Even if you are able to grow a new liver from stem cells for your resident alcoholic, does this mean you will have to grow a new brain in order not to repeat the process?
Not if you believe in the human ability to rehabilitate and change. Many people, when faced with the "life-changing event" of imminent death, change their behavior patterns.
We know that the earliest this can happen in the U.S. is January 20th, 2009, so might as well let Europe get a head start on saving lives.
Personally, if I was diagnosed with a terminal illness, I'd say, FDA be damned, give it to me now. Risking that my 6 months to live will become 3 months is worth it if it gives me a small chance of being cured.
I meant "creationists" in the 6-day creation, 6000+- year old earth sense... and I take back not one word.
Which is what the discussion was about... how Creationists "evolved" (pardon the pun) into "Intelligent Design" proponents.
The raw facts in front of them forced THINKING creationists to re-evaluate their thoughts on the origins of life....to realize that Genesis was an allegory - not literal fact. If there was a Noah, he surely didn't have two of EVERY species on his little boat. THINKING individuals got past that around the 3rd grade.
The shrinking "God-of-the-gaps"... the God that creationists depend on to give their life meaning... has forced them to come up with "intelligent design". Smaller gaps.. but still gaps. And with each gap's closing, their god shrinks. But as long as at least one gap remains, they can hold onto their faith.
The onion of truth is being peeled away in front of them, with every scientific discovery. And they're scared. And it makes them hate science. And the only tactic they have left is to legislate their alternative viewpoint into the school curriculum... so as to temporarily keep the next generation in the dark and hold onto their reason for living a little longer. Because, at its core, Intelligent Design is nothing more than a child holding onto a belief in Santa Claus long after their rational mind has already realized it was never true. Intelligent Design is for those who are intelligent enough to understand science, but cannot conceive... cannot accept... the possibility that this life is all there is. They NEED there to be an afterlife.. somewhere to go when they die.. because the alternative - that our consciousness ceases to exist when we die - is too much for them to handle.
They need God to exist... whether he does or not.
But... funny thing about the truth. It always wins out in the end. It will here too. Generations from now, our descendents will look back at today's Intelligent Design "scientists" the way we look back the medievel Catholic church or the Salem witch trials. And they'll wonder how so many people could fall for it.
80% to 90% of the population believes in the creation myth because they couldn't handle the thought that this life is all they have. The idea that there's nothing waiting for them after they die, except as a host for micro-organisms to feed on, is something they cannot accept.
ps. Non-thinking Creationists still consider the Moses-told Genesis story as being 100% factual. That's who I was referring to. If you're one of those, then yes... you are an idiot who is worthy of pity. If you're an Intelligent Design proponent... well, you're halfway on your way to accepting reality.
There is no such thing as "macro-evolution". All evolution is "micro". i.e. small changes over time. After several thousand or million of the "micro" evolutionary mutations, you compare back to the original and you see a whole different "species". A new species isn't formed from a single mutation... only after millions such "micro" changes does a different species from the original emerge.
The whole term "macro-evolution" was invented by creationists to try to desperately hold on to their "god-of-the-gaps". Thinking creationists (I know, an oxymoron) could no longer argue against the concept of mutations over time.
There are distinct species that didn't exist millions of years ago... even the most staunch ID-er cannot dispute this. There are extinct species that no longer exist... this is undeniable also.
Their "god-of-the-gaps" is shrinking.... and the ID-ers don't know how to deal with that.
Ladies and gentlemen, the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Do you feel safer now America?
The terrorists knocked down the World Trade Center... and have knocked the Bill of Rights down to nine.
They've won... and our glorious President handed the victory to them.
Okay, now tell me how blood clotting works and doesn't turn ALL my blood into one big clot. How does something like that evolve? Doesn't the "turn-clotting-off" mechanism have to be there at the same time as "turn-clotting-on"? One without the other is gonna kill me. It's when they both have to be there at the same time that leaves me puzzled as to how it could evolve gradually.
You're making the common mistake that ID proponents always make. Namely:
"There's some phenomenon I cannot explain. And nobody has given me a good explanation for it yet. Therefore, there must be a supreme being."
It's the God-of-the-gaps. Whatever humanity cannot yet explain, we ascribe to "god". The problem with your God-of-the-gaps is that... he keeps getting smaller as humanity's collective knowledge increases.
Someday, science will have an explanation for you on just how "clotting" works and has evolved. What then for you? Your god will be smaller, and you'll have to cope with that.
There will be always some things they we don't have a good explanation for... yet.
But guess what? Even if your intelligent "designer" does exist? You have a conundrum. How did the designer come to be?
If your answer is simply "He always was, didn't need to be created." Then I can answer to you... why can't that same explanation hold for the universe itself... it always was.
The old canard still applies. If God didn't exist, man would've created him.
The anal-retentiveness of the MUST-FRET-ABOUT-ALL-DUPES crowd in here is incredible.
Damn, you guys sure fit the engineer stereotype to a T. Relax.
LET IT GO. Take a deep breath. Repeat to yourself "Dupes cannot hurt me, it is best to ignore them" 100 times. Then take a puff on your inhaler, straighten your glasses and pocket protector, and get back to work.
I suffer from this all the time. The guy I ride to work with has the uncanny habit of slowing down to less than 20 miles per hour when he enters a tunnel, even though the speed limit is 55 both outside and inside the tunnel.
I want to kill him when he does this, but it's not my fault... for you see, I have:
Homo Sapiens has been on this planet for a relatively short period of time. Only in the last century or so, has the average lifespan of Homo Sapiens exceeded 50 years.
It's possible that, evolutionarily speaking, cancer wasn't "naturally selected" out of human beings because 99.999% of them (for most of humanity's existence) died of something else before they could get cancer.
If cancer typically hit the majority of humans in their teens and twenties over the millenia, perhaps natural selection would have then "weeded" out the bad genes that lead to cancer and current humans would be cancer free for the most part.
Because of the very recent development of increased longevity, perhaps only NOW is the process of natural selection, with respect to cancer, playing out. But, historically, this kind of thing would take eons to occur. Because of modern medicine, maybe we're able to accelerate our own evolution?
As an avid Second Life player, I can answer with "yes".
There really is not much limiting to what you can do in Second Life. Basically, you're only limited by your imagination and your pocket book. You make the rules.
The word "fuck" can be banned, but my message can't, my opinion can't, and I am protected from retaliation for it.
No.. you're still wrong.
Slashdot, as a private entity, can ban you for any reason it wants. The first amendment only protects you from the government taking action against you.
Slashdot can ban you for having "Dave" in your userid, if Slashdot chooses to disassociate itself with people named Dave. Especially if said people can't even read something as simple and beautiful as the first amendment and understand it.
You have no implicit right to post on Slashdot. You have the right to not have the U.S. Government take action against you because of your words. But Slashdot can toss you out for having bad breath if they want to.
In fact you are correct and, I guess not so amazingly, understand American law far better than most Americans.
The first amendment guarantees that the government cannot take action to limit your freedom of speech, right of free assembly, and right to practice the religion of your choosing.
Private organizations are under no such restriction. It is why my employer can prevent me from posting unflattering comments on the bulletin boards at work.
It's why Augusta National can bar women from joining their golf club.
It's why the Catholic church can excommunicate any member for any reason it so chooses.
The first amendment, indeed all of the Bill of Rights, only guarantees one's protection from the government limiting one's rights.
Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it), private Universities have no such restrictions.
At some point, all these files floating around for free on the net are going to start sounding pretty crappy
Why? The human ear is not going to improve in its ability to discern nuances in sound in the near future.
We've pretty much maxed out on providing lossless sound already (as far as the human ear can tell) with current non-DRM formats.
When you're already at the 99.9% level of hearing the sound on playback as it sounded live, there really isn't anything that can improve on it.
Sure.. some suckers will buy a "new" format that claims to be more lossless, and they will insist to everyone that they can really "hear" the difference. But the truth is, unless they have some canine in their ancestry, they won't be able to hear the difference.
We've damn near maxed out on improving sound quality in file formats, as far as any human ear can tell.
DRM is dead. If you can hear it coming through your speakers.. you can record it. At 0.001% loss.
So having kids is like eating from the tree of knowledge, eh?
Not exactly. Raising kids is. The process of giving birth doesn't impart any special knowledge on the parents. It develops over the next 18 years or so while raising kids.
Guess us homos will never understand.
Lots of homosexuals are parents and are raising fine young kids. Lot's of homosexuals I know would consider your comments insulting.
The parent poster is correct. Until you are raising kids, you cannot begin to fathom some concepts. You just can't.
I will never forget how I was treated as a child...
and
And now today I see what you adults have done with my country.
So which is it? are you a child now or were you a child before? Judging by your commentary, I'd say you still haven't grown up yet.
And if you are truly a "homo", I'm sure the homosexual community would want nothing to do with you.
For those that don't get it, NMR, when said out loud, is pronounced en-em-a
Maybe in New England. In the rest of the English-speaking world, "NMR" said out loud is pronounced "en-em-ar".
For those of you in New England... "Fork" and "Fuck" do NOT sound the same.
First time I visited my wife's relatives in Massachusetts, I nearly crapped my pants when my future mother-in-law, after dropping her eating utensil on the floor, asked my future father-in-law if he could go "get her a clean fuck".
seriously, some people don't get it. When the ACLU defends the KKK holding a protest march, they aren't agreeing with the KKK.. they are defending their right to march.
This makes the ACLU even more noble, in my opinion. The ability to defend a person or group that you loathe with every fiber of your being (at sometimes considerable monetary and PR expense to yourself), just to uphold a higher ideal, is downright saint-like.
Some people think it's about "defending the KKK" or "blocking harmless nativity scenes on public buildings" or "keeping the 10 commandments out of courtrooms". It is not... and the failure of a person to "get" the point says more about them than the ACLU.
"defending the KKK's right to protest" is about defending your right to espouse an unpopular idea.
"taking nativity scenes off of the government property" is about defending your right to not have your government endorse a particular religious viewpoint.
"taking the 10 commandments out of the courtroom" is about defending your right to not be pre-judged, even subliminally, because you don't share the religious beliefs of the people who will decide your fate.
"fighting against Intelligent Design in the classroom" is about defending your right, and your childrens' rights, to not be religiously indoctrinated by the state.
The ACLU will defend your civil rights, no matter how loathesome you or your viewpoints are. That makes them noble. Those that can't see that are too simple to get it.
Slashdot Mirror
Not if you believe in the human ability to rehabilitate and change. Many people, when faced with the "life-changing event" of imminent death, change their behavior patterns.
Many do not... but many do.
Personally, if I was diagnosed with a terminal illness, I'd say, FDA be damned, give it to me now. Risking that my 6 months to live will become 3 months is worth it if it gives me a small chance of being cured.
Which is what the discussion was about... how Creationists "evolved" (pardon the pun) into "Intelligent Design" proponents.
The raw facts in front of them forced THINKING creationists to re-evaluate their thoughts on the origins of life....to realize that Genesis was an allegory - not literal fact. If there was a Noah, he surely didn't have two of EVERY species on his little boat. THINKING individuals got past that around the 3rd grade.
The shrinking "God-of-the-gaps"... the God that creationists depend on to give their life meaning... has forced them to come up with "intelligent design". Smaller gaps.. but still gaps. And with each gap's closing, their god shrinks. But as long as at least one gap remains, they can hold onto their faith.
The onion of truth is being peeled away in front of them, with every scientific discovery. And they're scared. And it makes them hate science. And the only tactic they have left is to legislate their alternative viewpoint into the school curriculum... so as to temporarily keep the next generation in the dark and hold onto their reason for living a little longer. Because, at its core, Intelligent Design is nothing more than a child holding onto a belief in Santa Claus long after their rational mind has already realized it was never true. Intelligent Design is for those who are intelligent enough to understand science, but cannot conceive... cannot accept ... the possibility that this life is all there is. They NEED there to be an afterlife.. somewhere to go when they die.. because the alternative - that our consciousness ceases to exist when we die - is too much for them to handle.
They need God to exist... whether he does or not.
But... funny thing about the truth. It always wins out in the end. It will here too. Generations from now, our descendents will look back at today's Intelligent Design "scientists" the way we look back the medievel Catholic church or the Salem witch trials. And they'll wonder how so many people could fall for it.
80% to 90% of the population believes in the creation myth because they couldn't handle the thought that this life is all they have. The idea that there's nothing waiting for them after they die, except as a host for micro-organisms to feed on, is something they cannot accept.
ps. Non-thinking Creationists still consider the Moses-told Genesis story as being 100% factual. That's who I was referring to. If you're one of those, then yes... you are an idiot who is worthy of pity. If you're an Intelligent Design proponent... well, you're halfway on your way to accepting reality.
Damn.. you dupe hounds are pathetic.
YOU move along. Find a useful purpose in life besides finding Slashdot dupes.
Nobody gives a damn. If you read this already in the past, then skip the f***ing item.
Some of us may have not been reading Slashdot a year ago... you're going to point out year-old dupes?
Get a life...
The whole term "macro-evolution" was invented by creationists to try to desperately hold on to their "god-of-the-gaps". Thinking creationists (I know, an oxymoron) could no longer argue against the concept of mutations over time.
There are distinct species that didn't exist millions of years ago... even the most staunch ID-er cannot dispute this. There are extinct species that no longer exist... this is undeniable also.
Their "god-of-the-gaps" is shrinking.... and the ID-ers don't know how to deal with that.
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Do you feel safer now America?
The terrorists knocked down the World Trade Center... and have knocked the Bill of Rights down to nine.
They've won... and our glorious President handed the victory to them.
The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark - By Carl Sagan.
Fascinating reading.
Should be mandatory reading by all high-school students in the United States (and their parents).
You're making the common mistake that ID proponents always make. Namely:
"There's some phenomenon I cannot explain. And nobody has given me a good explanation for it yet. Therefore, there must be a supreme being."
It's the God-of-the-gaps. Whatever humanity cannot yet explain, we ascribe to "god". The problem with your God-of-the-gaps is that... he keeps getting smaller as humanity's collective knowledge increases.
Someday, science will have an explanation for you on just how "clotting" works and has evolved. What then for you? Your god will be smaller, and you'll have to cope with that.
There will be always some things they we don't have a good explanation for... yet.
But guess what? Even if your intelligent "designer" does exist? You have a conundrum. How did the designer come to be?
If your answer is simply "He always was, didn't need to be created." Then I can answer to you... why can't that same explanation hold for the universe itself... it always was.
The old canard still applies. If God didn't exist, man would've created him.
and "Happy Holidays" to you too. ;-)
Evolution is provable/disprovable. ID is not.
ID doesn't meet the rigorous scientific standards to be called a "theory".
Big farking deal.
Simple solution... ignore it.
The anal-retentiveness of the MUST-FRET-ABOUT-ALL-DUPES crowd in here is incredible.
Damn, you guys sure fit the engineer stereotype to a T. Relax.
LET IT GO. Take a deep breath. Repeat to yourself "Dupes cannot hurt me, it is best to ignore them" 100 times. Then take a puff on your inhaler, straighten your glasses and pocket protector, and get back to work.
I want to kill him when he does this, but it's not my fault... for you see, I have:
Carpool Tunnel Syndrome
oh... you're talking about something else?
What did the blonde say when she heard that 10 Brazilian soldiers were killed in Iraq?
"I didn't know there were that many soldiers in the whole world!"
Make no changes AT ALL on a Friday.
It's possible that, evolutionarily speaking, cancer wasn't "naturally selected" out of human beings because 99.999% of them (for most of humanity's existence) died of something else before they could get cancer.
If cancer typically hit the majority of humans in their teens and twenties over the millenia, perhaps natural selection would have then "weeded" out the bad genes that lead to cancer and current humans would be cancer free for the most part.
Because of the very recent development of increased longevity, perhaps only NOW is the process of natural selection, with respect to cancer, playing out. But, historically, this kind of thing would take eons to occur. Because of modern medicine, maybe we're able to accelerate our own evolution?
food for thought, anyway.
There really is not much limiting to what you can do in Second Life. Basically, you're only limited by your imagination and your pocket book. You make the rules.
It's really quite fascinating.
You always think that you're following someone.
ba-dum-bum.
Sorry.. it's just a joke!
No.. you're still wrong.
Slashdot, as a private entity, can ban you for any reason it wants. The first amendment only protects you from the government taking action against you.
Slashdot can ban you for having "Dave" in your userid, if Slashdot chooses to disassociate itself with people named Dave. Especially if said people can't even read something as simple and beautiful as the first amendment and understand it.
You have no implicit right to post on Slashdot. You have the right to not have the U.S. Government take action against you because of your words. But Slashdot can toss you out for having bad breath if they want to.
The first amendment guarantees that the government cannot take action to limit your freedom of speech, right of free assembly, and right to practice the religion of your choosing.
Private organizations are under no such restriction. It is why my employer can prevent me from posting unflattering comments on the bulletin boards at work.
It's why Augusta National can bar women from joining their golf club.
It's why the Catholic church can excommunicate any member for any reason it so chooses.
The first amendment, indeed all of the Bill of Rights, only guarantees one's protection from the government limiting one's rights.
Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it), private Universities have no such restrictions.
Why? The human ear is not going to improve in its ability to discern nuances in sound in the near future.
We've pretty much maxed out on providing lossless sound already (as far as the human ear can tell) with current non-DRM formats.
When you're already at the 99.9% level of hearing the sound on playback as it sounded live, there really isn't anything that can improve on it.
Sure.. some suckers will buy a "new" format that claims to be more lossless, and they will insist to everyone that they can really "hear" the difference. But the truth is, unless they have some canine in their ancestry, they won't be able to hear the difference.
We've damn near maxed out on improving sound quality in file formats, as far as any human ear can tell.
DRM is dead. If you can hear it coming through your speakers.. you can record it. At 0.001% loss.
Would that be "Old" MacDonald?
Not exactly. Raising kids is. The process of giving birth doesn't impart any special knowledge on the parents. It develops over the next 18 years or so while raising kids.
Guess us homos will never understand.
Lots of homosexuals are parents and are raising fine young kids. Lot's of homosexuals I know would consider your comments insulting.
The parent poster is correct. Until you are raising kids, you cannot begin to fathom some concepts. You just can't.
I will never forget how I was treated as a child...
and
And now today I see what you adults have done with my country.
So which is it? are you a child now or were you a child before? Judging by your commentary, I'd say you still haven't grown up yet.
And if you are truly a "homo", I'm sure the homosexual community would want nothing to do with you.
Maybe in New England. In the rest of the English-speaking world, "NMR" said out loud is pronounced "en-em-ar".
For those of you in New England... "Fork" and "Fuck" do NOT sound the same.
First time I visited my wife's relatives in Massachusetts, I nearly crapped my pants when my future mother-in-law, after dropping her eating utensil on the floor, asked my future father-in-law if he could go "get her a clean fuck".
oh.. yeah... I guess you're right.
seriously, some people don't get it. When the ACLU defends the KKK holding a protest march, they aren't agreeing with the KKK.. they are defending their right to march.
This makes the ACLU even more noble, in my opinion. The ability to defend a person or group that you loathe with every fiber of your being (at sometimes considerable monetary and PR expense to yourself), just to uphold a higher ideal, is downright saint-like.
Some people think it's about "defending the KKK" or "blocking harmless nativity scenes on public buildings" or "keeping the 10 commandments out of courtrooms". It is not... and the failure of a person to "get" the point says more about them than the ACLU.
"defending the KKK's right to protest" is about defending your right to espouse an unpopular idea.
"taking nativity scenes off of the government property" is about defending your right to not have your government endorse a particular religious viewpoint.
"taking the 10 commandments out of the courtroom" is about defending your right to not be pre-judged, even subliminally, because you don't share the religious beliefs of the people who will decide your fate.
"fighting against Intelligent Design in the classroom" is about defending your right, and your childrens' rights, to not be religiously indoctrinated by the state.
The ACLU will defend your civil rights, no matter how loathesome you or your viewpoints are. That makes them noble. Those that can't see that are too simple to get it.