Hans Reiser, author of the ReiserFS file system for Linux, was arrested today by Oakland CA police - on suspicion of murdering his wife Nina, who has been missing since September 3.
She probably asked him for support.
Filed under: Open Source
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Repeat after me.Â
Tolerance is not acceptance. Acceptance is not approval. Approval is not a basic human right.
Gay marriage is a great example of this. When you’re intolerant of gays, what we generally call “homophobic”, you don’t just oppose gay marriage. You oppose being gay altogether. Tolerance, acceptance, and approval lead into the gay marriage question.
Filed under: Gay Rights, Philosophy, Politics
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First, anyone claiming Representative Foley is some sort of criminal is an idiot. What he has done is embarrassing, and distinctly outside the code of conduct for a Congressional Representative. He should lose his seat, which he has. But the fact is, he didn’t do anything illegal! In 33 states (including parts of his own represented state of Florida) and the District of Columbia the age of sexual consent is 16 or lower. Three states - Iowa, Missouri, and South Carolina - have the age of sexual consent set at 14, just as I recommend. Fully twenty-nine states explicitly provide the age of sexual consent as 16, without requiring partners to have a comparable age, and without explicitly specifying a higher age for homosexual relations. Since Foley has confined his activity to pages sixteen and older within the D.C. limits, our opinion of his behavior is irrelevant: sex with a sixteen year old is LEGAL in that jurisdiction, and since there are areas of his own state which provide a similar legal climate, it cannot be legitimately claimed that he has crossed state lines for the purpose of having sex with a minor.
Second, the Republican plan to build a 700 mile fence on the Mexican border is stupid. We are already seeing major repercussions in the farming community from a lack of migrant workers, because the increased scrutiny is making them afraid to migrate. This means that the migrant workers are poorer, the farmers are poorer, and the law of supply and demand sends the price of healthy food up. Manufacturers of crap like Twinkies and donuts, however, will be largely unaffected… thus encouraging the low-income American to eat less real food in favor of the much less expensive garbage that already makes us a nation of the obese. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Finally, Islam is not an aggressor. Islam is a victim. There is an irreducible proportion of violent assholes with terrorist tendencies in the world, and they need ignorant simple-minded people to take the actual risks in the battle against sensible humanity. While religion is not inherently ignorant or simple-minded, the ignorant and simple-minded are readily converted to religion, and it is in the direct interest of the violent assholes to convert those people to a religion which supports their goals. Islam is simply the latest in a string of religions which are supportive of those goals when appropriately twisted and misinterpreted; almost every religion on the planet has been so used. The criteria are simply an ability to claim that “God says you need to kill everyone” by twisting the scriptures, a sufficiently large population of ignorant and simple-minded people familiar with the scriptures, and a suitable mechanism to isolate people from rational discourse and critical thinking.
And on the unimportant front, Al Gore just said that cigarette smoking is a major contributor to global warming. For those who don’t happen to speak complete and total moron, that translates to “I invest no thought whatsoever in the words that come out of my mouth”.
Filed under: Gay Rights, Global Warming, Media, Philosophy, Politics, Religion
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