"If you're fat it's because you're lazy!"
I agree it isn't all that simple. But after you continue to meet fat people who don't work out at all (or barely) that conclusion isn't all that astounding. I know men and women who have lost 50+ pounds by changing their diet and working out. I myself have lost 30ish. The people who want to get healthier eat better and work out. The ones with the most significant effects are the ones who are most committed--intense, frequent workouts, etc. Then I see way overweight people walking slowly on the treadmill or track, and I hear them at work saying "I work out all the time, but can't lose any of this." They grasp at these "exercise doesn't work" or "it's all genetics" arguments as an excuse to not work out more, or more intensely.
No, it's not going to be fair. I know muscular, well-defined men, who can run a 7 minute mile, who work out (and run) far less than I do. And that means nothing as far as *my* health goes. I have very little sympathy for fat people who don't even try because they're convinced that it won't do anything anyway. Do some have metabolic disorders? No doubt. But we also look for excuses to be lazy, and futility is one of the best excuses going.
I'm mostly with you on this one, but prisoners aren't random normal humans. They are generally evil.
No, they aren't. A significant percentage are there for drug crimes, prostitution, etc. You can be labelled as a sex offender and go to jail because you peed in an alley. We have moved well beyond the stage where everyone in jail can be considered evil. Are there bad people in jail? Certainly. But being convicted by a jury doesn't mean you really did it, or that it went down the way the prosecutor said. Cops lie, witnesses lie (or misremember), evidence gets planted|lost|tainted|misinterpreted, etc. Many have been released from death row after they were exonerated by DNA evidence. In short, the system is far from infallible, and even when it works flawlessly many who are far from "evil" are caught up in it. Don't fool yourself.
I'm not saying that eating pets is viable or necessary, but I find the responses interesting. When people say "we might as well eat neighbors|kids|whoever" they are pretty much putting the lives of animals on the level, value-wise, with the lives of humans. I'm a shameless speciesist (or is it species chauvinist?) and I'm always jarred by people treating animals as if they're as valuable, as humans. I know people who would rather use prisoners for medical research than animals. Seriously.
This thing goes pretty deep, and always amazes me. I used to work in an ER, and I had to sew up a child's face after she was bitten by a dog. After she was discharged , I was criticizing the family for having a 100lb carnivore that was bred for aggression living in the house with their 4 year old child. One of my co-workers got really angry at me, saying "we don't know that that child did to provoke the dog! Did you even ask that?" She blamed the kid and sided with the dog. I was dumbfounded. It fascinates me that people can work alongside one another and have profoundly divergent value systems. I'd have been less shocked to find that an otherwise amicable co-worker belonged to the Aryan Nation than to hear her side with the dog over a mauled child.
Have any of these climatologists considered climate change is a natural cycle of the planet?
Do you seriously think that hasn't been considered? Seriously? Do you seriously think that climatologists all over the world are so mind-numbingly stupid that that hasn't occurred to anyone? Yes, that has been addressed, time and again. We are *worsening* and *accelerating* the warming. No one has said that climate never ever changed until humans screwed stuff up. The only way you can ask that question is if you've only gotten your information from right-wing BS sources like Beck.
The idea that we as humans can control or even reverse this process is highly egotistical
The idea is that we are having a negative impact on our environment, and that we should try to minimize that as much as possible. No one said we can master global climate and roll back the clock. The simple acknowledgement that human action can degrade the environment in which we live is not egotistical--it's pretty much the opposite of that. It's not arrogant to say we have the capacity to damage our environment. If you think we can have no impact on the environment, then sit in a closed garage with a car running for a few hours. Should you turn off the car and open the garage door, or would it be arrogant to think you can avoid killing yourself by cutting back on the pollution you're pouring into your immediate environment?
First, what's wrong with expecting a monetary return on your education?
Nothing. Most of us need to make a living. That doesn't mean that only knowledge that translates directly into higher salary has value. Also, college isn't the sole source of education and general knowledge. A person with intellectual curiosity reads books, and would eventually come across references to figures such as Stalin and Freud.
think that nurse's lack of knowledge on Freud and Stalin says more about the nurse personally and less about her formal education
My point was that her formal education was entirely vocational. It seems that yours was as well, but since you can converse on a variety of subjects, you seem to have taken the effort (or had the curiosity) to give yourself a general education, via reading or whatnot. I don't blame vocational education. Most of us need jobs, and most of those jobs need training. Fine. I don't ask that an engineering program teach Proust.
And I think your choice of Freud and Stalin to make your point says quite a bit about you.
Yes, you caught me. I'm actually smoking a cigar right now, hopped up on cocaine, sending dissidents to the gulags. Seriously, I used those examples because I was so taken aback at the time that she had no idea at all who these people were. I don't fault her nursing school for not teaching general cultural literacy. I blame her for having so little intellectual curiosity that she never read a book she wasn't assigned in school.
Look down on ignorance? That's a little arrogant if you asked me
I wasn't saying we should put ignorant people in the stocks in the public square. My point was that when people are ignorant about something they don't think "hmm, maybe I should look that up." No one can know everything, but general intellectual curiosity is a good thing. Few people have it, because in our culture being ignorant carries no negative connotations. When people say "I've never read a book in my life" and they don't feel any shame about that, I consider it a problem.
Employers care about the breadth of education from 4-year degree because it shows the student has the ability to learn subjects outside of the core competencies
I worked with a registered nurse who did not know who Freud or Stalin were. At all. They came up at various times in our conversations (not work related, but still....) and she had no idea. Didn't know them by name or picture. She had a master's degree, but her education was entirely vocational. I feel sick to my stomach admitting that more school won't help the problem, but I think the underlying cause is that our culture does not look down on ignorance. Any knowledge that doesn't translate directly into dollars is considered "useless" by almost everyone. Even if someone is dead wrong about something they still have "a right to an opinion," so even pointing out that they're just ignorant makes *you* a presumptuous jerk.
I miss being a libertarian, because the world was so much simpler. Government=bad. Business=freedom. But the entire libertarian viewpoint (capitalize it or not, your choice) is basically blind to any abuse of power that is motivated by financial profit. They correctly see the dangers in government power, but non-government coercion, especially when money is involved, doesn't even register. I had to break with it because I felt that I was achieving clarity at the expense of ignoring what was right before my eyes.
Related to the story, I'd guess the heart monitors in question are pulse monitors, not cardiac monitors that give you an EKG reading.
Or something that only boring socially inept people are interested in.
You forget about Tony Stark, CSI, Numb3rs, etc. TV and movies are full of beautiful, suave people doing what is ostensibly science.
There was a story some time ago saying that the US military suspected Ahmed Chalabi of being an Iranian double agent who deliberately fed the USA government bad intel on Iraq to start a war that would destabilize the region and benefit Iran and the Shiites. I saw that story in the print news (I don't watch TV, so I can't speak to that) for about 2 days, and then it vanished.
Anyway, the war in Iraq certainly helped anti-US elements (Al Quaeda etc) with finances and recruitment. It removed Saddam Hussein, which was one of Bin Laden's goals. It killed thousands of US military members, caused us to spend hundreds of billions we couldn't afford, and lowered our international standing. Heck, it even drove us to embrace torture and undermine our own principles. I'd say that, if that fleeting story on Chalabi was true, he was far more successful than he would've been by building a single bomb.
I still find using this as an argument against wind farms to be grasping at straws, and rarely does it ring of sincerity as opposed to just finding any excuse for maintaining the status quo.
This same straw-grasping shows up whenever you discuss wind power, solar, electric cars, hybrid cars, recycling, human-exacerbated global warming, or really any environmental issue at all. Basically opposition to any efforts to reduce energy usage counts as the new common sense, political incorrectness, speaking truth to power, etc.
Why are we even talking about the 'silent' setting, as though that should make an iota of difference in either direction?
True. I suppose the police could still respect your wishes and arrest you quietly.
People don't like illegal immigrants because by definition those people are breaking the law.
When driving I frequently notice that considerably more than half the drivers are breaking the law by speeding, not using signals properly, not changing lanes properly, etc. Add in jaywalking, littering, etc, and a staggering number of Americans are criminals. Where is the hue and cry over all these criminals? When will THAT wall be built? Why aren't the Minutemen and Sheriff Joe clamoring for these people to be arrested and/or deported? THEY'RE BREAKING THE LAW!!!!!!
Oh wait, that's BS, and we know that Americans are not especially committed to scrupulous adherence to the law. A huge number of Americans break the law every day without any conservative going on any talk show demanding that something be done. So no, it's not just a conscientious committment to following the letter of the law. There is a bit more involved here, and everyone knows it.
I've noticed several design suggestions in your code.
