Uh no. Mathematics is what proved that it was factually incorrect, something that what a few years ago most on/. knew, what was.
Actually, McIntyre and McKitrick's paper was later torn apart by real mathematicians. Turns out they cherry-picked their data (they picked the 10 "best" results out of more than 100 and labelled them as typical) and altered the scale to amplify the results. To a layman, it looks convincing, but when examined closely it turned out that they were amplifying a minor flaw by one or two orders of magnitude. After they disclosed this flaw, a new version of the Hockey Stick was created that took used the preferred methodology of McIntyre and McKitrick, but there was no visual difference between the original and "corrected" graph.
Several corrections have been made to the Hockey stick over the years, for instance the original also understated the effect of the Medieval Warm Period (MWP), but the resulting improvement merely added a dent to the handle, however, none of the corrections have had a significant impact on the result. Furthermore, there are at least 4 different Hockey Stick graphs now each using different proxies and/or different methodologies all showing similar results. It seems most likely that Mann was correct and his detractors were wrong.
I think the big assumption is that warming is likely to reduce agricultural output.
Actually, the warming is already causing a small reduction in agricultural output. Technology, however, is increasing agricultural output at a faster rate than the reductions are slowing it, so we're net positive for now.
More heat allows for longer growing seasons and longer growing seasons allow us to boost production per acre.
It can potentially do that, if your crops are adpated to a longer growing season. However, more heat also increases the incidence rate of floods and droughts, neither of which are good for crops. It can also trigger changes to local climates which may render some previously fertile areas unsuitable for crop production. For example, if the glacier that used to provide fresh water all summer melts, and you now only receive a month or two of fresh water in the spring when this year's ice pack melts, that would have a severely negative impact on your crop production.
Plants adore higher levels of CO2.
Not so much. Some plants produce less food when exposed to higher levels of CO2, and for most plants CO2 access is not really a limiting factor. Your essentially trying to optomize withough actually identifying any of the bottlenecks first. Sometimes you get lucky and it works, but more often you end up wasting a lot of time for no results.
Given the price of food as it exists today we need cheap fresh water, but higher price of food allows for a higher price of water.
What happens to those people who can't afford this new higher price of food? There is a line of thought that says the revolutions and civil wars in Arab countries are because the previously tolerated dictatorships were no longer able to adequately feed their populations. Where will the violence spread is food prices continue to rise?
But these things are expense over the next few centuries they are going to cause extinction or anything like it.
That's true, I think the only realistic scenario for a man-made extinction of humanity is still global thermonuclear war. There is some danger, of course, that the underlying causes of climate change and a large scale famine could trigger the wars that eventually lead to nuclear war.
For the most part the climate change debate is about whether we should pay to clean up our own mess or force our descendants to clean up after us.
As I already gave my definition of polite in this context, your statement is disingenuous at best and a deliberate attempt at misrepresentation at worst.
I quoted your definition and quoted you saying the definition doesn't apply. Don't be a coward and hide from your own words. You could just admit that one of the two things you said was wrong, instead you hide behind accusations and sophistry. I'm sorry you have to face the fact that your position is self-contradictory, but maybe you should do more thinking before you start arguing next time.
The threat of armed response does not imply one is a coward.
Of course not, being threatened does not make one a coward. However, meekly obeying the people who make the threats does. There's the rub.
The saying does not in any way imply that polite societies cannot exist without arms. The saying does not negate other possibilities, it simply states that one route will have a specific effect. Your logic is the same as saying "Iced water is cold water" is equivalent to "Non-iced water cannot be cold." The statement that one precludes any other possibility is laughable.
That's a strawman argument. I said the clear implication was that unarmed societies are not polite which is exactly the way that quote is usually used. Otherwise people would be saying "An armed society is one of many ways to get a polite society". Mind you, it's not a pithy and is much less derisive towards anyone who disagrees with you.
Also you contradicted yourself:
Nice strawman. I never said, nor has anyone else to my knowledge, that an armed society is a crime-free society.
You either mistake the meaning of "polite" in the statement or you are being intentionally pedantic to disguise the lack of basis for saying it means rude people should be killed. It has always referred to criminal activity, not general rudeness.
If a polite society doesn't refer to "rude" behaviour, but instead to criminal activity and an armed society isn't a crime-free society, then by your own admission, an armed society is not a "polite" society.
If the statement was equivalent to "might makes right," rural areas (which tend to be those with the highest proportion of firearm ownership by those who do not own them for criminal purposes) would be controlled by warlords. That this has not happened is by itself evidence enough that the two are not equivalent. Those people with firearms owned for non-criminal purposes have not imposed their will on others by the use of their superior might. Those areas where firearms are almost universally possessed by criminals are actually where you find the warlords.
You seem to have misunderstood. It is not gun ownership that is equivalent to "might makes right". It is the view that armed citizens have the right to take the lives of people with whom they have disagreements. In most cases, the facts will be tailored by the survivors to make themselves the not-criminals. There's another famous saying: "history is written by the victors".
It's a very strange definition of bravery. Are you brave enough to don black clothes and repeatedly run across a busy freeway at night?
I find your examples to be a bit strange. You seem to be contending that the right to speak your mind is as frivolous as playing in traffic.
Perhaps you're more familiar with this quote "Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." In the scenario conjured by Heilein's quote, people are trading their liberty to speak their minds for the temporary safety of not being gunned down for offending someone. That would hardly seem to be an ideal society.
The armed society does not make you a coward.
I don't think you understand my position. My contention is not that armed societies are bad or that polite societies are bad. I'm just extremely skeptical that an armed society is significantly more polite than an unarmed society. I think the supposition fails to account for essential human nature. It presumes that all men are easily cowed by the threat of violence. The mere existance of young, testosterone-driven, men should make the proposition ludicrously false. The people most likely to be rude are probably the people least likely to be intimidated by threats of violence. They are also the most likely ones to be making and carrying out threats of violence.
It simply associates every aggressive act with a price to pay. You are still free to go ahead - and pay the price in the end.
Does it? Is being rude an aggressive act that deserves what appears to be an disproportionate response (death)? Or is the aggressive act shooting someone who has offended you? It easy to see a society where being rude becomes a bit of an art form whereby the goal is to provoke your opponent into drawing first, so that you have sufficient justification to claim self-defence. In such a scenario, an armed society would be a rude society.
An unarmed society, on the other hand, does not even give you the choice. If you meet aggression, all you can do is run away and complain to United Nations.
Frankly, that's irrelevant. I'm arguing against the assumption behind the pithy statement. The assumption seems to be that all men are cowards because a little danger will radically change their behaviour. Perhaps the quote makes sense in the context of the novel, but as with many ideas from fiction (particularly those that deal with people), it doesn't work when translated to the real world because the author no longer has to power to force everyone to behave as he desires.
A coward saves his own hide instead of saving someone else.
That may be a definition of coward, but it's not the primary one:
coward:
1. a person who lacks courage in facing danger, difficulty, opposition, pain, etc.; a timid or easily intimidated person.
By the above defintion, a society in which people are easily intimidated into silence by the threat of violence (as supposed by the proposition that "an armed society is a polite society") is clearly meets the standard definition of a society of cowards. Furthermore, when an entire society is walking on eggshells for fear of being gunned down, you know there's not a signle brave man (left) among them.
Of course, it is far more likely that when you have the "polite society" enforced by lethal violence, the criminals are already in charge.
Really? The saying certainly seems to indicate that using the threat of violence to enforce societal norms is a good and desired thing.
What it implies is that there are a number of people who would do bad things without the deterrent of firearms.
Does it? The saying is not "an armed society is a crime free society".
There are many reasons besides fear to support deterrents to crime.
Sure, but the first criteria should be effectiveness
An "armed society" is not the reason most people are polite to each other
But that is exactly what the saying says: "an armed society is a polite society". The clear implication is that an unarmed society would not be polite, which is the opposite of what you are saying.
I would posit that most criminals are cowards, with the exception of those with a predilection to violent crime.
I would question that assumption. It seems to me that criminals tend to take more risks than the average person. That means their either less cowardly or more desperate. In which case, in a society where extreme violence is used to enforce society's rules they may well have an advantage over their non-criminal companions.
Frankly, I think many people need to think about that saying a bit more. Why is the armed society polite? Because rude people are killed. If that's true, then it must follow that violent people are in charge of enforcing the rules. So what about the people who allow the violent people to enforce "politeness"? Are they ok with people be killed because they were rude and thus callously indifferent? Or are they too afraid of the violent people to object? After all, objecting to your violent benefactors, might be considered rude and we know what'll happen then...
It seems to me that in any situation where "an armed society is a polite society" were true, it would effetively be the same as "might makes right". So when might makes right, who ends up on top of the heap then? It seems to me it's those with a predilection towards violent crime.
Have you ever considered that if "an armed society is a polite society" is true, it means that everyone (including you) is a coward? After all, if you're only being polite to everyone so that you won't give anyone a reason to shoot you, you're already dead inside.
It's difficult to determine. It might curb some criminal behaviour, for example dumb and inexperienced criminals would be less likely to survive. However, it seems likely that criminal behaviour would adapt to the new circumstances. For example, the criminals might shift to taking their victims by surprise more often, and shooting them more often to prevent their victims from using the weapons they are presumed to be carrying. It's quite possible that if more people were carrying concealed weapons that more people would be injured during the commission of crimes with no real impact on the underlying crime rate. It's also possible that crime rates for "crimes of passion" (where the comitter isn't thinking straight), would go up since the means to cause serious damage and/or death are always at hand.
One of the safest places in the world is a gun range
And yet people do get murdered at gun ranges. Do you have any evidence to back up your proposition that gun ranges are actually safer than average? I couldn't find any actual statistics as to whether you were more or less likely to be shot at the gun range, but my gut instinct says it's probably slightly higher than average because besides the occasional murders and suicides, there's also accidents to account for. It's simple mathematics, since the gun range has a much higher concentration of guns than most other places, the per-gun murder, suicide, and accident rates would have be substantially lower than other locations to balance out the higher concentration.
because you don't start a fight knowing that everyone is armed.
Often enough people do because they're angry, stupid and/or crazy. The problem when everyone is waving a gun around, how do you know which one to shoot?
Hmm, have you considered that maybe the first two Xbox version only look "right" in comparison to everything else Microsoft has done wrong?
Microsoft had a golden opportunity to trounce Sony this generation, instead Sony recovered from a 8 million device deficit and the PS3 has now actually out-sold the Xbox 360. Given a year's head start, and a $100 (or was it $200) price differential, the Xbox 360 still wound up in last place this generation.
Now, the Xbox 1 (not the XBOne) did set the standard for online console gaming, so they deserve credit for that, but it was a finantial disaster that never actually became profitable.
And constantly blathering on about how evil we are as a whole and that we are destroying the planet and that we are causing the climate to no longer be in stasis...
Actually, the scientists and virtually all of the major groups that recognize that climate change is occurring are very much aware that the climate would be changing at a very slow rate even if humans didn't exist. In fact, they're the ones who discovered that in the first place.
That means the assumption is that the climate would never change if it weren't for the evil humans.
No it doesn't. That's a strawman argument, I've literally never seen that argument made by anyone who isn't actively denying the climate change is an issue.
That requires accepting that the climate has never changed.
No it doesn't. As previously mentioned, there are no major groups that claim that the climate has never changed.
And that requires ignoring a vast amount of physical evidence as well as written and oral history.
No it doesn't, because the only one making an argument that the climate has never changed in the imaginary opponent in your mind.
And I am in denial?!? wtf
Yes, you are. It's kind of like you are trying to argue your way out of a speeding ticket by claimin the police officer doesn't believe in continental drift and therefore couldn't accurate get a measure of your cars speed because he didn't account for it, and therefore your foot on the gas pedal shouldn't actually matter. What you are writing appears to be pretty much insane.
The natural temperature change is around -0.02 degrees per century. Our green house gas emissions have overwhelmed the negative trend and turned it into about +2.00 degrees per century (and still accelerating). It's 100 times faster in the opposite direction. That's actually a significant change attributable entirely to human acitvity.
I used to think the same thing but Orson Scott Card fought against the de-criminalization of sodomy in the 90s because it would prevent the government from arresting and imprisoning openly gay men. His reasoning was that it was beneficial to society to have cudgels to use against anyone who refused to publicly conform to societal norms (specifically in this case, heterosexuality). Since then, it seems he's campaign against every gay rights issue he's come across. So from his actions, I think it's pretty clear his opposition to gay marriage is derived from his opposition to gays in general.
Of course, if the movie fails to make a substancial profit, chances are no studio will buy the rights to another of his books until after he dies. The flip side being that if the movie makes a huge profit, chances are every studio will try to buy and produce one.
Nothing in the links you provided indicate that Chik-Fil-A has had elevated sales after the counter-boycott, in fact, the first link explicitly states that they most likely wouldn't. Overall, Chik-Fil-A sales have continued to rise but the chain is expanding and sales were increasing both before and after the boycott, so it would be nearly impossible to determine what, if any, long term impact the boycott would have on sales. Interestingly, the second article predicted a landslide victory for the Republicans based on the Chik-Fil-A anti-boycott, obviously that call was way off.
On the other hand, Chik-Fil-A quietly withdrew corporate funding from several vehemently anti-gay organizations, so the boycott despite seeming to have backfired, it may have ultimately accomplished it's goal.
By the way, I've eaten at Chik-Fil-A and I found the food to be quite good. Compared to much of the other fast-food available, I can see why they're growing so fast.
Yeah, I think you cross a line when you call for the violent overthrow of the government for the crime of treating people equally. I wasn't aware that Card had done that or advocated to criminalize/keep criminalized homosexual behaviour so the the government could jail anyone who dared to admit they were gay.
I don't think I need to actually consciously boycott Card. I was already tired of his endless rehashing of the Book of Mormon in every thing he writes. These (new to me) revelations about his bigotry have made anything with his name of it completely unappealing.
Zenin isn't in marketing, he's a software developer (it was obvious from his post history). His view of productive work likely doesn't actually include anything the marketing department actually does.
I really think the Firefox people think of it like hiding an option to make your feet a valid target on a hypothetical "smart" shotgun. It's an intentional user interface failure because they actually don't want you to shoot yourself in the foot.
Of course, if you're a professional who "knows what you're doing", then you can easily change a text file or install No Script.
This isn't going anywhere. I've already shown that you distorted your opponents position and shown how your accusation of falsehood, is in itself, false.
I don't know how you can maintain that "It's not equal" and "It doesn't exist" are logically the same statement, but if you are that devoid of understanding and so belligerent that you must constantly hurl undignified accusations and insults at anyone who dares to disagree with you, I can only conclude that it is pointless to discuss this further.
I stated very clearly that your statement contained both a formal and informal fallacy.
Sure you did, however, that's not a proper argument. You are supposed to actually say which fallacies and how they apply. Otherwise you're no better than a little child who screams "I'm right and you're wrong because I said so". Which, considering your behaviour to date, isn't actually surprising from you.
Douche.
Once again, this in unbecoming behaviour from someone who wishes to present himself as a model for rhetorical argument. Rather than hurling insults because you can't form a coherent argument, you should just admit that you were wrong.
He didn't claim they were unbiased, he claimed they weren't equally biased.
He wrote:
I hate to break it to you, but it isn't equal.
You wrote:
Arguing that one is more [biased] so the other can't be [biased] is foolishness at it's finest.
and
Please don't claim strawman when presenting an absolutely false statement.
Your argument is clearly a strawman because the OP said they weren't equally biased and you accused him of saying they weren't biased at all. It's obvious that you failed to understand what was written before you and then you descended into belligerence and profanity to conceal your failure. Clearly, you are a paragon of rhetorical argument.
He, under oath, swore to enforce laws passed by her constituents. It isn't her job to determine where something in unconstitutional or not.
Contrary to what the AC wrote, the AG was enforcing the law. She has chosen, however, not to continue arguing with the courts after they have ruled the law unconstitutional. Given your conviction that "It isn't her job to determine whether something is unconsitituional or not" she has already fullfilled her obligation by defending the law in court once. There courts judgement is, in her professional opinion, fair and there seem to be no obvious grounds for appeal that are likely to succeed.
People always complain around here about a theocracy and this sounds like a pure theocratical power grab by the AG.
From this sentence, it appears that you do not know what a theocracy is because the sentence simply doesn't make sense, given the facts of the case.
Why have an amendment that the people of california vote on that can so easily be refuted?
Why indeed, I wonder why the Prop 8 supports, many of them from Utah, even bothered to spend so much money getting an obviously discriminatory law passed.
As bjdevil said earlier, this is WRONG. He should be at least impeached. At least. And this is a BAD precedent. Next thing you know some other law will get passed and the AG will say, "hey i don't llke that law, *screw it!, I am not going to enforce it.
That would be a bad precedent but as far as I am aware, that is an entirely fictional scenario that has nothing to with the present case, where the AG defended in court the legislation constitutionality, lost, and accepted the court's verdict.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, they use the same public relations companies.
Uh no. Mathematics is what proved that it was factually incorrect, something that what a few years ago most on /. knew, what was.
Actually, McIntyre and McKitrick's paper was later torn apart by real mathematicians. Turns out they cherry-picked their data (they picked the 10 "best" results out of more than 100 and labelled them as typical) and altered the scale to amplify the results. To a layman, it looks convincing, but when examined closely it turned out that they were amplifying a minor flaw by one or two orders of magnitude. After they disclosed this flaw, a new version of the Hockey Stick was created that took used the preferred methodology of McIntyre and McKitrick, but there was no visual difference between the original and "corrected" graph.
Several corrections have been made to the Hockey stick over the years, for instance the original also understated the effect of the Medieval Warm Period (MWP), but the resulting improvement merely added a dent to the handle, however, none of the corrections have had a significant impact on the result. Furthermore, there are at least 4 different Hockey Stick graphs now each using different proxies and/or different methodologies all showing similar results. It seems most likely that Mann was correct and his detractors were wrong.
I think the big assumption is that warming is likely to reduce agricultural output.
Actually, the warming is already causing a small reduction in agricultural output. Technology, however, is increasing agricultural output at a faster rate than the reductions are slowing it, so we're net positive for now.
More heat allows for longer growing seasons and longer growing seasons allow us to boost production per acre.
It can potentially do that, if your crops are adpated to a longer growing season. However, more heat also increases the incidence rate of floods and droughts, neither of which are good for crops. It can also trigger changes to local climates which may render some previously fertile areas unsuitable for crop production. For example, if the glacier that used to provide fresh water all summer melts, and you now only receive a month or two of fresh water in the spring when this year's ice pack melts, that would have a severely negative impact on your crop production.
Plants adore higher levels of CO2.
Not so much. Some plants produce less food when exposed to higher levels of CO2, and for most plants CO2 access is not really a limiting factor. Your essentially trying to optomize withough actually identifying any of the bottlenecks first. Sometimes you get lucky and it works, but more often you end up wasting a lot of time for no results.
Given the price of food as it exists today we need cheap fresh water, but higher price of food allows for a higher price of water.
What happens to those people who can't afford this new higher price of food? There is a line of thought that says the revolutions and civil wars in Arab countries are because the previously tolerated dictatorships were no longer able to adequately feed their populations. Where will the violence spread is food prices continue to rise?
But these things are expense over the next few centuries they are going to cause extinction or anything like it.
That's true, I think the only realistic scenario for a man-made extinction of humanity is still global thermonuclear war. There is some danger, of course, that the underlying causes of climate change and a large scale famine could trigger the wars that eventually lead to nuclear war. For the most part the climate change debate is about whether we should pay to clean up our own mess or force our descendants to clean up after us.
As I already gave my definition of polite in this context, your statement is disingenuous at best and a deliberate attempt at misrepresentation at worst.
I quoted your definition and quoted you saying the definition doesn't apply. Don't be a coward and hide from your own words. You could just admit that one of the two things you said was wrong, instead you hide behind accusations and sophistry. I'm sorry you have to face the fact that your position is self-contradictory, but maybe you should do more thinking before you start arguing next time.
The threat of armed response does not imply one is a coward.
Of course not, being threatened does not make one a coward. However, meekly obeying the people who make the threats does. There's the rub.
The saying does not in any way imply that polite societies cannot exist without arms. The saying does not negate other possibilities, it simply states that one route will have a specific effect. Your logic is the same as saying "Iced water is cold water" is equivalent to "Non-iced water cannot be cold." The statement that one precludes any other possibility is laughable.
That's a strawman argument. I said the clear implication was that unarmed societies are not polite which is exactly the way that quote is usually used. Otherwise people would be saying "An armed society is one of many ways to get a polite society". Mind you, it's not a pithy and is much less derisive towards anyone who disagrees with you. Also you contradicted yourself:
Nice strawman. I never said, nor has anyone else to my knowledge, that an armed society is a crime-free society.
You either mistake the meaning of "polite" in the statement or you are being intentionally pedantic to disguise the lack of basis for saying it means rude people should be killed. It has always referred to criminal activity, not general rudeness.
If a polite society doesn't refer to "rude" behaviour, but instead to criminal activity and an armed society isn't a crime-free society, then by your own admission, an armed society is not a "polite" society.
If the statement was equivalent to "might makes right," rural areas (which tend to be those with the highest proportion of firearm ownership by those who do not own them for criminal purposes) would be controlled by warlords. That this has not happened is by itself evidence enough that the two are not equivalent. Those people with firearms owned for non-criminal purposes have not imposed their will on others by the use of their superior might. Those areas where firearms are almost universally possessed by criminals are actually where you find the warlords.
You seem to have misunderstood. It is not gun ownership that is equivalent to "might makes right". It is the view that armed citizens have the right to take the lives of people with whom they have disagreements. In most cases, the facts will be tailored by the survivors to make themselves the not-criminals. There's another famous saying: "history is written by the victors".
It's a very strange definition of bravery. Are you brave enough to don black clothes and repeatedly run across a busy freeway at night?
I find your examples to be a bit strange. You seem to be contending that the right to speak your mind is as frivolous as playing in traffic.
Perhaps you're more familiar with this quote "Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." In the scenario conjured by Heilein's quote, people are trading their liberty to speak their minds for the temporary safety of not being gunned down for offending someone. That would hardly seem to be an ideal society.
The armed society does not make you a coward.
I don't think you understand my position. My contention is not that armed societies are bad or that polite societies are bad. I'm just extremely skeptical that an armed society is significantly more polite than an unarmed society. I think the supposition fails to account for essential human nature. It presumes that all men are easily cowed by the threat of violence. The mere existance of young, testosterone-driven, men should make the proposition ludicrously false. The people most likely to be rude are probably the people least likely to be intimidated by threats of violence. They are also the most likely ones to be making and carrying out threats of violence.
It simply associates every aggressive act with a price to pay. You are still free to go ahead - and pay the price in the end.
Does it? Is being rude an aggressive act that deserves what appears to be an disproportionate response (death)? Or is the aggressive act shooting someone who has offended you? It easy to see a society where being rude becomes a bit of an art form whereby the goal is to provoke your opponent into drawing first, so that you have sufficient justification to claim self-defence. In such a scenario, an armed society would be a rude society.
An unarmed society, on the other hand, does not even give you the choice. If you meet aggression, all you can do is run away and complain to United Nations.
Frankly, that's irrelevant. I'm arguing against the assumption behind the pithy statement. The assumption seems to be that all men are cowards because a little danger will radically change their behaviour. Perhaps the quote makes sense in the context of the novel, but as with many ideas from fiction (particularly those that deal with people), it doesn't work when translated to the real world because the author no longer has to power to force everyone to behave as he desires.
A coward saves his own hide instead of saving someone else.
That may be a definition of coward, but it's not the primary one:
By the above defintion, a society in which people are easily intimidated into silence by the threat of violence (as supposed by the proposition that "an armed society is a polite society") is clearly meets the standard definition of a society of cowards. Furthermore, when an entire society is walking on eggshells for fear of being gunned down, you know there's not a signle brave man (left) among them.
Of course, it is far more likely that when you have the "polite society" enforced by lethal violence, the criminals are already in charge.
One does not imply the other.
Really? The saying certainly seems to indicate that using the threat of violence to enforce societal norms is a good and desired thing.
What it implies is that there are a number of people who would do bad things without the deterrent of firearms.
Does it? The saying is not "an armed society is a crime free society".
There are many reasons besides fear to support deterrents to crime.
Sure, but the first criteria should be effectiveness
An "armed society" is not the reason most people are polite to each other
But that is exactly what the saying says: "an armed society is a polite society". The clear implication is that an unarmed society would not be polite, which is the opposite of what you are saying.
I would posit that most criminals are cowards, with the exception of those with a predilection to violent crime.
I would question that assumption. It seems to me that criminals tend to take more risks than the average person. That means their either less cowardly or more desperate. In which case, in a society where extreme violence is used to enforce society's rules they may well have an advantage over their non-criminal companions.
Frankly, I think many people need to think about that saying a bit more. Why is the armed society polite? Because rude people are killed. If that's true, then it must follow that violent people are in charge of enforcing the rules. So what about the people who allow the violent people to enforce "politeness"? Are they ok with people be killed because they were rude and thus callously indifferent? Or are they too afraid of the violent people to object? After all, objecting to your violent benefactors, might be considered rude and we know what'll happen then...
It seems to me that in any situation where "an armed society is a polite society" were true, it would effetively be the same as "might makes right". So when might makes right, who ends up on top of the heap then? It seems to me it's those with a predilection towards violent crime.
An armed society is a polite society.
Have you ever considered that if "an armed society is a polite society" is true, it means that everyone (including you) is a coward? After all, if you're only being polite to everyone so that you won't give anyone a reason to shoot you, you're already dead inside.
It's difficult to determine. It might curb some criminal behaviour, for example dumb and inexperienced criminals would be less likely to survive. However, it seems likely that criminal behaviour would adapt to the new circumstances. For example, the criminals might shift to taking their victims by surprise more often, and shooting them more often to prevent their victims from using the weapons they are presumed to be carrying. It's quite possible that if more people were carrying concealed weapons that more people would be injured during the commission of crimes with no real impact on the underlying crime rate. It's also possible that crime rates for "crimes of passion" (where the comitter isn't thinking straight), would go up since the means to cause serious damage and/or death are always at hand.
Overall, I actually doubt that gun ownership rates and concealed carry rates have any significant impact on crime rates. I think the largest impacts come from culture, heavy metal contamination (especially lead) rates and policing strategies.
One of the safest places in the world is a gun range
And yet people do get murdered at gun ranges. Do you have any evidence to back up your proposition that gun ranges are actually safer than average? I couldn't find any actual statistics as to whether you were more or less likely to be shot at the gun range, but my gut instinct says it's probably slightly higher than average because besides the occasional murders and suicides, there's also accidents to account for. It's simple mathematics, since the gun range has a much higher concentration of guns than most other places, the per-gun murder, suicide, and accident rates would have be substantially lower than other locations to balance out the higher concentration.
because you don't start a fight knowing that everyone is armed.
Often enough people do because they're angry, stupid and/or crazy. The problem when everyone is waving a gun around, how do you know which one to shoot?
I don't know about that, it seems a bit of a stretch. After all by that standard isn't the New Testament actually Jewish fan fiction? I mean the author supposedly inserts himself into the story with god like powers. He can walk on water, make food appear, heal the sick, and turn water into wine, and is literally too good for this sinful earth. He really does seems like a Marty Stu character, in fact, he could be the first ever recorded Purity Stu character.
Hmm, have you considered that maybe the first two Xbox version only look "right" in comparison to everything else Microsoft has done wrong?
Microsoft had a golden opportunity to trounce Sony this generation, instead Sony recovered from a 8 million device deficit and the PS3 has now actually out-sold the Xbox 360. Given a year's head start, and a $100 (or was it $200) price differential, the Xbox 360 still wound up in last place this generation.
Now, the Xbox 1 (not the XBOne) did set the standard for online console gaming, so they deserve credit for that, but it was a finantial disaster that never actually became profitable.
And constantly blathering on about how evil we are as a whole and that we are destroying the planet and that we are causing the climate to no longer be in stasis...
Actually, the scientists and virtually all of the major groups that recognize that climate change is occurring are very much aware that the climate would be changing at a very slow rate even if humans didn't exist. In fact, they're the ones who discovered that in the first place.
That means the assumption is that the climate would never change if it weren't for the evil humans.
No it doesn't. That's a strawman argument, I've literally never seen that argument made by anyone who isn't actively denying the climate change is an issue.
That requires accepting that the climate has never changed.
No it doesn't. As previously mentioned, there are no major groups that claim that the climate has never changed.
And that requires ignoring a vast amount of physical evidence as well as written and oral history.
No it doesn't, because the only one making an argument that the climate has never changed in the imaginary opponent in your mind.
And I am in denial?!? wtf
Yes, you are. It's kind of like you are trying to argue your way out of a speeding ticket by claimin the police officer doesn't believe in continental drift and therefore couldn't accurate get a measure of your cars speed because he didn't account for it, and therefore your foot on the gas pedal shouldn't actually matter. What you are writing appears to be pretty much insane.
The natural temperature change is around -0.02 degrees per century. Our green house gas emissions have overwhelmed the negative trend and turned it into about +2.00 degrees per century (and still accelerating). It's 100 times faster in the opposite direction. That's actually a significant change attributable entirely to human acitvity.
I used to think the same thing but Orson Scott Card fought against the de-criminalization of sodomy in the 90s because it would prevent the government from arresting and imprisoning openly gay men. His reasoning was that it was beneficial to society to have cudgels to use against anyone who refused to publicly conform to societal norms (specifically in this case, heterosexuality). Since then, it seems he's campaign against every gay rights issue he's come across. So from his actions, I think it's pretty clear his opposition to gay marriage is derived from his opposition to gays in general.
Of course, if the movie fails to make a substancial profit, chances are no studio will buy the rights to another of his books until after he dies. The flip side being that if the movie makes a huge profit, chances are every studio will try to buy and produce one.
Nothing in the links you provided indicate that Chik-Fil-A has had elevated sales after the counter-boycott, in fact, the first link explicitly states that they most likely wouldn't. Overall, Chik-Fil-A sales have continued to rise but the chain is expanding and sales were increasing both before and after the boycott, so it would be nearly impossible to determine what, if any, long term impact the boycott would have on sales. Interestingly, the second article predicted a landslide victory for the Republicans based on the Chik-Fil-A anti-boycott, obviously that call was way off.
On the other hand, Chik-Fil-A quietly withdrew corporate funding from several vehemently anti-gay organizations, so the boycott despite seeming to have backfired, it may have ultimately accomplished it's goal.
By the way, I've eaten at Chik-Fil-A and I found the food to be quite good. Compared to much of the other fast-food available, I can see why they're growing so fast.
Yeah, I think you cross a line when you call for the violent overthrow of the government for the crime of treating people equally. I wasn't aware that Card had done that or advocated to criminalize/keep criminalized homosexual behaviour so the the government could jail anyone who dared to admit they were gay.
I don't think I need to actually consciously boycott Card. I was already tired of his endless rehashing of the Book of Mormon in every thing he writes. These (new to me) revelations about his bigotry have made anything with his name of it completely unappealing.
Zenin isn't in marketing, he's a software developer (it was obvious from his post history). His view of productive work likely doesn't actually include anything the marketing department actually does.
I really think the Firefox people think of it like hiding an option to make your feet a valid target on a hypothetical "smart" shotgun. It's an intentional user interface failure because they actually don't want you to shoot yourself in the foot. Of course, if you're a professional who "knows what you're doing", then you can easily change a text file or install No Script.
This isn't going anywhere. I've already shown that you distorted your opponents position and shown how your accusation of falsehood, is in itself, false.
I don't know how you can maintain that "It's not equal" and "It doesn't exist" are logically the same statement, but if you are that devoid of understanding and so belligerent that you must constantly hurl undignified accusations and insults at anyone who dares to disagree with you, I can only conclude that it is pointless to discuss this further.
I stated very clearly that your statement contained both a formal and informal fallacy.
Sure you did, however, that's not a proper argument. You are supposed to actually say which fallacies and how they apply. Otherwise you're no better than a little child who screams "I'm right and you're wrong because I said so". Which, considering your behaviour to date, isn't actually surprising from you.
Douche.
Once again, this in unbecoming behaviour from someone who wishes to present himself as a model for rhetorical argument. Rather than hurling insults because you can't form a coherent argument, you should just admit that you were wrong.
Since you did not even attempt to refute my argument, I'll take it that you are gracelessly conceding the point.
He didn't claim they were unbiased, he claimed they weren't equally biased.
He wrote:
I hate to break it to you, but it isn't equal.
You wrote:
Arguing that one is more [biased] so the other can't be [biased] is foolishness at it's finest.
and
Please don't claim strawman when presenting an absolutely false statement.
Your argument is clearly a strawman because the OP said they weren't equally biased and you accused him of saying they weren't biased at all. It's obvious that you failed to understand what was written before you and then you descended into belligerence and profanity to conceal your failure. Clearly, you are a paragon of rhetorical argument.
He, under oath, swore to enforce laws passed by her constituents. It isn't her job to determine where something in unconstitutional or not.
Contrary to what the AC wrote, the AG was enforcing the law. She has chosen, however, not to continue arguing with the courts after they have ruled the law unconstitutional. Given your conviction that "It isn't her job to determine whether something is unconsitituional or not" she has already fullfilled her obligation by defending the law in court once. There courts judgement is, in her professional opinion, fair and there seem to be no obvious grounds for appeal that are likely to succeed.
People always complain around here about a theocracy and this sounds like a pure theocratical power grab by the AG.
From this sentence, it appears that you do not know what a theocracy is because the sentence simply doesn't make sense, given the facts of the case.
Why have an amendment that the people of california vote on that can so easily be refuted?
Why indeed, I wonder why the Prop 8 supports, many of them from Utah, even bothered to spend so much money getting an obviously discriminatory law passed.
As bjdevil said earlier, this is WRONG. He should be at least impeached. At least. And this is a BAD precedent. Next thing you know some other law will get passed and the AG will say, "hey i don't llke that law, *screw it!, I am not going to enforce it.
That would be a bad precedent but as far as I am aware, that is an entirely fictional scenario that has nothing to with the present case, where the AG defended in court the legislation constitutionality, lost, and accepted the court's verdict.