It seems like you cannot understand the intelligence behind the social commentary in The Simpsons. Do you seriously think that this show encourages people to aspire to the likes of Homer? And in any case, he is an engineer in that power plant, isn't he?
The Simpsons is a sad case b/c almost everyone misses the social commentary. Or they realize it's a satire of couch potatoes, but it doesn't make them feel bad, rather it makes them feel accepted, or at least acceptable. The show itself kind of drops the ball in this regard: Marge always comes back to Homer, no matter what he does (which begs the question, whom is more stupid?). Intelligent/geeky characters are ridiculed: the science guy, comic book guy, Lisa.
I love the show, but it only contributes to the negative perception Americans have of academics. Because, really, the show doesn't go out of its way to make political statements. An environmentalist is going to think it's pro-environmentalist b/c of Lisa, an anti-environmentalist is going to think it makes fun of environmentalists b/c of how everyone treats Lisa. The Simpsons rarely takes a stance, it allows the audience to make their own conclusions based on what characters they relate to and their own personal biases.
You may see the Simpsons as making fun of fat dumb slobs, but fat dumb slobs see it as a reinforcing their normalcy. This was most damaging with kids during my generation (growing up in the 90s). Bart was an icon of cool. No one wanted to be a Milhouse or Martin.
With a few notable exceptions (Scientology), religions are not formed with the intent to be a religion. Religion is just the hoopla that forms around an idea (specifically, one that claims to hold the solution to mankind's ills). The religiously atheistic aren't being religious about their atheism intentionally, it's just the result of worshipping their material worldview.
What I consider 'militant' or 'fundamentalist' atheists are those who make the claim that religion is the cause of all of man's problems. When you cross that line, you've made a religion of atheism. You've asserted a dogma and condemned those who don't abide by it.
You're the one who referred to your anti-religious stance as a battle you've picked. How does the word militant not apply?
militant - combative and aggressive in support of a political or social cause, and typically favoring extreme, violent, or confrontational methods
The beliefs you've purported are the subject in question, so it's not a strawman I've propped up to attack. Dawkins has repeatedly made it clear that religion is an impediment to a better society, that we suffer unnecessarily because of it. His solution for society? Abolish religion.
No religion claims to abolish all suffering, that was a careless hyperbole on my part. But every religion makes a claim of a primary cause of suffering and offers a solution to it. All of your evangelical atheist heroes and your own little rant make it explicitly clear that there is nothing that causes more suffering in the world than religion, and that the only solution is to end religion. That's making a religion of atheism.
Mankind is inherently religious because we reflect on our dilemmas and conceptualize solutions to these problems. Sometimes these solutions make sense, sometimes they're riddled with fallacies, sometimes they're hypocritical.
Religion isn't invented by man. Man is invented by religion. -- Robert M. Pirsig
Unlike a (religious) fundie, his reasoning is sound. Big difference there.
What all religions have in common is that they declare a universal cause of human suffering and claim to know the cure. Fundamental atheists claim religion is the universal problem and fundamental, evangelical atheism is the only cure. It's a religion of religion-bashing. That type of circular logic makes me think of a dog chasing its tail.
The logical flaw is that religion isn't the cause of all human suffering. People are, according to Sartre, but I lean toward the more broad, Buddhist perspective: Life itself is the cause of suffering.
Notice how few militant atheists attack Buddhism, Taoism, and even Judaism. They go after easy targets: Fundamentalist Christians born out of the Great Awakenings who lack a solid theology, Islamic extremists from countries that aren't very advanced, and a Hindu caste system that doesn't even really exist anymore.
What I find especially humorous is that the parent used South Park in some of his citations. I guess he missed the Dawkins episode.
Really? Where? Or are you just going to keep that secret to yourself? South Park is about the most intelligent thing I've seen on my selection of channels.
Which brings up a major question: what would it take to unseat the market leader and is that even possible?
Microsoft is spending millions trying to answer that question and you expect some Slashdotter to just randomly throw it out there?
Here's my questions for you: Considering you knew this was horrendously non-scientific, why would you publish it knowing that people are going to misinterpret it as "a study that proves that Bing! is better than Google?" Do you really overestimate people that much? Do you have an interest in this misconception? Or were you just baiting for web hits?
This is why so few trust statistics, science, journalism, or anything published on the internet. Because those with nothing to say are the ones who insist on having their voice heard.
Oh, toddle off. As a member of the moral community, I can definitively say that the vast majority of us have no interesting in micromanaging your life.
Could you do us all a favour then and tell your "minority" to STFU? When you let them do all the talking, they'll naturally come to represent both them and you.
Does this mean you don't consider yourself to be a part of the moral community? So how do you feel about genocide. . .
I certainly don't find nudie photos to be immoral unless they are of children or heinously violent acts, but I still consider myself to be a part of the moral community. Just like everyone else who refrains from killing not because it's illegal but because it's morally wrong. To exclude yourself from the moral community implies that you have no sense of right and wrong. Or, to put it another way, you're criminally insane (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%27Naghten_Rules).
'Moral community' isn't synonymous with 'Puritan values' or 'Christianity' or 'religious.' I understand you were responding to either a troll or a fool (or both -- I can't figure out which -- maybe he was being sarcastic, sometimes on the net you just can't tell), but you still stuck your foot in your mouth with the first part of your post just as bad as he did with the second part of his post.
Stop judging women based on movies and TV. Check out the midwest -- the average woman is 5'1" and overweight.
Have the women in Playboy and on TV gotten prettier and prettier? Yes, but it's no different than the trend of professional wrestlers becoming more and more muscular. Population has increased, new medical procedures/work-out practices are taken advantage of, and the cream of the crop is oh so much creamier. But that doesn't mean that normal looking people ceased to exist, nor does it mean that, in general, there are more cute girls today than thirty or forty years ago. In fact, I would argue the reverse is true: take a look at obesity statistics. As a percentage, there are less attractive people today than there were several decades ago, it's just that media pretends they don't exist.
The difference is that all those things you mentioned were conscious decisions made by people. They're not behavioral patterns which are consistent with all humans. The fact of the matter is, there was a time in history when male humans took a mate by force because they were stronger. Then humans became intelligent (hundred thousand years ago + ?), and then civilized (thousands of years ago), and then religious/philosophical (five thousand years ago?), and then rape became a taboo for ethical reasons (Hammurabi, ~ 3.7k years ago), and then, developed a theory of rights (a couple hundred years ago!).
So yeah, maybe in a million years, or if they're lucky, a few hundred thousand years in the future, dolphins may be comparable to humans. When a rapist dolphin is a display of rogue behavior that their dolphin society has strict penalties for, get back to me.
I understand you were going for the ironic, "if humans are so evolved how come certain so-and-sos act so barbaric" argument, but you should know better. It just doesn't logically hold up. No one is claiming that humans are infallible, but our sentience does grant us a unique status in nature that exists outside the traditional food chain. Hell, humans can be more mean than other animals -- look at sadists, masochists, ect. But those are just more examples of how we live outside nature. We make rational decisions, oftentimes bizarre ones. An animal's decision making process is purely driven by instinct and reaction.
I think we should let Mr. Twain decide what he intended to write. You act like it was written in Old English or something. Lemme guess -- you haven't read the book? The use of the word 'nigger' is central to the book's meaning and everything Twain was trying to accomplish. He meant it as a pejorative term and it has the same meaning today. Huck's bigotry is central to his relationship with Jim b/c it takes almost the entire novel for him to become self-conscious regard it. Huck didn't think of himself as a bigot, in the beginning he thinks of blacks as property similar to livestock. He just thinks that's how things are b/c that's what he was taught. "Non-white person" or "slave" or "black" don't convey this ignorance on Huck's part. Removing any of Twain's words is just pissing on his legacy. It's a shame to treat such a great author with such disrespect, to act as if we can know better than Twain in regard to his own work. It's a fucking disgrace.
"Look at me, I'm insightful b/c I don't subscribe to the status quo!"
Corporate collusion with the government. ..why don't you Google, oops, I'm sorry, Bing! "OOXML" Yeah, it's not a tin-foil hat theory.
This cynical, apathetic attitude of yours seems to imply that all corporations are evil at some point, so why does it matter? I'll tell you why it matters: b/c one corporation has a corporate culture of corruption whereas the other has a corporate motto to do no evil. The average Slashdot user doesn't hate Microsoft b/c it's popular. When did a bunch of nerds ever prioritize conformity? The average Slashdot user hates Microsoft b/c of the company's unethical corporate culture and business practices. Knowing the history of Google and Microsoft, how is it possible to act like they're comparatively corrupt? Google may not always do everything perfect, but corporations are run by many people who have the power to make decisions. More often than not the decisions made by Google employees live up to their motto. More often than not the decisions made by Microsoft employees are in line with their culture of corruption fostered by Gates, Allen, and Balmer.
Google isn't perfect but that doesn't mean there's no distinction between them and Microsoft. If I only used the services of companies which are pure in intention and execution then I wouldn't have a cell phone, or internet service, or use prescription drugs. I can't boycott every company that's not pure and wonderful because here in reality those companies don't exist. But I can boycott (and publicly complain about) the worst offenders. That means Microsoft.
I don't know if Google has a legitimate case here or not, but do I want them to win either way? Yup, and it has nothing to do with a collectivist Slashdot mindset. Hell, I'd be fine with Google winning the case and then some other company like IBM getting the contract. I just don't want my government running on Microsoft technology. The government should only use Linux and Unix, but that's another argument altogether.
I hope you didn't read the article. If you did, your post is an example of the decline of reading comprehension in the United States. It's not an attack on science or the scientific method. If it's an attack on anything, it's how we publish scientific studies and how all too often studies are accepted as statistically significant when they are not. The article doesn't suggest that we abandon science but rather that we scrutinize it more and stop believing that the results of every study indicate the truth the researchers were hoping to prove.
If the scientific method is being questioned at all, then it's its relation to branches of science such as psychology, nutrition, and medicine that's being questioned. You make it sound as if the article is questioning whether we know anything, like it's purporting some form of subjectivism or supernaturalism. It's not questioning the soundness of the scientific method in theory; it's questioning the way this is being executed in the scientific community, especially among sciences where conclusions are not easy to provide statistical evidence for (psychology).
That's just not true. I find a two-party system to be flawed, but to claim that there's no difference between the parties is ridiculous. They aren't two sides of the same coin -- they get their money from different groups with opposing interests. Are both equally corrupt? Yes. But they clearly have opposing agendas.
There is no voting-machine conspiracy. There's no evil collusion among the parties. It's just a broken-ass system and will remain so as long as the electorate remains ignorant. Fixing the government starts with fixing public education. Our government is doing exactly what it was designed to do: represent the will of the majority.
Apple has a patent agreement with Microsoft which prevents such litigation between the two. That doesn't mean Apple wants to see Microsoft succeed. Even if Apple would prefer Android to succeed rather than the Windows phones, it also doesn't mean that Apple won't sue Android carriers when they believe there is infringement.
Am I ignorant to the inner motivations of these company's CEO's? Yes, that's why my post was speculation. But unless you're actually Steve Jobs, you're just as ignorant. What made you believe that your ignorant speculation can be construed as fact whereas mine must be false? Your presumptuousness is extremely irritating.
I don't see what made you jump to this conclusion. Apple has never shown any evidence of seeking the top market-share position. If they did they would probably have more than one model of their phone or maybe sell iOS to hardware manufacturers. Hell, you can still only buy iPhones on one carrier! Apple seems to be doing what Apple has always done. Sell high-end/high-margin and make more money than higher volume, low-margin competitors.
Given Apple's history between Google and Microsoft, and Google and Microsoft's history with other tech companies, I would assume the opposite. That Apple would love to see Google swipe the rug from underneath Microsoft because Google can play nice with others. Right now Apple's like European monarchs during the American Civil War: they're content to watch the north and south battle one another, they'd prefer the south to win b/c that would mean greater fragmentation and less tariffs, but they're not going to interfere because the war benefits them more than a victor on either side would.
You can't become addicted to most psychoactive drugs. If you take acid two days in a row, on the second day it will hardly affect you. You develop a short-term tolerance (that goes away in a couple of days). Not to mention it's not desirable to take it multiple days in a row. It's mentally stressful and the brain needs to recuperate.
The only addictive psychoactive drug is PCP and no one does that anymore b/c no one becomes a steady user and lives long.
What do you consider well-adjusted? Talking out your ass?
I mean really, how can a study find anything about human rights? It can't even be conclusively said that human rights exist, and even if you believe in them (which I do), it's still questionable what constitutes as a right and what doesn't. Are they talking about negative rights, positive right? It could be argued that one has a right to DDoS a website. Analogy: If a man is speaking in the street, saying things I disagree with, do I not have the right to speak louder than he is, thus drowning him out and suppressing his right to speech? Where does his right to speech trump mine? I don't know the answer to that, but I'm sure one could legitimately argue either way. Rights are such a vague thing, and to be so conclusive about them is pretentious and ignorant. What sensational FUD.
While agriculture requires backbreaking labour, hunter-gatherer societies only worked a couple of days a week. Not that I advocate a return to it, but backbreaking labour all the livelong day was not universal in ancient society.
The backbreaking labor isn't continuous and you can bank against long stretches of lean times. There's a considerable amount of suck in hunter-gatherer societies when you haven't found fresh food for a few days that isn't present in agricultural societies.
There's a certain amount of suck in working in a factory every day until retirement. Talk about backbreaking. Every retired factory worker I've known has back problems and depends on painkillers to make it through the day. Doing repetitive tasks for years does horrible things to the body. Hell, I just work on a computer and it's giving me tendonitis.
I don't think it can be generalized that it's better to be alive now than then. It all really depends on who you are, where you were born, and other individual factors. Technology can be greatly beneficial, but I'd argue that it has also been detrimental to the working poor. It's just a distraction -- TV shows to occupy their minds, fast food to fill their bellies with non-nutrious meals -- white noise that prevents them from caring about the broad state of things. If I were to be poor during any time during U.S. history, I'd prefer it to be during the manifest destiny years. What better time to be alive then when land was a limitless resource?
Technology has largely benefitted the rich throughout history. It gives them all sorts of toys and conveniences while it provides the poor with more grandiose colosseums to distract them from reality. Sure, some of those conveniences trickle down, but is that really what makes a life satisfying and worthwhile?
$100,000 is a good reason to temporarily change your mind and try something else.
$100,000 won't even pay for a bachelor's degree at some universities. It's hardly enough to justify dropping out of college. Also, Gates and Zuckerberg would have both benefitted from taking some ethics classes. Higher education has more benefits than making one monetarily valuable.
My sentiments exactly. Obama has mostly fought the wrong battles and lost all the ones that mattered. Health care reform? Please. I can't believe people call this guy a socialist. If only. . .
But he can close Guantanamo by executive order. He doesn't even need Congress for that.
Yes, he's the president, not a magician. I don't care if he succeeds in all of his campaign promises, but I'd at least like to see him try. Guantanamo epitomizes his failure.
Also, Afghanistan is a military operation, not a war, so he doesn't need Congress to do the right thing there as well. We can't make Afghanistan a first world nation, we can't do anything about the corruption, we can't do anything about the violence. We'd be better off just leaving.
I once believed in Obama. Now I believe he's just a politician. Will I vote for him again? Of course: I'd rather his incompetence than that of Gingrich or Palin. But I'm still disappointed.
Slashdot Mirror
It seems like you cannot understand the intelligence behind the social commentary in The Simpsons. Do you seriously think that this show encourages people to aspire to the likes of Homer? And in any case, he is an engineer in that power plant, isn't he?
The Simpsons is a sad case b/c almost everyone misses the social commentary. Or they realize it's a satire of couch potatoes, but it doesn't make them feel bad, rather it makes them feel accepted, or at least acceptable. The show itself kind of drops the ball in this regard: Marge always comes back to Homer, no matter what he does (which begs the question, whom is more stupid?). Intelligent/geeky characters are ridiculed: the science guy, comic book guy, Lisa.
I love the show, but it only contributes to the negative perception Americans have of academics. Because, really, the show doesn't go out of its way to make political statements. An environmentalist is going to think it's pro-environmentalist b/c of Lisa, an anti-environmentalist is going to think it makes fun of environmentalists b/c of how everyone treats Lisa. The Simpsons rarely takes a stance, it allows the audience to make their own conclusions based on what characters they relate to and their own personal biases.
You may see the Simpsons as making fun of fat dumb slobs, but fat dumb slobs see it as a reinforcing their normalcy. This was most damaging with kids during my generation (growing up in the 90s). Bart was an icon of cool. No one wanted to be a Milhouse or Martin.
With a few notable exceptions (Scientology), religions are not formed with the intent to be a religion. Religion is just the hoopla that forms around an idea (specifically, one that claims to hold the solution to mankind's ills). The religiously atheistic aren't being religious about their atheism intentionally, it's just the result of worshipping their material worldview.
What I consider 'militant' or 'fundamentalist' atheists are those who make the claim that religion is the cause of all of man's problems. When you cross that line, you've made a religion of atheism. You've asserted a dogma and condemned those who don't abide by it.
You're the one who referred to your anti-religious stance as a battle you've picked. How does the word militant not apply?
militant - combative and aggressive in support of a political or social cause, and typically favoring extreme, violent, or confrontational methods
The beliefs you've purported are the subject in question, so it's not a strawman I've propped up to attack. Dawkins has repeatedly made it clear that religion is an impediment to a better society, that we suffer unnecessarily because of it. His solution for society? Abolish religion.
No religion claims to abolish all suffering, that was a careless hyperbole on my part. But every religion makes a claim of a primary cause of suffering and offers a solution to it. All of your evangelical atheist heroes and your own little rant make it explicitly clear that there is nothing that causes more suffering in the world than religion, and that the only solution is to end religion. That's making a religion of atheism.
Mankind is inherently religious because we reflect on our dilemmas and conceptualize solutions to these problems. Sometimes these solutions make sense, sometimes they're riddled with fallacies, sometimes they're hypocritical.
Religion isn't invented by man. Man is invented by religion. -- Robert M. Pirsig
Unlike a (religious) fundie, his reasoning is sound. Big difference there.
What all religions have in common is that they declare a universal cause of human suffering and claim to know the cure. Fundamental atheists claim religion is the universal problem and fundamental, evangelical atheism is the only cure. It's a religion of religion-bashing. That type of circular logic makes me think of a dog chasing its tail.
The logical flaw is that religion isn't the cause of all human suffering. People are, according to Sartre, but I lean toward the more broad, Buddhist perspective: Life itself is the cause of suffering.
Notice how few militant atheists attack Buddhism, Taoism, and even Judaism. They go after easy targets: Fundamentalist Christians born out of the Great Awakenings who lack a solid theology, Islamic extremists from countries that aren't very advanced, and a Hindu caste system that doesn't even really exist anymore.
What I find especially humorous is that the parent used South Park in some of his citations. I guess he missed the Dawkins episode.
Really? Where? Or are you just going to keep that secret to yourself? South Park is about the most intelligent thing I've seen on my selection of channels.
It's more like having a spare key taped to the sub-frame. Her 'security questions' all had answers that were public information.
Which brings up a major question: what would it take to unseat the market leader and is that even possible?
Microsoft is spending millions trying to answer that question and you expect some Slashdotter to just randomly throw it out there?
Here's my questions for you: Considering you knew this was horrendously non-scientific, why would you publish it knowing that people are going to misinterpret it as "a study that proves that Bing! is better than Google?" Do you really overestimate people that much? Do you have an interest in this misconception? Or were you just baiting for web hits?
This is why so few trust statistics, science, journalism, or anything published on the internet. Because those with nothing to say are the ones who insist on having their voice heard.
Oh, toddle off. As a member of the moral community, I can definitively say that the vast majority of us have no interesting in micromanaging your life.
Could you do us all a favour then and tell your "minority" to STFU? When you let them do all the talking, they'll naturally come to represent both them and you.
Does this mean you don't consider yourself to be a part of the moral community? So how do you feel about genocide. . .
I certainly don't find nudie photos to be immoral unless they are of children or heinously violent acts, but I still consider myself to be a part of the moral community. Just like everyone else who refrains from killing not because it's illegal but because it's morally wrong. To exclude yourself from the moral community implies that you have no sense of right and wrong. Or, to put it another way, you're criminally insane (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%27Naghten_Rules).
'Moral community' isn't synonymous with 'Puritan values' or 'Christianity' or 'religious.' I understand you were responding to either a troll or a fool (or both -- I can't figure out which -- maybe he was being sarcastic, sometimes on the net you just can't tell), but you still stuck your foot in your mouth with the first part of your post just as bad as he did with the second part of his post.
Stop judging women based on movies and TV. Check out the midwest -- the average woman is 5'1" and overweight.
Have the women in Playboy and on TV gotten prettier and prettier? Yes, but it's no different than the trend of professional wrestlers becoming more and more muscular. Population has increased, new medical procedures/work-out practices are taken advantage of, and the cream of the crop is oh so much creamier. But that doesn't mean that normal looking people ceased to exist, nor does it mean that, in general, there are more cute girls today than thirty or forty years ago. In fact, I would argue the reverse is true: take a look at obesity statistics. As a percentage, there are less attractive people today than there were several decades ago, it's just that media pretends they don't exist.
The difference is that all those things you mentioned were conscious decisions made by people. They're not behavioral patterns which are consistent with all humans. The fact of the matter is, there was a time in history when male humans took a mate by force because they were stronger. Then humans became intelligent (hundred thousand years ago + ?), and then civilized (thousands of years ago), and then religious/philosophical (five thousand years ago?), and then rape became a taboo for ethical reasons (Hammurabi, ~ 3.7k years ago), and then, developed a theory of rights (a couple hundred years ago!).
So yeah, maybe in a million years, or if they're lucky, a few hundred thousand years in the future, dolphins may be comparable to humans. When a rapist dolphin is a display of rogue behavior that their dolphin society has strict penalties for, get back to me.
I understand you were going for the ironic, "if humans are so evolved how come certain so-and-sos act so barbaric" argument, but you should know better. It just doesn't logically hold up. No one is claiming that humans are infallible, but our sentience does grant us a unique status in nature that exists outside the traditional food chain. Hell, humans can be more mean than other animals -- look at sadists, masochists, ect. But those are just more examples of how we live outside nature. We make rational decisions, oftentimes bizarre ones. An animal's decision making process is purely driven by instinct and reaction.
I think we should let Mr. Twain decide what he intended to write. You act like it was written in Old English or something. Lemme guess -- you haven't read the book? The use of the word 'nigger' is central to the book's meaning and everything Twain was trying to accomplish. He meant it as a pejorative term and it has the same meaning today. Huck's bigotry is central to his relationship with Jim b/c it takes almost the entire novel for him to become self-conscious regard it. Huck didn't think of himself as a bigot, in the beginning he thinks of blacks as property similar to livestock. He just thinks that's how things are b/c that's what he was taught. "Non-white person" or "slave" or "black" don't convey this ignorance on Huck's part. Removing any of Twain's words is just pissing on his legacy. It's a shame to treat such a great author with such disrespect, to act as if we can know better than Twain in regard to his own work. It's a fucking disgrace.
This is why the education in the States is so poor. It's called EDUCATION not JOB TRAINING.
Seeing as a 60ish white guy has no ancestral relationship to either (besides marriage), I don't see how his opinion matters.
Well, if we're going to go that route, why does Mark Twain's opinion matter? Why does any opinion matter?
"Look at me, I'm insightful b/c I don't subscribe to the status quo!"
Corporate collusion with the government. . .why don't you Google, oops, I'm sorry, Bing! "OOXML" Yeah, it's not a tin-foil hat theory.
This cynical, apathetic attitude of yours seems to imply that all corporations are evil at some point, so why does it matter? I'll tell you why it matters: b/c one corporation has a corporate culture of corruption whereas the other has a corporate motto to do no evil. The average Slashdot user doesn't hate Microsoft b/c it's popular. When did a bunch of nerds ever prioritize conformity? The average Slashdot user hates Microsoft b/c of the company's unethical corporate culture and business practices. Knowing the history of Google and Microsoft, how is it possible to act like they're comparatively corrupt? Google may not always do everything perfect, but corporations are run by many people who have the power to make decisions. More often than not the decisions made by Google employees live up to their motto. More often than not the decisions made by Microsoft employees are in line with their culture of corruption fostered by Gates, Allen, and Balmer.
Google isn't perfect but that doesn't mean there's no distinction between them and Microsoft. If I only used the services of companies which are pure in intention and execution then I wouldn't have a cell phone, or internet service, or use prescription drugs. I can't boycott every company that's not pure and wonderful because here in reality those companies don't exist. But I can boycott (and publicly complain about) the worst offenders. That means Microsoft.
I don't know if Google has a legitimate case here or not, but do I want them to win either way? Yup, and it has nothing to do with a collectivist Slashdot mindset. Hell, I'd be fine with Google winning the case and then some other company like IBM getting the contract. I just don't want my government running on Microsoft technology. The government should only use Linux and Unix, but that's another argument altogether.
I hope you didn't read the article. If you did, your post is an example of the decline of reading comprehension in the United States. It's not an attack on science or the scientific method. If it's an attack on anything, it's how we publish scientific studies and how all too often studies are accepted as statistically significant when they are not. The article doesn't suggest that we abandon science but rather that we scrutinize it more and stop believing that the results of every study indicate the truth the researchers were hoping to prove.
If the scientific method is being questioned at all, then it's its relation to branches of science such as psychology, nutrition, and medicine that's being questioned. You make it sound as if the article is questioning whether we know anything, like it's purporting some form of subjectivism or supernaturalism. It's not questioning the soundness of the scientific method in theory; it's questioning the way this is being executed in the scientific community, especially among sciences where conclusions are not easy to provide statistical evidence for (psychology).
In 2000 I knew people who voted for Bush in the primary b/c they thought that McCain would whoop Gore. Oops.
That's just not true. I find a two-party system to be flawed, but to claim that there's no difference between the parties is ridiculous. They aren't two sides of the same coin -- they get their money from different groups with opposing interests. Are both equally corrupt? Yes. But they clearly have opposing agendas.
There is no voting-machine conspiracy. There's no evil collusion among the parties. It's just a broken-ass system and will remain so as long as the electorate remains ignorant. Fixing the government starts with fixing public education. Our government is doing exactly what it was designed to do: represent the will of the majority.
Palin's married to an oil man. I'm sure there would be knowledge and consent.
Apple has a patent agreement with Microsoft which prevents such litigation between the two. That doesn't mean Apple wants to see Microsoft succeed. Even if Apple would prefer Android to succeed rather than the Windows phones, it also doesn't mean that Apple won't sue Android carriers when they believe there is infringement.
Am I ignorant to the inner motivations of these company's CEO's? Yes, that's why my post was speculation. But unless you're actually Steve Jobs, you're just as ignorant. What made you believe that your ignorant speculation can be construed as fact whereas mine must be false? Your presumptuousness is extremely irritating.
I don't see what made you jump to this conclusion. Apple has never shown any evidence of seeking the top market-share position. If they did they would probably have more than one model of their phone or maybe sell iOS to hardware manufacturers. Hell, you can still only buy iPhones on one carrier! Apple seems to be doing what Apple has always done. Sell high-end/high-margin and make more money than higher volume, low-margin competitors.
Given Apple's history between Google and Microsoft, and Google and Microsoft's history with other tech companies, I would assume the opposite. That Apple would love to see Google swipe the rug from underneath Microsoft because Google can play nice with others. Right now Apple's like European monarchs during the American Civil War: they're content to watch the north and south battle one another, they'd prefer the south to win b/c that would mean greater fragmentation and less tariffs, but they're not going to interfere because the war benefits them more than a victor on either side would.
You can't become addicted to most psychoactive drugs. If you take acid two days in a row, on the second day it will hardly affect you. You develop a short-term tolerance (that goes away in a couple of days). Not to mention it's not desirable to take it multiple days in a row. It's mentally stressful and the brain needs to recuperate.
The only addictive psychoactive drug is PCP and no one does that anymore b/c no one becomes a steady user and lives long.
What do you consider well-adjusted? Talking out your ass?
I mean really, how can a study find anything about human rights? It can't even be conclusively said that human rights exist, and even if you believe in them (which I do), it's still questionable what constitutes as a right and what doesn't. Are they talking about negative rights, positive right? It could be argued that one has a right to DDoS a website. Analogy: If a man is speaking in the street, saying things I disagree with, do I not have the right to speak louder than he is, thus drowning him out and suppressing his right to speech? Where does his right to speech trump mine? I don't know the answer to that, but I'm sure one could legitimately argue either way. Rights are such a vague thing, and to be so conclusive about them is pretentious and ignorant. What sensational FUD.
While agriculture requires backbreaking labour, hunter-gatherer societies only worked a couple of days a week. Not that I advocate a return to it, but backbreaking labour all the livelong day was not universal in ancient society.
The backbreaking labor isn't continuous and you can bank against long stretches of lean times. There's a considerable amount of suck in hunter-gatherer societies when you haven't found fresh food for a few days that isn't present in agricultural societies.
There's a certain amount of suck in working in a factory every day until retirement. Talk about backbreaking. Every retired factory worker I've known has back problems and depends on painkillers to make it through the day. Doing repetitive tasks for years does horrible things to the body. Hell, I just work on a computer and it's giving me tendonitis.
I don't think it can be generalized that it's better to be alive now than then. It all really depends on who you are, where you were born, and other individual factors. Technology can be greatly beneficial, but I'd argue that it has also been detrimental to the working poor. It's just a distraction -- TV shows to occupy their minds, fast food to fill their bellies with non-nutrious meals -- white noise that prevents them from caring about the broad state of things. If I were to be poor during any time during U.S. history, I'd prefer it to be during the manifest destiny years. What better time to be alive then when land was a limitless resource?
Technology has largely benefitted the rich throughout history. It gives them all sorts of toys and conveniences while it provides the poor with more grandiose colosseums to distract them from reality. Sure, some of those conveniences trickle down, but is that really what makes a life satisfying and worthwhile?
$100,000 is a good reason to temporarily change your mind and try something else.
$100,000 won't even pay for a bachelor's degree at some universities. It's hardly enough to justify dropping out of college. Also, Gates and Zuckerberg would have both benefitted from taking some ethics classes. Higher education has more benefits than making one monetarily valuable.
My sentiments exactly. Obama has mostly fought the wrong battles and lost all the ones that mattered. Health care reform? Please. I can't believe people call this guy a socialist. If only. . .
But he can close Guantanamo by executive order. He doesn't even need Congress for that.
Yes, he's the president, not a magician. I don't care if he succeeds in all of his campaign promises, but I'd at least like to see him try. Guantanamo epitomizes his failure.
Also, Afghanistan is a military operation, not a war, so he doesn't need Congress to do the right thing there as well. We can't make Afghanistan a first world nation, we can't do anything about the corruption, we can't do anything about the violence. We'd be better off just leaving.
I once believed in Obama. Now I believe he's just a politician. Will I vote for him again? Of course: I'd rather his incompetence than that of Gingrich or Palin. But I'm still disappointed.