The difference is (assuming that you're an American), that your country aided the genocide, and then most of the same people are in the current administration condemning it and using it as an excuse for this assinine invasion. So, as Americans, *we* are (partially) responsible for the genocide *and* we are responsible for blowing the shit out of lots of innocents supposedly to take out the whacko *we put in power*.
In order for me to understand your point, let's just assume all this is true. I hear variations on this theme all the time. I never understood the point. What is your point?
Is it that you don't like the USA? Because that's a valid point. You could just start out with that. Or say it somewhere, at least. Then we'd understand your point. "Opinion noted" we might say.
But maybe that's not it. Because you didn't say. Maybe you were trying to suggest a course of action. It seems like your suggestion is that we go back in time and do something different. But time goes forward, so that's not really an option.
Please let us know what your point is. How would you solve the "a long time ago, a US ally did something nasty" problem? Should we never ally with anyone? Maybe we should only ally with countries you like, so when they do something nasty, you can justify it (or ignore it, or whatever)? Maybe we should only do things when we know the ultimate outcome will be something flawlessly perfect that no one could possibly ever complain about?
How can the US conduct foreign policy to produce an outcome that everyone will be 100% eternally happy with? (And it's getting late, so try to keep your response shorter than one page. Thx)
- They didn't say how difficult it was to create a vaccine. Maybe it was easy. Some vaccines are easier to create than others.
- Working on a project like this often leads to discoveries that are useful in fighting other diseases
- Just because there have been limited outbreaks in the past doesn't mean there won't be worse ones in the future (although I think Ebola is too deadly to spread very far)
- Ebola can be used in biological terrorist attacks, and it would likely be quite effective. It would be irresponsible not to try to develop a sound defense against such attacks.
- And maybe the next 1500 people can be saved from dying of Ebola in Africa
I usually print it out and staple it to a squirrel. Then I set the squirrel free, because information wants to be free, and so do squirrels with paper stapled to them.
Why do iPods outsell alternatives that, by all reckonings, deliver more for less?
There are no alternatives that "by all reckonings" deliver more for less. Otherwise people would buy those instead. People act on their own reckonings to buy the item that fits their needs. Vast numbers of people decided on an iPod. I did. At the time, it was the best choice.
The premise of religion is to accept that certain things are mysterious and cannot be investigated, or that certain things are true whether there is evidence for them or not.
Nope. Seriously. I read the whole Bible and it doesn't say anything like that in there.
There's lots of evidence in it though. Most of it is eyewitness testimony because forensics was less developed 1000s of years ago. There are forensic-like events -- Thomas the doubting Apostle comes to mind. Those events were witnessed and recorded using the recording methods available at the time. No high-definition video, unfortunately (damn Blu-Ray working-group delays!).
The premise of science is that everything should be investigated, and that things are accepted as generally true only after evidence emerges for them, and that new evidence can change our perceptions of what is true.
Religion and science are a nice fit then. They should be friends. If it weren't for the minority of hostile fools on each of the sides, they would be -- more than they already are anyway.
Yes, I do have a right to live in your house if you put it up for sale or rent and advertise in public. If it's your right and freedom that matters so much that only want prefered kinds to rent it, why put it up for sale/rent to begin with for all the world to see? After all, public isn't just one kind. If you want to keep it private, keep it private, not publically advertised.
Advertising is free speech. Renting a property out to someone is an association, and we're supposed to have the right to free association. And there's the property rights issue.
Free speech, free association, and property rights are fundamental rights. Lack or discrimination isn't. In order to enforce anti-discrimination, you need to take those rights away.
And suppose you are a good white Christian who hates all minorities, gays, Jews and Muslims? Should you be able to post THAT ad?
I guess it depends on whether you believe in free speech or not. If you do, then yes.
Anti-discrimination laws are anti-freedom laws. There was a time when giving up a little freedom to deal with the discrimination problem might have been the right choice. It worked. Discrimination is a smaller problem now, so the laws are less needed. Now freedom should be at least partly restored.
It's time to put the ad-police and the house-rental-police and the diversity-enforcement-police out of work.
If you can get fired for playing solitaire, then you can (and most likely will) get fired for anything. Some employers randomly fire people. It's unfortunate. Solitaire is just an excuse though. Excuses are easy to find.
Guess what, since 1980, Jupiter has seen a HUGE increase in the number of comet strikes of the previous decades. But we can't pin that on global warming.
Come on. You haven't even tried.
Give it a shot. It's surprisingly easy. Or at least it was before global warming made everything harder.
Its just as easy to say that pan-Anglo culture is dying
I don't know if you read the article. It's not the culture that's dying. It's a demographic issue, not a cultural one.
And it doesn't apply to United States. Our population is increasing and becoming more Christian with immigration from Mexico and other Catholic countires. There's no sign of that changing.
As for "Old Europe" it is serving as the intellectual and ethical leader for the time being
Europe is in decline. It can't even lead itself. You should read the article. You might not agree with the opinions, but demographics is factual. It's hard for 100 children to grow up to be 200 adults, no matter how much you wish for it and/or disagree with the opinions.
They don't have most of it (though they do have a lot). They just don't have an environmental movement that systematically prevents oil drilling in their lands.
I wonder if the Saudis are funding the greens so they don't have to compete with oil from North America and off the North American coast?
There's no genuine anger about the cartoons. They were published 6 months ago.
The cartoons are just an excuse. The cartoon riots are about rioting, not about cartoons. Rioters riot for fun and profit. Protests are arranged to gain political power for the people arranging them.
Web sites are defaced for the same reason bricks are thrown through windows. It's the same reason Reginald Denny was beat up. It's a combination of hate and the idea that "we can get away with it this time".
I advise not enabling the rioters and web-page defacers by giving them what they want: attention, concessions, etc.
This is not news. "The U.S. bombs Iran" is news. Speculation that the U.S. might bomb Iran in the future is not.
The news business used to be about reporting things that actually happened./You see how rediculous your statement is?
No.
Space aliens might bomb Iran. Atomic supermen from the future might bomb Iran. Google might bomb Iran. Google might make a PC. Apple might buy Palm. Apple might bomb Palm.
I guess I don't get it. When one of these things happens, it's news. When nothing happens, it's not, even though something might happen in the future.
Player-made content is always going to be buried in a sea of vandalism and coyright violations unless it's policed and all content is pre-approved.
Games can't allow you to violate copyrights, because the game companies will be the ones who get sued. By the same token it'll be next to impossible for any game with lots of player-made content to have an ESRB rating other than AO (adults only).
The assumptions made in this post of yours are insulting to essentially everyone involved in any court case.
There are exaggerations in the post. This is effectively how courts work though -- or at least they CAN work that way. They've ceased to be an instrument of justice and are now used to steal and extort money from innocent defendants for the benefit of lawyers.
I didn't break the courts. I want them fixed. So I don't have to pay extra for every product I buy. So I don't have to be afraid I'll be the one who gets robbed-by-court-ruling. So I don't lose my job or my health care because of liability expenses. Ans so we can go back to being a free country instead of one ruled by judges and lawyers.
You can get a bunch of scientists together and claim it's impossible.
I can get a bunch of "victims" together who claim that they lost 75% of their hearing from listening at REALLY low levels. They'll cry. They'll force the lawyers to yell the questions. They'll spend the court's time fiddling with hearing aids. They'll talk about how they lost their jobs and how their babies were run over by a bus because they couldn't hear the bus until it was too late. It'll be really tragic. And there's no way to prove they can still hear just as well as before.
The jury can decide either way: for the huge super-rich corporation or for the tragic half-deafened victims.
During the trial, some ridiculous "public interest group" will send out a press release warning people of the hearing loss, even at REALLY low levels. It'll be in every newspaper and on every TV newscast. Slashdot will post it 4 times in 3 days.
Apple will settle the case for $10 per iPod. Lawyers will get $9.02 of it and Apple will give iPod owners 98 cents off their next iTMS music purchase.
They'll artificially limit the sound level on future iPods and put a warning label on them. They'll raise the price $20.
The lawyers will buy new houses and fast cars. Then they'll start looking for their next big score. (Maybe Apple will have a hit against earnings because of the case. Did they warn the shareholders sufficiently? I smell a shareholder lawsuit.)
Slashdot Mirror
The difference is (assuming that you're an American), that your country aided the genocide, and then most of the same people are in the current administration condemning it and using it as an excuse for this assinine invasion. So, as Americans, *we* are (partially) responsible for the genocide *and* we are responsible for blowing the shit out of lots of innocents supposedly to take out the whacko *we put in power*.
In order for me to understand your point, let's just assume all this is true. I hear variations on this theme all the time. I never understood the point. What is your point?
Is it that you don't like the USA? Because that's a valid point. You could just start out with that. Or say it somewhere, at least. Then we'd understand your point. "Opinion noted" we might say.
But maybe that's not it. Because you didn't say. Maybe you were trying to suggest a course of action. It seems like your suggestion is that we go back in time and do something different. But time goes forward, so that's not really an option.
Please let us know what your point is. How would you solve the "a long time ago, a US ally did something nasty" problem? Should we never ally with anyone? Maybe we should only ally with countries you like, so when they do something nasty, you can justify it (or ignore it, or whatever)? Maybe we should only do things when we know the ultimate outcome will be something flawlessly perfect that no one could possibly ever complain about?
How can the US conduct foreign policy to produce an outcome that everyone will be 100% eternally happy with? (And it's getting late, so try to keep your response shorter than one page. Thx)
Just grant him the patent. Then, if there's anything real there, the patent will have expired by the time anyone has to worry about it.
A few points here:
- They didn't say how difficult it was to create a vaccine. Maybe it was easy. Some vaccines are easier to create than others.
- Working on a project like this often leads to discoveries that are useful in fighting other diseases
- Just because there have been limited outbreaks in the past doesn't mean there won't be worse ones in the future (although I think Ebola is too deadly to spread very far)
- Ebola can be used in biological terrorist attacks, and it would likely be quite effective. It would be irresponsible not to try to develop a sound defense against such attacks.
- And maybe the next 1500 people can be saved from dying of Ebola in Africa
Patent Pending
I usually print it out and staple it to a squirrel. Then I set the squirrel free, because information wants to be free, and so do squirrels with paper stapled to them.
Why do iPods outsell alternatives that, by all reckonings, deliver more for less?
There are no alternatives that "by all reckonings" deliver more for less. Otherwise people would buy those instead. People act on their own reckonings to buy the item that fits their needs. Vast numbers of people decided on an iPod. I did. At the time, it was the best choice.
If the headline has a question mark, it's not news, it's speculation about the future.
Get back to us when something happens.
The bundling was "forced" on buyers. The buy itself wasn't forced.
It's a "don't be an ass to your customers" issue.
Congrats to Best Buy for at least appearing to fix the problem.
The premise of religion is to accept that certain things are mysterious and cannot be investigated, or that certain things are true whether there is evidence for them or not.
Nope. Seriously. I read the whole Bible and it doesn't say anything like that in there.
There's lots of evidence in it though. Most of it is eyewitness testimony because forensics was less developed 1000s of years ago. There are forensic-like events -- Thomas the doubting Apostle comes to mind. Those events were witnessed and recorded using the recording methods available at the time. No high-definition video, unfortunately (damn Blu-Ray working-group delays!).
The premise of science is that everything should be investigated, and that things are accepted as generally true only after evidence emerges for them, and that new evidence can change our perceptions of what is true.
Religion and science are a nice fit then. They should be friends. If it weren't for the minority of hostile fools on each of the sides, they would be -- more than they already are anyway.
Yes, I do have a right to live in your house if you put it up for sale or rent and advertise in public. If it's your right and freedom that matters so much that only want prefered kinds to rent it, why put it up for sale/rent to begin with for all the world to see? After all, public isn't just one kind. If you want to keep it private, keep it private, not publically advertised.
Advertising is free speech. Renting a property out to someone is an association, and we're supposed to have the right to free association. And there's the property rights issue.
Free speech, free association, and property rights are fundamental rights. Lack or discrimination isn't. In order to enforce anti-discrimination, you need to take those rights away.
And suppose you are a good white Christian who hates all minorities, gays, Jews and Muslims? Should you be able to post THAT ad?
I guess it depends on whether you believe in free speech or not. If you do, then yes.
Anti-discrimination laws are anti-freedom laws. There was a time when giving up a little freedom to deal with the discrimination problem might have been the right choice. It worked. Discrimination is a smaller problem now, so the laws are less needed. Now freedom should be at least partly restored.
It's time to put the ad-police and the house-rental-police and the diversity-enforcement-police out of work.
If you can get fired for playing solitaire, then you can (and most likely will) get fired for anything. Some employers randomly fire people. It's unfortunate. Solitaire is just an excuse though. Excuses are easy to find.
The fact is, it's getting warmer, and that might be really bad, and we have to deal with it sometime.
What data do you have that indicates warmer is worse? Why isn't it just as likely to be better?
Guess what, since 1980, Jupiter has seen a HUGE increase in the number of comet strikes of the previous decades. But we can't pin that on global warming.
Come on. You haven't even tried.
Give it a shot. It's surprisingly easy. Or at least it was before global warming made everything harder.
Help me out here. If it was warmer in 800 AD, what 'human interferance' caused the global warming in the 9th century?
I don't know the specifics, but I'm sure the consensus will eventually decide it was George Bush's fault.
Its just as easy to say that pan-Anglo culture is dying
I don't know if you read the article. It's not the culture that's dying. It's a demographic issue, not a cultural one.
And it doesn't apply to United States. Our population is increasing and becoming more Christian with immigration from Mexico and other Catholic countires. There's no sign of that changing.
As for "Old Europe" it is serving as the intellectual and ethical leader for the time being
Europe is in decline. It can't even lead itself. You should read the article. You might not agree with the opinions, but demographics is factual. It's hard for 100 children to grow up to be 200 adults, no matter how much you wish for it and/or disagree with the opinions.
Who stands to gain by provoking Europeans into an anti-Muslim stance?
No one. Old Europe is fading into irrelevancy. Powerless countries are of no consequence. When they're provoked, it just becomes obvious to everyone.
Mark Steyn's piece on demographics explains Europe's future.
the muslim world is sitting on most of it.
They don't have most of it (though they do have a lot). They just don't have an environmental movement that systematically prevents oil drilling in their lands.
I wonder if the Saudis are funding the greens so they don't have to compete with oil from North America and off the North American coast?
There's no genuine anger about the cartoons. They were published 6 months ago.
The cartoons are just an excuse. The cartoon riots are about rioting, not about cartoons. Rioters riot for fun and profit. Protests are arranged to gain political power for the people arranging them.
Web sites are defaced for the same reason bricks are thrown through windows. It's the same reason Reginald Denny was beat up. It's a combination of hate and the idea that "we can get away with it this time".
I advise not enabling the rioters and web-page defacers by giving them what they want: attention, concessions, etc.
This is not news. "The U.S. bombs Iran" is news. Speculation that the U.S. might bomb Iran in the future is not.
/You see how rediculous your statement is?
The news business used to be about reporting things that actually happened.
No.
Space aliens might bomb Iran. Atomic supermen from the future might bomb Iran. Google might bomb Iran. Google might make a PC. Apple might buy Palm. Apple might bomb Palm.
I guess I don't get it. When one of these things happens, it's news. When nothing happens, it's not, even though something might happen in the future.
This is not news. "Apple buys Palm" is news. Speculation that Apple might buy Palm in the future is not.
The news business used to be about reporting things that actually happened.
I should have been more specific. Example: Players in a Mythic Entertainment game violate a Disney copyright. Disney sues Mythic Entertainment.
It's already happened in City of Heroes.
Player-made content is always going to be buried in a sea of vandalism and coyright violations unless it's policed and all content is pre-approved.
Games can't allow you to violate copyrights, because the game companies will be the ones who get sued. By the same token it'll be next to impossible for any game with lots of player-made content to have an ESRB rating other than AO (adults only).
The assumptions made in this post of yours are insulting to essentially everyone involved in any court case.
There are exaggerations in the post. This is effectively how courts work though -- or at least they CAN work that way. They've ceased to be an instrument of justice and are now used to steal and extort money from innocent defendants for the benefit of lawyers.
I didn't break the courts. I want them fixed. So I don't have to pay extra for every product I buy. So I don't have to be afraid I'll be the one who gets robbed-by-court-ruling. So I don't lose my job or my health care because of liability expenses. Ans so we can go back to being a free country instead of one ruled by judges and lawyers.
That's not how courts work.
You can get a bunch of scientists together and claim it's impossible.
I can get a bunch of "victims" together who claim that they lost 75% of their hearing from listening at REALLY low levels. They'll cry. They'll force the lawyers to yell the questions. They'll spend the court's time fiddling with hearing aids. They'll talk about how they lost their jobs and how their babies were run over by a bus because they couldn't hear the bus until it was too late. It'll be really tragic. And there's no way to prove they can still hear just as well as before.
The jury can decide either way: for the huge super-rich corporation or for the tragic half-deafened victims.
During the trial, some ridiculous "public interest group" will send out a press release warning people of the hearing loss, even at REALLY low levels. It'll be in every newspaper and on every TV newscast. Slashdot will post it 4 times in 3 days.
Apple will settle the case for $10 per iPod. Lawyers will get $9.02 of it and Apple will give iPod owners 98 cents off their next iTMS music purchase.
They'll artificially limit the sound level on future iPods and put a warning label on them. They'll raise the price $20.
The lawyers will buy new houses and fast cars. Then they'll start looking for their next big score. (Maybe Apple will have a hit against earnings because of the case. Did they warn the shareholders sufficiently? I smell a shareholder lawsuit.)