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What Did You Change Your Mind About in 2007?
chrisd writes "The Edge 2008 question (with answers) is in. This year, the question is: 'What did you change your mind about and why?'. Answers are featured from scientists as diverse as Richard Dawkins, Simon Baron-Cohen, George Church, David Brin, J. Craig Venter and the Astronomer Royal, Lord Martin Rees, among others. Very interesting to read. For instance, Stewart Brand writes that he now realizes that 'Good old stuff sucks' and Sam Harris has decided that 'Mother Nature is Not Our Friend.' What did Slashdot readers change their minds about in 2007?"
The more I see of the Presidential candidates on the Republican side, The more I see fascists running for Dictator in Chief, that a Gulliani presidency will mean a police state, a Huckabee presidency will will bring a theocracy and only the Republican who isn't bone chilling frightening is Ron Paul. When did the Republicans becomes Fascists?
CDE open sourced! https://sourceforge.net/projects/cdesktopenv/
I changed my opinion about the future of the United States and Capitalism. I was completely pesimisstic and was predicting complete economic and social collapse. But, thanks to Ron Paul, I realized that it was possible to go back to what made America great, and away from this welfare/warfare fascist/socialist mess that will eventually bankrupt the country. Thanks to Ron Paul, I also changed my mind about the Federal Bank. I always realized that the bank was the reason for the housing and dot com bubbles, but I always assumed that the bank was necessary, but Ron Paul made me realize that a better system is possible.
And as Ron Paul also said, "I think we can safely assume that 95% of the black males in [Los Angeles] are semi-criminal or entirely criminal."
Just so you know--Ron Paul is a racist whack-job. He doesn't have the endorsement of the American Nazi Party, Stormfront, and other white supremacists for nothing.
Anti-war != good and sane person. HTH, HAND.
-- Cerebus
Whether or not nature is our friend, Sam Harris is still a divisive, cherrypicking, spitemongering tool.
Not flaming, just going to correct you before you believe and therefore spread more erroneous FUD. Just FYI, back before medicare and medicaid, health care insurance-or just simply paying for it out of pocket-was *much* cheaper(as a percentage of joe working class raw median take home pay). This is from personal "been there" experience, I am old enough to comment on this, not out of a book or anything. The feds jumping in and controlling it caused instant huge price increases and it has never even gotten close to being a deal like it used to be. It was so freaking cheap guys used to go door to door selling policies.
In other words, stop drinking the new age welfare state koolaid without some historical perspective. Was it perfect? No it was not, but for joe regular worker right down to sub one dollar an hour range (when I started full time working it was still well under a buck an hour), health care coverage or direct hospital/medical bills were just not that bad, they just weren't for the most part. Right now, it is WAY more expensive, inflation adjusted or not, just way more expensive. Same with education. The feds being involved with education has doubled the cost and reduced actual knowledge transferred. Again, went to school before the department of education was around as an official cabinet level deal. sorry, education since 1980 is not any better and in a lot of ways it is worse. That entire department is not needed whatsoever for any purpose other than to coordinate mass children brainwashing. That is the number one goal of the department and always has been, to convert over younger generations to be big brother/corporate drones.
I am sort of surprised the europeans fell for it hook line and sinker, given they saw in their own backyards how this whole scam with brainwashing children worked out with hitler and stalins regime, but so it goes, they fell for it and are now so hooked on it it has reached cult like behavior. Oh well...some people just refuse to admit they have been long term conned so they defend being conned/exploited/taken advantage of. There's a term for it, it is called "stockholm syndrome".
The feds screw up all the time, some is necessary, most is not, and at best they add a huge layer of bloated bureaucracy who exist solely to shuffle paperwork around.
Chairman Mao called - he wants his rhetoric back, and also to correct your spelling in interNment.
Of course, if your upbringing includes 20 years as the child of a westerner working in "under-developed nations" - aka shitholes - we can't really expect you to have a remotely realistic outlook on reality. Are we talking social worker with an NGO, UN official, diplomat? It really doesn't matter - you've been fed a 20 year line of socialist bullshit and told it was foi gras. Eat up - maybe one day it will be relevant to someone other than college student who takes "protest vacations" on Daddy's dime.
(Although if your Dad was a mercenary, I'd pay more attention to you, but that's impossible, because mercenaries know better than to bring their familites to the places they are hired)
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
secularism is no guarantee of liberty.
No, nothing is. But it's a damn good start. You'll notice that the United States was founded by secularists, many (most?) of them to one degree or another were religious themselves. While I'm all for the complete elimination of religion, it's the secular ideals of the Enlightenment that gave rise to any liberty we have managed to achieve in the United States.
Religion is no guarantee of tyranny
No, but it certainly is a good start.
Ron Paul being a creationist is completely irrelevant to his ability to be a good president.
This is complete bullshit. If he can't accept facts based on evidence when it is the most solid any human has ever witnessed how can anyone expect him to rationally handle situations where the facts are less certain and the evidence more nuanced? Being a creationist should bar anyone from becoming president. Not because it is their religion but because it is profoundly stupid.
The Farewell Tour II
Not really. A sensible person looks at each case individually. Obviously Ron Paul doesn't feel that the evidence for evolution is enough to support it, but that doesn't mean he'll come to the same conclusion in other cases. Of course, this depends on the assumption that Dr. Paul is a sensible person who evaluates each issue on its own merits, but I try to give people the benefit of the doubt.
Then he is a complete and total idiot. If you look at his other positions you'll see that clearly he doesn't have a lot of sense and that he's "right" on the war (possibly his only correct position) probably for the wrong reasons, much like Pat Buchanan.
The Farewell Tour II
So what about all the reports of people getting their iPods stolen in London?
Sorry, I'll believe actual news reports before I believe some random person on Slashdot.