Bill Gates is giving away Billions for medices but how much could he realy do for the hunan race if he put that money into spce explolration
Or better yet, remedial spelling lessons. Though I did have a nice dinner tonight, as made by the "hunan" race. Duck, it was. It was that or the peeking chicken.
What is it with people that think it's one or the other? Space exploration/commercialization and things like vaccines and education for kids around the globe are not mutually exclusive. In fact, I'd venture to say that a whole lot of other resources, as needed currently for defense, etc., would no longer need to be spent if some of the crustier parts of the world could be talked into providing a decent, non-Apocolyptic education for their kids. To that end, be sure to thank Bill Gates heartily for what he and his wife are doing, and just have a little patience. And, it's not like Jeff Bezos is a pauper, either.
The Templars are using Consumer Reports as a cover to train a stable of elite Black Hat hackers, with which to take over the world.
Well, it is a conspiracy, but not the one you think. This is actually about the Masons, who are secretly behind the publishing deal for Dan Brown's upcoming book. I mean, what world-dominating secret society wouldn't want a piece of that action? Once their Masonware attack is launched, all web traffic will go through a link that tacks their affiliate code onto inbound Amazon traffic. There will be no escaping it until you order one for each member of your family. Free shipping, of course, if you also order a Masonic apron to go with it.
Rereading the summary, the submitter has it wrong - "FBI's attempt to modernize their department has once again failed" implies that Sentinel has failed - which is definitely not the content of the article. Even the snippet quoted is about VCF having problems, not Sentinel.
Way to just melt the tinfoil fun right off the story, dude. How can we have a slashdot groupthink paranoiagasm Hate-Teh-Bush-Fest if you go and point out the actual facts? Honestly, you're a total buzz-kill.
Why? They're not the ones filling mosques with speeches about tearing down western civilzation. They're not the ones sending suburban kids out with bombs to kill other kids on trains.
Why is it that the larger, non-bombing Muslim community (in, say, London) isn't heading this off at the pass by running the hate-preachers out of town so that there's no need to even talk statistics about who it's worth, or not, taking a closer look at in an airport? Really - why?
No, scary stuff is asking yourself what is the percentage of recent attackers (you know, people who have actually killed trainloads of people) in Europe were Muslims? I'll venture to say: close to or exactly 100%. Don't you think that might have a little to do with the demographics within which investigations are being done? Maybe just a little?
but if you actually look at the parts of New Orleans that are actually being rebuilt compared to those that are basically being left to rot, it's the middle class and the wealthy that are benefitting
It's not fairies working for the Republican Party waving magic wands at swamped houses and rebuilding them. It's typically people who have money from having the background and training to command a good income that own the houses they're rebuilding, and were paying for enough insurance to do so without it being a dead end.
They're benefitting, and they're paying, too. They're also the ones that pay all of the income taxes, remember? You know, the stuff that funds that part of what the government is doing?
There is a significant contingent who would like to see those areas bulldozed and turned into parks, and turn the city into a smaller, wealthier (and whiter) version of what it was.
Parts of town that are the most likely to flood are the places least well suited to housing. They're perfect for parks. How does the fact that water runs down hill make recognizing that a racial issue, for you?
And them freakin yankees and those in the Dakotas and Montana, & Michigan, that choose, mind you, choose to live in weather that requires snowplowing every summer & huge amounts of heating oil to keep warm, well, let em freeze, I say.
Really, you think that the Michigan DOT or the South Dakota state and county governments are asking for federal aid to plow all of their roads every year? Or that the residents in those states don't buy their own heating oil?
Left alone, Detroit may go to hell in a handbasket socially, but it's very like to be under the ocean. And the snow that covers Mitchell, SD every year WILL melt. All the more so, if Al Gore's right. But Huron, SD isn't going to disappear under some layer of Canada if the Army doesn't make a career out of building a wall around it.
but there is going to be hell to pay once their server farm of Vic-20s sends all those viruses through Fidonet at 300 baud in order to bring America's SychroNET and C-NET C64 BBS user base to its knees.
Nope, they've seen the latest Norwegian research and are moving up to ip-packet-carrying birds. The good news is that you can disable that network with a 20-gauge shotgun, and in a pinch, those pigeons are actually edible. Pheasants (which originate in Asia) are better eating, but don't home as well, and they're bigger targets. Though they might work well in a Token-Ringneck network topography.
and when the xray of the fecal samples shows dark spots and electronics the whole cooler is sent to the bomb squad for a "controlled detonation" using a small charge
I think that tip was aimed more at not having stuff ripped off from your vehicle, etc., now that I think about it. Honestly, I think I were to travel far with my camera gear, I'd probably put it all in a Pelican and FedEx it ahead of myself. I just don't trust the checked baggage these days. Not because of the handling (those cases are tough) but because of the theft risk.
I recall reading about a guy who put all of his gear in a strap-locked Coleman cooler labeled with stickers saying "Orangutan Fecal Samples." Problem solved.
It's a fucking text file on a server in a data center, not the freaking Magna Carta!
Get a grip!
It's not about the content of the file - it's about who says where that server is, which tells people what IP address to resolve when they're sitting in Beijing trying to search for the phrase "Magna Carta." This is about how the freakin' network works, and whether regimes that arrest people for writing about the Magna Carta get to chime in on how it all works. Get your own grip.
Really? Which country's policies would you most like influencing it on some given week, China's, or Venezuela's? Hugo Chavez has some excellent thoughts on freedom of communication, thought China is a little more thorough.
First, if you're a parent and your kids genuinely hate you then you're doing (or have done) something seriously wrong.
Which is why I put the word "hate" in quotes. Because teenagers have a bad habit of being melodramatic and using words like that when they don't really mean it. If you've never heard a typical (and ultimately well rounded) teenager uttering phrases like that, then you need to be around more kids for a reality check. Kids often reflexively dislike their first tastes of some aspects of reality, and sometimes resent the people that are tasked with educating them about it: usually, parents. And that's a lot better than leaving it to public school teachers, etc.
Second, once kids have the skills to support themselves independently (eg. life experience and a college education), in all but a very small number of unusual cases they do move out and they are happy to do so.
Yeah, so? That doesn't really bear on what I'm talking about, does it. As long as those kids are dependent on family for food, housing, clothing, internet access, and so on, they're just that: dependent.
Third, dependence, whatever the reason, does not equate to a right to control others
So, if a parent pays to have high-speed data access and cable TV appear at the house, it's "controlling" the kids to dictate the manner in which those products/services can and will be used around the house? The kids have the choice to use, or not use such things (though obviously good parents want them to do so, constructively) - just like countries elsewhere have the choice to plug in, or not, to that nice US military research invention, the internet and its name services. But until a kid is literally and legally on his or her own, a parent not only has the right to direct their lives, they have an obligation to. Kids are not wise. Some are smart, but none are wise.
Quite a few accidents are caused by cellphone use however:/
No. They are not.
Quite a few accidents are caused by people being poor drivers, or by allowing themselves to act like poor drivers because they're doing something that's distracting them (putting on makeup, eating a sandwich, looking at the cows in the next field that will be their next sandwich, fiddling with their iPod, yelling at the kids in the back seat, smoking, digging through their briefcase - whatever). Cell phones don't cause accidents, people do.
The complaint, among others, is that ICANN has been the tool of the US government for too long. That somehow it would be better if it were less US-centric. That may or may not be true.
Well, there's the problem - it's not true! ICANN has been pretty damn level-headed and easy going, and hasn't been doing the owners of other internation TLDs any disservice (other than not being hostile to the US, which some countries DO consider to be a disservice - too bad!). But not being hostile to the US (or anyone) doesn't make them US-centric, just functional. So it's good thing to keep it status quo, and that's just what the administration has been saying.
We definitely do not want W getting any more crazy ideas about "leadership" and "freedom".
You were sounding so rational there, right up to that point. The administration has been one of the most consistent voices speaking out specifically to maintain this arrangement. Exactly in the interests of leadership and freedom. Do you really want the committee-chairman-of-the-week in some back corner of the UN having influence over this vital area? Me neither. Neither does the current administration, which is why they've thrown their weight behind the current arrangement for a long time now.
I know a lot of people just have to reflexively toss in a Bush jab at every turn ("Man, traffic was slow today because of that road work on the freeway. And then when I got to work, I stubbed my toe on my desk chair, as if Bush doesn't have better things to do!"), but these non-sequitors (or worse, contrary-to-the-actual-facts notions) don't help you discredit the administration, they make your complaints seem less valid and more shrill. At least take your shots in the right direction - it's more effective.
In both the areas of military/support contracting and administering network address-space issues, it's not a question of whether or not there's someone else with equal experience, structure, stability, and readiness to step up. Just as much of the audience here would rather see some services go unprovided than have them provided by The Man (a large company that specializes in such things), some other spots around the world just can't stand that an operation friendly (read: "not hostile") to western/US interests is in charge of TLDs and address ranges.
It's the same reason that some extremists would rather have totally militarized, radicalized, corrupt "social services" management in southern Lebanon courtesy of Iran via their Hezbollah proxies than embrace western investment in some actually productive, forward-looking western-style democracy and economic productivity that would more quickly raise the standard of living. It simply doesn't feel as good to have someone you resent doing something useful that you're not ready/willing to do yourself. It's the same reason teenagers go through the "I hate my parents" phase... they have a hard time reconciling their dependence, the growing awareness that they don't know how to do everything, and the fact that doing it all yourself is actually very hard, expensive work. So, it's easier just to bitch about it, and let it keep working. Just like the teenagers that "hate" their parents are still happy to sit at the table and wait for Mom to scramble some eggs for them in the morning. Resentment is cheap and easy, and hey, Mom's making eggs (and address space) anyway, right?
I'm always annoyed by headlines like this. "Americans say..." when we're talking about a third of them. What, so the 15% of Icelanders who say the same thing aren't enough to use the phrase "Icelanders say..." but 33% of the polled people in the US is?
Yes, yes, the headline space is short. But how about something like "More in US than Iceland doubt evolution" or similar? "America says" implies something that just isn't the case.
I guess I often think of something I heard someone say: "If humans evolved from apes...why are there still apes?"
For the same reason we have German Shorthaired Pointers, and yet still have contemporary wolves and coyotes. Common ancestors, and branches in the tree. Isn't that easier to digest than imagining semi-modern human-ish primates just magically appearing out of nowhere? It sure is for me.
Don't mistake my discomfort (revulsion, even) with the radical Islamists to be me letting the other religious crazies (or religion, in any form, really) off the hook. Religion is probably one of the most destructive social structures in existence because it discourages critical thinking, encourages irrational-on-the-face-of-it magical thinking, and just generally screws up people's priorities, big time.
That being said: contemporary Mormons (to use your example) don't appear to be interested in recruiting teenage boys expressly for the purpose of getting them to get onboard airplanes full of, say, Canadians, and crash them. The Southern Baptist folks don't seem too interested in seeing "Mexico wiped off the face of the map" (a la Iran's lovely president, re: Israel). Yes, there's the occasional loon that bombs abortion clinics. But: given the huge number of people that are, thanks to their religion, signed onto the anti-abortion platform, and the large number of such clinics in the US (not to mention the availability of explosives), the fact is that any actual occurance of such an attack is a complete abberation. Not to be confused with the jihaddi propoganda machine, which makes it all about the martyrs taking Evil Crusaders(tm) out with "martyrdom operations," getting the 72 virgins, a family pension from Iran through Hezbollah, etc.
In short: as similar as the roots of Islam, Judaism, and Christianity may be, there's only one demographic that's overwhelmingly preaching murder, and actively recruiting suburban kids to go out and do it. And coughing up cash to make it so.
Even the loopiest midwestern neo-Nazi asses don't pump beheading videos out through Al Jazeera. And the reason is that the larger western culture is past that. Not every person in the culture, but the culture itself. The jihaddis specifically wish to prevent such forward movement in the Muslim world, and thus the medieval-minded theatrics and Taliban-esque "religious police" types who enforce wacked-out Sharia dictates with an AK-47. It's nuts, and more to the point, it's more nuts than the behavior of the other religions you're mentioning.
I'd rather see every culture walk away from their whole Magic Invisible Friend Worship phase. It's just embarassing. But when it moves from just being a damn shame because people are choosing to raise their kids in ignorance to sending those same kids out to kill for Allah, then action is required. It's not that the Christians aren't any sillier for their beliefs, it's the toxic degree to which the militant Islamists have usurped their corner of that culture. Sort of like what's happening with "thug life" culture in the U.S.: it's graduated from quaint and/or amusing to actually instructing teenagers that being looked at sideways is a worthy reason to kill someone and go to jail for the rest of your life.
Let's not split hairs about which religion is or isn't more or less slighly nuts than the next, and stipulate that they all are. It's what certain cultures do with the imagery and message and fashion of those religions while pursuing political, territorial, and economic agendas that matters. And right now, the Al Queda types and their local franchise operators are loudly repeating their objectives: a sprawling Sharia-powered caliphate that will displace western democratic societies around the globe. That's what they want, and they understand that they'll require many years to accomplish it, and they seem OK with that. The western attention span isn't nearly that long, and that's why we have to act, decisively, whenever the reality of the risks come clearly to the surface (i.e., in London just the other day).
We're discriminating, visibly and publically
Yes, and that's because of the discriminating actions of the militant subset of the culture we're talking about. Evil is as evil does, and they're doing it. To "discriminate" is to "choose," or to "separate by some standard," and the standard required here is plain as day: the folks who act to destroy planeloads of passengers are discriminating themselves out of the larger religious landscape through their own actions.
And if fighting terrorism is so important, why wasn't this training and technology already in place (using liquids to try to blow up planes is nothing new)?
Because, beyond the cell in question (which they'd been observing for months), there wasn't any intel suggesting that such a thing was being actively pursued. And if you've got one identifiable group that's seeking to exploit a particular tactic, and you know you'll know when they'll act (as was the case last week), there's actually a lot of value in not altering your publicly visible defenses - lest you show them that you know what they're up to. Unless you're ready to arrest them that moment, that's a mistake - because the more important catch is the larger network that's coordinating, funding, and recruiting these idiots.
Liquid explosives are nothing new, true. And the last folks to try it screwed it up (in the Pacific plot some years back). This was the first apparent re-emergence of that tactic, and that changes things. But better to keep your cards close while trying to rope in more of the bad guys. Breaking up networks like that is far more effective than trying to catch every member in the act of actually trying to get on board with something the network is supplying them.
If it takes them days to spot the inconsistency in this (i.e., if any liquids are dangerous, why not those in baby bottles? And if those can be safely allowed in, why prevent time with other liquids?), then I'm rather worried.
No, it takes time to develop an institutional sense (down to the man-in-the-field level) of what and who to be watching for. Heaven forbid we actually use a more statistically effective screening technique, and acknowledge the Pakistani extraction of the people involved in this latest group. Knowing a little about the background of who is standing at the security gate with a bottle of milk makes it a lot easier to decide when and how to be more thorough. But since it's apparently too painful (for someone - not me!) to admit that there is a strong correlation between the people we're most worried about here and certain ethnicities, we're stuck paying the usual absurd price of political correctness. That bit of silliness drives all sorts of nonsensical or inefficient policies, and it's just plain BS.
Someone that doesn't believe in evolution yet can (and does) elect the next president.
Hard to say which is worse, them or the Vegan-Wiccan-types that are so "progressive" that they loop right back around into crazy-land, but vote the opposite from your hypothetical "redneck," but for all the wrong reasons and just an annoyingly.
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Bill Gates is giving away Billions for medices but how much could he realy do for the hunan race if he put that money into spce explolration
Or better yet, remedial spelling lessons. Though I did have a nice dinner tonight, as made by the "hunan" race. Duck, it was. It was that or the peeking chicken.
What is it with people that think it's one or the other? Space exploration/commercialization and things like vaccines and education for kids around the globe are not mutually exclusive. In fact, I'd venture to say that a whole lot of other resources, as needed currently for defense, etc., would no longer need to be spent if some of the crustier parts of the world could be talked into providing a decent, non-Apocolyptic education for their kids. To that end, be sure to thank Bill Gates heartily for what he and his wife are doing, and just have a little patience. And, it's not like Jeff Bezos is a pauper, either.
The Templars are using Consumer Reports as a cover to train a stable of elite Black Hat hackers, with which to take over the world.
Well, it is a conspiracy, but not the one you think. This is actually about the Masons, who are secretly behind the publishing deal for Dan Brown's upcoming book. I mean, what world-dominating secret society wouldn't want a piece of that action? Once their Masonware attack is launched, all web traffic will go through a link that tacks their affiliate code onto inbound Amazon traffic. There will be no escaping it until you order one for each member of your family. Free shipping, of course, if you also order a Masonic apron to go with it.
Rereading the summary, the submitter has it wrong - "FBI's attempt to modernize their department has once again failed" implies that Sentinel has failed - which is definitely not the content of the article. Even the snippet quoted is about VCF having problems, not Sentinel.
Way to just melt the tinfoil fun right off the story, dude. How can we have a slashdot groupthink paranoiagasm Hate-Teh-Bush-Fest if you go and point out the actual facts? Honestly, you're a total buzz-kill.
Let's also make a special line for Jews.
Why? They're not the ones filling mosques with speeches about tearing down western civilzation. They're not the ones sending suburban kids out with bombs to kill other kids on trains.
Why is it that the larger, non-bombing Muslim community (in, say, London) isn't heading this off at the pass by running the hate-preachers out of town so that there's no need to even talk statistics about who it's worth, or not, taking a closer look at in an airport? Really - why?
That is scary stuff.
No, scary stuff is asking yourself what is the percentage of recent attackers (you know, people who have actually killed trainloads of people) in Europe were Muslims? I'll venture to say: close to or exactly 100%. Don't you think that might have a little to do with the demographics within which investigations are being done? Maybe just a little?
but if you actually look at the parts of New Orleans that are actually being rebuilt compared to those that are basically being left to rot, it's the middle class and the wealthy that are benefitting
It's not fairies working for the Republican Party waving magic wands at swamped houses and rebuilding them. It's typically people who have money from having the background and training to command a good income that own the houses they're rebuilding, and were paying for enough insurance to do so without it being a dead end.
They're benefitting, and they're paying, too. They're also the ones that pay all of the income taxes, remember? You know, the stuff that funds that part of what the government is doing?
There is a significant contingent who would like to see those areas bulldozed and turned into parks, and turn the city into a smaller, wealthier (and whiter) version of what it was.
Parts of town that are the most likely to flood are the places least well suited to housing. They're perfect for parks. How does the fact that water runs down hill make recognizing that a racial issue, for you?
er, that should read "NOT very likely to be under the ocean"
And them freakin yankees and those in the Dakotas and Montana, & Michigan, that choose, mind you, choose to live in weather that requires snowplowing every summer & huge amounts of heating oil to keep warm, well, let em freeze, I say.
Really, you think that the Michigan DOT or the South Dakota state and county governments are asking for federal aid to plow all of their roads every year? Or that the residents in those states don't buy their own heating oil?
Left alone, Detroit may go to hell in a handbasket socially, but it's very like to be under the ocean. And the snow that covers Mitchell, SD every year WILL melt. All the more so, if Al Gore's right. But Huron, SD isn't going to disappear under some layer of Canada if the Army doesn't make a career out of building a wall around it.
but there is going to be hell to pay once their server farm of Vic-20s sends all those viruses through Fidonet at 300 baud in order to bring America's SychroNET and C-NET C64 BBS user base to its knees.
Nope, they've seen the latest Norwegian research and are moving up to ip-packet-carrying birds. The good news is that you can disable that network with a 20-gauge shotgun, and in a pinch, those pigeons are actually edible. Pheasants (which originate in Asia) are better eating, but don't home as well, and they're bigger targets. Though they might work well in a Token-Ringneck network topography.
That would explain this huge pod which formed off of Wales (no pun, there, really). Obviously, they're forming a class action suit.
and when the xray of the fecal samples shows dark spots and electronics the whole cooler is sent to the bomb squad for a "controlled detonation" using a small charge
I think that tip was aimed more at not having stuff ripped off from your vehicle, etc., now that I think about it. Honestly, I think I were to travel far with my camera gear, I'd probably put it all in a Pelican and FedEx it ahead of myself. I just don't trust the checked baggage these days. Not because of the handling (those cases are tough) but because of the theft risk.
I recall reading about a guy who put all of his gear in a strap-locked Coleman cooler labeled with stickers saying "Orangutan Fecal Samples." Problem solved.
It's a fucking text file on a server in a data center, not the freaking Magna Carta!
Get a grip!
It's not about the content of the file - it's about who says where that server is, which tells people what IP address to resolve when they're sitting in Beijing trying to search for the phrase "Magna Carta." This is about how the freakin' network works, and whether regimes that arrest people for writing about the Magna Carta get to chime in on how it all works. Get your own grip.
Fine by me.
Really? Which country's policies would you most like influencing it on some given week, China's, or Venezuela's? Hugo Chavez has some excellent thoughts on freedom of communication, thought China is a little more thorough.
First, if you're a parent and your kids genuinely hate you then you're doing (or have done) something seriously wrong.
Which is why I put the word "hate" in quotes. Because teenagers have a bad habit of being melodramatic and using words like that when they don't really mean it. If you've never heard a typical (and ultimately well rounded) teenager uttering phrases like that, then you need to be around more kids for a reality check. Kids often reflexively dislike their first tastes of some aspects of reality, and sometimes resent the people that are tasked with educating them about it: usually, parents. And that's a lot better than leaving it to public school teachers, etc.
Second, once kids have the skills to support themselves independently (eg. life experience and a college education), in all but a very small number of unusual cases they do move out and they are happy to do so.
Yeah, so? That doesn't really bear on what I'm talking about, does it. As long as those kids are dependent on family for food, housing, clothing, internet access, and so on, they're just that: dependent.
Third, dependence, whatever the reason, does not equate to a right to control others
So, if a parent pays to have high-speed data access and cable TV appear at the house, it's "controlling" the kids to dictate the manner in which those products/services can and will be used around the house? The kids have the choice to use, or not use such things (though obviously good parents want them to do so, constructively) - just like countries elsewhere have the choice to plug in, or not, to that nice US military research invention, the internet and its name services. But until a kid is literally and legally on his or her own, a parent not only has the right to direct their lives, they have an obligation to. Kids are not wise. Some are smart, but none are wise.
Quite a few accidents are caused by cellphone use however :/
No. They are not.
Quite a few accidents are caused by people being poor drivers, or by allowing themselves to act like poor drivers because they're doing something that's distracting them (putting on makeup, eating a sandwich, looking at the cows in the next field that will be their next sandwich, fiddling with their iPod, yelling at the kids in the back seat, smoking, digging through their briefcase - whatever). Cell phones don't cause accidents, people do.
I don't know about that, but suddenly I have the urge to make an subnet omelet.
I'm sorry, all we serve here are Western Subnet Omlets, but you can have us hold the peppers. Ba-da-bing!
Thank you, I'll be here all week.
The complaint, among others, is that ICANN has been the tool of the US government for too long. That somehow it would be better if it were less US-centric. That may or may not be true.
Well, there's the problem - it's not true! ICANN has been pretty damn level-headed and easy going, and hasn't been doing the owners of other internation TLDs any disservice (other than not being hostile to the US, which some countries DO consider to be a disservice - too bad!). But not being hostile to the US (or anyone) doesn't make them US-centric, just functional. So it's good thing to keep it status quo, and that's just what the administration has been saying.
We definitely do not want W getting any more crazy ideas about "leadership" and "freedom".
You were sounding so rational there, right up to that point. The administration has been one of the most consistent voices speaking out specifically to maintain this arrangement. Exactly in the interests of leadership and freedom. Do you really want the committee-chairman-of-the-week in some back corner of the UN having influence over this vital area? Me neither. Neither does the current administration, which is why they've thrown their weight behind the current arrangement for a long time now.
I know a lot of people just have to reflexively toss in a Bush jab at every turn ("Man, traffic was slow today because of that road work on the freeway. And then when I got to work, I stubbed my toe on my desk chair, as if Bush doesn't have better things to do!"), but these non-sequitors (or worse, contrary-to-the-actual-facts notions) don't help you discredit the administration, they make your complaints seem less valid and more shrill. At least take your shots in the right direction - it's more effective.
In both the areas of military/support contracting and administering network address-space issues, it's not a question of whether or not there's someone else with equal experience, structure, stability, and readiness to step up. Just as much of the audience here would rather see some services go unprovided than have them provided by The Man (a large company that specializes in such things), some other spots around the world just can't stand that an operation friendly (read: "not hostile") to western/US interests is in charge of TLDs and address ranges.
It's the same reason that some extremists would rather have totally militarized, radicalized, corrupt "social services" management in southern Lebanon courtesy of Iran via their Hezbollah proxies than embrace western investment in some actually productive, forward-looking western-style democracy and economic productivity that would more quickly raise the standard of living. It simply doesn't feel as good to have someone you resent doing something useful that you're not ready/willing to do yourself. It's the same reason teenagers go through the "I hate my parents" phase... they have a hard time reconciling their dependence, the growing awareness that they don't know how to do everything, and the fact that doing it all yourself is actually very hard, expensive work. So, it's easier just to bitch about it, and let it keep working. Just like the teenagers that "hate" their parents are still happy to sit at the table and wait for Mom to scramble some eggs for them in the morning. Resentment is cheap and easy, and hey, Mom's making eggs (and address space) anyway, right?
I'm always annoyed by headlines like this. "Americans say..." when we're talking about a third of them. What, so the 15% of Icelanders who say the same thing aren't enough to use the phrase "Icelanders say..." but 33% of the polled people in the US is?
Yes, yes, the headline space is short. But how about something like "More in US than Iceland doubt evolution" or similar? "America says" implies something that just isn't the case.
I guess I often think of something I heard someone say: "If humans evolved from apes...why are there still apes?"
For the same reason we have German Shorthaired Pointers, and yet still have contemporary wolves and coyotes. Common ancestors, and branches in the tree. Isn't that easier to digest than imagining semi-modern human-ish primates just magically appearing out of nowhere? It sure is for me.
Your pal,
Occam.
Don't mistake my discomfort (revulsion, even) with the radical Islamists to be me letting the other religious crazies (or religion, in any form, really) off the hook. Religion is probably one of the most destructive social structures in existence because it discourages critical thinking, encourages irrational-on-the-face-of-it magical thinking, and just generally screws up people's priorities, big time.
That being said: contemporary Mormons (to use your example) don't appear to be interested in recruiting teenage boys expressly for the purpose of getting them to get onboard airplanes full of, say, Canadians, and crash them. The Southern Baptist folks don't seem too interested in seeing "Mexico wiped off the face of the map" (a la Iran's lovely president, re: Israel). Yes, there's the occasional loon that bombs abortion clinics. But: given the huge number of people that are, thanks to their religion, signed onto the anti-abortion platform, and the large number of such clinics in the US (not to mention the availability of explosives), the fact is that any actual occurance of such an attack is a complete abberation. Not to be confused with the jihaddi propoganda machine, which makes it all about the martyrs taking Evil Crusaders(tm) out with "martyrdom operations," getting the 72 virgins, a family pension from Iran through Hezbollah, etc.
In short: as similar as the roots of Islam, Judaism, and Christianity may be, there's only one demographic that's overwhelmingly preaching murder, and actively recruiting suburban kids to go out and do it. And coughing up cash to make it so.
Even the loopiest midwestern neo-Nazi asses don't pump beheading videos out through Al Jazeera. And the reason is that the larger western culture is past that. Not every person in the culture, but the culture itself. The jihaddis specifically wish to prevent such forward movement in the Muslim world, and thus the medieval-minded theatrics and Taliban-esque "religious police" types who enforce wacked-out Sharia dictates with an AK-47. It's nuts, and more to the point, it's more nuts than the behavior of the other religions you're mentioning.
I'd rather see every culture walk away from their whole Magic Invisible Friend Worship phase. It's just embarassing. But when it moves from just being a damn shame because people are choosing to raise their kids in ignorance to sending those same kids out to kill for Allah, then action is required. It's not that the Christians aren't any sillier for their beliefs, it's the toxic degree to which the militant Islamists have usurped their corner of that culture. Sort of like what's happening with "thug life" culture in the U.S.: it's graduated from quaint and/or amusing to actually instructing teenagers that being looked at sideways is a worthy reason to kill someone and go to jail for the rest of your life.
Let's not split hairs about which religion is or isn't more or less slighly nuts than the next, and stipulate that they all are. It's what certain cultures do with the imagery and message and fashion of those religions while pursuing political, territorial, and economic agendas that matters. And right now, the Al Queda types and their local franchise operators are loudly repeating their objectives: a sprawling Sharia-powered caliphate that will displace western democratic societies around the globe. That's what they want, and they understand that they'll require many years to accomplish it, and they seem OK with that. The western attention span isn't nearly that long, and that's why we have to act, decisively, whenever the reality of the risks come clearly to the surface (i.e., in London just the other day).
We're discriminating, visibly and publically
Yes, and that's because of the discriminating actions of the militant subset of the culture we're talking about. Evil is as evil does, and they're doing it. To "discriminate" is to "choose," or to "separate by some standard," and the standard required here is plain as day: the folks who act to destroy planeloads of passengers are discriminating themselves out of the larger religious landscape through their own actions.
And if fighting terrorism is so important, why wasn't this training and technology already in place (using liquids to try to blow up planes is nothing new)?
Because, beyond the cell in question (which they'd been observing for months), there wasn't any intel suggesting that such a thing was being actively pursued. And if you've got one identifiable group that's seeking to exploit a particular tactic, and you know you'll know when they'll act (as was the case last week), there's actually a lot of value in not altering your publicly visible defenses - lest you show them that you know what they're up to. Unless you're ready to arrest them that moment, that's a mistake - because the more important catch is the larger network that's coordinating, funding, and recruiting these idiots.
Liquid explosives are nothing new, true. And the last folks to try it screwed it up (in the Pacific plot some years back). This was the first apparent re-emergence of that tactic, and that changes things. But better to keep your cards close while trying to rope in more of the bad guys. Breaking up networks like that is far more effective than trying to catch every member in the act of actually trying to get on board with something the network is supplying them.
If it takes them days to spot the inconsistency in this (i.e., if any liquids are dangerous, why not those in baby bottles? And if those can be safely allowed in, why prevent time with other liquids?), then I'm rather worried.
No, it takes time to develop an institutional sense (down to the man-in-the-field level) of what and who to be watching for. Heaven forbid we actually use a more statistically effective screening technique, and acknowledge the Pakistani extraction of the people involved in this latest group. Knowing a little about the background of who is standing at the security gate with a bottle of milk makes it a lot easier to decide when and how to be more thorough. But since it's apparently too painful (for someone - not me!) to admit that there is a strong correlation between the people we're most worried about here and certain ethnicities, we're stuck paying the usual absurd price of political correctness. That bit of silliness drives all sorts of nonsensical or inefficient policies, and it's just plain BS.
Someone that doesn't believe in evolution yet can (and does) elect the next president.
Hard to say which is worse, them or the Vegan-Wiccan-types that are so "progressive" that they loop right back around into crazy-land, but vote the opposite from your hypothetical "redneck," but for all the wrong reasons and just an annoyingly.