And do you have any evidence that those things have been used when the owner is driving the car (even if wanted by the police) or only when the car is reported stolen? As long as the owner (but not the car thief) has a way to both completely disable and override those 'features' when they kick in, then I don't see a huge problem with it.
Yet those things have their place too, and they allow the worst of the deadbeats to somehow get a car. After all, it's not like getting a regular car loan from a reputable dealer is particularly difficult. I have a friend who works part time in a $12/hr job, has terrible credit history and no assets worth mentioning and she just got financing for a small used car from Carmax with an interest rate of 16%. People who have to get the deals like you mentioned are the ones that nobody in their right mind would loan money to except under those conditions. If they are being harsher than necessary on their customers then somebody (why not you?) will step in and be a slightly less harsh and take all the business.
"sloppy work", "incompetence, violations of the laws of war, or the indiscriminate killing of civilians"
And you are really sure about that, right? Or are you just talking out of your backside? By what standard is our military doing a sloppy and incompetent work in Iraq and Afghanistan? Show me another army that has fought wars of that scale with so few casualties on both sides and who takes as much care about avoiding harm to civilians and you might have a case.
We are talking about a war zone here. Are you seriously asking the US military to arrest every enemy soldier who is firing on them, find out if they are a US citizen, and then put them on trial?
With a 10% unemployment rate why do you think businesses still hire illegals, millions of them? Why don't they hire unemployed citizens instead, who, according to you, are willing to do the same jobs and work equally hard, for the same pay?
But the cause is exactly what we are talking about. There are about 18,000 homicides annually in the USA. I'm sure there are some where the murderer happened to be an atheist and the victim was religious or vice versa. But those are not relevant to our discussion because their beliefs had nothing to do with the cause of the murder. Stalin sent thousands to gulags or to firing squads, not because of what they believed about God (after all, surely he killed just as many if not more atheists than religious people) but because he perceived them as a threat to his power. This is quite different from say religious laws in Islamic countries today, and Christian countries in the past, which have, for example, a death penalty for things like blasphemy, apostasy etc because those penalties are proscribed very clearly in the Bible and the Koran and are an integral part of their religion.
Correction, millions were killed in his attempt to build a Communist society. Religion was an incidental thing in Communist ideology that barely gets a mention in the Communist Manifesto, except as one of the many things to get rid of as the new society is built. Orthodox Church in Russia was diminished by Stalin and many priests killed as part of a struggle for power between rival totalitarian ideologies. In other words, Stalin may have been an atheist but that doesn't mean he killed in the name of atheism. Big difference.
The thing is, though, that they aren't. If you're a Catholic, no-one's going to try and make your life a living hell if you want to stop coming to church.
First of all, can you say the same thing about Islam worldwide? And as for the Catholic church, check it's history in Europe, as well as Latin America and elsewhere. For centuries they did indeed make your life a living hell if you as much as disagreed with the smallest part of the church's official doctrine. I would say that the fact that lately they can't get away with similar behavior is not for the lack of will but for the lack of power.
No atheist is stopping religious people from living. Check the history of all major religions and you will find out that religious people quite often did stop atheists from living, and in quite imaginative ways too. I am just giving my opinion, feel free to give yours and stop playing the "hurt feelings" card you big baby.
The thing is in the US (as far as I know in most states, probably all), you are asked that question whenever you obtain or renew your driver license. So we do have the decision for the vast majority of the people. So it is pretty simple: if you don't check that box when you renew your license, then you don't want to be a donor.
You'd think with belief in afterlife, power of prayer and all that, when your life is on the line is when religion would really kick in? What's the point of holding strong beliefs if you throw them out the window the moment it really matters.
This is the way capitalism and and open-and-free market works.
Not really. If a company promises and charges you for one thing and then provides another you have every right to sue. It's really just a simple case of fraud. Not even the most ardent supporters of free market capitalism, in which group I count myself, would argue that there shouldn't be laws against fraud.
And yet..., if those engineers are so smart, how come poor ABE is rusting at the bottom of the ocean with only some ugly fishes for company. I think next time they should throw in a balloon, just in case.
And it's first and last thought was: Hm, I feel an interesting sensation all over me, pressing on me from all sides at once. I think I'll call it.... pressure. I wonder if it will be friends with me...
The point is that everybody can drive, hence everybody (more or less) can be a taxi driver. You might as well say it took you couple of years to learn how to walk, even more years to learn to speak, write etc etc. The only reason taxi drivers earn as much as they do is that they are protected by the government (usually city), which limits the number of licenses available. If anybody who wanted to be a taxi driver was given a license, the amount taxi drivers would make would be much less, exactly because it is such a common skill. If you think that to allow that would be cruel to taxi drivers, think about how cruel it is to prevent the millions of unemployed people by law from making some extra money driving people from A to B, which they could easily do.
The approach is short-sighted as there is at least one other cost you are not considering -- "good will." Apple is burning its public image with these sorts of abusive legal actions.
I guess they learned that good will doesn't matter all that much when it comes to the bottom line. Microsoft has for years burned good will, buried it, danced on it's grave and then salted the earth where it used to grow and they are still the biggest software company around.
In other news, Cassandra developers are celebrating the fact that their database is now used to store the largest amount of worthless information in history.
That was a trick question, I was just checking who will be the first with the right answer. It took a while:) And yes it is a stretch to call Republicans fiscally conservative, except in comparison to Democrats.
That's the problem with the politics in the US. One one hand you have nanny state socialists who tend to be pretty liberal on social issues. On the other hand you have fiscal conservatives who for some reason tend to be in bed with religious nutcases. Find me somebody who understands the value of economic liberty, financial responsibility and small government, while also understanding the value of individual liberty when it comes to things like drugs, sexual orientation, marriage etc and I will consider voting for them.
McDonald's doesn't come to your house and take money out of your wallet. All the money that McDonald's makes is paid to them voluntarily by people who like it's food, otherwise they wouldn't buy it. Of course McDonald's doesn't and shouldn't care if you are obese, that's nobody's business but your own. Don't like greasy disgusting fast food? Easy solution: don't go to a fast food restaurant. Eat salad or something, it's really easy to find, it's right there in the produce section of your local supermarket. Is your opinion of people really so low that you think they can't grasp that simple concept and need a superior intellect such as yours to make decisions for them on what to eat? What an arrogant asshole.
Yeah, they should have fired him on a Friday. Studies have statistically shown that there's less chance of an incident if you do it at the end of the week.
Attach it to a long string and throw it out of the window of a very tall building sometimes. After you got them curious, leave a spiderman costume on the floor of your cubicle and when your boss walks by quickly kick it under the desk.
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And do you have any evidence that those things have been used when the owner is driving the car (even if wanted by the police) or only when the car is reported stolen? As long as the owner (but not the car thief) has a way to both completely disable and override those 'features' when they kick in, then I don't see a huge problem with it.
Yet those things have their place too, and they allow the worst of the deadbeats to somehow get a car. After all, it's not like getting a regular car loan from a reputable dealer is particularly difficult. I have a friend who works part time in a $12/hr job, has terrible credit history and no assets worth mentioning and she just got financing for a small used car from Carmax with an interest rate of 16%. People who have to get the deals like you mentioned are the ones that nobody in their right mind would loan money to except under those conditions. If they are being harsher than necessary on their customers then somebody (why not you?) will step in and be a slightly less harsh and take all the business.
"sloppy work", "incompetence, violations of the laws of war, or the indiscriminate killing of civilians"
And you are really sure about that, right? Or are you just talking out of your backside? By what standard is our military doing a sloppy and incompetent work in Iraq and Afghanistan? Show me another army that has fought wars of that scale with so few casualties on both sides and who takes as much care about avoiding harm to civilians and you might have a case.
We are talking about a war zone here. Are you seriously asking the US military to arrest every enemy soldier who is firing on them, find out if they are a US citizen, and then put them on trial?
With a 10% unemployment rate why do you think businesses still hire illegals, millions of them? Why don't they hire unemployed citizens instead, who, according to you, are willing to do the same jobs and work equally hard, for the same pay?
That was written before the welfare state. I can't put it better than this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3eyJIbSgdSE
...Nitpicking about the cause...
But the cause is exactly what we are talking about. There are about 18,000 homicides annually in the USA. I'm sure there are some where the murderer happened to be an atheist and the victim was religious or vice versa. But those are not relevant to our discussion because their beliefs had nothing to do with the cause of the murder. Stalin sent thousands to gulags or to firing squads, not because of what they believed about God (after all, surely he killed just as many if not more atheists than religious people) but because he perceived them as a threat to his power. This is quite different from say religious laws in Islamic countries today, and Christian countries in the past, which have, for example, a death penalty for things like blasphemy, apostasy etc because those penalties are proscribed very clearly in the Bible and the Koran and are an integral part of their religion.
Correction, millions were killed in his attempt to build a Communist society. Religion was an incidental thing in Communist ideology that barely gets a mention in the Communist Manifesto, except as one of the many things to get rid of as the new society is built. Orthodox Church in Russia was diminished by Stalin and many priests killed as part of a struggle for power between rival totalitarian ideologies. In other words, Stalin may have been an atheist but that doesn't mean he killed in the name of atheism. Big difference.
The thing is, though, that they aren't. If you're a Catholic, no-one's going to try and make your life a living hell if you want to stop coming to church.
First of all, can you say the same thing about Islam worldwide? And as for the Catholic church, check it's history in Europe, as well as Latin America and elsewhere. For centuries they did indeed make your life a living hell if you as much as disagreed with the smallest part of the church's official doctrine. I would say that the fact that lately they can't get away with similar behavior is not for the lack of will but for the lack of power.
What ever happened to "live and let live"?
No atheist is stopping religious people from living. Check the history of all major religions and you will find out that religious people quite often did stop atheists from living, and in quite imaginative ways too. I am just giving my opinion, feel free to give yours and stop playing the "hurt feelings" card you big baby.
In Germany it is seen as a totalitarian anti-democratic organization
If only somebody in Germany had the guts to say the same thing about Catholicism, or for that matter Islam.
The thing is in the US (as far as I know in most states, probably all), you are asked that question whenever you obtain or renew your driver license. So we do have the decision for the vast majority of the people. So it is pretty simple: if you don't check that box when you renew your license, then you don't want to be a donor.
You'd think with belief in afterlife, power of prayer and all that, when your life is on the line is when religion would really kick in? What's the point of holding strong beliefs if you throw them out the window the moment it really matters.
For the most part, if it's for medical purposes, pork is fine. Saving a life takes precedence here
How nice. And for more details on various fantasies of ignorant old farts: http://www.chabad.org/search/keyword_cdo/kid/8213/jewish/Pig.htm
Wearing shoes made of pigskin - cool. Having pigs as pets - not cool. Why? Who cares.
This is the way capitalism and and open-and-free market works.
Not really. If a company promises and charges you for one thing and then provides another you have every right to sue. It's really just a simple case of fraud. Not even the most ardent supporters of free market capitalism, in which group I count myself, would argue that there shouldn't be laws against fraud.
And yet..., if those engineers are so smart, how come poor ABE is rusting at the bottom of the ocean with only some ugly fishes for company. I think next time they should throw in a balloon, just in case.
And it's first and last thought was: Hm, I feel an interesting sensation all over me, pressing on me from all sides at once. I think I'll call it.... pressure. I wonder if it will be friends with me...
The point is that everybody can drive, hence everybody (more or less) can be a taxi driver. You might as well say it took you couple of years to learn how to walk, even more years to learn to speak, write etc etc. The only reason taxi drivers earn as much as they do is that they are protected by the government (usually city), which limits the number of licenses available. If anybody who wanted to be a taxi driver was given a license, the amount taxi drivers would make would be much less, exactly because it is such a common skill. If you think that to allow that would be cruel to taxi drivers, think about how cruel it is to prevent the millions of unemployed people by law from making some extra money driving people from A to B, which they could easily do.
The approach is short-sighted as there is at least one other cost you are not considering -- "good will." Apple is burning its public image with these sorts of abusive legal actions.
I guess they learned that good will doesn't matter all that much when it comes to the bottom line. Microsoft has for years burned good will, buried it, danced on it's grave and then salted the earth where it used to grow and they are still the biggest software company around.
In other news, Cassandra developers are celebrating the fact that their database is now used to store the largest amount of worthless information in history.
That was a trick question, I was just checking who will be the first with the right answer. It took a while :) And yes it is a stretch to call Republicans fiscally conservative, except in comparison to Democrats.
That's the problem with the politics in the US. One one hand you have nanny state socialists who tend to be pretty liberal on social issues. On the other hand you have fiscal conservatives who for some reason tend to be in bed with religious nutcases. Find me somebody who understands the value of economic liberty, financial responsibility and small government, while also understanding the value of individual liberty when it comes to things like drugs, sexual orientation, marriage etc and I will consider voting for them.
McDonald's doesn't come to your house and take money out of your wallet. All the money that McDonald's makes is paid to them voluntarily by people who like it's food, otherwise they wouldn't buy it. Of course McDonald's doesn't and shouldn't care if you are obese, that's nobody's business but your own. Don't like greasy disgusting fast food? Easy solution: don't go to a fast food restaurant. Eat salad or something, it's really easy to find, it's right there in the produce section of your local supermarket. Is your opinion of people really so low that you think they can't grasp that simple concept and need a superior intellect such as yours to make decisions for them on what to eat? What an arrogant asshole.
Yeah, they should have fired him on a Friday. Studies have statistically shown that there's less chance of an incident if you do it at the end of the week.
Attach it to a long string and throw it out of the window of a very tall building sometimes. After you got them curious, leave a spiderman costume on the floor of your cubicle and when your boss walks by quickly kick it under the desk.