1) It violates the "no duty to act" principle in civil torts by attaching a duty to the parents to somehow correct such an embryos defects before allowing it to be born (which is currently technologically infeasible) or else face liability for circumstances beyond their control (i.e. which genes that particular human embryo inherited during fertilization).
2) It places state control over a parent's right to choose to keep a child which is as or more offensive to many than the notion of state control of a parent's right to abort a child.
3) It establishes a eugenic precedent that could be extended to other traits that become unpopular which may have beneficial side-effects. (Think schizophrenia and artistic creativity.) Downs is pretty universally awful, but what about autism?
4) It creates horrible issues of standing, particularly in the form of legally cognizable harm and redressability. (I'm talking from the perspective of the American concept of standing, so I don't know if this applies in the UK.) You are suing because your parents didn't choose to kill you before birth. If they had done so, you would be dead, which most if not all civil and criminal courts consider to be a worse fate than mental impairment. How much money does it take to make up for the fact that you were born?
If you read the article, it's pretty thought-provoking. The UK government allows for couples to select for hearing children via IVF (i.e. they can choose to throw out an embryo for being destined to be deaf), but deaf couples do not have the right to select for deaf children. The deaf couple in question is livid because this essentially is a eugenics program where the UK government says that it's okay for parents to decide that a child should never be born because it might be deaf -- but refuses to allow deaf people to do the same with children they don't want. The end goal is to allow deafness to be utterly eliminated from society. To those who can hear, it might seem like the laudible elimination of a tragic disability. To those who grew up deaf, it's nothing less than a declaration that their lives are intrinsically less valuable than ours -- that they are less worthy of legal protection as humans.
But if after growing up deaf, you became upset at your parents for "denying" you hearing, what would be the grounds for the case? Your parents didn't splice deaf genes into you before birth. They simply allowed you to be born and didn't allow someone else who could hear to be born. Basically, you would be suing them for not killing you and not allowing someone else to be born in your place.
How could a court let a case like that go forward?
A lot of human genetics is actually based around some people being designated more as caretakers for their relatives and other community members than sources of future offspring themselves. Take menopause, for example. Menopause extends the life of women by stopping them from risking their health with childbirth. This preserves women to live on as reservoirs of community knowledge and experience to teach to children. (If you'd like to read more about that, I recommend Jared Diamond's book "The Third Chimpanzee.")
Homosexuality (in men, at least) is most frequently found in later born sons. Past a certain point, extra sons are not really needed to pass on the genes of both parents and could fulfill similar societal roles as old people in assisting in the care-taking of the first-born's children. I think I remember reading somewhere that a study in Samoa showed that gay men were likely to dote over their nieces and nephews. Here's an article on that.
In tight-knit communities (i.e. the kind of hunter-gather tribes that dominated thousands of years of human evolution), having additional hunters & gatherers to provide for your grandkids in the forms of sons and daughter that provide for your firstborn's children may be of greater advantage than just another source of mouths to feed. In many hunter-gatherer societies, infanticide was used as a means of "birth control" to keep the task of feeding ones children manageable. This became less frequent with the dawn of agriculture, but having additional relatives around to provide the children of others is a survival strategy for yourself and for your first-born (and best provided for) children because it means that you have less need to limit the children you do have. (You can think of homosexuality as a "parasitic" trait for latter born children to aid the earlier born ones.)
Additionally, cultural norms in many pre-modern societies either forced homosexuals to adopt heterosexual lifestyles or allowed for homosexuals to engage in sex with their own gender for pleasure while being required to perform their "spousal duties" with a wife. (Think of ancient Greek pederasty for example.) Bisexual practices allow for homosexual preferences to survive and even flourish, as in bonobos who use lesbian sex for social bonding.
Another study has suggested that homosexual men tend to have more fertile female siblings and more homosexual relatives on their mothers' side meaning that homosexual genes could be passed down through unaffected maternal lines. This jives well with the theory of homosexuality as a tool for putting more of your eggs in the best basket and designating other children to a support role.
Lastly, as the order of birth examples above hint, homosexuality is only partially genetic. Environmental pressures both before and after birth can influence sexual orientation. Genes that increase sensitivity to these pressures can exist in heterosexuals and be passed on with no ill effect on survivability (or increased effect on survivability by assuring extra care for children with a homosexual uncle).
All of the above factors provide a rationale for homosexuality as a positively adaptive trait and one that has a clear mechanism for being passed on.
It can take its own sweet time to correct itself, but you sure don't want to be standing in the way when it does.
Why is this acceptable, especially when the people most affected by the market "correcting" itself are rarely the ones who had the most influence over the problem in the first place? Why should only risk be socialized but not profit?
Charging a pound a day to read news is ill-advised. It will transform this man's newspaper from being the anchor media of the community to being just another website for the rich and their wack-job worshipers.
This is Rupert Murdoch we're talking about. I mean, that's what he's done with TV news over here in the US, you know.
If ACTA passes as it is today, we are all going to be screwed. Keep up the pressure on your elected representatives.
Oh, and which party do you think is going to object to a stilted treaty that puts the desires of one of America's few export industries over the needs of petty citizens? Democrats and Republicans are overwhelmingly in favor of stronger copyright. No previous extension of the reach of copyright has faced major opposition.
Here's what will happen. You'll get the bill before Congress. Someone will motion for a voice vote. With their hands washed clean, the bill will pass without any record to let us hold the people who voted for it responsible. No muss, no fuss, and the only people who lose out are us little people.
That's how the Sonny Bono Act was passed. That's how the DMCA was passed. That's how this monstrosity will pass if it ever gets before Congress.
I'm only arguing from the standpoint that they fairly acquired those territories in the wake of a war they didn't start (the Six-Day War).
Well, the problem is that international law doesn't really recognize land seized in war as "fairly acquired" anymore -- especially without a treaty where the surrendering parties cede the land. It's true that Israel was the attacked party in 1967, but that didn't give them the right to carve out payback on its own terms unless you ignore modern law in favor of more traditional rights of conquest.
It seems like others on here are trying to demonize Israel for every single thing it's ever done, and acting like the Arab nations did absolutely nothing wrong, which is ridiculous. They seem to think that Israel should have just surrendered and allowed the Arab nations to do what they wanted with them.
Nah, that's not my perspective anyway. I just think though that Israel has burned a lot of its position of moral superiority from that time period over 40 years of occupation and oppression of the Palestinians. The relative conditions of their peoples and the relative body counts in any conflict don't win them many points either. Israel has a right to live. It just doesn't have a right to act with impunity in responding to a self-created problem.
The German/French land I'm talking about is Alsace-Lorraine, which was German before WWI (taken in the Franco-Prussian wars in the 1800s), taken by France after WWI, taken back by Germany during the Nazi period, and taken back again by France after WWI.
Ah, I didn't even think about that because I've always thought of that as belonging to France in the first place. (Kind of hilarious that much of the Prussia of the Franco-Prussian War is not part of Poland.) I guess it makes sense to consider that part of Germany if you're of the "taken fair and square" camp, but it's moot since it's France's by treaty and the whole thing happened pre-Geneva.
Your disingenuous response is typical of the left-wing side in the debate, and it does little to convince anyone.
As a left-winger and someone who has been convinced that the science does show global warming is happening, I wholeheartedly endorse this statement. Telling people that they're not good enough to understand what the big people are talking about is no way to get people to vote to support the policies you endorse.
If anything it's about as effective evangelism as standing around on a street corner with a sign saying "God Hates Fags" is for converting people to your faith.
You're calling media relations a "PR department"? You're comparing a small group of people who put out press releases with the massive industry-funded disinformation campaign which organizes massive denier conferences and offers prizes to scientists who can publish papers that support their position. Please, get serious here.
You know, not all PR departments are nothing but lying conspirators out to twist and hide the truth. Most company PR departments do nothing but put out a little press release with some boosterism and self-congratulating -- just like university PR departments do. A lot of crappy science journalism gets its start with a boiled-down press release that proclaims that the university's researchers have released a study proving some fact when the study in truth doesn't say much of anything conclusive.
For example, look at the story that was recently on Slashdot about HFCS causing obesity in rats. Several respectable science journalists have taken the time to look at the study more closely and concluded that it was deeply flawed and didn't prove much of anything. (123)
So where did the wide-eyed, "Big News!" take on the study come from? Why from Princeton's press release. This sort of things happens all the time in headline-grabbing areas of science, like global warming, nutrition, anthropology / humanoid evolution, cosmology, etc. Universities know that donations and grants come to those institutions that make the biggest splash, and they are more than willing to trump up the importance of a study that isn't as powerful as the headlines might make it out to be. Just like all those massive industry campaigns you decry as so different, lazy newspapers pick up the PR piece and publish it almost verbatim as news.
The problem of self-promoting PR compounded by a lack of journalistic integrity and diligence is just as prevalent in science as in industry. You want to know where the whole "eggs are good for you, eggs are bad for you" debate comes from? It comes from press releases overstating the importance of a particular study before it's faced years of peer review and double-checking. And this sort of irresponsible bragging is a large part of why the public is so skeptical about science actually knowing anything.
I know you don't want to accept this. But the reality is that unless you're willing to spend years learning about the subject, you are not qualified to assess the science. "Dumbed down" or not.
And then what? How do we run a democratic society if the people are expected to never look too deeply at science? In a democratic society, we need a populace that is actively interested in trying to evaluate the work of scientists. How is the public supposed to know what to base their voting decisions on if they're just told to "listen to the experts?" What do we do in areas where the science isn't as solid as global warming and takes a decade or more to settle down -- such as all the various health panics over cell phones, MSG, aspartame, or MMR shots?
If you encourage people to simply place a wide gulf of respect between themselves and scientists, then that wide gulf also can become one of distrust, like that which AGW-deniers and creationists have. If you don't speak the language of scientists and never try to learn it, then why would you ever trust the man in the lab coat more than any other authority figure? To many people in this country, the process of science is as opaque and foreign and is something understood only distantly and with a hearty dose of misinformation, skepticism, and distrust.
The poster that you're unrepentantly bashing as simply unworthy of scientific understanding is someone who is trying to be informed about the issues and trying to make a good policy decision. Your sheer arrogance and belittling of him only makes things worse by trying to ensure that people treat science like religion -- something passed down from on high by people greater than yourself. In the fact of that, is it any wonder that many people simply pick their choice of experts when one looks as valid as the other?
This is absolutely counter-productive unless you simply advocate giving up on democracy.
I'm guessing that it would take about 500-1000 years to get anything that was called an island rather than a reef to go away at current rates of sea level rise.
You may have assumed that this is something that sensible people would call an island. It's basically a sand bar, created by a hurricane in the 70s, that both countries wanted solely so that they can claim the surrounding parts of the ocean. No one could or would want to live there. It was an insignificant speck of land that was never more than 2 meters above sea level at its highest.
This is a case where is could easily be both sea level rise AND erosion and subsidence. But I agree that the latter two forces were most likely to be the primary culprit here. The island was ephemeral from beginning to end. Who knows? In a few years, it might come back.
That would be my approach to Israel and Palestine problems with Jerusalem Just say no one owns the areas... No residences are allowed but you can visit it for the history and religious pilgrimages. Perhaps the UN will make sure everyone plays fair in the area.
How big of an area do you clear out around a few holy sites, and what do you do with the nearly 750,000 people who already live in the city? I'm sure that the Palestinian territories would have *plenty* of room to absorb the roughly a quarter of a million people who are Muslim, and Israel's wide open spaces that give people plenty of room to build *on their own territory, instead of someone else's* could just soak up half a million people with no trouble, right?
I mean dispersing a population density of roughly 15,000 people per square mile on behalf of a couple of temples -- which are the only reason anyone has to be attached to the city -- is child's play right? Easy as chopping a baby in half to resolve a custody dispute.
I don't see the problem here. If you don't want to lose land to an enemy, don't attack him.
The same thing happened in WWII. Germany lost some valuable farmland to France. They never did get it back. Why isn't anyone complaining that France is building on disputed land? I'm sure Germany wouldn't mind having it back.
The problem is that the international community outlawed that sort of thing in the wake of the German's doctrine of "living space" in 1949. The Fourth Geneva Convention says in Art. 49, "The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies."
Israel signed the treaty in 1949. Egypt (previous owner of the Gaza Strip) signed it in 1949. Jordan (previous owner of the West Bank) signed it in 1951. Syria (widely considered the owner of the Golan Heights) signed it in 1949. Lebanon (considered by most to own the Shebaa Farms area) signed it in 1949 on the same day as Israel. All of these parties were bound to the treaty and bound to respect the others' citizens under the treaty. Israel's occupation of disputed territories flagrantly violates the conventions in several ways, not the least of which is colonizing the territories.
Additionally, there have been some UN security council resolutions demanding that Israel return the territories either in whole or individually. See, e.g. UN Security Council resolutions 242 (1967) and 338 (1973). These are the same level of resolution as the one used to justify the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and Israel is just as much in violation of UN resolutions as Hussein was.
As to France, what areas are you talking about? I confess ignorance here. I'm mostly familiar with the Postdam Agreement and the ceding of territories to the Soviet Union (well, Poland actually), so all I could find on France was the take over of Saar and Ruhr, both of which returned to German control by the 1950s. Either way, all of those agreements were handled by treaty and approved under international law, and all the settling of Germany's post-WW2 debts and concessions was handled pre-Geneva. Israel's occupation of disputed territories has never AFAIK been ratified by any treaties between the parties and is not recognized as valid under international law. That's the difference.
Did anyone else notice that all three articles (from A to B to C) had to do with gold? I wonder if that was a defined theme for the class and what other articles got written by the same theme.
That's very true. In fact, Wikipedia has made it very easy for me simply dismiss only those facts I happen to disagree with. In that regard it's a great tool for anyone who wishes to be out of touch with reality.
And that prepares them perfectly for a career in journalism in this age where people pick their news source based on how well it jives with their political beliefs, never having to read news articles that might challenge them.
Does dark matter disappear or do we still need some hiding to explain things?
Unless all those galaxies really far away explain how our galaxy holds itself together at the speeds its stars rotate, then no, we still need dark matter or some alternative theory like MOND.
You forgot that the display was an eye-searing red on black. It's like they deliberately picked the color most likely to irritate the eyes on prolonged exposure. (Yeah, I know they were cheap and didn't drain the batteries much, but that was to me the #1 source of eyestrain.)
So the bill has been in the works for a year or so, and the American people still don't know what's in the bill? Are you really suggesting that?
Yes. Wholeheartedly. Look at the "compromise" that had to be made to pass the bill and the reactions from both pro-life and pro-choice groups over it. The bill contained essentially the same language to prevent use of federal funds to pay for abortions (outside of rape, incest, and the life of the mother) that has been in every healthcare bill since 1976. Obama's executive order to not fund abortions was nothing more than a promise to do what the bill said to do in the first place in section 1303.
But if you listen to both sides wail about it, the bill and Obama's EO both promise a sea change from the way we've always done things to whatever each side fears most. It's plain to see that in the great horse race of politics, people either don't know what the bill actually says or simply don't care. The truth is not as important as scoring electoral points or working up your donor base.
We live in a society where there is a wealth of media sources and no requirement for fairness or accuracy anymore. We live in a nation where some people read the Huffington Post and watch The Daily Show, and others read The Drudge Report and watch Fox News. These people are not arguing based on the same set of "facts." They are seeking news that makes them feel good about their existing beliefs, and this is leading to mainstreaming of conspiracy theory thought patterns. (See, e.g. the 9/11 & Birther conspiracy fans.)
Also, you might be surprised to find out how many people do not support the ponzi scheme that is Social Security, either in part or in whole.
You might also be surprised how many people think we should go back on the gold standard, and you may be even more suprised to know just how unlikely either group is to get their ideas implemented. (Not that I'm arguing that Social Security isn't in trouble, mind you. I'm just saying that people who are opposed to it "in whole" are a vocal minority, and privatization is pretty much dead in the water until a generation forgets the current financial crisis.)
The trick is to distinguish a lazy person who deserves to starve, from a disabled person who doesn't.
If-and-only-if you actually give a damn about the latter. You'd be surprised by how many people's hearts bleed more for the businessman who has to install ramps than the damn cripple who should've just stayed out of sight.
Too many people in this country think that if they can handle themselves fine, then everyone who can't deserves what they get. Or they'd rather 100 innocent sick people suffer than see 1 cent of their tax dollars go to someone irresponsible. Bah, it's issues like these that make me sad for my country.
If you are suggesting those who put this bill into play did so for any kind of altruistic reason -- consider the context of their political ambitions (no one goes into politics to help people, they go into politics to control people).
Oh, bullshit. There are plenty of people in politics for all the wrong reason, and there are plenty of idealists who ended up with a piece of their soul burned out by the constant grind of begging for campaign donations and all the hundreds of compromises just to get the things you care most about, but from my experience on the ground helping out with political campaigns, most people enter politics for idealist reasons. (Not all are lucky enough to get to stay with their idealism intact, though.)
Getting elected to a legislature is simply too hard work with too little payoff for a wannabe puppetmaster.
I'm not sure what power the feds have enumerated by the constitutions to pass and enforce such an act. I can see how they could mandate it for federal buildings, I'm not sure how they can for private or even state buildings.
Welcome to the interstate commerce clause. Due to the highly interconnected nature of the modern business world, courts have slowly over the past 100 years recognized and ever-growing extension of that clause to regulate economic activities. It would be extremely difficult to run a business that did not engage in interstate commerce today in some form or fashion recognized by the courts. Also, Congress claims power to enforce the 14th Amendment:
"It is the purpose of this chapter . . . to invoke the sweep of congressional authority, including the power to enforce the fourteenth amendment and to regulate commerce, in order to address the major areas of discrimination faced day-to-day by people with disabilities." Preamble to the ADA, 42 U.S.C. 12101(b)(4)
Healthcare is similarly very much part of interstate commerce, and Congress may regulate how people engage in it and impose fines for non-compliance. As much as a I hate a mandate for me to give my money directly to companies that I hate, I'm going to have to say that Congress has the power to do so.
That would probably require the DOJ's assistance, and even if it didn't, since they're all members of the same government branch answerable all to the same man, it would probably be handled by firing people and forgetting about it rather than tying up the courts.
"Better" handled by firing people? Maybe or maybe not, but I just can't see the Obama administration (or ANY administration) opening themselves up to a political circus by fighting itself over which agency under its command risked American lives the most in our fight against terrorism.
Now I can finally start my restaurant (which specializes in mouse-tail delicacies) without PETA breathing down my neck. "Look: it's growing back!" Mouse-tail soup anyone?
Not really. If vegans oppose milking cows and harvesting honey, then cutting pieces off living animals, waiting for them to regrow, and then cutting more off again is just *may* be a bit less acceptable.
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A few reasons it's bad:
1) It violates the "no duty to act" principle in civil torts by attaching a duty to the parents to somehow correct such an embryos defects before allowing it to be born (which is currently technologically infeasible) or else face liability for circumstances beyond their control (i.e. which genes that particular human embryo inherited during fertilization).
2) It places state control over a parent's right to choose to keep a child which is as or more offensive to many than the notion of state control of a parent's right to abort a child.
3) It establishes a eugenic precedent that could be extended to other traits that become unpopular which may have beneficial side-effects. (Think schizophrenia and artistic creativity.) Downs is pretty universally awful, but what about autism?
4) It creates horrible issues of standing, particularly in the form of legally cognizable harm and redressability. (I'm talking from the perspective of the American concept of standing, so I don't know if this applies in the UK.) You are suing because your parents didn't choose to kill you before birth. If they had done so, you would be dead, which most if not all civil and criminal courts consider to be a worse fate than mental impairment. How much money does it take to make up for the fact that you were born?
If you read the article, it's pretty thought-provoking. The UK government allows for couples to select for hearing children via IVF (i.e. they can choose to throw out an embryo for being destined to be deaf), but deaf couples do not have the right to select for deaf children. The deaf couple in question is livid because this essentially is a eugenics program where the UK government says that it's okay for parents to decide that a child should never be born because it might be deaf -- but refuses to allow deaf people to do the same with children they don't want. The end goal is to allow deafness to be utterly eliminated from society. To those who can hear, it might seem like the laudible elimination of a tragic disability. To those who grew up deaf, it's nothing less than a declaration that their lives are intrinsically less valuable than ours -- that they are less worthy of legal protection as humans.
But if after growing up deaf, you became upset at your parents for "denying" you hearing, what would be the grounds for the case? Your parents didn't splice deaf genes into you before birth. They simply allowed you to be born and didn't allow someone else who could hear to be born. Basically, you would be suing them for not killing you and not allowing someone else to be born in your place.
How could a court let a case like that go forward?
A lot of human genetics is actually based around some people being designated more as caretakers for their relatives and other community members than sources of future offspring themselves. Take menopause, for example. Menopause extends the life of women by stopping them from risking their health with childbirth. This preserves women to live on as reservoirs of community knowledge and experience to teach to children. (If you'd like to read more about that, I recommend Jared Diamond's book "The Third Chimpanzee.")
Homosexuality (in men, at least) is most frequently found in later born sons. Past a certain point, extra sons are not really needed to pass on the genes of both parents and could fulfill similar societal roles as old people in assisting in the care-taking of the first-born's children. I think I remember reading somewhere that a study in Samoa showed that gay men were likely to dote over their nieces and nephews. Here's an article on that.
In tight-knit communities (i.e. the kind of hunter-gather tribes that dominated thousands of years of human evolution), having additional hunters & gatherers to provide for your grandkids in the forms of sons and daughter that provide for your firstborn's children may be of greater advantage than just another source of mouths to feed. In many hunter-gatherer societies, infanticide was used as a means of "birth control" to keep the task of feeding ones children manageable. This became less frequent with the dawn of agriculture, but having additional relatives around to provide the children of others is a survival strategy for yourself and for your first-born (and best provided for) children because it means that you have less need to limit the children you do have. (You can think of homosexuality as a "parasitic" trait for latter born children to aid the earlier born ones.)
Additionally, cultural norms in many pre-modern societies either forced homosexuals to adopt heterosexual lifestyles or allowed for homosexuals to engage in sex with their own gender for pleasure while being required to perform their "spousal duties" with a wife. (Think of ancient Greek pederasty for example.) Bisexual practices allow for homosexual preferences to survive and even flourish, as in bonobos who use lesbian sex for social bonding.
Another study has suggested that homosexual men tend to have more fertile female siblings and more homosexual relatives on their mothers' side meaning that homosexual genes could be passed down through unaffected maternal lines. This jives well with the theory of homosexuality as a tool for putting more of your eggs in the best basket and designating other children to a support role.
Lastly, as the order of birth examples above hint, homosexuality is only partially genetic. Environmental pressures both before and after birth can influence sexual orientation. Genes that increase sensitivity to these pressures can exist in heterosexuals and be passed on with no ill effect on survivability (or increased effect on survivability by assuring extra care for children with a homosexual uncle).
All of the above factors provide a rationale for homosexuality as a positively adaptive trait and one that has a clear mechanism for being passed on.
It can take its own sweet time to correct itself, but you sure don't want to be standing in the way when it does.
Why is this acceptable, especially when the people most affected by the market "correcting" itself are rarely the ones who had the most influence over the problem in the first place? Why should only risk be socialized but not profit?
Charging a pound a day to read news is ill-advised. It will transform this man's newspaper from being the anchor media of the community to being just another website for the rich and their wack-job worshipers.
This is Rupert Murdoch we're talking about. I mean, that's what he's done with TV news over here in the US, you know.
If ACTA passes as it is today, we are all going to be screwed. Keep up the pressure on your elected representatives.
Oh, and which party do you think is going to object to a stilted treaty that puts the desires of one of America's few export industries over the needs of petty citizens? Democrats and Republicans are overwhelmingly in favor of stronger copyright. No previous extension of the reach of copyright has faced major opposition.
Here's what will happen. You'll get the bill before Congress. Someone will motion for a voice vote. With their hands washed clean, the bill will pass without any record to let us hold the people who voted for it responsible. No muss, no fuss, and the only people who lose out are us little people.
That's how the Sonny Bono Act was passed. That's how the DMCA was passed. That's how this monstrosity will pass if it ever gets before Congress.
I'm only arguing from the standpoint that they fairly acquired those territories in the wake of a war they didn't start (the Six-Day War).
Well, the problem is that international law doesn't really recognize land seized in war as "fairly acquired" anymore -- especially without a treaty where the surrendering parties cede the land. It's true that Israel was the attacked party in 1967, but that didn't give them the right to carve out payback on its own terms unless you ignore modern law in favor of more traditional rights of conquest.
It seems like others on here are trying to demonize Israel for every single thing it's ever done, and acting like the Arab nations did absolutely nothing wrong, which is ridiculous. They seem to think that Israel should have just surrendered and allowed the Arab nations to do what they wanted with them.
Nah, that's not my perspective anyway. I just think though that Israel has burned a lot of its position of moral superiority from that time period over 40 years of occupation and oppression of the Palestinians. The relative conditions of their peoples and the relative body counts in any conflict don't win them many points either. Israel has a right to live. It just doesn't have a right to act with impunity in responding to a self-created problem.
The German/French land I'm talking about is Alsace-Lorraine, which was German before WWI (taken in the Franco-Prussian wars in the 1800s), taken by France after WWI, taken back by Germany during the Nazi period, and taken back again by France after WWI.
Ah, I didn't even think about that because I've always thought of that as belonging to France in the first place. (Kind of hilarious that much of the Prussia of the Franco-Prussian War is not part of Poland.) I guess it makes sense to consider that part of Germany if you're of the "taken fair and square" camp, but it's moot since it's France's by treaty and the whole thing happened pre-Geneva.
Your disingenuous response is typical of the left-wing side in the debate, and it does little to convince anyone.
As a left-winger and someone who has been convinced that the science does show global warming is happening, I wholeheartedly endorse this statement. Telling people that they're not good enough to understand what the big people are talking about is no way to get people to vote to support the policies you endorse.
If anything it's about as effective evangelism as standing around on a street corner with a sign saying "God Hates Fags" is for converting people to your faith.
You're calling media relations a "PR department"? You're comparing a small group of people who put out press releases with the massive industry-funded disinformation campaign which organizes massive denier conferences and offers prizes to scientists who can publish papers that support their position. Please, get serious here.
You know, not all PR departments are nothing but lying conspirators out to twist and hide the truth. Most company PR departments do nothing but put out a little press release with some boosterism and self-congratulating -- just like university PR departments do. A lot of crappy science journalism gets its start with a boiled-down press release that proclaims that the university's researchers have released a study proving some fact when the study in truth doesn't say much of anything conclusive.
For example, look at the story that was recently on Slashdot about HFCS causing obesity in rats. Several respectable science journalists have taken the time to look at the study more closely and concluded that it was deeply flawed and didn't prove much of anything. (1 2 3)
So where did the wide-eyed, "Big News!" take on the study come from? Why from Princeton's press release. This sort of things happens all the time in headline-grabbing areas of science, like global warming, nutrition, anthropology / humanoid evolution, cosmology, etc. Universities know that donations and grants come to those institutions that make the biggest splash, and they are more than willing to trump up the importance of a study that isn't as powerful as the headlines might make it out to be. Just like all those massive industry campaigns you decry as so different, lazy newspapers pick up the PR piece and publish it almost verbatim as news.
The problem of self-promoting PR compounded by a lack of journalistic integrity and diligence is just as prevalent in science as in industry. You want to know where the whole "eggs are good for you, eggs are bad for you" debate comes from? It comes from press releases overstating the importance of a particular study before it's faced years of peer review and double-checking. And this sort of irresponsible bragging is a large part of why the public is so skeptical about science actually knowing anything.
I know you don't want to accept this. But the reality is that unless you're willing to spend years learning about the subject, you are not qualified to assess the science. "Dumbed down" or not.
And then what? How do we run a democratic society if the people are expected to never look too deeply at science? In a democratic society, we need a populace that is actively interested in trying to evaluate the work of scientists. How is the public supposed to know what to base their voting decisions on if they're just told to "listen to the experts?" What do we do in areas where the science isn't as solid as global warming and takes a decade or more to settle down -- such as all the various health panics over cell phones, MSG, aspartame, or MMR shots?
If you encourage people to simply place a wide gulf of respect between themselves and scientists, then that wide gulf also can become one of distrust, like that which AGW-deniers and creationists have. If you don't speak the language of scientists and never try to learn it, then why would you ever trust the man in the lab coat more than any other authority figure? To many people in this country, the process of science is as opaque and foreign and is something understood only distantly and with a hearty dose of misinformation, skepticism, and distrust.
The poster that you're unrepentantly bashing as simply unworthy of scientific understanding is someone who is trying to be informed about the issues and trying to make a good policy decision. Your sheer arrogance and belittling of him only makes things worse by trying to ensure that people treat science like religion -- something passed down from on high by people greater than yourself. In the fact of that, is it any wonder that many people simply pick their choice of experts when one looks as valid as the other?
This is absolutely counter-productive unless you simply advocate giving up on democracy.
I'm guessing that it would take about 500-1000 years to get anything that was called an island rather than a reef to go away at current rates of sea level rise.
You may have assumed that this is something that sensible people would call an island. It's basically a sand bar, created by a hurricane in the 70s, that both countries wanted solely so that they can claim the surrounding parts of the ocean. No one could or would want to live there. It was an insignificant speck of land that was never more than 2 meters above sea level at its highest.
This is a case where is could easily be both sea level rise AND erosion and subsidence. But I agree that the latter two forces were most likely to be the primary culprit here. The island was ephemeral from beginning to end. Who knows? In a few years, it might come back.
That would be my approach to Israel and Palestine problems with Jerusalem Just say no one owns the areas... No residences are allowed but you can visit it for the history and religious pilgrimages. Perhaps the UN will make sure everyone plays fair in the area.
How big of an area do you clear out around a few holy sites, and what do you do with the nearly 750,000 people who already live in the city? I'm sure that the Palestinian territories would have *plenty* of room to absorb the roughly a quarter of a million people who are Muslim, and Israel's wide open spaces that give people plenty of room to build *on their own territory, instead of someone else's* could just soak up half a million people with no trouble, right?
I mean dispersing a population density of roughly 15,000 people per square mile on behalf of a couple of temples -- which are the only reason anyone has to be attached to the city -- is child's play right? Easy as chopping a baby in half to resolve a custody dispute.
I don't see the problem here. If you don't want to lose land to an enemy, don't attack him.
The same thing happened in WWII. Germany lost some valuable farmland to France. They never did get it back. Why isn't anyone complaining that France is building on disputed land? I'm sure Germany wouldn't mind having it back.
The problem is that the international community outlawed that sort of thing in the wake of the German's doctrine of "living space" in 1949. The Fourth Geneva Convention says in Art. 49, "The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies."
Israel signed the treaty in 1949. Egypt (previous owner of the Gaza Strip) signed it in 1949. Jordan (previous owner of the West Bank) signed it in 1951. Syria (widely considered the owner of the Golan Heights) signed it in 1949. Lebanon (considered by most to own the Shebaa Farms area) signed it in 1949 on the same day as Israel. All of these parties were bound to the treaty and bound to respect the others' citizens under the treaty. Israel's occupation of disputed territories flagrantly violates the conventions in several ways, not the least of which is colonizing the territories.
Additionally, there have been some UN security council resolutions demanding that Israel return the territories either in whole or individually. See, e.g. UN Security Council resolutions 242 (1967) and 338 (1973). These are the same level of resolution as the one used to justify the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and Israel is just as much in violation of UN resolutions as Hussein was.
As to France, what areas are you talking about? I confess ignorance here. I'm mostly familiar with the Postdam Agreement and the ceding of territories to the Soviet Union (well, Poland actually), so all I could find on France was the take over of Saar and Ruhr, both of which returned to German control by the 1950s. Either way, all of those agreements were handled by treaty and approved under international law, and all the settling of Germany's post-WW2 debts and concessions was handled pre-Geneva. Israel's occupation of disputed territories has never AFAIK been ratified by any treaties between the parties and is not recognized as valid under international law. That's the difference.
Did anyone else notice that all three articles (from A to B to C) had to do with gold? I wonder if that was a defined theme for the class and what other articles got written by the same theme.
That's very true. In fact, Wikipedia has made it very easy for me simply dismiss only those facts I happen to disagree with. In that regard it's a great tool for anyone who wishes to be out of touch with reality.
And that prepares them perfectly for a career in journalism in this age where people pick their news source based on how well it jives with their political beliefs, never having to read news articles that might challenge them.
And now the level of content is even more appropriate for Idle.
Does dark matter disappear or do we still need some hiding to explain things?
Unless all those galaxies really far away explain how our galaxy holds itself together at the speeds its stars rotate, then no, we still need dark matter or some alternative theory like MOND.
You forgot that the display was an eye-searing red on black. It's like they deliberately picked the color most likely to irritate the eyes on prolonged exposure. (Yeah, I know they were cheap and didn't drain the batteries much, but that was to me the #1 source of eyestrain.)
So the bill has been in the works for a year or so, and the American people still don't know what's in the bill? Are you really suggesting that?
Yes. Wholeheartedly. Look at the "compromise" that had to be made to pass the bill and the reactions from both pro-life and pro-choice groups over it. The bill contained essentially the same language to prevent use of federal funds to pay for abortions (outside of rape, incest, and the life of the mother) that has been in every healthcare bill since 1976. Obama's executive order to not fund abortions was nothing more than a promise to do what the bill said to do in the first place in section 1303.
But if you listen to both sides wail about it, the bill and Obama's EO both promise a sea change from the way we've always done things to whatever each side fears most. It's plain to see that in the great horse race of politics, people either don't know what the bill actually says or simply don't care. The truth is not as important as scoring electoral points or working up your donor base.
We live in a society where there is a wealth of media sources and no requirement for fairness or accuracy anymore. We live in a nation where some people read the Huffington Post and watch The Daily Show, and others read The Drudge Report and watch Fox News. These people are not arguing based on the same set of "facts." They are seeking news that makes them feel good about their existing beliefs, and this is leading to mainstreaming of conspiracy theory thought patterns. (See, e.g. the 9/11 & Birther conspiracy fans.)
Also, you might be surprised to find out how many people do not support the ponzi scheme that is Social Security, either in part or in whole.
You might also be surprised how many people think we should go back on the gold standard, and you may be even more suprised to know just how unlikely either group is to get their ideas implemented. (Not that I'm arguing that Social Security isn't in trouble, mind you. I'm just saying that people who are opposed to it "in whole" are a vocal minority, and privatization is pretty much dead in the water until a generation forgets the current financial crisis.)
The trick is to distinguish a lazy person who deserves to starve, from a disabled person who doesn't.
If-and-only-if you actually give a damn about the latter. You'd be surprised by how many people's hearts bleed more for the businessman who has to install ramps than the damn cripple who should've just stayed out of sight.
Too many people in this country think that if they can handle themselves fine, then everyone who can't deserves what they get. Or they'd rather 100 innocent sick people suffer than see 1 cent of their tax dollars go to someone irresponsible. Bah, it's issues like these that make me sad for my country.
If you are suggesting those who put this bill into play did so for any kind of altruistic reason -- consider the context of their political ambitions (no one goes into politics to help people, they go into politics to control people).
Oh, bullshit. There are plenty of people in politics for all the wrong reason, and there are plenty of idealists who ended up with a piece of their soul burned out by the constant grind of begging for campaign donations and all the hundreds of compromises just to get the things you care most about, but from my experience on the ground helping out with political campaigns, most people enter politics for idealist reasons. (Not all are lucky enough to get to stay with their idealism intact, though.)
Getting elected to a legislature is simply too hard work with too little payoff for a wannabe puppetmaster.
I'm not sure what power the feds have enumerated by the constitutions to pass and enforce such an act. I can see how they could mandate it for federal buildings, I'm not sure how they can for private or even state buildings.
Welcome to the interstate commerce clause. Due to the highly interconnected nature of the modern business world, courts have slowly over the past 100 years recognized and ever-growing extension of that clause to regulate economic activities. It would be extremely difficult to run a business that did not engage in interstate commerce today in some form or fashion recognized by the courts. Also, Congress claims power to enforce the 14th Amendment:
"It is the purpose of this chapter . . . to invoke the sweep of congressional authority, including the power to enforce the fourteenth amendment and to regulate commerce, in order to address the major areas of discrimination faced day-to-day by people with disabilities."
Preamble to the ADA, 42 U.S.C. 12101(b)(4)
Healthcare is similarly very much part of interstate commerce, and Congress may regulate how people engage in it and impose fines for non-compliance. As much as a I hate a mandate for me to give my money directly to companies that I hate, I'm going to have to say that Congress has the power to do so.
C'mon, who here would pass up a chance to Rickroll Al-Qaeda in the middle of a supposed new video by Osama bin Laden?
That would probably require the DOJ's assistance, and even if it didn't, since they're all members of the same government branch answerable all to the same man, it would probably be handled by firing people and forgetting about it rather than tying up the courts.
"Better" handled by firing people? Maybe or maybe not, but I just can't see the Obama administration (or ANY administration) opening themselves up to a political circus by fighting itself over which agency under its command risked American lives the most in our fight against terrorism.
Now I can finally start my restaurant (which specializes in mouse-tail delicacies) without PETA breathing down my neck. "Look: it's growing back!" Mouse-tail soup anyone?
Not really. If vegans oppose milking cows and harvesting honey, then cutting pieces off living animals, waiting for them to regrow, and then cutting more off again is just *may* be a bit less acceptable.