Wouldn't it be more about having the common userland, and a suitable way to interact with apps designed for touch-based UIs. Without the latter, one may as well be trying to control Excel from a Nintendo game pad.
Doesn't make much sense to me, but they do consider the three things to be part of the single godhead. And the saints aren't gods. They'll pray to saints, to intercede for them, but won't worship saints as they would God. It's like trying to make sense of a book, where each chapter was written by authors who had little to no contact with the other authors. Little wonder it'd end up being a mess.
In Mormon belief it's a bunch of gods with Yahweh in charge. At least that's my understanding of their position.
For a start, religions don't demand you pay up to read the texts and consider them trade secrets.
Which makes it ever more surprising that this commercial operation should have received tax exempt status. It's basically a company, run like an an alarmingly expensive MMO. Scientologists pay a fortune to reach level whatever in Scientology. The company ups the level cap and releases new content when it realises that these mugs still have money remaining.
Another option is to sign-up for indentured servitude, where hard work is rewarded with content and meagre pocket money. In that sense, the teachings can be free, albeit with some pretty serious strings attached. People opting out of the billion year contract they sign (seriously), will be retroactively billed for the religious instruction they received.
No organisation should be able to claim tax exempt status when its core function is to sell its teachings at a premium. By IRS logic, I could open a restaurant, with tax exempt status because I feed homeless people. The IRS doesn't seem to mind that destitute diners are either going to have to sell themselves in to slavery for food, or pay $150 per sitting.
It would indeed be a good day if Belgium can do some serious harm to this company.
Sure, if the Pope was commanding an emotionless and thoughtless robot crusader army. While popes were notorious power players, it's silly to think that the verse I cited (and many others) didn't influence the motivations of the crusaders. Regardless of how the Bible overall is to be interpreted, the ease at which brutality can be justified should give Christians pause for thought. It's not as the verse I cited was some kind of Nostradamus-like vague word salad. Here are the Prince of peace's words:
"But those mine enemies, which would not that I should reign over them, bring hither, and slay them before me."
Doesn't matter that one could find plenty of other verses to prohibit the wanton slaughter and sackings that took place. It's pretty difficult to categorically say that one verse overrides another.
Politics almost certainly steers the course, and religion provides the fuel. In the absence of religion, I'm sure some other ideology could take its place. This isn't just blaming religion for all of life's ills, yet we can't ignore the danger of ascribing divine will to these iron age fables.
Tell them it's a new life coaching/project management/quality methodology designed to align their deliverables with their metric milestones and increase partnership with cloud stakeholders.
It doesn't have to run a single Win32 app. Whether the FSF is right or wrong I don't know. It's merely enough to demonstate that Microsoft is using its monopoly status in desktop and/or office apps to compete unfairly in another market.
In theory they could be brought up on anti-trust charges if they found a way to unfairly tie banana purchases to Windows. Exactly where does the FSF come in to this discussion, and what FUD are they spreading? Their petition is perfectly reasonable. It's asking that users have the ability to disable secure booting - not that the technology should be avoided altogether. That seems fairly pragmatic to me. Users who want the protection can have it, while those who want to install other operating systems can.
Unfortunately a lot of doctors, in the name of science and scientifically guided moral righteousness, support mandatory circumcisions of male babies. It's not just religious nutjobs who support this.
Bullshit. It's a Jewish tradition that became the norm in America. It's the tradition, mixed with religion, that drives people to try to find rational reasons for docking baby penises. You may as well be saying that the Kallam Cosmological Argument is recounted in the name of logic and reason. Blanket circumcision for reasons of health is no more justified than removing toe nails to prevent the many disorders that can come from them. It's tradition. Parents don't realize the impact, and they want their kid to have a "normal" penis.
I don't know about that. I think having faith in someone you love is a virtuous thing. Even showing trust in a complete stranger is an admirable trait in my opinion. I am not a wealthy man by any means, but I think karma has been good to me. Life is a cold and ugly place for the cynical.
Trust should be based on the probability of claim(s) being valid and the risks associated with showing trust. I meet a guy in a bar, and he tells me that his wife is from Galway. I trust him, even though I've nothing to go on beyond his word on the matter. His claim is not extraordinary, and there's no obvious risk in accept it. Continuing our discussion, the stranger tells me that his wife is a rich princess, and that he needs plane fare to get back home. Of course he'll wire the money to me when he gets home, with a handsome reward on top - his wife is a fabulously rich princess! Would it be admirable to hand over the money? No, it'd be foolish. He's making an extraordinary claim which, if accepted at face value, is likely to result in my losing money to a con artist.
That's not be cynical. It's about weighing up the claims and the associated risks. A while back I loaned somewhere just south of 200 euro to a friend who was struggling financially, and had a wife and daughter to care for. Having known him on and off for 10 years, I trusted him and wanted to help. It transpired that I wasn't the only one loaning him money, and he was lying to me and others. In the end, he vanished leaving a trail of unpaid debts. Personally I'd have let him off the money if he'd just been honest, and I no-longer trust him at all. That hasn't stopped me loaning money to friends I trust, because I don't judge everyone by his actions. I am much more careful though in setting clear deadlines on when money is to be returned.
Life is a cold and ugly place for people who grant faith for no good reason. In reality there are few people cynical enough to have absolutely no faith in anyone or anything. Doesn't mean we're always good at weighing things up, but generally there is some kind of process. Christians will probably believe me if I say that I feel God's message of love inside of me, and that he wants me to go out in to the world to offer aid to the sick. Now how about if I tell them that Jesus told me I should ask good Christians to provide 10% of their salaries to support my efforts? I'm guessing that most would at that point withdraw their faith in me, and for good reason. That's healthy scepticism, triggered because accepting my initial claim carried no risk, while my second claim carries with it a great deal of risk. If a homeless guy asks me for money for food, do I give him money? Normally not. I prefer to offer to buy them something to eat, and if they accept, I return with the food. We chat a while, and if they seem pretty straight I may leave them some money. I do this because I see a lot of homeless people here, sitting around drinking anything vaguely alcoholic. I'd prefer to be certain that they've had a meal than give money to a stranger who could be investing it in their steady downwards spiral. Cynical? Maybe, but based on a fair bit of experience with the homeless.
Life is a cold and ugly place for people who grant faith for no good reason, and they'll hurt their friends and family when they make poor decisions.
From experience (mostly Catholic and CoE) most would believe the devil exists. From that point it gets muddy because scripturally the devil is kind of vaguely described, and he makes no sense.
The notion that "the adversary" could challenge God is to imagine that Chevy Chase could in unarmed combat defeat and kill the entire US Marine Corps. Satan is a really strange character, with his role in Christianity being pretty inconsistent with the Jewish understanding. Although popular depictions aren't hard theology, they do hint at how people see these characters. God is the father, with a beard and living up in a cloudy place. Satan is a being, with horns and a tail, and he loves tempting good people and punishing the bad ones. Jesus was a blue-eyed bearded guy who was well groomed and dressed sharply. That's not far off the unsophisticated views that I've found common among Christians.
My (likely--hopefully--erroneous) understanding of Islam is that everything is the will of Allah. If that's the case, then Allah wills blasphemy. Thus, it stands to reason that blasphemy doesn't exist, because (presumably) anything Allah does is holy.
I hope my understanding is wrong, because that's more insanity than I'm comfortable with.
Nope, you're obviously working from a very unsophisticated theology. The joy of sophisticated theology is that it can take the sentence "I love you and I hate you" and turn it in to something coherent. Anyone thinking that sentence negative is clearly taking it out of context. Anyone thinking the sentence is about love is clearly taking it out of context.
The problem is in men confabulating impossible ideas, and not having the slightest clue as to how they would make the shit work. Imagine a 2nd century stonemason attempting to describe the design and purpose of a lunar landing module. That's way simpler than an infinitely powerful being, yet we know it'd result in nonsense. He'd probably slap-on bird-like wings and other goofy stuff. It's no-wonder they failed miserably in building a coherent description of something that probably doesn't even exist.
I had a recent discussion along these lines, where a Christian and myself discussed Revelation. If that book is taken to be prophetic, then can the devil screw it up by spending Armageddon day in bed? If he can't then why? Is he so dumb that he forgot that his boss can destroy everything on a whim? Has he not read that far in the Bible? Is he God's marionette, in which case, how can we blame him when he's nothing more than an character in God's story? Why did he rebel, in the full knowledge that God could smite him on the spot, and why did God not kill him? Can I really exercise free will while this incredibly powerful fallen angel is tempting me, and God himself is to all intents and purposes absent? It can't be about giving us free will because that's a requirement of salvation. How about the angels, who must presumably have some kind of free will to have rebelled - unless they're just automatons being used in God's odd plan to condemn to Hell the majority of all humans who've ever lived. It's a complete mess.
The Bible and the Koran have plot holes and continuity errors that would make a b-movie screenwriter blush.
It's no the sensibilities of your god that worries me. It's the sensibilities of the primates that have appointed themselves as his/her/it's guardians and spokesmen.
If there really is a wise and loving god, he must surely be sitting there wondering firstly, why the fuck people are dying over cartoons and silly videos, and secondly, why he doesn't do something to stop it? It'd save use some hassle if he could ditch this vague communication through personally revealed and contradictory revelation to some yahoo in a cave. I remember back in the old days when, if God was pissed, he'd be personally smiting your arse. None of this vague tossing of tornadoes in to areas already known for naturally occurring tornadoes - with churches and brothels alike being smashed. Of course personal appearances would fuck with free will, while tornadoes and allowing nut jobs to run wild is free will for the poor victims. I'm not even sure how free will is any different whether the information is provided via divinely revealed texts, or a simple one-one-one communication with every single person? Either way, free will is impacted by external interference. I'm not even convinced that free will is necessary, if the angels who rebelled lived in Heaven and still had the free will to rebel. Fuck it. Tell us the deal and let us decided. Unless that happens, we'll continue to live on a ball of rock infested with people who hurt and confuse people by claiming to speak on behalf of a god that no-one seems to understand.
"This is very good news for FreeBSD and BSD in general. Go somewhere and do something to help your pet causes." the poster is pointing out that if this is considered newsworthy in the sense that it is surprising and it should make people happy, we are in a sad state. we should really be complaining that freebsd had to suffer on the path to meeting it's goals, and it took an uprising of good hearted doners to compensate for neglect. this is why the OP is upset, and that comes across. so to talk to you in your own language: you're not being helpful. this is very bad news for consumers and humanity in general. go somewhere and do something intelligent. if youwan't to live in your happy world with happy people go look at some lolcats.
In their own words, it's normal that 50% of their fundraising comes during their end of year campaigns. Where does the suffering come in to this? Fortunately they're looking to change this.
It is good news in the sense that a group run on donations can't assume those donations will magically come, and in this instance they exceeded their target by a pretty decent margin. I've no idea where you arrived at that interpretation of the ACs post. By my reading it's about people generally being unwilling to put money in to important causes, and I agree that it's difficult to get people to pony up time or cash to causes that are indeed important. However that should detract from cases where it does happen.
In an ideal world a majority, or even a large minority, of users would be donating code, cash or other resources to projects. We'd be calling our elected representatives to keep them in line, and we'd be sickened by the injustices that afflict our societies. In reality, that doesn't happen nearly as often as it should. We seem to struggle to really care about people distant to ourselves, at least in any kind of sustainable way. When crowds are involved, we're individually inclined to assume that someone else will take action, so we don't have to. That's why I think it particularly impressive when people do step away from the herd to take a stand. In the case of fund raising, it's going to be about knowing the right strings to pull - not just assuming that people will pay their "fair share".
It's good news when a project can get people to donate in any kind of serious way. I call that a healthy mixture of optimism and pragmatism - not living in some imaginary lolcat soothed happy world.
All this proves is that some people are willing to put their money where their mouth is when it comes to things that are important. If only we/they would do the same with some political contributions to those who are trying to change things for the better (human rights, privacy rights, less spying, copyright/patent reform, tort reform, etc, etc, etc).
You must be an absolute blast to hang out with, if on hearing good news, you feel compelled to whine about lack of involvement in unrelated areas.
Happy Man: I got tickets to go see Whiner: All that proves is that some people are willing to pay to hear live music. If only we/they would do the same for theatre!
Happy Man: I had to study three evenings a week for years, and now I finally got my degree! Whiner: All that proves is that people will put in time for things important to them. If only we/they would do the same in cleaning up litter in the neighbourhood.
Happy Man: I had to speak up on this one. It's shameful that women are being denied access to birth control. Whiner: All that proves is that people will speak up on things that matter to them. If only we/they would do the same for Internet whiners who find themselves derided in posts such as this one.
This is very good news for FreeBSD and BSD in general. Go somewhere and do something to help your pet causes.
Simplify the messages from Alex a bit. This is a basic teaching in Logic and Rhetoric which you lack or intentionally ignore. Take away the messages about "evil devil worshipers" and see what the facts given show. It's corruption at such a level that you can't begin to comprehend (Nor can I, and I have been digging for 2 decades. Every day am shocked the things I learn). Then again, perhaps you do know, and are just a shill? Your post history does not indicate that you are, but one never knows.
We don't need Jones to know that governments lie to their citizens, and that moneyed interests have may too much sway over our lives. Look at HSBC and UBS. How about corporations in the UK that are caught evading tax, and instead of being taken to task, engage in private agreements to pay back a bit of what they owe? HSBC was complicit in money laundering for killers! Either the law applies equally to all, or it applies to none. That is serious shit we need to fix - not the fantasies of Alex Jones.
As an example, I can pick-up a copy of Private Eye to discover new corruption, malice and sheer incompetence. There are other sources we can examine, without the need to descend in to lunacy that'd seem unrealistic in a James Bond film. Exactly how far should one simplify Jones' work in order to find the facts, and how is it helpful to refer people to the videos of a man who was up to his eyeballs in the birther movement, thinks that Kennedy was assassinated by The Powers That Be, and sold a video a bunch of worshipers of a Babylonian god (invented by Jones) are running the country? Jones has been "exposing" so many fabulous conspiracies that I wonder how the people who organised 9/11 (including the famous tower 7 spectacular), killed Kennedy, and have been laying plans for the UN/FEMA mass murder of Americans let him continue dishing the dirt.
What Jones does is to take facts, add in some blatant untruths, and wrap them in a blanket of fantasy. He's just like the paranormal nuts. Someone tells me that aliens abducted Flight 19. Okay, let's simplify that by looking at facts. Flight 19 vanished, and we've no conclusive understanding of why it happened. The Navy report provides some reasons why the flight leader could have taken his flight so off course, but nothing conclusive. Why was the aliens idea even necessary? That's exactly what Jones is doing, and not always in an honest way. Either he's a nutjob, or he's earning a decent living providing red herrings to throw people off the scent.
Because facts are sparse, I think Alex Jones is a good place for people to start to wake up. It's kind of like a shock treatment, and works very well for some people. Production is good and people that are only tuned to TV will catch on quickly. Ventura's books are another good starting point, but who the hell reads today? The facts that they both present can not be disputed.
Scarcity of facts is no excuse for outright confabulation. Sending people to Alex Jones for an introduction to questioning the way our world works is like sending people to Fred Phelps for an understanding of liberal Christianity. Sure, you'll get the basics, such as the belief in Christ's resurrection. What else then, when Phelps goes hardcore Calvinist on their arse? Most people are going to walk away, thinking him and the whole idea of Christianity to be mad. Others will buy in to Christianity, but a far from liberal version. This is the risk of referring to Jones as a way to wake up people.
You're right. Distortions and false accusations do not help wake up people. That's like fighting irrational religious belief by encouraging people to get in to astrology. So why does Jones get to defame and fling thinly evidenced accusations? Why can he accuse Obama of setting-up death camps throughout the US, yet I can't accuse you of being a plant?
Alex Jones? I hear he's running false flag operations. That would explain why so much if his stuff is batshit crazy. It's clearly to throw sceptics like you off the scent, and to make the sheeple think that you're crazy for believing that the Kenyan is ratcheting up the FEMA/UN death camps, staffed by Jewish bankers and Marilyn fucking Monroe.
Yeah, that's a strawman but it's no less insane than Jones and his colloidal silver slurping disciples of paranoia. Don't get me wrong, there was a lot of profiteering and backslapping during the Iraq war. There are people dragging us in to a police state, and the lunatic fringe makes it more difficult to persuade people of this. I'm guessing you're in on this yourself, and I hope you enjoy your government paychecks while they last. Come the day when people rise up, you'll be shot along with your fellow quislings..
I don't know why you think economists are pretty divided on the subject. A minimum wage is a price floor on labor. The economic analysis of price floors is pretty fleshed out. You can set a price floor that isn't terribly harmful.. but that will be because the floor isn't set very far over the natural price. So, help the poor people! But... not too much. Sounds like a great plan.
I checked out the wikipedia article and followed some of the studies and theories linked. I can see a minimum wage being a good thing, so long as it's obviously not set at a silly level. On employment levels, it seems complicated. Setting a minimum wage could reduce unemployment, through companies hiring fewer people, but could reduce it by making employment worthwhile for people who'd be better off just taking the benefits and black economy work.
How much it'd affect prices overall I don't know. I'd assume it'd have the largest impact on goods and services traditionally made/provided by unskilled workers, and then if the increase is significant enough, it'd have a knock-on impact on more expensive goods/services as cost of living for higher paid workers adjusts to the price increases (assuming that even happens).
I'm not claiming expertise here. It's more I think it problematic to make bold assertions, as the previous guy did, when this seems way more complicated than saying that minimum wage is just a stealth tax, with nothing but a bunch of assertions to back this up.
But any words, religiously themed or not, which are intended to offend are reprehensible. And I applaud Youtube for taking steps to mitigate the disaster that video initiated.
While I agree that setting out to deliberately offend people for no good reason isn't normally a good thing, the idea that deliberately offending people is automatically reprehensible is unrealistic idiocy. If someone claims that it's fine for a father to rape his own daughter, I'm not going to mince words in describing what he is.
There is a difference between an unpopular idea expressed in good faith, and one intended to offend. And while differentiating may be difficult
That's kind of academic unless we can be certain that these Islamic nutjobs will notice that differentiation. Even today you'll find more conservative Christians who'd rather see Father Ted never shown again on our screens. It's only been 10-15 years since the first male gay kiss was shown on US TV, and even today some people would consider showing such a thing to be offensive - perhaps deliberate as part of the Gay Agenda(TM).
Take the Danish cartoons as an example. Most of the cartoons were pretty harmless crap that would be otherwise unnoticed if the subject of them wasn't Mohammed. Just because people have attached special rules around him, everything goes crazy. Even in that case, the cartoons were embellished and hawked around the Islamic world until it stirred up the angry response the Danish Imams wanted.
And you may not like suppressing ideas, but there may be some people alive today who wouldn't be if that video wasn't turned off for a time. Which of those people is the EFF going to tell shouldn't be alive today?
Yes, Mr. Chamberlain. And I'm certain that these fucknuts will only go caveman with AK47s when something is deliberately intended to offend them - not just because they're after any excuse to take to the streets in a dramatic show of pious rage, which of course is exploited by those who enjoy stirring up the herd.
Fuck your weaselly words. People driven to murder by such things most certainly do need to "grow up and get a thicker skin". Your shifting the blame on to the maker of this puerile. Who's to blame if a woman, wearing a skimpy dress, gets raped while taking a late night short-cut home? Yes, the woman could have reduced her chances of becoming a victim, but ultimately the blame lies solely with the rapist. Same here - the fucktards who went out murdering and burning are the ones who are to blame. You're living in some kind of Orwellian Little House on the Prairie, and no-one of good conscience should want to be a resident in your little grief hole of a world.
When did the IRA sue Channel 4? Do you have a link for that?
Depends on the country, but you might get away with publishing a list of "scum". In the UK, the PCC would be more likely to handle general misconduct. I'm not sure calling someone "scum" is any more legally actionable than calling them "absolute shits" or similar. Where it becomes legal is if an actionable statement is made, such as publishing a list of "terrorist scum", or a list of people described as being "IRA terrorists".
Depending on how you define "free speech", it may not exist anywhere. From what I see in most countries, standing out in the street with a bullhorn claiming your neighbour is a paedophile is going to fall foul of some slander/defamation laws. Simply accusing them of being scum is more likely handled under public order laws. Of course in the UK we like our libel/slander laws to be batshit crazy, so it's difficult to predict how anything will end. I can legally say that Jeffrey Archer is a liar, and I can say the same about Jonathan "simple sword of truth" Aiken. This is because these liars have been convicted of perjury - with Aiken following the trend of meeting Christ in the prison exercise yard. It's almost always free speech with strings, and in general I agree that there should indeed be strings attached. A man's life could be ruined by false allegations, and even with libel proceedings, some allegations are just too nasty to be erased.
Joint Universal Salvation from Terrorism Instigated by Copyright Enemies - JUSTICE!
The US habit of requiring cool acronyms seems a bit like a 12 year old boy coming up with cool names for their GI Joe doll's super secret stealth ninja elite team who discreetly patrol the streets in a flying tanks, pausing occasionally to subtly blow-up half of the city.
Just be glad you don't have Theresa May over there. My God, that bastard must regret being born to late to get a decent position in the GDR.
Slashdot Mirror
Wouldn't it be more about having the common userland, and a suitable way to interact with apps designed for touch-based UIs. Without the latter, one may as well be trying to control Excel from a Nintendo game pad.
Thanks!
Doesn't make much sense to me, but they do consider the three things to be part of the single godhead. And the saints aren't gods. They'll pray to saints, to intercede for them, but won't worship saints as they would God. It's like trying to make sense of a book, where each chapter was written by authors who had little to no contact with the other authors. Little wonder it'd end up being a mess.
In Mormon belief it's a bunch of gods with Yahweh in charge. At least that's my understanding of their position.
Baloney can get pretty convoluted.
For a start, religions don't demand you pay up to read the texts and consider them trade secrets.
Which makes it ever more surprising that this commercial operation should have received tax exempt status. It's basically a company, run like an an alarmingly expensive MMO. Scientologists pay a fortune to reach level whatever in Scientology. The company ups the level cap and releases new content when it realises that these mugs still have money remaining.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operating_Thetan#Unreleased_levels
Another option is to sign-up for indentured servitude, where hard work is rewarded with content and meagre pocket money. In that sense, the teachings can be free, albeit with some pretty serious strings attached. People opting out of the billion year contract they sign (seriously), will be retroactively billed for the religious instruction they received.
No organisation should be able to claim tax exempt status when its core function is to sell its teachings at a premium. By IRS logic, I could open a restaurant, with tax exempt status because I feed homeless people. The IRS doesn't seem to mind that destitute diners are either going to have to sell themselves in to slavery for food, or pay $150 per sitting.
It would indeed be a good day if Belgium can do some serious harm to this company.
The doctrine of the trinity is not the sole determinant as to whether or not a religion is "Christian".
Wouldn't their belief in multiple gods, some of which used to be human, run contrary to monotheism?
Sure, if the Pope was commanding an emotionless and thoughtless robot crusader army. While popes were notorious power players, it's silly to think that the verse I cited (and many others) didn't influence the motivations of the crusaders. Regardless of how the Bible overall is to be interpreted, the ease at which brutality can be justified should give Christians pause for thought. It's not as the verse I cited was some kind of Nostradamus-like vague word salad. Here are the Prince of peace's words:
"But those mine enemies, which would not that I should reign over them, bring hither, and slay them before me."
Doesn't matter that one could find plenty of other verses to prohibit the wanton slaughter and sackings that took place. It's pretty difficult to categorically say that one verse overrides another.
Politics almost certainly steers the course, and religion provides the fuel. In the absence of religion, I'm sure some other ideology could take its place. This isn't just blaming religion for all of life's ills, yet we can't ignore the danger of ascribing divine will to these iron age fables.
Tell them it's a new life coaching/project management/quality methodology designed to align their deliverables with their metric milestones and increase partnership with cloud stakeholders.
The difference is that God told them to do it. Luke 19:27.
It doesn't have to run a single Win32 app. Whether the FSF is right or wrong I don't know. It's merely enough to demonstate that Microsoft is using its monopoly status in desktop and/or office apps to compete unfairly in another market.
In theory they could be brought up on anti-trust charges if they found a way to unfairly tie banana purchases to Windows. Exactly where does the FSF come in to this discussion, and what FUD are they spreading? Their petition is perfectly reasonable. It's asking that users have the ability to disable secure booting - not that the technology should be avoided altogether. That seems fairly pragmatic to me. Users who want the protection can have it, while those who want to install other operating systems can.
Unfortunately a lot of doctors, in the name of science and scientifically guided moral righteousness, support mandatory circumcisions of male babies. It's not just religious nutjobs who support this.
Bullshit. It's a Jewish tradition that became the norm in America. It's the tradition, mixed with religion, that drives people to try to find rational reasons for docking baby penises. You may as well be saying that the Kallam Cosmological Argument is recounted in the name of logic and reason. Blanket circumcision for reasons of health is no more justified than removing toe nails to prevent the many disorders that can come from them. It's tradition. Parents don't realize the impact, and they want their kid to have a "normal" penis.
I don't know about that. I think having faith in someone you love is a virtuous thing. Even showing trust in a complete stranger is an admirable trait in my opinion. I am not a wealthy man by any means, but I think karma has been good to me. Life is a cold and ugly place for the cynical.
Trust should be based on the probability of claim(s) being valid and the risks associated with showing trust. I meet a guy in a bar, and he tells me that his wife is from Galway. I trust him, even though I've nothing to go on beyond his word on the matter. His claim is not extraordinary, and there's no obvious risk in accept it. Continuing our discussion, the stranger tells me that his wife is a rich princess, and that he needs plane fare to get back home. Of course he'll wire the money to me when he gets home, with a handsome reward on top - his wife is a fabulously rich princess! Would it be admirable to hand over the money? No, it'd be foolish. He's making an extraordinary claim which, if accepted at face value, is likely to result in my losing money to a con artist.
That's not be cynical. It's about weighing up the claims and the associated risks. A while back I loaned somewhere just south of 200 euro to a friend who was struggling financially, and had a wife and daughter to care for. Having known him on and off for 10 years, I trusted him and wanted to help. It transpired that I wasn't the only one loaning him money, and he was lying to me and others. In the end, he vanished leaving a trail of unpaid debts. Personally I'd have let him off the money if he'd just been honest, and I no-longer trust him at all. That hasn't stopped me loaning money to friends I trust, because I don't judge everyone by his actions. I am much more careful though in setting clear deadlines on when money is to be returned.
Life is a cold and ugly place for people who grant faith for no good reason. In reality there are few people cynical enough to have absolutely no faith in anyone or anything. Doesn't mean we're always good at weighing things up, but generally there is some kind of process. Christians will probably believe me if I say that I feel God's message of love inside of me, and that he wants me to go out in to the world to offer aid to the sick. Now how about if I tell them that Jesus told me I should ask good Christians to provide 10% of their salaries to support my efforts? I'm guessing that most would at that point withdraw their faith in me, and for good reason. That's healthy scepticism, triggered because accepting my initial claim carried no risk, while my second claim carries with it a great deal of risk. If a homeless guy asks me for money for food, do I give him money? Normally not. I prefer to offer to buy them something to eat, and if they accept, I return with the food. We chat a while, and if they seem pretty straight I may leave them some money. I do this because I see a lot of homeless people here, sitting around drinking anything vaguely alcoholic. I'd prefer to be certain that they've had a meal than give money to a stranger who could be investing it in their steady downwards spiral. Cynical? Maybe, but based on a fair bit of experience with the homeless.
Life is a cold and ugly place for people who grant faith for no good reason, and they'll hurt their friends and family when they make poor decisions.
From experience (mostly Catholic and CoE) most would believe the devil exists. From that point it gets muddy because scripturally the devil is kind of vaguely described, and he makes no sense.
The notion that "the adversary" could challenge God is to imagine that Chevy Chase could in unarmed combat defeat and kill the entire US Marine Corps. Satan is a really strange character, with his role in Christianity being pretty inconsistent with the Jewish understanding. Although popular depictions aren't hard theology, they do hint at how people see these characters. God is the father, with a beard and living up in a cloudy place. Satan is a being, with horns and a tail, and he loves tempting good people and punishing the bad ones. Jesus was a blue-eyed bearded guy who was well groomed and dressed sharply. That's not far off the unsophisticated views that I've found common among Christians.
My (likely--hopefully--erroneous) understanding of Islam is that everything is the will of Allah. If that's the case, then Allah wills blasphemy. Thus, it stands to reason that blasphemy doesn't exist, because (presumably) anything Allah does is holy.
I hope my understanding is wrong, because that's more insanity than I'm comfortable with.
Nope, you're obviously working from a very unsophisticated theology. The joy of sophisticated theology is that it can take the sentence "I love you and I hate you" and turn it in to something coherent. Anyone thinking that sentence negative is clearly taking it out of context. Anyone thinking the sentence is about love is clearly taking it out of context.
The problem is in men confabulating impossible ideas, and not having the slightest clue as to how they would make the shit work. Imagine a 2nd century stonemason attempting to describe the design and purpose of a lunar landing module. That's way simpler than an infinitely powerful being, yet we know it'd result in nonsense. He'd probably slap-on bird-like wings and other goofy stuff. It's no-wonder they failed miserably in building a coherent description of something that probably doesn't even exist.
I had a recent discussion along these lines, where a Christian and myself discussed Revelation. If that book is taken to be prophetic, then can the devil screw it up by spending Armageddon day in bed? If he can't then why? Is he so dumb that he forgot that his boss can destroy everything on a whim? Has he not read that far in the Bible? Is he God's marionette, in which case, how can we blame him when he's nothing more than an character in God's story? Why did he rebel, in the full knowledge that God could smite him on the spot, and why did God not kill him? Can I really exercise free will while this incredibly powerful fallen angel is tempting me, and God himself is to all intents and purposes absent? It can't be about giving us free will because that's a requirement of salvation. How about the angels, who must presumably have some kind of free will to have rebelled - unless they're just automatons being used in God's odd plan to condemn to Hell the majority of all humans who've ever lived. It's a complete mess.
The Bible and the Koran have plot holes and continuity errors that would make a b-movie screenwriter blush.
It's no the sensibilities of your god that worries me. It's the sensibilities of the primates that have appointed themselves as his/her/it's guardians and spokesmen.
If there really is a wise and loving god, he must surely be sitting there wondering firstly, why the fuck people are dying over cartoons and silly videos, and secondly, why he doesn't do something to stop it? It'd save use some hassle if he could ditch this vague communication through personally revealed and contradictory revelation to some yahoo in a cave. I remember back in the old days when, if God was pissed, he'd be personally smiting your arse. None of this vague tossing of tornadoes in to areas already known for naturally occurring tornadoes - with churches and brothels alike being smashed. Of course personal appearances would fuck with free will, while tornadoes and allowing nut jobs to run wild is free will for the poor victims. I'm not even sure how free will is any different whether the information is provided via divinely revealed texts, or a simple one-one-one communication with every single person? Either way, free will is impacted by external interference. I'm not even convinced that free will is necessary, if the angels who rebelled lived in Heaven and still had the free will to rebel. Fuck it. Tell us the deal and let us decided. Unless that happens, we'll continue to live on a ball of rock infested with people who hurt and confuse people by claiming to speak on behalf of a god that no-one seems to understand.
"This is very good news for FreeBSD and BSD in general. Go somewhere and do something to help your pet causes." the poster is pointing out that if this is considered newsworthy in the sense that it is surprising and it should make people happy, we are in a sad state. we should really be complaining that freebsd had to suffer on the path to meeting it's goals, and it took an uprising of good hearted doners to compensate for neglect. this is why the OP is upset, and that comes across. so to talk to you in your own language: you're not being helpful. this is very bad news for consumers and humanity in general. go somewhere and do something intelligent. if youwan't to live in your happy world with happy people go look at some lolcats.
In their own words, it's normal that 50% of their fundraising comes during their end of year campaigns. Where does the suffering come in to this? Fortunately they're looking to change this.
It is good news in the sense that a group run on donations can't assume those donations will magically come, and in this instance they exceeded their target by a pretty decent margin. I've no idea where you arrived at that interpretation of the ACs post. By my reading it's about people generally being unwilling to put money in to important causes, and I agree that it's difficult to get people to pony up time or cash to causes that are indeed important. However that should detract from cases where it does happen.
In an ideal world a majority, or even a large minority, of users would be donating code, cash or other resources to projects. We'd be calling our elected representatives to keep them in line, and we'd be sickened by the injustices that afflict our societies. In reality, that doesn't happen nearly as often as it should. We seem to struggle to really care about people distant to ourselves, at least in any kind of sustainable way. When crowds are involved, we're individually inclined to assume that someone else will take action, so we don't have to. That's why I think it particularly impressive when people do step away from the herd to take a stand. In the case of fund raising, it's going to be about knowing the right strings to pull - not just assuming that people will pay their "fair share".
It's good news when a project can get people to donate in any kind of serious way. I call that a healthy mixture of optimism and pragmatism - not living in some imaginary lolcat soothed happy world.
All this proves is that some people are willing to put their money where their mouth is when it comes to things that are important. If only we/they would do the same with some political contributions to those who are trying to change things for the better (human rights, privacy rights, less spying, copyright/patent reform, tort reform, etc, etc, etc).
You must be an absolute blast to hang out with, if on hearing good news, you feel compelled to whine about lack of involvement in unrelated areas.
Happy Man: I got tickets to go see
Whiner: All that proves is that some people are willing to pay to hear live music. If only we/they would do the same for theatre!
Happy Man: I had to study three evenings a week for years, and now I finally got my degree!
Whiner: All that proves is that people will put in time for things important to them. If only we/they would do the same in cleaning up litter in the neighbourhood.
Happy Man: I had to speak up on this one. It's shameful that women are being denied access to birth control.
Whiner: All that proves is that people will speak up on things that matter to them. If only we/they would do the same for Internet whiners who find themselves derided in posts such as this one.
This is very good news for FreeBSD and BSD in general. Go somewhere and do something to help your pet causes.
Simplify the messages from Alex a bit. This is a basic teaching in Logic and Rhetoric which you lack or intentionally ignore. Take away the messages about "evil devil worshipers" and see what the facts given show. It's corruption at such a level that you can't begin to comprehend (Nor can I, and I have been digging for 2 decades. Every day am shocked the things I learn). Then again, perhaps you do know, and are just a shill? Your post history does not indicate that you are, but one never knows.
We don't need Jones to know that governments lie to their citizens, and that moneyed interests have may too much sway over our lives. Look at HSBC and UBS. How about corporations in the UK that are caught evading tax, and instead of being taken to task, engage in private agreements to pay back a bit of what they owe? HSBC was complicit in money laundering for killers! Either the law applies equally to all, or it applies to none. That is serious shit we need to fix - not the fantasies of Alex Jones.
As an example, I can pick-up a copy of Private Eye to discover new corruption, malice and sheer incompetence. There are other sources we can examine, without the need to descend in to lunacy that'd seem unrealistic in a James Bond film. Exactly how far should one simplify Jones' work in order to find the facts, and how is it helpful to refer people to the videos of a man who was up to his eyeballs in the birther movement, thinks that Kennedy was assassinated by The Powers That Be, and sold a video a bunch of worshipers of a Babylonian god (invented by Jones) are running the country? Jones has been "exposing" so many fabulous conspiracies that I wonder how the people who organised 9/11 (including the famous tower 7 spectacular), killed Kennedy, and have been laying plans for the UN/FEMA mass murder of Americans let him continue dishing the dirt.
What Jones does is to take facts, add in some blatant untruths, and wrap them in a blanket of fantasy. He's just like the paranormal nuts. Someone tells me that aliens abducted Flight 19. Okay, let's simplify that by looking at facts. Flight 19 vanished, and we've no conclusive understanding of why it happened. The Navy report provides some reasons why the flight leader could have taken his flight so off course, but nothing conclusive. Why was the aliens idea even necessary? That's exactly what Jones is doing, and not always in an honest way. Either he's a nutjob, or he's earning a decent living providing red herrings to throw people off the scent.
Because facts are sparse, I think Alex Jones is a good place for people to start to wake up. It's kind of like a shock treatment, and works very well for some people. Production is good and people that are only tuned to TV will catch on quickly. Ventura's books are another good starting point, but who the hell reads today? The facts that they both present can not be disputed.
Scarcity of facts is no excuse for outright confabulation. Sending people to Alex Jones for an introduction to questioning the way our world works is like sending people to Fred Phelps for an understanding of liberal Christianity. Sure, you'll get the basics, such as the belief in Christ's resurrection. What else then, when Phelps goes hardcore Calvinist on their arse? Most people are going to walk away, thinking him and the whole idea of Christianity to be mad. Others will buy in to Christianity, but a far from liberal version. This is the risk of referring to Jones as a way to wake up people.
You're right. Distortions and false accusations do not help wake up people. That's like fighting irrational religious belief by encouraging people to get in to astrology. So why does Jones get to defame and fling thinly evidenced accusations? Why can he accuse Obama of setting-up death camps throughout the US, yet I can't accuse you of being a plant?
Alex Jones? I hear he's running false flag operations. That would explain why so much if his stuff is batshit crazy. It's clearly to throw sceptics like you off the scent, and to make the sheeple think that you're crazy for believing that the Kenyan is ratcheting up the FEMA/UN death camps, staffed by Jewish bankers and Marilyn fucking Monroe.
Yeah, that's a strawman but it's no less insane than Jones and his colloidal silver slurping disciples of paranoia. Don't get me wrong, there was a lot of profiteering and backslapping during the Iraq war. There are people dragging us in to a police state, and the lunatic fringe makes it more difficult to persuade people of this. I'm guessing you're in on this yourself, and I hope you enjoy your government paychecks while they last. Come the day when people rise up, you'll be shot along with your fellow quislings..
I don't know why you think economists are pretty divided on the subject. A minimum wage is a price floor on labor. The economic analysis of price floors is pretty fleshed out. You can set a price floor that isn't terribly harmful.. but that will be because the floor isn't set very far over the natural price. So, help the poor people! But... not too much. Sounds like a great plan.
I checked out the wikipedia article and followed some of the studies and theories linked. I can see a minimum wage being a good thing, so long as it's obviously not set at a silly level. On employment levels, it seems complicated. Setting a minimum wage could reduce unemployment, through companies hiring fewer people, but could reduce it by making employment worthwhile for people who'd be better off just taking the benefits and black economy work.
How much it'd affect prices overall I don't know. I'd assume it'd have the largest impact on goods and services traditionally made/provided by unskilled workers, and then if the increase is significant enough, it'd have a knock-on impact on more expensive goods/services as cost of living for higher paid workers adjusts to the price increases (assuming that even happens).
I'm not claiming expertise here. It's more I think it problematic to make bold assertions, as the previous guy did, when this seems way more complicated than saying that minimum wage is just a stealth tax, with nothing but a bunch of assertions to back this up.
I thought economists were pretty divided on the effects of a minimum wage. Glad to see you have everything worked out. Where are you published?
Where did he say it would?
But any words, religiously themed or not, which are intended to offend are reprehensible. And I applaud Youtube for taking steps to mitigate the disaster that video initiated.
While I agree that setting out to deliberately offend people for no good reason isn't normally a good thing, the idea that deliberately offending people is automatically reprehensible is unrealistic idiocy. If someone claims that it's fine for a father to rape his own daughter, I'm not going to mince words in describing what he is.
There is a difference between an unpopular idea expressed in good faith, and one intended to offend. And while differentiating may be difficult
That's kind of academic unless we can be certain that these Islamic nutjobs will notice that differentiation. Even today you'll find more conservative Christians who'd rather see Father Ted never shown again on our screens. It's only been 10-15 years since the first male gay kiss was shown on US TV, and even today some people would consider showing such a thing to be offensive - perhaps deliberate as part of the Gay Agenda(TM).
Take the Danish cartoons as an example. Most of the cartoons were pretty harmless crap that would be otherwise unnoticed if the subject of them wasn't Mohammed. Just because people have attached special rules around him, everything goes crazy. Even in that case, the cartoons were embellished and hawked around the Islamic world until it stirred up the angry response the Danish Imams wanted.
And you may not like suppressing ideas, but there may be some people alive today who wouldn't be if that video wasn't turned off for a time. Which of those people is the EFF going to tell shouldn't be alive today?
Yes, Mr. Chamberlain. And I'm certain that these fucknuts will only go caveman with AK47s when something is deliberately intended to offend them - not just because they're after any excuse to take to the streets in a dramatic show of pious rage, which of course is exploited by those who enjoy stirring up the herd.
Fuck your weaselly words. People driven to murder by such things most certainly do need to "grow up and get a thicker skin". Your shifting the blame on to the maker of this puerile. Who's to blame if a woman, wearing a skimpy dress, gets raped while taking a late night short-cut home? Yes, the woman could have reduced her chances of becoming a victim, but ultimately the blame lies solely with the rapist. Same here - the fucktards who went out murdering and burning are the ones who are to blame. You're living in some kind of Orwellian Little House on the Prairie, and no-one of good conscience should want to be a resident in your little grief hole of a world.
I think someone needs a hug and his meds.
When did the IRA sue Channel 4? Do you have a link for that?
Depends on the country, but you might get away with publishing a list of "scum". In the UK, the PCC would be more likely to handle general misconduct. I'm not sure calling someone "scum" is any more legally actionable than calling them "absolute shits" or similar. Where it becomes legal is if an actionable statement is made, such as publishing a list of "terrorist scum", or a list of people described as being "IRA terrorists".
Depending on how you define "free speech", it may not exist anywhere. From what I see in most countries, standing out in the street with a bullhorn claiming your neighbour is a paedophile is going to fall foul of some slander/defamation laws. Simply accusing them of being scum is more likely handled under public order laws. Of course in the UK we like our libel/slander laws to be batshit crazy, so it's difficult to predict how anything will end. I can legally say that Jeffrey Archer is a liar, and I can say the same about Jonathan "simple sword of truth" Aiken. This is because these liars have been convicted of perjury - with Aiken following the trend of meeting Christ in the prison exercise yard. It's almost always free speech with strings, and in general I agree that there should indeed be strings attached. A man's life could be ruined by false allegations, and even with libel proceedings, some allegations are just too nasty to be erased.
Joint Universal Salvation from Terrorism Instigated by Copyright Enemies - JUSTICE!
The US habit of requiring cool acronyms seems a bit like a 12 year old boy coming up with cool names for their GI Joe doll's super secret stealth ninja elite team who discreetly patrol the streets in a flying tanks, pausing occasionally to subtly blow-up half of the city.
Just be glad you don't have Theresa May over there. My God, that bastard must regret being born to late to get a decent position in the GDR.