Re:wow, a reason to like GoDaddy even less
on
GoDaddy Backs SOPA
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· Score: 1
This is why I never dealt with them. It never even crossed my mind that they might have a good/inexpensive service. I don't have a problem with advertising blitzes as long as they aren't completely tasteless. Take Geico, for example. If they stop advertising I'll be sad, and I'm well aware that their crappy insurance doesn't cover shit. Their commercials are funny and well made and they always come up with new ones. GoDaddy's commercials don't even make sense. They don't even tell you what they sell.
NASCAR, need I say more? NASCAR depends on ESPN and the networks who are part of the media conglomerates who are pushing SOPA through in the first place. GoDaddy's primary advertising partner is a NASCAR driver.
Personally, I don't know how advertising through Danika Patrick ever worked out for them. It's not like they have advertisements on their website, so it's not like tricking rednecks into thinking there's Danika Patrick porn on there really brings in any revenue. I've had to explain to several people what GoDaddy actually is, because even after they visit the site in the vain hope of seeing Danika take it all off, they still don't understand what it's for.
As far as purchasing domains and web hosting. ..I don't know anyone who uses them. Obviously some people do, but I've always assumed they have some advertising scheme worked out. The way they exploit Danika just seems to imply there's no sense of business ethics, or even the desire to appear to have some, at the company. Of course, supporting SOPA proves this theory of mine.
Turn adblock on, that's how I'd like to see it measured. They say the amount of Flash stayed about the same, but there's a lot of non-Flash, annoyingly obtrusive ads these days that adblock takes care of. Their numbers seem to indicate that an increase in Javascript has been relevant, which could be from sites using AJAX a bit more, but a lot that the extra work is on the server's end so I still think there'd probably be quite a decrease in the average with adblock on.
I'm also curious as to whether Facebook pages played a role in these statistics, that's all a lot of people look at. People sharing pictures and whatnot.
It's about moral legitimacy, not legal. If legal legitimacy is all that matters, then we're all in clear violation of the Hammurabi's Code and all the other original monarchical and theocratic legislations that kick-started civilization. Moral legitimacy always takes priority over legal legitimacy. Men like Socrates and Jesus Christ died for these principles, and this is why they are so deeply revered.
So, I pretty much agree with what you say, but not how you say it. Revolting can be legitimate and often is, because revolting requires a great deal of sacrifice on the part of many people to be successful.
This is exactly what I was going to post. This is a self-fulfilling prophecy. These are obviously the new technologies that IBM is investing in and banking on. The three that stick out as creepy are the biometrics, mind-reading, and advertising. All three scream privacy invasion to me and all three can (will) be abused in the wrong hands.
The kinetic energy proposal seems promising but the digital divide issue just seems to be the 'safe bet.' It's already the case that cell phones are allowing almost anyone to connect to the internet. But that fails to acknowledge that being connected to the internet doesn't mean taking advantage of what it really has to offer. Having a Facebook page doesn't mean anything. Furthermore, it fails to acknowledge that while this 'digital divide' is shrinking, it's not doing anything to stop the social divide from widening. In fact, the internet allows people to stop diversifying altogether. You have a dating website for every type of person: Christian, wealthy, fat, smart, beautiful, into furries, etc. Then people only pull their news from places that confirm their own biases. Like/. but worse (Fox News/Huffington Post). You can buy whatever you want off the internet so you don't have to go out in public and associate with the plebs who run registers and stock shelves for a living. So while they make it sound like shrinking the digital divide is some social positive, I don't know if that's really the case.
I'm an American, but here's my answer to your question: Educate. That's our only hope, to educate our way out of this, and that's where the Democrats should narrow their focus. An uneducated person doesn't understand Rawlsian economics. An uneducated person doesn't understand that the U.S. Constitution is outdated and needs to be replaced. Or that socialism isn't a dirty word.
What the neo-cons have done is make a religion out of Americanism. They paint their opponents as unpatriotic blasphemers and the general public buys it. They buy it because they're uneducated, which makes them suckers.
Educate children. Extend the schoolday to 9-10 hours long (most people work at least 8 hours a day, so a 6-7 hour school day necessitates child care of some sort), allow more time for physical activity, self-study, and hands-on learning. Keep these kids away from their idiot parents as long as possible and teach them about the world. Ensure that they're well versed in logic, mathematics, science, and multiple languages. That they are in good physical condition.
There's this bizarre attitude in this country that a parent knows best. That by becoming a parent, some slumbering genius is awakened in each and every one of us and these instincts will guide our children to happiness. Mothers especially love this bullshit - the "maternal instinct" they speak of so reverently. Of course, they fail to mention that infanticide brought on by postpartum depression is nothing more than "maternal instinct."
I would rather see a Brave New World than my country devolve into ancient Rome, a land of bread and circuses, which is the way things appear to be headed. Take these kids away from their parents and fill their heads with every bit of objectively verifiable knowledge we can. That way, when they get older and start making subjective assessments, they'll at least be rooted in logic, which is clearly not the case right now.
If a silicon-based computer AI became sentient, I would consider it morally imperative to destroy it immediately. Like Frankenstein watching his monster come to life:
I had gazed on him while unfinished; he was ugly then, but when those muscles and joints rendered capable of motion, it became a thing such as even Dante could not have conceived.
I do see this attitude as pre-emptive self-defense, a prioritization of all things after mankind, lest we become the bird that chooses to perch on a crocodile tooth.
I also don't see these hypotheticals as that pertinent to reality: I don't believe we'll ever contact intelligent alien life and I don't believe it's technologically possible to construct a sentient computer. I do believe chimpanzees are a valuable experimental resource for scientists to exploit and I don't find such activity to be morally unsettling. Hypothetical AIs and aliens aren't very persuasive counter-arguments.
Don't get me wrong, I love my cat, for example, and although she can't do math I do think she's fairly intelligent for a creature and has emotions. But if I had to choose between the life of my cat and the life of a person I've never even met, I would choose the person. I would be morally compelled to. And that's the issue here.
You're right, religious apologists shouldn't be modded up. That's how the system works, if you disagree with someone then you mod them down. . . oh, wait, that's not how it's supposed to work at all.
Hitchens may have written about much more than atheism, but he used atheism to garner attention for himself. If being an asshole atheist isn't the legacy he wanted to leave, then perhaps he should have written a book called "God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything." I've seen Hitchens in several interviews and no blow was too low for him if it was directed toward religion. Perhaps if he would have been somewhat mature about the subject I would of given a damn what he had to say about other things.
Somehow, Hitchens believed that because I'm a Christian I'm supposed to accept responsibility for the Crusades and the Spanish Inquisition, but as an atheist he doesn't have to accept responsibility for Mao and Stalin. He was a hypocritical jackass.
I said no valid normative theory. As in, a logically coherent one.
No, I would have no qualms hurting/enslaving/experimenting on intelligent aliens. I would see it as a moral necessity to assess their strengths and weaknesses so we can eliminate them if necessary. Fuck E.T., it would have been best for the government to catch him.
When it comes to neanderthals, it's unclear how they relate to us. There are various theories one way or the other. Even though I love hypothetical ethical quandaries, this one is so far detached from reality there's no reasonable way to answer it.
The mentally retarded are people and thus warrant ethical consideration.
Utilitarianism is an overall weak normative theory because one can think of many examples when X example that seems terrible can be justified under utilitarianism. I'm a Kantian, btw.
As a Lutheran, I don't challenge the 'ignorance and tribal dogma' of my Hindu friends because doing so is inconsiderate. Even though I do find the caste system abhorrant and much wrong with the Hindu religion and its history (although, I admit, I also find a great deal about it fascinating). Hitchens and his buddies like Dawkins promote being a rude asshole, shoving your beliefs down people's throats. That's no better than the nut-job evangelicals.
I'm not a 'closet Lutheran' because I choose not to be evangelical about my beliefs. I see it as a mere courtesy, I respect others' right to make their own rational decisions when it comes to matters of faith.
Yes, that's the point. There is a line drawn between humans and animals. A human has an ethical duty towards his fellow man but he has no such obligations to animals.
That doesn't mean that I would be justified in driving hordes of animals extinct. This would likely have a negative impact on my fellow man, which would thus make it unethical. But there is nothing unethical about killing, eating, and wearing an animal -- unless, of course, it belongs to another person and I've stolen it from them. There's actually nothing unethical about torturing an animal - it's just strange and indicative that the person may be mentally unstable (in which case it's likely that they don't understand the distinction between people and animals and would be willing to do the same to a man - so it indicates a lack of morals but the act itself isn't immoral).
What is it about a primate that elevates their ethical status above that of a bacteria? Nothing. Humans, on the other hand, are innately moral beings.
During the postexilic age, an impoverished, harassed Israel lived under the domination of the Persian Empire. Her identity as a monarchial political state no longer secure or adequate, she sought to recover her ancient identity as a worshiping community ruled by the Lord. Accordingly, Leviticus stresses the antiquity of the Aaronite priestly leadership and of the attendant rituals. In a time of uncertainty about Israel's election and of a tendency to assimilate to the culture of her neighbors, Leviticus placed great stress on the uniqueness of Israel's socio-economic legislation and encouraged the observance of even the smallest details of the cultic regulations. In contrast to the unrestrained social and economic abuses of the late monarchic and exilic periods, it reasserts the ancient prohibition against absolute human domination of persons and physical property. Thus, in spite of the failures of the past and the hardships of the present, Israel could once again recover her identity as "holy people" in whose midst the Lord dwelled.
It helps to understand context before quoting the Bible and saying, "God said this!" Something both atheists and Baptists fail to do. No Catholic worth his confirmation, for example, would claim that anything in the Bible is the word of God. The Bible is a collection of old religious writings organized into a single book during the Council of Trent.
You use the term "Yahweh," so if you're attacking Jews, your complaint rests solely with the Hassidic variety because most Jews interpret these old writings as more of a cultural history than as religious absolutes. They are one of, if perhaps the only, culture to have a written record that dates back almost as far as civilization itself. They value this and preserve it.
Concerning Christians, Leviticus is even more irrelevant because what made Jesus of Nazareth so important was that he advocated abandoning these old texts in favor of his reformed Golden Rule Philosophy. Christians of the non-theologically insane variety (i.e. not Baptist, 'non-denominational,' southern Methodists, etc.) study the old testament as a historical context to understand the culture that Jesus of Nazareth lived in and the religion he was raised in and reformed.
Baptists and the like, the ones who quote various parts of the Bible as the absolute word of God, have their roots in snake-oil salesmen during various 'Great Awakenings' who decided that religion was a profitable venture. They rarely understand the historical or theological context of Christianity, foregoing the study of Hebrew and Greek in favor of a fervent study of the most simplistic English translation of the Bible they can find. Basically, they're just as ignorant as Christopher Hitchens was. Meanwhile, we Catholics and Lutherans and Jews stood in the middle of this fray, perplexed by the ignorance on both sides.
If one makes the case that it's unethical to use Chimps as test subjects then it follows that it's unethical to use any animal as a test subject. This is exactly what the animal rights whackos want.
I don't buy the "they're too similar to people" argument. I don't care how similar to people they are, they're not people. A person's ethical concerns are limited to the realm of people. There is no valid normative theory that draws a line between primates and the rest of animals. There are the theories the animal rights people rely on - such as that anything that can 'suffer' has ethical rights - but this theory is weak for various reasons ('rights' are undefined, predators become immoral beings, keeping pets becomes slavery, etc.). This attitude is the result of pussies raised on Disney cartoons who fall in love with anthropomorphic animals and fail to distinguish them from real animals.
This is similar to pro-lifers pushing through legislation to make a certain type of abortion illegal, like the 'partial birth abortion.' Even though it's not common, especially compared to standard 'procedures' (i.e. take a pill and bleed that shit out), they can use graphic pictures to appeal to one's emotion. But the goal isn't to stop partial birth abortion, which was typically only used in medical emergencies anyway, the goal was to take a step toward stopping all abortion. Similarly, this is just a step toward banning all animal testing, which is stupid because advances in medicine rely on it. No doctor recommends a woman wait until late in her pregnancy for an abortion, but in certain cases 'partial birth abortions' were used to save women's lives. No scientist uses a chimp when he can use a rat, but in certain cases the chimp's similarities to humans is what makes them valuable test subjects.
So, given that this restriction provides an exception for the very cases in which chimps are already allowed as test subjects, how does this change anything? It doesn't, except it gives the pussy vegans a sense of moral victory and motivates them to continue their zealous quest of unreasonableness.
Google needs to make clear guidelines for yanking items protected by copyright. I suggest a three strikes and you're out rule. When a copyright owner, say Universal in this example, sends in a request to have content pulled, they must agree to certain terms. The key term being that if they are caught abusing the system three times or more, then they automatically forfeit the right to utilize the system again. Meaning, you try and abuse our system, and you've just given your entire library of copyrights away to the YouTube community. Everyday users of software can be snagged into bullshit terms because of a click contract, why not do it to a company?
As it stands, there's every incentive for these companies to abuse the system. Threatening people with lawyers is the new form of extortion, and it's legal.
The professional publishers do realize it, but that's a distribution model that leaves them out of the equation, which is why they oppose it.
Publishers - whether they publish CDs, DVDs, print magazines, or books - realize that the internet is making them increasingly useless. In the past they functioned to copy media onto physical devices and distribute it through retail channels. This made sense, it was necessary because it was the only way to get a song or movie or book to millions of people.
With film, at least these companies can still justify their existence because of high production costs because it's not exactly cheap to display Transformers beating the hell out of one another. But with music and the written word . . . OpenOffice and Ardour are free and provide better functionality than anything William Faulkner or The Beatles had to produce their works. Even if you go 'professional grade' you're just looking at Microsoft Office (QuarkXPress/InDesign if you want to do your own layouts) and Logic/ProTools. The several hundred dollar per hour recording studio is a thing of the past. iPads, Nooks, and whathaveyou are making magazines and books a thing of the past, too.
Basically, these companies are becoming useless and they know it. They're grabbing whatever scraps of profit they can before they inevitably sink.
"By subscribing to TIME magazine, The Subscriber has chosen truth in a time of lies. Chosen real news, news you know is real because it's printed on actual paper, rather than succumb to the unverifiable voracity of the blogs that threaten to wipe out humanity. Make sure that everyone you know also becomes a Subscriber to save their humanity!"
That's nothing. Look what Stalin did. He won the it twice. Hitler won in 1938.
The funny thing is, the Time "Person of the Year" has been pretty stupid ever since they changed it from "Man of the Year" to "Person of the Year." To me, that represented when they decided to prioritize political correctness over honesty (1999). We had GWB in 2000 (the year he spent mostly on vacation), Rudy Giuliani in 2001 (the year Osama bin Laden was the clear 'winner'), 'The Whistleblowers' in 2002 (inciting this trend of non-persons - it had been done in the past but sparingly), 'The American Soldier' in 2003, GWB again in 2004, 'The Good Samaritans' in 2005, 'You' in 2006 (probably the worst choice ever), Putin in 2007, Obama in 2008, Bernanke in 2009 (first justifiable choice of the decade - the last year of it), Zuckerberg last year (Julian Assange clear 'winner'), and now this protestor bullshit.
Basically, Time Person of a Year is a joke.
Also, the chart you cite is full of inaccuracies, bias, and lies.
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This is why I never dealt with them. It never even crossed my mind that they might have a good/inexpensive service. I don't have a problem with advertising blitzes as long as they aren't completely tasteless. Take Geico, for example. If they stop advertising I'll be sad, and I'm well aware that their crappy insurance doesn't cover shit. Their commercials are funny and well made and they always come up with new ones. GoDaddy's commercials don't even make sense. They don't even tell you what they sell.
NASCAR, need I say more? NASCAR depends on ESPN and the networks who are part of the media conglomerates who are pushing SOPA through in the first place. GoDaddy's primary advertising partner is a NASCAR driver.
Personally, I don't know how advertising through Danika Patrick ever worked out for them. It's not like they have advertisements on their website, so it's not like tricking rednecks into thinking there's Danika Patrick porn on there really brings in any revenue. I've had to explain to several people what GoDaddy actually is, because even after they visit the site in the vain hope of seeing Danika take it all off, they still don't understand what it's for.
As far as purchasing domains and web hosting. . .I don't know anyone who uses them. Obviously some people do, but I've always assumed they have some advertising scheme worked out. The way they exploit Danika just seems to imply there's no sense of business ethics, or even the desire to appear to have some, at the company. Of course, supporting SOPA proves this theory of mine.
Turn adblock on, that's how I'd like to see it measured. They say the amount of Flash stayed about the same, but there's a lot of non-Flash, annoyingly obtrusive ads these days that adblock takes care of. Their numbers seem to indicate that an increase in Javascript has been relevant, which could be from sites using AJAX a bit more, but a lot that the extra work is on the server's end so I still think there'd probably be quite a decrease in the average with adblock on.
I'm also curious as to whether Facebook pages played a role in these statistics, that's all a lot of people look at. People sharing pictures and whatnot.
These cowboys better be careful when messing with ICE, it could be black.
It's about moral legitimacy, not legal. If legal legitimacy is all that matters, then we're all in clear violation of the Hammurabi's Code and all the other original monarchical and theocratic legislations that kick-started civilization. Moral legitimacy always takes priority over legal legitimacy. Men like Socrates and Jesus Christ died for these principles, and this is why they are so deeply revered.
So, I pretty much agree with what you say, but not how you say it. Revolting can be legitimate and often is, because revolting requires a great deal of sacrifice on the part of many people to be successful.
This is exactly what I was going to post. This is a self-fulfilling prophecy. These are obviously the new technologies that IBM is investing in and banking on. The three that stick out as creepy are the biometrics, mind-reading, and advertising. All three scream privacy invasion to me and all three can (will) be abused in the wrong hands.
The kinetic energy proposal seems promising but the digital divide issue just seems to be the 'safe bet.' It's already the case that cell phones are allowing almost anyone to connect to the internet. But that fails to acknowledge that being connected to the internet doesn't mean taking advantage of what it really has to offer. Having a Facebook page doesn't mean anything. Furthermore, it fails to acknowledge that while this 'digital divide' is shrinking, it's not doing anything to stop the social divide from widening. In fact, the internet allows people to stop diversifying altogether. You have a dating website for every type of person: Christian, wealthy, fat, smart, beautiful, into furries, etc. Then people only pull their news from places that confirm their own biases. Like /. but worse (Fox News/Huffington Post). You can buy whatever you want off the internet so you don't have to go out in public and associate with the plebs who run registers and stock shelves for a living. So while they make it sound like shrinking the digital divide is some social positive, I don't know if that's really the case.
I'm an American, but here's my answer to your question: Educate. That's our only hope, to educate our way out of this, and that's where the Democrats should narrow their focus. An uneducated person doesn't understand Rawlsian economics. An uneducated person doesn't understand that the U.S. Constitution is outdated and needs to be replaced. Or that socialism isn't a dirty word.
What the neo-cons have done is make a religion out of Americanism. They paint their opponents as unpatriotic blasphemers and the general public buys it. They buy it because they're uneducated, which makes them suckers.
Educate children. Extend the schoolday to 9-10 hours long (most people work at least 8 hours a day, so a 6-7 hour school day necessitates child care of some sort), allow more time for physical activity, self-study, and hands-on learning. Keep these kids away from their idiot parents as long as possible and teach them about the world. Ensure that they're well versed in logic, mathematics, science, and multiple languages. That they are in good physical condition.
There's this bizarre attitude in this country that a parent knows best. That by becoming a parent, some slumbering genius is awakened in each and every one of us and these instincts will guide our children to happiness. Mothers especially love this bullshit - the "maternal instinct" they speak of so reverently. Of course, they fail to mention that infanticide brought on by postpartum depression is nothing more than "maternal instinct."
I would rather see a Brave New World than my country devolve into ancient Rome, a land of bread and circuses, which is the way things appear to be headed. Take these kids away from their parents and fill their heads with every bit of objectively verifiable knowledge we can. That way, when they get older and start making subjective assessments, they'll at least be rooted in logic, which is clearly not the case right now.
If a silicon-based computer AI became sentient, I would consider it morally imperative to destroy it immediately. Like Frankenstein watching his monster come to life:
I had gazed on him while unfinished; he was ugly then, but when those muscles and joints rendered capable of motion, it became a thing such as even Dante could not have conceived.
I do see this attitude as pre-emptive self-defense, a prioritization of all things after mankind, lest we become the bird that chooses to perch on a crocodile tooth.
I also don't see these hypotheticals as that pertinent to reality: I don't believe we'll ever contact intelligent alien life and I don't believe it's technologically possible to construct a sentient computer. I do believe chimpanzees are a valuable experimental resource for scientists to exploit and I don't find such activity to be morally unsettling. Hypothetical AIs and aliens aren't very persuasive counter-arguments.
Don't get me wrong, I love my cat, for example, and although she can't do math I do think she's fairly intelligent for a creature and has emotions. But if I had to choose between the life of my cat and the life of a person I've never even met, I would choose the person. I would be morally compelled to. And that's the issue here.
Why? Video streaming usually isn't hi-def anyway. Netflix certainly isn't.
My PS3 is used for Netflix like 90% of the time, a DVD/Blu-Ray player 5% of the time, and NCAA Football 5% of the time.
You're right, religious apologists shouldn't be modded up. That's how the system works, if you disagree with someone then you mod them down. . . oh, wait, that's not how it's supposed to work at all.
Hitchens may have written about much more than atheism, but he used atheism to garner attention for himself. If being an asshole atheist isn't the legacy he wanted to leave, then perhaps he should have written a book called "God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything." I've seen Hitchens in several interviews and no blow was too low for him if it was directed toward religion. Perhaps if he would have been somewhat mature about the subject I would of given a damn what he had to say about other things.
Somehow, Hitchens believed that because I'm a Christian I'm supposed to accept responsibility for the Crusades and the Spanish Inquisition, but as an atheist he doesn't have to accept responsibility for Mao and Stalin. He was a hypocritical jackass.
I said no valid normative theory. As in, a logically coherent one.
No, I would have no qualms hurting/enslaving/experimenting on intelligent aliens. I would see it as a moral necessity to assess their strengths and weaknesses so we can eliminate them if necessary. Fuck E.T., it would have been best for the government to catch him.
When it comes to neanderthals, it's unclear how they relate to us. There are various theories one way or the other. Even though I love hypothetical ethical quandaries, this one is so far detached from reality there's no reasonable way to answer it.
The mentally retarded are people and thus warrant ethical consideration.
Utilitarianism is an overall weak normative theory because one can think of many examples when X example that seems terrible can be justified under utilitarianism. I'm a Kantian, btw.
Any more questions?
As a Lutheran, I don't challenge the 'ignorance and tribal dogma' of my Hindu friends because doing so is inconsiderate. Even though I do find the caste system abhorrant and much wrong with the Hindu religion and its history (although, I admit, I also find a great deal about it fascinating). Hitchens and his buddies like Dawkins promote being a rude asshole, shoving your beliefs down people's throats. That's no better than the nut-job evangelicals.
I'm not a 'closet Lutheran' because I choose not to be evangelical about my beliefs. I see it as a mere courtesy, I respect others' right to make their own rational decisions when it comes to matters of faith.
According to gnostics like Herman Hesse, Zen Buddhism and Christianity are the same thing. Philosophy, religion. To-may-to, to-mah-to.
The question was rhetorical, genius.
Yes, that's the point. There is a line drawn between humans and animals. A human has an ethical duty towards his fellow man but he has no such obligations to animals.
That doesn't mean that I would be justified in driving hordes of animals extinct. This would likely have a negative impact on my fellow man, which would thus make it unethical. But there is nothing unethical about killing, eating, and wearing an animal -- unless, of course, it belongs to another person and I've stolen it from them. There's actually nothing unethical about torturing an animal - it's just strange and indicative that the person may be mentally unstable (in which case it's likely that they don't understand the distinction between people and animals and would be willing to do the same to a man - so it indicates a lack of morals but the act itself isn't immoral).
What is it about a primate that elevates their ethical status above that of a bacteria? Nothing. Humans, on the other hand, are innately moral beings.
That's a weak argument. Blacks aren't similar to people, they are people.
During the postexilic age, an impoverished, harassed Israel lived under the domination of the Persian Empire. Her identity as a monarchial political state no longer secure or adequate, she sought to recover her ancient identity as a worshiping community ruled by the Lord. Accordingly, Leviticus stresses the antiquity of the Aaronite priestly leadership and of the attendant rituals. In a time of uncertainty about Israel's election and of a tendency to assimilate to the culture of her neighbors, Leviticus placed great stress on the uniqueness of Israel's socio-economic legislation and encouraged the observance of even the smallest details of the cultic regulations. In contrast to the unrestrained social and economic abuses of the late monarchic and exilic periods, it reasserts the ancient prohibition against absolute human domination of persons and physical property. Thus, in spite of the failures of the past and the hardships of the present, Israel could once again recover her identity as "holy people" in whose midst the Lord dwelled.
It helps to understand context before quoting the Bible and saying, "God said this!" Something both atheists and Baptists fail to do. No Catholic worth his confirmation, for example, would claim that anything in the Bible is the word of God. The Bible is a collection of old religious writings organized into a single book during the Council of Trent.
You use the term "Yahweh," so if you're attacking Jews, your complaint rests solely with the Hassidic variety because most Jews interpret these old writings as more of a cultural history than as religious absolutes. They are one of, if perhaps the only, culture to have a written record that dates back almost as far as civilization itself. They value this and preserve it.
Concerning Christians, Leviticus is even more irrelevant because what made Jesus of Nazareth so important was that he advocated abandoning these old texts in favor of his reformed Golden Rule Philosophy. Christians of the non-theologically insane variety (i.e. not Baptist, 'non-denominational,' southern Methodists, etc.) study the old testament as a historical context to understand the culture that Jesus of Nazareth lived in and the religion he was raised in and reformed.
Baptists and the like, the ones who quote various parts of the Bible as the absolute word of God, have their roots in snake-oil salesmen during various 'Great Awakenings' who decided that religion was a profitable venture. They rarely understand the historical or theological context of Christianity, foregoing the study of Hebrew and Greek in favor of a fervent study of the most simplistic English translation of the Bible they can find. Basically, they're just as ignorant as Christopher Hitchens was. Meanwhile, we Catholics and Lutherans and Jews stood in the middle of this fray, perplexed by the ignorance on both sides.
If one makes the case that it's unethical to use Chimps as test subjects then it follows that it's unethical to use any animal as a test subject. This is exactly what the animal rights whackos want.
I don't buy the "they're too similar to people" argument. I don't care how similar to people they are, they're not people. A person's ethical concerns are limited to the realm of people. There is no valid normative theory that draws a line between primates and the rest of animals. There are the theories the animal rights people rely on - such as that anything that can 'suffer' has ethical rights - but this theory is weak for various reasons ('rights' are undefined, predators become immoral beings, keeping pets becomes slavery, etc.). This attitude is the result of pussies raised on Disney cartoons who fall in love with anthropomorphic animals and fail to distinguish them from real animals.
This is similar to pro-lifers pushing through legislation to make a certain type of abortion illegal, like the 'partial birth abortion.' Even though it's not common, especially compared to standard 'procedures' (i.e. take a pill and bleed that shit out), they can use graphic pictures to appeal to one's emotion. But the goal isn't to stop partial birth abortion, which was typically only used in medical emergencies anyway, the goal was to take a step toward stopping all abortion. Similarly, this is just a step toward banning all animal testing, which is stupid because advances in medicine rely on it. No doctor recommends a woman wait until late in her pregnancy for an abortion, but in certain cases 'partial birth abortions' were used to save women's lives. No scientist uses a chimp when he can use a rat, but in certain cases the chimp's similarities to humans is what makes them valuable test subjects.
So, given that this restriction provides an exception for the very cases in which chimps are already allowed as test subjects, how does this change anything? It doesn't, except it gives the pussy vegans a sense of moral victory and motivates them to continue their zealous quest of unreasonableness.
Google needs to make clear guidelines for yanking items protected by copyright. I suggest a three strikes and you're out rule. When a copyright owner, say Universal in this example, sends in a request to have content pulled, they must agree to certain terms. The key term being that if they are caught abusing the system three times or more, then they automatically forfeit the right to utilize the system again. Meaning, you try and abuse our system, and you've just given your entire library of copyrights away to the YouTube community. Everyday users of software can be snagged into bullshit terms because of a click contract, why not do it to a company?
As it stands, there's every incentive for these companies to abuse the system. Threatening people with lawyers is the new form of extortion, and it's legal.
Doh, you're right, there are comics even less funny than Carrot Top. How could I forget? I guess I fail at irony.
Waitaminute, when did Carrot Top change his name to Louis CK?
The professional publishers do realize it, but that's a distribution model that leaves them out of the equation, which is why they oppose it.
Publishers - whether they publish CDs, DVDs, print magazines, or books - realize that the internet is making them increasingly useless. In the past they functioned to copy media onto physical devices and distribute it through retail channels. This made sense, it was necessary because it was the only way to get a song or movie or book to millions of people.
With film, at least these companies can still justify their existence because of high production costs because it's not exactly cheap to display Transformers beating the hell out of one another. But with music and the written word . . . OpenOffice and Ardour are free and provide better functionality than anything William Faulkner or The Beatles had to produce their works. Even if you go 'professional grade' you're just looking at Microsoft Office (QuarkXPress/InDesign if you want to do your own layouts) and Logic/ProTools. The several hundred dollar per hour recording studio is a thing of the past. iPads, Nooks, and whathaveyou are making magazines and books a thing of the past, too.
Basically, these companies are becoming useless and they know it. They're grabbing whatever scraps of profit they can before they inevitably sink.
"By subscribing to TIME magazine, The Subscriber has chosen truth in a time of lies. Chosen real news, news you know is real because it's printed on actual paper, rather than succumb to the unverifiable voracity of the blogs that threaten to wipe out humanity. Make sure that everyone you know also becomes a Subscriber to save their humanity!"
That's nothing. Look what Stalin did. He won the it twice. Hitler won in 1938.
The funny thing is, the Time "Person of the Year" has been pretty stupid ever since they changed it from "Man of the Year" to "Person of the Year." To me, that represented when they decided to prioritize political correctness over honesty (1999). We had GWB in 2000 (the year he spent mostly on vacation), Rudy Giuliani in 2001 (the year Osama bin Laden was the clear 'winner'), 'The Whistleblowers' in 2002 (inciting this trend of non-persons - it had been done in the past but sparingly), 'The American Soldier' in 2003, GWB again in 2004, 'The Good Samaritans' in 2005, 'You' in 2006 (probably the worst choice ever), Putin in 2007, Obama in 2008, Bernanke in 2009 (first justifiable choice of the decade - the last year of it), Zuckerberg last year (Julian Assange clear 'winner'), and now this protestor bullshit.
Basically, Time Person of a Year is a joke.
Also, the chart you cite is full of inaccuracies, bias, and lies.