No. I think a bigger concern is that the assets being frozen aren't his. It is like there being a murder in an apartment building and the police come and put up their tape. Fine. But the CSI's have had plenty of time and have done all they can do with the scene. But the government just expects the landlord to keep the apartment the way it was, including all the utilities on and the plants watered by the gardener until the trial is done. The cost is being paid by someone that isn't the defendant. They should copy the data and then let the guy delete it. If they don't want to copy it because it is a ridiculously large amount of data than that is their problem.
Well there is some case for that. Stuff has always been taken as evidence until the trial is over at least, and probably kept permanently if you are found guilty (not sure if a convicted murderer gets their knife back after they serve their time, but I suspect not). This is the flip side of cloud services: since you don't own the thing it isn't just the use of property you are denied, you might actually have bills to pay for stuff you don't want because the gov' doesn't allow you to delete/'cancel service until the trials are done. I suppose the subpoena should go to the hoster and then what? A subpoena from a US company to a foreign company may or may not be obeyed. If it was me I'd just say: What data? It was deleted yesterday as soon as we heard you were trying to arrest someone that isn't a citizen of your hell hole.
You're screwed then. If they were in NZ too if I was them I'd have just deleted it. Oh sorry a customer wasn't paying so as per our contract after 60 days their data is deleted. Oh, they were MegaUpload and you were interested in that day.. sorry. Too bad we aren't in the US. But alas that isn't the case they are a US based company and hence, screwed.
My win box is OEM but a Mac. I actually switched to Win because I found Lion so horrible for some reason. It would take literally 20 s or so for FF to open on my quad i7, previously less than 2s. That in itself was painful. But switching between apps for some reason sucked too. Say mail and FF were both open already. Click from firefox to mail you'd have to wait 10s for the mail window to pop up. I think it has been fixed in patches since but once I had win 7 I didn't go back. I develop in.Net at work and have some ideas I might want to try to commercialize on the side (no-non-compete/"we own all your IP" clause in my contract). Was running in a VM before but since I can be native might as well be. Still have lion on my system though in case windows pisses me off or I want to make an iOS app. But otherwise it's been happy going with Win. Funny though in the last 2 years I've gone through about 4 OSs, Solaris/linux admin->linux dev/admin -> Windows XP dev/admin/physicist at work, Mac Snow Leopard -> Lion ->Win 7 at home:-) Funny is that geeks often play for the sake of playing but I've actually had a business/functional case for each switch:-) Soon I hope to throw in some CP/2 or VAX/VMS experience:-)
Forget the motherboard (looks pretty standard to me:-) http://techon.nikkeibp.co.jp/english/NEWS_EN/20060119/112488/?SS=imgview_e&FD=-313234702) other things are issues with the design: like you have to use special tools to disassemble the screen in order to get at the harddrive. The only thing that is user maintainable is the RAM, you can get at that and replace it. But I had/have money pouring out of my asshole as at the time at least I was getting 100/hr as a contractor with a one year contract so wanted a nice machine but also wanted something I could fit in one checked bag for when/if I moved somewhere else. Doing linux based dev work on a 27" screen unix-like OS is a bit better than the 19" windows box HP was offering. Nobody else I looked at (Dell, Lenovo) seemed to have anything that was less of a piece of crap than the HP, they'd have 2GB of RAM, a underpowered (even for them) integrated video card, 500GB laptop format harddrive or whatever.
The two mac screens I've had (24 inch cinematic and 27 on my iMac) have been the two best screens I've had on any computer I've used. That said I wouldn't have dropped the ~1k or so that the 24" cost at the time but my work did:-) They also didn't mind if we used their 155Mbps symmetric connection to download things to watch after hours, both good perks:-) My current employer on the other hand is cheap, 19" screens everywhere with max res 1280X1024. To get anything bigger than a 20" you have to get senior management approval. The seem to not get the fact that a developer spending even 5 min a day fiddling around with a crappy screen costs more in a month than the cost of a 24" monitor.
I found the iMac 27" a better deal a year and a half ago when I was looking for an all in one. At the time the only thing I found really worth comparing with it was a HP model but it only had a 19" screen, and i3 and less graphics for I think it was ~200 less. So for 200 I got 9" more of a higher res display, an i7 quad, and a better graphics card. Made sense to me at the time. It all depends on what you want sometimes apple is a bit more but gives you a better screen and a little boost somewhere.
I'm not saying creationism is true, I'm an agnostic and a physicist. I just hate ignorance, even if it is ignorance about something you don't agree with. If it was some fringe idea like crystal healing it is one thing, but when it is a core belief of a very very large proportion of society to ignore the fact that your idea is controversial is crazy. Heck go to the wrong place and you'll get killed for suggesting evolution, or that god doesn't exist, hence it is good to be aware of people's beliefs/superstitions.
I am saying that a large, perhaps majority, of people think and act like it is true. Ignoring that, ignoring how that affects things like abortion rights, funding for stem cell research, how hard it was to convince people that evolution was true, how much the non-determinism of modern physics screwed with the determinism caused by the concept of a future seeing God, how it affects choices in what is moral and what isn't, what rights women should have and not have etc. is ridiculous. So what only kids that happen to have religious parents should learn anything about it (and presumably that will be a biased teaching of it because they have specific views on the topic)?
Mah. I user of a Mac or Linux will just sudo install crap rather than install it with a UAC prompt. Same difference. Non-techincal or even technical people that think they can trust the source will install random crap. Random crap can have viruses, in that kind of environment IMHO Mac and Linux are more secure just because virus writers haven't bothered spending as much time making viruses for those platforms. A lot of viruses are to create bots and for that you need lots and lots of machines for example.
Mac: better in that it comes from a vendor that is widely known already working and so pretty much guaranteed to at least work well with everything it comes with. Never underestimate the willingness of people to pay a little extra to not have to fiddle with their computer to get it working, even the perception that they won't have to fiddle will get them to by a Dell with win preinstalled or a Mac. Get a random box and then play... for hours with Linux and you "may" have a completely working system afterwards. I realize a lot of that problem has gone away over the years but it still happens.
I still had issues with ~2 year old hardware at a small startup I was working at. 3 other boxes with the same version of linux (Ubuntu, pre-unity at the time) running, with a room full of linux developers in the room (who had the same machine as me but for some reason it worked "out of the box" for them). I ended up having to figure out which flag inside of the graphics card driver I had to change to get it to be recognized. Not something your average user is going to be able to, or is going to be interested in solving. (not to mention you have to have another point of access to the internet to read manuals while you try to figure out what you need to do). Was a fun one because once I logged in I got a black screen I seem to recall so it wasn't even just a low res setting it was dead to the world once it hit the Gnome desktop.
A lot of things are history: linux is known for being hard to use because it was hard to use 15 years ago. Similarly Windows is known as crashing all the time because 10 years ago it did crash all the time. My Win 7 box hasn't crashed yet (only had Win on it for 6 months mind you) other than explorer restarting occasionally which is annoying because it knocks out the control panel and win explorer windows I have open. But all my apps have stayed up and the system hasn't gone down. Perhaps linux would never go down, but less than every 6 months is good enough for me and most users I suspect.
Ah good point. I suppose too if the skills are rare enough just knowing the programming language might narrow it down enough to get to the few likely cuplrits.
How about the old maps with "here be dragons"? I suppose it is possible that the world was round with dragons on one side:-)
Things don't have to be true in order to be important to know. Religion has had a huge impact on society. Draws a large percentage of GDP, was responsible for the content if not the inspiration to create some of the greatest works of art. Inspires a large number of the nut jobs that blow themselves up in hopes of killing people like you etc. You better believe that peoples beliefs are important. Again I don't see how a teacher saying "creationists don't like evolution because it doesn't match with their belief that the bibles 6 days of creation is literally true, or that the earth is on the back of a giant turtle, or...". It doesn't have to be true for it to be something they should be aware of, and in a loose sense it is true: it is true that their exists a large percentage of the population that believe and will die for such myths.
Exactly. Add to that tax incentives for people with houses, people with kids etc. People chose these things and if that is how they want to spend their money fine. But don't give away revenue that the government would otherwise be entitled to encourage a particular set of choices over another (and then get your money from other sources, ex. singles living in apartments with no kids).
Was this a photoshop user as in a hobbist or a professional? There is a huge difference. Someone pounding out 300 lines of C for an assignment in vi might not see the need for Eclipse or VS but that doesn't mean their isn't a need for Eclipse or VS (or something of that level). A room full of people looking for cut and paste and the drawing tool isn't the same as people using the ninjistu of edge detection, layering all the crazy stuff I hardly understand which makes a designer a professional just as much as me as a coder/physicist.
The government does use tax money for that purpose though since they give exemption from tax to religious organizations (in the US that means primarily churches). Exempting someones business activities from taxation is equivalent to giving them whatever their taxes owing should have been as a subsidy. It is effectively saying "we aren't going to tax you because what you are doing is so noble and a great thing for society". If not taxing religious organizations is okay than teaching not preaching what the various beliefs are out there in school should be okay too. If you aren't being biased in which one is right how is the knowledge itself interfering. I don't understand how ignorance is meant to protect people.
Sorry who said anything about refuting anything? My understanding from the op was that they were going to be allowed to teach creation theory. It doesn't mean that they have to teach it as being right. Heck they can spend 10 hrs teaching why it is stupid for all I care. I'm a physicist and an agnostic but I like knowledge too much to ignore ideas just because they are inconvenient. Creationism had a huge impact on the theory of evolution in terms of how open people were with their results, how they balanced the facts with their beliefs, the legality of teaching it etc. Ignoring context because we don't agree with the other side is ludicrous.
but nothing that creates any major problem with the theory itself (aside from the fact that some pieces of the theory are still missing).
So teach that.
What evidence is there to support creationism as a scientific theory? An ancient story book and a bunch of good feelings about it are not evidence.
So again teach that. I'm not saying that schools should teach creationism like it is an equally valid theory. Screw over the religious nutjobs by disproving creationism. Ignoring the fact that a large number of people believe it and that it was what made Darwin so cautious about discussing evolution and slowed scientific process are valid things to teach. Ignoring things because they touch on religion is crazy. It would be like teaching computer science but just ignoring that Java exists and refusing to teach it, not that there isn't interest or a use for it, but just because of some arbitrary idea that "those things are best lernt from your parent"
To prempt constitutionalists:
1) I'm not american so I don't care. 2) Teaching that an idea exists doesn't not equal teaching that an idea is right, or setting rules biasing people that believe one thing our another.
First off education != governing. Teaching someone something isn't the same as creating and enforcing laws which sole bases stem from religious beliefs. Second off: teaching a view != telling people that is the correct view. We teach different scientific theories without endorsing any particular one as the truth and the whole truth. You can teach religious ideas without saying that they are right or wrong. "Christians believe god is a purple elephant. Muslisms believe God is a blue pig." I didn't say which one is right, or that either view is right. A religious belief is different from a supposed scientific fact almost by definition since it is admitted (usually even by the religious people themselves) that they have these beliefs even without specific evidence. It is faith not a logical argument proving that X explains the data much better than Y.
Lastly, I'm fortunate not to be American so I really couldn't care a less about the constitution but my first argument still should hold I think. Teaching ideas is not the same as making a law respecting an establishment of religion. I think I've heard the argument the other way around too, that that clause says the government can't regulate religious institutions. To me the plan wording doesn't imply the opposite that religions can't establish a government.
Religion had a huge impact on science (heck it still does since IMO it is the primary source of arguments against stem cell research and such). That extent it should be included in science class. Not a long discourse just "There was a lot of resistance to this view since it seemed to controdict the christian idea of a 6 day creation)." Same as physics class can mention that Galileo had problems because he didn't have a earth centric universe. You don't have to go into a big debate and detour into religion but giving context to the debate that lead to an idea getting acceptance, taking so long to come about etc is reasonable. Science class is often layer after layer of gradually more complex explanations for the same thing. Without context you have no idea why things came in the order they did, why one idea should be better at explaining the facts than another, why the obvious "final theory" didn't happen before going through all these nutty ideas (like the Ptolemy solar system) etc.
Heck I have a physics degree and I'd say that about half of my courses each year were just learning last years stuff at a lower level of resolution and using more complex math. First year physics learn circuit equations, second year learn E & M with a basic calculus bent, 3 rd year E & M with vector and complex analysis level math, 4th year E & M all complex analysis and quantum mechanics level of things to play around with particle wave equations etc. Ultimately the same result for most things but an increasing deep understanding of why the larger affect happens after the effect of billions of billions of small quantum and relativistic effects of interacting particles.
So if there is no evidence what is the problem? Knowledge about a topic doesn't mean you have to agree with it. I do agree with you though that other than possibly a brief mention that the topic was very controversial when it came out because it was against the normal religious view (just like with Galileo though for some reason that doesn't create as much angst as creationism, perhaps the reason is in the name;-)) and that some people still don't agree with it. Leave it to history or philosophy class or whatever to get into the details. An elective course in the history of science, or history of "reason" or whatever would be nice, I would have taken it. I'm a physicist, but I like to know the context about what I learn. Why did it take so long to figure out (limitations in thinking (the west forgetting that the world is round), limitations on available tech (eg. Hubble constant), dependent on prior experiments etc).
I'm agnostic but I think there is a clear difference between your pink unicorn and other religions in that ~2B people say a God like the God in the bible exists, many more that gods exist, others that spiritual things exist while not necessarily requiring a god in a personal form etc. Ignoring something with such a huge impact on society, and the tempo of science is crazy IMHO. Parents typically aren't qualified to teach their kids, they might know some things about some things but the whole idea of a public education is to ensure that there is some standard for knowledge that everyone should know in society not just people that happen to have parents that know about that particular topic.
Generally religions have a claim of divine inspiration of their books. My understanding is most of the western religions the orthodox view is that the Pentateuch (first 5 books in the christian canon) were inspired by good and written by Moses and successors (obviously Moses wouldn't have been the author of things that happened after he died). Once you have an omnipresent, omniscient and eternal being in the picture anything goes. That is one of the reason that a lot of scientists (me included) are frustrated by religious "debates" because it is impossible to prove that something doesn't exist, and if that thing that is supposed to exist can make anything happen than you can't generate any experiment to prove anything because nothing stops God from just changing the rules at any time. That is why the scientific method is usually to do the opposite: assume something doesn't exist until you have evidence that it does.
Perhaps creationism has a place in a course on logic (eg. ontological, prime mover etc). I think to ensure freedom of religion or at least to keep the schools free from a biased view of religion it needs to be not only from the christian standpoint and more of an academic course rather than just a "we are a christian society and this is what christian's should believe" kind of course. I see nothing wrong with teaching religion as part of history, logic/philosophy, etc. It is a massive part of society. Even atheists often point to religious objects (churches, vatican, paintings etc) as being some of the finest works of art. It would be a shame to ignore the background of everything and just look at the paintings as pretty pictures. So much of the field was controlled by the church funding it, people's rather dreary look at the human state etc that the (mostly Catholic) church instilled in people in the 14-19th centuries. Similarly with science: we can't ignore the fact that these ideas had huge impact as to how people view themselves in relation to the universe and that there are still a large number of people that reject the ideas outright, or would modify them to include that God controls evolution to serve His purpose.
Separating the church from the state doesn't necessarily everyone in the state needs to remain ignorant of things religious just that the state shouldn't be controlled by the church(shrine, temple, insert whatever name you use for whatever building you consider sacred). I think the state has no place to say which religion is right but teaching facts about a religion and its place in history and culture? No problem there IMHO.
doesn't mean promoting it. It perhaps means that something other than one side of a debate gets thought. That said unless there is a significant debate in science about evolution it might not be the science class that it should be taught in. Perhaps a "world religions" course, history, etc. Again though if the law says that it allows something doesn't mean that the curriculum requires it (though in practical purposes in conservative areas it probably won't be a long time before it gets added).
Regardless, I don't see what is wrong in teaching kids both evolution and the evidence for or against it, and creationism and the evidence for or against it. People need to be encouraged to reason not just memorize whichever view we decide is "right" and cram down their throats.
But both links talk about a "material attachable to the skin" this seems to be a patch not a tattoo. Think nicotine patches all over your arms, sexy. Why do people come up with complicated solutions to things that already exist? They aren't replacing the phone so you still have to have the phone with you. Why not put the damn vibrate setting on rather than a magnetic field generator AND a patch on your arm, have to figure out how to make it so only your phone can make your patch vibrate etc. ? A really complicated solution to have the same effect (vibration on the skin telling you something is happening).
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No. I think a bigger concern is that the assets being frozen aren't his. It is like there being a murder in an apartment building and the police come and put up their tape. Fine. But the CSI's have had plenty of time and have done all they can do with the scene. But the government just expects the landlord to keep the apartment the way it was, including all the utilities on and the plants watered by the gardener until the trial is done. The cost is being paid by someone that isn't the defendant. They should copy the data and then let the guy delete it. If they don't want to copy it because it is a ridiculously large amount of data than that is their problem.
Well there is some case for that. Stuff has always been taken as evidence until the trial is over at least, and probably kept permanently if you are found guilty (not sure if a convicted murderer gets their knife back after they serve their time, but I suspect not). This is the flip side of cloud services: since you don't own the thing it isn't just the use of property you are denied, you might actually have bills to pay for stuff you don't want because the gov' doesn't allow you to delete/'cancel service until the trials are done. I suppose the subpoena should go to the hoster and then what? A subpoena from a US company to a foreign company may or may not be obeyed. If it was me I'd just say: What data? It was deleted yesterday as soon as we heard you were trying to arrest someone that isn't a citizen of your hell hole.
You're screwed then. If they were in NZ too if I was them I'd have just deleted it. Oh sorry a customer wasn't paying so as per our contract after 60 days their data is deleted. Oh, they were MegaUpload and you were interested in that day .. sorry. Too bad we aren't in the US. But alas that isn't the case they are a US based company and hence, screwed.
My win box is OEM but a Mac. I actually switched to Win because I found Lion so horrible for some reason. It would take literally 20 s or so for FF to open on my quad i7, previously less than 2s. That in itself was painful. But switching between apps for some reason sucked too. Say mail and FF were both open already. Click from firefox to mail you'd have to wait 10s for the mail window to pop up. I think it has been fixed in patches since but once I had win 7 I didn't go back. I develop in .Net at work and have some ideas I might want to try to commercialize on the side (no-non-compete/"we own all your IP" clause in my contract). Was running in a VM before but since I can be native might as well be. Still have lion on my system though in case windows pisses me off or I want to make an iOS app. But otherwise it's been happy going with Win. Funny though in the last 2 years I've gone through about 4 OSs, Solaris/linux admin->linux dev/admin -> Windows XP dev/admin/physicist at work, Mac Snow Leopard -> Lion ->Win 7 at home :-) Funny is that geeks often play for the sake of playing but I've actually had a business/functional case for each switch :-) Soon I hope to throw in some CP/2 or VAX/VMS experience :-)
Forget the motherboard (looks pretty standard to me :-) http://techon.nikkeibp.co.jp/english/NEWS_EN/20060119/112488/?SS=imgview_e&FD=-313234702) other things are issues with the design: like you have to use special tools to disassemble the screen in order to get at the harddrive. The only thing that is user maintainable is the RAM, you can get at that and replace it. But I had/have money pouring out of my asshole as at the time at least I was getting 100/hr as a contractor with a one year contract so wanted a nice machine but also wanted something I could fit in one checked bag for when/if I moved somewhere else. Doing linux based dev work on a 27" screen unix-like OS is a bit better than the 19" windows box HP was offering. Nobody else I looked at (Dell, Lenovo) seemed to have anything that was less of a piece of crap than the HP, they'd have 2GB of RAM, a underpowered (even for them) integrated video card, 500GB laptop format harddrive or whatever.
The two mac screens I've had (24 inch cinematic and 27 on my iMac) have been the two best screens I've had on any computer I've used. That said I wouldn't have dropped the ~1k or so that the 24" cost at the time but my work did :-) They also didn't mind if we used their 155Mbps symmetric connection to download things to watch after hours, both good perks :-) My current employer on the other hand is cheap, 19" screens everywhere with max res 1280X1024. To get anything bigger than a 20" you have to get senior management approval. The seem to not get the fact that a developer spending even 5 min a day fiddling around with a crappy screen costs more in a month than the cost of a 24" monitor.
I found the iMac 27" a better deal a year and a half ago when I was looking for an all in one. At the time the only thing I found really worth comparing with it was a HP model but it only had a 19" screen, and i3 and less graphics for I think it was ~200 less. So for 200 I got 9" more of a higher res display, an i7 quad, and a better graphics card. Made sense to me at the time. It all depends on what you want sometimes apple is a bit more but gives you a better screen and a little boost somewhere.
That is fantastic. Are you saying than that everything ships late to maximize the free pizza per project ratio? :-)
I'm not saying creationism is true, I'm an agnostic and a physicist. I just hate ignorance, even if it is ignorance about something you don't agree with. If it was some fringe idea like crystal healing it is one thing, but when it is a core belief of a very very large proportion of society to ignore the fact that your idea is controversial is crazy. Heck go to the wrong place and you'll get killed for suggesting evolution, or that god doesn't exist, hence it is good to be aware of people's beliefs/superstitions.
I am saying that a large, perhaps majority, of people think and act like it is true. Ignoring that, ignoring how that affects things like abortion rights, funding for stem cell research, how hard it was to convince people that evolution was true, how much the non-determinism of modern physics screwed with the determinism caused by the concept of a future seeing God, how it affects choices in what is moral and what isn't, what rights women should have and not have etc. is ridiculous. So what only kids that happen to have religious parents should learn anything about it (and presumably that will be a biased teaching of it because they have specific views on the topic)?
Mah. I user of a Mac or Linux will just sudo install crap rather than install it with a UAC prompt. Same difference. Non-techincal or even technical people that think they can trust the source will install random crap. Random crap can have viruses, in that kind of environment IMHO Mac and Linux are more secure just because virus writers haven't bothered spending as much time making viruses for those platforms. A lot of viruses are to create bots and for that you need lots and lots of machines for example.
Mac: better in that it comes from a vendor that is widely known already working and so pretty much guaranteed to at least work well with everything it comes with. Never underestimate the willingness of people to pay a little extra to not have to fiddle with their computer to get it working, even the perception that they won't have to fiddle will get them to by a Dell with win preinstalled or a Mac. Get a random box and then play ... for hours with Linux and you "may" have a completely working system afterwards. I realize a lot of that problem has gone away over the years but it still happens.
I still had issues with ~2 year old hardware at a small startup I was working at. 3 other boxes with the same version of linux (Ubuntu, pre-unity at the time) running, with a room full of linux developers in the room (who had the same machine as me but for some reason it worked "out of the box" for them). I ended up having to figure out which flag inside of the graphics card driver I had to change to get it to be recognized. Not something your average user is going to be able to, or is going to be interested in solving. (not to mention you have to have another point of access to the internet to read manuals while you try to figure out what you need to do). Was a fun one because once I logged in I got a black screen I seem to recall so it wasn't even just a low res setting it was dead to the world once it hit the Gnome desktop.
A lot of things are history: linux is known for being hard to use because it was hard to use 15 years ago. Similarly Windows is known as crashing all the time because 10 years ago it did crash all the time. My Win 7 box hasn't crashed yet (only had Win on it for 6 months mind you) other than explorer restarting occasionally which is annoying because it knocks out the control panel and win explorer windows I have open. But all my apps have stayed up and the system hasn't gone down. Perhaps linux would never go down, but less than every 6 months is good enough for me and most users I suspect.
Ah good point. I suppose too if the skills are rare enough just knowing the programming language might narrow it down enough to get to the few likely cuplrits.
How about the old maps with "here be dragons"? I suppose it is possible that the world was round with dragons on one side :-)
Things don't have to be true in order to be important to know. Religion has had a huge impact on society. Draws a large percentage of GDP, was responsible for the content if not the inspiration to create some of the greatest works of art. Inspires a large number of the nut jobs that blow themselves up in hopes of killing people like you etc. You better believe that peoples beliefs are important. Again I don't see how a teacher saying "creationists don't like evolution because it doesn't match with their belief that the bibles 6 days of creation is literally true, or that the earth is on the back of a giant turtle, or ...". It doesn't have to be true for it to be something they should be aware of, and in a loose sense it is true: it is true that their exists a large percentage of the population that believe and will die for such myths.
Exactly. Add to that tax incentives for people with houses, people with kids etc. People chose these things and if that is how they want to spend their money fine. But don't give away revenue that the government would otherwise be entitled to encourage a particular set of choices over another (and then get your money from other sources, ex. singles living in apartments with no kids).
Was this a photoshop user as in a hobbist or a professional? There is a huge difference. Someone pounding out 300 lines of C for an assignment in vi might not see the need for Eclipse or VS but that doesn't mean their isn't a need for Eclipse or VS (or something of that level). A room full of people looking for cut and paste and the drawing tool isn't the same as people using the ninjistu of edge detection, layering all the crazy stuff I hardly understand which makes a designer a professional just as much as me as a coder/physicist.
Wingery (a place with chicken wings) for me :-)
The government does use tax money for that purpose though since they give exemption from tax to religious organizations (in the US that means primarily churches). Exempting someones business activities from taxation is equivalent to giving them whatever their taxes owing should have been as a subsidy. It is effectively saying "we aren't going to tax you because what you are doing is so noble and a great thing for society". If not taxing religious organizations is okay than teaching not preaching what the various beliefs are out there in school should be okay too. If you aren't being biased in which one is right how is the knowledge itself interfering. I don't understand how ignorance is meant to protect people.
Sorry who said anything about refuting anything? My understanding from the op was that they were going to be allowed to teach creation theory. It doesn't mean that they have to teach it as being right. Heck they can spend 10 hrs teaching why it is stupid for all I care. I'm a physicist and an agnostic but I like knowledge too much to ignore ideas just because they are inconvenient. Creationism had a huge impact on the theory of evolution in terms of how open people were with their results, how they balanced the facts with their beliefs, the legality of teaching it etc. Ignoring context because we don't agree with the other side is ludicrous.
but nothing that creates any major problem with the theory itself (aside from the fact that some pieces of the theory are still missing).
So teach that.
What evidence is there to support creationism as a scientific theory? An ancient story book and a bunch of good feelings about it are not evidence.
So again teach that. I'm not saying that schools should teach creationism like it is an equally valid theory. Screw over the religious nutjobs by disproving creationism. Ignoring the fact that a large number of people believe it and that it was what made Darwin so cautious about discussing evolution and slowed scientific process are valid things to teach. Ignoring things because they touch on religion is crazy. It would be like teaching computer science but just ignoring that Java exists and refusing to teach it, not that there isn't interest or a use for it, but just because of some arbitrary idea that "those things are best lernt from your parent"
To prempt constitutionalists:
1) I'm not american so I don't care.
2) Teaching that an idea exists doesn't not equal teaching that an idea is right, or setting rules biasing people that believe one thing our another.
First off education != governing. Teaching someone something isn't the same as creating and enforcing laws which sole bases stem from religious beliefs. Second off: teaching a view != telling people that is the correct view. We teach different scientific theories without endorsing any particular one as the truth and the whole truth. You can teach religious ideas without saying that they are right or wrong. "Christians believe god is a purple elephant. Muslisms believe God is a blue pig." I didn't say which one is right, or that either view is right. A religious belief is different from a supposed scientific fact almost by definition since it is admitted (usually even by the religious people themselves) that they have these beliefs even without specific evidence. It is faith not a logical argument proving that X explains the data much better than Y.
Lastly, I'm fortunate not to be American so I really couldn't care a less about the constitution but my first argument still should hold I think. Teaching ideas is not the same as making a law respecting an establishment of religion. I think I've heard the argument the other way around too, that that clause says the government can't regulate religious institutions. To me the plan wording doesn't imply the opposite that religions can't establish a government.
Religion had a huge impact on science (heck it still does since IMO it is the primary source of arguments against stem cell research and such). That extent it should be included in science class. Not a long discourse just "There was a lot of resistance to this view since it seemed to controdict the christian idea of a 6 day creation)." Same as physics class can mention that Galileo had problems because he didn't have a earth centric universe. You don't have to go into a big debate and detour into religion but giving context to the debate that lead to an idea getting acceptance, taking so long to come about etc is reasonable. Science class is often layer after layer of gradually more complex explanations for the same thing. Without context you have no idea why things came in the order they did, why one idea should be better at explaining the facts than another, why the obvious "final theory" didn't happen before going through all these nutty ideas (like the Ptolemy solar system) etc.
Heck I have a physics degree and I'd say that about half of my courses each year were just learning last years stuff at a lower level of resolution and using more complex math. First year physics learn circuit equations, second year learn E & M with a basic calculus bent, 3 rd year E & M with vector and complex analysis level math, 4th year E & M all complex analysis and quantum mechanics level of things to play around with particle wave equations etc. Ultimately the same result for most things but an increasing deep understanding of why the larger affect happens after the effect of billions of billions of small quantum and relativistic effects of interacting particles.
So if there is no evidence what is the problem? Knowledge about a topic doesn't mean you have to agree with it. I do agree with you though that other than possibly a brief mention that the topic was very controversial when it came out because it was against the normal religious view (just like with Galileo though for some reason that doesn't create as much angst as creationism, perhaps the reason is in the name ;-)) and that some people still don't agree with it. Leave it to history or philosophy class or whatever to get into the details. An elective course in the history of science, or history of "reason" or whatever would be nice, I would have taken it. I'm a physicist, but I like to know the context about what I learn. Why did it take so long to figure out (limitations in thinking (the west forgetting that the world is round), limitations on available tech (eg. Hubble constant), dependent on prior experiments etc).
I'm agnostic but I think there is a clear difference between your pink unicorn and other religions in that ~2B people say a God like the God in the bible exists, many more that gods exist, others that spiritual things exist while not necessarily requiring a god in a personal form etc. Ignoring something with such a huge impact on society, and the tempo of science is crazy IMHO. Parents typically aren't qualified to teach their kids, they might know some things about some things but the whole idea of a public education is to ensure that there is some standard for knowledge that everyone should know in society not just people that happen to have parents that know about that particular topic.
Generally religions have a claim of divine inspiration of their books. My understanding is most of the western religions the orthodox view is that the Pentateuch (first 5 books in the christian canon) were inspired by good and written by Moses and successors (obviously Moses wouldn't have been the author of things that happened after he died). Once you have an omnipresent, omniscient and eternal being in the picture anything goes. That is one of the reason that a lot of scientists (me included) are frustrated by religious "debates" because it is impossible to prove that something doesn't exist, and if that thing that is supposed to exist can make anything happen than you can't generate any experiment to prove anything because nothing stops God from just changing the rules at any time. That is why the scientific method is usually to do the opposite: assume something doesn't exist until you have evidence that it does.
Perhaps creationism has a place in a course on logic (eg. ontological, prime mover etc). I think to ensure freedom of religion or at least to keep the schools free from a biased view of religion it needs to be not only from the christian standpoint and more of an academic course rather than just a "we are a christian society and this is what christian's should believe" kind of course. I see nothing wrong with teaching religion as part of history, logic/philosophy, etc. It is a massive part of society. Even atheists often point to religious objects (churches, vatican, paintings etc) as being some of the finest works of art. It would be a shame to ignore the background of everything and just look at the paintings as pretty pictures. So much of the field was controlled by the church funding it, people's rather dreary look at the human state etc that the (mostly Catholic) church instilled in people in the 14-19th centuries. Similarly with science: we can't ignore the fact that these ideas had huge impact as to how people view themselves in relation to the universe and that there are still a large number of people that reject the ideas outright, or would modify them to include that God controls evolution to serve His purpose.
Separating the church from the state doesn't necessarily everyone in the state needs to remain ignorant of things religious just that the state shouldn't be controlled by the church(shrine, temple, insert whatever name you use for whatever building you consider sacred). I think the state has no place to say which religion is right but teaching facts about a religion and its place in history and culture? No problem there IMHO.
doesn't mean promoting it. It perhaps means that something other than one side of a debate gets thought. That said unless there is a significant debate in science about evolution it might not be the science class that it should be taught in. Perhaps a "world religions" course, history, etc. Again though if the law says that it allows something doesn't mean that the curriculum requires it (though in practical purposes in conservative areas it probably won't be a long time before it gets added).
Regardless, I don't see what is wrong in teaching kids both evolution and the evidence for or against it, and creationism and the evidence for or against it. People need to be encouraged to reason not just memorize whichever view we decide is "right" and cram down their throats.
But both links talk about a "material attachable to the skin" this seems to be a patch not a tattoo. Think nicotine patches all over your arms, sexy. Why do people come up with complicated solutions to things that already exist? They aren't replacing the phone so you still have to have the phone with you. Why not put the damn vibrate setting on rather than a magnetic field generator AND a patch on your arm, have to figure out how to make it so only your phone can make your patch vibrate etc. ? A really complicated solution to have the same effect (vibration on the skin telling you something is happening).