There is an implied contract, I'd say. Sony has contracted to sell you a CD containing music. This was implied by the packaging in the store, as well as a hundred years or so of sales history. They did not inform you that they intended to compromise your PC with a rootkit, and you certainly were not expecting a rootkit.
Let's say you went and bought a car. After your purchase, you realized that the car had a device onboard recording your driving habits, any conversations in the car, and proscribing where you could drive the car. Furthermore, you were not aware of any of that at the time of purchase, but were informed after you started up the first time in your carport.
Now, let's say that you were a careful consumer and read that contract after receipt after sale, and you returned your car. Then, you find that the device had somehow cloned itself into your carport, and was now monitoring your other cars as well -- and they had not informed you of this "feature".
* Powerful and Continuing Nationalism
* Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights
* Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause
* Supremacy of the Military
* Rampant Sexism
* Controlled Mass Media
* Obsession with National Security
* Religion and Government are Intertwined
* Corporate Power is Protected
* Labor Power is Suppressed
* Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts
* Obsession with Crime and Punishment
* Rampant Cronyism and Corruption
* Fraudulent Elections
* Corporations and Government Merge
In the first month of my junior year at Lane Tech high school, my trig and physics textbooks were stolen. I went up to the teachers, and they told me that I'd have to pony up big bucks (for a kid with absolutely no money, whose only daily meal was the school lunch) to get new ones, and just to stick that old knife in deeper, they didn't have any spares even if I did have the gold.
So I sat for two weeks in class at the beginning of the semester with no textbooks, no calculator (they were really expensive then), trying to do trig and physics calculation by hand. Yes, that year was a no-go. For pennies, I had to repeat the classes because the books were too expensive to replace.
And if any Laneites say it wasn't like that, all I can say is that for a poor, quiet, shy kid, the school didn't exactly strain itself to help. Terry Pratchett said that the world consists of three types of people (paraphrasing): those who say the glass is half full, those who say it's half empty, and those who say, "This is my glass? No, my glass was full, and was a lot bigger than this. I want a new glass -- NOW! Who's the manager here?" There's a fourth: those who slink away, thinking they really weren't entitled to a glass anyway. If I'd a time machine, I'd not go back to punch the teachers, but instead that dumb kid who didn't think he was entitled to a book. I'm now not only thinking he needed a book, but that today all the other kids get books too. And I'll won't bother to ask the manager about it. I'll make my own damned glass.
I never forget what it was like to be without books or means to use them because I didn't have the cash. A stupid, meaningless interruption because the books were so damned expensive that you were SOL if someone stole them. (Come to think: what did the thieves do with the books, pawn them? Set them on fire? No doubt they're stockbrokers now)
Bring on wikibooks. Bring on the 100 buck reader, for all the poor kids trapped in a world that doesn't care about poor kids.
I'd say that if they say they can do it, they will do it. They supply Dell with some laptops, so they seem to know how to cut costs. It's Taiwan, for god's sake.
Of course, we could build it in the States, and pay five times as much so that the CEO can get a 20 million dollar severance plan when he's canned for incompetence.
I'd bet on the Taiwanese company.
And PS: everything a laptop does today will be done with ten dollar chips a decade from now, with five dollar screens and ten dollar bodys. Economics of scale and technological progress will turn PC's into things you can buy for $29 bucks in Walgreens ($18 on sale, this week only!). What else does a PC need to do for people (other than tech monsters) than take input, display output, communicate, and process data quickly? Speed will come for cheap. People "need" $2K computers because Microsoft continually makes new OS's that require them.
Wikitextbooks. The savior of every school district. Textbooks shouldn't cost a hundred dollars each. A hundred dollar ebook reader for each student, to which you add wikibooks for free, free, free forever, and the world save $billions$ of dollars in useless schooling costs -- not to mention all those forests.
Of course, the textbook publishers will detonate a nuclear device on Taiwan to stop it from happening, if they can.
That's for right now. Perspective. Eventually, one, or maybe just a few collaborating companies acting as a de facto monopoly, will consolidate voice communication infrastructure, and come to dominate VOIP services as they freeze out the small fry.
Then, they will raise the prices, and keep raising. What would stop them? This isn't speculation -- it always happens, always.
Since we'll have GPS in our phones, accessible at will by spooks and cops; cameras on every corner, every highway; DNA catalogued against our will; health care taken away at the whim of unknown lords, drug testing at will by our employers; unacceptable speech not permitted on private property (almost anywhere you shop or work or park...) free speech in public monitored by the military, spooks, and the dominant political party; laws that make everyone in the world a criminal; the ability to vote taken away if we're convicted on any of these new "felonies"; and all of us subject to recordings of everything we ever do on the internet (which soon will be surfing, TV, phone, all our purchases, text messages), the ability to run for office taken away if "they" decide to broadcast any of your recorded pecadillos...
We're to be numbered, watched, recorded, arrested at will, fired at will, paid slave wages per a "free" market that somehow can't pay workers but pays the bosses ever increasing millions.
Prison can be defined as what YOU can do compared to what your jailers can do, or do to you.
How, exactly, are we all now NOT in prison? Of course, I'm speaking of the U.S, but I assume Australia isn't exactly shrinking from doing the same as the US and the EU.
This is the most important subject in all our lives. We're being locked up, and we're helping them do it.
The question isn't whether or not he owns multiple machines, or if he can prove someone else used his connection to upload a movie.
The question is: can Paramount prove beyond a reasonable doubt that it was he that sat in the chair and executed the commands? Do they have witnesses that can be trusted? Is there video of this happening?
If they have no proof, there should be no case. Fin. Same with any other case.
And just leaving your computer on 24/7 should not be "contributing" to a crime. We are not required to secure our PC's. We don't even require that of guns.
ah, mathematics! Parabolically, perhaps. Yes, exponential. Never quite impossible, but harder to accomplish each passing period. And, related to something about a tortoise. Tasty, but apparently can outrun an arrow. That, and something about Xena.
I'm more than old enough, so here's how it was, in brief: AT&T fought the monopoly battle in court for almost ten years, lost in '84, then was broken up into multiple geographical companies, AT&T for long distance only, and Bell Labs became Lucent Technologies.
During the last twenty years, they've individually frozen out as much competition as they could, in a forward-guard holding action. And the last two decades have seen the installation of a lot of judges whose philosophies are decidedly pro-business with a jaundiced eye for monopoly regulation, as well as a large number of legislators and at least two Presidents, even three as Clinton wasn't exactly a flaming socialist, turning a blind eye and a curious lack of oversight as the Baby Bells merged together again.
Right now, the Justice Department has found itself stripped of monies to enforce antitrust law for the last five years. No money for investigations, no investigators. It's like repealing antitrust legislation without the messy bother of repealing the laws. (Ditto environmental laws, pollution, meat inspection, etc. ad nauseum).
So the last ones standing are AT&T and SBC. And they will merge very soon, so here we are again, with one monopoly dictating terms. And even if somehow a new set of enforcers come in after the next election, they will find a hostile Congress and court system slowing them down. Even in ideal circumstances, as we found with the original AT&T breakup and the Microsoft conviction, it takes ten years to get to the point of enforcing antitrust laws under a judge's supervision, and a lot can happen in ten years. A new Republican president can be elected, and the case dies. New technology can obsolete AT&T entirely in ten years -- if they let it happen (look at Philadephia and Pennsylvania trying to install municipal WiFi).
Every decade, the corporate powers grow stronger, more integrated with the government and the courts. The ability to enforce antitrust laws is decreasing hyperbolically with each era.
He was canned. So the cultists in the university nailed him, just after other members of the cult beat him in the head -- which is attempted murder.
AP via CNN.com:
Anti-creationism professor: Resignation was forced Mirecki recently quit as department head, remains professor
LAWRENCE, Kansas (AP) -- A college professor who drew sharp criticism for comments deriding Christian fundamentalists over "intelligent design" said he was forced out as chairman of the university's religious studies department.
Paul Mirecki, who remains a professor at the University of Kansas, said he had no choice when he signed the resignation letter, typed on stationary from the dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.
"The University penalized me and denied me my Constitutionally protected right to speak and express my mind," he said in a written statement Friday for the Lawrence Journal-World. He said his career had been ruined and his speaking engagements canceled.
Mirecki also said he had retained an attorney.
The university "has a duty, as a protector of intellectual honesty and debate, to support its teaching staff when controversial issues are raised," he wrote.
University spokeswoman Lynn Bretz said Saturday that Mirecki resigned the chairmanship last week on the recommendation of faculty members.
The university "stands unequivocally in support of his First Amendment rights and his rights to academic freedom," Bretz said.
The controversy began with a course Mirecki planned to teach called "Special Topics in Religion: Intelligent Design, Creationism and other Religious Mythologies." The class was proposed after the Kansas Board of Education decided to include more criticism of evolution in its school science standards.
The class was canceled last week after e-mails surfaced in which Mirecki mocked religious conservatives as "fundies" and said a course describing intelligent design as mythology would be a "nice slap in their big fat face." He has apologized for those comments.
On Monday, Mirecki was treated at a Lawrence hospital for head injuries after he said he was beaten by two men on a country road. He said the men referred to the creationism course. Law enforcement officials were investigating.
Still not getting the pattern... soon, open networks will be illegal. Very soon.
Terrorism, terrorism, terrorism, the answer to ever dictator's dream for total control of a free society. When they were using Russia as an excuse, they used nukes and communism as the basis for militarizing "the free world". That's out the window, now, and even tho China is technically communist, they are the nation principally funding our tax cuts, so we can't use them as the boogieman. They own us. Now, it's an eternal war against a common noun that by definition is unwinnable. How do you defeat "terror"? To keep the war going, all our new masters have to do is go "wooga wooga wooga" and everyone handcuffs themselves to a railing and tip off the new lords about all the suspicious brown people they've noticed.
What idiot fights with his fists? Edged weapons, buddy. Boots. Sticks. Pipes. 100 kilovolt pulsing stunners. Use your fists in fights and say hello to arthritis in a couple of years. What are you going to hit, exactly, that will impress your target? His head? Ow. The head is designed to take impacts, your hands aren't. It's like punching a stone arch.
Besides, as a rule, a suprise attacker who knows what he is doing always wins. WPM and wimpy arms mean nothing. The attacker knows a fight is about to start, and the defender shouldn't have a clue. A great-grandma can take a bodybuilder if she plans ahead.
Believe me, after being with them since 1865, they can go now. Please. Divorce us. Go away. You're like a husband gone to fat and soap operas on welfare. GO AWAY. Become the Christian States of America. We'll keep the borders open, and all the sane people can get out. And I don't think many people of color will stick around to find out what Christ's plan for them is, either.
Then we close the gate. Let the crucifixions and stonings begin, eh?
NO. He is not complicit in his own beating and firing because he spoke up. That's the "he forced us to kill him, officer" school of thug excuses. "If he had kept his mouth shut, he'd still be alive. What an idiot. Of course we had to kill him."
Where did America go? Or has it always been this way in certain areas of the U.S.? I'm thinking that the Bill of Rights never was popular down there. They have a... strange perception of the rights of man. Something about the past warps their ideas about freedom. What could it be?
"Eh, I'm not going to go so far as to claim the attack didn't happen, but it does seem like there are some oddities involved."
Bill O'Reilly, that IS trying to claim that the attack was fake. Pointing out "oddities" is claiming they are fake. YOU don't have to be the one making the claim: pointing to someone else's argument that he's faking a beating is disingenuous if you're trying to keep clean yourself. You're forwarding the BS, so you are part of it.
Being anti-fundie isn't "anti-Christian". I really don't see what's Christian about creationism or beating professors or getting them fired.
He's anti-insane fuckies. And their supporters in the University got him fired, one way or another, after others of their persuasion beat the fuck out of him -- actually, attempted his murder, because any beating can cause death from complications if nothing else.
He's up against millions of fundie loons who believe the earth was made 4000 years ago, that Adam was first up, and that Dominion should be the goal of good fundies everywhere in the U.S. They call themselves Dominionists: they want God's Law in the U.S., and like all fundie loonies, eventually they'll start beating, killing, and burning. It's just a matter of time.
The problem, for all of you outside the U.S. trying to understand this, is that they are a solid supermajority in the southern and western states. Seeing a 30-something percent figure for their numbers is misleading -- they OWN Kansas, Missouri, Mississipi, Lousiana, Alabama, the Virginias, the Carolinas, Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Iowa, Southern Illinois and Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee... I'm too tired to type any more. Suffice it to say, we in the sane world have a fucking problem -- they own the White House, the military command structure, the Congress, a good chunk of the courts, and are getting close to a lockup on the Supreme Court, in one way or another. Also, they have control of one hundred thousand nuclear devices. Think about that.
He was right to laugh at the fundies, he was right to deride their beliefs, dishonestly presented as "science", and he has A right to write any damned thing he wants.
The blurb sorta implies he deserved it. Reaaally.
The only mistake he made was teaching in America. If you mock loonies, you get beaten on the road by the loonies, then your superiors fire you for deriding the loonies. Cults is cults is cults. They use their membership in interestingly high places to sack people they don't want heard.
He "incited" a beating, huh? Usually, in science, when you mock a loonietoon for his perpetual motion machine, the perpetual motion cult doesn't beat you in the head on a lonely road, THEN use their contacts to get you fired for making fun of them in your emails.
If Sagan or Isaac Asimov were alive, they could be beaten to death with impunity. Yes, to death: if you beat anyone in the head, you're trying to kill them. Head shots cause brain damage and even death.
The Fundies, with their allies in the Republican party, have been making huge inroads in cowing universities into sacking "biased" professors, "bias" meaning has a sane opinion in opposition to a looney, and having the raw testicular power to speak up on those opinions.
The fundies are crazy, and they won't take no for an answer. There is no "other side" fighting the fundies. It's the fundies against everyone else in America, labeled "liberals" for easy demonification.
Hell doesn't exist. But those who believe in it are eagerly making one on Earth. Fuck the fake "Christians".
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There is an implied contract, I'd say. Sony has contracted to sell you a CD containing music. This was implied by the packaging in the store, as well as a hundred years or so of sales history. They did not inform you that they intended to compromise your PC with a rootkit, and you certainly were not expecting a rootkit.
Let's say you went and bought a car. After your purchase, you realized that the car had a device onboard recording your driving habits, any conversations in the car, and proscribing where you could drive the car. Furthermore, you were not aware of any of that at the time of purchase, but were informed after you started up the first time in your carport.
Now, let's say that you were a careful consumer and read that contract after receipt after sale, and you returned your car. Then, you find that the device had somehow cloned itself into your carport, and was now monitoring your other cars as well -- and they had not informed you of this "feature".
The Constitution delineated the rights of humans, not the rights of Americans. Non-americans were not to be considered animals.
stolen from daily kos -- i think:
How many of these apply?
* Powerful and Continuing Nationalism
* Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights
* Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause
* Supremacy of the Military
* Rampant Sexism
* Controlled Mass Media
* Obsession with National Security
* Religion and Government are Intertwined
* Corporate Power is Protected
* Labor Power is Suppressed
* Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts
* Obsession with Crime and Punishment
* Rampant Cronyism and Corruption
* Fraudulent Elections
* Corporations and Government Merge
On second thought, if I'd the time machine, I'd smack the teachers too. And take their textbooks.
A little violin music...
An anecdote from the remote past.
In the first month of my junior year at Lane Tech high school, my trig and physics textbooks were stolen. I went up to the teachers, and they told me that I'd have to pony up big bucks (for a kid with absolutely no money, whose only daily meal was the school lunch) to get new ones, and just to stick that old knife in deeper, they didn't have any spares even if I did have the gold.
So I sat for two weeks in class at the beginning of the semester with no textbooks, no calculator (they were really expensive then), trying to do trig and physics calculation by hand. Yes, that year was a no-go. For pennies, I had to repeat the classes because the books were too expensive to replace.
And if any Laneites say it wasn't like that, all I can say is that for a poor, quiet, shy kid, the school didn't exactly strain itself to help. Terry Pratchett said that the world consists of three types of people (paraphrasing): those who say the glass is half full, those who say it's half empty, and those who say, "This is my glass? No, my glass was full, and was a lot bigger than this. I want a new glass -- NOW! Who's the manager here?" There's a fourth: those who slink away, thinking they really weren't entitled to a glass anyway. If I'd a time machine, I'd not go back to punch the teachers, but instead that dumb kid who didn't think he was entitled to a book. I'm now not only thinking he needed a book, but that today all the other kids get books too. And I'll won't bother to ask the manager about it. I'll make my own damned glass.
I never forget what it was like to be without books or means to use them because I didn't have the cash. A stupid, meaningless interruption because the books were so damned expensive that you were SOL if someone stole them. (Come to think: what did the thieves do with the books, pawn them? Set them on fire? No doubt they're stockbrokers now)
Bring on wikibooks. Bring on the 100 buck reader, for all the poor kids trapped in a world that doesn't care about poor kids.
I'd say that if they say they can do it, they will do it. They supply Dell with some laptops, so they seem to know how to cut costs. It's Taiwan, for god's sake.
Of course, we could build it in the States, and pay five times as much so that the CEO can get a 20 million dollar severance plan when he's canned for incompetence.
I'd bet on the Taiwanese company.
And PS: everything a laptop does today will be done with ten dollar chips a decade from now, with five dollar screens and ten dollar bodys. Economics of scale and technological progress will turn PC's into things you can buy for $29 bucks in Walgreens ($18 on sale, this week only!). What else does a PC need to do for people (other than tech monsters) than take input, display output, communicate, and process data quickly? Speed will come for cheap. People "need" $2K computers because Microsoft continually makes new OS's that require them.
Wikitextbooks. The savior of every school district. Textbooks shouldn't cost a hundred dollars each. A hundred dollar ebook reader for each student, to which you add wikibooks for free, free, free forever, and the world save $billions$ of dollars in useless schooling costs -- not to mention all those forests.
Of course, the textbook publishers will detonate a nuclear device on Taiwan to stop it from happening, if they can.
That's for right now. Perspective. Eventually, one, or maybe just a few collaborating companies acting as a de facto monopoly, will consolidate voice communication infrastructure, and come to dominate VOIP services as they freeze out the small fry.
Then, they will raise the prices, and keep raising. What would stop them? This isn't speculation -- it always happens, always.
The mergers are making me dizzy. What can I say. Point is, they will merge.
Since we'll have GPS in our phones, accessible at will by spooks and cops; cameras on every corner, every highway; DNA catalogued against our will; health care taken away at the whim of unknown lords, drug testing at will by our employers; unacceptable speech not permitted on private property (almost anywhere you shop or work or park...) free speech in public monitored by the military, spooks, and the dominant political party; laws that make everyone in the world a criminal; the ability to vote taken away if we're convicted on any of these new "felonies"; and all of us subject to recordings of everything we ever do on the internet (which soon will be surfing, TV, phone, all our purchases, text messages), the ability to run for office taken away if "they" decide to broadcast any of your recorded pecadillos...
We're to be numbered, watched, recorded, arrested at will, fired at will, paid slave wages per a "free" market that somehow can't pay workers but pays the bosses ever increasing millions.
Prison can be defined as what YOU can do compared to what your jailers can do, or do to you.
How, exactly, are we all now NOT in prison? Of course, I'm speaking of the U.S, but I assume Australia isn't exactly shrinking from doing the same as the US and the EU.
This is the most important subject in all our lives. We're being locked up, and we're helping them do it.
The question isn't whether or not he owns multiple machines, or if he can prove someone else used his connection to upload a movie.
The question is: can Paramount prove beyond a reasonable doubt that it was he that sat in the chair and executed the commands? Do they have witnesses that can be trusted? Is there video of this happening?
If they have no proof, there should be no case. Fin. Same with any other case.
And just leaving your computer on 24/7 should not be "contributing" to a crime. We are not required to secure our PC's. We don't even require that of guns.
But I've no doubt a court will back up Paramount.
ah, mathematics! Parabolically, perhaps. Yes, exponential. Never quite impossible, but harder to accomplish each passing period. And, related to something about a tortoise. Tasty, but apparently can outrun an arrow. That, and something about Xena.
I'm more than old enough, so here's how it was, in brief: AT&T fought the monopoly battle in court for almost ten years, lost in '84, then was broken up into multiple geographical companies, AT&T for long distance only, and Bell Labs became Lucent Technologies.
During the last twenty years, they've individually frozen out as much competition as they could, in a forward-guard holding action. And the last two decades have seen the installation of a lot of judges whose philosophies are decidedly pro-business with a jaundiced eye for monopoly regulation, as well as a large number of legislators and at least two Presidents, even three as Clinton wasn't exactly a flaming socialist, turning a blind eye and a curious lack of oversight as the Baby Bells merged together again.
Right now, the Justice Department has found itself stripped of monies to enforce antitrust law for the last five years. No money for investigations, no investigators. It's like repealing antitrust legislation without the messy bother of repealing the laws. (Ditto environmental laws, pollution, meat inspection, etc. ad nauseum).
So the last ones standing are AT&T and SBC. And they will merge very soon, so here we are again, with one monopoly dictating terms. And even if somehow a new set of enforcers come in after the next election, they will find a hostile Congress and court system slowing them down. Even in ideal circumstances, as we found with the original AT&T breakup and the Microsoft conviction, it takes ten years to get to the point of enforcing antitrust laws under a judge's supervision, and a lot can happen in ten years. A new Republican president can be elected, and the case dies. New technology can obsolete AT&T entirely in ten years -- if they let it happen (look at Philadephia and Pennsylvania trying to install municipal WiFi).
Every decade, the corporate powers grow stronger, more integrated with the government and the courts. The ability to enforce antitrust laws is decreasing hyperbolically with each era.
He was canned. So the cultists in the university nailed him, just after other members of the cult beat him in the head -- which is attempted murder.
AP via CNN.com:
Anti-creationism professor: Resignation was forced
Mirecki recently quit as department head, remains professor
LAWRENCE, Kansas (AP) -- A college professor who drew sharp criticism for comments deriding Christian fundamentalists over "intelligent design" said he was forced out as chairman of the university's religious studies department.
Paul Mirecki, who remains a professor at the University of Kansas, said he had no choice when he signed the resignation letter, typed on stationary from the dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.
"The University penalized me and denied me my Constitutionally protected right to speak and express my mind," he said in a written statement Friday for the Lawrence Journal-World. He said his career had been ruined and his speaking engagements canceled.
Mirecki also said he had retained an attorney.
The university "has a duty, as a protector of intellectual honesty and debate, to support its teaching staff when controversial issues are raised," he wrote.
University spokeswoman Lynn Bretz said Saturday that Mirecki resigned the chairmanship last week on the recommendation of faculty members.
The university "stands unequivocally in support of his First Amendment rights and his rights to academic freedom," Bretz said.
The controversy began with a course Mirecki planned to teach called "Special Topics in Religion: Intelligent Design, Creationism and other Religious Mythologies." The class was proposed after the Kansas Board of Education decided to include more criticism of evolution in its school science standards.
The class was canceled last week after e-mails surfaced in which Mirecki mocked religious conservatives as "fundies" and said a course describing intelligent design as mythology would be a "nice slap in their big fat face." He has apologized for those comments.
On Monday, Mirecki was treated at a Lawrence hospital for head injuries after he said he was beaten by two men on a country road. He said the men referred to the creationism course. Law enforcement officials were investigating.
Still not getting the pattern... soon, open networks will be illegal. Very soon.
Terrorism, terrorism, terrorism, the answer to ever dictator's dream for total control of a free society. When they were using Russia as an excuse, they used nukes and communism as the basis for militarizing "the free world". That's out the window, now, and even tho China is technically communist, they are the nation principally funding our tax cuts, so we can't use them as the boogieman. They own us. Now, it's an eternal war against a common noun that by definition is unwinnable. How do you defeat "terror"? To keep the war going, all our new masters have to do is go "wooga wooga wooga" and everyone handcuffs themselves to a railing and tip off the new lords about all the suspicious brown people they've noticed.
1938.
What idiot fights with his fists? Edged weapons, buddy. Boots. Sticks. Pipes. 100 kilovolt pulsing stunners. Use your fists in fights and say hello to arthritis in a couple of years. What are you going to hit, exactly, that will impress your target? His head? Ow. The head is designed to take impacts, your hands aren't. It's like punching a stone arch.
Besides, as a rule, a suprise attacker who knows what he is doing always wins. WPM and wimpy arms mean nothing. The attacker knows a fight is about to start, and the defender shouldn't have a clue. A great-grandma can take a bodybuilder if she plans ahead.
IQ and ruthlessness beats the workout king.
"Domimionists". It's their own word for themselves, and it fits. Dominion over all, God's law, not Man's. Fundamentalist theocrats.
Believe me, after being with them since 1865, they can go now. Please. Divorce us. Go away. You're like a husband gone to fat and soap operas on welfare. GO AWAY. Become the Christian States of America. We'll keep the borders open, and all the sane people can get out. And I don't think many people of color will stick around to find out what Christ's plan for them is, either.
Then we close the gate. Let the crucifixions and stonings begin, eh?
Um, their faces are fat, and they are indeed stupid. He was being quite descriptive. Apparently calling them fat stupid fundies upsets them somehow.
How much you wanna bet that his attackers were:
1. Fat.
2. Stupid.
3. Fundamentalist.
he wasn't in class, he was on an email list, and he can say anything he wants there.
And their faces are, by and large, really fat, and they are indeed stupid. Such is life. He was being accurate.
NO. He is not complicit in his own beating and firing because he spoke up. That's the "he forced us to kill him, officer" school of thug excuses. "If he had kept his mouth shut, he'd still be alive. What an idiot. Of course we had to kill him."
Where did America go? Or has it always been this way in certain areas of the U.S.? I'm thinking that the Bill of Rights never was popular down there. They have a... strange perception of the rights of man. Something about the past warps their ideas about freedom. What could it be?
"Eh, I'm not going to go so far as to claim the attack didn't happen, but it does seem like there are some oddities involved."
Bill O'Reilly, that IS trying to claim that the attack was fake. Pointing out "oddities" is claiming they are fake. YOU don't have to be the one making the claim: pointing to someone else's argument that he's faking a beating is disingenuous if you're trying to keep clean yourself. You're forwarding the BS, so you are part of it.
Being anti-fundie isn't "anti-Christian". I really don't see what's Christian about creationism or beating professors or getting them fired.
He's anti-insane fuckies. And their supporters in the University got him fired, one way or another, after others of their persuasion beat the fuck out of him -- actually, attempted his murder, because any beating can cause death from complications if nothing else.
He's up against millions of fundie loons who believe the earth was made 4000 years ago, that Adam was first up, and that Dominion should be the goal of good fundies everywhere in the U.S. They call themselves Dominionists: they want God's Law in the U.S., and like all fundie loonies, eventually they'll start beating, killing, and burning. It's just a matter of time.
The problem, for all of you outside the U.S. trying to understand this, is that they are a solid supermajority in the southern and western states. Seeing a 30-something percent figure for their numbers is misleading -- they OWN Kansas, Missouri, Mississipi, Lousiana, Alabama, the Virginias, the Carolinas, Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Iowa, Southern Illinois and Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee... I'm too tired to type any more. Suffice it to say, we in the sane world have a fucking problem -- they own the White House, the military command structure, the Congress, a good chunk of the courts, and are getting close to a lockup on the Supreme Court, in one way or another. Also, they have control of one hundred thousand nuclear devices. Think about that.
Yup. They're just willing to kill for different aspects of belief. But they will kill.
He was right to laugh at the fundies, he was right to deride their beliefs, dishonestly presented as "science", and he has A right to write any damned thing he wants.
The blurb sorta implies he deserved it. Reaaally.
The only mistake he made was teaching in America. If you mock loonies, you get beaten on the road by the loonies, then your superiors fire you for deriding the loonies. Cults is cults is cults. They use their membership in interestingly high places to sack people they don't want heard.
He "incited" a beating, huh? Usually, in science, when you mock a loonietoon for his perpetual motion machine, the perpetual motion cult doesn't beat you in the head on a lonely road, THEN use their contacts to get you fired for making fun of them in your emails.
If Sagan or Isaac Asimov were alive, they could be beaten to death with impunity. Yes, to death: if you beat anyone in the head, you're trying to kill them. Head shots cause brain damage and even death.
The Fundies, with their allies in the Republican party, have been making huge inroads in cowing universities into sacking "biased" professors, "bias" meaning has a sane opinion in opposition to a looney, and having the raw testicular power to speak up on those opinions.
The fundies are crazy, and they won't take no for an answer. There is no "other side" fighting the fundies. It's the fundies against everyone else in America, labeled "liberals" for easy demonification.
Hell doesn't exist. But those who believe in it are eagerly making one on Earth. Fuck the fake "Christians".