he was saying is that teachers shouldn't think of creationism as just a little thing that people get wrong
Then I have some bad news for you all. People who believe in this "worldview" thing will not be moved by anything less subtle than a baseball bat. What arguments can you present to someone who will not believe in anything that's against his own very narrow preconceived interpretation of the Bible?
Maybe when you are older you will cut people some slack for little mistakes that don't significantly change their point.
I was born in October 1956. I don't think I'll ever become any more tolerant of people who try to pretend being something that they are not.
If you aren't familiar enough with engines to notice instantly that a "28 valve V-6" engine is impossible, then you shouldn't try to impress people with fake fuel consumption figures.
The funny thing is that for some 20 years, before I started using Python, my favorite and almost only language was C, and I don't know of any really good site for C.
However, I do know of a really good author, that is a "dead tree" author, for C: Herbert Schildt. I would recommend these. Any of them. Well, just kidding, I haven't read them all, I doubt anyone has, but I bet they are all good.
My favorite is his book on artificial intelligence. It's out of print now, but it was one of the reasons why C was my favorite language for about 20 years, and it still would be if Python hadn't come out.
I'm willing to accept that some people will abuse their freedoms
What if those people happen to be police officers? Are you willing to accept that?
The problem, as I see it, is not that the system for law enforcement exists, but that it's misused. From my point of view as a citizen, it's worse having some guys with revolvers and clubs harassing me than a system that subjects everyone to the same degree of surveillance. By all means, let's have those cameras everywhere, but let me see the tapes that show where Sargent Holcomb went last night, about the time when that guy disappeared.
Remember Nixon? Watergate? When his voice recorded on tape became public, the most powerful man in the world fell down. Surveillance can be used for good or evil, but secrecy always plays in the hands of the powerful. The truth will set you free.
it's perfectly possible to know one and not the other
Oh, for sure, any reasonably intelligent person can calculate a car's fuel consumption without any knowledge about engines. But someone who writes about a "28 valve V-6 engine" seems like he read this book. If you want to quote those detailed specs, better get them right. Otherwise, you become indistinguishable from a liar.
As Mark Twain put in his "Innocents Abroad", the Egyptians burned mummies in their locomotives: "The fuel is composed of mummies three thousand years old, purchased by the ton or by the graveyard for that purpose, and sometimes one hears the profane engineer call out pettishly, 'D--n these plebeians, they don't burn worth a cent--pass out a King!"
Unless you were smoking polar bear ribs, you actually caused a good effect on their population. The most likely alternative to using carbon-neutral wood would be to cook with a fossil fuel, such as natural gas or an LPG like butane or propane.
But, of course, you could have broiled the ribs in a solar oven instead of smoking them, which would have been even better...
I'm sure I got the number of valves wrong (it's printed on the engine along with the displacement, which I can't remember). Probably 24 valves. Dammit Jim, I'm a nerd, not a gearhead!
Which more or less undoes all your GP post. If you cannot even get the number of valves right, how can you be so sure about your gas mileage figures?
the officers' plan was exposed after tapes of radio traffic were leaked to the press
Aren't you glad there's no such thing as complete privacy in our society? I don't consider it "raping my privacy" if someone sees me in the street. And if someone decides to follow me where I go, well, it's a free country, isn't it?
It's true that any information system is subject to abuse, but stealing cars is also an abuse. I'd rather be exposed to somene being able to know where I go on the open street than being subject to the abuse of a car thief. I have no objection to surveillance, as long as two conditions are met: (1) it should be limited to public places and (2) the whole system should allow auditing and controls.
Russians used the name cosmonaut first, the Americans user astronaut to be different
The Russians never went beyond navigating in the cosmos itself, the Americans actually reached a heavenly body. This wasn't the original intention, but the terms "cosmonaut" and "astronaut" actually describe more or less the most advanced accomplishments of each country.
I was slightly injured by a 50-year-old 3300mfd cap I'd salvaged from a valve radio, which went off like a small bomb despite only holding 12 volts at the time
I doubt those numbers. Capacitors in valve radios were more like 32uF, and typically work at hundreds of volts. Values like 3200uF are used in low-voltage power supplies, not in valve equipment, unless it's some very specialized equipment from the 1950s with hundreds of valves, perhaps.
But you are right that charged capacitors can be dangerous. I myself once got a strong shock from a capacitor that had been disconnected from a circuit for about ten minutes, after that I learned to discharge any capacitor in a high voltage power supply. An innocent looking yet dangerous equipment is the normal photographic flash. There you can find, typically, a 200uF capacitor charged to 200 volts.
Well, that's not what his blog in The Guardian says. He says: "I feel that creationism is best seen by science teachers not as a misconception but as a world view".
Anyone who feels that creationism is not a misconception has no place in the direction of such an important scientific body as the Royal Society. Even if he feels that students who have been raised by creationist parents will not change their point of view easily, that's no reason to tolerate such nonsense in a science class. What next, will he say that one must accept criminal behavior from students that have been raised by criminal parents?
The correct procedure would be, in my opinion, not to accept discussion of creationist nonsense, but to explain why evolution is a scientifically correct theory.
Many other religions believe that the universe was created in a different way.
There were several different scientific opinions on the origin of the universe, but when the cosmic microwave background radiation was discovered in the 1960s, scientists agreed that the "big bang" hypothesis is the most likely.
That's why science is an absolute truth, which ultimately will prevail over personal opinions and beliefs. Science is based on experimental facts, to which logical reasoning is applied. You can believe as much as you wish on a "steady state" cosmology, for instance, but anyone with a microwave antenna and a spectrum analyzer will prove you wrong.
money is even easier to hide than internet addresses
Only if you don't spend it. And if you cannot spend it, why bother?
i could have the exact same argument with money that financials should be private.
Well, that bothers me, too. One should just remember that anonymous Swiss account were created to protect Jews from Nazi prosecution. But, still, the police has plenty of ways to investigate suspicious fortunes without intruding into bank accounts. Like, let's say, check the IRS returns for that guy with the Rolls Royce, Ferrari, and yacht who's building that big house over there. Any big transaction is bound to become public by other means than snooping into people's private lives.
I've done a lot of work on audio on Linux, not for the audio itself, but because I work with satellite telemetry that's frequency-modulated in the audio band. I hate ALSA. It broke completely with the Unix philosophy.
Before ALSA, one would open audio devices just like files, acquire audio data just like reading files, play audio just like writing files. ALSA went the Redmond way, one different API for each different type of data.
Money doesn't just evaporate, I'm sure it's still somewhere!
Burn 1500 $100 notes and the value will still be around somewhere, because less cash circulating will cause a drop in prices, so everybody else's cash will be worth a little bit more. But drive your new Porsche into a wall and you'll see $150 thousand evaporate.
A $1 billion drop in market value means that there's $1 billion somewhere that left the stock market to be spent on other things. This causes inflation, everybody's cash will have a somewhat smaller value.
Most of the people I met who have ever heard of Ubuntu do not know where the version numbering scheme comes from. Specifying that version 9.04 means it will be released in 2009/04 is always a good thing.
About version numbering, my personal favorite is the TeX system: version numbers approach Pi asymptotically. Stupid, but still smarter than most other systems.
Slashdot Mirror
Then I have some bad news for you all. People who believe in this "worldview" thing will not be moved by anything less subtle than a baseball bat. What arguments can you present to someone who will not believe in anything that's against his own very narrow preconceived interpretation of the Bible?
I was born in October 1956. I don't think I'll ever become any more tolerant of people who try to pretend being something that they are not.
If you aren't familiar enough with engines to notice instantly that a "28 valve V-6" engine is impossible, then you shouldn't try to impress people with fake fuel consumption figures.
Well, yes, I have been castigated by that, too...
BUT, on the other hand, Mr. Schildt introduced me to several other immensely powerful practices, like, for instance, "incremental testing".
In the end, adding everything up, I must say that Herbert Schildt's contribution to my formation as a programmer has been undecidedly positive.
The funny thing is that for some 20 years, before I started using Python, my favorite and almost only language was C, and I don't know of any really good site for C.
However, I do know of a really good author, that is a "dead tree" author, for C: Herbert Schildt. I would recommend these. Any of them. Well, just kidding, I haven't read them all, I doubt anyone has, but I bet they are all good.
My favorite is his book on artificial intelligence. It's out of print now, but it was one of the reasons why C was my favorite language for about 20 years, and it still would be if Python hadn't come out.
cpan.org and python.org
...do they have Virtual Girls?
What if those people happen to be police officers? Are you willing to accept that?
The problem, as I see it, is not that the system for law enforcement exists, but that it's misused. From my point of view as a citizen, it's worse having some guys with revolvers and clubs harassing me than a system that subjects everyone to the same degree of surveillance. By all means, let's have those cameras everywhere, but let me see the tapes that show where Sargent Holcomb went last night, about the time when that guy disappeared.
Remember Nixon? Watergate? When his voice recorded on tape became public, the most powerful man in the world fell down. Surveillance can be used for good or evil, but secrecy always plays in the hands of the powerful. The truth will set you free.
Oh, for sure, any reasonably intelligent person can calculate a car's fuel consumption without any knowledge about engines. But someone who writes about a "28 valve V-6 engine" seems like he read this book. If you want to quote those detailed specs, better get them right. Otherwise, you become indistinguishable from a liar.
As Mark Twain put in his "Innocents Abroad", the Egyptians burned mummies in their locomotives: "The fuel is composed of mummies three thousand years old, purchased by the ton or by the graveyard for that purpose, and sometimes one hears the profane engineer call out pettishly, 'D--n these plebeians, they don't burn worth a cent--pass out a King!"
Unless you were smoking polar bear ribs, you actually caused a good effect on their population. The most likely alternative to using carbon-neutral wood would be to cook with a fossil fuel, such as natural gas or an LPG like butane or propane.
But, of course, you could have broiled the ribs in a solar oven instead of smoking them, which would have been even better...
These must be some pretty *BIG* three guys, right?
Which more or less undoes all your GP post. If you cannot even get the number of valves right, how can you be so sure about your gas mileage figures?
Aren't you glad there's no such thing as complete privacy in our society? I don't consider it "raping my privacy" if someone sees me in the street. And if someone decides to follow me where I go, well, it's a free country, isn't it?
It's true that any information system is subject to abuse, but stealing cars is also an abuse. I'd rather be exposed to somene being able to know where I go on the open street than being subject to the abuse of a car thief. I have no objection to surveillance, as long as two conditions are met: (1) it should be limited to public places and (2) the whole system should allow auditing and controls.
The Russians never went beyond navigating in the cosmos itself, the Americans actually reached a heavenly body. This wasn't the original intention, but the terms "cosmonaut" and "astronaut" actually describe more or less the most advanced accomplishments of each country.
I doubt those numbers. Capacitors in valve radios were more like 32uF, and typically work at hundreds of volts. Values like 3200uF are used in low-voltage power supplies, not in valve equipment, unless it's some very specialized equipment from the 1950s with hundreds of valves, perhaps.
But you are right that charged capacitors can be dangerous. I myself once got a strong shock from a capacitor that had been disconnected from a circuit for about ten minutes, after that I learned to discharge any capacitor in a high voltage power supply. An innocent looking yet dangerous equipment is the normal photographic flash. There you can find, typically, a 200uF capacitor charged to 200 volts.
Well, that's not what his blog in The Guardian says. He says: "I feel that creationism is best seen by science teachers not as a misconception but as a world view".
Anyone who feels that creationism is not a misconception has no place in the direction of such an important scientific body as the Royal Society. Even if he feels that students who have been raised by creationist parents will not change their point of view easily, that's no reason to tolerate such nonsense in a science class. What next, will he say that one must accept criminal behavior from students that have been raised by criminal parents?
The correct procedure would be, in my opinion, not to accept discussion of creationist nonsense, but to explain why evolution is a scientifically correct theory.
No, let's teach that the world is like a Swiss cheese: round, flat, AND hollow, all at the same time! That way nobody's feeling will be hurt.
Well, then at least we are evolving as a society. Two thousand years ago, they would nail the guy to a wooden cross...
There were several different scientific opinions on the origin of the universe, but when the cosmic microwave background radiation was discovered in the 1960s, scientists agreed that the "big bang" hypothesis is the most likely.
That's why science is an absolute truth, which ultimately will prevail over personal opinions and beliefs. Science is based on experimental facts, to which logical reasoning is applied. You can believe as much as you wish on a "steady state" cosmology, for instance, but anyone with a microwave antenna and a spectrum analyzer will prove you wrong.
Only if you don't spend it. And if you cannot spend it, why bother?
Well, that bothers me, too. One should just remember that anonymous Swiss account were created to protect Jews from Nazi prosecution. But, still, the police has plenty of ways to investigate suspicious fortunes without intruding into bank accounts. Like, let's say, check the IRS returns for that guy with the Rolls Royce, Ferrari, and yacht who's building that big house over there. Any big transaction is bound to become public by other means than snooping into people's private lives.
Since you mention it, let me point out that no true slashdotter that plays a guitar should ever consider using other than Ernie Ball strings
the accused shall enjoy the right ... to be confronted with the witnesses against him;
In this case the withess is a machine, he has the constitutional right to know how that machine works
I've done a lot of work on audio on Linux, not for the audio itself, but because I work with satellite telemetry that's frequency-modulated in the audio band. I hate ALSA. It broke completely with the Unix philosophy.
Before ALSA, one would open audio devices just like files, acquire audio data just like reading files, play audio just like writing files. ALSA went the Redmond way, one different API for each different type of data.
Burn 1500 $100 notes and the value will still be around somewhere, because less cash circulating will cause a drop in prices, so everybody else's cash will be worth a little bit more. But drive your new Porsche into a wall and you'll see $150 thousand evaporate.
A $1 billion drop in market value means that there's $1 billion somewhere that left the stock market to be spent on other things. This causes inflation, everybody's cash will have a somewhat smaller value.
Most of the people I met who have ever heard of Ubuntu do not know where the version numbering scheme comes from. Specifying that version 9.04 means it will be released in 2009/04 is always a good thing.
About version numbering, my personal favorite is the TeX system: version numbers approach Pi asymptotically. Stupid, but still smarter than most other systems.