Man here (from birth)... I don't see how selfishness is an inherently male trait. I would never think taking someone else's food was OK as long as I replaced it. Obviously, at the moment there's a problem, and fixing problems you created is clearly inferior to not causing them in the first place. I would not want someone who wasted time and professional reputation, by constantly fixing the problems they caused, on my team.
What I see with men-- including myself, of course-- is that we DO want to fix problems, and save the discussion for later. "Lessons learned", "post-mortem meeting", etc. Women don't seem to like that. For some reason, they want to address the collateral issues at the same time, or even defer the solution in order to perform in-depth problem analysis. This seeming lack or urgency is frustrating to me, personally.
...and Linux has software to play blu-ray discs?
Yes. Technically, MakeMKV is a ripper, not a player, but once you have a disc ripped, you can play the ripped file with the player of your choice: VLC, mplayer, etc. You can also stream it over your network, transcode it to take less space, etc.
Freedom is *far* more at risk from our own governments than it ever was from terrorists.
Really? How many newspapers feel free to publish cartoons featuring Mohammed as a character? Is it the government that causes that fear? There has been a recent terrorist attack over this resulting in a dozen deaths, with more threatened. And that isn't the only problem from this vector.
Oxford University Press bans use of pig, sausage or pork-related words to avoid offending Muslims
Salafist Muslim Group Forms 'Sharia Police' Patrol in Germany
Anti-gay, anti-alcohol: London's "Sharia patrol"
Swedish Police Release Extensive Report Detailing Control Of 55 ‘No-Go Zones’ By Muslim Criminal Gangs
Like most problems I'm sure this one will get better by simply ignoring it, or even better, pretending that measures to solve it are the cause of it.
Because terrorism is a red herring, and this looks like a shiny new power they can grab without much hassle from the rabble. Fear is a great vehicle for stripping away liberties.
Fear is a great vehicle? You mean like fear of government, the same governments that provide universal health care in Europe that everyone claims is the very height of civilization? So you can't trust government when it comes to stopping people with a demonstrated and announced desire to poison, shoot, or blow you up, but you can trust them to pump your body full of chemicals, with the power of life or death over you, to decide if you get food or water when you are too sick or weak to take care of yourself? Given the persistent confusion on these points this will probably not end well.
And your
Saddam was a local bully boy member of the socialist Baath party that worked his way up to seize power through cunning and ruthlessness.
Almost all of Iraq's arms came from the Soviet Union or the People's Republic of China, a little from France, and very little from anywhere else.
I assume you didn't know that and were looking to blame the US for him?
Until the 1990s, Iraq had perhaps the best university system in the Middle East...
And what happened in August, 1990?
Anyone? Anyone?
Iraq invaded Kuwait, which lead to the destruction of most of the Iraqi Army, massive damage to the economy and infrastructure, and harsh international sanctions that Saddam magnified the effect of by diverting money intended for food and medicine to buying weapons and building many large, expensive palaces.
From your article:
Iraqi universities began their decline in the 12 years after the 1991 Gulf War. As the international sanctions regime cut off journal subscriptions and equipment purchases, academic salaries fell precipitously, and 10,000 Iraqi professors left the country. Those faculty who remained were increasingly closed off from new developments in their fields.
The terrible situation Saddam created was made even worse by the Islamists and insurgents.
Killings lead to brain drain from Iraq - 17 Apr 2006
The head of Arabic studies at Baghdad University was shot 32 times when his car was ambushed on the way to work.
Abdul Latif al-Mayah was murdered after he had appeared on al-Jazeera television. Police described the killing as "professional".
In Ramadi, the president of the university, Abdul Hadi Rajab al-Hitawi, was dragged from his home and bundled into the boot of a car. A ransom demand was received a few days later.
Both men are among the growing number of intellectuals to be targeted in Iraq, a phenomenon that is resulting in an unprecedented brain drain as those who can move abroad increasingly do so before they or their families join the list of their colleagues killed or kidnapped.
At least 182 academics have been killed since the invasion in 2003 and there have been many more kidnappings and murder attempts.
And it is not just university professors who are being targeted. In the past four months alone 331 school teachers have been murdered and nine medical workers were killed in a single day in the northern city of Mosul last month.
(Mosul? That rings a bell: Isis executioners 'kill gays by hurling them off roofs' in Mosul )
Professionals Fleeing Iraq As Violence, Threats Persist - January 23, 2006
Exodus is not new to the country. Iraqis who could flee Saddam Hussein's repressive rule did: Poor Shiite Muslims sneaked across the border into Iran, and Sunni Arabs crossed the mountains into Syria or the desert to Jordan. People often waited years for permission to attend a seminar or do business in another country and then would disappear there. Hussein began holding such people's families hostage to guarantee their return.
Many of those émigrés flooded back into Iraq when Hussein fell. But the country's instability and daily regimen of violence have made some reconsider their return. Others who stayed throughout Hussein's rule are finally saying goodbye to their homeland now.
Iraq still had engineering and medical schools after it was liberated. The Bush administration facilitated partnerships between Iraqi institutions and those in the US and Europe, ending Iraq's isolation from the international community and helped its efforts to rebuild after the long night of Saddam's rule.
Saddam did immense damage to the country by diverting its resources into arms deals and building palaces instead of education, medicine, and other necessities. That is before you get into the political repression, mass murder, and so on.
The Islamists that you can't quite bring yourself to condemn specifically targeted Iraqi intellectuals for murder, people like professors, doctors, and engineers.
Pro tip: Don't let your butt hurt over policy disagreements cause you to lie, i.e. "until GWB destroyed them".
Irony alert: Somehow I can't imagine you suggesting to any other country or group of terrorists that they not attack another country full of engineers: the US. Funny how that works.
Most of Europe has meaning immigration of people from Muslim nations occurring. But China doesn't and it is suffering its own unrest and attacks (as you may have heard).
And another "nutter" chimes in
Your handle is both well chosen and surprising utilitarian.
Are your sympathies with the Islamist terrorists, or Western civilization?
Unfortunately it is an "AND", not an "OR".
Is it OK with you if the French at least inconvenience the people trying to massacre them?
"False flag"? Don't be an ass.
In kindergarten, I walked over a mile to/from the school every day unaccompanied. So did all the other kids in the neighborhood.
I walked to and from school in kindergarten. Google Maps says it was a little bit over a half-mile. The only issue that came up was on the first day of school, when not knowing what the buses were all about, I ended up on one. It didn't take long to get that straightened out, and it only happened once.
I suspect the events described in TFA are a consequence (not necessarily unintended) of our hyperlitigious society...consider, for instance, the sledding bans that have been popping up like metastatic tumors all over the place lately, or that you can't get someone to build you a pool with a diving board.
Those who can, do; those who can't, write. Those who can't write work for the Bell Labs Record.
