Comment Re:Switch to Sudafed OM (Score 1) 333
+1 As an old Perl programmer, I have to appreciate any response that mentions the phrase "XY problem."
+1 As an old Perl programmer, I have to appreciate any response that mentions the phrase "XY problem."
Forget morphine - could I just get a way to simply, legally obtain sudafed without rigamarole at the pharmacy?
How about we quit making up rights?
You know, we're almost getting into "no true Scotsman" here. There are atheists who want religion to die out by persecution (the "make them second class citizens" ideas seem to be very popular here on Slashdot), and there are atheists who are like you are describing, who only want to persuade people. I have no idea what the relative proportions are between the two groups.
By the same token, there are Christians who want to infringe the liberty of atheists, and there are Christians who find that completely abhorrent.
To complicate the issue further there are all kinds of disagreements about what actually constitutes persecution and aggression. The issue of educating children is a prime example - some people feel that that responsibility lies primarily with the parents, and some feel the children are more the property of the state/society. This is on both sides of the argument - many want to use the schools to promote religion, and many want to use the schools to demote religion and counteract religious instruction from the parents.
There are lots of other examples, too. Many Christians are utterly totally blind to the fact that laws against consensual sexual behavior or against alcohol are a complete violation of liberty. I could go on and on.
I wish we'd all agree on the leave each other alone / everyone change their minds by respectful voluntary persuasion position. But that's probably a pipe dream.
I didn't say a single thing about being self-sustaining. Nothing you wrote has anything to do with what I said.
And in our society, we elect those leaders. In some societies, people obtain leadership through brute force. It's not pretty.
Brute force is wrong even when you are elected.
And the great thing about politics is that politicians, the people you and me vote for (or don't vote for) are ultimately elected by people. And those people have opinions. And those opinions can and do change. And when you share an unpopular opinion it can make you unpopular. Most politicians try not to share their unpopular opinions, at least the ones unpopular to their constituents.
Nobody's opinion should ever be forced on another person, no matter how popular their opinion is.
It's not about dominating friends, it's about informing them
Did you vote for 8 years of George W. Bush? Did you have to live under him for 8 years? You were dominated.
Substitute anyone else for George W. if you did vote for him. (I did - my mistake.)
If you vote for a guy, you are appointing a ruler for other human beings. Not just having a respectful conversation where you try to persuade them to willingly follow his leadership.
Does Facebook make it harder for people with different political views to get along?
Politics is about making other people do what you think is right. It's just like forcing your religion on someone except that somehow if there's not a God involved it's considered to be morally acceptable. It's the worst form of blind faith in the face of evidence to the contrary, and it's used to justify tyranny. We replaced hereditary tyrants with taking turns being tyrants, instead of replacing tyranny with freedom.
I'm not talking about people defending themselves from others who would wrong them - there's no problem with that. But politics is more than just appointing someone to run a mutual protection arrangement. When two neighbors have differing political signs up, each of them is hoping that his man will win the election and desires that his neighbor be subjugated to the winner.
Given that politics is all about oppressing your neighbor, it's hard to see how anyone could expect to get along over this.
Here's hoping they don't use use Sucralose, which is even worse than Aspartame
That's about as likely as slashdot posters starting to read the articles that are posted.
I suspect, at some point, feature phone people will find themselves unable to operate normally in society. They'll have to get a smartphone or become noticeably eccentric.
I'm seeing early signs of that already. People send me texts that come in as giant multimedia messages, and my Hispanic friend with whom I practice Spanish texts me in Spanish and the phone mangles it and I have to call back and ask what he said.
I hope we reach "peak phone" soon, because for those of us who don't spend every waking moment with our cell phone, the shit which is focused around that is kind of tedious.
I'm waiting for that moment to pass, and then I will finally get a smart phone. My wife has a smart phone, but I'm the techie, and I still have a flip phone. It's $15, no contract, easily replaceable, and does everything that my first $250 flip phone did years ago. I'm thrilled with it.
As long as the isps to my home are monopolies I don't want them engaging in "value added" services.
So what we really want is for the government grant of monopoly privilege to be taken away.
If you are such a whiny idiot that you think it should be OK to say "we don't serve your kind here", then you should have no legal or moral basis to claim that someone shouldn't be able to do the same to you.
Yes, I agree. People should be able to refuse to do business with someone for any reason whatsoever, and vice versa. Religious conviction shouldn't have any special status in law above any other type of preference or desire.
So either shut up, and accept that you have no other ways you're legally allowed to discriminate against someone
I agree and accept this.
Neutrinos have bad breadth.
