Why the city? If I was gonna disappear, camping in the mountains and/or desert. Rockies, Cascades, New Mexico, Arizona, etc. Stowaway on a train, pay with cash for everything. Hopefully if i thought I needed to do this I would have prepositioned cahes of food/water out there already, like many thruhikers already do. Lay in a supply of MREs and drycanned goods in a cave or abandoned cabin or something. And leave the phone behind for damn sure.
Just because you kids dont appreciate classic movies, we're supposed to stop? Stuff that.
And who modded Buzz "AC" Killington here as insightful? Holy crap. Someone is just slapping that tag on everything, the way gammy does Frank's Red Hot Sauce.
I dont see the need for it myself...but the average consumer doesnt think about that, they just see "BIGGER NUMBERS ARE BETTER!". And so they buy these things. And its too much for the current pipelines coming into the houses....
and viola! Hardcore, cannot be ignored (like it is now) market pressure to upgrade cable/telco infrastructure and deliver more bandwidth! So for that reason, I support it.
That's bullshit, this concept that they must be weak if it affects them. If it affects you, you are normal, a normal human being with normal mores from a normal rational civilized society. Have you ever killed a man or seen it done? Have you ever dealt with child abuse/trafficing? Ever had to deal with any of this sickness? No? Then shut your damn mouth. It is traumatizing, in varying degrees to different people, but it is traumatizing seeing the evil that some parts of mankind are capable of, and it is not something you can just wish away. Some of these things you'll get past it, over it, sure. But every so often you'll get reminded of it, and you can remember it clear as day. I know.
and whoever modded that P.O.S. post Insightful needs smacked upside the head.
the data is fairly consistent, such as it exists, even going back far enough to discount birth control. the more likely reason is most rape victims dont just lie there and make it easier to conceive a child, nor is the attacker really trying to concieve a child either. how many couples do you know that are actively trying to get a child, doing everything known to increase the chance, and still have trouble?
Reducing it to "just a simple medical procedure" I believe is an extreme devaluation of what is happening.
Human conception (any conception really) is a miracle to me. I value all life to the highest degree I can, and to me an unborn child is the ultimate in innocence, the miracle of life. No child gets to choose his parents. If it were me, I'm no more comfortable with terminating a rape pregnancy than I am with going forward with it. It's a damned if you do damned if you dont choice. But one thing that always gets me is the assumption that -all- rape victims abort any pregnancy that occurs as a result. And that's just flat out not true; I've known more than a few that not only bore the child, but also kept it (vs adoption).
I'm not saying force them all to bear the kid. But I will say, stop and think for a second about what is actually being thrown away in that medical "waste" bin. ------ (and as for the original source of this, i believe I know where the congressman was going, as health orgs around the world all seem to pin the rape-related pregnancy rate at around 5% of rapes committed. he just sucks at off-the-cuff words combined with a lack of knowledge of the reason behind the low rate and is now paying for it. and teh hyper-sensationalizing news media isn't helping by overplaying his use of the word "legitimate" when the connotation he likely meant was "actual")
I find it amusing how uneducated people keep throwing around the word libertarian like they actually know what it means. Like that other idiot a couple weeks ago that blamed all the worlds ills on the libertarians. Dumbasses.
They dont want the info out there. It has nothing to do with putting the info out there. That is strictly unrelated to what they want; they dont give a damn about having the info out there. They have one specific purpose, and that is to scare people. To scare people in regards to GM cultivars of common food plants. They've convinced themselves that this stuff is scary and they dont want to ever consume it and now they are trying to scare everyone else into agreeing with them, and trying to force everyone to not have access to it. An eventual ban is exactly what they want. And it's completely irrational, much like other organizations, such as PETA that would somehow have us never use any animal ever for anything (and yes, that is their stated eventual end game). It's completely irrational, an opinion that cannot be reached by any sort of logic.
We dont label crossbreeds. Everything thinks Corn is that yellow thing they see on a cob at the store. Few modern consumers (note: consumers) know what actual wild corn looks like. they probably wouldnt even recognize an ear of wild corn as being the same thing as the ear in the store, just many generations of selective breeding apart. We've developed crossbreeds, cultivars, that serve specific functions or desires. Larger tomatoes vs smaller tomatoes, Celery that's picked for its stalk vs celery that's picked for its starchy root, apples that are redder or sweeter or greener or bitterer, depending on a persons tastes.
And we dont fear these 1000's of years of breeding, even though breeding has had its misfires too. A blight resistant potato cultivar (re: to prevent another irish potato famine) that accidentally amplified the amount of cyanide in the actual tuber (edible part). Oops. Tomatoes that did likewise (toxin in the druit). Oops. Actually a lot of examples where teh cultivar backslid to its figurative roots as a toxic plant. It happens. And when it does, you dont keep beeding it, you go back to the drawing board.
Directly GM'ed plants are no different. A more drought resistant corn and wheat crop is extremely important today. This very day. Not only would it allow more crop acreage across more of the globe, but even right here in the midwest USA farmers would LOVE IT. Already we have areas that use the aquifer underlying the entire great plains faster than it can naturally replenish. (not to be alarmist, because other areas of the aquifer get replenished just fine....it just takes naturally takes awhile for water replenishment in Indiana to seep its way through the ground to western nebraska) Eventually those areas will see decreases in production because the water they depend on for irrigation wont be there. There was a valley my grandfather lived in down in Arizone, somewhere near Tuscon, that was great for lettuce, but eventually they produced too much, used too much water, and drove the water table from ~30ft underground to over 500ft, circa 1933. That valley stopped growing much of anything. Now, many years later, its been replenished, and can be used again.
Again, a GM crop that uses less water allows to stretch that resource further, possibly enough where responisible usage of the supply will both produce more of the crop while using the same level of resources.
but these people dont want that because to them Gm is akin to how scary "radiation" in the 60s was, or still is if you talk about "irradiated" meat to some folks.
the entire purpose in having a right to bear arms is safety, primarily of yourself and in relation to the powers that be. Its also includes safety of yourself and anyone would threaten your imminent well-being, but the primary purpose is protection from the government. Any government that has no reason to fear its citizens is free to do whatever it wishes to them, for the citizenry is then at the mercy of the government and dependent on the continued benevolence of said government. The forefathers learned well from the Crown, the crown that attempted to disarm its colonial subjects to make them more easily controlled, and same the crown that denied its colonials the rights of a basic Englishman across the pond. There is a reason for each and every one of the articles in the Bill of Rights, and they are still each and everyone of them timeless in their importance.
All men are equal before the court in the eyes of the law. "Special training" or not, you cannot be held to a different standard in a court of law just because of your background, and cases have been overturned on such grounds. Movies like ConAir not withstanding.
Also, having been a marine these past 12 years, I dont recall ever recieving special training in the usage of axes, or the severing of heads.
Let's be realistic. Honestly who cares if its transferable?
I got a copy of windows, I really don't care if it's tied to HardDriveX that I bought for 10$ alongside it or not. If I ever replace the piece of hardware its techinically tied to, I don't go out of a get a new windows. If the hard drive dies, I'm supposed to not use that Windows License any more? Stuff that.
I get a copy of windows. It goes on my personal machine. End of story. I upgrade 20x or even just replace the whole thing top to bottom, that same copy of windows is still going right back on it.
The natural tendency of any system where "conflict" occurs is to merge into fewer and fewer parties. True for politics, true for business.
Its only true that it happened to airlines because of deregulation because the industry was so heavily regulated the companies literally could not take a dump without the fed's approval. Want to buy a competitor? Want to change or add a route? Want to drop a route cause its unprofitable? Not saying removing service is good...that caused a lot of airports to shutdown, and led to the mega airports we have now..but frm a business standpoint having to get Every Single Thing approved is a hassle. Complete deregulation, too far. Total regulation like they had....also too far. But such is politics and lobbying.
Re:You can still fly this way if you want to
on
When Flying Was a Thrill
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
I love flying. sure I hate it when some sweaty fat guy/gal didn't buy two tickets or get put next to an empty seat and is half in my lap. sitting on the tarmac in the heat, sucks too.
But its got its good points too.
Always get a window seat. I stare out the window. I watch the towns drift past. I name the cities and geographic features I see. If I spot something interesting one of the first things I do once i get to a computer is fire up google maps and figure out what I saw. -Did you know the Mississippi river is down so low, the river thats a mile wide for a huge portion of its length, is down so low right now from teh drought, that flying over memphis and other portions of it, it looks like over half its width was dry as bone sandbars? Thats the drought were in right now....the mississippi, the river that drains ~80% of the entire countries watershed. -approaching Pheonix on a lfight from 29 Palms to Dallas, about 30 minutes west of pheonix (at altitude and speed, so ~300 miles or so, near the border with cali) was a quarry/pit mine in the middle of the desert. One that was absolutely HUGE from 30000 feet up. Dont know what theyre mining, but from google, and flight, it appears to be over a mile deep, the central pit. And a few miles wide. The civil engineer side of me looks at that and thinks, wow, thats a feat. Thats awesome. -I see hidden lakes and rivers and creeks near places Ive lived for years, that I never knew existed. -On flights out of San Diego, LA, and San Fran, when they have to loop out over the ocean before turning back inland on takeoff, I've seen whales, scores of them, swiming along. Big ones (grey or fin?) and small (dolphins and orca). Often only a mile or so from shore. -Flying into (and out of) turkminstan and afghanistan on my deployment, I swore I was flyinig across portions of nevada, the desert terrain is so similar. And again, there is no much hidden greenery around little water seeps, rivers and lakes. Bagram is in the middle of nowhere, thats why theres a base there. Just a few ridges over its like a huge valley oasis (relatively, for a desert), and naturally that's where the people, mostly farmers, are concentrated. They dont show you much of the rugged beauty and scenery of the place when they show the news. Everyone thinks its just sand and camels, but its familiar territory for anyone who's lived int eh southwest. -Flying across the desert of new mexico, I seen white sands test range -flying across so cal, i seen the muroc dry lake, with its giant rose compass, and the dry lake "runway" the shuttle landed on. as a aviation buff, that place is magic land anyway -had a flight once fly over near the tonopah test range and airfield due to storm forced divert. didnt cross the airspace, but apaprently we got pertty close to their flight paths over there, cause in a couple successive flashes of lightning, i saw a flight of F117s crossing our line of flight, a few thousand feet below us.
The character of your mate has much much more to do with environment she was raised in, and her reactions to it (being a thinking species, two people could react in totally opposite manner), conscious and unconscious.
Imagine a gene that causes people to self explode. Or emit gamma radiation. What if Napolean had a B52?
Luckily neither your nor my hypothetical exists. You can what if all day, but that doesn't make it relevant.
And it's proven time and again that genes don't MAKE YOU do things, they only give a pre-disposition, and even then its always been some very broadly defined thing. A predispotion towards being overweight for example.
And people can and do overcome these pre-dispositions all the time. Because they are people, with brains, capable of making choices. Like, hey, I'm gonna put the fork down and not eat that extra helping (or six) of cake. even your hypothetical wouldn't stand up that, because being raised in a society that teaches right and wrong someone with the "rape gene" would still have to make teh conscious choice to committ such a violation, and being predisposed would not be any sort of excuse. And thats not even touching on your implied notion that people would just let rape-gene rapists be fruitful and multiply.
An "expert in practical ethics". That sounds like baloney to start with. One, it sounds on par with being an "expert on oscillating fan operation". Practical ethics itself is an iffy field. Its not "real ethics" which is more akin to an actual moral code regarding others (dont kill, dont steal). Instead its: dont kill/steal unless you wont get caught and/or really really need to.
Does he realize how boring his society would be? If you can control that much behaviour, how long before you just start programming eevryone to just think the same, since clearly disagreement is the source of all problems. And if everyones thinking the same, why not just engineer the hive mind?
Even at the lowest level of manipulation, this society would be culturally dead. Boring. Many of our greatest triumphs come from people overcoming, or at coping with, their realities. And those realities deal with being an alcoholic, having a leg shorter tha the other, being born blind. Not only do these individuals themselves enrish everyone around them, but they inspire certain of those around them to themselves enrich society further.
A society where everyones the same is boring, dead, and in the end has no use for concepts like freedom, discussion, achievement. In fact it has little reason for existence beyond mere existence itself. In effect, through technology, reverting ourselves to animalistic state of being.
I love how everyone calls the leaked documents "the us's dirty laundy and lies and deceit". As if they even read any of the documents.
Most of it is generic garbage. "Today 1000x of water disseminated to airbases in these quantities: 100x to Bagram, 100 to Al Asad...." etc etc. Extremely dry, boring stuff, only possibly interesting to a intelligence analyst, and even then most of its too outdated to be useful. The other primary type of content was peoples ungaurded comments about those around "the un sucks, this country sucks, i will sec state would bring me home to a better posting, etc". very little of the many hundreds of thousands of leaked documents had anything "juicy" and most of it isnt even news. A few things, like actual military plans, did come out, and yea, you'd be pissed too if someone told the other said "hey they're gonna attack tomorow at dawn!". or the critical weak points for the global economy: "hey, blow up these cables and you kill the internet". but again, these are the smallest portion of the stuff that came out.
I have no beef with wikileaks in general. But if you do wrong to get your stuff, no matter how good intentioned or beneficial it is, you should still man up to the consequences.
Manning was a member of the Army and he violated his oath, and many "direct" orders. By his own admission he had no idea what was in the majority of the documents, which makes it worse cause for all he knew it could have been the favorite spy movie foil: "a list of every spy everywhere in the world". I mean he could have done some serious physical hurt to a lot of people, his fellow soldiers and countrymen, around the world. Most people on/. did not see the scramble to get people to safety that went on while the scale of the leak was determined.
If Assange gave advice to Manning on not getting caught (rather than just having the stuff dumped in his lap) it is a very important legal distinction. And like the guy said, could cross the line to conspiracy to commit espionage. If he actually solicited the information, its a textbook definition of espionage. And again, that's illegal, everywhere, and has nothing to do with US jurisdiction.
What's actually going to happen? I really dont care. I subscribe to the theory that Assange has done more harm than good to wikileaks over past few years.
Call BS without citations. Akin to the "he did it on purpose" argument of a 5 year old, or the more recent "Ryan hates women and mexicans" claim from rolling stone ragazine. Tell me, did the US also destroy its own buildings to start a war in the middle east? Cause all i see is standard conspiracy i have no proof but EVERYONE KNOWS its true clap trap and rhetoric.
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Why the city? If I was gonna disappear, camping in the mountains and/or desert. Rockies, Cascades, New Mexico, Arizona, etc. Stowaway on a train, pay with cash for everything. Hopefully if i thought I needed to do this I would have prepositioned cahes of food/water out there already, like many thruhikers already do. Lay in a supply of MREs and drycanned goods in a cave or abandoned cabin or something. And leave the phone behind for damn sure.
Just because you kids dont appreciate classic movies, we're supposed to stop? Stuff that.
And who modded Buzz "AC" Killington here as insightful? Holy crap. Someone is just slapping that tag on everything, the way gammy does Frank's Red Hot Sauce.
At this time anyway.
I dont see the need for it myself...but the average consumer doesnt think about that, they just see "BIGGER NUMBERS ARE BETTER!". And so they buy these things. And its too much for the current pipelines coming into the houses....
and viola! Hardcore, cannot be ignored (like it is now) market pressure to upgrade cable/telco infrastructure and deliver more bandwidth! So for that reason, I support it.
That's bullshit, this concept that they must be weak if it affects them. If it affects you, you are normal, a normal human being with normal mores from a normal rational civilized society. Have you ever killed a man or seen it done? Have you ever dealt with child abuse/trafficing? Ever had to deal with any of this sickness? No? Then shut your damn mouth. It is traumatizing, in varying degrees to different people, but it is traumatizing seeing the evil that some parts of mankind are capable of, and it is not something you can just wish away. Some of these things you'll get past it, over it, sure. But every so often you'll get reminded of it, and you can remember it clear as day. I know.
and whoever modded that P.O.S. post Insightful needs smacked upside the head.
Swear I remember a story a year ago or so about a Taiwan news channel creating simple 3d videos to illustrate news stories they dont have footage of.
This is troll, not insightful. I wish you people would learn the difference.
the data is fairly consistent, such as it exists, even going back far enough to discount birth control.
the more likely reason is most rape victims dont just lie there and make it easier to conceive a child, nor is the attacker really trying to concieve a child either.
how many couples do you know that are actively trying to get a child, doing everything known to increase the chance, and still have trouble?
Reducing it to "just a simple medical procedure" I believe is an extreme devaluation of what is happening.
Human conception (any conception really) is a miracle to me. I value all life to the highest degree I can, and to me an unborn child is the ultimate in innocence, the miracle of life. No child gets to choose his parents. If it were me, I'm no more comfortable with terminating a rape pregnancy than I am with going forward with it. It's a damned if you do damned if you dont choice. But one thing that always gets me is the assumption that -all- rape victims abort any pregnancy that occurs as a result. And that's just flat out not true; I've known more than a few that not only bore the child, but also kept it (vs adoption).
I'm not saying force them all to bear the kid. But I will say, stop and think for a second about what is actually being thrown away in that medical "waste" bin.
------
(and as for the original source of this, i believe I know where the congressman was going, as health orgs around the world all seem to pin the rape-related pregnancy rate at around 5% of rapes committed. he just sucks at off-the-cuff words combined with a lack of knowledge of the reason behind the low rate and is now paying for it. and teh hyper-sensationalizing news media isn't helping by overplaying his use of the word "legitimate" when the connotation he likely meant was "actual")
I find it amusing how uneducated people keep throwing around the word libertarian like they actually know what it means. Like that other idiot a couple weeks ago that blamed all the worlds ills on the libertarians. Dumbasses.
They dont want the info out there. It has nothing to do with putting the info out there. That is strictly unrelated to what they want; they dont give a damn about having the info out there. They have one specific purpose, and that is to scare people. To scare people in regards to GM cultivars of common food plants. They've convinced themselves that this stuff is scary and they dont want to ever consume it and now they are trying to scare everyone else into agreeing with them, and trying to force everyone to not have access to it. An eventual ban is exactly what they want. And it's completely irrational, much like other organizations, such as PETA that would somehow have us never use any animal ever for anything (and yes, that is their stated eventual end game). It's completely irrational, an opinion that cannot be reached by any sort of logic.
We dont label crossbreeds. Everything thinks Corn is that yellow thing they see on a cob at the store. Few modern consumers (note: consumers) know what actual wild corn looks like. they probably wouldnt even recognize an ear of wild corn as being the same thing as the ear in the store, just many generations of selective breeding apart. We've developed crossbreeds, cultivars, that serve specific functions or desires. Larger tomatoes vs smaller tomatoes, Celery that's picked for its stalk vs celery that's picked for its starchy root, apples that are redder or sweeter or greener or bitterer, depending on a persons tastes.
And we dont fear these 1000's of years of breeding, even though breeding has had its misfires too. A blight resistant potato cultivar (re: to prevent another irish potato famine) that accidentally amplified the amount of cyanide in the actual tuber (edible part). Oops. Tomatoes that did likewise (toxin in the druit). Oops. Actually a lot of examples where teh cultivar backslid to its figurative roots as a toxic plant. It happens. And when it does, you dont keep beeding it, you go back to the drawing board.
Directly GM'ed plants are no different. A more drought resistant corn and wheat crop is extremely important today. This very day. Not only would it allow more crop acreage across more of the globe, but even right here in the midwest USA farmers would LOVE IT. Already we have areas that use the aquifer underlying the entire great plains faster than it can naturally replenish. (not to be alarmist, because other areas of the aquifer get replenished just fine....it just takes naturally takes awhile for water replenishment in Indiana to seep its way through the ground to western nebraska) Eventually those areas will see decreases in production because the water they depend on for irrigation wont be there. There was a valley my grandfather lived in down in Arizone, somewhere near Tuscon, that was great for lettuce, but eventually they produced too much, used too much water, and drove the water table from ~30ft underground to over 500ft, circa 1933. That valley stopped growing much of anything. Now, many years later, its been replenished, and can be used again.
Again, a GM crop that uses less water allows to stretch that resource further, possibly enough where responisible usage of the supply will both produce more of the crop while using the same level of resources.
but these people dont want that because to them Gm is akin to how scary "radiation" in the 60s was, or still is if you talk about "irradiated" meat to some folks.
Yelling fire cannot serve any purpose but to cause harm.
Except that other, somewhat important, purpose of alerting people to imminent danger.
You need a qualifying statement in there.
the entire purpose in having a right to bear arms is safety, primarily of yourself and in relation to the powers that be. Its also includes safety of yourself and anyone would threaten your imminent well-being, but the primary purpose is protection from the government. Any government that has no reason to fear its citizens is free to do whatever it wishes to them, for the citizenry is then at the mercy of the government and dependent on the continued benevolence of said government. The forefathers learned well from the Crown, the crown that attempted to disarm its colonial subjects to make them more easily controlled, and same the crown that denied its colonials the rights of a basic Englishman across the pond. There is a reason for each and every one of the articles in the Bill of Rights, and they are still each and everyone of them timeless in their importance.
All men are equal before the court in the eyes of the law. "Special training" or not, you cannot be held to a different standard in a court of law just because of your background, and cases have been overturned on such grounds. Movies like ConAir not withstanding.
Also, having been a marine these past 12 years, I dont recall ever recieving special training in the usage of axes, or the severing of heads.
Let's be realistic. Honestly who cares if its transferable?
I got a copy of windows, I really don't care if it's tied to HardDriveX that I bought for 10$ alongside it or not. If I ever replace the piece of hardware its techinically tied to, I don't go out of a get a new windows. If the hard drive dies, I'm supposed to not use that Windows License any more? Stuff that.
I get a copy of windows. It goes on my personal machine. End of story.
I upgrade 20x or even just replace the whole thing top to bottom, that same copy of windows is still going right back on it.
The natural tendency of any system where "conflict" occurs is to merge into fewer and fewer parties. True for politics, true for business.
Its only true that it happened to airlines because of deregulation because the industry was so heavily regulated the companies literally could not take a dump without the fed's approval. Want to buy a competitor? Want to change or add a route? Want to drop a route cause its unprofitable? Not saying removing service is good...that caused a lot of airports to shutdown, and led to the mega airports we have now..but frm a business standpoint having to get Every Single Thing approved is a hassle. Complete deregulation, too far. Total regulation like they had....also too far. But such is politics and lobbying.
I love flying. sure I hate it when some sweaty fat guy/gal didn't buy two tickets or get put next to an empty seat and is half in my lap. sitting on the tarmac in the heat, sucks too.
But its got its good points too.
Always get a window seat. I stare out the window. I watch the towns drift past. I name the cities and geographic features I see. If I spot something interesting one of the first things I do once i get to a computer is fire up google maps and figure out what I saw.
-Did you know the Mississippi river is down so low, the river thats a mile wide for a huge portion of its length, is down so low right now from teh drought, that flying over memphis and other portions of it, it looks like over half its width was dry as bone sandbars? Thats the drought were in right now....the mississippi, the river that drains ~80% of the entire countries watershed.
-approaching Pheonix on a lfight from 29 Palms to Dallas, about 30 minutes west of pheonix (at altitude and speed, so ~300 miles or so, near the border with cali) was a quarry/pit mine in the middle of the desert. One that was absolutely HUGE from 30000 feet up. Dont know what theyre mining, but from google, and flight, it appears to be over a mile deep, the central pit. And a few miles wide. The civil engineer side of me looks at that and thinks, wow, thats a feat. Thats awesome.
-I see hidden lakes and rivers and creeks near places Ive lived for years, that I never knew existed.
-On flights out of San Diego, LA, and San Fran, when they have to loop out over the ocean before turning back inland on takeoff, I've seen whales, scores of them, swiming along. Big ones (grey or fin?) and small (dolphins and orca). Often only a mile or so from shore.
-Flying into (and out of) turkminstan and afghanistan on my deployment, I swore I was flyinig across portions of nevada, the desert terrain is so similar. And again, there is no much hidden greenery around little water seeps, rivers and lakes. Bagram is in the middle of nowhere, thats why theres a base there. Just a few ridges over its like a huge valley oasis (relatively, for a desert), and naturally that's where the people, mostly farmers, are concentrated. They dont show you much of the rugged beauty and scenery of the place when they show the news. Everyone thinks its just sand and camels, but its familiar territory for anyone who's lived int eh southwest.
-Flying across the desert of new mexico, I seen white sands test range
-flying across so cal, i seen the muroc dry lake, with its giant rose compass, and the dry lake "runway" the shuttle landed on. as a aviation buff, that place is magic land anyway
-had a flight once fly over near the tonopah test range and airfield due to storm forced divert. didnt cross the airspace, but apaprently we got pertty close to their flight paths over there, cause in a couple successive flashes of lightning, i saw a flight of F117s crossing our line of flight, a few thousand feet below us.
There's magic out there still in flying.
Wow. So much bullshit it's making my eyes water from the stench.
Oh and hey, it got modded informative.
My morals arent your morals? Wanna bet?
Easy example: The most 2 common and important societal mores are:
-Don't Kill
-Don't Steal
The only reason organized society works is because we get together and write laws the reflect the largely or commonly held societal mores.
I'll bet ten bucks though you're one of those who gets confused between "morals" and "religion" and think they're the same interchangable thing.
The character of your mate has much much more to do with environment she was raised in, and her reactions to it (being a thinking species, two people could react in totally opposite manner), conscious and unconscious.
Imagine a gene that causes people to self explode. Or emit gamma radiation.
What if Napolean had a B52?
Luckily neither your nor my hypothetical exists. You can what if all day, but that doesn't make it relevant.
And it's proven time and again that genes don't MAKE YOU do things, they only give a pre-disposition, and even then its always been some very broadly defined thing. A predispotion towards being overweight for example.
And people can and do overcome these pre-dispositions all the time. Because they are people, with brains, capable of making choices. Like, hey, I'm gonna put the fork down and not eat that extra helping (or six) of cake. even your hypothetical wouldn't stand up that, because being raised in a society that teaches right and wrong someone with the "rape gene" would still have to make teh conscious choice to committ such a violation, and being predisposed would not be any sort of excuse. And thats not even touching on your implied notion that people would just let rape-gene rapists be fruitful and multiply.
An "expert in practical ethics". That sounds like baloney to start with. One, it sounds on par with being an "expert on oscillating fan operation". Practical ethics itself is an iffy field. Its not "real ethics" which is more akin to an actual moral code regarding others (dont kill, dont steal). Instead its: dont kill/steal unless you wont get caught and/or really really need to.
Does he realize how boring his society would be? If you can control that much behaviour, how long before you just start programming eevryone to just think the same, since clearly disagreement is the source of all problems. And if everyones thinking the same, why not just engineer the hive mind?
Even at the lowest level of manipulation, this society would be culturally dead. Boring. Many of our greatest triumphs come from people overcoming, or at coping with, their realities. And those realities deal with being an alcoholic, having a leg shorter tha the other, being born blind. Not only do these individuals themselves enrish everyone around them, but they inspire certain of those around them to themselves enrich society further.
A society where everyones the same is boring, dead, and in the end has no use for concepts like freedom, discussion, achievement. In fact it has little reason for existence beyond mere existence itself. In effect, through technology, reverting ourselves to animalistic state of being.
I say no.
I love how everyone calls the leaked documents "the us's dirty laundy and lies and deceit". As if they even read any of the documents.
Most of it is generic garbage. "Today 1000x of water disseminated to airbases in these quantities: 100x to Bagram, 100 to Al Asad...." etc etc.
Extremely dry, boring stuff, only possibly interesting to a intelligence analyst, and even then most of its too outdated to be useful. The other primary type of content was peoples ungaurded comments about those around "the un sucks, this country sucks, i will sec state would bring me home to a better posting, etc". very little of the many hundreds of thousands of leaked documents had anything "juicy" and most of it isnt even news. A few things, like actual military plans, did come out, and yea, you'd be pissed too if someone told the other said "hey they're gonna attack tomorow at dawn!". or the critical weak points for the global economy: "hey, blow up these cables and you kill the internet". but again, these are the smallest portion of the stuff that came out.
I have no beef with wikileaks in general. But if you do wrong to get your stuff, no matter how good intentioned or beneficial it is, you should still man up to the consequences.
Manning was a member of the Army and he violated his oath, and many "direct" orders. By his own admission he had no idea what was in the majority of the documents, which makes it worse cause for all he knew it could have been the favorite spy movie foil: "a list of every spy everywhere in the world". I mean he could have done some serious physical hurt to a lot of people, his fellow soldiers and countrymen, around the world. Most people on /. did not see the scramble to get people to safety that went on while the scale of the leak was determined.
If Assange gave advice to Manning on not getting caught (rather than just having the stuff dumped in his lap) it is a very important legal distinction. And like the guy said, could cross the line to conspiracy to commit espionage. If he actually solicited the information, its a textbook definition of espionage. And again, that's illegal, everywhere, and has nothing to do with US jurisdiction.
What's actually going to happen? I really dont care. I subscribe to the theory that Assange has done more harm than good to wikileaks over past few years.
Call BS without citations. Akin to the "he did it on purpose" argument of a 5 year old, or the more recent "Ryan hates women and mexicans" claim from rolling stone ragazine. Tell me, did the US also destroy its own buildings to start a war in the middle east? Cause all i see is standard conspiracy i have no proof but EVERYONE KNOWS its true clap trap and rhetoric.