Maybe "they" think that saying "well it won't affect ME, so I can pollute as much as I want" is a pretty selfish, and shitty attitude to have?
I think it beats "we should make ourselves artificially poor, so we can conserve resources so our children can grow up to also be poor".
I'd say we should continue to live free and develop new resources and technology to provide for a better future. Conservation doesn't achieve this. Hunkering down and fearing the future doesn't achieve this.
Making myself poorer only makes someone else richer in the mindset of an extreme pessimist. Anyone else would consider the possibility that maybe everyone can be better off, not just one person or another.
Environmentalism used to be about problem-solving. Now that the problems are mostly solved, environmentalism has become pessimistic, negative and self-serving.
Limited resources. They tend to come in and defend those who don't otherwise have anybody defending them.
I think the problem with this addendum argument is that many people unfortunately view "free-excercise" of religion as state sponsored religious indoctrination. The Bill of Rights is quite clear, the state should not be influencing religion. Now if religion wants to influence the state, go right ahead, that's their right, but you do it on your own time using your own resources... see?
And none of this excuse-making and selective interpretation could ever remotely be described as "weasely"?
Dude, ever see a cash register? Each transaction is recorded on one reel, with reciepts given to the customer AND also on another reel that just spools and stays in the register. The whole day is on one continuous reel. It would be TRIVIAL to print out machine-readable and human-readable results on that second reel for quick, verifiable recounts.
Your local gas station cares more about getting the right results than your local election officials.
It was a "on the one hand -- on the other hand" comparison.
---
You're the one that started pointing out exceptions to free-exercise. I could go research it, but the point is a broad one about the ACLU's selective reading of the bill of rights. It doesn't turn on the fine points of free exercise. There are whole amendments the ACLU just skips over. Their opposition to (or indifference toward) the free exercise of religion is only a small part of it.
Besides, I was just answering the original question.
The ACLU supports the free-exercise of religion with big exceptions for kinds of free-exercise they don't support. But not all the time - sometimes they weasel out of it.
Look at the list again. Everyone else in it is a complete lightweight in comparison. It's George Bush, some people you never heard of, some people no one cares about one way or the other, and Jack Grubman. Bush has enemys. Those other guys aren't important enough to register.
Put Madonna, Micheal Jackson, Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Joe Isuzu, Ken Starr, Dan Rather, and Newt Gingrich in there and see what you get.
Could it be because they're a "civil rights" organization that picks and chooses which of your civil rights you should get to keep?
For example, they're always available to help prevent the "establishment" of religion, but they're never around to preserve the "free-exercise" of it. Free speech is good, but free association is bad in the ACLU world. And that's only the first amendment, there are 9 more in the bill of rights -- or 4-5 more in the ACLU's version.
It's extermely easy relative to how hard everyone says it is. It's hard compared to some jobs, and easy compared to others. Where does it rank on the scale of all the jobs? I don't know. I haven't done all the jobs. All anyone can do is guess. I'd guess it's easier than the median job. I'd further guess that it's easier than other jobs with similar pay.
I just don't judge a profession by its worst performers, but that's done all the time with teachers.
Because there's no accountability. The worst performers are entrenched. Their jobs are as guarenteed as the best teachers -- if not moreso. Being "the worst performer" has the same compensation as being the best, and it's much easier. The incentive to teachers is therefore to fail at their goal. Increasingly, they are.
Funding is being gutted, Out of date textbooks..., pay out of pocket(etc, etc)
This is just more of the same tired excuse-making we've all heard 1000 times. It's not persuasive any more.
I think they should be paid *on a par with* other professionals who do important work.
You're welcome to donate money to the school then. Leave the rest of us out of it.
In the real world, people tend to be paid based on their usefulness to the person paying them, and based on how replaceable they are.
If this is a propaganda campaign, it's been a failure as one for decades.
I've heard claims that "teachers are underpaid" for 20 years. I've heard "no they're not" for about 2 years. Both positions are meerly opinion. It's time people started reconsidering their thoughtless belief in the "teachers are underpaid" mantra. They ought to actually think about it. That was the point.
We had film strips in the 80s. I'm told media presentations are used more today than they were then. It's not teaching.
No bosses?
Not like anyone in a private-sector job.
No time spent but in class?
No one said that. But the days are still 6 hours long -- with breaks every hour. (Actually, most of my teachers in high-school only actually taught for 5 hours.) Then they could go home -- at their option. That's a pretty sweet deal.
Even if the job isn't exactly easy, it's not more difficult than the average job. All the whining deserves a counterpoint, especially since it's part of a propaganda campaign to get teachers' hands even deeper into taxpayer's pockets.
Lots of people are getting tired of the "pay us more for worse results every year" attitude. It's time for a few years of "do a better job for the same pay, and if you don't you're out".
There's 2 sides to the story. The real answer is their job is about as hard as everyone else's job. (In other words, their job is hard. Boo-fricken-hoo, my job's hard too.)
They get paid OK, considering benefits, job security, and summer off, 6 hours a day, film strips, cost-of-living raises, and no bosses looking over their shoulder.
What does your road construction worker do in the winter? He's unemployed. Teachers get paid all year.
Stop playing the violins for the teachers. They're doing well-enough.
I don't care if authors get paid. I don't care whether they write books.
I care if money is stolen from my paycheck to pay for useless (useless to me anyway) libraries.
And I'm tired of listening to people bitch about something that's going on in libraries that's "a violation of my rights". It's not. The government funds the libraries, they get to make the rules. Want better rules? Fund the libraries privately.
Funding the libraries privately will get you more accountability. It gets you the amount of influence over the rules that you're willing to pay for. And it's ethically better than taking the money from people against their will.
They're them because I don't want anything. I don't want a big bunch of freebies. I don't want to exercise influence over other people's lives.
Since I don't want anything, government can only take from me. They can't help me.
They're them because if they were us (at least the us that includes me), they wouldn't be anyone. They'd be substantially disbanded.
They'll always be them. The desire, by you or anyone else, to make them anything more, amounts to a desire to take from me for your own benefit. It's ethically wrong.
All this crap about public libraries. What do you expect? It's a public library, the "public" (really the government, because really they're government libraries) gets to decide ALL the rules.
Want to have different rules? Setup a private library, fund it yourself, and make up all your own rules.
Want to continue to freeload at the government's expense? Then live with the government rules.
Governments should just phase-out funding for public libraries and let them survive (or not) on voluntary contributions. That would completely solve all library "problems", and local taxes could be cut. It's win-win.
You, like many of the other people who responded to my post, are mistaking personal satisfaction/happiness/excitement over a new item as the spontaneous creation of new wealth in the global economy.
THAT'S NOT HOW IT WORKS.
So if wealth, in the sense of the "global economy", isn't a term describing the aggregate (or the average) living standard of the world's people, then what is it?
If "living-better" isn't "wealthy", then what's wealthy? And what good is it?
Slashdot Mirror
Yes you can.
I think it beats "we should make ourselves artificially poor, so we can conserve resources so our children can grow up to also be poor".
I'd say we should continue to live free and develop new resources and technology to provide for a better future. Conservation doesn't achieve this. Hunkering down and fearing the future doesn't achieve this.
Making myself poorer only makes someone else richer in the mindset of an extreme pessimist. Anyone else would consider the possibility that maybe everyone can be better off, not just one person or another.
Environmentalism used to be about problem-solving. Now that the problems are mostly solved, environmentalism has become pessimistic, negative and self-serving.
They want to tax it so it costs $5/gallon anyway.
They don't care about cramping people's style. They care about "the Earth". People don't matter.
Does it say how many tons of plants have existed in the last billion years or so?
I bet it's a lot.
Limited resources = excuse. A reasonable one, but an excuse nonetheless.
No I didn't. The answer to "why might someone perceive a thing" doesn't require proof that the perceptions are correct.
Yeah, 99% of lawyers ruin it for the rest of them.
Quote:
Limited resources. They tend to come in and defend those who don't otherwise have anybody defending them.
I think the problem with this addendum argument is that many people unfortunately view "free-excercise" of religion as state sponsored religious indoctrination. The Bill of Rights is quite clear, the state should not be influencing religion. Now if religion wants to influence the state, go right ahead, that's their right, but you do it on your own time using your own resources... see?
And none of this excuse-making and selective interpretation could ever remotely be described as "weasely"?
I was answering a specific question.
Dude, ever see a cash register? Each transaction is recorded on one reel, with reciepts given to the customer AND also on another reel that just spools and stays in the register. The whole day is on one continuous reel. It would be TRIVIAL to print out machine-readable and human-readable results on that second reel for quick, verifiable recounts.
Your local gas station cares more about getting the right results than your local election officials.
It was a "on the one hand -- on the other hand" comparison.
---
You're the one that started pointing out exceptions to free-exercise. I could go research it, but the point is a broad one about the ACLU's selective reading of the bill of rights. It doesn't turn on the fine points of free exercise. There are whole amendments the ACLU just skips over. Their opposition to (or indifference toward) the free exercise of religion is only a small part of it.
Besides, I was just answering the original question.
I didn't say versus (or versue either).
The ACLU supports the free-exercise of religion with big exceptions for kinds of free-exercise they don't support. But not all the time - sometimes they weasel out of it.
Look at the list again. Everyone else in it is a complete lightweight in comparison. It's George Bush, some people you never heard of, some people no one cares about one way or the other, and Jack Grubman. Bush has enemys. Those other guys aren't important enough to register.
Put Madonna, Micheal Jackson, Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Joe Isuzu, Ken Starr, Dan Rather, and Newt Gingrich in there and see what you get.
Could it be because they're a "civil rights" organization that picks and chooses which of your civil rights you should get to keep?
For example, they're always available to help prevent the "establishment" of religion, but they're never around to preserve the "free-exercise" of it. Free speech is good, but free association is bad in the ACLU world. And that's only the first amendment, there are 9 more in the bill of rights -- or 4-5 more in the ACLU's version.
Remember, you asked.
She spilled the coffee on herself. Therefore, the lawsuit was frivolous and ANY damages unjustified.
Why is that so hard for you people to understand?
I'm not going to post a zillion-line response.
Then why did you say it was easy?
It's extermely easy relative to how hard everyone says it is. It's hard compared to some jobs, and easy compared to others. Where does it rank on the scale of all the jobs? I don't know. I haven't done all the jobs. All anyone can do is guess. I'd guess it's easier than the median job. I'd further guess that it's easier than other jobs with similar pay.
I just don't judge a profession by its worst performers, but that's done all the time with teachers.
Because there's no accountability. The worst performers are entrenched. Their jobs are as guarenteed as the best teachers -- if not moreso. Being "the worst performer" has the same compensation as being the best, and it's much easier. The incentive to teachers is therefore to fail at their goal. Increasingly, they are.
Funding is being gutted, Out of date textbooks..., pay out of pocket(etc, etc)
This is just more of the same tired excuse-making we've all heard 1000 times. It's not persuasive any more.
I think they should be paid *on a par with* other professionals who do important work.
You're welcome to donate money to the school then. Leave the rest of us out of it.
In the real world, people tend to be paid based on their usefulness to the person paying them, and based on how replaceable they are.
If this is a propaganda campaign, it's been a failure as one for decades.
I've heard claims that "teachers are underpaid" for 20 years. I've heard "no they're not" for about 2 years. Both positions are meerly opinion. It's time people started reconsidering their thoughtless belief in the "teachers are underpaid" mantra. They ought to actually think about it. That was the point.
Film strips? What decade are you living in?
We had film strips in the 80s. I'm told media presentations are used more today than they were then. It's not teaching.
No bosses?
Not like anyone in a private-sector job.
No time spent but in class?
No one said that. But the days are still 6 hours long -- with breaks every hour. (Actually, most of my teachers in high-school only actually taught for 5 hours.) Then they could go home -- at their option. That's a pretty sweet deal.
Even if the job isn't exactly easy, it's not more difficult than the average job. All the whining deserves a counterpoint, especially since it's part of a propaganda campaign to get teachers' hands even deeper into taxpayer's pockets.
Lots of people are getting tired of the "pay us more for worse results every year" attitude. It's time for a few years of "do a better job for the same pay, and if you don't you're out".
There's 2 sides to the story. The real answer is their job is about as hard as everyone else's job. (In other words, their job is hard. Boo-fricken-hoo, my job's hard too.)
They get paid OK, considering benefits, job security, and summer off, 6 hours a day, film strips, cost-of-living raises, and no bosses looking over their shoulder.
What does your road construction worker do in the winter? He's unemployed. Teachers get paid all year.
Stop playing the violins for the teachers. They're doing well-enough.
Teachers have an easy job that pays well.
Their job is to talk to children, they're accountable to no one, and they work only 3/4 of the year.
I don't care if authors get paid. I don't care whether they write books.
I care if money is stolen from my paycheck to pay for useless (useless to me anyway) libraries.
And I'm tired of listening to people bitch about something that's going on in libraries that's "a violation of my rights". It's not. The government funds the libraries, they get to make the rules. Want better rules? Fund the libraries privately.
Funding the libraries privately will get you more accountability. It gets you the amount of influence over the rules that you're willing to pay for. And it's ethically better than taking the money from people against their will.
They're them because I don't want anything. I don't want a big bunch of freebies. I don't want to exercise influence over other people's lives.
Since I don't want anything, government can only take from me. They can't help me.
They're them because if they were us (at least the us that includes me), they wouldn't be anyone. They'd be substantially disbanded.
They'll always be them. The desire, by you or anyone else, to make them anything more, amounts to a desire to take from me for your own benefit. It's ethically wrong.
The USA. What's your point?
All this crap about public libraries. What do you expect? It's a public library, the "public" (really the government, because really they're government libraries) gets to decide ALL the rules.
Want to have different rules? Setup a private library, fund it yourself, and make up all your own rules.
Want to continue to freeload at the government's expense? Then live with the government rules.
Governments should just phase-out funding for public libraries and let them survive (or not) on voluntary contributions. That would completely solve all library "problems", and local taxes could be cut. It's win-win.
Why would anyone take worthless currency in exchange for something of value?
You, like many of the other people who responded to my post, are mistaking personal satisfaction/happiness/excitement over a new item as the spontaneous creation of new wealth in the global economy.
THAT'S NOT HOW IT WORKS.
So if wealth, in the sense of the "global economy", isn't a term describing the aggregate (or the average) living standard of the world's people, then what is it?
If "living-better" isn't "wealthy", then what's wealthy? And what good is it?
Famine isn't "very common" in "many" parts of the world.