I find pretty funny the current UK governments avowed surprise at the fact that companies are paying very little tax.
"... In March 2011, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the British cabinet minister who is responsible for all economic and financial matters, announced in his budget statement three major changes to UK corporation tax."
"The first was that the rate for large companies in the UK was set to fall to 23%. The second was that the UK would move to a corporate tax system where only the profits of companies arising in the UK would be subject to UK corporation tax; this representing a compete reversal of the situation that existed prior to 2009 when UK companies were (albeit convolutedly) taxable on their worldwide income. And thirdly he announced that if in the future a UK company runs its internal banking arrangements through a tax haven subsidiary then that company will benefit from a special UK tax rate of just 5.75 per cent of the resulting profits. ..."
"7) The world's conservative Christian community has brought this upon themselves... by being or supporting murderous psychopaths, by promoting mostly bullshit religious dogma that may not actually be part of the bible, and by being some of the most Xenophobic of all cultures the world has ever seen."
And it would make as much sense. Which is not a lot really, as from your argument it is surely also fine to persecute people dressed even slightly like americans, in those countries which america has attacked, if it is fine to persecute people wearing headscarves, for an extremist attack over a decade ago.
Also, if you want to round up the litany of death from dogma, athiest states have been just as destructive as religious ones over the past hundred years or so.
[edit] I have personally have found that generic religious/philosophic affiliation (Buddhist, Athiest, Christian, etc) seems to have very little bearing on if someone will be a dickhead, and also that all large affiliations seem to have their fair share of them. Claiming rationality about the lack of evidence for god, for instance, does not make people necessarily any more rational in other spheres, and also it doesn't automatically make them any nicer.
Near East is a big and poorly defined area. Israel is in the Near East according to the US State Department, but not according to the Library of Congress (which is a little odd as the Library of Congress does list all of Israel's neighbours as being in the Near East).
So you are saying that if you are uncomfortable with your experience of discrimination then you should change your appearance to appease your persecutor?
Do you make this crap up yourself, or does it get sent to you through the mail as part of your subscription to Batshit Monthly?
Just because a utility function can be defined for a given perspective doesn't mean that it automatically makes sense from within that perspective, given that defining a utility function is choosing to view things from an economic perspective and even in economics there is a difference of opinion of what that actually means, with some economists viewing it as something abstract that is only used to discuss more fundamental things and with others saying that utility functions are in themselves fundamental.
Saying that utility functions are the "what there is to life", is a bit like 42 being the answer to life, the universe and everything in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. What meaning you can draw depends totally on what question you are asking, or what perspective you are looking at it from.
For instance, if you are a squirrel, then an economist might be able to calculate a utility function for your behaviour, however the concept of utility functions themselves have no bearing (as far as we know) on "what there is to life" from the squirrel's perspective.
If you have walked a mile in someone else's shoes, you can then say whatever you like. For one thing, you are now a mile away, and for another, you also have their shoes.
(Not meaning to make light of what was an excellent post. Is just that I read your edit, and I thought you might be cheered up by sillyness.)
Only from a very narrow set of perspectives. There are many perspectives on life and for many of them a 'utility function' would seem nonsensical at best. Economics is not as all-encompassing a discipline as some people would like to make out.
The USA with the UK blew up the Chinese embassy in Belgrade and George Bush called the Iraq and Afghanistan wars a crusade, which is the Christian form of the term jihad. I suspect that the high-horse you have climbed onto here is actually more of a shetland pony.
The complexion doesn't matter, they are religions, not ethnicities. Also you are likely to get an even bigger reaction as you would probably then be viewed by some people as some kind of traitor.
If I were a muslim girl getting discriminated against for wearing a hijab, I'd stop wearing the hijab.
So you would, I guess, also suggest that Sikhs should stop wearing turbans, Jews should stop wearing a kippah, nuns should stop wearing habits, pagans should stop wearing pentangles, etc.
Not only is your suggestion frankly both offensive and pretty idiotic, but the world it would lead to would have even more discrimination than now and be a hell of a lot more boring.
No, just arguing against your suggestion that they are not crimes if they are not detected by straightforward means.
If someone detects a murder by extremely technological means, say while using muons from cosmic rays to image though a structure like they are doing at Fukashima at the moment http://prl.aps.org/abstract/PRL/v109/i15/e152501, then that murder is still a crime whatever the method of detection.
Now it is reasonable to argue that growing weed should not be a crime in the first place, but to argue that growing it indoors should not be a crime on the basis of the level of technology required to detect it, does not seem to make any sort of sense.
Murders are detectable outside of homes. Is someone missing? Yes? Then start an investigation.
They could be missing already, or be unregistered kids, or recently arrived unregistered migrants. Not everyone who is murdered is noticed missing. Also, very few of the people who are missing have been murdered.
I really hope you aren't being sarcastic, as that would be funnier. Here's how to make an x-ray machine strong enough to work with standard film that you can plug in the wall and uses old tv parts. Be careful in doing this as dosimeters apparently are required. http://www.belljar.net/xray.htm
[edit] Off topic - Meh, just realised I've been hellbanninated. Oh well, I might be able to get more work done now.