Science in the true sense of that word, real science, is at this time within reach of only an insignificant minority. For example, among us in Russia, how many accomplished savants are there in a population of eighty million? Probably a thousand are engaged in science, but hardly more than a few hundred could be considered first-rate, serious scientists. If science were to dictate the laws, the overwhelming majority, many millions of men, would be ruled by one or two hundred experts. Actually it would be even fewer than that, because not all of science is concerned with the administration of society. This would be the task of sociology – the science of sciences – which presupposes in the case of a well-trained sociologist that he have an adequate knowledge of all the other sciences. How many such people are there in Russia – in all Europe? Twenty or thirty – and these twenty or thirty would rule the world? Can anyone imagine a more absurd and abject despotism?
It is almost certain that these twenty or thirty experts would quarrel among themselves, and if they did agree on common policies, it would be at the expense of mankind. The principal vice of the average specialist is his inclination to exaggerate his own knowledge and deprecate everyone else’s. Give him control and he will become an insufferable tyrant. To be the slave of pedants – what a destiny for humanity! Give them full power and they will begin by performing on human beings the same experiments that the scientists are now performing on rabbits and dogs.
We must respect the scientists for their merits and achievements, but in order to prevent them from corrupting their own high moral and intellectual standards, they should be granted no special privileges and no rights other than those possessed by everyone – for example, the liberty to express their convictions, thought, and knowledge. Neither they nor any other special group should be given power over others. He who is given power will inevitably become an oppressor and exploiter of society.
(NB: I'm not endorsing Bakunin, just relating what one of the first anarchists had to say about it. Keep in mind that he was reacting to communism, a political system that claims to use scientific principles as the basis of government.)
Well, the Christian churches should simply shut up and stay out of the political arena. Yet, the Catholic church and many protestant churches are trying to push their views on economics, marriage, family, abortion, sex, drugs and many other issues.
but you wont find in the Bible that by being Christian you will become sinless or create a world without sin.
(1) I didn't claim that. (2) What Christians do or believe has little to do with what's in the Bible.
I see this a lot. Are you saying that there really are no requirements for being Christian? Because historically that simply isnt the case.
Oh, I think it's pretty clear: if a Christian church accepts you and you pay your tithes, you are a Christian, both by your own conviction and in the judgment of your church (since they would excommunicate you otherwise). By that definition, the vast majority of Nazis were Christians, and the overwhelming majority of their victims were Jews and atheists.
The Catholic parts of Germany were the parts of Germany least favorable to the Nazi party.
That's an erroneous interpretation of election results. Those regions were simply the parts of Germany where one right wing party (the Catholic Center Party) split the vote with another right wing party (the Nazis). In protestant areas, people who wanted to vote for a right wing party only had the Nazis as their choice. If the Catholic Center Party hadn't existed, the Nazis would likely have received at least as many votes in Catholic areas as they did in protestant areas.
and indeed the party itself was deeply divided over it, with all members knowing that it was a bad deal,
When you are saying "the party itself was deeply divided", what that means that the party knew that the Nazis were a bunch of murderous thugs and war mongers and debated that fact, i.e., they can't plead ignorance. But when it came to the vote, their support of Hitler was unanimous. And Catholics didn't just avoid persecution, they received large financial and political advantages for the Catholic church in Germany.
but the majority of the party hoping to avoid open persecution of the party and of the Catholic Church,
Yes, while at the same accepting (or even relishing) in the fact that the people the Catholic church hates, people like communists, socialists, homosexuals, Freemasons, Jehova's witnesses, and many others, would be persecuted, put in camps, and probably killed.
it was not the decisive act that erected the third reich.
But a vote against the Enabling Act by the Center Party would have been a decisive act that could have brought down the Third Reich, and regardless of its effectiveness, it would have been the morally right thing to do. In general, Catholics were about half of the German population and as such the Catholic church potentially wielded enormous political power, but it failed to use that power to attempt stop the Nazis. Instead, the church always made the same kind of rational, materialistic choice that German corporations made when they collaborated with the Nazis. The morally right choice is to oppose evil, even if that comes at a cost to yourself and even if you can't be certain whether it's going to be effective. If you only do the morally right thing when it doesn't cost you too much, your morality is worthless.
Just to relate this to the origin of this thread, churches warning against the dangers of "atheistic materialism" creeping into our societies and selling themselves as a bulwark against that. In Nazi Germany (there are many other examples), churches supported the Nazis with the justification that they needed to protect Germany against "atheistic materialism", and then committed the very moral failure that they accuse "atheistic materialists" of, namely putting their own financial interests and safety above doing the morally right thing. Ironically, the "atheistic materialists" (socialists and communists) were the ones doing the morally right thing even though they knew it would likely cost them their lives.
It almost seemed like the GP was implying that Christianity were to BLAME for naziism, rather than just having its own faults.
The Catholic church certainly is to blame for contributing to the rise of the Nazi regime, since it had the political power and the votes in parliament to stop Hitler from becoming dictator of Germany. Instead, its officials and representatives chose to vote for Hitler, and then chose to make deals with the Nazi dictatorship that gave the Catholic church financial and political advantages, while strengthening the Nazi party.
And my point is that Christians remain humans
And my point is that Christians fail to do the morally right thing as much as anybody else. Christianity isn't the "foundation" of morality or peaceful co-existence, it is a sham that falsely claims credit for the biologically innate goodness of human beings.
and that not all who claim to be Christian truly are.
That's the Christian version of the perfect prediction scam: you declare a large number of people to be Christians and then later declare those who did bad things retroactively not to have been "true Christians".
The rational analysis to consider everybody a Christian who the Christian churches consider to be members. In Germany, church membership is a matter of record that requires an annual positive act on the parts of both church members (tithing) and churches (accepting the tithe). The great majority of Nazis were church members, and no major Nazi figure was excommunicated, even after the war.
Interest free loans made by the Federal reserve: Citigroup - $2.513 trillion...
Yes, the Federal Reserve takes money from its members and then loans it back out to its members, as it is supposed to do. There may be plenty wrong with that system, but they aren't directly spending tax dollars on bailouts. Obama's tax-payer funded bailouts do, and that's what we have been talking about.
Romney's also promised to start a War with Iran, it's stupid
I see no difference in Obama's and Romney's positions: both acknowledge that war is an option.
You must be lacking in imagination, all Romney needs to do is trigger another recession to be worse than Obama, and he could easily do that with any of the big Republican policies.
While you may argue about their social fairness, there is not a shred of evidence that "Republican" policies (cutting taxes, cutting spending, cutting entitlements) cause recessions. On the other hand, these policies are reasonable long term strategies for reducing debt and increasing economic activity.
Furthermore, there is little evidence that Obama's economic policies have been effective (you were bemoaning the state of the economy yourself). In addition, the US credit rating got downgraded and debt has sharply increased on his watch.
My concern about Romney is that he would would not follow Republican principles and instead cut taxes without cutting spending and entitlements. Historically, Democrats at least paid for their spending with taxes. But judging by today's news, Obama is breaking with that principle too.
Of course, most of the bank bail outs were done while Bush was President
And many people (myself included) voted for Obama hoping he'd put an end to that, which he utterly failed to do.
and most of it was actually done by the Federal Reserve which the President has no control over
Really? By what mechanism can the Federal Reserve, all by itself, without consent or support from the president, bail out banks, investment banks, homeowners, and auto companies?
it's easy to be an arm-chair economic quarterback because none of your recommendations will ever matter.
We live in a democracy, and discussions prior to elections actually do matter. As far as I can tell, opinions are gradually turning against Obama, and there is a real possibility he won't get reelected.
Now, can you put some meat into your claim that Romney could be a disaster for the country? I really don't see on which dimension he could be worse than Obama.
Because in the American political system, it's always a choice between the lesser of two evils
And from that you somehow conclude that any criticism of one candidate automatically translates into an endorsement of the other?
Yes, I know, everyone who disagrees with you is a communist. Care to indulge in any more Randian fantasies?
Ah, great! Reverse communist baiting: you accuse others of accusing you of being a communist. No, sorry, I don't even give you that much intellectual credit.
That was no normal recession. The world is still struggling with the consequences of it, 4 years later.
Perhaps you simply don't remember how truly awful some of the previous recessions were?
Of course, since Obama has been promising "change", one is entitled to asking what he has actually delivered, and it looks like he hasn't been able to accomplish much.
The "economic collapse" I was referring to was the toxic asset market which requires trillions of dollars in loans and bailouts to prevent a depression.
It "required" nothing of the sort. The Obama administration decided that it was politically in their interest to take hundreds of billions of dollars and shove them in the hands of a few large failing banks, failing industries, and dumb invenstors. What it should have done is acted in accordance with the law: only protect FDIC insured assets, and charge a premium for loans to banks.
As a result of Obama's ill conceived, the nation is burdened with even more unnecessary debt, businesses have even less of an incentive to operate efficiently, and the recovery will be even slower. To hurt the economy even further, Obama added ineffective health care legislation and expanded regulations.
You want to know why the economy hasn't recovered faster? Obama's policies are part of the reason. At the very least, he failed to deliver the "change" that he promised.
Foolish, ignorant words. Romney could do much, much worse.
Really? Why don't you explain what horror scenario you're thinking of.
And Im sure all the German atheists were just wonderful examples of morality.
That's a false dichotomy. Atheism makes no claims about morality or proper behavior. Christianity on the other hand does, and in addition accuses atheists of intrinsically lacking morality. There is nothing to falsify about atheists, but we can falsify Christian claims based on history.
Clearly Nazi Germany was the fault of the religious types, is that what youre shooting for here?
This is not about "fault" (many people were at "fault" for Nazi Germany). It is about asking whether the Christian claims to superior morality compared to "atheistic materialists" are true. The actions of Christians in Nazi Germany shows that Christianity does not equate with superior morality, and that Christian churches are as corrupt as any other large organization, tolerating human suffering and death if it brings financial and political advantages.
That means you should take the Korean Christian's and the Vatican's arguments about "atheistic materialism" for what they are worth: nothing.
We've long jumped the Godwin here anyway, especially since creationism has nothing to do with the Catholic Church in 2012.
Are you kidding? Phrases like "atheistic materialism" are at the heart of Christian political arguments, and have been for centuries, and are trotted out whenever a church wants to achieve some political end. That's why churches in Korea are using it in political arguments, just like churches in Europe and the US.
The example of Catholicism and Nazi Germany is highly relevant in this context, because the Catholic church first used terms like "atheistic materialism" to justify allying itself with the Nazis against the communists and socialists, and then after the war to claim that it opposed the Nazis all along because they too supposedly were "atheistic materialism". (Many protestant churches behave the same way, but they are so splintered and lack historical continuity, so Catholicism just serves as a better illustrative example.)
The "Godwin" here has been pulled by Christian churches since WWII, trying to shift blame. The least people can do is point out that "atheistic materialism" has never been at the root of the problem and that the notion that Christian values prevent atrocities is ridiculous in light of historical reality.
Not good history there. The Catholic church did execute concordats with fascist Italy and Germany, but these were definitely arm's-length agreements whose only purpose (from the church's side) was to secure some basic operational rights in hostile political environments.... The Church did waffle a bit in signing the Reichskonkordat of 1933, but it can be argued that the terms were the best available
You need to read up on your history. The Catholic Center Party in Germany (headed prelate Kaas) didn't "waffle", it cast the deciding votes installing Hitler as a dictator of Germany and ending the Weimar Republic. Both the Nazis and the Catholics told you why in their speeches: they were allies in their fight against atheistic communists and for the promotion of traditional Christian values. In addition to dealing with Hitler and Mussolini, the Catholic church also supported Franco and other right-wing dictators, for the same reason.
And they didn't just get some "basic rights", the Catholic church negotiated itself a sweet deal (permission to teach in public school, tithing through the Nazi tax collectors, salaries of church officials paid by the Nazi government), while the people the Catholic church had traditionally persecuted itself (socialists, communists, Freemasons, homosexuals, Jehova's witnesses) were already being carted off to concentration camps or just disappeared outright. All the church had to do in return is give political support and have its priests swear allegiance to the Nazis, and it did.
If gaining money and power in return for acquiescing to the torture and murder of your fellow human beings isn't the essence of moral corruption and moral failing, I don't know what is. But to the Catholic church, the lives of the people carted off to the Nazi concentration camps were, despite all their speeches, worthless since they weren't Catholics.
(The moral failings of the German protestants were different but no less serious.)
Listen, public embarrassment and notice is a two way street. If you want to publicly post the actions of the police, I don't see why you should feel others couldn't do the same to you.
There's a big difference between what people do in their capacity as private citizens and as government employees. Police are acting as government employees; that gives them both specific powers, and it imposes additional responsibilities on them.
For example, I have a constitutional right to discriminate against you based on your race or religion in my private life; police violate the law if they do the same in their work.
Christian churches have been blaming the ills of the world on "pagans" and non-believers for almost as long as Christianity has existed. Usually, churches lump communism, materialist, and atheism together, but easily switch sides when that doesn't work out. For example, the Catholic church in Europe allied itself with Hitler and other fascist and military dictators against the "atheistic communists", but then after the war, when that turned out to be unpopular, blamed the fascists themselves for being atheists.
It's pretty simple to see why: Christianity starts with the premise that morality and decency is identical with belief in, and submission to, God. Logically, all non-believers must be either evil or at the very least misguided. Furthermore, no matter how bad the crimes of the churches or Christians are, they are either excused or atoned for by belief in God, or the people in question are retroactively declared not to have been "true believers" in the first place.
The only thing that changes over time is the group that the church is willing to extend the label "believer" to. Sometimes, it may include all Abrahamic religions, sometimes only Christians, and sometimes only specific denominations. It mostly seems to depend on political expediency.
Any Android VNC client will do for remotely controlling Linux, OSX, or Windows from an Android phone; you don't need anything more complicated than that.
If you think this is new, you really don't know much about patents. We've had cases like this going back more than a century. This particular example actually shows more that these kinds of bad patents are becoming less and less relevant with increasingly software-driven products, products that can be updated essentially overnight. At some point, Apple will hopefully figure out that they are just embarrassing themselves with these kinds of legal shenanigans.
Should the patent system be fixed to prevent this kind of abuse from companies like Apple? By all means. But this patent is perhaps not a good test case.
You don't understand what that law means. It means that it is not illegal if you don't carry identification. But if you do not carry identification, police can detain you if they have reason to find out your identity; it doesn't matter whether you are a citizen or not. The legal standards for detention in order to determine your identity are much lower than for arrest.
I actually prefer separate web searches and local searches. I find it annoying that the default Android search sends query terms over the web to Google, and I rarely if ever find the mixed searches useful.
As far as I can tell, I can turn off mixed global/local search, but I end up having to choose one or the other with the Google search app. Or is there some way I can get separate shortcuts for local and web searches?
Romney just comes off as bored and aloof. Being President is just something for him to do, not something he's truly energized about or something he brings real policy ideas to. He seems intent on spending his whole campaign attacking Obama rather than putting forth his own ideas. He has no vision.
You make Romney sound quite appealing: a candidate who isn't trying to reshape American society or the world, who doesn't have a grand economic plan, and who isn't trying to fix everybody's little booboos with photogenic, costly and ineffective government programs.
Obama has his faults, but McCain has since shown repeatedly that he would be worse on all of those issues
Why is this relevant? Assessing the failures of the Obama presidency doesn't imply that one thinks McCain would have been better or that one should vote for Romney.
Frankly, Romney appears to be another figure head who will take the blame for the policies implemented in his name by the same team that brought you the 2008 economic collapse.
We haven't had an "economic collapse", we have had a recession; they happen quite regularly all by themselves. The idea that they are "brought to you" by anybody is itself a misguided outgrowth of a view of economics rooted in central planning.
In addition, Bush and Obama failed in pretty much the same way: both used the public coffers to try to immortalize themselves with pet projects (military adventures, entitlements), both attempted to use the power of the federal government to engage in massive social engineering, and the teams of both rewarded their cronies in banking and industry with massive government bailouts.
Frankly, Romney can't be any worse than that either.
Well, Obama largely failed on the civil liberties, drugs, and defense reduction issues.
As for health care, the US already has a huge single payer system and its costs are also out of control. In contrast, many other nations are doing much better with private insurance systems than the US. So attributing US health care woes to private insurance is wrong. I won't even bother to comment on banks or campaign contributions other than to say that your analysis is wrong there too.
Apparently, you fail to grasp the basic difference between "cost control" and "deficit reduction". The CBO predicts a small deficit reduction a few years out.
No, PPACA does not result in meaningful cost control. The CBO projects temporary deficit reduction due to increased revenues and other factors. However, even that prediction is highly uncertain and based on lots of assumptions.
In addition, your idea that these numbers are "mathematics" instead of tea leaf reading just shows that you are about as ignorant of science and mathematics as your average creationist Christian fundamentalist.
I am all for debate, but your response was about as weak as "yeah, well your mother farts" and about as nonsensical.
You are caught up in this "tit-for-tat" mentality, not me. I'm not a Republican, I didn't mention Romney, and I voted for Obama last time.
Fine, you see it different, but then would you please put out there the accomplishments of the republican congress, positive laws that has helped this country?
I disagree with your premise. As far as I'm concerned, Congress should focus on reducing the size of government, reduce government intrusion into people's personal lives, reduce regulations, and reduce spending. Neither Republicans nor Democrats have delivered on that.
I didn't make an argument about which economic system is preferable, I pointed out that kent.dickey's posting misused the term "free market"; he erroneously stated that a free market operates without "rules/laws/regulations". If you and he don't even understand what a free market is, your arguments about it are worthless, and kent.dickey was criticizing a strawman.
As for his and your remaining attempt at an argument, arguing that policies A and B are equivalent because each has a possibility of harm is ludicrous. What matters is the expected costs and benefits of each policy, not theoretical possibilities.
Obama's investments in new energy has mostly been a failure. There is nothing wrong with investing in new sources of energy in principle (e.g., through university and public research), that's a legitimate function of government and outside the market. There is plenty wrong with handing vast amounts of money to his cronies in industry, people who obviously don't have a business plan good enough to attract investors.
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Bakunin pretty much lays it out for you:
(NB: I'm not endorsing Bakunin, just relating what one of the first anarchists had to say about it. Keep in mind that he was reacting to communism, a political system that claims to use scientific principles as the basis of government.)
Well, the Christian churches should simply shut up and stay out of the political arena. Yet, the Catholic church and many protestant churches are trying to push their views on economics, marriage, family, abortion, sex, drugs and many other issues.
(1) I didn't claim that. (2) What Christians do or believe has little to do with what's in the Bible.
Oh, I think it's pretty clear: if a Christian church accepts you and you pay your tithes, you are a Christian, both by your own conviction and in the judgment of your church (since they would excommunicate you otherwise). By that definition, the vast majority of Nazis were Christians, and the overwhelming majority of their victims were Jews and atheists.
That's an erroneous interpretation of election results. Those regions were simply the parts of Germany where one right wing party (the Catholic Center Party) split the vote with another right wing party (the Nazis). In protestant areas, people who wanted to vote for a right wing party only had the Nazis as their choice. If the Catholic Center Party hadn't existed, the Nazis would likely have received at least as many votes in Catholic areas as they did in protestant areas.
When you are saying "the party itself was deeply divided", what that means that the party knew that the Nazis were a bunch of murderous thugs and war mongers and debated that fact, i.e., they can't plead ignorance. But when it came to the vote, their support of Hitler was unanimous. And Catholics didn't just avoid persecution, they received large financial and political advantages for the Catholic church in Germany.
Yes, while at the same accepting (or even relishing) in the fact that the people the Catholic church hates, people like communists, socialists, homosexuals, Freemasons, Jehova's witnesses, and many others, would be persecuted, put in camps, and probably killed.
But a vote against the Enabling Act by the Center Party would have been a decisive act that could have brought down the Third Reich, and regardless of its effectiveness, it would have been the morally right thing to do. In general, Catholics were about half of the German population and as such the Catholic church potentially wielded enormous political power, but it failed to use that power to attempt stop the Nazis. Instead, the church always made the same kind of rational, materialistic choice that German corporations made when they collaborated with the Nazis. The morally right choice is to oppose evil, even if that comes at a cost to yourself and even if you can't be certain whether it's going to be effective. If you only do the morally right thing when it doesn't cost you too much, your morality is worthless.
Just to relate this to the origin of this thread, churches warning against the dangers of "atheistic materialism" creeping into our societies and selling themselves as a bulwark against that. In Nazi Germany (there are many other examples), churches supported the Nazis with the justification that they needed to protect Germany against "atheistic materialism", and then committed the very moral failure that they accuse "atheistic materialists" of, namely putting their own financial interests and safety above doing the morally right thing. Ironically, the "atheistic materialists" (socialists and communists) were the ones doing the morally right thing even though they knew it would likely cost them their lives.
The Catholic church certainly is to blame for contributing to the rise of the Nazi regime, since it had the political power and the votes in parliament to stop Hitler from becoming dictator of Germany. Instead, its officials and representatives chose to vote for Hitler, and then chose to make deals with the Nazi dictatorship that gave the Catholic church financial and political advantages, while strengthening the Nazi party.
And my point is that Christians fail to do the morally right thing as much as anybody else. Christianity isn't the "foundation" of morality or peaceful co-existence, it is a sham that falsely claims credit for the biologically innate goodness of human beings.
That's the Christian version of the perfect prediction scam: you declare a large number of people to be Christians and then later declare those who did bad things retroactively not to have been "true Christians".
The rational analysis to consider everybody a Christian who the Christian churches consider to be members. In Germany, church membership is a matter of record that requires an annual positive act on the parts of both church members (tithing) and churches (accepting the tithe). The great majority of Nazis were church members, and no major Nazi figure was excommunicated, even after the war.
Yes, the Federal Reserve takes money from its members and then loans it back out to its members, as it is supposed to do. There may be plenty wrong with that system, but they aren't directly spending tax dollars on bailouts. Obama's tax-payer funded bailouts do, and that's what we have been talking about.
I see no difference in Obama's and Romney's positions: both acknowledge that war is an option.
While you may argue about their social fairness, there is not a shred of evidence that "Republican" policies (cutting taxes, cutting spending, cutting entitlements) cause recessions. On the other hand, these policies are reasonable long term strategies for reducing debt and increasing economic activity.
Furthermore, there is little evidence that Obama's economic policies have been effective (you were bemoaning the state of the economy yourself). In addition, the US credit rating got downgraded and debt has sharply increased on his watch.
My concern about Romney is that he would would not follow Republican principles and instead cut taxes without cutting spending and entitlements. Historically, Democrats at least paid for their spending with taxes. But judging by today's news, Obama is breaking with that principle too.
And many people (myself included) voted for Obama hoping he'd put an end to that, which he utterly failed to do.
Really? By what mechanism can the Federal Reserve, all by itself, without consent or support from the president, bail out banks, investment banks, homeowners, and auto companies?
We live in a democracy, and discussions prior to elections actually do matter. As far as I can tell, opinions are gradually turning against Obama, and there is a real possibility he won't get reelected.
Now, can you put some meat into your claim that Romney could be a disaster for the country? I really don't see on which dimension he could be worse than Obama.
And from that you somehow conclude that any criticism of one candidate automatically translates into an endorsement of the other?
Ah, great! Reverse communist baiting: you accuse others of accusing you of being a communist. No, sorry, I don't even give you that much intellectual credit.
Looks pretty modest by historical standards:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_US_recessions
Perhaps you simply don't remember how truly awful some of the previous recessions were?
Of course, since Obama has been promising "change", one is entitled to asking what he has actually delivered, and it looks like he hasn't been able to accomplish much.
It "required" nothing of the sort. The Obama administration decided that it was politically in their interest to take hundreds of billions of dollars and shove them in the hands of a few large failing banks, failing industries, and dumb invenstors. What it should have done is acted in accordance with the law: only protect FDIC insured assets, and charge a premium for loans to banks.
As a result of Obama's ill conceived, the nation is burdened with even more unnecessary debt, businesses have even less of an incentive to operate efficiently, and the recovery will be even slower. To hurt the economy even further, Obama added ineffective health care legislation and expanded regulations.
You want to know why the economy hasn't recovered faster? Obama's policies are part of the reason. At the very least, he failed to deliver the "change" that he promised.
Really? Why don't you explain what horror scenario you're thinking of.
That's a false dichotomy. Atheism makes no claims about morality or proper behavior. Christianity on the other hand does, and in addition accuses atheists of intrinsically lacking morality. There is nothing to falsify about atheists, but we can falsify Christian claims based on history.
This is not about "fault" (many people were at "fault" for Nazi Germany). It is about asking whether the Christian claims to superior morality compared to "atheistic materialists" are true. The actions of Christians in Nazi Germany shows that Christianity does not equate with superior morality, and that Christian churches are as corrupt as any other large organization, tolerating human suffering and death if it brings financial and political advantages.
That means you should take the Korean Christian's and the Vatican's arguments about "atheistic materialism" for what they are worth: nothing.
Are you kidding? Phrases like "atheistic materialism" are at the heart of Christian political arguments, and have been for centuries, and are trotted out whenever a church wants to achieve some political end. That's why churches in Korea are using it in political arguments, just like churches in Europe and the US.
The example of Catholicism and Nazi Germany is highly relevant in this context, because the Catholic church first used terms like "atheistic materialism" to justify allying itself with the Nazis against the communists and socialists, and then after the war to claim that it opposed the Nazis all along because they too supposedly were "atheistic materialism". (Many protestant churches behave the same way, but they are so splintered and lack historical continuity, so Catholicism just serves as a better illustrative example.)
The "Godwin" here has been pulled by Christian churches since WWII, trying to shift blame. The least people can do is point out that "atheistic materialism" has never been at the root of the problem and that the notion that Christian values prevent atrocities is ridiculous in light of historical reality.
No, you can't. But with some effort, you can write object-oriented code.
You need to read up on your history. The Catholic Center Party in Germany (headed prelate Kaas) didn't "waffle", it cast the deciding votes installing Hitler as a dictator of Germany and ending the Weimar Republic. Both the Nazis and the Catholics told you why in their speeches: they were allies in their fight against atheistic communists and for the promotion of traditional Christian values. In addition to dealing with Hitler and Mussolini, the Catholic church also supported Franco and other right-wing dictators, for the same reason.
And they didn't just get some "basic rights", the Catholic church negotiated itself a sweet deal (permission to teach in public school, tithing through the Nazi tax collectors, salaries of church officials paid by the Nazi government), while the people the Catholic church had traditionally persecuted itself (socialists, communists, Freemasons, homosexuals, Jehova's witnesses) were already being carted off to concentration camps or just disappeared outright. All the church had to do in return is give political support and have its priests swear allegiance to the Nazis, and it did.
If gaining money and power in return for acquiescing to the torture and murder of your fellow human beings isn't the essence of moral corruption and moral failing, I don't know what is. But to the Catholic church, the lives of the people carted off to the Nazi concentration camps were, despite all their speeches, worthless since they weren't Catholics.
(The moral failings of the German protestants were different but no less serious.)
There's a big difference between what people do in their capacity as private citizens and as government employees. Police are acting as government employees; that gives them both specific powers, and it imposes additional responsibilities on them.
For example, I have a constitutional right to discriminate against you based on your race or religion in my private life; police violate the law if they do the same in their work.
Christian churches have been blaming the ills of the world on "pagans" and non-believers for almost as long as Christianity has existed. Usually, churches lump communism, materialist, and atheism together, but easily switch sides when that doesn't work out. For example, the Catholic church in Europe allied itself with Hitler and other fascist and military dictators against the "atheistic communists", but then after the war, when that turned out to be unpopular, blamed the fascists themselves for being atheists.
It's pretty simple to see why: Christianity starts with the premise that morality and decency is identical with belief in, and submission to, God. Logically, all non-believers must be either evil or at the very least misguided. Furthermore, no matter how bad the crimes of the churches or Christians are, they are either excused or atoned for by belief in God, or the people in question are retroactively declared not to have been "true believers" in the first place.
The only thing that changes over time is the group that the church is willing to extend the label "believer" to. Sometimes, it may include all Abrahamic religions, sometimes only Christians, and sometimes only specific denominations. It mostly seems to depend on political expediency.
I don't want to live on this planet anymore.
Any Android VNC client will do for remotely controlling Linux, OSX, or Windows from an Android phone; you don't need anything more complicated than that.
If you think this is new, you really don't know much about patents. We've had cases like this going back more than a century. This particular example actually shows more that these kinds of bad patents are becoming less and less relevant with increasingly software-driven products, products that can be updated essentially overnight. At some point, Apple will hopefully figure out that they are just embarrassing themselves with these kinds of legal shenanigans.
Should the patent system be fixed to prevent this kind of abuse from companies like Apple? By all means. But this patent is perhaps not a good test case.
You don't understand what that law means. It means that it is not illegal if you don't carry identification. But if you do not carry identification, police can detain you if they have reason to find out your identity; it doesn't matter whether you are a citizen or not. The legal standards for detention in order to determine your identity are much lower than for arrest.
(Is this thing on?)
I actually prefer separate web searches and local searches. I find it annoying that the default Android search sends query terms over the web to Google, and I rarely if ever find the mixed searches useful.
As far as I can tell, I can turn off mixed global/local search, but I end up having to choose one or the other with the Google search app. Or is there some way I can get separate shortcuts for local and web searches?
You make Romney sound quite appealing: a candidate who isn't trying to reshape American society or the world, who doesn't have a grand economic plan, and who isn't trying to fix everybody's little booboos with photogenic, costly and ineffective government programs.
Why is this relevant? Assessing the failures of the Obama presidency doesn't imply that one thinks McCain would have been better or that one should vote for Romney.
We haven't had an "economic collapse", we have had a recession; they happen quite regularly all by themselves. The idea that they are "brought to you" by anybody is itself a misguided outgrowth of a view of economics rooted in central planning.
In addition, Bush and Obama failed in pretty much the same way: both used the public coffers to try to immortalize themselves with pet projects (military adventures, entitlements), both attempted to use the power of the federal government to engage in massive social engineering, and the teams of both rewarded their cronies in banking and industry with massive government bailouts.
Frankly, Romney can't be any worse than that either.
Well, Obama largely failed on the civil liberties, drugs, and defense reduction issues.
As for health care, the US already has a huge single payer system and its costs are also out of control. In contrast, many other nations are doing much better with private insurance systems than the US. So attributing US health care woes to private insurance is wrong. I won't even bother to comment on banks or campaign contributions other than to say that your analysis is wrong there too.
Apparently, you fail to grasp the basic difference between "cost control" and "deficit reduction". The CBO predicts a small deficit reduction a few years out.
No, PPACA does not result in meaningful cost control. The CBO projects temporary deficit reduction due to increased revenues and other factors. However, even that prediction is highly uncertain and based on lots of assumptions.
In addition, your idea that these numbers are "mathematics" instead of tea leaf reading just shows that you are about as ignorant of science and mathematics as your average creationist Christian fundamentalist.
You are caught up in this "tit-for-tat" mentality, not me. I'm not a Republican, I didn't mention Romney, and I voted for Obama last time.
I disagree with your premise. As far as I'm concerned, Congress should focus on reducing the size of government, reduce government intrusion into people's personal lives, reduce regulations, and reduce spending. Neither Republicans nor Democrats have delivered on that.
I didn't make an argument about which economic system is preferable, I pointed out that kent.dickey's posting misused the term "free market"; he erroneously stated that a free market operates without "rules/laws/regulations". If you and he don't even understand what a free market is, your arguments about it are worthless, and kent.dickey was criticizing a strawman.
As for his and your remaining attempt at an argument, arguing that policies A and B are equivalent because each has a possibility of harm is ludicrous. What matters is the expected costs and benefits of each policy, not theoretical possibilities.
Obama's investments in new energy has mostly been a failure. There is nothing wrong with investing in new sources of energy in principle (e.g., through university and public research), that's a legitimate function of government and outside the market. There is plenty wrong with handing vast amounts of money to his cronies in industry, people who obviously don't have a business plan good enough to attract investors.