I'm also an Atheist, and if you think we aren't discriminated against, you're just ignorant. Fighting that is the cause you *ought* to have. In fact our lack of community is part of the problem. American society does not consider us normal people, and to counter that we need a non-crazy voice. When normal, well adjusted Atheists like you deny our community, you cede our voice to the loudest and angriest among us. That's the self harm I wrote about above.
Talk about confirming our stereotypes of Europeans. The US government are christo-fascist lunatics, therefore islamo-fascist lunatics in Iran would be better? God damn, man, get some perspective.
I'm sorry, what? Are you trying to say we can't speak against religion here? That's... retarded. Our Atheists are so noisy they actually harm their own cause.
I think the EU is great, and I'm not the least bit interested in bashing Europe, but if you're going to complain about free speech in America you at least need to know what the fuck you're talking about.
"your goal is noble, i'm not criticizing that. but you must include the fact that the goal is harder for the usa. genuinely, ideologically neutrally, harder"
"The USA is different, full stop", and "the USA is different, let's handle it this way" both include the same true statement, but each provokes a very different reaction in my mind. They are each a members of the tradition of American Exceptionalism, but the former is the domain of, well, regressive, hand-waving, fuckers. The latter much less so.
Which isn't to say it's anyone's *responsibility* to avoid looking regressive, but trying to think of reasons not to leaves me with a short list - disrespect for the parent (or the subject entirely), or lack of time, or something along those lines. Anyway, I ramble.
While I won't say you're wrong, I dislike this line of argument. Poor connectivity hinders American interests. Discourse on *why* it's poor, instead of the *effects* of it being poor, seems like a distraction at best.
At worst it's special pleading.
I know that's not your argument (cause I've read your posts for a while), but if you'd posted it anonymously I wouldn't know it from yet another "don't tread on me, America is different" excuses.
Who's spread out and who isn't is a waste of time. How we're going to get every American the best connectivity in the world matters.
"China has major human rights problems, but coerced labor in its manufacturing sector isn't one of them. They do seem to be responding well on environmental issues recently, and they took the consumer health / quality errors very seriously."
Thank you. Waving your hands at "Chinese slave labor" as a way to dismiss competition really grates at this point. Xenophobes: would you at least get your anti-China biases into the 21st century? Ain't slave labor at all. Employment in China is overwhelmingly voluntary, with wages set by more or less the same market forces as ours in the West.
Chinese WANT manufacturing jobs because they're EASIER and pay BETTER than the farm alternatives. Time to step out of the 1980s, guys. If you want to complain about Chinese, the current fashion is to rail against "Mercantilism". Read up on it and get back to us after that. Christ.
"Do *you* think it's the right choice of word to describe someone who's defending their country against an invading army?"
Wait wait, - "defending"?! That's one hell of a loaded word. The insurgency in Iraq is best known for blowing up churches, running protection rackets, and assassinating Iraqi police officers. How can you characterize that as "defending"? That's a bizarre use of the word. Their efforts to hinder US forces amount to very little when compared to their efforts at murdering Iraqis.
Come on. The world is not binary. America and its opponents can simultaneously be wrong. You can make your point without using loaded words and mischaracterizations.
No, but the point is we're sitting on half a continent of resources and when we've got nothing better to do, we'll extract them. Even if Canada has more and does a better job of it, the addition of ours to the market, and the demand collapse the world will experience from this crisis, is going to ruin resource prices for a while.
When the Asian Tigers fell apart in the 90s, Oil hit $25 a barrel. That's a long way down from where it's at now, and this crisis is so much larger than that one, I don't have the words to describe it. It's not going to be pretty, no matter who you are.
I know you're just being snarky but I have to respond, the American and EU economies still dwarf China's. You can see trends that put them ahead of us in absolute numbers some time in the future, but the graph is usually labeled in decades. I'm not a China basher - I think they're doing great - but it's going to be some time before they're rocking the world in the way the US and Europe have over the last centuries.
During the Great Depression, manufacturing disappeared all over the place. Manufacturing requires customers. When a $14 trillion economy tightens its belt, manufacturing sinks and resource prices go along with it. Supply and Demand, right?
And, recall, smaller collapses have brought gigantic commodity price drops in recent history. The crises the Asian Tigers had in the 90s left Oil down at $25 a barrel. It's $90 now. And the USA dwarfs them. You can only insulate yourself from a demand collapse of that scale so much.
Canada's economy is more tied to the USA's than probably any other nation on Earth. The good news is it's got a pretty responsible government and a well developed safety net, and that'll help a lot while the USA gets its shit together over the next several years.
I don't want to knock Canada, cause I think you guys are pretty cool, but you understand, when the largest economy in the world crashes, natural resource prices go along with it.
The other thing is while Canada is loaded with natural resources, so is the USA. In the nightmare world where the USA runs out of better ways to make money, it will turn to natural resource extraction too, and that is not going to have a good effect on Canada's extraction industry.
Again, not knocking Canada - great country, great people. But our fates are tied. Usually that's pretty cool, and sometimes, like now, it the pits.
"Or to be exact, any idiot who expects other people to speak their language is not going to be appreciated. If you are Spanish and use English to speak to Dutch guys in Amsterdam you are fine. But if you are American and expect them to speak in English, not so fine."
Our foreign language skills (or lack of skills) are related to necessity. When the number of foreigners entering the US for business greatly exceeds the number of Americans going abroad for business, and when the single largest economy in the world is America, and when America's cultural exports greatly exceed those of any other nation, it's not surprising at all that Americans are less enthusiastic about foreign languages than anyone else in the world is.
For an anecdote, from age 13 to around age 21 I studied, to varying degrees of interest, three different languages. This is actually not that uncommon here - try one, don't like it, try another, not bad, try a third, pretty cool. But every time I met anyone who speaks any of those other languages natively - and I do mean literally every time - they speak vastly better English than I speak their language, and both parties know it. Let me tell you, that is actually a serious hindrance when you're trying to learn. In other words, it's not particularly a cultural deficiency - it's a pragmatic one.
But the groundwork for fluency in another language is there. We all study at least one language for a couple of years. The day it actually becomes more practical to speak a foreign language than to just use English, we'll be speaking foreign languages about as well as anyone else.
Sure. And half NASA's budget is not that much on the scale of our whole economy.
By saying that I'm not trying to imply the damage should be ignored - it shouldn't; it needs to be reversed to whatever extent it can be. What I *am* trying to do is put the damage in perspective, because to get to the "this needs to be reversed" phase of a discussion, you first want to have an idea of just how bad your problem is.
"I'm not particularly worried about them spying on my files since there isn't anything sensitive there and if there was, I could upload it onto a secure server and then download it once in the States but even that is a somewhat depressing course of action to take when entering the "land of the free"."
Yeah, and any half assed techie instinctively grasps the former. That we don't seem particularly bothered by the latter is, to me, a much bigger downer. It's one thing to have a technically ignorant policy - what government doesn't have those in spades? It's another to have one that at the very least *seems* to disregard freedom - that appearance alone can harm relations with the rest of the free world for generations. Even under a less pessimistic outlook it will take an election cycle or three. Either way, that's long enough to reek a lot of tangible damage. Sad indeed.
"It's almost as if they don't want visitors, tourists, skilled workers?"
I've seen some numbers thrown around showing the amount of tourism money lost in the last several years amounts to some tens of billions of dollars. Which isn't that much on the scale of our whole economy, but it is a quantifiable change for the worse, and so you'd think it would at least have influenced policy by now, because it's just irresponsible to avoid minimizing damage. But then, it's irresponsible government that lead us here, so perhaps it's not that surprising at all.
Slashdot Mirror
Gah, my kingdom for mod points! Mod parent up please!
Um, huh?
I speak out against fanatical atheists and ask for more ordinary atheists to speak up for us, and therefore I'm a fanatic? Really?
How ridiculous.
I'm also an Atheist, and if you think we aren't discriminated against, you're just ignorant. Fighting that is the cause you *ought* to have. In fact our lack of community is part of the problem. American society does not consider us normal people, and to counter that we need a non-crazy voice. When normal, well adjusted Atheists like you deny our community, you cede our voice to the loudest and angriest among us. That's the self harm I wrote about above.
Talk about confirming our stereotypes of Europeans. The US government are christo-fascist lunatics, therefore islamo-fascist lunatics in Iran would be better? God damn, man, get some perspective.
I'm sorry, what? Are you trying to say we can't speak against religion here? That's... retarded. Our Atheists are so noisy they actually harm their own cause.
I think the EU is great, and I'm not the least bit interested in bashing Europe, but if you're going to complain about free speech in America you at least need to know what the fuck you're talking about.
I'd argue authorial intent matters, though. Accidental puns deserve their own word.
I'd love to pretend otherwise, but was really just a lucky typo. Thus the mondegreen discussion above.
Oh, fuck me, that's embarrassing. And now it's +5 Insightful. I love the spotlight!
Your reply went [whoosh] over my head ;)
in 3... 2... 1...
"your goal is noble, i'm not criticizing that. but you must include the fact that the goal is harder for the usa. genuinely, ideologically neutrally, harder"
"The USA is different, full stop", and "the USA is different, let's handle it this way" both include the same true statement, but each provokes a very different reaction in my mind. They are each a members of the tradition of American Exceptionalism, but the former is the domain of, well, regressive, hand-waving, fuckers. The latter much less so.
Which isn't to say it's anyone's *responsibility* to avoid looking regressive, but trying to think of reasons not to leaves me with a short list - disrespect for the parent (or the subject entirely), or lack of time, or something along those lines. Anyway, I ramble.
While I won't say you're wrong, I dislike this line of argument. Poor connectivity hinders American interests. Discourse on *why* it's poor, instead of the *effects* of it being poor, seems like a distraction at best.
At worst it's special pleading.
I know that's not your argument (cause I've read your posts for a while), but if you'd posted it anonymously I wouldn't know it from yet another "don't tread on me, America is different" excuses.
Who's spread out and who isn't is a waste of time. How we're going to get every American the best connectivity in the world matters.
Thanks, that's pretty interesting ;)
"China has major human rights problems, but coerced labor in its manufacturing sector isn't one of them. They do seem to be responding well on environmental issues recently, and they took the consumer health / quality errors very seriously."
Thank you. Waving your hands at "Chinese slave labor" as a way to dismiss competition really grates at this point. Xenophobes: would you at least get your anti-China biases into the 21st century? Ain't slave labor at all. Employment in China is overwhelmingly voluntary, with wages set by more or less the same market forces as ours in the West.
Chinese WANT manufacturing jobs because they're EASIER and pay BETTER than the farm alternatives. Time to step out of the 1980s, guys. If you want to complain about Chinese, the current fashion is to rail against "Mercantilism". Read up on it and get back to us after that. Christ.
"Do *you* think it's the right choice of word to describe someone who's defending their country against an invading army?"
Wait wait, - "defending"?! That's one hell of a loaded word. The insurgency in Iraq is best known for blowing up churches, running protection rackets, and assassinating Iraqi police officers. How can you characterize that as "defending"? That's a bizarre use of the word. Their efforts to hinder US forces amount to very little when compared to their efforts at murdering Iraqis.
Come on. The world is not binary. America and its opponents can simultaneously be wrong. You can make your point without using loaded words and mischaracterizations.
No, but the point is we're sitting on half a continent of resources and when we've got nothing better to do, we'll extract them. Even if Canada has more and does a better job of it, the addition of ours to the market, and the demand collapse the world will experience from this crisis, is going to ruin resource prices for a while.
When the Asian Tigers fell apart in the 90s, Oil hit $25 a barrel. That's a long way down from where it's at now, and this crisis is so much larger than that one, I don't have the words to describe it. It's not going to be pretty, no matter who you are.
I know you're just being snarky but I have to respond, the American and EU economies still dwarf China's. You can see trends that put them ahead of us in absolute numbers some time in the future, but the graph is usually labeled in decades. I'm not a China basher - I think they're doing great - but it's going to be some time before they're rocking the world in the way the US and Europe have over the last centuries.
During the Great Depression, manufacturing disappeared all over the place. Manufacturing requires customers. When a $14 trillion economy tightens its belt, manufacturing sinks and resource prices go along with it. Supply and Demand, right?
And, recall, smaller collapses have brought gigantic commodity price drops in recent history. The crises the Asian Tigers had in the 90s left Oil down at $25 a barrel. It's $90 now. And the USA dwarfs them. You can only insulate yourself from a demand collapse of that scale so much.
Canada's economy is more tied to the USA's than probably any other nation on Earth. The good news is it's got a pretty responsible government and a well developed safety net, and that'll help a lot while the USA gets its shit together over the next several years.
I don't want to knock Canada, cause I think you guys are pretty cool, but you understand, when the largest economy in the world crashes, natural resource prices go along with it.
The other thing is while Canada is loaded with natural resources, so is the USA. In the nightmare world where the USA runs out of better ways to make money, it will turn to natural resource extraction too, and that is not going to have a good effect on Canada's extraction industry.
Again, not knocking Canada - great country, great people. But our fates are tied. Usually that's pretty cool, and sometimes, like now, it the pits.
"Or to be exact, any idiot who expects other people to speak their language is not going to be appreciated. If you are Spanish and use English to speak to Dutch guys in Amsterdam you are fine. But if you are American and expect them to speak in English, not so fine."
Our foreign language skills (or lack of skills) are related to necessity. When the number of foreigners entering the US for business greatly exceeds the number of Americans going abroad for business, and when the single largest economy in the world is America, and when America's cultural exports greatly exceed those of any other nation, it's not surprising at all that Americans are less enthusiastic about foreign languages than anyone else in the world is.
For an anecdote, from age 13 to around age 21 I studied, to varying degrees of interest, three different languages. This is actually not that uncommon here - try one, don't like it, try another, not bad, try a third, pretty cool. But every time I met anyone who speaks any of those other languages natively - and I do mean literally every time - they speak vastly better English than I speak their language, and both parties know it. Let me tell you, that is actually a serious hindrance when you're trying to learn. In other words, it's not particularly a cultural deficiency - it's a pragmatic one.
But the groundwork for fluency in another language is there. We all study at least one language for a couple of years. The day it actually becomes more practical to speak a foreign language than to just use English, we'll be speaking foreign languages about as well as anyone else.
Sure. And half NASA's budget is not that much on the scale of our whole economy.
By saying that I'm not trying to imply the damage should be ignored - it shouldn't; it needs to be reversed to whatever extent it can be. What I *am* trying to do is put the damage in perspective, because to get to the "this needs to be reversed" phase of a discussion, you first want to have an idea of just how bad your problem is.
Thanks for the link, by the way.
I want his dollars, though. More money coming to the USA = good, yeah?
And I wouldn't mind if he decided to respond, either.
"I'm not particularly worried about them spying on my files since there isn't anything sensitive there and if there was, I could upload it onto a secure server and then download it once in the States but even that is a somewhat depressing course of action to take when entering the "land of the free"."
Yeah, and any half assed techie instinctively grasps the former. That we don't seem particularly bothered by the latter is, to me, a much bigger downer. It's one thing to have a technically ignorant policy - what government doesn't have those in spades? It's another to have one that at the very least *seems* to disregard freedom - that appearance alone can harm relations with the rest of the free world for generations. Even under a less pessimistic outlook it will take an election cycle or three. Either way, that's long enough to reek a lot of tangible damage. Sad indeed.
"It's almost as if they don't want visitors, tourists, skilled workers?"
I've seen some numbers thrown around showing the amount of tourism money lost in the last several years amounts to some tens of billions of dollars. Which isn't that much on the scale of our whole economy, but it is a quantifiable change for the worse, and so you'd think it would at least have influenced policy by now, because it's just irresponsible to avoid minimizing damage. But then, it's irresponsible government that lead us here, so perhaps it's not that surprising at all.
So, we'll see you after November, then? Cool.
No, because they aren't.