Look at America! Are people are some of the least education in the modern world. People laugh at how simple our education is. How is that possible if we have the largest free library system in the world? Because we don't care to learn.
I beg to differ. While there are certainly terrible aspects to the American education system, we also have the BEST in the world. Why do you think people from all around the world come here to study? While in lower levels, there is no doubting that many are left behind, and many ARE ignorant, we also produce the absolute best in education.
See recent efforts by for instance Japanese to kick start their own education systems with American techniques. I really take issue with your statements again.
I see you're neither a linguist or historian. I'm both.
An "inefficient" "alphabet" can not stunt a society's growth. This cast is most easily proven by China's current development. They are using Chinese ideograms, are developing rapidly, are developing cutting edge ideas, and have good literacy rates.
Sorry, you may know China, but you clearly shouldn't be making blanket statements like this without broadening your knowledge.
Case in point, take Ottoman Turkey. Ottoman turkish (and the other variants, Chaghatai, etc) had been written in slightly modified Arabic script for about 800-900 years around 1900 (there had been a so called "Runic" Uyghur script before that point). Literacy was terribly low in Ottoman Turkey, and the alphabet did a HORRIBLE job of fitting the language, and was hard to learn (literacy rates in almost EVERY country today that uses the Arabic script are far below standard). When in the 1920's Mustafa Kemal Ataturk switched the country's alphabet (well it wasn't just him, but he was the prime reshaper of Turkey) literacy rates almost IMMEDIATELY sky rocketed. The time needed to become literate with a Latin alphabet versus an Arabic one is much less. Today Turkish literacy is in the high 80%'s -- not great, but better than most.
So I ABSOLUTELY must disagree with you that some alphabets can't hinder progress. I'm also TOTALLY disregarding the case of reading Arabic on a computer terminal which almost always is butt ugly and very hard to read.
I forget the name of the theory, but there's a theory that one of the reasons that Indo-Europeans languages did so very well (they spread from Portugal to India! Compared to say the Sino languages which are spoken by many only because of the fact that their area is massively populated--they didn't really spread) was because they were good at passing on information without becoming garbled. Anyway, don't know if I buy that, but it's undoubted that some languages spread more than others, and I simply can't agree that some languages aren't BETTER than others.
Sorry, check your timeline. America was NOT in control of those parts of the city. In case you didn't realize it, Baghdad is a BIG city.. They could have been warned all you want, but that doesn't change the fact that they didn't have access to those parts of the city.
I think the issue is that no one knew how fast and how easily Baghdad would fall. thanks to the hysterics of both the American media and Arab indepedent press such as al-Jazeera (check Arab popular reaction--SHOCK that Baghdad fell so fast, and claims that there was some sort of agreement made btw Russia and saddam or US and Saddam, etc). At the time the lotting occurred NONE of the museums or archives that were looted were under US control. What kind of risk of US lives should America take when civil order decayed in Baghdad faster than could have been imagined?
I think it's EVERY bit as much a tragedy as you do. So fucking disgusting that it makes me absolutely sick, but I just don't think you can lay the blame on America the way you do.
And sorry, but just what kind of smoking gun did you think would be in the archive?
Subsidies in India are huge. Farmers for instance can get electricity for practically free (and many rich Delhi people buy homes outside of the city to declare themselves farmers to get cheap electricity). Transportation (good train systems, and cheap buses everywhere) is also very heavily subsidized.
That's illogical. It's perfectly allowed (and MORAL in my book) to make a profit on something you sell. Do you really think the box, CD, and manual physically cost $60 for a computer game? So they must be fixing the price, right?
CD is a greater value than a tape. By your logic when they sell a $40 computer game, and a $70 collector's addition that maybe has an extra cd with bonus material or something, unless the bonus material is physically worth $30, they're price fixing.
And incidentally, you saw "everything else must cost $15.80. right." Is that a rhetorical question ? Because if it is, you're clearly wrong. nobody exists to sell things to you at the price YOU think that YOU should get. they sell things to make money.
Unless I misunderstand your argument, I just don't understand your point at all.
How does it remind you of that? I for one have yet to see anyone call them freedom fries, and the government of America would NEVER pass a law forcing people to do so.
THanks for the links. Very informative. In their it says that the US military has never degraded civilian service, neither during Gulf War I or during Kosovo. Though there are contigency plans to limit affectiveness for a specific area (from one of the links). Sounds good to me. But the important part is that it's never been done.
The interference sounds like a very serious issue as well.
Also, the US didn't annoucne anything--we still have no idea if the signals will be degraded or not. This all comes on the speculation of a German autoclub--no doubt the first group of people informed of US military policy.
The Republican party isn't a Christian party. Many Republicans are of certain christian beliefs, but that says nothing for the party as a whole. I can tell you for one thing, I don't think a single person at my church (myself excluded) votes republican. Since they're all democrats, does that make the democrat party a christian party?
I was looking for evidence about that quote NOT actually being a Ben Franklin quote and couldn't find any sites (quick search). Do you happen to have any? It'd be really nice to be able to point out contextual errors when people start spouting off with that quote.
I personally don't like the quote because it's so ambiguous than any zealot can use it to back up his point of view. What exactly IS an 'essential liberty'? I'm relatively certain that the founding father's had a very different idea of that than we do today.
You are correct in saying the American Jewry today (and historically) has supported Israel. Absolutely. America has the majority of the Jews NOT in Israel--why? You may remember a little thing called WW2 that left most of the European jews with a bitter taste in their mouths. Not to mention the recent upsurges in anti-semitic racism in France, Germany, Russia, etc (and a history of death camps, pogroms and ghetto-ization). You are also correct in saying that today America gives a large amount of money to Israel.
I don't agree with our strategy but it can't be denied that Israel is the ONLY middle eastern democracy (I don't count Turkey as middle eastern, and Iran is not a democracy) and an ally. Why SHOULDN'T we help a democratic nation surrounded by monarchs and military dictators? There is of course the issue of the Israeli military use, which is why I'm in favor of private capital divestment from any Israeli military related industry.
And you're dead wrong on the early days of Israel--American had amazingly little to do with the creation of Israel. It's a really fascinating history, you might want to read some history of just the rough decade before independence.
On the topic of Zionism, I don't approve of HOW Israel was created, but I can certaintly understand the sentiment. Picture yourself as a jews whose ancestors have been persecuted everywhere they ever lived--kicked out of Israel by the Romans, dominated by Islam for a time (though a relatively peaceful one, especially compared with the experience in Europe where anti-semitism is STILL only too common), and if they happened to be in Europe--pogroms, laws against land ownership etc, stories of eating christian children, CONSTANT anti-semitism and racial violence. WW2 proved utterly that Jews weren't safe in Europe. Now, if it were up to me I would have carved out a nice chunk of Bavaria to give to the Jews--let the Germans suffer, not the Palestinians.
Though it IS interesting to note the population growth in modern day Israel--I've seen numbers stating that roughly 100 years before partition the city of Jerusalem was 2/3 Jewish, with then a large christian minority, and smaller numbers of Muslims. Mark Twain when he visited the holy land described the place as practically empty--uninhabited! As Zionism started, large numbers of rich jews came to the area, started draining swamps, creating industry etc, and HUGE numbers of Arabs came to the area too.
Actually, if anyone has been made to suffer because of the creation of Israel its been the indigenous Christian populations in the Middle East--their populations have been in a serious state of major decline ever since.
Ok, so that was longer than I expected, but I'd be interested in your response Mr Partridge.
No that's not correct either. Arabia being a region, and Arab being SOMEWHAT a race. For example there are Arabs living in Morocco, Sudan, Iran, etc, none of these are Arabia.
I'm not quite sure the embassy attacks, 9/11, Bali, the Cole, etc count as paranoid delusions. Whether this is the right way to combat that is another question...
Not to be a nitpick, but I try to correct this whenever I see it--it's an "Arab descent." Arabic only means the language and has no relation to being an Arab (as MANY non-Arabs speak Arabic as their first language).
Unlike the pro-cloning zealots who would rather play with cloning regardless of the consquences to the cloned?
The truth of the matter is we don't KNOW all the consequences of cloning. There's no reason you have to take such a politicized stand until we do know a bit more.
I just thought of something reading this article. Most people (including myself) seem to have a lot of problems with EULAs. Primarily because they limit what you can do with your software/hardware whatever.
But isn't the GPL more or less the same thing? It's trying to control what you do with something after it is in your possession?
Not trying to troll, trying to come up with the distinction.
Slashdot Mirror
Look at America! Are people are some of the least education in the modern world. People laugh at how simple our education is. How is that possible if we have the largest free library system in the world? Because we don't care to learn.
I beg to differ. While there are certainly terrible aspects to the American education system, we also have the BEST in the world. Why do you think people from all around the world come here to study? While in lower levels, there is no doubting that many are left behind, and many ARE ignorant, we also produce the absolute best in education.
See recent efforts by for instance Japanese to kick start their own education systems with American techniques. I really take issue with your statements again.
I see you're neither a linguist or historian. I'm both.
An "inefficient" "alphabet" can not stunt a society's growth. This cast is most easily proven by China's current development. They are using Chinese ideograms, are developing rapidly, are developing cutting edge ideas, and have good literacy rates.
Sorry, you may know China, but you clearly shouldn't be making blanket statements like this without broadening your knowledge.
Case in point, take Ottoman Turkey. Ottoman turkish (and the other variants, Chaghatai, etc) had been written in slightly modified Arabic script for about 800-900 years around 1900 (there had been a so called "Runic" Uyghur script before that point). Literacy was terribly low in Ottoman Turkey, and the alphabet did a HORRIBLE job of fitting the language, and was hard to learn (literacy rates in almost EVERY country today that uses the Arabic script are far below standard). When in the 1920's Mustafa Kemal Ataturk switched the country's alphabet (well it wasn't just him, but he was the prime reshaper of Turkey) literacy rates almost IMMEDIATELY sky rocketed. The time needed to become literate with a Latin alphabet versus an Arabic one is much less. Today Turkish literacy is in the high 80%'s -- not great, but better than most.
So I ABSOLUTELY must disagree with you that some alphabets can't hinder progress. I'm also TOTALLY disregarding the case of reading Arabic on a computer terminal which almost always is butt ugly and very hard to read.
I forget the name of the theory, but there's a theory that one of the reasons that Indo-Europeans languages did so very well (they spread from Portugal to India! Compared to say the Sino languages which are spoken by many only because of the fact that their area is massively populated--they didn't really spread) was because they were good at passing on information without becoming garbled. Anyway, don't know if I buy that, but it's undoubted that some languages spread more than others, and I simply can't agree that some languages aren't BETTER than others.
The poster couldn't be more right!
And once again, OpenBSD is taking the innovative lead--pf now has better bilingual support than any other packet filtering software out there!
Sorry, check your timeline. America was NOT in control of those parts of the city. In case you didn't realize it, Baghdad is a BIG city.. They could have been warned all you want, but that doesn't change the fact that they didn't have access to those parts of the city.
I think the issue is that no one knew how fast and how easily Baghdad would fall. thanks to the hysterics of both the American media and Arab indepedent press such as al-Jazeera (check Arab popular reaction--SHOCK that Baghdad fell so fast, and claims that there was some sort of agreement made btw Russia and saddam or US and Saddam, etc). At the time the lotting occurred NONE of the museums or archives that were looted were under US control. What kind of risk of US lives should America take when civil order decayed in Baghdad faster than could have been imagined?
I think it's EVERY bit as much a tragedy as you do. So fucking disgusting that it makes me absolutely sick, but I just don't think you can lay the blame on America the way you do.
And sorry, but just what kind of smoking gun did you think would be in the archive?
I'm sure a huge portion!
Subsidies in India are huge. Farmers for instance can get electricity for practically free (and many rich Delhi people buy homes outside of the city to declare themselves farmers to get cheap electricity). Transportation (good train systems, and cheap buses everywhere) is also very heavily subsidized.
That's illogical. It's perfectly allowed (and MORAL in my book) to make a profit on something you sell. Do you really think the box, CD, and manual physically cost $60 for a computer game? So they must be fixing the price, right?
CD is a greater value than a tape. By your logic when they sell a $40 computer game, and a $70 collector's addition that maybe has an extra cd with bonus material or something, unless the bonus material is physically worth $30, they're price fixing.
And incidentally, you saw "everything else must cost $15.80. right." Is that a rhetorical question ? Because if it is, you're clearly wrong. nobody exists to sell things to you at the price YOU think that YOU should get. they sell things to make money.
Unless I misunderstand your argument, I just don't understand your point at all.
How does it remind you of that? I for one have yet to see anyone call them freedom fries, and the government of America would NEVER pass a law forcing people to do so.
THanks for the links. Very informative. In their it says that the US military has never degraded civilian service, neither during Gulf War I or during Kosovo. Though there are contigency plans to limit affectiveness for a specific area (from one of the links). Sounds good to me. But the important part is that it's never been done.
The interference sounds like a very serious issue as well.
Also, the US didn't annoucne anything--we still have no idea if the signals will be degraded or not. This all comes on the speculation of a German autoclub--no doubt the first group of people informed of US military policy.
Scott
The Republican party isn't a Christian party. Many Republicans are of certain christian beliefs, but that says nothing for the party as a whole. I can tell you for one thing, I don't think a single person at my church (myself excluded) votes republican. Since they're all democrats, does that make the democrat party a christian party?
Hi, enjoyed your post.
I was looking for evidence about that quote NOT actually being a Ben Franklin quote and couldn't find any sites (quick search). Do you happen to have any? It'd be really nice to be able to point out contextual errors when people start spouting off with that quote.
I personally don't like the quote because it's so ambiguous than any zealot can use it to back up his point of view. What exactly IS an 'essential liberty'? I'm relatively certain that the founding father's had a very different idea of that than we do today.
Thanks for the very interesting post,
Scott
Radar detectors are only legal in some states--it's in the domain of the state to decide.
Could very well be--the point being made that the poster and kneejerk reactors all assumed that the gov. was specifically requesting pork info.
You are correct in saying the American Jewry today (and historically) has supported Israel. Absolutely. America has the majority of the Jews NOT in Israel--why? You may remember a little thing called WW2 that left most of the European jews with a bitter taste in their mouths. Not to mention the recent upsurges in anti-semitic racism in France, Germany, Russia, etc (and a history of death camps, pogroms and ghetto-ization). You are also correct in saying that today America gives a large amount of money to Israel.
I don't agree with our strategy but it can't be denied that Israel is the ONLY middle eastern democracy (I don't count Turkey as middle eastern, and Iran is not a democracy) and an ally. Why SHOULDN'T we help a democratic nation surrounded by monarchs and military dictators? There is of course the issue of the Israeli military use, which is why I'm in favor of private capital divestment from any Israeli military related industry.
And you're dead wrong on the early days of Israel--American had amazingly little to do with the creation of Israel. It's a really fascinating history, you might want to read some history of just the rough decade before independence.
On the topic of Zionism, I don't approve of HOW Israel was created, but I can certaintly understand the sentiment. Picture yourself as a jews whose ancestors have been persecuted everywhere they ever lived--kicked out of Israel by the Romans, dominated by Islam for a time (though a relatively peaceful one, especially compared with the experience in Europe where anti-semitism is STILL only too common), and if they happened to be in Europe--pogroms, laws against land ownership etc, stories of eating christian children, CONSTANT anti-semitism and racial violence. WW2 proved utterly that Jews weren't safe in Europe. Now, if it were up to me I would have carved out a nice chunk of Bavaria to give to the Jews--let the Germans suffer, not the Palestinians.
Though it IS interesting to note the population growth in modern day Israel--I've seen numbers stating that roughly 100 years before partition the city of Jerusalem was 2/3 Jewish, with then a large christian minority, and smaller numbers of Muslims. Mark Twain when he visited the holy land described the place as practically empty--uninhabited! As Zionism started, large numbers of rich jews came to the area, started draining swamps, creating industry etc, and HUGE numbers of Arabs came to the area too.
Actually, if anyone has been made to suffer because of the creation of Israel its been the indigenous Christian populations in the Middle East--their populations have been in a serious state of major decline ever since.
Ok, so that was longer than I expected, but I'd be interested in your response Mr Partridge.
No emoticon exists to express the rage I feel now! ;)
No that's not correct either. Arabia being a region, and Arab being SOMEWHAT a race. For example there are Arabs living in Morocco, Sudan, Iran, etc, none of these are Arabia.
Thanks for the knee-jerk reaction! The word pork isn't even in the article. Did you even TRY to read the article?
Thanks for the kneejerk reaction! The word pork isn't even in the article. Did you even TRY to read the article?
*bzzzt* Read the article. The word "pork" doesn't even appear.
Just another reason I think all the knee-jerk armchair politicans are a joke...
Never had to fill in a customs form I take it?
:)
And I would also like to think you for your very own knee-jerk reaction--the article didn't even mention the word pork! Thanks for playing
I'm not quite sure the embassy attacks, 9/11, Bali, the Cole, etc count as paranoid delusions. Whether this is the right way to combat that is another question...
Not to be a nitpick, but I try to correct this whenever I see it--it's an "Arab descent." Arabic only means the language and has no relation to being an Arab (as MANY non-Arabs speak Arabic as their first language).
Unlike the pro-cloning zealots who would rather play with cloning regardless of the consquences to the cloned?
The truth of the matter is we don't KNOW all the consequences of cloning. There's no reason you have to take such a politicized stand until we do know a bit more.
Some of them have been on Conan at least once. Really amazing people, can't wait for the show tomorrow~!
I just thought of something reading this article. Most people (including myself) seem to have a lot of problems with EULAs. Primarily because they limit what you can do with your software/hardware whatever.
But isn't the GPL more or less the same thing? It's trying to control what you do with something after it is in your possession?
Not trying to troll, trying to come up with the distinction.