Because looking at it from the outside, it's like the US^H^H^H^H Fox News is seeking a new bogeyman now the cold war is over. Unfortunately some of this is rubbing off on a more intellegent news source like/.
So, in your world, networks which report the news are bad? And your definition of an "intellegent" (nice irony with the misspelling, btw) news wource is one which ignores world events?
Get a clue. There's nothing sinister about the discussion of the constant Chinese cyber-attacks, and the possible threat from their economic rise. Your complaint is especially galling considering that you're from the EU - I've seen what passes as "news" in your papers when it comes to reporting on US foreign policy. UK and German papers, at least, are so blatantly biased and "looking for a bogyman" that they make Fox News seem fair and balanced.
But tell me: should children be banned from public swimming pools ? After all, swimwear often leaves a lot of the body uncovered, and is skintight over what is covered.
Apples and oranges. Sure, swimwear can be revealing, but it's generally not sexualized. I've never found myself the least bit attracted to a teenage girl in a one-piece bathing-suit. On the other hand, I had a provocatively dressed young female flirt with me at the local mall a few weeks ago, and I was VERY interested....until I found out she was 15. Sexuality isn't about how much you show, it's about HOW you show it. If you don't understand that, you're either a eunuch or too old to remember what an erection feels like.
Seriously thought, your comment has the same kind of fucked up mentality as those who claim that women not wearing burkas are asking to be raped.
If you walk through the ghetto in the middle of the night while waiving a thousand dollars in the air, you may not be asking to be robbed, but you're a fucking idiot anyway. Your actions have consequences, regardless of what you think should happen. We're not debating morality here, we're discussing reality.
Now, if you'd said "But it uses conventional rockets for launch and propulsion until it gets to cruising altitude," then you would have had a point.
That was a given, since "Digi-John" mentioned it earlier. As such, I assumed that the "collateral damage" we were discussing was enemy civilians in the missiles path, which would make it extremely silly to worry about the exhaust of the nuclear engine.
But even assuming we irradiate some of our own civilians on the way, so what? At the time this was seen as the only way to improve ICBM technology, and the increase in lethality would have been worth a few thousand casualties. Besides which, we're talking about THERMONUCLEAR WAR here. If we're lobbing nukes at each other, it's probably a bit late to be worrying about whether we're going to irradiate a few thousand of our own civilians along the missiles path. Chances are they'll be vapourized by the enemy's strike anyway.
However, I'd also like point out that when you are dealing with nuclear powers, this is a moot point that it really doesn't matter what China or Russia is doing as long as we can retaliate with a nuclear strike in the end.
What happens if mini-nukes start crossing the border into the US on the backs of suicide bombers, and blow up a few of your major cities? Without military or int capability, how do you track down those responsible? And even if you find the people responsible, are you really willing to nuke a whole country just because a rouge group decided to attack you?
What about if you scrap the US navy, and China decides to blockade you? How do you deal with that? Threaten to nuke them? What if they don't believe you? Nuke one of their cities in order to prove your point, and pray they don't nuke you back?
And regardless of whether or not you can nuke people back, how does that bring back the dead civilians you incurred before and after firing off your nukes?
The military is a way to resolve problems without having to resort to nuclear weaponry. If you scrap the military, you're only guaranteeing that eventually you'll be pushed into a position where you HAVE to use nukes, and then we're all fucked. Realistically, the only thing that nukes guarantee is that no nation will ever be able to enslave you. Other than that, it's an open-ended game.
Btw, I understand that you're not talking about scrapping the military entirely, but your suggestion that it doesn't matter what China/Russia do militarily amounts to the same thing. If you don't keep up with the technology, training, and tactics, eventually your opponents will outclass you so badly that you may as well not have a military at all. That's what happened to Iraq - the coalition strolled into Baghdad with such ease that Saddam's military may as well not have bothered to put up a fight.
What makes you think we can't do it as well as or better than they do?
Well, I'm Canadian, and I know for a fact that if I need an MRI done, I'll be travelling to the US. Same goes for pretty much any complex procedure - I have the option of waiting for a couple years in Canada and hoping that I don't die in the meantime, or crossing the border and getting taken care of in a matter of days. Sure, I'll pay more, but what the hell good is my money if I'm dead?
I'm also thinking of crossing the border to get laser-eye surgery done: sure, I can have it done in Canada, but it'll cost me less in the US, the doctors have more experience there, and if something goes wrong I can sue for a LOT more:)
That means ist's OK to maximize the collateral damage (by shockwave) and (possibly) make the territory inhabitable, as long it's done over hostile territory?
I'm sorry....you're discussing a nuclear-payload delivery system, and worrying that it might happen to irradiate a few hundred people on the way to blowing up a few hundred thousand?
....
You're not the sharpest knife in the drawer, are you?
Believe it or not, a lot of women wear thongs because they feel comfortable in them, not to look sexy.
Uhuh. Also, most women wear high-heeled shoes because they're so comfortable. And our horrible paternalistic society has totally destroyed the joys of corset-wearing for women!
Please, let's not be silly. Any woman who says she's wearing a thong for comfort isn't fooling anyone other than herself and, apparently, you.
Since the eye is so poorly designed, why haven't we made a replacement yet?
Because we can't manipulate biological matter to that extent. However, if we had the ability to design life from scratch, as god supposedly does, we certainly wouldn't be so stupid as to run the optic nerves in front of the receptor cells.
Your inference is basically that since we can't do any better we have no right to criticize god, right? Well, that's a flawed argument. It's like saying that because I personally can't build a car, I have no right to criticize the Edzel. Don't play stupid. Anyone with more than half a brain can look at the design of the human body, and find dozens of design flaws. If you can explain why your God decided to do some drunken-engineering, I'd love to hear it.
Also where is the evidence it formed at all? Wouldn't there be lesser formed eyes elsewhere?
There certainly are. Talk to any biologist and they'll explain to you exactly how the eye evolved. Or just pick up a book some time. Or at least check out the Wikipedia Entry if you can't be bothered to actually pick up a book.
The earliest "eye" was a simple clump of photo-receptive cells, allowing the animal to sense light or dark, and not much else. There are still animals today which make use of such "eyes".
How about when major species diverge, say insect and mammal, why did both develop basically the SAME eye?
They didn't. There are some massive differences between an insects eyeball and the eye of a mammal. As for species divergence amongst mammals, it's safe to say that the earliest form of mammal already had a fully functional mammalian eye. Individual species which evolved from that point only introduced minor improvements.
Your point is 'both are theories but theory X sounds better to me than theory Y, so theory X is science'.
No, that's the sort of argument a creationist would make. MY point is that your theories have nothing to do with science - your entire argument is based around "asking questions", ignoring the answers, and then pretending you've managed to poke holes in the evolutionary theory. Until you manage to come up with a scientific argument, your beliefs will be relegated to the realm of the irrational.
Intelligent Design is about *creation*. The idea is a higher entity began the process with each of the major species.
Buddy, I don't care whether you believe that life was created in 7 days by God, or that it was brought here by Space Lizards from Orion 5, or that the human race began when Xenu blew up some volcanoes, or that the whole universe was puked up by The Great Turtle after a drunken binge. Unless you can prove it, or at least show some evidence for it, your theories don't mean shit. It doesn't really matter which particular bit of mythology you happen to be pushing.
Interestingly enough, we actually can show that there's nothing intelligent about our design. Just look at the messed up way that the human eyeball is wired. If God really built us he must have been an idiot, and a horrible engineer to boot. "Incompetent Design" would be a much better name for that theory, but such a label doesn't really mesh well with the idea that God is omnipotent. But sure, if that's what people want to believe, I'm not going to argue with them. There's no rational way to disprove an irrational belief.
Even if this were true, it'd be irrelevant. You can say that about ANY new research endeavour, until a "breakthrough" is made.
Human caused global warming = ZERO evidence outside computer models, however the 'science is settled'
Not exactly true. There is plenty of evidence to suggest that human activity can cause changes in weather patterns. What's at question is how much we can affect the weather, and whether there is any natural mechanism which offsets our effect. You also shouldn't mix up the political "global warming" arguments with the actual science.
Evolution as origins of life = ZERO lab reproducible results of abiogenesis, however it too is 'scientific fact'.
Once again, not true. There have certainly been lab experiments which have reproduced some of the basic building blocks of life from scratch. If you're asking us to build you an entirely new intelligent life form from scratch, well, you're being an idiot. We're not god's....yet.
Re:Social or physical sciences?
on
Science Debate 2008
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
You have a valid point on science being a consensus thing, but one should be careful to differentiate between historians and physicists.
Yes, but Republicans aren't generally accused of being anti-Physics. When the "anti-science" accusation is made, it's generally referring to the "softer" sciences, like biology or, these days, climatology.
It's also due to the stereotype of Republicans being religious zealots who refuse to believe in evolution. And while these types of people are doubtless more common amongst republicans than amongst democrats, it's hardly a fair accusation against the party as a whole.
I was more implying the sort of store that's exorbitantly expensive, and disgustingly dirty compared to other stores in the same chain.
In which case, your analogy has nothing to do with TSA screening:) All the airports are part of the same "chain". If one (or more) airport doesn't follow TSA guidelines, then sure, report it. That's in fact what the article is talking about - the screeners were clearly violating their own rules, it got reported, and it's being fixed. But don't expect to change the whole system just because you're not happy about something. You can make a suggestion, but it won't be taken seriously unless it's reasonable.
If I walk into Safeway/Kroger/Food Lion, and tell the manager that one of their cashiers is stealing money out of the register, there's no doubt that he'll respond immediately. If I walk in and tell the manager that his store is dirty, and that prices are too high, I doubt I'll receive any sympathy.
Of course. My response would be "You want us to do MORE work, and then LOWER our prices? Sure. And we'll change the name of our store to NoprofitFairytaleLand."
Your complaints have to be reasonable in order for you to be taken seriously.
I'm sure someone's already posted something similar, but here goes:
For the last 6 months, I've been part of a group of 20 individuals taking a course together. Many of them have made computer purchases within those 6 months. And over the last 6 months, from that group of 20 people, I have had no less than 7 requests to downgrade a newly bought computer from Vista to XP. Even assuming that every person in that group (not including myself) had purchased a new computer within the last 6 months, that means that the rejection rate for Vista would be around 36%. However, as far as I know, only those 7 individuals have actually purchased new computers during that time period, meaning that the rejection rate for Vista amongst my acquaintances has been around 100%. The only reason these people are "buying" Vista is because it comes bundled with their computers, and most of them will get rid of it at the first opportunity.
When you mention anything relating to them getting on a plane, a train, or a bus, they immediately think of the bad things about public transportation and all the luxuries they'll lose from giving up their car. Some common things I hear are, "it's not convenient," "don't make me sit with strangers," "isn't it just cheaper to pay for gas," and "I don't want to pay for it." Yet they fail to realize the good things, like the fact that you can read a book or the newspaper during your commute instead of staring at traffic, there is no huge upfront cost for the vehicle--instead you pay for a fare as you use the service, and nearly anything is safer than driving your own car in terms of transportation.
None of which does anything to dispel the original complaint. You seem to think that stating a bunch of non-sequitors will somehow change peoples minds. Allow me to disabuse you of that notion. Despite all the "benefits" you list, I still much prefer to drive my car. That alone should be enough to counter your "point", but I've always been a fan of beating dead horses, so let's break it down:
You claim: "you can read a book"
I say: I LOVE driving!
You claim: "There's no huge up-front cost"
I say: Regaurdless of whether I take the train today, I'm going to buy a car anyway! The upfront cost is already there no matter what, you're just asking me to pay extra and leave my car in the driveway.
You claim: "nearly anything is safer than driving your own car in terms of transportation"
I say: And if I were a 40 year old man going on a trip with his wife and kids, I might care. As it is, I'll take comfort, pleasure, and convenience over "safety" any day!
If the average commute in one direction was 20 minutes, and roughly a third of the US population commutes (the other two thirds are senior citizens and children), then every work day 100,000,000 Americans waste 2,000,000,000 minutes commuting.
Back when I live in a medium-sized town, I could spend 20 minutes driving to work and 20 minutes driving back, or spend 2 hours on the bus each way. If Americans had similar experiences with public transportation, then that means that they are actually SAVING 200,000,000,000 minutes every day by taking the car instead of public transportation.
Of course, my math has as much to do with reality as yours, which is to say absolutely nothing. But at least I have the decency not to pretend that my statistics prove anything, whereas you take yourself entirely too seriously.
The ONLY time that I have not owned a car is when I was living in the downtown area of a major metropolis, and could walk to work in 15 minutes. At that point, it made no sense (either for my financial situation nor for my convenience) to own a vehicle. Other than that, though, it has always made more sense for me to drive my own vehicle than to throw myself at the mercy of public transportation.
I'll tell you what doesn't amaze me -- that the OP has never seen a laser disc.
Another thing that shouldn't surprise you: my comment got modded "flamebait" while his got modded "interesting". Ah. The wonders of the slashdot moderating system. It's like letting putting chimps in charge of an IT department: all your data gets trashed, and everything gets covered in feces.
1) You're comparing a gas-pumping robot to a bad-guy-killing cybernetic police officer? What do you do for an encore, compare the Apollo Module to the USS Enterprise?
2) You're amazed by the fact that he saw a lazerdisc shrunk it down for his robocop movie? Sorry, I'm not impressed.
3) You got the movie "Total Recall" confused with "Demolition Man", which was directed by someone else.
4) 9/11 reference in Star Ship troopers? Are you sure you weren't just on LSD at the time?
So you're getting all excited about a statistical tie, when we're spending $6700 per head and they're spending $251? Not to mention the fact that they have an infant mortality rate that's lower...
Recently released statistics on the infant mortality rate in the Western hemisphere yielded an odd conclusions -- Cuba's infant mortality rate, 16 6.0 per 1,000, is now lower than the U.S. infant mortality rate, at 7.2 per 1,000. Given Cuba's poverty level, its 6.0 rate is very impressive, but is it accurate to say that Cuba now has an infant mortality rate lower than the United States? No.
...
The primary reason Cuba has a lower infant mortality rate than the United States is that the United States is a world leader in an odd category -- the percentage of infants who die on their birthday. In any given year in the United States anywhere from 30-40 percent of infants die before they are even a day old. [ed: typo. what they meant to say is "30-40 percent of infants who die, die before they are a day old"]
Why? Because the United States also easily has the most intensive system of
emergency intervention to keep low birth weight and premature infants alive
in the world.
....
How does this skew the statistics? Because in the United States if an infant is born weighing only 400 grams and not breathing, a doctor will likely spend lot of time and money trying to revive that infant. If the infant does not survive -- and the mortality rate for such infants is in excess of 50 percent -- that sequence of events will be recorded as a live birth and then a death.
In many countries, however, (including many European countries) such severe medical intervention would not be attempted and, moreover, regardless of whether or not it was, this would be recorded as a fetal death rather than a live birth. That unfortunate infant would never show up in infant mortality statistics.
This is clearly what is happening in Cuba. In the United States about 1.3 percent of all live births are very low birth weight -- less than 1,500 grams. In Cuba, on the other hand, only about 0.4 percent of all births are less than 1,500 grams. This is despite the fact that the United States and Cuba have very similar low birth rates (births where the infant weighs less than 2500g). The United States actually has a much better low birth rate than Cuba if you control for multiple births -- i.e. the growing number of multiple births in the United States due to technological interventions has resulted in a marked increase in the number of births under 2,500 g.
So, after I decimated your initial claim, you responded with yet another inaccurate statistic. You are, in short, a blind fool. Get your head out of your ass and start actually researching these claims instead of spitting them out without a second thought.
One of the reasons it's been an American policy to keep Cuba under embargo is because they are a symbol of success without American support in the Western Hemisphere.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAA!!!!!!!!
Oh....my...god....
I'm wiping away tears here!
It's one of the reasons Cubans live far longer than Americans.
Cuban life expectancy: 77.08
American life Expectancy: 78.2
You really need to check your sources of propaganda, boy.
An interesting study, but that's not what I read in the results. I'd rather say that most people do not possess the "everything-for-myself" mentality, and are willing to share in general, and particularly when it maximizes the overall profit for the society (i.e. other people).
How exactly does giving public funds to random people maximize overall profit for the society? See, that's the point - people assume that this money just comes out of nowhere, and that some random person deserves to have it. It's the same thing when it comes to taxes - people have no problem letting the government "help the poor", or institute universal healthcare, but they don't stop and think where this money is coming from, and whether they have any right to tell the government to redistribute it.
I would even dare say that the majority of people need to work to stay happy. Most people I know are in that category.
That's because you, like me, mostly socialize with people who are productive members of society. I could similarly say that the majority of people I know on a personal level are white and middle class, but that doesn't mean that the group of people I associate with is representative of the nation as a whole.
I spent a few years of my youth working as a rent-a-cop in some of the worst areas of my city, so I've gotten plenty of exposure to the other end of the scale. Trust me when I say that most of the people I dealt with there were NOT the type who needed to work in order to stay happy.
People, in mass, don't really have the urge to redistribute wealth just for the sake of it, even when they see others who are much richer; but only as long as they themselves do not feel truly poor.
You've obviously never run into a gaggle of "homelessness activists". Never mind. Most of your points were correct - communism isn't really communism in practice, and "the masses" will revolt if they are mistreated. But "the masses" had a much lower quality of life in the US in, say, 1890, yet they didn't revolt, so why do we need such egalitarian welfare programs today?
I think that the more likely outcome is that increasing rises in productivity will result in a state where only 5% of the population actually need to do anything useful to keep the whole thing running. Maybe the developments you speak of (though I'm not sure they are real - can you actually present some numbers to show the steady rise of tax levels throughout the Western world?) are a sign of approaching that point...
Well, let's look at US taxation rates as a baseline. Currently, 5% of the US population pays almost 60% of all income tax. The top 1% pay almost 40% of total income tax. Meanwhile the bottom 50% pay only 3% of all income tax. That means that half of the population of the US gets access to public infrastructure, basically for free. On top of that, the bottom 50% are the ones most likely to use welfare, medicaid, and other "free" services, meaning that their tax contribution is at best balanced out by services which are of no benefit to the other 50% of the population. So half of the country gets a free ride. And this is in a country that's NOT a welfare state!
This is representative of most western nations. Now, has it always been like this? You'd have to look at past trends and rates, and things get kinda complicated by the fact that income tax didn't exist in most western nations until fairly recently. But since the rich pay such a disproportionate amount of the total income tax, that alone indicates that historically taxes have gravitated away from the lower end of the income scale.
if a state exists only for the sake of its people, and on their good will, then it is inevitable that it will bend towards their wishes, or be dismantled as useless
This assumes that the majority of people are capable of acting rationally when given the proxy-power of government control. Which, for the most part, just isn't the case. Try telling your children that they can vote on how big their allowance is, and see what happens.
There was actually a study a while back that's rather relevant to this discussion. Two groups of people were individually handed envelopes with $10. One group was told that they could take as much of the money as they wanted, and whatever they left in the envelope would be given to a stranger. The second group was told to take as much as they wanted, and whatever was left would be doubled, and then given to a stranger. The result? People in the second group consistently left a significantly larger amount of money than people in the first group. What does that tell us? That people are much more eager to give away other peoples money even when it results in less gain for them personally.
Yes, and how is it bad? It means that our society is rich enough that it can actually afford to maintain that level of life as a basic one - a great achievement in and of itself.
It's bad because it leads to dependence. When the all-powerful government has the ability to provide for all of your needs, where's the incentive for you to do anything? Take a look in any ghetto, and you'll see the result of a welfare-state policy. The ultimate result is France, with their 10% unemployment rate, their huge numbers of unemployed youths, and the ghettos full of unemployed immigrants into which the police rarely venture.
Hell, even here in Canada I've seen the negative side effects - when I was younger, I had a friend at one point who would work only 6 months out of the year (and I use the term "work" loosely), and then spend the next 6 months collecting unemployment checks, fishing at his parents cottage. Sure, it's nice that we can afford to support people who trully can not help themselves, but more and more we're supporting people who just don't want to.
The point of communism in general is the lack of private property; this is certainly not anything we've come close to in any Western country.
The government has the right to seize your income. If you do not pay your taxes, they can seize your property. While that's nowhere near as bad as communism, let's not pretend that we truly have a right to private property. If the masses vote tomorrow to raise your taxes to 60% so we can put more people on welfare, how is that any different than a communist commissar coming by to redistribute your possessions?
Worry not; European-style welfare social democracy is still much, much closer to America's screw-everyone-but-me capitalism politically and economically, that it is to any of the existing and past communist and totalitarian socialist regimes.
Agreed, but we seem to be on a constant slide toward a state where only 5% of the population does anything useful, and pays 100% of the taxes to support everyone else. I'm not sure I like that idea. Frankly, we need to bring back some misery and suffering, otherwise we're just stuck with a society of grown up children who refuse to get a job and leave their parents home. Figuratively speaking.
But what about war criminals? People who are responsable for genocide? Are they 'allowed' the same reasoning as you and me? I am not trolling here, I am having difficulty finding the line between me agreeing with you and me not agreeing with the 'right' of a war criminal to 'defend' himself against the legitimacy of a law that has been voted on by a mayority and by which he is sentenced to death.
The way I see it, all of us have the right to do what we want, as long as we do not interfere with the rights of another human being. To use a popular phrase: "your right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins".
This goes for other rights, too. You have the right to free speech, but you do not have the right to say things about me which you know to be false, in order to harm me. You have the right to purchase and sell whatever goods and services you wish, but you do not have the right to purchase the services of an assassin in order to kill me. You have the right to pursue happiness, but not if it means committing rape. Etc. etc.
Going by that logic, war criminals certainly have to be held accountable for their actions, yes. However, even they deserve a chance to defend themselves. That's the very basis of our legal system - innocent until proven guilty, right? If, on top of that, they wish to wrestle with their guards on the way to the gallows, well, I won't hold it against them.
No, actually, I'm from Toronto. And you are, without a doubt, one of the most most ignorant and insane zealots I've run into so far. We're done here. You're dismissed.
Slashdot Mirror
Get a clue. There's nothing sinister about the discussion of the constant Chinese cyber-attacks, and the possible threat from their economic rise. Your complaint is especially galling considering that you're from the EU - I've seen what passes as "news" in your papers when it comes to reporting on US foreign policy. UK and German papers, at least, are so blatantly biased and "looking for a bogyman" that they make Fox News seem fair and balanced.
He said "old-timers", not "petrified fossils".
If you walk through the ghetto in the middle of the night while waiving a thousand dollars in the air, you may not be asking to be robbed, but you're a fucking idiot anyway. Your actions have consequences, regardless of what you think should happen. We're not debating morality here, we're discussing reality.
But even assuming we irradiate some of our own civilians on the way, so what? At the time this was seen as the only way to improve ICBM technology, and the increase in lethality would have been worth a few thousand casualties. Besides which, we're talking about THERMONUCLEAR WAR here. If we're lobbing nukes at each other, it's probably a bit late to be worrying about whether we're going to irradiate a few thousand of our own civilians along the missiles path. Chances are they'll be vapourized by the enemy's strike anyway.
What about if you scrap the US navy, and China decides to blockade you? How do you deal with that? Threaten to nuke them? What if they don't believe you? Nuke one of their cities in order to prove your point, and pray they don't nuke you back?
And regardless of whether or not you can nuke people back, how does that bring back the dead civilians you incurred before and after firing off your nukes?
The military is a way to resolve problems without having to resort to nuclear weaponry. If you scrap the military, you're only guaranteeing that eventually you'll be pushed into a position where you HAVE to use nukes, and then we're all fucked. Realistically, the only thing that nukes guarantee is that no nation will ever be able to enslave you. Other than that, it's an open-ended game.
Btw, I understand that you're not talking about scrapping the military entirely, but your suggestion that it doesn't matter what China/Russia do militarily amounts to the same thing. If you don't keep up with the technology, training, and tactics, eventually your opponents will outclass you so badly that you may as well not have a military at all. That's what happened to Iraq - the coalition strolled into Baghdad with such ease that Saddam's military may as well not have bothered to put up a fight.
I'm also thinking of crossing the border to get laser-eye surgery done: sure, I can have it done in Canada, but it'll cost me less in the US, the doctors have more experience there, and if something goes wrong I can sue for a LOT more
You're not the sharpest knife in the drawer, are you?
Please, let's not be silly. Any woman who says she's wearing a thong for comfort isn't fooling anyone other than herself and, apparently, you.
Your inference is basically that since we can't do any better we have no right to criticize god, right? Well, that's a flawed argument. It's like saying that because I personally can't build a car, I have no right to criticize the Edzel. Don't play stupid. Anyone with more than half a brain can look at the design of the human body, and find dozens of design flaws. If you can explain why your God decided to do some drunken-engineering, I'd love to hear it.
There certainly are. Talk to any biologist and they'll explain to you exactly how the eye evolved. Or just pick up a book some time. Or at least check out the Wikipedia Entry if you can't be bothered to actually pick up a book.
The earliest "eye" was a simple clump of photo-receptive cells, allowing the animal to sense light or dark, and not much else. There are still animals today which make use of such "eyes".
They didn't. There are some massive differences between an insects eyeball and the eye of a mammal. As for species divergence amongst mammals, it's safe to say that the earliest form of mammal already had a fully functional mammalian eye. Individual species which evolved from that point only introduced minor improvements.
No, that's the sort of argument a creationist would make. MY point is that your theories have nothing to do with science - your entire argument is based around "asking questions", ignoring the answers, and then pretending you've managed to poke holes in the evolutionary theory. Until you manage to come up with a scientific argument, your beliefs will be relegated to the realm of the irrational.
Interestingly enough, we actually can show that there's nothing intelligent about our design. Just look at the messed up way that the human eyeball is wired. If God really built us he must have been an idiot, and a horrible engineer to boot. "Incompetent Design" would be a much better name for that theory, but such a label doesn't really mesh well with the idea that God is omnipotent. But sure, if that's what people want to believe, I'm not going to argue with them. There's no rational way to disprove an irrational belief.
Not exactly true. There is plenty of evidence to suggest that human activity can cause changes in weather patterns. What's at question is how much we can affect the weather, and whether there is any natural mechanism which offsets our effect. You also shouldn't mix up the political "global warming" arguments with the actual science.
Once again, not true. There have certainly been lab experiments which have reproduced some of the basic building blocks of life from scratch. If you're asking us to build you an entirely new intelligent life form from scratch, well, you're being an idiot. We're not god's....yet.
It's also due to the stereotype of Republicans being religious zealots who refuse to believe in evolution. And while these types of people are doubtless more common amongst republicans than amongst democrats, it's hardly a fair accusation against the party as a whole.
Your complaints have to be reasonable in order for you to be taken seriously.
I'm sure someone's already posted something similar, but here goes:
For the last 6 months, I've been part of a group of 20 individuals taking a course together. Many of them have made computer purchases within those 6 months. And over the last 6 months, from that group of 20 people, I have had no less than 7 requests to downgrade a newly bought computer from Vista to XP. Even assuming that every person in that group (not including myself) had purchased a new computer within the last 6 months, that means that the rejection rate for Vista would be around 36%. However, as far as I know, only those 7 individuals have actually purchased new computers during that time period, meaning that the rejection rate for Vista amongst my acquaintances has been around 100%. The only reason these people are "buying" Vista is because it comes bundled with their computers, and most of them will get rid of it at the first opportunity.
You claim: "you can read a book"
I say: I LOVE driving!
You claim: "There's no huge up-front cost"
I say: Regaurdless of whether I take the train today, I'm going to buy a car anyway! The upfront cost is already there no matter what, you're just asking me to pay extra and leave my car in the driveway.
You claim: "nearly anything is safer than driving your own car in terms of transportation"
I say: And if I were a 40 year old man going on a trip with his wife and kids, I might care. As it is, I'll take comfort, pleasure, and convenience over "safety" any day!
Back when I live in a medium-sized town, I could spend 20 minutes driving to work and 20 minutes driving back, or spend 2 hours on the bus each way. If Americans had similar experiences with public transportation, then that means that they are actually SAVING 200,000,000,000 minutes every day by taking the car instead of public transportation.
Of course, my math has as much to do with reality as yours, which is to say absolutely nothing. But at least I have the decency not to pretend that my statistics prove anything, whereas you take yourself entirely too seriously.
The ONLY time that I have not owned a car is when I was living in the downtown area of a major metropolis, and could walk to work in 15 minutes. At that point, it made no sense (either for my financial situation nor for my convenience) to own a vehicle. Other than that, though, it has always made more sense for me to drive my own vehicle than to throw myself at the mercy of public transportation.
1) You're comparing a gas-pumping robot to a bad-guy-killing cybernetic police officer? What do you do for an encore, compare the Apollo Module to the USS Enterprise?
2) You're amazed by the fact that he saw a lazerdisc shrunk it down for his robocop movie? Sorry, I'm not impressed.
3) You got the movie "Total Recall" confused with "Demolition Man", which was directed by someone else.
4) 9/11 reference in Star Ship troopers? Are you sure you weren't just on LSD at the time?
Recently released statistics on the infant mortality rate in the Western hemisphere yielded an odd conclusions -- Cuba's infant mortality rate, 16 6.0 per 1,000, is now lower than the U.S. infant mortality rate, at 7.2 per 1,000. Given Cuba's poverty level, its 6.0 rate is very impressive, but is it accurate to say that Cuba now has an infant mortality rate lower than the United States? No.
...
The primary reason Cuba has a lower infant mortality rate than the United States is that the United States is a world leader in an odd category -- the percentage of infants who die on their birthday. In any given year in the United States anywhere from 30-40 percent of infants die before they are even a day old. [ed: typo. what they meant to say is "30-40 percent of infants who die, die before they are a day old"]
Why? Because the United States also easily has the most intensive system of emergency intervention to keep low birth weight and premature infants alive in the world.
....
How does this skew the statistics? Because in the United States if an infant is born weighing only 400 grams and not breathing, a doctor will likely spend lot of time and money trying to revive that infant. If the infant does not survive -- and the mortality rate for such infants is in excess of 50 percent -- that sequence of events will be recorded as a live birth and then a death.
In many countries, however, (including many European countries) such severe medical intervention would not be attempted and, moreover, regardless of whether or not it was, this would be recorded as a fetal death rather than a live birth. That unfortunate infant would never show up in infant mortality statistics.
This is clearly what is happening in Cuba. In the United States about 1.3 percent of all live births are very low birth weight -- less than 1,500 grams. In Cuba, on the other hand, only about 0.4 percent of all births are less than 1,500 grams. This is despite the fact that the United States and Cuba have very similar low birth rates (births where the infant weighs less than 2500g). The United States actually has a much better low birth rate than Cuba if you control for multiple births -- i.e. the growing number of multiple births in the United States due to technological interventions has resulted in a marked increase in the number of births under 2,500 g.
So, after I decimated your initial claim, you responded with yet another inaccurate statistic. You are, in short, a blind fool. Get your head out of your ass and start actually researching these claims instead of spitting them out without a second thought.
Oh....my...god....
I'm wiping away tears here!
Cuban life expectancy: 77.08
American life Expectancy: 78.2
You really need to check your sources of propaganda, boy.
Thanks for the laughs!
That's because you, like me, mostly socialize with people who are productive members of society. I could similarly say that the majority of people I know on a personal level are white and middle class, but that doesn't mean that the group of people I associate with is representative of the nation as a whole.
I spent a few years of my youth working as a rent-a-cop in some of the worst areas of my city, so I've gotten plenty of exposure to the other end of the scale. Trust me when I say that most of the people I dealt with there were NOT the type who needed to work in order to stay happy.
You've obviously never run into a gaggle of "homelessness activists". Never mind. Most of your points were correct - communism isn't really communism in practice, and "the masses" will revolt if they are mistreated. But "the masses" had a much lower quality of life in the US in, say, 1890, yet they didn't revolt, so why do we need such egalitarian welfare programs today?
Well, let's look at US taxation rates as a baseline. Currently, 5% of the US population pays almost 60% of all income tax. The top 1% pay almost 40% of total income tax. Meanwhile the bottom 50% pay only 3% of all income tax. That means that half of the population of the US gets access to public infrastructure, basically for free. On top of that, the bottom 50% are the ones most likely to use welfare, medicaid, and other "free" services, meaning that their tax contribution is at best balanced out by services which are of no benefit to the other 50% of the population. So half of the country gets a free ride. And this is in a country that's NOT a welfare state!
This is representative of most western nations. Now, has it always been like this? You'd have to look at past trends and rates, and things get kinda complicated by the fact that income tax didn't exist in most western nations until fairly recently. But since the rich pay such a disproportionate amount of the total income tax, that alone indicates that historically taxes have gravitated away from the lower end of the income scale.
There was actually a study a while back that's rather relevant to this discussion. Two groups of people were individually handed envelopes with $10. One group was told that they could take as much of the money as they wanted, and whatever they left in the envelope would be given to a stranger. The second group was told to take as much as they wanted, and whatever was left would be doubled, and then given to a stranger. The result? People in the second group consistently left a significantly larger amount of money than people in the first group. What does that tell us? That people are much more eager to give away other peoples money even when it results in less gain for them personally.
It's bad because it leads to dependence. When the all-powerful government has the ability to provide for all of your needs, where's the incentive for you to do anything? Take a look in any ghetto, and you'll see the result of a welfare-state policy. The ultimate result is France, with their 10% unemployment rate, their huge numbers of unemployed youths, and the ghettos full of unemployed immigrants into which the police rarely venture.
Hell, even here in Canada I've seen the negative side effects - when I was younger, I had a friend at one point who would work only 6 months out of the year (and I use the term "work" loosely), and then spend the next 6 months collecting unemployment checks, fishing at his parents cottage. Sure, it's nice that we can afford to support people who trully can not help themselves, but more and more we're supporting people who just don't want to.
The government has the right to seize your income. If you do not pay your taxes, they can seize your property. While that's nowhere near as bad as communism, let's not pretend that we truly have a right to private property. If the masses vote tomorrow to raise your taxes to 60% so we can put more people on welfare, how is that any different than a communist commissar coming by to redistribute your possessions?
Agreed, but we seem to be on a constant slide toward a state where only 5% of the population does anything useful, and pays 100% of the taxes to support everyone else. I'm not sure I like that idea. Frankly, we need to bring back some misery and suffering, otherwise we're just stuck with a society of grown up children who refuse to get a job and leave their parents home. Figuratively speaking.
This goes for other rights, too. You have the right to free speech, but you do not have the right to say things about me which you know to be false, in order to harm me. You have the right to purchase and sell whatever goods and services you wish, but you do not have the right to purchase the services of an assassin in order to kill me. You have the right to pursue happiness, but not if it means committing rape. Etc. etc.
Going by that logic, war criminals certainly have to be held accountable for their actions, yes. However, even they deserve a chance to defend themselves. That's the very basis of our legal system - innocent until proven guilty, right? If, on top of that, they wish to wrestle with their guards on the way to the gallows, well, I won't hold it against them.
No, actually, I'm from Toronto. And you are, without a doubt, one of the most most ignorant and insane zealots I've run into so far. We're done here. You're dismissed.