The thing is, with so much less boredom, people dive to their iPhones all the time. There's no sitting around college in the dorm, staring at the ceiling with an 18 year old freshman, "Wanna go somewhere?" "Maybe... where?" "I dunno, it's boring here." "Yeah, but there's nothing to do on a Thursday night." "Bah..." ".... wanna have sex?"
No, it's more like, "Bah..." "...*starts playing Angry Birds*"
I think you need to expand your social circle a little. Any 18 year old who would rather play Angry Birds than have sex is not someone you should be hanging around with, as they are almost certainly deeply psychotic.
For most people, yes. They log onto facebook (or 4chan) and exchange tenth hand jokes and pictures of kittens with a selction of people who they have probably never talked to in real life, and who think about everything in exactly the same way that they do themselves.
Why is reading a crappy magazine in the doctor's office more productive than using your smartphone? I hate when people spew opinions like this without showing at least ONE piece of data/evidence that using a smartphone is more harmful than the alternative (the other things we do when we're bored).
And didn't people make the same arguments about television? And then, later, about videogames?
The point is that occasionally being "bored" (in the sense of lacking external stimuli) is a good thing as it encourages introspection and, you know, thinking.
And BTW reading shitty magazines, watching shitty TV or playing shitty vidogames are all just as bad as wasting time playing Angry Birds, or posting facebook photos of your dog, on your phone. if you do them all the time and never give yourself time to think.
Good points, except that anarcho-capitalist is a contradiction in terms. You can't have an exploitative, purely selfish economic system without some checks and balances from government. If you have no government, then everyone has to act for the common good without coercion, and capitalism is coercive by its very definition: if all economic activity is done on a communistic, fraternal, egalitarian basis, it's not capitalism any more.
American "libertarians" love to chuck in the anarcho- tag to make themselves sound edgy, romantic and revolutionary. Whereas, in fact, all they want is a return to laissez faire capitalism, and we all know how well that works out for the vast majority of people.
In America, people generally being described as "on the right" are generally those who favor a high degree of individual liberty.
You can't just go making up your own definitions, no matter how powerful your military is.
Individual liberty is a meaningless concept when you have a capitalist system that (without any socialist watering down) means that a tiny minority have the power of life and death over the vast majority and can operate unchecked without interference from a powerful, democratically elected government.
The original revolutionary slogan was "liberty, equality, fraternity". The first on its own is just another way of saying "let the rich people keep getting richer and the poor stay poor forever".
But most Americans wouldn't agree with this analysis.
Geert Wilders and virulent anti-Islamists generally would be called far right by most people in the UK (i.e. except for the BNP, EDL and other themselves-far-right organisations).
The Orthodox Christians and the Golden Dawn political party would also be called far right by most people in the UK (and Europe).
People with far right wing politics are characterised by: extreme social and religious conservatism, love of patriarchal family values (wife and kids being subservient to father), hatred of progress towards sexual and racial equality and hatred of foreigner culture/religion/people. They are generally rather keen on discipline, punishment and violence.
That being said, I had always assumed that "girlintraining" meant "man" when I had seen his posts in the past.
The name could imply: girl who is training to be an astronaut/lawyer/whatever, a woman from the north of England who is denying the existence of precipitation, a transexual currently undergoing gender reassignment, and no doubt many other things, but I'm not sure why you would assume it meant "man".
I am not going into the consequences relating to abortion law. That's separate, and being Dutch, I feel that anything that comes out of the USA in that respect is stone-age sentiment and religious oppression anyway.
Which is why you need to take any "scientific" arguments promoted by anti-abortionists with a pinch or two of salt. Basically, they want to do anything they can to make the legal window for abortion as short as possible, in order to make it harder for women to get a legal abortion. They do not believe a woman's body is really her own (she is just a vessel for producing children) and would logically make even contraception illegal a la the Wonderful Roman Catholic Church.
I'm a Christian,... I don't have to believe in reincarnation or karma to respect those who do.
So you think reincarnation and karma are errors at best, or outrights lies that would comdemn a soul to hell.
And you respect people for believing them?
You just lost all of my respect.
As a Christian, you can't disprove the ideas of reincarnation and karma any more than the Buddhist can disprove the idea of heaven and hell. If such ideas or beliefs were subject to scientific proof there wouldn't be different religions and beliefs, we'd have reached some sort of a consensus by now.
So, as a Christian, GP is merely showing a sensible level of humility not to write other people off for unproveable beliefs. Also, you can believe in some odd things but still live your life as a decent person, which is really the whole point of religion anyway. So unless you are a fanatic, you will look at the person, not just pigeon hole them by their beliefs. And don't forget the "hate the sin but love the sinner" idea is quite big in Christianity too.
I always figured hell would be a lot like Las Vegas. If the whole point of heaven and hell is a popularity contest (come retire at my resort!), then it makes sense for it to be one big anything-goes party. Heaven sounds kinda stuffy, on the other hand, with all those silly rules and things. I'd rather spend my eternity drunk off my ass than singing hymns all day.
Sadly, those honest opinions are what some consider blasphemy or disrespect.
Just because you honestly hold an opinion doesn't mean that it isn't blasphemous, disrespectful or just plain wrong. For example, I don't generally bother talking to "honest" racists. They're fucking morons and I would rather not get annoyed and have to hit them.
There is a difference between shouting on an internet forum about how Mohammed is a paedophilic mass murderer, and screaming it to the face of a devout Muslim.
It's not a question of free speech, it's just about accepting that speech is not some bland, neutral statement of fact with no possible consequences.
No tolerance, no compromise . . . sure, that may apply to a Southern Baptist, but it also applies to Richard Dawkins
Well, I'm not tolerant or prepared to compromise with Nazis. So I guess everyone's just the same if we are all intolerant and uncompromising about something?
I've met many well educated atheists who held on to completely irrational beliefs (such as the belief that religion is a scourge to human progress
All the good things that have been done in the name of religion (e.g. the campaign to abolish the slave trade) could equally well have been done in the name of humanism or common decency. What religious people won't acknowledge is that abandoning responsibility for this world because of the promise of going to a blissful afterlife is a poisonous, corrosive, dumbing-down and crushing of the human spirit.
For those like me who aren't fluent in biblical, Ezekiel 23:20 is as follows:
For she doted upon their paramours, whose flesh is as the flesh of asses, and whose issue is like the issue of horses. (King James Version)
And if that's not clear enough:
There she lusted after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of horses. (New International Version)
I'm pretty sure it is legal to mock someone in front of their kids, and that they can't sue, have you arrested, or engage in violence against you.
Fighting words. Do you know what they are? If you come round and mock me in front of my kids, I will fucking batter you, and the law will agree with me that you asked for it.
Certain safeguards need to be built in to control the passions of the moment.
Ah yes, because like all right wingers you associate "democracy" with "frenzied blood-letting by an emotional mob".
Believe it or not, democratic non-republics can have systems of law and order and things like the separation of the legislature from the executive too.
Or, you just decide that some things are inalienable and not up for the vote.
Well then it's lucky the US didn't stick to its original constitutional set up with legalised slavery and no votes for women isn't it? Or were they just coincidental and not inalienable features of the initial set up?
But you certainly wouldn't want to find yourself in a situation where, for example, the majority could decide that black's or women don't get the vote.
If the majority really wanted that, they would get it anyway, but it would only be due to ignorance arising from the lack of a proper education system and the corrupting influences of entrenched power groups such as rich male landowners and influential religious groups.
Anyway, the idea of having an aristocratic system in order for the wise, clever elite to defend the rights of poor minority groups is frankly risible.
How do you think those "uneducated and ignorant" voters are going to react if you try to rule them without representation?
By all means, give them representation. Just not an equal share, unless they are willing to learn a bit about the world, history, politics or other fields useful for casting the vote in question.
Are you really as stupid and morally void as you are pretending, or are you just a troll? The triumph of the West has been to assure universal representation. Anyone who wants to remove or neuter that should put his case before a mob armed with sticks, knives and flaming torches and see what sort of fucking reaction he gets.
Tyrants deserve one end, and they generally get it.
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The thing is, with so much less boredom, people dive to their iPhones all the time. There's no sitting around college in the dorm, staring at the ceiling with an 18 year old freshman, "Wanna go somewhere?" "Maybe... where?" "I dunno, it's boring here." "Yeah, but there's nothing to do on a Thursday night." "Bah..." ".... wanna have sex?"
No, it's more like, "Bah..." "...*starts playing Angry Birds*"
I think you need to expand your social circle a little. Any 18 year old who would rather play Angry Birds than have sex is not someone you should be hanging around with, as they are almost certainly deeply psychotic.
The internet is a "little closed world?"
For most people, yes. They log onto facebook (or 4chan) and exchange tenth hand jokes and pictures of kittens with a selction of people who they have probably never talked to in real life, and who think about everything in exactly the same way that they do themselves.
I don't recall a time when talking to other people in line was the thing to do. Most people either daydreamed or tuned out everyone else.
I talk to people in queues and I am (a) English and (b) anti-social, so I'm sure if I can relax my stiff upper life then you can too.
Why is reading a crappy magazine in the doctor's office more productive than using your smartphone? I hate when people spew opinions like this without showing at least ONE piece of data/evidence that using a smartphone is more harmful than the alternative (the other things we do when we're bored). And didn't people make the same arguments about television? And then, later, about videogames?
The point is that occasionally being "bored" (in the sense of lacking external stimuli) is a good thing as it encourages introspection and, you know, thinking.
And BTW reading shitty magazines, watching shitty TV or playing shitty vidogames are all just as bad as wasting time playing Angry Birds, or posting facebook photos of your dog, on your phone. if you do them all the time and never give yourself time to think.
That's why people who oppose any kind of racial discrimination or racial preferences are called "far right"
What are you talking about? Where do people who are anti-racist get described as far right? On some weird, intellectually inverted US radio talk show?
The following were/are far right: General Franco, Mussolini, Hitler, General Pinochet.
The following were/are far left: Lenin, Che Gevara, Mao, Castro.
I really think you either don't know what these words mean, or else you are simply not writing your sentences coherently to express what you intend.
Good points, except that anarcho-capitalist is a contradiction in terms. You can't have an exploitative, purely selfish economic system without some checks and balances from government. If you have no government, then everyone has to act for the common good without coercion, and capitalism is coercive by its very definition: if all economic activity is done on a communistic, fraternal, egalitarian basis, it's not capitalism any more.
American "libertarians" love to chuck in the anarcho- tag to make themselves sound edgy, romantic and revolutionary. Whereas, in fact, all they want is a return to laissez faire capitalism, and we all know how well that works out for the vast majority of people.
In America, people generally being described as "on the right" are generally those who favor a high degree of individual liberty.
You can't just go making up your own definitions, no matter how powerful your military is.
Individual liberty is a meaningless concept when you have a capitalist system that (without any socialist watering down) means that a tiny minority have the power of life and death over the vast majority and can operate unchecked without interference from a powerful, democratically elected government.
The original revolutionary slogan was "liberty, equality, fraternity". The first on its own is just another way of saying "let the rich people keep getting richer and the poor stay poor forever".
But most Americans wouldn't agree with this analysis.
And what about Libertarian party, are the right or left?
Extreme Right, but in favour of legalising drugs. Well, whoopy fucking do, that's all right then.
Conversely the attackers on the Orthodox Christians by another Greek likely to do not have a racial or semi-racial component.
The Orthodox Church is being supported by members of Golden Dawn, a xenophobic far right political party by any definition.
Geert Wilders and virulent anti-Islamists generally would be called far right by most people in the UK (i.e. except for the BNP, EDL and other themselves-far-right organisations).
The Orthodox Christians and the Golden Dawn political party would also be called far right by most people in the UK (and Europe).
People with far right wing politics are characterised by: extreme social and religious conservatism, love of patriarchal family values (wife and kids being subservient to father), hatred of progress towards sexual and racial equality and hatred of foreigner culture/religion/people. They are generally rather keen on discipline, punishment and violence.
I do not see why you are confused.
That being said, I had always assumed that "girlintraining" meant "man" when I had seen his posts in the past.
The name could imply: girl who is training to be an astronaut/lawyer/whatever, a woman from the north of England who is denying the existence of precipitation, a transexual currently undergoing gender reassignment, and no doubt many other things, but I'm not sure why you would assume it meant "man".
I am not going into the consequences relating to abortion law. That's separate, and being Dutch, I feel that anything that comes out of the USA in that respect is stone-age sentiment and religious oppression anyway.
Which is why you need to take any "scientific" arguments promoted by anti-abortionists with a pinch or two of salt. Basically, they want to do anything they can to make the legal window for abortion as short as possible, in order to make it harder for women to get a legal abortion. They do not believe a woman's body is really her own (she is just a vessel for producing children) and would logically make even contraception illegal a la the Wonderful Roman Catholic Church.
I'm guessing it's an election year in Greece too.
Recently it's been election year every year in Greece. And sometimes twice.
I have a religious belief that free speech is sacred, and any restriction on that speech is disrespectful to my religion.
How many people are in your religion, and how many guns have they got?
I'm a Christian, ... I don't have to believe in reincarnation or karma to respect those who do.
So you think reincarnation and karma are errors at best, or outrights lies that would comdemn a soul to hell.
And you respect people for believing them?
You just lost all of my respect.
As a Christian, you can't disprove the ideas of reincarnation and karma any more than the Buddhist can disprove the idea of heaven and hell. If such ideas or beliefs were subject to scientific proof there wouldn't be different religions and beliefs, we'd have reached some sort of a consensus by now.
So, as a Christian, GP is merely showing a sensible level of humility not to write other people off for unproveable beliefs. Also, you can believe in some odd things but still live your life as a decent person, which is really the whole point of religion anyway. So unless you are a fanatic, you will look at the person, not just pigeon hole them by their beliefs. And don't forget the "hate the sin but love the sinner" idea is quite big in Christianity too.
I always figured hell would be a lot like Las Vegas. If the whole point of heaven and hell is a popularity contest (come retire at my resort!), then it makes sense for it to be one big anything-goes party. Heaven sounds kinda stuffy, on the other hand, with all those silly rules and things. I'd rather spend my eternity drunk off my ass than singing hymns all day.
Do you get many subscribers to your newsletter?
They better be ready to hear my honest opinions.
Sadly, those honest opinions are what some consider blasphemy or disrespect.
Just because you honestly hold an opinion doesn't mean that it isn't blasphemous, disrespectful or just plain wrong. For example, I don't generally bother talking to "honest" racists. They're fucking morons and I would rather not get annoyed and have to hit them.
There is a difference between shouting on an internet forum about how Mohammed is a paedophilic mass murderer, and screaming it to the face of a devout Muslim.
It's not a question of free speech, it's just about accepting that speech is not some bland, neutral statement of fact with no possible consequences.
Throwing a temper tantrum and exploding all ove the place just because you were offended is immoral and wrong.
Or you could say it just shows that you care deeply about something.
No tolerance, no compromise . . . sure, that may apply to a Southern Baptist, but it also applies to Richard Dawkins
Well, I'm not tolerant or prepared to compromise with Nazis. So I guess everyone's just the same if we are all intolerant and uncompromising about something?
I've met many well educated atheists who held on to completely irrational beliefs (such as the belief that religion is a scourge to human progress
All the good things that have been done in the name of religion (e.g. the campaign to abolish the slave trade) could equally well have been done in the name of humanism or common decency. What religious people won't acknowledge is that abandoning responsibility for this world because of the promise of going to a blissful afterlife is a poisonous, corrosive, dumbing-down and crushing of the human spirit.
For those like me who aren't fluent in biblical, Ezekiel 23:20 is as follows:
For she doted upon their paramours, whose flesh is as the flesh of asses, and whose issue is like the issue of horses. (King James Version) And if that's not clear enough:
There she lusted after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of horses. (New International Version)
Who knew the Bible had horse pr0n in it?
I'm pretty sure it is legal to mock someone in front of their kids, and that they can't sue, have you arrested, or engage in violence against you.
Fighting words. Do you know what they are? If you come round and mock me in front of my kids, I will fucking batter you, and the law will agree with me that you asked for it.
Certain safeguards need to be built in to control the passions of the moment.
Ah yes, because like all right wingers you associate "democracy" with "frenzied blood-letting by an emotional mob".
Believe it or not, democratic non-republics can have systems of law and order and things like the separation of the legislature from the executive too.
Or, you just decide that some things are inalienable and not up for the vote.
Well then it's lucky the US didn't stick to its original constitutional set up with legalised slavery and no votes for women isn't it? Or were they just coincidental and not inalienable features of the initial set up?
But you certainly wouldn't want to find yourself in a situation where, for example, the majority could decide that black's or women don't get the vote.
If the majority really wanted that, they would get it anyway, but it would only be due to ignorance arising from the lack of a proper education system and the corrupting influences of entrenched power groups such as rich male landowners and influential religious groups.
Anyway, the idea of having an aristocratic system in order for the wise, clever elite to defend the rights of poor minority groups is frankly risible.
How do you think those "uneducated and ignorant" voters are going to react if you try to rule them without representation?
By all means, give them representation. Just not an equal share, unless they are willing to learn a bit about the world, history, politics or other fields useful for casting the vote in question.
Are you really as stupid and morally void as you are pretending, or are you just a troll? The triumph of the West has been to assure universal representation. Anyone who wants to remove or neuter that should put his case before a mob armed with sticks, knives and flaming torches and see what sort of fucking reaction he gets.
Tyrants deserve one end, and they generally get it.