Thirteen hours ago you said it means "without god". That's what you said. You said that meaning has been the same for thousands of years. Now, you seem to have changed your mind. Time flies.
> The Greek word transliterated as atheos means "without a god"
without God, lacking God. As opposed to "fighting against God". Which is precisely what I had said.
See also "immoral" versus amoral. immoral: opposite to moral amoral: without reference to morality.
In English, privative a is most often cognate to "un", through German. Had the greek come to us via the normal route, we'd write the same word as "un-theist".
athiest == untheist == ungod != antigod
"Atheist" groups used the word to describe what is in fact _against_ God, not merely _lacking_ God. Antitheist would be a far more accurate word for those groups.
> That said, could you please explain why the Atheist League should be called the Antichrist league, > as opposed to the Anti-Kali, Anti-Mohammedan, or Anti-Pastafarian league? > Sure, there are tons of different sects that profess the divinity of Christ - Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Protestants, Mormons, members of the Unification Church, etc...
Because they LIKE the whole Pastafarian thing, they are PRO-pastafarian.:)
Seriously, though, you're right, anti-theist is more technically accurate, and I considered using that word. However, on a practical level, the organizations I'm talking about spend their time being anti-Christian. You don't see "atheist" vs Hindu court cases in the news all the time. Recognizing that fact, antichrist is accurate for practical purposes and using the familiar term brings another level of frankness to the discussion. Whereas misusing the word "atheist" disguises their agenda, the word "antichrist" is the opposite - it puts their agenda it bold letters. So "antitheist" for technical accuracy, "atheist" for disguise, and "antichrist" to say it loud and proud.
> As soon as that line is crossed, I become, indeed, an anti-theist.
I appreciate your frankness. It's far more useful and interesting to have a conversation with someone who is clear about their beliefs and acknowledges them than someone who tries to wear a mask. So often we see, for example, people vehemently denying that they are socialists while they're quoting Trotsky.
> d. "This man has to die because he is an asshole" is a valid argument, "This man has to die because my Holy Book says the penalty for what he's done is death" is not.
How does this logic work for you:
The ancient wisdom says murder is a bad idea. The truth of that has become apparent. The same ancient wisdom says cheating on your wife is a bad idea. The truth of that has become apparent. The ancient wisdom says to reserve one day for rest and for family is a good idea. The truth of that has become apparent. The same ancient wisdom says treating your parents with respect is a good idea. The truth of that has become apparent. The same ancient wisdom says stealing is a bad idea. The truth of that has become apparent. The same ancient wisdom says perjury is a bad idea. The truth of that has become apparent. The same ancient wisdom says envy is a bad idea. Given the above, this one just might be true as well.
Whether or not that's CORRECT, it's certainly a more LOGICAL argument than "he's an asshole, so he should die", to use your example.
You listed off a bunch of different religions and denominations who have slightly different viewpoints around the central theme of a certain phenomenon. I have no doubt that each of them has come to some mistaken conclusions. Some of them have completely missed the point (Falwell?). It is interesting, though, that around the world they all put this phenomenon they call "God" or "Allah" at the center.
Much of what they say sounds like it's describing the same phenomenon I've directly experienced on more than one occasion. It reminds me of what might happen if you went around asking kindergartners to explain the common cold - what causes a cold, what the effects are, and the mechanism around the those effects. They'd come up with many entertaining explanations I'm sure. I bet many of them would include anthropomorphized "bugs". Most of them have experienced a cold, but they don't understand it. I suspect that the world's religions are full of people trying in vain to explain something many of them have experienced, but don't understand. They anthropomorphize what they don't understand in the same way that office workers do their computer, speaking, and thinking, as if the computer "wants" something because they have no understanding of the internal workings.
> > Understand the people you're working with, what they need, and provide that.
> Worrying about what people think... then you are still going through puberty and all the pubescent insecurity that entails.
I've said things like that before. Every so often, I have to remind myself of the following:
If your customers think you suck, you do indeed suck. You may have provided them with a wonderful solution to problem X, but since you didn't listen and ask questions you didn't know their problem was Y. For the problem at hand, your solution sucks, and your poor communication caused it.
If you don't "worry about what people think" when it comes to your boss, you'll not know she thinks it's critically important that your application is very easy to use because the old farts in the C suite will be the primary users. Lack of communication = suck, for the purpose at hand.
If the people report to you think you suck, they'll leave, after having no interest in getting your projects done and probably bad mouthing you (accurately). Again, the results suck because you're only interested in what you think.
Being interested in what other people think, need, and want is the first requirement for a successful project. Not paying due attention to what other people think makes you an arrogant asshole.
I've never had someone "with different background and views" get upset when I've asked them how they're doing, or complimented them, or asked them for suggestions or...
If you converse rather than proselytize I don't think you'll run into too many problems.
Ps - it's funny how the word "atheist" has been co-opted. The prefix "a" means "not applicable", or "not concerned with". Someone who is actually a-theitical is someone who is not interested in theology. The word has become most often used as a disguise by people who are very much interested, who are anti-God. If they described were honest enough to use accurate wording for their cause, the Atheist League would be called the Antichrist League. I wonder why they aren't honest, why they lie by labeling themselves as people not interested in the topic.
Grandpa was incorrect. If you wish to purchase pussy, $20 bills are the preferred form of payment. Though, I did notice some backpage ads listing 290 roses / hour.
Google's numbers based on 100,000 drives showed that specific model numbers are reliable or not, while brand name doesn't matter as much. All manufacturers make bad models and good models.
The Google report based on many thousands of drives showed that while some MODEL NUMBERS had much higher failure, various brand names had similar failure rates. Western Digital will make two drives at the same time, one model that's very reliable while the one next to it is crap. Same with every other manufacturer.
I understand and respect that. It sounds like we may have some things in common where you mentioned "I'm a nerd... redesign the firmware".
You do have a powerful testimony and I hope that, through whatever medium you choose, you continue to express that. Those of us who have been around long enough to have an appreciation of what this country is supposed to be can appreciate the reminder, and today's teenagers remember only the Bush and Obama years, so your words may introduce them to ideas that they've never thought about.
Every time I've asked to observe a user, the request baffles them. They've never had a developer do that before. I've never seen a developer other than myself just observe the user, keeping one's own mouth shut.
Users do the most surprising things, so watching them really is instructive.
When I made my post, to which you replied, I spent perhaps 40 seconds on it. I suspect you spent a similar amount of time on yours and Taco Cowboy maybe twice as long on his. That's about how long one spends on a Slashdot post - a minute or two. When one is writing an article that is expected will be read by thousands or millions of people, one generally spends an hour or two, as opposed to a minute or two.
As a case in point, I've made posts here regarding the 2nd amendment / gun control. I'll take a minute or two to post some relevant numbers, or at least the approximations I can remember. I'm currently writing a piece on the same topic, mentioning the same numbers, but I'm spending several hours to actually get the numbers write, to be sure I introduce my main point in the first paragraph and support it in the following paragraphs, then reinforce it in the closing paragraph, etc.
The post we're discussing has no paragraphs, or if one sentence per paragraph if you choose to look at it that way. I suspect that if Taco Cowboy were so inclined, he (she?) could organize it more effectively. In fact, I've read essentially te same post by Taco Cowboy before, but it was more effectively written the last time.
Again, this isn't a criticism of what was written, just an acknowledgement that what was written was a Slashdot post, not an article.
"The consumers machine"? The targets run major network exchanges. Owning their machines, and thereby the network exchanges they administer, is sort of like rooting the internet.
What's the risk? That the admin notices they have some malware? If they notice, they could either a) remove the malware just as admins everywhere do all the time or b) conjecture about a vast government conspiracy. Neither really does any damage - people have been babbling on about government conspiracies to get them approximately since the invention of government.
The risk, as it turned out, was that an insider would go rogue and make the information public _along_with_strong_documentation. I suppose in that business you just have to accept the fact that if one of your own turns against you, it's going to bad.
Due to some perfectly reasonable decisions by Microsoft that failed to predict the future, a reasonably a proficient private hacker could choose an appropriate Trojan to embed. The agencies involved in this sort of thing have libraries of them.
Those exploits are chained much like the normal boot process. The boot sector is 512 BYTES. It can't do much, but it can load the boot loader. The boot loader is quite limited, but it can load the 2MB kernel, which loads the rest of the OS.
Similarly, based on what even _I_ can do to a Windows machine that loads script of my choice, it's pretty clear the intelligence agencies could execute arbitrary code in the sandbox. That limited sandboxed code in turn loads a privilege escalation, which can load a rootkit. Three quick steps to own the machine. With control of the machine, they start looking at network shares and dropping payloads to infect coworkers, probe firewalls from the inside, etc.
I've read a similar post you made before. You have a powerful point to make, and you make it well. It would be a service to the country you loved, and freedom in general, if you spent an hour or two to write that up "properly", to spend a few minutes editing it to say exactly what you want to say. I could see such an article being shared quite a bit via social networking, blogs etc.
> So mothers with children and their kids went hungry because no food stamps.
Whoever you've been getting your "facts" from has been lying to you. That's assuming you're not the liar, of course. Food stamps never stopped. Obama did threaten to stop payments IF the shutdown continued into November (while continuing "green" payouts to campaign contributors).
You may have noticed that DEMOCRAT senators, leaders of the presidents own party, are currently acknowledging the republicans were right - healthcare.gov isn't ready and the mandate needs to be delayed for individuals, just as it's been delayed for unions.
I once set up a PA for people doing speeches. When the microphone was turned off, the transmissions from the business radio service nearby entered the microphone cable, which worked as a very long, and very bad antenna. I was trying to record the speeches , but was instead recording people's conversations. I had to work frantically to find a way to block their transmissions from getting into my recordings.
That's why since shortly after the invention of radio the law has been that if you want to transmit, it's your responsibility to ensure your transmissions don't unreasonably leak into other people's recordings. You are allowed to listen to anything people broadcast simply because physics are suchthat it's hard NOT to hear what people are beaming at you. Turn on your AM radio and try to tune to a silent frequency. You can't. Anywhere you set the dial, you'll hear people's transmissions. Sometimes you'll hear a dozen transmissions at once, which is called "static".
Going back to your open door analogy, the part you missed is that the homeowner is sending the conversations OUT of the house, throughout the neighborhood. It's like the door is open, yes, and they are standing in the doorway with a megaphone shouting to the neighborhood. Then complaining that someone heard them.
I'm not sure what you're saying in this context. The position of US liberals is that you may NOT care for your child, not if your ex-gf would prefer to kill your kid. Neither parent may teach their child anything requiring discipline - only government schools can discipline your child.
My wife and I started to adopt a baby once. After talking to the birth mother and HER mother, I worked out an arrangement to keep the child with their family while mom worked out her issues. Last I heard, mom is sober now.
To be fair, I should acknowledge there are some things liberals will allow you to do. Want to kill babies? That's fine as long as you don't drink a large soda afterwards.
You want to know whether or not someone is going to kill your baby? You're not allowed to find out.
In the US? Liberal laws: You not have health coverage that works for you, you must get Barry approved coverage for drug addiction, maternity, psyche, and routine doctor visits you'd rather pay cash for. You have your tubes tied? Sorry, we're still forcing you to pay for maternity coverage.
You must slowly destroy your car's engine by putting whiskey in the gas tank.
You must have lower standards for black people than white people, and lower standards for women than men. They're too stupid to meet the normal standards. Damn that one is OFFENSIVE!
You may not have a large soda.
You may not work hard in school and as a result be more successful than the potheads you went to high school with. Try it and we'll just take most of your paycheck so you're not able to provide your kids with anything the stoner doesn't provide his.
You may not recognize the 2nd amendment.
You may not build your retirement house on that lot you just spent your life savings on. A half mile down the road there's a spider that's a slightly different color than most of the spiders around here. The neighborhood now belongs to that spider.
Compared to US conservatism: Get whatever health coverage you want. We suggest INSURANCE, which means coverage for things you can't pay out of pocket, aka "major medical". It's cheap, but if you want some other plan, that's cool, do what you want.
Newer cars are more efficient, but if you have a gasoline car that you don't want ruined, feel free to put gas in it.
If someone wants to work for you and you want to hire them, cool. Do the work you want, and if you need help with the work, hire whoever you think will do the best job.
Eat what you want. If you're hungry after working hard, our favorite is bacon wrapped anything.
US style liberalism is all about the nanny state telling you what you can't do.
I've only been to neighboring countries - Canada, Mexico, and Jamaica. I'm not sure why I said four. Am I forgetting a country that I've been to? Was I counting the People's Republic of California? shrug
I've been told US dollars are ubiquitous in Singapore. I'm curious. My thought is that in most industrialized countries one could spend USD, maybe at a crappy exchange rate. I wonder if that's true.
Though the _most_common_ money in most countries is the local currency, I've been to four countries and never had any problem spending US dollars in any of them, including at supermarkets restaurants, and bars In one non-US country, sellers saw that I looked like an American and quoted prices in USD. I surprised one shop keeper when I paid in local currency. I had acquired a small amount of local currency but found out there was no need for it.
> So the answer to "how many regular cars light on fire on the highway" is 187,500 last year.
You would think. If you read the reports, you find the term has a non-intutive meaning. NFPA says:
92% of vehicle fire deaths involved highway-type vehicles such as cars, trucks, buses, recreational vehicles, and motorcycles. The term “highway vehicle fires” is used to describe the type of vehicle, not the location of the fire.
It goes on to say 8% of highway-vehicle fires are intentionally set and 5% are from exposure to some other fire such as a house fire. I didn't read how many were unintentionally set. My brother unintentionally set the contents of my car on fire once.
Slashdot Mirror
Thirteen hours ago you said it means "without god". That's what you said. You said that meaning has been the same for thousands of years. Now, you seem to have changed your mind. Time flies.
No. The phone I'm typing this on is not like the Slashdot server cluster. That's client-server, like most internet activity.
Slashdot.org and CNET.com are peers. Note they don't communicate, there's no peer-to-peer communication.
Sure some elements of the infrastructure involve peer communication.
> The Greek word transliterated as atheos means "without a god"
without God, lacking God. As opposed to "fighting against God". Which is precisely what I had said.
See also "immoral" versus amoral.
immoral: opposite to moral
amoral: without reference to morality.
In English, privative a is most often cognate to "un", through German.
Had the greek come to us via the normal route, we'd write the same word as "un-theist".
athiest == untheist == ungod != antigod
"Atheist" groups used the word to describe what is in fact _against_ God, not merely _lacking_ God.
Antitheist would be a far more accurate word for those groups.
> That said, could you please explain why the Atheist League should be called the Antichrist league,
> as opposed to the Anti-Kali, Anti-Mohammedan, or Anti-Pastafarian league?
> Sure, there are tons of different sects that profess the divinity of Christ - Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Protestants, Mormons, members of the Unification Church, etc...
Because they LIKE the whole Pastafarian thing, they are PRO-pastafarian. :)
Seriously, though, you're right, anti-theist is more technically accurate, and I considered using that word.
However, on a practical level, the organizations I'm talking about spend their time being anti-Christian. You don't see "atheist" vs Hindu court cases in the news all the time. Recognizing that fact, antichrist is accurate for practical purposes and using the familiar term brings another level of frankness to the discussion. Whereas misusing the word "atheist" disguises their agenda, the word "antichrist" is the opposite - it puts their agenda it bold letters. So "antitheist" for technical accuracy, "atheist" for disguise, and "antichrist" to say it loud and proud.
> As soon as that line is crossed, I become, indeed, an anti-theist.
I appreciate your frankness. It's far more useful and interesting to have a conversation with someone who is clear about their beliefs and acknowledges them than someone who tries to wear a mask. So often we see, for example, people vehemently denying that they are socialists while they're quoting Trotsky.
> d. "This man has to die because he is an asshole" is a valid argument, "This man has to die because my Holy Book says the penalty for what he's done is death" is not.
How does this logic work for you:
The ancient wisdom says murder is a bad idea. The truth of that has become apparent.
The same ancient wisdom says cheating on your wife is a bad idea. The truth of that has become apparent.
The ancient wisdom says to reserve one day for rest and for family is a good idea. The truth of that has become apparent.
The same ancient wisdom says treating your parents with respect is a good idea. The truth of that has become apparent.
The same ancient wisdom says stealing is a bad idea. The truth of that has become apparent.
The same ancient wisdom says perjury is a bad idea. The truth of that has become apparent.
The same ancient wisdom says envy is a bad idea. Given the above, this one just might be true as well.
Whether or not that's CORRECT, it's certainly a more LOGICAL argument than "he's an asshole, so he should die", to use your example.
You listed off a bunch of different religions and denominations who have slightly different viewpoints around the central theme of a certain phenomenon. I have no doubt that each of them has come to some mistaken conclusions. Some of them have completely missed the point (Falwell?). It is interesting, though, that around the world they all put this phenomenon they call "God" or "Allah" at the center.
Much of what they say sounds like it's describing the same phenomenon I've directly experienced on more than one occasion. It reminds me of what might happen if you went around asking kindergartners to explain the common cold - what causes a cold, what the effects are, and the mechanism around the those effects. They'd come up with many entertaining explanations I'm sure. I bet many of them would include anthropomorphized "bugs". Most of them have experienced a cold, but they don't understand it. I suspect that the world's religions are full of people trying in vain to explain something many of them have experienced, but don't understand. They anthropomorphize what they don't understand in the same way that office workers do their computer, speaking, and thinking, as if the computer "wants" something because they have no understanding of the internal workings.
> Why should I change who I am just so I'm "acceptable" or "normal" to other people. I like me.
Do you still poop your diaper? If not, you've made changes, switched to something more effective than what you had been doing.
> > Understand the people you're working with, what they need, and provide that.
> Worrying about what people think ... then you are still going through puberty and all the pubescent insecurity that entails.
I've said things like that before. Every so often, I have to remind myself of the following:
If your customers think you suck, you do indeed suck. You may have provided them with a wonderful solution to problem X, but since you didn't listen and ask questions you didn't know their problem was Y. For the problem at hand, your solution sucks, and your poor communication caused it.
If you don't "worry about what people think" when it comes to your boss, you'll not know she thinks it's critically important that your application is very easy to use because the old farts in the C suite will be the primary users. Lack of communication = suck, for the purpose at hand.
If the people report to you think you suck, they'll leave, after having no interest in getting your projects done and probably bad mouthing you (accurately). Again, the results suck because you're only interested in what you think.
Being interested in what other people think, need, and want is the first requirement for a successful project. Not paying due attention to what other people think makes you an arrogant asshole.
I've never had someone "with different background and views" get upset when I've asked them how they're doing, or complimented them, or asked them for suggestions or ...
If you converse rather than proselytize I don't think you'll run into too many problems.
Ps - it's funny how the word "atheist" has been co-opted. The prefix "a" means "not applicable", or "not concerned with". Someone who is actually a-theitical is someone who is not interested in theology. The word has become most often used as a disguise by people who are very much interested, who are anti-God. If they described were honest enough to use accurate wording for their cause, the Atheist League would be called the Antichrist League. I wonder why they aren't honest, why they lie by labeling themselves as people not interested in the topic.
Grandpa was incorrect. If you wish to purchase pussy, $20 bills are the preferred form of payment. Though, I did notice some backpage ads listing 290 roses / hour.
Google's numbers based on 100,000 drives showed that specific model numbers are reliable or not, while brand name doesn't matter as much.
All manufacturers make bad models and good models.
The Google report based on many thousands of drives showed that while some MODEL NUMBERS had much higher failure, various brand names had similar failure rates. Western Digital will make two drives at the same time, one model that's very reliable while the one next to it is crap. Same with every other manufacturer.
http://static.googleusercontent.com/external_content/untrusted_dlcp/research.google.com/en/us/archive/disk_failures.pdf
If you insist on buying based on the brand name, HGST models have been very good in our datacenter.
I understand and respect that. It sounds like we may have some things in common where you mentioned "I'm a nerd ... redesign the firmware".
You do have a powerful testimony and I hope that, through whatever medium you choose, you continue to express that. Those of us who have been around long enough to have an appreciation of what this country is supposed to be can appreciate the reminder, and today's teenagers remember only the Bush and Obama years, so your words may introduce them to ideas that they've never thought about.
Every time I've asked to observe a user, the request baffles them. They've never had a developer do that before. I've never seen a developer other than myself just observe the user, keeping one's own mouth shut.
Users do the most surprising things, so watching them really is instructive.
When I made my post, to which you replied, I spent perhaps 40 seconds on it. I suspect you spent a similar amount of time on yours and Taco Cowboy maybe twice as long on his. That's about how long one spends on a Slashdot post - a minute or two. When one is writing an article that is expected will be read by thousands or millions of people, one generally spends an hour or two, as opposed to a minute or two.
As a case in point, I've made posts here regarding the 2nd amendment / gun control. I'll take a minute or two to post some relevant numbers, or at least the approximations I can remember. I'm currently writing a piece on the same topic, mentioning the same numbers, but I'm spending several hours to actually get the numbers write, to be sure I introduce my main point in the first paragraph and support it in the following paragraphs, then reinforce it in the closing paragraph, etc.
The post we're discussing has no paragraphs, or if one sentence per paragraph if you choose to look at it that way.
I suspect that if Taco Cowboy were so inclined, he (she?) could organize it more effectively. In fact, I've read essentially te same post by Taco Cowboy before, but it was more effectively written the last time.
Again, this isn't a criticism of what was written, just an acknowledgement that what was written was a Slashdot post, not an article.
"The consumers machine"? The targets run major network exchanges. Owning their machines, and thereby the network exchanges they administer, is sort of like rooting the internet.
What's the risk? That the admin notices they have some malware? If they notice, they could either a) remove the malware just as admins everywhere do all the time or b) conjecture about a vast government conspiracy. Neither really does any damage - people have been babbling on about government conspiracies to get them approximately since the invention of government.
The risk, as it turned out, was that an insider would go rogue and make the information public _along_with_strong_documentation. I suppose in that business you just have to accept the fact that if one of your own turns against you, it's going to bad.
Due to some perfectly reasonable decisions by Microsoft that failed to predict the future, a reasonably a proficient private hacker could choose an appropriate Trojan to embed. The agencies involved in this sort of thing have libraries of them.
Those exploits are chained much like the normal boot process. The boot sector is 512 BYTES. It can't do much, but it can load the boot loader. The boot loader is quite limited, but it can load the 2MB kernel, which loads the rest of the OS.
Similarly, based on what even _I_ can do to a Windows machine that loads script of my choice, it's pretty clear the intelligence agencies could execute arbitrary code in the sandbox. That limited sandboxed code in turn loads a privilege escalation, which can load a rootkit. Three quick steps to own the machine. With control of the machine, they start looking at network shares and dropping payloads to infect coworkers, probe firewalls from the inside, etc.
I've read a similar post you made before. You have a powerful point to make, and you make it well.
It would be a service to the country you loved, and freedom in general, if you spent an hour or two to write that up "properly", to spend a few minutes editing it to say exactly what you want to say. I could see such an article being shared quite a bit via social networking, blogs etc.
> So mothers with children and their kids went hungry because no food stamps.
Whoever you've been getting your "facts" from has been lying to you. That's assuming you're not the liar, of course. Food stamps never stopped. Obama did threaten to stop payments IF the shutdown continued into November (while continuing "green" payouts to campaign contributors).
You may have noticed that DEMOCRAT senators, leaders of the presidents own party, are currently acknowledging the republicans were right - healthcare.gov isn't ready and the mandate needs to be delayed for individuals, just as it's been delayed for unions.
I once set up a PA for people doing speeches. When the microphone was turned off, the transmissions from the business radio service nearby entered the microphone cable, which worked as a very long, and very bad antenna. I was trying to record the speeches , but was instead recording people's conversations. I had to work frantically to find a way to block their transmissions from getting into my recordings.
That's why since shortly after the invention of radio the law has been that if you want to transmit, it's your responsibility to ensure your transmissions don't unreasonably leak into other people's recordings. You are allowed to listen to anything people broadcast simply because physics are suchthat it's hard NOT to hear what people are beaming at you. Turn on your AM radio and try to tune to a silent frequency. You can't. Anywhere you set the dial, you'll hear people's transmissions. Sometimes you'll hear a dozen transmissions at once, which is called "static".
Going back to your open door analogy, the part you missed is that the homeowner is sending the conversations OUT of the house, throughout the neighborhood. It's like the door is open, yes, and they are standing in the doorway with a megaphone shouting to the neighborhood. Then complaining that someone heard them.
I'm not sure what you're saying in this context.
The position of US liberals is that you may NOT care for your child, not if your ex-gf would prefer to kill your kid. Neither parent may teach their child anything requiring discipline - only government schools can discipline your child.
My wife and I started to adopt a baby once. After talking to the birth mother and HER mother, I worked out an arrangement to keep the child with their family while mom worked out her issues. Last I heard, mom is sober now.
To be fair, I should acknowledge there are some things liberals will allow you to do. Want to kill babies? That's fine as long as you don't drink a large soda afterwards.
You want to know whether or not someone is going to kill your baby? You're not allowed to find out.
In the US? Liberal laws:
You not have health coverage that works for you, you must get Barry approved coverage for drug addiction, maternity, psyche, and routine doctor visits you'd rather pay cash for. You have your tubes tied? Sorry, we're still forcing you to pay for maternity coverage.
You must slowly destroy your car's engine by putting whiskey in the gas tank.
You must have lower standards for black people than white people, and lower standards for women than men. They're too stupid to meet the normal standards. Damn that one is OFFENSIVE!
You may not have a large soda.
You may not work hard in school and as a result be more successful than the potheads you went to high school with. Try it and we'll just take most of your paycheck so you're not able to provide your kids with anything the stoner doesn't provide his.
You may not recognize the 2nd amendment.
You may not build your retirement house on that lot you just spent your life savings on. A half mile down the road there's a spider that's a slightly different color than most of the spiders around here. The neighborhood now belongs to that spider.
Compared to US conservatism:
Get whatever health coverage you want. We suggest INSURANCE, which means coverage for things you can't pay out of pocket, aka "major medical". It's cheap, but if you want some other plan, that's cool, do what you want.
Newer cars are more efficient, but if you have a gasoline car that you don't want ruined, feel free to put gas in it.
If someone wants to work for you and you want to hire them, cool. Do the work you want, and if you need help with the work, hire whoever you think will do the best job.
Eat what you want. If you're hungry after working hard, our favorite is bacon wrapped anything.
US style liberalism is all about the nanny state telling you what you can't do.
I've only been to neighboring countries - Canada, Mexico, and Jamaica. I'm not sure why I said four. Am I forgetting a country that I've been to? Was I counting the People's Republic of California? shrug
I've been told US dollars are ubiquitous in Singapore. I'm curious. My thought is that in most industrialized countries one could spend USD, maybe at a crappy exchange rate. I wonder if that's true.
Though the _most_common_ money in most countries is the local currency, I've been to four countries and never had any problem spending US dollars in any of them, including at supermarkets restaurants, and bars In one non-US country, sellers saw that I looked like an American and quoted prices in USD. I surprised one shop keeper when I paid in local currency. I had acquired a small amount of local currency but found out there was no need for it.
> So the answer to "how many regular cars light on fire on the highway" is 187,500 last year.
You would think. If you read the reports, you find the term has a non-intutive meaning. NFPA says:
92% of vehicle fire deaths involved highway-type vehicles such as cars, trucks, buses, recreational vehicles, and motorcycles.
The term “highway vehicle fires” is used to describe the type of vehicle, not the location of the fire.
It goes on to say 8% of highway-vehicle fires are intentionally set and 5% are from exposure to some other fire such as a house fire.
I didn't read how many were unintentionally set. My brother unintentionally set the contents of my car on fire once.
I asked how many cars get lit on fire (arson, smoldering cigarettes, etc.) versus how many light themselves on fire.
You think I claimed cars can't burn. Only on Slashdot.