You really hope we're alone, just to "bolster our odds"? So it's eventual extinction and a chance to find life outside of our terrestrial family, or eternal life in a barren universe? I'll take mortality/company over immortality/solitude any day.
So is running a casino equally heinous? Peddling pornography? How about putting sugar in food products?
Maybe the war on it is pretty ridiculous (I wouldn't know, I don't see what they're doing to combat the problem)
Well I do know. I've known a few very nice people whose only supposedly negative contribution to society was circumventing unjustifiable and largely unenforceable laws who have gone to jail for dealing pot and psychedelics. Not crack, heroine, not even ecstacy... just marijuana and mushrooms. Maybe if a friend of yours rips off Windows and has the feds break down his door, shoot his dog, and haul him off to prison where he gets to serve mandatory time (after all, we don't want judges actually using their judgment or anything), you'll have enough personal experience to give a shit about the lives that are being ruined by way of external coercion, instead of a personal choice to experiment with your own body.
I fail to see how these people were destroying society. I fail to see why we should spend tax money terrorizing our own citizens over a ridiculous culture war being largely funded/supported by the worst addicts of them all (fundamentalist zealots). I fail to see how any decent human being could support such impotent and violently enforced prohibition while there are still underfunded treatment clinics turning people away who sincerely need and want help with their addictions.
What are you even talking about? Is it something special about the land? Does the countryside get insta-worse when you cross the border into Canada? Did Hawaii get prettier when it was granted statehood? Or do you just love the political geography? The shape of the coastline?
You say you love the people... you do realize that they're responsible for their government, right? So is that a general "I love all people", or is that more of a jingoistic and/or arbitrary "I love Americans"?
Uhh... yes, it is. If I found Corvettes ugly (and I do), why would I buy one, regardless of how it performs? Haven't you ever been to a website that made you want to retch the instant you saw it, but contained the information you were looking for?
Some people enjoy themselves more in an aesthetically pleasing environment. Is that stupid? Is that wrong? Are people fools to spend money improving their quality of life? Isn't that the point of buying a fast car in the first place?
Gun rights are far from the only way I measure freedom, but I do think they're enumerated second in the US Constitution for a good reason.
I'll certainly acknowledge that there used to be a good reason. But I fail to see how citizens armed with guns are going to fight any semi-modern national power (most importantly the U.S., since we're protecting ourselves from tyranny, right?). If gun rights advocates actually think that individual martial capacity protects their freedoms, why aren't they advocating legal ownership of more effective weapons for asymmetric warfare (e.g., explosives)? After all, the 2nd says "arms", not "guns".
My general impression is that most vocal supporters of gun rights are more concerned with protecting their particular hobby (which just so happens to have constitutional support) than with protecting their freedoms.
So, how you liking the computer you typed that post on, huh? Is it pretty nice? THANKS, CAPITALISM.
How about the house or apartment you're in? Pretty nice, how it's all well-built with construction materials and designed by some house manufacturing company. THANKS, CAPITALISM.
And the car you drive to work or school? That thing has an advanced combustion engine built by friggin' robots! THANKS, CAPITALISM.
Just checking... is there any argument lurking in here, or are you just pretending that capitalism is wholly responsible for anything and everything inside a capitalist state?
You like the clothes you're wearing? I bet they're pretty nice clothes. THANKS, CAPITALISM.
"It's your great nation that makes our happy meals possible."
So, it appears that supposed "blind luck" and those "craptacular market failures" are doing pretty well, at least to better your life.
Some of them, yes. I guess that means... nothing really whatsoever?
The real reason lefties love communism is because it puts all the power into the government's hands.
Oh, here it is. The classic "pardon me while I assign arbitrary preferences and motives to my opponents" style of argument. So let's get ridiculous. I'm sure you're right, the reason "lefties" want to regulate the market is solely to consolidate power in the hands of corruptable/incompetent government, in the barely whispered hope that some power-mongering dictator will abuse/misuse that power and make everyone's life worse. Yup, you've really hit the nail on the head. I'm sure none of them advocate it as a lesser of two evils, or see fundamental problems with the tendency of capital to get extremely lumpy if left untended, or care about the difference between partially transparent and nearly opaque organizations, or think that it's unethical to trade with rampant human rights violators, or think that a truly free market can act as a Petri dish for evolving new, effective ways to dump your costs on others. No, my fellow lefties and I love government regulation of the market because the market is the One True Enemy, Responsible for All Evils. Only by indulging in our basest fantasy (a giant flowchart that plans out the entire economy, perfectly, all the time) do we see the true path to freedom: slavery.
So we advocate public spending on research on the hopes that the government will research enough Big Brother tech to finally live our lives for us, not because we think the market (especially in some countries) is often myopic. We want universal health care to drive up costs and drive down quality, so we can gum up the extraordinarily successful private system we've got right now. We want better minimum wage to make it harder to own a small business, because it obviously doesn't benefit the workers anyway.
Instead of the people regulating their market as consumers
Oh yeah, us consumers are really sharp when it comes to that. We buy brand-name, chemically-identical-at-a-higher-price aspirin, because we saw a picture of it on television (which, of course, cost money to produce). We're all smart enough to know that getting the best deal is enough to regulate a free market (unless we saw an ad, but... cut us some slack, it was on TV!), and don't have to worry about corporate ethics. The modern, savvy consumer: a model of informed, responsible participation in a free market.
The classical way to quantify information is in bits, no? It seems like a real can hold a helluva lot of information, so what's the real-to-bit conversion? I assume it's somehow accounted for by an expanded definition involving qubits.
Especially considering that the application and GUI layers of this thing are largely written in Python, and the source is just a single "View Source" keypress away.
I bet no one's thought of that yet! Hurry, get on a plane and go tell all those poor Africans to quit fucking! Then come back here and tell all the poor teenagers! Hallelujah, we're saved!
Re:Wow, what an interesting universe you inhabit.
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Homosexuals have the right to get married - just not to each other because its nonsensical.
Subjective. Some people think all sex acts are filthy. I think homophobic bigots are filthy.
and contrary to nature
Animals have gay sex, so it's not contrary to nature. I once witnessed a butterfly threesome. Anyway, clothes and the internet are also contrary to nature. Stop being unnatural, it's filthy.
and basic [sic] of anatomy
Right, that's why just about the only way to directly stimulate the prostate is rectally. God hates fags so much that he gave them more intense orgasms.
It's not a superstition that you can't eat a hot dog with your nose.
I think we've finally found some common ground.
Homosexuals dont really want to be married as much as they hate not being able to.
You don't speak for homosexuals, so stop trying to.
They are desperate to pretend their peccadillos are "normal"
Since when is subjective abnormality punishable by unequal treatment?
and want to force it on society via the courts.
They're merely seeking equal treatment under the law, something the courts claim to provide.
In places they get allowed to get married they lose interest.
Hah, bullshit. Provide some support for your irrelevant assertion.
Think of it - for 50 years we been told marriage is just a bit of paper
Uhh... we have?
and the left has been eradicating it and the family while having governemnt [sic] in charge of the problems it creates (called "hurt and rescue")
You're off in toon town again. At least cite some evidence to back up your vague nonsense.
Now all of a sudden marriage is important to them - but only for homos.
Gee, maybe because no one has threatened to constitutionally ban heterosexual marriage. Maybe it's possible that liberals aren't defending "traditional" marriage because it faces absolutely no threats whatsoever?
It's another step down in social decay and not a rise up in civil rights.
But wouldn't a step down in... nevermind, I'll just pretend you said what you tried to say. So basically, your idea of "society" is people living the lives that you want them to live. When they try to do something you disapprove of (because, yuck, it's so gross!), you cry foul and plead for government intervention (gay marriage bans), while simultaneously blaming government intervention for the decay of society. Congratulations, I don't think anyone will mistake you for an intellectual in the near future.
Re:Wow, what an interesting universe you inhabit.
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I support grown men doing whatever they please in the privacy of their own homes, and any arbitrary group of people receiving equal (no nonsensical "separate but equal") treatment under the law as any other, independent of what some hoax of an ancient superstition would say to the contrary.
But yeah, clearly it's us liberals that make a huge issue out of gay marriage.
First of all, let me re-quote myself: "something that a reasonable person could easily disagree with". There really is no rational scientific basis for believing in a lot of the "market magic" that many libertarians espouse. That being the case, disagreement falls into the "reasonable" category. I myself tend to think that an effective anarchy composed of completely self-sufficient individuals or families would be a paradise relative to the way things are today, but it's easy to see that a reasonable person could disagree with that conclusion, with fairly rational arguments degenerating into more and more speculative terms (just like mine would). Nothing in the "real world" admits proof, just degrees of belief and consensus (the latter being forged effectively by repeated application of the scientific method).
At any rate, I'd assert that a reasonable person looks at each problem individually, and understands that there are varying pros and cons to private- vs public-sector solutions to those problems. They'll certainly weight the factors differently, but to claim that either one is a blanket solution to all problems is the height of "being unreasonable". Since you vaguely allude to past government failures, consider this sentence a vague allusion to past free market failures. I don't see the free market as having had a very good environmental track record, for example. Maybe you have a better method than government to control monopolies and cost externalization. Maybe you can picture a completely unregulated capitalist society somehow avoiding the spiral towards an archipelago of monopolies, or that there's a simple solution to advertising's disastrous impact on the accuracy of "rational agent" assumptions. In any of those cases, it'd be pretty presumptuous of you to claim that anyone who didn't share your vision was being unreasonable.
Wow, what an interesting universe you inhabit.
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A lot of liberal sorts come from families where they resented their parents and they tend to transfer the hatred of a parent toward another authority figure (a safe one). The people with great hatred of Bush generally hated a parent (or someone who abused them) first and they could never resolve that so they project it.
Wow! Overgeneralized crackpot psychological hypothesis at its finest. Liberals mostly hate their parents and that's why they hate authority, huh? Just wow.
Secretly these people LOVE Bush's mistakes (real or imagined) because they get to FEEL superior. They acquire a compensatory identity via their judgements (a female trait btw. Republicans tend to be more masculine in principle and identity and all the kids who hated their Dads (and this id often encouraged by Moms in dysfunctional homes) tend to hate a Bush and Republicans. This is especially true in Europe which is very feminised.
I'm beginning to think I'm feeding a troll here. In fact, I'm beginning to hope I am. Please feel free to confirm/deny this.
They would rather have us all consumed homosexual marriage than self-defense even though homo marriage is one reason the Islamo Facists want to kill us.
Wow again! The dems are the ones making an issue out of gay marriage, huh? And because it's something the "islamo fascists" want to kill us over, we shouldn't do it? That would certainly jive with the "hate us for our freedoms" non-argument often put forth by Bush, so clearly restriction of our freedoms is in order to get them to stop hating us?
Anyway, to summarize with not-quite-Godwin flair, I'm sure you just think Hitler was evil because it makes you feel better about yourself.
Health conditions are the worker's responsibility?
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So it's a toxic environment, but since the worker could clearly choose another job, it's no problem, because some idiot is just going to end up in the toxic environment instead? Pardon me, but what the fuck kind of argument is that? Would it be okay for a painting contractor to hire bums and choose not to provide adequate ventilation because the bums are too stupid to find healthier work? It'll be pretty hard to find better work once your cortex is fried by epoxy poisoning.
You're basically arguing here from the assumption that a free market solves most or all problems, something that a reasonable person could easily disagree with. Nevertheless, you're claiming that your social vision be "forced" upon them, citing their ability to "use the free market" as the equality factor. The free market itself is nothing more than an arrangement among citizens, quite similar to government in that respect. So maybe instead of others using (possibly corrupt) free market processes to exercise their rights, you should use the (possibly corrupt) governmental processes to exercise yours.
But maybe you're right. Maybe the public commons should be run purely as a private enterprise, and people should resort to financial gambling to enjoy a healthy experience in "public" areas.
What is "behaving as though free will doesn't exist"? It seems like it would be exactly the same. But then, I find the whole concept bankrupt of meaning to begin with...
All ethical issues are much, much murkier without the same concept of personal responsibility. I'm not saying it's impossible to revise our ideas of responsibility. As a practical matter, it's extremely difficult.
I have to disagree with this pretty much 100%. There are better reasons to lock up a serial killer than "blame" or some childish notion of revenge-as-justice. They're purely practical: "keep this guy off the streets so he doesn't kill anyone". If this really is the best solution we have at our disposal to keep people safe from him, then it's no more "punishment" than the fact that some handicapped person can't walk. If, in some sci-fi future, we could implant a chip in the killer's brain that prevented him from killing, then just give him the option: chip-but-otherwise-free or incarceration. No one should suffer excessively, no matter what they've done. To say otherwise is to admit you're sadistic at heart.
You can look at all reasonable law enforcement from this perspective (where reasonable excludes absurd laws like banning sodomy or prostitution). Just two maxims: be effective, be humane. The concern of prevention is a completely separate (and oft-confused) issue. At any rate, any crime prevention strategy that employs sadistic treatment of human beings to instill fear into the rest of them is obviously flawed.
Wonderful! I'm sure all those folks in the crowd have a solid understanding of the physics of this weapon, and upon encountering the sensation of being burned alive straight through their clothes, their first thought will be, "this weapon operates via electromagnetic radiation... so brickwork won't protect me, wooden structures won't protect me, cloth fibers won't protect me... but metal, aha! metal will block this vicious EM radiation, so I won't waste time trying to take cover behind anything non-metallic". Then the thoughtful crowd member, with both eyes wide open (after all, he knows the corneal damage will heal soon enough), will scan the area for a car or other large metal object to duck behind, and live happily ever after.
C++ is successful for the same reason that COBOL and Microsoft Windows have been successful: because they happened to appear in the right place at the right time, and were promoted by the right people, to become entrenched.
You're half-right. C++ "won" the application development language contest for these empty reasons. However, part of its staying power comes from the fact that, sooner or later, you need a "low-level" language to actually write fast code behind a well thought-out interface, once, and call it a library. These are two vastly different purposes, and I'd agree that C++ is as ill-suited to large-scale application development as VB is to efficient library development. However, the folks out there who need fast linear algebra routines, or lean, memory-efficient text searching, or [insert well-defined write-once problem here] often choose C++ for the right reasons.
Now, there's a legion of people that will shout "use C for that!", while trotting out the same application-level arguments they always use against C++. If there are any doubts in your mind about the advantage in expressiveness C++ has over C, take a look at the Blitz scientific computing package. C++, in some cirumstances, grants a pretty magical ability to create useful abstractions with essentially no abstraction penalty. Even if the code behind the abstraction is a template swamp, the code in front of it (the application code, the code that will be read and rewritten much more often) reads clear as day, without sacrificing performance. No, it's probably not the best language it can be, but for creating powerful, ruthlessly efficient, reusable abstractions, I don't see it as having any competition whatsoever.
There is a very simple reason to both avoid purchase of the Zune and pray to 42 that it fails. For every Zune sale, the record industry gets a cut. If you buy a Zune, you are propping up the RIAA. You are essentially paying a tax that assumes you are guilty of copyright infringement before you've even committed it (and of course you could get still get sued by the RIAA even after paying the absurd tax). This should sound familiar to Canadians.
How in the hell did this get on/. in an article about N. Korea on/.? We're way OT and have said my last.
Well, as long as there's substance to the conversation, I'll reply. Most interesting/. discussions are at least somewhat OT.
First, I don't consider myself conservative nor liberal but I certainly think there's a HUGE component of free will which determines our fate.
Okay. I feel I should point out that this is basically a metaphysical assertion (one I don't share, as I don't think "free will" even defines a coherent concept, especially on scales where statstics come into play), and we as a society should operate on facts and science, not fairy tales.
Second, the Asians have more than just work ethic. The roots are based on personal pride, respect for elders, achievement and the like.
Well that fits pretty directly into my point. Everything has a cause that's bigger than the individual.
You want to help everyone escape their downtrodden surroundings, but do it gently and with love. Try to understand where their ancestors came from and how hard it was which continues to this day... Ahhhh bullshit.
Oh yeah, my argument is bullshit... good point! You really seem to have a hard time understanding that social history doesn't replace personal responsibility. You also seem to be confusing what concepts are applicable at what scale. Should we "blame the blacks" for inner-city violence?
Our urban streets (and jails) are full of people who believe it's more glamorous to earn a living through blatant crime and leeching than to join the lawful workforce of the Nation.
Our jails are full of drug offenders. Selling LSD will often land you a harsher sentence than committing a rape or murder. A guy shoots my aunt twice in the head, gets out in 7 years for good behavior. But get caught growing weed and you'll lose your house, all of your assets, your paycheck will be garnished for basically the rest of your life, and that's after a 10+-year prison sentence. Why not turn to "real" crime at that point?
To those abusing programs designed for survival of the truly deprived, our Government is a giant gold faucet dispensing untold sums of cash if you can figure out how to turn the handle.
Well, the sums are actually finite, and far from the most grievous misuse of our tax dollars. To reiterate something from an earlier post of mine, why is there such a focus on welfare leeches when the ludicrously rich are also exploiting the government? Not only exploiting it, but actively corrupting it in the process. It speaks of a hidden agenda.
Drugs, guns, murder, rape, abuse, auto theft, looting - this behavior is GLORIFIED in music, actions, attitude, dress and general behavior.
Part cause, mostly symptom.
This crap didn't come over on a boat and was never forced upon them. It grew out of defiance and rebellion against the very system they prey upon. Certain elements of this culture don't want to actually work lest they be targeted for selling out.
I agree completely, but it's all just more pointless blame. Once someone is born into these conditions, their future is pretty much a done deal. So we can rant all day long about how crappy the symptoms are (pointless), we can try to contain the symptoms from harming the rest of society (by locking up violent criminals, necessary), and we can try to attack the symptoms directly (like Bill Cosby is about to do in your post, pointless).
The liberal approach only prolongs their justification to continue this behavior.
The "liberal approach"? You know, I remember learning about a project in a sociology class. They (the state, I believe, not sure) took 4,000 inner-city families, secured them with decent jobs (note that they didn't just tell them to find a job), and gave them decent houses in the sub
You'll come to understand that snickering with a bunch of geeks about death
It's funny that the only people I observe using condescending language like that are the ones with narrow and judgmental mindsets. Maybe you'll come to understand that much of the apparent baggage you've picked up with age has little to do with maturity. Maybe some day your sense of humor will evolve to encompass more aspects of the world you live in. Maybe some day you'll be able to separate your personal issues from your interactions with others.
As Google indexes these conversations they will be *easily* found by the children as they learn to use the internet... think about it.
Think of the children! So, let me get this straight. You should never joke about anything that negatively impacts someone on the internet, because they could scour the internet about the incident and find your joke?
As to maturity... seriously? "Fucking joke", "ass-stick-ectomy"...? Need I say more?
Oops, I forgot that nasty f-bombs are the tools of juvenile minds. I'll surely try harder to restrict my vocabulary and neologisms to appease those who've just experienced something troubling and feel like taking it out on others. Cue your reply informing me that sarcasm, the term "f-bombs", and accusing people of lacking character are also signs of immaturity.
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You really hope we're alone, just to "bolster our odds"? So it's eventual extinction and a chance to find life outside of our terrestrial family, or eternal life in a barren universe? I'll take mortality/company over immortality/solitude any day.
So is running a casino equally heinous? Peddling pornography? How about putting sugar in food products?
Maybe the war on it is pretty ridiculous (I wouldn't know, I don't see what they're doing to combat the problem)
Well I do know. I've known a few very nice people whose only supposedly negative contribution to society was circumventing unjustifiable and largely unenforceable laws who have gone to jail for dealing pot and psychedelics. Not crack, heroine, not even ecstacy... just marijuana and mushrooms. Maybe if a friend of yours rips off Windows and has the feds break down his door, shoot his dog, and haul him off to prison where he gets to serve mandatory time (after all, we don't want judges actually using their judgment or anything), you'll have enough personal experience to give a shit about the lives that are being ruined by way of external coercion, instead of a personal choice to experiment with your own body.
I fail to see how these people were destroying society. I fail to see why we should spend tax money terrorizing our own citizens over a ridiculous culture war being largely funded/supported by the worst addicts of them all (fundamentalist zealots). I fail to see how any decent human being could support such impotent and violently enforced prohibition while there are still underfunded treatment clinics turning people away who sincerely need and want help with their addictions.
What are you even talking about? Is it something special about the land? Does the countryside get insta-worse when you cross the border into Canada? Did Hawaii get prettier when it was granted statehood? Or do you just love the political geography? The shape of the coastline?
You say you love the people... you do realize that they're responsible for their government, right? So is that a general "I love all people", or is that more of a jingoistic and/or arbitrary "I love Americans"?
It's all about "image" you know
Uhh... yes, it is. If I found Corvettes ugly (and I do), why would I buy one, regardless of how it performs? Haven't you ever been to a website that made you want to retch the instant you saw it, but contained the information you were looking for?
Some people enjoy themselves more in an aesthetically pleasing environment. Is that stupid? Is that wrong? Are people fools to spend money improving their quality of life? Isn't that the point of buying a fast car in the first place?
The sad part is that "fascism" is going to take the majority of the blame, not the individuals in the Nazi party that actually caused the problem.
Gun rights are far from the only way I measure freedom, but I do think they're enumerated second in the US Constitution for a good reason.
I'll certainly acknowledge that there used to be a good reason. But I fail to see how citizens armed with guns are going to fight any semi-modern national power (most importantly the U.S., since we're protecting ourselves from tyranny, right?). If gun rights advocates actually think that individual martial capacity protects their freedoms, why aren't they advocating legal ownership of more effective weapons for asymmetric warfare (e.g., explosives)? After all, the 2nd says "arms", not "guns".
My general impression is that most vocal supporters of gun rights are more concerned with protecting their particular hobby (which just so happens to have constitutional support) than with protecting their freedoms.
So, how you liking the computer you typed that post on, huh? Is it pretty nice? THANKS, CAPITALISM.
How about the house or apartment you're in? Pretty nice, how it's all well-built with construction materials and designed by some house manufacturing company. THANKS, CAPITALISM.
And the car you drive to work or school? That thing has an advanced combustion engine built by friggin' robots! THANKS, CAPITALISM.
Just checking... is there any argument lurking in here, or are you just pretending that capitalism is wholly responsible for anything and everything inside a capitalist state?
You like the clothes you're wearing? I bet they're pretty nice clothes. THANKS, CAPITALISM.
"It's your great nation that makes our happy meals possible."
So, it appears that supposed "blind luck" and those "craptacular market failures" are doing pretty well, at least to better your life.
Some of them, yes. I guess that means... nothing really whatsoever?
The real reason lefties love communism is because it puts all the power into the government's hands.
Oh, here it is. The classic "pardon me while I assign arbitrary preferences and motives to my opponents" style of argument. So let's get ridiculous. I'm sure you're right, the reason "lefties" want to regulate the market is solely to consolidate power in the hands of corruptable/incompetent government, in the barely whispered hope that some power-mongering dictator will abuse/misuse that power and make everyone's life worse. Yup, you've really hit the nail on the head. I'm sure none of them advocate it as a lesser of two evils, or see fundamental problems with the tendency of capital to get extremely lumpy if left untended, or care about the difference between partially transparent and nearly opaque organizations, or think that it's unethical to trade with rampant human rights violators, or think that a truly free market can act as a Petri dish for evolving new, effective ways to dump your costs on others. No, my fellow lefties and I love government regulation of the market because the market is the One True Enemy, Responsible for All Evils. Only by indulging in our basest fantasy (a giant flowchart that plans out the entire economy, perfectly, all the time) do we see the true path to freedom: slavery.
So we advocate public spending on research on the hopes that the government will research enough Big Brother tech to finally live our lives for us, not because we think the market (especially in some countries) is often myopic. We want universal health care to drive up costs and drive down quality, so we can gum up the extraordinarily successful private system we've got right now. We want better minimum wage to make it harder to own a small business, because it obviously doesn't benefit the workers anyway.
Instead of the people regulating their market as consumers
Oh yeah, us consumers are really sharp when it comes to that. We buy brand-name, chemically-identical-at-a-higher-price aspirin, because we saw a picture of it on television (which, of course, cost money to produce). We're all smart enough to know that getting the best deal is enough to regulate a free market (unless we saw an ad, but... cut us some slack, it was on TV!), and don't have to worry about corporate ethics. The modern, savvy consumer: a model of informed, responsible participation in a free market.
[*]: Where I come frome, it is quite rightly illegal to encourage or help someone to kill themselves.
Sounds like a pretty stupid place.
The classical way to quantify information is in bits, no? It seems like a real can hold a helluva lot of information, so what's the real-to-bit conversion? I assume it's somehow accounted for by an expanded definition involving qubits.
Especially considering that the application and GUI layers of this thing are largely written in Python, and the source is just a single "View Source" keypress away.
I bet no one's thought of that yet! Hurry, get on a plane and go tell all those poor Africans to quit fucking! Then come back here and tell all the poor teenagers! Hallelujah, we're saved!
Homosexuals have the right to get married - just not to each other because its nonsensical.
1 11700061500.htm
Pot kettle black.
They can't make babies
Not yet. http://www.hindu.com/seta/2005/11/17/stories/2005
and their sex acts are filthy
Subjective. Some people think all sex acts are filthy. I think homophobic bigots are filthy.
and contrary to nature
Animals have gay sex, so it's not contrary to nature. I once witnessed a butterfly threesome. Anyway, clothes and the internet are also contrary to nature. Stop being unnatural, it's filthy.
and basic [sic] of anatomy
Right, that's why just about the only way to directly stimulate the prostate is rectally. God hates fags so much that he gave them more intense orgasms.
It's not a superstition that you can't eat a hot dog with your nose.
I think we've finally found some common ground.
Homosexuals dont really want to be married as much as they hate not being able to.
You don't speak for homosexuals, so stop trying to.
They are desperate to pretend their peccadillos are "normal"
Since when is subjective abnormality punishable by unequal treatment?
and want to force it on society via the courts.
They're merely seeking equal treatment under the law, something the courts claim to provide.
In places they get allowed to get married they lose interest.
Hah, bullshit. Provide some support for your irrelevant assertion.
Think of it - for 50 years we been told marriage is just a bit of paper
Uhh... we have?
and the left has been eradicating it and the family while having governemnt [sic] in charge of the problems it creates (called "hurt and rescue")
You're off in toon town again. At least cite some evidence to back up your vague nonsense.
Now all of a sudden marriage is important to them - but only for homos.
Gee, maybe because no one has threatened to constitutionally ban heterosexual marriage. Maybe it's possible that liberals aren't defending "traditional" marriage because it faces absolutely no threats whatsoever?
It's another step down in social decay and not a rise up in civil rights.
But wouldn't a step down in... nevermind, I'll just pretend you said what you tried to say. So basically, your idea of "society" is people living the lives that you want them to live. When they try to do something you disapprove of (because, yuck, it's so gross!), you cry foul and plead for government intervention (gay marriage bans), while simultaneously blaming government intervention for the decay of society. Congratulations, I don't think anyone will mistake you for an intellectual in the near future.
I support grown men doing whatever they please in the privacy of their own homes, and any arbitrary group of people receiving equal (no nonsensical "separate but equal") treatment under the law as any other, independent of what some hoax of an ancient superstition would say to the contrary.
But yeah, clearly it's us liberals that make a huge issue out of gay marriage.
First of all, let me re-quote myself: "something that a reasonable person could easily disagree with". There really is no rational scientific basis for believing in a lot of the "market magic" that many libertarians espouse. That being the case, disagreement falls into the "reasonable" category. I myself tend to think that an effective anarchy composed of completely self-sufficient individuals or families would be a paradise relative to the way things are today, but it's easy to see that a reasonable person could disagree with that conclusion, with fairly rational arguments degenerating into more and more speculative terms (just like mine would). Nothing in the "real world" admits proof, just degrees of belief and consensus (the latter being forged effectively by repeated application of the scientific method).
At any rate, I'd assert that a reasonable person looks at each problem individually, and understands that there are varying pros and cons to private- vs public-sector solutions to those problems. They'll certainly weight the factors differently, but to claim that either one is a blanket solution to all problems is the height of "being unreasonable". Since you vaguely allude to past government failures, consider this sentence a vague allusion to past free market failures. I don't see the free market as having had a very good environmental track record, for example. Maybe you have a better method than government to control monopolies and cost externalization. Maybe you can picture a completely unregulated capitalist society somehow avoiding the spiral towards an archipelago of monopolies, or that there's a simple solution to advertising's disastrous impact on the accuracy of "rational agent" assumptions. In any of those cases, it'd be pretty presumptuous of you to claim that anyone who didn't share your vision was being unreasonable.
A lot of liberal sorts come from families where they resented their parents and they tend to transfer the hatred of a parent toward another authority figure (a safe one). The people with great hatred of Bush generally hated a parent (or someone who abused them) first and they could never resolve that so they project it.
Wow! Overgeneralized crackpot psychological hypothesis at its finest. Liberals mostly hate their parents and that's why they hate authority, huh? Just wow.
Secretly these people LOVE Bush's mistakes (real or imagined) because they get to FEEL superior. They acquire a compensatory identity via their judgements (a female trait btw. Republicans tend to be more masculine in principle and identity and all the kids who hated their Dads (and this id often encouraged by Moms in dysfunctional homes) tend to hate a Bush and Republicans. This is especially true in Europe which is very feminised.
I'm beginning to think I'm feeding a troll here. In fact, I'm beginning to hope I am. Please feel free to confirm/deny this.
They would rather have us all consumed homosexual marriage than self-defense even though homo marriage is one reason the Islamo Facists want to kill us.
Wow again! The dems are the ones making an issue out of gay marriage, huh? And because it's something the "islamo fascists" want to kill us over, we shouldn't do it? That would certainly jive with the "hate us for our freedoms" non-argument often put forth by Bush, so clearly restriction of our freedoms is in order to get them to stop hating us?
Anyway, to summarize with not-quite-Godwin flair, I'm sure you just think Hitler was evil because it makes you feel better about yourself.
So it's a toxic environment, but since the worker could clearly choose another job, it's no problem, because some idiot is just going to end up in the toxic environment instead? Pardon me, but what the fuck kind of argument is that? Would it be okay for a painting contractor to hire bums and choose not to provide adequate ventilation because the bums are too stupid to find healthier work? It'll be pretty hard to find better work once your cortex is fried by epoxy poisoning.
You're basically arguing here from the assumption that a free market solves most or all problems, something that a reasonable person could easily disagree with. Nevertheless, you're claiming that your social vision be "forced" upon them, citing their ability to "use the free market" as the equality factor. The free market itself is nothing more than an arrangement among citizens, quite similar to government in that respect. So maybe instead of others using (possibly corrupt) free market processes to exercise their rights, you should use the (possibly corrupt) governmental processes to exercise yours.
But maybe you're right. Maybe the public commons should be run purely as a private enterprise, and people should resort to financial gambling to enjoy a healthy experience in "public" areas.
While the hybrids did find a clever way to regain energy that a typical car just throws away
You said it right there. That's why the EPA should count it towards better fuel economy.
What is "behaving as though free will doesn't exist"? It seems like it would be exactly the same. But then, I find the whole concept bankrupt of meaning to begin with...
All ethical issues are much, much murkier without the same concept of personal responsibility. I'm not saying it's impossible to revise our ideas of responsibility. As a practical matter, it's extremely difficult.
I have to disagree with this pretty much 100%. There are better reasons to lock up a serial killer than "blame" or some childish notion of revenge-as-justice. They're purely practical: "keep this guy off the streets so he doesn't kill anyone". If this really is the best solution we have at our disposal to keep people safe from him, then it's no more "punishment" than the fact that some handicapped person can't walk. If, in some sci-fi future, we could implant a chip in the killer's brain that prevented him from killing, then just give him the option: chip-but-otherwise-free or incarceration. No one should suffer excessively, no matter what they've done. To say otherwise is to admit you're sadistic at heart.
You can look at all reasonable law enforcement from this perspective (where reasonable excludes absurd laws like banning sodomy or prostitution). Just two maxims: be effective, be humane. The concern of prevention is a completely separate (and oft-confused) issue. At any rate, any crime prevention strategy that employs sadistic treatment of human beings to instill fear into the rest of them is obviously flawed.
Wonderful! I'm sure all those folks in the crowd have a solid understanding of the physics of this weapon, and upon encountering the sensation of being burned alive straight through their clothes, their first thought will be, "this weapon operates via electromagnetic radiation... so brickwork won't protect me, wooden structures won't protect me, cloth fibers won't protect me... but metal, aha! metal will block this vicious EM radiation, so I won't waste time trying to take cover behind anything non-metallic". Then the thoughtful crowd member, with both eyes wide open (after all, he knows the corneal damage will heal soon enough), will scan the area for a car or other large metal object to duck behind, and live happily ever after.
C++ is successful for the same reason that COBOL and Microsoft Windows have been successful: because they happened to appear in the right place at the right time, and were promoted by the right people, to become entrenched.
You're half-right. C++ "won" the application development language contest for these empty reasons. However, part of its staying power comes from the fact that, sooner or later, you need a "low-level" language to actually write fast code behind a well thought-out interface, once, and call it a library. These are two vastly different purposes, and I'd agree that C++ is as ill-suited to large-scale application development as VB is to efficient library development. However, the folks out there who need fast linear algebra routines, or lean, memory-efficient text searching, or [insert well-defined write-once problem here] often choose C++ for the right reasons.
Now, there's a legion of people that will shout "use C for that!", while trotting out the same application-level arguments they always use against C++. If there are any doubts in your mind about the advantage in expressiveness C++ has over C, take a look at the Blitz scientific computing package. C++, in some cirumstances, grants a pretty magical ability to create useful abstractions with essentially no abstraction penalty. Even if the code behind the abstraction is a template swamp, the code in front of it (the application code, the code that will be read and rewritten much more often) reads clear as day, without sacrificing performance. No, it's probably not the best language it can be, but for creating powerful, ruthlessly efficient, reusable abstractions, I don't see it as having any competition whatsoever.
There is a very simple reason to both avoid purchase of the Zune and pray to 42 that it fails. For every Zune sale, the record industry gets a cut. If you buy a Zune, you are propping up the RIAA. You are essentially paying a tax that assumes you are guilty of copyright infringement before you've even committed it (and of course you could get still get sued by the RIAA even after paying the absurd tax). This should sound familiar to Canadians.
How in the hell did this get on /. in an article about N. Korea on /.? We're way OT and have said my last.
/. discussions are at least somewhat OT.
Well, as long as there's substance to the conversation, I'll reply. Most interesting
First, I don't consider myself conservative nor liberal but I certainly think there's a HUGE component of free will which determines our fate.
Okay. I feel I should point out that this is basically a metaphysical assertion (one I don't share, as I don't think "free will" even defines a coherent concept, especially on scales where statstics come into play), and we as a society should operate on facts and science, not fairy tales.
Second, the Asians have more than just work ethic. The roots are based on personal pride, respect for elders, achievement and the like.
Well that fits pretty directly into my point. Everything has a cause that's bigger than the individual.
You want to help everyone escape their downtrodden surroundings, but do it gently and with love. Try to understand where their ancestors came from and how hard it was which continues to this day... Ahhhh bullshit.
Oh yeah, my argument is bullshit... good point! You really seem to have a hard time understanding that social history doesn't replace personal responsibility. You also seem to be confusing what concepts are applicable at what scale. Should we "blame the blacks" for inner-city violence?
Our urban streets (and jails) are full of people who believe it's more glamorous to earn a living through blatant crime and leeching than to join the lawful workforce of the Nation.
Our jails are full of drug offenders. Selling LSD will often land you a harsher sentence than committing a rape or murder. A guy shoots my aunt twice in the head, gets out in 7 years for good behavior. But get caught growing weed and you'll lose your house, all of your assets, your paycheck will be garnished for basically the rest of your life, and that's after a 10+-year prison sentence. Why not turn to "real" crime at that point?
To those abusing programs designed for survival of the truly deprived, our Government is a giant gold faucet dispensing untold sums of cash if you can figure out how to turn the handle.
Well, the sums are actually finite, and far from the most grievous misuse of our tax dollars. To reiterate something from an earlier post of mine, why is there such a focus on welfare leeches when the ludicrously rich are also exploiting the government? Not only exploiting it, but actively corrupting it in the process. It speaks of a hidden agenda.
Drugs, guns, murder, rape, abuse, auto theft, looting - this behavior is GLORIFIED in music, actions, attitude, dress and general behavior.
Part cause, mostly symptom.
This crap didn't come over on a boat and was never forced upon them. It grew out of defiance and rebellion against the very system they prey upon. Certain elements of this culture don't want to actually work lest they be targeted for selling out.
I agree completely, but it's all just more pointless blame. Once someone is born into these conditions, their future is pretty much a done deal. So we can rant all day long about how crappy the symptoms are (pointless), we can try to contain the symptoms from harming the rest of society (by locking up violent criminals, necessary), and we can try to attack the symptoms directly (like Bill Cosby is about to do in your post, pointless).
The liberal approach only prolongs their justification to continue this behavior.
The "liberal approach"? You know, I remember learning about a project in a sociology class. They (the state, I believe, not sure) took 4,000 inner-city families, secured them with decent jobs (note that they didn't just tell them to find a job), and gave them decent houses in the sub
You'll come to understand that snickering with a bunch of geeks about death
It's funny that the only people I observe using condescending language like that are the ones with narrow and judgmental mindsets. Maybe you'll come to understand that much of the apparent baggage you've picked up with age has little to do with maturity. Maybe some day your sense of humor will evolve to encompass more aspects of the world you live in. Maybe some day you'll be able to separate your personal issues from your interactions with others.
As Google indexes these conversations they will be *easily* found by the children as they learn to use the internet... think about it.
Think of the children! So, let me get this straight. You should never joke about anything that negatively impacts someone on the internet, because they could scour the internet about the incident and find your joke?
As to maturity... seriously? "Fucking joke", "ass-stick-ectomy"...? Need I say more?
Oops, I forgot that nasty f-bombs are the tools of juvenile minds. I'll surely try harder to restrict my vocabulary and neologisms to appease those who've just experienced something troubling and feel like taking it out on others. Cue your reply informing me that sarcasm, the term "f-bombs", and accusing people of lacking character are also signs of immaturity.