Still this ruling isn't "airtight" enough that other Commandmenteers won't try new variations (by, again doesn't it sound humorous, trying to remove the religous meaning from a religious symbol) and appeal them all the way up at everyone's time/expense.
First one, a large permanent cross in a national park. This one was filed by the ACLU/SC (SC for Southern California, this group was founded by Upton Sinclair). I don't know if you know anything about his views on religion, his bibliography should give you an idea (here's a link from Google's beta book search, neat stuff, well if you hadn't heard, he was a pretty big critic of the organized religion and later became a socialist). Anyhow, I can respect the loose assertion that the ACLU/SC reflects on the ACLU in the same way that say, Catholics reflect on Christians. Each is a smaller group that affiliates with a whole. If you let me judge you by the actions of Catholics, then you can judge the ACLU by the actions of ACLU/SC -- i.e., the fallacy of generialazation. But getting past that -- the park didn't even try to fight it, it never even went to court, everyone involved just rolled over, because they knew that the anonymous ranger (that haha, "claimed to be Catholic") that sought the ACLU/SC's help would have won in court. Damn those courts.
Second one, Glassroth v. Moore. I am not a lawyer, but if you are I'd be interested to know why you believe both courts were wrong. Further, the ACLU was not a plaintiff in this case. The only relevant case that the ACLU was a plaintiff in was ACLU v. Rabun County (11th Circuit) in 1983. Was the U.S. "intolerant of Christian views" back then? I don't recall. But further, if you look up the opinion http://www.ca11.uscourts.gov/opinions/ops/20021670 8.pdf, the money quote is on the bottom of page 34: "Clearly erroneous they [the district court's previous findings of fact] are not. Moreover, even if we were free to review the determination de novo, having examined the record ourselves, we agree with the district court that it is "self-evident" that Chief Justice Moore's purpose in displaying the monument was non-secular. Given all of the evidence, including the Chief Justice's own words, we cannot see how a court could reach any other conclusion." So, basically open and shut. After Moore's appeal was rejected it should have been clear that his next step wasn't to get suspended in an act of civil disobedience but to obey the court's decision (what? a judge with contempt for the court?!) and used his only recourse, get the Constitution amended. It's laughable to consider the First Amendment to be an "assault on Christian's rights" so maybe you offered this example by mistake.
Third one, Montanna's Custer county officials roll over and settle in a similar year-2000 case involving another Commandments monument and a "seasonal nativity". I don't know what this shows us as far as assaults or tolerance go (because it didn't go to court and apparantly the Christians in power that put them there agreed to more/r
We believe that there's one God (the father), so anyone else's concept of God would neccessarily be a variation on that. We believe people will be judged according to what they knew and what they intended. I.e. if you live in a culture sure that you have no chance to be exposed to the true gospel before you died, that will be taken into account.
Sweet. You guys are alright with me!:-D Hope you had a great Thanksgiving.
Hope you had a great Thanksgiving. Mine was a little fractured by a 13 hour drive at the end.
However, first I'd tend to disagree with the idea that the establishment clause suggests that federally owned land should not be used for sectarian purposes. [...] The idea that the government should be non-sectarian in allocation of federal resources is definitely supported by case law and is the standard in our country today. Nothing in the vast vast majority of cases the ACLU takes up has to do with the federal government mandating that the creation of a state religion.
You're right. I was just being being stupid I guess:-p by conflating "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof" with the actual issue of public money for sectarian purposes. With that said...
With respect to the ACLU and their "non-assault" on Christians,[...]
I was just saying that 'assault' is a loaded word to describe something as pragmatic as opposing building religious memorials with non-religious money.
[...] let me say that I agree completely with the ideals you espouse above - that the TACLU (theoretical ACLU)
Hehe:)
would defend and protect the rights of all Americans against the abuses of the state. In practice, while the ACLU does not in fact go after Christians per se, the net effect of their behavior is that public expression of Christian values and behaviors are less and less acceptable.
But this is again my primary contention, going back to my first comment on your POV, there is a very important distinction between individual expression and 'majority rules expression'. So when you say "public expression of Christian values" above, I hope you are in fact defending public expression of MY PERSONAL Christian values and behvaiors and not some commitee, consensus or government "public expression". If that is the case, you have no problem with the 'T'ACLU, only your (frankly, and I apologize again) misconception of of it. The only other possibility is what I so flagrantly said before (I apologize also for the tone, as it turned out unjustified)"you don't actually care about individual religious expression as guaranteed in the 1st, you only care about getting the State to sponsor your religious expression".
If an organization does not attack me, but facilitates the public perception [...]
A wrong public perception, promulgated by whom?
[...] that the expression of my beliefs in the public square is unacceptable, that if I happen to be standing on government owned land when I do it I'm breaking the law and should be estopped by the courts, isn't the fact that they sued the city, county or state and not me directly a bit of a "distinction without a difference?" [...] I'm saying that the culture in the US is less tolerant of Christian views, and that the ACLU is part of the problem.
If you were ever estopped from expressing your beliefs in the public square by anyone --whether the owner of that 'square' was a school-board, a county, a state, or federal-- the ACLU would come to your aid. Any belief to the contrary is unfounded.
It's my position that the ACLU is not part of the problem, it's just a whipping boy, a convenient target, a distraction (Copid made a pretty compelling argument for this as well in a sibling post). I'd be happy to brain-storm or debate about this "culture in the US [that is] is less tolerant of Christian views"; where it comes from, if it exists at all, etc. If U.S. culture really is less tolerant of Christian views, maybe there's some ugly truth that no one wants to confront? (Wildly hypothetical e.g., America is more diverse, with all parties being less tolerant than Christians then it logically follows that a U.S. made up of these more diverse less-tolerant, less-Christian people would just be per capita less tolerant of "Christian views"; this is more tha
Thanks for the reply. I guess I was just saying that some cultures have followed morales considered to be universal without our contemporary notions of what is the Law of God.
As for the non-Christians burning in hell... doesn't it say in Proverbs (21?) "All men believe they are right in their hearts. Let it be God that judges their hearts" or some such. (Maybe I should look it up.) Anyway, I'm just saying that God isn't really so into how you address Him (that's my take anyhow)... and that what people think and say and do shouldn't send a message of damnation one way or another. Um another way, since the final say isn't up to us, should we just be tolerant instead?
Does the LDS teach that Allah is not the same God? I've heard some Christians say that the Muslim's God is pagan or false, etc. It makes me mad. Or really sad, I guess.
Sigh. It's late here. I'm besmirching my good name with this incoherent post. Goodnight.
Thank you for the well-reasoned response! Normally I just get a lot of fire and brimstone (look at my post history with one guy a little while ago).
Let's be clear, persecution of Christians for their religious beliefs DOES occur. Predominantly this is at the hands of atheistic or Muslim governments. More than 150,000 Christians were killed last year for their Christian beliefs. (Source: Missionary to Indonesia speaking at my church - not available on the web. This number is consistent with other sources I have heard.) What's happening here is not persecution. What is happening here is that the culture is becoming more intolerant and hostile to my worldview. Others may disagree, but I have observed management in my company tell people that they cannot discuss religion at work. This is a violation of free speech rights regardless of religious views, but there's a fear and perception that recognition of religious belief at work is unacceptable. It's only going to get worse and worse.
I did want to touch-back on this bit a little though. I do not deny that Christians are persecuted. They are. It sucked to be Christian in Iraq for years (it still mostly does all around the region). It sucks to be a Christian in China (despite the Presidential photo-op). What I'm saying is that Christians are not persecuted in the U.S. -- and every time someone mentions that the ACLU are 'persecuting Christians' it's a farce in light of Real Christians getting Really Persecuted (or again, Muslims or Jews or anyone else getting beaten and murdered in their streets). What I find ironic is that... if you contacted the ACLU about your problem with freedom of speech at the workplace they would either file amicus in your suit against said employer, or if the situation was dire enough, bring the suit with you. The ACLU is all about the 1st Amendment -- and the fact that they are the latest (right-wing) Christian whipping boy is absurd.
I don't want my federal taxes establishing one religion above another. It's against what I think the 1st Amendment means. The ACLU seems to be pretty close on that same score, it's never an issue until there is Federal money involved. What you see as "States' Rights cases" are often more blurry than that -- as these days, the Federal government has it's tendrils in every corner of state government. As a Libertarian this burns me to the core. That's why I can get past the piss and vinegar (and religious bias) and defend the ACLU.
So, help me (and other Libertarians, and maybe even the miserable LP.org) in getting the Federal money and power out of the county, and state governments. At that point, you won't even have a problem with the ACLU unless your state constitution has similar protections against the establishment of one religion (or one religion above another).
Do you see what I'm saying? I'm not trying to be combative.
You also say: With respect to the ACLU, while there may occasionally be cases where they defend the rights of Christians, I'd ask you to go to their page and search for "Christian" and see how many cases turn up in favor of Christian rights compared with the tsunami wall of cases against Christians.
The ACLU doesn't file cases against "Christians" -- the "tsunami wall of cases" is against governments. Weird anecdotal counter point: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=site%3Aaclu.o rg+christian yields roughly the same number of results for 'christian', 'muslim' or 'jewish' (including such obvious counterpoints like "After ACLU Intervention on Behalf of Christian Valedictorian, Michigan High School Agrees to Stop Censoring Religious Yearbook Entries (5/11/2004)"). I'm sorry to say that I'm unwilling to check all 600 for each, but if you have the time feel free and let me know what you find (and source it). It's easy to think the ACLU is after you -- after all, you've obviously been told that by at least
OP said: Which BTW. The creation of the Earth has squat to do with Evolution.
To which you said: Evolution as a process, no. I believe in evolution as a process. The theory of evolution as an explanation of how the universe began has everything to do with the creation of the Earth.
And I continue...
The theory as you put it (why the emphasis, don't believe in science?) of evolution has nothing to do with how the universe began and further has absolutely nothing to do with the creation of the Earth. Evolution deals in biology. The creation of the universe (and subsequently the Earth) is studied by mostly cosmologists -- by looking very, very far through telescopes. If you accept the speed of light is constant through space, then you would accept that any observable radiation from 1 light-year away is transmitting information about one year prior. 100 Light years away, 100 years ago. 1 million light-years away, 1 million years ago. When we observe light today that has traveled 1 billion light-years we are observing the universe as it was 1 billion years ago. I think what you are disputing/confusing is more like the three different and unrelated theories of one: evolution (to explain the observable fact that animals change over time), two: the big-bang (the theory that all mass-energy, space and thus time come from the same source), and three: the formation of the solar system (the model describing how the accretion disc from our young sun coalesced using well known properties of gravity and elemental materials to create planets).
Regarding the big-bang, whether God did it, or 'hot-lumps' did it, we can observe that it happened (give or take) fourteen and a half billion years ago. The Earth was formed about 10 billion years later. If you are not a Biblical literalist you should have no problem squaring this away with Genesis (again assuming you accept such well measured properties such as the speed of light and the rate of radioactive decay; not a stretch if you accept plate tectonics).
So, nothing personal, just trying to clear up some terminology for your future debates. Evolution (the theories of natural selection and such) only deal with biology, not with the "creation" of Earth or universe. I can see how it would get confused in a 'creationist-evolutionist' debate, but to be clear, evolution doesn't address creation in any way (again, those are things like cosmology (universe), abiogenesis (life), and others (sentience for example)).
In my opinion, the Koran has one huge advantage over the Bible(s) and that is that it is the immutable, untranslatable Word of God. If devout book-worshippers even now had to learn the ancient hand and tongue of the Bible it would probably help them appreciate nuance in a way that only studying a non-native language can. I can't speak to whether or not this would increase or decrease the amount of fundamentalism among denominations, but I would say that anecdotally, studying the Bible in Latin hasn't hurt Catholics any... they might even be pleased to be once-less removed from the actual and original Word. In the same vein, a great many (i.e., a large majority of) Muslims aren't literalists.
I've read all the tracts about why it's OK that the Christian bible is translated (God works through consensus apparently -- but only when it comes to survival and translation of His word not survival and transformation of His creatures). All of that would be avoided if the Bible were immutable.
I should have checked the Wikipedia page to see if this is on there... if not, check this out http://www.reciter.org/.
Anyhow, no disagreement with what you say, just an addendum really.
There's an all-out war to preclude any public religious speech in this country. Don't believe that? Why is the ACLU filing suit against Las Cruces NM for having Crosses in their logo? the town is known as "THE CROSSES!" It's revisionist history at best. It's persecution of the Christian worldview at most. It's troubling either way.
Where did you hear this? Do you have a source? There is no mention of this suit on the ACLU website. There is no mention in this article: http://www.freenewmexican.com/news/32902.html.
Either I'm under-informed, you're misinformed or you're just making shit up. Which is it?
Of course when the ACLU is fighting in court to allow Muslims to wear head scarfes or Christians to wear crucifixes then it's all swept under the rug (because you don't actually care about individual religious expression as guaranteed in the 1st, you only care about getting the State to sponsor your religious expression). It's obvious though that we have different understandings of the establishment clause. Fortunately, it's not for you or I to decide (I mean largely, it may not even be worth debate, since what we think it means matters not on whit). I guess we'll just have to keep relying on the SCOTUS as the Constitution intended.
I've spoken with persecuted Christians before. I just don't see it. I've said it before: the cult of victimization only belittles though who are actually victims of religious persecution (e.g., murdered Muslims in England, Jews in Poland, etc.).
Sorry for being so hotheaded. It's nothing personal. I'm just riled up from this debate.
I'm pleased that you tried to understand what San was saying to you. He is right to encourage you to broaden your horizons with the writings of the modern philosophers (if not an honest study, maybe the Cliff's Notes). It wouldn't hurt to consider the Eastern philosophies either. Depending on your bias, you could say that men lived for a thousand years justly and morally without a "religion" by following the Tao and the earliest schools of the Buddha (philosophies without an underlying faith in the divine, only in the human).
I think it's pretty clear that there is a difference between 'religion' and 'philosophy' -- otherwise one of those words would have disappeared from our language. We would no longer need to talk about morality or ethics or philosophy because we could rather just talk about religion or religion or theology.
I wondered what perhaps someone from the opposite extreme might think, with an equally intolerant and cruel intention. "If you're stupid enough to not believe in God's laws, then perhaps you ought to try anarchy, i.e. get carjacked and killed."
(With a touch of levity) I thought it was more often phrased like this: "If you're stupid enough not to believe in God's laws, then perhaps you ought to burn in Hell for all eternity". It seems so much more enlightened when you put it your way. "Carjacked and killed" seems so much less inhumane than an eternity of torment (if anything the punishment is finite). This is the aspect of modern religion I find most distasteful; the kind that indiscriminately damns the non-believer. I can understand the motive behind promises of eternal life and mercantile or hedonistic utopias -- but why oh why do some faiths insist that the un-chosen, or the un-saved have to burn in their hell? Wouldn't it be bad enough that they just can't live in the golden cities behind the pearly gates, forever looking over the wall saying, 'darn shucks, I followed the wrong prophet'? Why the torture? When you choose not to follow the Tao, or more recently fail to take Camus's advice, you're just stuck living a miserable, unfruitful life ending with your meaningless death (and if you're Buddhist or otherwise believe in reincarnation, you get to live that meaningless life again and again until you embark on the Eightfold Path).
Well anyhow, I'm only a layman. Full dislcosure: My father, wife and in-laws are Lutheran. My mom's a Unitarian. One of my grannies is technically a Jew. I come from a background that's basically removed from all fundamentalism -- so that's why I ask. If you aren't a true-believer or otherwise don't believe that a just God would do such things then you know, you don't have to answer.
I said originally: I think this [each 'side' being spoon-fed their own position in a way that is amusing to the 'other side'] is why they still enjoy such a large audience. Matt and Trey are equal opportunity 'haters'. I guess the genius is that we all see it through our own colored glasses.
You said I'm wrong, it's obviously a conservative show that makes fun of liberal consistently, "I disagree - they're not equal opportunity by any means. They do often attack conservative folly, but not as often as liberal." You then go on to point out episodes you believe are 'conservative' (even though calling any episode of South Park conservative is a stretch).
I think it's your colored glasses. Each of the episodes you marked as conservative could be labeled 'makes fun of conservatives'. To claim that South Park is against wide-spread cursing (and is therefor pro-conservative) based on the existence (and hyperbolic consequences depicted) of the we-can-say-shit-on-TV-episode... that's just retarded. Maybe satire and parody are lost on you. If anything it's a protest against the conservatives running the FCC (this meme is repeated frequently on the show).
Further, America! Fuck yeah! Overblown patriotism has never stopped nuclear proliferation or terrorism. It's just a farce. "the Team are unambiguously the heros of the movie, despite their clumsiness, overblown patriotism, and "very bad intelligence." Parker and Stone poke gentle fun at Red America. But the anti-American actors are portrayed as unredeemably foolish, spoiled and evil, and are violently killed." Which entirely makes my point -- equal opportunity. If this isn't a parody of our failed, contemporary foreign policy, I don't know if we can even agree on anything. If not, there's really no point in debate.
This season so far (season 9) has also been pretty equal opportunity (barring the recent episode making fun of R. Kelly, Scientology and Tom Cruise's gayness -- that doesn't really seem political on any level other than pointing out that Scientologists are bat-shit insane) made fun of topics like global warming (Two Days before the Day After Tomorrow), gay marriage (Fancy new Vagina, Follow that Egg), fun with racism (Gingerkids), cross-dressing plus WMD (Marjorine), the PSP episode or why conservatives are wrong about Terry Schiavo (Best Friends Forever), racism and stupidness of Hollywood movies (Die, Hippy Die), etc.
Anyway... nothing personal, but it doesn't look like you are going to change my mind. The Point stands. I see more than one side when I watch; maybe you don't, but your anecdotal evidence isn't swaying me. South Park is equal opportunity and this why it continues to be successful. If the far-fringes of both sides (that can stand to watch swearing kids, butt-sex, violence and gore) only see the part of the show they want to see -- not the giant homosexual fuck-suck fests to demonstrate against Goo-backs (racism, bad immigration policy) and not the natural unavoidable Capitalist progression of ma and pa shops into Satanic soul-devouring big-box stores for middle-class families (the Walmart question) -- that doesn't undermine the fact that fun/admonishment is pointed to both sides of every issue covered. The ending of every show can be summed up: Stan (or Kyle) gives a little sob story about why we should take a common-sense, centrist, pragmatic, inclusive position on nearly any debate. Cartman's point of view, while almost always hilarious is almost always wrong (just to mix it up, I think they've given one or two episodes where Eric was 'right').
Well again, nothing personal. I don't mean to sound too riled up.
I find South Park quite watchable, although (or because) it's often a thinly disguised swipe at liberals.
What a weird thing to say. I find that South Park is often a thinly veiled swipe at conservatives. I think this is why they still enjoy such a large audience. Matt and Trey are equal opportunity 'haters'. I guess the genius is that we all see it through our own colored glasses.
E.g., when a stupid liberal watches this all they see is a hilarious parody of ham-fisted American colonialism; but when a stupid conservative watches it all they see is hilarious caricatures of elitest left-wing Hollywood.
I find both sides hilarious, which is probably why I hate politics so much.
So that's my idea - a national blacklist of pirates. If somebody cannot obey the basic rules of society, then they should be excluded from society. If pirates want to steal from the music industry, then the music industry should exclude them. It's that simple. One strike, and you're out - no reputable record store will allow you to buy another CD. If the pirates can't buy the CDS to begin with, then they won't be able to copy them over The Internet, will they? It's no different to doctors blacklisting drug dealers from buying prescription medicine. (emphasis my own)
What's funny is this has worked so well in our War on Drugs that our prisons everywhere are bursting at the seams! What portion of society do you exclude before the rules have to change?
I'll believe that when people stop buying $200 jeans, $300 "bling" chains, $500 jackets, and $50,000 SUVs. There's plenty of money to go around, people just don't want to spend it. After all, says the general public, why buy something when you can just get it for free?
This argument is fallacious. Can you show amongst consumers that also buy above items that CD sales are down?
Common sense (not a factual assertion) would say that the market segment that is still buying designer jeans and jackets, jewelry and luxury autos is still buying music. As mentioned elsewhere it's more likely to be the teens and tweens of middle-class families (the largest class of pop-music consumers) that are getting crunched out of discretionary spending (the same familes that aren't getting luxury vehicles or anything that isn't sold at big box stores: I'd say that maybe when parent(s) won't provide money for a CD a child might be more likely to copy it, even if she knew it was wrong). I further imagine that the group of people that can afford new iPods for Christmas (in addition to designer jeans and jackets) are still buying CDs, too.
So, my counter-unfounded-assertion is that the rich, fashion conscious SUV owners are still buying CDs and are not responsible for the RIAAs disc-slump.:-) If only there was some market research that could tell us these things.
The way I read "fair-use" in the US, is that it is protection granted to comment on works. I don't see how copying the entire work onto a different media would be included in that definition.
It's not even a protection really.
What's so great about the current copyright law (in the U.S.) is that Fair Use is (just) a defense. Essentially, that means when it comes to copyright infringement you are guilty until proven innocent.:-D
If I use a piece of TV in a film I've made (and have publicly displayed or distributed not just kept in a can somewhere for eternity)... Or even worse, there is just a TV playing in a shot that I take... I might reasonably assume that I can get away with it using a the Fair Use defense; However, that does not prevent me from getting SUED. I have infringed -- there is no doubt. It then becomes a matter out of my immediate control, left to the lawyers of the party infringed, the judge involved, and whomever I can produce for my defense (at my own expense of course).
This is why copyright law is such a snake pit these days and why more and more real-life footage is being censored of trademarks and rebroadcast material etc. Have you seen footage of Times Square that has been censored to prevent this kind of indirect (but still actionable) infringement? Sigh.
"Properly punctuated e" according to whom? Romaji does not use accents. The correct transliteration is "animeeshon". [...] I used "Romaji" because that's the accepted spelling, whether it's consistent or not. I've been studying Japanese for over 9 years, and while Romaji is certainly a mess of tangled, inconsistent standards, use of diacritical marks is almost nonexistent, no matter what the "new Hepburn" might define. And thanks, jerk, for being the nitpicking asshole who points out standards that no one actually follows.
Nothing personal this time, but just what I would expect from someone that started out by nitpicking someone else. While I haven't studied the language as long as you (I only minored in Asian studies which included a few years of Japanese, some intro to Chinese and Korean), I think I've made my point.
Bitching about someone's use or not-use of some transliteration "standard" ("accepted spelling") is actually just like you said, being a "jerk" and a "nitpicking asshole."
You both accepted and reiterated my point -- while at the same time condemning yourself. You and I both know that nitpicking that kid about animeshon was dickish. Maybe you were just having a bad day?
Again, I'm glad the irony wasn't lost on you.
If you want to "use your powers for good" consider nitpicking and translating for Wikipedia (I do). Cheers again.
It may not be protectable, but since you see it as such a problem I invite you to create other methods by which the creator can be compensated.
Certainly many people contribute without expecting anything in return, but such attitudes can only reach so far, especially when creation of an "idea" requires the involvement of material goods that aren't cheap.
Never mind the time aspect, and that people need to eat.
Hey Microlith, long time no see. This is not to defend the GP for not offering alternatives:) I'll bet others will chime in with examples even before I finish my post. But anyway...
The alternatives to IP society have been addressed to death here and elsewhere. Lessig's free-to-download book Free Culture even touches on it (though, like me he advocates reform, not abolishment, of limited time state-granted monopolies for the purposes of promoting science and useful arts [for the advancement of the public domain]). Growing the public domain is the reason we offer copyright/patent protection in the first place! Artist compensation (in our case, feeding artists via expression/invention-monopoly) is a means to that end.
Anyhow, the progression works like this:
The first step is limited-time government monopolies (what we used to have after the first Congress; perpetual copyright --what we have now for as long as the Supreme Court agrees that forever minus a day is "limited"-- is not an incentive to grow the public domain and may not even be an incentive to create more than one time). These monopolies work greatest where we have scarcity (like in a particular expression in a tangible medium). Weirdly, we're approaching an age where we may have negligible scarcity even in tangible mediums (ubiquitous robotic labor, computer aided artifact replication, nano fabrication, etc.)
The second step is works for hire (the information age allows for works-for-hire (patronage) on a massive scale, there's plenty of missives about it; this leads to the most radical final step further down). This is what all the RIAA 'opponents' dwell on. Barriers to direct artist-consumer relationships have been removed. From car-part sculptors to garage bands, artists can now create and sell works directly to their audience (vis. eBay, concerts via webcast, Cafe Press, MMORPGs and so on). If the pratically direct and immediate compensation of labor (art) by one's audience isn't an incentive to create we may as well be doomed.
The third step is public patronage (covers "works held hostage" i.e., payment upfront with large, transparent, refundable escrow accounts. A work produced from public patronage would pass into the public domain upon completion). This idea has also been discussed to death. It has also transpired at least once with software in the real world.
I'm sure there's articles about all of these on E2.
So, the ball is already rolling. What remains to be seen is if "IP" reforms will ever take place to get out of the way or if the two will collide (with the only recourse being things like Creative Commons).
I know that most of these don't address the patent system. I largely agree with the patent system's current inplementation (barring the bureaucratic ineffeciencies and bone-headedness of algorithm patents, er I mean "business process" and software patents). I'm just saying the alternatives have been talked to death for many many years, maybe to the point that we don't need to explain them everytime we demand a change to the "IP" regime (many libertarians have written essays over the last 200 years about whether expressions and ideas are property).
This isn't insightful. It's pretty much wrong (or was maybe meant to be humorous). This is like saying that if it rained more we'd all get killed (by the intense global warming that would results from all that water vapor! Clouds!). Water is a cycle that's basically at equilibrium. We aren't gaining or losing any to/from space (except tiny, tiny, insignificant amounts). We aren't going out of our way to find, dig up, and then burn billions of gallons of water every year.:-p It's all in and around us.:-D
I don't see how the burning of hydrogen (created by and large from the electrolysis of... WATER) is going to alter the equilibrium one whit.
Now, what would alter the current balance, is if a bunch of CO2 that had been buried (and hence locked out of the atmosphere) for like 100 million years was being routinely sought, found, dug up and then burned in huge volumes every year.
The problem with the 'hydrogen economy' is that as it's currently envisioned it's still just a petrochemical economy -- except the gas pump is hidden to the consumer. It's still just coal plants and natural gas plants and whatever else we can dig up and burn to generate electricity to split hydrogen out of water or whatever else. Of course then we'll package and transport it with plastics and other petrochem-derived goodies. Until we get over ourselves and stop burning the oil and coal and using nuclear and other alternatives hydrogen is just a facade.
Ignoring everything else (like, uh, we can predict if it will rain tomorrow.:-)
Because global warming is the modern, secular, version of original sin. People just know that there has to be some horrible price to pay for eating from the tree of knowledge, and destroying all life on the planet sounds just about right to them as the price we have to pay. [...] We are the most important thing on the planet, and obviously there isn't anything that we can't do. If we are destroying the planet, then all we need to do is renounce our evil ways, and we can save the planet. That makes much more sense. That is how the universe really works. If we want to destroy a planet, then we can, and likewise if we want to save a planet, then we can do that too. We aren't just a bunch of insignificant specs crawling around the surface of some giant system totally beyond our control. We are the center of everything, and all that matters is what we choose to do. Yeah, that sounds much better.
I think it's a little ironic that the power elite in previous eras burned 'scientists' (or naturalists, or heretics all depending on your point of view) at the stake for similarly ego-deflating theories... The 'Father of Science' even recanted Copernican theory (under the threat of torture and death of course) and was still imprisoned for the remainder of his life.
"What? We aren't the center of the Universe? We live on a ball of rock that orbits a fiery gas-ball in some obscure corner of an unfathomable expanse? We weren't divinely created? Intelligence isn't uniquely human?" and on and on.
Imagine the persecution to come of scientists that create sentient machines, artificial life, weather manipulation, terra-forming, etc. Any discovery that steps on God's domain is unquestioningly derided, claimed as heresy; the incursion is used as evidence against ideas and their proponents who are otherwise deeply passionate, spiritual, and religious.
Godless Scientist is a stereotype as bad (and probably more widely held than) any of the others prevalent today.
Nothing personal, I'm not one to judge if you hold these views.
His words were (properly quoted) "appropriately punctuated" not 'properly' as you misquoted him.
Transliteration is a huge hassle. One could say that using diacriticals is 'appropriate' as the revised Hepburn style has used for years. In that case it wouldn't be animeeshon (kana transcription aka Kunrei-shiki) it would be animêshon (using the the substitution of circumflexes for macrons prevalent on, for example, IMDB, as a crutch against non unicode sites). The old Hepburn style just ignored long vowels and animeshon would be correct in that system (English speakers/writers like the accents, macrons and apostrophes because it helps our language distinguish between pokémon/poe-kay-mahn/ and poke-mon/poke-mun/ and names that are ambiguous like Shin'ichirô).
Ironically, you were trying to point out how wrong his transliteration was, when you didn't do "romaji" correctly by your own standard. Ha, it's roumaji (with kana transcribed or if you prefer the long-O marked with a diacrit rômaji). If you're nihonjin (it doesn't appear so from a cursory check at your website) it's even more ironic you can't use the romanization system on your own street/train signs.
Anyhow. Slashdot sucks for not taking unicode. And you're a jerk for being an inconsistent pedant.
Other than that it looks like we share a lot of the same interests! Cheers.
I also play Animal Crossing (not so secret now, huh) and on December 10th... I may have to buy a DS. I think there are actually a great many adults that do (as you mention, provided no one is looking):-p
I also play Puzzle Pirates (ahoy!):-D
Now, to re-establish my Y-chromosome, I also love GTA and Dawn of War! (and Zeldas, and Final Fantasies, and Castlevanias, and Onimushas, and Quakes, and Half-lifes, and and and...). Er, please to note that there's no reason that ladies can't love these same games (when they aren't playing Diner Dash, haha).
His mother (I am divorced) is raising him Reformed Judaism, and he is not permitted to wear his Yarmulke in school--both because it promotes a religion, and because they have a 'no hats' policy in keeping with 'anti gang' symbolism.
There is a really great chance that you (or his mother) could sue to permit his wearing of the yarmulke. What's scarier, is that the ACLU would even join you. So, while this (official prayer case) enrages you, this (hijab case) should encourage you!
Anyhow, school boards (generally) suck so bad that I bet if there were a gang that had a tradition of not shaving their beards that they would mandate that students shave. Also, while browsing around I did find this 5-year-old article dealing with my city -- it seems we are not immune from parents with non-Christian children suing for 'no official prayer'.
Following the 1992 decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in Lee v. Weisman prohibiting "prayer, benediction, or invocation at any graduation ceremonies" conducted or sponsored by a public school board, the Duval County School Board adopted a policy authorizing students to deliver prayers and religious messages at commencements. The policy and guidelines contain no requirement that the prayers and other religious messages at graduation ceremonies be non-sectarian.
As one example, the following prayer was offered at the June 10, 1993, Jean Ribault Senior High School commencement:
Help us to understand that we must help the one who plunders in some agony or strife, for we know it must be our Christian duty to pay heed to every pride, and deny no soul the kindness of some need we can supply. Lord help us to realize that you made us all to matter to you, our maker, as well as to each other. These and other blessings we ask in the Lord Jesus' name. Amen
If I was a devout non-Christian, this invocation would tarnish one of the most important days of my young life. Discrminination sucks.
Sadly, still no evidence of how the ACLU harmed you. You personally. None of your example cases are for north Florida anyway. I guess it's not common knowledge outside of Florida that the south end of the state is all Yankee. Well whatever, I knew you'd say you couldn't move (only real victims flee persecution, harkening back to my original point of cheapening what religious persecution actually means. e.g., heading backward through time: imprisonment, branding, burning, being fed to the lions, and on).
This is what I'm trying to understand... at Thanksgiving in a couple of weeks, when I stand with my entire family (some of whom are not Christians) I don't feel it would be sensitive to pray with them in Jesus' name. That's what I'm trying to say. When I stand in fellowship with people from other denominations or faiths I don't feel it's right to make them stand in silence resenting and rejecting a prayer that I offer for them. I guess it's like which is worse:
"Hey, I'm going to lead a prayer in a way that would be sacrilegious for you to take part in, so you should leave."
-or-
"Hey, I'm going to lead a prayer in a way that is sensitive to the beliefs of everyone present."
If "Living in Society requires a certain amount of conformity and self restraint," can't you show a little restraint?
As a libertarian I'm not so hot on compulsory public education (thankfully in America the State doesn't have a monopoly on education and one can choose to home-school or privately educated one's children). Private education would make this argument moot. As long as the State is involved in teaching there is only one way to avoid "an establishment of religion". Teaching all aspects, and allowing all rites of all religions is impossible (the equal-time argument is a fallacy when time is finite and religious variety is infinite), so the only viable alternative is to teach no aspects of religion and allow no rites (well outside of theology and philosophy classes I suppose). I pray that one day all Federal money will be removed from schools, at which point it would become a state matter. Imagine... If the Pennsylvania legislature wanted to compel private schools to issue a Bible to every student regardless of faith, it would be for you to vote on. The law could be upheld or struck down by your own courts in accordance with your own [state] constitution.
Anyhow, I can see we aren't going to reach an understanding. I don't think the ACLU is the problem, I think the government is. I can't tell for sure, but I think it's just the opposite for you: the government is OK but it's the ACLU screwing it all up. (By what? By making up their own laws and compelling you to follow them with lawyers and judges [those bastards!]?! I contend the problem is further up the chain, not with the lawyers and judges, but with the legislature and the laws they make in 'our' name.)
I wish you'd recounted an anecdote about how the ACLU had damaged you in your own town, rather than someone elses kid in someone elses town. It's alright though; I know that some people can hate second-hand (like hating commies when you don't know any, or hating blacks when you don't know any, etc.; the generalization fallacy is a requisite in almost every case!).
You should move to Florida, we don't have whatever "east-coast god-less communist elitism" that you are suffering from up in PA. Barring the hurricanes, the weather is probably nicer too! If you require the bad weather you could try Missouri (where my wife's extended-family lives).
To defend the obvious argument of not wanting to move, I just have to remind you that there is nothing more American than fleeing religious persecution at home and moving somewhere more friendly (like the New World, or in this case south of the Mason-Dixon). My family is largely Lutheran and we don't even get "harassed" (used loosely) by anyone very often (north Florida is largely Baptist). Then again, we are sensitive enough not to pray in Jesus' name when there are non-Christians among us. I know that some people believe that sensitivity somehow denies their rights. I see sensitivity as an expression of personal freedom. Living in Society requires a certain amount of conformity and self restraint. I guess you could also call sensitivity "restraint".
Still, I'm sorry to hear that it's so bad up in PA. Sorry if I was being too cheeky.
Your principle really does mean that if ANYONE ELSE has ever quoted the same passage, you have to also quote them. You and I both know that's wrong, so you can spare me the lecture.
No It Doesn't. As the sibling points out you are either intentionally misstating my point, or you've just missed it again.
Go back to your freshman English teacher and ask him/her about citing indirect quotations and why it's important. I tried to explain it was about context, but whatever.
Odds and ends: I think I even gave the caveat that you may not have indirectly quoted the page in question (maybe the zeal was in your eyes when you read "had you in fact copied this quotation from another site"); On Slashdot (with its aparent libertarian contingent), LewRockwell.com is hardly obscure; Additionally, in a conversational forum like this, I'm surprised anyone bothers to try to cite anything, haha other than sophism and the occasional arguement from authority ("See, everyone agrees I'm right," or "you're wrong because the right people agree with me!"); I recognize the irony of this paragraph following the former.
Anyhow, I wasn't making any accusations. You don't have to dignify this with a response. Cheers!
Slashdot Mirror
I forgot when speaking about the other Commandments cases that the SCOTUS upheld the Establishment Clause in this regard in similar cases.
c ourt=US&navby=case&vol=000&invol=03-1693
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/cgi-bin/getcase.pl?
Still this ruling isn't "airtight" enough that other Commandmenteers won't try new variations (by, again doesn't it sound humorous, trying to remove the religous meaning from a religious symbol) and appeal them all the way up at everyone's time/expense.
Sigh. Snarkily,
David
(An apology in advance, I kinda started to rant and ramble at the end, so you can skip this post if you want.)
.ap/ /
Well, now that most of my Thanks is given, I've had a chance to review your supports for the ongoing ACLU assault on Christian's rights.
Your words:
HOWEVER, I believed it because of the ongoing assault on Christian's rights from the ACLU which I have seen again and again:
http://archives.cnn.com/2000/US/11/01/desert.cross
http://www.cnn.com/2003/LAW/08/27/ten.commandments
http://www.aclu.org//religion/tencomm/16298prs2000 1012.html
http://www.kotv.com/main/home/stories.asp?whichpag e=1&id=91429
Let me get these done first.
First one, a large permanent cross in a national park. This one was filed by the ACLU/SC (SC for Southern California, this group was founded by Upton Sinclair). I don't know if you know anything about his views on religion, his bibliography should give you an idea (here's a link from Google's beta book search, neat stuff, well if you hadn't heard, he was a pretty big critic of the organized religion and later became a socialist). Anyhow, I can respect the loose assertion that the ACLU/SC reflects on the ACLU in the same way that say, Catholics reflect on Christians. Each is a smaller group that affiliates with a whole. If you let me judge you by the actions of Catholics, then you can judge the ACLU by the actions of ACLU/SC -- i.e., the fallacy of generialazation. But getting past that -- the park didn't even try to fight it, it never even went to court, everyone involved just rolled over, because they knew that the anonymous ranger (that haha, "claimed to be Catholic") that sought the ACLU/SC's help would have won in court. Damn those courts.
Second one, Glassroth v. Moore. I am not a lawyer, but if you are I'd be interested to know why you believe both courts were wrong. Further, the ACLU was not a plaintiff in this case. The only relevant case that the ACLU was a plaintiff in was ACLU v. Rabun County (11th Circuit) in 1983. Was the U.S. "intolerant of Christian views" back then? I don't recall. But further, if you look up the opinion http://www.ca11.uscourts.gov/opinions/ops/20021670 8.pdf, the money quote is on the bottom of page 34: "Clearly erroneous they [the district court's previous findings of fact] are not. Moreover, even if we were free to review the determination de novo, having examined the record ourselves, we agree with the district court that it is "self-evident" that Chief Justice Moore's purpose in displaying the monument was non-secular. Given all of the evidence, including the Chief Justice's own words, we cannot see how a court could reach any other conclusion." So, basically open and shut. After Moore's appeal was rejected it should have been clear that his next step wasn't to get suspended in an act of civil disobedience but to obey the court's decision (what? a judge with contempt for the court?!) and used his only recourse, get the Constitution amended. It's laughable to consider the First Amendment to be an "assault on Christian's rights" so maybe you offered this example by mistake.
Third one, Montanna's Custer county officials roll over and settle in a similar year-2000 case involving another Commandments monument and a "seasonal nativity". I don't know what this shows us as far as assaults or tolerance go (because it didn't go to court and apparantly the Christians in power that put them there agreed to more/r
We believe that there's one God (the father), so anyone else's concept of God would neccessarily be a variation on that. We believe people will be judged according to what they knew and what they intended. I.e. if you live in a culture sure that you have no chance to be exposed to the true gospel before you died, that will be taken into account.
:-D Hope you had a great Thanksgiving.
Sweet. You guys are alright with me!
Hope you had a great Thanksgiving. Mine was a little fractured by a 13 hour drive at the end.
:-p by conflating "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof" with the actual issue of public money for sectarian purposes. With that said...
:)
However, first I'd tend to disagree with the idea that the establishment clause suggests that federally owned land should not be used for sectarian purposes. [...] The idea that the government should be non-sectarian in allocation of federal resources is definitely supported by case law and is the standard in our country today. Nothing in the vast vast majority of cases the ACLU takes up has to do with the federal government mandating that the creation of a state religion.
You're right. I was just being being stupid I guess
With respect to the ACLU and their "non-assault" on Christians,[...]
I was just saying that 'assault' is a loaded word to describe something as pragmatic as opposing building religious memorials with non-religious money.
[...] let me say that I agree completely with the ideals you espouse above - that the TACLU (theoretical ACLU)
Hehe
would defend and protect the rights of all Americans against the abuses of the state. In practice, while the ACLU does not in fact go after Christians per se, the net effect of their behavior is that public expression of Christian values and behaviors are less and less acceptable.
But this is again my primary contention, going back to my first comment on your POV, there is a very important distinction between individual expression and 'majority rules expression'. So when you say "public expression of Christian values" above, I hope you are in fact defending public expression of MY PERSONAL Christian values and behvaiors and not some commitee, consensus or government "public expression". If that is the case, you have no problem with the 'T'ACLU, only your (frankly, and I apologize again) misconception of of it. The only other possibility is what I so flagrantly said before (I apologize also for the tone, as it turned out unjustified)"you don't actually care about individual religious expression as guaranteed in the 1st, you only care about getting the State to sponsor your religious expression".
If an organization does not attack me, but facilitates the public perception [...]
A wrong public perception, promulgated by whom?
[...] that the expression of my beliefs in the public square is unacceptable, that if I happen to be standing on government owned land when I do it I'm breaking the law and should be estopped by the courts, isn't the fact that they sued the city, county or state and not me directly a bit of a "distinction without a difference?" [...] I'm saying that the culture in the US is less tolerant of Christian views, and that the ACLU is part of the problem.
If you were ever estopped from expressing your beliefs in the public square by anyone --whether the owner of that 'square' was a school-board, a county, a state, or federal-- the ACLU would come to your aid. Any belief to the contrary is unfounded.
It's my position that the ACLU is not part of the problem, it's just a whipping boy, a convenient target, a distraction (Copid made a pretty compelling argument for this as well in a sibling post). I'd be happy to brain-storm or debate about this "culture in the US [that is] is less tolerant of Christian views"; where it comes from, if it exists at all, etc. If U.S. culture really is less tolerant of Christian views, maybe there's some ugly truth that no one wants to confront? (Wildly hypothetical e.g., America is more diverse, with all parties being less tolerant than Christians then it logically follows that a U.S. made up of these more diverse less-tolerant, less-Christian people would just be per capita less tolerant of "Christian views"; this is more tha
Thanks for the reply. I guess I was just saying that some cultures have followed morales considered to be universal without our contemporary notions of what is the Law of God.
... and that what people think and say and do shouldn't send a message of damnation one way or another. Um another way, since the final say isn't up to us, should we just be tolerant instead?
As for the non-Christians burning in hell... doesn't it say in Proverbs (21?) "All men believe they are right in their hearts. Let it be God that judges their hearts" or some such. (Maybe I should look it up.) Anyway, I'm just saying that God isn't really so into how you address Him (that's my take anyhow)
Does the LDS teach that Allah is not the same God? I've heard some Christians say that the Muslim's God is pagan or false, etc. It makes me mad. Or really sad, I guess.
Sigh. It's late here. I'm besmirching my good name with this incoherent post. Goodnight.
Thank you for the well-reasoned response! Normally I just get a lot of fire and brimstone (look at my post history with one guy a little while ago).
... if you contacted the ACLU about your problem with freedom of speech at the workplace they would either file amicus in your suit against said employer, or if the situation was dire enough, bring the suit with you. The ACLU is all about the 1st Amendment -- and the fact that they are the latest (right-wing) Christian whipping boy is absurd.
Let's be clear, persecution of Christians for their religious beliefs DOES occur. Predominantly this is at the hands of atheistic or Muslim governments. More than 150,000 Christians were killed last year for their Christian beliefs. (Source: Missionary to Indonesia speaking at my church - not available on the web. This number is consistent with other sources I have heard.) What's happening here is not persecution. What is happening here is that the culture is becoming more intolerant and hostile to my worldview. Others may disagree, but I have observed management in my company tell people that they cannot discuss religion at work. This is a violation of free speech rights regardless of religious views, but there's a fear and perception that recognition of religious belief at work is unacceptable. It's only going to get worse and worse.
I did want to touch-back on this bit a little though. I do not deny that Christians are persecuted. They are. It sucked to be Christian in Iraq for years (it still mostly does all around the region). It sucks to be a Christian in China (despite the Presidential photo-op). What I'm saying is that Christians are not persecuted in the U.S. -- and every time someone mentions that the ACLU are 'persecuting Christians' it's a farce in light of Real Christians getting Really Persecuted (or again, Muslims or Jews or anyone else getting beaten and murdered in their streets). What I find ironic is that
I don't want my federal taxes establishing one religion above another. It's against what I think the 1st Amendment means. The ACLU seems to be pretty close on that same score, it's never an issue until there is Federal money involved. What you see as "States' Rights cases" are often more blurry than that -- as these days, the Federal government has it's tendrils in every corner of state government. As a Libertarian this burns me to the core. That's why I can get past the piss and vinegar (and religious bias) and defend the ACLU.
So, help me (and other Libertarians, and maybe even the miserable LP.org) in getting the Federal money and power out of the county, and state governments. At that point, you won't even have a problem with the ACLU unless your state constitution has similar protections against the establishment of one religion (or one religion above another).
Do you see what I'm saying? I'm not trying to be combative.
You also say: With respect to the ACLU, while there may occasionally be cases where they defend the rights of Christians, I'd ask you to go to their page and search for "Christian" and see how many cases turn up in favor of Christian rights compared with the tsunami wall of cases against Christians.
The ACLU doesn't file cases against "Christians" -- the "tsunami wall of cases" is against governments. Weird anecdotal counter point: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=site%3Aaclu.o rg+christian yields roughly the same number of results for 'christian', 'muslim' or 'jewish' (including such obvious counterpoints like "After ACLU Intervention on Behalf of Christian Valedictorian, Michigan High School Agrees to Stop Censoring Religious Yearbook Entries (5/11/2004)"). I'm sorry to say that I'm unwilling to check all 600 for each, but if you have the time feel free and let me know what you find (and source it). It's easy to think the ACLU is after you -- after all, you've obviously been told that by at least
OP said: Which BTW. The creation of the Earth has squat to do with Evolution.
h tml
To which you said: Evolution as a process, no. I believe in evolution as a process. The theory of evolution as an explanation of how the universe began has everything to do with the creation of the Earth.
And I continue...
The theory as you put it (why the emphasis, don't believe in science?) of evolution has nothing to do with how the universe began and further has absolutely nothing to do with the creation of the Earth. Evolution deals in biology. The creation of the universe (and subsequently the Earth) is studied by mostly cosmologists -- by looking very, very far through telescopes. If you accept the speed of light is constant through space, then you would accept that any observable radiation from 1 light-year away is transmitting information about one year prior. 100 Light years away, 100 years ago. 1 million light-years away, 1 million years ago. When we observe light today that has traveled 1 billion light-years we are observing the universe as it was 1 billion years ago. I think what you are disputing/confusing is more like the three different and unrelated theories of one: evolution (to explain the observable fact that animals change over time), two: the big-bang (the theory that all mass-energy, space and thus time come from the same source), and three: the formation of the solar system (the model describing how the accretion disc from our young sun coalesced using well known properties of gravity and elemental materials to create planets).
Regarding the big-bang, whether God did it, or 'hot-lumps' did it, we can observe that it happened (give or take) fourteen and a half billion years ago. The Earth was formed about 10 billion years later. If you are not a Biblical literalist you should have no problem squaring this away with Genesis (again assuming you accept such well measured properties such as the speed of light and the rate of radioactive decay; not a stretch if you accept plate tectonics).
For further reading (if you want) about the age of our planet: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-age-of-earth.
So, nothing personal, just trying to clear up some terminology for your future debates. Evolution (the theories of natural selection and such) only deal with biology, not with the "creation" of Earth or universe. I can see how it would get confused in a 'creationist-evolutionist' debate, but to be clear, evolution doesn't address creation in any way (again, those are things like cosmology (universe), abiogenesis (life), and others (sentience for example)).
In my opinion, the Koran has one huge advantage over the Bible(s) and that is that it is the immutable, untranslatable Word of God. If devout book-worshippers even now had to learn the ancient hand and tongue of the Bible it would probably help them appreciate nuance in a way that only studying a non-native language can. I can't speak to whether or not this would increase or decrease the amount of fundamentalism among denominations, but I would say that anecdotally, studying the Bible in Latin hasn't hurt Catholics any... they might even be pleased to be once-less removed from the actual and original Word. In the same vein, a great many (i.e., a large majority of) Muslims aren't literalists.
I've read all the tracts about why it's OK that the Christian bible is translated (God works through consensus apparently -- but only when it comes to survival and translation of His word not survival and transformation of His creatures). All of that would be avoided if the Bible were immutable.
I should have checked the Wikipedia page to see if this is on there... if not, check this out http://www.reciter.org/.
Anyhow, no disagreement with what you say, just an addendum really.
http://www.freenewmexican.com/news/32902.html
There's an all-out war to preclude any public religious speech in this country. Don't believe that? Why is the ACLU filing suit against Las Cruces NM for having Crosses in their logo? the town is known as "THE CROSSES!" It's revisionist history at best. It's persecution of the Christian worldview at most. It's troubling either way.
Where did you hear this? Do you have a source? There is no mention of this suit on the ACLU website. There is no mention in this article: http://www.freenewmexican.com/news/32902.html.
Either I'm under-informed, you're misinformed or you're just making shit up. Which is it?
Of course when the ACLU is fighting in court to allow Muslims to wear head scarfes or Christians to wear crucifixes then it's all swept under the rug (because you don't actually care about individual religious expression as guaranteed in the 1st, you only care about getting the State to sponsor your religious expression). It's obvious though that we have different understandings of the establishment clause. Fortunately, it's not for you or I to decide (I mean largely, it may not even be worth debate, since what we think it means matters not on whit). I guess we'll just have to keep relying on the SCOTUS as the Constitution intended.
I've spoken with persecuted Christians before. I just don't see it. I've said it before: the cult of victimization only belittles though who are actually victims of religious persecution (e.g., murdered Muslims in England, Jews in Poland, etc.).
Sorry for being so hotheaded. It's nothing personal. I'm just riled up from this debate.
I'm pleased that you tried to understand what San was saying to you. He is right to encourage you to broaden your horizons with the writings of the modern philosophers (if not an honest study, maybe the Cliff's Notes). It wouldn't hurt to consider the Eastern philosophies either. Depending on your bias, you could say that men lived for a thousand years justly and morally without a "religion" by following the Tao and the earliest schools of the Buddha (philosophies without an underlying faith in the divine, only in the human).
I think it's pretty clear that there is a difference between 'religion' and 'philosophy' -- otherwise one of those words would have disappeared from our language. We would no longer need to talk about morality or ethics or philosophy because we could rather just talk about religion or religion or theology.
I wondered what perhaps someone from the opposite extreme might think, with an equally intolerant and cruel intention. "If you're stupid enough to not believe in God's laws, then perhaps you ought to try anarchy, i.e. get carjacked and killed."
(With a touch of levity) I thought it was more often phrased like this: "If you're stupid enough not to believe in God's laws, then perhaps you ought to burn in Hell for all eternity". It seems so much more enlightened when you put it your way. "Carjacked and killed" seems so much less inhumane than an eternity of torment (if anything the punishment is finite). This is the aspect of modern religion I find most distasteful; the kind that indiscriminately damns the non-believer. I can understand the motive behind promises of eternal life and mercantile or hedonistic utopias -- but why oh why do some faiths insist that the un-chosen, or the un-saved have to burn in their hell? Wouldn't it be bad enough that they just can't live in the golden cities behind the pearly gates, forever looking over the wall saying, 'darn shucks, I followed the wrong prophet'? Why the torture? When you choose not to follow the Tao, or more recently fail to take Camus's advice, you're just stuck living a miserable, unfruitful life ending with your meaningless death (and if you're Buddhist or otherwise believe in reincarnation, you get to live that meaningless life again and again until you embark on the Eightfold Path).
Well anyhow, I'm only a layman. Full dislcosure: My father, wife and in-laws are Lutheran. My mom's a Unitarian. One of my grannies is technically a Jew. I come from a background that's basically removed from all fundamentalism -- so that's why I ask. If you aren't a true-believer or otherwise don't believe that a just God would do such things then you know, you don't have to answer.
I said originally: I think this [each 'side' being spoon-fed their own position in a way that is amusing to the 'other side'] is why they still enjoy such a large audience. Matt and Trey are equal opportunity 'haters'. I guess the genius is that we all see it through our own colored glasses.
You said I'm wrong, it's obviously a conservative show that makes fun of liberal consistently, "I disagree - they're not equal opportunity by any means. They do often attack conservative folly, but not as often as liberal." You then go on to point out episodes you believe are 'conservative' (even though calling any episode of South Park conservative is a stretch).
I think it's your colored glasses. Each of the episodes you marked as conservative could be labeled 'makes fun of conservatives'. To claim that South Park is against wide-spread cursing (and is therefor pro-conservative) based on the existence (and hyperbolic consequences depicted) of the we-can-say-shit-on-TV-episode... that's just retarded. Maybe satire and parody are lost on you. If anything it's a protest against the conservatives running the FCC (this meme is repeated frequently on the show).
Further, America! Fuck yeah! Overblown patriotism has never stopped nuclear proliferation or terrorism. It's just a farce. "the Team are unambiguously the heros of the movie, despite their clumsiness, overblown patriotism, and "very bad intelligence." Parker and Stone poke gentle fun at Red America. But the anti-American actors are portrayed as unredeemably foolish, spoiled and evil, and are violently killed." Which entirely makes my point -- equal opportunity. If this isn't a parody of our failed, contemporary foreign policy, I don't know if we can even agree on anything. If not, there's really no point in debate.
This season so far (season 9) has also been pretty equal opportunity (barring the recent episode making fun of R. Kelly, Scientology and Tom Cruise's gayness -- that doesn't really seem political on any level other than pointing out that Scientologists are bat-shit insane) made fun of topics like global warming (Two Days before the Day After Tomorrow), gay marriage (Fancy new Vagina, Follow that Egg), fun with racism (Gingerkids), cross-dressing plus WMD (Marjorine), the PSP episode or why conservatives are wrong about Terry Schiavo (Best Friends Forever), racism and stupidness of Hollywood movies (Die, Hippy Die), etc.
Anyway... nothing personal, but it doesn't look like you are going to change my mind. The Point stands. I see more than one side when I watch; maybe you don't, but your anecdotal evidence isn't swaying me. South Park is equal opportunity and this why it continues to be successful. If the far-fringes of both sides (that can stand to watch swearing kids, butt-sex, violence and gore) only see the part of the show they want to see -- not the giant homosexual fuck-suck fests to demonstrate against Goo-backs (racism, bad immigration policy) and not the natural unavoidable Capitalist progression of ma and pa shops into Satanic soul-devouring big-box stores for middle-class families (the Walmart question) -- that doesn't undermine the fact that fun/admonishment is pointed to both sides of every issue covered. The ending of every show can be summed up: Stan (or Kyle) gives a little sob story about why we should take a common-sense, centrist, pragmatic, inclusive position on nearly any debate. Cartman's point of view, while almost always hilarious is almost always wrong (just to mix it up, I think they've given one or two episodes where Eric was 'right').
Well again, nothing personal. I don't mean to sound too riled up.
I find South Park quite watchable, although (or because) it's often a thinly disguised swipe at liberals.
What a weird thing to say. I find that South Park is often a thinly veiled swipe at conservatives. I think this is why they still enjoy such a large audience. Matt and Trey are equal opportunity 'haters'. I guess the genius is that we all see it through our own colored glasses.
E.g., when a stupid liberal watches this all they see is a hilarious parody of ham-fisted American colonialism; but when a stupid conservative watches it all they see is hilarious caricatures of elitest left-wing Hollywood.
I find both sides hilarious, which is probably why I hate politics so much.
So that's my idea - a national blacklist of pirates. If somebody cannot obey the basic rules of society, then they should be excluded from society. If pirates want to steal from the music industry, then the music industry should exclude them. It's that simple. One strike, and you're out - no reputable record store will allow you to buy another CD. If the pirates can't buy the CDS to begin with, then they won't be able to copy them over The Internet, will they? It's no different to doctors blacklisting drug dealers from buying prescription medicine. (emphasis my own)
What's funny is this has worked so well in our War on Drugs that our prisons everywhere are bursting at the seams! What portion of society do you exclude before the rules have to change?
I'll believe that when people stop buying $200 jeans, $300 "bling" chains, $500 jackets, and $50,000 SUVs. There's plenty of money to go around, people just don't want to spend it. After all, says the general public, why buy something when you can just get it for free?
:-) If only there was some market research that could tell us these things.
This argument is fallacious. Can you show amongst consumers that also buy above items that CD sales are down?
Common sense (not a factual assertion) would say that the market segment that is still buying designer jeans and jackets, jewelry and luxury autos is still buying music. As mentioned elsewhere it's more likely to be the teens and tweens of middle-class families (the largest class of pop-music consumers) that are getting crunched out of discretionary spending (the same familes that aren't getting luxury vehicles or anything that isn't sold at big box stores: I'd say that maybe when parent(s) won't provide money for a CD a child might be more likely to copy it, even if she knew it was wrong). I further imagine that the group of people that can afford new iPods for Christmas (in addition to designer jeans and jackets) are still buying CDs, too.
So, my counter-unfounded-assertion is that the rich, fashion conscious SUV owners are still buying CDs and are not responsible for the RIAAs disc-slump.
The way I read "fair-use" in the US, is that it is protection granted to comment on works. I don't see how copying the entire work onto a different media would be included in that definition.
:-D
It's not even a protection really.
What's so great about the current copyright law (in the U.S.) is that Fair Use is (just) a defense. Essentially, that means when it comes to copyright infringement you are guilty until proven innocent.
If I use a piece of TV in a film I've made (and have publicly displayed or distributed not just kept in a can somewhere for eternity)... Or even worse, there is just a TV playing in a shot that I take... I might reasonably assume that I can get away with it using a the Fair Use defense; However, that does not prevent me from getting SUED. I have infringed -- there is no doubt. It then becomes a matter out of my immediate control, left to the lawyers of the party infringed, the judge involved, and whomever I can produce for my defense (at my own expense of course).
This is why copyright law is such a snake pit these days and why more and more real-life footage is being censored of trademarks and rebroadcast material etc. Have you seen footage of Times Square that has been censored to prevent this kind of indirect (but still actionable) infringement? Sigh.
"Properly punctuated e" according to whom? Romaji does not use accents. The correct transliteration is "animeeshon".
[...]
I used "Romaji" because that's the accepted spelling, whether it's consistent or not. I've been studying Japanese for over 9 years, and while Romaji is certainly a mess of tangled, inconsistent standards, use of diacritical marks is almost nonexistent, no matter what the "new Hepburn" might define. And thanks, jerk, for being the nitpicking asshole who points out standards that no one actually follows.
Nothing personal this time, but just what I would expect from someone that started out by nitpicking someone else. While I haven't studied the language as long as you (I only minored in Asian studies which included a few years of Japanese, some intro to Chinese and Korean), I think I've made my point.
Bitching about someone's use or not-use of some transliteration "standard" ("accepted spelling") is actually just like you said, being a "jerk" and a "nitpicking asshole."
You both accepted and reiterated my point -- while at the same time condemning yourself. You and I both know that nitpicking that kid about animeshon was dickish. Maybe you were just having a bad day?
Again, I'm glad the irony wasn't lost on you.
If you want to "use your powers for good" consider nitpicking and translating for Wikipedia (I do). Cheers again.
It may not be protectable, but since you see it as such a problem I invite you to create other methods by which the creator can be compensated.
:) I'll bet others will chime in with examples even before I finish my post. But anyway...
:-D Anyhow, cheers.
Certainly many people contribute without expecting anything in return, but such attitudes can only reach so far, especially when creation of an "idea" requires the involvement of material goods that aren't cheap.
Never mind the time aspect, and that people need to eat.
Hey Microlith, long time no see. This is not to defend the GP for not offering alternatives
The alternatives to IP society have been addressed to death here and elsewhere. Lessig's free-to-download book Free Culture even touches on it (though, like me he advocates reform, not abolishment, of limited time state-granted monopolies for the purposes of promoting science and useful arts [for the advancement of the public domain]). Growing the public domain is the reason we offer copyright/patent protection in the first place! Artist compensation (in our case, feeding artists via expression/invention-monopoly) is a means to that end.
Anyhow, the progression works like this:
The first step is limited-time government monopolies (what we used to have after the first Congress; perpetual copyright --what we have now for as long as the Supreme Court agrees that forever minus a day is "limited"-- is not an incentive to grow the public domain and may not even be an incentive to create more than one time). These monopolies work greatest where we have scarcity (like in a particular expression in a tangible medium). Weirdly, we're approaching an age where we may have negligible scarcity even in tangible mediums (ubiquitous robotic labor, computer aided artifact replication, nano fabrication, etc.)
The second step is works for hire (the information age allows for works-for-hire (patronage) on a massive scale, there's plenty of missives about it; this leads to the most radical final step further down). This is what all the RIAA 'opponents' dwell on. Barriers to direct artist-consumer relationships have been removed. From car-part sculptors to garage bands, artists can now create and sell works directly to their audience (vis. eBay, concerts via webcast, Cafe Press, MMORPGs and so on). If the pratically direct and immediate compensation of labor (art) by one's audience isn't an incentive to create we may as well be doomed.
The third step is public patronage (covers "works held hostage" i.e., payment upfront with large, transparent, refundable escrow accounts. A work produced from public patronage would pass into the public domain upon completion). This idea has also been discussed to death. It has also transpired at least once with software in the real world.
I'm sure there's articles about all of these on E2.
So, the ball is already rolling. What remains to be seen is if "IP" reforms will ever take place to get out of the way or if the two will collide (with the only recourse being things like Creative Commons).
I know that most of these don't address the patent system. I largely agree with the patent system's current inplementation (barring the bureaucratic ineffeciencies and bone-headedness of algorithm patents, er I mean "business process" and software patents). I'm just saying the alternatives have been talked to death for many many years, maybe to the point that we don't need to explain them everytime we demand a change to the "IP" regime (many libertarians have written essays over the last 200 years about whether expressions and ideas are property).
I'm no expert of course.
What happens when we go to a hydrogen economy?
:-p It's all in and around us. :-D
... WATER) is going to alter the equilibrium one whit.
;-)r yId=4453&contentId=7004951
Lots of extra water vapor.
Moderation fails again.
This isn't insightful. It's pretty much wrong (or was maybe meant to be humorous). This is like saying that if it rained more we'd all get killed (by the intense global warming that would results from all that water vapor! Clouds!). Water is a cycle that's basically at equilibrium. We aren't gaining or losing any to/from space (except tiny, tiny, insignificant amounts). We aren't going out of our way to find, dig up, and then burn billions of gallons of water every year.
I don't see how the burning of hydrogen (created by and large from the electrolysis of
Now, what would alter the current balance, is if a bunch of CO2 that had been buried (and hence locked out of the atmosphere) for like 100 million years was being routinely sought, found, dug up and then burned in huge volumes every year.
The problem with the 'hydrogen economy' is that as it's currently envisioned it's still just a petrochemical economy -- except the gas pump is hidden to the consumer. It's still just coal plants and natural gas plants and whatever else we can dig up and burn to generate electricity to split hydrogen out of water or whatever else. Of course then we'll package and transport it with plastics and other petrochem-derived goodies. Until we get over ourselves and stop burning the oil and coal and using nuclear and other alternatives hydrogen is just a facade.
If it wasn't the big oil companies wouldn't be promoting it
http://www.bp.com/sectiongenericarticle.do?catego
Ignoring everything else (like, uh, we can predict if it will rain tomorrow. :-)
Because global warming is the modern, secular, version of original sin. People just know that there has to be some horrible price to pay for eating from the tree of knowledge, and destroying all life on the planet sounds just about right to them as the price we have to pay. [...] We are the most important thing on the planet, and obviously there isn't anything that we can't do. If we are destroying the planet, then all we need to do is renounce our evil ways, and we can save the planet. That makes much more sense. That is how the universe really works. If we want to destroy a planet, then we can, and likewise if we want to save a planet, then we can do that too. We aren't just a bunch of insignificant specs crawling around the surface of some giant system totally beyond our control. We are the center of everything, and all that matters is what we choose to do. Yeah, that sounds much better.
I think it's a little ironic that the power elite in previous eras burned 'scientists' (or naturalists, or heretics all depending on your point of view) at the stake for similarly ego-deflating theories... The 'Father of Science' even recanted Copernican theory (under the threat of torture and death of course) and was still imprisoned for the remainder of his life.
"What? We aren't the center of the Universe? We live on a ball of rock that orbits a fiery gas-ball in some obscure corner of an unfathomable expanse? We weren't divinely created? Intelligence isn't uniquely human?" and on and on.
Imagine the persecution to come of scientists that create sentient machines, artificial life, weather manipulation, terra-forming, etc. Any discovery that steps on God's domain is unquestioningly derided, claimed as heresy; the incursion is used as evidence against ideas and their proponents who are otherwise deeply passionate, spiritual, and religious.
Godless Scientist is a stereotype as bad (and probably more widely held than) any of the others prevalent today.
Nothing personal, I'm not one to judge if you hold these views.
His words were (properly quoted) "appropriately punctuated" not 'properly' as you misquoted him.
/poe-kay-mahn/ and poke-mon /poke-mun/ and names that are ambiguous like Shin'ichirô).
Transliteration is a huge hassle. One could say that using diacriticals is 'appropriate' as the revised Hepburn style has used for years. In that case it wouldn't be animeeshon (kana transcription aka Kunrei-shiki) it would be animêshon (using the the substitution of circumflexes for macrons prevalent on, for example, IMDB, as a crutch against non unicode sites). The old Hepburn style just ignored long vowels and animeshon would be correct in that system (English speakers/writers like the accents, macrons and apostrophes because it helps our language distinguish between pokémon
Ironically, you were trying to point out how wrong his transliteration was, when you didn't do "romaji" correctly by your own standard. Ha, it's roumaji (with kana transcribed or if you prefer the long-O marked with a diacrit rômaji). If you're nihonjin (it doesn't appear so from a cursory check at your website) it's even more ironic you can't use the romanization system on your own street/train signs.
Anyhow. Slashdot sucks for not taking unicode. And you're a jerk for being an inconsistent pedant.
Other than that it looks like we share a lot of the same interests! Cheers.
I also play Animal Crossing (not so secret now, huh) and on December 10th... I may have to buy a DS. I think there are actually a great many adults that do (as you mention, provided no one is looking) :-p
:-D
I also play Puzzle Pirates (ahoy!)
Now, to re-establish my Y-chromosome, I also love GTA and Dawn of War! (and Zeldas, and Final Fantasies, and Castlevanias, and Onimushas, and Quakes, and Half-lifes, and and and...). Er, please to note that there's no reason that ladies can't love these same games (when they aren't playing Diner Dash, haha).
His mother (I am divorced) is raising him Reformed Judaism, and he is not permitted to wear his Yarmulke in school--both because it promotes a religion, and because they have a 'no hats' policy in keeping with 'anti gang' symbolism.
There is a really great chance that you (or his mother) could sue to permit his wearing of the yarmulke. What's scarier, is that the ACLU would even join you. So, while this (official prayer case) enrages you, this (hijab case) should encourage you!
Anyhow, school boards (generally) suck so bad that I bet if there were a gang that had a tradition of not shaving their beards that they would mandate that students shave. Also, while browsing around I did find this 5-year-old article dealing with my city -- it seems we are not immune from parents with non-Christian children suing for 'no official prayer'.
If I was a devout non-Christian, this invocation would tarnish one of the most important days of my young life. Discrminination sucks.
Cheers again.
Sadly, still no evidence of how the ACLU harmed you. You personally. None of your example cases are for north Florida anyway. I guess it's not common knowledge outside of Florida that the south end of the state is all Yankee. Well whatever, I knew you'd say you couldn't move (only real victims flee persecution, harkening back to my original point of cheapening what religious persecution actually means. e.g., heading backward through time: imprisonment, branding, burning, being fed to the lions, and on).
... at Thanksgiving in a couple of weeks, when I stand with my entire family (some of whom are not Christians) I don't feel it would be sensitive to pray with them in Jesus' name. That's what I'm trying to say. When I stand in fellowship with people from other denominations or faiths I don't feel it's right to make them stand in silence resenting and rejecting a prayer that I offer for them. I guess it's like which is worse:
This is what I'm trying to understand
"Hey, I'm going to lead a prayer in a way that would be sacrilegious for you to take part in, so you should leave."
-or-
"Hey, I'm going to lead a prayer in a way that is sensitive to the beliefs of everyone present."
If "Living in Society requires a certain amount of conformity and self restraint," can't you show a little restraint?
As a libertarian I'm not so hot on compulsory public education (thankfully in America the State doesn't have a monopoly on education and one can choose to home-school or privately educated one's children). Private education would make this argument moot. As long as the State is involved in teaching there is only one way to avoid "an establishment of religion". Teaching all aspects, and allowing all rites of all religions is impossible (the equal-time argument is a fallacy when time is finite and religious variety is infinite), so the only viable alternative is to teach no aspects of religion and allow no rites (well outside of theology and philosophy classes I suppose). I pray that one day all Federal money will be removed from schools, at which point it would become a state matter. Imagine... If the Pennsylvania legislature wanted to compel private schools to issue a Bible to every student regardless of faith, it would be for you to vote on. The law could be upheld or struck down by your own courts in accordance with your own [state] constitution.
Anyhow, I can see we aren't going to reach an understanding. I don't think the ACLU is the problem, I think the government is. I can't tell for sure, but I think it's just the opposite for you: the government is OK but it's the ACLU screwing it all up. (By what? By making up their own laws and compelling you to follow them with lawyers and judges [those bastards!]?! I contend the problem is further up the chain, not with the lawyers and judges, but with the legislature and the laws they make in 'our' name.)
Cheers.
I wish you'd recounted an anecdote about how the ACLU had damaged you in your own town, rather than someone elses kid in someone elses town. It's alright though; I know that some people can hate second-hand (like hating commies when you don't know any, or hating blacks when you don't know any, etc.; the generalization fallacy is a requisite in almost every case!).
You should move to Florida, we don't have whatever "east-coast god-less communist elitism" that you are suffering from up in PA. Barring the hurricanes, the weather is probably nicer too! If you require the bad weather you could try Missouri (where my wife's extended-family lives).
To defend the obvious argument of not wanting to move, I just have to remind you that there is nothing more American than fleeing religious persecution at home and moving somewhere more friendly (like the New World, or in this case south of the Mason-Dixon). My family is largely Lutheran and we don't even get "harassed" (used loosely) by anyone very often (north Florida is largely Baptist). Then again, we are sensitive enough not to pray in Jesus' name when there are non-Christians among us. I know that some people believe that sensitivity somehow denies their rights. I see sensitivity as an expression of personal freedom. Living in Society requires a certain amount of conformity and self restraint. I guess you could also call sensitivity "restraint".
Still, I'm sorry to hear that it's so bad up in PA. Sorry if I was being too cheeky.
Your principle really does mean that if ANYONE ELSE has ever quoted the same passage, you have to also quote them. You and I both know that's wrong, so you can spare me the lecture.
c t+quotation
No It Doesn't. As the sibling points out you are either intentionally misstating my point, or you've just missed it again.
Go back to your freshman English teacher and ask him/her about citing indirect quotations and why it's important. I tried to explain it was about context, but whatever.
If you don't have a freshman English teacher, you can suffice with this webpage: http://www.google.com/search?q=citation+of+indire
Odds and ends: I think I even gave the caveat that you may not have indirectly quoted the page in question (maybe the zeal was in your eyes when you read "had you in fact copied this quotation from another site"); On Slashdot (with its aparent libertarian contingent), LewRockwell.com is hardly obscure; Additionally, in a conversational forum like this, I'm surprised anyone bothers to try to cite anything, haha other than sophism and the occasional arguement from authority ("See, everyone agrees I'm right," or "you're wrong because the right people agree with me!"); I recognize the irony of this paragraph following the former.
Anyhow, I wasn't making any accusations. You don't have to dignify this with a response. Cheers!