Good thing I didn't put them in brackets then, because then I would have calculated the year which is six years before the painting was made, and not the year of his death, which is what I was so facetiously looking for.;-)
Right now the summary reads: "...NYTimes a few days back of what is believed to be a 500-year-old portrait of William Shakespeare, painted 6 years before his death."
If the portrait is 500 years old, and it was painted 6 years before his death, I believe I'm being told that Shakespeare died in AD 2009 - 500 + 6 = 1515. This page says that Shakespeare was born 1564. How could Shakespeare have died before he was born? Even if this is true though, and he lived his entire life and wrote all his works while in his mother's womb and died in there in 1515, how could his corpse remain in there for some 49 years when he was still-born? And besides this, how did he develop bodily and mentally in utero such that he was able to lead a life as he did? How did he compose and direct and act? And then how did the artist figure what Shakespeare looked like? Is that the news I'm missing here? Did they have some sort of ultra-sound technology in 1509 and we've just re-discovered this now?
They'll just put a blanket ban on mentioning your sexual orientation or romantic status. The pride people will still be angry but they can't argue discrimination, at least not successfully (I'm sure they'll still argue it is discriminatory because it is in place solely to stem their pride speech, but people won't care anymore).
Some pornography company sublicenses photos of one million girls in bikinis and their contact info from Facebook. They then send something like the following letter to the girls:
"Recently, for inclusion in our published material, we purchased the rights to the enclosed photo you licensed to Facebook. We were concerned that you may not want to be included, so we are giving you the chance to opt-out. We need only a payment of $50 to cover the amount we paid Facebook and administrative costs. If you do not want to pay and wished to be included in our published material, you will be featured in our "Skanky Bikini Amateurs" collection on our website. Thank you."
"Missiles fired from suspected US drones killed at least 15 people inside Pakistan today, the first such strikes since Barack Obama became president and a clear sign that the controversial military policy begun by George W Bush has not changed."
"...locals also said that three children lost their lives."
Attacking sovereign nations and killing children...that's the change Americans voted in, as in, not change at all.
Gay marriage is an issue of freedom of association and personal action and discrimination within government recognition of associations.
Some people believe that there should be total freedom of personal action and of association, so long as you do not hurt of infringe anyone else's rights. On this view, there is, I believe, only two possible responses as to what the government should do about gay marriage: Recognize it, or not recognize any marriages whatsoever.
But it does not end there: The same principle -- that people should be allowed to do whatever they want without infringing on the rights of others -- which forces this move, forces other things as well. For example, if multiple people wanted to get married (polygamy) they would be allowed. This is an issue right now in Canada/BC, where Winston Blackmore (a fundamentalist Mormon) and a an associate of his have been charged with the crime of polygamy. Note that no gay marriage advocacy groups have at all loudly stood up to defend these fundamentalists' non-mainstream marriage arrangements, even though the same argument they use to push for recognition of gay marriage can be used to push for recognition of polygamous marriage. It would also force recognition of incestuous marriage for example: A father and his daughter, assuming both of consensual age, for example, could both wish to get married, and their getting married wouldn't infringe on anyone else's right. Yet no groups demand for incest rights like they do for gay rights. This is because of hypocrisy: They are morally uncomfortable with incest just as other bigots are morally uncomfortable with homosexuality. And it does not stop at issues of marriage. The same principle would imply that for example suicide should be allowed, or assisted suicide. Or cannibalism (this was an issue in Germany recently where one man chose for himself to be killed and partially eaten by another; the cannibal was nonetheless convicted though he infringed no one's rights). Or the use of hard drugs must be allowed. One's use of cocaine does not infringe on anyone else's rights. But the reason prohibitions are made on substances like cocaine is because there is this thought that when it is allowed that so many get addicted to the drugs that the society/economy as it is begins to break down, and society should not be allowed to break down in this way. This brings you to a differing view than the one first mentioned: Here there are things which override individual freedoms of personal action and association, such as economic sufficiency of the political body as a whole.
Well that's my view anyway: If you think that the government can prohibit things like drug use, or incest, or cannibalism, then you have no argument that they should not prohibit homosexuality because of gay rights, because that depends on there being underlying human freedoms which must respected in the first place! You have to bite the bullet so to speak.
"The fact that you ignorant asshats refuse to wake up from your delusional world of hate and bigotry, and perhaps read why people hate the US instead of believing the line "because we're not muslim" is why we've had muslim terrorist attacks on this country and its consulates. Look up the term blowback."
So American consulates were attacked by muslim extremists because of blowback. Why were Danish consulates attacked by muslim extremists? Blowback as well? Making political caricature cartoons is an act of war now?
Why was Theo van Gogh killed by a muslim extremist?
Since you might be Canadian(inferring from GYBE! mention), maybe you'll appreciate this one. Why was Tarek Fateh attacked by muslim extremists? Being an apostate from Islam in an act of war now?
My opinion is that there are plenty of muslim extremists who do use violence on people pretty much just "because [they're] not muslim."
If you read Sayyid Qutb's Milestones, which at least Wikipedia, citing something, calls a "major influence" on Islamic terrorism, there is this message that violence should be used to destroy non-muslim institutions which output vulgarities like pornography, blasphemy, and other haram things.
From Milestones: "But any place where the Islamic Shari'ah is not enforced and where Islam is not dominant becomes the home of Hostility (Dar-ul-Harb) for both the Muslim and the Dhimmi. A Muslim will remain prepared to fight against it, whether it be his birthplace or a place where his relatives reside or where his property or any other material interests are located. And thus Muhammad - peace be on him - fought against the city of Mecca, although it was his birthplace, and his relatives lived there, and he and his Companions had houses and property there which they had left when they migrated; yet the soil of Mecca did not become Dar-ul-Islam for him and his followers until it surrendered to Islam and the Shari'ah became operative in it."
I would say that such an interpretation of Islam is basically the same for Al-Qaeda and other Islamist groups: Use any means necessary to establish the rule of God.
Why not extend non-discrimination to associations beyond employment? Like friendships or marriage? Lots of money and social standing gets shared by marriage and friendships. And due to unjust historical circumstances, blacks in America have been deprived of these to an extent. It's a known fact that white men tend to marry white women: they obviously discriminate. If non-discrimination was enforced there, then maybe there would not be so much inequality. And don't say that this would infringe the rights of those racist white men to associate with whom they want, because that's the same reason that was used in trying to keep equality out of employment and housing. And one spends nearly as much time with marriage partners as with co-workers, so -- even if we could understand enforcing non-discrimination on racists as a burden for them with their racist tastes -- non-discrimination in marriage would be no dissimilar burden to them as non-discrimination in employment.
Say someone is a die-hard Neo-Nazi. Like a Wotanist or some religion like that. They wear a swastika as part of their religion and they heil hitler and all that. So you hire this guy to work your front desk. He pulls the swastika out. The customers are greatly offended. But you cannot fire him.
Someone can make a religion out of anything. I could start a religion of telling my boss that I want to do not at all tasteful things to his wife. So I tell him that. Apparently he's not allowed to fire me, even if it does make him rather uncomfortable.
"Refusing to hire someone because customers or co-workers may be "uncomfortable" with that person's religion or national origin is just as illegal as refusing to hire that person because of religion or national origin in the first place. Similarly, an employer may not fire someone because of religion and/or national origin. This prohibition applies to other employment decisions as well, including promotion, transfers, work assignments and wages."
Wikipedia says they do not censor. Yet they'll remove videos of male masturbation from -- the page on masturbation. They'll even remove images of people having sex and replace them with ridiculous drawings or drawings. They don't do that for other pages. Go to the page on a lion and they'll show you a big image, in colour, of a lion. No one says: "Well, a big image showing all the parts of the lion, and in colour, is just not necessary. Everyone knows what a lion is: A detailed image is not necessary to get the point across." But go to the Talk pages for fellatio or ejaculation and you'll see this exact argument used there. I would say they do censor. I think it's duplicitous of them to say that their official policy is "Wikipedia is not censored." And of course they censor child pornography from their pages, because it is illegal in Florida, where their main servers are.
When I go "Check for updates" I get the dialog box that informs me: "This update will cause some of your extensions and/or themes to stop working until they are updated." Clicking on "show list" shows me that Compact Menu and Whitehart will be disabled with FF3. If that extension and that theme get updated, then I'll switch to FF3. Until then, I'll "suffer" with my working browser, anti-phishing or not.
Firefox has stealther, but its an add-on and so obvious that you've installed it to look at porn. (Obviously you could always set and reset privacy settings everytime, but that could be a pain)
But Chrome has a stealth feature built in, so you're not a fiend just for having it. Although you're still a fiend. But a fiend with some shame at least!
Your theory that morals are culturally-based or a standardized code of conduct is just one theory of ethics -- constructivism or something like that. Ethics as a branch of philosophy is also called moral philosophy. Ethics in this sense is the study of the status of morality, of morals.
Pretty much in every modern piece of ethics, "moral" and "ethical" are synonyms. In Hume and Hume scholarship, though, "moral" frequently means "absolute," as in "moral certainty," as well meaning the regular "ethical." For example go to the end of Mackie's "Subjectivity of Values" (this is a very popular paper in ethics). Here he uses the terms as synonyms is the same sentence: "...the central ethical concepts of Plato or Aristotle are in a broad sense prescriptive...they show that their moral thought is an objectification of the desired and the satisfying." So moral thought is thought dealing with ethical concepts -- just as anyone would say that moral thought is thought dealing with moral concepts. And here he is saying that when Plato or Aristotle use ethical concepts, that is, speak of good things or actions, they actually are referring to things or actions that are connected to their subjective feelings of pleasure, but they objectify these things in language as "good." So Mackie is saying that ethical concepts are not-universal at all, but are merely expressions of desires of certain people -- this is precisely what you denied. Notice also that Mackie says that the ethical concepts are prescriptive -- which was the second feature you ascribed to morals as distinguishing them from the matter of ethics.
TL;DR:
If you ask a philosophy professor what Kant's moral theory was, he'll tell you about the Categorical Imperative. If you ask a philosophy professor what Kant's ethical theory was, he'll tell you about the Categorical Imperative. The word is just not regularly distinguished in the topic of ethics. The reason "ethically" was originally used in this story was probably for the simple reason that "more morally" sounds weird in its phonemic repetition.
So I gather my funds and start up an ISP. My idea for the ISP is that I will block Bittorrent and other P2P transfers and supply all other services without throttling for a cheap rate. I get a number of customers because they don't care about P2P and they just want a connection for checking email and reading the news at a cheap rate.
Your net neutrality laws would force me to close down this operation in the name of "free speech" and my customers would be worse off because they would have to go over to the other ISP which charge a higher rate in order to pay for p2p bandwidth which these customers have no use for. It's seems like you would be trampling over freedom of association in a misguided crusade for free speech.
Slashdot Mirror
I'll take the offtopic too, and... ...I'll have to admit I read the post, and I didn't see where he said Obama was a Muslim; I think you misread it.
Those figures are very interesting. How come Canada consumes so much energy without producing so much CO2?
60.7% of our electricity comes from hydro-electric power and 10.5% comes from nuclear power.
Good thing I didn't put them in brackets then, because then I would have calculated the year which is six years before the painting was made, and not the year of his death, which is what I was so facetiously looking for. ;-)
Right now the summary reads: "...NYTimes a few days back of what is believed to be a 500-year-old portrait of William Shakespeare, painted 6 years before his death."
If the portrait is 500 years old, and it was painted 6 years before his death, I believe I'm being told that Shakespeare died in AD 2009 - 500 + 6 = 1515. This page says that Shakespeare was born 1564. How could Shakespeare have died before he was born? Even if this is true though, and he lived his entire life and wrote all his works while in his mother's womb and died in there in 1515, how could his corpse remain in there for some 49 years when he was still-born? And besides this, how did he develop bodily and mentally in utero such that he was able to lead a life as he did? How did he compose and direct and act? And then how did the artist figure what Shakespeare looked like? Is that the news I'm missing here? Did they have some sort of ultra-sound technology in 1509 and we've just re-discovered this now?
Do not click parent link, it is a shock site.
http://www.saveournet.ca/ for supporting net neutrality in Canada.
They'll just put a blanket ban on mentioning your sexual orientation or romantic status. The pride people will still be angry but they can't argue discrimination, at least not successfully (I'm sure they'll still argue it is discriminatory because it is in place solely to stem their pride speech, but people won't care anymore).
Some pornography company sublicenses photos of one million girls in bikinis and their contact info from Facebook. They then send something like the following letter to the girls:
"Recently, for inclusion in our published material, we purchased the rights to the enclosed photo you licensed to Facebook. We were concerned that you may not want to be included, so we are giving you the chance to opt-out. We need only a payment of $50 to cover the amount we paid Facebook and administrative costs. If you do not want to pay and wished to be included in our published material, you will be featured in our "Skanky Bikini Amateurs" collection on our website. Thank you."
Start selling games as academic, sociological research tools. I don't think you need a rating on those.
President Obama 'orders Pakistan drone attacks'
"Missiles fired from suspected US drones killed at least 15 people inside Pakistan today, the first such strikes since Barack Obama became president and a clear sign that the controversial military policy begun by George W Bush has not changed."
"...locals also said that three children lost their lives."
Attacking sovereign nations and killing children...that's the change Americans voted in, as in, not change at all.
"He's made everyone believe that the world will be a slightly better place and helped them look forward to the future rather than dread it."
Everyone? What about the millions of people who voted against him?
The sole fact that their digital revenues have gone up does not tell you much about the growth of the industry.
How is it odd? Most of my trips to the bathroom are to urinate. Is it therefore odd that I am defecating more lately?
(Yes, this is a commentary on the overall state of modern music.)
Gay marriage is an issue of freedom of association and personal action and discrimination within government recognition of associations.
Some people believe that there should be total freedom of personal action and of association, so long as you do not hurt of infringe anyone else's rights. On this view, there is, I believe, only two possible responses as to what the government should do about gay marriage: Recognize it, or not recognize any marriages whatsoever.
But it does not end there: The same principle -- that people should be allowed to do whatever they want without infringing on the rights of others -- which forces this move, forces other things as well. For example, if multiple people wanted to get married (polygamy) they would be allowed. This is an issue right now in Canada/BC, where Winston Blackmore (a fundamentalist Mormon) and a an associate of his have been charged with the crime of polygamy. Note that no gay marriage advocacy groups have at all loudly stood up to defend these fundamentalists' non-mainstream marriage arrangements, even though the same argument they use to push for recognition of gay marriage can be used to push for recognition of polygamous marriage. It would also force recognition of incestuous marriage for example: A father and his daughter, assuming both of consensual age, for example, could both wish to get married, and their getting married wouldn't infringe on anyone else's right. Yet no groups demand for incest rights like they do for gay rights. This is because of hypocrisy: They are morally uncomfortable with incest just as other bigots are morally uncomfortable with homosexuality. And it does not stop at issues of marriage. The same principle would imply that for example suicide should be allowed, or assisted suicide. Or cannibalism (this was an issue in Germany recently where one man chose for himself to be killed and partially eaten by another; the cannibal was nonetheless convicted though he infringed no one's rights). Or the use of hard drugs must be allowed. One's use of cocaine does not infringe on anyone else's rights. But the reason prohibitions are made on substances like cocaine is because there is this thought that when it is allowed that so many get addicted to the drugs that the society/economy as it is begins to break down, and society should not be allowed to break down in this way. This brings you to a differing view than the one first mentioned: Here there are things which override individual freedoms of personal action and association, such as economic sufficiency of the political body as a whole.
Well that's my view anyway: If you think that the government can prohibit things like drug use, or incest, or cannibalism, then you have no argument that they should not prohibit homosexuality because of gay rights, because that depends on there being underlying human freedoms which must respected in the first place! You have to bite the bullet so to speak.
Perhaps in the future they will make such 3D glasses with your prescribed dioptres for the lenses.
"The fact that you ignorant asshats refuse to wake up from your delusional world of hate and bigotry, and perhaps read why people hate the US instead of believing the line "because we're not muslim" is why we've had muslim terrorist attacks on this country and its consulates. Look up the term blowback."
So American consulates were attacked by muslim extremists because of blowback. Why were Danish consulates attacked by muslim extremists? Blowback as well? Making political caricature cartoons is an act of war now?
Why was Theo van Gogh killed by a muslim extremist?
Since you might be Canadian(inferring from GYBE! mention), maybe you'll appreciate this one. Why was Tarek Fateh attacked by muslim extremists? Being an apostate from Islam in an act of war now?
My opinion is that there are plenty of muslim extremists who do use violence on people pretty much just "because [they're] not muslim."
If you read Sayyid Qutb's Milestones, which at least Wikipedia, citing something, calls a "major influence" on Islamic terrorism, there is this message that violence should be used to destroy non-muslim institutions which output vulgarities like pornography, blasphemy, and other haram things.
From Milestones:
"But any place where the Islamic Shari'ah is not enforced and where Islam is not dominant becomes the home of Hostility (Dar-ul-Harb) for both the Muslim and the Dhimmi. A Muslim will remain prepared to fight against it, whether it be his birthplace or a place where his relatives reside or where his property or any other material interests are located.
And thus Muhammad - peace be on him - fought against the city of Mecca, although it was his birthplace, and his relatives lived there, and he and his Companions had houses and property there which they had left when they migrated; yet the soil of Mecca did not become Dar-ul-Islam for him and his followers until it surrendered to Islam and the Shari'ah became operative in it."
I would say that such an interpretation of Islam is basically the same for Al-Qaeda and other Islamist groups: Use any means necessary to establish the rule of God.
Why not extend non-discrimination to associations beyond employment? Like friendships or marriage?
Lots of money and social standing gets shared by marriage and friendships. And due to unjust historical circumstances, blacks in America have been deprived of these to an extent. It's a known fact that white men tend to marry white women: they obviously discriminate. If non-discrimination was enforced there, then maybe there would not be so much inequality. And don't say that this would infringe the rights of those racist white men to associate with whom they want, because that's the same reason that was used in trying to keep equality out of employment and housing. And one spends nearly as much time with marriage partners as with co-workers, so -- even if we could understand enforcing non-discrimination on racists as a burden for them with their racist tastes -- non-discrimination in marriage would be no dissimilar burden to them as non-discrimination in employment.
Yeah, way to see the big picture.
Say someone is a die-hard Neo-Nazi. Like a Wotanist or some religion like that. They wear a swastika as part of their religion and they heil hitler and all that. So you hire this guy to work your front desk. He pulls the swastika out. The customers are greatly offended. But you cannot fire him.
Someone can make a religion out of anything. I could start a religion of telling my boss that I want to do not at all tasteful things to his wife. So I tell him that. Apparently he's not allowed to fire me, even if it does make him rather uncomfortable.
http://www.eeoc.gov/facts/backlash-employee.html:
"Refusing to hire someone because customers or co-workers may be "uncomfortable" with that person's religion or national origin is just as illegal as refusing to hire that person because of religion or national origin in the first place. Similarly, an employer may not fire someone because of religion and/or national origin. This prohibition applies to other employment decisions as well, including promotion, transfers, work assignments and wages."
And the geologists are studying her, 'cause, well you know, she's petrified.
Wikipedia says they do not censor. Yet they'll remove videos of male masturbation from -- the page on masturbation. They'll even remove images of people having sex and replace them with ridiculous drawings or drawings. They don't do that for other pages. Go to the page on a lion and they'll show you a big image, in colour, of a lion. No one says: "Well, a big image showing all the parts of the lion, and in colour, is just not necessary. Everyone knows what a lion is: A detailed image is not necessary to get the point across." But go to the Talk pages for fellatio or ejaculation and you'll see this exact argument used there. I would say they do censor. I think it's duplicitous of them to say that their official policy is "Wikipedia is not censored." And of course they censor child pornography from their pages, because it is illegal in Florida, where their main servers are.
When I go "Check for updates" I get the dialog box that informs me: "This update will cause some of your extensions and/or themes to stop working until they are updated." Clicking on "show list" shows me that Compact Menu and Whitehart will be disabled with FF3. If that extension and that theme get updated, then I'll switch to FF3. Until then, I'll "suffer" with my working browser, anti-phishing or not.
Firefox has stealther, but its an add-on and so obvious that you've installed it to look at porn. (Obviously you could always set and reset privacy settings everytime, but that could be a pain)
But Chrome has a stealth feature built in, so you're not a fiend just for having it. Although you're still a fiend. But a fiend with some shame at least!
I disagree as well.
Your theory that morals are culturally-based or a standardized code of conduct is just one theory of ethics -- constructivism or something like that. Ethics as a branch of philosophy is also called moral philosophy. Ethics in this sense is the study of the status of morality, of morals.
Pretty much in every modern piece of ethics, "moral" and "ethical" are synonyms. In Hume and Hume scholarship, though, "moral" frequently means "absolute," as in "moral certainty," as well meaning the regular "ethical." For example go to the end of Mackie's "Subjectivity of Values" (this is a very popular paper in ethics). Here he uses the terms as synonyms is the same sentence: "...the central ethical concepts of Plato or Aristotle are in a broad sense prescriptive...they show that their moral thought is an objectification of the desired and the satisfying." So moral thought is thought dealing with ethical concepts -- just as anyone would say that moral thought is thought dealing with moral concepts. And here he is saying that when Plato or Aristotle use ethical concepts, that is, speak of good things or actions, they actually are referring to things or actions that are connected to their subjective feelings of pleasure, but they objectify these things in language as "good." So Mackie is saying that ethical concepts are not-universal at all, but are merely expressions of desires of certain people -- this is precisely what you denied. Notice also that Mackie says that the ethical concepts are prescriptive -- which was the second feature you ascribed to morals as distinguishing them from the matter of ethics.
TL;DR:
If you ask a philosophy professor what Kant's moral theory was, he'll tell you about the Categorical Imperative. If you ask a philosophy professor what Kant's ethical theory was, he'll tell you about the Categorical Imperative. The word is just not regularly distinguished in the topic of ethics. The reason "ethically" was originally used in this story was probably for the simple reason that "more morally" sounds weird in its phonemic repetition.
So I gather my funds and start up an ISP. My idea for the ISP is that I will block Bittorrent and other P2P transfers and supply all other services without throttling for a cheap rate. I get a number of customers because they don't care about P2P and they just want a connection for checking email and reading the news at a cheap rate.
Your net neutrality laws would force me to close down this operation in the name of "free speech" and my customers would be worse off because they would have to go over to the other ISP which charge a higher rate in order to pay for p2p bandwidth which these customers have no use for. It's seems like you would be trampling over freedom of association in a misguided crusade for free speech.
The person who telecommutes would not get paid for that time, why should the person in office?