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How to respond to bigotry with tolerance and integrity.

Payback says...

If you wanna get technical, not a single human is native to Australia. We all get traced back to sub-Saharan Africa. All the whites could be classified as invasive species, too.

newtboy said:

Hey dumb bitch....you're an immigrant too, unless you're aborigine, which I seriously doubt. Go back to your country and stop taking money out of Australia, you ignorant taker.
I didn't know they had Faux news in Australia.

I guess I failed the tolerance test.

Dear Future Generations: Sorry

oritteropo says...

Food waste has different causes in different places.

For instance, 45% of tomatoes harvested in Nigeria are lost due to poor Food Supply Chain management. In Kenya 15-35% of their crops are wasted due to the high specifications on appearance by European Union supermarkets. In other places food is wasted because there's no easy way to transport it to markets. In most African nations most of the losses occur early in the food supply chain, but in Europe and North America the losses are more likely to occur much closer to home.

According to http://www.worldfooddayusa.org/food_waste_the_facts consumers in industrialised countries waste almost as much food every year as the entire net food production of sub-Saharan Africa (222 million vs. 230 million tons).

Australians discard 20% of the food we purchase (total waste is 4.06 million tonnes of food every year). This works out fairly similar to the 10kg per person per month in the link above for the USA.

There is no new technology required to dramatically improve on these figures, it mostly just requires a desire to do better (and perhaps a bit of education).

newtboy said:

Well, you do have a point....but I think 10 billion Nepali would still overburden the biosphere. It probably would only take <2 billion Americans (or far less, I'm just blind guessing) to overburden it. Given my druthers, we would have a total population under 1 billion, and make it so those wanting >3 children have to commit suicide to let their baby be born, essentially stopping population growth permanently.

Yes, solving food waste without massive expense could go a long way....but how? Most food waste is a factor of transportation cost. If it costs more to ship the food than it's 'worth', it will be allowed to rot. Figuring out a distribution method for getting excess food products to the needy for free is going to make someone billions of dollars if it's ever done. Unfortunately, without energy free teleportation, I don't see it happening on a large scale. Small scale local solutions (such as http://videosift.com/video/Fridge-Outside-Restaurant-Turns-Leftovers-Into-Free-Meals ) can have impact, but won't solve the problem completely.

The REAL Reason You're Circumcised

lucky760 says...

I've heard reports from several men who had sex before and after and said there was zero difference in sensation.

I circumcised my boys but not at all because of aesthetics, nor to "look like me", and especially not for any kind of religious reason.

We weren't dead-set against leaving them un-cut. In fact, we initially figured we'd just let them be natural.

One reason we decided to go ahead with it is we heard about lots of uncircumcised men have issues that require them to have it done later in life (e.g., phimosis, etc.), but the bigger reason was recent (at that time) studies showed strong evidence that circumcised men are at substantially lower risk for serious life-threatening diseases such as HIV and penile cancer (that results from HPV).

>> Yep, it's fucking barbaric. It is genital mutilation of children, period.

Talk about misinformation from a bunch of barbarians.

It's more barbaric to be completely close-minded, backward-thinking, and ignorant as to why there might possibly exist valid reasons to provide your children an almost 100% chance to avoid a plethora of penis-related problems and life-threatening diseases for their entire life in exchange for what's really a very minor procedure when done soon after birth.

The reasons against it? "It's fucking barbaric." Because... why again? "It just is," I'm sure is the best possible response.

The reasons in favor of it? Don't be so glib. Read the research.

Science Daily from Jan 2010:

Other epidemiological studies have shown that male circumcision is associated with significant reductions in HIV acquisition in men.

The strongest evidence for a cause-and-effect relationship between circumcision and HIV risk reduction came from three randomized-control trials in sub-Saharan Africa, where the circumcision rate is relatively low and the HIV infection rate is relatively high. All three demonstrated a more than 40 percent reduction in HIV acquisition among circumcised men.

The largest of these three studies -- in Rakai, Uganda -- was led by Dr. Ronald H. Gray, an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins and the scientific paper's senior author. Dr. Gray's group collected penile swabs from all of the circumcision trial study participants, which provided the data for the new TGen-Johns Hopkins study.

The new study found that circumcision -- the removal of the foreskin, or prepuce, from the penis -- eliminates an area of mucous membrane and dramatically changes the penile bacterial ecosystem. Significantly, TGen's analysis of more than 40 types of bacteria, using a 16S rRNA gene-based pyrosequencing approach, suggests that the introduction of more oxygen following circumcision decreases the presence of anaerobic (non-oxygen) bacteria and increases the amount of aerobic (oxygen-required) bacteria.


American Cancer Society:
HPV can also cause cancer of the penis in men. HPV infection is found in about half of all penile cancers. It’s more common in men with HIV and those who have sex with other men.

There is no approved screening test to find early signs of penile cancer. Because almost all penile cancers start under the foreskin of the penis, they may be noticed early in the course of the disease.

...

The 2 main risk factors for genital HPV infection in men are having many sex partners and not being circumcised.

The risk of being infected with HPV is strongly linked to having many sex partners.

Men who are circumcised (have had the foreskin of the penis removed) have a lower chance of getting and staying infected with HPV. Men who have not been circumcised are more likely to be infected with HPV and pass it on to their partners.


Facts like these are "the REAL reasons" my sons are circumcised.

xxovercastxx said:

Were you circumcised later in life so you are able to compare sex before and after? If not, then no, you can't say that.

Africans Don't Like African-Americans

chingalera says...

Indeed Yogi, the term African American should refer to anyone who can claim total or partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa. I believe there's already terminology which everybody can feel comfortable with, with which to refer to, 'everyone'.

If you wanna blame someone for for having to hear the term, blame Jesse Fucking Jackson. You wanna blame someone for the word nigger or negro, it's time to start pointing fingers at the fucking Spaniards, and we have only pussies and assholes to blame for political correctness.

Concrete Canvas Tent

aaronfr says...

Fair enough. Every crisis is different. My mind went straight to central sub-Saharan Africa and refugee situations. Just important to use the right tool at the right time in the right place when it comes to these things.

chingalera said:

Certain places would be prohibitive-What about in Haiti after the quake? They used these and used sea water most likely.
Once they are up they can be used for a long time as permanent structures for housing.

How to find your way home

BoneRemake says...

>> ^Sotto_Voce:

>> ^BoneRemake:
I wonder if that actually works over there. I think I can assume not a lot may read or write, so you can not put it down. You either have a great memory or you stop for directions an awful lot.

She's from Jamaica, not sub-Saharan Africa, so your assumption of mass illiteracy would be incorrect.


Your assuming my assumptions are wrong without knowing for certain yourself,give me statistics of her region not some popycock national 80+ literacy rate bullshit.

How to find your way home

Sotto_Voce says...

>> ^BoneRemake:

I wonder if that actually works over there. I think I can assume not a lot may read or write, so you can not put it down. You either have a great memory or you stop for directions an awful lot.


She's from Jamaica, not sub-Saharan Africa, so your assumption of mass illiteracy would be incorrect.

Malaria Parasite Invades Human Red Blood Cell

wraith says...

Oh look, someone with a "The Invisible Hand Of The Market will sheperd and protect us all" attitude!

Your argument is self defeating: Quinine has been in use for a very long time and no really better drug has been discvoered. Yet "there are more than 225 million cases of malaria, killing around 781,000 people each year according to the World Health Organisation's 2010 World Malaria Report, 2.23% of deaths worldwide. The majority of deaths are of young children in sub-Saharan Africa. Ninety percent of malaria-related deaths occur in sub-Saharan Africa." (From wikipedia)

I don't know of a single death from Erectile Dysfunction that could have been prevented if Viagra would have been invented earlier.

>> ^Mashiki:

>> ^wraith:
And since there is way more money to be made from giving old white guys a few last boners than saving millions of por people from malaria, we still don't have one effective drug against it.
Three cheers for privatizing the medical sector!

Oh look. Someone with a anti-rich, anti-white guy rant. I mean it's not like we haven't been using things like Quinine for nearly 500 years to treat it or anything, and it's not like europeans didn't figure out what worked or anything.
Cheers. That "private medical sector" did just fine.

Rachel Carson's Silent Spring

Skeeve says...

While indiscriminate spraying of DDT is obviously stupid and dangerous, the rise in worldwide malaria rates in response to the restrictions on DDTs use have killed hundreds of thousands to millions of humans.

Now, unfortunately, it's too late. Like not using all of one's prescribed antibiotics, we allowed mosquitoes to develop a resistance to DDT when we stopped using it and it doesn't work anymore (at least not as well).

By the early 1960s we had malaria cases in India down to almost zero from 75 Million in 1947. Sri Lanka went from 2.8 million cases in 1946 to 17 cases in 1963. Malaria was on the verge of extinction in these places.

Then we lost DDT thanks to Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring". By 1976 there were 6.4 million cases in India. Today it sits between 2 and 3 million cases a year and India is one of the luckier ones. Throughout most of sub-Saharan Africa more than 50% of all children are infected. In Zambia, in 2005, there were 1353 cases for every 1000 children under 5 years old. That means a huge percent of the children are infected more than once a year.

Was DDT dangerous to spray indiscriminately? Absolutely. Was it saving millions of lives? Without a doubt.

Meet Miss Namibia 2008

alizarin says...

Whites of Portuguese, Dutch, German, British and French ancestry make up about 7% of the population; they form the second-largest population of European ancestry, both in terms of percentage and actual numbers, in Sub-Saharan Africa after South Africa.[28] Most Namibian whites and nearly all those of mixed race speak Afrikaans and share similar origins, culture, and religion as the white and coloured populations of South Africa. A smaller proportion of whites (around 30,000) trace their family origins directly back to German colonial settlers and maintain German cultural and educational institutions. Nearly all Portuguese settlers came to the country from the former Portuguese colony of Angola.[29]

- Wikipedia

I was looking forward to seeing a hot black chick though.

Putting faith in its place

HadouKen24 says...

So, using this line of thought I can logically reject the various arguments that posit 'religion' and 'faith' are negative influences merely because there are some people who happen to have been part of a religion have had questionable motives. To do otherwise would be a classic example of an ad hominem logical fallacy, no?

No, that would not be an ad hominem. It would be a (perhaps rather weak) inductive argument. Since the argument goes to the desirability of religion (whether or not it is a negative influence), rather than the truth claims of religion, it is perfectly valid to talk about ways in which members of that religion may or may not be influenced to behave well or poorly.

I have found no document to this date from a major religious charitable institution that states that mandatory conversion is required before assistance is distributed.

You mean a major Christian institution, don't you, rather than a major "religious" one? There are Jewish and Muslim charities that only offer aid to Jews and Muslims (this is significantly more toxic for Muslim charities, as Judaism is not in the practice of seeking converts).

It is rarely done, among Christian ministries, so overtly as to leave an obvious paper trail. Rather, at the individual hospitals, charity wards, and so on, non-Christians are turned away if they refuse to convert. Exactly how common this is, is very difficult to tell, but it's certainly common enough to constitute a problem.

It is not a problem, as I said, in the US or the industrialized world. Your personal experiences with charities operating in the US or Europe is not representative. It is a problem in sub-Saharan Africa and parts of Southeast Asia.

It is also not, generally speaking, a problem with US organizations that take public funds. Federal rules prohibit government money being used for proselytizing. In fact, a small number of US religious charities have refused to accept government funds under Bush's "Faith-based Initiatives" program precisely for that reason; it would restrict their ability to require service attendance when providing aid.

A Call For A Siftquisition: Zifnab (Parody Talk Post)

Even Bill Gates thinks Vista sucks !

snoozedoctor says...

In the end analysis, a man's worth is not what's in his bank account, but what he has added, or subtracted, from humanity. There seems to be plenty of sentiment that he has detracted for valid reasons including, software that makes you pull your hair out, monopolistic business practices, the list can go on and on. That Gates can afford to make such huge contributions without sacrifice doesn't change the FACT that the donations ARE being made. I'm no saint, but I've done mission work in sub-saharan Africa and I know what impact billions of dollars in aid can have there. So, I'm not getting off the charity thing. 2 scenarios, (1) a world with no Bill Gates- uncertain, can't say how it would have turned out (2) a world with Bill Gates - personal computers and billions in charity. I'll take option 2.

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