I'm suggesting 4 diverse individuals to talk about 4 diverse topics is going to be better than having all 4 speakers be upper middle class, white, male, silicon valley startup alumni.
Having 4 speakers who are not all upper middle class silicon valley startup alumni is certainly better than having 4 speakers who are all upper middle class silicon valley alumni.
I'll even grant you that men and women are different (as every twelve-year-old knows) and say that 4 speakers who are not all upper middle class silicon valley startup alumni of the same gender is better than having 4 speakers who are all upper middle class silicon valley alumni of the same gender.
But why do you feel the need to throw race into it? Do you feel there are significant hormonal differences between people of different races? Do you think brain scans detect significant differences in thought patterns between people of different races? There are some differences in how people treat you - fore example walk around as a white guy in Asia and you'll be treated as a foreigner - sometimes that's good and sometimes that's bad. But these aren't differences that would be significant to a Ruby conference.
The most racist people I know are those who think racial diversity is an important goal.
Diversity is a good thing, and it should be deliberately incorporated. That doesn't mean we should have a black homeless woman 'quota', and it doesn't mean that there should be a law enforcing such a quota. But if I'm planning an event, and I notice I've got a lineup of consisting of nothing but 'white guys' then yeah, I'll step back and re-evaluate whether that's the most interesting line up I could have, and whether incorporating speakers with different backgrounds would be more interesting -- because it probably would.
So if the conference has one white male with a background of using Ruby on Windows for web applications, another white male with a background of using Ruby on Unix to develop FPS games, another white male with a background of writing Ruby libraries for managing BPEL, and another white male with a background of implementing statistical packages in Ruby - that would not be diversity.
But if get a white guy, an black guy, and a white woman and an oriental guy who all use Ruby for developing web apps on Unix, that would be diversity. Is that correct?
Being a white males is not a "background", it is a skin color and gender. If you want diverse backgrounds you should be looking at what the people have done, what they have studied, and what they have said. Focusing on their race and gender just makes you racist and sexist.
But we have all been taught from an early age that it is wrong to feel guilt for killing bad guys. If you feel guilty, then you are *for* the bad guys, and therefore one of *them*. ( remember, its a binary good/evil world we live in, amiright?)
You must have watched different war movies and cowboy movies than I did. The ones I watched generally portrayed the people who felt guilty for the killing as decent folk. The guilt was only "bad" when it prevented necessary action. For example, if your guilt in killing the bad guy prevented you from killing him and he went on to kill your friends - you were bad. But if you killed the bad guy and then wept over his corpse, gave him a funeral and set up a trust fund to care for his family, you were good. On the other hand, if the bad guy surrendered and you shot him anyway, you were bad. If you let him surrender and didn't kill him you were good.
Rule 1: Creating an autonomous robot that designed attacks human beings is forbidden. A robot that designed to recognize human beings is permitted so long as no attack on the humans occurs without affirmative human direction. A robot designed autonomously recognize and attack buildings, vehicles and ships is permitted.
Rule 2: Creating a weapon that masquerades a human in an attempt to protect the weapon from autonomous robots is forbidden.
They found some ancient artifacts that prove the early Chinese found Mars first and that Mars is an integral part of Chinese territory (as it the Moon since the Chinese saw it first).
Whether the social norms learned at school reflect the "real world" depends on what real world you live in. If you work at a high-tech white collar job and live in a suburb in a democratic country then the norms at school probably don't reflect your real world. But on the other hand, your real world has very little in common with the rest of the real world. Most people live in a world where they do have to submit to leaders or face punishments far worse that what you had to face in school. Most people live in a world where physical intimidation is something that must be handled occasionally or even daily. I'm not saying people get into fights all the time, but the concepts of a pecking order and bullying are there.
And don't forget that our schools also train our future leaders. If they don't understand that in the real world there is no teacher to make bullies behave, there no police force to call when people break social norms, and the rules of the unsupervised playground prevail so that might makes right - they'll be ineffective leaders.
If all you learned was submission then you failed. At some point you should have learned to blow off the abuse. You should have learned when to roll your eyes and walk away. You should have learned when to just look at someone with disbelief that they could be so lame. You should have learned how to make friends to help you stand up as a group.
I personally was a late learning, but I did finally figure some things out in high school - like how to ignore insults because it didn't really matter what the person saying them said - he wasn't someone whose opinion mattered to me. And, to my surprise as I learned after school, no one else cared about his opinion either. That guy who offered to shake hands before a fight and then yanked me forward with his right while knocking me out with his right? Turned out everyone around me thought he was a jerk and thought his behavior was deplorable. I didn't need to fight him. I didn't need to answer his taunts on the bus. It took me longer than it should have, but I did figure it out.
And I also learned some important lessons about humanity in general. All that stuff you learn when you're watching Barney and Sesame Street about people basically being good, and that you learn about how the good will come out with a little reason and a little kindness, well it's crap. There are some people who, if they are good somewhere deep down, it is really really far deep down. The Simpsons got it right when the bully just keeps bullying. And as for the majority of people around you, they may not be mean, but for the most part they'll just ignore your pain. A lot of people put on a show of civility for the people around them who can help them, who can make them more popular, who are their friends. But those of us who were bullied have seen the other side of these people. We know.
At one point I seriously considered just getting into a fight with a kid who was bullying me. At the same time, I was hoping to try to live up to my potential and get straight As. I did the math of course. If we each got suspended for 3 days and missed a test - Mr. Bully could recover and bring his grade point average back up to a D or C with a couple good scores. I would never be able to recover the A.
But it would help if strong performance were made a positive thing to your peers. Hogwarts has that school team thing (yeah, I know it's fictional, but it's still a good illustration). While having 4 teams that get judged on various things including academics and discipline creates a climate where 3/4s of the students are out to get you, it also creates a climate where 1/4 of the students want you to succeed. This means that if you're doing well they praise you instead of resent you. It means if you're doing poorly they have a reason to help you do better. This is generally what happens on sports teams.
I don't know if copying exactly what Hogwarts does would work in real life, but it seems using some sort of team academic competition would help the academically successful kids not be resented so much. And it would help motivate underachievers.
What better evidence for intellectualism than that a post that a clear attempt to hijack the thread to make non-sequitur attacks on political opponents gets modded Insightful?
I suppose it might help if efforts were made to promote some team competition or even team grading in academic subjects. Competitions like that "It's Academic" show held in class would make it nice to have the smart kid on your team sometimes. I'm sure some people would object that it would hurt the feelings of the kids who don't do as well, but we have competitions for soccer, football, basketball, and other physical activities all the time and the results are quite visible. The only time we worry about the results hurting people's feelings are in academics. It seems to me that a little more visibility would help everyone. People would know when they need to improve. Not everyone knows.
I think Chemisor (97276) said it best on Slashdot some months ago:
To a nerd, acquiring social skills merely means learning that he can never mention anything he really cares about, and that he must learn to politely endure other people's boring rants without showing it. And then people wonder why he dislikes socializing.
People don't get bullied for being good at soccer or for being good at art.
Regarding Mr. Nicholson's quote: I don't think the latter would be PG. A simulation of it might be PG. I mean, if you use special effects to make it look like an axe is cutting off some part of a person's body it might be PG. It would likely depend on the graphicness of the depiction and the quality of the special effects. However if you filmed it for real it would certainly be at least an R.
I think the same applies to the former part of his comment. If it is only simulated with special effects and doesn't actually occur, it might get a PG or it might get an R depending on the clearness of the view and the quality of the special effects.
Actually, this is more the standard in the USA, where violence is tolerated more than nudity. In most European countries, the standard seems to be reversed: American television shows are considered extremely violent and not suitable for children, but you can see billboard advertisements for soap featuring mild nudity (anything except genitals, really). Other parts of the world like Saudi Arabia forbid even showing females in print, which caused a kerfluffle when Ikea photoshopped all women out of the Saudi version of their catalog.
The biggest problem, really, is that obscenity filters are oriented only towards Americans, since the USA has the noisiest "church ladies" and Tipper Gore wannabes (man, I am dating myself here!). The rest of the world is either not big enough a market to filter for, or tolerant anyways so there is no need for more restrictions. So the techies just do enough filtering to cover their asses and can't be bothered to actually maintain said filters, since that isn't really a moneymaker.
My impression is that in America violence isn't much tolerated either. When was the last time you saw on TV someone getting shot in the head - for real I mean? When those Americans had their heads chopped off and videos of the event were posted on the internet, did you see the videos on your local news? When you see a car accident reported on the news, do they show the mangled body before its covered with a sheet?
I think the distinction often lies in whether what is being shown is the real event or a simulation. Movies constantly show "dead" people, but we know they're just actors and the people aren't really dead. Movies often show people getting out of a shower covered with a towel, but we know the actors have clothes on underneath. However, when it comes to reality people start to object. They don't show real dead bodies on TV. And they usually don't show people who really don't have their clothes on (although this has certainly changed a lot over the last few decades). In both cases I think the reason is not just what is seen, but what goes into creating the image. The only way to make a photo of someone without clothes is to have someone remove their clothes in front of the film crew. This is generally considered bad for the person doing so particularly if is a young women (as it usually is). Some people believe it is ok, but we also know that a lot of women who do this sort of thing early in life later regret it. On the other hand, simulated violence on TV doesn't require the actors and actresses to engage in actual violence.
You don't forgive someone unless they've done something wrong, so to say that you forgive someone is to implicitly accuse someone of doing something wrong.
So rather than saying out loud that they forgive you, many Christians will forgive you silently so as not to cause offense.
Imagine you're having a bad day and are rude to someone, and that someone says "I forgive you". What you're likely to hear in your mind is that person saying "I forgive you for being such an @ss and I'm soooo much better and more righteous than you." So instead the person simply forgives you without saying anything, and continues to try to be nice.
I find this method seriously scary due to the probability of a false positive. I mean, suppose you have a system that only fails once in a million times and the killer has already left the country. You ask the two million people in the metropolitan area to submit DNA. You get on average two matches. One doesn't have an alibi. You take him to trial and tell the jury that he not only doesn't have an alibi, he had a 1 in a million DNA match. It sounds pretty convincing. It is very possible the jury won't have the understanding of statistics to ask "was this a sweep or did you only test a couple of likely suspects?" Nor is it likely that the information will be volunteered by the court.
running a restaurant - the Democrats tell you whether you can smoke and Bloomberg (Democrat who switched parties but not stripes so he could run) even wants to tell you how big your drinks can be.
Your freedom to smoke vs. my freedom to be smoke free. You're still welcome to smoke on your own property. You're still welcome to make your kids breath your smoke during the most critical time of their development.
It's also illegal for me to enter an establishment naked, or with a huge boom box.
No you're not, and that is my point. for some reason it is perfectly legal for people to walk around outside on the sidewalk forcing me to breath their smoke, but illegal for them to smoke in a privately run restaurant ( a place that I can easily refuse to go ) .
So you're saying that if the government wants to tax 100% of everything you earn, it's not slavery because you have a choice of whether or not you want to work and because we have a constitutional amendment allowing Congress to do it?
I suppose you're right. It doesn't give me any comfort though.
From Wikipedia: A Democrat before seeking elective office, Bloomberg switched his registration in 2001 and ran for mayor as a Republican, winning the election that year and a second term in 2005. Bloomberg left the Republican Party over policy and philosophical disagreements with national party leadership in 2007
The guy was a democrat. He became a Republican just because he wanted to be mayor and knew he couldn't get the Democratic nomination. He remained a Democrat in his mind and left the Republican party.
Let's see gays - that's one I'll have to give you. The gay marriage thing is debatable, but too many Republicans would even outlaw gay relationships if it weren't for the recent, and baseless, supreme court decision.
And this makes them far more dangerous than you're willing to acknowledge. What do you think the Santorum/Robertsen types would do if they managed to make abortion and same-sex marriage illegal? They would ban the music you listen to, the video games you play, and then they would go after the way you dress, which church you go to,
You just went too far there. No, they wouldn't go after which church you go to because they respect the first amendment guarantee of the free practice of religion. As for the music and video games - they would likely try but they would have only limited success.
the group you congregate with etc. Once thugs have gained power, they seek more power. Doesn't this totally remind you of the taliban?...
drugs - that's just like the Democrats. Both parties support laws against drug use and both parties have made it clear that when they're in charge of the national government they won't look the other way when states legalize drug use.
Democrats aren't really united on this one. Libritarians are united in favor, conservatives tend to be united in opposition. Still, it tends to be the democratic states that legalize drugs, and push for reduced sentencing. Trend seems to be towards legalization, and much like gay marrage, I suspect it's the liberals that will make it legal, when it happens.
Republicans aren't united either. As you say, the more libertarian ones tend to prefer legalization while the more conservative ones oppose it. However, the libertarians usually don't say much about it because they have so many other priorities. So many other simple freedoms are ignored that if you're a libertarian trying to figure out which ideas to work toward first, drugs have trouble getting anywhere near the top of the list.
abortion - right to life trumps other rights. You can't kill someone just because they're inconvenient.
A person has a right to life (unless they are a criminal, appearently.)
A fetus is not a person. The rights of the fetus are trumped by the rights of the mother during the First Trimester. The SCOTUS established that in Roe vs. Wade. It's a good read.
Yes, you have a right to life, unless you're a criminal. Just like you have a right to freedom, unless you're a criminal. As for the rights of the unborn, the question of whether they have a right to life is one that has many arguments for and against. My point though was that being the party of liberty is not inconsistent with the being the pro-life party. If you believe the unborn have a right to live, then it makes sense to exclude the right to murder the unborn (or anyone else) from the list of freedoms you want to protect.
hiring - the Democrate tell you how much you have to pay and in general what you and another person can agree to.
You're in favor of indentured servitude? How about human slavery and the sex trade? Both are situations a person may find themselves voluntarily, either due to misinformation or via social or economic pressure. Let me guess, if they make that decision, it's their own fault?
A pure libertarian could, I suppose, support indentured servitude. However the principle we usually support is the ability to make a labor contract and then allow either party decide, for whatever reason, to terminate the contract. That is, when you trade labor for money, you should be able to decide to stop supplying the labor whenever you want (so that you're not an indentured servant). Similarly, you should be able to stop supplying the money for whatever reason. (Though I think an exception for union busting is a good thing.)
renting - the Democrats tell you what you can and can't do with your property, and what restrictions you can put on who enters your property
Your in favor of the landlord being able to enter a unit you are renting at any time, for any reason?
I'm in favor of the landlord being able to put that in the contract. I'm also in favor to potential tenants saying "H#ll NO" when a landlord does that. I'm also in favor of landlords being able to screen potential tenants based on whatever criteria they like, and for restaurant owners being able to screen customers based on their criteria. After all, customers have the right to refuse to patronize a restaurant for whatever reason! And from a practical standpoint, business owners have even more market motivation to treat potential customers and employees fai
I'll skip answering all of your comments on the history of the Bill of Rights because we'll end of arguing over questions of judicial philosophy and I frankly don't have time for that. Nor do I have time for a lengthy discussion the extent to which the American democracy and tolerance was the result of overcoming Christianity vs the result of Christianity. Rather, I'll skip to your final paragraphs.
Having a spiritual side can be healthy for many individuals, but there is a difference between individual pursuit of spirituality and imposing one's religious beliefs on others.
True. That is one of the reasons many people object to welfare and socialized medicine. It is one thing for an individual to practice generosity due to their religous beliefs, but it is another for the state to impose those beliefs on individuals who do not share those beliefs and would much rather be selfish.
Regarding your other comments, it is far from clear that religion or religious belief was the primary reason for either the existence or success of the Civil Rights movement, or that Americans will not be able to handle democracy without religion
Every multi-party democracy that lasted significant length of time originated and flourished in a cultural environment that is either currently or was historically a largely Judeo-Christian cultural environment. (I don't consider Japan "multi-party" for this purpose because for most of its democratic experience a single party dominated, and having finally started switching parties they are unable to maintain a stable government). Countries have that have officially rejected religion have been in every single case oppressive and backward.
(nor does separation of church and state require abolishing religion: to separate is not to abolish).
In modern times, that statement is increasingly false. Every year the state controls more and more of our lives. If religion is evicted from every part of our lives that the state controls, what is left of religion when the state controls everything? What, for example, happens to the Catholic Church when the government tells them that if they want to continue to their charities, they'll be required to do some things that violate their beliefs? What happens to Catholic businessmen when they are told that they can either violate their beliefs or they can shut down their businesses?
In any case, separation of church and state effectively puts a religious test on high office because most people who have religious beliefs cannot simply abandon those beliefs when they go on the job. As you mention later, those beliefs may be good or bad. They may lead you to vote for the abolition of slavery or for equal rights for black people despite the anger of your contituents, or they may lead you to vote to restrict the right of gays to do what they do in their bedrooms. But that's why we have elections - to pick the people who will represent us. And that is why we used to have 50 states, so different states could make different laws reflecting the different beliefs of their peoples.
Prohibition, which certainly inspired by religion, was a disaster.
Yep, sometimes you get baby; sometimes you get bathwater.
Ending child labor was not necessarily driven by religion: for example, in England, at least one of the early laws against child labor (Manchester, 1802, source: Edmund Robertson, Encyclopedia Britannica) was immediately motivated by the desire to avoid epidemic, and at least some of the numerous English laws against child labor already in existence by 1904 (when the US NCLC was created) would have been familiar to educated Americans.
Most social movements have multiple causes. The call for eugenics necessarily driven by science, but science contributed.
I am willing to accept claims that religious beliefs can have positive influences on the
Slashdot Mirror
I'm suggesting 4 diverse individuals to talk about 4 diverse topics is going to be better than having all 4 speakers be upper middle class, white, male, silicon valley startup alumni.
Having 4 speakers who are not all upper middle class silicon valley startup alumni is certainly better than having 4 speakers who are all upper middle class silicon valley alumni.
I'll even grant you that men and women are different (as every twelve-year-old knows) and say that 4 speakers who are not all upper middle class silicon valley startup alumni of the same gender is better than having 4 speakers who are all upper middle class silicon valley alumni of the same gender.
But why do you feel the need to throw race into it? Do you feel there are significant hormonal differences between people of different races? Do you think brain scans detect significant differences in thought patterns between people of different races? There are some differences in how people treat you - fore example walk around as a white guy in Asia and you'll be treated as a foreigner - sometimes that's good and sometimes that's bad. But these aren't differences that would be significant to a Ruby conference.
The most racist people I know are those who think racial diversity is an important goal.
Diversity is a good thing, and it should be deliberately incorporated. That doesn't mean we should have a black homeless woman 'quota', and it doesn't mean that there should be a law enforcing such a quota. But if I'm planning an event, and I notice I've got a lineup of consisting of nothing but 'white guys' then yeah, I'll step back and re-evaluate whether that's the most interesting line up I could have, and whether incorporating speakers with different backgrounds would be more interesting -- because it probably would.
So if the conference has one white male with a background of using Ruby on Windows for web applications, another white male with a background of using Ruby on Unix to develop FPS games, another white male with a background of writing Ruby libraries for managing BPEL, and another white male with a background of implementing statistical packages in Ruby - that would not be diversity.
But if get a white guy, an black guy, and a white woman and an oriental guy who all use Ruby for developing web apps on Unix, that would be diversity. Is that correct?
Being a white males is not a "background", it is a skin color and gender. If you want diverse backgrounds you should be looking at what the people have done, what they have studied, and what they have said. Focusing on their race and gender just makes you racist and sexist.
But we have all been taught from an early age that it is wrong to feel guilt for killing bad guys. If you feel guilty, then you are *for* the bad guys, and therefore one of *them*. ( remember, its a binary good/evil world we live in, amiright?)
You must have watched different war movies and cowboy movies than I did. The ones I watched generally portrayed the people who felt guilty for the killing as decent folk. The guilt was only "bad" when it prevented necessary action. For example, if your guilt in killing the bad guy prevented you from killing him and he went on to kill your friends - you were bad. But if you killed the bad guy and then wept over his corpse, gave him a funeral and set up a trust fund to care for his family, you were good. On the other hand, if the bad guy surrendered and you shot him anyway, you were bad. If you let him surrender and didn't kill him you were good.
New War Crimes
Rule 1: Creating an autonomous robot that designed attacks human beings is forbidden. A robot that designed to recognize human beings is permitted so long as no attack on the humans occurs without affirmative human direction. A robot designed autonomously recognize and attack buildings, vehicles and ships is permitted.
Rule 2: Creating a weapon that masquerades a human in an attempt to protect the weapon from autonomous robots is forbidden.
They found some ancient artifacts that prove the early Chinese found Mars first and that Mars is an integral part of Chinese territory (as it the Moon since the Chinese saw it first).
But in at least one country I know of such images are not similarly censored.
Then perhaps it is Germany that is screwed up in that it overreacts to fake violence.
Whether the social norms learned at school reflect the "real world" depends on what real world you live in. If you work at a high-tech white collar job and live in a suburb in a democratic country then the norms at school probably don't reflect your real world. But on the other hand, your real world has very little in common with the rest of the real world. Most people live in a world where they do have to submit to leaders or face punishments far worse that what you had to face in school. Most people live in a world where physical intimidation is something that must be handled occasionally or even daily. I'm not saying people get into fights all the time, but the concepts of a pecking order and bullying are there.
And don't forget that our schools also train our future leaders. If they don't understand that in the real world there is no teacher to make bullies behave, there no police force to call when people break social norms, and the rules of the unsupervised playground prevail so that might makes right - they'll be ineffective leaders.
If all you learned was submission then you failed. At some point you should have learned to blow off the abuse. You should have learned when to roll your eyes and walk away. You should have learned when to just look at someone with disbelief that they could be so lame. You should have learned how to make friends to help you stand up as a group.
I personally was a late learning, but I did finally figure some things out in high school - like how to ignore insults because it didn't really matter what the person saying them said - he wasn't someone whose opinion mattered to me. And, to my surprise as I learned after school, no one else cared about his opinion either. That guy who offered to shake hands before a fight and then yanked me forward with his right while knocking me out with his right? Turned out everyone around me thought he was a jerk and thought his behavior was deplorable. I didn't need to fight him. I didn't need to answer his taunts on the bus. It took me longer than it should have, but I did figure it out.
And I also learned some important lessons about humanity in general. All that stuff you learn when you're watching Barney and Sesame Street about people basically being good, and that you learn about how the good will come out with a little reason and a little kindness, well it's crap. There are some people who, if they are good somewhere deep down, it is really really far deep down. The Simpsons got it right when the bully just keeps bullying. And as for the majority of people around you, they may not be mean, but for the most part they'll just ignore your pain. A lot of people put on a show of civility for the people around them who can help them, who can make them more popular, who are their friends. But those of us who were bullied have seen the other side of these people. We know.
At one point I seriously considered just getting into a fight with a kid who was bullying me. At the same time, I was hoping to try to live up to my potential and get straight As. I did the math of course. If we each got suspended for 3 days and missed a test - Mr. Bully could recover and bring his grade point average back up to a D or C with a couple good scores. I would never be able to recover the A.
But it would help if strong performance were made a positive thing to your peers. Hogwarts has that school team thing (yeah, I know it's fictional, but it's still a good illustration). While having 4 teams that get judged on various things including academics and discipline creates a climate where 3/4s of the students are out to get you, it also creates a climate where 1/4 of the students want you to succeed. This means that if you're doing well they praise you instead of resent you. It means if you're doing poorly they have a reason to help you do better. This is generally what happens on sports teams.
I don't know if copying exactly what Hogwarts does would work in real life, but it seems using some sort of team academic competition would help the academically successful kids not be resented so much. And it would help motivate underachievers.
What better evidence for intellectualism than that a post that a clear attempt to hijack the thread to make non-sequitur attacks on political opponents gets modded Insightful?
I suppose it might help if efforts were made to promote some team competition or even team grading in academic subjects. Competitions like that "It's Academic" show held in class would make it nice to have the smart kid on your team sometimes. I'm sure some people would object that it would hurt the feelings of the kids who don't do as well, but we have competitions for soccer, football, basketball, and other physical activities all the time and the results are quite visible. The only time we worry about the results hurting people's feelings are in academics. It seems to me that a little more visibility would help everyone. People would know when they need to improve. Not everyone knows.
To a nerd, acquiring social skills merely means learning that he can never mention anything he really cares about, and that he must learn to politely endure other people's boring rants without showing it. And then people wonder why he dislikes socializing.
People don't get bullied for being good at soccer or for being good at art.
Regarding Mr. Nicholson's quote: I don't think the latter would be PG. A simulation of it might be PG. I mean, if you use special effects to make it look like an axe is cutting off some part of a person's body it might be PG. It would likely depend on the graphicness of the depiction and the quality of the special effects. However if you filmed it for real it would certainly be at least an R.
I think the same applies to the former part of his comment. If it is only simulated with special effects and doesn't actually occur, it might get a PG or it might get an R depending on the clearness of the view and the quality of the special effects.
Actually, this is more the standard in the USA, where violence is tolerated more than nudity. In most European countries, the standard seems to be reversed: American television shows are considered extremely violent and not suitable for children, but you can see billboard advertisements for soap featuring mild nudity (anything except genitals, really). Other parts of the world like Saudi Arabia forbid even showing females in print, which caused a kerfluffle when Ikea photoshopped all women out of the Saudi version of their catalog.
The biggest problem, really, is that obscenity filters are oriented only towards Americans, since the USA has the noisiest "church ladies" and Tipper Gore wannabes (man, I am dating myself here!). The rest of the world is either not big enough a market to filter for, or tolerant anyways so there is no need for more restrictions. So the techies just do enough filtering to cover their asses and can't be bothered to actually maintain said filters, since that isn't really a moneymaker.
My impression is that in America violence isn't much tolerated either. When was the last time you saw on TV someone getting shot in the head - for real I mean? When those Americans had their heads chopped off and videos of the event were posted on the internet, did you see the videos on your local news? When you see a car accident reported on the news, do they show the mangled body before its covered with a sheet?
I think the distinction often lies in whether what is being shown is the real event or a simulation. Movies constantly show "dead" people, but we know they're just actors and the people aren't really dead. Movies often show people getting out of a shower covered with a towel, but we know the actors have clothes on underneath. However, when it comes to reality people start to object. They don't show real dead bodies on TV. And they usually don't show people who really don't have their clothes on (although this has certainly changed a lot over the last few decades). In both cases I think the reason is not just what is seen, but what goes into creating the image. The only way to make a photo of someone without clothes is to have someone remove their clothes in front of the film crew. This is generally considered bad for the person doing so particularly if is a young women (as it usually is). Some people believe it is ok, but we also know that a lot of women who do this sort of thing early in life later regret it. On the other hand, simulated violence on TV doesn't require the actors and actresses to engage in actual violence.
You don't forgive someone unless they've done something wrong, so to say that you forgive someone is to implicitly accuse someone of doing something wrong.
So rather than saying out loud that they forgive you, many Christians will forgive you silently so as not to cause offense.
Imagine you're having a bad day and are rude to someone, and that someone says "I forgive you". What you're likely to hear in your mind is that person saying "I forgive you for being such an @ss and I'm soooo much better and more righteous than you." So instead the person simply forgives you without saying anything, and continues to try to be nice.
Is that true, if you post a picture of a person getting murdered it won't get censored?
I find this method seriously scary due to the probability of a false positive. I mean, suppose you have a system that only fails once in a million times and the killer has already left the country. You ask the two million people in the metropolitan area to submit DNA. You get on average two matches. One doesn't have an alibi. You take him to trial and tell the jury that he not only doesn't have an alibi, he had a 1 in a million DNA match. It sounds pretty convincing. It is very possible the jury won't have the understanding of statistics to ask "was this a sweep or did you only test a couple of likely suspects?" Nor is it likely that the information will be volunteered by the court.
running a restaurant - the Democrats tell you whether you can smoke and Bloomberg (Democrat who switched parties but not stripes so he could run) even wants to tell you how big your drinks can be.
Your freedom to smoke vs. my freedom to be smoke free. You're still welcome to smoke on your own property. You're still welcome to make your kids breath your smoke during the most critical time of their development.
It's also illegal for me to enter an establishment naked, or with a huge boom box.
No you're not, and that is my point. for some reason it is perfectly legal for people to walk around outside on the sidewalk forcing me to breath their smoke, but illegal for them to smoke in a privately run restaurant ( a place that I can easily refuse to go ) .
So you're saying that if the government wants to tax 100% of everything you earn, it's not slavery because you have a choice of whether or not you want to work and because we have a constitutional amendment allowing Congress to do it?
I suppose you're right. It doesn't give me any comfort though.
From Wikipedia: A Democrat before seeking elective office, Bloomberg switched his registration in 2001 and ran for mayor as a Republican, winning the election that year and a second term in 2005. Bloomberg left the Republican Party over policy and philosophical disagreements with national party leadership in 2007
The guy was a democrat. He became a Republican just because he wanted to be mayor and knew he couldn't get the Democratic nomination. He remained a Democrat in his mind and left the Republican party.
How the fuck did this get modded insightful?
Let's see gays - that's one I'll have to give you. The gay marriage thing is debatable, but too many Republicans would even outlaw gay relationships if it weren't for the recent, and baseless, supreme court decision.
And this makes them far more dangerous than you're willing to acknowledge. What do you think the Santorum/Robertsen types would do if they managed to make abortion and same-sex marriage illegal? They would ban the music you listen to, the video games you play, and then they would go after the way you dress, which church you go to,
You just went too far there. No, they wouldn't go after which church you go to because they respect the first amendment guarantee of the free practice of religion. As for the music and video games - they would likely try but they would have only limited success.
the group you congregate with etc. Once thugs have gained power, they seek more power. Doesn't this totally remind you of the taliban? ...
No, but you remind me of Godwin.
drugs - that's just like the Democrats. Both parties support laws against drug use and both parties have made it clear that when they're in charge of the national government they won't look the other way when states legalize drug use.
Democrats aren't really united on this one. Libritarians are united in favor, conservatives tend to be united in opposition. Still, it tends to be the democratic states that legalize drugs, and push for reduced sentencing. Trend seems to be towards legalization, and much like gay marrage, I suspect it's the liberals that will make it legal, when it happens.
Republicans aren't united either. As you say, the more libertarian ones tend to prefer legalization while the more conservative ones oppose it. However, the libertarians usually don't say much about it because they have so many other priorities. So many other simple freedoms are ignored that if you're a libertarian trying to figure out which ideas to work toward first, drugs have trouble getting anywhere near the top of the list.
abortion - right to life trumps other rights. You can't kill someone just because they're inconvenient.
A person has a right to life (unless they are a criminal, appearently.)
A fetus is not a person. The rights of the fetus are trumped by the rights of the mother during the First Trimester. The SCOTUS established that in Roe vs. Wade. It's a good read.
Yes, you have a right to life, unless you're a criminal. Just like you have a right to freedom, unless you're a criminal. As for the rights of the unborn, the question of whether they have a right to life is one that has many arguments for and against. My point though was that being the party of liberty is not inconsistent with the being the pro-life party. If you believe the unborn have a right to live, then it makes sense to exclude the right to murder the unborn (or anyone else) from the list of freedoms you want to protect.
hiring - the Democrate tell you how much you have to pay and in general what you and another person can agree to.
You're in favor of indentured servitude? How about human slavery and the sex trade? Both are situations a person may find themselves voluntarily, either due to misinformation or via social or economic pressure. Let me guess, if they make that decision, it's their own fault?
A pure libertarian could, I suppose, support indentured servitude. However the principle we usually support is the ability to make a labor contract and then allow either party decide, for whatever reason, to terminate the contract. That is, when you trade labor for money, you should be able to decide to stop supplying the labor whenever you want (so that you're not an indentured servant). Similarly, you should be able to stop supplying the money for whatever reason. (Though I think an exception for union busting is a good thing.)
renting - the Democrats tell you what you can and can't do with your property, and what restrictions you can put on who enters your property
Your in favor of the landlord being able to enter a unit you are renting at any time, for any reason?
I'm in favor of the landlord being able to put that in the contract. I'm also in favor to potential tenants saying "H#ll NO" when a landlord does that. I'm also in favor of landlords being able to screen potential tenants based on whatever criteria they like, and for restaurant owners being able to screen customers based on their criteria. After all, customers have the right to refuse to patronize a restaurant for whatever reason! And from a practical standpoint, business owners have even more market motivation to treat potential customers and employees fai
Having a spiritual side can be healthy for many individuals, but there is a difference between individual pursuit of spirituality and imposing one's religious beliefs on others.
True. That is one of the reasons many people object to welfare and socialized medicine. It is one thing for an individual to practice generosity due to their religous beliefs, but it is another for the state to impose those beliefs on individuals who do not share those beliefs and would much rather be selfish.
Regarding your other comments, it is far from clear that religion or religious belief was the primary reason for either the existence or success of the Civil Rights movement, or that Americans will not be able to handle democracy without religion
Every multi-party democracy that lasted significant length of time originated and flourished in a cultural environment that is either currently or was historically a largely Judeo-Christian cultural environment. (I don't consider Japan "multi-party" for this purpose because for most of its democratic experience a single party dominated, and having finally started switching parties they are unable to maintain a stable government). Countries have that have officially rejected religion have been in every single case oppressive and backward.
(nor does separation of church and state require abolishing religion: to separate is not to abolish).
In modern times, that statement is increasingly false. Every year the state controls more and more of our lives. If religion is evicted from every part of our lives that the state controls, what is left of religion when the state controls everything? What, for example, happens to the Catholic Church when the government tells them that if they want to continue to their charities, they'll be required to do some things that violate their beliefs? What happens to Catholic businessmen when they are told that they can either violate their beliefs or they can shut down their businesses? In any case, separation of church and state effectively puts a religious test on high office because most people who have religious beliefs cannot simply abandon those beliefs when they go on the job. As you mention later, those beliefs may be good or bad. They may lead you to vote for the abolition of slavery or for equal rights for black people despite the anger of your contituents, or they may lead you to vote to restrict the right of gays to do what they do in their bedrooms. But that's why we have elections - to pick the people who will represent us. And that is why we used to have 50 states, so different states could make different laws reflecting the different beliefs of their peoples.
Prohibition, which certainly inspired by religion, was a disaster.
Yep, sometimes you get baby; sometimes you get bathwater.
Ending child labor was not necessarily driven by religion: for example, in England, at least one of the early laws against child labor (Manchester, 1802, source: Edmund Robertson, Encyclopedia Britannica) was immediately motivated by the desire to avoid epidemic, and at least some of the numerous English laws against child labor already in existence by 1904 (when the US NCLC was created) would have been familiar to educated Americans.
Most social movements have multiple causes. The call for eugenics necessarily driven by science, but science contributed.
I am willing to accept claims that religious beliefs can have positive influences on the