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World Reacts To The Worst Mass Shooting In U.S. History (cnn.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNN: Fifty people were killed inside Pulse, a gay nightclub, Orlando Police Chief John Mina and other officials said Sunday morning, just hours after a shooter opened fire in the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history. At least 53 more people were injured, Mina said. Police have shot and killed the gunman, he told reporters.
The shooter is not from the Orlando area, Mina said. He has been identified as Omar Saddiqui Mateen, 29, of Fort Pierce, about 120 miles southeast of Orlando, two law enforcement officials tell CNN.
Orlando authorities said they consider the violence an act of domestic terror. The FBI is involved. While investigators are exploring all angles, they "have suggestions the individual has leanings towards (Islamic terrorism), but right now we can't say definitely..."
In the discussion on this submission, Slashdot readers reported that Reddit is among the sites that have removed some discussions about the shooter's identity, with one reader even reporting "Posts directing people where and how to give blood have been removed."
The shooter is not from the Orlando area, Mina said. He has been identified as Omar Saddiqui Mateen, 29, of Fort Pierce, about 120 miles southeast of Orlando, two law enforcement officials tell CNN.
Orlando authorities said they consider the violence an act of domestic terror. The FBI is involved. While investigators are exploring all angles, they "have suggestions the individual has leanings towards (Islamic terrorism), but right now we can't say definitely..."
In the discussion on this submission, Slashdot readers reported that Reddit is among the sites that have removed some discussions about the shooter's identity, with one reader even reporting "Posts directing people where and how to give blood have been removed."
Will the jackass who keeps posting spam and saying Slashdot hates gays please leave permanently? The story has been posted, now STFU. Slashdot doesn't hate gays.
Buddhist?
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
peace out
While investigators are exploring all angles, they "have suggestions the individual has leanings towards (Islamic terrorism), but right now we can't say definitely..."
This statement is about a perp who called 911 and proclaimed himself an agent of ISIS
No matter what you think about the civil rights aspect of our surveillance state, it is increasingly clear that it does not not work.
However, instead of calls to disband it, I'm sure there will be calls to make it even more intrusive. And there is no limit to that. If another event happens, we must not be surveilling the population enough...
He was radicalized by the NYPD
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Fucking Hindus at it again
And the circle jerk mentality they so love.
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
It's a good thing all Americans can get guns. Because, you know, protection and all that. Really, this attack as terrible as it was is only a 1/3 uptick in the number of violent gun deaths in America today.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Can't vouch for this, but various sites are reporting...
TFA mentions that Mateen was interviewed by the FBI in 2013 and 2014, but not deemed dangerous. This reinforces my doubts that background checks will ever be very effective in general, whether for terrorism or any other type of bad behavior.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
The reason not to act too hasty with a definitive declaration is that more evidence could come to light. What if it wasn't the perp, but someone else spreading disinformation? What if the perp himself was spreading disinformation to try and maximize the impact of his crime? That kind of thing. No, it isn't likely but it is too early to say definitively. Hence the "We think it is this, but can't say for sure." I think that is proper over all. Say what you think, but make sure to keep what you think and what you know clearly delineated.
The PC is the idiots who are either prohibiting discussion of this or worse, blaming American culture and it's supposedly ever-prevelant homophobia.
He's trolling. He wants to rile up the Aspies.
Nature empowers females with the ability to select mates whose immune systems are different from theirs, thus passing on to the progeny the benefits of two immune systems. This keeps us ahead of the pathogens evolving to defeat our immune systems. Religious and political eugenics, as well as the birth control pill, cause females to select mates with the same immune system, defeating nature's evolved system for protecting our species existence. If the eugenic system became the norm, our species would be at risk. To prevent this, nature makes a small percentage of the progeny of the eugenic behavior effectively sterile, i.e. homosexual.
Queue the left for appeasement of Islam while vilifying gun owners.
Rather than responding to the darkness of terror with the cleansing sunlight of truth and free discussion, major discussion sites like Reddit are shutting down discourse on this major event? This is a grave disservice to everyone who believes in a free and open society. Comments that offer nothing but vitriol, hate, and anger should certainly be moderated, but locking and deleting entire threads because the task facing the moderators is too hard is not the answer.
I cannot imagine what the families and friends of those killed and injured are going through. Instead of politicizing this hours after it occurred, how about everyone take a long moment to focus on supporting those whose loved ones were killed or whose loved ones are still in limbo in the hospital. There will be plenty of time for fingerpointing, anger, and hate later. Showing the best humanity has to offer is the best response to the worst humanity has to offer.
According to the timeline posted by the media, the gunman initially exchanged fire with three cops at 2am. They did not pursue him. 100 cops arrive. They do not attempt to enter. At 5am, the SWAT team finally breaches and kills the terrorist.
That left the attacker with 3 whole hours to kill his hostages. Shades of Columbine, where the police were similarly afraid to respond until they had ridiculously overwhelming force.
While these are certainly the actions of a depraved individual, what do you call the 3 hour delay between first shots (at police) and last shots (by SWAT)? All the while victims were bleeding out (past Golden Hour) and shooting continued.
To me, the delay looks like egregious cowardice, depraved indifference or worse (false flag amplification).
of chhalenges that that the project while the project pro-homosexual Departures of Yes, I work for America. You, AT&T and Berkeley Of HIV and other
The only spam I see is your post. I haven't read Slashdot since day 1, but suffice to say I remember reading it on 9/11.
Spammers and trolls were here then and will be here tomorrow. Just ignore them. Read comments at 1, or whatever it's known as these days[1]. They won't go away, they'll just try harder, but they will be disappointed, which is all you can really do.
[1] Paging whipslash - if you happen to read this. It'd be cool to have better thread filtering. We used to just be able to set the threshold to a number (-1 to 5) and read all comments at or above that number. Much simpler IMO. Thanks!
Had the assault weapons ban been still around, this massacre would never have been happened. When tools for "point, click, massacre" are available for general public consumption, it is no wonder why this happens every month. Australia and Venezuela have learned their lessons, and passed bans... and guess what... no more massacres, when the unwashed public isn't owning tools of mass mayhem.
Want to stop these shootings from happening? Get HR 4269 passed that bans ARs, AKs, and other tools whose only sole job in existence is for creating funerals, and get a real President who will make sure this is signed with her pen the first day in office.
Redditors are unsubscribing from r/News in protest of the moderation.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Kotak...
White western Christians are at war, bitches. Catch the drift?? Shoot down like rats all Sunnis infiltrated into the USA ... indict, try and hang the politicians that supported this infestation. Butcher off Sunni scum ... world wide butcher them by the 10s-of-millions. Lots of Nuke-practice for the B-52 gents. Let god sort 'em out just like WW2 and Dresden/Hiroshima.
... is 40,000,000 sufficient slaughter to enforce on them (our) desired behavior. Let them vote. If insufficient take out another 40-M and ask again. It's war, bitch, to the death. Act like it.
Now let's say there are 600,000,000 Sunnis. You can ask
750,000 died in the Civil War which was the worst "mass shooting" in US history. Refrain from ignorant sensationalism, please.
As far as we know, that attacker was a US citizen using legally obtained guns to conduct this attack. Likewise, another shooting just a day before in Florida killing Christina Grimmie took also place with, as far as we know, legally obtained guns. How many more have to die before the 2nd Amendment is repealed? How many more have to suffer until there are effective means put in place to curb the overabundance of firearms? How many more have to get the opportunity to create a blood bath out totally petty reasons? Is it 1,000 more? 10,000? A million? All of us? Terrorism or not, the fact that access to guns is so easy in the US is one of the core reasons not only for such tragedies, but for a much higher crime rate compared to other countries of the same socioeconomic make up. I doubt Americans are more criminal by nature than the Irish or Germans, yet more gun incidents per capita occur in the US than in any other country in the world, including areas of civil war! End this madness! Elect politicians who want to remove the 2nd Amendment and make the US a safer place for all of us!
Worst TERRORIST attack on US soil in more than a Decade is perpetrated on Obama's watch.
P.C. B.S. headline "World Reacts To The Worst Mass Shooting In U.S. History"
Thoughts and prayers go out to the families and loved ones of the victims, who's horror will be used in a twisted attempt to force a G un Control agenda on the American public over the next several months.
If you haven't seen the spam, then you haven't read the past several articles. Each of them has multiple threads started by a troll saying that Slashdot hates gays because they weren't posting this story. The posts were in awful taste but kept showing up in story after story. In the past, editors were active in modding down the garbage to -1 so ordinary users would focus on modding up good posts. It was a way of ensuring the trolls couldn't overwhelm the moderation system by flooding the site with nonsense. That seems to have stopped and it seems like fewer good posts get modded up now. I only post as an AC so I'm not subjected to karma. However, being modded up shows me that someone else thought my post was worthwhile and is still meaningful.
It's hard to have good discussions about these situations online. Indications are that the shooting was influenced by radical Islam, though the motivations aren't totally clear. On one side, there are people who want to condemn all of Islam for this. On the other side are people who don't want to say the words 'radical Islam' at all.
Suppose Omar Mateen used an iPhone, and suppose the FBI wanted Apple's help unlocking the phone, because they thought some data on the phone might help them prevent other, future, crimes. Then Tim Cook would be in a tough spot. If he refused to help the FBI, he would reinforce the impression of caring more about customer privacy than about public safety. But if he helped the FBI, people would think he helped this time only because it was a gay nightclub.
If Mr. Mateen used an iPhone, and the FBI asked for help, then I certainly hope Mr. Cook would help them. If he was worried about what people thought, then he might agree to help, only if the FBI kept quiet about the help.
Inside of them, I hear it's open carry, whatever your gender or identity :)
captcha was 'seminal' :)
I've noticed that when someone lacks any plausible argument, they tend to turn to making up lies about the people they see as their opposition. I don't know if you were fooled by the liar, or you are the liar.
At exactly 7:00 00 AM every Sunday, the Twitter account posts a verse. Why precisely 7:00 AM, never 7:01 or 6:58 AM? Because it's automated, scheduled the week before. So no, the tweet had nothing to do with the shooting that occurred several days after the tweet was scheduled.
Although he was born in the usa.
Afghans are... odd when it comes to homosexuality. Like all Muslims it's prohibited, but it is extremely common.
If you'd like to read more about the phenomenon, type Afghan Gay Thursday into google.
It's so common that Afghan men schedule their sex with other men for Thursdays so that they can pray on friday, the Muslim sabbath.
Serious question.
have a membership card to the NRA.
But I think anybody dumb enough to think removing the 2nd amendment is the solution deserves to find out what life is like in a country without firearms. BUT... with hostile armed criminals.
See if you still feel the same way.
Lest we forget.
The two laws you mention ban weapons based largely on APPEARANCE, not functionality, and they don't mention at all the type of guns most often used in murders. You're advocating "scary looking" guns. Exactly what difference do you think a barrel shroud or folding stock would make?
Here's a look at the effectiveness of the "assault weapons" ban from the Washington Post:
https://www.washingtonpost.com...
Because it doesn't meet the narrative that our current executive branch preaches? ISIS becomes ISIL for reasons this current administration won't comment on. (http://www.inquisitr.com/1306844/isis-vs-isil-which-one-is-it/)
Either way, this piece of filth decided to wrought his hate and beliefs on U.S. citizens in his apparent support for ISIS (read about his 911 call and his shouting before he fully opened fire).
Reddit is just another vehicle to either silence or deny the citizens of this country their viewpoints on topics they don't find attractive or don't fit their individual viewpoints. This isn't that much different than when Facebook was restricting and blocking conservative news though the topic at hand here is much more horrid. Freedom of the press isn't restricted to those that get paid to cover the news unless I misread the first amendment.
Peace out.
Slashdot does not hate gays. Slashdot does not have any problem with gays
The main problem in Slashdot is that Slashdot sides with the moslems
If you ever dare to post anything of the ugly truth about Islam or the the savegery of the moslems your message will be deleted
No, not modded down, but DELETED
In the matter of fact, this message is in danger of being deleted as well
Not 100%, but there have been some successes..
FTFY
http://www.theonion.com/articl....
The Onion, but not satire or humour.
They blamed the guns, they blamed Trump, they censored the truth. Hopefully people will wake up to the reality Islam is at war with us and their hateful religion is a root cause of evil in the world. The cherry on the shit sundae is yet another Terrorist attack ending in mass bloodshed happened under Obummer's watch. Time to get limp dicked Democrats and Liberals out of the White House because politically correct bullshit is killing America.
The current Slashdot is under the strict control of Islam and the moslems
And I prove it with a comment of my own
One of my recent comment - https://slashdot.org/comments.... - was down-modded all the way to '0' as "Flamebait" by the Slashdot Editors, after it was up-modded to "5" Insightful by the registered Slashdot users
The comment itself talked about the danger of criticizing moslems in Europe
It wasn't an attack on moslems or Islam per se
The comment was based on TRUE FACTS (read at the links on the comments to find out) but still, the Slashdot Editors saw it fit to down-mod it all the way to '0' 'Flamebait' _AFTER_ it had been up-modded to '5' by registered Slashdot users
I have been a long time Slashdot user and I can tell you that Slashdot in its original form wasn't like this
Slashdot in its original form wasn't so pro Islam (nor was it anti Islam)
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Was Wounded Knee. Where the US Government killed 150 men, women and children. Over "gun control".
The terrorist shooting this morning in Orlando was just awful.
And the reaction to it has in some cases been awful too.
No, this is not about gun control. I agree - the US has a horrible problem with guns, but Belgium doesn't, and they suffered attacks. France doesn't, and it suffered attacks. Israel doesn't and it's attacked regularly. The problem *in this instance* is nothing to do with gun control, and any claims to the contrary, including by Obama, are crass politicking. Awful. Shameful.
This is terrorism, but politicians and the press are afraid to call it what it really is -- *Islamist* terrorism. Yes, there are a few counter-examples in recent history to Islamist terrorism, but 99.5% of suicide attacks in the world are carried out by Muslims. ISIS is Muslim. Al Qaeda is Muslim. Al Nusra. Al Shabab. Boko Haram. The list goes on. All Muslim.
Over 30,000 people are murdered by terrorists world-wide, annually. Almost all of them by Muslim fanatics. Most of the dead are Muslim too, incidentally -- in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Nigeria, and many other fun tourist spots. Muslim terrorists have destroyed two airliners flying to/from Egypt and perhaps MH370 recently. Both Egypt and Malaysia are Muslim countries - not likely a coincidence.
So why doesn't the press call it what it is, in the US and elsewhere -- a Muslim Terrorist attack? Are they afraid of being targeted like Charlie Hebdo? Are they excessively politically correct? For shame.
Equally, this is about religion. Lots of people are quick to point out that this is not about religion, but they are wrong.
No, it's not your personal religious views. It's not reflective of the religious views of the majority of Muslims either. But to argue that this is not religiously motivated violence is pure fantasy. These killers are devout. That their beliefs are not mainstream does not invalidate them as religious beliefs. These terrorists are *Muslim* terrorists, not some other variety. They kill in the name of their god and in the name of their ideology. They share their God-belief with 1.6 billion others. Most of those 1.6B would never do anything like this, but a shocking number approve, at least in some circumstances.
Most Muslims are not terrorists, but almost all terrorists are Muslim.
It's also weirdly ironic that the political left, so concerned about LGBTQ rights, are also very concerned about Islamophobia. I'm quite sure that the Muslim world is not at all concerned about LGBTQ rights, or about political freedom. Quite the contrary - anything remotely LGBTQ is punishable by extreme violence (at best) and death (at worst) in the Muslim world.
So get over yourselves. This is a problem with extreme Muslim ideology. The solution has to start with tackling that ideology, not pretending that the causes are elsewhere.
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
So much for news for nerds.
Fuck off faggot, and learn to spell.
That was not his real name, nor are any of theirs.
Atheism in the early use of the word, meant anyone who didn't affirmatively belive in God.
This is actually a "modern" use of the word, starting in "only" the 1500s or so:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atheism#Etymology
It was originally used, by the ancient Greeks, to refer to someone who was ungodly, in the impious sense.
... that made him do it. I was scratching my head at that one, as if that somehow THAT makes it better. Plus, I'd pretty much bet the farm his homophobia has roots in his religion (as it does for most homophobic Christians I know for that matter)
'The unexamined life is not worth living' - Socrates
What s stinking pile of turd that post is, how quickly you forget the IRA, The Stern gang and Irgun.
Never mind the US army, the worlds worst terrorists.
Militias have always been useless. During the U.S. revolutionary war they were totally bad ass against local civilians but the first time someone fired a shot at them they shit their pants and ran like hell. Two hundred years later the North Carolina state militia is still famous for once getting off two volleys before running like hell.
Gun nuts are exactly the same. One hundred percent bullshit bravado. Their masturbational fantasy is that they and their gun will be the hero of something. But of course it never happens that way.
Seems like the "well regulated militia" part of that right would go a long way to preventing lone mentally ill people obtaining guns and murdering large numbers of people. Time to lobby for full implementation of the 2nd Amendment.
At the time it was authored, well regulated did not mean what you think it means today, and the militia consisted of all free males of military age.
If you read the papers and letters of the Founding Fathers you'll see that "bear arms" was always used in connection with military units:
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wh3oKpw4_nE
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f55AjlwXCDM
Basically a state-level National Guard that everyone was mandated to be in. The individual mandate is a recent invention, specifically of the post-1977 NRA. It has no historical basis, and the USSC didn't rule that it existed until 2008:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IopMFON6BNM
Those state-level militias do not exist anymore (and actually ceased to exist shortly after ratification), and so the need to bear arms disappeared two hundred years ago:
* https://www.amazon.com/Second-Amendment-Biography-Michael-Waldman/dp/147674744X
You're wrong. No editors modded your comment up or down
Since you say Taco was wrong, show us the proofs or STFU!
You Islamic ~wumao~ are so predictable.
How the actual fuck are we, the American people, under attack AND being disarmed at the same exact time. literally 2 fucking days ago this terrorist group called the "9th circuit clown posse" says we cant defend ourselves in our own fucking communities and now we have terrorists operating inside our neighbors borders. AND WHERE THE FUCK IS OUR MILITARY? EVERYWHERE BUT HERE! We need to get some people with some fucking common sense in office and not these terrorists like diane finestine or however you spell that traitors name.
Actually mental illness plays a pretty big role in human events, and the reason people try to downplay it is... actually pretty complicated, now that I stop to think of it... I started typing "because of the stigma associated with mental illness, but go ahead and keep playing this stupid game of"... but belligerence is another problem. Mental illness includes things that aren't belligerence, but belligerent behavior is considered especially heinous. When people think in terms of belligerence mental illness gets lumped in and people are so afraid of people with a mental illness who isn't belligerent getting hurt they are quick to say that a person who is belligerent isn't mentally ill. Arguably the people who want to harm any mentally ill person once the connection between mentally ill and belligerent is established in their mind are mentally ill... told you it was complicated. Anyways, it's long past time we all had a big sit-down about going the belligerent route as quick as we do, be it soldiers overseas or police here at home, and the quickness of Muslims to go the belligerent route, and the belligerence thing isn't limited to the West and Muslims. I'll stop pointing out groups at this point, but lets shine a huge spotlight on belligerence in general.
While the militia did include all free males of military age. The militia was subordinate to civilian authority whether the town council, the sheriff or the governor.
You did not have militia members running off on their own stockpiling guns. A miliita member was expected to drill as a member of the local or state militia, wear a proper uniform and maintain their weapons properly. A militia refusing to recognize civilian authority was considered an insurrection. The "Minutemen" was actually the elite select of the Massachusetts militia.
Typical Democrat liberal resorting to nothing but their primal instincts and public education to lash out with nothing but a primitive retort. Using the F word shows your bigotry too. No wonder you're losing this election and hated by Americans. You're part of the problem, not the solution. Captcha: "Artistry" LuLz
Registered users of Slashdot only get mod points on rare occasions, and they can mod a particular message only once .
Slashdot Editors, on the other hand, have unlimited mod points. They can either up-mod or down-mod any comment they want. Unlike the registered Slashdot users, the editors can mod a particular message multiple times.
The parent message, one from whipslash ( 4433507 ), is an example of how Editorial Up-Modding works.
Another proof of Editorial Up-Modding:
Whipslash's another message, at https://yro.slashdot.org/comme... has also been Editorially Up-Modded.
What we have here is an Editorial Abuse of the Slashdot modding system
Taco, you are so right!
Your message has been Editorially Down-Modded Right. In. Front. Of. Our. Eyes.
If Slashdot Editors do not stop Editorial Message Modding the reputation of Slashdot Will. Be. Seriously. Tarnished.
When "innocent muslims" take a stand and disavow sharia, I'll be happy to support them.
Those that refuse to disavow capital punishment for being a homosexual are complicit in these types of terror attacks.
World Reacts to the Worst Airplane Crash in U.S. History
It is a belief. It is an affirmative belief. It might qualify as a religion or creed depending on how you define those words. It is a belief because you can't prove something doesn't exist. It's a consequence of logic. All reason is necessarily based on a foundation of beliefs.
An agnostic is someone that neither believes in the supernatural nor does not believe in it. They are undecided or uncommitted.
People colloquially use the label atheist when they mean a person that atheist or agnostic since to them both are guilty.
Most people are agnostic no matter how much say they are atheistic and will readily prey when faced with imminent death.
You ever heard of a 3-hr tour? A THREE-HOUR TOUR!
I am an immigrant. I came from China.
I will say this --- Close down the border
Yes, I am saying this, as an immigrant
No longer I want to see America suffer
No longer I want to see any of my fellow Americans killed by someone related to immigrants
Yes I know, that moslem fucker was born in America, but if his immigrant parents didn't move to America from abroad he wouldn't have been born inside America and kill innocent people!
I know a lot of folks will send hate mail my way. They will call me a hypocrite. They will challenge me to move back to China. They will want to see that I, along as all my children, be thrown out of USA.
I know that will happen, but I am still going to stick to what I have said --- "CLOSE DOWN THE BORDERS"
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Large massive tax on regions, make religons pay for the war on terror, those pedo catholic preists etc etc..
http://www.dictionary.com/brow...
Contrast agnostic, those who say they don't know. Atheist CAN mean lack of belief, more often those who call themselves "atheist" have a strong, almost violent belief that rhere is no God. Most refuse to recognize that there are a thousand different concepts called "God", so really they are claiming "nothing can exist which can be called God." To some, the word God means essentially "nature", or "natural laws", which makes the atheist's position untenable.
Who else has so many excess mod points but the Editors ?
Who else can mod a particular message multiple times but the Editors ?
So far we have collected 7 (seven) proofs of Editorial Message Modding. .
Proofs of Editorial Down-Modding :
https://yro.slashdot.org/comme...
https://yro.slashdot.org/comme...
https://yro.slashdot.org/comme...
https://yro.slashdot.org/comme...
https://slashdot.org/comments....
Proofs of Editorial Up-Modding :
https://yro.slashdot.org/comme...
https://yro.slashdot.org/comme...
STOP framing this as a "mass shooting" and call it what it is, an ISLAMIC TERROR ATTACK ON AMERICAN SOIL.
This is terrorism plain and simple. No more, no less.
Another update on the proofs we have collected on Slashdot Editorial Message Modding. Up until now the number of messages that the editors have modded up / down has increased to 8 (eight) - :
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Proofs of Editorial Up-Modding
https://yro.slashdot.org/comme...
https://yro.slashdot.org/comme...
https://yro.slashdot.org/comme...
Proofs of Editorial Down-Modding :
https://slashdot.org/comments....
https://yro.slashdot.org/comme...
https://yro.slashdot.org/comme...
https://yro.slashdot.org/comme...
https://yro.slashdot.org/comme...
I'm sure that in your dream world, being suspected of something is enough to lose constitutional rights. Remember, it's the 2nd ammenment guys who will fight for your 1st ammendment rights.
It's a MUSLIM shooter, who targeted GAYS. Faggoty assholes fail to identify ANOTHER RELIGIOUS EXTREMIST FUCKING MUSLIM!!
No one gives a FUCK that you suffere from assburgers, or whatever the fuck.
It is a belief. It is an affirmative belief. It might qualify as a religion or creed depending on how you define those words.
There are traditionally philosophical distinctions made between "strong" (or "positive") atheism vs. "weak" (or "negative") atheism. "Strong atheists" have a positive belief that no gods exist. Most atheists are merely "weak atheists," who don't actively believe in gods -- and may think they sound unlikely -- but don't have an (unprovable) belief in their non-existence. Lack of belief in something doesn't necessarily entail a positive (and equally unprovable) belief in an opposite.
It is a belief because you can't prove something doesn't exist. It's a consequence of logic. All reason is necessarily based on a foundation of beliefs.
This is a bit of a different issue, which is more related to the traditional definition of agnosticism. A traditional agnostic is someone who has a positive belief that the answers to some questions are unknowable. ("Gnostic" refers to knowledge, an agnostic believes that one can't have that knowledge.)
These days the word "agnostic" is often used for weak atheism, but it's actually a separate issue. An agnostic traditionally is someone who believes we CANNOT know whether God exists -- it's just not a question that can be verified one way or another on the basis of normal empirical evidence. (Philosophers sometimes draw a distinction between "strong" and "weak" agnosticism too.)
An agnostic is someone that neither believes in the supernatural nor does not believe in it. They are undecided or uncommitted.
Again, that's not the word traditionally meant. What you're describing is what philosophers and theologians would generally call weak atheism (i.e., lack of a "theist" belief, hence a-theism). Agnosticism is about what we ALL could possibly know on the basis of evidence, and whether we have sufficient grounds to justify belief, not about whether an individual believes or not.
People colloquially use the label atheist when they mean a person that atheist or agnostic since to them both are guilty.
Agreed, though as I noted -- there are even more distinctions that you make. Using these terms the way philosophers would, it's quite possible to be a gnostic atheist (i.e., a person who has a positive belief that God by definition doesn't exist and believes that he has certain knowledge of this fact), or an agnostic theist (i.e., a person who believes that God exists, but believes it is outside the possibility of science to prove it), or even other stranger combinations.
Most people are agnostic no matter how much say they are atheistic and will readily prey when faced with imminent death.
This is again a separate issue. If I were dying of starvation, I'd definitively prey on animals to survive... sure.
The massacre of the lakota women children and the elderly in cold blood by the US army is the worst shooting in US history. 250 to 350 innocent people sitting unprotected at wounded knee.
.2A .22 is a relatively low powered rimfire cartridge.
An AR-15 is not a .22, it is a center fire rifle, commonly available in .223 (not to be confused with .22) 5.56x45mm .300, 7.52x39mm 5.45x39mm .45ACP 5.7x28mm 6.5mm 6.8mm .50 and .458
There probably are some AR-15's manufactured in .22 calibre, but it most https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... isn't "common".
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Yeah, who else has the time to format all those bold words? I don't even like using punctuation
Who doesn't want to condemn radical Islam? I don't get the point you're trying to make.
A quick google of "Mountain Meadows" or "Sand Creek" will find worse.
And yes the first one does have a strong religious thread.
You are comparing countries with highly developed civil protections and legal systems and countries without. Let's try a more apples to apples comparison, looking at what the fine upstanding Christians of Uganda are doing:
http://www.advocate.com/world/2014/02/25/lgbt-ugandans-attacked-tabloid-lists-top-200-homos
This is a tech site FYI
Can you imagine if they were a Republican? The media would be having a field day
Have more in common now.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
LMAO, Typical right wing nut job bigot, the bad spelling is the give away, complete with delusion that Drumpf will win.
Keep you guns and shooting each other, cheers me up on a cold day to see more dead Americans.
Its a bit too coherent for APK though isnt it?
Never mind, I once used to be upset at mass shootings in the US, now I see it as a good thing, thinning the stupid herd and raising the planets IQ.
By all means keep your guns, the killing of the human garbage that are Americans is good.
My post about isis and christians having something in common was removed after less than an hour....
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People in the US were allowed to carry guns, this would have been prevented.
> when you can change the definition for the word god
Obviously people do have different conceptions of God, but most religious people agree on God's own definition, so that's a solid foundation to start with. Christians, Jews, and Muslims consider Exodus to be scripture*. In Exodus Moses asked God who he is, and God replied "I am that which always is", or "I am the permanent/timeless". (Translation from ancient Hebrew is of course inexact).
Though each person has their own understanding, that basis, that God is what is unchanging, has itself been definitional for at least 2,600 years. Gravity, magnetism, etc are unchanging principles, so it seems, by the words of God, that God is gravity, magnetism, and anything other unchanging principle of the universe.
* Exodus is generally considered allegorical, scripture, illustrating spiritual truths in ancient stories that were down via oral tradition, not historical facts. Though some facts are confirmed by Egyptian records, such as the central event of the Egyptian army chasing the jews from Egypt.
I am a Christian and if I go out and kill people it would be wrong for you to blame Christianity for my killing of other people. It is *ME* who do the killing, and I'm the one to blame for the killing
To say that the problem is Islam is like saying GUNS KILL when the culprit is the person who pulled the trigger
No, it's the MOSLEMS who are the problem
In the San Bernardino massacre it was not the assault rifles which killed. It was the MOSLEM man & wife team who killed
In the Boston Marathon Bombing the killers were not the pressure cooker, nor Islam
It was the MOSLEMS who did the killing
In the Ford Hood killing it was not Islam who did the killing. It was a MOSLEM who killed the soldiers
In WTC of NYC it was not the planes which killed the thousands of people. Again, it was the MOSLEMS who killed
Stop blaming religion or guns or whatever. It is the PEOPLE who killed
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Editors have used unlimited mod points liberally in the past, especially in a certain thread started by sllort. I've also long suspected that some users do abuse their mod points. I've seen things that look like modbombing, in which a user has five posts downmodded at once by the same moderator, usually I'm articles that are a day or more old so the mods aren't undone. I could certainly see a user having multiple accounts with mod points and using the accounts to hammer a particular post. I believe whiplash when he says the editors aren't using mod points, though.
I'm pretty sure I saw mi get modbombed a couple months ago. I think it's still possible.
lol everyone is a detective/analyst on the internet!
We heard a lot recently as the US gives lessons from high tribunes to other lands about homosexuality. Was it a good idea politicizing this issue? Attracting unwanted attention to people who are vulnerable even without this? Gaining doubtful political benefits on backs of others?
"Christians: "Hate the sin, love the sinner." only a few sect do that. And nutters like the one at the abortion clinic still kill people. In both case the religion is not the culprit, ultimately it is the person.
I received a specific post a week ago predicting that a false flag like this would happen. Fits perfectly with hillary's agenda to disarm the population.
97% of mass shootings in 2015 were committed by men.
Maybe we should look at this first? Seems like a bigger issue.
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There is a crucial difference between atheism and religious belief: the importance of evidence. If a god were to appear and demonstrate their existence in an empirically measurable way then atheists would mentally move them from the category of things that don't exist to things that do, though they would likely no more 'believe' in the god than they believe in a chair. Things that are measurable can be safely assumed to exist (for a purely utilitarian definition of 'exist').
There are an infinite number of things that don't exist. Atheists don't typically go around enumerating all of them any more than a Christian goes around enumerating all of the Egyptian, Norse, Roman, and so on gods that he or she doesn't believe in.
I'm slightly astonished by people who find it easy to disbelieve hundreds of religions and superstitions that have precisely as much evidence supporting them as their own are unable to understand how someone else disbelieves one more than them.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
This is a tragedy, and this is the world we are living in now. Politicians will surely use this to increase control and restrain individual liberties one way or another : it's what they do.
People can be manipulated because they are uneducated and unhappy. The idea of improving education, teaching humanism and philosophy, better healthcare especially for the mentally unstable seems a straightforward answer to this. Alas I dream : money first, who cares about a few human lifes?
We'll get some news, we'll get advertising between shocking images, we'll get bored and will move on. Nothing will change. Some people will argue against guns, some will say that answer to violence is to ensure that idiots can have guns (and we are all idiots, just thing the last time you did something stupid because of anger, alcohol, pain, ...).
I'm just curious about one thing : when the French shooting happened, Donald Trump has been quoted saying : "Paris terror attacks would not have been as deadly if the French had GUNS". (http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/639692/Donald-Trump-Paris-terror-attacks-not-as-deadly-if-the-French-had-GUNS)
The only thing I don't know is what lie will this horrible Trump narcissist say now ?
Irrelevant news and morons using moderation to mod down what they disagree on. 2018 resolution: so long.
I'm pretty sure a properly configured HOSTS file would have prevented this tragedy
>Most people are agnostic no matter how much say they are atheistic and will readily prey when faced with imminent death.
That works very well - if the death is from starvation and you prey on something edible.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
Saudi Arabia is the biggest paymaster for terrorism
Saudi Arabia is also the biggest paymaster for the imams all over the world
They also fund the millions of madrassa where hundreds of millions of kids are being indoctrinated with the Wahabi ideology which opposes democracy, freedom, equality and is very anti-infidel
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
I did not heard the most important response - news announcement that B-52 are on the way. ...
To enlight ISIS with some old "pulse" bomb. Whatever is most decayed in the storage - neutron/hydrogen/atomic bomb.
Let them see the light Pulse
Editorial Message Modding strikes, again!
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...let's try this. Let's ask the Native people on whether we should accept more people and go with what they say as the final desicision. Sound good?
I've talked with Muslim colleagues about this and what they said was that even though Islam is against gays, they leave judgement to their god. So this guy can be anti-gay, as many people are, but it was his decision to go shooting the place up.... just your regular nutso who had pented up frustration/anger to release.
Cheers you up to see more dead Americans? Euro trash alert! That or you're one of those pinko traitors who is still sour over Bernie losing. Either way you are a disgusting individual and thanks for the laugh OP, you really wound up this libtard's watch nice and tight.
Most people are agnostic no matter how much say they are atheistic and will readily prey when faced with imminent death.
Bull. Shit.
Eat the rich.
Whenever there's a story on the Internet about an Islamist act of terrorism, the comments will talk about how evil Christianity is.
> because there is no personification of these forces, they cannot be given authority -
Gravity. It Isn't Just a Good Idea. It's the Law.
But nobody enforces the law of gravity. There are no priests of science that burned Einstein at the stake for altering Newton's version.
The Spinozan wonder relies on the acceptance that our understanfing of the universe is incomplete and will be altered by new knowledge. Thats the opposite of an auhoritative view. Also many scientists these days would suggest it was a mistake to ever call our theories about the observed behaviour of the universe 'laws'.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
The problem is that there are people who will do terrible things. When they're determined to do terrible things they will find a way to do them.
For all those blaming gun laws would you feel better if he had bought them illegally or stolen them? Would that vindicate your disdain for existing working gun laws because criminals always follow the laws. He legally owned firearms and that discussion is settled.
Would any of the rabid anti-gun people feel better had he made a dozen or so pipe bombs and threw those around the club instead? And then would you be screaming for background checks before buying home repair supplies?
If he truly was unstable enough to hook his actions to DAESH then of course they're going to jump on and take credit. It keeps them as a newsworthy 'viable threat' and only furthers their agenda. Whether or not they actually had any direct involvement will probably never be proved.
The problem is nutjobs. AKA people. When they're weak and broken enough to buy into a belief system of hate and then decide they're a holy warrior it's already too late to stop them. Single people acting alone are almost impossible to find before they do things like this. Hindsight is going to find things - all sorts of things - but at the time those same things wouldn't set off warning bells.
So stop trying to find a way to vilify inanimate objects for what happened, stop using blanket statements about any particular religion because all of them create people like this, and put the blame where it belongs. On the nutjob.
Omar Mateen is my porn name. Now I have to change it.
Guns were an important part of the founding of the country?
Oh you're suggesting that the population of the time was prescient, and anticipated a future we've not yet experienced, where Washington uses force in such a creative and impotent way that the population can only defend itself with firearms.
I was under the impression that systemD was the correct way to stop this
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
... then FBI, then DEA, then Slashdot...
The system rots, from within
Nobody enforces the biblical admonition to avoid eating unrefrigerated shellfish lest one get sick either. Nor the biblical fact that if you start a building without estimating the cost and end up with a half-finished building, you'll be laughed at. Nor that a man who finds a wise and faithful wife is truly blessed. Nor that adultery causes trouble. Nor that the wise save up stores of choice grain. Nor most of the other biblical adminitions.
It seems that you personally have this idea of a -person- enforcing truth through punishment. Some people think that way; it is by no means universal.
The words we most often translate as "sin" aren't just used in a "moral" context. They are cognates of the words hata and
hamartano, which mean roughly "miss the mark". In an archery competition, when an archer did not hit the target, that was hata. In another competition, many participants got prizes. Those who didn't qualify for a prize were hamartano. Same for someone who dug a well where there was no water, who co-signed a loan for someone who failed to make payment, etc.
Your vision of God isn't altogether uncommon, yet it's certainly not the only one. Most who have studied enough to know a few words of the original greek and hebrew have a different conception than what you have conveyed.
When the authorities gave their first press briefing after the Orlando shootings, they had a local imam speak. He spoke at length about how no one should immediately think this was a Muslim nor should they think he was linked in any way to ISIS. What he did not do was condemn the murders. Not one word about how horrific they were, how it was wrong, etc etc. I kept waiting for him to condemn the act, but he never did.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Pleas stop saying it was the worst. There were many native American massacres.
Speaking of punishment, some see that as a useful analogy. See failblog for examples of people punished for disregarding the law of gravity.
I'm always ac so I can't mod you up but I would if I could.
I really appreciate your explanation of the definition of agnostic. I am agnostic, by your definition and not atheist which is what my family thinks I am.
The Lt. Governor of Texas tweeted to indicate they reaped what they sowed. He later removed the tweet but the Country and the world has a right to know.
By your continued responses, you are starting to prove his point that you are not objective.
44th President fails to keep Americans safe at home or abroad.
"Posts directing people where and how to give blood have been removed."
While straight-up removal of such posts may not be the best approach, the intent behind such removals is likely honorable.
Donated blood needs to be screened for infectious diseases and otherwise processed before it can be used; it generally takes at least a couple of days before blood from a donor's arm can get to a patient's bedside. The blood that helps the victims of the Orlando massacre isn't the stuff that the Red Cross collects today and tomorrow; it's the blood that was donated last week or the week before. And blood has a limited shelf life--creating a big oversupply now doesn't help unless there's an enormous disaster in the next few weeks.
Donating blood now might make the donor feel good about themselves, but it's not actually a particularly constructive thing to do. If you want to help, put a reminder in your calendar to donate blood in two or three weeks, after this glut has made its way through the system. Or donate blood when the Red Cross (or whichever agency handles blood products in your jurisdiction) indicates a shortage. Better yet, get in the habit of donating blood regularly--help maintain a stable blood supply over the long term.
~Idarubicin
'nuff said.
Also please ask doctors in abortion clinics who they're most afraid of: Christians or Muslims.
Not to mention that Islam is merely Christianity with a third book: Old Testament (the testament of the Prophet Moses), New Testament (the testament of the Prophet Jesus Christ) and the Quran (the testament of the Prophet Muhammed). Indeed many christian sects grew up because they disagree with the godhood of Christ.
And it would be as accurate to claim this anti gay shooting was brought on by christianity, inspired by the christian saints Leviticus and Paul, in the Old and New testaments respectively.
While not to diminish the tragedy and horror of what happened in Orlando, one only needs to review the history of the US to see that there have been many mass shootings. Some notable ones dealt with the shooting of Native Americans, African Americans, Mormons, striking miners, troops vs civilians and troops vs prisoners (Civil War and American Revolution) and the list goes on.
Using violence against people and groups you disagree with is, unfortunately, nothing new.
Islam like any religion has a wide range of beliefs and practices. But Islam as practiced in many parts of the world is also more than just a religion in a modern western sense because widespread Islamic practice it is used to dictate the laws of the government and how they are determined. We aren't just talking about the medieval Islamic beliefs of a fringe group like ISIS, but the template for laws in a dozen or so countries which give primacy or deference to Islamic Law over any contemporary legal system.
In this regard, a more medieval form of Islam is better compared to Liberty and democracy, civil or common law or other political forms versus Christianity or another religion which in their modern forms have been divorced to a much larger degree from government.
Sure, if you look at medieval Christianity or even Christianity from a couple hundred years ago you see that religious institutions, beliefs and political institutions and people overlapped much more frequently. That overlap however has been steadily eroding.
"In Afghanistan, Brunei, Iran, Mauritania, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, United Arab Emirates and Yemen, homosexual activity carries the death penalty. In others, such as Algeria, Maldives, Malaysia, Qatar, Somalia and Syria, it is illegal."
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Systematic violence and repression against gay people is prevalent in many Islamic countries, not just among a relative fringe group like IS. On issues of violence against gay people or indeed on issues of systemic repression of many non-muslims we are very much right to note their association and demand reform to spread Islamic teachings that promote peaceful coexistence rather than medieval violence, persecution and oppression.
When a Christian does it, it's considered anomalous, mentally sick behavior, but when it's a Muslim, literally no one is surprised. I'm not criticizing the attitude, I just think it's interesting how it really doesn't matter if an Islamist is ill when he commits an atrocity like this. I figured that probably says something about the state of Islam when people really just want to ignore the sorts of differences that define Islamic mass-killings.
There is much more in the Koran about jihad and using the sword and such then there is in the New Testament. There is (generally) no such thing as the separation of "Church and State" in Islam, versus the render-under-Caesar in Christianity.
I think the "dual-power" split power structure has been very helpful to Europe compared to the single-power that generally happens elsewhere under most other civilizations. Ancient Egypt, Rome, and even semi-recent China had (semi-)divine rulers, whereas there was a real split in the secular/divine thanks to Christianity (especially of the Western, non-Orthodox variety).
Atheism is the belief that there are exactly zero gods, taken with no proof, as an assumption.
Monotheism is the belief that there are exactly one god, taken with no proof, as an assumption.
Both are religions -- a predetermined belief that is not subject to reconsideration, made without comparison to the truth.
Now, consider these two statements of Agnosticism:
1. We cannot tell the nature of God or Gods, and we never ever will be able to -- it is forever beyond the understand of man.
2. We cannot tell the nature of God or Gods today. At some point, we will understand what that actually means, and whether or not they exist.
One of those is a religion. The other is an acknowledgement of science and the current state of science.
I am not being a troll here. If you are thinking of modding me down for "troll", please consider this point:
Science has consistently been the question, "What is beyond ?".
We have gone from "What is beyond this region of the planet?" (when understanding that the world was round, before we understood gravity), to "what is beyond this solar system?", to "What is beyond this galaxy?", to now "What is beyond this universe?".
We are now at the point of asking if there is a multiverse, with multiple branes and a bulk; or, if there is a single uncollapsed wave function instead of the presumption of a wavefunction that collapses all the time; and if it does collapse all the time, does it only collapse once or does it collapse into multiple states, and if so, is there any way to send information from one to the other; does gravity actually go across all these universes or states; are virtual particles actually particles traveling from one brane to another; etc.
If there is a bulk, and there is a possibility of some form of awareness that exists outside this brane that can look at this brane, then what?
If this "universe" is a "black hole", and we know that black holes have their full state exposed on the surface, and some observer outside the black hole can read the state of the black hole? Not to mention that a black hole both radiates information out, and can take energy in?
We might not understand "God" today. Heck, I'd argue that we don't even have a single fixed concept behind the label. But we're trying to understand what's outside the stuff that can be detected by light. We've determined that gravity shows things that light does not; we've determined that there's strange types of mass we don't understand, as well as energy as a property of space that we don't understand. We're trying to push the limits of what we can understand, even to asking how our "black hole" / "brane" / "universe" might fit in with others -- and at the moment, using math as the tool to do so.
Religious? How about this: "The math that describes the universe will be correct, no matter how absurd the prediction it makes seems to be". So far, that has an alarmingly high correctness factor.
I don't think this is the worst shooting in the history of this country. What about the massacre at Wounded Knee? 150 Lakota killed. What about Opelousas, LA? Around 300 blacks murdered.
am only just catching up with this story and my first thought was how did he get weapons past security ?
First, let's look at the reason why car insurance happens:
http://asirt.org/initiatives/i...
"Over 37,000 people die in road crashes each year"
http://crimeresearch.org/2015/...
"annual rates of 69.2 for bathtubs for those under 5 to 58.2 for accidental firearm deaths for those under 15."
Should we get bathtub insurance as well?
Insurance only works when there is a large enough pool to justify the overhead - neither bathtub accidents or firearm accidents are common enough to justify it.
> I think that the religious concept of God is the same thing as life itself.
You say "the religious concept of God" is the same thing as "life itself". :D
You believe in life itself.
Therefore you believe in the religious concept of God.
Not what you meant?
I think you've gotten yourself a bit twisted trying to talk about what "religious people believe". Billions of different religious people believe a great many different things, so it's not normally true or useful to say "religious people believe", with some rare qualified exceptions. Honestly, you just confuse the issue if you pretend that all religious people believe the same things; they very rarely do. In fact, most religious people have substantial changes to their beliefs over time. For example, the founder of the largest church in the US, Robert Morris, long thought that God is not concerned with us humans, that he created us and then left. Now Robert thinks that proposition is ridiculous. So not even an individual religious leader believes the same thing he did 20 years ago.
Let's look at what YOU believe, recognizing that the different people believe many different things. It seems that the big contrast you wish to draw is "I don't think that there is anything ... intelligent to the whole thing". Is that my understanding accurate?
Are you by chance familar with ion pumps, the structures in each cell wall which pump molecules in and out? If not, surely you're familiar with the water cycle, the way water is naturally cleaned and recycled. Also the carbohydrate cycle, animals need oxygen and carbs to survive, and produce CO2 and water as waste. Coincidentally, plants do the exact opposite - they take in water and CO2, producing oxygen and carbohydrates. It's all rather clever, wouldn't you say? By clever I don't mean to imply "designed by a really old guy with a flowing white beard". Just how it all fits together so nicely, it's a clever system.
this is not the worst in usa history...
East st louis massacre 1917, 200-700 deaths
Arkansas masacre 1919, 854 dead
tulsa massacre 1921, 300-3000 dead
rosewood masacre 1923, 150 dead.......
I'm agnostic about god the same way I'm agnostic about the sun coming up tomorrow.
A Christian manufactures explosives in his home, issues threats, and plans to blow up a mosque. Gets charged with a hate crime (for the threats only), and the FBI has to actually detonate his bomb because they can't safely disarm it. Being a white Christian, this man isn't considered a terrorist. Also wasn't killed by law enforcement.
A guy shoots up a club. Kills a bunch of people, and because of his name he's alleged to be an Islamist extremist. Killed by police.
Both of these people are sick, and I don't condone any of it, but it seems to me that justice could be a little more evenhanded, otherwise it's not the right word for what follows these types of actions.
But hey, if someone who isn't even considered legally competent to stand trial in your country can easily and legally gain access to firearms, maybe the people responsible for blocking gun control legislation should be the ones being charged with terrorism.
Yes, the natural world is a very complex and beautiful system, both in terms of life as well as the other natural processes (such as the water cycle). None of this is evidence that it was designed by an intelligent being, though. I'm not willing to claim that I know what happened over the last several billion years, with all of the complexities involved, so I'm not going to claim that I know that there is or is not an actual being who designed and built the entire system. That's a preposterous position to take. I don't think that any such entity exists, because I haven't seen any evidence that it does. Maybe it does, I don't know, I just haven't seen any evidence. I'm not going to make an extraordinary claim if I don't have extraordinary evidence with which to back it up.
You say "the religious concept of God" is the same thing as "life itself".
I was trying to describe my belief that theists have taken the complexity of life, added intelligence, omniscience, and whatever else they want to add, and call it "God". In other words, God is life plus superstition and mythology.
Coincidentally, plants do the exact opposite - they take in water and CO2, producing oxygen and carbohydrates. It's all rather clever, wouldn't you say?
It seems to be the only way it can work, actually. If a planet was produced where animals need carbohydrates and oxygen, and they generate waste products that are needed by plants, which produce carbohydrates and oxygen, then this is the only way it can work. Maybe it works completely differently on another planet, I wouldn't doubt that for a second, but on this planet the reason it works that way is because that is the only way it can work on this planet. Or, at the very least, that's the way that "won". Consider that all life started as single-celled organisms only a billion or so years after the Earth formed, and for the next 3 billion years or so, all life was single-celled eukaryotes, prokaryotes, bacteria, etc. Fundamental processes like glycolysis and ATP formed very early on. They had 3 billion years to shape the environment while the Earth calmed in order to allow for the rise of multi-cellular life. Even after multi-cellular life appeared, it would be several hundred millions of years later that the first plants appeared on land. So, is it any wonder that the plants which thrived on land were uniquely suited to living in an environment dominated by animals? The plants had just come out of the oceans, which were full of primitive animal life. And, then, is it any wonder that the animals which thrived on land are uniquely suited to living in an environment dominated by plants? All of that happened several hundred millions of years ago, the genus Homo is only around 2 million years old and some of its members like to claim that all of this is for us, and that we were designed by some supernatural being. It seems very short-sighted.
Not that I don't understand where it comes from, though. I've seen the volcanoes in Hawaii, for example. If I was a native of Hawaii several hundred years ago, with no interaction with anyone who isn't also a Hawaiian, and I walked up and looked into that burning caldera, and someone told me that that's where Pele lives, I wouldn't have any reason to not believe them. Of course the fire god lives there, what else would that be? If I'm living several thousand years ago and I'm watching a volcano erupt which looks like this (I realize that's a time-lapse), of course I'm going to believe that there is some sort of supernatural being involved. I don't blame people thousands of years ago for believing in gods. But we know about plate tectonics, we understand the processes behind volcanoes, earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes, rain, lightning, thunder, etc.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
Everyone wants to focus on guns...
Terrorists killed 3,000 people using box cutters 15 years ago...
http://www.nydailynews.com/new...
One person killed 87 people using matches and gasoline...
If you want to kill people, you don't need guns to do it. This hyper focus on guns completely misses the point.
Mental health, security in crowded locations, having an environment where families who know someone is unstable can do something about it, etc...
More guns, less guns, and tech, won't do anything to stop this.
Thanks for writing all of that.
When my one-year-old finely ran out of energy in the evening, she would say "I go night-night." When her ipad ran out of energy, I explained to "ipad is going night-night" and she understood. Her vocabulary didn't include the words "battery" or "electricty", of course. As she learned a bit more vocabulary she said "ipad sleeping". This was a good analogy, she correctly understood the basic concept. Her description was neither complete nor wrong, it was simply limited by her vocabulary and understanding.
You can probably draw a water molecule, H2O of course looks like Mickey Mouse. That's the correct depiction of H2O. If we use an electron scanning microscope, we see it looks nothing like that. The Mickey Mouse picture of H2O is useful, and correctly depicts fundamental aspects of the molecule, so it's not really wrong; it's very limited. But correct enough to be useful! Kind of an analogy, or vocabulary-limited representation.
> I'm willing to bet that those people living thousands of years ago were wrong
I'm willing to bet that my understanding of the creation of everything in the entire universe is well under 1%. Essentially, I'm at the "ipad go night-night" level of understanding. As were people 2000 or 4000 years ago. The Mickey Mouse molecule is outdated in that we (humans) know more detail now, yet it's still a useful tool for me to personally understand the chemistry. Some of the biblical analogies and explanations (written in a language with a total vocabulary of hundreds of words) are limited and outdated. That doesn't mean they are wrong. Perhaps Moses was right when he said Ipad is night-night.
Ps: On a side-note, check out the US government instructions for removing black mold from a house, then read the mold removal instructions in Leviticus. It's interesting.
If the FBI "have suggestions the individual has leanings towards (Islamic terrorism), but right now we can't say definitely...".
Ahem. Immediate aftermath. No one knows anything. In any case, when an organization wants to write something, but has nothing to back it up, they have their office-mate 'suggest' to them something they write on a piece of paper.
If the FBI knew something about this guy being a "bad guy", then why the fuck did they not stop him, if they are so goddamned smart?
Don't worry, there will be an even larger shooting, and probably sooner than you think.
Actually, I just spent a couple of tedious hours crunching the numbers (I had to re-start the post - form expired.). About 50% chance of the next record breaker being between 5 and 9 years from now, with between 51 and 63 casualties. (The variance in date is greater than the variance in body count.) All, of course, assuming there isn't something significant happen, like Americans taking guns out of the hands of civilians. Which isn't likely for at least a couple of electoral cycles.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
I certainly understand why someone with limited knowledge of firearms might point to an gun in an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie and say "nobody needs to have THAT. I don't know exactly what that is, but it should be illegal." Of course what Arnold is holding is an oatmeal box with a four pieces of PVC pipe hot glued to it, painted black. So while their comment is understandable, it's not an intelligent way to make policy. You just end up outlawing Quaker oatmeal boxes.
> Would you rather it specify that only bolt-action weapons are legal?
Many things have been tried, so we get to look at how well they worked. A couple of things have worked, in combinations. Most effective has been a combination of tough sentences for using a weapon in the commission of a felony ALONG WITH advertising those tough sentences. Texas had ads on city busses and other places saying things like this:
Robbery: Five years in prison.
ARMED robbery: 20 years.
and:
Car theft: 5 years in prison
Having a gun when stealing a car: 15 years
The ads worked. Thugs learned - leave any guns and knives at home if you're going to commit a crime. In at least one case, video shows the crook ditching their weapon before stealing a car.
After that success, the same idea was applied when Texas got shall-issue carry licenses. They advertised that the good guys, the "victim", might shoot you. That also worked, though not as dramatically.
31% of the global population are Christian.
23% are Muslim.
Even if we pretend there are no Jewish people, not only do "most religious people" accept Exodus, the majority of people do. So yes, that's "lowest common denominator", minimum definition of God accepted by "most religious people" (over 75%) and most people (over 55%).
There's a lot of anger being posted, and lots of opinions about things.. but I'm just busy feeling sad for the 100+ people who have had their lives destroyed or ended. This was a weekend to celebrate with loved ones, and it was turned into a tragedy. Everybody needs to stop yelling at each other, put down the arguments, find your shmooey shmoo, and give them a big hug. You don't know when they will be taken from you. Every day matters. Hug them every day.
[1] Paging whipslash - if you happen to read this. It'd be cool to have better thread filtering. We used to just be able to set the threshold to a number (-1 to 5) and read all comments at or above that number. Much simpler IMO. Thanks!
I'd like a option to not only collapse -1 threads, but to not see any responses to those threads either. Have them totally collapsed together into one line.
That's so I not only have to see super-troll posts, I don't see the replies of people who ought to know better and quote and respond to the original troll post. Even on moderated boards, that nonsense will make stuff get out of hand and hard to sort through as well.
"Your Beliefs Doesn't Make You A Better Person; Your Behavior Does" --Unknown
Casteism
Well, assume for every group of five guys, one is a designated driver. Cut down the ratio for those people using cabs (say half), and you've got 10%.
Say only 10% of people are willing to properly train and obtain CCW - now you've got 1%.
In a group of 100+, that's at least one more good guy with a gun than before.
Now, of course the first few seconds of mayhem cannot be stopped - people are going to die. But for every good guy with a gun, ready to respond, more lives are saved.
Wounded Knee was the worst mass shooting in American history.
"APK's days are numbered" - by whipslash ( 4433507 ) on Tuesday February 09, 2016 @10:37PM (#51475843) FROM https://slashdot.org/comments....
I'm still posting as much as ever bigshot. What's that you're quoted saying? "Apk's days are numbered"?? LMAO - tell us, tin plated little forums "god" - how many years do you 'graciously offer'?? It's been 6 months & I'm still posting...
* What's the matter stupid? Can't "backup your bs"?? Obviously not... I run little wannabe douchebags like YOU right into the GROUND, bitch, every SINGLE time - this post is more proof of it.
Meanwhile my hosts program gains users & popularity while YOU lose your precious adbanner view money - isn't life great (for me but not you)? Yes, it is. Especially vs. powerless WORMS like you, lol!
APK
P.S.=> Shouldn't have opened your BIG mouth stupid - I''ll SLAM IT SHUT easily as I have just now, lol... puny FOOL! apk
"Orlando Shooter Was Reportedly Spotted Regularly At Pulse Nightclub, On Dating Apps"
"He allegedly communicated with several men through the dating app Jack’d."
"Omar Mateen, the gunman who killed 49 people at Pulse nightclub in Orlando, was no stranger to the popular gay bar, according to witnesses and parties working with the FBI.
“Sometimes he would go over in the corner and sit and drink by himself, and other times he would get so drunk he was loud and belligerent,” Ty Smith, a Pulse regular, told the Orlando Sentinel. "
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/omar-mateen-pulse-regular_us_576010abe4b0e4fe5143b16b
Think of when the ban was put in place and I'll bet you'll find that it was referring to the older gun.
click-bait headline