Well... it's a wee bit more complicated than you suggest. But basically, a voter in the US is never required to declare their political affiliation when they register to vote.
Trouble is, this is handled differently by each state in our federal republic. So please do forgive me that I didn't go off and research into 50 states (and assorted territories) to confirm this.
But you are quite free to refrain from declaring your political affiliation. This puts you in a special sought after group we call "Independents" (everybody wants your vote). Now you could easily make a worthy point that the act of not choosing to affiliate with a particular party could be held against you depending on your locale. But if that's the case since you've likely got more to worry about since your registered party affiliation need have no bearing on your actual voting.
It does seem registering only affects your ability to vote in primaries and to participate in party activities (like run for office). Indeed, it seems that some states even permit open primaries where any and all can participate (you know... vote early, vote often). This itself produces strange oddities (like lots of Republicans trying hard to ensure Hillary Clinton won the Democratic nomination).
Assuming an Obama win on Tuesday and a serious shift towards Democrats (what polls largely suggest), are we finally going to see some serious investigations and accountability for this current administration?
I know the wheels of justice are often rather slow. But I do hope the courts eventually get around to reeling back in the egregious power-grabs of the current executive. I also hope the next executive doesn't attempt to maintain such.
Furthermore, I don't quite see why this is that terribly hard to handle properly. All the searches (yes ALL of them) should be videotaped and the videos held for a duration significantly long enough to permit any traveler to file a claim against any loss. This should be codified into law and rigorously enforced by independent oversight.
Why is this hard?
Yes, I realize the difficulties this would pose of documenting everything everyone is carrying. But this seems inevitable anyway given where we seem to be headed.
There needs to be a deep shift in perception away from the idea that the TSA polices us to the concept that they WORK FOR us. In the same vein, a transition is needed from the idea that we are all criminals to the idea that they are as well. Indeed, if the TSA has nothing to hide surely they wouldn't mind such oversight...
The invisible hand of free markets probably works as long as everyone does act in their own self-interest AND everyone has the same access to reasonably accurate and complete information.
If anything, this current crisis should deeply underscore that institutions cannot be trusted to:
Be accountable
Be transparent
Be honest and forthcoming about conflicts of interest
Be accurate regarding valuations of assets
Be reasonable regarding short-term gains vs. long-term risks
Of course, if we would let everything and everyone fail outright in a horrific manner, maybe just maybe everyone would learn deep lessons. Nobody would deposit anything in any bank that wasn't bending over backwards to do all of the above.
Philosophy in High School may be a stretch. But I would imagine that any number of public High Schools likely have humanities courses that teach the world's major religions.
I had such a course in my Freshman year. It served as a combination English and Social Studies class. I cannot recall the exact title. It was part of a Humanities magnet program, however.
In any case, we did indeed do fairly in depth study of the basic tenets and practices of the world's major religions. Hilariously though, the teachers (team taught) informed us that we would perform the worst on our own religion (whatever it was). This proved to be the case. The cause seemed to be that everyone found it interesting to learn about other faiths, but nobody wanted to do much deep investigation on their own.
Though a bit more to topic, I don't think there'd be any justification or need to stress ID or even teach it in such a course. Again I said major religions. As many have already stated, the majority of what most would consider some flavor or another of Christianity would not necessarily have any issue with theories of Common Descent.
Ironically, I do think ID should be taught in a science course. It should be part of whenever you teach what the Scientific Method is and what it is not. The goal wouldn't be so much to pillory religion, per se. The goal should simply be to help folk understand issues of hypotheses, falsifiability, Scientific Theories, etc. ID stands as an EXCELLENT counter example.
Because TECH is not SCIENCE. These appear to be somewhat intersecting sets at best.
Furthermore, Computer Science is in its pure state much more akin to a branch of mathematics than anything remotely resembling a Science.
It's not hard at all to understand how you would up in IT with an anti-scientific mind. It's also not terribly hard to understand why a bunch of IT folk shaved their heads and committed mass suicide to attempt to hitch a ride on a comet given there isn't sufficient science to suggest that might actually work.
Sometimes I wonder if programming to many isn't more closely related to magic than science. And indeed, there are many aspects of IT work that seem much more art than science.
You cannot compare Pearl Harbor to the destruction of the Twin Towers unless you are so one-dimensional that body count is the only thing you think matters. I'll grant you it indeed may be the only thing for the purposes of cute statistics about your probabilistic chance of committing suicide. (That's a random thing? Better get some suicide insurance).
However, the point that the direct impact of terrorism is trivial should not be so easily dismissed. Pearl Harbor wasn't terrorism. It was one part of a much larger scheme of the Japanese which was almost perfectly executed to grant Japan nearly complete control of the entire Pacific Ocean in just a day or two. This was not trivial. The impact on many levels was profound and direct yes even to those in the heartland.
Although it may be crass to call 9/11 "trivial", it was much more so than Pearl Harbor unless you lived in greater NYC. Who were these attackers who swore to strive towards forced compliance to Islam and the removal of free press? I seem to have missed that part. I seem to recall it being rather dubious who actually did it, why and what their intentions were. Furthermore, who cares what they want to do! Do they (whoever they may be) have the power to do anything? They cannot do that by knocking down buildings. That's why we need intelligent responses rather than goofy things like worrying about everyone with a camera.
However, sadly one could make another comparison regarding our internment of Japanese-Americans that would suggest our incredibly foolish, irrational, slavishly fearful and horribly impotent responses to 9/11 are indeed rather "normal" given human history.
Usually these are just "phases" and given a few years we'll get over it. I fear our politicians love for fear mongering and the never-ending use of the terminology of "War on Terror" is seriously delaying that. And in that regard your comments regarding Orwell do indeed seem chillingly apropos.
However, you make a grave mistake of taking one example out of its context in casting it in ours. David was more or less ordered (specifically challenged) to bring in foreskins as proof of body counts. Yes this would be rather gross today. But back then it was very likely a rather simple way to ensure a Jewish force was killing non-Jewish males. You know, they didn't have embedded journalists back then. Nor did they have the Geneva convention for rules of war and return of combatants' (unmolested) bodies.
So yes, it was "savage" from our point of view. But it isn't appropriate to make it appear that David had a weird bloodthirsty foreskin fetish. There are much more reasonable criticisms you could correctly make of David if you wish to do so.
I had a history teacher in High School who purported to be a Flat-Earther. This chap was a very good humanities/history teacher. He had all sorts of ways to bring alive one of the more boring subjects (at least for teenagers who won't figure out for another decade or two why it's one of the most important subjects). This was also my wrestling coach. So for many reasons we respected this man. And he did have a good sense of humor.
But we had no idea why he claimed to believe the Earth was flat. To this day, I'm still not certain if this was real, tongue-in-cheek or yet another creative teaching methodology. He did put most of the students on the spot to defend why we believed the Earth was round. Almost none of us had any other answer than things like "but... but... people have gone up and taken pictures". None of us could explain how for several millenia all educated folk have known the Earth was round based a few obvious things such as the way a ship disappears over the horizon, the fact that the shadow of the Earth on the moon is always round and things like certain constellations going out of sight as folk travel north or south. This was well before the Google age where someone in the classroom could have found all that in a couple of minutes on the web.
In any case, you need not fear alternative ideas (even blatantly false goofy ones) in your school systems. If anything you should fear people trying to coopt the boards to ensure goofy ideas are taught in a non-critical fashion. But then, if you have any idea of the history of schools and school boards in America, you're probably jaded anyhow.
I find it rather comical that anyone is giving serious consideration to mining Titan for hydrocarbons for use on Earth. Most of the time I've seen such discussions the use has been for things like fuel for trips outside the solar system.
We're really reaching a point here on Earth where we need to do a better job considering the entire systems we're connected with: the carbon cycle, the water cycle, proper maintenance of soil, sustainability, etc.
Although some may wish to argue global warming issues, really nobody should take issue with the fact that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas. The entire concept of "carbon-neutral" is really trounced when you start importing carbon to shove into the atmosphere.
Ignoring all the economical issues of transporting hydrocarbons from Titan, does it really make any sense to shift to such a system. Taken to an extreme, over a long period of time this seems a good way to make Earth a bit more like Venus.
OK. Your immediate question would seem to have a parallel in books and similar things. There are any number of books, bibles, collections and whatnot that include some sort of language up front that says something to the effect that you may copy and use up to so many words.
Lemme look... Yup. NIV states the following:
The NIV text may be quoted in any form (written, visual, electronic or audio), up to and inclusive of five hundred (500) verses without express written permission of the publisher, providing the verses quoted do not amount to a complete book of the Bible nor do the verses quoted account for 25 percent or more of the total text of the work in which they are quoted.
Notice of copyright must appear...
So... If what you're suggesting has any validity, it would seem to undercut the ability to provide this provision. That is, why would anyone need to care? It would seem the distribution (not clear about downloading) of the chunk would still violate copyright. And remember, these days with P2P apps, most folk are uploading and downloading the same file simultaneously.
Now, having said that, a much more interesting angle of your question is how anyone would handle your original question were it recast a bit...
For example, if I scramble the tar out of the original file and parse it into scrambled chunks and provide a program to put it back together. All these chunks and the program are similarly distributed across a typical P2P application. Now, who's doing what that violates copyright?
If I take a bunch of these chunks and turn them into bitmaps, png files or whatnot and distribute these, then what? Things get much, much more interesting in a digital age where the same byte-stream could theoretically be any number of things. If I download the first billion digits of pi and this somehow includes the byte stream of a copyrighted song, has anyone violated the derivative works of copyright?
The practice of celibacy itself is more of the problem than the Catholic church or priesthood, per se.
Interesting tidbits:
1) The Apostle Peter (erroneously deemed the first pope) definitely was married. 2) The Apostle Paul declared his situation as somewhat of a unique gift, not a requirement of ministry. 3) The Bible clearly teaches celibacy is not something you should attempt to maintain if you retain desire. Instead you should get married. This is why one of the first things priests who started studying the Bible anew in the days of the Reformation was to renounce their vow of celibacy and get married. 4) The Bible more or less predicts the heresy of enforced celibacy would arise in later years. 5) In the Catholic church, this is NOT an issue of doctrine. It is simply an issue of Church Law. As such, any pope could wave their hands and dispense with the practice altogether. The structure is fairly rigidly in place at this point. Such a pope would likely be killed or at the very least "managed" so as not to do this. But the point is the Catholic church could do away with this by the mere flick of a pen. 6) Since it is not an issue of doctrine, there actually ARE married priests in the Catholic church. There is an established procedure for such. However, these are rather rare at the moment.
I would suggest your logic here is flawed or at the very least belies a bit of a gap in understanding how evolution works.
All the other folk who have commented that this is like giving artists new colors nobody can see are perhaps a bit closer.
Once we got started with anything even close to DNA, I would imagine we were more or less locked into that pattern. Evolution branches more so than tries all permutations and possibilities. It seems far more likely that once life got going with all the support systems (RNA, tRNA, etc.) and current coding mechanisms that it would have been very difficult to "back up" and try something new. Evolutionary history is full of examples like this where for what a lifeform is doing at the moment something else would be a bit better (human eye and blind spot?) but there is no going back, per se.
I think your pet peeve is part of a larger problem. For whatever reason, we seem (as a society) very prone to simplification. It may very well be that most of us cannot entertain complex issues. However, this behavior seems just as well represented among the highly intelligent and the humble norm. That is, it seems to be a special thing to be able (or to have been trained?) to accommodate shades of grey or conflicting data.
With regards to scientific studies, people (primarily journalists?) summarize things down to one or two points. We all see this sort of thing all the time for presentations and management discussions. The only problem is when we forget all that is lost in such consolidation. Furthermore, when the summaries of successive studies contradict each other people tend to lose faith (?) in studies at all and drift back to traditions, etc. (going to get some garlic now...)
With regards to children and education, I see this in the ever present glorification of "THE COMPUTER". It is amazing how consistent this is in today's cartoons for kids. There is incredibly often some version of the classic Delphi Oracle mascarading as a Computer. A Computer which knows all and will answer all - usually in simple straightforward answers. This doesn't seem to bode well for our overall ability to execute critical thinking.
Memorizing specific dates and absolutely precise things (eg. conversion tables) may not be quite as valuable today given the ability to look up such things.
However, there is one horribly glaring flaw in your position. The process of interpreting information requires context and knowledge, which comes in no small part from your memory of pertinent (and often seemingly unrelated) facts.
Today's lesson in Internet humor will discuss text-based simulations of real-life behavior.
Sometimes, it aids for delivery of humor to juxtapose two replies or comments together in such a way that one is hidden and the other is the official or formal one. A good example in common speech would be in Top Gun when the main character says one thing to the teacher and "coughs" a different response into his hand. The hidden, coughed, reply is shared with those nearby so they can share the deceit.
For the humor impaired, or non-human readers out there, humor is often a social construct of sharing the joke or hidden meaning. Get it?
A long time ago, before chat rooms or blogs, a common internet medium was a program called "talk". The primary difference of modes today was that each "talker" got half the screen and just typed away. You could type something and then backspace it away but the person on the other end would see the entire exchange. So they knew both the early response and the second.
"^H" is representative of Control-H which in several terminal types is basically backspace. When people now type one thing followed by a series of "^H" they are simulating this early behavior of "talk" or even earlier and more mundane habit of hiding a hidden response or comment (cough, cough).
Now, be sure to return next week (especially those semi-sentient programs out there) to tackle the more difficult topic of sarcasm.
#1) Evolution is term that encompasses many things. It is observed and observable FACT. It is a collection of various Scientific Theories. You need to be able to teach where/when/how it is fact and what the Scientific Theories are. You don't do justice to this when you simplify Evolution down to a counter to (one particular view of) Creationism. #2) Most Creationist proponents aren't really eager to have all the Creation stories/myths/beliefs/views discussed. There would be a whole lot more than just the typical Genesis based one. Although this would be interesting, it would be in a Humanities/Religion course, not a Science course. Why is it hard for anyone to see that unless you really are willing to give equal time to all religions that you're truly just advocating your own religion? #3) The various Theories should be discussed, not so much so students can "make up their own mind" but so they can understand the merits of such and understand why nobody really believes Lamarck anymore. The goal of what you seem to deem "shoving one theory down their throat" is to ensure people don't waste a ton of time rediscovering stuff their forebears have already hashed out. Case and point - go and read The Origin of Species. I think you might be amazed how things Creationists wish to debate were adequately handled there... many decades ago. Anyone even making the suggestion you have made probably has no idea how overwhelming the evidence is for Common Descent. #4) No Scientific Theory is ever "proven". This should be taught. Unless people understand how the Scientific Method works and what a Scientific Theory is, they'll never appreciate the fact the various things like Creationism and Intelligent Design aren't even Scientific Theories at all and cannot even be compared to Common Descent as such.
There is a proper forum for every discussion. (Ec 3)
As such, it would seem rather appropriate to suppress "directed evolution" in academic discourse. This really seems more appropriate in a philosophical or religious forum, not necessarily published science academic literature.
Ignoring the current reality of the clear connection between Christian based Creationists and Intelligent Design proponents, it doesn't seem clear how to separate "directed evolution" from "we don't understand it yet" and from various religious debates of the nature of this higher power.
How exactly would one demonstrate "directed evolution" in a scientific manner such that it doesn't fall into the same non-falsifiable, non-testable, non-predictive mess that is ID or the easily discredited Watchmaker Hypothesis? Although I may applaud your Belief (eg. Religion) of God-directed Evolution, I am seriously troubled by the likely overlap of this and a God of the Gaps theology.
Next, although I would hope Science could just remain Science, people are very aware of the political tactics of the Creationists. These folk have an agenda. Given that many Creationists fall prey to the logical fallacy of Appeal to Authority, it only aids their political goals to permit them to publish these sorts of things. Given the larger goals are so onerous (eg. redefining Science in elementary school education, etc.), few wish to aid them in any way.
But lastly, these people may also be suppressed because their work may not appreciate the vast number of examples of Evolution working in a crazily, chaotic fashion.
I agree with just one part of your suggestion: Respect.
You should respect your friends who believe in Creationism and not belittle them. You should respect anyone in a proper debate and maintain a sound sense of decorum.
However, there is no reason to provide arguments for or against Creationism. None at all. Indeed, you would probably do much better if you simply stick with Common Descent, or even Abiogenesis if you wish. Provide sound reasons for this. Be prepared to patiently counter all the very tired and very old Creationist claims against these. But there is no reason whatsoever to tread in their realm. It's their job to provide sound reasons for Creationism, not everyone else's to counter it.
I am saddened both by the poor science of many Creationists and poor theology of many Evolutionists. If you repeat what you feel to be "sound arguments against [Creationism]", you may simply be parroting popular memes of Evolutionists which are easily countered by anyone more familiar with the Bible (or whatever). You may seem as ill informed to them as they do to you. This wouldn't help your goal of persuading them.
I'm not enough of a masochist to willingly endure seeing Battlefield Earth as a movie. Experience has taught me many times there are amazingly few books that turn out even as good as the book. One strange example was a short story turned into a good short film "An occurence at Owl Creek Bridge". Then are the things where they really do use the book as the script (eg. The Last Unicorn and to a much lesser degree Harry Potter books). These are noteworthy exceptions. Usually things get bastardized in horrific ways (sigh... The Firm anyone or for a much more tragic SciFi example Starship Troopers).
But Battlefield Earth was clearly something that wasn't going to turn out good as a movie.
In essence, the entire concept was automated, accelerating training in a wide variety of subjects, not just flight simulators. A more worthy movie based parallel would be the accelerated, automated learning of physical fighting styles in the Matrix. If I remember correctly, the humans started being weasels in the sense that once they got going learning stuff they kept absorbing more and more and pestering their masters to get access to more and more stuff (in more subjects) ostensibly to help them do their job but really because they started figuring out they could probably eventually rebel if they were prepared.
There is one fly in the ointment of your essay suggesting that the tilt towards power consolidation in the US is due to the destruction of the twin towers. Actually there seem to be a lot of dead or funky insects in there. Let's see...
OK. There's this one twitching, little bug about the fact that the illegal wiretapping under discussion here started in February 2001. Last I checked, assuming causality, order of time, lack of time travel and all that... February is BEFORE September. The very issue under discussion could not have been implemented in February based on events in September.
Wow. There's also this fascinating old creepy-crawly that it is not entirely clear that Yoo's theory of the Unitary Executive developed only after September 11, 2001. No... it looks like several of the creepy folk crawling in, out and around the Bush administration had put forward lots of ideas towards strengthening executive power (eg. the rampant use of Signing Statements). These were documented well before September, 2001.
And look at THAT!! There's this monstrous spider with strange markings on its back that appear to spell out PNAC. It truly does appear that certain groups were hellbent on expanding and projecting American military power, including via several wars, long before September 11, 2001. It seems likely, although completely hypothetical, that we'd have gone to war with Iraq even without the attack on NYC.
Actually... your salve does nothing to cover up the stench that is the Bush Administration (and the completely complicit Republican congress). Whatever the reasons are for what is happening in the US, it is not at all completely explained as a reaction to the trauma of 9/11.
Slashdot Mirror
Well... it's a wee bit more complicated than you suggest. But basically, a voter in the US is never required to declare their political affiliation when they register to vote.
Trouble is, this is handled differently by each state in our federal republic. So please do forgive me that I didn't go off and research into 50 states (and assorted territories) to confirm this.
But you are quite free to refrain from declaring your political affiliation. This puts you in a special sought after group we call "Independents" (everybody wants your vote). Now you could easily make a worthy point that the act of not choosing to affiliate with a particular party could be held against you depending on your locale. But if that's the case since you've likely got more to worry about since your registered party affiliation need have no bearing on your actual voting.
It does seem registering only affects your ability to vote in primaries and to participate in party activities (like run for office). Indeed, it seems that some states even permit open primaries where any and all can participate (you know... vote early, vote often). This itself produces strange oddities (like lots of Republicans trying hard to ensure Hillary Clinton won the Democratic nomination).
Assuming an Obama win on Tuesday and a serious shift towards Democrats (what polls largely suggest), are we finally going to see some serious investigations and accountability for this current administration?
I know the wheels of justice are often rather slow. But I do hope the courts eventually get around to reeling back in the egregious power-grabs of the current executive. I also hope the next executive doesn't attempt to maintain such.
It helps to be first
Furthermore, I don't quite see why this is that terribly hard to handle properly. All the searches (yes ALL of them) should be videotaped and the videos held for a duration significantly long enough to permit any traveler to file a claim against any loss. This should be codified into law and rigorously enforced by independent oversight.
Why is this hard?
Yes, I realize the difficulties this would pose of documenting everything everyone is carrying. But this seems inevitable anyway given where we seem to be headed.
There needs to be a deep shift in perception away from the idea that the TSA polices us to the concept that they WORK FOR us. In the same vein, a transition is needed from the idea that we are all criminals to the idea that they are as well. Indeed, if the TSA has nothing to hide surely they wouldn't mind such oversight...
The invisible hand of free markets probably works as long as everyone does act in their own self-interest AND everyone has the same access to reasonably accurate and complete information.
If anything, this current crisis should deeply underscore that institutions cannot be trusted to:
Of course, if we would let everything and everyone fail outright in a horrific manner, maybe just maybe everyone would learn deep lessons. Nobody would deposit anything in any bank that wasn't bending over backwards to do all of the above.
Philosophy in High School may be a stretch. But I would imagine that any number of public High Schools likely have humanities courses that teach the world's major religions.
I had such a course in my Freshman year. It served as a combination English and Social Studies class. I cannot recall the exact title. It was part of a Humanities magnet program, however.
In any case, we did indeed do fairly in depth study of the basic tenets and practices of the world's major religions. Hilariously though, the teachers (team taught) informed us that we would perform the worst on our own religion (whatever it was). This proved to be the case. The cause seemed to be that everyone found it interesting to learn about other faiths, but nobody wanted to do much deep investigation on their own.
Though a bit more to topic, I don't think there'd be any justification or need to stress ID or even teach it in such a course. Again I said major religions. As many have already stated, the majority of what most would consider some flavor or another of Christianity would not necessarily have any issue with theories of Common Descent.
Ironically, I do think ID should be taught in a science course. It should be part of whenever you teach what the Scientific Method is and what it is not. The goal wouldn't be so much to pillory religion, per se. The goal should simply be to help folk understand issues of hypotheses, falsifiability, Scientific Theories, etc. ID stands as an EXCELLENT counter example.
Because TECH is not SCIENCE. These appear to be somewhat intersecting sets at best.
Furthermore, Computer Science is in its pure state much more akin to a branch of mathematics than anything remotely resembling a Science.
It's not hard at all to understand how you would up in IT with an anti-scientific mind. It's also not terribly hard to understand why a bunch of IT folk shaved their heads and committed mass suicide to attempt to hitch a ride on a comet given there isn't sufficient science to suggest that might actually work.
Sometimes I wonder if programming to many isn't more closely related to magic than science. And indeed, there are many aspects of IT work that seem much more art than science.
You cannot compare Pearl Harbor to the destruction of the Twin Towers unless you are so one-dimensional that body count is the only thing you think matters. I'll grant you it indeed may be the only thing for the purposes of cute statistics about your probabilistic chance of committing suicide. (That's a random thing? Better get some suicide insurance).
However, the point that the direct impact of terrorism is trivial should not be so easily dismissed. Pearl Harbor wasn't terrorism. It was one part of a much larger scheme of the Japanese which was almost perfectly executed to grant Japan nearly complete control of the entire Pacific Ocean in just a day or two. This was not trivial. The impact on many levels was profound and direct yes even to those in the heartland.
Although it may be crass to call 9/11 "trivial", it was much more so than Pearl Harbor unless you lived in greater NYC. Who were these attackers who swore to strive towards forced compliance to Islam and the removal of free press? I seem to have missed that part. I seem to recall it being rather dubious who actually did it, why and what their intentions were. Furthermore, who cares what they want to do! Do they (whoever they may be) have the power to do anything? They cannot do that by knocking down buildings. That's why we need intelligent responses rather than goofy things like worrying about everyone with a camera.
However, sadly one could make another comparison regarding our internment of Japanese-Americans that would suggest our incredibly foolish, irrational, slavishly fearful and horribly impotent responses to 9/11 are indeed rather "normal" given human history.
Usually these are just "phases" and given a few years we'll get over it. I fear our politicians love for fear mongering and the never-ending use of the terminology of "War on Terror" is seriously delaying that. And in that regard your comments regarding Orwell do indeed seem chillingly apropos.
Yes. David was a man of war.
However, you make a grave mistake of taking one example out of its context in casting it in ours. David was more or less ordered (specifically challenged) to bring in foreskins as proof of body counts. Yes this would be rather gross today. But back then it was very likely a rather simple way to ensure a Jewish force was killing non-Jewish males. You know, they didn't have embedded journalists back then. Nor did they have the Geneva convention for rules of war and return of combatants' (unmolested) bodies.
So yes, it was "savage" from our point of view. But it isn't appropriate to make it appear that David had a weird bloodthirsty foreskin fetish. There are much more reasonable criticisms you could correctly make of David if you wish to do so.
Maybe.. maybe not..
I had a history teacher in High School who purported to be a Flat-Earther. This chap was a very good humanities/history teacher. He had all sorts of ways to bring alive one of the more boring subjects (at least for teenagers who won't figure out for another decade or two why it's one of the most important subjects). This was also my wrestling coach. So for many reasons we respected this man. And he did have a good sense of humor.
But we had no idea why he claimed to believe the Earth was flat. To this day, I'm still not certain if this was real, tongue-in-cheek or yet another creative teaching methodology. He did put most of the students on the spot to defend why we believed the Earth was round. Almost none of us had any other answer than things like "but... but... people have gone up and taken pictures". None of us could explain how for several millenia all educated folk have known the Earth was round based a few obvious things such as the way a ship disappears over the horizon, the fact that the shadow of the Earth on the moon is always round and things like certain constellations going out of sight as folk travel north or south. This was well before the Google age where someone in the classroom could have found all that in a couple of minutes on the web.
In any case, you need not fear alternative ideas (even blatantly false goofy ones) in your school systems. If anything you should fear people trying to coopt the boards to ensure goofy ideas are taught in a non-critical fashion. But then, if you have any idea of the history of schools and school boards in America, you're probably jaded anyhow.
Cough.. Cough..
India actually has implemented Electronic Voting. Read that again - Electronic, not Computerized. For some explanation of the difference, look here.
They had serious problems with paper such as many ballot boxes from certain districts going "missing".
I find it rather comical that anyone is giving serious consideration to mining Titan for hydrocarbons for use on Earth. Most of the time I've seen such discussions the use has been for things like fuel for trips outside the solar system.
We're really reaching a point here on Earth where we need to do a better job considering the entire systems we're connected with: the carbon cycle, the water cycle, proper maintenance of soil, sustainability, etc.
Although some may wish to argue global warming issues, really nobody should take issue with the fact that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas. The entire concept of "carbon-neutral" is really trounced when you start importing carbon to shove into the atmosphere.
Ignoring all the economical issues of transporting hydrocarbons from Titan, does it really make any sense to shift to such a system. Taken to an extreme, over a long period of time this seems a good way to make Earth a bit more like Venus.
OK. Your immediate question would seem to have a parallel in books and similar things. There are any number of books, bibles, collections and whatnot that include some sort of language up front that says something to the effect that you may copy and use up to so many words.
Lemme look... Yup. NIV states the following:
The NIV text may be quoted in any form (written, visual, electronic or audio), up to and inclusive of five hundred (500) verses without express written permission of the publisher, providing the verses quoted do not amount to a complete book of the Bible nor do the verses quoted account for 25 percent or more of the total text of the work in which they are quoted.
Notice of copyright must appear...
So... If what you're suggesting has any validity, it would seem to undercut the ability to provide this provision. That is, why would anyone need to care? It would seem the distribution (not clear about downloading) of the chunk would still violate copyright. And remember, these days with P2P apps, most folk are uploading and downloading the same file simultaneously.
Now, having said that, a much more interesting angle of your question is how anyone would handle your original question were it recast a bit...
For example, if I scramble the tar out of the original file and parse it into scrambled chunks and provide a program to put it back together. All these chunks and the program are similarly distributed across a typical P2P application. Now, who's doing what that violates copyright?
If I take a bunch of these chunks and turn them into bitmaps, png files or whatnot and distribute these, then what? Things get much, much more interesting in a digital age where the same byte-stream could theoretically be any number of things. If I download the first billion digits of pi and this somehow includes the byte stream of a copyrighted song, has anyone violated the derivative works of copyright?
Correct.
The practice of celibacy itself is more of the problem than the Catholic church or priesthood, per se.
Interesting tidbits:
1) The Apostle Peter (erroneously deemed the first pope) definitely was married.
2) The Apostle Paul declared his situation as somewhat of a unique gift, not a requirement of ministry.
3) The Bible clearly teaches celibacy is not something you should attempt to maintain if you retain desire. Instead you should get married. This is why one of the first things priests who started studying the Bible anew in the days of the Reformation was to renounce their vow of celibacy and get married.
4) The Bible more or less predicts the heresy of enforced celibacy would arise in later years.
5) In the Catholic church, this is NOT an issue of doctrine. It is simply an issue of Church Law. As such, any pope could wave their hands and dispense with the practice altogether. The structure is fairly rigidly in place at this point. Such a pope would likely be killed or at the very least "managed" so as not to do this. But the point is the Catholic church could do away with this by the mere flick of a pen.
6) Since it is not an issue of doctrine, there actually ARE married priests in the Catholic church. There is an established procedure for such. However, these are rather rare at the moment.
I would suggest your logic here is flawed or at the very least belies a bit of a gap in understanding how evolution works.
All the other folk who have commented that this is like giving artists new colors nobody can see are perhaps a bit closer.
Once we got started with anything even close to DNA, I would imagine we were more or less locked into that pattern. Evolution branches more so than tries all permutations and possibilities. It seems far more likely that once life got going with all the support systems (RNA, tRNA, etc.) and current coding mechanisms that it would have been very difficult to "back up" and try something new. Evolutionary history is full of examples like this where for what a lifeform is doing at the moment something else would be a bit better (human eye and blind spot?) but there is no going back, per se.
I think your pet peeve is part of a larger problem. For whatever reason, we seem (as a society) very prone to simplification. It may very well be that most of us cannot entertain complex issues. However, this behavior seems just as well represented among the highly intelligent and the humble norm. That is, it seems to be a special thing to be able (or to have been trained?) to accommodate shades of grey or conflicting data.
With regards to scientific studies, people (primarily journalists?) summarize things down to one or two points. We all see this sort of thing all the time for presentations and management discussions. The only problem is when we forget all that is lost in such consolidation. Furthermore, when the summaries of successive studies contradict each other people tend to lose faith (?) in studies at all and drift back to traditions, etc. (going to get some garlic now...)
With regards to children and education, I see this in the ever present glorification of "THE COMPUTER". It is amazing how consistent this is in today's cartoons for kids. There is incredibly often some version of the classic Delphi Oracle mascarading as a Computer. A Computer which knows all and will answer all - usually in simple straightforward answers. This doesn't seem to bode well for our overall ability to execute critical thinking.
Memorizing specific dates and absolutely precise things (eg. conversion tables) may not be quite as valuable today given the ability to look up such things.
However, there is one horribly glaring flaw in your position. The process of interpreting information requires context and knowledge, which comes in no small part from your memory of pertinent (and often seemingly unrelated) facts.
Does anyone else get a kick out of the fact that this article about why Java is going to die of old age is being hosted by a webserver which is...
running Java ?
OK, class...
Today's lesson in Internet humor will discuss text-based simulations of real-life behavior.
Sometimes, it aids for delivery of humor to juxtapose two replies or comments together in such a way that one is hidden and the other is the official or formal one. A good example in common speech would be in Top Gun when the main character says one thing to the teacher and "coughs" a different response into his hand. The hidden, coughed, reply is shared with those nearby so they can share the deceit.
For the humor impaired, or non-human readers out there, humor is often a social construct of sharing the joke or hidden meaning. Get it?
A long time ago, before chat rooms or blogs, a common internet medium was a program called "talk". The primary difference of modes today was that each "talker" got half the screen and just typed away. You could type something and then backspace it away but the person on the other end would see the entire exchange. So they knew both the early response and the second.
"^H" is representative of Control-H which in several terminal types is basically backspace. When people now type one thing followed by a series of "^H" they are simulating this early behavior of "talk" or even earlier and more mundane habit of hiding a hidden response or comment (cough, cough).
Now, be sure to return next week (especially those semi-sentient programs out there) to tackle the more difficult topic of sarcasm.
Well... everyone else probably needs a good mnemonic.
They could use something like this...
What does RIAA remind you of? Pigs, right?
And what does the RIAA love to do? SUE, right?
And what do you say to call in the pigs?
SUE-W.... SU-EW...
Sony-Universal-EMI-Warner...
Here piggie...
#1) Evolution is term that encompasses many things. It is observed and observable FACT. It is a collection of various Scientific Theories. You need to be able to teach where/when/how it is fact and what the Scientific Theories are. You don't do justice to this when you simplify Evolution down to a counter to (one particular view of) Creationism.
#2) Most Creationist proponents aren't really eager to have all the Creation stories/myths/beliefs/views discussed. There would be a whole lot more than just the typical Genesis based one. Although this would be interesting, it would be in a Humanities/Religion course, not a Science course. Why is it hard for anyone to see that unless you really are willing to give equal time to all religions that you're truly just advocating your own religion?
#3) The various Theories should be discussed, not so much so students can "make up their own mind" but so they can understand the merits of such and understand why nobody really believes Lamarck anymore. The goal of what you seem to deem "shoving one theory down their throat" is to ensure people don't waste a ton of time rediscovering stuff their forebears have already hashed out. Case and point - go and read The Origin of Species. I think you might be amazed how things Creationists wish to debate were adequately handled there... many decades ago. Anyone even making the suggestion you have made probably has no idea how overwhelming the evidence is for Common Descent.
#4) No Scientific Theory is ever "proven". This should be taught. Unless people understand how the Scientific Method works and what a Scientific Theory is, they'll never appreciate the fact the various things like Creationism and Intelligent Design aren't even Scientific Theories at all and cannot even be compared to Common Descent as such.
#5) ???
#6) Profit
There is a proper forum for every discussion. (Ec 3)
As such, it would seem rather appropriate to suppress "directed evolution" in academic discourse. This really seems more appropriate in a philosophical or religious forum, not necessarily published science academic literature.
Ignoring the current reality of the clear connection between Christian based Creationists and Intelligent Design proponents, it doesn't seem clear how to separate "directed evolution" from "we don't understand it yet" and from various religious debates of the nature of this higher power.
How exactly would one demonstrate "directed evolution" in a scientific manner such that it doesn't fall into the same non-falsifiable, non-testable, non-predictive mess that is ID or the easily discredited Watchmaker Hypothesis? Although I may applaud your Belief (eg. Religion) of God-directed Evolution, I am seriously troubled by the likely overlap of this and a God of the Gaps theology.
Next, although I would hope Science could just remain Science, people are very aware of the political tactics of the Creationists. These folk have an agenda. Given that many Creationists fall prey to the logical fallacy of Appeal to Authority, it only aids their political goals to permit them to publish these sorts of things. Given the larger goals are so onerous (eg. redefining Science in elementary school education, etc.), few wish to aid them in any way.
But lastly, these people may also be suppressed because their work may not appreciate the vast number of examples of Evolution working in a crazily, chaotic fashion.
I agree with just one part of your suggestion: Respect.
You should respect your friends who believe in Creationism and not belittle them. You should respect anyone in a proper debate and maintain a sound sense of decorum.
However, there is no reason to provide arguments for or against Creationism. None at all. Indeed, you would probably do much better if you simply stick with Common Descent, or even Abiogenesis if you wish. Provide sound reasons for this. Be prepared to patiently counter all the very tired and very old Creationist claims against these. But there is no reason whatsoever to tread in their realm. It's their job to provide sound reasons for Creationism, not everyone else's to counter it.
I am saddened both by the poor science of many Creationists and poor theology of many Evolutionists. If you repeat what you feel to be "sound arguments against [Creationism]", you may simply be parroting popular memes of Evolutionists which are easily countered by anyone more familiar with the Bible (or whatever). You may seem as ill informed to them as they do to you. This wouldn't help your goal of persuading them.
Oh heavens. Is that what they did in the movie?
I'm not enough of a masochist to willingly endure seeing Battlefield Earth as a movie. Experience has taught me many times there are amazingly few books that turn out even as good as the book. One strange example was a short story turned into a good short film "An occurence at Owl Creek Bridge". Then are the things where they really do use the book as the script (eg. The Last Unicorn and to a much lesser degree Harry Potter books). These are noteworthy exceptions. Usually things get bastardized in horrific ways (sigh... The Firm anyone or for a much more tragic SciFi example Starship Troopers).
But Battlefield Earth was clearly something that wasn't going to turn out good as a movie.
In essence, the entire concept was automated, accelerating training in a wide variety of subjects, not just flight simulators. A more worthy movie based parallel would be the accelerated, automated learning of physical fighting styles in the Matrix. If I remember correctly, the humans started being weasels in the sense that once they got going learning stuff they kept absorbing more and more and pestering their masters to get access to more and more stuff (in more subjects) ostensibly to help them do their job but really because they started figuring out they could probably eventually rebel if they were prepared.
There is one fly in the ointment of your essay suggesting that the tilt towards power consolidation in the US is due to the destruction of the twin towers. Actually there seem to be a lot of dead or funky insects in there. Let's see...
OK. There's this one twitching, little bug about the fact that the illegal wiretapping under discussion here started in February 2001. Last I checked, assuming causality, order of time, lack of time travel and all that... February is BEFORE September. The very issue under discussion could not have been implemented in February based on events in September.
Wow. There's also this fascinating old creepy-crawly that it is not entirely clear that Yoo's theory of the Unitary Executive developed only after September 11, 2001. No... it looks like several of the creepy folk crawling in, out and around the Bush administration had put forward lots of ideas towards strengthening executive power (eg. the rampant use of Signing Statements). These were documented well before September, 2001.
And look at THAT!! There's this monstrous spider with strange markings on its back that appear to spell out PNAC. It truly does appear that certain groups were hellbent on expanding and projecting American military power, including via several wars, long before September 11, 2001. It seems likely, although completely hypothetical, that we'd have gone to war with Iraq even without the attack on NYC.
Actually... your salve does nothing to cover up the stench that is the Bush Administration (and the completely complicit Republican congress). Whatever the reasons are for what is happening in the US, it is not at all completely explained as a reaction to the trauma of 9/11.