...
On the contrary; the theory of macroevolution is falsifiable in theory, given time. It is an extrapolation on a readily-observable known, falsifiable mechanism (microevolution). It demands change, if species prove to be immutable over the next several millennia, then macroevolution could consider itself falsified. I don't think artificially accelerated selection to force the process of change necessarily constitutes falsifiability by way of proving the mechanism (or utterly failing to do so), but it's a good start.
Millenia? Hardly. It is only falsifiable over an enormous time-frame (i.e., millions if not billions of years) not millenia. Conveniently (or perhaps coincidentally) the timeframe continues to grow every time "discoveries" are made. We already have many millenia worth of data which has been incapable of demonstrating macro-evolution. Thus, falsifying Neo-Darwinism is impractical or unfeasible in a laboratory, despite 100 years of opportunities to do so.
The methods used in ID are an approach that can falsify Neo-Darwinism, and this is the threat to the Neo-Darwinist community. That is why it is being supressed (according to Stein).
Quite the contrary, Dawkins was offering that life on Earth could have been designed... but that the life that designed it must have ultimately evolved from a spontaneously evolving form. He has taken his logical assertion that ultimately there is no designer.
This illustrates the point that Ben Stein makes overwhelmingly in the film: Neo-Darwinian assertions are religious (or alternatively a competing worldview) and is controlling the platform of scientific discourse just as religious worldviews have throughout history. Hence the title of the film Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed.
The only way a Darwinian/Neo-Darwinian assertion could be demonstrated is to observe it through experiment. This has failed to happen... so it could equally be asserted that Neo-Darwinism is also unfalsifiable by your argument and is therefore a statement of faith. Stein points out that this is a gross inconsistency that the Neo-Darwinian adherents continually refuse to admit.
Yes, do teach the controversy, like your retardted example. "The Bible" didn't say the circumference of a circle was 2*r*3. "The Bible" described a basin:
Now he made the sea of cast metal ten cubits from brim to brim, circular in form, and its height was five cubits, and thirty cubits in circumference...
It was a handbreadth thick, and its brim was made like the brim of a cup, as a lily blossom; it could hold two thousand baths.
What does this mean? A basin shaped like a flower is imprecisely described, therefore you can insult the faith of Billions of people, to make a pathetic point: that assholes like you can make a religious discussion about anything, while claiming that religion is the problem.
"yet rarely have I actually seen them making any attempt to join in"
This is absolutely untrue.
Even without seeing the movie, scientists like Michael Behe are viciously attacked even when they try to have a rational, evidence-based discussion. Stein only uncovers many other cases (of which Behe is not even mentioned) where even worse attacks have taken place.
The fact is, Stein actually made a movie that is entertaining and uncovers a real problem. Unlike recent docugandas (even award winning ones), Expelled is an answer to a controversy that media coverage has failed to give "the other side" virtually any hearing. Contrast this with Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth," any of Michael Moore docuganda rubbish, or even Spike Lee's "When the Levees Broke."
The really powerful message in "Expelled" is that Stein explicitly points out that the philosophy behind two schools of thought are this:
1. Life necessarily emerged spontaneously, with mutation and natural selection being the sole mechanism
2. Life emerged, but mutation and natural selection is insufficient to account for life as we know it; therefore there must have been some intelligence involved with the design of life as we know it
The clever thing Stein does is capture Richard Dawkins on camera admitting that life as we know it may have been designed by aliens (who, of course, would have ultimately evolved via mutation and natural selection).
Your definition is completely reversed.
The "Left" is for strong central government--as you say, "top down"--(i.e. Federal government).
The "Right" is for strong local control--as you say, bottom-up--i.e. States' rights.
In America, these have been opposing sides since the framing of the Constitution.
Sources like these (a) are almost exclusively addressing Roman Catholicism and don't touch Eastern Orthodoxy, and (b) are largely conjecture. Even if only early Christian sources (say before 300 A.D.) are examined, it is clear immediately that paganism was fiercely opposed by early Christians. And most of the practices are based directly upon the religion of Israel, which can be clearly demonstrated.
Your "sources" are pathetic at best. Just because parallels can be drawn between cultures does not mean that the earlier is the origin of the later (correlation != causation).
This is simply inaccurate. Perhaps you should quote some sources, as Wikipedia is hardly a source for factual debate. Here are holidays that are not based on anything Pagan:
Resurrection
Pentecost
Sunday of Orthodoxy
All Saints
Feast of Peter and Paul, the Holy Apostles
Holy Ascension
Circumcision of Christ
Presentation of the Lord
Transfiguration
Annunciation
Dormition of the Mother of God
Not to even begin to enumerate the yearly commemorations of the Saints. You have no factual evidence for your claims except perhaps "Christmas" (which in the East is quite separated from the European traditions of Yule). This is unless you attempt to demonstate that the religion of Israel was "pagan."
The Pope decided the date for Easter (treating Mar 21 as the Equinox) because the Gregorian Calendar was passed. Originally, Christians were divided on when to celebrate the Resurrection. This resulted in one of the divides between Eastern and Western Christendom... the Christians in Asia Minor celebrated it on the same date as the Jews (even in the diaspora).
Eastern Orthodox still celebrate "Pascha" not "Easter" (Hebrew for passover is Pesach) and they do it on Sunday but it follows the Jewish Passover. The West deviated from this because of the Papacy, but not the East.
In any case, the date of the Passover is set in the Old Covenant as the first full moon of spring. I has nothing to do with a Pope, nor with Ostara. Neither do most of the other Christian Holidays (Circumcision of Jesus, Entrance of Mary into the Temple, Pentecost, etc.). I imagine this is only amusing to those who are so ignorant or presumptuous as to expect it to be a "set" date on their calendar. It is a "set" date on the Jewish lunar calendar while "Christmas" is not.
200 years ago, 17 years was a "short" relative to the average pace that people lived then (compared with travel on horseback/boat/foot, weeks-months for postal delivery, etc.). So, especially for many high-tech ideas, this timeframe often means that a technology is obsolescent by the time it is "fair game." I fail to see why
An arbitrary number of years (2, 5, or 17) would be able to be "fair" across the spectrum of patentable ideas
How a system like this could actually be implemented such that it prevents corporations from usurping power over individuals
I have not personally ever seen an instance where corporations haven't had advantages over individuals, since they are legally treated as a "person" to protect the individuals who really are controlling the capital. I would estimate that 99%+ of "patent squatters" are corporate.
Why not have a system where patents are valued according to an IP market. If you cannot pay the taxes on the market value, then you have to sell the patent to pay your debt... If the idea is really worth so much, then instead of selling the idea, sell rights to create use the idea? Have it due to expire on an annual basis with a 10-day grace period. Lawsuits could then not be based on BS estimations of what losses are incurred from patent infringement, but rather tangible based on the IP market. Dragging out lawsuits over IP can then be rendered unprofitable, since markets will be more realistic at evaluating an idea than lawyers.
There is wave particle duality, and that is an apparent contradiction. Newton formulated laws of motion that were wrong. The world is is not flat. Things just don't always make perfect sense. So what?!
Re:Now there are 3 Liberals to decide between..
on
Has Ron Paul Quit?
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· Score: 1
Thank you for bringing this point! Although it doesn't show them as "conservative," but as "Authoritarian Right" compared on a worldwide scale. It mentions that Hillary Clinton would be considered "conservative" compared with other Western Democracies, and leaders such as Hitler and Stalin.
This just reinforces the point that American presidnetial candidates are not nearly so separate as the media paints them.
Now there are 3 Liberals to decide between..
on
Has Ron Paul Quit?
·
· Score: 2, Informative
I got the email last night. So now 3 liberals to decide between... I believe that Obama is the best of the worst and I predict that he will win by an enormous landslide, perhaps even greater than Johnson. A significant number of those who would normally vote for Republican candidates are extraordinarily pissed off at the travesty that is the RNC and "party" now. And this is the party of Lincoln? I think not (at least, not in any recognizable form). It has been hijacked.
And I would probably be considered "a staunch conservative" by most slashdotters, even though I am really a moderate (at least according to http://www.politicalcompass.org/).
Yeah... then we will have Micro$oft Motors. I can see it now wile driving down the highway -- we will have to spontaneously close all the windows and restart the car to keep driving!
Anyone who has read the XML standard (or even a book like O'Reilly "XML in a nutshell") knows that the URI included in the doctype declaration and namespace attribute was never intended to actually be used to fetch DTDs. Duh... What sense does it make to ask people to read W3C blog statements when they didn't even RTFM and then "stop the insanity?" Perhaps W3C should give a bit more thought to their standards just as editors would comment on an author's choice of a pen name like "Harold Dick" or "Ben Dover."
OK. So what... even when I first read the specification (being quite a novice programmer at the time) I immediately thought using a URI for the DTD was poorly conceived, especially if there was actually a file accessible via HTTP at the URI. But it always struck me as retarded to say "here is a URI for the DTD... looks like a URL, smells like a URL, and actually points to a DTD, but don't really use it, even though you can." What did W3C really expect to happen? XML was designed to enable inexperienced programmers and web-monkeys to "be lazy" in that they could avoid authoring parsers and write web-based content with less effort (as long as it was well-formed).
Granted clients shouldn't download it according to the standard, but people don't always behave (or program) according to "the rules." My advice to W3C, do one of two things:
You authored and pushed the damn standard, so suck it up OR
Remove the DTD at the URL corresponding to the URI (since it doesn't need to be there) and eventually programmers will get the idea that there is not actually a file at that location.
Or, perhaps initially post simple text documents that state:
"There is not actually a DTD at this URI. Perhaps you should review the XML standard (i.e. RTFM)."
I know that many people might be attracted to Yahoo! hosting being reliable for uptime (as per http://www.webhostingstuff.com/uptime/YahooWebHosting.html), as it is close to 100%... I know from experience from other hosting providers that this is not the case with several others.
The killer app could very well be VirtualBox if it would only make the networking seamless (i.e., bridging or sharing). In my experience, it runs Windows 2000/XP FASTER than those OS flavors run natively on the same hardware (I figure this is due to better memory management on Linux).
However, it is a real PITA to either (a) by default only use select ports like 80 and 21 on the guest OS or (b) to go through the trouble of working to set up a promiscuous network bridge only to have it render the Host OS unconnected. There is also the issue of not having bridge connections work with many wireless cards period. I am sure that there are technical reasons for all this, but the bottom line is Internet Connection sharing is quite straightforward in the Windows environment and not in Linux.
Some people have complained that this is a security hole; while that may be valid, to the end user, security is not nearly as important if the system becomes unusable.
Europeans don't understand how conservative Americans think. "Religion" is a huge issue here, because we know that if your core is rotten, your tenure in office will be as well. The left in America tends to think the way most Europeans do (left or right) so this discussion forum will probably make little or no sense to you.
For most conservatives, the issues that matter are issues of "right and wrong" such as (1) the value of human life and our children, (2) limiting the power of our central government so as to not usurp the power of the people (through kangaroo courts or outrageous legislation), and (3) fighting the movements to create a one-world government. The other issues are tertiary.
This thinking is, for the most part, metaphorically (and literally) foreign to Europeans.
Slashdot Mirror
It would have been for Viagra (had it been invented 24 years earlier).
Millenia? Hardly. It is only falsifiable over an enormous time-frame (i.e., millions if not billions of years) not millenia. Conveniently (or perhaps coincidentally) the timeframe continues to grow every time "discoveries" are made. We already have many millenia worth of data which has been incapable of demonstrating macro-evolution. Thus, falsifying Neo-Darwinism is impractical or unfeasible in a laboratory, despite 100 years of opportunities to do so.
The methods used in ID are an approach that can falsify Neo-Darwinism, and this is the threat to the Neo-Darwinist community. That is why it is being supressed (according to Stein).
Quite the contrary, Dawkins was offering that life on Earth could have been designed... but that the life that designed it must have ultimately evolved from a spontaneously evolving form. He has taken his logical assertion that ultimately there is no designer.
This illustrates the point that Ben Stein makes overwhelmingly in the film: Neo-Darwinian assertions are religious (or alternatively a competing worldview) and is controlling the platform of scientific discourse just as religious worldviews have throughout history. Hence the title of the film Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed.
The only way a Darwinian/Neo-Darwinian assertion could be demonstrated is to observe it through experiment. This has failed to happen... so it could equally be asserted that Neo-Darwinism is also unfalsifiable by your argument and is therefore a statement of faith. Stein points out that this is a gross inconsistency that the Neo-Darwinian adherents continually refuse to admit.
Yes. "Discredited in court," just like DNA evidence in the O.J. Simpson case. That is the same Behe.
Yes, do teach the controversy, like your retardted example. "The Bible" didn't say the circumference of a circle was 2*r*3. "The Bible" described a basin:
Now he made the sea of cast metal ten cubits from brim to brim, circular in form, and its height was five cubits, and thirty cubits in circumference... It was a handbreadth thick, and its brim was made like the brim of a cup, as a lily blossom; it could hold two thousand baths.
What does this mean? A basin shaped like a flower is imprecisely described, therefore you can insult the faith of Billions of people, to make a pathetic point: that assholes like you can make a religious discussion about anything, while claiming that religion is the problem.
This is absolutely untrue.
Even without seeing the movie, scientists like Michael Behe are viciously attacked even when they try to have a rational, evidence-based discussion. Stein only uncovers many other cases (of which Behe is not even mentioned) where even worse attacks have taken place.
The fact is, Stein actually made a movie that is entertaining and uncovers a real problem. Unlike recent docugandas (even award winning ones), Expelled is an answer to a controversy that media coverage has failed to give "the other side" virtually any hearing. Contrast this with Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth," any of Michael Moore docuganda rubbish, or even Spike Lee's "When the Levees Broke."
The really powerful message in "Expelled" is that Stein explicitly points out that the philosophy behind two schools of thought are this:
- 1. Life necessarily emerged spontaneously, with mutation and natural selection being the sole mechanism
- 2. Life emerged, but mutation and natural selection is insufficient to account for life as we know it; therefore there must have been some intelligence involved with the design of life as we know it
The clever thing Stein does is capture Richard Dawkins on camera admitting that life as we know it may have been designed by aliens (who, of course, would have ultimately evolved via mutation and natural selection).The government has no authority to take a cut of anything they wish. To stick it to the man, many would just circumvent the system.
they run Ubuntu on the PCs. Then there will be peace and harmony, and the planets will align (this is /. after all).
Your definition is completely reversed.
The "Left" is for strong central government--as you say, "top down"--(i.e. Federal government).
The "Right" is for strong local control--as you say, bottom-up--i.e. States' rights.
In America, these have been opposing sides since the framing of the Constitution.
Sources like these (a) are almost exclusively addressing Roman Catholicism and don't touch Eastern Orthodoxy, and (b) are largely conjecture. Even if only early Christian sources (say before 300 A.D.) are examined, it is clear immediately that paganism was fiercely opposed by early Christians. And most of the practices are based directly upon the religion of Israel, which can be clearly demonstrated.
Your "sources" are pathetic at best. Just because parallels can be drawn between cultures does not mean that the earlier is the origin of the later (correlation != causation).
- Resurrection
- Pentecost
- Sunday of Orthodoxy
- All Saints
- Feast of Peter and Paul, the Holy Apostles
- Holy Ascension
- Circumcision of Christ
- Presentation of the Lord
- Transfiguration
- Annunciation
- Dormition of the Mother of God
Not to even begin to enumerate the yearly commemorations of the Saints. You have no factual evidence for your claims except perhaps "Christmas" (which in the East is quite separated from the European traditions of Yule). This is unless you attempt to demonstate that the religion of Israel was "pagan."The Pope decided the date for Easter (treating Mar 21 as the Equinox) because the Gregorian Calendar was passed. Originally, Christians were divided on when to celebrate the Resurrection. This resulted in one of the divides between Eastern and Western Christendom... the Christians in Asia Minor celebrated it on the same date as the Jews (even in the diaspora).
Eastern Orthodox still celebrate "Pascha" not "Easter" (Hebrew for passover is Pesach) and they do it on Sunday but it follows the Jewish Passover. The West deviated from this because of the Papacy, but not the East.
In any case, the date of the Passover is set in the Old Covenant as the first full moon of spring. I has nothing to do with a Pope, nor with Ostara. Neither do most of the other Christian Holidays (Circumcision of Jesus, Entrance of Mary into the Temple, Pentecost, etc.). I imagine this is only amusing to those who are so ignorant or presumptuous as to expect it to be a "set" date on their calendar. It is a "set" date on the Jewish lunar calendar while "Christmas" is not.
- An arbitrary number of years (2, 5, or 17) would be able to be "fair" across the spectrum of patentable ideas
- How a system like this could actually be implemented such that it prevents corporations from usurping power over individuals
I have not personally ever seen an instance where corporations haven't had advantages over individuals, since they are legally treated as a "person" to protect the individuals who really are controlling the capital. I would estimate that 99%+ of "patent squatters" are corporate.Why not have a system where patents are valued according to an IP market. If you cannot pay the taxes on the market value, then you have to sell the patent to pay your debt... If the idea is really worth so much, then instead of selling the idea, sell rights to create use the idea? Have it due to expire on an annual basis with a 10-day grace period. Lawsuits could then not be based on BS estimations of what losses are incurred from patent infringement, but rather tangible based on the IP market. Dragging out lawsuits over IP can then be rendered unprofitable, since markets will be more realistic at evaluating an idea than lawyers.
Also, implement a low-cost or free patent system for ideas immediately released into the public domain. Then stupid crap like one-click shopping, method of swinging on a swingset, or jump-rope methods could then be made into a game and fund-raiser type of game, and could be the first place to look to stop seemingly-silly-but-actually-scary-stupid-crap that seems a lot more plausible than it did perhaps a decade ago.
There is wave particle duality, and that is an apparent contradiction. Newton formulated laws of motion that were wrong. The world is is not flat. Things just don't always make perfect sense. So what?!
Thank you for bringing this point! Although it doesn't show them as "conservative," but as "Authoritarian Right" compared on a worldwide scale. It mentions that Hillary Clinton would be considered "conservative" compared with other Western Democracies, and leaders such as Hitler and Stalin.
This just reinforces the point that American presidnetial candidates are not nearly so separate as the media paints them.
I got the email last night. So now 3 liberals to decide between... I believe that Obama is the best of the worst and I predict that he will win by an enormous landslide, perhaps even greater than Johnson. A significant number of those who would normally vote for Republican candidates are extraordinarily pissed off at the travesty that is the RNC and "party" now. And this is the party of Lincoln? I think not (at least, not in any recognizable form). It has been hijacked.
And I would probably be considered "a staunch conservative" by most slashdotters, even though I am really a moderate (at least according to http://www.politicalcompass.org/).
Yeah... then we will have Micro$oft Motors. I can see it now wile driving down the highway -- we will have to spontaneously close all the windows and restart the car to keep driving!
OK. So what... even when I first read the specification (being quite a novice programmer at the time) I immediately thought using a URI for the DTD was poorly conceived, especially if there was actually a file accessible via HTTP at the URI. But it always struck me as retarded to say "here is a URI for the DTD... looks like a URL, smells like a URL, and actually points to a DTD, but don't really use it, even though you can." What did W3C really expect to happen? XML was designed to enable inexperienced programmers and web-monkeys to "be lazy" in that they could avoid authoring parsers and write web-based content with less effort (as long as it was well-formed).
Granted clients shouldn't download it according to the standard, but people don't always behave (or program) according to "the rules." My advice to W3C, do one of two things:
- You authored and pushed the damn standard, so suck it up OR
- Remove the DTD at the URL corresponding to the URI (since it doesn't need to be there) and eventually programmers will get the idea that there is not actually a file at that location.
Or, perhaps initially post simple text documents that state:"There is not actually a DTD at this URI. Perhaps you should review the XML standard (i.e. RTFM)."
I know that many people might be attracted to Yahoo! hosting being reliable for uptime (as per http://www.webhostingstuff.com/uptime/YahooWebHosting.html), as it is close to 100%... I know from experience from other hosting providers that this is not the case with several others.
The killer app could very well be VirtualBox if it would only make the networking seamless (i.e., bridging or sharing). In my experience, it runs Windows 2000/XP FASTER than those OS flavors run natively on the same hardware (I figure this is due to better memory management on Linux).
However, it is a real PITA to either (a) by default only use select ports like 80 and 21 on the guest OS or (b) to go through the trouble of working to set up a promiscuous network bridge only to have it render the Host OS unconnected. There is also the issue of not having bridge connections work with many wireless cards period. I am sure that there are technical reasons for all this, but the bottom line is Internet Connection sharing is quite straightforward in the Windows environment and not in Linux.
Some people have complained that this is a security hole; while that may be valid, to the end user, security is not nearly as important if the system becomes unusable.
Europeans don't understand how conservative Americans think. "Religion" is a huge issue here, because we know that if your core is rotten, your tenure in office will be as well. The left in America tends to think the way most Europeans do (left or right) so this discussion forum will probably make little or no sense to you. For most conservatives, the issues that matter are issues of "right and wrong" such as (1) the value of human life and our children, (2) limiting the power of our central government so as to not usurp the power of the people (through kangaroo courts or outrageous legislation), and (3) fighting the movements to create a one-world government. The other issues are tertiary. This thinking is, for the most part, metaphorically (and literally) foreign to Europeans.