The stats I've seen have something like 79% of Americans believing in the Virgin Birth and something like 33% believing in Evolution. This despite the fact that the Virgin Birth is a relatively recent addition to the Christian canon. I've seen statistics showing that 60% of Americans believe that you cannot be moral unless you are a Christian.
Agreed that the driving force behind the dumbification of Americans is coming from a minority viewpoint, but when your own president believes that atheists should not be considered as citizens and cannot be patriots, minority takes on a whole new meaning.
The US is already not top dog and so far no hoohoo from the native demagogues. America is serving now mostly as an example of the dangers of listening to demagogues.
Just to be fair, I do want to point out I'm not an America basher, I'm a stupidity basher. It's not my fault that an awful lot of it is coming from America these days.
I disagree. I believe that only the certified Word of God (TM) should be taught in schools. You do not need a science education to work at Walmart.
Seriously though, has it not attracted your attention that this whole debate is solely an American issue? The rest of the world recognizes that the Scientific Method is humanity's best tool for determining truth, and it isn't up for debate. The theory of evolution has endured a century of testing and refinement and is objectively viewed to be truth. Only in America is this in question because only in America are really, really stupid (or evil power-mad - take your pick) people in charge of the social agenda. And only in America are a majority of people falling for this tripe. What is the matter with y'all?
So, go ahead y'all keep believing in the tooth fairy and meanwhile do not be surprised that the rest of the world takes you less and less seriously. At international gatherings you will be like the opinionated bigot uncle that everyone keeps trying to dodge.
There's a good Salon article on Richard Dawkins that should be mandatory reading for anyone looking for a dose of truth.
Here in Canada we had a political party who sold us out to corporate interests, who made decisions that the average Canadian could not stomach and what happened was the very next election, all across the country, we wiped them out. They went from the ruling all powerful party to having only two members sitting. They became extinct and no longer exist. (The remnants merged with a far right party and the chances of them getting into power anywhere outside of their small regional base is small.)
Despite the overwhelming present power of the Republicans, it is still the people who have the power, but only if they use it. This Kerry fellow should be in the news every single day pounding a podium like an Old Testament prophet for each and every fresh outrage against democracy perpetrated by Bush and his cronies. He should be embracing confrontation with the Bush administration's insane and self serving policies. The Republicans call them the demoncrats and tell lie after lie about their positions and the best that they can come back with is half-hearted attempts to woo the Republican base.
If Kerry lacks the stones for a fight then y'all need to find someone who will. If people are getting messed over by crazy policies and corrupt elections they need to vote with their feet and their hearts.
The best of luck with the fight for your freedom. You are going to need it.
Actually I'm not criticizing you personally or indeed the hard work from all the people who tried to stop Bush but you have to admit that since 2000 it has been one bad development after another and there is not the sort of overwhelming sense of indignation about what is happening to American rights and freedoms that one ought to expect. The silence is deafening.
When President Clinton got hoovered in office, the din never stopped. Bush has repeatedly lied to the American people while setting up what can only be described as a feudal theocracy and where are the mobs in the streets to protest? If the Democrats are the only hope for a return to sanity, where are they? If they're not, where is the popular uprising to make a new party that does meet the needs of the average American? Where is the outrage about what is being done to the world these days in America's name?
Your educational system is being whittled out from under you, your medical care is fast becoming a luxury item, religious zealots are getting more press than all of the above combined and all I'm seeing is a bunch of people apparently happy to be herded into pens so long as it supports the troops.
I sympathize that you're on the side of the angels but what the blue blazes do these clowns have to do before Mr and Mrs Six Pack get off their butts to act?
Members only town hall meetings? Why aren't there five times the number of people outside letting everyone know that this is unacceptable behaviour?
They're not there. And I'm sorry but if that is the best America can come up with then yes you do deserve what you're getting.
You elected him president after four years of seeing him in action. I really have no idea how anyone can start complaining about things now.
Yes, he is corrupt beyond words to describe and is trying to implement a one party state. The damage this one administration has done to America's reputation around the world may never be undone.
This is what the majority of you voted for. Eat it in good health and try to remember your dissatisfaction if you get the opportunity to vote in the future.
And by the way, if you really do care about things, maybe you should start making noises
about paperless no-recount electronic voting machines and messed up voter rolls NOW before you get the same again fed to you.
According to
Dominic Keating, who plays Malcolm Reed on Enterprise, the series was cancelled because of politics. He says it was the number two show on UPN. The studio and the producers have fought all this season with the studio asking for changes like a boy band in the mess hall. About the theme music that everyone seems to hate? The studio asked for and got a tambourine added to it.
I knew when I saw the scene with the caskets of the dead servicemen that these guys were playing with fire. Good on them that they kept it up as good as they did given the amount of crap they must have been getting from above.
It's all a matter of priorities. The U.S. needs to be able to kill people in large numbers, not look out into the universe to learn Man's true place in it. There's the Bible for that, don't you know.
I just finished reading how one (1) of the many factories in the U.S. that produce bullets now makes 1.2 billion rounds a year and proudly boasts that 75% of them are used.
It's not fear for astronaut safety stopping the funds for a fix-it mission to Hubble, it's the mind-boggling short-sightedness, stupidity and profound greed of the current U.S. administration.
Now if Hubble could kill people, a fix-it flight would have been launched in Bush's first term.
As I stated, evolution is not being taught in schools because of teacher fear of backlash. It is being referred to in the right wing press as communistic evolution, which is supreme irony because the communists had crippled their own biological sciences with ideology (Lysenkoism) rather than science just as America is doing today.
I disagree with your second point, there has been ample evidence of a government driven suppression of dissent. So far it is mostly psychological (you get an intimidating visit from Homeland Security and/or death threats from Fox News watchers if the story is given wide circulation) as opposed to being disappeared by the government. At this time. As far as we know.
About the PBS show, I didn't see it and you didn't see it and it won't be aired so we'll never know. The impression I had from articles was that there were several sets of parents and not just the one lesbian couple. If the articles are to be believed, no special mention of the two mommy family was made, they were simply presented as one of the families.
Is this evidence of the forces of darkness at work? Yes, but persecution of cartoon characters and science fiction shows is the minor league stuff. You want the red meat, how about overturning 600 years of common law with holding prisoners without trial, without even identifying who they are, with torture of prisoners, with disappearing prisoners to torture-friendly regimes anonymously. The US government is doing some very dark things these days. Because they are doing them (as far as we know) just to dark skinned people from foreign countries (like Canada, for one example, where a Canadian citizen was erroneously identified as a terrorist, arrested on a US stopover while returning from vacation and spirited off to jail in Jordan without trial), there has been little public outcry. Foreigners = dirt is not a sign of a healthy society.
Putting the architect of the "legal" justification of American torture (which is BTW still in contravention of the Geneva Conventions no matter what the American government says) in as the top person in US justice is no sign of darkness, it is just the US being efficient, right?
I see the rise of superstition, the decline of science teaching, the rise of authoritarian one party government, the growing suppression of dissent, the disrespect for human rights and the economic class warfare going on in the United States as signs of darkness coming. Silly rabbit, me.
"Liberals are concentrated to the Black and Latino communities"? That is too silly. Buddy, liberals are being used as a scapegoat by the present administration for all manner of things. The fact that liberal and progressive are now used in the US as derisive terms speaks volumes. There was a time when the US was a progressive country on the world stage. Not any more.
About world government, all things being equal, nation states will go on for centuries and no one will want to undermine their country's sovereignty ever. However all things are not equal and we are entering the age of global challenges. Nation states do not have the resources or power necessary to cope which is why we are seeing the rise of coalitions like the EU. The US is bucking the trends with its isolationist stance and it is paying a heavy price with a lot heavier tab being rung up each day. This is going to whipsaw back on the US sooner or later. Just to pick one minor small example, how much do you think the US has to pay as hidden costs on items because they are the only non-metric system country in the world? I'm not even touching what is going to happen to the US dollar real soon now as a result of insane economic policies or the fallout from ignoring international agreements on justice, trade and the environment.
I'm not sure what you are using for news sources but in the last few weeks I've been reading how even in the blue states that teachers have stopped teaching evolution even without school board policy changes because they are afraid of the controversy. I've read where neighbors have reported neighbors to Homeland Security because of Bush-critical bumper stickers and the lucky reportee gets a visit. A PBS cartoon rabbit visiting a Vermont sugar maple farm gets pulled from broadcast and denounced by the federal Secretary of Education because (gasp) it happened to be a same sex couple shown.
Yeah, everything's coming up roses. America is #1.
A peaceful world government isn't pie in the sky and it isn't some stupid sign of the end-of-days, it would be a sign of social maturity. But don't worry, with the present levels of xenophobia and distrust of 'furriners' right down to the backbone of the US, it ain't going to happen in our lifetime.
And speaking of Left Behind, I gather sales are really good.
The minute I saw the episode this season with Archer looking at the coffins of the slain, I thought *finally* they're playing to original Trek's best trait - social commentary on present day events. I also thought the second someone in authority sees this episode, this series is doomed.
When they had Vulcan desert insurgents fighting, I thought, you guys are getting too clever, they will get you. (I also wondered where T'Pau's thick accent disappeared to.)
Original Trek played against the background of Viet Nam and a tidal wave of social change. This season Enterprise started to come around to that and tweaked some present day noses. In today's rat-out-your-neighbor-to-Homeland-Security-for-not -being -patriotic-enough climate, there was no way this could go on, could it?
Look, one of the central tenets of Star Trek is that humanity stops warring amongst itself, forms a world government and then heads out to the stars. In an ideal world, Enterprise could have shown some of that process in action using the example of how the Federation came into being as a model for how we can do it ourselves and bring all these disparate nations together to form a peaceful whole.
In this real world, I'm afraid that the forces of darkness are winning. Any notion of a peaceful world government is considered (at best) traitorous liberal propaganda. A substantial portion of the population of the US believes that the end of the world is real close and (incredibly) that this is a good thing since it means Jesus will be here soon. Selfless acts and working for the betterment of all rather than just your own clan is considered a sign of weakness, not strength. Honor has no value. Science and education have no value. Only money and power are worth anything to us and only blind obedience and unquestioning patriotism is worth anything to our leaders.
We need all the idealistic dreams and heroes that we can get now because this century is going to be getting worse before (if) it gets any better. Progress is not a new feature for your cell phone, it is the march of humans from our barbarous past to a better future. At its best, that is the heart and soul of Star Trek and that is what we all need so very very badly right now.
Use charcoal briquets. In the cancer wards, they'll put three or four regular barbecue charcoal briquets on a small cloth on the window sill or next to the radiator. If it can take out those smells, it can't hurt in this case. I'm not sure if I'd put them inside the computer but somewhere in the vicinity of the air outflow of the computer ought to offer some measure of help.
But there is a real good case for letting Rick Berman go.
I've been a fan since the beginning. I spent a good chunk of the 1970's hunting down the scarce model kits, writing letters to networks and studios and have been to the first showing of every movie. When Star Trek came back it was amazing, even if the first movie was very slow paced and not the freshest story line. There were maybe ten people in that first movie showing, talk about keeping faith.
I've watched the followup series come and go and have to say that they all had their moments - even Voyager is not as bad as the general opinion would have you believe.
I haven't always been happy with the directions the storylines have taken - as many posters have said, there is too great a reliance on techno-babble solutions.
Where "the franchise" and I parted company was not Insurrection, which I thought was at least an attempt at making a more thoughtful Trek but Nemesis, which was utter crap from beginning to end. The damning factor is that Rick Berman had no idea that Nemesis was so bad - every interview with him had such amazement that ticket sales were down so much and all the debate since is that this was Star Trek's fault. It isn't.
Look, we need Star Trek, the real Star Trek, more than ever. There are just about no ideals left any more in this crazy violent world. We've been taken over by large soulless corporations, government corruption is at record high levels, and most people are looking out for number one and screw everyone else and why not? Daily we see example after example that things are going to hell and selling out the future pays good money today.
Pre-Berman Star Trek's hook isn't that it has neato space toys that go whoosh and zap, lots of shows and movies have had that. Star Trek's hook is that at its best it shows a plausible and good future with humanity not looking like complete assholes but going for higher goals and brother, there are not many examples of that anymore anywhere.
THAT is why there are new original Star Trek episodes being made at home by people two generations removed from the original show. We are hungering for the higher goals we know we as a race have, and we are doing it in a world where all the higher goals have almost been forgotten in a haze of materialism, fear and violence.
Lose Berman, he just does not get it. Make a Star Trek that hooks us in before the first commercial and doesn't let us go until it's entertained us and shown a little bit more of that better humanity we can aspire to.
Honest to God, some days I feel like Cervantes living in the time of the Inquisition trying to hold hope for tomorrow.
I ran into something similar with an old Windows 98SE box. If you set BOINC as a screensaver with a password, when you try to enter the password to get out of the screensaver you can't. You can't select the password box to input the password, you can't escape with any key combinations. All you can do is power cycle the computer.
I find the BOINC client to be far from user friendly. I could figure it out and get it working but I have my doubts that the average Joe could.
I run an ISP in Canada and PIPEDA, the Cdn govt privacy act, applies to private concerns as of January 1, 2004. Our legal advice, from a major law firm partner specializing in PIPEDA law, was that user IP addresses are considered to be personal information and logs containing them should be deleted every month. All companies needed to appoint a Privacy Officer to deal with PIPEDA complaints. Any user can come to us, request everything we have on them and their usage and they can correct any wrong information or ask us to delete it. According to PIPEDA, an individual's personal information is their property.
Slashdot Mirror
Agreed that the driving force behind the dumbification of Americans is coming from a minority viewpoint, but when your own president believes that atheists should not be considered as citizens and cannot be patriots, minority takes on a whole new meaning.
The US is already not top dog and so far no hoohoo from the native demagogues. America is serving now mostly as an example of the dangers of listening to demagogues.
Just to be fair, I do want to point out I'm not an America basher, I'm a stupidity basher. It's not my fault that an awful lot of it is coming from America these days.
Seriously though, has it not attracted your attention that this whole debate is solely an American issue? The rest of the world recognizes that the Scientific Method is humanity's best tool for determining truth, and it isn't up for debate. The theory of evolution has endured a century of testing and refinement and is objectively viewed to be truth. Only in America is this in question because only in America are really, really stupid (or evil power-mad - take your pick) people in charge of the social agenda. And only in America are a majority of people falling for this tripe. What is the matter with y'all?
So, go ahead y'all keep believing in the tooth fairy and meanwhile do not be surprised that the rest of the world takes you less and less seriously. At international gatherings you will be like the opinionated bigot uncle that everyone keeps trying to dodge.
There's a good Salon article on Richard Dawkins that should be mandatory reading for anyone looking for a dose of truth.
Despite the overwhelming present power of the Republicans, it is still the people who have the power, but only if they use it. This Kerry fellow should be in the news every single day pounding a podium like an Old Testament prophet for each and every fresh outrage against democracy perpetrated by Bush and his cronies. He should be embracing confrontation with the Bush administration's insane and self serving policies. The Republicans call them the demoncrats and tell lie after lie about their positions and the best that they can come back with is half-hearted attempts to woo the Republican base.
If Kerry lacks the stones for a fight then y'all need to find someone who will. If people are getting messed over by crazy policies and corrupt elections they need to vote with their feet and their hearts.
The best of luck with the fight for your freedom. You are going to need it.
When President Clinton got hoovered in office, the din never stopped. Bush has repeatedly lied to the American people while setting up what can only be described as a feudal theocracy and where are the mobs in the streets to protest? If the Democrats are the only hope for a return to sanity, where are they? If they're not, where is the popular uprising to make a new party that does meet the needs of the average American? Where is the outrage about what is being done to the world these days in America's name?
Your educational system is being whittled out from under you, your medical care is fast becoming a luxury item, religious zealots are getting more press than all of the above combined and all I'm seeing is a bunch of people apparently happy to be herded into pens so long as it supports the troops.
I sympathize that you're on the side of the angels but what the blue blazes do these clowns have to do before Mr and Mrs Six Pack get off their butts to act?
Members only town hall meetings? Why aren't there five times the number of people outside letting everyone know that this is unacceptable behaviour?
They're not there. And I'm sorry but if that is the best America can come up with then yes you do deserve what you're getting.
Yes, he is corrupt beyond words to describe and is trying to implement a one party state. The damage this one administration has done to America's reputation around the world may never be undone.
This is what the majority of you voted for. Eat it in good health and try to remember your dissatisfaction if you get the opportunity to vote in the future.
And by the way, if you really do care about things, maybe you should start making noises about paperless no-recount electronic voting machines and messed up voter rolls NOW before you get the same again fed to you.
Just a thought.
I knew when I saw the scene with the caskets of the dead servicemen that these guys were playing with fire. Good on them that they kept it up as good as they did given the amount of crap they must have been getting from above.
Don't even joke about that. You never know who might be reading this and fail to get it.
I just finished reading how one (1) of the many factories in the U.S. that produce bullets now makes 1.2 billion rounds a year and proudly boasts that 75% of them are used.
It's not fear for astronaut safety stopping the funds for a fix-it mission to Hubble, it's the mind-boggling short-sightedness, stupidity and profound greed of the current U.S. administration.
Now if Hubble could kill people, a fix-it flight would have been launched in Bush's first term.
"O brave new world, That has such people in't!"
I disagree with your second point, there has been ample evidence of a government driven suppression of dissent. So far it is mostly psychological (you get an intimidating visit from Homeland Security and/or death threats from Fox News watchers if the story is given wide circulation) as opposed to being disappeared by the government. At this time. As far as we know.
About the PBS show, I didn't see it and you didn't see it and it won't be aired so we'll never know. The impression I had from articles was that there were several sets of parents and not just the one lesbian couple. If the articles are to be believed, no special mention of the two mommy family was made, they were simply presented as one of the families.
Is this evidence of the forces of darkness at work? Yes, but persecution of cartoon characters and science fiction shows is the minor league stuff. You want the red meat, how about overturning 600 years of common law with holding prisoners without trial, without even identifying who they are, with torture of prisoners, with disappearing prisoners to torture-friendly regimes anonymously. The US government is doing some very dark things these days. Because they are doing them (as far as we know) just to dark skinned people from foreign countries (like Canada, for one example, where a Canadian citizen was erroneously identified as a terrorist, arrested on a US stopover while returning from vacation and spirited off to jail in Jordan without trial), there has been little public outcry. Foreigners = dirt is not a sign of a healthy society.
Putting the architect of the "legal" justification of American torture (which is BTW still in contravention of the Geneva Conventions no matter what the American government says) in as the top person in US justice is no sign of darkness, it is just the US being efficient, right?
I see the rise of superstition, the decline of science teaching, the rise of authoritarian one party government, the growing suppression of dissent, the disrespect for human rights and the economic class warfare going on in the United States as signs of darkness coming. Silly rabbit, me.
"Liberals are concentrated to the Black and Latino communities"? That is too silly. Buddy, liberals are being used as a scapegoat by the present administration for all manner of things. The fact that liberal and progressive are now used in the US as derisive terms speaks volumes. There was a time when the US was a progressive country on the world stage. Not any more.
About world government, all things being equal, nation states will go on for centuries and no one will want to undermine their country's sovereignty ever. However all things are not equal and we are entering the age of global challenges. Nation states do not have the resources or power necessary to cope which is why we are seeing the rise of coalitions like the EU. The US is bucking the trends with its isolationist stance and it is paying a heavy price with a lot heavier tab being rung up each day. This is going to whipsaw back on the US sooner or later. Just to pick one minor small example, how much do you think the US has to pay as hidden costs on items because they are the only non-metric system country in the world? I'm not even touching what is going to happen to the US dollar real soon now as a result of insane economic policies or the fallout from ignoring international agreements on justice, trade and the environment.
Brick wall, meet speeding car. Speeding car, brick wall.
Yeah, everything's coming up roses. America is #1.
A peaceful world government isn't pie in the sky and it isn't some stupid sign of the end-of-days, it would be a sign of social maturity. But don't worry, with the present levels of xenophobia and distrust of 'furriners' right down to the backbone of the US, it ain't going to happen in our lifetime. And speaking of Left Behind, I gather sales are really good.
When they had Vulcan desert insurgents fighting, I thought, you guys are getting too clever, they will get you. (I also wondered where T'Pau's thick accent disappeared to.)
Original Trek played against the background of Viet Nam and a tidal wave of social change. This season Enterprise started to come around to that and tweaked some present day noses. In today's rat-out-your-neighbor-to-Homeland-Security-for-not -being -patriotic-enough climate, there was no way this could go on, could it?
Look, one of the central tenets of Star Trek is that humanity stops warring amongst itself, forms a world government and then heads out to the stars. In an ideal world, Enterprise could have shown some of that process in action using the example of how the Federation came into being as a model for how we can do it ourselves and bring all these disparate nations together to form a peaceful whole.
In this real world, I'm afraid that the forces of darkness are winning. Any notion of a peaceful world government is considered (at best) traitorous liberal propaganda. A substantial portion of the population of the US believes that the end of the world is real close and (incredibly) that this is a good thing since it means Jesus will be here soon. Selfless acts and working for the betterment of all rather than just your own clan is considered a sign of weakness, not strength. Honor has no value. Science and education have no value. Only money and power are worth anything to us and only blind obedience and unquestioning patriotism is worth anything to our leaders.
We need all the idealistic dreams and heroes that we can get now because this century is going to be getting worse before (if) it gets any better. Progress is not a new feature for your cell phone, it is the march of humans from our barbarous past to a better future. At its best, that is the heart and soul of Star Trek and that is what we all need so very very badly right now.
Use charcoal briquets. In the cancer wards, they'll put three or four regular barbecue charcoal briquets on a small cloth on the window sill or next to the radiator. If it can take out those smells, it can't hurt in this case. I'm not sure if I'd put them inside the computer but somewhere in the vicinity of the air outflow of the computer ought to offer some measure of help.
But there is a real good case for letting Rick Berman go.
I've been a fan since the beginning. I spent a good chunk of the 1970's hunting down the scarce model kits, writing letters to networks and studios and have been to the first showing of every movie. When Star Trek came back it was amazing, even if the first movie was very slow paced and not the freshest story line. There were maybe ten people in that first movie showing, talk about keeping faith.
I've watched the followup series come and go and have to say that they all had their moments - even Voyager is not as bad as the general opinion would have you believe.
I haven't always been happy with the directions the storylines have taken - as many posters have said, there is too great a reliance on techno-babble solutions.
Where "the franchise" and I parted company was not Insurrection, which I thought was at least an attempt at making a more thoughtful Trek but Nemesis, which was utter crap from beginning to end. The damning factor is that Rick Berman had no idea that Nemesis was so bad - every interview with him had such amazement that ticket sales were down so much and all the debate since is that this was Star Trek's fault. It isn't.
Look, we need Star Trek, the real Star Trek, more than ever. There are just about no ideals left any more in this crazy violent world. We've been taken over by large soulless corporations, government corruption is at record high levels, and most people are looking out for number one and screw everyone else and why not? Daily we see example after example that things are going to hell and selling out the future pays good money today.
Pre-Berman Star Trek's hook isn't that it has neato space toys that go whoosh and zap, lots of shows and movies have had that. Star Trek's hook is that at its best it shows a plausible and good future with humanity not looking like complete assholes but going for higher goals and brother, there are not many examples of that anymore anywhere.
THAT is why there are new original Star Trek episodes being made at home by people two generations removed from the original show. We are hungering for the higher goals we know we as a race have, and we are doing it in a world where all the higher goals have almost been forgotten in a haze of materialism, fear and violence.
Lose Berman, he just does not get it. Make a Star Trek that hooks us in before the first commercial and doesn't let us go until it's entertained us and shown a little bit more of that better humanity we can aspire to.
Honest to God, some days I feel like Cervantes living in the time of the Inquisition trying to hold hope for tomorrow.
I find the BOINC client to be far from user friendly. I could figure it out and get it working but I have my doubts that the average Joe could.
I run an ISP in Canada and PIPEDA, the Cdn govt privacy act, applies to private concerns as of January 1, 2004. Our legal advice, from a major law firm partner specializing in PIPEDA law, was that user IP addresses are considered to be personal information and logs containing them should be deleted every month. All companies needed to appoint a Privacy Officer to deal with PIPEDA complaints. Any user can come to us, request everything we have on them and their usage and they can correct any wrong information or ask us to delete it. According to PIPEDA, an individual's personal information is their property.
In Canada, this is the law.