Your habit of using Sparc has nothing to do with innate qualities of yourself
Until someone can cough up a list of the genetic markers or otherwise identifiable medical characteristics, neither (on an objective level) can one say that homosexuality is innate. Left/right handedness has a (at least potential) genetic marker (no, really: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LRRTM1 ) No one has yet to conclusively prove the same about sexual orientation.
Me, I don't know or care either way, nor will I make the claim. Just don't make/take a grand (or worse, groupthink) assumption and then assert it as known fact, plz.
So, if I think that using a Sparc processor is wrong, and say so, I'm suddenly "hostile" to it? If some random dude on the street tells me she thinks my little tobacco habit is wrong, Should I automatically assume he's hostile to me, and take appropriate and equally hostile steps in return? Hell of a stupid way to try and get along in this world, dontcha think?
Two thoughts come to mind:
* Me thinks thou doth protest too much. Not everyone who disagrees with your ideology/views/orientation/whatever is automatically "hostile".
* Ghandi's "eye for an eye" saying keeps popping up.
If the Catholic Herald refuses to print my article on the positive morality of abortion or contraception, that's not censorship. If the government passes a law making it a crime to publishany articles in favour of abortion or contraception, then that is censorship.
Quick question here - does Apple have an official stance on homosexuality? Otherwise, your analogy, while it does the job, does fall a bit short in specifics, and I think you misunderstood his point.
I mean, set the law aside for a moment here and just look at the concept. It's one thing to intentionally try to push an opposing viewpoint into the face of a specifically-oriented publication (or even a market). OTOH, Apple's App Store is supposedly a generalized market (well, reasonably so). It's not as if someone was trying to sell porn mags at a religious book store here. So any obvious reasons are out here.
While it certainly is perfectly legal for Apple to do, GP can still say with perfect clarity that yes, Apple facilitated a form of censorship, and yes, the LGBT community (or at least the part that pushed the petition) actively pushed for censorship of what is essentially just a viewpoint that they didn't like.
But did they try to stop because they wanted to stop being gay or because of fear of the reaction of family and peers?
I'm guessing (only guessing) that it's a mixture of societal/family pressures combined with internal confusion. For example, I suspect it would be hard for a guy raised/taught/imbued by family, friends, and society to stop and consider thoughts and feelings that he never had to personally confront head-on before.
Have you ever wanted to stop being hetero?
I've entertained the thoughts and seriously considered it before - there's no shame in saying it, and any man or woman who says he/she hasn't done so is a liar. I find it to be the hallmark of a mentally healthy, normal human being to at least consider it once or twice in his or her life, and a normal part of exploration during puberty, when a kid becomes a biological adult but doesn't quite know how to comprehend all the new desires and emotions.
(I was fortunate to have been raised by parents who had explicitly stated that they would continue to love me either way. This left me perfectly free to do all of the decision-making for myself as a teenager).
All that said, since it didn't quite elicit the same desires and reactions that thoughts of hetero sex and relationships do, I left the idea to die on its own, and I've never really had an occasion or desire to re-evaluate it. *shrug*.
I daresay that a teenager who, in the midst of confusion during puberty, is pressured in any direction by parents/friends/etc? It does more harm than good, since IMHO that pressure will likely intensify the thoughts out of rebellion, among other reasons. There's also the existing interpersonal relationships that the kid may have at that time, which may intensify desires one way or the other. Most kids have an extremely hard time even identifying their emotions and desires, let alone articulate them (even to themselves), so I can see where a teenager might go either way at that point, as opposed to being "born" one way or the other.
Most kids settle on it one way or the other by the time puberty ends, with each passing year reinforcing their identity. Some struggle with it for decades, or even their entire lives, until extreme old age makes the point moot. Some fall in-between (my wife's uncle is an example here - happily married for 20 years, woke up and settled the struggle, then left his wife and began searching for a man to fulfill him - awesome guy, highly intellectual, and a lot happier with himself nowadays. His ex-wife OTOH is still rather bitter about it, and it did a number on his kids).
All that said, while I know where I fell in the spectrum, I still find it hard to articulate exactly how it would affect any given person, and the above was my best shot so far.
Not marking judgement one way or the other on the whole efficacy of trying to make a gay man straight, but one thing needed remarked on:
...you'll find that they haven't lost the "temptation"...
Last I checked, temptation never goes away, for anything that tempts. Even as a straight guy who's happily married, pretty young ladies still attract the eye (and some thoughts that I'm sure most of/. wouldn't find too alien). Let's remove religion altogether: If you find an average person who smoked for decades and then quit. I'm willing to wager that he or she still get some sort of urge if another person lights up a ciggie in their presence... even years later (I once quit smoking for 3 years... even years afterwards, I still dreamt of smoking a cigarette, and experiencing an urge to light up whenever my ex or her father lit one up).
Over time, the urge may dull (for *any* temptation), but I doubt that any credible Christian organization would say that temptation goes away entirely, especially if you just barely gave it up (whatever "it" may be).
Most gay folk that I know have tried to 'stop being gay', until they finally accepted themselves for who they are. It's almost part of the process, I figure.
Not really seeing the comparison here w/ your analogy.
Dumping your trash in the forest would defile what is ostensibly common property, which is why it is illegal. Someone presenting an opposing view in a marketplace does no such thing.
The marketplace itself decides "collective desire", not ideology - and the funniest part is, that "collective desire" is anything but homogeneous (otherwise we'd all be ravenous fans of Ke$ha... let that thought sink in for a minute.)
Besides - the whole idea of anyone (or any group) daring to define "collective desire" (let alone try to enforce it) is pretty repugnant to anyone who desires the freedom to explore their own being and to (peacefully) maximize their own individual potential.
No, people with guns ate more. There are good reasons for that.
...chief among them being that people with guns (let's call them "armies") were able to subjugate and dominate those without guns (we'll call them "peasants"), taking their goods (like food, for instance).
Like sibling said - guns evolved as weapons of war. It wasn't until accuracy actually got half-assed decent (roughly the 17th century, or about 100-200 years after armies have been using them) that hunting with a gun made any sense at all.
While we're on the subject, one thing to note among the gun-toting crowd... you can reload, you can even (maybe) re-pour bullets, but eventually you're going to run out of powder and primers (unless of course you have a degree in chemistry, or a flintlock muzzle-loader and enough know-how to make powder old-school). There's a vast difference between gunpowder you can actually *make* from locally-had ingredients (if you know how), and the chemical concoctions that you buy at the local gun shop.
May want to brush up on the ol' bow-hunting skills, yanno?
No, they are used to operating in a general environment of order and calm. It is almost always required in order for them to insure their victims are unaware of any impending danger, and to operate with any semblance of stealth.
...they are used using a gun to shoot and kill people.
I suspect you've been watching too much truTV. Look past the BS bravado and attempts at intimidating speech and music. You'll find that the vast majority have never (ever) fired a weapon in anger, and most likely have zero actual training in the use of a firearm. The few who have used one are almost all not used to having someone fire back. Very few actual gang members (let's call it less than 0.5%) have ever had to deal with even a close analogue of attacking a watchful, armed, desperate, and fully determined individual (let alone a group) for the purposes of survival.
I also suspect that a very large percentage of them will be too busy fighting the various demons of narcotic withdrawal.
The ones in this group imo could not defend themselves if their life depended on it. I am willing to bet that one.
I'm willing to bet that *most* people, of *any* persuasion ("gangsta" or not) could not defend themselves if their lives depended on it.
Sounds pretty cool, but allow me to play Devil's Advocate for a bit. I promise I'm not trolling, but your post brought up a lot of questions:
What happens when the disaster/antichrist/zombies/alien-invasion/whatever starts killing off members, catches some members on vacation somewheres else entirely, cripples/debilitates members, or similar?
What if the disaster involves something (or occurs during anything) that hinders any kind of transportation for more than a week (e.g. blizzard or ice storm)?
Even when everything goes right and you all make it to sanctuary, you'll likely have to deal with the usual inter-personal conflicts that tend to arise in any group that's not already used to living together 24/7/365. That latter part is a natural result of any group of mammals getting together for the first time - you gotta sort out the Alpha Male, etc... have you sorted that out, and actually tested it out under simulated conditions?
What happens if one of your members becomes diabetic and dependent on insulin (or, say, finds themselves in a similar medical condition or pre-apocalyptic injury that requires civilized society to remain alive)? You kick 'em out of the group? And what happens if a few members start telling their girlfriends/neighbors/etc?
Incidentally, if you can walk to something in about a day or two, err, so can pretty much anyone else who has working legs. How do you fend off folks who are just following along - do you shoot them? What if there are children tagging along?
What if there's a group of similarly-armed folks who happen to notice you (and maybe a friend or two) wandering along towards your waypoint lugging all those supplies? Can you deal with an ambush or attack by folks who know that locale far better than you do?
Speaking of which, how do you deal with locals at your destination who may take issue with you hunting/fishing off of their territory?
How do you lug along all those supplies without anyone else noticing (and taking immediate interest), anyway?
Long term?
I ask all of this because I meet a lot of people, and in conversations over the years, almost *everyone* has the same idea you expressed, in various forms - get out into the woods with weapons and supplies, and proceed to live off the land in some sort of post-apocalyptic yet romanticized fashion. Seems almost safer to hunker down in town, what with everyone else migrating out to the woods...
Now mind you, I live in Oregon. I can find myself in the middle of woods and wildlife in less than a day, on foot. I can be out in actual no-shit wilderness in two days on foot, and I can be on the coast after walking a week - where towns are few and far between. OTOH, there are literally about a million other people who live nearby. Somehow, I'm not seeing myself being able to blast my way through even a small percentage of them, or to sneak past 'em with a shitload of survival supplies. Just not picturing it... at all. Unless one lives in an extremely rural environment (e.g. Alaska, Montana, North Dakota, etc)? I'm guessing that similar issues are going to be more than present.
I'm guessing that this is why I only keep an essentials kit (food, water, and I guess my hunting firearms may work in a pinch), but instead figure that anything beyond a rough outline is, well, kind of crazy.
Countdown to criminalization of all non-.xxx porn.
All you'd have to do first is define "porn" (and by that, I mean defining it a whole lot more objectively than a former Supreme Court Justice when his answer was: "I'll know it when I see it!")
Oh, and then you'd have to get that definition ratified across a zillion countries (and by that, I mean countries ranging from Saudi Arabia to Holland).
And, once you manage to get all that in place, and manage to actually get some sort of universal "criminalization" going, you and I both know full well that approximately 40 jillion pr0n site 'entrepreneurs' will start devising (successfully) ways of skirting that semi-ban.
Then you get to start the process all over again to counter those loopholes.
Sorta like how we've been fighting spam all this time, really - except that you get to wrestle with politicians while you do it. As someone who does e-mail administration, I'll stick with the Bayesian filter tweaking and RBL upkeeps, because what I have to mess with suddenly looks a whole lot easier by comparison.
'cept this time it's Android they want to drub up a bit...
After all, WP 7 isn't exactly selling like hotcakes (or even like cold cakes for that matter).
This whole affair tells me a lot more about how bad Microsoft's phone sales numbers really are, than any cock-and-bull show about how many licenses they "sold" (read: stuffed into the channel) since launch.
Perhaps there's not enough juice to go around for all the coffee makers, discotheques, and big-screen televisions.
OTOH, I'm pretty sure that 300 MWp is plenty to power a few hospitals, food distribution areas, and some command/coordination centers. Probably have enough power left over to maybe keep some radios, and perhaps a light bulb or two going so that folks in shelters can get some light and news.
I disagree, as evidenced by multiple factors, including:
* The 1999 sale of a public street in Salt Lake City to the LDS Church w/o public input of comment (so that they could join their business building grounds to the Tabernacle) - it clogged up traffic, which continues to be a PITA to this day.
* The influence and money of the church in politicking for Prop 8 in California (no, not Utah... *California*).
* The sheer fact that in spite of comprising only 60% of the population, they have 98%+ representation in the Utah Legislature.
* Four words: Downtown Salt Lake City (the "Metro" - which replaced a once busy mall.)
* Two more: "Sugarhouse Renovation" (amazing how the one spot of non-LDS culture ---and the one home of many shops that offend LDS sensibility and/or morality-- gets forcefully, by government edict, torn down to make way for more beige stores... in spite of having a huge chunk of higher-traffic space to experiment with elsewhere in the metro area).
* The sad fate of the "Port O' Call" pub in downtown SLC... to make room for a courthouse, when there were larger and abandoned buildings that were *literally* across the street.
* The fact that the Utah state constitution itself has a clause in it that prevents any resident from suing the state on grounds of religious discrimination.
While LDS officials will obviously claim to not support particular candidates (they have to in order to retain non-profit status), you cannot, in the face of overwhelming evidence otherwise, claim with a straight face that they don't do politics. The above was just a very small sampling from memory... actual research will likely turn up far, far more results.
Is the law a church-led/influenced thing, then? Not to harp on the LDS, but if anything is perceived by the Quorum to affect the church, then odds are perfect that they can and will strong-arm the legislature into doing/voting whatever's best for the church. Since only like 1-2 legislators are not practicing LDS members, it's a pretty easy task.
As a former resident of Utah, I've lost count of how many Mormon jokes I've had to hear out here whenever folks ask me where I moved here from (in spite of the fact that I'm not Mormon). Kinda gets old sometimes...:/
Do the citizens of Utah have the ability to repeal bad laws via ballot initiative?
Yes, but if the local bishops say it should stay, then the initiative will fail.
Hopefully, there's no morality question involved with it (or anything that would threaten the LDS church), and they can get enough people to actually give a damn.:/
Mind you, I'm not saying Atlantis is real, but......Heinrich Schliemann was laughed at until he unearthed the city of Troy. They found what is believed to be the cities referred to as Sodom and Gomorrah, as well as the Philistine city of Gath (e.g. Goliath's crib). The tomb of Tutankhamen was considered to be a myth.
Not all tales have pure fabrication as their foundation. Sometimes they drag in real places into the picture.
I'm thinking that Plato caught wind of (or maybe even grew up with) the oral stories surrounding the Santorini eruption ~1,000 years before he was born. He likely took that and ran with it.
Slashdot Mirror
Your habit of using Sparc has nothing to do with innate qualities of yourself
Until someone can cough up a list of the genetic markers or otherwise identifiable medical characteristics, neither (on an objective level) can one say that homosexuality is innate. Left/right handedness has a (at least potential) genetic marker (no, really: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LRRTM1 ) No one has yet to conclusively prove the same about sexual orientation.
Me, I don't know or care either way, nor will I make the claim. Just don't make/take a grand (or worse, groupthink) assumption and then assert it as known fact, plz.
So, if I think that using a Sparc processor is wrong, and say so, I'm suddenly "hostile" to it? If some random dude on the street tells me she thinks my little tobacco habit is wrong, Should I automatically assume he's hostile to me, and take appropriate and equally hostile steps in return? Hell of a stupid way to try and get along in this world, dontcha think?
Two thoughts come to mind:
* Me thinks thou doth protest too much. Not everyone who disagrees with your ideology/views/orientation/whatever is automatically "hostile".
* Ghandi's "eye for an eye" saying keeps popping up.
If the Catholic Herald refuses to print my article on the positive morality of abortion or contraception, that's not censorship. If the government passes a law making it a crime to publishany articles in favour of abortion or contraception, then that is censorship.
Quick question here - does Apple have an official stance on homosexuality? Otherwise, your analogy, while it does the job, does fall a bit short in specifics, and I think you misunderstood his point.
I mean, set the law aside for a moment here and just look at the concept. It's one thing to intentionally try to push an opposing viewpoint into the face of a specifically-oriented publication (or even a market). OTOH, Apple's App Store is supposedly a generalized market (well, reasonably so). It's not as if someone was trying to sell porn mags at a religious book store here. So any obvious reasons are out here.
While it certainly is perfectly legal for Apple to do, GP can still say with perfect clarity that yes, Apple facilitated a form of censorship, and yes, the LGBT community (or at least the part that pushed the petition) actively pushed for censorship of what is essentially just a viewpoint that they didn't like.
But did they try to stop because they wanted to stop being gay or because of fear of the reaction of family and peers?
I'm guessing (only guessing) that it's a mixture of societal/family pressures combined with internal confusion. For example, I suspect it would be hard for a guy raised/taught/imbued by family, friends, and society to stop and consider thoughts and feelings that he never had to personally confront head-on before.
Have you ever wanted to stop being hetero?
I've entertained the thoughts and seriously considered it before - there's no shame in saying it, and any man or woman who says he/she hasn't done so is a liar. I find it to be the hallmark of a mentally healthy, normal human being to at least consider it once or twice in his or her life, and a normal part of exploration during puberty, when a kid becomes a biological adult but doesn't quite know how to comprehend all the new desires and emotions.
(I was fortunate to have been raised by parents who had explicitly stated that they would continue to love me either way. This left me perfectly free to do all of the decision-making for myself as a teenager).
All that said, since it didn't quite elicit the same desires and reactions that thoughts of hetero sex and relationships do, I left the idea to die on its own, and I've never really had an occasion or desire to re-evaluate it. *shrug*.
I daresay that a teenager who, in the midst of confusion during puberty, is pressured in any direction by parents/friends/etc? It does more harm than good, since IMHO that pressure will likely intensify the thoughts out of rebellion, among other reasons. There's also the existing interpersonal relationships that the kid may have at that time, which may intensify desires one way or the other. Most kids have an extremely hard time even identifying their emotions and desires, let alone articulate them (even to themselves), so I can see where a teenager might go either way at that point, as opposed to being "born" one way or the other.
Most kids settle on it one way or the other by the time puberty ends, with each passing year reinforcing their identity. Some struggle with it for decades, or even their entire lives, until extreme old age makes the point moot. Some fall in-between (my wife's uncle is an example here - happily married for 20 years, woke up and settled the struggle, then left his wife and began searching for a man to fulfill him - awesome guy, highly intellectual, and a lot happier with himself nowadays. His ex-wife OTOH is still rather bitter about it, and it did a number on his kids).
All that said, while I know where I fell in the spectrum, I still find it hard to articulate exactly how it would affect any given person, and the above was my best shot so far.
Love the last comment. :)
Thanks much for replying. It's been rather interesting, and even a bit educational.
Not marking judgement one way or the other on the whole efficacy of trying to make a gay man straight, but one thing needed remarked on:
...you'll find that they haven't lost the "temptation"...
Last I checked, temptation never goes away, for anything that tempts. Even as a straight guy who's happily married, pretty young ladies still attract the eye (and some thoughts that I'm sure most of /. wouldn't find too alien). Let's remove religion altogether: If you find an average person who smoked for decades and then quit. I'm willing to wager that he or she still get some sort of urge if another person lights up a ciggie in their presence... even years later (I once quit smoking for 3 years... even years afterwards, I still dreamt of smoking a cigarette, and experiencing an urge to light up whenever my ex or her father lit one up).
Over time, the urge may dull (for *any* temptation), but I doubt that any credible Christian organization would say that temptation goes away entirely, especially if you just barely gave it up (whatever "it" may be).
People who are gay don't want to stop being gay.
Most gay folk that I know have tried to 'stop being gay', until they finally accepted themselves for who they are. It's almost part of the process, I figure.
Not really seeing the comparison here w/ your analogy.
Dumping your trash in the forest would defile what is ostensibly common property, which is why it is illegal. Someone presenting an opposing view in a marketplace does no such thing.
The marketplace itself decides "collective desire", not ideology - and the funniest part is, that "collective desire" is anything but homogeneous (otherwise we'd all be ravenous fans of Ke$ha... let that thought sink in for a minute.)
Besides - the whole idea of anyone (or any group) daring to define "collective desire" (let alone try to enforce it) is pretty repugnant to anyone who desires the freedom to explore their own being and to (peacefully) maximize their own individual potential.
No, people with guns ate more. There are good reasons for that.
...chief among them being that people with guns (let's call them "armies") were able to subjugate and dominate those without guns (we'll call them "peasants"), taking their goods (like food, for instance).
Like sibling said - guns evolved as weapons of war. It wasn't until accuracy actually got half-assed decent (roughly the 17th century, or about 100-200 years after armies have been using them) that hunting with a gun made any sense at all.
While we're on the subject, one thing to note among the gun-toting crowd... you can reload, you can even (maybe) re-pour bullets, but eventually you're going to run out of powder and primers (unless of course you have a degree in chemistry, or a flintlock muzzle-loader and enough know-how to make powder old-school). There's a vast difference between gunpowder you can actually *make* from locally-had ingredients (if you know how), and the chemical concoctions that you buy at the local gun shop.
May want to brush up on the ol' bow-hunting skills, yanno?
Not sure how far an eye patch or peg leg will get you. You'll also not really do much more up here in PDX than blend in... :/
http://www.sca.org/
http://www.dresslikeapirate.com/
The gangsta's are used to chaos...
No, they are used to operating in a general environment of order and calm. It is almost always required in order for them to insure their victims are unaware of any impending danger, and to operate with any semblance of stealth.
...they are used using a gun to shoot and kill people.
I suspect you've been watching too much truTV. Look past the BS bravado and attempts at intimidating speech and music. You'll find that the vast majority have never (ever) fired a weapon in anger, and most likely have zero actual training in the use of a firearm. The few who have used one are almost all not used to having someone fire back. Very few actual gang members (let's call it less than 0.5%) have ever had to deal with even a close analogue of attacking a watchful, armed, desperate, and fully determined individual (let alone a group) for the purposes of survival.
I also suspect that a very large percentage of them will be too busy fighting the various demons of narcotic withdrawal.
The ones in this group imo could not defend themselves if their life depended on it. I am willing to bet that one.
I'm willing to bet that *most* people, of *any* persuasion ("gangsta" or not) could not defend themselves if their lives depended on it.
Sounds pretty cool, but allow me to play Devil's Advocate for a bit. I promise I'm not trolling, but your post brought up a lot of questions:
What happens when the disaster/antichrist/zombies/alien-invasion/whatever starts killing off members, catches some members on vacation somewheres else entirely, cripples/debilitates members, or similar?
What if the disaster involves something (or occurs during anything) that hinders any kind of transportation for more than a week (e.g. blizzard or ice storm)?
Even when everything goes right and you all make it to sanctuary, you'll likely have to deal with the usual inter-personal conflicts that tend to arise in any group that's not already used to living together 24/7/365. That latter part is a natural result of any group of mammals getting together for the first time - you gotta sort out the Alpha Male, etc... have you sorted that out, and actually tested it out under simulated conditions?
What happens if one of your members becomes diabetic and dependent on insulin (or, say, finds themselves in a similar medical condition or pre-apocalyptic injury that requires civilized society to remain alive)? You kick 'em out of the group? And what happens if a few members start telling their girlfriends/neighbors/etc?
Incidentally, if you can walk to something in about a day or two, err, so can pretty much anyone else who has working legs. How do you fend off folks who are just following along - do you shoot them? What if there are children tagging along?
What if there's a group of similarly-armed folks who happen to notice you (and maybe a friend or two) wandering along towards your waypoint lugging all those supplies? Can you deal with an ambush or attack by folks who know that locale far better than you do?
Speaking of which, how do you deal with locals at your destination who may take issue with you hunting/fishing off of their territory?
How do you lug along all those supplies without anyone else noticing (and taking immediate interest), anyway?
Long term?
I ask all of this because I meet a lot of people, and in conversations over the years, almost *everyone* has the same idea you expressed, in various forms - get out into the woods with weapons and supplies, and proceed to live off the land in some sort of post-apocalyptic yet romanticized fashion. Seems almost safer to hunker down in town, what with everyone else migrating out to the woods...
Now mind you, I live in Oregon. I can find myself in the middle of woods and wildlife in less than a day, on foot. I can be out in actual no-shit wilderness in two days on foot, and I can be on the coast after walking a week - where towns are few and far between. OTOH, there are literally about a million other people who live nearby. Somehow, I'm not seeing myself being able to blast my way through even a small percentage of them, or to sneak past 'em with a shitload of survival supplies. Just not picturing it... at all. Unless one lives in an extremely rural environment (e.g. Alaska, Montana, North Dakota, etc)? I'm guessing that similar issues are going to be more than present.
I'm guessing that this is why I only keep an essentials kit (food, water, and I guess my hunting firearms may work in a pinch), but instead figure that anything beyond a rough outline is, well, kind of crazy.
That's right, little astroturfers... keep wasting the mod points. ;)
Aww, did the little Microsoft fanboys get offended (and got mod points to boot)?
Ah well. :p
Countdown to criminalization of all non-.xxx porn.
All you'd have to do first is define "porn" (and by that, I mean defining it a whole lot more objectively than a former Supreme Court Justice when his answer was: "I'll know it when I see it!")
Oh, and then you'd have to get that definition ratified across a zillion countries (and by that, I mean countries ranging from Saudi Arabia to Holland).
And, once you manage to get all that in place, and manage to actually get some sort of universal "criminalization" going, you and I both know full well that approximately 40 jillion pr0n site 'entrepreneurs' will start devising (successfully) ways of skirting that semi-ban.
Then you get to start the process all over again to counter those loopholes.
Sorta like how we've been fighting spam all this time, really - except that you get to wrestle with politicians while you do it. As someone who does e-mail administration, I'll stick with the Bayesian filter tweaking and RBL upkeeps, because what I have to mess with suddenly looks a whole lot easier by comparison.
'cept this time it's Android they want to drub up a bit...
After all, WP 7 isn't exactly selling like hotcakes (or even like cold cakes for that matter).
This whole affair tells me a lot more about how bad Microsoft's phone sales numbers really are, than any cock-and-bull show about how many licenses they "sold" (read: stuffed into the channel) since launch.
Perhaps there's not enough juice to go around for all the coffee makers, discotheques, and big-screen televisions.
OTOH, I'm pretty sure that 300 MWp is plenty to power a few hospitals, food distribution areas, and some command/coordination centers. Probably have enough power left over to maybe keep some radios, and perhaps a light bulb or two going so that folks in shelters can get some light and news.
I disagree, as evidenced by multiple factors, including:
* The 1999 sale of a public street in Salt Lake City to the LDS Church w/o public input of comment (so that they could join their business building grounds to the Tabernacle) - it clogged up traffic, which continues to be a PITA to this day.
* The influence and money of the church in politicking for Prop 8 in California (no, not Utah... *California*).
* The sheer fact that in spite of comprising only 60% of the population, they have 98%+ representation in the Utah Legislature.
* Four words: Downtown Salt Lake City (the "Metro" - which replaced a once busy mall.)
* Two more: "Sugarhouse Renovation" (amazing how the one spot of non-LDS culture ---and the one home of many shops that offend LDS sensibility and/or morality-- gets forcefully, by government edict, torn down to make way for more beige stores... in spite of having a huge chunk of higher-traffic space to experiment with elsewhere in the metro area).
* The sad fate of the "Port O' Call" pub in downtown SLC... to make room for a courthouse, when there were larger and abandoned buildings that were *literally* across the street.
* The fact that the Utah state constitution itself has a clause in it that prevents any resident from suing the state on grounds of religious discrimination.
While LDS officials will obviously claim to not support particular candidates (they have to in order to retain non-profit status), you cannot, in the face of overwhelming evidence otherwise, claim with a straight face that they don't do politics. The above was just a very small sampling from memory... actual research will likely turn up far, far more results.
Oh, hell... most of *us* don't read TFA - what makes you think a politician will?
Is the law a church-led/influenced thing, then? Not to harp on the LDS, but if anything is perceived by the Quorum to affect the church, then odds are perfect that they can and will strong-arm the legislature into doing/voting whatever's best for the church. Since only like 1-2 legislators are not practicing LDS members, it's a pretty easy task.
You forgot about the LDS (Mormon) church.
As a former resident of Utah, I've lost count of how many Mormon jokes I've had to hear out here whenever folks ask me where I moved here from (in spite of the fact that I'm not Mormon). Kinda gets old sometimes... :/
Do the citizens of Utah have the ability to repeal bad laws via ballot initiative?
Yes, but if the local bishops say it should stay, then the initiative will fail.
Hopefully, there's no morality question involved with it (or anything that would threaten the LDS church), and they can get enough people to actually give a damn. :/
The only way that will work is if BoA's credit rating gets downgraded.
Good luck with that one - the agencies that do the rating aren't the same folks who got screwed by buying toxic debts. :/
Bank of America is too big to fail and is therefore too big to go after.
The CEO and board of directors certainly aren't.
Mind you, I'm not saying Atlantis is real, but... ...Heinrich Schliemann was laughed at until he unearthed the city of Troy. They found what is believed to be the cities referred to as Sodom and Gomorrah, as well as the Philistine city of Gath (e.g. Goliath's crib). The tomb of Tutankhamen was considered to be a myth.
Not all tales have pure fabrication as their foundation. Sometimes they drag in real places into the picture.
I'm thinking that Plato caught wind of (or maybe even grew up with) the oral stories surrounding the Santorini eruption ~1,000 years before he was born. He likely took that and ran with it.