Because intelligence agencies use them to infiltrate terrorist groups and to network through terrorist organizations to the guys calling the shots. By shutting down these channels they are actually making the job harder for intelligence groups as they push terrorists to use more obscure forms of communications like the PSN which are harder for analysts to track. Not that terrorists aren't getting wise and doing this already but not all terrorists are as clever and we certainly want to keep them and their communication mechanisms lazy.
I spoke to 2 support reps just Wed. One from the US and one from Canada. Neither could give me an assurance that another Samsung device won't end up as abandonware. All I got were vague answers that Samsung will update Android as long as the hardware is compatible; but they couldn't say when or how often. My Note 10.1 tablet hasn't had an Android update in 2 years and they couldn't promise me one was coming either.
Now that we have a Mac in the house, despite the fact that I hate my iPhone, I'm considering transitioning all of my devices to Apple (shudder.)
I've been an IT manager and an IT director so I'll make a few points from that perspective. 1) IT is there to serve the needs of the business and one of the needs of the business is to create / facilitate a productive and encouraging work environment. Now, this doesn't need to mean that you give people everything they ask for, but it does mean that you need to trust people. If there are legitimate reasons for concern then get a firewall product that can measure the amount of time someone is spending surfing the net; however, this is really a business concern and this capability is not for IT to worry about its for the different LOB managers to worry about. If they have that as a general concern then pursue it, otherwise it's not IT's concern.
2) What is IT's concern is the security, availability, and integrity of the computing environment and business data and that does mean taking reasonable measures to protect the assets under your control. That means that perhaps you need AV / Anti-Malware / etc. protections. Perhaps also a webfilter that blocks sites that are known for producing malware with the intent to exploit the visitors to that site. Those sites should come from security vendor watchlists and not some arbitrary list put together by the sysadmins.
3) Doing this is about finding an appropriate balance. That balance can only be maintained through constant communication and feedback with the business leaders (i.e. you need a governance process.) The business leadership / executive will need to decide what that balance is. IT's job is to appropriately communicate the risks, consequences and options and let the executive make the decision on how much risk they are willing to take on. This is why communication is crucial, especially in IT, and why often managers who are non-technical or barely technical, get those positions instead of the very technical people who "know better."
This is windows.... no matter how much they evolve it every couple of years you're going to have to reinstall it anyways... so realistically it doesn't matter if they go to a 'rolling release' or not.
I'd say that the best way to learn how to think critically is by studying math, which teaches your brain how to structure your critical thinking. That said, the data you are going feed into that structure needs to come from a broad and relevant set of data and some understanding of the structure of that data or at least the underlying relevant drivers. That input is going to come from a liberal-arts education, not a STEM education.
In my experience this is not the case. The ability to handle math does suggest the ability to think and analyse, however, it does not follow that you have the ability to communicate clearly and effectively. Much too often I run into co-workers who are technically very smart, but cannot even write an understandable email. Their emails are a series of long run-on sentences, often with little to no punctuation. At the end of reading them I'm often left wondering what they were trying to say.
This is why I think it's important for STEM majors to go to a liberal arts school. A school that forces you to do a number of credits from different faculties and will force you to take courses in the social 'sciences,' arts, literature, history philosophy, religion, anthropology, etc. I would also agree with the comments on writing. Too often these days I run into people who cannot compose a cogent email let alone a memo or document. While technical skills are very important, leadership and communications skills are key differentiators in any business.
so you mean to tell me that after thousands of years and billions of dollars that we're going to go to the moon to be cave men? Talk about coming full circle.
In my experience, most of Latin America and the Caribbean is like that. Everyone had BlackBerry and BBM, iphone and Android were nowhere to be found. I did see a couple ipads though
It's not so called conservatism it's actually conservatism. The public service in Canada is pretty large and it's not sustainable. Canada is basically going through it's own downsizing of government they started about 1-2 years ago when they laid-off a lot of public sector employees and reduced spending all around. Every public servant in Ottawa was in a tizzy for months, you'd have thought the world was coming to an end to hear them speak of the calamities that were going to result in this. Personally, as a Canadian I pay way too much in taxes already while public servants make more, work less and have big pensions that they can retire on. Me, I'll probably never be able to retire.
So yes, this is liberal hand waving at it's finest. (And just so you know, national archives and many other gov't department 'libraries' are the places where they send the people no other group wants; because of the unions they can't fire them.)
I lived in Ottawa for over 15 years and worked with government employees every day. Anything that comes along and 'the sky is falling' this is just more of the same nonsense.
Oh yes, because waiting 3-6 months to patch a vulnerability that can lead to exploited systems, infrastructure and ultimately your IP being sent to China or Russia is a better option.
I'm sure that if the cost of one web-browser not working is 10 million dollars, the cost of eliminating rootkits/trojans from all the desktops on your network, (and maybe some of the servers) is going to be so much less.
As mentioned below. If you are actually running your operations, instead of letting your users do it for you, you'll be managing testing and deploying yourself from a central system.
Better to patch a vulnerability with the small possibility of having to issue another patched version to correct a corner case than to leave a vulnerability out there.
Have one typing class on a commodore 64 in grade seven, but in high school the only computer experience I got was programming my TI-85 in basic and my mom glt me the pascal module so I did a little of that, otherwise I didnt touch a computer until university.
I would agree with you that this often happens, people born into a religion are more likely to stay within that religion, but that's a generalization that has as more to do with the strength of socio-cultural influences than anything. That said, in my experience I have seen a lot of people, both former atheists and people from other religious backgrounds convert to Mormonism (I teach a class for 'investigators' / new members.)
Bringing in new converts is a fairly common occurrence, so I don't buy into the hypothesis that religions survive through indoctrination, certainly not that religions survive *only* through indoctrination. I know that atheists typically carry this assumption (being a former atheist myself) that if religious people just knew the 'facts' they wouldn't be religious any more. (Certainly evangelicals believe that about mormonism, just see my other posts in this thread.) However, that's not actually true (otherwise how do new religious movements form and grow and in some small cases, go on to become world religions? ) There are a lot of reasons why people decide to believe, or come to believe in a certain faith tradition and they almost never have anything to do with science. What is scientifically right or wrong often doesn't matter to the average person, they have their own criteria. I think to try and generalize it down to lack of knowledge, lack of intelligence or some other common factor is going to lead you to some very false stereotypes.
One last thing, converts always choose their new faith based on the 'merits,' even if those merits are totally subjective and relate only to them, so again, I would disagree with your general assumption.
There were many drivers to why people hated the mormons back in the day, not just reactions to the mormons. Geez if your reactions to your neighbours leads you to rape, pillage and kill them I'm not going to blame it on them. Everyone is accountable for *how* they react to things. It was impossible for them to live 'peacefully' with their neighbours, that's a naive thing to say. 19th century USA wasn't exactly the place of tolerance and acceptance for people who are different. Mormonism was *always* a peaceful religion, it didn't just become one. The thing is that religions are made up of people, and when you push people enough they eventually push back. I hear lots of people on this thread saying that Linus should speak his mind no matter whether it's politically correct or not. Yet when we get to the mormons any time they pushed back or spoke up it's somehow not ok. Double standard much?
Here are some of the *real* reasons why mormons were hated: 1) Mormon theology was by 19th century norms, unorthodox, and in the 1840's when J.S. introduced many new ideas, heretical. When J.S. started talking about gold plates the persecution was either from other pastors who found it heretical (revelation is gone! the heavens are closed! everyone knows that!) or from people who wanted to steal them from him. 2) Mormon theology and cosmology was very attractive. When mormonism first came on the scene people converted in droves. Entire congregations converted en-mass leaving many pastors without livelihoods. (That's what happened with Sydney Rigdon.) Those pastors saw it as a huge threat both doctrinally and financially. They didn't take it lying down, in fact much of the earliest and most vociferous persecution comes as a result of this. 3) Mormons were very insular. They tended to only patronize businesses that were also mormon. There were many reasons for this, such as people poising the wine they sold them for sacrament services, but they also to blame. 4) Joseph Smith was quite egalitarian. He believed in freedom and equality for all people. He even ordained blacks to the priesthood. Unfortunately that brought a lot of persecution and he stopped the practise. (Again, unfortunately he didn't really explain why he stopped it and no one resumed it again until the 1970's but that's another discussion.) You have this against the backdrop of mounting tensions that eventually lead to the civil war. People accused them of stirring up the indians and blacks to rebellion because they were teaching them that they were and should be equal to whites. 5) The failure of the kirkland bank pissed off a lot of people, both mormon and non-mormon. There are a lot of reasons why it failed. If you are interested you can read the LDS side of the story here: http://en.fairmormon.org/Mormonism_and_church_finances/Kirtland_Safety_Society 6) Early mormon converts typically came from poverty or lower class backgrounds. Middle & Upper class people largely looked down on them and saw them as a threat. They feared being over-run by the poor and needy, largely b/c of the next point. 7) Politics as I already mentioned. J.S. run for president scared a lot of people as did his prophecy that the new jerusalem would be in jackson county. (had nothing to do with an prophesy about gods kingdom over the whole earth. In fact most 19th century protestants believed that was going to happen anyway at the time of christ's second coming.) People there feared the mormons would overwhelm them and drive them out. The opposite happened of course. 8) Immigration. The LDS church brought a lot of poor foreigners into the areas where they lived. Locals saw it as an economic threat. 9) Polygamy in the Navoo period. It scandalized most europeans. Although there was good and bad elements to it it's not what people think of today when they look at the mormon fundamentalists. A very small percentage of people practised it and usually if you had money you got
Maybe you should also mention that Boggs was the one who put out the extermination order.... and that one of the reasons so many people hated the mormons wasn't because of polygamy (which wasn't an official practice until 12 years later) but because the Mormons were anti-slavery and treated blacks and natives as equals and even wanted women to vote! Those nasty backwards mormons.
For those of you still thinking in stereotypes, women living in polygamous mormon families (not anything like what the fundamentalists do today) weren't married off under age, most often had their own houses, were educated, had the right to vote (yes, they were the first women with the right to vote in north america) and often ran their own businesses. The abolishment of polygamy in Utah set women's rights back 100 years for them.
Lol. I've heard it all before. J.Smith wasn't the only one tarred and feathered, or murdered. But it must all be the mormon's fault. What bad neighbors they were. (If I was treated how they were treated I might not be such a nice neighbor either.) Because his actions justify the rape and murder of others, including women and children. Right.....
There's lots of problems with the so called evidence of J.Smith being an early womanizer. The story of Marinda Johnson is complete with contradictions. At the end of the day, the attack against him had little to do with supposed womanizing, accusations of which don't show up until long after the events (like 12 years later.) Go read the other side of the story. http://en.fairmormon.org/Polygamy_book/Early_womanizer
Boggs was shot by an unknown assailant and your 'prophesy' is based on the imagination of John Bennett, an active anti-mormon who was booted out for homosexuality, adultery, performing of abortions and polygamy, among other things. He was given more than one chance once caught. He actually vowed to drink the blood of J.S. he hated him so much. Yeah, I'm going to take his word for it as the unbiased party.
And really, Haun's mill not as bad? Really? I suppose it was all Brigham's fault; they must have brought it on themselves they did. Yup, that justifies all the persecution they got. I'm not defending the MMM. It was very unfortunate, but I can also understand how people who had repeatedly persecuted and driven out of the US, with an army coming to exterminate them might get jumpy and do something stupid. But of course that doesn't matter to you because you are apparently smarter than the rest of us and are yourself a completely unbiased party. So we must have deserved it. Question, do you say the same thing about the holocaust?
The only thing I agree with you on is the politics. People in the area were terrified of the 'mormon' vote b/c they would vote as a block; but not the nonsense about inheriting by the sword and terrorizing neighboring towns. (You don't mean those towns that sent mobs to burn them out of their homes in the middle of the night do you? Certainly not the ones where little children had to walk for miles in bear feet in the middle of winter over the frozen stubble of wheat fields that cut up their feet and left trails of blood? Not the ones where many of those children died from exposure? Certainly not those ones... because all those towns folk were perfect neighbors. )
What, because I don't believe all of your 'evidence' from the people who were trying to destroy them I'm clueless? Hmm.. maybe you're just a bigot. My guess is your either an evangelical who 'loves' us or an ex mormon. Either way, all your repeating is tired old allegations we've heard for 100 years now, or more.
How about... in the global pool of religions, where one is just as silly as the next, I picked the one that I figured was the most interesting and least dangerous.
Good enough for you or are you an 1) atheist or 2) evangelical looking to pick a fight? If so, I really don't care what you think.
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Because intelligence agencies use them to infiltrate terrorist groups and to network through terrorist organizations to the guys calling the shots. By shutting down these channels they are actually making the job harder for intelligence groups as they push terrorists to use more obscure forms of communications like the PSN which are harder for analysts to track. Not that terrorists aren't getting wise and doing this already but not all terrorists are as clever and we certainly want to keep them and their communication mechanisms lazy.
I spoke to 2 support reps just Wed. One from the US and one from Canada. Neither could give me an assurance that another Samsung device won't end up as abandonware. All I got were vague answers that Samsung will update Android as long as the hardware is compatible; but they couldn't say when or how often. My Note 10.1 tablet hasn't had an Android update in 2 years and they couldn't promise me one was coming either.
Now that we have a Mac in the house, despite the fact that I hate my iPhone, I'm considering transitioning all of my devices to Apple (shudder.)
I've been an IT manager and an IT director so I'll make a few points from that perspective.
1) IT is there to serve the needs of the business and one of the needs of the business is to create / facilitate a productive and encouraging work environment. Now, this doesn't need to mean that you give people everything they ask for, but it does mean that you need to trust people. If there are legitimate reasons for concern then get a firewall product that can measure the amount of time someone is spending surfing the net; however, this is really a business concern and this capability is not for IT to worry about its for the different LOB managers to worry about. If they have that as a general concern then pursue it, otherwise it's not IT's concern.
2) What is IT's concern is the security, availability, and integrity of the computing environment and business data and that does mean taking reasonable measures to protect the assets under your control. That means that perhaps you need AV / Anti-Malware / etc. protections. Perhaps also a webfilter that blocks sites that are known for producing malware with the intent to exploit the visitors to that site. Those sites should come from security vendor watchlists and not some arbitrary list put together by the sysadmins.
3) Doing this is about finding an appropriate balance. That balance can only be maintained through constant communication and feedback with the business leaders (i.e. you need a governance process.) The business leadership / executive will need to decide what that balance is. IT's job is to appropriately communicate the risks, consequences and options and let the executive make the decision on how much risk they are willing to take on. This is why communication is crucial, especially in IT, and why often managers who are non-technical or barely technical, get those positions instead of the very technical people who "know better."
This is windows.... no matter how much they evolve it every couple of years you're going to have to reinstall it anyways... so realistically it doesn't matter if they go to a 'rolling release' or not.
I should have said 'the data you are going to create a structure or framework from' needs to come from a broad and relevant set of data....
I'd say that the best way to learn how to think critically is by studying math, which teaches your brain how to structure your critical thinking. That said, the data you are going feed into that structure needs to come from a broad and relevant set of data and some understanding of the structure of that data or at least the underlying relevant drivers. That input is going to come from a liberal-arts education, not a STEM education.
In my experience this is not the case. The ability to handle math does suggest the ability to think and analyse, however, it does not follow that you have the ability to communicate clearly and effectively. Much too often I run into co-workers who are technically very smart, but cannot even write an understandable email. Their emails are a series of long run-on sentences, often with little to no punctuation. At the end of reading them I'm often left wondering what they were trying to say.
This is why I think it's important for STEM majors to go to a liberal arts school. A school that forces you to do a number of credits from different faculties and will force you to take courses in the social 'sciences,' arts, literature, history philosophy, religion, anthropology, etc. I would also agree with the comments on writing. Too often these days I run into people who cannot compose a cogent email let alone a memo or document. While technical skills are very important, leadership and communications skills are key differentiators in any business.
But the mandate to convert to Islam in Iraq is not false
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-...
Convert or die (or pay a 'special' tax)
so you mean to tell me that after thousands of years and billions of dollars that we're going to go to the moon to be cave men? Talk about coming full circle.
In my experience, most of Latin America and the Caribbean is like that. Everyone had BlackBerry and BBM, iphone and Android were nowhere to be found. I did see a couple ipads though
It's not so called conservatism it's actually conservatism. The public service in Canada is pretty large and it's not sustainable. Canada is basically going through it's own downsizing of government they started about 1-2 years ago when they laid-off a lot of public sector employees and reduced spending all around. Every public servant in Ottawa was in a tizzy for months, you'd have thought the world was coming to an end to hear them speak of the calamities that were going to result in this. Personally, as a Canadian I pay way too much in taxes already while public servants make more, work less and have big pensions that they can retire on. Me, I'll probably never be able to retire.
So yes, this is liberal hand waving at it's finest. (And just so you know, national archives and many other gov't department 'libraries' are the places where they send the people no other group wants; because of the unions they can't fire them.)
I lived in Ottawa for over 15 years and worked with government employees every day. Anything that comes along and 'the sky is falling' this is just more of the same nonsense.
Not to mention IE's completely non-standard and backwards event handling.
Oh yes, because waiting 3-6 months to patch a vulnerability that can lead to exploited systems, infrastructure and ultimately your IP being sent to China or Russia is a better option.
I'm sure that if the cost of one web-browser not working is 10 million dollars, the cost of eliminating rootkits/trojans from all the desktops on your network, (and maybe some of the servers) is going to be so much less.
As mentioned below. If you are actually running your operations, instead of letting your users do it for you, you'll be managing testing and deploying yourself from a central system.
Better to patch a vulnerability with the small possibility of having to issue another patched version to correct a corner case than to leave a vulnerability out there.
Graduated in 92
Have one typing class on a commodore 64 in grade seven, but in high school the only computer experience I got was programming my TI-85 in basic and my mom glt me the pascal module so I did a little of that, otherwise I didnt touch a computer until university.
Are you counting only completely new theologies or new religious movements, because there are a lot. You can see a list of some of them here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_new_religious_movements
I would agree with you that this often happens, people born into a religion are more likely to stay within that religion, but that's a generalization that has as more to do with the strength of socio-cultural influences than anything. That said, in my experience I have seen a lot of people, both former atheists and people from other religious backgrounds convert to Mormonism (I teach a class for 'investigators' / new members.)
Bringing in new converts is a fairly common occurrence, so I don't buy into the hypothesis that religions survive through indoctrination, certainly not that religions survive *only* through indoctrination. I know that atheists typically carry this assumption (being a former atheist myself) that if religious people just knew the 'facts' they wouldn't be religious any more. (Certainly evangelicals believe that about mormonism, just see my other posts in this thread.) However, that's not actually true (otherwise how do new religious movements form and grow and in some small cases, go on to become world religions? ) There are a lot of reasons why people decide to believe, or come to believe in a certain faith tradition and they almost never have anything to do with science. What is scientifically right or wrong often doesn't matter to the average person, they have their own criteria. I think to try and generalize it down to lack of knowledge, lack of intelligence or some other common factor is going to lead you to some very false stereotypes.
One last thing, converts always choose their new faith based on the 'merits,' even if those merits are totally subjective and relate only to them, so again, I would disagree with your general assumption.
There were many drivers to why people hated the mormons back in the day, not just reactions to the mormons. Geez if your reactions to your neighbours leads you to rape, pillage and kill them I'm not going to blame it on them. Everyone is accountable for *how* they react to things. It was impossible for them to live 'peacefully' with their neighbours, that's a naive thing to say. 19th century USA wasn't exactly the place of tolerance and acceptance for people who are different. Mormonism was *always* a peaceful religion, it didn't just become one. The thing is that religions are made up of people, and when you push people enough they eventually push back. I hear lots of people on this thread saying that Linus should speak his mind no matter whether it's politically correct or not. Yet when we get to the mormons any time they pushed back or spoke up it's somehow not ok. Double standard much?
Here are some of the *real* reasons why mormons were hated:
1) Mormon theology was by 19th century norms, unorthodox, and in the 1840's when J.S. introduced many new ideas, heretical. When J.S. started talking about gold plates the persecution was either from other pastors who found it heretical (revelation is gone! the heavens are closed! everyone knows that!) or from people who wanted to steal them from him.
2) Mormon theology and cosmology was very attractive. When mormonism first came on the scene people converted in droves. Entire congregations converted en-mass leaving many pastors without livelihoods. (That's what happened with Sydney Rigdon.) Those pastors saw it as a huge threat both doctrinally and financially. They didn't take it lying down, in fact much of the earliest and most vociferous persecution comes as a result of this.
3) Mormons were very insular. They tended to only patronize businesses that were also mormon. There were many reasons for this, such as people poising the wine they sold them for sacrament services, but they also to blame.
4) Joseph Smith was quite egalitarian. He believed in freedom and equality for all people. He even ordained blacks to the priesthood. Unfortunately that brought a lot of persecution and he stopped the practise. (Again, unfortunately he didn't really explain why he stopped it and no one resumed it again until the 1970's but that's another discussion.) You have this against the backdrop of mounting tensions that eventually lead to the civil war. People accused them of stirring up the indians and blacks to rebellion because they were teaching them that they were and should be equal to whites.
5) The failure of the kirkland bank pissed off a lot of people, both mormon and non-mormon. There are a lot of reasons why it failed. If you are interested you can read the LDS side of the story here: http://en.fairmormon.org/Mormonism_and_church_finances/Kirtland_Safety_Society
6) Early mormon converts typically came from poverty or lower class backgrounds. Middle & Upper class people largely looked down on them and saw them as a threat. They feared being over-run by the poor and needy, largely b/c of the next point.
7) Politics as I already mentioned. J.S. run for president scared a lot of people as did his prophecy that the new jerusalem would be in jackson county. (had nothing to do with an prophesy about gods kingdom over the whole earth. In fact most 19th century protestants believed that was going to happen anyway at the time of christ's second coming.) People there feared the mormons would overwhelm them and drive them out. The opposite happened of course.
8) Immigration. The LDS church brought a lot of poor foreigners into the areas where they lived. Locals saw it as an economic threat.
9) Polygamy in the Navoo period. It scandalized most europeans. Although there was good and bad elements to it it's not what people think of today when they look at the mormon fundamentalists. A very small percentage of people practised it and usually if you had money you got
Father is Catholic, mother was United. You just assumed my parents are Mormon.
Maybe you should also mention that Boggs was the one who put out the extermination order.... and that one of the reasons so many people hated the mormons wasn't because of polygamy (which wasn't an official practice until 12 years later) but because the Mormons were anti-slavery and treated blacks and natives as equals and even wanted women to vote! Those nasty backwards mormons.
For those of you still thinking in stereotypes, women living in polygamous mormon families (not anything like what the fundamentalists do today) weren't married off under age, most often had their own houses, were educated, had the right to vote (yes, they were the first women with the right to vote in north america) and often ran their own businesses. The abolishment of polygamy in Utah set women's rights back 100 years for them.
Lol. I've heard it all before. J.Smith wasn't the only one tarred and feathered, or murdered. But it must all be the mormon's fault. What bad neighbors they were. (If I was treated how they were treated I might not be such a nice neighbor either.) Because his actions justify the rape and murder of others, including women and children. Right.....
There's lots of problems with the so called evidence of J.Smith being an early womanizer. The story of Marinda Johnson is complete with contradictions. At the end of the day, the attack against him had little to do with supposed womanizing, accusations of which don't show up until long after the events (like 12 years later.) Go read the other side of the story. http://en.fairmormon.org/Polygamy_book/Early_womanizer
Boggs was shot by an unknown assailant and your 'prophesy' is based on the imagination of John Bennett, an active anti-mormon who was booted out for homosexuality, adultery, performing of abortions and polygamy, among other things. He was given more than one chance once caught. He actually vowed to drink the blood of J.S. he hated him so much. Yeah, I'm going to take his word for it as the unbiased party.
And really, Haun's mill not as bad? Really? I suppose it was all Brigham's fault; they must have brought it on themselves they did. Yup, that justifies all the persecution they got. I'm not defending the MMM. It was very unfortunate, but I can also understand how people who had repeatedly persecuted and driven out of the US, with an army coming to exterminate them might get jumpy and do something stupid. But of course that doesn't matter to you because you are apparently smarter than the rest of us and are yourself a completely unbiased party. So we must have deserved it. Question, do you say the same thing about the holocaust?
The only thing I agree with you on is the politics. People in the area were terrified of the 'mormon' vote b/c they would vote as a block; but not the nonsense about inheriting by the sword and terrorizing neighboring towns. (You don't mean those towns that sent mobs to burn them out of their homes in the middle of the night do you? Certainly not the ones where little children had to walk for miles in bear feet in the middle of winter over the frozen stubble of wheat fields that cut up their feet and left trails of blood? Not the ones where many of those children died from exposure? Certainly not those ones... because all those towns folk were perfect neighbors. )
What, because I don't believe all of your 'evidence' from the people who were trying to destroy them I'm clueless? Hmm.. maybe you're just a bigot. My guess is your either an evangelical who 'loves' us or an ex mormon. Either way, all your repeating is tired old allegations we've heard for 100 years now, or more.
How about... in the global pool of religions, where one is just as silly as the next, I picked the one that I figured was the most interesting and least dangerous.
Good enough for you or are you an 1) atheist or 2) evangelical looking to pick a fight? If so, I really don't care what you think.