(Yes, I know that in technical contexts, a kilobyte is 2^10=1024 instead of 10^3=1000, but either is sufficient for most purposes of common end users in grasping general differences in file or disk sizes.)
You had people all over the US talking about how third world uncivilized people deserved the tsunami.
I don't recall that at all. Now, there was a small number of rumblings among conservatives about the image of Osama bin Laden in this picture (which was not a new phenomenon) and concerns that the people in those Muslim nations support Islamist terrorism. However, this anger gained little traction, and most charitable people, including myself, gave money anyway despite suspicions.
About new orleans, you the media (sean hannity/fox) reported a blatant lie that foreign countries didn't step up to offer aid and assistance for new orleans.
You have a terrible tendency to exaggerate to the point of lying. Now, it's possible that Fox News tried to count the chickens before they hatched. Within the first few days, few countries had offered aid, and the amount of aid was tiny in comparison to the massive support given by the US to the tsunami victims.
Here's a report that contradicts what sean hannity was saying
These same people are now saying "screw new orleans bunch of savages".
Here you go exaggerating again for the purpose of slandering. Many are saying "screw the savages in New Orleans [who are raping and killing the good people of New Orleans and preventing aid from being distributed]," not "screw New Orleans, a bunch of savages." That's a huge difference. Shut off your flamethrower.
Sure there are scumbags causing trouble there.. but a vast majority of people are there because they didn't have the means (no cars & buses) to evacuate in time..let me stress that not every new orleans person is involved in looting.
Yes, and this is the majority opinion. Sure, there are scumbags who say "screw everybody in New Orleans -- they were morons for living in a suicide flood zone*, they should've evacuated, everyone left is a thug, etc." but the vast majority of people have great compassion for the people of New Orleans.
* I do think it would be a bad idea to rebuild New Orleans in the same place, but regardless, we must devote all attention and resources to the present humanitarian crisis and not hold bad city planning against the residents.
A fundamentalist Christian cleric recently called for a fatwah on a world leader urging his followers to assassinate him.
I wonder how many Americans support the Stalinist dictator who opposed our response to 9/11 in Afghanistan and mocked our need for help during this crisis of Hurricane Katrina.
OB is the largest U.S. charity after the Red Cross and Salvation Army. They had their giant supply trucks in Mississippi days before the Feds got there. I saw them on TV.
Efficiency - Over 99.2% of OBI's spending goes toward humanitarian programs.
Excellence - MinistryWatch.Com ranks Operation Blessing International #2 (out of 451 charities) with its top 5-Star Financial Efficiency Rating.
High-Value - For every $10 you give, it helps us secure more than $100 of donated food and relief supplies (10 to 1 return on your charitable investment).
'Cause, you know, if I gave $100 to the "Southen Baptist Convention" or "Operation Blessing", I strongly suspect that money would end up building some new mega-Church or making one of Reverend LePew's boat payments.
"Character is doing the right thing when nobody's looking. There are too many people who think that the only thing that's right is to get by, and the only thing that's wrong is to get caught." - J.C. Watts
Perhaps all of the people in your local church do not accept evolution, but the MAJORITY of Christians in the world do accept evolution.
The majority of Christians are wrong about a lot of things. For instance, the Bible clearly states that the Sabbath is the seventh day of the week. Why do Christians think it is Sunday? The story behind the "Sunday sabbath" is ugly and evil, and it has nothing to do with theology or honest disagreement about Scripture.
YOU say that evolution is incompatible with Christianity, but THE POPE said they are NOT incompatible.
The Pope parted ways with the original church over 1600 years ago. I protest the Roman Church more than Protestants do.
A literal interpretation of the Bible says that the earth does not move and that the sun goes around the earth
When I say "literalist," I primarily mean that I believe the text is true, as opposed to the disciples of "higher criticism" who interpret Scripture in such a way that, by the time they're done with it, its historical integrity is doubted and its impact and relevance for today is greatly weakened. Sure, there are parables. There is a great deal of metaphorical speech in the Bible. But the Creation account must be interpreted mostly in a literal way. Why? Because the earth exists! We are here. It's about concrete things.
If you think the earth is 6000 years old then you are rejecting geology and astronomy and chemistry and pretty much EVERY field of science.
When I took geology in college, I began to learn what a fraud evolutionary science is. Geologists start from the tenet that evolution is true. They use the evolutionary conjecture of what organisms evolved first, and in their minds, they place different organisms and their fossils into geologic periods. So they go out into creation with their *cough* scientific charts, and lo and behold, the earth disagrees with them. So they come up with cockamamie ideas to explain why their evolutionary beliefs don't match up with nature.
If you think the earth is 6000 years old then you are rejecting geology and astronomy and chemistry and pretty much EVERY field of science.
Science has been hijacked! People are brainwashed. The interpretations are skewed. Christian scientists (not referencing the sect by that name) are not immune to extra-Biblical influences. Nearly all of Christian thought in the West is Hellenist, and today, we are living in the shadow of secular states and media. It's no wonder that most Christians accept unbiblical beliefs.
They have studied the universe and the universe is screaming that the earth is four and a half billion years old.
Put God's works first. God did not create a universe to lie to us.
Amen and amen. The universe doesn't lie, but people who study it do, granted, mostly unknowingly (I hope).
If it doesn't jibe with reality, if it doesn't jibe with God's direct text (the universe itself), well them maybe some human along the line made a mistake.
Here your bias is exposed. "well them maybe some human along the line made a mistake." That's exactly what I'm saying! Why not assume that human scientists made mistakes in their assumptions about an "old earth" and biological evolution instead of devout Christians (a phrase you used earlier to bolster those of your position) who translated Scripture (sometimes under death threats of THE POPE)?
Caution: If you are a Christian, questioning doctrines by assuming faulty Bibles is a dangerous, slippery slope. You don't want to legitimize this avenue of attack.
Granted, at least a few Bible versions (there are hundreds in English) are faulty, and most Bible versions seem to have a number of instances where the translation is unacceptably/borderline off the mark, i
An amateur Christian, as well, apparently. Not an insult, just an observation. We're all still growing.
I am increasingly disturbed by an administration that ignores whole chunks of the Bible
I feel the same way, except my issue is Israel, not Creation. See my journal for details.
(namely, nearly every word of Christ) in favor of pandering to a small and crazy fringe group who wants an untenable literal interpretation.
If you read the words of Christ, you'll see that He was a literalist. He taught, making references to the flood of Noah's day. And if you read the polls, you'll see that a majority of Americans believe that God created the earth. However, some of them may be "theistic evolutionists."
The literalist interpretation of the Bible is not what's untenable. What's untenable is the materialist interpretation and practice of science.
I understand why someone in your shoes should be frightened. To believe in both evolution and Christianity causes a crisis of faith. They are not compatible, and, understandably, you don't want to be mocked and made fun of by the unbelieving world.
You have a crisis because you are judging the Word of God by the "reality" as defined by the prevailing wind of philosophy, which has hijacked science. Christianity has not been hijacked; science has been hijacked -- by materialists; those who refuse knowledge of the supernatural. You should be judging what you hear humans saying by what God has said. You have reversed the order. Instead of reexamining and reinterpreting the scientific data, "scared-to-death" Christians like yourself marginalize, water down, and "spiritualize" into oblivion the supremely authoritative words of the Creator.
Put God's words first. He was there! And got the t-shirt to prove it. If some "science" doesn't jibe with what God said, throw it out! (And wait for more research.) That may sound radical, but come on now. If it's accurate, rest assured, it will not - it cannot! - conflict with the Holy Bible.
You said you were a Christian.
Whom. Do. You. Trust?
Do some soul searching. Make your decision. If the answer is not "God," please stop calling yourself a Christian. If it is, halleluyah! Start putting His authority and intregrity far above that of mere men, who whither as grass (Isa. 40:7).
Does it have a place in a biology class? No.
Does it have a place in a philosophy class? Absolutely.
What does "Ph.D." stand for?
Science is a subset of philosophy. Philosophy (Greek for "love of wisdom") includes mathematics, physics, astronomy, and religion.
Materialist philosophy constrains science to materialist methods and interpretations, thus circularly reaffirming its starting tenet: that everything is material, or at least, that the only things that matter are material.
The scientific method is a very good method for learning many things about the world, but it is not the end-all-be-all of attaining knowledge. Scientists who discount other methods of attaining knowledge or wisdom are not really in the search of truth. They only want to find truth that their limited instruments can find.
I don't find fault with the limitations of materialist science. One could be a Christian and be fully engaged in studying the material world, hopefully, then seeing the big picture in his own mind. I do find fault with materialist scientists who have replaced the broadness of philosophy (the love of wisdom) with their version of science: the study of the material world, axed from its companion branches of knowledge and quarantined to operate on its own. I take issue with materialists who say that there is nothing beyond what their superficial field investigates -- who attempt to block discussion of ideas beyond their own philosophy [*] (a philosophy that most deny holding, because they think that philosophy has nothing to do with science), who scoff at the worship of a supernatural Being, and who discount the power of prayer.
In more honest times, people who rejected God admitted that they followed another god (idol) or ideologue and that they adhered to a certain religion/philosophy.
The problem with "science vs. religion" debates is that the Orthodox Scientism side won't admit to their philosophy/religion. They feign to sit in the Throne of Objectivity, inside a vacuum free of bias and preconception, ruling as supreme arbiter of what is knowable or unknowable, what is true or false. To me, that doesn't seem very "scientific."
* The philosophy of evolutionism is thousands of years old. We are just experiencing a temporary reemergence of it, and indeed, it is already fading out again.
Here's the context of the last quote: "When we got organized as a country and we wrote a fairly radical Constitution with a radical Bill of Rights, giving a radical amount of individual freedom to Americans... And so a lot of people say there's too much personal freedom. When personal freedom's being abused, you have to move to limit it. That's what we did in the announcement I made last weekend on the public housing projects, about how we're going to have weapon sweeps and more things like that to try to make people safer in their communities." - 3/22/94, MTV's "Enough is Enough"
Was Clinton using the issue of crime to remove our rights?
More Clinton quotes:
"The purpose of government is to rein in the rights of the people."- during an interview on MTV in 1993
"You know the one thing that's wrong with this country? Everyone gets a chance to have their fair say." - May 29, 1993, The White House
You expect someone whose rights have been quashed to all of a sudden have the unimpeded right to talk about it? That doesn't make any sense whatsoever. In fact, you should conclude the opposite
Yes, yes indeed. Makes you wonder how we hear so many tales of torture and abuse coming out of Gitmo. You'd think they'd all be dead or shut up in dungeons never to be heard from again.
If you read the article, it's entirely from the perspective of someone trying to corrupt the rankings for financial gain.
No, it's written from the perspective of helping people from inadvertently falling into a trap of being labeled a spammer. E.g. "If you are on a shared server it's possible somebody else on that server is using dirty tactics or Spaming. If so your site will suffer since you share the same IP."
His conclusion on page 3: "Overall keep it ethical and you can't go wrong."
Paul's letters indicate there was a lot of debate about whether to keep the Law, including circumcision and biblical festivals.
Paul did not want circumcision and kashrut to be barriers for Greeks to come to faith in Messiah, knowing that there is no power of salvation in the Law itself. The way I see it is that when the Greeks became saved, they would've begun attending synagogue where there would be a majority of Jewish believers, and they would eventually mature in their faith and take on the matters of the Law later as they came to understand that it was right to do so.
As to circumcision, one thing you should consider is that Pharisees/Orthodox require not just a mere cutting of the foreskin. You see, nearly all American men have been circumcised, but very few have undergone b'rit milah, the ritual ceremony of circumcision done on the eighth day under rabbinic supervision in accordance with all the traditions of the Oral Law. I think this is why Paul downplayed circumcision; not that it was bad, but that all the man-made, religious baggage that accompanied it (and many other Torah laws) created an unnecessary obstacle for Gentile believers.
Future "Mactel" computers will have specially designated Intel chips, not generic x86 compatible chips found in common PCs. My sources say that Jobs is going to use Intel's cryptographic technology called LaGrande to make sure OS X will only boot on Apple-branded hardware.
Slashdot Mirror
For Firefox, install the Greasemonkey extension and download the "Slashdot Live Comment Tree."
The new format is called Red-Ray, also Pinko-Ray in the U.S.
Maybe they meant to say "Best Products of 5765."
Shana tovah!
What about our COLOSSAL squid overlords?
See scary pictures. (I had no idea there was an Octopus News Magazine.)
Proper computing education should be mandatory for high school graduation and equivalent.
The problem is not computing education, but education in general.
Since when are standard metric prefixes considered "jargon"? Kilo-byte, mega-byte, etc.
(Yes, I know that in technical contexts, a kilobyte is 2^10=1024 instead of 10^3=1000, but either is sufficient for most purposes of common end users in grasping general differences in file or disk sizes.)
Many religious observers believe that the United Nations is today's Tower of Babel.
I don't recall that at all. Now, there was a small number of rumblings among conservatives about the image of Osama bin Laden in this picture (which was not a new phenomenon) and concerns that the people in those Muslim nations support Islamist terrorism. However, this anger gained little traction, and most charitable people, including myself, gave money anyway despite suspicions.
About new orleans, you the media (sean hannity /fox) reported a blatant lie that foreign countries didn't step up to offer aid and assistance for new orleans.
You have a terrible tendency to exaggerate to the point of lying. Now, it's possible that Fox News tried to count the chickens before they hatched. Within the first few days, few countries had offered aid, and the amount of aid was tiny in comparison to the massive support given by the US to the tsunami victims.
Here's a report that contradicts what sean hannity was saying
That comes after (and maybe as a result of) the criticism. Speaking of stingy...
These same people are now saying "screw new orleans bunch of savages".
Here you go exaggerating again for the purpose of slandering. Many are saying "screw the savages in New Orleans [who are raping and killing the good people of New Orleans and preventing aid from being distributed]," not "screw New Orleans, a bunch of savages." That's a huge difference. Shut off your flamethrower.
Sure there are scumbags causing trouble there .. but a vast majority of people are there because they didn't have the means (no cars & buses) to evacuate in time ..let me stress that not every new orleans person is involved in looting.
Yes, and this is the majority opinion. Sure, there are scumbags who say "screw everybody in New Orleans -- they were morons for living in a suicide flood zone*, they should've evacuated, everyone left is a thug, etc." but the vast majority of people have great compassion for the people of New Orleans.
* I do think it would be a bad idea to rebuild New Orleans in the same place, but regardless, we must devote all attention and resources to the present humanitarian crisis and not hold bad city planning against the residents.
I wonder how many Americans support the Stalinist dictator who opposed our response to 9/11 in Afghanistan and mocked our need for help during this crisis of Hurricane Katrina.
Does anybody not want to harm Chávez?
And the parent quoted whom? Nobody. Hello, hate-mongering bigotry.
don't you think that maybe looking for a third party rating might be a better idea?
Here you go.
OB is the largest U.S. charity after the Red Cross and Salvation Army. They had their giant supply trucks in Mississippi days before the Feds got there. I saw them on TV.
Well, both of those organizations are recommended by FEMA.
This is required viewing for all people of prayer.
Viewing note: Unless you have the ActiveX plugin for Firefox which allows embedded Windows Media, you will need to load the page in Internet Explorer.
"Character is doing the right thing when nobody's looking. There are too many people who think that the only thing that's right is to get by, and the only thing that's wrong is to get caught." - J.C. Watts
The majority of Christians are wrong about a lot of things. For instance, the Bible clearly states that the Sabbath is the seventh day of the week. Why do Christians think it is Sunday? The story behind the "Sunday sabbath" is ugly and evil, and it has nothing to do with theology or honest disagreement about Scripture.
YOU say that evolution is incompatible with Christianity, but THE POPE said they are NOT incompatible.
The Pope parted ways with the original church over 1600 years ago. I protest the Roman Church more than Protestants do.
A literal interpretation of the Bible says that the earth does not move and that the sun goes around the earth
When I say "literalist," I primarily mean that I believe the text is true, as opposed to the disciples of "higher criticism" who interpret Scripture in such a way that, by the time they're done with it, its historical integrity is doubted and its impact and relevance for today is greatly weakened. Sure, there are parables. There is a great deal of metaphorical speech in the Bible. But the Creation account must be interpreted mostly in a literal way. Why? Because the earth exists! We are here. It's about concrete things.
If you think the earth is 6000 years old then you are rejecting geology and astronomy and chemistry and pretty much EVERY field of science.
When I took geology in college, I began to learn what a fraud evolutionary science is. Geologists start from the tenet that evolution is true. They use the evolutionary conjecture of what organisms evolved first, and in their minds, they place different organisms and their fossils into geologic periods. So they go out into creation with their *cough* scientific charts, and lo and behold, the earth disagrees with them. So they come up with cockamamie ideas to explain why their evolutionary beliefs don't match up with nature.
If you think the earth is 6000 years old then you are rejecting geology and astronomy and chemistry and pretty much EVERY field of science.
Science has been hijacked! People are brainwashed. The interpretations are skewed. Christian scientists (not referencing the sect by that name) are not immune to extra-Biblical influences. Nearly all of Christian thought in the West is Hellenist, and today, we are living in the shadow of secular states and media. It's no wonder that most Christians accept unbiblical beliefs.
They have studied the universe and the universe is screaming that the earth is four and a half billion years old.
The earth screams that Genesis is true.
Put God's works first. God did not create a universe to lie to us.
Amen and amen. The universe doesn't lie, but people who study it do, granted, mostly unknowingly (I hope).
If it doesn't jibe with reality, if it doesn't jibe with God's direct text (the universe itself), well them maybe some human along the line made a mistake.
Here your bias is exposed. "well them maybe some human along the line made a mistake." That's exactly what I'm saying! Why not assume that human scientists made mistakes in their assumptions about an "old earth" and biological evolution instead of devout Christians (a phrase you used earlier to bolster those of your position) who translated Scripture (sometimes under death threats of THE POPE)?
Caution: If you are a Christian, questioning doctrines by assuming faulty Bibles is a dangerous, slippery slope. You don't want to legitimize this avenue of attack.
Granted, at least a few Bible versions (there are hundreds in English) are faulty, and most Bible versions seem to have a number of instances where the translation is unacceptably/borderline off the mark, i
An amateur Christian, as well, apparently. Not an insult, just an observation. We're all still growing.
I am increasingly disturbed by an administration that ignores whole chunks of the Bible
I feel the same way, except my issue is Israel, not Creation. See my journal for details.
(namely, nearly every word of Christ) in favor of pandering to a small and crazy fringe group who wants an untenable literal interpretation.
If you read the words of Christ, you'll see that He was a literalist. He taught, making references to the flood of Noah's day. And if you read the polls, you'll see that a majority of Americans believe that God created the earth. However, some of them may be "theistic evolutionists."
The literalist interpretation of the Bible is not what's untenable. What's untenable is the materialist interpretation and practice of science.
I understand why someone in your shoes should be frightened. To believe in both evolution and Christianity causes a crisis of faith. They are not compatible, and, understandably, you don't want to be mocked and made fun of by the unbelieving world.
You have a crisis because you are judging the Word of God by the "reality" as defined by the prevailing wind of philosophy, which has hijacked science. Christianity has not been hijacked; science has been hijacked -- by materialists; those who refuse knowledge of the supernatural. You should be judging what you hear humans saying by what God has said. You have reversed the order. Instead of reexamining and reinterpreting the scientific data, "scared-to-death" Christians like yourself marginalize, water down, and "spiritualize" into oblivion the supremely authoritative words of the Creator.
Put God's words first. He was there! And got the t-shirt to prove it. If some "science" doesn't jibe with what God said, throw it out! (And wait for more research.) That may sound radical, but come on now. If it's accurate, rest assured, it will not - it cannot! - conflict with the Holy Bible.
You said you were a Christian.
Whom. Do. You. Trust?
Do some soul searching. Make your decision. If the answer is not "God," please stop calling yourself a Christian. If it is, halleluyah! Start putting His authority and intregrity far above that of mere men, who whither as grass (Isa. 40:7).
There are many factors, including those you mentioned. There's no need to pin it on a single boogeyman.
"Intelligent Design," and the manufactured controversy over "junk science"
Intelligent Design is preferable to the predominant Lucky Chaos theory.
Lack of parental responsibility affects education in other ways, too.
Then you should be familiar with sura 7:157 (and other verses of the Quran), which Muslims around the world cite as a directive to follow hadith.
The text about 72 virgins is in Hadith number 2,562 contained in collection Sunan al-Tirmidhi.
Sunni Islam accepts this collection of hadith as canon. Other Islamic sects may afford it less honor, authority, or credence.
Does it have a place in a philosophy class? Absolutely.
What does "Ph.D." stand for?
Science is a subset of philosophy. Philosophy (Greek for "love of wisdom") includes mathematics, physics, astronomy, and religion.
Materialist philosophy constrains science to materialist methods and interpretations, thus circularly reaffirming its starting tenet: that everything is material, or at least, that the only things that matter are material.
The scientific method is a very good method for learning many things about the world, but it is not the end-all-be-all of attaining knowledge. Scientists who discount other methods of attaining knowledge or wisdom are not really in the search of truth. They only want to find truth that their limited instruments can find.
I don't find fault with the limitations of materialist science. One could be a Christian and be fully engaged in studying the material world, hopefully, then seeing the big picture in his own mind. I do find fault with materialist scientists who have replaced the broadness of philosophy (the love of wisdom) with their version of science: the study of the material world, axed from its companion branches of knowledge and quarantined to operate on its own. I take issue with materialists who say that there is nothing beyond what their superficial field investigates -- who attempt to block discussion of ideas beyond their own philosophy [*] (a philosophy that most deny holding, because they think that philosophy has nothing to do with science), who scoff at the worship of a supernatural Being, and who discount the power of prayer.
In more honest times, people who rejected God admitted that they followed another god (idol) or ideologue and that they adhered to a certain religion/philosophy.
The problem with "science vs. religion" debates is that the Orthodox Scientism side won't admit to their philosophy/religion. They feign to sit in the Throne of Objectivity, inside a vacuum free of bias and preconception, ruling as supreme arbiter of what is knowable or unknowable, what is true or false. To me, that doesn't seem very "scientific."
* The philosophy of evolutionism is thousands of years old. We are just experiencing a temporary reemergence of it, and indeed, it is already fading out again.
We have freedom of speech, even if that speech is false, exaggerated, or misleading. (See article.)
"...unfortunately we can't control the actions of everyone." - Bill Clinton, April 20, 1993
"We can't be so fixated on our desire to preserve the rights of ordinary Americans..." - President Bill Clinton, USA Today, March 11, 1993
"When personal freedom's being abused, you have to move to limit it." - Bill Clinton
[Source for my quotes, which lists original sources]
Here's the context of the last quote: "When we got organized as a country and we wrote a fairly radical Constitution with a radical Bill of Rights, giving a radical amount of individual freedom to Americans ... And so a lot of people say there's too much personal freedom. When personal freedom's being abused, you have to move to limit it. That's what we did in the announcement I made last weekend on the public housing projects, about how we're going to have weapon sweeps and more things like that to try to make people safer in their communities." - 3/22/94, MTV's "Enough is Enough"
Was Clinton using the issue of crime to remove our rights?
More Clinton quotes:
"The purpose of government is to rein in the rights of the people."- during an interview on MTV in 1993
"You know the one thing that's wrong with this country? Everyone gets a chance to have their fair say." - May 29, 1993, The White House
Yes, yes indeed. Makes you wonder how we hear so many tales of torture and abuse coming out of Gitmo. You'd think they'd all be dead or shut up in dungeons never to be heard from again.
No, it's written from the perspective of helping people from inadvertently falling into a trap of being labeled a spammer. E.g. "If you are on a shared server it's possible somebody else on that server is using dirty tactics or Spaming. If so your site will suffer since you share the same IP."
His conclusion on page 3: "Overall keep it ethical and you can't go wrong."
Paul did not want circumcision and kashrut to be barriers for Greeks to come to faith in Messiah, knowing that there is no power of salvation in the Law itself. The way I see it is that when the Greeks became saved, they would've begun attending synagogue where there would be a majority of Jewish believers, and they would eventually mature in their faith and take on the matters of the Law later as they came to understand that it was right to do so.
As to circumcision, one thing you should consider is that Pharisees/Orthodox require not just a mere cutting of the foreskin. You see, nearly all American men have been circumcised, but very few have undergone b'rit milah, the ritual ceremony of circumcision done on the eighth day under rabbinic supervision in accordance with all the traditions of the Oral Law. I think this is why Paul downplayed circumcision; not that it was bad, but that all the man-made, religious baggage that accompanied it (and many other Torah laws) created an unnecessary obstacle for Gentile believers.