The "re-vote" in ireland was not an election, but a referendum, much like the frequent referendums in the US that get instrumentalised, repeated or overturned by politicians on a regular basis
The european parliament is an elected body (by the people, seats according to population, much like the US congress), while the european comission consists of the (elected) governments of the member states (imagine a senate where senators are the state governors). Which part of this system is "undemocractic"?
> mean the loser of an election here bitchs about "no democracy", > but that is just cover for them feeling bad that the majority of Americans don't agree with them.
What about those who lose even though the majority of americans *do* vote for them (maybe half a million more than the guy who won??)
Apart from the fact that they have absolutely nought to do with combatting terror, ID cards are incredibly practical and would sort out some of the ridiculous systems this country currently uses to prove identity.
Who would ever design a system where you prove your address by bringing in a utility bill to your bank, or where to get a passport you need someone with "standing in the community" to sign a photo of yours.
In modern life there are lots of times when you need to prove your identity, your age, or your address, having one card that is fairly secure against ID theft would simplify all these procedures, and I can't for the world see why it would cost 95 pounds. When you print a passport, simply print the first (plastic) page twice, how much can it cost?
Interestingly the european country scoring best in almost all educational comparison tests (Finland) has abolished streaming or the concept of "failing" a year and having to repeat it years ago.
I don't think there's a simple answer to any of these questions, making test harder won't automatically make people more intelligent...
"Religios people" say that the world was created by god and jesus was his son, yet religious people say that jesus was only a prophet. Religious people also say that Brahma created the universe. Religious people say that you go to heaven when you die, religious people say that you are reborn in another shape.
That is approximately the quality of your argument about "scientists" saying that a water moleculs is life and an unborn child isn't.
What I'm trying to illustrate is that you are lumping together concepts from a number of disparate fields that have little or nothing in common with each other and use certain words very differently. I would be very surprised for example if a xeno-biologists would make a scientific contribution to the debate about abortion in the first place.
A micro-biologist will call any living cell life. Yet a moral philosopher won't accuse you of murder for taking antibiotics or other medicines (which destroy bacteria/viruses or even human cells). The debate about abortion is not about whether something is "alive" in a biological sense, but whether in a moral sense it is a person you are killing or not, which is a totally different debate, led by totally different poeple.
While I would agree with you that the "origin" of the universe might be unknowable in principle, the difference between religious faith and scientific explanations is that religious faith often precludes further investigations and/or changes to the best current explanation. Religious faith was happy to stop with the earth as the centre of the universe created 6000 years ago...
Scientists are never totally "happy" with their theories, they are developed and refined. Even theories that were once seen as absolute, such as Newton's laws, were shown to be limiting cases of broader, more unified concept.
Once you get to a point where someone says "this is it, this is the answer, I wrote it in a book, no need for further questions, don't bother checking it yourself" then you get yourself into a situation that is a quite similar to religion. While this happens at times in science (i.e. we "knew" all about the atom at one point before people started finding more exotic subatomic particled), it is never an absolute.
For me, that is the one major difference between science and religion: science is built on the premise that theories are imperfect and must be continually developed, while religion is built on the idea that someone knows "the truth" which is absolute and should not be questioned.
Surely a country that has potential targets for the US to track (and attack) in space will also have the capability of attacking a radio telescope... no?
As well as being an ECM protein, there is a significant concentration of fibronectin in plasma (0.3 mg/ml). This is the same molecule that can be found in matrix, just in a different form (and it is possible to lay plasma fn down as a matrix).
But I should have been more precise, fibronectin is not involved in the initial formation of blood clots, though it does play important roles in blood clots. What I should have said is that fibronectin has a role in wound healing as it allows cells to migrate into the clot, and promotes adhesion and spreadings of platelets, fibroblasts and a number of other cells vital for the healing process.
Then again, I didn't expect anyone on Slashdot to have even heard of fibronectin;).
Which "thing" are you referring to? The ability of bone marrow cells to bind to fibronectin? That's fairly essential, seeing that's how cells attach to connective tissue. Or maybe the ability of fibronectin to be soluble in the blood stream? Also fairly vital for things like blood clotting etc... (not to speak of the numerous roles fibronectin has in development)
Lots of things in biological systems are not built "logically". There are some fairly absurd mechanisms that exist merely because they have evolved from other systems that were originally doing something else, and because they "work", but they are not necessarily the simplest or best solution, even though they do usually find a "local maximum"... Sometimes they can leave the system open to attacks.
As for selection pressure *against* this functionality, I would suspect there is very little (practically none). Why? Think about the meaning of selection pressure. It applies almost primarily to your ability to have offspring, and to how far you can support your offspring to procreate themselves. Given that people generally die of cancer later in life, and given that for the vast majority of mammal evolution this would occur at a point far exceeding the average life expectancy (leave alone the time where parents have influence on their children), I don't think there is any negative selection pressure.
> I've never heard a biology teacher saying evolution is a possible explanation, only > that it's the explanation for the origin of man.
Would you like all physics teachers to say that gravity is a "possible explanation" for objects falling? It's only the "theory of gravity" after all...
Do you think the "theory" that crystal spheres hold planets in the sky should be taught alongside the theory of gravity? They're both theories after all...
I don't think many people drown because they "can't swim", not in a swimming pool anyway. People can get a knock on the head, could have a heart attack, or go unconscious for any number of reasons...
It is very easy to spot someone drowning in a pool because they can't swim. They flap their arms, possibly scream, etc. They don't go down "silently"...
> All this business of E = mc^2 "giving us the nuclear bomb" is another example of newspaper > pap-science. There's far more to a nuke than computing the mass defect.
I think if one was going to pick a single discovery that enabled building the nuclear bomb, it was probably the discovery of fission by Meitner & Hahn in 1938. It's quite amazing that it took only 7 years to build a nuclear bomb from that point!
> He DID name 2 people dumbass, he just ALSO named the Republican Party platform in texas.
Indeed. Your reply to this was that it was the policy of only a few "whackos" (which you "proved" by saying that it was the policies of 2 people), which completely ignores the fact that it was official policy, and thus supported by the *majority* of decision makers in the party.
> I NEVER said I supported Republicans. Stop putting words in my mouth.
OK, my apologise, please consider the "you" to be of the general figure of speach variety, or alternatively replace it by "someone".
My point remains, you cannot defend something as being the opinion of a few extremists in a party when the party adopts it as its official platform.
This sounds scarily like what some sections in the republican party want. E.g. they defended a law against sodomy between gay men, that's pretty close to "no gays ever" (and don't start with that "feeling gay is ok, so long as they don't do gay things" nonsense...). There are similar examples for all the other things you quote. Certainly the "no gun-control" and "no abortions" would please large sections of the republican party, I imagine capital punishment for drug dealers or having daily (christian) prayers in school (as well as teaching genesis in science) would be similarly popular...
>
I hope you're right!!! But I'm getting worried as that "fringe" seems to grow ever larger and more vocal...
He didn't name "2 people", he named the *official* platform of the Texas Republican Party (which after all is presumably where Bush was the leader, at least until 2000). I've not read it, but if you agree that it is pretty extreme, I wonder why you can support a party that has this as its platform.
Even if a side has "whackos", when it comes to the point where they make policy, it becomes decidedly dangerous.
Anyway, what would an equally "whacko" left-wing policy be? Would you consider free health-care for all similarly "whacko" as capital punishment for abortion doctors?
> The "right" isn't as far right as you think, and the > "left" is much farther left than they are willing to admit
From across the pond, the Republicans look *extreme* right, while the democrats are somewhat moderate, but probably still more right than left.
How could the Republicans possibly be *more* Rightwing? On any given policy issue i can think of, they are more right than most parties considered "conservative" in other parts of the western world...
> Allowing foreign and domestic companies to sell it, > after stealing 70% of it. (also known as taxes).
Hey? Arguably oil is a natural resource that belongs to the people. Norway is very generous in allowing companies to take 30% of the profit in return for getting it out of the ground and selling it...
Anyway, wish I lived in Norway where the country is running at a *surplus* of $20Bn. The rest of Europe or the US are not going to see the words "budget surplus" for such a long time, the word might fall out of use!
> Most laws are based on a moral principle such as not stealing or lying. Thus we have > elections to decide what the morals of the majority are, and laws are created to reflect them.
I contend that most laws are based on creating a funtioning community. Stealing hurts someone else (the one who you steal from), and infringes on their right to property, hence it is illegal.
Murder infringes someones right to life, so it's illegal.
Me having an abortion (well, if i was female and pregnant) has *no* effect on you whatsoever. It has an effect on me alone.
It is more analagous to me having wild and crazy sex in my home, which you might consider *immoral* for yourself, but you shouldn't make *illegal* because it doesn't affect you or anyone else that does not want to be part of it.
If you are talking about it preventing a possible life from happening you also need to: - ban the use of condoms - ban abstinence in marriage as each of these prevents lives from coming about
The only possible argument is that in fact a fertilized egg is a human being. However, this means: - every miscarriage needs to be investigated as manslaughter - a child being born disabled causes an investigation into the causes with possible convictions for GBH (e.g. due to accidents, drinking, smoking)
In the end it's fairly simple. A lump of cells is *not* a sentient human being. If it was born like that it would not be viable.
Where the cut-off point is is arbitrary, but anything in the first trimester certainly falls in this category.
As such whether you have an abortion is as much a moral issue as is using condoms, having sex before marriage, getting a divorce, etc. etc. and should be left to the individual and their own sense of morality rather than being dictated by the state.
Anyway, what I was trying to say originally was that it is usually conservatives who say that people should have the right to make their own decisions as far as possible. There appear to be only a couple of issues where this position is *completely* reversed (e.g. abortion and gay marriage, but also marihuana).
> If we worked it by popular vote, only fewer than > 10 states would be needed to win the election. > That is not very representative either.
That's nonsense. A candidate would have to get 100% of the vote in those states!!!
However, in the *current* system a candidate could win by taking the 11 most populous states:
California, Texas, New York, Florida, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, New Jersey, Georgia, North Carolina
This is because *all* the votes from a state go to one candidate even if they only have a tiny advantage in the state.
So in summary: The electoral system allows: - a candidate to win despite losing the popular vote (Bush could have lost despite winning the popular vote by several millions, if 70,000 voters in Ohio had gone the other way) - a candidate to win with support in 11 states only - a candidate to win because an elector independently changes his/her mind - a vote being much more/less valuable depending on which state the voter lives in etc. etc.
The only advantage i can see is that it makes for a good tv spectacle, a bit like a football game, where each candidate scores points that can be easily attributed, rather than simply having one big tally at the end of the day.
And of course seeing the electoral college got a party into power, no-one will be trying to change it anytime soon, unless they lost (and obviously don't have the power to change it...)
The thing that confuses me (i have no idea about the rest of the world...) is what counts as a "moral issue" in a US election.
In my opinion the big moral issues in this election in terms of government policy were the war in iraq, the patriot act, guantanamo bay, health care for all, etc. etc.
Being gay and what to do about it is a *private* moral issue, one that government should stay out of. I have yet to understand how you "defend" marriage by stopping gay people from being married, how in the world does that help the heterosexual married couples?
Similarly, whether you think that an abortion is a "sin" is a *private* matter for each person to figure out, rather than something to impose on everybody else.
The US conservatives usually claim that they want to reduce government and let people make their own decisions. However, it appears that is just the case on "their" issues, such as gun-ownership, while still trying to force everyone to live by their moral standards when it comes to other things...
Lastly, I don't understand how in the "land of the free" the word "liberal" can be seen as an insult! Liberal means "free". If people want to have an abortion, they *can* (but don't have to). If you want to marry someone of the same sex, you *can*.
Anyway, I've obviously not been in the US for so long that I don't understand the country anymore...
> This doesn't follow in all counties, just in those that are very very strongly Bush or Kerry, and you > are voting the other way. 'Cos if you vote the other way, you vote will more or less be lost.
It is nothing to do with what *county* you live in, the only thing that matters is the state...
Even if your county is 99.9% republican, if the republicans win the state by 1 vote, two extra votes against them in this county would tip the balance.
> Um, check again. It's called punctuation not spelling.
No, you misspelled the plural of URL. This has nothing to do with punctuation. If it makes you feel better you can call it a mistake in grammar (i.e. you *meant* to use the singular form and the possessive case "'s"). I doubt it though.
Anyway, what I was trying to point out was that the knowledge of the correct US-English spelling of Iraq is not necessary for the discussion of the situation in Iraq. However, when discussing other people's spelling it arguably is important to get it right.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, as I said, all decision making bodies are either directly elected or appointed by elected governments.
Now whether governments (or indeed voters) choose senisble people to represent their interests is a totally different question.
What in the world are you talking about???
The "re-vote" in ireland was not an election, but a referendum, much like the frequent referendums in the US that get instrumentalised, repeated or overturned by politicians on a regular basis
The european parliament is an elected body (by the people, seats according to population, much like the US congress), while the european comission consists of the (elected) governments of the member states (imagine a senate where senators are the state governors). Which part of this system is "undemocractic"?
> mean the loser of an election here bitchs about "no democracy",
> but that is just cover for them feeling bad that the majority of Americans don't agree with them.
What about those who lose even though the majority of americans *do* vote for them (maybe half a million more than the guy who won??)
Apart from the fact that they have absolutely nought to do with combatting terror, ID cards are incredibly practical and would sort out some of the ridiculous systems this country currently uses to prove identity.
Who would ever design a system where you prove your address by bringing in a utility bill to your bank, or where to get a passport you need someone with "standing in the community" to sign a photo of yours.
In modern life there are lots of times when you need to prove your identity, your age, or your address, having one card that is fairly secure against ID theft would simplify all these procedures, and I can't for the world see why it would cost 95 pounds. When you print a passport, simply print the first (plastic) page twice, how much can it cost?
Interestingly the european country scoring best in almost all educational comparison tests (Finland) has abolished streaming or the concept of "failing" a year and having to repeat it years ago.
I don't think there's a simple answer to any of these questions, making test harder won't automatically make people more intelligent...
"Religios people" say that the world was created by god and jesus was his son, yet religious people say that jesus was only a prophet. Religious people also say that Brahma created the universe. Religious people say that you go to heaven when you die, religious people say that you are reborn in another shape.
That is approximately the quality of your argument about "scientists" saying that a water moleculs is life and an unborn child isn't.
What I'm trying to illustrate is that you are lumping together concepts from a number of disparate fields that have little or nothing in common with each other and use certain words very differently. I would be very surprised for example if a xeno-biologists would make a scientific contribution to the debate about abortion in the first place.
A micro-biologist will call any living cell life. Yet a moral philosopher won't accuse you of murder for taking antibiotics or other medicines (which destroy bacteria/viruses or even human cells). The debate about abortion is not about whether something is "alive" in a biological sense, but whether in a moral sense it is a person you are killing or not, which is a totally different debate, led by totally different poeple.
While I would agree with you that the "origin" of the universe might be unknowable in principle, the difference between religious faith and scientific explanations is that religious faith often precludes further investigations and/or changes to the best current explanation. Religious faith was happy to stop with the earth as the centre of the universe created 6000 years ago...
Scientists are never totally "happy" with their theories, they are developed and refined. Even theories that were once seen as absolute, such as Newton's laws, were shown to be limiting cases of broader, more unified concept.
Once you get to a point where someone says "this is it, this is the answer, I wrote it in a book, no need for further questions, don't bother checking it yourself" then you get yourself into a situation that is a quite similar to religion. While this happens at times in science (i.e. we "knew" all about the atom at one point before people started finding more exotic subatomic particled), it is never an absolute.
For me, that is the one major difference between science and religion: science is built on the premise that theories are imperfect and must be continually developed, while religion is built on the idea that someone knows "the truth" which is absolute and should not be questioned.
Surely a country that has potential targets for the US to track (and attack) in space will also have the capability of attacking a radio telescope... no?
As well as being an ECM protein, there is a significant concentration of fibronectin in plasma (0.3 mg/ml). This is the same molecule that can be found in matrix, just in a different form (and it is possible to lay plasma fn down as a matrix).
;).
But I should have been more precise, fibronectin is not involved in the initial formation of blood clots, though it does play important roles in blood clots. What I should have said is that fibronectin has a role in wound healing as it allows cells to migrate into the clot, and promotes adhesion and spreadings of platelets, fibroblasts and a number of other cells vital for the healing process.
Then again, I didn't expect anyone on Slashdot to have even heard of fibronectin
Which "thing" are you referring to? The ability of bone marrow cells to bind to fibronectin? That's fairly essential, seeing that's how cells attach to connective tissue. Or maybe the ability of fibronectin to be soluble in the blood stream? Also fairly vital for things like blood clotting etc... (not to speak of the numerous roles fibronectin has in development)
Lots of things in biological systems are not built "logically". There are some fairly absurd mechanisms that exist merely because they have evolved from other systems that were originally doing something else, and because they "work", but they are not necessarily the simplest or best solution, even though they do usually find a "local maximum"... Sometimes they can leave the system open to attacks.
As for selection pressure *against* this functionality, I would suspect there is very little (practically none). Why?
Think about the meaning of selection pressure. It applies almost primarily to your ability to have offspring, and to how far you can support your offspring to procreate themselves. Given that people generally die of cancer later in life, and given that for the vast majority of mammal evolution this would occur at a point far exceeding the average life expectancy (leave alone the time where parents have influence on their children), I don't think there is any negative selection pressure.
> I've never heard a biology teacher saying evolution is a possible explanation, only
> that it's the explanation for the origin of man.
Would you like all physics teachers to say that gravity is a "possible explanation" for objects falling? It's only the "theory of gravity" after all...
Do you think the "theory" that crystal spheres hold planets in the sky should be taught alongside the theory of gravity? They're both theories after all...
actually, just to correct myself, apparently plenty of people who can't swim drown "silently"...
I don't think many people drown because they "can't swim", not in a swimming pool anyway. People can get a knock on the head, could have a heart attack, or go unconscious for any number of reasons...
It is very easy to spot someone drowning in a pool because they can't swim. They flap their arms, possibly scream, etc. They don't go down "silently"...
> All this business of E = mc^2 "giving us the nuclear bomb" is another example of newspaper
> pap-science. There's far more to a nuke than computing the mass defect.
I think if one was going to pick a single discovery that enabled building the nuclear bomb, it was probably the discovery of fission by Meitner & Hahn in 1938. It's quite amazing that it took only 7 years to build a nuclear bomb from that point!
> He DID name 2 people dumbass, he just ALSO named the Republican Party platform in texas.
Indeed. Your reply to this was that it was the policy of only a few "whackos" (which you "proved" by saying that it was the policies of 2 people), which completely ignores the fact that it was official policy, and thus supported by the *majority* of decision makers in the party.
> I NEVER said I supported Republicans. Stop putting words in my mouth.
OK, my apologise, please consider the "you" to be of the general figure of speach variety, or alternatively replace it by "someone".
My point remains, you cannot defend something as being the opinion of a few extremists in a party when the party adopts it as its official platform.
>
This sounds scarily like what some sections in the republican party want. E.g. they defended a law against sodomy between gay men, that's pretty close to "no gays ever" (and don't start with that "feeling gay is ok, so long as they don't do gay things" nonsense...). There are similar examples for all the other things you quote. Certainly the "no gun-control" and "no abortions" would please large sections of the republican party, I imagine capital punishment for drug dealers or having daily (christian) prayers in school (as well as teaching genesis in science) would be similarly popular...
>
I hope you're right!!! But I'm getting worried as that "fringe" seems to grow ever larger and more vocal...
He didn't name "2 people", he named the *official* platform of the Texas Republican Party (which after all is presumably where Bush was the leader, at least until 2000). I've not read it, but if you agree that it is pretty extreme, I wonder why you can support a party that has this as its platform.
Even if a side has "whackos", when it comes to the point where they make policy, it becomes decidedly dangerous.
Anyway, what would an equally "whacko" left-wing policy be? Would you consider free health-care for all similarly "whacko" as capital punishment for abortion doctors?
> The "right" isn't as far right as you think, and the
> "left" is much farther left than they are willing to admit
From across the pond, the Republicans look *extreme* right, while the democrats are somewhat moderate, but probably still more right than left.
How could the Republicans possibly be *more* Rightwing? On any given policy issue i can think of, they are more right than most parties considered "conservative" in other parts of the western world...
> This is why Bush won. The people against gay marriage are REALLY against it.
But why? It doesn't affect them in *any* way, why are they so intent on not letting other people be happy?
> and whose leader (Putin) supports Bush.
That is different to the *population* supporting Bush.
Spain, the UK and Italy had leaders who supported Bush, yet the vast majority of their population hated them for it!
> Allowing foreign and domestic companies to sell it,
> after stealing 70% of it. (also known as taxes).
Hey? Arguably oil is a natural resource that belongs to the people. Norway is very generous in allowing companies to take 30% of the profit in return for getting it out of the ground and selling it...
Anyway, wish I lived in Norway where the country is running at a *surplus* of $20Bn. The rest of Europe or the US are not going to see the words "budget surplus" for such a long time, the word might fall out of use!
> Most laws are based on a moral principle such as not stealing or lying. Thus we have
> elections to decide what the morals of the majority are, and laws are created to reflect them.
I contend that most laws are based on creating a funtioning community. Stealing hurts someone else (the one who you steal from), and infringes on their right to property, hence it is illegal.
Murder infringes someones right to life, so it's illegal.
Me having an abortion (well, if i was female and pregnant) has *no* effect on you whatsoever. It has an effect on me alone.
It is more analagous to me having wild and crazy sex in my home, which you might consider *immoral* for yourself, but you shouldn't make *illegal* because it doesn't affect you or anyone else that does not want to be part of it.
If you are talking about it preventing a possible life from happening you also need to:
- ban the use of condoms
- ban abstinence in marriage
as each of these prevents lives from coming about
The only possible argument is that in fact a fertilized egg is a human being. However, this means:
- every miscarriage needs to be investigated as manslaughter
- a child being born disabled causes an investigation into the causes with possible convictions for GBH (e.g. due to accidents, drinking, smoking)
In the end it's fairly simple. A lump of cells is *not* a sentient human being. If it was born like that it would not be viable.
Where the cut-off point is is arbitrary, but anything in the first trimester certainly falls in this category.
As such whether you have an abortion is as much a moral issue as is using condoms, having sex before marriage, getting a divorce, etc. etc. and should be left to the individual and their own sense of morality rather than being dictated by the state.
Anyway, what I was trying to say originally was that it is usually conservatives who say that people should have the right to make their own decisions as far as possible. There appear to be only a couple of issues where this position is *completely* reversed (e.g. abortion and gay marriage, but also marihuana).
> If we worked it by popular vote, only fewer than
> 10 states would be needed to win the election.
> That is not very representative either.
That's nonsense. A candidate would have to get 100% of the vote in those states!!!
However, in the *current* system a candidate could win by taking the 11 most populous states:
California, Texas, New York, Florida, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, New Jersey, Georgia, North Carolina
This is because *all* the votes from a state go to one candidate even if they only have a tiny advantage in the state.
So in summary: The electoral system allows:
- a candidate to win despite losing the popular vote (Bush could have lost despite winning the popular vote by several millions, if 70,000 voters in Ohio had gone the other way)
- a candidate to win with support in 11 states only
- a candidate to win because an elector independently changes his/her mind
- a vote being much more/less valuable depending on which state the voter lives in etc. etc.
The only advantage i can see is that it makes for a good tv spectacle, a bit like a football game, where each candidate scores points that can be easily attributed, rather than simply having one big tally at the end of the day.
And of course seeing the electoral college got a party into power, no-one will be trying to change it anytime soon, unless they lost (and obviously don't have the power to change it...)
The thing that confuses me (i have no idea about the rest of the world...) is what counts as a "moral issue" in a US election.
In my opinion the big moral issues in this election in terms of government policy were the war in iraq, the patriot act, guantanamo bay, health care for all, etc. etc.
Being gay and what to do about it is a *private* moral issue, one that government should stay out of. I have yet to understand how you "defend" marriage by stopping gay people from being married, how in the world does that help the heterosexual married couples?
Similarly, whether you think that an abortion is a "sin" is a *private* matter for each person to figure out, rather than something to impose on everybody else.
The US conservatives usually claim that they want to reduce government and let people make their own decisions. However, it appears that is just the case on "their" issues, such as gun-ownership, while still trying to force everyone to live by their moral standards when it comes to other things...
Lastly, I don't understand how in the "land of the free" the word "liberal" can be seen as an insult! Liberal means "free". If people want to have an abortion, they *can* (but don't have to). If you want to marry someone of the same sex, you *can*.
Anyway, I've obviously not been in the US for so long that I don't understand the country anymore...
> This doesn't follow in all counties, just in those that are very very strongly Bush or Kerry, and you
> are voting the other way. 'Cos if you vote the other way, you vote will more or less be lost.
It is nothing to do with what *county* you live in, the only thing that matters is the state...
Even if your county is 99.9% republican, if the republicans win the state by 1 vote, two extra votes against them in this county would tip the balance.
At a state level he may be right thought
> Um, check again. It's called punctuation not spelling.
No, you misspelled the plural of URL. This has nothing to do with punctuation. If it makes you feel better you can call it a mistake in grammar (i.e. you *meant* to use the singular form and the possessive case "'s"). I doubt it though.
Anyway, what I was trying to point out was that the knowledge of the correct US-English spelling of Iraq is not necessary for the discussion of the situation in Iraq. However, when discussing other people's spelling it arguably is important to get it right.
> Why should we follow URL's provided by someone who can't even spell Iraq (NOT IraK)?
a) I would assume the poster does not speak English as a native language, many countries around the world spell Iraq as Irak.
b) Don't complain about people's spelling if you get your own wrong. It's URLs, not URL's.