to all of the americans here trashing their own government:
if you as a cuban tried this in cuba, it is in the law of the land to arrest and jail you
if you doubt that, i'm not going to be your google monkey: go to the massively neocon sources of amnesty international and human rights watch and tell me what they say about the law in cuba about saying bad things about the government
so please, by all means, bash the us government: it's your right, you are respected as an american to bash your own government. just try to understand exactly what the real enemy is here. some people have a colossal lack of scale and perspective
along with the actions of a number of other players, including, believe it or not, the iraqis themselves
when we look to the usa as the blame for everything, you implicitly say the usa is the solution to the problems. yet of course the goal of blaming the usa for everything is to get the usa uninvolved... huh? it doesn't logically follow
if you don't want the usa involved in other parts of the world, you don't blame the usa for things, you blame the iraqis for what happens in iraq, the brazilians for what happens in brazil, the russians for what happens in russia, etc.
what an amazing concept
people say 9/11 is the fault of the usa. saner people that is, not those who think 9/11 was a government plot. they know it was done by al qaeda, but they say it happeend in the usa, which is our security, and therefore our fault
well, if something happens in iraq, it should be iraqis fault. this is the ONLY route to a sense of accountability and responsibility in the world that sees the usa less involved
the path of blaming the usa for everything leads the usa to be more involved in the world
to defeat the anti-abortion pharmacists and the anti-evolution teacher, you must adapt a more nuanced approach, as those who defend the reprehensible actions of these religious fundamentalists will use the same appeal to freedom of expression against an authoritarian goverment party line that is popular with many slashdotters here too
think it over, arrive at a solution that also preserves the rights of those who wish to speak out against government policy. it's not straightforward and easy this problem
the one who holds the usa responsible for all evil in the world, including things its enemies do, in a creative line of reasoning that excludes the existence of all other players and agendas
this story doesn't help us to understand why the usa is the center of all evil in the world. where is my giant list of us cold war atrocities? where is my creative line of reasoning as to explain how the usa is responsible for what its enemies do?
that way everyone gets up in the middle of the nigth to go to work, but by the time they get off work, they aren't really falling asleep until midnight, which is what used to be 9 pm. all those hours of glorious light for recreation, work done in darkness, since you can't get outside anyways, who cares?
i was going to say a better title for this story would be "when genuine scientific research imitates disposable scifi movie dialogue"
and add one more movie to your list : i saw that bad 2004 "doom" movie starring the rock last night on tnt, and i was having flashbacks to the movie's dialogue with this story
#1: making your money from touring does not mean that your album making beings to suck. examine the opposite: you could say that the era of deriving your money from albums means that tours sucked. excpet no one really says that, because, like what you are proposing, that fact does not logically follow
#2: this is the direction things are going anyways. so, let's say, for the sake of argument, you are correct about albums sucking due to bands getting their cash from touring. ok. does that fact actually reverse the change of business model? doe sit actually compel a change in behavior? no
people seeing a need for balance on these issues in the abstract
but in real life, i bet a lot of these people who see a need for balance turn into kneejerk privacy fundamentalists or kneejerk security fundamentalists
there are limits on everything folks, even [insert principle you hold most dear]
high school chemistry teacher gets lung cancer, decides to leave the world without saddling his family with debt, so he begins to make meth
in the episode i just saw tonight
***SPOILER***
he goes into a drug lord's den with a bag of meth. said drug lord isn't very impressed with the man and has put his partner in the hospital. so said mild mannered chemistry teacher, now unafraid of death, takes the "meth" he brought with him and throws it on the floor, hard
it's really fulminated mercury
BOOM
meth drug lord meets fulminated mercury beats any youtube chemistry video i've seen
electronic books are a joke. they keep failing in the marketplace for a reason. technophilia leads some people to deduce certain things that won't really ever happen. you can't improve on wood pulp. for every plus of an electronic book, there is a negative, and then some. wood pulp has no backlight, true, and limited memory. but wood pulp is way cheaper, more durable, and the battery lasts a hell of a lot longer. electornic books will never replace wood pulp. i am no luddite. i just know that electronics can't improve everything
in a vacuum of considering the crimes of anyone else
thereby rendering your verdict of the usa useless
and i, of course, am fucking stupid, of course, because i accept every crime you accuse the usa of, look at the crimes of other countries in the world, and find myself thinking the usa as not so culpable as you command
i am the stupid one, of course, because my opinion considers more facts and players than your opinion
of course
(snicker)
or rather, i await the other shoe to drop: i await your gigantic huge tome of horrid crimes from russia, china, iran, the uk, france... etc... i await your blistering display of high holy moral indignation against these countries, i await your flinging of invectives against the vast evil these countries command upon the world. oh where is the casting of aspersions on moscow, beijing, tehran?
i'm still waiting
because the goal is to make the world a better place, is it not? the goal is progress, is it not?
we do that by finding people accountable for their crimes, do we not?
or is the goal simply to pillory the usa for its crimes and that set of crimes only. and stop there. regardless of whether the rest of the world is a better place. hmmm. that's an interesting agenda
huh?
we ignore the other players in the world and thereby achieve what exactly in your mind? what exactly is the point of this biased prosecution according to you?
this is incredible to me: using the crimes of the world and the suffering of the people therein as tools only insofar as they are useful in prosecuting the usa, rather than in the improvement of the world
that's a very interesting sense of "morality" to me
where "very interesting" is a code phrase for gee, i dunno, for "fucking stupid";-)
when i demonstrate the convoluted logic that finds the usa responsible for deaths it is not really responsible for, the general idea would not be to reply to that comment by doing exactly that
you have an inflated sense of responsibility for the west, and deflated sense of responsibility for nonwesterners. this is racist and condescending of you
you have incredibly creative lines of reasoning to find the usa responsible for some of your numbers
for example "We are killing hundreds of thousands of civilians abroad."
huh? how is this number arrived at?
my best guess is that it is like the usual impressive flight of fancy of say, including civilians killed by al qaeda in iraq. the usa is responsible for the atrocities of it's enemies. that's a nice trick. or going back and considering numbers from the cold war (and not include any numbers from any other powers in that era). there's some other propagandistic tricks you labor under too, but those are the big obvious ones
look, dude, i don't know how to get through the vast smog of propaganda in your mind. countering your "facts" one by one is a laborious process that doesn't actually convince you of anything, because your deductions are not made from facts, but from a bias that shades the reality of your so-called "facts". all i can do is pose little simple truthful observations that stand in contrast to your obvious bias and hope it pricks through the fog
here's one:
the usa disappears into a vast lake tomorrow. every single american military installation in the world evaporates off the face of the earth
what happens to the numbers you quote above friend?
go ahead, give me a scenario where the numbers go vastly down. after all, the usa is murdering hundreds of thousands, right?
because by the way you speak of the usa's actions in the world, it would seem the world would suddenly become a vast field of peace prosperity love and happiness. is that what you believe?
perhaps if that is not what happens (or perhaps if the deaths go up, might it be possible? you gotta be careful in the wording here because the partisan kneejerk reactions are trigger haired here for propagandized sheep like yourself) then the usa is not responsible for the atrocities you currently blame it for
now you will excuse me, i need to go back to drinking oil from the skulls of dead iraqi children and have a nice demonic laugh
1. you present to me a crime the usa has committed 2. i am aware that this crime is also commited by most other countries in the world 3. therefore, i cannot hold this crime against the usa uniquely
is there anything in there you don't understand?
the golden rule "do unto others as you would have them do unto you" is an interesting observation on your part, because it reveals your confirmation bias: yourtendency to search for or interpret new information in a way that confirms your preconceptions and avoids information and interpretations which contradict prior beliefs
namely,you wish to prosecute the usa on the basis of an idealized standard of behavior no one actually follows. meanwhile, i wish to prosecute the usa on the basis of its relative cleanliness or dirtiness as compared to other countries
which reveals a difference in our two goals. you wish to improve the behavior of the usa, and only the behavior of the usa. you only care how the maerican government behaves. you've stated this many times. but you don't care how the rest of the world behaves. meanwhile, i wish to improve the behavior of the entire planet. for you, if people are cnanibalizing each other south the rio grande, this is ok by you. but if the usa doesn't enforce handicapped parking rules, you are goign to scream high holy indignation. frankly, this bias of yours is incpoatible with a moral point of pview. because if anything else, morality teraches us that all huamns must be considered equally. your own point of view is that people are valuable only if they are american. remember: you are the one, as stated by you, interested in only the behavior of americans. so you only care about the usa. which reveals your ethnocentrism
you will excuse me, but i care about the entire world. i don't really care about fat people in north america. i care about the lives of poor africans, indonesians, brazilians. meanwhile, you don't really care about the suffering of these people. you only seem to care about the suffering of these people insofar as they are useful in your prosecution of the usa. because your goal, as stated by you and your focus on the golden rule, is only changing the behavior of the usa
which is why you are absolutely useless, to the subjec tmatter you are invovled in: global subject matter. you need to focus your criticism to american domestic issues, or you need to lose your american-centered point of view. because you cannot talk about global issues with an american-centered point of view. this makes you morally and intellectually dishonest and useless on the questions you are involving yourself in
because frankly, a lot of the issues you talk about are not uniquely american issues
and yet you are applying your moral positions in unbalanced ways, which mean you fail at making an effective moral argument
i mean, if you want to say you are just spouting propaganda, ok then, fine. but i can see in the fury and emotion of your words you firmly believe in the morality of your words. and so i merely pointing out the moral inconsistencies in what you say
you have a bias agains the usa. which is fine, fuck the usa, i'm not defending the usa. but to prosecute the usa for crimes everyone commits, some worse than the usa, means you aren't really saying anything useful or valid
that's the simple truth dude
so i'll stop using the word morality, as soon as you stop making flawed moral arguments
now i await my list of american atrocities. conveniently forgetting atrocities of the same magnitude, and worse, committed by other players in the world
Slashdot Mirror
when are we getting a statue of darwin at oral roberts university?
my money is on the year 2578
to all of the americans here trashing their own government:
if you as a cuban tried this in cuba, it is in the law of the land to arrest and jail you
if you doubt that, i'm not going to be your google monkey: go to the massively neocon sources of amnesty international and human rights watch and tell me what they say about the law in cuba about saying bad things about the government
so please, by all means, bash the us government: it's your right, you are respected as an american to bash your own government. just try to understand exactly what the real enemy is here. some people have a colossal lack of scale and perspective
along with the actions of a number of other players, including, believe it or not, the iraqis themselves
when we look to the usa as the blame for everything, you implicitly say the usa is the solution to the problems. yet of course the goal of blaming the usa for everything is to get the usa uninvolved... huh? it doesn't logically follow
if you don't want the usa involved in other parts of the world, you don't blame the usa for things, you blame the iraqis for what happens in iraq, the brazilians for what happens in brazil, the russians for what happens in russia, etc.
what an amazing concept
people say 9/11 is the fault of the usa. saner people that is, not those who think 9/11 was a government plot. they know it was done by al qaeda, but they say it happeend in the usa, which is our security, and therefore our fault
well, if something happens in iraq, it should be iraqis fault. this is the ONLY route to a sense of accountability and responsibility in the world that sees the usa less involved
the path of blaming the usa for everything leads the usa to be more involved in the world
http://wenatcheeworld.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080216/NEWS03/970616772
to defeat the anti-abortion pharmacists and the anti-evolution teacher, you must adapt a more nuanced approach, as those who defend the reprehensible actions of these religious fundamentalists will use the same appeal to freedom of expression against an authoritarian goverment party line that is popular with many slashdotters here too
think it over, arrive at a solution that also preserves the rights of those who wish to speak out against government policy. it's not straightforward and easy this problem
but don't let that stop you from being blind and prejudicial
the one who holds the usa responsible for all evil in the world, including things its enemies do, in a creative line of reasoning that excludes the existence of all other players and agendas
this story doesn't help us to understand why the usa is the center of all evil in the world. where is my giant list of us cold war atrocities? where is my creative line of reasoning as to explain how the usa is responsible for what its enemies do?
make 6 am equal to what is now 3 am
that way everyone gets up in the middle of the nigth to go to work, but by the time they get off work, they aren't really falling asleep until midnight, which is what used to be 9 pm. all those hours of glorious light for recreation, work done in darkness, since you can't get outside anyways, who cares?
not that you are wrong factually to be concerned, but you are wrong to think
1. people think the way you do in general about waste
2. people will be converted to thinking the way you do any time soon
that 100% thought that traffic encryption and ip obfuscation would be desirable features of the next generation of file sharing apps
get clue, riaatards. the game is over. you lose. your business model is dead, and cannot be extended with legions of lawyers
i was going to say a better title for this story would be "when genuine scientific research imitates disposable scifi movie dialogue"
and add one more movie to your list : i saw that bad 2004 "doom" movie starring the rock last night on tnt, and i was having flashbacks to the movie's dialogue with this story
#1: making your money from touring does not mean that your album making beings to suck. examine the opposite: you could say that the era of deriving your money from albums means that tours sucked. excpet no one really says that, because, like what you are proposing, that fact does not logically follow
#2: this is the direction things are going anyways. so, let's say, for the sake of argument, you are correct about albums sucking due to bands getting their cash from touring. ok. does that fact actually reverse the change of business model? doe sit actually compel a change in behavior? no
the trick to understanding it was to know that "AV" stands for "antivirus", not "adult video"
what does the adult video industry have to do with botnets? and nevermind the black eyes, that's a kind of adult video i'm not into
live and learn
This Filipino Monkey?
http://michellemalkin.com/2008/01/11/the-iranian-incident-and-the-filipino-monkey/
moderation in everything... including moderation ;-)
people seeing a need for balance on these issues in the abstract
but in real life, i bet a lot of these people who see a need for balance turn into kneejerk privacy fundamentalists or kneejerk security fundamentalists
there are limits on everything folks, even [insert principle you hold most dear]
i've really been enjoying Breaking Bad on amc
high school chemistry teacher gets lung cancer, decides to leave the world without saddling his family with debt, so he begins to make meth
in the episode i just saw tonight
***SPOILER***
he goes into a drug lord's den with a bag of meth. said drug lord isn't very impressed with the man and has put his partner in the hospital. so said mild mannered chemistry teacher, now unafraid of death, takes the "meth" he brought with him and throws it on the floor, hard
it's really fulminated mercury
BOOM
meth drug lord meets fulminated mercury beats any youtube chemistry video i've seen
and we would like to welcome our new passengers, the previous customers of FIFO Airlines, which went out of business due to time delays
GIGO Airlines has offered to honor our coupons, but you don't want to fly with them if you want get where you really wanted to go
electronic books are a joke. they keep failing in the marketplace for a reason. technophilia leads some people to deduce certain things that won't really ever happen. you can't improve on wood pulp. for every plus of an electronic book, there is a negative, and then some. wood pulp has no backlight, true, and limited memory. but wood pulp is way cheaper, more durable, and the battery lasts a hell of a lot longer. electornic books will never replace wood pulp. i am no luddite. i just know that electronics can't improve everything
their reason for being will simply evolve
this is even hinted at in the story summary
we still have colisseums, we don't feed christians to lions in them. we still have public squares, we don't have gallows in them
true, we don't really have forts with cannons and we don't have stables, but we do have military installations, and we do have garages
so its not like the need for a public place for information storage and retrieval will go ever go away, just how it is accessed will change and evolve
in a vacuum of considering the crimes of anyone else
;-)
thereby rendering your verdict of the usa useless
and i, of course, am fucking stupid, of course, because i accept every crime you accuse the usa of, look at the crimes of other countries in the world, and find myself thinking the usa as not so culpable as you command
i am the stupid one, of course, because my opinion considers more facts and players than your opinion
of course
(snicker)
or rather, i await the other shoe to drop: i await your gigantic huge tome of horrid crimes from russia, china, iran, the uk, france... etc... i await your blistering display of high holy moral indignation against these countries, i await your flinging of invectives against the vast evil these countries command upon the world. oh where is the casting of aspersions on moscow, beijing, tehran?
i'm still waiting
because the goal is to make the world a better place, is it not? the goal is progress, is it not?
we do that by finding people accountable for their crimes, do we not?
or is the goal simply to pillory the usa for its crimes and that set of crimes only. and stop there. regardless of whether the rest of the world is a better place. hmmm. that's an interesting agenda
huh?
we ignore the other players in the world and thereby achieve what exactly in your mind? what exactly is the point of this biased prosecution according to you?
this is incredible to me: using the crimes of the world and the suffering of the people therein as tools only insofar as they are useful in prosecuting the usa, rather than in the improvement of the world
that's a very interesting sense of "morality" to me
where "very interesting" is a code phrase for gee, i dunno, for "fucking stupid"
when i demonstrate the convoluted logic that finds the usa responsible for deaths it is not really responsible for, the general idea would not be to reply to that comment by doing exactly that
you have an inflated sense of responsibility for the west, and deflated sense of responsibility for nonwesterners. this is racist and condescending of you
you have incredibly creative lines of reasoning to find the usa responsible for some of your numbers
for example "We are killing hundreds of thousands of civilians abroad."
huh? how is this number arrived at?
my best guess is that it is like the usual impressive flight of fancy of say, including civilians killed by al qaeda in iraq. the usa is responsible for the atrocities of it's enemies. that's a nice trick. or going back and considering numbers from the cold war (and not include any numbers from any other powers in that era). there's some other propagandistic tricks you labor under too, but those are the big obvious ones
look, dude, i don't know how to get through the vast smog of propaganda in your mind. countering your "facts" one by one is a laborious process that doesn't actually convince you of anything, because your deductions are not made from facts, but from a bias that shades the reality of your so-called "facts". all i can do is pose little simple truthful observations that stand in contrast to your obvious bias and hope it pricks through the fog
here's one:
the usa disappears into a vast lake tomorrow. every single american military installation in the world evaporates off the face of the earth
what happens to the numbers you quote above friend?
go ahead, give me a scenario where the numbers go vastly down. after all, the usa is murdering hundreds of thousands, right?
because by the way you speak of the usa's actions in the world, it would seem the world would suddenly become a vast field of peace prosperity love and happiness. is that what you believe?
perhaps if that is not what happens (or perhaps if the deaths go up, might it be possible? you gotta be careful in the wording here because the partisan kneejerk reactions are trigger haired here for propagandized sheep like yourself) then the usa is not responsible for the atrocities you currently blame it for
now you will excuse me, i need to go back to drinking oil from the skulls of dead iraqi children and have a nice demonic laugh
(rolls eyes)
1. you present to me a crime the usa has committed
2. i am aware that this crime is also commited by most other countries in the world
3. therefore, i cannot hold this crime against the usa uniquely
is there anything in there you don't understand?
the golden rule "do unto others as you would have them do unto you" is an interesting observation on your part, because it reveals your confirmation bias: yourtendency to search for or interpret new information in a way that confirms your preconceptions and avoids information and interpretations which contradict prior beliefs
namely,you wish to prosecute the usa on the basis of an idealized standard of behavior no one actually follows. meanwhile, i wish to prosecute the usa on the basis of its relative cleanliness or dirtiness as compared to other countries
which reveals a difference in our two goals. you wish to improve the behavior of the usa, and only the behavior of the usa. you only care how the maerican government behaves. you've stated this many times. but you don't care how the rest of the world behaves. meanwhile, i wish to improve the behavior of the entire planet. for you, if people are cnanibalizing each other south the rio grande, this is ok by you. but if the usa doesn't enforce handicapped parking rules, you are goign to scream high holy indignation. frankly, this bias of yours is incpoatible with a moral point of pview. because if anything else, morality teraches us that all huamns must be considered equally. your own point of view is that people are valuable only if they are american. remember: you are the one, as stated by you, interested in only the behavior of americans. so you only care about the usa. which reveals your ethnocentrism
you will excuse me, but i care about the entire world. i don't really care about fat people in north america. i care about the lives of poor africans, indonesians, brazilians. meanwhile, you don't really care about the suffering of these people. you only seem to care about the suffering of these people insofar as they are useful in your prosecution of the usa. because your goal, as stated by you and your focus on the golden rule, is only changing the behavior of the usa
which is why you are absolutely useless, to the subjec tmatter you are invovled in: global subject matter. you need to focus your criticism to american domestic issues, or you need to lose your american-centered point of view. because you cannot talk about global issues with an american-centered point of view. this makes you morally and intellectually dishonest and useless on the questions you are involving yourself in
because frankly, a lot of the issues you talk about are not uniquely american issues
as you are making moral arguments
and yet you are applying your moral positions in unbalanced ways, which mean you fail at making an effective moral argument
i mean, if you want to say you are just spouting propaganda, ok then, fine. but i can see in the fury and emotion of your words you firmly believe in the morality of your words. and so i merely pointing out the moral inconsistencies in what you say
you have a bias agains the usa. which is fine, fuck the usa, i'm not defending the usa. but to prosecute the usa for crimes everyone commits, some worse than the usa, means you aren't really saying anything useful or valid
that's the simple truth dude
so i'll stop using the word morality, as soon as you stop making flawed moral arguments
now i await my list of american atrocities. conveniently forgetting atrocities of the same magnitude, and worse, committed by other players in the world
zzz