There is admittedly a lot of this attitude. That said, I generally can find an answer for a difficult Linux problem much more readily than for a difficult Windows problem, where the solution is very often "Have you tried doing a full backup and re-installing?" Obviously, I am much better at using search engines to find what I want than much of the general Internet population (as are most users of Slashdot), but there are reliable sources of help out there. The sources for help in Windows, except for Windows' own knowledge base, which has often worked for me, seem to be more spotty to me.
This is correct. Dei is found, but di is more common in Nom. Sg. Vocative singular is "deus" rather than the regular "dee" -- "Deus meus, ut quid me dereliquisti?"
Because the dative and ablative plural of "dea" (goddess) would look the same as the form for "deus", this form is regularly substituted with "deabus".
Gods in general produce a lot of irregularities in Latin. The genitive of Iuppiter (Jupiter) is Iovis (Jovis). Hence, we say "Jumping Jupiter!", but "By Jove!"
I was stuck on IE and trying to download MPlayer for Windows.... Out of habit from Firefox, I naively used the Bing-box to search. All the results I got were for Windows Media Player -- and those pages don't even contain the word "MPlayer" at all. Fortunately, I realized that I knew MPlayer's address by memory anyway, so found it through the home page.
I think that there is the problem. Most of the experts seem to easily give up when faced by the Wikipedia system. Expert: "Um... actually, I'm the most reknowned expert in this author, having published 40 books about him, so I can really state with certainty that his favorite color was in fact blue." Wikipedia-Drone: "Original research! Reverting to 'fuscia'!" Expert: "Wikipedia is worthless. I'm going home."
If the expert has to dedicate hours of his valuable time to correct even the most trivial error, the people who have time to devote their entire day to Wikipedia are going to win every time.
I think "Enterprise" expanded on this, and had the smooth-headed Klingons resulting from a genetic disease, caused by trying to implement human Eugenics techniques. The disease was cured, but the physical results remained, and took many generations for the Klingons to get rid of them.
On the other hand, I very often get PDFs that evince can't print correctly. For example, anything lilypond outputs is full of artifacts when printed in evince, perfect when printed in acroread or viewed in evince...
I only saw it on the German television news, and that means it was pretty fluff-oriented, but the impression I had was that they simply withdrew some of her bone marrow, treated this in a lab, and injected it into the heart muscle.
I don't even know the precise nature of the ailment that was corrected, just that they stressed the difference in price tag to a traditional surgery.
I think your parent had some sarcasm in the last sentence that you missed. Embyronic stem cells need government funding because no sane entrepreneur would waste his money on a treatment that has no chance of working. Or at least that's what I understood.
Unfortunately, I think the real story is that if someone gets embryonic stem cells to work somehow, he will patent the process to make a fortune out of it. The pharmaceutical companies want to get to this holy grail, but don't want to risk their own money on a long shot, so they demand government funding. Whereas the adult stem cells are saving lives today (but not getting the pharmaceutical companies rich). I heard a couple years ago about a German experiment that cured a congenital heart disfunction with donor-supplied stem cells. This cost a total of 200 or 300 euros.
I seem to recall that Microsoft was saying just recently that this Beta would be the only Beta and then (possibly) one release candidate, and then release, because this one was so rock solid. If they hold true to that, then comments about the stability and upgradability of the beta are in fact pretty relevant. If they've backed off of that position and I missed it, I apologize in advance.
The point about factors of twelve is that it is very convenient to talk about 1/2 a foot, 1/3 of a foot, 1/4 of a foot and have those come out to "nice" numbers. With base 10, you have 1/2, 1/5, and 1/10 that come out nice, but 1/3 and 1/4 bring you into fractions. Thus, your parent is saying that the base twelve system is "better" for day to day use. Since most of the world has managed the switch, the argument is not decisive, but it does partially explain why it's hard to put the change through.
I was thinking that a solution to the problem of eternal copyrights that even a government could get behind despite the pushing of certain industries would have to be one that provided significant income to the government. What if the government allowed a, say, 20 year copyright basically for free (maybe reduced to 10 for something like software, since the real value plummets so much faster) -- just a nominal filing fee. Then to extend it another 10 years, put in a reasonably significant fee, say $25,000 (or tiered, with 100,000 for movies, 25,000 for music,...). However each further extension doubles the fee. Thus even the richest company can't keep things out of the public domain indefinitely, but they would be able to protect works that are still realistically earning them money.
Of course, that means that things that go quickly into public domain are the dogs, but everything eventually gets there.
Yep. That is essentially the system. It is your responsibility to check each month that the charges that were made were in fact authorized. As I understand, they are very good about chargebacks (suprisingly), though I have never had to actually do this. I have used this method of payment primarily with Amazon and with airlines, but it's very often an option. Germans don't particularly like credit cards (partly because German banks don't really "get" them -- most "credit" cards actually automatically suck the full amount of the bill out of your account on the due date... which means you're not worried about exhorbitant interest rates, but you're only barely buying on credit. It's actually more of a delayed debit card.)
This kind of reminds me of the comments I got from Business Calculus students when I was carrying around my graduate Algebra book, which was appropriately titled "Algebra". "Oh, Algebra! I had that in High School. It's not so hard..." If only they knew what was inside that bright lemon-yellow cover...
Even more so, since this is not embryonic stem-cell research (to which McCain, Palin, and many other Christians object), but rather adult stem-cell research (to which only Jehovah's Witnesses and Christian Scientists object, as far as I know).
Personally, I have yet to read of truly successful research with embryonic stem cells (because they are generally rejected by the recipient), whereas many large advances have been made with adult stem cells (since the donor and the recipient are the same person, rejection is eliminated) -- for men at least, pluripotent cells have been found in the testicles, so that any type of cell could be produced without having to use embryonic stem cells. I also recently saw a report about a person with congenital heart disease who was apparently cured by an injection of his own bone-marrow stem cells.
So I suppose my question would be why the intellectual elites want to spend their research monies on embryonic stem-cell research that is more expensive, less successful, and morally questionable to a large sector of society, rather than on research in areas where successes keep coming, the cells are available without moral complications, and the costs are in general lower. A cynical person might think that it's all about getting drug patents and getting money out of the consumers and padding their own checkbooks...
If you're think that the soul is created at the moment of conception, then I don't understand your problems with the pill etc (as taught to you in school).
The problem with contraceptives is (in general) unrelated to the abortion debate. Although most instances of "The Pill" have an abortifacient effect if taken after conception. Since we're pretty far off topic here, I'll just appeal to "Humanae Vitae" by Pope Paul VI, which explains the moral problem with artificial contraception.
I think I understood your point with the pharmacist, but if you really believed you were facilitating a murder by dispensing a drug (position of the pharmacist), would you do it, thinking that you can donate to a charity and save a life somewhere else, so that the world will not be plus or minus a life? I wouldn't find that all-too-acceptable.
I already lost karma on this thread ("Overrated"), and it doesn't really seem like we're communicating with each other, but to answer your implicit question:
I still don't get the Jews connection with embryos.
Just for a second, look at this from the other side. There we hold that embryos and fetuses are human beings. You say I shouldn't be concerned if other people are killing human beings as long as I'm not killing them myself. Imagine that we were talking about four-year-olds. Would you remain silent while one sector of your society slaughtered all four-year-olds who didn't meet a certain standard?
The real non-sequitur here is the whole miscarriage argument. No one (except apparently you) thinks that a miscarriage is the same morally as an abortion. There is no free decision to kill a living being in a miscarriage. It's like the difference between your four-year-old son dying of cancer despite your best efforts to heal him and you pulling out a pistol and shooting your four-year-old. They are not anywhere near related.
As for embryos in Heaven, we really have no idea what will happen there. Some medieval philosophers held that the soul was created at some point after conception, so that, while maintaining that abortion was always evil, the question of the destiny of these souls is moot. However, I don't really see that position as tenable today, given the state of our knowledge of embyology, and would see conception as the only real moment where the creation of the soul could occur.
Oh, if the pharmacists gives the money he earns with the sale to a charity, he may save the life of a kid in Africa with it.
And I suppose if the guards at the concentration camps gave their salaries to a charity to save the life of a child in Africa, that would make it O.K., too... The Nuremburg courts wouldn't have agreed with you there.
'The government is forcing Christian pharmacists to dispense drugs that are abortifacient, thus forcing them to be morally complicit in the termination of an unborn life. Christian doctors who wish to practice obstetrics are forced to learn how to perform abortions.'
Perhaps your government is more to blame for providing insufficient information before these people started their studies. I'm very sorry to hear that they cannot find another job.
Many of them became pharmacists (spending several years of their lives attaining that education) when this wasn't an issue. Some even became pharmacists while there were specific laws to protect their consciences. But the abortion-rights lobby decided that it would be far too traumatic for a woman to hear, "I'm sorry, I can't fill this prescription, but Joe's pharmacy down the street can.", and so pushed through legislation that says that pharmacists have no right to conscience. Obviously they can go get a job at the local McDonalds, but after years of student loans and the like, that's a pretty bitter pill to hand somebody.
'For that matter, the Nazis (sorry for the Godwin's Law thing) didn't force non-military personnell to murder Jews, so I suppose that was alright.'
As an example of a non-sequitur perhaps? I don't get it. My basic point is that religions (or more generally anyone) should leave other people (including those of other religions) free to do what they want, as long as they don't harm someone. Killing Jews should not be a pass-time.
If embryos and fetuses are human beings, then there is no non-sequitur, because you are harming someone with your actions. And that is the point of the statement. And actually, the idea that embryos and fetuses are human beings is pretty easy to support scientifically, even though there is a philosophical/theological issue about the value of such a life.
'Remember that most Christians believe that abortion is the murder of an innocent human being.'
Don't worry. Yagolah must positively hate those pre-born human beings. Next time you visit the ladies room and see the trash can for sanitary towels, put some flowers next to it and pray. If it is there for a while and the ladies room is visited fairly frequently, there is a large likelihood that at some point in time it contained your beloved 46 chromosome entity. A very large portion of fertilized eggs never make it to the full 9 month development period. Abortions barely increase the number. Of the 3 women I have data for: One with 3 kids and 1 miscarriage (I know of). One with 3 kids and 3 miscarriages (just a hormone thing. When the doctor gave her suppositories against the violent morning sickness causing the rejection the kids kept coming. Apparently yagolah liked the doctor's action. Or allowed the doctor to compensate for the birth control pills he had prescribed in his carrier. And the last woman I know of has 2 kids and one miscarriage. Oh the humanity! And I couldn't count the times they just missed a period, because I'm not privy to that.
And there is of course no moral difference whatsoever between the natural death of a person and actively killing them... My sister mourned the death of her miscarried child, and I don't think that there's any reason not to do so. But you seem to say, "Since a lot of children die before birth, it is O.K. to kill children before birth indiscriminately." Not a moral code I could accept. If we look at the rate of abortion compared to the birth rate, it is indeed significant, and to my eyes, positively frightening.
The government is forcing Christian pharmacists to dispense drugs that are abortifacient, thus forcing them to be morally complicit in the termination of an unborn life. Christian doctors who wish to practice obstetrics are forced to learn how to perform abortions. Schools are teaching birth control in such a way as to all but force it upon teenagers -- at least in my school, we were taught that everyone should use birth control and that natural methods were not methods at all.
For that matter, the Nazis (sorry for the Godwin's Law thing) didn't force non-military personnell to murder Jews, so I suppose that was alright. Remember that most Christians believe that abortion is the murder of an innocent human being, so of course they are going to fight it with all their strength. For that matter, a large number of so-called birth control methods are in fact abortifacient (read the package insert for most incarnations of "The Pill") so fall in the same category. Embryonic stem cell research also falls into this category. The cloned being, even if development is stopped at the blastula level, is still a human being (that is, it has 46 chromosomes, and if it were allowed to develop, could only result in a being that all persons, even atheists, would have to admit is a human being). Thus Christians consider it morally unacceptable, even for Atheists. If embryonic testing is used to promote abortion ("I'm sorry Ms. Smith, your child has Down Syndrome. When can we schedule the abortion?"), then this also comes here. In general though, I'd hold that such testing is neutral, morally speaking.
I'm not against alchohol, so I will leave that one alone. I'm living in Germany, so I'll leave the Pledge of Allegiance alone. I don't really care about the Ten Commandments debate, and would tend to side with leaving them out of the courtroom because of commandments 1-3 (1-4 for Protestants reading this), which are problematic, because they only apply to a portion of society. Sex toys... I'd certainly not make this a huge issue. One can avoid them quite well.
Premarital sex and gay sex... I don't think there is a lot of movement to actively ban this activity. (Against gay marriage, yes, there is a movement, but you didn't mention that one in your litany above.) There is a movement to actively promote this activity. So the activity seems to be more from the other direction...
In many Infocoms the "feelies" were in fact copy protection. For instance in "Sorceror", the "Infotater" is needed to get beyond the first 10-15 minutes of the game, or in "Spellbreaker", the Famous Wizards trading cards are needed at a point about 2/3 of the way through the game. In "Bureaucracy" you get quizzed on the contents of "Conspiracy Today", or whatever that silly "feely" was titled.
Most of the pagan artifacts that I know of are on display in the Vatican Museums. You can even go for free on the last Saturday of every month. The entry fee at other times is apparently controlled by the company that paid for the renovations a few years ago.
On the other hand, the linked article is referring to an ancient Roman burial ground that happened to be under Vatican property. As the article says, the burial ground has been opened to tourists and archeologists. I quote: "The graveyard will be open to the public only on Friday and Saturday mornings, by appointment, for â5 ($6.25). It will also remain an active archaeological dig until the sacred archaeologists feel they have cataloged and uncovered as much as they can, or need to."
The Vatican ran at a loss until very recently (Since some time under John Paul II, the yearly reports have been made public). All "profit" is given by Papal charities to causes that the Pope deems worthy. (These are typically symbolic sums.) The "billions in capital" that are being referred to here are presumably churches and art treasures. Firstly, it is highly unlikely that they could find buyers for these items. so this is not really liquid capital, and secondly, this hurts all of culture, as they most likely would land in private collections and presumably be lost to the rest of the world.
By the way, the Vatican has the Euro same as the rest of Europe. They have a right to mint a very small number of coins with the Pope's image, but these are all sold in collector sets, so you can hardly talk of a real currency.
For example, lying to the detainee. This is forbidden by the Army manual, but allowed to the CIA. Or for example, being rude to the detainee. This is forbidden in the Army manual and allowed to the CIA.
However, the linked article says that the GLOBAL temperature (presumably mean) has dropped precipitously in the past year. There are some graphs here that at least apparently back this up. According to the article in the Daily Tech, this is enough to offset all the increase in the last 100 years.
I have no way of testing the data, indeed, no way of knowing if they are talking about mean or median temperature in the articles, but just to be clear: the article that is linked is not saying "some places are colder, global warming is wrong", but "the whole planet is colder, global warming is wrong". That's an entirely different animal.
I think that the problem is that there are a lot of people who use the name "Intelligent Design" for different things. I suspect anyone who is reading Slashdot and considers himself a follower of Intelligent Design has a theory somewhat like the GP post: Evolution is an observed fact, but the mechanism for that observed fact is unclear, but seems to show signs of being directed toward positive results, hence the hypothesis of an intelligent designer who either planned it all that way in advance, or nudges the system along the way, or similar -- the point being that evolution is fully accepted by these people.
Unfortunately, there is a much more vocal group of people who use the name "Intelligent Design" as a code-word for creationism according to Genesis 1-2. These people deny evolution and generally see all differentiation of species as a direct intervention of the creator. This group uses the name because it's much easier to sell politically than creationism...
I suppose we need a new term to differentiate the two concepts, so that we are at least on the same wavelength when we disagree about this...
Galileo didn't have Kepler's three laws of planetary motion. He still thought that the orbits went in circles. Thus his version of the Copernican system, while having less epicycles added to the orbits of the planets than the Ptolemaic system, still required epicycles. Thus it was not an obvious "this is right, this is wrong", but a marginally simpler explanation of the reality. That the Church officials didn't immediately accept this as true beyond a shadow of a doubt is actually a wise decision. Galileo's central "proof" of the rotation of the earth around the sun in his "Dialogo", by the way, was the movement of the tides -- he claimed that the water was being sloshed from one side to another by the rotation of the earth around the sun. I hope that most of us here know that this is a completely wrong theory.
I would submit that Galileo's condemnation was primarily caused by pride and bad judgment (on both sides). He published his work not in Latin, so that it could be reviewed by other scientists, but in Italian, so that he could convert the people to his cause. When he went to get permission to publish the book, he went not to the Inquisition, but to a priest whom he trusted. This priest (Father Riccardi) advised him to take the word "tides" out of the title (it was originally entitled "Dialog about the Tides") and to add a preface saying that Galileo himself didn't want to take sides in the controversy, then to show the book directly to Pope Urban VIII.
Pope Urban VIII received him well. He offered him a lifelong pension to free up his time for study (he received this despite the later condemnation), but asked him to add a statement about the omnipotence of God in the conclusion. Galileo then went to the priest he visited before (Riccardi) and got an Imprimatur in blank (without Riccardi having read the final text). Here comes the bad judgment: he put the statement about the omnipotence of God in practically the same words used by the Pope into the mouth of "Simplicius", who is the naive character of the dialog, trapped in the Aristotelean worldview. (I.e. he said "The Pope is a simpleton!") He then had the book published in Florence, not in Rome (presumably to let it spread before the Inquisition saw it).
I think that the results of this are pretty obvious -- the Pope, who was previously favorable to him, is suddenly deeply offended; Father Riccardi feels betrayed, since he is the one who appears to have given permission for this; and the Inquisition feels that he has gone behind their back. The Inquisition then determined that the work was tendentious, in that it doesn't strive to avoid taking a position, as the preface claimed. This led to his trial and imprisonment.
It is worth mentioning that the imprisonment during the trial was five luxurious rooms provided by an official of the Inquisition who was favorable to the heliocentric theory. He was ultimately condemned, not for teaching heliocentrism or for heresy (he signed a statement saying he had always believed, and would always believe -- so help him God -- what the Catholic Church teaches), but for lack of obedience to the Pope, breaking promises, and going behind the Pope's back. This led to the banning of the book and to house arrest. Three of the ten judges did not sign the verdict. The famous "Eppur si muove" did not occur -- it is first referenced in a painting from 1645, which shows Galileo in an actual dungeon, which he never saw in the entire course of his troubles with the Inquisition.
"House arrest" meant that Galileo moved into the Villa Medici, later a Bishop's Palace when the plague hit Florence, and finally to his own house in Florence. There he continued his research, receiving a monthly allowance from the Medicis and a yearly pension from the Vatican. His most important work, the Discorsi, which is about classical mechanics and gravity, was published during this house arrest. Galileo's rehabilitation occurred first in 1741 (about fifty years after Kepler and others provided a mathematical basis for t
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There is admittedly a lot of this attitude. That said, I generally can find an answer for a difficult Linux problem much more readily than for a difficult Windows problem, where the solution is very often "Have you tried doing a full backup and re-installing?" Obviously, I am much better at using search engines to find what I want than much of the general Internet population (as are most users of Slashdot), but there are reliable sources of help out there. The sources for help in Windows, except for Windows' own knowledge base, which has often worked for me, seem to be more spotty to me.
This is correct. Dei is found, but di is more common in Nom. Sg. Vocative singular is "deus" rather than the regular "dee" -- "Deus meus, ut quid me dereliquisti?" Because the dative and ablative plural of "dea" (goddess) would look the same as the form for "deus", this form is regularly substituted with "deabus". Gods in general produce a lot of irregularities in Latin. The genitive of Iuppiter (Jupiter) is Iovis (Jovis). Hence, we say "Jumping Jupiter!", but "By Jove!"
I was stuck on IE and trying to download MPlayer for Windows.... Out of habit from Firefox, I naively used the Bing-box to search. All the results I got were for Windows Media Player -- and those pages don't even contain the word "MPlayer" at all. Fortunately, I realized that I knew MPlayer's address by memory anyway, so found it through the home page.
I think that there is the problem. Most of the experts seem to easily give up when faced by the Wikipedia system. Expert: "Um... actually, I'm the most reknowned expert in this author, having published 40 books about him, so I can really state with certainty that his favorite color was in fact blue." Wikipedia-Drone: "Original research! Reverting to 'fuscia'!" Expert: "Wikipedia is worthless. I'm going home."
If the expert has to dedicate hours of his valuable time to correct even the most trivial error, the people who have time to devote their entire day to Wikipedia are going to win every time.
I think "Enterprise" expanded on this, and had the smooth-headed Klingons resulting from a genetic disease, caused by trying to implement human Eugenics techniques. The disease was cured, but the physical results remained, and took many generations for the Klingons to get rid of them.
On the other hand, I very often get PDFs that evince can't print correctly. For example, anything lilypond outputs is full of artifacts when printed in evince, perfect when printed in acroread or viewed in evince...
I only saw it on the German television news, and that means it was pretty fluff-oriented, but the impression I had was that they simply withdrew some of her bone marrow, treated this in a lab, and injected it into the heart muscle.
I don't even know the precise nature of the ailment that was corrected, just that they stressed the difference in price tag to a traditional surgery.
I think your parent had some sarcasm in the last sentence that you missed. Embyronic stem cells need government funding because no sane entrepreneur would waste his money on a treatment that has no chance of working. Or at least that's what I understood.
Unfortunately, I think the real story is that if someone gets embryonic stem cells to work somehow, he will patent the process to make a fortune out of it. The pharmaceutical companies want to get to this holy grail, but don't want to risk their own money on a long shot, so they demand government funding. Whereas the adult stem cells are saving lives today (but not getting the pharmaceutical companies rich). I heard a couple years ago about a German experiment that cured a congenital heart disfunction with donor-supplied stem cells. This cost a total of 200 or 300 euros.
I seem to recall that Microsoft was saying just recently that this Beta would be the only Beta and then (possibly) one release candidate, and then release, because this one was so rock solid. If they hold true to that, then comments about the stability and upgradability of the beta are in fact pretty relevant. If they've backed off of that position and I missed it, I apologize in advance.
And if the window bar is off the screen as well, Alt-Space will get you the window bar menu, allowing you to move it.
The point about factors of twelve is that it is very convenient to talk about 1/2 a foot, 1/3 of a foot, 1/4 of a foot and have those come out to "nice" numbers. With base 10, you have 1/2, 1/5, and 1/10 that come out nice, but 1/3 and 1/4 bring you into fractions. Thus, your parent is saying that the base twelve system is "better" for day to day use. Since most of the world has managed the switch, the argument is not decisive, but it does partially explain why it's hard to put the change through.
I was thinking that a solution to the problem of eternal copyrights that even a government could get behind despite the pushing of certain industries would have to be one that provided significant income to the government. What if the government allowed a, say, 20 year copyright basically for free (maybe reduced to 10 for something like software, since the real value plummets so much faster) -- just a nominal filing fee. Then to extend it another 10 years, put in a reasonably significant fee, say $25,000 (or tiered, with 100,000 for movies, 25,000 for music, ...). However each further extension doubles the fee. Thus even the richest company can't keep things out of the public domain indefinitely, but they would be able to protect works that are still realistically earning them money.
Of course, that means that things that go quickly into public domain are the dogs, but everything eventually gets there.
Yep. That is essentially the system. It is your responsibility to check each month that the charges that were made were in fact authorized. As I understand, they are very good about chargebacks (suprisingly), though I have never had to actually do this. I have used this method of payment primarily with Amazon and with airlines, but it's very often an option. Germans don't particularly like credit cards (partly because German banks don't really "get" them -- most "credit" cards actually automatically suck the full amount of the bill out of your account on the due date... which means you're not worried about exhorbitant interest rates, but you're only barely buying on credit. It's actually more of a delayed debit card.)
This kind of reminds me of the comments I got from Business Calculus students when I was carrying around my graduate Algebra book, which was appropriately titled "Algebra". "Oh, Algebra! I had that in High School. It's not so hard..." If only they knew what was inside that bright lemon-yellow cover...
Even more so, since this is not embryonic stem-cell research (to which McCain, Palin, and many other Christians object), but rather adult stem-cell research (to which only Jehovah's Witnesses and Christian Scientists object, as far as I know).
Personally, I have yet to read of truly successful research with embryonic stem cells (because they are generally rejected by the recipient), whereas many large advances have been made with adult stem cells (since the donor and the recipient are the same person, rejection is eliminated) -- for men at least, pluripotent cells have been found in the testicles, so that any type of cell could be produced without having to use embryonic stem cells. I also recently saw a report about a person with congenital heart disease who was apparently cured by an injection of his own bone-marrow stem cells.
So I suppose my question would be why the intellectual elites want to spend their research monies on embryonic stem-cell research that is more expensive, less successful, and morally questionable to a large sector of society, rather than on research in areas where successes keep coming, the cells are available without moral complications, and the costs are in general lower. A cynical person might think that it's all about getting drug patents and getting money out of the consumers and padding their own checkbooks...
If you're think that the soul is created at the moment of conception, then I don't understand your problems with the pill etc (as taught to you in school).
The problem with contraceptives is (in general) unrelated to the abortion debate. Although most instances of "The Pill" have an abortifacient effect if taken after conception. Since we're pretty far off topic here, I'll just appeal to "Humanae Vitae" by Pope Paul VI, which explains the moral problem with artificial contraception.
I think I understood your point with the pharmacist, but if you really believed you were facilitating a murder by dispensing a drug (position of the pharmacist), would you do it, thinking that you can donate to a charity and save a life somewhere else, so that the world will not be plus or minus a life? I wouldn't find that all-too-acceptable.
I still don't get the Jews connection with embryos.
Just for a second, look at this from the other side. There we hold that embryos and fetuses are human beings. You say I shouldn't be concerned if other people are killing human beings as long as I'm not killing them myself. Imagine that we were talking about four-year-olds. Would you remain silent while one sector of your society slaughtered all four-year-olds who didn't meet a certain standard?
The real non-sequitur here is the whole miscarriage argument. No one (except apparently you) thinks that a miscarriage is the same morally as an abortion. There is no free decision to kill a living being in a miscarriage. It's like the difference between your four-year-old son dying of cancer despite your best efforts to heal him and you pulling out a pistol and shooting your four-year-old. They are not anywhere near related.
As for embryos in Heaven, we really have no idea what will happen there. Some medieval philosophers held that the soul was created at some point after conception, so that, while maintaining that abortion was always evil, the question of the destiny of these souls is moot. However, I don't really see that position as tenable today, given the state of our knowledge of embyology, and would see conception as the only real moment where the creation of the soul could occur.
Oh, if the pharmacists gives the money he earns with the sale to a charity, he may save the life of a kid in Africa with it.
And I suppose if the guards at the concentration camps gave their salaries to a charity to save the life of a child in Africa, that would make it O.K., too... The Nuremburg courts wouldn't have agreed with you there.
'The government is forcing Christian pharmacists to dispense drugs that are abortifacient, thus forcing them to be morally complicit in the termination of an unborn life. Christian doctors who wish to practice obstetrics are forced to learn how to perform abortions.'
Perhaps your government is more to blame for providing insufficient information before these people started their studies. I'm very sorry to hear that they cannot find another job.
Many of them became pharmacists (spending several years of their lives attaining that education) when this wasn't an issue. Some even became pharmacists while there were specific laws to protect their consciences. But the abortion-rights lobby decided that it would be far too traumatic for a woman to hear, "I'm sorry, I can't fill this prescription, but Joe's pharmacy down the street can.", and so pushed through legislation that says that pharmacists have no right to conscience. Obviously they can go get a job at the local McDonalds, but after years of student loans and the like, that's a pretty bitter pill to hand somebody.
'For that matter, the Nazis (sorry for the Godwin's Law thing) didn't force non-military personnell to murder Jews, so I suppose that was alright.'
As an example of a non-sequitur perhaps? I don't get it. My basic point is that religions (or more generally anyone) should leave other people (including those of other religions) free to do what they want, as long as they don't harm someone. Killing Jews should not be a pass-time.
If embryos and fetuses are human beings, then there is no non-sequitur, because you are harming someone with your actions. And that is the point of the statement. And actually, the idea that embryos and fetuses are human beings is pretty easy to support scientifically, even though there is a philosophical/theological issue about the value of such a life.
'Remember that most Christians believe that abortion is the murder of an innocent human being.'
Don't worry. Yagolah must positively hate those pre-born human beings. Next time you visit the ladies room and see the trash can for sanitary towels, put some flowers next to it and pray. If it is there for a while and the ladies room is visited fairly frequently, there is a large likelihood that at some point in time it contained your beloved 46 chromosome entity. A very large portion of fertilized eggs never make it to the full 9 month development period. Abortions barely increase the number. Of the 3 women I have data for: One with 3 kids and 1 miscarriage (I know of). One with 3 kids and 3 miscarriages (just a hormone thing. When the doctor gave her suppositories against the violent morning sickness causing the rejection the kids kept coming. Apparently yagolah liked the doctor's action. Or allowed the doctor to compensate for the birth control pills he had prescribed in his carrier. And the last woman I know of has 2 kids and one miscarriage. Oh the humanity! And I couldn't count the times they just missed a period, because I'm not privy to that.
And there is of course no moral difference whatsoever between the natural death of a person and actively killing them... My sister mourned the death of her miscarried child, and I don't think that there's any reason not to do so. But you seem to say, "Since a lot of children die before birth, it is O.K. to kill children before birth indiscriminately." Not a moral code I could accept. If we look at the rate of abortion compared to the birth rate, it is indeed significant, and to my eyes, positively frightening.
The government is forcing Christian pharmacists to dispense drugs that are abortifacient, thus forcing them to be morally complicit in the termination of an unborn life. Christian doctors who wish to practice obstetrics are forced to learn how to perform abortions. Schools are teaching birth control in such a way as to all but force it upon teenagers -- at least in my school, we were taught that everyone should use birth control and that natural methods were not methods at all.
For that matter, the Nazis (sorry for the Godwin's Law thing) didn't force non-military personnell to murder Jews, so I suppose that was alright. Remember that most Christians believe that abortion is the murder of an innocent human being, so of course they are going to fight it with all their strength. For that matter, a large number of so-called birth control methods are in fact abortifacient (read the package insert for most incarnations of "The Pill") so fall in the same category. Embryonic stem cell research also falls into this category. The cloned being, even if development is stopped at the blastula level, is still a human being (that is, it has 46 chromosomes, and if it were allowed to develop, could only result in a being that all persons, even atheists, would have to admit is a human being). Thus Christians consider it morally unacceptable, even for Atheists. If embryonic testing is used to promote abortion ("I'm sorry Ms. Smith, your child has Down Syndrome. When can we schedule the abortion?"), then this also comes here. In general though, I'd hold that such testing is neutral, morally speaking.
I'm not against alchohol, so I will leave that one alone. I'm living in Germany, so I'll leave the Pledge of Allegiance alone. I don't really care about the Ten Commandments debate, and would tend to side with leaving them out of the courtroom because of commandments 1-3 (1-4 for Protestants reading this), which are problematic, because they only apply to a portion of society. Sex toys... I'd certainly not make this a huge issue. One can avoid them quite well.
Premarital sex and gay sex... I don't think there is a lot of movement to actively ban this activity. (Against gay marriage, yes, there is a movement, but you didn't mention that one in your litany above.) There is a movement to actively promote this activity. So the activity seems to be more from the other direction...
In many Infocoms the "feelies" were in fact copy protection. For instance in "Sorceror", the "Infotater" is needed to get beyond the first 10-15 minutes of the game, or in "Spellbreaker", the Famous Wizards trading cards are needed at a point about 2/3 of the way through the game. In "Bureaucracy" you get quizzed on the contents of "Conspiracy Today", or whatever that silly "feely" was titled.
Most of the pagan artifacts that I know of are on display in the Vatican Museums. You can even go for free on the last Saturday of every month. The entry fee at other times is apparently controlled by the company that paid for the renovations a few years ago.
On the other hand, the linked article is referring to an ancient Roman burial ground that happened to be under Vatican property. As the article says, the burial ground has been opened to tourists and archeologists. I quote: "The graveyard will be open to the public only on Friday and Saturday mornings, by appointment, for â5 ($6.25). It will also remain an active archaeological dig until the sacred archaeologists feel they have cataloged and uncovered as much as they can, or need to."
The Vatican ran at a loss until very recently (Since some time under John Paul II, the yearly reports have been made public). All "profit" is given by Papal charities to causes that the Pope deems worthy. (These are typically symbolic sums.) The "billions in capital" that are being referred to here are presumably churches and art treasures. Firstly, it is highly unlikely that they could find buyers for these items. so this is not really liquid capital, and secondly, this hurts all of culture, as they most likely would land in private collections and presumably be lost to the rest of the world.
By the way, the Vatican has the Euro same as the rest of Europe. They have a right to mint a very small number of coins with the Pope's image, but these are all sold in collector sets, so you can hardly talk of a real currency.
For example, lying to the detainee. This is forbidden by the Army manual, but allowed to the CIA. Or for example, being rude to the detainee. This is forbidden in the Army manual and allowed to the CIA.
However, the linked article says that the GLOBAL temperature (presumably mean) has dropped precipitously in the past year. There are some graphs here that at least apparently back this up. According to the article in the Daily Tech, this is enough to offset all the increase in the last 100 years.
I have no way of testing the data, indeed, no way of knowing if they are talking about mean or median temperature in the articles, but just to be clear: the article that is linked is not saying "some places are colder, global warming is wrong", but "the whole planet is colder, global warming is wrong". That's an entirely different animal.
I think that the problem is that there are a lot of people who use the name "Intelligent Design" for different things. I suspect anyone who is reading Slashdot and considers himself a follower of Intelligent Design has a theory somewhat like the GP post: Evolution is an observed fact, but the mechanism for that observed fact is unclear, but seems to show signs of being directed toward positive results, hence the hypothesis of an intelligent designer who either planned it all that way in advance, or nudges the system along the way, or similar -- the point being that evolution is fully accepted by these people.
Unfortunately, there is a much more vocal group of people who use the name "Intelligent Design" as a code-word for creationism according to Genesis 1-2. These people deny evolution and generally see all differentiation of species as a direct intervention of the creator. This group uses the name because it's much easier to sell politically than creationism...
I suppose we need a new term to differentiate the two concepts, so that we are at least on the same wavelength when we disagree about this...
Galileo didn't have Kepler's three laws of planetary motion. He still thought that the orbits went in circles. Thus his version of the Copernican system, while having less epicycles added to the orbits of the planets than the Ptolemaic system, still required epicycles. Thus it was not an obvious "this is right, this is wrong", but a marginally simpler explanation of the reality. That the Church officials didn't immediately accept this as true beyond a shadow of a doubt is actually a wise decision. Galileo's central "proof" of the rotation of the earth around the sun in his "Dialogo", by the way, was the movement of the tides -- he claimed that the water was being sloshed from one side to another by the rotation of the earth around the sun. I hope that most of us here know that this is a completely wrong theory.
I would submit that Galileo's condemnation was primarily caused by pride and bad judgment (on both sides). He published his work not in Latin, so that it could be reviewed by other scientists, but in Italian, so that he could convert the people to his cause. When he went to get permission to publish the book, he went not to the Inquisition, but to a priest whom he trusted. This priest (Father Riccardi) advised him to take the word "tides" out of the title (it was originally entitled "Dialog about the Tides") and to add a preface saying that Galileo himself didn't want to take sides in the controversy, then to show the book directly to Pope Urban VIII.
Pope Urban VIII received him well. He offered him a lifelong pension to free up his time for study (he received this despite the later condemnation), but asked him to add a statement about the omnipotence of God in the conclusion. Galileo then went to the priest he visited before (Riccardi) and got an Imprimatur in blank (without Riccardi having read the final text). Here comes the bad judgment: he put the statement about the omnipotence of God in practically the same words used by the Pope into the mouth of "Simplicius", who is the naive character of the dialog, trapped in the Aristotelean worldview. (I.e. he said "The Pope is a simpleton!") He then had the book published in Florence, not in Rome (presumably to let it spread before the Inquisition saw it).
I think that the results of this are pretty obvious -- the Pope, who was previously favorable to him, is suddenly deeply offended; Father Riccardi feels betrayed, since he is the one who appears to have given permission for this; and the Inquisition feels that he has gone behind their back. The Inquisition then determined that the work was tendentious, in that it doesn't strive to avoid taking a position, as the preface claimed. This led to his trial and imprisonment.
It is worth mentioning that the imprisonment during the trial was five luxurious rooms provided by an official of the Inquisition who was favorable to the heliocentric theory. He was ultimately condemned, not for teaching heliocentrism or for heresy (he signed a statement saying he had always believed, and would always believe -- so help him God -- what the Catholic Church teaches), but for lack of obedience to the Pope, breaking promises, and going behind the Pope's back. This led to the banning of the book and to house arrest. Three of the ten judges did not sign the verdict. The famous "Eppur si muove" did not occur -- it is first referenced in a painting from 1645, which shows Galileo in an actual dungeon, which he never saw in the entire course of his troubles with the Inquisition.
"House arrest" meant that Galileo moved into the Villa Medici, later a Bishop's Palace when the plague hit Florence, and finally to his own house in Florence. There he continued his research, receiving a monthly allowance from the Medicis and a yearly pension from the Vatican. His most important work, the Discorsi, which is about classical mechanics and gravity, was published during this house arrest. Galileo's rehabilitation occurred first in 1741 (about fifty years after Kepler and others provided a mathematical basis for t