Right, and before the primaries it was a total question mark who the Democrats were going to nominate. Everyone just naturally assumed it was going to be Jim Webb, but then Hillary just came out of nowhere with hardly any support from the party!
You do realize that being a Christian means believing in and following Jesus' teachings
Is that one of those "no true Scotsman" things? If someone hates gay people, then they aren't a Christian? Because it seems like there are a lot of Christians who have problems following the teachings of Jesus. Take, for example, all of those people who decided to refuse services to gay people, and the people who support those people, and the people who were opposed to the SCOTUS decision on gay marriage. How do any of those things relate to the teachings of Jesus? They want to claim that they can't serve gay people because it's against their religion, which page of the Bible is that from? I'm pretty sure it's not there, but yet, they specifically cite their strong Christian faith as the reason for their actions. So, no true Christian?
This is one of those events which can be reported several different ways, depending on the slant of the reporting agency. It can be a story about radical Islam, a story about homophobia, a story about gun control, etc, depending on how they want to cover it. In reality all of those things are true, it's not like there's 1 piece to this story. It's about a homophobic ISIS supporter who had free access to guns and a desire to kill.
Right wing against gays? Are you insane? Nobody on the right side gives a shit.
Wait, what? All of that hand-wringing after the SCOTUS decision that struck down bans on same-sex marriage, that noise was conservatives not giving a shit?
Yes, the natural world is a very complex and beautiful system, both in terms of life as well as the other natural processes (such as the water cycle). None of this is evidence that it was designed by an intelligent being, though. I'm not willing to claim that I know what happened over the last several billion years, with all of the complexities involved, so I'm not going to claim that I know that there is or is not an actual being who designed and built the entire system. That's a preposterous position to take. I don't think that any such entity exists, because I haven't seen any evidence that it does. Maybe it does, I don't know, I just haven't seen any evidence. I'm not going to make an extraordinary claim if I don't have extraordinary evidence with which to back it up.
You say "the religious concept of God" is the same thing as "life itself".
I was trying to describe my belief that theists have taken the complexity of life, added intelligence, omniscience, and whatever else they want to add, and call it "God". In other words, God is life plus superstition and mythology.
Coincidentally, plants do the exact opposite - they take in water and CO2, producing oxygen and carbohydrates. It's all rather clever, wouldn't you say?
It seems to be the only way it can work, actually. If a planet was produced where animals need carbohydrates and oxygen, and they generate waste products that are needed by plants, which produce carbohydrates and oxygen, then this is the only way it can work. Maybe it works completely differently on another planet, I wouldn't doubt that for a second, but on this planet the reason it works that way is because that is the only way it can work on this planet. Or, at the very least, that's the way that "won". Consider that all life started as single-celled organisms only a billion or so years after the Earth formed, and for the next 3 billion years or so, all life was single-celled eukaryotes, prokaryotes, bacteria, etc. Fundamental processes like glycolysis and ATP formed very early on. They had 3 billion years to shape the environment while the Earth calmed in order to allow for the rise of multi-cellular life. Even after multi-cellular life appeared, it would be several hundred millions of years later that the first plants appeared on land. So, is it any wonder that the plants which thrived on land were uniquely suited to living in an environment dominated by animals? The plants had just come out of the oceans, which were full of primitive animal life. And, then, is it any wonder that the animals which thrived on land are uniquely suited to living in an environment dominated by plants? All of that happened several hundred millions of years ago, the genus Homo is only around 2 million years old and some of its members like to claim that all of this is for us, and that we were designed by some supernatural being. It seems very short-sighted.
Not that I don't understand where it comes from, though. I've seen the volcanoes in Hawaii, for example. If I was a native of Hawaii several hundred years ago, with no interaction with anyone who isn't also a Hawaiian, and I walked up and looked into that burning caldera, and someone told me that that's where Pele lives, I wouldn't have any reason to not believe them. Of course the fire god lives there, what else would that be? If I'm living several thousand years ago and I'm watching a volcano erupt which looks like this (I realize that's a time-lapse), of course I'm going to believe that there is some sort of supernatural being involved. I don't blame people thousands of years ago for believing in gods. But we know about plate tectonics, we understand the processes behind volcanoes, earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes, rain, lightning, thunder, etc.
Because it's a whole lot better than being regressive. Sorry old guys, but the 40s and 50s are over, they're not coming back. Instead of trying to drag us back there, let's work on moving forward.
Right, they love the sinner so much that they want to strip them of rights and refuse to bake cakes and take pictures of them. That's how much they love them.
To some, the word God means essentially "nature", or "natural laws", which makes the atheist's position untenable.
You sound confused. What you wrote there is almost right, but not quite. That's similar to how I think, but instead of "God = nature", I think that the religious concept of God is the same thing as life itself. That is, the miracle of life (i.e., what happened to turn a primordial amino acid stew into a living cell) is the concept that religious people think of as "God". The difference is that I don't think that there is anything supernatural or even intelligent to the whole thing, I think any attributes like intelligence, design, omniscience, etc were added by religious people because that's what they wanted their god to look like. They noticed the same kind of inter-connectedness that anyone else can see in life in general, and decided to re-shape that in their own image. And I don't think they're right, I don't think there's any evidence which supports their views. Life is complex and wonderful enough without needing to make it a being which is intelligent and omniscient, and dispensing divine punishments and rewards. So it's not just "God = nature", it's religious people adding a whole bunch of qualities which aren't there, for which there is no evidence.
It's a flaw. The user asked for images of black children, the images presented are not representative.
No, the user asked for "three black teenagers". Go do a Google image search right now for "black children" and tell me whether or not you think that is representative of the pictures that are online. So, why do mugshots of 3 black teenagers appear when you search for "three black teenagers"? Because guess how often those 3 words appear in a story accompanied by a mugshot. It IS representative, it's representative of the pictures that are posted online accompanied by the search term.
You want proof that it is representative? Go search right now for "three white teenagers". You'll see a bunch of stock photography of white kids, a few mugshots, and several screenshots of Google image results showing a bunch of black people in mugshots, as well as mugshots showing black people. So, class, what have we learned? How come an image search for "three white teenagers" TODAY shows images of black teenagers in mugshots, and screenshots of Google image search results? Do you think those images would have been part of those results a week ago? Do you understand how Google works?
On the other hand, it is deeply concerning that we may be in a situation where a billionaire can essentially destroy a company by funding lawsuits from other people.
Why is that concerning? If a company does something which a jury finds to be illegal, why does it matter who pays the lawyers?
After this, all media are going to think very carefully before doing any reporting on the very wealthy and be especially wary of reporting on anything Peter Thiel is doing.
If someone does something wrong then journalists are going to report on it. Hopefully what "journalists" will think twice about is reporting on the private sex lives of other people. Our society is not enriched in any way by knowing whether or not some businessman is gay or straight, especially if that person doesn't discuss his own sexuality in public.
That's beyond the crush depth of most nuclear powered submarines.
That's because most nuclear powered submarines are specifically not designed to have to withstand the pressure from being 3,000m underwater. You can't launch a missile from that far down, they only really need to be hidden from things on the surface and in the air (and stay quiet for other subs). There are plenty of other types of submarines which do go that deep because that's part of their design goal.
Right, when it's taken to the logical extreme it does seem pretty ridiculous. But you don't seem to think it's ridiculous otherwise. So you think that charities and support groups and advocacy groups are fine if they target a specific underserved or underrepresented segment of the population, as long as that segment is not defined by "race" (however you'd like to define that). And, again, you think I'm the racist one.
What about other traits that people are born with and can't change, such as where they or their parents came from? How about gender, is it immoral to have a group which advocates only for women? Is it only bad when people advocate on behalf of a certain racial or ethnic group?
So you're saying that organizations like the NAACP are racist? What about the Disabled American Veterans Charity, should we outlaw that also because they only support a minority group? Are you suggesting that every charity, support group, advocacy group, etc should only support everyone equally and not target specific segments of the population?
Oh, OK. Well, I admit, as a pasty white American a group called "La Raza" definitely sounds pretty scary. I only speak un poquito Espanol, but I feel like I should be scared of that name. It even has a "Z", right there in the middle of it. That sounds like gang stuff to me.
Although it looks like the actual association he belongs to is called San Diego La Raza Lawyer's Association. Although, and I'm being totally serious here, the addition of those 2 additional Spanish words does not help my feelings of insecurity. The group describes itself as "San Diego's Latino/Latina Bar Association." See that? I knew it. They meet in bars. Gang stuff.
But wait a second, hold on here. I've been arguing with a lot of Trump supporters in this thread, and they are very correct to point out that Mexican is not a race, and neither is Spanish for that matter. I'm actually the same race as Mexicans, we're both white. So we're the same race, so maybe I shouldn't have just shat my pants over their name. But maybe that's just a mistranslation, I mean the National Council of La Raza points out that Hispanic is not a race, it's an ethnicity, and so a better translation of the meaning would be "people" or "community", as far as their advocacy for Hispanics is concerned.
You know what though? I'm just not convinced. Granted, yes, I did immediately shit my pants when I saw that name. But now that I've thought about it, I think I want to get the opinion of some group like the Southern Poverty Law Center, the ACLU, etc on whether or not the actions of La Raza are actually racist, or if people just have a problem with the name. Can you help me out with that research?
No you're racist because the judge belongs to a group called La Raza.
I'm not sure that you're clear on how racism works... I don't think I'm racist for assuming that a federal judge who belongs to a Hispanic lawyers association is unable to do his job. I'm not sure the "racism" standard of proof has been met there, buddy.
So Trump suggests that a federal judge can't do his job because of where his parents were born, and I'm the racist one because I think that's bullshit.
What is it with you people assuming that if I oppose Trump, then I am necessarily in favor (and/or "idolize") either Obama or Clinton?
News flash: a Republican is not up for nomination in this election. I could very well be a Republican angered that I have no one to vote for.
I can't stand Trump, the thought of him as president makes me depressed. And I would sooner vote for Trump than I would for Clinton. But I refuse to cast some stupid protest vote where I'm not voting for someone who I actually want to win.
Nowadays even little girls in America, oh yes, American little girls using little girl toilets inside the United States of America have to watch out for grown man wearing bras because Obama says grown man wearing bras have the rights to use little girls toilets
I would sooner vote for Trump than Hillary, you idiot. What I'm not going to do is vote for a pathologically lying sociopath just because I can. I can instead vote for someone who more closely represents what I believe, so why the hell would I vote for either Trump or Clinton?
Slashdot Mirror
Right, and before the primaries it was a total question mark who the Democrats were going to nominate. Everyone just naturally assumed it was going to be Jim Webb, but then Hillary just came out of nowhere with hardly any support from the party!
By "my news source", you're referring to things like their own Twitter or Facebook posts, right? The actual statements that they released?
You do realize that being a Christian means believing in and following Jesus' teachings
Is that one of those "no true Scotsman" things? If someone hates gay people, then they aren't a Christian? Because it seems like there are a lot of Christians who have problems following the teachings of Jesus. Take, for example, all of those people who decided to refuse services to gay people, and the people who support those people, and the people who were opposed to the SCOTUS decision on gay marriage. How do any of those things relate to the teachings of Jesus? They want to claim that they can't serve gay people because it's against their religion, which page of the Bible is that from? I'm pretty sure it's not there, but yet, they specifically cite their strong Christian faith as the reason for their actions. So, no true Christian?
This is one of those events which can be reported several different ways, depending on the slant of the reporting agency. It can be a story about radical Islam, a story about homophobia, a story about gun control, etc, depending on how they want to cover it. In reality all of those things are true, it's not like there's 1 piece to this story. It's about a homophobic ISIS supporter who had free access to guns and a desire to kill.
Right wing against gays? Are you insane? Nobody on the right side gives a shit.
Wait, what? All of that hand-wringing after the SCOTUS decision that struck down bans on same-sex marriage, that noise was conservatives not giving a shit?
It looks like that's about $100k more than the new Peterbuilt extended-cab trucks.
Yes, the natural world is a very complex and beautiful system, both in terms of life as well as the other natural processes (such as the water cycle). None of this is evidence that it was designed by an intelligent being, though. I'm not willing to claim that I know what happened over the last several billion years, with all of the complexities involved, so I'm not going to claim that I know that there is or is not an actual being who designed and built the entire system. That's a preposterous position to take. I don't think that any such entity exists, because I haven't seen any evidence that it does. Maybe it does, I don't know, I just haven't seen any evidence. I'm not going to make an extraordinary claim if I don't have extraordinary evidence with which to back it up.
You say "the religious concept of God" is the same thing as "life itself".
I was trying to describe my belief that theists have taken the complexity of life, added intelligence, omniscience, and whatever else they want to add, and call it "God". In other words, God is life plus superstition and mythology.
Coincidentally, plants do the exact opposite - they take in water and CO2, producing oxygen and carbohydrates. It's all rather clever, wouldn't you say?
It seems to be the only way it can work, actually. If a planet was produced where animals need carbohydrates and oxygen, and they generate waste products that are needed by plants, which produce carbohydrates and oxygen, then this is the only way it can work. Maybe it works completely differently on another planet, I wouldn't doubt that for a second, but on this planet the reason it works that way is because that is the only way it can work on this planet. Or, at the very least, that's the way that "won". Consider that all life started as single-celled organisms only a billion or so years after the Earth formed, and for the next 3 billion years or so, all life was single-celled eukaryotes, prokaryotes, bacteria, etc. Fundamental processes like glycolysis and ATP formed very early on. They had 3 billion years to shape the environment while the Earth calmed in order to allow for the rise of multi-cellular life. Even after multi-cellular life appeared, it would be several hundred millions of years later that the first plants appeared on land. So, is it any wonder that the plants which thrived on land were uniquely suited to living in an environment dominated by animals? The plants had just come out of the oceans, which were full of primitive animal life. And, then, is it any wonder that the animals which thrived on land are uniquely suited to living in an environment dominated by plants? All of that happened several hundred millions of years ago, the genus Homo is only around 2 million years old and some of its members like to claim that all of this is for us, and that we were designed by some supernatural being. It seems very short-sighted.
Not that I don't understand where it comes from, though. I've seen the volcanoes in Hawaii, for example. If I was a native of Hawaii several hundred years ago, with no interaction with anyone who isn't also a Hawaiian, and I walked up and looked into that burning caldera, and someone told me that that's where Pele lives, I wouldn't have any reason to not believe them. Of course the fire god lives there, what else would that be? If I'm living several thousand years ago and I'm watching a volcano erupt which looks like this (I realize that's a time-lapse), of course I'm going to believe that there is some sort of supernatural being involved. I don't blame people thousands of years ago for believing in gods. But we know about plate tectonics, we understand the processes behind volcanoes, earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes, rain, lightning, thunder, etc.
Why should society be progressive?
Because it's a whole lot better than being regressive. Sorry old guys, but the 40s and 50s are over, they're not coming back. Instead of trying to drag us back there, let's work on moving forward.
Christians: "Hate the sin, love the sinner."
Right, they love the sinner so much that they want to strip them of rights and refuse to bake cakes and take pictures of them. That's how much they love them.
my first assumption was that some anti-gay marriage person had gone off their rocker.
I'm pretty sure that's actually what happened.
To some, the word God means essentially "nature", or "natural laws", which makes the atheist's position untenable.
You sound confused. What you wrote there is almost right, but not quite. That's similar to how I think, but instead of "God = nature", I think that the religious concept of God is the same thing as life itself. That is, the miracle of life (i.e., what happened to turn a primordial amino acid stew into a living cell) is the concept that religious people think of as "God". The difference is that I don't think that there is anything supernatural or even intelligent to the whole thing, I think any attributes like intelligence, design, omniscience, etc were added by religious people because that's what they wanted their god to look like. They noticed the same kind of inter-connectedness that anyone else can see in life in general, and decided to re-shape that in their own image. And I don't think they're right, I don't think there's any evidence which supports their views. Life is complex and wonderful enough without needing to make it a being which is intelligent and omniscient, and dispensing divine punishments and rewards. So it's not just "God = nature", it's religious people adding a whole bunch of qualities which aren't there, for which there is no evidence.
I have, however, run into atheists who are every bit as zealous and annoying as the people they love to publicly hate.
And, therefore, atheism is a religion? Is that your point?
Animals do not, generally, behave as amoral rapists
You've never swam with dolphins, have you?
It's a flaw. The user asked for images of black children, the images presented are not representative.
No, the user asked for "three black teenagers". Go do a Google image search right now for "black children" and tell me whether or not you think that is representative of the pictures that are online. So, why do mugshots of 3 black teenagers appear when you search for "three black teenagers"? Because guess how often those 3 words appear in a story accompanied by a mugshot. It IS representative, it's representative of the pictures that are posted online accompanied by the search term.
You want proof that it is representative? Go search right now for "three white teenagers". You'll see a bunch of stock photography of white kids, a few mugshots, and several screenshots of Google image results showing a bunch of black people in mugshots, as well as mugshots showing black people. So, class, what have we learned? How come an image search for "three white teenagers" TODAY shows images of black teenagers in mugshots, and screenshots of Google image search results? Do you think those images would have been part of those results a week ago? Do you understand how Google works?
On the other hand, it is deeply concerning that we may be in a situation where a billionaire can essentially destroy a company by funding lawsuits from other people.
Why is that concerning? If a company does something which a jury finds to be illegal, why does it matter who pays the lawyers?
After this, all media are going to think very carefully before doing any reporting on the very wealthy and be especially wary of reporting on anything Peter Thiel is doing.
If someone does something wrong then journalists are going to report on it. Hopefully what "journalists" will think twice about is reporting on the private sex lives of other people. Our society is not enriched in any way by knowing whether or not some businessman is gay or straight, especially if that person doesn't discuss his own sexuality in public.
That's beyond the crush depth of most nuclear powered submarines.
That's because most nuclear powered submarines are specifically not designed to have to withstand the pressure from being 3,000m underwater. You can't launch a missile from that far down, they only really need to be hidden from things on the surface and in the air (and stay quiet for other subs). There are plenty of other types of submarines which do go that deep because that's part of their design goal.
More details were requested, but ...
China Shipbuilding Industry Corporation and the ministry did not reply to faxes seeking comment.
No word on whether Bloomberg tried their BBS or AOL chat room.
4335 feet per square inch is an impressive compression ratio.
Right, when it's taken to the logical extreme it does seem pretty ridiculous. But you don't seem to think it's ridiculous otherwise. So you think that charities and support groups and advocacy groups are fine if they target a specific underserved or underrepresented segment of the population, as long as that segment is not defined by "race" (however you'd like to define that). And, again, you think I'm the racist one.
What about other traits that people are born with and can't change, such as where they or their parents came from? How about gender, is it immoral to have a group which advocates only for women? Is it only bad when people advocate on behalf of a certain racial or ethnic group?
So you're saying that organizations like the NAACP are racist? What about the Disabled American Veterans Charity, should we outlaw that also because they only support a minority group? Are you suggesting that every charity, support group, advocacy group, etc should only support everyone equally and not target specific segments of the population?
Oh, OK. Well, I admit, as a pasty white American a group called "La Raza" definitely sounds pretty scary. I only speak un poquito Espanol, but I feel like I should be scared of that name. It even has a "Z", right there in the middle of it. That sounds like gang stuff to me.
Although it looks like the actual association he belongs to is called San Diego La Raza Lawyer's Association. Although, and I'm being totally serious here, the addition of those 2 additional Spanish words does not help my feelings of insecurity. The group describes itself as "San Diego's Latino/Latina Bar Association." See that? I knew it. They meet in bars. Gang stuff.
But wait a second, hold on here. I've been arguing with a lot of Trump supporters in this thread, and they are very correct to point out that Mexican is not a race, and neither is Spanish for that matter. I'm actually the same race as Mexicans, we're both white. So we're the same race, so maybe I shouldn't have just shat my pants over their name. But maybe that's just a mistranslation, I mean the National Council of La Raza points out that Hispanic is not a race, it's an ethnicity, and so a better translation of the meaning would be "people" or "community", as far as their advocacy for Hispanics is concerned.
You know what though? I'm just not convinced. Granted, yes, I did immediately shit my pants when I saw that name. But now that I've thought about it, I think I want to get the opinion of some group like the Southern Poverty Law Center, the ACLU, etc on whether or not the actions of La Raza are actually racist, or if people just have a problem with the name. Can you help me out with that research?
No you're racist because the judge belongs to a group called La Raza.
I'm not sure that you're clear on how racism works... I don't think I'm racist for assuming that a federal judge who belongs to a Hispanic lawyers association is unable to do his job. I'm not sure the "racism" standard of proof has been met there, buddy.
So Trump suggests that a federal judge can't do his job because of where his parents were born, and I'm the racist one because I think that's bullshit.
Well I'm not a democrat so, no, I don't think every non-democrat is a racist.
What is it with you people assuming that if I oppose Trump, then I am necessarily in favor (and/or "idolize") either Obama or Clinton?
News flash: a Republican is not up for nomination in this election. I could very well be a Republican angered that I have no one to vote for.
I can't stand Trump, the thought of him as president makes me depressed. And I would sooner vote for Trump than I would for Clinton. But I refuse to cast some stupid protest vote where I'm not voting for someone who I actually want to win.
Nowadays even little girls in America, oh yes, American little girls using little girl toilets inside the United States of America have to watch out for grown man wearing bras because Obama says grown man wearing bras have the rights to use little girls toilets
Oh, your post was sarcasm.
I would sooner vote for Trump than Hillary, you idiot. What I'm not going to do is vote for a pathologically lying sociopath just because I can. I can instead vote for someone who more closely represents what I believe, so why the hell would I vote for either Trump or Clinton?