Andsoccer16's Waterfall
Why not just lock your kids up in a box, this way they have no chance of getting into any trouble, or ever having to deal with reality.
That's like taking away all coins, so people don't drop them off of buildings. Such a small portion of kids send naked pictures to each other that it's pointless to restrict everyone. If you take away cell phone they'll just use computers and digital cameras.
This is fucking stupid. The laws were designed to keep adults from taking advantage of little kids. I'm not sure I understand who is being hurt in this particular scenario if the kids are taking pictures of themselves. Admitidly you would have to be an idiot to send naked pictures, but charging them with child pornography? This is a complete waste of resources. Go after the real perverts, and pedofiles not some horny teenagers.
I agree. I think that mostly it shows what has been ingrained into us by society. So long as we don't act on these subconscious stereotypes then it shouldn't be an issue.
Apparently "Joe the plumber" was on welfare at one point.
First you say:
this country was founded as a Christian nation
Then you say:
in any case, this discussion isn't about Christianity
Hmmm...that's funny, I guess you can change your position pretty quickly, huh? As for the Jefferson quotes, it doesn't get much clearer than "Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law." It's pretty hard for me to take this out of context.
Also, the point you missing is that the religious beliefs of the founding fathers donn't matter. They founded a nation that had a government completely separate from religion. Had all of them been Hindu, or Muslim, or any other religion it wouldn't have mattered because as the 1st amendment says:
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion"
So even if every one of our founding fathers had practiced Satanic rituals and burned Bibles in the privacy of their own home, it would have no bearing on the constitution, because in a secular society religion is solely a private matter.
As for supposed "ad hominum" attack, I think we found another area you should study up on. My comments pertained to what you wrote. If you write stupid or ignorant things then I have the right to ridicule you for that. Had I made fun of you for being tall or blond, then that would have been an ad hominum attack because it is unrelated to the subject at hand.
So please stop saying the U.S.A. is a Christian nation, because we are not. We are no more a Christian nation then we are a white nation and a male nation (because did you know everyone of our founding fathers was a white man! GASP!). We are instead a nation that does not distinguish between any religion, race, or culture.
Wow, take a fucking history course. This is most certainly not a Christian nation. We were founded on secular beliefs. In fact, of the 55 delegates at the signing of the constitution, most didn't even belong to a specific church.
http://rolandhulme.blogspot.com/2008/03/
Do you know who Thomas Jefferson was? Our third president, and a fierce critic of religion, especially Christianity. How about we read some quotes from him?
Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined and imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity.
-Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia, 1782
But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.
-Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia, 1782
Where the preamble declares, that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed by inserting "Jesus Christ," so that it would read "A departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion;" the insertion was rejected by the great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mohammedan, the Hindoo and Infidel of every denomination.
-Thomas Jefferson, Autobiography, in reference to the Virginia Act for Religious Freedom
Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law.
-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Dr. Thomas Cooper, February 10, 1814
And my Favorite:
ay it be to the world, what I believe it will be, (to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all,) the signal of arousing men to burst the chains under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessings and security of self-government. All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God.
-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Roger C. Weightman, June 24, 1826 (in the last letter he penned)
So there you have it. Not only were many of our founding fathers not devout Christians, but Thomas Jefferson, our third president was, at the very least, an agnostic.
Instead of backing up your argument with facts you decided instead to make assumptions based on your flawed perceptions of history. Please, next time you think you have something to say, ask yourself if you have any idea what you're talking about before you come across looking like an idiot.
I think you'd like the French national anthem.
Okay, so let's say the money had to be redesigned anyway, and you were in charge of what was written. Would you put "In God We Trust"? I can understand the I don't want change thing, as well as the money aspect, but starting from scratch, should God be on our money?
I personally think it's hilarious that a nation founded on the idea of separation of Church and State has God on it's money. Hypocrisy is just kinda funny to me.
If the money had been that way since the beginning of our nations history, I would be fine in recognizing the historic value. But this is not the case. The "in God we trust" was added during the cold war, not our nations founding. Should we stop making money with the motto? For me it has to do with core beliefs, but honestly I don't think it's a huge deal. It's just money! Stuff like the pledge of allegiance is a little more serious, but I'm convinced that at this point there are too many bible thumpers for that idea to be realistic (plus there are a lot more important issues).
Once again, it's just hypocrisy, plain and simple.
Joe, I thought after the contest was over you would stop posting meaningless debates. Maybe the whole point thing wasn't such a great idea...[sigh]
So you want to go to space? Cus if so I'm for that. It would be great if you went millions of miles away. ;)
Haha, okay Joe how about this. I am against any plan that requires us to "reduce" the human population.
Come on, have some faith in humanity. We went to the moon, we cured polio, we invented a way to take shits in our houses and not have to worry about a mess. We can definitely find a reasonable solution to global warming.
This is exactly the narrow thinking that has fucked up the earth for the past 200 years. Sure fossil fuels and oil are great if you look at only the economic benefits, but in the longterm we end up with tremendous global problems that threaten our society.
There are also significant economic benefits to investing in solar and wind energy: the price will never increase. Oil and coal will only become more scarce and more expensive, but wind and solar energy will only get cheaper as the technology advances to the point where fossil fuels are today. Right now photoelectric cells are not at the level where they can adequately compete with coal. Solar thermal power, that converts solar energy into heat, much like coal and nuclear power is on nearly equal footing.
When you say "mature technologies", what I hear is "outdated technologies." In the 1980's would you have started investing in typewriters because they were "proven?" Of course not! We are on the verge of having clean renewable power and we should be concentrating on making it more affordable and efficient so that we don't need to worry about all the negative impacts of drilling for oil, and burning coal.
As for your talk about draining marshes, sure it helped get rid of malaria in certain areas, but at the same time it destroyed the habitat of plant and animal species that lived there and more importantly made certain coastal areas less protected from flooding. Look at New Orleans as an example. They destroyed some marshland which acted as a buffer for storms and the damage was much worse.
Your right, for them it's not cheap, but thanks to groups like the Gate's foundation, people who have the money can help by donating money. Secondly, DDT is not harmless. It has negative affects on both human and animal health:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
If you have the option between solving the problem using a) a harmful chemical or b) using reasonable means that have no negative affects. Well that's a tough choice...I'll get back to you with my answer.
CFC's were causing the problem so YES banning them was the only way to solve it. If you wan an explanation of how CFC's breakdown ozone, check out this link:
http://www.albany.
I said "to protect from over development". Oxymoron? I know you are, but what am I?
Do you know how much a mosqito net costs? $10. That's pretty fucking cheap. As for houses, you don't have to buy a whole new house, you just mosquito proof current houses.
When you say a the large number of people produce global warming are you saying it's because they exhale CO2 or because they use electricity and cars which generate greenhouse gases? Either way, we can make it so that we reduce, and eventually cancel out the carbon footprint of even 10 billion humans! Just because you can't solve the whole problem immediately does not mean you shouldn't try to solve at least part of the problem eventually, and try hard.
Welllllll.......Let's take these one at a time, shall we?
Yes CFCs may be a good cheap refrigerant but banning them was the only way to save the ozone. In the long run this would have hurt us more.
Solar Panels will one day help us overcome our dependence on fossil fuels and will help cut down on CO2 emissions. People are going to move and expand into wilderness so long as there are no laws preventing them from doing so. Our goal should not be to stunt innovation but to create laws that protect over development of wilderness areas.
There are other ways to prevent Malaria then DDT. In fact there were serious malaria outbreaks in the U.S. south at the beginning of the century. We solved the problem by creating mosquito proof housing. This, and mosquito nets are the best solution to getting rid of malaria. Check out this video about it:
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/
I agree with you that we need to think first, then innovate. By managing global warming though we are making up for the fact that we didn't do this before. We are trying to undo a past mistake. A lot of time, there will be a trade off, but hey! We're a very innovative species. We can get around these problems. Not trying to fix an obvious problem, though, is irresponsible.
Yeah, but we know that putting more CO2 in the atmosphere hurts the planet. We already took that action. Now we can lower our output of CO2. This will almost certainly have no negative affects because the earth was fine before we started fill the atmosphere with greenhouse gases.
Just because you don't know everything about something doesn't mean you shouldn't try. We know that CO2 emissions contribute to global warming so we can certainly cut down on those. Other methods of dealing with the issue, like trying to bring nutrient rich water to the surface of the ocean to help the growth of plankton may have negative impacts on the ecosystem and should be studied first.
In general we should be doing everything we can to use alternative sources of energy and increased efficiency to help fight global warming.
Joe, I didn't realize you read XKCD, that's one of my favorite comic strips.
Yes this usually happens to me except I get the letters I P P L E S
Although there are a disproportionate amount of liberal stories on digg, that is not a reflection on the site itself but the overall politics of the users. For your information one of the candidates that most digg users support is actually Ron Paul a republican/libertarian. Also, a good portion of the stories are not political at all. Some of the most popular topics are computers, science and random funny stuff on the internet. If Joe is so concerned about this then he can make his own digg.com profile and start burying Liberal stories and digging conservative ones. It's a very democratic system.
I've seen you post on a lot of debates, and as funny as your jokes are (/sarcasm), I have to disagree with your point. Although people may not be able to remember things as well while high, I do not believe there has been any study done to see if there is actually a correlation between marijuana use and memory loss. If I am wrong then please post the study. (Also do you think that a little memory loss warrants prohibition?)
Although in a lot of cases things that are "taken or done 'too much'" end up having negative effects, this generalization is not something to base an argument on. Also you assume that marijuana is addictive when in fact it is not. Some people do have addictive personalities, but these people are just as likely to become addicted to cake as they are to marijuana. Marijuana certainly does not lead to death, and as for crime, legalization would take care of that (if you want an explanation look at the argument higher on this page by me). In addition I would like to see the study you are talking about because from what I've read marijuana is actually has positive health affects (see links). The study you quote says there's more toxins yet smoking tobacco increases you chances of getting lung cancer by 20 times and smoking marijuana leads to a slight decrease your chance of getting lung cancer. I hope that next time you post an argument you will cite your sources and not rely on broad generalizations.
I have to disagree with your comparison of marijuana to alcohol in some respects. Although it is true that being high is kind of similar to being drunk there are some significant differences; marijuana makes things feel, for lack of a better term, sillier. Alcohol on the other hand, when used in excess can lead to blacking out, vomiting and not remembering what happened. In this way alcohol is significantly more dangerous. Whereas you can die from alcohol intoxication, too much marijuana really can't hurt you. Also, most of the negative feelings associated with alcohol, such as guilt and regret, are typically not experienced when using marijuana. We have also seen what happens when you make alcohol illegal: organized crime grew significantly in major cities because they were able to make an absurd amount of money selling bootleg liquor. Comparing alcohol to marijuana in this context would be accurate. The selling of marijuana by gangs is very profitable. You say that we should go down to Mexico to smoke but I live in Delaware and if I want to smoke with my friends going to Mexico for a weekend isn't a viable option. Instead I would have to find a drug dealer. This puts money in the hands of bad people. Legalization would put a stop to this.
Finally, for someone who claims to love the USA so much you seem to be okay with suppressing freedoms. The reason Mexico is different from the US is because they are relatively poor, their government is corrupt, and crime is rampant. Keeping marijuana illegal only helps criminals, so if you want the US to not be like Mexico then you should encourage the legalization of marijuana.
