Armed Man Takes Hostages At Discovery Channel HQ

It's always refreshing by gameboyhippo · 2010-09-01 09:34 · Score: 4, Insightful

It's always refreshing when Atheists are the psychos. I'm mean, c'mon! This guy is a representation of all atheists, right? :)

Re:It's always refreshing by Peach+Rings · 2010-09-01 09:42 · Score: 5, Informative

He's not completely psycho. Discovery's (TLC's) support of Jon and Kate Plus Eight, 19 Kids and Counting, etc is disgusting. Those parents should be in jail, not rolling in money.
Re:It's always refreshing by Doctor+Morbius · 2010-09-01 09:47 · Score: 5, Insightful

TLC is the freak show network. All these ridiculous shows about dwarves, women with giant legs, women with no lower body, and families with too many kids are stupid.

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If I disagree with you it's because you are wrong.
Re:It's always refreshing by IICV · 2010-09-01 09:47 · Score: 2, Funny

No no no, you don't understand. Most atheists are totally for TV shows like Jon and Kate - I mean, where else are we going to get a steady supply of fresh babies?
Next you're going to tell me that I should be barbecuing some cute cows or something. Disgusting.
On the other hand, if you're dealing with an atheist vegan, that's when you have problems.
Re:It's always refreshing by Cruciform · 2010-09-01 10:00 · Score: 4, Insightful

They made Communism their religion.
Dogmatic faith is a monster, whatever guise it wears.
It is the enemy of reason. As soon as people tell you to stop questioning an idea, beware their intentions.
Re:It's always refreshing by SpeZek · 2010-09-01 10:01 · Score: 4, Insightful

He might be an atheist, but he definitely has some very strong religious convictions regarding nature. I wouldn't be surprised if Mother Nature was his deity, in fact.
Re:It's always refreshing by ShakaUVM · 2010-09-01 10:06 · Score: 3, Insightful

>>19 Kids and Counting, etc is disgusting.
Do you know that your great-grandparents, or their parents, probably had that many kids, right? That the 2 child household is a very recent development?
Re:It's always refreshing by Sponge+Bath · 2010-09-01 10:16 · Score: 2, Insightful

I did not see anyplace in the article or the manifesto that states James Lee was an atheist. Besides, there is a difference between crazy person does something violent and crazy person does something violent in the name of religion (shooting doctors who perform abortion or bombing medical clinics). In this case, the person acted based on flawed environmental views, not because he was an atheist. In the case of shooting doctors, the shooter explicitly claims Christianity as justification for murder.
Re:It's always refreshing by Grishnakh · 2010-09-01 10:20 · Score: 3, Insightful

No, even back then 19 kids was not normal. More like 6-12 at the most.
Even so, back then, half the kids died before they reached 1 year of age. So it's not like there were families with a couple dozen kids running around.
Re:It's always refreshing by blair1q · 2010-09-01 10:21 · Score: 4, Insightful

I was questioning the idea that telling me to stop questioning an idea is a questionable idea.
What's the idea of telling me to stop?
Re:It's always refreshing by wjousts · 2010-09-01 10:23 · Score: 4, Informative

It's not been "The Learning Channel" for a long time. I believe they are officially know as TLC and TLC no longer stands for anything (quite apt actually). Kinda like how KFC insist that KFC doesn't stand for "Kentucky Fried Chicken" anymore and MTV isn't "Music Television".
Re:It's always refreshing by cyphercell · 2010-09-01 10:26 · Score: 4, Funny

must be openbsd.

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Under the influence of Post-Cyberpunk Gonzo Journalism
Re:It's always refreshing by frogzilla · 2010-09-01 10:42 · Score: 3, Informative

See Jonathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal" written in 1729.
http://art-bin.com/art/omodest.html
"I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee or a ragout."
and
"The constant breeders, beside the gain of eight shillings sterling per annum by the sale of their children, will be rid of the charge of maintaining them after the first year."
Clearly this is an old idea. What's the delay in getting this wholesome food into the grocery stores?
Re:It's always refreshing by Cruciform · 2010-09-01 10:51 · Score: 4, Insightful

People gathering together for a cause isn't an issue. It's when someone creates an element of unquestionable authority that you must submit to.
Whether that's Skygod Crankypants, Sauron, or Mao.
Dogmatism is a breeding ground for such "authorities".
Re:It's always refreshing by Zak3056 · 2010-09-01 10:59 · Score: 5, Insightful

He's not completely psycho. Discovery's (TLC's) support of Jon and Kate Plus Eight, 19 Kids and Counting, etc is disgusting. Those parents should be in jail, not rolling in money.
I personally think having that many kids is pretty damn weird, but who the hell are you to judge? It's not like they're on welfare and you're paying for it--apparently, they were fine financially before the reality stuff. The US isn't an overpopulated nation, either. Our birth rate is below replacement, so we can tolerate the occasional outlier--and "outlier" is exactly what these people are--like this.
"In jail?" Fuck you.

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What part of "shall not be infringed" is so hard to understand?
Re:It's always refreshing by jpapon · 2010-09-01 11:07 · Score: 2, Insightful

Religion is the belief in and worship of a god or gods, or a set of beliefs concerning the origin and purpose of the universe.

[dictionary.com, wikipedia.com] Not that "religion" is necessarily the best way to describe communism, but religion doesn't require a deity. Besides, their point was that they made it a religion in that they accepted its ultimate goodness and truth on faith, which in turn allowed them to commit terrible acts in its name.

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-- Let us endeavor so to live that when we pass even the undertaker shall be sorry. -- M. Twain
Re:It's always refreshing by ShakaUVM · 2010-09-01 11:11 · Score: 4, Informative

>>No, even back then 19 kids was not normal. More like 6-12 at the most.
I've got a family tree from the 1800s framed up in my guest room. Yeah, 6-12 was the average, but some had more. The average woman had 5 to 7 kids in the 1800s. A family of 19 wouldn't have been called "disgusting" - as the GGP did - back in the day.
>>Even so, back then, half the kids died before they reached 1 year of age.
A 50% infant mortality rate? I don't think so.
http://eh.net/encyclopedia/article/haines.demography
Re:It's always refreshing by professionalfurryele · 2010-09-01 11:13 · Score: 4, Insightful

If you look at history you will find plenty of evidence of atheists doing unpleasant things. Pol Pot for a start.
The question when we assign blame to ideologies is did the ideology lead the the unpleasant actions. Pol Pot and Stalin and so on didn't kill people because they were atheists. They killed people because they were radical communists, and communists need to have a look at their ideology and ask themselves why every time communists get sweeping powers they do such unpleasant things.
Same goes for Christianity, Islam, every ideology / religion. Christianity encourages the respect of authority, the widely held conception of faith is dangerous, the idea that salvation through grace as opposed to works is dangerous. Some of the bad things people have done in history have been a direct result of their interpretation of Christianity and when that repeatedly happens people will begin to wonder if the ideology / religion itself is a good thing.
Some ideologies are better than others, and if we measure them on their track record it is pretty darn clear that most religions are not conducive to a good social order. Communists should not go around acting all surprised when people point to Stalin and Pol Pot when they talk about their ideology and Christians cant complain when the Crusades and Slavery get brought up. That is the history of those ideologies and ideologies are judged on those histories.
Which brings us nicely to atheism. By it's very nature atheism doesn't do diddly. Go ask your average theist and they will tell you that atheism has nothing to offer, and they are in essence right. No one gets anything out of being an atheist. It doesn't compel anyone to do anything. Are you compelled to do stuff because you don't believe in the tooth fairy? Or Thor? Of course not.
This guy was a Malthusian whack job, you want to complain about that ideology have a field day. But suggesting that atheism had anything to do with his actions is just silly.
Re:It's always refreshing by Peach+Rings · 2010-09-01 11:39 · Score: 4, Insightful

It's a child protection issue not a financial issue. There's no way that the parents can pay adequate attention to each child. They educate each other (public school is evil etc), take care of each other, and fend for themselves most of the time. There is such a thing as a criminally irresponsible parent (leave your kid in a locked car for example).
Re:It's always refreshing by c6gunner · 2010-09-01 12:13 · Score: 2, Insightful

Atheists don't believe in a deity, but they might still have some spiritual component
Yes, but that's because the word "spiritual" is completely fucking useless, and can mean absolutely anything.

Buddhists are atheists, for example.
No, they're not. You may have noticed that the word "atheism" contains the word "theism". I know, it's hard to see, but it's in there.
Funny enough, the ancient Greeks used to refer to Christians as atheists, because they didn't believe in the Greek Gods. If you're going to use such a limited definition of the word, you're making the same mistake the Greeks did.
Re:It's always refreshing by SpeZek · 2010-09-01 12:23 · Score: 2, Insightful

Buddhists are atheists, for example.
No, they're not. You may have noticed that the word "atheism" contains the word "theism". I know, it's hard to see, but it's in there.
Yeah, try actually looking to see what "theism" means. It means a belief in a deity. Buddha isn't a god. Hence Buddhists are atheists with spiritual beliefs (such as reincarnation).
I don't know what "definition" of [a]theism you're using, but it isn't the correct one.
Re:It's always refreshing by hedwards · 2010-09-01 12:40 · Score: 4, Insightful

Yeah, they should be in jail. The only way that a family like that can subsist is by making the older children parent the younger ones, and all the children end up suffering the effects of neglect. Having food, shelter and medical care isn't all the a parent needs to provide for a child to grow up to be a well adjusted, contributing member of society.
Re:It's always refreshing by VanGarrett · 2010-09-01 12:41 · Score: 2, Insightful

One of the large problems with religion, is that people use it to justify their prejudices. For the sake of example, Christian scriptures, and the New Testament in particular, promotes friendship and kindness to everyone, regardless of who they are and what they do. Somehow, people are able to build doctrine around these scriptures, which justify the bombing of abortion clinics, or the hatred of Jews and those of African decent. It makes absolutely no sense, but people feel vindicated about this sort of belligerent ideology, because someone has shown them which individual passages to take out of context and focus on. It really seems to me, as though people start with bad ideas and build their religion around that, rather than building their ideas around their religion.
By definition, religion can have no solid proof. It wouldn't be faith, if we could prove the whole thing scientifically. Personally, when I encounter a discrepancy between my faith and my science, then I can only assume that my understanding of one or the other is incorrect. Science has a history of being wrong, and faith has a history of being misinterpreted. I am comfortable with worshiping God, without really understanding precisely what He is.
At the end of the day, one has to acknowledge that something, be it anywhere from inanimate to super-intelligent, at some point in history, had the capacity to cause the universe to exist. From there, you can either choose to make no opinion of what that thing is/was, or pick a religious view that you can reconcile with demonstrable science.

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Learning about brewing beer, by brewing beer.
Re:It's always refreshing by Com2Kid · 2010-09-01 12:53 · Score: 2, Informative

17% to 20% is still pretty miserable. Even then those numbers don't show how many children died young, just infants.

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Re:It's always refreshing by mjwx · 2010-09-01 14:35 · Score: 2, Informative

A 50% infant mortality rate? I don't think so.
According to your own link, it was about 25% accounting for the difference between black and white kids. That's a lot worse then the ~1% we have now.

That being said, fewer children are being born into western societies because we no longer need a large family to support ourselves into old age. If you look at a young adult from the Philippines (not Phil-Am, one who was born and grew up in the Philippines) they will tend to have a larger number of siblings, 5-7 is not unusual, even 9 is not abnormal. This is because in third world nations, the younger generation are required to support the elder members of the family so the more kids there are, the easier life the parents will have. The story is the same across most developing nations in Asia, Africa and South America but the situation in the Phils is a bit worse because of deep rooted Christianity (opposition to contraceptives) as compared to Thailand or Cambodia (both governments actively support contraceptive use as a way to stop the spread of STD's).

The economic need to have children is gone from western and advanced societies, only the biological need remains and that's strong enough (normally) to ensure a growing population. People like to drag up examples like OctoMum without realising just how much of an anomaly they are. I believe about 2.4 kids is normal per couple (at least for Australia).

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Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Re:It's always refreshing by grayshirtninja · 2010-09-01 20:12 · Score: 2, Informative

and they all died of dysentery.
Re:It's always refreshing by professionalfurryele · 2010-09-01 21:07 · Score: 2, Insightful

Some modern Christians have little in common with historical Christianity, but many if not most have plenty in common. If you attend a church then you are organised, like historical Christianity. If you think that it is grace and not works that are most pleasing to YHWH then you have something in common with historical Christianity.
My intent is not to use ideology pejoratively, nor do I think I was suggesting Christianity was an ideology, although maybe I got sloppy with language at one point or another. I have an ideology so if I'm being pejorative about them I'm insulting myself. To be fair that wouldn't be uncalled, my ideology has had problems, they are just nothing to do with atheism.
Before we talk about atheism spawning ideology we are going to need to agree what atheism is. If atheism is the assertion there is no god then it is true one can draw conclusions from this statement. I would term an atheist as someone who has not been compelled to a belief in God. If you want to term the ideologies that result from the belief there is no god 'atheist ideologies' you are at liberty to do so, what I don't understand is why you think that term is particularly informative.
To what extent can we say that Fascism is drawn from atheism as opposed to Thomism being drawn from Christianity? In the case of National Socialism which played a larger role in the less desirable attributes of the ideology, atheism (which most National Socialists were less than enamoured with) or anti-semitism which has a history drawn primarily from a particular application of the source text of Christianity?
Atheism hasn't learned from "it's" mistakes because it hasn't made any. It cant make any. This isn't a particular achievement on atheism's part. Belief in Santa hasn't done much by way of significant harm or good throughout history either. Both positions are essentially devoid of direct consequences and as you have pointed out at most have secondary effects through other ideas. The negative content of those ideas is almost exclusively drawn from sources other than atheism because atheism says virtually nothing.
I wouldn't assert that atheism is an alternative to ideology. I have an ideology and it isn't atheism, it is a mixture of Western social democracy, the enlightenment and secular humanism. It has nothing to do with atheism. It is also not without it's problems in history. Problems I'm well aware of and have studied.
That was the whole point of my post. I was responding to someone who had swapped something which was an ideology (politically active religiously motivated political ideologies) with something that was not (atheism).
If when you talk about Christianity you aren't talking something which has a drastic impact on your politics then when you use the word Christianity and I use the word Christianity we aren't talking about the same thing. When I use that word I'm referring to a representative depiction of the religion of about 1 billion of my fellow humans. It is a socially conservative, politically active and includes a moral philosophy which has a dramatic impact on the social and political reality of most Western states and has (sometimes for better, usually for worse) had a significant impact on a variety of related political ideologies.
If your ideology isn't inspired by Christianity in any way good for you. If it is, then I think it is important to take a good look at history and make darn sure you don't repeat the myriad mistakes committed as a direct result of specific interpretations of your religion's source text.

Well... by u38cg · 2010-09-01 09:34 · Score: 4, Interesting

I guess he did his bit for over-population.

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[FUCK BETA]

Re:Well... by moonbender · 2010-09-01 11:04 · Score: 3, Informative

The sanity of a few of his points along with the insanity of most of them makes his manifesto such a fun read (if you can blend out the whole hostage-taking business). "Focus must be given on how people can live WITHOUT giving birth to more filthy human children since those new additions continue pollution and are pollution. A game show format contest would be in order." That last bit just cracks me up.
Also the book he refers to ("channels MUST have daily television programs at prime time slots based on Daniel Quinn's "My Ishmael" pages 207-212") is described on Wikipedia: "My Ishmael is a sequel to the novel Ishmael by Daniel Quinn. Its plot revolves around a gorilla named Ishmael who describes his philosophy regarding tribal society to Julie, a twelve-year-old girl." This might be a good political book or not (I have no idea), but in terms of analytical quality and intellectual depth I assume it's not quite in the same league as Das Kapital.

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Why discovery channel by 0racle · 2010-09-01 09:34 · Score: 4, Funny

Seriously, who holds the people at the Discovery Channel hostage for anything?

This won't affect shark week will it?

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"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."

Re:Why discovery channel by blair1q · 2010-09-01 09:41 · Score: 5, Funny

Seriously, who holds the people at the Discovery Channel hostage for anything?
People looking for their hostage situation to become a long-running reality series.
Re:Why discovery channel by Grishnakh · 2010-09-01 10:39 · Score: 2, Insightful

Someone who wants to see shows about real science and nature, and not a bunch of stupid melodramas about boneheads building crappy motorcycles?
This guy should have shot whichever person at Discovery was responsible for American Chopper.

Ok you first... by thejuggler · 2010-09-01 09:35 · Score: 3, Insightful

eliminate yourself first and maybe others will follow.

Re:Ok you first... by jpapon · 2010-09-01 09:48 · Score: 3, Insightful

I can understand. An Inconvenient Truth made me want to kill myself too.

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-- Let us endeavor so to live that when we pass even the undertaker shall be sorry. -- M. Twain
Re:Ok you first... by conspirator57 · 2010-09-01 10:04 · Score: 3, Interesting

Indiana Jones: Archaeology is the search for fact... not truth. If it's truth you're looking for, Dr. Tyree's philosophy class is right down the hall.

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"If still these truths be held to be
Self evident."
-Edna St. Vincent Millay
Re:Ok you first... by Artifakt · 2010-09-01 10:27 · Score: 4, Insightful

He also advocated ending all immigration and the "Anchor baby Filth'. I'm not going to blame him in the right just for that, but if you read his manifesto enough to find your quote and ignored that part, you are deliberately lying. Lee was insane. Trying to use him to paint a political movement you don't like as the cause is a good way to get more violence going. I doubt you have enough discipline to control your hatred by actually seeking to speak the truth first and foremost, but I do urge just that on you - learn to care more about the truth and human life than you do about spreading lies and hatred. Actually reading Lee's manifesto with understanding reveals he thought many people were valueless or of negative value. Your own life is worth more than he thought - don't waste it in lies and prove him right.

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Who is John Cabal?
Re:Ok you first... by Locke2005 · 2010-09-01 10:54 · Score: 2, Insightful

Apparently Mr. Lee did exactly that. Now, who would like to follow in his footsteps?

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I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.

the manifesto by Joe+Snipe · 2010-09-01 09:35 · Score: 5, Informative

is cached.

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Sometimes, life itself is sarcasm...

It's a good thing... by Anonymous Coward · 2010-09-01 09:35 · Score: 5, Funny

... this guy was against religion. We all know how crazy religious people are!

re: by Anonymous Coward · 2010-09-01 09:36 · Score: 5, Funny

dear crazy guy,

we stoped producing babies (or even trying to) years ago.

the slashdot readership.

Think of the Froggies! by srobert · 2010-09-01 09:37 · Score: 3, Funny

Won't somebody please think of the Froggies!

Re:Think of the Froggies! by magunning · 2010-09-01 10:02 · Score: 2

And, of course, the Squirrels.

Thanks a lot, Jackass by StefanJ · 2010-09-01 09:38 · Score: 3, Insightful

This disturbed jerk has provided the Pave the Earth right wing with a new Emanuel Goldstein.

"SEE? We told you all the environmentalists hated humanity! This is all the proof we need that global warming is a hoax and that Yellowstone Park should be sold off to create timeshare resorts!"

Re:Thanks a lot, Jackass by phantomfive · 2010-09-01 09:47 · Score: 4, Insightful

Now you understand how Right-wingers feel at being labeled 'The American Taliban.'

Seriously, judging any movement by it's most extreme elements is silly.

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Qxe4
Re:Thanks a lot, Jackass by thetoadwarrior · 2010-09-01 09:53 · Score: 5, Insightful

They'll have to work a lot harder to undo that one as long as the tea party is around.
Re:Thanks a lot, Jackass by yyxx · 2010-09-01 10:21 · Score: 3, Insightful

Now you understand how Right-wingers feel at being labeled 'The American Taliban.' Seriously, judging any movement by it's most extreme elements is silly.
There are left/right-wingers, moderates, and centrists. The something-wingers are, by definition, the "most extremist elements".
Re:Thanks a lot, Jackass by timeOday · 2010-09-01 10:39 · Score: 4, Insightful

Now you understand how Right-wingers feel at being labeled 'The American Taliban.'
And how Muslims in NYC feel when people try to punish them for 9/11.
Re:Thanks a lot, Jackass by Jodka · 2010-09-01 10:43 · Score: 2, Insightful

The irony of your comment is that the so-called "Pave the Earthers" who want to sell off Yellowtone Park to create timeshares are no more representative of the right wing than is this disturbed jerk representative of the left. You engage in the same partisan misrepresentation which you ridicule, though with opposing polarity.

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Ceci n'est pas une signature.
Re:Thanks a lot, Jackass by PitaBred · 2010-09-01 10:51 · Score: 4, Insightful

I disagree with the Tea Party and their hangers-on in matters of "fact" that they claim. Things like America being founded as a Christian nation. That religion is the answer to America's ills (hint: we're fighting terrorists who believe the same fucking thing, only a slightly different religion). Pretty much ANYTHING Sarah Palin states as fact.
I don't like the Democrats or Republicans, and I try my damndest to not be partisan. The current Tea Party is based on misinformation and exploiting emotions rather than anything factual.

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Re:Thanks a lot, Jackass by CannonballHead · 2010-09-01 11:33 · Score: 3, Insightful

Things like America being founded as a Christian nation.
It wasn't exactly Christian, no. Religion/Deism, and the Bible, were pretty big deals back then. Let's not ignore that part of history. Yes, I know about Jefferson's Bible. Yes, I know about other Deists. Yes, I know a lot of people were not "Christians." Yes, I know a lot of Christians want to Christian-ize history. I'm against all that stuff. I'm also against atheism-izing them if they weren't atheists.

only a slightly different religion
Slightly? Either you are being facetious or you don't have much of a clue about the differences :)
Re:Thanks a lot, Jackass by phantomfive · 2010-09-01 12:09 · Score: 3, Insightful

I'm not interested in discussing the merits of tea-party 'solutions' here, but I want to address some biases you have that are hurting you.

You disagree with pretty much anything Sarah Palin states as fact? Really? I don't know how you can come to that conclusion reasonably. Do you doubt that she has a daughter with down's syndrome? Do you think she wasn't governor of Alaska? Do you think America should stay a democracy? Do you respect George Washington? I'm going to guess that you actually agree with the vast majority of what Sarah Palin believes.

Secondly, your information gathering skills must really suck, because the common thread between the tea-party members isn't religion, it's economic policy. If religion alone were capable of starting such a big political movement, Pat Robertson would have been president. This is stuff you can figure out for yourself if you apply yourself to understanding. As another measurement of the religious nature of the tea-party, consider Mike Huckabee, who makes a point of appealing directly to the religious elements of the Republican party, and does it well. He doesn't do as well in the tea-party, though. Typically he can pull around 30% of the Republican party, which about matches the religious sector of the Republicans (and also explains why Republicans talk about religion but don't do much about it). In the tea-party poll, he only managed to get 4%, whereas Romney, who markets himself on economic issues, did much better.

In other words, I'm not saying I'm 100% right with what I just said, but you need to make your analysis more carefully and more nuanced. The way you're doing it now is blinding you to things.

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Qxe4
Re:Thanks a lot, Jackass by Attila+Dimedici · 2010-09-01 14:43 · Score: 3, Informative

The current Tea Party is based on misinformation and exploiting emotions rather than anything factual.
Then you obviously haven't been paying attention to what the people in the Tea Party have actually been saying. I tried to find an easy summation of what I have seen various people who identify themselves with the Tea Party movement have said that it is to them. Here is the best I could find: # Identify constitutionality of every new law: Require each bill to identify the specific provision of the Constitution that gives Congress the power to do what the bill does.
# Reject emissions trading: Stop the "cap and trade" administrative approach used to control pollution by providing economic incentives for achieving reductions in the emissions of pollutants.
# Demand a balanced federal budget: Begin the Constitutional amendment process to require a balanced budget with a two-thirds majority needed for any tax modification.
# Simplify the tax system: Adopt a simple and fair single-rate tax system by scrapping the internal revenue code and replacing it with one that is no longer than 4,543 words – the length of the original Constitution.
# Audit federal government agencies for constitutionality: Create a Blue Ribbon taskforce that engages in an audit of federal agencies and programs, assessing their Constitutionality, and identifying duplication, waste, ineffectiveness, and agencies and programs better left for the states or local authorities
# Limit annual growth in federal spending: Impose a statutory cap limiting the annual growth in total federal spending to the sum of the inflation rate plus the percentage of population growth.
# Repeal the health care legislation passed on March 23, 2010
# Pass an 'All-of-the-Above' Energy Policy: Authorize the exploration of additional energy reserves to reduce American dependence on foreign energy sources and reduce regulatory barriers to all other forms of energy creation.
# Reduce Earmarks
# Reduce Taxes

Not all of the people who identify themselves as part of the Tea Party movement would agree with all of these points, they are all consistent with what people who have identified themselves with the Tea Party movement have said the movement is about. Some people who identify with the Tea Party movement would say that one or more of the points on this list are not the best way to accomplish the goals of the Tea Party, but the vast majority would say that these points represent legitimate ideas about how to do that.

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The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Re:Thanks a lot, Jackass by timeOday · 2010-09-01 17:06 · Score: 2, Insightful

Just because some event happened there doesn't mean Newt Gingrich gets to decide that's the "real" meaning of the namesake. The Cordoba House developers said they were commemorating Cordoba as an homage to the city in Spain where Muslims, Jews, and Christians lived together centuries ago in the midst of religious foment (that's a quote from the New York Times).

'disgusting human babies' by Gorimek · 2010-09-01 09:39 · Score: 4, Funny

Invader Zim is back!

Malthus Primer by CommieLib · 2010-09-01 09:40 · Score: 5, Informative

We're talking 19th century economist Thomas Malthus here. His main point was that the food supply only grew linearly, while the population could grow exponentially. Thus, there were only three restraints on population growth:

Misery, i.e., war, plague and starvation.
Vice - birth control - Malthus was Catholic,
Moral Restraint - keeping it in your pants.

Millibrain here seems to have got it exactly backwards (http://tmz.vo.llnwd.net/o28/newsdesk/tmz_documents/0901_demands.pdf):

Develop shows that mention the Malthusian sciences about how food production leads to the overpopulation of the Human race.

I was wondering for a while whether this dumbass was going to make an unexpectedly personal contribution to the zero population growth movement with the help of the local police. At any rate, "Malthusianism" is a perjorative in economics, as in "that's nothing more than warmed over Malthusianism". Where Malthus got it wrong was in not forseeing the economics pressures that drove innovation that in turn increased crop yields so that food supplies could indeed grow exponentially. His reasoning, per se, isn't wrong - but he starts from a false premise.

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If your bitterest enemies are people who hack the heads off civilians, then I would say you're doing something right.

Re:Malthus Primer by Nadaka · 2010-09-01 10:00 · Score: 5, Insightful

The food supply curve is not exponential. It has exceeded exponential growth for a century, but only by consuming ever increasingly scarce resources to do so. Soil quality and aquifer levels are dramatically declining, soon even oil based fertilizers (that will become prohibitively expensive with peak oil) won't be enough to keep up production.
Malthus was failed to account for technological advances and declining human fertility. But he also failed to account for destruction of the soil and irrigation systems from over production. His ideas were far from perfect, but they do have merit.
Re:Malthus Primer by yyxx · 2010-09-01 10:26 · Score: 2, Insightful

Where Malthus got it wrong was in not forseeing the economics pressures that drove innovation that in turn increased crop yields so that food supplies could indeed grow exponentially.
And where many economists get it wrong is in not realizing that this is not sustainable. You can print exponentially much money and delude yourself into believing that there is perpetual growth, but food production and population growth invariably will hit a wall. We're still growing because we're using up finite resources at an enormous rate; once they are gone, human populations will crash.
Re:Malthus Primer by CommieLib · 2010-09-01 11:03 · Score: 2, Interesting

You are correct that it is not (necessarily) exponential. The important point, however, is that it is not constrained to be linear - that's the core fallacy of Malthusianism.

The key missed insight that we have, that Malthus didn't, is that supplies of things that are highly constrained in the short run are subject to economic pressures that may make them less constrained in the long run.

So as soil quality and aquifer levels decline, their portion of the price of food will rise (because supplies are more scarce). This will create enormous demand for good soil and better aquifers, i.e., the prize for doing things differently becomes enormous, and only then do people change their behavior.

But people can and do change their behavior when the incentives are right - if I call you Malthusian, I'm generally implying that you're failing to realize this.

So, you can absolutely believe that there are problems in the way we produce food, and still realize that Malthus was wrong, wrong, wrong. If you still think Malthus was right, then it's simply because I have failed to communicate what the word "Malthusianism" means in an economics context.

--
If your bitterest enemies are people who hack the heads off civilians, then I would say you're doing something right.
Re:Malthus Primer by c6gunner · 2010-09-01 11:33 · Score: 2, Insightful

Heh. It's funny that you can completely accept that Maltheus was overreacting because he failed to allow for the advancement of technology, and in the same breath claim that we're all doomed because we're running out of X. Maltheus would have been proud.

His website's text by Anonymous Coward · 2010-09-01 09:40 · Score: 5, Informative

The Discovery Channel MUST broadcast to the world their commitment to save the planet and to do the following IMMEDIATELY:
1. The Discovery Channel and it's affiliate channels MUST have daily television programs at prime time slots based on Daniel Quinn's "My Ishmael" pages 207-212 where solutions to save the planet would be done in the same way as the Industrial Revolution was done, by people building on each other's inventive ideas. Focus must be given on how people can live WITHOUT giving birth to more filthy human children since those new additions continue pollution and are pollution. A game show format contest would be in order. Perhaps also forums of leading scientists who understand and agree with the Malthus-Darwin science and the problem of human overpopulation. Do both. Do all until something WORKS and the natural world starts improving and human civilization building STOPS and is reversed! MAKE IT INTERESTING SO PEOPLE WATCH AND APPLY SOLUTIONS!!!!

2. All programs on Discovery Health-TLC must stop encouraging the birth of any more parasitic human infants and the false heroics behind those actions. In those programs' places, programs encouraging human sterilization and infertility must be pushed. All former pro-birth programs must now push in the direction of stopping human birth, not encouraging it.

3. All programs promoting War and the technology behind those must cease. There is no sense in advertising weapons of mass-destruction anymore. Instead, talk about ways to disassemble civilization and concentrate the message in finding SOLUTIONS to solving global military mechanized conflict. Again, solutions solutions instead of just repeating the same old wars with newer weapons. Also, keep out the fraudulent peace movements. They are liars and fakes and had no real intention of ending the wars. ALL OF THEM ARE FAKE! On one hand, they claim they want the wars to end, on the other, they are demanding the human population increase. World War II had 2 Billion humans and after that war, the people decided that tripling the population would assure peace. WTF??? STUPIDITY! MORE HUMANS EQUALS MORE WAR!

4. Civilization must be exposed for the filth it is. That, and all its disgusting religious-cultural roots and greed. Broadcast this message until the pollution in the planet is reversed and the human population goes down! This is your obligation. If you think it isn't, then get hell off the planet! Breathe Oil! It is the moral obligation of everyone living otherwise what good are they??

5. Immigration: Programs must be developed to find solutions to stopping ALL immigration pollution and the anchor baby filth that follows that. Find solutions to stopping it. Call for people in the world to develop solutions to stop it completely and permanently. Find solutions FOR these countries so they stop sending their breeding populations to the US and the world to seek jobs and therefore breed more unwanted pollution babies. FIND SOLUTIONS FOR THEM TO STOP THEIR HUMAN GROWTH AND THE EXPORTATION OF THAT DISGUSTING FILTH! (The first world is feeding the population growth of the Third World and those human families are going to where the food is! They must stop procreating new humans looking for nonexistant jobs!)

6. Find solutions for Global Warming, Automotive pollution, International Trade, factory pollution, and the whole blasted human economy. Find ways so that people don't build more housing pollution which destroys the environment to make way for more human filth! Find solutions so that people stop breeding as well as stopping using Oil in order to REVERSE Global warming and the destruction of the planet!

7. Develop shows that mention the Malthusian sciences about how food production leads to the overpopulation of the Human race. Talk about Evolution. Talk about Malthus and Darwin until it sinks into the stupid people's brains until they get it!!

8. Saving the Planet means saving what's left of the non-human Wildlife by decreasing the Human population. That means stopping the hum

Re:His website's text by marcmerlin · 2010-09-01 09:53 · Score: 4, Insightful

well, obviously the guy was deranged, but some of his points are valid.
The problem is that most countries rely on ever increasing population for their economy to strive and the politicians to do well (starting with social security that is not funded by people other than the ones who get the money).
The world clearly could do better with a decreasing population, but most governments encourage exactly the opposite, so indeed right now humans are going to spread until they've taken over all the resources available and at the expense of pretty much all other lifeforms on the planet.
I'll be dead before then, but thinking about it makes me sad.
Re:His website's text by dangitman · 2010-09-01 11:49 · Score: 4, Funny

I'd watch a Discovery Channel game show based on Time Cube!
I'm sorry, moonbender, the answer is "Word Animal Singularity Brotherhood." You are educated stupid. Goodnight.

--
... and then they built the supercollider.

But... by ScentCone · 2010-09-01 09:40 · Score: 4, Funny

If we don't have any more disgusting babies, how will we get people to work the boats on Deadliest Catch, or drive the rigs on Ice Road Truckers?

Why didn't he just jump off the building, and then make an immediate appearance on Ghost Lab? He would have had all the air time in the world to rant about "parasitic human infants" if he could make the first ever actually non-BS appearance on an idiotic cable ghost hunting show.

Anyway, let's hear it for the Montgomery County PD for taking care of this clown. Alas, we'll now get to listen to him rant in court, too.

--
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.

Re:But... by machxor · 2010-09-01 09:57 · Score: 4, Informative

Alas, we'll now get to listen to him rant in court, too.
Only if your Ghost Lab option comes true... Oh and the court decides to start trying ghosts...
The gunman, identified as James Lee, was killed by police following four hours of negotiations but the hostages are all safe, said Montgomery County Police Chief J. Thomas Manger.

Of only it was for a good cause by Daimanta · 2010-09-01 09:41 · Score: 4, Interesting

Like making Discovery Channel an interesting channel to watch again. I am not interested in (*City) Ink or in a cake-baking italian. No more seasons of crab/lobster/nessie fishing. I want the interesting stuff back again, learning things I wouldn't have learned otherwise. I will tolerate endless Rex Hunt reruns if this would be the case.

But no, mister hostage taker has some sort of higher goal here. Typical.

--
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power lost.

Busted... by bugs2squash · 2010-09-01 09:41 · Score: 5, Funny

Jamie Heinemann shot the perp with a potato cannon and knocked him into a tank full of sharks.

--
Nullius in verba

Re:Busted... by sizzzzlerz · 2010-09-01 10:17 · Score: 5, Funny

... and Mike Rowe cleaned up the mess left behind.
Re:Busted... by Tackhead · 2010-09-01 11:05 · Score: 4, Funny

Jamie Heinemann shot the perp with a potato cannon and knocked him into a tank full of sharks.

... and Mike Rowe cleaned up the mess left behind.

I love potatoes,
I love to kick some ass,
I love the SWAT teams,
Who aim for center mass!
~Boom-de-headshot, boom-de-headshot, boom-de-headshot, boom-de-headshot~
Re:Busted... by Culture20 · 2010-09-01 11:05 · Score: 4, Funny

But that wasn't explosive enough. Let's use Buster to see what would have happened if the perp was wearing 50 pounds of unstable TNT!

Re:Sure fire way by Mongoose+Disciple · 2010-09-01 09:44 · Score: 5, Funny

Committing violence is never the way to gain true followers.

Violence is like XML -- if it's not solving your problem, you're not using enough of it!

(See, naysayers! We can turn anything into News for Nerds.)

Re:Slashdot/CNN by DarkKnightRadick · 2010-09-01 09:45 · Score: 3, Funny

But he took over the Discovery HQ! Think of the sharks!

--
"There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death." Proverbs 16:25 (NKJV)

Re:His concerns are valid by Darkness404 · 2010-09-01 09:55 · Score: 2, Insightful

Overpopulation is a silly concern. The only reason why people starve is because of corrupt governments, otherwise the industrialized countries could easily, easily feed the poorer nations. When Africa and parts of Asia turn industrialized, it becomes apparent that children are more of a hindrance than a help, think about it, while its pretty nice to have 5 extra hands helping out on your tiny farm, it becomes 5 hungry mouths to feed when you become industrialized, 5 large college tuition bills, more clothing, etc.

Not to mention that if space ever becomes an issue people will simply have fewer kids to save themselves space in their house/apartment.

There are legitimate things to be worried about, but overpopulation isn't one of them.

--
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.

The crackpot's web site by tomhudson · 2010-09-01 10:08 · Score: 5, Informative

http://www.savetheplanetprotest.com/
Domain name: SAVETHEPLANETPROTEST.COM

Administrative Contact:
Lee, James savetheplanetprotest.com@freeprivateregistration.com
P.O. Box 81024
Burnaby, BC V5H 4K2
CA
852-3594-1708
Technical Contact:
Hostmaster, Domain hostmaster@doteasy.com
Suite 210 - 3602 Gilmore Way
Burnaby, BC V5G 4W9
CA
(604) 434-4307 Fax: (604) 608-6832

Registrar of Record: In2net Network Inc.
Record last updated on 03-Jan-2010.
Record expires on 07-Jan-2011.
Record created on 07-Jan-2008.

Domain servers in listed order:
DNS4.DOTEASY.COM 65.61.199.12
DNS3.DOTEASY.COM 65.61.198.12

Domain status: clientTransferProhibited
clientUpdateProhibited

The Discovery Channel MUST broadcast to the world their commitment to save the planet and to do the following IMMEDIATELY:
1. The Discovery Channel and it's affiliate channels MUST have daily television programs at prime time slots based on Daniel Quinn's "My Ishmael" pages 207-212 where solutions to save the planet would be done in the same way as the Industrial Revolution was done, by people building on each other's inventive ideas. Focus must be given on how people can live WITHOUT giving birth to more filthy human children since those new additions continue pollution and are pollution. A game show format contest would be in order. Perhaps also forums of leading scientists who understand and agree with the Malthus-Darwin science and the problem of human overpopulation. Do both. Do all until something WORKS and the natural world starts improving and human civilization building STOPS and is reversed! MAKE IT INTERESTING SO PEOPLE WATCH AND APPLY SOLUTIONS!!!!

2. All programs on Discovery Health-TLC must stop encouraging the birth of any more parasitic human infants and the false heroics behind those actions. In those programs' places, programs encouraging human sterilization and infertility must be pushed. All former pro-birth programs must now push in the direction of stopping human birth, not encouraging it.

3. All programs promoting War and the technology behind those must cease. There is no sense in advertising weapons of mass-destruction anymore. Instead, talk about ways to disassemble civilization and concentrate the message in finding SOLUTIONS to solving global military mechanized conflict. Again, solutions solutions instead of just repeating the same old wars with newer weapons. Also, keep out the fraudulent peace movements. They are liars and fakes and had no real intention of ending the wars. ALL OF THEM ARE FAKE! On one hand, they claim they want the wars to end, on the other, they are demanding the human population increase. World War II had 2 Billion humans and after that war, the people decided that tripling the population would assure peace. WTF??? STUPIDITY! MORE HUMANS EQUALS MORE WAR!

4. Civilization must be exposed for the filth it is. That, and all its disgusting religious-cultural roots and greed. Broadcast this message until the pollution in the planet is reversed and the human population goes down! This is your obligation. If you think it isn't, then get hell off the planet! Breathe Oil! It is the moral obligation of everyone living otherwise what good are they??

5. Immigration: Programs must be developed to find solutions to stopping ALL immigration pollution and the anchor baby filth that follows that. Find solutions to stopping it. Call for people in the world to develop solutions to stop it completely and p

Re:The crackpot's web site by audubon · 2010-09-01 10:44 · Score: 2, Funny

He's no Kaczynski.
Re:The crackpot's web site by Pojut · 2010-09-01 13:53 · Score: 2, Insightful

See, that's the thing though...his base intentions are actually quite noble; it's the completely bassackwards way he went about trying to accomplish his goals (as well as how he attempted to present his arguments) that are crazy.

--
Living With a Nerd

Re:Was he a practising M*m? by HeckRuler · 2010-09-01 10:09 · Score: 2, Funny

Dude, they're just cartoons. The green ones are not sexy. They're just food with some advertising mascots.
But if they did have a religion, I imagine this guy would fit the bill.

A kernal of sense in an insane mind by hellfire · 2010-09-01 10:11 · Score: 5, Insightful

What sucks about this is this guy has got a point, but that's lost because his actions are plain nuts and will drown out most mainstream discussion. But the point is that we are at a point where we are deeply concerned with climate change and resources on this planet, and people think that it's not at all irresponsible to have 19 children, and then the media encourages it!

China may be run by dictatorial fuckwads, but they have a point with their laws on having children. The entire society can't sustain it's population now, so adding another billion hungry mouths over 20 years is just going to fuck things up even more. With the scientific information I've been seeing as of late with global warming, potable water, oil, etc, I can actually envision near future where first world countries start considering birth limits. I understand the personal liberties some people feel they have a right to, but there comes a time when your insistence on having more children affects me and my family. If just you, me, and your spouse left on the planet, and there is only enough food to feed 3 people, and you and your spouse go and have a child without asking me, someone is going to have to give up food. You just impinged on me and my ability to stay alive by having a child. This is not a matter of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, this is good old fashioned primitive instinct of I want to live.

This guy might be an insane fuckwad, but he has a point. We should not be glorifying having 19 children when every new child strains our resources. Sure, we need to have babies to keep the species alive, but without resources to sustain them, there will be a huge population crash.

--

"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"

Re:A kernal of sense in an insane mind by huckamania · 2010-09-01 10:34 · Score: 5, Insightful

Europe doesn't need growth limits. At their current rate of replacement, there won't be many Europeans left in this world in a few generations.
The US is not over-populated. The world is a different question and one that many 'experts' have been very, very wrong about many, many times.
Re:A kernal of sense in an insane mind by anomaly256 · 2010-09-01 10:58 · Score: 3, Insightful

Eat the father, then the child, then take the mother as your own spouse (or if you're female, eat the mother and take the father).. Problem solved. Nature is satisfied.
Re:A kernal of sense in an insane mind by Peach+Rings · 2010-09-01 11:03 · Score: 2, Insightful

The thing is, you can't just refuse to give a hungry child food and rant for 5 paragraphs about politics and the middle ages. These children can't help their parents' stupidity and need to be helped. I'm not sure what the solution is though because you're right, they keep pumping out babies and we keep feeding them. There has to be a penalty for the mother to stop the cycle. Forced abortions are a touchy issue what with China but if you're not willfully breaking the law by having more kids then you have nothing to worry about.
A lot of the problem is due to pervasive Catholicism in latin america. Otherwise good people who work hard think that it's a sin to use birth control, and their children suffer.
Re:A kernal of sense in an insane mind by Cyberax · 2010-09-01 11:07 · Score: 2, Insightful

"But today, the government basically forces people with more resources to give some of those resources to families that have less"
What does it mean? Why do some people 'have' more resources? Are they stronger? Do they plow larger fields? Or maybe they have better-bred cows?
Some people have more resources because they live in a fucking society, which is supported by people with less resources. So stop whining and go to live on an uninhabited island. Where no-one will take away your precious resources.
Re:A kernal of sense in an insane mind by M.+Kristopeit · 2010-09-01 11:12 · Score: 2, Insightful

including the original poster... is 19 kids in 1 generation really that much worse than 4 kids each over 5 generations at earlier and earlier ages of reproduction?
if i grew up with 18 brothers and sisters, the last thing i would want for my children would probably be a similar environment... those 19 kids and counting all might choose to not have ANY children.
Re:A kernal of sense in an insane mind by zoom-ping · 2010-09-01 11:16 · Score: 2, Informative

FYI: Europe is not a country. Neither are the Europeans a nation.
Re:A kernal of sense in an insane mind by jensend · 2010-09-01 11:30 · Score: 2, Insightful

Claims that overpopulation is why we have poverty, environmental problems, etc and predictions that continued growth will lead to disaster have time and again been shown to be dead wrong, from Malthus to Ehrlich to the present day.
Ultimately the core of the message is selfish- claiming that for some reason your present consumption patterns should be protected by preventing other people from living and that the responsibility for society's problems lies not on our unwise actions but in the fact that other people exist.
Technology allows us to have greater freedom in our consumption patterns and our impact on the environment. Hunter-gatherers largely had little choice how much environmental impact per person they had; with modern technology (genetics, materials science, etc) we can grow enough food to feed a person within a rather small area and with a rather small ecological footprint and house a person much more efficiently than could be done three hundred years ago (think of the resources and pollution involved in heating a modern well-insulated home versus burning wood continually at multiple inefficient fireplaces in each drafty house for the majority of the year)- or we can waste more land and materials, pollute more air and water, and manufacture larger piles of trash per capita than people three hundred years ago could possibly have conceived of mankind being able to do.
If people chose to live in a way which involved wise stewardship of resources- re-engineering cities to be walkable, using clean public transport on those occasions when it is necessary to go further, reducing demand for consumer junk which rapidly gets chucked in landfills, separating different kinds of waste materials and waste water at a household level so recycling, composting, and water treatment could be done more effectively, eating less meat, eating foods in season, etc.- and concentrated more on using and developing new technologies to achieve a more sustainable lifestyle, then the planet could very comfortably sustain at least twenty times the current world population. Urban living could, if done with this goal in mind, have only a tiny ecological impact per person. But if people choose to use technology to allow them to waste more, it could with more technology and automation reach the point where just two people on earth could be battling each other for resources and be beyond the planet's carrying capacity.
Greed, violence, and disrespect for the planet and for others are the problems- not overpopulation. Yes, the planet couldn't sustain tens of billions of people with our present average consumption levels and average environmental impact per person- but that means we need to change our lifestyles and the way we treat the environment, not that we need to prevent others from living.
Re:A kernal of sense in an insane mind by JustSomeProgrammer · 2010-09-01 11:40 · Score: 2, Funny

THAT must be why there are farmers paid to not plant crops.
Re:A kernal of sense in an insane mind by Peach+Rings · 2010-09-01 11:49 · Score: 2, Insightful

When you put kids in a dangerous environment without any food/money, and reject and scorn them as a society so they have to fend for themselves, they don't just die off cleanly. They form gangs.
They would murder people, destroy neighborhoods, have no education and speak an unintelligible street slang, and be generally useless to society. Except instead of being fed with tax money, they're fed by robbing you at knifepoint and taking everything you have.
Re:A kernal of sense in an insane mind by Grishnakh · 2010-09-01 12:06 · Score: 2, Insightful

When you put kids in a dangerous environment without any food/money, and reject and scorn them as a society so they have to fend for themselves, they don't just die off cleanly. They form gangs.
So what's your solution? Give them money, so they raise more kids to be gang members?
they're fed by robbing you at knifepoint and taking everything you have.
Where I live, anyone trying that would simply be shot. Robberies (esp. with knives) aren't so common here in states where you don't know who's carrying a gun. But I guess in states or countries where you're not legally allowed to defend yourself, that could be a problem.
Re:A kernal of sense in an insane mind by bsDaemon · 2010-09-01 12:34 · Score: 3, Insightful

A Turk living in Germany is a German in the same way that a Dane living in Greenland is an Eskimo.
Re:A kernal of sense in an insane mind by dangitman · 2010-09-01 12:54 · Score: 3, Insightful

A Turk living in Germany is a German in the same way that a Dane living in Greenland is an Eskimo.
You're conflating several different things here, making your point meaningless. Europe is a region. Germany is a nation. Eskimo is a culture/race. It's quite possible for somebody to belong to all of those three at the same time.

--
... and then they built the supercollider.
Re:A kernal of sense in an insane mind by tsm_sf · 2010-09-01 13:23 · Score: 4, Insightful

It's interesting to note which people oppose the simple solutions to this problem: sex education, contraceptives, and abortion.
Generally it's the same people complaining about the situation.

--
Literalism isn't a form of humor, it's you being irritating.
Re:A kernal of sense in an insane mind by Count+Fenring · 2010-09-01 14:56 · Score: 4, Insightful

Honestly, this whole thread has devolved into fucked-up "BLAME THE POOR!" bullshit, so I'm not going to argue with you past pointing this out: in states where guns are readily available, THEY ROB YOU AT GUNPOINT.
And you know what? The immensely greater lethality of firearms, and the ease of learning to use them means that, no matter how AWESOME and FULL OF TESTOSTERONE you are, in a confrontation involving guns on both sides, you're just about as likely to end up being shot as the other guy.
P.S. For anyone who bought the "robberies aren't as common in states with permissive gun laws" line, check out the statistics on violent crime and cross-reference by gun ownership statistics. If that's TLDR, I'll let you in on the twist ending - MOAR GUNZ != LESS CRIMEZ!
Re:A kernal of sense in an insane mind by Antimatt3r · 2010-09-01 16:09 · Score: 2, Insightful

Where I live, anyone trying that would simply be shot. Robberies (esp. with knives) aren't so common here in states where you don't know who's carrying a gun. But I guess in states or countries where you're not legally allowed to defend yourself, that could be a problem.
Yes robberies in the states with knives are not common. Since weapons are so easy to get here in the states our criminals have them more than the people who can legally possess them. In the states you get robbed and gun point and most likely shot as well.

Impossible! by NerveGas · 2010-09-01 10:13 · Score: 2, Funny

Washington has laws against such things.

Maybe they should have passed two or three more laws against them, so the guy wouldn't have done it.

--
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.

Re:Get Hell off the Planet!!! by spun · 2010-09-01 10:18 · Score: 5, Insightful

This guy is not a teabagger despite the fact that he hates immigrants. He isn't a liberal despite the fact that he likes the environment. He is a dead crazy guy because he took hostages. He didn't need any help from political partisans to achieve his stunning degree of lunacy, I'm pretty sure he got there all on his own.

--
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton

the real question is by circletimessquare · 2010-09-01 10:20 · Score: 5, Funny

what is his slashdot id?

--
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it

Re:the real question is by Un+pobre+guey · 2010-09-01 11:24 · Score: 2, Interesting

Are you referring to 444983's sig? There is a passing resemblance to the manifesto.

'disgusting human babies' ? by PolygamousRanchKid+ · 2010-09-01 10:22 · Score: 2, Funny

He wants them to avoid encouraging people to produce more 'disgusting human babies'

Well, if human women start giving birth to giraffes, let me know. Nice critters.

--
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!

Re:His concerns are valid by xtal · 2010-09-01 10:22 · Score: 2, Insightful

Talking about limiting population growth is politically untouchable because of religion.

Everyone knows what the problem is. Nobody will deal with it.

Nature fixes overpopulation through starvation. We are in equilibrium with the cheap energy.

If the cheap energy ends, ultimately nature will fix things - no problem.

Mother nature is a real bitch when she's angry..

--
..don't panic

Re:Get Hell off the Planet!!! by somersault · 2010-09-01 10:37 · Score: 4, Insightful

Some of his points are valid, but I don't think telling any lifeform that their babies are disgusting is good marketing, considering any successful species is pretty much hard-wired to love babies..

--
which is totally what she said

Re:Get Hell off the Planet!!! by causality · 2010-09-01 10:41 · Score: 4, Insightful

This guy is not a teabagger despite the fact that he hates immigrants. He isn't a liberal despite the fact that he likes the environment. He is a dead crazy guy because he took hostages. He didn't need any help from political partisans to achieve his stunning degree of lunacy, I'm pretty sure he got there all on his own.

The mantra of fanboys everywhere goes something like "never miss an opportunity to associate a nut with any group you don't like. It furthers the whole 'us against them' bullshit that is so easy to exploit. This is so important that a false association is better than none."

--
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein

Re:This is why... by rcastro0 · 2010-09-01 10:44 · Score: 2, Insightful

> This is why radical atheism should be considered to be a religion. Blind faith in ANYTHING can bring irrationality. Yes, not collecting stamps is not a hobby, but avoiding touching a stamp could be considered to be a hobby.

Avoiding touching a stamp is not a hobby: it is OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder) -- a mental illness.
Likewise that man's defining characteristic is not religion -- he is mentally ill.

Blind faith is not the bringer of irrationality: blind faith is irrationality in itself. Saying this mad man is a man of faith is a tautology, IMHO.

And let me object to the "radical atheism" label, while we are at it. How many degrees of "no god" are there to make someone a radical atheist?

--
Quem a paca cara compra, paca cara pagará.

Re:Get Hell off the Planet!!! by konohitowa · 2010-09-01 10:46 · Score: 4, Funny

any successful species is pretty much hard-wired to love babies..

They taste suspiciously like chicken.

Re:Get Hell off the Planet!!! by bonch · 2010-09-01 10:53 · Score: 3, Insightful

I'm sure the Right will be just as understanding about the fact that this man does not represent liberal environmentalism as the Left was over the fact that Michael Enright's drunken attack on an Arab driver didn't represent conservative opposition to the Ground Zero Mosque.

Karma's a bitch.

Re:Get Hell off the Planet!!! by Mashiki · 2010-09-01 11:01 · Score: 3, Insightful

Considering the guy who attacked the arab while drunk worked as part of a group supporting the ground zero mosque and was a devout leftist, you're going to have problems running that one by. This guy however takes many points of the hyper-leftist environmentalism an ran straight forward with them.

But hey, what does it matter? The left have been screaming wildly and blindly for the last year that all members of the tea party are conservative, and racist.

--
Om, nomnomnom...

Re:His concerns are valid by Grishnakh · 2010-09-01 11:02 · Score: 2, Insightful

No, most of them are just a burden. People need education and upbringing to turn them into resources, otherwise they're only good for dumb manual labor which can be replaced by automation (and a lot of them are actually a big negative, as they consume resources and cause problems, called "crime"). Turning people into productive resources requires a very large investment of time and energy.

And no, we don't have plenty of food. Fresh water is dwindling, oil is dwindling (needed as fertilizer), desertification is increasing, arable land is decreasing (for some strange reason, most people want to live in places where food grows well, so farms are constantly being turned into subdivisions). Wild spaces like the Amazon are disappearing.

We need to stop the population explosion until we have the technology to build giant space habitats and terraform other worlds. When we can do that, then we can have lots of kids to fill up all that space.

Re:His concerns are valid by Locke2005 · 2010-09-01 11:02 · Score: 2, Insightful

I applaud this man for doing his part to eliminate the surplus population by dying.

--
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.

Re:Get Hell off the Planet!!! by Psion · 2010-09-01 11:13 · Score: 5, Informative

No, it's more like pork, with a slight hint of veal.

Re:Get Hell off the Planet!!! by lgw · 2010-09-01 11:22 · Score: 4, Insightful

Some of his points are valid,

WTF? Some of his points? Are you arguing that civilization/technology is bad ... on an internet forum? If you're arguing that we need to "reduce the surplus population", well, you first buddy.

Malthus was wrong. Overpopulation has not lead to unsurmountable obstacles, nor is the human population growing out of control. The worlds population is better fed than ever before (more people are overweight than underweight). Diseases are better controlled than ever before. High population density is usually a sign of a wealthy area, these days. This guy was a tool, and the only good thing about him is that he's dead.

--
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.

Re:I lol'd at the contradictions by Un+pobre+guey · 2010-09-01 11:29 · Score: 4, Insightful

more war == less humans. It comes out equal in the end.

You're kidding, right? A modern war does not reduce the net world population except in the very short term. I challenge you to demonstrate otherwise. After the two bloodiest and most destructive wars in recent history, WWI and WWII, the population tripled within two generations, as pointed out by our illustrious manifesto writer du jour.

Re:Get Hell off the Planet!!! by David+Greene · 2010-09-01 11:39 · Score: 2, Insightful

Except how can a person be illegal? That's what I don't understand.

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Due Process by Anonymous Coward · 2010-09-01 11:45 · Score: 2, Insightful

No one seems to think that summary execution is a problem in America.

This guy was a nut, sure. Protect innocent civillians, ok. Kill him on the spot?

It's not the first time US 'Law Enforcement Officers' have killed someone on the street for a supposed crime. What happened to criminal jurisprudence?

Re:His concerns are valid by Locke2005 · 2010-09-01 11:47 · Score: 2, Insightful

Somebody who cares more about protecting the environment than about making profits for shareholders would be in violation of their fiduciary responsibility to the company's shareholders, and would quickly be removed from their job by the Board of Directors. Of course, this only applies to publicly held companies, so if you can find a privately held company or government operation to supply you with all of your energy needs, you're home free. Good luck with that.

--
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.

Re:Get Hell off the Planet!!! by FictionPimp · 2010-09-01 13:00 · Score: 2, Insightful

Besides, if all Muslims are terrorists, then all Christians are abortion clinic bombers and all catholics are child molesters.

omfg!!! by Charliemopps · 2010-09-01 13:44 · Score: 2, Insightful

Clearly Al Gores hate speech has gone too far. We need these sorts of videos banned, or at least labeled. Not even the columbine kids wanted to sterilize people!

Re:Get Hell off the Planet!!! by AuMatar · 2010-09-01 14:01 · Score: 3, Insightful

Malthus merely got pushed out and the curve extended. We found a new resource (oil) that allowed the curve to move substantially. Unless we find another resource to replace it, we'll eventually hit the curve again.

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I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?

Re:Get Hell off the Planet!!! by Count+Fenring · 2010-09-01 14:26 · Score: 2, Interesting

That's not how psychotic disorders work, sorry.

People pick up elements of their environment and attach them to their personal madness, but the media they incorporate into psychotic fantasies isn't remotely causing it.

I'd recommend a book called The Center Cannot Hold, by Elyn Saks - it's a memoir of a woman afflicted with psychotic episodes.

BS by mjwx · 2010-09-01 14:50 · Score: 3, Interesting

Europe doesn't need growth limits. At their current rate of replacement, there won't be many Europeans left in this world in a few generations.

Christ all mighty, this Neo-Con bullshit again.

"Oh noes, teh evil immigrants are going to kill our nation and history, blah, blah, ADDED FOR EXTRA SCAREMONGERING!1!one1!"

I call BS.

I live in Australia and over the last 50 years we've had so many new groups integrate it's not funny. The local racist organisation will tell you that the Africans have come to destroy the Australian way of life. Maybe but 10 years ago that same racist organisation said the same thing about the Indians (so how are the Africans going to succeed where the Indians failed). When I was a wee tacker (20 years ago) they used to tell me how the Asians were going to steal all the Jerbs and there would be none for me (yep, saw how that one turned out). When my dad was my age the same thing was said about the Wogs (Greeks and Italians), the Irish before them, going back to when captain Cook first settled onto Botany bay there were these same scaremongers spouting the same bullshit and to be quite frank, I'm sick of it.

So with a Greek Kebab (souvlaki), Kwai Teow, Indian Curry, Meat Pie and Cold Beer I call BS. Immigration has done nothing but help this nation and I can say with absolute certainty that introducing and integrating new groups has not destroyed the things that made Australia great.

So kindly sod off with this nonsense.

--
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.

Re:BS by Dread_ed · 2010-09-02 06:26 · Score: 2, Insightful

"introducing and integrating new groups has not destroyed the things that made Australia great."
Introducing and integrating is great. The US, for one, is a country where the introduction and integration of new groups has led to adaptability, resilience, and strength far beyond many ethnically monolithic nations. However, what the poster above was referring to is when outside groups do not integrate and what he fears is if and when they fundamentally change those things that make a country great.
IMO, this is the crux of the current illegal immigration debate in the US, though it is frequently couched in other terms. Australia assuredly has fewer problems with this as they are surrounded by water. Furthermore, they do not share a porous land border with, for instance, an underdeveloped and corrupt nation where the kidnapping, torture, and murder of travelers, citizens, police, military personnel, journalists, and even public officials is a daily occurrence. In addition, I do not think the Australian government is actively assisting in the isolation of those immigrant groups by inhibiting their assimilation the way the US government has done and still is doing.
The US and many other countries have done an excellent job of integrating their immigrant populations in the past. However, there are new issues to contend with. Unprecedented levels of illegal immigrants are pushing for isolation within their new borders, whether geographically or through language segregation, and even receive assistance from vote hungry politicians. Those politicians are catering to non-citizens and in doing so are not only ignoring and violating established laws with impunity but are also endangering their true citizens' lives, their property, current and future financial prospects, and even the national economy. Furthermore, wide and growing support for subversive political ideas, like the "Reconquista" of the southwestern US, give a glimpse into the radical departure from the norm that new immigration problems have taken.
In short, immigration is nothing new to the US and many other countries. However, the motivations and subsequent interactions of immigrants with their new government and their new neighbors have radically changed. Don't make the mistake of equating similar situations, especially in light of glaring evidence that the circumstances and results are fundamentally different from your past experience.

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When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.

I wanted to make a joke out of this... by Dexter+Herbivore · 2010-09-01 15:00 · Score: 3, Insightful

but crazy or not, a man died.

Re:Get Hell off the Planet!!! by wrook · 2010-09-01 20:38 · Score: 4, Insightful

Man, I don't even know who Malthus is, but you should probably research a little bit before you talk.

First, more people are not overweight than underweight. That might be the case in your country, but I assure you that your country does not constitute anywhere near the majority of the planet. The number of obese (dangerously overweight) people in the world number about 300 million (from WHO). The number of malnourished (dangerously underweight) people number over 900 million (from the Wikipedia article on malnutrition).

Maybe you are right about diseases being better controlled. But I for one can't find any data on the rates of pandemics. So who really knows. Our understanding is better, but our odds of world wide contagion is much higher due to the international travel.

Finally, here is the list of the largest cities by population density. Stop me when you find one that doesn't have a huge poverty problem: Mumbai, Kolkata, Karachi, Lagos, Shenzhen, Seoul (maybe here?), Taipei, Chennai, Bogota, Shanghai, Lima, Beijing, Delhi, Kinshasa, Manila, Tehran, Jakarta, Tianjin, Bangalore, Ho Chi Minh City. Well, that's the top 20 anyway. There is wealth in many of these cities, but for the vast majority they also have crushing poverty.

That guy may have been a tool, but he was crazy and is now dead. There's nothing we can do about him. But education is available for the rest of us. Please make use of it.

Re:Get Hell off the Planet!!! by PopeRatzo · 2010-09-01 23:32 · Score: 2, Insightful

What do you mean by that exactly?

Maybe women are hard-wired to love babies (mostly), but I don't think men wanting lots of sex translates to them "loving babies" at least in the abstract.

Once they show up though, something kicks in. I guess either you're going to respond with love or you're not. When my daughter was born, I was flying back from a show and feeling complete dread. When I walked in and saw my wife holding her, you could almost feel the tectonic plates in my brain shifting. 20 years later, it doesn't change. I see my accomplished, beautiful daughter and I still see the little purplish monkey-looking thing my wife was holding that morning.

Now when she was 13 she was a total snotty pain in the ass, but I still would have jumped in front of a bus for her.

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You are welcome on my lawn.

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