Sounds pretty straightforward to me. Apparently some missionaries also add that condoms come preinfected with the HIV virus.
I'm sure that you enjoy your faith, and more power to you. But ask yourself if you really want to have anything to do with an organization that, at it's highest levels, prefers to lie rather than admit their religious idealism is helping to subject millions to misery and death.
I'm willing to bet you got the 60% figure from the "George W Bush Abstinence Only Foundation" or some such, right? I have yet to see one that puts it at less than 85%, usually higher than that.
is able to prevent transmission of a viurs many times smaller than a human sperm
Gee, that makes sense. Latex stops sperm and viruses are smaller than sperm, therefore latex is permiable to viruses? I suppose the thought that the pores in latex are smaller than viruses never crossed your mind?
at least compared to celebacy, which is much more goof proof when used correctly
Oh this gets better and better. You compare the theoretical success rate of abstinence to the effective rate of condoms and call it a day? Why not compare the effective rate of both? Oh, that's right. Because among teens who say they'll refrain from sexual relationships, most of them ended up getting it on anyway. Abstinence is only a success if you make a point of ignoring the failures.
Nice. I think you just proved the parent's point. You really are totally ignorant in every topic you're trying to refute.
Evolution doesn't explain the origin of dimensions
What does evolution have to do with the topography of the universe? That's like saying that general relativity is no good because it doesn't explain why penicillin works. They have nothing to do with each other!
The Big Bang theory (and other origination theories) doesnt explain the origination of the origination
Oh, but postulating the existence of an all-powerful deity somehow gets around that? What created the creator? Cue generic creationist response: "The creator is eternal", which is a copout and no answer at all. Why is a deity with nonexistent origins somehow more rational than a universe with natural but as-yet-undetermined ones?
Certain measurements, such as carbon dating
It's not accurate under the conditions creationists always put it to, no. But then a hammer doesn't work too good for silicon lithography of microprocessors either. If you can't be troubled to learn how to use a tool correctly, then you don't get to complain that it doesn't work. Doing carbon dating on anything less than 1000 years or more than 50,000 old is going to give meaningless and useless results. So of course these are the very conditions that creationists use.
The speed of light, which is widely used as a standard constant measurement, is not constant. data used for this was collected from the past 200+ years
Bullshit. Measurements for c weren't even up to 99% accuracy until 150 years ago. And nowadays they are so accurate that they'd detect any deviations.
What would the purpose of complex sexual reproduction be, if creatures could just copy themselves or all reproduce asexually?
This has been answered so many times, conceptually, in the lab, and in the Real World, that for you to ask such a thing establishes once and for all you've not the foggiest idea what you talk about. Sexual reproduction allows for a species to achieve a much higher level of genetic diversity (and so faster adaptation) without the more chancy process of mutation. Populations of asexual creatures are genetically uniform to a high degree, making them much more vulnerable, as a species, to parasites and predators.
How did the sun start a massive fusion reaction all by itself, and why didn't the other planets start their own also?
Go read a middle school physics book. Christ, the astronomy book mom got me when I was in 1st grade answered that.
I'm done. The rest of your questions are meaningless philisophical dribble, questions easily answered with 20 seconds thought, questions already answered with exceptional certainty, or questions equating cultural effects to fundamental laws of nature.
the Vatican has taken a more "hands-off" approach to science, reasoning that God also created* science and human curiosity, not as a diversion for the inherently wicked, but as an avenue for humanity to better itself
Almost. The Church is still taking the line that birth control, specifically condoms, is useless for preventing the spread of STDs, which is demonstrably not true. Or at least, all the assholes they train or send to AIDS-riddled Africa are saying so and the Church isn't offering them a warm glass of STFU, which in my book amounts to the same thing.
But the Creationist thing, yeah, that's a real homegrown fruitcake movement.
Not so much that as the fact that testing for driving skill, while still a Good Idea, makes far more sense when done at the behest of, say, the auto insurance company. They have a direct incentive to relate premiums to the ability to refrain from smashing one's car. And there's lots of private driver training/testing people already out there who could do the job. The ins. company already requires an inspection of the car, an inspection of my ability to drive it is not, IMHO, an outrageous requirement for a discount or something.
Oh it's not that the bible-thumpers don't believe in dinosaurs. It's just that they alternately believe that they are fakes to test our faith or that they lived alongside humans and died in the flood.
Well, feeling heat generated by impact from IR radiation to receiving patterns of visible light is quite a stretch. It's possible tha that's how it started, though, with a clump of nerve cells that normally detected heat became sensetized to the radiation directly. Conversion to detecting visible light is just chemistry in the receptors.
As a set of cognitive beliefs about the existence of God in any recognizable sense continuous with the great systems of the past, religious doctrines constitute a speculative hypothesis of an extremely low order of probability
Man, if your gonna plagarize from Sidney Hook, at least give credit where credit is due.:)
As far as I can tell, the major resistance to evolution among much of the public is that it's humiliating to think that we have such humble, slimy origins.
And that just slays me. I watched the PBS special on Evolution and found it absolutely fascinating, even though I'd already known most of the stuff presented. To me, the process of evolution is a marvelous process, combining the grace of life in nature with the savagery of survival and competition in a harsh universe, all written on a tapestry 3 billion years long, just aching to be read. On a long enough time scale, morphology flows like water. It is a process that is beautiful beyond compare.
To say that humble origins detract from the end result is ludicrous. A painting is nothing but a canvas, paint, and the proverbial blood, sweat & tears, but it is no less a work of art for it.
Has it been observed in the amazing way that evolutionists describe it to have happened?
Yes. Speciation has been observed, in the lab and in the wild.
Why should they feel affronted, regardless of whether Creationists are right or wrong?
For the same reason a geography teacher is affronted when parents come in demanding they teach that the earth is flat. The same reason that Jews don't really like people who claim the Holocaust never happened. The same reason psychics never win the lottery, or at least with no more regularity than the rest of us. These people are simply wrong (and demonstrably so), and they use the most asinine arguments to support their ridiculously stupid stances.
If Creationists are just a bunch of blind religious zealots, why not ignore them?
Because they won't ignore the rest of us and leave their foolishness at home. Because they go to school boards, they go to governors, they go to Congress demanding in no uncertain terms that their favorite brand of nonsense be taught as fact to everyone else's children. Because students that _are_ taught ID are in for a rude awakening if and when they go to college where there's none of this "Aww, evolution is _just_ a theory" foolishness.
Because if they started including as synonyms of 'faith' the words 'unthinking', 'irrational', 'unreasonable', 'illogical', 'foolish', and 'a childish mentality', they'd get sued by churches for hitting too close to the mark.
What is macroevolution if not a whole bunch of microevolutions strung together? The journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step...
Consider canines. No one act of breeding is enough to cause speciation, but the individual actions of thousands of breeders across continents over the past few millenia has wrought breeds from (more or less) unchanged wolves to mastiffs to dobermans to pugs to chihuahuas, many of which are no longer physically capable of mating, no matter any genetic incompatibility.
The irony is that probably the only other president despised by so many Americans was Lincoln, one of our best. I guess that explains why Republicans are ready to deify Dubya and proclaim him the greatest president in US history. They must figure that anyone so hated and despised, both at home and abroad, _must_ be worthy of great honor.
I was discussing politics with some friends the other day, and the LP came up. One of them said, "Oh those guys are really out there. They want to get rid of driver's licenses". I love what the LP stands for, but this one was new to me. So I sat there thinking about whether or not this could be true.
To my surprise, I was totally unable to come up with an argument for keeping the DMV around. Its stated goal, of ensuring that only qualified people drive, is clearly total bullshit. They don't require any testing beyond vision after your 16th birthday, and lack of a driver's license isn't capable of keeping someone with hands, feet, and a key from driving anyway. On top of which, nobody likes the DMV (wasn't there a song by Primus along those lines?) and they're an expensive agency for a state to run. And on the flip side, a driver's license is a de facto ID card. It requires you to keep the government informed of where you live at all times, and makes it really easy for traffic cops to turn ticketing into a money racket.
So what if he lies? He's done so, and just as brazenly, before. Despite it, 50 million people are still going to vote for Bush.
Bush has said there will never be a draft. Oh, fantastic. So why all the orders to Selective Service offices to be ready for... something. For that matter, if a draft anytime in the forseeable future is merely the product of a deranged imagination, why is the Selective Service still here? Why did the No Child Left Behind Act include stuff for requiring public schools to give up student records to military recruiters on demand? Why is Cheney telling anyone who raises perfectly valid questions about future military manpower shortages to STFU? Why is Bush ignoring all his own advisors _and_ the Pentagon when they say, "We don't have enough troops."?
So Dubya and friends say there won't be a draft. So fscking what? To anti-paraphrase Richelieu, I have a hard time coming up with 6 lines written by this most dishonest of administrations that wouldn't be a hanging offense. It would not surprise me in the least in they are waiting and actually hoping for another major attack so they can spring some disgusting piece of jingoistically-named legislation on Congress again.
Indeed. And it looks like this apology wasn't a boilerplated item, either. Normally, when a big company backs down from a major IP snafu, their statementes are more of the "Well, you're still an naughty criminal, but out of sheer altruism we'll let you live for now" variety; basically insulting you under the guise of "We're sorry". So to see a real mea culpa and a request for additional contact info so they can do some _more_ apologizing is rare in the extreme. Kudos to Nintendo on this.
I can certainly appreciate the extreme reluctance in allowing non-Americans to have a say in an entirely American election, regardless of the influence that position may have. But if you're going to judge a president's foreign policy for the previous 4 years, the people you most need to hear from are, quite simply, foreigners. Nobody's suggesting giving Brits voting rights for 2004. We ask them, "How do you think the various candidates would affect the US's relationship with your country", and we got answers. We can read them and decide that they do not merit sufficient cause to change one's mind, but to dismiss them with insults and condemnation and threats is just a deliberate act of willful ignorance.
Whenever I hear someone say that we need to "stay the course", I just tell them that that's exactly what the captain of the Titanic said. Usually shuts em up pretty fast.
The fact that he would say something like that without realizing the logical implications obvious to anyone, though. Sad, so very sad.
What really drives me up the wall is the number of people voting for Bush "because he's well versed in Scripture". Ironic, too, considering the difficulty he has putting words together into coherent sentences. I wish people would hire me for a job for my ability to recite long verses from Monty Python skits.
I'm sure most everyone here has read this before, but....
I am a dynamic figure, often seen scaling walls and crushing ice. I have been known to remodel train stations on my lunch breaks, making them more efficient in the area of heat retention. I translate ethnic slurs for Cuban refugees, I write award-winning operas, I manage time efficiently. Occasionally, I tread water for three days in a row.
I woo women with my sensuous and godlike trombone playing, I can pilot bicycles up severe inclines with unflagging speed, and I cook Thirty Minute Brownies in twenty minutes. I am an expert in stucco, a veteran in love, and an outlaw in Peru.
Using only a hoe and a large glass of water, I once single-handedly defended a small village in the Amazon Basin from a horde of ferocious army ants. I play bluegrass cello, I was scouted by the Mets. I am the subject of numerous documentaries. When I'm bored, I build large suspension bridges in my yard. I enjoy urban hang gliding. On Wednesdays, after school, I repair electrical appliances free of charge.
I am an abstract artist, a concrete analyst, and a ruthless bookie. Critics worldwide swoon over my original line of corduroy evening wear. I don't perspire. I am a private citizen, yet I receive fan mail. I have been caller number nine and won the weekend passes. Last summer I toured New Jersey with a traveling centrifugal-force demonstration. I bat.400. My deft floral arrangements have earned me fame in international botany circles. Children trust me.
I can hurl tennis rackets at small moving objects with deadly accuracy. I once read Paradise Lost, Moby Dick, and David Copperfield in one day and still had time to refurbish an entire dining room that evening. I know the exact location of every food item in the supermarket. I have performed covert operations for the CIA. I sleep once a week; when I do sleep, I sleep in a chair. While on vacation in Canada, I successfully negotiated with a group of terrorists who had seized a small bakery. The laws of physics do not apply to me.
I balance, I weave, I dodge, I frolic, and my bills are all paid. On weekends, to let off steam, I participate in full-contact origami. Years ago I discovered the meaning of life but forgot to write it down. I have made extraordinary four-course meals using only a Mouli and a toaster oven. I breed prizewinning clams. I have won bullfights in San Juan, cliff-diving competitions in Sri Lanka, and spelling bees at the Kremlin. I have played Hamlet, I have performed open-heart surgery, and I have spoken with Elvis.
But I have not yet gone to college.
Re:Old school hackers vs. new school hackers.
on
Good Bad Attitude
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Sell them cheaply. Make it cheap, convenient, and reliable enough that it's simply not worth the time and effort and exasperation to go through the P2P networks. I'm thinking an absolute maximum of $.50 per track, depending on size. They should really strive for less, so an entire album would cost $2 or $3.
Add value that P2P can't match. Allow for purchase of miscellanceous artwork, interviews with the band, behind-the-scenes, crap like that. Keep a well organized discography database with links to similar artists. Allow downloads or mailing of the CD insert and stick-on labels so the customer can make their own CD's (Ha! Have a service that will create CD labels for custom mix CDs. Just specify the bands and/or albums and they'll send you a label with a montage of all the requested artwork). Allow downloads or streaming for free in crap-quality 48kbps MP3 and sell in a multitude of popular formats (MP3, OGG, lossy, lossless, whatever) and bitrates. Allow downloading of entire albums at once. Give promotionals for things like posters and concert tickets and t-shirts when you buy the album. And for the love of god, do not cripple it all with DRM shit that doesn't work!
Have the customer keep a PayPal-type debit account, so they can deposit a few bucks periodically and then just buy whatever song or album they want with a simple one-click purchase system.
Will the songs end up on P2P networks? Absolutely. But so what? They'll _never_ stamp it out; there will always be files available for free. The RIAA members need to have this fact drilled into their skulls. But this way they could at least compete with it. Look how will iTunes did, and that was expensive, limited, and had nothing I couldn't get from P2P. With a system like this in place, they could sweep illicit music trading under the rug almost at once and make even more money than they are now. I mean, there's almost no distribution costs apart from bandwidth. No middle-men, it's all profit.
But, no. Instead they declare war on the people who give them money. That's much better.
Power. It is the king of words. Not God, not Money, but Power. Pour it on your tongue until it tingles with it. [Jack London]
When it comes to the desire of people to accumulate, wield, and abuse power over others, human nature takes on a level of predicatability not seen outside of a high school phsyics class. Psychohistory writ small, as it were. A person will often willingly give up power. Small, closely-knit groups of them sometimes can do so. Governments of cops and bureaucrats and politicians spread out across 300 million people? They'll take every last ounce they can get.
My family says I'm way to young (25) to be so cynical. What do you think?
Slashdot Mirror
http://www.guardian.co.uk/aids/story/0,7369,105906 8,00.html
Sounds pretty straightforward to me. Apparently some missionaries also add that condoms come preinfected with the HIV virus.
I'm sure that you enjoy your faith, and more power to you. But ask yourself if you really want to have anything to do with an organization that, at it's highest levels, prefers to lie rather than admit their religious idealism is helping to subject millions to misery and death.
I'm willing to bet you got the 60% figure from the "George W Bush Abstinence Only Foundation" or some such, right? I have yet to see one that puts it at less than 85%, usually higher than that. is able to prevent transmission of a viurs many times smaller than a human sperm Gee, that makes sense. Latex stops sperm and viruses are smaller than sperm, therefore latex is permiable to viruses? I suppose the thought that the pores in latex are smaller than viruses never crossed your mind? at least compared to celebacy, which is much more goof proof when used correctly Oh this gets better and better. You compare the theoretical success rate of abstinence to the effective rate of condoms and call it a day? Why not compare the effective rate of both? Oh, that's right. Because among teens who say they'll refrain from sexual relationships, most of them ended up getting it on anyway. Abstinence is only a success if you make a point of ignoring the failures.
Nice. I think you just proved the parent's point. You really are totally ignorant in every topic you're trying to refute.
Evolution doesn't explain the origin of dimensions
What does evolution have to do with the topography of the universe? That's like saying that general relativity is no good because it doesn't explain why penicillin works. They have nothing to do with each other!
The Big Bang theory (and other origination theories) doesnt explain the origination of the origination
Oh, but postulating the existence of an all-powerful deity somehow gets around that? What created the creator? Cue generic creationist response: "The creator is eternal", which is a copout and no answer at all. Why is a deity with nonexistent origins somehow more rational than a universe with natural but as-yet-undetermined ones?
Certain measurements, such as carbon dating
It's not accurate under the conditions creationists always put it to, no. But then a hammer doesn't work too good for silicon lithography of microprocessors either. If you can't be troubled to learn how to use a tool correctly, then you don't get to complain that it doesn't work. Doing carbon dating on anything less than 1000 years or more than 50,000 old is going to give meaningless and useless results. So of course these are the very conditions that creationists use.
The speed of light, which is widely used as a standard constant measurement, is not constant. data used for this was collected from the past 200+ years
Bullshit. Measurements for c weren't even up to 99% accuracy until 150 years ago. And nowadays they are so accurate that they'd detect any deviations.
What would the purpose of complex sexual reproduction be, if creatures could just copy themselves or all reproduce asexually?
This has been answered so many times, conceptually, in the lab, and in the Real World, that for you to ask such a thing establishes once and for all you've not the foggiest idea what you talk about. Sexual reproduction allows for a species to achieve a much higher level of genetic diversity (and so faster adaptation) without the more chancy process of mutation. Populations of asexual creatures are genetically uniform to a high degree, making them much more vulnerable, as a species, to parasites and predators.
How did the sun start a massive fusion reaction all by itself, and why didn't the other planets start their own also?
Go read a middle school physics book. Christ, the astronomy book mom got me when I was in 1st grade answered that.
I'm done. The rest of your questions are meaningless philisophical dribble, questions easily answered with 20 seconds thought, questions already answered with exceptional certainty, or questions equating cultural effects to fundamental laws of nature.
the Vatican has taken a more "hands-off" approach to science, reasoning that God also created* science and human curiosity, not as a diversion for the inherently wicked, but as an avenue for humanity to better itself
Almost. The Church is still taking the line that birth control, specifically condoms, is useless for preventing the spread of STDs, which is demonstrably not true. Or at least, all the assholes they train or send to AIDS-riddled Africa are saying so and the Church isn't offering them a warm glass of STFU, which in my book amounts to the same thing.
But the Creationist thing, yeah, that's a real homegrown fruitcake movement.
Not so much that as the fact that testing for driving skill, while still a Good Idea, makes far more sense when done at the behest of, say, the auto insurance company. They have a direct incentive to relate premiums to the ability to refrain from smashing one's car. And there's lots of private driver training/testing people already out there who could do the job. The ins. company already requires an inspection of the car, an inspection of my ability to drive it is not, IMHO, an outrageous requirement for a discount or something.
Oh it's not that the bible-thumpers don't believe in dinosaurs. It's just that they alternately believe that they are fakes to test our faith or that they lived alongside humans and died in the flood.
Well, feeling heat generated by impact from IR radiation to receiving patterns of visible light is quite a stretch. It's possible tha that's how it started, though, with a clump of nerve cells that normally detected heat became sensetized to the radiation directly. Conversion to detecting visible light is just chemistry in the receptors.
Man, if your gonna plagarize from Sidney Hook, at least give credit where credit is due. :)
But the rest is good.
I dunno, I generally consider any religion that likes to dabble in areas well-covered by science to be a 'bottom down' process.
As far as I can tell, the major resistance to evolution among much of the public is that it's humiliating to think that we have such humble, slimy origins.
And that just slays me. I watched the PBS special on Evolution and found it absolutely fascinating, even though I'd already known most of the stuff presented. To me, the process of evolution is a marvelous process, combining the grace of life in nature with the savagery of survival and competition in a harsh universe, all written on a tapestry 3 billion years long, just aching to be read. On a long enough time scale, morphology flows like water. It is a process that is beautiful beyond compare.
To say that humble origins detract from the end result is ludicrous. A painting is nothing but a canvas, paint, and the proverbial blood, sweat & tears, but it is no less a work of art for it.
Is evolution really a fact?
Yes.
Has it been observed in the amazing way that evolutionists describe it to have happened?
Yes. Speciation has been observed, in the lab and in the wild.
Why should they feel affronted, regardless of whether Creationists are right or wrong?
For the same reason a geography teacher is affronted when parents come in demanding they teach that the earth is flat. The same reason that Jews don't really like people who claim the Holocaust never happened. The same reason psychics never win the lottery, or at least with no more regularity than the rest of us. These people are simply wrong (and demonstrably so), and they use the most asinine arguments to support their ridiculously stupid stances.
If Creationists are just a bunch of blind religious zealots, why not ignore them?
Because they won't ignore the rest of us and leave their foolishness at home. Because they go to school boards, they go to governors, they go to Congress demanding in no uncertain terms that their favorite brand of nonsense be taught as fact to everyone else's children. Because students that _are_ taught ID are in for a rude awakening if and when they go to college where there's none of this "Aww, evolution is _just_ a theory" foolishness.
Because if they started including as synonyms of 'faith' the words 'unthinking', 'irrational', 'unreasonable', 'illogical', 'foolish', and 'a childish mentality', they'd get sued by churches for hitting too close to the mark.
What is macroevolution if not a whole bunch of microevolutions strung together? The journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step...
Consider canines. No one act of breeding is enough to cause speciation, but the individual actions of thousands of breeders across continents over the past few millenia has wrought breeds from (more or less) unchanged wolves to mastiffs to dobermans to pugs to chihuahuas, many of which are no longer physically capable of mating, no matter any genetic incompatibility.
No, no, they must have had GREAT eyesight since they probably smelled very poorly indeed. Bathing hadn't been invented yet. Phew! :)
The irony is that probably the only other president despised by so many Americans was Lincoln, one of our best. I guess that explains why Republicans are ready to deify Dubya and proclaim him the greatest president in US history. They must figure that anyone so hated and despised, both at home and abroad, _must_ be worthy of great honor.
I was discussing politics with some friends the other day, and the LP came up. One of them said, "Oh those guys are really out there. They want to get rid of driver's licenses". I love what the LP stands for, but this one was new to me. So I sat there thinking about whether or not this could be true.
To my surprise, I was totally unable to come up with an argument for keeping the DMV around. Its stated goal, of ensuring that only qualified people drive, is clearly total bullshit. They don't require any testing beyond vision after your 16th birthday, and lack of a driver's license isn't capable of keeping someone with hands, feet, and a key from driving anyway. On top of which, nobody likes the DMV (wasn't there a song by Primus along those lines?) and they're an expensive agency for a state to run. And on the flip side, a driver's license is a de facto ID card. It requires you to keep the government informed of where you live at all times, and makes it really easy for traffic cops to turn ticketing into a money racket.
So what if he lies? He's done so, and just as brazenly, before. Despite it, 50 million people are still going to vote for Bush.
... something. For that matter, if a draft anytime in the forseeable future is merely the product of a deranged imagination, why is the Selective Service still here? Why did the No Child Left Behind Act include stuff for requiring public schools to give up student records to military recruiters on demand? Why is Cheney telling anyone who raises perfectly valid questions about future military manpower shortages to STFU? Why is Bush ignoring all his own advisors _and_ the Pentagon when they say, "We don't have enough troops."?
Bush has said there will never be a draft. Oh, fantastic. So why all the orders to Selective Service offices to be ready for
So Dubya and friends say there won't be a draft. So fscking what? To anti-paraphrase Richelieu, I have a hard time coming up with 6 lines written by this most dishonest of administrations that wouldn't be a hanging offense. It would not surprise me in the least in they are waiting and actually hoping for another major attack so they can spring some disgusting piece of jingoistically-named legislation on Congress again.
Not least of all because civil unions are a classic example of "separate but equal". http://www.glad.org/rights/OP7-marriagevcu.shtml
Indeed. And it looks like this apology wasn't a boilerplated item, either. Normally, when a big company backs down from a major IP snafu, their statementes are more of the "Well, you're still an naughty criminal, but out of sheer altruism we'll let you live for now" variety; basically insulting you under the guise of "We're sorry". So to see a real mea culpa and a request for additional contact info so they can do some _more_ apologizing is rare in the extreme. Kudos to Nintendo on this.
I can certainly appreciate the extreme reluctance in allowing non-Americans to have a say in an entirely American election, regardless of the influence that position may have. But if you're going to judge a president's foreign policy for the previous 4 years, the people you most need to hear from are, quite simply, foreigners. Nobody's suggesting giving Brits voting rights for 2004. We ask them, "How do you think the various candidates would affect the US's relationship with your country", and we got answers. We can read them and decide that they do not merit sufficient cause to change one's mind, but to dismiss them with insults and condemnation and threats is just a deliberate act of willful ignorance.
Whenever I hear someone say that we need to "stay the course", I just tell them that that's exactly what the captain of the Titanic said. Usually shuts em up pretty fast.
The fact that he would say something like that without realizing the logical implications obvious to anyone, though. Sad, so very sad.
What really drives me up the wall is the number of people voting for Bush "because he's well versed in Scripture". Ironic, too, considering the difficulty he has putting words together into coherent sentences. I wish people would hire me for a job for my ability to recite long verses from Monty Python skits.
I'm sure most everyone here has read this before, but....
.400. My deft floral arrangements have earned me fame in international botany circles. Children trust me.
I am a dynamic figure, often seen scaling walls and crushing ice. I have been known to remodel train stations on my lunch breaks, making them more efficient in the area of heat retention. I translate ethnic slurs for Cuban refugees, I write award-winning operas, I manage time efficiently. Occasionally, I tread water for three days in a row.
I woo women with my sensuous and godlike trombone playing, I can pilot bicycles up severe inclines with unflagging speed, and I cook Thirty Minute Brownies in twenty minutes. I am an expert in stucco, a veteran in love, and an outlaw in Peru.
Using only a hoe and a large glass of water, I once single-handedly defended a small village in the Amazon Basin from a horde of ferocious army ants. I play bluegrass cello, I was scouted by the Mets. I am the subject of numerous documentaries. When I'm bored, I build large suspension bridges in my yard. I enjoy urban hang gliding. On Wednesdays, after school, I repair electrical appliances free of charge.
I am an abstract artist, a concrete analyst, and a ruthless bookie. Critics worldwide swoon over my original line of corduroy evening wear. I don't perspire. I am a private citizen, yet I receive fan mail. I have been caller number nine and won the weekend passes. Last summer I toured New Jersey with a traveling centrifugal-force demonstration. I bat
I can hurl tennis rackets at small moving objects with deadly accuracy. I once read Paradise Lost, Moby Dick, and David Copperfield in one day and still had time to refurbish an entire dining room that evening. I know the exact location of every food item in the supermarket. I have performed covert operations for the CIA. I sleep once a week; when I do sleep, I sleep in a chair. While on vacation in Canada, I successfully negotiated with a group of terrorists who had seized a small bakery. The laws of physics do not apply to me.
I balance, I weave, I dodge, I frolic, and my bills are all paid. On weekends, to let off steam, I participate in full-contact origami. Years ago I discovered the meaning of life but forgot to write it down. I have made extraordinary four-course meals using only a Mouli and a toaster oven. I breed prizewinning clams. I have won bullfights in San Juan, cliff-diving competitions in Sri Lanka, and spelling bees at the Kremlin. I have played Hamlet, I have performed open-heart surgery, and I have spoken with Elvis.
But I have not yet gone to college.
Sell them cheaply. Make it cheap, convenient, and reliable enough that it's simply not worth the time and effort and exasperation to go through the P2P networks. I'm thinking an absolute maximum of $.50 per track, depending on size. They should really strive for less, so an entire album would cost $2 or $3.
Add value that P2P can't match. Allow for purchase of miscellanceous artwork, interviews with the band, behind-the-scenes, crap like that. Keep a well organized discography database with links to similar artists. Allow downloads or mailing of the CD insert and stick-on labels so the customer can make their own CD's (Ha! Have a service that will create CD labels for custom mix CDs. Just specify the bands and/or albums and they'll send you a label with a montage of all the requested artwork). Allow downloads or streaming for free in crap-quality 48kbps MP3 and sell in a multitude of popular formats (MP3, OGG, lossy, lossless, whatever) and bitrates. Allow downloading of entire albums at once. Give promotionals for things like posters and concert tickets and t-shirts when you buy the album. And for the love of god, do not cripple it all with DRM shit that doesn't work!
Have the customer keep a PayPal-type debit account, so they can deposit a few bucks periodically and then just buy whatever song or album they want with a simple one-click purchase system.
Will the songs end up on P2P networks? Absolutely. But so what? They'll _never_ stamp it out; there will always be files available for free. The RIAA members need to have this fact drilled into their skulls. But this way they could at least compete with it. Look how will iTunes did, and that was expensive, limited, and had nothing I couldn't get from P2P. With a system like this in place, they could sweep illicit music trading under the rug almost at once and make even more money than they are now. I mean, there's almost no distribution costs apart from bandwidth. No middle-men, it's all profit.
But, no. Instead they declare war on the people who give them money. That's much better.
When it comes to the desire of people to accumulate, wield, and abuse power over others, human nature takes on a level of predicatability not seen outside of a high school phsyics class. Psychohistory writ small, as it were. A person will often willingly give up power. Small, closely-knit groups of them sometimes can do so. Governments of cops and bureaucrats and politicians spread out across 300 million people? They'll take every last ounce they can get.
My family says I'm way to young (25) to be so cynical. What do you think?