There may not be additional paperwork, but if my facebook friends are any guide, the Canadian healthcare system is far from idyllic.
"I think my toe may be broken, but I won't be seeking medical attention because I don't have time to wait 8 hours in the hospital." In the US, you wouldn't go to a hospital. You'd go to urgent care, pay $20, and be seen right away. Of course, they'd probably just make you a splint and tell you to deal with it, but at least you can get an X-Ray and make sure there isn't something else going on.
"I have been on hold for over an hour trying to call my doctor. I think they may have left and gone home." Yeah, that doesn't happen in the US. You can schedule appointments online, and there's always someone to answer the phone. Even after hours, you'll get a medical triage line.
That kind of thing. And the funny thing is, I'm not sure any of my facebook friends have bitched about the US healthcare system and most of my friends are American. For as much as our system has a bad reputation, it seems to work for the most part.
By the way, paperwork is not really a big deal here. I go to the doctor, I hand them my insurance card, and they deal with it. That's it. I pay a $20 copay, and Canadians don't, but... well, I'll pay $20 if it means the system is accessible. Not sitting in an ER waiting room for 8 hours has value to me. Way more than $20, by the way.
As learned from the traditional book/eBook publisher, the biggest cost of publication is not the printing, it is the correcting, the formating, and the setting in a correct format. *all* of that is handled during the review, or for the format by the maker of the article.
Well, I've only had one publisher for a client, so I can't speak for the industry as a whole, but I can tell you that my client has a small army of technical editors in addition to journal editors. I can't really tell you what they do because I have no involvement with that side of the business, but I'm told they keep very busy. They get submissions from all over the world, they have a huge style guide, etc.
Like I said before, the cost to publish an article with them for open access is below what it would cost to publish in an open access journal. They're not gouging.
Taxpayer-funded research should be accessible by taxpayers.
Seems publishers would have no problem with that if taxpayers are also prepared to pay the cost of publication.
One of my clients is a "legacy" academic journal publisher. They actually offer an open access publication option for researchers where researchers can pay the publishing costs and have their article available freely online. It's priced lower than the open access journals, by the way. Seems they don't get many takers, though.
I hope those guides include my preferred option: Fuck off. I was dying, you got me to agree to treatment under duress, it's not a legal contract and I refuse to accept it now.
Let me make sure that I understand this correctly. A medical provider saved your life, but you feel that you owe them nothing in return for your life? Is your life worth nothing?
Anyway, you certainly could tell them to go pound sand, but they may still attempt to collect from you. And I wouldn't expect your "under duress" argument to hold much legal sway.
I have health insurance, so have never needed to do this, but you certainly can negotiate price - they key is to do it BEFORE you receive care.
FYI, you can absolutely negotiate on price after having received care. Hospitals know that uninsured people can't pay the sticker price, and they will work with you on the bills. You just have to ask.
There are many online guides for negotiating with hospitals over bills. Have a google. I'm too lazy.
The banks wouldn't make any money by doing faster transfers to their competitors, so why would they change?
Uhh, maybe because people want features that make their lives easier, and people will bank with banks that give them what they want?
Bank of America is a great example. They give me free payroll services, free business remote deposit capture, next business day deposit funds availability, and a platform that integrates all of the features seamlessly. Well, guess what, I do all of my business banking with them because they make my life easier with crap that basically costs them nothing.
And because everything integrates so easily and I can do so much electronically, they get first crack at my all of my banking needs, business and personal. When I buy a new investment property? I call B of A and let them match whatever deal I can find for financing. HELOC for my personal residence? Same deal. They make decent money from me by making me actually want to do business with them.
This concept used to be practiced by successful businesses large and small. I'm not sure when we went from customer-focused to customer-antagonistic business practices, but here we are. Anyway, that's why I think banks should be tripping over themselves to offer this service. That, and the fact that it's much cheaper for banks to process electronic transactions than to process paper check transactions.
To use this system, I get an email, purportedly from Square, asking me for my debit card information. What could possibly go wrong?
And could someone please tell me why we can't just do bank-to-bank transfers like they do in Europe? We're getting closer now. Through B of A, I can send money to a phone # or email address (is this just PopMoney?), but I've never tested the UX on that to see if it's a pain in the ass for the recipient.
None of the monuments were shut down during the last government shutdown. The fact that they were shut down this time was just President Obama trying to make your life more difficult.
I don't know that we're so much better. Try that stunt in the US and you'll probably get arrested for indecent exposure or some other type of lewd conduct. That arrest will prevent you from working in certain professions for life, and many other decent jobs, too. Also, you'll have to register as a sex offender for life, which means you can only live in certain places, hardly get any job, be on the receiving end of vigilante "justice".
We say that we don't allow cruel punishment here, and I get that whipping someone is cruel, but we can be plenty cruel ourselves.
From my understanding, 2000 lashes pretty much is a death sentence.
Not necessarily. From my understanding, in Islamic law, the lashes are not administered all at once. They are spread out over a period of time. Those 2000 lashes could be over the 10 year period of his sentence.
Also, "lash" is not a precise term. I thought I remember reading that under Islamic law, there are certain guidelines that the person administering the lashes must follow to make sure the victim doesn't die. I forget what they are, though. Something like holding a copy of the Quran between his elbow and body or something like that.
Obviously I can't read the mind of the hiring manager who passed on your friend, but hiring decisions can seem arbitrary at times. Maybe some other candidate was a better fit for the team or had previously tackled the exact same situation that the team was currently facing. There are any number of legitimate reasons that an otherwise "stellar" candidate might get passed on.
For the sake of discussion however, let's assume that the employer passed on your friend based on the online bile spewed by a mentally unhinged ex. Would you want to work for someone who makes hiring decisions based on previous work experience or one that makes those decisions based on unverifiable online rumors that come from obviously biased sources? If the decisions was made for the reasons that you claim, your friend dodged a bullet.
As a result, many people (but especially black males and LNWI's, or Low Net Worth Individuals) are relegated to a lifetime of poor employment prospects, unable to land jobs even as burger-flippers. This is true even if these arrestees are innocent!
I don't know how other employers are, but for me, I don't give one tenth of one hoot if someone was arrested for protesting something in college. You've got to do something way more serious than that for me to notice.
But for anyone who was arrested for a violent crime, I can't really hire them. If I hire someone who was arrested for rape and he goes on to rape another staff member, you can bet that I'll be sued into oblivion for exposing the victim to a known rapist. So it's a little tricky from the employer's perspective.
The problem is that serious decisions are made by people who have no idea which journals are top quality.
I'm not an academic, but I am fairly certain that the publishing portion of tenure decisions means publishing many papers in high impact factor journals ("impact factor", by the way, is the google search term that you're going to want to use if you want to look more into journal rankings).
There are established and readily-available metrics to measure journal quality. Department chairs, researchers, engineers, and doctors are not stupid people. They know that a paper in an open access journal whose results have never been replicated might as well have been "written" by an academic bullshit generator.
#1 (if you *could* know with certainty, then you must abort)
I did not sidestep this. I said that society could not compel the mother to abort in this case, because there is no justification to kill the fetus. There is no imminent danger, and there is plenty of time to contain the threat using other means.
#2 (police make this determination all the time)
Like I said, if the person feels comfortable making that call, that deadly force is not needed to achieve the objective of self-defense, then I'd hope that the potential victim would not use deadly force in that instance. I just wouldn't want to be in the business of legally requiring someone to make that determination without sufficient time and information when his or her life was on the line.
I think we're done here. It seems we support the same thing, but for different reasons.
What backlash was that? When it was too late to drum up another candidate, all the muted criticism ended and the RNC still forked over money for his campaign.
I'm not in the mood to Google, but I'm sure you'll find instances of both parties having funded ignoramuses, criminals, etc. These are politicians we're talking about here.
Playing Devil's Advocate: (1) And if it were a certainty that the "innocent fetus" would grow up to be a mass murder...?
Recognizing that we have no way to assess that a fetus will become a mass murderer, I would argue that some form of corrective action would need to be taken for the protection of society, however, society making the decision to kill the fetus would not be acceptable here. That fetus poses no imminent danger to anyone, so killing is not justified.
(2) If you were about to kill me, but I could defend myself w/o killing you, would I still be justified in killing you in self-defense - "exercising that opportunity"?
As a matter of morals, I think that you should employ the non-lethal option to neutralize the threat. However, as a matter of policy, I wouldn't feel comfortable requiring a potential victim to make that determination under imminent threat of his or her own life. That would require superhuman abilities, in my estimation.
(3) If one is allowed to defend one's own life, then one must be allowed to protect one's own body - from external and internal threats...
Sure. But again, when one's rights conflict with another's rights, a prioritization of those rights needs to be made.
Other people, male or female, have no right to interfere. I don't believe that society has the right to "protect the innocent" in these cases, unless we want to play God and presume that the life and rights of the unborn is more valuable than the born (mother).
But here we have the right of choice on the part of the mother conflicting with the fetus's right to life, so we need to prioritize. I think that a simple majority of people (remember, about half of us are pro-life) would agree that in the very beginning of the pregnancy, the mother's right of choice takes precedence, while at the very end of pregnancy, the life of the baby/fetus takes precedence. The prioritization switch must occur somewhere, but I guess society probably will never agree on where that point is.
What if it's discovered that the mother would die?
I don't believe that this question can be answered easily. Well, I know my answer, but I could technically argue it either way. My answer is that the mother's life would take precedence in all circumstances during all stages of pregnancy. But I'm not sure that's the One True Answer(TM).
The fewer people involved in these decisions, the better.
So you're pro-life, then? After all, in that case, nobody has to make any decisions! All babies are carried to term to the best of medical science's ability to cause that to happen!:P
Or in other words; when reality and their believes are in conflict, it is reality that must have gotten it wrong. Yes, that sounds about right.
I don't necessarily disagree with your assessment, but I wouldn't be so harsh in your judgment. It's human nature to latch onto questionable theories over issues that you're passionate about. I'm sure each and every one of us has wanted to believe something at one point or another, even if that thing is a little (or a lot) nuts.
I'm sure I'm guilty of it, although I can't think of a specific instance. It's also human nature to mentally block out times when we've humiliated ourselves!
In this context, the law could require her to file a police report where she would have to either fabricate an entire story or implicate an innocent man (with whom she actually had consensual sex). Both avenues would prove problematic for her.
I don't know why filing a police report should be so problematic. In the dark ages, women used to attempt abortion procedures with coat hangers. That seems like a higher bar than going into a police station and claiming that she was raped and that she did not know her attacker. Alternatively, she could claim that the father was her cousin or something. I'm not sure how close a familial relationship is required to constitute incest, but anyway, there you go.
Ultimately, it's either it's okay to kill something/one or it's not. [...] In civil society, I accept that it's appropriate for the society/law determines under what circumstances it's allowed, but to argue it's "wrong with exceptions" is disingenuous - which is where the "pro-lifers" who also support the death penalty go wrong.
That's not really a fair criticism. It's one thing to oppose terminating an innocent fetus. It's quite another to stand up and defend the life of a mass murderer. Most anyone would agree that it's OK to kill in certain circumstances. Let's say that I pointed a gun at you and told you that I was about to kill you. If you had some sort of opportunity to kill me first, would you not be justified in exercising that opportunity? I'd certainly argue that you would be within your rights to defend your own life!
Personally, my position on abortion is: (1) I'm a male, so until I get a uterus it's not place to argue about this, and (B) a woman should have the right to control her own body, period (if men could get pregnant, I'm sure the right to contraception and abortion would be absolute - he said cynically).
If the argument were just about uteruses, I suppose I'd see your point (and even further argue that women should not be dictating other women's uterine activities--after all, would you allow me, a fellow man, to tell you what you are and are not permitted to do with your epididymis?). But of course this is not about uteruses, is it.
At a certain point, a human life gains the right to life. To the point that society must intervene to protect the life of that individual (with laws and punishments for murder, for instance). A pro-lifer might argue that that point begins at conception, while a pro-choicer might argue that that point begins at birth. If you think about it, however, neither of those arguments is particularly satisfying (or acceptable, I'd argue). I predict that you might even agree with me, whatever your views.
The argument against life beginning at conception is a fairly straightforward one. A sperm combines with an egg. Maybe the cells have divided a few times. Whatever, that's hardly a life. That type of thing happens all the time, and the cell clump doesn't implant and passes out of the vagina without being noticed. Surely you wouldn't argue that we need to hold a funeral for these cells, right?
But the argument for life beginning at birth is just as fragile. We can obviously agree that a fully-born baby has the right to life, and for that life to be protected by society. If anyone kills a baby after he or she is born, then that person has committed murder and must face justice. But are you prepared to argue with a straight face that just a few minutes earlier, that newborn was just a fetus and had no right to life? What has honestly changed in that baby's life other than having passed through a birth canal? Will you be the one to argue that on one side of the cervix it's a baby with full rights, yet on the other side, it's just a pregnancy that's there for the aborting? Or what about the case of a Cesarean Section where the baby is technically still inside the mother, but is already exposed to the outside world? Could the mother say, "It's still inside of me.
I'm pretty sure he wasn't the only republican to agree with that philosophy.
Well, considering the backlash that former Rep Akin received from the Republican Party after making his ridiculous commentary, I'd say that Akin's in a small minority. His shockingly ignorant statements cost him his seat, so I'd say he paid a fair price.
Around the time that he made his commentary, I tried to understand what would make him want to believe such a thing that made no sense. What I think it boils down to is a basic conundrum for pro-lifers: You can't ban abortion in any effective fashion if you make an exception to the ban for rape and incest, because if you do, women who are seeking abortions will simply lie about the circumstances of their pregnancies in order to obtain legal abortions. Allow those exceptions, and you haven't outlawed anything. In order to address this loophole, it is necessary to outlaw all abortion for any reason (except, perhaps, if the mother will die if the pregnancy continues), but this position of eliminating the rape/incest exception is unpalatable to the American public.
Once you understand the issue from their perspective, it's easier to see how they could believe such a ridiculous notion, that a woman's body will somehow prevent a pregnancy from occurring if she is raped violently (for brevity, let's ignore the 'legitimate/forcible rape' issue). They need some way to close that loophole, and this is one such way to do it: a belief that if a pregnancy occurred, then she must not have been raped. If that bit of medical fiction were true, then we could know that the pregnancy was not the result of rape, so no exception would be granted.
So that's why such a theory is so seductive to some, in my estimation.
I drive a manual, and the only time I have ever engaged the handbrake at a red light was when I knew that it was a very long light and I'd be there for a while. At no time was I ever taught to do this as standard practice.
When I'm driving an automatic, I'm just as likely to put the car in park in such a situation.
svn is appealing in this case because you can check out subdirectories of a repo without downloading the whole thing, which is more similar to his current organization.
Actually, you can now check out subtrees of a git repo. It's called "sparse checkouts", if you want to do further reading.
But if you find yourself wanting to do this, you should consider that you might be using git contrary to its design.
Sounds like you were asking on the wrong forums. If someone were coming to my city, I wouldn't try to get them to live in the fucking hood.
Why were you moving to this new city. For your job? Your job probably had a relocation office or firm that they were working with, no? They should be able to help you figure out where to live.
There's no substitute for seeing the place with your own two eyes, though. I realize that sometimes that's not possible, but it's really best.
Slashdot Mirror
There may not be additional paperwork, but if my facebook friends are any guide, the Canadian healthcare system is far from idyllic.
"I think my toe may be broken, but I won't be seeking medical attention because I don't have time to wait 8 hours in the hospital." In the US, you wouldn't go to a hospital. You'd go to urgent care, pay $20, and be seen right away. Of course, they'd probably just make you a splint and tell you to deal with it, but at least you can get an X-Ray and make sure there isn't something else going on.
"I have been on hold for over an hour trying to call my doctor. I think they may have left and gone home." Yeah, that doesn't happen in the US. You can schedule appointments online, and there's always someone to answer the phone. Even after hours, you'll get a medical triage line.
That kind of thing. And the funny thing is, I'm not sure any of my facebook friends have bitched about the US healthcare system and most of my friends are American. For as much as our system has a bad reputation, it seems to work for the most part.
By the way, paperwork is not really a big deal here. I go to the doctor, I hand them my insurance card, and they deal with it. That's it. I pay a $20 copay, and Canadians don't, but ... well, I'll pay $20 if it means the system is accessible. Not sitting in an ER waiting room for 8 hours has value to me. Way more than $20, by the way.
As learned from the traditional book/eBook publisher, the biggest cost of publication is not the printing, it is the correcting, the formating, and the setting in a correct format. *all* of that is handled during the review, or for the format by the maker of the article.
Well, I've only had one publisher for a client, so I can't speak for the industry as a whole, but I can tell you that my client has a small army of technical editors in addition to journal editors. I can't really tell you what they do because I have no involvement with that side of the business, but I'm told they keep very busy. They get submissions from all over the world, they have a huge style guide, etc.
Like I said before, the cost to publish an article with them for open access is below what it would cost to publish in an open access journal. They're not gouging.
Taxpayer-funded research should be accessible by taxpayers.
Seems publishers would have no problem with that if taxpayers are also prepared to pay the cost of publication.
One of my clients is a "legacy" academic journal publisher. They actually offer an open access publication option for researchers where researchers can pay the publishing costs and have their article available freely online. It's priced lower than the open access journals, by the way. Seems they don't get many takers, though.
I hope those guides include my preferred option: Fuck off. I was dying, you got me to agree to treatment under duress, it's not a legal contract and I refuse to accept it now.
Let me make sure that I understand this correctly. A medical provider saved your life, but you feel that you owe them nothing in return for your life? Is your life worth nothing?
Anyway, you certainly could tell them to go pound sand, but they may still attempt to collect from you. And I wouldn't expect your "under duress" argument to hold much legal sway.
I have health insurance, so have never needed to do this, but you certainly can negotiate price - they key is to do it BEFORE you receive care.
FYI, you can absolutely negotiate on price after having received care. Hospitals know that uninsured people can't pay the sticker price, and they will work with you on the bills. You just have to ask.
There are many online guides for negotiating with hospitals over bills. Have a google. I'm too lazy.
The banks wouldn't make any money by doing faster transfers to their competitors, so why would they change?
Uhh, maybe because people want features that make their lives easier, and people will bank with banks that give them what they want?
Bank of America is a great example. They give me free payroll services, free business remote deposit capture, next business day deposit funds availability, and a platform that integrates all of the features seamlessly. Well, guess what, I do all of my business banking with them because they make my life easier with crap that basically costs them nothing.
And because everything integrates so easily and I can do so much electronically, they get first crack at my all of my banking needs, business and personal. When I buy a new investment property? I call B of A and let them match whatever deal I can find for financing. HELOC for my personal residence? Same deal. They make decent money from me by making me actually want to do business with them.
This concept used to be practiced by successful businesses large and small. I'm not sure when we went from customer-focused to customer-antagonistic business practices, but here we are. Anyway, that's why I think banks should be tripping over themselves to offer this service. That, and the fact that it's much cheaper for banks to process electronic transactions than to process paper check transactions.
To use this system, I get an email, purportedly from Square, asking me for my debit card information. What could possibly go wrong?
And could someone please tell me why we can't just do bank-to-bank transfers like they do in Europe? We're getting closer now. Through B of A, I can send money to a phone # or email address (is this just PopMoney?), but I've never tested the UX on that to see if it's a pain in the ass for the recipient.
None of the monuments were shut down during the last government shutdown. The fact that they were shut down this time was just President Obama trying to make your life more difficult.
I've worked on healthcare projects. It's not a big deal. And the law is HIPAA, by the way. Not "HIPPA".
Why do we bother with the barbarians?
I don't know that we're so much better. Try that stunt in the US and you'll probably get arrested for indecent exposure or some other type of lewd conduct. That arrest will prevent you from working in certain professions for life, and many other decent jobs, too. Also, you'll have to register as a sex offender for life, which means you can only live in certain places, hardly get any job, be on the receiving end of vigilante "justice".
We say that we don't allow cruel punishment here, and I get that whipping someone is cruel, but we can be plenty cruel ourselves.
From my understanding, 2000 lashes pretty much is a death sentence.
Not necessarily. From my understanding, in Islamic law, the lashes are not administered all at once. They are spread out over a period of time. Those 2000 lashes could be over the 10 year period of his sentence.
Also, "lash" is not a precise term. I thought I remember reading that under Islamic law, there are certain guidelines that the person administering the lashes must follow to make sure the victim doesn't die. I forget what they are, though. Something like holding a copy of the Quran between his elbow and body or something like that.
Obviously I can't read the mind of the hiring manager who passed on your friend, but hiring decisions can seem arbitrary at times. Maybe some other candidate was a better fit for the team or had previously tackled the exact same situation that the team was currently facing. There are any number of legitimate reasons that an otherwise "stellar" candidate might get passed on.
For the sake of discussion however, let's assume that the employer passed on your friend based on the online bile spewed by a mentally unhinged ex. Would you want to work for someone who makes hiring decisions based on previous work experience or one that makes those decisions based on unverifiable online rumors that come from obviously biased sources? If the decisions was made for the reasons that you claim, your friend dodged a bullet.
As a result, many people (but especially black males and LNWI's, or Low Net Worth Individuals) are relegated to a lifetime of poor employment prospects, unable to land jobs even as burger-flippers. This is true even if these arrestees are innocent!
I don't know how other employers are, but for me, I don't give one tenth of one hoot if someone was arrested for protesting something in college. You've got to do something way more serious than that for me to notice.
But for anyone who was arrested for a violent crime, I can't really hire them. If I hire someone who was arrested for rape and he goes on to rape another staff member, you can bet that I'll be sued into oblivion for exposing the victim to a known rapist. So it's a little tricky from the employer's perspective.
Most employers are going to conduct a criminal background check, and the data will come from the courthouses themselves, not Google.
The problem is that serious decisions are made by people who have no idea which journals are top quality.
I'm not an academic, but I am fairly certain that the publishing portion of tenure decisions means publishing many papers in high impact factor journals ("impact factor", by the way, is the google search term that you're going to want to use if you want to look more into journal rankings).
There are established and readily-available metrics to measure journal quality. Department chairs, researchers, engineers, and doctors are not stupid people. They know that a paper in an open access journal whose results have never been replicated might as well have been "written" by an academic bullshit generator.
#1 (if you *could* know with certainty, then you must abort)
I did not sidestep this. I said that society could not compel the mother to abort in this case, because there is no justification to kill the fetus. There is no imminent danger, and there is plenty of time to contain the threat using other means.
#2 (police make this determination all the time)
Like I said, if the person feels comfortable making that call, that deadly force is not needed to achieve the objective of self-defense, then I'd hope that the potential victim would not use deadly force in that instance. I just wouldn't want to be in the business of legally requiring someone to make that determination without sufficient time and information when his or her life was on the line.
I think we're done here. It seems we support the same thing, but for different reasons.
Indeed.
What backlash was that? When it was too late to drum up another candidate, all the muted criticism ended and the RNC still forked over money for his campaign.
I'm not in the mood to Google, but I'm sure you'll find instances of both parties having funded ignoramuses, criminals, etc. These are politicians we're talking about here.
In fairness, he is a former elected official. His foot-in-mouth moment cost him his lead in the polls, and he went on to lose the election.
Playing Devil's Advocate: (1) And if it were a certainty that the "innocent fetus" would grow up to be a mass murder...?
Recognizing that we have no way to assess that a fetus will become a mass murderer, I would argue that some form of corrective action would need to be taken for the protection of society, however, society making the decision to kill the fetus would not be acceptable here. That fetus poses no imminent danger to anyone, so killing is not justified.
(2) If you were about to kill me, but I could defend myself w/o killing you, would I still be justified in killing you in self-defense - "exercising that opportunity"?
As a matter of morals, I think that you should employ the non-lethal option to neutralize the threat. However, as a matter of policy, I wouldn't feel comfortable requiring a potential victim to make that determination under imminent threat of his or her own life. That would require superhuman abilities, in my estimation.
(3) If one is allowed to defend one's own life, then one must be allowed to protect one's own body - from external and internal threats...
Sure. But again, when one's rights conflict with another's rights, a prioritization of those rights needs to be made.
Other people, male or female, have no right to interfere. I don't believe that society has the right to "protect the innocent" in these cases, unless we want to play God and presume that the life and rights of the unborn is more valuable than the born (mother).
But here we have the right of choice on the part of the mother conflicting with the fetus's right to life, so we need to prioritize. I think that a simple majority of people (remember, about half of us are pro-life) would agree that in the very beginning of the pregnancy, the mother's right of choice takes precedence, while at the very end of pregnancy, the life of the baby/fetus takes precedence. The prioritization switch must occur somewhere, but I guess society probably will never agree on where that point is.
What if it's discovered that the mother would die?
I don't believe that this question can be answered easily. Well, I know my answer, but I could technically argue it either way. My answer is that the mother's life would take precedence in all circumstances during all stages of pregnancy. But I'm not sure that's the One True Answer(TM).
The fewer people involved in these decisions, the better.
So you're pro-life, then? After all, in that case, nobody has to make any decisions! All babies are carried to term to the best of medical science's ability to cause that to happen! :P
Or in other words; when reality and their believes are in conflict, it is reality that must have gotten it wrong. Yes, that sounds about right.
I don't necessarily disagree with your assessment, but I wouldn't be so harsh in your judgment. It's human nature to latch onto questionable theories over issues that you're passionate about. I'm sure each and every one of us has wanted to believe something at one point or another, even if that thing is a little (or a lot) nuts.
I'm sure I'm guilty of it, although I can't think of a specific instance. It's also human nature to mentally block out times when we've humiliated ourselves!
In this context, the law could require her to file a police report where she would have to either fabricate an entire story or implicate an innocent man (with whom she actually had consensual sex). Both avenues would prove problematic for her.
I don't know why filing a police report should be so problematic. In the dark ages, women used to attempt abortion procedures with coat hangers. That seems like a higher bar than going into a police station and claiming that she was raped and that she did not know her attacker. Alternatively, she could claim that the father was her cousin or something. I'm not sure how close a familial relationship is required to constitute incest, but anyway, there you go.
Ultimately, it's either it's okay to kill something/one or it's not. [...] In civil society, I accept that it's appropriate for the society/law determines under what circumstances it's allowed, but to argue it's "wrong with exceptions" is disingenuous - which is where the "pro-lifers" who also support the death penalty go wrong.
That's not really a fair criticism. It's one thing to oppose terminating an innocent fetus. It's quite another to stand up and defend the life of a mass murderer. Most anyone would agree that it's OK to kill in certain circumstances. Let's say that I pointed a gun at you and told you that I was about to kill you. If you had some sort of opportunity to kill me first, would you not be justified in exercising that opportunity? I'd certainly argue that you would be within your rights to defend your own life!
Personally, my position on abortion is: (1) I'm a male, so until I get a uterus it's not place to argue about this, and (B) a woman should have the right to control her own body, period (if men could get pregnant, I'm sure the right to contraception and abortion would be absolute - he said cynically).
If the argument were just about uteruses, I suppose I'd see your point (and even further argue that women should not be dictating other women's uterine activities--after all, would you allow me, a fellow man, to tell you what you are and are not permitted to do with your epididymis?). But of course this is not about uteruses, is it.
At a certain point, a human life gains the right to life. To the point that society must intervene to protect the life of that individual (with laws and punishments for murder, for instance). A pro-lifer might argue that that point begins at conception, while a pro-choicer might argue that that point begins at birth. If you think about it, however, neither of those arguments is particularly satisfying (or acceptable, I'd argue). I predict that you might even agree with me, whatever your views.
The argument against life beginning at conception is a fairly straightforward one. A sperm combines with an egg. Maybe the cells have divided a few times. Whatever, that's hardly a life. That type of thing happens all the time, and the cell clump doesn't implant and passes out of the vagina without being noticed. Surely you wouldn't argue that we need to hold a funeral for these cells, right?
But the argument for life beginning at birth is just as fragile. We can obviously agree that a fully-born baby has the right to life, and for that life to be protected by society. If anyone kills a baby after he or she is born, then that person has committed murder and must face justice. But are you prepared to argue with a straight face that just a few minutes earlier, that newborn was just a fetus and had no right to life? What has honestly changed in that baby's life other than having passed through a birth canal? Will you be the one to argue that on one side of the cervix it's a baby with full rights, yet on the other side, it's just a pregnancy that's there for the aborting? Or what about the case of a Cesarean Section where the baby is technically still inside the mother, but is already exposed to the outside world? Could the mother say, "It's still inside of me.
I'm pretty sure he wasn't the only republican to agree with that philosophy.
Well, considering the backlash that former Rep Akin received from the Republican Party after making his ridiculous commentary, I'd say that Akin's in a small minority. His shockingly ignorant statements cost him his seat, so I'd say he paid a fair price.
Around the time that he made his commentary, I tried to understand what would make him want to believe such a thing that made no sense. What I think it boils down to is a basic conundrum for pro-lifers: You can't ban abortion in any effective fashion if you make an exception to the ban for rape and incest, because if you do, women who are seeking abortions will simply lie about the circumstances of their pregnancies in order to obtain legal abortions. Allow those exceptions, and you haven't outlawed anything. In order to address this loophole, it is necessary to outlaw all abortion for any reason (except, perhaps, if the mother will die if the pregnancy continues), but this position of eliminating the rape/incest exception is unpalatable to the American public.
Once you understand the issue from their perspective, it's easier to see how they could believe such a ridiculous notion, that a woman's body will somehow prevent a pregnancy from occurring if she is raped violently (for brevity, let's ignore the 'legitimate/forcible rape' issue). They need some way to close that loophole, and this is one such way to do it: a belief that if a pregnancy occurred, then she must not have been raped. If that bit of medical fiction were true, then we could know that the pregnancy was not the result of rape, so no exception would be granted.
So that's why such a theory is so seductive to some, in my estimation.
engage the handbrake at a red light
Huh?
I drive a manual, and the only time I have ever engaged the handbrake at a red light was when I knew that it was a very long light and I'd be there for a while. At no time was I ever taught to do this as standard practice.
When I'm driving an automatic, I'm just as likely to put the car in park in such a situation.
svn is appealing in this case because you can check out subdirectories of a repo without downloading the whole thing, which is more similar to his current organization.
Actually, you can now check out subtrees of a git repo. It's called "sparse checkouts", if you want to do further reading.
But if you find yourself wanting to do this, you should consider that you might be using git contrary to its design.
Sounds like you were asking on the wrong forums. If someone were coming to my city, I wouldn't try to get them to live in the fucking hood.
Why were you moving to this new city. For your job? Your job probably had a relocation office or firm that they were working with, no? They should be able to help you figure out where to live.
There's no substitute for seeing the place with your own two eyes, though. I realize that sometimes that's not possible, but it's really best.