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[Scoops Novel]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-20474120

Thoughts. To be honest, i understand why the social worker made her decision, if not (yet) condone it. "End the active promotion of the doctrine of multiculturalism by local and national government" sounds just veiled enough not to elicit a bnp reaction but look at it with very cool eyes. On the other hand, the parents appear not to be awful human beings, and we all know the morass that belonging to a political party is. Nevertheless, i would not want to be fostered there.

[MonkeyHead]

It is an over reaction on the part of social services, but after they have come in for so much stick in recent years and blamed for not preventing child deaths in a number of high profile cases I can see why they went so heavy handed.

[Reelya]

Police Raid Home of 9-Year-Old Pirate Bay User, Seize "Winnie the Pooh" Laptop

According to TorrentFreak, the girl tried to download a number of songs by Finnish pop star Chisu using The Pirate Bay, where she was led after searching for the songs on Google (GOOG). The downloads failed, according to the girl’s father, and the two went to a local store the following day to purchase a Chisu album. ISPs working with CIAPC flagged the activity, however, and the group’s anti-piracy procedures went into effect.

[misko27]

Police Raid Home of 9-Year-Old Pirate Bay User, Seize "Winnie the Pooh" Laptop

I want to be honest here. Ordinarily, when everyone else is liek "Oh no, a 12 year-old was just eaten by Coyotes!' I usually don't care. But this, sickens me, for some reason. This, more then anything, more then Police beating protestors, more then all that stuff, makes me sick.
 
It might be cause I imagined what it was like to be that kid for a moment. I really don't even know what to say.

[Reelya]

Uhh update: The artist has publically stated that all her music is ACTUALLY FREE on the internet:

http://www.techspot.com/news/50888-police-raid-targets-9-year-old-pirate-winnie-the-pooh-laptop-seized.html

Indeed upon hearing about the situation Chisu apologized to the 9-year-old and pointed to a link on Spotify where her music can be played for free. Electronic Frontier Finland also took note of the case and said it is an indication of just how far copyright enforcement has progressed in Finland.

Which makes the raid even more retarded. Anyway, it was google which sent her to TPB rather than spotify. Why not raid Google? After all she just wanted the songs and google directed her to a torrent site, even though she wasn't a torrent user. google could have pointed her at either spotify or youtube and avoided the whole mess.

[Reelya]

Got a good one here:

Fox's Stossel Attacks Government Food Inspection After Inspectors Found A Peanut Butter Salmonella Outbreak

Stossel says the FDA were wrong to shut down the plant after finding Salmonella in the product, because companies can self-regulate without government control. But the fact that the FDA actually found the problem and had to shut them down rather defeats the argument that such things just wouldn't happen without health inspectors, because companies always check themselves and they're more proactive about it than the FDA.

It's a really hard argument to buy that companies are more lax now while there are food inspectors, but would tighten things up 100% if inspectors disappeared because of "market forces" (don't those same market forces operate on companies right now? And aren't health violations a real phenomena?).

Market forces will ensure no product ever harms you (according to John Stossel). But only if we get rid of inspectors, apparently.

[JoshuaFH]

Got a good one here:

Fox's Stossel Attacks Government Food Inspection After Inspectors Found A Peanut Butter Salmonella Outbreak

Stossel says the FDA were wrong to shut down the plant after finding Salmonella in the product, because companies can self-regulate without government control. But the fact that the FDA actually found the problem and had to shut them down rather defeats the argument that such things just wouldn't happen without health inspectors, because companies always check themselves and they're more proactive about it than the FDA.

It's a really hard argument to buy that companies are more lax now while there are food inspectors, but would tighten things up 100% if inspectors disappeared because of "market forces" (don't those same market forces operate on companies right now? And aren't health violations a real phenomena?).

Market forces will ensure no product ever harms you (according to John Stossel). But only if we get rid of inspectors, apparently.

I guess he needs to be reminded that The Jungle was a real thing.

[Euld]

Christianity isn't a religion anymore, guys.  Time to go home. 

Bill O'Reilly announces that Christianity is a philosophy and somehow not a religion.

TAX THE CHURCHES, MEN.  WE'VE GOT THEM BACKED INTO A CORNER.

[Reelya]

There's an outright "War On Christmas" like O'Reilly says. Unlike that "War On Women" - which is a myth.

I think Chrstianity is a quantum phenomena, Christianity both is, and isn't, a religion at the same time, just like corporations are both persons, and not persons, and when you do an "observation" the wave-functions collapse into whatever of the 2 states are convenient for the current argument.

Man, O'Reilly uses some pretty aggressive body language, with the yelling and the pointing xD he almost feels like a thug. When the atheist said O'Reilly WOULD have a problem if someone said "happy winter solstice", O'Reilly pointed and retorted "don't tell me what I think!".

But O'Reilly demonstrably does have a problem if some people just say "happy holidays" rather than "Merry Christmas":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0u_Vlmnt1r
Yeah, so unlike his rhetoric, it's not just about live and let live, he wants to force everyone to refer to the holidays as Christmas.

[SalmonGod]

GMO giant hires retired cops to hunt down farmers

DuPont Co, the second-largest seed country in the world, is hoping to find farmers that have purchased contracts to use their genetically modified soybean seeds but have breached the terms of agreement by illegally using the product for repeat harvests.

“Everyone always goes to the idea that we are trying to intimidate people and nothing could be further from the truth,” Agro President Dennis Birtles tells Bloomberg. “We are trying to create deterrence.”

Umm... can you describe the difference between intimidation and deterrence, please?

[RedKing]

Got a good one here:

Fox's Stossel Attacks Government Food Inspection After Inspectors Found A Peanut Butter Salmonella Outbreak

Stossel says the FDA were wrong to shut down the plant after finding Salmonella in the product, because companies can self-regulate without government control. But the fact that the FDA actually found the problem and had to shut them down rather defeats the argument that such things just wouldn't happen without health inspectors, because companies always check themselves and they're more proactive about it than the FDA.

It's a really hard argument to buy that companies are more lax now while there are food inspectors, but would tighten things up 100% if inspectors disappeared because of "market forces" (don't those same market forces operate on companies right now? And aren't health violations a real phenomena?).

Market forces will ensure no product ever harms you (according to John Stossel). But only if we get rid of inspectors, apparently.

Stossel is a colossal Randian dickhead and a purveyor of the worst kind of yellow journalism.

[Darvi]

What's the deal with Ayn Rand anyway? I haven't read Atlas Shrugged and honestly have no desire to do so.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Rand basically states that self-interest is the height of morality and that everything will work out if everyone looks after themselves only and stops trying to create collective solutions. Randian philosophy holds that altruism and collectivism are inherently evil because they lessen the motivation of the individual to act for their own interest.

Atlas Shrugged is a story about civilization winding down due to the "true producers" (industrialists and the like) abandoning society due to it not appreciating them enough. The most enigmatic of these is John Galt, who forms the basis of this movement. Eventually the old society collapses and the "true producers" return and take their rightful place as its rulers. "Atlas Shrugged" refers to the story of Atlas, who was cursed to hold the world on his shoulders in mythology. The title would be taken to mean that the world's Atlas, in this case the "true producers", decide to abandon their role keeping everything aloft.

tl;dr: It's fucking crazy.

[RedKing]

More practically, Randians are hyperlibertarians. They basically believe that a world devoid of government regulation and operating on utterly laissez-faire capitalism would be a utopia. Whereas the rest of us (rightly, IMHO) think of Bartertown from Mad Max.

[kaijyuu]

Yeah, it's delusional in that they mistake wealth for something that holds up society, perpetrated by assholes who feel they have no responsibility to anyone but themselves, and tends to put the "right" to property above actual legitimate rights.