This means that you cannot combat racism by limiting information or expression. The only effective way you can combat racism is by countering it with good information-- demonstrating the racists wrong, rather than silencing them.
It's sad that this may have to happen. Some of the most beautiful pictures ever taken were taken by Hubble. But, higher priorities have come up and Hubble must take a back seat to human life.
This is probably true, but we shouldn't be lured into believing that all human life must be preserved at all costs.
It's an ugly, uncomfortable truth, but if all resources went simply to preserving all human life there would be no progress. Instead there would be a race to reproduce until the entire world was full of people all living on the edge of survival - all "surplus" seed corn having been eaten before being planted for the next harvest.
So you agree with me that the preparations should have started by Sunday, but then claim it's a lie to score political points?
Your original comment:
Have you watched the news at all? All people questioning the slow federal response make mention of the 5 days.
And the quote of the congresscritters you cited:
``Why is it that five days after hurricane Katrina ravaged the Gulf Coast many of our fellow Americans are still without food and water, living in squalor in dangerous, inhumane conditions?'' the statement said. "
The response was not 5 days after the storm, as I proved. And preparations for and event are not the same thing as the response to an event. The event was still occuring on Tuesday as I also showed.
And yeah, I agree preparations should have been done sooner. And guess what: they were. FEMA was already beginning to move resources into place Saturday and Sunday.
The only people not preparing, apparently, were the Mayor and Governor.
So my answer to your question is yes and yes. Preparation should have been done before the storm, as FEMA did and New Orleans did not, and yes, the congresspeople lied to score political points by implying that the storm had been over for 5 days. It had actually only been over for about 3 days if by "over" we mean "finished wrecking Mississippi" (sometime Tuesday morning).
The Mayor of New Orleans had over 400 buses at his disposal after he was urged by President Bush to evacuate New Orleans ~48 hours before Katrina hit.
Gov. Kathleen Blanco, standing beside the mayor at a news conference, said President Bush called and personally appealed for a mandatory evacuation for the low-lying city, which is prone to flooding.
So George Bush had more clue than the Governor and Mayor. Is there any stronger proof that they must both be idiots?
You don't have to be a liberal to know that Louisiana had to be prepared for the worst then then or even earlier.
I don't think they were. The Governor even admitted that it was George Bush that phoned her and asked her to call for a mandatory evacuation. From an article published here:
The mayor called the order unprecedented and said anyone who could leave the city should. He exempted hotels from the evacuation order because airlines had already cancelled all flights.
Gov. Kathleen Blanco, standing beside the mayor at a news conference, said President Bush called and personally appealed for a mandatory evacuation for the low-lying city, which is prone to flooding.
If you're the Mayor or the Governor and your city is about to get smashed, you don't wait for the president to tell you to get the hell out of there. These people had information available to them, if they were paying attention Friday, that the city was in trouble, yet waited until George Bush asked them to declare a mandatory evacuation. Imagine that: George Bush had more clue than they did, apparently. That by itself proves they're idiots.
A new meme that's spreading in right wing blogs is that the mayor should have started evacuating the city on (Saturday/Sunday) using fleets of schoolbusses that are, today, sitting in water. There are logistical problems with that "solution", obviously. Some of it's a matter of getting fuel, drivers, and places to go. Some of it is that, as you and I as people that have lived through this before (you said in another post you live in Florida, I live in Stuart - Frances made landfall 15 miles south of here, Jeanne made landfall here) know, a huge proportion of the public simply wouldn't have left.
So you go ahead and ridicule the idea of using school buses to evacuate, but there were some people that took the idea seriously are are better for it. If one kid can steal a bus and carry 100 people to safety, then it must be possible for the government of New Orleans to have done the same in an organized way.
Over 200 buses were available. With 100 people on each bus, that's 20,000 that could have gotten out.
So the five days comment is perfectly reasonable.
No. It was a lie by congresspeople trying to score political points. And it's an easy lie to detect since it's well documented that Katrina was still in Mississippi Tuesday morning. That means there was about 3 days, not 5 days, delay.
Anyways when a majorj catastrophe like this strikes 5 days to start to fully deploy is unacceptable
The hurricane was still in Mississippi Tuesday morning. They certainly could not move in earlier than that. They arrived Friday. Is 3 days too long? Maybe. But considering they need to get men and equipment to a city that's flooded and nearly surrounded by destroyed bridges, it's not slow at all.
That aside, the blame really should be placed in the hands of the Mayor and Governor. They had since Friday night to begin getting food and water into the shelters and into the dome. They even had over 200 school buses they could have employed to help evacuate people, but they left them to get flooded.
You want someone to blame? Blame the Mayor and Governor. They should have been the most interested in protecting their city, but seem to have been the least interested until it was too late.
OK, I know you're up on your high horse and probably chanting that people shouldn't live where hurricanes have hit, and you've probably never even seen a hurricane in your life or had to use one of those fancy tracking charts you seem to like to wave around there.
The CENTER of the storm was in the Gulf of Mexico. Do you understand what that means? Maybe you should take some time out and look and see what a hurricane looks like.
I've lived in Florida for 20+ years. I've seen plenty of storms. And don't try to play stupid semantic games with me. The position of the storm is defined as it's center of circulation. That center was in the Gulf of Mexico and not in New Orleans 5 days ago as these congressmen claimed. They were bullshitting and you cited it.
Scroll down there, to that one picture of the hurricane stretching from Central America to Florida. Now, tell me again just where exactly the hurricane was 5 days ago?
Even if I grant you that the hurricane was "in" New Orleans 5 days ago based on it's size, then you have to concede that it was still in New Orleans Tuesday morning based on its size.
Given that, it's understandable why the bulk of the movement of troops and equipment would begin Wednesday after the storm passed. That means it took two whole days to get to New Orleans through the broken roads.
That's twice as fast as the Andrew mission. It took four days to get into Homestead.
don't know who to blame, but the federal government were definitely slow in acting (why the f*ck was Bush on vacation until Wednesday when he declared Louisiana a disaster area before the hurricane hit Louisiana?).
Slow? The storm was still in Mississippi Tuesday morning and still a depression in Ohio Wednesday. Just how quickly do you think they can move in with the storm still working it's way through the country? There were probably still guardmens in their homes Wednesday riding out the storm.
And don't forget that the federal government can't just yell "emergency" and send troops in to take over a state. It doesn't work that way. It's the governor that's mostly in control.
I am glad you found a silver lining, because otherwise most of the response to the storm has been very disheartening IMHO. From the weak, slow Federal response,
You have to figure that the bulk of the guardsmen are getting together Wednesday for the trip into the south. They got there by Friday with equipment and supplies. Is that actually slow for such an operation?
Have you watched the news at all? All people questioning the slow federal response make mention of the 5 days.
For example, take the following snippet from a Bloomberg news article :
" In Congress, Democrats including House Democratic Caucus Chairman Robert Menendez are stepping up their criticism, and the Democratic National Committee today issued a statement under the title, ``Where is the leadership, Mr. President.'' ``Why is it that five days after hurricane Katrina ravaged the Gulf Coast many of our fellow Americans are still without food and water, living in squalor in dangerous, inhumane conditions?'' the statement said. "
The funny thing about this is how you go through the trouble to cite an article that cites congressmen that made an obviously "incorrect" statement.
It's very easy to check where Katrina was 5 days ago and it was in the Gulf of Mexico.
Your post is an example of how ideology and dogma can confuse the issue.
I base this on a couple of things you wrote.
What a clear example of the harm of using non-scholarly sourcing (for the record, I love Wikipedia for getting a general idea of a topic, but I would never use it as an authoritative source on a complicated topic such as this one).
Even worse than these flaws, though, is your conclusion that "there may be some truth to it."
The only reason you might consider this harmful is if you already believe what the source suggests is false. It's unlikely that you would claim that that there was much harm in believing a non-scholarly source if what that source was claiming what you believed already to be true.
I also said that there may be something to it. And there might. There is no evidence that you've given that rules it out. If anything, you're the one implying the much stronger claim that there is no relationship.
How can you make such a strong claim? The only thing that might engender that level of confidence in you without strong evidence is ideological, not scientific, thinking.
If you think you've got evidence that rules out a connection between race and intelligence then let's have it. Until then you can keep your sense of moral superiority to yourself. I'm not interested in what you think should be true or comforting.
Yeah, especially after RFTA'ing.. you really just wanna piss on the head of this guy. He also claims that White people are more intellegent than black...
The risks of a for-profit enterprise are accepted by the investors, not the employees. The investors get the profit, so it's appropriate that they also get the risk.
Depends on how you define profit.
As a percentage of total revenue, employees get by far the biggest piece of the pie.
For example, from the Bureau of Economic Analysis, total personal income per year is about $9 trillion. Of that, 4.5% goes to pay dividends and 82% goes for employee salaries and suppliments to wages and salaries.
So when we say "profit", we only mean a certain kind of income. But in reality, employees as a group make far more money than investors as a group.
Things could never get this bad and here's why: everybody is genetically predisposed to something. If we're going to discriminate against everybody, it's the same thing as discriminating against nobody. If a company refuses to sell health insurance to someone with any family history of any condition at all, they won't be selling insurance at all.
But one positive effect of testing would be that people would tend to jobs that are most compatible with their biology.
It really creates more harm than good when biology is ignored. Why waste time in a job that will only ruin one's health? Shouldn't someone with more compatible genes be doing that job instead of someone that will be injured?
How long until companies like this just refuse to hire people who are genetically prone to carple tunnle or anything else that might affect their work performance?
Maybe it would be a good thing if they did. Why should people be doing jobs that are going to injure them because they are genetically prone to injury?
How many people die from heart disease or stroke because they do a job their bodies aren't genetically prepared for?
Seems like employers would be saving everyone a lot of trouble by testing.
...is to raise taxes and give the schools more money.
I mean hell, that's always worked so well in the past!
It would work if you could bust the teacher's union.
The teacher's union creates a problem. It's the pay scale. Everyone tends to be paid the same for the same number of years with a little extra for having a master's degree or better. There is no acknowledgement of the difference in pay required to get engineers and scientists into public schools compared to an English teacher, for example.
But the union likes it that way. Pay is mostly based on seniority.
The trouble is that it would be financially insane to pay every teacher $60k+ for 180 days teaching. Schools aren't going to do it. It's too expensive. Of course, paying just a few engineers or scientists $60k+ would do a lot of good for not much more money. But the union considers this "unfair".
Historically invasion meant the invading power had complete control. You do what you're told or you're killed. The US invaded Iraq, yet went out of their way to spend $1,000,000 per laser guided bomb so they could be "nice" and avoid killing innocents. They're still hated. Being nice doesn't work. This weapon is another waste of money. It will only make people more angry.
And that is a fact of war. You kill them, or they'll come back and kill you. Anything less is a waste of time.
If you can't stomach that, then don't bother attacking in the first place.
You miss the point. It very much depends on whether or not the taxes you pay are used to provide you with a service or to provide another with a service.
It's not theft when you receive a service for the taxes you paid.
It is theft when someone else receives those services or, more obviously, when someone else is given that money directly.
now let's kick back with a beer and watch some poor people die.
You think you're being sarcastic. But unless you live in a one bedroom shack eating rice and giving all your surplus money to the poor in Africa, you ARE letting people die.
Slashdot Mirror
This means that you cannot combat racism by limiting information or expression. The only effective way you can combat racism is by countering it with good information-- demonstrating the racists wrong, rather than silencing them.
I hope you will help by contributing to Wikipedia's page on Race and Intelligence.
It's a bit one-sided at the moment.
It's sad that this may have to happen. Some of the most beautiful pictures ever taken were taken by Hubble. But, higher priorities have come up and Hubble must take a back seat to human life.
This is probably true, but we shouldn't be lured into believing that all human life must be preserved at all costs.
It's an ugly, uncomfortable truth, but if all resources went simply to preserving all human life there would be no progress. Instead there would be a race to reproduce until the entire world was full of people all living on the edge of survival - all "surplus" seed corn having been eaten before being planted for the next harvest.
So you agree with me that the preparations should have started by Sunday, but then claim it's a lie to score political points?
Your original comment:
Have you watched the news at all? All people questioning the slow federal response make mention of the 5 days.
And the quote of the congresscritters you cited:
``Why is it that five days after hurricane Katrina ravaged the Gulf Coast many of our fellow Americans are still without food and water, living in squalor in dangerous, inhumane conditions?'' the statement said. "
The response was not 5 days after the storm, as I proved. And preparations for and event are not the same thing as the response to an event. The event was still occuring on Tuesday as I also showed.
And yeah, I agree preparations should have been done sooner. And guess what: they were. FEMA was already beginning to move resources into place Saturday and Sunday.
The only people not preparing, apparently, were the Mayor and Governor.
So my answer to your question is yes and yes. Preparation should have been done before the storm, as FEMA did and New Orleans did not, and yes, the congresspeople lied to score political points by implying that the storm had been over for 5 days. It had actually only been over for about 3 days if by "over" we mean "finished wrecking Mississippi" (sometime Tuesday morning).
The Mayor of New Orleans had over 400 buses at his disposal after he was urged by President Bush to evacuate New Orleans ~48 hours before Katrina hit.
Gov. Kathleen Blanco, standing beside the mayor at a news conference, said President Bush called and personally appealed for a mandatory evacuation for the low-lying city, which is prone to flooding.
So George Bush had more clue than the Governor and Mayor. Is there any stronger proof that they must both be idiots?
Quick bit of back-of-the-envelope math:
500 buses * 40 people per bus = 2000 people
Yikes!
500*40= 20,000 people.
Big difference.
You don't have to be a liberal to know that Louisiana had to be prepared for the worst then then or even earlier.
I don't think they were. The Governor even admitted that it was George Bush that phoned her and asked her to call for a mandatory evacuation. From an article published here:
The mayor called the order unprecedented and said anyone who could
leave the city should. He exempted hotels from the evacuation order
because airlines had already cancelled all flights.
Gov. Kathleen Blanco, standing beside the mayor at a news
conference, said President Bush called and personally appealed for
a mandatory evacuation for the low-lying city, which is prone to
flooding.
If you're the Mayor or the Governor and your city is about to get smashed, you don't wait for the president to tell you to get the hell out of there. These people had information available to them, if they were paying attention Friday, that the city was in trouble, yet waited until George Bush asked them to declare a mandatory evacuation. Imagine that: George Bush had more clue than they did, apparently. That by itself proves they're idiots.
A new meme that's spreading in right wing blogs is that the mayor should have started evacuating the city on (Saturday/Sunday) using fleets of schoolbusses that are, today, sitting in water. There are logistical problems with that "solution", obviously. Some of it's a matter of getting fuel, drivers, and places to go. Some of it is that, as you and I as people that have lived through this before (you said in another post you live in Florida, I live in Stuart - Frances made landfall 15 miles south of here, Jeanne made landfall here) know, a huge proportion of the public simply wouldn't have left.
And yet someone actually did take a school bus and drove 100 people to Houston -all without needed the Mayor's or the Governor's or the president's say-so.
So you go ahead and ridicule the idea of using school buses to evacuate, but there were some people that took the idea seriously are are better for it. If one kid can steal a bus and carry 100 people to safety, then it must be possible for the government of New Orleans to have done the same in an organized way.
Over 200 buses were available. With 100 people on each bus, that's 20,000 that could have gotten out.
So the five days comment is perfectly reasonable.
No. It was a lie by congresspeople trying to score political points. And it's an easy lie to detect since it's well documented that Katrina was still in Mississippi Tuesday morning. That means there was about 3 days, not 5 days, delay.
The hurricane was still in Mississippi Tuesday morning. They certainly could not move in earlier than that. They arrived Friday. Is 3 days too long? Maybe. But considering they need to get men and equipment to a city that's flooded and nearly surrounded by destroyed bridges, it's not slow at all.
That aside, the blame really should be placed in the hands of the Mayor and Governor. They had since Friday night to begin getting food and water into the shelters and into the dome. They even had over 200 school buses they could have employed to help evacuate people, but they left them to get flooded.
You want someone to blame? Blame the Mayor and Governor. They should have been the most interested in protecting their city, but seem to have been the least interested until it was too late.
OK, I know you're up on your high horse and probably chanting that people shouldn't live where hurricanes have hit, and you've probably never even seen a hurricane in your life or had to use one of those fancy tracking charts you seem to like to wave around there.
The CENTER of the storm was in the Gulf of Mexico. Do you understand what that means? Maybe you should take some time out and look and see what a hurricane looks like.
I've lived in Florida for 20+ years. I've seen plenty of storms. And don't try to play stupid semantic games with me. The position of the storm is defined as it's center of circulation. That center was in the Gulf of Mexico and not in New Orleans 5 days ago as these congressmen claimed. They were bullshitting and you cited it.
Scroll down there, to that one picture of the hurricane stretching from Central America to Florida. Now, tell me again just where exactly the hurricane was 5 days ago?
Even if I grant you that the hurricane was "in" New Orleans 5 days ago based on it's size, then you have to concede that it was still in New Orleans Tuesday morning based on its size.
Given that, it's understandable why the bulk of the movement of troops and equipment would begin Wednesday after the storm passed. That means it took two whole days to get to New Orleans through the broken roads.
That's twice as fast as the Andrew mission. It took four days to get into Homestead.
don't know who to blame, but the federal government were definitely slow in acting (why the f*ck was Bush on vacation until Wednesday when he declared Louisiana a disaster area before the hurricane hit Louisiana?).
Slow? The storm was still in Mississippi Tuesday morning and still a depression in Ohio Wednesday. Just how quickly do you think they can move in with the storm still working it's way through the country? There were probably still guardmens in their homes Wednesday riding out the storm.
And don't forget that the federal government can't just yell "emergency" and send troops in to take over a state. It doesn't work that way. It's the governor that's mostly in control.
I am glad you found a silver lining, because otherwise most of the response to the storm has been very disheartening IMHO. From the weak, slow Federal response,
2 /30.AL1205W.GIF>still in Mississippi Tuesday morning and still a tropical depression in Ohio Wednesday.
Was it really that slow, though? Katrina was http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/archive/2005/graphics/AT1
You have to figure that the bulk of the guardsmen are getting together Wednesday for the trip into the south. They got there by Friday with equipment and supplies. Is that actually slow for such an operation?
For example, take the following snippet from a Bloomberg news article :
" In Congress, Democrats including House Democratic Caucus Chairman Robert Menendez are stepping up their criticism, and the Democratic National Committee today issued a statement under the title, ``Where is the leadership, Mr. President.'' ``Why is it that five days after hurricane Katrina ravaged the Gulf Coast many of our fellow Americans are still without food and water, living in squalor in dangerous, inhumane conditions?'' the statement said. "
The funny thing about this is how you go through the trouble to cite an article that cites congressmen that made an obviously "incorrect" statement.
It's very easy to check where Katrina was 5 days ago and it was in the Gulf of Mexico.
It was still in Mississippi Tuesday morning.
..because if it's in Wikipedia, it's GOTTA be true.
No. I as wrote before, there might be some truth to it.
Your post is an example of how ideology and dogma can confuse the issue.
I base this on a couple of things you wrote.
What a clear example of the harm of using non-scholarly sourcing (for the record, I love Wikipedia for getting a general idea of a topic, but I would never use it as an authoritative source on a complicated topic such as this one).
Even worse than these flaws, though, is your conclusion that "there may be some truth to it."
The only reason you might consider this harmful is if you already believe what the source suggests is false. It's unlikely that you would claim that that there was much harm in believing a non-scholarly source if what that source was claiming what you believed already to be true.
I also said that there may be something to it. And there might. There is no evidence that you've given that rules it out. If anything, you're the one implying the much stronger claim that there is no relationship.
How can you make such a strong claim? The only thing that might engender that level of confidence in you without strong evidence is ideological, not scientific, thinking.
If you think you've got evidence that rules out a connection between race and intelligence then let's have it. Until then you can keep your sense of moral superiority to yourself. I'm not interested in what you think should be true or comforting.
Honestly, who cares. I'm willing to bet the real difference is very little to none.
Maybe. But is average intelligence relevant in discussions about how much women earn versus men?
Might this difference explain to some extent what appears to be "sex discrimination"?
The fact that millions many be lost and careers destroyed by lawsuits makes this an important result.
Yeah, especially after RFTA'ing.. you really just wanna piss on the head of this guy. He also claims that White people are more intellegent than black...
Take a look at Wikipedia's entry on race and intelligence.
There might be some truth to it.
But none of that means people should discriminate, of course. Everyone needs to be given a chance. Just don't expect equal outcomes.
Take a look here and tell me Castro isn't a psychopath.
The Incans did have library's.
We know this, because the Catholic priests and missionaries of the time recorded burning them.
I think you mean the infamous Bishop of Yucatan, who burned all the Maya books that could be located.
Unlike the Maya, the Inca didn't have a written language, which is why these knots are so important a discovery.
The risks of a for-profit enterprise are accepted by the investors, not the employees. The investors get the profit, so it's appropriate that they also get the risk.
Depends on how you define profit.
As a percentage of total revenue, employees get by far the biggest piece of the pie.
For example, from the Bureau of Economic Analysis, total personal income per year is about $9 trillion. Of that, 4.5% goes to pay dividends and 82% goes for employee salaries and suppliments to wages and salaries.
So when we say "profit", we only mean a certain kind of income. But in reality, employees as a group make far more money than investors as a group.
Things could never get this bad and here's why: everybody is genetically predisposed to something. If we're going to discriminate against everybody, it's the same thing as discriminating against nobody. If a company refuses to sell health insurance to someone with any family history of any condition at all, they won't be selling insurance at all.
But one positive effect of testing would be that people would tend to jobs that are most compatible with their biology.
It really creates more harm than good when biology is ignored. Why waste time in a job that will only ruin one's health? Shouldn't someone with more compatible genes be doing that job instead of someone that will be injured?
How long until companies like this just refuse to hire people who are genetically prone to carple tunnle or anything else that might affect their work performance?
Maybe it would be a good thing if they did. Why should people be doing jobs that are going to injure them because they are genetically prone to injury?
How many people die from heart disease or stroke because they do a job their bodies aren't genetically prepared for?
Seems like employers would be saving everyone a lot of trouble by testing.
I mean hell, that's always worked so well in the past!
It would work if you could bust the teacher's union.
The teacher's union creates a problem. It's the pay scale. Everyone tends to be paid the same for the same number of years with a little extra for having a master's degree or better. There is no acknowledgement of the difference in pay required to get engineers and scientists into public schools compared to an English teacher, for example.
But the union likes it that way. Pay is mostly based on seniority.
The trouble is that it would be financially insane to pay every teacher $60k+ for 180 days teaching. Schools aren't going to do it. It's too expensive. Of course, paying just a few engineers or scientists $60k+ would do a lot of good for not much more money. But the union considers this "unfair".
They'll hate the US, anyway.
Historically invasion meant the invading power had complete control. You do what you're told or you're killed. The US invaded Iraq, yet went out of their way to spend $1,000,000 per laser guided bomb so they could be "nice" and avoid killing innocents. They're still hated. Being nice doesn't work. This weapon is another waste of money. It will only make people more angry.
And that is a fact of war. You kill them, or they'll come back and kill you. Anything less is a waste of time.
If you can't stomach that, then don't bother attacking in the first place.
You miss the point. It very much depends on whether or not the taxes you pay are used to provide you with a service or to provide another with a service.
It's not theft when you receive a service for the taxes you paid.
It is theft when someone else receives those services or, more obviously, when someone else is given that money directly.
The word you were looking for is "tax" and you avoid it because it makes you look stupid to claim there should be no taxes.
And you avoid the word "theft" because your conscience won't let you admit that redistributive taxation is exactly that.
And he never said there should be NO taxes, btw.
I support you buddy!
now let's kick back with a beer and watch some poor people die.
You think you're being sarcastic. But unless you live in a one bedroom shack eating rice and giving all your surplus money to the poor in Africa, you ARE letting people die.