Personally I'd rather stay addicted to technology that be hooked on drugs, alcohol, gambling, etc
You're using "addicted" here to mean "very interested in," which is an overly broad definition. A better definition might be "continued or increased use in the face of negative consequences."
When would you say that someone is addicted to alcohol? If they drink it regularly? If they binge-drink? If they have a history of alcoholism in their family?
A person is addicted to alcohol if their drinking impacts their life in increasingly negative ways, and they continue to use the drug, perhaps even in greater amount or frequency.
So I guess my point is, it seems incorrect to say "I'd rather be addicted to computer use than gambling." Both imply compulsive behavior and increasing harm; the relative qualities of the two are of lesser importance.
Step one: go down to the local music store and buy five albums. This will cost you around sixty bucks, definitely within the means of anyone who buys computer equipment. Feel free to adjust the number according to your income. Try to make your selections a diverse group, bands you haven't heard much before but that you think you would like.
Step two:
Rip the music from the CDs and store it on your computer in high-quality mp3 format.
Step three:
Give the CDs to friends of yours. Have your friends give you the CDs they got. Rip the music and pass the CDs along.
Step four:
Listen to all your music. If all goes well you should have a lot of stuff that is new to you. Listen to it and think about what music you like and what it is about that music that makes it good. Talk with your friends about the music. Keep the good albums in the background when you hang out, when you go on long drives, when you party, when you code, and when you want to sit and listen to something cool.
Repeat as necessary. Make sure you listen to bands you've never heard before as well as old favorites. Then if the new ones are good, you can pass them along to people who you know will appreciate them. Buy music, share music, and listen to music. --
I lived with 5 guys that took about 3 hits of E every weekend for a year. They were all the happiest bastards you ever saw, even when they weren't high. No mood swings at all. Anyone who's actually seen people on E will tell you the same thing. Firsthand information is a great thing, you should try getting it some time.
Look, I didn't say that ecstasy immediately destroyed a person's mind and gave them chronic depression. Initial studies indicate ecstasy has a neurotoxic effect, and some people have observed long-term psychological damage (esp depression) resulting from heavy use. Even the most
drug-happy source will at least mention this.
I think if some of you anti-drug mouthpieces just tried taking some drugs a few times, you'd realize how much bullshit you're spouting, and why people who have actual firsthand experience with drugs and drug users laugh at your ignorance.
Huh? I'm an anti-drug mouthpiece? I think the drug war is just another aspect of the class war, and that drug use should be decriminalized, and drug manufacture regulated. It wouldn't solve all our problems, but it might solve a couple of them.
Every drug that you take into your body, whether legal or illegal, is going to have its positive effects and its side effects. Drug users may laugh about studies of drugs that show potential harmful side effects, but only because their experience is limited, and of an informal basis. It's hardly the same as conducting a rigorous scientific study of a drug. I drink, but I don't go around claiming that heavy alcohol use doesn't damage the liver, just because neither I nor my friends have ever experienced that.
Due to their capacity for critical thought, Engineers are almost invariably Libertarians, as that is the only logical and intellectually critical political philosophy presently in wide circulation.
Well, I guess I'm just an anomaly then, like so many other people I know. Or maybe computer science isn't engineering, I don't know.
Let me just get straight what you're saying. Libertarianism is the One True Philosophy, because it constantly claims to be more logical and intellectual than other philosophies. Also, the Blessed People, engineers, are more likely to follow the One True Philosophy, because of their more enlightened nature.
I guess I can't argue against that, since I don't subscribe to libertarianism and therefore suffer from a reduced capacity for critical thought.
On a side note, why is it that Ayn Rand's opposition to religion never seemed to eliminate religion's more slavish qualities in her ardent followers?
The negative experiences with any drug seem to happen when people don't respect the drug's power and fail to take account of their 'set' (mental state) and 'setting' (physical environment). Dr. Shulgin's essays on his life, his relationships, and his experiences are truly beautiful and, unlike the anti-drug propaganda, actually true!
Actually, the negative experiences with ecstasy come when after enough exposure to it, the body's regulation of its seratonin levels becomes disrupted. This results in profound depressions and other psychological disturbances. Oh, but one guy did some drugs once and wasn't negatively affected in any way he could discern. That must mean that anyone should be able to do drugs without any negative consequences, right? I'm sure any doctor who treats drug-related illnesses would be able to give you far more information. Oh, but that's just "propaganda."
--
Re:Public education has serious problems
on
Sean In The Middle
·
· Score: 2
(from m-w.com)
ATHEISM:
1 archaic : UNGODLINESS, WICKEDNESS
2 a : a disbelief in the existence of deity b : the doctrine that there is no deity
RELIGION:
1 a : the state of a religious "a nun in her 20th year of religion"
b (1) : the service and worship of God or the supernatural (2)
: commitment or devotion to religious faith or observance
QED.
Atheism, by etymology of the word, indicates the lack of something, specifically the lack of a belief in a god. It is not, in any meaningful definition of the word, a religion. This isn't "spin," it's just what the word means.
If you mean "Atheists believe certain things as dogmatically as religious people do," then say that. (speaking of spin.)
If you were to actually meet the people who have written this music, and tour the country playing just to make money to put food on their family's plates, would you fess up to doing this? Would you tell them: "No, I didn't buy I your CD. I downloaded it off Napster. I didn't even have to pay for it."
Yeah, that's pretty much exactly what I'd say. The tipping them $20 is also a good idea. Or, if I was especially poor that month, I'd just say "Thank you for the enjoyable music."
And then they'd say "The world would be a better place if you were not allowed to listen to our music."
The final irony here is that the spread of napster and gnutella, and unauthorised piracy generally, would mean the collapse of such small outfits and an increase in musical homogenousness.
Before I enagaged in a little unauthorized copying with Napster, my music collection was small and not very varied. Now it's much larger, and incredibly less homogenous. Explain to me again how unauthorized copying destroys diversity?
Strict copying restrictions don't empower the artist, the empower the distributes, since copying circumvents distribution but not creation. Because it is in the best interests of these distributers to promote homogeny (makes their job easier if they get to sell a smaller variety of product, since so much of their expenses are advertising), empowering these distributers destroys variety and the small artist.
All great truths begin as blasphemies.
All great artists are misunderstood, but not all who are misunderstood are great artists.
Yeah. Being constantly watched makes life better and makes us more tolerant of differences. This argument was powerfully and effectively rebutted in George Orwell's 1984. Which means you're more than half a century too late.
This has been posted several times in different forms, and is a bad interpretation of Orwell's book. Perhaps if we all had a little less privacy, this concept of shame, that actions disapproved of by segments of society and must be hidden, would be changed for the better.
Consider the omnipresent screens in 1984. One looked into Winston Smith's room, positioned so that almost nothing could escape its view. It was a reminder that Smith was being watched by a nameless, faceless entity. Smith could not use the screen to look out into the world, it was solely a spying device. Because the government was spying on Smith, but Smith could not look back at the gov't (indeed, he had no access to any true information at all about his government), it expressed a power relation between Smith and his government.
The relation of course, was that the government held total power over Smith's life. This is the theme, the argument if you will, of 1984. It imagines a future in which the government has total control over its citizens, with unsettling results. It has little to do with privacy and everything to do with power.
I don't agree with the "Open Society" people, but I do think that it is an interesting idea, and a starting point for considering our notions of privacy.
I have been trolled. I have lost. On the other hand, it's just such a fantastic troll, that I can't be rid of this compulsion to reply. So, a few quick points:
There is no such thing as consent in pornography, because every person involved is there because of dire economic need.
Untrue. I would imagine that most people in the sex industry could make enough money in other pursuits to subsist, sex is simply much more profitable. There is also the issue of people making pornography for pleasure and not for profit. Suppose I were to write a pornographic short story, would I be doing it because of dire economic need? Would this be exploitation? What about a couple who videotapes themselves having sex? Is this exploitation? What if they do it to sell the tapes at a profit -- is this different than if they do it for fun?
In short, it's a complex issue, and one that's not improved by the sorts of in-good-faith fearmongering that goes along the same lines as this troll.
But we tolerate women's public humiliation and public rape, because men universally crave and devour pornography.
Your language is strongly gendered and is every bit as much a part of the cultural mandates that oppress women as porn. Why are you equating nakedness and/or sex with humiliation? Why do you label only men as craving pornography?
Lastly, some facts that deserve to be stated a few times to keep the truth-to-nonsense ratio up.
--None of ten commandments mention rape. (Another reason why they suck.)
Man, that shit's better than Gibson. I'm surprised the author managed to resist the temptation to go overboard on the haX0r slang.
Welp, I gotta jet. sQu1db0y (a 'hacker') teld me hes gonna score me some perqs. (UNIX 'shell' accounts) Dam. Some days it just feels like the whole worlds smeared with Vaz. (?)
Look, if you lived in a society where "abortion" was legal up until 12 years of age, or were suddenly transplanted there, would you feel morally justified in killing the doctors who killed 11-year-olds for a living? Sure you would.
Fuck no I wouldn't. In such a case, terrorism would do little to make anyone happier. It wouldn't change the culture, and it wouldn't stop any further abortions. Unless you think there's something magical about violence that repeated applications of it will eventually result in moral action.
What kind of reprobate has no other means of expression other than muderous action?
"Mexicans are lazy" and "Mexicans are hard-working people" are both unsupportable claims. Obviously there is nothing about being Mexican that disposes someone one way or another. "Christianity promotes intolerance and violence" is a claim that may be supported or refuted by the evidence, because Christianity is a
collection of beliefs and teachings that may be sifted through to determine whether they support tolerance or intolerence.
I am not going to go back and sort through the comments and their moderation to try to see whether flamebait was marked as insightful, or insightful comments were marked as flamebait, I simply pointing out that you are wrong to call it prejudice, and that you are continuing to make a false analogy.
The Slashdot community, it seems, has a strong anti-Christian bias. They are unwilling to give up their preconceived notions of Christianity. Slashdot (and increasingly our culture in general)
I would consider Slashdot as being more non-Christian than the rest of the world. However, to say that our culture has an anti-Christian bias is insane. This is why I say that Christians have a persecution complex; you see this anti-Christian majority that just doesn't exist.
wants to believe that Christianity is responsible for lots of bad things (witch trials, Crusades) which did undeniably happen, but also wants to deny it's responsible for lots of good things (art, science, medicine) too. Looking at only one side of the truth about somebody is prejudice just as much as believing lies about him is.
It's true, these arguments lack a certain intellectual rigor. If Christianity had never existed, it's impossible to tell what would have happened. Maybe the Crusades would have been fought over something else. Maybe religious art would have found a different inspiration.
However, it seems to me that the teachings of Christianity are much more geared toward producing conformity, obedience, and fear of the unknown than they are towards encouraging art and good-will. So it seems reasonable to blame Christianty for the bad things in our society that are produced by the traits it encourages.
Oh, ps. Saying that someone "wants to believe" something is lame and insulting. I do believe that Christianity is a Bad Thing, there's no wanting involved.
Why is it that the only prejudice it's Politically Correct to have is anti-Christian prejudice?
Prejudice is when you have (usually wrong) beliefs about a person based on their nationality, race, religion, or whatnot. The key here is that you are drawing an inference from a trait that has nothing to do with what you are concluding. For example, if I were to say that so and so (who I don't know at all) is a lazy person, and I based this assertion on the fact that so and so is Mexican, that would be prejudiced, because I am "pre-judging" a person based on a stereotype.
On the other hand, if I were to say "Christians think that they are sinful, and need to accept Jesus Christ as their savior to be absolved of these sins," this is not a prejudice. As near as I can tell, this is a fairly factual statement. If I were to then go on and say "These beliefs are fucking bullshit and people need to stop propagating them," I'm expressing an opinion on actual traits on the religion and am in no way being prejudiced.
Why is it that so many Christians have persecution complexes?
I'm not being stupid. By makeing copies of someone else work off of the net you are depriving them if income. Call it a Banana if you want it is still wrong.
You're still arguing on some mystical inherency basis, like when you were wrongly calling unauthorized copying theft. Now you simply assert "it's still wrong." It's true, unlimited public copying of novels reduces the monetary incentive for writers to write. It's also true that giving authors exclusive, permanent, transferable rights to control copying deprives the public of benefit.
Does that make copyright "just wrong?" Maybe, maybe not. There's much more to be considered, ethically speaking, than just "it's theft" vs. "big bad companies trying to rip us off."
But you are depriving the author of income, and that is theft. Or at least fraud.
Don't be stupid. If I whack you in the leg with a lead pipe, and you miss two weeks of work, I've just deprived you of income. However, it's neither theft nor fraud, it's assault and battery.
Calling something what it's not is not a cohesive argument.
I've read a lot of online comics, and I've gotten tired of most of them. It's really difficult for a comic to remain fresh and funny over a long period of time.
Exception: Superosity. Chris Crosby is a freaking genius. --
No. This is the fundamental difference between capitalists and socialists. I don't believe that anything requiring an affirmative act by another
person can be a right. When I assert that I have the right to life, that means you shouldn't be able to kill me but leaves you otherwise free to
conduct yourself.
Nice abstraction, but in the real world it doesn't work that way. When say that everyone has the right to life, it doesn't mean anything unless somebody enforces that right. That means that your are commanding others to do your bidding: to write and enforce the laws that protect that right. In most societies around the world, that means involuntary taxation, subjection to law, etc. These are all affirmative acts. Your assertion that protecting a right to life is different from protecting a right to food is false.
I should be doing that too-- kneeling and thanking God for another skillful script on my machine or a great install or an excellent diagnosis of a problem on of one of our machines.
I have a similar ritual that I find helps quite a bit. Whenever I get through a rough patch and my program finally compiles, or whenever I root out and correct a particularly intricate or bothersome bug, I push my chair back, stand up, point and the screen and yell: "THAT'S RIGHT, BITCH! HOW DO YOU LIKE ME NOW?"
It makes me feel good, and is often the difference between success and failure.
Seriously though, I too realized that without a God, I am nothing. Then I realized that no Gods existed, and that I was therefore nothing. It was only through this realization that I was able to know what I was, and have any shot at all at being something. I suggest you read the Tao Te Ching for further insights.
It makes no sense to me that a love for play and for learning should be supressed when a person gets old.
I have a couple of little cousins that would love to play candyland with you.
Oh, I get it. You long ago stopped using your brain for anything other than propping up your wounded ego and mental masturbation. No great tragedy, I suppose.
It is depressing when I watch someone's eyes glaze over when a football game is on. People spend entire holidays sitting on their fat asses feeding
their faces and watching the same moronic game over and over again all day.
Gee, Sparky, I watch football. I guess that means I'm some kind of fat-assed moron. Do I dare point out that your serve-serving stereotyping, like most stereotyping, is completely inaccurate? Enh, why bother. Suffice to point out that football is a game of complex strategy and incredible feats of endurance. Maybe you just don't know enough about it to be able to appreciate it. *shrug*
Why wasn't this developed for use by a news agency? Was it a question of funding? If so, why then does the sports dept. get that amount of
funding?
News agencies are too busy trying to figure out how to cram more useless gerbage into their already fatuous programs of rapidly declining relevance. It should be fairly obvious why sport organizations have large amount of money: many people watch sports, and the sports organizations sell their eyeballs for large sums of cash.
American football is a children's game being played all to often by overgrown babies.
You say "children's game" as if it is a bad thing. Many of the games I enjoy today are ones that I learned and played as a child. Heck, most children's games are just simplified versions of adults' games; children love to learn, and games present wonderful environments in which to do so. It makes no sense to me that a love for play and for learning should be supressed when a person gets old.
Slashdot Mirror
You're using "addicted" here to mean "very interested in," which is an overly broad definition. A better definition might be "continued or increased use in the face of negative consequences."
When would you say that someone is addicted to alcohol? If they drink it regularly? If they binge-drink? If they have a history of alcoholism in their family?
A person is addicted to alcohol if their drinking impacts their life in increasingly negative ways, and they continue to use the drug, perhaps even in greater amount or frequency.
So I guess my point is, it seems incorrect to say "I'd rather be addicted to computer use than gambling." Both imply compulsive behavior and increasing harm; the relative qualities of the two are of lesser importance.
--
Step one: go down to the local music store and buy five albums. This will cost you around sixty bucks, definitely within the means of anyone who buys computer equipment. Feel free to adjust the number according to your income. Try to make your selections a diverse group, bands you haven't heard much before but that you think you would like.
Step two: Rip the music from the CDs and store it on your computer in high-quality mp3 format.
Step three: Give the CDs to friends of yours. Have your friends give you the CDs they got. Rip the music and pass the CDs along.
Step four: Listen to all your music. If all goes well you should have a lot of stuff that is new to you. Listen to it and think about what music you like and what it is about that music that makes it good. Talk with your friends about the music. Keep the good albums in the background when you hang out, when you go on long drives, when you party, when you code, and when you want to sit and listen to something cool.
Repeat as necessary. Make sure you listen to bands you've never heard before as well as old favorites. Then if the new ones are good, you can pass them along to people who you know will appreciate them. Buy music, share music, and listen to music.
--
Look, I didn't say that ecstasy immediately destroyed a person's mind and gave them chronic depression. Initial studies indicate ecstasy has a neurotoxic effect, and some people have observed long-term psychological damage (esp depression) resulting from heavy use. Even the most drug-happy source will at least mention this.
I think if some of you anti-drug mouthpieces just tried taking some drugs a few times, you'd realize how much bullshit you're spouting, and why people who have actual firsthand experience with drugs and drug users laugh at your ignorance.
Huh? I'm an anti-drug mouthpiece? I think the drug war is just another aspect of the class war, and that drug use should be decriminalized, and drug manufacture regulated. It wouldn't solve all our problems, but it might solve a couple of them.
Every drug that you take into your body, whether legal or illegal, is going to have its positive effects and its side effects. Drug users may laugh about studies of drugs that show potential harmful side effects, but only because their experience is limited, and of an informal basis. It's hardly the same as conducting a rigorous scientific study of a drug. I drink, but I don't go around claiming that heavy alcohol use doesn't damage the liver, just because neither I nor my friends have ever experienced that.
--
Well, I guess I'm just an anomaly then, like so many other people I know. Or maybe computer science isn't engineering, I don't know.
Let me just get straight what you're saying. Libertarianism is the One True Philosophy, because it constantly claims to be more logical and intellectual than other philosophies. Also, the Blessed People, engineers, are more likely to follow the One True Philosophy, because of their more enlightened nature.
I guess I can't argue against that, since I don't subscribe to libertarianism and therefore suffer from a reduced capacity for critical thought.
On a side note, why is it that Ayn Rand's opposition to religion never seemed to eliminate religion's more slavish qualities in her ardent followers?
--
When I saw the headline "Internet Drug Game Could Save Lives and Money," I thought to myself: How is Everquest gonna save anyone's life?
--
Actually, the negative experiences with ecstasy come when after enough exposure to it, the body's regulation of its seratonin levels becomes disrupted. This results in profound depressions and other psychological disturbances. Oh, but one guy did some drugs once and wasn't negatively affected in any way he could discern. That must mean that anyone should be able to do drugs without any negative consequences, right? I'm sure any doctor who treats drug-related illnesses would be able to give you far more information. Oh, but that's just "propaganda."
--
ATHEISM:
1 archaic : UNGODLINESS, WICKEDNESS
2 a : a disbelief in the existence of deity
b : the doctrine that there is no deity
RELIGION:
1 a : the state of a religious "a nun in her 20th year of religion"
b (1) : the service and worship of God or the supernatural (2) : commitment or devotion to religious faith or observance
QED.
Atheism, by etymology of the word, indicates the lack of something, specifically the lack of a belief in a god. It is not, in any meaningful definition of the word, a religion. This isn't "spin," it's just what the word means.
If you mean "Atheists believe certain things as dogmatically as religious people do," then say that. (speaking of spin.)
--
Ever read a book?
One of the benefits of learning from many sources is that one learns enough about reality not to make statements like the above.
--
Yeah, that's pretty much exactly what I'd say. The tipping them $20 is also a good idea. Or, if I was especially poor that month, I'd just say "Thank you for the enjoyable music."
And then they'd say "The world would be a better place if you were not allowed to listen to our music."
And then I'd just blink at them.
--
Before I enagaged in a little unauthorized copying with Napster, my music collection was small and not very varied. Now it's much larger, and incredibly less homogenous. Explain to me again how unauthorized copying destroys diversity?
Strict copying restrictions don't empower the artist, the empower the distributes, since copying circumvents distribution but not creation. Because it is in the best interests of these distributers to promote homogeny (makes their job easier if they get to sell a smaller variety of product, since so much of their expenses are advertising), empowering these distributers destroys variety and the small artist.
All great truths begin as blasphemies.
All great artists are misunderstood, but not all who are misunderstood are great artists.
--
This has been posted several times in different forms, and is a bad interpretation of Orwell's book. Perhaps if we all had a little less privacy, this concept of shame, that actions disapproved of by segments of society and must be hidden, would be changed for the better.
Consider the omnipresent screens in 1984. One looked into Winston Smith's room, positioned so that almost nothing could escape its view. It was a reminder that Smith was being watched by a nameless, faceless entity. Smith could not use the screen to look out into the world, it was solely a spying device. Because the government was spying on Smith, but Smith could not look back at the gov't (indeed, he had no access to any true information at all about his government), it expressed a power relation between Smith and his government.
The relation of course, was that the government held total power over Smith's life. This is the theme, the argument if you will, of 1984. It imagines a future in which the government has total control over its citizens, with unsettling results. It has little to do with privacy and everything to do with power.
I don't agree with the "Open Society" people, but I do think that it is an interesting idea, and a starting point for considering our notions of privacy.
--
There is no such thing as consent in pornography, because every person involved is there because of dire economic need.
Untrue. I would imagine that most people in the sex industry could make enough money in other pursuits to subsist, sex is simply much more profitable. There is also the issue of people making pornography for pleasure and not for profit. Suppose I were to write a pornographic short story, would I be doing it because of dire economic need? Would this be exploitation? What about a couple who videotapes themselves having sex? Is this exploitation? What if they do it to sell the tapes at a profit -- is this different than if they do it for fun?
In short, it's a complex issue, and one that's not improved by the sorts of in-good-faith fearmongering that goes along the same lines as this troll.
But we tolerate women's public humiliation and public rape, because men universally crave and devour pornography.
Your language is strongly gendered and is every bit as much a part of the cultural mandates that oppress women as porn. Why are you equating nakedness and/or sex with humiliation? Why do you label only men as craving pornography?
Lastly, some facts that deserve to be stated a few times to keep the truth-to-nonsense ratio up.
--None of ten commandments mention rape. (Another reason why they suck.)
--"Slippery slope" is a logical fallacy.
--Generally speaking, people don't have souls.
--
Welp, I gotta jet. sQu1db0y (a 'hacker') teld me hes gonna score me some perqs. (UNIX 'shell' accounts) Dam. Some days it just feels like the whole worlds smeared with Vaz. (?)
--
Fuck no I wouldn't. In such a case, terrorism would do little to make anyone happier. It wouldn't change the culture, and it wouldn't stop any further abortions. Unless you think there's something magical about violence that repeated applications of it will eventually result in moral action.
What kind of reprobate has no other means of expression other than muderous action?
--
(Nice troll, BTW. Can we get a Godwin-equivalent law for Bill Clinton?)
--
I am not going to go back and sort through the comments and their moderation to try to see whether flamebait was marked as insightful, or insightful comments were marked as flamebait, I simply pointing out that you are wrong to call it prejudice, and that you are continuing to make a false analogy.
The Slashdot community, it seems, has a strong anti-Christian bias. They are unwilling to give up their preconceived notions of Christianity. Slashdot (and increasingly our culture in general)
I would consider Slashdot as being more non-Christian than the rest of the world. However, to say that our culture has an anti-Christian bias is insane. This is why I say that Christians have a persecution complex; you see this anti-Christian majority that just doesn't exist.
wants to believe that Christianity is responsible for lots of bad things (witch trials, Crusades) which did undeniably happen, but also wants to deny it's responsible for lots of good things (art, science, medicine) too. Looking at only one side of the truth about somebody is prejudice just as much as believing lies about him is.
It's true, these arguments lack a certain intellectual rigor. If Christianity had never existed, it's impossible to tell what would have happened. Maybe the Crusades would have been fought over something else. Maybe religious art would have found a different inspiration.
However, it seems to me that the teachings of Christianity are much more geared toward producing conformity, obedience, and fear of the unknown than they are towards encouraging art and good-will. So it seems reasonable to blame Christianty for the bad things in our society that are produced by the traits it encourages.
Oh, ps. Saying that someone "wants to believe" something is lame and insulting. I do believe that Christianity is a Bad Thing, there's no wanting involved.
--
Prejudice is when you have (usually wrong) beliefs about a person based on their nationality, race, religion, or whatnot. The key here is that you are drawing an inference from a trait that has nothing to do with what you are concluding. For example, if I were to say that so and so (who I don't know at all) is a lazy person, and I based this assertion on the fact that so and so is Mexican, that would be prejudiced, because I am "pre-judging" a person based on a stereotype.
On the other hand, if I were to say "Christians think that they are sinful, and need to accept Jesus Christ as their savior to be absolved of these sins," this is not a prejudice. As near as I can tell, this is a fairly factual statement. If I were to then go on and say "These beliefs are fucking bullshit and people need to stop propagating them," I'm expressing an opinion on actual traits on the religion and am in no way being prejudiced.
Why is it that so many Christians have persecution complexes?
--
Now I know why Cryptonomicon was such a thick book...
--
You're still arguing on some mystical inherency basis, like when you were wrongly calling unauthorized copying theft. Now you simply assert "it's still wrong." It's true, unlimited public copying of novels reduces the monetary incentive for writers to write. It's also true that giving authors exclusive, permanent, transferable rights to control copying deprives the public of benefit. Does that make copyright "just wrong?" Maybe, maybe not. There's much more to be considered, ethically speaking, than just "it's theft" vs. "big bad companies trying to rip us off."
--
Don't be stupid. If I whack you in the leg with a lead pipe, and you miss two weeks of work, I've just deprived you of income. However, it's neither theft nor fraud, it's assault and battery.
Calling something what it's not is not a cohesive argument.
--
Exception: Superosity. Chris Crosby is a freaking genius.
--
Nice abstraction, but in the real world it doesn't work that way. When say that everyone has the right to life, it doesn't mean anything unless somebody enforces that right. That means that your are commanding others to do your bidding: to write and enforce the laws that protect that right. In most societies around the world, that means involuntary taxation, subjection to law, etc. These are all affirmative acts. Your assertion that protecting a right to life is different from protecting a right to food is false.
--
I have a similar ritual that I find helps quite a bit. Whenever I get through a rough patch and my program finally compiles, or whenever I root out and correct a particularly intricate or bothersome bug, I push my chair back, stand up, point and the screen and yell: "THAT'S RIGHT, BITCH! HOW DO YOU LIKE ME NOW?"
It makes me feel good, and is often the difference between success and failure.
Seriously though, I too realized that without a God, I am nothing. Then I realized that no Gods existed, and that I was therefore nothing. It was only through this realization that I was able to know what I was, and have any shot at all at being something. I suggest you read the Tao Te Ching for further insights.
--
Oh, I get it. You long ago stopped using your brain for anything other than propping up your wounded ego and mental masturbation. No great tragedy, I suppose.
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Gee, Sparky, I watch football. I guess that means I'm some kind of fat-assed moron. Do I dare point out that your serve-serving stereotyping, like most stereotyping, is completely inaccurate? Enh, why bother. Suffice to point out that football is a game of complex strategy and incredible feats of endurance. Maybe you just don't know enough about it to be able to appreciate it. *shrug*
Why wasn't this developed for use by a news agency? Was it a question of funding? If so, why then does the sports dept. get that amount of funding?
News agencies are too busy trying to figure out how to cram more useless gerbage into their already fatuous programs of rapidly declining relevance. It should be fairly obvious why sport organizations have large amount of money: many people watch sports, and the sports organizations sell their eyeballs for large sums of cash.
American football is a children's game being played all to often by overgrown babies.
You say "children's game" as if it is a bad thing. Many of the games I enjoy today are ones that I learned and played as a child. Heck, most children's games are just simplified versions of adults' games; children love to learn, and games present wonderful environments in which to do so. It makes no sense to me that a love for play and for learning should be supressed when a person gets old.
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