In other words, register for one of the two parties (you have to guess which one will be more important) in order to help validate the existing duopoly in exchange for a slightly larger franchise that will be totally invalidated by the large numbers of party True Believers who are the ones the primaries are REALLY for.
The system is broken. Spending more time working on this system will not make it less broken. We need a new system.
Er, mules are the sterile offspring between donkeys and horses. They are not an evolutionary forebear of anything.
There is a huge amount science doesn't know, surely. But science has a proven, successful framework of learning new stuff, of expanding our world view and better comprehending the universe that we live in.
I happen to believe that the universe was created by a loving God, who cares for me personally, and who likes it when I try to understand His creation. That is an article of faith: It is not open to scientific rebuttal. Science is irrelevant to my faith. There is room in my faith for science. "God did it" is not a satisfactory answer for "Why are things this way?".
Since I am the user, and I spend my time interfacing with the device, that is the most important feature. Period. And nobody does it better than Apple.
Uh, probably all the people who bought iPods care about smaller. I KNOW all the people who pay the premium for the Mini (you know, the one that has been selling like mad since its introduction) care about size.
If you think that "Best UI available in a portable player" is part of the "coolness", I agree.
I don't give a teeny shit about what's "cool". But I paid for my iPod, happily, because it's the best available player at any price.
I've built my own PCs for ten years, and I've never found one that is as well designed as a stock Macintosh.
There simply isn't a PC case that's as well-engineered and designed as the G5 case (Or the G4 case. Or the new iMac.) There doesn't exist a cooling system that's as well designed and elegant as the current Apple state-of-the-art. You can't find an operating system that works as well, as elegantly, as flexibly as Apple's.
There are a lot of reasons not to own a Mac. Quality of the user experience (from end to end) isn't among them.
No, I DON'T think we could, not without becoming our enemy. That is my point. It may or may not be against the Geneva Accords, it is absolutely against the code of ethics that this nation was founded on.
If we can't afford our principles, we can't afford anything.
The techniques of acceptable interrogation are the business of every citizen of this nation. We are (rightly!) judged by our treatment of prisoners. Prisoners should be treated with dignity at all times. Period.
An imperfect plan delivered swiftly gets us stuck in an untenable occupation with no support and no viable exit strategy, with insufficient forces and no armor. Had Colin Powell been calling the shots, it would have not been a problem. Overwhelming force is better for everybody involved. Having some frat boys who think they're soldiers because they did a weekend survival camp where they shot each other with paintball guns running our foreign policy is a Rotten Idea.
Saddam was a bad, bad man. He was not the worst man in the world, nor was he the easiest to get rid of, nor did he lead the most dangerous nation. Any of those criteria would have been sufficient to justify his removal by force by an international body. I do not think invading Iraq has made the United States more secure, and I do not think we had sufficient mandate to invade.
Now that we're there, we have no choice but to stay the course. I am not sanguine about the prospects, but certainly leaving now would be far worse than trying to stick it out.
1) sorry about the monster crack. That was poor form on my part.
2) I'm not going to try to make a legal argument. I don't know the Geneva Conventions well enough to do so.
However, I can and do make an ethical argument against executing Afghan or Iraqi prisoners. It's pretty straightforward: If even a single, solitary innocent shepherd has gotten lumped in with the detainees, there is simply no outcome positive enough to justify murdering them. Not possible. And, since the detainees have no access to counsel or due process, there is no way of proving that they are not innocent shepherds, and therefore (by our own ethical code) they are entitled to presumption of innocence, which is an inalienable human right that we encode in our supreme laws.
The Constitution simply does not apply to only citizens. It enjoins the Government from taking actions that would infringe on inalienable human rights.
I can make a similar argument wrt torture. It is a) not effective and b) morally repugnant.
Want to protect our "boys"? Let's don't invade Iraq with no plan for an effective occupation. That will save a lot more US service personnel than torturing a couple naked Iraqis.
You're right. If we'd found them in Nebraska, we could execute them as spies.
But since the US Army invaded Afghanistan, calling Afghan natives "spies" is pretty thin. Don't think Karl Rove didn't consider it.
Both those points aside, you are the sort of monster the Geneva Convention is designed to preserve the rest of us from. I suppose you think torturing people is just fine as long as you think you might find a convenient piece of information from it.
Matthew 25:34. Jesus puts the point explicitly: 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.'
I say this by way of information, not proselytizing. You feel free to put credence in the Bible or not, according to your own path to righteousness.
Slashdot Mirror
Is it really necessary to your worldview to believe everybody who disagrees with you must be under some form of mind control?
If it's not, why do you say things like that? If it is, you need professional help.
In other words, register for one of the two parties (you have to guess which one will be more important) in order to help validate the existing duopoly in exchange for a slightly larger franchise that will be totally invalidated by the large numbers of party True Believers who are the ones the primaries are REALLY for.
The system is broken. Spending more time working on this system will not make it less broken. We need a new system.
"then the philosophy they defined is no more applicable than Nietzsche."
Applicability can be judged, in my opinion, only based on a philosophy's relevance to its adherents.
If Nietzche feeds your soul, more power to you. That's hard for me to imagine, but I don't have to imagine it in order for it to be relevant to you.
Yes. Faith is arbitrary. And mine has nothing whatsoever to do with you.
So why are you so insistent that I am wrong to have it?
It's not a matter of getting them to change their minds, it's a matter of preventing them from ruling the country.
Which we have thus far failed to do. See where it's gotten us?
What do Man's imperfect ways of relating to God have to do with God's nature?
Nothing.
Want to really confuse a Biblical literalist? Have them try to reconcile the two different timelines for Creation that appear in Genesis.
Their brains get all melty. It's fun.
The interesting thing is, if you read the accounts as an allegory to explain cosmology to a nomadic shepherd, they track surprisingly well.
The Bible is not about how the heavens go, it is about how to go to Heaven. (paraphrased from Galileo)
Er, mules are the sterile offspring between donkeys and horses. They are not an evolutionary forebear of anything.
There is a huge amount science doesn't know, surely. But science has a proven, successful framework of learning new stuff, of expanding our world view and better comprehending the universe that we live in.
I happen to believe that the universe was created by a loving God, who cares for me personally, and who likes it when I try to understand His creation. That is an article of faith: It is not open to scientific rebuttal. Science is irrelevant to my faith. There is room in my faith for science. "God did it" is not a satisfactory answer for "Why are things this way?".
Why is this so contentious?
They're not rationalizations, they are articles of faith that do not contradict observable data.
Faith and science do not address the same set of questions.
I think that might explain chartreuse.
Two words.
User Interface.
Since I am the user, and I spend my time interfacing with the device, that is the most important feature. Period. And nobody does it better than Apple.
Er, wouldn't you pay extra for all those accessories for your precious Nomad? Am I crazy?
Uh, probably all the people who bought iPods care about smaller. I KNOW all the people who pay the premium for the Mini (you know, the one that has been selling like mad since its introduction) care about size.
If you think that "Best UI available in a portable player" is part of the "coolness", I agree.
I don't give a teeny shit about what's "cool". But I paid for my iPod, happily, because it's the best available player at any price.
Uh, yeah, it IS that ugly, and they didn't spend a damn nickel on UI design.
The Archos is a piece of junk. It's cheap, and if you want something cheap, then knock yourself out. But it is still a piece of junk.
Stop.
You bought a computer made by HP?
You're totally disqualified.
Bluetooth.
Get over it.
Well, everybody who doesn't is still fucked, so it's not a very good solution to the problem, is it?
I've built my own PCs for ten years, and I've never found one that is as well designed as a stock Macintosh.
There simply isn't a PC case that's as well-engineered and designed as the G5 case (Or the G4 case. Or the new iMac.) There doesn't exist a cooling system that's as well designed and elegant as the current Apple state-of-the-art. You can't find an operating system that works as well, as elegantly, as flexibly as Apple's.
There are a lot of reasons not to own a Mac. Quality of the user experience (from end to end) isn't among them.
What is the "it" that Mac users don't apparently "get"?
No, I DON'T think we could, not without becoming our enemy. That is my point. It may or may not be against the Geneva Accords, it is absolutely against the code of ethics that this nation was founded on.
If we can't afford our principles, we can't afford anything.
The techniques of acceptable interrogation are the business of every citizen of this nation. We are (rightly!) judged by our treatment of prisoners. Prisoners should be treated with dignity at all times. Period.
An imperfect plan delivered swiftly gets us stuck in an untenable occupation with no support and no viable exit strategy, with insufficient forces and no armor. Had Colin Powell been calling the shots, it would have not been a problem. Overwhelming force is better for everybody involved. Having some frat boys who think they're soldiers because they did a weekend survival camp where they shot each other with paintball guns running our foreign policy is a Rotten Idea.
Saddam was a bad, bad man. He was not the worst man in the world, nor was he the easiest to get rid of, nor did he lead the most dangerous nation. Any of those criteria would have been sufficient to justify his removal by force by an international body. I do not think invading Iraq has made the United States more secure, and I do not think we had sufficient mandate to invade.
Now that we're there, we have no choice but to stay the course. I am not sanguine about the prospects, but certainly leaving now would be far worse than trying to stick it out.
I'm going to backtrack a little bit.
1) sorry about the monster crack. That was poor form on my part.
2) I'm not going to try to make a legal argument. I don't know the Geneva Conventions well enough to do so.
However, I can and do make an ethical argument against executing Afghan or Iraqi prisoners. It's pretty straightforward: If even a single, solitary innocent shepherd has gotten lumped in with the detainees, there is simply no outcome positive enough to justify murdering them. Not possible. And, since the detainees have no access to counsel or due process, there is no way of proving that they are not innocent shepherds, and therefore (by our own ethical code) they are entitled to presumption of innocence, which is an inalienable human right that we encode in our supreme laws.
The Constitution simply does not apply to only citizens. It enjoins the Government from taking actions that would infringe on inalienable human rights.
I can make a similar argument wrt torture. It is a) not effective and b) morally repugnant.
Want to protect our "boys"? Let's don't invade Iraq with no plan for an effective occupation. That will save a lot more US service personnel than torturing a couple naked Iraqis.
They also didn't find any unicorns. That's not evidence that there were in fact unicorns.
You're right. If we'd found them in Nebraska, we could execute them as spies.
But since the US Army invaded Afghanistan, calling Afghan natives "spies" is pretty thin. Don't think Karl Rove didn't consider it.
Both those points aside, you are the sort of monster the Geneva Convention is designed to preserve the rest of us from. I suppose you think torturing people is just fine as long as you think you might find a convenient piece of information from it.
Matthew 25:34. Jesus puts the point explicitly: 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.'
I say this by way of information, not proselytizing. You feel free to put credence in the Bible or not, according to your own path to righteousness.
: )
Except for the fact that the ink dries out in the tanks faster than I can use it up.
Cheap used laser printer for me, thanks.