I need to move to Norway. For some reason, it seems to be the only sensible country on earth. Now if we could just tilt the rotational axis of the earth a little farther up, and we'd solve it's only problem: eternal days and eternal nights.
Fuck, just lost my entire comment. I'll just summarize the main points now.
We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; That to secure these rights governments are instituted among men...
There you have it. The purpose of government is to secure your natural, unalienable rights.
The Declaration of Independence is a powerful speech that outlines some fairly new ideas for the role of government. However, it is not a policy document, not a legal document, and not even a philosophical treatise. For one, it does not say what the full list of inalienable rights are, nor what the government can do to secure them. As a result, it is useless in this discussion.
Regarding the platform, it ranges from hoping for change to tarring-and-feathering-worthy.
Points 6-8: I won't argue with your assessment of them. I don't agree 100%, but it's close enough for now.
Point 9: earmarks are at a historic low. Interestingly enough, some political scientists have been arguing for a long time now that it is earmarks that grease the wheel of Congress.
Point 10: your assessment is the fundamental problem of the point. Reducing taxes without a plan of what's important to fund or without regard to general revenue is nothing but pandering to your base.
Points 1-4 are complete fantasies in that will either accomplish exactly, exacerbate the problem they're supposed to solve or are trying to address a point that even a few years ago used to be conservative or free-market solutions. They're utterly laughable, especially since one of them is being implemented in California, and everyone there hates it.
That brings me to the most egregious point in their platform: point 5. The mentioning of a "blue-ribbon panel" is cute, but is nothing short of a fig-leaf for a concept that goes against the core of the US government, the basic principles that the Founding Fathers were working with, and is guaranteed to lead to a complete kleptocracy. Why? It basically removes the authority of the president to execute laws, the authority of the courts to rule on whether laws have been broken, and merges them all under the authority of the Congress. In other words, it does away with the three branches of government, and will lead to the worst excesses of any Banana republic.
It's that point especially that cements my notion that the Tea Party doesn't have a fucking clue about economics, politics, civics, or even the goddamn history of the US.
So excuse me while I give them the benefit of the doubt and label them merely insane, and do not think that they are some very clever sociopaths who are bent on destroying the core foundation of the US government.
Sorry, little of that looks like lunacy to me or most people for that matter.
On Wikipedia, this would be tagged as "weaselwords".
When you actually look at the demographics [nytimes.com], the Tea Party crew are actually more educated than the average American
Let's make sure we know what educated means in this context: more degrees than a similar population of average Americans would have. To some extent, this matches my experience: tea partiers - or those who espouse the libertarian aspect of the Tea Party - have more money than average, and have at least a Bachelor Degree, if not a Master. No PhDs among the ones I know though.
However, there's one area where they are spectacularly ignorant, to the point where I'm starting to think that there's some specific cognitive effect at work: they all think that they made it on their own in the world, think that Government should be run like a business and think that the purpose of Society is to make their life better. Keep in mind though that they the vast majority come from wealthy families, have businesses that fail, are full of cronies and family members, experience how shoddy and shady businesses can be, and live in one of the most stable environments in the world.
Even the mainstream Tea Partiers that I know - or at least those who profess no ideological attachment, but pretty much recite Tea Party and Republican political platforms verbatim - indulge in a massive misunderstanding of how society operates, what the role of government is or even what made their own success possible. Top that off with a complete lack of understanding what the debt ceiling is (a badly set up part of the budget process), and even the "moderate" Tea Partiers can come across as complete lunatics. For my friends who are part of this group, I treat them like the crazy uncle - they're always welcome, but certain topics are forbidden, unless everyone consents to "lively" debates until 4 AM.
By definition, a monopoly does not exist anymore when multiple people engage in the same activity. In this case, the monopoly is being broken by copyright infringers.
I think you might also want to think very carefully about actual ownership and how it relates to representations of ideas. Specifically, you might want to think about the origin of the phrase "You only truly own what you can carry in both hands while running at full tilt."
I think the more important point is that there are many, many significant legal and philosophical differences between copyright infringement and theft. Using piracy for it tends to muddle the distinction and imply theft. For those who missed the boat, here's a partial list of the differences: 1) Theft requires an object. Copyright deals with a representation. 2) Theft deprives the victim of the object. Copyright infringement deprives the victim of the government-granted monopoly over their representations. 3) Theft moves objects around. Copyright infringement increases the amount of representations available.
No. I didn't. And even if I had, I don't believe democratically elected representatives represent their voters regardless of how is democracy implemented.
Democracy never promised that you'd get your wish, nor did representative democracy promise that your representative will follow your exact wishes.
When it comes to representative democracy, it's impossible to emphasise enough that this can all be changed by voting differently.
That is false and naive. As a simple proof, I challenge you to change it all by voting differently.
You're either a control freak, ignorant, or both. You might be ignorant because you mistake democracy to mean "I control stuff." You're wrong - democracy just means you have input. Along with millions of others. So your share of the control is 1/n, which can be quite small in a country the size of the US. You might be a control freak because you think that everyone should just do what you think is right. There's also the possibility that you're some teenage know-it-all who thinks that his 30 minutes of coverage of the American Revolution taught him everything he needs to know about civics and political theory. But that would be just insulting.
Yes, the mechanisms are actually there. Sorry that democracy doesn't mean that we all just do what you want. Wait, no, I'm not sorry. That'd be just a dictatorship, and we actually moved away from that. For good reasons. Maybe one day you'll learn about them.
Personally, I think most artists are lazy fucks who think that doing work for about 3 months should entitle them to a lifetime of luxury. I prefer to support people who actually play music. You know, concerts.
Nope, haven't bough music in years. But I have been to more than a few concerts.
Well, thank you for being honest. At least know we know that it isn't about fair play, respecting someone's work or making sure that someone can make a living off of their work. No, it's just fuck you, you can't stop us.
In return, I offer you a "Nuts!". There's always Linux to run everything at home. Including a private a VPN for friends.
Someone mod the AC up: manufacturers are basically responsible for the car until it moves off of the dealer's lot. That's why a lemon tanks a manufacturer's stock and balance sheet, and dealerships basically keep on trucking.
Oh oh oh! I can tell a story! I'm part of the support dept of a big cloud-service company. As a result, I'm supposed to help customers with their problems with our service. Two weeks ago, I ran into a request from a customer about white listing our IP addresses. Turns out they outsourced their IT department to one of the big outsources, with "Sam", senior network engineer with 20 years of experience, in charge of the problem. Here's what I ran into: * guy doesn't read documentation I send him * guy doesn't listen to what I tell him about our infrastructure * guy demands we put him in touch with our network engineers because he doesn't like talking to anyone put network engineers * guy spends a week demanding to talk to our network engineers, and ignores everything we send his way. * guy suddenly asks a question we answered a week ago, and is finally good to with his whitelisting project. * guy makes change to his VPN, and end-users on VPN suddenly can't reach our service. But his users on their regular internal network are fine. Guy demands again to speak to a network engineer on our side. * guy spends a week asking for a network engineer on our side, without doing a single investigation on his side. * Today, guy suddenly gets an epiphany that there might be some configuration on his side that might cause packets to not be delivered to his VPN users. * problem suddenly gets fixed.
So after two weeks of Mr. Senior Networking Engineer with 20 years of experience doing diddly squat to resolve something that was obviously a configuration issue, making all kinds of stupid demands, asking questions that either were nonsensical or already answered and escalating the issue to the c-suite on all sides, it turns out that he didn't check his own configuration. Not fucking once. I was ready to fly over to where ever he was hiding and cattle-prod him into doing some work.
In the meantime, yeah, I'm going to enjoy tomorrow's call.
This story, combined with pretty much 90% of my other experiences with outsourcing IT to India, has me convinced that this is probably the single worst thing a company can do. On the upside, I'm pretty sure I have little competition from Indian outsourcers.
Here's the IPCC section on ocean acidification from 2007: http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch5s5-4-2-3.html. You can go back farther if you're willing to look. You're already wrong in that at least one thing that they predicted is coming true with a vengeance. Feel free to look up the other predictions and compare with today.
I find it rather amusing that on the one hand you're complaining that no one says anything about ocean acidification (when they are), and then are complaining that they are wrong about everything (when one thing they are complaining about is ocean acidification). On the upside, maybe you can start to do something about ocean acidification. I mean, beyond posting on Slashdot. Maybe support one of those poor persecuted scientists whose cry for help regarding ocean acidification is being suppressed?
Since when does an unsupported ad hominem attack need to be debunked? You're making some very specific claims about what someone thinks, then are crying foul when someone throws it back in your face.
Say something supported with evidence, or can the party-line rhetoric.
To all the idiots who modded this up: just one key mistake from the last few weeks is that there are no record ice caps, just that the growth from summer minimum has been going at an unusually high pace. We're still way below average ice coverage and volume.
And this is how you lie to ignorant people and make them believe whatever you want: tell them something that is close enough to the truth that they sort of remember something like it and that tells them they are going to be alright. They won't catch the error, happily repeat it to everyone, and then wonder why WW2 broke out.
I'm sorry... there's spelunking. There's caves (trolls! darkness!). There's a brand-new species. It doesn't even have eyes (take that, Beholder!). It's something that makes a neat trace for evolution (eat that, micro-evolutionists!). It shows what is necessary for species to survive - sometimes, that's something completely different from what we expect.
And somehow, that's not news for nerds? Stuff that matters? Go shove your "I need things to cater to myself exclusively" attitude so far up your ass that you'll find your own species of blind, unpigmented species of snails.
Small quibble: they do wear buttons on their shirts: http://www.amishnews.com/ai.html. Couldn't find a reason for why they wouldn't, outside of "It's a myth that the Amish don't wear buttons."
And this is why my version of the easy pass sits in the glove box when I'm not near toll booths. How do I know it works? I forgot to take it out once, and blew right through the toll booth without a beep anywhere.
On that thought: as soon as I renew my passport, I'm getting one of the aluminum card/passport holders/wallets. Having RFIDs about all kinds of data available out in the open is nuts. Yes, I'm aware of LPSs, facial recognition from video, but those are still a lot harder to do than just reading an RFID.
#1 thing to keep in mind: laws and theories refer to the same thing. Laws are just a historical anachronism when people used to call things laws of nature any time they found out a rule that seemed to be invariable in nature. Buoyancy, F=ma, etc.
#2 thing to keep in mind: theories are not just guesses. They are statements about how some things supposedly work, based on our current understanding of related things. They are fully independent of scientific facts, which are data. Sometimes though, theories and facts have the same name, but refer to different things. Example: the theory of evolution, and Evolution. The theory of evolution lays out how we think creatures evolve. Evolution is the fact (the data collected) that creatures evolve.
#3 thing to keep in mind: linguistically, a hypothesis and a theory is the same thing. In scientific vernacular, a hypothesis is what you have before you have data. A theory is what you have once you have collected some data and have the ability to support your theory with more than "cuz I say so."
#4 thing to keep in mind: laws, theories, hypotheses - all of these can and will be changed once data shows that they're not correct anymore. That is the hallmark of science. We've just gotten so used to things having been nailed down so well that they haven't been updated in a long time. That doesn't mean that they can't be in the future.
Scientist keep changing their mind on things! It's big science that's supporting research that shows that AGW is not the root of all evil! Wait, no.... it's liberal academics who are polluting our childrens's minds with nonsense like wholly mammoths not being hunted to extinction by savage humans!
I'm confused. Someone please point me to the right meme I'm supposed to employ against evil scientists here. Help me, Bill O'Reilly!
Wow - you're the first AC to at least not immediately go off the deep end. I guess that this should get a reply as well, then.
The thing is, women shelters simply don't outnumber men, but there are almost NO shelters designed for men (at least that we are aware of), or other provisions. That does not match the criminal statistics, as criminal statistics do not show that men are almost never the victims.
There are a host of other issues why women-only (or women and children only) shelters make more sense than men only shelters. For one, the physical difference means that the abuse that the men received at home is unlikely to be repeated in a shelter. This has a host of other knock-on effects as well which all lead to there being a higher need for women-specific shelters. I would ultimately leave that decision to the people who run the shelters. They have a much better idea of what type of housing is needed to cater to the needs of the homeless, and how to best spend the very limited funds to do that. I have not seen a particular and specific need that has to be addressed, and purely going by "the statistics don't match" is asinine. It's the same reason, we don't institute quotas that exactly match demographic distributions for things like board members, head-coaches or college admissions. Yes, there are discussions when the statistics don't match up, but that's not the same as instituting those as quotas.
Some statistics actually argue that women initiate domestic violence as often as men
Anything can be supported by "some" statistics. I'd be very careful about citing a single data set or study to support a conclusion. Not unless you've read the actual paper and reproduced the statistics (and data collection.... which can be tricky). The much more salient aspect is also whether there's actual injury involved. Technically, a slap is violence, but few people get PTSD from that. A rape, broken arm, death threat while getting a black eye is far more significant. And that's a place where men are much more frequently the perpetrators rather than the victims.
There are male victims, but there aren't (as far as we know) provisions for male victims near what the statistics may imply. That is an inequality that cannot be simply explained by biology. Society has taken steps to cater to the biology of women, but not so much for men.
So far, I've seen only the most trivial examples that explicitly do not need sex-specific steps to be addressed. Equality isn't a numbers thing.
Personally, I think that's one reason why men are more likely to suffer from mental illness.
That's not backed up by any research. Please provide sourcing.
Well, since you're the only non-AC who deigned to respond (and the only one who is a able to put together anything even remotely resembling a coherent argument), I'll reply.
Yes physical and mental issues do contribute to homelessness but the overwhelming cause of homelessness is the lack of affordable housing.
I was specifically referring to the claim that men make up a larger percent of the homeless than women. Given that one of the factors in homelessness is mental instability, and that mental disorders are more likely to strike men than women, it makes sense that men are more often homeless than women for reasons that are unrelated to sexism. I wouldn't harp on the point too much, as I'm pretty sure that you're correct that the percentage of people who are homeless due to mental illness is a smaller fraction than that of those who can't afford housing. Then again, there's the question of why people can't afford housing. Your link actually has an indication of that, and it ties into what I had in mind: chronic homelessness. " "Chronic" has a specific definition, involving either long-term and/or repeated bouts of homelessness coupled with disability (physical or mental). " It's only 16% of the total population of homeless, but I think that chronic homelessness is a serious public problem. Temporary homelessness is an issue that requires a much better understanding of the specific problem than what we're discussing here - the theory that men are somehow victims of a society that prefers women.
Wrong. There are homeless shelters that specialize in single homeless women and women with children. These are not spousal abuse shelters which requires abuse to have taken place and actively involve local law enforcement.
You're right. I should have phrased that differently. There are no battered men shelters (or at least, none that I'm aware of). However, there are battered women shelters. The reason for that is that physical altercations still favor the men, which is reflected in the criminal statistics: women are more likely to be wounded or killed by their male partner. This means that the number of shelters designed for women as opposed to those designed for men are going to outnumber those for men. Again, this has more to do with basic biology than with any sort of sexism.
I don't understand how homelessness counters feminist claims
It doesn't. That's the point. Everything that the post I replied to brought up where things that were tied much more to biology than to any misandry in current society.
but you really need to research your answers.
Point taken. I don't research every post that I write. I do appreciate, however, any corrections when I do get it wrong.
Slashdot Mirror
I need to move to Norway. For some reason, it seems to be the only sensible country on earth. Now if we could just tilt the rotational axis of the earth a little farther up, and we'd solve it's only problem: eternal days and eternal nights.
What comments? I also don't see any ads. *Pets his adblock and noscript extensions*
To steal the post from someone who responded: No, I'm saying that they all think they built the log-cabin in which they were born.
Fuck, just lost my entire comment. I'll just summarize the main points now.
We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; That to secure these rights governments are instituted among men...
There you have it. The purpose of government is to secure your natural, unalienable rights.
The Declaration of Independence is a powerful speech that outlines some fairly new ideas for the role of government. However, it is not a policy document, not a legal document, and not even a philosophical treatise. For one, it does not say what the full list of inalienable rights are, nor what the government can do to secure them. As a result, it is useless in this discussion.
Regarding the platform, it ranges from hoping for change to tarring-and-feathering-worthy.
Points 6-8: I won't argue with your assessment of them. I don't agree 100%, but it's close enough for now.
Point 9: earmarks are at a historic low. Interestingly enough, some political scientists have been arguing for a long time now that it is earmarks that grease the wheel of Congress.
Point 10: your assessment is the fundamental problem of the point. Reducing taxes without a plan of what's important to fund or without regard to general revenue is nothing but pandering to your base.
Points 1-4 are complete fantasies in that will either accomplish exactly, exacerbate the problem they're supposed to solve or are trying to address a point that even a few years ago used to be conservative or free-market solutions. They're utterly laughable, especially since one of them is being implemented in California, and everyone there hates it.
That brings me to the most egregious point in their platform: point 5. The mentioning of a "blue-ribbon panel" is cute, but is nothing short of a fig-leaf for a concept that goes against the core of the US government, the basic principles that the Founding Fathers were working with, and is guaranteed to lead to a complete kleptocracy. Why? It basically removes the authority of the president to execute laws, the authority of the courts to rule on whether laws have been broken, and merges them all under the authority of the Congress. In other words, it does away with the three branches of government, and will lead to the worst excesses of any Banana republic.
It's that point especially that cements my notion that the Tea Party doesn't have a fucking clue about economics, politics, civics, or even the goddamn history of the US.
So excuse me while I give them the benefit of the doubt and label them merely insane, and do not think that they are some very clever sociopaths who are bent on destroying the core foundation of the US government.
Sorry, little of that looks like lunacy to me or most people for that matter.
On Wikipedia, this would be tagged as "weaselwords".
When you actually look at the demographics [nytimes.com], the Tea Party crew are actually more educated than the average American
Let's make sure we know what educated means in this context: more degrees than a similar population of average Americans would have. To some extent, this matches my experience: tea partiers - or those who espouse the libertarian aspect of the Tea Party - have more money than average, and have at least a Bachelor Degree, if not a Master. No PhDs among the ones I know though.
However, there's one area where they are spectacularly ignorant, to the point where I'm starting to think that there's some specific cognitive effect at work: they all think that they made it on their own in the world, think that Government should be run like a business and think that the purpose of Society is to make their life better. Keep in mind though that they the vast majority come from wealthy families, have businesses that fail, are full of cronies and family members, experience how shoddy and shady businesses can be, and live in one of the most stable environments in the world.
Even the mainstream Tea Partiers that I know - or at least those who profess no ideological attachment, but pretty much recite Tea Party and Republican political platforms verbatim - indulge in a massive misunderstanding of how society operates, what the role of government is or even what made their own success possible. Top that off with a complete lack of understanding what the debt ceiling is (a badly set up part of the budget process), and even the "moderate" Tea Partiers can come across as complete lunatics. For my friends who are part of this group, I treat them like the crazy uncle - they're always welcome, but certain topics are forbidden, unless everyone consents to "lively" debates until 4 AM.
By definition, a monopoly does not exist anymore when multiple people engage in the same activity. In this case, the monopoly is being broken by copyright infringers.
I think you might also want to think very carefully about actual ownership and how it relates to representations of ideas. Specifically, you might want to think about the origin of the phrase "You only truly own what you can carry in both hands while running at full tilt."
I think the more important point is that there are many, many significant legal and philosophical differences between copyright infringement and theft. Using piracy for it tends to muddle the distinction and imply theft. For those who missed the boat, here's a partial list of the differences:
1) Theft requires an object. Copyright deals with a representation.
2) Theft deprives the victim of the object. Copyright infringement deprives the victim of the government-granted monopoly over their representations.
3) Theft moves objects around. Copyright infringement increases the amount of representations available.
These are just a few of the primary ones.
No. I didn't. And even if I had, I don't believe democratically elected representatives represent their voters regardless of how is democracy implemented.
Democracy never promised that you'd get your wish, nor did representative democracy promise that your representative will follow your exact wishes.
When it comes to representative democracy, it's impossible to emphasise enough that this can all be changed by voting differently.
That is false and naive.
As a simple proof, I challenge you to change it all by voting differently.
You're either a control freak, ignorant, or both. You might be ignorant because you mistake democracy to mean "I control stuff." You're wrong - democracy just means you have input. Along with millions of others. So your share of the control is 1/n, which can be quite small in a country the size of the US. You might be a control freak because you think that everyone should just do what you think is right. There's also the possibility that you're some teenage know-it-all who thinks that his 30 minutes of coverage of the American Revolution taught him everything he needs to know about civics and political theory. But that would be just insulting.
Yes, the mechanisms are actually there. Sorry that democracy doesn't mean that we all just do what you want. Wait, no, I'm not sorry. That'd be just a dictatorship, and we actually moved away from that. For good reasons. Maybe one day you'll learn about them.
Personally, I think most artists are lazy fucks who think that doing work for about 3 months should entitle them to a lifetime of luxury. I prefer to support people who actually play music. You know, concerts.
Nope, haven't bough music in years. But I have been to more than a few concerts.
Well, thank you for being honest. At least know we know that it isn't about fair play, respecting someone's work or making sure that someone can make a living off of their work. No, it's just fuck you, you can't stop us.
In return, I offer you a "Nuts!". There's always Linux to run everything at home. Including a private a VPN for friends.
Someone mod the AC up: manufacturers are basically responsible for the car until it moves off of the dealer's lot. That's why a lemon tanks a manufacturer's stock and balance sheet, and dealerships basically keep on trucking.
Like democracy, Slashdot's moderation system is the worst one out there, except for all the other alternatives.
Nope. I have worked with Rackspace though. Friendly folks, even if a bit nutty and high-strung.
Oh oh oh! I can tell a story!
I'm part of the support dept of a big cloud-service company. As a result, I'm supposed to help customers with their problems with our service. Two weeks ago, I ran into a request from a customer about white listing our IP addresses. Turns out they outsourced their IT department to one of the big outsources, with "Sam", senior network engineer with 20 years of experience, in charge of the problem. Here's what I ran into:
* guy doesn't read documentation I send him
* guy doesn't listen to what I tell him about our infrastructure
* guy demands we put him in touch with our network engineers because he doesn't like talking to anyone put network engineers
* guy spends a week demanding to talk to our network engineers, and ignores everything we send his way.
* guy suddenly asks a question we answered a week ago, and is finally good to with his whitelisting project.
* guy makes change to his VPN, and end-users on VPN suddenly can't reach our service. But his users on their regular internal network are fine. Guy demands again to speak to a network engineer on our side.
* guy spends a week asking for a network engineer on our side, without doing a single investigation on his side.
* Today, guy suddenly gets an epiphany that there might be some configuration on his side that might cause packets to not be delivered to his VPN users.
* problem suddenly gets fixed.
So after two weeks of Mr. Senior Networking Engineer with 20 years of experience doing diddly squat to resolve something that was obviously a configuration issue, making all kinds of stupid demands, asking questions that either were nonsensical or already answered and escalating the issue to the c-suite on all sides, it turns out that he didn't check his own configuration. Not fucking once. I was ready to fly over to where ever he was hiding and cattle-prod him into doing some work.
In the meantime, yeah, I'm going to enjoy tomorrow's call.
This story, combined with pretty much 90% of my other experiences with outsourcing IT to India, has me convinced that this is probably the single worst thing a company can do. On the upside, I'm pretty sure I have little competition from Indian outsourcers.
Here's the IPCC section on ocean acidification from 2007: http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch5s5-4-2-3.html. You can go back farther if you're willing to look. You're already wrong in that at least one thing that they predicted is coming true with a vengeance. Feel free to look up the other predictions and compare with today.
I find it rather amusing that on the one hand you're complaining that no one says anything about ocean acidification (when they are), and then are complaining that they are wrong about everything (when one thing they are complaining about is ocean acidification). On the upside, maybe you can start to do something about ocean acidification. I mean, beyond posting on Slashdot. Maybe support one of those poor persecuted scientists whose cry for help regarding ocean acidification is being suppressed?
Since when does an unsupported ad hominem attack need to be debunked? You're making some very specific claims about what someone thinks, then are crying foul when someone throws it back in your face.
Say something supported with evidence, or can the party-line rhetoric.
So the stuff that's been predicted for years by climatologists is happening, and yet, for some reason, the core mechanism for it is wrong.
You are one piece of work.
To all the idiots who modded this up: just one key mistake from the last few weeks is that there are no record ice caps, just that the growth from summer minimum has been going at an unusually high pace. We're still way below average ice coverage and volume.
And this is how you lie to ignorant people and make them believe whatever you want: tell them something that is close enough to the truth that they sort of remember something like it and that tells them they are going to be alright. They won't catch the error, happily repeat it to everyone, and then wonder why WW2 broke out.
I'm sorry... there's spelunking. There's caves (trolls! darkness!). There's a brand-new species. It doesn't even have eyes (take that, Beholder!). It's something that makes a neat trace for evolution (eat that, micro-evolutionists!). It shows what is necessary for species to survive - sometimes, that's something completely different from what we expect.
And somehow, that's not news for nerds? Stuff that matters? Go shove your "I need things to cater to myself exclusively" attitude so far up your ass that you'll find your own species of blind, unpigmented species of snails.
Small quibble: they do wear buttons on their shirts: http://www.amishnews.com/ai.html. Couldn't find a reason for why they wouldn't, outside of "It's a myth that the Amish don't wear buttons."
And this is why my version of the easy pass sits in the glove box when I'm not near toll booths. How do I know it works? I forgot to take it out once, and blew right through the toll booth without a beep anywhere.
On that thought: as soon as I renew my passport, I'm getting one of the aluminum card/passport holders/wallets. Having RFIDs about all kinds of data available out in the open is nuts. Yes, I'm aware of LPSs, facial recognition from video, but those are still a lot harder to do than just reading an RFID.
#1 thing to keep in mind: laws and theories refer to the same thing. Laws are just a historical anachronism when people used to call things laws of nature any time they found out a rule that seemed to be invariable in nature. Buoyancy, F=ma, etc.
#2 thing to keep in mind: theories are not just guesses. They are statements about how some things supposedly work, based on our current understanding of related things. They are fully independent of scientific facts, which are data. Sometimes though, theories and facts have the same name, but refer to different things. Example: the theory of evolution, and Evolution. The theory of evolution lays out how we think creatures evolve. Evolution is the fact (the data collected) that creatures evolve.
#3 thing to keep in mind: linguistically, a hypothesis and a theory is the same thing. In scientific vernacular, a hypothesis is what you have before you have data. A theory is what you have once you have collected some data and have the ability to support your theory with more than "cuz I say so."
#4 thing to keep in mind: laws, theories, hypotheses - all of these can and will be changed once data shows that they're not correct anymore. That is the hallmark of science. We've just gotten so used to things having been nailed down so well that they haven't been updated in a long time. That doesn't mean that they can't be in the future.
Scientist keep changing their mind on things! It's big science that's supporting research that shows that AGW is not the root of all evil! Wait, no.... it's liberal academics who are polluting our childrens's minds with nonsense like wholly mammoths not being hunted to extinction by savage humans!
I'm confused. Someone please point me to the right meme I'm supposed to employ against evil scientists here. Help me, Bill O'Reilly!
Wow - you're the first AC to at least not immediately go off the deep end. I guess that this should get a reply as well, then.
The thing is, women shelters simply don't outnumber men, but there are almost NO shelters designed for men (at least that we are aware of), or other provisions. That does not match the criminal statistics, as criminal statistics do not show that men are almost never the victims.
There are a host of other issues why women-only (or women and children only) shelters make more sense than men only shelters. For one, the physical difference means that the abuse that the men received at home is unlikely to be repeated in a shelter. This has a host of other knock-on effects as well which all lead to there being a higher need for women-specific shelters. I would ultimately leave that decision to the people who run the shelters. They have a much better idea of what type of housing is needed to cater to the needs of the homeless, and how to best spend the very limited funds to do that. I have not seen a particular and specific need that has to be addressed, and purely going by "the statistics don't match" is asinine. It's the same reason, we don't institute quotas that exactly match demographic distributions for things like board members, head-coaches or college admissions. Yes, there are discussions when the statistics don't match up, but that's not the same as instituting those as quotas.
Some statistics actually argue that women initiate domestic violence as often as men
Anything can be supported by "some" statistics. I'd be very careful about citing a single data set or study to support a conclusion. Not unless you've read the actual paper and reproduced the statistics (and data collection.... which can be tricky). The much more salient aspect is also whether there's actual injury involved. Technically, a slap is violence, but few people get PTSD from that. A rape, broken arm, death threat while getting a black eye is far more significant. And that's a place where men are much more frequently the perpetrators rather than the victims.
There are male victims, but there aren't (as far as we know) provisions for male victims near what the statistics may imply. That is an inequality that cannot be simply explained by biology. Society has taken steps to cater to the biology of women, but not so much for men.
So far, I've seen only the most trivial examples that explicitly do not need sex-specific steps to be addressed. Equality isn't a numbers thing.
Personally, I think that's one reason why men are more likely to suffer from mental illness.
That's not backed up by any research. Please provide sourcing.
Well, since you're the only non-AC who deigned to respond (and the only one who is a able to put together anything even remotely resembling a coherent argument), I'll reply.
Yes physical and mental issues do contribute to homelessness but the overwhelming cause of homelessness is the lack of affordable housing.
I was specifically referring to the claim that men make up a larger percent of the homeless than women. Given that one of the factors in homelessness is mental instability, and that mental disorders are more likely to strike men than women, it makes sense that men are more often homeless than women for reasons that are unrelated to sexism. I wouldn't harp on the point too much, as I'm pretty sure that you're correct that the percentage of people who are homeless due to mental illness is a smaller fraction than that of those who can't afford housing. Then again, there's the question of why people can't afford housing. Your link actually has an indication of that, and it ties into what I had in mind: chronic homelessness. " "Chronic" has a specific definition, involving either long-term and/or repeated bouts of homelessness coupled with disability (physical or mental). " It's only 16% of the total population of homeless, but I think that chronic homelessness is a serious public problem. Temporary homelessness is an issue that requires a much better understanding of the specific problem than what we're discussing here - the theory that men are somehow victims of a society that prefers women.
Wrong. There are homeless shelters that specialize in single homeless women and women with children. These are not spousal abuse shelters which requires abuse to have taken place and actively involve local law enforcement.
You're right. I should have phrased that differently. There are no battered men shelters (or at least, none that I'm aware of). However, there are battered women shelters. The reason for that is that physical altercations still favor the men, which is reflected in the criminal statistics: women are more likely to be wounded or killed by their male partner. This means that the number of shelters designed for women as opposed to those designed for men are going to outnumber those for men. Again, this has more to do with basic biology than with any sort of sexism.
I don't understand how homelessness counters feminist claims
It doesn't. That's the point. Everything that the post I replied to brought up where things that were tied much more to biology than to any misandry in current society.
but you really need to research your answers.
Point taken. I don't research every post that I write. I do appreciate, however, any corrections when I do get it wrong.