Because the ones who make the most noise have the least idea about the science and engineering of course.
The fact that no one currently manufactures a valve that hydrodgen won't leak through seems to make no impression on the Hydrogen Fans. They are True Believers, mere facts are irrelevant.
Did the polls mention that women like SUVs because they don't trust their children's safety to the tiny little cars we have these days? Thanks to the enviro-mental movement regulations on cars require that companies build unsafely small vehicles.
Give me a 1974 Buick or Oldsmobile and I'll think about parking my truck. But some dainty little envirocar? Doubt it. I have no wish to die on the highway.
"I don't own a car, I make a point of not owning one but how do you convince Mr Tinyknob in his suv-sports-environment killer to drive something fuel efficient? He's never going to impress people any other way."
In a free country, you suck it up and respect the guy's right to spend his money on what he wants. He lets you have a computer, right?
Or you could do it the other way, and arrange a government that will confiscate his car. Of course sooner or later the Ministry of Waste will decide that YOU don't "need" that computer, and then we won't be reading your amazingly stupid postings here.
So you should really think about whether you want to live in a free country with nice food and things in the stores, or do you want to see that rich guy with the big car punished for having something you don't like. You are not going to have it both ways.
By the way the Freudian "penis extention" theory you're going on about? Total crap, very old news. Try to keep up eh?
"But lets step back for a second and ask if there were no laws about it, would you would cross these lines more freely than you would otherwise?"
Would I? No. But then I'm already aculturated and steeped in Western tradition.
It is indisputable that there are countries in which honor killings are both common and accepted. There are countries in which honor suicides are common and accepted.
If people move here from these cultures and no one tells them we don't do that stuff here, is it unreasonable to assume they will carry on as before? Probably not, right?
If we shrink from teaching our own cultural values in public school to our own kids, is it unreasonable to assume that there will be growing numbers of young people who don't know what those values are? Again, probably not.
Its my opinion of human beings that they generally rise to the occasion, and respond with increased effort to meet increased expectations. If society, meaning the majority, demands a certain minimum level of civilised behaviour, that's what we will get.
Conversely if we are going to declare ourselves open for anything and everything, we are going to get anything and everything.
Which is not what we want as a society. What we want is personal freedom, prosperity and peace to enjoy it in. You don't get peace when anything goes, you get peace when the citizenry willingly observes accepted limits. As in no killing, stealing, raping, slavery etc.
bug locomotion not easy either
on
Animal Robots
·
· Score: 1
The funny thing about insect locomotion that nobody noticed until we started making six leged robots is that they fall down a lot. Bugs trip and fall all the time when walking.
Of course this is not a problem for a bug, because their exoskeletons are so strong for their weight and because they mostly have a big skid plate for an abdomen.
You have a half ton, three megabuck robot though, falling down becomes an issue.
Besides, as we knw from Discovery Channel, bugs switch from 6 to 4 legs when they want to go fast, and from 4 to 2 when going REAL fast.
Picture 3 megabuck robot running on hind legs and tripping over a lump in the carpet. Bdoom, crash. D'oh.
Gotta agree with you. He postulated no end of modern machines before they existed, the quintessential science fiction writer.
Possibly the problem is that Hollywood is American, and has never understood the Victorians at all. Even at the time they didn't understand them, or like them. 1837 wasn't very long after 1812, let us not forget. Even in Well's time they remembered the War of 1812 the way we remember WWI.
Of course I don't believe it, I can prove otherwise.
First of all, as I've made more than clear in this thread, this is not about spreading "my" religion. The point is, and you are making it for me admirably I might add, that there are no end of posters like yourself willing to jump to that conclusion instantly upon seeing the word "Christian".
That the Greeks had schools of rhetoric, and for that matter China and India had them too, does not alter the fact that WESTERN universities, as in those in Europe and the Americas, have their roots in the Catholic and Orthodox centers of learning from the middle ages onward. Like Oxford.
One obvious reason for this is that throughout the whole cathedral building phase of European history the Church had most of the money. Almost all scholarship was Church funded, Church directed.
Which you would know had you been paying any attention at your Jesuit school. Your Jesuit instructors would slap their foreheads if they saw this poor excuse for historical recall.
As for attacking a single part of your argument, I just go to the most glaring piece of foolishness first. Anything else you want dismantled, let me know.
Short answer, no. Why? Generation losses, storage losses, transportation losses.
Example, there is currently no method of welding a liquid hydrogen storage tank that does not leak. This problem also includes valves, pipe joints, and fittings.
Then there's the issue of where to find the millions of tons of rare metals to make all the fuel cells out of. We are talking palladium, gold, silver, platinum and on and on.
I believe in open immigration to the USA too. That's because I'm a Canadian, and I'd like somewhere nice to live that my income isn't taxed at a rate of 50+%. Like Arizona. I loooove Arizona!
However, you don't have "open" immigration. What you have is a system that turns away doctors, nurses and other skilled people (but first they torture you with bureaucratic nightmares and threats of forced deportation if your papers are not in order) while Somali goat herders with AIDS get the fast track Green Card.
You also have zero border control. You should work on that.
So you're saying there's been no origional thought developed since 0 AD? Aquinas was 100% derivative from previous work? Locke? Spinosa? Get a grip man!
Check it: "Besides, who says there's something wrong with teaching Christianity? If you don't know the rules of Western Civilization your life will suck, and all the rules come right out of the Bible like it or not."
This does not say: "If you don't buy into my book, your life will suck. Real nice."
It says something completely different than you state. There's nothing about buying in implied there. The simple communication you seem to be deliberately avoiding is, if you live in a Western country, and you don't know the rules of how people in Western countries live, your life is going to suck. Why? Because everybody you meet is going to think you are a JERK, and behave accordingly.
The fact that the rules for moral behaviour -in the West- come from the Christian religion and Christian philosphers is inescapable, but it does not mean that one must become a Christian to merely know what they are. Nor do I say anywhere that making people convert would be a good idea, or even faintly desirable.
I can know about Bhuddism without being a Bhuddist. As a matter of individual sovereignty, anybody who says I have to convert will feel the toe of my boot. BUT, if I'm going to live in Tibet for a while I better know about Bhuddism. Right? And probably Tibetan schools would be smart to teach Bhuddism. Right?
Did you get that? Is that clear?
There's no attempt being made here to convert all and sundry by fire and the sword, and your insistence that there is indicates, to me at least, that you have no intellectual flexibility. Somebody says the word "Christianity" and you go off down your programmed path.
As for Ashcroft and the rest of it, about all you've stated here is that you disagree with some of the laws that Ashcroft has been upholding lately. He has to apply the law, that's his job. Even the laws you don't like, and even the ones he doesn't like. He doesn't let things slide like Lurch Reno used to under Clinton, but I notice his department hasn't burned down any buildings with little kids in them like Lurch did. Waco, remember? Ashcroft pulls something like that, then maybe you'll have a point.
The "Bush Lied" thing has been just about beaten to death thanks. He didn't lie, everybody knows it. 9/11 Committee report, remember? George didn't lie? Ring a bell?
The only people still saying he did are the Democratic Party, their various water carriers, and you Slashdot intellectuals.
Your raving on being entirely representative of the Slashdot Experience (TM) was the reason I posted that little witticism in the first place. Try turning down the Bush Hatred knob to a slow boil.
Has anyone considered there might be a bias in the publishing environment? Sci Fi publishing and books in general have had their tax environment changed over the last few years in the USA.
These days their back list inventory of printed books is considered a TAXABLE item instead of a deductible cost. That means they have to blow out as much of their print run as possible within the tax year or get hit with a tax on unsold product.
So in the old days they could sit on 10,000 unsold copies for a few years, but now they can't. They have to do small runs, and if the small run doesn't fly off the shelf they remainder it and don't do a re-print.
Avant garde books are notorious for not flying off the shelves, even the Lord Of The Rings didn't sell huge when it first came out.
That built in systematic bias will have a stultifying effect on Sci Fi in print.
Another bias present in the USA is that basically there are two bookstores, Barnes & Noble and Borders. Here in Canada there's ONE store, Chapters. If a book doesn't make their inventory for whatever reason, it doesn't get sold.
This is not a conspiracy theory you understand, more like gravity. An uncaring and accidental force that constrains movement.
Change the above constraints, change the type of stories you get.
So basically I think Mr. Sawyer has a good chance of being wrong in his assumptions. The result he predicts may actually hold up.
Or the whole publishing biz could go electronic or "just in time" printing. That would really shake things up.
You say honor killings have an "ethical treatment", and to denounce (or pointlessly tirade against) them would be "hypocritical".
Given your decision to consider the cultural/ethical validity of honor killings, if that decision is widespread, what's going to be the inevitable, logical result?
Maybe... honour killings?
So if some demented perve somewhere figures out an "ethical treatment" for rape, like, oh maybe chattel slavery, you'll just "understand the world beyond my own experiences"?
What's going to be the result? Rape? Possibly?,
Final case, if you drop a pencil, are you willing to be open to the possibility that it will be on the ceiling? You can argue about it, but when you drop your pencil in an exam, where do you look?
My guess is that you're under 25, possibly under 20, enroled in some frightfully progresive school and doing quite well at absorbing all the wonderful progressive thoughts they are feeding you.
You've even contradicted yourself in the same small post.
On the one hand you say "Who am I to judge? Who are you?" with respect to honor killings, stretching even to the killing of children.
On the other hand, you have a problem with rape.
But dude, who are you to judge?!
This is 100% representative of what passes for liberal "thinking", and its reflected in liberal generated social policy like the hopeless farce that is public education in New York City, or another hopeless farce, the Assault Weapon Ban.
So you'll forgive me if I vote for the most non-liberal people I can.
I'd consider myself more to be a Lockean Liberal if one can use the term without bringing a freight of Statism with it.
Say, wouldn't it be nice if Locke and Jeffersonian democracy and all that stuff was actually taught in schools? That's be a good thing eh?
Of course you can't really understand Locke and Jefferson et al without at least a nodding familiarity with Christianity and its practices at the time...
It is hard for me to take you seriously for two reasons. First, you don't know how Slashdot works.
(#10180121) is the ultimate parent of this thread, and the origional of my comment, which was that there's no tolerance on Slashdot, and which is now marked -1 Troll more than confirming my point. Thank you Lefty moderators, you are absolutely predictable.
Second, you make the outrageous claim that John Ashcroft is a religious zealot hell bent on destroying everything his hate filled zealot heart wants to.
Now, finally, you take my disagreement with your outrageous and unsupported assertions as evidence that I am a zealot too.
This is important shit, not some intellectual game, so let me realign your brain cells a little bit.
The fucks who killed all those little kids in Russia? They are religeous zealots, or were before the Russian cops executed them on the spot. That's what the word "zealot" in English refers to. Its taken from the lunatics who threw their living children down on the heads of the Roman soldiers from the walls of Masada when they ran out of ammunition. Look it up.
The Russian government then spent three days covering up the situation by lying to the Russian people, lying to the parents of dead children, lying to the intenational press and lying to each other about how many terrorists there were, how many casualties, and how many were taken hostage, and why it took so long for the regular troops to get there, and etc. THAT is corruption.
John Ashcroft is not a zealot, and the Bush administration is not corrupt.
You want to be taken seriously, don't make claims that are self evidently not true.
Again, I can only direct you to the Civil Rights Act.
Because the Civil Rights Act in this particular case is what was transgressed against. Companies cannot make any rule they like. Making a rule that bans a religious practice is illegal, making a rule which enforces a religious practice is also illegal.
It is illegal for a Christian company to ban Jews, or to make rules which transgress against the Jewish religion such as baning the wearing of the yarmaluke.
Therefore it is also illegal for a Muslim company to ban Christians, or to enforce halal customs on their employees. Bacon cannot be banned from a Muslim owned workplace, nor indeed can the company punish even their Muslim employees for eating bacon, much less non-Muslim ones.
Why Liberals continue to abhore the former case while arguing the "legitimacy" of the latter is a mystery to me. Justice is supposed to be blind.
Thems is The Rules. Obey the rules, or go in peace. Or go to jail, I suppose.
Sorry guy, I guess I must be just an ignorant Nazi/baby killer. I'll go shoot myself now, ok?
Hence my origional comment in this thread, since marked troll -1, that there's no tolerance at all for non-left opinions on Slashdot. Mere reason and evidence are meaningless here.
I rest my case....and a good thing too, it was getting pretty heavy." -Groucho Marx, Karl's" smarter brother.
And this has what to do with teaching the tenets of Christianty in Western schools? All I said was if you want to live in a Western country, it makes your life easier if you know the basics. That includes France, I hasten to add.
Besides, you've taken me out of context. I did not say that NO other religion has freedom of worship as a concept, just that some don't. Our current version has ROOTS in Christianity. Obviously it has been elaborated upon since it was posited.
One of the consequences of not teaching about religions in school is that it makes telling the difference between science and religion much more difficult.
Certain members of the extreme ecology movement have in fact forgotten the difference, and are busy hammering science back into religion again.
You see my point, yes?
One does not have to practice a religion to learn its tenets, or to gain great insight from knowing them.
Slashdot Mirror
Because the ones who make the most noise have the least idea about the science and engineering of course.
The fact that no one currently manufactures a valve that hydrodgen won't leak through seems to make no impression on the Hydrogen Fans. They are True Believers, mere facts are irrelevant.
You will be asimilated.
Did the polls mention that women like SUVs because they don't trust their children's safety to the tiny little cars we have these days? Thanks to the enviro-mental movement regulations on cars require that companies build unsafely small vehicles.
Give me a 1974 Buick or Oldsmobile and I'll think about parking my truck. But some dainty little envirocar? Doubt it. I have no wish to die on the highway.
"I don't own a car, I make a point of not owning one but how do you convince Mr Tinyknob in his suv-sports-environment killer to drive something fuel efficient? He's never going to impress people any other way."
In a free country, you suck it up and respect the guy's right to spend his money on what he wants. He lets you have a computer, right?
Or you could do it the other way, and arrange a government that will confiscate his car. Of course sooner or later the Ministry of Waste will decide that YOU don't "need" that computer, and then we won't be reading your amazingly stupid postings here.
So you should really think about whether you want to live in a free country with nice food and things in the stores, or do you want to see that rich guy with the big car punished for having something you don't like. You are not going to have it both ways.
By the way the Freudian "penis extention" theory you're going on about? Total crap, very old news. Try to keep up eh?
"But lets step back for a second and ask if there were no laws about it, would you would cross these lines more freely than you would otherwise?"
Would I? No. But then I'm already aculturated and steeped in Western tradition.
It is indisputable that there are countries in which honor killings are both common and accepted. There are countries in which honor suicides are common and accepted.
If people move here from these cultures and no one tells them we don't do that stuff here, is it unreasonable to assume they will carry on as before? Probably not, right?
If we shrink from teaching our own cultural values in public school to our own kids, is it unreasonable to assume that there will be growing numbers of young people who don't know what those values are? Again, probably not.
Its my opinion of human beings that they generally rise to the occasion, and respond with increased effort to meet increased expectations. If society, meaning the majority, demands a certain minimum level of civilised behaviour, that's what we will get.
Conversely if we are going to declare ourselves open for anything and everything, we are going to get anything and everything.
Which is not what we want as a society. What we want is personal freedom, prosperity and peace to enjoy it in. You don't get peace when anything goes, you get peace when the citizenry willingly observes accepted limits. As in no killing, stealing, raping, slavery etc.
The funny thing about insect locomotion that nobody noticed until we started making six leged robots is that they fall down a lot. Bugs trip and fall all the time when walking.
Of course this is not a problem for a bug, because their exoskeletons are so strong for their weight and because they mostly have a big skid plate for an abdomen.
You have a half ton, three megabuck robot though, falling down becomes an issue.
Besides, as we knw from Discovery Channel, bugs switch from 6 to 4 legs when they want to go fast, and from 4 to 2 when going REAL fast.
Picture 3 megabuck robot running on hind legs and tripping over a lump in the carpet. Bdoom, crash. D'oh.
Alan Parsons' Project and the Moody Blues figure in there anywhere? ~:D
Gotta agree with you. He postulated no end of modern machines before they existed, the quintessential science fiction writer.
Possibly the problem is that Hollywood is American, and has never understood the Victorians at all. Even at the time they didn't understand them, or like them. 1837 wasn't very long after 1812, let us not forget. Even in Well's time they remembered the War of 1812 the way we remember WWI.
Of course I don't believe it, I can prove otherwise.
First of all, as I've made more than clear in this thread, this is not about spreading "my" religion. The point is, and you are making it for me admirably I might add, that there are no end of posters like yourself willing to jump to that conclusion instantly upon seeing the word "Christian".
That the Greeks had schools of rhetoric, and for that matter China and India had them too, does not alter the fact that WESTERN universities, as in those in Europe and the Americas, have their roots in the Catholic and Orthodox centers of learning from the middle ages onward. Like Oxford.
One obvious reason for this is that throughout the whole cathedral building phase of European history the Church had most of the money. Almost all scholarship was Church funded, Church directed.
Which you would know had you been paying any attention at your Jesuit school. Your Jesuit instructors would slap their foreheads if they saw this poor excuse for historical recall.
As for attacking a single part of your argument, I just go to the most glaring piece of foolishness first. Anything else you want dismantled, let me know.
Short answer, no.
Why? Generation losses, storage losses, transportation losses.
Example, there is currently no method of welding a liquid hydrogen storage tank that does not leak. This problem also includes valves, pipe joints, and fittings.
Then there's the issue of where to find the millions of tons of rare metals to make all the fuel cells out of. We are talking palladium, gold, silver, platinum and on and on.
Ain't going to work right now.
I believe in open immigration to the USA too. That's because I'm a Canadian, and I'd like somewhere nice to live that my income isn't taxed at a rate of 50+%. Like Arizona. I loooove Arizona!
However, you don't have "open" immigration. What you have is a system that turns away doctors, nurses and other skilled people (but first they torture you with bureaucratic nightmares and threats of forced deportation if your papers are not in order) while Somali goat herders with AIDS get the fast track Green Card.
You also have zero border control. You should work on that.
Well, if that's all you've got to say, why are you even bothering? Such a bald statement is patently wrong and you know it.
Small example, there wouldn't be modern universities if there hadn't been monestaries in the middle ages.
If you haven't got anything better than this nya nya nyaaaa! stuff, piss off.
http://www.steynonline.com/pageprint.cfm?edit_id=2 9
Here's a rather nice article that may explain some of the consequences of your current thought process better than I've been able to.
Pay particular attention to the guy blaming rapes in Norway on Norwegian women, and his justification for it.
So you're saying there's been no origional thought developed since 0 AD? Aquinas was 100% derivative from previous work? Locke? Spinosa? Get a grip man!
You just are not reading what I'm writing here.
Check it: "Besides, who says there's something wrong with teaching Christianity? If you don't know the rules of Western Civilization your life will suck, and all the rules come right out of the Bible like it or not."
This does not say: "If you don't buy into my book, your life will suck. Real nice."
It says something completely different than you state. There's nothing about buying in implied there. The simple communication you seem to be deliberately avoiding is, if you live in a Western country, and you don't know the rules of how people in Western countries live, your life is going to suck. Why? Because everybody you meet is going to think you are a JERK, and behave accordingly.
The fact that the rules for moral behaviour -in the West- come from the Christian religion and Christian philosphers is inescapable, but it does not mean that one must become a Christian to merely know what they are. Nor do I say anywhere that making people convert would be a good idea, or even faintly desirable.
I can know about Bhuddism without being a Bhuddist. As a matter of individual sovereignty, anybody who says I have to convert will feel the toe of my boot. BUT, if I'm going to live in Tibet for a while I better know about Bhuddism. Right? And probably Tibetan schools would be smart to teach Bhuddism. Right?
Did you get that? Is that clear?
There's no attempt being made here to convert all and sundry by fire and the sword, and your insistence that there is indicates, to me at least, that you have no intellectual flexibility. Somebody says the word "Christianity" and you go off down your programmed path.
As for Ashcroft and the rest of it, about all you've stated here is that you disagree with some of the laws that Ashcroft has been upholding lately. He has to apply the law, that's his job. Even the laws you don't like, and even the ones he doesn't like. He doesn't let things slide like Lurch Reno used to under Clinton, but I notice his department hasn't burned down any buildings with little kids in them like Lurch did. Waco, remember? Ashcroft pulls something like that, then maybe you'll have a point.
The "Bush Lied" thing has been just about beaten to death thanks. He didn't lie, everybody knows it. 9/11 Committee report, remember? George didn't lie? Ring a bell?
The only people still saying he did are the Democratic Party, their various water carriers, and you Slashdot intellectuals.
Your raving on being entirely representative of the Slashdot Experience (TM) was the reason I posted that little witticism in the first place. Try turning down the Bush Hatred knob to a slow boil.
Indigo/Chapters still does all their buying though, right?
A good way to tell is if they still have Guns & Ammo at Coles, because the great minds at Chapters discontinued all gun magazines.
Some bias there I'm thinking.
Has anyone considered there might be a bias in the publishing environment? Sci Fi publishing and books in general have had their tax environment changed over the last few years in the USA.
These days their back list inventory of printed books is considered a TAXABLE item instead of a deductible cost. That means they have to blow out as much of their print run as possible within the tax year or get hit with a tax on unsold product.
So in the old days they could sit on 10,000 unsold copies for a few years, but now they can't. They have to do small runs, and if the small run doesn't fly off the shelf they remainder it and don't do a re-print.
Avant garde books are notorious for not flying off the shelves, even the Lord Of The Rings didn't sell huge when it first came out.
That built in systematic bias will have a stultifying effect on Sci Fi in print.
Another bias present in the USA is that basically there are two bookstores, Barnes & Noble and Borders. Here in Canada there's ONE store, Chapters. If a book doesn't make their inventory for whatever reason, it doesn't get sold.
This is not a conspiracy theory you understand, more like gravity. An uncaring and accidental force that constrains movement.
Change the above constraints, change the type of stories you get.
So basically I think Mr. Sawyer has a good chance of being wrong in his assumptions. The result he predicts may actually hold up.
Or the whole publishing biz could go electronic or "just in time" printing. That would really shake things up.
Ahh, you wish to THINK. Ok, think about this.
You say honor killings have an "ethical treatment", and to denounce (or pointlessly tirade against) them would be "hypocritical".
Given your decision to consider the cultural/ethical validity of honor killings, if that decision is widespread, what's going to be the inevitable, logical result?
Maybe... honour killings?
So if some demented perve somewhere figures out an "ethical treatment" for rape, like, oh maybe chattel slavery, you'll just "understand the world beyond my own experiences"?
What's going to be the result? Rape? Possibly?,
Final case, if you drop a pencil, are you willing to be open to the possibility that it will be on the ceiling? You can argue about it, but when you drop your pencil in an exam, where do you look?
My guess is that you're under 25, possibly under 20, enroled in some frightfully progresive school and doing quite well at absorbing all the wonderful progressive thoughts they are feeding you.
My condolences. You'll get over it eventually.
Yep, that's what a Liberal would say.
You've even contradicted yourself in the same small post.
On the one hand you say "Who am I to judge? Who are you?" with respect to honor killings, stretching even to the killing of children.
On the other hand, you have a problem with rape.
But dude, who are you to judge?!
This is 100% representative of what passes for liberal "thinking", and its reflected in liberal generated social policy like the hopeless farce that is public education in New York City, or another hopeless farce, the Assault Weapon Ban.
So you'll forgive me if I vote for the most non-liberal people I can.
True.
I'd consider myself more to be a Lockean Liberal if one can use the term without bringing a freight of Statism with it.
Say, wouldn't it be nice if Locke and Jeffersonian democracy and all that stuff was actually taught in schools? That's be a good thing eh?
Of course you can't really understand Locke and Jefferson et al without at least a nodding familiarity with Christianity and its practices at the time...
Wait, didn't I say that already? ~:D
It is hard for me to take you seriously for two reasons. First, you don't know how Slashdot works.
(#10180121) is the ultimate parent of this thread, and the origional of my comment, which was that there's no tolerance on Slashdot, and which is now marked -1 Troll more than confirming my point. Thank you Lefty moderators, you are absolutely predictable.
Second, you make the outrageous claim that John Ashcroft is a religious zealot hell bent on destroying everything his hate filled zealot heart wants to.
Now, finally, you take my disagreement with your outrageous and unsupported assertions as evidence that I am a zealot too.
This is important shit, not some intellectual game, so let me realign your brain cells a little bit.
The fucks who killed all those little kids in Russia? They are religeous zealots, or were before the Russian cops executed them on the spot. That's what the word "zealot" in English refers to. Its taken from the lunatics who threw their living children down on the heads of the Roman soldiers from the walls of Masada when they ran out of ammunition. Look it up.
The Russian government then spent three days covering up the situation by lying to the Russian people, lying to the parents of dead children, lying to the intenational press and lying to each other about how many terrorists there were, how many casualties, and how many were taken hostage, and why it took so long for the regular troops to get there, and etc. THAT is corruption.
John Ashcroft is not a zealot, and the Bush administration is not corrupt.
You want to be taken seriously, don't make claims that are self evidently not true.
Again, I can only direct you to the Civil Rights Act.
Because the Civil Rights Act in this particular case is what was transgressed against. Companies cannot make any rule they like. Making a rule that bans a religious practice is illegal, making a rule which enforces a religious practice is also illegal.
It is illegal for a Christian company to ban Jews, or to make rules which transgress against the Jewish religion such as baning the wearing of the yarmaluke.
Therefore it is also illegal for a Muslim company to ban Christians, or to enforce halal customs on their employees. Bacon cannot be banned from a Muslim owned workplace, nor indeed can the company punish even their Muslim employees for eating bacon, much less non-Muslim ones.
Why Liberals continue to abhore the former case while arguing the "legitimacy" of the latter is a mystery to me. Justice is supposed to be blind.
Thems is The Rules. Obey the rules, or go in peace. Or go to jail, I suppose.
Sorry guy, I guess I must be just an ignorant Nazi/baby killer. I'll go shoot myself now, ok?
...and a good thing too, it was getting pretty heavy." -Groucho Marx, Karl's" smarter brother.
Hence my origional comment in this thread, since marked troll -1, that there's no tolerance at all for non-left opinions on Slashdot. Mere reason and evidence are meaningless here.
I rest my case.
And this has what to do with teaching the tenets of Christianty in Western schools? All I said was if you want to live in a Western country, it makes your life easier if you know the basics. That includes France, I hasten to add.
Besides, you've taken me out of context. I did not say that NO other religion has freedom of worship as a concept, just that some don't. Our current version has ROOTS in Christianity. Obviously it has been elaborated upon since it was posited.
One of the consequences of not teaching about religions in school is that it makes telling the difference between science and religion much more difficult.
Certain members of the extreme ecology movement have in fact forgotten the difference, and are busy hammering science back into religion again.
You see my point, yes?
One does not have to practice a religion to learn its tenets, or to gain great insight from knowing them.
Parent to my comment was:
"The West is moving on past Christianity. It's interesting for historical reasons, nothing more."
Which is patently false and frankly silly. Hence my post.
More sense now?