161–170 of 193 posts
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Quick FYI - factoid: a false fact that is repeated often enough to become accepted as true.
Your little factoid is an example of the definition of factoid you're describing. But there are other definitions of factoid and I suspect the most common one is along the lines "small tidbit of information".
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> while the US just nominated its first (viable) female candidate for president. And as someone who isn't from the US, I find it incredibly bizarre that you haven't had a female leader yet. The UK has had 2 female Prime Ministers (1979-1990, 2016-), Canada has had 1 (1993), and Germany (2005-) to name a few. > I find it bizarre that Japan is having an contentious debate about if it's appropriate for a woman to ascend…
In fairness, Canada's female PM wasn't democratically elected, was only in power for 2.5 months, and came to power after the current PM stepped down due to unpopularity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Mulroney#Retirement This has parallels to the current UK situation. I understand the response to perceived American ethnocentrism, but I wouldn't minimize the significance of Hillary/Trump.
Like US Presidents, Canadian PMs are elected by others who are directly elected; unlike US Presidents and many Canadian PMs, Kim Campbell was not chosen immediately after the election of the body by whom she was chosen. Characterizing this as not being "democratically elected" but the usual election of US Presidents being one that is "democratically elected", however, requires a non-obvious interpretation of what "democratic" means when applied to an election.
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Add to that that the current U.S. Senate has only 20 women members (i.e., 20 percent), which is the highest proportion in the history of the Senate . In the House of Representatives the proportion of women members is below 20 percent (19.4, to be exact), and that, too, is the highest proportion ever .
That doesn't seem bad at all. That may be roughly the same as the relative percentage of women that are interested in going into politics.
Its low by international standards.
> That may be roughly the same as the relative percentage of women that are interested in going into politics.
I'm not sure why US culture having a much stronger effect of socializing men and women into different roles vis-à-vis government than every other developed nation and many developing nations would be a positive explanation for that statistic.
I propose a deal: Let the man rest in exchange for the abolishment of the constitutional monarchy. Symbolic or not, it's outmoded and incongruent with modern egalitarian society. The list of constitutional monarchies is rather embarrassingly long (37 countries).
An egalitarian society sounds interesting; someone should try it. I can respect the honesty of a monarchy. We have a fake egalitarian society where most of our leaders must either be Bush, Clinton, Roosevelt, Kennedy, or be closely related by marriage. Not to mention the behind the scenes families that control and pay for it all. Its disrespectful to the concept of democracy to view Hillaries coronation party as anyt…
The entire job of candidates is to channel people's discontent into support by sounding revolutionary. Once they're in office, their job becomes supporting the status quo and implementing the long-term designs of the people, as you said, who control and pay for it all.
This iteration, the red team is frustrated and united (having been straight opposition for the past eight years), while the blue team is divided and unenthused (having seen eight years of disappointment under their own banner). So the red team sees a savior, some blue team defects to third parties or (rationally) stays home, and the cycle repeats.
At least my peers will go back to latent libertarianism.
One interesting factoid that the new york times did not mention is that while it was common for emperors to resign before the meiji restoration, a lot of those resignations probably were not voluntary. The Japanese emperors are the longest reigning royal dynasty in the world, having reigned for the entire known history of the nation. But perhaps heir secret is that they did not have much power most of the time. Durin…
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Yes, though zealotry is perhaps the wrong word here - zealots were a Judean movement that rebelled against the Roman Empire and sought to expel it by force of arms; zealots are associated with violence. Pope's influence has over the recent centuries come over non-violent conviction of followers. Daesh has lots of zealotry, Catholics less so.
I meant potential zealotry: Catholics seem to be quite peaceful nowadays, but my opinion is that this is a temporary state of affairs. Religions are totalitarian, since they are the holders of the One Truth.
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It doesn't matter. These days head of states in parliamentary systems don't do their jobs One of the best example for such a system is Bush lying and going to war in Iraq when the people didn't want it. The best example that it doesn't matter is Blair doing the same thing and Elisabeth 2 not doing anything about it.
Do you honestly believe that the Queen should have stepped in? That would have been totally undemocratic, and it would have undermined constitutional part of constitutional monarchy.
Otherwise, what is the point of having a head of state?
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> One interesting factoid that the new york times did not mention is that while it was common for emperors to resign before the meiji restoration It's right there in the article, you might have missed it (or it was added after you read it): “Historically, it was extremely common for emperors to abdicate,” said Takeshi Hara, an authority on the imperial family at the Open University of Japan. More than half of Japan’s…
Selectively quoting an accurate sentence so you can pretend it's inaccurate is not a good way to do things. Take a look at the "while" in the portion you've quoted.
That wasn't my intention,and I apologize to parent (hristov). I misread/parsed parent's comment wrong: my eyes somehow skipped over the 'while' which left the sentence structure valid but with the opposite meaning: "One interesting factoid that the new york times did not mention is that it was common for emperors to resign before the meiji restoration, a lot of those resignations probably were not voluntary."
The reason I removed the rest of the sentence was because it seemed tangential to the primary subject. I can no longer edit my original comment so this one will serve as my addendum.
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Actually, that's the factoid. According to Wikipedia [1]: > The term was coined originally in 1973 as a neologism by American writer Norman Mailer to mean a "piece of information that becomes accepted as a fact even though it’s not actually true, or an invented fact believed to be true because it appears in print." Since its creation in 1973 the term has evolved from its original meaning, in common usage, and has ass…
Perhaps we should disambiguate the two: factoid, brief fact. Infactoid, brief seemingly true fact that is not due to repeated use. It's not literally as bad as the figuritive misuse of literally, where literally has come to mean figuratively and literally... This one I fight all day long.
But the "-oid" suffix doesn't mean "small", it means "like or resembling". So "factoid" being something that is not, but superficially resembles, a fact makes sense. A "factoid" being a "brief fact" does not.
"Factlet" would be a sensible word for a brief fact.
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I was in strict opposition to a concept of Monarchy, but not anymore. In many countries constitutional monarchs are replaced by de-facto for-life Despots (think Putin and his partner Erdogan), for whom nobody could explain who they are (parents, relatives, children?), where we got them from and what happens when they expire. At least for a Monarch we knew all that with high amount of detail. Who have no legitimacy wh…
Can you explain what would be better if Putin called himself a czar?
Right now we don't even know if he has wife or any children and what's they're up to, and also what happens next.
Him calling himself an Emperor is laughable, but having an Emperor with heritage and all the stuff instead of him now looks like an option.