Some people are not motivated primarily by greed. I'm guessing many people who go to MIT and become statisticians fall into that category, I mean, if they have that mindset and level of intelligence they could easily have gone to a business school and gone on to make millions. I'm not saying scientists, engineers and mathematicians are saints, they can be as petty as anyone, but if they wanted to be millionaires, they would have chosen different careers.
You know I'm not making a joke, ArcherB. Don't pretend you don't know me. Don't play dumb. Oh wait... You also claim that any MSNBC commentator is left of Marx. How so? I mean, seriously, I would love to see your cogent analysis showing how modern American commentators on a corporate owned station are left of Marx.
The Conservative will say well lets leave it as the fix could be worse then the problem.
How right you are, for example:
Immigrants: Lets leave them alone! Existing government regulations: No need to fix this, the fix might be worse than the problem Current levels of taxation: Can't change this, might cause problems. Abortion rights: leave it alone, Roe v. Wade settled it. Medicare: Don't want to make things worse, leave it alone. Social Security: Any change here might screw things up.
Yes, conservatism, the philosophy of "leave it alone, you might break it. Unless changing it could make the rich even richer, in which case, fuck it! Change it all."
What makes you think Slashdot is center-left? It's not far right, I'll give you that, but based on the moderation of comments that I have observed, Slashdot's readership approximates a bell curve centered over, well, political centrism. If anything I would say that Slashdot's readership is generally fiscally conservative, socially liberal, with a much larger percentage of far right wing "libertarians" than you would see in most places.
Just because people here are not falling all over themselves praising your favored ideology does not mean they are leftists. Maybe you are more right wing than the average?
Wow, so a media watchdog group founded by a conservative ex Fox News contributor and funded by conservative groups says Fox is the least biased. Go figure!
Ahahaha, who did that study, Fox? Nobody lies half as much as Fox. No other news outlet has given the finger to actual reporting as much as Fox has. And given Fox's popularity, why haven't its viewers set up their own youtube channels showing how the "lamestream media" (their words for everything non-Fox) lies? It is because the rest of the media does not lie nearly as much. All the mainstream media are owned by large corporations, and serve corporate interests, even MSNBC. That is why Morning Joe is still on then air, but Olbermann is not. Corporate media are all biased in favor of the corporate agenda, serving the 10 percent of citizens that own 90 percent of the country. You and I aren't in that top ten percent (I'm guessing you make less than a quarter million a year?) so, we do not really have any media in this country that speak on our behalf.
There is nothing equivalent to Fox News anywhere else in the western world. It is more akin to the government run propaganda outlet of some third world dictatorship.
No, MSNBC has a centrist pro-corporate bias. You might be surprised to find out that MSNBC is not some grass roots hippie mom and pop operation, but is owned by a rather large and conservative corporation. Morning Joe, anyone? Okay, I guess they did have this Olbermann guy on there for a while, to throw a sop to the liberals, but the owners couldn't stand him, so they got rid of him.
Nah, I find idiots and their "news" hilarious. It's like watching monkeys watching monkey news, with the monkey anchors flinging poop at the monkey audience, and vice versa.
False equivalency. Fox News has been proven, again and again, to lie on air nearly continuously. Heck, they fought and won a lawsuit defending their right to lie on air.
Please, when you make an outrageous claim such as implying that MSNBC lies as much as Fox, try to back it up with some data. I realize you can't, as there is no data showing that, so perhaps you should just refrain from spreading lies. Fox has that covered.
Of course I read it, and of course the thesis has been challenged. You go around saying the people we stole the land from also taught us a lot about democracy, you won't be very popular. Still, even if they didn't contribute much, they were a democratic nation. They certainly had concept of land ownership. So, even discounting that point (it is contested) my main point still stands, and I think you know it because you didn't even address it. Native peoples had the concept of land ownership and nations.
Oh noes! Someone on the Internet disagrees with you! They must be nutters. Probably fascists too, am I right? They might even be... NAZIS! I mean, they modded you down for going on an off topic pro-gun rant, that sure sounds like Nazis to me!
Wow, so natives never fought each other over territory? And our Republic was not modeled after the Five Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy? And you further claim that there was at least some land in the Americas that was NOT claimed by a sovereign nation?
I thought they taught real history in Canada, not the bullshit revisionism they teach here, but I see that, at least on the subject of Native history, you guys lie through your teeth just like we do. I guess when the alternative is admitting that you are descended from thieving illegal immigrants with a passion for genocide (just like everyone else in the world, m'kay?) a lie just feels more warm and cuddly.
They're coming for our WORDS! It's 1984 meets Brave New World meets The Prince meets a thesaurus!
Yes, feast on the outrage. The hate will make you strong. The fear will keep you sharp. Knowing about the evil conspiracy to take our words makes you better than the sheeple who don't realize that the crypto-fascist-islamist-terrorist-commie-nazi-liberals want to control what they think.
I had a good friend who had terminal cancer, then her aorta split. She committed suicide. It was the most rational choice. My granddad served in WWII. He was in the cavalry (they used light tanks, not horses, though) He killed a lot of people. He wasn't unstable.
Suicide and murder are not always the acts of an unstable person. Sometimes, there are comprehensible reasons for these acts.
Ah, look. My grand dad killed a lot of people. He served in WWII. Killing a bunch of people does not necessarily mean you are deranged. I had a friend who had terminal cancer, then had her aorta split. She committed suicide. It was the most rational thing to do. Committing suicide is not necessarily irrational. I can think of cases where suicide bombing might be the best choice of action open to me. You can not simply define suicide bombing itself as deranged without knowing more about the situation. And knowing more about the situation is exactly what claims of insanity prevent. You say "Crazy!" as if that answers any important question. it doesn't.
What if what's his nuts had been a fanatic, and had no other evidence of being insane but the fact that he assassinated someone? Are you saying all assassins are deranged? I don't believe history bears that out. We say suicide bombers are crazy precisely because we do not want to know the real reasons Knowing the real reasons might entail some difficult introspection and soul searching on our part.
I don't think the majority of suicide bombers are crazy in the same way that what's his nuts is. Note that I am not trying to excuse their actions. I am saying, if we want to combat them, we must understand them. To understand them, we must look beyond "They are just crazy." That tells us nothing, it is basically stating that we do not and can not know the real root cause. It amounts to giving up.
Well, Bachman was looking into the cameras of the group that sponsored her, the Tea Party. Let's not even talk about where she was looking, it distracts from the stupid that came out of her mouth. And Palin had her own gaffe, she had no idea what "sputnik moment" meant, and attributed the collapse of the Soviet Union to sputnik. Seriously. She thought "sputnik moment" refereed to the launching of sputnik, rather than our response to the launching of sputnik. And she thought that launching it was what bankrupted them, so having another "sputnik moment" would be a bad thing.
It could be that strong women engender more hatred. Or it could be that she really is a "greedy, selfish, uneducated, calculating, egotistical nightmare." She certainly seems greedy, look at her spending of campaign money. Selfish? Surely she has demonstrated that. Uneducated? By her own words, obviously so. Calculating? Okay, every politician is that. An egotistical nightmare? Look at this very story and tell me she isn't!
Perhaps people despise her because they feel that her brand of political discourse is damaging to the country. Perhaps they feel it is unfair that someone like her can become a millionaire, a governor, a candidate for vice president, and a well paid political consultant without having any of the skills or qualities usually required by those jobs. She is just one more piece of evidence that we do not live in anything even resembling a meritocracy, and that galls some people.
No, not the punctuation mark, like so: "Alaska Must Release Palin's Colon, Emails by May" Not sure what we'd do with Palin's colon, but I imagine we could find some use for it.
Do you really think that no elected officials are idiots? What faith you have in government! Do you think that a movement of morons can not be lead by a moron? Why not? History holds plenty of examples of the dumb leading the stupid.
You are not addressing the issue, you are trying to confuse things by going off on a tangent. This is not a matter of definition, it is a matter of motivation. We are trying to determine the motivations behind suicide bombers. You say, "They do it because they are unstable. Proof being, they do it." That answers nothing!
I am saying, in order to determine the reasons that someone has decided to become a suicide bomber, we must look at the actions leading up to the bombing. If the bombing itself is the only evidence of instability, then it is not logical or helpful to claim that the instability is the reason for the bombing: because the bombing is given as the reason for the diagnosis of instability, the diagnosis of instability can not also be given as the reason for the suicide bombing.
I had a good friend with terminal cancer who killed herself. She was not unstable, she had a good reason to do it. Therefore, not all suicides are caused by instability. Therefore, the main premise of your argument falls apart. QED.
Slashdot Mirror
Some people are not motivated primarily by greed. I'm guessing many people who go to MIT and become statisticians fall into that category, I mean, if they have that mindset and level of intelligence they could easily have gone to a business school and gone on to make millions. I'm not saying scientists, engineers and mathematicians are saints, they can be as petty as anyone, but if they wanted to be millionaires, they would have chosen different careers.
I'm not familiar with the conspiracies you mention, could you enlighten me?
You know I'm not making a joke, ArcherB. Don't pretend you don't know me. Don't play dumb. Oh wait... You also claim that any MSNBC commentator is left of Marx. How so? I mean, seriously, I would love to see your cogent analysis showing how modern American commentators on a corporate owned station are left of Marx.
The Conservative will say well lets leave it as the fix could be worse then the problem.
How right you are, for example:
Immigrants: Lets leave them alone!
Existing government regulations: No need to fix this, the fix might be worse than the problem
Current levels of taxation: Can't change this, might cause problems.
Abortion rights: leave it alone, Roe v. Wade settled it.
Medicare: Don't want to make things worse, leave it alone.
Social Security: Any change here might screw things up.
Yes, conservatism, the philosophy of "leave it alone, you might break it. Unless changing it could make the rich even richer, in which case, fuck it! Change it all."
What makes you think Slashdot is center-left? It's not far right, I'll give you that, but based on the moderation of comments that I have observed, Slashdot's readership approximates a bell curve centered over, well, political centrism. If anything I would say that Slashdot's readership is generally fiscally conservative, socially liberal, with a much larger percentage of far right wing "libertarians" than you would see in most places.
Just because people here are not falling all over themselves praising your favored ideology does not mean they are leftists. Maybe you are more right wing than the average?
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=19&media_outlet_id=2
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fox_News_Channel_controversies
http://mediamatters.org/search/tag/fox_news_channel
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S._Robert_Lichter#Criticism_and_Response
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Center_for_media_and_public_affairs#Funding
Wow, so a media watchdog group founded by a conservative ex Fox News contributor and funded by conservative groups says Fox is the least biased. Go figure!
Ahahaha, who did that study, Fox? Nobody lies half as much as Fox. No other news outlet has given the finger to actual reporting as much as Fox has. And given Fox's popularity, why haven't its viewers set up their own youtube channels showing how the "lamestream media" (their words for everything non-Fox) lies? It is because the rest of the media does not lie nearly as much. All the mainstream media are owned by large corporations, and serve corporate interests, even MSNBC. That is why Morning Joe is still on then air, but Olbermann is not. Corporate media are all biased in favor of the corporate agenda, serving the 10 percent of citizens that own 90 percent of the country. You and I aren't in that top ten percent (I'm guessing you make less than a quarter million a year?) so, we do not really have any media in this country that speak on our behalf.
There is nothing equivalent to Fox News anywhere else in the western world. It is more akin to the government run propaganda outlet of some third world dictatorship.
No, MSNBC has a centrist pro-corporate bias. You might be surprised to find out that MSNBC is not some grass roots hippie mom and pop operation, but is owned by a rather large and conservative corporation. Morning Joe, anyone? Okay, I guess they did have this Olbermann guy on there for a while, to throw a sop to the liberals, but the owners couldn't stand him, so they got rid of him.
Nah, I find idiots and their "news" hilarious. It's like watching monkeys watching monkey news, with the monkey anchors flinging poop at the monkey audience, and vice versa.
False equivalency. Fox News has been proven, again and again, to lie on air nearly continuously. Heck, they fought and won a lawsuit defending their right to lie on air.
Please, when you make an outrageous claim such as implying that MSNBC lies as much as Fox, try to back it up with some data. I realize you can't, as there is no data showing that, so perhaps you should just refrain from spreading lies. Fox has that covered.
Of course I read it, and of course the thesis has been challenged. You go around saying the people we stole the land from also taught us a lot about democracy, you won't be very popular. Still, even if they didn't contribute much, they were a democratic nation. They certainly had concept of land ownership. So, even discounting that point (it is contested) my main point still stands, and I think you know it because you didn't even address it. Native peoples had the concept of land ownership and nations.
Oh noes! Someone on the Internet disagrees with you! They must be nutters. Probably fascists too, am I right? They might even be... NAZIS! I mean, they modded you down for going on an off topic pro-gun rant, that sure sounds like Nazis to me!
Wow, so natives never fought each other over territory? And our Republic was not modeled after the Five Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy? And you further claim that there was at least some land in the Americas that was NOT claimed by a sovereign nation?
I thought they taught real history in Canada, not the bullshit revisionism they teach here, but I see that, at least on the subject of Native history, you guys lie through your teeth just like we do. I guess when the alternative is admitting that you are descended from thieving illegal immigrants with a passion for genocide (just like everyone else in the world, m'kay?) a lie just feels more warm and cuddly.
They're coming for our WORDS! It's 1984 meets Brave New World meets The Prince meets a thesaurus!
Yes, feast on the outrage. The hate will make you strong. The fear will keep you sharp. Knowing about the evil conspiracy to take our words makes you better than the sheeple who don't realize that the crypto-fascist-islamist-terrorist-commie-nazi-liberals want to control what they think.
I had a good friend who had terminal cancer, then her aorta split. She committed suicide. It was the most rational choice. My granddad served in WWII. He was in the cavalry (they used light tanks, not horses, though) He killed a lot of people. He wasn't unstable.
Suicide and murder are not always the acts of an unstable person. Sometimes, there are comprehensible reasons for these acts.
Ah, look. My grand dad killed a lot of people. He served in WWII. Killing a bunch of people does not necessarily mean you are deranged. I had a friend who had terminal cancer, then had her aorta split. She committed suicide. It was the most rational thing to do. Committing suicide is not necessarily irrational. I can think of cases where suicide bombing might be the best choice of action open to me. You can not simply define suicide bombing itself as deranged without knowing more about the situation. And knowing more about the situation is exactly what claims of insanity prevent. You say "Crazy!" as if that answers any important question. it doesn't.
What if what's his nuts had been a fanatic, and had no other evidence of being insane but the fact that he assassinated someone? Are you saying all assassins are deranged? I don't believe history bears that out. We say suicide bombers are crazy precisely because we do not want to know the real reasons Knowing the real reasons might entail some difficult introspection and soul searching on our part.
I don't think the majority of suicide bombers are crazy in the same way that what's his nuts is. Note that I am not trying to excuse their actions. I am saying, if we want to combat them, we must understand them. To understand them, we must look beyond "They are just crazy." That tells us nothing, it is basically stating that we do not and can not know the real root cause. It amounts to giving up.
Well, Bachman was looking into the cameras of the group that sponsored her, the Tea Party. Let's not even talk about where she was looking, it distracts from the stupid that came out of her mouth. And Palin had her own gaffe, she had no idea what "sputnik moment" meant, and attributed the collapse of the Soviet Union to sputnik. Seriously. She thought "sputnik moment" refereed to the launching of sputnik, rather than our response to the launching of sputnik. And she thought that launching it was what bankrupted them, so having another "sputnik moment" would be a bad thing.
Persecution complexes and other paranoid delusions are rarely rational.
It could be that strong women engender more hatred. Or it could be that she really is a "greedy, selfish, uneducated, calculating, egotistical nightmare." She certainly seems greedy, look at her spending of campaign money. Selfish? Surely she has demonstrated that. Uneducated? By her own words, obviously so. Calculating? Okay, every politician is that. An egotistical nightmare? Look at this very story and tell me she isn't!
Perhaps people despise her because they feel that her brand of political discourse is damaging to the country. Perhaps they feel it is unfair that someone like her can become a millionaire, a governor, a candidate for vice president, and a well paid political consultant without having any of the skills or qualities usually required by those jobs. She is just one more piece of evidence that we do not live in anything even resembling a meritocracy, and that galls some people.
Palin is an elite. The laws do not apply to elites in the same way they apply to the rest of us. For example, http://blogs.forbes.com/halahtouryalai/2010/11/08/wall-street-broker-escapes-felony-hit-and-run-charge/
No, not the punctuation mark, like so: "Alaska Must Release Palin's Colon, Emails by May" Not sure what we'd do with Palin's colon, but I imagine we could find some use for it.
Do you really think that no elected officials are idiots? What faith you have in government! Do you think that a movement of morons can not be lead by a moron? Why not? History holds plenty of examples of the dumb leading the stupid.
You are not addressing the issue, you are trying to confuse things by going off on a tangent. This is not a matter of definition, it is a matter of motivation. We are trying to determine the motivations behind suicide bombers. You say, "They do it because they are unstable. Proof being, they do it." That answers nothing!
I am saying, in order to determine the reasons that someone has decided to become a suicide bomber, we must look at the actions leading up to the bombing. If the bombing itself is the only evidence of instability, then it is not logical or helpful to claim that the instability is the reason for the bombing: because the bombing is given as the reason for the diagnosis of instability, the diagnosis of instability can not also be given as the reason for the suicide bombing.
Honestly, can you not see how that is circular?
I had a good friend with terminal cancer who killed herself. She was not unstable, she had a good reason to do it. Therefore, not all suicides are caused by instability. Therefore, the main premise of your argument falls apart. QED.