Agreed; I am not about to tell anyone that they are "wrong" for burying their dead. If their choice is burial, that is their choice. I am just saying that as a whole, I think that better solutions exist and that burial has always seemed a bit absurd to me. But maybe that's just me.
While I agree with the absurdities of burials, it has been working for tens of thousands of years with little trouble
No it hasn't, really -- not in the way we are doing it now. For most of those tens of thousands of years (maybe with the exception of Egyptian pharaohs and selected others), the remains were not embalmed -- and even if they were embalmed, certainly not with the level of technology now used. And the caskets were degradable, not the fancy things we use today that are designed to last and last.
Neither is the universe if we want to get completely nihilistic about it.
That is a poor counterargument, as methods such as cremation are (while not infinite, I suppose), still far more sustainable than burial.
Filling up cemeteries isn't a problem, and when it is, we can easily fix it with a few backhoes (which you would need anyway if you wanted to build there) and a few changed laws. You really think Cemeteries are what's holding back 'REAL progress'? And all this time it was not being able to develop on that land that was holding back 'REAL progress'.
I'm not even talking about development on that land necessarily. It's just that using that land for burial seems a poor use of it. Even keeping that land as natural open space would be a better use in my opinion.
You know, what's funny is that if our ancestors didn't take some efforts to bury/preserve their dead, we would know a great deal less about them.
Yeah, but that was then -- when written and digital methods of information preservation were not available or used -- and this is now, when there are numerous methods of knowing a great deal about anyone, without having to have their remains in a box in the ground.
The deceased person is not there anyway. That person can be honored anywhere. It doesn't have to be at the site where his/her Earthly body is now in a box in the ground.
Now maybe if the civilized human race were finally able to get past the rather strange tradition of putting their loved ones' preserved physical remains into (usually rather expensive) boxes in the ground, in order to last as long as possible, filling up acres and acres of land with these, increasing on a daily basis with every new death -- then that might be some REAL progress. At some point this whole "burying" thing needs to go. It is not an infinitely sustainable model to follow.
Or could it be you're more concerned that the US military and its political masters have been made to look bad?
Nah. Not concerned about that at all.
That would explain your outrage
Outrage? No outrage here. Like I said in a previous post, I really wish we'd just get the hell out of there and quit with the "nation building" attempt...
Look, if these accusations are true, there's no problem with you posting where the civilians were outed.
Actually, you need to tell that to the news agencies -- including the New York Times, who initially broke the story. The reports from all sources that I have seen (and I looked up quite a few) have all been only that such information exists in the leaked documents, presumably scattered among the thousands of pages of information, and that the Taliban has been sifting through these in order to plan revenge attacks. Thus the "comprehensive list" that I referred to is one that the Taliban (and/or other enemies) are compiling, not some handy-dandy list to which someone can simply point.
That stated reason that the NYT and other news agencies are not even referencing a single name in particular or location in any document as to where this information can be found is to avoid placing said persons in jeopardy -- that is, more jeopardy than they are already in anyway. The NYT article -- and admittedly the NYT is not the most trusted, unbiased news source in the world, but assuming that their reporting is accurate -- put it this way: "The founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, has said that the organization withheld 15,000 of the approximately 92,000 documents in the archive that was released on Sunday to remove the names of informants in what he called a “harm minimization” process. But the 75,000 documents WikiLeaks put online provide information about possible informants, like their villages and in some cases their fathers’ names."
Now, you can interpret all of these reports as simply propaganda designed to turn the public against Wikileaks. Or you can accept the reports that in those 75,000 documents, there is information that the enemy can use against both troops and civilians. Having not sifted through all 75,000 documents myself, but knowing the demeanor and past track record of Wikileaks, I tend to think that these reports are probably accurate and that these documents do contain information that could put both troops and civilian informants (and their families/villages) in danger.
That said, I wish we'd just get the hell out of there.
"It's not just our troops that are put in jeopardy by this leaking. It's U.K. troops, it's German troops, it's Australian troops—all of the NATO troops and foreign forces working together in Afghanistan."
It's not limited to just troops. I'm sure that the Taliban greatly appreciated suddenly having a comprehensive list of the names of hundreds of Afghan civilian informants.
I never understood the "information (data) wants to be free" mantra. Information is just information; data is just data. It doesn't know or want anything. It just is. Some PEOPLE want data to be free, for them. But only certain data. Mostly of the entertaining variety.
...that answering alarming questions in these seemingly endless "which is the most stressful thing that can happen to you?" surveys, raises the participants' stress levels.
So, the whole of my personality can be summed up in four attributes: whether I talk a lot, how well I cope with changes, how impulsive I am and how humble I am? I call BS. Where's the "insensitive clod" attribute?
In all seriousness, while certain propensities may remain throughout life to varying degrees, people change. That's common sense and all that really needs to be said to debunk this so-called study.
Right, that was essentially my point in my previous post. Turning off cancer suppressors in order to facilitate regeneration in an organism with a long lifespan, such as a human being, and whose limbs I assume would be more complex to regrow than a newt's, seems like a bad tradeoff. I'd rather have a healthy body that's missing an arm than a cancer-prone or cancer-ridden body that has both limbs. But I guess that's just me...
If I had my way, Turbo Tax would not exist. And neither would the IRS. I know that a flat tax or fair tax or even a significantly simplified tax code is a pipe dream at this point, but even though I've used Turbo Tax in the past, I hated every frustrating/confusing/boring minute of it, so I tend to have little sympathy for companies like Intuit in situations like this.
As if? Dude, Hoth IS completely covered in snow and Tattooine WAS presented as nothing else but a desert plant. Endor was completely forest. Dagobah was completely swamp, for all we saw. No other environments were shown. That was my point. It would pretty much be the equivalent of, say, an alien race's entire knowledge of the planet Earth be limited to the movie "Waterworld." I'd like sci-fi planets to be more varied in their on-screen (or even in-written-novel) depictions than just being only "desert" or "swamp" or whatever.
Except that it's not JUST ocean only (evidenced by the fact that I'm not breathing through gills). Earth has the environments of all of those other fictitious planets/moons I mentioned combined, plus a lot more. But yeah, I think our planet would have been more accurately named "Sea." Although referring to a human as a "sealing" (ceiling?) would be a little confusing...
And in Star Wars, even the topology of the planets/moons is singular. Hoth, the snow planet. Dagobah, the swamp world. Tattooine, the desert planet. Endor, the forest moon. Etc.
The thing about these sci-fi languages that I've always thought is silly is that on Earth we have, what, about 6,000 languages? But sci-fi worlds tend to have only one language for the whole planet. Or does that mean that we silly monkey-men have not yet evolved and progressed to the point where we are all one cohesive yellowish, black- brownish,reddish whitish bald race with purple goo on our heads and speak a singular guttural language?
Although I have to say, if this is a trend for Australia, watching "Crocodile Dundee" with Klingon voiceovers would be awesome!
Slashdot Mirror
Agreed; I am not about to tell anyone that they are "wrong" for burying their dead. If their choice is burial, that is their choice. I am just saying that as a whole, I think that better solutions exist and that burial has always seemed a bit absurd to me. But maybe that's just me.
While I agree with the absurdities of burials, it has been working for tens of thousands of years with little trouble
No it hasn't, really -- not in the way we are doing it now. For most of those tens of thousands of years (maybe with the exception of Egyptian pharaohs and selected others), the remains were not embalmed -- and even if they were embalmed, certainly not with the level of technology now used. And the caskets were degradable, not the fancy things we use today that are designed to last and last.
Neither is the universe if we want to get completely nihilistic about it.
That is a poor counterargument, as methods such as cremation are (while not infinite, I suppose), still far more sustainable than burial.
Filling up cemeteries isn't a problem, and when it is, we can easily fix it with a few backhoes (which you would need anyway if you wanted to build there) and a few changed laws.
You really think Cemeteries are what's holding back 'REAL progress'? And all this time it was not being able to develop on that land that was holding back 'REAL progress'.
I'm not even talking about development on that land necessarily. It's just that using that land for burial seems a poor use of it. Even keeping that land as natural open space would be a better use in my opinion.
You know, what's funny is that if our ancestors didn't take some efforts to bury/preserve their dead, we would know a great deal less about them.
Yeah, but that was then -- when written and digital methods of information preservation were not available or used -- and this is now, when there are numerous methods of knowing a great deal about anyone, without having to have their remains in a box in the ground.
The deceased person is not there anyway. That person can be honored anywhere. It doesn't have to be at the site where his/her Earthly body is now in a box in the ground.
Now maybe if the civilized human race were finally able to get past the rather strange tradition of putting their loved ones' preserved physical remains into (usually rather expensive) boxes in the ground, in order to last as long as possible, filling up acres and acres of land with these, increasing on a daily basis with every new death -- then that might be some REAL progress. At some point this whole "burying" thing needs to go. It is not an infinitely sustainable model to follow.
Those retard monkey fish squirrels were not so retarded after all?
Now that's wishful thinking! No longer Duke Nukem Forever, but now Duke Of The Ages? Do Over 'Til Abandoned?
Or could it be you're more concerned that the US military and its political masters have been made to look bad?
Nah. Not concerned about that at all.
That would explain your outrage
Outrage? No outrage here. Like I said in a previous post, I really wish we'd just get the hell out of there and quit with the "nation building" attempt...
I would agree with the statement that the reports could now be more specific, as the cat is out of the bag anyway.
Look, if these accusations are true, there's no problem with you posting where the civilians were outed.
Actually, you need to tell that to the news agencies -- including the New York Times, who initially broke the story. The reports from all sources that I have seen (and I looked up quite a few) have all been only that such information exists in the leaked documents, presumably scattered among the thousands of pages of information, and that the Taliban has been sifting through these in order to plan revenge attacks. Thus the "comprehensive list" that I referred to is one that the Taliban (and/or other enemies) are compiling, not some handy-dandy list to which someone can simply point.
That stated reason that the NYT and other news agencies are not even referencing a single name in particular or location in any document as to where this information can be found is to avoid placing said persons in jeopardy -- that is, more jeopardy than they are already in anyway. The NYT article -- and admittedly the NYT is not the most trusted, unbiased news source in the world, but assuming that their reporting is accurate -- put it this way: "The founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, has said that the organization withheld 15,000 of the approximately 92,000 documents in the archive that was released on Sunday to remove the names of informants in what he called a “harm minimization” process. But the 75,000 documents WikiLeaks put online provide information about possible informants, like their villages and in some cases their fathers’ names."
Now, you can interpret all of these reports as simply propaganda designed to turn the public against Wikileaks. Or you can accept the reports that in those 75,000 documents, there is information that the enemy can use against both troops and civilians. Having not sifted through all 75,000 documents myself, but knowing the demeanor and past track record of Wikileaks, I tend to think that these reports are probably accurate and that these documents do contain information that could put both troops and civilian informants (and their families/villages) in danger.
That said, I wish we'd just get the hell out of there.
It's not limited to just troops. I'm sure that the Taliban greatly appreciated suddenly having a comprehensive list of the names of hundreds of Afghan civilian informants.
I never understood the "information (data) wants to be free" mantra. Information is just information; data is just data. It doesn't know or want anything. It just is. Some PEOPLE want data to be free, for them. But only certain data. Mostly of the entertaining variety.
...that answering alarming questions in these seemingly endless "which is the most stressful thing that can happen to you?" surveys, raises the participants' stress levels.
I eat a spinach salad topped with olive oil (oyl) almost every night of the week. So how come my forearms don't look like bowling pins?
In all seriousness, while certain propensities may remain throughout life to varying degrees, people change. That's common sense and all that really needs to be said to debunk this so-called study.
...be sure to turn on your AC's "internal circulation" feature.
Right, that was essentially my point in my previous post. Turning off cancer suppressors in order to facilitate regeneration in an organism with a long lifespan, such as a human being, and whose limbs I assume would be more complex to regrow than a newt's, seems like a bad tradeoff. I'd rather have a healthy body that's missing an arm than a cancer-prone or cancer-ridden body that has both limbs. But I guess that's just me...
Cool, my arm is slowly growing back! Bummer, I have cancer and only 90 days to live!
If I had my way, Turbo Tax would not exist. And neither would the IRS. I know that a flat tax or fair tax or even a significantly simplified tax code is a pipe dream at this point, but even though I've used Turbo Tax in the past, I hated every frustrating/confusing/boring minute of it, so I tend to have little sympathy for companies like Intuit in situations like this.
Er, "plant" -- "planet"
As if? Dude, Hoth IS completely covered in snow and Tattooine WAS presented as nothing else but a desert plant. Endor was completely forest. Dagobah was completely swamp, for all we saw. No other environments were shown. That was my point. It would pretty much be the equivalent of, say, an alien race's entire knowledge of the planet Earth be limited to the movie "Waterworld." I'd like sci-fi planets to be more varied in their on-screen (or even in-written-novel) depictions than just being only "desert" or "swamp" or whatever.
My baby loves me for my pink Cadillac. For my pink Hyundai Matrix, not so much.
Except that it's not JUST ocean only (evidenced by the fact that I'm not breathing through gills). Earth has the environments of all of those other fictitious planets/moons I mentioned combined, plus a lot more. But yeah, I think our planet would have been more accurately named "Sea." Although referring to a human as a "sealing" (ceiling?) would be a little confusing...
And in Star Wars, even the topology of the planets/moons is singular. Hoth, the snow planet. Dagobah, the swamp world. Tattooine, the desert planet. Endor, the forest moon. Etc.
The thing about these sci-fi languages that I've always thought is silly is that on Earth we have, what, about 6,000 languages? But sci-fi worlds tend to have only one language for the whole planet. Or does that mean that we silly monkey-men have not yet evolved and progressed to the point where we are all one cohesive yellowish, black- brownish,reddish whitish bald race with purple goo on our heads and speak a singular guttural language? Although I have to say, if this is a trend for Australia, watching "Crocodile Dundee" with Klingon voiceovers would be awesome!
I won't be impressed until I can make a flaming pigeon come out of it.