With people's limited attention span and focus, parceling everything out is a good thing. Otherwise you'd have important stories drowning each other. If the press makes money doing good work, I'm all for it.
Your current brain isn't the one you were born with. On a cellular level, there are processes that continously rebuild your brain. The only thing that stays somewhat constant is the pattern of information and processing.
The only rational conclusion I see is that anything that has your brain pattern will be you, for all intents and purposes. There's no unique process that has to be present to make you you.
While I agree about the one-sidedness of news, in this specific case I think you're doing what many muslim governments are accused of doing — distracting people from a serious issue with another one. Internal atrocities are overshadowed by the atrocities of your enemy, real or imagined. Inform people about the other issues, fine, but not as a counterargument to this issue. It does neither of them justice.
I've bought a few second hand games in my days, but rarely so cheaply as the games I've bought during Steam's many sales. Many of those sales have had ludicrously low prices, like just a few euros for Bioshock or Team Fortress 2.They usually knock off at least 50% of the price. Except for getting awesome deals, I also like that it's still the game maker's decision and they also get paid. With second hand games you're giving all your money to the reatiler, and they allegedly make an undeserved killing from it.
Makes you wonder how people in an actual paradise would feel. Would they long for some kind of hyper-paradise, with more blissful bliss or raunchier orgies?
Religion isn't necessary for good morals or motivations, but sure, it can provide that for people. But religion isn't simply a system of morality or a philosophy for living well. It's the other parts of religion, like supernatural mumbo-jumbo, dogmatism, willfull ignorance and such, that bothers me.
The miracles of a religious neurosurgeon are still the result of human ingenuity and spirit. Her religious explanations of why adds nothing to the miracle of saving someone's life through brain surgery.
But you have a point in that religious people still can contribute to non-religous and real miracles. I didn't mean to imply that they don't. Of course many do, but still I don't see what positive contributions come from religion, besides personal motivation. Religion seems to cause much more problems in this regard.
Stories like these always make me think of how science, technology and development delivers so many of the things promised but undelivered by religion. This story, healing the sick and making the blind see again, is an actual, real miracle, and an awesome one at that. Religion, in contrast, offers only false hope and perhaps some comfort for unfulfilled promises and a harsh reality. And yet so many millions pin their hopes on imagined gods, not human spirit and ingenuity. It continues to baffle me.
Even the most extreme things promised by religion, eternal life and/or an immortal soul, might be deliverable in some form by science one day. We can certainly create a paradise for ourselves. Compared to how the people who first imagined today's religions lived, one could argue that many of us are already living in paradise (or some beta version of it at least) and it's within reach for every human on earth, regardless of religion, if we continue to produce our own miracles.
Back in my day, if we wanted to play games we had to build the hardware ourselves from radio tubes that would shock you if you fatally if you looked at them funny, and then painstakingly program the games with soggy punch cards, distinguish enemies on a screen with pixels the size of bricks, using a controller that could only go left and up.
Unless you travel by worm hole, of course. There's nothing that says that the other end of the world hole would have to be placed at the same location.
If you're going to build a tube thousands of kilometers in radius, why not just keep going and extend it towards orbit while you're at it? We're only talking another few hundreds of kilometers of tubing.
The acceleration from speeding up in the loop wouldn't be the only acceleration in the system. A circular track would create centripetal acceleration as well. If I remember physics correctly, the radius of the loop is given by R = v^2 / a. If v is the escape velocity (11.2 km/s) and a is 20 m/s^2 (about 2G), we get a loop with a radius of 6272 kilometers.
Then again, I'm no physicist, so feel free to correct me.
To make this metaphor complete, not only did you Tivo the match, you fathered and trained each player, judge and person in the audience, you have full control over any imaginable condition on the playing field and you don't even have to be there, because you know the future and can change it by tweaking the initial conditions long before.
In other words, god not only knows everything, he has always known it and also has the power to change it. Combine omniscience with omnipotence (neither seems possible without the other, really) and you're not simply a passive watcher.
Good allies of of atheism are freedom and skepticism, which they certainly didn't have in Soviet Russia. Unquestioning adherence to dogma and authority was effectively just as bad there as in any religious dictatorship.
The problem is that it doesn't take much to be percieved as one of those extremist atheists, especially by a certain kind of religious people. It's enough to simply question religion or to claim that religious arguments are only valid for those who believe in them. That's hugely offensive to some religious people, who then make a big fuss about being under attack from evil atheists and try to make smear all atheists to be bad, extremist dogmatics.
This seems to be especially true in the US. Atheists are more distrusted than any other controversial group, including gays and muslims.
So yes, there are douchebag atheists. I would keep in mind who accuses atheists of this,however. If it's someone whose millenia-old religious dogma and the power dreived from that suddenly has competition, I would be skeptical about their claims.
Not for nothing, but yes, you can get investigated for the accusation only. It's a problem that many rapes leave no evidence and has no witnesses, and while the Swedish system might not be the optimal way to handle it, it should be addressed in any civilized society.
Assange is also the hero of many internet-savvy geeks, some of which who could easily make life very difficult for these women, regardless of whether they were actually raped or not. A lot of people are going to see this as some kind of conspiracy and the women are probably aware of it. You can't dismiss this so easily until we know more.
Slashdot Mirror
With people's limited attention span and focus, parceling everything out is a good thing. Otherwise you'd have important stories drowning each other. If the press makes money doing good work, I'm all for it.
You're changing brains all the time.
Your current brain isn't the one you were born with. On a cellular level, there are processes that continously rebuild your brain. The only thing that stays somewhat constant is the pattern of information and processing.
The only rational conclusion I see is that anything that has your brain pattern will be you, for all intents and purposes. There's no unique process that has to be present to make you you.
The convicted man in this case just pointed out your door is unlocked to everyone. It doesn't seem like a crime.
And an isolationist/nationalist will have to buy the rope to hang himself from the Chinese, due to the death of the domestic rope industry?
While I agree about the one-sidedness of news, in this specific case I think you're doing what many muslim governments are accused of doing — distracting people from a serious issue with another one. Internal atrocities are overshadowed by the atrocities of your enemy, real or imagined. Inform people about the other issues, fine, but not as a counterargument to this issue. It does neither of them justice.
I've bought a few second hand games in my days, but rarely so cheaply as the games I've bought during Steam's many sales. Many of those sales have had ludicrously low prices, like just a few euros for Bioshock or Team Fortress 2.They usually knock off at least 50% of the price. Except for getting awesome deals, I also like that it's still the game maker's decision and they also get paid. With second hand games you're giving all your money to the reatiler, and they allegedly make an undeserved killing from it.
Makes you wonder how people in an actual paradise would feel. Would they long for some kind of hyper-paradise, with more blissful bliss or raunchier orgies?
There are good evolutionary explanations for altruism. Religion isn't ncessary for morals or good behavior.
Religion isn't necessary for good morals or motivations, but sure, it can provide that for people. But religion isn't simply a system of morality or a philosophy for living well. It's the other parts of religion, like supernatural mumbo-jumbo, dogmatism, willfull ignorance and such, that bothers me.
The miracles of a religious neurosurgeon are still the result of human ingenuity and spirit. Her religious explanations of why adds nothing to the miracle of saving someone's life through brain surgery.
But you have a point in that religious people still can contribute to non-religous and real miracles. I didn't mean to imply that they don't. Of course many do, but still I don't see what positive contributions come from religion, besides personal motivation. Religion seems to cause much more problems in this regard.
Stories like these always make me think of how science, technology and development delivers so many of the things promised but undelivered by religion. This story, healing the sick and making the blind see again, is an actual, real miracle, and an awesome one at that. Religion, in contrast, offers only false hope and perhaps some comfort for unfulfilled promises and a harsh reality. And yet so many millions pin their hopes on imagined gods, not human spirit and ingenuity. It continues to baffle me.
Even the most extreme things promised by religion, eternal life and/or an immortal soul, might be deliverable in some form by science one day. We can certainly create a paradise for ourselves. Compared to how the people who first imagined today's religions lived, one could argue that many of us are already living in paradise (or some beta version of it at least) and it's within reach for every human on earth, regardless of religion, if we continue to produce our own miracles.
Back in my day, if we wanted to play games we had to build the hardware ourselves from radio tubes that would shock you if you fatally if you looked at them funny, and then painstakingly program the games with soggy punch cards, distinguish enemies on a screen with pixels the size of bricks, using a controller that could only go left and up.
Kids these days are spoiled. Spoiled I say!
Unless you travel by worm hole, of course. There's nothing that says that the other end of the world hole would have to be placed at the same location.
If you're going to build a tube thousands of kilometers in radius, why not just keep going and extend it towards orbit while you're at it? We're only talking another few hundreds of kilometers of tubing.
The acceleration from speeding up in the loop wouldn't be the only acceleration in the system. A circular track would create centripetal acceleration as well. If I remember physics correctly, the radius of the loop is given by R = v^2 / a. If v is the escape velocity (11.2 km/s) and a is 20 m/s^2 (about 2G), we get a loop with a radius of 6272 kilometers.
Then again, I'm no physicist, so feel free to correct me.
But only if you trade them for all the images of myself captured by Birtish surveillance cameras. Photos or video of me belong to me, sorry.
- Gregory House, M.D.
Here's an optimistic thought — it might make people skeptical of the images they see, which is a useful attitude reagrdless of this technology.
To make this metaphor complete, not only did you Tivo the match, you fathered and trained each player, judge and person in the audience, you have full control over any imaginable condition on the playing field and you don't even have to be there, because you know the future and can change it by tweaking the initial conditions long before.
In other words, god not only knows everything, he has always known it and also has the power to change it. Combine omniscience with omnipotence (neither seems possible without the other, really) and you're not simply a passive watcher.
EA are wrong to compromise artistic freedom because of complaints, especially since it's just a cosmetic change.
But if the game is moddable (which seems like like a big maybe), a name change should be easy.
Good allies of of atheism are freedom and skepticism, which they certainly didn't have in Soviet Russia. Unquestioning adherence to dogma and authority was effectively just as bad there as in any religious dictatorship.
The problem is that it doesn't take much to be percieved as one of those extremist atheists, especially by a certain kind of religious people. It's enough to simply question religion or to claim that religious arguments are only valid for those who believe in them. That's hugely offensive to some religious people, who then make a big fuss about being under attack from evil atheists and try to make smear all atheists to be bad, extremist dogmatics.
This seems to be especially true in the US. Atheists are more distrusted than any other controversial group, including gays and muslims.
So yes, there are douchebag atheists. I would keep in mind who accuses atheists of this,however. If it's someone whose millenia-old religious dogma and the power dreived from that suddenly has competition, I would be skeptical about their claims.
I would put wheels on that mofo and ride it back to civilization.
Not for nothing, but yes, you can get investigated for the accusation only. It's a problem that many rapes leave no evidence and has no witnesses, and while the Swedish system might not be the optimal way to handle it, it should be addressed in any civilized society.
Assange is also the hero of many internet-savvy geeks, some of which who could easily make life very difficult for these women, regardless of whether they were actually raped or not. A lot of people are going to see this as some kind of conspiracy and the women are probably aware of it. You can't dismiss this so easily until we know more.