The irritating this is, I agree with the gun nuts, only they don't agree with me. I'm largely libertarian, and I largely oppose gun control. But they're still nuts, because they can marshall these cogent, well-reasoned, well-documented arguments against gun control, and tell you why the 2nd Amendment is necessary for freedom, but they consider anyone who supports any of the other nine amendments to be godless liberal hippies who hate America.
If the gun nuts brought the same passion for freedom, the same skepticism for government intrustion, and the same unflagging vigilance to the other nine amendments as they do to the 2nd one, our country would be a much better place. But try getting them riled up about torture-induced confessions or preventing school-mandated prayer and that skepticism towards government vanishes. They're not really anti-government, but anti-anti-gun. They're very articulate and impressive one-trick ponies. So I give my money to the ACLU. It isn't perfect, but 9/10 is 9 times better than 1/10.
It isn't as if it "could be perverted into" a horrible torture device. It IS a torture device. It causes excruciating pain, and leaves no marks. It will be used (if it isn't already) for interrogation. In Iraq first, and eventually it will be purchased by police departments stateside.
Then you'll hear from suspects that it was used on them, and the police departments will deny it. Eventually it'll happen to a telegenic white person, and there'll be a congressional hearing (assuming the Democrats are still in office) and they'll discover that US police departments are using them to torture confessions out of people. Everyone will act shocked, condemn the "few bad apples" and it'll continue as before after a brief pause.
Understanding of this issue is divided starkly into two camps--those who understand that power is abused, and those who think power is only abused by that other political party, the one they don't like. I know that humans are who they are. I spent part of my morning reading http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/article.php?scid=6 &did=110, and time and time again I read of police torturing confessions out of people. Police do this. In every country. Every police officer? No, but that distinction won't matter when it's you feeling as if your arm is being cooked.
It isn't that particular police officers are "bad people" but that people can't be trusted with this much power. Give any population of human beings the power to inflict great pain without being caught, make it convenient for them to use it because doing so will get results, and the results will always be the same--people will do the wrong thing if doing so is in their best interests. Call it original sin, whatever, but power corrupts. It's part of our nature, and can't be negated by optimism or indignant "cops are good people!" responses. People invariably take it as an insult to good cops they know, because they think that evil in this world is due to a few bad apples, not to an innate, insurmountable flaw in our nature. It's that naive optimism that prevents us from acknowledging the limitations to what we can trust people with, and leads us to keep inventiing torture devices like this. This is one of those cases where optimism causes more harm than good, and a bit of cynicism would result in a lot less human suffering.
Industry and naysayers have convinced the public that there is a debate in the scientific community on the existence and (preventable) cause of global warming.
There is a populist element in both US and UK culture (moreso the US) that persuades people that their input into complex questions is just as insightful as that of experts. We have to pretend that the facts are waiting for John Q. Public (or John Bull, as the case may be) to weigh in before the issue is settled, rather than pointing out that there are scientifically verifiable objective facts we just have to live with.
It plays on people's innate sense of fairness to imply that honest folk are expressing concerns and having their questions squashed by egghead know-it-alls. This also plays into populist distrust of academics, class resentment, red states having scorn for hoity-toity college-edgumucated blue states, and may uglier common elements in our cultures, all the way down to the folks thinking the rapture is coming any second, so it's sacrilege to think that Jesus isn't coming back and thus we need to worry about long-term environmental concerns. This ghoulash of embarassing traits is collectively the strongest bond holding us down.
People like looking for conspiracies.
People don't really understand science anyway, and they don't evaluate global warming info any differently than they do stories about the Loch Ness Monster, alien abuductions, or guardian angels. It's all just magic talk.
"Do you think America is a power for good or a power for evil?"
That we would ask that question does say a lot about our mindset. Americans see it as a question of good vs evil. If you answer "evil" to the question, all they then have to do is mention that we defeated Hitler to disprove your point. It's a loaded question because power is really about power, and we are not "the good guys" in a struggle against the powers of darkness, our national myths notwithstanding. We have no problem seeing that the Romans, Greeks, or anyone else who had an empire to defend really just wanted to preserve their wealth and influence, but US--well, we're only taking the mantle of responsibility for defending freedom and justice, and even then only as a reluctant giant who would really rather mind his own business. Right.
You're talking to an audience who is never, ever wrong, and who do not feel that the intractible, insoluble problems faced by every other great power in history apply to them. Every objection to the invasion of Iraq--that Saddam didn't have WMD, that Saddam wasn't involved with Al-Queida, that the invasion would destabilize the region and make terrorism worse--have proven true, and still they think they were right all along.
Iran wanted Saddam removed because they want a Shia superstate. This little gem of an idea was on the news for about 10 minutes a couple of years ago, when the Pentagon opined that Chalabi was an Iranian double-agent who duped the US with bad intel so Iran could foment a regime change to destabilize the region so the Shia majority could take control. But when the news agencies realized that they were saying that the entire Executive Branch of the US Government had been suckered by selective intelligence into doing the bidding of a known sponsor of terrorism, the story sort of dried up and went away. We're still working for Iran and Israel. Two masters, though with incompatible ends, but both being served by our own Wilsonian idealistic crusade mentality. It's an interesting, if depressing, situation.
After being entertained for years by the notion that to leave Iraq, or pull back, or draw down, or really anything other than what Bush was doing would be "cutting and running" and "emboldening the terrorists," I'm curious to see how Bush pulling troops back will be called something other than cutting and running. My guess is that they'll (they being neoconservatives) declare victory and trumpet Bush's genius, then lament the incompetence of the new Congress in letting Iraq descend into civil war.
Since we never really had an objective, it would be easy to declare victory no matter the outcome. Disarm Saddam of his WMD? Done--before we even arrived! Regime change? Done. Would've been done sooner, if we hadn't armed and financed him, but let's not dwell on fine points. Pay him back for his support of Al Queida and his role in 9-11? Er, okay, bad example.
But PR can do anything. All they have to do is say "We won! Bush is a great leader!" and trumpet it over and over and over and over, while acting indignant that anyone would ever suggest that Bush, Cheney, and the neoconservatives bear any responsibility at all for anything bad that happened in Iraq (though we can credit them for every flower that bloomed, it seems) and eventually people will come around. If there is ethnic cleansing and tens or hundreds of thousands killed in internecine war, it's not as if the US population is going to sit down and say, "well hell, our President is responsible for that." People consider themselves and the government they voted for responsible for the noble things they meant to do, not what they did. A school opened and a child got a puppy? That's because of George Bush, God bless him. That kid gets killed later that day by a rocket? Not us, Bub. This isn't new--how many Americans felt responsible for the Khmer Rouge? How many Americans care that American financiers helped Hitler? There won't be a reckoning, because there never is. It's too easy to pat ourselves on the back for our nobler motives, and ignore what our decisions actually resulted in.
If I really have to explain why paying for a blowjob from a live girl (dead girls aren't any good, though I guess they're cheaper) is different from paying for fake friends on a website intended to impress people you'll never meet are not even closely related, then something is really wrong here.
I do see many posts literally calling Christians retards (some of which are modded down appropriately). As a Christian, I get offended by that
It's unfortunate that some people in the world are rude. Try being an atheist and having tens of millions of people assume that you have no morals or values. I have to be careful who I "admit" my lack of faith to, lest I be insulted openly by their assumption that I must live my life as if there is no morality. Yeah, like I rape, pillage, and plunder daily. Want to join me?
Unfortunately for you, the fundamentalists have tried to co-opt the word "Christian" for themselves. If you aren't a biblical literalist, they don't consider you a Christian. The problem is, most biblical literalists repudiate rational thought and pretty much all of science. When you guys get that sorted out amongst yourselves as to who is an isn't a Christian, let us know.
but anyone who believes in a higher being), I get offended,
Well, how much respect would you have for an adult who believed in Santa Claus or magic elves? Really? You might not pelt them with rocks, but you aren't really going to respect them, and you are fully aware of that. God is basically an invisible magic friend who loves you and who will punish people you don't like by sending them to hell forever. We can disagree on the fine points, but though I agree that you have faith and I would never openly mock you (sorry about those who do--I don't like rude people) but at a basic level what is there that I'm supposed to respect? Can I have more respect for you than you would have for someone who prayed to Dionysus or thought that a magic leprechaun orbits Neptune and sends him messages? How you can expect more respect than you would have yourself? I agree that you wouldn't be rude to them (kudos to you) but the best we can hope for here is the old saw, "if you don't have anything nice to say..."
I have yet to hear anyone debunk the first law of thermodynamics. If energy (and matter) is never created nor destroyed, nothing can exist without that law at any scale being broken at some point.
The laws of physics would only exist in a universe that existed. Meaning, that this first law only holds true once the universe exists. And if science is correct and space and time are linked, there was no before to existence--it isn't as if the universe existed for a while but was empty, and then later stuff came into being. The laws only came into being with the existence of stuff, because the stuff has properties that, once recognized, are stated as scientific laws.
Evolution is the basis of modern biology. It isn't a hack "theory" in the laymen sense of the word. It is a mental model that happens to not only explain the facts, but to have a predictive value, and so on. Talkorigins.org has good articles on what "theory" means in a scientific sense. A large part of the problem we face in the evolution-creationism "debate" is the (often deliberate) misuse of the word "theory." Just because the biblical literalists have an explanation doesn't make it a theory in the scientific sense, so their explanation isn't a competing theory. It's a competing explanation (just as magic elves, Odin, and so on are explanations) but not a competing theory. A theory is more than a conjectural explanation.
I'm not saying that non-religious people are incapable of being irrational. Everyone succumbs to advertising and propaganda, for example, and everyone thinks they can beat the house in Vegas. But the very nature of religious beliefs are not rational. "Not rational" does not mean "stupid." It just means "not arrived at by reason." Would you consider a belief in magical elves to be rational? Tarot? Crystal gazing? All are things that can be believed in, and sometimes are, but without any rational reason. Non-religious people are capable of being irrational, but the distinction of not believing in God (or elves, or leprechauns) is not irrational. Not believing in magic invisible people in the sky who love you is inherently more rational than believing that they talk to you every day.
The idea that there is no afterlife would be the greatest thing in the world to me. Knowing that I could live my life any way I chose
This is interesting, because I don't actually know any atheists who act as if our actions don't have meaning. That a religious person is only a decent human being because they're afraid of eternal punishment says something about them, doesn't it? So are they saying that THEY would rape, pillage, and plunder if their faith was shaken? My reason for being a decent person is just a question--"what kind of world do you want to live in?" I don't need the fear of God or hell lurking over me to know what is wrong. I guess your example does serve to remind me that we need the faith of the Christians to stay strong, since they are fundamentally bad people who would slit our throats if they no longer feared divine judgement. Or is that not what she meant? I don't believe that about Christians, and I wouldn't insult them by suggesting that they're only moral because they fear hell. I don't fear hell, but I know what morality is. The least I could do is extend them the same respect.
I don't ususally engage in conversations about politics or religion, they're rarely much use - people's minds are pretty made up one way or the other in both cases.
Well, the problem is that the non-religious people want to use rational thought, and the religious want an extemption for this one area of belief. If you meet a person who believes there are invisble telepathic unicorns in their closet, well, both sides of the debate are not equally tenable. To say "people's minds are pretty made up one way or the other in both cases" may be technically true, in that my mind is made up that there is no reason to believe in the invisible unicorns, but that doesn't mean that I'm closed-minded. I'm not saying we should forbid people from believing in God (not that that would change much anyway) but the belief deserves as much respect as belief in elves, faeries, unicorns, and Santa Claus. Do I KNOW definitively there are no elves, faeries, etc? No, that can't be proven, and I'm not omniscent. But I see no reason to believe that they exist outside of the world of make-believe. We non-theists don't want to deny anyone their right to believe, but we do have a predilection for rational thought, and can't abide a special exemption for that one three-letter word, God.
if there wasn't someone to fight against. They have to have a mission for their faith to be worthwhile, and their mission is to collect more souls for Christ. Yes, they could believe in the Christ of the Sermon on the Mount and dedicate their lives to helping the poor, but that doesn't do much to bolster normal human vanity, nor does it allow one to seek and enjoy power over others, or enjoy much wealth and comfort. Since most humans are vain and like power, influence, and wealth, it's no surprize that many Christians take a reading of the Bible that instructs them to convert souls, rail against evolution and the other teachings of the devil, work their way into government so they can pass laws governing the rest of us, all while living a materially comfortable life in this world. And all the while they can sleep soundly at night knowing that hell exists to welcome anyone they don't like, because anyone they don't like is someone God doesn't like. Why do you think we HAVE religion, anyway?
So why not call them that instead of using phrases like "anti-scientific" that imply a war between religion and science?
Because this teacher views himself as a Soldier of Christ in a cultural battle between the forces of God and the Prince of Lies. They view the teaching of evolution and (sometimes) the age of the earth, etc, to be lies foisted on us by the devil in an attempt to drag us down to hell via a weakened faith. It is a war, not between religion and science, but between fundamentalists and everyone else. If you watch movies like Jesus Camp, you'll see that they already consider us to be at war. Granted, much of this just plays into their persecution fantasies, but they still think they are manning the barricades for Christ. Really.
But what is a belief is that science is the only form of truth.
And this is a belief system that no one actually has. Scientists don't purport to tell you why you should be a good person, why you should be good to your children, why you shouldn't rape/pillage/plunder, etc. Scientists don't rule out a soul, or God, or whether or not Jesus died for your sins. Science deals only with whether or not physical, verifiable evidence exists for claims. There could be invisible, telepathic magic elfs orbiting Jupiter, and science deals not with the Truth of this, but with whether or not any evidence exists to show us that the proposition is true.
It may gall many that science is respected so much, perhaps even excessively much, but the fact is that it works. If you get cancer and you could use only medicine or only prayer, which you you try? Appendicitis? Gunshot wound? If you want to build a bridge, are you going to rely on prayer to guide you, or the sciences of engineering, metallurgy, etc? Science is rational thought. It isn't everything--it generally makes for bad poetry, for example. It doesn't touch on the genius of Van Gogh or Proust. There is much in the human condition that isn't addressed by science, and this finite scope is readily acknowledged by scientists. The only ones claiming that sciences tries to answer all questions are the religious opponents who don't want to accept science's answers on the age of the earth, or genetic diversity, or something along those lines.
Believing "if you mess up the place you live, then the place you live will be messed up" is definitely a faith-based proposition. No logical or factual support to that at all. Going way out on a limb there. You might as well believe in Nessie and Bigfoot. What a bunch of loonies. Just like a religion. Yep.
Oh, wait. If I live somewhere...and mess it up....wait...I live on the Earth, and if the Earth is polluted and toxic to life...then...wait...no, never mind, you're right, it still takes a lot of crazy, wacko faith to believe in that line of reasoning. Only the far, far, way far out extreme mega-left wing would believe that.
Where did you go to school? I never saw any teacher "ridicule" religion, in grade school, middle school, high school, or college. I have seen students be offended at the teaching of mainstream science and think that being tested on evolution or the age of the earth was intended to undermine religion. I've seen students mocked for making stupid, childish arguments against evolution or an old earth. Every time I've ever seen someone say that schooling was hostile to religion, they meant that evolution and the age of the earth were being taught, and they disagreed with it. But I've never seen a teacher mock religion per se--in the USA, about 90% of the population believes in God to one extent or another, and few atheist teachers would admit their atheism because families would clamor for them to be fired. So what do you mean? Was faith in God mocked? The soul? The divinity of Jesus? Or do you mean that modern science was being taught, and some religious people felt that this constituted an all-out assault on their religion?
What do you mean our knowledge of the earth is incomplete?
Science has never been complete, and in fact complete knowledge is illusory. Anyone claiming to have complete knowledge is either a fool or thinks you are, or both. The anti-science contingent of Protestant fundamentalism, from whence springs evolution and global warming "skepticism" in the USA, pretends that science makes the claim of complete knowledge, and pretends to be shocked when it doesn't actually have it. Partly it's a cynical, specious argument because they're refuting a claim that was never made, and partly it's just the result of stupidity. Because their own Bible stories are the Complete, All-Explaining Truth, they can't comprehend that any alternative explanations wouldn't be comparably ambitious. Science doesn't claim to be the One-Stop Shopping for All Answers--it's just the process to find out about the physical world around us. The only party in town who has ever claimed to have the Whole Truth was religion. If you're skeptical of science because we don't know absolutely everything about the physical world, then religion, which is a collection of bizarre beliefs concerning improbable events, based on a few stories scribbled by persons unknown thousands of years ago, must really seem stupid to you.
That's exactly what evolution is, which is why I was so surprized to see it explained this way. Usually evolution "skeptics" try and make evolutioon into some absurd and ridiculous theory (such as frog+time=prince). When you actually describe the theory as it is, it is not only not ridiculous, but sort of obvious. The parent poster must be thinking (I'm speculating, admittedly) that indivuduals adapt, when in fact it is populations that adapt, via the death of unfit individuals.
No, we can't predict exactly how much warmer it will be, or exactly what the rate of change will be. We don't know exactly how much humans contribute to this anyway. Until we know absolutely everything, we might as well do absolutely nothing. Just because all of our lab experiments lead to the conclusion that carbon dioxide makes warming worse, and we pump huge amounts of carbon dioxide into the environment, we should still do nothing. Humans changing our habits wouldn't fix all the problems, everywhere, forever, so we should still do nothing.
I really think almost all of these questions end up as what I call side of the room questions. People line up via their political orientation, and they end up on the side of the room with Michael Moore and Al Gore, or Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter. You might not like everything about the people on your side of the room, but if you find the other side of the room more unpalatable, you shut up and live with your reservations. The polarized nature of politics makes you at least act as if you buy into everything from your side of the room--if you vacillate (waffle!) you might embolden the other side of the room. Aaargh! So smart people end up believing stupid stuff, just so they don't have to stand on the same side of the room as Michael Moore (or Anne Coulter, depending on your aversion). And no, I'm not exempting myself from this. I find Michael Moore's stuff smarmy and irritating, but I'd do some serious soul-searching if I ended up on the same side of the room as Anne Coulter.
Not surprising at all. Somone has sunk a lot of money into trying to figure out why wrestling and NASCAR are popular. But I don't think Moore's law is going to help, really. It has something to do with the M.Q. (Mullet Quotient) of the state, and may not be a computable question.
I was going try for a Np joke, but I'm not smart enough, having gone to a public school in the south. Could someone help me out?
There is also the cost associated. Who is gonna pay for it all
So could a municipality, state, or even the entire nation suspend elections as a cost-cutting, budget-balancing move? Elections would be cheaper if we didn't have them. Can you think of any justification for the government paying for your election? Do you believe in "big government?" What other handouts are you hoping for?
I don't mean to condone bad cops, but everyone makes mistakes sometimes (don't try to tell me you've never said somthing that you now regret)
Yes, I've let my voice become surlier than I intended. I have, on occasion, used sarcasm. I have not as of yet punched my customers in the face. What you have is some people complaining about police brutality, and other people equivocating as if all "mistakes" are of the same magnitude. Officer Smith speaking to Jane Q. Public in a preremptory voice and hurting her itty bitty feewings isn't the same thing as him slamming her to the ground, punching her in the face repeatedly, and leaving her a bloody mess. Don't act as if I, or anyone else, expect all officers to be models of perfect behavior 24/7. Don't act as if we're asking for superhuman perfection and restraint. We're asking for them to stop brutalizing people.
Cops get carried away and beat the living hell out of people, mainly because they get off on the power they have. They do, they know they do, and I know they do--I've known cops, and I've had cops tell me their stories with a shit-eating grin. They love this shit. They want someone to get mouthy, to struggle a little.
All cops? No, not all. Most? No, I'd say not most. But enough. Technology exists to record traffic stops and arrests, and recordings would completely exonerate innocent cops of all wrongdoing. If someone comes to you and says "I don't want oversight" that means they're doing something illegal or unethical. People abuse their power. That is a standard truth that we have to live with while creating any power relationship. It doesn't matter if I like cops or respect them or even admire them--I know that, at a basic level, human beings tend to abuse the power they have. If they compound that liability with a deliberate attempt to exempt themselves from oversight, then I know what I'm looking at, even before I know the specifics of the case. If a bank teller wants the cameras taken out and doesn't want his balance sheets checked, you know what he's aiming for, and even if that basic principle doesn't hold true every single time, a safe bet is still one you usually win, not one you always win.
Well, for it to be irony, the implied meaning must differ from the stated meaning. What were you implying that was different than what you were stating? The allusion to Orwell did not go unnoticed, but it is not really applicable here. No one was suggesting police officers should be under surveillance in their homes or even every minute they're on duty, only when they're interacting with the public. An apprehension is a delicate matter--force can be used, allegations of excessive force are common, and a film showing that nothing untoward happened would help the police officer, would it not? I do believe in "innocent until proven guilty" but police are in a position where they are armed, taking another person into custody, handcuffing them, locking them into a vehicle, etc. They have a right to privacy as human beings, yes, but not so much in the performance of their duties as police officers. A corporate CEO has a right to privacy as a human being, but his papers, email, etc can still legally and ethically be audited, and he is still legally mandated to keep records of certain things. Are you saying there should be no accountability for police officers? Do you find it so unbelievable that one would abuse their power, ever, that you think they need no oversight?
As a teenager I worked at an electronics company that built, among other things, circuit boards for in-car cameras for police cars. When I first got the job, the cameras were on if the flashing lights were on. That was it. Easy-peasy. A week into the job, we changed the design per the requests of the customers--the police departments wanted a way to leave the flashing lights on, but turn the camera off. Even at that tender age, I thought "Why would they want to turn off the camera?" Why, indeed. I still have never heard a remotely convincing argument why a police officer would not want to film his or her interaction with the public. Since they're so frequently accused of impropriety or even brutality, wouldn't a tape help them? Well, it would, unless they weren't innocent. The only time a cop would want the option of turning off the camera would be if they wanted the option of doing something they don't want a record of. I'm just amazed that more people aren't skeptical.
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If the gun nuts brought the same passion for freedom, the same skepticism for government intrustion, and the same unflagging vigilance to the other nine amendments as they do to the 2nd one, our country would be a much better place. But try getting them riled up about torture-induced confessions or preventing school-mandated prayer and that skepticism towards government vanishes. They're not really anti-government, but anti-anti-gun. They're very articulate and impressive one-trick ponies. So I give my money to the ACLU. It isn't perfect, but 9/10 is 9 times better than 1/10.
It isn't as if it "could be perverted into" a horrible torture device. It IS a torture device. It causes excruciating pain, and leaves no marks. It will be used (if it isn't already) for interrogation. In Iraq first, and eventually it will be purchased by police departments stateside.
6 &did=110, and time and time again I read of police torturing confessions out of people. Police do this. In every country. Every police officer? No, but that distinction won't matter when it's you feeling as if your arm is being cooked.
Then you'll hear from suspects that it was used on them, and the police departments will deny it. Eventually it'll happen to a telegenic white person, and there'll be a congressional hearing (assuming the Democrats are still in office) and they'll discover that US police departments are using them to torture confessions out of people. Everyone will act shocked, condemn the "few bad apples" and it'll continue as before after a brief pause.
Understanding of this issue is divided starkly into two camps--those who understand that power is abused, and those who think power is only abused by that other political party, the one they don't like. I know that humans are who they are. I spent part of my morning reading http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/article.php?scid=
It isn't that particular police officers are "bad people" but that people can't be trusted with this much power. Give any population of human beings the power to inflict great pain without being caught, make it convenient for them to use it because doing so will get results, and the results will always be the same--people will do the wrong thing if doing so is in their best interests. Call it original sin, whatever, but power corrupts. It's part of our nature, and can't be negated by optimism or indignant "cops are good people!" responses. People invariably take it as an insult to good cops they know, because they think that evil in this world is due to a few bad apples, not to an innate, insurmountable flaw in our nature. It's that naive optimism that prevents us from acknowledging the limitations to what we can trust people with, and leads us to keep inventiing torture devices like this. This is one of those cases where optimism causes more harm than good, and a bit of cynicism would result in a lot less human suffering.
Medical trauma shears work great. You can get them cheap on Ebay, and they make short work of clamshell packaging.
That we would ask that question does say a lot about our mindset. Americans see it as a question of good vs evil. If you answer "evil" to the question, all they then have to do is mention that we defeated Hitler to disprove your point. It's a loaded question because power is really about power, and we are not "the good guys" in a struggle against the powers of darkness, our national myths notwithstanding. We have no problem seeing that the Romans, Greeks, or anyone else who had an empire to defend really just wanted to preserve their wealth and influence, but US--well, we're only taking the mantle of responsibility for defending freedom and justice, and even then only as a reluctant giant who would really rather mind his own business. Right.
Iran wanted Saddam removed because they want a Shia superstate. This little gem of an idea was on the news for about 10 minutes a couple of years ago, when the Pentagon opined that Chalabi was an Iranian double-agent who duped the US with bad intel so Iran could foment a regime change to destabilize the region so the Shia majority could take control. But when the news agencies realized that they were saying that the entire Executive Branch of the US Government had been suckered by selective intelligence into doing the bidding of a known sponsor of terrorism, the story sort of dried up and went away. We're still working for Iran and Israel. Two masters, though with incompatible ends, but both being served by our own Wilsonian idealistic crusade mentality. It's an interesting, if depressing, situation.
Since we never really had an objective, it would be easy to declare victory no matter the outcome. Disarm Saddam of his WMD? Done--before we even arrived! Regime change? Done. Would've been done sooner, if we hadn't armed and financed him, but let's not dwell on fine points. Pay him back for his support of Al Queida and his role in 9-11? Er, okay, bad example.
But PR can do anything. All they have to do is say "We won! Bush is a great leader!" and trumpet it over and over and over and over, while acting indignant that anyone would ever suggest that Bush, Cheney, and the neoconservatives bear any responsibility at all for anything bad that happened in Iraq (though we can credit them for every flower that bloomed, it seems) and eventually people will come around. If there is ethnic cleansing and tens or hundreds of thousands killed in internecine war, it's not as if the US population is going to sit down and say, "well hell, our President is responsible for that." People consider themselves and the government they voted for responsible for the noble things they meant to do, not what they did. A school opened and a child got a puppy? That's because of George Bush, God bless him. That kid gets killed later that day by a rocket? Not us, Bub. This isn't new--how many Americans felt responsible for the Khmer Rouge? How many Americans care that American financiers helped Hitler? There won't be a reckoning, because there never is. It's too easy to pat ourselves on the back for our nobler motives, and ignore what our decisions actually resulted in.
If I really have to explain why paying for a blowjob from a live girl (dead girls aren't any good, though I guess they're cheaper) is different from paying for fake friends on a website intended to impress people you'll never meet are not even closely related, then something is really wrong here.
It's unfortunate that some people in the world are rude. Try being an atheist and having tens of millions of people assume that you have no morals or values. I have to be careful who I "admit" my lack of faith to, lest I be insulted openly by their assumption that I must live my life as if there is no morality. Yeah, like I rape, pillage, and plunder daily. Want to join me?
Unfortunately for you, the fundamentalists have tried to co-opt the word "Christian" for themselves. If you aren't a biblical literalist, they don't consider you a Christian. The problem is, most biblical literalists repudiate rational thought and pretty much all of science. When you guys get that sorted out amongst yourselves as to who is an isn't a Christian, let us know.
Well, how much respect would you have for an adult who believed in Santa Claus or magic elves? Really? You might not pelt them with rocks, but you aren't really going to respect them, and you are fully aware of that. God is basically an invisible magic friend who loves you and who will punish people you don't like by sending them to hell forever. We can disagree on the fine points, but though I agree that you have faith and I would never openly mock you (sorry about those who do--I don't like rude people) but at a basic level what is there that I'm supposed to respect? Can I have more respect for you than you would have for someone who prayed to Dionysus or thought that a magic leprechaun orbits Neptune and sends him messages? How you can expect more respect than you would have yourself? I agree that you wouldn't be rude to them (kudos to you) but the best we can hope for here is the old saw, "if you don't have anything nice to say..."
The laws of physics would only exist in a universe that existed. Meaning, that this first law only holds true once the universe exists. And if science is correct and space and time are linked, there was no before to existence--it isn't as if the universe existed for a while but was empty, and then later stuff came into being. The laws only came into being with the existence of stuff, because the stuff has properties that, once recognized, are stated as scientific laws.
Evolution is the basis of modern biology. It isn't a hack "theory" in the laymen sense of the word. It is a mental model that happens to not only explain the facts, but to have a predictive value, and so on. Talkorigins.org has good articles on what "theory" means in a scientific sense. A large part of the problem we face in the evolution-creationism "debate" is the (often deliberate) misuse of the word "theory." Just because the biblical literalists have an explanation doesn't make it a theory in the scientific sense, so their explanation isn't a competing theory. It's a competing explanation (just as magic elves, Odin, and so on are explanations) but not a competing theory. A theory is more than a conjectural explanation.
if there wasn't someone to fight against. They have to have a mission for their faith to be worthwhile, and their mission is to collect more souls for Christ. Yes, they could believe in the Christ of the Sermon on the Mount and dedicate their lives to helping the poor, but that doesn't do much to bolster normal human vanity, nor does it allow one to seek and enjoy power over others, or enjoy much wealth and comfort. Since most humans are vain and like power, influence, and wealth, it's no surprize that many Christians take a reading of the Bible that instructs them to convert souls, rail against evolution and the other teachings of the devil, work their way into government so they can pass laws governing the rest of us, all while living a materially comfortable life in this world. And all the while they can sleep soundly at night knowing that hell exists to welcome anyone they don't like, because anyone they don't like is someone God doesn't like. Why do you think we HAVE religion, anyway?
It may gall many that science is respected so much, perhaps even excessively much, but the fact is that it works. If you get cancer and you could use only medicine or only prayer, which you you try? Appendicitis? Gunshot wound? If you want to build a bridge, are you going to rely on prayer to guide you, or the sciences of engineering, metallurgy, etc? Science is rational thought. It isn't everything--it generally makes for bad poetry, for example. It doesn't touch on the genius of Van Gogh or Proust. There is much in the human condition that isn't addressed by science, and this finite scope is readily acknowledged by scientists. The only ones claiming that sciences tries to answer all questions are the religious opponents who don't want to accept science's answers on the age of the earth, or genetic diversity, or something along those lines.
Oh, wait. If I live somewhere...and mess it up....wait...I live on the Earth, and if the Earth is polluted and toxic to life...then...wait...no, never mind, you're right, it still takes a lot of crazy, wacko faith to believe in that line of reasoning. Only the far, far, way far out extreme mega-left wing would believe that.
Where did you go to school? I never saw any teacher "ridicule" religion, in grade school, middle school, high school, or college. I have seen students be offended at the teaching of mainstream science and think that being tested on evolution or the age of the earth was intended to undermine religion. I've seen students mocked for making stupid, childish arguments against evolution or an old earth. Every time I've ever seen someone say that schooling was hostile to religion, they meant that evolution and the age of the earth were being taught, and they disagreed with it. But I've never seen a teacher mock religion per se--in the USA, about 90% of the population believes in God to one extent or another, and few atheist teachers would admit their atheism because families would clamor for them to be fired. So what do you mean? Was faith in God mocked? The soul? The divinity of Jesus? Or do you mean that modern science was being taught, and some religious people felt that this constituted an all-out assault on their religion?
Just taze the cop who tazed the student. Tell him to stand up immediately, and keep tazing him until he does.
That's exactly what evolution is, which is why I was so surprized to see it explained this way. Usually evolution "skeptics" try and make evolutioon into some absurd and ridiculous theory (such as frog+time=prince). When you actually describe the theory as it is, it is not only not ridiculous, but sort of obvious. The parent poster must be thinking (I'm speculating, admittedly) that indivuduals adapt, when in fact it is populations that adapt, via the death of unfit individuals.
I really think almost all of these questions end up as what I call side of the room questions. People line up via their political orientation, and they end up on the side of the room with Michael Moore and Al Gore, or Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter. You might not like everything about the people on your side of the room, but if you find the other side of the room more unpalatable, you shut up and live with your reservations. The polarized nature of politics makes you at least act as if you buy into everything from your side of the room--if you vacillate (waffle!) you might embolden the other side of the room. Aaargh! So smart people end up believing stupid stuff, just so they don't have to stand on the same side of the room as Michael Moore (or Anne Coulter, depending on your aversion). And no, I'm not exempting myself from this. I find Michael Moore's stuff smarmy and irritating, but I'd do some serious soul-searching if I ended up on the same side of the room as Anne Coulter.
Not surprising at all. Somone has sunk a lot of money into trying to figure out why wrestling and NASCAR are popular. But I don't think Moore's law is going to help, really. It has something to do with the M.Q. (Mullet Quotient) of the state, and may not be a computable question.
I was going try for a Np joke, but I'm not smart enough, having gone to a public school in the south. Could someone help me out?
Cops get carried away and beat the living hell out of people, mainly because they get off on the power they have. They do, they know they do, and I know they do--I've known cops, and I've had cops tell me their stories with a shit-eating grin. They love this shit. They want someone to get mouthy, to struggle a little.
All cops? No, not all. Most? No, I'd say not most. But enough. Technology exists to record traffic stops and arrests, and recordings would completely exonerate innocent cops of all wrongdoing. If someone comes to you and says "I don't want oversight" that means they're doing something illegal or unethical. People abuse their power. That is a standard truth that we have to live with while creating any power relationship. It doesn't matter if I like cops or respect them or even admire them--I know that, at a basic level, human beings tend to abuse the power they have. If they compound that liability with a deliberate attempt to exempt themselves from oversight, then I know what I'm looking at, even before I know the specifics of the case. If a bank teller wants the cameras taken out and doesn't want his balance sheets checked, you know what he's aiming for, and even if that basic principle doesn't hold true every single time, a safe bet is still one you usually win, not one you always win.
Well, for it to be irony, the implied meaning must differ from the stated meaning. What were you implying that was different than what you were stating? The allusion to Orwell did not go unnoticed, but it is not really applicable here. No one was suggesting police officers should be under surveillance in their homes or even every minute they're on duty, only when they're interacting with the public. An apprehension is a delicate matter--force can be used, allegations of excessive force are common, and a film showing that nothing untoward happened would help the police officer, would it not? I do believe in "innocent until proven guilty" but police are in a position where they are armed, taking another person into custody, handcuffing them, locking them into a vehicle, etc. They have a right to privacy as human beings, yes, but not so much in the performance of their duties as police officers. A corporate CEO has a right to privacy as a human being, but his papers, email, etc can still legally and ethically be audited, and he is still legally mandated to keep records of certain things. Are you saying there should be no accountability for police officers? Do you find it so unbelievable that one would abuse their power, ever, that you think they need no oversight?
As a teenager I worked at an electronics company that built, among other things, circuit boards for in-car cameras for police cars. When I first got the job, the cameras were on if the flashing lights were on. That was it. Easy-peasy. A week into the job, we changed the design per the requests of the customers--the police departments wanted a way to leave the flashing lights on, but turn the camera off. Even at that tender age, I thought "Why would they want to turn off the camera?" Why, indeed. I still have never heard a remotely convincing argument why a police officer would not want to film his or her interaction with the public. Since they're so frequently accused of impropriety or even brutality, wouldn't a tape help them? Well, it would, unless they weren't innocent. The only time a cop would want the option of turning off the camera would be if they wanted the option of doing something they don't want a record of. I'm just amazed that more people aren't skeptical.