It matters because you have a vote and a vote is political power. You in part get to decide how science funding is partitioned, how much funding there is and what we teach future scientists in school.
They've demonstrated adaptation/change via passage of genetic traits. That's literally, without hyperbole, the definition of evolution.
Well, if we change the definition to something we have proof of, then yes, we do have proof!
If we use actual scientific definitions instead of whatever nonsense you're using, then yes, we have mountains of evidence that more than meet what most people consider to be proof.
You speak of genetics and inheritence, not EVOLUTIONOLOGY that has so many faux-intellectual zealots masturabating onto each other here. Pay attention to what is being disputed in the article: "Do you believe your ancestors were monkeys despite us never finding a missing link and all supposed missing links up until now have been proven to be different species entirely? If not, it's because YOU HATE SCIENCE!" Yeah, guys, groupthink manipulation tactics REALLY prove your point.
There is no single "missing link". Every generation of organisms is a link. Fossilization is relatively rare. We don't expect to find a fossilized example of every generation of every organism out there, so there will always be missing links in the fossil record. As for your claim that they were all proven to be different species, well that's going to require a bit more explaining as to what you're actually referring to. Being different species doesn't mean that one is not a predecessor of another or that they don't share a common ancestor.
Educated doubt is a noble scientific endeavor, and ad-hominem attacks only invite deeper inspection. In fact, so many slashdotters have become so brainwashed, as soon as I say "I doubt the validity of your unproven/non-disprovable hypothesis, because I find the supporting evidence has been repeatedly gathered under an inadequacy of scientific rigour" then they IMMEDIATELY consider me intellectually inferior. It's conditioned into them -- though if I wanted, I could probably argue FOR evolution better than they ever could.
No, they probably look at the rest of your post(s) and conclude that you have no clue what you're talking about.
Consider the following: An esimated 1,000+ species go extinct every year without evolving into something else. Every single one is observable evidence that evolution does NOT happen like predicted. 1,000 pieces of evidence a year, and you just ignore that?
That paragraph is observable evidence that you have no understanding of evolutionary theory. Please educateyourself before posting nonsense.
surprisingly relevant considering it was made over 170 years ago.
Why wouldn't it be relevant? The most fundamental aspects of copyright really haven't changed since the early 18th century. We've been screwing up the implementation of it for a while, but the basic idea remains sound.
And yet they still did exactly what was warned against, and are experiencing the predicted results. Now they pretend not to understand, and they continue to demand respect. Sorry, but that's not how respect works.
The Republicans are right were the Democrats were in 2005, full of nutjob moonbats. Once the Democrats won Congress in 2006 they rabid insanity mellowed, hopefully the Republican adults will make gains in November 2010 and the rabid insanity will calm down.
One can dream. With so many rabidly insane people out there as the public face of the party, it's hard to believe that they'll return to sanity any time soon. If the "conservative" media wasn't making so much money by putting insane people on the air, we might see some progress and focus on things that actually matter.
Its not the entire spool of modern Republicans or Conservatism. I'm an Atheist Republican, my fiancee is too, 3/4th of my family are secular conservative, the other 1/4 are secular liberal.
Many conservative authors and talking heads are secular, they just don't get the TV time like Beck does.
Carter was very religious and whacky, remember he claimed to have seen UFOs.
The real conservatives lost control of the party a long time ago. The nutjobs took over and now I can't stand either party. The current crop of Republicans make the Democrats come across as significantly less crazy these days. If there are still sane, fiscally conservative Republicans out there, they must be kept locked up in the basement by the party. Their principles sure aren't being represented.
There are aggressors on BOTH sides, and that is what he is saying. Both sides have the people who are moderate and in the middle and both have the biased extremists that throw insults and around.
Someone who is pro-Evolution who says "if you don't agree with Evolution then you don't agree with any science and are delusional" is just as bad as someone who is pro-Creation who says that people who don't believe in Creation are "evil" and "going to hell".
This is what he is talking about. There are people who can have intelligent and thought provoking discussions on the matter from both sides and then both sides have their extremists.
He is 100% correct.
Doesn't change the fact that one side has mountains of evidence and the other has... a book of dubious origins, riddled with factual errors and contradictions.
God isn't someone who performs on demand. He doesn't conform to the scientific method. You can't just say - God heal this person now and expect Him to do it any more than you can tell the Queen of England to give you $1,000,000,000 and expect her to do it just because you told her to. So you can't prove God exists by a scientific experiment. George Burns did a cute God on the movie, but God is Soverign. He doesn't come into a court room and show off with parlor tricks. He's done His work that proves He is. It is up to the individual to believe in faith in what their own eyes have seen (or read) or not. It is your personal decision with eternal consequences. I can't make it for you. As someone who enjoyed science all through school and college, I can say that throwing out observed data because they don't fit your idea of how the whole experiment should work is wrong.
How convenient for religious folks. You pray, and no matter what happens, it's proof of God! If they get better, then God did it! If they don't, then it's because God decided it was their time to go. Yay God! Prayer works! It's undeniable!
And by the way, God doesn't do things so people can get famous. I'm pretty sure He's had quite enough of the televangelists and their ilk perverting the gospel for their own gain. I firmly believe that is why we don't see more miracles and acts of healing today. He's interested in getting the glory - not giving someone a Nobel Prize.
Then why doesn't he just smite them and be done with it? He was always all about the smiting. We all get free will, except if we decide to turn away from God. That's a smitin'. Oh yeah, but JC says he doesn't do that anymore. Bummer. I'd love to see some televangelists get a good smitin'.
I want to know why they were "suddenly entombed" together - what was going on outside that they all died in the cave together - it would seem strange to me to have that combination together (or is "suddenly" a geologic thing where one died in one year and another five years later?)
According to the article, it sounds like they got trapped in some kind of pit inside a cave. There were animal remains in the pit as well, so they probably weren't the first things to end up there.
Heh, sure. That's liberty. And in this case, it is the liberty of the majority to tell you to suck it. You may not have realized it, but outside of the slashdot portion of the population, most people actually favor copyright. Go talk to people and find out. So if your only argument is 'suck it,' you're going to be ignored. That's why you need to find a better argument if you actually want to change things.
Outside of the slashdot portion, and certain academic circles, nobody but those who are profiting the most even thinks about copyright. They don't have anything resembling an informed opinion. Of course uninformed opinions certainly drive what passes for "political discourse" these days. Too bad the press is more often contributing to rather than debunking that stuff.
I agree with your sentiment, but there is a different usage of "unlimited" that has more currency in the land of ISP. That is in relation to time. Used to be plans had limited numbers of minutes that you could be online. So, perhaps they mean you can be online an unlimited number of minutes at high speed, but you just aren't allowed to do much. Verizon are still scum, though.
Yes, it seems like a gauge of time to me as well. That would tell me that I'm able to have the advertised speed for an unlimited number of minutes per month. So I should get the full data throughput for that speed for the entire month. That they put a cap in the fine print means that the "unlimited" claim is bullshit. I can only have that transfer rate for a limited number of minutes per month before I hit that cap, so it's not unlimited!
Did you read them? Perhaps you weren't clear when you replied to my statement or I didn't understand what you were asking. You do realize that there has been a tirade of constitutional court cases surrounding this very issue where schools banned all references to a religion including bibles and students praying on their own. And after you read them, you will know that students were refused the ability to start a religious club on school grounds and had to go to court to force them, others were refused the ability to publish a magazine/news paper and did the same, some were about parents praying in the cafeteria which is allowed and so on.
I understand what you're saying, but none of the cases you linked comes anywhere near "banning all references to a religion". They were all about the things I referred to earlier like school sponsorship of religious activities or use of school property, etc.
This last one is one where the judge allowed (refused to stop) student prayer at a graduation ceremony.
None of those four links has anything to do with a graduation ceremony, and only one of the cases from your previous post was about graduation ceremonies, and in that case the school banned proselytizing and prayer in the ceremonies as part of a settlement with the ACLU.
If the school retains control, then it's school sponsored. If it doesn't then it isn't government sponsored and the establishment clause doesn't come into play. You will also see where if the school of government organization opens itself up to outside entities, then it cannot deny access to a religious group based on being religious.
I agree that if public property is going to be allowed to be used for religious purposes, then it must be open to all religions, not just selected religions. The problem is that that isn't what seems to happen in practice, as the case I linked previously shows.
And your missing the point. Well, that or taking the opportunity to preach your religion. Mentioning the word God, whether it is a proper noun or not, does not amount to preaching or praying. You have done this exact thing over the last several posts and I do not for one minute believe you were preaching or praying. If I'm wrong on that, please let me know because your claim does seem to be that simply using the proper nound God means you are.
First of all, I'm not religious. I have no religion. Atheism is not a religion, as it has no belief structure associated with it. I simply don't believe in things that there is no evidence for. I don't believe in God anymore than I believe in fairies. I've seen no evidence of the supernatural whatsoever, so I have no reason to believe in such things.
Second, I'm not saying that mentioning the word God is preaching or praying. I've never said that. What I am saying is that making the claim that this nation is "under God" is making the claim that there is a God for it to be under. That's a religious claim. I don't see any way to say it isn't. The words make no sense absent the assumption that God exists. The congressmen that made the change to the pledge certainly saw it as a religious claim. Trying to claim, after the fact, that it's not religious is highly disingenuous when it was put there specifically for religious reasons by those congressmen. They said so themselves! As the dissenting opinion in that case stated, the Constitution is what limits the power of the government. It does this by enumerating the powers of the government and assigning all other power to the states and to "We the people", it doesn't mention God at all.
Your stepping in it without even knowing it. I support removing under God from the pledge for religious reasons too, does that mean that removing it is a religious motive?
If your reasons for wanting it removed are based on religion, then yes, that's a religious motive. I could see both reli
It is funny to me that this story comes up on slashdot now. Just two days ago, I went to pick up my dog from the day care place, and the owner asked me if I use Yelp. I told her it was crap and that you can never believe anything you see there, but she (rightfully) said that other people don't see it that way. It seems Yelp had deleted all their positive reviews, and only kept the one bad one. This is a business started by a couple young people who have obviously put all of their eggs into this particular basket. It makes me really angry, but I don't know what I can do to Yelp to get them to stop. Ignoring them would do no good, because that's what I was doing before and that obviously wasn't working.
The world needs a way to hold companies like Yelp accountable. My experience with the dog place made me wonder if maybe there was some legal structure a company could use. For example, NotYelp.com does what Yelp does, but sells $1 contracts with anybody who will buy them that the reviewing system meets certain requirements, like not purging positive reviews from businesses that don't advertise with you. This would create an assurance for other people that NotYelp.com would have to be crazy to do untrustworthy things, which should make NotYelp.com reliable and worthy of your trust.
citation(s) needed. I've seen lots of cases. Most were dealing with prayer over the PA system or
teachers or students leading prayers at sporting events and such. I've seen no bans on praying on your
own. In fact there have been cases upholding the "moment of silence" in schools.
And of course we all know that if you haven't seen it, it doesn't exist. I'm wondering if your
google finger is broke. Here is reference to one, here is another, and I won't bother linking to the others but I'll post the link to the same
sites if your interested.
Did you even read the articles you linked? Theses are exactly the cases that I was talking about.
Those are about school sponsorship of prayer, student-lead prayer at school events, the moment of
silence in class, and use of school property for religious purposes. So snide remarks aside, you
aren't exactly showing me anything I didn't already refer to.
And those are just some that were compiled at a couple site showing up in the first few
results of the google search. And yes, a couple of those were dealing with prayer over the PA system in
which the court rules it was allowed. At least two of the cases cited refereed to the use or the PA
system at either football games or graduation ceremonies and echoed the same sentiments on when it's
controlled by the school or student.
I see one article that refers to graduation ceremonies, and it's the one that the school agreed to ban
proselytizing and prayer in the ceremonies. Are you sure you read these?
That's how they've tried to sell it, but it clearly says that this nation is under God (proper
noun). If that doesn't profess a belief, not just in a god, but in a specific God, then you're going to
need some serious evidence to back up your explanation of what it actually means. The court's decision
was essentially an appeal to tradition and a refusal to consider the matter. The addition of the phrase
was intended originally to distance our country from those godless commies in Russia.
So if I say God with the capitol G as a proper noun, I'm automatically preaching or endorsing a
religion? I guess you were preaching too when you wrote your statement pointing that out. Do you see
how ridiculous that sounds? And no, that's not a strawman argument, it's the basis of your argument
completely and undistorted outside of the subject being stated.
If you write God with the capital G, it's a proper noun. So you're referring to a specific person, place or thing. In this
case, a specific god. You do understand what a proper noun is don't you?
As I said, the court's ruling was simply an appeal to tradition and a refusal to review it. The
dissenting opinion by Stephen Reinhardt clearly shows, through their own statements, that the
congressmen supporting the bill were doing it for religious reasons. From the dissent:
"The majority argues that the purpose of the amendment of the Pledge of Allegiance in 1954
was not predominantly religious because the words “under God” are simply a reference to the limited
powers of our national government. That is, of course, an argument dreamt up by my colleagues that can
nowhere be found in the Congressional Record. In addition, my colleagues have apparently forgotten that
it is the Constitution that sets forth the limitations on government powe
A few years ago I bought the "safest car in the world" (that's the brand promise) second hand from a dealer. It had one previous owner, and was two years old.
What model/year is it? I drive a 2002 Camry. My CC switch is built into the little lever on the right side of the steering column that you push up to resume/increase acceleration and down to set/slow. The on/off button is on the end of that lever. It defaults to off when the car is started, and disengages if I tap the breaks. So if I turned CC on after starting the car, and the lever was broken in such a way that it could vibrate itself enough to trigger the set/resume accel, then I'd expect the same result. I can't imagine how that would happen without a very noticeably broken CC lever though. Is your CC mechanism different?
Or in other words, they take their foot off the pedal and put it on the wrong one.
Maybe we should switch to hand controls for the gas and brake.
Or get rid of steering wheels entirely and use a motorcycle type steering/gas/brake system.
If the problem is "user error," we should change the user interface.
We should radically change a user interface that has been under development for over 100 years, and has worked quite well, because a very tiny fraction of people have a problem with it? Yet you think that some very tiny fraction (at least) wouldn't have a problem with any new interface?
I listened to that This American Life, too, and there was a pretty significant change in worker behavior at NUMMI (vs when it was GM-Fremont) that could not be replicated at other GM plants because... (drum roll) workers at other plants didn't really think they'd be closed if they didn't reform. Aside from that episode, however, there are plenty of stories out there of sabotage by auto workers. The management was insular and came up with uninspiring designs, but the workers also did a truly awful job of building cars. (And it took more like 2 years to reform the place.)
It wasn't just the workers that were the issue. The plant management was also very resistant to change. GM corporate management should have started shutting down plants to send a message that the kind of shoddy quality being turned out in many of the plants wasn't acceptable. GM-Fremont had to be shut down before it changed. They should have just done the same elsewhere. The fact that it took them decades to turn things around means that GM management screwed up royally.
I have no idea how anyone could be prevented from praying in school.
Well, were that to be the goal, very easily. Tommy starts praying, the teacher can tell him to stop disrupting / offending / insulting the other kids, and if he refuses send him to detention. Honestly, its not even that hard to imagine.
If he's praying out loud, then that's talking during class, so hell yes, he should be told to stop. You don't get to disrupt class for your personal desires. If he's praying silently, then how would someone even know?
You do realize that there has been a tirade of constitutional court cases surrounding this very issue where schools banned all references to a religion including bibles and students praying on their own.
citation(s) needed. I've seen lots of cases. Most were dealing with prayer over the PA system or teachers or students leading prayers at sporting events and such. I've seen no bans on praying on your own. In fact there have been cases upholding the "moment of silence" in schools.
So still, it's not asking you or anyone else to believe in God or worship any religious entity, it's asking you to believe that there is no authority that has power over the US besides God which you (or Not everyone) does not believe in.
That's how they've tried to sell it, but it clearly says that this nation is under God (proper noun). If that doesn't profess a belief, not just in a god, but in a specific God, then you're going to need some serious evidence to back up your explanation of what it actually means. The court's decision was essentially an appeal to tradition and a refusal to consider the matter. The addition of the phrase was intended originally to distance our country from those godless commies in Russia.
But when you look at the constitution, you will find that your basis of a "clear violation" is completely crap. There is no separation of church and state in the constitution, there is only a prohibition on making laws about religions or restricting them.
Allowing government property and government employees to support one or more religions but not others seems like a clear establishment of religion to me. Since they can't give equal treatment to all religions (and many religious folks would have a cow if they tried), the only reasonable solution is to keep the government completely out of it.
I don't know who these conservatives are that do not like Jefferson, I have never met any of them. I also do not know why they would be pissed about the term "separation between church and state" unless it is because it is being used to people rights they had until recently. Some of these rights were to prey in school, some schools were outright banning religious material altogether due to the separation between church and state.
I have no idea how anyone could be prevented from praying in school. Teachers are not allowed to lead prayers, of course, and you do it on your own time, but I don't see how that can be construed as a violation of anyone's rights.
But hey, that's not Jefferson's fault, it's the idiots who can't grasp a concept. An idiot like this was the guy who sued because his kid had to learn the pledge of allegiance in school citing "separation of church and state".
Maybe because some idiots back in the 50s decided to mix a little religion in with the pledge and added "under God" to it. Not everyone believes in God, and I think it's a clear violation to make kids recite anything that has a religious component to it.
Once enough people are getting "free" health care and the government is determining who should be cared for and who shouldn't, rationing will take hold.
What do you call the fact that people who get sick and cost a lot are getting dropped from their insurance? What do you call the fact that people with some condition who lose their insurance cannot get coverage? What do you call premiums rising and coverage dropping each year?
That's all rationing!!
It's just the insurance companies doing it to increase profits rather than the government doing it to ensure solvency of the health care system.
Right now the system does it's best to force out the sickest people, and is doing an amazingly good job of it judging by the number of people who have been dropped from their existing coverage or who can't get coverage. These people are the ones that end up in emergency rooms for the care they need, can't get any preventative care to help keep them out of the emergency rooms, and who will probably eventually die because they can't get the care they need.
The insurance companies are all too happy to collect your money for as long as possible until you need your coverage. Then they notice some problem with your paperwork and boot you out of the system. Then it's up to the taxpayer to cover you. Screw that. I'd rather have coverage regulated by the government than that. Insurance companies trying to make as much as possible while they kick the sick folks over to the taxpayers to cover is bullshit.
If you want coverage, go out and buy it. If you're not happy with what insurance companies are doing, lobby the government to allow competition across state lines. Government control always ends badly.
How is that any kind of solution for all those people with pre-existing conditions? They can't buy insurance! They've either lost their job and their insurance along with it, or they were booted out by the insurance company when they got sick. What's the solution for that?
Amen. This is why the Federal Government is mandated to run the Post Office. At the dawn of the Republic, no intelligent businessman would operate such a money-losing enterprise. However, it is a necessary and needed service.
FYI, This is incorrect. The federal government had to force Lysander Spooner (under threat of imprisonment) to stop competing with the US Postal Service in the 1800s.
So who was rushing to offer that service in the 50+ years prior to his founding of the AML when only the US Post Office was doing so? While I think it was pretty crappy that he was basically forced out of business through legal costs, that's a common tactic among businesses even today. That the government did it is admittedly even worse though. I don't think that his competing is an argument against the necessity of the US Post Office though, as there was no other competing service for that first 50 or so years.
Slashdot Mirror
Wearing Mal Reynolds's costume was a bit silly IMO.
I think it was supposed to be. It's not exactly a serious show.
It matters because you have a vote and a vote is political power. You in part get to decide how science funding is partitioned, how much funding there is and what we teach future scientists in school.
QFT
They've demonstrated adaptation/change via passage of genetic traits. That's literally, without hyperbole, the definition of evolution.
Well, if we change the definition to something we have proof of, then yes, we do have proof!
If we use actual scientific definitions instead of whatever nonsense you're using, then yes, we have mountains of evidence that more than meet what most people consider to be proof.
You speak of genetics and inheritence, not EVOLUTIONOLOGY that has so many faux-intellectual zealots masturabating onto each other here. Pay attention to what is being disputed in the article: "Do you believe your ancestors were monkeys despite us never finding a missing link and all supposed missing links up until now have been proven to be different species entirely? If not, it's because YOU HATE SCIENCE!" Yeah, guys, groupthink manipulation tactics REALLY prove your point.
There is no single "missing link". Every generation of organisms is a link. Fossilization is relatively rare. We don't expect to find a fossilized example of every generation of every organism out there, so there will always be missing links in the fossil record. As for your claim that they were all proven to be different species, well that's going to require a bit more explaining as to what you're actually referring to. Being different species doesn't mean that one is not a predecessor of another or that they don't share a common ancestor.
Educated doubt is a noble scientific endeavor, and ad-hominem attacks only invite deeper inspection. In fact, so many slashdotters have become so brainwashed, as soon as I say "I doubt the validity of your unproven/non-disprovable hypothesis, because I find the supporting evidence has been repeatedly gathered under an inadequacy of scientific rigour" then they IMMEDIATELY consider me intellectually inferior. It's conditioned into them -- though if I wanted, I could probably argue FOR evolution better than they ever could.
No, they probably look at the rest of your post(s) and conclude that you have no clue what you're talking about.
Consider the following: An esimated 1,000+ species go extinct every year without evolving into something else. Every single one is observable evidence that evolution does NOT happen like predicted. 1,000 pieces of evidence a year, and you just ignore that?
That paragraph is observable evidence that you have no understanding of evolutionary theory. Please educate yourself before posting nonsense.
Do you have a suggestion as to where %DEITY% came from?
Nope. It's pure faith. I acknowledge that and keep both science and religion separate. Perhaps i'm in the minority in this regard?
So you can accept that %DEITY% just exists without a creator, but you can't accept that the universe just exists without a creator. Odd.
surprisingly relevant considering it was made over 170 years ago.
Why wouldn't it be relevant? The most fundamental aspects of copyright really haven't changed since the early 18th century. We've been screwing up the implementation of it for a while, but the basic idea remains sound.
And yet they still did exactly what was warned against, and are experiencing the predicted results. Now they pretend not to understand, and they continue to demand respect. Sorry, but that's not how respect works.
The Republicans are right were the Democrats were in 2005, full of nutjob moonbats. Once the Democrats won Congress in 2006 they rabid insanity mellowed, hopefully the Republican adults will make gains in November 2010 and the rabid insanity will calm down.
One can dream. With so many rabidly insane people out there as the public face of the party, it's hard to believe that they'll return to sanity any time soon. If the "conservative" media wasn't making so much money by putting insane people on the air, we might see some progress and focus on things that actually matter.
Its not the entire spool of modern Republicans or Conservatism. I'm an Atheist Republican, my fiancee is too, 3/4th of my family are secular conservative, the other 1/4 are secular liberal.
Many conservative authors and talking heads are secular, they just don't get the TV time like Beck does.
Carter was very religious and whacky, remember he claimed to have seen UFOs.
The real conservatives lost control of the party a long time ago. The nutjobs took over and now I can't stand either party. The current crop of Republicans make the Democrats come across as significantly less crazy these days. If there are still sane, fiscally conservative Republicans out there, they must be kept locked up in the basement by the party. Their principles sure aren't being represented.
There are aggressors on BOTH sides, and that is what he is saying. Both sides have the people who are moderate and in the middle and both have the biased extremists that throw insults and around.
Someone who is pro-Evolution who says "if you don't agree with Evolution then you don't agree with any science and are delusional" is just as bad as someone who is pro-Creation who says that people who don't believe in Creation are "evil" and "going to hell".
This is what he is talking about. There are people who can have intelligent and thought provoking discussions on the matter from both sides and then both sides have their extremists.
He is 100% correct.
Doesn't change the fact that one side has mountains of evidence and the other has... a book of dubious origins, riddled with factual errors and contradictions.
God isn't someone who performs on demand. He doesn't conform to the scientific method. You can't just say - God heal this person now and expect Him to do it any more than you can tell the Queen of England to give you $1,000,000,000 and expect her to do it just because you told her to. So you can't prove God exists by a scientific experiment. George Burns did a cute God on the movie, but God is Soverign. He doesn't come into a court room and show off with parlor tricks. He's done His work that proves He is. It is up to the individual to believe in faith in what their own eyes have seen (or read) or not. It is your personal decision with eternal consequences. I can't make it for you. As someone who enjoyed science all through school and college, I can say that throwing out observed data because they don't fit your idea of how the whole experiment should work is wrong.
How convenient for religious folks. You pray, and no matter what happens, it's proof of God! If they get better, then God did it! If they don't, then it's because God decided it was their time to go. Yay God! Prayer works! It's undeniable!
And by the way, God doesn't do things so people can get famous. I'm pretty sure He's had quite enough of the televangelists and their ilk perverting the gospel for their own gain. I firmly believe that is why we don't see more miracles and acts of healing today. He's interested in getting the glory - not giving someone a Nobel Prize.
Then why doesn't he just smite them and be done with it? He was always all about the smiting. We all get free will, except if we decide to turn away from God. That's a smitin'. Oh yeah, but JC says he doesn't do that anymore. Bummer. I'd love to see some televangelists get a good smitin'.
I want to know why they were "suddenly entombed" together - what was going on outside that they all died in the cave together - it would seem strange to me to have that combination together (or is "suddenly" a geologic thing where one died in one year and another five years later?)
According to the article, it sounds like they got trapped in some kind of pit inside a cave. There were animal remains in the pit as well, so they probably weren't the first things to end up there.
Heh, sure. That's liberty. And in this case, it is the liberty of the majority to tell you to suck it. You may not have realized it, but outside of the slashdot portion of the population, most people actually favor copyright. Go talk to people and find out. So if your only argument is 'suck it,' you're going to be ignored. That's why you need to find a better argument if you actually want to change things.
Outside of the slashdot portion, and certain academic circles, nobody but those who are profiting the most even thinks about copyright. They don't have anything resembling an informed opinion. Of course uninformed opinions certainly drive what passes for "political discourse" these days. Too bad the press is more often contributing to rather than debunking that stuff.
I agree with your sentiment, but there is a different usage of "unlimited" that has more currency in the land of ISP. That is in relation to time. Used to be plans had limited numbers of minutes that you could be online. So, perhaps they mean you can be online an unlimited number of minutes at high speed, but you just aren't allowed to do much. Verizon are still scum, though.
Yes, it seems like a gauge of time to me as well. That would tell me that I'm able to have the advertised speed for an unlimited number of minutes per month. So I should get the full data throughput for that speed for the entire month. That they put a cap in the fine print means that the "unlimited" claim is bullshit. I can only have that transfer rate for a limited number of minutes per month before I hit that cap, so it's not unlimited!
Did you read them? Perhaps you weren't clear when you replied to my statement or I didn't understand what you were asking. You do realize that there has been a tirade of constitutional court cases surrounding this very issue where schools banned all references to a religion including bibles and students praying on their own. And after you read them, you will know that students were refused the ability to start a religious club on school grounds and had to go to court to force them, others were refused the ability to publish a magazine/news paper and did the same, some were about parents praying in the cafeteria which is allowed and so on.
I understand what you're saying, but none of the cases you linked comes anywhere near "banning all references to a religion". They were all about the things I referred to earlier like school sponsorship of religious activities or use of school property, etc.
This last one is one where the judge allowed (refused to stop) student prayer at a graduation ceremony.
None of those four links has anything to do with a graduation ceremony, and only one of the cases from your previous post was about graduation ceremonies, and in that case the school banned proselytizing and prayer in the ceremonies as part of a settlement with the ACLU.
If the school retains control, then it's school sponsored. If it doesn't then it isn't government sponsored and the establishment clause doesn't come into play. You will also see where if the school of government organization opens itself up to outside entities, then it cannot deny access to a religious group based on being religious.
I agree that if public property is going to be allowed to be used for religious purposes, then it must be open to all religions, not just selected religions. The problem is that that isn't what seems to happen in practice, as the case I linked previously shows.
And your missing the point. Well, that or taking the opportunity to preach your religion. Mentioning the word God, whether it is a proper noun or not, does not amount to preaching or praying. You have done this exact thing over the last several posts and I do not for one minute believe you were preaching or praying. If I'm wrong on that, please let me know because your claim does seem to be that simply using the proper nound God means you are.
First of all, I'm not religious. I have no religion. Atheism is not a religion, as it has no belief structure associated with it. I simply don't believe in things that there is no evidence for. I don't believe in God anymore than I believe in fairies. I've seen no evidence of the supernatural whatsoever, so I have no reason to believe in such things.
Second, I'm not saying that mentioning the word God is preaching or praying. I've never said that. What I am saying is that making the claim that this nation is "under God" is making the claim that there is a God for it to be under. That's a religious claim. I don't see any way to say it isn't. The words make no sense absent the assumption that God exists. The congressmen that made the change to the pledge certainly saw it as a religious claim. Trying to claim, after the fact, that it's not religious is highly disingenuous when it was put there specifically for religious reasons by those congressmen. They said so themselves! As the dissenting opinion in that case stated, the Constitution is what limits the power of the government. It does this by enumerating the powers of the government and assigning all other power to the states and to "We the people", it doesn't mention God at all.
Your stepping in it without even knowing it. I support removing under God from the pledge for religious reasons too, does that mean that removing it is a religious motive?
If your reasons for wanting it removed are based on religion, then yes, that's a religious motive. I could see both reli
It is funny to me that this story comes up on slashdot now. Just two days ago, I went to pick up my dog from the day care place, and the owner asked me if I use Yelp. I told her it was crap and that you can never believe anything you see there, but she (rightfully) said that other people don't see it that way. It seems Yelp had deleted all their positive reviews, and only kept the one bad one. This is a business started by a couple young people who have obviously put all of their eggs into this particular basket. It makes me really angry, but I don't know what I can do to Yelp to get them to stop. Ignoring them would do no good, because that's what I was doing before and that obviously wasn't working.
The world needs a way to hold companies like Yelp accountable. My experience with the dog place made me wonder if maybe there was some legal structure a company could use. For example, NotYelp.com does what Yelp does, but sells $1 contracts with anybody who will buy them that the reviewing system meets certain requirements, like not purging positive reviews from businesses that don't advertise with you. This would create an assurance for other people that NotYelp.com would have to be crazy to do untrustworthy things, which should make NotYelp.com reliable and worthy of your trust.
You work for NotYelp don't you?
And of course we all know that if you haven't seen it, it doesn't exist. I'm wondering if your google finger is broke. Here is reference to one, here is another, and I won't bother linking to the others but I'll post the link to the same sites if your interested.
Did you even read the articles you linked? Theses are exactly the cases that I was talking about. Those are about school sponsorship of prayer, student-lead prayer at school events, the moment of silence in class, and use of school property for religious purposes. So snide remarks aside, you aren't exactly showing me anything I didn't already refer to.
And those are just some that were compiled at a couple site showing up in the first few results of the google search. And yes, a couple of those were dealing with prayer over the PA system in which the court rules it was allowed. At least two of the cases cited refereed to the use or the PA system at either football games or graduation ceremonies and echoed the same sentiments on when it's controlled by the school or student.
I see one article that refers to graduation ceremonies, and it's the one that the school agreed to ban proselytizing and prayer in the ceremonies. Are you sure you read these?
So if I say God with the capitol G as a proper noun, I'm automatically preaching or endorsing a religion? I guess you were preaching too when you wrote your statement pointing that out. Do you see how ridiculous that sounds? And no, that's not a strawman argument, it's the basis of your argument completely and undistorted outside of the subject being stated.
If you write God with the capital G, it's a proper noun. So you're referring to a specific person, place or thing. In this case, a specific god. You do understand what a proper noun is don't you?
As I mentioned earlier which doesn't have the lunacy of your contention, the phrase under God in the pledge is not a prayer or religion,"Thus, the pledge is an endorsement of our form of government, not of religion or any particular sect." as the courts said.
As I said, the court's ruling was simply an appeal to tradition and a refusal to review it. The dissenting opinion by Stephen Reinhardt clearly shows, through their own statements, that the congressmen supporting the bill were doing it for religious reasons. From the dissent:
A few years ago I bought the "safest car in the world" (that's the brand promise) second hand from a dealer. It had one previous owner, and was two years old.
What model/year is it? I drive a 2002 Camry. My CC switch is built into the little lever on the right side of the steering column that you push up to resume/increase acceleration and down to set/slow. The on/off button is on the end of that lever. It defaults to off when the car is started, and disengages if I tap the breaks. So if I turned CC on after starting the car, and the lever was broken in such a way that it could vibrate itself enough to trigger the set/resume accel, then I'd expect the same result. I can't imagine how that would happen without a very noticeably broken CC lever though. Is your CC mechanism different?
Yes but the Woz case is possible bug in the cruise control software, not the accelerator.
Woz's case is a complete non-issue. It works as designed and advertised. He even admits this to Blitzer: http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/us/2010/02/02/tsr.wozniak.toyota.owner.cnn?iref=allsearch
Or in other words, they take their foot off the pedal and put it on the wrong one.
Maybe we should switch to hand controls for the gas and brake.
Or get rid of steering wheels entirely and use a motorcycle type steering/gas/brake system.
If the problem is "user error," we should change the user interface.
We should radically change a user interface that has been under development for over 100 years, and has worked quite well, because a very tiny fraction of people have a problem with it? Yet you think that some very tiny fraction (at least) wouldn't have a problem with any new interface?
I listened to that This American Life, too, and there was a pretty significant change in worker behavior at NUMMI (vs when it was GM-Fremont) that could not be replicated at other GM plants because... (drum roll) workers at other plants didn't really think they'd be closed if they didn't reform. Aside from that episode, however, there are plenty of stories out there of sabotage by auto workers. The management was insular and came up with uninspiring designs, but the workers also did a truly awful job of building cars. (And it took more like 2 years to reform the place.)
It wasn't just the workers that were the issue. The plant management was also very resistant to change. GM corporate management should have started shutting down plants to send a message that the kind of shoddy quality being turned out in many of the plants wasn't acceptable. GM-Fremont had to be shut down before it changed. They should have just done the same elsewhere. The fact that it took them decades to turn things around means that GM management screwed up royally.
I have no idea how anyone could be prevented from praying in school.
Well, were that to be the goal, very easily. Tommy starts praying, the teacher can tell him to stop disrupting / offending / insulting the other kids, and if he refuses send him to detention. Honestly, its not even that hard to imagine.
If he's praying out loud, then that's talking during class, so hell yes, he should be told to stop. You don't get to disrupt class for your personal desires. If he's praying silently, then how would someone even know?
You do realize that there has been a tirade of constitutional court cases surrounding this very issue where schools banned all references to a religion including bibles and students praying on their own.
citation(s) needed. I've seen lots of cases. Most were dealing with prayer over the PA system or teachers or students leading prayers at sporting events and such. I've seen no bans on praying on your own. In fact there have been cases upholding the "moment of silence" in schools.
So still, it's not asking you or anyone else to believe in God or worship any religious entity, it's asking you to believe that there is no authority that has power over the US besides God which you (or Not everyone) does not believe in.
That's how they've tried to sell it, but it clearly says that this nation is under God (proper noun). If that doesn't profess a belief, not just in a god, but in a specific God, then you're going to need some serious evidence to back up your explanation of what it actually means. The court's decision was essentially an appeal to tradition and a refusal to consider the matter. The addition of the phrase was intended originally to distance our country from those godless commies in Russia.
But when you look at the constitution, you will find that your basis of a "clear violation" is completely crap. There is no separation of church and state in the constitution, there is only a prohibition on making laws about religions or restricting them.
Allowing government property and government employees to support one or more religions but not others seems like a clear establishment of religion to me. Since they can't give equal treatment to all religions (and many religious folks would have a cow if they tried), the only reasonable solution is to keep the government completely out of it.
I don't know who these conservatives are that do not like Jefferson, I have never met any of them. I also do not know why they would be pissed about the term "separation between church and state" unless it is because it is being used to people rights they had until recently. Some of these rights were to prey in school, some schools were outright banning religious material altogether due to the separation between church and state.
I have no idea how anyone could be prevented from praying in school. Teachers are not allowed to lead prayers, of course, and you do it on your own time, but I don't see how that can be construed as a violation of anyone's rights.
But hey, that's not Jefferson's fault, it's the idiots who can't grasp a concept. An idiot like this was the guy who sued because his kid had to learn the pledge of allegiance in school citing "separation of church and state".
Maybe because some idiots back in the 50s decided to mix a little religion in with the pledge and added "under God" to it. Not everyone believes in God, and I think it's a clear violation to make kids recite anything that has a religious component to it.
Once enough people are getting "free" health care and the government is determining who should be cared for and who shouldn't, rationing will take hold.
What do you call the fact that people who get sick and cost a lot are getting dropped from their insurance? What do you call the fact that people with some condition who lose their insurance cannot get coverage? What do you call premiums rising and coverage dropping each year?
That's all rationing!!
It's just the insurance companies doing it to increase profits rather than the government doing it to ensure solvency of the health care system.
Right now the system does it's best to force out the sickest people, and is doing an amazingly good job of it judging by the number of people who have been dropped from their existing coverage or who can't get coverage. These people are the ones that end up in emergency rooms for the care they need, can't get any preventative care to help keep them out of the emergency rooms, and who will probably eventually die because they can't get the care they need.
The insurance companies are all too happy to collect your money for as long as possible until you need your coverage. Then they notice some problem with your paperwork and boot you out of the system. Then it's up to the taxpayer to cover you. Screw that. I'd rather have coverage regulated by the government than that. Insurance companies trying to make as much as possible while they kick the sick folks over to the taxpayers to cover is bullshit.
If you want coverage, go out and buy it. If you're not happy with what insurance companies are doing, lobby the government to allow competition across state lines. Government control always ends badly.
How is that any kind of solution for all those people with pre-existing conditions? They can't buy insurance! They've either lost their job and their insurance along with it, or they were booted out by the insurance company when they got sick. What's the solution for that?
In a natural monopoly like utilities, roads, bridges, etc, you're going to pay through the nose if privately owned. http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/private/snapshot.asp?privcapId=4213016
I can't tell if you think you're supporting his claim or not. What, exactly, is that link supposed to prove?
Amen. This is why the Federal Government is mandated to run the Post Office. At the dawn of the Republic, no intelligent businessman would operate such a money-losing enterprise. However, it is a necessary and needed service.
FYI, This is incorrect. The federal government had to force Lysander Spooner (under threat of imprisonment) to stop competing with the US Postal Service in the 1800s.
So who was rushing to offer that service in the 50+ years prior to his founding of the AML when only the US Post Office was doing so? While I think it was pretty crappy that he was basically forced out of business through legal costs, that's a common tactic among businesses even today. That the government did it is admittedly even worse though. I don't think that his competing is an argument against the necessity of the US Post Office though, as there was no other competing service for that first 50 or so years.