>If you buy a vacuum cleaner it is not considered "OK" to take it apart and build another one so you can have a vacuum cleaner for your holiday home, or one for upstairs and one for downstairs.
Yes, it is. There is absolutely nothing wrong with doing so if you have the materials and the ability to recreate it. If there were replicators (ala Star Trek), I would have no moral problem with copying anything at all.
>The 51% majority thing is actually good. It enables the party in power to actually do something,
You say that like it's a good thing. I would rather have congress sit on its ass and do literally nothing for 4 years than pass a steaming pile of crap like the 'patriot' act.
And explosion like this isn't just going to affect a few planets in a solar system, it's going to flash fry every system for hundreds or thousands of light years in every direction. Kinda the interstellar version of the hydrogen bomb.
Either show us that declaration of war or stop trying to claim that we're in one. Until congress passes a resolution saying that a state of war exists, we are *not* at war.
All portable players support mp3 playback, so if you feel that you must spend money on music, it's far better to buy the cd and rip it to mp3 rather than download it in some format that may not be suppported in the future. The best solution is still just to download it for free and withhold your support for the entire 'recorded music' industry.
I've read somewhere that if you could maintain 1G of acceleration - speeding up for half the trip and then turning around and decelerating at 1G for the other half - you could basically reach anywhere in the universe within a normal human lifetime because of time dilation effects.
>There's a nice story on "This American Life" about a guy with a high school education who, in the process of trying to invent something, tries to teach himself Theoretical Physics and "realises" in the course of his autodidacticiousness that all of modern Physics is wrong.
>I have a class this semester where the teacher encourages political debate, he is a liberal and I am a neo-con (I love that), so we get into the topic of the war in Iraq, and he says "You know why we went into Iraq right? OIL!" and so I politely responded "See, I just don't see what we have to gain by overtaking Iraq, in terms of oil."
*We* don't gain anything by being in Iraq. Big oil does by maintaining the dollar as the standard oil currency. Iraq had switched to the Euro, and within a year we were invading. Notice also how Iran has recently decided to switch off the dollar and now we're rattling our sabre at them.
(a) Prohibited activities A person is guilty of an offense if he intentionally-- (1) engages in electronic surveillance under color of law except as authorized by statute; or (2) discloses or uses information obtained under color of law by electronic surveillance, knowing or having reason to know that the information was obtained through electronic surveillance not authorized by statute. (b) Defense It is a defense to a prosecution under subsection (a) of this section that the defendant was a law enforcement or investigative officer engaged in the course of his official duties and the electronic surveillance was authorized by and conducted pursuant to a search warrant or court order of a court of competent jurisdiction. (c) Penalties An offense described in this section is punishable by a fine of not more than $10,000 or imprisonment for not more than five years, or both.
>1) The president has wartime powers which include surveillance of suspected enemies. The recognition of a state of war and authorization to take wartime actions was declared by Congress after 9/11, but constitutionally this declaration was not even required.
False. The US is not in a state of war. For it to be so, congress must pass a declaration of war, and they haven't. An authorization to use force is not equivalent to a declaration of war, regardless how much the president wishes it were.
>2)...
Might be true.
>3) There is no expectation of privacy for international communications. FISA requires an expectation of privacy.
Huh? Why would there be less an expectation of privacy on international call than domestic? A phone call is a phone call.
>4) The executive has the power to "search" international communications in the same way that it has the power to inspect packages crossing the border.
I tend to agree, but that's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about the mass searching of the phone records of everyday communications, not just international calls.
>5) All modern presidents have used these powers.
Not the supposed power to search everyone's phone records at will.
"Present-day carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from subaerial and submarine volcanoes are uncertain at the present time. Gerlach (1991) estimated a total global release of 3-4 x 10E12 mol/yr from volcanoes. This is a conservative estimate. Man-made (anthropogenic) CO2 emissions overwhelm this estimate by at least 150 times."
Geezus, where are you getting you information? The whole problem is that there is *no* oversight of this domestic spying program. Sure, he told a few members of congress that he was doing it, but they couldn't tell anyone else without violating secrecy laws, and the FISA courts are exactly what have been bypassed. The president has blatantly broken the law that he has been sworn to uphold. There are no real checks on this power.
>At the point that someone prohibits a religious practice (even in a limited context) because it is religious, they are practicing the religious belief that says that religious practices should be prohibited (in that context).
Everything isn't a religious belief. Because the law prohibits the government from supporting one religion over another (or none at all), it is the law that is keeping them from preaching from the city council, not some other religious belief.
>This is self-contradictory. In other words, saying that religious statements are bad (or good or whatever) is a religious statement.
No, it's a "religious statement" statement.;)
>Your lack of belief is a positive action to not choose.
Incorrect. I have to do nothing at all not to chose. No action required. I could do it in my sleep.
>"I don't know and I don't care" is a perfectly valid choice, but it is a choice. You apparently believe that it is not worth taking a position on; this is itself a position that you have taken -- and a religious position, since the topic is religion.
Every lack of action on any given subject is not itself an action, or else I'd be doing infinite things at once, and on every possible topic too!
>It was explicitly the state religion in the Soviet Union.
That is true. I have some Russian friends who were young in the early 80's and they really did preach secular humanism as a religion.
>The dominant interpretation of "separation of church and state" does not recognize that secularism is a religious belief system, and so current practice promotes it over others.
Just because the effect of not promoting any religion happens to coincide with the goals of the secular humanists doesn't mean that the government is promoting it.
>The federal government can not create a church (c.f. Church of England), or ban a religion or keep it from being practiced. There is nothing there that actually prohibits it from looking favorably upon a given religion.
That is exactly what "respecting the establishment" means. It doesn't mention a church, it mentions religion and says that it cannot support one. Short, simple, and to the point.
>If you think about it, if you didn't preferentially support one (or more) religions, it would pretty hard to have a government cafeteria. (Hint, think about keeping Kosher all the time. No cheese and meat allowed on the same plate. No cheeseburgers... Separate dishes, etc.) So in that case, the government plainly does discriminate against a religion.
Eh? Because they don't follow some religion's food rules, they are discriminating against it? I don't think so. You cannot possibly take everyone's religion into consideration in such a situation, so you serve some food and if you can eat it, you can eat it. If there's enough a demand for something special, they'll supply it. Not catering to everyone's whim is not the same as discriminating against them.
>The situation I'm concerned with is where somebody (who may or may not be a government official) says something like "I think that somebody should pray before every city council meeting" and then some government official (who may or may not be the same person) says "OK, go ahead." That's no different from somebody saying "I think that our elementary school kids should sing a song before every city council meeting" or "I think that we should go around the room and say our favorite color before every city council meeting."
Yes, it is. At the point that you are saying a prayer ("Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion;"), you are supporting some religion. Personally, I think that if the prayer is truly open to anyone at all who wants to say one (Catholic, Protestant, Islamic, Wiccan, Satanist), then it should be allowed. In practice, they tend to stop after the first few 'wrong' prayers.
>It becomes religious bigotry when somebody says "no, that's an act of a religion I don't agree with, so you can't do it".
Umm, it is an act of religion. Whether or not I agree with it doesn't matter. That the law forbids it is what matters.
>If a government doesn't give equal time to different groups that want to pray during a public event, or if it prohibits prayer because of its religious nature, then it's unfair.
Maybe we're mostly in agreement, then.
>Speaking strictly, you're correct; however, speaking strictly, "lack of religion" does not exist. Everybody has one form of religion or another.
I don't. I simply don't believe in the supernatural.
>In its loosest sense, 'lack of religion' certainly is a religion. The belief that organized religions are not true is a religious belief, yet it is often characterized as "lack of religion".
I don't believe that they are not true, I simply don't have a religious belief at all. A belief is a positive action. It takes some effort to believe something, and I don't expend any of that effort on the supernatural either way.
>Similarly, the belief that the natural world is all that ever was is a religious belief.
Eh? How does that involve the supernatural?
>Everybody has religious beliefs about the existence or not of the supernatural. Making secular humanism the state religion is just as bad as making Catholicism the state religion.
Slashdot Mirror
>If you buy a vacuum cleaner it is not considered "OK" to take it apart and build another one so you can have a vacuum cleaner for your holiday home, or one for upstairs and one for downstairs.
Yes, it is. There is absolutely nothing wrong with doing so if you have the materials and the ability to recreate it. If there were replicators (ala Star Trek), I would have no moral problem with copying anything at all.
While the religion is wack, the newspaper is excellent. Seriously, they put out some of the best unbiased news out there.
>The 51% majority thing is actually good. It enables the party in power to actually do something,
You say that like it's a good thing. I would rather have congress sit on its ass and do literally nothing for 4 years than pass a steaming pile of crap like the 'patriot' act.
Don't you mean the *three* brave astronauts sent up? Or was it two?
And explosion like this isn't just going to affect a few planets in a solar system, it's going to flash fry every system for hundreds or thousands of light years in every direction. Kinda the interstellar version of the hydrogen bomb.
>I don't think 2004 was fixed...
I used to think that, but now I'm not so sure.
That would be nice, except for the fact that you can never actually reach ligh speed.
Either show us that declaration of war or stop trying to claim that we're in one. Until congress passes a resolution saying that a state of war exists, we are *not* at war.
All portable players support mp3 playback, so if you feel that you must spend money on music, it's far better to buy the cd and rip it to mp3 rather than download it in some format that may not be suppported in the future. The best solution is still just to download it for free and withhold your support for the entire 'recorded music' industry.
You mean I shouldn't be letting everyone in my apartment building on my completely open wi-fi connection? What's the worse that can happen?
I've read somewhere that if you could maintain 1G of acceleration - speeding up for half the trip and then turning around and decelerating at 1G for the other half - you could basically reach anywhere in the universe within a normal human lifetime because of time dilation effects.
>There's a nice story on "This American Life" about a guy with a high school education who, in the process of trying to invent something, tries to teach himself Theoretical Physics and "realises" in the course of his autodidacticiousness that all of modern Physics is wrong.
This might be that same guy.
Seriously, do a google groups search for the guy and see the long, long history of this particular crackpot.
>I have a class this semester where the teacher encourages political debate, he is a liberal and I am a neo-con (I love that), so we get into the topic of the war in Iraq, and he says "You know why we went into Iraq right? OIL!" and so I politely responded "See, I just don't see what we have to gain by overtaking Iraq, in terms of oil."
*We* don't gain anything by being in Iraq. Big oil does by maintaining the dollar as the standard oil currency. Iraq had switched to the Euro, and within a year we were invading. Notice also how Iran has recently decided to switch off the dollar and now we're rattling our sabre at them.
>Hmmmm... and Iraq didn't take shots at UN planes in no fly zones? Still, you'd claim the war in Iraq were unprovoked.
The "no fly zones" were a creation of the US, and had no force of law behind them.
>terming the wiretaps as illegal is not rooted in any law
u sc_sec_50_00001809----000-.html
You're joking, right?
http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode50/
(a) Prohibited activities
A person is guilty of an offense if he intentionally--
(1) engages in electronic surveillance under color of law except as authorized by statute; or
(2) discloses or uses information obtained under color of law by electronic surveillance, knowing or having reason to know that the information was obtained through electronic surveillance not authorized by statute.
(b) Defense
It is a defense to a prosecution under subsection (a) of this section that the defendant was a law enforcement or investigative officer engaged in the course of his official duties and the electronic surveillance was authorized by and conducted pursuant to a search warrant or court order of a court of competent jurisdiction.
(c) Penalties
An offense described in this section is punishable by a fine of not more than $10,000 or imprisonment for not more than five years, or both.
Well there is a law specifically saying that wiretapping people in the US is unlawful without a warrant, so yes, it is illegal.
>1) The president has wartime powers which include surveillance of suspected enemies. The recognition of a state of war and authorization to take wartime actions was declared by Congress after 9/11, but constitutionally this declaration was not even required.
False. The US is not in a state of war. For it to be so, congress must pass a declaration of war, and they haven't. An authorization to use force is not equivalent to a declaration of war, regardless how much the president wishes it were.
>2)...
Might be true.
>3) There is no expectation of privacy for international communications. FISA requires an expectation of privacy.
Huh? Why would there be less an expectation of privacy on international call than domestic? A phone call is a phone call.
>4) The executive has the power to "search" international communications in the same way that it has the power to inspect packages crossing the border.
I tend to agree, but that's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about the mass searching of the phone records of everyday communications, not just international calls.
>5) All modern presidents have used these powers.
Not the supposed power to search everyone's phone records at will.
>Animals and volcanoes produce far more CO2 than cars and industry. CO2 and Methane are greenhouse gasses, but they are also naturally occuring.
Completely incorrect.
http://volcano.und.edu/vwdocs/Gases/man.html
"Present-day carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from subaerial and submarine volcanoes are uncertain at the present time. Gerlach (1991) estimated a total global release of 3-4 x 10E12 mol/yr from volcanoes. This is a conservative estimate. Man-made (anthropogenic) CO2 emissions overwhelm this estimate by at least 150 times."
Geezus, where are you getting you information? The whole problem is that there is *no* oversight of this domestic spying program. Sure, he told a few members of congress that he was doing it, but they couldn't tell anyone else without violating secrecy laws, and the FISA courts are exactly what have been bypassed. The president has blatantly broken the law that he has been sworn to uphold. There are no real checks on this power.
First point, spontaneous generation has nothing to do with evolution.
Second point, I can falsify the two of us existing mathematically (using logic very similar to what I'm sure you're relying on), and yet here we are.
I, for one, am glad that both organizations are around.
>At the point that someone prohibits a religious practice (even in a limited context) because it is religious, they are practicing the religious belief that says that religious practices should be prohibited (in that context).
;)
Everything isn't a religious belief. Because the law prohibits the government from supporting one religion over another (or none at all), it is the law that is keeping them from preaching from the city council, not some other religious belief.
>This is self-contradictory. In other words, saying that religious statements are bad (or good or whatever) is a religious statement.
No, it's a "religious statement" statement.
>Your lack of belief is a positive action to not choose.
Incorrect. I have to do nothing at all not to chose. No action required. I could do it in my sleep.
>"I don't know and I don't care" is a perfectly valid choice, but it is a choice. You apparently believe that it is not worth taking a position on; this is itself a position that you have taken -- and a religious position, since the topic is religion.
Every lack of action on any given subject is not itself an action, or else I'd be doing infinite things at once, and on every possible topic too!
>It was explicitly the state religion in the Soviet Union.
That is true. I have some Russian friends who were young in the early 80's and they really did preach secular humanism as a religion.
>The dominant interpretation of "separation of church and state" does not recognize that secularism is a religious belief system, and so current practice promotes it over others.
Just because the effect of not promoting any religion happens to coincide with the goals of the secular humanists doesn't mean that the government is promoting it.
>The federal government can not create a church (c.f. Church of England), or ban a religion or keep it from being practiced. There is nothing there that actually prohibits it from looking favorably upon a given religion.
That is exactly what "respecting the establishment" means. It doesn't mention a church, it mentions religion and says that it cannot support one. Short, simple, and to the point.
>If you think about it, if you didn't preferentially support one (or more) religions, it would pretty hard to have a government cafeteria. (Hint, think about keeping Kosher all the time. No cheese and meat allowed on the same plate. No cheeseburgers... Separate dishes, etc.) So in that case, the government plainly does discriminate against a religion.
Eh? Because they don't follow some religion's food rules, they are discriminating against it? I don't think so. You cannot possibly take everyone's religion into consideration in such a situation, so you serve some food and if you can eat it, you can eat it. If there's enough a demand for something special, they'll supply it. Not catering to everyone's whim is not the same as discriminating against them.
>The situation I'm concerned with is where somebody (who may or may not be a government official) says something like "I think that somebody should pray before every city council meeting" and then some government official (who may or may not be the same person) says "OK, go ahead." That's no different from somebody saying "I think that our elementary school kids should sing a song before every city council meeting" or "I think that we should go around the room and say our favorite color before every city council meeting."
Yes, it is. At the point that you are saying a prayer ("Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion;"), you are supporting some religion. Personally, I think that if the prayer is truly open to anyone at all who wants to say one (Catholic, Protestant, Islamic, Wiccan, Satanist), then it should be allowed. In practice, they tend to stop after the first few 'wrong' prayers.
>It becomes religious bigotry when somebody says "no, that's an act of a religion I don't agree with, so you can't do it".
Umm, it is an act of religion. Whether or not I agree with it doesn't matter. That the law forbids it is what matters.
>If a government doesn't give equal time to different groups that want to pray during a public event, or if it prohibits prayer because of its religious nature, then it's unfair.
Maybe we're mostly in agreement, then.
>Speaking strictly, you're correct; however, speaking strictly, "lack of religion" does not exist. Everybody has one form of religion or another.
I don't. I simply don't believe in the supernatural.
>In its loosest sense, 'lack of religion' certainly is a religion. The belief that organized religions are not true is a religious belief, yet it is often characterized as "lack of religion".
I don't believe that they are not true, I simply don't have a religious belief at all. A belief is a positive action. It takes some effort to believe something, and I don't expend any of that effort on the supernatural either way.
>Similarly, the belief that the natural world is all that ever was is a religious belief.
Eh? How does that involve the supernatural?
>Everybody has religious beliefs about the existence or not of the supernatural. Making secular humanism the state religion is just as bad as making Catholicism the state religion.
Where is secular humanism the state religion?