Obviously, you're not a lawyer, but you are a retard.
... and I don't need to be one to know ad hominem and straw man arguments from (since we've degenerated in one post/reply cycle to name calling) an AC pudknocker when I read one. I did not take a position on whether and how the supremes should limit themselves. I stated that the majority justices contradicted their own previously stated philosophies about their role as adjudicators.
That said, if you care to try again and refute either point...
Pardon me for not having the chapter and verse on hand (my library is at home, and I am at work) but what follows will be easy to verify with a little research if you really want an answer.
They were wrong because:
1. Florida statute says that the clear intent of the voter is to be honored. It also says that there is a fixed amount of time for the election results to be certified. It is the role of Florida's Supreme Court to resolve conflicts in Florida Law, which they did when they allowed hand recounts to correctly determine the intent of the voter, reasoning that voter intent was more important than an arbitrary deadline for result certification. The US Supreme Court then stepped in to stop the recount in process despite the fact that management of election counts is expressly delegated to the states.
2. The majority justices every one violated their own precedent and opinions in prior cases. Not only did they contradict their own previous rulings on related cases, the majority opinion included language stating that the Bush v Gore decision was to be applied narrowly to this specific instance only, a judicial philosophy that is not unheard of but specifically contradicts Scalia's (and others of the majority, I believe) professed philosophy that the role of the USSC is to make decisions on matters of wide general applicability, not to arbitrate on specific instances.
Basically, all the evidence points to the Supreme's voting their political agenda and not a point of Constitutional law. It was a much sadder day for the US than the copyright extension decision because it undermined respect in the one branch of government that most of previously tended to think of as being above such pettiness. At least in defending Congress' right to be wrong about copyright extensions, they were consistent with the text of the Constitution and prior case law.
I apologize for your nausea. I don't have the same problem with the term "intellectual property" because I think it describes a legitimate concept distinguishing intangible works from material ones. Nonetheless, I will try to be more circumspect with its use because it is counterproductive to use inflammatory language in the pursuit of understanding.
I have worked in the music business as an artist, so I definitely don't need to be informed that it's rife with bloodsuckers. I was also appalled when MJ bought the Beatles catalog. The corporatization of copyright is another topic and if you want someone in the trenches with you to fight against that, then sign me up. I'll throw in advocacy against ridiculuous patents to boot. It doesn't contradict my view that copyright as a protection for the creator is a good thing.
I'm also with you on the impetus to art, but I can tell you from experience that the choice often comes down to create or thrive, largely because of the hammerlock that a corporate elite hold on the entertainment market. It is repugnant that artists have to sell out their work to the Vivendis of the world, and it has been and is my sincere hope that technology will level the playing field. We need to be vigilant to ensure that the entertainment cartels do not successfully position themselves as the regulators of technology, or we can kiss that dream goodbye. Part of that vigilance, IMO, is ensuring we take the right steps in resisting the corporate dominance. Those steps include not buying their products, but do not include infringing their copyrights, which puts the debate back on their terms and virtually guarantees they will win the specious legal protections they are seeking.
Trying to divide it by percentages would be futile. Copyright law solves that problem by dividing it over time instead. The owner maintains control over 100% of the work for a *limited* time.
Please lets not get into the interminable extensions to the copyright interval that have been pushed by Congress and their Hollywood masters. I am no defender of effectively unterminating corporate copyrights.
Thank you sincerely for your reply. I have always maintained that clear, unambiguous language is critical to understanding. Frankly, I am ashamed to have contributed to the hysteria with this misapplication of terms.
At risk of going off-topic, can you explain "mens rea" and "actus reus". I could go back to the dictionary for a definition, but based on this post, I think I'd rather hear your explanation.
One could also make a claim that my car is a loan from the steel and rubber gods, but my right to control its use is still not in question, or I would not have paid $20K for it.
Serious Response:
Can you offer a simple, alternative term (to "Intellectual Property" that is) that acknowledges that many things of very real value to their creators are not bound to physical quantities? If you can, I will gladly use it.
Whether it is a "birth right" or "a loan from the public domain", the effect is essentially the same. As an author, there is a strong disincentive for me to publish if my work is not protected. Without copyright, it becomes a might-makes-right question and he who can distribute the most copies fastest wins. Whether that "he" is a global corporation or a networked group of parasites, the effect is that the value of my work is reduced below the level of commodity, to essentially zero.
When copyright was established, I don't think the framers anticipated the possibility of an effectively infinite number of perfect copies of a work distributed at high-speed through a global medium. That is why it is a modern problem for our culture and legislators.
Funny, I just mailed my rep and senators today asking them to support the Digital Bill of Rights. I assume you're aware that it is codified in the Senate as SJ Res 51.
Extrapolating your observation about patents to copyrights, you're right on the money about the terms being too long. I think the lifetime of the author is reasonable for copyrights (which do not protect items with the same "useful" value to society as patents, and may well require a long time to fairly compensate the creator) but extending it much beyond that is just absurd in a society where marginalized works are routinely lost to the mists because there's no big-money profit motive to keep them in print. It's the cultural analogue of children starving while the grain rots in the hoppers to artificially maintain prices.
As for the sharing issue, I am pretty much an absolutist on the rights of individuals to control their work. As long as the property is controlled by copyright, it should be the copyright owner's right to be as big a jerk about it as they like. They should get to decide if no copy is ever made for any amount of money or if a million copies are made for free. I definitely don't believe anyone has the right to distribute another's IP unless that right is licensed in some way. Guess I just wasn't high enough back in the eighties when I was subjected to those "Property is Theft" rants...:-)
Precisely! I wonder how many of our vociferous defenders of digital liberty will be willing to go to jail for their illicit copies of The Eminem Show or Enterprise?
I'm pleased that you at least show some humor on the topic.
Copyright law, and the associated rights to the copyright owner and the public, is established in the U.S. Constitution. It makes little difference to the average citizen on the street because most currently do not make their living from intellectual property. As the "information economy" continues to evolve, though, and the distinction between physical and intellectual commodities continues to blur, you can be sure that more and more people will take an active interest. The emergence of HDTV and the erosion of the right to copy certain TV broadcasts will also be interesting in as far as it should be a wake up call to currently uninterested consumers.
While that statement is technically correct, copyright infringement denies the copyright owner their legal right to control their intellectual property, and is therefore quite close to the dictionary definition of larceny. I suppose it rests upon whether you consider intangible works of equal status to material ones.
My first impulse is to flame you for conflating MKG with a bunch of hooligans and thieves, but the vaguery of your language makes your position unclear so can you clarify something for me?
By "Download the music, rip the DVDs" are you suggesting that one download copies of music that have been posted without the copyright owner's permission and rip the DVDs for purposes of sharing? Or are you suggesting that people download music that has been made freely available by its producers and rip the DVDs for their own personal use in ways that the entertainment cartel doesn't necessarily approve of (e.g. making it available on your home LAN).
This distinction is the deciding factor between whether you are a conscientous protestor or just another criminal trying to justify your theft with the trappings of civil disobedience.
Re:Is it cosher? Is it lenten?
on
Lab-Grown Steak
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· Score: 2
I can't make an excuse. It would be hypocritical of me as I occassionally eat pork. When I do so, I assume the risk of trichinae contamination and clogged ateries.
As for how Moses derived the law, it is not only possible but, I would assume, likely that it was based on practical observation, probably that passed along by the Egyptian occultists he studied with.
Re:You're bitter and hateful
on
Lab-Grown Steak
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· Score: 2
I'm not sure where I misspoke or was misunderstood. I've been yammering on most of the afternoon on this topic so I'm sure I've bungled a few things. I understand that Mosaic and Hindu law are different and unrelated. I claimed that they both served practical purposes to their respective cultures, and that both can be viewed as valid for entirely modern reasons also. Ergo, I'd have to disagree that they are irrelevant.
If I follow the Kosher diet, then I am assured that I am getting clean meat (stricter than USDA standards) from an animal that was treated well and humanely slaughtered. The pork and shellfish thing is obviated by our improved cooking technology, but a non-issue if you don't eat either no matter how it's cooked. Plus, both are fatty meats implicated in vascular/heart disease, so there's another advantage to following The Law. It's sort of like the debate about condoms and abstinence. One reduces the likelihood of an STD, the other eliminates it.
I can't dispute you on the meat and milk thing, but another reply addressed that really well, demonstrating that political as well as personal and tribal survival concerns go into the rules.
While we're sharing personal histories, I've been a vegetarian, ovo-lacto, omnivore, et al at one time or another, and have never advocated abstinence.:-)
Re:Is it cosher? Is it lenten?
on
Lab-Grown Steak
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· Score: 2
There is without question enough food to feed the world on a vegetarian or modest omnivourous diet. What I claimed, or meant to claim, was that there are not enough resources to feed the world the meat-heavy Western diet. This is something I've heard stated so frequently throughout my life that it's become conventional wisdom to me, but I would be happy to update my beliefs if presented with counter-evidence from a reputable source.
Re:Other reasons for dietary rules
on
Lab-Grown Steak
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· Score: 2
Well, I love cats but I'll let that go because "roof rabbit" is possibly the funniest thing I've heard this week!
That's fascinating about how dietary rules are used to deliniate tribal membership. Politics at it's finest! It would betray an interesting sophistication in so-called primitive cultures if, as you suggest, such a meta-layer of intertribal culture existed to prevent resource allocation conflicts.
However, people are not starving in India because they are not eating the cows. They are starving because of poverty and poor food distribution. More people would starve if the poor killed the cows that give them milk products. It takes substantially more resources to raise cattle for meat than to subsist on a lacto-vegetarian diet.
Re:Is it cosher? Is it lenten?
on
Lab-Grown Steak
·
· Score: 2
Thanks for the well-considered reply. If I took the thread in a perpindicular direction, I did so no less than the condescending AC who felt compelled to denigrate another person's religous practice.
As I've stated elsewhere I don't see much utility in segregating our activities into religous and secular so cavalierly. That "any sufficiently evolved technology is indistinguishable from magic" is a caution to the scientist as much as to the savage. Kosher is an ancient term for a dietary regimen that we would today call "The Dr. Moses Diet" and back up with studies and demographics. That version 1.0 came out of a burning bush concerns me not. It's validity as a concept should not be suspect simply because it originates in a religous tradition.
The examples from Judaism and Hinduism certainly suited my argument better, so indulge me a little prooftexting. I passed commenting on Lent because it does strike me as more of a (substitute "spiritual" or "self-discipline" to suit your bias) act. I suppose it is possible to make a case that a weekly day of denying unhealthy (ergo, inheritently more desirable) foods has its physical benefits, and is consistent with the "all things in moderation" philosophy of most non-fundamentalist sects of X.
For the record, I associate with a Hindu legacy crowd in the US and I do observe immigrant parents and more often their US-born children eating beef, so there is a "when in Rome" effect at work. Whether the biosphere can really sustain cattle farming as it is currently practiced (to serve overconsumption by a small fraction of the earth's population) is questionable. Cattle farms are not rat-mink operations, but vast consumers of plant resources that could be used to feed many starving people. I find it interesting (+1) that ancient dogma can so effectively account for and counter modern farming practices as a moral question.
I'm pretty sure you can't eat the flesh of another Christian. I'm not sure about atheists...
Re:You're bitter and hateful
on
Lab-Grown Steak
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· Score: 2
Back it up. Show me how a kosher diet is irrelevant today. Detail a strategy for feeding the world's population with cows.
I am only hateful toward people who make sweeping, ignorant claims about religions they don't understand. I have no more respect for unfounded attacks on religion than on science.
Re:Is it cosher? Is it lenten?
on
Lab-Grown Steak
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· Score: 2
Yours is the third post to make the claim that we have somehow outgrown the wisdom of the past. I am still waiting for someone to demonstrate that keeping Kosher (sorry, I'm a gentile, so I don't know if that should be capitalized or not?!) can be demonstrated irrelevant to personal health and respect for food animals, or that Indian subcontinent can be productively turned to cattle-grazing...
Re:Is it cosher? Is it lenten?
on
Lab-Grown Steak
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· Score: 2
You are correct and I'll retract my trolling accusation. Honestly, that was provoked more by the AC status of the post than its content.
Nonetheless, my point of view is that the wedge between logic/rationality and religion is an artifact of our current culture and one that causes a lot of unnecessary noise in discussions such as this. The immediate dismissal of all things religous as worthless mysticism is no more conducive to productive discouse than fundamentalist adherance to meaningless dogma.
As for immediate relevance, I believe I addressed that (at least in fly-by fashion) in a reply to the first reply to my initial reply.:-)
Re:Is it cosher? Is it lenten?
on
Lab-Grown Steak
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· Score: 2
Your point is significant, but but to the best of my knowledge India is still incapable of sustaining cattle farming and, given the horrors of modern factory farming, it is very hard to go wrong from a health or ethical standpoint (unless you're taking the total vegetarian standpoint) eating Kosher. Organic/free-range are IMHO a natural (heh) substitute, but are just a modern secular equivalent to a 6K year-old religous observation.
Re:Is it cosher? Is it lenten?
on
Lab-Grown Steak
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· Score: 4, Insightful
I'll bite, troll...
Religious dietary laws are not arbitrary mysticism. If you trace them back to their roots, you will invariably find the proscriptions make good sense for the immediate health of the eater (e.g. don't eat pig in a desert where firewood is scarce because you'll get trichynosis (sp?)) or the long term health of the society (e.g. don't eat the cow that gives you milk today because you'll starve tomorrow because the landscape and grain supply won't support cattle farming).
Of course, I assume that correlating any religous edict with such sensible arguments will be wasted on you, since you've already decided that anything that doesn't suit your immediate desire for self-gratification is just the silliness of some shrouded, treacherous priesthood....
A) Assuming forward is active because we have just done one or more backs, it would activate with a list all of the routes previously taken from the current point.
B) It is also active if a previously followed link path from the current page exists.
C) Correct. Forward cannot be active after following a fresh link, but back is inactive before you start browsing. How is this relevant?
I don't presume to have it all worked out, but I think my post to the parent presents a start.
I'm not so sure about the retooled back button either, but I've also thought about / wished for an improved forward button. The current forward button only provides the most-recently-used forward line, e.g. if you start at A, link to B, link to C, link to D, back to C, back to B, link to D, back to B, then only D will show as a foward option. I would like a forward button to become a hierarchical menu of previous browse lines. You would have to select which browse line and how far along it to proceed. For example, from my previous example, upon the third visit to B, the forward button would present a menu showing the two paths previously taken from B:
-> C -> D -> D
I think you could do something similar with "back".
Of course, if I was really motivated, I'd jump into one of the plethora of OSS browsers and implement this, but instead I'll just make like a typical/.er and complain.;-)
Slashdot Mirror
That said, if you care to try again and refute either point...
Pardon me for not having the chapter and verse on hand (my library is at home, and I am at work) but what follows will be easy to verify with a little research if you really want an answer.
They were wrong because:
1. Florida statute says that the clear intent of the voter is to be honored. It also says that there is a fixed amount of time for the election results to be certified. It is the role of Florida's Supreme Court to resolve conflicts in Florida Law, which they did when they allowed hand recounts to correctly determine the intent of the voter, reasoning that voter intent was more important than an arbitrary deadline for result certification. The US Supreme Court then stepped in to stop the recount in process despite the fact that management of election counts is expressly delegated to the states.
2. The majority justices every one violated their own precedent and opinions in prior cases. Not only did they contradict their own previous rulings on related cases, the majority opinion included language stating that the Bush v Gore decision was to be applied narrowly to this specific instance only, a judicial philosophy that is not unheard of but specifically contradicts Scalia's (and others of the majority, I believe) professed philosophy that the role of the USSC is to make decisions on matters of wide general applicability, not to arbitrate on specific instances.
Basically, all the evidence points to the Supreme's voting their political agenda and not a point of Constitutional law. It was a much sadder day for the US than the copyright extension decision because it undermined respect in the one branch of government that most of previously tended to think of as being above such pettiness. At least in defending Congress' right to be wrong about copyright extensions, they were consistent with the text of the Constitution and prior case law.
The usual IANAL disclaimer applies...
I apologize for your nausea. I don't have the same problem with the term "intellectual property" because I think it describes a legitimate concept distinguishing intangible works from material ones. Nonetheless, I will try to be more circumspect with its use because it is counterproductive to use inflammatory language in the pursuit of understanding.
I have worked in the music business as an artist, so I definitely don't need to be informed that it's rife with bloodsuckers. I was also appalled when MJ bought the Beatles catalog. The corporatization of copyright is another topic and if you want someone in the trenches with you to fight against that, then sign me up. I'll throw in advocacy against ridiculuous patents to boot. It doesn't contradict my view that copyright as a protection for the creator is a good thing.
I'm also with you on the impetus to art, but I can tell you from experience that the choice often comes down to create or thrive, largely because of the hammerlock that a corporate elite hold on the entertainment market. It is repugnant that artists have to sell out their work to the Vivendis of the world, and it has been and is my sincere hope that technology will level the playing field. We need to be vigilant to ensure that the entertainment cartels do not successfully position themselves as the regulators of technology, or we can kiss that dream goodbye. Part of that vigilance, IMO, is ensuring we take the right steps in resisting the corporate dominance. Those steps include not buying their products, but do not include infringing their copyrights, which puts the debate back on their terms and virtually guarantees they will win the specious legal protections they are seeking.
Trying to divide it by percentages would be futile. Copyright law solves that problem by dividing it over time instead. The owner maintains control over 100% of the work for a *limited* time.
Please lets not get into the interminable extensions to the copyright interval that have been pushed by Congress and their Hollywood masters. I am no defender of effectively unterminating corporate copyrights.
Thank you sincerely for your reply. I have always maintained that clear, unambiguous language is critical to understanding. Frankly, I am ashamed to have contributed to the hysteria with this misapplication of terms.
At risk of going off-topic, can you explain "mens rea" and "actus reus". I could go back to the dictionary for a definition, but based on this post, I think I'd rather hear your explanation.
Thanks a lot. Now I have to type one-handed while I wipe *my* monitor.
Seriously, that was majorly fscking funny!
Wiseacre Response:
One could also make a claim that my car is a loan from the steel and rubber gods, but my right to control its use is still not in question, or I would not have paid $20K for it.
Serious Response:
Can you offer a simple, alternative term (to "Intellectual Property" that is) that acknowledges that many things of very real value to their creators are not bound to physical quantities? If you can, I will gladly use it.
Whether it is a "birth right" or "a loan from the public domain", the effect is essentially the same. As an author, there is a strong disincentive for me to publish if my work is not protected. Without copyright, it becomes a might-makes-right question and he who can distribute the most copies fastest wins. Whether that "he" is a global corporation or a networked group of parasites, the effect is that the value of my work is reduced below the level of commodity, to essentially zero.
When copyright was established, I don't think the framers anticipated the possibility of an effectively infinite number of perfect copies of a work distributed at high-speed through a global medium. That is why it is a modern problem for our culture and legislators.
Funny, I just mailed my rep and senators today asking them to support the Digital Bill of Rights. I assume you're aware that it is codified in the Senate as SJ Res 51.
:-)
Extrapolating your observation about patents to copyrights, you're right on the money about the terms being too long. I think the lifetime of the author is reasonable for copyrights (which do not protect items with the same "useful" value to society as patents, and may well require a long time to fairly compensate the creator) but extending it much beyond that is just absurd in a society where marginalized works are routinely lost to the mists because there's no big-money profit motive to keep them in print. It's the cultural analogue of children starving while the grain rots in the hoppers to artificially maintain prices.
As for the sharing issue, I am pretty much an absolutist on the rights of individuals to control their work. As long as the property is controlled by copyright, it should be the copyright owner's right to be as big a jerk about it as they like. They should get to decide if no copy is ever made for any amount of money or if a million copies are made for free. I definitely don't believe anyone has the right to distribute another's IP unless that right is licensed in some way. Guess I just wasn't high enough back in the eighties when I was subjected to those "Property is Theft" rants...
Precisely! I wonder how many of our vociferous defenders of digital liberty will be willing to go to jail for their illicit copies of The Eminem Show or Enterprise?
I'm pleased that you at least show some humor on the topic.
Copyright law, and the associated rights to the copyright owner and the public, is established in the U.S. Constitution. It makes little difference to the average citizen on the street because most currently do not make their living from intellectual property. As the "information economy" continues to evolve, though, and the distinction between physical and intellectual commodities continues to blur, you can be sure that more and more people will take an active interest. The emergence of HDTV and the erosion of the right to copy certain TV broadcasts will also be interesting in as far as it should be a wake up call to currently uninterested consumers.
While that statement is technically correct, copyright infringement denies the copyright owner their legal right to control their intellectual property, and is therefore quite close to the dictionary definition of larceny. I suppose it rests upon whether you consider intangible works of equal status to material ones.
My first impulse is to flame you for conflating MKG with a bunch of hooligans and thieves, but the vaguery of your language makes your position unclear so can you clarify something for me?
By "Download the music, rip the DVDs" are you suggesting that one download copies of music that have been posted without the copyright owner's permission and rip the DVDs for purposes of sharing? Or are you suggesting that people download music that has been made freely available by its producers and rip the DVDs for their own personal use in ways that the entertainment cartel doesn't necessarily approve of (e.g. making it available on your home LAN).
This distinction is the deciding factor between whether you are a conscientous protestor or just another criminal trying to justify your theft with the trappings of civil disobedience.
I can't make an excuse. It would be hypocritical of me as I occassionally eat pork. When I do so, I assume the risk of trichinae contamination and clogged ateries.
As for how Moses derived the law, it is not only possible but, I would assume, likely that it was based on practical observation, probably that passed along by the Egyptian occultists he studied with.
I'm not sure where I misspoke or was misunderstood. I've been yammering on most of the afternoon on this topic so I'm sure I've bungled a few things. I understand that Mosaic and Hindu law are different and unrelated. I claimed that they both served practical purposes to their respective cultures, and that both can be viewed as valid for entirely modern reasons also. Ergo, I'd have to disagree that they are irrelevant.
:-)
If I follow the Kosher diet, then I am assured that I am getting clean meat (stricter than USDA standards) from an animal that was treated well and humanely slaughtered. The pork and shellfish thing is obviated by our improved cooking technology, but a non-issue if you don't eat either no matter how it's cooked. Plus, both are fatty meats implicated in vascular/heart disease, so there's another advantage to following The Law. It's sort of like the debate about condoms and abstinence. One reduces the likelihood of an STD, the other eliminates it.
I can't dispute you on the meat and milk thing, but another reply addressed that really well, demonstrating that political as well as personal and tribal survival concerns go into the rules.
While we're sharing personal histories, I've been a vegetarian, ovo-lacto, omnivore, et al at one time or another, and have never advocated abstinence.
There is without question enough food to feed the world on a vegetarian or modest omnivourous diet. What I claimed, or meant to claim, was that there are not enough resources to feed the world the meat-heavy Western diet. This is something I've heard stated so frequently throughout my life that it's become conventional wisdom to me, but I would be happy to update my beliefs if presented with counter-evidence from a reputable source.
Well, I love cats but I'll let that go because "roof rabbit" is possibly the funniest thing I've heard this week!
That's fascinating about how dietary rules are used to deliniate tribal membership. Politics at it's finest! It would betray an interesting sophistication in so-called primitive cultures if, as you suggest, such a meta-layer of intertribal culture existed to prevent resource allocation conflicts.
However, people are not starving in India because they are not eating the cows. They are starving because of poverty and poor food distribution. More people would starve if the poor killed the cows that give them milk products. It takes substantially more resources to raise cattle for meat than to subsist on a lacto-vegetarian diet.
Thanks for the well-considered reply. If I took the thread in a perpindicular direction, I did so no less than the condescending AC who felt compelled to denigrate another person's religous practice.
As I've stated elsewhere I don't see much utility in segregating our activities into religous and secular so cavalierly. That "any sufficiently evolved technology is indistinguishable from magic" is a caution to the scientist as much as to the savage. Kosher is an ancient term for a dietary regimen that we would today call "The Dr. Moses Diet" and back up with studies and demographics. That version 1.0 came out of a burning bush concerns me not. It's validity as a concept should not be suspect simply because it originates in a religous tradition.
The examples from Judaism and Hinduism certainly suited my argument better, so indulge me a little prooftexting. I passed commenting on Lent because it does strike me as more of a (substitute "spiritual" or "self-discipline" to suit your bias) act. I suppose it is possible to make a case that a weekly day of denying unhealthy (ergo, inheritently more desirable) foods has its physical benefits, and is consistent with the "all things in moderation" philosophy of most non-fundamentalist sects of X.
For the record, I associate with a Hindu legacy crowd in the US and I do observe immigrant parents and more often their US-born children eating beef, so there is a "when in Rome" effect at work. Whether the biosphere can really sustain cattle farming as it is currently practiced (to serve overconsumption by a small fraction of the earth's population) is questionable. Cattle farms are not rat-mink operations, but vast consumers of plant resources that could be used to feed many starving people. I find it interesting (+1) that ancient dogma can so effectively account for and counter modern farming practices as a moral question.
I'm pretty sure you can't eat the flesh of another Christian. I'm not sure about atheists...
Back it up. Show me how a kosher diet is irrelevant today. Detail a strategy for feeding the world's population with cows.
I am only hateful toward people who make sweeping, ignorant claims about religions they don't understand. I have no more respect for unfounded attacks on religion than on science.
Yours is the third post to make the claim that we have somehow outgrown the wisdom of the past. I am still waiting for someone to demonstrate that keeping Kosher (sorry, I'm a gentile, so I don't know if that should be capitalized or not?!) can be demonstrated irrelevant to personal health and respect for food animals, or that Indian subcontinent can be productively turned to cattle-grazing...
You are correct and I'll retract my trolling accusation. Honestly, that was provoked more by the AC status of the post than its content.
:-)
Nonetheless, my point of view is that the wedge between logic/rationality and religion is an artifact of our current culture and one that causes a lot of unnecessary noise in discussions such as this. The immediate dismissal of all things religous as worthless mysticism is no more conducive to productive discouse than fundamentalist adherance to meaningless dogma.
As for immediate relevance, I believe I addressed that (at least in fly-by fashion) in a reply to the first reply to my initial reply.
Your point is significant, but but to the best of my knowledge India is still incapable of sustaining cattle farming and, given the horrors of modern factory farming, it is very hard to go wrong from a health or ethical standpoint (unless you're taking the total vegetarian standpoint) eating Kosher. Organic/free-range are IMHO a natural (heh) substitute, but are just a modern secular equivalent to a 6K year-old religous observation.
I'll bite, troll...
Religious dietary laws are not arbitrary mysticism. If you trace them back to their roots, you will invariably find the proscriptions make good sense for the immediate health of the eater (e.g. don't eat pig in a desert where firewood is scarce because you'll get trichynosis (sp?)) or the long term health of the society (e.g. don't eat the cow that gives you milk today because you'll starve tomorrow because the landscape and grain supply won't support cattle farming).
Of course, I assume that correlating any religous edict with such sensible arguments will be wasted on you, since you've already decided that anything that doesn't suit your immediate desire for self-gratification is just the silliness of some shrouded, treacherous priesthood....
No mind reading required.
A) Assuming forward is active because we have just done one or more backs, it would activate with a list all of the routes previously taken from the current point.
B) It is also active if a previously followed link path from the current page exists.
C) Correct. Forward cannot be active after following a fresh link, but back is inactive before you start browsing. How is this relevant?
I don't presume to have it all worked out, but I think my post to the parent presents a start.
I'm not so sure about the retooled back button either, but I've also thought about / wished for an improved forward button. The current forward button only provides the most-recently-used forward line, e.g. if you start at A, link to B, link to C, link to D, back to C, back to B, link to D, back to B, then only D will show as a foward option. I would like a forward button to become a hierarchical menu of previous browse lines. You would have to select which browse line and how far along it to proceed. For example, from my previous example, upon the third visit to B, the forward button would present a menu showing the two paths previously taken from B:
/.er and complain. ;-)
-> C -> D
-> D
I think you could do something similar with "back".
Of course, if I was really motivated, I'd jump into one of the plethora of OSS browsers and implement this, but instead I'll just make like a typical