Ben No.3

Good luck to the kid. And to you.

I know I know; rule of law is a terrible thing isn't it? Would be a much better world if the police could just arrest people whenever they are under suspicion of having pushed someone of a bike.

Seriously though, Georg Elser was a good guy.

I did watch the apple presentation yesterday. To be honest, what it reminded me most of was some sort of sect... the speakers were using a very specific language and very specific gestures and mimic. It started off with an in memoriam to Steve Jobs which almost felt like what we call Götzenverehrung (which kind of means idol worship, but has a different tone to it because "Götze" is a demeaning word for a different (as in, different from your) god,) especially considerinh their language and gestures mimicked Jobs. The products were presented not as technical gadgets or even as lifestyle gadgets but as life changing or at least life forming wonders. Heck, they sought to present themselves as a fundamentally life changing force; in the beginning they mentioned how they now call apple stores "apple townsquares". Think about what that does rhetorically... it incorporates what actually is a shop into everyday language as a normal gathering place, not unlike the word "church". And lastly, it is all about getting money from its worshippers, like a sect. And yes I am writing this from my iPhone SE, why do you ask?

Ive been curious though, if an Islamic man gets 72 virgins upon death, what does an Islamic woman get?And where do the virgins come from? If they are dead actual virgins, doesn't that just incentivise premarital sex?

My point is that is seems weird the Chinese government would support the higher numbers

Fake newsWell... Ben might be joking, but I would say that Germany, being a representative democracy with more public oversight into the accumulation of statistics, is more reliable than China in terms of things like suicide rates. It's like the article you posted said, it's tough to compare suicide rates when you can't trust all of the information, sometimes due to deceit, sometimes due to bad design, and even other times on account simple lack of reporting or care. I was semi joking. According to the "more info" link, the new number are due to one study by a Hong Kong Uni. I guess if they were reliable enough, the government would use them...https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_in_China

Fake news

What do you use as that measure of happiness? Most of the developed world has run down and industrial areas that rival the worst of China. If it's such a miserable place were people are poor then how come is one of the biggest markets for movie and games, with companies going so far as to censor themselves to appeal to the Chinese standards.I think suicide rates are a good objective measure of happiness https://web.archive.org/web/20130926142518/http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5i1FL2q8ZO_Z93-mOqOx5eSYQW36Q?docId=CNG.fe11c1b55d60e484a37a458dccdd1b34.8f1&hl=en "BEIJING — A person tries to kill themselves in China every two minutes, the government and state media said Thursday, giving the country one of the highest suicide rates in the world. China's suicide rate is 22.23 people out of every 100,000, the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention said on its website." If I remember correctly (I think I heard something about these rates some months ago), those numbers have been dropping; but that is because more and more people live in the cities. If we compare China to the British empire, the colonies equate the rural areas, where 75% of suicides happen, and the cities Britain.

Ah good example might be China. By all means, they have archived much in terms of wealth and power, but that doesn't make me want to live there. Economic progress is important, but neither a guarantee for societal progress nor a guarantee for well being. One doesn't have to be a developed culture to be a happy one.

I can see how someone looks at all the good and all the bad that a system produced and then decided to either like it or dislike it. But, and this is true for both sides, one sides views are a problem. If you say "this is the good, this is the evil; I think this side outweighs the other because of these reasons" that's fine. I may disagree, but that's fine. The problem just arises if we have "British Empire good cause pride" or "British Empire bad cause genocide". And honestly, if it comes down to choosing the lesser evil here, I'd say one should go with "bad". But it is a choice of lesser evil, and I think we can agree that it would be highly preferable if people were informed.

Well it's like saying that if you were saved from hypothermia you can thank Dr Mengele. Almost all we know about hypothermia comes from Nazies experiments on people.Sometimes some good comes out of the bad. Like some of the most crucial elements of modern court rules were invented by Spanish inquisition and such. You need to acknowledge some things that are factual but don't sit well with you morally. This is different though... you point out an existing correlation. The video, however, wants to point out a causation. It says that all of these great things existed strictly because of the British Empire and it's ideology. But thins like infrastructure and the import of western ideology are more of a byproduct of colonialism. The essence of it is still the domination and exploitation of other people for your own benefits. Pointing to the US as an example of positive British influence is flawed as well, since the Americans we are talking about are of British descent; therefore equal in terms of race. Ignoring atrocities carried out by any imperial power, be it coups, famines, shootings or bombardments and be they carried out under the Union Jack, the Star Spangled or the Red Banner, is to deny them. And that is exactly what this video is doing. See I'm not denying that the British build roads. I'm just pointing out that they have done horrible things that we can not and must not ignore. And this video is at best ignoring them and at worst trying to cover them up; which has to be and should be criticised. Hitler also did a great deal for the German economy, especially in his early years. Stalin pushed the USSR forward decades. Mao united China. But we have to judge people primarily by their most significant actions; and for any of these that is mass killings. Pointing out their achievements is not wrong and historically interesting; but reducing them to their achievements is morally highly wrong and historically very misleading.

That's just utterly insane. Really is

Like that time they build concentration camps? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Boer_War Or the time they created famines in India? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Famine_in_India

can't say much 'bout the anthem, but their flag always struck us as being a bit, well, plain. HA! Good Fun! thought they adopted a different one after '45?

Also, the French easily have the best national anthem and the best-looking flag anywhere in the world. Vive la republique

Good luck to your family

I take it that the bomb disposal went off without a hitch? I haven't been following the story, but if the bomb detonated I imagine it would be the top article everywhere. Yes, all went well

I just (well, two hours ago) got home after the evacuation; and honestly it's pretty fascinating.... we're amongst the first, and there's literally no one all the streets and every! single! Window! Is dark. But what probably disturbs me the most is the silence tbh

We should however consider the possibility of the frequency of these sort of events greatly increasing due to global warming. Consequently, we have to think about ways of combating these issues. While progress is being made, it is being made far too slow... we have to think more radically. Replacing tree based paper with agriculture based paper would do a great deal in regards to keeping CO2 levels at bay. Fusion energy seems very promising so far... definitely much more so than most of the green energies; at least until we have actually useful batteries. But the ITER project seems to be very promising, and fusion energy could potentially provide safe and cheap energy to the world, assuming initial costs can be overcome. Eating significantly less meat would help us significantly much as well. Furthermore, we could greatly reduce the use of cars for example through introducing car free cities. Flights, especially cargo flights, at least within small areas such as Europe or the US and even over large distances might as well be done with zeppelins or some sort of zeppelin/plane hybrid like the Lockheed Martin P-791. Just some ideas.

I think he'll make the full eight years

Aren't American liberals generally supportive of less military might?

Damn... seems like I missed out