"A good example are all charities that collect clothing and ship it to the third world. Every item of clothing shipped this way means one less item produced by the local factories."
I totally agree! We should NEVER let recycling compete with with new manufacturing for the same market space.
Giving you the benefit of the doubt, by supposing that wasn't just a Troll post:
There are some things that you say in your post that suggest that you don't really know much about religion.
1- "Religion provides a great numbing effect" If you make a good study of the effects of religion on the lives of many adherents I think you would quickly clear up for yourself the misconception that "numbing" is a universal effect of religion truth.
2- "It's easier to just give in to religion" Having "given in" to a religion, and feeling pressures all around me to not live as I believe, I would have to disagree with you there. I can't think of any person that I know (from any religion) that feels like religion is the easy way out.
3- "All this killing in the name of religion is nuts." The fact that I, and everybody I know (especially the strongly religious) agree with that statement, suggests that you've missed the point somewhere.
The trouble is that there are some religions that have exactly the effects that you've described. If you're looking for reasons to discount religion, you can definitely find enough bad examples. If, on the other hand, you're not trying to fit data to a pre-conception of what religion is, it is very easy to see that there are religions that are valuable to humanity.
You're right, and when my sister's Sprint was 10 years old it was still running, though on it's 3rd (IIRC) owner.
So, do you feel like you're justified in trading 10mpg for "nicer," or do you wonder if you're committed to the environment?
I realize that's kind of a personal question, and I'm not trying to be judgemental here. I'm just trying to see how people that aren't me think about these things.
Since I asked that question, it's only fair that I tell you the following: We have a minivan that gets a little under 20 mpg in the city, and a little over 20 mpg on the highway. The minivan stays home with the wife and kids, while I walk to the train station and take the train to work. When we got rid og our old (17 year old, breaking down too often, 5 passenger) car we felt like we needed more room (future children, driving friends, etc.) We bought the van used.
I think another recent post of yours alluded to that idea that many things that we (or others) accept as Truth were really only meant to working assumptions.
I think that idea has a lot of merit. I'll think about it.
In contrast, there are things that are True that many of us dismiss (perhaps unwittingly) as convenient theories.
Does anyone here know how much energy it takes to build a new car (say, a Prius)?
Does the change in gas mileage justify the extra energy, the disposal and (we hope) recycling of the old car, and the further diminishing of irreplaceable natural resources required to replace an old car with a new one?
I know that it's a great marketing tool, but I have a hard time believing that building any new car saves energy over rehabilitating a 10-year-old Geo Metro.
So, observing that my sister, aproximately 15 years ago, had a car that routinely got 65 miles per (US) gallon of gasoline, do people that drive (with 3 or fewer passengers) anything that gets less than 50 mpg today really believe themselves to be committed to the environment?
One more thing: Want a test to see if people are as serious as they say on the poll? For those of you that live in places that have such things, watch where there are revolving doors next to regular doors. Does the percentage of people that use the revolving door, even when it's slightly inconvenient, match the percentages in the article?
In the building where I work, probably 90% use the revolving door. In contrast, there is a building next door that I pass through, and the revolving door usage there is probably 40% or less.
I'm sorry that I seem to have misunderstood you, but I don't see how else anyone reading your (GGP) post could have taken it. You (perhaps mistakenly) only talked about missing out on sex, and didn't mention companionship at all. (e.g. "If you are 30 and did not have sex in your 20's, then being single is miserable." instead of "If you are 30 and don't have good friends, then being single is miserable.") Had you even mentioned friendship and companionship, I would have agreed with you. Had you not further confused sex with companionship (e.g. "to those that go decades without it, 'sex' means more than just the act") in your response, I would be more likely to think that I had misunderstood you the first time.
Then, this comment in your (parent) post, "Even if you don't have sex with them, you get girl friends that you could have sex with..." which suggests that you might be one of these people that I pity (see definition of pity below). You see, first, I never had a "girlfriend" until 4-5 months before I got married. Second, I fully believe that if I had ever said or done anything to suggest an invitation to any of my female friends to have sex outside of marriage, they would have been offended, and felt hurt and betrayed. I hope that you can see how this mutual standard and trust allowed (and allows) close friendships.
I know that there exist shallow women and men, but you seemed to have implied in your (GGP) post that non-shallow women and men are few and far between. I disagree with that implication. From your statements in your (parent) post you may also disagree, but it wasn't clear.
One more thing. In my (GP) post, I ended with, "If you think that happiness/misery depends on whether you get sex I pity you." Upon re-reading this statement, and the rest of that post, you may realize that I never once suggested that I pity people who don't fit conventional images of attractiveness, but rather pitied people looking for happiness where I don't believe they'll find it. You responded with, "So have a little compassion instead of disgust..." Here is a link to the definition of pity.
What if you're already earning minimum wages, and have bills to pay?
Somehow, I don't see this as an effective argument in favor of not finding a better job.
Being single IS being miserable.
I was single (no wife or girlfriend) for more than 20 years, and wasn't miserable. It is true, that the years that I've been married are even better, but if you're miserable just because you're single, I pity you.
I doubt people dedicating their lives to a computer game are really that happy.
How do people justify a claim to believe that Jesus was a prophet, and not accept His statements about Him being the fulfillment of prophesy, and who His Father is? Do people also say "Well Moses was a prophet, but he was probably making it up when he said that Pharaoh should let the people go?"
"Christians don't seem to have a clue for the most part about any of the texts of the Torah.. if they did, they would have a hard time believing Christ was the Messiah."
When Jesus explained the scriptures to the Jews many of the doctrinally knowledgable, that had lots of "clue" about the prophesies, at that time did accept that he was the Son of God and the Messiah, even if they didn't fully understand with his (then) current mission was.
I understand that you may not agree with the New Testament account, but according to the Jews that wrote it, it wasn't doctrinal differences that kept many Jews people from believing Jesus was the Messiah any more than in the Old Testament it was doctrinal differences that kept many of the Israelites from believing what Moses (or Samuel, or Nathan, or Elijah, etc.) told them.
I also accept that you probably don't agree with the Jews that did accept Jesus as the Messiah back then, but I wanted to make sure that you didn't ignore the terms (according to those that did accept) on which they did accept Him.
When I was in elementary school I used to think that memorizing the multiplication tables was stupid. You could look it up in a table, or if you didn't have a table you could work it out in a few seconds.
I continued to feel more or less the same until I was teaching algebra to college students, some of whom didn't know the multiplication tables.
Factoring an simple trinomial can be very difficult without basic single-digit multiplication tables at your immediate recall. Those that didn't memorize the multiplication tables when children were at a disadvantage. Those that didn't learn them for the class either never could factor trinomials with any degree of speed or accuracy.
When we moved to our current apartment my wife looked up some crime stats for various neighborhoods.
With 100 as the national average: Some areas of Newark, NJ were 400 or more. The small town where I went to high school (about 2000 pop, 50 miles from nearest Mc Donald's) was about 25 or so, IIRC. The town has significant Mexican (ex-pat) and Navajo populations. The town where our apartment is, rated 4. That's right, single digit, 4.
This is the most diverse place I've ever lived, or visited. On my short block (duplexes and single-family homes) there are at least 6 native languages. My daughter's first grade class had a variety of Christians along with Jews, Muslims, Buddists, and I don't know what religion the kid from Mongolia follows. The school has maybe 20 students that would qualify for free or reduced school lunch. When I'm in church on Sunday I talk to people from Nigeria, Jamaica, Haiti, Mexico, Chile, Peru, Germany, Philipines, Eastern Europe, etc.
We happened to drive through one of those very high crime areas of Newark and my daughter had a question. "Why is everyone the same color?"
Result: In my (perhaps not statistically significant experience) it is the lack of diversity that has a positive correlation with crime and welfare. So, I think it's interesting that you put "diversity" in quotes.
The trouble is that I doubt that I'll ever be able to afford to buy a home in the town where I live.
"When did you ever go somewhere beautiful and see photos of cities with the slogan "get away from it all - go to London", for instance?"
I don't know about London, but New York city is marketed very effectively as a place to go to have fun. And, while I have no desire to live in Manhattan, the property values demonstrate that plenty of people like it permanently.
Also, Las Vegas makes losts money telling people to go there to "get away."
I thought about how to reply, but you've so completely misunderstood so much of what I've said already, that I have no hope of you understanding any of my responses to your misunderstandings.
The argument in your first paragraph, though highly paid union officials have used it often, is ineffective on a few points (IMO): 1- Unions don't need to be big. The hugeness of many unions seems to be more for purposes of power outside the workplace than to directly help the members. 2- Hiring someone to take care of clerical and legal work is different than paying someone to tell the union members what to think and do. 3- Union governance would be less corrupt (IMO) if it were more shared (less work for a single person), anyway.
Several quotes from your post: "these democracies are likely to be more corruptable simply because they're unions?" "That's an unproven assertion" "quit listening to conservative talk radio"
I didn't say that they were corruptible because they were unions, I suggested that I assume that the're corrupt when people claiming to represent the union aren't actually part of the group that they claim to represent.
And as for unproven assertions: The little bit that I listen to the radio, it's usually music. The non-music that I listen to on the radio is NPR.
Show me a union where the leaders of the union are actually currently working in the jobs that they claim to represent, make within a standard deviation of the mean income of the union members, and recieve no compensation for leading the union, and I might agree, for that particular union, anyway.
Some people argue that the union can't function that way, ignoring the fact that not only have unions worked that way, but they were started that way. Unions don't stay that way because they are so easily corruptible, and so useful to organized crime, politics, etc.
I was a union member, once. Once was more than enough.
Nearly all people that seriously study economics agree that inflation is due to increased money supply. Traditionally people think of physically printing more money as the way to increase money supply. These days, the increased money supply is more a result of government interest rates.
Slashdot Mirror
Yep. Sending asbestos death ships to India is definitely in the "forefront of modern environmental practises (sic)." http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=18274 9&cid=15104210
OK, OK. I freely admit that referring to arivanov's post doesn't generate a lot of credibility.
I thought that exploding population has (recently) been the most effective solution to exploding population.
"A good example are all charities that collect clothing and ship it to the third world. Every item of clothing shipped this way means one less item produced by the local factories."
I totally agree!
We should NEVER let recycling compete with with new manufacturing for the same market space.
Giving you the benefit of the doubt, by supposing that wasn't just a Troll post:
There are some things that you say in your post that suggest that you don't really know much about religion.
1- "Religion provides a great numbing effect"
If you make a good study of the effects of religion on the lives of many adherents I think you would quickly clear up for yourself the misconception that "numbing" is a universal effect of religion truth.
2- "It's easier to just give in to religion"
Having "given in" to a religion, and feeling pressures all around me to not live as I believe, I would have to disagree with you there. I can't think of any person that I know (from any religion) that feels like religion is the easy way out.
3- "All this killing in the name of religion is nuts."
The fact that I, and everybody I know (especially the strongly religious) agree with that statement, suggests that you've missed the point somewhere.
The trouble is that there are some religions that have exactly the effects that you've described. If you're looking for reasons to discount religion, you can definitely find enough bad examples. If, on the other hand, you're not trying to fit data to a pre-conception of what religion is, it is very easy to see that there are religions that are valuable to humanity.
You're right, and when my sister's Sprint was 10 years old it was still running, though on it's 3rd (IIRC) owner.
So, do you feel like you're justified in trading 10mpg for "nicer," or do you wonder if you're committed to the environment?
I realize that's kind of a personal question, and I'm not trying to be judgemental here. I'm just trying to see how people that aren't me think about these things.
Since I asked that question, it's only fair that I tell you the following:
We have a minivan that gets a little under 20 mpg in the city, and a little over 20 mpg on the highway. The minivan stays home with the wife and kids, while I walk to the train station and take the train to work. When we got rid og our old (17 year old, breaking down too often, 5 passenger) car we felt like we needed more room (future children, driving friends, etc.) We bought the van used.
I think another recent post of yours alluded to that idea that many things that we (or others) accept as Truth were really only meant to working assumptions.
I think that idea has a lot of merit. I'll think about it.
In contrast, there are things that are True that many of us dismiss (perhaps unwittingly) as convenient theories.
Does anyone here know how much energy it takes to build a new car (say, a Prius)?
Does the change in gas mileage justify the extra energy, the disposal and (we hope) recycling of the old car, and the further diminishing of irreplaceable natural resources required to replace an old car with a new one?
I know that it's a great marketing tool, but I have a hard time believing that building any new car saves energy over rehabilitating a 10-year-old Geo Metro.
So, observing that my sister, aproximately 15 years ago, had a car that routinely got 65 miles per (US) gallon of gasoline, do people that drive (with 3 or fewer passengers) anything that gets less than 50 mpg today really believe themselves to be committed to the environment?
One more thing: Want a test to see if people are as serious as they say on the poll?
For those of you that live in places that have such things, watch where there are revolving doors next to regular doors. Does the percentage of people that use the revolving door, even when it's slightly inconvenient, match the percentages in the article?
In the building where I work, probably 90% use the revolving door. In contrast, there is a building next door that I pass through, and the revolving door usage there is probably 40% or less.
I'm sorry that I seem to have misunderstood you, but I don't see how else anyone reading your (GGP) post could have taken it.
You (perhaps mistakenly) only talked about missing out on sex, and didn't mention companionship at all. (e.g. "If you are 30 and did not have sex in your 20's, then being single is miserable." instead of "If you are 30 and don't have good friends, then being single is miserable.")
Had you even mentioned friendship and companionship, I would have agreed with you. Had you not further confused sex with companionship (e.g. "to those that go decades without it, 'sex' means more than just the act") in your response, I would be more likely to think that I had misunderstood you the first time.
Then, this comment in your (parent) post, "Even if you don't have sex with them, you get girl friends that you could have sex with..." which suggests that you might be one of these people that I pity (see definition of pity below). You see, first, I never had a "girlfriend" until 4-5 months before I got married. Second, I fully believe that if I had ever said or done anything to suggest an invitation to any of my female friends to have sex outside of marriage, they would have been offended, and felt hurt and betrayed. I hope that you can see how this mutual standard and trust allowed (and allows) close friendships.
I know that there exist shallow women and men, but you seemed to have implied in your (GGP) post that non-shallow women and men are few and far between. I disagree with that implication. From your statements in your (parent) post you may also disagree, but it wasn't clear.
One more thing. In my (GP) post, I ended with, "If you think that happiness/misery depends on whether you get sex I pity you." Upon re-reading this statement, and the rest of that post, you may realize that I never once suggested that I pity people who don't fit conventional images of attractiveness, but rather pitied people looking for happiness where I don't believe they'll find it. You responded with, "So have a little compassion instead of disgust..." Here is a link to the definition of pity.
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=pity
Please especially note the first listed synonym, "compassion."
"If you are single, but over 6', not bald, and not very over-weight, chances are you have sex at least 1/year."
I was single, 6'3" close to 200lbs, had many friends (men and women) and didn't have sex until after I was married (mid 20's), and wasn't miserable.
If you think that happiness/misery depends on whether you get sex I pity you even more than if you're miserable becuse you're single.
What if you're already earning minimum wages, and have bills to pay?
Somehow, I don't see this as an effective argument in favor of not finding a better job.
Being single IS being miserable.
I was single (no wife or girlfriend) for more than 20 years, and wasn't miserable. It is true, that the years that I've been married are even better, but if you're miserable just because you're single, I pity you.
I doubt people dedicating their lives to a computer game are really that happy.
I agree.
Don't forget, NT also did a lot to kill Netware.
How do people justify a claim to believe that Jesus was a prophet, and not accept His statements about Him being the fulfillment of prophesy, and who His Father is? Do people also say "Well Moses was a prophet, but he was probably making it up when he said that Pharaoh should let the people go?"
"Christians don't seem to have a clue for the most part about any of the texts of the Torah.. if they did, they would have a hard time believing Christ was the Messiah."
When Jesus explained the scriptures to the Jews many of the doctrinally knowledgable, that had lots of "clue" about the prophesies, at that time did accept that he was the Son of God and the Messiah, even if they didn't fully understand with his (then) current mission was.
I understand that you may not agree with the New Testament account, but according to the Jews that wrote it, it wasn't doctrinal differences that kept many Jews people from believing Jesus was the Messiah any more than in the Old Testament it was doctrinal differences that kept many of the Israelites from believing what Moses (or Samuel, or Nathan, or Elijah, etc.) told them.
I also accept that you probably don't agree with the Jews that did accept Jesus as the Messiah back then, but I wanted to make sure that you didn't ignore the terms (according to those that did accept) on which they did accept Him.
fewer "miracles"
Fewer "miracles" is only better history if the the "miracles" didn't happen.
(Note to flamers: This post is true even if the miracles didn't happen.)
When I was in elementary school I used to think that memorizing the multiplication tables was stupid. You could look it up in a table, or if you didn't have a table you could work it out in a few seconds.
I continued to feel more or less the same until I was teaching algebra to college students, some of whom didn't know the multiplication tables.
Factoring an simple trinomial can be very difficult without basic single-digit multiplication tables at your immediate recall. Those that didn't memorize the multiplication tables when children were at a disadvantage. Those that didn't learn them for the class either never could factor trinomials with any degree of speed or accuracy.
I can't argue with that, and in fact I think that's generally true.
Still, the town where I went to high school would definitely be at the low end of the economic spectrum.
Why the non-sequitur?
Even though true for Vegas, and not for NYC, it doesn't change the fact that people DO see those places as ways to go on vacation.
"Diversity" means one thing : CRIME and WELFARE
Interesting that you put "diversity" in quotes.
When we moved to our current apartment my wife looked up some crime stats for various neighborhoods.
With 100 as the national average:
Some areas of Newark, NJ were 400 or more.
The small town where I went to high school (about 2000 pop, 50 miles from nearest Mc Donald's) was about 25 or so, IIRC. The town has significant Mexican (ex-pat) and Navajo populations.
The town where our apartment is, rated 4. That's right, single digit, 4.
This is the most diverse place I've ever lived, or visited. On my short block (duplexes and single-family homes) there are at least 6 native languages.
My daughter's first grade class had a variety of Christians along with Jews, Muslims, Buddists, and I don't know what religion the kid from Mongolia follows. The school has maybe 20 students that would qualify for free or reduced school lunch.
When I'm in church on Sunday I talk to people from Nigeria, Jamaica, Haiti, Mexico, Chile, Peru, Germany, Philipines, Eastern Europe, etc.
We happened to drive through one of those very high crime areas of Newark and my daughter had a question. "Why is everyone the same color?"
Result: In my (perhaps not statistically significant experience) it is the lack of diversity that has a positive correlation with crime and welfare. So, I think it's interesting that you put "diversity" in quotes.
The trouble is that I doubt that I'll ever be able to afford to buy a home in the town where I live.
The hope of getting something for nothing fuels a lot of industries. Gambling (including lotteries) seems most obvious.
How many people have lost more than $2500 (net) in, say, two years of gambling?
"When did you ever go somewhere beautiful and see photos of cities with the slogan "get away from it all - go to London", for instance?"
I don't know about London, but New York city is marketed very effectively as a place to go to have fun. And, while I have no desire to live in Manhattan, the property values demonstrate that plenty of people like it permanently.
Also, Las Vegas makes losts money telling people to go there to "get away."
I thought about how to reply, but you've so completely misunderstood so much of what I've said already, that I have no hope of you understanding any of my responses to your misunderstandings.
So, no further resonse. Thank you.
The argument in your first paragraph, though highly paid union officials have used it often, is ineffective on a few points (IMO):
1- Unions don't need to be big. The hugeness of many unions seems to be more for purposes of power outside the workplace than to directly help the members.
2- Hiring someone to take care of clerical and legal work is different than paying someone to tell the union members what to think and do.
3- Union governance would be less corrupt (IMO) if it were more shared (less work for a single person), anyway.
Several quotes from your post:
"these democracies are likely to be more corruptable simply because they're unions?"
"That's an unproven assertion"
"quit listening to conservative talk radio"
I didn't say that they were corruptible because they were unions, I suggested that I assume that the're corrupt when people claiming to represent the union aren't actually part of the group that they claim to represent.
And as for unproven assertions: The little bit that I listen to the radio, it's usually music. The non-music that I listen to on the radio is NPR.
Show me a union where the leaders of the union are actually currently working in the jobs that they claim to represent, make within a standard deviation of the mean income of the union members, and recieve no compensation for leading the union, and I might agree, for that particular union, anyway.
Some people argue that the union can't function that way, ignoring the fact that not only have unions worked that way, but they were started that way. Unions don't stay that way because they are so easily corruptible, and so useful to organized crime, politics, etc.
I was a union member, once. Once was more than enough.
Nearly all people that seriously study economics agree that inflation is due to increased money supply. Traditionally people think of physically printing more money as the way to increase money supply. These days, the increased money supply is more a result of government interest rates.
"So I'm a water addict?"
Yes.
"They" say that you can beat any addiction in two weeks, if you quit cold turkey.
Come on! You can do it!