There's a difference between allowing people to write a contract, and allowing another party to agree to it, and allowing unlimited parties to treat such a contract as if it were a real thing, reselling it willy-nilly.
I have no problem with two parties working out whatever contracts they want between themselves. I do have a problem when we decide that a specific type of contract somehow should have a multi-trillion dollar market to repeatedly sell and resell it in some abstract form, somehow magically making money.
The stock market has the same problem, incidentally. Stocks should be parts of companies. They should be valued, and sold, for the value they earn in dividends, aka, company profits. Not in an attempt to make money on the actual variations in stock prices.
At some point our entire financial system stopped being backed by actual things.
That's okay when people are actually purchasing hypothetical stuff for themselves. You want to own part of Coca-Cola, fine, go buy part of them. You want to hedge some possible future loss with a countering bet, or, hell, just play casino, fine, go find a company willing to make that bet, aka, a 'future'
The problem shows up when people take these already imaginary things and start trading them around for some sort of imagined value to make money on the imaginary variations in said imaginary value. The problem, believe it or not, is that it's a market, that it's behaving that they're selling and trading big containers of golf balls that randomly change the amount of golf balls they have in them, and the point of the entire exercise is to magically predict which container will next have golf balls in it.
None of it is 'company ownership', or 'hedging bets' or 'insurance', it is, indeed, all a casino, they're just gambling using things that nominally have some other value, but in actuality the gambling is for random fluctuation in some imaginary value that has nothing to do with said nominal value.
Actually, the implication is that I not only have to believe it, I have to follow it.
Perhaps I actually believe it is wrong to call someone an idiot, yet sometimes I sin and do call someone that.
Now, of course, that would make me a hypocritic if I was insulting someone while condemning them for insulting someone. However, I wasn't condemning anyone for insulting people at all, I was condemning people for misunderstanding the verses.
Of course, even if I was being hypocritical, it wouldn't change the fact of what was being talked about in those verses.
The PTC is not only indecent, they are, in fact, mind-bogglingly stupid.
I used to watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and post on the newsgroup about them. PTC whined about that show all the time. If you've watched the show, see if you can find some of the talk about their complaints of it, either on Usenet or elsewhere. I think there was an article here, too. And you'll laugh and laugh.
No, they were not complaining about stupid things, they were complaining about wrong things. Like, untrue things. Things that made no sense, that were not a possibly interpretation of events on the show.
Like 'In the 2001 season finale, Buffy committed suicide, jumping to her death to save the world.' Yes, dying to save the world is best described by the term 'suicide'. Or, you know, martyrdom. One of the two, I get them confused.
And it's not like the symbolism was hard to miss, she died with her arms outstretched, in the place of someone else. You know, like that guy that died to save the world 2000 years ago, what was his name? Spanish name, I think, although pronounced differently. Juan? Julio? But with the J sound, not an H. Nailed to a cross or something with his arms outstretched.
Oddly enough, they didn't seem to catch that symbolism, which either means they are possibly the worst Christians ever, or like they couldn't even be bothered to actually watch the shows they were whining about. Or, as I suspect, both.
This wasn't a singular event. They missed the fricking antichrist wandering around on Angel. Didn't have a word for or against her. Granted, the show didn't explicitly say who Jasmine was, but it was pretty damn obvious, and one of the episodes was named 'Slouching Toward Bethlehem'!
But they did bitch and whine about an ex-priest who decided to switch sides and serve the Buffy equivalent of Satan. They seemed to think that the show was saying all priests served the First Evil or something, it was fairly incoherent.
It was hilarious. The Buffyverse had a ton of religious, and usually Christian, references, as any 'morality play' would, and the PTC, like total morons, didn't even seem to notice them. We kept waiting for someone to make the connection, to notice that BtVS was somewhat heretical and talked about Christianity all the time, but no. Instead, they would complain about trivial stuff, or just stuff that didn't even make sense.
You know why this is? The PTC consists of like four people who don't actually watch TV. They write complaints based on TV listings and whatnot, maybe watching five minutes of an episode, and then email them to a larger group of people who print them out, sign them, and mail them to the FCC.
At no point is anyone fucking 'offended' by any TV show, as they have not, in fact, actually seen any TV show. All the people printing out the form letters and signing them should be charged with 'lying to a Federal agency' for asserting it 'offended' them.
In fact, that's an interesting point. Most TV shows do not, in fact, have the title on screen. The FCC is in charge of what is broadcast on television. If '$#*! My Dad Says' does not actually print the title on screen, I fail to see how it can be indecent in any manner whatsoever.
What, are they going to complain about the cabling listing channel? That's not under FCC jurisdiction. The printed TV guide? Also not under FCC jurisdiction.
I guess they could complain about commercials for it.
None of this refers to wor[d]s only the intent behind the words. So using "shit" as an equivalent of "stuff" most definitely does not infringe upon your quotes.
That is probably the best way to say that.
The Bible has plenty of stuff to say about what you should say, just like it has comments about other types of behavior.
But none of the stuff seems to be about word choice. Except that somewhat confusing Jesus quote about how one way of calling someone dumb is bad, and the other way is very bad, which no one quite understands, but doesn't have anything to do with 'obscenity' as far as we know.
Barring that baffling example, the Bible is all about what you say, not what words you use, or what types of words you use.
Although you left out one thing. 'Cursing' was an actual thing like 'May you break your leg', which we don't tend to do that much in this society except to actors.;)
So all the quotes there are talk about either a) falsely swearing on the name of the Lord, b) malicious gossip and lies, or c) wishing harm on others.
Or d), the first one, which is regarding insulting people to their face, with subjective names, not 'lies'. Which is incidentally the only Jesus quote. He is, obviously, against it.
Although no one knows what exactly he's talking about, because no one can figure out the difference between 'Raba' and 'fool'. 'Raba' means 'empty-headed' as far as anyone can figure out, and was a mild term of reproach, whereas 'moros', the word translated as fool, seems to be the same thing. Both of them seem to be ways of calling people 'dumb'.
Why one is deserving of condemnation by God and the other is not is unknown. Theories abound. Moros can also mean 'godless', so it's a possibility that is what Jesus mean. Don't say other people are not true followers of God. (Man, Jesus is so pissed at me right now.)
The safest bet for Christians is probably not to insult people at all, which seems to go along with other Jesus teachings.
But I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to his brother, 'Raca,' is answerable to the Sanhedrin. But anyone who says, 'You fool!' will be in danger of the fire of hell.
I mentioned this explicitly, you fool. Jesus said not to insult people. That has nothing at all to do with whether or not the word is 'obscene'.
With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse men, who have been made in God's likeness. Out of the same mouth come praise and cursing. My brothers, this should not be. Can both fresh water and salt water flow from the same spring?
The word 'curse' there is 'katara' which is an actual curse. Aka, wishing that someone comes to harm because they are a bad person.
Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen.
A better translation there for 'unwholesome' is 'corrupt', or even 'rotten', the word is 'sapros'. Sadly, 'rotten talk' is a broken metaphor...that's not what it means.
See, the word you've translated as 'talk' is 'logos', which all Christians should recognize (In the beginning was The Word, etc.), which can, indeed, mean 'talk', or even 'word' , but here almost certainly means 'the truth'. Do not speak rotten truths. Aka, don't lie.
You used to walk in these ways, in the life you once lived. But now you must rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips.
What is translated as filthy language there is 'aischrologia', which is, oddly enough, a specific Latin word meaning 'a role-reversal mocking and insulting your betters', and there were actually festivals (Scroll to 'Significance'.) that had this as an aspect of it.
Of course, this mocking probably included rather lewd languages, especially as women got to insult men during it. But it certainly not talking about 'bad words', or the way we use the term 'filthy language'.
You know that thing, where your boss leaves and you pretend to talk like him and make fun of him? Believe it or not, a Bible verse condemns that.
Put away perversity from your mouth; keep corrupt talk far from your lips.
'Perverse' doesn't mean what you think it means. Perverse simply means 'crooked'. In fact, it still means that, we just use it entirely metaphorically now. Again, it's 'don't lie'.
However, you've certainly proven me wrong. Apparently, there is language that idiots can interpret to be about the word 'fuck'. The world can always surprise me by building a better idiot.
Depending on your definition of 'significantly different', it's actually pretty easy to find depictions of what Jesus did that differ in the same translation, but different gospels. The gospels are not 100% consistent between them.
However, what is more to the point, Jesus never condemned anyone, in any way, for their language.
In fact, the entire Bible doesn't condemn 'bad language' in any sense unless it involves the name of God. There's not a single word in the entire Bible that could be construed, in any manner whatsoever, as saying you shouldn't say 'fuck'.
Now, you're not supposed to insult people, so you shouldn't say 'Fuck you', but neither should you say 'Screw you'. (Jesus said you shouldn't even call people 'fools'.) But there's not a single word of the Bible that slightly can be read as saying you shouldn't say 'That's fucking amazing.' when you see the Grand Canyon or whatever. The only thing that's mentioned is the name of the Lord.
And even then people are confused. What is prohibited is using the Lord's name in vain, aka swearing a false oath to God, which is pretty damn uncommon in this society. Example #9274593 why the most vocal 'Christians' are, apparently, severely and profoundly mentally handicapped(1): The only reason anyone swears an oath on God at all is thanks to those 'Christians' putting God in anywhere, having Bible in courtrooms and whatnot, thus causing people to false swear on him. (Which is a bit like putting the sacrament on the bathroom floor and bitching about people peeing on it.)
Luckily, atheists stepped in and stopped as much of that as that sinful behavior as they could, because they don't like swearing in the name of the Lord for other reasons.
Meanwhile, 'Christians' run around HALLUCINATING that 'bad language' is a sin. Hell, at least with homosexuality and whatnot there's Old Testament verses and some mistranslated New Testament ones...with language there is literally not a single passage that could even slightly be read as 'Don't say the word shit'.
1) Great, now God is annoyed with me for insulting those fucking idi...erm, people.
Why is 'crap' not a bad word, then? Please explain the distinction between 'shit' and 'crap' for all of us. Likewise, the distinction between 'whiz', 'piss', and 'pee'.
And what the hell does toilet training have to do with anything? You're just trying to exclude 'childish' words like 'poop', but that's a rather idiotic slang distinction and doesn't have much to do with anything.
Likewise, the word 'sex', itself, is fairly new slang. The first recorded instance of it referring to intercourse is barely 80 years old, before that, it referred entirely to the distinction between male and female. It's from 'sexual intercourse', which actually meant 'intercourse with the parts of the body that differ between men and women'. Which poses some interesting etymological issues when speaking of 'gay sex', as that would be the opposite of sex, but whatever.
And yet nowadays we have judges talking about 'sex acts' and whatnot. (Which would technically mean 'acts that differ between the sex'.) Language changes. Slang changes to language, languages becomes outdated. Words become offensive, or acceptable.
And you really need to just accept that we just made up the damn distinctions. There seems to be a medical and legal exception, in that no matter what the word is, no one can actually complain if you're using those terms in that sense, but the rest of the distinction, the entire
Incidentally, bastard is a legal term. It's not used that often in the modern era because a) not a lot of law rely anymore on whether or not someone is born in wedlock (Inheritance law based on that actually was ruled unconstitutional in the US.), and b) it is gender specific. However, it is still a legal term, especially in places that do hereditary titles. (And note that's the least offensive term..the other term is, believe it or not, 'whoreson'.)
Why don't you suggest that your company just go ahead and secure-wipe all files all the time?
I mean, it's a frickin copier. It's not like it's pinning the CPU.
You don't even have to 'secure' wipe. That's for suckers. No one has ever demonstrated the ability to reconstruct data on a modern hard drive that's been overwritten just once. (All those studies about multi-pass were a) hypothetical, and b) based on old MFM encoding and much wasteful hard drives.)
Hell, there's probably a shared library you can link in and do a search and replace for 'unlink()' in your code with a wipe function.
You can always power an iPhone off. You just hold 'Home' and 'Sleep' together for about five seconds and it does a cold power off, regardless of what the software is doing.
As you can't remove the battery, this is a somewhat important ability for fixing utterly wedged iPhones.
Indeed. Anyone who thinks the Fed went after them, and thus pointed the media at him, probably read that in the...tada...MEDIA. I'm not entirely sure they can be trusted to explain exactly what happened.
Richard Jewell was questioned by the FBI. Like, oh, a hundred other people. The FBI rather quickly, and well before any stories appeared, dismissed any theories about him planting it himself.
But because the FBI was stingy with information about the progress of the case, and the media somehow learned the fact that, at one point, the FBI had asked him a few questions aimed at seeing if he had did it, they started doing their own 'investigation' into him.
I'm not a huge fan of Federal law enforcement, or in fact how any law enforcement is allowed to operate, but the FBI isn't to blame for Richard Jewell being slimed...that was entirely the media. At no point did the FBI even consider him seriously as a suspect.
Someone, somewhere in the FBI probably let something slip they shouldn't have about who was being interviewed, or some government official, no one knows, but a perfect air-tight barrier of information is too much to expect. The media is not supposed to go 'Why, the FBI has a possible suspect! We better start meddling in the case and running information about him all over the front page.'.
Hell, if he'd been a real suspect, and actually charged, it would have been almost impossible to get an untainted jury because of the media's ass-hattery.
A much much better example of Federal law enforcement screwing with people is Steve Jackson vs. the Secret Service.
More important, it's hard to figure out why anyone would think this problem only applies to the SS, or why, if there was a solution, other government agencies wouldn't use it.
For some reason, in comments to this article, people have suddenly started believing the SS, a law enforcement agency people think well of because most people have no interaction with them (Although ask Steve Jackson about them some day.), is the only law enforcement agency that exists. And that the problems here, and solutions they find, and legislature about this, and whatnot all magically apply only to them.
Uh, no, hiding in your bedroom is retreating, which you are often required to do in many states. (Unless they have a 'castle' doctrine.)
There's really no state where being trapped in an inescapable bedroom and shooting an intruder would even slightly be illegal. In some states, going towards an intruder and shooting them can be illegal, or shooting at them when you could have escaped, but simply grabbing a gun and getting as far away from them as possible, and shooting them when they come towards you, is entirely legal anywhere I know of.
Unless, somehow, those intruders are actually cops, in which case they find a way to make it illegal.
They're apparently trying to get it under the 'commitment' thing, where the government can, indeed, imprison people who are a 'danger to themselves or others', without their having committed a crime.
The problem is, of course, if he was actually that, there's no fucking way he should have been serving his prison sentence in prison. People who are mentally ill serve their damn prison sentences in mental institutions until they are cured, and then go to prison if they have any time left on their sentence. YOU DO NOT PUT MENTALLY ILL PEOPLE IN A PRISON ENVIRONMENT. Um, DUH.
The court doesn't seem to understand they just let a justice system win a case which just admitted what is probably criminal negligence in failing to notice or treat a person for mental illness in their prison that they're now claiming is so mentally ill as to be eligible for commitment. And they claiming they just learned this? How exactly are they getting away with this?
'Oh, heh, we just noticed he was mentally ill. Stupid us.'
If people are mentally ill enough to lock them up because they pose a danger to themselves or others, they should not be in prison in the first place.
That's really the problem here. The question isn't 'Can we keep people detained?', it's 'Why the hell was someone so mentally ill that we could have them committed in a prison anyway?'.
Of course, I have no idea if this person is actually that mentally ill, or if this is just an excuse to keep them locked up. Or even if they became mentally ill in prison and we kept them there. But no matter which, something has gone wrong with the system if we're saying 'This person, which we had locked up in prison, is mentally ill.'.
Well, yes, but all cars using this system would be automatics. Duh, it's a form of automatic transmission. Talking about how manuals have a redundant control system is dumb.
It's like someone's invented a new car where the top can open called a 'convertible', and someone says they're more dangerous because trains drive on a track whereas convertibles can drive anywhere. Well, strictly speaking, that's true...but I'm pretty certain we were talking about cars, not trains, and all cars are like that. Likewise, we're talking about automatics, not manuals, and all automatics are like that.
But, yes, manuals are popular elsewhere, although there does not seem to be a good reason for that.
Manuals might be slightly more fuel efficient if you're an expert manual driver, but I'll wager that an average manual driver gets worse gas mileage. It might have been true when people were driving around with carburetors, but fuel injection is entire different. Computers beat 95% of people in that.
As for pickup, that is, heh, sorta the opposite of fuel efficiency. If someone used to driving a manual is bitching about the pickup of an automatic, I will promise you they're getting worse gas mileage when driving a manual.;)
But, anyway, manuals have, for almost two decades, gotten reasonable pickup. Yes, a trained driver can always get from 0 to 60 in less time than a computer...but that is a rather stupid operational test for a vehicle.
It's also worth noting that the point of diminishing returns is different for different people, so no that's not obvious.
It's probably even more important to point out it's based on gas prices, which tend to vary and slowly but surely go up as supply decreases and demand increases.
Erm, it removes a redundant control system...in manuals, which are a small percentage of cars, and, rather obviously, would not be using this anyway. (Or, duh, they wouldn't be manuals.)
The problem with your example is that 'reasonableness' is actually defined by law.
It might sound like some sort of opinion, but it is not. There are actually tests, based on facts, whether or not a belief that someone is trying to kill you is 'reasonable'.
Notablity, OTOH, while it is pretended to be defined, is not actually. That is, there are actual tests, actual lists of what do not belong on Wikipedia...and you'll find those things all over Wikipedia. Same with the inverse, things that clearly are notable under even the harshest interpretation of the rules...and yet get removed.
Instead of the rules, notability is actually 'What the guy with the most free time on his hands thinks is notable and willing to defend either way.'
Actually your point was that they don't follow rules. You didn't mention "judgment" at all, not even indirectly; it was complaining about inconsistent application of rules.
No, my point was they didn't make strict rules. Their rules are, essentially, 'Whatever'.
Their rules are not actually rules. Their rules, as you said, are judgment calls. But you've missed the point that a judgment call is the opposite of a rule.
Yes, yes, you made a joke about implemented by computer. But that really is what rules are. Rules are things that anyone can look at and come to the same conclusion if something is in violation or not. That is the meaning of 'rules'.
Rules can have judgment calls and observer differences in the facts. Did the person bowling touch the line with their foot? Was the car going 55 or 56MPH?
But on Wikipedia, people aren't arguing about the facts of 'notability'. They're arguing about opinion, about unprovable things.
That's not a 'rule' at all.
Moreover, as I said, they're arguing about opinions that are pretty inherently subjective based on world experience. You can actually reach a consensus on sulfur smelling bad, for example, although that's an opinion and some people might think otherwise.
But how 'important' something is is, ipso facto, relative. People are myoptic. People think things they deal with are important, and things they don't are unimportant.
Which, as someone else pointed out, has resulted in notability discussions over locations, as just one of the many strange examples. There are moderately sized European towns that get deleted for lack of notability. And yet a town of 430 stays?
I assume their reason is to mimic a traditional encyclopedia. Personally my preference for less is based on two things: A 200-word article is more useful than a 2000 word article if you want a short introduction; and, length in a traditional encyclopedia does convey valuable information about the overall importance.
I think about half their problems are due to the fact they're mimicking a traditional encyclopedia, including the shortcomings of encyclopedias.
The other half is that editors make 'judgment calls' and then stand there and assert said judgment calls are 'the rules' and enforce them with an iron fist.
I think people missed the fact that I was using fictional things as an example of something that you actually could have hard and fast rules about inclusion. Fictional works, yes, things inside those works, no.
It was just a very specific and good example, as opposed to saying 'Only cities over 10,000 in the main Wiki, and everything else in an atlas Wiki', because you know someone would debate the number. Whereas 'people and things that exist solely in fictional works' aren't debatable.
Except, as some wag pointed out, religion, but it's simple enough to make an exception for that. Or, heck, that probably deserves its own Wiki.
Instead, you get a weird smattering of fiction...and that apparently crowds out rule for, you know, actually existing things. Like you pointed out.
And as TheSpoon already replied with, the problem isn't really space. The problem is that they think 'serious' encyclopedias don't have 'unnotable' articles, or something. But this is stupid...the way the real world deals with it is to have 'encyclopedias of...' that focus on categories of stuff. 'Encyclopedia of Television', 'World Atlas', 'Who's Who', etc.
No one can quite figure out why they have notability rules, instead of just having a dozen different topics and shunting things into the right one.
Except that if did that, the people at the top would probably have to reduce their power somewhat, or stop behaving how they want to behave. It's a leadership problem, not a space problem.
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There's a difference between allowing people to write a contract, and allowing another party to agree to it, and allowing unlimited parties to treat such a contract as if it were a real thing, reselling it willy-nilly.
I have no problem with two parties working out whatever contracts they want between themselves. I do have a problem when we decide that a specific type of contract somehow should have a multi-trillion dollar market to repeatedly sell and resell it in some abstract form, somehow magically making money.
The stock market has the same problem, incidentally. Stocks should be parts of companies. They should be valued, and sold, for the value they earn in dividends, aka, company profits. Not in an attempt to make money on the actual variations in stock prices.
At some point our entire financial system stopped being backed by actual things.
That's okay when people are actually purchasing hypothetical stuff for themselves. You want to own part of Coca-Cola, fine, go buy part of them. You want to hedge some possible future loss with a countering bet, or, hell, just play casino, fine, go find a company willing to make that bet, aka, a 'future'
The problem shows up when people take these already imaginary things and start trading them around for some sort of imagined value to make money on the imaginary variations in said imaginary value. The problem, believe it or not, is that it's a market, that it's behaving that they're selling and trading big containers of golf balls that randomly change the amount of golf balls they have in them, and the point of the entire exercise is to magically predict which container will next have golf balls in it.
None of it is 'company ownership', or 'hedging bets' or 'insurance', it is, indeed, all a casino, they're just gambling using things that nominally have some other value, but in actuality the gambling is for random fluctuation in some imaginary value that has nothing to do with said nominal value.
Actually, the implication is that I not only have to believe it, I have to follow it.
Perhaps I actually believe it is wrong to call someone an idiot, yet sometimes I sin and do call someone that.
Now, of course, that would make me a hypocritic if I was insulting someone while condemning them for insulting someone. However, I wasn't condemning anyone for insulting people at all, I was condemning people for misunderstanding the verses.
Of course, even if I was being hypocritical, it wouldn't change the fact of what was being talked about in those verses.
Doh, you are correct. Don't know why I typed Latin. Heck, I was linking to a fricking Greek article.
The PTC is not only indecent, they are, in fact, mind-bogglingly stupid.
I used to watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and post on the newsgroup about them. PTC whined about that show all the time. If you've watched the show, see if you can find some of the talk about their complaints of it, either on Usenet or elsewhere. I think there was an article here, too. And you'll laugh and laugh.
No, they were not complaining about stupid things, they were complaining about wrong things. Like, untrue things. Things that made no sense, that were not a possibly interpretation of events on the show.
Like 'In the 2001 season finale, Buffy committed suicide, jumping to her death to save the world.' Yes, dying to save the world is best described by the term 'suicide'. Or, you know, martyrdom. One of the two, I get them confused.
And it's not like the symbolism was hard to miss, she died with her arms outstretched, in the place of someone else. You know, like that guy that died to save the world 2000 years ago, what was his name? Spanish name, I think, although pronounced differently. Juan? Julio? But with the J sound, not an H. Nailed to a cross or something with his arms outstretched.
Oddly enough, they didn't seem to catch that symbolism, which either means they are possibly the worst Christians ever, or like they couldn't even be bothered to actually watch the shows they were whining about. Or, as I suspect, both.
This wasn't a singular event. They missed the fricking antichrist wandering around on Angel. Didn't have a word for or against her. Granted, the show didn't explicitly say who Jasmine was, but it was pretty damn obvious, and one of the episodes was named 'Slouching Toward Bethlehem'!
But they did bitch and whine about an ex-priest who decided to switch sides and serve the Buffy equivalent of Satan. They seemed to think that the show was saying all priests served the First Evil or something, it was fairly incoherent.
It was hilarious. The Buffyverse had a ton of religious, and usually Christian, references, as any 'morality play' would, and the PTC, like total morons, didn't even seem to notice them. We kept waiting for someone to make the connection, to notice that BtVS was somewhat heretical and talked about Christianity all the time, but no. Instead, they would complain about trivial stuff, or just stuff that didn't even make sense.
You know why this is? The PTC consists of like four people who don't actually watch TV. They write complaints based on TV listings and whatnot, maybe watching five minutes of an episode, and then email them to a larger group of people who print them out, sign them, and mail them to the FCC.
At no point is anyone fucking 'offended' by any TV show, as they have not, in fact, actually seen any TV show. All the people printing out the form letters and signing them should be charged with 'lying to a Federal agency' for asserting it 'offended' them.
In fact, that's an interesting point. Most TV shows do not, in fact, have the title on screen. The FCC is in charge of what is broadcast on television. If '$#*! My Dad Says' does not actually print the title on screen, I fail to see how it can be indecent in any manner whatsoever.
What, are they going to complain about the cabling listing channel? That's not under FCC jurisdiction. The printed TV guide? Also not under FCC jurisdiction.
I guess they could complain about commercials for it.
None of this refers to wor[d]s only the intent behind the words. So using "shit" as an equivalent of "stuff" most definitely does not infringe upon your quotes.
That is probably the best way to say that.
The Bible has plenty of stuff to say about what you should say, just like it has comments about other types of behavior.
But none of the stuff seems to be about word choice. Except that somewhat confusing Jesus quote about how one way of calling someone dumb is bad, and the other way is very bad, which no one quite understands, but doesn't have anything to do with 'obscenity' as far as we know.
Barring that baffling example, the Bible is all about what you say, not what words you use, or what types of words you use.
Yup.
Although you left out one thing. 'Cursing' was an actual thing like 'May you break your leg', which we don't tend to do that much in this society except to actors. ;)
So all the quotes there are talk about either a) falsely swearing on the name of the Lord, b) malicious gossip and lies, or c) wishing harm on others.
Or d), the first one, which is regarding insulting people to their face, with subjective names, not 'lies'. Which is incidentally the only Jesus quote. He is, obviously, against it.
Although no one knows what exactly he's talking about, because no one can figure out the difference between 'Raba' and 'fool'. 'Raba' means 'empty-headed' as far as anyone can figure out, and was a mild term of reproach, whereas 'moros', the word translated as fool, seems to be the same thing. Both of them seem to be ways of calling people 'dumb'.
Why one is deserving of condemnation by God and the other is not is unknown. Theories abound. Moros can also mean 'godless', so it's a possibility that is what Jesus mean. Don't say other people are not true followers of God. (Man, Jesus is so pissed at me right now.)
The safest bet for Christians is probably not to insult people at all, which seems to go along with other Jesus teachings.
But I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to his brother, 'Raca,' is answerable to the Sanhedrin. But anyone who says, 'You fool!' will be in danger of the fire of hell.
I mentioned this explicitly, you fool. Jesus said not to insult people. That has nothing at all to do with whether or not the word is 'obscene'.
With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse men, who have been made in God's likeness. Out of the same mouth come praise and cursing. My brothers, this should not be. Can both fresh water and salt water flow from the same spring?
The word 'curse' there is 'katara' which is an actual curse. Aka, wishing that someone comes to harm because they are a bad person.
Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen.
A better translation there for 'unwholesome' is 'corrupt', or even 'rotten', the word is 'sapros'. Sadly, 'rotten talk' is a broken metaphor...that's not what it means.
See, the word you've translated as 'talk' is 'logos', which all Christians should recognize (In the beginning was The Word, etc.), which can, indeed, mean 'talk', or even 'word' , but here almost certainly means 'the truth'. Do not speak rotten truths. Aka, don't lie.
You used to walk in these ways, in the life you once lived. But now you must rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips.
What is translated as filthy language there is 'aischrologia', which is, oddly enough, a specific Latin word meaning 'a role-reversal mocking and insulting your betters', and there were actually festivals (Scroll to 'Significance'.) that had this as an aspect of it.
Of course, this mocking probably included rather lewd languages, especially as women got to insult men during it. But it certainly not talking about 'bad words', or the way we use the term 'filthy language'.
You know that thing, where your boss leaves and you pretend to talk like him and make fun of him? Believe it or not, a Bible verse condemns that.
Put away perversity from your mouth; keep corrupt talk far from your lips.
'Perverse' doesn't mean what you think it means. Perverse simply means 'crooked'. In fact, it still means that, we just use it entirely metaphorically now. Again, it's 'don't lie'.
However, you've certainly proven me wrong. Apparently, there is language that idiots can interpret to be about the word 'fuck'. The world can always surprise me by building a better idiot.
Okay, I hate to admit I've heard it, but who else here has heard the Pussycat Doll's song 'Beep'?
It's all in your head, promise. The most suggestive line is 'Want to hold me with their hands'.
Depending on your definition of 'significantly different', it's actually pretty easy to find depictions of what Jesus did that differ in the same translation, but different gospels. The gospels are not 100% consistent between them.
However, what is more to the point, Jesus never condemned anyone, in any way, for their language.
In fact, the entire Bible doesn't condemn 'bad language' in any sense unless it involves the name of God. There's not a single word in the entire Bible that could be construed, in any manner whatsoever, as saying you shouldn't say 'fuck'.
Now, you're not supposed to insult people, so you shouldn't say 'Fuck you', but neither should you say 'Screw you'. (Jesus said you shouldn't even call people 'fools'.) But there's not a single word of the Bible that slightly can be read as saying you shouldn't say 'That's fucking amazing.' when you see the Grand Canyon or whatever. The only thing that's mentioned is the name of the Lord.
And even then people are confused. What is prohibited is using the Lord's name in vain, aka swearing a false oath to God, which is pretty damn uncommon in this society. Example #9274593 why the most vocal 'Christians' are, apparently, severely and profoundly mentally handicapped(1): The only reason anyone swears an oath on God at all is thanks to those 'Christians' putting God in anywhere, having Bible in courtrooms and whatnot, thus causing people to false swear on him. (Which is a bit like putting the sacrament on the bathroom floor and bitching about people peeing on it.)
Luckily, atheists stepped in and stopped as much of that as that sinful behavior as they could, because they don't like swearing in the name of the Lord for other reasons.
Meanwhile, 'Christians' run around HALLUCINATING that 'bad language' is a sin. Hell, at least with homosexuality and whatnot there's Old Testament verses and some mistranslated New Testament ones...with language there is literally not a single passage that could even slightly be read as 'Don't say the word shit'.
1) Great, now God is annoyed with me for insulting those fucking idi...erm, people.
Oh yeah?
Why is 'crap' not a bad word, then? Please explain the distinction between 'shit' and 'crap' for all of us. Likewise, the distinction between 'whiz', 'piss', and 'pee'.
And what the hell does toilet training have to do with anything? You're just trying to exclude 'childish' words like 'poop', but that's a rather idiotic slang distinction and doesn't have much to do with anything.
Likewise, the word 'sex', itself, is fairly new slang. The first recorded instance of it referring to intercourse is barely 80 years old, before that, it referred entirely to the distinction between male and female. It's from 'sexual intercourse', which actually meant 'intercourse with the parts of the body that differ between men and women'. Which poses some interesting etymological issues when speaking of 'gay sex', as that would be the opposite of sex, but whatever.
And yet nowadays we have judges talking about 'sex acts' and whatnot. (Which would technically mean 'acts that differ between the sex'.) Language changes. Slang changes to language, languages becomes outdated. Words become offensive, or acceptable.
And you really need to just accept that we just made up the damn distinctions. There seems to be a medical and legal exception, in that no matter what the word is, no one can actually complain if you're using those terms in that sense, but the rest of the distinction, the entire
Incidentally, bastard is a legal term. It's not used that often in the modern era because a) not a lot of law rely anymore on whether or not someone is born in wedlock (Inheritance law based on that actually was ruled unconstitutional in the US.), and b) it is gender specific. However, it is still a legal term, especially in places that do hereditary titles. (And note that's the least offensive term..the other term is, believe it or not, 'whoreson'.)
Why don't you suggest that your company just go ahead and secure-wipe all files all the time?
I mean, it's a frickin copier. It's not like it's pinning the CPU.
You don't even have to 'secure' wipe. That's for suckers. No one has ever demonstrated the ability to reconstruct data on a modern hard drive that's been overwritten just once. (All those studies about multi-pass were a) hypothetical, and b) based on old MFM encoding and much wasteful hard drives.)
Hell, there's probably a shared library you can link in and do a search and replace for 'unlink()' in your code with a wipe function.
You can always power an iPhone off. You just hold 'Home' and 'Sleep' together for about five seconds and it does a cold power off, regardless of what the software is doing.
As you can't remove the battery, this is a somewhat important ability for fixing utterly wedged iPhones.
DAMMIT
Indeed. Anyone who thinks the Fed went after them, and thus pointed the media at him, probably read that in the...tada...MEDIA. I'm not entirely sure they can be trusted to explain exactly what happened.
Richard Jewell was questioned by the FBI. Like, oh, a hundred other people. The FBI rather quickly, and well before any stories appeared, dismissed any theories about him planting it himself.
But because the FBI was stingy with information about the progress of the case, and the media somehow learned the fact that, at one point, the FBI had asked him a few questions aimed at seeing if he had did it, they started doing their own 'investigation' into him.
I'm not a huge fan of Federal law enforcement, or in fact how any law enforcement is allowed to operate, but the FBI isn't to blame for Richard Jewell being slimed...that was entirely the media. At no point did the FBI even consider him seriously as a suspect.
Someone, somewhere in the FBI probably let something slip they shouldn't have about who was being interviewed, or some government official, no one knows, but a perfect air-tight barrier of information is too much to expect. The media is not supposed to go 'Why, the FBI has a possible suspect! We better start meddling in the case and running information about him all over the front page.'.
Hell, if he'd been a real suspect, and actually charged, it would have been almost impossible to get an untainted jury because of the media's ass-hattery.
A much much better example of Federal law enforcement screwing with people is Steve Jackson vs. the Secret Service.
More important, it's hard to figure out why anyone would think this problem only applies to the SS, or why, if there was a solution, other government agencies wouldn't use it.
For some reason, in comments to this article, people have suddenly started believing the SS, a law enforcement agency people think well of because most people have no interaction with them (Although ask Steve Jackson about them some day.), is the only law enforcement agency that exists. And that the problems here, and solutions they find, and legislature about this, and whatnot all magically apply only to them.
Uh, no, hiding in your bedroom is retreating, which you are often required to do in many states. (Unless they have a 'castle' doctrine.)
There's really no state where being trapped in an inescapable bedroom and shooting an intruder would even slightly be illegal. In some states, going towards an intruder and shooting them can be illegal, or shooting at them when you could have escaped, but simply grabbing a gun and getting as far away from them as possible, and shooting them when they come towards you, is entirely legal anywhere I know of.
Unless, somehow, those intruders are actually cops, in which case they find a way to make it illegal.
Indeed.
They're apparently trying to get it under the 'commitment' thing, where the government can, indeed, imprison people who are a 'danger to themselves or others', without their having committed a crime.
The problem is, of course, if he was actually that, there's no fucking way he should have been serving his prison sentence in prison. People who are mentally ill serve their damn prison sentences in mental institutions until they are cured, and then go to prison if they have any time left on their sentence. YOU DO NOT PUT MENTALLY ILL PEOPLE IN A PRISON ENVIRONMENT. Um, DUH.
The court doesn't seem to understand they just let a justice system win a case which just admitted what is probably criminal negligence in failing to notice or treat a person for mental illness in their prison that they're now claiming is so mentally ill as to be eligible for commitment. And they claiming they just learned this? How exactly are they getting away with this?
'Oh, heh, we just noticed he was mentally ill. Stupid us.'
If people are mentally ill enough to lock them up because they pose a danger to themselves or others, they should not be in prison in the first place.
That's really the problem here. The question isn't 'Can we keep people detained?', it's 'Why the hell was someone so mentally ill that we could have them committed in a prison anyway?'.
Of course, I have no idea if this person is actually that mentally ill, or if this is just an excuse to keep them locked up. Or even if they became mentally ill in prison and we kept them there. But no matter which, something has gone wrong with the system if we're saying 'This person, which we had locked up in prison, is mentally ill.'.
Well, yes, but all cars using this system would be automatics. Duh, it's a form of automatic transmission. Talking about how manuals have a redundant control system is dumb.
It's like someone's invented a new car where the top can open called a 'convertible', and someone says they're more dangerous because trains drive on a track whereas convertibles can drive anywhere. Well, strictly speaking, that's true...but I'm pretty certain we were talking about cars, not trains, and all cars are like that. Likewise, we're talking about automatics, not manuals, and all automatics are like that.
But, yes, manuals are popular elsewhere, although there does not seem to be a good reason for that.
Manuals might be slightly more fuel efficient if you're an expert manual driver, but I'll wager that an average manual driver gets worse gas mileage. It might have been true when people were driving around with carburetors, but fuel injection is entire different. Computers beat 95% of people in that.
As for pickup, that is, heh, sorta the opposite of fuel efficiency. If someone used to driving a manual is bitching about the pickup of an automatic, I will promise you they're getting worse gas mileage when driving a manual. ;)
But, anyway, manuals have, for almost two decades, gotten reasonable pickup. Yes, a trained driver can always get from 0 to 60 in less time than a computer...but that is a rather stupid operational test for a vehicle.
It's also worth noting that the point of diminishing returns is different for different people, so no that's not obvious.
It's probably even more important to point out it's based on gas prices, which tend to vary and slowly but surely go up as supply decreases and demand increases.
Why on earth would how much you save from the end result of a government program have anything to do with how much it costs the government?
Erm, it removes a redundant control system...in manuals, which are a small percentage of cars, and, rather obviously, would not be using this anyway. (Or, duh, they wouldn't be manuals.)
The problem with your example is that 'reasonableness' is actually defined by law.
It might sound like some sort of opinion, but it is not. There are actually tests, based on facts, whether or not a belief that someone is trying to kill you is 'reasonable'.
Notablity, OTOH, while it is pretended to be defined, is not actually. That is, there are actual tests, actual lists of what do not belong on Wikipedia...and you'll find those things all over Wikipedia. Same with the inverse, things that clearly are notable under even the harshest interpretation of the rules...and yet get removed.
Instead of the rules, notability is actually 'What the guy with the most free time on his hands thinks is notable and willing to defend either way.'
Actually your point was that they don't follow rules. You didn't mention "judgment" at all, not even indirectly; it was complaining about inconsistent application of rules.
No, my point was they didn't make strict rules. Their rules are, essentially, 'Whatever'.
Their rules are not actually rules. Their rules, as you said, are judgment calls. But you've missed the point that a judgment call is the opposite of a rule.
Yes, yes, you made a joke about implemented by computer. But that really is what rules are. Rules are things that anyone can look at and come to the same conclusion if something is in violation or not. That is the meaning of 'rules'.
Rules can have judgment calls and observer differences in the facts. Did the person bowling touch the line with their foot? Was the car going 55 or 56MPH?
But on Wikipedia, people aren't arguing about the facts of 'notability'. They're arguing about opinion, about unprovable things.
That's not a 'rule' at all.
Moreover, as I said, they're arguing about opinions that are pretty inherently subjective based on world experience. You can actually reach a consensus on sulfur smelling bad, for example, although that's an opinion and some people might think otherwise.
But how 'important' something is is, ipso facto, relative. People are myoptic. People think things they deal with are important, and things they don't are unimportant.
Which, as someone else pointed out, has resulted in notability discussions over locations, as just one of the many strange examples. There are moderately sized European towns that get deleted for lack of notability. And yet a town of 430 stays?
I assume their reason is to mimic a traditional encyclopedia. Personally my preference for less is based on two things: A 200-word article is more useful than a 2000 word article if you want a short introduction; and, length in a traditional encyclopedia does convey valuable information about the overall importance.
I think about half their problems are due to the fact they're mimicking a traditional encyclopedia, including the shortcomings of encyclopedias.
The other half is that editors make 'judgment calls' and then stand there and assert said judgment calls are 'the rules' and enforce them with an iron fist.
Ha, finally, someone understood it.
I think people missed the fact that I was using fictional things as an example of something that you actually could have hard and fast rules about inclusion. Fictional works, yes, things inside those works, no.
It was just a very specific and good example, as opposed to saying 'Only cities over 10,000 in the main Wiki, and everything else in an atlas Wiki', because you know someone would debate the number. Whereas 'people and things that exist solely in fictional works' aren't debatable.
Except, as some wag pointed out, religion, but it's simple enough to make an exception for that. Or, heck, that probably deserves its own Wiki.
Instead, you get a weird smattering of fiction...and that apparently crowds out rule for, you know, actually existing things. Like you pointed out.
And as TheSpoon already replied with, the problem isn't really space. The problem is that they think 'serious' encyclopedias don't have 'unnotable' articles, or something. But this is stupid...the way the real world deals with it is to have 'encyclopedias of...' that focus on categories of stuff. 'Encyclopedia of Television', 'World Atlas', 'Who's Who', etc.
No one can quite figure out why they have notability rules, instead of just having a dozen different topics and shunting things into the right one.
Except that if did that, the people at the top would probably have to reduce their power somewhat, or stop behaving how they want to behave. It's a leadership problem, not a space problem.