It can be both. My view is that religion serves as an amplifier. People reach some rough conclusions about the right thing to do, and then use their religion to justify their conclusions to themselves and to others, to back them up with a claim of an authority greater than their own, and to intensify their drive.
Religion can turn 'I feel sorry for those people' into the commitment needed to donate money and volunteer at the soup kitchen. But it can also turn 'outsiders are shifty and suspicious' into a campaign of systematic persecution and oppression.
It's very common for employers to 'informally' pressure workers to get some extra unpaid time in. Assign them more work than their office hours could accommodate, imply that they may lose their job if they can't keep up. What choice does the employee have but to work from home, or stay in after office hours for some unpaid overtime? Most employees are expendable and replaceable - they know it, and their manager knows it.
I am convinced that religious anti-gay activists in the US spend a substantially greater portion of their time thinking about anal sex than an average gay person does.
They blocked FurAffinity and DeviantArt earlier this year. No official reason was ever given, but the blocks were applied simultaneously so are probably related.
A lack of sex drive would actually be better for many: You can stop caring about it, and get on with productive things.
The worst is the single person: You have a deep instinct lodged in your brain, always whispering to go seek a mate, sometimes screaming "GO GET LAID NOW!" It distracts you, it frustrates you, it makes focusing on anything else a challenge, and you can never escape it. You can at least quiet it for a while with porn and masturbation, but it will always return.
Your work day shall begin an hour before you arrive at the office, and end an hour after.
"What, you didn't read all your daily meeting notes and emails and answer your voice mail while on the way into the office? You slacker! Now you're going to waste an hour of your paid company time catching up. If this happens again, your future here may not be secure."
1. They count Halal and Kosher foods as religious benefits. But if the followers of those religions were not followers, they would eat just as much meat - it would just come from non-religious suppliers. 2. They count 'business with faith backgrounds' - which is broad enough to include pretty much every business that has a religious owner. Well done, chick-fil-a and Hobby Lobby get to count as economic gains from religion. 3. Schools and daycare facilities? So if the religion were erased, all those children would just no longer go to school? Any economic activity by these as religious organisations is exactly balanced by activity lost to non-religious organisations, because demand is inelastic.
I've no doubt that religion in the US is worth a vast amount of money, but this does feel like someone is trying to inflate the numbers.
Oh, and the authors? Brian Grim and Melissa Grim? Brian actually gives his email as 'Brian@religiousfreedomandbusiness.org' where Melissa is a research fellow. An organisation which describes their purpose this: "The Religious Freedom & Business Foundation educates the global business community about how religious freedom is good for business, and engages the business community in joining forces with government and non-government organizations in promoting respect for freedom of religion or belief."
Melissa also lists her education as the "Newseum Institute." Which is a political pressure group, not an academic organisation.
And Brian Grim is president of the "Religious Freedom and Business Foundation" - Yeah, sounds totally unbiased and trustworthy.
So, what I see here are two researchers employed by organisations with the stated goal of making religion look good for business who then write a report in which they very broadly define religion in order to make it look good for business.
This study should be taken with a giant heap of salt.
An important element of the prank is that it depends upon the victim's 'cooperation.' Any person finding the pornography page open could, in seconds, close the tab and get on with whatever they wanted. That would be the sensible course of action, and the end of the attempted prank. The fun comes when the victim cannot help but overreact - when they jump and scream, try to shield the eyes of children, cower in fear from the controls and start shouting their outrage to all nearby. That's funny, and it's all the funnier because they have the option of just closing the tab at any time they choose.
More likely they are trying to prevent a backlash - get them pulled quick before some state congressman introduces another 'ban the porn' bill or the local tabloid fills with stories of how Google is endangering children.
Probably. You can't really enjoy porn in public, but leaving porn in unexpected places is a classic prank. Trivial in execution, good for a laugh if you can witness or hear about the reaction.
It is not reflective any more. There was a time when some churches did forbid any other position, even the big RC, on the grounds that they could serve only to inflame man's base and sinful lusts.
(Though, popular legend aside, this is not where the term 'missionary position' comes from.)
Because if you can stop the 90+% of regular users from getting the malware-of-the-week, that's a win. Most people wouldn't even realise what was going on.
America still has the draft available as an option, the Selective Service System. All the preparations are maintained - the list of who is eligible, accepted exemptions, procedures for selecting people. It's not currently used for conscription, but it's designed to that in the event of a crisis it can be activated at very short notice.
It would take a dire situation indeed for that to happen though, just because it would be so unpopular and many politicians would lose their next election if they supported it.
The Vietnam war wasn't senseless, really. It was a proxy war. Vietnam had their own civil war, but then half the world stepped in to back one side or the other because everyone wanted the long-term advantage that would come from having a government sympathetic to their own interests in power.
This wasn't an AI. It was a non-A I. Facebook use an army of human moderators. If you click the button to report inappropriate content, they are the ones who inspect it.
Some minimum-wage drone had this flash on their screen, checked it against their list of forbidden material, and ticked 'child with exposed genitalia' or something like that.
How silly is it? In many countries it's a criminal offence to possess artistic depictions of sexualised children. Not even photos, just pencil-and-paper drawings.
I once accepted a correction for claiming to invent the term 'cargo cult science.' I'd actually read it previously, but the memory of reading it had faded so I thought it was my own idea.
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It can be both. My view is that religion serves as an amplifier. People reach some rough conclusions about the right thing to do, and then use their religion to justify their conclusions to themselves and to others, to back them up with a claim of an authority greater than their own, and to intensify their drive.
Religion can turn 'I feel sorry for those people' into the commitment needed to donate money and volunteer at the soup kitchen. But it can also turn 'outsiders are shifty and suspicious' into a campaign of systematic persecution and oppression.
Not entirely negate, but it does mean the actual value is less than $150B. Calculating how much less is beyond my economic knowledge.
It's very common for employers to 'informally' pressure workers to get some extra unpaid time in. Assign them more work than their office hours could accommodate, imply that they may lose their job if they can't keep up. What choice does the employee have but to work from home, or stay in after office hours for some unpaid overtime? Most employees are expendable and replaceable - they know it, and their manager knows it.
I've seen a few religious columns arguing that government benefits are evil because the undermine the role of the church in supporting the poor.
I like bats. They are cute.
Flap flap flap.
I am convinced that religious anti-gay activists in the US spend a substantially greater portion of their time thinking about anal sex than an average gay person does.
Soon everyone in the country will know how to bypass the blocks.
They blocked FurAffinity and DeviantArt earlier this year. No official reason was ever given, but the blocks were applied simultaneously so are probably related.
A lack of sex drive would actually be better for many: You can stop caring about it, and get on with productive things.
The worst is the single person: You have a deep instinct lodged in your brain, always whispering to go seek a mate, sometimes screaming "GO GET LAID NOW!" It distracts you, it frustrates you, it makes focusing on anything else a challenge, and you can never escape it. You can at least quiet it for a while with porn and masturbation, but it will always return.
Your work day shall begin an hour before you arrive at the office, and end an hour after.
"What, you didn't read all your daily meeting notes and emails and answer your voice mail while on the way into the office? You slacker! Now you're going to waste an hour of your paid company time catching up. If this happens again, your future here may not be secure."
1. They count Halal and Kosher foods as religious benefits. But if the followers of those religions were not followers, they would eat just as much meat - it would just come from non-religious suppliers.
2. They count 'business with faith backgrounds' - which is broad enough to include pretty much every business that has a religious owner. Well done, chick-fil-a and Hobby Lobby get to count as economic gains from religion.
3. Schools and daycare facilities? So if the religion were erased, all those children would just no longer go to school? Any economic activity by these as religious organisations is exactly balanced by activity lost to non-religious organisations, because demand is inelastic.
I've no doubt that religion in the US is worth a vast amount of money, but this does feel like someone is trying to inflate the numbers.
Oh, and the authors? Brian Grim and Melissa Grim? Brian actually gives his email as 'Brian@religiousfreedomandbusiness.org' where Melissa is a research fellow. An organisation which describes their purpose this: "The Religious Freedom & Business Foundation educates the global business community about how religious freedom is good for business, and engages the business community in joining forces with government and non-government organizations in promoting respect for freedom of religion or belief."
Melissa also lists her education as the "Newseum Institute." Which is a political pressure group, not an academic organisation.
And Brian Grim is president of the "Religious Freedom and Business Foundation" -
Yeah, sounds totally unbiased and trustworthy.
So, what I see here are two researchers employed by organisations with the stated goal of making religion look good for business who then write a report in which they very broadly define religion in order to make it look good for business.
This study should be taken with a giant heap of salt.
He didn't impersonate a real reporter. Just made up a name.
I do not have an iThing, but I am curious: What do you get for 'furry?'
But then you end up with a racist filter. if you go for all possible flesh tones you'll be over-blocking severely.
It's ok, you can still buy the bluetooth iMic for $89.
An important element of the prank is that it depends upon the victim's 'cooperation.' Any person finding the pornography page open could, in seconds, close the tab and get on with whatever they wanted. That would be the sensible course of action, and the end of the attempted prank. The fun comes when the victim cannot help but overreact - when they jump and scream, try to shield the eyes of children, cower in fear from the controls and start shouting their outrage to all nearby. That's funny, and it's all the funnier because they have the option of just closing the tab at any time they choose.
More likely they are trying to prevent a backlash - get them pulled quick before some state congressman introduces another 'ban the porn' bill or the local tabloid fills with stories of how Google is endangering children.
Probably. You can't really enjoy porn in public, but leaving porn in unexpected places is a classic prank. Trivial in execution, good for a laugh if you can witness or hear about the reaction.
Not me though. I have more class than that.
It is not reflective any more. There was a time when some churches did forbid any other position, even the big RC, on the grounds that they could serve only to inflame man's base and sinful lusts.
(Though, popular legend aside, this is not where the term 'missionary position' comes from.)
Because if you can stop the 90+% of regular users from getting the malware-of-the-week, that's a win. Most people wouldn't even realise what was going on.
America still has the draft available as an option, the Selective Service System. All the preparations are maintained - the list of who is eligible, accepted exemptions, procedures for selecting people. It's not currently used for conscription, but it's designed to that in the event of a crisis it can be activated at very short notice.
It would take a dire situation indeed for that to happen though, just because it would be so unpopular and many politicians would lose their next election if they supported it.
The Vietnam war wasn't senseless, really. It was a proxy war. Vietnam had their own civil war, but then half the world stepped in to back one side or the other because everyone wanted the long-term advantage that would come from having a government sympathetic to their own interests in power.
This wasn't an AI. It was a non-A I. Facebook use an army of human moderators. If you click the button to report inappropriate content, they are the ones who inspect it.
Some minimum-wage drone had this flash on their screen, checked it against their list of forbidden material, and ticked 'child with exposed genitalia' or something like that.
How silly is it? In many countries it's a criminal offence to possess artistic depictions of sexualised children. Not even photos, just pencil-and-paper drawings.
They get three million per day. Clearly it has to be almost fully automated.
There must be some criteria by which the automated system passes a request up for human review, but I don't know what the criteria are.
I once accepted a correction for claiming to invent the term 'cargo cult science.' I'd actually read it previously, but the memory of reading it had faded so I thought it was my own idea.