Slashdot Mirror
China Blanks Nobel Peace Prize Searches
1 a bee writes "CNN is reporting that China is attempting to block all communication regarding Peace prize winner Liu Xiaobo. Even texting is affected: 'Text-messaging on mobile phones is not immune from censors, either. A Shanghai-based netizen, @littley, tweeted his unfortunate experience: "My SIM card just got de-activated, turning my iPhone to an iPod touch after I texted my dad about Liu Xiaobo winning the Nobel Peace Prize."' Might as well add Slashdot to the censored list."
Further coverage is available from NBC.
You got to admire their attention to detail. I wish my government cared that much about ANYTHING.
A B A C A B B
China is just trying to protect it's citizens against the terrorist and child porn. Sheesh.
The real Sig captains the Northwestern. This one captains
I've heard it said that much of the Chinese government's restrictions on free speech, protest, etc. are to maintain social stability.
Is that an ideal that's especially resonant with the Chinese culture for some reason? If so, why?
Or is it a transparent attempt to maintain power (stability = keeping the same people/party in power)? Or is it both?
In an effort to pre-empt any assumptions about access to information, I am in China and I have been able to access news sources and most articles online using Google News and various Western media outlets linked therein. Searches seem to be filtered by key-word, but most Chinese are aware of the award. Honestly, most of them don't care that much. They all know that the award often carries a political agenda. See: Barack Obama. Some feel it's just the West finding new ways to apply pressure to China on these issues where there has been long-standing disagreement. They are aware of the news though.
Mainly, I think the government is trying to avoid any large gatherings, unrest, or protests in the wake of this decision. We'll see what happens.
I've never had a problem accessing Slashdot from here. Some of the linked articles, yes, but not Slashdot itself. *ducks*
~A~
And it's as boring as fuck and written by men scared of pork products. Next?! I love bacon. Where's your silly "god" now? 666, Hail Satan!!1!
This is the NSA, we're gonna geet U h@x0r5! Also, what is a h@x0r5?
Somebody ought to write an exploit for Chinese iPhones and Android based phones that autotexts the name "Liu Xiaobo" to everyone in a person's contact list, then goes on to force their phone to do the same thing. Within a matter of days the entire population of the two most popular smartphone platforms in China would have their favorite toys censored. I am pretty sure that could cause an effective public outrage.
Motorcycles, Robots, Space Gossip and More!
Is it just my observation, or is eldavojohn an idiot?
Believe me, it's just your observation. At least he knows how to post on-topic.
Qxe4
Don't know much about this guy, but I understand he's a Chinese democracy activist. How does that promote peace, really?
Dear China,
Fuck you and your backward, stultifying Communist state!
P.S. Do you have 4 trillion to loan us so we can extend our tax cuts?
"I guess the moral of the story is, don't paint your airship with rocket fuel." -- Addison Bain
Uh, works fine for me:
http://www.baidu.cn/s?wd=%C1%F5%CF%FE%B2%A8
http://www.baidu.cn/s?wd=liu+xiaobo
http://www.baidu.cn/s?wd=nobel+peace+prize
all these urls print up plenty of results.
-ballyhoo
slashdot was already banned last year when i lived in china. Thank god for the VPN
I see you've never taken an introductory logic course before.
It is historically sound - People who are named in the Bible have been found to exist.
People named in the Futurama cartoon exist too, therefore it must be historically sound!
I'd continue, but actually I think I will go watch some historically accurate Futurama episodes instead.
Sweet Zombie Jesus you're right!
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
in china, that gets you killed. AND your family if you aren't careful.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Obvious question: Are you hitting Baidu from inside China, or from outside? An awful lot of sites give different results based on where they determine you are coming from.
It could also depend on what part of the path from the computer to the server the filtering and monitoring was being done on. If it was at a few choke points en route rather than at boatloads of individual sites(likely) then a non Chinese located computer might not hit the filters.
People named in the Futurama cartoon exist too, therefore it must be historically sound! I'd continue, but actually I think I will go watch some historically accurate Futurama episodes instead.
Of course Futurama is historically sound. It's from the future. It even says so right in the title: Futur ama. That's a portmanteau of 'Future' and 'historically accurate drama'.
And they said it couldn't be done. This is actually a quite elegant solution: ALL internet access goes thru a SIM card, and if you do bad things it gets turned off by your carrier.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Scientific Accuracy? Pi is 3 in the Bible.
Isaiah 40:22 says a circle, not a sphere, not that it's round, but that it is a circle and "heavens like a canopy" of a tent.
You skip over the universe being created in six days and it being a bit over 6,000 years old.
As for confirming the Bible with Herodotus, he didn't get the title of Father of Lies for being accurate.
Google still seems to be keeping search results good - http://www.google.com.hk/search?hl=zh-CN&source=hp&biw=&bih=&q=Liu+Xiaobo .. But then I am not up to date on whether google is blocked or not. Either way I sense a streisand effect about to woop some commie butt.
Those who can, do. Those who cannot, sue.
Let them know that freedom in secularism, or falling to Islam is their eventual future. The control they exert is only one hop, skip and a jump away from the Muslim way. You think Saudi Arabia is bad? Imagine an Islamic China.
Do someone know if there are ports of the "Off-The-Record" library over plain SMS ? I mean direct SMS, not the SIMPLE protocol as recently featured on /.
For WebOS, that should be fairly trivial given that it already uses Pdgin's libpurple as a basis for its chat application.
Are there any Off-the-record supporting Apps for Android ? (And perhaps for iPhone, although I doubt that Apple will green-light one)
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
In 1989, we watched in horror as the Chinese government murdered 3,000 students for the crime of asking for a Democratic government.
A lot of us tried to boycott China after that for fear of making those bloody monsters even more rich and powerful
We were shouted down. "We have to trade with China. As China grows wealthier, the wealth will trickle down to their middle class, who will then rise up and demand basic human rights and freedoms. As we trade with China, as we stregnthen their middle classes, China will be dragged into joining the civilized world."
It didn't quite work out that way. China still has no real middle class, though ours has been decimated. The Chinese government started executing prisoners and selling their organs for profit, but that uprising of the newly-empowered middle classes still didn't happen.
So where is this "Enlightenment Through Trade?" China took that money, and used it to build a military that they're now threatening Japan with. They're kidnapping Toyota executives and holding manufacturing hostage with the market corner they've got on rare earth elements.
We've sacrificed our manufacturing base to this idea that a richer China is a friendlier China.
Really? How do you explain this?
http://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/870490--chinese-dissident-tipped-for-nobel-peace-prize
"Last Dec. 25 her husband was sentenced to 11 years behind bars, after being found guilty of trying to incite others to subvert state power.
Liu was the lead author of a document called Charter '08, calling for multi-party elections in China, where the Communist Party keeps a lock grip on power."
Why are we still doing business with these monsters?
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
This is an example of real censorship. Please reserve this word for things like this, and not your boss preventing you from using company computers to chat with someone about whatever you want. Thank you.
but the Bible told that it was round. (Isaiah 40:22)
22 He sits enthroned above the circle of the earth,
and its people are like grasshoppers.
He stretches out the heavens like a canopy,
and spreads them out like a tent to live in.
Which Bible are we talking about?
The prophesy thing always gets me. The Bible MUST be true because someone in 400 AD wrote a book set in 200 BC that "successfully" predicts an event taking place in 50 BC.
Damn! All those history books in the library are actually prophesies! And they came true!
P.S. Star Trek successfully prophesied cell phones, touch screens and hot alien love making (still waiting).
http://www.chaotickingdoms.com
Pi is only 3 if you assume that bowls have no thickness.
Which is a pretty dumb assumption, really.
6000 years isn't anywhere in the Bible, and was created via a priest who added up essentially random strings of numbers from geneologies. Given that he lived within the last few centuries, this is far from essential church doctrine. Similarly, interpreting the beginning of Genesis as anything other than poetry is extremely recent - most well respect theologians have historically held this to be true - see Aquinas, for example.
Even if you are to ignore the poetic elements, you quickly run into issues - measuring time would be devilishly tricky without any matter to establish a reference frame, for example.
It's not like there's a verse that says "And then YHWH took Moses away for seventy years, starting him on basic mathematics and proceeding through higher and more accurate models of the universe, until Moses was an expert in the most advanced and arcane of physics, adept at quantum and a master of relativity. And then He said unto Moses 'Now that I have shown you all this, I will relate unto you an in depth account of exactly how I created the universe'."
At least Liu Xiaobo did more to earn his Nobel Peace Prize then just not being Bush.
The Chinese state may not be happy about him winning now, but hopefully in the future, the Chinese will fondly remember him as their first Nobel price prize winner.
No matter how much the government thinks that they can hide that he won this year, the information is still leaking through the blocks.
They is a large Chinese scientific community that follow the Nobel prizes each year, and most will notice that there will be omissions in the reporting this year.
The difference being that people don't generally try to disprove Futurama by finding instances where it contradicts historical sources.
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People also don't shoot fleas with a shotgun. What's your point?
"The Bible isn't historically accurate" is a common argument for claiming it's a load of bunk. He was responding to that point before someone made it in this specific instance.
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Scientific Accuracy? Pi is 3 in the Bible.
There are only two places where pi is 3. Religion and Engineering.
Sewage Treatment Facilities - "Our duty is clear."
Like it says in the title, it all seems to be heading that way.
"we've got trenchcoats and bad attitudes" - John Constantine, HellBlazer
After last year's embarrassing decision to award the Nobel Peace Prize for Wishful Thinking and Teleprompter Reading, it's good to see them give the prize to someone who actually deserves recognition again.
-jcr
Why the hell is this moderated as Troll? That's exactly what they did last year, unless someone wants to come along and explain what Obama did in 12 days or so to earn the prize. Hell, I'll give you a freebie and let you count the last two years, too. Can anyone justify why Obama won the Noble Peace Prize? Anyone?
I was raised on the command line, bitch
"Nemo me impune lacesset"
1.) It's a unique book - It's the most widely distributed book in history. The Bible has been printed at least 4.7 BILLION times, in more than 2,400 languages. The Bible has endured bans and attacks from opposers.
Too be fair Gideons International is dedicated to carpeting the planet with copies of the thing. According to wikipeida they are personally responsible for distributing 1.5 billion copies. So that accounts for over 30% of all bibles printed right there.
I can't even recall how many of those I've personally tossed myself... at least a dozen or so over the years.
Secondly, "Quotations from Chairman Mao Tsetung" aka "The Little Red Book" was printed an estimated 5 to 6.5 billion times. (or should I write it as BILLION the way you did.)
2.) It is historically sound - People who are named in the Bible have been found to exist. Pontius Pilate, the Roman Governor of Judea - his name was found on a stone in Caesarea in 1961. Events that happened in the Bible are proven to have happened. The account of Edom and Israel battling was one such event that proved to be true.
Mentioning people, places, and events that are real doesn't lend the quality of "historically sound" to the entire work. I hope we don't decide "The Last Samurai" was "historically sound" because we find a mention of Emperor Meiji in an archeological dig in the year 4210.
And indeed, Washington Irving's retelling of the life of Christopher Columbus creates the picture of a stubborn Columbus trying to make theologians understand that the earth was round. When in reality by this time the church already accepted the earth was round. Our modern conception that the church believed the earth was flat at this time is actually derived from Irving's fictional ("dramatic") account of it.
3.) Candor and honesty - Not only are their achievements recorded, but the people of the Bible also recorded their shortcomings and errors. Moses told of a mistake he made, Jonah made a big mistake and landed in the belly of a fish. Even the Apostle Paul humbly admitted that he made mistakes.
flawed characters? That's unique how? Achilles infamous heel, Lady Macbeth's self-destructive guilt...
4.) Internal Harmony - There were 40 men who wrote the Bible in the span of some 1,600 years. And yet, they wrote about the same theme - a harmonious message - God's Kingdom. From Genesis to Revelation, this theme can be found.
Its riddled with contradictions. And the modern 'bible' was assembled from a large collection of independant works precisely because they were deemed thematically harmonious by the theology over several hundred years. Books were systematically purged from the Bible, and purged from 'canon'.
The Gospel of Thomas..? First and Second Epistles of Clement?
Seriously the composition of the bible and Christian canon is even more convoluted, contentious, arbitrary, and self-serving than that of Star Trek or Star Wars.
5.) Scientific Accuracy - People used to believe that the earth was flat, but the Bible told that it was round. (Isaiah 40:22)
Yeah, I've seen that one before. But we also have Matthew 4:8 "Again, the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them;"
Its easy for the Bible to be right if it contains passages predicting both sides. If the earth were in fact flat, I expect you'd be pointing at Matthew and pounding your chest.
Furthermore, Isaiah 40:22, in the original tongue uses a word that is translated as 'circle' not 'sphere'. Its not like they didn't have a word for "sphere" or "ball". The word Isaiah uses is more properly interpreted as 'circle' like a 'disc' not like a 'sphere'. There are a number of passages in Job that reinforce this disk interpretation as well -- refering to shaking the earth by its edges (spheres don't have edges, nobody ever grabs a ball by its edges, but a disk would make perfect sense). Job also compares the earth to a clay seal w
I believe you mean a malamanteau.
"People don't want to learn linux" hasn't been a valid excuse since '03.
Sounds like a case for the....Blackberry! (Unless RIM gave encryption to the Chinese government, that is)
DNA -- National Dyslexic Association
Scientific Accuracy? Pi is 3 in the Bible.
Isaiah 40:22 says a circle, not a sphere, not that it's round, but that it is a circle and "heavens like a canopy" of a tent.
You skip over the universe being created in six days and it being a bit over 6,000 years old.
As for confirming the Bible with Herodotus, he didn't get the title of Father of Lies for being accurate.
I'd like to point out that anything in King James English couldn't be that scientifically accurate. You should at least investigate the Hebrew.
Six days. Right there in Genesis.
According to the Hebrew calendar the Universe was created in 3760 BC, so it's less than 6000 years by that measurement.
And yes, pi is three in the Bible, even Jewish scholars admit to it.
http://www.abarim-publications.com/Bible_Commentary/Pi_In_The_Bible.html
"He made the Sea of cast metal, circular in shape, measuring ten cubits from rim to rim and five cubits high. It took a line of thirty cubits."
Sweet Zombie Jesus
That's redundant.
The bible would be awfully long if it printed every digit in Pi, and the wheel would still be being invented.
"We (Chinese) know your kind, and we know why you live in China. We despise you"
Does that mean I have to give back all the food?
Once people have something worth defending they become very attached to the status quo that gave it to them.
I can't even recall how many of those I've personally tossed myself... at least a dozen or so over the years.
Dude, you're going to hell. You don't recycle?
If libertarians are so opposed to effective government, why don't they all move to Somalia?
Nobel committee seems to follow some kind of pro-democratic, pro-western policy and misuse nobel prize for political agendas (Obama last year...). ,another low - provoking a third world power - for a single person imprisoned because he disobeyed the law of a billion state. Yes he is a political prisoner, but go try negating holocaust in the west. That's right, you will end up in jail for a political view and that shouldn't happen even if you are completely wrong. So western countries should clean up their own democracy misuse first, before pretending to be so smart with ideas like the one that democracy should be the only political system of the future (I'm not saying that Chinese model is any better, except _maybe_ economically; it's based on a set of outright stupid or failed in practice, ideas).
And now
Regarding Obama, as many other people, I fail to see how he deserved a Nobel. Thereafter he sent more troops to Afganistan. Oh, yeah, evil Talibans want to turn everyone into pilgrims. It wouldn't hurt to check whether local warlords which are currently in power are any better. But the usual PR sh*t did enough to win hearts and minds of western population in that war, so the carnage continues.
and I know [they say] that everything is about to get more expensive. But, ...
...prices are already set as high as the market will bear, so prices are going nowhere. But here's the good news, here's where we get our integrity back.
We will not do business with men who murder kids. We will not do business with butchers who part their own people out like stolen cars. We will no longer allow the people who poison their own children to make toys for ours.
As of today, all imports from China are canceled. Any company that wants to manufacture anything overseas must do so in a country that meets or exceeds our labor and environmental protections. All trade will henceforth be on a "dollar-out, dollar-in" basis, and our trade policies will at least mirror the ones on the other side of the deal.
For all of you who are unemployed, get your resumes ready. You're about to get offers. For those of you who have jobs, get ready to talk to your boss about a raise.
Take me seriously? Have you seen the polls lately? If we cut off trade with China tomorrow, there would be dancing on both sides of the aisle, from both the unions and the tea partiers, from both the tree-huggers and the VFW. The only people who would suffer are the rich bastards who have been selling us out to monsters since Nixon.
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
This is a job for Haystack. Oh wait never mind.
Every foreigner who's in China is a loser who's there for Chinese women? Uh huh. Suuuure...
Might it be that you're pissed that one or more Chinese gals paid you no mind? Or, are you one of those who derides any Chinese female who goes out with a non-Chinese as a "yellow cab"?
Or is it that there's a shortage of them?
China's made its own problem of being 2 million female children short because of "one child" and the cultural emphasis on sons. Better start working on opening your own minds before trying to change minds here.
Oh, wait. You're here in the West according to your comments. Then how is it that you aren't just the same sort of loser leaving your own failures in the country you left behind? Oh. I got it. Different standard for you and others. You're inherently superior somehow. I've heard that philosophy somewhere before.
Or, maybe you were born here, and became embittered all on your own. Good to know to know that bullshit xeno attitude of yours can spring up anywhere.
Here in America (and across the world) we know your kind. We despise you.
Almost as much as we despise a totalitarian government censoring.
(Hopefully, you just wrote something silly because you were ticked off at the previous poster. Very few here sympathize with the Chinese government, but your comment came across just as alienating and biased as how I tried to wrote the above.)
Well said, but why bother? Crazy religious trumps well-reasoned logic every time, even before you start typing.... at least in the mind of crazy religious.
Considering how big of a response you gave, I'm beginning to see why people troll like that. He made a box of instant copypasta, you waited your time, and now that you've been modded up, your post is in the middle of a completely different subject. Because the purpose was likely disruption and inciting others to waste their time (which I just realized I'm now doing as well...crap), the GP must be loving your post. YHBT.
Now I'm confused. Would recycling a bible be a good thing or an evil?
c++;
"On the topic of valuable materials too where do you think we're even going to get the rare-earth metals for our iPhones, and LCDs, or communication grade lasers given that China has pretty much all the worlds supply"
Pretty much every country that has a rare earth mine (and they're not really that rare) put it back into production after last month's fiasco.
Again I like the ideal but the though is shallow and the consequences are more far reaching than you could imagine.
Oh, kid, I got the grey hair to remember what it was like before we started whoring ourselves out to the Chinese government. I can remember when a blue-collar job could buy a house and put your kids through college. Meat-packers and construction workers used to make comfortable livings. Now airline pilots in charge of hundreds of lives have to apply for food stamps.
The United States, unlike Japan or Britain, is not a tiny little island with few natural resources. We don't HAVE to do business with the outside world. Unlike North Korea, we are capable of feeding ourselves. We can supply all of our own manufacturing inputs for steel, plastic, electronics, etc.
The ONLY people who benefit from trade with the Chinese are the wealthy in this country who get access to slave labor by proxy, who get to shirk their environmental responsibilities because the monsters in Beijing don't care if entire peasant towns die from cancer. You and I don't benefit from it because prices are already set as high as the market will bear. All that trade with the Chinese does is cut the legs out from underneath labor, allowing the wealthy to roll back all the gains that were made when the muckrakers ruled.
Welcome back to the bad old days.
As for those Chinese kids who will suffer when we pull our trade? Believe it or not, I actually do worry for them. My hope is that pulling our trade will spark the revolution that will save their future from the slave labor that now lies ahead. I WANT to see China join the civilized world. I WANT to see a real democracy in China. I would love to think those three thousand college kids did not die in vain.
But what I want more than that is that my own children do not join those Chinese kids in servitude, which is precisely where we're headed.
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
>Why the hell is this moderated as Troll?
Obama has a lot of fans, and sometimes they get mod points. Don't sweat it.
-jcr
True.. but it's annoying :)
I was raised on the command line, bitch
"Nemo me impune lacesset"
Sigh, why is it I find myself siding with China all the time on Slashdot, even though I don't actually like the Chinese government? The US is not blameless or is Guantanamo bay just a tropical holiday resort? Sure the Chinese is in Tibet, but the US is in Iraq and Afghanistan. Sure the Chinese imprison and torture people, but so do the American government. Sure the Chinese execute its enemies, but so do the US, only difference is that the US uses Predator drones instead of a bullet to the back of the head. Sure the Chinese are propping up dictatorships in Africa, but the US is supporting genocidal Israel. In fact, looking a the balance sheet of foreigners killed, the US had killed more foreigners than China had in the last 20 years. If you hold China to such standards, then it is only logical and internally consistent that you should boycott the US as well. Or are you a hypocrite?
Wildly off-topic and obvious flamebait, yet look at the discussion you have spawned.
Successful troll is successful... well played.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
Furthermore Obama agreed with that view: he didn't think he'd didn't deserved to be in the compan" of past prize winners, didn't think it was recognition of his own accomplishments and didn't think the award was about his administration. All statements in his speech. Bloody good speech though.
to avoid any sort of questions whether I do good or evil with the bibles, I use them as toilet paper, so it's clearly good - it's recycling.
You can't handle the truth.
Just wondering, is the Subversion repository software actually used in China?
That's exactly what GOP policy has been for the past few decades. They couldn't get rid of entrenched government bureaucrats, so they put complete incompetent people into government. Result: government falls apart, and suddenly we need 3-5x as many people to do the same work, government blooms and drains tax dollars: society goes down. You don't accomplish anything buy encouraging destructive or stupid behavior. If we had efficient people in government, you wouldn't need as much government, taxes would be less, there would be more economic prosperity and less crime.
The GOP policy has been documented in books like 'The Wrecking Machine', and if you look at the noticeable effect (see http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/54/US_incarceration_timeline-clean.svg/693px-US_incarceration_timeline-clean.svg.png). Note how the graph turns sharply up just after 1980 and has been on the upswing ever since. The economy was in the pit in 1980, and the GOP came into office and have dominated for most of the past 3 decades.
Government inefficiency and *imprisonment* rate have gone up hand in hand; the imprisonment rate didn't go up significantly even in the tumultuous 60's or early 70's.
It is China's first Nobel Prize, awarded no doubt in grateful recognition of China's consistent, lengthy and tireless efforts to promote peace, prosperity, and happiness both abroad and at home.
Perhaps one ought to see this prize in historical perspective. Throughout its lengthy history, the Realm of the Middle has always been known as a beacon of peaceful tranquility and benevolent good will towards its inhabitants and all of its neighbours, as Annam, Kampuchea, Korea, Japan, and Tibet will no doubt gratefully acknowledge.
It can also be seen as a tribute to the spirit of wise benevolence that inspires those members of that munificent collective that currently stands at China's helm.
I have the fullest confidence that can only be the most self-effacing and timid shyness that prompts the modesty we currently see displayed in China's reluctance to share this bounty with its citizens. Barring that the overwhelming interest in this widely cheered development coupled to the millions of adhesions from the grateful populace have temporarily overwhelmed available network capacity.
Furthermore Obama agreed with that view: he didn't think he'd didn't deserved to be in the compan" of past prize winners, didn't think it was recognition of his own accomplishments and didn't think the award was about his administration. All statements in his speech. Bloody good speech though.
Perhaps. However, he still took the award home, did he not? Bloody good speech? Of course, it is his primary skill. :)
I was raised on the command line, bitch
"Nemo me impune lacesset"
It's not historically accurate. I still don't get what point you're trying to make.
Thank you, Captain Willfully Missing the Point. I don't know how to make it any simpler:
1. "You're going to say the Bible isn't historically accurate, so here's some evidence that it is."
2. "The Bible isn't historically accurate."
3. "I rest my case..."
4. "I disagree with what you're saying, so I'm going to complain that your argument isn't even comprehensible."
5. [gives up]
Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
I think you need to go back and re-read the conversation we've had, because your little list there doesn't even come close to reflecting reality.
Another realization of Rules 34 and 35...
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
It really worries me to see someone pull out the old "heavens are a canopy" argument, and then get modded informative. I have to wonder if any of the mods have ever taken high school lit, or know what metaphorical language is. But no, clearly, the author of Isaiah thinks the sky is a sheet of cloth.
You may not believe that the Bible is accurate, but any time you pull out a ridiculous and weak claim like that, it just damages your credibility.
The link I posted talks about pi from a Jewish point of view, so from the Hebrew.
http://www.abarim-publications.com/Bible_Commentary/Pi_In_The_Bible.html
Really? Do you know what the authors of Isaiah really knew or thought about cosmology?
I know that the leading Clerics in Saudi Arabia didn't accept the Earth was a sphere until a Muslim flew on the Shuttle in the 1980s. They thought it probably was a sphere, but there was doubt in their minds because a Muslim hadn't witnessed it.
Reading Isaiah in Hebrew and looking at the translation straight to English is better, I shouldn't have dumbed it down to the Christian translations
http://www.mechon-mamre.org/p/pt/pt1040.htm
So it's censorship. Some private organization deals China a tepid slap with a stuffy award. The Chinese public is likely about as concerned about this as the willfull censorship we enforce on ourselves.
After all, the stability of the USA is allegedly threatened by the same footage of our imperial wars abroad that any Italian or French citizen gets on the nightly news. Ours is simply a familiar, comfortng, purposeful censorship that preserves our freedoms and markets. It's for our children, right?
As for China rising, so be it. We rose too. They happen to be in that awkward pubescent stage where their engineers barely know enough to build efficient infrastructure in a centrally controlled economy, where corruption isn't merely rampant, but something to aspire to for their best political class, engineers and scientists (read the retractions in SCIENCE and NATURE lately? more of that to come...). They will get better- and soon they'll be able to perfect their empire on the tasty vulnerable pockets of resources in the world in the same way the USA nearly perfected half a century ago.
Cry me a river. The affluence isn't coming back. The censorship isn't going away. The wars won't end until we are broke. Our parents and grandparents and ourselves have made that absolutely assured. There will come a tme when it will be better on average to seek other places to raise a famly and call home.
Outrage at China? Keep leaving the dream, folks. Hope indignance works for you.
Just moderating the comments in this thread, and was thinking the very same thing. "Interesting" to you, based on an arbitrary decision between positive adjectives which don't fit my sentiment.
Reading Isaiah in Hebrew doesnt help you if you cannot identify the difference between historical narrative, scientific terminology, and metaphor.
I would note that in v22, Isaiah calls the inhabitants of the earth grasshoppers. Clearly, he was directing this passage towards insects.
Its funny how everyone latches on to the 'six days' and uses that as a demonstration of how the Bible is wrong. What everyone glosses over is the 'and God said "let there be light" and there was light' part - seriously, if we are going to diss the use of the term 'day', why is the total lack of physics in the description of the actual making never dissed?
Simply put, if you accept that God really did just say "let there be light" and that was that, then the concept of doing it in a day really isnt going to be a problem to accept.
On the other hand, if the concept of doing it in a day is difficult to grasp, then equally God shouldn't have been able to bring about whole universes just by speech alone (no matter how good an orator he is), so its obviously not what was actually going on and instead glosses over a few things.
Except that a cubit is not a standard measurement. Hardly an accurate measure in any way.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
It doesn't matter how long a cubit is.
30 by 10 is 30 by 10 if it's feet, yards, Jewish cubits, Egyptian cubits, Temple cubits.
They were standard measures when/where they were used, different societies and civilizations had different ones is all.
A photon has no mass and no charge so why couldn't a major god just create them.
Back to Earth was created in 6 days and it's only 5-10,000 years old.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubit
Read this and try again. The cubit is a measure of a number of forearms, nothing says it was measured with the same forearm for all of the measurements. It is an inexact measurement.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Try reading your own links.
As early as 2650 BCE they had standardized on lengths and made rulers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cubit_rule_Egyptian_NK_from_Liverpool_museum.jpg - look a cubit stick.
However, different cultures had standardized on different lengths of a cubit.
They didn't build the Pyramids, Memphis, Persepolis or Petra by measuring different slaves and engineers arms.
So what makes you think this is a standardized usage, and not 30 people putting their arms up to measure? There is no indication of how it was measured, nor is there any significant figures. Ever heard of significant figures in science? There is only a tens figure, no ones, no tenths, so why would math done against it be expected to be more precise? The measurement used isn't designed for the precision to produce 3.1, let alone 3.1415... so expecting it to be an exact measurement is like expecting 22/7 to be equal to pi, it isn't, it is an approximation that is good enough in most usages.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Nice , I appreciate that from living in Taiwan and eating the lovely food there.