I'd say according to the laws of nature, death is exactly what he deserves. If you're too slow, weak, or stupid to avoid getting eaten by a predator, you deserve to die. It applies to every other animal on earth. Why not humans, too?
Thanks for asking, but, pretty horrible. The biggest problem is not driving my wife crazy for the first few days. Her mother is in the hospital right now with open heart surgery complications and so she can't deal with the stress of me going bonkers too. So, I'll probably send her off to Maine to visit a friend of hers for a week and go cold turkey then.
Have you tried nicotine patches? My wife has had some good luck using those. They seem to curb the urges from wanting-to-kill-someone to just wanting-to-bludgeon them:) Apparently the generic ones don't work as well as the name brand ones, so if you're going to try them, shell out for the good ones.
The same population explosion that's causing relatively disease-free places like Europe and the U.S. to grow at exponential rates? Oh yeah, right.........
The US/European population boom came and went already. Then the population stabilized due to increased access to birth control and people choosing not to have children.
Other checks on population growth (besides birth control) are war, famine, and disease. If we're going to wipe out diseases, we had better increase access to birth control, or else war and famine will help pick up the slack.
amending the bill of rights actually takes more than a 2/3rd majority. since you can't delete text I don't see how you can just take away the first amendment. it seems like anything added that would interfere with it, would be considered unconstitutional and tossed out by the supreme court.
Ob Simpsons reference: "Why can't we make a law against flag burning?" "Because that law would be unconstitutional. But if we change the Constitution..." "We can make all sorts of crazy laws!"
They made an amendment prohibiting alcohol, and then added another amendment saying it was void. Theoretically, they could insert another amendment saying the 1st amendment was void too. It might be pretty difficult to do, but it's possible. Why not?
It doesn't matter. All that will change before the next redistricting and it will all be an entirely different ball game. And it is probably impossible to a 55% republican state to go all republican in the redistricting.
If it didn't make a difference, they wouldn't do it. Since politicians work hard at gerrymandering, apparently it does make a difference.
Anyway, any discussion of redistricting wouldn't be complete without a link to the redistricting game.
Plain and simple this legislation moved our country into the 21st century.
And it only took a massive terrorist attack to do it.
The problem a lot of people have with the USAPATRIOT act is that it was passed under the pretenses of fighting terrorism, but many of the laws within it apply to non-terrorists, such as drug dealers.
Taking away coke addiction won't do a darn thing for 99.9999% of all coke users. If they don't want off it? then either they refuse to take it, or are given it without consent and can legitimately claim abuse and sue. Either way it won't stop the problem that caused them to want it in the first place.
If the government can force people onto Antabuse for alcohol-related crimes, I'm sure they'll find a way to force the cocaine vaccine upon users as well.
By leaving the Saddam selected, corrupt, sunni-serving, oppressive leaders in charge? I could maybe see retaining some of the police forces, but the military needed the reboot - it's ugly, but there.
Well, they're still in charge, only they're on the side of the insurgency rather than the US and Iraqi government.
It might have seemed like a good idea at the time, but I think in retrospect, disbanding of the military turned out to be a bad choice, even if it there were potentially corrupt leaders. There's the old saying about keeping your friends close, and your enemies closer. Better the potentially corrupt military officers are within the organization (and either they decide to play ball with the new regime, or they're weeded out one by one) than operating as part of the insurgency. Also, cutting loose a bunch of trained, armed men into a chaotic, war-torn country with vast unemployment problems didn't work out so well, and only served to provide manpower for the insurgency.
Similarly, the 'gifted' person who can more or less coast to a certain level, then has to buckle down and actually work at it, same as everybody else, is truely buggered compared to the 'non-gifted' guy who had to buckle down and actually work at it from the get-go, and therefore *knows how buckle down and actually work at it.*
This was a hard lesson to learn. Even the advanced classes in high school were a joke. Homework was only done if it was absolutely required. Studying for tests never happened. The first year or two of college were slightly harder, but still not enough to develop any real study habits. After that though, I was screwed- the classes got harder, and I had never really developed any study habits at all, and it took a while to really learn how to study.
If you took the time to understand what you are criticising - act like a rational human being - you would see your diatribe is nothing more than bluster mixed with fear.
I do have fear- I'm afraid of seeing the state of science education in this country getting even worse than it already is.
1. ID is falsifiable - Michael Behe's claim to irreducible complexity can be countered in more than one way - one is to show an indirect darwinian pathway that would produce the IC in question. Another, which Kenneth Miller proposed, and Michael Behe agreed, would be to knock out one of the parts of an IC system and see if evolution is sufficient to replace it. All ID really says is that certain signposts are indications of design. One need demonstrate that such a signpost can be generated by chance, necessity, or some combination in order to show ID is misguided or wrong
Every example of "irreducible complexity" that I know of has been shown to have a probable evolutionary pathway- i.e. flagella, the eye, blood clotting. As these examples are shown to be explainable through evolutionary theory, new IC examples will be generated (or else the evolutionary evidence is just ignored.) The problem with trying to disprove IC is that for every instance of potential IC that's disproven, a new one can take its place. For example, an ID proponent might concede that the three examples I gave *do* have a potential evolutionary pathway... but 'Biological System X' does not. Now the evolutionary proponent needs to prove that the latest example can be explained by evolution. Once that is done, there will be another example created- it becomes like a game of Whack-A-Mole.
2. Falsifiability is not universally accepted - There are philosophers of science who do not think that falsifiability is a necessary criterion for a scientific theory. While I think that ID is falsifiable, you are wrong to say that a theory *must* be falsifiable to be counted as scientific. You are wrong in the sense that people we have a right to listen to will disagree with you - this is by no means a universally accepted criterion (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability#Criticisms)
Fair enough- I'm not familiar enough with this argument to weigh in here, so I won't say much here.
3. You contradict yourself. You said "Every argument that ID proponents make against evolution is wrong- every single one." You can't have your cake and eat it too. Either every argument that ID proponents make against evolution is wrong, and therefore falsifiable, or no argument that ID makes is wrong because it is not falsifiable. Make up your mind what you want to believe. You're confused because you want to use every insult or strategy in the book to oppose ID on irrational grounds, so you fling them out at random without even considering what you're saying.
Sorry, I wasn't more clear here. What I was trying to say was that ID proponents generally make claims about evolution that are simply false. Usually claims such as "Evolution couldn't possibly have led to X!" when, in fact, it can.
My main complaint with ID is that it begins with the assumption that there is an intelligent designer. Then the "scientific" explanations follow- specified complexity, irreducible complexity, etc.- but they're mainly criticisms of evolution more than anything else. "Evolution can't explain the flagella" so therefore it must have been created by a designer. Even if individual aspects of ID are falsifiable (as your argument states) the theory as a whole cannot be falsified. Even if all examples of irreducible complexity (for example) were adequately explained by evolutionary theory, that still can't prove that they weren't designed. If I flip a coin 10 times and get heads each time, it's probably random chance, but I can't prove that an Intelligent Designer somewhere didn't make that just happen.
This response is completely unrelated to my initial point, and is just an opportunistic jab at ID without understanding it. I shouldn't be surprised, given that that's what most posts on this story are.
I take jabs at ID because it's a really, really, really stupid "theory," and I use the term "theory" loosely, because it's not a falsifiable scientific theory. It's the creation of a bunch of religious people with a poor understanding of evolutionary theory and of science in general. Every argument that ID proponents make against evolution is wrong- every single one.
It seems you have no clue about what ID is - "disguise the Bible in some pseudo-scientific mumbo-jumbo"? What are you talking about? Are you denying that most proponents of ID have a religious agenda that they're trying to push? Intelligent Design requires an Intelligent Designer, and I'll give you 3 guesses Who that might be.
Because if ID is correct, it allows for FSM as much as Christianity or any other religion that involves a creator.
And this is precisely where this point starts falling apart. ID isn't anywhere near "correct."
To make this point clearer - ID is an overarching project that encompasses many religions and materialist scenarios - Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, ancient Egyptian beliefs, FSM, and more.
Except 99.99% of ID enthusiasts are nutty Christians trying to force their beliefs on others. The ID movement is their attempt to get their religion taught in school, and everyone knows it. Since they can't get the Bible taught in American public schools, they do the next best thing- disguise the Bible in some pseudo-scientific mumbo-jumbo to fool the religious idiots who don't understand science, and then pretend it's science and some kind of alternative to a pretty rock-solid actual scientific theory, and try to fool a bunch of kids who don't know any better.
Tyranny has been around since before the stone age.
I'm afraid I'm going to have to call BS on your call of BS.
Tyranny relies on a specific form of human social organization- i.e. enough food and social organization to allow a specialization of labor- a ruling class and an enforcement class (i.e. soldiers and police) to support the rulers.
Pre-stone age cultures lacked this type of organization, and any leaders that existed would have been rather limited in their power. There's only so much of a tyrant someone can be without a bunch of henchmen to back them up.
I would argue that tyranny is not a condition of human nature, but merely a symptom of the predominant form of social organization.
It has more to do with resources than governments, in fact the most effective government was Germany. Hitler was able to take a struggling country and turn it into a world superpower, capable of easily defeating France and several smaller weaker countries, and able to take on the British empire, also a major power in those days.
And then Hitler managed to do one stupid thing after another, and turn his world superpower into a defeated country again. If Germany had any sort of checks on Hitler's power (i.e. a different type of government) then it's possible the outcome would have been different.
Yeah, I know... who ever heard of Japs being Buddhists and believing in peace?
I can't speak for your family's specific beliefs, but the world has seen "peaceful" Christians and "peaceful" Muslims and "peaceful" Hindus, and "peaceful" Buddhists and members of all other religions slaughter each other, either because-of or despite their religious beliefs.
and all of the top generals had ordered a surrender, japanese civilians themselves would have mounted fierce resistance to the death, on an individual by individual basis
They eventually did order a surrender. Did the civilians end up resisting the occupation that followed?
"If you want to point out callous use of military power in the Pacific theater, firebombing cities made mostly of wood"
And this likely would have continued without dropping the atomic bombs. I think that's too often overlooked- if the atomic bombs weren't used, the cities likely would have been destroyed by conventional bombing anyway, with a comparable number of civilians just as dead, but without the scary psychological factor of the one giant bomb.
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But it's not something he deserved to die for.
I'd say according to the laws of nature, death is exactly what he deserves.
If you're too slow, weak, or stupid to avoid getting eaten by a predator, you deserve to die.
It applies to every other animal on earth. Why not humans, too?
it's really bad when you have to flee TO Verizon.
I saw some billboards around here (put up by Comcast) that said
"Three words: We're Not Verizon"
Which I thought was a funny ad campaign, since in my experience, they're so much worse than Verizon.
I mean, Verizon sucks too, but at least they're not Comcast.
Thanks for asking, but, pretty horrible. The biggest problem is not driving my wife crazy for the first few days. Her mother is in the hospital right now with open heart surgery complications and so she can't deal with the stress of me going bonkers too. So, I'll probably send her off to Maine to visit a friend of hers for a week and go cold turkey then.
:)
Have you tried nicotine patches? My wife has had some good luck using those.
They seem to curb the urges from wanting-to-kill-someone to just wanting-to-bludgeon them
Apparently the generic ones don't work as well as the name brand ones, so if you're going to try them,
shell out for the good ones.
Anyway, good luck with it.
The same population explosion that's causing relatively disease-free places like Europe and the U.S. to grow at exponential rates? Oh yeah, right.........
The US/European population boom came and went already. Then the population stabilized due to increased access to birth control and people choosing not to have children.
Other checks on population growth (besides birth control) are war, famine, and disease. If we're going to wipe out diseases, we had better increase access to birth control, or else war and famine will help pick up the slack.
The amount of human AND animal suffering they inflict far outweighs what little (I believe) effect they probably have in the food chains.
The prevention of disease helps fuel a human population explosion, which does have a rather significant effect on food chains.
Ob Simpsons reference:
"Why can't we make a law against flag burning?"
"Because that law would be unconstitutional. But if we change the Constitution..."
"We can make all sorts of crazy laws!"
They made an amendment prohibiting alcohol, and then added another amendment saying it was void.
Theoretically, they could insert another amendment saying the 1st amendment was void too.
It might be pretty difficult to do, but it's possible. Why not?
Cars kill more than those drugs and allergies combined.
With hard work and a little bit of luck, I think we can genetically engineer foods to kill *way* more people than cars.
It doesn't matter. All that will change before the next redistricting and it will all be an entirely different ball game. And it is probably impossible to a 55% republican state to go all republican in the redistricting.
If it didn't make a difference, they wouldn't do it.
Since politicians work hard at gerrymandering, apparently it does make a difference.
Anyway, any discussion of redistricting wouldn't be complete without a link to the redistricting game.
Plain and simple this legislation moved our country into the 21st century.
And it only took a massive terrorist attack to do it.
The problem a lot of people have with the USAPATRIOT act is that it was passed under the pretenses of fighting terrorism, but many of the laws within it apply to non-terrorists, such as drug dealers.
Taking away coke addiction won't do a darn thing for 99.9999% of all coke users. If they don't want off it? then either they refuse to take it, or are given it without consent and can legitimately claim abuse and sue. Either way it won't stop the problem that caused them to want it in the first place.
If the government can force people onto Antabuse for alcohol-related crimes, I'm sure they'll find a way to force the cocaine vaccine upon users as well.
as long as they've got John Cleese in it again.
I remember his character had a ridiculously hilarious name, but I can't remember what it was.
Someone help me out here.
Why do death penalty advocates mostly oppose abortion while vegans mostly support it?
Because death penalty advocates eat babies, not fetuses.
Some of what Dr. Paul says does make me a bit frightened when he says absolutely no foreign intervention (what about stopping genocides?)
We don't really do much of that now as it is, do we?
Well, they're still in charge, only they're on the side of the insurgency rather than the US and Iraqi government.
It might have seemed like a good idea at the time, but I think in retrospect, disbanding of the military turned out to be a bad choice, even if it there were potentially corrupt leaders. There's the old saying about keeping your friends close, and your enemies closer. Better the potentially corrupt military officers are within the organization (and either they decide to play ball with the new regime, or they're weeded out one by one) than operating as part of the insurgency.
Also, cutting loose a bunch of trained, armed men into a chaotic, war-torn country with vast unemployment problems didn't work out so well, and only served to provide manpower for the insurgency.
This was a hard lesson to learn. Even the advanced classes in high school were a joke. Homework was only done if it was absolutely required. Studying for tests never happened. The first year or two of college were slightly harder, but still not enough to develop any real study habits.
After that though, I was screwed- the classes got harder, and I had never really developed any study habits at all, and it took a while to really learn how to study.
I do have fear- I'm afraid of seeing the state of science education in this country getting even worse than it already is.
Every example of "irreducible complexity" that I know of has been shown to have a probable evolutionary pathway- i.e. flagella, the eye, blood clotting. As these examples are shown to be explainable through evolutionary theory, new IC examples will be generated (or else the evolutionary evidence is just ignored.) The problem with trying to disprove IC is that for every instance of potential IC that's disproven, a new one can take its place. For example, an ID proponent might concede that the three examples I gave *do* have a potential evolutionary pathway... but 'Biological System X' does not. Now the evolutionary proponent needs to prove that the latest example can be explained by evolution. Once that is done, there will be another example created- it becomes like a game of Whack-A-Mole.
Fair enough- I'm not familiar enough with this argument to weigh in here, so I won't say much here.
Sorry, I wasn't more clear here. What I was trying to say was that ID proponents generally make claims about evolution that are simply false. Usually claims such as "Evolution couldn't possibly have led to X!" when, in fact, it can.
My main complaint with ID is that it begins with the assumption that there is an intelligent designer. Then the "scientific" explanations follow- specified complexity, irreducible complexity, etc.- but they're mainly criticisms of evolution more than anything else. "Evolution can't explain the flagella" so therefore it must have been created by a designer. Even if individual aspects of ID are falsifiable (as your argument states) the theory as a whole cannot be falsified. Even if all examples of irreducible complexity (for example) were adequately explained by evolutionary theory, that still can't prove that they weren't designed. If I flip a coin 10 times and get heads each time, it's probably random chance, but I can't prove that an Intelligent Designer somewhere didn't make that just happen.
Even if every argumen
This response is completely unrelated to my initial point, and is just an opportunistic jab at ID without understanding it. I shouldn't be surprised, given that that's what most posts on this story are.
I take jabs at ID because it's a really, really, really stupid "theory," and I use the term "theory" loosely, because it's not a falsifiable scientific theory. It's the creation of a bunch of religious people with a poor understanding of evolutionary theory and of science in general. Every argument that ID proponents make against evolution is wrong- every single one.
It seems you have no clue about what ID is - "disguise the Bible in some pseudo-scientific mumbo-jumbo"? What are you talking about?
Are you denying that most proponents of ID have a religious agenda that they're trying to push? Intelligent Design requires an Intelligent Designer, and I'll give you 3 guesses Who that might be.
Because if ID is correct, it allows for FSM as much as Christianity or any other religion that involves a creator.
And this is precisely where this point starts falling apart.
ID isn't anywhere near "correct."
To make this point clearer - ID is an overarching project that encompasses many religions and materialist scenarios - Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, ancient Egyptian beliefs, FSM, and more.
Except 99.99% of ID enthusiasts are nutty Christians trying to force their beliefs on others. The ID movement is their attempt to get their religion taught in school, and everyone knows it. Since they can't get the Bible taught in American public schools, they do the next best thing- disguise the Bible in some pseudo-scientific mumbo-jumbo to fool the religious idiots who don't understand science, and then pretend it's science and some kind of alternative to a pretty rock-solid actual scientific theory, and try to fool a bunch of kids who don't know any better.
Tyranny has been around since before the stone age.
I'm afraid I'm going to have to call BS on your call of BS.
Tyranny relies on a specific form of human social organization- i.e. enough food and social organization to allow a specialization of labor- a ruling class and an enforcement class (i.e. soldiers and police) to support the rulers.
Pre-stone age cultures lacked this type of organization, and any leaders that existed would have been rather limited in their power. There's only so much of a tyrant someone can be without a bunch of henchmen to back them up.
I would argue that tyranny is not a condition of human nature, but merely a symptom of the predominant form of social organization.
It has more to do with resources than governments, in fact the most effective government was Germany. Hitler was able to take a struggling country and turn it into a world superpower, capable of easily defeating France and several smaller weaker countries, and able to take on the British empire, also a major power in those days.
And then Hitler managed to do one stupid thing after another, and turn his world superpower into a defeated country again.
If Germany had any sort of checks on Hitler's power (i.e. a different type of government) then it's possible the outcome would have been different.
Yeah, I know... who ever heard of Japs being Buddhists and believing in peace?
I can't speak for your family's specific beliefs, but the world has seen "peaceful" Christians and "peaceful" Muslims and "peaceful" Hindus, and "peaceful" Buddhists and members of all other religions slaughter each other, either because-of or despite their religious beliefs.
and all of the top generals had ordered a surrender, japanese civilians themselves would have mounted fierce resistance to the death, on an individual by individual basis
They eventually did order a surrender. Did the civilians end up resisting the occupation that followed?
US troops (who had volunteered to be used in such a fashion, unlike the civilians who had no such luxury).
There was a draft during WWII in the US, so at least a good portion of the combatants weren't volunteers.
"If you want to point out callous use of military power in the Pacific theater, firebombing cities made mostly of wood"
And this likely would have continued without dropping the atomic bombs.
I think that's too often overlooked- if the atomic bombs weren't used, the cities likely would have been destroyed by conventional bombing anyway, with a comparable number of civilians just as dead, but without the scary psychological factor of the one giant bomb.
And make sure you butter that bacon! And bacon that sausage!
:(
But my heart hurts