It has nothing to do with Indian citizens? A law passed in India does not concern Indian citizens? I am not sure I can make sense of what you are saying.
If you are saying that the law does not affect current citizens, then, I want to say that It does not have to to justify the protests. Because the protests are about how it drags religion into how citizenship is granted.
It discriminates people based on religion.
That itself, without going into anymore details, is enough reason to protest against it.
Now, there are some arguments that say we already have different laws for different religion casts etc. But that argument is shallow, misguided at best, blatantly malicious at worst.
Because such things are there because the idea of being secular overrides even having consistent laws. Because it allows people to practice their religion.
In other cases, were certain reservations are provided to people of certain cast, they are merly to target a subset of population that was victim of a bad cast system in the past.
You can see that both of these ideas are very much in the spirit of secularism, and in first case, even overrides the need for consistent laws.
This bill shatters that very idea, like to its core.
In a set of people in which all members have same attributes, except for their religion, it makes it much easier for people from certain religion to obtain citizenship.
Now, one can argue that the religion filter, as we saw in the second case above, is meant to target people who were fleeing from religious persecution. But that argument also does not help here. Because then it only helps people who are fleeing from religious persecution from being a Hindu, and it does not help if you are fleeing from religious persecution from being a Muslim.
And why drag religious persecution into the whole thing anyway, people are made to suffer for various reasons in a lot of places, many of which does not have to do with religion.
No, this "religious persecution" thing is a very clever way to mask the actual intent behind this act. And in fact, this religious persecution clause is not even present in the actual law [1].
>> It discriminates people based on religion.
>> Now, there are some arguments that say we already have different laws for different religion casts etc. But that argument is shallow, misguided at best, blatantly malicious at worst.
I respectfully submit that your argument is even shallower.
There are separate personal laws for different communities, all non-Hindu communities have exemptions under various laws (Right to Education being one particularly damaging example, the Endowment Acts being another).
All these laws discriminate against and put the majority community at a disadvantage vs. the minorities.
>> Because such things are there because the idea of being secular overrides even having consistent laws. Because it allows people to practice their religion.
This principle has allowed the policy-making process to be hijacked by vote-bank politics, in which every two-bit political party outdoes itself to woo minorities by offering sops, at the expense of the majority. Case-in-point: The Trinamool and Mamta Bannerjee.
>> Because then it only helps people who are fleeing from religious persecution from being a Hindu, and it does not help if you are fleeing from religious persecution from being a Muslim.
Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan are Muslim-majority countries. By definition, you cannot be fleeing religious persecution. Offered without evidence: The only Muslim immigrants from these countries are economic immigrants, and there is no humanitarian imperative to offer them citizenship.
>> No, this "religious persecution" thing is a very clever way to mask the actual intent behind this act. And in fact, this religious persecution clause is not even present in the actual law [1].
The act is a set of directions to the government machinery. It does not have to explain itself, and certainly does not have to contain the words "religious persecution".
>The fact that it’s natural means nothing nature is a cunt.
Natural means, what a human body has been accustomed to, over the course of its evolution. That is what is natural. Not something coming directly from nature. Often both are same since most of the things that we were exposed to during the long course of evolution came directly from nature.
Also, from your other comments, you have a skewed definition of health. You seem to consider a human being healthy even if they can only survive with the help of medicines or modern health care..which is quite stupid...
I would guess taxpayers. But keep in mind the military has a huge budget for training exercises. I would guess they just cancel one of those and go blow this up instead.
I doubt it's costing us anything 'extra'. Also I'm not super enthusiastic about corporations being able to purchase airstrikes, or really any kind of military operation.
If someone's complaint is the military budget is too big, i'd agree. But this specific thing seems like it's in everyone's best interest, and a good use for resources we'd spend anyway.
using 20+ floppies to install windows 95 only to get up "windows protection error", like a zillion time, and trying again in hopes it ll work the next time?
He really is an alien. Human PR usually involves making a slick show, and having skilled communicators express vague messages full of bullshit. Musk is an exact opposite of that.
It is possible for a "technical document" to appear rigorous enough to untrained eye, but sadly, you can fool people, you cannot fool nature. Which is why "Hyperloop", which was not even an original idea, still remain in paper...
AFAIR the paper was technologically sound to the first approximation; the objections were mostly economical (I'm ignoring people who missed that Hyperloop was not a vacuum tube design and went on ranting how infeasible it is).
Also, for a paper-only design, there seem to be plenty of activity involving people building actual hardware to test components.
Also2, from the first day it was known that Elon is not going to pursue Hyperloop himself any time soon; he threw an idea for others to pick up, and didn't promise anything. Judging him by not having built the Hyperloop by now is... insane.
Well, hyperloop was kind of bullshit that now appears only made up for cheap publicity aka PR stunt.
Then there is the promise of taking humanity to "mars", which quite honestly, sounds a bullshit claim at this point. It wold have held more water, if they said it after making real tech breakthroughs (Ie not stunts like landing a rockets, which only guillable people finds magical because they were not tech savvy to know that it was possible with tech that is half a century old).
> It wold have held more water, if they said it after making real tech breakthroughs
Going to Mars is literally the only reason they're in the rocket business. Like everything behind their breakthroughs, which they had a few - including landing and turnaround times - is meant to enable the Mars mission. They've been explicit about this since day one.
> stunts like landing a rockets
This is not a stunt. It's the real, practical, working, cost-effective rocket reusability. For the first time ever. Not sure what do you expect; em-drive? Because SpaceX booster landing is exactly how a technological breakthrough looks like (as opposed to fundamental science breakthrough).
> Like everything behind their breakthroughs, which they had a few - including landing and turnaround times - is meant to enable the Mars mission. They've been explicit about this since day one.
It's not so much a rocket company with a Mars objective, it's a Mars cult with a rocketry front operation.
Somehow, people get the idea that they're "not really serious" about the one driving goal that they've never deviated from.
That's not a criticism. The Mars cult is a very good thing. For forty years, most space programs have been motivated by the burning urge to...uh...send some more people to Low Earth Orbit, I guess, and eke out marginal improvements on technology that never really changes.
The force of the idea of Mars keeps people focused on what really matters.
Sorry. Was tired and in anticipation of Falcon Heavy launch (and wondering how I'll excuse myself from a telco to watch it). I misinterpreted your comment as another line of criticism this whole subthread was made of. I apologize.
It's getting tiring, really - people seem to still believe they're bullshitting with Mars, even though it was the single constant thing about SpaceX since the very inception of the company.
No worries! I guess I get people's reactions a little - they've heard so many vague plans about "maybe a Mars mission" that never pan out, so when the real thing arrives they're not ready to believe it's serious.
What you refer to as a 'stunt' is not magical but a very important step in reducing costs to get a certain mass to orbit.
Whether Musk gets to take humans to Mars or not remains to be seen, but in the meantime he's making a lot of progress that is going to be super useful to humanity.
Whether it was possible or not is irrelevant, what matters is that someone actually went and did it.
After all, the internal combustion engine could have probably been built in 1750 or so, but nobody did...
I'm not sure I've ever thought it was impossible -- I've learned to be more circumspect about that kind of thing as I'm nearing 40 -- but I tried imagining the fine detail engineering that would be required to do it and was totally overwhelmed.
I mean, take a yardstick or short rod or something, and try to balance it upright on the tip of your finger. That's basically what they're doing, but with a -rocket-. It's amazing.
The rocket has its center of mass very low during landing, as it's mostly an empty shell by this point, with heavy engines at the bottom. So take a meter tape, pull it out a bit, lock and try to balance that. Much easier, right?
The magic is in a) ensuring the whole construct survives reentry, and b) timing the landing burn - even a single Merlin engine is too powerful for the almost empty rocket to hover, so they need to zero out their velocity at precisely the moment they're hitting the ground. There's no second attempt.
> even a single Merlin engine is too powerful for the almost empty rocket to hover
Indeed. For their last launch, they decided to try landing the booster with three engines rather than one, which brings the whole 'hoverslam' concept to the next level.
This was considered so risky that they didn't try landing it on the barge, for fear of damaging it. Instead, they soft landed on the ocean.
But much to everyone's surprise, it actually worked! There's a picture of the Falcon 9 booster floating awkwardly. Musk said they'll try to tow it to shore.
And all that is really the core of why I love SpaceX: continuous improvement. It's a grand thing!
I decided I had no way to guess on the mass distribution of fuel, engine, and airframe, plus wind shear, so I went with the hard scenario. If anybody knows the numbers for this, I'd love to hear it!
Not parent, but I was surprised when I first heard of it. I thought it must be infeasible - in retrospect, for no reason other than vertical-standing rockets are associated with kitschy cover arts of old sci-fi stories. It didn't fit the more modern sci-fi aesthetics I grew in.
Since realizing that I became more wary of unconscious biases picked up from environment, and how they affect what I think is technologically possible.
Perhaps I grew up in a different era, but it's precisely that same aesthetic which makes me see these landings as futuristic because they align so well with those images.
The ascent into space looks like a massive show of raw power, and in contrast these vertical landings look so graceful and controlled.
> The ascent into space looks like a massive show of raw power, and in contrast these vertical landings look so graceful and controlled.
Personally, I think both are a "massive show of raw power" - both literally and figuratively.
Literally goes without explanation. But what I mean of the word "figuratively" is that it shows our capability as a species to fully harness our intellect, knowledge, and emotions to do this kind of engineering, despite knowing it can all go horribly wrong (especially in the case of manned space flight).
Certainly there are many other drivers to why we do this (profit in the case of SpaceX certainly is a great one), but part of it is also to show ourselves we can push beyond what seemed or seems impossible at times, and make it routine, and eventually both practical and relatively "safe" (always knowing it might never be perfect).
The Space Shuttle was perfectly capable of carrying its main fuel tank into orbit... I always wondered why they didn’t do that as standard, then later connect up all the now empty tanks, pressurise them and hey presto, instant space station, far bigger than the ISS. Such a waste to just drop them.
I know that many aerospace engineers were skeptical it would be possible to achieve ignition when facing "backwards" during hypersonic flight. No way to get the right mixture in exhaust chamber.
Even engines that "startup" more than once were pretty "out there". Over the years watching along, I've gotten the feeling that getting the engines to restart at all, and then restart in the right order and with enough consistency was one of the major breakthroughs.
I found the NASA blog entry on engine ignition pretty interesting (https://blogs.nasa.gov/J2X/tag/ignition/). Doing that when you have mach 6 winds blowing always seems amazing to me.
to me it was having to carry the fuel for the landing burn. Also, an empty booster is very fragile, they're basically metal balloons. I figured the landing legs, extra support needed, and the required fuel would make it infeasible in the end.
> an empty booster is very fragile, they're basically metal balloons.
If you think about it that's not really the case. Post launch the boosters are empty and must sustain their own weight and that of the payload sitting upright on the launch pad prior to fueling.
During the launch the full force of the engine is exerted on everything and it must withstand that force even as the tanks empty. If the boosters were not able to withstand these forces then as the rocket climbed into the sky you'd see it start to compress like a tin can the higher into the atmosphere it climbed.
I thought it was kind of unrealistic as well. The reasons were that now you have to store fuel for the return trip of just an "empty can", as well as (possibly) even more launch trajectory restrictions to ensure it can reach the landing site.
Does this take it into account of the possibility that people who sleep longer than 8hrs probably has other unhealthy habits, like lack of exercise etc..
But that does not prevent them from entering a car ride with their own babies. So, yes, people know that roads are dangerous. But no one ever gives a second thought when entering a car ride, even with their own kids, even when they know nothing about the skill/ability of the driver.
Not to mention that you are literally placing the life of you and your fellow riders in the hands of every driver in the incoming traffic...I mean, think about that chance, where 1 in a 1000+ drivers you encounter is doing either one of these..
1. Texting and driving
2. Is drunk
3. Just having a very bad day..
Tell me, what is the justification for taking your family on a joy ride on a highway..
Truth is, the capitalistic society at large encourages vehicle use. That thousands of lives are lost in accidents every year is mentioned, but not highlighted. There are things that warn you about the dangers of smoking. But there are no such thing that prompts you to ask the question, "Is this ride really necessary?" when you are getting into a car.
A lot of things that we do can be attributed to just this selective shunning of society.
I'm not sure why you mention children, I think people are paranoid about child safety, but that's kind of a tangent..
Cars have all sorts of safety features, crumple zones, mandatory seat-belts etc. It's more dangerous to be hit by a car than be inside it I reckon, though car-on-car collisions would be an additional hazard to drivers.
> think about that chance, where 1 in a 1000+ drivers you encounter
is 0.001 the actual figure for that probability? larger motorways with counter-flow traffic usually have lane separators.
I'm not sure what "having a bad day" means, but drivers caught drink driving are harshly punished. also, it should be possibly to spot suspicious drivers early on in many instances.
I'd argue whether a driver who was not paying attention is likely to do anything as severe as swerve into counter-traffic harshly enough for the collision to result in severe death or injury.
> the capitalistic society at large encourages vehicle use
As opposed to what kind of society? People like driving cars even if it's not economical.
> thousands of lives are lost in accidents every year is mentioned, but not highlighted
what's that as a percentage of all car use? Dangerous or inattentive driving is the cause of most accidents; the same is not true of smoking. And generally, technology and regulation is improving.
Now apparently its drug overdose, which is one of those cases where intent (aka suicide) isn't always clear.
But by far the most dangerous thing your average american does everyday is get in a car, and that is by a large margin.
*this is why the focus on "terrorism" and "gun control" both piss me off, seatbelt, airbag, backup cameras, etc laws save more lives every month than all the terrorism related activity in the last couple decades, despite the government spending orders of magnitude more on the latter.
Seriously. It hurts me to see the "anti-vaxxers" term thrown around so loosely. There are very legitimate reasons for being skeptical of vaccine research. Events like this appear quite frequently [1]. It is not at all in the same league as "flat-earths".
Assuming that "flat-earthers" potential to cause harm is fairly limited, but that "anti-vaxxers" potential to cause harm is rather significant - population immunity comes to mind - I would rather say it hurts me to see the "flat-earthers" term thrown around so loosely.
We had a huge HPV debate in Denmark in 2017 because of the problems surrounding it, but as usually it turned out all the fearmongering was completely unfounded and that the vaccine was much safer than the alternative.
Flatearthers are harmless. I’m not even completely convinced they are not just collectively trolling us. Anti-vaxxers mean while are responsible for weakening herd immunity in western civilization and by doing so, the killing of hundreds of people who got sick and died because of it.
The measles were basically extinct, now they are even killing people in countries with low amounts of anti-vaxxers. And why? Because a group of stupid people got together on Facebook and decided they wanted to create a version of reality where vaccines were evil.
Vaccines have side effects. Not taking them, however, has much worse effects. Worst case means you’re quite literally murdering people who can’t survive neither the vaccines nor the disease, best case is things like the HPV were it’s just you or your children getting completely avoidable cancer (still extremely tragic).
Hell, even Donald Trump has done far less lasting harm than anti-vaxxers.
What you are starting, is a different debate. This is the issue with this topic. People usually have a hard time differentiating the subtleties involved. Hence could be easily mislead.
What I was arguing is that, there are valid reasons to question the validity of vaccine research. But right now, every one who question the research or application of any single vaccine is labeled an anti-vaxxer and is collectively attacked/ridiculed, and considered to be in the same league as flatearthers. This end up being a situation where there is less and less incentive to put the required effort into safety of vaccines (because there is a huge negative stigma in questioning the safety of a vaccine), that are used to inoculate generation after generation of human beings.
What could go wrong. Right?
>Worst case means you’re quite literally murdering people who can’t survive neither the vaccines nor the disease, best case is things like the HPV were it’s just you or your children getting completely avoidable cancer (still extremely tragic).
So you are telling me that if I don't get vaccines, I ll literally murder a bunch of people. Or I ll get cancer or die of a vaccine preventable disease. Right?
If that is so, flawless logic. Actually the utter stupidity of these kinds of arguments put forward by pro-vaccine people is one of the biggest reasons one can start questioning the safety and necessity of vaccines.
It has nothing to do with Indian citizens? A law passed in India does not concern Indian citizens? I am not sure I can make sense of what you are saying.
If you are saying that the law does not affect current citizens, then, I want to say that It does not have to to justify the protests. Because the protests are about how it drags religion into how citizenship is granted.
It discriminates people based on religion.
That itself, without going into anymore details, is enough reason to protest against it.
Now, there are some arguments that say we already have different laws for different religion casts etc. But that argument is shallow, misguided at best, blatantly malicious at worst.
Because such things are there because the idea of being secular overrides even having consistent laws. Because it allows people to practice their religion.
In other cases, were certain reservations are provided to people of certain cast, they are merly to target a subset of population that was victim of a bad cast system in the past.
You can see that both of these ideas are very much in the spirit of secularism, and in first case, even overrides the need for consistent laws.
This bill shatters that very idea, like to its core.
In a set of people in which all members have same attributes, except for their religion, it makes it much easier for people from certain religion to obtain citizenship.
Now, one can argue that the religion filter, as we saw in the second case above, is meant to target people who were fleeing from religious persecution. But that argument also does not help here. Because then it only helps people who are fleeing from religious persecution from being a Hindu, and it does not help if you are fleeing from religious persecution from being a Muslim.
And why drag religious persecution into the whole thing anyway, people are made to suffer for various reasons in a lot of places, many of which does not have to do with religion.
No, this "religious persecution" thing is a very clever way to mask the actual intent behind this act. And in fact, this religious persecution clause is not even present in the actual law [1].
And people are calling it out en masse.
[1] http://egazette.nic.in/WriteReadData/2019/214646.pdf