Chick-fil-A does, yes. There official stance is that they welcome anyone to eat at their restaurants, of course, which is the right position. However, they donate buttloads* of money and resources to anti-gay entities.
I'm only replying to this as a "public service announcement". Yes, yes, yes, you absolutely can get AIDS an other serious STDs by oral sex. You would have been correct to say "lower chance than anal sex", but not 0%.
You have a very low chance to not cause pregnancy with a condom, but not 0% chance. You have a lower chance than anal sex to get AIDS and other STDs with oral sex, but by no means 0% chance.
Yeah... I've always wondered what an election would be with a 90% turnout.
> 2. Gay rights isn't strictly divided on party lines.
Nothing is "strictly" divided on party lines. However, gay rights wasn't a good option to make that statement with - it is extremely divided between party lines! Something like 2/3rds on one party and 1/3rd on the other party!
> 3. Of those who do care about gay rights, and are opposed, what percent are so opposed that it would play into considerations of which company to work for?
Not a majority... but you'd be surprised. Given a choice between two almost equal companies, I know lots of people would choose the company more in line with their beliefs.
I am a gay man who wants to get married and have children.
On one hand: what's the reason two guys want to be recognized as a "marriage"? Not children, as they can't have them, and they're just as capable of raising a kid one of them had with a third party as mere friends as a couple -- it can never be "their" kid, at most of one of them. The uncomfortable truth is that they're after lowered taxes and certain other benefits meant to encourage having kids. A solo person deserves such benefits more than them.
1. Yes, I am after lowered taxes and certain other benefits meant to encourage having kids. Why do you say a solo person deserves such benefits more than me?
2. Such a truth (actually, a fact among many) isn't uncomfortable to me at all. Now, mind you, there's much more to it than such benefits. The rest of your comment is getting towards that goal - that the government (specifically, the vote of 50% + 1 of a population) shouldn't have the ability to promote single mothers raising children, married couples without children or that cannot have children, divorced couples married with children from previous marriages, some sects of Christianity, etc., over other beliefs/people - such others like homosexuals with children or Christian sects who believe God loves everyone.
3. One of the most devastating problems we gays have in this country have to do with problems of life and death at the hospital, family, inheritance, et al. See http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/washington-adventist-denied-same-sex-visitation-hospital-apologizes/2012/01/19/gIQAvngQCQ_story.html?tid=pm_national_pop I really do believe those problems will be solved soon in most places because rational humans find stories like that abhorrent. (That link isn't the most abhorrent story by any means, it's just recent) The basic cause inherit in all these problems is that the government (50%+1) has defined what can be a family and what can't. If the government (50%+1) didn't define it, these discrimination problems would go away (at least de jure, not necessarily de facto).
4. There are a whole lot of things in the government that discriminate homosexuals over heterosexuals. I won't list them all here, as you can just google it - a quick example is the right not testify against your spouse - but when you say "paying less taxes" you're quite missing the point - there shouldn't be any discrimination at all, period.
Thus, let's go for the complement: a whole household or nothing.
You're onto the answer. However, by doing that, you're still making the mistake that the government shouldn't make - making a decision of who can or can't be involved. I hate the fact that people dismiss that interracial marriage was illegal in this country until sometime in the 1970's - that wasn't long ago, and most Americans find it so ridiculous that the government would say it's illegal for a white person and black person to get married that they dismiss it. Well, the problem was mitigated by changing the definition of marriage at that point - instead of the government removing itself from the definition in the first place.
The answer is to not let the government discriminate at all, nor to "define marriage" at all. It's not a states rights vs. federal thing at all - there shouldn't be any government (50%+1) that can make that choice. If there should be laws helping society procreate, then so be it - base it on people having children and not religious beliefs about what a marriage is, or enlightened beliefs about who can join such unions. Simply put, merit-based laws. Don't write anything about what a marriage is.
I'd always think a similar pragmatic approach would help with these god awful debates about the rich and taxes and jo
Quite an insightful statement. I've read a similar sentiment in The Economist. Of course, this way of describing it sounds quite romantic, but in fact, the US homeless guy is quite stupid for voting for lower taxes for the rich because he might win the lottery. At least to me, anyhow.
I'm not saying the world is ready for eugenics just yet, but maybe we could apply some social engineering to slightly decrease the life expectancy of the terminally stupid.
Yes, there really is a shortage of people who have the ability to become doctors.
You have no idea what people go through at med school. I do, my sister and her husband are doctors. They spend 13 years in primary education (elementary middle and high schools), 4 years in higher education (college), 4 years in med school, and 3-4 years training in the field (internships). During med school they have to study ungodly hours and during their internships they have to work ungodly hours (literally 80-100 hours a week... they work and sleep for years, some days unable to even go home to sleep, with only 10 days off a year).
It doesn't take a crooked type a person to go through this, it takes a very special and amazing type of person to go through this. And why would we want to "crank out" doctors? To have second rate care? You probably don't understand how much knowledge and comprehension a doctor has to have. Very few human beings can do it well. Maybe you're thinking of nurses and other health care professionals... as it turns out, we ARE cranking them out.
Justification for obliterating a country on the opposite side of the planet? The Constitution doesn't say anything authorizing that.
I'm certainly not arguing for war, but for this point: Just because the constitution doesn't say anything authorizing it, doesn't mean it isn't legal. The U.S. constitution is a "liberal constitution", defining things that the government can't do. It doesn't have to explicitly list everything that the government can do.
I wish people would realize that the federal budget is 99% defense, medicare/medicaid, and social security. Fuck those politicians who play on people's emotions talking about NPR and the department of education. They have no idea how to solve the problem, and are convincing people that they have solutions.
The biggest problem people have in these debates is calling "rich people" "job creators". They aren't mutually exclusive, of course, but all of the laws are based around income instead of job creation. Your previous bosses would definitely be called job creators. However, blindly basing the tax laws off of wealth is a problem because it potentially gives special status based on wealth instead of based on merit. My parents were part of the 1% (err, maybe 3% I dunno) and created no jobs in the past 15 years. Sorry for the personal anecdotal evidence, but there are many, many other wealthy citizens who aren't creating jobs.
And you are incorrect about the drop in the bucket. 99% of the budget is social security, medicare/medicaid, and defense. Removing every single thing else like the department of education and energy and NPR would only amount to 1% of the budget. So it wouldn't add up to anything more than 1%, and is (almost) pointless to waste energy arguing about it. If we are going to get out of the fiscal crisis, the solution will have to deal with one or all of the following: 1. social security, 2. medicare/medicaid, 3. defense, and 4. income (i.e. taxes).
I did not reply to whatever comment you are talking about.
Wall Street can't recover unless Main Street is buying their shit. The average wage might be sort of flat over the last 4 years, but it has doubled in the last 20.
Not trolling, seriously: why would pot smoking be a disqualifier? Alcohol isn't. Obviously not so much that you aren't in shape or healthy or have a well rounded life, but disqualifying by marijuana seems quite out dated, as if they were going off of the basis that marijuana will destroy your body.
The problem is that Firefox uses custom networking libraries instead of using the system libraries. This means it takes longer for the application to load because it has to load the custom libraries, unlike IE and Chrome which just link to the system libraries.
I just think it's a really bad idea and Google is being irresponsible and malicious with such project
Everything you were saying was reasonable except for this. They aren't being malicious, by definition of malicious - they aren't trying to do bad or make harm. I don't think they are being irresponsible until they actually put something out there at the expense of the safety of others.
Let me just say that somewhere in the future we will be hearing how Google killed some innocent people and children.
OMG, you're a prophet! just kidding, sort of. Everything and every action can possibly kill innocent people and children (I like how you threw in children in there, as if people wasn't good enough). Deciding to order soup instead of a salad can cause some chain reaction of events where someone dies. This isn't hyperbole - it's a matter of fact. The thing is, it's stupid to worry about the decision of soup or salad, the same way it's stupid to predict and worry that the actions of a company with tens of thousands of smart people working can lead to a chain reaction of events that will accidentally cause harm.
As a person who used to work at T-Mobile, and was privy to some insider information about the economic and technological aspects of the deal, I believe this is going to be a bad thing for T-Mobile and its customers. The problem T-Mobile is facing is that its parent company, Deutsche Telecom, is not investing in T-Mobile in the amount that it needs to catch up to the bigger customers. All of the 4 billion dollars that AT&T is required to pay T-Mobile is going to DT, and not likely* to be used for T-Mobile infrastructure. T-Mobile simply cannot catch up in terms of capital to compete with Verizon and AT&T.
* I can't say how much of the 4 billion dollars will or will not be, but the idea when we were discussing the deal was that 1. we didn't think we had to worry about it, and 2. if the deal did actually fail, the money went straight to DT and would not affect their investments in T-Mobile USA.
There was lots of talk about how the merger would have stifled innovation and created monopolistic problems. Well, those who said it don't understand the technological problems of the wireless utility industry. There is not enough spectrum for either AT&T or T-Mobile to compete separately while providing the best service for their customers. There is not enough capital for T-Mobile to build wireless infrastructure across the country. If there were, you may have a case about a monopoly. But there isn't, so you don't. There isn't enough spectrum for AT&T, and there isn't enough money for T-Mobile. T-Mobile isn't going to be able to provide the best customer service in the business and the coolest phones (only one of the four without iPhone) and the capital infrastructure for 4G and future wireless technologies.
Both companies, and the American consumer, has lost because of this deal's breakdown. I no longer work at T-Mobile, and I think they will continue to be a successful company, but I believe they will be drowned out by Verizon and AT&T due to their size, regardless of T-Mobile's continued nimbleness and "scrappiness".
WOW. Where do you get your information, Fox News? It's very well known that the purchasing power of the average middle class American has been stagnant for 20 years.
Google "inflation". Just because the average American earns around ~45,000 2011 U.S. dollars a year in 2011 doesn't mean that he's ~5X as rich as the person in 1971 who earned ~8,000 1971 U.S. dollars.
Just because you don't know someone who uses it in no way means it's unpopular. It just means you have a rather small cadre of people you talk to.
No it doesn't. It could mean that the poster has a rather small cadre of people he/she talks to. But not necessarily. They could have an enormous cadre of people they talk to, who all happen to use IE and Opera and Safari.
The real answer is that it's a two-party winner-takes-all system. It is mathematically improbable that a third party can simply bubble up, even if 50% would agree with it, due to the winner-takes-all arrangement.
Slashdot Mirror
Chick-fil-A does, yes. There official stance is that they welcome anyone to eat at their restaurants, of course, which is the right position. However, they donate buttloads* of money and resources to anti-gay entities.
* HA!
I'm only replying to this as a "public service announcement". Yes, yes, yes, you absolutely can get AIDS an other serious STDs by oral sex. You would have been correct to say "lower chance than anal sex", but not 0%.
You have a very low chance to not cause pregnancy with a condom, but not 0% chance. You have a lower chance than anal sex to get AIDS and other STDs with oral sex, but by no means 0% chance.
This is another indication of how much power corporations have today.
It is a shame we need big companies to take the initiative in social reform - what happened to politicians working for the people?
Can you explain the thought process behind these statements? As in, what in the summary or article caused you to come to these conclusions?
It seems like a good idea to follow good ideas to me.
> 1. Half of people are nonvoters.
Yeah... I've always wondered what an election would be with a 90% turnout.
> 2. Gay rights isn't strictly divided on party lines.
Nothing is "strictly" divided on party lines. However, gay rights wasn't a good option to make that statement with - it is extremely divided between party lines! Something like 2/3rds on one party and 1/3rd on the other party!
> 3. Of those who do care about gay rights, and are opposed, what percent are so opposed that it would play into considerations of which company to work for?
Not a majority... but you'd be surprised. Given a choice between two almost equal companies, I know lots of people would choose the company more in line with their beliefs.
I am a gay man who wants to get married and have children.
On one hand: what's the reason two guys want to be recognized as a "marriage"? Not children, as they can't have them, and they're just as capable of raising a kid one of them had with a third party as mere friends as a couple -- it can never be "their" kid, at most of one of them. The uncomfortable truth is that they're after lowered taxes and certain other benefits meant to encourage having kids. A solo person deserves such benefits more than them.
1. Yes, I am after lowered taxes and certain other benefits meant to encourage having kids. Why do you say a solo person deserves such benefits more than me?
2. Such a truth (actually, a fact among many) isn't uncomfortable to me at all. Now, mind you, there's much more to it than such benefits. The rest of your comment is getting towards that goal - that the government (specifically, the vote of 50% + 1 of a population) shouldn't have the ability to promote single mothers raising children, married couples without children or that cannot have children, divorced couples married with children from previous marriages, some sects of Christianity, etc., over other beliefs/people - such others like homosexuals with children or Christian sects who believe God loves everyone.
3. One of the most devastating problems we gays have in this country have to do with problems of life and death at the hospital, family, inheritance, et al. See http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/washington-adventist-denied-same-sex-visitation-hospital-apologizes/2012/01/19/gIQAvngQCQ_story.html?tid=pm_national_pop I really do believe those problems will be solved soon in most places because rational humans find stories like that abhorrent. (That link isn't the most abhorrent story by any means, it's just recent) The basic cause inherit in all these problems is that the government (50%+1) has defined what can be a family and what can't. If the government (50%+1) didn't define it, these discrimination problems would go away (at least de jure, not necessarily de facto).
4. There are a whole lot of things in the government that discriminate homosexuals over heterosexuals. I won't list them all here, as you can just google it - a quick example is the right not testify against your spouse - but when you say "paying less taxes" you're quite missing the point - there shouldn't be any discrimination at all, period.
Thus, let's go for the complement: a whole household or nothing.
You're onto the answer. However, by doing that, you're still making the mistake that the government shouldn't make - making a decision of who can or can't be involved. I hate the fact that people dismiss that interracial marriage was illegal in this country until sometime in the 1970's - that wasn't long ago, and most Americans find it so ridiculous that the government would say it's illegal for a white person and black person to get married that they dismiss it. Well, the problem was mitigated by changing the definition of marriage at that point - instead of the government removing itself from the definition in the first place.
The answer is to not let the government discriminate at all, nor to "define marriage" at all. It's not a states rights vs. federal thing at all - there shouldn't be any government (50%+1) that can make that choice. If there should be laws helping society procreate, then so be it - base it on people having children and not religious beliefs about what a marriage is, or enlightened beliefs about who can join such unions. Simply put, merit-based laws. Don't write anything about what a marriage is.
I'd always think a similar pragmatic approach would help with these god awful debates about the rich and taxes and jo
Quite an insightful statement. I've read a similar sentiment in The Economist. Of course, this way of describing it sounds quite romantic, but in fact, the US homeless guy is quite stupid for voting for lower taxes for the rich because he might win the lottery. At least to me, anyhow.
If someone said that the police aren't free, then most people hearing that would assume that calling 911 would cost money, which it doesn't.
I'm not saying the world is ready for eugenics just yet, but maybe we could apply some social engineering to slightly decrease the life expectancy of the terminally stupid.
Um, isn't that eugenics?
Yes, there really is a shortage of people who have the ability to become doctors.
You have no idea what people go through at med school. I do, my sister and her husband are doctors. They spend 13 years in primary education (elementary middle and high schools), 4 years in higher education (college), 4 years in med school, and 3-4 years training in the field (internships). During med school they have to study ungodly hours and during their internships they have to work ungodly hours (literally 80-100 hours a week... they work and sleep for years, some days unable to even go home to sleep, with only 10 days off a year).
It doesn't take a crooked type a person to go through this, it takes a very special and amazing type of person to go through this. And why would we want to "crank out" doctors? To have second rate care? You probably don't understand how much knowledge and comprehension a doctor has to have. Very few human beings can do it well. Maybe you're thinking of nurses and other health care professionals... as it turns out, we ARE cranking them out.
HA! :)
Justification for obliterating a country on the opposite side of the planet? The Constitution doesn't say anything authorizing that.
I'm certainly not arguing for war, but for this point: Just because the constitution doesn't say anything authorizing it, doesn't mean it isn't legal. The U.S. constitution is a "liberal constitution", defining things that the government can't do. It doesn't have to explicitly list everything that the government can do.
Get a real anti-virus app for Android like Lookout, and it won't ever happen to you.
+1.
I wish people would realize that the federal budget is 99% defense, medicare/medicaid, and social security. Fuck those politicians who play on people's emotions talking about NPR and the department of education. They have no idea how to solve the problem, and are convincing people that they have solutions.
The biggest problem people have in these debates is calling "rich people" "job creators". They aren't mutually exclusive, of course, but all of the laws are based around income instead of job creation. Your previous bosses would definitely be called job creators. However, blindly basing the tax laws off of wealth is a problem because it potentially gives special status based on wealth instead of based on merit. My parents were part of the 1% (err, maybe 3% I dunno) and created no jobs in the past 15 years. Sorry for the personal anecdotal evidence, but there are many, many other wealthy citizens who aren't creating jobs.
And you are incorrect about the drop in the bucket. 99% of the budget is social security, medicare/medicaid, and defense. Removing every single thing else like the department of education and energy and NPR would only amount to 1% of the budget. So it wouldn't add up to anything more than 1%, and is (almost) pointless to waste energy arguing about it. If we are going to get out of the fiscal crisis, the solution will have to deal with one or all of the following: 1. social security, 2. medicare/medicaid, 3. defense, and 4. income (i.e. taxes).
I did not reply to whatever comment you are talking about.
Wall Street can't recover unless Main Street is buying their shit. The average wage might be sort of flat over the last 4 years, but it has doubled in the last 20.
That was the comment I replied to.
Not trolling, seriously: why would pot smoking be a disqualifier? Alcohol isn't. Obviously not so much that you aren't in shape or healthy or have a well rounded life, but disqualifying by marijuana seems quite out dated, as if they were going off of the basis that marijuana will destroy your body.
The problem is that Firefox uses custom networking libraries instead of using the system libraries. This means it takes longer for the application to load because it has to load the custom libraries, unlike IE and Chrome which just link to the system libraries.
He said wage, not money. The only thing relevant over the last 20 years is purchasing power, or at least dollars accounting for inflation.
I just think it's a really bad idea and Google is being irresponsible and malicious with such project
Everything you were saying was reasonable except for this. They aren't being malicious, by definition of malicious - they aren't trying to do bad or make harm. I don't think they are being irresponsible until they actually put something out there at the expense of the safety of others.
Let me just say that somewhere in the future we will be hearing how Google killed some innocent people and children.
OMG, you're a prophet! just kidding, sort of. Everything and every action can possibly kill innocent people and children (I like how you threw in children in there, as if people wasn't good enough). Deciding to order soup instead of a salad can cause some chain reaction of events where someone dies. This isn't hyperbole - it's a matter of fact. The thing is, it's stupid to worry about the decision of soup or salad, the same way it's stupid to predict and worry that the actions of a company with tens of thousands of smart people working can lead to a chain reaction of events that will accidentally cause harm.
As a person who used to work at T-Mobile, and was privy to some insider information about the economic and technological aspects of the deal, I believe this is going to be a bad thing for T-Mobile and its customers. The problem T-Mobile is facing is that its parent company, Deutsche Telecom, is not investing in T-Mobile in the amount that it needs to catch up to the bigger customers. All of the 4 billion dollars that AT&T is required to pay T-Mobile is going to DT, and not likely* to be used for T-Mobile infrastructure. T-Mobile simply cannot catch up in terms of capital to compete with Verizon and AT&T.
* I can't say how much of the 4 billion dollars will or will not be, but the idea when we were discussing the deal was that 1. we didn't think we had to worry about it, and 2. if the deal did actually fail, the money went straight to DT and would not affect their investments in T-Mobile USA.
There was lots of talk about how the merger would have stifled innovation and created monopolistic problems. Well, those who said it don't understand the technological problems of the wireless utility industry. There is not enough spectrum for either AT&T or T-Mobile to compete separately while providing the best service for their customers. There is not enough capital for T-Mobile to build wireless infrastructure across the country. If there were, you may have a case about a monopoly. But there isn't, so you don't. There isn't enough spectrum for AT&T, and there isn't enough money for T-Mobile. T-Mobile isn't going to be able to provide the best customer service in the business and the coolest phones (only one of the four without iPhone) and the capital infrastructure for 4G and future wireless technologies.
Both companies, and the American consumer, has lost because of this deal's breakdown. I no longer work at T-Mobile, and I think they will continue to be a successful company, but I believe they will be drowned out by Verizon and AT&T due to their size, regardless of T-Mobile's continued nimbleness and "scrappiness".
WOW. Where do you get your information, Fox News? It's very well known that the purchasing power of the average middle class American has been stagnant for 20 years.
Google "inflation". Just because the average American earns around ~45,000 2011 U.S. dollars a year in 2011 doesn't mean that he's ~5X as rich as the person in 1971 who earned ~8,000 1971 U.S. dollars.
Just because you don't know someone who uses it in no way means it's unpopular.
It just means you have a rather small cadre of people you talk to.
No it doesn't. It could mean that the poster has a rather small cadre of people he/she talks to. But not necessarily. They could have an enormous cadre of people they talk to, who all happen to use IE and Opera and Safari.
What Dishevel said was not "batcrap crazy"... calm down, breath, and read it again.
The real answer is that it's a two-party winner-takes-all system. It is mathematically improbable that a third party can simply bubble up, even if 50% would agree with it, due to the winner-takes-all arrangement.