OK, my dear AC. Do you have the right to go to Brooklyn, find a kosher bakery run by Orthodox Jews, and demand that they create "holy cross" themed and decorated rolls for an Easter party? If they decline and ask you to contact a different bakery, should you have the right to sue them and ultimately bankrupt them and drive them out of business if they continue to follow their religious scruples?
To be consistent, you'll have to agree that the above is just as legit as the current Gay lobby's bullying. So my next question -- why do you hate Jewish people?
Nonsense. You are spreading misinformation about the law and about the reason for the law.
Nobody should be able to force an artisan out of business because they refuse to accept commissioning for a creative work, where the work itself is specified so as to violate the artists or artisan's religious convictions. Anyone who is fairminded can see the difference between creative works (like cake design and photography) versus general services like food at the deli or buying a ticket at the movie theater.
Unfortunately, the gay lobby is not always fairminded. They want to bankrupt and destroy small business owners who refuse to be bullied.
Good grief, so many people are piling on and hating Indiana for this, but they are mistaken. This is not about saying "we don't serve your kind here". This is about establishing guidelines for government to avoid reflexively punishing religious individuals over their scruples of conscience.
If you want to talk about brainless and/or dishonest liberal media, today would be the day, because the NYT, CNN, and any number of other outlets are acting like this is something new and unnecessary that Indiana is doing, when in fact the opposite is true. There has been a very similar federal law on the books since Chuck Schumer proposed it and then-President Bill Clinton signed it into law. The only reason Indiana enacted a state law equivalent is that courts have determined that the federal law doesn't protect religious individuals from non-compliance with certain local laws.
This is not to allow the local deli to refuse to serve gays, and in fact will not allow them to do so. This is to prevent bullies and jerks from picking on people who happen to be small business owners over their religion.
Example: if a Christian goes to a kosher bakery and asks for "holy cross" themed rolls for an Easter party, and the proprieters kindly offer to refer them to the secular baker down the street, should the Christian sue those dirty Jews for all they've got, and attempt to bankrupt them and destroy their business over this scruple of religious conscience? No, of course not. The Christian would be a jerk in that case. So why are so many gays being jerks about the exact same kind of thing?
as a real secret any more, if there ever was. If the "secret" is based on scientific research, it's been published and is reproducible and all the relevant people already know about it.
Nope, not true. I have a friend with a Physics Ph.D. who does nuclear weapons related research at LANL. Her work is read only by fellow DoD scientists and certainly is not published in public journals.
This is actual law in many places around the world,
Which sucks, but is entirely irrelevant in the US.
OK, fair enough to some extent, I agree that people clamoring for sharia law and/or jihad isn't a real threat as long as individuals never act on their barbarous ideology (unfortunately many individuals do), and as long as Muslims don't become the majority locally, regionally, or nationally (they have in some areas here, and regionally/nationally elsewhere in the world). A pretty good litmus test for how the progression to sharia is going would be to walk through a neighborhood wearing a yarmulke and see how you are treated. That's not safe in some neighborhoods of Paris these days, although I have a vague understanding that it's politically incorrect for me to point that out. It's weird how Jew-hatred goes in and out of vogue among the self-designated intelligentsia of Western culture; currently it's "in".
and it's amazing to see liberal non-Muslims "see no evil, hear no evil" etc. when they fail to admit sharia is creeping onto their own turf.
Or it could be that "creeping onto their own turf" is utter bullshit fear mongering.
One of us is in denial about the obvious, that's for sure.
I vote for sideslash, then. Clearly your name is pejorative enough.
Aha, that is creative. I hadn't thought of it that way.
Meanwhile, you say you "may" be murdered. Well, fuck, I "may" be murdered for burning the US flag is I seek out those most likely to be inflamed and irrational and then desecrate their holy symbol.
Perhaps you're unaware that death is specified in Muslim holy texts as the correct response to desecration of the Koran, blasphemy of Mohammed or Allah, attempted apostasy or turning away from the Muslim faith, along with a laundry list of other sins. This is actual law in many places around the world, and it's amazing to see liberal non-Muslims "see no evil, hear no evil" etc. when they fail to admit sharia is creeping onto their own turf.
Nobody will kill you for burning an American flag. Maximum forcefulness of response, like on the order of a punch in the nose, I guarantee it.;)
So, what vile thing should we call you and conflate you with?
I'm going to leave that up to you -- be creative, see what you can come up with.
Your original argument was that the mere desire to ban Koran burning made them Islamists, now you've switched to talking about the Muslims who want to kill you for it. That is another conversation.
No, they're still different despite your efforts to paint them the same. The ban on Koran burning will almost never exist in isolation, but rather as part of a continual progression toward Islamic domination of the society. It's part of a larger package we really don't want, which is called "sharia". Well, at least _I_ really don't want it, don't know about you.
Are you unaware that sharia principles are not isolated, one-off notions taken by individuals, but rather are actually written down and codified in Islamic primary religious documents? Do you know what it's like to live in an Islamic country and face a modern Inquisition for being a free thinker?
Don't be so naive about Islam. I agree that there are some practitioners of a sort of modern "hippie Islam" who are cool with coexisting and diversity of thought, but I think they're in the minority. The aim of Islam in general is to take over, run things, and enforce sharia law in some form; and you're naive if you don't recognize that.
Look, if I burn a flag, I am likely to get an evil eye from a bunch of people, and possibly be punched in the nose by a veteran. All things considered I don't regard that as a huge threat, and I admit a certain fondness for these misguided patriots, even as they're punching me in the nose.
If I burn a Koran, I may be murdered by those who want to split the USA into favored adherents of Islam versus subjugated slaves of Islam (dhimmis). I am... uh... really not OK with that, and I despise and want to publicly shame people who promote that agenda. Do you see the difference now, hippie?:)
This may come as a shock to you, but this is the USA, and patriotism is OK here. If some people get a little carried away, that's not as big a deal as people who want to subject non-Muslims to sharia law. If you really don't see the difference between the two, then it appears that you will never be in danger of someone demanding you relinquish your hippie credentials.
(Side note: I agree with the SCOTUS that flag burning and other forms of expression that don't actually cause harm to others should remain legal.)
As you pointed out the "disempowered" covers Muslims in the US. And my evidence for them being disempowered (marginalized would be a better term) is the ease with which people will hear Muslim and translate it to Islamist, and then they'll start sprouting off half a dozen negative stereotypes that would be verboten if applied to most other groups.
You're really going off on a tangent here. Getting back on subject, perhaps we can agree that the most likely reason for SMBC's curious silence toward Islam is not because Zach can't find anything silly in their beliefs, but rather because conservative Muslims around the world, aka Islamists of different degrees, are likely to commit acts of violence in response to their religion being made fun of.
Also, just for the record, equating "Muslim" and "Islamist" is often a reasonably accurate approximation, particularly outside the USA but frequently here as well. There are useful litmus tests to identify an Islamist, such as: "Should it be illegal to burn a Koran?" "Should people be allowed to apostatize from Islam?" and so forth. If you only ask about affinity for Osama bin Laden you will definitely miss a lot of the scary religious nuts. Their ultimate goal is not peaceful coexistence in a pluralistic society, but rather enforcement of norms of sharia law and subjugation of non-Islamic people. Whether they are likely to be successful in their goal is irrelevant as to their classification as Islamists in that respect.
It could be caution, but it could also be the fact that poking fun at empowered groups in your own culture carries a very different context than poking fun at foreign cultures (or disempowered groups in your own culture).
So you're saying Islam is a "foreign culture" in the USA. How many Muslims do we have to have living here as citizens before it becomes one of the (many) American subcultures?
Also, your use of the term "disempowered" is hilarious. Just because Islamists in the USA can't get away with chopping off people's heads here (like they do elsewhere in the world) doesn't make them "disempowered" relative to Christianity and Judaism. Always with Islam it's the (pardon the expression) camel's nose in the tent. Islamists have no sense of humor, no tolerance for criticism, and no qualms about taking their half from the middle and screwing atheists, homosexuals, apostates, and in general, persons of other religions (inculding variants of Islam slightly different from theirs).
He is actually really careful about that. There are regular barbecues of sacred cows related to Judaism and Christianity, but never so much as a hint of poking fun at Islam or Mohammed.
Probably premature to say this, but it would be funny if Intel does to mobile processing and ARM what it did to Mac computers and RISC. For a long time the Mac-heads were constantly harping about how superior PowerPC was to anything in the Wintel world. And then suddenly everything was x86 again. It seems x86 is the technology that can't be killed.
(Spoiler alert: If you don't know this stuff, then... what are you doing on Slashdot?)
They'd better be careful how they handle this. It's supposed to be decades into the future, and thus after Deckard and Rachel are both supposed to be dead by their targeted end of life engineering as replicants. You know: "It's too bad she won't live. But then again, who does?"
Maybe he will be a different iteration of Deckard, i.e. another replicant clone or something.
Both brook no dissent, both have used the courts to silence critics, or at least to embroil them in interminable legal battles, and both seem curiously lacking of any sense of humor. One individual who prevailed against a spurious lawsuit by Muslims in Canada and has pointed out this parallel is Mark Steyn. He's currently being sued by Michael Mann in the Washington DC court system. The fireworks have been exciting thus far, at least for people who are into that sort of thing, as Steyn not only has a legally reasonable position in my opinion, but is also one of the best writers of his generation in satire and political humor. It would be unwise to bet against him.
Keep in mind that many app developers put a huge amount of time and effort into developing their apps and publishing them, and then only see a small trickle of income. They just hover at the edges of the app economy desperately trying to catch their big break, while watching the big stars like Rovio rake in huge paychecks every day. Often they have to work side jobs like waiting tables to pay the bills while they dream of becoming stars in their own right. And sadly, the statistics suggest that most of them won't ever make it big.
Contrast that to Hollywood, where... uhh, nevermind. Carry on.
you've obviously never taken any time to research and come up with an original thought, let alone research anything to substantiate the trash you repeat from far right-wing nutbags
It's OK honey. Calm down or you'll blow a gasket. Let's pick one claim and substantiate it, shall we? In my post (on which you heaped such opprobrium), I claimed that Obama previously said he would lack legal authority to change immigration law on his own as president. Here's a source that doesn't fit the category of "right-wing nutbags" that claims the same, with quotes and links:
Note that this fact checker is disagreeing with a conservative count that Obama said this 20 times, and points out that only about 15 of them are solid examples. At any rate, it's not a one-off misunderstanding or misstatement, it's a solidly documented example of the president's lack of integrity. Wouldn't you agree, O Coward Without Cognomen?
I think you somehow mistyped "I disagree with XYZ, can you provide examples to substantiate it?" It's completely understandable, keyboards can be so tricky sometimes.
So how about when a bunch of religious people flag a story on evolution as false? Sounds like this semi-curating of stories will turn more on Facebook demographics than on objective facts.
Slashdot Mirror
I hope you clean up that sarcasm you dripped all over the floor. ;)
OK, my dear AC. Do you have the right to go to Brooklyn, find a kosher bakery run by Orthodox Jews, and demand that they create "holy cross" themed and decorated rolls for an Easter party? If they decline and ask you to contact a different bakery, should you have the right to sue them and ultimately bankrupt them and drive them out of business if they continue to follow their religious scruples?
To be consistent, you'll have to agree that the above is just as legit as the current Gay lobby's bullying. So my next question -- why do you hate Jewish people?
Nonsense. You are spreading misinformation about the law and about the reason for the law.
Nobody should be able to force an artisan out of business because they refuse to accept commissioning for a creative work, where the work itself is specified so as to violate the artists or artisan's religious convictions. Anyone who is fairminded can see the difference between creative works (like cake design and photography) versus general services like food at the deli or buying a ticket at the movie theater.
Unfortunately, the gay lobby is not always fairminded. They want to bankrupt and destroy small business owners who refuse to be bullied.
Good grief, so many people are piling on and hating Indiana for this, but they are mistaken. This is not about saying "we don't serve your kind here". This is about establishing guidelines for government to avoid reflexively punishing religious individuals over their scruples of conscience.
If you want to talk about brainless and/or dishonest liberal media, today would be the day, because the NYT, CNN, and any number of other outlets are acting like this is something new and unnecessary that Indiana is doing, when in fact the opposite is true. There has been a very similar federal law on the books since Chuck Schumer proposed it and then-President Bill Clinton signed it into law. The only reason Indiana enacted a state law equivalent is that courts have determined that the federal law doesn't protect religious individuals from non-compliance with certain local laws.
This is not to allow the local deli to refuse to serve gays, and in fact will not allow them to do so. This is to prevent bullies and jerks from picking on people who happen to be small business owners over their religion.
Example: if a Christian goes to a kosher bakery and asks for "holy cross" themed rolls for an Easter party, and the proprieters kindly offer to refer them to the secular baker down the street, should the Christian sue those dirty Jews for all they've got, and attempt to bankrupt them and destroy their business over this scruple of religious conscience? No, of course not. The Christian would be a jerk in that case. So why are so many gays being jerks about the exact same kind of thing?
Sad to say, my own code probably has a huge number of them. I'd approximate it as:
(int)0xFFFF... with a bunch more F's
as a real secret any more, if there ever was. If the "secret" is based on scientific research, it's been published and is reproducible and all the relevant people already know about it.
Nope, not true. I have a friend with a Physics Ph.D. who does nuclear weapons related research at LANL. Her work is read only by fellow DoD scientists and certainly is not published in public journals.
This is actual law in many places around the world,
Which sucks, but is entirely irrelevant in the US.
OK, fair enough to some extent, I agree that people clamoring for sharia law and/or jihad isn't a real threat as long as individuals never act on their barbarous ideology (unfortunately many individuals do), and as long as Muslims don't become the majority locally, regionally, or nationally (they have in some areas here, and regionally/nationally elsewhere in the world). A pretty good litmus test for how the progression to sharia is going would be to walk through a neighborhood wearing a yarmulke and see how you are treated. That's not safe in some neighborhoods of Paris these days, although I have a vague understanding that it's politically incorrect for me to point that out. It's weird how Jew-hatred goes in and out of vogue among the self-designated intelligentsia of Western culture; currently it's "in".
and it's amazing to see liberal non-Muslims "see no evil, hear no evil" etc. when they fail to admit sharia is creeping onto their own turf.
Or it could be that "creeping onto their own turf" is utter bullshit fear mongering.
One of us is in denial about the obvious, that's for sure.
I vote for sideslash, then. Clearly your name is pejorative enough.
Aha, that is creative. I hadn't thought of it that way.
Meanwhile, you say you "may" be murdered. Well, fuck, I "may" be murdered for burning the US flag is I seek out those most likely to be inflamed and irrational and then desecrate their holy symbol.
Perhaps you're unaware that death is specified in Muslim holy texts as the correct response to desecration of the Koran, blasphemy of Mohammed or Allah, attempted apostasy or turning away from the Muslim faith, along with a laundry list of other sins. This is actual law in many places around the world, and it's amazing to see liberal non-Muslims "see no evil, hear no evil" etc. when they fail to admit sharia is creeping onto their own turf.
;)
Nobody will kill you for burning an American flag. Maximum forcefulness of response, like on the order of a punch in the nose, I guarantee it.
So, what vile thing should we call you and conflate you with?
I'm going to leave that up to you -- be creative, see what you can come up with.
Your original argument was that the mere desire to ban Koran burning made them Islamists, now you've switched to talking about the Muslims who want to kill you for it. That is another conversation.
No, they're still different despite your efforts to paint them the same. The ban on Koran burning will almost never exist in isolation, but rather as part of a continual progression toward Islamic domination of the society. It's part of a larger package we really don't want, which is called "sharia". Well, at least _I_ really don't want it, don't know about you.
Are you unaware that sharia principles are not isolated, one-off notions taken by individuals, but rather are actually written down and codified in Islamic primary religious documents? Do you know what it's like to live in an Islamic country and face a modern Inquisition for being a free thinker?
Don't be so naive about Islam. I agree that there are some practitioners of a sort of modern "hippie Islam" who are cool with coexisting and diversity of thought, but I think they're in the minority. The aim of Islam in general is to take over, run things, and enforce sharia law in some form; and you're naive if you don't recognize that.
Look, if I burn a flag, I am likely to get an evil eye from a bunch of people, and possibly be punched in the nose by a veteran. All things considered I don't regard that as a huge threat, and I admit a certain fondness for these misguided patriots, even as they're punching me in the nose.
:)
If I burn a Koran, I may be murdered by those who want to split the USA into favored adherents of Islam versus subjugated slaves of Islam (dhimmis). I am... uh... really not OK with that, and I despise and want to publicly shame people who promote that agenda. Do you see the difference now, hippie?
Since around 50% of Americans support a flag burning amendment does that make them all scary nationalist nuts? There's not even a god who's supposed to care about that one.
This may come as a shock to you, but this is the USA, and patriotism is OK here. If some people get a little carried away, that's not as big a deal as people who want to subject non-Muslims to sharia law. If you really don't see the difference between the two, then it appears that you will never be in danger of someone demanding you relinquish your hippie credentials.
(Side note: I agree with the SCOTUS that flag burning and other forms of expression that don't actually cause harm to others should remain legal.)
If I encounter any apostles, I'll be sure to warn them.
As you pointed out the "disempowered" covers Muslims in the US. And my evidence for them being disempowered (marginalized would be a better term) is the ease with which people will hear Muslim and translate it to Islamist, and then they'll start sprouting off half a dozen negative stereotypes that would be verboten if applied to most other groups.
You're really going off on a tangent here. Getting back on subject, perhaps we can agree that the most likely reason for SMBC's curious silence toward Islam is not because Zach can't find anything silly in their beliefs, but rather because conservative Muslims around the world, aka Islamists of different degrees, are likely to commit acts of violence in response to their religion being made fun of.
Also, just for the record, equating "Muslim" and "Islamist" is often a reasonably accurate approximation, particularly outside the USA but frequently here as well. There are useful litmus tests to identify an Islamist, such as: "Should it be illegal to burn a Koran?" "Should people be allowed to apostatize from Islam?" and so forth. If you only ask about affinity for Osama bin Laden you will definitely miss a lot of the scary religious nuts. Their ultimate goal is not peaceful coexistence in a pluralistic society, but rather enforcement of norms of sharia law and subjugation of non-Islamic people. Whether they are likely to be successful in their goal is irrelevant as to their classification as Islamists in that respect.
It could be caution, but it could also be the fact that poking fun at empowered groups in your own culture carries a very different context than poking fun at foreign cultures (or disempowered groups in your own culture).
So you're saying Islam is a "foreign culture" in the USA. How many Muslims do we have to have living here as citizens before it becomes one of the (many) American subcultures?
Also, your use of the term "disempowered" is hilarious. Just because Islamists in the USA can't get away with chopping off people's heads here (like they do elsewhere in the world) doesn't make them "disempowered" relative to Christianity and Judaism. Always with Islam it's the (pardon the expression) camel's nose in the tent. Islamists have no sense of humor, no tolerance for criticism, and no qualms about taking their half from the middle and screwing atheists, homosexuals, apostates, and in general, persons of other religions (inculding variants of Islam slightly different from theirs).
He is actually really careful about that. There are regular barbecues of sacred cows related to Judaism and Christianity, but never so much as a hint of poking fun at Islam or Mohammed.
It gives me a warm feeling to know that some things about Slashdot never change.
Probably premature to say this, but it would be funny if Intel does to mobile processing and ARM what it did to Mac computers and RISC. For a long time the Mac-heads were constantly harping about how superior PowerPC was to anything in the Wintel world. And then suddenly everything was x86 again. It seems x86 is the technology that can't be killed.
*mind blown*
(Spoiler alert: If you don't know this stuff, then... what are you doing on Slashdot?)
They'd better be careful how they handle this. It's supposed to be decades into the future, and thus after Deckard and Rachel are both supposed to be dead by their targeted end of life engineering as replicants. You know: "It's too bad she won't live. But then again, who does?"
Maybe he will be a different iteration of Deckard, i.e. another replicant clone or something.
Orthodoxy of any sort is inherently joke-worthy, even if the orthodoxy is correct in its tenets.
Both brook no dissent, both have used the courts to silence critics, or at least to embroil them in interminable legal battles, and both seem curiously lacking of any sense of humor. One individual who prevailed against a spurious lawsuit by Muslims in Canada and has pointed out this parallel is Mark Steyn. He's currently being sued by Michael Mann in the Washington DC court system. The fireworks have been exciting thus far, at least for people who are into that sort of thing, as Steyn not only has a legally reasonable position in my opinion, but is also one of the best writers of his generation in satire and political humor. It would be unwise to bet against him.
Keep in mind that many app developers put a huge amount of time and effort into developing their apps and publishing them, and then only see a small trickle of income. They just hover at the edges of the app economy desperately trying to catch their big break, while watching the big stars like Rovio rake in huge paychecks every day. Often they have to work side jobs like waiting tables to pay the bills while they dream of becoming stars in their own right. And sadly, the statistics suggest that most of them won't ever make it big.
Contrast that to Hollywood, where... uhh, nevermind. Carry on.
you've obviously never taken any time to research and come up with an original thought, let alone research anything to substantiate the trash you repeat from far right-wing nutbags
It's OK honey. Calm down or you'll blow a gasket. Let's pick one claim and substantiate it, shall we? In my post (on which you heaped such opprobrium), I claimed that Obama previously said he would lack legal authority to change immigration law on his own as president. Here's a source that doesn't fit the category of "right-wing nutbags" that claims the same, with quotes and links:
http://www.politifact.com/texas/statements/2014/dec/05/michael-mccaul/michael-mccaul-says-obama-said-over-20-times-he-la/
Note that this fact checker is disagreeing with a conservative count that Obama said this 20 times, and points out that only about 15 of them are solid examples. At any rate, it's not a one-off misunderstanding or misstatement, it's a solidly documented example of the president's lack of integrity. Wouldn't you agree, O Coward Without Cognomen?
I think you somehow mistyped "I disagree with XYZ, can you provide examples to substantiate it?" It's completely understandable, keyboards can be so tricky sometimes.
You mean "fewer people", not "less people".
So how about when a bunch of religious people flag a story on evolution as false? Sounds like this semi-curating of stories will turn more on Facebook demographics than on objective facts.