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Ken Ham's Ark Torpedoed With Charges of Religious Discrimination
McGruber writes: Back on February 4, "Science Guy" Bill Nye debated Creationist Kenneth Alfred "Ken" Ham. That high-profile debate helped boost support for Ham's $73 million "Ark Encounter" project, allowing Ham to announce on February 25 that a municipal bond offering had raised enough money to begin construction. Nye said he was "heartbroken and sickened for the Commonwealth of Kentucky" after learning that the project would move forward. Nye said the ark would eventually draw more attention to the beliefs of Ham's ministry, which preaches that the Bible's creation story is a true account, and as a result, "voters and taxpayers in Kentucky will eventually see that this is not in their best interest."
In July, the Kentucky Tourism Development Finance Authority unanimously approved $18.25 million worth of tax incentives to keep the ark park afloat. The funds are from a state program that allows eligible tourism attractions a rebate of as much as 25 percent of the investment in the project. Since then, the Ark Park's employment application has became public: "Nestled among the requirements for all job applicants were three troubling obligatory documents: 'Salvation testimony,' 'Creation belief statement,' and a 'Confirmation of your agreement with the AiG statement of faith.' (AiG is Answers in Genesis, Ham's ministry and Ark Encounter's parent company.)"
That caused the Kentucky Tourism, Arts and Heritage Cabinet to halt its issuance of tax incentives for the ark park. Bob Stewart, secretary of the cabinet, wrote to Ham that "the Commonwealth does not provide incentives to any company that discriminates on the basis of religion and we will not make any exception for Ark Encounter, LLC." Before funding could proceed, Stewart explained, "the Commonwealth must have the express written assurance from Ark Encounter, LLC that it will not discriminate in any way on the basis of religion in hiring." The ark park has not yet sunk. It is "still pending before the authority" and a date has not yet been set for the meeting where final approval will be considered.
In July, the Kentucky Tourism Development Finance Authority unanimously approved $18.25 million worth of tax incentives to keep the ark park afloat. The funds are from a state program that allows eligible tourism attractions a rebate of as much as 25 percent of the investment in the project. Since then, the Ark Park's employment application has became public: "Nestled among the requirements for all job applicants were three troubling obligatory documents: 'Salvation testimony,' 'Creation belief statement,' and a 'Confirmation of your agreement with the AiG statement of faith.' (AiG is Answers in Genesis, Ham's ministry and Ark Encounter's parent company.)"
That caused the Kentucky Tourism, Arts and Heritage Cabinet to halt its issuance of tax incentives for the ark park. Bob Stewart, secretary of the cabinet, wrote to Ham that "the Commonwealth does not provide incentives to any company that discriminates on the basis of religion and we will not make any exception for Ark Encounter, LLC." Before funding could proceed, Stewart explained, "the Commonwealth must have the express written assurance from Ark Encounter, LLC that it will not discriminate in any way on the basis of religion in hiring." The ark park has not yet sunk. It is "still pending before the authority" and a date has not yet been set for the meeting where final approval will be considered.
Maybe a bit of Sanity from Kentucky? I hope so.
Sure. Soylent News.
I only come to slashdot for the mod points I keep getting, but if that stream stops, I'll quit altogether.
Viable Slashdot alternatives: https://pipedot.org/ and http://soylentnews.org/
I thought, perhaps mistakenly, that I learned a long time ago that the only two states that are commonwealths are Massachusetts and Virginia.
I wonder if Jesus would let unbelievers hang out and help build things... Either these guys don't think he would, or they don't follow Jesus's beliefs.
proves that "Noah" could not have done it. $18.25M and a year later, and it's still not done? Didn't noah supposedly build it in a fortnight without the aid of modern construction equipment?
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this is literally being built in my grandparents' backyard, directly behind their property
If it's behind their property, then it's not literally being built in their back yard. It's being built on someone else's property.
It seems like creationism versus evolution is always relevant on /.
I've seen this type of thing before. They will just pull the words, get their funding, then when someone apples for the job they will then ask in the interview. If they are "caught" in the interview, they will blame the interviewing person... say "sorry" and continue.
What is it with liberals hammering away at people they don't agree with?
Even otherwise "perfect" liberals such as Bill Maher are threatened with censorship for daring to speak against received wisdom.
Is there any group more intolerant than self-professed "tolerant" liberals?
This story (which doesn't belong on Slashdot) has nothing to do with liberal hypocrisy regarding "tolerance" (which is pervasive).
The state is (correctly) saying they can't get tax rebates if they discriminate applicants/employees on the basis of religion.
I watched it as well, and I now suspect you are one of Hams astroturfers.
Bill Nye seems like a good dude. But participating in that "debate" was just stupid. It gives the appearance that there are two credible sides to the issue. The only option is to ignore these people. When they decide to join us in the modern era, we will welcome them.
This particular dispute is stupid. The theme park will just remove the offending wording and resubmit it. There's no point to enforcing those restrictions during hiring. After being hired, the employee has to say to the guests what the owners want them to say or get fired. The difference between a Born Again evangelical and an atheist who spouts the beliefs of a Born Again evangelical is a philosophical one.
Religion is the opiate of the masses - Karl Marx
It doesn't matter who won that debate (although most accounts I have read suggest that Nye won), Nye is right and Ham was talking bollocks. Evolution happened, creationism as per the Bible didn't. The Great Flood is fiction.
All I want is a secure system where it's easy to do anything I want. Is that too much to ask ~~ Randall Munroe
And yet you did feel it such an important story that you posted to it.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
My aunt in Idaho owns a house in a new development where the back of the property opens to a common field with a lake. Her backyard is both the property AND the field. I expect fences to go up if cows ever escape from the nearby fields to drop cow pies near the houses.
Nye said he was "heartbroken and sickened for the Commonwealth of Kentucky"
Duh. Bill. What did you think this was about? An actual debate?
It was a motivational stunt to get the true believers to open their wallet to fund something like this.
"voters and taxpayers in Kentucky will eventually see that this is not in their best interest."
Don't count on it.
That caused the Kentucky Tourism, Arts and Heritage Cabinet to halt its issuance of tax incentives for the ark park.
The bureaucrats, having an actual mission to accomplish have their feet at least partway on the ground. Not so the voters. I predict that withdrawl of these tax breaks will be made a serious issue come election time.
That said, let them have their amusement part. Who cares? We've got Disney World.
Have gnu, will travel.
Yea Nye could be much more condescending. He could have outwardly trashed how stupid and silly it is to believe that the earth was created as the bible says. Six days? Cattle first animals? Where do dinosaurs work there way into the picture? I don't blame Bill for losing the argument, its hard to convince an idiots how dumb they really are.
I did not watch the debate, but, from what I have read it sounds like Nye tried to make the debate into a scientific one. That was the first mistake. The difference is one of philosophy. Epistemology, and higher order questions about how one determines truth from falsehood, are what separate Ken Ham from Bill Nye. The specific facts in question are of secondary importance.
So, if Bill just kept banging on a bunch of facts which Ham had dismissed as irrelevant via a forgone conclusion, and then Ham just started banging on a bunch of other facts that don't actually prove anything but sure sound good from a creationist perspective, Ham would emerge the winner.
Many scientists have not also studied philosophy, and as such aren't well-equipped for precisely this sort of debate. It is very unfortunate, since Science is (properly understood) one of many schools of philosophy, and all scientists (in my opinion) should study the basics at least.
I didn't watch the debate because the whole concept was dumb. Even if Bill Nye had performed to your satisfaction, the result would have been exactly the same. As a debate, it was a pointless exercise. A few weeks later, Bill Nye was on NPR and said the only meaningful thing to come out of it was Ken Ham admitting that nothing would ever change his mind. Which is precisely the problem. You can't debate faith. By its very definition, you believe because you choose to, not because there is overwhelming and convincing evidence. The faithful need to come to their own realizations, a single debate is only going to convince people that are already leaning toward abandoning one or the other.
The Great Flood is fiction.
Like all creation stories, there might be a grain of truth to the story. Perhaps Noah built a boat for his family and farm animals before the valley got flooded and the water didn't subside until four hours. After the stories were handed through oral tradition and written down, a valley flood has become a world-end wide flood that lasted 40 days and nights.
... I don't think the bar is set especially high for bill nye. I mean, he's not really an expert on anything.
post apocalyptic much? wait, the one in Orlando's still going...
And if God wants a themepark, why does he need tax incentives from Caesar ?
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
They should build it in Florida; they're gonna need it when global warming floods the place.
Table-ized A.I.
Except the concept of the Great Flood was adapted from the story of Gilgamesh.
throw some wicked rides, i'd definitely stop by. It would be interesting to see.
If one studies the Bible one will understand that Jesus Christ ain't a dude who will say *NO!* to the non-believers
In fact, the only character Jesus says *NO!* to is the Satan
There are many stories inside the new testaments which tell us Jesus, before he was killed, was an open-minded kind of dude
I _am_ a Christian, and damn proud to be one, although I ain't a fundie. And as a Christian I do have a duty to correct wrong impressions about Jesus Christ
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Build a replica of the HMS Beagle next to it, Darwin's ship.
Table-ized A.I.
How is this even news? An employer wanted tax breaks. They discriminate based on a protected class, so they don't get tax breaks. This is the system working.
The problem is Ken Hamm won in the end because the debate helped him secure funding for his nonsense
Sure, recommend an insecure site (and I'm the reason they have to keep updating.)
Keep on fooling yourselves. Slashcode is inherently broken from the ground-up and Soylent was a fucking fool to use it.
Bet 10:1 they still use SSL3 instead of TLS 1.2 - idiots.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
" I'm sick of people saying, "oh you just don't get it because you didn't get a PhD in philosophy!"
The proper response to that is "No, I don't get it because soft sciences, which heavily incorporate philosophy, are for fools and charlatans."
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
...yeah, I didn't post the AC comment, but thanks? I'd suppose any admins who care can easily distinguish the two comments as separate, but whatever.
Viable Slashdot alternatives: https://pipedot.org/ and http://soylentnews.org/
"The Commonwealth must have the express written assurance from Ark Encounter, LLC that it will not discriminate in any way on the basis of religion in hiring."
Umm... anyone else reminded of this:
Agnes: Pinkie promise?
Gru: Oh yes, my pinkie promises.
Computer over. Virus = very yes.
I do have to wonder, with all the concrete footings, if the floor is actually wood and bowed up at the edges like a true ship hull would have been, so we can watch all the people slide towards the keel where the eliminated swill from the animals would have collected by the ton before it gets carted up several stories to be thrown out the one tiny window. Of course they didn't have steel wheel barrows back then, so they woud have to put the animals to work. You couldn't even hire someone for that these days. No wonder they want to raise the minimum wage!
Hell yeah, I hear they'll have all 14 stations of the cross, plus a bonus at the end where you shoot up out of the tomb. I have been thinking way too hard about what rides would be best for each station... somehow you have to cram a water ride in there. You definitely need a 'superman' type roller coaster where it's suspended and you are fastened to a cross.
X
It seems very likely it's the same story coming through two channels - and probably has a historical basis. Imagine if your neighbor was a crazy survivalist who kept insisting the river would flood, and was so obsessed by it that he built a huge boat for his family and farm animals. Now imagine that the river actually flooded, and he drifted away safely while most people drowned. People would keep telling that story forever - the one time that the crazy survivalist guy was actually right!
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Please don't educate the bible believers that nearly every part of their story was stolen from other popular myths of the time -- it angers them.
Please do not taunt, tease or annoy the close-minded.
The Pope seems to be more on the side of Bill Nye in this debate. Huh.
http://www.independent.co.uk/n...
We don't know that. It's possible that both are based on an earlier story, and it's also possible that this is a case of convergent evolution.
Joseph Campbell probably pointed this out the most convincingly, that there are strong parallels to be found in apparently unrelated mythology from around the world. The existence of similarities between two mythological traditions therefore does not constitute evidence that one borrowed from the other, or even that they both borrowed from another tradition. It's also possible that the two traditions evolved independently to fill the same psychological niche.
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Err, I seriously doubt that anyone you spoke to ever argued that blacks needed help because they couldn't ever be intelligent enough to get into school. Saying that "a disproportionate amount of this group is burdened by coming from areas with poor schools and poor support structures, while facing social barriers like racism, and therefore could use some aid" is a little bit different, ignoring the fact that affirmative action is kind of a patchwork fix that encourages society to ignore the actual problems. You could probably count the number of people who are in favor of affirmative action because African Americans are physically inferior on one hand, so you sound a bit deluded.
I don't have a problem with that. Hell, I'm happy that fools and their money are parted.
Just as long as the taxpayer isn't giving it a subsidy. If they want a tax break, they should play by the rules.
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There was no "winner" unless one of them was convinced by the others' arguments. This notion that you can "win" a debate through completely arbitrary means needs to die.
After all, wasn't the original ark built by just a few guys with hand tools?
Affirmative action had, at its peak, been the social institution of "blacks are retards with a propensity for not being as smart as anyone, and so they need us to extend a large amount of help to them to elevate them to the level of a human being rather than a chimpanzee."
Interesting, I think most would qualify affirmative action as, "There are a large number of socially conservative idiots in society who will not give minorities a chance because their skin is the wrong color, so we need to pass laws to make ignorant racists give them a chance to pull themselves out of poverty". A person of any race of can achieve anything, but only when given a chance to try.
You are making veil threats about killing liberals for their views, so I am having trouble taking anything you are saying at face value. Why haven't you been flagged as a troll yet?
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Unless one of them was convinced by the other one's arguments, there was no winner. Popularity does not make someone a winner. There's really not much to "win" in a debate aside from maybe your opponent's agreement.
Many scientists have not also studied philosophy, and as such aren't well-equipped for precisely this sort of debate.
Many scientists would also destroy these fools when it comes to philosophy, so don't give me that nonsense.
You can't prove God doesn't exist, so arguing with people that there's "no evidence he does" is kind of pointless.
Not pointless. No evidence = no rational reason to believe. Ham was just spouting incorrect, irrational nonsense.
The bible doesn't say how long it took, and does describe Noah's family being involved too. It doesn't rule out the possibility that Noah was loaded and hired hundreds of workers to help out. It wouldn't matter though, as a wooden ship that size is structurally impossible.
...except that the creationist "debate" is not about the existence of God, as evidenced by the majority of Christians worldwide who belong to denominations which either explicitly agree with evolution, or take the neutral "we don't know, go ask a scientist" line. (Incidentally, both of those positions seem reasonable to me.)
OK, it is about the existence of God in one sense. I was brought up a Christian in an extremely liberal denomination, and apart from one kid in high school who was going through a phase, I never met a real creationist until I discovered Usenet and started talking to people from the US regularly. One of the first questions I asked was to the effect of what they were actually trying to prove. The answer I got was telling: If evolution didn't happen, God must exist, so let's hope it's true.
I suspect that for many creationists on the ground, that's exactly their mentality.
Of course, that's not true of many of the funders. In the United States, creationism is part of the anti-science oligarchy movement. There are a number of corporations which have a financial interest in casting doubt on science, from tobacco companies, to fossil fuel companies, to arms manufacturers, and so on. Some of them are willing to fund any organisation whose mission is contrary to the scientific consensus, and that includes creationists. This is all fairly well documented.
So in that sense, the creationist "debate" isn't even philosophical. It's political.
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Perhaps, at least it was something that hadn't been tried before.
One of the advantages of sending someone like Bill Nye is that he's not primarily known as a working scientist, he's primarily known as an educator and entertainer. That is the appropriate level of gravitas for a debate like this. Letting someone like Francis Collins share the stage with Ken Ham would send the wrong message.
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You're kidding, right? The guy was an aerospace engineer.
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Yeah, you're a fucking moron. Wish I had some way to make you actually pay up: not only do they only support TLS (and have downgrade protection for good measure), they default to perfect forward secrecy with all clients. https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltes...
I suppose you think Slashdot is more secure? This site you're posting on, which doesn't even *allow* people to browse using HTTPS (it redirects you back to HTTP immediately), doesn't do PFS by default, still uses SSLv3 without downgrade prevention (it "mitigates" POODLE by using the known-weak RC4 cipher instead)? If you think Slashcode is so "inherently broken", why are you using this site?
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
By this measure, I'm certain that Nye won. Anyone who was over 18 and watching the debate has probably had their minds made up for a long time. But I imagine there were a ton of religious parents that sat their kids down to watch the debate. Nye's arguments had a chance of swaying kids who may not have been exposed to a scientific view before, and his arguments had the benefit of being based on observable evidence that anyone could at least understand. Ham's arguments are based on personal beliefs and an ancient book. He had little chance of convincing anyone not already thoroughly indoctrinated.
Last post!
Nye did not win, because he was fighting the wrong war.
Nye argued like a scientist. He presented the evidence, gave logical explanations, and generally relied on demonstrable facts. He did a flawless job, but changed absolutely no-one's mind, because anyone who cares about science, reason and evidence already accepts evolution.
Ham didn't even really argue. He just riled people up for a crusade - it was the evil liberal commie atheists trying to teach satan's lies, and him and his book of JESUS that showed the big bad man up. He also did not convince anybody, but he can count it as a win because he got people who believed in the general idea of creationism to believe specifically in his branch of creationism.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: when you argue about creationism, you are not arguing science. You're arguing theology. If it were me on the stage with Ken Ham, I wouldn't bring slides of radiocarbon dating and fossil evidence, I'd bring quotes from Augustine and Aquinas. I'd point out that some of the earliest work leading to evolution was done by Gregor Mendel, a friar in the Augustinian order. I'd use some choice words from Pope Francis, who, even if you aren't catholic, you have to admit he's probably read the bible at least a few times. I'd present a history of creation that matches both scientific evidence (literally) and scripture (figuratively). And then I'd attack his own character, not with the insults of the scientist, but with the insults of a religious man. I'd ask rhetorically how he thinks he can interpret scripture for the rest of us. I'd make him out to be a fraud and a cheat, hijacking religion for his own gain (which, to be fair, he kind of is).
That's how you argue with a crazy person - with more crazy. He, and his followers, don't give a single fuck about the truth. So take them down within their own framework, not from your own.
By that measure, you could never win in a debate against Ham. He admitted it himself. They were both asked what it would take for them to accept the other's opinion. Bill Nye replied evidence. Lots of evidence would be needed, of course, but theoretically it could be done. (You could start by finding bunny remains where T-Rex should be. Or an apatosaurus that lived only 5,000 years ago.) Ken Ham, meanwhile, replied that nothing would change his mind. You could pull up a mound of evidence the size of Mount Everest and compare it to the mound of his "evidence" the size of an anthill he would still insist that he was right.
You can't "win" a debate against someone like that. In fact, there was no real point to the entire thing except for raising money and publicity for Ken Ham.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Sadly, even with these tactics you can't win. Ken Ham and folks like him are so wrapped up in their own world that they can trot out every last little Biblical quote and theologian's opinion that supports them. Never argue crazy with a crazy man. Some people can be convinced and should be taught. Others won't ever be convinced by anything and should just be ignored (or fought against if they try to foist their beliefs on others).
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
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Comment removed based on user account deletion
By this measure, I'm certain that Nye won.
Again, I'm talking about the ones in the debate. Popularity is irrelevant, and there's not really anything to win. This reminds me of all those Internet posters who suddenly declare that the other person has "lost" the argument due to violating some arbitrary rule.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
i want to point out that i used to be a christian (indoctrinated while growing up) and a richard dawkins debate on youtube got me interested enough to read one of his books. after that i was no longer a christian.
with something as unprovable as god, i think that few people are going to be outright convinced by a debate, but it may open some minds to new possibilities and questioning why they believe what they do, prompting them to research further and come to their own conclusion.
further, when one debator presents a wide range of facts and evidence based on centuries of study, revision, and growing understanding -and the other debator simply presents a two thousand year old book, rhetoric, and subjective personal "proof", im willing to bet more on-the-fencers would find the science guy's argument more compelling than the god guy's.
the problem is as you noted, the bible.
a bible quote is proof of nothing, evidence of nothing, support of nothing aside from the existence of a book called 'the bible'.
where does it say that the bible is the word of god? surprise, ITS IN THE BIBLE! in one of these debates, someone needs to go in ready to debate the bible itself, not its contents.
Again, I'm talking about the ones in the debate
Whoops - I missed your original point. My bad.
there's not really anything to win.
I still disagree. The point of a (public) debate isn't to convince your opponent, it's to convince the audience.
Last post!
Ham won't be convinced of anything. But the people who follow him might. Ham has convinced them that science and religion are at odds, and many people, unfortunately, would choose religion over science. If you can convince them there is no such war, they'll stop fighting it.
We don't need them to join our side - we just need them to stop fighting.
Any actual EVIDENCE for that other than the assertions you repeat to your just-as-close-minded friends?
I used to be a Republican. Been there, done that. Go figure.
This does not belong on Slashdot.
I know that this site has always been shit. Why do I keep coming here?
Can anyone recommend an alternative?
4chan?
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
There's also pipedot.
Viable Slashdot alternatives: https://pipedot.org/ and http://soylentnews.org/
Nye is a pretend-scientist just like Ham, so you have two fakes debating science. Who cares?
If your target audience is concentrated stupid, then any publicity is good publicity.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
I completely agree. If the crazies become numerous enough that you cannot simply ignore them, then you have to beat them at their own game on their own level. Creationists just do not understand Science and what it is about. They can hence not be convinced with scientific arguments. Sure, that means they are not in any way part of modern enlightened society, but unfortunately, due to some terrible accident, they are here and they are not few.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
I don't quite agree. You can reach some people in that movement by this technique. Of course, the fundamentalists will never be convinced, because they do not have the mental flexibility to change their mind. But it is not them you are arguing with.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Or become few enough that they can just be ignored like so many other groups of crackpots.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
See, the creationists are going about this all wrong. What they need is a meta-theme park, where you go and spend time with a Jewish carpenter wearing hippy clothes who peaches to you all day about God and love while you help him build an Ark-based theme park.
See, in this way you get lots of free labour to build your theme park from all the True Believers, and should any heathens get in, you get to have hippy carpenter guy preach the good word to them all day.
The only drawback to all this is it means Mr. Ham would have to employ someone who is Jewish, and he might feel that is against God's divine will.
Yaz
Convincing the audience is just a matter of being the best bullshitter, considering the general intellect of most audiences. While you might be able to convince some people watching the debate, I consider that a side benefit, rather than a "win."
Personally, I prefer text-based debates in the first place.
You don't know enough about philosophy to make any of the statements you have made. It is not just linguistic, it is not just marketspeak, and it gets traction for very good reasons. Your forgone conclusions about it are based on your ignorance, not your knowledge, on the topic.
You seem quite confident about that. Wrongfully so, perhaps. Have you read the article you linked to?
Anyway, it's not as if anything Ken Ham said had any substance in the first place. One doesn't need to know much about philosophy to debunk his garbage.
I don't know why the State got involved in funding the park in the first place (it is a pretty obvious potential conflict with their first amendment duties, but then again, this is Kentucky), but for it to even sneak by constitutional muster, employees cannot be discriminated against because of their religious beliefs.
So, if you let employees walk around and talk about Noah's flood and all that Jazz, you have to give other employees equal rights to talk about how it is a myth likely originating in the flood plains of Mesopotamia that the "decedents of Abraham" brought to Palestine.
Of course, the sensible thing would have been to not have involved the government in the park in the first place. I am sure there are plenty of young-earth creationists out there that Ham can scam.
Congrats. That is never easy on a personal level, and a significant achievement.
I completely agree that these debates are for those that are still open to arguments. The other ones cannot be reached by any means anyways.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Ideas of how people have to be and tolerance are orthogonal properties. You find arrogant fundamentalists in any camp, even among hippies.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Well, take the small but growing field of astrobiology for one. It draws a lot from astrophysicists, chemists, et cetera. If someone does not understand how life, how are they going to even consider becoming an astrobiologist? After getting a physics degree, maybe they would go on to study astronomy, focus on astrochemistry, and discover the first signs of life on a distant planet but, because that interest in the origins of life and the beauty of evolution was never sparked, they decided to go work for a startup.
Or, say someone with a physics degree who might be interested in studying biophysics applications in graduate school is not going to even consider the field if they don't believe or understand basic biology.
Are you kidding? This article is about the advancement of scientific thought. About putting mythology in it's place.
I went to a creationist museum once, keeping mom happy when she was visiting. One surprise was how many of the exhibits had nothing whatsoever to do with creationism, but were mostly 'proof' that later biblical events were true (Hebrews enslaved in Egypt), or dioramas of later events (Roman empire, spread of Christianity, etc).
There was one exhibit I remember about the Grand Canyon, about how it could have been created quickly (this place believed in young earth only a few millenia old). They tied this into the flood, about how receding waters dug it, that the sandstone hardened relatively quickly, and so forth. Lots of hand waving about it despite the story of the flood occuring long long after the story of creation.
That's one reason I found the 'intelligent design' to be so transparent. These people aren't about just creation, or some amorphous entity that guided creation, they absolutely 100% are about the literal protestant biblical accounts. They don't care about native American stories, Hindu stories, Chinese stories, etc.
In the original story ( Gilgamesh ) it was a week, in the re-telling the character Noah started at 500 years old and finished when he was 600.
But if you point out things by Mendel or a pope, it won't hold any weight either as these are imperfect Christians who have missed the truth in the eyes of the Protestant creationists.
Even for the case where the bible myth is based off a common ancestor myth shared by the Gilgmesh story it still shows that the bible myth is only that - a myth, a story. What we know for certain is that the bible myth is neither the original telling of that story nor backed up by any credible evidence of world wide flooding.
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
I don't know how much weight I give the biblical flood account but when dealing with ancient literature nothing is that certain. There has been some interesting arguments in favour of this but that's far from the absolute you imply. Ancient Mesopotamia flooded a lot, cultures in the area didn't need to go far to get details on the phenomenon.
even the Pope has got with it http://www.independent.co.uk/n... - sort of torpedoes the Creation museum as well
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
well, you'd better get reading the article then because thats not the reason. or maybe your comprehension is lacking
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
That's how you argue with a crazy person - with more crazy. He, and his followers, don't give a single fuck about the truth. So take them down within their own framework, not from your own.
No, no no. Never argue with an idiot. First they drag you down to their level and then they beat you with experience.
Ah someone who has seen Religulous and considers themselves an expert. Shame that documentary was full of crap. Most of the parallels/plagiarism he pointed out were reaching to an extreme or were a result of the stories that were stolen from actually being altered after the formation of Christianity and some stuff he flat out made up.
Yeah, there's no evidence that people in different areas share any common heritage, except all the DNA and stuff, but that's Satan's work.
If you think someone isn't free to have a different definition of "freedom" you may be a tyrant.
So Judaism is UNIX.
Christianity is Microsoft (embrace and extend)
Islam is SCO (copy, claim, and wage holy war the guys you stole it from)
Nice strawman. Affirmative action was an attempt to fix the symptom of black people being under-represented in higher education and in the workplace. That's it. They didn't do it because black people are not intelligent, they did it because they simply were not represented in those places, and those places are the ones which bring money and development to the communities from which people come.
But as long as you can make stuff up to make a point, why bother with facts?
"Religion". You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means. Nye has no patience for people who deny climate change because they're flat-out, provably, scientifically-settled wrong. It's like someone being expected to have patience with someone insisting the sky is yellow with purple polka dots. (Although, you might have patience with them because they're clearly deranged mentally. Do your own comparison of the zealots and the mentally ill here.)
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
Given the age of the stories there may have actually been a flood of almost biblical proportion. Go back to the end of the last ice age and if you had lakes like Lake Missoula emptying it would seem to fit. It isn't like dumping 500 cubic miles of water would go unnoticed if there was a human population near by that happened to survive. It wouldn't surprise me if there were similar events that got passed down by oral tradition to various people in Eurasia. Give the story ~8000 years to morph and for people to hear similar stories from all other tribes and it becomes a global flood.
Time to offend someone
From my experience (being raised in a fundamentalist baptist church that was probably different only in actions to the Westboro Baptist Church) it goes deeper than that. These people are so invested in their belief system that if any portion is proven to be wrong it means that it is all wrong. The bible for them is the gold standard of truth and everything in it is of divine origin that speaks with one voice (never understood this). For them religion is their reason for existence and provides all the meaning in their life and they don't want that to be a lie. Unfortunately they use religion to justify all sorts of strange belief like the gays need to die, black people carry the mark of Cain and as such are sub human, the universe is only ~6000 years old, a women must submit to their husband, etc.
Time to offend someone
... so he was employed :)
I know the people I grew up with. They handed me ribbons for Cathleen Kennedy Townsend while spewing vitriol about Robert Ehrlich. I know how the issue has grown and evolved over time, and what it was like at the peak of its political and media attention.
Further, "Affirmative Action", when not so severe as it had been at its peak, is still a thing known as "Positive Discrimination", in which favoritism is given to a disadvantaged group. The main theory is that a certain group is not capable of thriving on its own merits, and so certain policies must be taken up to favor that group and, by extension, handicap others.
So my post falls under "call a spade a shovel".
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" (and have downgrade protection for good measure)"
Downgrading from TLS 1.2 to 1.0 would be foolhardy.
Ah well, you guys haven't spent the last week dealing with SSL and TLS attacks on your sites.
Keep on talking smack.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Well, you're wrong. The original Executive Order commanded that GOVERNMENT CONTRACTORS hire without regard to race, religion, or national origin (i.e. you can't refuse to hire foreigners). Nothing about higher education.
That was way back in the 60s. In the 90s, it was fashionable to place college students by non-statutory racial quotas--they were non-statutory because such quotas are, and always have been, illegal--and so it was suggested that more women and blacks would be taken into college on the basis of being women and blacks. There was much argument for this, and much political theater against this. About this time, the term "reparations" begun to appear, with blacks and non-black civil rights advocates demanding cash payment for the suffering of their ancestors, or some such nonsense; these such things are simply the result of political hysteria, and are mirrored by white country singers sparking white Americans to kick the shit out of anyone with a beard and turban shortly after 9/11.
At a point, the social institution of affirmative action had been the leaning toward bringing in at least some candidates for employment and college admissions based on "some of them are black and women, so we should chose some of those specifically to get a good balance". This institution was not formalized by statute--indeed, was illegal--but was engaged in nonetheless, and was talked about openly and argued for as a social institution which many desired to codify into formal statute.
Try thinking from a view of everything, instead of from a narrow view. It helps to understand not just legal statute and origins, but the progression, the implicit social institutions which came and went, the arguments people had made, the media behavior over time, misconceptions of various people, forward-theory, and human psychology in general.
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Out of curiosity, did they wear clothes with mixed fabrics?
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
It's perfectly sane for a black liberal to dislike affirmative action, and that's where the value of your post ends.
Originally (which was at its peak), it had been a way to get certain people considered for things they never would have been considered before earlier. It wasn't so much the establishing of quotas as changing them. The intention was to allow smart blacks into college and business on much the same basis as smart whites.
It's arguable that its utility has passed, and that it is currently doing more harm than good. (I'm not convinced either way, myself.) That would be a good reason to oppose it. A black liberal might be annoyed that his or her personal success was attributed to racial discrimination.
Nor do I have the faintest idea where you get your liberal Democrats from, but I suspect I'd want them well washed before I met them. The ones I know of are in favor of AA because they believe there still is discrimination, and that blacks are handicapped by society in comparison to whites of similar ability.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
The peak of Affirmative Action was in the 90s, when arguments over Affirmative Action were made, when Family Guy was mocking reparations, when fears over quotas of how many black people to hire were coming out of the woodwork, when such quotas or similar systems of selecting X from the black/women pool and the rest from the general pool were actively done so as to avoid potential "you have an awful lot of white guys working here..." EEO litigation, and so on.
I got my liberal Democrats from high school. Had a friend whose mom baked the class Democrat Cookies with asses on them; the kid campaigned in the middle of class for a gubernatorial election, and also told us that one of our classmates got into a good college because she was black. Said black chick had a better SAT score than me, initially, by 20 points; but I retook the test because my statistics teacher scored 1330 on his SATs, and he was similarly fucking head-up-ass politically retarded, and went on 40 minute rants about how gay marriage would lead to people marrying tables and animals, and then was fired after 3 months for gross incompetence. I scored a 1340 on my second round, 10 points higher than black chick who "got into a good college because she's black", so my response to that argument is an enormous middle finger.
Amusingly, the anti-gay-marriage ranting teacher was a firm Democrat, and would rant about bush a lot, too. The guy campaigning for Kathleen Kennedy Townsend also used to comment that Shirley Temple was a bright actress because she was a Democrat, while talking about how fucked up gays are and how they all carry diseases and HIV. Never have I experienced such a confused mixture of politics and social vitriol as I had in the presence of these people. How they managed to hold a firm stance against gay marriage and yet a firm stance against all things conservative politics I will never quite understand, considering the way partisan politics are held as a fashion statement here in the United States.
The more conservatives I was surrounded by did not seem to care much. We had such people as William Donald Schaffer once, a moderate Democrat whose behavior was more becoming, and who speaks to me of what the country should be more like; alas, in my time, he had taken a more minor governmental office and was no longer governor. The modern Conservative has disappeared, as well, in favor of the right-wing radical: some politicians appear as caricatures of Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity. These are such sad times, but familiar to me: it is as when the Tori of the English cut down the center of Parliament to bring progressive politics in where there was only the barren wasteland between the Liberal and the Radical politicians, and I hope soon we shall see similar senses brought among the House of Representatives and the Senate of our nation.
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Being confident isn't what makes one an idiot.
Good thing I didn't say that. I can't determine whether or not you studied it, or whether or not you truly came to an understanding of it if you did study it. That makes it possible that you're just a "confident idiot." That's what makes such subjective soft science studies so fun; they can be applied to nearly everyone.
I studied philosophy formally, and in great depth, and know quite a lot about it.
I don't care what you claim to know.
Many posters on slashdot who deride philosophy have not studied it at all, and hence would be in the "confident idiot" category.
I sort of agree in the sense that people shouldn't be deriding philosophy because idiots like Ken Ham are professional bullshitters, but I'm not sure where you got this information. Have you conducted some sort of scientific study to determine that "many" posters on Slashdot who deride philosophy have not studied it at all?
In my opinion, the main problem is that so many people lack knowledge about philosophy. If they understood more about it, it is possible they'd see right through Ken Ham's nonsense, rather than be fooled by pseudo-philosophical garbage.
A set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe, especially when considered as the creation of a superhuman agency or agencies, usually involving devotional and ritual observances, and often containing a moral code governing the conduct of human affairs.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/religion
No, I'm pretty sure I knew what I was talking about.
No one denies climate change, not even the deniers. The climate has been changing since the Earth was formed. Bill Nye is fighting a straw man. What the deniers dispute is humans having a majoritive effect on climate change. The science on that is not settled, especially when new papers are being published trying to explain a hiatus in the warming trend and the significance of the oceans in the atmospheric temperature. If the science on that was settled there would be no use for continued research.
...of simpler times hundreds of years ago...
Stick Men
I reiterate that you are a slobbering mouth breather, and now I append the honorific of 'grammar Nazi'. While you have diagrammed your sentence with such skill that freshman English teachers everywhere are getting erections, you overlook that fact that using correct grammar doesn't mean that you have expressed yourself in any clear or elegant fashion.
If your statement was written by someone who had the intellectual capacity of at least a third grader, it my be thus:
"I have the greatest understanding for anyone who wishes to excise from their lives, such views and the people possessing them."
Mind you, your poor sentence structure is the least of your faults. I would point out the generalizations you attribute to 'Liberal Democrats' sound wholly out of character for a people who are normally generalized as socially progressive, and sound more like the statements that might be made by an astroturfing tea party member who secretly follows KKK propaganda.
But by all means, continue attributing your bizarre interpretation of Affirmative action to others, it doesn't sound strange at all. Additional insulting boilerplate I couldn't be bothered with here.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
I agree with everything you say except for the possible insinuation (which you may have intended) that "only a myth" is a bad thing. On Slashdot, things like mythology, fantasy, and sci-fi are usually considered magnificent.
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
Of course, Campbell based is work on that of Jung, so he wasn't completely ignorant in these matters.
Say what you will about his monomyth theory, it's been very successful in storytelling. So even if it's not universally found in mythology, it does seem to be useful.
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
Where the frack did you get the idea that I was claiming that Noah was original? All I said was that we don't know that the Noah story specifically inherited from Gilgamesh.
We do know that the Noah story was not purely the work of one author, because we can see strong evidence in the text itself that it's been edited. The only known links to Gilgamesh are that it has a similar theme and it comes from a similar part of the world. It wouldn't surprise me if they're related, but we don't actually know, and probably never will.
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
By my laymen's education on the subject, I do believe it means they double and triple tax the shit out of you while providing fewer services than non-commonwealth states.
Once again, you've proven you have have no understanding of these issues. The GP's reference to downgrade protection refers to mitigation of a MITM's ability to force a protocol downgrade to SSL 3.0 and hence gain the ability to decrypt sensitive data such as session cookies. As I mentioned in an earlier reply, TLS_FALLBACK_SCSV offers mitigation for such protocol downgrade scenarios, although it should be noted that the most desirable means of resolving this entire mess is to disable SSL 3.0 on the server side.
Why are you persisting in posting replies which clearly indicate you're nothing more than a pompous ass and pretender? To help you understand my context, I spend the majority of my time contributing to the efforts of a team that is devoted to securing a varied assortment of information assets for Fortune 50 companies. Do I really need to track you down and dox everything I find to everyone you know? Is that really what you want? Hush up now, it's past your bedtime, junior.
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I authenticate the parent post.
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On the off chance that you're actually one of those "special guys" who isn't really a complete idiot but is instead engaged in the business of posting bait posts in forums like these with the intent of identifying "candidates" for employment by certain entities, please be advised that I've already worn a uniform for a living "once upon a time," and I'm not presently interested in returning to that sort of service. This is mostly due to the fact that your organizational concept of loyalty is demonstrably flawed at best (all it takes is one lying and improperly trusted jackass in a senior officer role to ruin the fun for others), and there's also the minor problem that your pay fucking sucks considering the nature of the work at hand. If none of the aforementioned criteria apply to you, meaning you're simply a pompous ass and idiot, all I can really say is "good luck in life, and try not to piss off the wrong people." Cheers.
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If you think Slashcode is so "inherently broken", why are you using this site?
Please be advised that it's plausible that the GP is engaged in the business of pretending ignorance in an effort to identify individuals who possess the requisite knowledge to accomplish certain aims. I don't particularly care about this possibility as it pertains to myself, but I'm becoming increasingly "itchy" with regard to digging into this person's background. It wouldn't be the first (or even tenth) time I've confirmed such behavior, where confirmation is defined as irrefutable identification of the full background of the involved party. Most of these guys really aren't very bright, but hey, they allegedly mean well.
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I agree. Myths are terrific! I just don't like it when people confuse myths with history ^^
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
1) A scientific mindset is not a set of beliefs. Scientists do not worship what they cannot understand; they only seek to understand it.
2) Scientists do not consider the cause or purpose of the universe, only its nature. Cause or purpose implies an intelligent creator. We do not have any objective evidence that one exists. The Bible is not objective evidence, only philosophy, narrative, and metaphor. Even if it were, the current versions of the work have been translated and interpreted so many times by so many people with so many different agendas to push that the original meaning has been lost for thousands of years.
3) There is no objective evidence that a superhuman agency or agencies created the universe. There is conjecture and hypothesis. The problem is that the zealots insist that you prove a negative when you express an opinion on the subject. As we all know, proving a negative is impossible. Thinking that something is possible doesn't mean you believe it to actually be the case. We do not know what was happening before the Big Bang happened, as current technology does not exist to look beyond the singularity. Nothing can be proven or disproven about the origin of the Big Bang at the moment, and that is not a concession of a weak argument; the three most important words in science are "I don't know".
4) Exactly what devotional and ritual observances do scientists engage in? The closest I can come up with is getting your morning coffee.
5) Scientifically based solutions and practices are not the same as a moral code. Morals are arbitrary rules of conduct that a particular slice of humanity has decided are worth upholding, and as such, cannot by definition be associated with science. Nothing in science says you can't have sex before marriage, for example, or stone the gays to death, or beat your wife, or kill your slaves..
I'm positive you don't know what you're talking about.
It's settled. Getting 97% of scientists to agree on something is virtually impossible if there is no objective evidence. CO2 in the atmosphere makes temperatures rise. We're dumping CO2 into the atmosphere by the billions of tons. Therefore, more heat from the sun is trapped in the atmosphere, making global temperature rise. Honestly, it's not a difficult concept, and if you need an example of a greenhouse effect gone mad, take a look at Venus. It's like 863 degrees F / 462 degrees C on the surface, in large part to the atmosphere being 96% CO2. The origins of the high levels of CO2 on Venus are different from those on Earth, but they share a similar problem in that there is insufficient biomass to recapture the carbon in the atmosphere.
Please link to some of those papers; if they're not in reputable peer-reviewed publications, though, don't bother.
You are failing to grasp the nature of scientific endeavor. We will never know everything about a particular topic; there is always more knowledge to be obtained. If 97% (or even a significant majority) of the new research contradicts the human-caused theory of global warming, then a conclusio
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
" Do I really need to track you down and dox everything I find to everyone you know? Is that really what you want? Hush up now, it's past your bedtime, junior."
You got so mad over me being right (because you're a total fool in the firt pace) that you had to resort to making threats.
You lost your entire argument.
Oh, and just for fun - I'm a global horticultural research director - four of your Fortune 50 companies DIRECTLY CONSULT WITH ME in securing their automated food production facilities, designing new internet-connected monitoring/control systems, and even down to designing the buildings, hydroponics systems, LED lighting, the entire shebang. I get paid $2500/hr for consultation work. What the fuck are you getting paid?
Oh, look, have a nice guided tour of an FTSE 100 (That's the UK equivalent to Fortune 100) facility I built and designed (and SECURED from SSL/TLS attacks.)
Amateur.
Dox me? I'm already globally known, who the fuck are you, Mr. Nobody? Go take your empty threats to your mother.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
I don't know if that was an enforced rule or not but I didn't follow it (60/40 blend t-shirts). That was a long time ago and when little I didn't know what most of those things were. As I got older I started thinking for my self and the whole religious thing just didn't make sense to me. After starting to question some things and realizing that it was pretty shitty to think like that I rapidly fell away from it. It was really strange too when I went to church with my grandparents on my father's side (Presbyterian) on the rare occasion I was at their house for the weekend and while their god and Jesus had the same names they were very different from what I was hearing in my regular church. This new Jesus seemed more like a guy who wanted you to not be a dick to other people and help out to make people's lot in life better, not someone who wants you to carry out a crusade for him.
Time to offend someone
Liberal Democrats are not simple social progressives. The country is run by........
Sorry, could you repeat that? I nodded of during your tangential gibbering about political labeling. You should sell it to people with sleep disorders, you could make a killing.
I see more than the packaged deal. I see more than two parties where the two names are used. I see more than two positions active in our government and in our politics. I see society's sentiments, behaviors, and moods. That you wish to ignore these occludes the reality of our recent history and our modern struggles to your view.
I see someone who starts sentences with 'I see...' way too much. I see someone who wants to replace Mr Luther King Jr's speech writers. I see someone who claims to have a worldview that includes a plurality of political interests, and still attributes negative generalizations to 'Liberal Democrats'. In short, I see a pompous ass who loves the sound of his own voice.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
There was no "winner" unless one of them was convinced by the others' arguments. This notion that you can "win" a debate through completely arbitrary means needs to die.
The goal of an organized debate is not to convince the other debater. It's to convince the audience. That's the whole point of it.
NPR airs a program called Intelligence Squared which has a debate between two panels or two participants where a specific question or proposition is made, for example "Flexing American Muscles In The Middle East Will Make Things Worse." The audience is polled before and after the debate, and, Oxford-style, the team which sways more people to its side is declared the winner.
Obviously, that doesn't mean the discussion is over, because people are not computers. You can't just plug in a set of conditions and just have that be someone's new reality. People need to be convinced, often many times.
But if you point out things by Mendel or a pope, it won't hold any weight either as these are imperfect Christians who have missed the truth in the eyes of the Protestant creationists.
Folks like Ken Ham love the militant protestants like Jack T Chick, who has argued that the Roman Catholic Church was started, organized, and is currently supported by none less than Satan himself.
People on the outside looking in might think RC Christian = Protestant Evangelical Christian, but it's like saying Sunni Muslim = Shiite Muslim. There are some deep, dark divides when you go into the boonies and start playing with the crazies.
Further, "Affirmative Action", when not so severe as it had been at its peak, is still a thing known as "Positive Discrimination", in which favoritism is given to a disadvantaged group. The main theory is that a certain group is not capable of thriving on its own merits, and so certain policies must be taken up to favor that group and, by extension, handicap others.
Wow, I dislike Affirmative Action and would love to see it go away completely, but even I know that is not the theory behind Affirmative Action or Positive Discrimination AT ALL. At no point is there the belief that a certain group is not capable of thriving on its own merits, that's the exact opposite of what most people in favor of AA believe. Instead, they are very much of the opinion that previous AND current discrimination is still holding a particular group down. IE, "we were racist and still are racist, and since we hold all the power we can subtly keep those other groups out by not giving them any of the breaks that we got."
and are mirrored by white country singers sparking white Americans to kick the shit out of anyone with a beard and turban shortly after 9/11
Which doubly-sucked, since most of the beard/turban types in the US are Sikh, not Muslim. Though the white country singer and his followers wouldn't even know that there was such a thing as a Sikh or that they were somehow different from Muslims.
Out of curiosity, did they wear clothes with mixed fabrics?
They always find ways to weasel out of that, telling you how it doesn't mean what you think it means, or that Jesus dissolved those old rules (but somehow just some) or that accumulation of vast amounts of wealth was totally fine and something that Jesus would have approved of.
otherwise "perfect" liberals such as Bill Maher
Yeah, keep whacking that strawman, buddy. I guess the exercise will really do you some good.
The goal of an organized debate is not to convince the other debater. It's to convince the audience. That's the whole point of it.
Which would just make it a bullshitting contest, considering the intelligence of most of the audience. The best bullshitter will "win" (what, I don't know).
An organized debate is, to me, text-based. More time to collect your thoughts, do research, and speak precisely. No yelling or interruptions, and gish gallops aren't as effective. And you can always thoroughly study what your opponent said. I think these public speech debates are worse than pointless.
http://tech.slashdot.org/story...
What was that, idiot?
"As I mentioned in an earlier reply, TLS_FALLBACK_SCSV [ietf.org] offers mitigation for such protocol downgrade scenarios,"
And it's horribly broken by design which is why IN MY CONSULTATIONS WITH GOOGLE we decided to remove the fallback code ENTIRELY because TLS 1.0 is broken as fuck in the same vein that SSL 3.0 is broken.
There's a reason I was the first computer help provider on Google Helpouts - that's because Google comes to ME (and pays well) for advice.
I don't see them consulting your ignorant ass.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Sikh are awesome, though. They're bound by the tenants of their religion to intervene when somebody is in need of aid. Think about that: they have a religion that specifically damns them for wandering by a murder or rape and deciding it's not their business.
But they're still brown, and this is America.
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Flood myths are the single most common myth in the world. There are literally thousands of flood myths from widely differing cultures, across many different spans of time.
There have been some pretty large floods in history that may have contributed to some of the "world flooding myths": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outburst_flood