Do you mean no, you believe by force of law if your business is making cakes, you must print any and all messages(barring illegal hate speech) requested by customers?

A Muslim baker should be required by law to produce a cake depicting the prophet?

Pro-Choice bakers should be required by law to produce cakes with graphic imagery of aborted fetuses?

Jewish bakers shouldn't be allowed to refuse to make a birthday cake for Hitler's birthday?

I get that right to refuse to do certain kinds of business can be touchy, but IMO it's even more dangerous to start demanding business owners lose the freedom to decline business that although legal goes against their own values.

You're kidding, right? You dismiss snopes which clearly you didn't read since you claimed he offered no peer reviewed data that was included there, but you link quora.com and snidely tell me to read twice?! Lol.

From quora.com "Quora is not a source of information or an editor of information. Quora is a forum, just like yahoo answers. So basically Quora is neither credible and neither not credible."

Not so good, absolutely not peer reviewed, but I read it anyway....and I note it repeatedly misleadingly shows OVERALL homicide rates, not the topic (firearm homicides), except at the very end to claim looking at just firearm homicide rates when discussing firearm laws and their efficacy is dumb because murder is murder, and to try to pretend the trend hadn't reversed and shot up for years before the law change at the fastest rate on the chart, and reversed sharply again shortly afterwards, instead claiming a relatively steady decline (I guess hoping we won't look closely at the graph).
Looking at just firearm homicide rates seems to tell a different story.

The other two you mentioned weren't linked, so I bothered to search out the first to find it's behind pay walls, so unavailable...not wasting my time twice. I'll have to assume they're the same caliber.
You claim you personally produced some peer reviewed studies, what about them? You must have them available for free where they were reviewed and published, no? So far, you aren't convincing.

It's pretty horrific to think that this precipitous decline is being measured in reserves in a country with some of the stricter regulations on toxins.

Since you've noticed such a decline in insects where you are, have you noticed a corresponding increase in pill bugs (really crustaceans)? I have here in N Cali

The data of the study came out of Germany, where the effects of a change in temperature are much more moderate than in many other areas. Basically, this decline is attributed mostly due to farming, the saturation of everything with pesticides, and, generally speaking, the destruction of the ecosphere. Even worse, this is in a country with comparably extensive regulation on all these matters, unlike, say, India.

As you say, this really is no bueno.

Driving past fields of rapeseed in the late '90s meant a windshield full of bugs. We used to head into the fields wearing yellow shirts just to see who can get the densest armor of bugs. Now, I can walk past the very same fields outside the town I grew up in with less than 5 bugs on a yellow shirt.

Or how about another anecdote: when I grew up, barbecue in my (grand-)parents yard meant paying attention to all the wasps, so that you don't swallow one by accident. I haven't seen a single one over several barbecues this year. Bees and bumblebees are still around, though less plentiful, but wasps are a complete no-show. Haven't seen a hornet in two years.

I take the view of SDGundamX that it's intended to be contextual based on the speaker but trying to force this kind of nuance into public discourse is a losing battle.

I also think the tack of shunning people / getting them fired for use the word hatefully is the wrong tack. Sunlight is the best disinfectant, just publicly and repeatedly call them an asshole.

Language arguments distract from the real driver of racism, income inequality. I suspect outright racial hatred - notions of racial inferiority/subjugation while still obviously present, are in decline.

I would instead guess the rate of police deaths, employment discrimination and many other biases are linked to the assumption that poorer means 'more likely to be a criminal'.

Getting soaked is a crock of BS. They're paying often times 20% effective tax rates.

And when income and wealth inequality is as bad as it is today, what you're pointing out points to how ridiculous the economic system is when almost half of Americans pay no federal income taxes and still see their effective income drop over the last four decades, while the rich have experienced steady income increases during that time.

IE, the inequality is so great, even if you literally don't have people pay taxes, it's still resulting in growing wealth inequality.

And I'm sure you're gonna claim that I'm suggesting pure income/wealth equality is what we want, which I'm not. However, it is absolutely essential to a functioning market economy that wealth and income inequality do not become too great, as that was one of the contributing factors to the Great Depression. If the economic lower class does not have money to purchase goods and services the businesses owned by the rich produce, those businesses will inevitably decline.

I don't agree that this statement is relevant to Apple.

Jobs is arguing that when you have a monopoly, your product people take a back seat to your sales/marketing guys. Fair enough, but that assumes Apple have a monopoly.
Far from it, they have:
- 13% of the smartphone market
- 24% of the tablet market (and that market is in decline)
- and a whopping 4% of the desktop market

How on any planet is that even close to a monopoly?

Don't get me wrong, I think Apple are in a bit of a creative slump at the moment. They desperately need new design blood.

Ignoring the rambling narrator, the few numbers we can see say even 200 GtC passes the tipping point in over 1/3 of models, assuming emissions peak soon, decline to current levels by 2030 and then decline much faster (all total pie in the sky optimism) hits 2 degrees rise by 2100, and the best case scenario estimate with aggressive mitigation (that we aren't doing) and as yet uninvented technology is 250-540GtC.
That's total failure and unavoidable doom.

To me, this is just rearranging the deck chairs on the titanic. I understand why some Christians and Christian organizations are trying to fight these culture wars, but it is completely futile. What difference does it make which flag is flying when the culture has basically completely rejected biblical Christianity. The moral decline that is happening is the bad fruit that comes out of that. If you chop off the fruit and branches, they will just grow back because you haven't dealt with the root system.

Good point, I was too lazy to post the link, my bad. List of quotes from people who Gary has misrepresented: http://www.bodyforwife.com/an-open-letter-to-gary-taubes/

(for newtboy, notice how this is not a vegan website, nor are the people complaining about Gary Taubes vegan researchers)


Sugar consumption going down since the late 90s https://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/data-mine/2014/02/25/surprise-american-sugar-consumption-is-on-the-decline

Indeed this video is about sugar, but it's a common strategy to use sugar to demonise carbs(the only research you will ever find where "carbs" are bad for you, always use sugar of some type). Every single popular diet today uses this kind of shitty research to back up their diets. They're all variations of low-carb: atkins, paleo, keto, isogenics etc because this is what sells the most animal products, which is a far more lucrative industry than grains and beans. But possibly more importantly it doesn't work in the long run! So you have repeat customers. They lose weight quickly for 6 months, then in 12-18 months time they are heavier than how they started.



BTW this is vegan http://www.blogto.com/restaurants/doomies-toronto/

You don't have to eat healthy all the time once you are at a stable weight and your other biosigns are good, pig out every now and then .

Life won't be so short this way ;-) (on average 13 years longer)

*promote the naked truth (in how the west now sees the US, at least).

"Some will cheer the decline of America, but I think we'll miss it when it's gone." Too true. Schadenfreude will only get us so far.

I wonder what the chances are of a united European leadership stepping up to the mark.

except google never forced you to use their products. You are free to boycott it and/or develop a better one (maybe more privacy oriented) if you don't like it.

government always forces you to do what they think is best for you without letting you the freedom to decline.

Jesus was pro-freedom, and he was anti-big-government. His principles are moral ones, and were never intended to be forced onto people. Charity stops being charity when the government forces people to give.

While you can try to be idealistic and point the finger at total CO2 emissions, it's not a practical target for developing countries like China.

It's not a matter of them trying to "grow their economy faster than their emissions". They are a developing country, and their economy will grow fast, whether you like it or not. Telling China to limit their total CO2 emission to pre 2005 values is like telling a teenager in the middle of puberty to limit their food consumption to the same amount as when they were 9 years old. It's just not an option.

Now you may say "But their total emissions is still increasing! This is just a farce and they're doing nothing!" Well, saying that they're doing nothing is not true. Do you know what China's emissions would look like if they did nothing to limit them? Having China's emissions plateau is already quite an achievement, as the alternative is far far worse.

Now you may say "China's not putting funds towards green energy!" Well, that's also not true. China already surpassed the US, in spending on renewable energy. In fact, China spent $103 billion on renewable energy in 2015, far more than the US, which only spent $44 billion. Also, they will continue to pour enormous amounts of resources into renewable energy, far more than any other country.

"But China is building more coal plants!" Well that's not really true either. China just scrapped over 100 coal power projects with a combined power capacity of 100 GW . Instead, the aforementioned investments will add over 130GW in renewable energy. Overall, Chinese coal consumption may have already peaked back in in 2013.

So in the world of reality, how is China doing in terms of combating global warming? It's doing a decent job. So no "@Diogenes", China is NOT the single biggest factor in our future success/failure, because it is already on track to meeting its targets.

Don't let China distract us from our own responsibilities and how shitty of a job Trump is doing.

i agree that, generally speaking, the best way to deal with stupidity is to let it expose and screw itself. but there is definitely a limit to that, a point where the stupid becomes too big to stop, and you have to take a stand before its too late.

I dont think that was the case here (though all I know of peterson is what was in the CBC article). But I would definitely protest if my university was paying an idiot a ton of money to give a speech where they could make themselves look smart; and lets not be naive, for all the calls for "free speech" and "debate", usually these speakers take few questions and dodge anything critical with the host moderators protecting them from embarrassment. So if my university wants to pay kissinger or hillary hundreds of thousands of dollars to talk about human rights or ethics, yes I would protest that...

this guy is small fry and is basically looking for it to validate his position, as the article stated other speakers declined precisely because they could foresee that the free speech vs political correctness summit having a speaker whose contribution to the discussion is: "[he] does not recognize another person's right to determine what pronouns he uses to address them." I dont care what whose beliefs are, if you dont want to call someone how they want to be called, you are looking for a fight. and if the other person does not recognize your right to self determine how to address them?! Wow, so deep. this is really what university is for!

my response also comes from a recent discussion elsewhere, regarding the pervasiveness/frequency of the "safe space, snowflake, trigger warning" phenomena that occasionally comes up in videos like these. how many people actually have personal experiences, even indirectly, with professors giving trigger warnings or of a safe space? i have several professors in my circle of friends and family and none have ever witnessed it.

Trivia:

While not exactly proven (correlation is not causation), the wide spread introduction of refrigeration for food storage probably was the reason behind the gross decline of GI Cancer as a major source of death before the 1930s...

"Until the late 1930s, stomach cancer was the leading cause of cancer death in the United States. Now, stomach cancer is well down on this list. The reasons for this decline are not completely known, but may be linked to increased use of refrigeration for food storage. This made fresh fruits and vegetables more available and decreased the use of salted and smoked foods. Some doctors think the decline may also be linked to the frequent use of antibiotics to treat infections. Antibiotics can kill the bacteria called Helicobacter pylori (H pylori), which is thought to be a major cause of stomach cancer."

American Cancer Society...

The mechanism appears to have been the move away from pickling/smoking...and towards fruits/vegetables/etc which an in-home refrigerator let you use...

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1971721/?page=1