Given how few CRT monitors there are in the wild (let alone on those computers that are running new hardware), I'm not sure why the CRT vs LCD distinction was noteworthy.

...as actually having anything to do with "yetis".

I don't think we need DNA evidence to demonstrate that people are perfectly capable of making up monster folklore without anything more convincing than a tall tale.

Replacing a non-existent creature of folklore with a purported half breed of a creature that occurs nowhere near a specific location really isn't accomplishing much, especially when people have long been motivated to produce "evidence" before the advent of DNA testing. The polar bear doesn't live anywhere near the Himalays, yet intrepid explorers who wanted to engage in a prank or to fool a foundation to donate money to their expedition were certainly capable of bringing part of a polar bear to create "evidence" for their "discovery".

This is like finding a South African cent in my change and coming to the conclusion that the United States used to be a South African possession. There are easier ways to explain this "evidence" than purporting the yeti myth to be a misunderstood bear that didn't live anywhere near the reported location: people make shit up, and people want to believe in monster myths.

So what you're saying is that you can't dispute that:

1 - Sharia is the law imposed on Muslims.

2 - Sharia law imposes great sanction - including death in this life and damnation in the next - for those that reject the faith.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apostasy_in_Islam

I'm done with you. You are at best deluded, and at worst, disingenuous.

So do you dispute that Sharia law is specifically enjoined on all Muslims according to the Koran, and that Sharia law forbids a Muslim from ever rejecting Islam? Because if you're willing to dispute that, you're either confused or lying.

The Koran and Sharia law. Pakistan does not comply fully with Sharia law. Contrast with Saudi Arabia. Again, the Koran is very specific about all of this, despite your apologist posturing.

So tell me more about the rights to publicly worship in a faith other than Islam according the the Koran. To discuss with Muslims the virtues of another faith and try to convert them. The right of Muslims to convert. The rights of Hindus and Sikhs and Buddhists and Jains to worship as they please.

Because none of these rights exist, and are specifically countermanded by the Koran, which is the "official word of god" which pre-existed the creation of the world. Even though that makes no sense given the actual contents.

They are from the Koran, which is considered by Muslims to be the direct word of God, and are not contingent in time or circumstance.

But you already know this, don't you?

Ah yes, the Islamic assertion that the Koran is the unaltered work of god. This has no historical basis, and is a provably incorrect assertion of faith.

Please read the Koran:

(4:89) - "They but wish that ye should reject Faith, as they do, and thus be on the same footing (as they): But take not friends from their ranks until they flee in the way of Allah (From what is forbidden). But if they turn renegades, seize them and slay them wherever ye find them; and (in any case) take no friends or helpers from their ranks."

(5:33) - "The punishment of those who wage war against Allah and His messenger and strive to make mischief in the land is only this, that they should be murdered or crucified or their hands and their feet should be cut off on opposite sides or they should be imprisoned; this shall be as a disgrace for them in this world, and in the hereafter they shall have a grievous chastisement"

(8:12) - "I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve. Therefore strike off their heads and strike off every fingertip of them"

(8:39) - "And fight with them until there is no more fitna (disorder, unbelief) and religion should be only for Allah"

(9:29) - "Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book, until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued."

I'm done. It goes on and on. In Islam, one has no "human rights" in the modern understanding, and one certainly has no "human rights" with regards to the freedom of religion. Without the freedom to believe or disbelieve as one chooses, one has no freedom at all.

And don't get me started on the "People of the Book" nonsense, as if being slightly less awful to Jews and Christians is all it takes to ignore the fact that Buddhists and Jains and Hindus and other polytheists and pantheists have no such "protection".

While Arab scholars did indeed preserve important works, the degree to which this was a "golden age" is largely an invention of 18th and 19th century "orientalists" who saw in Islam a foil to point out the flaws in Christendom, and is hardly a useful measure of human rights during the era. Most Islamic history in non-Arab countries is treated as if it began with the Arab invasions and that nothing useful happened before.

These Orientalist apologists for Islam also paint a far too rosy picture of the human rights enjoyed by "people of the book", ignoring the fact that they were subject to huge fines, massive discrimination, torture, and forced conversions.

This white-washing of history is well-established, and while I'm sorry that you've fallen victim to it (as had I when I was first learning about Arab-Islamic civilization in school), there is a cure: modern historians who have managed to paint a far more objective picture of Classical Islamic culture.

The plight of the Jews in particular is apt, as the fate of the Jews in al-Andalus and the Turkish portions of the empire are often painted as a sort of multicultural haven. In fact, the Jews were subject to the whim of the ruler and had no recourse to law if the ruler decided to forcibly convert them, confiscate their lands, economically cripple them, or kill them. That this was true in the Abassid empire should not, however, be used to paint a rosy picture of Jews in Christian Europe, as the exact same thing was true there. Leaders of nations - both Islamic and Christendom - tolerated Jews at their whim, and had more to do with whether or not the ruler needed their influence or financial backing, and whether or not public sentiment against them was worth the benefit of toleration.

While the Crusades were an awful abuse of Christians over Muslims, it must be fairly stated that neither civilization treated the members of the other with any real tolerance, and that there was plenty of Muslim abuse of Christian communities. To be even *more* intellectually honest, it must be recognized that the Christians were pretty good at finding reasons to abuse one another during the Crusades, as several of them made it nowhere near the Caliphate before wreaking havoc.

Arab-Islamic culture is very good at "forgetting" much of its own history, through imperialism, whitewashing, tortuous apologetics, and outright revisionist history.

By paying the correct toll at the correct tollbooth, and tacitly agreeing that culture is something you "buy" and not "participate in".

> Tim Berners-Lee: DRMed HTML least of all evils

No, Tim, DRMed HTML is a pretty big evil, in that it sabotages an open, readable format by saddling it to an unnecessary rights management monkey.

Let stakeholders in DRM do their own dirty work and see if the public embraces it. The fact that they are going to do so doesn't make it incumbent on web developers and standards bodies to make it more easy for them to do so in a more universal manner.

Check your mandate, Tim.

Please use Sharia to create a credible defense of human rights and which respect the rights of a person to have equal rights to a Muslim in a Muslim society even if one is a non-muslim, in a way that is in accordance with the interpretations of the Sunnah which are considered mainstream in Islam. Bonus points if these non-muslims are non-Abrahamaic polytheists.

I'll wait.

The right not to be subjected to cruel and unusual punishment is a human right enshrined in the UNUDHR. Specifically:

Article 5.
        No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

2,000 lashings is inhuman and degrading. 10 years prison time is cruel for a petty infraction. The punishment is entirely germane when determining if a human rights violation has occurred.

Our private insurance system is also responsible for driving up health costs themselves, which deflates your argument considerably. There is a reason health costs in the US per capita are so far outside the norm for developed countries.

Namely, "private efficiency" isn't about cost/benefit efficiency, but rather profitability.

Sadly, I ran out of mod points a few hours ago.

+1 insightful

I did look for a neutral estimate beforehand, one not tied to single-payer advocates or defenders of the medical insurance industry... ...then I made the effort moot by typing "billion" instead of "trillion", just as you said. Oh for an "edit" button. Thanks!