Exactly. It also depends on what you're doing. If you're working on some project that's of great personal interest to you (e.g., your own open-source project, your own small business, etc.), then longer hours can be very productive, to an extent (you still need to avoid burnout and exhaustion). However, if you're just a hired gun (which is what almost all employees really are, even though management refuses to believe this), then extra hours aren't going to add much productivity.
Exactly; there's a balance here. I've been in companies that did both extremes: pretty much zero meetings, and many meetings per week (for us rank-and-file engineers). Both are bad. Too many meetings are distracting and waste a lot of time (more than just the meetings, because there's overhead time where you "get in the zone" before you're really productive, and breaking up the day at arbitrary times ruins that, and zero meetings mean no one has any idea what anyone else is doing.
What's really bad is when your team is behind schedule on a project, so management schedules even more meetings so you can discuss why you're behind schedule.
I went to high school at the same time, in Tennessee. I remember my scientific classes being all-metric. I also don't remember having any trouble in college with metric units, though I remember everyone laughing when the professor in Engineering Statics brought in a big old "slug" (the imperial unit of mass; this was a block of metal with a handle on it). I do seem to remember some imperial units being mixed in here and there though, I think mainly 1) to make sure we could do both if we had to, and 2) so we knew how to perform unit conversions as necessary in calculations, not only between different SI units but also between other kinds of units too.
As I said before, we already use metric units at the university level. Don't be stupid.
Besides, if I wanted the prestige of going to a foreign university, I'd go to one in Europe, not Australia. Australia isn't really known for its higher educational institutions. Both Europe and America are.
Are they straight out of high school? They'd have problems over here in our physics classes too, because our secondary education system sucks balls. But our physics classes still use metric units.
Going to college in America, esp. in the technical classes, is a giant sea-change for American students who came out of public high schools, for this and many other reasons (especially the huge difference in the pace of instruction; I learned as much in 2 weeks in my freshman University classes as I did in a whole semester in one of the best public high schools in my state).
What the heck are American students going to Australian colleges for anyway? It's not like there's some shortage of them over here.
Oh please, he did more than that. Maybe you don't like him or his products (I don't like highly limited products either), but he had a gift for knowing what things would sell well, what styles would be popular, etc. Microsoft did the exact same thing, and they always fell flat on their faces. Remember the turd-brown Zune? Why did the Apple aesthetic succeed wildly, and the Microsoft aesthetic only succeed in being a laughingstock? Simple: Steve knew what people would like, and the suits at MS didn't have a clue.
If it was that easy to just put standard hardware in a fancy box and sell it at a massive mark-up to fools, then why isn't everyone doing it and succeeding the way Apple is (or has)? It's not like MS (and many others) haven't tried hard to do the exact same thing. Some people simply have a gift for knowing what'll be popular, and others simply don't.
The hard way: a mile is 5280 feet (_usually_, according to Wikipedia). So how many feet are 38 miles? A: 38 times 5280 feet per mile is the same as 200,640 feet. The easy way: 200 kft is 200,000 feet (since kilo means a thousand... always!
No, not "usually", always, if you're talking about US miles. There's other kinds of miles out there: nautical miles (used worldwide), and statute miles (almost the same as US miles, but not exactly).
You still haven't proven why this is useful. Why should a barista care how many feet are in 38 miles?
And that's the point. Those who read scientific works, like me, must face calculations about rate of ascent of planes (speed in knots) and time until they reach a given altitude (in feet!). And if you think scientists use meters, well, not in the works I read (some of which referenced here). That's quite uncomfortable, in fact.
The majority of the population does not read scientific works, and they don't give two shits if you're uncomfortable. They also vote.
So, you're basically saying educated people use metric, while the masses use imperial units. Ok, let's not question that for now. So, it follows, when educated people do some numeric research, results are presented to society in units which the society at large doesn't understand (or doesn't want to understand). So why bother? And if they do unit conversion for the sake of the masses, well, we're back at what I was complaining about: scientific research in 19th century units. QED.
You don't do research in 19th century units; you use the best units for the job (which is usually metric ones, though a few professions do use different ones), and then you convert if you have to make a press release for the masses of morons out there. A one-time conversion of a single unit is not hard to do. You can even do it on Google now.
And it's quite easy to explain why using power-of-ten prefixes are a good idea. But you won't use a kilofoot, which would be bad, but better than using miles.
Actually, it's not easy to explain why power-of-ten prefixes are a good idea. If you think it is, by all means go ahead and explain.
This subject comes up from time to time on Slashdot. The underlying reason why nerds think power-of-ten prefixes are so great is because it makes unit conversions very, very easy. There's a slight problem however: why should anyone care about doing unit conversions? If you're a scientist or an engineer, the answer seems blindingly obvious. However, what if you're not a scientist or engineer? What if you're a lawyer or truck driver or a cashier or barista? When are you ever going to do unit conversions? The answer is: you're not. Why should you even care how many feet are in a mile? When do you ever do those calculations? When is a department store cashier ever going to need to do a calculation like that? When is a barista or a tattoo artist or fast-food cook going to do a calculation involving units of temperature (like calculating the thermal energy based on the temperature)? Never.
It's weird for you to read a document with unfamiliar units, but you're asking 300+ million people to adopt what, to them, are unfamiliar units, just so that you can have something you're more comfortable with? As I pointed out, things are changing over here, even if it's slower than you're happy with. The engineers and scientists here (except for the ones working for certain military contractors....) are all getting along just fine with metric units in the course of their work, and are perfectly able to do english-to-metric conversions when necessary, despite the fact that the cashiers and waitresses they interact with might have no clue how to do such things.
Basically, the "problem" you speak of isn't a problem at all. Those of us who appreciate easily-converted units are already using them. Come over here and take some university courses in physics, and see if you see any English units at all; you won't. The uneducated people who don't appreciate them only use them when they have to (like when they buy soda), and the rest of us really don't care, because quite frankly it isn't that hard.
A commercial software product that treated its "customers" the way that some FOSS projects do would be out of business in a matter of weeks.
I'm sorry, but everything you said was spot-on, except this line. As others pointed out, Apple and Microsoft do exactly the same thing. Apple however has a weird knack for being able to presciently come up with changes that their customers actually like, and will shell out big bucks for, though it remains to be seen how well this knack persists now that Jobs is gone. Microsoft is attempting to copy this, but they seem to be falling flat on their face judging by all the negative talk about Win8; however, their marketshare is so huge and they have so much lock-in that no matter how badly they screw up (Windows Me, Windows Vista, etc.), they continue to be highly profitable.
Also, there's several large "enterprise" software vendors out there that treat their customers like crap, releasing shitty products and charging an absolute fortune for them, yet their customers keep coming back for more, presumably because either there isn't much competition for that particular market niche, or because the people buying these crappy products are buying them with their company's money, and not their own money, and don't really care (and might be getting kickbacks or extravagant meals from salespeople).
While there's some truth here, making something that potential customers don't know they want (they'll know they want it after it's released and they see how useful it is) is highly risky, and requires you to have some keen insight into what your potential customers will like without them knowing beforehand. Not that many people are good at this. Steve Jobs was scarily good at it (despite his control-freak tendencies). Sorry Gnome devs, you're no Steve Jobs or Henry Ford.
Just because lots of time was put into engineering it does not make it good.
Exactly. A lot of time was put into engineering Windows Vista, as well as Windows Me, and those sucked. A lot of time was put into engineering the Ford Pinto, and that was a deathtrap. A lot of time was put into engineering the Pontiac Aztek, and that was so butt-ugly it's known to many as the ugliest car ever made in all history. A lot of time was put into engineering lots of "enterprise" software, and that entire class of software is frequently scorned as "crap" among technophiles here.
The world could be great, but you're intent on not coordinating with others. Not respecting international law, not even adopting a common standard of units.
Most of what you write is good, but this last part is a red herring. There's no official units in the US, just commonly-used units. The government doesn't tell us to use degrees Fahrenheit and inches and feet, though it does use miles for road distances on signs. For the most part, people use non-metric units because they want to, not because the government is pushing it. News TV stations tell us the weather forecast in Fahrenheit because if they switched to Celsius, almost everyone would change the channel to one of their Fahrenheit-using competitors since Americans really don't understand Celsius. Americans buy hardware and measure wood in imperial units because that's what they've always done, that's what the plans are using, etc. However, when Americans want to work on their cars, if the car is 20 years old or less, they buy metric wrenches to do so because all cars (including American-made ones) use metric fasteners now. Last time I checked, the US Navy still uses imperial fasteners and units for everything, but that doesn't affect public policy. NASA uses metric units for everything, as shown by the Mars lander disaster ~10 years ago (they got data from a military contractor which was in imperial units and didn't bother to check the units).
Also, we're not the only ones who use non-metric units. The UK uses them too: ask a UK resident how much they weigh and they'll give you an answer in some weird unit called "stones", whatever that is. They buy ale from their pubs in pints, and they still talk about road distances in miles.
Also, we have made some attempts at metrification; I've seen some places where they posted the roadside mile markers (a tiny sign on the interstate highway which marks every mile) in kilometers; it looks like they gave up after a while. They tried to sell gasoline in liters back in the 70s, and that pissed everyone off because the vendors jacked up the prices thinking people wouldn't know the difference with the new units. Also, with a lot of things in grocery stores, metric units are used; most fluid containers are measured in liters and milliliters now, except of course for milk which is usually in gallons and half-gallons (but the metric units are always written on them anyway). Soda has been sold in 2-liter bottles for decades.
In summary, the reason we still use a lot of non-metric units is because of inertia, resistance to change, and because that's what the people want. Our government sucks in a lot of ways, but pushing an unpopular change for seemingly arbitrary reasons isn't going to help things any. What does it matter whether you buy milk in a 1-gallon container or a 2.5-liter (or whatever) container? It's not like we're shipping this stuff out of the country anyway, and it's not like we require imported goods to be re-labeled in imperial units.
No, that would be the price of theocracy. As long as religion is a personal issue and no particular faith is mandatory to an individual, you can't make any assumptions as to who wants what and the only logical course of action is simply to leave it out (from the test that everyone is supposed to take).
Theocracy is what you get when you have a democracy and most of the population demand theocratic reforms in their government. If the population demands if, they can make a particular faith mandatory (or a group of faiths; after all, even though there's a lot of sects of Christianity, most of them have a lot of things in common that they agree on. Most of the Christians in this country, for instance, seem to be anti-gay, so they could very well agree on a law or even constitutional amendment to oppress gay people.)
The pure Democracy that you are equating with freedom is no such thing.
Who said anything about "pure democracy"? Please point me to where I used that term. You and a whole slew of other morons keep reading that into my writing, and it isn't there.
Your other writings are nonsensical. There are no "fundamental rights", and nothing in the Constitution is set in stone; many amendments have been made to the document over the years.
I frequently think that. Sure, slavery was horrible, but a half million people died in that war on both sides, and as another poster in this thread said, it paved the way for a stronger central government, less states' rights, which led to the imperial corporate oligarchy that we have now. From what I've read, the South at the time was on the edge of economic collapse anyway, so if the North had just let them go, their economy would have collapsed sooner or later (sooner if the North enacted sanctions against them for their use of slavery), and they would have been forced to make changes within. And North America probably would have been better off if the two had remained separate countries (but on friendly terms and allied after the whole slavery issue was settled in a couple decades).
This is a tired point, but the United States is a Presidential Republic, it is not a Democracy,
It IS a tired point, because fools like you keep repeating this idiotic meme and don't even know the definition of "democracy". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy
It has been secular, but if people demand more religion in government, it can happen, over time. Heck, all you really need is a few more SCOTUS justices to rubber-stamp anything the religious right wants, even if that means overturning prior rulings, plus a President that's willing to enforce religious rulings. It could happen sooner than you think.
Secession didn't work well the first time for several reasons: 1) slavery was a major issue in the war, and since it was so obviously morally wrong, it brought a lot of support on the northern side. We probably don't have any issues like that right now which would make lots of people want to take up arms to keep another part of the country from leaving. 2) It hadn't been that long since the War of 1812; there was probably still fear than Britain would try to retake the "colonies" if they were too weak, so unity was seen as necessary by many. There's no one that's going to invade and take over part of the US today, even if it did secede. 3) the North had a very strong industrial economy, so it could afford to finance the war effort. Today, our economy is not doing well, and is based on nothing really; we no longer have a strong manufacturing economy and the future looks grim. A civil war would cause immediate economic collapse, much worse than just letting the breakaway republics go. Finally, just how many people do you know who'd sign up to carry a rifle and fight against other Americans (perhaps in a separate region) so they can't secede? Most conservatives are constantly making comments about wishing California would fall into the ocean or otherwise leave the country. I really don't think there'd be a lot of support for using force to keep this place together if regions started trying to break away. Instead, a lot of people would be happy that they wouldn't have to share a country with "those dumb bible-thumping rednecks in Alabama or Kentucky" or "those godless atheists and homosexuals in California".
That's all nice and well, but totally irrelevant to the discussion. We're talking about school curricula, and that's something that the voters have (indirect) control over. If the voters want the public schools to teach falsehoods, it is within their power.
That sounds great, and I'd support it personally. However, when the majority of voters (esp. parents) in a school district are fundamentalist christian nuts, they're not going to be too happy that little Johnny is learning about the Mooslims and Shinto and everything else, and they're going to demand an end to it.
It's weird how Slashdotters have so little reading comprehension. Where did I ever advocate that the majority should be able to strip the minority of their rights? I'm only stating that it's possible under a democratic system. Our system of government has enacted protections against this, but since it is still a democracy, the people have the ability to vote for people who can change the government (with new laws, new constitutional amendments, etc.), and eventually, if the majority pushes for something long enough, do something totally unjust. The constitution and use of representatives only makes it much more difficult.
I also never said authoritarian government is necessary. It has its own problems, namely that you're subject to the whims of the leaders, good or bad. Get a good one, then it can be much better than a democracy. But then when he gets old and dies, or has an untimely accident, he might be replaced with a nut, and then you're stuck with decades of despotism.
Yes, democracy does mean we do any damn fool thing the majority wants. Our form of democracy (with representation, checks and balances, etc.) makes it much harder and time-consuming to push through "damn fool" things, but if the majority doesn't change its mind and pushes for it enough, it'll happen.
Whether it's "okay" or not is irrelevant. If it's what the majority wants, they may be able to get it (though the specific form of government they live under may make it difficult and time-consuming to achieve that goal within the law, because they'll have to elect people who agree with them, and then those politicians will have to change the laws, etc.).
There's some African country right now, with a democratic government, that's trying to get homosexuality banned with death being the punishment. Obviously (or at least I would hope it's obvious, but there's a lot of people here on Slashdot who would probably applaud this) this is horrible, but with a democratic form of government, this is what can happen when the majority wants something, and unwaveringly demands it from their government for long enough.
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Exactly. It also depends on what you're doing. If you're working on some project that's of great personal interest to you (e.g., your own open-source project, your own small business, etc.), then longer hours can be very productive, to an extent (you still need to avoid burnout and exhaustion). However, if you're just a hired gun (which is what almost all employees really are, even though management refuses to believe this), then extra hours aren't going to add much productivity.
Exactly; there's a balance here. I've been in companies that did both extremes: pretty much zero meetings, and many meetings per week (for us rank-and-file engineers). Both are bad. Too many meetings are distracting and waste a lot of time (more than just the meetings, because there's overhead time where you "get in the zone" before you're really productive, and breaking up the day at arbitrary times ruins that, and zero meetings mean no one has any idea what anyone else is doing.
What's really bad is when your team is behind schedule on a project, so management schedules even more meetings so you can discuss why you're behind schedule.
I went to high school at the same time, in Tennessee. I remember my scientific classes being all-metric. I also don't remember having any trouble in college with metric units, though I remember everyone laughing when the professor in Engineering Statics brought in a big old "slug" (the imperial unit of mass; this was a block of metal with a handle on it). I do seem to remember some imperial units being mixed in here and there though, I think mainly 1) to make sure we could do both if we had to, and 2) so we knew how to perform unit conversions as necessary in calculations, not only between different SI units but also between other kinds of units too.
As I said before, we already use metric units at the university level. Don't be stupid.
Besides, if I wanted the prestige of going to a foreign university, I'd go to one in Europe, not Australia. Australia isn't really known for its higher educational institutions. Both Europe and America are.
Are they straight out of high school? They'd have problems over here in our physics classes too, because our secondary education system sucks balls. But our physics classes still use metric units.
Going to college in America, esp. in the technical classes, is a giant sea-change for American students who came out of public high schools, for this and many other reasons (especially the huge difference in the pace of instruction; I learned as much in 2 weeks in my freshman University classes as I did in a whole semester in one of the best public high schools in my state).
What the heck are American students going to Australian colleges for anyway? It's not like there's some shortage of them over here.
Oh please, he did more than that. Maybe you don't like him or his products (I don't like highly limited products either), but he had a gift for knowing what things would sell well, what styles would be popular, etc. Microsoft did the exact same thing, and they always fell flat on their faces. Remember the turd-brown Zune? Why did the Apple aesthetic succeed wildly, and the Microsoft aesthetic only succeed in being a laughingstock? Simple: Steve knew what people would like, and the suits at MS didn't have a clue.
If it was that easy to just put standard hardware in a fancy box and sell it at a massive mark-up to fools, then why isn't everyone doing it and succeeding the way Apple is (or has)? It's not like MS (and many others) haven't tried hard to do the exact same thing. Some people simply have a gift for knowing what'll be popular, and others simply don't.
The hard way: a mile is 5280 feet (_usually_, according to Wikipedia). So how many feet are 38 miles? A: 38 times 5280 feet per mile is the same as 200,640 feet.
The easy way: 200 kft is 200,000 feet (since kilo means a thousand... always!
No, not "usually", always, if you're talking about US miles. There's other kinds of miles out there: nautical miles (used worldwide), and statute miles (almost the same as US miles, but not exactly).
You still haven't proven why this is useful. Why should a barista care how many feet are in 38 miles?
And that's the point. Those who read scientific works, like me, must face calculations about rate of ascent of planes (speed in knots) and time until they reach a given altitude (in feet!). And if you think scientists use meters, well, not in the works I read (some of which referenced here). That's quite uncomfortable, in fact.
The majority of the population does not read scientific works, and they don't give two shits if you're uncomfortable. They also vote.
So, you're basically saying educated people use metric, while the masses use imperial units. Ok, let's not question that for now. So, it follows, when educated people do some numeric research, results are presented to society in units which the society at large doesn't understand (or doesn't want to understand). So why bother? And if they do unit conversion for the sake of the masses, well, we're back at what I was complaining about: scientific research in 19th century units. QED.
You don't do research in 19th century units; you use the best units for the job (which is usually metric ones, though a few professions do use different ones), and then you convert if you have to make a press release for the masses of morons out there. A one-time conversion of a single unit is not hard to do. You can even do it on Google now.
And it's quite easy to explain why using power-of-ten prefixes are a good idea. But you won't use a kilofoot, which would be bad, but better than using miles.
Actually, it's not easy to explain why power-of-ten prefixes are a good idea. If you think it is, by all means go ahead and explain.
This subject comes up from time to time on Slashdot. The underlying reason why nerds think power-of-ten prefixes are so great is because it makes unit conversions very, very easy. There's a slight problem however: why should anyone care about doing unit conversions? If you're a scientist or an engineer, the answer seems blindingly obvious. However, what if you're not a scientist or engineer? What if you're a lawyer or truck driver or a cashier or barista? When are you ever going to do unit conversions? The answer is: you're not. Why should you even care how many feet are in a mile? When do you ever do those calculations? When is a department store cashier ever going to need to do a calculation like that? When is a barista or a tattoo artist or fast-food cook going to do a calculation involving units of temperature (like calculating the thermal energy based on the temperature)? Never.
It's weird for you to read a document with unfamiliar units, but you're asking 300+ million people to adopt what, to them, are unfamiliar units, just so that you can have something you're more comfortable with? As I pointed out, things are changing over here, even if it's slower than you're happy with. The engineers and scientists here (except for the ones working for certain military contractors....) are all getting along just fine with metric units in the course of their work, and are perfectly able to do english-to-metric conversions when necessary, despite the fact that the cashiers and waitresses they interact with might have no clue how to do such things.
Basically, the "problem" you speak of isn't a problem at all. Those of us who appreciate easily-converted units are already using them. Come over here and take some university courses in physics, and see if you see any English units at all; you won't. The uneducated people who don't appreciate them only use them when they have to (like when they buy soda), and the rest of us really don't care, because quite frankly it isn't that hard.
A commercial software product that treated its "customers" the way that some FOSS projects do would be out of business in a matter of weeks.
I'm sorry, but everything you said was spot-on, except this line. As others pointed out, Apple and Microsoft do exactly the same thing. Apple however has a weird knack for being able to presciently come up with changes that their customers actually like, and will shell out big bucks for, though it remains to be seen how well this knack persists now that Jobs is gone. Microsoft is attempting to copy this, but they seem to be falling flat on their face judging by all the negative talk about Win8; however, their marketshare is so huge and they have so much lock-in that no matter how badly they screw up (Windows Me, Windows Vista, etc.), they continue to be highly profitable.
Also, there's several large "enterprise" software vendors out there that treat their customers like crap, releasing shitty products and charging an absolute fortune for them, yet their customers keep coming back for more, presumably because either there isn't much competition for that particular market niche, or because the people buying these crappy products are buying them with their company's money, and not their own money, and don't really care (and might be getting kickbacks or extravagant meals from salespeople).
While there's some truth here, making something that potential customers don't know they want (they'll know they want it after it's released and they see how useful it is) is highly risky, and requires you to have some keen insight into what your potential customers will like without them knowing beforehand. Not that many people are good at this. Steve Jobs was scarily good at it (despite his control-freak tendencies). Sorry Gnome devs, you're no Steve Jobs or Henry Ford.
Just because lots of time was put into engineering it does not make it good.
Exactly. A lot of time was put into engineering Windows Vista, as well as Windows Me, and those sucked. A lot of time was put into engineering the Ford Pinto, and that was a deathtrap. A lot of time was put into engineering the Pontiac Aztek, and that was so butt-ugly it's known to many as the ugliest car ever made in all history. A lot of time was put into engineering lots of "enterprise" software, and that entire class of software is frequently scorned as "crap" among technophiles here.
The world could be great, but you're intent on not coordinating with others. Not respecting international law, not even adopting a common standard of units.
Most of what you write is good, but this last part is a red herring. There's no official units in the US, just commonly-used units. The government doesn't tell us to use degrees Fahrenheit and inches and feet, though it does use miles for road distances on signs. For the most part, people use non-metric units because they want to, not because the government is pushing it. News TV stations tell us the weather forecast in Fahrenheit because if they switched to Celsius, almost everyone would change the channel to one of their Fahrenheit-using competitors since Americans really don't understand Celsius. Americans buy hardware and measure wood in imperial units because that's what they've always done, that's what the plans are using, etc. However, when Americans want to work on their cars, if the car is 20 years old or less, they buy metric wrenches to do so because all cars (including American-made ones) use metric fasteners now. Last time I checked, the US Navy still uses imperial fasteners and units for everything, but that doesn't affect public policy. NASA uses metric units for everything, as shown by the Mars lander disaster ~10 years ago (they got data from a military contractor which was in imperial units and didn't bother to check the units).
Also, we're not the only ones who use non-metric units. The UK uses them too: ask a UK resident how much they weigh and they'll give you an answer in some weird unit called "stones", whatever that is. They buy ale from their pubs in pints, and they still talk about road distances in miles.
Also, we have made some attempts at metrification; I've seen some places where they posted the roadside mile markers (a tiny sign on the interstate highway which marks every mile) in kilometers; it looks like they gave up after a while. They tried to sell gasoline in liters back in the 70s, and that pissed everyone off because the vendors jacked up the prices thinking people wouldn't know the difference with the new units. Also, with a lot of things in grocery stores, metric units are used; most fluid containers are measured in liters and milliliters now, except of course for milk which is usually in gallons and half-gallons (but the metric units are always written on them anyway). Soda has been sold in 2-liter bottles for decades.
In summary, the reason we still use a lot of non-metric units is because of inertia, resistance to change, and because that's what the people want. Our government sucks in a lot of ways, but pushing an unpopular change for seemingly arbitrary reasons isn't going to help things any. What does it matter whether you buy milk in a 1-gallon container or a 2.5-liter (or whatever) container? It's not like we're shipping this stuff out of the country anyway, and it's not like we require imported goods to be re-labeled in imperial units.
With politicians, it's nearly impossible to tell if they really believe that shit, or if they're just acting that way to get votes.
No, that would be the price of theocracy. As long as religion is a personal issue and no particular faith is mandatory to an individual, you can't make any assumptions as to who wants what and the only logical course of action is simply to leave it out (from the test that everyone is supposed to take).
Theocracy is what you get when you have a democracy and most of the population demand theocratic reforms in their government. If the population demands if, they can make a particular faith mandatory (or a group of faiths; after all, even though there's a lot of sects of Christianity, most of them have a lot of things in common that they agree on. Most of the Christians in this country, for instance, seem to be anti-gay, so they could very well agree on a law or even constitutional amendment to oppress gay people.)
The pure Democracy that you are equating with freedom is no such thing.
Who said anything about "pure democracy"? Please point me to where I used that term. You and a whole slew of other morons keep reading that into my writing, and it isn't there.
Your other writings are nonsensical. There are no "fundamental rights", and nothing in the Constitution is set in stone; many amendments have been made to the document over the years.
I frequently think that. Sure, slavery was horrible, but a half million people died in that war on both sides, and as another poster in this thread said, it paved the way for a stronger central government, less states' rights, which led to the imperial corporate oligarchy that we have now. From what I've read, the South at the time was on the edge of economic collapse anyway, so if the North had just let them go, their economy would have collapsed sooner or later (sooner if the North enacted sanctions against them for their use of slavery), and they would have been forced to make changes within. And North America probably would have been better off if the two had remained separate countries (but on friendly terms and allied after the whole slavery issue was settled in a couple decades).
Thank you, you summed that up perfectly.
This is a tired point, but the United States is a Presidential Republic, it is not a Democracy,
It IS a tired point, because fools like you keep repeating this idiotic meme and don't even know the definition of "democracy".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy
It has been secular, but if people demand more religion in government, it can happen, over time. Heck, all you really need is a few more SCOTUS justices to rubber-stamp anything the religious right wants, even if that means overturning prior rulings, plus a President that's willing to enforce religious rulings. It could happen sooner than you think.
Secession didn't work well the first time for several reasons: 1) slavery was a major issue in the war, and since it was so obviously morally wrong, it brought a lot of support on the northern side. We probably don't have any issues like that right now which would make lots of people want to take up arms to keep another part of the country from leaving. 2) It hadn't been that long since the War of 1812; there was probably still fear than Britain would try to retake the "colonies" if they were too weak, so unity was seen as necessary by many. There's no one that's going to invade and take over part of the US today, even if it did secede. 3) the North had a very strong industrial economy, so it could afford to finance the war effort. Today, our economy is not doing well, and is based on nothing really; we no longer have a strong manufacturing economy and the future looks grim. A civil war would cause immediate economic collapse, much worse than just letting the breakaway republics go. Finally, just how many people do you know who'd sign up to carry a rifle and fight against other Americans (perhaps in a separate region) so they can't secede? Most conservatives are constantly making comments about wishing California would fall into the ocean or otherwise leave the country. I really don't think there'd be a lot of support for using force to keep this place together if regions started trying to break away. Instead, a lot of people would be happy that they wouldn't have to share a country with "those dumb bible-thumping rednecks in Alabama or Kentucky" or "those godless atheists and homosexuals in California".
That's all nice and well, but totally irrelevant to the discussion. We're talking about school curricula, and that's something that the voters have (indirect) control over. If the voters want the public schools to teach falsehoods, it is within their power.
That sounds great, and I'd support it personally. However, when the majority of voters (esp. parents) in a school district are fundamentalist christian nuts, they're not going to be too happy that little Johnny is learning about the Mooslims and Shinto and everything else, and they're going to demand an end to it.
It's weird how Slashdotters have so little reading comprehension. Where did I ever advocate that the majority should be able to strip the minority of their rights? I'm only stating that it's possible under a democratic system. Our system of government has enacted protections against this, but since it is still a democracy, the people have the ability to vote for people who can change the government (with new laws, new constitutional amendments, etc.), and eventually, if the majority pushes for something long enough, do something totally unjust. The constitution and use of representatives only makes it much more difficult.
I also never said authoritarian government is necessary. It has its own problems, namely that you're subject to the whims of the leaders, good or bad. Get a good one, then it can be much better than a democracy. But then when he gets old and dies, or has an untimely accident, he might be replaced with a nut, and then you're stuck with decades of despotism.
Yes, democracy does mean we do any damn fool thing the majority wants. Our form of democracy (with representation, checks and balances, etc.) makes it much harder and time-consuming to push through "damn fool" things, but if the majority doesn't change its mind and pushes for it enough, it'll happen.
Whether it's "okay" or not is irrelevant. If it's what the majority wants, they may be able to get it (though the specific form of government they live under may make it difficult and time-consuming to achieve that goal within the law, because they'll have to elect people who agree with them, and then those politicians will have to change the laws, etc.).
There's some African country right now, with a democratic government, that's trying to get homosexuality banned with death being the punishment. Obviously (or at least I would hope it's obvious, but there's a lot of people here on Slashdot who would probably applaud this) this is horrible, but with a democratic form of government, this is what can happen when the majority wants something, and unwaveringly demands it from their government for long enough.
When you go throwing the word "WRONG" around, you should make sure you're actually correct, because otherwise you look like a total moron.
Our country is indeed a democracy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy