Is your understanding of politics seriously so rudimentary that you actually think the Bushes and libertarians have anything in common? I suggest you read up on a history of the Republican Party--particularly a fellow by the name of Barry Goldwater--before you start spouting such nonsense as libertarianism having anything in common with Bushism or anarchy. Maybe then you'd learn that good will has no correlation to preferred size of government, or that the current Republican Party has had little in common with its libertarian history for the last twenty years.
Seriously, though, LACK of government wasn't the problem. There was plenty of aid from private organizations and citizens that was just piling up while FEMA turned them away. It's troublesome that whenever something goes wrong people immediately jump to the conclusion that we need more government intervention, especially in this case where government bureaucracy so blatantly impeded ready and available aid from reaching the city.
Based on the all the stories about lousy CEOs flying around, it hardly seems like you need much experience at all to be a CEO who can drive a business into the ground & come out with a nice golden parachute - you just need to know the right people & be able to scam the stockholders/board into believing you long enough to sign the contract. I'll assume you're talking about begin a _competent_ CEO, which probably does require a fair bit of experience to be able to claim that title.
Certainly there's a difference between a competent CEO and an incompetent one. I'm sure, however, that it seems like more CEOs are incompetent than not because we only hear about it when a CEO does an absolutely horrible job. How many CEOs out there compared to the number that screw up? And how easy a job is it to screw up? I think there's a lot more talent there than people like to admit.
Even given a lot of experience, why does that give a CEO the right to claim all the credit for turning around a company or improving its performance? It's not like the CEO did any of the actual field work to implement his/her decisions - all of his directions were implemented by real people. If it weren't for those real people, the CEO's directions would be worthless, no matter how experienced or talented the CEO was. But, for some reason, the CEO somehow manages to get most of the credit (and compensation) for improving a company's performance, while the people doing the actual work which resulted in the company's performance improving are lucky if they don't get laid off during the usual "restructuring"....
CEOs aren't compensated based on how much actual revenue they bring to the company. There is a fallacy in thinking they should be--if they were, each CEO would have literally hundreds of competing offers from different companies, and if you are running a company, how are you supposed to land one of the better ones? You're correct that they look at what other companies are paying, and there is a certain perception as to what they should be paid, but that's how it is in every field. I did the same thing lately in a job interview--I cited salary.com, and said "this is what people are getting paid for this position." If people hate it so much, they should vote in a board of directors who will do what Ben and Jerry's did, and cap CEO pay at something reasonable (incidently, Blue Bell ice cream has made serious headway in this area over the past few years).
It doesn't take years and years of education and experience to be qualified to work on the bottom rung of the corporate ladder. To be a CEO, it does. As soon as you've attended a few years of post-graduate business school, accumulated a long track record of managerial success, demonstrated a solid understanding of the ins and outs of business and economics, and developed an incredibly long list of people who will vouch for you, you don't deserve as much as a CEO. It's not about how much work they do, or just how much value they bring, but how much leadership ability they have as well; and yes, if your CEO is buddy-buddy with the CEOs of other companies, that is an asset as well.
If the board members didn't feel like the CEO was worth that much, they wouldn't pay him that much. And if the stockholders don't feel like the board members know what they're doing as far as CEO compensation is concerned, they'll elect new board members.
Sounds like it's the exact same feature. I guess I never knew about it because it does it through the bookmarks dialog rather than a search engines dialog (a little more intuitive I think).
The OP used the term "free software," not "Free Software (TM)." While the FSF can label things as they want, they don't have control over semantics, and the term "free software" is nothing more than the noun "software" modified by the adjective "free." While "free" may mean "liberated" to some people, for most it probably means "without cost." Until the term becomes widely used enough to actually register a certain meaning with society at large, it remains ambiguous, and a slightly less ambiguous term--"open software" for example--should probably be used. I've made a similar argument when it comes to "open source" and "Open Source," where one literally means the source code is available, and one allows for actual editing and redistributing of source code.
In short, I propose we use the term "open software" when licensing is implied, "free software" when free as in beer is applied, and "open source" when source code is provided (independent of licensing). We can't have any more of this ambiguity!
...Opera search configuration, and searching with the address bar.
All I do is click the address bar, type "g whatever i want to google", and it's googled. I can use a different keyword at the beginning to search a different site, ex. "y whatever i want to search on yahoo," or even add MY OWN, like "z book on amazon" or "gm address on google maps", "gi image in google images," etc. I can search Merriam-Websters, AllRecipes.com, etc. simply by typing in the address bar.
Between this, the integrated RSS feeds, the download manager, integrated email, wand, and speed dial, it's tough for me to use any other browser anymore....and no, I don't have any stake in Opera.
Small nitpick: it has nothing to do with ARMs. ARMs are *usually* cheaper than FRMs, even in the long run. The problem was with balloon rates, teaser rates, and other tools that make the loan cheaper upfront than it would otherwise be. That can be done with FRMs, too, in the form of buydowns. The bank gives you this nice low rate for two or three years, and you have so much money that you can buy your nice SUV, HDTV, etc., and then OOPS it resets to prime+7 (which means the LOWEST possible interest rate you can get is 7%!). And then you can't refinance or sell the house because it's now worth less than the amount you owe.
If people would have generally stuck with normal ARMs, we wouldn't be having these problems--but then again, housing prices wouldn't have skyrocketed as much, because some of those people with ballooning payments wouldn't have been able to get a normal loan.
So your doctrines don't include racism, they just include the belief that skin color has been used to set apart the righteous from the unrighteous? What's your definition of racism, if a correlation between righteousness and inherited skin color doesn't qualify? A corpse flower by any other name would smell as awful, to make an old analogy a bit more direct.
Quite simply, I'd say racism is prejudice or discrimination by reason of skin color. Saying that skin color has been used to set apart the righteous is no more prejudice than saying green shorts can be used to set apart the righteous, because the righteous or unrighteous can be made to wear green shorts. If it were implied that skin color is always a sign of unrighteousness, it would be inherently racist, but that's not the case.
As for Joseph Smith's actions, they didn't reflect on any principles that weren't subject to revision at whim. That's why he could preach monogamy in public and polygamy in private, preach in favor of abolitionism in the North and against it in the South. If he liked a black man enough to ordain him after writing scriptures forbidding it, that doesn't mean anything more than when he started plural marriage after quoting scriptures forbidding it or when he added already-married women to his "plural wives" after writing D&C 132:61. Smith simply felt that he controlled the rules, not vice versa.
See, the point I'm trying to make is, we can read the writings all we want and say that his actions don't match up with our interpretation of them, but who's to say our interpretation is correct? He never wrote scriptures forbidding black people from being ordained to the priesthood. He never wrote scriptures forbidding plural marraige. Those inconsistencies require certain assumptions to be made regarding the interpretation of his writings (and the correctness of the transcriptions!). If you frame it one way, you can find it is inconsistent, but if you frame it another, it's not.
But back to that "internal consistency": you seem to be arguing that because Joseph Smith's behavior wasn't always consistent with his scriptures, yours doesn't need to be consistent either. Do you think that claim refutes PitaBred's (admittedly too rudely expressed) point, or just strengthens it?
People do slip up. I believe regular exercise is important and that it's best to exercise every morning when I wake up, but I didn't exercise this morning. Does that make me internally inconsistent? Is my belief in exercise wrong because skip some mornings? You could probably judge how important it is to me based on how regularly I exercise, but at the same time, you wouldn't be too alarmed if I missed a day here and there, would you?
I applaud you for taking a less biased look at your own religion, though. That's something I've tried to do for years, and it has definitely shaped my views. I'm still not sure where I stand on the overall faith spectrum, but I have grown somewhat comfortable into a slightly skeptical pragmatic view of religion. In other words, I don't automatically believe everything that emanates from the church but rather try to achieve some sort of enlightenment about each position for myself; and I believe that there's no way you're going to eliminate every bit of quantum doubt one way or another, so at some (however insignificant) level it just comes down to what you want to believe. I've pondered that raising-children-to-choose-their-religious-beliefs issue, and that's a tough one: do you remove all bias and hope they come to the right decision, all the while praying that they're not going to do something stupid that will ruin their life; or do you raise them in a biased way that you believe will make them happy? I think, in general, most people's parenting instincts make them favor bias and choose the latter.
I've already conceded elsewhere in this discussion that skin color has been used in the book of mormon as a way of setting apart the righteous from the unrighteous, but it has no bearing on PitaBred's claim that racism is built into the religion's doctrines. I also pointed out in said remark that the same group of people that was supposedly "punished" in the book later became more righteous than those "unpunished," so I think at least that should put to rest the idea that the religion considers those with darker skin to be less desirable people.
Now your citing of Moses 7:22 brings up an interesting questions: since Joseph Smith wrote that verse, and assuming he did intend that verse to mean that blacks are on a lower tier and don't belong in a righteous society, would the fact that he ordained blacks to the priesthood, purchased freedom for slaves, took an abolitionist platform in politics, etc. indicate that he misinterpreted his own writings? I guess what I'm trying to say is, the best indicator of how he actually believed is his actions, and the best indicator of the true meaning of some passage is the belief of that passage's author. And all these indicators seem to suggest that Brigham Young is indeed the one from whom this interpretation of skin color originated.
In regards to my little snarky swipe at PitaBred, I thought it was pretty clear that it was in response to the "internal consistency" statement. I don't think the internal consistency is as questionable as he made it out to be, and relies on certain assumptions in regards to the role of prophets in the church, the veracity of the quotes being cited, among other things. But I suppose we'd have to ask someone without any kind of cognitive bias whether that's true.
It's already been discussed in this thread, but occasional divine inspiration does not imply lack of personal opinion. Joseph Smith even stated that prophets are entitled to their own opinion. The short answer is that you're supposed to not simply believe anything that comes from the mouth of a prophet, but rather pray about it and decide for yourself how it feels. I can think of a few things the current church leadership has said that I don't agree with, such as the blanket statements about watching R-rated movies, whether we should persuade our government officials to ban gay marraige, etc., but it's easy for me to see how they could have arrived at those opinions. Back in the 70s (if my timeline is correct), many of Joseph Fielding Smith's writings I find to also be uninspired, but again, it's easy for me to see how he arrived at his opinions. The truth of the matter is they all have had opinions that have been off (which is normal for most people), and they have also had ideas that are potentially inspired.
Of course, in reality, the majority of the church membership probably does blindly believe anything that comes from the mouth of the prophets, but I don't see how those people cause a contradiction for those of us who don't.
(a) I think it's the Pearl of Great Price you're referring to, and (b) it says "mark." Brigham Young was the one who described it as black skin, and that book predates his leadership in the church.
But doing research is only for people who think logically.
That Kimball quote is dated 17 years before he even became the leader of the church. In almost two decades opinions can change.
The Brigham Young's quote isn't really useful either. It's already been mentioned that Brigham Young is the one who first implemented the priesthood policy, and the man before him who actually wrote the book ordained black people to the priesthood. We can discuss Brigham Young all we want, but the bottom line is it's all just his opinion when it comes to church doctrine and theology.
Actually, that just says that when a certain group of people were bad their skin literally or figuratively was changed to separate them from another certain group of people. Nowhere does that imply that this is always (or even often) the case with people who have dark skin, or that the children of those people are bad. In fact, if you keep reading, you'll find that the children of those people were actually very good, and at some points in the book, the dark-skinned are actually better than the light-skinned.
But you can take it out of context, that's OK too, I guess.
Considering who the prophet is supposed to have a hotline to... well, I'll just stop there.
Well, Joseph Smith stated that a prophet is still entitled to his own opinion. If you receive revelation, it doesn't prevent you from coming up with other ideas of your own in the future.
Let me clarify: I'm not saying the church wasn't racism during certain periods of its history. I'm saying that was largely a reflection of society at large, and the church has removed all the residuals of that from all its policies. That racism was an aspect of people within the church and not the theology, however. From all indications, Joseph Smith was not racist (he was actually quite progressive in that area), and it wasn't an issue until long after he died.
Also, it wasn't a doctrine that black people couldn't hold the priesthood, it was a policy (and it should be noted that Spencer Kimball had wanted to change that policy for years before he was actually able to). I haven't personally been able to find out when or how or by whom that policy came into existence, but it was not backed by doctrine (and interpretations of symbols in the scriptures, even if they apparently originated from Brigham Young, do not count as doctrine).
Actually, that's not true at all. Nowhere in the Mormon canon and/or official doctrine does it say anything about dark skin. The term "mark" has been used, and certain Mormons in times past have described that mark as being dark skin, but that was just their own racist opinion (which happened to be a popular opinion at the time in American society, not just in the church). One thing people don't really get about the Mormon church is that it has never claimed to be a perfect organization full of perfect people who don't have any flaws. Ever since the church was re-integrated with society at large, it has adjusted along with that society (as much as the theology allows). The LDS church certainly made some cultural blunders in past decades, but there is no inherent racism in the religion. The church has worked to eradicate past racism (that was largely a reflection of the situation in the United States at the time), but if you think there's "undeniable racism inherent to the religion," you just don't know what you're talking about.
And as for drivers with those ultra-blue blinding lights, I want to build an auto-tracking fully automatic BB gun (everyone knows driving is dangerous -- anyone remember Deathtrack from the bad old DOS days? loved that game).
Gah! I hate those blasted bright headlights! Here's a tip for you: If the car in front of you actually casts a shadow when its own headlights are on, your headlights may be too bright. These should be illegal--they're a complete safety hazard.
And even pointer arithmetic only starts to get complex when you're dealing with multidimensional arrays and complex objects.
It's been a couple years since I've used C, but... int myArray = new int[2] is the same as int* myArray = (int*)malloc(sizeof(int)*2)
myArray[2] is the same as *(myArray + 2 * sizeof(int))
Nothing really complex about that. Array indexers are just syntactical sugar.
Objects are even easier.
String* myStr = new String() is the same as String myStr = new String(), and you just use "." to access its members instead of "->" (but it really means the exact same thing), and you get rid of the C ".".
Honestly, the only somewhat difficult aspect of pointers is having to worry about scope (i.e., when memory needs to be deallocated). You're exactly correct--why are you in this business if you don't like dealing with the most fundamental concepts of computer programming? It's like being an actuary who hates dealing with financial math.
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Is your understanding of politics seriously so rudimentary that you actually think the Bushes and libertarians have anything in common? I suggest you read up on a history of the Republican Party--particularly a fellow by the name of Barry Goldwater--before you start spouting such nonsense as libertarianism having anything in common with Bushism or anarchy. Maybe then you'd learn that good will has no correlation to preferred size of government, or that the current Republican Party has had little in common with its libertarian history for the last twenty years.
I thought that was Bush's fault?
Seriously, though, LACK of government wasn't the problem. There was plenty of aid from private organizations and citizens that was just piling up while FEMA turned them away. It's troublesome that whenever something goes wrong people immediately jump to the conclusion that we need more government intervention, especially in this case where government bureaucracy so blatantly impeded ready and available aid from reaching the city.
Certainly there's a difference between a competent CEO and an incompetent one. I'm sure, however, that it seems like more CEOs are incompetent than not because we only hear about it when a CEO does an absolutely horrible job. How many CEOs out there compared to the number that screw up? And how easy a job is it to screw up? I think there's a lot more talent there than people like to admit.
CEOs aren't compensated based on how much actual revenue they bring to the company. There is a fallacy in thinking they should be--if they were, each CEO would have literally hundreds of competing offers from different companies, and if you are running a company, how are you supposed to land one of the better ones? You're correct that they look at what other companies are paying, and there is a certain perception as to what they should be paid, but that's how it is in every field. I did the same thing lately in a job interview--I cited salary.com, and said "this is what people are getting paid for this position." If people hate it so much, they should vote in a board of directors who will do what Ben and Jerry's did, and cap CEO pay at something reasonable (incidently, Blue Bell ice cream has made serious headway in this area over the past few years).
It doesn't take years and years of education and experience to be qualified to work on the bottom rung of the corporate ladder. To be a CEO, it does. As soon as you've attended a few years of post-graduate business school, accumulated a long track record of managerial success, demonstrated a solid understanding of the ins and outs of business and economics, and developed an incredibly long list of people who will vouch for you, you don't deserve as much as a CEO. It's not about how much work they do, or just how much value they bring, but how much leadership ability they have as well; and yes, if your CEO is buddy-buddy with the CEOs of other companies, that is an asset as well.
If the board members didn't feel like the CEO was worth that much, they wouldn't pay him that much. And if the stockholders don't feel like the board members know what they're doing as far as CEO compensation is concerned, they'll elect new board members.
I have the same one for Wikipedia actually.
Sounds like it's the exact same feature. I guess I never knew about it because it does it through the bookmarks dialog rather than a search engines dialog (a little more intuitive I think).
The OP used the term "free software," not "Free Software (TM)." While the FSF can label things as they want, they don't have control over semantics, and the term "free software" is nothing more than the noun "software" modified by the adjective "free." While "free" may mean "liberated" to some people, for most it probably means "without cost." Until the term becomes widely used enough to actually register a certain meaning with society at large, it remains ambiguous, and a slightly less ambiguous term--"open software" for example--should probably be used. I've made a similar argument when it comes to "open source" and "Open Source," where one literally means the source code is available, and one allows for actual editing and redistributing of source code.
In short, I propose we use the term "open software" when licensing is implied, "free software" when free as in beer is applied, and "open source" when source code is provided (independent of licensing). We can't have any more of this ambiguity!
...Opera search configuration, and searching with the address bar.
All I do is click the address bar, type "g whatever i want to google", and it's googled. I can use a different keyword at the beginning to search a different site, ex. "y whatever i want to search on yahoo," or even add MY OWN, like "z book on amazon" or "gm address on google maps", "gi image in google images," etc. I can search Merriam-Websters, AllRecipes.com, etc. simply by typing in the address bar.
Between this, the integrated RSS feeds, the download manager, integrated email, wand, and speed dial, it's tough for me to use any other browser anymore. ...and no, I don't have any stake in Opera.
"In case you missed it, this week, there was a tragedy in Kansas. Ten thousand people diedan entire town destroyed"
"I've been in 57 states, (with) I think one left to go."
Small nitpick: it has nothing to do with ARMs. ARMs are *usually* cheaper than FRMs, even in the long run. The problem was with balloon rates, teaser rates, and other tools that make the loan cheaper upfront than it would otherwise be. That can be done with FRMs, too, in the form of buydowns. The bank gives you this nice low rate for two or three years, and you have so much money that you can buy your nice SUV, HDTV, etc., and then OOPS it resets to prime+7 (which means the LOWEST possible interest rate you can get is 7%!). And then you can't refinance or sell the house because it's now worth less than the amount you owe.
If people would have generally stuck with normal ARMs, we wouldn't be having these problems--but then again, housing prices wouldn't have skyrocketed as much, because some of those people with ballooning payments wouldn't have been able to get a normal loan.
I don't think the Kings play basketball, not this year at least. ;)
Would he have been able to bankroll it without the original Star Wars pedigree?
See, the point I'm trying to make is, we can read the writings all we want and say that his actions don't match up with our interpretation of them, but who's to say our interpretation is correct? He never wrote scriptures forbidding black people from being ordained to the priesthood. He never wrote scriptures forbidding plural marraige. Those inconsistencies require certain assumptions to be made regarding the interpretation of his writings (and the correctness of the transcriptions!). If you frame it one way, you can find it is inconsistent, but if you frame it another, it's not.
People do slip up. I believe regular exercise is important and that it's best to exercise every morning when I wake up, but I didn't exercise this morning. Does that make me internally inconsistent? Is my belief in exercise wrong because skip some mornings? You could probably judge how important it is to me based on how regularly I exercise, but at the same time, you wouldn't be too alarmed if I missed a day here and there, would you?
I applaud you for taking a less biased look at your own religion, though. That's something I've tried to do for years, and it has definitely shaped my views. I'm still not sure where I stand on the overall faith spectrum, but I have grown somewhat comfortable into a slightly skeptical pragmatic view of religion. In other words, I don't automatically believe everything that emanates from the church but rather try to achieve some sort of enlightenment about each position for myself; and I believe that there's no way you're going to eliminate every bit of quantum doubt one way or another, so at some (however insignificant) level it just comes down to what you want to believe. I've pondered that raising-children-to-choose-their-religious-beliefs issue, and that's a tough one: do you remove all bias and hope they come to the right decision, all the while praying that they're not going to do something stupid that will ruin their life; or do you raise them in a biased way that you believe will make them happy? I think, in general, most people's parenting instincts make them favor bias and choose the latter.
I've already conceded elsewhere in this discussion that skin color has been used in the book of mormon as a way of setting apart the righteous from the unrighteous, but it has no bearing on PitaBred's claim that racism is built into the religion's doctrines. I also pointed out in said remark that the same group of people that was supposedly "punished" in the book later became more righteous than those "unpunished," so I think at least that should put to rest the idea that the religion considers those with darker skin to be less desirable people.
Now your citing of Moses 7:22 brings up an interesting questions: since Joseph Smith wrote that verse, and assuming he did intend that verse to mean that blacks are on a lower tier and don't belong in a righteous society, would the fact that he ordained blacks to the priesthood, purchased freedom for slaves, took an abolitionist platform in politics, etc. indicate that he misinterpreted his own writings? I guess what I'm trying to say is, the best indicator of how he actually believed is his actions, and the best indicator of the true meaning of some passage is the belief of that passage's author. And all these indicators seem to suggest that Brigham Young is indeed the one from whom this interpretation of skin color originated.
In regards to my little snarky swipe at PitaBred, I thought it was pretty clear that it was in response to the "internal consistency" statement. I don't think the internal consistency is as questionable as he made it out to be, and relies on certain assumptions in regards to the role of prophets in the church, the veracity of the quotes being cited, among other things. But I suppose we'd have to ask someone without any kind of cognitive bias whether that's true.
It's already been discussed in this thread, but occasional divine inspiration does not imply lack of personal opinion. Joseph Smith even stated that prophets are entitled to their own opinion. The short answer is that you're supposed to not simply believe anything that comes from the mouth of a prophet, but rather pray about it and decide for yourself how it feels. I can think of a few things the current church leadership has said that I don't agree with, such as the blanket statements about watching R-rated movies, whether we should persuade our government officials to ban gay marraige, etc., but it's easy for me to see how they could have arrived at those opinions. Back in the 70s (if my timeline is correct), many of Joseph Fielding Smith's writings I find to also be uninspired, but again, it's easy for me to see how he arrived at his opinions. The truth of the matter is they all have had opinions that have been off (which is normal for most people), and they have also had ideas that are potentially inspired.
Of course, in reality, the majority of the church membership probably does blindly believe anything that comes from the mouth of the prophets, but I don't see how those people cause a contradiction for those of us who don't.
(a) I think it's the Pearl of Great Price you're referring to, and (b) it says "mark." Brigham Young was the one who described it as black skin, and that book predates his leadership in the church.
But doing research is only for people who think logically.
That Kimball quote is dated 17 years before he even became the leader of the church. In almost two decades opinions can change.
The Brigham Young's quote isn't really useful either. It's already been mentioned that Brigham Young is the one who first implemented the priesthood policy, and the man before him who actually wrote the book ordained black people to the priesthood. We can discuss Brigham Young all we want, but the bottom line is it's all just his opinion when it comes to church doctrine and theology.
Actually, that just says that when a certain group of people were bad their skin literally or figuratively was changed to separate them from another certain group of people. Nowhere does that imply that this is always (or even often) the case with people who have dark skin, or that the children of those people are bad. In fact, if you keep reading, you'll find that the children of those people were actually very good, and at some points in the book, the dark-skinned are actually better than the light-skinned.
But you can take it out of context, that's OK too, I guess.
Let me clarify: I'm not saying the church wasn't racism during certain periods of its history. I'm saying that was largely a reflection of society at large, and the church has removed all the residuals of that from all its policies. That racism was an aspect of people within the church and not the theology, however. From all indications, Joseph Smith was not racist (he was actually quite progressive in that area), and it wasn't an issue until long after he died.
Also, it wasn't a doctrine that black people couldn't hold the priesthood, it was a policy (and it should be noted that Spencer Kimball had wanted to change that policy for years before he was actually able to). I haven't personally been able to find out when or how or by whom that policy came into existence, but it was not backed by doctrine (and interpretations of symbols in the scriptures, even if they apparently originated from Brigham Young, do not count as doctrine).
Actually, that's not true at all. Nowhere in the Mormon canon and/or official doctrine does it say anything about dark skin. The term "mark" has been used, and certain Mormons in times past have described that mark as being dark skin, but that was just their own racist opinion (which happened to be a popular opinion at the time in American society, not just in the church). One thing people don't really get about the Mormon church is that it has never claimed to be a perfect organization full of perfect people who don't have any flaws. Ever since the church was re-integrated with society at large, it has adjusted along with that society (as much as the theology allows). The LDS church certainly made some cultural blunders in past decades, but there is no inherent racism in the religion. The church has worked to eradicate past racism (that was largely a reflection of the situation in the United States at the time), but if you think there's "undeniable racism inherent to the religion," you just don't know what you're talking about.
Er, I guess I meant adding rather than dereferencing... As in, (int*)(myPtr + 1) wouldn't work, but (int*)myPtr + 1 would...
My bad... Like I said, it's been a couple years. (That makes it even less complex, though) :P
What about if you have a void* pointer? In that case, do you have to cast it to the correct pointer type before dereferencing?
And even pointer arithmetic only starts to get complex when you're dealing with multidimensional arrays and complex objects.
It's been a couple years since I've used C, but...
int myArray = new int[2] is the same as int* myArray = (int*)malloc(sizeof(int)*2)
myArray[2] is the same as *(myArray + 2 * sizeof(int))
Nothing really complex about that. Array indexers are just syntactical sugar.
Objects are even easier.
String* myStr = new String() is the same as String myStr = new String(), and you just use "." to access its members instead of "->" (but it really means the exact same thing), and you get rid of the C ".".
Honestly, the only somewhat difficult aspect of pointers is having to worry about scope (i.e., when memory needs to be deallocated). You're exactly correct--why are you in this business if you don't like dealing with the most fundamental concepts of computer programming? It's like being an actuary who hates dealing with financial math.
What's so difficult about pointers? Even C# and Java use pointers, you're just forced to dereference them every time you use them.