Torvalds Uses Profanity To Lambaste Romney Remarks 1223
netbuzz writes "Last night Linux creator Linus Torvalds took to his Google+ page and called Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney 'a f***ing moron.' Torvalds' stated reason? Romney's much-ridiculed suggestion that air passengers would be safer in emergencies if aircraft windows could be opened (a suggestion which some, including Snopes.com, have taken as a joke). Torvalds also recently called Mormonism, Romney's religion, 'bats**t crazy.' Is this just Linus being Linus? Or does such outspokenness on non-technical matters reflect poorly on the Linux community that Torvalds leads?"
Listening to the video (Score:5, Interesting)
I had no clue in Romney's tone or anything else he was joking.
Ask Mark Twain about calling a thing by its name (Score:5, Interesting)
What a loaded question. "Does it reflect badly and cause of loss of reputation", what... that someone calls a batshit crazy religion batshit crazy? Didn't hurt Mark Twain's reputation much.
http://www.salamandersociety.com/marktwain/ [salamandersociety.com]
So I guess the answer is no.
Re:Come on Slashdot, seriously? (Score:2, Interesting)
Windows (Score:2, Interesting)
Well, there's no arrogance like that of an uninformed nerd. As a type-rated pilot (turboprops), I can tell you even pressurized planes do have windows, and partially for this purpose.
Bill Nye (Score:2, Interesting)
He called a sitting US Congressman a "fucking idiot" for his pseudo-scientific beliefs and followers of creationism "fucking retarded".
Run for President, Bill. We need you.
Re:Romney *is* a moron (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Romney *is* a moron (Score:1, Interesting)
I don't ask Romney to fix kernel bugs just as I don't look to Linux for political advice. Both should stick to what they know.
You imply that Romney is a source for political advice. The current (supposedly left-leaning but maybe not) polls speak otherwise.
You are correct. Romney is not the best of politicians. His specialty is management. He has a record of taking things that are failing and turning them around. Bain Capital is an example as it was on the verge of bankruptcy when Romney took over as CEO. The Olympics are another example.
The least important part of a politicians job is politics. That's what gets him elected, but it has very little to do with how well he runs the executive branch. Obama has absolutely no managerial experience. I believe that's why we are stagnant on crap right now. Every job he ever had, he was part of a committee. He's never had to balance a budget, hire someone, promote someone, fire someone. He's never had to make the decision that will ruin the lives of 100's to save the jobs of thousands. He's never had to negotiate a debt settlement or make a function more efficient. Now he's in charge. When he's presented with a decision, he looks around to see how others are voting, but everyone else is just staring at him. He's a hell of a politician, but that doesn't run the country.
And credible polls like Gallup and Rasmussen show the race as a dead heat.
Re:idiotic politically correct fears indeed (Score:5, Interesting)
Aren't they too busy being "bats**t crazy" to care about what Torvalds says?
Though I admit, getting my very own planet in the afterlife is a pretty tempting proposition.
[I know too many really good and decent devout people to absolutely discount religious beliefs, and the big ones are based upon centuries, if not millennia of tradition. So I have something of a grandfather-clause when it comes to ridiculing religion. If your religion was created after the development of the steam engine, you're a crackpot. If your religion pre-dates the steam engine, I'm careful not to insult your beliefs. I'm considering pushing it back to Newton, but for now, the steam engine is the cutoff.
I know it's kind of arbitrary, but I've found it to be a very reliable rule-of-thumb. ]
Re:Not useful (Score:5, Interesting)
... We're considering him for a president. I'd rather debate on his policy, record, etc. And I'm not claiming to agree with all of it or think highly of him on these merits, but this is the domain we need to be in, not the "batshit crazy." ...
Romney is the candidate for everyone. No matter what your position is on anything, he has held that position at one time or another..
Re:Fortunately, Romney isn't a Democrat (Score:5, Interesting)
Oh, I can certainly point out some odious Democrats.
During the SOPA hearings, I became particularly incensed at Maxine Waters. What a waste of everybody's time she is. She and a most on both sides of the aisle didn't particularly "get" why SOPA was a bad idea. Watt was similarly a waste of oxygen and body heat in that chamber. Only a handful like Polis (D), Lofgren(D), Lungren(R), and Issa (R) and got it. Hell, Polis even understood what the hell Bitcoin, TOR, and Silk Road are. The response on /g/ was "oh god, he knows!"
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BMO
Re:Listening to the video (Score:3, Interesting)
The thing about Joe Biden's gaffes is that at the end of it, you wind up liking him anyway, because when he gaffes, he speaks what he's really thinking, and he shows that he's not a vile, emotionless robot like Romney is.
FFS, y'all should see his talk on grief he gave at TAPS. Bring tissues.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GwZ6UfXm410 [youtube.com]
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BMO
Re:Some points (Score:2, Interesting)
And why pick on Mormons, who've never, as far as I can tell, been known to blow up people they disagree with?
Not having a propensity to blow themselves and other people up with them is a nice attribute, and Mormons are, on average, among the nicest people I've ever known. That doesn't alter the fact that a lot of what they believe is batshit-crazy, above and beyond the usual batshit-craziness of religions in general. Full disclosure: I am an ex-Mormon...
Re:reflects well (Score:5, Interesting)
People make this complaint about every president - the president really has no choice in the matter, he can't book a ticket on a commercial flight and slip away to NYC for a private weekend with his wife. All of his trips, regardless of reason come with immense security that most individuals cannot afford to pay, so every trip is on the taxpayer's dime. This is the tradeoff we make between protecting our top leaders and saving money. Is there any candidate that will promise to never go on vacation? Would you want such a candidate in office?
But if something did happen, can't you just elect a new president?
Sure, and there is a succession plan 18 people deep to decide who would take over in the interim and it would take up to a year for the special election to take place. In the meantime the VP is next in line to become president, and there are few vice presidents (or speaker of the house, or secretary of education, or any other people in the succession plan) from either party that I'd want to be acting as president. Especially in a crisis like the death of a sitting president.
The costs from the financial turmoil from even an unsuccessful assassination attempt would be far greater than the cost of providing years of first class security to the president.
Re:idiotic politically correct fears indeed (Score:5, Interesting)
Joseph Smith also married the wife of Orson Hyde while Hyde was away serving a mission in Jerusalem/Palestine. While Orson and Nancy Hyde divorced later in life, THEY WERE MARRIED when Smith supposedly received a revelation from God that they should be married, despite Nancy Hyde already being married to Orson Hyde.
The events I'm referring to are colloquially known as "history" and you should try reading some before repeating the same nonsense you've been told since you were a kid. Do some research and you'll discover the exact same things I discovered. IT SUCKS. I was devastated. I eventually got over the fact that the people who lied to me were well-meaning and didn't realize they were lied to as well.
Uncle Joe was a con-man, a swindler, and a womanizer and he documented such in his own journals. Read the Joseph Smith Papers, volumes 1 and 2. Prepare to have your faith shattered, my friend. He documented his own exploits and still people believe the nonsense, it's absolutely incredible.
Re:Snopes on the window comment (Score:2, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
ICYMI, some jets have windows that open inflight (Score:4, Interesting)
Boeing 737 and Airbus 320 for example.
If he wasn't joking: For venting smoke, the airbus manual says (or used to say) you have to reduce speed to below 200 knots. You should be at low altitude, of course.
Despite studies showing these it not much good in venting this way, crews still desire to do it.
I looked and Romney didn't say anything about " passengers rolling down the windows at 30,000 feet and at 500 knots."
That's just wild ass charicature circle jerking. What he said was that they (FAA? Manufacturer? Leasor?) should allow it. He might have been reflecting the crew's sentiments.
Venting air via an open window could be done using air rams to maintain pressure. The FAA doesn't like the planes slowing down and dropping altitude to do it for delayed landing, reduced cummonication, and analysis of In effectiveness.
Wide body jets are particularly bad aerodynamically to allow venting based on studies.
planes in the US May have their windows bolted shut, I don't know about that.
But I do know that even today there are planes evenin commercial service that have windows that can be opened in flight and older flight manuals gave instructions on how to do it in the event of smoke or fire. (btw, fire can be bad because the vacuum can pull it into other areas of the plane).
Anyway, I don't get Linus' reaction as I when I read the quote in the la times I immediately thought I understood what he was saying.
The planes are made with opening windows, but I don't know
Re:Come on (Score:5, Interesting)
How many rational people strap the dog kennel to the roof of the car?
While I might be crazy (Score:4, Interesting)
my religion isn't. I am a Mormon. I guess I should be offended by what Torvalds said, but if I go around getting offended by every time somebody says something unthinking or inaccurate, then I won't live my life. Perhaps if all I knew about my faith came from people ranting on the internet I guess that I would be scared too. But here is the thing. When I find someone who makes a pretty easy factual mistake about something, I can ignore the rest of what they say pretty easily. For example. Lets say that you read a history textbook that says that Theodore Roosevelt ended World War II by dropping an H-bomb on Tokyo in 1946. Would you pay any attention at all to any analysis that that book made? If you know anything about history, you could quite easily detect the subtle yet easily identifiable mistakes that someone not quite in the know would make. If you didn't know any better, you could conceivably believe the person. But you would be wrong.
OK, so how does that apply here? You said, "golden plates that no-one ever saw". Now, if you knew even a smidgen of Mormon history you would know about the three Witnesses and the eight Witnesses. In fact, their testimony is printed in every Book of Mormon. Each of those eleven men to their dying day never denied seeing the plates. Some people after interviewing them tried to explain away, or spin what was said so Martin Harris and David Whitmer countered newspaper accounts with their own newspaper advertisements. Even fifty years after the fact, after Joseph Smith was long dead and the LDS church was in Utah, Whitmer 1000 miles away safely in Missouri could have easily denied his testimony but expressed the truth of what he saw and said on his deathbed. He even had it engraved on his tombstone. To state that "no-one ever saw" the plates (or claimed to have seen the plates) is a serious misrepresentation of historical record. So, any further analysis that you might bring is "objectively and obviously" incorrect.
Most of the stuff deemed "bat XXXX crazy" really comes from people and books who falsify and misrepresent our church and its beliefs. It is very disappointing that people who consider themselves intelligent and open minded really aren't. I guess it is ok to make fun of us, just realize that you are being a bigot while you do it.
So, the next time you have something glib to say about Mormons, just run it by a real Mormon first. We'll tell you the truth.
Re:idiotic politically correct fears indeed (Score:5, Interesting)
On behalf of all Mormons, you guys are making a far bigger deal out of it than we are. I read it and just went... meh.. it's Linus being Linus.
I think we can handle' Linus' opinion after. oh, having the US Gov't try to exterminate us and being the target of 'Christian' hate, I mean Love, for a couple hundred years that resulting in smear campaigns, regular protests in front of our places of worship, tar and feathering, burning down our homes, raping our women and killing our children and murdering our leaders....
Linus, no problem. I'll take Linus' love over 'Christian' love any day.
This is exactly what I was talking about (Score:3, Interesting)
Please don't take offense, but I am quite familiar with the topic. After some people confuted the words "spiritual experience" and started the "spiritual eyes" reporting Harris and Whitmer to clarify their testimony began using much more concrete terms while granting interviews, and made sure to write and publish their own accounts. Historians much prefer first hand accounts to second hand accounts (otherwise known as hearsay). Even after some of them left the church,
Look, I have a book full of 200 first and second hand accounts of the translation of the Book of Mormon called "Opening the Heavens" Accounts of Divine Manifestations 1820-1844 right next to me. I have also read the book "Investigating the Book of Mormon Witnesses" by Richard Anderson. Again, several accounts and let me quote
""'Do you still believe that the Book of Mormon is true and that Joseph Smith was a prophet?" Martin Harris, standing in the Kirtland Temple on a bright, winter day, pointed to one of the arched Gothic windows where the sun was streaming through it and said, "Do I see the sun shining? Just as surely as the sun is shining on us . . . I saw the plates; I saw the angel."
As a very old man, Martin went to Utah and spent the last five years of his life there in upper Cache Valley. When people in his community asked him about the plates of the Book of Mormon, he continued using physical objects like the sun to illustrate his testimony. One time he raised his hand and asked, "'Do you see that hand? . . . Are your eyes playing you a trick or something? . . . Well, as sure as you see my hand so sure did I see the angel and the plates." Martin Harris, like all the witnesses, was especially desirous at the end of his life to have people hear and repeat his testimony.
http://maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/publications/transcripts/?id=21 [byu.edu]
Reading that exmormon.org article was frustrating as I am familiar with the sheer volume of both first and second hand accounts that it plainly ignores. Read my comment on the flawed WWII lesson. Then understand when I say when a skillful writer with an agenda (like someone who is mad at the LDS church) can ignore evidence to bolster their argument. I'm not stupid or naive, I know that you aren't going to read those books or look up the article that I provided. Just know though that we aren't bat XXXX crazy and we do have reasons for what we believe. Getting through the stuff made up by people keeps people from the real message of the Book of Mormon. Its message is that God lives, has a plan for us, that we need to love and care for others, that offensive war is evil, pride from wealth will cause society to sicken and die, it is possible to change to become holy and that Jesus Christ paid a heavy price to save mankind. Most people who talk about it have never actually read it.
Re:idiotic politically correct fears indeed (Score:5, Interesting)
I agree with your analysis that the fragmentation of US national solidarity for health insurance etc. is founded on sublime racism. It is a quite Straussian perspective but I think it applies.
In Europe freaky aggressive policy communication is usually the business of the "progressive" left and the right fringe. Conservatives are conservative, that is they restrain themselves. They don't engage in negative campaigning. You could say, conservatism is policy making for grandpas, not disgruntled haters. Europe is multicultural but equally struggles to create cohesion. But we see the emergence of right wing populist parties like FPÖ [www.fpoe.at] in Austria, PVV/Wilders [wikipedia.org] in the Netherlands and others which adopt communications similar to US Republicans. They are mostly immune to scandals, poltical legacy and refuted facts, thus not conservative. Even Obama's positions would be unacceptable to modern European conservatives [www.epp.eu] because he endorses death penalty, torture and targeted killings.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Fortunately, Romney isn't a Democrat (Score:5, Interesting)
There are hundreds of other candidates, none of which are will likely even have a remote shot of actually winning the election.
One person that is likely going to at least appear on a number of ballots throughout America is Gary Johnson [wikipedia.org], the current Libertarian Party candidate. If you really can't stomach either Romney nor Obama, that is at least one person to cast that kind of dissenting vote against both political parties. There are currently a total of five presidential candidates [thegreenpapers.com] that in theory could win the presidency by virtue of the fact that they are officially on enough ballots in enough states with enough electoral votes that something really drastic happening between now and November could open a way for one of those other candidates to actually win. Outside of those five candidates, everybody else really is a fringe candidate and doesn't even have a theoretical chance of winning.
I'm still undecided in terms of who I will vote for this November, and Gary Johnson is looking pretty nice right now. I'm under no illusion that he even has a remote shot of winning, but it at least gives me somebody to look at other than those other two major party candidates.