I support negroes voting, but you're just not going to win any sympathy with that type of argument.
The government needs to extend voting benefits to everyone or no one. However, if you think mommy government is going to force all those evil whities to recognize that negroes have the same sufferage rights as godfearing white people, it just isn't going to happen, and you're the one who needs to get over it. If, by some miracle, the government did declare such a thing, American Whites will just make up a new, exclusive way to vote, and you're back to square one. Deal.
(Am I the only one that thinks the parent's retort was completely stupid? New name for their version of marriage? What?)
This is actually a reference to a picture hosted on rotten.com. It may seem surprising to you that I was able to detect the ACs meaning; but after you go see the picture, my friend, you will understand that it has a profound effect on your memory.
It isn't hard to find (it should be linked from the main page, called 'The Incident with the Bird' or some such). I'm too lazy to link.
While I'm no fan of Microsoft, I think the Hurd qualifies as a RSNOS. Implication: it is not exclusively a Microsoft concept.
Of course, one could argue that the reason the Hurd is a RSNOS is because they want to get it done right. So I would say, RSNOSs that suck are an exclusively Microsoft concept.
Wasn't Le Sacre du Printemps written by Igor Stravinsky in the early part of the last century? Wikipedia says 1911 to 1913. Fantasia was released in 1940. So without having any links to back up Nom du Keyboard's claim, I would have to say that this seems very plausible -- the work would have still had an active copyright in 1940 (although by now it hopefully would have expired).
It is worth noting that the United States did not become a signatory of the Berne Convention until 1989, although it became a signatory of the Universal Copyright Convention in 1952. Fantasia predates all of these; this also suggests that what the OP is saying is plausible.
Further research (from copyright.gov) shows that the US and the USSR (or at least, Russia) began respecting each others copyrights legally only in 1973, when the latter nation became party to the Universal Copyright Convention in Geneva, Switzerland.
This suggests that there would have been nothing even vaguely illegal about Disney using Le Sacre du Printemps without Stravinsky's permission. It would surprise me, in fact, if they even bothered asking -- if you ask and they say no, you look like a jerk when you do it anyway. But if you just respect the law, no one can fault you for it.
I'm not a big fan of Disney, but for much of the youngish Slashdot community, globally enforced copyrights are seen as the norm, when really that is a very recent development.
Yeah, because those people would love how France randomly decides to flex its nuclear muscles by detonating bombs on the pristine beaches of Polynesia. Don't remember the slogan, "Stop Hirochirac"?
My experience with the jocks in HS was rather the opposite -- they turned out to be alright, once they got over themselves (this typically involved them going to Uni and realizing that being popular in HS didn't transfer well to a college environment).
When you're idolized, you start to let aspects of your personality develop that wouldn't otherwise. I'm sure lots of you have played MUDs, for example. Lots of people that become powerful on such games begin to act in a very powertrippy way, even though they're actually nice people in real life. It's the situation, usually, that causes these sorts of personality quirks, not the person himself.
Once they are removed from the situation (being a popular football star) they get to be more grounded. And let's face it, we geeks weren't exactly easy to like, either. But everyone grows up.
No doubt to convince people that love sports that he has stuff in common with them. It's all a lie, of course -- when the bar of entry for running for president is being a multimillionaire, no politicians in any party have much in common with regular voters.
The OP's point was that, while this is politicking and silly, it's completely irrelevant. He has no power, as the President, to make decisions that affect sports (other than, I suppose, vetoing bills that involve them). He isn't on the board of directors at the NFL. He isn't going to declare that the 49ers are the best team ever, legally. He can't do anything like that.
The posters point is that this shouldn't be an issue. But in America, people like to vote for the person rather than what he stands for. This is manifestly stupid, because politicians never present their true selves on the campaign trail (if ever). Just look at how cool Bob Dole and Al Gore turned out to be, once they retired from politics. Funny, charismatic, interesting people. Whoda thunk it. Of course Al Gore making self-deprecating jokes on a campaign trail would have been suicide; and Bob Dole endorsing Viagra would have been the same.
The truth is, politicians need to spend a lot of time calculating what kind of person they want people to think they are. It's sad, but as you probably learned in high school, most people don't like you for who you really are, and when your job depends on people liking you enough to vote for you, well, you start looking at demographics, not at your heart.
Kerry is hardly the first politician guilty of this, and he won't be the last. I see lots of reasons not to like Kerry, but stuff like this is as silly as disliking Bush because he's not particularly well-spoken.
Now, now, I hate Bush as much as the next red blooded American, but he got elected because too many people voted for him.
You might say that he stole the election because the florida thing was rigged, or because Gore won the popular vote, or because Aliens took over the Supreme Court when the decision was made, and all of these things might even be true. But in order for them to make a difference, enough people still had to vote for him for the election to be close enough that these factors could be construed to matter.
Even if you posit that Gore won, he didn't win by a huge margin. That is the problem. Too many people voted for Bush. That's why he's president.
Well, I did a quick search on google and lots of stuff came up, with data supporting your side of the argument and mine. This didn't really surprise me, since studies sponsored by pro-contraceptive groups always showed no increased risk or decreased risk, whereas studies sponsored by anti-contraceptive groups seemed to show the opposite.
One link that was particularly informative was the Oral Contraceptives and Cancer Risk page at the National Cancer Institute. Essentially, they maintain that there is a statistically significant correlation between higher rates of breast cancer and long term oral contraceptive use (which I didn't know, so I'm glad you had me looking for references.) The correlation is clear enough that a causal relationship appears to be accepted by most researchers in the field, but there is more recent data that disputes this (the article discusses it).
On the other side, there is a significant decrease in the risk of ovarian cancer, for reasons unknown. Again, causality seems apparent, as the data remains consistent when varying other factors that might have been key, such as race, rate of birth, etc. The pill also reduces the risk of endometrial cancers to a significant degree.
There are a number of other cancers that are positively correlated with OC use. These include cervical cancer and certain types of liver tumors. However, the increase is either not significant enough statistically to warrant worry, or is widely believed to be non-causal: for example, due to the higher likelyhood of women on OCs having non-barrier-method sex (without condoms, etc), there is a higher rate of HPV infection among women that are on the pill. HPV is a leading cause of cervical cancer, so it is unclear whether increased cervical cancer is caused by the pill directly, or simply as a side effect of higher HPV infection rates.
Now, ovarian cancer and endometrial cancer are nothing to laugh about, and the fact that the pill reduces these is a very good thing (and it reduces them very significantly, the numbers are in the referenced link). However, breast cancer is the most common and dangerous cancer for women, so an increased rate of breast cancer is nothing to write off, either. As the article points out, though, frequent screening (breast exams, mammograms, and the like) can catch most breast cancers early and should be practiced by all women regardless (especially as they get older).
It is my opinion (of course I may be biased here) that the pill has, more than anything else, been a force of liberation for women everywhere. The pill has allowed women to have sex like men; this (while frightening if you want to preserve the status quo) has had the net effect of reducing objectification of women, increasing objectification of men, and generally promoting equality of the sexes. It's beneficial effects with regard to women's menstrual problems can't be ignored, either.
Still, the breast cancer link is interesting. Worth pointing out, certainly, to anyone thinking about the pill. Read the link, though, it's interesting (and seems unbiased).
The point of my post, friend, is that despite the misguided views to the contrary held by so many privileged middle income white males who post on Slashdot, you did not make it here by just working diligently, as you so eloquently put it.
You got here by standing on the shoulders of your parents, your friends, your stable community, teachers that cared, etc, etc, etc.
The point of my sarcastic rant was that unless you are the person that I described that really did do everything on his own and against the odds, you have benefited from the hard work and support of others, which you likely did not earn but rather were given as a birthright.
This is not the case for the vast majority of non-white, non-middle income, non-male persons.
Despite what Ayn Rand would have you believe, the world is not made up of Howard Roarks and you, in particular, are no exception. Inherited wealth and opportunity does not make you more capable or intelligent than someone with the misfortune of being born into less fortuitous circumstance.
You had a safety net. Some people do not. It is society's responsibilty to provide at least a minimal one for them.
Actually, you have it backwards. The pill reduces the risk of cervical and breast cancer. I don't know about ovarian cancer.
As we now, with the aging boomer generation, finally have data on women who have taken the pill all their lives, we've got pretty hard data on the subject. There's no reason not to take the pill.
In fact, for many women, it means regular periods (or even no period, if you don't want to have one for a while, and are on a monophasic pill), moderate to light flow, reduced cramping, etc. My little sister was put on the pill by her obgyn to control her period's eratic, unnaturally heavy flow and the cramps that kept her out of school two days out of every month.
The bigger boobs thing is related to the fact that the pill works by convincing the body that it's pregnant, and so there is some inflation of the mammary glands, but it's usually next to unnoticeable. Of course, the FDA is (for some reason) very reluctant to allow the low dosage pills that have been de rigeur in Europe for decades now.
I think the pill has affected too much social change for our conservative government to trust it. Allowing women to control their bodies with little or no side effects! No! We have to give them the pill, or they'll riot, but let's keep dosages high enough that they still have some adverse physical affects from the higher hormone dosage (like nausea during adjustment, etc) as a deterrent.
Can't have women running their own womb now! God forbid!
I think you're missing the point of my story. No birth control method is perfect anyway; even if we'd been using condoms or she'd been on the pill, there remains the possibility of conception. My answer to unwanted conception is abortion.
Now, I will agree that contraceptives are a superior solution. But I think of them as a superior solution because they are less possibly harmful to the woman, less costly, and less psychologically disturbing, not because I want to avoid killing babies.
Just wanted to note that, you know, in case you wanted to get more offended. I don't jive with the whole pro-life stance thing and if your little retort is seeding for that sort of debate, this is the last response you're going to get from me on the subject.
Well, hispanics are not spanish. Spanish people are white (a lot of them aren't even all that dark, blonde hair and blue eyes not being uncommon).
Hispanics (in the US sense of the word) refers to the mixing of Europeans and South and Central American natives. The two were blended to such an extent that their offspring no longer physically resemble either race. They don't think of themselves as being white, that's for sure; the vast majority of them have much more native blood in them than white, as there were far more natives than whites when the Conquistadores came.
In fact, in the US, most native south americans would probably be considered hispanic rather than Native American (incorrectly, perhaps, but... that's how it works).
Regardless of whether you call them Native Americans or Hispanics, though, they still take a sizeable portion of the pie away from the "white" majority. FWIW, not all Mexicans would be considered Hispanic (although the vast majority probably would be).
Personally, I'm "Other/Decline to State" until the Census form has a "Human" check box. Race is a stupid distinction anyway.
Oh yeah, you earned it, alright. I bet you grew up in the ghetto with illiterate parents who were alcoholics and beat you. I bet you had a crime-ridden gang-dominated inner city high school to look forward to, which, despite the fact that you were certainly not one of the cool kids (hey, you post on Slashdot) and risked getting beaten up every time you went, you still attended regularly. I bet through your sweat and perserverence, you pervailed, walking through your gang-banger neighborhood out into the better burbs where there were libraries (where of course you needed to lay very low, lest you be harassed by cops on account of your being less fair in complexion than most of the residents) so that you could obtain non-graffiti laiden versions of the textbooks you needed to pass your classes. Classes, by the way, taught by the most inexperienced and underqualified teachers in America, as is the case in most poor neighborhoods.
Then, because good universities like extracurricular activities, you tried your best to do community service and find constructive ways to better yourself, while your brother and his gang banger friends were living the thug life on easy money they got from selling cocaine. Despite their apparent success and your lack of a greater frame of reference, you believed the rich white senator types who said things like "Stay in school! It'll pay off in the end."
After 4 arduous years you convinced someone to give you a scholarship to a local state school, maybe. Perhaps, if you were lucky, affirmative action helped, but probably not -- after all, why should the better off in society help those less fortunate? So you made your way through without any help. You got to university, and lived on what meager assistance you could eek out of what little money you were getting from odd jobs and whatever else -- maybe you ate rice and beans, and lived on the other side of the tracks where housing was cheaper -- until you finally got your degree in some useful, high paying discipline.
Then you went out and, despite the fact that you only get paid cents on the dollar compared to a similarly qualified white applicant, you managed to build a living for yourself.
You sir, are certainly to be commended. You don't need help from anyone.
But lots of people aren't as fortunate. Most children abused by parents end up abusing their own children. Most kids in inner city schools drop out, prefering to make easy money illegally -- everyone they know ends up dead or in jail anyway, and jail is free housing and meals, more than they can expect at home. Most people that graduate from inner city schools still can't get into high school -- all high schools are not created equal, no matter what the rulebook says -- and if they do get in, they can't afford it. Even with all these hurdles, enough people do make it that competition for the dozens of adequate scholarships is cutthroat. Not to mention that if you were ever implicated in a drug bust (a common thing in poor neighborhoods) you aren't eligible for federal aid.
Oh but wait, you're against federal aid. Don't want those undeserving people to take the money you rightfully earned, all by yourself, with no-one helping you.
You know, I was having a discussion with my lover the other day because she had gone off the pill for a bit, and we (out of habit) had had unprotected sex a few times. Not a big deal, she didn't get pregnant (although it was dangerous), but I said something like, "You know, you really should get back on the pill, or we should start using condoms or something, because if you got pregnant you'd probably have to go all the way down to Hong Kong to get a safe abortion." (We live in Shanghai).
Anyway, she said something then that scared me a lot, as a man. She said, "I don't know if I'd want to have an abortion." And I just about exploded. Essentially, the thesis of my argument was, "You can't make that decision for the both of us." Her retort, then, was "Don't you think you should at least consider my opinion?"
And my answer to that was no, that I shouldn't have to. In normal circumstances when two people have a difference of opinion on a decision to be made, I would be rooting for the consensus approach -- but in this case, I felt that we were dealing with a decision that had two very different outcomes. One possibility, abortion, had very little effect on our lives. Sure, we'd both be filled with "what ifs" and she'd probably feel sick and depressed for a while, which is lamentable, but contrasted against the outcome of not having an abortion, it just seemed rather minor. I felt that no one (man or woman) should have the ability to unilaterally make a decision that would affect someone else's life for at least 20 years and probably forever.
Anyway, the reason I'm bringing this up is because it seems like a classic case of men's interests versus women's. In classic women's lib, we've often talked about how men in the old days (and in many places still today) have "hijacked" women's bodies for the purpose of bearing children. This is mostly universally decried. Now that women have the power to choose of their own accord whether they want a child or not, there seems to be the possibility of a woman forcing a man to be a father when he doesn't want or isn't ready to be (along with all the responsibilities, financial and otherwise, that that implies).
I really had a very emotional reaction to all this, I must admit. Thinking about it now, from a more distant perspective, I wonder if this not-at-all uncommon response from men on this issue is actually a result of experiencing, for the first time, what it is like to not be in power. I mean, we control most everything else, but one of the great successes of feminism in the western world is giving control of women's bodies back to women, which is logical, after all.
But a side effect of power is that for everyone who has it, someone doesn't. I made my argument to her and she accepted it, but in the pit of my stomach I knew that if the time came and she decided an abortion wasn't for her, there was nothing I could do about it except run out on her and my child, and I could never in good conscience do that.
In the past, men have held all the cards, and women I suppose have simply had to put up with this uncomfortable feeling of having life-altering decisions made for them. But women's bodies have always held extreme appeal to men, and because we covet them, they have always been a source of power. So we've done all we can to strip this power from women, or convince them they don't have it. I'm thinking, in particular, of social attitudes to female infidelity. Throughout history, men having multiple lovers has always been accepted -- even in the Bible we have virile King Solomon and his harem of women. The opposite, however, has never really been true in our society (have you read the Scarlet Letter?). I was thinking that this is probably because a woman always knows her child is hers, but a man can never be sure. Because, in a patriarchal society, inheritance of land and titles has always passed from father to son, it has been absolutely necessary that we ensure our bl
Well, no one in their right mind thinks of Hispanic as white (the only reason this is the case on the census is due to historic -- read 19th century -- reasoning which subdivided humans into 3 broad categories, being caucasoid, mongoloid, and negroid).
50.1% is extremely close to half; it looks as though someone was looking for the breaking point, and 2050 is a nice round number. That would imply that by 2060 (for example) whites will probably be a minority (and there will be no majority, as I believe is already the case in California).
So the OP really was pretty close. Come on, give him credit. There's no way that the real number would have been something round like 2050, anyway.
I'll believe it when I have the source code in my hand, under a DFSG-approved license. Until then, it's all just marketeering, as far as I'm concerned. Sun changes their mind every week about open source.
No, see, that's the problem. It isn't just punishment. It's rehabilitation. Our prisons are designed to contain, not to rehabilitate. As a result, they operate in a defacto state of lawlessness and abuse -- see the Stanford Prison Experiment -- and result in the institutionalization of inmates.
People are put in prison to rot. If you go to prison for 5 years on something minor like possession of LSD, and spend those 5 years having to brutally subdue inmates trying to rape you while the guards look on, get used to carrying home made weapons for your own protection, etc, how can you reasonably be expected to function in society? When you went in, there was nothing violent about you. In the joint, you learned violence as a way to survive. Are you just supposed to forget all that?
Remember the social crisis in the 70s with all the vets that couldn't get over the Nam? Normal, honest boys sent off to kill the bad guys. But then it turned out to not be just the bad guys, but women and children, too. They come back traumatised and violent.
A drug addict needs treatment for his addiction, not incarceration. A murderer or a rapist needs psychological help, and needs to be constantly observed functioning in society, not outside of it.
People want to be tough on crime, so they say "We have to punish these people." But unless you want to keep them in prison forever, you need to have an exit strategy. You need to figure out how to punish them, but not make them more violent and hateful than they were to begin with. Half a decade of anal rape and prison killings will fuck up any man.
Some countries (Denmark, I think) treat prison (in most cases) like a job you do. On the weekends, you can go home. Why is this such a bad idea? If people lose track of society, they won't be able to get back into it.
Everyone makes mistakes, and people change. We respect alcoholics recognizing that they have a disease and trying to get over it, but we don't think the same of rapists, who arguably are even more psychologically damaged. So we ignore the problem, we don't bother fixing it; instead we put the rapist into a prison where he gets to decide if he wants to be bitch or wolf. Yeah, that's going to decrease the likelyhood of a repeat offense when he eventually gets out.
Genetic factors certainly play a part in obesity, heart disease, etc. There is no doubt about this.
However, the fact remains that Americans are more overweight than essentially anyone else on earth. Moreover, we're possibly one of the most genetically diverse nations on earth, given that our entire population is descended from people from other places (with the exception of Native Americans, of course, duly noted).
Given these facts, making the "it's genetic" argument for more than a tiny, tiny percentage of overweight people is just making excuses for an overly sedentary lifestyle. With the introduction of fast food (an American invention), the younger generations in countries where people have classically been slim are getting fat. This is notably true in France and China, where overweight people were few and far between in my mother's time. While you might be able to make an economic rather than lifestyle argument for China, this is hardly true of France. Neighboring Germany tends to have much huskier folks; it isn't surprising, look at what they eat.
Americans are fat, face it. We are. As a society. We eat too much, we exercise too little, etc. It's a direct result of living in a culture that is, as the french say, consommatrice -- consumerist would be a good translation. We consume like it's going out of style. We eat larger servings of greasier food than anyone else out there.
To make matters worse, we increasingly have a "it's anyone's problem but my own" reaction to any criticism. So fat people say, "It's not because I don't exercise, although I don't, or because I eat too much, although I do, but rather because I'm genetically predetermined to be 'big-boned' (don't you call me fat, it's rude)."
It really makes light of people who actually do have genetic heart disease/weight problems. They do exist. Typically, they have actually gone to certified nutrionists and worked their asses off to lose weight, and been unable to; these people know what it's like to not have a choice. Most people I know that like to claim they've done the same have actually purchased a limited membership to 24-hour fitness and have made a half hearted effort to go, once or twice. They ignore scientifically substantiated recommendations on nutrion, prefering instead to try whatever the latest fad diet is -- bonus points if it's one of those "have a shake for lunch and then you can have a fudge sundae with your steak dinner, and still lose weight!" Or the Atkins diet. Ugh.
The "it's not my fault" thing is endemic in our society. It really needs to stop. You can't lose weight by ordering a Big Mac and a Diet Coke (supersized, no less). Lots of Americans do this. You see them do it. They buy a huge, greasy mess of fast food slop and order a Diet Coke with it. Wow. I bet they're gonna lose weight any day now!
Or it could be some rather critical problems in Hurd, such as the inability to support partitions over 2 GB in size (not really a Hurd problem, just really stupid driver design - Hurd's file system drivers memorymap the entire partition, and since the address space of a 32-bit processor is just 4 GB...).
FWIW, this problem has been fixed (or so I've heard). But seriously, GNU Mach sucks. It has all the poor features of a monolithic kernel and all the poor features of a microkernel, all wrapped into one. L4-Hurd is a much better prospect, but it isn't very mature yet.
Slashdot Mirror
I support negroes voting, but you're just not going to win any sympathy with that type of argument.
The government needs to extend voting benefits to everyone or no one. However, if you think mommy government is going to force all those evil whities to recognize that negroes have the same sufferage rights as godfearing white people, it just isn't going to happen, and you're the one who needs to get over it. If, by some miracle, the government did declare such a thing, American Whites will just make up a new, exclusive way to vote, and you're back to square one. Deal.
(Am I the only one that thinks the parent's retort was completely stupid? New name for their version of marriage? What?)
This is actually a reference to a picture hosted on rotten.com. It may seem surprising to you that I was able to detect the ACs meaning; but after you go see the picture, my friend, you will understand that it has a profound effect on your memory.
It isn't hard to find (it should be linked from the main page, called 'The Incident with the Bird' or some such). I'm too lazy to link.
While I'm no fan of Microsoft, I think the Hurd qualifies as a RSNOS. Implication: it is not exclusively a Microsoft concept.
Of course, one could argue that the reason the Hurd is a RSNOS is because they want to get it done right. So I would say, RSNOSs that suck are an exclusively Microsoft concept.
Scientific progress goes BOINC?
Hail to the king, baby.
You know, I remember reading that the lyrics to that song were written by none other than Shel Silverstein. Don't have a reference though.
Still, it's one of my favorite Johnny Cash songs. New country is for bitches. Old country is where it's at.
Wasn't Le Sacre du Printemps written by Igor Stravinsky in the early part of the last century? Wikipedia says 1911 to 1913. Fantasia was released in 1940. So without having any links to back up Nom du Keyboard's claim, I would have to say that this seems very plausible -- the work would have still had an active copyright in 1940 (although by now it hopefully would have expired).
It is worth noting that the United States did not become a signatory of the Berne Convention until 1989, although it became a signatory of the Universal Copyright Convention in 1952. Fantasia predates all of these; this also suggests that what the OP is saying is plausible.
Further research (from copyright.gov) shows that the US and the USSR (or at least, Russia) began respecting each others copyrights legally only in 1973, when the latter nation became party to the Universal Copyright Convention in Geneva, Switzerland.
This suggests that there would have been nothing even vaguely illegal about Disney using Le Sacre du Printemps without Stravinsky's permission. It would surprise me, in fact, if they even bothered asking -- if you ask and they say no, you look like a jerk when you do it anyway. But if you just respect the law, no one can fault you for it.
I'm not a big fan of Disney, but for much of the youngish Slashdot community, globally enforced copyrights are seen as the norm, when really that is a very recent development.
Dude, do you hear that whooshing sound? It's the the sound of the GPs joke going right over your little head.
Yeah, because those people would love how France randomly decides to flex its nuclear muscles by detonating bombs on the pristine beaches of Polynesia. Don't remember the slogan, "Stop Hirochirac"?
My experience with the jocks in HS was rather the opposite -- they turned out to be alright, once they got over themselves (this typically involved them going to Uni and realizing that being popular in HS didn't transfer well to a college environment).
When you're idolized, you start to let aspects of your personality develop that wouldn't otherwise. I'm sure lots of you have played MUDs, for example. Lots of people that become powerful on such games begin to act in a very powertrippy way, even though they're actually nice people in real life. It's the situation, usually, that causes these sorts of personality quirks, not the person himself.
Once they are removed from the situation (being a popular football star) they get to be more grounded. And let's face it, we geeks weren't exactly easy to like, either. But everyone grows up.
No doubt to convince people that love sports that he has stuff in common with them. It's all a lie, of course -- when the bar of entry for running for president is being a multimillionaire, no politicians in any party have much in common with regular voters.
The OP's point was that, while this is politicking and silly, it's completely irrelevant. He has no power, as the President, to make decisions that affect sports (other than, I suppose, vetoing bills that involve them). He isn't on the board of directors at the NFL. He isn't going to declare that the 49ers are the best team ever, legally. He can't do anything like that.
The posters point is that this shouldn't be an issue. But in America, people like to vote for the person rather than what he stands for. This is manifestly stupid, because politicians never present their true selves on the campaign trail (if ever). Just look at how cool Bob Dole and Al Gore turned out to be, once they retired from politics. Funny, charismatic, interesting people. Whoda thunk it. Of course Al Gore making self-deprecating jokes on a campaign trail would have been suicide; and Bob Dole endorsing Viagra would have been the same.
The truth is, politicians need to spend a lot of time calculating what kind of person they want people to think they are. It's sad, but as you probably learned in high school, most people don't like you for who you really are, and when your job depends on people liking you enough to vote for you, well, you start looking at demographics, not at your heart.
Kerry is hardly the first politician guilty of this, and he won't be the last. I see lots of reasons not to like Kerry, but stuff like this is as silly as disliking Bush because he's not particularly well-spoken.
Now, now, I hate Bush as much as the next red blooded American, but he got elected because too many people voted for him.
You might say that he stole the election because the florida thing was rigged, or because Gore won the popular vote, or because Aliens took over the Supreme Court when the decision was made, and all of these things might even be true. But in order for them to make a difference, enough people still had to vote for him for the election to be close enough that these factors could be construed to matter.
Even if you posit that Gore won, he didn't win by a huge margin. That is the problem. Too many people voted for Bush. That's why he's president.
Let's not make the same mistake again, ok?
Well, I did a quick search on google and lots of stuff came up, with data supporting your side of the argument and mine. This didn't really surprise me, since studies sponsored by pro-contraceptive groups always showed no increased risk or decreased risk, whereas studies sponsored by anti-contraceptive groups seemed to show the opposite.
One link that was particularly informative was the Oral Contraceptives and Cancer Risk page at the National Cancer Institute. Essentially, they maintain that there is a statistically significant correlation between higher rates of breast cancer and long term oral contraceptive use (which I didn't know, so I'm glad you had me looking for references.) The correlation is clear enough that a causal relationship appears to be accepted by most researchers in the field, but there is more recent data that disputes this (the article discusses it).
On the other side, there is a significant decrease in the risk of ovarian cancer, for reasons unknown. Again, causality seems apparent, as the data remains consistent when varying other factors that might have been key, such as race, rate of birth, etc. The pill also reduces the risk of endometrial cancers to a significant degree.
There are a number of other cancers that are positively correlated with OC use. These include cervical cancer and certain types of liver tumors. However, the increase is either not significant enough statistically to warrant worry, or is widely believed to be non-causal: for example, due to the higher likelyhood of women on OCs having non-barrier-method sex (without condoms, etc), there is a higher rate of HPV infection among women that are on the pill. HPV is a leading cause of cervical cancer, so it is unclear whether increased cervical cancer is caused by the pill directly, or simply as a side effect of higher HPV infection rates.
Now, ovarian cancer and endometrial cancer are nothing to laugh about, and the fact that the pill reduces these is a very good thing (and it reduces them very significantly, the numbers are in the referenced link). However, breast cancer is the most common and dangerous cancer for women, so an increased rate of breast cancer is nothing to write off, either. As the article points out, though, frequent screening (breast exams, mammograms, and the like) can catch most breast cancers early and should be practiced by all women regardless (especially as they get older).
It is my opinion (of course I may be biased here) that the pill has, more than anything else, been a force of liberation for women everywhere. The pill has allowed women to have sex like men; this (while frightening if you want to preserve the status quo) has had the net effect of reducing objectification of women, increasing objectification of men, and generally promoting equality of the sexes. It's beneficial effects with regard to women's menstrual problems can't be ignored, either.
Still, the breast cancer link is interesting. Worth pointing out, certainly, to anyone thinking about the pill. Read the link, though, it's interesting (and seems unbiased).
The point of my post, friend, is that despite the misguided views to the contrary held by so many privileged middle income white males who post on Slashdot, you did not make it here by just working diligently, as you so eloquently put it.
You got here by standing on the shoulders of your parents, your friends, your stable community, teachers that cared, etc, etc, etc.
The point of my sarcastic rant was that unless you are the person that I described that really did do everything on his own and against the odds, you have benefited from the hard work and support of others, which you likely did not earn but rather were given as a birthright.
This is not the case for the vast majority of non-white, non-middle income, non-male persons.
Despite what Ayn Rand would have you believe, the world is not made up of Howard Roarks and you, in particular, are no exception. Inherited wealth and opportunity does not make you more capable or intelligent than someone with the misfortune of being born into less fortuitous circumstance.
You had a safety net. Some people do not. It is society's responsibilty to provide at least a minimal one for them.
Actually, you have it backwards. The pill reduces the risk of cervical and breast cancer. I don't know about ovarian cancer.
As we now, with the aging boomer generation, finally have data on women who have taken the pill all their lives, we've got pretty hard data on the subject. There's no reason not to take the pill.
In fact, for many women, it means regular periods (or even no period, if you don't want to have one for a while, and are on a monophasic pill), moderate to light flow, reduced cramping, etc. My little sister was put on the pill by her obgyn to control her period's eratic, unnaturally heavy flow and the cramps that kept her out of school two days out of every month.
The bigger boobs thing is related to the fact that the pill works by convincing the body that it's pregnant, and so there is some inflation of the mammary glands, but it's usually next to unnoticeable. Of course, the FDA is (for some reason) very reluctant to allow the low dosage pills that have been de rigeur in Europe for decades now.
I think the pill has affected too much social change for our conservative government to trust it. Allowing women to control their bodies with little or no side effects! No! We have to give them the pill, or they'll riot, but let's keep dosages high enough that they still have some adverse physical affects from the higher hormone dosage (like nausea during adjustment, etc) as a deterrent.
Can't have women running their own womb now! God forbid!
I think you're missing the point of my story. No birth control method is perfect anyway; even if we'd been using condoms or she'd been on the pill, there remains the possibility of conception. My answer to unwanted conception is abortion.
Now, I will agree that contraceptives are a superior solution. But I think of them as a superior solution because they are less possibly harmful to the woman, less costly, and less psychologically disturbing, not because I want to avoid killing babies.
Just wanted to note that, you know, in case you wanted to get more offended. I don't jive with the whole pro-life stance thing and if your little retort is seeding for that sort of debate, this is the last response you're going to get from me on the subject.
Well, hispanics are not spanish. Spanish people are white (a lot of them aren't even all that dark, blonde hair and blue eyes not being uncommon).
... that's how it works).
Hispanics (in the US sense of the word) refers to the mixing of Europeans and South and Central American natives. The two were blended to such an extent that their offspring no longer physically resemble either race. They don't think of themselves as being white, that's for sure; the vast majority of them have much more native blood in them than white, as there were far more natives than whites when the Conquistadores came.
In fact, in the US, most native south americans would probably be considered hispanic rather than Native American (incorrectly, perhaps, but
Regardless of whether you call them Native Americans or Hispanics, though, they still take a sizeable portion of the pie away from the "white" majority. FWIW, not all Mexicans would be considered Hispanic (although the vast majority probably would be).
Personally, I'm "Other/Decline to State" until the Census form has a "Human" check box. Race is a stupid distinction anyway.
Most people that graduate from inner city schools still can't get into high school
That should read "university". Sorry.
Oh yeah, you earned it, alright. I bet you grew up in the ghetto with illiterate parents who were alcoholics and beat you. I bet you had a crime-ridden gang-dominated inner city high school to look forward to, which, despite the fact that you were certainly not one of the cool kids (hey, you post on Slashdot) and risked getting beaten up every time you went, you still attended regularly. I bet through your sweat and perserverence, you pervailed, walking through your gang-banger neighborhood out into the better burbs where there were libraries (where of course you needed to lay very low, lest you be harassed by cops on account of your being less fair in complexion than most of the residents) so that you could obtain non-graffiti laiden versions of the textbooks you needed to pass your classes. Classes, by the way, taught by the most inexperienced and underqualified teachers in America, as is the case in most poor neighborhoods.
Then, because good universities like extracurricular activities, you tried your best to do community service and find constructive ways to better yourself, while your brother and his gang banger friends were living the thug life on easy money they got from selling cocaine. Despite their apparent success and your lack of a greater frame of reference, you believed the rich white senator types who said things like "Stay in school! It'll pay off in the end."
After 4 arduous years you convinced someone to give you a scholarship to a local state school, maybe. Perhaps, if you were lucky, affirmative action helped, but probably not -- after all, why should the better off in society help those less fortunate? So you made your way through without any help. You got to university, and lived on what meager assistance you could eek out of what little money you were getting from odd jobs and whatever else -- maybe you ate rice and beans, and lived on the other side of the tracks where housing was cheaper -- until you finally got your degree in some useful, high paying discipline.
Then you went out and, despite the fact that you only get paid cents on the dollar compared to a similarly qualified white applicant, you managed to build a living for yourself.
You sir, are certainly to be commended. You don't need help from anyone.
But lots of people aren't as fortunate. Most children abused by parents end up abusing their own children. Most kids in inner city schools drop out, prefering to make easy money illegally -- everyone they know ends up dead or in jail anyway, and jail is free housing and meals, more than they can expect at home. Most people that graduate from inner city schools still can't get into high school -- all high schools are not created equal, no matter what the rulebook says -- and if they do get in, they can't afford it. Even with all these hurdles, enough people do make it that competition for the dozens of adequate scholarships is cutthroat. Not to mention that if you were ever implicated in a drug bust (a common thing in poor neighborhoods) you aren't eligible for federal aid.
Oh but wait, you're against federal aid. Don't want those undeserving people to take the money you rightfully earned, all by yourself, with no-one helping you.
Seriously. Think about it.
This is completely off-topic.
You know, I was having a discussion with my lover the other day because she had gone off the pill for a bit, and we (out of habit) had had unprotected sex a few times. Not a big deal, she didn't get pregnant (although it was dangerous), but I said something like, "You know, you really should get back on the pill, or we should start using condoms or something, because if you got pregnant you'd probably have to go all the way down to Hong Kong to get a safe abortion." (We live in Shanghai).
Anyway, she said something then that scared me a lot, as a man. She said, "I don't know if I'd want to have an abortion." And I just about exploded. Essentially, the thesis of my argument was, "You can't make that decision for the both of us." Her retort, then, was "Don't you think you should at least consider my opinion?"
And my answer to that was no, that I shouldn't have to. In normal circumstances when two people have a difference of opinion on a decision to be made, I would be rooting for the consensus approach -- but in this case, I felt that we were dealing with a decision that had two very different outcomes. One possibility, abortion, had very little effect on our lives. Sure, we'd both be filled with "what ifs" and she'd probably feel sick and depressed for a while, which is lamentable, but contrasted against the outcome of not having an abortion, it just seemed rather minor. I felt that no one (man or woman) should have the ability to unilaterally make a decision that would affect someone else's life for at least 20 years and probably forever.
Anyway, the reason I'm bringing this up is because it seems like a classic case of men's interests versus women's. In classic women's lib, we've often talked about how men in the old days (and in many places still today) have "hijacked" women's bodies for the purpose of bearing children. This is mostly universally decried. Now that women have the power to choose of their own accord whether they want a child or not, there seems to be the possibility of a woman forcing a man to be a father when he doesn't want or isn't ready to be (along with all the responsibilities, financial and otherwise, that that implies).
I really had a very emotional reaction to all this, I must admit. Thinking about it now, from a more distant perspective, I wonder if this not-at-all uncommon response from men on this issue is actually a result of experiencing, for the first time, what it is like to not be in power. I mean, we control most everything else, but one of the great successes of feminism in the western world is giving control of women's bodies back to women, which is logical, after all.
But a side effect of power is that for everyone who has it, someone doesn't. I made my argument to her and she accepted it, but in the pit of my stomach I knew that if the time came and she decided an abortion wasn't for her, there was nothing I could do about it except run out on her and my child, and I could never in good conscience do that.
In the past, men have held all the cards, and women I suppose have simply had to put up with this uncomfortable feeling of having life-altering decisions made for them. But women's bodies have always held extreme appeal to men, and because we covet them, they have always been a source of power. So we've done all we can to strip this power from women, or convince them they don't have it. I'm thinking, in particular, of social attitudes to female infidelity. Throughout history, men having multiple lovers has always been accepted -- even in the Bible we have virile King Solomon and his harem of women. The opposite, however, has never really been true in our society (have you read the Scarlet Letter?). I was thinking that this is probably because a woman always knows her child is hers, but a man can never be sure. Because, in a patriarchal society, inheritance of land and titles has always passed from father to son, it has been absolutely necessary that we ensure our bl
Well, no one in their right mind thinks of Hispanic as white (the only reason this is the case on the census is due to historic -- read 19th century -- reasoning which subdivided humans into 3 broad categories, being caucasoid, mongoloid, and negroid).
50.1% is extremely close to half; it looks as though someone was looking for the breaking point, and 2050 is a nice round number. That would imply that by 2060 (for example) whites will probably be a minority (and there will be no majority, as I believe is already the case in California).
So the OP really was pretty close. Come on, give him credit. There's no way that the real number would have been something round like 2050, anyway.
I'll believe it when I have the source code in my hand, under a DFSG-approved license. Until then, it's all just marketeering, as far as I'm concerned. Sun changes their mind every week about open source.
No, see, that's the problem. It isn't just punishment. It's rehabilitation. Our prisons are designed to contain, not to rehabilitate. As a result, they operate in a defacto state of lawlessness and abuse -- see the Stanford Prison Experiment -- and result in the institutionalization of inmates.
People are put in prison to rot. If you go to prison for 5 years on something minor like possession of LSD, and spend those 5 years having to brutally subdue inmates trying to rape you while the guards look on, get used to carrying home made weapons for your own protection, etc, how can you reasonably be expected to function in society? When you went in, there was nothing violent about you. In the joint, you learned violence as a way to survive. Are you just supposed to forget all that?
Remember the social crisis in the 70s with all the vets that couldn't get over the Nam? Normal, honest boys sent off to kill the bad guys. But then it turned out to not be just the bad guys, but women and children, too. They come back traumatised and violent.
A drug addict needs treatment for his addiction, not incarceration. A murderer or a rapist needs psychological help, and needs to be constantly observed functioning in society, not outside of it.
People want to be tough on crime, so they say "We have to punish these people." But unless you want to keep them in prison forever, you need to have an exit strategy. You need to figure out how to punish them, but not make them more violent and hateful than they were to begin with. Half a decade of anal rape and prison killings will fuck up any man.
Some countries (Denmark, I think) treat prison (in most cases) like a job you do. On the weekends, you can go home. Why is this such a bad idea? If people lose track of society, they won't be able to get back into it.
Everyone makes mistakes, and people change. We respect alcoholics recognizing that they have a disease and trying to get over it, but we don't think the same of rapists, who arguably are even more psychologically damaged. So we ignore the problem, we don't bother fixing it; instead we put the rapist into a prison where he gets to decide if he wants to be bitch or wolf. Yeah, that's going to decrease the likelyhood of a repeat offense when he eventually gets out.
Genetic factors certainly play a part in obesity, heart disease, etc. There is no doubt about this.
However, the fact remains that Americans are more overweight than essentially anyone else on earth. Moreover, we're possibly one of the most genetically diverse nations on earth, given that our entire population is descended from people from other places (with the exception of Native Americans, of course, duly noted).
Given these facts, making the "it's genetic" argument for more than a tiny, tiny percentage of overweight people is just making excuses for an overly sedentary lifestyle. With the introduction of fast food (an American invention), the younger generations in countries where people have classically been slim are getting fat. This is notably true in France and China, where overweight people were few and far between in my mother's time. While you might be able to make an economic rather than lifestyle argument for China, this is hardly true of France. Neighboring Germany tends to have much huskier folks; it isn't surprising, look at what they eat.
Americans are fat, face it. We are. As a society. We eat too much, we exercise too little, etc. It's a direct result of living in a culture that is, as the french say, consommatrice -- consumerist would be a good translation. We consume like it's going out of style. We eat larger servings of greasier food than anyone else out there.
To make matters worse, we increasingly have a "it's anyone's problem but my own" reaction to any criticism. So fat people say, "It's not because I don't exercise, although I don't, or because I eat too much, although I do, but rather because I'm genetically predetermined to be 'big-boned' (don't you call me fat, it's rude)."
It really makes light of people who actually do have genetic heart disease/weight problems. They do exist. Typically, they have actually gone to certified nutrionists and worked their asses off to lose weight, and been unable to; these people know what it's like to not have a choice. Most people I know that like to claim they've done the same have actually purchased a limited membership to 24-hour fitness and have made a half hearted effort to go, once or twice. They ignore scientifically substantiated recommendations on nutrion, prefering instead to try whatever the latest fad diet is -- bonus points if it's one of those "have a shake for lunch and then you can have a fudge sundae with your steak dinner, and still lose weight!" Or the Atkins diet. Ugh.
The "it's not my fault" thing is endemic in our society. It really needs to stop. You can't lose weight by ordering a Big Mac and a Diet Coke (supersized, no less). Lots of Americans do this. You see them do it. They buy a huge, greasy mess of fast food slop and order a Diet Coke with it. Wow. I bet they're gonna lose weight any day now!
FWIW, this problem has been fixed (or so I've heard). But seriously, GNU Mach sucks. It has all the poor features of a monolithic kernel and all the poor features of a microkernel, all wrapped into one. L4-Hurd is a much better prospect, but it isn't very mature yet.