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| Acmlm's Board - I3 Archive - - Posts by Arwon |
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Arwon Bazu                 Since: 11-18-05 From: Randwick, Sydney, NSW, Australia Last post: 5909 days Last view: 5909 days |
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| Microsoft only really screws computer uses, generally a fairly wealthy demographic. Compare to corporations which thrive off the blood of third world workers, they're pretty small potatoes in the "evil corporation" stakes. | |||
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Arwon Bazu Since: 11-18-05 From: Randwick, Sydney, NSW, Australia Last post: 5909 days Last view: 5909 days |
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| Nah, there's sections of the nationalist and cultural right (as opposed to the economic right) who are pretty skeptical of free markets, capitalism and corporations. elements of Catholicism have also been, historically, pretty anti-capitalist and uncomfortable with markets. | |||
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Arwon Bazu Since: 11-18-05 From: Randwick, Sydney, NSW, Australia Last post: 5909 days Last view: 5909 days |
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All real men must emulate the following:
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Arwon Bazu Since: 11-18-05 From: Randwick, Sydney, NSW, Australia Last post: 5909 days Last view: 5909 days |
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| It's a pity they're in a rapid downward spiral these days. ): FOUR members!?
I saw them play I Fell Asleep On My Arm live once. It was great. (edited by Arwon on 05-05-06 10:46 PM) |
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Arwon Bazu Since: 11-18-05 From: Randwick, Sydney, NSW, Australia Last post: 5909 days Last view: 5909 days |
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| Well I understood that and I'm Australian, so maybe it isn't good proof. | |||
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Arwon Bazu  Since: 11-18-05 From: Randwick, Sydney, NSW, Australia Last post: 5909 days Last view: 5909 days |
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| A compliated system of chains, straps and pulleys. | |||
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Arwon Bazu  Since: 11-18-05 From: Randwick, Sydney, NSW, Australia Last post: 5909 days Last view: 5909 days |
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| No, I beg to differ. Clearly if he talks Mexican he is a Mexican. | |||
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Arwon Bazu Since: 11-18-05 From: Randwick, Sydney, NSW, Australia Last post: 5909 days Last view: 5909 days |
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| I used the bilingual phrase cos it's one of those things that, due to cognates, is extremely obvious. And yo no se que is a really obscure joke about the French phrase je nais se quoi (not sure of the spelling).
Anyways... my first thought was what's the word for "Spangled". Somehow I think La bandera espanglada con estrellas (or something like that, my Spanish is still prety rudimentary) wouldn't have the same ring to it. c(: Um, more seriously, it's an absolute non-issue. The friggin White House website has a section with the Spanish words, Bush himself has sung the anthem in Spanish on the campaign trail in the past in places where he was campaigning in Latino communities. Besides which, the US anthem doesn't exactly have any mystical unalterable significance. I understand that the lyrics have changed a little and been adapted to portray US-American patriotism with Latino sensibilities or something like that... but regardless it is just one of several patriotic tunes so at most this is adding one more. That isn't a heinous crime, it's entirely sensible. Moreover, Star Spangled Banner is not that popular, it's an unsingable song of explosions and defeat, and it's taken from a British drinking song. It's not some unalterable prayer brought down by a choir of archangels, fucking with it is entirely legit. Hell, O Canada has been translated not only into French, but several native languages, Spanish, and apparently Cantonese and Mandarin. They've got the right idea here. Bush said he thinks it ought to be sung in English only... this strikes me as a staggeringly bad PR move. The only way it makes any sense is if the Republican Party has just totally given up on courting the latino vote and gone into full-on play-to-the-far-right-racists mode. Which doesn't make sense, there's more Latinos than crazy racists. One more hole in the anti-immgrant rhetoric: 2/3rds of Illegal Immigrants pay income tax and other things, but they can't get most government services and so forth. |
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Arwon Bazu  Since: 11-18-05 From: Randwick, Sydney, NSW, Australia Last post: 5909 days Last view: 5909 days |
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| Higher oil prices are good. The higher the price, the more economically viable other energy sources are.
80 dollars a barrel or more makes a whole range of alternate energy sources viable, both in terms of more-difficult-to-access types of fossil fuels (such as tar sands) and the further development of various renewables sources. And just to build on Wurl's point about prices at the pump, in the UK they're paying the equivalent of US $6 or $7 a gallon, and it's even higher in other places. |
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Arwon Bazu Since: 11-18-05 From: Randwick, Sydney, NSW, Australia Last post: 5909 days Last view: 5909 days |
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| Love is not a positive emotion. | |||
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Arwon Bazu Since: 11-18-05 From: Randwick, Sydney, NSW, Australia Last post: 5909 days Last view: 5909 days |
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| Rom, you make the mistake of assuming every scary Muslim is the same, and in league with each other. Iran had about as much to do with September 11 as Turkey or Indonesia did.
And, more broadly, al Qaeda isn't Iran, and I suspect its activities would be brutally opposed if it tried to operate in Iran. Iran's stogidly repressive Shiite regime, with its ultraconservative Ayatollahs and mouthy populist president (whose talk is crazy but largely for domestic consomption and playing internal power games with the ayatollahs) has about as much to do with Al Qaeda as the Greek Orthodox Chruch has to do with Jerry Fallwell. Iran is a storm in a teacup for two reasons. 1) we can't stop them, and 2) they're not really a huge threat of using their weapons. We can't stop them through a bombing campaign because their sites are too diffuse and protected and close to population centres, this is not Iraq in the 1980s. This is a country 5 times its size, militarily stronger relative to Israel, and which has learned those lessons well in terms of making their nuclear sites hard to destroy. We can't stop them through the UN unless they want to stop, and a full-on regime-change war won't happen--Iran is militarily strong and its regime is secure. The US would be in a real danger of not being able to win such a war. Even ignoring how incredibly over-stretched its military is, the US would have a hell of a time doing anything, even just airstrikes, and no-one else would support them. Oh, and there's the fact that the entire south of Iraq would erupt in revolt... I once heard a quote that went along the lines of "Iran could take Basra with a truck full of clerics and a loudspeaker" and that's about the size of it. War on Iran = incredibly stupid to the point that it just can't happen. But as I say, whatever, nuclear weapons suck but the world situation won't substantially change when Iran gets the bomb. Iran has no geopolitical reason to start a nuclear war, they'd be erased very quickly. It wouldn't even be anything close to an ICBM, and they'd only get to use a bomb once and then... BAM. Iran knows that there are several countries that can hurl times the kilotonnage at them, from around the world, in a few minutes. Mutually Assured Destruction still applies here, it kept the peace in the Cold War, even though both sides had thousands of weapons and people thought the Commies were fucking nuts. It'll keep the peace with an isolated country with only the barest of nuclear arsenals. The "oh they might help terrorists" thing is also a weak argument, ignorant and vaguely racist allusions to the WTC nonwithstanding. Firstly, not all terrorism is equal, and in the ME a distinction must be drawn between anti-Israel stuff like Hezbollah, which is worlds away from the multinational revolutionary death cults such as Al Qaeda. Supporting the former is common policy, yes, but supporting the latter isn't. Moreover, in a world where more than one country is threatening to use nukes on a country which sponsors an act of terrorism on its soil (go check out Chirac's policy regarding state-sponsored terrorism and nuclear responses), this'd be too risky. Iran's run by conservative assholes, but it's not run by crazy people. Iran wants nuclear weapons for exactly the same reason Israel does. It's a security thang, the open secret of nuclear weapons strengthens one's bargaining position and makes one secure in what is an extremely unstable region. Looking at Iran's geopolitical position, they've got Central Asia including Afghanistan on one side, the Caucasus region up there as well, the shambles that is Iraq on another side, and a Pakistan rife with Sunni extremists on a third. I'd be pretty big on security too. Iran is after its own security and prestige within the world, and with their stogidly conservative government they're no more a nuclear danger than Israel or China. And we can't stop them anyway. Frankly I'd be much more worried about India and Pakistan. That's nuclear danger number one. They've got a readymade TRIGGER for a war with a scarily short fuse, and they both already have nuclear weapons. (edited by Arwon on 05-10-06 09:30 AM) |
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Arwon Bazu Since: 11-18-05 From: Randwick, Sydney, NSW, Australia Last post: 5909 days Last view: 5909 days |
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| I think the word youse are looking for is "oligopoly" | |||
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Arwon Bazu Since: 11-18-05 From: Randwick, Sydney, NSW, Australia Last post: 5909 days Last view: 5909 days |
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| God, some of you people are anal about what should and shouldn't be taught. Lighten up... education isn't about indoctrination and people aren't automatons. Education's about teaching ways of thinking and giving people mental tools for dealing successfully with life. It's not about carefully choosing what people do and don't get expoed to.
Whatever happened to the concept of a comprehensive liberal education? Maybe we should just turn everything back over to the fucking Jesuits. (edited by Arwon on 05-19-06 02:29 PM) |
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Arwon Bazu Since: 11-18-05 From: Randwick, Sydney, NSW, Australia Last post: 5909 days Last view: 5909 days |
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| You know, the funny thing is they actually do. Mate of mine studies petroleum engineering, it's surprising how progressive the thinking of the industry is, in some ways.
They know they've got a finite product and they need to diversify or be at the forefront of replacement options, or they go out of business. The trick for the energy companies is to stay on top of this to maintain their market dominance, without creating something that accidentally utterly undermines their market position. The renewables/alternative energy revolution when it comes will be sponsored by Big Oil. |
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Arwon Bazu Since: 11-18-05 From: Randwick, Sydney, NSW, Australia Last post: 5909 days Last view: 5909 days |
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Originally posted by SilvershieldOriginally posted by ArwonFine, my religion will be taught to our nation's seven-year-old kids too. And if you object, then you're being anal about it. Fine by me, we do have religion in our schools here, it's no big deal. Exposure to many things is fine. It doesn't matter though, because no-one gets "converted" or anything like that... what happens is that it turns into a big joke. This is because religion seems kinda, uh, dumb to the majority of us who aren't religious, and so it turns in to "get the religion teacher angry or ask her dumb questions to send her off on weird tangents" and everyone thinks the class is funny and a waste of time. Then I realise I have dog shit on my shoe and so I remove it with pages of the bible because that's the only paper handy. Then the teacher insults my best friend because he is gay, and since he's in his political crusader phase he threatens the school and so it becomes an optional class and the religion teacher befriends a pregnant slut instead since no-one's gonna show up when they can have a free period after lunch. Good times. So what's my point here? Oh, yeah, go nuts, try and teach your religion in schools. The point isn't what's getting taught, the subject matter is really quite secondary since indoctrination is incredibly ineffective. The point is learning study methods, critical thinking, information management strategies, all those mental tools you need. School can't teach you a fraction of what you might need to know about life, it can only help you so you can do it yourself later on. So again, everyone needs to lighten the fuck up about educational content and realise that kids aren't paying attention anyway. (edited by Arwon on 05-20-06 02:00 PM) |
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Arwon Bazu Since: 11-18-05 From: Randwick, Sydney, NSW, Australia Last post: 5909 days Last view: 5909 days |
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| No, there really isn't. Scripture when I was 7 was pretty much just as doumb, just with bratty little 7 year olds instead of smart-ass teenagers. You underestimate the ability of kids to simply not absorb information, and certainly you treat them like automatons for whom what they get told at age 7 controls their lives. Bollocks to that. At best you can have a kind of temporary hold over kids to scared of authority to act out... but by the time we reach teenage yers we're already laughing t or forgetting or ignoring most of what we learned in our younger days.
SOCIAL ENGINEERING DOESN'T REALLY WORK which means the battles over control of schools are pretty dumb. Honestly, if you're worried about indoctrination go fight the bloody advertising industry, they're far better at it. The point is you're never going to teach EVERYTHING, so the idea of being even-handed and equal with it is absurd. Teachers need some free reign to teach what they think will engage kids minds, not just some proscribed cirriculum all people must follow. Just relax, stop being anal retentive about indoctrination, and realise that a gay fairy tale does not matter at all and is entirely valid and appropriate. Seriously, I wish all these god damn "pro-family" (how did that term get hijacked by such a narrow band of cranky crusaders?) would just fuck off and let people do their damn jobs. You know nothing about this teacher or school, you know nothing about how they do their jobs, all you have is one half-assed sensational news article designed to trigger Pavlovian responses about the American kulturkampf and some weird conviction that anything gay is part of some insidious agenda to gay-ify your kids and make them do the buttseks. Finally, it's not the same material. It's a sodding fairy tale. A silly little story designed to pass the time and make the litle blighters sit still and listen to you. They're not discussing politics or social issues, they're not discussing sex, they're reading a damn story. (edited by Arwon on 05-20-06 09:19 PM) |
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Arwon Bazu Since: 11-18-05 From: Randwick, Sydney, NSW, Australia Last post: 5909 days Last view: 5909 days |
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| Nah, hit em young and at best you've got 'em for a few years.
How else do you explain the fact that Catholic schools are actully more or less factories for militant atheists? |
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Arwon Bazu Since: 11-18-05 From: Randwick, Sydney, NSW, Australia Last post: 5909 days Last view: 5909 days |
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| Kosovo is a different kettle of fish to Montenegro. In the republic of Yugoslavia, Montenegro was one of the 6 constituent replublics and thus a constitutionally seperate entity with ready-made paths to independence.
Kosovo, however, not only is not a republic, merely a region of Serbia, but it's also the ancestral homeland of Serbian history and Serbian nationalism, an area that has gradually been populated with Albanians. Independence was never on the cards until the Kosovo Liberation Army radicalised and became militant, provoked a massively excessive Serbian backlash, and somehow got NATO and the UN to intervene to the extent of making Kosovar independence likely despite the fact that no-one in the region (Greece, Macedonia, Serbia, Bosnia) except Albania wants it. The breakup of Yugoslavia was a series of regrettable tragedies. I really think the region was better of united under a non-discriminatory federal system. |
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Arwon Bazu Since: 11-18-05 From: Randwick, Sydney, NSW, Australia Last post: 5909 days Last view: 5909 days |
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| Bus to Canberra. See my family, sort out some unfinished business with someone--oddly enough the end of the world would have a wonderful clarifying effect. What better place to see the world end than there. (edited by Arwon on 05-23-06 09:05 AM) |
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Arwon Bazu Since: 11-18-05 From: Randwick, Sydney, NSW, Australia Last post: 5909 days Last view: 5909 days |
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| The vast majority of water on the planet isn't in a usable form though. That and an ever-increasing population needing a finite and fixed water-supply makes water scarcity a massive issue. Doubly so in a place like Australia.
Ooops, just missed this bit of nonsense:
Amazing how people forget 7th grade geography. Antarctica is a landmass with massive sheets of ice sitting on top of it. Same deal with Greenland, and there's any number of glaciers and so forth with water locked up in them. The melting of floating ice shelves isn't necesarily the main danger, but a precursor to something bigger. Also, if we're talking about science here... what happens to something as it heats up? That's right - thermal expansion. The water temperature increasing will lead to rising sea levels. This is actually the main likely cause of sea-level rising, the melting of ice shelves and glaciers is just a nice added bonus. |
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| Acmlm's Board - I3 Archive - - Posts by Arwon |
