Human teeth show every sign of being shaped, at least in part, to consume insects, and we possibly developed long fingers to dig them out of hiding places, too. I'm not religious, but sometimes I can't help but think of a monkey-like God looking down on all of mankind's problems with famine and hunger and yelling, "For My sake, mankind, I gave you the cockroach! An unlimited food source - you can't wipe the little bastards out if you try!"
"As people have already pointed out, the parents who complain about violent video games are not the same parents as those buying it."
Actually, I'm not totally certain of this. My step-sister and her husband are the sort of people who would complain about this, and I've seen their kids playing GTA4 at their house. Hypocrisy and cognitive dissonance are no problem for a certain portion of our population, unfortunately.
Whether or not that matters to you depends on whether you are concerned with Card's financial gain, in which case you are possibly correct, or your own moral contribution to Card's actions, in which case, the person who buys the new book is taking a tiny amount of responsibility for what he does with their money onto themselves, but by buying used, you aren't.
I think that that is so brilliant.... that I thought of it years ago.;-) But, there's actually an even better option if you're not picky about religion: Form a pagan coven, file all of the paperwork necessary to make it legal, and keep shared resources in the coven's name. The reason this is (was? Not sure if some of President Obama's directives on Medicaid payouts have made this irrelevant) superior is that there are (were? Honestly need to look back into this, I guess) certain circumstances where organizations such as hospitals would not recognize a gay or poly spouse as a family member - BUT, in a coven, every member is clergy, and they can't deny access to your clergy.:-D
I would really like to see government "marriage" (not church Marriage, churches can do what they want regarding religious ceremonies) replaced with a Family Contract, someday. Forget about sex - why SHOULDN'T an elderly brother and sister who have both had their spouses precede them be able to give one another the same financial security as partners in a married couple give one another, just as one example?
I get why you're saying that, but that word still applies to other mixes of polygamists, too, aside from the one the poster above was asking about. The difference between polygamy and polyamory is that the first applies to marriage and the second applies to love - and hopefully for most people those go together just like the opening to 'Married With Children' said.;-)
"So the "deepness" of the book had to do with how much you DID'NT know about the author?"
How many times have you had your enjoyment of something (music, movie, artwork, etc) ruined or at least diminished because you found out the creators' original intentions and they were so much less than what you had taken from those works on your own, using the context of your own life and knowledge? That happens to me ALL THE TIME. So, in other words, the answer to your question may very well be "yes".
Your notion that other mammals (such as goats) are not sentient is both specious and speciesist. You clearly need a cat, or, if you have one, he/she needs to be watching their human more carefully.
"I have no idea if there is a term for multiple men and multiple women that is more specific than polygamy."
If there is, I've never heard it, and I've been part of the poly community for almost 20 years. But, there IS another set of terms, so long as we are creating a glossary;-), that is applicable:
Triad - three people of any mix of genders, all in a relationship with each other.
V - three people of any mix of genders, where two of them are in relationships with the third, but not with one another.
(I don't mean to generalize - I'm sure there are people in perfectly honorable, up-front Vs - but in my experience, the V is frequently what happens when one part of a couple cheats and then convinces the other part that they're really doing some high-minded new-age thing, instead - talking them into staying and being miserable, at least for a while.)
AIDS is a significant societal down-side to promoting people running around having sex all willy-nilly, rather than settling down in committed groups. Has it occurred to you that you just made an excellent argument FOR gay marriage?
My wife and I are polygynists, and while I am fully for equal rights for non-abusive polygamists, even I can see that there is going to be a fundamental difference between ceasing to worry about gender in marriage, and completely redesigning several parts of government and corporate bureaucracies to allow for legal poly unions. Think of all of the FORMS, man! I mean, it's easy enough to write a woman's name in a man's place or vice-versa, and even redesigning them to say "spouse" instead of "husband" or "wife" isn't a real big deal - everything still lines up. But extra fields? Entirely new forms? From GOVERNMENT WORKERS? Who then have to get them approved, in triplicate, by superiors and superiors' superiors?;-)
It's going to be an uphill battle, to say the least. But at least the fundies are now unintentionally working for us. Since they see that gay equality in government is inevitable, they are now arguing (correctly, by the Constitution, in my opinion, but still perhaps for other reasons) that government should be out of the marriage business altogether. If they succeed in that, then perhaps the government will change all government recognition of marriage to "civil unions", and it is a shorter walk from that to "family contracts" than from where we are now.
There's a thin line between bigotry and nationalism. But even if true, one example of a bigot does not negate my point, which wasn't that racism or bigotry didn't exist, or even that it wasn't more common. It was that *some* writers demonstrated much more enlightened views, too, well before 1900.
So he's able to see the common sense in the situation ahead of time, but not actually able to practice it. Not sure if that makes him a visionary, an idiot, or both.
"Let me sum up my position on this by example; If Al Qaeda came up with a cure for cancer, would we as a society start using it, or reject it as poisoned fruit?"
Actually, this very question has been applied non-hypothetically to the body of research done by Nazi scientists utilizing experiments done on their prisoners. I won't try to summarize the HUGE number of articles involving the philosophies and ethics here, but if you're really interested in that question, I'm sure Google could turn up a few YEARS worth of reading on the subject for you, because it isn't a simple matter at all.
"Really, practically every author before 1900 was an extreme racist."
I guess since you modified that with "practically", that means I'm just nitpicking, but right off the top of my head, I seem to recall that Hamilton had some pretty strong opinions about extending full citizen rights to black people who had fought for the country's freedom in "The Federalist Papers", Mark Twain was pretty remarkably liberal in that regard, and whomever the author was that put the parable of The Good Samaritan into Jesus's mouth seemed to be preaching not to judge people by the look of their body but by the content of their character, as well.
"Everyone else is doing it" is no excuse for bad behavior, especially when the "everyone else" you have to point at are people 100 years or more behind the times. Card gets no pass from me.
It's a shame because the trailer makes the movie seem like it will be pretty awesome, but no bit of entertainment however well produced is worth putting money in the pocket of someone who would trample the rights of my fellow citizens.
Slashdot Mirror
You are confused. The Mr. Fusion was *used to* fire up the Flux Capacitor. If no fusion, you need lightning. Duh.
Human teeth show every sign of being shaped, at least in part, to consume insects, and we possibly developed long fingers to dig them out of hiding places, too. I'm not religious, but sometimes I can't help but think of a monkey-like God looking down on all of mankind's problems with famine and hunger and yelling, "For My sake, mankind, I gave you the cockroach! An unlimited food source - you can't wipe the little bastards out if you try!"
I laughed at this, but I'm not sure why. :-D
"As people have already pointed out, the parents who complain about violent video games are not the same parents as those buying it."
Actually, I'm not totally certain of this. My step-sister and her husband are the sort of people who would complain about this, and I've seen their kids playing GTA4 at their house. Hypocrisy and cognitive dissonance are no problem for a certain portion of our population, unfortunately.
So I assume you're fully up on the new maths created to keep up with the assets of Disaster Area and Dethklok, then?
Or, begin using war or other life-threatening large scale projects to reduce their male population. I'll take the poly, thanks.
Whether or not that matters to you depends on whether you are concerned with Card's financial gain, in which case you are possibly correct, or your own moral contribution to Card's actions, in which case, the person who buys the new book is taking a tiny amount of responsibility for what he does with their money onto themselves, but by buying used, you aren't.
I think that that is so brilliant.... that I thought of it years ago. ;-) But, there's actually an even better option if you're not picky about religion: Form a pagan coven, file all of the paperwork necessary to make it legal, and keep shared resources in the coven's name. The reason this is (was? Not sure if some of President Obama's directives on Medicaid payouts have made this irrelevant) superior is that there are (were? Honestly need to look back into this, I guess) certain circumstances where organizations such as hospitals would not recognize a gay or poly spouse as a family member - BUT, in a coven, every member is clergy, and they can't deny access to your clergy. :-D
I would really like to see government "marriage" (not church Marriage, churches can do what they want regarding religious ceremonies) replaced with a Family Contract, someday. Forget about sex - why SHOULDN'T an elderly brother and sister who have both had their spouses precede them be able to give one another the same financial security as partners in a married couple give one another, just as one example?
I get why you're saying that, but that word still applies to other mixes of polygamists, too, aside from the one the poster above was asking about. The difference between polygamy and polyamory is that the first applies to marriage and the second applies to love - and hopefully for most people those go together just like the opening to 'Married With Children' said. ;-)
"So the "deepness" of the book had to do with how much you DID'NT know about the author?"
How many times have you had your enjoyment of something (music, movie, artwork, etc) ruined or at least diminished because you found out the creators' original intentions and they were so much less than what you had taken from those works on your own, using the context of your own life and knowledge? That happens to me ALL THE TIME. So, in other words, the answer to your question may very well be "yes".
Your notion that other mammals (such as goats) are not sentient is both specious and speciesist. You clearly need a cat, or, if you have one, he/she needs to be watching their human more carefully.
"I have no idea if there is a term for multiple men and multiple women that is more specific than polygamy."
If there is, I've never heard it, and I've been part of the poly community for almost 20 years. But, there IS another set of terms, so long as we are creating a glossary ;-), that is applicable:
Triad - three people of any mix of genders, all in a relationship with each other.
V - three people of any mix of genders, where two of them are in relationships with the third, but not with one another.
(I don't mean to generalize - I'm sure there are people in perfectly honorable, up-front Vs - but in my experience, the V is frequently what happens when one part of a couple cheats and then convinces the other part that they're really doing some high-minded new-age thing, instead - talking them into staying and being miserable, at least for a while.)
AIDS is a significant societal down-side to promoting people running around having sex all willy-nilly, rather than settling down in committed groups. Has it occurred to you that you just made an excellent argument FOR gay marriage?
No offense, because I don't mind a Godwin when it is appropriate, I just want to use you as an educational tool -
To the person who accused me elsewhere in the conversation here of Godwinning: THIS is a Godwinning. And a winning Godwinning, at that. :-D
So have our girlfriends. ;-) ;-)
My wife and I are polygynists, and while I am fully for equal rights for non-abusive polygamists, even I can see that there is going to be a fundamental difference between ceasing to worry about gender in marriage, and completely redesigning several parts of government and corporate bureaucracies to allow for legal poly unions. Think of all of the FORMS, man! I mean, it's easy enough to write a woman's name in a man's place or vice-versa, and even redesigning them to say "spouse" instead of "husband" or "wife" isn't a real big deal - everything still lines up. But extra fields? Entirely new forms? From GOVERNMENT WORKERS? Who then have to get them approved, in triplicate, by superiors and superiors' superiors? ;-)
It's going to be an uphill battle, to say the least. But at least the fundies are now unintentionally working for us. Since they see that gay equality in government is inevitable, they are now arguing (correctly, by the Constitution, in my opinion, but still perhaps for other reasons) that government should be out of the marriage business altogether. If they succeed in that, then perhaps the government will change all government recognition of marriage to "civil unions", and it is a shorter walk from that to "family contracts" than from where we are now.
There's a thin line between bigotry and nationalism. But even if true, one example of a bigot does not negate my point, which wasn't that racism or bigotry didn't exist, or even that it wasn't more common. It was that *some* writers demonstrated much more enlightened views, too, well before 1900.
So he's able to see the common sense in the situation ahead of time, but not actually able to practice it. Not sure if that makes him a visionary, an idiot, or both.
You could still read the Shadow series - just buy them 2nd hand. Card won't see an additional penny.
"Let me sum up my position on this by example; If Al Qaeda came up with a cure for cancer, would we as a society start using it, or reject it as poisoned fruit?"
Actually, this very question has been applied non-hypothetically to the body of research done by Nazi scientists utilizing experiments done on their prisoners. I won't try to summarize the HUGE number of articles involving the philosophies and ethics here, but if you're really interested in that question, I'm sure Google could turn up a few YEARS worth of reading on the subject for you, because it isn't a simple matter at all.
"Marriage" predates Christianity. You're describing Holy Matrimony, Batman.
"Really, practically every author before 1900 was an extreme racist."
I guess since you modified that with "practically", that means I'm just nitpicking, but right off the top of my head, I seem to recall that Hamilton had some pretty strong opinions about extending full citizen rights to black people who had fought for the country's freedom in "The Federalist Papers", Mark Twain was pretty remarkably liberal in that regard, and whomever the author was that put the parable of The Good Samaritan into Jesus's mouth seemed to be preaching not to judge people by the look of their body but by the content of their character, as well.
"Everyone else is doing it" is no excuse for bad behavior, especially when the "everyone else" you have to point at are people 100 years or more behind the times. Card gets no pass from me.
It's a shame because the trailer makes the movie seem like it will be pretty awesome, but no bit of entertainment however well produced is worth putting money in the pocket of someone who would trample the rights of my fellow citizens.
David Weber? Seriously - where is our Honorverse series?
Stewart and Colbert