I agree with you in principle but I think there are some arguments for maintaining as much biodiversity as is practical.

One of the strongest is the the value of genomes. It has taken nature billions of years to generate the genomes of the life that is on earth now - it seems wasteful to throw them away before we have a chance to learn from them.

Look at the number of drugs that have been developed from natural sources. Destroying species before we've even had a chance to study them could mean that we miss out on a cure that we could really do with.

>Youtube is infringing on copyrights and making money by not having to pay for that infringement. that's the same as me polluting and not having to pay the consequences.

No it's not. There are some similarities but there are also differences.

Youtube is a middleman between content uploaders and content viewers. In your polluting example, you are not a middleman. Would you make a waste company responsible for pre-screening every load of waste they pick up from a customer to deliver to the dump to ensure it does not have any illegal waste in it?

Forcing youtube to screen content could have terrible consequences for all websites that act as conduits between their users (slashdot being an example) - could Slashdot afford to pre-screen every comment here for copyright violations, libel, hate speech or other illegal acts?

Right now, such sites can operate on the basis of removing content when there is a complaint. Forcing pre-screening (presumably with penalties if violations slip through) could prove costly.

The map in question is ultimately sourced from The Ordinance Survey, the UK government's mapping agency. OS maps are well regarded for their accuracy .

Of course, your milage may vary (perhaps literally!) in countries where Bing relies on other sources for it's detailed maps.

My favourite cover artist misconception is in Josh Kirby's original cover for Terry Pratchetts The Colour of Magic. The initial description of the Discworld's first tourist, Twoflower, mentions four eyes (meaning he wears glasses) but Kirby took the description literally and depicted him with four actual eyes.

I believe the extra eyes remained for the cover of The Light Fantastic, so clearly the author wasn't too upset about the inaccuracy (Kirby's covers were never all that true to the book descriptions in any case...)

Quite right.

Aside from any offensive connotations, which of these names clearly fails at being clear about what it does?

Photoshop
Paint
GIMP

>That acronym would not be offensive if used by a black person.

You keep saying that. Why is it surprising to you? The same is true for words used towards all kinds of groups.

I don't think it is words themselves that are offensive but the intent behind them. Obviously as we are not all mind readers, people have to take a guess at intent based on the words used, the tone and, yes, the person doing the talking. When a member of a particular group uses a potentially offensive term for their own group, it is usually pretty clear that they do not intend to offend. When someone outside the group does it, it is not so clear.

As well as racial groups, this applies to all kinds of groups like gays, jews, ginger haired people, nerds, people from specific cities/countries/regions.

People can sometimes be over sensitive (I have certainly come across people who look for opportunities to be offended) but if you know a word will be considered offensive when you use it, why not choose a different word, assuming you don't intend to offend?

The point is that whether other planets are heating up or not has nothing to do with whether we should be concerned about climate change.

I don't even think it matters whether climate change is anthropogenic (for whether we should be concerned - it obviously does matter in terms of studying the area and finding potential solutions)

If you are in a room that is getting too hot, it is a good idea to switch the heating off, open a window or turn the air con on. Who or what is to blame for the excess heat doesn't matter as much as stopping the room getting so hot it causes problems for the people in it.

For me the most important questions we should be asking are:

* Is the climate changing?
* What effects will that cause (good and bad)?
* What can we do to affect the rate of change?
* What can we do to mitigate the bad effects?
* What can we do to benefit from the good effects?

The reasons why the climate is changing are important as they can suggest what we can do to affect things but even if we determine that the climate change is not down to human activity, we should still be looking for ways to affect it in our favour.

>your logic of reasoning is flawed the second you begin to cast any form of judgement over someone

you see the irony in putting that statement in the middle of a long post attacking someones ideas, right?

Strictly speaking, an acronym, is a _word_ formed from the initial letters of a phrase. Thus, strictly speaking, neither NDA or DNA are acronyms, as we don't pronounce them as words but rather we speak their constituent letters separately.

Interesting that you refer to 'the intruder' - in this case, the guy who got killed was walking to a house where he was a guest - he wasn't on or even approaching the other guys property.

I don't think this case is clear cut - there are all kinds of grey areas about what happened - but muddying the water with words like 'intruder' doesn't help.

I think it would be fair to say 'supposed intruder', as it does seem that Zimmerman mistakenly believed this to be the case.