You might have ADHD, caffeine has been shown to treat the effects of ADHD, many people with ADHD claim that drinking coffee before bead calms them down and they fall asleep much easier.
That is an interesting theory. I'm certain I'm not full blown ADHD as I know I can focus better than some people who I know have ADD of one form or another. However I do sometimes show some symptoms in terms of difficulty focusing, and sometimes I get antsy. I figure I'd be somewhere on the spectrum, maybe with some shared genes specifically responsible for the different caffeine effect.
I do have a theory about how caffeine affects me the way it does, though I'm sure it's only partly correct at best, and I doubt I'll ever know for sure. When I have caffeine in really small doses and have a particularly clear task to focus on it can work really well. Give me just a bit more caffeine or a less well defined task and I struggle. More than that, with even half of a cup of regular coffee my head feels noisy, like the firing in my brain got turned up but it's all heat and no light. This then causes me to feel sleepy (and I have a fatigue problem as it is, with an inability to stay awake during afternoon seminars if I haven't gotten a nap first). Since I tend to have a pretty good memory and adaptability to various things (like food preference, which might partially explain why I like coffee), I figure maybe my set point for neuron excitability is higher than average, which makes my synapses a bit more plastic on average. One of caffeine's effects is to increase neuron excitability by blocking an adenosine receptor responsible for regulating excitability. My theory is that for most people that puts their neurons, and in effect their brains, in a sweet spot of excitability, but for me to puts me above that sweet spot and puts my networks out of balance.
I would love such a drink. I'm extremely sensitive to caffeine, but I enjoy coffee quite a bit. In fact, the stuff is more likely to put me to sleep than keep me awake, so I tend to enjoy coffee after some dinners rather than early or during the day. Occasionally I have a cup of decaf during the day. If this coffee becomes available I'd drink it much more frequently than I drink coffee now.
I've heard of others like myself, though I doubt we're a particularly large portion of the population, so we are probably not a major reason for this research. Still, why are you so against people having a less processed low-caffeine option? And how is railing against such a possibility with zero facts or specific arguments in any way insightful?
I know it's common to comment without RTFA, but to make a statement of fact regarding the article without reading it is something else entirely.
"Issue: (1) Whether the warrantless use of a tracking device on respondent's vehicle to monitor its movements on public streets violated the Fourth Amendment; and (2) whether the government violated respondent's Fourth Amendment rights by installing the GPS tracking device on his vehicle without a valid warrant and without his consent."
I would actually think the point following that one is the more relevant. I can definitely think of cases where I see something coming up, and not sure whether the driver has noticed I stop talking if I had been talking, or slow my talking, or in some way react to allow the driver to notice and/or focus. So while you can adjust your focus in general when talking on the phone, you won't be able to in the same way as you would if you were talking to a passenger. There's a lot of nuanced communication going on when you are sharing the space and context rather than being in a completely different context over the phone
I'm undecided on whether a ban should be implemented, and as such I'm against it until I'm convinced, but in the meantime I think it's best that we all actually understand the factors and look to what the science says. When we have a clearer picture of the contribution of various interactions with phones under different circumstances to accidents, then we can decide whether it is worth banning cell phone use.
I like the idea of a simple signal to someone on the other end of the line, but I feel like there are a number of great ideas in car-related communication that have never been interested, so I doubt this one will ever happen. For instance, there's still no alternative to the obnoxious car horn other than trying to press it gently (even then it sounds kind of obnoxious, but the person usually gets the idea).
Talking on a phone is no worse than talking to someone in the passenger seat. Using voice activated dialing systems in a car seems like a reasonable line to me.
Apparently that is not true. Unfortunately I haven't found a primary source yet, but I've seen/heard claims twice today by researchers that talking with a passenger is not the same as talking on a phone.
Second in this CBS article: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-205_162-57343541/hands-free-phones-just-as-risky-research-shows/
"Of course, drivers do not have to be using cellphones to have conversations — they talk with passengers all the time. But talking to an adult passenger does not involve the same risk as a phone conversation, researchers said. That is because passengers are engaged in the driving experience with the driver. If they see a danger, they'll usually warn the driver. Passengers also tend to instinctively adjust their conversation to the level of traffic and other difficulties confronting the driver."
Of the $787B stimulus (not $1T), over a third ($288B) went to tax breaks and tax incentives, a bit less than a third ($224B) to entitlements, and another third ($275B) to various government projects. So your question then is where did the $275B go. The answer, along with the info I included here, is all at Recovery.gov. I'm sure if you don't fully trust the source, you can at least find out the programs there and then track down details via other means like news sources. Total infrastructure including roads, water treatment, broadband, etc was $48.9B (roads got broken up into two separate categories: "Transportation" and "Infrastructure"). Unemployment insurance programs got $60B.
You assume that an international minimum wage law would require the same minimum wage everywhere, regardless of local context such as cost of living. If you nailed minimum wage to cost of living, then while jobs in those countries would be reduced, those other countries would still have cheaper labor than us and thus would keep a (slightly decreased) competitive advantage. If you throw in environmental regulation, then that advantage decreases a bit more. If such a system were phased in over 10 years, the impact would not be disastrous, and should ultimately benefit the local and global environment, as well as the wellbeing of workers. The real challenges would be compliance and potential tariff retribution, but a concerted effort over time would I think produce positive results. The one other downside would be a short-term decrease in productivity since we'd essentially be internalizing external costs. However the whole point is that dealing with externalities pays off over the mid and long term.
Apparently "freedom of religion" doesn't mean anything to you. Thankfully, the Bill of Rights disagrees with you.
Apparently you have no conception of how the Bill of Rights applies. mozumder never said "the government should force people to no longer be Christian (or of a middle-eastern religion)". He said he wants to socially vilify those religions, which without any explicit statement otherwise we should assume he intends to do in a legal manner. You are free to disagree with him as much as he is free to disagree with you and with any religion he chooses. This is the same sort of thing the talking heads on the Right always mistake whenever some idiot pundit says something that offends people. "So-and-so has every right to say what they said, and you're taking away his first amendment right to say it." No, we are using our own rights to make "so-and-so" accountable in the public arena.
Well, this is fun, I get to agree and disagree with both of you! First of all, parent makes the right point (that I irresponsibly glossed over) that aside from the US and Al Qaeda, there were a bunch of Iraqis responsible for the majority of the deaths in Iraq. I wouldn't be all that surprised if the number dead is over 300,000, and that number (whatever it really is) does matter to me. The US is largely responsible in the sense that we opened up the can of worms, but the Iraqi factions and Al Qaeda are the primary killers, particularly in terms of innocent civilians. I do not think the US administrations have done enough to avoid civilian casualties in many instances, particularly when it comes to bombings based on bad intel, and particularly the Bush administration. Maybe it's just the coverage of bombings of things like weddings has decreased, but I've seen many fewer instances of this sort of thing in the news over the past year or so. That all being said, there is a difference between what we do and what they do in that we (usually) make a concerted effort to avoid civilian casualties, whereas the others not only don't mind killing civilians but often target them outright.
So both of you, please put away your extreme and overly simplistic perspectives. The US carries responsibility in that we made choices and need to recognize the consequences of those choices. However to cast all blame on the US and fail to distinguish between motivations is just as childish. Obama is no leftist. Your statement saying he is tells me a lot about you, tiqui. Obama is a centrist with liberal roots. Moreover his actions, while in my opinion unconstitutional, are far less reaching than Bush's were in terms of starting an endless war against "terrorism", promoting torture as policy, and denying rights to citizens and prisoners of war alike (yeah, the Geneva Conventions are still relevant until a person has been processed to ensure they were in fact enemy combatants, something Bush failed to consider for a substantial amount of time as many innocents got stuck in Guantanamo for years). So let's can the false equivalencies but recognize the US's role and responsibility with regards to civilian deaths and mistreatment. The problem hasn't been "a few bad apples", the problems come from the top in the way we put our soldiers into war, and more specifically into a situation of having overcrowding in prisons and insufficient training and supervision. There were a few bad apples, but most of the poor treatment and bad action by US military has been due to military and civilians policies and implementation.
Maybe (actually I do agree), but that's not the issue. I don't care if this is just politics from the Republicans perspective. I want our President to follow the law and constitution. Right now he isn't doing that. I don't think it's as bad as approving torture, but it's close in its potential long-term implications.
Democrats are no different than Republicans in putting "their team" over the country and over principle.
Which Democrats are we talking about, the ones that are suing Obama over this, the ones that are disagreeing with the administration in the press and TV, or the ones at home writing in message boards like these and writing letters to the White House urging a change of course that respects the rule of law and constitution? Democrats are in fact much better than Republicans in terms of attempting to hold their own to higher standards. Unfortunately it's easy to be much better than Republicans and still not be all that effective. Stop with the bullshit false equivalencies and start actually having an adult conversation.
Also, Obama is no war monger, but he does have a too strong sense of needing to protect our soft candy-asses from any potential external threat by using power that is not constitutionally his. Let's be clear on the real problem here. And a big reason he (and every other President) does this is because so many cowards want him to do whatever it takes even if it infringes on our rights. I hear it all the time on CSPAN (when I bother to listen).
Why can't people who start with a legitimate argument stop while they're ahead? My goodness. The "terrorists" (let's be specific, Al Qaeda) have killed way more than 3,000 innocents. That's just the approximate number of people they killed on 9/11. Since then they've killed plenty more. While one might argue that we (via the Bush administration) are responsible for many deaths because the war in Iraq led to destabilization and gave Al Qaeda room to operate and murder (both our troops and many civilians), your assertion that "we've killed something like 300,000" is an irresponsibly nonspecific charge. Moreover, it is silly to compare numbers that way when many (most?) of the deaths it seems you are saying we are responsible for are also the responsibility of those terrorists.
Overpopulation is the reason I have stopped giving to charities except those that advocate birth control....
If you really want to improve people's lives, give them the means to limit the number of kids they have. Then we will see some real improvement.
I agree with your core concept there, but you'd be well served by broadening your criteria to include education. Education level is the best predictor of birth rate and the long-term health of a community. It's not that poor places produce high birth rates or that high birth rates produce poverty, it's that poverty and lack of education leads to higher infant mortality, continued poverty, continued lack of education, and continued high birth rates. Also, funding small businesses through micro-financing (e.g. FINCA), in conjunction with providing local education, can help by providing economic stability, which can in turn increase the capability of a community to become educated.
So those are the sorts of things I focus my giving towards.
Name a major candidate... name a candidate on the Democratic side in the past 10 years who has been a Truther. How much coverage has that movement gotten? I'm not saying that Birtherism is something new, since a major public effort was made to discredit our previous Democratic president, but you are making false equivalencies up and down the line. There was some evidence that Bush was AWOL from guard duty, but once there wasn't sufficient evidence for it the issue, and it didn't look like there was going to be a way to find further evidence, the issue was dropped by the media. The issue was NEVER picked up by party leaders, and all of this while there was never conclusive evidence that Bush was not AWOL (while we've had plenty of proof of Obama's birth for a couple of years now, the long form simply being the most definitive).
The one about Palin being Trig's mother is another one that didn't last very long and few people took seriously. I could go on. Please stop making these false equivalencies. Many on the Left are capable of being blithering idiots, but far more on the right are doing it, and it regularly reaches many representatives and even the leaders of the Republican party.
Look. Mental addiction is just mental. It's bullshit.
That is a simple and ignorant position to take. Physical addiction and mental addiction are two different conditions that often go together (like in drug addiction), but that doesn't mean mental addiction can't be a very serious thing (as Laxori's post a few down makes clear). What is important in addiction is the narrowing of perspective and devaluing of otherwise valuable things in order to feed the addiction. Video games, internet, and text messaging all have a high potential to be the focus of addiction because of the way they produce dopamine release in the brain. Pushing buttons, controlling an environment, and getting quick rewards, when lacking sufficient complexity to engage our higher order brain areas can lead to a strong desire to keep doing the same while at the same time reducing self-control. A person doesn't just have or not have self-control, it is something that parts of the brain do. Thus, if you partake in activities that inhibit those brain areas and over time weaken them relative to other things that provide reward, you will have a harder time tearing yourself away from the activity: addiction. Yes, drugs will generally pull you in further and more quickly, but that doesn't mean one can't become partially addicted to these technologies. Moreover, there are people, probably those already prone to addiction in general, that get intensely addicted such that they stop eating, sleeping, studying, and/or working. How that isn't serious addiction you'll have to explain to me.
These effects can occur with a person in their room online for a long time, but a new array of issues arise when dealing with mobile devices. Now you can feed your addiction on the run, between and even during other tasks. This makes it easier to become addicted and more difficult to break it. It can lead to greater irritability, particularly for a child who doesn't have a fully developed prefrontal cortex, if they are torn away from their devise for whatever reason. Sure, there are some kids who are just rude and don't care about the people around them, but there are also kids that do care but get pulled in anyway. They might say they'd like to spend more time doing X, but they don't do it because they don't know how to break the addiction. People in general, and parents specifically, need to understand this process in order to engineer ways to help their children break away and be more healthy, particularly if the child wants to get better.
It's really not that hard to drive with your knees. The problems are when someone has their hands busy for any amount of time that would preclude them from making a severe correction in an unforeseen circumstance, and when the person has their attention pulled away from the world and thus fails to notice a pedestrian or car doing something out of the ordinary. If you're careful you can keep your attention on the road and your hands close enough to the wheel while doing some relatively simple functions on a device, but texting is clearly not a simple function no matter how good at it someone gets (unless you can do it one-handed without even looking at the screen).
So Steven Colbert in real life is really just as big a self-serving narcissistic douche as Steven Colbert is on the Colbert Report? Danny DeVito is really an asshole in real life? Your favorite porn star actually sleeps with every pizza boy that visits her house in real life?
Colbert is doing satire, and that is clear. Yes, Beck is acting, but in order to spread fear and ignorance I posit one must be either themselves ignorant and fearful, or a complete douche. All of those others you mention are known actors; they don't pretend to be their characters in real life (except Colbert in many cases, but again it is still clear he is doing an act). One would think this distinction would be obvious.
I can give you many reasons why to bother at all if there is nothing at the end, and I bet you could too if you bothered to think about it. Funny you should bring up that philosophy just as I've been listening to a piece about Nietzsche, who railed against Christianity and Judaism for precisely this reason. If you claim that some god is necessary for life to be worth living, and then we have reason to suspect there is no god, then all of life is a sham and we should end it all. All that remains is Nihilism.
While it is certainly your prerogative to believe there is a god, god's existence (or non-existence) is not required just so you can be satisfied that there is some meaning. There are many of us atheists who believe there is no god or don't give a damn whether or not there is such a thing, and yet we still have morals and find plenty of reason to live and create. I feel very sorry for you if you require god to maintain morals and a desire to live.
I apologize if that sounds harsh, but this is a very tired argument, and it saddens me to see if repeated so often.
Now, I don't think it's reasonable for them to completely block any (legal) traffic, but I do think it reasonable to allow them to setup tiered service and tiered pricing. The key is that they should fully disclose in their advertising and customer agreements, just exactly what it is the customer is paying for.
That might work, if there were sufficient competition so that you could easily choose which type of service to get. There is little (in some places no) competition, thus consumers don't get a choice and thus we need net neutrality. The other side of the problem is that second tier services would not be nearly as likely to be used, and thus promising upstarts might never see the light of day because, having less money to buy fast access to networks, they can't compete with the big guys.
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You might have ADHD, caffeine has been shown to treat the effects of ADHD, many people with ADHD claim that drinking coffee before bead calms them down and they fall asleep much easier.
That is an interesting theory. I'm certain I'm not full blown ADHD as I know I can focus better than some people who I know have ADD of one form or another. However I do sometimes show some symptoms in terms of difficulty focusing, and sometimes I get antsy. I figure I'd be somewhere on the spectrum, maybe with some shared genes specifically responsible for the different caffeine effect.
I do have a theory about how caffeine affects me the way it does, though I'm sure it's only partly correct at best, and I doubt I'll ever know for sure. When I have caffeine in really small doses and have a particularly clear task to focus on it can work really well. Give me just a bit more caffeine or a less well defined task and I struggle. More than that, with even half of a cup of regular coffee my head feels noisy, like the firing in my brain got turned up but it's all heat and no light. This then causes me to feel sleepy (and I have a fatigue problem as it is, with an inability to stay awake during afternoon seminars if I haven't gotten a nap first). Since I tend to have a pretty good memory and adaptability to various things (like food preference, which might partially explain why I like coffee), I figure maybe my set point for neuron excitability is higher than average, which makes my synapses a bit more plastic on average. One of caffeine's effects is to increase neuron excitability by blocking an adenosine receptor responsible for regulating excitability. My theory is that for most people that puts their neurons, and in effect their brains, in a sweet spot of excitability, but for me to puts me above that sweet spot and puts my networks out of balance.
I would love such a drink. I'm extremely sensitive to caffeine, but I enjoy coffee quite a bit. In fact, the stuff is more likely to put me to sleep than keep me awake, so I tend to enjoy coffee after some dinners rather than early or during the day. Occasionally I have a cup of decaf during the day. If this coffee becomes available I'd drink it much more frequently than I drink coffee now.
I've heard of others like myself, though I doubt we're a particularly large portion of the population, so we are probably not a major reason for this research. Still, why are you so against people having a less processed low-caffeine option? And how is railing against such a possibility with zero facts or specific arguments in any way insightful?
I know it's common to comment without RTFA, but to make a statement of fact regarding the article without reading it is something else entirely.
"Issue: (1) Whether the warrantless use of a tracking device on respondent's vehicle to monitor its movements on public streets violated the Fourth Amendment; and (2) whether the government violated respondent's Fourth Amendment rights by installing the GPS tracking device on his vehicle without a valid warrant and without his consent."
I would actually think the point following that one is the more relevant. I can definitely think of cases where I see something coming up, and not sure whether the driver has noticed I stop talking if I had been talking, or slow my talking, or in some way react to allow the driver to notice and/or focus. So while you can adjust your focus in general when talking on the phone, you won't be able to in the same way as you would if you were talking to a passenger. There's a lot of nuanced communication going on when you are sharing the space and context rather than being in a completely different context over the phone
I'm undecided on whether a ban should be implemented, and as such I'm against it until I'm convinced, but in the meantime I think it's best that we all actually understand the factors and look to what the science says. When we have a clearer picture of the contribution of various interactions with phones under different circumstances to accidents, then we can decide whether it is worth banning cell phone use.
I like the idea of a simple signal to someone on the other end of the line, but I feel like there are a number of great ideas in car-related communication that have never been interested, so I doubt this one will ever happen. For instance, there's still no alternative to the obnoxious car horn other than trying to press it gently (even then it sounds kind of obnoxious, but the person usually gets the idea).
Talking on a phone is no worse than talking to someone in the passenger seat. Using voice activated dialing systems in a car seems like a reasonable line to me.
Apparently that is not true. Unfortunately I haven't found a primary source yet, but I've seen/heard claims twice today by researchers that talking with a passenger is not the same as talking on a phone.
First on the Diane Rehm Show this morning: http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2011-12-15/ban-cell-phones-while-driving, one of the guests specifically talked about research testing the reaction time of people in simulations under different conditions.
Second in this CBS article: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-205_162-57343541/hands-free-phones-just-as-risky-research-shows/
"Of course, drivers do not have to be using cellphones to have conversations — they talk with passengers all the time. But talking to an adult passenger does not involve the same risk as a phone conversation, researchers said. That is because passengers are engaged in the driving experience with the driver. If they see a danger, they'll usually warn the driver. Passengers also tend to instinctively adjust their conversation to the level of traffic and other difficulties confronting the driver."
False equivalency fallacy. My work here is done.
Of the $787B stimulus (not $1T), over a third ($288B) went to tax breaks and tax incentives, a bit less than a third ($224B) to entitlements, and another third ($275B) to various government projects. So your question then is where did the $275B go. The answer, along with the info I included here, is all at Recovery.gov. I'm sure if you don't fully trust the source, you can at least find out the programs there and then track down details via other means like news sources. Total infrastructure including roads, water treatment, broadband, etc was $48.9B (roads got broken up into two separate categories: "Transportation" and "Infrastructure"). Unemployment insurance programs got $60B.
You assume that an international minimum wage law would require the same minimum wage everywhere, regardless of local context such as cost of living. If you nailed minimum wage to cost of living, then while jobs in those countries would be reduced, those other countries would still have cheaper labor than us and thus would keep a (slightly decreased) competitive advantage. If you throw in environmental regulation, then that advantage decreases a bit more. If such a system were phased in over 10 years, the impact would not be disastrous, and should ultimately benefit the local and global environment, as well as the wellbeing of workers. The real challenges would be compliance and potential tariff retribution, but a concerted effort over time would I think produce positive results. The one other downside would be a short-term decrease in productivity since we'd essentially be internalizing external costs. However the whole point is that dealing with externalities pays off over the mid and long term.
Apparently "freedom of religion" doesn't mean anything to you. Thankfully, the Bill of Rights disagrees with you.
Apparently you have no conception of how the Bill of Rights applies. mozumder never said "the government should force people to no longer be Christian (or of a middle-eastern religion)". He said he wants to socially vilify those religions, which without any explicit statement otherwise we should assume he intends to do in a legal manner. You are free to disagree with him as much as he is free to disagree with you and with any religion he chooses. This is the same sort of thing the talking heads on the Right always mistake whenever some idiot pundit says something that offends people. "So-and-so has every right to say what they said, and you're taking away his first amendment right to say it." No, we are using our own rights to make "so-and-so" accountable in the public arena.
^ NSFW
Well, this is fun, I get to agree and disagree with both of you! First of all, parent makes the right point (that I irresponsibly glossed over) that aside from the US and Al Qaeda, there were a bunch of Iraqis responsible for the majority of the deaths in Iraq. I wouldn't be all that surprised if the number dead is over 300,000, and that number (whatever it really is) does matter to me. The US is largely responsible in the sense that we opened up the can of worms, but the Iraqi factions and Al Qaeda are the primary killers, particularly in terms of innocent civilians. I do not think the US administrations have done enough to avoid civilian casualties in many instances, particularly when it comes to bombings based on bad intel, and particularly the Bush administration. Maybe it's just the coverage of bombings of things like weddings has decreased, but I've seen many fewer instances of this sort of thing in the news over the past year or so. That all being said, there is a difference between what we do and what they do in that we (usually) make a concerted effort to avoid civilian casualties, whereas the others not only don't mind killing civilians but often target them outright.
So both of you, please put away your extreme and overly simplistic perspectives. The US carries responsibility in that we made choices and need to recognize the consequences of those choices. However to cast all blame on the US and fail to distinguish between motivations is just as childish. Obama is no leftist. Your statement saying he is tells me a lot about you, tiqui. Obama is a centrist with liberal roots. Moreover his actions, while in my opinion unconstitutional, are far less reaching than Bush's were in terms of starting an endless war against "terrorism", promoting torture as policy, and denying rights to citizens and prisoners of war alike (yeah, the Geneva Conventions are still relevant until a person has been processed to ensure they were in fact enemy combatants, something Bush failed to consider for a substantial amount of time as many innocents got stuck in Guantanamo for years). So let's can the false equivalencies but recognize the US's role and responsibility with regards to civilian deaths and mistreatment. The problem hasn't been "a few bad apples", the problems come from the top in the way we put our soldiers into war, and more specifically into a situation of having overcrowding in prisons and insufficient training and supervision. There were a few bad apples, but most of the poor treatment and bad action by US military has been due to military and civilians policies and implementation.
The cause is a just one.
Maybe (actually I do agree), but that's not the issue. I don't care if this is just politics from the Republicans perspective. I want our President to follow the law and constitution. Right now he isn't doing that. I don't think it's as bad as approving torture, but it's close in its potential long-term implications.
Democrats are no different than Republicans in putting "their team" over the country and over principle.
Which Democrats are we talking about, the ones that are suing Obama over this, the ones that are disagreeing with the administration in the press and TV, or the ones at home writing in message boards like these and writing letters to the White House urging a change of course that respects the rule of law and constitution? Democrats are in fact much better than Republicans in terms of attempting to hold their own to higher standards. Unfortunately it's easy to be much better than Republicans and still not be all that effective. Stop with the bullshit false equivalencies and start actually having an adult conversation.
Also, Obama is no war monger, but he does have a too strong sense of needing to protect our soft candy-asses from any potential external threat by using power that is not constitutionally his. Let's be clear on the real problem here. And a big reason he (and every other President) does this is because so many cowards want him to do whatever it takes even if it infringes on our rights. I hear it all the time on CSPAN (when I bother to listen).
How is this insightful? Did someone get insightful confused with simple and cliched?
Why can't people who start with a legitimate argument stop while they're ahead? My goodness. The "terrorists" (let's be specific, Al Qaeda) have killed way more than 3,000 innocents. That's just the approximate number of people they killed on 9/11. Since then they've killed plenty more. While one might argue that we (via the Bush administration) are responsible for many deaths because the war in Iraq led to destabilization and gave Al Qaeda room to operate and murder (both our troops and many civilians), your assertion that "we've killed something like 300,000" is an irresponsibly nonspecific charge. Moreover, it is silly to compare numbers that way when many (most?) of the deaths it seems you are saying we are responsible for are also the responsibility of those terrorists.
Overpopulation is the reason I have stopped giving to charities except those that advocate birth control. ...
If you really want to improve people's lives, give them the means to limit the number of kids they have. Then we will see some real improvement.
I agree with your core concept there, but you'd be well served by broadening your criteria to include education. Education level is the best predictor of birth rate and the long-term health of a community. It's not that poor places produce high birth rates or that high birth rates produce poverty, it's that poverty and lack of education leads to higher infant mortality, continued poverty, continued lack of education, and continued high birth rates. Also, funding small businesses through micro-financing (e.g. FINCA), in conjunction with providing local education, can help by providing economic stability, which can in turn increase the capability of a community to become educated. So those are the sorts of things I focus my giving towards.
Name a major candidate... name a candidate on the Democratic side in the past 10 years who has been a Truther. How much coverage has that movement gotten? I'm not saying that Birtherism is something new, since a major public effort was made to discredit our previous Democratic president, but you are making false equivalencies up and down the line. There was some evidence that Bush was AWOL from guard duty, but once there wasn't sufficient evidence for it the issue, and it didn't look like there was going to be a way to find further evidence, the issue was dropped by the media. The issue was NEVER picked up by party leaders, and all of this while there was never conclusive evidence that Bush was not AWOL (while we've had plenty of proof of Obama's birth for a couple of years now, the long form simply being the most definitive). The one about Palin being Trig's mother is another one that didn't last very long and few people took seriously. I could go on. Please stop making these false equivalencies. Many on the Left are capable of being blithering idiots, but far more on the right are doing it, and it regularly reaches many representatives and even the leaders of the Republican party.
They've lost faith in sci-fi too, as much as NBC did.
That's probably because Syfy is NBC.
Look. Mental addiction is just mental. It's bullshit.
That is a simple and ignorant position to take. Physical addiction and mental addiction are two different conditions that often go together (like in drug addiction), but that doesn't mean mental addiction can't be a very serious thing (as Laxori's post a few down makes clear). What is important in addiction is the narrowing of perspective and devaluing of otherwise valuable things in order to feed the addiction. Video games, internet, and text messaging all have a high potential to be the focus of addiction because of the way they produce dopamine release in the brain. Pushing buttons, controlling an environment, and getting quick rewards, when lacking sufficient complexity to engage our higher order brain areas can lead to a strong desire to keep doing the same while at the same time reducing self-control. A person doesn't just have or not have self-control, it is something that parts of the brain do. Thus, if you partake in activities that inhibit those brain areas and over time weaken them relative to other things that provide reward, you will have a harder time tearing yourself away from the activity: addiction. Yes, drugs will generally pull you in further and more quickly, but that doesn't mean one can't become partially addicted to these technologies. Moreover, there are people, probably those already prone to addiction in general, that get intensely addicted such that they stop eating, sleeping, studying, and/or working. How that isn't serious addiction you'll have to explain to me.
These effects can occur with a person in their room online for a long time, but a new array of issues arise when dealing with mobile devices. Now you can feed your addiction on the run, between and even during other tasks. This makes it easier to become addicted and more difficult to break it. It can lead to greater irritability, particularly for a child who doesn't have a fully developed prefrontal cortex, if they are torn away from their devise for whatever reason. Sure, there are some kids who are just rude and don't care about the people around them, but there are also kids that do care but get pulled in anyway. They might say they'd like to spend more time doing X, but they don't do it because they don't know how to break the addiction. People in general, and parents specifically, need to understand this process in order to engineer ways to help their children break away and be more healthy, particularly if the child wants to get better.
It's really not that hard to drive with your knees. The problems are when someone has their hands busy for any amount of time that would preclude them from making a severe correction in an unforeseen circumstance, and when the person has their attention pulled away from the world and thus fails to notice a pedestrian or car doing something out of the ordinary. If you're careful you can keep your attention on the road and your hands close enough to the wheel while doing some relatively simple functions on a device, but texting is clearly not a simple function no matter how good at it someone gets (unless you can do it one-handed without even looking at the screen).
So Steven Colbert in real life is really just as big a self-serving narcissistic douche as Steven Colbert is on the Colbert Report? Danny DeVito is really an asshole in real life? Your favorite porn star actually sleeps with every pizza boy that visits her house in real life?
Colbert is doing satire, and that is clear. Yes, Beck is acting, but in order to spread fear and ignorance I posit one must be either themselves ignorant and fearful, or a complete douche. All of those others you mention are known actors; they don't pretend to be their characters in real life (except Colbert in many cases, but again it is still clear he is doing an act). One would think this distinction would be obvious.
I can give you many reasons why to bother at all if there is nothing at the end, and I bet you could too if you bothered to think about it. Funny you should bring up that philosophy just as I've been listening to a piece about Nietzsche, who railed against Christianity and Judaism for precisely this reason. If you claim that some god is necessary for life to be worth living, and then we have reason to suspect there is no god, then all of life is a sham and we should end it all. All that remains is Nihilism.
While it is certainly your prerogative to believe there is a god, god's existence (or non-existence) is not required just so you can be satisfied that there is some meaning. There are many of us atheists who believe there is no god or don't give a damn whether or not there is such a thing, and yet we still have morals and find plenty of reason to live and create. I feel very sorry for you if you require god to maintain morals and a desire to live.
I apologize if that sounds harsh, but this is a very tired argument, and it saddens me to see if repeated so often.
Are you claiming that news shows giving both sides of a story is a _bad_ thing?
BOTH sides!
http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/25cc3e4e77/smbc-theater-both-sides
Now, I don't think it's reasonable for them to completely block any (legal) traffic, but I do think it reasonable to allow them to setup tiered service and tiered pricing. The key is that they should fully disclose in their advertising and customer agreements, just exactly what it is the customer is paying for.
That might work, if there were sufficient competition so that you could easily choose which type of service to get. There is little (in some places no) competition, thus consumers don't get a choice and thus we need net neutrality. The other side of the problem is that second tier services would not be nearly as likely to be used, and thus promising upstarts might never see the light of day because, having less money to buy fast access to networks, they can't compete with the big guys.