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[Duke 2.0]

... Wow, maybe I'm not actually even kidding about that.

Extremist Norwegian Anders Behring Breivik (left), who went on a killing spree in Norway in July. A new Facebook-based study has revealed a rise in far right political views throughout Europe.

I kinda get the point of the article I guess, but this kind of wording is kinda unforgivable. You don't lump two seemingly unrelated sentences together like this without any phrasing to connect them when involving topics like this. This is giving me real serious vibes of that TED talk where somebody showed a picture of a crowd of people in my faith and a crowd of nazis, the only wording to connect them being "...And you can just tell the problem here." No other part of the presentation supported this accusation.

I think this gets me off worse than any message the article itself was trying to convey.

[Pnx]

I like when Truan talks with mismatched rainbows.
...
That's about all I can contribute to this conversation.

It's kinda hard to read on Darkling, though, especially the blue.

Changed to green. I hope that helps. The colors do match though. The format is color coded and all ideas of a given color relate to one another. Red to red, green to green, etc. I find it really helps me keep on track easier and to address each element. This really helps when writing briefs and I have to keep everything straight, which facts go to what elements of the case for example.

Well I meant they're not really rainbows, rainbows go red, yellow, orange, green, blue, purple (indigo and violet were invented to make ROYGBIV stop being ROYGBP ;p).

I just finished reading Terry Pratchett's 'Snuff' and I just thought I'd mention it here as a book that deals very strongly with progressivism and brings it's point across very well.

Like many of his books, actually.

One of my favourite quotes:

Racism was not a problem on the Discworld, because — what with trolls and dwarfs and so on — speciesism was more interesting. Black and white lived in perfect harmony and ganged up on green.

[scriver]

Purple and non-bright red is rather hard to read as well.

[Rose]

I just finished reading Terry Pratchett's 'Snuff' and I just thought I'd mention it here as a book that deals very strongly with progressivism and brings it's point across very well.

Like many of his books, actually.

One of my favourite quotes:

Racism was not a problem on the Discworld, because — what with trolls and dwarfs and so on — speciesism was more interesting. Black and white lived in perfect harmony and ganged up on green.

Funny you should mention that. This book was all about the green.

[Pnx]

I know, I read it a few weeks ago.

[Rose]

I know, I read it a few weeks ago.

AND YOU DIDN'T TELL ME, YOU BASTARD.

[RedKing]

Is not sure what the flying f**k he just read, with the eyes and the Aryans and stuff. I'd just like to add that I have hazel eyes, and ggamer's understanding of prehistory is seriously off-kilter.

Spoiler: Utterly irrelevant anthropology/archaeology stuff that I nonetheless have to do because it'll eat a hole in my psyche to leave it uncorrected. (click to show/hide)

1. The "four birthplaces" thing is total bollocks. What about Catal Huyuk, in Turkey? What about the Minoans? What about the pre-Pictish builders of Skara Brae? What about the Teotihuacanos? Those four cited are some of the earliest, but calling them "birthplaces" implies that all civilization can trace a lineage to one or more of those groups, which is both incorrect and dangerous because that's precisely the sort of thinking that led to Aryanism in the first place. It's not far from ancient view that all racial groups derived from the three sons of Noah: Shem (Caucasians / "Semitic"), Ham (Africans), and Japheth (Asians and -- after 1492 -- Native Americans). This was then used in some dodgy exegesis to justify slavery on the grounds that Ham was apparently more sinful than his brethren and that this was reflected in the color of their skin.

2. The Aryans were not a southern Indian group. The Indo-Aryans were an ethnic group which moved into northern India and brought the Vedic tradition with them. Over time, the Vedic system became the framework which we refer to as Hindusim today. Again, over time with conquest and natural cultural transmission, the Dravidian south of India became Hindu as well. However, with the Mughal conquests, much of the Aryan population was converted to Islam. The Dravidian south Indian population remained Hindu under strong states like Vijayanagara.

It's worth noting however, that even among Indian scholars there is a great deal of vehement disagreement as to the actual chronology of all this, or of which cultural or linguistic group can "claim" to be the founders of Hinduism or to be the "indigenous" Indians. Aryanism has its own modern contemporaries among the right-wing Hindu parties like Shiv Sena and the Hindutva movement, which deny any "Aryan invasion" and claim that not only did the Aryans originate in India, but that all Indo-European languages can be traced back to an Aryan forebear. (Some of the more virulent supporters also claim that the universe is 155 trillion years old.)

3. The correlation between castes and ethnic group is murky at best. Genetic analysis of caste groupings have shown mixed results. There is also a fair bit of evidence that the Dravidian ethnic groups already had a caste system in place before the Aryan arrival, and the latter simply adopted it and placed themselves at the top. In that sense, it's not much different than the Normans modifying the Anglo-Saxon social order and placing themselves at the top. Or any other number of similar scenarios throughout human history.

Okay, rant done for now.

[alway]

It seems Mississippi's arch-conservative 'Personhood Amendment' failed to pass. For those of you unaware of that one, it was the one on the ballot which would have made destruction of any fertilized human embryo punishable with a murder charge due to attempting to redefine the state's definition of personhood to "every human being from the moment of fertilization, cloning or the functional equivalent thereof."

Though failing by a margin of only 45%-55% is quite concerning.

Ohio's anti-union bill was also voted down with a pretty decent margin.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

I'm not really sure why Mississippi even tried. It would be automatically overruled by federal law, the only objective I an see is to curry favor with the far right elements of the electorate.

[Nadaka]

I'm not really sure why Mississippi even tried. It would be automatically overruled by federal law, the only objective I an see is to curry favor with the far right elements of the electorate.

I have a very conservative republican friend in mississippi, and she voted no on 26. She didn't vote against it because she was pro choice, but because she knew it went beyond abortion to affect miscarriage, in vitro fertilization and some forms of birth control.

[Heron TSG]

it went beyond abortion to affect miscarriage, in vitro fertilization and some forms of birth control.

45% of voters in Mississippi supported it even with that? That scares me.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

it went beyond abortion to affect miscarriage, in vitro fertilization and some forms of birth control.

45% of voters in Mississippi supported it even with that? That scares me.

That's assuming they're all really that informed on it. Many people tend to be ignorant even on referendum issues. If properly educated on the law's effects, the percentage would almost certainly go down.

[Glowcat]

it went beyond abortion to affect miscarriage, in vitro fertilization and some forms of birth control.

45% of voters in Mississippi supported it even with that? That scares me.

Remember that this is the state where half of Republican voters in a poll wanted to outlaw Interracial Marriage.

[G-Flex]

Well I meant they're not really rainbows, rainbows go red, yellow, orange, green, blue, purple (indigo and violet were invented to make ROYGBIV stop being ROYGBP ;p).

Where you draw the distinctions is pretty arbitrary to begin with, really. Certain primary and secondary (and in the case of orange, tertiary) spectral colors just stick out. On the other hand, you don't see "cyan" listed.

[RedKing]

it went beyond abortion to affect miscarriage, in vitro fertilization and some forms of birth control.

45% of voters in Mississippi supported it even with that? That scares me.

That's assuming they're all really that informed on it. Many people tend to be ignorant even on referendum issues. If properly educated on the law's effects, the percentage would almost certainly go down.

Case in point: North Carolina's impending "Defense of Marriage" amendment. Currently polling at 59% support, even though that same sample of people were 60% in favor of some legal recognition for same-sex couples, such as civil union. However, the amendment would outlaw ANY kind of legal union other than hetero marriage. So there's at least 19% out there that either don't have a clue what they're supporting, or have some serious cognitive dissonance going on.