If men in general were politically dominant, then it wouldn't be the case that 75% of all homeless people are male
Homelessness is often correlated with mental illness, which is preponderant in men. Next.
there are numerous homeless shelters that cater strictly to women.
Those are battered women shelters. Domestic abuse is still heavily skewed towards women being victims, largely because they are on average physically weaker.
If men in general were politically dominant, then we wouldn't have men being forced to pay child support for children that the courts acknowledge aren't even theirs.
A single anecdote based on a time frame where men where so dominant socially and politically that a divorced mother would be condemned to a life of abject poverty. The reason for these laws is because it used to be that women were incapable of finding jobs anything other than secretaries or nurses. Add to that that mothers were in the vast majority of cases "home makers", being divorced was close to a poverty sentence.
If men in general were politically dominant, then Title IX wouldn't instruct colleges to kick out men on the mere allegation of sexual misconduct (the "preponderance of evidence" clause) rather than requiring actual evidence.
You watched too much CSI. Preponderance of evidence is the standard for any civil case. Which is what Title IX cases fall under.
I agree that some feminist claims, as well as laws designed to deal with male supremacy need to be revisited. But your examples aren't helping your argument.
Next you're going to lecture us on how you just found a proof of God's non-existence by claiming that he can't create a rock so heavy that he can't lift it.
In other words, you're someone who never went beyond middle-school in a particular field, and then claims some bleedingly obvious question hasn't been answered, and therefore invalidates an entire concept.
Newsflash: tolerance does not merely mean "I will not object to anyone doing anything, even if it harms me directly." That's suicidal. Tolerance means to tolerate behaviors and thoughts that do not directly impact you, and where the objection is largely moralistic. That also means that not tolerating intolerance is actually well within the purview of the tolerant person, as the take-over of the intolerant person means that it is not possible anymore to be tolerant. The decision of what to tolerate will be done by someone else.
Quite frankly, I blame this ignorance on American culture: the amount of pure crap that is based on what I can only assume is willful - and prideful! - ignorance is staggering in the US. Other countries have it to, but Americans have elevated it to a point of national pride.
You would be funny if you'd be just a shade less obtuse. Instead, your fantasy world is just sad. Somebody will always make the decision. And in your world, you'll have far less say in that decision than in mine, or even in the current one. You're lucky most people around you are smart enough to not let you create the world you have in mind. You wouldn't like once you'd be there. How do I know? You'd have moved out of Canada by now.
If it isn't me, it will be someone else. Possibly you. In the end, someone ALWAYS decides. And will make the decision for others, based on power - whether raw, hard or soft. Your fantasy that you can live without impacting or being impacted by anyone is... a fantasy. Well, not unless you want to live and die alone, but humans aren't built for that. Kinda the same problem the communists of old had.
Just saying that using the argument form that 9 out of 10 doctors agree "Brand X Cigarettes are good for your health" isn't the best argument.
It is, however, the appropriate response to the argument coming from a lot of deniers (I wouldn't sully the label skeptic with them) that this is a very controversial topic among scientists. It isn't. The numbers are why. As soon as people stop claiming that there's a controversy, we will be able to stop bringing out this largely irrelevant data point.
Better a few people starve to death now than entire population starve to death later, just because some idiots couldn't understand that eating the last animal on the island will mean no more animals ever.
Finally, as someone else pointed out, commercial fishing IS by definition the equivalent of people fishing for their own food - some people just outsourced their fishing to others.
For fuck's sake - it's fiduciary. Not feudatory (nice freudian slip from feudal), not fiscal, not anything else that starts with an f. Fi-du-ci-a-ry. Go crack a dictionary sometime instead of coming across as illiterate texters. Now get off my lawn.
It really is a weird how an otherwise intelligent person could miss the game of misdirection being played out repeatedly.
Kinda like how otherwise intelligent people manage to blame everything bad on mexican immigrants, jews, fiat currencies, UN black helicopters or contrails? Conspiracy theories isn't just a specialty of the US.
Exactly right. Specifically the ExactTarget acquisition has resulted in a shit ton of people becoming Salesforce, quite a few with positions that were already filled on the Salesforce side. Acquisitions are always bad for the same set of people: HR, accounting, and frontline support.
That said, Salesforce has been struggling with one thing: getting the "market" to raise the stock price. SaaS companies feel traditionally undervalued, and are doing all kinds of weird gimmicks to boost the numbers that Wall Street looks for when making stock purchase recommendations. We'll see if Salesforce falls into the same traps.
You're more than welcome to join a group of your little buddies and make your own government. Just leave the rest of us the fuck out of it. How hard is that for you to understand?
You don't get to benefit from the structure that a government provides and want to be left out of its regulations. Either participate, or get the fuck out. The entire point of a democracy is that everyone participates in the process. Whining that it isn't what you want is not part of the deal.
Ah yes, the argument from fear again. "Oh noes, big scary anarchy like the 'dark ages', man.'
I'm pretty sure you a) have no clue what actual anarchists (those who actually try to live that life for more than a few weeks) are like and b) haven't read enough history to figure out what anarchists are normally like and where that leads. If you do, feel free to educate me. If you don't, don't bring up arguments you can't support.
Yet every single day, we are held in fear of violence by the very state you hold so dear. You little pissant, tell us how "non-violent" your political system is if you get put in jail for victimless crimes. You make me sick.
The voting booth is over there. The paperwork to run for office is down that way. Have fun working the system in a democracy, or get ready to feel what ACTUAL tyranny, state violence and oppression is like. Being a white teenager in the suburbs gives you zero insight into anything you're talking about.
Not only do your opinions suppress violent means of achieving freedom,
Ohhh... cute. I guess you at least did realize that the pen is mightier than the sword. Now act on it.
but you also oppress the legitimate change you so loudly tout as the 'logical' means to achieve government change.
I don't think you thought this through. Or that you know the difference between legal, legitimate and violent.
Freedom itself, like freedom of speech, means allowing people to have the freedom you don't like. If you don't give that, then you're not giving anyone any freedom at all, you're just enforcing your view of freedom on them.
Waah. Freedom of speech means I'm allowed to debate you. You seem to be afraid of that. Next, you're going to tell me that I'm infringing on your 1st Amendment rights any time I mod you down, right?
The only good news about your post is that you have some time before you get of high school and into college. Actually study some history and sociology, and then form some opinions that are a bit more substantial than the privileged whinings of a bored teenager (that quip about my post suppressing your ability to wage war against the government is particularly cute and telling).
Rules...how quaint. You sound like my dad's generation. (And well I'm over 40).
I guess you have learned jack squat in all those years. What a waste.
I take your rules and I point a gun at your fucking head. Show me how those rules are gonna stop me from pulling the trigger
They make you consider the consequences. If you're fucking retarded and don't care about consequences, then nothing can stop you. Well, nothing until someone else puts a bullet in you. At a bare minimum, that's all that rules do: show you the consequences of your actions. At an absolute maximum, they regulate behavior. The fact that they're not guaranteed to regulate actions is irrelevant, as that is a completely unrealistic expectation of anything. If you're looking for guarantees, just off yourself. You will not be contributing anyway.
especially when I have a nuclear equipped army backing me.
Where is that nuclear-backed army of yours? Oh, now you're speaking hypothetically, as a hypothetical representative of government. Which, I presume, arrived in some sort of black helicopter. Of course, what you're overlooking is not every cop is backed by an actual nuclear-armed army. Actually, no cop is. That would be the army.
They just change or ignore the rules and there's not flipping thing you can do about it.
Who, exactly, is "They"? Show me them, and I'll show what I can do about it.
Ghandi's way is completely ineffective in the modern world.
Assertion without support. As a matter of fact, assertion contradicted by recent events, which started in Tunisia.
And stop with the "democracy" bullshit. "Democracy" isn't important anymore. Democracy has shown time and time again to be a stepping stone to dictatorship anyway.
As opposed to what, exactly? The reason it's a stepping stone to dictatorship is partially because of morons like you who just shrug their shoulders and go "eh, it's all the same anyway". When the founding fathers said that Democracy is hard work, they meant that you have to work to preserve it. You want to have Democracy, but aren't willing to work for it. You're an insult to your history.
A feel good for one or two generations and then it's over. Ask Athens how democracy worked out for them.
And again, the defeatist attitude that because something is hard work, isn't guaranteed and at some point might fail, it's completely pointless to work towards it. Go back to watching whatever TV show is rotting your brain, because you're a worthless drag on society, incapable of contributing. During pioneer days, you would have starved to death within a week. Why? Because no one would have put up with your whining.
That wasn't the argument. The argument was "no change has ever happened without lethal force". You're arguing "because non-violent change has sometimes not born fruit, violence always has to be used to bring about change." The actual argument is "non-violent change has been quite successful quite frequently. Here's how. It's cheaper than violence. Try it." Pay attention.
God damn you're a fucking idiot. There's plenty of change that happened in the last 50 years that didn't involve violence - groundbreaking, fundamental change that tossed out the current power structure in its entirety. The most significant examples are probably South Africa and India. If you can't name the people involved, you have no standing in this discussion.
Furthermore, there are purely logical, sociological and philosophical problems with your approach. Off the top of my head: Logical: the entire point of a democracy is the non-violent change in government. You completely missed the point of democracy if you think change can only come through violence. Sociological and economical: The cost to society of a civil war is huge. You can see it in the Middle East, you can see it in our own civil war, you can see it throughout history. Compared to that, the option of just slowly working to change the system to work more like you imagined is a fucking panacea. Philosophical: the founding fathers fought a bloody war to give you the ability to change political systems through non-violence. They also made it quite hard to do it. Now you're proposing that all stuff was just fairies pissing in the wind, and we're going back to the middle ages.
but it's the only way to keep the boot of the government from stepping on the face of humanity forever.
What are you, 15? Anytime 3 or more people get together, you'll get a form of government. Heck, 5 year olds in the sand pit form ad-hoc governments with one kid in charge and bossing every one around. The only way to keep the boot of government from stepping on your face is to set up rules so that it's not supposed. Everything else is just some Pioneer/Rambo fantasy.
Agreed. I normally don't care too much about redesigns, and I haven't used the Yahoo frontpage (sports or otherwise) in about 3 years. So I really don't even remember what it used to look like. But.... holy crap this is terrible. For some reason, it took about a minute to load (crappy laptop indexing and backing up a large pst file is partially to blame). Then, when it finally loaded, I have partially transparent content with a background image of a baseball field making me feel like I'm looking at a giant captcha page. With the various lines of grass shadings of the field running off into wildly different directions (thank you gnat-high perspective), text becomes really, really hard to read. There is a giant ad at the top (adblocker is off) that is overpowering the entire site, I can't tell if the main image staring at me is for another ad or a story, as I can't tell what sport it is for, what the story is about, or even who the people in the picture are.
I don't care about the new logo (it's a logo - whoop-de-do. at least it isn't the new Motorola logo), I don't really care about the menu layouts.... but I can't read the damn site. Why in the hell did they decide to go for a layout that actively prevents me from reading the news? Did no one actually try to use that layout?
A friend of mine had a brilliant comment on Marissa Meyer: she can't fail. If she merely prevents Yahoo from being obliterated in the next five years, she'll be hailed a genius. If Yahoo crashes in the next five years, well, everyone saw that coming, and now she has a big CEO position on her resume that she can spit shine into something valuable. Either way, she wins, and Yahoo is completely irrelevant. With the changes that have been happening, I can't see Yahoo becoming anything but an AOL clone: technically still alive, but only because people have a hard time giving up their yahoo email addresses and Instant messenger networks.
Funny. Everyone I know who goes to Burning Man is using their talents to do something constructive, both while there and while not. It ranges from artists to computer geeks to lawyers. Then again, not everyone thinks that having a house in suburbia is being productive, or that doing anything but the 9-5 grind is required to be an upstanding citizen.
Quite frankly, I don't understand the Burning Man hate. If anything, it sounds like the standard neckbeard whining about anything that lots of people do: I can't go, therefore it must be something only hipsters and wannabes go to.
Interestingly enough, Musk has that money because he managed to actually push boundaries, rather than just talk about them. When was the last time you did something that damn near everyone in the world said wasn't possible?
I'm sure that someone who manages to run not one, but two game-changing companies while already having succeeded with another one is both brilliant and a blowhard. However, I think that linking to a site that posts drivel like this (you have to read it to believe it....) http://boycotttesla.wordpress.com/2013/06/18/tesla-and-fisker-use-vaginal-orifice-to-trick-rich-guys-into-buying-cars/ and to gawker, which is the equivalent of a tabloid for tech, makes you sound like someone who believes that Aliens are replacing the president with a monkey-boy so that they can destroy the US through Universal Healthcare. I.e., a total crackpot.
To some extent. But it is frequently pennies of their money that is being wasted, if that much. They make it sound like they're the sole supporters of whatever government agency had an issue.
No, you are just comparing apples and oranges - people don't bitch about private companies because, worst comes to worst, they can take their custom elsewhere. Government needs to be held to a higher standard precisely because that freedom is lacking.
In quite a number of instances, you can't - or at least, there is no comparable product to select. Example: Internet access, health insurance, airport, airline, power, etc.
And government isn't being held to a higher standard, government is assumed to be incompetent by definition. Not worse, not less efficient, but literally incompetent. You're trying to create a narrative that doesn't exist in conservative talk or political circles. The politicians I find doubly ironic, since they are part of government. I wonder how they'd respond to: so are you incompetent too?
You really think the problem is "government"? Bureaucrats at the NSA, a faceless executive, legislative and judiciary branch? No, you have a much, MUCH bigger problem on your hands: a lot of people like this set up, and vote for the legislators and executives who promote this approach.
What you're proposing is cute, but utterly pointless. All that it will do is make you into the local loon whom parents talked about in hushed tones to their kids. "Don't go near him, he's weird."
No, you need to fight a much bigger battle: education. Educate your friends on the purpose of government, on why the 1st Amendment, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, exist, why there's a balance of power, what it is supposed to look like, and, most importantly, why the ideas behind the Constitution and its amendments are so important.
Because otherwise, you'll just trade an overanxious government for an actual tyranny.
I mean, when New Orleans was evacuated during Katrina, that already sparked enough conflict. Now imagine that the change is permanent and that it's not just a major city evacuating, but an entire geographical area. We'll find out just how far we have evolved from chimps (hint: not very much).
That the information was only produced after the IG investigation is highly suspicious and seems to be a flimsy, if not fraudulent, attempt to undermine the IG's investigation.
Citation needed. Preferably in the form of direct comments from the IG.
That liberals have conveniently come out with a list of words after the IG investigation has concluded proves nothing. There's simply no evidence progressive groups were targeted like conservative groups were.
Wow. The fact that [GroupB] has come out with a list of words after the IG investigation has concluded proves nothing. There's simply no evidence [GroupB] was targeted like [GroupA] was. Do you listen to yourself?
Conservative students being disallowed to a presidential speech that they had tickets to and that had open seats based on their political preference is exactly the same discrimination perpetrated by the IRS against conservative groups.
I don't think you know what "exactly the same" means. Unless, of course, you think that a presidential speech is the IRS, and conservative groups are students attending a speech. Furthermore, there is the question whether there was reasonable suspicion of thinking they're up to shenanigans. Considering the history of republican activists like James O'Keefe, I'm waiting for some more evidence before coming to any conclusion.
Liberals preach tolerance, but are almost never able to tolerate those they disagree with, which is the whole point of being tolerant.
And there, I was almost ready to take you seriously. You have no idea what tolerance is. Hint: it is not "you have to let me do and say whatever I want". It's significantly more subtle and complex than that.
Slashdot Mirror
Wow. 6 AC responses, and all some whining neckbeards who don't even bother to read their own links. This is a new low.
If men in general were politically dominant, then it wouldn't be the case that 75% of all homeless people are male
Homelessness is often correlated with mental illness, which is preponderant in men. Next.
there are numerous homeless shelters that cater strictly to women.
Those are battered women shelters. Domestic abuse is still heavily skewed towards women being victims, largely because they are on average physically weaker.
If men in general were politically dominant, then we wouldn't have men being forced to pay child support for children that the courts acknowledge aren't even theirs.
A single anecdote based on a time frame where men where so dominant socially and politically that a divorced mother would be condemned to a life of abject poverty. The reason for these laws is because it used to be that women were incapable of finding jobs anything other than secretaries or nurses. Add to that that mothers were in the vast majority of cases "home makers", being divorced was close to a poverty sentence.
If men in general were politically dominant, then Title IX wouldn't instruct colleges to kick out men on the mere allegation of sexual misconduct (the "preponderance of evidence" clause) rather than requiring actual evidence.
You watched too much CSI. Preponderance of evidence is the standard for any civil case. Which is what Title IX cases fall under.
I agree that some feminist claims, as well as laws designed to deal with male supremacy need to be revisited. But your examples aren't helping your argument.
Next you're going to lecture us on how you just found a proof of God's non-existence by claiming that he can't create a rock so heavy that he can't lift it.
In other words, you're someone who never went beyond middle-school in a particular field, and then claims some bleedingly obvious question hasn't been answered, and therefore invalidates an entire concept.
Newsflash: tolerance does not merely mean "I will not object to anyone doing anything, even if it harms me directly." That's suicidal. Tolerance means to tolerate behaviors and thoughts that do not directly impact you, and where the objection is largely moralistic. That also means that not tolerating intolerance is actually well within the purview of the tolerant person, as the take-over of the intolerant person means that it is not possible anymore to be tolerant. The decision of what to tolerate will be done by someone else.
Quite frankly, I blame this ignorance on American culture: the amount of pure crap that is based on what I can only assume is willful - and prideful! - ignorance is staggering in the US. Other countries have it to, but Americans have elevated it to a point of national pride.
And moved to an even more socialist country. I know.
You would be funny if you'd be just a shade less obtuse. Instead, your fantasy world is just sad. Somebody will always make the decision. And in your world, you'll have far less say in that decision than in mine, or even in the current one. You're lucky most people around you are smart enough to not let you create the world you have in mind. You wouldn't like once you'd be there. How do I know? You'd have moved out of Canada by now.
If it isn't me, it will be someone else. Possibly you. In the end, someone ALWAYS decides. And will make the decision for others, based on power - whether raw, hard or soft. Your fantasy that you can live without impacting or being impacted by anyone is... a fantasy. Well, not unless you want to live and die alone, but humans aren't built for that. Kinda the same problem the communists of old had.
Just saying that using the argument form that 9 out of 10 doctors agree "Brand X Cigarettes are good for your health" isn't the best argument.
It is, however, the appropriate response to the argument coming from a lot of deniers (I wouldn't sully the label skeptic with them) that this is a very controversial topic among scientists. It isn't. The numbers are why. As soon as people stop claiming that there's a controversy, we will be able to stop bringing out this largely irrelevant data point.
Better a few people starve to death now than entire population starve to death later, just because some idiots couldn't understand that eating the last animal on the island will mean no more animals ever.
Undoing a funny mod, but ah well... this type of idiocy is just too rampant.
Here are just a few examples of the top of my head:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easter_Island
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passenger_Pigeon
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/30/madagascar-giant-tortoises_n_3525586.html
Tortoises in general are endangered due to sailors loving them as walking food supplies in the years 1500-1900.
And, the classical example... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodo
Finally, as someone else pointed out, commercial fishing IS by definition the equivalent of people fishing for their own food - some people just outsourced their fishing to others.
For fuck's sake - it's fiduciary. Not feudatory (nice freudian slip from feudal), not fiscal, not anything else that starts with an f. Fi-du-ci-a-ry. Go crack a dictionary sometime instead of coming across as illiterate texters. Now get off my lawn.
It really is a weird how an otherwise intelligent person could miss the game of misdirection being played out repeatedly.
Kinda like how otherwise intelligent people manage to blame everything bad on mexican immigrants, jews, fiat currencies, UN black helicopters or contrails? Conspiracy theories isn't just a specialty of the US.
Exactly right. Specifically the ExactTarget acquisition has resulted in a shit ton of people becoming Salesforce, quite a few with positions that were already filled on the Salesforce side. Acquisitions are always bad for the same set of people: HR, accounting, and frontline support.
That said, Salesforce has been struggling with one thing: getting the "market" to raise the stock price. SaaS companies feel traditionally undervalued, and are doing all kinds of weird gimmicks to boost the numbers that Wall Street looks for when making stock purchase recommendations. We'll see if Salesforce falls into the same traps.
You're more than welcome to join a group of your little buddies and make your own government. Just leave the rest of us the fuck out of it. How hard is that for you to understand?
You don't get to benefit from the structure that a government provides and want to be left out of its regulations. Either participate, or get the fuck out. The entire point of a democracy is that everyone participates in the process. Whining that it isn't what you want is not part of the deal.
Ah yes, the argument from fear again. "Oh noes, big scary anarchy like the 'dark ages', man.'
I'm pretty sure you a) have no clue what actual anarchists (those who actually try to live that life for more than a few weeks) are like and b) haven't read enough history to figure out what anarchists are normally like and where that leads. If you do, feel free to educate me. If you don't, don't bring up arguments you can't support.
Yet every single day, we are held in fear of violence by the very state you hold so dear. You little pissant, tell us how "non-violent" your political system is if you get put in jail for victimless crimes. You make me sick.
The voting booth is over there. The paperwork to run for office is down that way. Have fun working the system in a democracy, or get ready to feel what ACTUAL tyranny, state violence and oppression is like. Being a white teenager in the suburbs gives you zero insight into anything you're talking about.
Not only do your opinions suppress violent means of achieving freedom,
Ohhh... cute. I guess you at least did realize that the pen is mightier than the sword. Now act on it.
but you also oppress the legitimate change you so loudly tout as the 'logical' means to achieve government change.
I don't think you thought this through. Or that you know the difference between legal, legitimate and violent.
Freedom itself, like freedom of speech, means allowing people to have the freedom you don't like. If you don't give that, then you're not giving anyone any freedom at all, you're just enforcing your view of freedom on them.
Waah. Freedom of speech means I'm allowed to debate you. You seem to be afraid of that. Next, you're going to tell me that I'm infringing on your 1st Amendment rights any time I mod you down, right?
The only good news about your post is that you have some time before you get of high school and into college. Actually study some history and sociology, and then form some opinions that are a bit more substantial than the privileged whinings of a bored teenager (that quip about my post suppressing your ability to wage war against the government is particularly cute and telling).
Rules...how quaint. You sound like my dad's generation. (And well I'm over 40).
I guess you have learned jack squat in all those years. What a waste.
I take your rules and I point a gun at your fucking head. Show me how those rules are gonna stop me from pulling the trigger
They make you consider the consequences. If you're fucking retarded and don't care about consequences, then nothing can stop you. Well, nothing until someone else puts a bullet in you. At a bare minimum, that's all that rules do: show you the consequences of your actions. At an absolute maximum, they regulate behavior. The fact that they're not guaranteed to regulate actions is irrelevant, as that is a completely unrealistic expectation of anything. If you're looking for guarantees, just off yourself. You will not be contributing anyway.
especially when I have a nuclear equipped army backing me.
Where is that nuclear-backed army of yours? Oh, now you're speaking hypothetically, as a hypothetical representative of government. Which, I presume, arrived in some sort of black helicopter. Of course, what you're overlooking is not every cop is backed by an actual nuclear-armed army. Actually, no cop is. That would be the army.
They just change or ignore the rules and there's not flipping thing you can do about it.
Who, exactly, is "They"? Show me them, and I'll show what I can do about it.
Ghandi's way is completely ineffective in the modern world.
Assertion without support. As a matter of fact, assertion contradicted by recent events, which started in Tunisia.
And stop with the "democracy" bullshit. "Democracy" isn't important anymore. Democracy has shown time and time again to be a stepping stone to dictatorship anyway.
As opposed to what, exactly? The reason it's a stepping stone to dictatorship is partially because of morons like you who just shrug their shoulders and go "eh, it's all the same anyway". When the founding fathers said that Democracy is hard work, they meant that you have to work to preserve it. You want to have Democracy, but aren't willing to work for it. You're an insult to your history.
A feel good for one or two generations and then it's over. Ask Athens how democracy worked out for them.
And again, the defeatist attitude that because something is hard work, isn't guaranteed and at some point might fail, it's completely pointless to work towards it. Go back to watching whatever TV show is rotting your brain, because you're a worthless drag on society, incapable of contributing. During pioneer days, you would have starved to death within a week. Why? Because no one would have put up with your whining.
That wasn't the argument. The argument was "no change has ever happened without lethal force". You're arguing "because non-violent change has sometimes not born fruit, violence always has to be used to bring about change." The actual argument is "non-violent change has been quite successful quite frequently. Here's how. It's cheaper than violence. Try it." Pay attention.
God damn you're a fucking idiot. There's plenty of change that happened in the last 50 years that didn't involve violence - groundbreaking, fundamental change that tossed out the current power structure in its entirety. The most significant examples are probably South Africa and India. If you can't name the people involved, you have no standing in this discussion.
Furthermore, there are purely logical, sociological and philosophical problems with your approach.
Off the top of my head:
Logical: the entire point of a democracy is the non-violent change in government. You completely missed the point of democracy if you think change can only come through violence.
Sociological and economical: The cost to society of a civil war is huge. You can see it in the Middle East, you can see it in our own civil war, you can see it throughout history. Compared to that, the option of just slowly working to change the system to work more like you imagined is a fucking panacea.
Philosophical: the founding fathers fought a bloody war to give you the ability to change political systems through non-violence. They also made it quite hard to do it. Now you're proposing that all stuff was just fairies pissing in the wind, and we're going back to the middle ages.
but it's the only way to keep the boot of the government from stepping on the face of humanity forever.
What are you, 15? Anytime 3 or more people get together, you'll get a form of government. Heck, 5 year olds in the sand pit form ad-hoc governments with one kid in charge and bossing every one around. The only way to keep the boot of government from stepping on your face is to set up rules so that it's not supposed. Everything else is just some Pioneer/Rambo fantasy.
Agreed. I normally don't care too much about redesigns, and I haven't used the Yahoo frontpage (sports or otherwise) in about 3 years. So I really don't even remember what it used to look like. But.... holy crap this is terrible. For some reason, it took about a minute to load (crappy laptop indexing and backing up a large pst file is partially to blame). Then, when it finally loaded, I have partially transparent content with a background image of a baseball field making me feel like I'm looking at a giant captcha page. With the various lines of grass shadings of the field running off into wildly different directions (thank you gnat-high perspective), text becomes really, really hard to read. There is a giant ad at the top (adblocker is off) that is overpowering the entire site, I can't tell if the main image staring at me is for another ad or a story, as I can't tell what sport it is for, what the story is about, or even who the people in the picture are.
I don't care about the new logo (it's a logo - whoop-de-do. at least it isn't the new Motorola logo), I don't really care about the menu layouts.... but I can't read the damn site. Why in the hell did they decide to go for a layout that actively prevents me from reading the news? Did no one actually try to use that layout?
A friend of mine had a brilliant comment on Marissa Meyer: she can't fail. If she merely prevents Yahoo from being obliterated in the next five years, she'll be hailed a genius. If Yahoo crashes in the next five years, well, everyone saw that coming, and now she has a big CEO position on her resume that she can spit shine into something valuable. Either way, she wins, and Yahoo is completely irrelevant. With the changes that have been happening, I can't see Yahoo becoming anything but an AOL clone: technically still alive, but only because people have a hard time giving up their yahoo email addresses and Instant messenger networks.
Funny. Everyone I know who goes to Burning Man is using their talents to do something constructive, both while there and while not. It ranges from artists to computer geeks to lawyers. Then again, not everyone thinks that having a house in suburbia is being productive, or that doing anything but the 9-5 grind is required to be an upstanding citizen.
Quite frankly, I don't understand the Burning Man hate. If anything, it sounds like the standard neckbeard whining about anything that lots of people do: I can't go, therefore it must be something only hipsters and wannabes go to.
Interestingly enough, Musk has that money because he managed to actually push boundaries, rather than just talk about them. When was the last time you did something that damn near everyone in the world said wasn't possible?
I'm sure that someone who manages to run not one, but two game-changing companies while already having succeeded with another one is both brilliant and a blowhard. However, I think that linking to a site that posts drivel like this (you have to read it to believe it....) http://boycotttesla.wordpress.com/2013/06/18/tesla-and-fisker-use-vaginal-orifice-to-trick-rich-guys-into-buying-cars/ and to gawker, which is the equivalent of a tabloid for tech, makes you sound like someone who believes that Aliens are replacing the president with a monkey-boy so that they can destroy the US through Universal Healthcare. I.e., a total crackpot.
Because its their money being wasted.
To some extent. But it is frequently pennies of their money that is being wasted, if that much. They make it sound like they're the sole supporters of whatever government agency had an issue.
No, you are just comparing apples and oranges - people don't bitch about private companies because, worst comes to worst, they can take their custom elsewhere. Government needs to be held to a higher standard precisely because that freedom is lacking.
In quite a number of instances, you can't - or at least, there is no comparable product to select. Example: Internet access, health insurance, airport, airline, power, etc.
And government isn't being held to a higher standard, government is assumed to be incompetent by definition. Not worse, not less efficient, but literally incompetent. You're trying to create a narrative that doesn't exist in conservative talk or political circles. The politicians I find doubly ironic, since they are part of government. I wonder how they'd respond to: so are you incompetent too?
Give it about a week after his firing. See Juan Williams.
You really think the problem is "government"? Bureaucrats at the NSA, a faceless executive, legislative and judiciary branch? No, you have a much, MUCH bigger problem on your hands: a lot of people like this set up, and vote for the legislators and executives who promote this approach.
What you're proposing is cute, but utterly pointless. All that it will do is make you into the local loon whom parents talked about in hushed tones to their kids. "Don't go near him, he's weird."
No, you need to fight a much bigger battle: education. Educate your friends on the purpose of government, on why the 1st Amendment, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, exist, why there's a balance of power, what it is supposed to look like, and, most importantly, why the ideas behind the Constitution and its amendments are so important.
Because otherwise, you'll just trade an overanxious government for an actual tyranny.
Besides the fact that the DoD already incorporates climate change in their threat assessments (see http://www.acq.osd.mil/ie/download/green_energy/dod_sustainability/2012/Appendix%20A%20-%20DoD%20Climate%20Change%20Adaption%20Roadmap_20120918.pdf and http://www.acq.osd.mil/ie/download/green_energy/dod_sustainability/2012/Appendix%20A%20-%20DoD%20Climate%20Change%20Adaption%20Roadmap_20120918.pdf), there's the bleedingly obvious conclusion that if an area goes through enough environmental changes that mass migration is better than staying put, conflict with the surrounding areas is guaranteed.
I mean, when New Orleans was evacuated during Katrina, that already sparked enough conflict. Now imagine that the change is permanent and that it's not just a major city evacuating, but an entire geographical area. We'll find out just how far we have evolved from chimps (hint: not very much).
That the information was only produced after the IG investigation is highly suspicious and seems to be a flimsy, if not fraudulent, attempt to undermine the IG's investigation.
Citation needed. Preferably in the form of direct comments from the IG.
That liberals have conveniently come out with a list of words after the IG investigation has concluded proves nothing. There's simply no evidence progressive groups were targeted like conservative groups were.
Wow. The fact that [GroupB] has come out with a list of words after the IG investigation has concluded proves nothing. There's simply no evidence [GroupB] was targeted like [GroupA] was. Do you listen to yourself?
Conservative students being disallowed to a presidential speech that they had tickets to and that had open seats based on their political preference is exactly the same discrimination perpetrated by the IRS against conservative groups.
I don't think you know what "exactly the same" means. Unless, of course, you think that a presidential speech is the IRS, and conservative groups are students attending a speech. Furthermore, there is the question whether there was reasonable suspicion of thinking they're up to shenanigans. Considering the history of republican activists like James O'Keefe, I'm waiting for some more evidence before coming to any conclusion.
Liberals preach tolerance, but are almost never able to tolerate those they disagree with, which is the whole point of being tolerant.
And there, I was almost ready to take you seriously. You have no idea what tolerance is. Hint: it is not "you have to let me do and say whatever I want". It's significantly more subtle and complex than that.