If groups like that had the same sort of clout that religious groups have, America could remain the economic and philosophical leader of the world.
Maybe we should be able to purchase the services of engineers and scientists tax-free. After all, it is the tax-free donations to churches that make religious people such attractive targets of political pandering. (that, and the inherent gullibility. . . )
Frankly, it's been shown that the current Administration is very willing to bend over backwards to portray that they support the quote-Evangelical-unquote (lest an actual specific religion be endorsed) worldview, and politics, but when it comes to actually ACCOMPLISHING the Evangelical Agenda, they have a poor track record, and when it comes to living to those ideals, either personally, or policy-wise, even worse. There's even hearsay (which was in the rumor-mill around the time of the Mark Foley scandal) that Bush would refer to the Evangelical base as "rubes". It's all about appearances - and just as Clinton worked to put out an appearance of being a Liberal, (while pursuing a conservative corporate agenda), Bush does the same with the Social Conservatives. It's good money.
And also; make sure you are able to talk about Your Own Initiative: Projects you managed. Problems you discovered and fixed, on your own, without oversight. Also, if other techs come to YOU for advice, detail those happenings as well.
If you're the go-to guy, and can be trusted with a small budget, and a certain amount of autonomy to come up with fixes to long standing annoyances that nobody else thought of even trying to solve (overcoming organizational inertia) - then try to convey that. Most managers would give their left nut/tit for this kind of worker. (and often, this kind of worker is misclassified as "junior").
Bottom line is: breadth of skill does nobody any damn good, if that skill does not come with initiative. Breadth of skill is difficult for a busy manager to manage. That level of management is usually tasked with fighting fires with his or her immediate superiors. They're too busy to task you - so you put your skills to good use, be everyone's hero.
You can go back to the wiretapping of Dr. King. Or you can go back to Nixon's abuses; the reason why the rubber-stamp FISA court was created (that Bush ignores).
Or you can listen to the rhetoric from the right that; people arguing against wiretapping, etc. are guilty of "pre-9/11 thinking". To wit: those people are guilty of pre-1776 thinking. Uncontrolled government surveillance was one of King George III's specialties. No, he didn't have anything like listening devices, or special recording switches sitting at internet routing offices. He had gangs of thugs, called "redcoats" who could enter your home, and take whatever they liked, and charge you with treason if you were friends with guys like Ben Franklin, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, et. al. No trial was necessary, and you couldn't demand to see the evidence against you in order to contest it. Frankly, it's why we have a Declaration of Independence, a Constitution, and a Bill of Rights (particularly the 4th Amendment) in the first place. Anyone who forgets these lessons, really ought not be talking about how to best govern this country. They're free to do so; which is a good thing, because those of us who ARE familliar with American history, can readily identify the morons as soon as they open their mouths.
I think another good model for this is how ethernet as a networking technology, beat out several other media-access technologies, like token-ring - specifically because of the overhead and complexity involved in keeping everything managed. Token-ring offered a nice set of diagnostic tools in the install package, along with the driver; because you NEEDED those tools on every network node. One bad node would break the ring, and then nobody could pass tokens.
Tim Berners-Lee made a good point about Network Neutrality. The open systems win out in the market place, because nobody wants to use a closed system. Take away Net Neutrality - and you will see the internet die.
I dunno - I waited years and years for another player to come out that was comparable to the iPod. I ended up buying a nano last month. I suspect it will be similar in the phone market. iPhone will have its shortcomings (as does the iPod) - and many competitors will try to make "iPhone killers" and fall short in one or more crucial ways - and Apple will absolutely never ever drop the price - because they NEVER do.
(acutally, they DID once; when they introduced the iMac. And it was wildly successful. And they eventually abandoned that model - and replaced the iMac in that price-bracket with the mini.)
USA ain't a country bombed to ruins. USA ain't a country with a large fraction of its industrial capacity blown to smitherens. USA ain't a country with a significant portion of the 20-40 year olds killed, injuried or otherwise traumatized. USA ain't a country under occupation.
It's easy to imagine this being the case if the Bush/neoconservative policy agenda continues for another 5-10 years. Given our level of debt to China, our military unpreparedness, our precarious economic position (despite a fair GDP growth - other indicators are very troubling) - Germany got into its trouble prior to WWII, in part, because of the debt obligation incurred after WWI. Both Germany and Japan were trying to militarily grab oil resources to fuel their otherwise booming economies; Japan attacked the US in response to the US oil embargo. Germany attacked the UK in an attempt to secure North Sea oil reserves. The leadership of both of these countries was convinced they'd win, militarily, and had no idea they were going to get their asses handed to them. I'd say the US is in roughly that position now. Who is going to attack the US? If we attack Iran, there are other regional powers who will be very unhappy with the US making that oil grab. China. Russia. EU. Perhaps an alliance. It's clear that if we continue our present course, we're headed for disaster.
Well, if you look at Germany, in the aftermath of WWII, (enforced partition and occupation, absolute devastation of major urban areas, etc.) and look at Germany today - they did recover. They're an intelligent and industrious people, and so it goes for the USA as well. Maybe you're right - maybe it *will* take more than 5-15 years. . . I tend to look at how the USA recovered after the devastation of the Great Depression, and use that as an example - though apparently, we've forgotten entirely, the lessons learned there.
and then, there's also the use of camera jammers; which work by using a laser; which is regulated by the FCC. To wit: everyone will have cameras - but only THEY will have jammers.
Wasn't all that transparent. Maybe to you and me. But at one point, 70% of Americans believed that Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11. Now, I think it's down to something like 60%. But it's sure easy to fool some of the people, all of the time. Easy, and profitable as hell.
Some of us shouted that this was going to happen in 1999 when Bush announced he was running for President (as if it wasn't obvious when he ran for Gv. in Texas). We were called psycho liberal commie leftist tree huggers. Now that everything we predicted was going to happen has come to pass, does anyone who spoke out in 1999 get 5 minutes of airtime on CNN or Fox? Hell no.
Profits from petroleum sales, in the middle east, in particular, become very concentrated among the royal families of the UAE, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia. It's well-documented that certain members of these royal families funnel huge sums of money to madrassas. In fact, shortly after 9/11, a particular Saudi Prince with business ties to the Bush family, had made payments to one of the 9/11 hijackers. But don't let the facts get in the way of your god-given right to your lifestyle.
Well, honestly, we're just another in a long list of superpowers who've peaked, and are on the decline. Maybe it's a natural cycle, maybe it's preventable, who knows? Maybe in 20-40 years, we'll be a kinder, humbler power, or maybe there will be a different map.
Frankly; a lot of the policies on detention, torture, etc. have more to do with political manipulation than anything else. A lot of Americans watch too much TV; (perhaps that's a function of our prosperity, and as our standard of living continues to go away, so will mass media's influence?) - in the post-mortems of Nazi Germany, they had this concept called zeitgeist (literally "time mind", or a pervading political attitude). The majority of us are spoon-fed propaganda from a very few media outlets, they see a story of common criminals inflicting pain on others, and then "getting off on a technicality" - and the justice system, with it's rights and loopholes, is blamed. So anger is directed there. So when a leader steps forward, and does what this base of people want, he wins elections. Pure and simple - the actions of the Bush Administration was the result of pressure to pander to the redneck base. And once they got in power, they robbed the treasury blind. Through outright fraud, war profiteering, bribery, etc. I hate to see these criminals go free, but it looks like they have the power to escape justice. And what's left will be a former superpower, wondering what we were thinking, and where all our power and prosperity went.
I generally do think that Americans are really good people - and that our system of government, with all it's flaws, is great. We just took our eyes off the ball for a generation or two. I think we'll survive. We'll suffer. For a decade or longer. But we'll survive. And hopefully, we'll have learned from these mistakes.
No - cats are a perfect example: A new male cat that takes over dominance of a pride will kill all male kittens fathered by the previous dominant male. This is true for feral felis domestica (common housecats) as well.
Re:I kinda doubt it
on
Explosives Camp
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
That's bullshit.
Religion was just the excuse.
In the Soviet Union, where Atheism was the "state religion" - people were indoctrinated and trained in their military to kill others. Kill the rich? Kill the religious fanatics? Kill the oligarchs?
Religion is just a convenient tool for manipulation - and in its absence, humans will always find another tool.
Despite the use of "designed" being flawed; I think humans were well-designed for killing other humans. It really is quite natural for us. And I disagree that we're the only animals to do so. It's actually a very common phenomenon in the animal kingdom.
What's ironic, is that we (America) showed these people how to do exactly that (defeat a superpower), in the 1980's in Afghanistan.
Particularly in the Afghanistan situation, "public opinion" was possible to manipulate, in an oppressive communist country, where there was no free press: The Soviet Union. Against this weapon, the US occupation of Iraq does not stand a chance.
The ironic part is; US war-planners could have planned this war, (hell, they have known it was coming since 1992) - they could have easily predicted this response, and equipped their effort appropriately. Out of sheer stubbornness (or arrogance), they failed to do so. This time, it's not just a bunch of "dirty hippies" who oppose the war. Some fairly powerful monied interests are looking at what the financial burden of this effort will be, and they don't want to pay for it any more.
Military planners have to start thinking about how they're going to defend this country, without bleeding its economy dry. Yes - GDP has been doing okay in recent years. But have you looked at the value of the DOLLAR lately? That's what happens when you PRINT a couple hundred billion dollars a year - with no production to back it up.
Even more pathetic are the so-called terrorism experts who are on the news, talking about this attack as if it were some sort of actual threat to the safety and security of Western Civilization.
But the WORST are the ones breathlessly claiming that this was an Al Qaeda attack.
The morning of 9/11, I *knew* it was Al Qaeda, because the attack bore all the hallmarks of the typical Al Qaeda attack; which were most publicly well-established in the Africa embassy bombings. The most distinguishing characteristic of a true Al Qaeda operation, was a very sophisticated coordination of multiple events. It was really kind of an ego thing for them; because the whole point of terrorism, was to inspire terror. And the ability to pull off such coordination meant that these guys were damn good at what they did.
That's why these Glasgow punters were not Al Qaeda. If they claimed to be, the real Al Qaeda could probably take them to court for trademark violation. They don't inspire terror. They inspire a chuckle. And perhaps a few more guards, and maybe an increase in insurance premiums at airports.
I know this, and I am not a "terrorism-expert". I just mildly pay attention once in a while.
What truly terrorizes me, is that the supposed "experts" don't apparently even do that anymore.
Re:Great, so engineers are Masons now?
on
Explosives Camp
·
· Score: 1
Well, at least where certain fields of engineering are concerned, there's certifications, tests, credentials, professional organizations.
Re:Great, so engineers are Masons now?
on
Explosives Camp
·
· Score: 1
Well, the real fault lies with lazy, incompetent HR departments of Corporate America, who use the college education as the first and only measure of a job applicant's suitability. This is the primary barrier to (meaningful) employment, so of course, demand for a degree (any degree) goes way up, and the market prices this commodity accordingly. Until the degree, itself, becomes mostly just a ticket to employment, and pretty much means nothing more.
So why bother with the whole death thing? I understand the added baggage of the blood sacrifice, but the entire exercise seems futile if it's done for no reason at all.
My opinion? This is how most people have viewed the world for thousands of years. Crime and Justice - the thirst for blood to satisfy what seems like an almost instinctual human need for revenge (the sense of "fairness") when wronged.
I think it's a theme in all the major world religions - in one form or another; universal karma. Somehow, it's a part of the human psyche, and it expresses itself through this certain set of symbols, in the context of Christianity.
Personally, it doesn't appeal to me, in that way. To me, the importance of the message of Christ is that; God came to earth and walked a mile in our shoes, and saw that judgment of Man was unjust. "They know not what they do." - because when we do wrong to someone else, we don't feel what they feel. We need to try to learn that. It's about reaching out, it's about trying to reconcile.
Some people are still stuck in that "blood sacrifice for justice" mindset.
Well, the simple answer is that the "perfect" and "infinite" stuff is all just trash-talk. They're human words that represent concepts that are logically meaningless; but from the standpoint of reverence and worship, are meaningful. Considering the primitive, superstitious origins, it wouldn't be surprising. Whether or not God exists, religion does fulfill important cultural and psychological functions. And human languages used for common discussion don't have the precision of mathematics - so it's kind of absurd to make them stand together as equals, for the purposes of logical deduction. That was like, in chapter 1 of my Discrete Math textbook.
Ok - your turn. How come no one was even charged with releasing the identity of his 'covert' wife - even though it's clear that several people did (including Joe Wilson)?
Ask Fitzgerald. He said that nobody was charged, because his investigation was impeded; by Libby's lying.
He was killed because he wanted to end our very limited involvement in Vietnam.
LBJ (curious; another Texan) greatly expanded our involvement, and our commitment - we got "stuck" there too. We weren't able to commit enough force to WIN the war, and withdrawing would have created a humanitarian (and political) disaster (and eventually did). Our only choice for the next 15 years was to keep sending our boys (and our military spending) into the meat-grinder.
Sound familiar?
Wake up and smell the war-profiteering.
There's a theory that Reagan was shot (by a close family friend of the Bush's), because he refused to get directly involved in Afghanistan. Afghanistan helped to bankrupt the Soviets - and would have screwed us as well. In fact, it did; because our IN-direct involvement in Afghanistan resulted in Al Qaeda, and 9/11.
Well, the South really forced the Federalist's hand.
We had to either accept, as a nation, that the states had the right to allow slavery, or we had to accept that the Federal Government had the power to tell the states "no".
We're still fighting that battle of grotesquery. But that was the choice it had boiled down to (at that time in history), and Lincoln and his party decided to choose on the side of "this line must be drawn somewhere."
Today's battle has nothing to do with slavery - but we're still arguing over where to draw the line; where do the rights of our society end, and the rights of individuals to make choices begin.
Slashdot Mirror
If groups like that had the same sort of clout that religious groups have, America could remain the economic and philosophical leader of the world.
Maybe we should be able to purchase the services of engineers and scientists tax-free. After all, it is the tax-free donations to churches that make religious people such attractive targets of political pandering. (that, and the inherent gullibility. . . )
Frankly, it's been shown that the current Administration is very willing to bend over backwards to portray that they support the quote-Evangelical-unquote (lest an actual specific religion be endorsed) worldview, and politics, but when it comes to actually ACCOMPLISHING the Evangelical Agenda, they have a poor track record, and when it comes to living to those ideals, either personally, or policy-wise, even worse. There's even hearsay (which was in the rumor-mill around the time of the Mark Foley scandal) that Bush would refer to the Evangelical base as "rubes". It's all about appearances - and just as Clinton worked to put out an appearance of being a Liberal, (while pursuing a conservative corporate agenda), Bush does the same with the Social Conservatives. It's good money.
What the parent poster said.
And also; make sure you are able to talk about Your Own Initiative:
Projects you managed. Problems you discovered and fixed, on your own, without oversight. Also, if other techs come to YOU for advice, detail those happenings as well.
If you're the go-to guy, and can be trusted with a small budget, and a certain amount of autonomy to come up with fixes to long standing annoyances that nobody else thought of even trying to solve (overcoming organizational inertia) - then try to convey that. Most managers would give their left nut/tit for this kind of worker. (and often, this kind of worker is misclassified as "junior").
Bottom line is: breadth of skill does nobody any damn good, if that skill does not come with initiative. Breadth of skill is difficult for a busy manager to manage. That level of management is usually tasked with fighting fires with his or her immediate superiors. They're too busy to task you - so you put your skills to good use, be everyone's hero.
You can go back to the wiretapping of Dr. King.
Or you can go back to Nixon's abuses; the reason why the rubber-stamp FISA court was created (that Bush ignores).
Or you can listen to the rhetoric from the right that; people arguing against wiretapping, etc. are guilty of "pre-9/11 thinking". To wit: those people are guilty of pre-1776 thinking. Uncontrolled government surveillance was one of King George III's specialties. No, he didn't have anything like listening devices, or special recording switches sitting at internet routing offices. He had gangs of thugs, called "redcoats" who could enter your home, and take whatever they liked, and charge you with treason if you were friends with guys like Ben Franklin, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, et. al. No trial was necessary, and you couldn't demand to see the evidence against you in order to contest it. Frankly, it's why we have a Declaration of Independence, a Constitution, and a Bill of Rights (particularly the 4th Amendment) in the first place. Anyone who forgets these lessons, really ought not be talking about how to best govern this country. They're free to do so; which is a good thing, because those of us who ARE familliar with American history, can readily identify the morons as soon as they open their mouths.
I think another good model for this is how ethernet as a networking technology, beat out several other media-access technologies, like token-ring - specifically because of the overhead and complexity involved in keeping everything managed. Token-ring offered a nice set of diagnostic tools in the install package, along with the driver; because you NEEDED those tools on every network node. One bad node would break the ring, and then nobody could pass tokens.
Tim Berners-Lee made a good point about Network Neutrality. The open systems win out in the market place, because nobody wants to use a closed system. Take away Net Neutrality - and you will see the internet die.
I dunno - I waited years and years for another player to come out that was comparable to the iPod. I ended up buying a nano last month. I suspect it will be similar in the phone market. iPhone will have its shortcomings (as does the iPod) - and many competitors will try to make "iPhone killers" and fall short in one or more crucial ways - and Apple will absolutely never ever drop the price - because they NEVER do.
(acutally, they DID once; when they introduced the iMac. And it was wildly successful. And they eventually abandoned that model - and replaced the iMac in that price-bracket with the mini.)
USA ain't a country bombed to ruins. USA ain't a country with a large fraction of its industrial capacity blown to smitherens. USA ain't a country with a significant portion of the 20-40 year olds killed, injuried or otherwise traumatized. USA ain't a country under occupation.
It's easy to imagine this being the case if the Bush/neoconservative policy agenda continues for another 5-10 years. Given our level of debt to China, our military unpreparedness, our precarious economic position (despite a fair GDP growth - other indicators are very troubling) - Germany got into its trouble prior to WWII, in part, because of the debt obligation incurred after WWI. Both Germany and Japan were trying to militarily grab oil resources to fuel their otherwise booming economies; Japan attacked the US in response to the US oil embargo. Germany attacked the UK in an attempt to secure North Sea oil reserves. The leadership of both of these countries was convinced they'd win, militarily, and had no idea they were going to get their asses handed to them. I'd say the US is in roughly that position now. Who is going to attack the US? If we attack Iran, there are other regional powers who will be very unhappy with the US making that oil grab. China. Russia. EU. Perhaps an alliance. It's clear that if we continue our present course, we're headed for disaster.
Well, if you look at Germany, in the aftermath of WWII, (enforced partition and occupation, absolute devastation of major urban areas, etc.) and look at Germany today - they did recover. They're an intelligent and industrious people, and so it goes for the USA as well. Maybe you're right - maybe it *will* take more than 5-15 years. . . I tend to look at how the USA recovered after the devastation of the Great Depression, and use that as an example - though apparently, we've forgotten entirely, the lessons learned there.
and then, there's also the use of camera jammers; which work by using a laser; which is regulated by the FCC. To wit: everyone will have cameras - but only THEY will have jammers.
Wasn't all that transparent. Maybe to you and me. But at one point, 70% of Americans believed that Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11. Now, I think it's down to something like 60%. But it's sure easy to fool some of the people, all of the time. Easy, and profitable as hell.
Some of us shouted that this was going to happen in 1999 when Bush announced he was running for President (as if it wasn't obvious when he ran for Gv. in Texas). We were called psycho liberal commie leftist tree huggers. Now that everything we predicted was going to happen has come to pass, does anyone who spoke out in 1999 get 5 minutes of airtime on CNN or Fox? Hell no.
Profits from petroleum sales, in the middle east, in particular, become very concentrated among the royal families of the UAE, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia. It's well-documented that certain members of these royal families funnel huge sums of money to madrassas. In fact, shortly after 9/11, a particular Saudi Prince with business ties to the Bush family, had made payments to one of the 9/11 hijackers. But don't let the facts get in the way of your god-given right to your lifestyle.
Well, honestly, we're just another in a long list of superpowers who've peaked, and are on the decline. Maybe it's a natural cycle, maybe it's preventable, who knows? Maybe in 20-40 years, we'll be a kinder, humbler power, or maybe there will be a different map.
Frankly; a lot of the policies on detention, torture, etc. have more to do with political manipulation than anything else. A lot of Americans watch too much TV; (perhaps that's a function of our prosperity, and as our standard of living continues to go away, so will mass media's influence?) - in the post-mortems of Nazi Germany, they had this concept called zeitgeist (literally "time mind", or a pervading political attitude). The majority of us are spoon-fed propaganda from a very few media outlets, they see a story of common criminals inflicting pain on others, and then "getting off on a technicality" - and the justice system, with it's rights and loopholes, is blamed. So anger is directed there. So when a leader steps forward, and does what this base of people want, he wins elections. Pure and simple - the actions of the Bush Administration was the result of pressure to pander to the redneck base. And once they got in power, they robbed the treasury blind. Through outright fraud, war profiteering, bribery, etc. I hate to see these criminals go free, but it looks like they have the power to escape justice. And what's left will be a former superpower, wondering what we were thinking, and where all our power and prosperity went.
I generally do think that Americans are really good people - and that our system of government, with all it's flaws, is great. We just took our eyes off the ball for a generation or two. I think we'll survive. We'll suffer. For a decade or longer. But we'll survive. And hopefully, we'll have learned from these mistakes.
No - cats are a perfect example:
A new male cat that takes over dominance of a pride will kill all male kittens fathered by the previous dominant male. This is true for feral felis domestica (common housecats) as well.
That's bullshit.
Religion was just the excuse.
In the Soviet Union, where Atheism was the "state religion" - people were indoctrinated and trained in their military to kill others. Kill the rich? Kill the religious fanatics? Kill the oligarchs?
Religion is just a convenient tool for manipulation - and in its absence, humans will always find another tool.
Despite the use of "designed" being flawed; I think humans were well-designed for killing other humans. It really is quite natural for us. And I disagree that we're the only animals to do so. It's actually a very common phenomenon in the animal kingdom.
You forgot to mention where all the money for the madrassas comes from:
Americans gassing up their Hummers.
What's ironic, is that we (America) showed these people how to do exactly that (defeat a superpower), in the 1980's in Afghanistan.
Particularly in the Afghanistan situation, "public opinion" was possible to manipulate, in an oppressive communist country, where there was no free press: The Soviet Union. Against this weapon, the US occupation of Iraq does not stand a chance.
The ironic part is; US war-planners could have planned this war, (hell, they have known it was coming since 1992) - they could have easily predicted this response, and equipped their effort appropriately. Out of sheer stubbornness (or arrogance), they failed to do so. This time, it's not just a bunch of "dirty hippies" who oppose the war. Some fairly powerful monied interests are looking at what the financial burden of this effort will be, and they don't want to pay for it any more.
Military planners have to start thinking about how they're going to defend this country, without bleeding its economy dry. Yes - GDP has been doing okay in recent years. But have you looked at the value of the DOLLAR lately? That's what happens when you PRINT a couple hundred billion dollars a year - with no production to back it up.
Well, this "terror cell" was, pathetic.
Even more pathetic are the so-called terrorism experts who are on the news, talking about this attack as if it were some sort of actual threat to the safety and security of Western Civilization.
But the WORST are the ones breathlessly claiming that this was an Al Qaeda attack.
The morning of 9/11, I *knew* it was Al Qaeda, because the attack bore all the hallmarks of the typical Al Qaeda attack; which were most publicly well-established in the Africa embassy bombings. The most distinguishing characteristic of a true Al Qaeda operation, was a very sophisticated coordination of multiple events. It was really kind of an ego thing for them; because the whole point of terrorism, was to inspire terror. And the ability to pull off such coordination meant that these guys were damn good at what they did.
That's why these Glasgow punters were not Al Qaeda. If they claimed to be, the real Al Qaeda could probably take them to court for trademark violation. They don't inspire terror. They inspire a chuckle. And perhaps a few more guards, and maybe an increase in insurance premiums at airports.
I know this, and I am not a "terrorism-expert". I just mildly pay attention once in a while.
What truly terrorizes me, is that the supposed "experts" don't apparently even do that anymore.
Well, at least where certain fields of engineering are concerned, there's certifications, tests, credentials, professional organizations.
Well, the real fault lies with lazy, incompetent HR departments of Corporate America, who use the college education as the first and only measure of a job applicant's suitability. This is the primary barrier to (meaningful) employment, so of course, demand for a degree (any degree) goes way up, and the market prices this commodity accordingly. Until the degree, itself, becomes mostly just a ticket to employment, and pretty much means nothing more.
So why bother with the whole death thing? I understand the added baggage of the blood sacrifice, but the entire exercise seems futile if it's done for no reason at all.
My opinion? This is how most people have viewed the world for thousands of years. Crime and Justice - the thirst for blood to satisfy what seems like an almost instinctual human need for revenge (the sense of "fairness") when wronged.
I think it's a theme in all the major world religions - in one form or another; universal karma. Somehow, it's a part of the human psyche, and it expresses itself through this certain set of symbols, in the context of Christianity.
Personally, it doesn't appeal to me, in that way. To me, the importance of the message of Christ is that; God came to earth and walked a mile in our shoes, and saw that judgment of Man was unjust. "They know not what they do." - because when we do wrong to someone else, we don't feel what they feel. We need to try to learn that. It's about reaching out, it's about trying to reconcile.
Some people are still stuck in that "blood sacrifice for justice" mindset.
Well, the simple answer is that the "perfect" and "infinite" stuff is all just trash-talk. They're human words that represent concepts that are logically meaningless; but from the standpoint of reverence and worship, are meaningful. Considering the primitive, superstitious origins, it wouldn't be surprising. Whether or not God exists, religion does fulfill important cultural and psychological functions. And human languages used for common discussion don't have the precision of mathematics - so it's kind of absurd to make them stand together as equals, for the purposes of logical deduction. That was like, in chapter 1 of my Discrete Math textbook.
Ok - your turn. How come no one was even charged with releasing the identity of his 'covert' wife - even though it's clear that several people did (including Joe Wilson)?
Ask Fitzgerald.
He said that nobody was charged, because his investigation was impeded; by Libby's lying.
It's an ironic coincidence, (perhaps?) that Dan Qualye "served" in the same TANG unit as Bush did.
Okay, Troll, I'll bite.
If Wilson was lying - where are Saddam's WMD?
Oh yeah. Syria. I forgot.
He was killed because he wanted to end our very limited involvement in Vietnam.
LBJ (curious; another Texan) greatly expanded our involvement, and our commitment - we got "stuck" there too. We weren't able to commit enough force to WIN the war, and withdrawing would have created a humanitarian (and political) disaster (and eventually did). Our only choice for the next 15 years was to keep sending our boys (and our military spending) into the meat-grinder.
Sound familiar?
Wake up and smell the war-profiteering.
There's a theory that Reagan was shot (by a close family friend of the Bush's), because he refused to get directly involved in Afghanistan. Afghanistan helped to bankrupt the Soviets - and would have screwed us as well. In fact, it did; because our IN-direct involvement in Afghanistan resulted in Al Qaeda, and 9/11.
Well, the South really forced the Federalist's hand.
We had to either accept, as a nation, that the states had the right to allow slavery, or we had to accept that the Federal Government had the power to tell the states "no".
We're still fighting that battle of grotesquery. But that was the choice it had boiled down to (at that time in history), and Lincoln and his party decided to choose on the side of "this line must be drawn somewhere."
Today's battle has nothing to do with slavery - but we're still arguing over where to draw the line; where do the rights of our society end, and the rights of individuals to make choices begin.