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At 7/16/09 09:10 PM, Masterzakk wrote: The act of keeping diseased people and the like from giving birth and killing them can help our people evolve.

We can also evolve by having different people reproduce at different rates. If we do accept your philosophical disposition, then the best policy would be to encourage reproduction among the most physically and mentally able (i.e, with a genius sperm bank).

Pretty much everyone agrees with me whenever two stupid people get together and have children they will have a retarded child.

There is a higher probability that their child will be retarded, yes. If two parents with IQs of 70 have children, their mean IQ will be 83.

Science supports this ideallogy.

No. Science tells us how the world works, not how it ought to work.

From a moral standpoint I cannot see how it is bad for us to kill the weak because it helps keep humanity strong. To some people this is a necassary "evil" (evil means live so be evil). Thus if we kill the weak and the sick (people with aids and other diseases) our blood will be clean (not pure) and can normally resist diseases.

Actually, aside from a few heritable diseases this is entirely wrong. Biodiversity makes us more resilient to new diseases. Look up the history of the banana plant. After humans cultivated bananas and selected for the most desirable traits, they lost the ability to resist new diseases. So when a new blight emerges, all bananas will succumb to it.

Would you like to add something to this standpoint or give another opionion on it? I would love to know.

I don't support eugenics, because there is more to life than being highly intelligent (which is itself of dubious value to an individual). And if I did support eugenics, I would encourage the proliferation of the intelligent rather than the discarding of the disadvantaged.

At 7/13/09 09:23 AM, sreggin wrote: you know what i never got about this whole 'environmentally friendly' thing? even if we're making products more efficiently, why the hell do we have to be so smug about it? and we're still burning resources, but now we're sparing ourselves some of the guilt.

Outside of pure thermodynamics, there is no such thing as "burning resources". Humanity at present has more wealth than its ever had, and it's not because we're consuming more resources, it's because we're using our creativity and intelligence to create resources that never existed before.

same thing with the climate change issue as a whole. although we might be set to reduce emissions (even though we haven't done shit yet) how the hell are we going to get china, india, and the rest of the developing world to follow our example in the next 50 years? china opens up new coal-fired power plants every day, and soon the rest of the third world- the countries we never thought were going to get better anytime soon- will follow in their footsteps and further strain earth's resources.

Coal isn't being particularly strained at the moment, and if it is, nuclear/solar/wind/hydro will undoubtedly be able to pick up the slack.

even though the G8 plan to cut emissions by 80% by 2050, how exactly do they plan to make sure other countries follow their example? you know, aren't we overlooking the fact that our planet was not meant to sustain 6,700,000,000+ people? we are straining the resources of earth to the breaking point- much beyond just pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. we use exorbitant amounts of land and water for agriculture and are continually destroying ecosystems even as i futilely write this on some forum.

Our planet was not "meant" for anything. It's a big rock in the middle of space that wouldn't be able to support a billion humans if it weren't for our resourcefulness and ingenuity.

at least we now have people in office who aren't completely shit for brains. but if anything, look at what the new energy secretary is warning us about: the desertification of california. what he fails to mention is the rapid shifting of climate zones all over the globe, and the fact that more of earth's arable land will turn into desert.

Nonsense. Plants thrive on high CO2 levels, so if anything agricultural productivity will increase by leaps and bounds as a result of global warming.

and yet, the human population is still growing by the tens of millions every year. as we do even more damage to the earth's environment, its carrying capacity decreases further as our population increases. the impact of this is most likely going to be mass starvation. now figure in climate change, and we have hundreds of millions of refugees all over the world from environmental meltdown, the destruction of even more fertile land, low-lying coastal areas flooded, more extreme weather, etc., and what do we get?

The Earth has no "carrying capacity". The only resource that cannot be created or destroyed is energy, and the world's uranium/thorium supplies will provide us enough energy for billions of years.

governments will struggle to keep up with these disasters and most likely fail. in order to keep the economy moving people will continue to burn fossil fuels despite their best intentions, worsening the environment. the massive social and economic problems will probably lead to the collapse of most major governments. those that don't break down will quickly abandon diplomacy to secure vital resources like fresh water and arable land. the person who proposed the Gaia hypothesis is now stating that earth's carrying capacity will decrease dramatically as a result.

lol.

so yeah, by the end of the century the world is going to collapse. isn't that great?

That's what they said last century :P

At 7/1/09 01:11 AM, fli wrote:

I said make a test that utilizes different ways of asking the question. Knowing something in the field is different then knowing how to take a test.

Do you mean like a practical test of leadership? I had to do one while applying for an RA job and I thought that it was absolutely obnoxious. It was unclear what they were looking for, and how a person performs with a committee watching is totally different than how they will perform during the real thing.

Also, test taking skills might not matter on this exam. If you don't know the answer, you don't know the answer. Knowing how to manage your time or guess pragmatically will not help you if you are unqualified.

I don't see how Fli's argument contradicts the court's decision. If black people are less likely to pass the test because they are less prepared, then it seems obvious that they should be given extra preperation, not positions that they are underqualified for.

To give another example: Assume that blacks are underepresented in the neurosurgery field because they are less likely to enroll in medical school. I think we can all agree that the correct solution is to take steps to make blacks more qualified to perform surgery, rather than hiring those who are less qualified.

In the context of this case, it would have made sense for the city to provide lower income firefighters with more extensive access to test materials or perhaps a day or two off for studying.

Hi, I'm designing a website that allows users to press a button that links to "mailto:a@b". Is there anything that I can add to that URL so that it automatically fills the subject or body of the email with certain text?

I thought that "mailtoa@b&subject=xyz" would work, but apparently it does not. I am doing this because I cannot use server side scripting on the site I am working on.

At 6/11/09 06:16 AM, fli wrote: As someone who uses public transportation, I wish that the government gave more funding towards public transportation systems and thus bringing down the price of fares.

The thing is that huge swaths of the country are simple not cut out for public transportation. In suburbia, people simply need cars. Adding metro lines to major towns might be able to cut out half of the commute for some people, but they still need a personal vehicle to get to the metro station.

Every year, sometimes half years, the prices keep on going up and up. At the same time, they eliminate services, bus/train stops, hours, increase route distances, etc. It's like I'm being penalized for helping out the world.

Yeah, that is pretty obnoxious. I appreciate public transportation just for the convenience (being able to read a book or take a nap during the commute).

And then people harass us public transportation users for voting measures such as extending the BART extend its tracks and mobilize the public in general... because they want the money going towards building new roads which, one day eventually, won't useful when gas is gone.

It needs to be a better world for us public transit users.

We have plenty of time to transition to electric or hybrid cars.

At 6/11/09 07:40 PM, ASKDodge wrote:

Even if I'm not elected, I want the people to think about politics again and maybe believe that their votes and voices can make a difference in our democracy. If at the end of it, that's all I have achieved, I will go home a happy man.

Apologies for going on, but I wanted to see what people here think about the idea and whether they think one man can make a difference.

Even if you have to compromise a little, you should probably try to attach yourself to a major political party, if only to get their support. Politics is a game of building connections. You make friends with people who are influential by supporting them, and they use their influence to support you. Of course, it is possible to become influential without doing this (think Ron Paul and Ross Perot), but it's a lot easier if you make friends within the party.

Also, if you end up losing the parliamentary election, you might want to look into running for the provincial parliament (if it exists). In the US each state has a government that sort of reflects the structure of the federal government. Each state has a governor who acts like the President and a House of Delegates which acts like the Congress. Usually it is easier to win these seats, and they are seasonal positions that only run for a small portion of the year.

At 6/10/09 04:50 AM, GoronMaster wrote: well during world war 2 nevil chamberlin took a trip to nazi germany announcing to hitler all he wanted was peace and had nothing against the nazis or the nazi party.

If Obama was signing treaties with Iran saying "Okay, you can invade one country, but you have to promise to stop there!" then you might have a point.

I also don't really understand why people think that negotiations would have been pointless in WW2. Obviously, Hitler wasn't going to be reasoned with, but diplomacy still made a huge difference in the outcome of the war. Hitler made an uneasy alliance with the Soviet Union that helped Germany earlier in the war. The US signed a peace treaty with Japan that allowed the Emperor to stay in power and saved millions of lives.

So really, I don't see how people can pretend that diplomacy was irrelevant to WW2.

I think the problem here is how broadly he's defining "Mother's Health". Obviously, all pregnancies have some impact on the mother's health and pose a non-trivial threat of serious injury, but only threats to the Mother's Health of a certain likelyhood and magnitude justify late term abortions?

Do you have a link or know off the top of your head what the threats were to the mother's health?

At 6/3/09 03:57 PM, yinyangman wrote: He's cutting $5.2 billion from schools.

...

Just curious, what would you prefer he cut (or tax)?

I think one point here which is not getting enough attention is that he performed late term abortions. If he was performing them on women who had serious medical complications with their pregnancies, then I don't see how you can argue that he was in the wrong. I mean, killing fetuses is terrible, but in medicine you have to make harsh utilitarian judgments. If Tiller was performing medically necessary abortions, then I don't think the Operation Rescue people were right to target him in their media campaigns.

Also, I love the weasel language in the Yahoo article:

The slaying quickly brought condemnation from both anti-abortion and abortion-rights groups, as well as President Barack Obama.

So Pro-Life groups are anti-abortion, but Pro-Choice groups are not pro-abortion, their abortions-rights groups. I've said it before, they should just use the word legalized abortion so as not to impose bias.

At 5/21/09 10:22 PM, thedo12 wrote:

seriously some dumb superbowl commercial isn't gonna convince anyone. A feus isn't a human being, in the same way a seed isn't a flower.

The thing is that a fetus is a specific type of human, the same way that an Oak seed is a specific type of Oak plant.

If one holds the position that fetuses and embryos hold no legal or moral value, than there is little reason for one with a liberal philosophy not to fund abortions and encourage their use. Indeed, if abortions are just a simple surgery, then they increase the standard of living and prevent children from being born into a broken home. Obama's position seems entirely consistent.

What bothers me is that he won't just come out and admit that he doesn't place a moral value on fetuses, instead he weasels around the issue when its brought up and then when arguing for legalized abortion assumes that fetuses has no moral value.

At 5/16/09 05:45 PM, fli wrote:

Latino immigrants will vote against abortion, but they also vote for social welfare programs... same way as mothers... seeing that a lot of them depend programs such as California's successful "First Five." Mothers aren't going to vote against something that will help their kids even if they are conservatives...

I suspect that this is what's going on. But if we could look at the trends within races, we could confirm or deny it.

At 5/16/09 07:00 PM, foolonthehillz wrote: The plague of evangelical conservative close-mindedness spreads. . . .

The spread of evangelical Christianity could explain this, but frankly less than half of all Americans are evangelical Christians, so we cannot use Pro-Life as a proxy for evangelical.

At 5/16/09 07:30 PM, Ravariel wrote: I like how the statement says that this is the first time since 1995 that a majority of Americans self-identified as pro-life, while their graph shows that in 1995 a HUGE, H U G E majority self-identified as pro-choice.

Contradict much? Also, it'd be interesting to see the questions they asked, and the sampling data.
The devil's in the spin.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/1576/Abortion .aspx

Here is the more detailed data. I find it intriguing that people identify more as pro-choice when they are asked what their position is as a stand alone question. Perhaps people intuitively think that they are pro-choice, but realize that they are pro-life when they are asked questions about abortion.

At 5/16/09 07:53 PM, RydiaLockheart wrote: The numbers seem a little skewed to me. CNN took a similar poll and 49 percent voted pro-choice, 45 percent pro-life. That I tend to believe more, since the numbers are so close.

Link? Perhaps both of the polls are just outliers, and reality is somewhere between them. After all, they only poll

I did notice reading the questions that even among pro-lifers in the poll mentioned originally, they had differing opinions regarding abortion. Only 23 percent thought it should always be illegal, whereas others were willing to make exceptions for things like rape or incest.

Yes. One possibility is that people are simply interpreting the term more broadly nowadays. I've met several people who say that they are pro-life but support legalized abortion, so that could be what we're seeing.

Overall, I am skeptical of the chart. I'd like to see more of what questions were asked, who was asked (gender, age, religious affiliation, etc.) and regional differences as well. For example, if they called a bunch of people in the Deep South, that would skew the chart. Overall, I know the ratio of pro-choice to pro-life is very close, though.

My understanding is that they ask something like 1,000 random people. Just asking people in the Deep South and then touting the results as a national poll would be an extreme form of fraud. Gallup is very respected in polls, and anyone who tried to pull something like that would get fired very quickly.

I don't think that they ask people their ages and genders to ensure even results. I'm pretty sure they just poll people randomly and use statistics to determine a margin of error.

Poll: More Americans Identify as Pro-Life

So why do you think that Americans are turning against legalized abortion? I can think of a few reasons:

-Hispanic immigration is increasing the number of Americans who are Catholic. If the poll asked people about their religion, we could confirm or reject this possibility.

-There are more single mothers in America, who identify as Pro-Life to reduce the stigma of having a child out of wedlock.

-Americans are becoming more socially conservative because the credit crunch has made them focus less on material satisfaction and more on their families.

-People simply think that Pro-Life arguments are more persuasive.

-Americans with Pro-Life views have more kids, and their kids let their parent's pro life views rub off on them (this would be really interesting if it were true).

So what do you guys think? What will this trend mean for American politics? Is this indicative of a general shift towards social conservatism in America?

I wonder how that correlates to GDP growth for those years. I might calculate that tonight.

At 5/7/09 01:18 PM, aviewaskewed wrote: Oh this is so funny! I love how the slippery slope fallacy has not only NOT become a fallacy for some people, but they think it's an acceptable argument.

It's not a slippery slope fallacy if there actually is a slippery slope.

In fact, the slippery slope argument is really a variation on the argument by contradiction. Basically if you want to show that the reasoning for something is wrong, you use the reasoning to show that something which is false is actually true, demonstrating that the reasoning is wrong. For example, one might argue that if Hitler does X, then X is bad. We could show that this is false by contradiction by assuming that the logic is correct. Hitler breathed air, therefore breathing air is bad. We all know that breathing air is not bad, therefore the logic fails.

The slippery slope argument is simply a variation on this technique.

"If we let the gays marry, then all bets are off!!! Polygamists, necropheliacs, anything goes!!"

Some arguments for gay marriage could be used to support all of those things. Not all of them, but some of them. Consider the relatively common argument gay people have a right to marry, because people should have the right to marry the way they want. But this reasoning could also be used to support polygamy. Therefore, if one opposes polygamy, this argument is invalid.

Yeah no, it doesn't work like that, here's why: BECAUSE THERE'S STILL LAWS TO PUNISH THAT STUFF!!! You yourself have pointed that out. By this logic polygamists should probably be claiming right now that because straight couples can get married why can't they? Oh right, that wouldn't work because you can always fall back on the "marriage is defined by a contract between two people" oh hey! There you go! That's how we can make gay marriage work while slamming the door on the arguments you all seem to think will be renewed by true deviants and undesirables.

This is nonsense. It is defined as a contract between two people, but the polygamy rights activists would just claim that the law is discrimination or rooted in outdated tradition the same way that gay rights activists do right now.

The problem is that most of the gay marriage advocates would not be dissuaded if the law defined marriage as being between a man and a woman. (Frankly, in the past marriage has not been defined explicitly as being between a man and a woman because it was seen as trivial and self-apparent, not significant enough to write).

This logic equals fail, and this thread will be monitored since right now it seems right on the borderland of acceptability to me.

His logic is not sorted out very well, but I think that he has some reasonable points. There are good arguments for gay marriage, but a lot of them are slippery slopes.

An interesting question: on what grounds can the president force networks to display his content? I think we can all agree that the networks should all be willing to cede the airwaves for major emergencies, but if it is just

But let's say Obama wanted to make all of the networks give up a primetime slot every day to air his weekly address. Could he use eminent domain laws if he agreed to compensate them for their lost time?

At 4/28/09 08:21 AM, Der-Lowe wrote:

She tried to turn England into a more free-market economy , believing this would increase economic efficiency and the country's international competitiveness, by selling state companies, fighting against labor unions, etc. A poll tax is also considered to be one of the most efficient taxes, because there's no way you'll alter your economic behavior by getting taxed; you won't move to another country because of that. Of course, it terribly unequal, because everyone pays the same amount, no matter how much they earn.
Samuelson, Economics 18th ed page 335:

Yay. I'm going to try to read that book this summer.

Alas, the British government underestimated the extent to which the populace felt this tax to be unfair. The poll tax is highly regressive because it places a much higher proportional burden on low-income people than on high-income people. Criticism of the poll tax played a key role in bringing the Thatcher government in power. This illustrates clearly the difficult choice between efficiency and fairness in taxes and other areas of economic policy.

I think the problem is that the democrats always try to make the tax code more complicated because they think it is funny to make republicans vote against "Pregnant women with cancer" or some tiny subset of the population. Of course, making the tax code more complicated provides a huge benefit to those with the largest income who can exploit the loopholes.

The obvious solution is to cut out a lot of the incentives in the tax code (because realistically the average person's behavior is not molded by tiny tax incentives here and there) and then make it progressive with a negative income tax.

This is quite serious. I think it's kind of funny that people act like SARs and the avian flu were media scares. In reality, we were very lucky, and they could have killed millions of people.

But the fact that people outside of Mexico haven't died is promising. Perhaps the disease is not really fatal if treated well? Perhaps the disease has simply been in the US for less time, so it has had less time to kill people? Perhaps Mexico has a younger median population, and the disease is only deadly for young people with over reactive immune systems?

In any case, though, I am not confident in our ability to stop the virus from spreading. I just don't see it happening. Lots of people commute across the country on a daily basis, so you cannot just quarantine a city and prevent the disease's spread. Of course you can quarantine any cases where someone catches the disease, but it seems like it will have spread far and wide by the time the quarantine goes up. Just look at how far across the globe it is right now.

I think that by going to a website with child pornography, you give law enforcement the justification needed to monitor your behavior.

At 4/24/09 03:29 PM, FUNKbrs wrote:

At 4/24/09 02:49 PM, pyromaniac616 wrote:

Actually, beliefs imply there is no solid evidence.

What if you believe in science? What then?

Science does require some axioms. Truth can be derived from consistent observation. Logic can be used to derive predictions from observations, etc.

The thing is that most people accept these axioms because they allow them to have a high standard of living and enjoy the luxuries of an industrialized society (note that science still has axioms, because the observation that science improves standards of living is a scientific observation that relies on the axioms).

Aren't there more serious economic mistakes that poor people could make then blowing a twenty on a lottery ticket? Like:

-Buying a home that they cannot afford

-Going into excessive debt for an education that will not give them strong career oppertunities

-Buying drugs

While I agree with the lawmaker's reasoning, I think that if we are going to make lottery off limits for people receiving government funds, we ought to give people many more restrictions that keep them out of (much more serious) economic danger.

At 4/21/09 08:33 PM, Saen wrote:

It is not hard if you are strong enough to grasp the food product you are about to purchase and if you are intelligent enough to be able to read. Also, many companies have begun to remove trans fats from their products by listing on the package, "No hydrogenated oils used." Voortmon, Smart Balance, and Newman's Own to name a few. There are a large amount of produces that use trans fats in their products.

Right. But it's more complicated than that.

And what if a person wants to buy something that simply isn't offered without trans fats?

Every fast food company in the world uses trans fats in their products except Chick-Fil-A and Subway (if that even counts as fast food.). Easily over half of the groceries that consumers buy contain trans fat. Don't believe me? Look at the food labels at items in your pantry and check for partially hydrogenated or hydrogenated vegetable oil or lard, shortening, or margarine.

Right, that does make it kind of hard. And it's not like the average person is a nutritionist who knows every single thing that is bad for them.

At 4/21/09 06:35 PM, Tancrisism wrote:

I think it's pretty simple - the consumer should be aware of what he/she is eating. Trans fat is listed in the nutrition facts, so if you are worried about it, try to avoid products with it in it, like you have done. Perhaps some more education about it should take place in health classes.

Should it be banned? I'd say no.

It's kind of hard to do that with everything you eat, no? And what if all of the companies that make a given product use trans fats because they are cheaper? It's very possible that no company will change their practice because there are only a small number of producers, and they all are corroborating to keep costs to a minimum.

This so called holocaust expert is an idiot.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocides_i n_history#Americas

Most of the Indians died from the spread of disease, which the American settlers had neither the knowledge nor the means to prevent.

Funk,

How are you defining racism? I've seen people describe racism as the ideas that:

1. People of different races are biologically different.
2. The law should treat people differently based on their race

Because if we're talking about the first definition of racism, then we are talking about a scientific truth or falsehood that we should not try to encourage or discourage through rhetorical tricks or absurd jokes. If we are talking about the second definition, then I'd agree that we ought to discourage it by publicly displaying its absurdity.

At 4/19/09 11:54 AM, Mr-Money wrote: http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/200 9/04/19/meghan-mccain-warns-of-looming-c ivil-war-in-the-gop/

Look at some of the comments on the CNN article, about Meghan McCain saying Republicans need to get past their anti-gay stances.

Imagine an election being won or lost over gay marriage.. I mean, forget the economic crisis, forget America's dangerous occupation of the Middle East -- inspiring a whole new generation of people to become terrorists. Forget that. We want to know what the candidates think about gay marriage!

The thing is that the media is extremely liberal on social issues, because the people who write the news tend to be upper class liberal arts majors.

"Beauty and brains make her an eloquent spokeswoman for any party. Keep talking girl, we love it."

This is one of the comments. Beauty and brains.. and some people in the comments are even talking about her as President...?

To be fair, people probably do consider looks whether we like it or not.

The public has officially lost touch with reality. After Sarah Palin came onto the scene, I was generally frightened. Some dumb beauty pageant bimbo as VP, but by God.. the Presidential race has turned into American Idol, with "brains" also necessary...

Brains really aren't that important, especially since the public has no ability to gauge how intelligent a candidate is. Consider that Bush did much better than John Kerry on his SATs, ASVABS, and classes in college - but most of the public saw Bush as less intelligent and less academic.

While it is true that Obama is very bright and was successful at a top university, the same is true of Mitt Romney and no one pointed it out.

This probably occurs because Republicans don't stoop to the level of calling their opponents idiots and harping on little verbal missteps, but the Democrats have no problem with it.

Erggh. I sometimes think I should stop even caring about politics. Sometimes I feel I should give up on the people, because they're just too fucking stupid. Times like these make you want to join the dark side.

lol.

I don't think that liberals understand why conservatives are irked by a "progressive" tax code. A lot of Obama supporters seem to think that poor Americans don't understand that lower taxes. I've seen two reasons why conservatives want a more even tax burden:

1. Fairness
2. Conflict. Socialized people hate any sort of psychological conflict, so naturally they are disturbed by the Marxist suggestion that wealthy people economically exploit poor people. Conservatives like the current world system (and hence want to conserve it), so they are probably more socialized then liberals on average.

A good argument against this is that the very wealthy tended to vote for Obama, so clearly they don't think that they're being overtaxed.

At 4/10/09 09:10 PM, Proteas wrote:

a) mark "Caucasian of European Descent"
b) mark "African American"
c) mark "other"

Caucasian. African American is just a euphemism for black. Someone can have absolutely no connection to Africa can still be African American, but a white person from South Africa is Caucasian.

Besides, white people from Africa are probably not underrepresented at American universities and so it defeats the real point of affirmative action:

To morally justify "holistic" admissions in which rich kids with padded resumes and experts for gaming the system get preference over middle class white/asian kids with superior academic talents.