Re: What? Only 5% profit? Take on the GROSS, man..
on
Who Owns Your Body?
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· Score: 2
You only want 5% profit? I think you should try and claim 20% profit. If you're going to go with numbers like 5%, do it on the gross take of every sale. Don't doubt that's what the BioCorps would do.
1.Apple doesn't open up its specs, so coding for linux/ppc largely consists of hacks and other substandard patches.
Apple is partly open, partly closed. Some chipset details on their motherboard are closed, the OpenFirmware stuff is VERY well documented and a bit of a boon. Things ain't as bad as Be made it out to be.
2.The platform isn't as popular, so maintaining the ppc tree at the expense of the x86 one would be ludicrous.
This is true. Including PPC patches in the kernel shouldn't have to bring about this dichotomy, though.
3.The trend has been rightfully away from ppc for the last couple years, since Be decided to abandon the platform.
Uh... what? Be didn't decide to do this based on techincal merit. It was a political move -- and a good one for Be, but it has absolutely nothing to do with the nature of the PPC processor.
4.Several companies (LinuxPPC, YellowDog, etc.) exist to maintain linux/ppc. So why should Linus do their work for them?
We're simply talking about why Linus won't fold the work they've already done into the Kernel, not why he won't do their work. There are several well articulated reasons for this. Yours are not among them, though.
If you want an alternative to x86, then stick with Alpha. Now there's a real platform. The support still isn't as good as with x86, but what can you expect?
The support for Alpha is likely no better than for Linux PPC. In fact, if you want to apply the commodity hardware/number of units out there argument, I'll wager that LinuxPPC seats outnumber Linux Alpha seats. There is no sense in jumping from LinuxPPC to Alpha just because you're having some architecture deals. Out of the frying pan, into the fire.
I support Linus on this one. I think Paul Mackerras is treading awfully close to a kernel fork, and that's the last thing we need.
As has been well-pointed out in other posts for this article, we already have kernel "forks" of the kind that Paul Mackerras is treading close to, and we have for years.
Just curious. I'm not very knowledgeable about encryption or stuff at lower network levels, but wouldn't using HTTPS for looking at the websites stop the sniffers? I
And you can't block ALL encrypted traffic, seeing as how there's so much business that depends on it...
And I would have stopped coming here -- after all, I was trying to read slashdot on things like a Performa 6116 using Netscape 3.0, and a Powerbook 230 running Nestcape 2.0, and even Lynx.... it was awful. There was no way I could read comments if they got over 100.
Then I discoverd "light mode" in the preferences. I've never gone back. And I don't have to put up with the so-called color schemes!
With the exception of a cassette walkman I bought back in 1986, I'd have to agree that Sony products I've owned have sucked in terms of reliability. And worse has been when I've tried to get service.
Let's take, for example, the story of my TCD-3 portable DAT player/recorder. For much of the time I owned it, it had this intermittent problem where the right input would periodically just stop working. Simple cold solder joint? Nope. I first took it to the local "Authorized Sony Dealer", and that's what they tried to fix. Well, that didn't work (intermittent problem still) and so they said they had no idea what to do, so they told me they could send it to Sony. $170 of flat fees later, they sent it back to me. It worked for an entire month, and then quit 5 minutes into taping a show. When I tried to send it back to them, they claimed they had no record that they had done any maintenance for me or for the unit # I gave them. I prevailed on them to look at it, and sent a long letter detailing the history of the problem, including its intermittent nature and the fact that I'd tested the thing with a bunch of different sound sources so I knew that wasn't it. They returned the item to me in two weeks with a note saying "unit works fine; check your mics".
Either the techs were brain damaged or their communication chain was screwed. Either way, I was done with Sony at that moment.
(Eventually, I found my way to a guy in Philadelphia who makes his way fixing these kinds of things, and when he fixed it, the thing lasted for two whole months, after which I dropped the whole matter).
The point you bring up is valid, and I've heard some other scary stories about Canada. There are lots of people who have long waits. But Canada has some success stories as well -- I've had friends who've had good experiences with the system. And let's not forget the HMO horror stories we have down here. Maybe there's some solution that can provide better coverage than an existing system.
One thought is to socialize insurance but NOT medicine. Let individuals/organizations that provide the best service still compete for (and win) the available money. Under such a system, for your story above, maybe three or four enterprising souls realize that if there's such a long line of people waiting for MRIs, THEY can collect the money for doing the scan if they invest in the proper equipment and personell.
The other thought I've seen that I like is to create some non-profit (but non-state) insurance companies, whose primary mission would be NOT profit for shareholders, but actual maximizing of benefits for customers (while keeping itself alive). You'd think that w/o having to pay dividends to shareholders, they could offer competitive rates and/or better benefits. The beauty of this plan is that anybody with enough capital and philanthropy could start tomorrow. The problem is getting the capital purely of philanthropy....
There's probably other good ideas. People just have to stop thinking in terms of "free market" vs "government run" solutions.
It's actually NOT fair. My observations (biased because I'm a male) are that the females I know have been in more accidents than the males -- below a certain age (about 20).
I suspect that some of the studies that the insurance companies conduct don't draw lines in the right places. And also, that they are guilty of out-n-out BS sometimes. For example, I got told for 3 years that when I turned 25, I'd see a dramatic reduction in premium, seeing as how I was leaving a higher risk group. The month after I turned 25, my premium actually jumped $40 per year.
I think that genetic discrimination is largely inappropriate. Behavior based is better, because
it gives people control. There's got to be some better way of doing insurance, though...
Sometimes I think it might be cool to start a non-profit insurance company -- that is, one whose primary mission is NOT to be a profit center, but to provide good insurance. People would work there because they wanted to part of that mission...
If it becomes legal to discriminate by DNA,
race most certainly WILL be part of the package.
After all, what we call race is just a few broad phenotypes associated with some genotypes.
It's well established that people of certain races are more susceptible to certain ailments. Skin cancer for whites, sickle-cell anemia for some blacks, etc....
Ever since I read Shadow of the Hegemon reviewed here on slashdot, it's been hard for me not to see the world as a giant Risk game waiting to happen
-- and America, mighty as some of us are used to thinking of it -- not quite as powerful relative to some other nations as we think. Articles (and posts) like this one keep bringing that thought back.
What I've wondered about, tho', as far as missile defense systems go, is why the United States doesn't simply develop the system and offer to share the technology. Alleviates politcal pressure, solves the "rogue state" problem that's our ostensible reaspon for developin it, and makes us all safer from nukes.
Yeah, I know, it's really quite a naive idea. But I thought I'd mention it.
"Homophobic" in today's sense doesn't mean afraid of people with homosexual behaviors.. it just means prejudiced against them. Be as overly literal as you want; that's what the word is globally accepted as meaning. If you really take offense, substiture "anti-homosexual" for homophobic. My point is the same: if you say that the homosexual lifestyle is innately harmful then you're displaying a prejudice and are coloring the rest of your argument.
"Prejudice" is an interesting word for a viewpoint. I don't see why it couldn't just as easily be applied to the viewpoint that homosexuality has no effect on the individual at all (a dubious point. If sex had no effect on individuals, we wouldn't be as crazy about it as most of us are:).
But the main issue I take with the term homophobe -- or even the term "anti-homosexual" -- is that those who use it often seek to erode the distinction between those who would harm homosexuals and those who oppose practicing homosexuality (a distinction I think is real in most 'homophobes' but sadly not in another). It also is a lable that unfairly colors my arguments. See, for example our discussion.
I'm happy to say I am anti-homosexual in the sense that I oppose practicing homosexuality. However, perhaps I should have been more clear in saying this is not my primary reason for thinking gay couples shouldn't be parents. The reasoning flows from the idea that having a female and male parent while growing up (assuming that they're not disfunctional themselves) may provide psychological/spiritual/emotional/whatever-you-wan na-call-it benefits that would be missing otherwise. This has nothing to do with approving or disapproving of the sexual behavior of similarly-gendered parents. They just can't be both genders, sexual behavior aside.
Now, there MIGHT be issues involved in the sexual behavior of the couple; but I haven't tried to suss them out, and they're not the essence of my argument. But somehow you assumed that they really came from my opposition to homosexual practices. Which is unfortunate, because we might have actually been able to have a rational discussion about the former point, aside from the fact that neither of us seems to be able to offer more than anecdotal evidence at the moment (it's too bad the studies I've read were paper, not web, and I have no idea how to find the reference at the moment).
I'd like to think that the criteria of psychological health, intelligence according to grades, ability to form friendships and romantic relationships, &c, are good enough.
These are exactly the criteria I was thinking of, though. I admit to having some criteria beyond this, but for the sake of simplicity (having to establish them would take an essay) I've skipped them. They're enough to have a good starter discussion with...
a) Not necessarily 'you' so much as whoever is reading the post. b) Your post certainly said nothing that insinuated that you weren't thinking [that children of homosexual parents will probably have a similar orientation]
"most people probably don't decide their orientation based on how the authority figures in their life told 'em they oughta " were my words. I was thinking parent/guardian when I wrote authority figure; perhaps I was not quite clear enough.
Sounds like "sheer 'homophobia'" to me. You've discredited yourself with this statement.. but this is not my point.
Glad you took time to make it then. You completely misunderstand the word homophobia, then -- or, you have an agenda to meet with it.
Am I afraid of people with homosexual behaviors? Hardly. Am I "afraid" of what homosexual behavior does to people? Yep. Am I "afraid" of what some heterosexual behavior does to people? Yep. Am I "afraid" of what smoking does to people? Yep. All in the same sense.
How this makes me "homophobic", I don't know. Maybe you can explain it.
I rather doubt that you have ever met any children who are the product of two same-sex parents.
Wrong-o.
Guess what? They certainly have a chance of being well-adjusted happy people.. in fact, my experience and studies (I haven't any links handy) have shown that from all testable aspects, children raised by same-sex couples do better on average than others.
Funny, I've seen studies and experiences that
said the opposite (probably can be accounted for by the fact that most studies/personal inquiries are backed by an agenda, my own included).
And.. since I know you're thinking it.. the kids don't always turn out gay. Fancy that.. homosexual parents tend to hope that their progeny will make their own decisions about sexuality.
You didn't even read my post if you thought that's what I was thinking. Take a little time to do so.
This isn't going to play well here, but I'm going to say it anyway:
I don't think gay couples should be raising kids.
(Hold on there, cowboy, before you pull out the guns, wait until the end of the post to shoot, thanks).
This isn't out of sheer 'homophobia' -- though I do believe that homosexual behavior is inherently harmful to the individuals involved. But most people probably don't decide their orientation based on how the authority figures in their life told 'em they oughta (behavior, maybe, but probably not orientation).
Nor do I think that homosexuality strictly means promiscuity anymore than heterosexuality means stable monogamy.
Nope, I'm just a person who thinks that perhaps the male-female pair/combo might contribute something significant to breeding, raising, and socializing a new human being BEYOND just the necessary exchange of complementary material. That having a good female mother and a good male father will get people farther along to being well-adjusted than not.
And please: I'm willing to concede that homosexual couples can be stable and caring --- so don't bring up the "better them than the abusive/f*d up straight people." Yes, that's true: much better for a kid to be raised outside of the traditional/natural model than abused. But I think it's strange that whenever I talk about this, stable gay couples get compared to straight people who make Elizabeth Taylor look monogamous. Stable, good straight couples looking to adopt DO exist. My parents -- not always the best role models for a relationship -- did a decent job. Many of my friends were luckier. All things being equal, it's probably better to be raised by straight parents.
Yeah, yeah. Now, ask yourself -- why did they want to deregulate in the first place? What was the incentive for deregulation?
Well, because some people thought that the market would become more effecient, and power would become cheaper.
Now a few people realized that any utilities market where the infrastructure is as expensive and hard to create as our current power market wouldn't work like a commodoties market.
So they introduced price controls as a compromise. After all, since the market was going to get more effecient, nobody should have had to fear raising prices, right?
Ooops.
Granted, it is stupid to half-deregulate a market and expect it to work like a market. But let me reiterate again: it's just like phone service or any other infrastructure-expensive utility. The bar to entry into the market and the lock in to a prevailing system is too high for power companies to become a truly free market.
While never as a flexible as Calvinball, some friends and I years ago got into the habit of changing the rules of some games. Unlike Calvinball, we usually fixed the rules at the start of the game. Usually. The two best games we came up with were
1) the combination of SpeedBasketball and Foursquare
2) Monopoly with Crap!
I'll elaborate on Monopoly with Crap. To play, you need not only the standard board, but a deck of playing cards, a pool table, crepe paper, a baloon, a stairmaster, and a Dr. Seuss book. And a radio. Substitutions are encouraged.
The rules are altered thus:
* all properties are distributed randomly at the beginning of the game ("Communist Monopoly!" my girlfriend said). No houses are built.
* everybody gets a fixed sum of money ($300 - $500 works best) and doesn't receive anything when they pass go.
* when landing on a property, you draw (from the deck of playing cards) the number of cards equal to the first digit in the propert rental price. You then must run to the pool table (which is preferably kept in another room, or perhaps another building), and shoot the balls corresponding to those cards into the pockets. You can't return to the board until you do. If the person who owns the property is present, you must pay them rent before you go shoot pool. If not, you can stiff them.
*If your turn comes and you aren't present, your fellow players may steal $20 from your stash and put it in a pot in the middle.
*Anyone going to jail must go work on the stairmaster until the song that was going when they started is over. Then they must wait to play Baloon Volleyball (set up the court with the crepe paper) with the next person who finishes playing pool (who is required to play with them). They get out of jail if they win.
*The game ends when someone runs out of money. That person is then forced to read everyone else a Dr. Seuss voice. If the balloon has been helium filled, that person should inhale the helium first.
Variations are, of course, encouraged.
It usually generates enough sheer chaos and fast movement that it's fun. Lasts about an hour, depending on how much money you give out.
Embedding scripts in HTML can be done in a way that minimizes problems when you change appearance and empowers designers. Generally, if you create some high-level functions with easy to understand parameters, you can pass that info on to people who are doing the client side design and have them incorporate things nicely.
As a *simple* example, suppose I've got a list of frequently changing links that I want displayed on any page in a given site (let's also say frames are out). I can throw the links in a file or in a database, and create a PHP function
showlinks();. I pass this on to the client side team, and wherever the list of links is to appear, they just include:
It's just like they got a new tag to play with (hmmm. This reminds me of something else... starts with an x...).
This can get more difficult, obviously, as things get more complex, but if you're willing to put in the work to do the proper abstraction, and you have client-side folks with a few ounces of intelligence, it seems to work pretty well in many situations.
namespan is meant to be an all-encompasing nick.... one that "spans" an entire namespace.
The derivation comes from me trying to get an AIM nick, and EVERYTHING (and I mean EVERYTHING -- even some of the most unusual words or pet phrases I have in English or in SAMOAN for cryin' out loud) was taken already. I thought "Gee, this is a small name space", which really it wasn't (it was just crowded), and so I happened on the intermediate nick "smallnamespace".
Later, when signing up for my second slashdot account, the linear algebra classes I'd had kicked in, and I came up with namespan.
o do you believe that it would (for instance) be destructive to the Catholic Church if they decided to change the fundamental policy of disallowing women to be ordained?
Not being a big part of the Catholic Community or even haven known more than one or two practicing catholics, I'm afraid I can't say for certain.
However, I do know that if a community claims that its heirarchy leads by divine guidance, and then allows a popular vote among members of the community to change things w/o reference to afforementioned guidance, it destroys that principle of the community, and possibly the
community with it.
They _could_ change it if they claimed they had received direction from God to do so. This would preserve the claims of guidance from God, and affect the change, w/o damage to the community.
There may also be a spiritual argument for not ordaining women w/in their church. I don't know.
There are lots of doling-outs of federal money that are of a dubious nature. And even more uses of federal money by organizations that somebody could object to. Anybody could probably come up with 10 examples of groups receiving federal funding whose idealogies -- whether "religious" or not (and most all of them are in some sense or another) -- are objectionable in some way. We could start with the Republican and Democratic parties, if you like.
Rather than being worried that the feds are giving religious organizations money, we should be sure that no organization is favored over another trying to do the same thing -- except, perhaps, on bases that we can agree upon, such as effeciency, desired results, etc.
Bottom line: don't make it so religious organizations can never receive public funding for projects the public would approve of. Just hold them to the same standards of accountability you'd hold any other organization to.
sit there and talk about how tolerance in the church will destroy it. Isn't that what it's built around?
It depends on what you're tolerating.
If by tolerance you mean treating other human beings with kindness and integrity in your dealings with them, the church is definitely built around that.
If by tolerance you mean blessing any behavior or attitude, the Mormon church (or any spiritual discipline, really) is NOT about that. If it were,
what would be the point?
The point of a spiritual discipline is to achieve a transformation to a desired state, usually by controlling ones behavior, thoughts, actions, desires, habits. Churches are based on this premise. Christianity is, with the added idea that you can't really do it all by yourself, you need the help of a higher power (Christ), as well as the example. Mormonism tracks this pretty closely.
Some of the oft-included behaviors/desires for various spiritual disciplines are those associated with sexual behavior/desire. For mormons, that discipline includes no sexual relations except between a man and woman married to each other. The homosexual community seems to persist in calling for the church to abandon teaching this discipline.
Since that discipline (and those related) ARE
the point of the church, to eliminate it is to
essentially destroy the purpose of the church.
Re: Subtexts, homophobia, homophobiaphobia, etc.
on
Shadow of the Hegemon
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· Score: 2
Given this new knowledge, do you think that it is at all possible -- consciously or unconsciously -- that Card did just such a thing (purposely make references between homosexuality and evil) as the original poster suggests?
Card is not in the habit of making homosexuals villains. See Songmaster. Additionally, he has plenty of heterosexual villains (see, oh, just about anything, including the fact that Achilles seemed pretty straight in Shadw).
Also, the essay you quote shows that he's not subversive about the way he goes about expressing his beliefs about homosexuality -- he's happy to put it out front.
Finally, I think you misunderstand the essay. It's not, as a focus, a scathing rejection of anyone who is homosexual. He _does_ reject the idea that you can live a life based on your identity as a homosexual and remain part of the LDS church (which really, doesn't take being a nuclear physicist to figure out). That's where he draws his line. You can't beleive the Mormon Church is what it says it is and be what it asks its members to be if your allegiance to your sexual tendancies is higher than your allegience to the Church.
Is anyone else bothered by the fact the Shoeboy consistently seems to name his villian "Card".
Most would consider Card to be hero, or at the very least interesting, but not Shoeboy.
Shoeboy is Card hater, and like all Card haters, is homophobicphobic.
As anyone who's read Card knows, he doesn't hate homosexual individuals, but doesn't believe that homosexuality is right and doesn't have a problem telling people that.
Apparently, in Shoeboy's eyes, this makes him a villain.
Mormons worry me.
Shoeboy worries me.:)
(or might just have just taken up the slashdot hobby of posting just the right inflammatory but not quite flamebait comment, much like KTB)
You know, I think that if I were picking somebody to be in charge of the world -- or even this little country I live int -- it would be Larry Wall.
He's happy, and not driven by worldly ambition, and his ethos of trying to contribute to the world is both admirable and real-seeming. He also seems remarkably non-dogmatic.
I suppose these people don't seek to be in charge, though. They just lead where they want to go and hope other people follow....
Slashdot Mirror
You only want 5% profit? I think you should try and claim 20% profit. If you're going to go with numbers like 5%, do it on the gross take of every sale. Don't doubt that's what the BioCorps would do.
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"I have finally found the free Unix that's the closest thing to FORTH." -- Jack J. Woehr on OpenBSD
What does this mean?
Or, put another way, how is OpenBSD like FORTH?
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1.Apple doesn't open up its specs, so coding for linux/ppc largely consists of hacks and other substandard patches.
Apple is partly open, partly closed. Some chipset details on their motherboard are closed, the OpenFirmware stuff is VERY well documented and a bit of a boon. Things ain't as bad as Be made it out to be.
2.The platform isn't as popular, so maintaining the ppc tree at the expense of the x86 one would be ludicrous.
This is true. Including PPC patches in the kernel shouldn't have to bring about this dichotomy, though.
3.The trend has been rightfully away from ppc for the last couple years, since Be decided to abandon the platform.
Uh... what? Be didn't decide to do this based on techincal merit. It was a political move -- and a good one for Be, but it has absolutely nothing to do with the nature of the PPC processor.
4.Several companies (LinuxPPC, YellowDog, etc.) exist to maintain linux/ppc. So why should Linus do their work for them?
We're simply talking about why Linus won't fold the work they've already done into the Kernel, not why he won't do their work. There are several well articulated reasons for this. Yours are not among them, though.
If you want an alternative to x86, then stick with Alpha. Now there's a real platform. The support still isn't as good as with x86, but what can you expect?
The support for Alpha is likely no better than for Linux PPC. In fact, if you want to apply the commodity hardware/number of units out there argument, I'll wager that LinuxPPC seats outnumber Linux Alpha seats. There is no sense in jumping from LinuxPPC to Alpha just because you're having some architecture deals. Out of the frying pan, into the fire.
I support Linus on this one. I think Paul Mackerras is treading awfully close to a kernel fork, and that's the last thing we need.
As has been well-pointed out in other posts for this article, we already have kernel "forks" of the kind that Paul Mackerras is treading close to, and we have for years.
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Just curious. I'm not very knowledgeable about encryption or stuff at lower network levels, but wouldn't using HTTPS for looking at the websites stop the sniffers? I
And you can't block ALL encrypted traffic, seeing as how there's so much business that depends on it...
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Amen.
And I would have stopped coming here -- after all, I was trying to read slashdot on things like a Performa 6116 using Netscape 3.0, and a Powerbook 230 running Nestcape 2.0, and even Lynx.... it was awful. There was no way I could read comments if they got over 100.
Then I discoverd "light mode" in the preferences. I've never gone back. And I don't have to put up with the so-called color schemes!
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Sony's evilness (and they are evil) aside...
With the exception of a cassette walkman I bought back in 1986, I'd have to agree that Sony products I've owned have sucked in terms of reliability. And worse has been when I've tried to get service.
Let's take, for example, the story of my TCD-3 portable DAT player/recorder. For much of the time I owned it, it had this intermittent problem where the right input would periodically just stop working. Simple cold solder joint? Nope. I first took it to the local "Authorized Sony Dealer", and that's what they tried to fix. Well, that didn't work (intermittent problem still) and so they said they had no idea what to do, so they told me they could send it to Sony. $170 of flat fees later, they sent it back to me. It worked for an entire month, and then quit 5 minutes into taping a show. When I tried to send it back to them, they claimed they had no record that they had done any maintenance for me or for the unit # I gave them. I prevailed on them to look at it, and sent a long letter detailing the history of the problem, including its intermittent nature and the fact that I'd tested the thing with a bunch of different sound sources so I knew that wasn't it. They returned the item to me in two weeks with a note saying "unit works fine; check your mics".
Either the techs were brain damaged or their communication chain was screwed. Either way, I was done with Sony at that moment.
(Eventually, I found my way to a guy in Philadelphia who makes his way fixing these kinds of things, and when he fixed it, the thing lasted for two whole months, after which I dropped the whole matter).
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Well, it's the open source concept, but one notch better, because the source wouldn't be open ...
... that's what a'cappella means! I mean, that's what it doesn't mean. A'cappella means without instruments."
This reminds me of a college comedy sketch I saw once:
"So... did you like our song?"
"Yeah, it was great... but I thought you said it was going to be a'cappella."
"It was. We're an a'cappella group."
"But... you were playing the guitar. And he was playing the bass. And you had a drummer."
"We're taking a'cappella to the next level: a'cappella... WITH INSTRUMENTS!"
"But... but... that's
"Why're you always trying to bring us down, man?"
Courtesy of The Garrens. See if you can find their CD and listen to it...
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Socialized medicine just doesn't work
The point you bring up is valid, and I've heard some other scary stories about Canada. There are lots of people who have long waits. But Canada has some success stories as well -- I've had friends who've had good experiences with the system. And let's not forget the HMO horror stories we have down here. Maybe there's some solution that can provide better coverage than an existing system.
One thought is to socialize insurance but NOT medicine. Let individuals/organizations that provide the best service still compete for (and win) the available money. Under such a system, for your story above, maybe three or four enterprising souls realize that if there's such a long line of people waiting for MRIs, THEY can collect the money for doing the scan if they invest in the proper equipment and personell.
The other thought I've seen that I like is to create some non-profit (but non-state) insurance companies, whose primary mission would be NOT profit for shareholders, but actual maximizing of benefits for customers (while keeping itself alive). You'd think that w/o having to pay dividends to shareholders, they could offer competitive rates and/or better benefits. The beauty of this plan is that anybody with enough capital and philanthropy could start tomorrow. The problem is getting the capital purely of philanthropy....
There's probably other good ideas. People just have to stop thinking in terms of "free market" vs "government run" solutions.
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It's actually NOT fair. My observations (biased because I'm a male) are that the females I know have been in more accidents than the males -- below a certain age (about 20).
I suspect that some of the studies that the insurance companies conduct don't draw lines in the right places. And also, that they are guilty of out-n-out BS sometimes. For example, I got told for 3 years that when I turned 25, I'd see a dramatic reduction in premium, seeing as how I was leaving a higher risk group. The month after I turned 25, my premium actually jumped $40 per year.
I think that genetic discrimination is largely inappropriate. Behavior based is better, because
it gives people control. There's got to be some better way of doing insurance, though...
Sometimes I think it might be cool to start a non-profit insurance company -- that is, one whose primary mission is NOT to be a profit center, but to provide good insurance. People would work there because they wanted to part of that mission...
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Maybe they have race in the closet too.
If it becomes legal to discriminate by DNA,
race most certainly WILL be part of the package.
After all, what we call race is just a few broad phenotypes associated with some genotypes.
It's well established that people of certain races are more susceptible to certain ailments. Skin cancer for whites, sickle-cell anemia for some blacks, etc....
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Ever since I read Shadow of the Hegemon reviewed here on slashdot, it's been hard for me not to see the world as a giant Risk game waiting to happen
-- and America, mighty as some of us are used to thinking of it -- not quite as powerful relative to some other nations as we think. Articles (and posts) like this one keep bringing that thought back.
What I've wondered about, tho', as far as missile defense systems go, is why the United States doesn't simply develop the system and offer to share the technology. Alleviates politcal pressure, solves the "rogue state" problem that's our ostensible reaspon for developin it, and makes us all safer from nukes.
Yeah, I know, it's really quite a naive idea. But I thought I'd mention it.
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"Homophobic" in today's sense doesn't mean afraid of people with homosexual behaviors.. it just means prejudiced against them. Be as overly literal as you want; that's what the word is globally accepted as meaning. If you really take offense, substiture "anti-homosexual" for homophobic. My point is the same: if you say that the homosexual lifestyle is innately harmful then you're displaying a prejudice and are coloring the rest of your argument.
:).
n na-call-it benefits that would be missing otherwise. This has nothing to do with approving or disapproving of the sexual behavior of similarly-gendered parents. They just can't be both genders, sexual behavior aside.
"Prejudice" is an interesting word for a viewpoint. I don't see why it couldn't just as easily be applied to the viewpoint that homosexuality has no effect on the individual at all (a dubious point. If sex had no effect on individuals, we wouldn't be as crazy about it as most of us are
But the main issue I take with the term homophobe -- or even the term "anti-homosexual" -- is that those who use it often seek to erode the distinction between those who would harm homosexuals and those who oppose practicing homosexuality (a distinction I think is real in most 'homophobes' but sadly not in another). It also is a lable that unfairly colors my arguments. See, for example our discussion.
I'm happy to say I am anti-homosexual in the sense that I oppose practicing homosexuality. However, perhaps I should have been more clear in saying this is not my primary reason for thinking gay couples shouldn't be parents. The reasoning flows from the idea that having a female and male parent while growing up (assuming that they're not disfunctional themselves) may provide psychological/spiritual/emotional/whatever-you-wa
Now, there MIGHT be issues involved in the sexual behavior of the couple; but I haven't tried to suss them out, and they're not the essence of my argument. But somehow you assumed that they really came from my opposition to homosexual practices. Which is unfortunate, because we might have actually been able to have a rational discussion about the former point, aside from the fact that neither of us seems to be able to offer more than anecdotal evidence at the moment (it's too bad the studies I've read were paper, not web, and I have no idea how to find the reference at the moment).
I'd like to think that the criteria of psychological health, intelligence according to grades, ability to form friendships and romantic relationships, &c, are good enough.
These are exactly the criteria I was thinking of, though. I admit to having some criteria beyond this, but for the sake of simplicity (having to establish them would take an essay) I've skipped them. They're enough to have a good starter discussion with...
a) Not necessarily 'you' so much as whoever is reading the post. b) Your post certainly said nothing that insinuated that you weren't thinking [that children of homosexual parents will probably have a similar orientation]
"most people probably don't decide their orientation based on how the authority figures in their life told 'em they oughta " were my words. I was thinking parent/guardian when I wrote authority figure; perhaps I was not quite clear enough.
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Sounds like "sheer 'homophobia'" to me. You've discredited yourself with this statement.. but this is not my point.
Glad you took time to make it then. You completely misunderstand the word homophobia, then -- or, you have an agenda to meet with it.
Am I afraid of people with homosexual behaviors? Hardly. Am I "afraid" of what homosexual behavior does to people? Yep. Am I "afraid" of what some heterosexual behavior does to people? Yep. Am I "afraid" of what smoking does to people? Yep. All in the same sense.
How this makes me "homophobic", I don't know. Maybe you can explain it.
I rather doubt that you have ever met any children who are the product of two same-sex parents.
Wrong-o.
Guess what? They certainly have a chance of being well-adjusted happy people.. in fact, my experience and studies (I haven't any links handy) have shown that from all testable aspects, children raised by same-sex couples do better on average than others.
Funny, I've seen studies and experiences that
said the opposite (probably can be accounted for by the fact that most studies/personal inquiries are backed by an agenda, my own included).
And.. since I know you're thinking it.. the kids don't always turn out gay. Fancy that.. homosexual parents tend to hope that their progeny will make their own decisions about sexuality.
You didn't even read my post if you thought that's what I was thinking. Take a little time to do so.
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This isn't going to play well here, but I'm going to say it anyway:
I don't think gay couples should be raising kids.
(Hold on there, cowboy, before you pull out the guns, wait until the end of the post to shoot, thanks).
This isn't out of sheer 'homophobia' -- though I do believe that homosexual behavior is inherently harmful to the individuals involved. But most people probably don't decide their orientation based on how the authority figures in their life told 'em they oughta (behavior, maybe, but probably not orientation).
Nor do I think that homosexuality strictly means promiscuity anymore than heterosexuality means stable monogamy.
Nope, I'm just a person who thinks that perhaps the male-female pair/combo might contribute something significant to breeding, raising, and socializing a new human being BEYOND just the necessary exchange of complementary material. That having a good female mother and a good male father will get people farther along to being well-adjusted than not.
And please: I'm willing to concede that homosexual couples can be stable and caring --- so don't bring up the "better them than the abusive/f*d up straight people." Yes, that's true: much better for a kid to be raised outside of the traditional/natural model than abused. But I think it's strange that whenever I talk about this, stable gay couples get compared to straight people who make Elizabeth Taylor look monogamous. Stable, good straight couples looking to adopt DO exist. My parents -- not always the best role models for a relationship -- did a decent job. Many of my friends were luckier. All things being equal, it's probably better to be raised by straight parents.
Flame away.
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Yeah, yeah. Now, ask yourself -- why did they want to deregulate in the first place? What was the incentive for deregulation?
Well, because some people thought that the market would become more effecient, and power would become cheaper.
Now a few people realized that any utilities market where the infrastructure is as expensive and hard to create as our current power market wouldn't work like a commodoties market.
So they introduced price controls as a compromise. After all, since the market was going to get more effecient, nobody should have had to fear raising prices, right?
Ooops.
Granted, it is stupid to half-deregulate a market and expect it to work like a market. But let me reiterate again: it's just like phone service or any other infrastructure-expensive utility. The bar to entry into the market and the lock in to a prevailing system is too high for power companies to become a truly free market.
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While never as a flexible as Calvinball, some friends and I years ago got into the habit of changing the rules of some games. Unlike Calvinball, we usually fixed the rules at the start of the game. Usually. The two best games we came up with were
1) the combination of SpeedBasketball and Foursquare
2) Monopoly with Crap!
I'll elaborate on Monopoly with Crap. To play, you need not only the standard board, but a deck of playing cards, a pool table, crepe paper, a baloon, a stairmaster, and a Dr. Seuss book. And a radio. Substitutions are encouraged.
The rules are altered thus:
* all properties are distributed randomly at the beginning of the game ("Communist Monopoly!" my girlfriend said). No houses are built.
* everybody gets a fixed sum of money ($300 - $500 works best) and doesn't receive anything when they pass go.
* when landing on a property, you draw (from the deck of playing cards) the number of cards equal to the first digit in the propert rental price. You then must run to the pool table (which is preferably kept in another room, or perhaps another building), and shoot the balls corresponding to those cards into the pockets. You can't return to the board until you do. If the person who owns the property is present, you must pay them rent before you go shoot pool. If not, you can stiff them.
*If your turn comes and you aren't present, your fellow players may steal $20 from your stash and put it in a pot in the middle.
*Anyone going to jail must go work on the stairmaster until the song that was going when they started is over. Then they must wait to play Baloon Volleyball (set up the court with the crepe paper) with the next person who finishes playing pool (who is required to play with them). They get out of jail if they win.
*The game ends when someone runs out of money. That person is then forced to read everyone else a Dr. Seuss voice. If the balloon has been helium filled, that person should inhale the helium first.
Variations are, of course, encouraged.
It usually generates enough sheer chaos and fast movement that it's fun. Lasts about an hour, depending on how much money you give out.
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Embedding scripts in HTML can be done in a way that minimizes problems when you change appearance and empowers designers. Generally, if you create some high-level functions with easy to understand parameters, you can pass that info on to people who are doing the client side design and have them incorporate things nicely.
... starts with an x...).
As a *simple* example, suppose I've got a list of frequently changing links that I want displayed on any page in a given site (let's also say frames are out). I can throw the links in a file or in a database, and create a PHP function
showlinks();. I pass this on to the client side team, and wherever the list of links is to appear, they just include:
It's just like they got a new tag to play with (hmmm. This reminds me of something else
This can get more difficult, obviously, as things get more complex, but if you're willing to put in the work to do the proper abstraction, and you have client-side folks with a few ounces of intelligence, it seems to work pretty well in many situations.
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namespan is meant to be an all-encompasing nick.... one that "spans" an entire namespace.
The derivation comes from me trying to get an AIM nick, and EVERYTHING (and I mean EVERYTHING -- even some of the most unusual words or pet phrases I have in English or in SAMOAN for cryin' out loud) was taken already. I thought "Gee, this is a small name space", which really it wasn't (it was just crowded), and so I happened on the intermediate nick "smallnamespace".
Later, when signing up for my second slashdot account, the linear algebra classes I'd had kicked in, and I came up with namespan.
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o do you believe that it would (for instance) be destructive to the Catholic Church if they decided to change the fundamental policy of disallowing women to be ordained?
Not being a big part of the Catholic Community or even haven known more than one or two practicing catholics, I'm afraid I can't say for certain.
However, I do know that if a community claims that its heirarchy leads by divine guidance, and then allows a popular vote among members of the community to change things w/o reference to afforementioned guidance, it destroys that principle of the community, and possibly the
community with it.
They _could_ change it if they claimed they had received direction from God to do so. This would preserve the claims of guidance from God, and affect the change, w/o damage to the community.
There may also be a spiritual argument for not ordaining women w/in their church. I don't know.
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"faith-based" charity federal funding
Just a note about this:
There are lots of doling-outs of federal money that are of a dubious nature. And even more uses of federal money by organizations that somebody could object to. Anybody could probably come up with 10 examples of groups receiving federal funding whose idealogies -- whether "religious" or not (and most all of them are in some sense or another) -- are objectionable in some way. We could start with the Republican and Democratic parties, if you like.
Rather than being worried that the feds are giving religious organizations money, we should be sure that no organization is favored over another trying to do the same thing -- except, perhaps, on bases that we can agree upon, such as effeciency, desired results, etc.
Bottom line: don't make it so religious organizations can never receive public funding for projects the public would approve of. Just hold them to the same standards of accountability you'd hold any other organization to.
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sit there and talk about how tolerance in the church will destroy it. Isn't that what it's built around?
It depends on what you're tolerating.
If by tolerance you mean treating other human beings with kindness and integrity in your dealings with them, the church is definitely built around that.
If by tolerance you mean blessing any behavior or attitude, the Mormon church (or any spiritual discipline, really) is NOT about that. If it were,
what would be the point?
The point of a spiritual discipline is to achieve a transformation to a desired state, usually by controlling ones behavior, thoughts, actions, desires, habits. Churches are based on this premise. Christianity is, with the added idea that you can't really do it all by yourself, you need the help of a higher power (Christ), as well as the example. Mormonism tracks this pretty closely.
Some of the oft-included behaviors/desires for various spiritual disciplines are those associated with sexual behavior/desire. For mormons, that discipline includes no sexual relations except between a man and woman married to each other. The homosexual community seems to persist in calling for the church to abandon teaching this discipline.
Since that discipline (and those related) ARE
the point of the church, to eliminate it is to
essentially destroy the purpose of the church.
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Thanks.
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Given this new knowledge, do you think that it is at all possible -- consciously or unconsciously -- that Card did just such a thing (purposely make references between homosexuality and evil) as the original poster suggests?
Card is not in the habit of making homosexuals villains. See Songmaster. Additionally, he has plenty of heterosexual villains (see, oh, just about anything, including the fact that Achilles seemed pretty straight in Shadw).
Also, the essay you quote shows that he's not subversive about the way he goes about expressing his beliefs about homosexuality -- he's happy to put it out front.
Finally, I think you misunderstand the essay. It's not, as a focus, a scathing rejection of anyone who is homosexual. He _does_ reject the idea that you can live a life based on your identity as a homosexual and remain part of the LDS church (which really, doesn't take being a nuclear physicist to figure out). That's where he draws his line. You can't beleive the Mormon Church is what it says it is and be what it asks its members to be if your allegiance to your sexual tendancies is higher than your allegience to the Church.
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Is anyone else bothered by the fact the Shoeboy consistently seems to name his villian "Card".
:)
Most would consider Card to be hero, or at the very least interesting, but not Shoeboy.
Shoeboy is Card hater, and like all Card haters, is homophobicphobic.
As anyone who's read Card knows, he doesn't hate homosexual individuals, but doesn't believe that homosexuality is right and doesn't have a problem telling people that.
Apparently, in Shoeboy's eyes, this makes him a villain.
Mormons worry me.
Shoeboy worries me.
(or might just have just taken up the slashdot hobby of posting just the right inflammatory but not quite flamebait comment, much like KTB)
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You know, I think that if I were picking somebody to be in charge of the world -- or even this little country I live int -- it would be Larry Wall.
He's happy, and not driven by worldly ambition, and his ethos of trying to contribute to the world is both admirable and real-seeming. He also seems remarkably non-dogmatic.
I suppose these people don't seek to be in charge, though. They just lead where they want to go and hope other people follow....
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