I just mentioned it because you specifically called out female circumcision
The only reason I singled that out is that it's a (fairly) unambiguous target. I never really thought about male circumcision either until I had children, and really thought about it, and did a little research into it. It's amazing how few people care about such a horrible thing. Probably because there are so many men who don't want to admit that they're walking around with something that doesn't function as well as it should.
Do you respect certain western cultures that practice male circumcision?
Actually, I think male circumcision is barbaric and am not afraid to label it as sexual mutilation. It should be totally outlawed, and I don't give a crap if a religion thinks it's part of their cultural heritage (e.g., Jewish religion).
It's unfortunately too late for me on the score, but my son was not circumcised.
Cultures are supposed to conflict. That's what makes them separate cultures. If you don't find another culture inferior, superior, or at least alien in some way, then you should really consider the fact that it probably isn't another culture at all.
I find Japanese culture neither inferior nor superior overall (though it is certainly alien). Exactly how does that fit your premise that all cultures are supposed to conflict? I can find something interesting, but different, without passing a judgment on it.
Thats all nice and true as long as you don't look at the flaws of your own culture, sadly enough a rather common flaw in the USA nowadays.
Jeez, people like you are irritating. Where did I say that US culture was perfect? In fact, I think I specifically named part of US culture that I don't like (i.e., Rap culture). Just because we aren't perfect doesn't mean that all cultures are morally equivalent.
Though, for the record, I do believe that mainstream US culture is the greatest culture in the world. Just an opinion, of course, though one that plenty of other people share (just look at how many people try and emigrate to here).
Other cultures are seen as inferior only because they are different, and practiced by minorities.
Some cultures are different and not inferior. Other culture are definitely inferior. I'm sorry, but the culture of violence, anti-intellectualism and mysogynism practiced by certain members of the rap community is inferior and utter crap. Should I respect certain Muslim countries when the suppress women? Should I respect certain other cultures that practice child slavery? Should I respect certain African cultures that practice female circumcision?
Otherwise, I think you're totally wrong and lack real experience of diverse people.
I live in Southern California. Believe me, I have plenty of experience with "diverse" people.
I'm not implying that freaky people can't be productive citizens or whatever. Heck, one of my best friends growing up was 9-on-a-scale-of-10 bearded geek with all the stereotypical annoying personality flaws you can name. And when I worked with him once, I said "never again", even though he was a smart guy.
My point is that there's usually a deep-seated psychological reason people need to be latch on to the Goth subculture or the drug subculture or the geek subculture or whatever.
I personally hate the taste of meat...and the odors that emanate from fast food restaurants makes me want to vomit.
It doesn't matter what you personally like or don't like, the vast majority of people like meat. Look at vegetarian web site... it's recipe after recipe of vegetarian meals that are supposed to simulate meat, and that's for people who don't WANT to like it.
Then look at children. Very, very, very few children enjoy green vegetables. If they were so good for you, wouldn't we have evolved such that children would love them?
Your points about heroin, etc, aren't relevant because those aren't subject to evolutionary pressure like food is. Food has a direct relationship to survability. If vegetables made a huge difference in how long someone lived, then it should be that people who liked vegetables a lot more than meat should be naturally selected. But they haven't been.
I actually know part of the answer -- it's because the energy density of meat is far superior to the energy density of vegetables, so we naturally gravitate toward the thing that is better able to keep us alive.
But given just how much better meat tastes than vegetables to the vast majority of people (including me, I really dislike vegetables for the most part, and looooooove meat), I predict that a lot of the nutritional bias against meat will turn out to be completely wrong in the future.
The culture of conformity and mediocrity, you mean. Me, I'll just keep an eye out for smart, thoughtful, talented people.
Exactly what makes you think that there is some correlation between being freaky and being "smart, thoughtful and talented"?
Dunno about you, but I've seen in my life a reverse correlation. People who dress and look freaky do it for a reason -- because they ARE freaky. They have so little to offer the world that they only way they can get themselves noticed is by changing themselves physically in order to prove to the world that they're "non-conformists" (never mind that they are actually conforming to a counter-culture).
Or to put it another way, the smart, thought and talented (and psychologically healthy) people don't need to do all the other BS. They 1) have enough respect for themselves that they don't have to do it, and 2) have enough respect for themselved that they keep themselves cleaned up.
and furthermore, we don't want to see any nappy hair or dreadlocks in our lily white corporate environment either !
Definitely dreadlocks are out. If you want to be a member of that culture, then fine, go do it. But don't be surprised when people treat you like a member of that culture.
If you are black, you better be as Huxtable as it can get, buddy.
Imagine that. If someone is black and they dress and behave in a civilized (i.e., "Huxtable") manner, then racism becomes a non-issue. What do you suppose that means?
It means that 90% of racism is culture, not skin color. And I have absolutely no problem with rejecting someone out on their ass based on their (or lack of) culture.
Sendmail was key to the e-mail revolution because it was how everyone got up and running with e-mail communications over the Internet.
And Sendmail also happens to be one of the absolute worst widely-deployed programs in the history computer software. Man, I despite that program. How could anyone have thought that configuration file format was a good idea? You know it's bad when you have to have a preprocessor to translate something (semi-)tolerable into its syntax.
The e-mail revolution succeeded DESPITE sendmail, not because of it, though I give it some small credit for flexibility. It was just barely adequate enough to keep people from writing a replacement (thought we have some now).
No point to this post, except to voice how much I despise sendmail.:)
The Toronto production puts less emphasis on plot, character, and music, and concentrates more on hi-tech theatrics.
I'm getting pretty disgusted with modern theatre. I remember thinking while watching the The Lion King when they came to Los Angeles, "this is all spectacle -- there's no friggin' PLOT." And dare I say it, Phantom of the Opera wasn't much better (and I saw it with Michael Crawford).
Is it too much to ask to have, oh I dunno, maybe a STORY when I go to the theatre? Shakespeare is rolling in his grave at the self-important state of the stage. It's all about the performers instead of the performance.
The US is planning to build a permanent lunar base which will support future visits to Mars.
Nothing is "permanent" that doesn't pay for itself. I'm sure everyone thought in 1969 that we were permanently on the moon, but it didn't quite work out that way, did it?
It's like Magellan. You send them off, and maybe they come back, maybe they don't,
Magellan et al were looking for PROFIT. They weren't risking their lives for the hell of it.
Must be nice to have enough power to go buy your own laws when you feel like it.
Must be nice have enough moral bankrupcty to rip off people when you feel like it.
I don't care if you don't like the word "stealing", but you're just deluding yourself if you think people don't copy music they would've otherwise paid for. And, once again it must be said, it DOESN'T MATTER what you personally do or wouldn't do ("I wouldn't have bought it anyway", leaving aside the fact that that's total bullshit), it's the aggregate effect of a LOT of people who DO download instead of buy.
The Truth is that both parties are wrong. Piraters are wrong for stealing, and the industry is wrong for encouraging people to be pirates by not selling them what they want (plain MP3s). However, the industry is by far the more moral here. It's their music. They choose the license (just as, ahem, most here would agree that a programmer should have the right to choose the GPL rather than only Public Domain). You either respect their license, or you are in the wrong.
Yeah it is. They're forcing people to give them information that is none of their fucking business in exchange for the "privilege" of NOT being charged a 75% penalty on food.
No one is "forcing" you to do jack. They're paying you for your information. If you don't want to sell them your information, then don't.
Yeah. Give us your address and phone number or we'll plug an industrial vaccuum into your wallet. Bullshit. Ripoff. Cheat.
You act like you have no choice but to shop there. You don't like it, shop somewhere else. Why get so up in arms about it? Like I said, I'm more than happy to sell them my information. It's a simple business decision.
So it's ok for the store to rip certain people off. That about right?
"Ripping people off" implies the store is doing something underhanded, which is not true. Your choices are laid out right in front of you. Here's one price. Here's another price you can have if you use the club card. Your choice.
That's like saying a store "rips certain people off" if they charge a lower price if you buy two of something.
A supermarket's margins are notoriously cut-throat. If they can come up with new revenue streams, that will create more margin for them to lower prices because of store competition (no, I'm not claiming they'll lower prices out of the goodness of their heart). If my having to ignore this gives me lower prices, I'm all for it.
Just like I'm all for those stupid "club cards". I used to hate them, until I realized that the suckers who didn't use them were subsidizing me, along with the free advertising and coupons. It's well worth it to me for them to know how many tampons my wife buys in exchange for lower prices. Same theory.
When a Palestinian suicide bomber kills civilians it's often described as terrorism, but apparantly not when the US drops bombs on a restaurant where they believe Saddam Hussein is eating
The difference is intent (why do I need to explain this? It's insane). The suicide bomber intends to kill civilians. The US intends to kill a military target. It's an unfortunate truth that sometimes civilians are killed along with a military target, but the true blame likes with the cowardly terrorists who hide among civilians for exactly that reason -- to put them in danger, so that the terrorists will be safe.
The US has done more to protect civilians in a time of war in the current conflict than any civilization in history. Take a look at how many civizilians are killed in other wars. But this war MUST BE WON. The world cannot continue to be held hostage by these people.
It's also true that these "civilians" that are killed aren't all that innocent. The people around terrorists know who they are. That they don't turn them in makes them as guilty as the people they harbor.
What saddens me the most, is that the Media plays a great part in forming this image, and the general public do not take an extra step to verify or validate such image. The stereotype of Arabs go beyond the image of being Radicals, it starts by the believe that we are "totally" different, out-of-this world. Once people buy this, then any other mis-information will just easily get in the minds of ordinary people.
I find this rather insulting, and rather telling. It saddens him the most that the media is forming the image? How about the freaking TERRORISTS that form the image? And it doesn't "sadden him the most" that there is so much arab radicalism that causes all arabs to be painted with the same brush?
(Almost) everyone knows that not every arab supports the terrorists. But to deny that there are grains of truth at the core of the portrayal of Arabs is to deny reality. Arab radicalism is a huge problem right now, and it's going to take Arabs like him to stand up and tell their own people to shut up, sit down, and stop killing people.
Gah! It angers me to see things like this, like it's some western conspiracy to paint Arabs in a bad light.
At my peak, I probably had 1,500 books when I was about 25. As I scanned them one day, it hit me how ridiculous it was -- the vast majority of them I would never read again. The Truth was that it mostly vanity that I kept them. I thought it was oh-so-impressive that I had this big row of bookshelves with books.
My advice is to take 90% of them (as we know, 90% of everything is crap) and donate them to your school library where they might actually get used instead of just sitting on your shelves gathering dust.
But, you'd have give up the vanity of being able to say you have 3,500 books.:) So I doubt that most people will take this advice.
So you think that because an open source project has received some US government funding that the high profile members of such projects should voluntarily gag themselves in order to please their sugardaddy?
You do realize that "the government" is not some monolithic inhuman machine, right? If I'm giving money to someone who mouths off about how I'm "sickening" him, I'm probably going to get tired of it. It's not about "gagging" themselves, it's about wanting a bit of simple courtesy. Not to mention holding a hypocrite responsible. If he doesn't the like the source of the money, then he shouldn't accept it.
If de Raadt's anti-war comments were indeed the reason that the funding was pulled, shouldn't you look to blame DARPA for being amateurish/childish and not de Raadt for simple speaking his mind?
Guess what? Free speech does not mean you are free of responsibility. No one said The Rat couldn't say whatever the hell he wanted. But that doesn't mean that the *people* he's insulting have to work with the a-hole.
It's probably not the right time to rant about this, but... could people *please* take care to actually spell names correctly?
Speaking as someone whose name is almost NEVER spelled correctly, and (almost) never pronounced correctly (I had exactly one person do it on that historic day), I've learned that it just doesn't matter.
And anyway, this is an English web site. We use the English alphabet. The spelling was correct as an anglicized version. Is a Chinese person supposed to be offended when we don't use Chinese characters for their name on this web site? Get over it.
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The only reason I singled that out is that it's a (fairly) unambiguous target. I never really thought about male circumcision either until I had children, and really thought about it, and did a little research into it. It's amazing how few people care about such a horrible thing. Probably because there are so many men who don't want to admit that they're walking around with something that doesn't function as well as it should.
Actually, I think male circumcision is barbaric and am not afraid to label it as sexual mutilation. It should be totally outlawed, and I don't give a crap if a religion thinks it's part of their cultural heritage (e.g., Jewish religion).
It's unfortunately too late for me on the score, but my son was not circumcised.
I find Japanese culture neither inferior nor superior overall (though it is certainly alien). Exactly how does that fit your premise that all cultures are supposed to conflict? I can find something interesting, but different, without passing a judgment on it.
Jeez, people like you are irritating. Where did I say that US culture was perfect? In fact, I think I specifically named part of US culture that I don't like (i.e., Rap culture). Just because we aren't perfect doesn't mean that all cultures are morally equivalent.
Though, for the record, I do believe that mainstream US culture is the greatest culture in the world. Just an opinion, of course, though one that plenty of other people share (just look at how many people try and emigrate to here).
Some cultures are different and not inferior. Other culture are definitely inferior. I'm sorry, but the culture of violence, anti-intellectualism and mysogynism practiced by certain members of the rap community is inferior and utter crap. Should I respect certain Muslim countries when the suppress women? Should I respect certain other cultures that practice child slavery? Should I respect certain African cultures that practice female circumcision?
Not all cultures are morally equivalent.
I live in Southern California. Believe me, I have plenty of experience with "diverse" people.
I'm not implying that freaky people can't be productive citizens or whatever. Heck, one of my best friends growing up was 9-on-a-scale-of-10 bearded geek with all the stereotypical annoying personality flaws you can name. And when I worked with him once, I said "never again", even though he was a smart guy.
My point is that there's usually a deep-seated psychological reason people need to be latch on to the Goth subculture or the drug subculture or the geek subculture or whatever.
It doesn't matter what you personally like or don't like, the vast majority of people like meat. Look at vegetarian web site... it's recipe after recipe of vegetarian meals that are supposed to simulate meat, and that's for people who don't WANT to like it.
Then look at children. Very, very, very few children enjoy green vegetables. If they were so good for you, wouldn't we have evolved such that children would love them?
Your points about heroin, etc, aren't relevant because those aren't subject to evolutionary pressure like food is. Food has a direct relationship to survability. If vegetables made a huge difference in how long someone lived, then it should be that people who liked vegetables a lot more than meat should be naturally selected. But they haven't been.
I actually know part of the answer -- it's because the energy density of meat is far superior to the energy density of vegetables, so we naturally gravitate toward the thing that is better able to keep us alive.
But given just how much better meat tastes than vegetables to the vast majority of people (including me, I really dislike vegetables for the most part, and looooooove meat), I predict that a lot of the nutritional bias against meat will turn out to be completely wrong in the future.
Exactly what makes you think that there is some correlation between being freaky and being "smart, thoughtful and talented"?
Dunno about you, but I've seen in my life a reverse correlation. People who dress and look freaky do it for a reason -- because they ARE freaky. They have so little to offer the world that they only way they can get themselves noticed is by changing themselves physically in order to prove to the world that they're "non-conformists" (never mind that they are actually conforming to a counter-culture).
Or to put it another way, the smart, thought and talented (and psychologically healthy) people don't need to do all the other BS. They 1) have enough respect for themselves that they don't have to do it, and 2) have enough respect for themselved that they keep themselves cleaned up.
Definitely dreadlocks are out. If you want to be a member of that culture, then fine, go do it. But don't be surprised when people treat you like a member of that culture.
If you are black, you better be as Huxtable as it can get, buddy.
Imagine that. If someone is black and they dress and behave in a civilized (i.e., "Huxtable") manner, then racism becomes a non-issue. What do you suppose that means?
It means that 90% of racism is culture, not skin color. And I have absolutely no problem with rejecting someone out on their ass based on their (or lack of) culture.
Just based on this post, there's no way you could do the suit's job in a million years.
And Sendmail also happens to be one of the absolute worst widely-deployed programs in the history computer software. Man, I despite that program. How could anyone have thought that configuration file format was a good idea? You know it's bad when you have to have a preprocessor to translate something (semi-)tolerable into its syntax.
The e-mail revolution succeeded DESPITE sendmail, not because of it, though I give it some small credit for flexibility. It was just barely adequate enough to keep people from writing a replacement (thought we have some now).
No point to this post, except to voice how much I despise sendmail. :)
I'm getting pretty disgusted with modern theatre. I remember thinking while watching the The Lion King when they came to Los Angeles, "this is all spectacle -- there's no friggin' PLOT." And dare I say it, Phantom of the Opera wasn't much better (and I saw it with Michael Crawford).
Is it too much to ask to have, oh I dunno, maybe a STORY when I go to the theatre? Shakespeare is rolling in his grave at the self-important state of the stage. It's all about the performers instead of the performance.
Nothing is "permanent" that doesn't pay for itself. I'm sure everyone thought in 1969 that we were permanently on the moon, but it didn't quite work out that way, did it?
It's like Magellan. You send them off, and maybe they come back, maybe they don't,
Magellan et al were looking for PROFIT. They weren't risking their lives for the hell of it.
I've said what I care to say on this issue (as I've said so many times before), but I couldn't let this go, even though it's off topic.
Some day soon (30 years or less), we will have the ability to duplicate material goods, down to the molecule.
That's never going to happen. Nanotech of that nature is basically fantasy, just like magic wands.
Must be nice have enough moral bankrupcty to rip off people when you feel like it.
I don't care if you don't like the word "stealing", but you're just deluding yourself if you think people don't copy music they would've otherwise paid for. And, once again it must be said, it DOESN'T MATTER what you personally do or wouldn't do ("I wouldn't have bought it anyway", leaving aside the fact that that's total bullshit), it's the aggregate effect of a LOT of people who DO download instead of buy.
The Truth is that both parties are wrong. Piraters are wrong for stealing, and the industry is wrong for encouraging people to be pirates by not selling them what they want (plain MP3s). However, the industry is by far the more moral here. It's their music. They choose the license (just as, ahem, most here would agree that a programmer should have the right to choose the GPL rather than only Public Domain). You either respect their license, or you are in the wrong.
You mean D2Fusion delivered the cash to Fleischmann to be a figurehead in the company.
No one is "forcing" you to do jack. They're paying you for your information. If you don't want to sell them your information, then don't.
Yeah. Give us your address and phone number or we'll plug an industrial vaccuum into your wallet. Bullshit. Ripoff. Cheat.
You act like you have no choice but to shop there. You don't like it, shop somewhere else. Why get so up in arms about it? Like I said, I'm more than happy to sell them my information. It's a simple business decision.
"Ripping people off" implies the store is doing something underhanded, which is not true. Your choices are laid out right in front of you. Here's one price. Here's another price you can have if you use the club card. Your choice.
That's like saying a store "rips certain people off" if they charge a lower price if you buy two of something.
Just like I'm all for those stupid "club cards". I used to hate them, until I realized that the suckers who didn't use them were subsidizing me, along with the free advertising and coupons. It's well worth it to me for them to know how many tampons my wife buys in exchange for lower prices. Same theory.
The difference is intent (why do I need to explain this? It's insane). The suicide bomber intends to kill civilians. The US intends to kill a military target. It's an unfortunate truth that sometimes civilians are killed along with a military target, but the true blame likes with the cowardly terrorists who hide among civilians for exactly that reason -- to put them in danger, so that the terrorists will be safe.
The US has done more to protect civilians in a time of war in the current conflict than any civilization in history. Take a look at how many civizilians are killed in other wars. But this war MUST BE WON. The world cannot continue to be held hostage by these people.
It's also true that these "civilians" that are killed aren't all that innocent. The people around terrorists know who they are. That they don't turn them in makes them as guilty as the people they harbor.
This is such an idiotic characterization of what I wrote that it's simply laughable.
I find this rather insulting, and rather telling. It saddens him the most that the media is forming the image? How about the freaking TERRORISTS that form the image? And it doesn't "sadden him the most" that there is so much arab radicalism that causes all arabs to be painted with the same brush?
(Almost) everyone knows that not every arab supports the terrorists. But to deny that there are grains of truth at the core of the portrayal of Arabs is to deny reality. Arab radicalism is a huge problem right now, and it's going to take Arabs like him to stand up and tell their own people to shut up, sit down, and stop killing people.
Gah! It angers me to see things like this, like it's some western conspiracy to paint Arabs in a bad light.
My advice is to take 90% of them (as we know, 90% of everything is crap) and donate them to your school library where they might actually get used instead of just sitting on your shelves gathering dust.
But, you'd have give up the vanity of being able to say you have 3,500 books. :) So I doubt that most people will take this advice.
So you think that because an open source project has received some US government funding that the high profile members of such projects should voluntarily gag themselves in order to please their sugardaddy?
You do realize that "the government" is not some monolithic inhuman machine, right? If I'm giving money to someone who mouths off about how I'm "sickening" him, I'm probably going to get tired of it. It's not about "gagging" themselves, it's about wanting a bit of simple courtesy. Not to mention holding a hypocrite responsible. If he doesn't the like the source of the money, then he shouldn't accept it. If de Raadt's anti-war comments were indeed the reason that the funding was pulled, shouldn't you look to blame DARPA for being amateurish/childish and not de Raadt for simple speaking his mind?
Guess what? Free speech does not mean you are free of responsibility. No one said The Rat couldn't say whatever the hell he wanted. But that doesn't mean that the *people* he's insulting have to work with the a-hole.
Speaking as someone whose name is almost NEVER spelled correctly, and (almost) never pronounced correctly (I had exactly one person do it on that historic day), I've learned that it just doesn't matter.
And anyway, this is an English web site. We use the English alphabet. The spelling was correct as an anglicized version. Is a Chinese person supposed to be offended when we don't use Chinese characters for their name on this web site? Get over it.