There are a few important differences, though. (1) I'm not trying to get elected to public office. (2) I'm not trying to exert political pressure while in office. (3) I'm not trying to sell ad space. (4) I'm not trying to be the voice of authority. Go look this stuff up. Make up your own mind. Just don't blindly follow the media narrative. They're biased, either toward the Democrats or Republicans... and neither of those biases give a fair reporting of the movement.
But ultimately, I'm a guy on the internet. Don't take my word at face value, any more than the word of MrBigInThePants.
The moderators and other tools prevent useless stuff from rising to the top.
Sometimes.
(Sorry, couldn't help myself)
And regardless of your motives, the fact that you both wrote and submitted the article can open you up to accusations of self-aggrandizement, of which the Slashthink is very very suspicious.
If this is a warning about what others might think, meant as a courtesy, then it's not well worded. If it's a request not to self-submit, then it's a worthless statement. Slashdot is about conversation. If the topic is worthy of conversation among nerds, geeks, techies, etc, then somebody needs to submit it. It doesn't do any good to tell people that they ought to be bashful.
And what some fringe elements say at small meetings? How is that even relevant?!
Because those relatively small gatherings are where all the media cameras and microphones are. The larger movement has not, and cannot be heard nationally.
You have NOT heard the "Tea Party" movement, because you'd really have to go looking for it. You HAVE heard the constant barrage of media coverage on a particular corner of it, especially the Tea Party Express*, which is generally frowned upon by the other groups.
*(I think I've got the right group here. No slander intended if I've got the wrong one. What is called "The Tea Party" is not... it's just one of many, many organizations nationally. It's not even a good representation of the other groups.)
I am commenting on their actual representatives which are voting and passing laws not on the joe-shmoes voting them...
Again, showing that you only think you know what's going on. There are no Tea Party candidates. There never were. There is no "Tea Party" organization. There is nobody declaring which candidates may, or may not self-describe themselves as Tea Party candidates. A bunch of Republicans decided that they could ride the momentum to out-maneuver the establishment. Some of them are quite crazy, and need to be mocked. They show up to one rally, somewhere on Tax Day, put on a pretty face, and call them selves a "Tea Party Candidate". That's the whole of it.
I'll say it again. You're repeating lies. They're not your lies, so you need not feel any shame. The tea party movement started as a grass-roots movement, from the ground up. Ever since its inception, different political factions have been trying to define it or co-opt it from the outside, to some success. But at its core, there is no authoritative leader. Even "Tea Party Caucus" is a bit of a misnomer.
So, what defines "the tea party movement"? Principally: being willing to say out loud that the government is wasting our money; that our current fiscal path is unsustainable; that we can, and ought to have a balanced budget; that we can do much more with less if we cut graft, waste, and well, stealing, theft, kickbacks, cronyism, foxes watching hen houses, and the systemic deficiencies encouraging them (sometimes obvious, sometimes not).
In the words of John Green (to my nearest recollection) "If you think you might be a nerdfighter, you probably are." The same is doubly true of tea party advocates (or tea party anythings), especially as there aren't any de-facto Green brothers at the center of the nebulous thing. If there were congressmen being called the "Anonymous Caucus", you wouldn't blame Anonymous for everything they do, would you? That would be ludicrous. The tea party movement is even less organized than Anonymous. Consider that for a moment.
So, when you refer to the evil-doers in congress, please stop calling them the tea party. At best, you could refer to them as the Tea Party Caucus. The aren't just a self selected group, but a self-proclaimed group. They have chosen to define themselves in terms of the movement (and most of them do so badly). It is disingenuous, and more than a little insulting to define the movement in terms of them. Voters elected them. There were no "Tea Party" primaries, or nominations, or official nods, or unofficial nods. There is no process of keeping bad candidates from claiming the designation. Individual groups may have rallied behind them, but that is meaningless for the movement as a whole. They are congressmen, self described as tea party candidates. Nothing more.
The tea party is not and never will be the answer to the problems of the US due to their rabid irrational policies, their inability to relate cause and effect and their complete disdain for analysis, science and research. (those last two are related) Not to mention their bat shit crazy candidates.
No, the "Tea party" (there is no such thing) is not and will probably never be the answer to problems in the US because the media has focused on a very, very small, loud, and moronic corner of the movement in an uncoordinated smear campaign. Your vitriol is warranted, but only against the small target that the media has set you on. You've been duped.
What's worse is that the weak-brained have been told that the tea party movement is a good home for them. They are flocking to this "ideal environment" in droves, strangling an otherwise important political movement.
As for the Republican party, they've tried to co-opt the thing, to varying degrees of success. Most "tea-party" candidates are nothing of the sort. They just fly someone else's banner in order to get elected.
At the meetings that I've seen (from the edges), there was always an honest call for bi-partisanship, welcoming everyone from all political stripes. That's largely gone now that the Democrats, Republicans, and media have all taken the position that "the tea party" is a Republican thing. There are still people who hold out hope that it can operate in a bi-partisan (or non-partisan) fashion.
For one thing, the police aren't even involved, just the sheriff...
I'm not sure what hairs you're splitting, but I don't buy it. Any and all other issues aside, any government agent (1) issued a badge and (2) a gun who can (3) apprehend you and (4) put you in the back of their car - all fit in the same basic category. Don't call them police if you like, but it's mighty disingenuous to try to call someone else on it.
(Rabid apologists: Please note that I'm not calling for an end to law enforcement or lambasting them in any way. Misinterpretation of this post may be met with excoriation, or mocking silence.)
Police do not get to keep the money they collect. None of that money is allowed to go back to the police department.
There is a common fallacy when it comes to how the government spends its money. I mean our money.
Money is fungible. A dollar is a dollar is a dollar. It's not like one dollar has higher tensile strength, and another one tastes better. They're all the same. If fines go into the general fund, then where do police funds come from? The general fund? What about when fines go to another fund? Does less money get channeled there, because fines are supporting the difference? Does that not free up that amount of money to be spent where-ever the politicians deem necessary, including the police department?
Whenever the government says "We're not spending those funds there, but other funds." you should be skeptical. They often play a shell game to re-allocate funds in legal, but unsavory ways.
Replying to AC troll, not for the troll's benefit, but because too many people are developing this perspective.
Propaganda works. Sorry.
Indeed - just look at the way the summary writer uplifts Democrats while lambasting Republicans, even though any objective observer will tell you they're essentially two sides of the same, evil coin.
My guess is you vote libertarian--because that's the same rhetoric I keep hearing from them, which is in reality nothing more than a rebranding of the extreme right wing of the republican party. Same party different name.
There are different types and degrees of Libertarians out there. There are some that are just as crazy as the irrational religious zealots and the tree huggers. The media is largely allied with the Democrats, and most of those that aren't are allied with the Republicans. Thus, there is a perverse incentive to cast all Libertarians in same light... as the enemy.
The truth is, sane libertarians exist, and are very centrist in their positions. They agree with Republicans on some issues, and with Democrats on others.
(disclaimer: I'm not a Libertarian, but a Republican who likes a few of their ideas. Not most, but a few.)
Expecting businesses to obey the law? That's crazy talk!
In California? Yeah, it frequently is.
California has a hostile business climate. Any businesses we can chase out of the state, we are chasing out of the state. Even Silicon Valley is struggling to retain companies.
I don't know the merits in this particular instance, but in CA, the presumption of ridiculousness goes to the state.
I agree about Waze. I got it as an alternative to Google and really liked it... then Google snarfed it up. (I am pretty sure "snarf" is the right word.)
snarf
snärf/
verb informal
verb: snarf; 3rd person present: snarfs; past tense: snarfed; past participle: snarfed; gerund or present participle: snarfing
1.
eat or drink quickly or greedily.
"they snarfed up frozen yogurt"
The term "blaming the victim" has been dubious since it's very origin. I'll grab text from Wikipedia, because it's handy:
The Negro Family: The Case For National Action (the 1965 Moynihan Report) was written by Assistant Secretary of Labor[1] Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a sociologist and later U.S. Senator. It focused on the deep roots of black poverty in America and concluded controversially that the relative absence of nuclear families (those having both a father and mother present) would greatly hinder further progress toward economic and political equality.
Moynihan argued that the rise in single-mother families was not due to a lack of jobs but rather to a destructive vein in ghetto culture that could be traced back to slavery and Jim Crow discrimination. Though black sociologist E. Franklin Frazier had already introduced the idea in the 1930s, Moynihan's argument defied conventional social-science wisdom. As he wrote later, "The work began in the most orthodox setting, the U.S. Department of Labor, to establish at some level of statistical conciseness what 'everyone knew': that economic conditions determine social conditions. Whereupon, it turned out that what everyone knew was evidently not so."
Moynihan had concluded that... the uniquely cruel structure of American slavery [had created a pattern which]..., manifested itself in high rates of unwed births, absent fathers, and single mother households in black families. Moynihan then correlated these familial outcomes, which he considered undesirable, to the relatively poorer rates of employment, educational achievement, and financial success found among the black population. Moynihan advocated the implementation of government programs designed to strengthen the black nuclear family.
Ryan objected that Moynihan then located the proximate cause of the plight of black Americans in the prevalence of a family structure in which the father was often sporadically, if at all, present, and the mother was often dependent on government aid to feed, clothe, and provide medical care for her children. Ryan's critique cast the Moynihan theories as attempts to divert responsibility for poverty from social structural factors to the behaviors and cultural patterns of the poor.[8][9]
"We need to help these people understand how not to be poor." "RACIST, He's BLAMING THE VICTIMS!"
Ryan has set minorities back 4 decades. Unwed births among all races are now on the rise, and we see that there really is a strong statistical correlation with ongoing multi-generational poverty. We'd actually be a more integrated society if we'd dealt with this problem years ago. But no. The knee-jerk reaction is to assume that any action a "victim" takes must be their own fault (often false), and to assume that if anyone is in poverty, it must be someone else's fault (also false; sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't). By this twisted and broken logic, one can never suggest that an individual change their own behavior to change their outcome. Any attempt to suggest that minorities adjust their behavior or world-view has been met with vitriolic screams of racism. (In any degree, no matter how small a part of any larger plan.)
The phrase "blaming the victim" is inherently broken, not in concept, but in functional use. It is a poor excuse to make uncomfortable topics off limits, and it always has been.
The codecs (etc) are avoided because Debian doesn't want to deal with liability or licences. Steam doesn't present that particular problem. The intellectual property owner is actively contributing the software.
Yes, it's non-free, and it needs to be in the appropriate repo. But this isn't a "destroy the project, bring on the wrath of **** **, and sue everybody into oblivion" level of non-free.
(Ubuntu, on the other hand, wants more than just to be a better Debian. They've got a specific vision of where Linux ought to go, and they're trying to push into new territory. They just liked Debian as a starting point, that's all.)
Inbreeding isn't nearly as dangerous as it is made up to be, do if for generations and sure it can go terrible wrong
but lets assume siblings have kids and it doubles the risk of genetic diseases, if it was 1% it is now 2%
That's backwards, actually. The less often inbreeding happens, the more dangerous. (Not that I'm advocating.)
I had a professor once say that we're all carriers of about 3 bad genetic mutations. Because these are so varied, people rarely marry with the same problem.
So, let's assume "Bob" only carries one bad recessive mutation (not on a sex chromosome), and he passes it onto half of his kids. If you grab any two of his kids, there is a 1/4 chance that both will be carriers. (This is equally true of half-siblings, since they both inherit half of Bob's DNA.) If they marry and have kids, 1/4 of them will receive broken copies from both parents, and will be terribly ill.
Assuming each person is a carrier of 3 major genetic disorders* , then the chance would be 1- (1 - 1/16)^3 ~= 17.6%, and not 2%, per child. (regardless of how common or rare those particular three disorders are)
*(Yeah, yeah, citation needed; I heard it from a genetics professor in a 101 class; it could be way off and I wouldn't know any better, but he ought to know.)
Each child receives 23 chromosomes from his/her mother, and 23 chromosomes from his/her father. Two of those are XX or XY. As far as inbreeding is concerned, the remaining 44 chromosomes also matter. Half-siblings share about a quarter of their chromosomes (on average). If they're of opposite genders, then it's just under a quarter.
To be clear, the real problem with inbreeding isn't that it causes bad genetic mutations, but that it brings them to the surface. Horrific genetic disorders that are dominant don't tend to propagate. They (or their kids) don't tend to survive to maturity and/or have trouble finding mates. Recessive disorders, however, lurk all over the place. I don't know if it's true or not, but I heard a professor say at one point that each of us carries about 3 major genetic disorders. They're not a problem because they're recessive. They're wide, and varied, so the chance that two carriers of the same disorder marry is pretty small (but does happen). Enter in-breeding into the equation. Suddenly there's a much higher chance that two carriers of the same disorder will marry, and some of their children may have major medical complications. (The same principle applies to minor genetic problems too.)
Animal husbandry often uses inbreeding intentionally to remove recessive genetic defects. They do so at the risk of getting very ill offspring... intentionally to weed them out. This does tend to lead toward a genetically homogeneous population, and therefore slows the rate of evolution. So, it's a trade off.
So is it good or bad for humans? I don't know. In the short term, it can be very, very bad. In the long term, we are probably benefiting from the added genetic diversity. Inbreeding might remove some of that. I'm going to tentatively say that we should probably avoid it.
(Not being a professional in this field, I am almost certainly missing something.)
As much as I think "space tourism" is an overhyped amusement park ride for jaded rich white people,...
As a jaded poor white person, it doesn't make sense to me how race plays into this. I don't know you or your beliefs, but there are racist who would use a phrase like that. If we ever want to have a color-blind society, we're all going to need to practice it.
No, that's not what I said. And that's not "exactly" what you said, either. (Though it's hard to be sure, your sentence was a bit broken.) I merely pointed out the exact same form could be pointed the other way.
And for the record: Science tries to ascertain truth by narrowing in on it through hypothesis and testing... it does not, indeed cannot, establish "facts". If the scientific facts of years-gone-by contradict the scientific facts of today, were they really facts at all? No. As some philosophers have put it, science can only disprove things. (Which doesn't make it invalid, or useless.)
People of faith (the rational ones, at least) tend to take the long view. If something is true, then it is true. Otherwise, the fad will wear off eventually. There's no need to categorically reject everything that superficially appears to contradict what you already accept. It's ok to say "I don't know, but it will make sense eventually." (This happens in science all the time, by the way.)
Your anger has blinded you. You're lashing out. Something happened to you, and you seem bent on taking it out on religion as a whole. I've seen it before, typically when parents are too strict, or are hypocrites.
It's ok for people to be different from you. (Some religionist need to learn this too, granted.) It's going to be a rough road because you've engineered a philosophy around religious belief, but you can come to accept that religion doesn't need to be demolished for the world to be a great place.
No, it's not. Thankfully I haven't had anybody in my family go through Alzheimer yet, or slip gradually into severe dementia. There are many people out there who would find that statement offensive.
Insane people don't have it. By definition.
Hmm, looking up the medical definition of "insane":
So... It's not a medical term, but a legal one. We seem to have found another tautology.
We're not talking defense here - we're talking there being nothing wrong about killing.
We're talking about whether the practice of capital punishment can dissuade someone who does not have a sound grasp of reality from killing. It won't dissuade all of them; it won't dissuade all sane people either. But will it dissuade some of them? I contend that it can.
As for the rest of your reply... That's a finest example of cherry picking I've seen yet.
Really... Forget the core arguments, go for the sentences. And individual words.
I picked your argument apart piece by piece. I may have missed things (it's likely, in fact), but I didn't skip anything intentionally. And I didn't skip the core arguments by going for individual ideas. That's not how arguments work. You had premises; you connected them; you tried to show how this lead to conclusions. Fine. I showed which premises I thought were faulty, and why others didn't lead to the conclusions you thought they did. I didn't just stand up and declare you wrong, but I showed you why. Piece by piece.
Looking at history it's in fact demonstrably true, because there are cases where science conflicted with religion in every case, and those with religious beliefs sided with religion, ignoring the science.
Faulty logic.
One could just as easily argue that every time a scientific advance happened, there were religious people who embraced it whole-heartedly. The same argument structure; the opposite conclusion.
Some people reject change. Religion is irrelevant to that behavior.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes. I do.
There are a few important differences, though. (1) I'm not trying to get elected to public office. (2) I'm not trying to exert political pressure while in office. (3) I'm not trying to sell ad space. (4) I'm not trying to be the voice of authority. Go look this stuff up. Make up your own mind. Just don't blindly follow the media narrative. They're biased, either toward the Democrats or Republicans... and neither of those biases give a fair reporting of the movement.
But ultimately, I'm a guy on the internet. Don't take my word at face value, any more than the word of MrBigInThePants.
That website is disgusting and the text is ridiculously huge. I'm not reading that.
Dude, "Ctrl -". How do you survive on the Internet?
The moderators and other tools prevent useless stuff from rising to the top.
Sometimes.
(Sorry, couldn't help myself)
And regardless of your motives, the fact that you both wrote and submitted the article can open you up to accusations of self-aggrandizement, of which the Slashthink is very very suspicious.
If this is a warning about what others might think, meant as a courtesy, then it's not well worded. If it's a request not to self-submit, then it's a worthless statement. Slashdot is about conversation. If the topic is worthy of conversation among nerds, geeks, techies, etc, then somebody needs to submit it. It doesn't do any good to tell people that they ought to be bashful.
I, for one, welcome your submission.
And what some fringe elements say at small meetings? How is that even relevant?!
Because those relatively small gatherings are where all the media cameras and microphones are. The larger movement has not, and cannot be heard nationally.
You have NOT heard the "Tea Party" movement, because you'd really have to go looking for it. You HAVE heard the constant barrage of media coverage on a particular corner of it, especially the Tea Party Express*, which is generally frowned upon by the other groups.
*(I think I've got the right group here. No slander intended if I've got the wrong one. What is called "The Tea Party" is not... it's just one of many, many organizations nationally. It's not even a good representation of the other groups.)
I am commenting on their actual representatives which are voting and passing laws not on the joe-shmoes voting them...
Again, showing that you only think you know what's going on. There are no Tea Party candidates. There never were. There is no "Tea Party" organization. There is nobody declaring which candidates may, or may not self-describe themselves as Tea Party candidates. A bunch of Republicans decided that they could ride the momentum to out-maneuver the establishment. Some of them are quite crazy, and need to be mocked. They show up to one rally, somewhere on Tax Day, put on a pretty face, and call them selves a "Tea Party Candidate". That's the whole of it.
I'll say it again. You're repeating lies. They're not your lies, so you need not feel any shame. The tea party movement started as a grass-roots movement, from the ground up. Ever since its inception, different political factions have been trying to define it or co-opt it from the outside, to some success. But at its core, there is no authoritative leader. Even "Tea Party Caucus" is a bit of a misnomer.
So, what defines "the tea party movement"? Principally: being willing to say out loud that the government is wasting our money; that our current fiscal path is unsustainable; that we can, and ought to have a balanced budget; that we can do much more with less if we cut graft, waste, and well, stealing, theft, kickbacks, cronyism, foxes watching hen houses, and the systemic deficiencies encouraging them (sometimes obvious, sometimes not).
In the words of John Green (to my nearest recollection) "If you think you might be a nerdfighter, you probably are." The same is doubly true of tea party advocates (or tea party anythings), especially as there aren't any de-facto Green brothers at the center of the nebulous thing. If there were congressmen being called the "Anonymous Caucus", you wouldn't blame Anonymous for everything they do, would you? That would be ludicrous. The tea party movement is even less organized than Anonymous. Consider that for a moment.
So, when you refer to the evil-doers in congress, please stop calling them the tea party. At best, you could refer to them as the Tea Party Caucus. The aren't just a self selected group, but a self-proclaimed group. They have chosen to define themselves in terms of the movement (and most of them do so badly). It is disingenuous, and more than a little insulting to define the movement in terms of them. Voters elected them. There were no "Tea Party" primaries, or nominations, or official nods, or unofficial nods. There is no process of keeping bad candidates from claiming the designation. Individual groups may have rallied behind them, but that is meaningless for the movement as a whole. They are congressmen, self described as tea party candidates. Nothing more.
The tea party is not and never will be the answer to the problems of the US due to their rabid irrational policies, their inability to relate cause and effect and their complete disdain for analysis, science and research. (those last two are related) Not to mention their bat shit crazy candidates.
No, the "Tea party" (there is no such thing) is not and will probably never be the answer to problems in the US because the media has focused on a very, very small, loud, and moronic corner of the movement in an uncoordinated smear campaign. Your vitriol is warranted, but only against the small target that the media has set you on. You've been duped.
What's worse is that the weak-brained have been told that the tea party movement is a good home for them. They are flocking to this "ideal environment" in droves, strangling an otherwise important political movement.
As for the Republican party, they've tried to co-opt the thing, to varying degrees of success. Most "tea-party" candidates are nothing of the sort. They just fly someone else's banner in order to get elected.
At the meetings that I've seen (from the edges), there was always an honest call for bi-partisanship, welcoming everyone from all political stripes. That's largely gone now that the Democrats, Republicans, and media have all taken the position that "the tea party" is a Republican thing. There are still people who hold out hope that it can operate in a bi-partisan (or non-partisan) fashion.
The US, land of the free! (*)
(*) applies iff you are the CEO of a MegaCorp.
You kidding? They paid quite a lot for it!
You think the sheriff, himself, personally arrested her? Not one of his deputies?
(I can't disprove it, but that would be very unusual, statistically.)
For one thing, the police aren't even involved, just the sheriff...
I'm not sure what hairs you're splitting, but I don't buy it. Any and all other issues aside, any government agent (1) issued a badge and (2) a gun who can (3) apprehend you and (4) put you in the back of their car - all fit in the same basic category. Don't call them police if you like, but it's mighty disingenuous to try to call someone else on it.
(Rabid apologists: Please note that I'm not calling for an end to law enforcement or lambasting them in any way. Misinterpretation of this post may be met with excoriation, or mocking silence.)
You sir, are an idiot.
Police do not get to keep the money they collect. None of that money is allowed to go back to the police department.
There is a common fallacy when it comes to how the government spends its money. I mean our money.
Money is fungible. A dollar is a dollar is a dollar. It's not like one dollar has higher tensile strength, and another one tastes better. They're all the same. If fines go into the general fund, then where do police funds come from? The general fund? What about when fines go to another fund? Does less money get channeled there, because fines are supporting the difference? Does that not free up that amount of money to be spent where-ever the politicians deem necessary, including the police department?
Whenever the government says "We're not spending those funds there, but other funds." you should be skeptical. They often play a shell game to re-allocate funds in legal, but unsavory ways.
Replying to AC troll, not for the troll's benefit, but because too many people are developing this perspective.
Propaganda works. Sorry.
Indeed - just look at the way the summary writer uplifts Democrats while lambasting Republicans, even though any objective observer will tell you they're essentially two sides of the same, evil coin.
My guess is you vote libertarian--because that's the same rhetoric I keep hearing from them, which is in reality nothing more than a rebranding of the extreme right wing of the republican party. Same party different name.
There are different types and degrees of Libertarians out there. There are some that are just as crazy as the irrational religious zealots and the tree huggers. The media is largely allied with the Democrats, and most of those that aren't are allied with the Republicans. Thus, there is a perverse incentive to cast all Libertarians in same light... as the enemy.
The truth is, sane libertarians exist, and are very centrist in their positions. They agree with Republicans on some issues, and with Democrats on others.
(disclaimer: I'm not a Libertarian, but a Republican who likes a few of their ideas. Not most, but a few.)
Expecting businesses to obey the law? That's crazy talk!
In California? Yeah, it frequently is.
California has a hostile business climate. Any businesses we can chase out of the state, we are chasing out of the state. Even Silicon Valley is struggling to retain companies.
I don't know the merits in this particular instance, but in CA, the presumption of ridiculousness goes to the state.
Control is only a part of the equation. I bet they're after money. Control and money go hand-in-hand, especially in this state.
Yep. This sounds like California.
I agree about Waze. I got it as an alternative to Google and really liked it... then Google snarfed it up. (I am pretty sure "snarf" is the right word.)
You're right. define:snarf
snarf
snärf/
verb informal
verb: snarf; 3rd person present: snarfs; past tense: snarfed; past participle: snarfed; gerund or present participle: snarfing
1. eat or drink quickly or greedily.
"they snarfed up frozen yogurt"
(Pardon the pun.)
The term "blaming the victim" has been dubious since it's very origin. I'll grab text from Wikipedia, because it's handy:
The Negro Family: The Case For National Action (the 1965 Moynihan Report) was written by Assistant Secretary of Labor[1] Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a sociologist and later U.S. Senator. It focused on the deep roots of black poverty in America and concluded controversially that the relative absence of nuclear families (those having both a father and mother present) would greatly hinder further progress toward economic and political equality.
Moynihan argued that the rise in single-mother families was not due to a lack of jobs but rather to a destructive vein in ghetto culture that could be traced back to slavery and Jim Crow discrimination. Though black sociologist E. Franklin Frazier had already introduced the idea in the 1930s, Moynihan's argument defied conventional social-science wisdom. As he wrote later, "The work began in the most orthodox setting, the U.S. Department of Labor, to establish at some level of statistical conciseness what 'everyone knew': that economic conditions determine social conditions. Whereupon, it turned out that what everyone knew was evidently not so."
Moynihan had concluded that ... the uniquely cruel structure of American slavery [had created a pattern which]..., manifested itself in high rates of unwed births, absent fathers, and single mother households in black families. Moynihan then correlated these familial outcomes, which he considered undesirable, to the relatively poorer rates of employment, educational achievement, and financial success found among the black population. Moynihan advocated the implementation of government programs designed to strengthen the black nuclear family.
Ryan objected that Moynihan then located the proximate cause of the plight of black Americans in the prevalence of a family structure in which the father was often sporadically, if at all, present, and the mother was often dependent on government aid to feed, clothe, and provide medical care for her children. Ryan's critique cast the Moynihan theories as attempts to divert responsibility for poverty from social structural factors to the behaviors and cultural patterns of the poor.[8][9]
"We need to help these people understand how not to be poor." "RACIST, He's BLAMING THE VICTIMS!"
Ryan has set minorities back 4 decades. Unwed births among all races are now on the rise, and we see that there really is a strong statistical correlation with ongoing multi-generational poverty. We'd actually be a more integrated society if we'd dealt with this problem years ago. But no. The knee-jerk reaction is to assume that any action a "victim" takes must be their own fault (often false), and to assume that if anyone is in poverty, it must be someone else's fault (also false; sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't). By this twisted and broken logic, one can never suggest that an individual change their own behavior to change their outcome. Any attempt to suggest that minorities adjust their behavior or world-view has been met with vitriolic screams of racism. (In any degree, no matter how small a part of any larger plan.)
The phrase "blaming the victim" is inherently broken, not in concept, but in functional use. It is a poor excuse to make uncomfortable topics off limits, and it always has been.
Why not? Am I wrong? Is there a good reason, or does the topic just make you squeamish? (I didn't bring it up)
The codecs (etc) are avoided because Debian doesn't want to deal with liability or licences. Steam doesn't present that particular problem. The intellectual property owner is actively contributing the software.
Yes, it's non-free, and it needs to be in the appropriate repo. But this isn't a "destroy the project, bring on the wrath of **** **, and sue everybody into oblivion" level of non-free.
(Ubuntu, on the other hand, wants more than just to be a better Debian. They've got a specific vision of where Linux ought to go, and they're trying to push into new territory. They just liked Debian as a starting point, that's all.)
(Posting while tired, subject to mistakes.)
Inbreeding isn't nearly as dangerous as it is made up to be, do if for generations and sure it can go terrible wrong but lets assume siblings have kids and it doubles the risk of genetic diseases, if it was 1% it is now 2%
That's backwards, actually. The less often inbreeding happens, the more dangerous. (Not that I'm advocating.)
I had a professor once say that we're all carriers of about 3 bad genetic mutations. Because these are so varied, people rarely marry with the same problem.
So, let's assume "Bob" only carries one bad recessive mutation (not on a sex chromosome), and he passes it onto half of his kids. If you grab any two of his kids, there is a 1/4 chance that both will be carriers. (This is equally true of half-siblings, since they both inherit half of Bob's DNA.) If they marry and have kids, 1/4 of them will receive broken copies from both parents, and will be terribly ill.
Assuming each person is a carrier of 3 major genetic disorders* , then the chance would be 1- (1 - 1/16)^3 ~= 17.6%, and not 2%, per child. (regardless of how common or rare those particular three disorders are)
*(Yeah, yeah, citation needed; I heard it from a genetics professor in a 101 class; it could be way off and I wouldn't know any better, but he ought to know.)
No.
(IANAG)
Each child receives 23 chromosomes from his/her mother, and 23 chromosomes from his/her father. Two of those are XX or XY. As far as inbreeding is concerned, the remaining 44 chromosomes also matter. Half-siblings share about a quarter of their chromosomes (on average). If they're of opposite genders, then it's just under a quarter.
To be clear, the real problem with inbreeding isn't that it causes bad genetic mutations, but that it brings them to the surface. Horrific genetic disorders that are dominant don't tend to propagate. They (or their kids) don't tend to survive to maturity and/or have trouble finding mates. Recessive disorders, however, lurk all over the place. I don't know if it's true or not, but I heard a professor say at one point that each of us carries about 3 major genetic disorders. They're not a problem because they're recessive. They're wide, and varied, so the chance that two carriers of the same disorder marry is pretty small (but does happen). Enter in-breeding into the equation. Suddenly there's a much higher chance that two carriers of the same disorder will marry, and some of their children may have major medical complications. (The same principle applies to minor genetic problems too.)
Animal husbandry often uses inbreeding intentionally to remove recessive genetic defects. They do so at the risk of getting very ill offspring... intentionally to weed them out. This does tend to lead toward a genetically homogeneous population, and therefore slows the rate of evolution. So, it's a trade off.
So is it good or bad for humans? I don't know. In the short term, it can be very, very bad. In the long term, we are probably benefiting from the added genetic diversity. Inbreeding might remove some of that. I'm going to tentatively say that we should probably avoid it.
(Not being a professional in this field, I am almost certainly missing something.)
As much as I think "space tourism" is an overhyped amusement park ride for jaded rich white people,...
As a jaded poor white person, it doesn't make sense to me how race plays into this. I don't know you or your beliefs, but there are racist who would use a phrase like that. If we ever want to have a color-blind society, we're all going to need to practice it.
No, that's not what I said. And that's not "exactly" what you said, either. (Though it's hard to be sure, your sentence was a bit broken.) I merely pointed out the exact same form could be pointed the other way.
And for the record: Science tries to ascertain truth by narrowing in on it through hypothesis and testing... it does not, indeed cannot, establish "facts". If the scientific facts of years-gone-by contradict the scientific facts of today, were they really facts at all? No. As some philosophers have put it, science can only disprove things. (Which doesn't make it invalid, or useless.)
People of faith (the rational ones, at least) tend to take the long view. If something is true, then it is true. Otherwise, the fad will wear off eventually. There's no need to categorically reject everything that superficially appears to contradict what you already accept. It's ok to say "I don't know, but it will make sense eventually." (This happens in science all the time, by the way.)
Your anger has blinded you. You're lashing out. Something happened to you, and you seem bent on taking it out on religion as a whole. I've seen it before, typically when parents are too strict, or are hypocrites.
It's ok for people to be different from you. (Some religionist need to learn this too, granted.) It's going to be a rough road because you've engineered a philosophy around religious belief, but you can come to accept that religion doesn't need to be demolished for the world to be a great place.
Insanity isn't boolean.
Grasping of reality IS though.
No, it's not. Thankfully I haven't had anybody in my family go through Alzheimer yet, or slip gradually into severe dementia. There are many people out there who would find that statement offensive.
Insane people don't have it. By definition.
Hmm, looking up the medical definition of "insane":
a legal term for mental illness of such degree that the individual is not responsible for his or her acts. Dorland's Medical Dictionary for Health Consumers. © 2007
1. Persistent mental disorder or derangement. Not in scientific use.
2. Unsoundness of mind sufficient in the judgment of a civil court to render a person unfit to maintain a contractual or other legal relationship or to warrant commitment to a mental health facility.
3. In most criminal jurisdictions, a degree of mental malfunctioning considered to be sufficient to relieve the accused of legal responsibility for the act committed. The American Heritage® Medical Dictionary Copyright © 2007
So... It's not a medical term, but a legal one. We seem to have found another tautology.
We're not talking defense here - we're talking there being nothing wrong about killing.
We're talking about whether the practice of capital punishment can dissuade someone who does not have a sound grasp of reality from killing. It won't dissuade all of them; it won't dissuade all sane people either. But will it dissuade some of them? I contend that it can.
As for the rest of your reply... That's a finest example of cherry picking I've seen yet. Really... Forget the core arguments, go for the sentences. And individual words.
I picked your argument apart piece by piece. I may have missed things (it's likely, in fact), but I didn't skip anything intentionally. And I didn't skip the core arguments by going for individual ideas. That's not how arguments work. You had premises; you connected them; you tried to show how this lead to conclusions. Fine. I showed which premises I thought were faulty, and why others didn't lead to the conclusions you thought they did. I didn't just stand up and declare you wrong, but I showed you why. Piece by piece.
What did I cherry pick?
Looking at history it's in fact demonstrably true, because there are cases where science conflicted with religion in every case, and those with religious beliefs sided with religion, ignoring the science.
Faulty logic.
One could just as easily argue that every time a scientific advance happened, there were religious people who embraced it whole-heartedly. The same argument structure; the opposite conclusion.
Some people reject change. Religion is irrelevant to that behavior.
You seem to have settled on a conclusion that you put a lot of faith in. I wish you could see the irony.