In general, adjusted for region, private schools that out-perform public schools, spend more money, while private schools that underspend public schools, perform worse than public schools.
(Note that we're talking about spending, not tuition: private school tuition doesn't measure per-student spending because private schools usually get grants or subsidies from other sources.)
Yes in Chicago, many dead people are registered and vote "Mayor Daley of Chicago "found" tens of thousands of dead people to "vote" for John F. Kennedy in the 1960 election,".
Completed Dec. 9, the recount of 863 precincts showed that the original tally had undercounted Nixon's (and Adamowski's) votes, but only by 943, far from the 4,500 needed to alter the results. In fact, in 40 percent of the rechecked precincts, Nixon's vote was overcounted. Displeased, the Republicans took the case to federal court, only to have a judge dismiss the suits. Still undeterred, they turned to the State Board of Elections, which was composed of four Republicans, including the governor, and one Democrat. Yet the state board, too, unanimously rejected the petition, citing the GOP's failure to provide even a single affidavit on its behalf.
Yes, Nixon believed he was robbed, but Nixon was fscking crazy.
Our public school system used far fewer monetary resources, had many one-room schools, very few books, etc... for most of our history as a nation.
And for most of our history, we were an agrarian nation; and even as we started to industrialize, there were many good industrial jobs available that didn't require a lot of education.
Also for most of our history, it was not expected -- or even illegal -- to teach the lowest classes how to read and write. If poor black kids couldn't read and write in 1910, no one gave a damn.
So, your historical comparison is not really useful.
Why is it that liberal's answer to every problem is to throw more money at it?
Investing money in social infrastructure like education is not "throwing money" at the problem, any more than fixing the leaking roof in your house, or getting your car's oil changed regularly, is ""throwing money" at those issues.
The question is this: who's responsibility is it to ensure students work hard and strive to achieve excellence? THE PARENTS
Working hard and striving can only get you so far if the buildings are crumbling, the textbooks outdated, the labs lacking supplies and equipment, and the student body living in constant fear of violence.
No amount of government spending can make up for bad parenting.
No amount of good parenting can make up for a lack of vital resources.
Entitlement spending is a deep, dark, bottomless hole.
Education is a public good, as as been understood since Jefferson's day, not an entitlement; but anyway, entitlements are the ante we owe for playing the private property game.
(And, by the way, your consistent misuse of "'s" make the case that American schools are underfunded better than anything I can say. And of course, by pointing this out, I ensure that my own post will contain at least one grammatical error.)
Yes, you are. You say, "Regardless of the morals and ethics, the bottom line is its good skilled and technical jobs for America." There is no way to parse that sentence that is not a dismissal of morals and ethics.
2) LOL slavery does not equal perfectly legal industry and rights-abiding jobs. Plus, young one, slavery was not a "job."..Even though a tomato is a fruit, you don't put it in fruit salad.
Slavery created many jobs -- slave auctioneer, sailor on a slave ship, fugitive slave catcher, slave overseer, whip maker, chain forger. It was a perfectly legal industry at the time.
Creating weapons of terror is not a "rights-abiding job", as all people have the right to live free from the threat of violence.
Given the/. demographics, odds are very good that I should be calling you "young one" rather than the other way around, not that it matters. And while I like a good non sequitur as much as anyone, what do tomatoes in fruit salads have to do with creating weapons of mass destruction?
3) I realize a lot of you don't know this, but the Iraq war started before 2003. It started in 1991 when Iraq invaded Kuwait.
I was marching against that war when I was in college, thank you, so I remember it well. Iraq was not developing nukes when we attacked in 2001. Perhaps you didn't get the news that the evidence of that was faked?
There is no reason to have the countries that already have nukes to give them up as long as we have ours to serve as a deterrence.
The U.S., Russia, the U.K. France, and China have a treaty obligation under the NNPT to "pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control." We cannot reasonably ignore our obligation under the NNPT to work for disarmament which at the same time citing the NNPT as the legal basis for threatening Iran. Nor can we effectively engage in negotiations to convince non-nuclear nations to stay that way
while our line is "do as I say, not as I do."
Joking is also squarely outside the definition of bigotry, which is an absolute hatred and intolerance of members of a group or at least intolerant devotion to your own prejudices or opinions.
Nonsense. Telling jokes about members of a group that derive their humor from acceptance of stereotypes is one way that bigotry spreads.
On the other hand, telling jokes in which the point of the joke is the idiocy of those who accept stereotypes, is healthy and counters bigotry.
As Carlin said, anything can be funny, it depends on where the emphasis is.
Hatred of "rednecks" is the last socially-acceptable kind of bigotry.
Depends on how you define "redneck". If by "redneck" you mean a poor rural white Southerner, then hating on them is bigotry. If by "redneck" you mean "bigoted, loutish and opposed to modern ways", then despising rednecks is the duty of all sensible people.
That's 1/3 or 1/4 to remove the law. Not to pass it.
You don't "remove a law" without passing a law. Essentially, most laws are "diffs" to the federal or state "code". Like this bit from H. R. 4957 (selected as a random example from thomas.loc.gov):
a) In General- Paragraph (1) of section 9502(d) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 is amended--
(1) by striking `April 1, 2010' and inserting `May 1, 2010'; and
(2) by inserting `or the Federal Aviation Administration Extension Act of 2010' before the semicolon at the end of subparagraph (A).
There is not supposed to be some equal balance between the federal government and the states and people; the federal government is supposed to have only the little bit of power given it by its constitution.
First, the "states and people" are two very different things, a point often overlooked by confused "Tenthers" and advocates of "states rights". Much of the expanded role that the federal government has taken on has been exactly because the states were acting against the people.
Second, the powers granted to the federal government by the Constitution are not a "little bit". They tried a government that only gave a little bit of power to the feds with the Articles of Confederation. It failed miserably, and was replaced by the stronger federal government of the Constitution. The feds have Constitutional authority to control inter-state and international commerce, spend money pretty much however they want, and (as amended) defend the rights of people against the states, and lay any taxes they want on any sort of income.
Under the Constitution, the states give up almost all sovereignty. They cannot "enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility," nor "lay any Imposts or Duties on Imports or Exports" (with a small exception for inspection Laws), nor "lay any Duty of Tonnage, keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace, enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power, or engage in War".
And furthermore each state is required to give "Full Faith and Credit" to the public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State", and to recognize the "Privileges and Immunities" of citizens of other states, and to extradite fugitives.
Giving the states the power to reject laws would be a good check on the federal government
Riiiiigggghhttt...let's give Mississippi the power to reject civil rights laws. Brilliant plan.
Over 10 years ago, it was apparent that Saddam Hussein had to be removed from power.
No, it was not at all "apparent".
It was apparent that he was cruel SOB of a dictator, and no one was going to shed many tears if he was up against the wall, but it was also apparent that Gulf War I was a fairly ordinary border dispute jacked up into a full war by the lies of the Bush I administration, that Iraq was no longer any significant threat to any other nation, that cruel SOB of a dictators are a dime-a-dozen in this world, and that removing them by force just kills a bunch of people and usually just puts a different cruel SOB of a dictator in their place.
It was apparent over ten years ago that American policy in the Middle East -- like our foreign policy in general -- is brutal and stupid, and is geared to the interests of our corporate plutocracy, not to the interests of the people of the United States or of the nations of that region.
If you went to Japan before, you'd know they don't eat a lot of sushi... It's relatively expensive stuff to eat for many people in Japan
Used to get cheap kappa maki at the grocery store under my apartment all the time. (As a vegetarian in Japan, I ate a *lot* of kappa maki, as it was on of the prepared foods I could identify with no knowledge of the language. I did eventually learn enough to find ume and konbu onigiri, too.)
the addictive substance in the seaweed. It's in miso soup and green tea. It's name is glutamatic acid.
I think you are confused. Glutamatic acid is a common amino acid that's in every living cell, and is found free in a wide variety of foods including peas, tomatoes, and some cheeses. Perhaps you are thinking of its salt MSG, a controversial substance used as a "flavor enhancer" and blamed to a variety of ill effects, though the evidence is not strong. Citation needed that there's anything "addictive" here.
Regardless of the morals and ethics, the bottom line is its good skilled and technical jobs for America
If you have to disregard morals and ethics, it's not a good job.
Get rid of the nukes and we put 10s of thousands of people out of work. (This is definitely putting my dad out of work.)
Getting rid of slavery put a lot of people out of work too. Sorry, but I have little sympathy when those who make terrorist weapons of mass destruction lose their jobs. I hope your father applies some ethical consideration to his future career choices.
Plus the USA has the right to amass any sort of defense we feel necessary. We are a sovereign nation - no other entity has legal domain over us.
If the U.S. has the right, as a sovereign nation, to amass any sort of defense we feel necessary, then Iraq, as a sovereign nation, has the right to amass any sort of defense it feels is necessary, and North Korea has the right to amass any sort of defense it feels is necessary, and so on.
The only way we'll get other nations to give up nuclear ambitions, is to get rid of our own nukes.
Conversely: If we only had 100, Soviet-Era Russia would have had no problem going all out against us if they could take out 99 of them before they hit.
Contrary to popular belief, Soviet Russia was not populated, nor led, by lunatics who were just waiting for an opportunity to blow up the USA.
(On the other hand, the U.S. was the only nation to ever use nuclear weapons, and had once sent 13,000 troops to participate in an anti-Communist invasion of Russia, and was, during the 1980s, led by a lunatic who believed the Soviets were the "Evil Empire" and that a Biblical Armageddon was nigh. Can't blame the Russkies if they thought the U.S. might really launch an unprovoked attack.)
I wonder when the left will finally admit that the renaissance wasn't some "enlightening"
Perhaps you are confusing the Renaissance (14th to 17th centuries), with the Enlightenment (17th and 18th century)?
The head of the liberal movement in the United States has an airborne palace that flies around at 600+ mph and multiple bases throughout the world... The head of the liberals has two million men and women under arms, countless scores of agents, police, and interrogation powers.
Um, just who is this "head of the liberal movement" of whom you speak? Surely you're not talking about our moderately conservative President?
Not only that, but scientific thinking is arguably the best way to think about morals. What makes us and others around us happy? What decreases suffering both ours and that of others?
But those aren't the primary moral questions. The primary moral question is, "why should I give a fsck what makes others around me happy, or what decreases the suffering of others?"
Science doesn't give us "shoulds". It tells us "do A and B will probably be the result, while if you do X you'll get Y," but it can't tell us whether B or Y is "better". You could conclude that if we do A, we'll destroy the biosphere and the human race will be extinct in 200 years, while if we do X, taxes would have to go up 1%, but science can't tell you whether the extinction of all life on the planet more complicated than a bacterium is "better" than a higher tax bill. The question is outside its domain.
Supernatural ethical systems tell us that some divine judge is going to spank us if we do A and give us candy if we do X, so we'd better do X. Given the lack of evidence for the existence of such a divine judge, much less evidence of what its desires are, rational, intelligent, educated people reject supernaturalist ethical systems.
There are many ethical systems that are not supernaturalist: utilitarianism, contractualism, or rights theories, to name a couple. But each of these ultimately rests on some set of intuitions or assumption -- ethical axioms, if you will.
But no-one actually forces you to make that tithe.
They used to, you know. If the church is no longer demanding a tax from you, you have the rise of secular governance to thank.
Of course, that secular government imposes taxes of its own. If you want to play the game of living in an industrialized civilization that creates and defends "property", you've got to pay the ante. TANSTAAFL.
Note that I just did my taxes, so I'm feeling a bit annoyed on the subject of taxes right at this moment.
700 MB is quite properly "on the order of gigabytes", as the GP post has it. On a logarithmic scale, it is closer to 1 GB than to 1 MB, or even 100 MB:
log (1,000,000,000) = 9
log (700,000,000) = 8.85
log (100,000,000) = 8
log (1,000,000) = 6
And as for my point, it's that I wish that all the Linux distros in all of their many flavors would come to a point where they merge into one so that I can actually switch to Linux. There are so many distros and so many desktop environments and so many package managers and and and..... but I've yet to see a really good post that tells me (in one place) why I would choose one distro over another or why I should pick Gnome or KDE or whatever.
Yeah! And I wish all those different car manufacturers with all their many flavors would come to a point where they merge into one so that I can actually switch to cars over my horse and buggy. There are so many makes and so many models and so many options...but I've yet to see a really good post that tells me (in one place) why I would choose one make other another or why I should pick a wagon or a coupe or whatever.
A more apt analogy would be somebody who develops extreme sun sensitivity late in life, and then attempts to sue the sun.
No, a more apt analogy would be somebody who develops extreme sun sensitivity (for instance, bright sunlight triggers migraine headaches for them) and then sues their neighbor who has put in a swimming pool that reflects sun into their bedroom window. Is it their responsibility to put up curtains (and block their view), or the neighbor's to move the pool? I don't know what the law says about that.
If this guy is actually effected by her transmissions, then maybe he has a case. All he has to do is prove it. I don't discount the possibility of biological effects, even harmful ones, from EM radiation in the radio band, but to my knowledge no one claiming this sort of "extreme electromagnetic sensitivity" has been able to show in a blinded test that their experience correlates with whether or not the electronics gear is turned on or not.
Additionally, while I agree with shorter copyright limits, one could make the argument that infinitely-long copyrights are better for society than no copyrights.
and without copyrights, there is no good economic model for the production of a lot of new work.
Sure there are. There's various forms of patronage, there's government-funded production (which is no more an intervention into the "free market" than copyright is), and there's my favorite, royalty-right: anyone can copy a work for free, but commercial use -- selling copies or derivative works -- requires payment of a royalty. (Modeled on songwriter royalties: sing in the shower all you want, but sing at the bar to bring in more customers, and the songwriter gets their nickel.)
That is a story about a 5 year old being stranded in a tree. The teachers "watched from afar" because of a school policy. A passerby stopped to help, and now faces possible legal action.
As usual, Fox is a source of negative information.
Anyway, isn't it kind of odd to claim that the neglect of a child (which, I repeat, did not actually occur) means the promotion of the "Nanny state"? Aren't nannies supposed to be protecting children, not neglecting them? But I guess that would require some thought about just what a "Nanny state" means, and it's clearly not a phrase meant to provoke thought; it's just a right-wing shibboleth.
During the Kennedy administration, the Republican minority in Congress introduced many bills to protect the constitutional rights of blacks, including a comprehensive new civil rights bill. In February 1963, to head off a return by most blacks to the party of Lincoln, Kennedy abruptly decided to submit to Congress a new civil rights bill.
Wow. You're guzzling the GOP Kool-Aid pretty hard -- mainlining it right from The Washington Times, apparently. That's at least a two letter grade reduction for plagiarism. Really, you could at least bother to re-phrase the Republican whining points in your own words.
As for the facts of the matter, JFK was pushing for a meaningful civil rights bill in the Senate in 1960. The idea that he "abruptly" discovered the issue is nonsense. Not to say that there weren't some progressive Republicans who favored civil rights -- I'll certainly give a nod to Eisenhower on that.
Though he shared Johnson's convictions on safeguarding the constitutional rights of blacks, if Nixon had been in the White House...
Just so long as they didn't breed with whites, that is. According to Tricky Dick, "There are times when an abortion is necessary. I know that. When you have a black and a white. Or a rape."
Socialism, Communism, Fascism, and Progressiveism are all on the extreme end of the scale ranging from anarchy at one extreme to total government control on the other.
No, they aren't. Anarchists are socialist, as one of the links I've already provided to you explains. And lumping Progressives like Teddy Roosevelt in with fascists is just silly.
"Make those rich people PAY! It's not FAIR that they have money and you don't!", never minding that the rich person got that way by working hard, being smart
No. That's the fantasy. One accumulates vast wealth by a combination of being born into it, by gaming the system, by exploitation, or by luck. Very, very rarely does a person become truly wealthy by talent and hard work.
Bill Gates? Born with a silver spoon, rode IBM's coattails, used criminal business practices and used government-issued copyrights and patent to rake it in. Warren Buffet? Son of a Congressman, got rich not from producing useful goods or services but made his wealth in the form of gambling called the stock market. Carlos Slim Helú? Gamed the deregulation of the Mexican telephone system to end up in control in 90% of its landlines, so that his company can charge some of the highest usage fees in the world.
Meanwhile, the investment class sucks its profit out of the labor of the people who actually do the productive work. The worker creates all the value, the bank, the bondholder, and the stockholder create none -- yet they not only get a cut -- indeed, often the lion's share -- of the value the worker creates, but we set our economic policy for their benefit.
We still live in the most-free (as an overall measure) nation on the planet with the highest standard of living of any other nation, ever.
No, we don't. It's a great nation -- hey, we taught the world to rock and roll, and whose bootprints are on the moon? -- but it's not as great as those wearing the flag as a blindfold like to pretend. We have the highest rate of incarceration on the planet. We rank 13th on the human development index, and are well down from the top in the CIFP rights rankings.
The progress we have made, though, is entirely because of those who l
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People do indeed say that. They are wrong.
In general, adjusted for region, private schools that out-perform public schools, spend more money, while private schools that underspend public schools, perform worse than public schools.
(Note that we're talking about spending, not tuition: private school tuition doesn't measure per-student spending because private schools usually get grants or subsidies from other sources.)
No reputable source holds that there was enough fraud in the 1960 election to alter the results:
Yes, Nixon believed he was robbed, but Nixon was fscking crazy.
And for most of our history, we were an agrarian nation; and even as we started to industrialize, there were many good industrial jobs available that didn't require a lot of education.
Also for most of our history, it was not expected -- or even illegal -- to teach the lowest classes how to read and write. If poor black kids couldn't read and write in 1910, no one gave a damn.
So, your historical comparison is not really useful.
Investing money in social infrastructure like education is not "throwing money" at the problem, any more than fixing the leaking roof in your house, or getting your car's oil changed regularly, is ""throwing money" at those issues.
Working hard and striving can only get you so far if the buildings are crumbling, the textbooks outdated, the labs lacking supplies and equipment, and the student body living in constant fear of violence.
No amount of good parenting can make up for a lack of vital resources.
Education is a public good, as as been understood since Jefferson's day, not an entitlement; but anyway, entitlements are the ante we owe for playing the private property game.
(And, by the way, your consistent misuse of "'s" make the case that American schools are underfunded better than anything I can say. And of course, by pointing this out, I ensure that my own post will contain at least one grammatical error.)
Yes, you are. You say, "Regardless of the morals and ethics, the bottom line is its good skilled and technical jobs for America." There is no way to parse that sentence that is not a dismissal of morals and ethics.
Slavery created many jobs -- slave auctioneer, sailor on a slave ship, fugitive slave catcher, slave overseer, whip maker, chain forger. It was a perfectly legal industry at the time.
Creating weapons of terror is not a "rights-abiding job", as all people have the right to live free from the threat of violence.
Given the /. demographics, odds are very good that I should be calling you "young one" rather than the other way around, not that it matters. And while I like a good non sequitur as much as anyone, what do tomatoes in fruit salads have to do with creating weapons of mass destruction?
I was marching against that war when I was in college, thank you, so I remember it well. Iraq was not developing nukes when we attacked in 2001. Perhaps you didn't get the news that the evidence of that was faked?
The U.S., Russia, the U.K. France, and China have a treaty obligation under the NNPT to "pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control." We cannot reasonably ignore our obligation under the NNPT to work for disarmament which at the same time citing the NNPT as the legal basis for threatening Iran. Nor can we effectively engage in negotiations to convince non-nuclear nations to stay that way while our line is "do as I say, not as I do."
Nonsense. Telling jokes about members of a group that derive their humor from acceptance of stereotypes is one way that bigotry spreads.
On the other hand, telling jokes in which the point of the joke is the idiocy of those who accept stereotypes, is healthy and counters bigotry.
As Carlin said, anything can be funny, it depends on where the emphasis is.
Depends on how you define "redneck". If by "redneck" you mean a poor rural white Southerner, then hating on them is bigotry. If by "redneck" you mean "bigoted, loutish and opposed to modern ways", then despising rednecks is the duty of all sensible people.
Natural language is ambiguous. So it goes.
Your ignorance is showing. Jim Crow laws were state and local laws. The segregation law upheld in Plessy v. Ferguson was a Louisiana law. The segregation law struck down by Brown v. Board of Education was a Kansas law.
No. The U.S. government FORCED integration in the late 1800s for a while, until the end of Reconstruction.
Please: learn some history.
You don't "remove a law" without passing a law. Essentially, most laws are "diffs" to the federal or state "code". Like this bit from H. R. 4957 (selected as a random example from thomas.loc.gov):
First, the "states and people" are two very different things, a point often overlooked by confused "Tenthers" and advocates of "states rights". Much of the expanded role that the federal government has taken on has been exactly because the states were acting against the people.
Second, the powers granted to the federal government by the Constitution are not a "little bit". They tried a government that only gave a little bit of power to the feds with the Articles of Confederation. It failed miserably, and was replaced by the stronger federal government of the Constitution. The feds have Constitutional authority to control inter-state and international commerce, spend money pretty much however they want, and (as amended) defend the rights of people against the states, and lay any taxes they want on any sort of income.
Under the Constitution, the states give up almost all sovereignty. They cannot "enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility," nor "lay any Imposts or Duties on Imports or Exports" (with a small exception for inspection Laws), nor "lay any Duty of Tonnage, keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace, enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power, or engage in War".
And furthermore each state is required to give "Full Faith and Credit" to the public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State", and to recognize the "Privileges and Immunities" of citizens of other states, and to extradite fugitives.
Riiiiigggghhttt...let's give Mississippi the power to reject civil rights laws. Brilliant plan.
No, it was not at all "apparent".
It was apparent that he was cruel SOB of a dictator, and no one was going to shed many tears if he was up against the wall, but it was also apparent that Gulf War I was a fairly ordinary border dispute jacked up into a full war by the lies of the Bush I administration, that Iraq was no longer any significant threat to any other nation, that cruel SOB of a dictators are a dime-a-dozen in this world, and that removing them by force just kills a bunch of people and usually just puts a different cruel SOB of a dictator in their place.
It was apparent over ten years ago that American policy in the Middle East -- like our foreign policy in general -- is brutal and stupid, and is geared to the interests of our corporate plutocracy, not to the interests of the people of the United States or of the nations of that region.
Used to get cheap kappa maki at the grocery store under my apartment all the time. (As a vegetarian in Japan, I ate a *lot* of kappa maki, as it was on of the prepared foods I could identify with no knowledge of the language. I did eventually learn enough to find ume and konbu onigiri, too.)
I think you are confused. Glutamatic acid is a common amino acid that's in every living cell, and is found free in a wide variety of foods including peas, tomatoes, and some cheeses. Perhaps you are thinking of its salt MSG, a controversial substance used as a "flavor enhancer" and blamed to a variety of ill effects, though the evidence is not strong. Citation needed that there's anything "addictive" here.
If you have to disregard morals and ethics, it's not a good job.
Getting rid of slavery put a lot of people out of work too. Sorry, but I have little sympathy when those who make terrorist weapons of mass destruction lose their jobs. I hope your father applies some ethical consideration to his future career choices.
If the U.S. has the right, as a sovereign nation, to amass any sort of defense we feel necessary, then Iraq, as a sovereign nation, has the right to amass any sort of defense it feels is necessary, and North Korea has the right to amass any sort of defense it feels is necessary, and so on.
The only way we'll get other nations to give up nuclear ambitions, is to get rid of our own nukes.
Fear does not produce peace. Fear is what produced 9/11.
Contrary to popular belief, Soviet Russia was not populated, nor led, by lunatics who were just waiting for an opportunity to blow up the USA.
(On the other hand, the U.S. was the only nation to ever use nuclear weapons, and had once sent 13,000 troops to participate in an anti-Communist invasion of Russia, and was, during the 1980s, led by a lunatic who believed the Soviets were the "Evil Empire" and that a Biblical Armageddon was nigh. Can't blame the Russkies if they thought the U.S. might really launch an unprovoked attack.)
Perhaps you are confusing the Renaissance (14th to 17th centuries), with the Enlightenment (17th and 18th century)?
Um, just who is this "head of the liberal movement" of whom you speak? Surely you're not talking about our moderately conservative President?
But those aren't the primary moral questions. The primary moral question is, "why should I give a fsck what makes others around me happy, or what decreases the suffering of others?"
Science doesn't give us "shoulds". It tells us "do A and B will probably be the result, while if you do X you'll get Y," but it can't tell us whether B or Y is "better". You could conclude that if we do A, we'll destroy the biosphere and the human race will be extinct in 200 years, while if we do X, taxes would have to go up 1%, but science can't tell you whether the extinction of all life on the planet more complicated than a bacterium is "better" than a higher tax bill. The question is outside its domain.
Supernatural ethical systems tell us that some divine judge is going to spank us if we do A and give us candy if we do X, so we'd better do X. Given the lack of evidence for the existence of such a divine judge, much less evidence of what its desires are, rational, intelligent, educated people reject supernaturalist ethical systems.
There are many ethical systems that are not supernaturalist: utilitarianism, contractualism, or rights theories, to name a couple. But each of these ultimately rests on some set of intuitions or assumption -- ethical axioms, if you will.
They used to, you know. If the church is no longer demanding a tax from you, you have the rise of secular governance to thank.
Of course, that secular government imposes taxes of its own. If you want to play the game of living in an industrialized civilization that creates and defends "property", you've got to pay the ante. TANSTAAFL.
Some perspective might reduce the annoyance: American tax rates are near historically low levels, and are lower than those in comparable nations.
700 MB is quite properly "on the order of gigabytes", as the GP post has it. On a logarithmic scale, it is closer to 1 GB than to 1 MB, or even 100 MB: log (1,000,000,000) = 9
log (700,000,000) = 8.85
log (100,000,000) = 8
log (1,000,000) = 6
Yeah! And I wish all those different car manufacturers with all their many flavors would come to a point where they merge into one so that I can actually switch to cars over my horse and buggy. There are so many makes and so many models and so many options...but I've yet to see a really good post that tells me (in one place) why I would choose one make other another or why I should pick a wagon or a coupe or whatever.
No, a more apt analogy would be somebody who develops extreme sun sensitivity (for instance, bright sunlight triggers migraine headaches for them) and then sues their neighbor who has put in a swimming pool that reflects sun into their bedroom window. Is it their responsibility to put up curtains (and block their view), or the neighbor's to move the pool? I don't know what the law says about that.
If this guy is actually effected by her transmissions, then maybe he has a case. All he has to do is prove it. I don't discount the possibility of biological effects, even harmful ones, from EM radiation in the radio band, but to my knowledge no one claiming this sort of "extreme electromagnetic sensitivity" has been able to show in a blinded test that their experience correlates with whether or not the electronics gear is turned on or not.
No, not if one understands human history one can't. Humans created art before copyright, and some of those works have come down to us today. Meanwhile, existing copyright is preventing the preservation of existing works.
Sure there are. There's various forms of patronage, there's government-funded production (which is no more an intervention into the "free market" than copyright is), and there's my favorite, royalty-right: anyone can copy a work for free, but commercial use -- selling copies or derivative works -- requires payment of a royalty. (Modeled on songwriter royalties: sing in the shower all you want, but sing at the bar to bring in more customers, and the songwriter gets their nickel.)
An inaccurate story, as it turns out. It didn't happen that way at all.
As usual, Fox is a source of negative information.
Anyway, isn't it kind of odd to claim that the neglect of a child (which, I repeat, did not actually occur) means the promotion of the "Nanny state"? Aren't nannies supposed to be protecting children, not neglecting them? But I guess that would require some thought about just what a "Nanny state" means, and it's clearly not a phrase meant to provoke thought; it's just a right-wing shibboleth.
Wow. You're guzzling the GOP Kool-Aid pretty hard -- mainlining it right from The Washington Times, apparently. That's at least a two letter grade reduction for plagiarism. Really, you could at least bother to re-phrase the Republican whining points in your own words.
As for the facts of the matter, JFK was pushing for a meaningful civil rights bill in the Senate in 1960. The idea that he "abruptly" discovered the issue is nonsense. Not to say that there weren't some progressive Republicans who favored civil rights -- I'll certainly give a nod to Eisenhower on that.
Just so long as they didn't breed with whites, that is. According to Tricky Dick, "There are times when an abortion is necessary. I know that. When you have a black and a white. Or a rape."
No, they aren't. Anarchists are socialist, as one of the links I've already provided to you explains. And lumping Progressives like Teddy Roosevelt in with fascists is just silly.
No. That's the fantasy. One accumulates vast wealth by a combination of being born into it, by gaming the system, by exploitation, or by luck. Very, very rarely does a person become truly wealthy by talent and hard work.
Bill Gates? Born with a silver spoon, rode IBM's coattails, used criminal business practices and used government-issued copyrights and patent to rake it in. Warren Buffet? Son of a Congressman, got rich not from producing useful goods or services but made his wealth in the form of gambling called the stock market. Carlos Slim Helú? Gamed the deregulation of the Mexican telephone system to end up in control in 90% of its landlines, so that his company can charge some of the highest usage fees in the world.
Meanwhile, the investment class sucks its profit out of the labor of the people who actually do the productive work. The worker creates all the value, the bank, the bondholder, and the stockholder create none -- yet they not only get a cut -- indeed, often the lion's share -- of the value the worker creates, but we set our economic policy for their benefit.
No, we don't. It's a great nation -- hey, we taught the world to rock and roll, and whose bootprints are on the moon? -- but it's not as great as those wearing the flag as a blindfold like to pretend. We have the highest rate of incarceration on the planet. We rank 13th on the human development index, and are well down from the top in the CIFP rights rankings.
The progress we have made, though, is entirely because of those who l