The reason it can't be anonymous is because to grant it the freedom of the press (which goes above and beyond the normal freedom of speech) it needs to have an official editor that's legally responsible when it oversteps those freedoms(for instance when it libels someone).
No, you have to register with the authorities to be considered a Newspaper. Once you're qualified as a newspaper your sources are protected by law making it illegal for the government to investigate them. Obviously the newspaper itself can't be anonymous, but their sources can be.
"The goal is unique in that Volvo Cars has designated a year and is showing a social responsibility that also extends to people in other vehicles and pedestrians," says Anders Eugensson, safety expert at Volvo Cars. "We are very clear about the fact that our cars should not negatively affect other people at the moment of an accident. In addition, no unprotected roadusers should be seriously injured or killed."
The general idea as far as I know is that if you suspect someone has performed a crime, but you do not yet have evidence, then you can detain them for a short while as you gather your evidence preventing him from for instance running as you start to search his backpack.
Police seem to like exploiting their right to detain for frivolous reasons though.
[quote] Combustion engines are a pretty useful technology, last I checked. [/quote] Combustion engines can run on other fuel sources then oil, who would have thunk!
"Oh, so solar cells, batteries, transmission towers, and a distributed energy grid all grow on trees now do they?"
No, but we're perfectly capable of building them, and somehow they don't appear to be equivalent to the downfall of civilization.
"Anybody who thinks that agriculture, let alone civilization, can possibly be made carbon neutral is at least one of a complete fool or sadly ignorant. My statement "hunter-gatherer societies which are the only ones carbon neutral" stands."
As long as you're not using fossil fuel sources then you're carbon neutral, it's not a horrifyingly complex process.
"Indeed, under any even remotely plausible set of assumptions adaption to warmth is a far superior idea to going back to the hunter-gatherer societies which are the only ones carbon neutral."
WTF, seriously, NOONE, and I mean NOONE is proposing that. The most extreme proposals are more along the lines of planting more trees and building some solar power plants(well, technically the most extreme are global climate engineering affairs where we send tons of aircraft into the atmosphere to alter it to desired effect). Stop promoting that crap.
Heh, do you seriously think a politician would stand up and say he'd rather have his entire industry collapse from lack of energy then authorize power plants?
It's impossible to deny climate friendly power-plants at the same time as you want to cut down on CO2 emissions.
Where the heck is all the "We'll destroy the world economy!!!!!!" coming from? All people are suggesting is that we invest more in CO2 conservative technologies, Electric Cars, Solar Power, Wave Power etc seems to be moving forward nicely.
Interferes with useful necessary technology? Like fucking what, SUV's? That's pretty much the only piece of technology I know the climate people are up in arms about. (Though there's plenty of other nutcases in the environmentalism movement, but that has nothing to do with global warming)
You can have the coldest winter, warmest summer and warmest year all at the same time. There's no contradiction there, all it requires is extreme weather on both ends which seems to become more and more common.
We don't disagree I think. The point is that it's a waste of effort to dedicate yourself to a religion when you have no real basis to assume it's correct, as far as anyone knows you might go to heaven aslong as you're just a decent person.
Some do, some don't. Christianity for instance has never pushed enlightenment, it's core message has always been "As long as you perform well in this life you'll be rewarded in the next" which is similar to Hindu (Though I haven't really studied that religion extensively).
The pagan religions were similar although the virtues can be different, for instance the best fate for a viking would be dying in battle. Enlightenment has not really struck me as the common thread in my religious studies.
Though even if your theory is correct, then it's inconsequential if you follow the religions or not since the main point of most religions is just to tell you to behave decently and you can do that just fine without going to church one a week or praying 5 times a day (Probably because in most ancient civilizations Law and Religion were one and the same)
Though it doesn't appear that religious people on average are any more moral then the secular. Most of us learn right and wrong from our parents and society in general and those that don't want to be moral seem to have no problem finding justifications for whatever they want by selective readings of their favorite books and religious and secular alike are just as good at saying "Oh, those people aren't like us, they don't deserve to be treated good"
However since there does not appear to exist any objective way to discern which religion is correct (in fact many theologians consider this imperative, if you know that God exists, then it's not faith now is it?) then it appears to be a bad bet to devote a significant part of your life that at best might only have a 1/1000 chance of being correct.
I don't disagree with Dawkins et all per see, but generally the militant Atheists can seem a bit overly aggressive. Personally I take an agnostic approach where I consider the subject of God to be inherently unknowable and as such it's probably better to put your faith in scientists rather then priests.
It would be interesting if anyone performed a study to see what the effect of the militant atheists is, their objective must be to convert the religious into atheists (otherwise they're just circle jerking away at religion) but I can't remember reading about anyone that's turned away from religion after listening to them, most people I know that stopped being religious just stopped because they had just lost any interests long ago and had just been going to church out of habit anyhow.
Hmm, I'm not sure if I've heard a god gene argument but I've heard it argued that religion is a coping mechanism to deal with the unknown and unknowable which would explain why Secularism is becoming so much more popular now when we're exploring more and more of the universe through science. You no longer need to turn to religion to get answers to basic questions like "Where does rain come from? What is that shiny object in the sky?"
Ofcourse science can't help you with questions like "What happens after we die? Why do we exists? What is the meaning of my life?" where the most popular secular answers seems to be either "To further the human race" if you're altruistic or "have fun" if you're not:p (Technically there's also "nothing" though the people that answer that tend to have a short life expectancy, it's interesting that Christians have lower suicide rates because they tell people they go to hell if they do it)
Anyhow, just because some people excessively use hand waving doesn't mean you should throw away the entire evolutionary discipline, it's like throwing away the history discipline as they're also forced to perform a fair bit of hand-waving. If cooperative behavior for instance is not evolutionary favored behavior, why do we see it everywhere in nature?
Who would disown them exactly? It's not like they belong to the Roman Atheist Church of Humanity or something.
The closest thing would be the Humanists, but even in a heavily secular nation like Sweden they're mostly ignored. (Something that's rather interesting is that Sweden doesn't really have a strong anti-religious lobby, the population just sorta stopped being interested in religion over time)
So the Roman/Greek/Persian/Aztek/Chinese empires are just my imagination? Humans seems to historically been very good at cooperating with eachother regardless of their religion.
"Arguments from evolution are nearly as bad as arguments "...because God told me so." You can prove nearly anything using evolution - road rage? Why, that's territorial ape-man behavior!"
You seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding about how the argument works. The general idea is that over time evolution will favor traits that grants long term success (more offspring etc) since that means the ratio of those genes in the gene-pool will go up.
Dawkins argued extensively that while being mean usually grants short term success, long term the people that play nice reap much greater rewards. This is because once you start misbehaving the social group will eject you making your survival odds abysmal. Now this behavior is not just in humans, but can be seen in almost all animals when you observe their behavior.
Slashdot Mirror
The reason it can't be anonymous is because to grant it the freedom of the press (which goes above and beyond the normal freedom of speech) it needs to have an official editor that's legally responsible when it oversteps those freedoms(for instance when it libels someone).
That's why I havn't spent several hundred dollars on games this year, oh wait.
No, you have to register with the authorities to be considered a Newspaper. Once you're qualified as a newspaper your sources are protected by law making it illegal for the government to investigate them. Obviously the newspaper itself can't be anonymous, but their sources can be.
"The goal is unique in that Volvo Cars has designated a year and is showing a social responsibility that also extends to people in other vehicles and pedestrians," says Anders Eugensson, safety expert at Volvo Cars. "We are very clear about the fact that our cars should not negatively affect other people at the moment of an accident. In addition, no unprotected roadusers should be seriously injured or killed."
The general idea as far as I know is that if you suspect someone has performed a crime, but you do not yet have evidence, then you can detain them for a short while as you gather your evidence preventing him from for instance running as you start to search his backpack.
Police seem to like exploiting their right to detain for frivolous reasons though.
[quote]
Combustion engines are a pretty useful technology, last I checked.
[/quote]
Combustion engines can run on other fuel sources then oil, who would have thunk!
"Oh, so solar cells, batteries, transmission towers, and a distributed energy grid all grow on trees now do they?"
No, but we're perfectly capable of building them, and somehow they don't appear to be equivalent to the downfall of civilization.
"Anybody who thinks that agriculture, let alone civilization, can possibly be made carbon neutral is at least one of a complete fool or sadly ignorant. My statement "hunter-gatherer societies which are the only ones carbon neutral" stands."
As long as you're not using fossil fuel sources then you're carbon neutral, it's not a horrifyingly complex process.
"Indeed, under any even remotely plausible set of assumptions adaption to warmth is a far superior idea to going back to the hunter-gatherer societies which are the only ones carbon neutral."
WTF, seriously, NOONE, and I mean NOONE is proposing that. The most extreme proposals are more along the lines of planting more trees and building some solar power plants(well, technically the most extreme are global climate engineering affairs where we send tons of aircraft into the atmosphere to alter it to desired effect). Stop promoting that crap.
Heh, do you seriously think a politician would stand up and say he'd rather have his entire industry collapse from lack of energy then authorize power plants?
It's impossible to deny climate friendly power-plants at the same time as you want to cut down on CO2 emissions.
Where the heck is all the "We'll destroy the world economy!!!!!!" coming from? All people are suggesting is that we invest more in CO2 conservative technologies, Electric Cars, Solar Power, Wave Power etc seems to be moving forward nicely.
Interferes with useful necessary technology? Like fucking what, SUV's? That's pretty much the only piece of technology I know the climate people are up in arms about. (Though there's plenty of other nutcases in the environmentalism movement, but that has nothing to do with global warming)
You can have the coldest winter, warmest summer and warmest year all at the same time. There's no contradiction there, all it requires is extreme weather on both ends which seems to become more and more common.
Tom Clancy: Press A is a pretty popular games genre in Japan, they call them Visual Novels.
We don't disagree I think. The point is that it's a waste of effort to dedicate yourself to a religion when you have no real basis to assume it's correct, as far as anyone knows you might go to heaven aslong as you're just a decent person.
lol?
I have to admit I don't really know terribly much at all about the specifics of Judaism.
Some do, some don't. Christianity for instance has never pushed enlightenment, it's core message has always been "As long as you perform well in this life you'll be rewarded in the next" which is similar to Hindu (Though I haven't really studied that religion extensively).
The pagan religions were similar although the virtues can be different, for instance the best fate for a viking would be dying in battle. Enlightenment has not really struck me as the common thread in my religious studies.
Though even if your theory is correct, then it's inconsequential if you follow the religions or not since the main point of most religions is just to tell you to behave decently and you can do that just fine without going to church one a week or praying 5 times a day (Probably because in most ancient civilizations Law and Religion were one and the same)
Yes, but each of them seem to believe the other two will go to hell as heathens.
Though it doesn't appear that religious people on average are any more moral then the secular. Most of us learn right and wrong from our parents and society in general and those that don't want to be moral seem to have no problem finding justifications for whatever they want by selective readings of their favorite books and religious and secular alike are just as good at saying "Oh, those people aren't like us, they don't deserve to be treated good"
However since there does not appear to exist any objective way to discern which religion is correct (in fact many theologians consider this imperative, if you know that God exists, then it's not faith now is it?) then it appears to be a bad bet to devote a significant part of your life that at best might only have a 1/1000 chance of being correct.
I don't disagree with Dawkins et all per see, but generally the militant Atheists can seem a bit overly aggressive. Personally I take an agnostic approach where I consider the subject of God to be inherently unknowable and as such it's probably better to put your faith in scientists rather then priests.
It would be interesting if anyone performed a study to see what the effect of the militant atheists is, their objective must be to convert the religious into atheists (otherwise they're just circle jerking away at religion) but I can't remember reading about anyone that's turned away from religion after listening to them, most people I know that stopped being religious just stopped because they had just lost any interests long ago and had just been going to church out of habit anyhow.
Hmm, I'm not sure if I've heard a god gene argument but I've heard it argued that religion is a coping mechanism to deal with the unknown and unknowable which would explain why Secularism is becoming so much more popular now when we're exploring more and more of the universe through science. You no longer need to turn to religion to get answers to basic questions like "Where does rain come from? What is that shiny object in the sky?"
Ofcourse science can't help you with questions like "What happens after we die? Why do we exists? What is the meaning of my life?" where the most popular secular answers seems to be either "To further the human race" if you're altruistic or "have fun" if you're not :p (Technically there's also "nothing" though the people that answer that tend to have a short life expectancy, it's interesting that Christians have lower suicide rates because they tell people they go to hell if they do it)
Anyhow, just because some people excessively use hand waving doesn't mean you should throw away the entire evolutionary discipline, it's like throwing away the history discipline as they're also forced to perform a fair bit of hand-waving. If cooperative behavior for instance is not evolutionary favored behavior, why do we see it everywhere in nature?
Who would disown them exactly? It's not like they belong to the Roman Atheist Church of Humanity or something.
The closest thing would be the Humanists, but even in a heavily secular nation like Sweden they're mostly ignored. (Something that's rather interesting is that Sweden doesn't really have a strong anti-religious lobby, the population just sorta stopped being interested in religion over time)
So the Roman/Greek/Persian/Aztek/Chinese empires are just my imagination? Humans seems to historically been very good at cooperating with eachother regardless of their religion.
"Arguments from evolution are nearly as bad as arguments "...because God told me so." You can prove nearly anything using evolution - road rage? Why, that's territorial ape-man behavior!"
You seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding about how the argument works. The general idea is that over time evolution will favor traits that grants long term success (more offspring etc) since that means the ratio of those genes in the gene-pool will go up.
Dawkins argued extensively that while being mean usually grants short term success, long term the people that play nice reap much greater rewards. This is because once you start misbehaving the social group will eject you making your survival odds abysmal. Now this behavior is not just in humans, but can be seen in almost all animals when you observe their behavior.
If you're actually interested you can hear him explain it himself here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8y7ZZB6Mt1o