WHat is someone commits suicide, then can we say they would have wanted to be aborted?
Actually, this is the first I have heard of this.
The quote goes as follows:
Little baby Trig must be so glad he wasnâ(TM)t aborted for this, his first Halloween, because his parents dressed him up like a political party symbol to be carried around at snarling political events. Aww. Isnâ(TM)t life just grand?
That's a politically convinient way of looking at it. It ignores the fact that studies on ES cells advanced our understanding of adult stem cells, so the scores are irrevocably intertwined, but I can see why you'd like to ignore that fact.
Good thing Bush allowed for federal funding for research on existing lines of embryonic stem cells.
So if someone thinks allowing people with genetically inheritable diseases to produce offspring is immoral, does that make the entire idea morally questionable? I don't think so...
Not to drag the latest election into this. Looking at all the people that said Sarah Palin should have gotten an abortion... Yeah, I'd say that makes it morally questionable to some people.
(An example would be Wonkette saying that Palin's Down-baby wishes it would have been aborted)
You just linked to O'Reilly's talking points about Mark Cuban, you insane Republican liar. The list of what you personally don't understand is bigger than Cuban's fortune.
Out of all the links I've posted, here is the entirety of what is mentioned about Bill O'Reilly:
Mark Cuban may very well find himself in serious need of some reputation management very shortly. Fox News' Bill O'Reilly discussed the soon to be distributed Loose Change, a film about the supposed 9/11 government conspiracy. Mark Cuban, billionaire owner of the Dallas Mavericks, is going to distribute it and Charlie Sheen has said he will do the narration.
Regardless of the source, is anything in that paragraph not true?
The same article also mentions Jennifer Engle of ESPN Radio. Is ESPN now a right-wing outfit also?
Again, the point was to show that Cuban is a loose cannon. Someone who leaves his mouth in gear while the brain is neutral. And again, my beef with Cuban is what he said about the San Antonio River Walk. That's a landmark in San Antonio as well as the State of Texas. You just don't insult that stuff. It would be like going to London and calling Big Ben a broken pocket watch. You do that and you're likely to piss off a few Brits, just like he pissed off a few Texans. For the record, I'm a Texan, but the lack of class and respect as constantly displayed by Cuban tends to piss me off no matter who it is directed.
Now all that aside, I'm surprised at you Doc. I usually enjoy your posts and find them quite insightful, even when they are counter to my own as we rarely agree. I've always found you to be intelligent, fair and open minded. You are not in usually good form today. I hope it's just an off day and look forward to your insight in the future.
But since you are evidently guilty of collecting Bill O'Reilly talking points to defend Bush attacking the guy exposing that ripoff, I'm going to take your post as confirmation that your wingnut army is going after Cuban with the last power it has left, since America just fired it for its decade of crimes.
And the fact that you accuse me of "collecting Bill O'Reilly talking points" tells me you a far left-winger suffering from severe Bush/FoxNews Derangement Syndrome. My disdain for Cuban comes from what he said about The San Antonio River Walk, not anything I saw on O'Reilly. You should get to know someone before you start making broad assumptions about them. Otherwise, you are no different than those that call people Racist because the voted against Obama or traitor because they oppose the war. Yep! That's you!
I was pointing out that Cuban has hard time keeping his mouth shut and is well known for doing stuff that make other people stare and say "WTF?" The guy is a loose cannon. He evidently has the smarts to make the money, but not enough common sense to know when to STFU.
Personally, I don't understand why someone with more money than they could possibly spend would be so stupid as to risk losing everything and end up in jail trying to make more.
The fact that this occurred in June of '04 and he's being charged for it now implies that either it takes that long to build up evidence for a case or you don't hear about this until someone slips up.
Whatever happened happened in 2004, but he's being charged only in the last few weeks Bush can direct the SEC.
Funny how the other thing that happened recently was that Cuban just launched a website, BailoutSleuth looking into and organizing against the Bush/Paulson Wall Street bailout.
BTW, in America people are presumed innocent until proven guilty, especially when Bush has a political crusade at stake. Even if Cuban is guilty, it's pretty "coincidental" timing to start prosecuting him.
No, if that were the case, they would have gone after Cuban after he funded Redacted, or any of the other stupidstuffCuban is guilty of.
Science seeks to answer how by collecting evidence, religion seeks to answer why by blindly trusting something that was written long ago (they might drop details but e.g. Christianity would never discard the concepts that define their god even if they have no evidence beyond old texts that any of these concepts apply).
If the GP said "Christianity" instead of "Religion", you would be correct, and you are, for the most part, when speaking of Christianity. But I was speaking of "religion" as a whole, not necessarily Christianity. There are many other religions that try to explain the reasons behind existence, and not all of them are based on divinely inspired ancient texts. I listed Buddhism as an example of an "ancient" religion that is not based on divine texts. I guess Scientology would be one as well as it's "text" (Dianetics?) is neither ancient nor written by a deity (although many do not consider Scientology a religion for those reasons... and many many others)
Religion does not seek, it claims to know the answer. This is pure arrogance, as it offers little proof other than some text that it claims is written by god.
Buddhism is one example of a religion that is not based on a text written by a God. Accepting your own arrogance is the first step towards curing your ignorance toward the world's religions. If you don't control your arrogance, your arrogance will control you.
"the idea of this universe being particularly suited to life"... And if there are multiple parallel universes, then in all universes that are not suited to life, there will be no life to ask, "why isn't this universe suited to life". So only in the universes that are suited to life, could there be lifeforms asking, why is this universe suited to life.
Asking therefore "that the universe was made just for us", is clearly totally wrong. Its not about us at all. Its just that life can survive and exist in this universe.
Imagine how tough it would be if we were to live in one of those Universes that were not suitable for life! I guess we should thank God that he put us in this one.
Preface: I am not an economist, and I have never purchased a home. I'm a programmer, and I don't know jack shit about banking.
It is my understanding that FM & FM *do not* make loans. They buy loans from lending institutions.
It is also my understanding that FM & FM purchased a fairly small percentage of the "toxic" loans compared to other financial institutions who were using them as get-rich-quick schemes.
Of course, my understanding mostly comes from Marketplace on NPR, so it's almost certainly tainted by evil liberals.
Well, I am not an economist either, but I do work in banking, although only as a computer technician. Here is what Wikipedia says Fannie Mae does:
The Federal National Mortgage Association (FNMA) (NYSE: FNM), commonly known as Fannie Mae, is a stockholder-owned corporation chartered by Congress in 1968 as a government sponsored enterprise (GSE), but founded in 1938 during the Depression. Contrary to some beliefs, Fannie Mae does not make home loans directly to consumers, but rather functions as an intermediary in the U.S. secondary mortgage market. By purchasing and securitizing mortgages, Fannie Mae facilitates liquidity in the primary mortgage market by ensuring that funds are consistently available to the institutions that do lend money to home buyers.
So, you are correct, they do not make loans, they buy them, but there is really not much difference between the two. A bank makes loan and sells it to Freddie Mac. The bank then takes that money and loans it to someone else... and then sells it to Freddie Mac. There is really not much difference between this and Freddie loaning money to the banks directly. Think of Fannie Mae as the middleman between the Fed (government) and your local bank.
That said, I think your argument is a load of BS. Let's look at your first post:
Actually, it was over-regulation that broke the US banking industry.
Then let's look at your most recent one:
However, to get this back to the original point, this was something that should have been regulated to prevent the problem from affecting more than just banking.
Make up your mind, then get back to us.
--Jeremy
You are correct. I am not 100% in either camp as very little in the world is absolute. I said that the banks need less regulation. I did not say the banks need NO regulation. Government should not tell the banks who to loan money to. However, government should force to banks to stick to their decision and not pass the risk onto unsuspecting investors.
Hope that clears things up.
-- Jesus was a liberal
As for your sig... Jesus is all about personal responsibility. Not exactly a liberal position. Being a Christian is not easy. It requires some... let's say... discomfort sometimes. It's kinda like a job. You stick with the job, you don't complain and you work to the best of your ability. You do NOT work as a team and your church is not a union. For that matter, unions are not allowed. You are rewarded for your own work and no one else's. Nor can you pass your salvation on to others. You keep 100% of what you earn and those that don't work (believe) get nothing. So, no. Jesus is not a liberal.
I found it odd that they redacted the programmer's name. Whay would the man's neame be a matter of national security? I could see if he was a field agent, but a PROGRAMMER?
Are there any NSA spooks out there who can shed some light on this?
First, I would guess that any NSA employee's names would be held back for a couple of reasons. First, would be from anarchist/hippie types that would want to torment this poor fellow or his family for helping out what they view as an evil organization, even if only as a programmer. Next, this guy might be privy to security issues, default passwords or back doors in the applications or IT setup at NSA. This information would be very valuable to foreign intelligence agencies.
wrong. The "forcing" companies to make loans was only a few companies that were caught gaming the books. The feds choose to have them "help the poor" rather than levy appropriate fines. That said, they should have been harsh and shut down the FMs when they cooked the books years ago in spite of the harm because their cheating is what brought down the system. Mercy is what cause the banking crisis not regulations.
Uh, those few companies that you spoke are FannieMae and FreddieMac, who combined make up a vast majority of loans made in the US. They are pretty much in control of mortgages, student loans, auto loans, business loans, etc. So, by saying that it is "a few companies" is a bit of an understatement. But one point you don't dispute is that they were "forced" to give loans to people who couldn't pay them back, regardless of the rate.
However, you could have (should have?) pointed out that much of the problem was this new idea of rolling up these bad loans and dumping them on the stock market. This was a bad idea that made a bad problem much worse as it hid the bad debt on Wall St, putting off the inevitable collapse, and spread the risk of these bad loans to the stock market and sticking ignorant investors with the bill.
However, to get this back to the original point, this was something that should have been regulated to prevent the problem from affecting more than just banking.
Deregulation has worked great for the US banking industry.
Actually, it was over-regulation that broke the US banking industry. When you force banks to give loans to people without any means of paying them back, the banks are going to fail. If you just leave the banks to decide who they loan money to, they tend to make sure that their customer is able to pay it back before giving out this year's Christmas bonuses.
I love it when religious people likens disregard for their religion with racism. Racism is the act of discriminating against a person's race, something over which he had no choice and for which there exists no scientific evidence that he is different from you in any way beyond the colour of his skin.
Religion is a personal choice, so it says something about your individual person. Hence, stereotyping on that basis is quite fair.
There was a slashdot story out a while back that showed that humans were genetically coded for faith. HERE is a CNN story on the matter. HERE is the slashdot story.
So, if we are going to state that making fun of gay people, for example, is a hate crime, or at least bigotry, then we have to say the same for actions against religious people, since both are said to be the result of genetic coding.
Also, stereotyping people is almost never "fair", as you put it. If you have a problem with comparing it to race, fine. Is it fair to say that everyone in Texas is redneck? Is it fair to say that every woman in LA is blond with fake boobs? Is it fair to say that everyone in Detroit works for an automaker? No, No, and No. It's really not even a matter of "fair", but more of a matter of "fact", as in, "it's not one". It's just wrong.
I don't think you finished reading my original post, since I think I was pretty clear in my definition of "Creationist". I have no interest whatsoever in debating the existence (or otherwise) of God, nor do I particularly care who created the Universe. I also am not claiming that science knows everything... but it has determined a lot of things with a degree of accuracy and precision far in excess of anything any known religion can claim. Rational people understand that their is a potential for error in everything: the difference is that scientists attempt to quantify and account for that error, whereas people of faith simply believe that there is no error. Which approach is more likely to correctly answer any given question?
This is what you said:
I lump Creationists (yes, all of them) together with all the other groups exhibiting fundamentally irrational thought processes that have fallen by the wayside in the past century or so.
So, while you may not want to debate who created the Universe, you were certainly quick to insult me and my entire religion based on what I believe about the creation of the Universe. The fact that ignored all the evidence that was so clearly provided for you shows that you are one "exhibiting fundamentally irrational thought processes". That is the process that is required to ignore the facts and stereotype people based on what YOU want them to be. Although, it's much easier to call it bigotry.
I also am not claiming that science knows everything...
No, but you are claiming that religious people know nothing. You seem to think that "Creationists" like myself ignore reason and understanding. I gave evidence and even provide a link with mathematical evidence of a creator from a PHD in engineering, yet, you come back with the idea that somehow religious people had rejected science. Do you believe in the "Big Bang Theory"?. If you had read my post, you would know who originally thought of the idea, Georges Lemaitre, a Catholic Priest. Do you know who Galileo is? Did you read the Galileo quote I provided? Both of these guys are Creationists. Are you really going to say that Galileo or Lemaitre are "people that are constitutionally unable to accept basic facts, or data that is provably correct to a high degree of accuracy"? Given this, who is it that is unable to accept basic facts, you or them?
On the other hand, if you mean to say that belief trumps reason and real understanding, you have a problem.
I don't think you read my post. You certainly didn't read the link I provided. My beliefs are based on reason, logic and observation. The laws of nature are way too fine tuned to have happened by chance. If you had done the homework I assigned you, you would understand that.
It's not a simply matter of ignorance (mere education can fix that) but a certain inflexibility of mind.
This is the kicker. You are quick to claim that people of faith have a "certain inflexibility of mind". It's as if religious people are incapable of believing in science. Sorry, but as I have shown repeatedly, that is NOT TRUE. Your constantly bringing up shows and incredible "inflexibility of mind" on your part. It's as if you are covering your ears and screaming "NAH-NAH-NAH" and ignoring the evidence as it is presented. In other words, YOU ARE DOING EXACTLY WHAT YOU CLAIM PEOPLE OF FAITH ARE GUILTY OF! You are ignoring the evidence that is staring you in the face.
HERE is a list of many more Nobel Prize winners with their religious affiliations listed. Not to say all these guys were "religious", but some of them were, and still managed to win Nobel Prizes in spite of it. Something tells me that each of them has won at least one more Nobel Prize than you have.
I lump Creationists (yes, all of them) together with all the other groups exhibiting fundamentally irrational thought processes that have fallen by the wayside in the past century or so. Casualties of scientific advancement, nothing more, in spite of all their posturing and racial self-glorification. You can make all the fine distinctions that you wish, call me a redneck if it makes you happy. It matters not to me, and ultimately makes no difference. Reality is what it is, the Universe works a certain way, and science is (unfortunately for many belief systems) the only rock-solid method the human race has yet come up with for understanding and manipulating it. Religion had millenia to prove itself a viable method of explaining the true nature of our existence. It failed miserably, and is still failing.
The problem you have is with your idea of what a "Creationist" is. Wikipedia defines creationist this way:
Creationism is the religious belief that humanity, life, the Earth, and the universe were created in their original form by a deity (often the Abrahamic God of Judaism, Christianity and Islam) or deities.[1] In relation to the creation-evolution controversy the term creationism (or strict creationism) is commonly used to refer to religiously-motivated rejection of evolution as an explanation of origins.
You are taking the second part of that definition and applying it all creationists, whereas many "creationist", myself included, belong to the first half. So, at the risk of lumping "us" together, I will refer to what I believe as meaning those that believe as I do (the first half).
My personal definition of creationist is much more simple. It is simply that "God created everything." As I am PHD educated (PBS, History Channel, Discovery Channel... PHD, get it?), I'm not going to attempt to go into great detail on how the universe works. However, I do have a degree (a real one), have taken science courses and I do have a fairly firm grasp of the concepts.
First, we'll start with the idea that there religion and science are not compatible. Galileo observed that "the laws of nature are written by the hand of God in the language of mathematics". Was Galileo NOT a scientist? Einstein believed that the universe was static. It is the way that it is and has always been that way. Georges Lemaitre, a Catholic Priest thought differently. His idea was that if God CREATED the universe, then it must of had a beginning. He used Einstein's own equations to propose the idea, that Einstein disagreed with. Hubble's observations proved Lemaitre right and Einstein had to revise his theory. Now keep in mind that Lemaitre was a Catholic Priest AND A CREATIONIST. Are you going to say that he was not "scientific"? So when you say, "Religion had millenia to prove itself a viable method of explaining the true nature of our existence. It failed miserably, and is still failing", did you factor Lemaitre's contribution into it? And, as for you quote about religion not being able to "prove a viable method for explaining the true nature of existence", I could say the same about science.
For your homework, I want you to look up the "just so universe" "laws of nature" and read up on the fundamental laws of nature. THIS site is a good place to start. Stick to the cosmos stuff and stop when they start talking about the location of earth and all.
On to evolution. Very few Creationists deny "micro evolution". A rabbit that turns white in the winter snow will do better than one that stays brown, and more white-winter-rabbits will survive to reproduce while the brown-winter-rabbits will die off. In areas where it doesn't snow, the opposite is true. This is proven fact and is not denied by Creationists as there is obvious evidence all around us.
On the other hand, there is "macro evolution", which states th
talk about being a total troll. keep your bigotry to yourself.
Nah... Creationists are fair game here on Slashdot. Matter of fact, they're fair game, period.
If so, you should probably get it right. Not all creationist think that the earth is 6,000 years old. For that matter, very few do. Just like all stereotypes, what very few do gets the entire group labeled.
Some creationists believe that evolution happened, but is way to complicated to have happened by chance. They point to the idea that 6 billion years is not nearly enough time for earth to form, start life and have it evolve randomly into the many creatures that are living currently, and the many more that are extinct.
Anyway, the fact that you and the GP lump all creationists together into your worst stereotype of what they can be tells me you are no different than the rednecks that think all (your racial group here) steal, or are lazy/greasy/dirty.
Really? You learned nothing from electing a baseball manager as your president, and then re-electing him four years later even though he had achieved little except stopping stem cell research and invading two countries of little brown people?
First, Bush was an extremely popular governor of a very populous US state. He was well known for working with members of the other party. Unfortunately, this depended on members of the other party willing to work with him.
Next, Bush was the first US President to offer any money at all to stem cell research. All Bush limited was the funding of embryonic stem cells from NEW lines. Existing lines at the time were offered federal funding. Stem cells from other means, such as adult derived or from amniotic fluid or chord blood saw no limitations.
Finally, one of those countries with "little brown people" was harboring the terrorists that planned and executed the 9-11 attacks. If you have a problem with us going after the guys that did that, you need to spell that out so everyone can see what a pussy you are. Next, Bush invaded a country full of "brown people" because those "brown people" were being massacred by their leader or starved to death under UN sanctions.
Please, before you go a post a bunch of half truths and lies, please do some research and learn all the facts before you make yourself look stupid.
So, when the numbers agree with you then the numbers are correct.
But when the numbers contradict you, well, everyone knows you cannot trust the numbers anyway.
No, I was admitting that you can't go purely off of the numbers of stories reported. You actually have to look at what is reported, not just the number of articles or Google hits. And when you do look at what was reported and how, it should be obvious to anyone paying attention that the press was biased towards Obama. For Pete's sake, the moderator for the second debate is releasing a book praising Obama on inauguration day!
But seriously, are you going to try to say that the press was even handed when dealing with Obama vs. McCain? Are you going to say that Chris Matthews getting a "chill up his leg" was fair. How about when he said that his "job" was to see that Obama's presidency is a successful one. Funny, that didn't seem to be his "job" during Bush's presidency.
Comments made by sources, voters, reporters and anchors that aired on ABC, CBS and NBC evening newscasts over the past two months reflected positively on Obama in 65 percent of cases, compared with 31 percent of cases with regards to McCain, according to the Center for Media and Public Affairs.
ABC's "World News" had more balance than NBC's "Nightly News" or the "CBS Evening News," the group said.
Meanwhile, the first half of Fox News Channel's "Special Report" with Brit Hume showed more balance than any of the network broadcasters, although it was dominated by negative evaluations of both campaigns. The center didn't evaluate programs on CNN or MSNBC.
"For whatever reason, the media are portraying Barack Obama as a better choice for president than John McCain," said Robert Lichter, a George Mason University professor and head of the center. "If you watch the evening news, you'd think you should vote for Obama."
Those numbers don't lie, but they don't mean anything. Stevens is the long serving senior Senator from Alaska who has enjoyed wide coverage for being a jackass, in addition to his recent trial for corruption. Jefferson is a corrupt member of the House of Representatives from a state famous for being corrupt. Why exactly would you expect teh Google to return the same number of matches for their names?
The second one is equally meaningless, as the initial press awareness of Obama Rezko was like a year ago, where as the Palin thing is only a few months old.
If you systematically controlled for how much attention a given story should be given (how powerful are the individuals involved, how recent is the scandal, etc.), you could use those numbers to argue. As it stands, you are typing shit into Google and stomping your feet.
You are correct in that you can't just rely on the numbers. Google "Obama Ayers" and you will get several more stories, however, the majority of them are about the GOP's negative campaigning.
But, like I said, what is NOT reported is equally important. Take this story about the mayor of Detroit, Kwame Kilpatrick, being arraigned. No where in the story is Kwame Kilpatrick's party mentioned. He is a Democrat, by the way. Now compare that to another CNN story about Ted Stevens. His party affiliation is mentioned in the opening paragraph:
Despite his felony conviction this week for filing false U.S. Senate financial disclosure forms, Republican Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska insisted he was innocent and vowed not to step down.
Was it an accidental oversight? I doubt it. Google "Name That Party" for many more examples.
Like I've said, it's not so much what is reported, but what is NOT reported as well. Here are some Google News search results from another post:
Obama Rezko (no quotes): Results 1 - 10 of about 1,298 for Obama rezko Palin tropper-gate (no quotes): Results 1 - 10 of about 3,072 for Palin trooper-gate
(On the other hand, Obama Ayers does give different results, but the majority of the stories are about the GOP going negative, which shows that numbers don't always prove a point)
She admittedly doesn't know how the Executive Branch interacts with the Legislative Branch and thinks the rules only apply if a Judge says so and not before. That's not flamebait, that's fact.
The Vice President of the United States shall be President of the Senate, but shall have no vote, unless they be equally divided.
To put this back on topic, you and the press all came out and said Palin was wrong. However, it appears that Palin was correct. Granted, it's not a job that VP's have ever really done, but when you strictly follow the Constitution, the VP's job is to be part of the Legislative branch.
To take extreme cases, consider either Alaska's Ted Stevens or Louisiana's William Jefferson.
Sure, that's fair. Both deserve negative coverage. However, how many times has Ted Stevens been the headline vs William Jefferson? It's not just what is reported, but WHAT IS NOT reported.
Do a Google News search for "William Jefferson" and "Ted Stevens" (both in quotes) "William Jefferson": Results 1 - 10 of about 1,128 for william-jefferson "Ted Stevens": Results 1 - 10 of about 19,889 for Ted-Stevens.
I'm certain you will find similar results on any Democrat vs Republican scandals.
Obama Rezko (no quotes): Results 1 - 10 of about 1,298 for Obama rezko Palin tropper-gate (no quotes): Results 1 - 10 of about 3,072 for Palin trooper-gate
McCain picking a woefully under-qualified running mate, apparently without even bothering to vet her, is a big story. It has nothing to do with 'liberal bias'.
She was qualified by the standards set forth by The Constitution. Now, if you want to talk about her level of expertise or how often she does stupid stuff, you may have a point. But since we are talking about media coverage, consider that we are comparing Palin to THIS guy.
Watch that video or any of the other "gaffes" that Biden let out that were not widely reported and tell me she receive fair coverage.
Slashdot Mirror
WHat is someone commits suicide, then can we say they would have wanted to be aborted?
Actually, this is the first I have heard of this.
The quote goes as follows:
Little baby Trig must be so glad he wasnâ(TM)t aborted for this, his first Halloween, because his parents dressed him up like a political party symbol to be carried around at snarling political events. Aww. Isnâ(TM)t life just grand?
And HERE is the link.
That's a politically convinient way of looking at it. It ignores the fact that studies on ES cells advanced our understanding of adult stem cells, so the scores are irrevocably intertwined, but I can see why you'd like to ignore that fact.
Good thing Bush allowed for federal funding for research on existing lines of embryonic stem cells.
So if someone thinks allowing people with genetically inheritable diseases to produce offspring is immoral, does that make the entire idea morally questionable? I don't think so...
Not to drag the latest election into this.
Looking at all the people that said Sarah Palin should have gotten an abortion... Yeah, I'd say that makes it morally questionable to some people.
(An example would be Wonkette saying that Palin's Down-baby wishes it would have been aborted)
You just linked to O'Reilly's talking points about Mark Cuban, you insane Republican liar. The list of what you personally don't understand is bigger than Cuban's fortune.
Out of all the links I've posted, here is the entirety of what is mentioned about Bill O'Reilly:
Mark Cuban may very well find himself in serious need of some reputation management very shortly. Fox News' Bill O'Reilly discussed the soon to be distributed Loose Change, a film about the supposed 9/11 government conspiracy. Mark Cuban, billionaire owner of the Dallas Mavericks, is going to distribute it and Charlie Sheen has said he will do the narration.
Regardless of the source, is anything in that paragraph not true?
The same article also mentions Jennifer Engle of ESPN Radio. Is ESPN now a right-wing outfit also?
Again, the point was to show that Cuban is a loose cannon. Someone who leaves his mouth in gear while the brain is neutral. And again, my beef with Cuban is what he said about the San Antonio River Walk. That's a landmark in San Antonio as well as the State of Texas. You just don't insult that stuff. It would be like going to London and calling Big Ben a broken pocket watch. You do that and you're likely to piss off a few Brits, just like he pissed off a few Texans. For the record, I'm a Texan, but the lack of class and respect as constantly displayed by Cuban tends to piss me off no matter who it is directed.
Now all that aside, I'm surprised at you Doc. I usually enjoy your posts and find them quite insightful, even when they are counter to my own as we rarely agree. I've always found you to be intelligent, fair and open minded. You are not in usually good form today. I hope it's just an off day and look forward to your insight in the future.
But since you are evidently guilty of collecting Bill O'Reilly talking points to defend Bush attacking the guy exposing that ripoff, I'm going to take your post as confirmation that your wingnut army is going after Cuban with the last power it has left, since America just fired it for its decade of crimes.
And the fact that you accuse me of "collecting Bill O'Reilly talking points" tells me you a far left-winger suffering from severe Bush/FoxNews Derangement Syndrome. My disdain for Cuban comes from what he said about The San Antonio River Walk, not anything I saw on O'Reilly. You should get to know someone before you start making broad assumptions about them. Otherwise, you are no different than those that call people Racist because the voted against Obama or traitor because they oppose the war. Yep! That's you!
I was pointing out that Cuban has hard time keeping his mouth shut and is well known for doing stuff that make other people stare and say "WTF?" The guy is a loose cannon. He evidently has the smarts to make the money, but not enough common sense to know when to STFU.
Personally, I don't understand why someone with more money than they could possibly spend would be so stupid as to risk losing everything and end up in jail trying to make more.
Whatever happened happened in 2004, but he's being charged only in the last few weeks Bush can direct the SEC.
Funny how the other thing that happened recently was that Cuban just launched a website, BailoutSleuth looking into and organizing against the Bush/Paulson Wall Street bailout.
BTW, in America people are presumed innocent until proven guilty, especially when Bush has a political crusade at stake. Even if Cuban is guilty, it's pretty "coincidental" timing to start prosecuting him.
No, if that were the case, they would have gone after Cuban after he funded Redacted, or any of the other stupid stuff Cuban is guilty of.
Science seeks to answer how by collecting evidence, religion seeks to answer why by blindly trusting something that was written long ago (they might drop details but e.g. Christianity would never discard the concepts that define their god even if they have no evidence beyond old texts that any of these concepts apply).
If the GP said "Christianity" instead of "Religion", you would be correct, and you are, for the most part, when speaking of Christianity. But I was speaking of "religion" as a whole, not necessarily Christianity. There are many other religions that try to explain the reasons behind existence, and not all of them are based on divinely inspired ancient texts. I listed Buddhism as an example of an "ancient" religion that is not based on divine texts. I guess Scientology would be one as well as it's "text" (Dianetics?) is neither ancient nor written by a deity (although many do not consider Scientology a religion for those reasons... and many many others)
Religion does not seek, it claims to know the answer. This is pure arrogance, as it offers little proof other than some text that it claims is written by god.
Buddhism is one example of a religion that is not based on a text written by a God. Accepting your own arrogance is the first step towards curing your ignorance toward the world's religions. If you don't control your arrogance, your arrogance will control you.
Religion replaces "it just is" with "God did it" which means about the same thing: "No idea."
Or you could look at this way:
Religion seeks to answer why. Science seek to answer how.
"the idea of this universe being particularly suited to life" ... And if there are multiple parallel universes, then in all universes that are not suited to life, there will be no life to ask, "why isn't this universe suited to life". So only in the universes that are suited to life, could there be lifeforms asking, why is this universe suited to life.
Asking therefore "that the universe was made just for us", is clearly totally wrong. Its not about us at all. Its just that life can survive and exist in this universe.
Imagine how tough it would be if we were to live in one of those Universes that were not suitable for life! I guess we should thank God that he put us in this one.
Phew!
Preface: I am not an economist, and I have never purchased a home. I'm a programmer, and I don't know jack shit about banking.
It is my understanding that FM & FM *do not* make loans. They buy loans from lending institutions.
It is also my understanding that FM & FM purchased a fairly small percentage of the "toxic" loans compared to other financial institutions who were using them as get-rich-quick schemes.
Of course, my understanding mostly comes from Marketplace on NPR, so it's almost certainly tainted by evil liberals.
Well, I am not an economist either, but I do work in banking, although only as a computer technician. Here is what Wikipedia says Fannie Mae does:
The Federal National Mortgage Association (FNMA) (NYSE: FNM), commonly known as Fannie Mae, is a stockholder-owned corporation chartered by Congress in 1968 as a government sponsored enterprise (GSE), but founded in 1938 during the Depression. Contrary to some beliefs, Fannie Mae does not make home loans directly to consumers, but rather functions as an intermediary in the U.S. secondary mortgage market. By purchasing and securitizing mortgages, Fannie Mae facilitates liquidity in the primary mortgage market by ensuring that funds are consistently available to the institutions that do lend money to home buyers.
So, you are correct, they do not make loans, they buy them, but there is really not much difference between the two. A bank makes loan and sells it to Freddie Mac. The bank then takes that money and loans it to someone else... and then sells it to Freddie Mac. There is really not much difference between this and Freddie loaning money to the banks directly. Think of Fannie Mae as the middleman between the Fed (government) and your local bank.
That said, I think your argument is a load of BS. Let's look at your first post:
Then let's look at your most recent one:
Make up your mind, then get back to us.
--Jeremy
You are correct. I am not 100% in either camp as very little in the world is absolute. I said that the banks need less regulation. I did not say the banks need NO regulation. Government should not tell the banks who to loan money to. However, government should force to banks to stick to their decision and not pass the risk onto unsuspecting investors.
Hope that clears things up.
--
Jesus was a liberal
As for your sig... Jesus is all about personal responsibility. Not exactly a liberal position. Being a Christian is not easy. It requires some... let's say... discomfort sometimes. It's kinda like a job. You stick with the job, you don't complain and you work to the best of your ability. You do NOT work as a team and your church is not a union. For that matter, unions are not allowed. You are rewarded for your own work and no one else's. Nor can you pass your salvation on to others. You keep 100% of what you earn and those that don't work (believe) get nothing. So, no. Jesus is not a liberal.
I found it odd that they redacted the programmer's name. Whay would the man's neame be a matter of national security? I could see if he was a field agent, but a PROGRAMMER?
Are there any NSA spooks out there who can shed some light on this?
First, I would guess that any NSA employee's names would be held back for a couple of reasons. First, would be from anarchist/hippie types that would want to torment this poor fellow or his family for helping out what they view as an evil organization, even if only as a programmer. Next, this guy might be privy to security issues, default passwords or back doors in the applications or IT setup at NSA. This information would be very valuable to foreign intelligence agencies.
wrong. The "forcing" companies to make loans was only a few companies that were caught gaming the books. The feds choose to have them "help the poor" rather than levy appropriate fines. That said, they should have been harsh and shut down the FMs when they cooked the books years ago in spite of the harm because their cheating is what brought down the system. Mercy is what cause the banking crisis not regulations.
Uh, those few companies that you spoke are FannieMae and FreddieMac, who combined make up a vast majority of loans made in the US. They are pretty much in control of mortgages, student loans, auto loans, business loans, etc. So, by saying that it is "a few companies" is a bit of an understatement. But one point you don't dispute is that they were "forced" to give loans to people who couldn't pay them back, regardless of the rate.
However, you could have (should have?) pointed out that much of the problem was this new idea of rolling up these bad loans and dumping them on the stock market. This was a bad idea that made a bad problem much worse as it hid the bad debt on Wall St, putting off the inevitable collapse, and spread the risk of these bad loans to the stock market and sticking ignorant investors with the bill.
However, to get this back to the original point, this was something that should have been regulated to prevent the problem from affecting more than just banking.
Deregulation has worked great for the US banking industry.
Actually, it was over-regulation that broke the US banking industry. When you force banks to give loans to people without any means of paying them back, the banks are going to fail. If you just leave the banks to decide who they loan money to, they tend to make sure that their customer is able to pay it back before giving out this year's Christmas bonuses.
I love it when religious people likens disregard for their religion with racism. Racism is the act of discriminating against a person's race, something over which he had no choice and for which there exists no scientific evidence that he is different from you in any way beyond the colour of his skin.
Religion is a personal choice, so it says something about your individual person. Hence, stereotyping on that basis is quite fair.
There was a slashdot story out a while back that showed that humans were genetically coded for faith. HERE is a CNN story on the matter. HERE is the slashdot story.
So, if we are going to state that making fun of gay people, for example, is a hate crime, or at least bigotry, then we have to say the same for actions against religious people, since both are said to be the result of genetic coding.
Also, stereotyping people is almost never "fair", as you put it. If you have a problem with comparing it to race, fine. Is it fair to say that everyone in Texas is redneck? Is it fair to say that every woman in LA is blond with fake boobs? Is it fair to say that everyone in Detroit works for an automaker? No, No, and No. It's really not even a matter of "fair", but more of a matter of "fact", as in, "it's not one". It's just wrong.
I don't think you finished reading my original post, since I think I was pretty clear in my definition of "Creationist". I have no interest whatsoever in debating the existence (or otherwise) of God, nor do I particularly care who created the Universe. I also am not claiming that science knows everything ... but it has determined a lot of things with a degree of accuracy and precision far in excess of anything any known religion can claim. Rational people understand that their is a potential for error in everything: the difference is that scientists attempt to quantify and account for that error, whereas people of faith simply believe that there is no error. Which approach is more likely to correctly answer any given question?
This is what you said:
I lump Creationists (yes, all of them) together with all the other groups exhibiting fundamentally irrational thought processes that have fallen by the wayside in the past century or so.
So, while you may not want to debate who created the Universe, you were certainly quick to insult me and my entire religion based on what I believe about the creation of the Universe. The fact that ignored all the evidence that was so clearly provided for you shows that you are one "exhibiting fundamentally irrational thought processes". That is the process that is required to ignore the facts and stereotype people based on what YOU want them to be. Although, it's much easier to call it bigotry.
I also am not claiming that science knows everything ...
No, but you are claiming that religious people know nothing. You seem to think that "Creationists" like myself ignore reason and understanding. I gave evidence and even provide a link with mathematical evidence of a creator from a PHD in engineering, yet, you come back with the idea that somehow religious people had rejected science. Do you believe in the "Big Bang Theory"?. If you had read my post, you would know who originally thought of the idea, Georges Lemaitre, a Catholic Priest. Do you know who Galileo is? Did you read the Galileo quote I provided? Both of these guys are Creationists. Are you really going to say that Galileo or Lemaitre are "people that are constitutionally unable to accept basic facts, or data that is provably correct to a high degree of accuracy"? Given this, who is it that is unable to accept basic facts, you or them?
On the other hand, if you mean to say that belief trumps reason and real understanding, you have a problem.
I don't think you read my post. You certainly didn't read the link I provided. My beliefs are based on reason, logic and observation. The laws of nature are way too fine tuned to have happened by chance. If you had done the homework I assigned you, you would understand that.
It's not a simply matter of ignorance (mere education can fix that) but a certain inflexibility of mind.
This is the kicker. You are quick to claim that people of faith have a "certain inflexibility of mind". It's as if religious people are incapable of believing in science. Sorry, but as I have shown repeatedly, that is NOT TRUE. Your constantly bringing up shows and incredible "inflexibility of mind" on your part. It's as if you are covering your ears and screaming "NAH-NAH-NAH" and ignoring the evidence as it is presented. In other words, YOU ARE DOING EXACTLY WHAT YOU CLAIM PEOPLE OF FAITH ARE GUILTY OF! You are ignoring the evidence that is staring you in the face.
HERE is a list of many more Nobel Prize winners with their religious affiliations listed. Not to say all these guys were "religious", but some of them were, and still managed to win Nobel Prizes in spite of it. Something tells me that each of them has won at least one more Nobel Prize than you have.
Look. We agree that
I lump Creationists (yes, all of them) together with all the other groups exhibiting fundamentally irrational thought processes that have fallen by the wayside in the past century or so. Casualties of scientific advancement, nothing more, in spite of all their posturing and racial self-glorification. You can make all the fine distinctions that you wish, call me a redneck if it makes you happy. It matters not to me, and ultimately makes no difference. Reality is what it is, the Universe works a certain way, and science is (unfortunately for many belief systems) the only rock-solid method the human race has yet come up with for understanding and manipulating it. Religion had millenia to prove itself a viable method of explaining the true nature of our existence. It failed miserably, and is still failing.
The problem you have is with your idea of what a "Creationist" is. Wikipedia defines creationist this way:
Creationism is the religious belief that humanity, life, the Earth, and the universe were created in their original form by a deity (often the Abrahamic God of Judaism, Christianity and Islam) or deities.[1] In relation to the creation-evolution controversy the term creationism (or strict creationism) is commonly used to refer to religiously-motivated rejection of evolution as an explanation of origins.
You are taking the second part of that definition and applying it all creationists, whereas many "creationist", myself included, belong to the first half. So, at the risk of lumping "us" together, I will refer to what I believe as meaning those that believe as I do (the first half).
My personal definition of creationist is much more simple. It is simply that "God created everything." As I am PHD educated (PBS, History Channel, Discovery Channel... PHD, get it?), I'm not going to attempt to go into great detail on how the universe works. However, I do have a degree (a real one), have taken science courses and I do have a fairly firm grasp of the concepts.
First, we'll start with the idea that there religion and science are not compatible. Galileo observed that "the laws of nature are written by the hand of God in the language of mathematics". Was Galileo NOT a scientist? Einstein believed that the universe was static. It is the way that it is and has always been that way. Georges Lemaitre, a Catholic Priest thought differently. His idea was that if God CREATED the universe, then it must of had a beginning. He used Einstein's own equations to propose the idea, that Einstein disagreed with. Hubble's observations proved Lemaitre right and Einstein had to revise his theory. Now keep in mind that Lemaitre was a Catholic Priest AND A CREATIONIST. Are you going to say that he was not "scientific"? So when you say, "Religion had millenia to prove itself a viable method of explaining the true nature of our existence. It failed miserably, and is still failing", did you factor Lemaitre's contribution into it? And, as for you quote about religion not being able to "prove a viable method for explaining the true nature of existence", I could say the same about science.
For your homework, I want you to look up the "just so universe" "laws of nature" and read up on the fundamental laws of nature. THIS site is a good place to start. Stick to the cosmos stuff and stop when they start talking about the location of earth and all.
On to evolution. Very few Creationists deny "micro evolution". A rabbit that turns white in the winter snow will do better than one that stays brown, and more white-winter-rabbits will survive to reproduce while the brown-winter-rabbits will die off. In areas where it doesn't snow, the opposite is true. This is proven fact and is not denied by Creationists as there is obvious evidence all around us.
On the other hand, there is "macro evolution", which states th
talk about being a total troll. keep your bigotry to yourself.
Nah ... Creationists are fair game here on Slashdot. Matter of fact, they're fair game, period.
If so, you should probably get it right. Not all creationist think that the earth is 6,000 years old. For that matter, very few do. Just like all stereotypes, what very few do gets the entire group labeled.
Some creationists believe that evolution happened, but is way to complicated to have happened by chance. They point to the idea that 6 billion years is not nearly enough time for earth to form, start life and have it evolve randomly into the many creatures that are living currently, and the many more that are extinct.
Anyway, the fact that you and the GP lump all creationists together into your worst stereotype of what they can be tells me you are no different than the rednecks that think all (your racial group here) steal, or are lazy/greasy/dirty.
Really? You learned nothing from electing a baseball manager as your president, and then re-electing him four years later even though he had achieved little except stopping stem cell research and invading two countries of little brown people?
First, Bush was an extremely popular governor of a very populous US state. He was well known for working with members of the other party. Unfortunately, this depended on members of the other party willing to work with him.
Next, Bush was the first US President to offer any money at all to stem cell research. All Bush limited was the funding of embryonic stem cells from NEW lines. Existing lines at the time were offered federal funding. Stem cells from other means, such as adult derived or from amniotic fluid or chord blood saw no limitations.
Finally, one of those countries with "little brown people" was harboring the terrorists that planned and executed the 9-11 attacks. If you have a problem with us going after the guys that did that, you need to spell that out so everyone can see what a pussy you are. Next, Bush invaded a country full of "brown people" because those "brown people" were being massacred by their leader or starved to death under UN sanctions.
Please, before you go a post a bunch of half truths and lies, please do some research and learn all the facts before you make yourself look stupid.
So, when the numbers agree with you then the numbers are correct.
But when the numbers contradict you, well, everyone knows you cannot trust the numbers anyway.
No, I was admitting that you can't go purely off of the numbers of stories reported. You actually have to look at what is reported, not just the number of articles or Google hits. And when you do look at what was reported and how, it should be obvious to anyone paying attention that the press was biased towards Obama. For Pete's sake, the moderator for the second debate is releasing a book praising Obama on inauguration day!
But seriously, are you going to try to say that the press was even handed when dealing with Obama vs. McCain? Are you going to say that Chris Matthews getting a "chill up his leg" was fair. How about when he said that his "job" was to see that Obama's presidency is a successful one. Funny, that didn't seem to be his "job" during Bush's presidency.
Here is another article to ponder:
Comments made by sources, voters, reporters and anchors that aired on ABC, CBS and NBC evening newscasts over the past two months reflected positively on Obama in 65 percent of cases, compared with 31 percent of cases with regards to McCain, according to the Center for Media and Public Affairs.
ABC's "World News" had more balance than NBC's "Nightly News" or the "CBS Evening News," the group said.
Meanwhile, the first half of Fox News Channel's "Special Report" with Brit Hume showed more balance than any of the network broadcasters, although it was dominated by negative evaluations of both campaigns. The center didn't evaluate programs on CNN or MSNBC.
"For whatever reason, the media are portraying Barack Obama as a better choice for president than John McCain," said Robert Lichter, a George Mason University professor and head of the center. "If you watch the evening news, you'd think you should vote for Obama."
So, it's not just me.
Those numbers don't lie, but they don't mean anything. Stevens is the long serving senior Senator from Alaska who has enjoyed wide coverage for being a jackass, in addition to his recent trial for corruption. Jefferson is a corrupt member of the House of Representatives from a state famous for being corrupt. Why exactly would you expect teh Google to return the same number of matches for their names?
The second one is equally meaningless, as the initial press awareness of Obama Rezko was like a year ago, where as the Palin thing is only a few months old.
If you systematically controlled for how much attention a given story should be given (how powerful are the individuals involved, how recent is the scandal, etc.), you could use those numbers to argue. As it stands, you are typing shit into Google and stomping your feet.
You are correct in that you can't just rely on the numbers. Google "Obama Ayers" and you will get several more stories, however, the majority of them are about the GOP's negative campaigning.
But, like I said, what is NOT reported is equally important. Take this story about the mayor of Detroit, Kwame Kilpatrick, being arraigned. No where in the story is Kwame Kilpatrick's party mentioned. He is a Democrat, by the way. Now compare that to another CNN story about Ted Stevens. His party affiliation is mentioned in the opening paragraph:
Despite his felony conviction this week for filing false U.S. Senate financial disclosure forms, Republican Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska insisted he was innocent and vowed not to step down.
Was it an accidental oversight? I doubt it. Google "Name That Party" for many more examples.
Like I've said, it's not so much what is reported, but what is NOT reported as well. Here are some Google News search results from another post:
Obama Rezko (no quotes): Results 1 - 10 of about 1,298 for Obama rezko
Palin tropper-gate (no quotes): Results 1 - 10 of about 3,072 for Palin trooper-gate
(On the other hand, Obama Ayers does give different results, but the majority of the stories are about the GOP going negative, which shows that numbers don't always prove a point)
She admittedly doesn't know how the Executive Branch interacts with the Legislative Branch and thinks the rules only apply if a Judge says so and not before. That's not flamebait, that's fact.
Allow me to quote from the United States Constitution, Article I:
The Vice President of the United States shall be President of the Senate, but shall have no vote, unless they be equally divided.
To put this back on topic, you and the press all came out and said Palin was wrong. However, it appears that Palin was correct. Granted, it's not a job that VP's have ever really done, but when you strictly follow the Constitution, the VP's job is to be part of the Legislative branch.
To take extreme cases, consider either Alaska's Ted Stevens or Louisiana's William Jefferson.
Sure, that's fair. Both deserve negative coverage. However, how many times has Ted Stevens been the headline vs William Jefferson? It's not just what is reported, but WHAT IS NOT reported.
Do a Google News search for "William Jefferson" and "Ted Stevens" (both in quotes)
"William Jefferson": Results 1 - 10 of about 1,128 for william-jefferson
"Ted Stevens": Results 1 - 10 of about 19,889 for Ted-Stevens.
I'm certain you will find similar results on any Democrat vs Republican scandals.
Obama Rezko (no quotes): Results 1 - 10 of about 1,298 for Obama rezko
Palin tropper-gate (no quotes): Results 1 - 10 of about 3,072 for Palin trooper-gate
See what I mean? Numbers don't lie.
McCain picking a woefully under-qualified running mate, apparently without even bothering to vet her, is a big story. It has nothing to do with 'liberal bias'.
She was qualified by the standards set forth by The Constitution. Now, if you want to talk about her level of expertise or how often she does stupid stuff, you may have a point. But since we are talking about media coverage, consider that we are comparing Palin to THIS guy.
Watch that video or any of the other "gaffes" that Biden let out that were not widely reported and tell me she receive fair coverage.