Akulakhan's Waterfall
We need both more and less gun control.
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"31 672 firearm-related deaths occurred in 2010 in the USA (10·1 per 100 000 people; mean state-specific count 631·5 [SD 629·1]). Of 25 firearm laws, nine were associated with reduced firearm mortality, nine were associated with increased firearm mortality, and seven had an inconclusive association. After adjustment for relevant covariates, the three state laws most strongly associated with reduced overall firearm mortality were universal background checks for firearm purchase (multivariable IRR 0·39 [95% CI 0·23–0·67]; p=0·001), ammunition background checks (0·18 [0·09–0·36]; p<0·0001), and identification requirement for firearms (0·16 [0·09–0·29]; p<0·0001). Projected federal-level implementation of universal background checks for firearm purchase could reduce national firearm mortality from 10·35 to 4·46 deaths per 100 000 people, background checks for ammunition purchase could reduce it to 1·99 per 100 000, and firearm identification to 1·81 per 100 000."
Oh yes. The title track from Atom Heart Mother..... phenomenal. If is also a horrendously underrated song from that album.
One of these days I'll get around to Meddle...
Culture is a very complex subject. I assume that by culture "mixing" you are referring to mixed culture kids, and not cultural appropriation. Of course there's nothing wrong being raised into an amalgamation of cultures, no matter how funny your memes try to be.
I think you're conflating biology and gender fluidity. People are fluid in all regards of their personality, gender and orientation are no exceptions. What factors influence those changes is what is debated.
There is biology involved in determining orientation, yes, but it is still poorly understood. All we know is that orientation isn't a choice and is subject to change.
Gender is more complex. Gender is largely determined by society and it's expectations. In the western world, we typically have two binary genders. Other cultures have as many as 5 or more, each with their own seemingly arbitrary set of rules (equally arbitrary to our western roles I might add). As where you might define yourself as male here, male as a gender may not exist somewhere else.
Diamonds are abundant naturally and fairly easy to synthesize. Intense marketing and artificial shortage of supply are the only things making diamonds expensive. And because of that, if you tried to return or resell a diamond, you'd only get a small fraction of your money back.
I completely agree with the idea. Like Tyson said, when someone racist sees a black person after having seen a black scientist, they experience cognitive dissonance and have to reconcile two contradictory notions. And although you have half-trolled with the image provided, your definitely bringing up an equally important topic. Women are represented very poorly on the internet and in the media in general, and it does help reinforce the stereotypes.
I joined CreateDebate after convinceme.net lost almost all of it's server(s?) support and completely fell apart. I have been on there recently, it looks better, but the community doesn't exist any more and it's basically just a site for bots to spam about DISCOUNT BIRKENSTOCKS AT PRICES YOU WOULD NEVER BELIEVE GO TO WWW.THIS-IS-NOT-A-SCAM.COM
I certainly don't think one can just choose what gets their rocks off, but that doesn't mean your sexuality is stagnant throughout your life. It may not be as easy as straight or gay for some people. A lot of people straddle on their orientation, and those people should be who we look to when we ask these kinds of questions. How much is choice, how much is predisposition, and how much does it ultimately matter whether it is one or the other? Choices define people no less than their genes, and if someone chooses to date someone of their own sex, I don't see how anyone would have the right to question them.
http://www.isidewith.com/results/
95% Democrats
-on science, social, immigration, healthcare, domestic policy, foreign policy, economic,
and;environmental issues
91% Green Party
-on science, immigration, foreign policy, social, healthcare, and economic issues
64% Socialist
-on social, immigration, and healthcare issues
52% Libertarians
-on foreign policy and immigration issues
3% Republicans
-no major issues
•Akulakhan(2302) Disputed 1 point
Thats an impractical and irrelevant question: for there are no perfectly identical twins.
And that's avoiding the problem; the problem still remains. You made an inherited claim that the genetic code from one individual isn't adequate to create another human, when the individual his/her/itself is the converse example, a contradiction. In fact, the reproduction of genetic code from a single code, is called cloning.
And if there were, then it would still be irrelevant, for the sperm would be an extension of that person's, which ever twin it happened to be, self
Which again changes nothing, because the clone is just as "being" as the original.
1) We have no absolute rights.
So why would it matter if the fetus was some precious human with dignity and importance?
2) Nothing, except God, is sovereign
Everything but God is sovereign. If no one talked about God, He'd be non-existent within one generation.
3) Sovereignty, in the sense of commanding one's life in the narrow sense of how we perceive, does not necessitate the affirmation of "right," in the constitutional sense.
4) Ability to act does not necessitate the [being] of those same types of rights either.
And again you are shooting yourself in the foot. So you are telling me you don't believe that a sovereign individual is necessarily entitled to rights? Then why not abort after birth?
Physically healthy, maybe so. But physical goodness does not necessitate moral goodness.
This is a separate debate I'd love to have later, would be too much fun.
•lolzors93(1561) Disputed 1 point
I'm not going to debate with you. You, unlike most people, have good points. I just am too lazy to actually debate them; and yes, I do disagree with them on logical grounds. The problem is that it reverts into too many sub-debates.
What about hiring a 51st employee?
<.<.... the same, plus an average of $2.20 for health insurance, making minimum wage employees cost about $10.55 per hour, which an employee ought to be able to make within an hour.
Limiting to up to fifty employees was your condition anyhow;
~"Think on the level of someone who wants to hire less than 50 people, the small businesses."
Funny how easy it is for you to count someone else's massive amount of income when in reality the food business is one of the hardest to make money in.
Hardest because it has the most competition, but not by any stretch the least profitable. That's why there's so many food businesses.
Do you care at all about the risk that the owner is taking by starting a business?
Soooooo you don't like bleeding heart liberals but use a sympathy argument? No I don't. I'm not them, and I'm not there to feel sorry for them. As an employee, I can tell you that I work not out of respect for my boss, but because both my boss and I make money out of it. That's it.
No, because the government forces you to pay more for benefits.
Now if we are talking small businesses of fifty or less, there are no benefits to be paid, beyond unemployment, FICA, FUTA, medicade, the works..
If I have one employee and he can make 2 products a day. Having 2 employees would mean 4 a day. If the business owner has to pay for a bunch of benefits if he hires a third person, what is the point, he can only get 6 products out of it.
The average additional cost for an employee, ignoring the one-time fees to hire, is about $1.50 an hour, so I don't know where you're going with that. As long as each employee makes more than his/her wage + appx $1.50, they pay for themselves. Turning enough money to keep the place running is all about having a business that is any good. Imagine a small restaurant that staffs about 20 people that turns an average till of about $1,500 dollars a night. Say these employees average real hourly cost was $11.50. That averages to $221.00 in employee expenses a night. Leaving the remaining funds of $1,280. Plenty to cover space rent and utilities and raise a sizeable profit.
If he hires the third person and benefits have to be paid to everyone, he would need 3 products from each person. Now, the workers have to work harder in order to sustain their new benefits.
Again, the odds are that there are no extended benefits for a small business, and that which there are are based on the wage and hours of the employee particular, not by the amount of employees.
Which you will gladly take from the owner and give to the workers
Right.
With all of the unemployment in America, it's statements like these that are really dumb.
Right, moving right along.
With the Democrats proposed system, the more you employ, the less you get to keep
...because more people are doing your job.
the more you have to make the workers you hire work,
More employees = more individual workload? I'm willing to completely disagree with you on that one. The more people you have working for you, the more you can get done with less individual workload, i.e. the whole premise of employment.
or hire less.
Hire less if your business can't afford it? Well then maybe the problem is the shitty business.
There is no incentive to starting a business
Profit.
which I assure you is not an easy task
Agreed.
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The thing is that an owner expects a personal salary parabolic to their workers, and succeeds in doing so by paying them less. If profit weren't the main incentive, but rather maximal benefit, then the wages between the worker and the owner would be much closer, and the excess profit would go back into improving the business. I've worked for small businesses before, and yes they are a lot of work, but not just for the owner. For every employee. In fact the few small business owners I've worked for really just managed the hiring and payroll.
The more you employ the less you work, so let's throw out that "we earned it" argument. Also, Obama doesn't set the budget, that's congress, so taxes really have nothing to do with who's president. Having a president is just the way that we pawn off all our problems to a scape goat._
No, nothing had to have created space and time. What you understand about creating and existing is limited to that which you have experienced within this existence and therefor you (or I) could never understand what it means for something NOT to be made by something else.
Now..., how does the picture insinuates that Bush's character or ability is superior to Obama's?
The image and caption related goes out of its way to insinuate that those kids somehow carry the same responsibility as the president for the president's actions/in-actions; an implication that is NOT attributed to the clearly white Mr. Bush.
If anything, the picture states that there's no difference between Bush and Obama.
No, it states that there is no difference between Bush and Obama and black kids by relation to Obama which is an invalid comparison.
HE is, but it has nothing to do with the article. So what's the point of relating the two? And why did they use that image with the black kids when the only relation derivable from the context of this article, which it begs you to relate, is that both Obama and the kids are black. I mean really what gives? It's not as though all black people are liberals.
They really had to make Obama the "black" one? I mean come on that has nothing to do with the rest of the damn article. I'm mainly speaking of the fist bump in which Mr. Bush was being 'cool' with the black kids in reference to how he's equivalent to Obama.
The incentive is within a mutual contract between members of a group, to provide labor towards products/services that benefit the entirety of the group. Who decides, how the decisions are made, the factors (which in any system are difficult to account for), are all dependent on the manner in which this system is implemented. It is too quickly assumed that communism is a one size fits all society, when in truth it is very dependent on the needs and resources of whichever group on whatever size. There's micro-communism and macro-communism and capitalist communism and everything in between. Concerning 'the most valuable of people,' in communism, ones goal isn't to excel to being the most valuable of people, it's simply to provide when you can and request when you need. It just so happens that people whom provide the most are naturally then the most valuable. Competition is null, and yet everyone gets what they want.
This brings up a whole other ethical and speculative realm of questions. Is there natural selection in humans, and if not so, why? Well the short answer would be yes and no, yes because of poverty and no because of medicine. Thanks to medicine and treatments we are able to artificially extend our own life expectancy and appear or become more attractive or strong or what have we. We can even grow our own babies out of the womb. But all these things require what fundamental resource? Money. The most well off have the means to obtain a cheat out of evolution and natural selection. The poor continue to be apart of these process conversly. Socialism puts everyone on an equal platform and if nothing else reinforces natural selection. Say everyone had the means to medicine that does whatever they like, how does one prove them self to be a better mate than another? Well, by being born slightly better to start off with.
The effect of socialism (collectivism) is to reduce the incentive to produce.
Wrong; socialism changes the incentive to produce from a self interest one to a common good.
The effect is less aggregate wealth, and a society where the more productive are more worse off than the least productive are improved.
Nonsense. Communism is a system collaborated by laborers to produce and provide that which is beneficial for the group. This is to say the more productive would be the most valuable of people.
