On voting: The voting age ought to be at least as low as 16. That is the age when most (perhaps all?) people are allowed to work. It should be the age when all people are allowed to vote. After all, why are we making teenagers pay into SS and other programs if we aren’t going to give them an equal say?
Also, I wouldn’t support it, but I can’t say I would be heartbroken if the U.S. adopted an Australia-like system where voting was mandatory.
The effectiveness of the argument from complexity and arguments from ignorance baffles me. That life is difficult to understand or that we don’t know how it began (or how the Universe came to be) are not valid reasons for concluding in a designer. They just aren’t.
I’m not saying we should harass fat people, but I am sick and tired of this credence that everyone gives to the idea that it’s okay to not try and be healthy. Don’t “love your body” regardless of what it looks like. Love the effort put forth in trying to be healthy. And if that effort pays off in a great body, then love your body.
The average schlub does not appreciate rhetoric. Keeping that in mind, let’s go to the comment section over at Pharyngula where the user Pteryxx recently said this:
We’re not dealing with honest participants in a discussion here. We have unconscious bias. We have institutionalized sexism. We have stereotype threat. We have widespread apologetics and denial. We have constant, systemic silencing attempts using every tactic from harassment to shaming to tone-trolling to death threats. And we have evidence that a large subset of sexism-apologetics have as their goal the continued oppression of women.
And they pretend their oppression is actually rational discussion, SO THEY DON’T GET CALLED ON IT. They need the guise of social acceptance for freedom to operate. Rhetoric WILL NOT WORK here – in fact, it’s ceding the point at the outset.
This would be risible were it not so pathetically stupid. This person has used nothing but rhetoric in a post in which he advocates against its use. He obviously has zero understanding of what rhetoric even is or why it matters so much in everyday life.
I think I expect too much out of the average schlub.
My love/hate relationship with Facebook has been very much trending towards the “hate” side lately. I would be fine with having a Facebook within my Facebook so I can Facebook while I Facebook, but don’t take away my friggin’ option to toggle between top stories and recent stories. I don’t need Facebook arbitrarily telling me what is relevant in my feed.
What the Republicans should do now that their bill got voted out in the House is double-down. Stick to their guns, utterly failing to even think about compromise. What we need is another last-minute prevention of a government shutdown so that we can get another credit downgrade.
For the Sake of Science 