What's "white" got to do with it? A poor white man is no better off than a poor black man, to the rich man, white or balck, poor people (and probably middle class as well) are all "niggers". There are far more poor white Americans than poor black Americans, although a larger percentage of blacks are poor. When you hear people rage about blacks on food stamps, there are more whites on food stamps, and almost all, white and black, are working. It's just that their evil employers won't pay them well enough to eat without help.
Race hatred is a tool of the rich to keep the poor white and poor black at each others' throats and away from their own throats. The "rich white man" label perpetuates stereotypes, keeping blacks from relising that it's not the color of the person's skin, but the color of their money.
Sadly, you're right. I think the cause was Reagan's slashing capital gains taxes, shanging the stock market from a long-term investment vehicle to a casino.
I'd like to see the CGT abolished. let capital gains be taxed as income.
What good does it do society to execute an innocent man while a murderer goes free? I guess torture does work, as long as the truth isn't what you're after. But it doesn't work if you're looking for meaningful information.
If torture works, then why did so many Chicagoans admit to crimes they didn't commit when tortured? If you're being tortured you're going to say what you think the torturer wants to hear, not necessarily the truth.
Morally speaking, companies have an obligation to their communities.
Saying an amoral entity should exhibit morals is like saying an atheist should respect God. Ain't gonna happen. Atheists don't believe in God, and have no reason for rspect, and it would be stupid to expect it. Amoral corporations don't believe in right and wrong, only in legal and illegal, and to expect them to have compassion or any sense of social responsibility is equally stupid.
So no. It wouldn't result in a market 'shakeout'.... and if it did, that's capitalism in action.
Capitalists no longer support capitalism. They support anything that makes them more money. Witness: US bank bailouts. Today's capitalists are for socialism, as long as they're the ones getting the government money.
Well, if indeed it is legal, then there's nothing wrong with it.
What's more wrong, adultery or smoking marijuana? I say adultery is wrong even if it is legal, and there's nothing whatever wrong with smoking the illegal herb.
Legal != right, illegal != wrong. Right and wrong have nothing to do with legal and illegal.
I have no qualms about trying to use every legal means to reduce my tax burden any way I can.
Nothing wrong with that, unless you're a Christian.
If they would cut all the deductions, loopholes, etc...and just do simple, flat type taxes
The poll tax is the most regressive of all. Read Asimov's Forward the Foundation for his take on complicated vs simple taxes. Both are bad. I'd agree that getting rid of deductions is a good thing, but since the rich get far more benefit from government than the poor do, they should pay a higher percentage.
it would make some that don't pay taxes (people and companies) pay at least a little.
Since you're probably European this probably doesn't apply to you, but the "conservatives" in the US are saying the same thing, despite the fact that in my grandfather's day only the rich paid federal income tax. It's hypocticy for them but it wouldn't be, in Europe.
Written English leaves out a lot of tonal information that's in spoken English
Then you're doing it wrong. Does that jingle from Priscilla's say "where fun and fantasy meet," or is it "we're fun and fantasy meat?" Written language is far better at communicating, but not quite so easy to make jokes with*. Like this biology joke that just doesn't work in written form: "Q: How do you tell the sex of a chromosome? A: Pull down its genes." The pun is lost because jeans and genes are spelled differently.
Poe's Law only takes effect when someone makes a crazy, absurd stance -- like Crazy John from a bar I frequent, who is convinced that space aliens walk among us. If you know him you know he's nuts, but if he was a stranger on a messageboard you would have no clue unless you saw a whole lot of posts. It isn't a matter of written vs verbal, it's a matter of whether or not you're familiar with the person making the absurd statement.
If you're going to use sarcasm or parody, you should choose words that make it clear that it's sarcasm or parody, if you're parodying some nutter like the GGP was.
* Meaning Douglas Adams was and Terry Pratchett is a genious.
id make a cursory assertion that the lock-step rise in cancer rates is probably related somehow to the twin revolving-doors of the EPA and FDA
You woudn't if you'd been alive before the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act like I was. The difference between now and 1969 is incredible, especially around factories.
Back then, when cars didn't have air conditioning, you had to have the windows rolled up when driving past a Monsanto plant because the air literally burned your lungs and made your eyes water. What little vegetation there was anywhere near these plants was brown and sickly. Now drive past a Monsanto plant and you might catch a whiff of bleach at worst, and usually smell nothing at all, and there's now healthy green vegetation.
Before the EPA, rivers and streams were so polluted that they actually caught fire.
This graph (PDF) shows cancer rates between 1930 and 2000. There's a slow rise in lung cancers from 1930 to the late 1940s, when they rose far faster until around 1990 when they started dropping. It makes me suspect radiation is the primary culprit, since above ground atom bomb testing started in the mid '40s and stopped in the 1960s.
Your primary source of chemical carcinogens (you being a desk-bound nerd as opposed to someone working at Monsanto) is probably your automobile. Both the fumes from the gasoline and the exhaust from your tailpipe are highly carcinogenic.
I googled BPE and found no chemical with that name.
What's the logic in that? Why is the cable company carrying a channel that's not profitable?
So they can truthfully brag "We have 100 channels!" thereby getting a whole lot more customers from the half of the population that have 2 digit IQs. The rest uf us shrug and cancel our cable subscriptions.
They could get me back by charging two bucks a month for each channel I selected, but they'd only be getting maybe ten bucks a month from me.
I realise that's sarcasm, but there are a whole lot of people who actually do think like that. Did the guy commit a crime? Yes, but committing that crime was a patriotic thing to do, and damned brave if you aske me. The guy should get a CMH for his bravery, or at least a silver star (I know a guy who got two silver stars and doesn't believe that he should have; "I didn't do anything anybody else woudn't have," he said.)
The guy in TFS is a patriot and hero. The people pressing charges should be in front of a firing squad for treason -- because waterboarding IS unamerican, as is lying about it.
We're supposed to be the good guys. Can't we even try to be?
Not poisoning the well, just pointing out that it's us, the users, who make slashdot good or bad. I haven't submitted many myslef lately, the last one accepted was last july. About one in three I submitted were accepted. And there's the firehose as well. If only non-nerds vote on stories in the firehose, you're going to get bad submissions accepted.
I'd rather they just did a better job proofreading. People today put way too much faith in spell checkers."Loose" is a verb that means "set free" and "lose" means "not be able to find something", so when someone says "that business should loose money" they aren't saying what they mean to say. Then you have other idiocies like using "their" when it should be "there" or "they're." Those kind of mistakes that a spell checker can't catch hinder communication, while a misspelling (like spelling "Beer" as "Ber") that a spell checker will catch will only slow down a reader's speed, and not really by that much.
I don't agree. If you're making crap comments yourself, you're likely to mod others' crap comments up.
What I'd like to see is removal of the "time between posting" limit removed for comments in your own journal, and responding to comments that show up in your "notifications" page. If you get a highly rated comment you're likely to have lots of responses, many of which demand answers or further comments. And some of us read pretty fast.
Conservative can mean many things but in the end one key value is caution, bordering on skepticism - unwilling to believe a claim just because someone says it is so. We demand real proof
Then why do so many conservatives claim to be Christian?
I don't believe for a minute that Newt Gingrich is a Christian. Nothing he says or does shows any indication that he's anything but a damned liar who goes to chucrh to get votes from less intelligent Christians. Everything he says and does indicates that he worships money and power above all else.
If someone wears a necktie, the symbol of wealth and power, which is against everything Christ taught, you should be very skeptical of that person's faith.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, but it's a privately held company. If a good person owns a company, it won't be evil. When millions are owner, it's a bit different.
What's "white" got to do with it? A poor white man is no better off than a poor black man, to the rich man, white or balck, poor people (and probably middle class as well) are all "niggers". There are far more poor white Americans than poor black Americans, although a larger percentage of blacks are poor. When you hear people rage about blacks on food stamps, there are more whites on food stamps, and almost all, white and black, are working. It's just that their evil employers won't pay them well enough to eat without help.
Race hatred is a tool of the rich to keep the poor white and poor black at each others' throats and away from their own throats. The "rich white man" label perpetuates stereotypes, keeping blacks from relising that it's not the color of the person's skin, but the color of their money.
Sadly, you're right. I think the cause was Reagan's slashing capital gains taxes, shanging the stock market from a long-term investment vehicle to a casino.
I'd like to see the CGT abolished. let capital gains be taxed as income.
What good does it do society to execute an innocent man while a murderer goes free? I guess torture does work, as long as the truth isn't what you're after. But it doesn't work if you're looking for meaningful information.
Those aren't war, though. The "war on" bullshit is just that -- meaningless rhetoric.
Yes, he did. He was born in 1896.
If torture works, then why did so many Chicagoans admit to crimes they didn't commit when tortured? If you're being tortured you're going to say what you think the torturer wants to hear, not necessarily the truth.
Sure you can, you just need an infinitely long yardstick with infinitesimal measuring marks.
You should be aware of the contents of your hard drive though.
With cheap terabyte drives? How?
Morally speaking, companies have an obligation to their communities.
Saying an amoral entity should exhibit morals is like saying an atheist should respect God. Ain't gonna happen. Atheists don't believe in God, and have no reason for rspect, and it would be stupid to expect it. Amoral corporations don't believe in right and wrong, only in legal and illegal, and to expect them to have compassion or any sense of social responsibility is equally stupid.
So no. It wouldn't result in a market 'shakeout'.... and if it did, that's capitalism in action.
Capitalists no longer support capitalism. They support anything that makes them more money. Witness: US bank bailouts. Today's capitalists are for socialism, as long as they're the ones getting the government money.
Well, if indeed it is legal, then there's nothing wrong with it.
What's more wrong, adultery or smoking marijuana? I say adultery is wrong even if it is legal, and there's nothing whatever wrong with smoking the illegal herb.
Legal != right, illegal != wrong. Right and wrong have nothing to do with legal and illegal.
I have no qualms about trying to use every legal means to reduce my tax burden any way I can.
Nothing wrong with that, unless you're a Christian.
If they would cut all the deductions, loopholes, etc...and just do simple, flat type taxes
The poll tax is the most regressive of all. Read Asimov's Forward the Foundation for his take on complicated vs simple taxes. Both are bad. I'd agree that getting rid of deductions is a good thing, but since the rich get far more benefit from government than the poor do, they should pay a higher percentage.
it would make some that don't pay taxes (people and companies) pay at least a little.
Since you're probably European this probably doesn't apply to you, but the "conservatives" in the US are saying the same thing, despite the fact that in my grandfather's day only the rich paid federal income tax. It's hypocticy for them but it wouldn't be, in Europe.
Written English leaves out a lot of tonal information that's in spoken English
Then you're doing it wrong. Does that jingle from Priscilla's say "where fun and fantasy meet," or is it "we're fun and fantasy meat?" Written language is far better at communicating, but not quite so easy to make jokes with*. Like this biology joke that just doesn't work in written form: "Q: How do you tell the sex of a chromosome? A: Pull down its genes." The pun is lost because jeans and genes are spelled differently.
Poe's Law only takes effect when someone makes a crazy, absurd stance -- like Crazy John from a bar I frequent, who is convinced that space aliens walk among us. If you know him you know he's nuts, but if he was a stranger on a messageboard you would have no clue unless you saw a whole lot of posts. It isn't a matter of written vs verbal, it's a matter of whether or not you're familiar with the person making the absurd statement.
If you're going to use sarcasm or parody, you should choose words that make it clear that it's sarcasm or parody, if you're parodying some nutter like the GGP was.
* Meaning Douglas Adams was and Terry Pratchett is a genious.
id make a cursory assertion that the lock-step rise in cancer rates is probably related somehow to the twin revolving-doors of the EPA and FDA
You woudn't if you'd been alive before the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act like I was. The difference between now and 1969 is incredible, especially around factories.
Back then, when cars didn't have air conditioning, you had to have the windows rolled up when driving past a Monsanto plant because the air literally burned your lungs and made your eyes water. What little vegetation there was anywhere near these plants was brown and sickly. Now drive past a Monsanto plant and you might catch a whiff of bleach at worst, and usually smell nothing at all, and there's now healthy green vegetation.
Before the EPA, rivers and streams were so polluted that they actually caught fire.
This graph (PDF) shows cancer rates between 1930 and 2000. There's a slow rise in lung cancers from 1930 to the late 1940s, when they rose far faster until around 1990 when they started dropping. It makes me suspect radiation is the primary culprit, since above ground atom bomb testing started in the mid '40s and stopped in the 1960s.
Your primary source of chemical carcinogens (you being a desk-bound nerd as opposed to someone working at Monsanto) is probably your automobile. Both the fumes from the gasoline and the exhaust from your tailpipe are highly carcinogenic.
I googled BPE and found no chemical with that name.
Bachelor of Physical Education
Ballpark estimate
Banco Popular Español, banking group in Spain
Barclays Private Equity
Bataan Provincial Expressway in the Philippines
Before Present Era - a year numbering system often used in archaeology in which the year 1950 is used as the epoch marker, an alternative to Before Present.
Berliner Parkeisenbahn, a ridable miniature railway near Berlin Wuhlheide station
Bureau of Public Enterprises in Nigeria
Byte pair encoding in computing
Spanish ship Juan Carlos I (L61), initially known as Buque de ProyecciÃn Estratégica
I doubt you were referring to Byte Pair Encoding. The chemical that makes plastic stiff maybe? I can't remember what the stuff is called.
What's the logic in that? Why is the cable company carrying a channel that's not profitable?
So they can truthfully brag "We have 100 channels!" thereby getting a whole lot more customers from the half of the population that have 2 digit IQs. The rest uf us shrug and cancel our cable subscriptions.
They could get me back by charging two bucks a month for each channel I selected, but they'd only be getting maybe ten bucks a month from me.
I realise that's sarcasm, but there are a whole lot of people who actually do think like that. Did the guy commit a crime? Yes, but committing that crime was a patriotic thing to do, and damned brave if you aske me. The guy should get a CMH for his bravery, or at least a silver star (I know a guy who got two silver stars and doesn't believe that he should have; "I didn't do anything anybody else woudn't have," he said.)
The guy in TFS is a patriot and hero. The people pressing charges should be in front of a firing squad for treason -- because waterboarding IS unamerican, as is lying about it.
We're supposed to be the good guys. Can't we even try to be?
Not poisoning the well, just pointing out that it's us, the users, who make slashdot good or bad. I haven't submitted many myslef lately, the last one accepted was last july. About one in three I submitted were accepted. And there's the firehose as well. If only non-nerds vote on stories in the firehose, you're going to get bad submissions accepted.
It's our fault, not theirs.
I'd rather they just did a better job proofreading. People today put way too much faith in spell checkers."Loose" is a verb that means "set free" and "lose" means "not be able to find something", so when someone says "that business should loose money" they aren't saying what they mean to say. Then you have other idiocies like using "their" when it should be "there" or "they're." Those kind of mistakes that a spell checker can't catch hinder communication, while a misspelling (like spelling "Beer" as "Ber") that a spell checker will catch will only slow down a reader's speed, and not really by that much.
What's more, his generation wasn't even alive the last time somebody stepped on the moon.
I don't agree. If you're making crap comments yourself, you're likely to mod others' crap comments up.
What I'd like to see is removal of the "time between posting" limit removed for comments in your own journal, and responding to comments that show up in your "notifications" page. If you get a highly rated comment you're likely to have lots of responses, many of which demand answers or further comments. And some of us read pretty fast.
That's what the little black flag is for. You don't have to have mod points to flag.
Are you looking to start a flame war, son? Get off my lawn, dipshit.
The FAQ is linked in TFS and answers your question.
Conservative can mean many things but in the end one key value is caution, bordering on skepticism - unwilling to believe a claim just because someone says it is so. We demand real proof
Then why do so many conservatives claim to be Christian?
They should be equally skeptical of theology.
I don't believe for a minute that Newt Gingrich is a Christian. Nothing he says or does shows any indication that he's anything but a damned liar who goes to chucrh to get votes from less intelligent Christians. Everything he says and does indicates that he worships money and power above all else.
If someone wears a necktie, the symbol of wealth and power, which is against everything Christ taught, you should be very skeptical of that person's faith.