Actually, I have read it. I can truthfully say that it is probably the scariest book I have ever read, putting nearly everything Stephen King has ever done to shame;)
(Seriously...A lot of people don't realise just how close we ARE to such a scenario, and (minor spoiler) we don't even need fundies launching a well-orchestrated coup-de-etat for it...they can pretty much get what they want by subverting governments up to the state level, then having the states call for a Constitutional Convention. It should interest the fine readers of Slashdot that part of the platform of two of the larger Religious Right (or Religious Reich, if you prefer--I'm trying to keep the level of vitriol so that there's a chance those who need to read it (read: the fundies) might do so) groups involves a mix of "stealth" candidates (who don't reveal their links to the Religious Right till elected) and going into stuff like school-board elections and such where there is not only a historically low voter turnout but also the chance to basically "get 'em while they're young" (this is important, especially if you have ever read statistics on walkaways...most kids who are members of coercive groups are raised in them, and unless either their parents walk out or something comes along to clue-by-four them to the point that they cannot have faith in the coercive group anymore, kids who are raised in coercive groups tend to not walk away...spontaneous walkaways, if they don't happen by the early teens, are very rare indeed).
Incidentially..."getting them while they're young" is specifically why groups like the UnChristian Coalition and the FRC and the AFA-affiliated group Family-Friendly Libraries are pushing for censorship of nearly all media that younguns can get a hold of. They basically want to block all viewpoints OTHER than the fundamentalist view (those of you who've done your reading on coercive groups know that this is a big technique they use--block off all info from the outside world, then you have no "reality checks" on the codswallop they feed you) so that, hopefully, the kids will grow up to be good fundies and good little "soldiers in the Army of Gawd". This is why they're pushing homeschooling like crazy in ANY community where schools are having trouble or a tragedy has occured (yes, they're being little predators taking advantage of tragedies like Columbine...as an aside: It is an actual, stated agenda of several Religious Right groups to eventually dismantle the public school system altogether, and thus force kids to go to sectarian schools or to homeschooling...as another aside: Anywhere from 50%-75% of homeschooling groups and homeschooling curriculum are fundamentalist-controlled--a LARGE number of "homeschool curricula" are actually the A-Beka curriculum (the exact same curriculum used in the vast majority of fundamentalist "Christian" schools, and which has an extremely hard Religious Right bent). It's also been outright stated by both Religious Right groups and many of the fundy-run homeschool groups that "indoctrination in the ways of the Lord" is literally more important to them than giving their children a decent education...and as noted before, these folks are masters at lying and at taking advantage of folks when they're scared and/or angry about something...and people WONDER why the public schools are going to shite).
This is why it's really, really important for folks--especially regular folks like you and me--to wake up and do something about it like educating others, voting (if you have to write in Dunkelzahn the fraggin' Dragon, vote anyways), etc. Otherwise, we are going to end up with something like out of The Handmaid's Tale, only probably worse (instead of [minor spoiler] a bunch of Native American and other "minority" cultures studying old Gilead like we study the Renaissance it'll probably end up in a nuclear war--some of these groups literally believe that they will be raptured up and then the world will be blown to smithereens in nuclear hellfire, and they see the destruction of the world as a Good Thing...).
Warning: If you are of anything even remotely resembling a "fundamentalist" mindset, you will probably find this post flame-ish at best. You will probably also want to scroll down, because there is probably very little I could do to show you just HOW you are being led about (even to the point of showing you examples of how your own leaders have outright lied to you). I can only say, in this case, that I feel very sorry for you and that I hope that whatever god or gods may exist may take pity on you--especially since the actions of those who lead you are probably against everything the founders of your religions stood for.
I will also forewarn that I am in a generally pissy mood to begin with tonight, and many of my statements may come out more harshly than I meant them to. My apologies. I've had a bad day, and a bad temper to go along with it (I had to deal with Hellsouth about a problem which has been going on for well-nigh over three years). If things sting too bad, I suggest you take heed of Yshua's example and turn the other cheek and forgive me my tresspasses.
Now that THAT disclaimer has been taken care of...
Some anonymous coward dun said:
That's not true, what they want is to protect their families from harmful things. Beleive it or not pornography really is harmful to people, it helps increase rape and child abuse among other things. Porn addiction can occur and it causes real problems with families. This is not something that people need nor is the obsessive viewing of it in public at all healthful.
Assuming that you aren't an outright shill that is astroturfing Slashdot in support of fundy viewpoints--something which I cannot discount, unfortunately, because it is a fairly well-known tactic that is used by Religious Right groups on occasion--allow me to correct some misguidings and rip a few new holes in your argument.
First off:
That's not true, what they want is to protect their families from harmful things.
Well, for starters, I hate to tell you, but the major pusher of censorware in the debates nationally are not "concerned families" but rather multi-million-dollar funded PACs and pressure groups that have as an explicit goal the establishment of a fundamentalist Christian theocracy in the United States.
Let me repeat that for you: The vast majority of groups that are pushing censorware in libraries and whatnot are multi-million-dollar PACs and pressure groups that have, as an explicit goal, the establishment of a fundamentalist Christian theocracy in the United States .
Yes, you heard that right. They want to set up a fundamentalist Christian version of Taliban Afghanistan, up to and including bringing back Old Testament punishments for such things as homosexuality, sex outside of church-sanctioned marriages, and even "being fresh" to one's parents.
If you want to learn for yourself just how well funded these groups are and just how MANY of them are interlinked, go here and read up all about the Coalition for National Policy (basically the "think-tank" of the Religious Right in the United States; it is invitation-only, and contains many "fortune 500" individuals and state and national legislators). Then go here for some hard info on many of the Religious Right groups and their real agenda...or here or here (or here for a special page for those who've seen how destructive and utterly un-Christian the Religious Right is--I'll get to that in a sec).
For your info, by the way, the major folks pushing it in Holland are a little group called the Family Research Council. They were set up specifically as the "lobbying" wing of a group called Focus on the Family after the IRS threatened to yank FoF's tax-exempt status (it was set up under the same exemption as a church, and thus they aren't supposed to be doing political lobbying). One of the names you might recognise from them is Gary Bauer, their head; he recently did a failed run for the presidency. One of their favourite tactics, by the way, is stuff with stealth candidates who don't reveal links to the Religious Right till they're elected; they are also far, far from being merely a "concerned parent's group" (they are extremely homophobic, push very, very heavily for the entire Religious Right agenda, and incidentially the head of FoF is a "Christian reconstructionist" who thinks the US should be a theocracy complete with religious tests for government office). You can find out more info here or find a big ol' archive of their writing to their membership here.
If you want to know more about the Religious Right's agenda in general, I've put a much longer post here that even goes on about some groups that folks don't traditionally associate with the Religious Right (like, oh, Home Shopping Network's links with the Religious Right, or NASCAR driver Jeff Gordon's links, or the many links the PMRC has with the Religious Right).
Oh, and while we're on the subject of "protecting their families from harmful things"...you'd think if they were really interested in that, they'd be pushing for the Convention on the Rights of the Child to be ratified...but no...they're one of many fundy groups across the US that have lobbied specifically to KEEP it from being ratified, because they think it'll take away their right to force their ways on their kids, forcibly "exorcise" their kids, beat them, etc. (By the way, the US is one of two nations that still hasn't ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child. The other nation, Somalia, has a reasonable excuse for not ratifying it as it has no working government right now.)
For THAT matter, you'd think they'd work extra hard to protect their families from such destructive things as Bible-based cults (which do everything to isolate their members from birth, use outright deception to recruit members and keep them, and which are every bit as destructive as Scientology is--I've actually put up a post here comparing practices between the two if you odn't believe me, so you can look at the hard evidence for yourself). But no, they don't do that--they actively promote many of the Bible-based cults, because half the Religious Right groups could well be considered coercive in and of themselves and most of their hard-core membership is gotten from people in Bible-based cults (often people who have been members for generations and literally isolated and indoctrinated since birth--there's a college that has been set up for "Christian" homeschooled youths to train them to be politicians for the Religious Right), and their entire mindset shows just HOW cultic the whole mess is.
And before you tell me I don't know what the hell I'm talking about...I do. All too well. I just happen to be a walkaway from a Bible-based cult my family has been involved in for several generations; I was raised up into the whole spiel, and found out quite accidentially at age 12 that I had pretty much been fed lies...I found out later (partly from info regarding Scientology that included "is your group coercive?" checklists) that the group I was formerly involved in WOULD count as a Bible-based cult. The group I walked away from also happens to be one of the largest fundamentalist churches in Kentucky, and is the de facto center of the Religious Right in that state...trust me when I know all too well what I'm talking about here, and I still suffer after-effects from it. I would move heaven and earth if it meant some kid didn't have to go through the absolute hell I went through as a kid, being abused in the name of God. I'd love them not to wince whenever discussions of Christianity were brought up because it makes you flashback to just how fragging twisted some of the things that were done to you were. I'd love for them not to be scared shitless that the very groups you walked away from were working hard to put the entire nation under the same hell you walked away from--complete with force of arms, if they were to get power.
And yes, I can say that as a direct result of that I've been hurt by the Religious Right and it's just a wee bit personal to me. Then again, I think any kid who's been abused by another has the right to be pissed, and more to the point, to work to make sure that abuser can't ever hurt another kid ever again.
Beleive it or not pornography really is harmful to people, it helps increase rape and child abuse among other things
There has been only two studies that have ever shown a negative effect regarding pornography in general--the Meese report, which Edwin Meese III literally bullied through and had to have rewritten after the scientists he hired reached exactly the opposite conclusion, and the Surgeon-General's report on pornography in 1987 (by Dr. C.E. Koop--a Surgeon-General who was also appointed by Reagan, who pandered to the Religious Right on many issues). (As a minor aside--Edwin Meese III is a raving fundy, and is heavily involved with the Religious Right [see here for more info]. In fact, he's SO much in with the Religious Right that he's a member of the very secretive Coalition for National Policy [here's his info from the membership list here], and is involved in a Religious Right group known as the Heritage Foundation [more info on the Heritage Foundation here and here [the last article also contains info on another Religious Right group Meese is involved in]; as a minor aside, "Heritage" is a very common "code word" for fundamentalist/Religious Right interests, along with "family" and "Christian Life Center"]. In fact, he was put in specifically by Ronald Reagan, who was largely elected due to the Religious Right and who started the not-so-great Republican tradition of pandering to the Religious Right...needless to say, Edwin Meese isn't impartial, wasn't impartial, and was looking specifically for evidence he wanted to have "scientific proof" for a very specific agenda of the Religious Right in the US. Even worse, there is a fair amount of evidence from his own public speeches to indicate Edwin Meese may be a "Christian Reconstructionist" [Christian Reconstructionism is the canard that the Founding Fathers intended the United States to be a fundamentalist Christian theocracy and that it is the duty of Reconstructionists to "re-establish" this theocracy]; info here. In other words, he flatly had an agenda and bent the evidence towards it.)
Most scientists who have studied human sexuality, and specifically stuff relating to porn and to sex crimes, see so many holes in the Meese Report that it's not funny. There are no less than five studies which indicate that pornography isn't harmful (at least to normal people); more to the point, many of the statistics which have been argued to show that porn is harmful could also be argued to indicate that people into certain categories of porn are likely to be pathological in and of themselves.
A rather informal example is with the Japanese, and in particular, hentai comics (which feature sex and adult situations). Hentai is pretty popular and readily available in Japan, even to under-18's; some of it goes farther than most US porn does (Playboy just shows naked women, for example). The Japanese percentage of sex crimes is actually somewhat below that of the US, even considering that the Japanese are generally a somewhat more repressed society than the US is.
As a minor aside--rape and child abuse (except for very, very exceptional circumstances in the latter, and even often there) aren't so much crimes of sex as of power--in other words, the main component of these crimes and the motivation for them isn't so much sex as, well, power and domination over another by degrading them in the lowest way possible. Rapists are often found to be hostile against women period, and so rape them as a dominance thing; same thing with the vast majority of child abuse (the major exception may be child abuse in which there has been found actual pedophilia--a sexual paraphilia in which the person is actually sexually attracted to children--but even then, there is a definite dominance streak to this). Also, it's been found that treatments to try to stop rapists and child-molesters from having sex by attempting to curb the sex-drive don't work very well (again, the major exception to this is child molestation in which it's been found actual pedophilia exists)--they simply will rape their victims with objects or will find other ways to "get it up". This is because they're using their gonads as weapons--it's like trying to castrate someone to cure them of beating hell out of someone else.
There is a known correlation between rape (and to an extent, child molestation as well--most notably incest) and other violent behaviours--such as torture of animals when young, assault, etc. Most of these folks seek out violent porn and violent entertainment in general because they're generally prone to violence to begin with; there is some evidence that in extreme cases there may be an actual defect in brain chemistry to account for this. Needless to say, castrating a rapist or child molester isn't going to fix them, and neither is depriving them of pornography.
Another interesting statistic--there are some reports to suggest that there is actually a higher rate of child abuse (including incest) in households in which most of the family are members of coercive groups such as Bible-based cults or Scientology. This, again, probably has a lot to do with the whole dominance thing; coercive groups, which rely VERY much on a "master/servant" relationship to begin with, can't help things much. (In Bible-based cults especially, the whole "spare the rod and spoil the child" bit can't help either.) Based on my own experience (which fortunately did not include sexual abuse, but did include physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual abuse) I'm inclined to agree with this, if only because of all the other kinds of abuse which are the norm in such families.
Porn addiction can occur and it causes real problems with families.
First, a primer about "addiction". Addiction, in the purest sense (and the medical sense) of the word, is where the body chemistry changes to require the use of a drug to maintain normal body function; this tends to occur with narcotics, cocaine, nicotine, most of your "downer" drugs (including alcohol, benzodiazepines [Valium, etc.] and phenobarbital and friends), amphetamines, and (to a lesser degree) caffeine. (The "nicotine cravings" you get if you don't get your smoke, or the "coffee migraines" longtime coffee drinkers get if they don't get their caffeine, are actually withdrawal symptoms resulting from the fact your body has become dependent on that substance to maintain normal function.)
"Psychic addiction" as commonly described (where no actual physical addiction occurs) is a misnomer, and denotes a state where people feel they "need" something to "function". There is no real biological need for it, merely a "craving"; hence the proper term is "psychic dependence" since the effect is more of a "crutch".
Now, in some cases, this does occur; however, "addiction" has been used to describe "psychic dependence" for so many things (from overeating to sex to the Internet) that it's patently ridiculous. Better to say "obsession" because this is closer to what is happening.
I'm certain there have been a few cases where someone has become obsessed with porn to the exclusion of family. This has also happened, by the way, with TV...with the Internet...with religion (no, I'm not making this up--people in coercive religious groups WILL participate to the exclusion of all else including their family)...with food...with jogging...with dieting...and with literally anything else that makes humans "feel good". Does this mean we ban everything that humans find pleasurable? No.
As a minor aside--there is some evidence that people who do develop "obsessions" like this do have a genetic tendency to do so; it's basically a minor brain-chemical defect, much like a milder version of obsessive-compulsive disorder. Turns out that in a lot of cases, they can be treated with the same drugs used for OCD too (this has been especially useful in overeaters and in folks with anorexia and bulimia). It also turns out that most folks who do develop "obsessions" that could be termed "psychic dependence" can, again, develop "psychic dependence" on literally anything that makes them feel good (to an extent, this is why people tend to gain weight when quitting cigarettes; there is a measure of psychic dependence in cigarette smoking (along with the physical dependence), largely related to the rituals of lighting up, etc. when smoking, and many people tend to overeat to compensate with "crutches")...this is related to very, very primal instincts and emotional triggers in humans relating to comfort. One could literally say that small kids can develop psychic dependence on their "woobies" or other comfort-toys;)
This is not something that people need nor is the obsessive viewing of it in public at all healthful.
Well, people don't need the Internet or Slashdot, either, and obsessive use of the Internet can certainly be non-healthful and harmful (ask any student who has ever flunked out of a semester in college because of excessive IRCing/MUDding/Everquest/MP3-scarfing/etc.). Doesn't mean we need to ban Slashdot or the Internet, though.
In fact, sometimes porn can actually be helpful to a relationship--such as when a couple gets ideas from a bit of pornography to try in their own bedrooms. Such things have actually saved marriages in past, and an increasing number of marriage counselors will actually suggest to couples who have lost lustre in their love-lives to *gasp!* rent porn movies or read articles in Penthouse (or alt.sex.*) to get ideas.
No, we aren't suggesting Junior be made to watch porn. For starters, he's probably not going to be terribly interested and will go "ooh, ickie"--exactly the same way even most adults will go "ooh, ickie" when they see porn that doesn't match their own particular sexual preference (most straight girls gross out at lesbian porn; same with guys and man-on-man pics; I think most of us not into boinking goats go "ooh, ickie" at http://www.goatse.cx, or those of us not into fisting go "ooh, ickie" at sites featuring fisting...I could go on). It doesn't scar us for life--neither kids nor adults.
I honestly expect most kids who even accidentially hit a porn site (which is unlikely if Mommy or Daddy is actually bothering to parent the little monster instead of using the Internet as an electronic babysitter the same way they used tapes of Barney the Insipid Purple Demon From Hell when the little monster was a tyke of 3 or the same way they use Teletubbies tapes with his sister of 2...and even more unlikely unless the little monster is precocious enough to be searching out warez or cracks, in which case you've got a wee bit more to worry about than little Junior maybe being exposed to nekkid women;) are going to either be grossed out or very, very confused...in which case (assuming Mommy and Daddy are doing their job, and not using the Internet as an electronic babysitter the same way they use Barney tapes and Teletubbies and the entire collected works of Disney [both pre-Eisner and in the Dark Ages]) Mommy and Daddy explain that this is something not meant for Junior to see, and they distract him and steer him to something a bit more appropriate like YaHooligans or the like.
Just like what Mommy and Daddy do (if they're being good parents) if Junior accidentially picks up Madonna's "Sex" in the library. Or if Junior is riding in the car with Mommy in downtown and passes the Show-world Dance Emporium which features "Topless And Bottomless Men And Women". Or if Junior (Cthulhu forbid) sees two doggies Doing The Nasty in front of Goddess and everyone.
If you're doing your job as a parent, it's not going to permanently warp Junior's mind. If he grows up at age 16 and starts raping cattle despite your best job, you can safely assume he was probably bent to begin with (and if you do your job as a parent and actually parent the kids instead of using electronic babysitters or keeping your face buried in stuff while the kids are being babysat by the entire cast of Donkey Kong and each and every one of the characters in each and every game Squaresoft has ever released, you will probably notice the initial signs that the child is Seriously Bent and you will hopefully get help for that kid before he hurts someone).
Unfortunately, a lot of people are too bloody lazy to parent their kids, and are all too content to let folks with horrible, destructive agendas (like the FRC) parent their kids because they get fed the line "It's for the good of the children" (and these people are too busy with the grownup equivalent of electronic babysitters they don't even bother to research that these people are very, very, very good at lying or covering up their bad parts when they have to). No offense, but those kids would honestly be better off being raised by wolves IMNSHO--at least the kids would learn how to get along in a structured society, and have loving parents that gave a damn for them. (Yeah, they'd have a hell of a time getting along if/when they returned to human society...but half the kids now have a hell of a time, period.) And don't even get me started on those parents who look at their kids not so much as humans but as pawns or tools or (worse yet) all-so-much-more cannon-fodder for the Army of Gawd...if anything, those are as bad if not worse than those who just use TV and the net as a babysitter, because those kids get warped into more Borg just like their folks if they aren't lucky enough to have just enough of a factor that leads them to walk away from it all...
love vegetarian food. Vegetables. That's what it's called. Not "vegetarian food". Next thing you know, you'll be calling beer "beer-drinkers food". Get over yourself, hippie!
No, no, no...you misunderstand...
We're not talking "vegetarian food" like tofu and soy-milk and "meat substitute" and GardenBurgers...
We're talking "vegetarian food" as in, say, Emeril "The Dick Vitale Of Cooking, Baby" Lagasse's "Emeril Lagasse Cooks Vegetarian"...
"First, you get a vegetarian. BAM! Git back dere in dat grindah!"
For a lot of us (and most of the male) vegetarians, it's not about animal rights... Hell, I don't care what the hell anyone wants to do with some critter as long as it's legal:). Mostly I can't stand to eat dead carcasses because of sheer squeamishness. After dissecting fetal pigs and then a dead cat in high school Bio, the thought of sticking pieces of some rotten corpse in my gob can bring me to retch. Lesson? Get out of high school biology if at all possible.
I was fortunate to get out of dissections in biology (long story--basically, we ended up going through three teachers in a semester, and none stayed long enough to get to the dissection section) but the thing about "dead carcasses" puzzles me..hell, at least they're DEAD.
So instead, you eat very-much-living plant lungs and plant fetuses and plant-stomachs and plant, erm, naughty-bits?;) (Greatest way to troll those "meat-is-murder" folks: Explain to them how those soybeans they're eating are essentially plant abortions.;)
Seriously, though...realistically, the idea that meat comes from animals doesn't make me sick, really (though I think that some practices in factory-farming need to be done away with because they're not really good for the animals OR people eating them). Then again, I used to live next door to a working beef-cattle farm and have relatives who hunt for meat, so that could explain why I don't go "My god, you're eating BAMBI!" when I decide to eat some venison.;9 (Then again, I also know someone who turned vegetarian after his pet pig at his grandma's farm ended up being the main course one night...and I can only imagine the trauma caused by the sign "PET EATING RABBITS" that used to be up by a rabbit-breeders close to where I used to live...:)
Realistically, though, about the ONLY thing that really gets me physically ill is, well, maggots (I literally can't watch the infamous "birth scene" in the 1986 remake of "The Fly" because I get physically ill). As long as the meat isn't flyblown I'm ok.;)
Dude. A couple of weeks ago I saw a box of King Vitaman at Giant Eagle here in Pittsburgh. I didn't think anything of it -- it looked like one of those generic store brand cereals like "Crisped Rice" and "Fruit Rings."
Yup, they still sell King Vitaman (it's actually fairly easy to find here in Kentucky--I know I've seen it at Kroger's, Winn Dixie, AND Meijer's (the three big stores in Louisville) and odds are they also carry it at Food Lion, Foodland, and Piggly Wiggly (the other three big stores here in Kentucky, just not in Louisville); I can prolly find out for sure in the case of Foodland in about a month or so). I am all too familiar with the stuff, having been fed it by parents who seemed to have an outright paranoia about iron-deficiency anemia.:P
Oddly, the stuff isn't generic like Malt-O-Meal; it's actually made by Quaker (you know, the oats folks) which explains much on why they were promoting the healthy aspects of it...
King Vitaman doesn't quite count as a blast-from-the-past for me, though. A REAL blast-from-the-past would be, oh, Count Chocula or Frankenberry or (gods help me) QUISP (yes, so help me Cthulhu, they sell all three here, though the latter usually only in the big hypermarkets or at Sam's and super-Wal-Marts).
And, again, I see how I was deprived as a kid...I never had Captain Crunch till I was over drinking age, because my parents never bought it (it was "too expensive", so we'd get tons of Apple Jacks and Cheerios and King Vitaman and (if money was REALLY tight) the Malt-O-Meal knockoffs of Apple Jacks and Fruit-Loops). I am probably one of three people who has been born and lived all their life in the United States who has never, ever, not ONCE had Tang (I am not joking, either; my parents were somehow convinced that if we had ANY drinks with real sugar in them, we would become instantly diabetic, so Tang was right out; Kool-Aid wasn't because you could make it with saccharine or Nutrasweet [gee, folks, thanks; replace my (minimal) risk of diabetes with a greater chance of cancer and PMS, not to mention that thanks to all the Nutrasweet I won't have to worry about embalming my body thanks to all the formaldehyde...]). I still don't know exactly what the stuff tastes like.:) I also never had Cream of Wheat till this year (my folks always having gotten either good old oatmeal or grits).
Oddly (tying in with the prize thing), though, I was all too familiar with Ovaltine in my youth (another fun drink of which the "healthy" virtues have been promoted to death). Yes, they still did the crap with the cap lids for prizes. Yes, I sympathised with Ralphie all too much in "A Christmas Story" because, likewise, I'd drunk gallons of Ovaltine as a kid. And most folks have never SEEN Ovaltine. Hmph.:)
>>I'm one of the ones who wonders if we really want one click installs and easy setup.>> From your complaints(below) it seems that you choose to avoid easy installers in favor of greater control and precision. I commend you for that. I sit firmly in that camp myself, but I can't expect everyone to feel the same way.
Agreed. Myself, I tend to like power installs (this is the reason, by the way, why I tend to loathe Redhat--it's almost too "for newbies" friendly for my liking) but I would recommend the "easy install" flavours of Linux in a heartbeat for someone who is new to Linux and isn't one of those folks like myself (who is used to taking apart their computer blindfolded and whose computer has long since been transmogrified into a FrankenBox).
Myself, I'd use Slackware or SuSE or Debian to set up my box, because there is a lot of stuff I like to tweak.
If my sister were installing (she's not too comfy with mucking about in the innards of her computer yet, but she IS comfortable with Microsoft OS upgrades--and I don't CARE what anyone says, a fresh install of Win95 or Win98 is not trivial if you don't know what you're doing or (especially) you have hardware for which there aren't standard drivers packed with the OS), I'd hand her one of the "designed for newbies" distros--like Redhat or Caldera or SuSE 6.3 (YaST2 does have a nice, Redhat-ish GUI setup).
The one thing we're missing, IMHO, is a distro where, well, someone who has to consult "For Dummies" books about Win98 apps can install with a minimum of fuss and alcohol/antacids/[insert your drug of choice here]. I honestly think we're going to be a while on this, largely because even bloody Microsoft isn't there yet. About the only OS that IS there yet is the install of MacOS 8 (which is damn near as close to idiot-proof as one is going to get, methinks--largely because Macs themselves are largely idiot-proof, and Macs generally do not have a ton and a half of funky and possibly not-exactly-standard crap in them the way the average PC does). Until PCs become roughly as standardised as Macintoshes of modern lineage are, you aren't going to get something totally idiot-friendly. The best option for those folks all along has been, and I suspect will be for an awfully long time, to (a) have an OS preinstalled and ready-to-run and (b) have a nice friendly geek/neighbour's kid/knowledgeable relative/etc. come by and do the OS and hardware upgrades, and maybe the software ones too (depending on how knowledgeable they are).
Hell, I don't care if they're using a bloody IMac for Cthulhu's sake--I still would not trust my mother-in-law, or the lady for whom I would occasionally do computer upgrades for (whose main vocation wasn't computers, but Tole painting, and who was a complete and utter computer virgin who'd "heard of this Internet thing and that I could trade painting patterns with people"), to do ANYTHING hardware or software wise that would involve mucking with the computer's internals (OS, software, OR hardware).
Hence, I think the important thing right now (at least for the "virgins") is to push for more computer companies to have Linux pre-installed, and to make things maybe a bit more uniform for the newbies so they know where everything IS.
For the rest of us...that's going to be preference, pretty much. Some of us like standardised stuff (and that may be best for business, which has to be pretty newbie-friendly) and some of us are frankly going to want to be able to do everything ourselves. It's much like cars--some folks build their own cars and go on rod-runs, some people like zero-maintenance Korean rice-burners, and a lot of folks like something kind of in the middle (like a Saturn--it can be zero-maintenance if you like, but the car is put together well enough that Saturday-mechanic maintenance is not out of the question if you like to fix up your car yourself).
As for distros...Redhat and such seem to be the closest to "zero-maintenance", though they aren't there yet. Slackware (and to an extent, Debian) are there for folks who still like to build their own. SuSE is probably the best compromise I've seen between the two (it can literally be run in either "Hyundai user" or "performance driver" mode, and it's stock installer is basically for "Saturn drivers who at least know how to fill the tires and change oil"). This is Good--you're never going to satisfy everyone, just like you'll never satisfy everyone with cars.;)
Now - if you're a God-fearing Christian, why on earth would you rely on a solution advocated by a satanic cult that believes that the whole Jesus story was merely an "R6 implant" - a false memory artificially-implanted into our collective unconsciousness by evil alien overlords?
Maybe because, oh, there are a really surprising number of groups that claim to be "Christian" yet use the exact same coercive tactics as Scientology does? (Caveat--I speak from experience on more than one front here. First off, I'm a walkaway from a "Bible-based cult" which uses techniques similar to Scientology. Secondly, it was (in part) various FAQs on coercive groups including Scientology that led me to realise the general techniques used in coercive groups in general. Thirdly, I've lurked off and on on ARS since the "Cancelpoodle" scandal (I was a reader of the various net.abuse groups, and the whole thing led me directly to ARS)...just so folks know.)
The thing is, most folks who are in deep with the various Religious Right groups like FRC and so forth are also members of various Bible-based groups that use coercive tactics. Not only that, but some of the "higher-demand" Religious Right groups may in and of themselves be borderline coercive groups (I know that concerns have been mentioned regarding Promise Keepers, for one). A lot of the issues re coercive tactics between "Bible-based cults" and Scientology are very similar, so (at least to me) it's no surprise whatsoever that they both push for censorware.
Warning: The following comparison will probably not have a whole lot of relevance unless you are intimately familiar with how coercive groups work, and especially not unless you are familiar with the particular coercive tactics used in Scientology and/or Bible-based coercive groups. If you are not familiar with either of these groups' tactics, I strongly recommend that you read Xenu.net (for info on some of the particular coercive tactics used in Scientology and some of the terminology) and Walk Away (for info on some specific tactics used in Bible-based coercive groups), then come back and read. Otherwise it's probably not going to make terrible amounts of sense, especially in regards to effects of the coercion.
Now...I can give just a brief list of Scientology coercive tactics and their analogues in Bible-based cults:
Scientology: Essentially all of your problems are the result of "body engrams" resulting from when you were dumped into Kilahuea 73 million years ago by the evil Xenu. This includes doubt in Scientology.
Bible-based cult analogue: All of your problems, including doubt in the church or your minister, are the result of demons attempting to oppress or possess you. (By the way, this along with the next two sections is commonly termed "Deliverance Ministry".)
Scientology: The only ones worthy to be called human are clears. Everything that could bring negative body engrams--including Supressive Persons who say Scientology is bunk--are to be avoided.
Bible-based cult analogue: Your group is the only ones who are truly saved--everyone else is lukewarm at best, and most are outright in league with Satan. You should avoid all media not done by us, only do business with folks in our church, and vote for whom we tell you to--because everyone else is oppressed or possessed by demons, and info from outside can lead to demonic posession. Those who say bad things about our church are probably demon-possessed.
Scientology: You have to be constantly on alert for bad engrams. You have to do lots of clearing sessions; if someone is acting like an SP, they probably need an intensive "clearing session" whether they want it or not. (Lisa McPherson being held against her will to be "cleared" is the likely cause of her death.)
Bible-based cult analogue: All doubts are the results of demons trying to oppress you; you must constantly "pray the demons out". If someone is acting rebellious, they are probably demon-possessed and need to be exorcised to get the demons out. (Tens of children each year are killed in such "exorcisms"; many more people are probably driven insane, much as Lisa McPherson was before her death. The Walk Away site, mentioned above, has a rather dramatic [and all too factual] description of an exorcism as practiced by most "Bible-based" coercive groups.)
Scientology: We must Clear The Planet, and those who oppose us must be stopped by any means necessary, including dead-agenting. It is permissible to deceive people to get them in for becoming Clears.
Bible-based cult analogue: We are in a war with Satan, and those who oppose us must be stopped by any means necessary. Deception and libeling are perfectly permissible weapons to use in the war. (This is actually called "Heavenly Deception" in some Bible-based cults; the Bible-based cult version of "dead agenting" can be seen in most fundy literature. Bible-based cults have also been known to use deceptive measures (such as "free pizza parties", "anti-drug talks" by athletes associated with fundy groups held in schools, and "hell house" haunted-houses in which people are forced--as in not allowed to leave till it's over--to listen to sermons) to recruit people, especially teens, into such groups.)
Scientology: You need folks to watch out for you, especially to make sure you don't have any bad engrams and to make sure you keep being an OT. They are expected to check up on you and report if you might be becoming a SP.
Bible-based cult analogue: You are divided into groups of five or so, and expected to meet every week for Bible-discussions and to make sure that you aren't backsliding. Your group is expected to check up on you, and report back and take action in case you do backslide. (This is known as "shepherding" or "Cell Churches"; it is increasingly recognised as one of the single most destructive practices of Bible-based cults. It is this practics which is causing serious concern about Promise Keepers.)
Scientology: OTs are expected to influence their legislatures to make sure nothing negative to Scientology passes, and in fact OTs are supported. Lobbying wings exist to fight things that Scientology may disapprove of, often not revealing their links to the main group (such as organisations protesting "psychiatric abuse"). OTs are the only truly fit leaders and eventually OTs will take over the world.
Bible-based cult analogue: Members are expected to join lobbying groups for "Christian" causes; often, lobbying groups are actually run by deacons or ministers, or based out of the church itself. Voter-guides are provided. Groups are set up, usually "concerned parents" groups or "American heritage" groups, which try to fudge their links to the Bible-based group or the Religious Right at all. Christians are seen as the only fit leaders and it is their destiny to turn the US into a fundamentalist theocracy.
Scientology: Members are often lured in with guidebooks, like "Dianetics", which eventually suggest you come to a processing center to get Cleared. It's not mentioned explicitly that Dianetics is a Scientology book on the adverts.
Bible-based cult analogue: We'll promote books, "hell houses", sponsor rod-runs, etc. that suggest you come to our church to get more info and become a member. We don't mention that we're affiliated, other than being a "Christian" or "Faith-based" group. (This tactic is actually used by the Arthur S. DeMoss Foundation--a hard-right fundamentalist group that supports Christian Reconstructionism and has even supported racist groups--to hawk "Power For Living" as an innocent "guide for getting closer to God" [what it is, in fact, is a book promoting fundamentalist Christianity, and in particular those varieties that go over the line into being coercive groups].)
Scientology: Use famous people to promote Scientology and show how it's made their lives better.
Bible-based cult analogue: Use famous people to promote the group and show how it's made their lives better. (Again, this tactic is used outright by the Arthur S. DeMoss Foundation. Other Bible-based coercive groups have done this too, especially with NFL (American) football players; one player actually seems to have gone insane as a direct result of being involved in a Bible-based cult, and he'd done public speeches on how fundamentalism was a Good Thing beforehand)
Scientology: Psychiatrists, "coercive group info" groups like FACTnet, and folks against Scientology are SPs. One good way to stop them is protests en masse, or suing them into submission so that we own them then keep the site up for folks looking for info on coercive groups. (Scientology actually sued a group that reported on coercive tactics into bankruptcy, then bought the group wholesale.)
Bible-based cult analogue: Gays, women's health providers, anti-censorship groups, and folks who are against us are literally in league with Satan. It is perfectly acceptable to engage in mass protest, or to sue the people claiming that into submission; it's also good to get a name really similar to the group you're fighting so that folks will come to you instead. (This tactic is partly why the American Center for Law and Justice, a group that files lawsuits on behalf of fundamentalist causes, is very similar to the ACLU; it's also why groups like the fundy parents in Paducah are suing nearly the entire entertainment industry (they hope to bankrupt them) and why anti-abortion "counseling centers" get names very similar to women's health providers (sometimes even locating in the same building) so that people will get confused.)
Scientology: It's ok to break the law to advance Scientology.
Bible-based cult analogue: It's ok to break laws to advance the "kingdom of God". (This has shown up everywhere, from outright fraud with the "hell houses", to illegally distributing voter guides in churches, to illegal electioneering IN the churches, to "tax protesters" who refuse to pay taxes because "it supports abortion", to folks who libel and harass people who support gay/les/bi folks being added to civil rights laws, to people who stalk abortion providers...)
Scientology: Don't question what you're being taught. You've got to pay money for each level.
Bible-based cult analogue: Don't question what you're being taught--that's a sign of demonic oppression. You must give at least ten percent, and preferably more, to the church so that we can continue operating. (As an aside--there is evidence that both Scientology and many Bible-based cults are basically money rackets. Hubbard supposedly admitted as much with Scientology; many larger Bible-based cults run networks of TV stations and the like and demand money from their fellowship, and more than a few have been found to be decidedly shifty with their finances.)
Scientology: In Sea Org, you are subject to poor food (beans and rice) and hard work, often doing work around a Scientology office.
Bible-based cult analogue: Members are expected to fast completely (water only), often for long periods (the group I walked away from often had 21-day fasts...to support their damned television station...they also had 40-day fasts that people participated in). "Partial fasts" are done with poor food (the "Mayo Heart Clinic Soup Diet"--which is NOT promoted by the Mayo Clinic, is pretty much nothing but watery cabbage soup, and can actually cause deficiencies in needed nutrients if eaten exclusively for more than two or three days--is often pushed in "partial fasts" in Bible-based cults). Members are expected to participate in church functions (including long revivals extending for tens or even hundreds of days) and are expected to prosyletise often, often going door-to-door.
Want me to list some more examples?;)
Or, just for fun...get one of the sheets that talks about characteristics in coercive groups. Then compare Scientology to that. Then compare Bible-based cults (as I've described them, and as described on places like Walk Away)...you'll find that the two are nearly identical. About the only major differences are that Scientology has the Sea Orgs (then again, most Bible-based cults are involved in large political networks and have enforcers such as deacons...which is probably worse) and Bible-based cults are even worse as far as deceptive tactics to get you into a group as well as one-on-one mind-control techniques to keep you in and keep you unable to get out. (It also doesn't hurt that there is a very well-funded media industry that caters exclusively to the Religious Right in the US.) The single most destructive practice in Scientology--the idea of "engrams", the constant sessions to clear them, and an almost paranoid avoidance of the non-Clear and involuntary Clearing sessions for SPs trying to leave--is almost identical to the entire practics of deliverance ministry in Bible-based cults (literally the only thing different is the terminology).
You don't hear that much about Bible-based cults, though. Part of it is, well, they've gotten a lot of power. Part of it has to do with, well, the fact they're Bible-based cults--nobody wants to think a Christian group can go coercive, and for some reason "Christian" churches are seen as respectable--they think it's always the WEIRD stuff like Scientology that goes coercive, not the little "Full Gospel" church down the street (that even goes so far as to tell their members who they can and cannot marry, tells them what clothes they can wear, and just happens to be the headquarters of nearly every Religious Right group in the county...:P).
Trust me, though, when I say that the poor sods in the FRC are probably just as brainwashed and lost as your average OT VII is who's spent $300,000 on Clearing sessions and such.:P
Why, oh why, is everything ludicrous attributed to right-wingers? I am just about as far-right-wing as you can get, and I assure that my core beliefs do not condone censorship in any form. I mean, remember the PMRC (record labeling)? That was Tipper Gore, not Pat Buchanan.
Hate to have to bring some things up to dash the illusion there, but there are some things I do need to bring up in light of your venting...
1). The vast majority of groups pushing censorship, and for that matter a lot of flatly ludicrous stuff, are right-wing--specifically, members of various political groups which are basically run by fundamentalist "Christians" in the US. (For that matter, Israel sees the same thing with ultraorthodox "Jews", and darn near every country with a signifigant Islamic population deals with fundamentalist "Moslems" of the two main denominations of their religion. For THAT matter, as I understand it, India's having the same damn problem with fundamentalist "Sikhs" and fundamentalist "Hindus".)
2). For all intents and purposes, there is no functioning left-wing in the United States. The US has literally gone so far to the right (largely because of influence of fundamentalist "Christian" groups, which at one point had pretty much taken over the entire Republican Party apparatus in thirty-four states; they have apparently led to the self-destruction now of a second party [the Reform Party]. It's not all the GOP's fault, though--I'll note that in a minute) that were Richard Nixon to run today on his present political platform, he would be considered a liberal. The most "liberal" parties in the US with any large percentage of voters (the Democratic and Libertarian parties) would be considered right-moderate in most political systems in the industralised world (yes, that includes Canada, too); the largest "conservative" party (the GOP) would be hard-right in nearly any other country's political system, and the second or third-largest "conservative" political party in the US (the US Taxpayer's Party) is, for all intents and purposes, run by extreme far-righters in the US and in fact promotes theocracy as a platform. (The Reform Party, before it basically started destroying itself when Pat Buchanan got considered for nomination, probably fell in between the Republicans and Libertarians; now, for all intents and purposes, the Reform Party will probably end up as two parties, one beign slightly more left-leaning but both still firmly on the right.) One newspaper, which started in the 1800's as a "moderate conservative" paper of the times and has had pretty much the same political bent ever since it started, is now considered one of the hardest-left papers in the US. It would also probably be considered moderate or moderate-left in political spectrums in most industralised countries.
Sad to say, but the political spectrum in the US today is less like other industrialised countries and more like those in which a fair amount of corruption occurs (such as in many "third-world" nations) or which are having very serious problems with fundamentalists trying to subvert the very structure of the government itself (this is certainly true in the US, and in a lot of other places you hear about in the news--like Israel, or Pakistan and India (basically a pissing contest between Muslim fundies and Hindu fundies which could well end up in a nuclear war before it's over with) or Sudan (which is having a rather nasty civil war between Muslim fundies and Christian fundies)).
2a). On a related note, and this is very important to note with anything related to fundy movements in general--most fundy groups, especially so in the US, are basically run by power-hungry individuals. In the US at least (and probably elsewhere--there's real signs of it at least in some ultra-Orthodox communities, and among nations like Iran and Afghanistan especially), many of the people who are members of the various fundy PACs here--and especially the more decidedly active ones--are members of churches that can be described as coercive groups much as Scientology can be described as a coercive group. Many of these groups use various mind-control techniques on their members to not only have them basically allow their minister to think for them, but to specifically "block out" anything that could be averse to what the minister says (these include basically teaching that the people in the church or group are the only ones who are "saved" and that anyone who isn't "saved" is in direct league with Satan; teaching that any doubt is the result of either demonic oppression or (if someone else says it) outright possession and one needs to "pray the doubts out" or have exorcisms performed (often involuntarily); forced confession of "sins" (which have included the involuntary outing of gays in church; most Religious Right groups are homophobic at best and some (like Fred Phelps, or Donald Wildmon, or Kentucky's own Frank Simon) are downright infamous for it); telling members to only do business with "members of like faith" (including printing special directories, like the "Christian Yellow Pages") and to only watch media that is affiliated with the church because all other media sources are "worldly" at best and outright "Satanic" at worst, not to mention businesses; "shepherding" programs and "cell churches" (in most programs, the people are divided into groups of five which, in essence, play "Big Brother" on each other--if someone has doubts, the other members try to work them more into the group, in extreme cases by methods like involuntary exorcisms), and so-called "divine lies" (basically, lying about your goals or at the least being dishonest about them to lure folks in to "win more souls for Christ"--this encompasses everything from "hell house" haunted-houses which are marketed as regular haunted houses for "educational purposes" which in fact are used to make people listen to fundy preaching (and yes, sometimes the doors ARE locked and the people not allowed to leave, so yes, they are in essence forced to listen) to "pep talks" run in high schools by groups that have fundy athletes come in to prosyletise, often on the premise that these are "anti-drug" or "self-esteem" talks (most of the time, these assemblies are mandatory to attend for kids, and often the groups will take innocuous-sounding names like "Athletes Against Drugs" or suchlike to hide their fundy links) to "free pizza parties" held by fundy groups who then hold the kids for hours, not allowing them to leave (it is almost never revealed that the "pizza party" is in fact being run by a fundy group) to "stealth candidates" for political offices (which don't reveal their fundy links till elected)...). Basically, because a lot of these groups ARE essentially Bible-based cults, they can feed their members an amazing amount of horsesheisse and (because they literally have nothing else to "error-check" it with) their followers will swallow it. If anything, most folks involved are to be pitied (the only ones that really deserve hate are probably the leaders who outright manipulate their followers).
There has not been a terrible amount of info on how "Bible-based cults" do manipulate their followers until fairly recently, largely because most folks associate "cults" with "new religions" and most folk haven't wanted to believe that "Christian" groups can and sadly do turn into coercive groups preaching far more of a god of Fear, Hate and Loathing (both of self and others) than a god of love, acceptance, and respect (which is what, at least with those folks whom I've met who I sense actually "get" what Yshua was saying, feel it's supposed to be about anyways). I also expect this is a big reason why most mainstream churches in the US haven't spoken out about "Bible-based cults" except in cases where they've been really extreme (part of this, too, might be because--sadly--coercive tactics are getting into larger and larger denominations; one of the largest fundy denominations in the US, which is in essence a Bible-based cult, was the major source of TV preachers for years and has well over one million members...a recent expose of the "Brownsville Movement" (which is centered at one of the larger churches in the US for this denomination in Pensacola, Florida) using coercive tactics is one of the major exceptions; the Southern Baptists, which have had their entire church head and seminary taken over by the fundamentalist wing of the denomination, are starting to dance close to using coercive tactics though they aren't as bad as the "traditionally" fundy denominations yet); part of that, though, may be because most fundy denominations (and especially those which are basically Bible-based cults) don't have anything to do with most major ecumenical conventions, holding their own separate worldwide conferences because they feel mainstrean Christianity is "lukewarm" at best and outright perverted by Satan at worst).
I'll also note (this is a personal aside, based on my own observations of having grown up in a family of raving fundies and having seen far more than I like of the internals of the Religious Right and fundamentalist groups in the US) that--probably because many of these folks have literally been in these groups for generations (I know of three-generation households in the group I walked away from; also, many of the younger especially are literally isolated from the outside world from birth all the way through college (fundies push homeschooling in large part so that kids CAN be isolated and not see anything that could spur them to walk away; there is now even a college being set up specifically for fundy-homeschooled kids to train them to be "political leaders for Christians", homeschooled kids being perfect fodder because they have literally been raised and brainwashed in Bible-based cults from birth), partly because walkaways from groups one has been raised in are EXTREMELY rare (pretty much most kids walk away when their parents do, or if they are forced out of their homes due to "irreconcilable differences" like the kid discovering he's gay; there are literally no statistics on kids walking away on their own (with no help from parents or exit counselors) from groups they were raised in because it is so rare), and partly because this is all they know as a result...a large percentage of those involved in Bible-based cults and in groups like the FRC are, to put none too fine a term on it, control-freaks. This is probably because the only real model they have IS the preacher, who basically uses coercive tactics (and a hell of a lot of FUD) to keep his flock "in line" and not questioning the preacher--this is especially true of folks who have been raised in such groups for generations--and so they basically take the whole "coercive-tactics"/"control-freak" thing to ALL walks of life. Literally everything from politics (a big part of why fundies want a theocracy here has to do with Control and Power over others; again, this is probably an extension of how their own ministers and deacons use Power and Control to keep the flock in line, along with the major "us versus them" mindset in such groups) to parenting (a lot of fundy parents will homeschool kids specifically to keep a maximum amount of Control and Power over them--this is also why they push so much for censorship initiatives to "protect the children", and a lot of fundies won't allow their kids to attend non-Christian colleges or allow them to attend schools with coed dorms or alcohol on campus [yes, I've had experience with this; the fact Beloit College had coed dorms and alcohol on campus pretty much shot all hell out of any chance I had of going there, even without money concerns]). Basically, to put a fine point on it, many of them are control-freaks by basis of being in groups that are run by control-freaks who use coercive tactics, and they have no other model to use (either by model of literally not knowing any better, or by model of literally being so brainwashed that pretty much they have nothing else to go by).
A good starter for exploring the mindset of which I'm talking on is here. It's a page for walkaways, specifically from Bible-based cults, run by a person who was formerly involved in one (he walked away, and now actually runs a "fight-the-right" group largely because of his experiences in the coercive group); it gives you a lot of perspective on where they're coming from, if you've never been misfortunate enough to have experienced Fundie Hell for yourself. (I honestly don't recommend the latter for anyone, especially not kids and other living things. It can screw you up for life, seriously. Look at me.;)
2b). As another aside--this is probably not widely known by folks, but there are a lot of businesses in the US--many of them Fortune 500 companies, yet--that not only are affiliated with the Right Wing in the US, but are in fact members and actually supportive of it. An enlightening--and scary page--for starters is here--this is a page featuring info on the Coalition for National Policy, which is essentially a secretive, invite-only think-tank for the Religious Right in the United States. It features a membership list that includes, among others, many members of the Coors family, a (former) Presidential candidate, and a number of representatives to US and state legislatures. There's also a good link here that talks about the CNP and a lot more of the big names in the Religious Right...
For more starters...both the Coors family (yep, as in Coors Breweries) and the Waltons (yep, as in Sam's Wholesale/Wal-Mart--as in, before Sam Walton died, one of the single richest individuals on the planet, worth more than Bill Gates, and only surpassed by the Sultan of Brunei; the Waltons collectively are still in the top 100 of the richest people on the planet) are heavily involved with the Religious Right, outright subsidizing them and being sympathetic to concerns (to give examples--the Coors family supported Amendment 2 in Colorado, which would have rescinded civil-rights laws that included sexual orientation; the Waltons have made it a policy not to carry albums with "Tipper-stickers", refused to carry heavy-metal magazines for a long time, and refuse to provide "morning-after" contraceptives even though they will provide Viagra). Needless to say, these are two of the biggest companies in the US. Another interesting one is AmWay--AmWay in and of itself has been accused of using coercive tactics with its sales representatives, but is also run by fundamentalists with links to the CNP and AmWay has been known to bankroll fundy groups in past. Not even home shopping is immune--as it turns out, the person who owns Home Shopping Club, Home Shopping Network (the off-hours version of HSC that shows up on a lot of "Christian" TV stations and also used to show up on the "Family Channel") and PAX TV is a major bankroller of the Religious Right (more on that below).
For even more shockers...a lot of times, Religious Right groups deal in a fair bit of "cloaking". The Arthur S. DeMoss foundation (a Religious Right group that pushes "Christian Reconstructionism", has actually endorsed Christian Identity groups on occasion, and pretty much is a major funding source for the Religious Right; it was founded by the widow of a Religious Right supporter who happened to be a multi-millionaire) hides most of its nastier stuff by not only doing innocuous-sounding adverts for adoption and "Power for Living" (basically a book which hawks fundamentalist Christianity), but has sympathetic multi-million-dollar stars like the woman from "Children of a Lesser God" and Jeff Gordon (great...have NASCAR drivers hawking fundamentalism to the kiddies...Jeff Gordon, probably more than anyone in NASCAR short of the Pettys, is seen as particularly "kid-friendly" and as a general, All-American "Wheaties"-box boy) and NFL stars hawking for them. (Knowing that group, I'm almost willing to bet that either a) they might not have been too forthcoming with these folks other than that they were a group promoting a book about "Christian living", or b) a hell of a lot of people in show-business need a good expose like there has been with Scientologists in Hollywood...more info on the Arthur S. Demoss Foundation here and here [thank you Google...it seems that Pathfinder is not wanting to behave well].) The Family Channel, until recently, was owned by the same folks who brought you Pat Robertson and the 700 Club--it was renamed from the "Christian Broadcasting Network" to make it sound like it offered "family-friendly" programming and to hide its links to the Religious Right (as Pat Robertson and the Christian Coalition had started to get a rather bad name). In fact, the Family Channel was sold to FOX, which does have some links to the right in the US (though not as bad as, say, Coors).
PAX TV, which is a TV network set up by a fundamentalist (again, using the exact same canard that the "Family Channel" did in its Pat Robertson days--as a purveyor of "family-friendly entertainment" which conveniently neglects to mention its links to the Religious Right) and which is largely carried on "Christian" TV stations, is heavily bankrolled by Home Shopping Club and Home Shopping Network (which--not exactly coincidentially--also showed on the Family Channel on off-hours and shows on a lot of "Christian" TV stations in off-hours) and--even worse--is also owned 20 percent by CBS and NBC was planning to buy 32 percent in PAX TV (this would be over 400 million dollars). More info here, and more info on PAX here...for that matter, the very head of Focus on the Family (which spawned off Family Research Council as a lobbying wing), James Dobson, makes a rather healthy living selling parenting books promoting "tough love" and "discipline".
Even besides all THAT, a lot of the major Religious Right groups get a lot of funding from members, and many of them can actually get it tax-free (by either setting up separate "political" wings when the heat from the IRS gets too much, or by setting it up with roughly the same tax exemptions a church would get). There are also local businesses...as one guide has advised, if you want to boycott teh Religious Right you almost have to look through one of the directories made for the Religious Right or avoid every business with an ichthus-fish on it...and besides all THAT, Religious Right groups are increasingly going stealth or relying on certain "code words" within the community like "Family", "Heritage", or names confusingly similar to existing groups (one anti-abortion "counseling center" actually named themselves "PPC, Inc." and based themselves in the same building as the local Planned Parenthood office; a legal group that bankrolls and supports lawsuits friendly to Religious Right causes is named "American Center for Law and Justice"; a really amazing number of Religious Right groups use "Family" or "Heritage" or "Christian Life Center" (in the case of churches) because these are actual code words in the fundamentalist community for fundy-friendly causes).
Needless to say, unfortunately, the Religious Right isn't exactly hurting for money and, short of ALL of their members walking away combined with a massive economic crash that disrupts nearly the entire worldwide financial system to the point that it forces us to go back to barter or most of their members walking away combined with a massive boycott of ANYTHING the Religious Right has their fingers in, they aren't going to be hurting for money anytime soon.:P
2c). Media that isn't tied with the Religious Right somehow is often basically bullied into submission. As noted above, a lot of folks in fundy groups have a very "us versus them" viewpoint to begin with--they literally believe they are fighting Satan and all of us not in a fundy group are practicing Satanists as a direct result.:P If ANYTHING is reported whatsoever that is in the LEAST critical of the Religious Right, they will protest (even if they don't read the paper or watch non-"Christian" TV because it might be "Satanically influenced") because, in essence, they will be informed about it and told to raise forty kinds of hell over it. And they will. In droves. (A Pensacola paper found this out when they basically exposed the "Brownsville Movement" as a Bible-based cult; "20/20" did an expose of the "Brownsville Movement" and likewise were damn near pilloried (of course, most fundies were already boycotting anything relating to Disney because {horror!} they dared give equal rights to gay couples for benefits and had a "gay Day" there, but that's beside the point)...my family raged for days about the expose because "Oh god, they make us all out to be cultists or something" (I hate to inform them, but, well, if the shoe fits...I'd think instead of ranting at ABC maybe you should do some serious soul-searching on whether the chuch is doing the Right Thing or not, but then again, I walked away and I dare to be sensible about the whole thing instead of getting my panties in a wad)...read your newspaper's editorials everytime someone dares suggest that the Religious Right and theocracy or even putting the Ten Commandments in schools might possibly not be the be-all, end-all to the world's problems to get an idea of just WHAT kinds of cain they do raise.) Burger King and Pepsi, among others, have literally been bullied out of running certain adverts or sponsoring programs because of letter-writing campaigns by the American Family Association (a hard-line Religious Right lobbying group which has some decidedly homophobic tendencies); many ABC affiliates were likewise bullied into not carrying "NYPD Blue" during its first two seasons for the same reason.
3). Now, to a direct point I was going to mention--hate to break it to you, but the PMRC is by no bloody means liberal. Tipper Gore (and Al Gore) are (as noted above) right-moderate AT MOST; the other co-founder, oddly enough, just happens to be Elizabeth Dole, wifey of Bob Dole and onetime candidate for the 2000 GOP nomination for President. One of the founding members was Susan Baker (wife of Former Secretary of State James A. Baker III (R)).
More to the point, though, the PMRC has many a link to Religious Right groups. First off, they have carried advertising in PMRC literature for "Back In Control Training Center" and other "training centers"; Back In Control was basically an inpatient program run by two former LAPD officers which was advertised to "de-metal" or "de-punk" kids, which was in effect a brainwashing center with links to the Religious Right and which has claimed, among other things, that Wiccans are Satanists and that the Magen David (the Jewish star) is a Satanic symbol and that if kids are wearing "gothy" or "metal" clothing this is a sure sign of Satan-worship. Back In Control has also worked with a lot of police departments and schools, and (ObSlashdot) is one of the groups that is directly responsible for kids being harassed and worse after Columbine for wearing "goth" clothing. (More info here,here (in passing, but in direct relation to how Back In Control Training Center has been heavily promoted by the PMRC), and here.)
Also, they've promoted and used material from Bob Larson Ministries; for those who aren't aware, Bob Larson is a "foamin' fundy" radio preacher who, among other things, promotes censorship and the whole Religious Right agenda. Among other things, he's called peace symbols and the Nike swoosh Satanic symbols (no, I'm not making this up) as well as the good old canard about the Magen David supposedly being a Satanic symbol. More info here (or the newer version here--the "Bob Larson Fan Site"--trust me, the kinds of horsesheisse Larson spews is the kind that must be seen for itself to be believed), and a lovely expose in a British Columbia Christian mag here. Yes, the PMRC actually promoted material from this nut:P
Incidentially, you can confirm all the info above by getting a copy of the book "50 Ways To Fight Censorship" by Dave Marsh (head of Rock and Rap Confidential, and the guy who coined the phrase "rock and roll" incidentially). It's out of print, but most better libraries do have a copy, and if you can't find it there, there are all manner of online bookstores who could probably scare up a copy for you.
Oh, and if you wondered whether the PMRC still has links to the Religious Right...the answer, darling, is an emphatic yes. The present head, one Barbara Wyatt, just happens (ironically) to also sit on the board of Focus on the Family (!)...more info here (again, thank you Google; the more recent version is here, btw), and here.
And BTW, just for the record--I don't have an agenda, other than being a walkaway from a Bible-based cult who really does not the US to descend into a theocracy (I lived under one for all intents and purposes for 25 years of my life; trust me, it sucks, and it will suck twenty times worse if they can get their theocracy nationwide) and who knows all too well both the mindset these folks operate under and the real danger (to freedom and, ultimately, to the psyches of both their memberships and those who are family to them) these groups ultimately present. In essence, I don't want the rest of y'all on Slashdot to have to put up with what I had to put up with for 25 years of my life, and an especially hellish thirteen years after I walked away and I had to live in a household of which the majority of people were raving fundies (and the rest of my family was, slowly but steadily, being assimilated by the Bible-Based Cult Of Borg). It sucks. Bigtime.:P (I note this because, when I made a little post exposing the agenda of the Family Research Council, I was accused of having an agenda. Sorry, I've got no more of an agenda than a kid who's been abused has in getting the abuse to stop.:P)
I'd have no problem with a horse-hide case. I've got a horse-hide chair stuffed with horse-hair already! Hell, I'd probably eat horse as well! I'm sorry, but a horse is a domestic pack animal, not unlike a mule, and not far off-field from a cow. Cats, dogs, rats, etc fall into a seperate category; They were domesticated for pleasure, not food or utility.
Some minor corrections there:
First off, rats were originally domesticated for use in labs, not as pets. (That came later.)
Second, dogs were domesticated (or, some theorise, humans and dogs domesticated each other) in a sort of symbiotic relationship relating to hunting--in other words, we helped each other hunt. Furthermore, up until fairly recently (we're talking in the past 300 years or so), most dogs (and most cats, for that matter) were utility animals, NOT household pets. (Hell, on farms TODAY the barn-cats are seen more as utility-cats than pets, and the same goes for the border-collies that may be working dogs on the farm.)
Also, what dogs were bred for besides as working dogs varies a great deal with the culture. The Aztecs, for instance, DID eat dog (it was considered a delicacy) and actually bred a type of dog that was hairless for easier preparation as food. (This being the Mexican Hairless, of course.) There is also some evidence that Chihuahua dogs were originally bred as food animals (no, I am not making this up, and I think we can stop the bad Taco Bell jokes now:).
As it is, I'd feel better about the cow cases, because (in all odds) they are using skins from cows that were headed to slaughter ANYWAYS--the moo is going to be a side of beef or at least stew meat anyways. At least they're using all of the cow; it's not like they're killing thousands of Holsteins just to rip off their skins and leaving the carcasses to rot (a la the bison of the old West) or anything.
I'd be a little more leery of horse, and more leery still of dog and cat, because (typically) most people in Western cultures don't eat those animals, and (at least with slaughterhouses for horses) most of the time foreign buyers have to be found for the horsemeat so that they can use the entire animal. (Dogmeat seems to be limited to some Asian cultures; I don't know of anyone who eats cats. Cat would probably taste horrid anyways, seeing as kitties are obligate carnivores.) Also, horses sent for slaughter tend to be either old horses or are mustangs that are illegally being sent to slaughter (the federal "adopt-a-mustang" program does stipulate that animals are not to be sent to slaughter; hundreds go to slaughter anyways).
Then again, I'm weird in that I think if you are going to take an animal's life (for food or skins), you should do right by the animal to use as much of it as you can. This puts me in the rather odd position of being ok with hunting deer for food or eating cows, but not being ok with trophy hunts or killing animals just for skins. *shrug*
Radio was invented by a catholic priest called Landell de Moura, who lived in the southernmost state of Brazil, Rio Grande do Sul. He even traveled to New York to get a patent.
According to Brazil, that is.:)
People in Murray, Kentucky would give serious argument to both that claim AND the claims of Marconi and Tesla (they claim AM transmission was invented by Nathan B. Stubblefield).
People in West Virginia would give arguments to all that, and claim that Loomis invented radio (there was a demonstration in West Virginia in 1866; this is specifically mentioned in the Guinness Book of Records as possibly the first radio broadcast).
People in England and in Italy argue that Marconi did it.
People in Serbia and in a fair section of the US would argue Tesla did it.
If I remember right (basing this from a half-remembering of an old article in Soviet Life over fifteen years ago, when I actually was sent a copy from Radio Moscow in responce to a QSL request...what with all the QSL requests I made as a kid, I expect I will never be able to get government employment anywhere:), the Russians claim one of their OWN invented radio.:)
The truth of the matter is, radio was probably simultaneously invented by many people and one method (namely, Tesla's) ended up becoming dominant.
Same thing happened with TV, by the way--the Russians give credit to Zworykin (who invented the iconoscope); the Americans give credit to him + a fella in Indiana who worked out the technical details; the Brits give credit to Laird (who invented a mechanical TV system using 30 lines that worked suprisingly well), the Germans (who had some of the first high-definition broadcasts) claim yet ANOTHER guy, the French claim Nipkow, and so on and so forth. What happened there was more of a case of several people simultaneously inventing TV, and the system what worked best winning out.
I didn't say just wireless. Spark gap devices preceeded Teslas work too. Tesla invented wireless broadcast of intelligence with resonance being used to segregate channels. If wireless is the only criteria, then lets throw speech into the possibilities.;o)
Yes, spark gap transmissions existed; hell, Maxwell proved how spark gap transmissions could work.:) The trick is using them for information--Morse code, or voice, or whatnot.
(BTW--even if we limit it to "information transmission by radio", it is entirely likely that neither Marconi nor Tesla invented radio. There is a considerable amount of evidence that radio may have been independently invented by both Loomis (whom is actually credited with the invention of radio in some books) and voice communication by Nathan Stubblefield (probably longwave or ground-wave communications; known to be an early AM system, possibly the first; Murray, KY still has signs up claiming it is the "Home of Radio"). I think the best we can say there is that radio was probably invented independently by at least three, possibly more, individuals...which is the exact same situation as exists with television (no less than three people independently invented it, though we mostly use the Zworykin process for TV much as we use the Tesla method for radio).)
What Tesla definitely deserves credit for is making high-frequency transmission possible. Before the invention of methods for high-frequency transmission by Tesla, the highest frequencies possible were in the longwave bands (we're talking around fifty or sixty KHz--AM or "medium-wave" bands were still considered HF in those days). Pretty much Tesla made transmissions outside of longwave possible, not to mention FM radio (it can be said that Tesla did in fact invent FM transmissions).
Oh, and as a wee bit of radio trivia--the first "officially recognised" transmitter WAS a spark-gap transmitter!:) One of the old Marconi stations actually celebrated its 100th anniversary and was fired up for a day for DX purposes...
Spark gap transmissions are broad spectrum emmisions. Transmission of intelligence requires modulation of the carrier to represent voice or data. Spark gap tranmissions require interruption of the entire signal to represent information and are basically limited to morese type communication. That definition is what I remember from my novice and tech class ham exams 12 years ago. It may be slightly off.
CW is actually considered intelligence, too; you're still transmitting info, just in binary mode.:) It IS pretty much impossible to do much besides CW on a spark-gap transmitter, though.:) (This is why Tesla's system beat out Marconi's, by the way--you could do voice and tune frequencies. Hell, Tesla probably wasn't the first to do voice; if Nathan Stubblefield hadn't been so bloody paranoid about patents [he was convinced someone else would steal his ideas-- of course, between the modern patent mess and seeing what happened to poor Tesla, he just might've had a point...] he might well have been credited.)
A notary public is not a lawyer, but a person who is certified to verify your signature on a legal document. Just go to the nearest branch office of your local bank. They will have one or more notaries public on staff. You will need to bring the document you are signing and one or more pieces of photo ID. They will verify you are who you say you are, watch you sign, then place their stamp on the document verifying your signature. No big deal, and it won't cost you anything other than your time.
Actualy, this varies from state to state. In some states, notary republics have to undergo special certification (usually because, in those states, notaries can have powers up and beyond just certification of signatures--in some states, for instance, notaries can legally perform weddings).
Also, notarisation being free ALSO varies between states; in Kentucky, for instance, getting a notary to certify something is most certainly not free (it usually costs around $50, in fact; I happen to know a notary, which is how I know this). Also, banks may or may not have notaries for this reason (again, in Kentucky a lot of people actually make a business out of being a notary and advertise their services as a notary).
Depending on the laws in your state, you might also have to get witnesses (I know you do in Kentucky for some certification stuff).
You don't have grits in the UK? I find that hard to believe.
I don't find it hard to believe at all. Hell, there are parts of the United States that don't have grits (like, oh, rural Ohio until fairly recently). I figured that grits were a Southern thing, kinda like being served cornmeal with breakfast, or biscuits (note to UK readers-- not biscuits like you have with tea--American biscuits are closer to a cross between scones and dinner rolls, basically like a flaky wheat-cake; UK biscuits are what we call cookies:)
Odd bit of trivia, though--there is a sort of "grits/biscuits" line. Above this line, you're going to probably get toast with breakfast and, if you get anything cereal-like at all, it'll be oatmeal or "cream-of-wheat"; below this line, you are liable to get biscuits and grits with breakfast whether you wanted them or not.:) (Kentucky is around the start of the "grits zone", and the "okra zone" too [you CANNOT find okra up north to save your life--I know, I've tried:P]. Needless to say, I've some experience with this.)
I have to say that I've NEVER heard of ham in grits, though. I'm more used to the ham being a fried country-ham steak.:) The stuff isn't too bad with sugar or butter, though, not to mention egg yolks (for that matter, (American) biscuits are good for sopping up egg yolks too:). Poached eggs aren't real common here, either (I've heard they are up north)--here, you will get them scrambled or fried. (Yes, it is true what you've heard about American breakfasts, especially the traditional Southern breakfast, causing instant heart attacks in people who aren't used to them.:)
Bmajik dun said: just posting all of the personal information on every employee of the RIAA ? If any of them happen to get egged, defecated on, or receive bodily harm, who's really going to be that upset ? Is this moral? Is this legal ?
Most likely immoral, probably illegal, and definitely would open up the party who did it to a MASSIVE lawsuit.
Yes, there is precedent to indicate that "posting all the personal information on every employee of the RIAA" and not caring of the consequences (or, more to the point, hoping they get egged and worse) IS illegal and if someone wanted to sue there is legal precedent to do so.
Specifically, recent court cases involving an anti-abortion page known as the "Nurenberg Files" have set precedent that if one posts personal info with expectation of harm, you CAN be held liable. (The "Nurenberg Files"--as of late on a Dutch server, probably xs4all.nl--lists names and personal info, including addresses, vehicle registration info (like driver's licenses), info on family members, etc. of doctors who provide abortion services. Doctors who are injured have their names greyed out; doctors who are killed end up with slashes through their names. The admin of the site, who is involved in "Christian Militia" groups, claims that this is evidence for a "war crimes tribunal" whenever fundamentalists get sufficient control to start putting doctors on trial for performing abortions; the courts have ruled that the page is in fact a form of terroristic threatening and a court order was obtained to remove the page from Mindspring.)
I dare say that--even if you just meant them to get egged and whatnot--the RIAA would probably use the precedent set with the "Nurenberg Files" pages to get your site shut down and ask for court injunctions and large amounts of civil damages.:P
First, I wouldnt think it ridiculous for the service to be used for the purpose of plotting terrorist or spy attacks. Considering the military has probably used this technology to map out and survey areas, I could forsee some wannabe terrorists purchasing an aerial map of a large metropolitan city in order to determine where to place a bomb for maximum impact and what to use as an escape route. True, the photos arent detailed enough to be dangerous, but on large scale area, it might be problematic.
Unless aforementioned terrorists intend to drop a bomb out of a plane (or crash a plane into a downtown area), most of those maps aren't going to be terribly useful. I'd suspect most terrorists would find maps of the internals of a building, or plain old MAPSCO street maps, far more useful. (This is especially true in the case of most domestic terrorists, which are actually the larger source of potential terrorism in the US; a Planned Parenthood office isn't going to be easily identifiable as such by a mere aerial shot (well, unless you look for the building with a lot of people marching about with piccies of dismembered stillborn fetuses), while on MOST maps of downtown areas they tend to mark federal buildings clearly as landmarks.)
I'd actually think, oh, a building directory or blueprint, or even a AAA map would be more useful. The majority of terrorists are going to go for either car-bombs (a la World Trade Center or Oklahoma City) or for small devices which can be hidden easily (a la the Eric Rudolph bombings, or butyric acid attacks on family-planning centers that perform abortions). This is probably true even if they go for non-conventional arms.
The aims of military are different, in that with spy cameras they are usually looking for military installments; then, "smart weapons" or bombers are targeted towards those areas using the info from the maps. Not too many terrorists have ready access to ICBM's or bombers yet.:) (If and when they do, I suspect we'd have rather worse problems than, say, merely keeping high-resolution photographs of downtown areas away from them.:)
Regarding the letter to the Family Research Council--I honestly wish you the best of luck there.
I also think you will probably have better luck having an in-depth conversation on the merits of Red Hat versus Slackware with the walls of your home than convince the Family Research Council of the fact the software is flawed and even blocks partisan material.
This is largely because the Family Research Council would consider this a feature and not a bug.:P
For those who aren't aware--the Family Research Council is, essentially, the lobbying arm of a group called Focus on the Family. FoF is probably the largest Religious Reich organisation in the US now (yes, even bigger than the Christian Coalition) and basically split off Family Research Council some years back in order to preserve their tax-exempt status. (As an aside, often state FoF branches will operate under different names to hide their affiliation with FoF.)
To be perfectly blunt, FoF and its affiliates have an agenda--to basically get as many raving fundamentalists in office as possible and to get the fundamentalist vote out, in hopes of getting enough people in office to essentially turn the United States into a fundamentalist theocracy. If you want to get a good idea about the "face" politics they support, just look at the political platform of (recently dropped out) presidential candidate Gary Bauer--this is the guy who founded Family Research Council when it was split off of FoF.
To these folks, pushing censorware is just another way of them "saving" us--whether or not we particularly want to be "saved" or not--and making the US into a "nice Christian nation again". (Many of these folks, by the way, also subscribe to "Christian Reconstructionism"--that is, the canard that the Founding Fathers actually meant the US to be a theocracy.) This is also why they tend to run "stealth" candidates (candidates who do not reveal their links to Religious Reich groups until elected) specifically to things like school boards--they want to get them young so they can indoctrinate them young, because they know that if they're gotten young they likely won't walk away. (This is also why they push homeschooling a lot, by the way, as well as vouchers for private schools--it's been the actual stated goal of many Religious Reich groups to get the school system totally dismantled so that kids are forced to go to sectarian schools.)
FoF's president, Bob Dobson, also makes a rather lucrative career selling books on "disciplining your kids"--usually involving a mix of censorship, forcing God down their throats, and liberal amounts of spanking the kids (part of the reason corporal punishment is NOT illegal in the US--or, for that matter, why the US is the only nation besides Somalia which has still not ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child--is because fundamentalist groups like FRC lobby heavily against such laws, claiming that it'll take away their right to "spare the rod and spoil the child" or to "raise their kids as they see fit". In some cases where it has crossed the line into child abuse, some fundies have even argued in court that the state prohibiting them from beating the living hell out of their kids is a violation of their First Amendment rights to religion and that beating the hell out of their kids is actually a duty of their religion).
I happen to be a walkaway from what may be described as a "bible-based cult", and I can say that a fair percentage of the harder-core membership of many (if not most) Religious Reich groups in the US happen to be from churches that use coercive tactics on their membership. In other words, the ones who are doing the lobbying are more than likely brainwashed, they have probably already mentally defined anyone who isn't on their side and who dares to tell them about "flaws" in the software is directly in league with Satan (most Religious Reich groups, and most bible-based cults, DO have a very "us-versus-them" attitude--many Bible-based cults even go to the point of "deliverance ministry" (even your doubts are caused by demons, and the only cure is to "pray them out" or get an exorcism...rather like some of the nastier mind-control techniques in Scientology, actually)...). It is going to take a considerably larger clue-by-four than that to make them change their minds.
The FRC has a rather long record of lobbying not just for censorship, but for the entire Religious Reich platform. On occasion, this has even gone to slandering folks who speak against them...don't be surprised if you find possibly much of the town turned against you (I've read in previous reports that the town in general is quite conservative and beholden to the Religious Reich).
Some links so that the curious may learn more (and educate themselves thereby):
Walk Away--a good resource not only for those walking away from "bible-based cults" but also gives you a glimpse of the mindset these groups have--important in debating them. (The head of Institute for First Amendment Studies is himself a walkaway from a bible-based cult.)
And since I don't want to just talk about them without providing some way to fight the Religious Reich (otherwise I wouldn't have posted the damn warning about the FRC's agenda;):
EFF (as if you didn't need any more reasons to send that donation in;)--they fight censorware initiatives)
Peacefire--the source for info on censorware, including how most censorware has just a wee bit of a fundamentalist agenda
Institute for First Amendment Studies--highly recommended. Includes info on the Coalition for National Policy (basically the "think-tank" of the Religious Reich) including membership lists. Head of group is walkaway from a fundamentalist "Bible-based cult".
Rock Out Censorship--naturally concentrates on music censorship, but has really good info on other school-related issues, including filtering. (I'm a wee bit biased on this one, much as I am with IFAS--I have done volunteer work for ROC before. They're a damned good group, though.)
In any case, I wish y'all the best of luck in fighting them...I'm not sure you realised just what the hell you were getting into, but if there's anything we can do to help here on Slashdot, let us know.
Very, very nice post. But I have a completely unrelated question. Did you used to post to alt.barney.dinosaur.die.die.die?
O_o Now THERE is something I never expected to see mentioned on Slashdot...:)
As a matter of fact, yes, I did. In the Good Old Days, before spammers completely overran the non-binaries, non-moderated sections of Usenet (and more to the point, before Hipcrime-script attacks rendered large portions of Usenet useless).
Needless to say, Bad Folks sent it to hell, and so I've retired from Usenet and (largely) the Jihad.;) Ah well...*shrugs*
The idea that DNA entirely determines the characteristics of the organism does not sit well with these observations - "Fifteen years ago molecular biologists working under Dr Morris Goodman at Michigan University decided to test this hypothesis. They took the alpha haemoglobin DNA of two reptiles -- a snake and a crocodile -- which are said by Darwinists to be closely related, and the haemoglobin DNA of a bird, in this case a farmyard chicken. They found that the two animals who had _least_ DNA sequences in common were the two reptiles, the snake and the crocodile. They had only around 5% of DNA sequences in common -- only one twentieth of their haemoglobin DNA. The two creatures whose DNA was closest were the crocodile and the chicken, where there were 17.5% of sequences in common -- nearly one fifth. The actual DNA similarities were the _reverse_ of that predicted by neo-Darwinism."
In a word--Duh. For many reasons, at that.
First off, fifteen years ago, genetic cladograms were in their infancy.
Secondly, a good deal of what we now know about "reptilian" evolution has come about literally in the past fifteen to twenty years. (We have literally gone in twenty-five years from thinking dinosaurs were slow, cold-blooded creatures to realising that birds (which are among the hottest- blooded critters there are--sparrows typically have a normal body temperature of around 110 degrees Fahrenheit, or around 42 degrees C) are in fact theropod dinosaurs.) This has been both through genetic cladograms AND by fossil remains--much of the fossils that have shaped our present view of dinosaurs, in fact, have come up literally within the past five to ten years, and some of the most astounding yet (feathered dinosaurs, and many fossils that pretty much trace the entire history of how dinosaurs developed powered flight, along with typical "avian" traits like feathers, brooding eggs, even when hard-shelled eggs may have developed) have literally only come to light in the past two years).
Thirdly, I have my doubts that, even fifteen years ago, scientists thought crocs were closer to snakes than birds. (Just some info for you--on occasion, people who are trying to debunk evolution have been known to outright tell porkies. I've seen this far more often with "Creation Science" groups funded by fundamentalist "Christian" groups here in the States, but I wouldn't put it past some newage (rhymes with sewage) groups, either. And from what I've read, this sounds really suspiciously like newage (rhymes with sewage). In other words, don't trust everything you read--verify first.:)
The reason I doubt that they thought snakes and crocs were closer than crocs and birds is because it has been known for at least the past fifteen or so years that birds and crocodiles were part of a group called the Archosauria. (Archosauria, for your information, is a clade that is considered roughly equal to the old "Reptilia"--Reptilia has actually been split. Archosauria contains thecodonts, pterosaurs, dinosaurs, and crocodilians (note I've not expressly mentioned birds--I'm going to get to that). Just FWIW.) Snakes have, for at least the past twenty years or so, been considered to have evolved from lizards; there is a controversial theory that snakes instead evolved from mosasaurs, but mosasaurs are still not terribly related to archosaurs (they instead form yet another sister clade) so the point still stands.
Anyone who had the faintest idea about paleontology--who had so much as kept up with some of the early writing on Deinonychus or read a copy of Robert Bakker's "The Dinosaur Heresies" (written in 1986, talking about the "hot theories" already circulating in paleontology--many of the "heresies" have been recently vindicated, btw)-- would bloody well know crocs are closer to birds than snakes, unless he didn't keep up with paleontology at all. (It is entirely possible they didn't. As late as the early 1990's people were still being taught about "slow, sluggish, cold-blooded, naked-skinned" dinosaurs.)
For the record, especially in the field of dinosaur paleontology, fifteen years is damned near an eternity nowadays. Among other things, we've found evidence that the closest relative of Deinonychus (the one dinosaur that, along with Archaeopteryx and now the feathered dinos coming out of China--yes, you heard right, feathered dinosaurs--gave paleontology a needed boot in the arse with its sickle-clawed feets) is in fact Archaeopteryx, the first bird; that dinosaurs cared for their young (this has now been documented from "duckbilled" dinosaurs all the way to Tyrannosaurus rex itself--a juvenile named "Tinker" has recently been found, which has been teaching a lot on both juvenile tyrannosaurs and tyrannosaur family life) and that theropods even brooded young like chickens or ostriches (at least two oviraptor fossils have been found brooding nests); there have been incredible fossils as of late coming out of China which include the first feathered non-avian dinosaurs; we now have a large number of transitional fossils documenting nearly the entire evolution of flight in dinosaurs (from pre-avian feathered dinos, including display feathers on arms and tail, to Archie, to development of the alula feather from the thumb); we have entire evolutionary sequences for many families of archosaurs (including dinosaurs and crocs--we now know early crocs were ground-runners and that crocs are actually incredibly derived archosaurs); we even now have evidence that some dinosaurs like (oddly enough) Deinonychus may well have evolved from early protobirds and become secondarily flightless. Paleontology has come by INCREDIBLE leaps and bounds; one might say the science fifteen years ago was in prehistory (pun intended).
Oh, among things (both from re-analysis of fossils and new finds, and from some genetic studies including embryology studies) relating to the little comparison: Reptilia has now been split into the four groups other than archosaurs (ichthyosaurs, lizards/snakes, tuataras, and turtles), and Archosauria is now class-status. Crocodiles' and birds' last common ancestor was approximately 225-200 million years ago, when basal thecodonts split into "arctotarsal" and "crurotarsal" lineages (this is denoting ankle structures--one can say "bird-ankled" and "croc-ankled". Around the end of the Triassic, crocs evolved from "croc-ankled" thecodonts as ground-runners; they then proceeded to specialise as water-hunters, including specialisations in the heart for suspended animation underwater, etc. (Croc hearts are supposedly some of the most derived in the animal kingdom.) Dinosaurs evolved at around the same time from "bird-ankled" thecodonts, probably little ones like Lagosuchus; birds are now recognised (after a hell of a lot of evidence, and finally a few clue-by-fours out of Liaoning, China that finally settled many questions of dinosaur and "bird" evolution) as being a surviving group of theropod dinosaurs (specifically, maniraptorian neotheropod theropod dinosaurs) that survived the K-T boundary (there is about as much link between dinosaurs and birds as there is between mammals and bats; birds are dinosaurs and always have been, and most paleontologists have sunk Aves into a subgroup of dinosaurs at best and usually down to a theropodian subgroup--you will actually hear discussions of "neornithian dinosaurs").
Oh, and for the record--the same shakeup in cladistics that has led to birds being finally recognised as dinosaurs has also removed "mammal-like reptiles" from Reptilia and put them in a group with mammals and therapsids (therapsids are basically proto-mammals; they're related to us in the same way that early dinosaurs like herrerasaurs or dilophosaurs are related to birds). Yes, Mammilia got sunk in the process, though not as badly as Aves has.
In other words, the genetic cladogram actually proved RIGHT (dinosaurs and crocs are, in fact, archosaurs which derived from thecodont lineages that split fairly early in archosaurian evolution). Which blows hell out of the argument.:)
Oh, another fun fact--the same genetic cladograms also show that chimpanzees, bonobos, and humans are literally more closely related to each other than to any of the other great apes (they also led to gibbons possibly losing their status as a great ape). Chimps and humans share around 98 percent of their DNA, and bonobos are even closer if memory serves. It is probably a matter of a few evolutionary changes and some reordering on chromosomes that differenciates Homo sapiens from Pan paniscus (the bonobo, the closest living relative to humans and not terribly far from australopithecines--they have been known to make tools and they do walk erect fairly often).
As for other arguments:
On the age of the earth: Most of what we know is based on dating of rocks here and in other parts of the solar system. For the oldest rocks on Earth we have a lower limit of around 3 1/2 billion years (this is based on radioactive decay halflives, which have been proven sound both mathematically and experimentally--if there is funkiness with radioactive decay, I'd suggest you share it now:). Both strata-dating AND radio-dating are used, as checks on each other (especially when you are dealing with very old rocks where there are no diagnostic fossils that can date the rock).
We've also got rocks from other parts of the solar system (most notably meteorites [some of possible Martian origin] and moon-rocks). These have likewise been radio-dated, and give an upper bound of around 4 1/2-5 billion years. (Rocks from Earth don't exist from then because Earth was essentially a big ball of cooling lava at that point.:) So between the two, we can safely state the Earth is probably around 4 1/2 billion years old, give or take a few million years. (FWIW, this has also been checked by extrapolating and finding the age of our Sun based on the millions of stars we've observed--we know pretty much how baby stars are born and grow and die, and how stars of the mass of our Sun tend to behave. Also, for really old rocks, one of the dating methods uses uranium--uranium has a half-life of some six billion years in its most stable isotopes, which is just about right for measuring the age of a solar system.)
On species: Actually, yes, there is a specific definition of species both for fossil remains and for living specimens--there is actually a specific convention of species nomenclature called the ICZN, or "International Convention on Zoological Nomenclature". Summed up:
Living Species/Non-Fossil Remains: Species is defined as when two members of a population have diverged genetically to the point that they cannot easily interbreed. (Incidentially--it is this very definition of species that caused both dogs AND cats to be sunk into subspecies. Until 1994 or so, dogs were officially listed as Canis familiaris and cats as Felis catus; recent genetic studies have shown that dogs and cats ARE genetically still wolves and African wildcats respectively (just with a lot of the natural genetic variation brought out by selective breeding)--hence dogs are now Canis lupus familiaris and cats are now Felis sylvestris domestica. For that matter, there's been a lot of DNA testing of Neandertal remains to see if we can find out whether we could have interbred with them--if it turns out Neandertals and modern humans could interbreed, Neandertals are just a subspecies of us (Homo sapiens neandertalensis) but if we couldn't, they get their own species name (Homo neandertalensis).
In fossil species: Species is defined as such point as a morphological change has occured in a fossil specimen as to distinguish it from other existing fossils that may be of that type. (Since in most cases genetic studies cannot be done of fossil remains, they basically go by "has there been a major or minor change in this organism". Most fossil classifications beyond the genus level tend to be controversial unless there is good evidence to account for them, both in morphology and (on occasion) in habitat (such occurs in the two species of tyrannosaurs, Tyrannosaurus rex and Tyrannosaurus bataar--bataar is smaller than T. rex, and T. bataar is found in Mongolia where T. rex is found in Montana and western North America).
On random mutations: Actually, random mutations can sometimes be beneficial--and sometimes even both. A good example is with some genetic diseases such as Tay-Sach's Disease (nearly always fatal before 5), thalassemia, sickle-cell anemia, and cystic fibrosis (all three of which are debilitating and potentially fatal)-- as it turns out, two copies are Bad, but having one copy actually protects you against some other disease (with Tay-Sachs, it's tuberculosis [which was very common in ghettos, where Ashkenazi Jews (the major carriers) lived]; with both thalassemia and sickle-cell anemia, one copy protects you against malaria (the genes evolved separately in the Mediterranean and Sub-Saharan Africa, and there are other sickling/"deformed" genetic diseases of red blood cells that have the same protective effect against malaria in small doses in Southeast Asian populations); one copy of the cystic fibrosis gene is protective against cholera (in fact, what goes wrong in cystic fibrosis is now known on a chemical basis as a defect in chloride excretion--as it turns out, the exact opposite disorder occurs in cholera! One stops you up, the other gives you the raging squits...). Even though these genes cause bad (sometimes tragic) effects in double-doses, they actually are beneficial enough that they've stayed in the human genome for thousands of years (unlike most genetic diseases with no good benefit, which generally only tend to show up when people end up marrying cousins or people get seriously inbred).
Also, sometimes it doesn't take a HUGE mutation. The length in arms of Archaeopteryx really is not that much longer (per body ratio) than that of Deinonychus (much bigger, non-flying, but skeletally very, very similar to Archie). If there is something to work with, it can give an animal an advantage. Said animal does the nasty, passes their genes along, and if it's good it spreads. (BTW, the fact that humans and chimps share 98% of DNA and have about as much difference both in actual gene content and chromosome-count as horses and donkeys do (humans have 46 chromosomes--chimps have 48) show that it does not take a terrible amount of mutation to evolve.
Also, sometimes it's not so much a matter of evolving new things as "sports" showing up with OLD traits that prove useful. Phorusracid birds, which evolved tens of millions of years AFTER non-avian dinosaurs went extinct, actually redeveloped flexible fingers with claws--a trait that had laid dormant in birds since the late Cretaceous--and adopted a ground-running hunter lifestyle, like nonavian theropod dinosaurs, which was very successful for millions of years (mammilian predators of megafauna finally did them in anywhere from 2 million to 750,000 years ago, but until then they were the top predator niche in South America). Hoatzins have claws when babies which is a reversion. Chickens are on occasion born with teeth (this too is an old archosaurian trait).
On punctuated equillibrium: Actually, there are cases where it does occur. One of the biggies seems to be powered flight (flight is incredibly advantageous, and is usually refined very quickly after invented). And even in that case we DO have "missing links"--plenty of them. Hell, with dinosaurs we have an almost 100-million-year-old continuous string of evolution showing from early protofeathers (Sinosauropteryx) to examples of display feathers on tail and arms (Caudipteryx) to possible pre-flyers or very early flyers (Protoarchaeopteryx) to full-fledged flyers (Archaeopteryx) to more advanced flight (fossils from China showing development of alula feather from clawed thumb) to advanced toothed forms (birds like Hesperornis) to paleornithe birds to the beginnings of a lineage of extant modern birds (chadriiforme ducks) to an actual reversion towards an older condition (phorusracids) to now. Also, around the time of Archaeopteryx we may well have a complete record (including many transitionals) of both an initial radiation of sickle-clawed early "birds" and (most tantalizing) either the co-evolution of archaeopterygids and dromaeosaurs as sister species or possibly dromaeosaurs outright evolving from archaeopterygids. (The latter would REALLY be something, and a fair amount of evidence IS pointing that way. Don't be surprised if you hear around two or three years down the road that Deinonychus is probably secondarily flightless.)
A more classic evolutionary sequence (with tons and tons and tons of transitional fossils) is the sequence of horse evolution.
There are no known transitional fossils. What about all the skeletons of ape like creatures that have been discovered? are they not transitional? seems like a never ending argument to me, as transitional means whatever you want it to mean. If I find a transitional fossilized skeleton, you can simply say that it's far to big of a jump, and that we need to find another speciman to show a smoother transition. How convenient.
Even better yet--a wonderful series of transitional fossils is, pretty much, the known specimens of feathered dinosaur fossils (including early birds, Archaeopteryx, and a mess of feathered dinos found in China). From the fossil evidence we're finding now, it has almost been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that birds are, in fact, dinosaurs (and specifically maniraptorian, neotheropodian, theropod dinosaurs). Of course, there are still some folks (notably an Alan Feduccia, who seems to want to do ANYTHING to disprove at all the idea that birds even DESCENDED from dinosaurs or are remotely related to them, much less ARE dinosaurs) who literally do ANYTHING to "explain away" some of the fossils and other evidence birds are dinosaurs (examples--claims that "dinosaurs don't have turbinates and aren't warm blooded" (turbinates sometimes don't preserve well, aren't necessarily a diagnostic of endothermy, and besides, dinosaurs HAVE been found with extensive turbinates--some of the more recent T. rex finds and Nanotyrannus, for example); trying to label Caudipteryx as a "bird" (most paleontologists feel Caudipteryx is a basal oviraptorid, and oviraptors are either cousins of avian dinos or possibly secondarily flightless); claiming most of the feathered dinos are mislabeled as dinosaurs and not birds (I can't wait to see what Feduccia says about Sinonithosaurus, which is a feathered dromaeosaur; were it somewhat bigger and found without the feathers, it'd possibly have been classified as Velociraptor; the skeletons are that close...will he have to admit dinosaurs are birds, or will he claim dromaeosaurs are birds?); claims that the "dinofuzz" protofeathers on Sinosauropteryx (a very obviously non-avian dinosaur, probably a close cousin of Coelurosaurus) were "muscle fibers" or "artifacts" (tests have now proven that yes, indeed, those really are bristle-like protofeathers), etc. etc.).
Hell, for that matter, the entire fossil record of archaeopterygids and dromaeosaurs, PERIOD, is a rather amazing transitional record. There are all kinds of transitional forms between the two groups (including Rahonavis), and in fact the skeletons look identical in most parts (other than the size of the arms and claws, and head details). It's even been found Archaeopteryx has a sickle claw, like dromaeosaurs, and many studies have been done on the similarities in skeleton between Archaeopteryx and Deinonychus. (Dromaeosaurs and archaeopterygids, especially transitional fossils, are also interesting for another reason--there is the real possibility that dromaeosaurs may have become secondarily flightless, so what we may be seeing there is actually a transitional series between a flying animal and one that lost flight and became a running-leaping hunter instead.)
It is interesting you mention hominids, too. As it turns out, humans are more related to chimps and bonobos than ANY of the three are related to any other great apes (including gorillas, the next closest ancestor); if we went just by straight cladistics, we'd end up sinking australopithecines into the apes and probably all hominids (including humans). I have my serious doubts that this will ever occur; I guess to humans, it's one thing to sink dogs into a subspecies of wolf, but another to sink all of Hominidae into the great apes (or letting chimps and bonobos into our club). People still have incredibly serious trouble even accepting that chimps and bonobos are sister-species, and use "I didn't come from no chimp" in arguments against evolution--I don't want to THINK of the arguments that would take place the day an anthropologist or paleontologist gets the intestinal fortitude to suggest humans be considered the fifth species of great ape.:P
This is also similar to why some ornithologists, like Feduccia, do damn near everything (up to and including calling paleontologists charlatans at times) to try to disprove that birds might be dinosaurs. It would be too much of a blow to their pride to see Aves (which has the status of a major class of animals) sunk all the way to a sub-group of theropod dinosaurs--it'd be roughly equivalent to a group that had the status of mammals being sunk to a group that had the status of, oh, insectivorous bats. No matter that birds ARE pretty much the dinosaur equivalent of "insectivorous bats", which had the damn good luck to have learned to fly and had really tiny members so that when the K-T extinction event happened they made it through ok while all the other dinos died off. They can't stand the thought of their precious birdies being reduced to a subclass of fscking dinosaurs--with Tyrannosaurus rex being officially listed as their cousin, for Chrissakes! And so they raise fifty million kinds of cain over every fossil that further proves the fact that birds are dinosaurs (forget link--birds are surviving theropod dinosaurs--saying there is a "dinosaur-bird link" is like saying there is a "mammal-bat link") shows up, trying to disprove it...they keep claiming birds evolved from a "basal theropod" (duh...dinosaurs did too, and then one lineage begat Archaeopteryx after several tens of millions of years of genetic jerry-rigging with display feathers they first developed to keep from freezing their tails off, and then Archaeopteryx and friends learned to fly, and eventually got pretty good at it, and now exist as birdies like the gimped cardinal with the semi-twisted wing that chases off all the sparrows from my bird-feeder. The End.), and throw temper tantrums worthy of some of my younger cousins-in-law when someone suggests even moving Aves to a group inside of Archosauria, much less the tantrums they throw when it's proposed birds get sunk into Dinosauria proper, much less the hellfire-and-brimstone-esque apoplectic fits they throw when paleontologists suggest they get the intestinal fortitude to put the damn birdies into the theropods where they properly belong.
It's incredibly stupid, and it's basically a bunch of pride and politics, and it doesn't make for particularly good science and pisses off people who maybe should be working with each other. Until humans discard pride as an evolutionary adaptation, though, I don't know when that's gonna happen.:P
Has it ever occured to you that evolution might not be a steady and slow process, but something that takes place very rarely, but at very quick spurts (geologically speaking) therefore, the transitional species may have only existed for a short time, thus making it very difficult to find a perfectly smooth set of transitional specimans.
Gould, if I remember right, has made this very assertion (that evolution works basically in fits and starts). Interestingly, there is some evidence that this is actually true in the case of animals that evolve flight--flight is such a beneficial adaptation that usually it is refined VERY quickly in evolutionary terms, and we're often very lucky to find the transitional forms of flying animals (we're still looking for the "missing link" between gliding archosaurs and early pterosaurs, for example; we've gotten DAMNED lucky with birds in having a beautiful series of transitional fossils which show pretty much how dinosaurs evolved wings from forelimbs and learned to fly--only iffy thing is if they took off running or leaping--we even know how they went from four-point landings like bats, to perching on trees--the finer points in bird flight). Hell, there's even evidence (some genetic) that mammals seemed to have thought flying such a great thing that they up and evolved it twice (including, likely, primates--flying-foxes should probably be called flying aye-ayes instead;).
There are plenty of things that could falsify evolution. Genetics is one example. If we looked at the DNA of two different but similar creatures and saw that there were very few similarities, then that would be very strong evidence against the sort of common descent that is currently postulated. Now, that doesn't mean that some god couldn't have engineered the DNA that way, but that's not the point; we're looking at things that could falsify evolution, not prove a god.
It could be evidence agaisnt common descent. Or, it could be evidence of a hell of a lot of convergence. (This exact method, by the way-- studying the genetics of living things--is what has led not only to "domains" beyond kingdoms now used in cladistic systems (it's been found out that a group of lifeforms, previously lumped in with bacteria, are actually more related to us than bacteria are, and now get their own "Domain" or "Superkingdom" of Archaea) but has led to the rather astounding idea that mammals may well have evolved flight twice (it seems insectivorous bats and fruit-bats aren't terribly closely related, insectivorous bats being more closely related to insectivorous animals like rodents and (here's the real kicker) fruit-eating bats possibly sharing a common ancestor with lemurs--yes, that's right, primates learned to fly at least twice and the first time they didn't need tools to do it:). It's also been used to show that humans, chimps, and bonobos share a common ancestor around five million years ago or so, that bonobos really ARE a different species than chimps are, and humans are still closely enough related to chimps genetically that (if it weren't for silly things like people being too proud to do it) technically Homo sapiens and ALL of our immediate ancestors should still be classified as great apes (humans, chimps, and bonobos are literally more related to each other than any of them are related to gorillas or orangutans--on simple cladistics, we should sink hominids into a subclass of apes, but it will probably not happen for much the same reason that some people are screaming bloody murder about sinking Aves into even a subclass of Dinosauria (realistically, Aves should be sunk all the way into Theropoda, no higher than the coelurosaur/carnosaur (now defined as "advanced/ primitive theropods) divide and probably even down to a subclass to coelurosaur theropods, but there are enough people who'd go into apoplexy about it that it might not happen even if someone were to hit Feduccia upside the head with the fossilised remains of Sinonithosaurus, Rahonavis, Archaeopteryx, Deinonychus, and Sinosauropteryx and drive the idea in by brute force)...hell, one reason a lot of folks oppose evolution is "I'm not related to no bloody filthy ape", and they'd REALLY start bursting blood vessels and throwing Bibles if the scientific community finally admitted that humans ARE apes:P).
Unfortunately, for a lot of stuff we'd really like to get genetic info on, we can't. A good example is with the archosaurs--there are exactly two major surviving groups out of four, one is basically reduced to the rough equivalent of the only survivors of ALL mammals being insectivorous bats, and the two groups diverged over 200 million years ago (around the middle to end of the Triassic, when crocs and dinosaurs separately evolved from two groups of thecodonts which had ALREADY split on the basis of hip-joint and ankle-joint structure). Comparing croc DNA and bird DNA MIGHT get us to finding out around when the basal thecodont first came about; even the ANCESTORS of dinosaurs (including birds) and crocodilians had diverged a fair way from each other, and crocs themselves are as derived from their ancestor as dinosaurs are from their thecodont ancestor (crocs are amazingly specialised as aquatic animals; they may well have lost most warm-bloodedness as an evolutionary adaptation, their sprawling gait is secondary (early crocs were ground-runners and much higher off the ground; you can see it in baby crocs, and even adult crocs can run for short distances like big scaly ferrets), their heart may well be the most "derived" evolutionarily-speaking in the animal kingdom (there are adaptations for such things as suspended animation, for starters)...not at all primitive, really). It's not going to tell us the REALLY fun stuff we'd love to know, like just how closely related dromaeosaurs are to archaeopterygids (this is an important question now in paleontology) or how close T. rex was to flying birds, or how far away the ancestor of birds and hadrosaurs or diplodocids is, or how closely related dinosaurs really are to pterosaurs (there is debate on this--some say as derived as crocs are, some say they shared common ancestors in "bird-ankled" thecodonts)...because there aren't any dinos LEFT except for the birds, and no thecodonts or pterosaurs left at all. Hell, it'd be the absolute bee's knees (and potentially incredibly important for anthropology and mankind in general) to see, oh, how closely related early hominids like Australopithecus or Ardipithecus are to chimps, bonobos, AND us--unfortunately, we've not exactly been lucky enough to find any early hominid DNA (the earliest hominid DNA that's been found so far is with Neandertals, and their mitochondrial DNA is dissimilar enough to ours that it's now thought Neandertals might be a "sister species" to modern humans after all; we definitely seem to have split before the "mitochondrial Eve" of modern humans, who seems to date from around 200,000 years ago or so; we don't even have enough Neandertal DNA to know if they had the same number of chromosomes that we do (it'd be really interesting to know just WHEN chromatid shift--a change in the number of chromosomes--occured in hominids; bonobos and chimps have 48 chromosomes, while we have 46; if us and Neandertals had the same number of chromosomes, we could have potentially interbred (much like many felids can interbreed); if they didn't, we'd know they really WERE something different; if it occured after Homo split from australopithecines, we might have to reorder more than a few cladograms and possibly wound the pride of humans in the process).
As a minor aside--one of the reasons scientists are so excited about a recent frozen mammoth find is because there might be the chance to get enough DNA to compare mammoths to modern elephants. (It is thought that mammoths are closely related to Asian elephants, actually to the point of both being more related to each other than to African elephants--some folks think they were a third class, though--for those folks who have the plans to clone mammoths, much less folks doing cladograms of elephant evolution, this is important to know:)
Design would be another example. If every creature on Earth appeared to be optimally "engineered", you would not see some of the deficiencies that are present. Take humans, for example. Creationists like to arrogantly claim that humans are "perfect." We are? Then why do we have (for example) an appendix? At best, it's a useless organ. At worst, it can become infected and threaten your life. Why is it even there? If a god engineered it, he's a pretty lousy engineer.
If there's a God (we can't really prove or disprove it, seeing as there's no way to really prove Someone Is Mucking About With The Universe without stepping outside the universe itself, which nobody's really found a good way of doing without getting one's self Quite Dead in the process), He is probably as much of a jerry-rigger as, say, Tool Time Taylor on the TV show "Home Development" or people who believe that all things can be fixed with sufficient amounts of ingenuity, wood, nails, Super Glue, and duck-tape.:) If so, I'm proud to say that I must have gotten it honest at least, as I also tend to be one of the three inveterate jerry-riggers in my family.:) No wonder Yshua went into carpentry--jerry-rigging is, sometimes, just a bit of a black art and often necessary (as anyone who has attempted to build something off a set of building plans has found out, and spent the next six hours cursing Norm Abram AND his Bloody-Arsed Biscuit Machine and his entire shop full of tools for making visual lies about how building things is supposed to be simple...or how people fixing plumbing, even professionals, usually end up cursing the entire cast, past, present AND future, of "Hometime" for giving mere mortals the impression that plumbing is either easy or something that can be done with a minimum of jerry-rigging...or, for that matter, installing Linux on some cantankerous systems:). That, or God has a sense of humour in that we humans are supposed to only LOOK jerry-rigged. This brings the set of God suspiciously close to the set of Norm Abram for my liking.:)
Myself, having actually DELVED into home repair, Linux installations on cranky boxen, and general jerry-rigging, rather suspect the former case.;)
As for the appendix--there is some evidence that it still does have a small function in the immune system (basically helping keep the colon from getting all infectious). Most surgeons won't remove it unless they have to, because of this (even though we have laparoscopic surgery, which could even be done on an outpatient basis). In animals which are largely herbivores (especially insectivore-group animals, such as rodents and lagomorphs), they tend to have huge appendixes; it is probably an organ that doesn't have much use outside of immune-system function in primates.
Pretty much, though, as much as we can tell, cladograms tend to agree pretty much with the genetic record (as far as we can determine that) and the fossil record as (to put a metaphor on it) things being jerry-rigged to work. Sometimes they give surprising results, the more data you get (such as dogs now being sunk into wolves, or chimps being closer to humans than either is to gorillas, or (on the basis of non-genetic evidence + some genetic comparison + genome studies including genetic engineering) the fact that birds are actually dinosaurs (now, tell me ONE person who doesn't think the fact that dinosaurs survived is neat as hell:)...). If the groups are separated enough, you can even find out from gross details (it's pretty obvious that Squamata (the group that includes therapsids (including mammals), "mammal-like reptiles" like Dimetrodon, and the like) split from the group that founded all the rest of the land-animals outside of amphibians a LONG time ago; birds and mammals evolved sex chromosomes that work exactly opposite from each other (birds use WZ sex determination--WW is male, WZ is female; mammals use XY sex determination--XX female, XY male) indicating they evolved separately but did an amazing amount of convergence, indicating that maybe sexual chromosomes are characteristic of warm-blooded animals in general (yes, that's right--you can learn basically where "God is applying duck-tape")...but there are so many differences that, in part based on genetic studies, "mammal-like reptiles" actually got split from reptiles, and it's now thought they diverged a short while after their immediate ancestor (probably the first "shelled egg laying animal" or close thereby) split from amphibians).
If you want to see a real example of God jerry-rigging:), look over the record of how dinosaurs evolved flight. (Pretty much bird flight is the most jerry-rigged of all animals, because development was largely limited because of existing adaptations of theropods--can't splay legs, they're all feathery, but if you modify the display feathers enough to catch air and make the arms long...and later on, fuse the fingers, lose the claws, and use the thumb as an "aileron" for braking in landings...there wasn't as much to work with as there was with bats or pterosaurs.)
WARNING: This post runs long. Even for my posts, which I realise usually take up a page or two when I'm at my most quiet on Slashdot. I just realised I have spent well over three hours typing up this reply, due to the length of it (ok, it touches on a lot of my favourite subjects, and this tends to induce just a bit of typed verbal diarrhea:), and I do not even want to think just how many pages this will take. I may well win the record for "Longest Post Ever Posted On Slashdot That Is Not A Blatant Attempt To Launch A DOS Attack On The Message Board System" for this one. If you don't want to read a long, possibly rambling post, feel free to skip ahead. It's not going to hurt me any (I don't post to be a karma-whore, just when something tickles my interest).
Now that the ObWarning is out of the way for those who don't want to risk a case of repetitive stress injury from hitting the space bar...:)
KahunaBurger dun said:
When you say that evolution is only reactive, you are not quite right. Evolution works with what is there and small gradients thereof. A lungfish's protolung became a swim bladder for fish who went the other way (oddly not the other way around, but thats a longer story). Something that was selected for before (or simply not selected against in some complex cases) becomes useful in another context and is now heavily selected. Try the Gould essay "The Panda's Thumb" for an example of how jerryrigging can give the illusion of proactive selection.
A wonderful example of this is how wings for powered flight evolved separately in insects, pterosaurs, dinosaurs (I'll explain more on that in a bit, I promise:) and (possibly twice) in bats.
Insects evolved from a common ancestor of insects, arachnids, other arthropods (like millipedes), and crustaceans; if you go farther down the line in the fossil record you find that this group and segmented worms share a common ancestor. Pretty much what insects had to work with were external limbs; these evolved eventually into wings, and in beetles further as protective covering. (There is still a type of insect, a very tiny one, that has a primitive type of wing; we can also determine from fossil records of insects and the huge number of surviving insect groups roughly how wing evolution has gone. They've had around 400 million years to improve on the idea, give or take a few, and flies are one of the two or three existing groups of flying critters to have mastered hovering flight. About the only type of flight insects haven't mastered is soaring flight, but that's because insects have serious trouble getting big enough for soaring flight to be possible.)
Pterosaurs (at least according to most theories) either evolved from a basal archosauromorph or possibly from a common ancestor of "bird-hip-jointed" archosaurs (archosaurs have evolved two forms of hip joints--the other is seen in crocodilians, by the way, which are very derived archosaurs which started out as land-runners and ended up as water-hunters)--we aren't entirely sure which, because there is not a hell of a lot of good fossil material from when pterosaurs first evolved. (It is also suspected-- largely from examining the two fossil groups we DO have halfway decent evidence of how flight may have developed--that flight is incredibly advantageous to animals in general and tends to be refined on very quickly; flight, oddly enough, might be an example of "quantum evolution"). They evolved wings from flaps between the arms and body of gliding archosaurs (of which we do have a few in the fossil record); they seem to have evolved "pterosaur fuzz" (probably protofeathers, and it is now thought protofeathers are a general "warm-blooded" archosaurian trait--see the next paragraph for info) around that time or possibly shortly after.
Now we come to the real example of successful jerryrigging in the world of flight--dinosaurian flight.:) First off, dinosaurs aren't entirely extinct--birds are now classified by most paleontologists as at least a group, if not a subgroup, of theropod dinosaurs and even many ornithologists have become convinced of it. (I'll note more on this below.) Theropods started off as ground-runners; we have very good evidence now (scattered feathers dating all the way back to the Triassic when theropods were first starting out, including a full impression of wing feathers that may be from a dilophosaur or similar early theropod, and some absolutely incredible fossil material coming out of several sites in China including Liaoning which have included at least five species of feathered dinosaur, including at least possibly some pre-Archaeopteryx material and including at least three non-avian dinosaurs). We now know from the incredible fossils coming out of China that feathers in dinosaurs probably started out as "fuzz" or hairlike or bristly stuff to keep them warm (Sinosauropteryx is one of the main examples we know of re "dinofuzz", and was the first major "feathered dino" find out of China; yes, it's been determined it's actual protofeathers and not "muscle tissue" like some have tried to claim), possibly going to wing feathers and tail feathers for display (we see this in Caudipteryx, now thought to be a basal oviraptor, and (assuming archaeopterygids and dromaeosaurs came from a common ancestor, and that dromaeosaurs aren't actually secondarily flightless--more on this in a bit--Sinornithosaurus, a feathered dromaeosaur or "raptor" and an unnamed dromaeosaur (possibly another Sinornithosaurus) that is now identified as being the "mirror image" of the tail section of "Archaeoraptor" (now known to be a chimaera composed of a feathered dromaeosaur tail and a feathered dinosaur (whether avian or not, we don't know for sure--it's suspected avian though))...also, some reports of a feathered theriziniosaur, a group of dinosaurs which have just been discovered to be abberant theropods and possibly the ancestors of ornithomimid dinosaurs).
By the time dinosaurs started evolving flight, their hips were so modified for erect stance that trying to splay one's feet would have dislocated their hips. Plus, there was no real way for skin "tents" to develop like those in pterosaurs or bats. They already had feathers for warmth and (probably) sexual displays or brooding...so dinosaurs made do with what they had, and modified their feathers (and later, their fingers by merging them and losing their claws) for flight. This is incredibly well documented--from dinofuzz to display feathers to early fliers (like Archaeopteryx to birds losing flexible fingers and claws and using the thumb as the alula feather--possibly now the best evidence we have of how animals learned to fly. About the only things still really up in the air are whether fliers were around earlier than Archaeopteryx and whether dinosaurs learned to fly from the ground up or the trees up (on the former, Protoarchaeopteryx from China might have been able to fly; on the latter, we're getting some evidence leaning towards "ground up").
(A minor note on some things I've pointed out. Many folks (a few ornithologists, one Feduccia for example) have serious problems with the idea that birds are dinosaurs--possibly because of old ideas they have regarding dinos, or possibly because they really don't want Aves to be sunk into a subclass of theropod dinosaurs (which are in themselves a subclass of a renewed Dinosauria, which in turn would be a subclass of Archosauria which would be the same rank as the rest of Reptilia, Amphibia, and Therapsidia (yes, there's talk of sinking mammals too). The thing with what happened to birds...there is a theory (based on a fair amount of evidence from the fossil record) that the animals that have the best chance of survival in a bad extinction event are small animals. This has happened at least three times in the fossil record (big therapsids disappearing and mammals evolving from little survivors; most big archosaurs disappearing and the little ones evolving into crocs and pterosaurs and dinosaurs; most big dinosaurs dying off and surviving as birds) and you could make a darn good argument it may be happening on a lesser scale now (most megafauna of the Ice Age has died off, we came pretty darn close to possibly losing whales, we are still on dicey edge of losing a fair number of large land animals (elephants, most of the big cats, some others)...yes, we are going through an extinction event of sorts right now, much of it probably human-caused (definitely so in the latter bits), in case nobody noticed:P). In the past instances, it's seemed like animals around sparrow-sized or a bit larger and down seem to be "right-sized" to get through an extinction event ok. What has happened to dinosaurs is that they went through a major extinction event in which the only survivors were small flying toothless ones; a rough equivalent for mammals would be if all mammals with the exception of the smaller insectivorous bats were to become extinct--and the surviving species of insectivorous bats were all that were left to continue the entire line of mammals. (In a real-life extinction event mice would probably make it ok, as well as rats and other such small critters. The smallest non-avian dinosaur we know of is probably Comsognathus which was right around the size of a large chicken; the smallest dinosaurs around at the time of the K-T boundary were, well, what we tend to call birds. The smallest pterosaurs were at the least around the size of large crows, most were around pelican-sized, and at least one pterosaur (Quetzalcoatlus) had the largest wingspan of any flying animal; if there's merit to the "small animals survive extinctions" rule, non-avian dinosaurs and pterosaurs probably never had much of a chance. Even modern crocs evolved from smaller crocs that survived the K-T boundary (really huge ones seem not to have made it) so there may be merit to it...
(With dinosaurs in particular, the matter of learning how they learned to fly is made even more complicated by two things--firstly, reversions have occured all over the place (flightless birds are common, at least one group (phorusracids) that was alive as recently as (possibly) 75,000 years ago in the Americas seems to have redeveloped movable, clawed fingers, and even chickens on occasion have teeth--yes, hen's teeth do exist, but they are rare indeed, and it's an old theropod trait that sometimes shows up). Secondly, the closest relatives to the first known group of flyers (archaeopterygids) happen to be dromaeosaurs like Deinonychus...which are so closely related that except for minor details (arm length, size of toe-claws (yes, it's been found Archie has a tiny sickle-claw just like Deinonychus though much smaller) and head details) it's been argued that they could be placed in the same family or as a suborder at the least. Even worse, dromaeosaurs tend to show up after Archaeopteryx and we now know feathers aren't diagnostic of Aves (dromaeosaurs, and stuff older than Archie, had feathers). Even worse STILL, there are a hell of a lot of transitional forms being found now between Archaeopteryx and dromaeosaurs like Rahonavis (which looks almost exactly like a tiny flying Deinonychus). Worse yet, we've not found a hell of a lot of sickle-clawed animals before Archie, because the fossil records aren't so great then, but we've found a hell of a lot of them (including basal birds, especially) AFTER Archie...so there's a rather lively debate going on about whether dromaeosaurs and archaeopterygids are "sister species" or whether Deinonychus should call Archie (insert large number of "greats"-grandpa-birdie). IF it turns out dromaeosaurs ARE secondarily flightless (and the evidence looks more and more like they may well be--it's been known to happen before--look at phorusracid birds) a lot of people, including paleontologists, are going to have to find yet another way to redefine what is "Aves" or give up and lump them all in with the theropods without trying to separate them (since it's been found out dinos had feathers, the "diagnostic characteristic" for Aves in cladograms has been "all those animals with ancestors closer to Archaeopteryx than Deinonychus. Needless to say, if it turns out Deinonychus and other dromaeosaurs are secondarily flightless descendants of flying archaeopterygids, this is going to bugger up cladistic diagrams JUST a wee bit, because if Archie is the base of Aves you have just defined dromaeosaurs as birds.:) A fair number of people (including those who draw cladograms) would probably go into apoplexy at the thought of Deinonychus (not to mention probably oviraptorids, not to mention troodontids...not to mention a lot of other theropods not typically thought of as avian) in Aves.:)
As for bats...we're pretty sure they evolved flight in much the same manner as pterosaurs did-- from the trees up, from small gliding animals. Of special interest to those following evolution--it seems insectivorous bats and fruit-eating bats may not be terribly closely related, and in fact may have both evolved flight separately from completely different groups of mammals (insectivorous bats from small insectivores or proto-rodents; fruit-eating bats possibly from very early primates (!!!) (Yes, you may well be a distant cousin to a flying fox, and lemurs may be a somewhat closer cousin)...) So this has been jerry-rigged from flaps of skin possibly not once, but twice...apparently it was so useful and so jerry-riggable that it was almost bound to happen eventually.:) (One wonders if, whenever a major extinction event does happen to the mammals, if whatever evolves from mice and/or birds 65 million years down the road (should their descendents evolve sentience) even realises that bats are of that old class known as mammals that nearly all died off;)
Flight, though (especially with dinosaurs) is almost the classic example of jerry-rigging. (Dinos really didn't have anything BUT feathers and arms to base wings off of...;) Hell, how phorusracids hunted and came about is also a good example of this (flexible fingers, and big size and good ground-running, were selected for; this resulted in (for a while, at least till anywhere from 2 million to 75,000 years ago) essentially land-running, land-hunting dinosaurs coming back and becoming the terror of the Pampas of Tertiary and early Quaternary South America:)...of course, birds ARE theropods, and birds haven't entirely lost a lot of early theropod adaptations (see the occasional "freak" of a hen with teeth, when the old genes coding for teeth are turned on again-- by the way, the genes are known and scientists have grown hens with teeth on purpose to study bird evolution and development--or phorusracids, or even baby hoatzins (who have little claws on their wings and lose them as adults) or ostriches (which, I've read, are occasionally born with claws on their wings as well). For most birds, wing-claws and teeth aren't needful (actually detrimental--beaks don't protect teeth terribly well, and claws make it hard to control landings (the thumb in birds is modified to the alula feather, which is necessary for controlled landings instead of four-pointers). Baby hoatzins, who can't fly yet, seem to have been done good by keeping wing-claws so they can climb back up into the nest, at least till they can fly. Phorusracids did darn good by having fingers:)
(Apologies, by the way, if this has run really long-winded. I have a bit of a recreational interest in paleontology, especially mammilian and archosaurian paleontology, especially theropods, especially early avians and protoavians like dromaeosaurs and archaeopterygians and oviraptors (I STILL think it's the bee's knees that there's been found a brooding oviraptor) and early birds like Hesperornis. One of the things that has always fascinated me is how it's come about, just from theories in maybe the past twenty years or so and fossils dating back from 1964, that we've found out dinosaurs aren't extinct but we just call them cardinals, and one of the damn near coolest (IMHO) dinosaurs may well have been secondarily flightless and maybe even got its hunting style from flighted ancestors. Even going from the ideas in "Jurassic Park" (the book), which were based on the best science at the time...to "Raptor Red", which was based on Bob Bakker's idea of what life was like for Utahraptor, a large dromaeosaur (found while filming for "Jurassic Park" (the movie), oddly when Steven Spielberg wanted to put a Giant Dromaeosaur of Death in there) to knowing that dinosaurs brood (the "broody oviraptor" fossil find) to dinosaurs having feathers and all us nutters who drew Deinonychus with feathers (including, well, myself on a piccie at avatar. furry.org in an anthropomorphic piccie of a deinonych--ok, allow me a LITTLE self-advertisement:) being vindicated. (OK, so I read Greg Paul's "Predatory Dinosaurs of the World" and Bakker's "Dinosaur Heresies", and between that and the fossil evidence I have absolutely cringed every time I've seen someone draw Deinonychus naked as a jaybird (actually more so, seeing as jaybirds have feathers:). Especially the "'raptors" in "Jurassic Park". Even reading "Raptor Red" (Bakker's description of Red had her nekkid; I'll give him credit, though, because he HAS drawn feathery dromaeosaurs and it wasn't known then for sure that non-avian dinosaurs did have feathers, much less dromaeosaurs). It's just an odd sense that nekkid dromaeosaurs are just wrong to my sense of What Is Right In The World. Skies tend to be blue and grass green (unless one is in the middle of a field in Kentucky in the middle of spring storm season during a tornado warning, in which case the grass tends to be more bluish than the sky is, but we're all fscked up in Kentucky anyways, especially with the weather), cats tend not to give birth to puppies, and by God/dess, deinonychs should have proper feathers:)...wow, things have come a long way. Especially the last two years. We live in interesting times, and not entirely in the means of a Chinese curse (though those who keep wanting to think birds aren't dinosaurs might disagree with me, especially in light of some Chinese fossils:)...)
Yeah, I have told him to take me off his list" Then he can be fined for continuing to call you. I wish I knew where to look this stuff up, but this was a big deal when I was working for a company that wrote auto-dialers for call centers.
Fined a good amount, at that--$500 per offense, $1500 per offense (if you can prove it was a willful offense--in other words, they knew damn well they were doing a Bad Thing and did it anyways).
Once you say the magic words "Please put me on your do not call list and send me a copy of your do not call policy", they are supposed to maintain your name on a do-not-call list for ten years, and they are supposed to provide a copy of the do-not-call policy on request. If they call you after you've requested to be put on a do-not-call list, or if they claim they don't have a list or policy, you have officially got them by the balls and can go directly to court and claim your $500 (or $1500, if you can show there's been a pattern of abuse of this kind with the company and people have successfully sued them under the law--ChemLawn and AT&T are fairly notorious for this).
In most states, $500-$1500 is small enough that you can actually file in small claims court--no lawyers required. If the company doesn't send someone to court, you can get a summary judgement and the judge can actually put a lien out on the company to pay you your money (even garnishing profits if necessary), because if they don't pay they are officially in contempt of court.
There is a very thorough page at Junkbusters, including a handy little script that lists literally EVERYTHING you can potentially screw a telemarketer over with on that law (not just refusing to put you on a do-not-call list, btw-- collection and/or telemarketing calls after 9 pm local time are also illegal, for starters). Needless to say, I do use the Junkbusters script, and telemarketers learn one way or another that when I say I don't want any bloody calls I damned well mean I don't want any calls, damnit:)=
Actually toll roads provide a streamlined/better route to drive. This is more like saying "Pay me money if you want to use this better/higher fidelity music player." This is a completely different statement than "I know you think you bought it but you are only allowed to play it on this one particular device."
Again, I don't know where you live, but more often than not (at least in the part of the US I'm in) toll roads aren't so much because they're "limited access" but they are toll to pay for road construction bonds (I've posted a much more extensive discussion here--in Kentucky and West Virginia, for example, tolls have been to pay for road construction costs, not for limited access).
I'd dare say that the situation isn't quite the same as with SoDoMI--the latter is far more akin to a protection racket ("buy from us or we send ya up the river and make you Bubba's prison-bitch") than a matter of paying for road bonds.:)
In fact, if memory serves, the reason there are so many toll roads in Chicago is largely to pay for maintenance, so that further blows holes in your argument.
The use of toll roads is completely by choice. I'm not aware of any areas that are _only_ accessible by toll roads. The restrictions of SDMI is completely without choice (except of course for the choice not to buy SDMI related stuff)
I can name a few. Until fairly recently, it was literally impossible to travel to Owensboro, Kentucky without hitting toll roads along the route (unless one wanted to attempt driving on multiple, two-lane roads). There are still sections of Kentucky (especially along the Mountain Parkway) in which it is literally impossible to get to those areas without paying toll, because the Mountain Parkway is the only major access road into those areas (and yes, that includes the two-lane roads that connect to the Mountain Parkway). There are sections along a major interstate in West Virginia where one cannot go without paying toll on the interstate (because there are no other connecting roads, interstate OR two-lane, to the area)--the whole state is mountains, and construction of roads is very expensive there. Until around 1975-1976, you couldn't go north to Louisville on I-65 without hitting toll. Until around 1990 or so, you couldn't go through much of Kentucky on anything better than a two-lane, twisty, guardrail-less goat-track without hitting toll (Kentucky has an extensive parkway system, equivalent in quality to interstate highways, which was almost completely a toll system--nowadays it's almost completely free except for two parkways), especially if you wanted to get to any towns in western Kentucky.
Or, better yet, Chicago.:) I am not making this up--literally every route of access larger than, say, a goat track is toll into and out of Chicago. Yes, this includes even two-lane highways on occasion. This goes out to about fifty miles away from Chicago, and when I first saw it on a road map I stared in disbelief. I have NEVER seen so many toll roads concentrated in one area.:) (Of course, one could make the snide comment that Da Mob is running the toll booths as a protection racket...:)
Well there are toll roads where someone else owns the roads and you have to pay to dive. It is a similar situation with music. Not to say I'm very fond of that particular system myself.
I dunno about where you live, but where I live (Kentucky) and in other places in the US, tolls have typically been placed on highways to pay for the construction costs of the road (especially if the state doesn't think it'll recover costs of construction quickly from things like property bonds, gas taxes, trucker gas tags, etc.).
As a minor note--until a few years ago, Kentucky had the single highest number of toll roads in the US (no less than eight major interstate thoroughfares were toll at one point, including sections of I-65 (the old "Kentucky Turnpike"--when I was very young, parts of I-65 south of Louisville were still toll)...). This has pretty much been reduced to two or three (if memory serves, the Bert T. Combs Parkway and sections of the Mountain Parkway, which still haven't been completely paid for); this is because by now most of the parkways (which are basically the state version of interstate highways--limited access and all--which is important because Kentucky has all of four interstate highways going through it which don't cover most of the state) have been paid for in tolls. (In fact, the parkway system here in Kentucky is good enough that parts of it are being very seriously considered for the proposed I-66 interstate--the infrastructure is already there and paid for, they just need to officially designate it as interstate).
In fact, there are roads in West Virginia that are toll (including interstates) for the exact same reason--West Virginia is a poor state (even poorer than Kentucky is) and about the only way they can afford to build interstates is to recover construction fees via tolls (construction costs also tend to be expensive there because you're dealing with building interstates in mountains--I honestly think there might be three acres of flat land in the whole of West Virginia:) and the cost of mountain construction is also a major factor in why the Mountain Parkway is still toll in Kentucky).
Any students threatened by such a policy should notify the administration that discount calling card services can be used to the same effect... Heads up on that one- I was an Over the Road truck driver for many years, payphone providers regularly block access to the 1-800 numbers used to connect to discount calling cards. It would be trivial for the campii (sp?) to do the same thing.
First off, it may be trivial, but it's also quite illegal. You see, legally, telephone providers (including universities and payphone providers) cannot block access to 1-800 numbers for calling cards, 10-10-xxx numbers, etc. because of several laws (including the Telecommunications Act of 1996, mandating that phone companies open up local lines to competition) and because of telephone companies' special legal status of a common carrier.
This is not to say that phone companies don't do it illegally, though. Many university phone providers illegally block 1-800 access numbers and 10-10-xxx access numbers; COCOT pay phones (COCOTS are small, for-profit telephone companies outside the local monopolies that run pay phone services in which the person who allows the phone on his property gets a considerable cut--in fact, many of the same parties that run COCOT pay phones also run university phone systems) are downright infamous for blocking equal access, as are hotel telephone services; occasionally, one of the "big boy" telcos will do it as well (I've run into GTE pay phones at Bristol Motor Speedway that will not accept access to other phone companies--neither by calling card nor by 10-10-xxx number--though fortunately they've not figured out how to block personal 1-800 numbers yet:).
If your university/pay phone/etc. IS blocking 1-800 access numbers for collect calls or calling cards, and/or if it blocks 10-10-xxx phone numbers, give a call to your state's Public Utilities Commission (it is normally in the phone book in the information section or in the Blue Pages). Explain that the telco is blocking equal access by blocking 10-10-xxx or calling-card access (whichever applies)--as noted, this is flatly illegal, and it is one of the few things that PSCs and the FCC (which regulates the telephone industry) will clue-by-four telephone companies over (some COCOT operators have actually lost their "license" to operate a telephone company because they blocked equal access).
I suspect that most universities that use these COCOT-style services as "dorm telephone service" aren't aware of the laws regarding equal access, and think of it as a "business agreement" much like they'd see an exclusive contract with a soft-drink distributor. Alas, Coke and Pepsi distributors generally aren't subject to common-carrier laws like telcos are:)
You'll also want to contact the phone company you have calling-card access with (or whom you get 10-10-xxx access through) and notify them that your university (or COCOT phones) are blocking access to alternate providers. Many long-distance companies are all too happy to sic the FCC on folks who illegally block 1-800 calling-card access and/or 10-10-xxx access (AT&T among them).
More info than you ever cared to see about telcos, and the laws affecting them, here, and info specifically on equal access here and h ere and even a cute little Postscript complaint sticker that gives info about the laws regarding equal access.:)
Slashdot Mirror
Re: The Handmaid's Tale:
Actually, I have read it. I can truthfully say that it is probably the scariest book I have ever read, putting nearly everything Stephen King has ever done to shame ;)
(Seriously...A lot of people don't realise just how close we ARE to such a scenario, and (minor spoiler) we don't even need fundies launching a well-orchestrated coup-de-etat for it...they can pretty much get what they want by subverting governments up to the state level, then having the states call for a Constitutional Convention. It should interest the fine readers of Slashdot that part of the platform of two of the larger Religious Right (or Religious Reich, if you prefer--I'm trying to keep the level of vitriol so that there's a chance those who need to read it (read: the fundies) might do so) groups involves a mix of "stealth" candidates (who don't reveal their links to the Religious Right till elected) and going into stuff like school-board elections and such where there is not only a historically low voter turnout but also the chance to basically "get 'em while they're young" (this is important, especially if you have ever read statistics on walkaways...most kids who are members of coercive groups are raised in them, and unless either their parents walk out or something comes along to clue-by-four them to the point that they cannot have faith in the coercive group anymore, kids who are raised in coercive groups tend to not walk away...spontaneous walkaways, if they don't happen by the early teens, are very rare indeed).
Incidentially..."getting them while they're young" is specifically why groups like the UnChristian Coalition and the FRC and the AFA-affiliated group Family-Friendly Libraries are pushing for censorship of nearly all media that younguns can get a hold of. They basically want to block all viewpoints OTHER than the fundamentalist view (those of you who've done your reading on coercive groups know that this is a big technique they use--block off all info from the outside world, then you have no "reality checks" on the codswallop they feed you) so that, hopefully, the kids will grow up to be good fundies and good little "soldiers in the Army of Gawd". This is why they're pushing homeschooling like crazy in ANY community where schools are having trouble or a tragedy has occured (yes, they're being little predators taking advantage of tragedies like Columbine...as an aside: It is an actual, stated agenda of several Religious Right groups to eventually dismantle the public school system altogether, and thus force kids to go to sectarian schools or to homeschooling...as another aside: Anywhere from 50%-75% of homeschooling groups and homeschooling curriculum are fundamentalist-controlled--a LARGE number of "homeschool curricula" are actually the A-Beka curriculum (the exact same curriculum used in the vast majority of fundamentalist "Christian" schools, and which has an extremely hard Religious Right bent). It's also been outright stated by both Religious Right groups and many of the fundy-run homeschool groups that "indoctrination in the ways of the Lord" is literally more important to them than giving their children a decent education...and as noted before, these folks are masters at lying and at taking advantage of folks when they're scared and/or angry about something...and people WONDER why the public schools are going to shite).
This is why it's really, really important for folks--especially regular folks like you and me--to wake up and do something about it like educating others, voting (if you have to write in Dunkelzahn the fraggin' Dragon, vote anyways), etc. Otherwise, we are going to end up with something like out of The Handmaid's Tale, only probably worse (instead of [minor spoiler] a bunch of Native American and other "minority" cultures studying old Gilead like we study the Renaissance it'll probably end up in a nuclear war--some of these groups literally believe that they will be raptured up and then the world will be blown to smithereens in nuclear hellfire, and they see the destruction of the world as a Good Thing...).
Warning: If you are of anything even remotely resembling a "fundamentalist" mindset, you will probably find this post flame-ish at best. You will probably also want to scroll down, because there is probably very little I could do to show you just HOW you are being led about (even to the point of showing you examples of how your own leaders have outright lied to you). I can only say, in this case, that I feel very sorry for you and that I hope that whatever god or gods may exist may take pity on you--especially since the actions of those who lead you are probably against everything the founders of your religions stood for.
I will also forewarn that I am in a generally pissy mood to begin with tonight, and many of my statements may come out more harshly than I meant them to. My apologies. I've had a bad day, and a bad temper to go along with it (I had to deal with Hellsouth about a problem which has been going on for well-nigh over three years). If things sting too bad, I suggest you take heed of Yshua's example and turn the other cheek and forgive me my tresspasses.
Now that THAT disclaimer has been taken care of...
Some anonymous coward dun said:
Assuming that you aren't an outright shill that is astroturfing Slashdot in support of fundy viewpoints--something which I cannot discount, unfortunately, because it is a fairly well-known tactic that is used by Religious Right groups on occasion--allow me to correct some misguidings and rip a few new holes in your argument.
First off:
Well, for starters, I hate to tell you, but the major pusher of censorware in the debates nationally are not "concerned families" but rather multi-million-dollar funded PACs and pressure groups that have as an explicit goal the establishment of a fundamentalist Christian theocracy in the United States.
Let me repeat that for you: The vast majority of groups that are pushing censorware in libraries and whatnot are multi-million-dollar PACs and pressure groups that have, as an explicit goal, the establishment of a fundamentalist Christian theocracy in the United States .
Yes, you heard that right. They want to set up a fundamentalist Christian version of Taliban Afghanistan, up to and including bringing back Old Testament punishments for such things as homosexuality, sex outside of church-sanctioned marriages, and even "being fresh" to one's parents.
If you want to learn for yourself just how well funded these groups are and just how MANY of them are interlinked, go here and read up all about the Coalition for National Policy (basically the "think-tank" of the Religious Right in the United States; it is invitation-only, and contains many "fortune 500" individuals and state and national legislators). Then go here for some hard info on many of the Religious Right groups and their real agenda...or here or here (or here for a special page for those who've seen how destructive and utterly un-Christian the Religious Right is--I'll get to that in a sec).
For your info, by the way, the major folks pushing it in Holland are a little group called the Family Research Council. They were set up specifically as the "lobbying" wing of a group called Focus on the Family after the IRS threatened to yank FoF's tax-exempt status (it was set up under the same exemption as a church, and thus they aren't supposed to be doing political lobbying). One of the names you might recognise from them is Gary Bauer, their head; he recently did a failed run for the presidency. One of their favourite tactics, by the way, is stuff with stealth candidates who don't reveal links to the Religious Right till they're elected; they are also far, far from being merely a "concerned parent's group" (they are extremely homophobic, push very, very heavily for the entire Religious Right agenda, and incidentially the head of FoF is a "Christian reconstructionist" who thinks the US should be a theocracy complete with religious tests for government office). You can find out more info here or find a big ol' archive of their writing to their membership here.
If you want to know more about the Religious Right's agenda in general, I've put a much longer post here that even goes on about some groups that folks don't traditionally associate with the Religious Right (like, oh, Home Shopping Network's links with the Religious Right, or NASCAR driver Jeff Gordon's links, or the many links the PMRC has with the Religious Right).
Oh, and while we're on the subject of "protecting their families from harmful things"...you'd think if they were really interested in that, they'd be pushing for the Convention on the Rights of the Child to be ratified...but no...they're one of many fundy groups across the US that have lobbied specifically to KEEP it from being ratified, because they think it'll take away their right to force their ways on their kids, forcibly "exorcise" their kids, beat them, etc. (By the way, the US is one of two nations that still hasn't ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child. The other nation, Somalia, has a reasonable excuse for not ratifying it as it has no working government right now.)
For THAT matter, you'd think they'd work extra hard to protect their families from such destructive things as Bible-based cults (which do everything to isolate their members from birth, use outright deception to recruit members and keep them, and which are every bit as destructive as Scientology is--I've actually put up a post here comparing practices between the two if you odn't believe me, so you can look at the hard evidence for yourself). But no, they don't do that--they actively promote many of the Bible-based cults, because half the Religious Right groups could well be considered coercive in and of themselves and most of their hard-core membership is gotten from people in Bible-based cults (often people who have been members for generations and literally isolated and indoctrinated since birth--there's a college that has been set up for "Christian" homeschooled youths to train them to be politicians for the Religious Right), and their entire mindset shows just HOW cultic the whole mess is.
And before you tell me I don't know what the hell I'm talking about...I do. All too well. I just happen to be a walkaway from a Bible-based cult my family has been involved in for several generations; I was raised up into the whole spiel, and found out quite accidentially at age 12 that I had pretty much been fed lies...I found out later (partly from info regarding Scientology that included "is your group coercive?" checklists) that the group I was formerly involved in WOULD count as a Bible-based cult. The group I walked away from also happens to be one of the largest fundamentalist churches in Kentucky, and is the de facto center of the Religious Right in that state...trust me when I know all too well what I'm talking about here, and I still suffer after-effects from it. I would move heaven and earth if it meant some kid didn't have to go through the absolute hell I went through as a kid, being abused in the name of God. I'd love them not to wince whenever discussions of Christianity were brought up because it makes you flashback to just how fragging twisted some of the things that were done to you were. I'd love for them not to be scared shitless that the very groups you walked away from were working hard to put the entire nation under the same hell you walked away from--complete with force of arms, if they were to get power.
And yes, I can say that as a direct result of that I've been hurt by the Religious Right and it's just a wee bit personal to me. Then again, I think any kid who's been abused by another has the right to be pissed, and more to the point, to work to make sure that abuser can't ever hurt another kid ever again.
There has been only two studies that have ever shown a negative effect regarding pornography in general--the Meese report, which Edwin Meese III literally bullied through and had to have rewritten after the scientists he hired reached exactly the opposite conclusion, and the Surgeon-General's report on pornography in 1987 (by Dr. C.E. Koop--a Surgeon-General who was also appointed by Reagan, who pandered to the Religious Right on many issues). (As a minor aside--Edwin Meese III is a raving fundy, and is heavily involved with the Religious Right [see here for more info]. In fact, he's SO much in with the Religious Right that he's a member of the very secretive Coalition for National Policy [here's his info from the membership list here], and is involved in a Religious Right group known as the Heritage Foundation [more info on the Heritage Foundation here and here [the last article also contains info on another Religious Right group Meese is involved in]; as a minor aside, "Heritage" is a very common "code word" for fundamentalist/Religious Right interests, along with "family" and "Christian Life Center"]. In fact, he was put in specifically by Ronald Reagan, who was largely elected due to the Religious Right and who started the not-so-great Republican tradition of pandering to the Religious Right...needless to say, Edwin Meese isn't impartial, wasn't impartial, and was looking specifically for evidence he wanted to have "scientific proof" for a very specific agenda of the Religious Right in the US. Even worse, there is a fair amount of evidence from his own public speeches to indicate Edwin Meese may be a "Christian Reconstructionist" [Christian Reconstructionism is the canard that the Founding Fathers intended the United States to be a fundamentalist Christian theocracy and that it is the duty of Reconstructionists to "re-establish" this theocracy]; info here. In other words, he flatly had an agenda and bent the evidence towards it.)
Most scientists who have studied human sexuality, and specifically stuff relating to porn and to sex crimes, see so many holes in the Meese Report that it's not funny. There are no less than five studies which indicate that pornography isn't harmful (at least to normal people); more to the point, many of the statistics which have been argued to show that porn is harmful could also be argued to indicate that people into certain categories of porn are likely to be pathological in and of themselves.
A rather informal example is with the Japanese, and in particular, hentai comics (which feature sex and adult situations). Hentai is pretty popular and readily available in Japan, even to under-18's; some of it goes farther than most US porn does (Playboy just shows naked women, for example). The Japanese percentage of sex crimes is actually somewhat below that of the US, even considering that the Japanese are generally a somewhat more repressed society than the US is.
As a minor aside--rape and child abuse (except for very, very exceptional circumstances in the latter, and even often there) aren't so much crimes of sex as of power--in other words, the main component of these crimes and the motivation for them isn't so much sex as, well, power and domination over another by degrading them in the lowest way possible. Rapists are often found to be hostile against women period, and so rape them as a dominance thing; same thing with the vast majority of child abuse (the major exception may be child abuse in which there has been found actual pedophilia--a sexual paraphilia in which the person is actually sexually attracted to children--but even then, there is a definite dominance streak to this). Also, it's been found that treatments to try to stop rapists and child-molesters from having sex by attempting to curb the sex-drive don't work very well (again, the major exception to this is child molestation in which it's been found actual pedophilia exists)--they simply will rape their victims with objects or will find other ways to "get it up". This is because they're using their gonads as weapons--it's like trying to castrate someone to cure them of beating hell out of someone else.
There is a known correlation between rape (and to an extent, child molestation as well--most notably incest) and other violent behaviours--such as torture of animals when young, assault, etc. Most of these folks seek out violent porn and violent entertainment in general because they're generally prone to violence to begin with; there is some evidence that in extreme cases there may be an actual defect in brain chemistry to account for this. Needless to say, castrating a rapist or child molester isn't going to fix them, and neither is depriving them of pornography.
Another interesting statistic--there are some reports to suggest that there is actually a higher rate of child abuse (including incest) in households in which most of the family are members of coercive groups such as Bible-based cults or Scientology. This, again, probably has a lot to do with the whole dominance thing; coercive groups, which rely VERY much on a "master/servant" relationship to begin with, can't help things much. (In Bible-based cults especially, the whole "spare the rod and spoil the child" bit can't help either.) Based on my own experience (which fortunately did not include sexual abuse, but did include physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual abuse) I'm inclined to agree with this, if only because of all the other kinds of abuse which are the norm in such families.
First, a primer about "addiction". Addiction, in the purest sense (and the medical sense) of the word, is where the body chemistry changes to require the use of a drug to maintain normal body function; this tends to occur with narcotics, cocaine, nicotine, most of your "downer" drugs (including alcohol, benzodiazepines [Valium, etc.] and phenobarbital and friends), amphetamines, and (to a lesser degree) caffeine. (The "nicotine cravings" you get if you don't get your smoke, or the "coffee migraines" longtime coffee drinkers get if they don't get their caffeine, are actually withdrawal symptoms resulting from the fact your body has become dependent on that substance to maintain normal function.)
"Psychic addiction" as commonly described (where no actual physical addiction occurs) is a misnomer, and denotes a state where people feel they "need" something to "function". There is no real biological need for it, merely a "craving"; hence the proper term is "psychic dependence" since the effect is more of a "crutch".
Now, in some cases, this does occur; however, "addiction" has been used to describe "psychic dependence" for so many things (from overeating to sex to the Internet) that it's patently ridiculous. Better to say "obsession" because this is closer to what is happening.
I'm certain there have been a few cases where someone has become obsessed with porn to the exclusion of family. This has also happened, by the way, with TV...with the Internet...with religion (no, I'm not making this up--people in coercive religious groups WILL participate to the exclusion of all else including their family)...with food...with jogging...with dieting...and with literally anything else that makes humans "feel good". Does this mean we ban everything that humans find pleasurable? No.
As a minor aside--there is some evidence that people who do develop "obsessions" like this do have a genetic tendency to do so; it's basically a minor brain-chemical defect, much like a milder version of obsessive-compulsive disorder. Turns out that in a lot of cases, they can be treated with the same drugs used for OCD too (this has been especially useful in overeaters and in folks with anorexia and bulimia). It also turns out that most folks who do develop "obsessions" that could be termed "psychic dependence" can, again, develop "psychic dependence" on literally anything that makes them feel good (to an extent, this is why people tend to gain weight when quitting cigarettes; there is a measure of psychic dependence in cigarette smoking (along with the physical dependence), largely related to the rituals of lighting up, etc. when smoking, and many people tend to overeat to compensate with "crutches")...this is related to very, very primal instincts and emotional triggers in humans relating to comfort. One could literally say that small kids can develop psychic dependence on their "woobies" or other comfort-toys ;)
Well, people don't need the Internet or Slashdot, either, and obsessive use of the Internet can certainly be non-healthful and harmful (ask any student who has ever flunked out of a semester in college because of excessive IRCing/MUDding/Everquest/MP3-scarfing/etc.). Doesn't mean we need to ban Slashdot or the Internet, though.
In fact, sometimes porn can actually be helpful to a relationship--such as when a couple gets ideas from a bit of pornography to try in their own bedrooms. Such things have actually saved marriages in past, and an increasing number of marriage counselors will actually suggest to couples who have lost lustre in their love-lives to *gasp!* rent porn movies or read articles in Penthouse (or alt.sex.*) to get ideas.
No, we aren't suggesting Junior be made to watch porn. For starters, he's probably not going to be terribly interested and will go "ooh, ickie"--exactly the same way even most adults will go "ooh, ickie" when they see porn that doesn't match their own particular sexual preference (most straight girls gross out at lesbian porn; same with guys and man-on-man pics; I think most of us not into boinking goats go "ooh, ickie" at http://www.goatse.cx, or those of us not into fisting go "ooh, ickie" at sites featuring fisting...I could go on). It doesn't scar us for life--neither kids nor adults.
I honestly expect most kids who even accidentially hit a porn site (which is unlikely if Mommy or Daddy is actually bothering to parent the little monster instead of using the Internet as an electronic babysitter the same way they used tapes of Barney the Insipid Purple Demon From Hell when the little monster was a tyke of 3 or the same way they use Teletubbies tapes with his sister of 2...and even more unlikely unless the little monster is precocious enough to be searching out warez or cracks, in which case you've got a wee bit more to worry about than little Junior maybe being exposed to nekkid women ;) are going to either be grossed out or very, very confused...in which case (assuming Mommy and Daddy are doing their job, and not using the Internet as an electronic babysitter the same way they use Barney tapes and Teletubbies and the entire collected works of Disney [both pre-Eisner and in the Dark Ages]) Mommy and Daddy explain that this is something not meant for Junior to see, and they distract him and steer him to something a bit more appropriate like YaHooligans or the like.
Just like what Mommy and Daddy do (if they're being good parents) if Junior accidentially picks up Madonna's "Sex" in the library. Or if Junior is riding in the car with Mommy in downtown and passes the Show-world Dance Emporium which features "Topless And Bottomless Men And Women". Or if Junior (Cthulhu forbid) sees two doggies Doing The Nasty in front of Goddess and everyone.
If you're doing your job as a parent, it's not going to permanently warp Junior's mind. If he grows up at age 16 and starts raping cattle despite your best job, you can safely assume he was probably bent to begin with (and if you do your job as a parent and actually parent the kids instead of using electronic babysitters or keeping your face buried in stuff while the kids are being babysat by the entire cast of Donkey Kong and each and every one of the characters in each and every game Squaresoft has ever released, you will probably notice the initial signs that the child is Seriously Bent and you will hopefully get help for that kid before he hurts someone).
Unfortunately, a lot of people are too bloody lazy to parent their kids, and are all too content to let folks with horrible, destructive agendas (like the FRC) parent their kids because they get fed the line "It's for the good of the children" (and these people are too busy with the grownup equivalent of electronic babysitters they don't even bother to research that these people are very, very, very good at lying or covering up their bad parts when they have to). No offense, but those kids would honestly be better off being raised by wolves IMNSHO--at least the kids would learn how to get along in a structured society, and have loving parents that gave a damn for them. (Yeah, they'd have a hell of a time getting along if/when they returned to human society...but half the kids now have a hell of a time, period.) And don't even get me started on those parents who look at their kids not so much as humans but as pawns or tools or (worse yet) all-so-much-more cannon-fodder for the Army of Gawd...if anything, those are as bad if not worse than those who just use TV and the net as a babysitter, because those kids get warped into more Borg just like their folks if they aren't lucky enough to have just enough of a factor that leads them to walk away from it all...
Al "I Invented The Internet!" Gore dun said:
No, no, no...you misunderstand...
We're not talking "vegetarian food" like tofu and soy-milk and "meat substitute" and GardenBurgers...
We're talking "vegetarian food" as in, say, Emeril "The Dick Vitale Of Cooking, Baby" Lagasse's "Emeril Lagasse Cooks Vegetarian"...
"First, you get a vegetarian. BAM! Git back dere in dat grindah!"
;)
Some anonymous coward dun said:
I was fortunate to get out of dissections in biology (long story--basically, we ended up going through three teachers in a semester, and none stayed long enough to get to the dissection section) but the thing about "dead carcasses" puzzles me..hell, at least they're DEAD.
So instead, you eat very-much-living plant lungs and plant fetuses and plant-stomachs and plant, erm, naughty-bits? ;) (Greatest way to troll those "meat-is-murder" folks: Explain to them how those soybeans they're eating are essentially plant abortions. ;)
Seriously, though...realistically, the idea that meat comes from animals doesn't make me sick, really (though I think that some practices in factory-farming need to be done away with because they're not really good for the animals OR people eating them). Then again, I used to live next door to a working beef-cattle farm and have relatives who hunt for meat, so that could explain why I don't go "My god, you're eating BAMBI!" when I decide to eat some venison. ;9 (Then again, I also know someone who turned vegetarian after his pet pig at his grandma's farm ended up being the main course one night...and I can only imagine the trauma caused by the sign "PET EATING RABBITS" that used to be up by a rabbit-breeders close to where I used to live... :)
Realistically, though, about the ONLY thing that really gets me physically ill is, well, maggots (I literally can't watch the infamous "birth scene" in the 1986 remake of "The Fly" because I get physically ill). As long as the meat isn't flyblown I'm ok. ;)
Generic-man dun said:
Yup, they still sell King Vitaman (it's actually fairly easy to find here in Kentucky--I know I've seen it at Kroger's, Winn Dixie, AND Meijer's (the three big stores in Louisville) and odds are they also carry it at Food Lion, Foodland, and Piggly Wiggly (the other three big stores here in Kentucky, just not in Louisville); I can prolly find out for sure in the case of Foodland in about a month or so). I am all too familiar with the stuff, having been fed it by parents who seemed to have an outright paranoia about iron-deficiency anemia. :P
Oddly, the stuff isn't generic like Malt-O-Meal; it's actually made by Quaker (you know, the oats folks) which explains much on why they were promoting the healthy aspects of it...
King Vitaman doesn't quite count as a blast-from-the-past for me, though. A REAL blast-from-the-past would be, oh, Count Chocula or Frankenberry or (gods help me) QUISP (yes, so help me Cthulhu, they sell all three here, though the latter usually only in the big hypermarkets or at Sam's and super-Wal-Marts).
And, again, I see how I was deprived as a kid...I never had Captain Crunch till I was over drinking age, because my parents never bought it (it was "too expensive", so we'd get tons of Apple Jacks and Cheerios and King Vitaman and (if money was REALLY tight) the Malt-O-Meal knockoffs of Apple Jacks and Fruit-Loops). I am probably one of three people who has been born and lived all their life in the United States who has never, ever, not ONCE had Tang (I am not joking, either; my parents were somehow convinced that if we had ANY drinks with real sugar in them, we would become instantly diabetic, so Tang was right out; Kool-Aid wasn't because you could make it with saccharine or Nutrasweet [gee, folks, thanks; replace my (minimal) risk of diabetes with a greater chance of cancer and PMS, not to mention that thanks to all the Nutrasweet I won't have to worry about embalming my body thanks to all the formaldehyde...]). I still don't know exactly what the stuff tastes like. :) I also never had Cream of Wheat till this year (my folks always having gotten either good old oatmeal or grits).
Oddly (tying in with the prize thing), though, I was all too familiar with Ovaltine in my youth (another fun drink of which the "healthy" virtues have been promoted to death). Yes, they still did the crap with the cap lids for prizes. Yes, I sympathised with Ralphie all too much in "A Christmas Story" because, likewise, I'd drunk gallons of Ovaltine as a kid. And most folks have never SEEN Ovaltine. Hmph. :)
Behkat dun said:
Agreed. Myself, I tend to like power installs (this is the reason, by the way, why I tend to loathe Redhat--it's almost too "for newbies" friendly for my liking) but I would recommend the "easy install" flavours of Linux in a heartbeat for someone who is new to Linux and isn't one of those folks like myself (who is used to taking apart their computer blindfolded and whose computer has long since been transmogrified into a FrankenBox).
Myself, I'd use Slackware or SuSE or Debian to set up my box, because there is a lot of stuff I like to tweak.
If my sister were installing (she's not too comfy with mucking about in the innards of her computer yet, but she IS comfortable with Microsoft OS upgrades--and I don't CARE what anyone says, a fresh install of Win95 or Win98 is not trivial if you don't know what you're doing or (especially) you have hardware for which there aren't standard drivers packed with the OS), I'd hand her one of the "designed for newbies" distros--like Redhat or Caldera or SuSE 6.3 (YaST2 does have a nice, Redhat-ish GUI setup).
The one thing we're missing, IMHO, is a distro where, well, someone who has to consult "For Dummies" books about Win98 apps can install with a minimum of fuss and alcohol/antacids/[insert your drug of choice here]. I honestly think we're going to be a while on this, largely because even bloody Microsoft isn't there yet. About the only OS that IS there yet is the install of MacOS 8 (which is damn near as close to idiot-proof as one is going to get, methinks--largely because Macs themselves are largely idiot-proof, and Macs generally do not have a ton and a half of funky and possibly not-exactly-standard crap in them the way the average PC does). Until PCs become roughly as standardised as Macintoshes of modern lineage are, you aren't going to get something totally idiot-friendly. The best option for those folks all along has been, and I suspect will be for an awfully long time, to (a) have an OS preinstalled and ready-to-run and (b) have a nice friendly geek/neighbour's kid/knowledgeable relative/etc. come by and do the OS and hardware upgrades, and maybe the software ones too (depending on how knowledgeable they are).
Hell, I don't care if they're using a bloody IMac for Cthulhu's sake--I still would not trust my mother-in-law, or the lady for whom I would occasionally do computer upgrades for (whose main vocation wasn't computers, but Tole painting, and who was a complete and utter computer virgin who'd "heard of this Internet thing and that I could trade painting patterns with people"), to do ANYTHING hardware or software wise that would involve mucking with the computer's internals (OS, software, OR hardware).
Hence, I think the important thing right now (at least for the "virgins") is to push for more computer companies to have Linux pre-installed, and to make things maybe a bit more uniform for the newbies so they know where everything IS.
For the rest of us...that's going to be preference, pretty much. Some of us like standardised stuff (and that may be best for business, which has to be pretty newbie-friendly) and some of us are frankly going to want to be able to do everything ourselves. It's much like cars--some folks build their own cars and go on rod-runs, some people like zero-maintenance Korean rice-burners, and a lot of folks like something kind of in the middle (like a Saturn--it can be zero-maintenance if you like, but the car is put together well enough that Saturday-mechanic maintenance is not out of the question if you like to fix up your car yourself).
As for distros...Redhat and such seem to be the closest to "zero-maintenance", though they aren't there yet. Slackware (and to an extent, Debian) are there for folks who still like to build their own. SuSE is probably the best compromise I've seen between the two (it can literally be run in either "Hyundai user" or "performance driver" mode, and it's stock installer is basically for "Saturn drivers who at least know how to fill the tires and change oil"). This is Good--you're never going to satisfy everyone, just like you'll never satisfy everyone with cars. ;)
Tackhead dun said:
Maybe because, oh, there are a really surprising number of groups that claim to be "Christian" yet use the exact same coercive tactics as Scientology does? (Caveat--I speak from experience on more than one front here. First off, I'm a walkaway from a "Bible-based cult" which uses techniques similar to Scientology. Secondly, it was (in part) various FAQs on coercive groups including Scientology that led me to realise the general techniques used in coercive groups in general. Thirdly, I've lurked off and on on ARS since the "Cancelpoodle" scandal (I was a reader of the various net.abuse groups, and the whole thing led me directly to ARS)...just so folks know.)
The thing is, most folks who are in deep with the various Religious Right groups like FRC and so forth are also members of various Bible-based groups that use coercive tactics. Not only that, but some of the "higher-demand" Religious Right groups may in and of themselves be borderline coercive groups (I know that concerns have been mentioned regarding Promise Keepers, for one). A lot of the issues re coercive tactics between "Bible-based cults" and Scientology are very similar, so (at least to me) it's no surprise whatsoever that they both push for censorware.
Warning: The following comparison will probably not have a whole lot of relevance unless you are intimately familiar with how coercive groups work, and especially not unless you are familiar with the particular coercive tactics used in Scientology and/or Bible-based coercive groups. If you are not familiar with either of these groups' tactics, I strongly recommend that you read Xenu.net (for info on some of the particular coercive tactics used in Scientology and some of the terminology) and Walk Away (for info on some specific tactics used in Bible-based coercive groups), then come back and read. Otherwise it's probably not going to make terrible amounts of sense, especially in regards to effects of the coercion.
Now...I can give just a brief list of Scientology coercive tactics and their analogues in Bible-based cults:
Scientology: Essentially all of your problems are the result of "body engrams" resulting from when you were dumped into Kilahuea 73 million years ago by the evil Xenu. This includes doubt in Scientology.
Bible-based cult analogue: All of your problems, including doubt in the church or your minister, are the result of demons attempting to oppress or possess you. (By the way, this along with the next two sections is commonly termed "Deliverance Ministry".)
Scientology: The only ones worthy to be called human are clears. Everything that could bring negative body engrams--including Supressive Persons who say Scientology is bunk--are to be avoided.
Bible-based cult analogue: Your group is the only ones who are truly saved--everyone else is lukewarm at best, and most are outright in league with Satan. You should avoid all media not done by us, only do business with folks in our church, and vote for whom we tell you to--because everyone else is oppressed or possessed by demons, and info from outside can lead to demonic posession. Those who say bad things about our church are probably demon-possessed.
Scientology: You have to be constantly on alert for bad engrams. You have to do lots of clearing sessions; if someone is acting like an SP, they probably need an intensive "clearing session" whether they want it or not. (Lisa McPherson being held against her will to be "cleared" is the likely cause of her death.)
Bible-based cult analogue: All doubts are the results of demons trying to oppress you; you must constantly "pray the demons out". If someone is acting rebellious, they are probably demon-possessed and need to be exorcised to get the demons out. (Tens of children each year are killed in such "exorcisms"; many more people are probably driven insane, much as Lisa McPherson was before her death. The Walk Away site, mentioned above, has a rather dramatic [and all too factual] description of an exorcism as practiced by most "Bible-based" coercive groups.)
Scientology: We must Clear The Planet, and those who oppose us must be stopped by any means necessary, including dead-agenting. It is permissible to deceive people to get them in for becoming Clears.
Bible-based cult analogue: We are in a war with Satan, and those who oppose us must be stopped by any means necessary. Deception and libeling are perfectly permissible weapons to use in the war. (This is actually called "Heavenly Deception" in some Bible-based cults; the Bible-based cult version of "dead agenting" can be seen in most fundy literature. Bible-based cults have also been known to use deceptive measures (such as "free pizza parties", "anti-drug talks" by athletes associated with fundy groups held in schools, and "hell house" haunted-houses in which people are forced--as in not allowed to leave till it's over--to listen to sermons) to recruit people, especially teens, into such groups.)
Scientology: You need folks to watch out for you, especially to make sure you don't have any bad engrams and to make sure you keep being an OT. They are expected to check up on you and report if you might be becoming a SP.
Bible-based cult analogue: You are divided into groups of five or so, and expected to meet every week for Bible-discussions and to make sure that you aren't backsliding. Your group is expected to check up on you, and report back and take action in case you do backslide. (This is known as "shepherding" or "Cell Churches"; it is increasingly recognised as one of the single most destructive practices of Bible-based cults. It is this practics which is causing serious concern about Promise Keepers.)
Scientology: OTs are expected to influence their legislatures to make sure nothing negative to Scientology passes, and in fact OTs are supported. Lobbying wings exist to fight things that Scientology may disapprove of, often not revealing their links to the main group (such as organisations protesting "psychiatric abuse"). OTs are the only truly fit leaders and eventually OTs will take over the world.
Bible-based cult analogue: Members are expected to join lobbying groups for "Christian" causes; often, lobbying groups are actually run by deacons or ministers, or based out of the church itself. Voter-guides are provided. Groups are set up, usually "concerned parents" groups or "American heritage" groups, which try to fudge their links to the Bible-based group or the Religious Right at all. Christians are seen as the only fit leaders and it is their destiny to turn the US into a fundamentalist theocracy.
Scientology: Members are often lured in with guidebooks, like "Dianetics", which eventually suggest you come to a processing center to get Cleared. It's not mentioned explicitly that Dianetics is a Scientology book on the adverts.
Bible-based cult analogue: We'll promote books, "hell houses", sponsor rod-runs, etc. that suggest you come to our church to get more info and become a member. We don't mention that we're affiliated, other than being a "Christian" or "Faith-based" group. (This tactic is actually used by the Arthur S. DeMoss Foundation--a hard-right fundamentalist group that supports Christian Reconstructionism and has even supported racist groups--to hawk "Power For Living" as an innocent "guide for getting closer to God" [what it is, in fact, is a book promoting fundamentalist Christianity, and in particular those varieties that go over the line into being coercive groups].)
Scientology: Use famous people to promote Scientology and show how it's made their lives better.
Bible-based cult analogue: Use famous people to promote the group and show how it's made their lives better. (Again, this tactic is used outright by the Arthur S. DeMoss Foundation. Other Bible-based coercive groups have done this too, especially with NFL (American) football players; one player actually seems to have gone insane as a direct result of being involved in a Bible-based cult, and he'd done public speeches on how fundamentalism was a Good Thing beforehand)
Scientology: Psychiatrists, "coercive group info" groups like FACTnet, and folks against Scientology are SPs. One good way to stop them is protests en masse, or suing them into submission so that we own them then keep the site up for folks looking for info on coercive groups. (Scientology actually sued a group that reported on coercive tactics into bankruptcy, then bought the group wholesale.)
Bible-based cult analogue: Gays, women's health providers, anti-censorship groups, and folks who are against us are literally in league with Satan. It is perfectly acceptable to engage in mass protest, or to sue the people claiming that into submission; it's also good to get a name really similar to the group you're fighting so that folks will come to you instead. (This tactic is partly why the American Center for Law and Justice, a group that files lawsuits on behalf of fundamentalist causes, is very similar to the ACLU; it's also why groups like the fundy parents in Paducah are suing nearly the entire entertainment industry (they hope to bankrupt them) and why anti-abortion "counseling centers" get names very similar to women's health providers (sometimes even locating in the same building) so that people will get confused.)
Scientology: It's ok to break the law to advance Scientology.
Bible-based cult analogue: It's ok to break laws to advance the "kingdom of God". (This has shown up everywhere, from outright fraud with the "hell houses", to illegally distributing voter guides in churches, to illegal electioneering IN the churches, to "tax protesters" who refuse to pay taxes because "it supports abortion", to folks who libel and harass people who support gay/les/bi folks being added to civil rights laws, to people who stalk abortion providers...)
Scientology: Don't question what you're being taught. You've got to pay money for each level.
Bible-based cult analogue: Don't question what you're being taught--that's a sign of demonic oppression. You must give at least ten percent, and preferably more, to the church so that we can continue operating. (As an aside--there is evidence that both Scientology and many Bible-based cults are basically money rackets. Hubbard supposedly admitted as much with Scientology; many larger Bible-based cults run networks of TV stations and the like and demand money from their fellowship, and more than a few have been found to be decidedly shifty with their finances.)
Scientology: In Sea Org, you are subject to poor food (beans and rice) and hard work, often doing work around a Scientology office.
Bible-based cult analogue: Members are expected to fast completely (water only), often for long periods (the group I walked away from often had 21-day fasts...to support their damned television station...they also had 40-day fasts that people participated in). "Partial fasts" are done with poor food (the "Mayo Heart Clinic Soup Diet"--which is NOT promoted by the Mayo Clinic, is pretty much nothing but watery cabbage soup, and can actually cause deficiencies in needed nutrients if eaten exclusively for more than two or three days--is often pushed in "partial fasts" in Bible-based cults). Members are expected to participate in church functions (including long revivals extending for tens or even hundreds of days) and are expected to prosyletise often, often going door-to-door.
Want me to list some more examples? ;)
Or, just for fun...get one of the sheets that talks about characteristics in coercive groups. Then compare Scientology to that. Then compare Bible-based cults (as I've described them, and as described on places like Walk Away)...you'll find that the two are nearly identical. About the only major differences are that Scientology has the Sea Orgs (then again, most Bible-based cults are involved in large political networks and have enforcers such as deacons...which is probably worse) and Bible-based cults are even worse as far as deceptive tactics to get you into a group as well as one-on-one mind-control techniques to keep you in and keep you unable to get out. (It also doesn't hurt that there is a very well-funded media industry that caters exclusively to the Religious Right in the US.) The single most destructive practice in Scientology--the idea of "engrams", the constant sessions to clear them, and an almost paranoid avoidance of the non-Clear and involuntary Clearing sessions for SPs trying to leave--is almost identical to the entire practics of deliverance ministry in Bible-based cults (literally the only thing different is the terminology).
You don't hear that much about Bible-based cults, though. Part of it is, well, they've gotten a lot of power. Part of it has to do with, well, the fact they're Bible-based cults--nobody wants to think a Christian group can go coercive, and for some reason "Christian" churches are seen as respectable--they think it's always the WEIRD stuff like Scientology that goes coercive, not the little "Full Gospel" church down the street (that even goes so far as to tell their members who they can and cannot marry, tells them what clothes they can wear, and just happens to be the headquarters of nearly every Religious Right group in the county... :P).
Trust me, though, when I say that the poor sods in the FRC are probably just as brainwashed and lost as your average OT VII is who's spent $300,000 on Clearing sessions and such. :P
Just Some Guy dun said:
Hate to have to bring some things up to dash the illusion there, but there are some things I do need to bring up in light of your venting...
1). The vast majority of groups pushing censorship, and for that matter a lot of flatly ludicrous stuff, are right-wing--specifically, members of various political groups which are basically run by fundamentalist "Christians" in the US. (For that matter, Israel sees the same thing with ultraorthodox "Jews", and darn near every country with a signifigant Islamic population deals with fundamentalist "Moslems" of the two main denominations of their religion. For THAT matter, as I understand it, India's having the same damn problem with fundamentalist "Sikhs" and fundamentalist "Hindus".)
2). For all intents and purposes, there is no functioning left-wing in the United States. The US has literally gone so far to the right (largely because of influence of fundamentalist "Christian" groups, which at one point had pretty much taken over the entire Republican Party apparatus in thirty-four states; they have apparently led to the self-destruction now of a second party [the Reform Party]. It's not all the GOP's fault, though--I'll note that in a minute) that were Richard Nixon to run today on his present political platform, he would be considered a liberal. The most "liberal" parties in the US with any large percentage of voters (the Democratic and Libertarian parties) would be considered right-moderate in most political systems in the industralised world (yes, that includes Canada, too); the largest "conservative" party (the GOP) would be hard-right in nearly any other country's political system, and the second or third-largest "conservative" political party in the US (the US Taxpayer's Party) is, for all intents and purposes, run by extreme far-righters in the US and in fact promotes theocracy as a platform. (The Reform Party, before it basically started destroying itself when Pat Buchanan got considered for nomination, probably fell in between the Republicans and Libertarians; now, for all intents and purposes, the Reform Party will probably end up as two parties, one beign slightly more left-leaning but both still firmly on the right.) One newspaper, which started in the 1800's as a "moderate conservative" paper of the times and has had pretty much the same political bent ever since it started, is now considered one of the hardest-left papers in the US. It would also probably be considered moderate or moderate-left in political spectrums in most industralised countries.
Sad to say, but the political spectrum in the US today is less like other industrialised countries and more like those in which a fair amount of corruption occurs (such as in many "third-world" nations) or which are having very serious problems with fundamentalists trying to subvert the very structure of the government itself (this is certainly true in the US, and in a lot of other places you hear about in the news--like Israel, or Pakistan and India (basically a pissing contest between Muslim fundies and Hindu fundies which could well end up in a nuclear war before it's over with) or Sudan (which is having a rather nasty civil war between Muslim fundies and Christian fundies)).
2a). On a related note, and this is very important to note with anything related to fundy movements in general--most fundy groups, especially so in the US, are basically run by power-hungry individuals. In the US at least (and probably elsewhere--there's real signs of it at least in some ultra-Orthodox communities, and among nations like Iran and Afghanistan especially), many of the people who are members of the various fundy PACs here--and especially the more decidedly active ones--are members of churches that can be described as coercive groups much as Scientology can be described as a coercive group. Many of these groups use various mind-control techniques on their members to not only have them basically allow their minister to think for them, but to specifically "block out" anything that could be averse to what the minister says (these include basically teaching that the people in the church or group are the only ones who are "saved" and that anyone who isn't "saved" is in direct league with Satan; teaching that any doubt is the result of either demonic oppression or (if someone else says it) outright possession and one needs to "pray the doubts out" or have exorcisms performed (often involuntarily); forced confession of "sins" (which have included the involuntary outing of gays in church; most Religious Right groups are homophobic at best and some (like Fred Phelps, or Donald Wildmon, or Kentucky's own Frank Simon) are downright infamous for it); telling members to only do business with "members of like faith" (including printing special directories, like the "Christian Yellow Pages") and to only watch media that is affiliated with the church because all other media sources are "worldly" at best and outright "Satanic" at worst, not to mention businesses; "shepherding" programs and "cell churches" (in most programs, the people are divided into groups of five which, in essence, play "Big Brother" on each other--if someone has doubts, the other members try to work them more into the group, in extreme cases by methods like involuntary exorcisms), and so-called "divine lies" (basically, lying about your goals or at the least being dishonest about them to lure folks in to "win more souls for Christ"--this encompasses everything from "hell house" haunted-houses which are marketed as regular haunted houses for "educational purposes" which in fact are used to make people listen to fundy preaching (and yes, sometimes the doors ARE locked and the people not allowed to leave, so yes, they are in essence forced to listen) to "pep talks" run in high schools by groups that have fundy athletes come in to prosyletise, often on the premise that these are "anti-drug" or "self-esteem" talks (most of the time, these assemblies are mandatory to attend for kids, and often the groups will take innocuous-sounding names like "Athletes Against Drugs" or suchlike to hide their fundy links) to "free pizza parties" held by fundy groups who then hold the kids for hours, not allowing them to leave (it is almost never revealed that the "pizza party" is in fact being run by a fundy group) to "stealth candidates" for political offices (which don't reveal their fundy links till elected)...). Basically, because a lot of these groups ARE essentially Bible-based cults, they can feed their members an amazing amount of horsesheisse and (because they literally have nothing else to "error-check" it with) their followers will swallow it. If anything, most folks involved are to be pitied (the only ones that really deserve hate are probably the leaders who outright manipulate their followers).
There has not been a terrible amount of info on how "Bible-based cults" do manipulate their followers until fairly recently, largely because most folks associate "cults" with "new religions" and most folk haven't wanted to believe that "Christian" groups can and sadly do turn into coercive groups preaching far more of a god of Fear, Hate and Loathing (both of self and others) than a god of love, acceptance, and respect (which is what, at least with those folks whom I've met who I sense actually "get" what Yshua was saying, feel it's supposed to be about anyways). I also expect this is a big reason why most mainstream churches in the US haven't spoken out about "Bible-based cults" except in cases where they've been really extreme (part of this, too, might be because--sadly--coercive tactics are getting into larger and larger denominations; one of the largest fundy denominations in the US, which is in essence a Bible-based cult, was the major source of TV preachers for years and has well over one million members...a recent expose of the "Brownsville Movement" (which is centered at one of the larger churches in the US for this denomination in Pensacola, Florida) using coercive tactics is one of the major exceptions; the Southern Baptists, which have had their entire church head and seminary taken over by the fundamentalist wing of the denomination, are starting to dance close to using coercive tactics though they aren't as bad as the "traditionally" fundy denominations yet); part of that, though, may be because most fundy denominations (and especially those which are basically Bible-based cults) don't have anything to do with most major ecumenical conventions, holding their own separate worldwide conferences because they feel mainstrean Christianity is "lukewarm" at best and outright perverted by Satan at worst).
I'll also note (this is a personal aside, based on my own observations of having grown up in a family of raving fundies and having seen far more than I like of the internals of the Religious Right and fundamentalist groups in the US) that--probably because many of these folks have literally been in these groups for generations (I know of three-generation households in the group I walked away from; also, many of the younger especially are literally isolated from the outside world from birth all the way through college (fundies push homeschooling in large part so that kids CAN be isolated and not see anything that could spur them to walk away; there is now even a college being set up specifically for fundy-homeschooled kids to train them to be "political leaders for Christians", homeschooled kids being perfect fodder because they have literally been raised and brainwashed in Bible-based cults from birth), partly because walkaways from groups one has been raised in are EXTREMELY rare (pretty much most kids walk away when their parents do, or if they are forced out of their homes due to "irreconcilable differences" like the kid discovering he's gay; there are literally no statistics on kids walking away on their own (with no help from parents or exit counselors) from groups they were raised in because it is so rare), and partly because this is all they know as a result...a large percentage of those involved in Bible-based cults and in groups like the FRC are, to put none too fine a term on it, control-freaks. This is probably because the only real model they have IS the preacher, who basically uses coercive tactics (and a hell of a lot of FUD) to keep his flock "in line" and not questioning the preacher--this is especially true of folks who have been raised in such groups for generations--and so they basically take the whole "coercive-tactics"/"control-freak" thing to ALL walks of life. Literally everything from politics (a big part of why fundies want a theocracy here has to do with Control and Power over others; again, this is probably an extension of how their own ministers and deacons use Power and Control to keep the flock in line, along with the major "us versus them" mindset in such groups) to parenting (a lot of fundy parents will homeschool kids specifically to keep a maximum amount of Control and Power over them--this is also why they push so much for censorship initiatives to "protect the children", and a lot of fundies won't allow their kids to attend non-Christian colleges or allow them to attend schools with coed dorms or alcohol on campus [yes, I've had experience with this; the fact Beloit College had coed dorms and alcohol on campus pretty much shot all hell out of any chance I had of going there, even without money concerns]). Basically, to put a fine point on it, many of them are control-freaks by basis of being in groups that are run by control-freaks who use coercive tactics, and they have no other model to use (either by model of literally not knowing any better, or by model of literally being so brainwashed that pretty much they have nothing else to go by).
A good starter for exploring the mindset of which I'm talking on is here. It's a page for walkaways, specifically from Bible-based cults, run by a person who was formerly involved in one (he walked away, and now actually runs a "fight-the-right" group largely because of his experiences in the coercive group); it gives you a lot of perspective on where they're coming from, if you've never been misfortunate enough to have experienced Fundie Hell for yourself. (I honestly don't recommend the latter for anyone, especially not kids and other living things. It can screw you up for life, seriously. Look at me. ;)
2b). As another aside--this is probably not widely known by folks, but there are a lot of businesses in the US--many of them Fortune 500 companies, yet--that not only are affiliated with the Right Wing in the US, but are in fact members and actually supportive of it. An enlightening--and scary page--for starters is here--this is a page featuring info on the Coalition for National Policy, which is essentially a secretive, invite-only think-tank for the Religious Right in the United States. It features a membership list that includes, among others, many members of the Coors family, a (former) Presidential candidate, and a number of representatives to US and state legislatures. There's also a good link here that talks about the CNP and a lot more of the big names in the Religious Right...
For more starters...both the Coors family (yep, as in Coors Breweries) and the Waltons (yep, as in Sam's Wholesale/Wal-Mart--as in, before Sam Walton died, one of the single richest individuals on the planet, worth more than Bill Gates, and only surpassed by the Sultan of Brunei; the Waltons collectively are still in the top 100 of the richest people on the planet) are heavily involved with the Religious Right, outright subsidizing them and being sympathetic to concerns (to give examples--the Coors family supported Amendment 2 in Colorado, which would have rescinded civil-rights laws that included sexual orientation; the Waltons have made it a policy not to carry albums with "Tipper-stickers", refused to carry heavy-metal magazines for a long time, and refuse to provide "morning-after" contraceptives even though they will provide Viagra). Needless to say, these are two of the biggest companies in the US. Another interesting one is AmWay--AmWay in and of itself has been accused of using coercive tactics with its sales representatives, but is also run by fundamentalists with links to the CNP and AmWay has been known to bankroll fundy groups in past. Not even home shopping is immune--as it turns out, the person who owns Home Shopping Club, Home Shopping Network (the off-hours version of HSC that shows up on a lot of "Christian" TV stations and also used to show up on the "Family Channel") and PAX TV is a major bankroller of the Religious Right (more on that below).
For even more shockers...a lot of times, Religious Right groups deal in a fair bit of "cloaking". The Arthur S. DeMoss foundation (a Religious Right group that pushes "Christian Reconstructionism", has actually endorsed Christian Identity groups on occasion, and pretty much is a major funding source for the Religious Right; it was founded by the widow of a Religious Right supporter who happened to be a multi-millionaire) hides most of its nastier stuff by not only doing innocuous-sounding adverts for adoption and "Power for Living" (basically a book which hawks fundamentalist Christianity), but has sympathetic multi-million-dollar stars like the woman from "Children of a Lesser God" and Jeff Gordon (great...have NASCAR drivers hawking fundamentalism to the kiddies...Jeff Gordon, probably more than anyone in NASCAR short of the Pettys, is seen as particularly "kid-friendly" and as a general, All-American "Wheaties"-box boy) and NFL stars hawking for them. (Knowing that group, I'm almost willing to bet that either a) they might not have been too forthcoming with these folks other than that they were a group promoting a book about "Christian living", or b) a hell of a lot of people in show-business need a good expose like there has been with Scientologists in Hollywood...more info on the Arthur S. Demoss Foundation here and here [thank you Google...it seems that Pathfinder is not wanting to behave well].) The Family Channel, until recently, was owned by the same folks who brought you Pat Robertson and the 700 Club--it was renamed from the "Christian Broadcasting Network" to make it sound like it offered "family-friendly" programming and to hide its links to the Religious Right (as Pat Robertson and the Christian Coalition had started to get a rather bad name). In fact, the Family Channel was sold to FOX, which does have some links to the right in the US (though not as bad as, say, Coors).
PAX TV, which is a TV network set up by a fundamentalist (again, using the exact same canard that the "Family Channel" did in its Pat Robertson days--as a purveyor of "family-friendly entertainment" which conveniently neglects to mention its links to the Religious Right) and which is largely carried on "Christian" TV stations, is heavily bankrolled by Home Shopping Club and Home Shopping Network (which--not exactly coincidentially--also showed on the Family Channel on off-hours and shows on a lot of "Christian" TV stations in off-hours) and--even worse--is also owned 20 percent by CBS and NBC was planning to buy 32 percent in PAX TV (this would be over 400 million dollars). More info here, and more info on PAX here...for that matter, the very head of Focus on the Family (which spawned off Family Research Council as a lobbying wing), James Dobson, makes a rather healthy living selling parenting books promoting "tough love" and "discipline".
Even besides all THAT, a lot of the major Religious Right groups get a lot of funding from members, and many of them can actually get it tax-free (by either setting up separate "political" wings when the heat from the IRS gets too much, or by setting it up with roughly the same tax exemptions a church would get). There are also local businesses...as one guide has advised, if you want to boycott teh Religious Right you almost have to look through one of the directories made for the Religious Right or avoid every business with an ichthus-fish on it...and besides all THAT, Religious Right groups are increasingly going stealth or relying on certain "code words" within the community like "Family", "Heritage", or names confusingly similar to existing groups (one anti-abortion "counseling center" actually named themselves "PPC, Inc." and based themselves in the same building as the local Planned Parenthood office; a legal group that bankrolls and supports lawsuits friendly to Religious Right causes is named "American Center for Law and Justice"; a really amazing number of Religious Right groups use "Family" or "Heritage" or "Christian Life Center" (in the case of churches) because these are actual code words in the fundamentalist community for fundy-friendly causes).
Needless to say, unfortunately, the Religious Right isn't exactly hurting for money and, short of ALL of their members walking away combined with a massive economic crash that disrupts nearly the entire worldwide financial system to the point that it forces us to go back to barter or most of their members walking away combined with a massive boycott of ANYTHING the Religious Right has their fingers in, they aren't going to be hurting for money anytime soon. :P
2c). Media that isn't tied with the Religious Right somehow is often basically bullied into submission. As noted above, a lot of folks in fundy groups have a very "us versus them" viewpoint to begin with--they literally believe they are fighting Satan and all of us not in a fundy group are practicing Satanists as a direct result. :P If ANYTHING is reported whatsoever that is in the LEAST critical of the Religious Right, they will protest (even if they don't read the paper or watch non-"Christian" TV because it might be "Satanically influenced") because, in essence, they will be informed about it and told to raise forty kinds of hell over it. And they will. In droves. (A Pensacola paper found this out when they basically exposed the "Brownsville Movement" as a Bible-based cult; "20/20" did an expose of the "Brownsville Movement" and likewise were damn near pilloried (of course, most fundies were already boycotting anything relating to Disney because {horror!} they dared give equal rights to gay couples for benefits and had a "gay Day" there, but that's beside the point)...my family raged for days about the expose because "Oh god, they make us all out to be cultists or something" (I hate to inform them, but, well, if the shoe fits...I'd think instead of ranting at ABC maybe you should do some serious soul-searching on whether the chuch is doing the Right Thing or not, but then again, I walked away and I dare to be sensible about the whole thing instead of getting my panties in a wad)...read your newspaper's editorials everytime someone dares suggest that the Religious Right and theocracy or even putting the Ten Commandments in schools might possibly not be the be-all, end-all to the world's problems to get an idea of just WHAT kinds of cain they do raise.) Burger King and Pepsi, among others, have literally been bullied out of running certain adverts or sponsoring programs because of letter-writing campaigns by the American Family Association (a hard-line Religious Right lobbying group which has some decidedly homophobic tendencies); many ABC affiliates were likewise bullied into not carrying "NYPD Blue" during its first two seasons for the same reason.
3). Now, to a direct point I was going to mention--hate to break it to you, but the PMRC is by no bloody means liberal. Tipper Gore (and Al Gore) are (as noted above) right-moderate AT MOST; the other co-founder, oddly enough, just happens to be Elizabeth Dole, wifey of Bob Dole and onetime candidate for the 2000 GOP nomination for President. One of the founding members was Susan Baker (wife of Former Secretary of State James A. Baker III (R)).
More to the point, though, the PMRC has many a link to Religious Right groups. First off, they have carried advertising in PMRC literature for "Back In Control Training Center" and other "training centers"; Back In Control was basically an inpatient program run by two former LAPD officers which was advertised to "de-metal" or "de-punk" kids, which was in effect a brainwashing center with links to the Religious Right and which has claimed, among other things, that Wiccans are Satanists and that the Magen David (the Jewish star) is a Satanic symbol and that if kids are wearing "gothy" or "metal" clothing this is a sure sign of Satan-worship. Back In Control has also worked with a lot of police departments and schools, and (ObSlashdot) is one of the groups that is directly responsible for kids being harassed and worse after Columbine for wearing "goth" clothing. (More info here,here (in passing, but in direct relation to how Back In Control Training Center has been heavily promoted by the PMRC), and here.)
Also, they've promoted and used material from Bob Larson Ministries; for those who aren't aware, Bob Larson is a "foamin' fundy" radio preacher who, among other things, promotes censorship and the whole Religious Right agenda. Among other things, he's called peace symbols and the Nike swoosh Satanic symbols (no, I'm not making this up) as well as the good old canard about the Magen David supposedly being a Satanic symbol. More info here (or the newer version here--the "Bob Larson Fan Site"--trust me, the kinds of horsesheisse Larson spews is the kind that must be seen for itself to be believed), and a lovely expose in a British Columbia Christian mag here. Yes, the PMRC actually promoted material from this nut :P
Incidentially, you can confirm all the info above by getting a copy of the book "50 Ways To Fight Censorship" by Dave Marsh (head of Rock and Rap Confidential, and the guy who coined the phrase "rock and roll" incidentially). It's out of print, but most better libraries do have a copy, and if you can't find it there, there are all manner of online bookstores who could probably scare up a copy for you.
Oh, and if you wondered whether the PMRC still has links to the Religious Right...the answer, darling, is an emphatic yes. The present head, one Barbara Wyatt, just happens (ironically) to also sit on the board of Focus on the Family (!)...more info here (again, thank you Google; the more recent version is here, btw), and here.
And BTW, just for the record--I don't have an agenda, other than being a walkaway from a Bible-based cult who really does not the US to descend into a theocracy (I lived under one for all intents and purposes for 25 years of my life; trust me, it sucks, and it will suck twenty times worse if they can get their theocracy nationwide) and who knows all too well both the mindset these folks operate under and the real danger (to freedom and, ultimately, to the psyches of both their memberships and those who are family to them) these groups ultimately present. In essence, I don't want the rest of y'all on Slashdot to have to put up with what I had to put up with for 25 years of my life, and an especially hellish thirteen years after I walked away and I had to live in a household of which the majority of people were raving fundies (and the rest of my family was, slowly but steadily, being assimilated by the Bible-Based Cult Of Borg). It sucks. Bigtime. :P (I note this because, when I made a little post exposing the agenda of the Family Research Council, I was accused of having an agenda. Sorry, I've got no more of an agenda than a kid who's been abused has in getting the abuse to stop. :P)
Technos dun said:
Some minor corrections there:
First off, rats were originally domesticated for use in labs, not as pets. (That came later.)
Second, dogs were domesticated (or, some theorise, humans and dogs domesticated each other) in a sort of symbiotic relationship relating to hunting--in other words, we helped each other hunt. Furthermore, up until fairly recently (we're talking in the past 300 years or so), most dogs (and most cats, for that matter) were utility animals, NOT household pets. (Hell, on farms TODAY the barn-cats are seen more as utility-cats than pets, and the same goes for the border-collies that may be working dogs on the farm.)
Also, what dogs were bred for besides as working dogs varies a great deal with the culture. The Aztecs, for instance, DID eat dog (it was considered a delicacy) and actually bred a type of dog that was hairless for easier preparation as food. (This being the Mexican Hairless, of course.) There is also some evidence that Chihuahua dogs were originally bred as food animals (no, I am not making this up, and I think we can stop the bad Taco Bell jokes now :).
As it is, I'd feel better about the cow cases, because (in all odds) they are using skins from cows that were headed to slaughter ANYWAYS--the moo is going to be a side of beef or at least stew meat anyways. At least they're using all of the cow; it's not like they're killing thousands of Holsteins just to rip off their skins and leaving the carcasses to rot (a la the bison of the old West) or anything.
I'd be a little more leery of horse, and more leery still of dog and cat, because (typically) most people in Western cultures don't eat those animals, and (at least with slaughterhouses for horses) most of the time foreign buyers have to be found for the horsemeat so that they can use the entire animal. (Dogmeat seems to be limited to some Asian cultures; I don't know of anyone who eats cats. Cat would probably taste horrid anyways, seeing as kitties are obligate carnivores.) Also, horses sent for slaughter tend to be either old horses or are mustangs that are illegally being sent to slaughter (the federal "adopt-a-mustang" program does stipulate that animals are not to be sent to slaughter; hundreds go to slaughter anyways).
Then again, I'm weird in that I think if you are going to take an animal's life (for food or skins), you should do right by the animal to use as much of it as you can. This puts me in the rather odd position of being ok with hunting deer for food or eating cows, but not being ok with trophy hunts or killing animals just for skins. *shrug*
Glgraca dun said:
According to Brazil, that is. :)
People in Murray, Kentucky would give serious argument to both that claim AND the claims of Marconi and Tesla (they claim AM transmission was invented by Nathan B. Stubblefield).
People in West Virginia would give arguments to all that, and claim that Loomis invented radio (there was a demonstration in West Virginia in 1866; this is specifically mentioned in the Guinness Book of Records as possibly the first radio broadcast).
People in England and in Italy argue that Marconi did it.
People in Serbia and in a fair section of the US would argue Tesla did it.
If I remember right (basing this from a half-remembering of an old article in Soviet Life over fifteen years ago, when I actually was sent a copy from Radio Moscow in responce to a QSL request...what with all the QSL requests I made as a kid, I expect I will never be able to get government employment anywhere :), the Russians claim one of their OWN invented radio. :)
The truth of the matter is, radio was probably simultaneously invented by many people and one method (namely, Tesla's) ended up becoming dominant.
Same thing happened with TV, by the way--the Russians give credit to Zworykin (who invented the iconoscope); the Americans give credit to him + a fella in Indiana who worked out the technical details; the Brits give credit to Laird (who invented a mechanical TV system using 30 lines that worked suprisingly well), the Germans (who had some of the first high-definition broadcasts) claim yet ANOTHER guy, the French claim Nipkow, and so on and so forth. What happened there was more of a case of several people simultaneously inventing TV, and the system what worked best winning out.
LinuxGeek dun said:
Yes, spark gap transmissions existed; hell, Maxwell proved how spark gap transmissions could work. :) The trick is using them for information--Morse code, or voice, or whatnot.
(BTW--even if we limit it to "information transmission by radio", it is entirely likely that neither Marconi nor Tesla invented radio. There is a considerable amount of evidence that radio may have been independently invented by both Loomis (whom is actually credited with the invention of radio in some books) and voice communication by Nathan Stubblefield (probably longwave or ground-wave communications; known to be an early AM system, possibly the first; Murray, KY still has signs up claiming it is the "Home of Radio"). I think the best we can say there is that radio was probably invented independently by at least three, possibly more, individuals...which is the exact same situation as exists with television (no less than three people independently invented it, though we mostly use the Zworykin process for TV much as we use the Tesla method for radio).)
What Tesla definitely deserves credit for is making high-frequency transmission possible. Before the invention of methods for high-frequency transmission by Tesla, the highest frequencies possible were in the longwave bands (we're talking around fifty or sixty KHz--AM or "medium-wave" bands were still considered HF in those days). Pretty much Tesla made transmissions outside of longwave possible, not to mention FM radio (it can be said that Tesla did in fact invent FM transmissions).
Oh, and as a wee bit of radio trivia--the first "officially recognised" transmitter WAS a spark-gap transmitter! :) One of the old Marconi stations actually celebrated its 100th anniversary and was fired up for a day for DX purposes...
CW is actually considered intelligence, too; you're still transmitting info, just in binary mode. :) It IS pretty much impossible to do much besides CW on a spark-gap transmitter, though. :) (This is why Tesla's system beat out Marconi's, by the way--you could do voice and tune frequencies. Hell, Tesla probably wasn't the first to do voice; if Nathan Stubblefield hadn't been so bloody paranoid about patents [he was convinced someone else would steal his ideas-- of course, between the modern patent mess and seeing what happened to poor Tesla, he just might've had a point...] he might well have been credited.)
Gil Bates dun said:
Actualy, this varies from state to state. In some states, notary republics have to undergo special certification (usually because, in those states, notaries can have powers up and beyond just certification of signatures--in some states, for instance, notaries can legally perform weddings).
Also, notarisation being free ALSO varies between states; in Kentucky, for instance, getting a notary to certify something is most certainly not free (it usually costs around $50, in fact; I happen to know a notary, which is how I know this). Also, banks may or may not have notaries for this reason (again, in Kentucky a lot of people actually make a business out of being a notary and advertise their services as a notary).
Depending on the laws in your state, you might also have to get witnesses (I know you do in Kentucky for some certification stuff).
Trifthen dun said:
I don't find it hard to believe at all. Hell, there are parts of the United States that don't have grits (like, oh, rural Ohio until fairly recently). I figured that grits were a Southern thing, kinda like being served cornmeal with breakfast, or biscuits (note to UK readers-- not biscuits like you have with tea--American biscuits are closer to a cross between scones and dinner rolls, basically like a flaky wheat-cake; UK biscuits are what we call cookies :)
Odd bit of trivia, though--there is a sort of "grits/biscuits" line. Above this line, you're going to probably get toast with breakfast and, if you get anything cereal-like at all, it'll be oatmeal or "cream-of-wheat"; below this line, you are liable to get biscuits and grits with breakfast whether you wanted them or not. :) (Kentucky is around the start of the "grits zone", and the "okra zone" too [you CANNOT find okra up north to save your life--I know, I've tried :P]. Needless to say, I've some experience with this.)
I have to say that I've NEVER heard of ham in grits, though. I'm more used to the ham being a fried country-ham steak. :) The stuff isn't too bad with sugar or butter, though, not to mention egg yolks (for that matter, (American) biscuits are good for sopping up egg yolks too :). Poached eggs aren't real common here, either (I've heard they are up north)--here, you will get them scrambled or fried. (Yes, it is true what you've heard about American breakfasts, especially the traditional Southern breakfast, causing instant heart attacks in people who aren't used to them. :)
Bmajik dun said: just posting all of the personal information on every employee of the RIAA ? If any of them happen to get egged, defecated on, or receive bodily harm, who's really going to be that upset ? Is this moral? Is this legal ?
Most likely immoral, probably illegal, and definitely would open up the party who did it to a MASSIVE lawsuit.
Yes, there is precedent to indicate that "posting all the personal information on every employee of the RIAA" and not caring of the consequences (or, more to the point, hoping they get egged and worse) IS illegal and if someone wanted to sue there is legal precedent to do so.
Specifically, recent court cases involving an anti-abortion page known as the "Nurenberg Files" have set precedent that if one posts personal info with expectation of harm, you CAN be held liable. (The "Nurenberg Files"--as of late on a Dutch server, probably xs4all.nl--lists names and personal info, including addresses, vehicle registration info (like driver's licenses), info on family members, etc. of doctors who provide abortion services. Doctors who are injured have their names greyed out; doctors who are killed end up with slashes through their names. The admin of the site, who is involved in "Christian Militia" groups, claims that this is evidence for a "war crimes tribunal" whenever fundamentalists get sufficient control to start putting doctors on trial for performing abortions; the courts have ruled that the page is in fact a form of terroristic threatening and a court order was obtained to remove the page from Mindspring.)
I dare say that--even if you just meant them to get egged and whatnot--the RIAA would probably use the precedent set with the "Nurenberg Files" pages to get your site shut down and ask for court injunctions and large amounts of civil damages. :P
Ater dun said:
Unless aforementioned terrorists intend to drop a bomb out of a plane (or crash a plane into a downtown area), most of those maps aren't going to be terribly useful. I'd suspect most terrorists would find maps of the internals of a building, or plain old MAPSCO street maps, far more useful. (This is especially true in the case of most domestic terrorists, which are actually the larger source of potential terrorism in the US; a Planned Parenthood office isn't going to be easily identifiable as such by a mere aerial shot (well, unless you look for the building with a lot of people marching about with piccies of dismembered stillborn fetuses), while on MOST maps of downtown areas they tend to mark federal buildings clearly as landmarks.)
I'd actually think, oh, a building directory or blueprint, or even a AAA map would be more useful. The majority of terrorists are going to go for either car-bombs (a la World Trade Center or Oklahoma City) or for small devices which can be hidden easily (a la the Eric Rudolph bombings, or butyric acid attacks on family-planning centers that perform abortions). This is probably true even if they go for non-conventional arms.
The aims of military are different, in that with spy cameras they are usually looking for military installments; then, "smart weapons" or bombers are targeted towards those areas using the info from the maps. Not too many terrorists have ready access to ICBM's or bombers yet. :) (If and when they do, I suspect we'd have rather worse problems than, say, merely keeping high-resolution photographs of downtown areas away from them. :)
Regarding the letter to the Family Research Council--I honestly wish you the best of luck there.
I also think you will probably have better luck having an in-depth conversation on the merits of Red Hat versus Slackware with the walls of your home than convince the Family Research Council of the fact the software is flawed and even blocks partisan material.
This is largely because the Family Research Council would consider this a feature and not a bug. :P
For those who aren't aware--the Family Research Council is, essentially, the lobbying arm of a group called Focus on the Family. FoF is probably the largest Religious Reich organisation in the US now (yes, even bigger than the Christian Coalition) and basically split off Family Research Council some years back in order to preserve their tax-exempt status. (As an aside, often state FoF branches will operate under different names to hide their affiliation with FoF.)
To be perfectly blunt, FoF and its affiliates have an agenda--to basically get as many raving fundamentalists in office as possible and to get the fundamentalist vote out, in hopes of getting enough people in office to essentially turn the United States into a fundamentalist theocracy. If you want to get a good idea about the "face" politics they support, just look at the political platform of (recently dropped out) presidential candidate Gary Bauer--this is the guy who founded Family Research Council when it was split off of FoF.
To these folks, pushing censorware is just another way of them "saving" us--whether or not we particularly want to be "saved" or not--and making the US into a "nice Christian nation again". (Many of these folks, by the way, also subscribe to "Christian Reconstructionism"--that is, the canard that the Founding Fathers actually meant the US to be a theocracy.) This is also why they tend to run "stealth" candidates (candidates who do not reveal their links to Religious Reich groups until elected) specifically to things like school boards--they want to get them young so they can indoctrinate them young, because they know that if they're gotten young they likely won't walk away. (This is also why they push homeschooling a lot, by the way, as well as vouchers for private schools--it's been the actual stated goal of many Religious Reich groups to get the school system totally dismantled so that kids are forced to go to sectarian schools.)
FoF's president, Bob Dobson, also makes a rather lucrative career selling books on "disciplining your kids"--usually involving a mix of censorship, forcing God down their throats, and liberal amounts of spanking the kids (part of the reason corporal punishment is NOT illegal in the US--or, for that matter, why the US is the only nation besides Somalia which has still not ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child--is because fundamentalist groups like FRC lobby heavily against such laws, claiming that it'll take away their right to "spare the rod and spoil the child" or to "raise their kids as they see fit". In some cases where it has crossed the line into child abuse, some fundies have even argued in court that the state prohibiting them from beating the living hell out of their kids is a violation of their First Amendment rights to religion and that beating the hell out of their kids is actually a duty of their religion).
I happen to be a walkaway from what may be described as a "bible-based cult", and I can say that a fair percentage of the harder-core membership of many (if not most) Religious Reich groups in the US happen to be from churches that use coercive tactics on their membership. In other words, the ones who are doing the lobbying are more than likely brainwashed, they have probably already mentally defined anyone who isn't on their side and who dares to tell them about "flaws" in the software is directly in league with Satan (most Religious Reich groups, and most bible-based cults, DO have a very "us-versus-them" attitude--many Bible-based cults even go to the point of "deliverance ministry" (even your doubts are caused by demons, and the only cure is to "pray them out" or get an exorcism...rather like some of the nastier mind-control techniques in Scientology, actually)...). It is going to take a considerably larger clue-by-four than that to make them change their minds.
The FRC has a rather long record of lobbying not just for censorship, but for the entire Religious Reich platform. On occasion, this has even gone to slandering folks who speak against them...don't be surprised if you find possibly much of the town turned against you (I've read in previous reports that the town in general is quite conservative and beholden to the Religious Reich).
Some links so that the curious may learn more (and educate themselves thereby):
Religious Reich Database F section--also info on FoF
Extended coverage of FRC from above site
ACLU's open letter to FRC
People for the American Way speaks out against FRC campaign against hate-crimes laws that would protect gay/les/bi/trans folks
PFAW's "Who's Who on the Religious Right"--FRC section
here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and even here very recently, you can see what the FRC and the rest of the Religious Reich have to say to their own members
QRD's info on FRC--this also has a lot of quotes of the FRC in their own words to their supporters
Info on the FRC from the Matthew Shephard website--more FRC "in their own words" and at their worst
EFF's "Know Your Enemies--includes info on FRC
Walk Away--a good resource not only for those walking away from "bible-based cults" but also gives you a glimpse of the mindset these groups have--important in debating them. (The head of Institute for First Amendment Studies is himself a walkaway from a bible-based cult.)
And since I don't want to just talk about them without providing some way to fight the Religious Reich (otherwise I wouldn't have posted the damn warning about the FRC's agenda ;):
Arguing Against Faith--basically, how to debate fundies
A whole big mess of resources on how to fight the Religious Reich
Another mess of good links
and still another mess of good links
Skipp Porteous (walkaway and head of IFAS) writes on how to win against the Religious Reich
A really good expose of the Religious Reich, including info on the "code words" they use with their members
Defending Yourself Against The Religious Right
11 Things You Can Do To Fight The Religious Right--this is good for regular folks too. (As an aside--Domino's is no longer owned by fundies, but Coors Brewery is)
Major groups fighting the right wing:
EFF (as if you didn't need any more reasons to send that donation in ;)--they fight censorware initiatives)
Peacefire--the source for info on censorware, including how most censorware has just a wee bit of a fundamentalist agenda
Institute for First Amendment Studies--highly recommended. Includes info on the Coalition for National Policy (basically the "think-tank" of the Religious Reich) including membership lists. Head of group is walkaway from a fundamentalist "Bible-based cult".
People for the American Way. Highly recommended is their "Right Wing Watch Online" section.
ACLU
Americans United for Separation of Church and State
The Interfaith Alliance--progressive religious groups united for tolerance
Rock Out Censorship--naturally concentrates on music censorship, but has really good info on other school-related issues, including filtering. (I'm a wee bit biased on this one, much as I am with IFAS--I have done volunteer work for ROC before. They're a damned good group, though.)
In any case, I wish y'all the best of luck in fighting them...I'm not sure you realised just what the hell you were getting into, but if there's anything we can do to help here on Slashdot, let us know.
An Ominous Coward dun wrote:
O_o Now THERE is something I never expected to see mentioned on Slashdot... :)
As a matter of fact, yes, I did. In the Good Old Days, before spammers completely overran the non-binaries, non-moderated sections of Usenet (and more to the point, before Hipcrime-script attacks rendered large portions of Usenet useless).
Needless to say, Bad Folks sent it to hell, and so I've retired from Usenet and (largely) the Jihad. ;) Ah well...*shrugs*
Greenrd dun said:
In a word--Duh. For many reasons, at that.
First off, fifteen years ago, genetic cladograms were in their infancy.
Secondly, a good deal of what we now know about "reptilian" evolution has come about literally in the past fifteen to twenty years. (We have literally gone in twenty-five years from thinking dinosaurs were slow, cold-blooded creatures to realising that birds (which are among the hottest- blooded critters there are--sparrows typically have a normal body temperature of around 110 degrees Fahrenheit, or around 42 degrees C) are in fact theropod dinosaurs.) This has been both through genetic cladograms AND by fossil remains--much of the fossils that have shaped our present view of dinosaurs, in fact, have come up literally within the past five to ten years, and some of the most astounding yet (feathered dinosaurs, and many fossils that pretty much trace the entire history of how dinosaurs developed powered flight, along with typical "avian" traits like feathers, brooding eggs, even when hard-shelled eggs may have developed) have literally only come to light in the past two years).
Thirdly, I have my doubts that, even fifteen years ago, scientists thought crocs were closer to snakes than birds. (Just some info for you--on occasion, people who are trying to debunk evolution have been known to outright tell porkies. I've seen this far more often with "Creation Science" groups funded by fundamentalist "Christian" groups here in the States, but I wouldn't put it past some newage (rhymes with sewage) groups, either. And from what I've read, this sounds really suspiciously like newage (rhymes with sewage). In other words, don't trust everything you read--verify first. :)
The reason I doubt that they thought snakes and crocs were closer than crocs and birds is because it has been known for at least the past fifteen or so years that birds and crocodiles were part of a group called the Archosauria. (Archosauria, for your information, is a clade that is considered roughly equal to the old "Reptilia"--Reptilia has actually been split. Archosauria contains thecodonts, pterosaurs, dinosaurs, and crocodilians (note I've not expressly mentioned birds--I'm going to get to that). Just FWIW.) Snakes have, for at least the past twenty years or so, been considered to have evolved from lizards; there is a controversial theory that snakes instead evolved from mosasaurs, but mosasaurs are still not terribly related to archosaurs (they instead form yet another sister clade) so the point still stands.
Anyone who had the faintest idea about paleontology--who had so much as kept up with some of the early writing on Deinonychus or read a copy of Robert Bakker's "The Dinosaur Heresies" (written in 1986, talking about the "hot theories" already circulating in paleontology--many of the "heresies" have been recently vindicated, btw)-- would bloody well know crocs are closer to birds than snakes, unless he didn't keep up with paleontology at all. (It is entirely possible they didn't. As late as the early 1990's people were still being taught about "slow, sluggish, cold-blooded, naked-skinned" dinosaurs.)
For the record, especially in the field of dinosaur paleontology, fifteen years is damned near an eternity nowadays. Among other things, we've found evidence that the closest relative of Deinonychus (the one dinosaur that, along with Archaeopteryx and now the feathered dinos coming out of China--yes, you heard right, feathered dinosaurs--gave paleontology a needed boot in the arse with its sickle-clawed feets) is in fact Archaeopteryx, the first bird; that dinosaurs cared for their young (this has now been documented from "duckbilled" dinosaurs all the way to Tyrannosaurus rex itself--a juvenile named "Tinker" has recently been found, which has been teaching a lot on both juvenile tyrannosaurs and tyrannosaur family life) and that theropods even brooded young like chickens or ostriches (at least two oviraptor fossils have been found brooding nests); there have been incredible fossils as of late coming out of China which include the first feathered non-avian dinosaurs; we now have a large number of transitional fossils documenting nearly the entire evolution of flight in dinosaurs (from pre-avian feathered dinos, including display feathers on arms and tail, to Archie, to development of the alula feather from the thumb); we have entire evolutionary sequences for many families of archosaurs (including dinosaurs and crocs--we now know early crocs were ground-runners and that crocs are actually incredibly derived archosaurs); we even now have evidence that some dinosaurs like (oddly enough) Deinonychus may well have evolved from early protobirds and become secondarily flightless. Paleontology has come by INCREDIBLE leaps and bounds; one might say the science fifteen years ago was in prehistory (pun intended).
Oh, among things (both from re-analysis of fossils and new finds, and from some genetic studies including embryology studies) relating to the little comparison: Reptilia has now been split into the four groups other than archosaurs (ichthyosaurs, lizards/snakes, tuataras, and turtles), and Archosauria is now class-status. Crocodiles' and birds' last common ancestor was approximately 225-200 million years ago, when basal thecodonts split into "arctotarsal" and "crurotarsal" lineages (this is denoting ankle structures--one can say "bird-ankled" and "croc-ankled". Around the end of the Triassic, crocs evolved from "croc-ankled" thecodonts as ground-runners; they then proceeded to specialise as water-hunters, including specialisations in the heart for suspended animation underwater, etc. (Croc hearts are supposedly some of the most derived in the animal kingdom.) Dinosaurs evolved at around the same time from "bird-ankled" thecodonts, probably little ones like Lagosuchus; birds are now recognised (after a hell of a lot of evidence, and finally a few clue-by-fours out of Liaoning, China that finally settled many questions of dinosaur and "bird" evolution) as being a surviving group of theropod dinosaurs (specifically, maniraptorian neotheropod theropod dinosaurs) that survived the K-T boundary (there is about as much link between dinosaurs and birds as there is between mammals and bats; birds are dinosaurs and always have been, and most paleontologists have sunk Aves into a subgroup of dinosaurs at best and usually down to a theropodian subgroup--you will actually hear discussions of "neornithian dinosaurs").
Oh, and for the record--the same shakeup in cladistics that has led to birds being finally recognised as dinosaurs has also removed "mammal-like reptiles" from Reptilia and put them in a group with mammals and therapsids (therapsids are basically proto-mammals; they're related to us in the same way that early dinosaurs like herrerasaurs or dilophosaurs are related to birds). Yes, Mammilia got sunk in the process, though not as badly as Aves has.
In other words, the genetic cladogram actually proved RIGHT (dinosaurs and crocs are, in fact, archosaurs which derived from thecodont lineages that split fairly early in archosaurian evolution). Which blows hell out of the argument. :)
Oh, another fun fact--the same genetic cladograms also show that chimpanzees, bonobos, and humans are literally more closely related to each other than to any of the other great apes (they also led to gibbons possibly losing their status as a great ape). Chimps and humans share around 98 percent of their DNA, and bonobos are even closer if memory serves. It is probably a matter of a few evolutionary changes and some reordering on chromosomes that differenciates Homo sapiens from Pan paniscus (the bonobo, the closest living relative to humans and not terribly far from australopithecines--they have been known to make tools and they do walk erect fairly often).
As for other arguments:
On the age of the earth: Most of what we know is based on dating of rocks here and in other parts of the solar system. For the oldest rocks on Earth we have a lower limit of around 3 1/2 billion years (this is based on radioactive decay halflives, which have been proven sound both mathematically and experimentally--if there is funkiness with radioactive decay, I'd suggest you share it now :). Both strata-dating AND radio-dating are used, as checks on each other (especially when you are dealing with very old rocks where there are no diagnostic fossils that can date the rock).
We've also got rocks from other parts of the solar system (most notably meteorites [some of possible Martian origin] and moon-rocks). These have likewise been radio-dated, and give an upper bound of around 4 1/2-5 billion years. (Rocks from Earth don't exist from then because Earth was essentially a big ball of cooling lava at that point. :) So between the two, we can safely state the Earth is probably around 4 1/2 billion years old, give or take a few million years. (FWIW, this has also been checked by extrapolating and finding the age of our Sun based on the millions of stars we've observed--we know pretty much how baby stars are born and grow and die, and how stars of the mass of our Sun tend to behave. Also, for really old rocks, one of the dating methods uses uranium--uranium has a half-life of some six billion years in its most stable isotopes, which is just about right for measuring the age of a solar system.)
On species: Actually, yes, there is a specific definition of species both for fossil remains and for living specimens--there is actually a specific convention of species nomenclature called the ICZN, or "International Convention on Zoological Nomenclature". Summed up:
Living Species/Non-Fossil Remains: Species is defined as when two members of a population have diverged genetically to the point that they cannot easily interbreed. (Incidentially--it is this very definition of species that caused both dogs AND cats to be sunk into subspecies. Until 1994 or so, dogs were officially listed as Canis familiaris and cats as Felis catus; recent genetic studies have shown that dogs and cats ARE genetically still wolves and African wildcats respectively (just with a lot of the natural genetic variation brought out by selective breeding)--hence dogs are now Canis lupus familiaris and cats are now Felis sylvestris domestica. For that matter, there's been a lot of DNA testing of Neandertal remains to see if we can find out whether we could have interbred with them--if it turns out Neandertals and modern humans could interbreed, Neandertals are just a subspecies of us (Homo sapiens neandertalensis) but if we couldn't, they get their own species name (Homo neandertalensis).
In fossil species: Species is defined as such point as a morphological change has occured in a fossil specimen as to distinguish it from other existing fossils that may be of that type. (Since in most cases genetic studies cannot be done of fossil remains, they basically go by "has there been a major or minor change in this organism". Most fossil classifications beyond the genus level tend to be controversial unless there is good evidence to account for them, both in morphology and (on occasion) in habitat (such occurs in the two species of tyrannosaurs, Tyrannosaurus rex and Tyrannosaurus bataar--bataar is smaller than T. rex, and T. bataar is found in Mongolia where T. rex is found in Montana and western North America).
On random mutations: Actually, random mutations can sometimes be beneficial--and sometimes even both. A good example is with some genetic diseases such as Tay-Sach's Disease (nearly always fatal before 5), thalassemia, sickle-cell anemia, and cystic fibrosis (all three of which are debilitating and potentially fatal)-- as it turns out, two copies are Bad, but having one copy actually protects you against some other disease (with Tay-Sachs, it's tuberculosis [which was very common in ghettos, where Ashkenazi Jews (the major carriers) lived]; with both thalassemia and sickle-cell anemia, one copy protects you against malaria (the genes evolved separately in the Mediterranean and Sub-Saharan Africa, and there are other sickling/"deformed" genetic diseases of red blood cells that have the same protective effect against malaria in small doses in Southeast Asian populations); one copy of the cystic fibrosis gene is protective against cholera (in fact, what goes wrong in cystic fibrosis is now known on a chemical basis as a defect in chloride excretion--as it turns out, the exact opposite disorder occurs in cholera! One stops you up, the other gives you the raging squits...). Even though these genes cause bad (sometimes tragic) effects in double-doses, they actually are beneficial enough that they've stayed in the human genome for thousands of years (unlike most genetic diseases with no good benefit, which generally only tend to show up when people end up marrying cousins or people get seriously inbred).
Also, sometimes it doesn't take a HUGE mutation. The length in arms of Archaeopteryx really is not that much longer (per body ratio) than that of Deinonychus (much bigger, non-flying, but skeletally very, very similar to Archie). If there is something to work with, it can give an animal an advantage. Said animal does the nasty, passes their genes along, and if it's good it spreads. (BTW, the fact that humans and chimps share 98% of DNA and have about as much difference both in actual gene content and chromosome-count as horses and donkeys do (humans have 46 chromosomes--chimps have 48) show that it does not take a terrible amount of mutation to evolve.
Also, sometimes it's not so much a matter of evolving new things as "sports" showing up with OLD traits that prove useful. Phorusracid birds, which evolved tens of millions of years AFTER non-avian dinosaurs went extinct, actually redeveloped flexible fingers with claws--a trait that had laid dormant in birds since the late Cretaceous--and adopted a ground-running hunter lifestyle, like nonavian theropod dinosaurs, which was very successful for millions of years (mammilian predators of megafauna finally did them in anywhere from 2 million to 750,000 years ago, but until then they were the top predator niche in South America). Hoatzins have claws when babies which is a reversion. Chickens are on occasion born with teeth (this too is an old archosaurian trait).
On punctuated equillibrium: Actually, there are cases where it does occur. One of the biggies seems to be powered flight (flight is incredibly advantageous, and is usually refined very quickly after invented). And even in that case we DO have "missing links"--plenty of them. Hell, with dinosaurs we have an almost 100-million-year-old continuous string of evolution showing from early protofeathers (Sinosauropteryx) to examples of display feathers on tail and arms (Caudipteryx) to possible pre-flyers or very early flyers (Protoarchaeopteryx) to full-fledged flyers (Archaeopteryx) to more advanced flight (fossils from China showing development of alula feather from clawed thumb) to advanced toothed forms (birds like Hesperornis) to paleornithe birds to the beginnings of a lineage of extant modern birds (chadriiforme ducks) to an actual reversion towards an older condition (phorusracids) to now. Also, around the time of Archaeopteryx we may well have a complete record (including many transitionals) of both an initial radiation of sickle-clawed early "birds" and (most tantalizing) either the co-evolution of archaeopterygids and dromaeosaurs as sister species or possibly dromaeosaurs outright evolving from archaeopterygids. (The latter would REALLY be something, and a fair amount of evidence IS pointing that way. Don't be surprised if you hear around two or three years down the road that Deinonychus is probably secondarily flightless.)
A more classic evolutionary sequence (with tons and tons and tons of transitional fossils) is the sequence of horse evolution.
Diakka dun said (quoting someone):
Even better yet--a wonderful series of transitional fossils is, pretty much, the known specimens of feathered dinosaur fossils (including early birds, Archaeopteryx, and a mess of feathered dinos found in China). From the fossil evidence we're finding now, it has almost been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that birds are, in fact, dinosaurs (and specifically maniraptorian, neotheropodian, theropod dinosaurs). Of course, there are still some folks (notably an Alan Feduccia, who seems to want to do ANYTHING to disprove at all the idea that birds even DESCENDED from dinosaurs or are remotely related to them, much less ARE dinosaurs) who literally do ANYTHING to "explain away" some of the fossils and other evidence birds are dinosaurs (examples--claims that "dinosaurs don't have turbinates and aren't warm blooded" (turbinates sometimes don't preserve well, aren't necessarily a diagnostic of endothermy, and besides, dinosaurs HAVE been found with extensive turbinates--some of the more recent T. rex finds and Nanotyrannus, for example); trying to label Caudipteryx as a "bird" (most paleontologists feel Caudipteryx is a basal oviraptorid, and oviraptors are either cousins of avian dinos or possibly secondarily flightless); claiming most of the feathered dinos are mislabeled as dinosaurs and not birds (I can't wait to see what Feduccia says about Sinonithosaurus, which is a feathered dromaeosaur; were it somewhat bigger and found without the feathers, it'd possibly have been classified as Velociraptor; the skeletons are that close...will he have to admit dinosaurs are birds, or will he claim dromaeosaurs are birds?); claims that the "dinofuzz" protofeathers on Sinosauropteryx (a very obviously non-avian dinosaur, probably a close cousin of Coelurosaurus) were "muscle fibers" or "artifacts" (tests have now proven that yes, indeed, those really are bristle-like protofeathers), etc. etc.).
Hell, for that matter, the entire fossil record of archaeopterygids and dromaeosaurs, PERIOD, is a rather amazing transitional record. There are all kinds of transitional forms between the two groups (including Rahonavis), and in fact the skeletons look identical in most parts (other than the size of the arms and claws, and head details). It's even been found Archaeopteryx has a sickle claw, like dromaeosaurs, and many studies have been done on the similarities in skeleton between Archaeopteryx and Deinonychus. (Dromaeosaurs and archaeopterygids, especially transitional fossils, are also interesting for another reason--there is the real possibility that dromaeosaurs may have become secondarily flightless, so what we may be seeing there is actually a transitional series between a flying animal and one that lost flight and became a running-leaping hunter instead.)
It is interesting you mention hominids, too. As it turns out, humans are more related to chimps and bonobos than ANY of the three are related to any other great apes (including gorillas, the next closest ancestor); if we went just by straight cladistics, we'd end up sinking australopithecines into the apes and probably all hominids (including humans). I have my serious doubts that this will ever occur; I guess to humans, it's one thing to sink dogs into a subspecies of wolf, but another to sink all of Hominidae into the great apes (or letting chimps and bonobos into our club). People still have incredibly serious trouble even accepting that chimps and bonobos are sister-species, and use "I didn't come from no chimp" in arguments against evolution--I don't want to THINK of the arguments that would take place the day an anthropologist or paleontologist gets the intestinal fortitude to suggest humans be considered the fifth species of great ape. :P
This is also similar to why some ornithologists, like Feduccia, do damn near everything (up to and including calling paleontologists charlatans at times) to try to disprove that birds might be dinosaurs. It would be too much of a blow to their pride to see Aves (which has the status of a major class of animals) sunk all the way to a sub-group of theropod dinosaurs--it'd be roughly equivalent to a group that had the status of mammals being sunk to a group that had the status of, oh, insectivorous bats. No matter that birds ARE pretty much the dinosaur equivalent of "insectivorous bats", which had the damn good luck to have learned to fly and had really tiny members so that when the K-T extinction event happened they made it through ok while all the other dinos died off. They can't stand the thought of their precious birdies being reduced to a subclass of fscking dinosaurs--with Tyrannosaurus rex being officially listed as their cousin, for Chrissakes! And so they raise fifty million kinds of cain over every fossil that further proves the fact that birds are dinosaurs (forget link--birds are surviving theropod dinosaurs--saying there is a "dinosaur-bird link" is like saying there is a "mammal-bat link") shows up, trying to disprove it...they keep claiming birds evolved from a "basal theropod" (duh...dinosaurs did too, and then one lineage begat Archaeopteryx after several tens of millions of years of genetic jerry-rigging with display feathers they first developed to keep from freezing their tails off, and then Archaeopteryx and friends learned to fly, and eventually got pretty good at it, and now exist as birdies like the gimped cardinal with the semi-twisted wing that chases off all the sparrows from my bird-feeder. The End.), and throw temper tantrums worthy of some of my younger cousins-in-law when someone suggests even moving Aves to a group inside of Archosauria, much less the tantrums they throw when it's proposed birds get sunk into Dinosauria proper, much less the hellfire-and-brimstone-esque apoplectic fits they throw when paleontologists suggest they get the intestinal fortitude to put the damn birdies into the theropods where they properly belong.
It's incredibly stupid, and it's basically a bunch of pride and politics, and it doesn't make for particularly good science and pisses off people who maybe should be working with each other. Until humans discard pride as an evolutionary adaptation, though, I don't know when that's gonna happen. :P
Gould, if I remember right, has made this very assertion (that evolution works basically in fits and starts). Interestingly, there is some evidence that this is actually true in the case of animals that evolve flight--flight is such a beneficial adaptation that usually it is refined VERY quickly in evolutionary terms, and we're often very lucky to find the transitional forms of flying animals (we're still looking for the "missing link" between gliding archosaurs and early pterosaurs, for example; we've gotten DAMNED lucky with birds in having a beautiful series of transitional fossils which show pretty much how dinosaurs evolved wings from forelimbs and learned to fly--only iffy thing is if they took off running or leaping--we even know how they went from four-point landings like bats, to perching on trees--the finer points in bird flight). Hell, there's even evidence (some genetic) that mammals seemed to have thought flying such a great thing that they up and evolved it twice (including, likely, primates--flying-foxes should probably be called flying aye-ayes instead ;).
Cje dun said:
It could be evidence agaisnt common descent. Or, it could be evidence of a hell of a lot of convergence. (This exact method, by the way-- studying the genetics of living things--is what has led not only to "domains" beyond kingdoms now used in cladistic systems (it's been found out that a group of lifeforms, previously lumped in with bacteria, are actually more related to us than bacteria are, and now get their own "Domain" or "Superkingdom" of Archaea) but has led to the rather astounding idea that mammals may well have evolved flight twice (it seems insectivorous bats and fruit-bats aren't terribly closely related, insectivorous bats being more closely related to insectivorous animals like rodents and (here's the real kicker) fruit-eating bats possibly sharing a common ancestor with lemurs--yes, that's right, primates learned to fly at least twice and the first time they didn't need tools to do it :). It's also been used to show that humans, chimps, and bonobos share a common ancestor around five million years ago or so, that bonobos really ARE a different species than chimps are, and humans are still closely enough related to chimps genetically that (if it weren't for silly things like people being too proud to do it) technically Homo sapiens and ALL of our immediate ancestors should still be classified as great apes (humans, chimps, and bonobos are literally more related to each other than any of them are related to gorillas or orangutans--on simple cladistics, we should sink hominids into a subclass of apes, but it will probably not happen for much the same reason that some people are screaming bloody murder about sinking Aves into even a subclass of Dinosauria (realistically, Aves should be sunk all the way into Theropoda, no higher than the coelurosaur/carnosaur (now defined as "advanced/ primitive theropods) divide and probably even down to a subclass to coelurosaur theropods, but there are enough people who'd go into apoplexy about it that it might not happen even if someone were to hit Feduccia upside the head with the fossilised remains of Sinonithosaurus, Rahonavis, Archaeopteryx, Deinonychus, and Sinosauropteryx and drive the idea in by brute force)...hell, one reason a lot of folks oppose evolution is "I'm not related to no bloody filthy ape", and they'd REALLY start bursting blood vessels and throwing Bibles if the scientific community finally admitted that humans ARE apes :P).
Unfortunately, for a lot of stuff we'd really like to get genetic info on, we can't. A good example is with the archosaurs--there are exactly two major surviving groups out of four, one is basically reduced to the rough equivalent of the only survivors of ALL mammals being insectivorous bats, and the two groups diverged over 200 million years ago (around the middle to end of the Triassic, when crocs and dinosaurs separately evolved from two groups of thecodonts which had ALREADY split on the basis of hip-joint and ankle-joint structure). Comparing croc DNA and bird DNA MIGHT get us to finding out around when the basal thecodont first came about; even the ANCESTORS of dinosaurs (including birds) and crocodilians had diverged a fair way from each other, and crocs themselves are as derived from their ancestor as dinosaurs are from their thecodont ancestor (crocs are amazingly specialised as aquatic animals; they may well have lost most warm-bloodedness as an evolutionary adaptation, their sprawling gait is secondary (early crocs were ground-runners and much higher off the ground; you can see it in baby crocs, and even adult crocs can run for short distances like big scaly ferrets), their heart may well be the most "derived" evolutionarily-speaking in the animal kingdom (there are adaptations for such things as suspended animation, for starters)...not at all primitive, really). It's not going to tell us the REALLY fun stuff we'd love to know, like just how closely related dromaeosaurs are to archaeopterygids (this is an important question now in paleontology) or how close T. rex was to flying birds, or how far away the ancestor of birds and hadrosaurs or diplodocids is, or how closely related dinosaurs really are to pterosaurs (there is debate on this--some say as derived as crocs are, some say they shared common ancestors in "bird-ankled" thecodonts)...because there aren't any dinos LEFT except for the birds, and no thecodonts or pterosaurs left at all. Hell, it'd be the absolute bee's knees (and potentially incredibly important for anthropology and mankind in general) to see, oh, how closely related early hominids like Australopithecus or Ardipithecus are to chimps, bonobos, AND us--unfortunately, we've not exactly been lucky enough to find any early hominid DNA (the earliest hominid DNA that's been found so far is with Neandertals, and their mitochondrial DNA is dissimilar enough to ours that it's now thought Neandertals might be a "sister species" to modern humans after all; we definitely seem to have split before the "mitochondrial Eve" of modern humans, who seems to date from around 200,000 years ago or so; we don't even have enough Neandertal DNA to know if they had the same number of chromosomes that we do (it'd be really interesting to know just WHEN chromatid shift--a change in the number of chromosomes--occured in hominids; bonobos and chimps have 48 chromosomes, while we have 46; if us and Neandertals had the same number of chromosomes, we could have potentially interbred (much like many felids can interbreed); if they didn't, we'd know they really WERE something different; if it occured after Homo split from australopithecines, we might have to reorder more than a few cladograms and possibly wound the pride of humans in the process).
As a minor aside--one of the reasons scientists are so excited about a recent frozen mammoth find is because there might be the chance to get enough DNA to compare mammoths to modern elephants. (It is thought that mammoths are closely related to Asian elephants, actually to the point of both being more related to each other than to African elephants--some folks think they were a third class, though--for those folks who have the plans to clone mammoths, much less folks doing cladograms of elephant evolution, this is important to know :)
If there's a God (we can't really prove or disprove it, seeing as there's no way to really prove Someone Is Mucking About With The Universe without stepping outside the universe itself, which nobody's really found a good way of doing without getting one's self Quite Dead in the process), He is probably as much of a jerry-rigger as, say, Tool Time Taylor on the TV show "Home Development" or people who believe that all things can be fixed with sufficient amounts of ingenuity, wood, nails, Super Glue, and duck-tape. :) If so, I'm proud to say that I must have gotten it honest at least, as I also tend to be one of the three inveterate jerry-riggers in my family. :) No wonder Yshua went into carpentry--jerry-rigging is, sometimes, just a bit of a black art and often necessary (as anyone who has attempted to build something off a set of building plans has found out, and spent the next six hours cursing Norm Abram AND his Bloody-Arsed Biscuit Machine and his entire shop full of tools for making visual lies about how building things is supposed to be simple...or how people fixing plumbing, even professionals, usually end up cursing the entire cast, past, present AND future, of "Hometime" for giving mere mortals the impression that plumbing is either easy or something that can be done with a minimum of jerry-rigging...or, for that matter, installing Linux on some cantankerous systems :). That, or God has a sense of humour in that we humans are supposed to only LOOK jerry-rigged. This brings the set of God suspiciously close to the set of Norm Abram for my liking. :)
Myself, having actually DELVED into home repair, Linux installations on cranky boxen, and general jerry-rigging, rather suspect the former case. ;)
As for the appendix--there is some evidence that it still does have a small function in the immune system (basically helping keep the colon from getting all infectious). Most surgeons won't remove it unless they have to, because of this (even though we have laparoscopic surgery, which could even be done on an outpatient basis). In animals which are largely herbivores (especially insectivore-group animals, such as rodents and lagomorphs), they tend to have huge appendixes; it is probably an organ that doesn't have much use outside of immune-system function in primates.
Pretty much, though, as much as we can tell, cladograms tend to agree pretty much with the genetic record (as far as we can determine that) and the fossil record as (to put a metaphor on it) things being jerry-rigged to work. Sometimes they give surprising results, the more data you get (such as dogs now being sunk into wolves, or chimps being closer to humans than either is to gorillas, or (on the basis of non-genetic evidence + some genetic comparison + genome studies including genetic engineering) the fact that birds are actually dinosaurs (now, tell me ONE person who doesn't think the fact that dinosaurs survived is neat as hell :)...). If the groups are separated enough, you can even find out from gross details (it's pretty obvious that Squamata (the group that includes therapsids (including mammals), "mammal-like reptiles" like Dimetrodon, and the like) split from the group that founded all the rest of the land-animals outside of amphibians a LONG time ago; birds and mammals evolved sex chromosomes that work exactly opposite from each other (birds use WZ sex determination--WW is male, WZ is female; mammals use XY sex determination--XX female, XY male) indicating they evolved separately but did an amazing amount of convergence, indicating that maybe sexual chromosomes are characteristic of warm-blooded animals in general (yes, that's right--you can learn basically where "God is applying duck-tape")...but there are so many differences that, in part based on genetic studies, "mammal-like reptiles" actually got split from reptiles, and it's now thought they diverged a short while after their immediate ancestor (probably the first "shelled egg laying animal" or close thereby) split from amphibians).
If you want to see a real example of God jerry-rigging :), look over the record of how dinosaurs evolved flight. (Pretty much bird flight is the most jerry-rigged of all animals, because development was largely limited because of existing adaptations of theropods--can't splay legs, they're all feathery, but if you modify the display feathers enough to catch air and make the arms long...and later on, fuse the fingers, lose the claws, and use the thumb as an "aileron" for braking in landings...there wasn't as much to work with as there was with bats or pterosaurs.)
WARNING : This post runs long. Even for my posts, which I realise usually take up a page or two when I'm at my most quiet on Slashdot. I just realised I have spent well over three hours typing up this reply, due to the length of it (ok, it touches on a lot of my favourite subjects, and this tends to induce just a bit of typed verbal diarrhea :), and I do not even want to think just how many pages this will take. I may well win the record for "Longest Post Ever Posted On Slashdot That Is Not A Blatant Attempt To Launch A DOS Attack On The Message Board System" for this one. If you don't want to read a long, possibly rambling post, feel free to skip ahead. It's not going to hurt me any (I don't post to be a karma-whore, just when something tickles my interest).
Now that the ObWarning is out of the way for those who don't want to risk a case of repetitive stress injury from hitting the space bar... :)
KahunaBurger dun said:
A wonderful example of this is how wings for powered flight evolved separately in insects, pterosaurs, dinosaurs (I'll explain more on that in a bit, I promise :) and (possibly twice) in bats.
Insects evolved from a common ancestor of insects, arachnids, other arthropods (like millipedes), and crustaceans; if you go farther down the line in the fossil record you find that this group and segmented worms share a common ancestor. Pretty much what insects had to work with were external limbs; these evolved eventually into wings, and in beetles further as protective covering. (There is still a type of insect, a very tiny one, that has a primitive type of wing; we can also determine from fossil records of insects and the huge number of surviving insect groups roughly how wing evolution has gone. They've had around 400 million years to improve on the idea, give or take a few, and flies are one of the two or three existing groups of flying critters to have mastered hovering flight. About the only type of flight insects haven't mastered is soaring flight, but that's because insects have serious trouble getting big enough for soaring flight to be possible.)
Pterosaurs (at least according to most theories) either evolved from a basal archosauromorph or possibly from a common ancestor of "bird-hip-jointed" archosaurs (archosaurs have evolved two forms of hip joints--the other is seen in crocodilians, by the way, which are very derived archosaurs which started out as land-runners and ended up as water-hunters)--we aren't entirely sure which, because there is not a hell of a lot of good fossil material from when pterosaurs first evolved. (It is also suspected-- largely from examining the two fossil groups we DO have halfway decent evidence of how flight may have developed--that flight is incredibly advantageous to animals in general and tends to be refined on very quickly; flight, oddly enough, might be an example of "quantum evolution"). They evolved wings from flaps between the arms and body of gliding archosaurs (of which we do have a few in the fossil record); they seem to have evolved "pterosaur fuzz" (probably protofeathers, and it is now thought protofeathers are a general "warm-blooded" archosaurian trait--see the next paragraph for info) around that time or possibly shortly after.
Now we come to the real example of successful jerryrigging in the world of flight--dinosaurian flight. :) First off, dinosaurs aren't entirely extinct--birds are now classified by most paleontologists as at least a group, if not a subgroup, of theropod dinosaurs and even many ornithologists have become convinced of it. (I'll note more on this below.) Theropods started off as ground-runners; we have very good evidence now (scattered feathers dating all the way back to the Triassic when theropods were first starting out, including a full impression of wing feathers that may be from a dilophosaur or similar early theropod, and some absolutely incredible fossil material coming out of several sites in China including Liaoning which have included at least five species of feathered dinosaur, including at least possibly some pre-Archaeopteryx material and including at least three non-avian dinosaurs). We now know from the incredible fossils coming out of China that feathers in dinosaurs probably started out as "fuzz" or hairlike or bristly stuff to keep them warm (Sinosauropteryx is one of the main examples we know of re "dinofuzz", and was the first major "feathered dino" find out of China; yes, it's been determined it's actual protofeathers and not "muscle tissue" like some have tried to claim), possibly going to wing feathers and tail feathers for display (we see this in Caudipteryx, now thought to be a basal oviraptor, and (assuming archaeopterygids and dromaeosaurs came from a common ancestor, and that dromaeosaurs aren't actually secondarily flightless--more on this in a bit--Sinornithosaurus, a feathered dromaeosaur or "raptor" and an unnamed dromaeosaur (possibly another Sinornithosaurus) that is now identified as being the "mirror image" of the tail section of "Archaeoraptor" (now known to be a chimaera composed of a feathered dromaeosaur tail and a feathered dinosaur (whether avian or not, we don't know for sure--it's suspected avian though))...also, some reports of a feathered theriziniosaur, a group of dinosaurs which have just been discovered to be abberant theropods and possibly the ancestors of ornithomimid dinosaurs).
By the time dinosaurs started evolving flight, their hips were so modified for erect stance that trying to splay one's feet would have dislocated their hips. Plus, there was no real way for skin "tents" to develop like those in pterosaurs or bats. They already had feathers for warmth and (probably) sexual displays or brooding...so dinosaurs made do with what they had, and modified their feathers (and later, their fingers by merging them and losing their claws) for flight. This is incredibly well documented--from dinofuzz to display feathers to early fliers (like Archaeopteryx to birds losing flexible fingers and claws and using the thumb as the alula feather--possibly now the best evidence we have of how animals learned to fly. About the only things still really up in the air are whether fliers were around earlier than Archaeopteryx and whether dinosaurs learned to fly from the ground up or the trees up (on the former, Protoarchaeopteryx from China might have been able to fly; on the latter, we're getting some evidence leaning towards "ground up").
(A minor note on some things I've pointed out. Many folks (a few ornithologists, one Feduccia for example) have serious problems with the idea that birds are dinosaurs--possibly because of old ideas they have regarding dinos, or possibly because they really don't want Aves to be sunk into a subclass of theropod dinosaurs (which are in themselves a subclass of a renewed Dinosauria, which in turn would be a subclass of Archosauria which would be the same rank as the rest of Reptilia, Amphibia, and Therapsidia (yes, there's talk of sinking mammals too). The thing with what happened to birds...there is a theory (based on a fair amount of evidence from the fossil record) that the animals that have the best chance of survival in a bad extinction event are small animals. This has happened at least three times in the fossil record (big therapsids disappearing and mammals evolving from little survivors; most big archosaurs disappearing and the little ones evolving into crocs and pterosaurs and dinosaurs; most big dinosaurs dying off and surviving as birds) and you could make a darn good argument it may be happening on a lesser scale now (most megafauna of the Ice Age has died off, we came pretty darn close to possibly losing whales, we are still on dicey edge of losing a fair number of large land animals (elephants, most of the big cats, some others)...yes, we are going through an extinction event of sorts right now, much of it probably human-caused (definitely so in the latter bits), in case nobody noticed :P). In the past instances, it's seemed like animals around sparrow-sized or a bit larger and down seem to be "right-sized" to get through an extinction event ok. What has happened to dinosaurs is that they went through a major extinction event in which the only survivors were small flying toothless ones; a rough equivalent for mammals would be if all mammals with the exception of the smaller insectivorous bats were to become extinct--and the surviving species of insectivorous bats were all that were left to continue the entire line of mammals. (In a real-life extinction event mice would probably make it ok, as well as rats and other such small critters. The smallest non-avian dinosaur we know of is probably Comsognathus which was right around the size of a large chicken; the smallest dinosaurs around at the time of the K-T boundary were, well, what we tend to call birds. The smallest pterosaurs were at the least around the size of large crows, most were around pelican-sized, and at least one pterosaur (Quetzalcoatlus) had the largest wingspan of any flying animal; if there's merit to the "small animals survive extinctions" rule, non-avian dinosaurs and pterosaurs probably never had much of a chance. Even modern crocs evolved from smaller crocs that survived the K-T boundary (really huge ones seem not to have made it) so there may be merit to it...
(With dinosaurs in particular, the matter of learning how they learned to fly is made even more complicated by two things--firstly, reversions have occured all over the place (flightless birds are common, at least one group (phorusracids) that was alive as recently as (possibly) 75,000 years ago in the Americas seems to have redeveloped movable, clawed fingers, and even chickens on occasion have teeth--yes, hen's teeth do exist, but they are rare indeed, and it's an old theropod trait that sometimes shows up). Secondly, the closest relatives to the first known group of flyers (archaeopterygids) happen to be dromaeosaurs like Deinonychus...which are so closely related that except for minor details (arm length, size of toe-claws (yes, it's been found Archie has a tiny sickle-claw just like Deinonychus though much smaller) and head details) it's been argued that they could be placed in the same family or as a suborder at the least. Even worse, dromaeosaurs tend to show up after Archaeopteryx and we now know feathers aren't diagnostic of Aves (dromaeosaurs, and stuff older than Archie, had feathers). Even worse STILL, there are a hell of a lot of transitional forms being found now between Archaeopteryx and dromaeosaurs like Rahonavis (which looks almost exactly like a tiny flying Deinonychus). Worse yet, we've not found a hell of a lot of sickle-clawed animals before Archie, because the fossil records aren't so great then, but we've found a hell of a lot of them (including basal birds, especially) AFTER Archie...so there's a rather lively debate going on about whether dromaeosaurs and archaeopterygids are "sister species" or whether Deinonychus should call Archie (insert large number of "greats"-grandpa-birdie). IF it turns out dromaeosaurs ARE secondarily flightless (and the evidence looks more and more like they may well be--it's been known to happen before--look at phorusracid birds) a lot of people, including paleontologists, are going to have to find yet another way to redefine what is "Aves" or give up and lump them all in with the theropods without trying to separate them (since it's been found out dinos had feathers, the "diagnostic characteristic" for Aves in cladograms has been "all those animals with ancestors closer to Archaeopteryx than Deinonychus. Needless to say, if it turns out Deinonychus and other dromaeosaurs are secondarily flightless descendants of flying archaeopterygids, this is going to bugger up cladistic diagrams JUST a wee bit, because if Archie is the base of Aves you have just defined dromaeosaurs as birds. :) A fair number of people (including those who draw cladograms) would probably go into apoplexy at the thought of Deinonychus (not to mention probably oviraptorids, not to mention troodontids...not to mention a lot of other theropods not typically thought of as avian) in Aves. :)
As for bats...we're pretty sure they evolved flight in much the same manner as pterosaurs did-- from the trees up, from small gliding animals. Of special interest to those following evolution--it seems insectivorous bats and fruit-eating bats may not be terribly closely related, and in fact may have both evolved flight separately from completely different groups of mammals (insectivorous bats from small insectivores or proto-rodents; fruit-eating bats possibly from very early primates (!!!) (Yes, you may well be a distant cousin to a flying fox, and lemurs may be a somewhat closer cousin)...) So this has been jerry-rigged from flaps of skin possibly not once, but twice...apparently it was so useful and so jerry-riggable that it was almost bound to happen eventually. :) (One wonders if, whenever a major extinction event does happen to the mammals, if whatever evolves from mice and/or birds 65 million years down the road (should their descendents evolve sentience) even realises that bats are of that old class known as mammals that nearly all died off ;)
Flight, though (especially with dinosaurs) is almost the classic example of jerry-rigging. (Dinos really didn't have anything BUT feathers and arms to base wings off of... ;) Hell, how phorusracids hunted and came about is also a good example of this (flexible fingers, and big size and good ground-running, were selected for; this resulted in (for a while, at least till anywhere from 2 million to 75,000 years ago) essentially land-running, land-hunting dinosaurs coming back and becoming the terror of the Pampas of Tertiary and early Quaternary South America :)...of course, birds ARE theropods, and birds haven't entirely lost a lot of early theropod adaptations (see the occasional "freak" of a hen with teeth, when the old genes coding for teeth are turned on again-- by the way, the genes are known and scientists have grown hens with teeth on purpose to study bird evolution and development--or phorusracids, or even baby hoatzins (who have little claws on their wings and lose them as adults) or ostriches (which, I've read, are occasionally born with claws on their wings as well). For most birds, wing-claws and teeth aren't needful (actually detrimental--beaks don't protect teeth terribly well, and claws make it hard to control landings (the thumb in birds is modified to the alula feather, which is necessary for controlled landings instead of four-pointers). Baby hoatzins, who can't fly yet, seem to have been done good by keeping wing-claws so they can climb back up into the nest, at least till they can fly. Phorusracids did darn good by having fingers :)
(Apologies, by the way, if this has run really long-winded. I have a bit of a recreational interest in paleontology, especially mammilian and archosaurian paleontology, especially theropods, especially early avians and protoavians like dromaeosaurs and archaeopterygians and oviraptors (I STILL think it's the bee's knees that there's been found a brooding oviraptor) and early birds like Hesperornis. One of the things that has always fascinated me is how it's come about, just from theories in maybe the past twenty years or so and fossils dating back from 1964, that we've found out dinosaurs aren't extinct but we just call them cardinals, and one of the damn near coolest (IMHO) dinosaurs may well have been secondarily flightless and maybe even got its hunting style from flighted ancestors. Even going from the ideas in "Jurassic Park" (the book), which were based on the best science at the time...to "Raptor Red", which was based on Bob Bakker's idea of what life was like for Utahraptor, a large dromaeosaur (found while filming for "Jurassic Park" (the movie), oddly when Steven Spielberg wanted to put a Giant Dromaeosaur of Death in there) to knowing that dinosaurs brood (the "broody oviraptor" fossil find) to dinosaurs having feathers and all us nutters who drew Deinonychus with feathers (including, well, myself on a piccie at avatar. furry.org in an anthropomorphic piccie of a deinonych--ok, allow me a LITTLE self-advertisement :) being vindicated. (OK, so I read Greg Paul's "Predatory Dinosaurs of the World" and Bakker's "Dinosaur Heresies", and between that and the fossil evidence I have absolutely cringed every time I've seen someone draw Deinonychus naked as a jaybird (actually more so, seeing as jaybirds have feathers :). Especially the "'raptors" in "Jurassic Park". Even reading "Raptor Red" (Bakker's description of Red had her nekkid; I'll give him credit, though, because he HAS drawn feathery dromaeosaurs and it wasn't known then for sure that non-avian dinosaurs did have feathers, much less dromaeosaurs). It's just an odd sense that nekkid dromaeosaurs are just wrong to my sense of What Is Right In The World. Skies tend to be blue and grass green (unless one is in the middle of a field in Kentucky in the middle of spring storm season during a tornado warning, in which case the grass tends to be more bluish than the sky is, but we're all fscked up in Kentucky anyways, especially with the weather), cats tend not to give birth to puppies, and by God/dess, deinonychs should have proper feathers :)...wow, things have come a long way. Especially the last two years. We live in interesting times, and not entirely in the means of a Chinese curse (though those who keep wanting to think birds aren't dinosaurs might disagree with me, especially in light of some Chinese fossils :)...)
Pspeed dun said (while replying to someone):
Fined a good amount, at that--$500 per offense, $1500 per offense (if you can prove it was a willful offense--in other words, they knew damn well they were doing a Bad Thing and did it anyways).
Once you say the magic words "Please put me on your do not call list and send me a copy of your do not call policy", they are supposed to maintain your name on a do-not-call list for ten years, and they are supposed to provide a copy of the do-not-call policy on request. If they call you after you've requested to be put on a do-not-call list, or if they claim they don't have a list or policy, you have officially got them by the balls and can go directly to court and claim your $500 (or $1500, if you can show there's been a pattern of abuse of this kind with the company and people have successfully sued them under the law--ChemLawn and AT&T are fairly notorious for this).
In most states, $500-$1500 is small enough that you can actually file in small claims court--no lawyers required. If the company doesn't send someone to court, you can get a summary judgement and the judge can actually put a lien out on the company to pay you your money (even garnishing profits if necessary), because if they don't pay they are officially in contempt of court.
There is a very thorough page at Junkbusters, including a handy little script that lists literally EVERYTHING you can potentially screw a telemarketer over with on that law (not just refusing to put you on a do-not-call list, btw-- collection and/or telemarketing calls after 9 pm local time are also illegal, for starters). Needless to say, I do use the Junkbusters script, and telemarketers learn one way or another that when I say I don't want any bloody calls I damned well mean I don't want any calls, damnit :)=
Some anonymous coward dun said:
Again, I don't know where you live, but more often than not (at least in the part of the US I'm in) toll roads aren't so much because they're "limited access" but they are toll to pay for road construction bonds (I've posted a much more extensive discussion here--in Kentucky and West Virginia, for example, tolls have been to pay for road construction costs, not for limited access).
I'd dare say that the situation isn't quite the same as with SoDoMI--the latter is far more akin to a protection racket ("buy from us or we send ya up the river and make you Bubba's prison-bitch") than a matter of paying for road bonds. :)
In fact, if memory serves, the reason there are so many toll roads in Chicago is largely to pay for maintenance, so that further blows holes in your argument.
I can name a few. Until fairly recently, it was literally impossible to travel to Owensboro, Kentucky without hitting toll roads along the route (unless one wanted to attempt driving on multiple, two-lane roads). There are still sections of Kentucky (especially along the Mountain Parkway) in which it is literally impossible to get to those areas without paying toll, because the Mountain Parkway is the only major access road into those areas (and yes, that includes the two-lane roads that connect to the Mountain Parkway). There are sections along a major interstate in West Virginia where one cannot go without paying toll on the interstate (because there are no other connecting roads, interstate OR two-lane, to the area)--the whole state is mountains, and construction of roads is very expensive there. Until around 1975-1976, you couldn't go north to Louisville on I-65 without hitting toll. Until around 1990 or so, you couldn't go through much of Kentucky on anything better than a two-lane, twisty, guardrail-less goat-track without hitting toll (Kentucky has an extensive parkway system, equivalent in quality to interstate highways, which was almost completely a toll system--nowadays it's almost completely free except for two parkways), especially if you wanted to get to any towns in western Kentucky.
Or, better yet, Chicago. :) I am not making this up--literally every route of access larger than, say, a goat track is toll into and out of Chicago. Yes, this includes even two-lane highways on occasion. This goes out to about fifty miles away from Chicago, and when I first saw it on a road map I stared in disbelief. I have NEVER seen so many toll roads concentrated in one area. :) (Of course, one could make the snide comment that Da Mob is running the toll booths as a protection racket... :)
Duxup dun said:
I dunno about where you live, but where I live (Kentucky) and in other places in the US, tolls have typically been placed on highways to pay for the construction costs of the road (especially if the state doesn't think it'll recover costs of construction quickly from things like property bonds, gas taxes, trucker gas tags, etc.).
As a minor note--until a few years ago, Kentucky had the single highest number of toll roads in the US (no less than eight major interstate thoroughfares were toll at one point, including sections of I-65 (the old "Kentucky Turnpike"--when I was very young, parts of I-65 south of Louisville were still toll)...). This has pretty much been reduced to two or three (if memory serves, the Bert T. Combs Parkway and sections of the Mountain Parkway, which still haven't been completely paid for); this is because by now most of the parkways (which are basically the state version of interstate highways--limited access and all--which is important because Kentucky has all of four interstate highways going through it which don't cover most of the state) have been paid for in tolls. (In fact, the parkway system here in Kentucky is good enough that parts of it are being very seriously considered for the proposed I-66 interstate--the infrastructure is already there and paid for, they just need to officially designate it as interstate).
In fact, there are roads in West Virginia that are toll (including interstates) for the exact same reason--West Virginia is a poor state (even poorer than Kentucky is) and about the only way they can afford to build interstates is to recover construction fees via tolls (construction costs also tend to be expensive there because you're dealing with building interstates in mountains--I honestly think there might be three acres of flat land in the whole of West Virginia :) and the cost of mountain construction is also a major factor in why the Mountain Parkway is still toll in Kentucky).
Wirehead dun said:
First off, it may be trivial, but it's also quite illegal. You see, legally, telephone providers (including universities and payphone providers) cannot block access to 1-800 numbers for calling cards, 10-10-xxx numbers, etc. because of several laws (including the Telecommunications Act of 1996, mandating that phone companies open up local lines to competition) and because of telephone companies' special legal status of a common carrier.
This is not to say that phone companies don't do it illegally, though. Many university phone providers illegally block 1-800 access numbers and 10-10-xxx access numbers; COCOT pay phones (COCOTS are small, for-profit telephone companies outside the local monopolies that run pay phone services in which the person who allows the phone on his property gets a considerable cut--in fact, many of the same parties that run COCOT pay phones also run university phone systems) are downright infamous for blocking equal access, as are hotel telephone services; occasionally, one of the "big boy" telcos will do it as well (I've run into GTE pay phones at Bristol Motor Speedway that will not accept access to other phone companies--neither by calling card nor by 10-10-xxx number--though fortunately they've not figured out how to block personal 1-800 numbers yet :).
If your university/pay phone/etc. IS blocking 1-800 access numbers for collect calls or calling cards, and/or if it blocks 10-10-xxx phone numbers, give a call to your state's Public Utilities Commission (it is normally in the phone book in the information section or in the Blue Pages). Explain that the telco is blocking equal access by blocking 10-10-xxx or calling-card access (whichever applies)--as noted, this is flatly illegal, and it is one of the few things that PSCs and the FCC (which regulates the telephone industry) will clue-by-four telephone companies over (some COCOT operators have actually lost their "license" to operate a telephone company because they blocked equal access).
I suspect that most universities that use these COCOT-style services as "dorm telephone service" aren't aware of the laws regarding equal access, and think of it as a "business agreement" much like they'd see an exclusive contract with a soft-drink distributor. Alas, Coke and Pepsi distributors generally aren't subject to common-carrier laws like telcos are :)
You'll also want to contact the phone company you have calling-card access with (or whom you get 10-10-xxx access through) and notify them that your university (or COCOT phones) are blocking access to alternate providers. Many long-distance companies are all too happy to sic the FCC on folks who illegally block 1-800 calling-card access and/or 10-10-xxx access (AT&T among them).
More info than you ever cared to see about telcos, and the laws affecting them, here, and info specifically on equal access here and h ere and even a cute little Postscript complaint sticker that gives info about the laws regarding equal access. :)