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That article is an excellent read from someone on the "inside", so to speak.

It is, however, a slightly closed-minded and selfish view.

I'm going to play the devil's advocate here; I personally do not agree with the RIAA's tactics, but I do understand them.

The RIAA's job is not to produce and inspire great works of art. They are a lobbying group who's job is to enable their sponsors to continue to rake in copious amounts of cash. They therefore will be unscrupulous and uncaring and stomp on the little guy and sponsor reports which prove their side (a common practice, even in the scientific community - although that's a little tangential to this issue), etc. The record labels are a BUSINESS. They pretty much don't care about the music, so long as it's of sufficient quality to sell enough to make a profit. This is why the indie music scene generally has to go outside the big labels (EMI, Sony BMG, Time Warner, etc) to get their first albums published; these labels generally aren't willing to take the initial risk of publishing/promoting an unknown. This is bad in general for the music industry but good for the bottom line.

Unfortunately these tactics force other labels to respond in kind. Take an indie label such as Maple Music. They publish/promote an artist who manages to get a Top 40 hit (or just good word-of-mouth) and starts to bring in money (which for an indie label is sometimes a stretch). Suddenly Sony BMG is knocking at the artist's door with a contract and a fat cheque. For most "starving artists" this kind of offer is too good to turn down. In order to prevent this kind of thing from happening, the indie label is forced to get a contract. And the cycle repeats.

I only present this in order to bring a bit of balance to the arguement. Yes, these tactics are ridiculous. Yes, the music suffers as a result. But if one of these labels was to go out of business (or if the music industry in general was to become unprofitable) we would all rue the day.

Really this is all a result of the heroification of artists in Western society; musicians, actors, sports figures (who for the sake of arguement we'll throw in here) all the most overpaid people on the face of the earth. Unfortunately we've become accustomed to paying $10 for a movie, $20 for the DVD, $65 for the in-season game, thousands for season tickets, etc. so our pockets continue to be drained.

Damned tangents again.

Personally, I knew it was a fake when they used the names of the so called "victims." "David?" "Jenny?" Such common, down-to-Earth salt-of-the-Earth American names of honest people, being ripped off by the soulless, godless heathen pirates, who only wish to bring injustice to this world...

Puh-lease. It's as transparent as any fake story I've ever seen. The Onion has made more realistic stories. So, yeah, we need a -2, Hoax moderation.

I agree, damn those liberals! How date they show their bleeding hearts by trying to protect the Republican President after he rats out a member of the CIA!
I mean, they've consistently backed up every bit of crap the administration vomited out in support of the war and have removed anti-war editorials at Bush's personal request, but hell, that's what liberals do.

Of course, the whole "siding with the republicans" might be a dirty trick used by the evil liberal conspiracy to spread godlessness through their evil theory of evolution.

Are you serious? The implications of a device capable of performing calculations with that level of precision on a model that good would be a huge step forward in computing technology!

I know I shouldn't feed the troll, but to paraphrase Malcolm Reynolds, it is occasionally hilarious.

Well said. I've never been to Thailand (nor any South East Asian country), but I spent most of my life in East Africa. One thing most Western world residents don't understand about the third world is that there's some things you simply don't do. In Thailand, it's diss the king. In the US, it's burn a flag. Yes the punishment may be harsh. Yes Thailand may have other issues. The truth of the matter is that the person shouldn't have done what they did and now they're paying for it.

As a low-level grunt for the company, I will confirm that Comcast does indeed cap bandwidth. The stated limited (and yes, it is in the TOS agreement which nobody reads - available on the Comcast.com website) is 60 GB/month. Yes many people exceed that and don't get cut off (which is the penalty), but be warned that the company can legally do so if they feel you are degrading the service for other customers.

Luckily I don't even live in an area where I can GET Comcast, so it's a non-issue for me! I just have to deal with Rogers' packet-shaping, BitTorrent ruining behaviours :(

Here is something for you to try. Dig up lots of things and send pieces to different labs to be tested. If you can show that any of them systematically inflate the ages, you can put them out of business. One less godless lab to worry about! Get to work.

I know a guy who calls himself a "Creathiest." You can pronounce it either Crea-theist, or Cre-athiest, depending on which mood you are in.

It's the believe that the universe is God, or that God is at least no smaller than the universe we know so far, and thus profound respect, veneration, love, and appreciation for the universe, as we grow in our understanding of it as humanity, is utterly admirable, and fully complete; That God is a proper name for the Universe, (it's that amazing,) but if you want to consider it Godless, because there are no angel fairies as far as we can see, that goes too: It's all Creatheism.

That's how he preached it to me, at least.

He likes to preach that the traditional religious concept of God is notable for it's smallness, and it's tininess: That the concept that God battles over a small tiny planet, given that there are uncounted many galaxies in (merely) the observable universe, the actual universe we have no concept of it's true size-- that that old God, with his 10,000 year old world, is so pitifully small. That evolution should be rejected, because of the long duration, and myriad transformations of matter between forms, in favor of a little itty bitty story, ... It didn't make much sense to him.

There actually is quite a bit of evidence for a young earth

There are just too many contradictions

I don't think that a true scientist can say that evolution is fact

Today's science is founded more and more on popularity

as evolution continues to fall apart (because humans DO like to learn and explore... so TRUE scientists will exist), the scientific community WILL undoubtably have to come up with another Godless answer to the creation of humanity

You have to understand that a Christian CAN be a scientist. There actually is quite a bit of evidence for a young earth. I don't think that a true scientist can say that evolution is fact. There are just too many contradictions. And in fact, more recent scientific discoveries tend to suggest that evolution is the religious dogma of blind zealots. Rather than accepting evolution as blind fact, scientists should be doing experimentation to support the idea of evolution... however, many of the experiments are done with faulty reasoning and make assumptions (of things that are not even good theory). Evolution is a hypothesis at best. The world has truly forgotten what the scientific method is. Now... we accept things as theories based on the popularity of the scientist. Which is sad. So... what will the future hold. Today's science is founded more and more on popularity. It has become more and more like science fiction. Science (those that do not believe in God) want to make sure that God does not exist... so, as evolution continues to fall apart (because humans DO like to learn and explore... so TRUE scientists will exist), the scientific community WILL undoubtably have to come up with another Godless answer to the creation of humanity. Personally, given our infatuation with science fiction, I believe that the next big popular "theory" will be the space seed theory. While it does not answer original creation, it will help satisfy the evidence of a young earth and a history that only goes back 4,000 years.

Anyway, enough of this. I want someone to help me evolve the long, thin, incredibly strong fingers I'm going to need to open up ther case of the Mac Mini to my right and slot in the replacement disk drive.

New Doctor Who was great tonight, by the way. Rose was great, but you're all going to love Martha Jones. Except for the creationists, of course, who are going to hate The Doctor kissing (whisper it) a black woman.

It matters when they decide what to teach your children. It matters when they vote for politicians believing God wants us to defend God's official borders for Israel, God wants us to oppress homosexuals, God wants us to keep whatever they think is immoral out of libraries and stores and off the Internet, God wants us to go to war against Godless Muslim countries, God wants us to stop stem cell research, etc. Or how about God made the white race the world's natural rulers, or God wants us to wipe out infidels, or fly airplanes into buildings or blow up cities? When people choose to believe things based on mysticism instead of reason, every prejudice can be magically validated and every base impulse indulged.

one-third (34 percent) of college graduates say they accept the Biblical account of creation as fact.

Not wanting to be nasty or anything, but America is going through a bit of a religious experience at the moment, with people rejecting science by the million.

That cannot happen and the US retain their technological advantage.

Point of interest, America was having similer problems pre Sputnik, and when it flew overhead Congress ordered that Science be given a priority in the classroom, and that evolution be taught everywhere. The result? America's rise to technological dominance in the information age.

I don't have any idea what teaching evolution would help instill a science mindset. I had to go through junior high, high school, and college in Arkansas. You could not avoid Christain thought here. I can barely ignore it though its like ignoring air.

I find the main problem is folks that tend to think that evolution is most of or even the basics of science and Christains or other religious folks can't do any science due to their beliefs. That's just pure flame bait. The religious can go into science and do just as much ground breaking work as the nonreligious. I think far too much time/money is wasted on evolution/global warming debates that could be spent on doing useful work in other areas.

Why is it so important to push evolution on to those that flat out don't like it? I view that mindset as the same mindset as those that want prayer or the ten commandments in schools. I've had to put up with both sides all my life. I've learned evolution because it was one of the many things that the government required be taught. I learned the ten commandments mainly because every other student would tell it to you or if you didn't have a church be attempted to be converted. I got both in Arkansas schools so I tend to find it funny that there are those that insist that our schools are godless because the government isn't enforcing their prayer or their version of the ten commandments. I'm just thankful for Kansas angering the evolution is holy science crowd rather than Arkansas.

I didn't really think evolution was that big of a deal in my education. It had little effect on my interest in science. I tended to hate evolution and global warming type subjects because they were both too political and difficult to find non-political sources.

"Why not take the view that these "self evident" rights appear to be self evident because they are somehow beneficial to the social organization of humans? Or at least that they are consistent with the nature of human intelligence."

Why? Why are they beneficial to social organization of humans? I don't care about other people, so why should I subscribe to your "morals"? I don't agree that "life" is a right, because I believe the weak should perish, and when we don't kill off the weak and deformed, humans are weakened, as a society. Why spend resources on people who aren't productive?

"That aside, there are many, many societies around the world that have really not found these rights to be so self evident"

Exactly my point.

"I'd say that the vast majority of people in the world do not live with those rights and, in fact, many of them may not be able to fathom why we would want all of them."

Exactly. Most of those places don't have any governance or are at the other end, too much governance. Which direction do you think we in Western Cultures are moving to?

A limited and restricted governing system is what the USA was founded upon, one where the rights (see self evident) are procured and protected even when they seem silly or superfluous. With rights comes responsibility, something that no government school teaches as part of its lesson plan. For every stupid law there is, is an act of irresponsibility or gross negligence, or placing blame on the wrong party.

"So I would argue that these "self evident" rights are not really self evident at all."

They aren't self evident if you're an atheist, because they require the notion of something "bigger" than a puny human blip on the clock of history. Again, I suggest that they are only "self evident" to those that understand that there is a "Creator".

The scariest thought there is, is that there is no creator, which allows godless government based not upon ideals that none of us can reach, but rather upon the wisdom of foolish men, who think they know better than everyone else.

"I do not think the US rights model is perfect"

Agreed. But then again, no other system ever devised by men is either. I do believe that it was once one of the best ever, but it was ultimately flawed because it forgot where it came from. The founding document is "unconstitutional" according to ACLU, because it contains a reference to "Creator". I find that quite amazing.

"What you say is is not what I believe really is just because you say it is."

The same can be said of any other philosophical argument. Which leaves us holding an empty bag. There has to be a basis for understanding of where "rights" come from. If there is no agreement, then there can be no further discussion. Our founding document established that basis, and until you change the foundation of this country, I'll start there.