"Similarly I'm okay with religion classes, as long as the world's eight major religions are all given equal time. "
I'm not. Teaching superstition or even teaching people to consider superstition with anything but utter contempt is a waste of time. The only people who want superstition respected want to propagate it.
The solution is educational separation. Give the Christian Taliban school vouchers so they can send their Jihadists to whatever madrassas they like (and keep them out of public school, which is for people who failed to have kids they could afford to raise properly) and since school vouchers would be available to everyone else, caring parents could send their offspring to secular schools. Boarding school worked well for me. I escaped the vermin who went to the local public school, avoided their mediocre teachers, and got a decent education free from all religion. That is what we all should strive for, and leave the Bible Thumpers uneducated at all. It's easy enough to avoid hiring Bible Thumpers and be friendly while doing it. If they can be (self)-induced to avoiding education, even better. I've had enough of these people. It's time to fuck them over.
Good points. The only way to win (some) wars is to not have the post-Nuremburg rules of engagement.
War in modern times is often a choice between "rules" and "victory", which is why unconventional war works so well with an appropriate (Vietnamese, Taliban) level of persistence.
"It's time to go back to what got us the strong middle-class to begin with:"
That was called "World War II", which wrecked and disrupted _all_ the manufacturing competition AND gave unions leverage because US skilled labor was in demand.
There isn't any practical war that would accomplish this again.
"And then workers both North and South suffer a lowering of incomes."
Work is competition. Either the US lowers wages or the jobs will move even more quickly to cheaper labor offshore. The post-WWII bubble was a function of most modern manufacturing competition being disrupted by violence.
I don't believe there is a pony at the bottom, but I know that's where we are headed so the choices are "adapt" or "dawdle and suffer the consequences".
"Chinese wages" suck by comparison to what we are used to. If we want better, we are required to compete _fiercely_, avoid buying foreign goods where practical, and do what EVERYONE ELSE has had to do to compete. Unions are only good for valuable workers. Highly-skilled workers who are difficult to replace can command good wages, but the key word is "command". Generic labor isn't valuable and cannot be made that way by legislation.
"In South Carolina (a "right to work" state) there was a story about a factory looking for experienced machinists with advanced training and offering to pay $12 per hour, which is approximately what a fast food worker would make after a year or so."
I can verify the South Carolina situation. I live there and work at a vo-tech. (We have retrained a few machinists and machine operators as weldors because there is a modest shortage of those and they can travel nationwide for contract work.)
Machinists are available because manufacturing took a dive. Boeing moved to Charleston for very good reason. Everything is cheaper down here which greatly cushions the effect of low wages. What I'd pay in property taxes in North Jersey would buy a nice house and lots of acreage in SC.
As for "right to work", that "right to compete" is an advantage because manufacturers can simply leave union states and move South. If the South goes union, they can simply outsource and shut down their plants.
Work sucked long before there were corporations and long before Ayn Rand was born. Work is suffering in return for money.
That is NOT to say that if you can compel better conditions through individual or collective bargaining you should not do so. Labor and management are enemies, so get what you can any way you can.
That's actually the truth, of which we will be gently reminded by the current economy. Work usually sucked throughout human history. Non-suckful working conditions are not the norm.
The way labor gets to vote is to leave for greener pastures.
"While you do have people with insane religious zeal, most religious people have a conscience which keeps them from taking part in mass misery; contrast this with "rational" ideologies which will make arbitrary divisions based on skin color, social class, etc... and disenfranchise a whole class of people."
Bullshit. Conscience is adjustable, note religionists in Germany went along with the program (a Niemoller or several don't matter much) and the Vatican even went so far as to rescue Nazis after WWII. (Operation Ratline, etc.)
You've grown up in a world where religion is weak, tame, and has been beaten back by the Enlightenment. It wasn't always thus (the Crusades come to mind) and without vigilance religion would return to its savage past. The price of freedom FROM religion is aggressive vigilance.
The WBC and Taliban are the essence of the "Middle East", which can only be improved by local nuclear war, drought, and the destruction of its worthless superstitionist inhabitants. I wish they had but one throat, and my hands were on it.
Religious Man has nothing left to offer the world except slavery. Religious Man is a beast who exists to inflict religion on others. His superstition deserves no respect by Modern Man, and anything that works against religion is good.
People need bread and want circuses. Given enough of both, not much else is required.
Revolutions happen when "bread" gets too expensive. If there is insufficient bread available, and it's the fault of the ruling class, there is no logical reason not to slaughter them and take their bread. The last time this happened in China was very recently, in 1948.
A fine idea, but the US is so desperately religious that not whacking them isn't just a matter of tolerance, it's a matter of tacit agreement by some more reticent fag-hating religionists.
"Honestly, I think the arguments for the existence of God are more compelling than the opposite,"
Of course you do, out of faith, not logic. Your faith dictates your life and replaces reason instead of being derived from it. I mention this not to argue you out of your delusion, but to point out its absurdity to spectators.
NO! The WBC effectively represent unvarnished, raw religion without the usual marketing hype, as do the Taliban. They have helped promote everything they oppose! Good stuff. They begat the Patriot Guard to block their picketing at G.I. funerals, and motivated creative counter-protests in many places. I am grateful to such perfect superstitionists for their work.
"That's exactly the crappy attitude I run up against. A big hearty "Fuck you!" to those who actually believe that shit."
That doesn't exclude it being accurate. The only reason to go cash-only and not use disposable credit cards is paranoia. The Beast still records your transactions.:)
BTW if you really believe that shit, man up and die fighting instead of playing games (I has no Mark, so I be gwine up to Hebbin'!). No respectable Imaginary Friend condones such mewling weakness.
"It's also not fair to just say "rednecks and freaks".
It's past unfair and well into "stupid". Those of us who drive long distance often use CB to keep track of road conditions. Just lurking is usually enough. The CB craze is mostly over, (praise be to Allah!) so there are fewer dumbfucks polluting the airwaves.
After investing about the SAME TIME AND EFFORT, I find Linux as easy to use (and MUCH easier to install (though most Windows users don't install their own OS) than Windows.
Don't discount the shitload of time (even for technically inclined people who think it's fun) it takes to be comfortable with a new OS starting from scratch.
This is where a national broadband investment would pay off. When we can get rid of mail for communication, that will slash the amount of time and energy involved in making and transporting dead trees.
OT: Those HDDRs are pretty decent worklights. The body is made of aluminum (not some zinc-ish smegalloy), as we found out when we TIG welded a cracked one.
Slashdot Mirror
"Similarly I'm okay with religion classes, as long as the world's eight major religions are all given equal time. "
I'm not. Teaching superstition or even teaching people to consider superstition with anything but utter contempt is a waste of time.
The only people who want superstition respected want to propagate it.
The solution is educational separation. Give the Christian Taliban school vouchers so they can send their Jihadists to whatever madrassas they like (and keep them out of public school, which is for people who failed to have kids they could afford to raise properly) and since school vouchers would be available to everyone else, caring parents could send their offspring to secular schools.
Boarding school worked well for me. I escaped the vermin who went to the local public school, avoided their mediocre teachers, and got a decent education free from all religion. That is what we all should strive for, and leave the Bible Thumpers uneducated at all. It's easy enough to avoid hiring Bible Thumpers and be friendly while doing it. If they can be (self)-induced to avoiding education, even better. I've had enough of these people. It's time to fuck them over.
Good points. The only way to win (some) wars is to not have the post-Nuremburg rules of engagement.
War in modern times is often a choice between "rules" and "victory", which is why unconventional war works so well with an appropriate (Vietnamese, Taliban) level of persistence.
"It's time to go back to what got us the strong middle-class to begin with:"
That was called "World War II", which wrecked and disrupted _all_ the manufacturing competition AND gave unions leverage because US skilled labor was in demand.
There isn't any practical war that would accomplish this again.
"And then workers both North and South suffer a lowering of incomes."
Work is competition. Either the US lowers wages or the jobs will move even more quickly to cheaper labor offshore. The post-WWII bubble was a function of most modern manufacturing competition being disrupted by violence.
I don't believe there is a pony at the bottom, but I know that's where we are headed so the choices are "adapt" or "dawdle and suffer the consequences".
"Chinese wages" suck by comparison to what we are used to. If we want better, we are required to compete _fiercely_, avoid buying foreign goods where practical, and do what EVERYONE ELSE has had to do to compete. Unions are only good for valuable workers. Highly-skilled workers who are difficult to replace can command good wages, but the key word is "command". Generic labor isn't valuable and cannot be made that way by legislation.
Torrenting is usually (unless all you do is leech) simultaneously redistributing while downloading.
"In South Carolina (a "right to work" state) there was a story about a factory looking for experienced machinists with advanced training and offering to pay $12 per hour, which is approximately what a fast food worker would make after a year or so."
I can verify the South Carolina situation. I live there and work at a vo-tech. (We have retrained a few machinists and machine operators as weldors because there is a modest shortage of those and they can travel nationwide for contract work.)
Machinists are available because manufacturing took a dive. Boeing moved to Charleston for very good reason. Everything is cheaper down here which greatly cushions the effect of low wages. What I'd pay in property taxes in North Jersey would buy a nice house and lots of acreage in SC.
As for "right to work", that "right to compete" is an advantage because manufacturers can simply leave union states and move South. If the South goes union, they can simply outsource and shut down their plants.
Work sucked long before there were corporations and long before Ayn Rand was born. Work is suffering in return for money.
That is NOT to say that if you can compel better conditions through individual or collective bargaining you should not do so. Labor and management are enemies, so get what you can any way you can.
That's actually the truth, of which we will be gently reminded by the current economy. Work usually sucked throughout human history. Non-suckful working conditions are not the norm.
The way labor gets to vote is to leave for greener pastures.
Nor should one assume they are not, or that the typical superstitionist dodge of disowning inconvenient followers is anything but that.
"While you do have people with insane religious zeal, most religious people have a conscience which keeps them from taking part in mass misery; contrast this with "rational" ideologies which will make arbitrary divisions based on skin color, social class, etc... and disenfranchise a whole class of people."
Bullshit. Conscience is adjustable, note religionists in Germany went along with the program (a Niemoller or several don't matter much) and the Vatican even went so far as to rescue Nazis after WWII. (Operation Ratline, etc.)
You've grown up in a world where religion is weak, tame, and has been beaten back by the Enlightenment. It wasn't always thus (the Crusades come to mind) and without vigilance religion would return to its savage past. The price of freedom FROM religion is aggressive vigilance.
"I think there may be hope for the middle east."
The WBC and Taliban are the essence of the "Middle East", which can only be improved by local nuclear war, drought, and the destruction of its worthless superstitionist inhabitants. I wish they had but one throat, and my hands were on it.
Religious Man has nothing left to offer the world except slavery. Religious Man is a beast who exists to inflict religion on others. His superstition deserves no respect by Modern Man, and anything that works against religion is good.
People need bread and want circuses. Given enough of both, not much else is required.
Revolutions happen when "bread" gets too expensive. If there is insufficient bread available, and it's the fault of the ruling class, there is no logical reason not to slaughter them and take their bread. The last time this happened in China was very recently, in 1948.
Smart rulers understand this.
"10 years' worth of digital photos for two people (the other doesn't have a camera) = about 10GB."
Depends on what sort of photos you take. Da spouse has over 100GB of painted bunting photos alone (RAW images mostly).
A fine idea, but the US is so desperately religious that not whacking them isn't just a matter of tolerance, it's a matter of tacit agreement by some more reticent fag-hating religionists.
"There's logic and valid arguments on both sides"
Wrong. There are merely assertions based on faith from religionists.
I defy you to pose a valid argument for religion.
"Honestly, I think the arguments for the existence of God are more compelling than the opposite,"
Of course you do, out of faith, not logic. Your faith dictates your life and replaces reason instead of being derived from it. I mention this not to argue you out of your delusion, but to point out its absurdity to spectators.
NO!
The WBC effectively represent unvarnished, raw religion without the usual marketing hype, as do the Taliban.
They have helped promote everything they oppose! Good stuff. They begat the Patriot Guard to block their picketing at G.I. funerals, and motivated creative counter-protests in many places. I am grateful to such perfect superstitionists for their work.
"That's exactly the crappy attitude I run up against. A big hearty "Fuck you!" to those who actually believe that shit."
That doesn't exclude it being accurate. The only reason to go cash-only and not use disposable credit cards is paranoia. The Beast still records your transactions. :)
BTW if you really believe that shit, man up and die fighting instead of playing games (I has no Mark, so I be gwine up to Hebbin'!). No respectable Imaginary Friend condones such mewling weakness.
"It's also not fair to just say "rednecks and freaks".
It's past unfair and well into "stupid". Those of us who drive long distance often use CB to keep track of road conditions. Just lurking is usually enough. The CB craze is mostly over, (praise be to Allah!) so there are fewer dumbfucks polluting the airwaves.
Buy a pay-as-you-go credit card and use that. Postage is high enough you'll likely save money.
After investing about the SAME TIME AND EFFORT, I find Linux as easy to use (and MUCH easier to install (though most Windows users don't install their own OS) than Windows.
Don't discount the shitload of time (even for technically inclined people who think it's fun) it takes to be comfortable with a new OS starting from scratch.
"They can't invest time in learning something new because they are too busy removing crap."
Not very many of them remove it, they just shitcan their expendable computing appliance when it bogs down too much. More free stuff for me. :)
This is where a national broadband investment would pay off. When we can get rid of mail for communication, that will slash the amount of time and energy involved in making and transporting dead trees.
OT:
Those HDDRs are pretty decent worklights. The body is made of aluminum (not some zinc-ish smegalloy), as we found out when we TIG welded a cracked one.