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Darwin Day is a celebration of Charles Darwin's birthday, the theory of evolution and science in general. This year marks his 210th birthday and 160 years since the publication of The Origin of Species. Those looking to celebrate or learn more about Darwin and evolution will find a wealth of events going on, or if you'd rather not leave the house, try a Darwin Day card with designs generated by simulated evolution.
Recently, an important finding in man's evolution was announced; the so-called Missing Link was confirmed. Australopithecus Sediba fossils were found in 2010 but it took a decade of research and debate for scientists to confirm that this was indeed the missing link that connects man's evolution in an unbroken chain back to primate ancestors.
Not everyone is down with Darwin. The Pew Research Center reports, "In spite of the fact that evolutionary theory is accepted by all but a small number of scientists, it continues to be rejected by many Americans. In fact, about one-in-five U.S. adults reject the basic idea that life on Earth has evolved at all." In Indiana, senator Dennis Kruse introduced a bill that would, among other things, "require the teaching of various theories concerning the origin of life, including creation science."
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 11 2019, @05:32PM (26 children)
That assumes there's somebody to vote for. The US has two rightwing parties. Voting for the Democrats is somewhat better on a small number of issues, but they're every bit as corrupt as the GOP is. They hand out committee positions purely based upon donor contributions, not on which member would be best qualified for a particular post.
You can thank the rightwing for legalizing bribery and declaring corporations to be people for most of that. Not to mention the massive gerrymandering that's gone on to limit the influence of progressives and anybody else not on the take.
(Score: 2) by cubancigar11 on Monday February 11 2019, @07:01PM (3 children)
Declaring corporations to be people is a legal loophole to achieve a financial stability that otherwise won't exist. It is what gives legal basis to a contract between you and a corporation. It is purely a legal technicality.
Your rest of the post stands true. Democrats and Republicans are both beholden to different corporations and different ideas of how to get more funding for themselves. You don't have a say if you are poor.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 12 2019, @12:14AM (2 children)
Not really, it's not something that anybody else has to the extent we do. Allowing corporations into contracts isn't something that required corporate personhood, the US existed for well over a century without corporate personhood.
There's no reason why corporations should be allowed to donate to political campaigns. And there's no reason why they should be permitted to do things that would land actual people in prison.
(Score: 2) by cubancigar11 on Tuesday February 12 2019, @09:20AM (1 child)
> There's no reason why corporations should be allowed to donate to political campaigns.
... which is a different thing that extending personhood to corporations. Legal language is very much like math. Giving personhood to corporations meant that all the laws that apply to a person also apply to corporations which was an incredibly elegant solution when compared to writing the totally different laws to handle corporations.
It simply made more sense to hold corporations responsible for all the things that a person is held for, then eliminating discrepancies on a case-by-case basis, than not holding corporations responsible at all, and add responsibilities on a case-by-case basis.
If you go in detail about all this, you will see why it is this way. Historically, laws were always about holding someone responsible as there was never a question of "rights". State was not as intrusive as it is today (and contrary to leftist ideologies). You could kill, rape, loot and if you were able to hold your own ground the king would most probably recognize your authority and in lieu of tax. So extending personhood to corporations was all about holding corporations responsible and about giving them more rights.
It is just a bad progression, or corruption, that a very good approach has been used to bent natural laws this way. I mean, instead of revoking the rights of corporations SC has chosen to extend rights so much that giving money is considered free-speech, i.e. bribery is legal. I would say SC made a bad judgment. Of course, I haven't read the full judgment so...
(Score: 2) by cubancigar11 on Tuesday February 12 2019, @09:22AM
> So extending personhood to corporations was all about holding corporations responsible than about giving them more rights.
15 years and I still don't use preview :)
(Score: 2, Disagree) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday February 12 2019, @05:37AM (21 children)
Nope. You don't measure one country's political parties against an external scale. We have a right wing and a left wing. We also have plenty of people who think both wings would best serve the nation if they decided to DIAF.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday February 13 2019, @05:36PM (20 children)
Of course you do. The idea of left and right wing are external to, distinct from, older than, and supervened on by, any particular country's party structure. The most you can say about any one country in isolation is that party X is further to the left than party Y. That tells you only spaceless, relative information.
I'm kind of surprised you'd say something this clearly wrong. I mean it fits with your agenda, but you're not dumb enough to actually believe that's how things really work.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday February 14 2019, @11:40AM (19 children)
Don't be obtuse, context matters. When you're trying to find the center of a board you measure from the ends of that board not from galactic central point. Doing otherwise would mean the entirety of Western civilization could only be classified as far left nutjobs with Europe having moral authority roughly equivalent to that of PETA.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday February 14 2019, @11:00PM (18 children)
Context indeed does matter, which is *precisely* why your dishonest attempt to keep left vs right comparisons stuck in vacuum, country by country, is somewhere between meaningless and willfully malicious. If you're going to call Russia or Ukraine or Hungary, to use just *modern* examples, "far left nutjobs," you've got a credibility deficit that rivals Nixon's.
Keep this shit up, Uzzard. Keep posting this self-serving, solipsistic trash for everyone to see and for me and a few others to rip to shreds. You harm yourself and your reputation more than any of us could ever possibly do alone.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday February 15 2019, @03:13AM (17 children)
And this willful obtuseness, changing of the subject, and ad-hom nonsense would be why I rarely reply to you anymore, yes. If you can't be bothered to put real thought into a response, don't bother speaking to me.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday February 15 2019, @04:46AM (16 children)
Uzzard, you would not know real thought if it bit you in the backside while you were busy getting high on your own jenkem supply. Also, ad-hom is when you insult instead of an argument; I insult to supplement my arguments :)
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1, Troll) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday February 15 2019, @12:04PM (15 children)
If you'd actually refuted a statement I made, what you claim might be accurate but "You're a horrible person" is not sufficient rebuttal in an argument. It's the butthurt screams of a child unable to find a valid one. If you can do better, please do. If not, why are you bothering?
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday February 15 2019, @11:14PM (14 children)
For the third time: your insistence on taking a given country's left and right wing in isolation of the rest of the world is fatally flawed because of its utter lack of context; furthermore, the ideas of left- and right-wing are ontologically prior to and supervened on by any given country's individual left-wing or right-wing parties. You may as well sit on a tree branch and cut it off at the trunk and expect the branch to stay up while the rest of the tree falls over.
Left-wing or right-wing relative to...what, exactly? Take a nation's parties in vacuum and you have no reference. You are, again, deliberately obfuscating in the hopes that no one will pick up on the strawman you're constructing.
That is a refutation, and it's a refutation made three times over. If you refuse to comprehend this, and decide that a thorough rubbishing of your position is "the butthurt screams of a child," that is on YOU, corpse-breath. You're not fooling anyone but yourself, and you are, as you always do, projecting like a mile of movie theaters. And everyone can see it. You fool no one but yourself.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 3, Disagree) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday February 17 2019, @03:07AM (13 children)
You do not need external context when discussing internal politics. The wings are universally understood to be relative to the politics and policies of the nation they reside in. It serves no purpose and only confuses the matter to make external reference unless what you really wish to do is condemn/laud an entire nation.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday February 17 2019, @03:26AM (12 children)
There's really no such thing as "internal politics" on any world where the inhabitants have invented any form of transport equal to or greater than oceangoing ships. And even before that, as soon as you have nation fighting nation--which you will any time two clans get large enough on the same landmass--politics takes on an external dimension by definition. "Internal politics" might not even be possible, like square circles or married bachelors or honest Republicans.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday February 17 2019, @03:19PM (11 children)
Are you sure you want to go with that as an argument? I'll give you a do-over there if you like.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday February 17 2019, @11:36PM (10 children)
So you think it's possible for nations to remain utterly isolated from one another once they start having contact? That's...impressively delusional. As soon as any amount of cultural diffusion starts happening, let alone trade or intermarriage, guess what? You ain't got internal politics no mo'. Not really.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday February 18 2019, @01:02AM (9 children)
No, I was saying that was an exceptionally easy argument to refute but not using that specific argument. If you'd prefer I make the argument, I will. I just wanted to give you a chance to think it through again and produce a better one.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday February 18 2019, @01:14AM (8 children)
It seems like we're talking past one another here...or, more likely, like you just don't want to comprehend what's being said to you :/
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday February 18 2019, @01:20AM (7 children)
No, I really do get what you're saying. I just also see the flaws in your reasoning. Thus my offer to let you rethink it. If you're content with it though, I've no objection to responding.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday February 18 2019, @11:59PM (6 children)
So far your responses have been "nuh-uh, you're wrong 'cause I say you're wrong."
Please consult the reference of your choice for the "fallacy of the stolen concept." This is the informal logical fallacy committed when someone uses a concept to argue against that concept's genetic roots, something like trying to use a derived class in C++ while not including the header with the base or parent class.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday February 19 2019, @01:09AM (5 children)
No, my responses have been along the lines of "That's a bad argument. Would you care to rethink it?". There's no attempt to dispute your assertion, that's explicitly left up to you if you so choose. Apparently you do not so choose though, so I'll give you my response.
Your entire assertion is nonsense. There are reasons to judge nations and even the political subgroups within them on a global scale but that does not mean they should always be discussed on a global scale. Saying they should is as absurd as saying you shouldn't tell someone to drive on the right side of the road just because there are other roads further to the right. Context and scope obviously matter and it's absurd to even suggest that they don't. You know better, you're just in the mood to argue.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday February 19 2019, @03:13AM (4 children)
You seem to have been misreading me here. Yes, we can make some small subset of judgments about a given nation within itself, but they are of limited utility and only tell us answers to questions entirely internal to said specific nation in the first place. Which...is to be expected.
If a given nation's policies seem not to be working no matter whether that nation's notional left OR right side is in charge, a wider view is more useful. In the case of the US, it turns out that compared to most of the developed world, even our supposed left wing is barely left of center (Ocasio-Cortes) to center and center-right (Sanders, Warren, Harris, Biden), with a few odd right-wingers (Obama, Bill and Hillary Clinton) somehow inveigling themselves into the supposed left. And our notional right wing is quite literally a party of religious wingnuts one step removed from the Ayatollahs (Pompeo, half the Trump cabinet, Mike Pence, etc) along with a few hardcore Mammon-worshipers (so, just a different kind of religious wingnut).
See how that works? In the case of the US, if we limit ourselves strictly to what the US calls left and right, we have to wonder why there's so little positive change no matter who's in charge, and be left mystified. Expand the scope of the discussion to include the civilized world--Canada, most of the EU, the Nordic countries--and the problem suddenly comes into sharp relief.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday February 19 2019, @04:50AM (3 children)
Ahh, I see your problems then.
First, you don't actually believe it. You may think you do but you do not.
Currently you want the US judged by the standards of and subservient in morality to Western Europe. Not the rest of the world, just Western Europe. So your globalist stance is proven false right there.
Also, if Western Europe's views were more along the lines of let's say Kansas, you would be taking the exact opposite stance. If you fundamentally believed in your false globalist stance, you would believe it even if it meant the US became more conservative.
Second, your false globalist stance is bloody stupid even if it actually were a globalist stance and you genuinely believed it. Much like you do not give your neighbors any say in what goes on in your house, no nation is under any legal, ethical, or moral obligation to consider anything outside its borders when making decisions as to how it should deal with internal matters. And rest assured the vast majority of matters are entirely internal.
The moral and ethical obligations placed upon politicians are to do the will of the voters unless what the voters want is not in their best interest, in which case they are morally and ethically obliged to first convince the voters of this before going contrary to their wishes. Thus, considering the will of the people of Western Europe if you are an elected official in the US is not only incorrect but unethical and immoral.
Considering the will of Western Europe as a voter is equally absurd. Western Europe does not have to uphold US obligations nor do they have to live under US laws; the US voters do. You would not presume to tell France how to handle their work week, minimum wage, immigration policy, or cheese purity laws, so saying we should do things as they do should be equally verboten, were you intellectually consistent.
Further, Western Europe is nothing like the US in resources, population density, or the desires of the people who populate it. Using their standard to compare our politicians or issues only makes sense if you're trying to use it to win an argument that you would otherwise lose due to the unpopularity of your own views.
And that's making things as concise and non-insulting as I'm able. Now do you see why I asked you if you didn't want to rethink that position?
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday February 19 2019, @10:59PM (2 children)
Oh, I see the problem...you think I'm a globalist. Ye gods, you'd think after what, 4 years of me on this site, you'd know better. No, I'm no globalist, but I do hold certain moral standards that transcend national barriers, and judge nations on how well they uphold these standards. That has nothing to do with imposing said standards on another nation by force (though, boy oh boy, does the US ever do a lot of that). You seem to have some sort of bee in your bonnet about [what you think...] globalism is, too.
Incidentally, my neighbors *do* have a certain amount of say as to what goes on in my home, because if I'm making disruptive noise or cooking meth or hoarding cats and not cleaning up after them, everyone's quality of life suffers. And we have community standards and even laws governing these things. So yeah, that analogy blew up in your face like the latest Acme gadget in the about equally-capable hands of Wile E. Coyote.
My God, was *that* your much-vaunted, devastating counterargument? You actually had me anticipating that you'd found an angle I seriously had failed to consider. Instead, nope, it's this misaimed "hurr hurr you're a globalist and you even suck at that" tripe. Somehow, you've managed to disappoint me even further, and that actually *is* a bit of an accomplishment so...er, 2/10 I guess?
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1, Troll) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday February 20 2019, @06:19AM (1 child)
You're not asking we judge nations by your standards though. You're demanding we judge all nations' every issue by what's good for other nations. Square your arguments away before you respond please. Make sure you're saying things consistent with both what you're responding to and what you said before. Despite all my experience arguing with you, I still believe you capable of presenting an argument that makes sense, even if you choose not to. Please tell me I'm not wrong.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday February 20 2019, @05:39PM
Uh...I *always* ask that we implicitly judge nations, and indeed everything, by my standards. Those standards also happen to be good for other nations, because they are good for the individuals of said nations, and a nation is after all made up of its people.
Why do I feel like an airline pilot who's being told by some kid with a copy of flight sim '95 that I'm flying it wrong...?
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...