Yep... you're right. Saddam did invade Kuwait for oil.
Oh, was your dumbnessness referring to US invasion of Iraq, which had the (predicted) net effect of RAISING oil prices both short (due to the war/security situation) and long term compared to simply shutting down the whole embargo and buying oil from Saddam on the cheap (a lot cheaper than tnew Iraqi government will sell it)?
Oh yeah, I forgot, you're a liberal and live in your own world... you think that USA actually OWNS all the oil resources in Iraq after the war and gets that oil free.
> We can debate good vs. bad, but you can't say that socialism has won the day and is the dominant form of industrial activity. History and current stats show us otherwise.
OK, generally a well-thought-out response, but you're forgetting one important fact: USSR may have (luckily) disintegrated after 70 years, but in that timeframe if fucked up the environment in its territory as well as many others a WHOLE lot more than entire Western world did in the last 300 years. Oh, and I actually LIVED in Russia over a half of my life, so I happen to know what I'm talking about:)
> I wouldn't ask scifi writers can/should we terraform. I would ask ethicists if we should, and chemists, astrophysicists, etc if we can.
Unless ethics is a real scientific discipline (as in, you can obtain verifyable results based on *scientific methods*, as opposed to a bunch of BS handwaving, asking and ethicist about an answer to anything important is dumb. While an ethicist would be very good at coming up with QUESTIONS or ISSUES, their discipline is not designed for answering them, if only because they are unaware of the factors affecting the decision and because there are no un-questionable assumptions in ethics for most part. You can not *prove* whether wiping out a rare frog species is ethical or not (or for a more real life example, whether torturing people to obtain information in ticking bomb scenario). It depends on te underlying assumptions which are only true or false subjectively.
As far as I'm concerned, the only provable "corect" ethics is the one which establishes a "more successful" ESS (Evolutionary Stable Strategy) for a given set of humans. And we don't know nearly enough to compute which one that is, due to various side effects.
> > > There was only 1 first man on the moon. > > Who gives a damn who else went later from the USSR. > Um, nobody went later from the USSR. The US is the only country to have sent men to the moon, although the USSR did have some interesting robotic probes that made it up there (and a few that made the return trip, as well).
Well, USSR had more than just interesting robotic probes. It also had a near-ready piloted moon program (look up N-1), that was (unfortunately) scrapped when Americans beat them to the moon as politically non-necessary and embarassing.
Unfortunately, because if N-1 program had continued successfully, Space Race would have gone on and we (USA) would have never went so far back in our space exploration capabilities.
> Furthermore, think about a "technological war" fought over the internet. If all of the techs are siding with or in another country, we're hosed.
After reading/., and watching how it's moderated, I must say it appears that all of the techs (at least/. ones) WILL be siding with or be in another country.
Now, let's get to the modding down for violating GoupThink.
> So what if in 50 years we all speak Spanglish with an Indian accent?
So, the problem is that Irish came and tried to be Americans of Irish descent (and speak English with an accent).
Many Spanish come in and: - Try to be Spanish. - Speak spanish and NOT speak English (and use MY tax dollars to pay for their fucking bilingual government forms etc..). - Most importantly, try to not be American in spirit. - And to top it off, call themselves "minority" despite statistically not being even close, and demand extr provileges because of that.
BTW, this is not an ethnic attack - Cubans, who're just as Spanish as Mexicans, are in this regard as "good" immigrants as Irish. They consider themselves Americans. They speak English in addition to their native language. Ditto for most Asian immigrants, or USSR ones (except for the Brighton Beach subculture, but they are not exactly representative of most fUSSR immigrants).
Oh, and for the "culturally sensitive" morons who want to label me an immigrant basher - I'm a first generation immigrant. Except i too come from an immigrant culture where majority of its members try to become as much Americans as possible, and speak English.
> Slashdot's reader base is finding it more interesting to complain and play the victim than actually put some effort, thought, and most importantly creativity into improving their situation.
They are simply exibiting the sheep-like mentality of modern day liberals, who seem to venerate JFK without bothering to remember what he stood for ("And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you--ask what you can do for your country.")
These days, it's all about "Ask not what I can do to better my and others' life - ask who you can sue".
> They can only be created by an act of government, and can only continue to exist through the special privileges that government provides.
HUH? What are you smoking, and can I pretty please have some of it?
I can start a corporation tomorrow provided I want to pay the legal fees for registering it.
Oh, and I expect you to get rid of ALL of your s and your families pension plans, 401ks and investements. 'cause otherwise, you're a representative of a corporation by virtue of being an evil shareholder, on whose behalf said corporation(s) outsourced jobs.
> People are people. Corporations are corporations > Anyone who can't see the difference is an idiot.
Actually, you're way wrong (I'll try to be a bit above overall/. morals and avoid calling you an idiot).
Corporation, in the end, *is* its shareholders. Which, among others, include the little old lady whose pension is invested in that "evil corporation" you hate so much, or me (and average geek) who's a shareholder both due to my investing in the market and being partially bonused with company stock, or probably you if you got 401k plan (or 200.5k plan as it is commonly known after 2001 bubble bust:)
Repeat after me: legally, and philosophically, the MAIN purpose of a company is to provide return on investement to its shareholders. Everything else (creating jobs, making products, suing people, paying salaries, ruling the world, etc...) are either byproducs of fulfilling that main purpose or side effects of the process of fulfilling it.
Well, it it a common knowledge among people who have an actual understanding of politics. Most of whom apparently aren't the type who posts comments like the grandparent of this:)
Not really. It's a useless right for them, just as a bunch of other rights are useless for me. We weren't discuessing having USEFUL rights for anyone, only equal.
If you read my earlier post carefully, i'm advocating making it even MORE equal, by stripping any rights from married man+woman unless they are related to raising children. BTW, that'd be disadvantageous to me - i'm married but have no kids yet.
> How grateful would you be for the right to have sex with a man?
#1: Why are you assuming i'm not a woman? Discriminating, eh?:) #2: I would be, because it means I have the same right as anyone else.
> So all of those kids raised by single parents are insane and ill?
Such kids CAN turn out OK (but if you think it through logically, to obtain that result, single parent needs to put in a LOT more effort), but:
1) Most importantly, statistics show that disproportionate number of law-breakers actually come from single-parent families
2) Also, usually to turn out OK, the kid needs some sort of "other-parent" figure anyway (usually relative, or family friend, or coach etc..). So this is just an exception proving the rule.
So your simple observation is, indeed, too simple to disprove anything.
Just interesting, what's Chain of Custody rules going to be like for SMS?
(For those who've never seen this term, any legal issues dealing with digital technology have pretty complicated rules called Chain of Custody meant to ensure lack of tampering with evidence. I'm guessing same applies to non-digital evidence, but I only heard the term as applied to forensics related to computer security).
> If you're going to bring the bible up, at least know what it says...
Well, let's start with: If you're going to bring the Bible up, at least know that there're two parts to it, Old and New testament. In case you didn't read the post you're replying to (then again, it's/., so who needs to), the ONLY one I mentioned was OT, and youre quoting NT. Nor did I mention a single time anything related t Christians. I'm not even a Christian in the first place.
You have set up a very nice strawman in your post, and successfuly demolished it - I even 100% agree with you. Christian logic when it comes to gays isn't very logical (or good), and probably was the cause of Turing's death.
But my post have not been based logically on anything said in the OT or NT - I merely mentioned the origins of the whole anti-gay legalities as an aside in the end of my post, as a preemptive move to stop exactly such strawman arguments as yours (Bible condemns gays && Bible defines marriage:=man+woman && Homofobia is bad => Marriage between man+woman is bad).
> What about a man and three women? Four men and two women? I think any of those combinations is capable of "raising children".
First off, none of the combinations above contradict my requirement of "man and a woman". Whether they are more or less beneficial for a child's well-being, I don't know. Considering our evolution, poligamy isn't something "unheard of" or outrageously weird.
However, we were talking about gay marriage, not poligamy. Psychologically and medically, a child needs both a mother and a father (at least one of each).
Yes, I know some straight "fathers" and "mothers" aren't so good at parenting and do a lot worse than a decent gay couple would. But these are not the norm, but exception.
> If so, then why is bi/tri/polygamy illegal in the US (except Utah, where IIRC it's not exactly legal but they turn a blind eye to it).
Why is it illegal? Because most laws were written with Christian influence, especially this one. (Please note that it's strictly Christan, not Judeo-Cristian in this case - Judaism adopted monogamy into law only recently (in the last 2000 years), only among Jews living in Christian societies, and purely for the purpose of not breaking the laws of those societies. Historically, Jews were poligamists which is where Mormons got the idea from in the first place.
Matter of fact, I don't object to poligamy as living/sexual arrangements in any way, shape or form. Now, as for raising children, I don't have a strong opinion because I don't know the facts. But i DO know the facts as far as requirering at least a male and female presence for a child.
-DVK
P.S. Hehehe.... as usual, my original post wos modded down 0 Flamebate.../. method of discussion in action - mod down anything you disagree with.
> considering a leader of a democratic nation wants to amend the constitution in order to deny rights to the homosexual segment of the population.
WRONG. Last time I checked, homosexuals have exactly the same right as heterosexuals - to join in a government-registered union (a.k.a. marriage) with a member of the opposite sex.
AGAIN, there's absolutely nothing prohibiting homosexuals to marry, thus it's not a question of equal rights.
This issues are: 1) What is defined as marriage. 2) How that state (as defined in Q.#1) affects government laws/policy.
And guess what, when it comes to DEFINING marriage, it is logical to propose that only a man and a woman are married, since that is what is required to raise children by human evolution.
By the way, before you flame me based on some "people don't get married to have kids" and other similar arguments used in defending gay marriage, I officially state that my position on the issue: IMO, ALL (100%) of government policy (such as taxes, inheritance, benefits, many others) be defined EXCLUSIVELY in terms of having/raising kids, NOT of state-or-religoin-or-whatever-sanctioned state of cohabitation. Again, if you're married with no kids, you're treated 100% as if you were two separate adults. End of story. No more unequal treatment of gay couples compared to straight ones. We seem to have forgotten that the whole set of family/marriage incentives primarily originated to benefit not the married couple itself but their raising kids.
Leave it to/. to mod left-wing propaganda lie as +5 Insiteful.
> One has to wonder if President Bush would approve of forcing chemical castration on homosexuals today.
No, one has to wonder why such idiotic drivel got modded up. Then again, it's/.
Oh, and in case you want to anti-bible-thump again, the Kernel of Judeo-Christian norality (A.K.A. Old Testament) explicitly does NOT condemn gays, only hay sex - and for totally un-discriminatory reason. That prohibition is of the same set as onanism/sodomy/bestiality/any other type of sex where a man's sperm is not used inside a female reproductive organs. In other words, wanting to screw a guy is not a sin. Doing so is. Please note the difference. Interestingly enough, Old Testament has no prohibition on lesbian sex at all - it was later prohibited by Rabbis as "indecent behavior", but such prohibition has a lot less religious weight than what the Book says.
Evolution is Not a strategy aimed at achieving any goal. It's a process of change whereby forms of life adapt to changing environment via selection and a bunch of other biological mechanisms too interesting and complicated to fit in a/. post.
> One thing I've been thinking about recently is what if there was an intelligent dinosaur? If said intelligent dino only built structures from wood I highly doubt any evidence would exist 65million years after they died out.
Sorry to bust the feeling of original discovery for you, but "Evolution" by Stephen Baxter explored the idea pretty well:)
Joy's solution, as some posts here already indicated, is invalid due to the underlying logic of the problem he poses: - We may have VERY destructive technologies - Those technologies might be developed/obtained by small entities (up to an individual) who may not always be responsible in their use/effect.
His solution is: Limit the spread of development.
Problems with his solution: 1) It's virtually impossible to limit scientific/technological development. There will always be some rogue or naive/dumb/uncaring guy who will do the R&D anyway.
2) As mentioned in one post in the thread below, human nature is such taht there are ALWAYS loonies of varying degrees. With sufficiently dangerous technology (as per problem #1, that technology is inevitable), it's only a matter of time before sufficiently looney person/group gets his/her hands on sufficiently destructive tool.
Therefore, there are only 3 possible solutions, all of them technological:
A) Extreme push towards any technology which will enable humans to spread off-earth. "Baskets/eggs" logic. If we are almost guaranteed to wipe ourselves out planetwide, we need to have off-site backups.
B) Concentration on developing solution to looniness. Unfortunately, taht may be innate property of human brain, and as such, the only possible solution I can see is uber-mass-mind-control technologies (bombarding everyoe with "thou shall not murder" and "thou shall ask others for bad consequence of your ideas 100% of the time" might work on eliminating both problems #1 and #2 mentioned above)
C) Concentration to developing solutions to dangerous technology. Artificial uber-antivirii for artivicial uber-virii, anti-gray-goo for gray goo, etc...
Yeah, and if I was a shareholder in the company (like, y'know, that old lady who keeps her retirement money in a mutual fund which invests in this company), i'd vote to give that HR a BIG bonus. 'Cause if some arsehole manager decided to be upset by this, he COULD have sued, and cost the company (including the shareholders), lots of money.
The purpose of HR, in case nobody have explained to you, is NOT to serve you. It's to serve the company's interests, by: 1) Implementing policies ensuring safe/"positive" workplace environment for ALL within the company, or at the very least making their best effort.
Translation: that 2-hour lecture on sexual harrassment you had to suffer through was NOT there mainly for your educational benefit. It was so that someone who sues the company for sexual harrassment wouldn't be able to say "they encouraged it by not educating people that SH is bad".
2) Making it more pleasant to work in the company as long as #1 is not violated (thereby promoting hiring and retention of better personnel than other companies).
E.g, they are responsible for providing you wuth tangible (such as insurance) and intangible (such as commemorative lucite cube) benefits. Again, as in Asimov, #2 is only so far as it doesn't imfringe on #1 - even if playing a "you're 45" joke on a guy is fun and increases your morale, it DOES potencially open the company up to a major lawsuit and thus is not a Good Thing.
Oh, and I'm not a company whore or HR person, FYI. Matter o fact i'm a developer who quit a major company 2 days ago because of very bad management 2 levels above mine.
> change the Sixth Commandment from "Thou shalt not kill" to "Thou shalt not kill unless you have a really good reason"
Uhh... Sorry to ruin your joke, but in the original, it WAS exactly "Thou shalt not kill unless you have a really good reason", aka "Though shall not murder". It got lost in the translation, leading to current Vatican's idiotic anti-death-penalty position (uh... this from the guys who invented Crusades, witch hunts and Inquizition?:)
Slashdot Mirror
> As if there wasn't already a war for oil...
Yep... you're right. Saddam did invade Kuwait for oil.
Oh, was your dumbnessness referring to US invasion of Iraq, which had the (predicted) net effect of RAISING oil prices both short (due to the war/security situation) and long term compared to simply shutting down the whole embargo and buying oil from Saddam on the cheap (a lot cheaper than tnew Iraqi government will sell it)?
Oh yeah, I forgot, you're a liberal and live in your own world... you think that USA actually OWNS all the oil resources in Iraq after the war and gets that oil free.
*sigh*
> We can debate good vs. bad, but you can't say that socialism has won the day and is the dominant form of industrial activity. History and current stats show us otherwise.
:)
OK, generally a well-thought-out response, but you're forgetting one important fact:
USSR may have (luckily) disintegrated after 70 years, but in that timeframe if fucked up the environment in its territory as well as many others a WHOLE lot more than entire Western world did in the last 300 years.
Oh, and I actually LIVED in Russia over a half of my life, so I happen to know what I'm talking about
-DVK
> I wouldn't ask scifi writers can/should we terraform. I would ask ethicists if we should, and chemists, astrophysicists, etc if we can.
Unless ethics is a real scientific discipline (as in, you can obtain verifyable results based on *scientific methods*, as opposed to a bunch of BS handwaving, asking and ethicist about an answer to anything important is dumb.
While an ethicist would be very good at coming up with QUESTIONS or ISSUES, their discipline is not designed for answering them, if only because they are unaware of the factors affecting the decision and because there are no un-questionable assumptions in ethics for most part.
You can not *prove* whether wiping out a rare frog species is ethical or not (or for a more real life example, whether torturing people to obtain information in ticking bomb scenario).
It depends on te underlying assumptions which are only true or false subjectively.
As far as I'm concerned, the only provable "corect" ethics is the one which establishes a "more successful" ESS (Evolutionary Stable Strategy) for a given set of humans.
And we don't know nearly enough to compute which one that is, due to various side effects.
-DVK
Define Irony: all Slashdotters cheering for a company taht was (almost) fully funded by blood money of Evil Empire of Micro$oft.
P.S. best of luck and successful flight to Mike and SS1 people.
-DVK
> > > There was only 1 first man on the moon.
> > Who gives a damn who else went later from the USSR.
> Um, nobody went later from the USSR. The US is the only country to have sent men to the moon, although the USSR did have some interesting robotic probes that made it up there (and a few that made the return trip, as well).
Well, USSR had more than just interesting robotic probes.
It also had a near-ready piloted moon program (look up N-1), that was (unfortunately) scrapped when Americans beat them to the moon as politically non-necessary and embarassing.
Unfortunately, because if N-1 program had continued successfully, Space Race would have gone on and we (USA) would have never went so far back in our space exploration capabilities.
***I*** am from Soviet Russia, you insensitive clod :)
:)
So's my wife, BTW, who just spent 2 hours watching me play Heros of Might and Magic 2 (with some exceptions, she likes to watch, not play
-DVK
> Furthermore, think about a "technological war" fought over the internet. If all of the techs are siding with or in another country, we're hosed.
/., and watching how it's moderated, I must say it appears that all of the techs (at least /. ones) WILL be siding with or be in another country.
After reading
Now, let's get to the modding down for violating GoupThink.
> So what if in 50 years we all speak Spanglish with an Indian accent?
So, the problem is that Irish came and tried to be Americans of Irish descent (and speak English with an accent).
Many Spanish come in and:
- Try to be Spanish.
- Speak spanish and NOT speak English (and use MY tax dollars to pay for their fucking bilingual government forms etc..).
- Most importantly, try to not be American in spirit.
- And to top it off, call themselves "minority" despite statistically not being even close, and demand extr provileges because of that.
BTW, this is not an ethnic attack - Cubans, who're just as Spanish as Mexicans, are in this regard as "good" immigrants as Irish. They consider themselves Americans. They speak English in addition to their native language. Ditto for most Asian immigrants, or USSR ones (except for the Brighton Beach subculture, but they are not exactly representative of most fUSSR immigrants).
Oh, and for the "culturally sensitive" morons who want to label me an immigrant basher - I'm a first generation immigrant. Except i too come from an immigrant culture where majority of its members try to become as much Americans as possible, and speak English.
-DVK
> Slashdot's reader base is finding it more interesting to complain and play the victim than actually put some effort, thought, and most importantly creativity into improving their situation.
They are simply exibiting the sheep-like mentality of modern day liberals, who seem to venerate JFK without bothering to remember what he stood for ("And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you--ask what you can do for your country.")
These days, it's all about "Ask not what I can do to better my and others' life - ask who you can sue".
-DVK
> They can only be created by an act of government, and can only continue to exist through the special privileges that government provides.
HUH? What are you smoking, and can I pretty please have some of it?
I can start a corporation tomorrow provided I want to pay the legal fees for registering it.
Oh, and I expect you to get rid of ALL of your s and your families pension plans, 401ks and investements. 'cause otherwise, you're a representative of a corporation by virtue of being an evil shareholder, on whose behalf said corporation(s) outsourced jobs.
-DVK
> People are people. Corporations are corporations
/. morals and avoid calling you an idiot).
:)
> Anyone who can't see the difference is an idiot.
Actually, you're way wrong (I'll try to be a bit above overall
Corporation, in the end, *is* its shareholders.
Which, among others, include the little old lady whose pension is invested in that "evil corporation" you hate so much, or me (and average geek) who's a shareholder both due to my investing in the market and being partially bonused with company stock, or probably you if you got 401k plan (or 200.5k plan as it is commonly known after 2001 bubble bust
Repeat after me: legally, and philosophically, the MAIN purpose of a company is to provide return on investement to its shareholders. Everything else (creating jobs, making products, suing people, paying salaries, ruling the world, etc...) are either byproducs of fulfilling that main purpose or side effects of the process of fulfilling it.
-DVK
Well, it it a common knowledge among people who have an actual understanding of politics. Most of whom apparently aren't the type who posts comments like the grandparent of this :)
> Do you want them to be thankful for that?
:)
Not really. It's a useless right for them, just as a bunch of other rights are useless for me.
We weren't discuessing having USEFUL rights for anyone, only equal.
If you read my earlier post carefully, i'm advocating making it even MORE equal, by stripping any rights from married man+woman unless they are related to raising children.
BTW, that'd be disadvantageous to me - i'm married but have no kids yet.
> How grateful would you be for the right to have sex with a man?
#1: Why are you assuming i'm not a woman? Discriminating, eh?
#2: I would be, because it means I have the same right as anyone else.
> So all of those kids raised by single parents are insane and ill?
Such kids CAN turn out OK (but if you think it through logically, to obtain that result, single parent needs to put in a LOT more effort), but:
1) Most importantly, statistics show that disproportionate number of law-breakers actually come from single-parent families
2) Also, usually to turn out OK, the kid needs some sort of "other-parent" figure anyway (usually relative, or family friend, or coach etc..). So this is just an exception proving the rule.
So your simple observation is, indeed, too simple to disprove anything.
Just interesting, what's Chain of Custody rules going to be like for SMS?
(For those who've never seen this term, any legal issues dealing with digital technology have pretty complicated rules called Chain of Custody meant to ensure lack of tampering with evidence. I'm guessing same applies to non-digital evidence, but I only heard the term as applied to forensics related to computer security).
> If you're going to bring the bible up, at least know what it says...
/., so who needs to), the ONLY one I mentioned was OT, and youre quoting NT.
Well, let's start with:
If you're going to bring the Bible up, at least know that there're two parts to it, Old and New testament.
In case you didn't read the post you're replying to (then again, it's
Nor did I mention a single time anything related t Christians. I'm not even a Christian in the first place.
You have set up a very nice strawman in your post, and successfuly demolished it - I even 100% agree with you. Christian logic when it comes to gays isn't very logical (or good), and probably was the cause of Turing's death.
But my post have not been based logically on anything said in the OT or NT - I merely mentioned the origins of the whole anti-gay legalities as an aside in the end of my post, as a preemptive move to stop exactly such strawman arguments as yours (Bible condemns gays && Bible defines marriage:=man+woman && Homofobia is bad => Marriage between man+woman is bad).
> What about a man and three women? Four men and two women? I think any of those combinations is capable of "raising children".
/. method of discussion in action - mod down anything you disagree with.
First off, none of the combinations above contradict my requirement of "man and a woman". Whether they are more or less beneficial for a child's well-being, I don't know. Considering our evolution, poligamy isn't something "unheard of" or outrageously weird.
However, we were talking about gay marriage, not poligamy. Psychologically and medically, a child needs both a mother and a father (at least one of each).
Yes, I know some straight "fathers" and "mothers" aren't so good at parenting and do a lot worse than a decent gay couple would. But these are not the norm, but exception.
> If so, then why is bi/tri/polygamy illegal in the US (except Utah, where IIRC it's not exactly legal but they turn a blind eye to it).
Why is it illegal? Because most laws were written with Christian influence, especially this one. (Please note that it's strictly Christan, not Judeo-Cristian in this case - Judaism adopted monogamy into law only recently (in the last 2000 years), only among Jews living in Christian societies, and purely for the purpose of not breaking the laws of those societies. Historically, Jews were poligamists which is where Mormons got the idea from in the first place.
Matter of fact, I don't object to poligamy as living/sexual arrangements in any way, shape or form. Now, as for raising children, I don't have a strong opinion because I don't know the facts. But i DO know the facts as far as requirering at least a male and female presence for a child.
-DVK
P.S. Hehehe.... as usual, my original post wos modded down 0 Flamebate...
> considering a leader of a democratic nation wants to amend the constitution in order to deny rights to the homosexual segment of the population.
/. to mod left-wing propaganda lie as +5 Insiteful.
/.
WRONG.
Last time I checked, homosexuals have exactly the same right as heterosexuals - to join in a government-registered union (a.k.a. marriage) with a member of the opposite sex.
AGAIN, there's absolutely nothing prohibiting homosexuals to marry, thus it's not a question of equal rights.
This issues are:
1) What is defined as marriage.
2) How that state (as defined in Q.#1) affects government laws/policy.
And guess what, when it comes to DEFINING marriage, it is logical to propose that only a man and a woman are married, since that is what is required to raise children by human evolution.
By the way, before you flame me based on some "people don't get married to have kids" and other similar arguments used in defending gay marriage, I officially state that my position on the issue:
IMO, ALL (100%) of government policy (such as taxes, inheritance, benefits, many others) be defined EXCLUSIVELY in terms of having/raising kids, NOT of state-or-religoin-or-whatever-sanctioned state of cohabitation. Again, if you're married with no kids, you're treated 100% as if you were two separate adults. End of story. No more unequal treatment of gay couples compared to straight ones.
We seem to have forgotten that the whole set of family/marriage incentives primarily originated to benefit not the married couple itself but their raising kids.
Leave it to
> One has to wonder if President Bush would approve of forcing chemical castration on homosexuals today.
No, one has to wonder why such idiotic drivel got modded up. Then again, it's
Oh, and in case you want to anti-bible-thump again, the Kernel of Judeo-Christian norality (A.K.A. Old Testament) explicitly does NOT condemn gays, only hay sex - and for totally un-discriminatory reason. That prohibition is of the same set as onanism/sodomy/bestiality/any other type of sex where a man's sperm is not used inside a female reproductive organs. In other words, wanting to screw a guy is not a sin. Doing so is. Please note the difference.
Interestingly enough, Old Testament has no prohibition on lesbian sex at all - it was later prohibited by Rabbis as "indecent behavior", but such prohibition has a lot less religious weight than what the Book says.
-DVK
Someone MOD PARENT UP please!!!
/. post.
Evolution is Not a strategy aimed at achieving any goal. It's a process of change whereby forms of life adapt to changing environment via selection and a bunch of other biological mechanisms too interesting and complicated to fit in a
-DVK
> The pyrimids are giant piles of stone. Technology wise they are relatively simple. The real challenge was organization.
:)
Hmm... Perhaps Ancient Egyptians discovered Six Sigma?
[ Disclaimer: I am fortunate enough to not even know what Six Sigma is other than it's somehow management related and Bad For You ]
-DVK
> One thing I've been thinking about recently is what if there was an intelligent dinosaur? If said intelligent dino only built structures from wood I highly doubt any evidence would exist 65million years after they died out.
:)
Sorry to bust the feeling of original discovery for you, but "Evolution" by Stephen Baxter explored the idea pretty well
Joy's solution, as some posts here already indicated, is invalid due to the underlying logic of the problem he poses:
- We may have VERY destructive technologies
- Those technologies might be developed/obtained by small entities (up to an individual) who may not always be responsible in their use/effect.
His solution is: Limit the spread of development.
Problems with his solution:
1) It's virtually impossible to limit scientific/technological development. There will always be some rogue or naive/dumb/uncaring guy who will do the R&D anyway.
2) As mentioned in one post in the thread below, human nature is such taht there are ALWAYS loonies of varying degrees. With sufficiently dangerous technology (as per problem #1, that technology is inevitable), it's only a matter of time before sufficiently looney person/group gets his/her hands on sufficiently destructive tool.
Therefore, there are only 3 possible solutions, all of them technological:
A) Extreme push towards any technology which will enable humans to spread off-earth. "Baskets/eggs" logic. If we are almost guaranteed to wipe ourselves out planetwide, we need to have off-site backups.
B) Concentration on developing solution to looniness. Unfortunately, taht may be innate property of human brain, and as such, the only possible solution I can see is uber-mass-mind-control technologies (bombarding everyoe with "thou shall not murder" and "thou shall ask others for bad consequence of your ideas 100% of the time" might work on eliminating both problems #1 and #2 mentioned above)
C) Concentration to developing solutions to dangerous technology. Artificial uber-antivirii for artivicial uber-virii, anti-gray-goo for gray goo, etc...
-DVK
Looking through the names in the article, none jumped out at me as book publishers advocating free-er distribution of books. Looks lke Jim Baen (http://www.baen.com/library/defaultTitles.htm) and/or Eric Flint (http://www.baen.com/library/palaver_index.htm) would be someone fitting pretty well in that event.
-DVK
Yeah, and if I was a shareholder in the company (like, y'know, that old lady who keeps her retirement money in a mutual fund which invests in this company), i'd vote to give that HR a BIG bonus.
'Cause if some arsehole manager decided to be upset by this, he COULD have sued, and cost the company (including the shareholders), lots of money.
The purpose of HR, in case nobody have explained to you, is NOT to serve you. It's to serve the company's interests, by:
1) Implementing policies ensuring safe/"positive" workplace environment for ALL within the company, or at the very least making their best effort.
Translation: that 2-hour lecture on sexual harrassment you had to suffer through was NOT there mainly for your educational benefit. It was so that someone who sues the company for sexual harrassment wouldn't be able to say "they encouraged it by not educating people that SH is bad".
2) Making it more pleasant to work in the company as long as #1 is not violated (thereby promoting hiring and retention of better personnel than other companies).
E.g, they are responsible for providing you wuth tangible (such as insurance) and intangible (such as commemorative lucite cube) benefits.
Again, as in Asimov, #2 is only so far as it doesn't imfringe on #1 - even if playing a "you're 45" joke on a guy is fun and increases your morale, it DOES potencially open the company up to a major lawsuit and thus is not a Good Thing.
Oh, and I'm not a company whore or HR person, FYI. Matter o fact i'm a developer who quit a major company 2 days ago because of very bad management 2 levels above mine.
-DVK
> change the Sixth Commandment from "Thou shalt not kill" to "Thou shalt not kill unless you have a really good reason"
:)
Uhh... Sorry to ruin your joke, but in the original, it WAS exactly "Thou shalt not kill unless you have a really good reason", aka "Though shall not murder". It got lost in the translation, leading to current Vatican's idiotic anti-death-penalty position (uh... this from the guys who invented Crusades, witch hunts and Inquizition?
-DVK