Brad's Notes: 2/11/2004

Just some notes from the net

from JoeUser Forums

Not too excited to hear Mexicans treating our soccer team this way. Booing the US national anthem and yelling "Osama" as a soccer game in Mexico helps make the case that the US really needs to secure the border. It's not just that Mexican illegal immigrants aren't assimilating as well as other cultures have for economic reasons, they're not assimilating because unlike other immigrants, there's a considerable number of them quite hostile to the US.  I have seen interviews with immigrants who quite openly hope to become a majority in New Mexico, Arizona, and California and effectively turn it into a quasi-separate country. Don't kid yourself, Mexico isn't our friend. They have ample reason not to like the USA btw. But that doesn't change the end result.

Meanwhile...

France's solution to discrimination? Eliminate personal freedom to express their religion. Great...

So Clark is out of the race. Big surprise. Maybe he figured out that Republicans should run in Republican primaries. I mean, what kind of fool would think Clark was a Democrat? Oh yea, Michael Moore. ;)

Meanwhile, my friend Andrew Orlowski has an article at The Register about iPod owners ticked off about their alliance with Pepsi. I like the Register but frankly I tend to want to focus on Andrew's articles as they're my favorites and I have to go by the sub-headers to figure out which ones are his (his tend to be more smart aleky). Of course, he's likely horrified at my right-wing blogging. ;)

Meanwhile, the anti-Orlowski, Steven Den Beste has an article about why Muslims need to deal with the fanatics. If you're left of center or against the war in Iraq you'll probably want to avoid it as it'll cause you to wither up.

Another net friend, Jark, is having some problems with his employer. Besides being the main guy at deviantART, he has a day job. If the cheapskate users at deviantART were willing to help the site more Jark wouldn't have to put up with crap from his employer, the US Navy.

Speaking of day jobs, running JoeUser isn't my day job. Not really anyway. But I will tell you one thing, everytime someone marks someone as a troll it shows up in a log. So you left wingers and right wingers running around trying to bring down your ideological opponents through abuse of the trolling button, beware, we know who you are.

Meanwhile, John Hawkins has an article suggesting that if the Star Trek dream came true, it would ruin the human race. I tend to agree. In fact, I predict that my son's generation will likely run into serious issues once virtual reality becomes a..ahem reality. Who's going to want to do real work when you can just go have virtual sex anytime you want? Look at the popularity of Everquest now and that stuff is nothing compared to what VR will one day offer.

Well it's going on 2 am. I'm finishing up my install of SP5 for Visual Studio 6.  I really need to upgrade to Visual Studio.net one of these days. I'll know soon whether I'll be working from home or dragging the 3 year old to the office with the laptop to get The Political Machine setup on this machine.  Hmph, gotta go grab the latest MSDN.  Pain.

Gnight!

 

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3,869 views 8 replies
Reply #1 from JoeUser Forums Top
yeah, but on star trek they came up with a great solution: holodeck doors are never locked and display what's being run to anyone waiting outside. so anyone can see what you're doing and walk inside while you're occupied. and in order to make a realistic sim of outer space exploration, someone has to go out there and explore it and send pics back to the holodeck programmers.

hell, the old series had a bunch of episodes on the garden of eden syndrome. kirk blew up the god machine that was the primary source of food and healthcare for an entire tribe of primitive people(yay you've given us freedom! now we will die in a normal lifespan, suffer wounds and disease, and have to spend most of our day sweating just to survive, just like cavemen, and our infants will suffer a horrific mortality rate. thanks, jim!). he had to do it to save the ship but still...

and the one where they are stuck on a planet where the androids are doing everything possible to please the humans. (they shut them down with crazy human behavior)

then in star trek v, kirk refuses to accept the vulcan guy's offer to erase his pain: "You know that pain and guilt can't be taken away with a wave of a magic wand. There the things we carry with us, the things that make us who we are. If we lose them, we lose ourselves. I don't want my pain taken away. I need my pain."

the other side of the coin is that without the worry of his/her kids starving to death, would a factory worker/office guy go do nothing or would he seek to improve himself? make art? read the classics/crappy generic bestsellers? write crappy poetry? play in sports leagues, learn to dance, invent a better mouse trap, make a blog, etc?
Reply #2 from JoeUser Forums Top
Brad: Your comment about the french ban in state school is a misunderstanding of france culture about religion. The purpose of this law is to suport the secularity of the state, a principle highly valued in french culture. Religious symbol in french school have been banned for almost all the last century with the victim being christian. There has been exactly the same demonstration. France has both the highest muslim population and the highest jew population in Europe, one of the reason these communityies developped so well is because there are no state religion. So, you can be religious in france, you just don't have the right in school to demonstrate it.
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Reply #3 from JoeUser Forums Top
JEPEL, so what you are saying is the same as our separation of church and state. Of course, that doesn't end up working well in our schools, because most schools still have Christmas festivities.
Reply #4 from JoeUser Forums Top
Hmm, i guess not. christmas vacation are given by tradition (i suppose).
In Italy, the crucifix is in any class room, the growing muslim population feel discriminated and asked that muslim symbol should be in everyroom as well. The governement refused, but the problem is still going on ...
Secularity is an important value in a society. There are big talk in France about this law giving some strengh to fundamentalist. I'm not sure if it 's a good way to fight against extremism.
Reply #5 from JoeUser Forums Top
Maybe it's only me, but I like how the US deals with religion in schools: lets people practice it, and punishes those that discriminate. I guess France was looking for an excuse to take secularism to another level. Personally, I can't wait until the anti-religious folk go too far and demand that Christmas no longer be a national holiday, and to ensure that the government isn't giving any lip service at all to it, demand that nobody have the holiday off. I honestly believe there will be a time when the ACLU attempts to steal Christmas.
Reply #6 from JoeUser Forums Top
JEPEL _you are right. Separation of church and state is vital for a society. The law hasn't been passed yet, officially.
Many here, like Missy Buu and Brad are happy to attack an adherance to the separation of church and state without admitting that the US system is losing this, submitting to the desires of whoever is paying to get their message out. Religion: the opiate for the masses_still works.
Missy no one is denying Christmas or Hannekah_the kids just can't go to school with christmas trees on their heads to announce their faith. Fair enough, I can't see Americans embracing the muslim girls scarved heads in US public schools_so why critisize enforcement of French Law?
( oh, it's fashionable to dislike " The French?"...how ignorant.)
At home and in life, people in France can demonstrate their faith, this is just at school.
A good plan for assimilation reasons and if you don't live there_why worry?
Reply #7 from JoeUser Forums Top
Without being provocative, I doubt that US is really secular. The use of the bible in the official ceremonie is self explaining. But I think that mnost of the world countries aren't really secular states.
Reply #8 from JoeUser Forums Top
What's wrong with a child going to school and openly proclaiming their Christianity? Why is that wrong, but going to school and openly proclaiming their homosexuality, liberalism, Gothness, vegetarianism, racial pride, etc. all fine and dandy? Those are thousands of times more annoying then somebody wearing a crucifix or somebody wearing a turban. Therefore, I think we should basically place all students in uniforms and not allow them to form clubs. After all, the school is a place to learn, not to express one's beliefs, sexuality, ethics, tastes, etc.
Of course, I'm also one of those people who believes that somebody silently praying (even in a group) isn't forcing a gun to your head to follow their religion. Live and let live.