As for shutting down airlines due to fear, if you look at Israel, for example, the evidence shows that having a persistent threat of getting blown up in public places doesn't actually do much to affect public behavior.
As for the check-in queues being a better target for terrorists, that might not be a terrible idea, but there are lots of crowded places that are possible to target. But just killing a bunch of people with a bomb, while lovely, is inferior to blowing up a whole airplane, on the basis of visual spectacle. And it's all about visual spectacle. The greater the visual spectacle, the greater Super-Hero-Warriors-of-Allah they have proven themselves to be, before the eyes of all the world. That's why you're fortunately never going to find them doing anything so harmful yet mundane as salting our water supplies.
The important questions, which get glossed over by things like the above declarative talking point, are "What is the likelihood of an attack within the next N, N+1, N+2... years?" and "What is the expected severity/method of such an attack, should it occur?" and "What is the likelihood that any given person will be affected?"
Even if terrorists pulled off a 9/11 once every year or destroyed one shopping mall a week, your chances of actually dying in a terrorist attack are utterly miniscule. A rational person, when confronted with such numbers, should not be afraid.
This line of reasoning proceeds from the assumption that the problem with terrorist attacks is that it increases the death rate... which is absurd. You could use the same logic to say that we shouldn't prosecute murderers because the chances of any given person being killed by any given murder are minuscule compared to the chances of that person dying in a car accident. More lives could be saved by spending the money for seatbelt ads.
There's nothing wrong with death. Everyone dies. The thing that is wrong is murder. And what's worse than murder is wanton mass-murder of Americans, because they are Americans, by a foreign power. It is worth extraordinary measures to ensure that that sort of thing doesn't happen on a regular basis.
...if their goal was to create fear in the U. S. population.
The terrorist don't give a crap about creating fear in the US population... or delaying our flights... or eroding our freedoms. Their only purpose in committing terrorist acts is to kill large numbers of Americans (or other Westerners) in visually dramatic ways, as this is how they measure their own credibility as warriors, and how they glorify their religion. (Their long-term goal is the establishment of a new Islamic Caliphate, and ultimately a world-wide Caliphate. And Iraq is currently looking like the most promising place for establishing it, with Afghanistan and Somalia in 2nd and 3rd place.)
What I hated myself for was that I personally was creeped out by this person and her appearance. And what I particularly hated myself for was that the things creeped me out were a) her style of dress, and b) her disfigured face.
Part of me was indignant at what looked from a distance to be discriminatory treatment. And part of it was great relief that she was not on my flight.
Differences creep us out for a good reason. I think Western societal aversion to "discrimination" is perverse and hypocritical. Screening for suspicious behavior in a sensitive area makes a lot of sense, and humans are good at it. However, part of the mechanism that makes us good at it is our innate mechanism for societal norms. Presented with someone with dress, speech and behavior that we don't understand, our natural defenses of perception become useless. The only rational response is to subject those people to the highest standard of scrutiny. I find it absurd that doing so violates some moral anti-discrimination imperative. When we go to an Islamic country, the moral imperative on US is to dress and behave in a way that conforms with their societal standards, for example covering your hair in public if you are a woman. Muslims in the US should show the same respect for our culture and society. You don't have to dress like a freak, by our standards, to dress modestly or cover your hair. We probably won't arrest you just for dressing like a freak, but by the definition of what it means to be human, we will certainly treat you discriminately.
Secondly, the Pirahã people [wikipedia.org] of Amazonia do not have numbers or counting. Professor Everett, despite months of instruction, was unable to make any progress in teaching them how to count. The Pirahã themselves were highly motivated learners, as they didn't want to be ripped off in trade by visiting merchants, but nevertheless, they had no success in learning the most basic concepts of math. Indeed the Pirahã language has no numerals, and is claimed to have no quantifiers, either.
Clearly, those folks need to hire themselves some chimps as accountants.
"It seems pretty obvious. The parties go all-out to make sure they have a strong competitor for every senate seat. It is simply not possible with every House seat."
If most House members did not run against a "viable" candidate, then they'd have a disproportionately higher percentage of the vote compared to statewide elections. Since you couldn't be bothered to look at my links, I'll repeat the numbers here:
House: Challenged incumbents got 64% of the vote on average, and won 93% of the time Senate: Challenged incumbents got 58% of the vote on average, and won 79% of the time.
I only looked at the elections where the incumbent had a competitor whose name appeared on the ballot. I specifically excluded single-candidate elections as well as those where the only competitors were write-ins. 6% fewer votes "just happen" to result in 14% fewer wins, from the same voters? Even when I looked only at the contested House incumbents in states where the Senate incumbent lost (i. e. they obviously wanted change), challenged House incumbents got 63% of the vote on average, winning 92% of the time.
I did look at the links. I saw you excluded races without an opposing candidate. That doesn't exclude races with only a weak and/or underfunded candidate. I don't know how what you said is supposed to undermine that reality, which you can readily find across the nation every election cycle. I don't understand the basis of your argument that the difference between 64% vs 58% of the average vote is not compatible with a victory rate of 92% vs 79%. I don't have any statistical equations for you, but that is exactly the kinds of relationship between those numbers that I would expect. I also don't understand the basis of concluding that any state that elects a new Senator "obviously" wants to get rid of its incumbent House members as well.
"A few?" I haven't put it in my journal yet, but I looked at Michigan's state legislature elections from 2006 (average-sized state, parties swapped majorities in the legislature in 2006, considered a toss-up in 2004, no major news of voting problems). Aside from re-electing their federal Senator and 13 out of 14 federal Representatives...
House: 81 contested incumbents, 64% of the voters kept 78 (96%) in office Senate: 29 contested incumbents, 62% of the voters kept 28 (97%) in office
So victory margins of 20% keeping ~100% in office is just "a few?" Statistical outliers?
Again... I don't understand what mathematical relationship you're expecting to see. If it was 51% and it was evenly distributed, it would result in a 100% victory.
6% fewer voters, 14% fewer victories. Only substantial difference is that House races are gerrymandered while Senate races are statewide. If it were "just as likely to decrease as increase the incumbency rate," why is the difference more than doubled?
By this statement, I assume that you would expect 6% fewer votes to represent 6% fewer victories. So 58% would result in 86% victories... 50% would result in 78% of victories... 40% would result in 68% of victories. Do you see the problem with assuming a linear relationship? A model of the actual relationship would be defined not just as a function of the average votes, but also of the standard deviation of that average across the different races. For example, again, 51% of the vote with extreme uniformity across races, i.e. a very low standard deviation, would result in 100% of victories, whereas 51% of the vote with very little uniformity, i.e. a high standard deviation, would result in 51% of victories +/- some uncertainty, which is also a function of the standard deviation. It nudging that result up or down within the range of uncertainty is that gerrymandering can accomplish.
If by "anti-terrorism laws" the summary means fireworks regulations, anti-drug laws, and most especially product liability laws and precedents, then it is somewhere on the sane side of reality. TFA didn't have a single example of an anti-terrorism law that impeded the sale or manufacture of chemistry sets. Paranoia strikes deep.
Then explain why the incumbency rate for statewide office is 15%-20% lower than districted elections, in the same election, polling the same voters.
It seems pretty obvious. The parties go all-out to make sure they have a strong competitor for every senate seat. It is simply not possible with every House seat. There is often a shortage of viable candidates, and more often a shortage of campaign funds for non-incumbents. The national parties make sure that their senate seat challengers get funding, because senate seats are a lot more important.
Sure, there are A FEW districts that will only vote for one party or another. Almost every inner city district, for example, will always vote Democrat. But that is the case with or without gerrymandering. Gerrymandering may be able to occasionally gain one party or another an advantage in some district, but depending on the scenario, and which party is in charge, it is just as likely to decrease as increase the incumbency rate.
But aren't 99% of the entries in any encyclopedia unimportant to a particular reader of that encyclopedia? Conversely, if someone bothered to make a Wikipedia entry for it, there is at least one person in the world who considered this information important. In your defense you only give a circular definition of unimportant (= trivial = unimportant).
Importance is completely irrelevant to notability. Notability pertains to how much information about the subject there is in reliable, independent sources, and therefore whether or not it is possible to write an article on the subject that is neutral, well-sourced, and not comprised of original research or self-promotion.
No! Notability has NOTHING to do with how important or interesting a subject is. It is not a subjective measure, it is an objective one. It pertains to how much information about the subject there is in reliable, independent sources, and therefore whether or not it is possible to write an article on the subject that is neutral, well-sourced, and not comprised of original research or self-promotion.
Frankly, who cares? I don't. What if I want to know some details on [whatever web comic] someone just mentioned to me? Maybe I want to know a handful of relevant links? Google is going to give me a bunch of irrelevant crap I don't want.
Whether or not you think Google works well is irrelevant. Maybe you should use Yahoo search. An encyclopedia isn't for providing links, it's for providing information.
On Wikipedia I can enter a word, name, phrase, and I'll get some information and some relevant links. I don't care for a damn second how "notable" the item in question is. I just want to know some information on what I typed in. Why is it such a huge deal if it's not that notable?
Because in an encyclopedia, the quality and source of information matters. For an encyclopedia to be credible, all information must come from reliable and verifiable sources, independent from the subject matter. For non-notable subjects, no such independant and reliable sources exist. The information ends up being either "original research" or self-provided information. The allowance of that kind of information (further) undermines the credibility of the encyclopedia. The goal is to have an encyclopedia where you can count on being given only reliable, verifiable information.
I pretty often look up local bands to see some info about them. Of course none of them are even there. It would be nice if I didn't have to sort through a bunch of shitty, image/video-loaded Myspace pages in order to check out the local music scene. I'd love to read a few little blurbs about local bands on Wikipedia. Why is that such a problem? Actually, the real question is, is that even a problem at all?
Because it's an encyclopedia. Maybe you should start your own localbands.com. Or unverifiablewikiabouteverything.com.
IN FACT, I'll argue right now that the LESS notable something is, all the more reason to keep the article and get people to contribute whatever info they might have! Why even BOTHER running an online encyclopedia-style site if you're going to shut down articles that happen to pertain to not-widely-known subjects? I can understand extremely trivial stuff like "The QX935 is a $0.39 alarm clock from Bill's Dollar Store in Urbana, Ohio", but even then, maybe someone found an old "QX935" sitting around and are wondering about its origin?
Notability has NOTHING to do with how important something is OR how widely known it is. It only has to do with how available reliable and independent information about the subject is.
I guess it's all a question of what the intention of Wikipedia is. They do have the text "edit an article and help make Wikipedia the best information source on the Internet", which implies to me that the more information available, the better. The whole "notability" rule seems to contradict this core concept, though.
Yes, it's all about what the intention of Wikipedia is. It is NOT to have simply as much information as possible. It is to have as much neutral, verifiable, and well-sourced information as possible.
I'm assuming that you meant without there, I don't exactly see a bunch of hardline GOP members out on the picket lines come execution day.
Yes. That's because the person being executed has been given due process: trial with representation, conviction by his peers, and sentencing by a judge. The aborted baby has not been afforded any of this.
You really don't see the difference between being arrested for blocking some intersection with a group of bikers (presumably for the purpose of getting arrested), and being arrested for posting online that you like to bike in groups? Paranoia strikes deep.
Incumbents don't lose. 93% of House elections (and something like 96% of state legislative elections) were decided shortly after the 2000 census. Voting doesn't matter, with the possible exception of the party primaries (since the parties function as kingmakers).
Voting doesn't matter? Because people vote in a way that you don't like? I don't think that one necessarily follows from the other. It shouldn't be surprising that most the time people will vote for the same person in election N that they voted for in election N-1.
Since a non-notable subject has no significant coverage in independent reliable sources, it is impossible to write an article on the subject that meets encyclopedic standards. Hence the policy.
While some people might like a universal wiki covering all subjects, with no standard of objectivity or verifiability, that would have a completely different purpose from Wikipedia.
The idea that any actor, even an actor in a cheap porn filmed in a barn in Idaho, is worthy of an article because it exists in the space outside of Internet culture while a webcomic has to meet a meaningless standard of notability outside of its primary sphere of influence and existence is evidence that the notability requirement, while well-meaning, is fundamentally flawed.
Yes, wikipedia has extremely non-consistent enforcement of policy. The remedy, however, would be to delete the articles on non-notable porn actors (which would be most of them).
As for Notability, if something is notable according to the policy, it is usually demonstrably provable. I doubt MGTOW is Notable. A news.google.com search for MGTOW turned up only this slashdot article! Wikipedia does have a lengthy article on Men's Rights, however.
As for editors and/or administrators taking arbitrary actions, often in blatant violation of the policies, that IS is problem.
I don't think you understand what Notability is. It has nothing to do with how interesting somebody finds the subject: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:Notability The guidelines would suggest that this information would be fine as a section in the movie article.
As far as I see it, Wikipedia is less an encyclopaedia and more a burgeoning store of all world knowledge.
It's not. And they go to great pains to prevent it from being such. The fact that it is an encyclopedia, and not an indiscriminate store of all knowledge, is precisely why searching Wikipedia can be more useful in many contexts than searching the entire internet.
The problem that arises from that is you are removing knowledge that people might want to read. Wikipedia is not a valid academic reference and I doubt it ever will be due to the fluid nature of it's contents...
No encyclopedia is a valid academic reference, however it can be a very valuable introduction to a subject matter or starting point for research. If it contained everything that "people might want to read", it would cease to be useful as an encyclopedia, and its already questionable credibility would be non-existent.
The big problem is the systemic denial that Wikipedia could eventually be the sum of all recordable knowledge, and the push to try and remove valuable information "in favor of" more notable entries. Wikipedia is not paper; it's possible to both expand a notable entry and keep a non-notable entry.
"Systemic denial"? Let's back up. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia run by The Wikimedia Foundation, it exists for the purpose of being an encyclopedia, not "the sum of all recordable knowledge." To this end, there are policies and guidelines, some of which are shaped by consensus, others of which are beyond debate. One of these policies is the well-defined criteria for notability. The entire point of having such policies is as a means to preventing Wikipedia from becoming an indiscriminate collection of information, rather than an encyclopedia. While much is left to the consensus of the administrators and/or editors, the fundamental purpose, that Wikipedia should be an encyclopedia, is not.
Uhhh... I can't help but wonder what your hobbies are, that you think some "idiot policeman" is going to throw you in jail for. Bicycling? Parcheesi? Stamp Collecting?
Quote: "as the law only applies to the making recordings and images of people having sex, and the degree to which such recordings are 'speech' as used in the 1st amendment is negligible"
That was precisely my point, and precisely where you are probably wrong. That exact issue has been covered and decided rather strongly and decisively in past cases. It sounds as though you really did not read the decision, or perhaps you are not familiar with the other cases cited. The decision was based on rather strongly established precedent. The fact that the decision was somewhat split is merely a reflection of the so-called "conservative" values of this particular circuit
I read the decision. I didn't read all the cited cases, but I am aware that there is some precedent to back them up. However, that precedent is not rational, and when ideologies no longer support it, irrational precedent is overturned. According to "Are Judges Political?: An Empirical Analysis of the Federal Judiciary" by Cass R. Sunstein, the 6th circuit is more liberal than most other circuits, based on 3 out of 4 measures. While it does have a majority of Republican-appointed judges, this case was decided by a majority of Democratic-appointed judges, with the judge appointed by the Republican being the one delivering the separate opinion dissenting in part.
If "salt" isn't literally "salt", then perhaps the the Flat Earth Theory is also correct. Perhaps "flat" isn't literally "flat". Perhaps "flat" means "roughly spherical".
Perhaps 6 days was really 4.5 billion years. Adam and Eve were actually single-cell lifeforms. Abraham and sons were really dinosaurs. Egypt was really Pangaea.
If you are allowed to reinterpret the Bible to fit modern scientific observations, then it's a meaningless book. You can do the same thing with any book, any movie, any song, anything... and it'll describe the nature of the Universe "perfectly".
So to you words can only have strictly literal meaning, or else be wide open to any any interpretation? That's not how it works. "Salt" has a specific meaning. "Light" has a specific meaning. "Water" has a specific meaning. The Bible does not describe formation of the planet, single-cell lifeforms, or dinosaurs. It describes the nature of God, man, and the relationship between the two. Either you can go through the process of understanding it, or you can just let it forever be "a non-statement" to you. Scientific observations are "non-statements" in relationship to the subject matter of the Bible, which is spiritual reality, which is the only subject matter of lasting importance.
If your claims are falsifiable, then you can demonstrate their validity with evidence. That's science. If your claims are unfalsifiable, then they're non-statements. The validity of the claims are irrelevant.
So you apparently think that the only type of thought is scientific thought, and the only type of statement is a scientific statement? The deductive principle of logic is unfalsifiable. Is it a non-statement? Is its validity irrelevant? It is hard to imagine you think it is, as you can't do math or science without it.
I contend that: 1. The claims of the existence of a "generic" deity (Spinoza's God) is a non-statement. This is a God that doesn't interfere with reality. This God is just a synonym for Nature. 2. The claims of the Judeo-Christian God is simply wrong. There is an enormous amount of evidence that the universe was not created as described in the Book of Genesis.
I agree that using "God" as a synonym for a deterministic Nature is meaningless. It's not only meaningless, it's a manipulation of semantics to disguise atheism. Your second conclusion is a non-sequitur. It is the equivalent of claiming that the claims of the Christian God are wrong because Jesus claimed in Matthew 5:13 that his followers were made of salt, but they are demonstrably not. The subject of the first chapter of Genesis is the creation of the mind of man -- both of mankind in general, and of the spiritual development of each individual. The nature of the Judeo-Christian God is consistent with the Hindu God, the Islamic God, and the Pythagorean and Platonic God, etc. If you want super-literal explanations of God, you should stick to Plato or possibly Mohamed, or else the later Christian philosophers, like Augustine or Kierkegaard. But although it can take a lot more work to follow, there is vastly more insight that can be expressed in metaphor.
Slashdot Mirror
Or a porno flick.
As for shutting down airlines due to fear, if you look at Israel, for example, the evidence shows that having a persistent threat of getting blown up in public places doesn't actually do much to affect public behavior.
As for the check-in queues being a better target for terrorists, that might not be a terrible idea, but there are lots of crowded places that are possible to target. But just killing a bunch of people with a bomb, while lovely, is inferior to blowing up a whole airplane, on the basis of visual spectacle. And it's all about visual spectacle. The greater the visual spectacle, the greater Super-Hero-Warriors-of-Allah they have proven themselves to be, before the eyes of all the world. That's why you're fortunately never going to find them doing anything so harmful yet mundane as salting our water supplies.
This line of reasoning proceeds from the assumption that the problem with terrorist attacks is that it increases the death rate... which is absurd. You could use the same logic to say that we shouldn't prosecute murderers because the chances of any given person being killed by any given murder are minuscule compared to the chances of that person dying in a car accident. More lives could be saved by spending the money for seatbelt ads.
There's nothing wrong with death. Everyone dies. The thing that is wrong is murder. And what's worse than murder is wanton mass-murder of Americans, because they are Americans, by a foreign power. It is worth extraordinary measures to ensure that that sort of thing doesn't happen on a regular basis.
The terrorist don't give a crap about creating fear in the US population... or delaying our flights... or eroding our freedoms. Their only purpose in committing terrorist acts is to kill large numbers of Americans (or other Westerners) in visually dramatic ways, as this is how they measure their own credibility as warriors, and how they glorify their religion. (Their long-term goal is the establishment of a new Islamic Caliphate, and ultimately a world-wide Caliphate. And Iraq is currently looking like the most promising place for establishing it, with Afghanistan and Somalia in 2nd and 3rd place.)
Differences creep us out for a good reason. I think Western societal aversion to "discrimination" is perverse and hypocritical. Screening for suspicious behavior in a sensitive area makes a lot of sense, and humans are good at it. However, part of the mechanism that makes us good at it is our innate mechanism for societal norms. Presented with someone with dress, speech and behavior that we don't understand, our natural defenses of perception become useless. The only rational response is to subject those people to the highest standard of scrutiny. I find it absurd that doing so violates some moral anti-discrimination imperative. When we go to an Islamic country, the moral imperative on US is to dress and behave in a way that conforms with their societal standards, for example covering your hair in public if you are a woman. Muslims in the US should show the same respect for our culture and society. You don't have to dress like a freak, by our standards, to dress modestly or cover your hair. We probably won't arrest you just for dressing like a freak, but by the definition of what it means to be human, we will certainly treat you discriminately.
Clearly, those folks need to hire themselves some chimps as accountants.
I did look at the links. I saw you excluded races without an opposing candidate. That doesn't exclude races with only a weak and/or underfunded candidate. I don't know how what you said is supposed to undermine that reality, which you can readily find across the nation every election cycle. I don't understand the basis of your argument that the difference between 64% vs 58% of the average vote is not compatible with a victory rate of 92% vs 79%. I don't have any statistical equations for you, but that is exactly the kinds of relationship between those numbers that I would expect. I also don't understand the basis of concluding that any state that elects a new Senator "obviously" wants to get rid of its incumbent House members as well.
Again... I don't understand what mathematical relationship you're expecting to see. If it was 51% and it was evenly distributed, it would result in a 100% victory.
By this statement, I assume that you would expect 6% fewer votes to represent 6% fewer victories. So 58% would result in 86% victories... 50% would result in 78% of victories... 40% would result in 68% of victories. Do you see the problem with assuming a linear relationship? A model of the actual relationship would be defined not just as a function of the average votes, but also of the standard deviation of that average across the different races. For example, again, 51% of the vote with extreme uniformity across races, i.e. a very low standard deviation, would result in 100% of victories, whereas 51% of the vote with very little uniformity, i.e. a high standard deviation, would result in 51% of victories +/- some uncertainty, which is also a function of the standard deviation. It nudging that result up or down within the range of uncertainty is that gerrymandering can accomplish.
If by "anti-terrorism laws" the summary means fireworks regulations, anti-drug laws, and most especially product liability laws and precedents, then it is somewhere on the sane side of reality. TFA didn't have a single example of an anti-terrorism law that impeded the sale or manufacture of chemistry sets. Paranoia strikes deep.
It seems pretty obvious. The parties go all-out to make sure they have a strong competitor for every senate seat. It is simply not possible with every House seat. There is often a shortage of viable candidates, and more often a shortage of campaign funds for non-incumbents. The national parties make sure that their senate seat challengers get funding, because senate seats are a lot more important.
Sure, there are A FEW districts that will only vote for one party or another. Almost every inner city district, for example, will always vote Democrat. But that is the case with or without gerrymandering. Gerrymandering may be able to occasionally gain one party or another an advantage in some district, but depending on the scenario, and which party is in charge, it is just as likely to decrease as increase the incumbency rate.
Importance is completely irrelevant to notability. Notability pertains to how much information about the subject there is in reliable, independent sources, and therefore whether or not it is possible to write an article on the subject that is neutral, well-sourced, and not comprised of original research or self-promotion.
No! Notability has NOTHING to do with how important or interesting a subject is. It is not a subjective measure, it is an objective one. It pertains to how much information about the subject there is in reliable, independent sources, and therefore whether or not it is possible to write an article on the subject that is neutral, well-sourced, and not comprised of original research or self-promotion.
Whether or not you think Google works well is irrelevant. Maybe you should use Yahoo search. An encyclopedia isn't for providing links, it's for providing information.
Because in an encyclopedia, the quality and source of information matters. For an encyclopedia to be credible, all information must come from reliable and verifiable sources, independent from the subject matter. For non-notable subjects, no such independant and reliable sources exist. The information ends up being either "original research" or self-provided information. The allowance of that kind of information (further) undermines the credibility of the encyclopedia. The goal is to have an encyclopedia where you can count on being given only reliable, verifiable information.
Because it's an encyclopedia. Maybe you should start your own localbands.com. Or unverifiablewikiabouteverything.com.
Notability has NOTHING to do with how important something is OR how widely known it is. It only has to do with how available reliable and independent information about the subject is.
Yes, it's all about what the intention of Wikipedia is. It is NOT to have simply as much information as possible. It is to have as much neutral, verifiable, and well-sourced information as possible.
Yes. That's because the person being executed has been given due process: trial with representation, conviction by his peers, and sentencing by a judge. The aborted baby has not been afforded any of this.
You really don't see the difference between being arrested for blocking some intersection with a group of bikers (presumably for the purpose of getting arrested), and being arrested for posting online that you like to bike in groups? Paranoia strikes deep.
Voting doesn't matter? Because people vote in a way that you don't like? I don't think that one necessarily follows from the other. It shouldn't be surprising that most the time people will vote for the same person in election N that they voted for in election N-1.
Notability has nothing to do with importance. Notability means a subject has significant coverage in independent reliable sources.
The goal of Wikipedia is obviously to be an encyclopedia. To provide encyclopedic information, an article must have a neutral point of view based on verifiable information from reliable sources, without straying into original research.
Since a non-notable subject has no significant coverage in independent reliable sources, it is impossible to write an article on the subject that meets encyclopedic standards. Hence the policy.
While some people might like a universal wiki covering all subjects, with no standard of objectivity or verifiability, that would have a completely different purpose from Wikipedia.
Yes, wikipedia has extremely non-consistent enforcement of policy. The remedy, however, would be to delete the articles on non-notable porn actors (which would be most of them).
As for Notability, if something is notable according to the policy, it is usually demonstrably provable. I doubt MGTOW is Notable. A news.google.com search for MGTOW turned up only this slashdot article! Wikipedia does have a lengthy article on Men's Rights, however.
As for editors and/or administrators taking arbitrary actions, often in blatant violation of the policies, that IS is problem.
I don't think you understand what Notability is. It has nothing to do with how interesting somebody finds the subject:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:Notability
The guidelines would suggest that this information would be fine as a section in the movie article.
The other problem was the style of writing. Encyclopedic articles need to be written from a "real-world," not "in-world" perspective.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style_(writing_about_fiction)
It's not. And they go to great pains to prevent it from being such. The fact that it is an encyclopedia, and not an indiscriminate store of all knowledge, is precisely why searching Wikipedia can be more useful in many contexts than searching the entire internet.
Trivia sections in notable articles are not necessarily frowned upon.
Trivia articles are necessarily frowned upon.
see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:Notability
No encyclopedia is a valid academic reference, however it can be a very valuable introduction to a subject matter or starting point for research. If it contained everything that "people might want to read", it would cease to be useful as an encyclopedia, and its already questionable credibility would be non-existent.
"Systemic denial"? Let's back up. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia run by The Wikimedia Foundation, it exists for the purpose of being an encyclopedia, not "the sum of all recordable knowledge." To this end, there are policies and guidelines, some of which are shaped by consensus, others of which are beyond debate. One of these policies is the well-defined criteria for notability. The entire point of having such policies is as a means to preventing Wikipedia from becoming an indiscriminate collection of information, rather than an encyclopedia. While much is left to the consensus of the administrators and/or editors, the fundamental purpose, that Wikipedia should be an encyclopedia, is not.
Uhhh... I can't help but wonder what your hobbies are, that you think some "idiot policeman" is going to throw you in jail for. Bicycling? Parcheesi? Stamp Collecting?
I don't see anything in there that explains how the chromosome merger could take place simply because of a few base pair changes.
The guy in the video doesn't know what he's arguing against. ID doesn't suggest the lack of a common ancestor.
I read the decision. I didn't read all the cited cases, but I am aware that there is some precedent to back them up. However, that precedent is not rational, and when ideologies no longer support it, irrational precedent is overturned. According to "Are Judges Political?: An Empirical Analysis of the Federal Judiciary" by Cass R. Sunstein, the 6th circuit is more liberal than most other circuits, based on 3 out of 4 measures. While it does have a majority of Republican-appointed judges, this case was decided by a majority of Democratic-appointed judges, with the judge appointed by the Republican being the one delivering the separate opinion dissenting in part.
So to you words can only have strictly literal meaning, or else be wide open to any any interpretation? That's not how it works. "Salt" has a specific meaning. "Light" has a specific meaning. "Water" has a specific meaning. The Bible does not describe formation of the planet, single-cell lifeforms, or dinosaurs. It describes the nature of God, man, and the relationship between the two. Either you can go through the process of understanding it, or you can just let it forever be "a non-statement" to you. Scientific observations are "non-statements" in relationship to the subject matter of the Bible, which is spiritual reality, which is the only subject matter of lasting importance.
So you apparently think that the only type of thought is scientific thought, and the only type of statement is a scientific statement? The deductive principle of logic is unfalsifiable. Is it a non-statement? Is its validity irrelevant? It is hard to imagine you think it is, as you can't do math or science without it.
I agree that using "God" as a synonym for a deterministic Nature is meaningless. It's not only meaningless, it's a manipulation of semantics to disguise atheism. Your second conclusion is a non-sequitur. It is the equivalent of claiming that the claims of the Christian God are wrong because Jesus claimed in Matthew 5:13 that his followers were made of salt, but they are demonstrably not. The subject of the first chapter of Genesis is the creation of the mind of man -- both of mankind in general, and of the spiritual development of each individual. The nature of the Judeo-Christian God is consistent with the Hindu God, the Islamic God, and the Pythagorean and Platonic God, etc. If you want super-literal explanations of God, you should stick to Plato or possibly Mohamed, or else the later Christian philosophers, like Augustine or Kierkegaard. But although it can take a lot more work to follow, there is vastly more insight that can be expressed in metaphor.