If the universe wasn't ordered, we wouldn't be here trying to figure out what created it.
You can try to explain it, but an ordered universe is still evidence for a creator. This refutes your claim that there is no evidence for a creator.
After all, nothing creating something has not ever been observed; we have no evidence to think the universe pops itself into existence.
There have been many historical claims that have been abandon in the light of science, like geocentism or the idea that there should be an equal amount of land north and south of the equator. This one should be too.
For any mathematical equation, there are an infinite number of wrong solutions. For any given crime, there are billions of people on the planet who are not guilty.
By the metric you suggest, we should give up on solving math problems or crimes, because the wrong to right solution ratio is extremely lopsided.
We shall ignore the fact that not all historical claims are created equal; your metric would toss out the entirety of human history because no historian is completely reliable, and there are some that have been debunked!
"No evidence", except for the fact that we live in an ordered universe, that the universe has a beginning, and that there are historical claims of a divine creator.
Not that this small set of evidence stops you from listing counter-evidence or alternate explanations, but claiming "no evidence" is plain wrong.
(with the slight exception of the ignorant rights being "quite concerned" when I'd have expected "somewhat" or "rather").
If we characterize rights (conservatives) as preferring the status quo, climate change seems to be a big deal because it'd be a deviation from the status quo.
With more knowledge, climate change is seen as the status quo, which would then drop the concern level.
I'm a bit surprised that Russia did this after Obama indicated he would have more manuevering room to negotiate on it after the election. This puts pressure on him in a way that's not likely to lead to him backing down since he's in a campaign. Maybe they see him as vulnerable in some way.
Probably because Obama might not be getting re-elected, and he's much more likely to fold to their demands right now than a Republican president a year down the road.
I don't believe you, and the Republicans have been pushing voodoo since 1980. Even the person who pejoratively named it practiced it in that time. The only break from it was under Clinton, and he managed a balanced budget (for some definitions of balanced). That's a lot more than Keynesian for 3 years. Keynesian isn't "disproven" it's been proven to not work when poorly implemented..
The entirety of the New Deal is Keynesian economics. You'll notice that for FDR's 4 terms and his economic policy, we never did quite get out of the Great Depression. That's almost 16 years of an economic policy that didn't work.
Would you care to explain how the New Deal was "poorly implemented"? Or would you like to point to a good implementation of Keynesian economics?
Keynesian ultimately boils down to a form of central planning, compared to the de-centralized planning a free market would have. And it's not hard to see why a centralized decision making process fails to account for all the millions of variables relevant to the economy, resulting in a "poor implementation".
The reality is that it has nothing to do with "poor implementation". Failure is a system defect of Keynesian economics. Gov't beauracrats are not inerrant prophets who can predict the rise and fall of economic growth and compensate for it with monetary policy. Nor are politicians disciplined enough to avoid buying votes with irresponsible gov't spending.
4 trillion dollars in defecit spending, and we're just not "doing it right". Maybe we should not do it and save 4 trillion dollars - all that requires is us to do nothing.
Ask Reagan and his voodoo economics. Oh wait, that trickle down that never trickled down is *still* being advocated by conservatives, despite being proven false. The irony is that they then complain that "if it doesn't work, isn't it time to re-evaluate" for other things.
Compare Reagan's voodoo economics to FDR's New Deal and Obama's 3 year trillion dollar deficits Keynesian stimuluses.
Which of those economic periods is typified by high unemployment and low economic growth?
Keynesian economics is far more disproven than "voodoo economics", yet that's the supposed solution to our current economic ills. We've tried it for 3 years. It's not working.
Nobody wants to risk everything on a worldwide missle defense system that's never been operationally tested. Nobody wants to live in a world where several other continents have been nuked into radioactive ash. Believe me, the people planning and building missle defense systems sincerely hope that they never have to be used. Nobody's imagining it as an enabler for a first-strike capability.
I don't doubt that there are good intentions behind the development of missile defense tech. But intentions don't necessarily control the effects of a technology.
The scientists who built the atomic bomb thought of it as a bigger bomb; they didn't intend for it to be a weapon that could potentially exterminate humanity from this planet - but that's the potential it had as a technology.
For a more humorous example, I doubt the scientists and engineers behind ARPANET intended to build a distribution system for lolcat pictures and videos, but that's one of the results of their R&D.
So the intention of the developers doesn't really matter - what are the effects of the US being immune to a nuclear first strike OR retaliation? Other countries will be nervous about that impunity and power. Yet at the same time, I don't know that we have the ability to prevent the technology from existing. If it's going to exist, I want my country to have it. And back we go to game theory.
So the failure of the USSR to satisfy its own citizens with a decent quality of life doesn't have anything to with the choice to have "cheap" military production?
What the USSR was willing to pay for military production does not change the opportunity costs for developing that hardware. They used centralized economic planning rather than allowing free markets to determine the value of what was produced. The leaders prioritized weaponry over the wants and needs of their citizens, so they didn't develop some of the techs and luxuries the Western world did.
Call it a myth if you'd like; that the USSR fell is a fact, and economic ineptitude is a pretty reasonable stab at the root cause.
Heh. Your obvious inconsistencies aren't so inconsistent on closer examination.
such as Jesus helping the poor and budget cutting anything that helps poor people.
It's not inconsistent if the budget cuts are driven by budget deficits and poor results. If you're borrowing money to help the poor, you're doing it wrong.
On top of that, it's pretty clear that the US's deficit spending isn't helping the poor. The US economy is in the crapper and the percentage of working Americans is at a record low - coincidentally, we've also spent the most money we don't have in the past several years. If you do something with good intentions and it doesn't work, isn't it time to re-evaluate what you are doing?
Is it that hard to see the difference between digging into your own pocket to help out a beggar, vs. taking money from a "rich guy" (in the future) to give to the poor?
Do you think Jesus would have supported the NRA? Cutting school budgets to get the latest F-35 bombers that the military doesn't even want?
The NRA was formed to protect gun rights, which is in essence a man's natural right to protect himself from harm. Do you think Jesus would have supported a man's right to protect himself from being murdered? In the US, gun control was used to prevent blacks from protecting themselves from the KKK after the Civil War. Is that the kind of thing Jesus would have supported instead of the NRA?
As for school budgets, schools have historically been funded by their local communities, whereas the F-35 is a national weapon funded by the federal gov't. Different levels of gov't have different responsibilities, and their budgets are separate from each other. The gov't that buys military airplanes is not the one that builds the school, hires teachers, and manages the curriculum.
So there's no inconsistency in having the federal gov't buy warplanes. The federal gov't has a responsibility to protect the nation. It does not have any Constitutionally delegated powers to fund school budgets.
None of the inconsistencies you listed hold up to examination. Perhaps instead of accusing a group of inconsistent thinking, you should spend more time learning how they think.
Increased complexity (and functionality) of the systems means increasing cost and time to design or upgrade said complex systems. One hears how Moore's law results in exponential increase in transistor density, and performance; fewer pay attention to the exponential increases in fab building costs.
Couple that with the lack of near term threats to the US, which would justify the increased cost for design and production new planes.
/shrug on the naming. Just been following what everyone else was using when I first read up on the case. The ones used are more distinctive, and I suspect it's easier to imagine a "Zimmerman" to be racist than a "George". A possible factor why early media reports used those names, considering how much some companies want this to be about racism.
Zimmerman stated Martin went for his gun. If the gun was not brandished, how would Martin have known to go for it?
If we're going to use Zimmerman's testimony, then according to that same testimony, Martin approached Zimmerman, knocked him down, and beat him.
Where does brandishing of a gun fit into that series of events? That Zimmerman brandished the gun before or after the conversation, and Martin decided to start a fight after seeing the gun?
If Martin was beating a knocked down Zimmerman, Martin could have felt or saw the weapon at that point in time.
It's certainly not obvious to me that the only way that Martin would have noticed the gun is if Z was first pointing it at him or waving it around in a threatening manner.
2) Zimmerman disregards common sense and dispatch suggestions and not only continues to persue, but approaches on foot (in a menacing manner).
3) ???
4) Zimmernam then executes Martin.
[Citation needed] for your parenthetical aside in (2), as well as the claim of execution in your (4).
It's not disregarding common sense for a neighborhood watch guy to approach and talk to a stranger.
It would be disregarding common sense and decency if Zimmerman had approached while pointing a weapon at Trayvon, but you don't know that. Use evidence to support the conclusions you reach.
Your ability to be certain of murderous intent based only on sparse information from biased media reports is disturbing. This is why we have trial by a jury of peers, not by national media frenzy.
Civil unions don't have all the legal rights and responsibilities of marriage.
Nor do I support making them complete legal equivalents. A homosexual couple is objectively different in nature than a heterosexual one. But I don't oppose expanding rights granted to marriage like hospital visitation rights, power of attorney, and so on.
Since your premise about the nature of civil unions vs. marriage is wrong, and since I do not support making them completely equal, your argument falls apart.
Calling two different things by two different names is natural and not wrong. It may offend some people's delicate politically correct sensitivities, but that in of itself does not make an observation wrong.
I also recognize that the status quo is my position imposed on others. But if marriage is as fragile and worthless as they say, I don't see why they care to have my official recognition through our collective society. (Because the reality is that the word and its associated meaning is actually quite valuable)
Sadly, some who oppose my position have deluded themselves into thinking that their position does not and will not impose on mine. I'm correcting the record on that point. We both impose on each other. The question is not if imposing will happen, the question is who will impose on whom, to what ends.
Not a national law in the US. Some states did choose to restrict the simple definition of recognized marriages to a subset, but not every state did so.
That something has changed in the past does not mean any proposed change is a good idea.
If marriage is "just a word", then why care if gay couples have it or not? There's already a word they can use, "civil unions". In the same way that "marriage" has meaning to a gay couple, it has meaning to others.
But let's put that aside - you want to focus on the "rights and benefits" associated with marriage, and don't see how that imposes anything on anyone. You ought to recognize that all of those legal rights and benefits *are* the imposing.
If not, why only allow all of those rights and benefits for married couples? Why not singles? Friends with benefits? Brothers, sisters? Why deny legal benefits of a recognized relationship to entire classes of people?
The legal benefits for marriage exist because society recognizes marriage is a special relationship. For good reason, too, as it's the basic unit of a family and provides a structure for reproduction and education of a new generation.
Changing how society organizes itself is a big deal. Forcing your vision of how society should be organized on others is imposing.
Pick an argument: Marriage is no big deal, in which case no one should care one way or another if gay couples get it or not; or marriage is a big deal, and it is imposing to force people to use one definition over the other.
Marriage is about a partnership between a male and a female. It's not that hard to determine that that's the traditional and historical definition in the US and many other countries.
If you'd like to modify the legal definition to include any combination of male or female, the legislature is that a way.
If you're like to modify the cultural definition in the same way, well, have fun inserting pro-gay marriage commentary and ideas into everything. Video games, movies, tv shows, the sky's the limit.
But while you're pushing to redefine what marriage is, don't complain about the opposition to changing the meaning of words. You're imposing on them as much as they're imposing on you.
I wasn't talking about duty. I was talking about motivation.
If Trayvon did not initiate the violence, here's the timeline: As of the end of Zimmerman's 911 call, they are at a distance from each other. How do you go from that to (3), where Trayvon is close to Zimmerman? (I acknowledge the dispute of T pummeling Z) Did Zimmerman chase after Trayvon and start a fist fight? Does Zimmerman walk up to Trayvon, interrogate him, and then start a fist fight? Does Trayvon walk up to Zimmerman, start a conversation ("why are you staring at me?"), after which Zimmerman initiates a fistfight?
That last scenario was the one I was thinking of which does not make sense to me from a "Trayvon did not initiate" PoV (but it might have happened; I don't know).
It all depends on the actual sequence of events, which is still murky, and which a jury may have to make a best guess at.
The funeral director's report is interesting additional information, but that's not enough in of itself to dismiss the eyewitness report. What does the autopsy report say? That's still not available, AFAIK. Maybe the eyewitness is lying, but that's for a jury to decide. All I know is that there's enough "Fog of War" to say that judgement should be deferred until more evidence is collected. (My guess is that it takes at least a year for someone to finally make a report that accounts for all the evidence)
But I know one thing for sure: All the disinformation that's been put out there is media malpractice. Screw them for poisoning the well and lying to those who want justice to be served.
Zimmerman was not twice Trayvon's size. Trayvon was taller by 3~4", while Zimmerman was 30~40 pounds heavier.
I'd also like to point out that a healthy person is in of themselves a weapon. Unarmed people are quite capable of killing each other. Not as quickly as with a gun, but the capability is still there.
Possessing a gun doesn't make you invincible, either. You can be punched in the face, knocked down, and disoriented. Guns are not magical defensive talismans.
My argument is absurd because you try to subdivide your employee salary costs into an infinite number of subcategories?
Why do we care? Where your employees spend their money has no relevance to how your business is run. Every business boils down to $income - $cost = $profit.
All of the money you get, you get because someone valued your goods and paid for them. Every single cost you have is paid for by your customers. How you choose to itemize your costs is irrelevant.
The only way for your costs to not be paid for by your customers is if $cost > $income, meaning you're losing money operating your business. In which case your business has no purpose to continue existing.
Since the very nature of markets leaves only the businesses that can break even or make a profit, all costs must by definition be borne by the consumer who pays more for the goods than they cost the business to provide them.
3.) Trayvon knocks down Zimmerman and pummels him in the face
4.) Zimmerman shoots and kills Trayvon
I think what happened in (2) is a lot more important than (1) for deciding who initiated the chain of events.
If all Zimmerman did was to ask a question, there's no way that Trayvon was justified to do (3). If Zimmerman threatened Trayvon verbally/physically, then perhaps Trayvon was trying to act in self-defense. (If Trayvon did not initiate the violence, it seems that he should want to run away, but people can make bad choices in high stress situations)
It's just that it has to be the federal gov't that implements such an interstate commerce regulation. States are denied that power by the US Constitution.
The federal gov't not having done such a thing can be seen as a result of various factors:
- Various online retailers lobbying Congress to not increase their costs of business (whether fair or not)
- Congress not particularly interested in passing laws whose only purpose is to raise money for the states, as opposed to the federal gov't
- Congress not interested in being responsible for raising everyone's taxes, which a national sales tax regulation for online/phone/mail transactions would do. They'd much rather tax some "evil" minority, such as the rich, oil companies, phone companies - someone who the public wouldn't care as much about.
Congress could pass a law that states the sales tax is determined by the location of the purchaser. (encourages people to move to lower tax states) Or it could be based on the location of the seller. (encourages businesses to move to lower tax states)
For whatever reasons, Congress hasn't done so yet, but Amazon, to its credit, is not freeloading - they're lobbying Congress to do such a thing. (And get rid of individual states trying to specifically target Amazon for higher taxes)
Your decision on how to set prices (look at the competition) still doesn't change the reality that the consumers pay the tax.
You have margins large enough that you can pay for the tax out of your "profits". Your business still relies on customers paying for goods, and you pay taxes proportional to the goods sold.
Would you disagree with the statement that your customers pay your costs of business? If they weren't willing to pay you more for services/goods than it costs you to provide them, you wouldn't be in business.
Taxes are a cost. Who pays for the costs of business? Ultimately, for any business that is profitable enough to continue operating, it's the consumer.
Do your grocery stores never offer items on sale? Clearance?
Groceries don't last forever, after all, and if the price is too high, the items don't sell - and then they spoil or go past their "sell by" date. No profit in throwing away items.
Or perhaps you're talking about inflation... that's still explainable by supply and demand - it's just that you have to make a calculation with a million variables instead of just 2. (supply vs. demand for all products instead of supply vs. demand for a single product.
Retarded? Try harder.
You realize when talking about the US, that we have multiple levels of gov't? Local gov'ts are the ones responsible for dealing with problems of healthcare/education. Since local gov'ts can handle those problems according to the will of their communities, the federal gov't should stick to what it's good at - destroying things with an army of trained killers.
Ah, the good ole times of generalised illiteracy and high mortality. How I miss them.
Maybe *your* country was illiterate - but don't project your country's deficiencies on mine.
Mortality has improved, but that's not directly proportional to federal gov't spending, now is it? Prove me wrong, if you have any evidence beyond your feelings on the matter.
If the troops are supposed to protect your country, what are they doing on the other side of the world fighting illiterate peasants that live in caves and bear 30 year old AK47s?
They're projecting my country's foreign policy, as a response to this nasty terrorist attack that happened a few years back. Were you living under a rock? You're on the internet, maybe you can go do some research.
I can buy myself cough medicine and pay for a visit to my doctor.
You can, how good for you. Many can't. What about cancer treatment? Can you afford it?
There's this thing called insurance, where you bet against yourself - you get sick, insurance company pays out; you don't get sick, insurance company pockets your money. That's how I plan to pay for cancer treatment if that ever happens.
The only thing the gov't has to do is to enforce the contract. That's something done by the state gov't, not the federal one.
I can buy a book or search the internets to educate myself.
You can, how good for you. Many can't.
The primary driver of any man's education is himself. No amount of money will make a man who does not want to be educated, educated.
If someone can't be arsed to educate himself, an army of teachers paid to do so won't change the outcome.
Anyways, in the US, we have these things called libraries, that are funded by local or state gov'ts. They let you borrow books, for free! They'll let you surf the internet, for free! No federal money is needed to make this happen - in fact many libraries were built in the US with private money.
If you don't understand how my country works, then you really should keep your ignorance to yourself. Actually, why not try to educate yourself? All you have to do is ask questions instead of making asinine assumptions!
To add on to your point: Notice how the federal gov't didn't have the responsibilities of healthcare or education for the first 100~ years.
On the other hand, it's always had the responsibility of protecting our country from foreign threats. It really shouldn't be that hard to discern which items should be a higher priority for our federal gov't.
I can buy myself cough medicine and pay for a visit to my doctor. I can buy a book or search the internets to educate myself. I cannot buy myself a warplane or a warship to defend against a foreign gov'ts army, or to fight and destroy terrorists overseas. (And if I could afford it, my neighbors might not care for me having a private army/navy)
Slashdot Mirror
If the universe wasn't ordered, we wouldn't be here trying to figure out what created it.
You can try to explain it, but an ordered universe is still evidence for a creator. This refutes your claim that there is no evidence for a creator.
After all, nothing creating something has not ever been observed; we have no evidence to think the universe pops itself into existence.
There have been many historical claims that have been abandon in the light of science, like geocentism or the idea that there should be an equal amount of land north and south of the equator. This one should be too.
For any mathematical equation, there are an infinite number of wrong solutions. For any given crime, there are billions of people on the planet who are not guilty.
By the metric you suggest, we should give up on solving math problems or crimes, because the wrong to right solution ratio is extremely lopsided.
We shall ignore the fact that not all historical claims are created equal; your metric would toss out the entirety of human history because no historian is completely reliable, and there are some that have been debunked!
"No evidence", except for the fact that we live in an ordered universe, that the universe has a beginning, and that there are historical claims of a divine creator.
Not that this small set of evidence stops you from listing counter-evidence or alternate explanations, but claiming "no evidence" is plain wrong.
Unpersuasive or insufficient, sure. None? Wrong.
(with the slight exception of the ignorant rights being "quite concerned" when I'd have expected "somewhat" or "rather").
If we characterize rights (conservatives) as preferring the status quo, climate change seems to be a big deal because it'd be a deviation from the status quo.
With more knowledge, climate change is seen as the status quo, which would then drop the concern level.
I'm a bit surprised that Russia did this after Obama indicated he would have more manuevering room to negotiate on it after the election. This puts pressure on him in a way that's not likely to lead to him backing down since he's in a campaign. Maybe they see him as vulnerable in some way.
Probably because Obama might not be getting re-elected, and he's much more likely to fold to their demands right now than a Republican president a year down the road.
I don't believe you, and the Republicans have been pushing voodoo since 1980. Even the person who pejoratively named it practiced it in that time. The only break from it was under Clinton, and he managed a balanced budget (for some definitions of balanced). That's a lot more than Keynesian for 3 years. Keynesian isn't "disproven" it's been proven to not work when poorly implemented..
The entirety of the New Deal is Keynesian economics. You'll notice that for FDR's 4 terms and his economic policy, we never did quite get out of the Great Depression. That's almost 16 years of an economic policy that didn't work.
Would you care to explain how the New Deal was "poorly implemented"? Or would you like to point to a good implementation of Keynesian economics?
Keynesian ultimately boils down to a form of central planning, compared to the de-centralized planning a free market would have. And it's not hard to see why a centralized decision making process fails to account for all the millions of variables relevant to the economy, resulting in a "poor implementation".
The reality is that it has nothing to do with "poor implementation". Failure is a system defect of Keynesian economics. Gov't beauracrats are not inerrant prophets who can predict the rise and fall of economic growth and compensate for it with monetary policy. Nor are politicians disciplined enough to avoid buying votes with irresponsible gov't spending.
4 trillion dollars in defecit spending, and we're just not "doing it right". Maybe we should not do it and save 4 trillion dollars - all that requires is us to do nothing.
Ask Reagan and his voodoo economics. Oh wait, that trickle down that never trickled down is *still* being advocated by conservatives, despite being proven false. The irony is that they then complain that "if it doesn't work, isn't it time to re-evaluate" for other things.
Compare Reagan's voodoo economics to FDR's New Deal and Obama's 3 year trillion dollar deficits Keynesian stimuluses.
Which of those economic periods is typified by high unemployment and low economic growth?
Keynesian economics is far more disproven than "voodoo economics", yet that's the supposed solution to our current economic ills. We've tried it for 3 years. It's not working.
Nobody wants to risk everything on a worldwide missle defense system that's never been operationally tested. Nobody wants to live in a world where several other continents have been nuked into radioactive ash. Believe me, the people planning and building missle defense systems sincerely hope that they never have to be used. Nobody's imagining it as an enabler for a first-strike capability.
I don't doubt that there are good intentions behind the development of missile defense tech. But intentions don't necessarily control the effects of a technology.
The scientists who built the atomic bomb thought of it as a bigger bomb; they didn't intend for it to be a weapon that could potentially exterminate humanity from this planet - but that's the potential it had as a technology.
For a more humorous example, I doubt the scientists and engineers behind ARPANET intended to build a distribution system for lolcat pictures and videos, but that's one of the results of their R&D.
So the intention of the developers doesn't really matter - what are the effects of the US being immune to a nuclear first strike OR retaliation? Other countries will be nervous about that impunity and power. Yet at the same time, I don't know that we have the ability to prevent the technology from existing. If it's going to exist, I want my country to have it. And back we go to game theory.
So the failure of the USSR to satisfy its own citizens with a decent quality of life doesn't have anything to with the choice to have "cheap" military production?
What the USSR was willing to pay for military production does not change the opportunity costs for developing that hardware. They used centralized economic planning rather than allowing free markets to determine the value of what was produced. The leaders prioritized weaponry over the wants and needs of their citizens, so they didn't develop some of the techs and luxuries the Western world did.
Call it a myth if you'd like; that the USSR fell is a fact, and economic ineptitude is a pretty reasonable stab at the root cause.
Heh. Your obvious inconsistencies aren't so inconsistent on closer examination.
such as Jesus helping the poor and budget cutting anything that helps poor people.
It's not inconsistent if the budget cuts are driven by budget deficits and poor results. If you're borrowing money to help the poor, you're doing it wrong.
On top of that, it's pretty clear that the US's deficit spending isn't helping the poor. The US economy is in the crapper and the percentage of working Americans is at a record low - coincidentally, we've also spent the most money we don't have in the past several years. If you do something with good intentions and it doesn't work, isn't it time to re-evaluate what you are doing?
Is it that hard to see the difference between digging into your own pocket to help out a beggar, vs. taking money from a "rich guy" (in the future) to give to the poor?
Do you think Jesus would have supported the NRA? Cutting school budgets to get the latest F-35 bombers that the military doesn't even want?
The NRA was formed to protect gun rights, which is in essence a man's natural right to protect himself from harm. Do you think Jesus would have supported a man's right to protect himself from being murdered? In the US, gun control was used to prevent blacks from protecting themselves from the KKK after the Civil War. Is that the kind of thing Jesus would have supported instead of the NRA?
As for school budgets, schools have historically been funded by their local communities, whereas the F-35 is a national weapon funded by the federal gov't. Different levels of gov't have different responsibilities, and their budgets are separate from each other. The gov't that buys military airplanes is not the one that builds the school, hires teachers, and manages the curriculum.
So there's no inconsistency in having the federal gov't buy warplanes. The federal gov't has a responsibility to protect the nation. It does not have any Constitutionally delegated powers to fund school budgets.
None of the inconsistencies you listed hold up to examination. Perhaps instead of accusing a group of inconsistent thinking, you should spend more time learning how they think.
Increased complexity (and functionality) of the systems means increasing cost and time to design or upgrade said complex systems. One hears how Moore's law results in exponential increase in transistor density, and performance; fewer pay attention to the exponential increases in fab building costs.
Couple that with the lack of near term threats to the US, which would justify the increased cost for design and production new planes.
/shrug on the naming. Just been following what everyone else was using when I first read up on the case. The ones used are more distinctive, and I suspect it's easier to imagine a "Zimmerman" to be racist than a "George". A possible factor why early media reports used those names, considering how much some companies want this to be about racism.
Zimmerman stated Martin went for his gun. If the gun was not brandished, how would Martin have known to go for it?
If we're going to use Zimmerman's testimony, then according to that same testimony, Martin approached Zimmerman, knocked him down, and beat him.
Where does brandishing of a gun fit into that series of events? That Zimmerman brandished the gun before or after the conversation, and Martin decided to start a fight after seeing the gun?
If Martin was beating a knocked down Zimmerman, Martin could have felt or saw the weapon at that point in time.
It's certainly not obvious to me that the only way that Martin would have noticed the gun is if Z was first pointing it at him or waving it around in a threatening manner.
2) Zimmerman disregards common sense and dispatch suggestions and not only continues to persue, but approaches on foot (in a menacing manner).
3) ???
4) Zimmernam then executes Martin.
[Citation needed] for your parenthetical aside in (2), as well as the claim of execution in your (4).
It's not disregarding common sense for a neighborhood watch guy to approach and talk to a stranger.
It would be disregarding common sense and decency if Zimmerman had approached while pointing a weapon at Trayvon, but you don't know that. Use evidence to support the conclusions you reach.
Your ability to be certain of murderous intent based only on sparse information from biased media reports is disturbing. This is why we have trial by a jury of peers, not by national media frenzy.
Civil unions don't have all the legal rights and responsibilities of marriage.
Nor do I support making them complete legal equivalents. A homosexual couple is objectively different in nature than a heterosexual one. But I don't oppose expanding rights granted to marriage like hospital visitation rights, power of attorney, and so on.
Since your premise about the nature of civil unions vs. marriage is wrong, and since I do not support making them completely equal, your argument falls apart.
Calling two different things by two different names is natural and not wrong. It may offend some people's delicate politically correct sensitivities, but that in of itself does not make an observation wrong.
I also recognize that the status quo is my position imposed on others. But if marriage is as fragile and worthless as they say, I don't see why they care to have my official recognition through our collective society. (Because the reality is that the word and its associated meaning is actually quite valuable)
Sadly, some who oppose my position have deluded themselves into thinking that their position does not and will not impose on mine. I'm correcting the record on that point. We both impose on each other. The question is not if imposing will happen, the question is who will impose on whom, to what ends.
Not a national law in the US. Some states did choose to restrict the simple definition of recognized marriages to a subset, but not every state did so.
That something has changed in the past does not mean any proposed change is a good idea.
If marriage is "just a word", then why care if gay couples have it or not? There's already a word they can use, "civil unions". In the same way that "marriage" has meaning to a gay couple, it has meaning to others.
But let's put that aside - you want to focus on the "rights and benefits" associated with marriage, and don't see how that imposes anything on anyone. You ought to recognize that all of those legal rights and benefits *are* the imposing.
If not, why only allow all of those rights and benefits for married couples? Why not singles? Friends with benefits? Brothers, sisters? Why deny legal benefits of a recognized relationship to entire classes of people?
The legal benefits for marriage exist because society recognizes marriage is a special relationship. For good reason, too, as it's the basic unit of a family and provides a structure for reproduction and education of a new generation.
Changing how society organizes itself is a big deal. Forcing your vision of how society should be organized on others is imposing.
Pick an argument: Marriage is no big deal, in which case no one should care one way or another if gay couples get it or not; or marriage is a big deal, and it is imposing to force people to use one definition over the other.
Marriage is about a partnership between a male and a female. It's not that hard to determine that that's the traditional and historical definition in the US and many other countries.
If you'd like to modify the legal definition to include any combination of male or female, the legislature is that a way.
If you're like to modify the cultural definition in the same way, well, have fun inserting pro-gay marriage commentary and ideas into everything. Video games, movies, tv shows, the sky's the limit.
But while you're pushing to redefine what marriage is, don't complain about the opposition to changing the meaning of words. You're imposing on them as much as they're imposing on you.
I wasn't talking about duty. I was talking about motivation.
If Trayvon did not initiate the violence, here's the timeline: As of the end of Zimmerman's 911 call, they are at a distance from each other. How do you go from that to (3), where Trayvon is close to Zimmerman? (I acknowledge the dispute of T pummeling Z) Did Zimmerman chase after Trayvon and start a fist fight? Does Zimmerman walk up to Trayvon, interrogate him, and then start a fist fight? Does Trayvon walk up to Zimmerman, start a conversation ("why are you staring at me?"), after which Zimmerman initiates a fistfight?
That last scenario was the one I was thinking of which does not make sense to me from a "Trayvon did not initiate" PoV (but it might have happened; I don't know).
It all depends on the actual sequence of events, which is still murky, and which a jury may have to make a best guess at.
The funeral director's report is interesting additional information, but that's not enough in of itself to dismiss the eyewitness report. What does the autopsy report say? That's still not available, AFAIK. Maybe the eyewitness is lying, but that's for a jury to decide. All I know is that there's enough "Fog of War" to say that judgement should be deferred until more evidence is collected. (My guess is that it takes at least a year for someone to finally make a report that accounts for all the evidence)
But I know one thing for sure: All the disinformation that's been put out there is media malpractice. Screw them for poisoning the well and lying to those who want justice to be served.
Zimmerman was not twice Trayvon's size. Trayvon was taller by 3~4", while Zimmerman was 30~40 pounds heavier.
I'd also like to point out that a healthy person is in of themselves a weapon. Unarmed people are quite capable of killing each other. Not as quickly as with a gun, but the capability is still there.
Possessing a gun doesn't make you invincible, either. You can be punched in the face, knocked down, and disoriented. Guns are not magical defensive talismans.
My argument is absurd because you try to subdivide your employee salary costs into an infinite number of subcategories?
Why do we care? Where your employees spend their money has no relevance to how your business is run. Every business boils down to $income - $cost = $profit.
All of the money you get, you get because someone valued your goods and paid for them. Every single cost you have is paid for by your customers. How you choose to itemize your costs is irrelevant.
The only way for your costs to not be paid for by your customers is if $cost > $income, meaning you're losing money operating your business. In which case your business has no purpose to continue existing.
Since the very nature of markets leaves only the businesses that can break even or make a profit, all costs must by definition be borne by the consumer who pays more for the goods than they cost the business to provide them.
1.) Zimmerman gets out of car
2.) ???
3.) Trayvon knocks down Zimmerman and pummels him in the face
4.) Zimmerman shoots and kills Trayvon
I think what happened in (2) is a lot more important than (1) for deciding who initiated the chain of events.
If all Zimmerman did was to ask a question, there's no way that Trayvon was justified to do (3). If Zimmerman threatened Trayvon verbally/physically, then perhaps Trayvon was trying to act in self-defense. (If Trayvon did not initiate the violence, it seems that he should want to run away, but people can make bad choices in high stress situations)
Well, they *could* tax the transaction.
It's just that it has to be the federal gov't that implements such an interstate commerce regulation. States are denied that power by the US Constitution.
The federal gov't not having done such a thing can be seen as a result of various factors:
- Various online retailers lobbying Congress to not increase their costs of business (whether fair or not)
- Congress not particularly interested in passing laws whose only purpose is to raise money for the states, as opposed to the federal gov't
- Congress not interested in being responsible for raising everyone's taxes, which a national sales tax regulation for online/phone/mail transactions would do. They'd much rather tax some "evil" minority, such as the rich, oil companies, phone companies - someone who the public wouldn't care as much about.
Congress could pass a law that states the sales tax is determined by the location of the purchaser. (encourages people to move to lower tax states) Or it could be based on the location of the seller. (encourages businesses to move to lower tax states)
For whatever reasons, Congress hasn't done so yet, but Amazon, to its credit, is not freeloading - they're lobbying Congress to do such a thing. (And get rid of individual states trying to specifically target Amazon for higher taxes)
Your decision on how to set prices (look at the competition) still doesn't change the reality that the consumers pay the tax.
You have margins large enough that you can pay for the tax out of your "profits". Your business still relies on customers paying for goods, and you pay taxes proportional to the goods sold.
Would you disagree with the statement that your customers pay your costs of business? If they weren't willing to pay you more for services/goods than it costs you to provide them, you wouldn't be in business.
Taxes are a cost. Who pays for the costs of business? Ultimately, for any business that is profitable enough to continue operating, it's the consumer.
Do your grocery stores never offer items on sale? Clearance?
Groceries don't last forever, after all, and if the price is too high, the items don't sell - and then they spoil or go past their "sell by" date. No profit in throwing away items.
Or perhaps you're talking about inflation ... that's still explainable by supply and demand - it's just that you have to make a calculation with a million variables instead of just 2. (supply vs. demand for all products instead of supply vs. demand for a single product.
Ah, the good ole times of generalised illiteracy and high mortality. How I miss them.
In 1776, the US had a 95% literacy rate. http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_was_the_literacy_rate_in_1776
Maybe *your* country was illiterate - but don't project your country's deficiencies on mine.
Mortality has improved, but that's not directly proportional to federal gov't spending, now is it? Prove me wrong, if you have any evidence beyond your feelings on the matter.
If the troops are supposed to protect your country, what are they doing on the other side of the world fighting illiterate peasants that live in caves and bear 30 year old AK47s?
They're projecting my country's foreign policy, as a response to this nasty terrorist attack that happened a few years back. Were you living under a rock? You're on the internet, maybe you can go do some research.
I can buy myself cough medicine and pay for a visit to my doctor.
You can, how good for you. Many can't. What about cancer treatment? Can you afford it?
There's this thing called insurance, where you bet against yourself - you get sick, insurance company pays out; you don't get sick, insurance company pockets your money. That's how I plan to pay for cancer treatment if that ever happens.
The only thing the gov't has to do is to enforce the contract. That's something done by the state gov't, not the federal one.
I can buy a book or search the internets to educate myself.
You can, how good for you. Many can't.
The primary driver of any man's education is himself. No amount of money will make a man who does not want to be educated, educated.
If someone can't be arsed to educate himself, an army of teachers paid to do so won't change the outcome.
Anyways, in the US, we have these things called libraries, that are funded by local or state gov'ts. They let you borrow books, for free! They'll let you surf the internet, for free! No federal money is needed to make this happen - in fact many libraries were built in the US with private money.
If you don't understand how my country works, then you really should keep your ignorance to yourself. Actually, why not try to educate yourself? All you have to do is ask questions instead of making asinine assumptions!
To add on to your point: Notice how the federal gov't didn't have the responsibilities of healthcare or education for the first 100~ years.
On the other hand, it's always had the responsibility of protecting our country from foreign threats. It really shouldn't be that hard to discern which items should be a higher priority for our federal gov't.
I can buy myself cough medicine and pay for a visit to my doctor.
I can buy a book or search the internets to educate myself.
I cannot buy myself a warplane or a warship to defend against a foreign gov'ts army, or to fight and destroy terrorists overseas. (And if I could afford it, my neighbors might not care for me having a private army/navy)