Deer don't have a 'point of view.' They do not conceptualize. They can not think ahead and imagine what it would be like to be killed and eaten. After the deer is dead, there is no deer to have a point of view, as stated in your first point, so: they can not think about it ahead of time, and afterwords they are dead. Your point is moo, it is like a cow's opinion. It's a moo point.:)
If I am in a survival situation, I will do whatever it takes to get myself and my loved ones to safety. After I and my loved ones are safe, I will help others escape the situation.
Let me rephrase my next point: the planet has the carrying capacity to give everyone a decent standard of living. If the majority of people act selfishly, we will fail, if we (the majority, that is) act cooperatively, we can create a future where no one has to fear the desperate actions of starving individuals.
Yes, we the majority need to make sure the selfish minority do not take what is not theirs, and shit where they are not supposed to. You need to read up on modern experiments in game theory. Humans are not primarily self interested. Most people will voluntarily harm themselves to punish selfishness in others. When a society has degraded to the point it is primarily selfish, people will act selfishly out of necessity, but when cooperation is rewarded and selfishness punished, everyone is happier, has more freedom, and a greater chance of survival and satisfaction.
This science has been peer reviewed and stands up to scrutiny. Only sociopaths act selfishly all the time, and we (the non sociopaths) do not need to take their desires into account. It is perfectly fine to kill someone who would kill you and everyone you love without any qualms. Heck, we'd be doing society a favor if we wiped out all the sociopathic non-cooperators rather than letting them take advantage of our good nature.
Except, sociopathy comes from a spectrum of genetic influences, and if we killed off all the sociopaths, we'd also be removing many of the genes responsible for leadership and survival instincts, probably not a good idea, so we need a system that takes the existence of a small number of sociopaths into account.
Your world view is a self fulfilling prophecy. It seems realistic to you because it creates the conditions it purports to protect you from. It also points to a serious case of confirmation bias. You easily ignore data that does not support your worldview, rather than changing your worldview to incorporate the new data into a cohesive framework, but don't feel bad, the majority of people sem to live that way.
Nature is not exclusively 'red in tooth and claw.' Cooperation is at least as much a part of ecology as competition. Cooperators are simply more likely to survive than pure competitors. Every creature on Earth evolved from the same thing, and uses the same building blocks. Like cells in your body, nothing can live on its own. Everywhere you look you will see altruism and cooperation in nature, as well as violent competition. However, all this is beside the point.
Your argument boils down to a classic naturalistic fallacy. Just because something is a certain way does not mean that is how it should be, or how it must be. We have brains. We aren't simple animals. We can predict the consequences of our actions and adjust our actions accordingly. Another point to consider is that we are not desperate. We are not being chased by a lion. We have enough resources to give everyone on the planet a decent standard of living. When you look at history, resource depletion is one of the primary factors in culture collapse. Some cultures have learned from this and developed sustainable ways of living. Ultimately, those are the cultures with the best long term chance of survival.
Finally, we can punish non-cooperation, making it less profitable than cooperation. Pollution is only potentially profitable to you if your neighbors won't come over and put a stop to your activities. We can change the risk/reward ratio for any activity individuals or groups engage in, whether they like it or not.
In closing, let me just add that I'm glad I don't live in your mental world. It sounds like a lonely and frightening place.
You know, you can still do the same no-sleep schedule with legal amphetamines. I also know people who use speed responsibly, just as if they had been prescribed the legal stuff. A little bump in the morning, a little bump at noon, and that's all for the day. Not saying that's the way to go, the legal stuff is guaranteed pure, but you can abuse that too. If you find yourself crushing and snorting it, well...
"Zero tolerance" is about lifestyle control and more money for the prison-industrial conplex out of our pockets by CEOs and politicians who simply do not give a shit about public safety.
This point can not be overstated. The evidence is there if anyone cares to look at the history of the war on drugs.
I was responding to cyphercell's comment about weed being a gateway drug because of who you meet when you buy it. I agree with you, most pot dealers don't deal harder drugs. But that's beside the point, the 'gateway drug' argument is an argument FOR legalization,as a said.
The 'gateway drug' argument is one of the great arguments for legalization. When a drug is sold only by criminals, then you are likely to be exposed to harder drugs while purchasing your drug of choice. If the drug is sold in a pharmacy, not so much.
However, you seemed to have missed my point about addiction. Let's say someone likes jogging. As in, really, really likes it. They skip work to jog. They cancel on plans with friends to go jog. They miss family gatherings, dates, and any other sort of fun to go jogging. Maybe they even jog so much they damage their feet and knees. That's a problem, isn't it?
Now, let's say they jog a reasonable amount, with friends, and don't screw up other parts of their life or their body to jog. Not a problem, right? Yeah, go ahead and substitute drugs, video games, food, sex, basically anything for 'jogging' and you can see what the real problem of addiction is.
Now, some drugs are worse than others. For instance, I don't know any 60 year old speed freaks. All hard core speed freaks tend to die before then. Opiates are almost as dangerous, cocaine, not quite as much. Hallucinogens have their own set of problems, but addiction isn't usually one of them. So I'm all for treating some drugs like we treat other dangerous activities: require the prospective user to get educated in their use and dangers, and issue them a license.
The thing about addiction is that, in general, it only happens to people who already have problems. A happy, well adjusted person who tries speed is not going to become a speed freak. Drugs are not the root problem. Addicts are merely self-medicating, trying to fix something that was already broken. And abstinence does not fix the underlying problem, at all. Look at the problems dry drunks get themselves and others into because they never fixed the problem that got them started in the first place. Hell, some of them even invade random foreign countries to avenge their fathers.
I'm just saying, not everyone who uses a substance is addicted to it, and not every addiction is bad. The way I see it, there is a wide range of possible drug use styles, from non-use through destructive use. Even heavy daily use is not necessarily destructive. The key things to look for are, does the use interfere with other important parts of your life? Is it messing up your job, your friendships, or your family relations? Then it may be a problem. But someone who drinks two glasses of wine a night, or smokes a joint a day, or plays a few hours of video games a day; but still has friends, holds down a job, and has meaningful relations: this person may be an addict but they aren't causing themselves or others any trouble, so their addictive use is not a problem.
Those guys in uniforms are just people we hired because we are too busy to do it full time. But make no mistake, in any society, it is every member's duty to protect every other member from crime.
Too bad the folks we hired don't see it like that anymore. But the problem isn't the fines, it is the fact that we let the people creating the fines and handing out the fines keep the fines. That's a huge moral hazard right there.
Dumbass, people can circumvent the cell phone blocker, too. Doesn't mean it doesn't work. People can circumvent any technological enforcement, that isn't a reason not to use them. You spoke not a whit about guns, why not? You've completely lost sight of the original argument, and have started bringing up arguments that contradict your original position.
The cell phone blocker is not like a sign. Telling kids not to use cell phones is like the no trespassing sign. The cell phone blocker is more like a gun. You break into my home, well, I have shotguns rigged to a string pointing at all the doors and windows and you get blown away. Same as if your dumb kids try to use a cellphone surreptitiously in class, oops, it just doesn't work, problem solved, and teachers don't have to waste valuable teaching time acting as police and babysitters for assholes.
I don't think existence of a rule constitutes enforcement, THAT'S THE FUCKING POINT, ya moron. The rule is, 'don't use cellphones in school.' If that were its own enforcement, we wouldn't need the cellphone blocker, now would we? You're so far off track now, you couldn't find your way back to your original idiotic point with a map and compass.
I just fucking love giving morons cognitive dissonance so bad they start to argue against their own point. It's like I owned your tiny little brain.
Police could test actual impairment. Some years back I read about an impairment testing device for use in factories and heavy machinery. It's a simple LCD screen with a left-right joystick. A dot moves randomly to the left or the right on the screen, the user tries to keep it in the center using the joystick. If their reaction times are not impaired, the device unlocks the machinery. If they are, for whatever reason, like sleep deprivation, prescription medications, illegal drugs, or whatever, then the machinery remains locked. The police could test actual impairment rather than the presence of things that might or might not impair reactions. This would catch any sort of impairment which might endanger drivers and others on the road. For instance, studies have found that people with severe sleep apnea are about as likely to get in an accident as someone with a.1 BAC. If we are trying to protect people on the roads, rather than simply punish users of certain substances, this would be a fairer option.
So you don't lock your door? Okay. Probably don't keep guns in the house, either? That would be enforcing a rule with a technological solution, and you don't do that.
If you think I'm misusing words, and it is obvious, maybe you could post your interpretation of those words for all to see? That would be entertaining. But the 'all to see' part is pure fantasy, it's just you and me here, bub. Who else do you think is reading this days old thread?
I get it! You aren't sociopathic, you're narcissistic! It's very close to sociopathic, so you can see why I was confused.
No, YOU don't understand the difference between a freedom and a right. And you don't understand what enforcement is, either. Here's a clue for you: this IS enforcement. The rules say, no cell phones in class. This is a simple, technological way of enforcing the rules, just like a lock on a door enforces the rules of private property. Consider yourself schooled, dumbass.
What a selfish, idiotic asshole you are. I live in America, thank you very much. If you piss in a reservoir, you'll be arrested. You have the ability to do it, not the freedom to. Same thing with punching people in the face, you will be arrested. Just because you have the ability to do something, does not mean you have the freedom to. I have the ability to murder you and your whole family in your sleep, but I don't have the freedom to do so. And your kids do not have the freedom to use a cellphone in class. After this law passes they won't have the ability either, thankfully. Case closed, the selfish assholes LOSE, the vast majority of decent citizens WIN, and the crowd goes wild!
You just don't want to be held responsible for your actions, that is plain as day. Your political philosophy boils down to the childish refrain of, "yer not the boss of me!" Well, guess what, if you want to live in a society, other people are the boss of you, that's what you agree to by living with others. If you want to be a selfish ass, don't interact with others. No one is forcing you to, go be a hermit. We'll all be much happier if all the sociopathic assholes moved off to form 'libertopia' or whatever idiotic name the libertarians are giving their fantasy country these days.
But you don't want freedom for others, you only want it for yourself, which is why you bastards have never gone off to make your own country: you want to impose your will on others through force. We want to stop you from using force against us. We are for freedom and you desire tyranny, with yourself as tyrant, of course!
You do realize that socialism and communism are economic systems, and democracy is a political system, right? Most democracies in the first world are socialist democracies.
As for freedom, I too have it. So do my children. When your little scrunts interrupt my kid's lessons with texting and chatting in class, they take away my kids freedom to learn. Which is more important than your little bastard's freedom to chat in class. So cry me a river, you selfish twat, you don't have the freedom to piss in the city water supply, you don't have the freedom to walk around punching people in the face, and your little sociopathic brood does not have the freedom to interrupt other people's learning.
Hmmm, a so called study, posted on the website of one of the guys who performed the study. Said website being a storefront selling dubious 'environmental' products. Color me skeptical.
You can blather on about this all you like, quoting irrelevant shit you don't understand, but it means fuck-all, no one sane believes you, and your theories are worthless. I had a good friend who got seriously burned by this weak ass shit and is now in jail, which is where you will go if you think this crap will get you anywhere in a court of law. So shut up and pay your fucking taxes, you dig it?
He's not saying that your kid doesn't need one. He's saying his kid doesn't need to be distracted by your kid having one. It's called an externality, like pollution and global warming. When your (or your kid's) actions screw things up for everyone else, we are justified in stopping you from imposing your selfish desires on the rest of us. Stop thinking you can do whatever you like without consequences and grow up. And please, if you do have kids, don't teach them to be selfish bastards.
However, I am interested in what possible scenario your child might need a cellphone in class. I somehow managed to get along without one. Hell, even without one, I wasn't allowed to talk to friends during class. Maybe if you are going to teach your kids to be self centered anti-social twats who get to do whatever they like without consequences, you should consider home schooling them.
Things don't necessarily mean what you think they mean, bucky. Your interpretation is just plain whacked. Do NOT attempt to use what you've 'learned' from those books you got from the militia.
This is just absolute bunk. Pretty soon he'll be telling you that you are a corporation owned by the ebil gubmint, that's why they print your name in ALL CAPS!!11eleventy!! Then he will try to sell you books showing you how you don't have to pay taxes because Abraham Lincoln ordered congress to convene at gunpoint and the US has been a military dictatorship since then. If you buy the books and try out the theories, you will go to jail.
In other news today, anonymous sources at the popular nerd news aggregator Slashdot claim that AP are not journalists because they do not investigate and simply repeat what they are told.
Slashdot Mirror
Deer don't have a 'point of view.' They do not conceptualize. They can not think ahead and imagine what it would be like to be killed and eaten. After the deer is dead, there is no deer to have a point of view, as stated in your first point, so: they can not think about it ahead of time, and afterwords they are dead. Your point is moo, it is like a cow's opinion. It's a moo point. :)
If I am in a survival situation, I will do whatever it takes to get myself and my loved ones to safety. After I and my loved ones are safe, I will help others escape the situation.
Let me rephrase my next point: the planet has the carrying capacity to give everyone a decent standard of living. If the majority of people act selfishly, we will fail, if we (the majority, that is) act cooperatively, we can create a future where no one has to fear the desperate actions of starving individuals.
Yes, we the majority need to make sure the selfish minority do not take what is not theirs, and shit where they are not supposed to. You need to read up on modern experiments in game theory. Humans are not primarily self interested. Most people will voluntarily harm themselves to punish selfishness in others. When a society has degraded to the point it is primarily selfish, people will act selfishly out of necessity, but when cooperation is rewarded and selfishness punished, everyone is happier, has more freedom, and a greater chance of survival and satisfaction.
This science has been peer reviewed and stands up to scrutiny. Only sociopaths act selfishly all the time, and we (the non sociopaths) do not need to take their desires into account. It is perfectly fine to kill someone who would kill you and everyone you love without any qualms. Heck, we'd be doing society a favor if we wiped out all the sociopathic non-cooperators rather than letting them take advantage of our good nature.
Except, sociopathy comes from a spectrum of genetic influences, and if we killed off all the sociopaths, we'd also be removing many of the genes responsible for leadership and survival instincts, probably not a good idea, so we need a system that takes the existence of a small number of sociopaths into account.
Your world view is a self fulfilling prophecy. It seems realistic to you because it creates the conditions it purports to protect you from. It also points to a serious case of confirmation bias. You easily ignore data that does not support your worldview, rather than changing your worldview to incorporate the new data into a cohesive framework, but don't feel bad, the majority of people sem to live that way.
Nature is not exclusively 'red in tooth and claw.' Cooperation is at least as much a part of ecology as competition. Cooperators are simply more likely to survive than pure competitors. Every creature on Earth evolved from the same thing, and uses the same building blocks. Like cells in your body, nothing can live on its own. Everywhere you look you will see altruism and cooperation in nature, as well as violent competition. However, all this is beside the point.
Your argument boils down to a classic naturalistic fallacy. Just because something is a certain way does not mean that is how it should be, or how it must be. We have brains. We aren't simple animals. We can predict the consequences of our actions and adjust our actions accordingly. Another point to consider is that we are not desperate. We are not being chased by a lion. We have enough resources to give everyone on the planet a decent standard of living. When you look at history, resource depletion is one of the primary factors in culture collapse. Some cultures have learned from this and developed sustainable ways of living. Ultimately, those are the cultures with the best long term chance of survival.
Finally, we can punish non-cooperation, making it less profitable than cooperation. Pollution is only potentially profitable to you if your neighbors won't come over and put a stop to your activities. We can change the risk/reward ratio for any activity individuals or groups engage in, whether they like it or not.
In closing, let me just add that I'm glad I don't live in your mental world. It sounds like a lonely and frightening place.
You know, you can still do the same no-sleep schedule with legal amphetamines. I also know people who use speed responsibly, just as if they had been prescribed the legal stuff. A little bump in the morning, a little bump at noon, and that's all for the day. Not saying that's the way to go, the legal stuff is guaranteed pure, but you can abuse that too. If you find yourself crushing and snorting it, well...
"Zero tolerance" is about lifestyle control and more money for the prison-industrial conplex out of our pockets by CEOs and politicians who simply do not give a shit about public safety.
This point can not be overstated. The evidence is there if anyone cares to look at the history of the war on drugs.
I was responding to cyphercell's comment about weed being a gateway drug because of who you meet when you buy it. I agree with you, most pot dealers don't deal harder drugs. But that's beside the point, the 'gateway drug' argument is an argument FOR legalization,as a said.
And if the person is just slow to begin with?
They should NOT be driving. Next question?
The 'gateway drug' argument is one of the great arguments for legalization. When a drug is sold only by criminals, then you are likely to be exposed to harder drugs while purchasing your drug of choice. If the drug is sold in a pharmacy, not so much.
However, you seemed to have missed my point about addiction. Let's say someone likes jogging. As in, really, really likes it. They skip work to jog. They cancel on plans with friends to go jog. They miss family gatherings, dates, and any other sort of fun to go jogging. Maybe they even jog so much they damage their feet and knees. That's a problem, isn't it?
Now, let's say they jog a reasonable amount, with friends, and don't screw up other parts of their life or their body to jog. Not a problem, right? Yeah, go ahead and substitute drugs, video games, food, sex, basically anything for 'jogging' and you can see what the real problem of addiction is.
Now, some drugs are worse than others. For instance, I don't know any 60 year old speed freaks. All hard core speed freaks tend to die before then. Opiates are almost as dangerous, cocaine, not quite as much. Hallucinogens have their own set of problems, but addiction isn't usually one of them. So I'm all for treating some drugs like we treat other dangerous activities: require the prospective user to get educated in their use and dangers, and issue them a license.
The thing about addiction is that, in general, it only happens to people who already have problems. A happy, well adjusted person who tries speed is not going to become a speed freak. Drugs are not the root problem. Addicts are merely self-medicating, trying to fix something that was already broken. And abstinence does not fix the underlying problem, at all. Look at the problems dry drunks get themselves and others into because they never fixed the problem that got them started in the first place. Hell, some of them even invade random foreign countries to avenge their fathers.
DWI: Driving While Impaired. Sorry to break it to you, but depending on what state you were in, you may have been breaking the law.
Stop drinking and posting.
I'm just saying, not everyone who uses a substance is addicted to it, and not every addiction is bad. The way I see it, there is a wide range of possible drug use styles, from non-use through destructive use. Even heavy daily use is not necessarily destructive. The key things to look for are, does the use interfere with other important parts of your life? Is it messing up your job, your friendships, or your family relations? Then it may be a problem. But someone who drinks two glasses of wine a night, or smokes a joint a day, or plays a few hours of video games a day; but still has friends, holds down a job, and has meaningful relations: this person may be an addict but they aren't causing themselves or others any trouble, so their addictive use is not a problem.
Those guys in uniforms are just people we hired because we are too busy to do it full time. But make no mistake, in any society, it is every member's duty to protect every other member from crime.
Too bad the folks we hired don't see it like that anymore. But the problem isn't the fines, it is the fact that we let the people creating the fines and handing out the fines keep the fines. That's a huge moral hazard right there.
Dumbass, people can circumvent the cell phone blocker, too. Doesn't mean it doesn't work. People can circumvent any technological enforcement, that isn't a reason not to use them. You spoke not a whit about guns, why not? You've completely lost sight of the original argument, and have started bringing up arguments that contradict your original position.
The cell phone blocker is not like a sign. Telling kids not to use cell phones is like the no trespassing sign. The cell phone blocker is more like a gun. You break into my home, well, I have shotguns rigged to a string pointing at all the doors and windows and you get blown away. Same as if your dumb kids try to use a cellphone surreptitiously in class, oops, it just doesn't work, problem solved, and teachers don't have to waste valuable teaching time acting as police and babysitters for assholes.
I don't think existence of a rule constitutes enforcement, THAT'S THE FUCKING POINT, ya moron. The rule is, 'don't use cellphones in school.' If that were its own enforcement, we wouldn't need the cellphone blocker, now would we? You're so far off track now, you couldn't find your way back to your original idiotic point with a map and compass.
I just fucking love giving morons cognitive dissonance so bad they start to argue against their own point. It's like I owned your tiny little brain.
Police could test actual impairment. Some years back I read about an impairment testing device for use in factories and heavy machinery. It's a simple LCD screen with a left-right joystick. A dot moves randomly to the left or the right on the screen, the user tries to keep it in the center using the joystick. If their reaction times are not impaired, the device unlocks the machinery. If they are, for whatever reason, like sleep deprivation, prescription medications, illegal drugs, or whatever, then the machinery remains locked. The police could test actual impairment rather than the presence of things that might or might not impair reactions. This would catch any sort of impairment which might endanger drivers and others on the road. For instance, studies have found that people with severe sleep apnea are about as likely to get in an accident as someone with a .1 BAC. If we are trying to protect people on the roads, rather than simply punish users of certain substances, this would be a fairer option.
So you don't lock your door? Okay. Probably don't keep guns in the house, either? That would be enforcing a rule with a technological solution, and you don't do that.
If you think I'm misusing words, and it is obvious, maybe you could post your interpretation of those words for all to see? That would be entertaining. But the 'all to see' part is pure fantasy, it's just you and me here, bub. Who else do you think is reading this days old thread?
I get it! You aren't sociopathic, you're narcissistic! It's very close to sociopathic, so you can see why I was confused.
No, YOU don't understand the difference between a freedom and a right. And you don't understand what enforcement is, either. Here's a clue for you: this IS enforcement. The rules say, no cell phones in class. This is a simple, technological way of enforcing the rules, just like a lock on a door enforces the rules of private property. Consider yourself schooled, dumbass.
What a selfish, idiotic asshole you are. I live in America, thank you very much. If you piss in a reservoir, you'll be arrested. You have the ability to do it, not the freedom to. Same thing with punching people in the face, you will be arrested. Just because you have the ability to do something, does not mean you have the freedom to. I have the ability to murder you and your whole family in your sleep, but I don't have the freedom to do so. And your kids do not have the freedom to use a cellphone in class. After this law passes they won't have the ability either, thankfully. Case closed, the selfish assholes LOSE, the vast majority of decent citizens WIN, and the crowd goes wild!
You just don't want to be held responsible for your actions, that is plain as day. Your political philosophy boils down to the childish refrain of, "yer not the boss of me!" Well, guess what, if you want to live in a society, other people are the boss of you, that's what you agree to by living with others. If you want to be a selfish ass, don't interact with others. No one is forcing you to, go be a hermit. We'll all be much happier if all the sociopathic assholes moved off to form 'libertopia' or whatever idiotic name the libertarians are giving their fantasy country these days.
But you don't want freedom for others, you only want it for yourself, which is why you bastards have never gone off to make your own country: you want to impose your will on others through force. We want to stop you from using force against us. We are for freedom and you desire tyranny, with yourself as tyrant, of course!
But no matter what, always remember to stay positive, cynicism never got anyone anywhere!
That's a pretty cynical view of cynicism.
You do realize that socialism and communism are economic systems, and democracy is a political system, right? Most democracies in the first world are socialist democracies.
As for freedom, I too have it. So do my children. When your little scrunts interrupt my kid's lessons with texting and chatting in class, they take away my kids freedom to learn. Which is more important than your little bastard's freedom to chat in class. So cry me a river, you selfish twat, you don't have the freedom to piss in the city water supply, you don't have the freedom to walk around punching people in the face, and your little sociopathic brood does not have the freedom to interrupt other people's learning.
Hmmm, a so called study, posted on the website of one of the guys who performed the study. Said website being a storefront selling dubious 'environmental' products. Color me skeptical.
You can blather on about this all you like, quoting irrelevant shit you don't understand, but it means fuck-all, no one sane believes you, and your theories are worthless. I had a good friend who got seriously burned by this weak ass shit and is now in jail, which is where you will go if you think this crap will get you anywhere in a court of law. So shut up and pay your fucking taxes, you dig it?
He's not saying that your kid doesn't need one. He's saying his kid doesn't need to be distracted by your kid having one. It's called an externality, like pollution and global warming. When your (or your kid's) actions screw things up for everyone else, we are justified in stopping you from imposing your selfish desires on the rest of us. Stop thinking you can do whatever you like without consequences and grow up. And please, if you do have kids, don't teach them to be selfish bastards.
However, I am interested in what possible scenario your child might need a cellphone in class. I somehow managed to get along without one. Hell, even without one, I wasn't allowed to talk to friends during class. Maybe if you are going to teach your kids to be self centered anti-social twats who get to do whatever they like without consequences, you should consider home schooling them.
Me sue you long time!
Things don't necessarily mean what you think they mean, bucky. Your interpretation is just plain whacked. Do NOT attempt to use what you've 'learned' from those books you got from the militia.
This is just absolute bunk. Pretty soon he'll be telling you that you are a corporation owned by the ebil gubmint, that's why they print your name in ALL CAPS!!11eleventy!! Then he will try to sell you books showing you how you don't have to pay taxes because Abraham Lincoln ordered congress to convene at gunpoint and the US has been a military dictatorship since then. If you buy the books and try out the theories, you will go to jail.
In other news today, anonymous sources at the popular nerd news aggregator Slashdot claim that AP are not journalists because they do not investigate and simply repeat what they are told.