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Comment Re:Oh The Irony (Score 1) 282

Yes, well, Democrats didn't use the magic formula "To Protect Our Children!" as in "We Need Everyone To Have Large Capacity Semi-automatics TO PROTECT OUR CHILDREN!" or "We Need To Keep Vomiting Vast Quantities of GHG's Into The Atmosphere And Allow Poisoning Of Water Sheds TO PROTECT THE CHILDREN!"

Comment Re:Lots of people in the field (Score 1) 24

There's also the rather unique aspects of Darwin's theory as opposed to previous theories, such as Lamarck's theory. That organisms seem to fit into hierarchies was in and of itself not a new idea, though I would argue Linnaean taxonomy with its fairly strict methodology was a new innovation. Darwin's key observation wasn't merely that populations evolve, but rather that there is variation exists in all populations, and that some variations will be more favorable than others, and thus more likely to be selected for through differential reproductive success. While he didn't have Mendelian genetics which when plugged in to Natural Selection, provided the hereditary aspects of the theory, but he did make that critical observation that was very different from anyone else's previous stab at some sort of evolutionary process.

Comment Re:Lots of people in the field (Score 1) 24

I'm not really all that sure that anything resembling Darwin's theory of natural selection could have developed without Linnaean taxonomy, not to mention that unlike much larger biospheres, the Galapagos Islands could be more easily observed, so I think it unlikely that da Vinci would have had the kind of environmental exposure.

Comment Re:Big labor is a state-sanctioned extortion racke (Score -1) 122

Because rule by technocratic corporation is just such a big win. Your's is a perfect example of how our chimpanzee brain can overwhelm those faculties that make us human. Greed is based largely on short term gain (your paycheck right now) and not on long term prosperity (what will my paycheck look like if the government and unions are hamstrung or outright eliminated from labor regulation and negotiation).

So what is it? Are you a chimpanzee, or a human being?

Comment Re:Japan too (Score 1) 224

It will be the standard Conservative talking point; that the recession doesn't really exist, it's all these evil economists, many of them civil servants, trying to get Labour elected. Labour has now been out of power so long that it can't be directly blamed for the woeful state of the British economy, so the next strategy is to deny there is a problem at all.

All the Brexit "dividends" that were promised have proven phantoms. Creating any kind of friction with your primary trading partner is utter stupidity. Britain has been a merchant nation since the Middle Ages, with deep links to the Continent. In fact, whether it was the Habsburgs, Napoleon, the Kaisers or Hitler, the primary objective was to create a continental system that would keep Britain out. Heck, even de Gaulle got in on the "keep Britain off the Continent" when he blocked Britain's entry into the customs union at a time when Britain's economy was falling over a cliff.

And lo and behold, this time it wasn't some Continental demagogue trying to wrench Britain away from Europe, it was the likes of Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson who accomplished what Britain had been fighting to prevent since the Battle of Agincourt.

Comment Re:Japan too (Score 2) 224

I think a review of post-WWII history will show that Britain spent decades in a spiraling decline. It's empire and the kind of locked in economy that that vast empire had created began to disintegrate. The huge debts accrued between the late 1930s and 1945, much of it owed to the United States in one form or another, left it the sick man of Europe. It probably would have entered the Customs Union earlier, but de Gaulle had an absolute hatred of the British and did everything he could do to block it. A seemingly permanent turn around happened as it integrated into the European economic community. It had to replace its Empire with something; and the Commonwealth had proven an enormous failure; with the preeminent Commonwealth nations like Canada and the Australia resigning their economic relationship with the UK to the dust heap.

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