>If the gays want more "fairness", push for laws that enable them to have more fairness.
Actually, that is pretty much the game plan for gay rights activists. I saw an article somewhere on the topic (nytimes?), and gay rights activists say that there judical efforts are 10 years ahead of their legislative and cultural efforts.
IMHO, it isn't the left that's pushing the issue. If the left just waits a few years, the demographics will shift. Younger people have a lot less trouble with gay marriage than members of the Greatest Generation. It seems to me that its the right that's forcing the issue.
>You don't see cats and dogs screwing their own sex.
Um, actually, I see male dogs humping each other all the time. Although they do seem to be "prison gay" than the regular kind. I don't know about cats or lesbian dogs though.
>Also, how is any species going to survive if there is no reproduction? Considering reproduction is one of the most natural things, it obviously doesn't fit into the picture.
First off, that's only a factor if you assume that reproduction is the only function of marriage. There are large number of "child-free" straight marriages. Also, one of the main motivations for gays to get married is to improve their chances of adoption.
I'm a bit confused on this issue myself. I believe that homosexuality is something you're born with. I'm no scientist, and I'm probably offending someone by saying this, but: Assuming that it is genetic, then why hasn't it been selected against? Does gayness confer some advantage? As somebody else pointed out, if you really are a homophobe, then you should support gay marriage - there'll be less pressure to "closet", and they won't reproduce.
>Um...how have the been disproven? WMD's can have LEGS! They may have had them right before the war, but because we American's have a walk across this line or else attitude and then sit back and wait, he had all the time in the world to get them out of there.
According to what I've heard, Saddam had the physical side of his WMD program dismantled, but kept the "human capital" of people who knew how to make them. So if the sanctions were ever relaxed, he could rebuild the program. So yes, he was a threat, but he was a contained one.
>That and the war is STILL happening. War is tuff.
Precisely my point.
>We American's have to buck up and realize there are GOING to be men that won't come back. Is it worth it? I say yes.
I would find our Iraq casualities acceptable if they were truly fighting the War Against Terrorism. I might even say that they are worth it just to take out Saddam. But it is not worth it to divert over 100,000 of our troops from the War against Al Qaeda.
>Was Saddam linked to Osama? Maybe not directly, but definitely in a indirect way.
Bullshit. Saddam, since he was a Westernized, Secular dictator, was on Al Qaeda's hit list. Never the less, since the enemy of my enemy is my friend, Al Qaeda and the Iraqi intelligence services did attempt a hookup. But as far as anybody knows, this meeting consisted of Saddam asking why this man was dragging mud on his carpets.
By invading Iraq, we have given aid to our real enemy, Al Qaeda. Al Qaeda loves it when a more powerful non-Muslim country invades a weaker Muslim one. This is how they got started, in Afghanistan against the Soviets. We are going to have to be very good and very lucky to keep them from filling in the power vacuum in Iraq with a Taliban-like theocracy.
>Is it making me feel safer? You bet. We have to have a SPINE and show that we think they are wrong.
Very well, you have a SPINE. Might I recommend this new thing called a BRAIN? Comes in handy for making decisions above the reflex level. (I know, cheap blow, but I couldn't resist.)
>Bush was right when he says your either with us or against us. We have to think of our country first sometimes and worry less about repurcussions
I seem to recall, in the wake of 9/11, a French newspaper said "We are all Americans". So France was "with us". A short time later, the Congressional Cafeteria was serving "Freedom Fries". (Which, coming from Idaho, must have been a real blow to the French economy.) By this ill-advised and ill-timed invasion, we have squandared international good will essential to the War against Terrorism. It is because we have to think of our country first that we have to consider the repurcussions.
>we can deal with later like France and the UK and the other governments that were violating UN sanctions that were supposed to be enforced on Iraq.
So, is that next on Bush's game plan? Punish our strongest ally, the UK, for allegedly violating now irrelevant sanctions? Interesting.
Another question I find interesting: In order to enforce UN sanctions, was it necessary to marginalize and trivalize the UN? Granted, France would probably have used their veto power, but we still could have appealed to the Supreme Assembly, and garnered more allies. Assuming of course, that Saddam was in fact violating UN sanctions, and that invasion was in fact necessary.
>because I think he was right for going to Iraq (anyone who has ever thought war is easy would be a fool)
It is precisely because war is hard that you should think long and hard before starting one. Why do/did you think a war in Iraq was neccessary, when we are already fighting a war against Al Qaeda? I really want to know!
All the reasons I've seen for going to war have largely been disproven, with the exception that Saddam was a Bad Man. He was a threat, but he was a *contained* threat that could have waited until after we've finished off Osama.
So what reasons do you have for starting a long, hard, and expensive war?
As a resident of the Midwest (Missouri counts, right?) I'm just as bitter as the parent. My only consolation right now is that Bush's Reality Distortion Field can't hold up forever. When he goes down, he'll take down the Republicans with him.
Or at least that's what I'm telling myself right now.
I need a hug.
Public domain would be nice, but releasing the technology might give an advantage to our enemies (but most of our enemies these days don't have the resources to mass produce these things). Donating some packages would be harmless though. I'd guess that the filter membranes would last until torn or clogged. Might be a cottage industry in war zones - recovering used MRE wrappers.
By spending 1/2 hour in a live chat, you could help a few people. By spending the same time in a wiki, you could help hundreds - provided they read what you wrote. Plus, out of a random sample of such "experts", some will be medicore, some will be stellar. If you draw a dunce in a live chat, you're just screwed. In a wiki, the stellar experts can spend their time putting the polish on what the medicore ones spewed out, instead of spending most of their time laying out the ground work.
You could have the best of both worlds - a forum and a wiki together, and distill the knowledge of the forum into the wiki.
They put it under the non-commerical varient? That strikes me as a bit boneheaded. They should have used the by-sa which allows commerical use. There's quite a bit of money to be made selling hard copys of the text- not many people want to read hundreds of pages of text of a computer screen.
Those interested in this project might be better off looking at the California Open Source Textbook Project. http://www.opensourcetext.org However, last I checked, the site was down, and it didn't look like much had been done. Maybe someone should do Yet Another Open Source Textbook?
Yes the two licenses are incompatible.
I'm a contributor to both the Wikipedia (GFDL) and the linuxquestions.org wiki (Creative Commons). It's a real pain to have to do an article on RMS over again, with all the inevitable flamewars involved, when there's an "open" article just over there... The Creative Commons (by-sa to be exact) is better for this sort of thing (the GFDL can mean that a 1-2 page article comes with 12 pages of legalese). But the Wikipedia was started before the Creative Commons, and migrating is non-trivial since the individual contributors (many of whom are anons) are the real copyright holders.
If anybody wants to do a wiki encyclopedia under the Creative Commons, let me know.
Slashdot Mirror
>If the gays want more "fairness", push for laws that enable them to have more fairness.
Actually, that is pretty much the game plan for gay rights activists. I saw an article somewhere on the topic (nytimes?), and gay rights activists say that there judical efforts are 10 years ahead of their legislative and cultural efforts.
IMHO, it isn't the left that's pushing the issue. If the left just waits a few years, the demographics will shift. Younger people have a lot less trouble with gay marriage than members of the Greatest Generation. It seems to me that its the right that's forcing the issue.
>You don't see cats and dogs screwing their own sex.
Um, actually, I see male dogs humping each other all the time. Although they do seem to be "prison gay" than the regular kind. I don't know about cats or lesbian dogs though.
>Also, how is any species going to survive if there is no reproduction? Considering reproduction is one of the most natural things, it obviously doesn't fit into the picture.
First off, that's only a factor if you assume that reproduction is the only function of marriage. There are large number of "child-free" straight marriages. Also, one of the main motivations for gays to get married is to improve their chances of adoption.
I'm a bit confused on this issue myself. I believe that homosexuality is something you're born with. I'm no scientist, and I'm probably offending someone by saying this, but: Assuming that it is genetic, then why hasn't it been selected against? Does gayness confer some advantage? As somebody else pointed out, if you really are a homophobe, then you should support gay marriage - there'll be less pressure to "closet", and they won't reproduce.
>Um...how have the been disproven? WMD's can have LEGS! They may have had them right before the war, but because we American's have a walk across this line or else attitude and then sit back and wait, he had all the time in the world to get them out of there.
According to what I've heard, Saddam had the physical side of his WMD program dismantled, but kept the "human capital" of people who knew how to make them. So if the sanctions were ever relaxed, he could rebuild the program. So yes, he was a threat, but he was a contained one.
>That and the war is STILL happening. War is tuff.
Precisely my point.
>We American's have to buck up and realize there are GOING to be men that won't come back. Is it worth it? I say yes.
I would find our Iraq casualities acceptable if they were truly fighting the War Against Terrorism. I might even say that they are worth it just to take out Saddam. But it is not worth it to divert over 100,000 of our troops from the War against Al Qaeda.
>Was Saddam linked to Osama? Maybe not directly, but definitely in a indirect way.
Bullshit. Saddam, since he was a Westernized, Secular dictator, was on Al Qaeda's hit list. Never the less, since the enemy of my enemy is my friend, Al Qaeda and the Iraqi intelligence services did attempt a hookup. But as far as anybody knows, this meeting consisted of Saddam asking why this man was dragging mud on his carpets.
By invading Iraq, we have given aid to our real enemy, Al Qaeda. Al Qaeda loves it when a more powerful non-Muslim country invades a weaker Muslim one. This is how they got started, in Afghanistan against the Soviets. We are going to have to be very good and very lucky to keep them from filling in the power vacuum in Iraq with a Taliban-like theocracy.
>Is it making me feel safer? You bet. We have to have a SPINE and show that we think they are wrong.
Very well, you have a SPINE. Might I recommend this new thing called a BRAIN? Comes in handy for making decisions above the reflex level. (I know, cheap blow, but I couldn't resist.)
>Bush was right when he says your either with us or against us. We have to think of our country first sometimes and worry less about repurcussions
I seem to recall, in the wake of 9/11, a French newspaper said "We are all Americans". So France was "with us". A short time later, the Congressional Cafeteria was serving "Freedom Fries". (Which, coming from Idaho, must have been a real blow to the French economy.) By this ill-advised and ill-timed invasion, we have squandared international good will essential to the War against Terrorism. It is because we have to think of our country first that we have to consider the repurcussions.
>we can deal with later like France and the UK and the other governments that were violating UN sanctions that were supposed to be enforced on Iraq.
So, is that next on Bush's game plan? Punish our strongest ally, the UK, for allegedly violating now irrelevant sanctions? Interesting.
Another question I find interesting: In order to enforce UN sanctions, was it necessary to marginalize and trivalize the UN? Granted, France would probably have used their veto power, but we still could have appealed to the Supreme Assembly, and garnered more allies. Assuming of course, that Saddam was in fact violating UN sanctions, and that invasion was in fact necessary.
>because I think he was right for going to Iraq (anyone who has ever thought war is easy would be a fool) It is precisely because war is hard that you should think long and hard before starting one. Why do/did you think a war in Iraq was neccessary, when we are already fighting a war against Al Qaeda? I really want to know! All the reasons I've seen for going to war have largely been disproven, with the exception that Saddam was a Bad Man. He was a threat, but he was a *contained* threat that could have waited until after we've finished off Osama. So what reasons do you have for starting a long, hard, and expensive war?
Amen brother!
As a resident of the Midwest (Missouri counts, right?) I'm just as bitter as the parent. My only consolation right now is that Bush's Reality Distortion Field can't hold up forever. When he goes down, he'll take down the Republicans with him. Or at least that's what I'm telling myself right now. I need a hug.
Does anybody have any idea what post-modern means?
Public domain would be nice, but releasing the technology might give an advantage to our enemies (but most of our enemies these days don't have the resources to mass produce these things). Donating some packages would be harmless though. I'd guess that the filter membranes would last until torn or clogged. Might be a cottage industry in war zones - recovering used MRE wrappers.
By spending 1/2 hour in a live chat, you could help a few people. By spending the same time in a wiki, you could help hundreds - provided they read what you wrote. Plus, out of a random sample of such "experts", some will be medicore, some will be stellar. If you draw a dunce in a live chat, you're just screwed. In a wiki, the stellar experts can spend their time putting the polish on what the medicore ones spewed out, instead of spending most of their time laying out the ground work. You could have the best of both worlds - a forum and a wiki together, and distill the knowledge of the forum into the wiki.
They put it under the non-commerical varient? That strikes me as a bit boneheaded. They should have used the by-sa which allows commerical use. There's quite a bit of money to be made selling hard copys of the text- not many people want to read hundreds of pages of text of a computer screen. Those interested in this project might be better off looking at the California Open Source Textbook Project. http://www.opensourcetext.org However, last I checked, the site was down, and it didn't look like much had been done. Maybe someone should do Yet Another Open Source Textbook?
Yes the two licenses are incompatible. I'm a contributor to both the Wikipedia (GFDL) and the linuxquestions.org wiki (Creative Commons). It's a real pain to have to do an article on RMS over again, with all the inevitable flamewars involved, when there's an "open" article just over there... The Creative Commons (by-sa to be exact) is better for this sort of thing (the GFDL can mean that a 1-2 page article comes with 12 pages of legalese). But the Wikipedia was started before the Creative Commons, and migrating is non-trivial since the individual contributors (many of whom are anons) are the real copyright holders. If anybody wants to do a wiki encyclopedia under the Creative Commons, let me know.
If these sites are known to be child pornography, why block them instead of taking them down completely and arresting the owners?