I don't think that's true. My own surname is McIntosh, and all the family I know of come from around the Inverness area, in the Scottish Highlands, along with thousands of other McIntoshs.
I was intrigued by your assertion so I looked it up, and found this site which states "It is often erroneously said the Mc indicates Irish origin and Mac Scottish origin. In fact there is no difference at all."
as one of the best scientific minds of his generation, it's typically British to ignore him during his lifetime
Stephen Hawking is hardly "ignored". In fact, I'm struggling to think of a physicist less ignored. He's the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge, has had a book stay on the British bestseller list for 5 years, and has been the subject of numerous documentaries, to name a few. If he's as well appreciated 200 years after his death as he is during his life, then he'll have been proved important.
And the fact is getting rid of the trouble makers is GOOD for Virgin, because then they won't continue complaining in public forums about the issue
Then..
Virgin can slide in a price increase, bandwidth cap, or any other of a million things to increase revenue without a Cory Doctrow (sic) to whine about it.
What, pray tell, would the difference be if he whined about it then to if he whines about this now? Are the same 'trouble makers' who complain about net neutrality by default the same people who will complain about price increases? I know a lot of "sheep" who care little for arguments about net neutrality who will be up in arms at a price increase, for example. It's more transparent.
If the stock price isn't hurt, Doctrow (sic) is a lot of sound and fury, signifying nothing, and Virgin won't give a damn.
You seem to be under the impression that this is a battle that has to be won tomorrow. Rome wasn't built in a day, perhaps the general public will switch onto this neutrality issue, perhaps it won't. Just pointing to the stock price of a multinational and saying 'look! pointless!' every time someone speaks against it helps no-one (except perhaps, your own ego, boosted by your superiority to all those sheep. They're sub-human, I tell you, they care little for the things we do)..
But pushing Doctrow's opinion is like betting your money on a Trabant in the Dakar rally, or for San Marino to win the next World Cup.
Huh? If Cory Doctorow started his own ISP on a shoestring budget this analogy might be valid. Public perception has little impact on an international sport's team success, but it matters to a company: it's why they spend so much on PR and Marketing.
Your argument is the very definition of fatalism: most people won't protest. If people do protest it won't work and will only help the bad guys anyway.
One other thing I just noticed from your post: how can you so viciously attack people who negatively stereotype Americans as "creationists" etc. but then claim that standing up for maligned persons is an "American thing to do".
If you want to generalise a nation, you cannot have the good stuff but not the bad stuff. Personally, I try to forget the whole thing and go with the 'To Kill A Mockingbird' philosophy of 'folks is just folks'..
Well, you certainly read my post as being a lot more aggressive than it actually was, perhaps because a few other people had attacked you.
My point, put simply, was this: you change a lot more hearts and minds by defying prejudices with a 'quiet dignity' than you do by coming all guns blazing against them. The latter may get you modded up by like-minded thinkers on Slashdot, but it bounces off the people you're railing against (any time you attack someone with such vitriol they'll steel themselves against it, regardless of whether you're right or wrong, or rational or irrational).
I find your arguments about cultural stereotypes to be reasonable, but slightly inconsistent: you'll have a hard time convincing anyone that a political difference is the same as an ethnic difference. You seem to want other people to stop generalising Americans, but are not distinguishing between those other people yourself: "don't do the same to us" and "if you want us to get to know you as individual people" suggests that you're talking to the world in general, which, of course, contains lots of people who don't do the "same to you". What's good for the goose..
Personally, I don't really care for the stuff about American military: you seem smart enough to realise that it's been a force for bad as well as good: that's politics. The people who are really irritating are the "we saved your ass" crowd, and there's enough of them for it to have found it's way into American popular culture as a pretty permanent fixture when Europeans pop up in Hollywood. Despite the efforts of American soldiers, I'm certainly not prepared to thank people who weren't involved based on the fact that (to quote Chris Rock) they "came out of their mothers pussy in the same fuckin' country"..And as for the stuff about the Soviet Union, well, if my Auntie had bollocks she'd be my uncle. Who knows what would have happened or what will happen..
It's funny, I've noticed that in any given crowd the rudest people are usually those who think that everyone else is rude.
Look, no-one likes being lumped in with the rest of their country as one homogeneous, unthinking blob, and I see a lot more people, such as you, defending the USA when it gets criticized than there are people who are ready to defend the individuals who may think differently in any given Arab state, for example. Or every time a 1984 story rolls round about the UK. Or against the 'jokes' on the French.
America is not some shining beacon of diversity that innocently stands by whilst people from other countries decide to irrationally voice their prejudices about it. You have some dangerous, ignorant trends that run through large segments of your society. Most countries do. So: some people don't realize how ignorant they're being when they generalize you? It's the internet, deal with it. Prove them wrong with intelligence and rationality. By reacting as you have you've just confirmed their prejudices.
All politics is a balance between individual freedom and collective responsibility. A balance, not a contest.
Your description of those policies above as "Authoritarian" (which is a 'blind' subscription to an authority often abused) is no different from describing the inverse as 'anarchist': it's hyperbolic, untrue and useless in any debate.
I haven't made a single attack at anyone's character in this thread, only their actions, and this is the second time you've flung names at me, so don't talk to me about what's conducive to civilized discussion. I would suggest you look up and learn what "pretentious" means, because you're using it in the wrong context. The only way my comments could be un-conducive to discussion would be if the poster took themselves and their opinions so seriously that they would not respond to anything considered flippant, or if they read it to themselves in a tone-of-voice filled with spite and bitterness, rather than the more casual and good-natured 'ribbing' tone-of-voice it was intended (Out of interest, did you do this? No-one else jumped on it like you did, mods or otherwise.)
Reading your posts it seems that you are, figuratively speaking, backed into a corner, having to choose between being wrong, or else defending a statement which is otherwise utterly mundane, and have resorted to throwing insults. It's almost irrelevant how the OP meant his message to be read, as the/. crowd certainly took it in the manner which I did (taxes==evil), as otherwise it would not have been modded to +5 Insightful. The people here are, in general, smart enough to know that "free" museums must be paid for somehow, and do not need reminding in the same way that they do not need reminding that the sky is blue..Give yourself a rest my friend, its just not worth it.
Do you honestly think that someone raising a point about taxes paying for something (Art, of all things!), on fucking slashdot is doing so purely in the interest of stating such an obvious fact as "someone pays for things which cost", or do you think that they're trying to provoke a reaction from the notoriously anti-government crowd that lurk round here? It's like the newspapers that pick and choose their stories about "immigrants". They don't need to be outright racist then, do they? They just let the readers join the dots..
Don't try and pull the evidence card, I brought that up and freely admitted that we'd need the facts and figures, and then interpret them exactly (which, even for Government it's nigh-on impossible to do, i.e. how do you measure how satisfied a couple of million people are with their holiday and therefore likely to return/recommend it?) All we can do is use logic and rationality to interpret a likelihood, which I attempted to do.
If I'm pretentious please tell me what importance or distinction I am making claim to. I'd love to hear it.
My point was that, although it is not "free", it is probably self-sustaining, or possibly better, when considering the UK economy as a whole (like, for example, any successful business in the world, none of which are "free" to run, but most importantly, they recoup more than they spend. )
Whilst it is a little futile to have an in depth discussion about it without numbers or figures, the post I replied to was making one of two statements:
1) It costs the normal taxpayer (which I disputed the extent of) or
2) It generally costs money to maintain a museum, (which you interpreted it as). This is so asinine a statement it is barely worth the paper its not written on, let alone an insightful mod.
The boost to the economy from the tourism industry (and the taxes therein) as people flock to London for the culture, and the money that is made in the shop/cafe sales are, of course, purely illusionary.
Oh the common man and his taxes, such a burdened soul!
Yes, but by not adhering to your "False Conclusion C", you're alienating the people in Iran who are reasonable and, being a part of their total population, who are in the best position to effect change.
I was in America visiting family when the mass-media collectively decided they 'hated' the French, and between the outright bigotry of the right wing Radio, and the 'jokes' of the Television comedians very very few people actually addressed what the French government had said..
It's like a positive feedback cycle whereby a couple of people start to get a few cheap laughs and suddenly it's 'ok' to do so, so every one does else joins in, because we all know it's easier to point and laugh at someone who's been stereotyped as different than it is to actually be creative. The same thing has happened with Steven Hawking in the UK where a few jokes were well received because people laughed whilst asking disbelievingly "Can they say that?", whereas now they're so ubiquitous its just become a game of laugh at the disabled guy.
Anyway, I digress. My point is that if people really want to change things then they should be formulating arguments against why "bigotry, sexism and totalitarianism" are bad things, because although it seems obvious to us it's useless unless you can put it in a social or historical context. Some will claim that there's a 'politically-correct' conspiracy to stop people from having fun, but I don't buy it. Surely, when the majority of sheep in a given culture turn irrationally against a population (read:not a political viewpoint but a diverse group of people) it is the job of the intelligent people (which, I'm sure if you asked 1000/.ers, at least 999 of them would think they were) to stand as the voice of reason. I wouldn't expect any less of intelligent Iranians in this position as I would of intelligent Americans
And this shouldn't be marked as flamebait, he gives as much of a reason for his opinion as most insightful mods on slashdot. If you don't like it, I'd love to hear an argument against him. I'd love to see someone suggest with a straight face that 1984 doesn't get dragged out every time some ridiculous paranoid fantasist's story gets dragged through slashdot. Along with that bloody Ben Franklin quote.
The first of my heresies says that all the fluff about global warming is grossly exaggerated. Here I am opposing the holy brotherhood of twilight model experts and the crowd of diluted citizens that believe the numbers predicted by their models. Of course they say I have no degree in meteorology and I am therefore not qualified to speak.
Cry me a river.
But I have studied their climate models and know what they can do. The models solve the equations of fluid dynamics and do a very good job of describing the fluid motions of the atmosphere and the oceans. They do a very poor job of describing the clouds, the dust, the chemistry and the biology of fields, farms and forests. They do not begin to describe the real world that we live in.
Show me the evidence.
The real world is muddy and messy and full of things that we do not yet understand. It is much easier for a scientist to sit in an air-conditioned building and run computer models than to put on winter clothes and measure what is really happening outside in the swamps and the clouds. That's why the climate model experts end up believing their own models.
I'm not saying the warming doesn't cause problems, obviously it does. Obviously we should be trying to understand it. I'm saying that the problems are being grossly exaggerated. They take away money and attention from other problems that are much more urgent and important. Poverty, infectious diseases, public education and public health. Not to mention the preservation of living creatures on land and in the oceans.
Sorry, did anyone say that these issues were zero sum?
He also worked out a way to reverse global warming quite cheaply.
I'm not even particularly opinionated on the issue of global warming, but this guy's said nothing, i repeat nothing in the above paragraph to contribute, other than his own opinion. THAT's why his first sentence is so defensive.
It's just that now most violent crime is perpetrated with knives and other physical weapons, like bats, metal pipes, chains, etc
Yeah. And also: there a lot less of it. That's quite pertinent.
What happens when they go up against a skel WITH a gun? Yell at it and shake their baton?
No, the dispatcher and/or officer on the scene call an armed response unit, who are highly trained marksmen (due to their rare situation of having a gun on the streets of Britain). You see, because gun crime happens so infrequently in the UK (see above), the armed response units have an incredibly quick response time, quicker, i'd wager, than the normal police response time in the US.
Ok, if you or the gp actually think that Britain is a "totalitarian dictatorship", or even anything close, you need to log off slashdot, go outside, and see some of the fucking world, you idiot.
If, however, you are being sarcastic (or if the gp isn't being sarcastic), then carry on.
The current average is 5.5%, which is irrelavent. Some places the local rates are as high as 16%
Same as every other country in the world. Nationwide employment levels are not uniform. Big fucking deal.
If you can't afford [...]
OK, we'll all use your definitions for words from now on, in order that you may anecdotally justify your prejudices you've picked up from living in a geographical anomaly. God forbid you should be proved wrong and look like a twat.
As far as piss-holes, East Anglia is a pretty nice piss-hole
I support Ipswich Town football club. I'm in East Anglia on average once a month. That guy who I mentioned who's a club bouncer? You'll probably see him on the door at Yates' on a Friday or Saturday night.
Trying prying your ass out of your, graduating class of 150, small butt-crack corner of the UK
I live in South London.
getting out and seeing your own country
On average, apart from travelling to Ipswich for the football, I also travel about once a month to rural lancashire (well, merseyside) and back to see my girlfriends dad, or her mum who lives in rural cornwall. I have family in Manchester and up in Scotland that I sometimes visit (my uncle lives there in a village of approximately 50 people). Having gone to uni in Plymouth, I also have friends there who I visit, as well as having lived there for 3 years. Many of the people I went to uni with were brought up in -and now live and work in- the surrounding rural areas of Devon and Cornwall.
Now, having said that, Do you honestly think that having "lived here for a year" you somehow have seen/know more than someone who's lived here their whole fucking life? Are you really that arrogant? I said I was on speaking terms with my class of 150, do you not think I visited at least some of them? I would be surprised if there was a single county in England, Scotland or Wales that I hadn't at some point stopped in, or at the very least driven through.
Of course, none of this can be verified. But then neither can anything you've said. So, let's face it, the only fact you've actually attempted to state is that employment is "well into double figures". In reality, it's 2.9%. (shock horror! it may be higher in some rural areas! that never happens in any other country, does it? Either your diatribe against the economical state of the UK is inaccurate and you look like a prick, or else all you were really stating was that in general rural areas are poorer than rich urban areas, which is so obvious to everyone that's ever been to any western country that to be honest, you still look like a prick.)
So, in the words of the ITFC crowd "Sit down, shut up".
Quite a few Brits I've met seem to work 2-3 jobs. If you are a teenager good luck finding a job, even the local pizza delivery boy is in his early fifties.
Ok, I don't know what backwater piss-hole you're living in, but I'm 24 and not a single one of my friends had trouble finding a job as a teenager, whether it was after-school/weekends or as an apprenticeship. I can't think of a single person in my year at school who didn't have at least one job before university, and there was 150 people in my year, and I was on talking terms with all of them.
I've never met a single person working 2-3 jobs, other than my friend who used to moonlight as a club bouncer. Oh and the lady who worked in my library at primary school. You get taxed higher if you do, it just doesn't make sense for most people.
I've never seen a local pizza delivery boy over 25, but I'll grant you, as an anomaly, this is possible. Talk about selective facts though.
"Somebody was trying to tell me that CDs are better than vinyl because they don't have any surface noise. I said, "Listen, mate, life has surface noise."
At first glance, it seems an obvious truism but I think it relies upon a simplistic view of history which neglects any complexity to the extent whereby any non-democratic, oppressive movements which may need to be addressed are assumed to have a clear signal. In modern times, it seems, the opposite is true.
Empowerment of a population strikes me as the way to breed complacency within it (the old "bread and circus" routine) and one thing that seems to happen in America is that the population is so 'aware' of its second amendment, and its been repeatedly -through media outlets- told that it's 'born of revolution' from oppression that an opinion of "well, if it's THAT bad, SOMEONE would have done something" seems bound to surface.
Mix into the above scenario metaphorical 'circuses' in the form of Jerry Springer; metaphorical 'Bread' from SUV's and Suburbs and I can't imagine a worse environment for change.
Iraq insurgents had a signal, a "go" sign in the form of a war with an outside force. It seems that the time for weapons is really over in the Western world, words and ideas are what change our world now, and if you have you were to try to use a gun in the name of revolution, or even in defense of you perceived 'rights', you'll lose the war of words before you start, the media shouts loudest, and you're just another crackpot with an agenda.
I'm British by the way, and although I'm pro gun control in my own country, I understand the difficulty in America with it's own laws. As other posters have said, the cat is too far out of the bag, but any pro-gun arguments concerning population control are universal, and that's why I've taken up this argument.
Slashdot Mirror
I was intrigued by your assertion so I looked it up, and found this site which states "It is often erroneously said the Mc indicates Irish origin and Mac Scottish origin. In fact there is no difference at all."
Stephen Hawking is hardly "ignored". In fact, I'm struggling to think of a physicist less ignored. He's the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge, has had a book stay on the British bestseller list for 5 years, and has been the subject of numerous documentaries, to name a few. If he's as well appreciated 200 years after his death as he is during his life, then he'll have been proved important.
As did everyone else who replied to you. If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck..
Then..
What, pray tell, would the difference be if he whined about it then to if he whines about this now? Are the same 'trouble makers' who complain about net neutrality by default the same people who will complain about price increases? I know a lot of "sheep" who care little for arguments about net neutrality who will be up in arms at a price increase, for example. It's more transparent.
You seem to be under the impression that this is a battle that has to be won tomorrow. Rome wasn't built in a day, perhaps the general public will switch onto this neutrality issue, perhaps it won't. Just pointing to the stock price of a multinational and saying 'look! pointless!' every time someone speaks against it helps no-one (except perhaps, your own ego, boosted by your superiority to all those sheep. They're sub-human, I tell you, they care little for the things we do)..
Huh? If Cory Doctorow started his own ISP on a shoestring budget this analogy might be valid. Public perception has little impact on an international sport's team success, but it matters to a company: it's why they spend so much on PR and Marketing.
Your argument is the very definition of fatalism: most people won't protest. If people do protest it won't work and will only help the bad guys anyway.
Idiot.
Aww darling, you got me a powerpoint template..
If you want to generalise a nation, you cannot have the good stuff but not the bad stuff. Personally, I try to forget the whole thing and go with the 'To Kill A Mockingbird' philosophy of 'folks is just folks'..
My point, put simply, was this: you change a lot more hearts and minds by defying prejudices with a 'quiet dignity' than you do by coming all guns blazing against them. The latter may get you modded up by like-minded thinkers on Slashdot, but it bounces off the people you're railing against (any time you attack someone with such vitriol they'll steel themselves against it, regardless of whether you're right or wrong, or rational or irrational).
I find your arguments about cultural stereotypes to be reasonable, but slightly inconsistent: you'll have a hard time convincing anyone that a political difference is the same as an ethnic difference. You seem to want other people to stop generalising Americans, but are not distinguishing between those other people yourself: "don't do the same to us" and "if you want us to get to know you as individual people" suggests that you're talking to the world in general, which, of course, contains lots of people who don't do the "same to you". What's good for the goose..
Personally, I don't really care for the stuff about American military: you seem smart enough to realise that it's been a force for bad as well as good: that's politics. The people who are really irritating are the "we saved your ass" crowd, and there's enough of them for it to have found it's way into American popular culture as a pretty permanent fixture when Europeans pop up in Hollywood. Despite the efforts of American soldiers, I'm certainly not prepared to thank people who weren't involved based on the fact that (to quote Chris Rock) they "came out of their mothers pussy in the same fuckin' country"..And as for the stuff about the Soviet Union, well, if my Auntie had bollocks she'd be my uncle. Who knows what would have happened or what will happen..
Look, no-one likes being lumped in with the rest of their country as one homogeneous, unthinking blob, and I see a lot more people, such as you, defending the USA when it gets criticized than there are people who are ready to defend the individuals who may think differently in any given Arab state, for example. Or every time a 1984 story rolls round about the UK. Or against the 'jokes' on the French.
America is not some shining beacon of diversity that innocently stands by whilst people from other countries decide to irrationally voice their prejudices about it. You have some dangerous, ignorant trends that run through large segments of your society. Most countries do. So: some people don't realize how ignorant they're being when they generalize you? It's the internet, deal with it. Prove them wrong with intelligence and rationality. By reacting as you have you've just confirmed their prejudices.
Your description of those policies above as "Authoritarian" (which is a 'blind' subscription to an authority often abused) is no different from describing the inverse as 'anarchist': it's hyperbolic, untrue and useless in any debate.
All the world's a stage.
It's the difference between a metaphor and a simile, and they're both valid..
Reading your posts it seems that you are, figuratively speaking, backed into a corner, having to choose between being wrong, or else defending a statement which is otherwise utterly mundane, and have resorted to throwing insults. It's almost irrelevant how the OP meant his message to be read, as the /. crowd certainly took it in the manner which I did (taxes==evil), as otherwise it would not have been modded to +5 Insightful. The people here are, in general, smart enough to know that "free" museums must be paid for somehow, and do not need reminding in the same way that they do not need reminding that the sky is blue..Give yourself a rest my friend, its just not worth it.
Don't try and pull the evidence card, I brought that up and freely admitted that we'd need the facts and figures, and then interpret them exactly (which, even for Government it's nigh-on impossible to do, i.e. how do you measure how satisfied a couple of million people are with their holiday and therefore likely to return/recommend it?) All we can do is use logic and rationality to interpret a likelihood, which I attempted to do.
If I'm pretentious please tell me what importance or distinction I am making claim to. I'd love to hear it.
Whilst it is a little futile to have an in depth discussion about it without numbers or figures, the post I replied to was making one of two statements:
1) It costs the normal taxpayer (which I disputed the extent of) or
2) It generally costs money to maintain a museum, (which you interpreted it as). This is so asinine a statement it is barely worth the paper its not written on, let alone an insightful mod.
Oh the common man and his taxes, such a burdened soul!
I was in America visiting family when the mass-media collectively decided they 'hated' the French, and between the outright bigotry of the right wing Radio, and the 'jokes' of the Television comedians very very few people actually addressed what the French government had said..
It's like a positive feedback cycle whereby a couple of people start to get a few cheap laughs and suddenly it's 'ok' to do so, so every one does else joins in, because we all know it's easier to point and laugh at someone who's been stereotyped as different than it is to actually be creative. The same thing has happened with Steven Hawking in the UK where a few jokes were well received because people laughed whilst asking disbelievingly "Can they say that?", whereas now they're so ubiquitous its just become a game of laugh at the disabled guy.
Anyway, I digress. My point is that if people really want to change things then they should be formulating arguments against why "bigotry, sexism and totalitarianism" are bad things, because although it seems obvious to us it's useless unless you can put it in a social or historical context. Some will claim that there's a 'politically-correct' conspiracy to stop people from having fun, but I don't buy it. Surely, when the majority of sheep in a given culture turn irrationally against a population (read:not a political viewpoint but a diverse group of people) it is the job of the intelligent people (which, I'm sure if you asked 1000 /.ers, at least 999 of them would think they were) to stand as the voice of reason. I wouldn't expect any less of intelligent Iranians in this position as I would of intelligent Americans
Or maybe I'm just naive..
And this shouldn't be marked as flamebait, he gives as much of a reason for his opinion as most insightful mods on slashdot. If you don't like it, I'd love to hear an argument against him. I'd love to see someone suggest with a straight face that 1984 doesn't get dragged out every time some ridiculous paranoid fantasist's story gets dragged through slashdot. Along with that bloody Ben Franklin quote.
Cry me a river.
Show me the evidence.
Ad hominem. And also, just plain wrong
yes it is
Sorry, did anyone say that these issues were zero sum?
Possibly. It's a little more complicated than that.
I'm not even particularly opinionated on the issue of global warming, but this guy's said nothing, i repeat nothing in the above paragraph to contribute, other than his own opinion. THAT's why his first sentence is so defensive.
Yeah. And also: there a lot less of it. That's quite pertinent.
No, the dispatcher and/or officer on the scene call an armed response unit, who are highly trained marksmen (due to their rare situation of having a gun on the streets of Britain). You see, because gun crime happens so infrequently in the UK (see above), the armed response units have an incredibly quick response time, quicker, i'd wager, than the normal police response time in the US.
If, however, you are being sarcastic (or if the gp isn't being sarcastic), then carry on.
Same as every other country in the world. Nationwide employment levels are not uniform. Big fucking deal.
OK, we'll all use your definitions for words from now on, in order that you may anecdotally justify your prejudices you've picked up from living in a geographical anomaly. God forbid you should be proved wrong and look like a twat.
I support Ipswich Town football club. I'm in East Anglia on average once a month. That guy who I mentioned who's a club bouncer? You'll probably see him on the door at Yates' on a Friday or Saturday night.
I live in South London.
On average, apart from travelling to Ipswich for the football, I also travel about once a month to rural lancashire (well, merseyside) and back to see my girlfriends dad, or her mum who lives in rural cornwall. I have family in Manchester and up in Scotland that I sometimes visit (my uncle lives there in a village of approximately 50 people). Having gone to uni in Plymouth, I also have friends there who I visit, as well as having lived there for 3 years. Many of the people I went to uni with were brought up in -and now live and work in- the surrounding rural areas of Devon and Cornwall.
Now, having said that, Do you honestly think that having "lived here for a year" you somehow have seen/know more than someone who's lived here their whole fucking life? Are you really that arrogant? I said I was on speaking terms with my class of 150, do you not think I visited at least some of them? I would be surprised if there was a single county in England, Scotland or Wales that I hadn't at some point stopped in, or at the very least driven through.
Of course, none of this can be verified. But then neither can anything you've said. So, let's face it, the only fact you've actually attempted to state is that employment is "well into double figures". In reality, it's 2.9%. (shock horror! it may be higher in some rural areas! that never happens in any other country, does it? Either your diatribe against the economical state of the UK is inaccurate and you look like a prick, or else all you were really stating was that in general rural areas are poorer than rich urban areas, which is so obvious to everyone that's ever been to any western country that to be honest, you still look like a prick.)
So, in the words of the ITFC crowd "Sit down, shut up".
unemployment is 2.9%
Ok, I don't know what backwater piss-hole you're living in, but I'm 24 and not a single one of my friends had trouble finding a job as a teenager, whether it was after-school/weekends or as an apprenticeship. I can't think of a single person in my year at school who didn't have at least one job before university, and there was 150 people in my year, and I was on talking terms with all of them.
I've never met a single person working 2-3 jobs, other than my friend who used to moonlight as a club bouncer. Oh and the lady who worked in my library at primary school. You get taxed higher if you do, it just doesn't make sense for most people.
I've never seen a local pizza delivery boy over 25, but I'll grant you, as an anomaly, this is possible. Talk about selective facts though.
"Somebody was trying to tell me that CDs are better than vinyl because they don't have any surface noise. I said, "Listen, mate, life has surface noise."
I hear this argument often, but i have my doubts.
At first glance, it seems an obvious truism but I think it relies upon a simplistic view of history which neglects any complexity to the extent whereby any non-democratic, oppressive movements which may need to be addressed are assumed to have a clear signal. In modern times, it seems, the opposite is true.
Empowerment of a population strikes me as the way to breed complacency within it (the old "bread and circus" routine) and one thing that seems to happen in America is that the population is so 'aware' of its second amendment, and its been repeatedly -through media outlets- told that it's 'born of revolution' from oppression that an opinion of "well, if it's THAT bad, SOMEONE would have done something" seems bound to surface.
Mix into the above scenario metaphorical 'circuses' in the form of Jerry Springer; metaphorical 'Bread' from SUV's and Suburbs and I can't imagine a worse environment for change.
Iraq insurgents had a signal, a "go" sign in the form of a war with an outside force. It seems that the time for weapons is really over in the Western world, words and ideas are what change our world now, and if you have you were to try to use a gun in the name of revolution, or even in defense of you perceived 'rights', you'll lose the war of words before you start, the media shouts loudest, and you're just another crackpot with an agenda.
I'm British by the way, and although I'm pro gun control in my own country, I understand the difficulty in America with it's own laws. As other posters have said, the cat is too far out of the bag, but any pro-gun arguments concerning population control are universal, and that's why I've taken up this argument.