The legal system is not "broken beyond repair."
The fact that these simple truths can be irreversibly concealed through the one-way hash known as legalese, is just evidence that the legal system is broken beyond repair.At least you can brute-force RSA:/ And, by a similar [I apologise] token, the fact that legalese can be learned proves that the one-way hash is not quite perfect.
If you saw a well-written petition, to the effect that any law school at any university receiving any public funds in the United States must hereafter require as a condition of graduation from that law school, a published proposal to remove at least one unused, redundant and/or un-constitutional (US Constitution, State Constitution, maybe local charters), would you be likely to sign it?
I have at least one close friend that is a hard core Atheist (and is a Biology Professor) At least? May I assume you are trying to clone your one close friend? May I please? It would be so much funnier than supposing the most likely interpretation of your words.
I worked making germs (some evolved to resist antibiotics!) for many years. I do actually understand the battle, and have already planted my flag on the side of evolution in my kids school district. I think if we were to meet you and I would actually get along despite the elephant in the room. As long as you don't attempt to use your faith as a weapon against me, there is a mouse, not an elephant, in the room.
My point was not that Scalzone oughtn't be allowed to visit universities, quite the opposite. OK, my mistake.
Invite both and ask the Pope about Galileo if that is an issue for you. It's not the first time the Pope had to clarify his position (backpedal?), it happened with phrases about Islam.
As for Prodi, the university is public. He or the minister of instruction are entitled to take the matter into their own hands and override the professors. Indubitably! That is the reason that I said the professor's comments, even coupled with any number of shirtless radicals, cannot be called "censorship" -- they have no power to enforce their wishes, or impose their opinions in any way on anybody who chooses not to do what they request. The message by Stephen Samuels called Cini's actions "suppression," and called them "censorship" three times. My argument is with that "drama queen" description of a statement of protest. Of course, you're right, too, from what I can see here, across the pond.
Of course he does NOT do it because he feels responsibility towards the guys who elected him and whose taxes pay professors, students - and the Pope's organization too (in a kind of an opt-out scheme). He did it because this is the perfect topic for pointless debate that takes up valuable space in the media. Better discuss this than the situation of Naples, or the rising debt at family level, or the reason why Prodi and Berlusconi are enemies that do not fight each other, simply milking different sectors of society when they get to power. Yes, playing the martyr gets these clowns much more mileage with their supporters than bothering to take any real risk for anything they claim to believe. I read Cini's statement on the Pope's cancellation to mean essentially the same thing you just said, albeit less clearly, cluttered by a prediction of the future and sarcastic use of a phrase that IMO should only be used when giving a genuine compliment -- especially from a college professor!
Cini said of Benedict's cancellation: 'By canceling, he is playing the victim, which is very intelligent. It will be a pretext for accusing us of refusing dialogue.' If the Pope does turn around and use this as "a pretext for accusing us of refusing dialogue," I wouldn't consider that evidence that he is "very intelligent." Playing the martyr is such a crude gimmick, a chimpanzee could do it in sign language. They are more intelligent than many other animals, but for a human to call that "very intelligent" is sorta stoopid.
Assume "other things being equal."
Think about it for a second; the two actually need each other. Religion (or, at the very least, morality) without rationality (without "science") easily veers towards superstition and sorcery. Science without religion just as easily veers towards the cruel and inhuman. Ideally, each should help guide the other. There are plenty of perfectly rational reasons to treat other people decently. The murderer who feels no remorse is statistically aberrant. In general, empathy is a trait of the biological class "human" and, as yet, has not been scientifically correlated to religion that I know. On the other hand, a great many social evils are less prevalent in less religious locales. Google it.
Are you offering me bandwidth, or GB - pick one. Because either I pay for GB, and you give it to me as fast as possible, and I pay for GB or I pay for 5Mb service all the time and you shove your limits. Which is it, you *don't* get to chose both.
I have asked you for your definition of secularism...
First, you told me I had used the wrong definition of "secularism." Only afterward did you ask me to state my definition.
We began our exchange here:
[Bombula]
Ref: Christopher Hitchens. There is no moral action taken or moral statement made by a believer that could not have been made by a non-believer. The corrolary is, of course, that there are any number of wicked acts or statements that ONLY a believer could make (ie: flying planes into buildings).
If you want religion to take credit for the good it does - like the Red Cross - then religion must also take credit for the bad it does. The bad outweighs the good by orders of magnitude. I will get by just fine with nonprofit, secular healthcare from my local hospitals and service-providers as well as with secular international aid via Doctors Without Borders and the UN, thanks very much.
You replied:
Really? Then you in turn must take all of secularism under your belt. I think you will find secularism has killed and oppressed many many times more people then religion ever has. Sadly thier chief tool is religion, but make no mistake, it is secular greed, avarice, and power hunger that drives it.
You asserted that "greed, avarice, and power hunger" are "secular," then, when challenged, asked that I provide you a definition of "secular" rather than proffer your own in defense of your own claim. So, yes, I do "keep seeing an ulterior motive." I also see the tip of my nose if I look straight down, and the frames of my spectacles if I look 45-60 degrees to either side.
"I doff my hat to you Sir, and bid you Peace."
PS What is the significance of "72" in "Seraphim_72"? Wikipedia has told me a bit about Seraphim in Judaic and Christian beliefs, but nothing that would help me take a semi-educated guess at the "72".
Well, Christianity started out as just the opposite really. Jesus was a dissident, and was challenging a powerful establishment: the Roman Empire. Christianity was used to shake up established morality, and take the fear of eternal damnation out of life, if you would just be prepared to admit your mistakes. It was pretty revolutionary in its day, and those ideas got Jesus killed.
What you have quoted is the myth of Christianity. The verified historical facts are that Christianity was made the official religion of a military empire, by one of its most notoriously cruel rulers. When you judge Christianity only by verifiable facts it doesn't look good at all.
So without doing more research into Scalzone to learn about any specific point you're trying to make, all I can say is that, assuming that if I did know anything about Scalzone I would then agree that he should not be invited to any university ever, I would say that a previous invitation, even to a convicted criminal, should not imply that everybody else who ever wants to visit ought to necessarily be welcomed. If members of the physics department were not allowed to state their disapproval of their university's invitation to somebody who represents and supports a history of theocratic dictatorship, or who says rude & untrue things about Mr. Marconi, or who wears shirts that say E != mc^2, those would be examples of censorship. The closest thing to censorship I detect in the original article, is what the Italian Prime Minister said:
Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi condemned the professors and students for "intolerance" towards the pontiff, and renewed the invitation for Benedict to visit the public university.
"I condemn the acts, statements and attitudes that provoked unacceptable tension and a climate that does not honour Italy's traditions of civility and tolerance," Prodi said, according to the ANSA news agency.
Signatories to the letter protesting the planned visit recalled a 1990 speech in which the pope, then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger and head of the Roman Catholic Church's doctrinal watchdog, seemed to justify the Inquisition's verdict against Galileo in 1633.
Mr. Prodi, any of "Italy's traditions of civility and tolerance" which really exist, are no thanks to the Catholic Church.
I suspect wikinerd can see as well as you and I can that you have ignored my primary objection to your assertion that we should expect that at secondary and lower levels, the free market-based education standards that work famously well at the college level should be expected to function less well, for some reason you have left unstated. Whatever!
What I am asking for is your definition of Secular, as it seems that you and I do not share the same one. I said secular, you said, dialectical materialism, what I was seeking was that no matter how you slice it, they are at best siblings, and at worst dialectical materialism is a child of secularism. I was hoping to find a common definition of a term.
First, "secular" is not normally Capitalized. And since you claimed that I used "secularism" incorrectly, not just with a different connotation than the one to which you're accustomed, it is your burden to prove that the former, and not the latter, is in fact the case. And, I can see very well what you were seeking. I can also see that you cannot achieve it by your own effort.
I will not do your homework for you.
And if you wish for a specific error? How about this:
Secularism doesn't kill and oppress people. People oppress and kill people. I know of nobody in the history of mankind who has been killed or oppressed, for "secularism."
Which is odd, because I can find many many people that were killed and oppressed for secularism by religion, up to and including modern atheists. Is this an error or a weak argument? But perhaps you meant to say the opposite:
Secularism doesn't kill and oppress people. People oppress and kill people. I know of nobody in the history of mankind who has been killed or oppressed, by "secularism."
You're right, that is a specific error... of inference, by you. As you know, in spoken and casually-written English such as you should expect on the Internet, many words are implied but not spoken or printed. Your "by" is clearer in the revised sentence, showing that you know very well that I meant nobody has been killed "for [the sake of purpose of advancing] secularism." I'm getting tired of your dishonesty, and will not e-mail you so that you can conveniently lie to me privately.
4) By rejecting most of modern physics and geology, they can shoehorn in a reasonable sounding "interpretation" of the data. And of course, for that totally reasonable interpretation to work, we need merely reject most of modern atomic theory, quantum mechanics, cosmology, and geology. Then everything fits with only a few holes, and for all that effort, we get a theory with zero predictive power. Yay!
You say "Yay!" sarcastically, but this group produces theories with zero predictive power like Toyota produces automobiles. Occam's Razor suggests -- unless it requires -- that such consistency is not the result of random chance but of unintelligent, designed malevolence.
Good points. You're right, it's all obvious, with anybody who has eyes to see, ears to listen, and a reasonably-developed neocortex. And, they know they're full of shit. Better to mock them than rant at them, although I'm hardly one to talk. It's just ridiculous nonsense, until you and I waste our time, taking it seriously. We shouldn't, though. They don't.
Religion also has similarities in having differences in the way it is approached and practiced. Again, I am not saying that science and religion are the same; they are certainly not. You seemed to have missed that in my post.
Disagreement with you does not imply that I missed something. That science and religion are the same is not something I have stated, nor intended to imply. Your incorrect inference is your own responsibility. Please "blockquote"
the text I typed from which you inferred that I believe you were "saying that science and religion are the same"
so that I can clarify. Back to you:
However, they have at their core, a pursuit of truth, even if vastly different kinds. Religion does not care about causality and repeatability.
I agree. And because it "does not care about causality and repeatability," I don't care about religion. Religion places too little emphasis on reality, accuracy, truth, and other values for my liking. I do care about the setting of precedents which tend to undermine my right to freedom from religion.
It does not care if it can be proven.
Which means, unequivocally, that it does not belong in science classes, is different and separate from science, and not a variation or different perspective on science. Science is a process, not a body of knowledge. Science is a process developed and practiced for the purpose of increasing knowledge of the physical world. You have noted some of the limits of its utility for deriving metaphysical values, and implied others. Whether I agree or disagree with specific claims of yours of the value of science as a philosophy is irrelevant, and would not be worth my time or yours. Science is not, and was never meant to be, a philosophy. As a profession, it requires a set of habits, including taking measurements carefully and comparing those to the predictions of existing theory, but those habits, even if performed "religiously," are not the same as a religion, and the similarities you have demonstrated are not pertinent to your thesis.
if you don't believe that science can be a religion, you have not tried to discuss facts with someone who has a pet theory. Atheism may be a religion for some people: it depends on whether they are atheists because they don't see the need for anything else or because they are against religion. Many people, perhaps most, are religious about the core things in their life because they accept them on faith and believe them dogmatically, whatever their philosophical underpinnings.
I think your thesis is there. I think that, in one sentence, it would be "science is not a complete philosophical system." I think that is true, but that it is a mere truism, standing in for an argument which cannot be made rationally. Your attempt is among the best possible, but your position is untenable.
That's just you. I've progressed linearly from wikinerd's underrated, insightful proposal for decentralisation, through your objection about lack of standards, to the existing solution to that problem. You, not we, are going in circles.
I was specifically referring to the original poster's comment to "let everyone learn whatever they want" (paraphrased?).
That's not a paraphrase, it's a quote, and one which takes a very short phrase, and portrays it as the entire argument, in a way that distorts the thrust of wikinerd's excellent suggestion. Try a larger excerpt.
wikinerd:
... I see ample need for decentralisation. Instead of fighting over what to teach in state schools, I propose to break free from all catch-22s by simply making the problem irrelevant by switching to private schools. Let everyone learn what they want in a free educational market, and then let the free market economy choose the best people. As simple as that. Government, if it wants, could run voluntary certification programmes, although I would tend to say that similar programmes by NGOs would work just as good.
As I already explained, private agencies determine and apply standards for higher education including public schools, with input only from the free market, and do it well enough that the United States' college system is the best in the world. Why do you believe the same dynamics would not be equally effective secondary and primary education?
How would you explain to a child the reason for Islamic terrorism without teaching the child about Islam? How would you explain the problems in and around Israel without explaining anything about either Judaism or Islam?
I'd explain the troubles in the Middle East primarily in terms of their real causes: oil, real estate, poverty and simple political opportunism.
How would you explain why some politicians want to ban abortion or institute school prayer without mentioning Christianity? And do you think that your explanation of those events would actually be more accurate and complete without any knowledge of those religions?
Again, I think my explanations of those events would be more accurate and useful than primarily religious explanations because I'll put them in terms of the real advantages pursued via irrational means, rather than taking the irrational explanations of the apologists at face value.
And, back to the original point, if your child had attended church with a friend and found the experience confusing and uncomfortable because they didn't know what it was all about, how would you resolve their confusion without actually explaining anything about Christianity?
The phrase "without actually explaining anything about Christianity" implies omission of important information, just because it relates to a religion, which is not part of my plan. I see why you have the impression I'm misguided, but you misunderstood. I plan no censorship of information about religion, only to treat it as I see it: nothing more than an anachronism overstaying its invitation. When my kids ask about Christianity, the explanations will be in the same factual terms as their questions about any other superstition, regardless of popularity. I'm sure they'll wonder about stories of UFO abductions someday, too. I don't plan to tell them the "abductees" are right.
Assuming you're not just making that up, you're the person to ask the question I've been wondering since reading the headline, and a couple lines of the article.
Nope. They use two integers. One for the dollars, and one for the cents... The important thing to keep in mind is that floating point numbers are not accurate enough for banks.
Why not do something similar for time -- an int for the year, another for the month, another for the day, and another for the time of day?
Slashdot Mirror
If you saw a well-written petition, to the effect that any law school at any university receiving any public funds in the United States must hereafter require as a condition of graduation from that law school, a published proposal to remove at least one unused, redundant and/or un-constitutional (US Constitution, State Constitution, maybe local charters), would you be likely to sign it?
As for Prodi, the university is public. He or the minister of instruction are entitled to take the matter into their own hands and override the professors. Indubitably! That is the reason that I said the professor's comments, even coupled with any number of shirtless radicals, cannot be called "censorship" -- they have no power to enforce their wishes, or impose their opinions in any way on anybody who chooses not to do what they request. The message by Stephen Samuels called Cini's actions "suppression," and called them "censorship" three times. My argument is with that "drama queen" description of a statement of protest. Of course, you're right, too, from what I can see here, across the pond. Of course he does NOT do it because he feels responsibility towards the guys who elected him and whose taxes pay professors, students - and the Pope's organization too (in a kind of an opt-out scheme). He did it because this is the perfect topic for pointless debate that takes up valuable space in the media. Better discuss this than the situation of Naples, or the rising debt at family level, or the reason why Prodi and Berlusconi are enemies that do not fight each other, simply milking different sectors of society when they get to power. Yes, playing the martyr gets these clowns much more mileage with their supporters than bothering to take any real risk for anything they claim to believe. I read Cini's statement on the Pope's cancellation to mean essentially the same thing you just said, albeit less clearly, cluttered by a prediction of the future and sarcastic use of a phrase that IMO should only be used when giving a genuine compliment -- especially from a college professor! Cini said of Benedict's cancellation: 'By canceling, he is playing the victim, which is very intelligent. It will be a pretext for accusing us of refusing dialogue.' If the Pope does turn around and use this as "a pretext for accusing us of refusing dialogue," I wouldn't consider that evidence that he is "very intelligent." Playing the martyr is such a crude gimmick, a chimpanzee could do it in sign language. They are more intelligent than many other animals, but for a human to call that "very intelligent" is sorta stoopid.
[Bombula] You replied: You asserted that "greed, avarice, and power hunger" are "secular," then, when challenged, asked that I provide you a definition of "secular" rather than proffer your own in defense of your own claim. So, yes, I do "keep seeing an ulterior motive." I also see the tip of my nose if I look straight down, and the frames of my spectacles if I look 45-60 degrees to either side.
"I doff my hat to you Sir, and bid you Peace."
PS What is the significance of "72" in "Seraphim_72"? Wikipedia has told me a bit about Seraphim in Judaic and Christian beliefs, but nothing that would help me take a semi-educated guess at the "72".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oreste_Scalzone
So without doing more research into Scalzone to learn about any specific point you're trying to make, all I can say is that, assuming that if I did know anything about Scalzone I would then agree that he should not be invited to any university ever, I would say that a previous invitation, even to a convicted criminal, should not imply that everybody else who ever wants to visit ought to necessarily be welcomed. If members of the physics department were not allowed to state their disapproval of their university's invitation to somebody who represents and supports a history of theocratic dictatorship, or who says rude & untrue things about Mr. Marconi, or who wears shirts that say E != mc^2, those would be examples of censorship. The closest thing to censorship I detect in the original article, is what the Italian Prime Minister said:
Mr. Prodi, any of "Italy's traditions of civility and tolerance" which really exist, are no thanks to the Catholic Church.
I suspect wikinerd can see as well as you and I can that you have ignored my primary objection to your assertion that we should expect that at secondary and lower levels, the free market-based education standards that work famously well at the college level should be expected to function less well, for some reason you have left unstated. Whatever!
I will not do your homework for you. You're right, that is a specific error... of inference, by you. As you know, in spoken and casually-written English such as you should expect on the Internet, many words are implied but not spoken or printed. Your "by" is clearer in the revised sentence, showing that you know very well that I meant nobody has been killed "for [the sake of purpose of advancing] secularism." I'm getting tired of your dishonesty, and will not e-mail you so that you can conveniently lie to me privately.
Gadzooks, you have totally disproved what I said! You obviously take the contrary position seriously ... enough to post as AC. Hmm.
http://www.expelledthemovie.com/blog/ You say "Yay!" sarcastically, but this group produces theories with zero predictive power like Toyota produces automobiles. Occam's Razor suggests -- unless it requires -- that such consistency is not the result of random chance but of unintelligent, designed malevolence.
Good points. You're right, it's all obvious, with anybody who has eyes to see, ears to listen, and a reasonably-developed neocortex. And, they know they're full of shit. Better to mock them than rant at them, although I'm hardly one to talk. It's just ridiculous nonsense, until you and I waste our time, taking it seriously. We shouldn't, though. They don't.
You haven't invited me into your house or your workplace, either.
Is that also censorship?
Methinks you could recommend a qualified expert for the procedure.
Thanks for the sig!
It would be the reader who "infers". You meant to say "the GP ... neither claims nor implies that this is an inherent problem of simpler processors."
You're welcome.