zapatos

Jesus Fucking Christ. Feel better now that you've purged years worth of frustration from your system?

It was another way of saying "the United States". No need to make a negative interpretation when someone uses creative writing.

Possibly. Boxing for example has 17 weight classes with two categories (amateur or professional) and additionally split by gender. That's a total of possibly 68 breakdowns in an attempt to keep things fair.

Nice. +1

I accept that change is difficult for many people. I just wish they wouldn't throw up their hands in defeat without even trying. For example?

If you are going to resort to hyperbole please start reading the thread from the beginning. This is a serious discussion and we are treating it as such.

It is. Not all conservatives think the same way on all issues. Of course. I cannot tell what motivates an individual, but history tells us that more conservatives than progressives will take exception to the pre-announcement.

To further clarify the point I didn't make very well earlier... By definition, conservatives tend to conserve and be somewhat averse to change, especially social change. Thus, I think the objections being raised by some about Biden's pre-selection announcement have something to do with the simple fact that we are progressing. Since conservatives tend to be somewhat averse to change they will often do a lot more analysis and questioning about all the trappings surrounding a change that is happening. When gay marriage was such a hotbed of debate, conservatives tended to question whether there could simply be a kind of 'separate but equal' arrangement, or whether or not gay marriage would 'destroy the sanctity of marriage', or why gay people couldn't take it slowly to let straight people get used to the idea over time. Progressives on the other hand were more inclined to simply say 'just let it be legal already!' And now that we've had gay marriage for a while, those concerns conservatives had no longer seem so significant to many. A more recent example is Hollywood's move to be more racially and culturally aware when choosing actors for a role. For example, not too distant arguments that you should pick the 'most qualified' candidate for the role regardless of skin color/culture were ignored, and very few people complained, when Steve Spielberg announced ahead of time that he would choose an Hispanic for the role of Maria in West Side Story. And just to show how important a qualification skin color was to Spielberg for the role, he chose Rachel Zegler, who had exactly two previous credits to her name, one of them being a podcast. Thus, I think that recent concerns raised regarding Biden's pre-announcement are part of the nature of the conservative mind, are part of the process we must go through as changes occur, and will not seem to be very important in the not too distant future. Similarly, I suspect that in the future conservatives will not be as concerned as they are today about trans-gender athletes, pronouns, politically correct language, and incandescent light bulbs.

My apologies for a very murky post. I was not trying to say the pre-announcement had nothing to do with race. I was saying the objections were not because the candidate was a person of color. The objections were because the President said the candidate would be a person of color. No one here objected to the fact that ultimately a black person was selected to sit on the Supreme Court. I'll be back. My 3 month old grandson is demanding immediate attention...

I meant everyone here. The pre-announcement.

The thing that I have the most trouble with is that everyone who objected to the announcement also claims the objection has nothing to do with race. And yet of the hundreds (thousands?) of announcements Biden has made, on issues or initiatives large and small, the only announcement that seems worthy of criticizing for the words he used, is the one that has to do with race. Now I recognize that the concern raised is more nuanced than that, but it follows a pattern whereby anytime a minority takes a step closer to equality, their progress often undergoes an extreme amount of scrutiny. Look at gay marriage, LGBTQ rights, women voting or moving into fields previously occupied by men, interracial marriage, or absolutely any step forward made by blacks in the US. I suspect we could devote an entire thread to what motivate people on debates surrounding civil liberties.

Which is better than my one math joke... What's the square root of 69? Eight something.

Clearly that is not the equivalence beecee was making.

One of the reasons the Right often seems worse than the Left is that the Right has so many obnoxious politicians that the Left does not match. Lots of TV time for them which amplifies their worst traits. Politicians on the Left may excuse bad behavior, but they don't typically encourage it.

Riots at the WTO conference in 1999 in Seattle, "Occupy" Wall Street, antifa, the Weather Underground, some of the violence at BLM rallies, violent confrontations against far-right rallies...

This made me laugh as I've seen it frequently. People who on the science threads present coherent, logical and reasonable arguments that I cannot help but admire for their quality, will resort to hyperbole and emotion on the humanity forums. It seems so out of character when I see it that I have to follow subsequent comments before recognizing they were serious.

There is only one way you could know that to be true, which would confirm a suspicion I've had of you.

I obviously can't know the thoughts of Biden so I'll only speak for myself, but I suspect based on past actions and comments that Biden feels roughly the same way. The selection of KBJ was racist in neither intent nor fact, even though the selection criteria included being a black woman. The selection included the anticipated benefits of gaining Biden popularity with whites, asians, rich people, poor people, and of course blacks among others. The primary benefit was to finally recognize the equality of a long marginalized group while placing an outstanding liberal judge on the Supreme Court. Since Biden is unable to control the perceptions of others, and since any methodology of selecting a black woman was likely to cause turmoil anyway, he simply chose the method he felt would work best and went for it, and let the chips fall where they may. His goal was NOT to minimize the discomfort his selection would have on certain people. When it is a question of doing the right thing, I believe you do it and simply accept that people who don't like it will find a reason to object. The objections to Biden's method are a natural part of any significant public action and go a long way to help pull people into the future; talking about previously unheard of changes makes them more common and easier to accept. The concern about how Biden went about this is reminiscent of the reaction to blacks sitting at the white lunch counter, interracial marriage, gay marriage, transgender students in schools sports, women working "men's" jobs, and a long list of other changes. People don't like change and prefer to be eased into it slowly. The first time these things happened the naysayers were up in arms, complaining about how they are going about it, but at this point the uproar would come if you tried to STOP a black person from sitting at a lunch counter. Personally I'm a fan of ripping the bandage off all at once. It may hurt, and it may even not work on the first try, but it is the right thing to do. We shouldn't deprive people of what is rightfully theirs due to the discomfort of others.

You have again completely missed my point. I agree that it is the way it sounds when spoken out loud. I am saying that not all abbreviation are said out loud as written. "AFAIK, I want to talk about WYSIWG with you F2F. I'll BRB, as I have to get B2W B4 my boss starts looking 4 me." When you read that to someone you don't say all the letters and numbers of the abbreviations. You say the words that they stand for. "As far as I know, I want to talk about wizzywig with you face to face. I'll be right back as I have to get back to work before my boss starts looking for me." "I just bought [a/an] 🐘 for the zoo." Do you say "I just bought a picture of an elephant for the zoo"? Or do you say "I just bought an elephant for the zoo"? Most people expect you to see the symbol for the elephant then to say the word "elephant". Similarly you will see the symbols that represent "what you see is what you get" and to say the word 'wizzywig', or possibly 'what you see is what you get'. No one expects you to see WYSIWYG then to say "W Y S I W Y G". Thanks for the off-topic aside. 😀 For some weird reason I like discussing grammar, punctuation, pronunciation, etc. Even though it may well end up in the trash can.

Well, if you say so. And I am saying it is said "Supreme Court seat". If I write AFAIK, in your brain do you say "AFAIK" or "as far as I know"?

I'm unsure you are correct in this case. If the writer only intended SC as shorthand for Supreme Court, then the writer would reasonably expect you to read the line as "a Supreme Court seat", even though it says "a SC seat". "SC" is not an 'official' abbreviation like FBI is.

Just to be clear, it was an analogy and thus imperfect. The idea was that if blacks were mistreated, then to make up for that mistreatment you do something extra for blacks. That was not part of the analogy. The idea was that going forward, all would be treated equally. However, that is not enough. You must also make up for past harm. Which is of course how our justice system works. If I commit a crime but never again commit another crime, I still must pay my debt for that original crime I committed. I am not 'let off the hook' for that past crime just because I never commit any crimes going forward. Yes, I can. But it seems so obvious to me that if our actions caused harm in the past, then we must take direct action to repair those harms. It is fundamental fairness and I cannot see how anyone would object to that. Thus my thought is if someone is uncomfortable, it probably has to do with the mechanism employed to rectify the harm done, rather than the fact that the harm was rectified. I think a fundamental difference between the opposing points of view in this thread is that group 'A' thinks "this was a poor way to fix the problem", and group 'B' thinks "poor way to fix the problem or not, I don't care, we finally got the right result and it was long overdue, and that is more important than any mistakes that might have been made in the way we went about it". I wouldn't be surprised. But I suspect that no matter which way was chosen there would be critics. It is difficult to know ahead of time the best way forward. Thus you pick a path and execute it. And while you and others in this thread object to Biden's announcement during the campaign, his 'pre-announcement' doesn't seem to be a widespread concern as that is not what others in the press seemed to object to. It seems that most people objected to her past record of court ruling, rather than Biden's pre-announcement. Therefore, while some may object to that pre-announcement, it seems that it was not a major faux pas. As I said, above, the view of many of us is that the good done far outweighs what some view as a clumsy process.

I understand why you say that, and I don't feel the need to try to get you to move to a different conclusion. But I will offer my own viewpoint which interprets the same set of facts differently. When a group is discriminated against it is not perceived by some to be discriminatory to single out that group for reparations. In fact, it is not really possible to make up for past harm done to a group without singling out that group. That is the reasoning behind Affirmative Action. Ensuring that future actions and decisions by government no longer favor white people does not make up for past harm. It only ensures no future harm. To make up for past harm you must identify the group that was harmed and do something extra for them. If I unfairly singled you out and didn't give you a raise at work for years, then after a decade I proclaim I've seen the foolishness of my actions and vow to treat everyone equally going forward, you will be happy that from then on you will be treated fairly and get a raise every year just like the others. But you and I might also think it reasonable that I single you out above the others for a bonus. Some others might think it is hypocritical for me to give you something extra when I've just said I'm going to treat everyone equally, but some of us, including me, would find that to be fair. So, while you may find giving blacks a bonus to make up for part harms is hypocritical, to me is seem like the right thing to do.

Did you get lost on the way back from the bathroom? 😁 The further the galaxy, the larger the redshift. But this is only true on the scale of superclusters. For galaxies that are gravitationally bound the expansion of space has no impact on redshift. If a galaxy is receding at constant velocity, the redshift will be constant. The recession of nearby galaxies will not be due to the expansion of space, and therefore they can be receding at a constant velocity. Edit: x-posted with Genady.

Um, isn't it obvious how long an immortal lives?