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Comment I didn't explain enough, my apologies (Score 2) 78

2000 years ago the nations that have generated what is now 'Western culture' were part of the Roman Empire. This was a society in which human sacrifice was known, and the abandonment of unwanted children, for whatever reason the father had, was standard practice. Gladiator shows saw men killing each other for the entertainment of the crowds, and crucifixion was the punishment for serious criminals.

All these features of the culture changed - not spontaneously but because Christianity came to dominate the moral discourse, challenged these behaviours, and Emperors stopped them. Religion is part of 'culture'...

Comment Re:They haven't solved any of the social problems (Score 1) 40

The containment buildings didn't contain the meltdown, and the emergency cooling system that was supposed to let them use external pumps diverted the water into holding tanks instead of the cores. There were many screw-ups, and even now they are behind schedule with the decommissioning and clean up.

Comment Re:They haven't solved any of the social problems (Score 1) 40

Chernobyl and Fukushima had the same root cause - too expensive. Chernobyl skimped on not bothering to build containment buildings or train people properly. Fukushima didn't build the necessary tsunami defences, despite being warned.

It's nuclear's Achilles' heel. Costs too much to be commercially viable, can't afford to be properly insured, and doesn't get the necessary level of investment once it's running.

Comment What do you suggest? (Score 0) 78

Every nation is ruled by some sort of ethical code, the only question is what that consists of, and where it comes from. The US and the rest of the West as well as Russia are ruled by a set of ethics that have grown out of Christianity; why else do we regard human sacrifice and child abandonment as unacceptable? There's a very legitimate argument that our present problems come from the fact that there is no overarching ethical structure that everyone will accept as the basis for decisions.

In that context the commitment of Islamic countries to Islam is as reasonable. Your allergic reaction is more a function of your unfortunate ignorance of history. For a corrective challenge, I suggest you read Tom Holland's 'Dominion'; a book by a non-Christian historian which looks at Christianity's impact over the millennia

Comment Re: CORRECTION (Score 1) 33

XDG and other Freedesktop.org specs are careful to identify the concept of a Unix-like operating systems. And nothing in the spec requires it to run on UNIX specifically, although the spec does identify features from UNIX that it depends on. Implement those features and you can implent this spec. Linux and several others have done so already.

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