On Tue, Jul 15, 2014 at 8:12 AM, Rick Johnson <rantingrickjohn...@gmail.com> wrote: > If the "powers that be" cannot handle the heat, then they > should withdraw Python from the public and then they can > decree any ridiculous fascist rules they please, until then, > what's that old adage about "reaping" and "sewing"...?
You've already been told about "shutter" vs "shudder", but I'd like to also point out that this would be "sowing", as it's a reference to this passage from the Bible: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Galatians+6%3A7-8&version=NIV which is itself a reference to the work of planting (sowing seeds) and then harvesting (reaping). > Besides, "opposing and competing forces" are a fundamental > part of evolution (psst: do you remember that little thing > called "evolution" Chris?) Actually, no. I don't remember evolving from anything else. Do you? Because I've always been the same thing I am now. What am I supposed to be remembering, exactly? > Image, for a moment, a world WITHOUT the great USA! "Imagine". If you were worth the effort, I could easily "image" a world without the USA, by Photoshopping something out of a world map. (I'd probably use the Gimp, or Pike's image manipulation libraries, but everyone knows what Photoshopping is.) And I know what would happen if the USA weren't here. People in other countries would have made similar improvements to the world. Oh, and just for reference, I'm not in the US. I'm an Aussie, and we boast a fairly impressive per-capita invention rate. Some of them (like the stump-jump plough) are specific to our peculiar land, but there are plenty of awesome tools of general interest that have come from here. Just start poking around in various technical documents (RFCs, ISO and ANSI standards, etc, etc) and see how many contributors' addresses say Australia; chances are it'll be a lot more than our ~20M population would suggest. There are a few European countries that, similarly, contribute far more than their apparent size would imply. > what nation in > modern history has contributed more technological > achievements [1] or engendered a revolution of social > justice around the world, or, propagated the idea that all > men are created equal and endowed by their creator with > unalienable rights? Social justice? Do you honestly think the USofA is the example to hold up and say "Look, we have perfectly solved the problems of social injustice"? I guess you've eliminated racism since I last heard. Oh, and I agree that all people are created equal. (I'll leave aside the argument about whether your statement is proof that English is sexist, or that the US founding fathers were the sexist ones.) I also believe that our Creator sees us as equal. But all through history, we flawed human beings have had a problem with seeing people differently, for various reasons. The Apostle James wrote about a major problem with "wealthist" Christians: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=James+2%3A1-4&version=NIV And there've been plenty of other problems creeping in. God treats us all the same way: flawed, fallible people whom He loves enough to die for. If you want to believe in true equality, you need to follow His example. ChrisA -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list