Nobody ever makes an argument "not YEC, therefore atheism"...
Really. Dawkins has made a career out of doing precisely that, and he has a lot of parrots.
I know he's got a lot of books, so maybe I missed this one. The one I recall was "God is highly improbable, so it makes more sense to assume he isn't than he is." Where does the above argument occur?
The traveler goes back in time, and fixes the mistake without otherwise altering the future at all, then skips right back home to the future to find everything worked out exactly as desired. If they have a difficult time of it, they might have to make several trips back in time to fix the problems, but they of course succeed.
That's one of three major themes. The other two are:
2. Time traveler becomes the source of the events which necessitate the time travel, creating a paradoxical loop.
3. Attempts to change anything fail, with the premise (sometimes spoken, sometimes unspoken) that it's essentially impossible to change anything through time travel.
I averaged a book every few days when I was single, a book every few weeks when I married and was running a side business, but now with kids I'm lucky to average a book a month, unless you want to include 4-6 kids' books daily in that mix. I assume I'll rebound when the kids get older, but I don't know how long it will take to get back to 1/week.
So long as it's all good fun among consenting participants, MOOCs are under no obligation to produce any particular results at all (though obviously their backers hope that they will), and if the costs are low enough almost any benefit is a net win. However, the minute somebody steps out of their area of strength and starts peddling them as a cheap, innovative, disruptive, etc. alternative to boring old legacy education, they really take on the burden of actually doing reasonably well.
For as many survey questions as they throw at you, I'm surprised they never (or rarely) include one about your intentions as a student. I'd tell them all up front I'm not going to pass because I'm just browsing, but I'm still a happy customer just by watching lectures and doing readings and exercises as I like. Whenever I see statistics I cringe, because I know I'm in there as a "failure" when I never intended to "pass" any of the classes I've signed up for.
That's why, when deciding whether to put any on the digital version of my novel, I decided against it. I'd rather risk someone finding it and enjoying it for free than risk anyone being frustrated because of DRM.
Also, frankly, I don't care about consumers. My only real worry, if you can even call it that, would be against someone trying to resell my work as their own, which is covered adequately by copyright protections. I don't care if people get a free copy for their personal enjoyment. (Though of course I'd be thrilled by recommendations or reviews if they found it worthwhile.)
That's how it should be. Anyone obsessing over the consumer end of the deal has their priorities seriously out of whack.
I think it's a combination of two evolutionary factors. 1. We have the ability to recognize intelligence in other beings. Not just humans but animals, and, with a bit more creativity, it's not hard to imagine it in inanimate objects and forces of nature. 2. We evolved an empathy that allows for emotional connections with other beings, most specifically for small-group, next-of-kin type stuff, but that, too, has expanded to include the ability to love pets and feel compassion for even inanimate objects - favorite tools and clothes, for instance.
Put those two together--assumed intelligence plus an emotional connection--and it's easy enough to invent a tree spirit or thunder god, and once you've got those religious thought can continue to develop on its own to get you things like monotheism.
I'm not positive, but I think Bruce Schneier's "Liars and Outliers" first suggested this to me.
I talked to Saturn in '97 when I was looking for my first car. The sales person I got was a trainee but very nice, but because she was a trainee (I think) some manager jumped in at the end and put on a pretty high-pressure pitch that really turned me off. Maybe that was an exception, though, based on other comments.
I bought my last car at a CarMax, and the agent there was genuinely low-pressure, which I really appreciated.
This is getting me on Plants vs. Zombies 2. Some things you can unlock by playing, but unless I'm missing it, many of them you have to buy. Between the plants and the upgrades, they have $40 worth of items! That's not counting "coins" which you can also purchase - in amounts, and I kid you not, up to $100. Really? I've got to wonder if anyone's ever purchased that amount, except by accident.
I'd be pretty happy to pay $10 to fully unlock this on my iPhone, which I think is what I paid for the original PvZ, but the idea of shelling out $40 for everything is kind of disgusting. I don't usually pay that much for a console game. (There are more games than I have time; I can wait a year and buy when it goes on discount. Maybe prices will drop on this one in a year, too, but there's a good chance I'll be sick of it by then and not interested.)
No kidding. I don't know exactly where my "just call it good" threshold is, but I'd guess it's much closer to $100 million than even a billion. At those numbers, more or less gets pretty irrelevant pretty fast. At $3 billion, I'd rather just sign the paper and be set for eternity than leave uncertainty and doubt hanging over me for another second while quibbling about an extra billion, more or less.
Communications can not only be lacking, but contain too much information. I had a manager long ago that told me to use Word's grammar check and don't produce anything over an 8th grade reading level when communications were going to non-technical staff. He also told me to limit emails to one topic, even dealing with technical issues, so that people could not confuse issues.
Knowing your audience is key. I discovered one client (a university dean, no less) would not read emails past the first line break, and would not register anything in a second or subsequent paragraph of an email. A bizarre obstacle, but once I figured out how to work around it, our working relationship improved dramatically.
I still buy CDs then convert them because CDs are still of higher quality. I'll stop buying CDs when the music stores offer songs in a lossless format, such as FLAC. However, I no longer buy physical books. My Kindle is small enough to carry around, will last two weeks, and can store way more books than I can carry. I see book stores evolving into specialty shops, much like the stores that sell vinyl records.
Curious. I stopped buying CD's a decade ago because (mostly) I'd rather pick out individual songs and I don't care about lossless quality. I still buy physical books because sometimes I don't want to deal with electronics, or because I can get a pretty good discount on used ones.
I think the AC was subtly pointing out that adding an hour to a 24-hour day, making it a 25-hour day, increases all other events in that day by 4%, which it mathematically has to. Just like early studies of traffic accidents went into a tizzy when they noticed there were 75% fewer car accidents on February 29 than other days, before someone remembered it only occurs on leap years.
That said, if the heart attacks occur when the day is shortened from 24 to 23 hours, a 4% increase is mathematically significant.
I chased one out of my yard by throwing a half-full water bottle at it. (Not directly, but toward its feet so it bounced and skittered and made a lot of noise.) The bear had been walking away slowly and broke into a run, so it seemed to be scared, or at least somewhere on that side of the spectrum.
Less the 5 mph over is simply never going to happen unless there are significantly extenuating circumstances. Certainly not as a primary offense.
My brother got pulled over for going 72 in a 70.
Yes, this was Kansas, so maybe that explains it. Possibly he was pulled over for "looking under 30 and having out-of-state plates" but there wasn't any other actual traffic infraction.
What kind of productivity do you think we get back by being able to do something else while the car drives us? And why don't you think this makes up for the 10% time that might be lost?
I think monotheistic cultures lose something by not having a trickster god. There's a pretty good collection of evidence that, if there's a divine force and they're actively promoting anything, humor is a significant part of it.
Puts me in the mood to read a little classic space travel. Some Asimov, or Heinlein, maybe. "These Thousand Worlds," a story of a galactic civilization hitting its stride as it colonizes it's thousandth planet, and the struggles it faces managing such a widespread and diverse collection of worlds.
Yes, I know most of the first thousand here aren't habitable, but I can imagine we've found and colonized a thousand that are, one of these days.
Slashdot Mirror
Nobody ever makes an argument "not YEC, therefore atheism"...
Really. Dawkins has made a career out of doing precisely that, and he has a lot of parrots.
I know he's got a lot of books, so maybe I missed this one. The one I recall was "God is highly improbable, so it makes more sense to assume he isn't than he is." Where does the above argument occur?
Very insightful and well explained.
Hah! You're quacking me up! The funniest thing I've bread all day.
The traveler goes back in time, and fixes the mistake without otherwise altering the future at all, then skips right back home to the future to find everything worked out exactly as desired. If they have a difficult time of it, they might have to make several trips back in time to fix the problems, but they of course succeed.
That's one of three major themes. The other two are:
2. Time traveler becomes the source of the events which necessitate the time travel, creating a paradoxical loop.
3. Attempts to change anything fail, with the premise (sometimes spoken, sometimes unspoken) that it's essentially impossible to change anything through time travel.
I averaged a book every few days when I was single, a book every few weeks when I married and was running a side business, but now with kids I'm lucky to average a book a month, unless you want to include 4-6 kids' books daily in that mix. I assume I'll rebound when the kids get older, but I don't know how long it will take to get back to 1/week.
So long as it's all good fun among consenting participants, MOOCs are under no obligation to produce any particular results at all (though obviously their backers hope that they will), and if the costs are low enough almost any benefit is a net win. However, the minute somebody steps out of their area of strength and starts peddling them as a cheap, innovative, disruptive, etc. alternative to boring old legacy education, they really take on the burden of actually doing reasonably well.
For as many survey questions as they throw at you, I'm surprised they never (or rarely) include one about your intentions as a student. I'd tell them all up front I'm not going to pass because I'm just browsing, but I'm still a happy customer just by watching lectures and doing readings and exercises as I like. Whenever I see statistics I cringe, because I know I'm in there as a "failure" when I never intended to "pass" any of the classes I've signed up for.
That's why, when deciding whether to put any on the digital version of my novel, I decided against it. I'd rather risk someone finding it and enjoying it for free than risk anyone being frustrated because of DRM.
Also, frankly, I don't care about consumers. My only real worry, if you can even call it that, would be against someone trying to resell my work as their own, which is covered adequately by copyright protections. I don't care if people get a free copy for their personal enjoyment. (Though of course I'd be thrilled by recommendations or reviews if they found it worthwhile.)
That's how it should be. Anyone obsessing over the consumer end of the deal has their priorities seriously out of whack.
Well, what reasons are there to invent Gods?
I think it's a combination of two evolutionary factors. 1. We have the ability to recognize intelligence in other beings. Not just humans but animals, and, with a bit more creativity, it's not hard to imagine it in inanimate objects and forces of nature. 2. We evolved an empathy that allows for emotional connections with other beings, most specifically for small-group, next-of-kin type stuff, but that, too, has expanded to include the ability to love pets and feel compassion for even inanimate objects - favorite tools and clothes, for instance.
Put those two together--assumed intelligence plus an emotional connection--and it's easy enough to invent a tree spirit or thunder god, and once you've got those religious thought can continue to develop on its own to get you things like monotheism.
I'm not positive, but I think Bruce Schneier's "Liars and Outliers" first suggested this to me.
I talked to Saturn in '97 when I was looking for my first car. The sales person I got was a trainee but very nice, but because she was a trainee (I think) some manager jumped in at the end and put on a pretty high-pressure pitch that really turned me off. Maybe that was an exception, though, based on other comments.
I bought my last car at a CarMax, and the agent there was genuinely low-pressure, which I really appreciated.
This is getting me on Plants vs. Zombies 2. Some things you can unlock by playing, but unless I'm missing it, many of them you have to buy. Between the plants and the upgrades, they have $40 worth of items! That's not counting "coins" which you can also purchase - in amounts, and I kid you not, up to $100. Really? I've got to wonder if anyone's ever purchased that amount, except by accident.
I'd be pretty happy to pay $10 to fully unlock this on my iPhone, which I think is what I paid for the original PvZ, but the idea of shelling out $40 for everything is kind of disgusting. I don't usually pay that much for a console game. (There are more games than I have time; I can wait a year and buy when it goes on discount. Maybe prices will drop on this one in a year, too, but there's a good chance I'll be sick of it by then and not interested.)
No kidding. I don't know exactly where my "just call it good" threshold is, but I'd guess it's much closer to $100 million than even a billion. At those numbers, more or less gets pretty irrelevant pretty fast. At $3 billion, I'd rather just sign the paper and be set for eternity than leave uncertainty and doubt hanging over me for another second while quibbling about an extra billion, more or less.
Communications can not only be lacking, but contain too much information. I had a manager long ago that told me to use Word's grammar check and don't produce anything over an 8th grade reading level when communications were going to non-technical staff. He also told me to limit emails to one topic, even dealing with technical issues, so that people could not confuse issues.
Knowing your audience is key. I discovered one client (a university dean, no less) would not read emails past the first line break, and would not register anything in a second or subsequent paragraph of an email. A bizarre obstacle, but once I figured out how to work around it, our working relationship improved dramatically.
I still buy CDs then convert them because CDs are still of higher quality. I'll stop buying CDs when the music stores offer songs in a lossless format, such as FLAC. However, I no longer buy physical books. My Kindle is small enough to carry around, will last two weeks, and can store way more books than I can carry. I see book stores evolving into specialty shops, much like the stores that sell vinyl records.
Curious. I stopped buying CD's a decade ago because (mostly) I'd rather pick out individual songs and I don't care about lossless quality. I still buy physical books because sometimes I don't want to deal with electronics, or because I can get a pretty good discount on used ones.
I for one welcome our Microsoft-destroying overlords.
Yeah, right. Sure it is.
I think the AC was subtly pointing out that adding an hour to a 24-hour day, making it a 25-hour day, increases all other events in that day by 4%, which it mathematically has to. Just like early studies of traffic accidents went into a tizzy when they noticed there were 75% fewer car accidents on February 29 than other days, before someone remembered it only occurs on leap years.
That said, if the heart attacks occur when the day is shortened from 24 to 23 hours, a 4% increase is mathematically significant.
In Soviet Russia, time abolishes YOU!
Er, wait, that actually makes sense.
And *nobody* really wants to sit in an airplane seat just vacated by the previous occupant, now matter how appealing they might have looked.
I think it takes it beyond correct, into something else. Probably plaid.
I chased one out of my yard by throwing a half-full water bottle at it. (Not directly, but toward its feet so it bounced and skittered and made a lot of noise.) The bear had been walking away slowly and broke into a run, so it seemed to be scared, or at least somewhere on that side of the spectrum.
It's a ship. It ships itself.
Less the 5 mph over is simply never going to happen unless there are significantly extenuating circumstances. Certainly not as a primary offense.
My brother got pulled over for going 72 in a 70.
Yes, this was Kansas, so maybe that explains it. Possibly he was pulled over for "looking under 30 and having out-of-state plates" but there wasn't any other actual traffic infraction.
What kind of productivity do you think we get back by being able to do something else while the car drives us? And why don't you think this makes up for the 10% time that might be lost?
I think monotheistic cultures lose something by not having a trickster god. There's a pretty good collection of evidence that, if there's a divine force and they're actively promoting anything, humor is a significant part of it.
Puts me in the mood to read a little classic space travel. Some Asimov, or Heinlein, maybe. "These Thousand Worlds," a story of a galactic civilization hitting its stride as it colonizes it's thousandth planet, and the struggles it faces managing such a widespread and diverse collection of worlds.
Yes, I know most of the first thousand here aren't habitable, but I can imagine we've found and colonized a thousand that are, one of these days.