Or more crudely, "after all is said and done, God exists because I know its true. Argument is just another way of showing how wrong you are. You cannot win, and I cannot lose. No argument is valid if it contradicts what I have been told since I was born. If you have a powerful piece of evidence that my belief is based on falsehood, the evidence is misinterpreted or false. Or you are a liar. Or evil. In any case, you are a representative of the Great Evil, and anything you say is born of iniquity. I can't hear you. LAA LAA LAA LAA LAA LAA LAA LAA."
Well, logically, you can't really make such a statement. You don't know there is no god. Atheist is the term, of course, and you can use it, but its hard to argue that there is no god. You can argue that religions are a sham, etc, but it's hard to argue that something does not exist. Prove the negative. As Heinlein said, soon enough you will know, so why worry about it.
And if you don't believe the term has been hijacked, get ye to rural Georgia, stand on the corner with a sign and declare yourself an atheist. They will hide the children's eyes and come after you with fists and guns, and not because they are disputing the technical meaning of the word "atheist" - they know what it means to them, and your hide will pay for it if you don't run fast enough.:) This belief is welded to the American culture, so much so that it is a semantic given that an interviewer will ask an atheist "Why don't you believe in God?". The question presupposes the validity of the interviewer's belief in the christian god, and defines you as the outsider. Remember, non-monotheists add up to about two percent of the American population. You are outnumbered 50 to 1. They control the horizontal, they control the vertical...
*** AG-ostic just has an ugly sound to it. And since it fudges the sound of "gnostic", I think the term loses its obvious meaning when spoken.
Did Taco hit you with a pipe? Shoot you? Kick you in the balls? No? Then he didn't "attack" you.
And copying music isn't "stealing", someone didn't "steal" your girfriend, and you couldn't "murder" a lunch if you were very hungry.
(NOTE TO EVERYONE: Semantics are key. If the opponent shreds the meaning of a term key to the discussion, by say, mapping false identifier "attack" to the real term "criticism", he has cut your feet out from under you and you cannot make your argument -- and the audience won't notice the trick, either. Deny the remapping. Do not let the argument progress; stop your opponent and point out the nasty little trick. Scream. Be rude. Stop them, or they own you)
Well, it's a semantic win for theists when you call yourself and "a-theist", a person who, as they define it, "doesn't believe in God".
Do you call yourself an a-Hinduist or a non-believer in the Norse gods? You don't have to, because people don't believe in such, for the most part, in the U.S. and don't feel compelled to define themselves by naming themselves non-believers in the Hindu, Norse, etc. pantheons.
The term "atheist" has been semantically hijacked to mean "unbeliever in the christian god" To apply it to yourself puts a rhetorical bullet in your head before the argument even starts.
"Agnostic" is better, one, because it doesn't have the semantic disadvantage, and secondly because it more accurately defines who you are: a person who declares that he hasn't any special knowledge (a-gnostic) and can't possibly have any answers. It's a "who-knows?" category which better suits a reasonable person. It also implies nobody else has the answers either.:)
My one peeve about the word is that it's mispronounced! It should be: AAY-NOSTIK, not AG-NOSTIK. We pronounce gnostic NOSTIK, not G'NOSTIK. Sheesh.
"I feel nobody has the right to chastise other's for their beliefs."
Why not? Beliefs are open to criticism and question. Even ridicule. Free speech. If a person's belief system is so fragile that a note of disbelief will shatter their composure, then they should examine what it is that they believe in so weakly.
I do not believe in dropping a force field around religions and cults so they don't encounter nasty criticism. They are a part of society, and have to participate just like everyone else. If they don't want to hear, they can do what the Scientologists do and put nanny filters on their web browsers, security guards around their get-togethers, and barbed wire on top of the walls around their lesser-known compounds. So much easier than having fresh eyes look at you. Keeps the kids from developing a personality that questions the Divitity of Reverend Moon or the meaningfulness of a lie detector used for "spiritual" purposes at US$250/hour.
Most of the religious justification for hating gays comes from Leviticus, but damn few people ever read the whole text. The people who wrote it were freaking nuts. It's like a read from Rev. Moon's writings -- control for its own sake. Superstition and common sense mixed together with a massive dash of fanaticism.
Re:Hehee. Just like loading off a Cassette tape :)
on
Piezo-Acoustic iPod Hack
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
"Why ? the beancounters and deadweight,,,, uhh managment for the most part have no clue what really make things tick. Now Jobs or the like are probably thee ones who would get it , and may be kind enough to run interference for the engineers...yeah right..."
I've a feeling Jobs has been running interference for The Rest of Us for quite a long time now. He's playing the record industry, stockholders, and the movie industry in a carefully planned game that will break the way we used to do a lot of things. He's a sneaky one. Jobs is the ultimate Undercover Hippy -- a man who absorbed counterculture values when he was young, and has grown up looking and acting mainstream while plotting revolution:) He's the guy who's made friends with the Kings and Princes for decades, and when he finally gets to stand in back of the throne... in goes the knife...
Hell, the iPod should be mated to a tapeless digital video camera. The 60 GB photo version has a color screen, and could be used as the camera's LCD screen. Power the iPod through the Firewire jack from the camera's power supply. Hours of MP4's can be recorded before the iPod fills up. I've heard that the newest iPod can support 30 fps video, tho Apple doesn't document this. If so, the parts are all there, waiting for Steve Jobs to give the green light. I'd imagine that no one wants to impoverish the tape industry overnight, so it isn't going to happen anytime soon. But the iPod, the Mac Mini, and digital video are set to blow up the way we record consumer video and watch movies and TV. Another idea for the Linuxed iPod: make a decent #@*^$#ing eBook reader! FINALLY.
Robbing the state of California of untold billions of dollars, as Enron did, was illegal. I see the White House covering for them, prosecution nearly nonexistent, the governor who opposed Enron ousted from office by the White House and replaced with an Enron supporter selected by the White House.
Point to a song, get nailed. Steal billions, go free, and you get to choose a new governor who's yer best bud.
The law is an ass. Little smurfs get destroyed for disobeying laws bought by rich men, and rich men steal billions without consequence. The trouble with stupid, mean little laws is that people lose respect for the institution after observing such service for the wealthy and torture for the small.
So, what if I said, out loud, in the presence of witnesses, the IP address of a site where one can possibly download a song someone claims is copyrighted. Would that be infringement? What if I wrote it down on a piece of paper and gave it to someone? Put it on a poster and put it on a wall? Wrote it on a wall? What if I published the address in a blog? How about a letter to a friend? How about printing it in a magazine? A newspaper? TV show? Radio program?
If it's infringement for one, it's infringement for all. If so, commercial law triumphs basic freedom to speak. The commerce-based society Poul and Kornbluth's "The Space Merchants" has finally come to pass, where CC -- Commercial Crime --becomes the most heinous, unspeakable thing an individual can commit.
They only have to last a year. Paper money wears out after a year in circulation, and is sent to paper heaven. (They used the shredded bills for upholstery and insulation, back in the day).
"i figured i'd use a 12" LCD and sit it on top of the mini."
I thought of that too, but it turns out that Apple recommends not placing objects on top of the Mini. The top of the case can press down onto the dvd/cd drive, which can damage or at least disturb the mechanism. Also, the BT and Airport antennae are located on the top of the box, and objects placed next to them (case is plastic) can interfere with proper operation.
I'd expect this to be fixed in the next version! Lots of people may find themselves with a damaged Mini.
I'll help: the Phillipines, where we killed 300,000 to conquer the country. Manifest Destiny is a cancer on any society. Or, and I love this term, "malignant egophrenia". A culture can have psychological disorders as a whole, and we in the U.S. are hostage to an enormous ME outbreak.
So, if the U.S. government, or more properly, the neocons now running the White House, State, and the Pentagon, don't like something on a website, say... criticism of them... it's in an ISP's best business interests to simply acquiese and deny the WH's enemy access to the web through their machines.
Applied generally enough, the neocons can deny anyone they like access to commercial servers in the U.S. And abroad as well, if they care to make the usual threats through the usual channels. And they will care to.
In other news today, the Supreme Court says they've no problem with officers setting dogs on your car and person at a routine traffic stop to look for drugs, reason or no reason.
Every day, another door clangs shut on us in the soon to open New NeoCon World Order Prison.
"Because if you believe that life begins at conception, then the fertilized eggs are in fact children, and precious lifeforms."
Okay then. Take the zygote to the zoo, and watch the cell group laugh at the elephants. Feed it Gerbers. Change its little cellular diapers.
Won't do you any good, because a zygote is not a child; it is a fertilized egg. This is a fundamental point of what is really real, and what is fantasy. Chris Reeves was real. People dying and suffering by the millions that we could save are real. The cells are just cells.
Actually, I don't think so. There is such as thing as using the courts to litigage an opponent into bankruptcy and capitulation. It's what Scientology does to critics, nosy parents, and importunate reporters. Sue, resue, multiply sue: destroy and devour.
There should be a limit. Suing without a hope of winning, just using money and power to exhaust a target, should be illegal. The Scientologists turned this into a fine filthy art, and I am ashamed of Jobs and his cohorts that they have sunk this low.
BTW: despite what all the tort reformers say, it isn't individuals and their lawyers clogging the court systems with frivolous suits. Corporations are the agents of over 90 percent of the torts in the U.S., not individuals. Tort reform starts with corporations. For instance, if this lawsuit by Apple was deemed frivolous, or more accurately, designed to destroy-not-win, then Apple should be required to give ThinkSecret oodles of cash as recompensation over and above paying for TS's legal bills.
"Second off: the first amendment has always been limited. This is one of those limited areas."
Actually, it's the other way around. The first amendment limits other laws. A law restricting a journalist's 1st amendment rights because the journalist's unknown source could possibly have signed an NDA? It won't survive the Supreme Court. Unless they are stone crazy, and throw away the right to speak because a rich man is upset.
This is not one of those limited areas. This is what newspeople do: get sources and write stories. If we can't do that, there is no first amendment, and no United States. We'll be a corporate feudal state, not a republic based on rights.
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Or more crudely, "after all is said and done, God exists because I know its true. Argument is just another way of showing how wrong you are. You cannot win, and I cannot lose. No argument is valid if it contradicts what I have been told since I was born. If you have a powerful piece of evidence that my belief is based on falsehood, the evidence is misinterpreted or false. Or you are a liar. Or evil. In any case, you are a representative of the Great Evil, and anything you say is born of iniquity. I can't hear you. LAA LAA LAA LAA LAA LAA LAA LAA."
Well, logically, you can't really make such a statement. You don't know there is no god. Atheist is the term, of course, and you can use it, but its hard to argue that there is no god. You can argue that religions are a sham, etc, but it's hard to argue that something does not exist. Prove the negative. As Heinlein said, soon enough you will know, so why worry about it.
:) This belief is welded to the American culture, so much so that it is a semantic given that an interviewer will ask an atheist "Why don't you believe in God?". The question presupposes the validity of the interviewer's belief in the christian god, and defines you as the outsider. Remember, non-monotheists add up to about two percent of the American population. You are outnumbered 50 to 1. They control the horizontal, they control the vertical...
And if you don't believe the term has been hijacked, get ye to rural Georgia, stand on the corner with a sign and declare yourself an atheist. They will hide the children's eyes and come after you with fists and guns, and not because they are disputing the technical meaning of the word "atheist" - they know what it means to them, and your hide will pay for it if you don't run fast enough.
***
AG-ostic just has an ugly sound to it. And since it fudges the sound of "gnostic", I think the term loses its obvious meaning when spoken.
a blatant "attack"? L. Ron Hubbard, is that you?
Did Taco hit you with a pipe? Shoot you? Kick you in the balls? No? Then he didn't "attack" you.
And copying music isn't "stealing", someone didn't "steal" your girfriend, and you couldn't "murder" a lunch if you were very hungry.
(NOTE TO EVERYONE: Semantics are key. If the opponent shreds the meaning of a term key to the discussion, by say, mapping false identifier "attack" to the real term "criticism", he has cut your feet out from under you and you cannot make your argument -- and the audience won't notice the trick, either. Deny the remapping. Do not let the argument progress; stop your opponent and point out the nasty little trick. Scream. Be rude. Stop them, or they own you)
How much do you two whiners pay for reading Slashdot? Contribute much?
Techies can be so bloody whiny about their free content...
Well, it's a semantic win for theists when you call yourself and "a-theist", a person who, as they define it, "doesn't believe in God".
:)
Do you call yourself an a-Hinduist or a non-believer in the Norse gods? You don't have to, because people don't believe in such, for the most part, in the U.S. and don't feel compelled to define themselves by naming themselves non-believers in the Hindu, Norse, etc. pantheons.
The term "atheist" has been semantically hijacked to mean "unbeliever in the christian god" To apply it to yourself puts a rhetorical bullet in your head before the argument even starts.
"Agnostic" is better, one, because it doesn't have the semantic disadvantage, and secondly because it more accurately defines who you are: a person who declares that he hasn't any special knowledge (a-gnostic) and can't possibly have any answers. It's a "who-knows?" category which better suits a reasonable person. It also implies nobody else has the answers either.
My one peeve about the word is that it's mispronounced! It should be: AAY-NOSTIK, not AG-NOSTIK. We pronounce gnostic NOSTIK, not G'NOSTIK. Sheesh.
"I feel nobody has the right to chastise other's for their beliefs."
Why not? Beliefs are open to criticism and question. Even ridicule. Free speech. If a person's belief system is so fragile that a note of disbelief will shatter their composure, then they should examine what it is that they believe in so weakly.
I do not believe in dropping a force field around religions and cults so they don't encounter nasty criticism. They are a part of society, and have to participate just like everyone else. If they don't want to hear, they can do what the Scientologists do and put nanny filters on their web browsers, security guards around their get-togethers, and barbed wire on top of the walls around their lesser-known compounds. So much easier than having fresh eyes look at you. Keeps the kids from developing a personality that questions the Divitity of Reverend Moon or the meaningfulness of a lie detector used for "spiritual" purposes at US$250/hour.
Chastise away, Commander Taco! Thus spake me.
Most of the religious justification for hating gays comes from Leviticus, but damn few people ever read the whole text. The people who wrote it were freaking nuts. It's like a read from Rev. Moon's writings -- control for its own sake. Superstition and common sense mixed together with a massive dash of fanaticism.
"Why ? the beancounters and deadweight,,,, uhh managment for the most part have no clue what really make things tick. Now Jobs or the like are probably thee ones who would get it , and may be kind enough to run interference for the engineers...yeah right..."
:) He's the guy who's made friends with the Kings and Princes for decades, and when he finally gets to stand in back of the throne... in goes the knife...
I've a feeling Jobs has been running interference for The Rest of Us for quite a long time now. He's playing the record industry, stockholders, and the movie industry in a carefully planned game that will break the way we used to do a lot of things. He's a sneaky one. Jobs is the ultimate Undercover Hippy -- a man who absorbed counterculture values when he was young, and has grown up looking and acting mainstream while plotting revolution
Hell, the iPod should be mated to a tapeless digital video camera. The 60 GB photo version has a color screen, and could be used as the camera's LCD screen. Power the iPod through the Firewire jack from the camera's power supply. Hours of MP4's can be recorded before the iPod fills up. I've heard that the newest iPod can support 30 fps video, tho Apple doesn't document this. If so, the parts are all there, waiting for Steve Jobs to give the green light.
I'd imagine that no one wants to impoverish the tape industry overnight, so it isn't going to happen anytime soon.
But the iPod, the Mac Mini, and digital video are set to blow up the way we record consumer video and watch movies and TV.
Another idea for the Linuxed iPod: make a decent #@*^$#ing eBook reader! FINALLY.
Robbing the state of California of untold billions of dollars, as Enron did, was illegal. I see the White House covering for them, prosecution nearly nonexistent, the governor who opposed Enron ousted from office by the White House and replaced with an Enron supporter selected by the White House.
Point to a song, get nailed. Steal billions, go free, and you get to choose a new governor who's yer best bud.
The law is an ass. Little smurfs get destroyed for disobeying laws bought by rich men, and rich men steal billions without consequence. The trouble with stupid, mean little laws is that people lose respect for the institution after observing such service for the wealthy and torture for the small.
So, what if I said, out loud, in the presence of witnesses, the IP address of a site where one can possibly download a song someone claims is copyrighted. Would that be infringement? What if I wrote it down on a piece of paper and gave it to someone? Put it on a poster and put it on a wall? Wrote it on a wall? What if I published the address in a blog? How about a letter to a friend? How about printing it in a magazine? A newspaper? TV show? Radio program?
If it's infringement for one, it's infringement for all. If so, commercial law triumphs basic freedom to speak. The commerce-based society Poul and Kornbluth's "The Space Merchants" has finally come to pass, where CC -- Commercial Crime --becomes the most heinous, unspeakable thing an individual can commit.
They only have to last a year. Paper money wears out after a year in circulation, and is sent to paper heaven. (They used the shredded bills for upholstery and insulation, back in the day).
It's called "pan and scan".
"from other computer manufacturers to George Foreman CubeGrills."
Here ya go, then! Your own iGrill!
Mars has a 25 hour day.
"i figured i'd use a 12" LCD and sit it on top of the mini."
I thought of that too, but it turns out that Apple recommends not placing objects on top of the Mini. The top of the case can press down onto the dvd/cd drive, which can damage or at least disturb the mechanism. Also, the BT and Airport antennae are located on the top of the box, and objects placed next to them (case is plastic) can interfere with proper operation.
I'd expect this to be fixed in the next version! Lots of people may find themselves with a damaged Mini.
This is not an issue of forcing people to listen to anyone. False argument.
I'll help: the Phillipines, where we killed 300,000 to conquer the country. Manifest Destiny is a cancer on any society. Or, and I love this term, "malignant egophrenia". A culture can have psychological disorders as a whole, and we in the U.S. are hostage to an enormous ME outbreak.
A hell of a lot more than if it's reported by Fox News, son.
So, if the U.S. government, or more properly, the neocons now running the White House, State, and the Pentagon, don't like something on a website, say... criticism of them... it's in an ISP's best business interests to simply acquiese and deny the WH's enemy access to the web through their machines.
Applied generally enough, the neocons can deny anyone they like access to commercial servers in the U.S. And abroad as well, if they care to make the usual threats through the usual channels. And they will care to.
In other news today, the Supreme Court says they've no problem with officers setting dogs on your car and person at a routine traffic stop to look for drugs, reason or no reason.
Every day, another door clangs shut on us in the soon to open New NeoCon World Order Prison.
"Because if you believe that life begins at conception, then the fertilized eggs are in fact children, and precious lifeforms."
Okay then. Take the zygote to the zoo, and watch the cell group laugh at the elephants. Feed it Gerbers. Change its little cellular diapers.
Won't do you any good, because a zygote is not a child; it is a fertilized egg. This is a fundamental point of what is really real, and what is fantasy. Chris Reeves was real. People dying and suffering by the millions that we could save are real. The cells are just cells.
So, if the court splis pro-biz vs. pro-consumer, he will step in. So, no changes. We be screwed.
Yep. The rich people will win.
"Apple has every right to TRY to stop you."
Actually, I don't think so. There is such as thing as using the courts to litigage an opponent into bankruptcy and capitulation. It's what Scientology does to critics, nosy parents, and importunate reporters. Sue, resue, multiply sue: destroy and devour.
There should be a limit. Suing without a hope of winning, just using money and power to exhaust a target, should be illegal. The Scientologists turned this into a fine filthy art, and I am ashamed of Jobs and his cohorts that they have sunk this low.
BTW: despite what all the tort reformers say, it isn't individuals and their lawyers clogging the court systems with frivolous suits. Corporations are the agents of over 90 percent of the torts in the U.S., not individuals. Tort reform starts with corporations. For instance, if this lawsuit by Apple was deemed frivolous, or more accurately, designed to destroy-not-win, then Apple should be required to give ThinkSecret oodles of cash as recompensation over and above paying for TS's legal bills.
"Second off: the first amendment has always been limited. This is one of those limited areas."
Actually, it's the other way around. The first amendment limits other laws. A law restricting a journalist's 1st amendment rights because the journalist's unknown source could possibly have signed an NDA? It won't survive the Supreme Court. Unless they are stone crazy, and throw away the right to speak because a rich man is upset.
This is not one of those limited areas. This is what newspeople do: get sources and write stories. If we can't do that, there is no first amendment, and no United States. We'll be a corporate feudal state, not a republic based on rights.