No, I've read the McDonald's shit, and I've read the anti-smoking shit. Neither of it is any more compelling than Reefer Madness.
"Liebeck's attorney argued that coffee should never be served hotter than 140 F (60 C)"
That, right there, is a load of shit. That's cold coffee. Check the next cup you buy from.. well, ANYWHERE. It will be hotter than 140. It'll be more like 180. Ideal temp is 155-175 or thereabouts. Coffee's served a bit warmer, so as it sits there it reaches the best temp and to counteract cooling from the creamer people dump into it (which is a sin against coffee but that's another rant).
Essentially, the whole case was based on a lie -- that being that the coffee served by McDonald's was unreasonably and unsafely hot. Truth of the matter is ALL COFFEE IS UNREASONABLY AND UNSAFELY HOT, IT WAS JUST FUCKING BOILING WATER A FEW MINUTES AGO. I feel bad for the old lady, but come on. She should have known better than to act in such a reckless manner. You don't sue a store because you bought a lighter and burnt yourself on it.
The smoking shit is just that -- shit. God knows it's a fucking crime for any industry to ever try and improve their product in any way. Nosir, anything that isn't the nastiest, harshest, shittiest cigarette is TOO GOOD FOR ALL THEM EBIL SMOKERZ. amirite? Did you even read that link? They're not trying to make cigarettes as addictive as possible, they're trying to make better cigarettes. Nicotine's addictive. NEWS AT 11! So is caffeine, where's all the clamoring for rope and a sturdy tree limb when Starbucks releases their latest sugar-and-caffeine-bombinacup? Admit it -- you think these things they're doing are terrible because you think cigarettes are terrible. That's unfair. Cigarettes are terrible? That's a fine opinion to have, and smoking is bad for you, but it IS a choice to start smoking AND to continue (it's just hard to quit) -- and, it's a LEGAL choice. Where it any other industry that was doing the things listed in the BBC article, with any other product, we would applaud them for progress, even if we don't personally have any contact or fondness for their product. Happens all the time here, Apple or MS comes out with something, people hate it but they don't hate that the industry as a whole is moving forward -- and this is demonized when it's done by the tobacco industry? That makes no sense. Hell, it doesn't even make sense to bitch at beer companies for releasing more delicious beers -- I mean GOSH, IT MIGHT TEMPT KIDS TO DRINK! I don't even fucking understand how that argument flies in the first place, I suppose it's just the magic evilness of the tobacco industry that makes it so.
You lack any sort of perspective. Of any kind. You're parroting evil things because you've been told they're evil and that's bad. Truth is, that lady should NOT have received a DIME, and cigarette companies are merely a favored whipping boy because they don't have any allies to come to their side and point out the unfair treatment.
Corporations are just a concept. Like a government. Or a gang. It's all the same, it's all people. People are quite able to be sociopathic, evil bastards all on their own. Don't blame the corporation, a corporation never does a damnedable thing -- it's the people running the show (or "running" the show) that do things. Blame where blame is due.
And your tripe about the tobacco industry is garbage. Clearly you must support the 7-figure judgement against McDonald's because some fat woman spilled hot coffee on her lap (because she removed the lid while holding the cup between her legs while driving) -- they're burning people every year! EVIL CORPORATION! Oh, except, no. That's fucking stupid. You're fucking stupid. Go away.
So if a child is yelling and the parent yells at the child to stop it, in your opinion both are equally in the wrong. The parent should have calmly and diplomatically explained to the (still yelling) child how much they'd like it if the child would just stop, please. Yes, that's totally reasonable. Oh wait, no, you live in a fantasy fucking world where everybody is willing to act rationally and only resorts to violence when confused or afraid, never because they're just bad fucking people with no respect for life.
I'm sure you're right, though. I suggest you begin your process of explaining to american gangs and mexican cartels why they don't ACTUALLY need to be killing anyone to accomplish their goals, they just need to sit down and TAAAALLLKK.
Amateur. I created a whole new one-time-use email account for that. You're totally going to get hacked, and I'm gonna laugh. You have viruses in your chips!
Let's be fair and let's be clear. It's not hard to mistake one product as drugs from a company known to manufacture other highly addictive substances. Peeps are puffed crack.
From the sound of it, it looks like he's talking about IFR type designs. Which was a pretty good program that would've allowed us to basically use current waste as future fuel, and the future waste would have a small fraction of the halflife current waste does. Until Clinton shitcanned it for no discernible reason. GE has an IFR design out now that it's shopping to, primarily, China -- it's small, and designed to drop in to a current coal plant. Take out the furnace, drop this in, revamp control facilities to be able to handle nuclear shit, and bam! Done! Tech that Clinton decided in 1996 wasn't worth squat, 'cause nookleer's ebil.
This is one of the primary reasons that I consider anyone who believes Clinton was a good president to be the saddest type of fool. He did a great deal of harm to this country, but thanks to his personality-based popularity nobody ever wanted to hear about how big of a fuckup he was.
2009 was the hottest year on record? Huh. News to me, I have heard otherwise. Not locally or nationally, but globally.
AGW is most likely a fact, but the EXTENT of AGW is certainly not. Is there any explanation as to what causes earth's natural climate shifts? Do we have any idea if we are in a natural upshift or downshift? No and no. We don't know. We're basing the entire AGW on very shaky ground -- that our climate should NOT be increasing naturally through mechanisms we still don't understand, and that CO2 is the primary cause of climate change. Um. Sorry, but both of those are wrong. Matter of fact, just yesterday saw that someone (iirc in Spain?) has been studying submerged caves and found evidence that ocean levels 100,000 years ago were higher than they are today. Maybe it was 80,000. Then there's the medieval warm period. Then there's the little ice age. What caused those two climate shifts?
Increased CO2 levels in the atmosphere does, yes, verifiable fact, act as a 'greenhouse gas', and that would tend to increase temperatures globally. Anything beyond that point is just conjecture. We really have no clue if increased CO2 levels in ice cores are caused by or caused warmer temperatures (huh, nevermind those findings I read about recently that casts doubt on the infallability of ice cores -- that is, that gases and such aren't as static in ice cores as we thought, and they're not as accurate as we believed).
It would be GREAT if we could actually go back and look at records, but huh, apparently East Anglia hasn't ever heard about keeping records and threw out everything that was actual hard unadulterated data.. so we'll just never know. All we have are the numbers they hand-picked and corrected. We have only their word that the numbers they have are any good. Sounds a lot like faith to me.
Faith and trust is antithetical to the progress of science. Science is built upon doubt and distrust -- and that is a noble and commendable thing. Science doesn't give a shit what you say, PROVE it, prove it with evidence that is concrete. Don't wave your hands with a bunch of numbers and not let others peek behind the curtain. Frankly, I'm more inclined to call the whole AGW a hoax JUST TO SPITE those assholes who label themselves men of science but who wrung their hands and conspired to REFUSE FOIA REQUESTS. What the FUCK? What fucking scientist doesn't show his work to others so that they may verify it? A charlatan does that. Not a scientist.
AGW may be real -- in fact, I'd lean towards that pretty strongly -- but the wizard's been exposed and some of the leading men in the field have been shown to be nothing but frauds. Even if they're right, their refusal of FOIA requests, their destruction of original data.. that's just immoral and criminal in severity. Science without hard facts and data is not science, it's religion, and that's what AGW has become. Bow at the altar of Al Gore. Don't question. What's this shit about "extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof", have whoever said that shot for questioning AGW. Who needs proof when these guys in white coats are telling us that they're really very clever and most probably totally right, we should believe them you heathen.
Believing in a creator does not mean you must also DISBELIEVE SCIENCE. That's just fucking idiotic. If there is a god, there's no way for us to understand him or what he's done. The best we can do is do what we can to understand how the world we live in operates. Whether this universe is incidental or created is irrelevant, the important part is that science allows us to investigate the workings of that universe and at no point is that impeded by faith. AT NO POINT! It's only FOOLS who pick and choose passages from the bible and interpret them as the literal truth-and-fact-and-history who believe that their faith requires them to stick their head in the sand and not investigate through our GOD-GIVEN facilities how our world operates. Even if there was a creator that made the world in 7 days, that fact would be completely useless to the furtherance of human knowledge because it's not happening anymore. Genetic adaptation and change is a demonstrable fact. Speciation, less so, but the period of time in which we would have even been able to observe such a thing is so small that even if we WERE observing such a thing we would not be able to recognize it; there is, however, strong evidence to suggest it is fact. Continuing down the path that scientific evidence leads us brings us a greater understanding of the natural world. Shoving our head in the sand because we THINK it contradicts some religious book brings NO furtherance of knowledge.
In short arguing against teaching creationism in an educational setting is both dumb and just makes you a Luddite. Schools should endeavor to the best of their ability to teach only verifiable facts. Teaching creationism, or intelligent design, in a publicly-funded school, IS THE ESTABLISHMENT AND SUPPORT OF RELIGION BY THE GOVERNMENT. Maybe it's not a big deal for you, or your friends, or the people at your church, but such talk is contradictory to a number of other religions with their own creation stories. For each religion, the only proof available that their creation story is right is the story itself. Maybe science isn't right, but it's the only thing that can be verified by human means and as such we should get the fuck over ourselves and for good or for ill, come to terms that it's the best way for us to broaden our understanding of how things work. maybe the bible is right, but if the bible said fire was given to man from god only a fucking fool would rattle sabers because someone discovered that fire can also be obtained by rubbing sticks together.
best part is i read about this two days ago, and the ACTUAL truth is that neither rush limbaugh or heavy metal were very effective; it was only when the researchers started using sounds that, you know, MADE SENSE, that it became effective. They blasted the sounds the beetles themselves make when they are agitated and aggressive.
Yeah, the researchers are the assholes here, because when they wanted to blast loud and offensive sounds the first things they thought of were heavy metal and rush limbaugh. what a bunch of assholes, more concerned about denigrating things they don't like and scoring snark points than doing actual thinking about what might be most offensive to beetles.
People who allow others to dictate what they can and can't do are fools. That's a value that it seems is no longer instilled -- that people are going to tell you you can't do things, and if you don't like it you prove them wrong. Or, at worst, prove them right while still improving yourself.
So far as the rates of incarceration, there's so many more factors that contribute to a varied racial mix of inmates that pinning it all on race is ridiculous and reductionist. Boiling it down to either racism or racism? You chose the answer before you even finished understanding the problem.
your analogy is better, I didn't really RTFA (I did RTFS and STFA so i figure i'm still at the good small end of the bell curve) before posting, but sadly I mentioned cars more often and stole any moderation that might've fallen your way. Ahh slashdot..
Your analogy IS flawed. If you're a restaurant, first of all, you're the *provider* of the food. A better analogy would be if you owned a car and merely delivered food per customer requests, from the sources they request. You have no hand at all in the food except moving it from Point A to Point B (in your car). Now, some of that food is going to be rotten, some of it will be downright objectionable, possibly illegal. You don't want to be required to search every single morsel of food that you deliver, because to do so would be an undue burden on your business -- you'd spend all your time inspecting food.
Then, one day, you decide you don't like veal in your car, and begin inspecting everything you deliver for veal. You stop transporting food from places that serve veal. You've now turned from a neutral transporter of food, with the contents and quality of that food being an issue only for the preparer and the purchaser, to an inspector. Now you're liable if someone DOES get something illegal, because, why, you're already searching for veal! Surely you saw this and that was illegal. If you can remove all the veal, you can remove all the soylent green as well, and to not do so would be tacit approval of illegal activity.
That's what's going on here -- 4chan is the resturant, verizon is merely the delivery service. If they are going to police the internet, they're no longer a neutral carrier that cannot be held responsible for that which they transport.
And that is not a problem with race, gender or creed but rather with insular groups of people who favor their friends.
They're not denying you a promotion because you're a woman, or black, or a jew. You're simply not a part of the good ole' boys' club. I, being a white male, would ALSO be denied that position, because I am not a member of their good ole' boys' club. Yet in that same situation, I would be the only one unable to follow up the discrimination with legal action. This is a flaw in our legal system. It is difficult to lay out any sort of law that would be applicable to this situation. What is the 'good ole' boys' club'? Well.. they're all white male WASPs, so.. they have everyone that isn't a white male WASP? No, they just favor those who are within or in some clear way connected to their own social circle. The colors, sky-monsters and dangly bits are completely incidental to their social grouping. You could be a mirror image of them, but if you are not in some way part of "their group" you are still viewed as an outsider and so would be discriminated against. People are upset about the wrong fucking things.
That message is less a message and more a message that there is a message.
That is, the actual thing really doesn't exist. No fucking adult is going to deride or berate a girl child for being good at math. That is stupid. They WILL tell the girl "good for you! so few girls are interested in math, you're special!".. and then, well christ. nobody wants to be the odd one out.
Copy this for racism: there's more talk about how horrible and prevalent racism is and how it holds people back than there is racism holding anybody back.
These are just bogeymen trumped up by people with a particular agenda (who often wholeheartedly believe their fantasies).
No one cars if the CEO of a car company is black, or white. Neither should be denied the position based upon race, and whoever ends up in that position should not be meant to feel bad about it because of their race. If 100% of auto execs are white, that does not indicate racism. It only indicates racism if they were given the position so that a non-white person could not have it, or if a non-white person was denied the position based upon race. Merely the numbers don't mean a goddamned thing.
uhm, correct me if i'm wrong but i believe the recording industry has been paddled *twice* over price-fixing in regards to compact discs. TWICE. I don't recall prices dropping all that much either time. I think they sent out $1 coupons if you wrote them a letter or some stupid shit like that. Probably not. That's just a guess and assumption that sounds about right, it's most likely not what happened. The price fixing thing should be spot on, though.
The mechanism in those guns never worked right. Smith & Wesson did the same thing. I don't know of any demonstrations where the guns worked right, but I do know of several in which they surreptitiously disabled the electronic locking mechanism in order to demonstrating it firing.
Ever been to Detroit? There IS something very wrong with the society we live in. There's scores of places across America that are closer to shitholes in Africa than any first-world nation. Oh, sure, they might have a cell phone, and a 360 at their crib, and a nice car.. but functionally the values and attitudes are pretty in-line with what you'd find in some of the most awful places around the world.
If your kids are fucking idiots who don't understand what DEAD means, who don't understand that there are things that are not meant to be played with, well sir you are a terrible parent and shouldn't have had a child in the first place. The only reason a kid could possibly think that dead doesn't mean FUCKING DEAD is if you completely abdicated the education of your child to electronic media. Don't blame an inanimate object for your lackadaisical parenting. Further, a lack of understanding as to how death works and how guns are treated would probably be the least of your problems with that child. If they've picked those up from TV and video games and you have done nothing to instill in them the difference between entertainment and reality they'll wind up with many other issues related to shit they learned from fiction that they think is real.
Obviously you don't see the downside, because it would lead to fewer guns, and you are anti-gun. You have tunnel vision, and anything that moves towards an end you believe good -- no guns! -- is itself good.
Thing is the world doesn't work like that, and you have nothing but faith that your stance is in fact correct and good and through that faith anything that moves closer towards your goal is also worthwhile and holy.
It might me a small sample size and anecdotal evidence, but I have had many neighbors over the years and in that time, the collective number of homicides committed by every person I've ever lived nearby.. is less than the number of people killed by Ted Kennedy. Senators are far more dangerous.
I'd suggest you not even try to find any info on your last question, that's worded almost exactly like some of the shit put out by the antigun lobbies and they use so much bad reasoning in those things.. I'd cite an example but I gloss over them after finding a few mistakes, but I can cite a few mistakes. I recall one from the past few years where they included as "deaths in the household" occasions when an intruder was shot and killed. Yes. They included "SAVING YOUR FUCKING FAMILY" into the "people killed by guns inside your hosue!" number, while implying the whole time that "people killed by guns inside your house" meant "your family is more likely to die!". They often also don't discriminate between legal and illegal gun ownership, though i don't think any reasonable and sane person would expect anything but a higher rate of shootings when guns are owned illegally by felons -- most shootings are drug related, full stop, and painting them as being caused by guns instead of a violent black-market culture is akin to blaming cars for drunk driving fatalities.
Not when the Reality Distortion Field is in effect. That's why a computer will go up in price if it's branded with that A-name. You're paying a premium because what you're actually purchasing is a small portion of Steve's Coolness Factor, guaranteed to make a room full of people believe the crap you're saying unquestionably.
I might have missed out on some of the legal shit going on around this issue but "distributing files someone's providing to us" strikes me as a far, far cry from "publisher". Macmillan would still be the publisher, Amazon would still be the distributor, the only difference is with a real book the publisher prints out a bunch of copies and then sends them to the distributor to sell and send around and with an e-book the publisher sets up some manner of file and sends just that to the distributor to be copied and sent to those who buy it. At no point do I see Amazon doing anything I'd call "publishing".
When the speed limit's 55, I'm not doing over 65. 65, not over 75. And it's rare I'll go more than 5 over. For this, pretty much every time I'm out on the highway at night, which is not infrequent, I get people who decide the best course of action for them to deal with me not breaking the law enough for them is for them to ride my ass while flashing their brights on and off.
Cell phones might make people worse at driving, but it's not shocking that there's been little reduction in accidents because of it -- cell phones just make bad drivers worse. Most people who get into an accident "because of a cell phone!" are the same people who will do 85 down back roads two days after a snowstorm and get into an accident "because of the drifting snow!".
In short, it's not their fault, it's all these OTHER THINGS that they COULDN'T CONTROL OR EXPECT! They're great drivers, why should they repeatedly have to ask people on the phone to repeat themselves because driving safely distracted them from conversation? Or tell people to hold on? Or drive slowly knowing conditions are unsafe?
Seems to me like there's more and more people out on the road who view absolutely everyone and everything that isn't helping them or a means to an end is simply an obstacle, including on the road. They're special, and good drivers, so they don't need to pay attention while they drive. Nothing that happens can possibly be their fault.
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No, I've read the McDonald's shit, and I've read the anti-smoking shit. Neither of it is any more compelling than Reefer Madness.
"Liebeck's attorney argued that coffee should never be served hotter than 140 F (60 C)"
That, right there, is a load of shit. That's cold coffee. Check the next cup you buy from.. well, ANYWHERE. It will be hotter than 140. It'll be more like 180. Ideal temp is 155-175 or thereabouts. Coffee's served a bit warmer, so as it sits there it reaches the best temp and to counteract cooling from the creamer people dump into it (which is a sin against coffee but that's another rant).
Essentially, the whole case was based on a lie -- that being that the coffee served by McDonald's was unreasonably and unsafely hot. Truth of the matter is ALL COFFEE IS UNREASONABLY AND UNSAFELY HOT, IT WAS JUST FUCKING BOILING WATER A FEW MINUTES AGO. I feel bad for the old lady, but come on. She should have known better than to act in such a reckless manner. You don't sue a store because you bought a lighter and burnt yourself on it.
The smoking shit is just that -- shit. God knows it's a fucking crime for any industry to ever try and improve their product in any way. Nosir, anything that isn't the nastiest, harshest, shittiest cigarette is TOO GOOD FOR ALL THEM EBIL SMOKERZ. amirite? Did you even read that link? They're not trying to make cigarettes as addictive as possible, they're trying to make better cigarettes. Nicotine's addictive. NEWS AT 11! So is caffeine, where's all the clamoring for rope and a sturdy tree limb when Starbucks releases their latest sugar-and-caffeine-bombinacup? Admit it -- you think these things they're doing are terrible because you think cigarettes are terrible. That's unfair. Cigarettes are terrible? That's a fine opinion to have, and smoking is bad for you, but it IS a choice to start smoking AND to continue (it's just hard to quit) -- and, it's a LEGAL choice. Where it any other industry that was doing the things listed in the BBC article, with any other product, we would applaud them for progress, even if we don't personally have any contact or fondness for their product. Happens all the time here, Apple or MS comes out with something, people hate it but they don't hate that the industry as a whole is moving forward -- and this is demonized when it's done by the tobacco industry? That makes no sense. Hell, it doesn't even make sense to bitch at beer companies for releasing more delicious beers -- I mean GOSH, IT MIGHT TEMPT KIDS TO DRINK! I don't even fucking understand how that argument flies in the first place, I suppose it's just the magic evilness of the tobacco industry that makes it so.
You lack any sort of perspective. Of any kind. You're parroting evil things because you've been told they're evil and that's bad. Truth is, that lady should NOT have received a DIME, and cigarette companies are merely a favored whipping boy because they don't have any allies to come to their side and point out the unfair treatment.
Why, it's not insightful *at all*.
Corporations are just a concept. Like a government. Or a gang. It's all the same, it's all people. People are quite able to be sociopathic, evil bastards all on their own. Don't blame the corporation, a corporation never does a damnedable thing -- it's the people running the show (or "running" the show) that do things. Blame where blame is due.
And your tripe about the tobacco industry is garbage. Clearly you must support the 7-figure judgement against McDonald's because some fat woman spilled hot coffee on her lap (because she removed the lid while holding the cup between her legs while driving) -- they're burning people every year! EVIL CORPORATION! Oh, except, no. That's fucking stupid. You're fucking stupid. Go away.
So if a child is yelling and the parent yells at the child to stop it, in your opinion both are equally in the wrong. The parent should have calmly and diplomatically explained to the (still yelling) child how much they'd like it if the child would just stop, please. Yes, that's totally reasonable. Oh wait, no, you live in a fantasy fucking world where everybody is willing to act rationally and only resorts to violence when confused or afraid, never because they're just bad fucking people with no respect for life.
I'm sure you're right, though. I suggest you begin your process of explaining to american gangs and mexican cartels why they don't ACTUALLY need to be killing anyone to accomplish their goals, they just need to sit down and TAAAALLLKK.
Amateur. I created a whole new one-time-use email account for that. You're totally going to get hacked, and I'm gonna laugh. You have viruses in your chips!
Let's be fair and let's be clear. It's not hard to mistake one product as drugs from a company known to manufacture other highly addictive substances. Peeps are puffed crack.
From the sound of it, it looks like he's talking about IFR type designs. Which was a pretty good program that would've allowed us to basically use current waste as future fuel, and the future waste would have a small fraction of the halflife current waste does. Until Clinton shitcanned it for no discernible reason. GE has an IFR design out now that it's shopping to, primarily, China -- it's small, and designed to drop in to a current coal plant. Take out the furnace, drop this in, revamp control facilities to be able to handle nuclear shit, and bam! Done! Tech that Clinton decided in 1996 wasn't worth squat, 'cause nookleer's ebil.
This is one of the primary reasons that I consider anyone who believes Clinton was a good president to be the saddest type of fool. He did a great deal of harm to this country, but thanks to his personality-based popularity nobody ever wanted to hear about how big of a fuckup he was.
2009 was the hottest year on record? Huh. News to me, I have heard otherwise. Not locally or nationally, but globally.
AGW is most likely a fact, but the EXTENT of AGW is certainly not. Is there any explanation as to what causes earth's natural climate shifts? Do we have any idea if we are in a natural upshift or downshift? No and no. We don't know. We're basing the entire AGW on very shaky ground -- that our climate should NOT be increasing naturally through mechanisms we still don't understand, and that CO2 is the primary cause of climate change. Um. Sorry, but both of those are wrong. Matter of fact, just yesterday saw that someone (iirc in Spain?) has been studying submerged caves and found evidence that ocean levels 100,000 years ago were higher than they are today. Maybe it was 80,000. Then there's the medieval warm period. Then there's the little ice age. What caused those two climate shifts?
Increased CO2 levels in the atmosphere does, yes, verifiable fact, act as a 'greenhouse gas', and that would tend to increase temperatures globally. Anything beyond that point is just conjecture. We really have no clue if increased CO2 levels in ice cores are caused by or caused warmer temperatures (huh, nevermind those findings I read about recently that casts doubt on the infallability of ice cores -- that is, that gases and such aren't as static in ice cores as we thought, and they're not as accurate as we believed).
It would be GREAT if we could actually go back and look at records, but huh, apparently East Anglia hasn't ever heard about keeping records and threw out everything that was actual hard unadulterated data.. so we'll just never know. All we have are the numbers they hand-picked and corrected. We have only their word that the numbers they have are any good. Sounds a lot like faith to me.
Faith and trust is antithetical to the progress of science. Science is built upon doubt and distrust -- and that is a noble and commendable thing. Science doesn't give a shit what you say, PROVE it, prove it with evidence that is concrete. Don't wave your hands with a bunch of numbers and not let others peek behind the curtain. Frankly, I'm more inclined to call the whole AGW a hoax JUST TO SPITE those assholes who label themselves men of science but who wrung their hands and conspired to REFUSE FOIA REQUESTS. What the FUCK? What fucking scientist doesn't show his work to others so that they may verify it? A charlatan does that. Not a scientist.
AGW may be real -- in fact, I'd lean towards that pretty strongly -- but the wizard's been exposed and some of the leading men in the field have been shown to be nothing but frauds. Even if they're right, their refusal of FOIA requests, their destruction of original data.. that's just immoral and criminal in severity. Science without hard facts and data is not science, it's religion, and that's what AGW has become. Bow at the altar of Al Gore. Don't question. What's this shit about "extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof", have whoever said that shot for questioning AGW. Who needs proof when these guys in white coats are telling us that they're really very clever and most probably totally right, we should believe them you heathen.
Believing in a creator does not mean you must also DISBELIEVE SCIENCE. That's just fucking idiotic. If there is a god, there's no way for us to understand him or what he's done. The best we can do is do what we can to understand how the world we live in operates. Whether this universe is incidental or created is irrelevant, the important part is that science allows us to investigate the workings of that universe and at no point is that impeded by faith. AT NO POINT! It's only FOOLS who pick and choose passages from the bible and interpret them as the literal truth-and-fact-and-history who believe that their faith requires them to stick their head in the sand and not investigate through our GOD-GIVEN facilities how our world operates. Even if there was a creator that made the world in 7 days, that fact would be completely useless to the furtherance of human knowledge because it's not happening anymore. Genetic adaptation and change is a demonstrable fact. Speciation, less so, but the period of time in which we would have even been able to observe such a thing is so small that even if we WERE observing such a thing we would not be able to recognize it; there is, however, strong evidence to suggest it is fact. Continuing down the path that scientific evidence leads us brings us a greater understanding of the natural world. Shoving our head in the sand because we THINK it contradicts some religious book brings NO furtherance of knowledge.
In short arguing against teaching creationism in an educational setting is both dumb and just makes you a Luddite. Schools should endeavor to the best of their ability to teach only verifiable facts. Teaching creationism, or intelligent design, in a publicly-funded school, IS THE ESTABLISHMENT AND SUPPORT OF RELIGION BY THE GOVERNMENT. Maybe it's not a big deal for you, or your friends, or the people at your church, but such talk is contradictory to a number of other religions with their own creation stories. For each religion, the only proof available that their creation story is right is the story itself. Maybe science isn't right, but it's the only thing that can be verified by human means and as such we should get the fuck over ourselves and for good or for ill, come to terms that it's the best way for us to broaden our understanding of how things work. maybe the bible is right, but if the bible said fire was given to man from god only a fucking fool would rattle sabers because someone discovered that fire can also be obtained by rubbing sticks together.
best part is i read about this two days ago, and the ACTUAL truth is that neither rush limbaugh or heavy metal were very effective; it was only when the researchers started using sounds that, you know, MADE SENSE, that it became effective. They blasted the sounds the beetles themselves make when they are agitated and aggressive.
Yeah, the researchers are the assholes here, because when they wanted to blast loud and offensive sounds the first things they thought of were heavy metal and rush limbaugh. what a bunch of assholes, more concerned about denigrating things they don't like and scoring snark points than doing actual thinking about what might be most offensive to beetles.
People who allow others to dictate what they can and can't do are fools. That's a value that it seems is no longer instilled -- that people are going to tell you you can't do things, and if you don't like it you prove them wrong. Or, at worst, prove them right while still improving yourself.
So far as the rates of incarceration, there's so many more factors that contribute to a varied racial mix of inmates that pinning it all on race is ridiculous and reductionist. Boiling it down to either racism or racism? You chose the answer before you even finished understanding the problem.
your analogy is better, I didn't really RTFA (I did RTFS and STFA so i figure i'm still at the good small end of the bell curve) before posting, but sadly I mentioned cars more often and stole any moderation that might've fallen your way. Ahh slashdot..
Your analogy IS flawed. If you're a restaurant, first of all, you're the *provider* of the food. A better analogy would be if you owned a car and merely delivered food per customer requests, from the sources they request. You have no hand at all in the food except moving it from Point A to Point B (in your car). Now, some of that food is going to be rotten, some of it will be downright objectionable, possibly illegal. You don't want to be required to search every single morsel of food that you deliver, because to do so would be an undue burden on your business -- you'd spend all your time inspecting food.
Then, one day, you decide you don't like veal in your car, and begin inspecting everything you deliver for veal. You stop transporting food from places that serve veal. You've now turned from a neutral transporter of food, with the contents and quality of that food being an issue only for the preparer and the purchaser, to an inspector. Now you're liable if someone DOES get something illegal, because, why, you're already searching for veal! Surely you saw this and that was illegal. If you can remove all the veal, you can remove all the soylent green as well, and to not do so would be tacit approval of illegal activity.
That's what's going on here -- 4chan is the resturant, verizon is merely the delivery service. If they are going to police the internet, they're no longer a neutral carrier that cannot be held responsible for that which they transport.
And that is not a problem with race, gender or creed but rather with insular groups of people who favor their friends.
They're not denying you a promotion because you're a woman, or black, or a jew. You're simply not a part of the good ole' boys' club. I, being a white male, would ALSO be denied that position, because I am not a member of their good ole' boys' club. Yet in that same situation, I would be the only one unable to follow up the discrimination with legal action. This is a flaw in our legal system. It is difficult to lay out any sort of law that would be applicable to this situation. What is the 'good ole' boys' club'? Well.. they're all white male WASPs, so.. they have everyone that isn't a white male WASP? No, they just favor those who are within or in some clear way connected to their own social circle. The colors, sky-monsters and dangly bits are completely incidental to their social grouping. You could be a mirror image of them, but if you are not in some way part of "their group" you are still viewed as an outsider and so would be discriminated against. People are upset about the wrong fucking things.
That message is less a message and more a message that there is a message.
That is, the actual thing really doesn't exist. No fucking adult is going to deride or berate a girl child for being good at math. That is stupid. They WILL tell the girl "good for you! so few girls are interested in math, you're special!".. and then, well christ. nobody wants to be the odd one out.
Copy this for racism: there's more talk about how horrible and prevalent racism is and how it holds people back than there is racism holding anybody back.
These are just bogeymen trumped up by people with a particular agenda (who often wholeheartedly believe their fantasies).
No one cars if the CEO of a car company is black, or white. Neither should be denied the position based upon race, and whoever ends up in that position should not be meant to feel bad about it because of their race. If 100% of auto execs are white, that does not indicate racism. It only indicates racism if they were given the position so that a non-white person could not have it, or if a non-white person was denied the position based upon race. Merely the numbers don't mean a goddamned thing.
And heck, if you really release something good, Apple might just decide to ban your app and release their own copycat app!
uhm, correct me if i'm wrong but i believe the recording industry has been paddled *twice* over price-fixing in regards to compact discs. TWICE. I don't recall prices dropping all that much either time. I think they sent out $1 coupons if you wrote them a letter or some stupid shit like that. Probably not. That's just a guess and assumption that sounds about right, it's most likely not what happened. The price fixing thing should be spot on, though.
Throw into that mix that more learning brings onto you more mocking from your peers, and it's more surprising that any kids *do* choose to learn.
The mechanism in those guns never worked right. Smith & Wesson did the same thing. I don't know of any demonstrations where the guns worked right, but I do know of several in which they surreptitiously disabled the electronic locking mechanism in order to demonstrating it firing.
Ever been to Detroit? There IS something very wrong with the society we live in. There's scores of places across America that are closer to shitholes in Africa than any first-world nation. Oh, sure, they might have a cell phone, and a 360 at their crib, and a nice car.. but functionally the values and attitudes are pretty in-line with what you'd find in some of the most awful places around the world.
If your kids are fucking idiots who don't understand what DEAD means, who don't understand that there are things that are not meant to be played with, well sir you are a terrible parent and shouldn't have had a child in the first place. The only reason a kid could possibly think that dead doesn't mean FUCKING DEAD is if you completely abdicated the education of your child to electronic media. Don't blame an inanimate object for your lackadaisical parenting. Further, a lack of understanding as to how death works and how guns are treated would probably be the least of your problems with that child. If they've picked those up from TV and video games and you have done nothing to instill in them the difference between entertainment and reality they'll wind up with many other issues related to shit they learned from fiction that they think is real.
Obviously you don't see the downside, because it would lead to fewer guns, and you are anti-gun. You have tunnel vision, and anything that moves towards an end you believe good -- no guns! -- is itself good.
Thing is the world doesn't work like that, and you have nothing but faith that your stance is in fact correct and good and through that faith anything that moves closer towards your goal is also worthwhile and holy.
It might me a small sample size and anecdotal evidence, but I have had many neighbors over the years and in that time, the collective number of homicides committed by every person I've ever lived nearby.. is less than the number of people killed by Ted Kennedy. Senators are far more dangerous.
I'd suggest you not even try to find any info on your last question, that's worded almost exactly like some of the shit put out by the antigun lobbies and they use so much bad reasoning in those things.. I'd cite an example but I gloss over them after finding a few mistakes, but I can cite a few mistakes. I recall one from the past few years where they included as "deaths in the household" occasions when an intruder was shot and killed. Yes. They included "SAVING YOUR FUCKING FAMILY" into the "people killed by guns inside your hosue!" number, while implying the whole time that "people killed by guns inside your house" meant "your family is more likely to die!". They often also don't discriminate between legal and illegal gun ownership, though i don't think any reasonable and sane person would expect anything but a higher rate of shootings when guns are owned illegally by felons -- most shootings are drug related, full stop, and painting them as being caused by guns instead of a violent black-market culture is akin to blaming cars for drunk driving fatalities.
Not when the Reality Distortion Field is in effect. That's why a computer will go up in price if it's branded with that A-name. You're paying a premium because what you're actually purchasing is a small portion of Steve's Coolness Factor, guaranteed to make a room full of people believe the crap you're saying unquestionably.
I might have missed out on some of the legal shit going on around this issue but "distributing files someone's providing to us" strikes me as a far, far cry from "publisher". Macmillan would still be the publisher, Amazon would still be the distributor, the only difference is with a real book the publisher prints out a bunch of copies and then sends them to the distributor to sell and send around and with an e-book the publisher sets up some manner of file and sends just that to the distributor to be copied and sent to those who buy it. At no point do I see Amazon doing anything I'd call "publishing".
When the speed limit's 55, I'm not doing over 65. 65, not over 75. And it's rare I'll go more than 5 over. For this, pretty much every time I'm out on the highway at night, which is not infrequent, I get people who decide the best course of action for them to deal with me not breaking the law enough for them is for them to ride my ass while flashing their brights on and off.
Cell phones might make people worse at driving, but it's not shocking that there's been little reduction in accidents because of it -- cell phones just make bad drivers worse. Most people who get into an accident "because of a cell phone!" are the same people who will do 85 down back roads two days after a snowstorm and get into an accident "because of the drifting snow!".
In short, it's not their fault, it's all these OTHER THINGS that they COULDN'T CONTROL OR EXPECT! They're great drivers, why should they repeatedly have to ask people on the phone to repeat themselves because driving safely distracted them from conversation? Or tell people to hold on? Or drive slowly knowing conditions are unsafe?
Seems to me like there's more and more people out on the road who view absolutely everyone and everything that isn't helping them or a means to an end is simply an obstacle, including on the road. They're special, and good drivers, so they don't need to pay attention while they drive. Nothing that happens can possibly be their fault.