I don't think this was a rocket of any kind. Consider the scale of the explosion if it was seen all over Norway on a given night. How big exactly was that burst of light, and how far away was it? Unless that was a honkin' big missile able to withstand who knows how many Gs of pressure from spinning tightly and then blowing up with a nuclear warhead, I don't believe that was a missile. Of course, I reserve the right to be completely wrong.
From what I've read of the Koran, being a Muslim is an intensely self-centered act of surrender to God, in which no government or authority on earth can interfere with. You surrender your perceived control of your self and submit to God's will directly without an intercessor (Jesus or Mohammed or the Pope) because Islam is supposed to be based on the faith of Abraham, which is the progenitor to Judaism and Christianity. Historically, Mohammed never intended for a priesthood to arise (I'm basing this off Karen Armstrong's work, don't have a direct citation for you). He was emphatic that he was not to be worshipped, and the immediate founders of the ummah were not to be worshipped as well.
It appears to me that what you're referring to (regarding Islam and the state and how a Muslim can't be a muslim unless they are part of a nation state or something - you're very vague on that) is how Arab culture subsumed Islam and turned it into a political empire. Islam as politics and Islam as religion are two completely different animals, and the same can definitely be said for Christianity and Judaism. The muslim laws (shariah) you're referring to, are the collections of decisions made by later priests based on their interpretations of the Koran and given the weight of law. But they are not actually in the Koran, and they are subject to cultural interpretation and political whims. You would do better to study the Moors of Spain to see what a proper Islamic society was. As for the child-rapist thing, I would remind you that back then, it was customary for girls that young to wed men in Arab, Jewish, and even Christian culture. Hell, up until the beginning of the last century we had American Christian men marrying 12 and 13 year olds. So you're trying to pull a straw man argument there.
Your points, when you're attacking the political culture of Islam as defined by a state, are mostly valid. But you are making an error in combining Islam as political culture and Islam as religion. Unfortunately, I will concede to you that most people, many Muslims (and Christians, and Jews) make the same mistake. We are only human after all, and definitely not perfect
So I screwed up my percentages as pointed out below. The actual number would be more like 48K instead of 4 million. I shall concede the debate. I was wrong.
Nothing, because I am horribly and hideously wrong and my math sucks. Apparently I am a cynic who does not believe the best of my fellow human. This was my error, and I apologize.:-)
Yeah, I had it delivered via rabid bat to your chimney. Whether you had a chimney or not was beside the question:-P My math was screwed up. I apologize!
Approximate population of the state of Florida is about 15.9 million people. Of that 15.9 million, only 4% bear concealed weapons permits. Note that all of them are pretty much law-abiding citizens, with the exceptions that you pointed out. Not much violence, I'll concede that point - only as long as the percentage of CWP holders stays around 4% OF THE TOTAL POPULATION.
But, let's apply that 0.3% (which is 30%) to the whole 15,900,000. At that point, if you have 15 million people armed, then with the 0.3% revocation rate, that means you would have had 4.7 million people revoked for abusing their firearms. And that's just LEGAL citizens who take the time to apply. At that rate, sir, Florida would be literally awash in blood. And I'm not even taking into account all the media stories about tourists being shot at in Miami, the drug violence, etc. Your analysis and belief is flawed, and the only reason it's true right now, is because of application of scale.
If everyone were like YOU, then I would sleep safe at night because you are a responsible gun owner. Sadly, thanks to individuality and free will, everyone is not. So everyone cannot be trusted with guns, or freedom for that matter
I'd imagine that for every fiercely independent libertarian who demands the right to bear arms in public and claims that everyone should bear arms in order to produce a more civil society, there are at least twenty individuals of various derangements and mental disorders, who are undiagnosed and therefore legal to carry weaponry, who would cheerfully whip out a gun and start shooting random people for whatever funky reason is in their head at the time. Not to mention all the really stupid and/or egotistical people who put too much emphasis on 'honor' and not enough on 'safety' and who will go around with a trigger finger ready to avenge any potential slight they may encounter.
Show me a society in which everyone carries a weapon, and I'll show you an average life expectancy rate of 40 years or so. Most of us simply cannot be trusted with weapons.
So let's say our universe is expanding (doesn't matter if it's this theory or mainstream Big Bang). We already know there's volume beyond the visible edges of our universe. What if there's another universe expanding towards us, accelerating into heat death, and then its edges hit our own? Wouldn't that Big Smack be a Big Crunch? And thus another universe is born?
Well, that'll force me to dig out all my old college textbooks;-)
So, a good place to start would be by researching the Open Door policy on Wikipedia to get an idea of what it was. The original policy was actually set in Berlin with regards to the Congo basin, but the US adapted it to China when the European powers were moving in to claim Chinese territory as their own. From there I would recommend looking at British mercantile trading and China in the 17th and 18th century, and that's where you'll see the literature about the trade imbalance between Britain and China - where the Emperor would only accept payments of silver from foreign envoys in exchange for shipments of tea, silk, spices, etc because of the native Chinese xenophobic attitude against foreign goods and ideas (you can blame the first Ming emperor for that - by some accounts the guy was mentally ill and xenophobic in the extreme). Britain was the first Western country to fall into the China Fallacy trap, and when they realized their currency reserves were dangerously low (they being the royal-sponsored trading companies like the British East India Company) that's when the British moved in and started seizing treaty ports.
"China's going to be a HUGE market!" is the China fallacy, which operates with the assumption that consumers in China are like consumers elsewhere, and that as soon as they get money they will become a gold mine.
That is a fallacy that's been going on for three to four hundred plus years, and contributed directly to the downfall of the Qing Emperor, the Open Door policy, and all the other problems that China's been trying to recover from for the last hundred years. See, China's culture is very nationalistic and one of their flaws is that they believe they are the center of the Earth. In the mercantile age, that meant that China always exported its goods but would only accept silver from the West because western goods were always seen as 'inferior'. It almost bankrupted the British Empire, and did significant economic damage to the other Western countries, so they retaliated by basically taking over China's ports (and the whole country) to boot.
To assume that once THIS happens then China will open up to the West is wrong. China will continue what it's doing right now with the currency, and with it's trade policies: accepting money (in the form of Treasury debt and other convertibles) and exporting its goods without buying our goods, because they do not want to be 'dependent' on us. This is at the heart of the Chinese currency manipulation problem - that China is doing exactly what it did 200+ years ago - hoarding monetary assets while not accepting imports from us and slowly bankrupting us. They're not doing it out of spite, they're doing it because to them, all other countries and cultures are 'inferior' to a degree and they want to be the center of the world - and the center never accepts help from the edges.
That's why the best route for developers is to ignore China. Don't buy into the fallacy, because then you force China to accept your goods, and in doing so, you fix the imbalance.
I think Hodgman has a point. We're steadily embracing geek culture. Interoperable (in an earlier post) also makes a point that we should only take his word so far. Unless we somehow figure out a way to turn geekdom into an ecclesiastical theocracy and imprint our memes upon all of society to forever quash jocks and preppies, there will always be jocks, and there will always be preppies, and there will always be idiots, which is why I'm bringing up Hanlon's Razor here, and General Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord's addendum to Hanlon's Razor.
Currently "jocks" are in charge (aka the smart and industrious). Let's face it, jocks are smart in their chosen fields. However, geeks are the smart and lazy segment, and we are running the world now. Jocks will always be smart and they will always do things the hard way and expend the most effort. Geeks on the other hand, will always be smart, but we're always looking for the most efficient way to do things. That's why we're currently becoming dominant IMHO in the American social structure, and probably why we will continue to be dominant for a while to come
Now, does anyone have a better view or a better argument? I need to learn something today and (sadly) lately the only place where I've been able to learn new things or realize that my assumptions are wrong is/.
This is the fifth time today I've seen you posting today. What awful purpose could possibly have driven you out from your dark hoary crypt? The stars aren't even right yet!
How about the black market and drugs? A "Free" market in the drug trade becomes rapidly overcome by an oligarchy of competing organized criminal interests who, when not taking on each other, will do their best to prevent or co-op upstarts in the name of reducing competition.
But to carry that to its logical conclusion: WE are the government. WE empower the government to act in our names because the vast majority of us are too busy/too stupid/too inexperienced/too dangerous to be allowed to police ourselves and others. So all the individuals, companies, religions, etc come together to form a government. Ultimately (IMHO)your logic fails because the end result is to trust no one save yourself - and it is that ethos which is coloring your argument.
You do have a valid point in saying that I don't have the authority to imprison and/or kill you. But in making that point you undermine your logic in that you are implicitly granting the government that power to imprison and/or kill you, which means that you do trust it to NOT do so, and to prevent others from doing that to you.
We must trust the government to a degree (which is probably where you and I could find our middle ground here), because the alternative is to be governed by the mob, which is far worse. Enlightened Anarchy is an unattainable ideal as long as human individuality remains our single greatest common factor.
I could imprison and/or kill you because I find your actions offensive. And if it weren't for my own innate sense of morality, the government would be the only entity with the ability and the authority to stop me.
You are arguing from an innate anti-government bias, which is coloring your logic. I suspect that you are a very individualistic person with a higher degree of conscience and responsibility than most. Good for you. However, just because you may be, does not mean that your opinions about the nature of government are indeed fact.
If they're not Real Estate Agents/Mortgage Brokers/Daytime Call Girls, they're vampires. You never EVER see them during the day, they pancake on the make-up with a trowel for good reason, and most of them are either taken by large burly boyfriends, or not interested in anything with a Y chromosome.
Oh, to be a young college grad working in Vegas!
Been there, done that. Fought in the dating wars in Vegas from '01-'06. And the only way you ever got lucky was if you had money (to buy girls with), or were a "Vegas Boy", meaning you had no body fat, perfect abs, perfect tan, perfect teeth, perfect hair, wore polo shirts and khaki shorts, and generally sported more bling than most girls do. Oh, and driving a hot car. Just remember, Vegas is one of the few places left in the US where you don't have to have a high school degree to make 40K a year. Lotsa dim, good-looking young boys and girls come to Vegas to party, work crap jobs and make lots of money, which they then promptly spend on partying, and repeat.
And prostitution is legal!
Now this is a valid point. But prostitution is only legal in certain sections of the county, and not in Clark County. So you'd have to drive an hour northwest to Pahrump, where the brothels are at. This is what the smart guys do. Prostitution is NOT legal in Vegas itself, and Vegas Metro's Vice division has lots of fun arresting stupid young dicks trying to pick some tail up when they could have driven an hour away and had lots of tail for the same amount of cash LEGALLY. And then there's the stories of all the scams and robberies perpetrated... Oh yes, loads of fun. Couldn't leave there fast enough.
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I don't think this was a rocket of any kind. Consider the scale of the explosion if it was seen all over Norway on a given night. How big exactly was that burst of light, and how far away was it? Unless that was a honkin' big missile able to withstand who knows how many Gs of pressure from spinning tightly and then blowing up with a nuclear warhead, I don't believe that was a missile. Of course, I reserve the right to be completely wrong.
Post as yourself and not as an AC, and then I'll take you on.
Coward.
From what I've read of the Koran, being a Muslim is an intensely self-centered act of surrender to God, in which no government or authority on earth can interfere with. You surrender your perceived control of your self and submit to God's will directly without an intercessor (Jesus or Mohammed or the Pope) because Islam is supposed to be based on the faith of Abraham, which is the progenitor to Judaism and Christianity. Historically, Mohammed never intended for a priesthood to arise (I'm basing this off Karen Armstrong's work, don't have a direct citation for you). He was emphatic that he was not to be worshipped, and the immediate founders of the ummah were not to be worshipped as well.
It appears to me that what you're referring to (regarding Islam and the state and how a Muslim can't be a muslim unless they are part of a nation state or something - you're very vague on that) is how Arab culture subsumed Islam and turned it into a political empire. Islam as politics and Islam as religion are two completely different animals, and the same can definitely be said for Christianity and Judaism. The muslim laws (shariah) you're referring to, are the collections of decisions made by later priests based on their interpretations of the Koran and given the weight of law. But they are not actually in the Koran, and they are subject to cultural interpretation and political whims. You would do better to study the Moors of Spain to see what a proper Islamic society was. As for the child-rapist thing, I would remind you that back then, it was customary for girls that young to wed men in Arab, Jewish, and even Christian culture. Hell, up until the beginning of the last century we had American Christian men marrying 12 and 13 year olds. So you're trying to pull a straw man argument there.
Your points, when you're attacking the political culture of Islam as defined by a state, are mostly valid. But you are making an error in combining Islam as political culture and Islam as religion. Unfortunately, I will concede to you that most people, many Muslims (and Christians, and Jews) make the same mistake. We are only human after all, and definitely not perfect
Snark ignored. :-)
So I screwed up my percentages as pointed out below. The actual number would be more like 48K instead of 4 million. I shall concede the debate. I was wrong.
Nothing, because I am horribly and hideously wrong and my math sucks. Apparently I am a cynic who does not believe the best of my fellow human. This was my error, and I apologize. :-)
Yeah, I had it delivered via rabid bat to your chimney. Whether you had a chimney or not was beside the question :-P My math was screwed up. I apologize!
Approximate population of the state of Florida is about 15.9 million people. Of that 15.9 million, only 4% bear concealed weapons permits. Note that all of them are pretty much law-abiding citizens, with the exceptions that you pointed out. Not much violence, I'll concede that point - only as long as the percentage of CWP holders stays around 4% OF THE TOTAL POPULATION.
But, let's apply that 0.3% (which is 30%) to the whole 15,900,000. At that point, if you have 15 million people armed, then with the 0.3% revocation rate, that means you would have had 4.7 million people revoked for abusing their firearms. And that's just LEGAL citizens who take the time to apply. At that rate, sir, Florida would be literally awash in blood. And I'm not even taking into account all the media stories about tourists being shot at in Miami, the drug violence, etc. Your analysis and belief is flawed, and the only reason it's true right now, is because of application of scale.
If everyone were like YOU, then I would sleep safe at night because you are a responsible gun owner. Sadly, thanks to individuality and free will, everyone is not. So everyone cannot be trusted with guns, or freedom for that matter
Sad, but true.
I'd imagine that for every fiercely independent libertarian who demands the right to bear arms in public and claims that everyone should bear arms in order to produce a more civil society, there are at least twenty individuals of various derangements and mental disorders, who are undiagnosed and therefore legal to carry weaponry, who would cheerfully whip out a gun and start shooting random people for whatever funky reason is in their head at the time. Not to mention all the really stupid and/or egotistical people who put too much emphasis on 'honor' and not enough on 'safety' and who will go around with a trigger finger ready to avenge any potential slight they may encounter.
Show me a society in which everyone carries a weapon, and I'll show you an average life expectancy rate of 40 years or so. Most of us simply cannot be trusted with weapons.
So let's say our universe is expanding (doesn't matter if it's this theory or mainstream Big Bang). We already know there's volume beyond the visible edges of our universe. What if there's another universe expanding towards us, accelerating into heat death, and then its edges hit our own? Wouldn't that Big Smack be a Big Crunch? And thus another universe is born?
Well, that'll force me to dig out all my old college textbooks ;-)
So, a good place to start would be by researching the Open Door policy on Wikipedia to get an idea of what it was. The original policy was actually set in Berlin with regards to the Congo basin, but the US adapted it to China when the European powers were moving in to claim Chinese territory as their own. From there I would recommend looking at British mercantile trading and China in the 17th and 18th century, and that's where you'll see the literature about the trade imbalance between Britain and China - where the Emperor would only accept payments of silver from foreign envoys in exchange for shipments of tea, silk, spices, etc because of the native Chinese xenophobic attitude against foreign goods and ideas (you can blame the first Ming emperor for that - by some accounts the guy was mentally ill and xenophobic in the extreme). Britain was the first Western country to fall into the China Fallacy trap, and when they realized their currency reserves were dangerously low (they being the royal-sponsored trading companies like the British East India Company) that's when the British moved in and started seizing treaty ports.
"China's going to be a HUGE market!" is the China fallacy, which operates with the assumption that consumers in China are like consumers elsewhere, and that as soon as they get money they will become a gold mine.
That is a fallacy that's been going on for three to four hundred plus years, and contributed directly to the downfall of the Qing Emperor, the Open Door policy, and all the other problems that China's been trying to recover from for the last hundred years. See, China's culture is very nationalistic and one of their flaws is that they believe they are the center of the Earth. In the mercantile age, that meant that China always exported its goods but would only accept silver from the West because western goods were always seen as 'inferior'. It almost bankrupted the British Empire, and did significant economic damage to the other Western countries, so they retaliated by basically taking over China's ports (and the whole country) to boot.
To assume that once THIS happens then China will open up to the West is wrong. China will continue what it's doing right now with the currency, and with it's trade policies: accepting money (in the form of Treasury debt and other convertibles) and exporting its goods without buying our goods, because they do not want to be 'dependent' on us. This is at the heart of the Chinese currency manipulation problem - that China is doing exactly what it did 200+ years ago - hoarding monetary assets while not accepting imports from us and slowly bankrupting us. They're not doing it out of spite, they're doing it because to them, all other countries and cultures are 'inferior' to a degree and they want to be the center of the world - and the center never accepts help from the edges.
That's why the best route for developers is to ignore China. Don't buy into the fallacy, because then you force China to accept your goods, and in doing so, you fix the imbalance.
Thank you for posting this so succinctly. If I had mod points, I'd use them :-)
Actually, I applaud you for using your user name!
That is the best damn response I've read in a while. Too bad you're an AC.
I think Hodgman has a point. We're steadily embracing geek culture. Interoperable (in an earlier post) also makes a point that we should only take his word so far. Unless we somehow figure out a way to turn geekdom into an ecclesiastical theocracy and imprint our memes upon all of society to forever quash jocks and preppies, there will always be jocks, and there will always be preppies, and there will always be idiots, which is why I'm bringing up Hanlon's Razor here, and General Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord's addendum to Hanlon's Razor.
Currently "jocks" are in charge (aka the smart and industrious). Let's face it, jocks are smart in their chosen fields. However, geeks are the smart and lazy segment, and we are running the world now. Jocks will always be smart and they will always do things the hard way and expend the most effort. Geeks on the other hand, will always be smart, but we're always looking for the most efficient way to do things. That's why we're currently becoming dominant IMHO in the American social structure, and probably why we will continue to be dominant for a while to come
Now, does anyone have a better view or a better argument? I need to learn something today and (sadly) lately the only place where I've been able to learn new things or realize that my assumptions are wrong is /.
yo Mods, hit this shit like you owe it money! Mod this up!
And I shall furiously refute any attempts to rectify my cognitive dissonance to the contrary!
This is the fifth time today I've seen you posting today. What awful purpose could possibly have driven you out from your dark hoary crypt? The stars aren't even right yet!
your understanding of Kilgore Trout needs some serious work. I'm thinking orders of magnitude
How about the black market and drugs? A "Free" market in the drug trade becomes rapidly overcome by an oligarchy of competing organized criminal interests who, when not taking on each other, will do their best to prevent or co-op upstarts in the name of reducing competition.
But to carry that to its logical conclusion: WE are the government. WE empower the government to act in our names because the vast majority of us are too busy/too stupid/too inexperienced/too dangerous to be allowed to police ourselves and others. So all the individuals, companies, religions, etc come together to form a government. Ultimately (IMHO)your logic fails because the end result is to trust no one save yourself - and it is that ethos which is coloring your argument.
You do have a valid point in saying that I don't have the authority to imprison and/or kill you. But in making that point you undermine your logic in that you are implicitly granting the government that power to imprison and/or kill you, which means that you do trust it to NOT do so, and to prevent others from doing that to you.
We must trust the government to a degree (which is probably where you and I could find our middle ground here), because the alternative is to be governed by the mob, which is far worse. Enlightened Anarchy is an unattainable ideal as long as human individuality remains our single greatest common factor.
I could imprison and/or kill you because I find your actions offensive. And if it weren't for my own innate sense of morality, the government would be the only entity with the ability and the authority to stop me.
You are arguing from an innate anti-government bias, which is coloring your logic. I suspect that you are a very individualistic person with a higher degree of conscience and responsibility than most. Good for you. However, just because you may be, does not mean that your opinions about the nature of government are indeed fact.
Showgirls.
If they're not Real Estate Agents/Mortgage Brokers/Daytime Call Girls, they're vampires. You never EVER see them during the day, they pancake on the make-up with a trowel for good reason, and most of them are either taken by large burly boyfriends, or not interested in anything with a Y chromosome.
Oh, to be a young college grad working in Vegas!
Been there, done that. Fought in the dating wars in Vegas from '01-'06. And the only way you ever got lucky was if you had money (to buy girls with), or were a "Vegas Boy", meaning you had no body fat, perfect abs, perfect tan, perfect teeth, perfect hair, wore polo shirts and khaki shorts, and generally sported more bling than most girls do. Oh, and driving a hot car. Just remember, Vegas is one of the few places left in the US where you don't have to have a high school degree to make 40K a year. Lotsa dim, good-looking young boys and girls come to Vegas to party, work crap jobs and make lots of money, which they then promptly spend on partying, and repeat.
And prostitution is legal!
Now this is a valid point. But prostitution is only legal in certain sections of the county, and not in Clark County. So you'd have to drive an hour northwest to Pahrump, where the brothels are at. This is what the smart guys do. Prostitution is NOT legal in Vegas itself, and Vegas Metro's Vice division has lots of fun arresting stupid young dicks trying to pick some tail up when they could have driven an hour away and had lots of tail for the same amount of cash LEGALLY. And then there's the stories of all the scams and robberies perpetrated... Oh yes, loads of fun. Couldn't leave there fast enough.