It doesn't necessarily favor the pro-abortion argument if you realize that not everything that reduces crime is desirable. Certainly 24/7 government surveilance of every room in every house of every person in the world would reduce crime, but it certainly would not be desirable.
Or, to extend the above economist's logic, why should we stop at merely encouraging abortions among those whose cultural and socioeconomic characteristics make their children more likely to be criminals? Sterilizing everybody in the inner cities would certainly reduce crime for the same reason that encouraging inner city residents to have abortions does. Should it be done?
25.5% of women deciding to have an abortion want to postpone childbearing. 21.3% of women cannot afford a baby. 14.1% of women have a relationship issue or their partner does not want a child. 12.2% of women are too young (their parents or others object to the pregnancy.) 10.8% of women feel a child will disrupt their education or career. 7.9% of women want no (more) children. 3.3% of women have an abortion due to a risk to fetal health. 2.8% of women have an abortion due to a risk to maternal health.
Let's go down the list. Wanting to postpone childbearing is certainly a reason based on convenience. As for cannot afford a baby, I will also put that under convenience, at least in the developed world where you can be poor and fat at the same time. Would you rather lose your child or live in poverty? A relationship issue, such as the partner doesn't want a child is certainly for convenience. The mother being too young is also for convenience, as the baby certainly can be raised even by the mother's parents if necessary. Disruption of a career or education is also for convenience as is especially not wanting more children. And finally, the last two categories concerning health are definitely not for convenience.
You may decide differently what is convenient or not, but I count 95% of abortions performed for convenience. Even with more liberal criteria than what I use, I think you'll arrive at a percentage greater than 50%.
It is not really secret if the searched person is ever told about it. And if a warrant is required, I don't see the problem at all.
It is a good idea for combining our need for security with effective recognition of our constitutional rights. If a terrorist is warned of a search, then they know that the game is up, and that they should flee and tell their co-conspirators to do the same. Waiting a reasonable time to tell the subject that they were searched allows both evidence to be gathered effectively and the subject's constitutional rights to be preserved, since they always eventually learn about the search and the search warrant must go through a judge.
In any case, I don't think that the average person who says "secret searches" in reference to the PATRIOT act thinks that a warrant is required or that the searched person ever has to find out that he was searched. Contrary to popular wisdom, the 4th amendment is not contradicted.
I think that grandparent is refering to other things like the inability of of Photoshop to read Nikon raw images or the inability to reliably stream iTunes music
I've read Freakonomics and it doesn't discount what I say at all. The most Freakonomics would say is that it is stupid to worry about being murdered if you live in a normal, middle class neighborhood. It does not say that you shouldn't be worried if you are a nerdy white boy walking through an alley in the worst part of Chicago.
Oh, and those campus crime statistics are irrelevant. I care about the chances of getting mugged while being off-campus, not on-campus.
I'm excited to go to UF anyway because I get to go for free. I don't regret for a minute passing up a university where I not only would be bored out of my mind due to the inability to leave campus, but also have a $120K debt. Maybe graduate school will be different.
It was much more than that. Believe me, I talked to others who had went there, and I got the impression that everyone is depressed an awful lot and because of the bad neighborhood there is nothing to do off campus.
Chicago really is a dangerous city. I didn't even apply to the University of Chicago (even though I had a reasonable chance of being admitted) due to the fact that the neighborhood around the college is so dangerous that students can't even leave!
Because pollsters strive to make that sample of 3000 people representative of the population of likely voters. There is no effort to have a representative sample.
All right, I constantly hear that MSO is bloated, but is it really? My files in Word open in 2 seconds tops. OO.o takes ~10 seconds, even with the Quickstarter. And IIRC the install sizes of both programs are about the same.
Agreed. The government should not be involved at all. Then a nice balance between producer and consumer rights can be achieved. However, when I say that the government should not be involved, that includes laws like the DMCA. Government should do nothing more than provide the framework for the MPAA to take individual copyright infingers to court, and get its head out of the details of making or breaking DRM technology.
For me, the MPAA should be able to sell DVDs with any amount of DRM that they desire, as long as they indicate that the DVD is DRMed. I just want the right to be able to break the encryption, or even do simple things like interoperate my devices without being sued.
Nothing. It is referring to a company called ClearPlay that resold DVDs at a substancial markup after having scrubbed them of non-family-friendly content. The bill just passed makes this practice legal, which is necessary because Hollywood groups are suing ClearPlay.
Because space and time themselves formed during this epoch. The questions involving what space and time intrinsically are remain mysterious. The first microsecond is the most important one in the whole universe.
we went to Iraq, initially, fueled on the FUD surrounding the events of 9/11/01
FUD? I never had the impression that Hussein was behind 9/11. I know that there are those who are either misinformed or idiots who believe this, but anyone worth your time arguing with would know that this isn't true.
The lies that say we are in Iraq to "free them" from their evil regime
This was initially only part of the reason, but after no WMDs were found, it became the primary reason. You put "free them" in quotation marks, but I believe that we actually have freed them. Oh sure, they were worse off under us during the peak of the insurgency last November, but the insurgency is now rapidly losing ground because of the elections. Actual elections. Even though 28 died and 71 were wounded, and insurgents promised to "wash the streets with voters' blood", people risked their lives to vote, with turnout at 59%. Iraq has a Kurdish president, Talabani. A Shiite is prime minister. And many of those elected are not exactly pro-American. The elections are also inspiring democracy elsewhere. In Lebanon, anti-Syrian protesters are inspired by the Iraqi elections. In Saudi Arabia, they are actually allowing elections for local officials (women can't vote though....sigh).
I can't wait until the final stable government is formed and we can leave the place. The elections are the only justification left for the Iraq war, everything else was an embarrassing demonstration of the lack of intelligence of our intelligence community.
But we're in Iraq now, and nothing can change what has already happened. We need to set up a truly democratic, stable government, and then get the heck out of there.
What about North Korea? Or Iran? There is very little we can do about North Korea. We simply have to stand with Japan, S. Korea, and China and put as much pressure as possible on them. If we attacked North Korea, they would use their thousands of artillery guns to reduce S. Korea to rubble.
In Iran, military action is not even necessary. The Iranian mullahs are despised by most of the population. Iranian are surprisingly pro-American. I think that in time the Iranian regime will be overthrown.
supporting an evil cause still makes one evil
Well, you got me, I'm really evil. When I go to bed every night, I pray for as many Iraqis to die as possible, as well as fantasize about ruling the world and decapitating puppies. Bwahahahahaha!!!
The Fairness Doctrine,which mandated that newscasts cover both sides of an issue (quite vulnerable to abuse), has not existed since the middle of the Reagan administration.
Republicans are generally against campaign finance reform, even though republican John McCain started this whole mess. Bush only reluctantly signed it.
What's more important is the slashdot mind-meld. I'm a Republican and a poster on Slashdot for only a few months. It is true that I sometimes cringe and laugh out loud at posts here. But that is the world we live in, and for every "Bush=Hitler" post there are many more with thoughtful criticisms of GWB that are worth reading and responding to. When people engage in such debate, there is at least a tacit level of respect between all parties concerned. When you debate enough Republicans, you realize that although you disagree with them, they are not vampires, and you can have them as friends and colleagues. Again, through debate, you realize that I'm not evil, that I don't run over kittens with my Hummer for fun, and that I love it that both I and the people who disagree with me completely can debate.
Oh yes, I also use Firefox. That at least will get me a good mod.
While studying for the National Georgraphy Bee, I played a lot of Civ 2. It really teaches you those place names when you have to memorize them in order to figure out quickly what's going on in your empire. I did a lot of serious studying as well, but that game taught me 25 cities in each of Britain, France, Germany, and Russia (I'm from the US).
you, sir, are an example of why 'make something sound extreme and nobody will believe it' works as a modern propaganda technique
If you define propaganda as "something that you disagree with. But since I don't believe your crackpot conspiracy theories I must be stupid, right?
WHERE IS THE EVIDENCE THAT OSAMA BIN LADEN WAS BEHIND 9/11? YOUR GOVERNMENT *IS* SUPPRESSING IT!
Well, Bin Laden did admit it.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/binladen_10-29 -04.html
But I'm sure that Lyndon LaRouche is much more accurate than Jim Lehrer, who is just Bush's lackey. But hey, if you use all-caps it must be true, right?
slavish devotion to the 'common line' is extremism too, you know.
Oh, I see, I'm slavish. This is one post. You can prove that my devotion to my omnipresent, all knowing god George W. Bush is slavish based on one comment? Odd definition you must have there.
One of their muzzles concerns Tariq Ramadan. There are two sides to every story, and the article is just a whitewash.
The group that his grandfather founded is the Muslim Brotherhood, a terrorist organization that not only spawned offshoots in many countries, but assassinated Anwar Sadat of Egypt for making peace with Israel among other less notorious acts.
There are many allegations of extremist statements such as: Osama Bin Laden was not behind 9/11, 9/11 was an "intervention", the praise of the genocidal Hasan Al-Turabi (the head of the Sudanese government), and more. He was also barred from entering France for suspicion of collaboration with Algerian Islamists.
So to recap, he has close familial ties with the oldest terrorist organization in the mid-east, he has made many extremeist political statements, and he was barred from entry into foreign country not known for being pro-US before. Couple that with the fact that denying someone a visa does not require the same level of proof as convicting someone of a crime, and I would have to say at least that it is not miscarriage of justice to deny this man a visa.
Well, I have to say that some standardized tests are the best thing since sliced bread. They are a WONDERFUL thing. How can someone who doesn't work for ETS have such opinions? Let me explain.
You see, it used to be that getting into top colleges was based partly on how good you were and partly on whether you were part of the good old boy network. The SAT set out to change that. How do you think my dad, a poor boy from New Haven, got into the University of Chicago? 1600 SAT. My mom went to a no name university in south east Washington nicknamed "Moo U" because there were more cows than people nearby. How did she ever get into medical school? 99th percentile on the MCAT, that's how.
The tests are not perfect, but they offered the chance for a girl from rural Washington to fulfill her dream and become a doctor. More generally, standardized testing offered a world of opportunity to those without connections.
Slashdot Mirror
It doesn't necessarily favor the pro-abortion argument if you realize that not everything that reduces crime is desirable. Certainly 24/7 government surveilance of every room in every house of every person in the world would reduce crime, but it certainly would not be desirable.
Or, to extend the above economist's logic, why should we stop at merely encouraging abortions among those whose cultural and socioeconomic characteristics make their children more likely to be criminals? Sterilizing everybody in the inner cities would certainly reduce crime for the same reason that encouraging inner city residents to have abortions does. Should it be done?
Because it's true. This is the breakdown of reasons why women have abortions, taken froma aabortionstats.htm
http://womensissues.about.com/cs/abortionstats/a/
25.5% of women deciding to have an abortion want to postpone childbearing.
21.3% of women cannot afford a baby.
14.1% of women have a relationship issue or their partner does not want a child.
12.2% of women are too young (their parents or others object to the pregnancy.)
10.8% of women feel a child will disrupt their education or career.
7.9% of women want no (more) children.
3.3% of women have an abortion due to a risk to fetal health.
2.8% of women have an abortion due to a risk to maternal health.
Let's go down the list. Wanting to postpone childbearing is certainly a reason based on convenience. As for cannot afford a baby, I will also put that under convenience, at least in the developed world where you can be poor and fat at the same time. Would you rather lose your child or live in poverty? A relationship issue, such as the partner doesn't want a child is certainly for convenience. The mother being too young is also for convenience, as the baby certainly can be raised even by the mother's parents if necessary. Disruption of a career or education is also for convenience as is especially not wanting more children. And finally, the last two categories concerning health are definitely not for convenience.
You may decide differently what is convenient or not, but I count 95% of abortions performed for convenience. Even with more liberal criteria than what I use, I think you'll arrive at a percentage greater than 50%.
It is not really secret if the searched person is ever told about it. And if a warrant is required, I don't see the problem at all.
It is a good idea for combining our need for security with effective recognition of our constitutional rights. If a terrorist is warned of a search, then they know that the game is up, and that they should flee and tell their co-conspirators to do the same. Waiting a reasonable time to tell the subject that they were searched allows both evidence to be gathered effectively and the subject's constitutional rights to be preserved, since they always eventually learn about the search and the search warrant must go through a judge.
In any case, I don't think that the average person who says "secret searches" in reference to the PATRIOT act thinks that a warrant is required or that the searched person ever has to find out that he was searched. Contrary to popular wisdom, the 4th amendment is not contradicted.
Please know that the PATRIOT Act does NOT allow secret searches. Trusty www.factcheck.org (which I swear is non-partisan) strikes again!
http://www.factcheck.org/article259.html
Finally the debate will be settled once and for all!
like Konqueror?
I think that grandparent is refering to other things like the inability of of Photoshop to read Nikon raw images or the inability to reliably stream iTunes music
I've read Freakonomics and it doesn't discount what I say at all. The most Freakonomics would say is that it is stupid to worry about being murdered if you live in a normal, middle class neighborhood. It does not say that you shouldn't be worried if you are a nerdy white boy walking through an alley in the worst part of Chicago.
Oh, and those campus crime statistics are irrelevant. I care about the chances of getting mugged while being off-campus, not on-campus.
I'm excited to go to UF anyway because I get to go for free. I don't regret for a minute passing up a university where I not only would be bored out of my mind due to the inability to leave campus, but also have a $120K debt. Maybe graduate school will be different.
It was much more than that. Believe me, I talked to others who had went there, and I got the impression that everyone is depressed an awful lot and because of the bad neighborhood there is nothing to do off campus.
Although "negro" is considered offensive (maybe parent doesn't know that), bringing up facts does not make parent racist.
Blacks are seven times more likely to commit homicide than whites.
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/homicide/race.htm
Chicago really is a dangerous city. I didn't even apply to the University of Chicago (even though I had a reasonable chance of being admitted) due to the fact that the neighborhood around the college is so dangerous that students can't even leave!
Because pollsters strive to make that sample of 3000 people representative of the population of likely voters. There is no effort to have a representative sample.
All right, I constantly hear that MSO is bloated, but is it really? My files in Word open in 2 seconds tops. OO.o takes ~10 seconds, even with the Quickstarter. And IIRC the install sizes of both programs are about the same.
Agreed. The government should not be involved at all. Then a nice balance between producer and consumer rights can be achieved. However, when I say that the government should not be involved, that includes laws like the DMCA. Government should do nothing more than provide the framework for the MPAA to take individual copyright infingers to court, and get its head out of the details of making or breaking DRM technology.
For me, the MPAA should be able to sell DVDs with any amount of DRM that they desire, as long as they indicate that the DVD is DRMed. I just want the right to be able to break the encryption, or even do simple things like interoperate my devices without being sued.
Nothing. It is referring to a company called ClearPlay that resold DVDs at a substancial markup after having scrubbed them of non-family-friendly content. The bill just passed makes this practice legal, which is necessary because Hollywood groups are suing ClearPlay.
Because space and time themselves formed during this epoch. The questions involving what space and time intrinsically are remain mysterious. The first microsecond is the most important one in the whole universe.
we went to Iraq, initially, fueled on the FUD surrounding the events of 9/11/01
FUD? I never had the impression that Hussein was behind 9/11. I know that there are those who are either misinformed or idiots who believe this, but anyone worth your time arguing with would know that this isn't true.
The lies that say we are in Iraq to "free them" from their evil regime
This was initially only part of the reason, but after no WMDs were found, it became the primary reason. You put "free them" in quotation marks, but I believe that we actually have freed them. Oh sure, they were worse off under us during the peak of the insurgency last November, but the insurgency is now rapidly losing ground because of the elections. Actual elections. Even though 28 died and 71 were wounded, and insurgents promised to "wash the streets with voters' blood", people risked their lives to vote, with turnout at 59%. Iraq has a Kurdish president, Talabani. A Shiite is prime minister. And many of those elected are not exactly pro-American. The elections are also inspiring democracy elsewhere. In Lebanon, anti-Syrian protesters are inspired by the Iraqi elections. In Saudi Arabia, they are actually allowing elections for local officials (women can't vote though....sigh).
I can't wait until the final stable government is formed and we can leave the place. The elections are the only justification left for the Iraq war, everything else was an embarrassing demonstration of the lack of intelligence of our intelligence community.
But we're in Iraq now, and nothing can change what has already happened. We need to set up a truly democratic, stable government, and then get the heck out of there.
What about North Korea? Or Iran?
There is very little we can do about North Korea. We simply have to stand with Japan, S. Korea, and China and put as much pressure as possible on them. If we attacked North Korea, they would use their thousands of artillery guns to reduce S. Korea to rubble.
In Iran, military action is not even necessary. The Iranian mullahs are despised by most of the population. Iranian are surprisingly pro-American. I think that in time the Iranian regime will be overthrown.
supporting an evil cause still makes one evil
Well, you got me, I'm really evil. When I go to bed every night, I pray for as many Iraqis to die as possible, as well as fantasize about ruling the world and decapitating puppies. Bwahahahahaha!!!
The Fairness Doctrine ,which mandated that newscasts cover both sides of an issue (quite vulnerable to abuse), has not existed since the middle of the Reagan administration.
Republicans are generally against campaign finance reform, even though republican John McCain started this whole mess. Bush only reluctantly signed it.
What's more important is the slashdot mind-meld. I'm a Republican and a poster on Slashdot for only a few months. It is true that I sometimes cringe and laugh out loud at posts here. But that is the world we live in, and for every "Bush=Hitler" post there are many more with thoughtful criticisms of GWB that are worth reading and responding to. When people engage in such debate, there is at least a tacit level of respect between all parties concerned. When you debate enough Republicans, you realize that although you disagree with them, they are not vampires, and you can have them as friends and colleagues. Again, through debate, you realize that I'm not evil, that I don't run over kittens with my Hummer for fun, and that I love it that both I and the people who disagree with me completely can debate.
Oh yes, I also use Firefox. That at least will get me a good mod.
While studying for the National Georgraphy Bee, I played a lot of Civ 2. It really teaches you those place names when you have to memorize them in order to figure out quickly what's going on in your empire. I did a lot of serious studying as well, but that game taught me 25 cities in each of Britain, France, Germany, and Russia (I'm from the US).
Ob Simpsons:
Or rods per hogshead
If you define propaganda as "something that you disagree with. But since I don't believe your crackpot conspiracy theories I must be stupid, right?
WHERE IS THE EVIDENCE THAT OSAMA BIN LADEN WAS BEHIND 9/11? YOUR GOVERNMENT *IS* SUPPRESSING IT!Well, Bin Laden did admit it. http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/binladen_10-29 -04.html
But I'm sure that Lyndon LaRouche is much more accurate than Jim Lehrer, who is just Bush's lackey. But hey, if you use all-caps it must be true, right?
slavish devotion to the 'common line' is extremism too, you know.Oh, I see, I'm slavish. This is one post. You can prove that my devotion to my omnipresent, all knowing god George W. Bush is slavish based on one comment? Odd definition you must have there.
And the lower classes won't be able to afford a computer capable of running XP Starter either.
One of their muzzles concerns Tariq Ramadan. There are two sides to every story, and the article is just a whitewash.
The group that his grandfather founded is the Muslim Brotherhood, a terrorist organization that not only spawned offshoots in many countries, but assassinated Anwar Sadat of Egypt for making peace with Israel among other less notorious acts.
There are many allegations of extremist statements such as: Osama Bin Laden was not behind 9/11, 9/11 was an "intervention", the praise of the genocidal Hasan Al-Turabi (the head of the Sudanese government), and more. He was also barred from entering France for suspicion of collaboration with Algerian Islamists.
So to recap, he has close familial ties with the oldest terrorist organization in the mid-east, he has made many extremeist political statements, and he was barred from entry into foreign country not known for being pro-US before. Couple that with the fact that denying someone a visa does not require the same level of proof as convicting someone of a crime, and I would have to say at least that it is not miscarriage of justice to deny this man a visa.
Well, I have to say that some standardized tests are the best thing since sliced bread. They are a WONDERFUL thing. How can someone who doesn't work for ETS have such opinions? Let me explain.
You see, it used to be that getting into top colleges was based partly on how good you were and partly on whether you were part of the good old boy network. The SAT set out to change that. How do you think my dad, a poor boy from New Haven, got into the University of Chicago? 1600 SAT. My mom went to a no name university in south east Washington nicknamed "Moo U" because there were more cows than people nearby. How did she ever get into medical school? 99th percentile on the MCAT, that's how.
The tests are not perfect, but they offered the chance for a girl from rural Washington to fulfill her dream and become a doctor. More generally, standardized testing offered a world of opportunity to those without connections.