If Bush were going to send "our" children (are you even married?) to die for his God, we wouldn't be setting up democracies. We'd be setting up generation-long colonies, and give "dollar-equal" space to anyone who wants to set up a church or other religious body.
The simple fact is that Bush sent Americans to kill and do horrible things for his politics, not his religion. There's ample enough room to vilify him based soley on those things, without marginalizing yourself by thinking that he's just doing it because of his religion.
If your particular religion is not his--perhaps you do not believe in God at all, not only has he done something unconstitutional, but he has done something which one of the founding fathers of our nation explicitly state was tyrannical. He is forcing you to make a monetary endorsement of his religious beliefs.
No. He is forcing me to make an involuntary endorsement of his POLITICAL beliefs. No American citizen or foreign national has ever been compelled by the Bush administration to admit to the existance of God, the lordship of Christ, or even the basic moral descency of George W. Bush.
The only two means that Bush's religion could be a bad thing would be if he DID try and compel others to follow--say, for example, by demanding that the terrorists convert--or if he had a secret or post-election religion that pointed him in a manner different from what he was elected to do.
Let me put it another way: are you a Republican? Did you support the war? If not, do you feel that you have been illegally taxed to support causes you didn't support? (If so, do you realize how foolish that is?)
Religion is just fine as a source of policy -- it is no better and no worse, from a democratic point of view, than any other means that the White House has ever used to pull its policy from.
...I give them about 5 minutes post-release before they are hit with the mother of all cease-and-desist notices from Apple Legal.
Look-and-feel in software UI doesn't give a copyrightable protection. Unless Apple has actual, patentable, patented innovations in their interface, they can't require anything but filing the names off.
for layout, there are things you can do with tables that you cannot do well with CSS without resorting to hacks, browser-specific CSS, or even background images (to make things 'look' like columns).
You're right -- it's hard to do bad design with CSS. What's your point?
If you're making an actual table, then go ahead and use a table-tag. I'll presume that you're talking about layout columns, similar to those slashboxes next to the comment you're reading now. And in that case, you still don't have a reason to use tables: five-year old CSS can put out a clean-looking layout just fine with DIV tags.
And if you're talking about the CSS-column attribute like FireFox 1.5 just introduced -- don't do it. It's an ugly, ugly thing that doesn't really do much for you at all. The only time I'd want to use it is in a PRINT css; the rest of the time, I can get by just fine with max-width.
There's another basic tenet of our nation's Constituation falling by the wayside: separation of church and state.
George W. Bush is not a church. He is a man. The channel for a church to influence the state is to influence men before they enter office--which certainly happened to our famously born-again President.
There is NOTHING wrong with George W. Bush using his religion to decide politics. He was upfront about it, he admits it if you ask him, and he did nothing untoward to make the voters -- most of which, btw, are still Christian -- think that he would draw a line between his religion and his job.
Whether you like the scene or not, you have to stand in awe of Joss for having the balls to pull something like that.
No, you don't. It was a stupid, arrogant descion by Mr. Whedon that had no greater effect than to alienate most of his audience. It doesn't cause the audience to believe that all of the rest of the characters might die. It doesn't do anything to give heighted meaning to anything that happens in the rest of the film. And it doesn't allow for any character development in the others whatsoever.
He dropped the ball, just like a news anchor who suddenly starts telling dirty jokes.
* - Our Senators & Representatives are bought off / unreachable.
Run against them, or support someone to run against them.
* - Our voting machines are rigged and we're unable to vote them out of office.
File suit in federal district court. Election fraud causing more than the margin of error of a difference is provable in court, and worst comes to worst there's always the option of a recall election.
* - While being monitored, we have no means of collaboration and organization to form a revolution.
Your revolution should START with the collaboration and organization. Our system of government was designed to have bi-annual non-violent revolutions. The Republicans did it, the Civil Rights movement did it, the pro-alcohol lobby did it, and the prohibition movement did it.
* - Were a revolution organized, we have no weapons of any signifigance to mount an effective revolution.
With a just cause and a convincing argument of actual fraud on the part of the elected government, you can expect the United States military to fracture and bring the weapons for you. The oath is "defend the consitution", not "defend the President."
In the example cited, the Arawaks of the Caribbean, they did not wage war.
No, the Arawaks did not seek war. There's an important difference. You imply that they were innocent creatures who knew nothing of warfare--which is patently false, as they certainly did know of warfare and did, in fact, engage in defensive fighting against those who threatened them.
We also do not have any unbiased records of what they were like in their formative ages; what seperated them from their cannibalistic neighbors (aside from Columbus's application of the friendly nativers as "Arawak", that is) may have been a violent revolt against a previously tyrannical civilization, or a brutal elimination of a tribe followed by a somber realization of their crime.
If you tried some, you'd discover that hunter-gatherers spent (and spend) far less time focused on getting food than us "civilized" people do working at our jobs.
1: What makes you think that a tribe of hunter-gatherers is in any way "uncivilized?" They have language, history, mythology, and persistent social structures.
2: Go out in the wilderness and see how quickly you can stop worrying about where your next meal comes from. When the only food you get comes from your hands, you aren't going to stop in any sudden time. And if you have someone else's hands to help you out, odds are that you've got the very basic elements of a civilization.
What happens when the power goes out for Vonage customers? I read the description, but didn't see anything about this.
Depends on whether or not the cable modem and the Vonage-box both have battery backups.
Time Warner Cable's digital phone comes with a right-to-cable box, that has a built-in battery backup. I had a circuit trip in my computer room that I didn't notice for a good day of phone calls, until I finally tried to turn on my computer.
The fundamnetal difference between civilized and uncivilized man is that we have the time to worry about killing each other. Uncivilized man by and large had to spend all of their time on eating, with a little left over for reproduction, and had no time to oppose the truly evil or wicked members of our species.
Being able to end another's life brings a desire for the Other to communicate with you, so as to keep you from ending his life. And a nuclear weapon places almost the only way of stopping the ending as being civilized discussion -- witness how the USA and the USSR went to great lengths to never engage each other in a direct war.
Of course, let's not pretend that all civlization is "good".
But by and large HFCS doesn't cause weight gain, and claims to the contrary aren't borne about by statistics.
Please let me know about such a study, preferrably not funded by groups with pro-corn interests.
Show me a "study" on the topic at all. Any one. The "HFCS is like tobacco" crowd alludes to studies, but doesn't actually cite any.
The only really alarming thing is that HFCS-55, the kind put in soft drinks to replace sugar, has 10% more fructose than an equal sweetness of sucrose. Which could be slightly bad, given that fructose can only be digested by the liver--but unless we start living on the stuff, most of our claories aren't going to come from the sugar anyway, and we're unliketly to wind up like rats in the study Ms. Forristal alludes to..
I'd wager that, if we actually looked at the studies that such "planetary health" advocates as Newstarget allude to, we'd find a general argument against soft drinks at all, be they sweetened with sugar or HFCS.
FWIW, the Wikipedia article on HFCS strikes a fair blance on the topic, and concludes as follows (emphasis added):
Some nutritionists and natural food advocates believe that consumption of high fructose corn syrup should be avoided due to its possible links with obesity and diabetes. Also cited as reasons to avoid HFCS are that it is highly refined, that it might be produced from genetically modified corn, that various molds found on corn might leave harmful byproducts in the final product, or that corn products in general should be avoided. [2], [3] Other nutritionists say that HFCS is no more or less harmful than other forms of sugar and that all sugars should be consumed sparingly. It may be the case that confusion has arisen between the effects of consuming pure fructose as compared to pure glucose, versus the effects of consuming mixtures of the two sugars from different sources.
I'd love a chance to purview any actual study on the effects of HFCS vs. table sugar (or even honey), but since no one seems able to even provide the name or journal in which a study appeared, I'm left to presume that there simply hasn't been any with a solid conclusion one way or another.
I wonder if most Americans would be willing to pay 3% more on their manufactured food products if it would have a significant chance of helping them lose weight.
Yes, they would. But by and large HFCS doesn't cause weight gain, and claims to the contrary aren't borne about by statistics.
I'd be interested in a counter-claim link, if you have one. My current opinion is formed because the argument by the corn-growers is a saner one than that born about by the anti-HFCS crowd, who never really address why they think HFCS is so much worse than just plain table sugar, which is itself pretty bad.
I learned in biochemistry that fructose is biochemically "sweeter" than sucrose. I don't know WHY; but it technically is.
Well, yes. But there's frutcose in sucrose, and HFCS-55 is designed to be as-sweet as sucrose.
While I haven't taken biochemistry, my understanding suggests that frutcose either has a closer moleclear match to our "sweet" sense, or frutcose just has more angles at which it matches. Well, that and in a study of human beings, more folk thought that frutctose was sweeter than sucrose than vice versa.
1: oh, yes, Splenda's great, once you get accustomed to the aftertaste and work out the proportions. (The aftertaste literally vanishes with the right proportion and acclimation.)
2: So, where's YOUR letter to Coca-cola and your local bottling plant to request (and offer to buy) real-sugar coca-cola?
3: I'm still looking for a source of about a quart of HFCS, so I can try it at home in things I would use table sugar for--like sweeting my coffee.
I still ate cookies and sweets and stuff, just those brands without HFCS, and I lost 15 pounds in 2-3 months without even meaning to, and without even trying.
Did you actually track your caloric intake, or just avoid HFCS products? You'd be surprised how much you can lose if you just always check the ingredients that go into what you eat and discard a common ingredient -- but this is due to a reduced caloric intake, most of the time.
But anyway, Coca-Cola's response was that individual bottling factories have the choice which sweetener to use and that I should contact them. Of course these factories choose to cut costs by using the low-price HFCS.
So, DID you contact the individual bottling company near you? There's probably a price where you could buy no-HFCS coca-cola right from them, although you might need to order an unusually large ammount at a time.
And remember two reasons HFCS is so cheap is because of government subsidies of corn farmers, and the embargo against Cuba (and it's huge sugar export economy).
Don't forget that HFCS is a liquid at room temperature, which gives a cost savings all of its own on top of the corn subsidy.
I really wish big American soda manufacturers would use sugar again. Sugar-based sodas taste so much better.
No, not really.
OTOH, at least you're not bitching about the supposed health benefits of granulated sugar against HFCS...
While on the same hand--when was the last time you sent coke a letter asking them to make real-sugar based soda year round? "Kosher Coke" apparantly has real sugar, and so you should buy as much of it as you can use before it goes bad every time you can. Eventually, Coca-cola will get the message, and sell you the higher-priced soda you crave.
Not in Aeon Flux, they aren't. The scientists explicity created the cloning process to persist all the information it could, likely including as much of the former person (mitochondira, possibly brain chemistry) as they could.
Remember: there were no more human eggs. What we currently think of cloning, re-coding the DNA inside an egg, wouldn't be possible. So, some new form of cloning was required.
1: Don't try debating when someone calls you on a simple rule of argument. It makes you look, well, stupid.
2: You'll use silver to "finace" it? Does the other party accept real silver and gold in exchange, or do you have to convert it to actual money to complete the purchase? Do you track your funds in dollar-value, or weight of gold and silver?
3: I took a look at the book you referenced, just to gauge the length (hint: anything more than 1000 words on the net isn't a "short read."). I paid special attention to the argument against fiat currency, and quite simply the attribution of the United States' switching the US dollar to a by-law backing instead of a by-gold backing as a "power grab" screamed of quackery. (There are more signs beyond that, of course)
Beyond mere quackery, the "Mises Institute" also has some simply bad science. The thirteen original states originally printed their own paper money during the Revolution, not the first depression (in fact, stabilizing the money supply was one of the few accomplishments of the pre-Constitution federal government). Various states throughout the world have always coined money, and the value of coined money, even when coined in a precious metal, has been considered seperately from the mere weight of the money.
And, of course, in the unlikely event that the United States were to suddenly lose its prestige, the fiat money of other banks, such as the Euro or the Yen or the Yuan, would more than pick up the slack.
Read Murray Rothbard's "What has government done to our money?" for a great run down on how money was once wealth and is now worthless.
1: Arguing by reference is even worse than arguing by authority. If you want to make a point, make the damn point and don't try and reference a book you read to back it up.
2: I use money to feed myself and my wife, I trade it for goods and servies, and I perform certain actions expressly because I am given money in return. In contrast, the only articles of gold or silver I own have no chance of ever being sold for more than they were bought for, and even had I pounds of gold or silver I would be unable to utilize them in my daily commerce.
To say it bluntly: money is the ONLY indirect and impersonal manner of trade. If I want something, I either need to use money or attempt to trade directly, like I did when dividing up the chores as a child.
give me one verifiable fact, and i'll never argue with anyone again
You've taken one too many philosiphy class, and one t0o few English classes.
"Pure water at 1 atmosphere boils at 0 degrees celsius" is one verifiable fact. "Water's boiling point changes with changes in its purity or the abundant atmopshereic pressure" is another.
If your definition of "fact" doesn't include statements like these, then you don't know what a fact is, and you're probably talking about "truths".
Not that the Moslems acted any better; of course they didn't. But that sure doesn't excuse the Crusades.
Oh, of course it doesn't. But the inverse applies, and when defending the actual existance of just causes for a war (which always has both just and unjust causes), one doesn't need to also argue the extantly discussed unjust causes.
I know, they're godly people who only want to do good *ahem, crusades, ahem*
You're right. There was absolutely nothing good about going to war because your pilgrims were being slaughtered. It was an evil, tryannical power-grab that had no justification whatsoever, of any kind. The European Christians should have just said "oh, we can't send pilgrims to the Holy Land that you live in? Well, ok then."
(To say nothing, of course, of the pre-Crusade Muslim invasion of Europe by way of Spain.)
Slashdot Mirror
Your opinion is based on falseshoods.
If Bush were going to send "our" children (are you even married?) to die for his God, we wouldn't be setting up democracies. We'd be setting up generation-long colonies, and give "dollar-equal" space to anyone who wants to set up a church or other religious body.
Go read Article 7 of the Provisional Iraqi Constitution. No Christian Crusade would let that be set up.
The simple fact is that Bush sent Americans to kill and do horrible things for his politics, not his religion. There's ample enough room to vilify him based soley on those things, without marginalizing yourself by thinking that he's just doing it because of his religion.
If your particular religion is not his--perhaps you do not believe in God at all, not only has he done something unconstitutional, but he has done something which one of the founding fathers of our nation explicitly state was tyrannical. He is forcing you to make a monetary endorsement of his religious beliefs.
No. He is forcing me to make an involuntary endorsement of his POLITICAL beliefs. No American citizen or foreign national has ever been compelled by the Bush administration to admit to the existance of God, the lordship of Christ, or even the basic moral descency of George W. Bush.
The only two means that Bush's religion could be a bad thing would be if he DID try and compel others to follow--say, for example, by demanding that the terrorists convert--or if he had a secret or post-election religion that pointed him in a manner different from what he was elected to do.
Let me put it another way: are you a Republican? Did you support the war? If not, do you feel that you have been illegally taxed to support causes you didn't support? (If so, do you realize how foolish that is?)
Religion is just fine as a source of policy -- it is no better and no worse, from a democratic point of view, than any other means that the White House has ever used to pull its policy from.
...I give them about 5 minutes post-release before they are hit with the mother of all cease-and-desist notices from Apple Legal.
Look-and-feel in software UI doesn't give a copyrightable protection. Unless Apple has actual, patentable, patented innovations in their interface, they can't require anything but filing the names off.
for layout, there are things you can do with tables that you cannot do well with CSS without resorting to hacks, browser-specific CSS, or even background images (to make things 'look' like columns).
You're right -- it's hard to do bad design with CSS. What's your point?
If you're making an actual table, then go ahead and use a table-tag. I'll presume that you're talking about layout columns, similar to those slashboxes next to the comment you're reading now. And in that case, you still don't have a reason to use tables: five-year old CSS can put out a clean-looking layout just fine with DIV tags.
And if you're talking about the CSS-column attribute like FireFox 1.5 just introduced -- don't do it. It's an ugly, ugly thing that doesn't really do much for you at all. The only time I'd want to use it is in a PRINT css; the rest of the time, I can get by just fine with max-width.
There's another basic tenet of our nation's Constituation falling by the wayside: separation of church and state.
George W. Bush is not a church. He is a man. The channel for a church to influence the state is to influence men before they enter office--which certainly happened to our famously born-again President.
There is NOTHING wrong with George W. Bush using his religion to decide politics. He was upfront about it, he admits it if you ask him, and he did nothing untoward to make the voters -- most of which, btw, are still Christian -- think that he would draw a line between his religion and his job.
Whether you like the scene or not, you have to stand in awe of Joss for having the balls to pull something like that.
No, you don't. It was a stupid, arrogant descion by Mr. Whedon that had no greater effect than to alienate most of his audience. It doesn't cause the audience to believe that all of the rest of the characters might die. It doesn't do anything to give heighted meaning to anything that happens in the rest of the film. And it doesn't allow for any character development in the others whatsoever.
He dropped the ball, just like a news anchor who suddenly starts telling dirty jokes.
* - Our Senators & Representatives are bought off / unreachable.
Run against them, or support someone to run against them.
* - Our voting machines are rigged and we're unable to vote them out of office.
File suit in federal district court. Election fraud causing more than the margin of error of a difference is provable in court, and worst comes to worst there's always the option of a recall election.
* - While being monitored, we have no means of collaboration and organization to form a revolution.
Your revolution should START with the collaboration and organization. Our system of government was designed to have bi-annual non-violent revolutions. The Republicans did it, the Civil Rights movement did it, the pro-alcohol lobby did it, and the prohibition movement did it.
* - Were a revolution organized, we have no weapons of any signifigance to mount an effective revolution.
With a just cause and a convincing argument of actual fraud on the part of the elected government, you can expect the United States military to fracture and bring the weapons for you. The oath is "defend the consitution", not "defend the President."
In the example cited, the Arawaks of the Caribbean, they did not wage war.
No, the Arawaks did not seek war. There's an important difference. You imply that they were innocent creatures who knew nothing of warfare--which is patently false, as they certainly did know of warfare and did, in fact, engage in defensive fighting against those who threatened them.
We also do not have any unbiased records of what they were like in their formative ages; what seperated them from their cannibalistic neighbors (aside from Columbus's application of the friendly nativers as "Arawak", that is) may have been a violent revolt against a previously tyrannical civilization, or a brutal elimination of a tribe followed by a somber realization of their crime.
If you tried some, you'd discover that hunter-gatherers spent (and spend) far less time focused on getting food than us "civilized" people do working at our jobs.
1: What makes you think that a tribe of hunter-gatherers is in any way "uncivilized?" They have language, history, mythology, and persistent social structures.
2: Go out in the wilderness and see how quickly you can stop worrying about where your next meal comes from. When the only food you get comes from your hands, you aren't going to stop in any sudden time. And if you have someone else's hands to help you out, odds are that you've got the very basic elements of a civilization.
What happens when the power goes out for Vonage customers? I read the description, but didn't see anything about this.
Depends on whether or not the cable modem and the Vonage-box both have battery backups.
Time Warner Cable's digital phone comes with a right-to-cable box, that has a built-in battery backup. I had a circuit trip in my computer room that I didn't notice for a good day of phone calls, until I finally tried to turn on my computer.
Hallmark of civilization, right there.
Well, yes, actually.
The fundamnetal difference between civilized and uncivilized man is that we have the time to worry about killing each other. Uncivilized man by and large had to spend all of their time on eating, with a little left over for reproduction, and had no time to oppose the truly evil or wicked members of our species.
Being able to end another's life brings a desire for the Other to communicate with you, so as to keep you from ending his life. And a nuclear weapon places almost the only way of stopping the ending as being civilized discussion -- witness how the USA and the USSR went to great lengths to never engage each other in a direct war.
Of course, let's not pretend that all civlization is "good".
Please let me know about such a study, preferrably not funded by groups with pro-corn interests.
Show me a "study" on the topic at all. Any one. The "HFCS is like tobacco" crowd alludes to studies, but doesn't actually cite any.
The only really alarming thing is that HFCS-55, the kind put in soft drinks to replace sugar, has 10% more fructose than an equal sweetness of sucrose. Which could be slightly bad, given that fructose can only be digested by the liver--but unless we start living on the stuff, most of our claories aren't going to come from the sugar anyway, and we're unliketly to wind up like rats in the study Ms. Forristal alludes to..
I'd wager that, if we actually looked at the studies that such "planetary health" advocates as Newstarget allude to, we'd find a general argument against soft drinks at all, be they sweetened with sugar or HFCS.
FWIW, the Wikipedia article on HFCS strikes a fair blance on the topic, and concludes as follows (emphasis added):
I'd love a chance to purview any actual study on the effects of HFCS vs. table sugar (or even honey), but since no one seems able to even provide the name or journal in which a study appeared, I'm left to presume that there simply hasn't been any with a solid conclusion one way or another.
I wonder if most Americans would be willing to pay 3% more on their manufactured food products if it would have a significant chance of helping them lose weight.
Yes, they would. But by and large HFCS doesn't cause weight gain, and claims to the contrary aren't borne about by statistics.
I'd be interested in a counter-claim link, if you have one. My current opinion is formed because the argument by the corn-growers is a saner one than that born about by the anti-HFCS crowd, who never really address why they think HFCS is so much worse than just plain table sugar, which is itself pretty bad.
(Got a cup of coffee with Splenda in hand, btw.)
I learned in biochemistry that fructose is biochemically "sweeter" than sucrose. I don't know WHY; but it technically is.
Well, yes. But there's frutcose in sucrose, and HFCS-55 is designed to be as-sweet as sucrose.
While I haven't taken biochemistry, my understanding suggests that frutcose either has a closer moleclear match to our "sweet" sense, or frutcose just has more angles at which it matches. Well, that and in a study of human beings, more folk thought that frutctose was sweeter than sucrose than vice versa.
1: oh, yes, Splenda's great, once you get accustomed to the aftertaste and work out the proportions. (The aftertaste literally vanishes with the right proportion and acclimation.)
2: So, where's YOUR letter to Coca-cola and your local bottling plant to request (and offer to buy) real-sugar coca-cola?
3: I'm still looking for a source of about a quart of HFCS, so I can try it at home in things I would use table sugar for--like sweeting my coffee.
I still ate cookies and sweets and stuff, just those brands without HFCS, and I lost 15 pounds in 2-3 months without even meaning to, and without even trying.
Did you actually track your caloric intake, or just avoid HFCS products? You'd be surprised how much you can lose if you just always check the ingredients that go into what you eat and discard a common ingredient -- but this is due to a reduced caloric intake, most of the time.
But anyway, Coca-Cola's response was that individual bottling factories have the choice which sweetener to use and that I should contact them. Of course these factories choose to cut costs by using the low-price HFCS.
So, DID you contact the individual bottling company near you? There's probably a price where you could buy no-HFCS coca-cola right from them, although you might need to order an unusually large ammount at a time.
And remember two reasons HFCS is so cheap is because of government subsidies of corn farmers, and the embargo against Cuba (and it's huge sugar export economy).
Don't forget that HFCS is a liquid at room temperature, which gives a cost savings all of its own on top of the corn subsidy.
I really wish big American soda manufacturers would use sugar again. Sugar-based sodas taste so much better.
No, not really.
OTOH, at least you're not bitching about the supposed health benefits of granulated sugar against HFCS...
While on the same hand--when was the last time you sent coke a letter asking them to make real-sugar based soda year round? "Kosher Coke" apparantly has real sugar, and so you should buy as much of it as you can use before it goes bad every time you can. Eventually, Coca-cola will get the message, and sell you the higher-priced soda you crave.
A clone is an individual distinct from its donor.
Not in Aeon Flux, they aren't. The scientists explicity created the cloning process to persist all the information it could, likely including as much of the former person (mitochondira, possibly brain chemistry) as they could.
Remember: there were no more human eggs. What we currently think of cloning, re-coding the DNA inside an egg, wouldn't be possible. So, some new form of cloning was required.
eventually people will begin to ask "what is NASA needed for? Can't we just have this company do it?
When folk ask that, the answer will be "research and exploration, like they've always been good at."
1: Don't try debating when someone calls you on a simple rule of argument. It makes you look, well, stupid.
2: You'll use silver to "finace" it? Does the other party accept real silver and gold in exchange, or do you have to convert it to actual money to complete the purchase? Do you track your funds in dollar-value, or weight of gold and silver?
3: I took a look at the book you referenced, just to gauge the length (hint: anything more than 1000 words on the net isn't a "short read."). I paid special attention to the argument against fiat currency, and quite simply the attribution of the United States' switching the US dollar to a by-law backing instead of a by-gold backing as a "power grab" screamed of quackery. (There are more signs beyond that, of course)
Beyond mere quackery, the "Mises Institute" also has some simply bad science. The thirteen original states originally printed their own paper money during the Revolution, not the first depression (in fact, stabilizing the money supply was one of the few accomplishments of the pre-Constitution federal government). Various states throughout the world have always coined money, and the value of coined money, even when coined in a precious metal, has been considered seperately from the mere weight of the money.
And, of course, in the unlikely event that the United States were to suddenly lose its prestige, the fiat money of other banks, such as the Euro or the Yen or the Yuan, would more than pick up the slack.
Read Murray Rothbard's "What has government done to our money?" for a great run down on how money was once wealth and is now worthless.
1: Arguing by reference is even worse than arguing by authority. If you want to make a point, make the damn point and don't try and reference a book you read to back it up.
2: I use money to feed myself and my wife, I trade it for goods and servies, and I perform certain actions expressly because I am given money in return. In contrast, the only articles of gold or silver I own have no chance of ever being sold for more than they were bought for, and even had I pounds of gold or silver I would be unable to utilize them in my daily commerce.
To say it bluntly: money is the ONLY indirect and impersonal manner of trade. If I want something, I either need to use money or attempt to trade directly, like I did when dividing up the chores as a child.
give me one verifiable fact, and i'll never argue with anyone again
You've taken one too many philosiphy class, and one t0o few English classes.
"Pure water at 1 atmosphere boils at 0 degrees celsius" is one verifiable fact. "Water's boiling point changes with changes in its purity or the abundant atmopshereic pressure" is another.
If your definition of "fact" doesn't include statements like these, then you don't know what a fact is, and you're probably talking about "truths".
A "Psion" pimping EnWorld on /. --
You wouldn't happen to be Psion, would you?
Not that the Moslems acted any better; of course they didn't. But that sure doesn't excuse the Crusades.
Oh, of course it doesn't. But the inverse applies, and when defending the actual existance of just causes for a war (which always has both just and unjust causes), one doesn't need to also argue the extantly discussed unjust causes.
I know, they're godly people who only want to do good *ahem, crusades, ahem*
You're right. There was absolutely nothing good about going to war because your pilgrims were being slaughtered. It was an evil, tryannical power-grab that had no justification whatsoever, of any kind. The European Christians should have just said "oh, we can't send pilgrims to the Holy Land that you live in? Well, ok then."
(To say nothing, of course, of the pre-Crusade Muslim invasion of Europe by way of Spain.)