Slashdot Mirror

I think it's at least partly driven by purposeful misuse of it in that way by people who either do or should know better--- whether because they want to make nuclear power seem scary, or just because they or their publishers want to sell books and push documentaries. One of the first major books on the subject uses the sensational title Three Mile Island: Thirty Minutes to Meltdown (1982), and its paperback cover has the even more sensational tagline, "The Untold Story--- Why It Happened And How It Can Happen Again". And even that looks like a sober scholarly analysis compared to subsequent books with subtitles like A Nuclear Omen for the Age of Terror.

Fortunately there are good books on the subject. But I suspect they don't sell as well.

I met Lev at Comicon this year, and talked with him briefly. He led a panel which covered, among other topics, Harry Potter and the impact it had on the fantasy genre. The Magicians is pretty upfront about borrowing from Harry Potter, with the students sarcastically saying, "Let's go put on our Quidditch Robes" when they are dragged outside to play the magical game that they all hate.

Essentially, it's a re-take on the entire notion of a magical sub-culture in our world, with a lot more "realism" (if that's the right word) instilled. There's no big bad. Wizards are by and large angsty, unmotivated (they can get anything they want with a snap of their fingers) and emotionally stunted. The main character is a depressing anti-hero (not in the cool and dangerous antihero vibe, but is just a character you end up hating by the end of the book since he's the polar opposite of a hero, though not a villain, so to speak.)

I'd recommend this book to anyone who likes Harry Potter and Narnia, but is looking for a more adult take on it. That said, I'd probably just give it a B+, since I hate angsty teens, and they never really develop past that point.

Here's my Amazon review on it:
http://www.amazon.com/review/RPCO5K5YVAQ5I/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm

Unless someone knows something I don't about this post it shouldn't be modded down. This is pretty insightful and the author obviously has read and given thought to the content of the book.

Because it's a copy/paste from Amazon's reviews and this "Smidge" character is not only a well known troll but he has done this before? In the course of his lies, he continues to claim to be multiple different reviewers on Amazon. Frankly, he is stealing other reviewer's credit and should be modded down, not up.

I heard an author talk about on The Discovery of Air at the local bookstore. The book is about the correspondence between Priestly and Thomas Jefferson about Priestly's scientific ideas. This author talk was the first time I heard an author say that Google Books was an important reference source for him. This is a sweet spot for Google Books: 19th and early 20th century books out of copyright, but captured by google's university library digitzation effort.

You people should encourage entrepreneurship. Not only he had a great idea, he has actually made it real and had the balls to quit his job in pursue of his dream. Way much more that many of the rest here has ever done with their lives.

You have to relax and take a step back. Get yourself out of the day-to-day in order to reevaluate your position.
I would recommend you this book:

Little Black Book of Entrepreneurship

BTW I'm not affiliated or anything. It's just is the best book about the matter I've ever read.

Complicating the discussion is what the author of this book found. A study showed that reading a book on cognitive behavior modification exhibited the same effectiveness as antidepressants and talk therapy.

BTW, if you are depressed, I highly recommend this book. It works better than drugs for me.

Yep, there is a reason. For the latter books, it has more to do with popularity (similar to Windows) than any decent writing. Check out the reviews for the thenth book "Crossroads of Twilight" link. People absolutely loathed the book. Many wished to give zero star ratings, but couldn't since one star is the lowest Amazon allows. The eleventh book got something like 3.0-3.5 stars if memory serves, but like the other response says, I'm almost positive it's because Jordan was feeling rushed. Which by our standards means he was moving at a normal pace again.

Not when you are playing with LEGO Mindstorms NXT. I got my set ( the older version ) when Ed Nisley, writing for Dr Dobbs at the time, recommended them as a way to learn about embedded programming. Here is a great example of how awesome the robots can be.

Last I'd heard, the only CD-Rs that had the tax applied were ones that were specifically labeled as music CD-Rs, so something like this. CD-Rs like this didn't have it.

But that was years ago so things may have changed since then.

Last I'd heard, the only CD-Rs that had the tax applied were ones that were specifically labeled as music CD-Rs, so something like this. CD-Rs like this didn't have it.

But that was years ago so things may have changed since then.

"Cloud computing" is the next step in the commoditization of hosting. The economic benefits of adopting a virtualized, on-demand IT architecture are profound, and the technical people aren't going to have a lot to say about it when the VP of Finance tells the CEO that they can cut IT costs in half by outsourcing.

Better to get on board and live with what's coming. I've been very impressed with Amazon's Web Services offerings. Their latest idea is a virtual private cloud: cloud machine images hooked into your datacenter via VPN.

Somebody's been reading Jennifer Government, you think?

Yes and Yes

Yes and Yes

I took a quick look at that book on a store shelf once, and it smells of a gigantic "get off my lawn" diatribe.

First off, the cover comes off as silly. While I get the ironic imagery of Japaneese robots reenacting the raising of the flag at Iwo Jima, it also lacks appreciation for the details for the themes explored in Gundam.

More to the point, there was never some intellectual golden age, during the author's lifetime or otherwise, where people had a broad appreciation for literature, art, and history. A review of the book on Amazon gives many specific examples of this generation being quite a bit smarter than Bauerlein's own generation.

http://www.amazon.com/HDMI-meter-foot-cable-1080P/dp/B0002L5R78 Amazon has a perfectly good HDMI cable for 4c

"i.e." should be used after a statement to explain it another way

Remove the [sic]

http://askville.amazon.com/define-correct-usage/AnswerViewer.do?requestId=5300847

As long as a cheap standard HDMI cable works and i dont have to buy a special-sony/MS/... cable its ok.

Paper copy is still the best option.

Uh huh...

Because the author and apparently the majority of Slashdot readers are not as well educated as they think they are. If I write an article about a clothing design I heard about, where I tie knots in white t-shirts, and call the article, 'Dye, Screen Printing, and now "Tie-Dying"', neither putting the words "Tie-Dying" in quotes, nor the fact that I somehow was unaware of the 60's/70's makes Tie-Dying new.

The term was coined in the late 70's. Here is a link to a book that are over a decade old that have the term, right in the title...

1998: http://www.amazon.com/Unschooling-Handbook-Whole-Childs-Classroom/dp/0761512764/ref=pd_sim_b_6

In case you need a "For Dummies Book"

2001: http://www.amazon.com/Homeschooling-Dummies-Jennifer-Kaufeld/dp/0764508881/ref=sr_1_36?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1252178339&sr=1-36

And for older references just Google John Holt.

Because the author and apparently the majority of Slashdot readers are not as well educated as they think they are. If I write an article about a clothing design I heard about, where I tie knots in white t-shirts, and call the article, 'Dye, Screen Printing, and now "Tie-Dying"', neither putting the words "Tie-Dying" in quotes, nor the fact that I somehow was unaware of the 60's/70's makes Tie-Dying new.

The term was coined in the late 70's. Here is a link to a book that are over a decade old that have the term, right in the title...

1998: http://www.amazon.com/Unschooling-Handbook-Whole-Childs-Classroom/dp/0761512764/ref=pd_sim_b_6

In case you need a "For Dummies Book"

2001: http://www.amazon.com/Homeschooling-Dummies-Jennifer-Kaufeld/dp/0764508881/ref=sr_1_36?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1252178339&sr=1-36

And for older references just Google John Holt.

It's ironic your tagline says "The first thing to do when you find yourself in a hole is stop digging". Compulsory education was created precisely to have an underclass to in your words "grind into the machinery of the economy"; see John Taylor Gatto:
    http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/toc1.htm
    http://www.newciv.org/whole/schoolteacher.txt
So, unschooling is really about stopping the digging. But it sounds unbelievable at first because of "cognitive dissonance":
    "Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts"
    http://www.amazon.com/Mistakes-Were-Made-But-Not/dp/0151010986

Grove is supposed to be a management guru - he's certainly not shy about sharing his opinions - but Business Week has a story mentioning Intel as one of several big companies that headhunters tend to avoid when recruiting talent. Seems that Intel in particular has a reputation for instilling a "paranoid", reactive mentality up and down the ladder. Gee, where could they have gotten that from ?

Free, unlimited 3G internet connection that works anywhere a cell phone works.

This isn't quite true. It may be true in the US (possibly only the continental US?), but if you take it out of the US there is no guarantee that this will work at all.

I don't own a Kindle, but I did have an interesting conversation with someone at Copenhagen Airport who had brought his Kindle with him from the US. He was somewhat angry at Amazon support, as he claimed to have called them before travelling overseas and asking if the download and wiki-bits would still work while in Scandinavia, and they said 'of course'.

First he thought it was because there weren't any 3G-networks available in Denmark, but that's simply not the case.

Obviously the issue is a lack of deals with carriers in other countries, and it may be rectified at some point, but everywhere is exaggerating the capability. Especially when you look at the coverage map that Amazon links to themselves.

Each Kindle has a setting to "back up annotations", which defaults to "on". You can get at your own annotations from http://kindle.amazon.com/, sync them to another device, and get them back if you delete the book and redownload it from your "archived" items at a later date.

Remember the buzz around the Segway before it came out? (I know some Slashdotters these days are a bit too young, see e.g. Kemper's Code Name Ginger .) Basically Kamen's invention was first announced through the code names IT and Ginger, with the promise that this unknown invention would completely change life as we know it. When the Segway was finally unveiled, the disappointment pretty much killed off any widescale distribution of the device (along with crazy city ordinances). I wish this bike inventor luck, but I have a feeling that the less he touts how revolutionary it is, the more adoption it will see.

Cloud computing is useless for the average user. Who in their right mind would wants to store everything important to them on an advanced cluster for a monthly fee?

You're assuming that a typical user doesn't have their home computer stuffed full of spy-ware, that they know how to backup everything that matters to them and that they only ever want to access their files from a single location and from a single device. Faceless-mega corporation 'in the cloud' is likely to be much better at managing that data than a typical home user. Even if privacy suffers a bit, at least it will do so in defined and publicised ways (compare and contrast with the problems of techs at the local repair shop rummaging through your data).

How I spend my cable money these days. I buy a season at a time of whatever.

DVD...

http://www.amazon.com/24-Pack-Network-EPISODES-Breakfast-Veggie/dp/B0018KVL5O/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1252075676&sr=8-1

I miss nothing... I have a decent set of DVDs no commercials. Also in high quality not the compressed and recompressed and then recompressed again cable version. With a bit of work I do not even have to get off my couch to watch them.

CDs are sooo last century. I have ripped all my CDs. My PC is my player and with Amarok I not only get the lyrics and the cover image. I get links to wiki from where I can get a ton of other information not available on the printed CD.

When I want to listen elsewhere I put them on a microSD that fits in my phone and am able to put the microSD in a SD adapter so I can put it in my car radio.

So why would I use CDs again? Selfmade or bought is the same. 46 CD set or 1 SD card with plenty of room to add other things? The Hobbit and LOTR is a total of 1.8GB.

SD cards and mp3 players are much easier to transfer files to then placing them on CD first. I hardly use CDs anymore and the only reason I use DVDs is to burn Linux images and those will soon be replaced by USB disk images (where I use microSD with an USB adapter). DVDs I have ripped on my HD as well.

Sure, some people will like the physical part of it, just like some people like the physical part of lifting an arm with a needle to play an LP. The majority just wants to listen to the music.

I have. I think it was on the soundtrack for "My Best Friend's Wedding" which is why I was able to get it even if it was an older song. Now, I just looked it up (here), and, of course, it's the only song on there that's "Album Only" and can't be bought as an MP3. Lame.

To me much like medical doctors, hackers do no harm. Here I'm going back to the Tech Model Railroad ClubWoz and the others who created personal computers.

I suppose you could say I'm biased, but as you say yourself there's not a universally agreed definition of what a hacker is. Up until the early '80s that is what "hacker" meant. The first recorded use of "hacker" as someone who was bad, mischievous, or otherwise caused harm was in 1984 I believe. In his 1984 book "Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution" Steven Levy doesn't use "hacker" as a negative. As mentioned here the original use of "hack" was as inelegant kludges so a hacker would be one who used inelegant kludges.

Falcon

Well, I don't have one myself, so in some sense I must agree with the not-worth-it assessment. But it's not really expensive compared to a netbook, if we're talking about the Kindle 2 (the subject of this article) rather than the Kindle DX. It costs $299, which is basically the going rate for netbooks. So it'd be really deciding on features rather than price.

Kindle wins on: battery life, daylight visibility of the display, weight, free 3G internet

Netbooks win on: hardware (CPU/ram/hdd/etc.), color display, can run a normal OS without heroics

Just depends on what you want, I think. Do you care more about the 1.6 GHz Atom vs. 400 MHz XScale? Do you care more about a weight of 2/3 lbs vs 2 lbs? Etc.

No Reverse Engineering, Decompilation, Disassembly or Circumvention. You may not, and you will not encourage, assist or authorize any other person to, modify, reverse engineer, decompile or disassemble the Device or the Software, whether in whole or in part, create any derivative works from or of the Software, or bypass, modify, defeat or tamper with or circumvent any of the functions or protections of the Device or Software or any mechanisms operatively linked to the Software, including, but not limited to, augmenting or substituting any digital rights management functionality of the Device or Software.

I wonder what the legal team will do? This is a derivative work and the guy did reverse engineer how things worked (a little) to get Linux on it.

Another wacky idea first proposed in science fiction. Larry Niven's Puppeteer race in Ringworld moved their planets far from their sun to avoid baking in their own waste heat. But when it comes to Earth, this idea is still completely fantastical.

a space parasol made of superfine aluminum mesh

Reminds me of Kim Stanley Robinson's terraforming conjectures in his trilogy beginning with Red Mars , where an orbital lens first used to provide more sunlight for Mars is ultimately sent to Venus, turned around, and used to shield that hot planet from sunlight.

You're sending them there on a one trip for one reason and one reason only: saving money.

One reason? Consider the expression "opportunity of a lifetime."

Typical NASA Mars mission profiles have astronauts returning after only one year on Mars (yes, "only"). A scientist who needs or even wants to spend a longer period of time there is SOL. With virtually no chance of making a return trip the obvious solution is not to return to earth; retire there.

The astronauts, however, are ... heading to a place of no resources. None for living anyway. ... This isn't little house on the prairie, this is the cold deadness of space.

It's not Space, it's Mars. All the necessary elements needed to survive are there. Try reading a book written by Robert Zubrin; he's done the math.

All other things being reasonably equal, given the choice between a one way trip to Florida for retirement versus a one way trip to Mars, I'm going to Mars.

"Faith is no substitute for arithmetic" -- Henry Spencer

For anyone looking for even more depth, Tanenbaum's chapter on Media Access Control also talks about ALOHA in great detail before moving on to Ethernet, which is based on the work done by the University of Hawaii's packet radio experiments.

Try tracing back random pieces of modern technology to all of their component parts/materials, and all of those's component parts/materials, and so forth, with the components needed for manufacturing/refining along the way, and if any of those are consumable, trace those back.

Little bit off-topic but directly related to this, find the book The Pencil: A History of Design and Circumstance. It covers all the technology and industries that had to spring up in order to make and mass produce a simple pencil. Fascinating read.

Another similar book that is no longer in print is the semi-classic, Programmers at Work subtitled Interviews With 19 Programmers Who Shaped the Computer Industry, (1986 /1989) by Susan Lammers which includes interviews with well-known or pioneer programmers such as Charles Simonyi (Microsoft), Bill Gates, Gary Kildall (Intergalactic Digital Research), Andy Hertzfield (Macintosh Operating System), John Warnock (Postscript) and C. Wayne Ratcliff (dBASE).

I found Writing Solid Code (Maguire, 1993) worth the read. Sure, some of what's in there is dated but many of the concepts are timeless and part of today's conventional wisdom.

Things like coding for security, coding for readability/maintenance, etc. etc.

Granted, those concepts weren't new in 1993 either, but many in the generation of programmers that cut their teeth on Turbo Pascal and 8-bit-machine BASIC never learned the lessons from 1960s mainframe code jockeys.

I don't mind teaching this stuff (economics) in school, as long as we don't teach it as "the way we do it here is right." For example, it should include a good look at Stone Age Economics, The Gift, and the chapter of Asimov and Pohl Our Angry Earth called "How Bean Counters can Save the World." It should teach how Muslim banks work, even though they can't charge interest. It should teach the historic importance of the labour movement to those who were not born into the middle or upper class. It should also teach that economic systems can and must be changed over time to correct inequities and negative feedback loops, just as any social and cultural system can be changed.

I remember listening to a talk by David Suzuki, in which he said that, despite being a scientist, he was always intimidated by economic jargon, so he signed up for a first year economics course. The prof put a huge and complex flowchart up on the board and said, "This is Economics." Suzuki looked at it, trying to find where the boxes on the board linked up with anything he knew, and failed, so he stuck his hand up and asked, "Where is the natural environment? Where is the culture?" The prof said, "Oh, those are externalities. Suzuki commented, "I'm a scientist. I know what externalities are. I was just flabbergasted that everything that I care about could be dismissed with that word."

Yes, I'm remembering this, so the quotations are actually paraphrases. It's a good story, though, and summarizes my thinking that economics is a good servant, if its limitations are understood, but a very poor and inhuman guide to what we should be doing in any particular case.

Gareth

Those Seagate drives have been fraught with problems since their release. The model they quote is ST31500341AS. The reviews on both Amazon and NewEgg detail the history. Supposedly, Seagate finally got the firmware sorted out, but would you want to test it with a couple grand of drives? More to the point, would you want to support it? That choice has the air of penny-wise and pound foolish.

Terry Childs played the "battle of wills" game and lost. He's not the innocent child that some are alluding to - he did willfully not give the passwords out.

When I was a corporate IT guy (about 3 years in the middle of about 16 years as a consultant), I took responsibility over a large part of the network in a multi facility health care business. ...that is what Terry should have done. ...

Uh, so because he didn't do what YOU did you think it is right to throw him in Jail for a year? Our prisons are swelling with thousands of people who are their on someone's whim. EVERYONE is a federal felon nowadays. I mean everyone. There is some federal law you are violating that can land you in prison indefinitely. Now, if you are a member of Congress or the cabinet you can "forget" to pay some taxes. Otherwise, you better hope you don't tick off someone in power because they can and will destroy you. http://www.amazon.com/Three-Felonies-Day-Target-Innocent/dp/1594032556

We are living in some scary times. The political class is treated like royalty and every crime is forgiven (see Kennedy, Chappaquiddick, and the royal state funeral he was given). And the average American, who is thrown into prison just to pump up some prosecutor resume.

Yeah, the term dates back at least to the 1990s. The classic survey paper (over 1000 citations!) on the subject is "Ensemble Methods in Machine Learning" [pdf] by Tom Dietterich (2000), for those who want to glance through a survey. Though be warned that some of its specific conclusions are now dated--- e.g. there's been a *lot* written in both statistics and machine learning since then on what boosting "really" is and why it works.

Dietterich presents the more machine-learning view of it, focused on algorithms, combination of predictions, iterative refinement, etc. The best survey from a statistical approach is probably Ch. 16 of this book by three Stanford profs, which you can probably read some of on Google Books.

Playing Tetris actually gives you more brain to work with, says a new study to be published later this week.

So you're saying you had control groups of people that played other video games and Tetris showed a difference? Or a control group studying chess? I suspect the title of this article should be "Puzzles Improve Your Brain."

This, says the doctors who undertook the study, shows that focusing on a "challenging visuospatial task" like a videogame can actually alter the structure of the brain, not just increase brain activity.

So you're saying this is akin to jamming the square block in the square hole and the triangle block in the triangle hole? Or, really, any sort of two dimensional puzzles like the mazes on the back of tray mats at a restaurant? Or maybe even -- *gasp* -- any game portrayed on a 2D surface like a TV or computer screen?

The study, funded by Tetris' makers ...

I understand now.

The study's subjects, a group of adolescent girls, underwent MRI scans before and after a three-month Tetris practice period.

The pretty pictures wouldn't happen to be statistically erroneous now would they?

Don't get me wrong, I grew up on Tetris 2 and The New Tetris. They both still have massive replay value and really spurred me to look into polyomino based puzzles which had increased fame in the mid 1960s until everyone realized that they had little real world application (but they still show up in papers). Still, it lead me to a book by Martin Gardner who wrote Scientific American columns on Mathematical Games. If you remember those, I recommend this book. So something good came out of studying tile theory and Tetris for me but there's no evidence yet it did anything more for me than say playing Gauntlet on the NES would have.

Playing Tetris actually gives you more brain to work with, says a new study to be published later this week.

So you're saying you had control groups of people that played other video games and Tetris showed a difference? Or a control group studying chess? I suspect the title of this article should be "Puzzles Improve Your Brain."

This, says the doctors who undertook the study, shows that focusing on a "challenging visuospatial task" like a videogame can actually alter the structure of the brain, not just increase brain activity.

So you're saying this is akin to jamming the square block in the square hole and the triangle block in the triangle hole? Or, really, any sort of two dimensional puzzles like the mazes on the back of tray mats at a restaurant? Or maybe even -- *gasp* -- any game portrayed on a 2D surface like a TV or computer screen?

The study, funded by Tetris' makers ...

I understand now.

The study's subjects, a group of adolescent girls, underwent MRI scans before and after a three-month Tetris practice period.

The pretty pictures wouldn't happen to be statistically erroneous now would they?

Don't get me wrong, I grew up on Tetris 2 and The New Tetris. They both still have massive replay value and really spurred me to look into polyomino based puzzles which had increased fame in the mid 1960s until everyone realized that they had little real world application (but they still show up in papers). Still, it lead me to a book by Martin Gardner who wrote Scientific American columns on Mathematical Games. If you remember those, I recommend this book. So something good came out of studying tile theory and Tetris for me but there's no evidence yet it did anything more for me than say playing Gauntlet on the NES would have.

Playing Tetris actually gives you more brain to work with, says a new study to be published later this week.

So you're saying you had control groups of people that played other video games and Tetris showed a difference? Or a control group studying chess? I suspect the title of this article should be "Puzzles Improve Your Brain."

This, says the doctors who undertook the study, shows that focusing on a "challenging visuospatial task" like a videogame can actually alter the structure of the brain, not just increase brain activity.

So you're saying this is akin to jamming the square block in the square hole and the triangle block in the triangle hole? Or, really, any sort of two dimensional puzzles like the mazes on the back of tray mats at a restaurant? Or maybe even -- *gasp* -- any game portrayed on a 2D surface like a TV or computer screen?

The study, funded by Tetris' makers ...

I understand now.

The study's subjects, a group of adolescent girls, underwent MRI scans before and after a three-month Tetris practice period.

The pretty pictures wouldn't happen to be statistically erroneous now would they?

Don't get me wrong, I grew up on Tetris 2 and The New Tetris. They both still have massive replay value and really spurred me to look into polyomino based puzzles which had increased fame in the mid 1960s until everyone realized that they had little real world application (but they still show up in papers). Still, it lead me to a book by Martin Gardner who wrote Scientific American columns on Mathematical Games. If you remember those, I recommend this book. So something good came out of studying tile theory and Tetris for me but there's no evidence yet it did anything more for me than say playing Gauntlet on the NES would have.

Well, to start, according to Apple that's 13W @ idle, but 110W with CPU load. Big difference.

If powersipping is what you want try the ASRock ION-330 Nettop. The reviewers here couldn't get it to draw more than 40 watts, at full load. But there are differences between this and a Mac-Mini:
1) Mac Mini has a Firewire 800 port, Bluetooth, 802.11n, Mini-DVI-out port, and DisplayPort, and slightly faster processor (although ASRock comes with overclocking package to easily reach 2.1GHz)
2) ASRock has HDMI-out, VGA-out, 1 more USB port, and costs less than 1/2 as much. So with that other $420 you save you could buy a Class 1 USB Bluetooth adapter, a USB 802.11n adapter, and a 24" monitor, and still have change left over for a Dinovo Edge bluetooth keyboard.

Who knows, you just might even be allowed to open it up and upgrade the hardware (RAM, HDD, DVD/RW to Blu-ray, etc) without voiding the warranty.

Arguing against the messenger and not the message? His work appears to be well researched and referenced - which of his arguments do you think are incorrect? It's not as if he is the only writer to make these claims:

Homosexuality & Civilization By Louis Crompton

page 158

Bishop Wala, the leading churchman of the Frankish kingdom, convened the Council at Paris... the council explicitly endoresed the death penalty for sodomy. Moreover, Canon 34 not only endorsed Leviticus but also interpreted Paul's Epistle to the Romans as advocating capital punishment: "Moreoever, the Lord in his law commands that any who commit this infamous crime be punished with death [Lev. 20:13], and the Apostle adds that they are "worthy of death [Rom. 1:32]. We may recall that at the end of the first chapter of Romans, Paul accuses non-believers of a long list of sins, in which homosexuality is given a special prominence. Tnen he adds that the "judgement of God" makes such sinners "worthy of death."

Justinian's jurists had made male love responsible for the "destruction of cities." But Canon 34 went further and make it the reason for Noah's Flood - and the near extinction of humanity....

page 162

Elsewhere in Islamic cultre, however, the evidence is strikingly contradictory. Popular attitudes were more accepting than in Christendom, and European visitors were repeatedly shocked by the relaxed tolerance of Arabs, Turks, and Persians, who seemed to find nothing unnatural in love between men and boys. Behind this important cultural difference lies a vein of romanticism that runs deep through medieval Arab treatises on love. For Islamic writers, emotional intoxication might spring not just from the love of women, as with the troubadours, but also from the love of males.

Sex, drugs, death and the law: an essay on human rights and overcriminalization By David Richards

page 70

Finally, the Christian interpretation of the unnaturalness of homosexuality was consolidated and given theoretical statement by St. Thomas's reformulation of St. Augustine's view that the only proper 'genital commotion' is that aimed toward the reproduction of the species in marriage... Building on these Augustinian foundations, St. Thomas argued that, even granting that homosexual acts between consenting adults harm no one, it is still unnatural and immoral, for it is an offense to God himself who has ordained procreation as the only legitimate use of sexuality.Summa Theologica, II-II, Q. cliv, I, II, and XII. St. Thomas takes the Platonic view - namely, that human sexuality has a distinct purpose - and gives it a theological interpretation. Homosexuality is unnatural not primarily because it degrades proper human function, but because it violates divine law, which sanctions that function.

On the basis of such views, there arose the conviction that homosexuality was a heresy, a clear and fragrant violation of express divine command. Accordingly, throughout the Middle Ages, homosexuals were prosecuted as heretics, often being burned at the stake.... ... during the Middle Ages in England, homosexuality was... within the jurisdiction of the ecclesiastical courts... The first English statute forbidding homosexual acts... confiring the religious grounds of its legitimacy, recited that the law was necessary to combat the prevalence of the 'horrible and detestable vice of buggery, aforesaid, to the high displeasure of Almighty God.'... citing Old Testament prohibitions and the Sodom and Gomorrah legend for the appropriateness of capital punishment (preferably, it seems, by burning).

A Christian response to homo

Arguing against the messenger and not the message? His work appears to be well researched and referenced - which of his arguments do you think are incorrect? It's not as if he is the only writer to make these claims:

Homosexuality & Civilization By Louis Crompton

page 158

Bishop Wala, the leading churchman of the Frankish kingdom, convened the Council at Paris... the council explicitly endoresed the death penalty for sodomy. Moreover, Canon 34 not only endorsed Leviticus but also interpreted Paul's Epistle to the Romans as advocating capital punishment: "Moreoever, the Lord in his law commands that any who commit this infamous crime be punished with death [Lev. 20:13], and the Apostle adds that they are "worthy of death [Rom. 1:32]. We may recall that at the end of the first chapter of Romans, Paul accuses non-believers of a long list of sins, in which homosexuality is given a special prominence. Tnen he adds that the "judgement of God" makes such sinners "worthy of death."

Justinian's jurists had made male love responsible for the "destruction of cities." But Canon 34 went further and make it the reason for Noah's Flood - and the near extinction of humanity....

page 162

Elsewhere in Islamic cultre, however, the evidence is strikingly contradictory. Popular attitudes were more accepting than in Christendom, and European visitors were repeatedly shocked by the relaxed tolerance of Arabs, Turks, and Persians, who seemed to find nothing unnatural in love between men and boys. Behind this important cultural difference lies a vein of romanticism that runs deep through medieval Arab treatises on love. For Islamic writers, emotional intoxication might spring not just from the love of women, as with the troubadours, but also from the love of males.

Sex, drugs, death and the law: an essay on human rights and overcriminalization By David Richards

page 70

Finally, the Christian interpretation of the unnaturalness of homosexuality was consolidated and given theoretical statement by St. Thomas's reformulation of St. Augustine's view that the only proper 'genital commotion' is that aimed toward the reproduction of the species in marriage... Building on these Augustinian foundations, St. Thomas argued that, even granting that homosexual acts between consenting adults harm no one, it is still unnatural and immoral, for it is an offense to God himself who has ordained procreation as the only legitimate use of sexuality.Summa Theologica, II-II, Q. cliv, I, II, and XII. St. Thomas takes the Platonic view - namely, that human sexuality has a distinct purpose - and gives it a theological interpretation. Homosexuality is unnatural not primarily because it degrades proper human function, but because it violates divine law, which sanctions that function.

On the basis of such views, there arose the conviction that homosexuality was a heresy, a clear and fragrant violation of express divine command. Accordingly, throughout the Middle Ages, homosexuals were prosecuted as heretics, often being burned at the stake.... ... during the Middle Ages in England, homosexuality was... within the jurisdiction of the ecclesiastical courts... The first English statute forbidding homosexual acts... confiring the religious grounds of its legitimacy, recited that the law was necessary to combat the prevalence of the 'horrible and detestable vice of buggery, aforesaid, to the high displeasure of Almighty God.'... citing Old Testament prohibitions and the Sodom and Gomorrah legend for the appropriateness of capital punishment (preferably, it seems, by burning).

A Christian response to homo