It would be a small asteroid, the kind that hits the Earth all the time. It would be of the type that tends to disintegrate on reentry, and it will always be on a non-impact trajectory in case the system fails.
With flip-up screen. It was sweet, helped me get through high school. Yes, I was the geek with the laptop, the only kid in school who had one (bought cheap from DAK with summer job money). Gave me and my friend some fun self-wiring a connection between than and his Model 100 until we realized the motherboards and connectors were flipped between the two.
I've been a gun owner since 1983. I've had an Illinois FOID card for decades. I own long guns and hand guns.
I guess I was wrong.
believe, as do most Americans, as did the Supreme Court until the 1980s, that local governments should be able to restrict gun ownership.
Remember, that was just for the black man. White ownership of weapons was never successfully restricted in the early days.
As far as the federal government preventing towns and states from restricting ownership, that is a problem. Since the 14th Amendment, it has taken various lengths of time for rights to be solidly recognized as incorporated. The 1st and 4th Amendments weren't fully incorporated until decisions in the 1960s. The 5th Amendment hasn't been fully incorporated, and the latest parts to be incorporated were in the 1960s. Other decisions refining incorporation have continued into the 2000s.
I think you see a progression here, towards more federal protection of our natural rights, more solidification of the 14th Amendment.
McDonald in 2010 was yet another in that long-overdue series of rights incorporation. I'd say it's about time we follow the idea of Justice Black in the 1940s and simply incorporate the entirety of the first eight amendments as dictated by the 14th Amendment.
I believe there should be a total ban on full-auto, teflon and black talon-style ammunition.
Why? I don't mean to be uncivil, but opinions such as these are usually based in ignorance of the facts. Do you realize how few crimes are committed with full-auto weapons? Did you know that NO crimes have been committed with any of the 175,000 licensed full-auto weapons in this country? Did you know that teflon does NOTHING to make a bullet armor-piercing? Did you know there's not much special about a Black Talon? It's just one of many fragmenting hollowpoints on the market, designed to reduce dangerous overpenetration and ricochets (IOW, it's safer for bystanders). Their supposed extra danger was a media fabrication, they're no more deadly than any other normal pistol round.
Did I mention I'm not a hunter? I loathe hunters. And hunting.
I'm a hunter. For food though, never trophy. Supermarket stuff leaves much to be desired, and specialty free-range meat is too expensive.
I always expect otherwise when the talk turns to gun laws and the Constitution.
Even among non-fanatical 2nd Amendment supports such as myself, discussions tend to turn ugly when those against rights start (usually unknowingly) throwing out the same old lies we've had to counter a hundred times already. It gets frustrating, but you've been pleasant so far so I am making the effort too.
During that era, the Muslims were basically peaceful (that is, relative to the brutishness of the period) until the Christians decided to start killing them all and stealing their lands, women, etc.
While the Christians were definitely not peaceful, neither were the Muslims. They continued their conquests up to and through the time of the Crusades. Don't forget, the Battle of Tours was in present-day France, and it marked the beginning of a Christian push-back of the Islamic invasions of Christian lands. By the time of the Crusades, the Christians had re-conquered the Holy Land taken by the Muslims 400 years before. I can't think of one period of Muslim history where they weren't trying to spread the religion through violence. All-out territorial conquering only ended with the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, at which point no Muslim nation had the military might to do it anymore in the face of the Western (Christian- and Jewish-historied) military forces. They tried to wipe out Israel in the 40s through 60s, and lost. Now they just try it through terrorism.
even though 95% of Muslims are just fine as people, the 5% gives plenty of reason to be afraid and worried.
That's 5% actively trying to kill us for not being Muslim, probably another 94% willing to sit aside and let it happen, and in a generous estimate maybe 1% actively trying to stop that 5%, which is still 75 million people. There is definitely reason to be afraid.
We don't know (from the article, at least) that religious zealots are responsible for this tragedy.
Teaching of girls was illegal under the Taliban for religious reasons. There are still many around who believe that even though they aren't currently ruling the country. There is no reason to suspect anything other than a religious motive.
I mean before that. It is only a written recognition of the acknowledged right. Blackstone is critical for English common law, and he clearly states it is an individual right.
But in the US, you won't find a single respected justice, no matter how Conservative or "originalist" who will assert that the Second Amendment establishes an individual right of gun ownership
Nunn V. State, Georgia, 1846. Georgia didn't have a right to keep and bear arms in its constitution, so the justices approached it from a natural rights view, and used the US Second Amendment. The individual right to purchase, possess and carry arms was upheld, striking down that portion of the law, although manner of carry restrictions were allowed (no concealed) as long as they didn't violate the above.
Actually, concealed carry laws popped up quite a bit in the early 1800s, and some were struck down as unconstitutional (state or federal), but the basic right of a white man to keep and bear arms was not questioned.
Yes, the white man. The original gun prohibitions and were aimed at disarming blacks, and they succeeded in court on the idea that blacks weren't really citizens, so they had no right to individual ownership. Reverse that, it means citizens (whites at the time) do. The Dredd Scott case mentioned this, saying that if "negros" were seen as citizens, then they would have the right "...to keep and carry arms wherever they went." Just like white people could.
This "collective rights" model is actually the newer interpretation, coming up after the Civil War. Glad it's finally gone, and find it fitting that the nail in the coffin was over a black man's right to keep and bear arms.
What we have here is simple: Less scrupulous people interpret the constitution to mean what they want to be true, regardless of how far off the interpretation is. Remember Colbert's "truthiness"? You just say it, with no care for whether it's true.
Scalia has spoken over and over about federal abuse of the Commerce Clause, overreaching it beyond the powers intended to be given to the federal government. So you get Scalia ruling in United States v. Lopez saying it was an overreach of the Commerce Clause for the feds to criminalize the local activity of guns in school zones. He likes guns, so he ruled that way. But he doesn't like marijuana, so some years later the extreme overreach of the feds busting cancer-ridden grandmas with a pot plant in the backyard was suddenly constitutional in Gonzales v. Raich. We know he won't like Obamacare's individual mandate, so be pretty sure he'll flip the other way in the current Obamacare cases.
It's not about constitutional principle, it's simply about getting what you want.
Meanwhile, I admit I kind of like the mandate portion of Obamacare and see its necessity in the grand scheme of things to eliminate the freerider problem (Republicans in the early 90s did too). However, I recognize that it is not a power granted to the federal government, but reserved to the states, which is why it was okay for Romney to do it in MA. Do I try to stretch the Commerce Clause to absurdity in an effort to say it's constitutional like Obama does? No, I just admit it's not constitutional. We need an amendment or an agreement between the states to do it with state law.
I'll take a bet you don't like individual ownership of guns, which is the source of your faulty Second Amendment interpretation.
That would be right. There wasn't any debate of whether this was an individual right back then. All believed it was individual natural right dating back through ancient English common law. The only serious contention was between the anti-Federalists, who wanted this restraint on government power codified, and the Federalists, who thought such codification was unnecessary. Remember, the 2nd doesn't grant the right, it acknowledges the right's existence and prevents the government from infringing on it. Big difference.
Our biggest problem comes from those who believe that when they want something contrary to the Constitution, they can just reinterpret and get it. Going through the process of an amendment is just too democratic for them.
Those against the natural right to keep and bear arms know they would never get the support for an amendment, so they try it in the courts. Long ago we thought we needed an amendment to outlaw booze nationwide. These days we just snap our fingers and the magical "interstate commerce" fairy makes a federal marijuana ban constitutional.
Both the house and the senate approved amendments adding the text, "Nothing in this section shall be interpreted as affecting lawful contraception." It's right there in your source, yet you didn't refer to it.
Its text is absolutely authentic and in our own language. The context has a well-documented written history, and the identities, views, intentions and debates of the parties involved in its creation are recorded in writing.
And yet, only 223 years later, the interpretations of that document can vary in the extreme from the original text and clearly documented intent of the writers. For example,
Some interpret the 2nd Amendment to the sense that it is completely ineffectual when documentation shows the writers saw it as an important individual right
Some interpret the copyright clause to allow effectively unlimited copyright in duration and reach, when it was meant to be a moderate portion of a person's lifetime, limited in reach (and Jefferson didn't want copyright at all)
Some presidents have thought they are the supreme branch that can rule over the others, not one among equals
The Commerce Clause has been stretched to absurdity, the argument "could affect interstate commerce" effectively lifting any limits to the federal government's powers
So do you think a religion created 2,000 or 1,400 years ago with various texts, translations and oral histories even has a chance of having a coherent interpretation among the followers?
And even then for some the article recognizes that the violence being driven by the religion itself is questionable.
And they even include Kony, who practices something that pulls elements from many religions into his own unique theology. I know Christians like to use "No True Scotsman" whenever a Christian does something wrong, but this guy's beliefs are so far outside any known Christian sect that it's really wrong to call him Christian.
Anything to flesh out an article that would otherwise be extremely short.
Total education funding has more than doubled since 1990, and has risen much higher than that by various other metrics. So that can't be the problem.
Time to look back at your administrators, policy makers, teachers and unions.
The magical thinking (I assume you refer to the Christian creation myth taught as science) has only been attempted in a few states, so you can't place the blame there.
Or check out the liberals who have been running/destroying the US education system for the past several decades. Where it used to be hard subjects taught, and failure punished, now it's touchy-feely subjects, various liberal-agenda study programs, teaching tolerance towards all groups (except conservatives, we don't like them), and nobody fails. Seriously, under this liberal scheme, many kids are no longer given failing grades since it may hurt their sense of self-esteem.
Our teacher unions have become very powerful in many places, and they admittedly put the interests of the teachers before the interests of the kids (well, they are a union, the teachers are their members, not the kids, so you can't really blame them). They negotiate extremely good packages for the teachers, better than most people in the country get. They negotiate health insurance packages that are extremely lucrative for the insurance company -- the company they have a financial stake in. They even lobby against incentive pay to reward better teachers, and make it very difficult to fire underperforming and even abusive teachers.
In the recent troubles in Wisconsin, one grade-school teacher protesting about how poorly teachers are compensated was making over $80,000 a year. Everybody wants a piece of the billions poured into education, and everybody has a rich lobby to make it happen. Except for the kids. Screw them.
are some extremists who utterly pervert and abuse that faith
Since religious texts have about as many interpretations as there are adherents of the religion. But in the end, a religion is defined by what a large number of its adherents do, and what the adherents overall, and their governments, are willing to accept and not punish.
Christian extremist wackos to this extent are few and far between, almost universally condemned by those of their religion, and prosecuted by their governments. The few abortion clinic bombers and doctor killers were promptly brought to justice in this majority-Christian country.
Muslim extremist wackos are sometimes the ones running the governments. While many Muslims may say "this isn't Islam" they don't do much about it. CAIR preaches peaceful Islam on the front, while providing support for the "extremists" on the back. I know there are non-extremist Muslims, and are probably the majority. But I believe most of those either have no idea what's going on (say a rural mom in Malaysia), or tacitly support it in the same way most American Christians did nothing while the Westboro Baptists bashed gays (they only got upset when Westboro started protesting soldier funerals). This isn't just the right-wing Christians either, since we have pictures of Al Gore chumming it up with Fred Phelps himself.
Some have put the percentage of these murderous "extremists" at maybe five percent of Muslims or less. That's still tens of millions of people out there, many supported by the laws of their country or province, who are willing to kill and maim because their sense of religion was offended.
A simple test was brought up in a previous story: piss on a Bible publicly in the US, declare your name, tape it, and post it to the Internet. What will happen? There will be some grumbles, the 700 Club won't be happy, but that's about it.
Now do the same thing, in the US, with a Quran. There will be deadly riots around the world, there will be people out to kill you. The "peaceful" Muslims in the US will at a minimum be calling for your prosecution. However, your government founded on Western culture will not prosecute you, and will prosecute your killer (unless we keep sliding in this liberal PC direction and respect the Religion Of Peace). When you are killed, few Muslims will shed a tear.
Now do it with a Quran in a Muslim-ruled country. If you somehow manage to be taken into police custody before you are murdered on the spot, expect a lengthy jail sentence or execution.
This tells me what I need to know about whether Islam is a peaceful religion overall, and whether the "extremists" are truly the outliers.
Always "we can learn something from them" and never "they can learn something from us." When it comes to the barbaric practices of other cultures, it's something we should respect, not try to eradicate through cultural imperialism.
Hadith are stories of the sayings and doings of Mohammed and are used to clarify Quran and establish law. There are many different collections of varying trustworthiness, and different sects accept different hadith as authoritative. However, there is a central collection that most Muslims believe is authoritative.
A lot of the nastiness in Islam you see these days can be found in the hadith, not Quran, but it's still part of the religion as believed by the vast majority of Muslims.
Quran-only Muslims are a small minority, and their rejection of Hadith is heavily criticized by mainstream Muslims. So saying "The Quran does not state" really has no weight for the vast majority of Muslims. If it's in Hadith, it's part of the religion.
And here's where you run into the real problem: Apple never devotes enough coding resources to do this sort of stuff. This is why it took a year+ to get copy/paste on the iPhone
OS X 10.5 Leopard was delayed for about a year because Apple pulled development resources to work on the iPhone. Microsoft did the same thing delaying VIsta for XP SP2.
As far as copy/paste, you have to set a feature set for a release and go with that, or you will never release. The iPhone's copy/paste was a pretty advanced piece of software in itself. If you want to talk stupid omission, why couldn't we delete a photo from PhotoStream until iOS 5.1?
I'm not at Apple, but people who are tell me that there's basically an A-team of good coders, and they get shifted around to whatever project makes the most sense at the time.
Keeps developers from getting tunnel vision, giving them a larger view of the whole ecosystem.
iCloud cost Apple a fortune and it almost lets me do everything without iTunes -- yet try to put a video on my phone
I'm guessing the sheer amount of storage involved is hindering things, plus video on there will probably piss off the MPAA, even if it's a video you took of your kid playing at the beach.
difficulties governments face in balancing communication with transparency
More like difficulties on how to arrange actions that affect the public without having to disclose them under FOIA. These bureaucrats long for the day they could impose their will on the people while leaving the people clueless, and they will work any angle on a FOIA law that they can in order to get it.
First, I'm not a proponent of any such thing - however, your argument is a variant of the "attack the messenger, not the message"
You may be too innocent. Holocaust revisionists are experts at twisting what could even be reliable sources to fit their arguments. It is very easy to get misled by them. Their individual arguments sound good until you see the whole picture, which is of course a lie.
So, no, I will not accept one word from that site or an argument influenced by that site. I'm not going down that rabbit hole.
Also, the Wiki article on the firebombing of Tokyo mentions the Japanese emperor's personal involvement in the peace talks
Wikipedia entry, anybody could do it. Source is a dead tree book, can't check context or veracity from here.
So stop with the stupidity - there was immoral behaviour on both sides.
That statement, in general, is not being contested.
That's an outright lie. The emperor himself had ordered that the Japanese offer a complete surrender
Cite source. The military was still planning complete armageddon.
Some facts while you wait:
The firebombing of Tokyo had already caused 100,000 deaths. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were spared this destruction because we wanted untouched cities for the nuclear bombs. Minus the nukes, the cities would have been destroyed by conventional means, likely resulting in the same number of deaths.
Japan was still murdering civilians by the thousands every day in occupied countries. Each day of waiting doomed thousands more to death.
It was expected that the aftermath of total bombing and invasion would be a humanitarian disaster in Japan, with millions dying of starvation and disease.
The US was so sure it needed to invade, that it made half a million Purple Heart medals in advance. We're still using those medals for present-day casualties.
If nothing else, the last one should show you the truth. Our government didn't believe there could be an easy peace, or it wouldn't have ordered these medals.
Without Hezbollah Israel would probably had done similar kind of ethnic cleansing in Lebanon that Palestinians have faced within Palestine.
Israel was not looking to move into Lebanon. The only reason for Israel attacks into Lebanon was because the PLO was attacking Israel from there. After the PLO got kicked out of Jordan for starting a rebellion, they set up their base of operations in Lebanon to attack Israel. Hezbollah was Iran meddling in local affairs, attacking Israel by proxy.
Israel hasn't had much of a problem with the Lebanese themselves, or the government, but the foreign forces, and foreign-sponsored forces, fighting from Lebanon.
And in Israel some of the Jews have started their own gender separation, which is worse than in many Arabic/Muslim countries.
Note that where it happens, the government and most of the population fights against it. Compare and contrast with your Arab/Muslim countries, where it is law.
For a tolerance barometer, take the state of Jews in the Middle East and North Africa when under the power of Muslims. Under the Ottoman Caliphate they were treated with general civility, even allowed to immigrate and buy territory (much of it in present-day Palestine, fairly purchased). They lived pretty much unmolested.
Now the only place in the Middle East and North Africa where there is any appreciable population of Jews is in Israel, and current-day Muslims are trying to destroy that. Elsewhere there are fewer than one percent left, driven out by the ever-more tolerant Muslim populations.
Islam needs two things before it can advance: a successful reformation, and to lose state power.
The goal of these Christians as they see it is to prevent the murder of unborn children. The goal of the Muslims is to subjugate the women, protect the honor of the paternalistic family. This isn't even near the subject of hanging a woman for being raped. "Christians are just as bad" is total bullshit, and you know it. They may have been five hundred years ago, but the religion has advanced and lost state power almost everywhere.
Full disclosure: I am an atheist and against these laws.
BTW, as an atheist in a Christian theocracy, I may be not be considered a full citizen. In a Muslim country I'm fair game to kill if I don't convert, I don't even have that ostensible "people of the book" protection.
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It would be a small asteroid, the kind that hits the Earth all the time. It would be of the type that tends to disintegrate on reentry, and it will always be on a non-impact trajectory in case the system fails.
With flip-up screen. It was sweet, helped me get through high school. Yes, I was the geek with the laptop, the only kid in school who had one (bought cheap from DAK with summer job money). Gave me and my friend some fun self-wiring a connection between than and his Model 100 until we realized the motherboards and connectors were flipped between the two.
I guess I was wrong.
Remember, that was just for the black man. White ownership of weapons was never successfully restricted in the early days.
As far as the federal government preventing towns and states from restricting ownership, that is a problem. Since the 14th Amendment, it has taken various lengths of time for rights to be solidly recognized as incorporated. The 1st and 4th Amendments weren't fully incorporated until decisions in the 1960s. The 5th Amendment hasn't been fully incorporated, and the latest parts to be incorporated were in the 1960s. Other decisions refining incorporation have continued into the 2000s.
I think you see a progression here, towards more federal protection of our natural rights, more solidification of the 14th Amendment.
McDonald in 2010 was yet another in that long-overdue series of rights incorporation. I'd say it's about time we follow the idea of Justice Black in the 1940s and simply incorporate the entirety of the first eight amendments as dictated by the 14th Amendment.
Why? I don't mean to be uncivil, but opinions such as these are usually based in ignorance of the facts. Do you realize how few crimes are committed with full-auto weapons? Did you know that NO crimes have been committed with any of the 175,000 licensed full-auto weapons in this country? Did you know that teflon does NOTHING to make a bullet armor-piercing? Did you know there's not much special about a Black Talon? It's just one of many fragmenting hollowpoints on the market, designed to reduce dangerous overpenetration and ricochets (IOW, it's safer for bystanders). Their supposed extra danger was a media fabrication, they're no more deadly than any other normal pistol round.
I'm a hunter. For food though, never trophy. Supermarket stuff leaves much to be desired, and specialty free-range meat is too expensive.
Even among non-fanatical 2nd Amendment supports such as myself, discussions tend to turn ugly when those against rights start (usually unknowingly) throwing out the same old lies we've had to counter a hundred times already. It gets frustrating, but you've been pleasant so far so I am making the effort too.
While the Christians were definitely not peaceful, neither were the Muslims. They continued their conquests up to and through the time of the Crusades. Don't forget, the Battle of Tours was in present-day France, and it marked the beginning of a Christian push-back of the Islamic invasions of Christian lands. By the time of the Crusades, the Christians had re-conquered the Holy Land taken by the Muslims 400 years before. I can't think of one period of Muslim history where they weren't trying to spread the religion through violence. All-out territorial conquering only ended with the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, at which point no Muslim nation had the military might to do it anymore in the face of the Western (Christian- and Jewish-historied) military forces. They tried to wipe out Israel in the 40s through 60s, and lost. Now they just try it through terrorism.
That's 5% actively trying to kill us for not being Muslim, probably another 94% willing to sit aside and let it happen, and in a generous estimate maybe 1% actively trying to stop that 5%, which is still 75 million people. There is definitely reason to be afraid.
Teaching of girls was illegal under the Taliban for religious reasons. There are still many around who believe that even though they aren't currently ruling the country. There is no reason to suspect anything other than a religious motive.
I mean before that. It is only a written recognition of the acknowledged right. Blackstone is critical for English common law, and he clearly states it is an individual right.
Nunn V. State, Georgia, 1846. Georgia didn't have a right to keep and bear arms in its constitution, so the justices approached it from a natural rights view, and used the US Second Amendment. The individual right to purchase, possess and carry arms was upheld, striking down that portion of the law, although manner of carry restrictions were allowed (no concealed) as long as they didn't violate the above.
Actually, concealed carry laws popped up quite a bit in the early 1800s, and some were struck down as unconstitutional (state or federal), but the basic right of a white man to keep and bear arms was not questioned.
Yes, the white man. The original gun prohibitions and were aimed at disarming blacks, and they succeeded in court on the idea that blacks weren't really citizens, so they had no right to individual ownership. Reverse that, it means citizens (whites at the time) do. The Dredd Scott case mentioned this, saying that if "negros" were seen as citizens, then they would have the right "...to keep and carry arms wherever they went." Just like white people could.
This "collective rights" model is actually the newer interpretation, coming up after the Civil War. Glad it's finally gone, and find it fitting that the nail in the coffin was over a black man's right to keep and bear arms.
What we have here is simple: Less scrupulous people interpret the constitution to mean what they want to be true, regardless of how far off the interpretation is. Remember Colbert's "truthiness"? You just say it, with no care for whether it's true.
Scalia has spoken over and over about federal abuse of the Commerce Clause, overreaching it beyond the powers intended to be given to the federal government. So you get Scalia ruling in United States v. Lopez saying it was an overreach of the Commerce Clause for the feds to criminalize the local activity of guns in school zones. He likes guns, so he ruled that way. But he doesn't like marijuana, so some years later the extreme overreach of the feds busting cancer-ridden grandmas with a pot plant in the backyard was suddenly constitutional in Gonzales v. Raich. We know he won't like Obamacare's individual mandate, so be pretty sure he'll flip the other way in the current Obamacare cases.
It's not about constitutional principle, it's simply about getting what you want.
Meanwhile, I admit I kind of like the mandate portion of Obamacare and see its necessity in the grand scheme of things to eliminate the freerider problem (Republicans in the early 90s did too). However, I recognize that it is not a power granted to the federal government, but reserved to the states, which is why it was okay for Romney to do it in MA. Do I try to stretch the Commerce Clause to absurdity in an effort to say it's constitutional like Obama does? No, I just admit it's not constitutional. We need an amendment or an agreement between the states to do it with state law.
I'll take a bet you don't like individual ownership of guns, which is the source of your faulty Second Amendment interpretation.
That would be right. There wasn't any debate of whether this was an individual right back then. All believed it was individual natural right dating back through ancient English common law. The only serious contention was between the anti-Federalists, who wanted this restraint on government power codified, and the Federalists, who thought such codification was unnecessary. Remember, the 2nd doesn't grant the right, it acknowledges the right's existence and prevents the government from infringing on it. Big difference.
Our biggest problem comes from those who believe that when they want something contrary to the Constitution, they can just reinterpret and get it. Going through the process of an amendment is just too democratic for them.
Those against the natural right to keep and bear arms know they would never get the support for an amendment, so they try it in the courts. Long ago we thought we needed an amendment to outlaw booze nationwide. These days we just snap our fingers and the magical "interstate commerce" fairy makes a federal marijuana ban constitutional.
Both the house and the senate approved amendments adding the text, "Nothing in this section shall be interpreted as affecting lawful contraception." It's right there in your source, yet you didn't refer to it.
Its text is absolutely authentic and in our own language. The context has a well-documented written history, and the identities, views, intentions and debates of the parties involved in its creation are recorded in writing.
And yet, only 223 years later, the interpretations of that document can vary in the extreme from the original text and clearly documented intent of the writers. For example,
So do you think a religion created 2,000 or 1,400 years ago with various texts, translations and oral histories even has a chance of having a coherent interpretation among the followers?
And even then for some the article recognizes that the violence being driven by the religion itself is questionable.
And they even include Kony, who practices something that pulls elements from many religions into his own unique theology. I know Christians like to use "No True Scotsman" whenever a Christian does something wrong, but this guy's beliefs are so far outside any known Christian sect that it's really wrong to call him Christian.
Anything to flesh out an article that would otherwise be extremely short.
I seem to remember Buddhist monks rioting in Seoul.
But to be fair it was about who gets the power and money to run the temples, not over a religious doctrinal issue.
Total education funding has more than doubled since 1990, and has risen much higher than that by various other metrics. So that can't be the problem.
Time to look back at your administrators, policy makers, teachers and unions.
The magical thinking (I assume you refer to the Christian creation myth taught as science) has only been attempted in a few states, so you can't place the blame there.
Or check out the liberals who have been running/destroying the US education system for the past several decades. Where it used to be hard subjects taught, and failure punished, now it's touchy-feely subjects, various liberal-agenda study programs, teaching tolerance towards all groups (except conservatives, we don't like them), and nobody fails. Seriously, under this liberal scheme, many kids are no longer given failing grades since it may hurt their sense of self-esteem.
Our teacher unions have become very powerful in many places, and they admittedly put the interests of the teachers before the interests of the kids (well, they are a union, the teachers are their members, not the kids, so you can't really blame them). They negotiate extremely good packages for the teachers, better than most people in the country get. They negotiate health insurance packages that are extremely lucrative for the insurance company -- the company they have a financial stake in. They even lobby against incentive pay to reward better teachers, and make it very difficult to fire underperforming and even abusive teachers.
In the recent troubles in Wisconsin, one grade-school teacher protesting about how poorly teachers are compensated was making over $80,000 a year. Everybody wants a piece of the billions poured into education, and everybody has a rich lobby to make it happen. Except for the kids. Screw them.
Since religious texts have about as many interpretations as there are adherents of the religion. But in the end, a religion is defined by what a large number of its adherents do, and what the adherents overall, and their governments, are willing to accept and not punish.
Christian extremist wackos to this extent are few and far between, almost universally condemned by those of their religion, and prosecuted by their governments. The few abortion clinic bombers and doctor killers were promptly brought to justice in this majority-Christian country.
Muslim extremist wackos are sometimes the ones running the governments. While many Muslims may say "this isn't Islam" they don't do much about it. CAIR preaches peaceful Islam on the front, while providing support for the "extremists" on the back. I know there are non-extremist Muslims, and are probably the majority. But I believe most of those either have no idea what's going on (say a rural mom in Malaysia), or tacitly support it in the same way most American Christians did nothing while the Westboro Baptists bashed gays (they only got upset when Westboro started protesting soldier funerals). This isn't just the right-wing Christians either, since we have pictures of Al Gore chumming it up with Fred Phelps himself.
Some have put the percentage of these murderous "extremists" at maybe five percent of Muslims or less. That's still tens of millions of people out there, many supported by the laws of their country or province, who are willing to kill and maim because their sense of religion was offended.
A simple test was brought up in a previous story: piss on a Bible publicly in the US, declare your name, tape it, and post it to the Internet. What will happen? There will be some grumbles, the 700 Club won't be happy, but that's about it.
Now do the same thing, in the US, with a Quran. There will be deadly riots around the world, there will be people out to kill you. The "peaceful" Muslims in the US will at a minimum be calling for your prosecution. However, your government founded on Western culture will not prosecute you, and will prosecute your killer (unless we keep sliding in this liberal PC direction and respect the Religion Of Peace). When you are killed, few Muslims will shed a tear.
Now do it with a Quran in a Muslim-ruled country. If you somehow manage to be taken into police custody before you are murdered on the spot, expect a lengthy jail sentence or execution.
This tells me what I need to know about whether Islam is a peaceful religion overall, and whether the "extremists" are truly the outliers.
As practiced:
Western culture = bad
All other cultures = good
Always "we can learn something from them" and never "they can learn something from us." When it comes to the barbaric practices of other cultures, it's something we should respect, not try to eradicate through cultural imperialism.
Hadith are stories of the sayings and doings of Mohammed and are used to clarify Quran and establish law. There are many different collections of varying trustworthiness, and different sects accept different hadith as authoritative. However, there is a central collection that most Muslims believe is authoritative.
A lot of the nastiness in Islam you see these days can be found in the hadith, not Quran, but it's still part of the religion as believed by the vast majority of Muslims.
Quran-only Muslims are a small minority, and their rejection of Hadith is heavily criticized by mainstream Muslims. So saying "The Quran does not state" really has no weight for the vast majority of Muslims. If it's in Hadith, it's part of the religion.
OS X 10.5 Leopard was delayed for about a year because Apple pulled development resources to work on the iPhone. Microsoft did the same thing delaying VIsta for XP SP2.
As far as copy/paste, you have to set a feature set for a release and go with that, or you will never release. The iPhone's copy/paste was a pretty advanced piece of software in itself. If you want to talk stupid omission, why couldn't we delete a photo from PhotoStream until iOS 5.1?
Keeps developers from getting tunnel vision, giving them a larger view of the whole ecosystem.
I'm guessing the sheer amount of storage involved is hindering things, plus video on there will probably piss off the MPAA, even if it's a video you took of your kid playing at the beach.
More like difficulties on how to arrange actions that affect the public without having to disclose them under FOIA. These bureaucrats long for the day they could impose their will on the people while leaving the people clueless, and they will work any angle on a FOIA law that they can in order to get it.
You may be too innocent. Holocaust revisionists are experts at twisting what could even be reliable sources to fit their arguments. It is very easy to get misled by them. Their individual arguments sound good until you see the whole picture, which is of course a lie.
So, no, I will not accept one word from that site or an argument influenced by that site. I'm not going down that rabbit hole.
Wikipedia entry, anybody could do it. Source is a dead tree book, can't check context or veracity from here.
That statement, in general, is not being contested.
Sorry if I don't follow leads on WWII historical subjects from proponents of Holocaust revisionist sites.
Ah yes, "the world's leading Holocaust denial organization"
Sorry if I don't take them as authoritative. Even if they cite sources, you can be sure they are twisted.
How about a believable source?
Cite source. The military was still planning complete armageddon.
Some facts while you wait:
The firebombing of Tokyo had already caused 100,000 deaths. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were spared this destruction because we wanted untouched cities for the nuclear bombs. Minus the nukes, the cities would have been destroyed by conventional means, likely resulting in the same number of deaths.
Japan was still murdering civilians by the thousands every day in occupied countries. Each day of waiting doomed thousands more to death.
It was expected that the aftermath of total bombing and invasion would be a humanitarian disaster in Japan, with millions dying of starvation and disease.
The US was so sure it needed to invade, that it made half a million Purple Heart medals in advance. We're still using those medals for present-day casualties.
If nothing else, the last one should show you the truth. Our government didn't believe there could be an easy peace, or it wouldn't have ordered these medals.
Israel was not looking to move into Lebanon. The only reason for Israel attacks into Lebanon was because the PLO was attacking Israel from there. After the PLO got kicked out of Jordan for starting a rebellion, they set up their base of operations in Lebanon to attack Israel. Hezbollah was Iran meddling in local affairs, attacking Israel by proxy.
Israel hasn't had much of a problem with the Lebanese themselves, or the government, but the foreign forces, and foreign-sponsored forces, fighting from Lebanon.
Note that where it happens, the government and most of the population fights against it. Compare and contrast with your Arab/Muslim countries, where it is law.
For a tolerance barometer, take the state of Jews in the Middle East and North Africa when under the power of Muslims. Under the Ottoman Caliphate they were treated with general civility, even allowed to immigrate and buy territory (much of it in present-day Palestine, fairly purchased). They lived pretty much unmolested.
Now the only place in the Middle East and North Africa where there is any appreciable population of Jews is in Israel, and current-day Muslims are trying to destroy that. Elsewhere there are fewer than one percent left, driven out by the ever-more tolerant Muslim populations.
Islam needs two things before it can advance: a successful reformation, and to lose state power.
The goal of these Christians as they see it is to prevent the murder of unborn children. The goal of the Muslims is to subjugate the women, protect the honor of the paternalistic family. This isn't even near the subject of hanging a woman for being raped. "Christians are just as bad" is total bullshit, and you know it. They may have been five hundred years ago, but the religion has advanced and lost state power almost everywhere.
Full disclosure: I am an atheist and against these laws.
BTW, as an atheist in a Christian theocracy, I may be not be considered a full citizen. In a Muslim country I'm fair game to kill if I don't convert, I don't even have that ostensible "people of the book" protection.