I'm tired of the assumption that your sort keeps making that you can bash America and love it at the same time. How many times do you think America will keep crawling back to you, hoping that you'll change?
This is what you are up against with your plan to use argument and reason. Although, I do agree with you that MANDATORY vaccines are a bad thing and could end up being a slippery slope (wildly fictional example: Look! We've found a vaccine to purge the homosexual gene! Put it on the mandatory vaccine list so we can purge this hideous disease from humanity!)
Well, I certainly agree with you that there are certain evils that could be perpetuated with vaccines, the idea behind making vaccines mandatory is that the illnesses they prevent are contagious, easily spread from person to person. Homosexuality, despite what a totally-wackjob minority believes, is not contagious.
Of course now the question is what is causing the increase in autism, if it wasn't the mercury then what else changed?
Sorry, a bit late to the party here. As another poster mentioned, I think those "autism cases increased from 1:10,000 to 1:100" figures are very suspicious. For one, we've gotten much better at diagnosing autism itself. Better diagnosing means more cases will be found that would have been previously missed. Second, these days people are more likely to get mental health issues checked out, especially developmental issues. And third, the standard for "what is autism" has changed over time, and more symptoms are being classified as autism. Asperger's Syndrome for example is now considered a mild form of autism. Decades ago people with autism might just have been referred to as "a bit slow." It sounds insulting, but you can sort of think of it as over time, lowering the bar to classification. That allows for more people under the umbrella and growing numbers.
If we could somehow apply today's standards to all the cases 50 years ago, I wonder what the numbers would look like.
BTW, unless you're making 250K+ a year there's no way in hell you're paying anywhere near 50% in taxes. And if you are- quite frankly I don't give a fuck, you're well enough off that you ought to be. Until world hunger and homelessness are solved you have no right to more of the world's resources than that.
This is probably the biggest point of contention between you and the people who push for lower taxes.
You imply that world hunger and homelessness can be solved by more money. They don't think so. You imply that solving "world hunger" is a good use of our money. They think (probably?) it's a good use of donations, certainly a terrible allocation of tax dollars. I would guess that most of them are in favor of a minimum social safety net, IE, limited unemployment benefits for folks "down on their luck," but they also don't want to subsidize the lazy . Nor do they want to give to those who think they're entitled to a handout. Separating those two groups is pretty tricky.
It's a very liberal college town, by the way (Ashland, Oregon). It's not the crazy fundamentalist Christians doing it; it's the crazy crystal-sniffing hippies.
That's usually the way it goes. The folks who listen to Jenny McCarthy and her "I'm an indigo mom and my child is a crystal child" bullshit. They're usually the ones who think that the evil evil pharmaceutical companies hide all the real evidence of autism caused by vaccines.
I thought that all sides had pretty much agreed that global warming was a fact and that the discussion had moved on to whether or not human activity has had any effect on said warming.
If only! No, if global warming actually happens is still hotly debated.
Thus all the snickering and eye-rolling you'll hear from the conservative side this past winter during the blizzards. "But I thought we had global warming! Sure seems cold to me."
- "I didn't recognize the other guy's name, so I voted the name I knew." (And thus 95% of incumbents get re-elected.)
Instead of telling people, "Go vote - it's your duty," we should be saying, "Only vote if you took time to reach and understand all the candidates' issues. Otherwise, you may stay home."
This is why I absolutely detested MTV's "Rock the Vote" campaign. The actual ad went along the lines of: "You know, it doesn't matter who you vote for. The only thing that matters is that you actually vote." Bleeuurrrgh.
What about all the snake oil stuff that got sold to the public in the 1920s? with the lack of regulation. back then people had all kinds of radioactive products [environmen...affiti.com] back then.
Well... in their defense, not much was known about the dangers of various types of radiation back in the 1920s. Nobel prize-winners (like Madam Curie) died from the exposure they didn't realize would kill them. Don't see too many people handling radioactive isotopes with their bare hands these days.:-)
This is just the deathrattle of a clutch of obsolete industries.
*bunch of rambling nonsense about how popular media sucks*
People (especially on Slashdot) have been talking about how the MPAA, BSA, and so forth are "in their death throes" for a few decades now. Why has it not happened yet? Why are movies and software and games not crashing and burning?
As much as I love to do that it's worth noting that most of these were made during the period Steve Jobs wasn't in charge. He may be an evil cult leading SOB, but he does for the most part make good products.
I think just as important as "making good products," he's not afraid to kill bad products, or at least products that he thinks are bad.
iPhones/iPads without SD card slots. iPhones that don't appear as a mass storage device when connected to a PC (I still don't believe this one, it seems so 1995).
I'll go along with this. It's one of the few ways in which my iPhone actually seemed to be a downgrade from my old iPod.
I don't bother with cable. The few things I want to watch are on hulu. I watch a few shows on delay via Netflix.
Ah, well, I hate streaming video. It's a little better now that I have a better net connection, but Hulu's interface sucks (as does just about every video streaming site), and clear, perfect video and audio are very important to me. I would love to be able to download a show from hulu at a high bitrate (at a bitrate that would make watching while streaming infeasible), but that doesn't seem like an option.
Does anyone do that? Allow pre-downloading instead of live streaming? Nothing kills my buzz more than buffering, or seeing a lower-quality streams because of bandwidth concerns.
2.) The wrist is firmly set down on the tabletop. The mouse is moved lightly between the fingers. Light, precise movement. Big-ass clunky Microsoft mouse and virtually everything Logitech has built suck ass, including every "ergonomic" (nightmare) mouse ever built. Every Apple mouse is a pleasure to use, with the possible exception of the hockey puck (I never had a problem with it, but understand why people would).
I currently use a Logitech Mouseman Optical (both at work and at home) with the wrist resting on the pad and the mouse fits perfectly. It is, in fact, the only way I was able to beat my wrist RSI.
I think the most important part is for the mouse to be sized according to the size of the hand -- smaller hands, smaller mice; bigger hands, bigger mouse. One-size-fits-all is terrible.
Macintosh mice may have sucked, and most of their keyboards have similarly-sucked.. but I have to admit their iMac and Powermac laptops have really good keyboards now.. for laptops. Nothing will replace my desktop keyboard, but the very best laptop keyboards I've ever used were on Macs.
Except that your memories and mine differ. At that time, Intel processors weren't speed demons, and the PPC ran much faster.
No no no, not at all. Apple liked to talk a good talk with the new PPC chips, but when they came out they were about on par with Intel's finest. Then Intel seriously started to pull away and Apple switched.
That's right the guy who got caught with the performance enhancing drugs during the Tour de France had a warrant issued for him today for hacking. I don't know what it is over but maybe his attempts to tamper with the committee who tested him maybe. I don't know all the info but I just saw it on the news channel.
He wasn't caught with performance enhancing drugs. A few of the many samples he sent to a corrupt French lab were reported as positive, while the same samples sent to other labs came back negative.
For instance, every manager you've ever met is a liar. Read the want ads/careerbuilder/whatever. Every single managerial position says the same thing: "Previous management experience a must." There are no zero experience jobs to start off with
All the publicly advertised jobs, perhaps. But nearly every manager I've ever had didn't start out at that company as a manager -- they were promoted into it. That's why you can have a billion jobs requiring management experience, because most managers didn't get their management experience from a job they saw advertised.
Why was this modded a troll? The poster has a point. Everyone likes to say "you should give that ex-con a chance" when they're the ones who don't actually have to take the risk.
Two people apply to a job. Both are qualified. One was convicted of a felony. Which do you think will get hired?
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I'm tired of the assumption that your sort keeps making that you can bash America and love it at the same time. How many times do you think America will keep crawling back to you, hoping that you'll change?
Haha, America as a battered wife; I love it.
I think that is part of the reason why Libertarians are so misunderstood; both here on Slashdot and elsewhere.
I don't think Libertarians are misunderstood; it's just that most people have little faith in capitalist/individualist systems to address every issue.
Libertarians think they are misunderstood, the reality is that others do understand the philosophy but reject it as cold and heartless.
Who cares? She's got really nice tits.
Unfortunately she's likely vomited on them quite a few times, which reduces their attractiveness in the mind...
This is what you are up against with your plan to use argument and reason. Although, I do agree with you that MANDATORY vaccines are a bad thing and could end up being a slippery slope (wildly fictional example: Look! We've found a vaccine to purge the homosexual gene! Put it on the mandatory vaccine list so we can purge this hideous disease from humanity!)
Well, I certainly agree with you that there are certain evils that could be perpetuated with vaccines, the idea behind making vaccines mandatory is that the illnesses they prevent are contagious, easily spread from person to person. Homosexuality, despite what a totally-wackjob minority believes, is not contagious.
Of course now the question is what is causing the increase in autism, if it wasn't the mercury then what else changed?
Sorry, a bit late to the party here.
As another poster mentioned, I think those "autism cases increased from 1:10,000 to 1:100" figures are very suspicious. For one, we've gotten much better at diagnosing autism itself. Better diagnosing means more cases will be found that would have been previously missed. Second, these days people are more likely to get mental health issues checked out, especially developmental issues. And third, the standard for "what is autism" has changed over time, and more symptoms are being classified as autism. Asperger's Syndrome for example is now considered a mild form of autism. Decades ago people with autism might just have been referred to as "a bit slow." It sounds insulting, but you can sort of think of it as over time, lowering the bar to classification. That allows for more people under the umbrella and growing numbers.
If we could somehow apply today's standards to all the cases 50 years ago, I wonder what the numbers would look like.
BTW, unless you're making 250K+ a year there's no way in hell you're paying anywhere near 50% in taxes. And if you are- quite frankly I don't give a fuck, you're well enough off that you ought to be. Until world hunger and homelessness are solved you have no right to more of the world's resources than that.
This is probably the biggest point of contention between you and the people who push for lower taxes.
You imply that world hunger and homelessness can be solved by more money. They don't think so.
You imply that solving "world hunger" is a good use of our money. They think (probably?) it's a good use of donations, certainly a terrible allocation of tax dollars.
I would guess that most of them are in favor of a minimum social safety net, IE, limited unemployment benefits for folks "down on their luck," but they also don't want to subsidize the lazy . Nor do they want to give to those who think they're entitled to a handout. Separating those two groups is pretty tricky.
It's a very liberal college town, by the way (Ashland, Oregon). It's not the crazy fundamentalist Christians doing it; it's the crazy crystal-sniffing hippies.
That's usually the way it goes. The folks who listen to Jenny McCarthy and her "I'm an indigo mom and my child is a crystal child" bullshit. They're usually the ones who think that the evil evil pharmaceutical companies hide all the real evidence of autism caused by vaccines.
I thought that all sides had pretty much agreed that global warming was a fact and that the discussion had moved on to whether or not human activity has had any effect on said warming.
If only! No, if global warming actually happens is still hotly debated.
Thus all the snickering and eye-rolling you'll hear from the conservative side this past winter during the blizzards. "But I thought we had global warming! Sure seems cold to me."
The Queen song "I'm Going Slightly Mad" was all about Freddie Mercury's AIDS-induced dementia:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNBWf54RvsI
At the time, fans thought it was simply humorous, as Freddie Mercury didn't announce his AIDS infection until the day before he died.
Nah, the anime tear face is when the waterworks are shooting directly over the head with the face pointed up, Charlie Brown-style.
- "I didn't recognize the other guy's name, so I voted the name I knew." (And thus 95% of incumbents get re-elected.)
Instead of telling people, "Go vote - it's your duty," we should be saying, "Only vote if you took time to reach and understand all the candidates' issues. Otherwise, you may stay home."
This is why I absolutely detested MTV's "Rock the Vote" campaign. The actual ad went along the lines of: "You know, it doesn't matter who you vote for. The only thing that matters is that you actually vote." Bleeuurrrgh.
What about all the snake oil stuff that got sold to the public in the 1920s? with the lack of regulation. back then people had all kinds of radioactive products [environmen...affiti.com] back then.
Well... in their defense, not much was known about the dangers of various types of radiation back in the 1920s. Nobel prize-winners (like Madam Curie) died from the exposure they didn't realize would kill them. Don't see too many people handling radioactive isotopes with their bare hands these days. :-)
A few decades of Slashdot rantings?
I must have missed an anniversary party or two...
Those decades really fly by.
I didn't say it was only on Slashdot, just that Slashdot is the most prominent site to most of us at the moment.
This is just the deathrattle of a clutch of obsolete industries.
*bunch of rambling nonsense about how popular media sucks*
People (especially on Slashdot) have been talking about how the MPAA, BSA, and so forth are "in their death throes" for a few decades now. Why has it not happened yet? Why are movies and software and games not crashing and burning?
Nuclear fusion, anyone? I was promised this by the Omni Future Almanac (pub. 1982) no later than 2010. Should I ask for my money back?
Yes, I hear Omni Magazine is sitting on huge cash reserves at the moment.
As much as I love to do that it's worth noting that most of these were made during the period Steve Jobs wasn't in charge. He may be an evil cult leading SOB, but he does for the most part make good products.
I think just as important as "making good products," he's not afraid to kill bad products, or at least products that he thinks are bad.
iPhones/iPads without SD card slots. iPhones that don't appear as a mass storage device when connected to a PC (I still don't believe this one, it seems so 1995).
I'll go along with this. It's one of the few ways in which my iPhone actually seemed to be a downgrade from my old iPod.
I don't bother with cable. The few things I want to watch are on hulu. I watch a few shows on delay via Netflix.
Ah, well, I hate streaming video. It's a little better now that I have a better net connection, but Hulu's interface sucks (as does just about every video streaming site), and clear, perfect video and audio are very important to me. I would love to be able to download a show from hulu at a high bitrate (at a bitrate that would make watching while streaming infeasible), but that doesn't seem like an option.
Does anyone do that? Allow pre-downloading instead of live streaming? Nothing kills my buzz more than buffering, or seeing a lower-quality streams because of bandwidth concerns.
News flash: almost NO computer keyboards are designed for programming, either on Mac or PC.
This is true. I -love- my Kinesis keyboard picture here for ergonomic reasons, and it's great for typing out regular text, Slashdot comments, etc.
However, when I have to start putting down Python code, it's placement of punctuation keys ( like [, ], |, ', etc ) make coding a bit of a chore.
And for gaming, it's totally useless. I use a different keyboard for that.
2.) The wrist is firmly set down on the tabletop. The mouse is moved lightly between the fingers. Light, precise movement. Big-ass clunky Microsoft mouse and virtually everything Logitech has built suck ass, including every "ergonomic" (nightmare) mouse ever built. Every Apple mouse is a pleasure to use, with the possible exception of the hockey puck (I never had a problem with it, but understand why people would).
I currently use a Logitech Mouseman Optical (both at work and at home) with the wrist resting on the pad and the mouse fits perfectly. It is, in fact, the only way I was able to beat my wrist RSI.
I think the most important part is for the mouse to be sized according to the size of the hand -- smaller hands, smaller mice; bigger hands, bigger mouse. One-size-fits-all is terrible.
Macintosh mice may have sucked, and most of their keyboards have similarly-sucked.. but I have to admit their iMac and Powermac laptops have really good keyboards now.. for laptops. Nothing will replace my desktop keyboard, but the very best laptop keyboards I've ever used were on Macs.
Except that your memories and mine differ. At that time, Intel processors weren't speed demons, and the PPC ran much faster.
No no no, not at all. Apple liked to talk a good talk with the new PPC chips, but when they came out they were about on par with Intel's finest. Then Intel seriously started to pull away and Apple switched.
That's right the guy who got caught with the performance enhancing drugs during the Tour de France had a warrant issued for him today for hacking. I don't know what it is over but maybe his attempts to tamper with the committee who tested him maybe. I don't know all the info but I just saw it on the news channel.
He wasn't caught with performance enhancing drugs. A few of the many samples he sent to a corrupt French lab were reported as positive, while the same samples sent to other labs came back negative.
For instance, every manager you've ever met is a liar. Read the want ads/careerbuilder/whatever. Every single managerial position says the same thing: "Previous management experience a must." There are no zero experience jobs to start off with
All the publicly advertised jobs, perhaps. But nearly every manager I've ever had didn't start out at that company as a manager -- they were promoted into it. That's why you can have a billion jobs requiring management experience, because most managers didn't get their management experience from a job they saw advertised.
Why was this modded a troll? The poster has a point. Everyone likes to say "you should give that ex-con a chance" when they're the ones who don't actually have to take the risk.
Two people apply to a job. Both are qualified. One was convicted of a felony. Which do you think will get hired?