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That's the funniest comment I've read in a long time. Such an excellent caricature of the typical Free software advocate stance: offer inferior alternatives where possible without understanding the domain and discount anything else as 'useless'.
I mean, reading the article, it's obvious it's a parody.
I think they know.
lampoon (lm-pn') pronunciation
n.
1. A written attack ridiculing a person, group, or institution. See synonyms at caricature.
2. A light, good-humored satire.
However, the original article from ABC is, in fact, serious. It's also so ridiculously inaccurate, it's scary. Quoth I: "Predators are using Nintendo DS anywhere in the world. And it's going to be really hard to track down those individuals because of course, they're on a wireless network from a hotspot such as a coffee shop." which is totally false - as PictoChat only works DS-to-DS, which means the person they're talking to is a few feet away.
I dunno about you, but I think I can track a DS user who's a few feet away. I'm probably going to look for the guy holding a Nintendo DS who's not me.
But then again, this is why I don't watch local news. To paraphrase the Daily Show, "Is the media too sensationalist? Find out tonight, in our no-holds-barred expose that just might save your family's life."
"The USA has no moral high ground when it comes to human rights violations."
Hmm even if compared to the stoning to death of women who "consented" to rape? Ever seen that? What about the death camps in North Korea? Heard testimonies on that? Or organising the torching of embassies to win the hearts and minds of the population? You know... that Bush caricature incident... ah, no sorry that's just wrong isn't it? It was someone else being portrayed. What about opening fire on your own population? You know, like China does routinely. What about...
Why don't you go read Amnesty International reports? Then try to argue that the US is the worst on the block.
There are two big and contentious issues, Guantanmo and what happened at Abu Ghraib, the rest is peanuts, but even those two are on far higher moral ground than most of the daily ordinary shit that goes on in the rest of the world except for in the EU (and that's only because the EU does next to nothing anyway... uh well forget that, the Dutch UN soldiers have raped another village again).
Your name is fitting, you're disgusting.
Take note: In the Orlowski article, the line following the bit about the lotus-eating is: "Both these points of view are caricatures, of course." Thanks to the poster for the sensational, and ultimately false, summary.
I will look into this as soon as I get some time to do so.
Keynes has one truly fatal flaw to his work: It changes. ... As those premises were demonstrated to be false, because events and data changed, rather than admit he had been wrong he either pretended that he hadn't meant what he said before, or simply ignored data that contradicted him.
He did not exactly impress me either.
Capitalism: Private ownership of the means of production. I own what I have, you own what you have, we engage in trade solely because both of us consider what we gain to be greater than what we lose. (I want your apple more than I want my nickel, for example.)
This definition is incomplete, as it would also cover all the previous forms of trade systems like mercantilism for example and so it is not specific to Capitalism. So there has to be some additional considerations, which in my understanding of Smith's premises would be structuring the marketplace in such a way as to aim at the system to become in effect a meritocracy, as trade/private ownership alone are simply a wholly unsatisfying description of societal goals.
Socialism: Collective ownership of the means of production. What I have, earn, can acquire, all defined by central authority. You and I engage in trade not because we want to, but because that is what the plan says we do.
That is of course a caricature of Socialism and in fact pretty much the definition of Communism. My understanding of a Socialist society (or perheaps more accurately called a "Social Conscience" based society) would be where the means of production are private but their macroscopic operation is shaped by a set of social boundaries which prevent their activities to exceed certain globally set limits, beyond which their actions produce more negative then positive effects. The governing rule of such a place is an attempt to follow the premise of meritocracy to its logical ends in the structure of the marketplace and also a premise of a certain base "social contract" understanding between the citizens and the society are taken into consideration. In the case of the meritocracy-based marketplace, you would see things like very steep estate taxes, to prevent kids of rich people to acquire fortunes without the attendant contributions to society, you would see all natural resources (but not their extraction and processing) being nationalized as there is no merit but only a danger of monopolistic gouging to society provided by an idle ownership of a coal deposit, you would see exponentially progressive taxation to prevent runaway market singularities and to forster more uniform distribution of production amongst a large number of competing smaller companies instead of a few massive conglomerates, you will also see very aggressive anti-monopoly actions of the market oversight authorities and a significant effort being made to prevent the government from assisting and inducing monopolistic behaviour (which is doubly checked by the progressive taxation slowing down unlimited growth of individual companies), etc. From the "social contract" side you would see things like Universal Medicare and significant assistance in acquiring education. Note that nowhere there is anything about "collective ownership" of any means of production, with the exception of things not subject to regular rules of competition in the marketplace, as Universal Medicare for example (people do not shop for doctors when in cardiac arrest -- no competition and thus no marketplace here). Also the few "government monopolies" (such as the natural resource ownership and Medicare) are strictly confined to specific areas, constituting a small fraction of the economy.
Note that most of this is consistent with Adam Smith
As a minister formally of the Southern Baptist convention, I can tell you that there are a lot of Christians standing up to fundamentalism. The problem is that they don't tend to get the press. Instead, the press latches on to controversy (e.g. Pat Robertson's all-too-regular hoof-in-mouth disease) and, due to their largely secular bias, have created a caricature of American religion in the form of the religious right.
Thank you for your insightful comment. I agree that it is not very intelligent to form one's opinion about what is going on in the world with information from only one source. I have never, to my recollection, watched Fox News, so I can't really judge it myself, but it certainly doesn't have a reputation of being a useful source in any case (except possibly to find out what Americans are being told).
However, you've totally missed my point. My question was not "Where are the peaceful Muslims?", but rather, "Where are the 10,000-strong demonstrations against Al Quaeda?". The cartoonists drew some pictures which, when you come right down to it, may be offensive but don't actually hurt anyone. Al Quaeda kills people. Which humiliates Mohammed more, someone who draws a caricature of him, or someone who tells the world that he taught his followers to kill innocents? Which is the greater danger to Islam, some nobody who makes fun of the Prophet, or some follower of his who distorts his teachings so criminally?
If there is outrage at the minor thing, why is there no outrage at the major thing? Or, if there is only limited outrage at the major thing, why is there so much outrage at the minor thing?
But I don't think there's much point continuing the discussion in this forum. This is already old, and few people are continuing to follow it.
"In the evolutionary theory debates, the battle between the gradual change camp and the punctuated equilibrium camp has been going on for a long long time. As an antro major, we discussed both ideas in class, but really never talked about 'what if it's both'."
Gould and Eldredge explicitly stated that punctuated equilibrium and gradualism are not mutually exclusive. It's actually a little bit funnier than that. When Gould and Eldredge came out with punctuated equilibrium, those that they pegged as gradualists felt like they had been caricatured as slavishly holding to uniformitarianism and disallowing any role to great environmental change. Punk Eek is however a great way of describing things. Read more about it at talk.origins.
Have you even seen the cartoons? I doubt it, or you couldn't have drawn a parallel to anything racist. Radical muslims could take a page from the message of those caricatures: islamic terrorism is destroying the thing it's supposed to be fighting for. Islam.
... nevermind. Which country did not pose harm? Are you talking about Afghanistan? Hmm, I wonder what Afghan women thought about that! Or, of course, everybody that didn't follow the state-sanctioned doctrine and got themselves a bullet for the trouble. But of course, it's the same in the west, right? Opinions such as yours a silenced by US-Army guns and tanks, right?
drop bombs on innocent civilians in a country that posed no harm, and boastfully talk of 'shock and awe';
Fly planes into
Irag maybe? Remember Kuwait? Gasing of the Kurds? Harmless? Sure!
Whats important to remember though: Allah is great and societies that are based on state-enforced religiousness, intolerance, oppression, hatred and violence towards their own populance are moraly equivalent or even superior to the west!
shoot their children in the face as part of an organized program to steal their lands;
Yes, the tactics of Hamas et al are despicable! Wouldn't have expected this insight from you!
# imprison their wives and daughters as hostages;
Even if true and not just some sentimental appeal on your part, what's the difference? There is a case to be made that muslin women are better of in western jails than they are in their own culture. At least they'd be more free, and you know wouldn't get killed for being raped (an occurance which, for all the talk about religion is much more prevalant there).
# chop down the olive trees that have supported their families for hundreds of years;
"USS Abraham Lincoln, this is Delta Chop Alpha One, please confirm the Operation "No more Olive branch" is a go!"
Are you fucking kidding me?
# lock up their young men by the hundreds of even thousands after September 11, unconstitutionally and illegally, and quietly release them months later rather than admit it was all a racist program of profiling;
The constitution doesn't apply to anything happening outside the US. Also, it's an excellent idea to provide a disencentive for gurillia fighters: No uniform, no rights under the geneva convention.
fire a tank shell into a group of their children, and call it a 'mistake';
Blow youself up on a civilian bus and call it heroism! I wonder, which of the two cost more lifes so far?
set up torture centers to brutalize and humiliate mostly innocent civilians, and continue doing it after photographs of some of the least outrageous acts are shown;
"toture centers"? Oh right, like Abu Graib, formerly known as "Saddams Happy Fun Park". Loud music and getting you dick grabed by a girl just doesn't compare to beheadings, the cutting off of hands and beatings-till-you-are-dead. But never forget: Iraq was totally harmless and the people sitting in detention centers right now are randomly picked from the streets for looking like Aereabs!
But still, I agree with part of what you are saying: there should be trails, with impartial judges and competant counsel.
# drop bombs on apartment buildings on the chance that some political enemy you are illegally targeting might possibly be there;
Fly planes into buildings, rig subways with bombs, blow yourself up with no goal except: kill all "westerners". Inflicting civilian deaths is so much better when it's intended, right?
# set up food distribution for the poor, tauntingly featuring soup made of pork; # surround them with walls to formalize the theft of land from them and make it impossible for them to have a state.
Yeah, gifts that I don't like give me all the excuses I need to commit any crime! I totally symphazie! Didn't like pants you aunty gave you for christm
Did you know that those cartoons were re-prints. They had been published previously in Denmark, even in Egypt (in October 2005!), without the worldwide baying of "muslims" for blood.
7 46
:0)> ) it is the Islamic states which are using the caricatures as a sort of reverse propaganda (perhaps it's a soviet thing?!?). "Look what you've done, these cartoons give us the right to murder a few people and burn a whole bundle of stuff down ...".
See eg http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=48
If you ask me (which I know you were going to
That's what it looks like to me.
I've been watching this craziness over cartoons for a few days now, and I'm confused - what's the problem? From what I can tell - someone drew a cartoon that someone else thought was offensive and the person who took offense asked for an apology... The person who drew it told them to piss off, and that incited riots?
Maybe it's just me - but isn't that a bit much? Rather than rioting, why not say "hey - ya know what? There's a zillion of us in your country - we're just not going to buy anything from the company that created this cartoon. Boycott 'em." or better yet - commission an artist or two to draw a caricature of the cartoonist who drew the things in the first place. Put it up all over the place "Joe Blow is a blasphemous asshole" or some such nonsense...
But marching, chanting, and burning down buildings is just so frigging ridiculous that it boggles the mind. If I recall - isn't the Prophet in question one who professes peace and love? What the hell kind of follower tries to defend the honor of the Prophet with war and hate?
Now that I think of it, it reminds of of the whole Salmon Rushdie "Satanic Verses" thing... just completely insane and wrong.
I'm Jewish and I have friends of all faiths - including Muslim. And none of them are going nuts over this - in fact, they're all pretty embarassed by the actions that their fellow followers have undertaken. What I think we're seeing here is a limited sect of radicals who are fanned on by a bunch of nutjobs (terrorist or otherwise) and enhanced by the Media... I say "Stop covering it in the news" and ignore it. Just like that crazy guy who walks down the street screaming at people ("who look at him funny")...
and finally - I'm a nerd. Someone hacked an unprotected website *yawn* Why does this news matter to me?
You mean to say they are being a bunch of liars?
If that was what I meant, that would have been what I said. The caricatures definitely was offensive, and the Danish PM did handle the situation very arrogantly initially by refusing to see the ambassadors, but seing as this is nowhere near the first - or the worst - instance of Mohammad drawings, the reaction is absolutely out of proportions, and I do believe it has more to do with middle eastern interior politics than with Denmark as such.
I think, however, it's not just a matter of "guilt by association". The Islamic terrorists are not just terrorists who happen to be Muslim, they are people who are doing what they do IN THE NAME OF ISLAM, which is why it's very important for other Muslims to contradict them publicly. Unless, of course, you think that they are accurately interpreting the teachings of the Prophet, which is what the world will assume you think unless you speak up.
As has been pointed out elsewhere in this thread, Muslims ARE speaking out about this, just not being covered by the mainstream media. But it does seem odd that SO MANY people are demonstrating angrily because cartoonists showed on paper what Bin Ladin and friends showed by their actions, yet the latter do not seem to be getting anywhere near the same scale of reaction.
Somebody has written that this is because Muslims in, say, Turkey, do not attach any particular importance to the fact that Bin Ladin and friends are Muslim, whereas caricatures of the Prophet do affect their religion. They seem not to realize that, to the rest of the world, unless they are contradicted by other Muslims, Bin Ladin and friends DO appear to speak for Islam. They are not only killing innocent people, THEY ARE TELLING THE WORLD THAT ISLAM TEACHES TO KILL INNOCENT PEOPLE. And if Muslims do not care about that, why in the world should they care about what some cartoonists in Denmark draw?
Thats funny you know. I think a M$ salesman has more info about kernel development. And most your facts are like a VB noob trying to argue Linus arguments in linux kernel mailing list.
To feel what muslims feels. Just imagine.
That SCO case gonna bad because some monkey court. After that, all Corporate support for linux was droped. Major distro makers was declare bankrupt and top 20 linux kernel developer was killed because some unexplanable disasters(Including Linus even his family). BSD begin threatened by some very very old copright issues from AT&T. All major OSS companys start to close their doors or sources. After than that some Open Soruce zealots start to ddos ing entire world. Because of this FBI/USA Congress Outlawing Linux and GNU licence and arresting Stallman for cyber terrorism. Microsoft and others start to harvestering open soured programs. Then making arguments how Open Sourcerers are bad programmers, how they are unamerican, how they are cancer of economy yada yada yada...
Please my dear Slashdotters. This is not your job, most of you even don't talk any of that muslims. You just see some managed news about that.
I'm Turkish, I believe in caricaturism we have above avarage standarts. These cartoons not good, neither funny. They are just someting else to ignite Muslim people. Of course there was some works for rejecting Turkeys EU membership. These are wery hard times for Muslims and especially Arabs.
More than 100 years they are dying because of western politics.
Once upon time they are wery happy people. And they betrayed Ottoman Empire.
Of course Allah has own Justice...
Please don't make stupid argumenst and burn your damned oil. You know people dying for it...
Yeah, that was on Fark the other day.
...ah here:
5 .htm
lemme dig up the link (...)
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L0615375
GAZA, Feb 6 (Reuters) - When entrepreneur Ahmed Abu Dayya first heard that Danish caricatures of the Prophet Mohammad were being reprinted across Europe, he knew exactly what his customers in Gaza would want: flags to burn.
Abu Dayya ordered 100 hard-to-find Danish and Norwegian flags for his Gaza City shop and has been doing a swift trade.
Looks like there is a double-standard.
Well, it has never been about the caricatures (well, it has, but not really). The muslim world - or at least part of it, centered around the more fundamentalist governments - need an outside enemy. Egypt really isn't outside, and the Saudis don't want to anger the US - enter Denmark. A relatively small country with basically no impact whatsoever on life in Saudi Arabia; the perfect target.
One wonders where to find the Muslim mobs shouting "Down with Al-Qaeda! Down with terrorism! Stop killing innocent people in the name of Islam, because YOU are profaning the very name of Islam. Stop ridiculing the name of the Prophet in the eyes of the world by claiming that murder is part of Islam!"
Yes, Muslim governments are trying to control the terrorists, but governments always do that sort of thing. Where are the clerics denouncing the suicide bombers and those who send them? Why is there not a loud RELIGIOUS opposition to these people?
Because if there isn't, then the world is quite JUSTIFIED in believing that the terrorists are right when they claim that Islam teaches them to kill innocent people just because they belong to a nation that they claim are "enemies of Islam". And if Mohammed really did teach such things, then the caricatures of him are completely justified.
So don't attack the messenger! Don't attack the cartoonist who says "this is the picture that Muslims are showing us of Mohammed." Attack the people who are GIVING the world this picture of Mohammed.
>The objection is simply the image of Mohammed
That's what I've heard, but I wonder if the reacation would have been anywhere near this bad had they simply published, say, an artist's conception of the prophet vs. these unflattering caricatures.
>The cartoons that were published weren't that bad by any standards
By any reasonable standards, I'd agree. C'mon though -- muslims are insulted by the way their revered prophet is portrayed in these cartoons, let alone that their dogma forbids this in the first place.
That's certainly not any justification for violence and comupter vandalism, but I disagree with your point.
Just for the record, I think the way (some) muslims are reacting is wrong. Expressing their outrage by marching, screaming, carrying signs and setting flags on fire, well that would be protected free speech and public assembly anywhere, right? Commiting crimes like torching embassies, calling for violence against individuals and breaking into and defacing computer systems, that's wrong anywhere.
However, sweeping generalizations about an entire religion based on the actions of an angry few...
Mod parent up.
It seems very few people realize that the cartoons are offensive to Muslims for at least these two reasons: 1) that any sort of image of Mohammed is forbidden in Islam, and 2) not only are these images of him, but they depict him in such a negative fashion. An equivalent sort of offense for Christians might be having Jesus as a character who engages in casual sex on a mainstream sitcom - that is, linking a major figure in the religion to a caricature of the culture.
Additionally, people forget that in many Muslim and Arab countries, speech and the press are severely restricted by the government - thus why the population thinks it's reasonable to ask the Danish government to apologize. Literacy rates are also a lot lower that in the West, and street demonstrations are a very common medium of expression. That they turn violent is not suprising, and probably has a lot less to do with Islam than it does with political figures taking advantage of the angry crowds to promote their own anti-Western agenda.
Actually Jesus is the second figure of Islam. It is called Isa, the son of Mariah and Yussef by the maometans (the same Jesus).
Mohamed was introduced to christianity probably with a nestorian view, in which Jesus was not the Saviour of mankind (the nestorians denied the original sin), but an illuminated prophet. By the wy, there are many references in the Korhan, protecting the jews and the cristians and proclaiming them something as imperfect muslims. I guess the people at Al Qaeda do not read it throughly, as the inquisition did not read the bible.
Having a caricature of Mohamed balanced with a caricature of Jesus and with a spice of Moses would be in fact a treble insult on islam. Only a double for me, though, but I am used to ignore it.
Francisco Colaço