You are correct that the rate of homicide has been falling steadily since the 70s. This is not just a US trend though, its been occurring in Europe and other places as well. The end result is that the US still has very high murder rates compared to other countries. For example, you are 21 times more likely to be murdered as a resident of the United States than you are as someone from Hong Kong. You can go to this Wikipedia page and sort by column to see where the US places: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate . Don't let national pride get in the way of acknowledging that this is still an issue we need to work on.

This whole business is a large part of why I can not vote for a Republican, at least in national races. Between the people mentioned in this story, and we all remember Todd "In the case of a legitimate rape" Akin and Paul "Lies straight from the pit of hell" Broun, both who were/are also on the House Science committee. I mean, a Republican can say, "Hey, yeah, that is looney, but we're not all looney!". But I have to ask, "Who let these people serve on the science committee, and what does that say about... their concern for the nation?" Its this unbelievable horror story that these people are in an elected office, just utterly baffling. Sometimes I expect Rod Serling to step out from around a corner and tell us all that this was all just an odd trip into the Twilight Zone.

Actually they are a 40 year old group (founded in '73). 30 years ago they came out with "Back in Black" (1980), which is the 1st album with Brian Johnson on vocals, but before that you had a the years of Bon Scott singing "TNT", "Whole Lotta Rosie", "Dirty Deeds (Done Dirt Cheap)" etc.

And quite rightly so? Hell, NK has a fake city set up that actively blared propaganda into SK via loudspeaker for years. Popped off some artillery at a SK island setting fire to buildings a couple years back. Oh, and kidnappings. That's the easy stuff off the top of my head. For SK to retaliate with free Wi-fi would, in comparison, clearly be an appalling violation of NK sovereignty!

This may be a bit too much in the vein of Slashdot-centric posting. Others will agree, and I may be modded up into the stratosphere. Yet I keep and will keep saying that predicting your own possible mod-point oppression is one of the major negative characteristics of Slashdot posters, besides all the positive stuff there ( still ) is.

I'm not quite sure what you mean by "anyone who attempts to redefine 'life' in terms suited to his personal needs is a sort of Stalinist". Is there some accepted definition of life we all agree upon, and Kurzweil is perverting that? Is his definition of life more suited to his personal needs than your definition of life is suited to yours, or mine to me, or the Pope's to the Catholic Church? And as for Marx and Ayn Rand, I have an opinion of each that falls far short of total agreement, but I think the fact that they took their ideas as far as they did contributed to a richer perspective on the domains on which they commented.

I don't know your background or take on this stuff, but I suspect, based on Lanier's essay, that we might agree that people deeply exploring certain ideas can fall prey to... oversimplification? Like the example of explaining away subjective experience as illusory, unimportant, or somehow fully explained by an objective account. Or someone explaining all of human nature as economic transactions, etc. I guess with those sorts of theories, I find that someone zealously doing their best to interpret the whole world through their particular narrow lens... leads to some nonsense and some fascinating insights. And, to be kinda flip, "I dig it."

As for Lanier's essay being 12 years old, I don't consider that a bad thing in itself, but it does place it 5-6 years before Kurzweil's "The Singularity is Near". Maybe that isn't relevant, but Kurzweil does attempt to address some criticisms in that book and I suspect Lanier continued to comment in response. I'm sure I could dig up some ongoing dialog if I was inclined to.

There is something kind of lame about taking a guy who has some interesting ideas, and performing some kind of hack psychoanalysis of him, and generating this air of "because this hack psychoanalysis does a good job of making him look crazy, obviously that discredits his ideas." "He doesn't have a rational basis for this, he's just wracked with guilt over his father" is the sleaziest kind of ad-hominem argument.

As for Lanier's 12 year old essay, I'm not even sure that half of his "cybernetic totalist" beliefs are necessarily held by people intrigued by Singularity ideas, without even going into whether those beliefs are reasonable or not. It's not that I'm even convinced by the Singulatarians, but that so many people who aren't convinced make these weird statements like "He's pretty much willing to throw away everything that makes human life worth living" as if Kurzweil is some kind of Cyber-Stalinist, rather than a guy who is trying to take an idea as far as it can go to see if there is anything to it.

Please don't be "Is anyone really surprised?" guy. I hate that guy. He is one of the standard guys that makes his comment in stories on the internet. Maybe some people are surprised, which the question seems to imply that someone would be sort of dumb to be surprised. Most of the people, however, are not really surprised at all but thought it was an important issue to bring up. The "Is anyone really surprised?" guy seems to be telling them that the whole issue is a waste of time, and they should just kind of shut up about it. Sometimes, though, "Is anyone really surprised?" guy is just trying to look detached and cool, like he's seen it all before, and its all old hat now, and he has to let people know he's detached and cool like that. I don't know which variety of "Is anyone really surprised?" commenter you are, but I've never seen that guy's comment bring good things to a conversation.

Please don't be "Is anyone really surprised?" guy.

Thank you.

I'm guessing that is because your definition of Anarchism is different than the definition held by the people you are talking about. Under your definition (apparently the "Everybody does what they want! No rules!, No Hierarchy! Yay Chaos!" definition), their act of organizing would be absurd and un-anarchist. Under their definition, it is likely an ideology (or group of ideologies, libertarian socialism, anarcho-syndicalism, etc.) you can see some points to here and there, but just generally disagree with.

But God hardens the Pharaoh's heart in Exodus 9:12, assuring that he won't free the Jews. So, you can't fully blame the Pharaoh when God was fixing the game so the drama would play out the way he wanted it. To not blame God would be like not blaming a terrorist because people should have had gas masks when the poison gas was released. If you told this story, and replaced God with... the Punisher, well, as much of a "dark anti-hero" the Punisher is, he doesn't vengefully murder a nation of first born children, because that would clearly make him a villain. Nobody would seriously be an apologist for his actions.

If you read the New Yorker story you will see that there was no recording. Also, the 1 viewing through a camera was of 2 guys making out, not sex. There was never a recording posted on the internet. There was a plan to have some people spy on this guy through a web cam, but they didn't work out because the guy turned off the computer. So, yeah, not that the guy being charged didn't do something wrong, but your version of the scenario is adding more and more outrageous details to the event that don't seem to be true.

Does it deserve 10 years in jail for spying on 2 guys kissing? I'm not even sure I would call this incident bullying. Possibly it could be, but it sounds more like someone was shocked and curious, like someone who comes across a juicy diary that shows entries to their friends. It sounds like something that probably deserves a punishment a little harsher than whatever a peeping tom gets, but less than you'd get for passing a non-consensually recorded sex tape around.

I think that if you find that definition of "religious" useful in some sense, then there is no reason for me to talk you out of it. Just to get some clarity on it though... is there any principle or belief that can be somewhat strongly held at all and not be religious under this definition? Say... someone believes rape is wrong, is that in some sense a religious position? For me, the religiosity of that belief depends on the authority or argument they use to support it. I just say, because you say "the whole point is that they believe that something matters" and go on to "as in the case of God, there has never been nor will there ever be evidence that anything matters at all". Matters in what respect? Evident in objectively observable reality? Not to be frustratingly flip, but I could pull "what does anything matter?" Do religious beliefs need to be regarding non-disprovable things to qualify as such? Are all non-disprovable claims religious in nature? Should all non-disprovable claims be given equal weight? Not to be a big pile of questions, just curious.

You can continue to make more and more presumptions about what atheism is and what atheists believe in their fundamentalist fervor... but when you boil it down, atheist are basically "I see no evidence for a god or the supernatural, so I'm going to live as if it doesn't exist". I mean, there are atheists that have beliefs beyond that, but whatever that "more" is has a label all its own. Empiricists? Scientism? Buddhism? Objectivist? Member of the Liberal Conspiracy? Any time someone wants to claim Atheism is a religion, their definition requires a broadness that makes the word "religion" apply to any particular outlook or notion. I just don't get it.

You are honestly expecting me to believe you would give up $250k/year because there are some people who would... "bad mouth" you? Are you actively dismantling your wealth as we speak, so you can live a happy "bad mouth" free existence? Am I to believe that your wealth is a burden you bear now, only out of a sense of responsibility for other people who need the jobs you create? I can understand wanting your taxes to be less, but the whole "why should I even try to earn money?" thing strikes me as hyperbole, as a cry of "Well then... maybe I'll take my ball and go home! Huh?!?" For every dollar you pull down, you are going to be at least, like, $0.65 richer. I don't even know what it is now, probably more than that, even.