So you're saying that because some governments try to limit the spread of child porn, the PRC has the right to deceive the people of China into thinking there was no "Tank Man" or that democracy is evil?
Nonsense. What they are doing will be remembered as a great injustice. It will be a cautionary tale for all societies with a chance to determine their own destiny. They will say, "We will not let it happen again."
No amount of cheap wealth will hide what is happening. No one sympathizes. They are known as the perpetrators of a great and ongoing crime against humanity.
every single story on slashdot can be qualified as advertisement. Every. Single. One.
So by that logic, a story about a congressional hearing is an advertisement for that hearing? A story about someone's rights being violated or a major patent lawsuit is an advertisement? Wiktionary says that an advertisement is "A commercial solicitation designed to sell some commodity, service or similar." That sounds a lot like this story, but nothing at all like a quote from Torvalds or a move by the FCC, which is the kind of info/. made it's name on.
That said, you are actually more and more right every day, in the sense that slashdot has become a big target for viral marketing, which is probably how this story got posted. If one thinks of slashdot as a bulletin board, one forgets that there are editors. If one looks at it as a news aggregator, one gets a little closer to the truth, but since news in general becomes more and more viral every day, it's even hard to say that much. Basically its a sounding board for whatever the editors think is cool. Apparently they think this phone is cool. I think they are spending too much time on this kind of crap and ignoring other, more important stories. But that's just my opinion...
Dude, a spade's a spade. Our government is absolutely trying to control the Internet. Everyone is. Microsoft is. Apple is. EFF is. The RIAA and ThePirateBay both are. I am. You are.
Fair enough. But the US produces the bulk of the original, "protectable" content consumed on the web. In the post-WWII era, we have become a huge exporter of culture, entertainment and technology. Those exports are incredibly valuable and the US has every right to enforce the explicit contracts entered into by consumers of that content. You can't (legally) get a U2 album without entering into a contract with the seller. Part of that contract says you cannot redistribute it without U2's consent. If you don't like that deal, don't buy the U2 album. It's that simple. The US is simply trying to enforce it's own laws as they apply to distribution over a network it created and other people have started to use (an obvious understatement). Again, if someone wants to release their own content without copyright or whatever, the US is not forcing them to do otherwise. All it is doing is attempting to stop billions of dollars of piracy/theft around the world.
To be fair, you can compare the two because they're both dictated by ideology.
Perhaps in some very broad sense, it is a free-market/speech ideology against a totalitarian ideology. But cultural relativism is itself an ideology, not a "fact". If you believe that the PRC govt can oppress it's people because it belongs to a different culture, then you must also allow that the US has a culture of activism across borders in the name of "human rights". Why should China's relative claims be more valid than the US? Keep in mind that Relativism as a concept was invented by 60's academics who felt guilty thinking of developing nations as backwards. They knew that they couldn't claim that stoning women accused of adultery was "acceptable" by any modern human standards, but they also couldn't condemn it out of the seemingly legitimate desire to be "objective". As a result, they invented this concept of "we don't understand because we're not one of them". Bullshit. Relativism is an artifact of a particular point of view. It is not applicable to all points of view simultaneously, especially when the thing you're looking at is shared among them - namely, the Internet.
And even if you stick with Relativism, if you use the internet, you are using (mostly) US technology to share information in way that was and is a product of US cultural identity. There's a reason China had to go so far to create its "great firewall". The technology upon which the internet is built was designed to be as transparent as possible because that's what US culture wanted. When you browse the web, you are using a product of the US culture of information exchange, free-speech, commerce, etc. To claim otherwise is to rewrite history.
other people have morals different from yours in which copyright (and enforcing it) is immoral
What? Who in the world believes that copyrighting one's own work is immoral? I know people who think the laws favor copyright holders too much, but I've never met someone who thinks copyright laws are inherently "immoral".
What morality would disallow the creator of an original creation from controlling how that creation is distributed? Would you attempt to enforce such a principle by demanding that artists immediately publish everything they create without compensation? And even if you believe that it is in the best interest of "the people" that original content is in the public domain at the time of its creation, that is a matter of political-economy, not morals. But if you have some compelling moral argument against copyright protection - in principle, not in practice - then I'd be happy to hear it.
The US has no interest in stopping you from publishing whatever you want. Go ahead and give it away if that's where your moral compass points you. All the US wants is to do is enforce it's copyright laws as they apply to content produced by its citizens. If other nations want to take that same approach (and most do), then that's their choice. If you don't want any content protected under copyright, then you're unaffected. If you want it, then you have to pay for it. Its that simple. Or do you believe that everyone should be able to listen to a U2 record for free?
blocking anti-social speech is moral
Well first thing I would ask is: What is anti-social speech? And more importantly, who defines it? If a govt wants to silence opposition to its policies, is anyone who speaks out "anti-social"? Or are you talking about child-porn? Because if you're talking about child-porn or cyber-bullying or whatever, then you're talking about crimes among individuals. But if you're talking about free speech issues like petitions or twittering about rallies, then you're not talking about "anti-social" speech, you're talking about political speech. And I think it has been proven over and over again that the dangers of allowing governments to suppress speech of any kind far outweighs the advantages to the society it is trying to "protect".
In China, the govt has put in place an enormously powerful system of censorship to ostensibly control "anti-social" speech, but is in fact primarily a tool for controlling political speech. People can't see child porn very easily, but they also can't even see a picture of "tank man" (the guy who stood in front of a column of tanks in Tienanmen Sq). What is "anti-social" about political protest? Isn't that how the PRC was founded? They fought a war with the existing govt and won. Now they don't want the same thing to happen to them.
China wants to enforce it's totalitarian system to protect those in power who know that if people are allowed to read and discuss anything they want, they would be thrown out on their asses. If you don't want to be censored, well...you're out of luck.
What particular moral view do you claim the US is imposing upon you by asking you to pay for something that it's citizens are trying to sell?
If you're too poor to afford health cover, then you'll be fined for being too poor to afford health cover
Presuming you mean "coverage" not "cover", you are wrong either way. People who are "too poor" to afford coverage are given the option to get Medicaid. People who are "too well off" to be eligible for Medicaid are allowed to buy from the state-run exchanges, which make essentially pools of people who are not already part of a large pool like a union or a big company. And the Many more people in fact will be in this category now, because the bill increases income limits for eligibility, as well as providing subsidies for those who make "too much" money for Medicaid but not enough to afford private care. No one - repeat no one who really cannot afford to buy insurance will be fined. It is only people who can afford it but choose not to buy it because they figure they're young/healthy enough to go without it. They raise premiums for everyone because a) they are healthy people who would lower premiums for everyone (including themselves) if they were part of the larger pool, and b) they end up in an emergency room costing hospitals thousands of dollars in mandated losses (they cannot refuse to care for someone, yet they must eat the cost of the care).
In effect, it makes taking a median wage job untenable, unless the employee also provides health cover
Actually thats completely wrong. This bill's purpose is almost entirely oriented around helping lower income people get insurance. The exchanges are about pooling people who are not part of a big employer's pool. The subsidies and expansion of Medicare are all about offering coverage to people who make too much money to be considered "poor" and yet too little money to be on their own in the marketplace. Various subsidies and rule changes make it possible for almost everyone to get access. And even if someone had no other choice but to pay the tax, it would max out at a very small percentage of a person's income, which would mean that the people who can afford it the least would not even pay the full amount.
Where are you getting the "facts" that lead you to your conclusions? The National Review? The Drudge Report? Fox???
So if you only own a bicycle you're being forced to buy auto insurance?
Its very simple. Not everyone drives. Everyone needs healthcare. Thus, non-drivers without auto-insurance do not cost anyone anything because they don't crash into anything. However, those without health-insurance will get sick, and they will cost everyone else money because they must be cared for in an emergency room (a law on the books for many years).
Thus by forcing them to buy insurance, they cannot take advantage. A reactionary like you should like a system like that.
So your saying that everyone is going to be as lazy as they can be and go without any of the benefits of an income? That they will tell their kids, "sorry, we can't go to the beach this year because we've decided to become really really lazy and squeeze the govt for all it's worth". That people will ignore all of their ambitions for a better life for themselves and their offspring and live in poverty - on purpose - when they don't have to - just to take advantage of a few dollars in govt subsidies??
Wow, you really hate "poor people". You probably want them all to go "back where they came from".
China tries to control it's own Internet. USA tries to control the whole Internet. Which one is worse?
First of all, the US is not trying to "control the internet". All it is doing (albeit with a heavy hand at the expense of consumers), is to control certain commercial transactions that, arguably, skirt the law. Stopping someone from downloading copies of a U2 album that they in no way paid for is in no way the same thing as trying to stop someone from reading about the Tienanmen Square protests or sending emails about democracy. How can you compare the two?
And even if your point is that control of any kind is bad, are you suggesting that selling poached Ivory or distributing kiddie porn should be allowed as long as the transaction is completed online? Sounds like a principle without the application of common sense.
Forcing an insurance company to pay for a pre-existing condition is simple theft, regardless of how hard that makes your situation.
Not if you require everyone - healthy or otherwise - to carry insurance. By creating a giant pool of healthy and unhealthy people, it increases the total revenue of the insurers tremendously, more than enough to offset the potential losses related to covering people with preexisting conditions.
The sick get coverage immediately, and the healthy are assured that when/if they get sick, they will not and cannot be dropped. Everyone wins. Including the insurance companies. Why do you think they support the mandate so forcefully? They know they will have to cover preexisting conditions for moral reasons, so they also want the mandate for economic ones. Very simple.
Understand the whole picture before you make a fool of yourself again.
because just about EVERYTHING that you buy will soon have a processor/wireless in it, and problems like this are going to increase exponentially. we must be smarter about the safeguards we require, as well as being smarter about what we accept in our products. in this case the car was simply disabled. what happens in 25 years with auto-piloted cars or whatever.
The US is so far down the track towards autocracy that warning about the dangers of too weak a government is like warning a man who is dying from dehydration in the desert of the dangers of drowning if he's not careful when approaching an oasis.
You realize "autocracy" means one person has all the power, right? In what parallel universe does the congress, courts and the voluntary military cede all of their power to (presumably) President Obama? Did you mean "authoritarian"? That's were the govt ignores the will of the general public and does whatever it wants. If so, I would suggest that you don't really understand US politics. Our biggest problem right now is that politicians are far too responsive to the whims of the people. To wit, the Dems were riding high last year, but descended into a state of self-destructive panic after a single special election that didn't go their way.
And how does this compare to an actual authoritarian govt like China or Russia? People are regularly beaten, arrested and never heard from again (and that's just for sending emails calling for democracy). In Russia, journalists are publicly assassinated for exposing govt misconduct/corruption. By contrast, last August people in the US were carrying automatic weapons and burning the president in effigy outside - of all things - town hall meetings about healthcare reform. And what was the govt reaction? Nothing. And rightly so. (Though I don't agree with allowing people to wield assault weapons anywhere but in the armed services).
I would suggest that you have a look at what the world is really like before you puff up your chest and spout ignorant nonsense.
when we don't have access to any of the really damaging information about government activity
Pentagon Papers
Nixon Tapes
Iran-Contra Hearings
Information Awareness Program
Secret Detention Centers/Rendition
Abu Ghraib Prison
Waco
What do all of these things have in common? They are all exposed government scandals/controversies. The administrations involved (and some that were not) attempted to either squash any further investigation or simply punish those who did the exposing. But did they succeed? No. And why not? Because the courts/congress/press would not allow that to happen.
People in China and Iran are regularly arrested for doing nothing more than suggesting policy that the regime does not agree with. People in the US were carrying automatic weapons while burning the president in effigy last August. People still complain openly that Bush a) stole the 2000 election, b) enriched his oil buds, c) killed thousands of Iraqis and US soldiers based on a personal grudge, d) was in the grip of some kind of evil demon (Cheney?) And yet even those who disagree with these positions would defend - to the death - the right to express them without reprisal.
I echo Pojut's qualification that the US is by no means perfect (it's govt is, after all, responsible for the creation of these scandals). And there is always room for more openness. But to compare the US to China/Iran/N.Korea/Egypt/Zimbabwe/Russia/etc is to diminish the plight of the people living in those nations. We are outraged on principle. They suffer in reality.
Giving Google the monopoly now would be the worst thing to do.
Who's giving google anything? The government? No. Microsoft? No. (except via incompetence).
The market decided long ago that google's search results are better than their competitors - in part because they provided results that were NOT tainted by keyword purchases like Yahoo, Altavista, MSN, AOL etc. Yes google benefits from the feedback received by the use of their product, but what's wrong with that? Should a company with a large market share stop using consumer feedback to improve it's product? Should Coca-Cola or Sony ignore customer feedback because it has a larger sample size than it's competitors? Should netflix stop tracking it's customers movie preferences because it has more data than blockbuster?
To say yes is to ignore the very thing that an open marketplace is based on: customer feedback improving products.
Let's suppose for a moment that you're tactic is adopted by enough people that it actually makes a difference in a given election cycle.
What would a sitting legislator do upon realizing that people will vote against them no matter what they do? Would they be more likely to do the right thing in the face of certain defeat? Or would they seek whatever personal/ideological advantage they can while still in power?
And whom do you expect to run for office in an environment where what you do in office has nothing to do with re-election? In your world, potential candidates would get (maybe) 18 months or so to gain clout, build a coalition and wield some degree of legislative power before being thrown out for no reason except that they are in office. This would deter serious candidates and encourage those would are willing to rubber stamp a pre-existing legislative agenda in exchange for lucrative jobs in the private sector after being thrown out of office. Such a trend is already gaining momentum, and your tactic would only speed it's approach.
If you're interested in term-limits, then I would say - support candidates that are willing to enact it. And if you really don't like ANY politicians, then don't vote at all. Abstaining is not without it's own pitfalls, but at least you won't be doing more harm than good.
Also consider supporting efforts to change the process of "gerrymandering" - the process that allows incumbent entrenchment in the first place.
So what you're saying is that its the US vs China/India? Probably not the best way to look at things if you want growth in those nations to continue.
For the people of both nations, I am very happy that so many have been pulled out of poverty in the past few decades. I hope it continues unabated until everyone in the world has a reasonable standard of living. And to the parent's rather crude comments about call-centers, I agree that it is demeaning and arrogant.
That said, I'd like to point out that the ONLY reason China and India have anything like a real economy at this point is that US (and to some degree EU) consumers went into heavy debt to buy all those US-branded, Indian/Chinese-made toys, electronics, textiles, etc. Should the US and/or Europe decide that unfettered globalization is not in its best interest after all (already happening), both China and India would be cut off from by far the largest market in the world (US=14 trillion, China=4 trillion). And if you think Europe (13 trillion), with its heavy dependence on exports and long history of cultural kinship will side with China, think again.
The reason outsourced production has been tolerated (barely) in the US is because reducing labor costs by many fold (i.e., going from a $25/hr US worker to a $2/hr Indian/Chinese worker) means dramatically lower prices for consumers. When prices are getting lower, it's not so bad that your wages aren't getting any higher (a trend that has become more and more obvious to the average US worker). But now that the US has started to notice that price drops are no longer enough to offset wage stagnation plus inflation, tolerance is waning. More and more, businesses are being criticized for offshore production, and though no one is talking about tariffs yet, wait until there are two or three years of minimal job growth in the US while China/India continues to pour cheap exports into the US market.
Again I say that I am glad for both nation's success and I wish them more of it. But to say that India has "started turning a hugely populated and impoverished country around using the latest opportunities afforded to them by technology" without also mentioning that the US a) created most of the technology India has been using, and b) is China's and India's single biggest market (and in the case of India, it's biggest benefactor) is ignorant or arrogant or both. China and India do not buy it's their own stuff, the US and Europe do. And when they do start consuming their own stuff, they will face all the same problems of more mature economies - higher taxes, labor laws, safety litigation, national unions, etc. And since growth in China (and to a lesser degree in India) has occurred so far without any of the political growth that a modern economy requires, their problems are going to be far more acute and probably fraught with great danger.
And...
people like you sit back on the Apollo moon landing's laurels and fiddle while Rome burns
??? Mars missions? GPS? Comm satellites? Space Shuttle? ISS? Apollo was a military exercise, in spite of its trappings as a peace mission. The US would and could put a Starbucks on Pluto if it was in its immediate national interest. The same cannot be said of either India or China. They are just now reverse engineering US (and Russian) technology to do things done with room-size computers 50 years ago. Where do you think India and China got their rocket/computing/communications technology in the first place?
And what's burning exactly?
Also...
What's the USA doing? Still putting out fires in Mesopotamia
First, I remind you that both India and China have benefited enormously from the energy excesses of the US and Europe during the 20th century. There would be no US market for Chinese/Indian goods/services without the West's exploitation of the Middle East. In fact, the reluctance of both nations to sign on to any binding climate resolutions is based mainly on the argument that they should be allowed
Hardly mind over matter, simply a bio-chemical organ that can be induced to produce a range of neurotransmitters and hormones based upon psychological states
How are the two different exactly? The "bio-chemical" organ you refer to is, I suppose, is the brain? If that's the case, most experts - such as yourself - say the brain is where most people keep their mind (though new research suggests many male subjects keep their mind in a different organ closer to the waist). And the "range of neurotransmitters and hormones" produced based on "psychological states" would appear to be the mind interacting with that oh so squishy matter we call our central nervous system. So why do you strain so much to "debunk" the mind over matter truism.
The placebo effect relies in no small part on the "faith" effect, which we use every day to overcome our physiologically limited ability to comprehend the world. Faith does not (necessarily) allow people to walk through walls or levitate, but it does allow us to do all kinds of important things, including and not limited to the discovery of new knowledge.
For example, your well founded faith in the scientific method allows you to maintain focus while facing mysteries often seem to defy not only experimental observation, but the very intuitions upon which those observations are based.
Do you have faith that we will figure out what's inside a black hole? Will we'll figure out where and what all that missing mass and energy is? Will we ever know why the photon goes through both holes at the same time? The scientific method has attained considerable momentum because of it's ability to shed light on mysteries we have long thought unknowable. That does NOT mean it will always succeed. The uncertainty principle, for example, claims that it has already failed in at least one important case (i.e., Schrodinger's cat). Knowing something about the state of an atom means affecting that atom, which also means we cannot always make "objective" observations. We can only make extremely well-educated guesses and hope that we're not wrong that often. This realization put a HUGE hole in the scientific method, but our faith allowed us to continue working and make ever more important discoveries.
So when you tell someone that the pill they took was just sugar, why is it a surprise that their faith is undermined and the unconscious processes that resulted in pain relief (or whatever) are also undermined?
Especially when Pakistan, India, and North Korea just got told "naughty boy" then it was business as usual.
We did not want India or Pakistan to develop nukes (and told them so repeatedly), but we tolerated it because they are not in the business of shouting "Death to America" at every "prayer" meeting.
Not sure what you mean about North Korea (who also calls for America's destruction daily). We have adamantly opposed their development program since the beginning and have done everything we could (sometime competently, sometimes not), to get them to stop.
To equate India (or Pakistan for that matter) and Iran is to ignore the nature of their respective regimes.
India is a stable, modern democracy with no particular regional ambitions except to sell more crap to the West than China does.
Pakistan is less stable (and getting worse), but when they began their testing they were much more so than they are now (Musharaff was badly flawed but at least wielded absolute power). They have also been a staunch ally of the US from just after the start of the Cold War (signed mutual protection pact in 1954) up to the present day, and though the more rural population is anti-West/US, the more educated urban population is quite the opposite - recognizing that their own fate is tied to good relations with the developed world.
Iran's current regime is attempting to solidify itself as a regional superpower on par with Saudi Arabia and Egypt in terms of influence. As such, it regularly aides insurgents in Iraq in the hope of destabilizing the (very fragile, somewhat corrupt and slow to develop) democratic institutions that are emerging there, because a stable democratic neighbor would put pressure on the increasingly illegitimate Iranian cabal that now controls both the military and much of the economy. They also regularly call for the destruction of Israel (a deeply flawed but important US ally) as well as the US itself. And more recently the Iranian regime has shown itself to be increasingly paranoid not of external threats, but to internal reformers attempting to operate within the parameters of the system ostensibly set up to empower it's nation's people.
Beyond these problems of attitude, there is also the very real and politically neutral problem of a MAD scenario involving Iran and Israel. Mutually Assured Destruction (barely) worked during the Cold War because both the US and the USSR were supremely stable and supremely powerful in their respective spheres of influence. In other words, no one would mess with either of them - internally or externally. This resulted in a kind of de facto stability regarding negotiations, because when Kennedy talked to Khrushchev, they each spoke for their respective military (and more importantly for their respective nuclear arsenals), and could keep the promises they made.
This would not be the case for an Iran-Israel variation. Consider a situation akin to the Cuban missile crisis, in which Iran decided to put nukes in the hands of Hamas in Syria. Blockades and secret deals would likely not result in a deal. It would more likely result in an escalation - not necessarily a nuclear one, but certainly a high-intensity battle for control of the areas in which the weapons reside.
Ever taken a self-defense class? Go take one and educate yourself. There are lots of things you can do when faced with an armed robber
If you can learn how to defend yourself without a gun, why carry one? Are you planning to simultaneously disarm the mugger and shoot him? I don't think the average mall walker has the dexterity to reach into their pocket quickly, let alone disarm and detain a mugger. And if you say, "but I can", then you are not applying your own rule of "everyone or no one", because the fact that you might meet some utility vs safety requirement, the vast majority of people do not, and would just be carrying a dangerous loaded weapon they'll never get to use until they're drunk or someone else uses it for them.
chief among them would have been to pay attention to your surroundings so your first indication of the robbery wasn't the gun in your face.
Ahh, so you agree that it is unlikely that you'd have a chance to actually pull a gun unless you saw things coming in advance. Which also means a lot of very jumpy people pulling loaded weapons when they see a "shady character" coming towards them. That would certainly make our streets safer.
Who the hell are you to tell someone else that they have NO REASON to do anything or everything?
I am a voting, tax-paying citizen of the United States, and I have exactly as much say in our laws as you do. Whether the law says you can or can't do something, you need a reason. In my opinion, (which all of this is of course), there is no reason to allow non security/law enforcement personnel to carry a concealed weapon. It would be like saying I have no right to say there's no reason for the "average person" (i'll get to that in a minute), to drive their car the wrong way on the highway or put on a blindfold and start swinging a baseball bat at the mall. We pass laws for reasons, and I have mine. This is not a "big brother" issue.
And I like how you qualify that with "average person". You don't get to play that game -- either everybody has the right to carry a firearm or nobody does (and this would include off-duty police officers too). Ever heard of equal protection? We don't have a class system in this country wherein certain people get rights not afforded to the remaining population.
You're kidding right? I cannot write a prescription. I cannot issue parking tickets. I cannot fly a plane. I cannot represent someone in court. Such restrictions are widely used and completely acceptable by everyone (except perhaps the hardcore libertarians). Why is wielding a tool (in public) designed explicitly for violence any different? And as for equal protection, it simply guarantees that everyone is treated equally under a given law, not that the law can't distinguish between one circumstance and another. Should a convicted felon be allowed to carry a gun in prison? Should a child be allowed to carry a gun? Should a person be allowed to carry a gun into a courtroom?
Plaxico Burris was a fucking moron who carried his handgun in the waistband of his sweatpants while drinking. He deserves to be punished as harshly as possible for his stupidity but holding him up as an argument for why the rest of us shouldn't be able to carry firearms is absurd. If he's your standard bearer then the rest of us shouldn't be allowed to have drivers licenses or checking accounts either.
You made my point for me. Plaxico Burress was an idiot for doing what he did, and if everyone is allowed to carry a loaded gun, there will be millions of morons carrying their weapons in their waste-band while drunk. This lesson should be obvious to anyone who looks at auto accident statistics. Certain people are exceptional and do not cause accidents. But most people are not, and cause all sorts of mayhem. The difference is that cars are intended for non-violent purposes and we
The rest of us poor slobs don't have the right to defend ourselves if we are unlucky enough to live in a part of the country run by the anti-gun zealots.
Defend yourself? How?
If you are being robbed in your home, you do not need a carry permit to have a shotgun under your bed.
If you are being robbed at gunpoint on the street, unless you plan to strap a quick draw holster to your leg you will never even have a chance to use your weapon. (And even if they pull a knife, you just might have enough time to unsheathe your weapon and get off a shot before they stab you in the chest and take your wallet, but most people will be too busy pissing themselves to do anything effective their gun will go on to live a life of crime with the guy who took it from them.)
There is NO REASON for the average person to carry a concealed weapon (trained and monitored security personnel excepted of course). In fact it creates an even more dangerous environment.
Plaxico Burris (the football player who shot himself in the leg at a nightclub last year), had a license to carry his gun in Florida. What if he shot someone else's leg? Or their head?
Please understand that I am not against guns, I am just against non-law enforcement/security personnel carrying handguns (or assault rifles for that matter), around in public.
Why would anyone, especially the/. crowd, take the report of this poor bastard's "suicide" at face value? He may have been distraught, but it would seem more likely that they made an example of him. "Look what happened to the last guy to lose a prototype."
We buy just about everything we use in our daily lives from China, and in light of our dwindling manufacturing base, perhaps we should rethink our partnership until things like this are less common. Now this is not to say that intimidation is not a part of US history (or present for that matter), but a US corp could not order its thugs to intimidate and search the home of one of its workers. At least not publicly.
I understand that your original point was that some people will believe anything they are told, but I think your critic should be aimed at a less complex source of incredulity.
While it may be true that people tend to act like "sheep" in uncritically accepting interpretations of ancient texts, that's the whole point of using allegory in the first place. Most people are simply looking for a digestible worldview that enriches their lives - i.e., "Do these things and you will reap great reward regardless of whether you understand what you are doing or not" and cannot process the surprisingly sophisticated theological and philosophical ideas that underpin the Judeo-Christian-Muslim belief system. It is simply too dense for the average person to grasp by use of reason, so simple metaphors are used instead.
Consider that the billiard ball model of atomic interaction is still used to teach high school students because they have no a priori understanding of "electron clouds" or a quantum of energy, whereas they do understand things bumping into one another. Would you call them sheep? Would you call their teachers purveyors of superstition? The students with just enough interest to digest these basic concepts understand at least as much as 19th century professional scientists (about atoms), while those with more interest and capacity go on to examine things in more detail, and presumably gain a more sophisticated and far more powerful understanding of the world.
Which raises the real problem for modern Christianity (or any other surviving ancient religion): the book has already gone to press and no one presumes to write a sequel. As a result, it's allegories are increasingly misunderstood and misused, and the further away we get from a text's context of authorship, the more difficult it is for us to see them the way the author and original reader saw them. The key is to realize that this in no way diminishes the value of the lessons on which they are based. If you consider this heresy, remember that some of the most respected scientists in history were devoutly religious - Newton, Aristotle, Einstein, Bacon, Jung, etc. Perhaps they saw past the allegorical "jewish zombies" and "magical trees" to the deeper meaning beneath.
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And by the way, sometimes when we look at the knowledge for which an allegory is constructed as a tool of understanding, we can see how important our intuition is in deciding how we see the world:
Ancient Bible : Ever-present cosmic creator snaps fingers and the universe suddenly exists. Modern Science: Ever-present cosmic "membranes" collide and the universe suddenly exists.
Ancient Bible : Man emerges from a "garden of plenty" where he has no concept of right and wrong Modern Science: Man emerges from "lower" forms of life that have no concept of right and wrong.
Ancient Bible : Man struggles to understand his world and is aided by a series of revelations. Modern Science: Man struggles to understand his world and is aided by a series of discoveries.
Ancient Bible : Man is beset by fear and anxiety because he does not put his faith in god. Modern Science: Man is beset by fear and anxiety because he put his faith in god.
Ancient Bible : Jesus tells people that "heaven" is available to everyone.
Modern Science: Freud tells people that "sanity" is available to everyone.
Ancient Bible : Jesus teaches that a person can be healed by having faith. Modern Science: Placebos teach us that a person can be healed by having faith.
Ancient Bible : Jesus claims there is an unseen world behind the world we live in. Modern Science: Physicists claim there is an unseen world behind the world we live in.
Ancient Bible : The heavens and the earth will pass away. Modern Science: The heavens and the earth will pass away.
That is what science is about. Revelation based on fact, not faith.
But you realize that faith is not an inherently religious concept. You have faith that science will explain things like the "Big Bang" and the "cause" of gravity. In fact, you have faith that science is a useful tool in the first place. What if all of our observations are based on a lie perpetrated by an all-powerful trickster (see Descartes)? Or perhaps reality is merely a series of shadows projected on a cave wall in front of a captive audience (see Plato).
Attempting to set science above religious dogma based on some notion of absolute certainty is to engage in the same kind of hubris you chastise.
Faith is an essential part of life. It is a bridge between what we have proven to be true and what we intuitively understand to be true based on personal experience. And if you say you know science to be "true", then go talk to Socrates - he's got some questions for you...
Slashdot Mirror
So you're saying that because some governments try to limit the spread of child porn, the PRC has the right to deceive the people of China into thinking there was no "Tank Man" or that democracy is evil?
Nonsense. What they are doing will be remembered as a great injustice. It will be a cautionary tale for all societies with a chance to determine their own destiny. They will say, "We will not let it happen again."
No amount of cheap wealth will hide what is happening. No one sympathizes. They are known as the perpetrators of a great and ongoing crime against humanity.
Do not defend it. Rid yourself of it.
every single story on slashdot can be qualified as advertisement. Every. Single. One.
So by that logic, a story about a congressional hearing is an advertisement for that hearing? A story about someone's rights being violated or a major patent lawsuit is an advertisement? Wiktionary says that an advertisement is "A commercial solicitation designed to sell some commodity, service or similar." That sounds a lot like this story, but nothing at all like a quote from Torvalds or a move by the FCC, which is the kind of info /. made it's name on.
That said, you are actually more and more right every day, in the sense that slashdot has become a big target for viral marketing, which is probably how this story got posted. If one thinks of slashdot as a bulletin board, one forgets that there are editors. If one looks at it as a news aggregator, one gets a little closer to the truth, but since news in general becomes more and more viral every day, it's even hard to say that much. Basically its a sounding board for whatever the editors think is cool. Apparently they think this phone is cool. I think they are spending too much time on this kind of crap and ignoring other, more important stories. But that's just my opinion...
Dude, a spade's a spade. Our government is absolutely trying to control the Internet. Everyone is. Microsoft is. Apple is. EFF is. The RIAA and ThePirateBay both are. I am. You are.
Fair enough. But the US produces the bulk of the original, "protectable" content consumed on the web. In the post-WWII era, we have become a huge exporter of culture, entertainment and technology. Those exports are incredibly valuable and the US has every right to enforce the explicit contracts entered into by consumers of that content. You can't (legally) get a U2 album without entering into a contract with the seller. Part of that contract says you cannot redistribute it without U2's consent. If you don't like that deal, don't buy the U2 album. It's that simple. The US is simply trying to enforce it's own laws as they apply to distribution over a network it created and other people have started to use (an obvious understatement). Again, if someone wants to release their own content without copyright or whatever, the US is not forcing them to do otherwise. All it is doing is attempting to stop billions of dollars of piracy/theft around the world.
To be fair, you can compare the two because they're both dictated by ideology.
Perhaps in some very broad sense, it is a free-market/speech ideology against a totalitarian ideology. But cultural relativism is itself an ideology, not a "fact". If you believe that the PRC govt can oppress it's people because it belongs to a different culture, then you must also allow that the US has a culture of activism across borders in the name of "human rights". Why should China's relative claims be more valid than the US? Keep in mind that Relativism as a concept was invented by 60's academics who felt guilty thinking of developing nations as backwards. They knew that they couldn't claim that stoning women accused of adultery was "acceptable" by any modern human standards, but they also couldn't condemn it out of the seemingly legitimate desire to be "objective". As a result, they invented this concept of "we don't understand because we're not one of them". Bullshit. Relativism is an artifact of a particular point of view. It is not applicable to all points of view simultaneously, especially when the thing you're looking at is shared among them - namely, the Internet.
And even if you stick with Relativism, if you use the internet, you are using (mostly) US technology to share information in way that was and is a product of US cultural identity. There's a reason China had to go so far to create its "great firewall". The technology upon which the internet is built was designed to be as transparent as possible because that's what US culture wanted. When you browse the web, you are using a product of the US culture of information exchange, free-speech, commerce, etc. To claim otherwise is to rewrite history.
other people have morals different from yours in which copyright (and enforcing it) is immoral
What? Who in the world believes that copyrighting one's own work is immoral? I know people who think the laws favor copyright holders too much, but I've never met someone who thinks copyright laws are inherently "immoral".
What morality would disallow the creator of an original creation from controlling how that creation is distributed? Would you attempt to enforce such a principle by demanding that artists immediately publish everything they create without compensation? And even if you believe that it is in the best interest of "the people" that original content is in the public domain at the time of its creation, that is a matter of political-economy, not morals. But if you have some compelling moral argument against copyright protection - in principle, not in practice - then I'd be happy to hear it.
The US has no interest in stopping you from publishing whatever you want. Go ahead and give it away if that's where your moral compass points you. All the US wants is to do is enforce it's copyright laws as they apply to content produced by its citizens. If other nations want to take that same approach (and most do), then that's their choice. If you don't want any content protected under copyright, then you're unaffected. If you want it, then you have to pay for it. Its that simple. Or do you believe that everyone should be able to listen to a U2 record for free?
blocking anti-social speech is moral
Well first thing I would ask is: What is anti-social speech? And more importantly, who defines it? If a govt wants to silence opposition to its policies, is anyone who speaks out "anti-social"? Or are you talking about child-porn? Because if you're talking about child-porn or cyber-bullying or whatever, then you're talking about crimes among individuals. But if you're talking about free speech issues like petitions or twittering about rallies, then you're not talking about "anti-social" speech, you're talking about political speech. And I think it has been proven over and over again that the dangers of allowing governments to suppress speech of any kind far outweighs the advantages to the society it is trying to "protect".
In China, the govt has put in place an enormously powerful system of censorship to ostensibly control "anti-social" speech, but is in fact primarily a tool for controlling political speech. People can't see child porn very easily, but they also can't even see a picture of "tank man" (the guy who stood in front of a column of tanks in Tienanmen Sq). What is "anti-social" about political protest? Isn't that how the PRC was founded? They fought a war with the existing govt and won. Now they don't want the same thing to happen to them. China wants to enforce it's totalitarian system to protect those in power who know that if people are allowed to read and discuss anything they want, they would be thrown out on their asses. If you don't want to be censored, well...you're out of luck.
What particular moral view do you claim the US is imposing upon you by asking you to pay for something that it's citizens are trying to sell?
If you're too poor to afford health cover, then you'll be fined for being too poor to afford health cover
Presuming you mean "coverage" not "cover", you are wrong either way. People who are "too poor" to afford coverage are given the option to get Medicaid. People who are "too well off" to be eligible for Medicaid are allowed to buy from the state-run exchanges, which make essentially pools of people who are not already part of a large pool like a union or a big company. And the Many more people in fact will be in this category now, because the bill increases income limits for eligibility, as well as providing subsidies for those who make "too much" money for Medicaid but not enough to afford private care. No one - repeat no one who really cannot afford to buy insurance will be fined. It is only people who can afford it but choose not to buy it because they figure they're young/healthy enough to go without it. They raise premiums for everyone because a) they are healthy people who would lower premiums for everyone (including themselves) if they were part of the larger pool, and b) they end up in an emergency room costing hospitals thousands of dollars in mandated losses (they cannot refuse to care for someone, yet they must eat the cost of the care).
In effect, it makes taking a median wage job untenable, unless the employee also provides health cover
Actually thats completely wrong. This bill's purpose is almost entirely oriented around helping lower income people get insurance. The exchanges are about pooling people who are not part of a big employer's pool. The subsidies and expansion of Medicare are all about offering coverage to people who make too much money to be considered "poor" and yet too little money to be on their own in the marketplace. Various subsidies and rule changes make it possible for almost everyone to get access. And even if someone had no other choice but to pay the tax, it would max out at a very small percentage of a person's income, which would mean that the people who can afford it the least would not even pay the full amount.
Where are you getting the "facts" that lead you to your conclusions? The National Review? The Drudge Report? Fox???
Good luck.
So if you only own a bicycle you're being forced to buy auto insurance?
Its very simple. Not everyone drives. Everyone needs healthcare. Thus, non-drivers without auto-insurance do not cost anyone anything because they don't crash into anything. However, those without health-insurance will get sick, and they will cost everyone else money because they must be cared for in an emergency room (a law on the books for many years).
Thus by forcing them to buy insurance, they cannot take advantage. A reactionary like you should like a system like that.
So your saying that everyone is going to be as lazy as they can be and go without any of the benefits of an income? That they will tell their kids, "sorry, we can't go to the beach this year because we've decided to become really really lazy and squeeze the govt for all it's worth". That people will ignore all of their ambitions for a better life for themselves and their offspring and live in poverty - on purpose - when they don't have to - just to take advantage of a few dollars in govt subsidies??
Wow, you really hate "poor people". You probably want them all to go "back where they came from".
China tries to control it's own Internet. USA tries to control the whole Internet. Which one is worse?
First of all, the US is not trying to "control the internet". All it is doing (albeit with a heavy hand at the expense of consumers), is to control certain commercial transactions that, arguably, skirt the law. Stopping someone from downloading copies of a U2 album that they in no way paid for is in no way the same thing as trying to stop someone from reading about the Tienanmen Square protests or sending emails about democracy. How can you compare the two?
And even if your point is that control of any kind is bad, are you suggesting that selling poached Ivory or distributing kiddie porn should be allowed as long as the transaction is completed online? Sounds like a principle without the application of common sense.
Forcing an insurance company to pay for a pre-existing condition is simple theft, regardless of how hard that makes your situation.
Not if you require everyone - healthy or otherwise - to carry insurance. By creating a giant pool of healthy and unhealthy people, it increases the total revenue of the insurers tremendously, more than enough to offset the potential losses related to covering people with preexisting conditions.
The sick get coverage immediately, and the healthy are assured that when/if they get sick, they will not and cannot be dropped. Everyone wins. Including the insurance companies. Why do you think they support the mandate so forcefully? They know they will have to cover preexisting conditions for moral reasons, so they also want the mandate for economic ones. Very simple.
Understand the whole picture before you make a fool of yourself again.
this makes front page of slashdot, why?
because just about EVERYTHING that you buy will soon have a processor/wireless in it, and problems like this are going to increase exponentially. we must be smarter about the safeguards we require, as well as being smarter about what we accept in our products. in this case the car was simply disabled. what happens in 25 years with auto-piloted cars or whatever.
this is important.
The US is so far down the track towards autocracy that warning about the dangers of too weak a government is like warning a man who is dying from dehydration in the desert of the dangers of drowning if he's not careful when approaching an oasis.
You realize "autocracy" means one person has all the power, right? In what parallel universe does the congress, courts and the voluntary military cede all of their power to (presumably) President Obama? Did you mean "authoritarian"? That's were the govt ignores the will of the general public and does whatever it wants. If so, I would suggest that you don't really understand US politics. Our biggest problem right now is that politicians are far too responsive to the whims of the people. To wit, the Dems were riding high last year, but descended into a state of self-destructive panic after a single special election that didn't go their way.
And how does this compare to an actual authoritarian govt like China or Russia? People are regularly beaten, arrested and never heard from again (and that's just for sending emails calling for democracy). In Russia, journalists are publicly assassinated for exposing govt misconduct/corruption. By contrast, last August people in the US were carrying automatic weapons and burning the president in effigy outside - of all things - town hall meetings about healthcare reform. And what was the govt reaction? Nothing. And rightly so. (Though I don't agree with allowing people to wield assault weapons anywhere but in the armed services).
I would suggest that you have a look at what the world is really like before you puff up your chest and spout ignorant nonsense.
when we don't have access to any of the really damaging information about government activity
What do all of these things have in common? They are all exposed government scandals/controversies. The administrations involved (and some that were not) attempted to either squash any further investigation or simply punish those who did the exposing. But did they succeed? No. And why not? Because the courts/congress/press would not allow that to happen.
People in China and Iran are regularly arrested for doing nothing more than suggesting policy that the regime does not agree with. People in the US were carrying automatic weapons while burning the president in effigy last August. People still complain openly that Bush a) stole the 2000 election, b) enriched his oil buds, c) killed thousands of Iraqis and US soldiers based on a personal grudge, d) was in the grip of some kind of evil demon (Cheney?) And yet even those who disagree with these positions would defend - to the death - the right to express them without reprisal.
I echo Pojut's qualification that the US is by no means perfect (it's govt is, after all, responsible for the creation of these scandals). And there is always room for more openness. But to compare the US to China/Iran/N.Korea/Egypt/Zimbabwe/Russia/etc is to diminish the plight of the people living in those nations. We are outraged on principle. They suffer in reality.
Giving Google the monopoly now would be the worst thing to do.
Who's giving google anything? The government? No. Microsoft? No. (except via incompetence).
The market decided long ago that google's search results are better than their competitors - in part because they provided results that were NOT tainted by keyword purchases like Yahoo, Altavista, MSN, AOL etc. Yes google benefits from the feedback received by the use of their product, but what's wrong with that? Should a company with a large market share stop using consumer feedback to improve it's product? Should Coca-Cola or Sony ignore customer feedback because it has a larger sample size than it's competitors? Should netflix stop tracking it's customers movie preferences because it has more data than blockbuster?
To say yes is to ignore the very thing that an open marketplace is based on: customer feedback improving products.
Let's suppose for a moment that you're tactic is adopted by enough people that it actually makes a difference in a given election cycle.
What would a sitting legislator do upon realizing that people will vote against them no matter what they do? Would they be more likely to do the right thing in the face of certain defeat? Or would they seek whatever personal/ideological advantage they can while still in power?
And whom do you expect to run for office in an environment where what you do in office has nothing to do with re-election? In your world, potential candidates would get (maybe) 18 months or so to gain clout, build a coalition and wield some degree of legislative power before being thrown out for no reason except that they are in office. This would deter serious candidates and encourage those would are willing to rubber stamp a pre-existing legislative agenda in exchange for lucrative jobs in the private sector after being thrown out of office. Such a trend is already gaining momentum, and your tactic would only speed it's approach.
If you're interested in term-limits, then I would say - support candidates that are willing to enact it. And if you really don't like ANY politicians, then don't vote at all. Abstaining is not without it's own pitfalls, but at least you won't be doing more harm than good.
Also consider supporting efforts to change the process of "gerrymandering" - the process that allows incumbent entrenchment in the first place.
people like you sit back on the Apollo moon landing's laurels and fiddle while Rome burns
??? Mars missions? GPS? Comm satellites? Space Shuttle? ISS? Apollo was a military exercise, in spite of its trappings as a peace mission. The US would and could put a Starbucks on Pluto if it was in its immediate national interest. The same cannot be said of either India or China. They are just now reverse engineering US (and Russian) technology to do things done with room-size computers 50 years ago. Where do you think India and China got their rocket/computing/communications technology in the first place? And what's burning exactly? Also...
What's the USA doing? Still putting out fires in Mesopotamia
First, I remind you that both India and China have benefited enormously from the energy excesses of the US and Europe during the 20th century. There would be no US market for Chinese/Indian goods/services without the West's exploitation of the Middle East. In fact, the reluctance of both nations to sign on to any binding climate resolutions is based mainly on the argument that they should be allowed
Hardly mind over matter, simply a bio-chemical organ that can be induced to produce a range of neurotransmitters and hormones based upon psychological states
How are the two different exactly? The "bio-chemical" organ you refer to is, I suppose, is the brain? If that's the case, most experts - such as yourself - say the brain is where most people keep their mind (though new research suggests many male subjects keep their mind in a different organ closer to the waist). And the "range of neurotransmitters and hormones" produced based on "psychological states" would appear to be the mind interacting with that oh so squishy matter we call our central nervous system. So why do you strain so much to "debunk" the mind over matter truism.
The placebo effect relies in no small part on the "faith" effect, which we use every day to overcome our physiologically limited ability to comprehend the world. Faith does not (necessarily) allow people to walk through walls or levitate, but it does allow us to do all kinds of important things, including and not limited to the discovery of new knowledge.
For example, your well founded faith in the scientific method allows you to maintain focus while facing mysteries often seem to defy not only experimental observation, but the very intuitions upon which those observations are based.
Do you have faith that we will figure out what's inside a black hole? Will we'll figure out where and what all that missing mass and energy is? Will we ever know why the photon goes through both holes at the same time? The scientific method has attained considerable momentum because of it's ability to shed light on mysteries we have long thought unknowable. That does NOT mean it will always succeed. The uncertainty principle, for example, claims that it has already failed in at least one important case (i.e., Schrodinger's cat). Knowing something about the state of an atom means affecting that atom, which also means we cannot always make "objective" observations. We can only make extremely well-educated guesses and hope that we're not wrong that often. This realization put a HUGE hole in the scientific method, but our faith allowed us to continue working and make ever more important discoveries.
So when you tell someone that the pill they took was just sugar, why is it a surprise that their faith is undermined and the unconscious processes that resulted in pain relief (or whatever) are also undermined?
Especially when Pakistan, India, and North Korea just got told "naughty boy" then it was business as usual.
We did not want India or Pakistan to develop nukes (and told them so repeatedly), but we tolerated it because they are not in the business of shouting "Death to America" at every "prayer" meeting.
Not sure what you mean about North Korea (who also calls for America's destruction daily). We have adamantly opposed their development program since the beginning and have done everything we could (sometime competently, sometimes not), to get them to stop.
To equate India (or Pakistan for that matter) and Iran is to ignore the nature of their respective regimes.
India is a stable, modern democracy with no particular regional ambitions except to sell more crap to the West than China does.
Pakistan is less stable (and getting worse), but when they began their testing they were much more so than they are now (Musharaff was badly flawed but at least wielded absolute power). They have also been a staunch ally of the US from just after the start of the Cold War (signed mutual protection pact in 1954) up to the present day, and though the more rural population is anti-West/US, the more educated urban population is quite the opposite - recognizing that their own fate is tied to good relations with the developed world.
Iran's current regime is attempting to solidify itself as a regional superpower on par with Saudi Arabia and Egypt in terms of influence. As such, it regularly aides insurgents in Iraq in the hope of destabilizing the (very fragile, somewhat corrupt and slow to develop) democratic institutions that are emerging there, because a stable democratic neighbor would put pressure on the increasingly illegitimate Iranian cabal that now controls both the military and much of the economy. They also regularly call for the destruction of Israel (a deeply flawed but important US ally) as well as the US itself. And more recently the Iranian regime has shown itself to be increasingly paranoid not of external threats, but to internal reformers attempting to operate within the parameters of the system ostensibly set up to empower it's nation's people.
Beyond these problems of attitude, there is also the very real and politically neutral problem of a MAD scenario involving Iran and Israel. Mutually Assured Destruction (barely) worked during the Cold War because both the US and the USSR were supremely stable and supremely powerful in their respective spheres of influence. In other words, no one would mess with either of them - internally or externally. This resulted in a kind of de facto stability regarding negotiations, because when Kennedy talked to Khrushchev, they each spoke for their respective military (and more importantly for their respective nuclear arsenals), and could keep the promises they made.
This would not be the case for an Iran-Israel variation. Consider a situation akin to the Cuban missile crisis, in which Iran decided to put nukes in the hands of Hamas in Syria. Blockades and secret deals would likely not result in a deal. It would more likely result in an escalation - not necessarily a nuclear one, but certainly a high-intensity battle for control of the areas in which the weapons reside.
That would not be good for anyone.
the giant sucking sound of IT jobs being outsourced to India and China.
Ever taken a self-defense class? Go take one and educate yourself. There are lots of things you can do when faced with an armed robber
If you can learn how to defend yourself without a gun, why carry one? Are you planning to simultaneously disarm the mugger and shoot him? I don't think the average mall walker has the dexterity to reach into their pocket quickly, let alone disarm and detain a mugger. And if you say, "but I can", then you are not applying your own rule of "everyone or no one", because the fact that you might meet some utility vs safety requirement, the vast majority of people do not, and would just be carrying a dangerous loaded weapon they'll never get to use until they're drunk or someone else uses it for them.
chief among them would have been to pay attention to your surroundings so your first indication of the robbery wasn't the gun in your face.
Ahh, so you agree that it is unlikely that you'd have a chance to actually pull a gun unless you saw things coming in advance. Which also means a lot of very jumpy people pulling loaded weapons when they see a "shady character" coming towards them. That would certainly make our streets safer.
Who the hell are you to tell someone else that they have NO REASON to do anything or everything?
I am a voting, tax-paying citizen of the United States, and I have exactly as much say in our laws as you do. Whether the law says you can or can't do something, you need a reason. In my opinion, (which all of this is of course), there is no reason to allow non security/law enforcement personnel to carry a concealed weapon. It would be like saying I have no right to say there's no reason for the "average person" (i'll get to that in a minute), to drive their car the wrong way on the highway or put on a blindfold and start swinging a baseball bat at the mall. We pass laws for reasons, and I have mine. This is not a "big brother" issue.
And I like how you qualify that with "average person". You don't get to play that game -- either everybody has the right to carry a firearm or nobody does (and this would include off-duty police officers too). Ever heard of equal protection? We don't have a class system in this country wherein certain people get rights not afforded to the remaining population.
You're kidding right? I cannot write a prescription. I cannot issue parking tickets. I cannot fly a plane. I cannot represent someone in court. Such restrictions are widely used and completely acceptable by everyone (except perhaps the hardcore libertarians). Why is wielding a tool (in public) designed explicitly for violence any different? And as for equal protection, it simply guarantees that everyone is treated equally under a given law, not that the law can't distinguish between one circumstance and another. Should a convicted felon be allowed to carry a gun in prison? Should a child be allowed to carry a gun? Should a person be allowed to carry a gun into a courtroom?
Plaxico Burris was a fucking moron who carried his handgun in the waistband of his sweatpants while drinking. He deserves to be punished as harshly as possible for his stupidity but holding him up as an argument for why the rest of us shouldn't be able to carry firearms is absurd. If he's your standard bearer then the rest of us shouldn't be allowed to have drivers licenses or checking accounts either.
You made my point for me. Plaxico Burress was an idiot for doing what he did, and if everyone is allowed to carry a loaded gun, there will be millions of morons carrying their weapons in their waste-band while drunk. This lesson should be obvious to anyone who looks at auto accident statistics. Certain people are exceptional and do not cause accidents. But most people are not, and cause all sorts of mayhem. The difference is that cars are intended for non-violent purposes and we
The rest of us poor slobs don't have the right to defend ourselves if we are unlucky enough to live in a part of the country run by the anti-gun zealots.
Defend yourself? How?
There is NO REASON for the average person to carry a concealed weapon (trained and monitored security personnel excepted of course). In fact it creates an even more dangerous environment.
Plaxico Burris (the football player who shot himself in the leg at a nightclub last year), had a license to carry his gun in Florida. What if he shot someone else's leg? Or their head?
Please understand that I am not against guns, I am just against non-law enforcement/security personnel carrying handguns (or assault rifles for that matter), around in public.
We buy just about everything we use in our daily lives from China, and in light of our dwindling manufacturing base, perhaps we should rethink our partnership until things like this are less common. Now this is not to say that intimidation is not a part of US history (or present for that matter), but a US corp could not order its thugs to intimidate and search the home of one of its workers. At least not publicly.
I understand that your original point was that some people will believe anything they are told, but I think your critic should be aimed at a less complex source of incredulity.
While it may be true that people tend to act like "sheep" in uncritically accepting interpretations of ancient texts, that's the whole point of using allegory in the first place. Most people are simply looking for a digestible worldview that enriches their lives - i.e., "Do these things and you will reap great reward regardless of whether you understand what you are doing or not" and cannot process the surprisingly sophisticated theological and philosophical ideas that underpin the Judeo-Christian-Muslim belief system. It is simply too dense for the average person to grasp by use of reason, so simple metaphors are used instead.
Consider that the billiard ball model of atomic interaction is still used to teach high school students because they have no a priori understanding of "electron clouds" or a quantum of energy, whereas they do understand things bumping into one another. Would you call them sheep? Would you call their teachers purveyors of superstition? The students with just enough interest to digest these basic concepts understand at least as much as 19th century professional scientists (about atoms), while those with more interest and capacity go on to examine things in more detail, and presumably gain a more sophisticated and far more powerful understanding of the world.
Which raises the real problem for modern Christianity (or any other surviving ancient religion): the book has already gone to press and no one presumes to write a sequel. As a result, it's allegories are increasingly misunderstood and misused, and the further away we get from a text's context of authorship, the more difficult it is for us to see them the way the author and original reader saw them. The key is to realize that this in no way diminishes the value of the lessons on which they are based. If you consider this heresy, remember that some of the most respected scientists in history were devoutly religious - Newton, Aristotle, Einstein, Bacon, Jung, etc. Perhaps they saw past the allegorical "jewish zombies" and "magical trees" to the deeper meaning beneath. --------- And by the way, sometimes when we look at the knowledge for which an allegory is constructed as a tool of understanding, we can see how important our intuition is in deciding how we see the world:
Ancient Bible : Ever-present cosmic creator snaps fingers and the universe suddenly exists.
Modern Science: Ever-present cosmic "membranes" collide and the universe suddenly exists.
Ancient Bible : Man emerges from a "garden of plenty" where he has no concept of right and wrong
Modern Science: Man emerges from "lower" forms of life that have no concept of right and wrong.
Ancient Bible : Man struggles to understand his world and is aided by a series of revelations.
Modern Science: Man struggles to understand his world and is aided by a series of discoveries.
Ancient Bible : Man is beset by fear and anxiety because he does not put his faith in god.
Modern Science: Man is beset by fear and anxiety because he put his faith in god.
Ancient Bible : Jesus tells people that "heaven" is available to everyone.
Modern Science: Freud tells people that "sanity" is available to everyone.
Ancient Bible : Jesus teaches that a person can be healed by having faith.
Modern Science: Placebos teach us that a person can be healed by having faith.
Ancient Bible : Jesus claims there is an unseen world behind the world we live in.
Modern Science: Physicists claim there is an unseen world behind the world we live in.
Ancient Bible : The heavens and the earth will pass away.
Modern Science: The heavens and the earth will pass away.
Ancient Bib
can you spell "allegory"? try it with me now: a-l-l-e-g-o-r-y. that wasn't so hard, right? now try "condescending prick"...
That is what science is about. Revelation based on fact, not faith.
But you realize that faith is not an inherently religious concept. You have faith that science will explain things like the "Big Bang" and the "cause" of gravity. In fact, you have faith that science is a useful tool in the first place. What if all of our observations are based on a lie perpetrated by an all-powerful trickster (see Descartes)? Or perhaps reality is merely a series of shadows projected on a cave wall in front of a captive audience (see Plato). Attempting to set science above religious dogma based on some notion of absolute certainty is to engage in the same kind of hubris you chastise. Faith is an essential part of life. It is a bridge between what we have proven to be true and what we intuitively understand to be true based on personal experience. And if you say you know science to be "true", then go talk to Socrates - he's got some questions for you...