The part that I--and others-- have a problem with is the one sentence that is quoted. "Second, I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life."
Like I said--I don't think this makes her racist, I think it shows how ingrained in her philosophy identity politics is.
The difference between what she said and what Alito said is that she said wise Lainta. Not a wise immigrant. Not a wise person with personal and family experience of the trials of immigrant life, a wise Latina. I _do_ think that's substantively different from what Alito said. For example, Sotomayor's statement is a bit of a slap in the face to Alito! It certainly sounds to me like Sotomayor is saying that Alito's family experiences are somehow less authentic than her own, by virtue of the fact that she is Latina, and he is a white male.
To reiterate, the problem is NOT with the spirit of what she said...it's utterly obvious that a judge's background and experiences will influence their decisions. IMHO extolling the virtues of personal bias in making judicial decisions is not desierable, yet at the same time it's unavoidable to a degree. I have a problem with how she makes this point.
I honestly don't think this whole thing is a big deal. Sotomayor will be confirmed with few difficulties IMHO, and even if the Republicans vote en masse against her (which I don't think they will) they couldn't stop her. I think that much like Alito, she is perfectly well qualified for the Supreme Court as a an average circuit judge. Like Obama against Alito, I oppose Sotomayor not because of her qualifications, or believing that she is racist (or misogynist or anything equally ludicrous such as been slandered against Thomas, Roberts, and others) but because of her viewpoints. The way she marshalls her points in the article I linked to I think is very indicative of her worldview.
So in short, I absolutely do see a substantive difference in her statements and Alito's.
n any event, U.S. intervention into Iraq turned a brutal but relatively stable dictatorship into a failing state fractured along ethnic and religious lines, slipping inevitably into full-scale civil war, and a perfect breeding ground for Islamic terrorists of all flavors.
Saddam under Iraq--and particularly during the decade between the wars--was stable? This must be some hitherto unknown to me definition of the word stable.
Iraq was DESIGNED as a weak state shared between different thnic and religious lines...it's a pattern repeated across Africa and the Middle East by all of the colonial powers. It's why France lumped in large MUslim areas into what was primarily CHristian lebanon before the end of colonialism, thus ensuring that the LEbanese Christians would be forced to rely on French influence to maintain their power. It's also why Kurds/Sunni/Shia segments of Iraq were divided the way they were. THat's one reason Britain protected the creation of a post-colonial Kuwait...check out the deep water ports around the gulf there.
I'm getting offtopic, the point is, if the failure of Iraq is an issue, it was going to be an issue no matter what. I don't believe any of Saddam's sons would have continued his rule succesfully. IRGC and others started building up presence in Iraq over the last two decades. I think you're v ery misplaced if you think AQI -- or whatever the al-Qa'ida affiliates in IRaq are calling themselves today -- are the biggest threat in the area. They just get the name recongition because that's what the media gushes about. Be more afraid of the Qods Force and Iranian influence.
Lastly, I find your analysis somewhat bizarre. You MIGHT have had a point 18 months ago, or more likely 2 years ago about Iraq as a failed state. I think if you examine the picture more closely, things have turned around dramatically in that time period. Additionally, the US Army--and to an increasing degree, the Iraqi national forces have become VERY good at dealing with the insurgencies. The Intel/Army support of the Awakening movements (wikipedia if you're not familiar with) is an excellent example. You'll get no argument out of me that the beginning of the post-invasion occupation was a disaster, but nobody expected things to go down like they did. Since then, particularly in the last 3 years or so, many lessons have been learned, and the "on the ground" picture has completely turned around from your recitation of media reports.
Yeah, it is pretty silly to think we invaded Iraq in 2003 because...... they committed genocide against the Kurds in 1983 which we knew about at the time and kept quiet about because we supported their war with Iran [gwu.edu].... they went to war with Iran in 1980 and used chemical weapons against them, which we later supported and helped Iraq to fund because we wanted Iran contained.... they invaded Kuwait in 1990, initiating the Persian Gulf War.
If you've got issues with the timeline, please read my other post in this thread. The wars were not for entirely discrete reasons. Believe it or not, the past and context DID play a role in decision making.
I mean I can at least see how you could think WMD were a reason to invade... though when they come up with the reason first, and then demand the intelligence community support that reason, you should wonder...
That's a pretty interesting allegation. Where's the proof? I've never seen any.
But to think that one action that already resulted in us going to war, and two other actions which we supported at the time, warrant an invasion twenty years later is just nutty
Like I said in a different post...Gulf war 2 was about Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. Gulf war 3 was about cleaning up OUR mess. This includes our mistakes after gulf war 2 and our mistakes in giving any support to Saddam at any point in time.
It was just one step in cleaning up the post-cold war world.
Sotomayor's or Alito? I quoted a sig. portion of her quote in my previous post, and refered the surrounding context in the link I provided. I DID read that whole quote.
The first gulf war was a very simple affair with representation from almost every single nation on earth--even the virtual non-state Afghanistan sent detachments of mujahideen fighters to Iraq.
Iraq War 1 / the second Gulf War was about Saddam's invasion into Kuwait. Whether he was somewhat justified into invading or not, that's what the issue was.
Iraq War 2 / the third Gulf War was about getting rid of Saddam. Cleaning up the mess we SHOULD have cleaned up after the first war.
I just made a different post about this...Alito's statement and Sotomayor's are completely different.
Alito explained how experience--and yes, FAMILY experience--helped give him empathy into certain cases. Sotomayor said that being Latina makes someone give better answers.
Do you not see a difference there? I see a big one...if Alito had said a wise Italian would come to better decisions, then you're absolutely right I'd have a problem with that...just think how ludicrous that sounds. Insert Latina and it doesn't sound quite so bad...
I think the assertion that every man and woman should have the same opinion as a white guy to be incredibly racist, myself.
You're just totally buying into identity and race politics, and the sad thing is, you don't even realize it.
WTF does it matter if someone is black, white, latina, male, female etc. Alito made a somewhat simliar (though in my view less offensive) statement during his confirmation hearing about his family's immigrant background, and how that gave him empathy in certain kinds of cases. The difference is he didn't say a wise Italian will come to a better answer...he didn't play the race gender political identity game. Sotomayor did, and that's the difference.
You must not get out a lot or read much...it's been all over the news (and I mean that in terms of regardless of whether or not you AGREE with the allegations, the allegations have been EXTREMELY widely reported, blogged, etc about)
So in short, I'm not sure if you're trying to be snide or not, but the allegations go back to a statement she made (linked below, see for greater context):
Justice O'Connor has often been cited as saying that a wise old man and wise old woman will reach the same conclusion in deciding cases. I am not so sure Justice O'Connor is the author of that line since Professor Resnik attributes that line to Supreme Court Justice Coyle. I am also not so sure that I agree with the statement. First, as Professor Martha Minnow has noted, there can never be a universal definition of wise. Second, I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life.
That's from whence the allegations come. Make of it what you will--I don't think that's racist, I think it just shows that she's a full blown identity politics player.
Right, well, actually George "Dubya" Bush mortgaged your daughter's future over the last eight years.
The second the fanatics are able to stop doing things like writing "dubya" and bringing every discussion back to "BUSH WAS WORST!!!" is when I see change I can believe in:-)
Beyond that, how did Bush mortgage someone's future?
No, they don't defend the powerful with words. At least, Saddam didn't die of their words after he offered to sell oil for EUR too, instead of USD only.
Oh so THAT'S why Iraq was invaded... Silly me thinking attacking two neighbors, genocide, religious persecution, utter failure to comply with terms of surrender, and last but not least intelligence claims of WMDs, etc had something to do with it. Fascinating.
It's fairly close to what I expected, though Obama has indeed surpassed by expectations.
SEriously though, what's he going to do, walk into his office, get his first intelligence briefing, and then decide immediately to change the way the whole intel community works? As someone who worked in Intel for a few years before I couldn't stand working for government bureaucracy anymore, that's utterly laughable. Nobody who has seen actual intel reports thinks that way--left, right, or other.
Look at it this way--if Obama DOES repeal the patriot act, close gitmo, restore whatever freedoms were allegedly lost, make buddy buddy with muslim nations, try to bring Iran, Syria, etc in from the cold, what does he gain (politically)...the adoration of people who already adore him, and the anger of people who are already angry at him.
Now, let's say he does all the above and then there's another 9/11 or similiar attack....he and the entire Democrat party are huge losers.
On the other hand if he puts on a good face and makes some good speeches but leaves the status quo the way it is, probably the only people he's irritated and alienated are the fringe left... people who would vote for him no matter. (We know what Bush's base of support--the "yellow dogs" if you will...roughly 20%....who stuck with him to the end. How many people will stick with Obama to the end? I'm thinking it's a crapload more than that)
The funny thing is, TWC is still the cable provider, but Earthlink is the ISP. I still have the same cable modem TWC installed, etc. After I called Earthlink and signed up for their service ($20 a month cheaper than TWC for 6 months, then $10/mon cheaper than TWC forever...no contract) I had to call my local TWC office and they toggled something in software that made me get an Earthlink IP.
I don't know if TWC will be able to start making Earthlink charge more, but when I talked to the people at Earthlink they specifically told me there were no bandwidth caps, no tiers, and no plans for such.
I've struggled to find any numbers that mean anything, but my impression (fwiw) is that AIM has been losing marketshare for a number of years.
Over the past 15 years my usage of chat service usage has gone from PowWow, to exclusively ICQ, to switching to AIM (around 2000) to google talk, and just in the past year or so completely stopping using AIM due to almost all my contacts switching to google talk.
I'm always shocked that AOL is still around.....the only subscriber I personally know is my 90+ year old grandfather who is barely able to use a computer..
well it is a big deal for folks like a friend of mine who have already bought quite a lot of the protected AACs, and now being told they have to pay more money to "unlock" them.
I can't understand how that's possibly true.
Everybody--presumably including your "friend"--who bought from the iTunes store over the past 6-7 years knew exactly what they were getting. Copy protected songs that they could play on their itunes and on their ipod. They have not LOST any freedom from this arrangement--indeed, Apple has increased the number of usages per file over the year.
Apple just now offers higher quality songs without the DRM. It's a new product if you will. Yeah, it kinda sucks that I chose to buy a bunch of songs for a $1 instead of buying a CD, but I'm not losing that much sleep over upgrading the ones I actually want for 30 cents each.
So, in conclusion--your "friend" could NEVER play songs on a device other than an ipod/iphone. Nothing has changed. Therefore, why is it suddenly a big deal?
Specter is as loyal a Republican as you could possibly hope for and disagrees with the Dems on virtually everything. No Dem in the world would want him in the party. But one vote in favor of Obama on an economics bill and boom, he's effectively booted from the party. It was seen as a great victory.
Do you REALLY believe any of that, or is it just the talking point of the moment? If you reply, I'd be more than happy to discuss at greater length with you.
Nice straw man. I never claimed the brain is exempt from these.
Ok, if you didn't, then cool--that makes up a lot of what I disagreed with. Perhaps I misunderstood what you meant when you claimed that culture causes intelligence--I took that as meaning intelligence has no heritability. Glad we agree on that point after all.
p.s. I still don't understand:
For example, we saw the same abject poverty in Europe during the Middle Ages, for cultural reasons that are well known.
That makes race a purely cultural concept.
Yes, race IS a cultural concept. I would not argue that point. I think I've been pretty clear in the last couple points about mentioning "certain African peoples" etc rather than saying "Blacks." As an example, using the example of Kenyan marathoners, most of the marathoners come from a small area of Kenya, and many are of same tribes. Tribes due to inbreeding are probably as closely as you can be related and not striclty be talking about families. "African" may not mean much, but when you look at the performance of sprinters and marathoners, it's hard to argue that many people of direct African descent dominate the scene.
I think you might be implying that brainpower is purely genetically or "racially" determined.
No, not at all. Let me put it this way--I don't believe people are getting smarter..well, maybe in some ways, but that's slow evolutionary change. I don't believe that we are in anyways smarter than people 2000 years ago, 4000 years ago, etc. 20,000 years ago? We might be smarter than them, hard to say. We're most definitely smarter than our ancestors of 100,000 years ago, etc.
Is intelligence genetically determined? IMHO (as far as I know, the science is still largely up the air), yes--with a but. The but is of course your genes give you a potential, doesn't mean you have to fulfill it. How many people with Michael Phelps' body would train hard enough to do what he did? How many people with Einstein's brain would do what he did? Difficult to say. I definitely believe genetics play a large part.
The point is, IQ, SAT, all these tests you keep talking about, they measure something, but it's open to interpretation as to what they measure. That's why I said you maybe have a point about SAT. Beyond that, when I said "brainpower is brainpower" what I meant is there are smart people, smarter people, and stupid people (and millions of variants in between). I believe in something called intelligence that is perhaps not universally quantifiable in a test, but that exists nonetheless.
Is "race" a genetically insignificant factor? Perhaps. The issue is that "race" and "skin color" are all most people think about. In reality there are basically clusters of somewhat related people. Is there a "Black" race or an "Asian" or a "White" race? -- absolutely not. The difference between your average East African and your average West African or South African can be huge. Ditto East European and North European, etc.
The modern world with all the movement and intermingle will completely undermine the concept of race in no time.
Perhaps you should reread your/my post--it was in direct reply to your statement that "There is no evidence that there is."
I'm an atheist because I don't believe in God. I'm also an agnostic, in the sense that I don't know if there is a God.
I'm not so sure you can be both...I don't think that's internally consistent.
Trying to plead "but we can't prove it isn't" is irrelevant - are you a theist? No, neither am I. Do you believe in unicorns "because there's no evidence they don't exist"? No, neither do I.
Actually, that's what agnosticism is--what I described is basically the definition. Belief that the existence of deity is unknowable (either in the positive or the negative). As for unicorns--I've seen no evidence that they exist today, but it's certainly possible that horses with a horn--or another similar animal--existed at one point, yes. Not sure why that is silly?
In fact, I didn't even identity as an atheist in my post, so your attempt to drag up a boring atheist-agnostic-definitions-debate is completely off topic
Sheesh, it's not all about you--I never claimed you were an atheist or even thought you were! If you were offended by something in my post, I apologize. When you post on forums, one expects replies..I'm sure you did when you posted, so why angered when you get them?
Unless you're actually an agnostic theist, neither of us believe in that morality comes from a higher power, so I fail to see what your disagreement with me is.
Where did I say I disagreed with you? In fact, I started my post with "Likewise" which is generally considered to be a word of AGREEMENT!
Actually, the one part of your post I did disagree with, and explicated in mine was: "And if there is, there is no way we could know what "morality" he expects us to behave by. "
That's the simple part..if you believe in a deity and a religion, then typically the founders/important members of that religion are believed to have been divinely inspired. They offer a window of understanding to the divine. That's why the ancient Romans called their preists (and even the Pope today) Pontifex...bridge builders. They build a bridge (of understanding, etc) from the divine to the world around us. To give another example, some Islamic theologians have posited the existence of a book called "The Mother Book" (Um al-Kitab in Arabic). The mother book is basically a floating celestial entity that has always existed and will always exist...somewhat like God. Things like the Qur'an are bits and pieces of the Um al-Kitab revealed to humanity. Again, just like the Roman view of the clergy, Muhammad acted as a conduit through which divine knowledge flowed, into a form humanity could understand. THAT'S how deity-believers believe their knowledge is both human and divine.
So you claim that physical attributes are related to intelligence? If not, you're off topic; if so, you're not worth arguing with. Anthropometric theories of intelligence have been utterly discredited since the 1940s.
Haha, nice try. It's clear and undeniable that different families have different physical attributes. It's clear and undeniable that different families have differing level of susceptibility to different diseases, conditions, etc. Is one really to believe that everything is heritable EXCEPT for anything to do with the brain...really? What makes the brain exempt from evolution and heritability?
Your inability to come up with any substantial response is a sign of ignorance.
How about this--if you had said the SAT was culturally biased, you MIGHT have a point. Brainpower is brainpower.
Afrikan? Really? I've met plenty of Africans who use the standard spelling...who exactly uses a new spelling?
This was all prior to the 1990s when all those Afrikan runners started winning marathons
I could be wrong, but I believe the Kenyan domination of longer distance events started earlier, like in the 60s/70s?
In any case, it seems difficult to argue that there isn't something innate in some African peoples that make them better runners than others.
We all do work with what we have. We don't all have the same things to work with though! I could train my whole life and not be a championship marathoner.
The argument is that a friend/close relation/whatever you want to call her of Kucinich made specific claims about an experience she shared with Kucinich. I have not read anywhere that Kucinich has denied these claims. That's all, no deeper or more complex or insidious than that.
Slashdot Mirror
The part that I--and others-- have a problem with is the one sentence that is quoted. "Second, I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life."
Like I said--I don't think this makes her racist, I think it shows how ingrained in her philosophy identity politics is.
The difference between what she said and what Alito said is that she said wise Lainta. Not a wise immigrant. Not a wise person with personal and family experience of the trials of immigrant life, a wise Latina. I _do_ think that's substantively different from what Alito said. For example, Sotomayor's statement is a bit of a slap in the face to Alito! It certainly sounds to me like Sotomayor is saying that Alito's family experiences are somehow less authentic than her own, by virtue of the fact that she is Latina, and he is a white male.
To reiterate, the problem is NOT with the spirit of what she said...it's utterly obvious that a judge's background and experiences will influence their decisions. IMHO extolling the virtues of personal bias in making judicial decisions is not desierable, yet at the same time it's unavoidable to a degree. I have a problem with how she makes this point.
I honestly don't think this whole thing is a big deal. Sotomayor will be confirmed with few difficulties IMHO, and even if the Republicans vote en masse against her (which I don't think they will) they couldn't stop her. I think that much like Alito, she is perfectly well qualified for the Supreme Court as a an average circuit judge. Like Obama against Alito, I oppose Sotomayor not because of her qualifications, or believing that she is racist (or misogynist or anything equally ludicrous such as been slandered against Thomas, Roberts, and others) but because of her viewpoints. The way she marshalls her points in the article I linked to I think is very indicative of her worldview.
So in short, I absolutely do see a substantive difference in her statements and Alito's.
n any event, U.S. intervention into Iraq turned a brutal but relatively stable dictatorship into a failing state fractured along ethnic and religious lines, slipping inevitably into full-scale civil war, and a perfect breeding ground for Islamic terrorists of all flavors.
Saddam under Iraq--and particularly during the decade between the wars--was stable? This must be some hitherto unknown to me definition of the word stable.
Iraq was DESIGNED as a weak state shared between different thnic and religious lines...it's a pattern repeated across Africa and the Middle East by all of the colonial powers. It's why France lumped in large MUslim areas into what was primarily CHristian lebanon before the end of colonialism, thus ensuring that the LEbanese Christians would be forced to rely on French influence to maintain their power. It's also why Kurds/Sunni/Shia segments of Iraq were divided the way they were. THat's one reason Britain protected the creation of a post-colonial Kuwait...check out the deep water ports around the gulf there.
I'm getting offtopic, the point is, if the failure of Iraq is an issue, it was going to be an issue no matter what. I don't believe any of Saddam's sons would have continued his rule succesfully. IRGC and others started building up presence in Iraq over the last two decades. I think you're v ery misplaced if you think AQI -- or whatever the al-Qa'ida affiliates in IRaq are calling themselves today -- are the biggest threat in the area. They just get the name recongition because that's what the media gushes about. Be more afraid of the Qods Force and Iranian influence.
Lastly, I find your analysis somewhat bizarre. You MIGHT have had a point 18 months ago, or more likely 2 years ago about Iraq as a failed state. I think if you examine the picture more closely, things have turned around dramatically in that time period. Additionally, the US Army--and to an increasing degree, the Iraqi national forces have become VERY good at dealing with the insurgencies. The Intel/Army support of the Awakening movements (wikipedia if you're not familiar with) is an excellent example. You'll get no argument out of me that the beginning of the post-invasion occupation was a disaster, but nobody expected things to go down like they did. Since then, particularly in the last 3 years or so, many lessons have been learned, and the "on the ground" picture has completely turned around from your recitation of media reports.
Yeah, it is pretty silly to think we invaded Iraq in 2003 because... ... they committed genocide against the Kurds in 1983 which we knew about at the time and kept quiet about because we supported their war with Iran [gwu.edu]. ... they went to war with Iran in 1980 and used chemical weapons against them, which we later supported and helped Iraq to fund because we wanted Iran contained. ... they invaded Kuwait in 1990, initiating the Persian Gulf War.
If you've got issues with the timeline, please read my other post in this thread. The wars were not for entirely discrete reasons. Believe it or not, the past and context DID play a role in decision making.
I mean I can at least see how you could think WMD were a reason to invade... though when they come up with the reason first, and then demand the intelligence community support that reason, you should wonder...
That's a pretty interesting allegation. Where's the proof? I've never seen any.
But to think that one action that already resulted in us going to war, and two other actions which we supported at the time, warrant an invasion twenty years later is just nutty
Like I said in a different post...Gulf war 2 was about Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. Gulf war 3 was about cleaning up OUR mess. This includes our mistakes after gulf war 2 and our mistakes in giving any support to Saddam at any point in time.
It was just one step in cleaning up the post-cold war world.
Sotomayor's or Alito? I quoted a sig. portion of her quote in my previous post, and refered the surrounding context in the link I provided. I DID read that whole quote.
The first gulf war was a very simple affair with representation from almost every single nation on earth--even the virtual non-state Afghanistan sent detachments of mujahideen fighters to Iraq.
Iraq War 1 / the second Gulf War was about Saddam's invasion into Kuwait. Whether he was somewhat justified into invading or not, that's what the issue was.
Iraq War 2 / the third Gulf War was about getting rid of Saddam. Cleaning up the mess we SHOULD have cleaned up after the first war.
End of story, simple as that.
I just made a different post about this...Alito's statement and Sotomayor's are completely different.
Alito explained how experience--and yes, FAMILY experience--helped give him empathy into certain cases. Sotomayor said that being Latina makes someone give better answers.
Do you not see a difference there? I see a big one...if Alito had said a wise Italian would come to better decisions, then you're absolutely right I'd have a problem with that...just think how ludicrous that sounds. Insert Latina and it doesn't sound quite so bad...
I think the assertion that every man and woman should have the same opinion as a white guy to be incredibly racist, myself.
You're just totally buying into identity and race politics, and the sad thing is, you don't even realize it.
WTF does it matter if someone is black, white, latina, male, female etc. Alito made a somewhat simliar (though in my view less offensive) statement during his confirmation hearing about his family's immigrant background, and how that gave him empathy in certain kinds of cases. The difference is he didn't say a wise Italian will come to a better answer...he didn't play the race gender political identity game. Sotomayor did, and that's the difference.
You must not get out a lot or read much...it's been all over the news (and I mean that in terms of regardless of whether or not you AGREE with the allegations, the allegations have been EXTREMELY widely reported, blogged, etc about)
So in short, I'm not sure if you're trying to be snide or not, but the allegations go back to a statement she made (linked below, see for greater context):
http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2009/05/26_sotomayor.shtml
That's from whence the allegations come. Make of it what you will--I don't think that's racist, I think it just shows that she's a full blown identity politics player.
Right, well, actually George "Dubya" Bush mortgaged your daughter's future over the last eight years.
The second the fanatics are able to stop doing things like writing "dubya" and bringing every discussion back to "BUSH WAS WORST!!!" is when I see change I can believe in :-)
Beyond that, how did Bush mortgage someone's future?
No, they don't defend the powerful with words. At least, Saddam didn't die of their words after he offered to sell oil for EUR too, instead of USD only.
Oh so THAT'S why Iraq was invaded... Silly me thinking attacking two neighbors, genocide, religious persecution, utter failure to comply with terms of surrender, and last but not least intelligence claims of WMDs, etc had something to do with it. Fascinating.
That is not what anyone expected, left or right.
It's fairly close to what I expected, though Obama has indeed surpassed by expectations.
SEriously though, what's he going to do, walk into his office, get his first intelligence briefing, and then decide immediately to change the way the whole intel community works? As someone who worked in Intel for a few years before I couldn't stand working for government bureaucracy anymore, that's utterly laughable. Nobody who has seen actual intel reports thinks that way--left, right, or other.
Look at it this way--if Obama DOES repeal the patriot act, close gitmo, restore whatever freedoms were allegedly lost, make buddy buddy with muslim nations, try to bring Iran, Syria, etc in from the cold, what does he gain (politically)...the adoration of people who already adore him, and the anger of people who are already angry at him.
Now, let's say he does all the above and then there's another 9/11 or similiar attack....he and the entire Democrat party are huge losers.
On the other hand if he puts on a good face and makes some good speeches but leaves the status quo the way it is, probably the only people he's irritated and alienated are the fringe left ... people who would vote for him no matter. (We know what Bush's base of support--the "yellow dogs" if you will...roughly 20%....who stuck with him to the end. How many people will stick with Obama to the end? I'm thinking it's a crapload more than that)
Australia FTW!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6378161.stm
Interesting.. I literally just switched so am not quite sure how all the billing details will play out.
At the very least I hope TWC gets slightly less of my money now.
FWIW I just switched from TWC to Earthlink cable.
The funny thing is, TWC is still the cable provider, but Earthlink is the ISP. I still have the same cable modem TWC installed, etc. After I called Earthlink and signed up for their service ($20 a month cheaper than TWC for 6 months, then $10/mon cheaper than TWC forever...no contract) I had to call my local TWC office and they toggled something in software that made me get an Earthlink IP.
I don't know if TWC will be able to start making Earthlink charge more, but when I talked to the people at Earthlink they specifically told me there were no bandwidth caps, no tiers, and no plans for such.
I've struggled to find any numbers that mean anything, but my impression (fwiw) is that AIM has been losing marketshare for a number of years.
Over the past 15 years my usage of chat service usage has gone from PowWow, to exclusively ICQ, to switching to AIM (around 2000) to google talk, and just in the past year or so completely stopping using AIM due to almost all my contacts switching to google talk.
I'm always shocked that AOL is still around.....the only subscriber I personally know is my 90+ year old grandfather who is barely able to use a computer..
well it is a big deal for folks like a friend of mine who have already bought quite a lot of the protected AACs, and now being told they have to pay more money to "unlock" them.
I can't understand how that's possibly true.
Everybody--presumably including your "friend"--who bought from the iTunes store over the past 6-7 years knew exactly what they were getting. Copy protected songs that they could play on their itunes and on their ipod. They have not LOST any freedom from this arrangement--indeed, Apple has increased the number of usages per file over the year.
Apple just now offers higher quality songs without the DRM. It's a new product if you will. Yeah, it kinda sucks that I chose to buy a bunch of songs for a $1 instead of buying a CD, but I'm not losing that much sleep over upgrading the ones I actually want for 30 cents each.
So, in conclusion--your "friend" could NEVER play songs on a device other than an ipod/iphone. Nothing has changed. Therefore, why is it suddenly a big deal?
That's the big deal.
Why is that a big deal? I don't think apple even SELLS protected aac songs anymore?
Specter is as loyal a Republican as you could possibly hope for and disagrees with the Dems on virtually everything. No Dem in the world would want him in the party. But one vote in favor of Obama on an economics bill and boom, he's effectively booted from the party. It was seen as a great victory.
Do you REALLY believe any of that, or is it just the talking point of the moment? If you reply, I'd be more than happy to discuss at greater length with you.
Years ago, due to licensing issues...
It was even reported on slashdot: http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/04/18/1812228
You can gather how well that fork went...
Funny you mention Drepper, I just recently read of his altercation with rms..
http://sources.redhat.com/ml/libc-announce/2001/msg00000.html
Specifically, the part starting with "And now for some not so nice things."
Nice straw man. I never claimed the brain is exempt from these.
Ok, if you didn't, then cool--that makes up a lot of what I disagreed with. Perhaps I misunderstood what you meant when you claimed that culture causes intelligence--I took that as meaning intelligence has no heritability. Glad we agree on that point after all.
p.s. I still don't understand:
For example, we saw the same abject poverty in Europe during the Middle Ages, for cultural reasons that are well known.
That makes race a purely cultural concept.
Yes, race IS a cultural concept. I would not argue that point. I think I've been pretty clear in the last couple points about mentioning "certain African peoples" etc rather than saying "Blacks." As an example, using the example of Kenyan marathoners, most of the marathoners come from a small area of Kenya, and many are of same tribes. Tribes due to inbreeding are probably as closely as you can be related and not striclty be talking about families. "African" may not mean much, but when you look at the performance of sprinters and marathoners, it's hard to argue that many people of direct African descent dominate the scene.
I think you might be implying that brainpower is purely genetically or "racially" determined.
No, not at all. Let me put it this way--I don't believe people are getting smarter..well, maybe in some ways, but that's slow evolutionary change. I don't believe that we are in anyways smarter than people 2000 years ago, 4000 years ago, etc. 20,000 years ago? We might be smarter than them, hard to say. We're most definitely smarter than our ancestors of 100,000 years ago, etc.
Is intelligence genetically determined? IMHO (as far as I know, the science is still largely up the air), yes--with a but. The but is of course your genes give you a potential, doesn't mean you have to fulfill it. How many people with Michael Phelps' body would train hard enough to do what he did? How many people with Einstein's brain would do what he did? Difficult to say. I definitely believe genetics play a large part.
The point is, IQ, SAT, all these tests you keep talking about, they measure something, but it's open to interpretation as to what they measure. That's why I said you maybe have a point about SAT. Beyond that, when I said "brainpower is brainpower" what I meant is there are smart people, smarter people, and stupid people (and millions of variants in between). I believe in something called intelligence that is perhaps not universally quantifiable in a test, but that exists nonetheless.
Is "race" a genetically insignificant factor? Perhaps. The issue is that "race" and "skin color" are all most people think about. In reality there are basically clusters of somewhat related people. Is there a "Black" race or an "Asian" or a "White" race? -- absolutely not. The difference between your average East African and your average West African or South African can be huge. Ditto East European and North European, etc.
The modern world with all the movement and intermingle will completely undermine the concept of race in no time.
I'm not sure how that is relevant to my post.
Perhaps you should reread your/my post--it was in direct reply to your statement that "There is no evidence that there is."
I'm an atheist because I don't believe in God. I'm also an agnostic, in the sense that I don't know if there is a God.
I'm not so sure you can be both...I don't think that's internally consistent.
Trying to plead "but we can't prove it isn't" is irrelevant - are you a theist? No, neither am I. Do you believe in unicorns "because there's no evidence they don't exist"? No, neither do I.
Actually, that's what agnosticism is--what I described is basically the definition. Belief that the existence of deity is unknowable (either in the positive or the negative). As for unicorns--I've seen no evidence that they exist today, but it's certainly possible that horses with a horn--or another similar animal--existed at one point, yes. Not sure why that is silly?
In fact, I didn't even identity as an atheist in my post, so your attempt to drag up a boring atheist-agnostic-definitions-debate is completely off topic
Sheesh, it's not all about you--I never claimed you were an atheist or even thought you were! If you were offended by something in my post, I apologize. When you post on forums, one expects replies..I'm sure you did when you posted, so why angered when you get them?
Unless you're actually an agnostic theist, neither of us believe in that morality comes from a higher power, so I fail to see what your disagreement with me is.
Where did I say I disagreed with you? In fact, I started my post with "Likewise" which is generally considered to be a word of AGREEMENT!
Actually, the one part of your post I did disagree with, and explicated in mine was: "And if there is, there is no way we could know what "morality" he expects us to behave by. "
That's the simple part..if you believe in a deity and a religion, then typically the founders/important members of that religion are believed to have been divinely inspired. They offer a window of understanding to the divine. That's why the ancient Romans called their preists (and even the Pope today) Pontifex...bridge builders. They build a bridge (of understanding, etc) from the divine to the world around us. To give another example, some Islamic theologians have posited the existence of a book called "The Mother Book" (Um al-Kitab in Arabic). The mother book is basically a floating celestial entity that has always existed and will always exist...somewhat like God. Things like the Qur'an are bits and pieces of the Um al-Kitab revealed to humanity. Again, just like the Roman view of the clergy, Muhammad acted as a conduit through which divine knowledge flowed, into a form humanity could understand. THAT'S how deity-believers believe their knowledge is both human and divine.
So you claim that physical attributes are related to intelligence? If not, you're off topic; if so, you're not worth arguing with. Anthropometric theories of intelligence have been utterly discredited since the 1940s.
Haha, nice try. It's clear and undeniable that different families have different physical attributes. It's clear and undeniable that different families have differing level of susceptibility to different diseases, conditions, etc. Is one really to believe that everything is heritable EXCEPT for anything to do with the brain...really? What makes the brain exempt from evolution and heritability?
Your inability to come up with any substantial response is a sign of ignorance.
How about this--if you had said the SAT was culturally biased, you MIGHT have a point. Brainpower is brainpower.
Afrikan? Really? I've met plenty of Africans who use the standard spelling...who exactly uses a new spelling?
This was all prior to the 1990s when all those Afrikan runners started winning marathons
I could be wrong, but I believe the Kenyan domination of longer distance events started earlier, like in the 60s/70s?
In any case, it seems difficult to argue that there isn't something innate in some African peoples that make them better runners than others.
We all do work with what we have. We don't all have the same things to work with though! I could train my whole life and not be a championship marathoner.
That's not really the argument at all.
The argument is that a friend/close relation/whatever you want to call her of Kucinich made specific claims about an experience she shared with Kucinich. I have not read anywhere that Kucinich has denied these claims. That's all, no deeper or more complex or insidious than that.