We already do that, in the name of multiculturalism.
It's sad to see women's rights get trampled in the name of multiculturalism. I've lost all respect for "progressives" for this reason (among others). That German judge rubbed her ass on the Enlightenment and on women with that abortion of a ruling. May history treat her with merciless justice.
I call bullshit on this. There is nothing in your quote that implies this.
I personally thought that "beat her" implied "beat her", but your answer is rhetoric anyway. Let's get to your argument:
This passage outlines steps to be taken when a woman is motivated by "ill-will and nasty conduct".
Okay. Who is the judge of what is "ill-will and nasty conduct"? The husband is the judge! And if he decides that she is showing "ill will" and that her conduct is "nasty", then he is permitted to beat her if she does not obey. If a Muslim man beats his wife and then claims that she showed "ill-will and nasty conduct", was his behavior haram? This misogynistic religious abuse happens frequently in the Islamic world. Sad is the plight of the Muslim woman. This is on top of forcing her to be veiled so that she does not "corrupt men".
There are plenty of Bible passages that are equally incongruent in modern times.
Now it is my turn to call bullshit on you. Obviously you fail to mention any Bible passages that are "equally incongruent in modern times". Put up or shut up! Keep in mind that I am an EX-Christian and I am very, very knowledgable about the Bible. I know ALL of the "dirty verses" in the Bible and often employ them against Christian extremists myself. That's why I think it's bullshit that you think that the Bible is "just as bad" as the Koran, and that Christianity is "just as bad" as Islam. Christianity has a lot of warts. I'm a gay man, I should know. But Islam is far worse than Christianity, both in scope and in depth of malevolence.
Please answer me the following, as I think your honest answers will put to rest the false notion that Christianity, bad as it is, is "just as bad" as Islam:
1. How many battles did Jesus Christ participate in? By comparison, how many battles did the Muslim prophet Mohammed lead?
2. How many offensive battles did the Muslim prophet Mohammed conduct? By comparison how many defensive battles did the Muslim prophet Mohammed participate in?
3. Where does the Bible advocate conversion, subjugation, or warfare against ALL non-Christians for ALL time? (See also ALL of Sura 9, especially 9:29)
4. Where does the Bible give permission for husbands to beat their wives?
Fixed with a reminder: Allowing someone to practice their beliefs is good.
That's not always true. Consider Koran 4:34, for instance:
"Men are meant to be righteous and kind guardians of women because God has favored some more than others and because they [men] spend out of their wealth. In their turn righteous women are meant to be devoted and to guard what God has willed to be guarded even though out of sight of the husband. As for those women on whose part you fear ill-will and nasty conduct, admonish them first, next separate them in beds and last beat them. But if they obey you, then seek nothing against them. Behold, God is most high and great."
Should we allow a muslim man to practice his belief that men are allowed to beat women who do not obey?
What is more important: protecting others' freedom of religion, or protecting women's right to life?
By the way, many millions of Muslim women, in addition to being humiliated by being forced to veil themselves, are beaten by their husbands. It is all completely justified by the Koran. Sad is the plight of the Muslim woman who lives at the mercy of a cruel and misogynistic religion.
Well then, as Lewis put it, "There comes a point when the unreasonableness of a person's argument forces me to have nothing else to say to them..." (paraphrased).
Indeed. The time for "dialogue" ends when it becomes clear that the enemy who wants you dead is exploiting your desire for "dialogue" as yet another means to your destruction.
The single, best argument to the contrary I have ever heard is that not one defendant at the Nuremburg trials stated, in defense, that the holocaust never happened....
The Islamist repsonse to that is to claim that the "Europeans" (Nazis) were actually Zionists who fabricated the Holocaust in order to carve out a homeland for the Jews land that belonged to the ummah. So naturally the defendants at the Nuremburg trials wouldn't have denied such a thing: the Nazis were hard-core Zionists (the worst stripe of Evil(TM)) and went to their grave to defend their Jewish masters.
Muslim hatred for Jewish people is stronger than that of Klan hatred for Jewish people: the hate is not merely cultural, it's theologically-justified. It's a big problem for those of us who believe in freedom of conscience and tolerance for other people.
(Answer: craven fear and militant denial are much more powerful than a genuine desire not to offend. "I don't want to get my head cut off, so maybe I should entertain the notion that all Jews are Nazis and the Holocaust never happened...")
Why does accommodating religion nearly always harm society?
It depends on which society you're talking about. I don't see how accomodating the Muslim religion is going to harm the Muslim society, for instance. That is, unless you will argue that Muslims themselves are harmed by Muslim society by nature of their harmful religious beliefs, but that's not very multicultural of you, is it? Quite a pickle we have here...
It's a good thing that we have folks on the other side of the Pond who can inform us which News Outlets are categorically Good(TM) or unflinchingly Evil(TM). There is no middle ground, after all. Progressive nuance is all we need in order to know which groups should be judged unacceptable and thus banished forever in the pit of "Faux News".
That's a convenient way for you to dodge the question, an unsavory and intellectually dishonest behavior that you are repeating. How is your reply different from "No", considering that you have yet to define a purely altruistic action?
No.
Then that negates your earlier statement ("Any group of more than ten individuals will be compromised by people who are self-interested, greedy, and willing to sacrifice the good of the group for their own personal benefit even to the point of creating misery for a significant percentage of the rest of the group. I have yet to see an example where this doesn't hold true."). If the rest of the group is not significant, then how can the example hold true?
Your inflammatory rhetoric is highly juvenile.
It's actually your collectivist ideology that is juvenile. Radical Leftist ideology (anti-conformist, anarchist, etc.) is largely the realm of the rebellious young. Are you a rebel and a non-conformist? Furthermore, I'm sorry that you're so easily-provoked. Your life must be hard.
You have much anger and pain which you brought to the table. My anger and pain was inspired by you. It is your problem.
The only one here who is angry and in pain is you, and that is most certainly your problem. Perhaps in the future you'll gain some maturity and figure out how not to get so angry when someone asks questions that you can't answer.
Are you ready to reneg on your pledge to treat me altruistically? "Progressives" usually resort to (tolerant) slander and (peaceful) threats of violence at this point. Perhaps you will prove to be different from all the rest of your tolerant and peaceful kind.
The democrats, at least, want to legalize immigrants, therefore giving them the right to minimum wage, unionize, complain, protest, boycott, strike
Alternatively, illegal aliens could NOT come the USA. In that case, there would be no need to legalize them and the complaints, protests, and boycotts that you seem to be agitating for could be avoided. It seems to me that you are advocating for a shittification of American society, because I would prefer to live in a culture where there are fewer complains, protests, and boycotts. Not more, fewer. And no, I never said that the ruthless jackbooted black-masked paramilitary shock troops should go crush all dissenters. Rather, it is you who seems to want more riots, not less.
And when I write, "NOT come to the USA", I am talking about building a wall and levying enormous fines to any employer who hires an illegal alien. Naturally, people who want a better life for illegal aliens (using a non-constituient's money) hate this idea with a passion. I have read that the reason that the wall/punishment idea won't happen is because it would bankrupt Mexico's economy which is now quite dependant on the remittances that are constantly sent from the USA and now is Mexico's largest source of income. As some have speculated, if this money stream to Mexico is cut off, then we're going to have a REAL problem with illegal aliens, not the tiny one that we have right now. We'll know the shit has hit the fan when a politican is brave enough to use the phrase "demographic conquest". Most liberals are familiar with this concept only through the word "settlements" when that word was used to describe what Israelis were doing in Gaza.
And here I figured you had to get up to a thousand or so to become evil.
According to HomelessInLaJolla, all it takes is ten individuals to turn into a Microsoft-scented Shoggoth. I'll have to adjust my understanding of crazy appropriately.
Then again, I'm sure there an even crazier person out there who thinks that all it takes is five individuals to turn into a Dick Cheney-Cthulu hybrid.
Within the original context of a large corporation in modern society I cannot describe a purely altruistic action because they do not exist.
In the proper context, can you define and describe a purely altruistic action?
The percentage of the rest of the group is itself insignificant.
How can the percentage of the rest of the group be insignificant when you referenced a "significant percentage of the rest of the group"? Is a percentage of the rest of the group significant or not?
I'm homeless and unemployed. My boredom is assuaged by engaging in a mental exercise.
I have yet to see you exercise your mental faculties. So far, you're just repeating dogma, dodging questions, and contradicting yourself. I'm interested in your core values, not your conclusions.
I resent the inflammatory rhetoric with which you began your comment but, in the interest of altruism, I am not using inflammatory language in reply.
The resentment is mutual, and since altruism does not exist in human nature I doubt you will keep your word.
Your words are boilerplate collectivist ideology and entirely unoriginal. Allow me to try to ask some incisive questions that might bring to light some of the faulty underpinnings of your ethic.
1. Can you define and describe a purely altruistic action?
2. What percentage of the rest of the group is significant?
Google has some of the attributes which the industry used to have before penny-pinching cretins tried to "rationalize" it.
I find your post very intriguing because it sounds like you speak from experience. Tell me, what are you referring to when you mention "rationalize"? You did so twice, with scare quotes, and I'd like to know what you're talking about. I'm ignorant.
this story is only shocking and interesting to those who still believe google is somehow saintly amongst large companies. that's impossible. a large company is a large company is a large company. slashdot: google = microsoft.
Let me switch my brain into stark, uncompromising black-and-white mode so that I can understand the logic.
<click>
Okay. Here we go:
1 employee: good 2-9 employees: good 10-49 employees: good 50+ employees: BLAM! EVIL! MICROSOFT-EVIL!
Slashdot, what you must learn is that *ALL* large companies are automatically evil, as the table (above) clearly shows. They are *ALL* as evil as Microsoft once they become large. End of discussion.
And how many businesses, exactly, has George Bush run that were profitable?
That question is symptomatic of Bush Derangement Syndrome.
That's why it's called capitalism, and not "work harderism." It's all about who controls the primary capital
You and I have different definitions of "capitalism". The USA is *not* a capitalist country. It has a mixed economy, and it becomes less and less capitalist every day. Capitalism is that which exists when individual property rights are protected by government and individuals refrain from depriving any other individuals of property through force or fraud. Hence, individuals exist as traders, trading value for value as they see is mutually beneficial. It's a society of making win-wins, not a society which supports thieves, liars, moochers, and looters.
I hope I'm not shattering your world here or anything, but New York is a pretty liberal heavy city. That means the majority of victims of 9/11 were probably liberals.
(I'm quite aware that there are boatloads of pompous liberals in NYC, and I have to resist hating NYC for it.)
Whether or not a person is "liberal" has nothing to do with whether or not they were able to work hard, make good choices, and reap the benefits from it. Think about Google and Apple. Those are both very "progressive" companies, but they function (mostly) as capitalists, trading value for value, working hard, making good choices, and being rewarded for it. (In other words, they're hypocrites.)
You actually do need government intervention to support the rules of capitalism. For one, ultimately governments enforce contract laws.
Please note that I didn't write anything about government enforcing laws. What I wrote was that government "never solves anything". The word I chose is "solve", not "enforce", and the word choice is very important because "progressives" think that "society" is filled with "problems" that require a government "solution". (Please forgive my egregious use of scare quotes, but Marxist ideology has infected those words and I don't want you to infer that I share that revolting ideology simply because I use those words.) I maintain: government solves nothing. The enforcement of contracts, which exist to protect individual property rights, is a legitimate and necessary role of government.
The EPA ensures that the mill up the river doesn't pollute it so much
Likewise the FDA ensures that beneficial drugs get to the market, and the DEA ensures that there are no drugs on the streets. Style over substance, form over function, right? It's no small wonder that so many artists and movie-makers, who deal solely in the imaginary, fanciful, and superficial, are "progressive".
Some of these things are so essential for the functioning of capitalism that they are frequently taken for a given. But they're not: they're achieved via government.
You have faith in government much like a Christian has faith in Jesus Christ. What's the point of showing you how broadly and deeply government fails? For you to accept it would require you to deny yourself, and that takes strength and peace of mind that few people will ever have. As an Ex-Evangelical Christian who has since become a Eudaimonist, I can honestly say that I do not suggest that others follow my path. Life is too short for that kind of pain.
This is the point where you will write, "Likewise, you have faith in the free market." That accusation only makes sense if I see the world as a "society" that has "problems" that need to be "solved". I don't see it that way because you and I have drastically different values.
A truly free and open market isn't free
That is useless and self-contradictory rhetoric. We need to agree on what "freedom" means (I prefer "individual liberty", as you might imagine) before we can use it with each other and have it mean anything.
In this equation, the government is the ONLY entity that is at least theo
It is very much a central tenet of Marxism that communism isn't "designed", it's an inevitable consequence of class struggle, and more directly of capitalism.
It's an example of cart-before-the-horse turned into dogma. Capitalism doesn't come from "class struggle". Rather, "class struggle" (code for wealth envy) follows capitalism, in which people who work hard and make good choices are rewarded while the lazy and stupid are not.
Granted, there are exceptions. Sometimes the lazy and stupid wind up rich (think about the rich liberal living-on-trust-fund brat denizens of the Hamptons), and sometimes those who work hard and make good choices are punished (victims of 9/11). Capitalism isn't designed to cure all problems. It's merely that which exists without government intervention, which always creates more problems than it solves (and it never solves anything).
By the way, did Marx ever define what a "class" was?
Stop using CSS for positioning and revert to tables. I even reccommend using tables with nested tables and spacer gifs as well.
No, I'm not trolling at all, even though the sentence above is like pouring acid in the ear of some very, very ardent CSS zealots which frequent this board. CSS positioning will never be easy. It will always be a morass of hacks upon hacks upon hacks that will never look completely right in all browsers. It will always take longer, require more arcane (read: useless) knowledge, and turn previously mundane tasks into exotic feats of dick-sizing-contest proportions. Just swallow your pride and go back to tables for positioning. You will feel better and you will enjoy your job more.
Then again, if you work in a zealot shop ("100% CSS and proud of it!") then you have my sympathy.
(Here come the expected counter-arguments: "CSS isn't the problem, it's the browsers." "You just hate handicapped people." "CSS is the future!" "You just don't want to learn anything new.")
As you business plummets downhill backwards, remember this: the answer is You'll never know.
That's FUD. If the server logs start noting many, many more hits coming from Firefox (hits that necessarily do NOT, by business logic, become sales) and the number of IE hits dropping coupled with news reports of IE's declining market share, then the "You'll never know!" excuse doesn't fly, particularly considering that knowing the market's choice in web browser is crucial information to a web-only storefront.
Did you ever identify item #9 in Wizardry with your Bishop? Or item "number" M?
I don't know if that qualifies as a bug or an easter egg, but it sure made Wizardry very interesting for the next 5 minutes, after which it became suddenly very boring forever. (I guess that qualifies as a rotten easter egg.)
You 6-digiters are just common. But at least you're not as bad as the 7-digiters. I'm so glad I'm not one of those 5-digiters. But the 3-digiters are so cool and smart.
It seems that having a 4-digit UID does nothing for one's ability to reason. Why in the world would I possibly support either of these political whores?
I get a lot of hate for having a 4-digit UID. I'm not being gay-bashed nearly enough on Slashdot (damn you liberals!), so I'm going to have to create a new group of oppressed minorites for those of us poor souls who carry the immesurable burden of having 4-digit UIDs. (Here's where the 3-digit UID user is supposed to stand up and indignantly state that his burden is so much greater than mine.)
In any case, since when did supporting a political candidate have anything, anything at all, to do with reasoning? Political operatives now muse openly about the "likability" of candidates, openly eschewing all discussions about positions. There's a lot of both love and hatred for W, but is any of that based on reasoning as well? It's pure, gut emotions. The thinking mind is hard to find around election time, and that societal illness is going to get worse, not better.
So, why would you support either of them? Because they would make you *feel* good. I'm sorry, did I impugn you with not thinking? Of course I did. Forgive me if I did so and it was not warranted. You may very well be one of the very, very few people who has a list of values that he would like to see upheld and can express them in terms of political positions that a politician can support. (Please don't denigrate "whores" by likening them to politicians, it's rude.)
They're totally unpredictable in who they're going to sell out to next.
It's not unpredictable at all. They'll sell out to whomever or whatever can deliver or maintain (legitimately or otherwise) the most votes. Furthermore, our two-party system in the USA makes it pretty simple in most cases. It's not like Obama and Hillary are both grappling in deep consternation over the issue of pandering to either the NRA or the NEA.
Limiting time wasted talking to members of the opposing gender.
As a gay geek, you have NO IDEA how true and appropriate this was for me growing up. For you spinning-your-wheels straight geeks, talking to members of the opposing (heh!) gender is not completely a waste of time. After all, you do, technically, have a non-zero chance of getting laid by talking to a fish, and that chance decreases to zero if you choose not to talk to them.
For me, the chances of me getting laid by talking to a fish remain at zero. On the other hand, playing D&D actually increased my chances of getting laid. We would be role-playing fighting orcs, which would then turn into role-playing what happened in the bar after the battle, and then we'd forego the dice and go strictly into story-telling.
And then we'd forego the role-playing. Good times, fond memories.:)
Plus, being gay allowed me the latituted to have more interesting artifacts. The +2 Dildo of Speed and the +5 Salad of Chaos. How do you activate the latter one? Toss it!
Oh, and I'm also a chubby chaser. I fucking love D&D!!!
You seem to be confusing anti-Americanism with anti-capitalism, anti-westernism, and pro-communism.
Those things are more than just casually linked. People who hate capitalism generally hate the USA as the Great Satan: Capitalism is evil, and the USA is its prime enactor. Hence, anti-Americans are often Marxists who hate capitalism in general and the USA in particular.
Isn't it possible that some people are anti-American while loving capitalism, western culture, and democracy in general?
Of course it is. The prime example would be Charles de Gaulle. He hated the USA because a humbled France had to see its global power take second (or third, or fourth, or fifth) chair to an American culture that he thought was garbage. This isn't to say that he "loved" capitalism, and he loved it more than practically any of his sucessors.
Taking the devil's advocate here, but I can immagine someone saying, "Look, it's pretty bad in North Korea right now, but at least they havn't invaded anyone for the past 50 or so years. North Korea contents itself with opressing it's own people while the US goes out and opresses everyone else. On the sheer weight of the numbers, that puts the US in a worse position."
Of course you can take that position, but you would have to ignore logic and history and merely aim for a rhetorical advantage. The one you're employing in your hypothetical argument is "Invasion is bad; therefore, the USA is worse than North Korea". If invasion is bad, then was the USA wrong to invade Japan, a country that had had decades of experience invading, enslaving, and mass-killing in countries such as Korea, China, the Phillipines, Thailand, and so forth, and so on? The anti-American answer would be to say "Yes", which ignores all facts and reasoning. And that's the essence of anti-Americanism as it is the essence of zealotry of any stripe: devotion to the cause is of prime importance. All other considerations are secondary.
Side question 1: Do the Chinese regard the USA's fire-bombing of Tokyo, which killed 100,000 civilians, as a human-rights violation?
Side question 2: What is the anti-American response to side question 1?
Slashdot Mirror
We already do that, in the name of multiculturalism.
It's sad to see women's rights get trampled in the name of multiculturalism. I've lost all respect for "progressives" for this reason (among others). That German judge rubbed her ass on the Enlightenment and on women with that abortion of a ruling. May history treat her with merciless justice.
I call bullshit on this. There is nothing in your quote that implies this.
I personally thought that "beat her" implied "beat her", but your answer is rhetoric anyway. Let's get to your argument:
This passage outlines steps to be taken when a woman is motivated by "ill-will and nasty conduct".
Okay. Who is the judge of what is "ill-will and nasty conduct"? The husband is the judge! And if he decides that she is showing "ill will" and that her conduct is "nasty", then he is permitted to beat her if she does not obey. If a Muslim man beats his wife and then claims that she showed "ill-will and nasty conduct", was his behavior haram? This misogynistic religious abuse happens frequently in the Islamic world. Sad is the plight of the Muslim woman. This is on top of forcing her to be veiled so that she does not "corrupt men".
There are plenty of Bible passages that are equally incongruent in modern times.
Now it is my turn to call bullshit on you. Obviously you fail to mention any Bible passages that are "equally incongruent in modern times". Put up or shut up! Keep in mind that I am an EX-Christian and I am very, very knowledgable about the Bible. I know ALL of the "dirty verses" in the Bible and often employ them against Christian extremists myself. That's why I think it's bullshit that you think that the Bible is "just as bad" as the Koran, and that Christianity is "just as bad" as Islam. Christianity has a lot of warts. I'm a gay man, I should know. But Islam is far worse than Christianity, both in scope and in depth of malevolence.
Please answer me the following, as I think your honest answers will put to rest the false notion that Christianity, bad as it is, is "just as bad" as Islam:
1. How many battles did Jesus Christ participate in? By comparison, how many battles did the Muslim prophet Mohammed lead?
2. How many offensive battles did the Muslim prophet Mohammed conduct? By comparison how many defensive battles did the Muslim prophet Mohammed participate in?
3. Where does the Bible advocate conversion, subjugation, or warfare against ALL non-Christians for ALL time? (See also ALL of Sura 9, especially 9:29)
4. Where does the Bible give permission for husbands to beat their wives?
5. Did Jesus Christ screw a nine-year-old little girl like the Muslim prophet Mohammed did?
6. Is it true that Muslims regard their prophet Mohammad as a "perfect model of conduct" (Sura 33:21)?
Fixed with a reminder: Allowing someone to practice their beliefs is good.
That's not always true. Consider Koran 4:34, for instance:
"Men are meant to be righteous and kind guardians of women because God has favored some more than others and because they [men] spend out of their wealth. In their turn righteous women are meant to be devoted and to guard what God has willed to be guarded even though out of sight of the husband. As for those women on whose part you fear ill-will and nasty conduct, admonish them first, next separate them in beds and last beat them. But if they obey you, then seek nothing against them. Behold, God is most high and great."
Should we allow a muslim man to practice his belief that men are allowed to beat women who do not obey?
What is more important: protecting others' freedom of religion, or protecting women's right to life?
By the way, many millions of Muslim women, in addition to being humiliated by being forced to veil themselves, are beaten by their husbands. It is all completely justified by the Koran. Sad is the plight of the Muslim woman who lives at the mercy of a cruel and misogynistic religion.
Well then, as Lewis put it, "There comes a point when the unreasonableness of a person's argument forces me to have nothing else to say to them..." (paraphrased).
Indeed. The time for "dialogue" ends when it becomes clear that the enemy who wants you dead is exploiting your desire for "dialogue" as yet another means to your destruction.
The single, best argument to the contrary I have ever heard is that not one defendant at the Nuremburg trials stated, in defense, that the holocaust never happened....
The Islamist repsonse to that is to claim that the "Europeans" (Nazis) were actually Zionists who fabricated the Holocaust in order to carve out a homeland for the Jews land that belonged to the ummah. So naturally the defendants at the Nuremburg trials wouldn't have denied such a thing: the Nazis were hard-core Zionists (the worst stripe of Evil(TM)) and went to their grave to defend their Jewish masters.
Muslim hatred for Jewish people is stronger than that of Klan hatred for Jewish people: the hate is not merely cultural, it's theologically-justified. It's a big problem for those of us who believe in freedom of conscience and tolerance for other people.
Why is it perfectly ok to offend the people who the tragedy happened to, but not ok to offend people who deny it ever happened to begin with?
What's more, why is it not okay to offend people who perpetrate tragedy at a surprisingly disproportionate (not to mention theologically-justified) rate?
(Answer: craven fear and militant denial are much more powerful than a genuine desire not to offend. "I don't want to get my head cut off, so maybe I should entertain the notion that all Jews are Nazis and the Holocaust never happened...")
Why does accommodating religion nearly always harm society?
It depends on which society you're talking about. I don't see how accomodating the Muslim religion is going to harm the Muslim society, for instance. That is, unless you will argue that Muslims themselves are harmed by Muslim society by nature of their harmful religious beliefs, but that's not very multicultural of you, is it? Quite a pickle we have here...
It's a good thing that we have folks on the other side of the Pond who can inform us which News Outlets are categorically Good(TM) or unflinchingly Evil(TM). There is no middle ground, after all. Progressive nuance is all we need in order to know which groups should be judged unacceptable and thus banished forever in the pit of "Faux News".
Yes. This is not the proper context.
That's a convenient way for you to dodge the question, an unsavory and intellectually dishonest behavior that you are repeating. How is your reply different from "No", considering that you have yet to define a purely altruistic action?
No.
Then that negates your earlier statement ("Any group of more than ten individuals will be compromised by people who are self-interested, greedy, and willing to sacrifice the good of the group for their own personal benefit even to the point of creating misery for a significant percentage of the rest of the group. I have yet to see an example where this doesn't hold true."). If the rest of the group is not significant, then how can the example hold true?
Your inflammatory rhetoric is highly juvenile.
It's actually your collectivist ideology that is juvenile. Radical Leftist ideology (anti-conformist, anarchist, etc.) is largely the realm of the rebellious young. Are you a rebel and a non-conformist? Furthermore, I'm sorry that you're so easily-provoked. Your life must be hard.
You have much anger and pain which you brought to the table. My anger and pain was inspired by you. It is your problem.
The only one here who is angry and in pain is you, and that is most certainly your problem. Perhaps in the future you'll gain some maturity and figure out how not to get so angry when someone asks questions that you can't answer.
Are you ready to reneg on your pledge to treat me altruistically? "Progressives" usually resort to (tolerant) slander and (peaceful) threats of violence at this point. Perhaps you will prove to be different from all the rest of your tolerant and peaceful kind.
The democrats, at least, want to legalize immigrants, therefore giving them the right to minimum wage, unionize, complain, protest, boycott, strike
Alternatively, illegal aliens could NOT come the USA. In that case, there would be no need to legalize them and the complaints, protests, and boycotts that you seem to be agitating for could be avoided. It seems to me that you are advocating for a shittification of American society, because I would prefer to live in a culture where there are fewer complains, protests, and boycotts. Not more, fewer. And no, I never said that the ruthless jackbooted black-masked paramilitary shock troops should go crush all dissenters. Rather, it is you who seems to want more riots, not less.
And when I write, "NOT come to the USA", I am talking about building a wall and levying enormous fines to any employer who hires an illegal alien. Naturally, people who want a better life for illegal aliens (using a non-constituient's money) hate this idea with a passion. I have read that the reason that the wall/punishment idea won't happen is because it would bankrupt Mexico's economy which is now quite dependant on the remittances that are constantly sent from the USA and now is Mexico's largest source of income. As some have speculated, if this money stream to Mexico is cut off, then we're going to have a REAL problem with illegal aliens, not the tiny one that we have right now. We'll know the shit has hit the fan when a politican is brave enough to use the phrase "demographic conquest". Most liberals are familiar with this concept only through the word "settlements" when that word was used to describe what Israelis were doing in Gaza.
And here I figured you had to get up to a thousand or so to become evil.
According to HomelessInLaJolla, all it takes is ten individuals to turn into a Microsoft-scented Shoggoth. I'll have to adjust my understanding of crazy appropriately.
Then again, I'm sure there an even crazier person out there who thinks that all it takes is five individuals to turn into a Dick Cheney-Cthulu hybrid.
Within the original context of a large corporation in modern society I cannot describe a purely altruistic action because they do not exist.
In the proper context, can you define and describe a purely altruistic action?
The percentage of the rest of the group is itself insignificant.
How can the percentage of the rest of the group be insignificant when you referenced a "significant percentage of the rest of the group"? Is a percentage of the rest of the group significant or not?
I'm homeless and unemployed. My boredom is assuaged by engaging in a mental exercise.
I have yet to see you exercise your mental faculties. So far, you're just repeating dogma, dodging questions, and contradicting yourself. I'm interested in your core values, not your conclusions.
I resent the inflammatory rhetoric with which you began your comment but, in the interest of altruism, I am not using inflammatory language in reply.
The resentment is mutual, and since altruism does not exist in human nature I doubt you will keep your word.
Your words are boilerplate collectivist ideology and entirely unoriginal. Allow me to try to ask some incisive questions that might bring to light some of the faulty underpinnings of your ethic.
1. Can you define and describe a purely altruistic action?
2. What percentage of the rest of the group is significant?
3. What's in it for you to answer me?
Google has some of the attributes which the industry used to have before penny-pinching cretins tried to "rationalize" it.
I find your post very intriguing because it sounds like you speak from experience. Tell me, what are you referring to when you mention "rationalize"? You did so twice, with scare quotes, and I'd like to know what you're talking about. I'm ignorant.
this story is only shocking and interesting to those who still believe google is somehow saintly amongst large companies. that's impossible. a large company is a large company is a large company. slashdot: google = microsoft.
Let me switch my brain into stark, uncompromising black-and-white mode so that I can understand the logic.
<click>
Okay. Here we go:
1 employee: good
2-9 employees: good
10-49 employees: good
50+ employees: BLAM! EVIL! MICROSOFT -EVIL!
Slashdot, what you must learn is that *ALL* large companies are automatically evil, as the table (above) clearly shows. They are *ALL* as evil as Microsoft once they become large. End of discussion.
<click>
And how many businesses, exactly, has George Bush run that were profitable?
That question is symptomatic of Bush Derangement Syndrome.
That's why it's called capitalism, and not "work harderism." It's all about who controls the primary capital
You and I have different definitions of "capitalism". The USA is *not* a capitalist country. It has a mixed economy, and it becomes less and less capitalist every day. Capitalism is that which exists when individual property rights are protected by government and individuals refrain from depriving any other individuals of property through force or fraud. Hence, individuals exist as traders, trading value for value as they see is mutually beneficial. It's a society of making win-wins, not a society which supports thieves, liars, moochers, and looters.
I hope I'm not shattering your world here or anything, but New York is a pretty liberal heavy city. That means the majority of victims of 9/11 were probably liberals.
(I'm quite aware that there are boatloads of pompous liberals in NYC, and I have to resist hating NYC for it.)
Whether or not a person is "liberal" has nothing to do with whether or not they were able to work hard, make good choices, and reap the benefits from it. Think about Google and Apple. Those are both very "progressive" companies, but they function (mostly) as capitalists, trading value for value, working hard, making good choices, and being rewarded for it. (In other words, they're hypocrites.)
You actually do need government intervention to support the rules of capitalism. For one, ultimately governments enforce contract laws.
Please note that I didn't write anything about government enforcing laws. What I wrote was that government "never solves anything". The word I chose is "solve", not "enforce", and the word choice is very important because "progressives" think that "society" is filled with "problems" that require a government "solution". (Please forgive my egregious use of scare quotes, but Marxist ideology has infected those words and I don't want you to infer that I share that revolting ideology simply because I use those words.) I maintain: government solves nothing. The enforcement of contracts, which exist to protect individual property rights, is a legitimate and necessary role of government.
The EPA ensures that the mill up the river doesn't pollute it so much
Likewise the FDA ensures that beneficial drugs get to the market, and the DEA ensures that there are no drugs on the streets. Style over substance, form over function, right? It's no small wonder that so many artists and movie-makers, who deal solely in the imaginary, fanciful, and superficial, are "progressive".
Some of these things are so essential for the functioning of capitalism that they are frequently taken for a given. But they're not: they're achieved via government.
You have faith in government much like a Christian has faith in Jesus Christ. What's the point of showing you how broadly and deeply government fails? For you to accept it would require you to deny yourself, and that takes strength and peace of mind that few people will ever have. As an Ex-Evangelical Christian who has since become a Eudaimonist, I can honestly say that I do not suggest that others follow my path. Life is too short for that kind of pain.
This is the point where you will write, "Likewise, you have faith in the free market." That accusation only makes sense if I see the world as a "society" that has "problems" that need to be "solved". I don't see it that way because you and I have drastically different values.
A truly free and open market isn't free
That is useless and self-contradictory rhetoric. We need to agree on what "freedom" means (I prefer "individual liberty", as you might imagine) before we can use it with each other and have it mean anything.
In this equation, the government is the ONLY entity that is at least theo
It is very much a central tenet of Marxism that communism isn't "designed", it's an inevitable consequence of class struggle, and more directly of capitalism.
It's an example of cart-before-the-horse turned into dogma. Capitalism doesn't come from "class struggle". Rather, "class struggle" (code for wealth envy) follows capitalism, in which people who work hard and make good choices are rewarded while the lazy and stupid are not.
Granted, there are exceptions. Sometimes the lazy and stupid wind up rich (think about the rich liberal living-on-trust-fund brat denizens of the Hamptons), and sometimes those who work hard and make good choices are punished (victims of 9/11). Capitalism isn't designed to cure all problems. It's merely that which exists without government intervention, which always creates more problems than it solves (and it never solves anything).
By the way, did Marx ever define what a "class" was?
Stop using CSS for positioning and revert to tables. I even reccommend using tables with nested tables and spacer gifs as well.
No, I'm not trolling at all, even though the sentence above is like pouring acid in the ear of some very, very ardent CSS zealots which frequent this board. CSS positioning will never be easy. It will always be a morass of hacks upon hacks upon hacks that will never look completely right in all browsers. It will always take longer, require more arcane (read: useless) knowledge, and turn previously mundane tasks into exotic feats of dick-sizing-contest proportions. Just swallow your pride and go back to tables for positioning. You will feel better and you will enjoy your job more.
Then again, if you work in a zealot shop ("100% CSS and proud of it!") then you have my sympathy.
(Here come the expected counter-arguments: "CSS isn't the problem, it's the browsers." "You just hate handicapped people." "CSS is the future!" "You just don't want to learn anything new.")
As you business plummets downhill backwards, remember this: the answer is You'll never know.
That's FUD. If the server logs start noting many, many more hits coming from Firefox (hits that necessarily do NOT, by business logic, become sales) and the number of IE hits dropping coupled with news reports of IE's declining market share, then the "You'll never know!" excuse doesn't fly, particularly considering that knowing the market's choice in web browser is crucial information to a web-only storefront.
You're not that old school.
Did you ever identify item #9 in Wizardry with your Bishop? Or item "number" M?
I don't know if that qualifies as a bug or an easter egg, but it sure made Wizardry very interesting for the next 5 minutes, after which it became suddenly very boring forever. (I guess that qualifies as a rotten easter egg.)
You 6-digiters are just common. But at least you're not as bad as the 7-digiters. I'm so glad I'm not one of those 5-digiters. But the 3-digiters are so cool and smart.
It seems that having a 4-digit UID does nothing for one's ability to reason. Why in the world would I possibly support either of these political whores?
I get a lot of hate for having a 4-digit UID. I'm not being gay-bashed nearly enough on Slashdot (damn you liberals!), so I'm going to have to create a new group of oppressed minorites for those of us poor souls who carry the immesurable burden of having 4-digit UIDs. (Here's where the 3-digit UID user is supposed to stand up and indignantly state that his burden is so much greater than mine.)
In any case, since when did supporting a political candidate have anything, anything at all, to do with reasoning? Political operatives now muse openly about the "likability" of candidates, openly eschewing all discussions about positions. There's a lot of both love and hatred for W, but is any of that based on reasoning as well? It's pure, gut emotions. The thinking mind is hard to find around election time, and that societal illness is going to get worse, not better.
So, why would you support either of them? Because they would make you *feel* good. I'm sorry, did I impugn you with not thinking? Of course I did. Forgive me if I did so and it was not warranted. You may very well be one of the very, very few people who has a list of values that he would like to see upheld and can express them in terms of political positions that a politician can support. (Please don't denigrate "whores" by likening them to politicians, it's rude.)
They're totally unpredictable in who they're going to sell out to next.
It's not unpredictable at all. They'll sell out to whomever or whatever can deliver or maintain (legitimately or otherwise) the most votes. Furthermore, our two-party system in the USA makes it pretty simple in most cases. It's not like Obama and Hillary are both grappling in deep consternation over the issue of pandering to either the NRA or the NEA.
"I support Hillary Clinton."
-- TheMeuge (645043)
"I support Barack Obama."
-- MindStalker (22827)
Limiting time wasted talking to members of the opposing gender.
:)
As a gay geek, you have NO IDEA how true and appropriate this was for me growing up. For you spinning-your-wheels straight geeks, talking to members of the opposing (heh!) gender is not completely a waste of time. After all, you do, technically, have a non-zero chance of getting laid by talking to a fish, and that chance decreases to zero if you choose not to talk to them.
For me, the chances of me getting laid by talking to a fish remain at zero. On the other hand, playing D&D actually increased my chances of getting laid. We would be role-playing fighting orcs, which would then turn into role-playing what happened in the bar after the battle, and then we'd forego the dice and go strictly into story-telling.
And then we'd forego the role-playing. Good times, fond memories.
Plus, being gay allowed me the latituted to have more interesting artifacts. The +2 Dildo of Speed and the +5 Salad of Chaos. How do you activate the latter one? Toss it!
Oh, and I'm also a chubby chaser. I fucking love D&D!!!
You seem to be confusing anti-Americanism with anti-capitalism, anti-westernism, and pro-communism.
Those things are more than just casually linked. People who hate capitalism generally hate the USA as the Great Satan: Capitalism is evil, and the USA is its prime enactor. Hence, anti-Americans are often Marxists who hate capitalism in general and the USA in particular.
Isn't it possible that some people are anti-American while loving capitalism, western culture, and democracy in general?
Of course it is. The prime example would be Charles de Gaulle. He hated the USA because a humbled France had to see its global power take second (or third, or fourth, or fifth) chair to an American culture that he thought was garbage. This isn't to say that he "loved" capitalism, and he loved it more than practically any of his sucessors.
Taking the devil's advocate here, but I can immagine someone saying, "Look, it's pretty bad in North Korea right now, but at least they havn't invaded anyone for the past 50 or so years. North Korea contents itself with opressing it's own people while the US goes out and opresses everyone else. On the sheer weight of the numbers, that puts the US in a worse position."
Of course you can take that position, but you would have to ignore logic and history and merely aim for a rhetorical advantage. The one you're employing in your hypothetical argument is "Invasion is bad; therefore, the USA is worse than North Korea". If invasion is bad, then was the USA wrong to invade Japan, a country that had had decades of experience invading, enslaving, and mass-killing in countries such as Korea, China, the Phillipines, Thailand, and so forth, and so on? The anti-American answer would be to say "Yes", which ignores all facts and reasoning. And that's the essence of anti-Americanism as it is the essence of zealotry of any stripe: devotion to the cause is of prime importance. All other considerations are secondary.
Side question 1: Do the Chinese regard the USA's fire-bombing of Tokyo, which killed 100,000 civilians, as a human-rights violation?
Side question 2: What is the anti-American response to side question 1?