Janet Reno was the Attorney General in the Clinton Administration, and since only the Bush Administartion suppresses human rights and eats babies for brunch, she couldn't possibly have applied the pressure you attribute to her.
As long as most USA political debates inevitably decend into red/blue bashing, BOTH political parties will continue eating babies AND getting away with it. Everyone is too busy mudslinging and "but you were worse"'ing to actually do anything useful.
Have you ever considered the implications of this, and what might be driving it in the first place?
Radical islam does not have a "live and let live" mindset.
Yes it does. The number of radical islamist who want to spread their beliefs outside of their own countries is remarkably small. On the other hand, most if not all of our leaders want to spread our own values culture accross the whole planet. Each group has this weird idea that their ideas are superiour and that they have some form of devine right to promote. We are the only ones currently invading other countries to do so.
We are allies of the sovereign government of Saudi Arabia. I don't see the Germans, Italians or Japanese attacking the United States because of our military presence in their nations.
That's because those other countries approve of the governments, and all in all they are relatively "nice" to the population. The same cannot be said for the Saudi's, who are a bunch of repressive, militaristic dictators. That's not specifically what Osama doesn't like however, his beef is with the rampant consumerism and greed, along with the "corruption" of western society. On Archive.org, you'll find a great BBC documentary "The Power Of Nightmares" on the subject of where & how the war on terror started.
As long as the US backs up this government, you will be his enemy. But to be honest, since he hit the big time, Osama would likely say anything now that might get him support.
You are sooo stuck in the past. Modern occupation is the installment of a pro-you government, with an accessible ecconomic system. You fund the candidates you want (or kill their opponents), get them into power, then step four: profit!
No, they don't hate us for being free, they hate us for trying to spread freedom.
Your post makes me sad. You really ought to pick up a history book if you think the US spreads freedom. South America is a good place to start reading.
Freedom nope. Profit yes. Profit is the only thing the US spreads. If there is a profit to be made with a represive regime, you'll sell all the weapons/antrax they can buy. Conversly, if a free and open political party is democratically voted in, but makes the mistake of harming America's profits, well can you say political coup? Hell, you kidnapped the president of Venezuela just four years ago in an attempt to realise this goal.
You guys really ought to put down CNN and Fox News to see what your country is really up to. Do you HONESTLY believe people fly planes into buildings "because they hate freedom"? Are you really that gulible? Please someone tell me that all of America isn't sitting there believing all of this propaganda.
They HATE your foreign policy. I suggest you read up on that policy that is being carried out in your name. Then you might realise why people are willing to die to get some small form of petty revenge on the country that has screwed them over in some way. If you don't do this, sooner or later the world will be completely fuxored, and you are the only one that can do anything about it.
Where did you study politics? I need to register a complaint about their standard of teaching. Never before have I heard such a lunatic suggestion. Socialism is an ecconomic system; it does not require or mutually exclude democracy (which is a political system). Socialsm dictates different "ownership" of property and land, and what you can do with it. If you see owning land as a "freedom", then you really ought to read up on what freedom really entails. Possessions and healthcare aren't freedom; the freedom of expression/religion and such like are.
There are many socialist countries in Europe with more freedom (i.e. less totalitarianism) than the Capitalist states of the world. And there are many capitalist states with really represive regimes. Hell, I've seen people arguing that the USA is moving closer to totalitairism every day. Two years ago, standing out against the Iraq war was a bad career move for politicians. They were deemed unpatriotic and a danger to the security of the USA and were exiled. Capitalism allows freedom only when it doesn't get in the way of a profit.
...and stop being such a wimp. There is no way in hell this is legal in your country. If it doesn't work, you get your money back. All you need to do is learn and quote the specific law and you get your money back straight away. The magic phrase here in the UK is "it's not fit for purpose" in this case.
It's not a big group. They have recruitment problems; Osama PAYS people to be in the background of film shoots for his "army".
You care to back this up?
Sure:
[ EXCERPT , CNN EXCLUSIVE VIDEO : BIN LADEN, SURROUNDED BY ARMED , MASKED SOLDIERS ]
VO: Even bin Ladens displays of strength to the Western media were faked. The fighters in this video had been hired for the day and told to bring their own weapons. For beyond this small group, bin Laden had no formal organisation until the Americans invented one for him.
From this documentary, which you can view here. Three hours of your life, it's worth it though.
Until your ISP drops you like a rock. If enough users utilize their connections like you do, don't be surprised to see either bills in the mail, or reduced bandwidth caps.
Bandwidth is not as cheap as you seem to think it is.
Then I'll pay more. WTF is the problem? How ISPs decide what the average load is is THEIR concern. I pay for an internet connection, how they manage contention is their problem. If they think they can profit more by having less capacity, then it's their fault if the users that they SELL the service to use more than their imaginary "usage patterns". If it slows down enough for me as a user, I'll switch ISP. The one company I use provides me with telephone, cable and internet, and I've been with them for five years. No problems whatsoever. They do implement caps, but I don't come close to hitting them. The caps on a 10 meg connection need to be pretty high though, for obvious reasons. I pay them a shit load of money each month, and the second they try to get fresh they'll get threatened with me disconnecting ALL services they provide me with. I buy the service off them, I owe them no favours. It's just business.
Oh, I also do most of my downloading in off-peak hours. Just a quirk of the times I'm sitting at a PC at home most often. I suspect that they do a bit of QoS against p2p during peak hours, but I think that's just great. I want my voip packets getting there quickly; I already do my own QoS and it's nice to see the ISP doing it as well.
Besides, there is a major problem with your point. Paid-for downloads use just as much as bandwidth as the p2p stuff. Many media providers are experimenting with p2p for their own usage, e.g. the BBC. Your high-horse aint that high.
That has nothing to do with the "best and brightest", educated aspect, though.
Yes it does. My point was that the background of the people really doesn't matter. They can be poor/rich or dumb/smart, it's all to do with giving them reason to hate or feel threatened. And that reason 9 times out of 10 involves religion in some way or other.
glesga kiss, yours is the most profoundly disturbing post I have ever read. You are truly a coward to say you wouldn't help a lost child.
Well, them's the world we live in. What if I were to take said child to look for help, then the mother or a cop comes along looking for them? I then get accused of the crime and there is nothing I can do about it. Peodo press is big business here in the UK and at even the slightest suggestion of kiddie fiddling, your life is fuxored. Presently I'm living in a country where if you see a child doing something cute or otherwise child-like, you'd better not smile or react in any way. If you do you get accusing glares from the parent, wondering all sorts of sick thoughts that'd they'd read in the newspapers that morning. It's that bad. To put in a context to which you may be familiar, politicians use pedo-scares here in the same way 9/11 is constantly involked in US polics. Hence the BBC story in which the media industry tried to link bittorrent to child abuse.
It's a disgraceful state of afairs and I fully agree with you on saying my post was disturbing. But I'm not emigrating just because I tried to help someone and it was taken the wrong way.
Wow, didn't know we targetted civilians with B52s. You learn something new each day.
Every time you open the payload bay doors over an urban area, you are targeting civilans. Labeling them "collateral damage" might work for some people, but not me.
PS the B52s took off from my country (UK), it was live on the news at the time. Does that count as evidence?
What are you talking about? The Jews really did burn down the German Reichstag building!! We must deport them to other countries. What our army does with them when they get there is not our concern. They are evil dooers after all.
This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual -- is felt in every city, every statehouse, every office of the federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals so that security and liberty may prosper together.
Combined with Orwells thoughts on continuous warfare, it is indeed scary biscuits. I bolded the last bit to highlight the only way out of this mess.
No fund raisers? No recruiters? No trainers? these people just pop up out of the ground strapped with semtex and go to work?
The Al Qaida presented to us by our own fearmongers isn't very acurate. It's not a big group. They have recruitment problems; Osama PAYS people to be in the background of film shoots for his "army". The leaders themselves are very rich.
The insergency in Iraq is nothing but well meaning Iraqis either I take it?
Mostly, yes, but not the "well meaning" part. The vast majority of those fighting in Iraq are Iraqi's fighting each other. The impending civil war was predicted months before the invasion began. Our leaders frequently use the word "terrorism" when discribing the issues in order to deliberately mislead us and promote false beliefs.
Essentially, the three groups in Iraq really don't get along. The only reason that kept them together was the repressive rule of Saddam. Now they all want a slice of the pie. One of the Iraqi experts called into the Whitehouse had to explain this problem of inner tension to Bush imediataly prior to the war. They didn't even think there would be a problem. They're all Muslin, right, what's the big deal?
This isn't a Hollywood film where a dozen guys get together and hatch a scheme. It's a bit more involved and it doesn't take much to see that for yourself, you've got the whole internet to understand how large this strcuture is, not much unlike a large corporation.
Nope, it's not like that. Al Qaida is a tiny organisation. It's membership probably halved on 9/11, with most of them being new recruits. Again, our leaders like to present a them as a large network. Example: the London bombers had no links, but whenever it is discussed on the news it is presented as if they were a sleeper cell. It only took four of them to hatch that scheme, though they may have needed a fifth guy to provide the Hollywood lighting.
3. If you piss a group of people off enough over a long period, they might explode. Literally. If you want to be sure of violence, include a religious aspect.
Not just European help, people from other parts of the US were prevented from helping. You even got the situation of doctors being prevented from treating people whilst their papers were checked.
That's more a sign of the times really. A doctor now has to think twice about helping after an accident: the victim might one day sue. Another example of this sort of thing is lost children; if I see a lost child I am staying the hell away and not helping them. Previously, I'd speak to them and try to find a cop or store clerk that could help. Now I'm just frightened of being accused of being a pervert or child abductor. Your lost children are on their own, it's just not worth the risk to help them anymore.
With my Mac that runs iTunes and my iPod, I hardly even notice the DRM.
Oh, you'll notice it at upgrade time. Unless of course your upgrades automatically assume a trip to the Apple store. You are Apple's bitch and will be as long as you wish to listen to the media you have paid for. Every media player you will own will need to be an iPod.
It takes a user's time to find the shit. The user has to be skilled enough to extract it, run it, store it, convert it, etc.. Also, users have to rely on each other to package pirated media in convenient forms.
Every night, an RSS feed delivers me the latest Daily Show in a high quality avi format, ready to run. I sit my ass on the sofa, turn on the TV and press play. Zero effort, after the copy/paste of the RSS feed into the BT client.
I didn't have to enter any 16 digit numbers or expiry dates. How's that for convienence!!?!:-)
Piracy, for consumers, IS A GOOD THING. The more consumers pirate, the more media companies will be FORCED to innovate and adapt.
Could not agree more. However, it seems to me now that the illegitmate trade is way more advanced that the official sources. We get xbox media players, open AVI/mpeg files, no DRM, automatic RSS downloads AND higher quality that is currently available. It used to be that people didn't pirate because of quality reasons; crappy VHS copies of films, audio cassettes etc. Now the pirate is actually better off in technical terms.
I'm not so poor that I'm willing to deal with the pain-in-the-ass that is peer-to-peer to save a lousy $10 / month.
Heh. The Daily Show rips are great quality and are available shortly after the show airs. I've been watching it this way for two years. Never miss it, because the download is always available. The members-only BT site I'm in is ratio based and maxes out my 10meg connection. It sucks down ~150 meg The Daily Show in less than five minutes, completely automatically via RSS. When I go home tonight there will be an fresh episode waiting for me.
This is superiour to the official offering in every way. You won't see me paying for iTunes versions that doesn't play on any of my hardware except my PC. Who wants to watch TV on their PC? If it doesn't work on a chipped xbox media player, I'm not interested.
They missed the boat. The downloading of media ship has sailed without them, much like the horse & cart makers of old who took too long to switch to the car.
I don't get what we are arguing about here to be honest. SigILL does talk about social evolution, but I came into the topic late and never picked up on his passing the "too many babies" belief on. Yes, agreed, that is not something you can pass on, though it could be possible for the belief to be "inherited" just through conversation. Of course, most teenagers try their utmost to be the opposite of the their parents, so it kinda falls apart.
About weathly treatment; I never said anything about healthcare. I'm more thinking education, life skills etc. There's a famous self improvement book whos title is something like "tricks the rich teach their children" that illustrates some simple things you can do to encourage your offspring into success. Personally, I don't agree with you on this, IMHO good healthcare does matter. There are many treatable problems people can have that will prevent them from reproducing (be it sterility or premature death). Access to healthcare is important in surving them. Access to things like IVF treatment is defiately a fact. But we'd probably agree that it has some influence, just not a whole lot, and only in special cases.
PS, I quoted "fit" myself, for the exact same reason. It's not "the best", but "the best suited for the current environment". Darwin himself said that evolution was more the ability to react to change.
True, but I'm concerned that in some point in the future, everyone born will have genetic defects that need correction/medication. With the absence of a filter, natural selection is no longer doing it's job. With things like IVF treatments, we may even reach a point where it's impossible to reproduce naturally.
No, he's saying that biological evolution only works on genetics. Anything that is not genetically influenced can't be effectively passed to the next generation.
That's not what he said, go back and re-read the post. He said that there is more to evolution than just genetics. When Dawin wrote of natural selection, genetics were unknown. His original theory did not make claims on the mechanism behind natural selection. Many years later, DNA is discovered, proving that you inherit traits from your parents. (which everyone already knew, it just need to be proven how). However, just because genetics are a part of natural selection, they are not the whole story.
For example, just because you were good at managing money and managed to get wealthy enough to have extremely high reproductive success does not guarantee that your children will be equally responsible with money. (In fact, it appears that the opposite tends to be true.)
Well, undoubtably you are getting the "poor with money" from some of the rich media-whore children that are always in the news. Real life is not like that; these guys are freaks. One rich family I know has their 12 year old kid running three buisnesses, selling CDs and the like to classmates. He was taught these skills by his family and as a positive skill it will assist his reproductive efforts. In other words, chicks dig rich guys. A crap parent is still a crap parent, even if they are rich. Having resources will make the good parents better and the children benefit from this.
Success in nature is often associated with behaviour passed down generations. Some animals have "evolved" the use of tools. This isn't purely a genetic trait, though obviously they need to have the mental and physical abilities to use tools. However, it's the passing down of the techniques that will ensure the future of that particular lineage. Apes and humans are incredably briliant at copying others; it's how we learn.
Social pressure and status to have more children does not make you more "fit" to have said children, and does not guarantee the next generation is more "fit" to do so either.
Of course. Being "fit" has nothing to do with it. At the end of the day, it's just numbers. If someone has 10 kids, it only takes one of them to have 10 kids of their own to continue the larger-than-normal family. Ultimately those genes will be the strongest.
One of the original posters points was that religion plays a factor. Take Catholism, where contraception is outlawed. Catholic families tend to be larger than other Christian religions, such as the Prodestant derivative that is popular here in the UK. And as religion is generally a passed-down trait, Catholism is almost a heritatory condition. Thinking of it another way; imagine a religion that bans sex outright, even for reproduction. Fast-forward 100 years; how many followers will be left? The ultimate irony here is that religion itself is an evolutionary process. The most "fit" religion will dominate as the other religions get pushed out.
Wow - you almost sound like you think the "single parent living on state benefit" has life incredibly easy.
IMHO the original poster wasn't passing judgment, just pointing out that in evolutionary terms the single parent with 12 kids is superiour to the childless millionarie couple.
Slashdot Mirror
As long as most USA political debates inevitably decend into red/blue bashing, BOTH political parties will continue eating babies AND getting away with it. Everyone is too busy mudslinging and "but you were worse"'ing to actually do anything useful.
Have you ever considered the implications of this, and what might be driving it in the first place?
Yes it does. The number of radical islamist who want to spread their beliefs outside of their own countries is remarkably small. On the other hand, most if not all of our leaders want to spread our own values culture accross the whole planet. Each group has this weird idea that their ideas are superiour and that they have some form of devine right to promote. We are the only ones currently invading other countries to do so.
Where's our "live and let live" mindset?
That's because those other countries approve of the governments, and all in all they are relatively "nice" to the population. The same cannot be said for the Saudi's, who are a bunch of repressive, militaristic dictators. That's not specifically what Osama doesn't like however, his beef is with the rampant consumerism and greed, along with the "corruption" of western society. On Archive.org, you'll find a great BBC documentary "The Power Of Nightmares" on the subject of where & how the war on terror started.
As long as the US backs up this government, you will be his enemy. But to be honest, since he hit the big time, Osama would likely say anything now that might get him support.
You are sooo stuck in the past. Modern occupation is the installment of a pro-you government, with an accessible ecconomic system. You fund the candidates you want (or kill their opponents), get them into power, then step four: profit!
Your post makes me sad. You really ought to pick up a history book if you think the US spreads freedom. South America is a good place to start reading.
Freedom nope. Profit yes. Profit is the only thing the US spreads. If there is a profit to be made with a represive regime, you'll sell all the weapons/antrax they can buy. Conversly, if a free and open political party is democratically voted in, but makes the mistake of harming America's profits, well can you say political coup? Hell, you kidnapped the president of Venezuela just four years ago in an attempt to realise this goal.
You guys really ought to put down CNN and Fox News to see what your country is really up to. Do you HONESTLY believe people fly planes into buildings "because they hate freedom"? Are you really that gulible? Please someone tell me that all of America isn't sitting there believing all of this propaganda.
They HATE your foreign policy. I suggest you read up on that policy that is being carried out in your name. Then you might realise why people are willing to die to get some small form of petty revenge on the country that has screwed them over in some way. If you don't do this, sooner or later the world will be completely fuxored, and you are the only one that can do anything about it.
Where did you study politics? I need to register a complaint about their standard of teaching. Never before have I heard such a lunatic suggestion. Socialism is an ecconomic system; it does not require or mutually exclude democracy (which is a political system). Socialsm dictates different "ownership" of property and land, and what you can do with it. If you see owning land as a "freedom", then you really ought to read up on what freedom really entails. Possessions and healthcare aren't freedom; the freedom of expression/religion and such like are.
There are many socialist countries in Europe with more freedom (i.e. less totalitarianism) than the Capitalist states of the world. And there are many capitalist states with really represive regimes. Hell, I've seen people arguing that the USA is moving closer to totalitairism every day. Two years ago, standing out against the Iraq war was a bad career move for politicians. They were deemed unpatriotic and a danger to the security of the USA and were exiled. Capitalism allows freedom only when it doesn't get in the way of a profit.
...and stop being such a wimp. There is no way in hell this is legal in your country. If it doesn't work, you get your money back. All you need to do is learn and quote the specific law and you get your money back straight away. The magic phrase here in the UK is "it's not fit for purpose" in this case.
You care to back this up?
Sure:
From this documentary, which you can view here. Three hours of your life, it's worth it though.
Good advice, noted, cheers!
Then I'll pay more. WTF is the problem? How ISPs decide what the average load is is THEIR concern. I pay for an internet connection, how they manage contention is their problem. If they think they can profit more by having less capacity, then it's their fault if the users that they SELL the service to use more than their imaginary "usage patterns". If it slows down enough for me as a user, I'll switch ISP. The one company I use provides me with telephone, cable and internet, and I've been with them for five years. No problems whatsoever. They do implement caps, but I don't come close to hitting them. The caps on a 10 meg connection need to be pretty high though, for obvious reasons. I pay them a shit load of money each month, and the second they try to get fresh they'll get threatened with me disconnecting ALL services they provide me with. I buy the service off them, I owe them no favours. It's just business.
Oh, I also do most of my downloading in off-peak hours. Just a quirk of the times I'm sitting at a PC at home most often. I suspect that they do a bit of QoS against p2p during peak hours, but I think that's just great. I want my voip packets getting there quickly; I already do my own QoS and it's nice to see the ISP doing it as well.
Besides, there is a major problem with your point. Paid-for downloads use just as much as bandwidth as the p2p stuff. Many media providers are experimenting with p2p for their own usage, e.g. the BBC. Your high-horse aint that high.
Yes it does. My point was that the background of the people really doesn't matter. They can be poor/rich or dumb/smart, it's all to do with giving them reason to hate or feel threatened. And that reason 9 times out of 10 involves religion in some way or other.
Well, them's the world we live in. What if I were to take said child to look for help, then the mother or a cop comes along looking for them? I then get accused of the crime and there is nothing I can do about it. Peodo press is big business here in the UK and at even the slightest suggestion of kiddie fiddling, your life is fuxored. Presently I'm living in a country where if you see a child doing something cute or otherwise child-like, you'd better not smile or react in any way. If you do you get accusing glares from the parent, wondering all sorts of sick thoughts that'd they'd read in the newspapers that morning. It's that bad. To put in a context to which you may be familiar, politicians use pedo-scares here in the same way 9/11 is constantly involked in US polics. Hence the BBC story in which the media industry tried to link bittorrent to child abuse.
It's a disgraceful state of afairs and I fully agree with you on saying my post was disturbing. But I'm not emigrating just because I tried to help someone and it was taken the wrong way.
Every time you open the payload bay doors over an urban area, you are targeting civilans. Labeling them "collateral damage" might work for some people, but not me.
PS the B52s took off from my country (UK), it was live on the news at the time. Does that count as evidence?
/godwinned. I'll get my coat...
Combined with Orwells thoughts on continuous warfare, it is indeed scary biscuits. I bolded the last bit to highlight the only way out of this mess.
The Al Qaida presented to us by our own fearmongers isn't very acurate. It's not a big group. They have recruitment problems; Osama PAYS people to be in the background of film shoots for his "army". The leaders themselves are very rich.
The insergency in Iraq is nothing but well meaning Iraqis either I take it?
Mostly, yes, but not the "well meaning" part. The vast majority of those fighting in Iraq are Iraqi's fighting each other. The impending civil war was predicted months before the invasion began. Our leaders frequently use the word "terrorism" when discribing the issues in order to deliberately mislead us and promote false beliefs.
Essentially, the three groups in Iraq really don't get along. The only reason that kept them together was the repressive rule of Saddam. Now they all want a slice of the pie. One of the Iraqi experts called into the Whitehouse had to explain this problem of inner tension to Bush imediataly prior to the war. They didn't even think there would be a problem. They're all Muslin, right, what's the big deal?
This isn't a Hollywood film where a dozen guys get together and hatch a scheme. It's a bit more involved and it doesn't take much to see that for yourself, you've got the whole internet to understand how large this strcuture is, not much unlike a large corporation.
Nope, it's not like that. Al Qaida is a tiny organisation. It's membership probably halved on 9/11, with most of them being new recruits. Again, our leaders like to present a them as a large network. Example: the London bombers had no links, but whenever it is discussed on the news it is presented as if they were a sleeper cell. It only took four of them to hatch that scheme, though they may have needed a fifth guy to provide the Hollywood lighting.
3. If you piss a group of people off enough over a long period, they might explode. Literally. If you want to be sure of violence, include a religious aspect.
That's more a sign of the times really. A doctor now has to think twice about helping after an accident: the victim might one day sue. Another example of this sort of thing is lost children; if I see a lost child I am staying the hell away and not helping them. Previously, I'd speak to them and try to find a cop or store clerk that could help. Now I'm just frightened of being accused of being a pervert or child abductor. Your lost children are on their own, it's just not worth the risk to help them anymore.
Oh, you'll notice it at upgrade time. Unless of course your upgrades automatically assume a trip to the Apple store. You are Apple's bitch and will be as long as you wish to listen to the media you have paid for. Every media player you will own will need to be an iPod.
Every night, an RSS feed delivers me the latest Daily Show in a high quality avi format, ready to run. I sit my ass on the sofa, turn on the TV and press play. Zero effort, after the copy/paste of the RSS feed into the BT client.
I didn't have to enter any 16 digit numbers or expiry dates. How's that for convienence!!?! :-)
Piracy, for consumers, IS A GOOD THING. The more consumers pirate, the more media companies will be FORCED to innovate and adapt.
Could not agree more. However, it seems to me now that the illegitmate trade is way more advanced that the official sources. We get xbox media players, open AVI/mpeg files, no DRM, automatic RSS downloads AND higher quality that is currently available. It used to be that people didn't pirate because of quality reasons; crappy VHS copies of films, audio cassettes etc. Now the pirate is actually better off in technical terms.
Heh. The Daily Show rips are great quality and are available shortly after the show airs. I've been watching it this way for two years. Never miss it, because the download is always available. The members-only BT site I'm in is ratio based and maxes out my 10meg connection. It sucks down ~150 meg The Daily Show in less than five minutes, completely automatically via RSS. When I go home tonight there will be an fresh episode waiting for me.
This is superiour to the official offering in every way. You won't see me paying for iTunes versions that doesn't play on any of my hardware except my PC. Who wants to watch TV on their PC? If it doesn't work on a chipped xbox media player, I'm not interested.
They missed the boat. The downloading of media ship has sailed without them, much like the horse & cart makers of old who took too long to switch to the car.
About weathly treatment; I never said anything about healthcare. I'm more thinking education, life skills etc. There's a famous self improvement book whos title is something like "tricks the rich teach their children" that illustrates some simple things you can do to encourage your offspring into success. Personally, I don't agree with you on this, IMHO good healthcare does matter. There are many treatable problems people can have that will prevent them from reproducing (be it sterility or premature death). Access to healthcare is important in surving them. Access to things like IVF treatment is defiately a fact. But we'd probably agree that it has some influence, just not a whole lot, and only in special cases.
PS, I quoted "fit" myself, for the exact same reason. It's not "the best", but "the best suited for the current environment". Darwin himself said that evolution was more the ability to react to change.
True, but I'm concerned that in some point in the future, everyone born will have genetic defects that need correction/medication. With the absence of a filter, natural selection is no longer doing it's job. With things like IVF treatments, we may even reach a point where it's impossible to reproduce naturally.
That's not what he said, go back and re-read the post. He said that there is more to evolution than just genetics. When Dawin wrote of natural selection, genetics were unknown. His original theory did not make claims on the mechanism behind natural selection. Many years later, DNA is discovered, proving that you inherit traits from your parents. (which everyone already knew, it just need to be proven how). However, just because genetics are a part of natural selection, they are not the whole story.
For example, just because you were good at managing money and managed to get wealthy enough to have extremely high reproductive success does not guarantee that your children will be equally responsible with money. (In fact, it appears that the opposite tends to be true.)
Well, undoubtably you are getting the "poor with money" from some of the rich media-whore children that are always in the news. Real life is not like that; these guys are freaks. One rich family I know has their 12 year old kid running three buisnesses, selling CDs and the like to classmates. He was taught these skills by his family and as a positive skill it will assist his reproductive efforts. In other words, chicks dig rich guys. A crap parent is still a crap parent, even if they are rich. Having resources will make the good parents better and the children benefit from this.
Success in nature is often associated with behaviour passed down generations. Some animals have "evolved" the use of tools. This isn't purely a genetic trait, though obviously they need to have the mental and physical abilities to use tools. However, it's the passing down of the techniques that will ensure the future of that particular lineage. Apes and humans are incredably briliant at copying others; it's how we learn.
Social pressure and status to have more children does not make you more "fit" to have said children, and does not guarantee the next generation is more "fit" to do so either.
Of course. Being "fit" has nothing to do with it. At the end of the day, it's just numbers. If someone has 10 kids, it only takes one of them to have 10 kids of their own to continue the larger-than-normal family. Ultimately those genes will be the strongest.
One of the original posters points was that religion plays a factor. Take Catholism, where contraception is outlawed. Catholic families tend to be larger than other Christian religions, such as the Prodestant derivative that is popular here in the UK. And as religion is generally a passed-down trait, Catholism is almost a heritatory condition. Thinking of it another way; imagine a religion that bans sex outright, even for reproduction. Fast-forward 100 years; how many followers will be left? The ultimate irony here is that religion itself is an evolutionary process. The most "fit" religion will dominate as the other religions get pushed out.
IMHO the original poster wasn't passing judgment, just pointing out that in evolutionary terms the single parent with 12 kids is superiour to the childless millionarie couple.