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It's because people here are stupid. They are so desperate to avoid any trappings of Socialism that they'd rather die because they can't get medical care than to let Big Evil Government help them out.
The truth is that we desperately need a single-payer system, just like every industrialized country in the world that realized a long time ago that health care is a basic infrastructure need for a productive, thriving population. But the American people are collectively so scared, stupid, and easily swayed, even by outright lies ("Death panels! Federally funded abortion! Rampant costs! Elderly care cuts!") posted on bumper stickers, they they would literally show up with torches and pitchforks in Washington if Congress actually did what is right.
The funny thing to me is that these stupid people who are so quick to bash Socialism are usually fanboys of one of the most huge, expensive Socialist organizations in the entire world: the U.S. military. Now, I'm not bashing the military, I have a lot of respect for it, Socialist as it is and everything. But it's just kind of funny how when George Bush sunk trillions of dollars into it, you didn't see these idiots showing up in Washington with caricatures of him as Hitler.
Maybe I'll post more later. I really could write a book about this, but I've got to go to work.
But consider this. The U.S. is the only country, other than Myanmar, that still has not converted to the metric system. If this country is so stubborn and stupid as to not do things the right way just to spite those damn commies in Europe (and not have to buy a new set of wrenches), seriously, what hope do we ever have of really moving to a single-payer health care system?
No need for the hostility, its just part of what most of his humor is about. Look at other characters in Family Guy, they're all superficial and ridiculous stereotypes of various races, genders, nationalities, etc. Stewie is no closer to an actual Brit than Cleveland is to a black man, or Meg is to an awkward teenager. You could even consider those characters to be caricatures of stereotypes. American Dad is the same way.
I apologize if I offended you, I definitely did not intend to do so. I am most certainly not the bigot you are looking for.
I own a mineral deposit in a central Nevada mining district, though not with any intent to exploit it. I am quite familiar with the regulatory details of mining in the US. It is very different than the caricatures spoon-fed to the public by activist organizations.
Environmental impact studies are fine and necessary. Archaeological impact studies are mostly bullshit; the region is littered from end-to-end with artifacts leftover from the Lake Lahontan civilization (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Lahontan), you can find stuff everywhere if you know what to look for. So everyone just pretends that there are no artifacts.
There are two big problems that really make it impossible to profitably mine US deposits. First, there is an environmental lawsuit industry that thrives on delaying the opening of mines until the companies run out of money to deal with them. The lawsuits are mostly bullshit about hypothetical habitats for endangered species and the like; they aren't credible, but that isn't the point and some courts are willing to entertain them indefinitely.
Second, a big problem is that if you pick up a rock, you own it. In the western US mining districts, those rocks are laden with natural concentrations of all sorts of low-value heavy minerals that are magically transformed into "toxic waste" the minute you touch it. This has arguably been the biggest killer of new mining. The obligation to scrub natural mineral formations of elements with no economical value very substantially increases the cost because you end up "mining" metals that have no value. This is particularly problematic for things like rare earth metals -- the mineral complexes are intrinsically "toxic waste" under standard regulatory regimes. It doesn't matter that they are natural, the mining company is obligated to treat nature as a superfund site.
Regulations regarding arsenic in the water have been similarly exploited by environmental activist groups to shut down mining. In many places in the western US, the background levels of arsenic in the groundwater is naturally several times higher than the EPA limits because of the local mineral formations. The way it works now is that if you do mining near those formations, you become responsible for bringing the natural background levels within EPA guidelines -- a fool's errand. So mining companies avoid areas where the local arsenic levels exceed EPA guidelines, lest they become responsible for cleaning up arsenic they didn't produce.
Environmental activists have very cleverly created a regulatory framework that holds mining companies responsible for natural mineral distributions even if the mining companies are in no way responsible. This has effectively outlawed heavy metal mining in the western US because the environment is naturally full of heavy minerals.
From what I understand, there is some fear from prosecution, or the ACTA won't be relevant, would it? And the many Puritans took significant part in politics in England (you might have heard of Oliver Cromwell, for example), your description is simply wrong. The Puritans left mainly because they didn't like the Anglican Church, and wanted to openly take part in a Puritan Church. You make a caricature of both the puritans and those you object to today, in different directions, and then say there are no similarities. Maybe if you'll look at things as they are you'll see them.
Because we simply don't care? People here get so stressed about some of the most pedantic things. I use the WiFi outside my home once in a blue moon. It's just not that important since my data plan is unlimited. 3G is perfectly suitable for the occasional internet need while I'm at the doctors office, or sitting eating lunch and reading slashdot or some random news tidbit.
'Joe User' simply doesn't care as the functions and apps they have work just fine for day to day use. I shouldn't be surprised given the typical slashdot reader, but it's almost like there's a complete disconnect between the geeks and the typical user in here. Usually folks in here are a little more level headed to at least attempt to understand the general wants and needs of the non-nerd folk (outside of linux anyway..lol).
It like some sort of weird political extremist group in here lately. This whole Apple/Droid thing reminds me of the old Windows/Apple wars. It's become so polarized in here lately that people can't even state that they don't really care if it's a closed system, they just like the damn phone and geek ideals be damned.
Every iPhone topic turns into how Apple is evil (+1 insightful, yeah baby), and how we should despise them (+1 underrated), or their the new 'Microsoft' (+1 fanboi), even if these 'blocked' apps aren't even apps we use, or care about. You end up reading post after post about how we're missing out by not buying a droid, and we're mindless drones, ect, etc, ad-nauseum.
The very folks saying we're mindless drones just want us to become mindless droids. It's just turned into some weird caricature of South Park where the goths are running around calling everyone conformist, and stating you only need to wear dark clothes, listen to sad music, and hang out with the goth crowd to be non-conformists.
Whatever...
Now there was a paranoid ranting screed. I read most of it, but finally started skimming it. I no longer had to read it because I've heard it all before. I have an ex-girlfriend who was like her: old overweight undereducated radical feminist.
There is a grain of truth in rants like that, but only a grain. Yes there is societal pressure against segments of society by other segments of society, but this tendency to ascribe malice aforethought to that pressure is symptomatic of poor education and very muddy thinking. It is true that conservative think-tanks generate bogus studies for the purpose of shoring up agenda-driven speeches, but her attempt to explain why is pure fantasy. I'm quite sure she'd never been in a country club in her life, so her attempt to characterize the interplay of the wealthy is nothing but ill-informed speculation.
I have had repeated, regular contact with the CEO of the company I work for, and he's almost a caricature of the old white rich male good old boy networked patriarch that she was ranting about. And I can tell you with absolute certainty that the hierarchy of such people she fantasizes about does not exist. The people who are driven to seek power and wealth at all costs are often sociopaths, but more, they are always extremely arrogant. They do not submit to the will of others of their type. She ascribes very female motives and organization to a sub-culture that is entirely, even rabidly, male. They do not all march in the same direction, they do not issue veiled orders to one another, they do not even get along very well.
I have also had occasional contact with the majority owner of the company I work for, and while he's superficially similar to the CEO (old white rich and male), in other respects he's entirely different. One, he's substantially richer than the CEO. Two, he is in truth a self-made man. He did not come from a wealthy background, he does not have the "right" parents, and he does not exhibit the drive to seek power for power's sake or wealth for wealth's sake that the CEO does. He was a carpenter, he's missing some fingers from one hand after an accident with a power saw, and he was in the right place at the right time (California's real estate boom starting 40 years ago) and knew enough to parlay serendipity into success. He's fabulously wealthy by her standards and quite wealthy even by my upper middle class standards and... there is no agenda. He runs his construction company the same way he always has. When he thinks he can make money doing a development, he spends the money and takes the risk. When he thinks he'll lose money, he doesn't take the risk. Simple as that. There was no spoken from on high marching orders to denigrate women and minorities, nor would he follow them if there were. A large fraction of his workforce is Latino. This does not make him some sort of equal opportunity crusader, either. It's just a southern California company and that's the kind of labor he can get.
Aside from all that, she decries the system that fails to "provide" jobs for everybody. It doesn't work that way. First, because all of the people she's talking about who needed jobs don't know anything particularly valuable. If I was in a position to hire people, I would be wanting particular skills, and most of those people not only don't have them, but can't get them. Some of it is for lack of opportunity, but much of it is lack of both interest and capability. I have a sneaking suspicion she fell into that category herself, most of the time. I know damn well Britain's unruly youth fall into that category.
Second, the American Dream (up in lights, with music) isn't about having a job. Having a job is having the opportunity to make someone else rich. Wanting a job is wanting to not have to worry, to not have to think, to not have to make hard decisions (or indeed, any decisions at all). That's NOT the American Dream. The American Dream is having the opportunity to work for yourself, to do what you want and get paid for it.
Regarding your point of interest: there's about 30,000 people killed via firearm every year for the last decade and the decade prior. A little more than half are suicides (about 17,000) and the rest are a mix of homicides and accidental deaths (of which IIRC there are about 1200 a year). It's remarkably consistent, actually.
So anyway there's about 12,000-14,000 non-accidental firearms related deaths each year. Versus A little more than 3000 Americans killed by terrorists on our own soil, for the whole history of our country--kind of pales in comparison; your point stands. It's kind of silly to get worked up about terrorists, when people are so unlikely to die because of terrorists. But that's their goal, isn't it? Make a real big ugly scene, get everyone worked up.
As a firearm rights advocate, I concede that too many people are killed via firearm. It is a problem. But even if you could magically take all the guns away from *everyone*, it's not going to do a lot to the numbers. People will still kill because that's the culture.
Of course, when one cites statistics, it sounds TERRIBLE, like end of the world stuff. Until you see that about the same number of people (about 13,000) die from falls, another 13,000 die from poisoning, and 40,000 from automobiles. Yeah, far fewer people are killed with guns purposefully than are killed by cars, accidentally... All despite Americans having more guns in their closets than cars in their driveways.
Great, let's just have everyone shooting everyone
Sure... After all, *everyone* knows the 1800's American western frontier was called the Wild Wild West, because there were shootouts every noon, right after the morning brawl at the saloon, and right before the evening run-in with the in-juns... Right? Well, Wrong. There was probably never a time where men went armed as much as they did then, but Heinlein's observation, An armed society is a polite society held true. In reality, when the white men weren't being evil to the natives, it was generally the Not so Wild, West.
Heck, the most famous old west shootout, the gunfight at the O.K. Corral only tallied three deaths, and besides even that sort of event was exceptionally rare. Despite this, every time there is a debate about someone's choice to go armed, some pundit chimes in, "it's going to be the wild west all over again"... Yeah, if only we could go back to a time where the wildest thing around was Buffalo Bill's Wild West--basically a caricature of itself.
The previous poster has been listening to the people yelling in his mind, and to an angry mommy he's determined to humiliate for some reason. I want you to do a survey of all feminists and tell me exactly what percent are always angry about boys peeking at women? I know a lot of feminists. Very few of them are of that "Take back the night" Catherine MacKinnon Andrea Dworkin variety. Of course, there's always the caricature. You know, like "Obama is a socialist." A useful lie.
Rather than engaging with my books on their own terms, he caricatures my work and then attacks it.
:'(
That's not what he says:
South Park, Family Guy, and the Simpsons are social and political satire (leave their effectiveness out of this, please), and thus qualify to most Americans as acceptable fare for adults in moderation (same class as Dilbert or an op-ed caricature cartoon). Anime hero tales of any sort are lumped in with the old Saturday morning fare. This is compounded by there genuinely being a lot of Japanese anime that IS targeted at youth, especially when corrected for social norms (Ranma, with its nudity, is a child/teen show; Dragonball, with its fairly graphic dismemberment (and nudity!), is a child/teen show). Add in the histrionics when Japanese shows talk about or show something adult (someone talking about sex about as candidly as would someone on Friends; using black-and-gray or black-and-black morality), and you've finished the portrait. Now, as the current generation of twenty-somethings matures, a lot of this will go away, since many, many people of that age have seen some anime or know someone otherwise reasonably sane that like anime. It may always seem a bit odd, but then, so is seriously enjoying zombie movies or coin-collecting. The stigma will shift in that direction, I think.
Aaah. Civilization 1 and 2 were the best! :D
Show that the record of *global average* temperature over the last century that has been reported in the literature has systematic errors that account for most of the warming.
Falsification doesn't mean having to refute any straw man caricature of a hypothesis anyone can dream up
Funny. You are the one coming up with straw man caricatures. GP asked about AGW, and you are talking about falsifiability of GW.
while some kids will follow right up to the goody two shoes path
That's a caricature, and not terribly close to what's going on. I'm not suggesting these kids do everything exactly the way their parents want all the time. I'm suggesting they generally grow up to be good, well-rounded people, without their parents having to watch their every move.
It isn't that people are inherently evil. I believe that it is easier to be bad and/or difficult without reason, at the very least it is easier to be selfish...
Easier in the short term, but not in the long term, which is one of the many lessons you teach your kids when you teach them why to be good. "Because I said so" isn't going to cut it.
Hardly anyone actively tries to turn (their own) children in to their own definition of evil, because it generally doesn't take much effort.
Hardly anyone tries, so I doubt you have any evidence on which to base that... And no, anyone could turn their kid into an asshole. I would think it takes talent to make someone evil.
Easy. Show that the record of *global average* temperature over the last century that has been reported in the literature has systematic errors that account for most of the warming.
It has been attempted repeatedly in the published literature. There hasn't exactly been a cover up, it's just that the warming issue per se issue was largely settled in the literature over twenty years ago.
Falsification doesn't mean having to refute any straw man caricature of a hypothesis anyone can dream up. Climate change does not require average temperature at every locality to increase, for seasonal variance at locales to remain constant as average temps there increase, or for there never to be cold years at a locality or for temps to go up every single year. It certainly doesn't preclude unusually large snowstorms on the eastern seaboard.
In any case anyone who's lived in a cold, snowy climate knows snow is weakly correlated at best to temperature. It has to be cold enough to freeze water at high altitudes, then you need plenty of moisture which near the coast is correlated with higher ocean temperatures. It's not anything new or mysterious.
You swine. You vulgar little maggot. Don't you know that you are pathetic? You worthless bag of filth. As we say in Texas, I'll bet you couldn't pour piss out of a boot with instructions on the heel. You are a canker. A sore that won't go away. I would rather kiss a lawyer than be seen with you.
You are a fiend and a coward, and you have bad breath. You are degenerate, noxious and depraved. I feel debased just for knowing you exist. I despise everything about you. You are a bloody nardless newbie twit protohominid chromosomally aberrant caricature of a coprophagic cloacal parasitic pond scum and I wish you would go away.
You're a putrescence mass, a walking vomit. You are a spineless little worm deserving nothing but the profoundest contempt. You are a jerk, a cad, a weasel. Your life is a monument to stupidity. You are a stench, a revulsion, a big suck on a sour lemon.
You are a bleating fool, a curdled staggering mutant dwarf smeared richly with the effluvia and offal accompanying your alleged birth into this world. An insensate, blinking calf, meaningful to nobody, abandoned by the puke-drooling, giggling beasts who sired you and then killed themselves in recognition of what they had done.
I will never get over the embarrassment of belonging to the same species as you. You are a monster, an ogre, a malformation. I barf at the very thought of you. You have all the appeal of a paper cut. Lepers avoid you. You are vile, worthless, less than nothing. You are a weed, a fungus, the dregs of this earth. And did I mention you smell?
If you aren't an idiot, you made a world-class effort at simulating one. Try to edit your writing of unnecessary material before attempting to impress us with your insight. The evidence that you are a nincompoop will still be available to readers, but they will be able to access it more rapidly.
You snail-skulled little rabbit. Would that a hawk pick you up, drive its beak into your brain, and upon finding it rancid set you loose to fly briefly before spattering the ocean rocks with the frothy pink shame of your ignoble blood. May you choke on the queasy, convulsing nausea of your own trite, foolish beliefs.
You are weary, stale, flat and unprofitable. You are grimy, squalid, nasty and profane. You are foul and disgusting. You're a fool, an ignoramus. Monkeys look down on you. Even sheep won't have sex with you. You are unreservedly pathetic, starved for attention, and lost in a land that reality forgot.
And what meaning do you expect your delusionally self-important statements of unknowing, inexperienced opinion to have with us? What fantasy do you hold that you would believe that your tiny-fisted tantrums would have more weight than that of a leprous desert rat, spinning rabidly in a circle, waiting for the bite of the snake?
You are a waste of flesh. You have no rhythm. You are ridiculous and obnoxious. You are the moral equivalent of a leech. You are a living emptiness, a meaningless void. You are sour and senile. You are a disease, you puerile one-handed slack-jawed drooling meatslapper.
On a good day you're a half-wit. You remind me of drool. You are deficient in all that lends character. You have the personality of wallpaper. You are dank and filthy. You are asinine and benighted. You are the source of all unpleasantness. You spread misery and sorrow wherever you go.
I cannot believe how incredibly stupid you are. I mean rock-hard stupid. Dehydrated-rock-hard stupid. Stupid so stupid that it goes way beyond the stupid we know into a whole different dimension of stupid. You are trans-stupid stupid. Meta-stupid. Stupid collapsed on itself so far that even the neutrons have collapsed. Stupid gotten so dense that no intellect can escape. Singularity stupid. Blazing hot mid-day sun on Mercury stupid. You emit more stupid in one second than our entire galaxy emits in a year. Quasar stupid. Your writing has to be a troll. Nothing in our universe can really be this stupid. Perhaps this is some primordial fragment from the original
The problems with your argument are as follows:
(1) "Mayor Tommy Battle" and his "task force to include 25 community leaders" does not equate to Alabama congresscritters, Alabama citizens in general, or the tea party movement.
(2) Nor do I really think if we took a poll of Alabama's citizens that we would find a majority who thought Obama was "fascist" or "communist".
(3) So far I haven't found anything definitive about Mr. Battle's political affiliation... maybe someone else can make a more skilled research. But the best lead I have is that he spoke at a conference for Democrat women. It may be the case your assumption he represents conservative groups is incorrect. Was it substantiated by anything other than seeing the word Alabama?
(4) Promoting small government does not preclude people from supporting the existence of certain government programs. I mean, theoretically you are talking about conservatives (or some crude caricature thereof), not anarcho-capitalists. As "the Alabama task force fighting the new plan includes former NASA Administrator Mike Griffin and former Ares project manager Steve Cook," I think it there are probably some decent balancing arguments for maintaining the program.
I'm not saying that securing pork isn't likely to be among the motivations, or that there mightn't be some hypocrisy; but as far as establishing either of those points goes, all you did was rant off some wild generalizations.
Please, dude... I know you loooove Apple more like your (non-existing? this is /. after all ;) girlfriend. And that’s all good. Do whatever makes your happy. :) ;)
But please keep it down with using the Apple brand name for every type of product out there. Ok?
I hate to tell you, but: Reality does not equal Apple!
You could just as easily have said the factually correct thing:
In 6 years time, there’ll be an awful lot of smart phones / mobile computers in the wild.
Frankly, I doubt that even in the US many people will still care about Apple that much in 6 years, when the reality distortion bubble (the one that lets their products look like they could compete) will become its first gaping holes.
And that is not meant as as offense. Even though religious people will see it like that anyway. (See Mohammad caricatures.)
Wow... exaggerate much? App store to police state? .
That's not that big of an exaggeration. See here: http://www.juggleware.com/blog/2008/09/steve-jobs-writes-back/
FreedomTime was a app that displayed a countdown till the next president was elected. It was banned by Apple for being too political.
The developers email:
Dear Steve,
A quick note to let you know what kinds of apps are being rejected for the App Store.
This app is not defamatory, harmful or speaking untruth. It is lighthearted and humorous. Does it imply critique? Of course it does, but not without crossing any lines of decency or the boundaries agreement.
For a quick screen shot:
http://www.juggleware.com/iphone/freedomtime/
Sincerely,
Alec Vance
juggleware llc
His Steveness' reply:
Even though my personal political leanings are democratic, I think this app will be offensive to roughly half our customers. What’s the point?
Steve
That's only of many examples, which include political caricatures etc. etc.
So while you play with your shiny phone, freedom is being trampled.. and even the tech savvy Apple Slashdotters are not even aware of it..or maybe they're busy brushing them under the carpet while making and modding up posts that rationalize Apple. Just think of the mom and pop types that get an iPhone because everyone else has it, no one will care, while developer freedom is lost. This is Microsoft's wet dream.. and Apple is realizing it.
What you are describing are not shills, but caricatures of shills. If I was to pay someone to astroturf on a site that rewards (usually) rational discussion, I would make sure to instruct them not to just troll, but to present rational, but one-sided, arguments to promote my product/service, while using satire/sarcasm/witticisms to denigrate my competitors/opposition. If you scroll down to the bottom of the page of comments, and click on the "363 more" button a couple times it adds more and more comments from further back in time. Almost all his comments are defending a Microsoft product or action, or attacking Apple/Linux/FOSS. The funny part is - I agree with him frequently in his defense of MS stuff, as well as some of his criticisms of FOSS and Apple. He just seems too extreme to be legitimate and he doesn't seem to talk about anything else.
Check it out, man, and let me know what you think.