Martin Luther and some of the other early Protestants reacted negatively far years before the Church did.
Small nitpick. The rest of your post is excellent and very informative, but you may want to check facts here. We only have one well-known quotation by Luther criticizing Copernicus, but it's a second-hand account of a remark made over dinner before Copernicus's book actually came out -- so, hardly an actual refutation of anything. More along the lines of, "Have you heard about this guy with this crazy theory?" (And it was kind of crazy, compared to traditional theories of the universe at the time.)
As for Luther's followers, recent research has demonstrated that Lutheran astronomers in Wittenberg played a major role in disseminating Copernicus's ideas. (See, for example, the work by scholar Peter Barker on this issue.) You do realize that both Kepler and his teacher Michael Maestlin were Lutherans?
As for other reformers, Calvin has traditionally been cited as anti-Copernican, but a thorough search by recent historians of science has failed to find any actual historical source for one quotation against Copernicus. It seems this was probably made up sometime in the 19th century, since it appears in none of Calvin's voluminous writings or contemporary accounts of Calvin. So, whatever Calvin thought of Copernicus, he didn't seem to think he was even worth bothering about.
That's not to say there were Protestants against Copernicus's theory, just as there were those in Rome who threatened to write a refutation against Copernicus's treatise when it first came out, but seemed never to get around to it. All in all, though, there doesn't seem to evidence that the Protestants were significantly more anti-Copernican than Catholics, and if anything, the Lutherans in particular contributed significantly to the spread of Copernicus's ideas.
Not a priest. Actually a cleric, a step below the priest in the hierarchy of the church. But still had to take a vow of celibacy.
We actually don't know for certain, but most science historians have concluded there is no reliable evidence suggesting that he was a priest.
Nevertheless, it's interesting to note that the first person to claim that Copernicus was a priest appears to be Galileo, when he was trying to keep Copernicus's book off the banned books list (the book had been freely available for some 75 years since Copernicus's death). That's the main historical source for the claim, but it appears that Galileo just made that up.
You do realize that papal infallibility was only officially asserted as a doctrine by the First Vatican Council in 1870? It's hardly something that pertains to Galileo's trial centuries before. Since 1870, some historical documents have since been classified "infallible," but those are quite rare -- certainly nothing as mundane as the whole Galileo business. And many more "infallible" writings have come out of ecumenical councils than from popes.
If you actually want an answer to your question, rather than just going on an ignorant self-righteous rant, you can easily find a lot of this information:
then 400-500 years later admit that your predecessors made a mistake and make use of the very science you tried to bury to shout from the rooftops how good and holy you are to be able to admit the error at all - really put on a show - set up an observatory, rebury people.
Okay, first off -- you're conflating a whole bunch of stuff between Copernicus and Galileo. Copernicus lived about a century before Galileo, was a priest, wrote his book, dedicated it to the pope, and nothing happened to it for about 75 years after his death. That hardly qualifies as trying to "bury" the science, and Copernicus was certainly never persecuted.
Even in the early 1600s, Copernicus's book wasn't banned -- just a few short sections that asserted that heliocentrism was actually true as opposed to a mathematical model were censored. Galileo was free to read Copernicus's book, and I think we actually have his copy that just has a couple sentences edited out. They weren't trying to suppress the theory at that time. Oh, and by the way, Copernicus's theory still required lots of epicycles, and Copernicus really didn't have good data to back it up (even Kepler noticed that Copernicus seemed to fudge some data).
Galileo came along and asserted that heliocentrism was "true." Yes, we can talk about the various political things that were going on, but you have to admit that at that time Galileo couldn't actually prove that his theory was "true," only that it was one possible model that explained the observations. The Tychonic model, which the Catholic church endorsed, also modeled the empirical data just as well, although admittedly it was what we'd now consider a more complicated model. You could argue that Galileo should have been believed because his solution seemed more "elegant," but he couldn't actually prove it was "true." With James Bradley's measurements of parallax and such in the 18th century, you could finally prove that the heliocentric model was true, but before that, all you could say was that it was a better model according to some standards. And according to the standards of Aristotelean philosophy and science that were still accepted by most scientists in 1630, a moving earth posed significant problems.
Really... please go crack open a book before going on these sorts of rants. I'll condemn the church's actions in the Galileo affair as well, but not out of ignorance.
You are an idiot. NO ONE understood that the orbits were elliptical until Kepler.
Not to jump in on your rant, but you do realize that Kepler died in 1630, three years before Galileo went on trial? Kepler discovered the first law (the one about ellipses) around 1605, and it had been published decades before (1609, I think) all of the Galileo nonsense erupted. Galileo liked circles better, because he thought they were a more perfect geometrical figure, more in line with the "perfection" of God's creation. Nevertheless, contrary to the GP, I don't think the whole circle/ellipse business had much to do with why he was censured by the church.
I'm not going to defend the church's actions. But I also think you need to check your facts before going around calling people idiots.
However, natural science can very easily show the non-existence of things. Very trivially, we can take a thing as non-existing if it a priori contradicts itself logically.
Yeah, the problem with such arguments is that they depend on (1) the current conception of a "proper" logical argument, as well as (2) the "a priori" assumptions.
For example, historically, St. Anselm claimed to "prove" the existence of God using what he thought was a logical argument. Descartes, after claiming to throw out all assumptions and only asserting "I think, therefore I am," only a little while later only is able to get out of his solipsism by using what he thinks is a logical argument that God exists. Today, most logicians wouldn't agree that such arguments are logical. Can we guarantee that our present understanding of logic will hold up over time?
As for the second issue, take, for example, your scenario about the novel particle. You manage to prove that it's a logical contradiction only based on the current conception of an expanding universe originating at a Big Bang. 75 years ago, you couldn't depend on physicists to believe your "a priori" assumption; even 50 years ago, there were still a number of hold-outs for the "steady state" theory of the universe, despite a lot of evidence to the contrary. Who's to say that in another century, scientists might not discover something that requires a new model of the history of the universe (or maybe just a more subtle one) that wouldn't rule out your scenario? Or, for your DNA example, you again rely on our current genetic understanding, which is still in the process of rapid development. Perhaps there is some minor and as-yet unnoticed function for junk DNA.
Of course, I agree with your general conclusions, and I don't think either of your scenarios is likely. But many scientists have made the mistake in the past of assuming certain things to be "impossible" (or possible) based on supposed "a priori" arguments. It's a fun exercise to try to prove things "impossible," but you're only proving that your scenarios contradict our current theories and understanding using accepted logical standards of today, not that they are actually logically impossible to ever exist in the universe.
Only sociopaths have what it takes to succeed in modern business, everyone else is just too weak.
Your idealized past implied by your use of "modern" here never existed. The business world has always had a significant number of such people, and before them, many leaders in most countries in the world... going back for millennia. The megalomaniac has often been the one to lead the alpha males of society. (It has a sort of logic, if you think about it.)
We used to shun or kill monsters, now we elevate them to the status of Gods.
Yeah, 'cause history isn't full of crazy rampaging dictators running around the world killing people. (/sarcasm)
Who the hell modded this "insightful"? It's a sarcastic joke about how this is what the Communist regime in China has supposed to achieve for much of the last century. It's not a plan for future action.
And unfortunately, the tradition of copyright depends on copying being hard. Now that it's easy, there's really no way to prevent people from doing this.
Umm... I have to call BS on your "tradition of copyright." Copyright wasn't created until movable type on presses made mass "copying" possible and relatively easy to do. The "tradition of copyright" came into being when copying became easy. So, various governments stepped in and made such things illegal (for a limited time, anyway) to enable creators and publishers a little time to make a profit.
I'll admit that the combination of digital formats for data and the internet has made it easier to distribute materials. The question isn't whether we can "prevent people from doing this" (because governments could -- it's just not the preferred world most of us want to live in), but whether we should. Or -- what measures are reasonable to take and what measures aren't.
Like every other content producer, eventually you're going to have to learn to make money from the people who are willing to pay you.
Exactly. But how do you propose to do that if intellectual property no longer exists? Unless you're creating a tangible good (and even then your design could be stolen), all it takes is a few internet anarchists to distribute your content and you're out of business.
(By the way, I'm in favor making copyright laws much less stringent -- perhaps taking them back to a 7 or 14 year term with an optional extension. And I agree that a good solution to the problem of copyright in digital media is still wanting. But I'm not quite ready to just throw up my hands and say, "Oh well, copyright is dead because it's too easy to copy these days." It's a broken system, but that doesn't mean we can figure out a better one.)
Companies may have a "privacy policy," but they are generally not required to follow it by law
Sorry -- self-correction: what I meant is that companies are not generally legally required to have such detailed privacy policies. Obviously, if a company guarantees your privacy as part of a contract you enter into with them, such a contract would be legally binding.
I say that Google did cross this line, and the fact that so many people--including entire governments--are reacting so negatively means, in fact, that they were expecting Google, and any other large corporation, to exercise restrain and not do this. This, in my opinion, is an expectation of privacy.
While I agree with your basic idea, I think you're conflating a couple different legal issues. Reasonable "expectation of privacy" is something that generally applies only to actions taken by the government. Government agents (police, etc.) can't just search through your things without your permission. That's what an "expectation of privacy" is usually about.
Corporations, on the other hand, have traditionally had very little constraints placed on how they treat people's "privacy." Companies may have a "privacy policy," but they are generally not required to follow it by law (except when dealing with certain things like medical records, educational records, etc.). Obviously, if a corporation did to a private citizen what the police might do in searches, they would be trespassing and perhaps stealing (if they take anything), etc. As to information that you make available freely for public access, corporations are just as welcome to it as anyone else.
The problem with the present scenario is that there isn't a good analogy related to older law. In the past, collecting massive quantities of PUBLIC data and manipulating it was difficult, time-consuming, and expensive. Companies who wanted to invest in creating such databases were generally permitted to, because it would take so much effort to amass enough data for significant abuses to happen.
In the past couple decades, however, public data has become much more accessible, much more easily aggregated, much more easily searched, and much more easily analyzed and manipulated.
The issue is not that we have any traditional "expectation of privacy" for such data (since a lot of it is and generally has been public), but that new aggregating tools allow that data to be collected and analyzed in more efficient ways that end up feeling invasive. We need a new conception of "privacy" to deal with such scenarios, because a lot of us would like to continue living our lives without worrying about companies spying on us and tracking our every move, and yet we also would like to maintain our ability to act in some way "publicly" without being tracked. That's really a novel scenario, and I don't think the old legal concept of an "expectation of privacy" covers that well.
The real culprits here are the companies which sold WAPs which were pre-configured to broadcast traffic unencrypted to the world.
Agreed.
I sometimes have to rely on public APs for 'net access. I need to be able to trust that the open ones are there for people to use (lots of them will take my credit card through a trustworthy gateway and let me on the net!) I shouldn't be risking getting in trouble for invading people's privacy by using a network which is configured for open access.
I think this is a different issue. It's one thing to observe data broadcast from a network; it's another to actually use that network for your own purposes. If I sit on my porch across the street and watch your giant television through your window, there's not much you can do legally (except close the blinds), but if I get an extra remote control and start using your television myself (from outside the house) when you're not watching it, we have a different situation. Using an open network without the explicit permission of the owner means you're making use of their resources. That's why, for example, you can be fined for sending "spam" faxes -- by spamming a fax machine, you are costing the owner of that machine money for paper, ink, etc., even if it's a few cents. Observing something from a public place is one thing -- but using someone's equipment that resides on their private property without their permission is a different animal.
With flamebait lines like that, I don't know how you got a +5 insightful.
I'll admit that particular line you quoted was a bit over the top. I'm just tired of all the "I'm a liberal and I'm open-minded" self-righteous crap that I hear a lot, so when the GP said something like that, I got a bit pissed. Sorry.
As far as one-dimensional thinking goes, yes, everybody knows the liberal-conservative axis is just a loose approximation.
For someone complaining about my generalizations, I beg to differ with your "everybody knows" here. Most of the people I talk to (except perhaps on some web forums with a lot of political discussion) seem to think that there are just Democrats and Republicans, and there are just liberals and conservatives, and some people might be more or less extreme, but if you claim to be off of that line somewhere, you must be a complete wacko, or at least some strange animal they've never seen before.
It sort of reminds me of my dad's story about growing up. He was an Eastern Orthodox Christian. Everyone else at school was Catholic or Protestant (and perhaps a couple Jews). Who you were, who you hung out with, etc. was very much influenced by whether kids thought of you as Catholic or Protestant. Even though there are hundred of millions of Orthodox worldwide (and even a significant community where my dad grew up), he was viewed as something strange.
Like the kids at my dad's school, most people just associate most political positions with these simplified categories. To try to tease apart the details of these positions would be like trying to have an argument about transubstantiation or eschatology with my dad's friends -- the details of their beliefs didn't matter, just that they identified with one group or another. As long as we have two dominant political parties that are associated with the two prevailing positions on a perceived one-dimensional political spectrum, it's safe to say that most people will think of those are "normal," and they'll assume all sorts of things about people who associate themselves with either position.
Thus, to most people (and most people don't hang out on political blogs or have detailed reasoned political discussions that radically challenge their beliefs) the liberal/conservative divide is pretty much how they think of politics. Not just an "approximation," since they don't have another model to use.
I read liberal blogs often and I note plenty of eclecticism among liberals; they're not sheep.
To risk another generalization, I submit that the "vast majority of liberals" aren't active on liberal blogs. Most people who call themselves "liberal," like most people in general, aren't particularly interested in having detailed discussions on politics that actually question their own beliefs in any detail. Though among my liberal friends I do note a marked propensity to stand around and congratulate themselves about how open-minded they are when they do talk about their views (often simultaneously disparaging conservative views); I don't notice the same tendency among my conservative friends. The latter definitely disparage liberals, but they don't claim they are open-minded while a priori rejecting the beliefs of others.
There was lots of disagreement among liberals. So, you are mistaken.
Well, as I already admitted, the statement you quoted from my post was an exaggeration. Nevertheless, for the GP I was actually arguing with to be right, you'd have to argue that such disagreement among liberals is actually greater than among conservatives. I'm not sure that's actually the case, which was at the heart of my argument.
Indeed, the vast majority of judgments about "the vast majority" are bullshit.:-)
Lately I've been noticing that I get a lot more google matches that are utterly irrelevant to what I was looking for, and on examination, they usually don't even contain any of the keywords that I typed.
Yeah, which is why I took to using a "+" in front of most of my search terms about a year ago. It seems most people who use Google just type in random words that are something like what they want. I, on the other hand, learned to search by using the exact words that I want. Back when Google was young (over a decade ago), I remember that as something particularly useful -- if you knew the sorts of words likely to occur on a given page you were looking for, you could find it lightening fast compared to other search engines.
Today, though, particularly when I'm researching an obscure topic (or using search terms that are closely related to an idiom or some other idea), I often can't get any Google results anymore that will actually contain all my search terms without using "+". Otherwise, I get all sorts of crap sites vaguely related to one of my search terms.
Naples' graveyard has long been hunting ground for thieves: last year, 5,000 flower pots were stolen from the cemetery.
While I assume there's more evidence than is being repeated in this article, does it strike anyone else like there's a big gulf between stealing a flower pot versus digging up a grave, throwing out the corpse, and then breaking up the wood for an oven fire?
It all strikes me as a lot of work to save a few bucks.
Not to mention that you'd need the appropriate casket wood. Recent and high-end caskets have wood that's often heavily treated, which could release dangerous fumes when burned (dangerous not only for customers but for workers). Caskets that are cheap enough to be made of untreated wood generally deteriorate in the ground pretty fast, so only recent graves would be useful.
All in all, the story seems unlikely, unless someone were doing it for some warped or macabre reason. Even if they have evidence, I'm not sure about the focus on lower-end pizzerias. Cheap pizza places in Naples already use cheap wood to fire their ovens; this seems like a lot of heavy work for little gain.
You can find tip jars at fast-food restaurants, coffee shops...I think I even remember seeing one at a gas-station recently.
Yes, this drives me crazy as well. And generally it's not so much about a "tip" as a place for people to throw coins they don't want to carry.
If I'm at a coffee shop, the only person who might be worthy of a tip might be the barista (if anyone), not the cashier (who sometimes does nothing except hit buttons and give change). But the tip jars are always located by the cash register. Why? They just want people to drop their change in... it has nothing to do with "tipping" in the normal context, since it's difficult to tip on an "service" in that situation.
That said, before tip jars were so common everywhere, I once tried to tip a guy at a fast-food drive-thru. He was incredibly pleasant and polite, apologized that it was taking an extra minute for the order, chatted with me a bit, etc. But he wouldn't take the tip, saying it was just his job. I wish more people had his attitude (though I do realize that fast food is generally a crap job to have).
By the way, people used to tip at gas stations, though generally for "full-service." Today, "full-service" means they pump your gas, but they used to clean windshields, check oil, etc. On the rare occasion when someone does something like that at a full-service station, I generally give him a tip.
Paying short and getting my waitress sacked for "stealing" is pretty low.
That's not what GP was suggesting. See this:
As long as you don't *leave* until the negotiation has come to a mutually acceptable end.
In other words, he was suggesting that you complain and say you didn't get acceptable service, and therefore you think you shouldn't have to pay full price... and if the manager has to get involved, so be it.
I've eaten at restaurants a few times where I've had things go really wrong, but waitstaff or managers make up for it. For example, once I was having drinks with some people, and it turned into dinner. We all started ordering stuff, but for some reason the waitress forgot my order. She brought out the orders one or two at a time, and I thought I was just the last to be served... except she never came back.
After about 5 minutes, we finally flagged her down, and she said she'd check on it. Ten minutes later, we flagged her down again, and she said she'd go look into it right then... and discovered that it had never been placed. I finally received my food another 20 minutes later... after all my friends were done eating.
In this case, the waitress brought the manager over, who apologized for the situation, and gave me the meal for free AND a free drink.
Similar things have happened to me on a couple other occasions. When something goes really wrong as a waiter/waitress, the right thing to do is to fess up and keep the customer happy. It's better for you to tell the manager the problem and let him comp the meal (even if it costs you) than to wait for the customer to complain after getting the bill. As long as such a thing doesn't happen a lot, the manager probably won't fire you.
A liberal media can't survive by advertising in the US or anywhere else.
Sure they could. Market "organic" goods, "green" technologies, Apple products, etc.
Mind you, I'm not saying anything bad about these things. But a lot of such things are marketed this way to "liberals" (or "hippie liberals," as you called them), even though many -- not all, but many -- such products aren't a marked improvement over other options (even in their ecofriendly status, etc.). Yet somehow people are still willing to pay double, triple, or even quadruple the price for such things, just because they carry a certain kind of label.
If you don't think marketers haven't done research to figure out what "hippies liberals" like and how to attract them, you're hopelessly naive.
Oh, and by the way, the "media" isn't just news. While I'll grant you that there's more right-wing news programming than left-wing, the vast majority of television programming, movies, magazines, etc. tend to be more neutral, and if anything, tend to err on the side of being more "liberal" rather than portraying some right-wing fantasy-land.
Some of us just live in the real world and can indicate which is the closest approximation (YMMV) to their high level beliefs.
That's not what the GP was doing. He was arguing that "liberal" = "open-minded" and perhaps "independent thinker." My argument is that while many so-called "liberals" like to think they are more open-minded, they are actually just taking up one particular set of "high level beliefs" as you put it, which are mostly defined by one side of our two-party political discourse.
My argument was with his description of "liberal," which I think isn't true. If he wanted to say that he was a "liberal" because he believed in the various things that most liberals believe in, I'd have no problem with that... and my guess is that would be a fairly accurate description of his beliefs.
Ex: If someone is asked for their political ideology and they say they are a conservative, would you chastise them for not articulating each and every belief? Sounds like a lot of fun for everyone. (eye roll)
Nope. If they choose to identify mostly with that set of beliefs, that's fine. But if they start to claim that being a "conservative" means they are an independent thinker and open to a variety of ideas (as the GP did), I'd want to hear how their thinking is so independent through examples of how they don't just conform in their thinking to a cookie-cutter version of a "conservative."
I agree that people should think more critically, but name calling isn't going to win over people who just don't care as much about politics.
I wasn't name calling. I took issue with the GP's particular characterization of "liberalism," which I don't think is true (although many liberals like to think that way about themselves). I take issue only with that particular aspect of liberalism. If someone wants to call him/herself a "liberal" just because they happen to believe in the set of political positions that are common to liberals, I have absolutely no problem with that.
FYI - if you don't think the links below are propaganda, then I question your ability to think openly.
Not sure what your point is here. Even if these sites weren't propaganda, they'd still be trying to classify positions on a two-dimensional grid instead of a line. I think that such characterizations literally do add another dimension to the way we consider politics, but they are still just (limited) models. Any person who is truly "open to new ideas" will probably have a few aspects of his/her ideology that couldn't be accurately mapped in these spaces.
Nope. Despite the propaganda put out by certain groups that do think in lock-step, liberals are fairly... liberal in their thinking.
Bullshit. Anyone who would ever accept the name "liberal" in the U.S. is already buying into the idea that there is only one possible spectrum of ideas, which goes from "conservative" to "liberal." Most people seem to think that any possible collection of political ideas should be able to be mapped onto that one-dimensional scale. If you actually were thinking independently, you wouldn't buy into this oversimplified (and inaccurate) model.
Liberals don't tend to hold the view that things are perfect just the way they are. Upholding the status quo means thinking the same thing: everything is peachy just the way it is and the old ways are best.
Here's a newsflash -- the reality is that a lot of ideas have been around for a long time. Those who are supposedly "liberal" may actually be wanting to go back to older ideas as well, or older ideas that were rejected in the past for various reasons. If you think that "conservatives" only want things to stay the same, take a look at the "neo-conservative" movement, which has actively tried to change society in the past few decades. In your naive conception of conservative/liberal, is it even possible to have a "neo-conservative"? You might argue that the neo-cons are actually trying to return to some deeper past, but we all know that's just rhetoric -- their idealized past never existed.
Instead, liberals are open to new ideas and new ways of looking at the world, so they tend to be more eclectic in their thoughts and ideals than some other groups.
That may have had some traction in the classic "liberalism" on the nineteenth century. Today, though, the vast majority of "liberals" are just sheep buying into a certain collection of ideas that certain people deem "liberal."
You want to be truly open to new ideas? Start thinking independently for yourself. Analyze every political question from your own perspective and logic, and decide what makes the most sense to you. The standard modern "conservative" and "liberal" positions aren't very consistent and make a lot of assumptions that don't necessarily make a lot of sense.
So, yes, seeing how we have a pretty complex social dynamic going in our species, there exists that period when sexually mature individuals cannot yet be considered fully capable adults.
Perhaps. "Childhood," however, is primarily a social construction which has varied historically and within different societies. For most of history, teenagers were capable of work and therefore were treated pretty much as adults. In terms of sexuality, practice has varied from culture to culture. In some, becoming sexually active as soon as puberty arrives is fine; in others, there is some expectation to wait for greater maturity. In modern society, we've decided that teenagers -- who are notoriously volatile and have a great potential for causing mischief in society at large -- need to be controlled... hence, compulsory "education" that contains them in schools and infantilizes them. (That's a different topic, but do some research into the history of secondary education in the U.S. and Western Europe and where it came from before you think I'm being cynical.)
In sum, what you're talking about is a particular perspective. Personally, I tend to agree with you that people need time to mature past puberty. But I'm not going to claim that such a standard is valid for all times and places. The GP is not just arguing semantics here.
I find it hard to believe that any state would be so small that book manufacturers wouldn't cater to them. The whole argument seem to be a bit facetious.
Well, that's sort of true these days with electronic publishing, etc., but you're not going to get a new textbook written to specs for your state curriculum. However, it helps to be one of the 20 "adoption states," where the state board actually approves textbooks. If you're a school district in one of the other states, you're probably not going to get a customized textbook unless you do it yourself.
Before the last decade or so, Texas, California, and New York (as the most populous states) actually did determine some aspects of information that ended up in standard textbooks. For some publishers that still tend toward national editions, these state decisions may still have an impact.
Except you're missing an important point. Neither New York nor California passed laws telling history book writers what version of history they were allowed to include nor what religious or political slants were required by the state. [...] Textbook publishers were not required by law to have a bias prior to the Texan law. You can claim they did, but you need to support that hypothesis with real evidence. We know textbooks are being forced to have a slant now, because a law was passed requiring specific things determined by politicians, not historians.
I agree with you that what Texas is doing here is ridiculous, but... wow. If you don't think textbook publishers have yielded to state biases for decades, you're hopelessly naive.
Each state generally has a state board of education, sometimes elected and sometimes appointed. Regardless, these people generally have a political slant of some sort. The way the curriculum for the state is accepted varies -- sometimes aspects of it are part of state law, sometimes they are just policies created by the board of education, but there are political fights on these boards over controversial issues in many states.
The curricula of small states doesn't really matter to textbook publishers, but the biggest markets (California, Texas, and New York) generally determine the major versions of textbooks that are created.
If you don't think these boards of education set rather specific standards for the exact materials to be covered in curricula, think again. Check out the detailed standards given for New York and California curricula:
Take some time reading though the thousands of pages on these (and similar sites), and you'll quickly discover some of the "standards" that seem to have a political slant one way or another. Other standards seem to be completely arbitrary choices about what gets emphasized.
And when it comes time for textbook adoption, you can bet the states will check to see which textbooks line up most closely with their specified "standards."
Slashdot Mirror
Martin Luther and some of the other early Protestants reacted negatively far years before the Church did.
Small nitpick. The rest of your post is excellent and very informative, but you may want to check facts here. We only have one well-known quotation by Luther criticizing Copernicus, but it's a second-hand account of a remark made over dinner before Copernicus's book actually came out -- so, hardly an actual refutation of anything. More along the lines of, "Have you heard about this guy with this crazy theory?" (And it was kind of crazy, compared to traditional theories of the universe at the time.)
As for Luther's followers, recent research has demonstrated that Lutheran astronomers in Wittenberg played a major role in disseminating Copernicus's ideas. (See, for example, the work by scholar Peter Barker on this issue.) You do realize that both Kepler and his teacher Michael Maestlin were Lutherans?
As for other reformers, Calvin has traditionally been cited as anti-Copernican, but a thorough search by recent historians of science has failed to find any actual historical source for one quotation against Copernicus. It seems this was probably made up sometime in the 19th century, since it appears in none of Calvin's voluminous writings or contemporary accounts of Calvin. So, whatever Calvin thought of Copernicus, he didn't seem to think he was even worth bothering about.
That's not to say there were Protestants against Copernicus's theory, just as there were those in Rome who threatened to write a refutation against Copernicus's treatise when it first came out, but seemed never to get around to it. All in all, though, there doesn't seem to evidence that the Protestants were significantly more anti-Copernican than Catholics, and if anything, the Lutherans in particular contributed significantly to the spread of Copernicus's ideas.
Not a priest. Actually a cleric, a step below the priest in the hierarchy of the church. But still had to take a vow of celibacy.
We actually don't know for certain, but most science historians have concluded there is no reliable evidence suggesting that he was a priest.
Nevertheless, it's interesting to note that the first person to claim that Copernicus was a priest appears to be Galileo, when he was trying to keep Copernicus's book off the banned books list (the book had been freely available for some 75 years since Copernicus's death). That's the main historical source for the claim, but it appears that Galileo just made that up.
What's the definition of infallible?
You do realize that papal infallibility was only officially asserted as a doctrine by the First Vatican Council in 1870? It's hardly something that pertains to Galileo's trial centuries before. Since 1870, some historical documents have since been classified "infallible," but those are quite rare -- certainly nothing as mundane as the whole Galileo business. And many more "infallible" writings have come out of ecumenical councils than from popes.
If you actually want an answer to your question, rather than just going on an ignorant self-righteous rant, you can easily find a lot of this information:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papal_infallibility
then 400-500 years later admit that your predecessors made a mistake and make use of the very science you tried to bury to shout from the rooftops how good and holy you are to be able to admit the error at all - really put on a show - set up an observatory, rebury people.
Okay, first off -- you're conflating a whole bunch of stuff between Copernicus and Galileo. Copernicus lived about a century before Galileo, was a priest, wrote his book, dedicated it to the pope, and nothing happened to it for about 75 years after his death. That hardly qualifies as trying to "bury" the science, and Copernicus was certainly never persecuted.
Even in the early 1600s, Copernicus's book wasn't banned -- just a few short sections that asserted that heliocentrism was actually true as opposed to a mathematical model were censored. Galileo was free to read Copernicus's book, and I think we actually have his copy that just has a couple sentences edited out. They weren't trying to suppress the theory at that time. Oh, and by the way, Copernicus's theory still required lots of epicycles, and Copernicus really didn't have good data to back it up (even Kepler noticed that Copernicus seemed to fudge some data).
Galileo came along and asserted that heliocentrism was "true." Yes, we can talk about the various political things that were going on, but you have to admit that at that time Galileo couldn't actually prove that his theory was "true," only that it was one possible model that explained the observations. The Tychonic model, which the Catholic church endorsed, also modeled the empirical data just as well, although admittedly it was what we'd now consider a more complicated model. You could argue that Galileo should have been believed because his solution seemed more "elegant," but he couldn't actually prove it was "true." With James Bradley's measurements of parallax and such in the 18th century, you could finally prove that the heliocentric model was true, but before that, all you could say was that it was a better model according to some standards. And according to the standards of Aristotelean philosophy and science that were still accepted by most scientists in 1630, a moving earth posed significant problems.
Really... please go crack open a book before going on these sorts of rants. I'll condemn the church's actions in the Galileo affair as well, but not out of ignorance.
You are an idiot. NO ONE understood that the orbits were elliptical until Kepler.
Not to jump in on your rant, but you do realize that Kepler died in 1630, three years before Galileo went on trial? Kepler discovered the first law (the one about ellipses) around 1605, and it had been published decades before (1609, I think) all of the Galileo nonsense erupted. Galileo liked circles better, because he thought they were a more perfect geometrical figure, more in line with the "perfection" of God's creation. Nevertheless, contrary to the GP, I don't think the whole circle/ellipse business had much to do with why he was censured by the church.
I'm not going to defend the church's actions. But I also think you need to check your facts before going around calling people idiots.
However, natural science can very easily show the non-existence of things. Very trivially, we can take a thing as non-existing if it a priori contradicts itself logically.
Yeah, the problem with such arguments is that they depend on (1) the current conception of a "proper" logical argument, as well as (2) the "a priori" assumptions.
For example, historically, St. Anselm claimed to "prove" the existence of God using what he thought was a logical argument. Descartes, after claiming to throw out all assumptions and only asserting "I think, therefore I am," only a little while later only is able to get out of his solipsism by using what he thinks is a logical argument that God exists. Today, most logicians wouldn't agree that such arguments are logical. Can we guarantee that our present understanding of logic will hold up over time?
As for the second issue, take, for example, your scenario about the novel particle. You manage to prove that it's a logical contradiction only based on the current conception of an expanding universe originating at a Big Bang. 75 years ago, you couldn't depend on physicists to believe your "a priori" assumption; even 50 years ago, there were still a number of hold-outs for the "steady state" theory of the universe, despite a lot of evidence to the contrary. Who's to say that in another century, scientists might not discover something that requires a new model of the history of the universe (or maybe just a more subtle one) that wouldn't rule out your scenario? Or, for your DNA example, you again rely on our current genetic understanding, which is still in the process of rapid development. Perhaps there is some minor and as-yet unnoticed function for junk DNA.
Of course, I agree with your general conclusions, and I don't think either of your scenarios is likely. But many scientists have made the mistake in the past of assuming certain things to be "impossible" (or possible) based on supposed "a priori" arguments. It's a fun exercise to try to prove things "impossible," but you're only proving that your scenarios contradict our current theories and understanding using accepted logical standards of today, not that they are actually logically impossible to ever exist in the universe.
Only sociopaths have what it takes to succeed in modern business, everyone else is just too weak.
Your idealized past implied by your use of "modern" here never existed. The business world has always had a significant number of such people, and before them, many leaders in most countries in the world... going back for millennia. The megalomaniac has often been the one to lead the alpha males of society. (It has a sort of logic, if you think about it.)
We used to shun or kill monsters, now we elevate them to the status of Gods.
Yeah, 'cause history isn't full of crazy rampaging dictators running around the world killing people. (/sarcasm)
If it's a bridge collapse, I suppose that's one thing. If it's a dog that scares itself with its own farts, I'd say this decreases quality.
Maybe on your local news. Compared to some of the stories I've seen on my local news, a flatuphobic canine would be a marked improvement.
Sorry to self-reply, but I mod myself down (before someone else does) for bad grammar and being wordy. :)
Who the hell modded this "insightful"? It's a sarcastic joke about how this is what the Communist regime in China has supposed to achieve for much of the last century. It's not a plan for future action.
And unfortunately, the tradition of copyright depends on copying being hard. Now that it's easy, there's really no way to prevent people from doing this.
Umm... I have to call BS on your "tradition of copyright." Copyright wasn't created until movable type on presses made mass "copying" possible and relatively easy to do. The "tradition of copyright" came into being when copying became easy. So, various governments stepped in and made such things illegal (for a limited time, anyway) to enable creators and publishers a little time to make a profit.
I'll admit that the combination of digital formats for data and the internet has made it easier to distribute materials. The question isn't whether we can "prevent people from doing this" (because governments could -- it's just not the preferred world most of us want to live in), but whether we should. Or -- what measures are reasonable to take and what measures aren't.
Like every other content producer, eventually you're going to have to learn to make money from the people who are willing to pay you.
Exactly. But how do you propose to do that if intellectual property no longer exists? Unless you're creating a tangible good (and even then your design could be stolen), all it takes is a few internet anarchists to distribute your content and you're out of business.
(By the way, I'm in favor making copyright laws much less stringent -- perhaps taking them back to a 7 or 14 year term with an optional extension. And I agree that a good solution to the problem of copyright in digital media is still wanting. But I'm not quite ready to just throw up my hands and say, "Oh well, copyright is dead because it's too easy to copy these days." It's a broken system, but that doesn't mean we can figure out a better one.)
Companies may have a "privacy policy," but they are generally not required to follow it by law
Sorry -- self-correction: what I meant is that companies are not generally legally required to have such detailed privacy policies. Obviously, if a company guarantees your privacy as part of a contract you enter into with them, such a contract would be legally binding.
I say that Google did cross this line, and the fact that so many people--including entire governments--are reacting so negatively means, in fact, that they were expecting Google, and any other large corporation, to exercise restrain and not do this. This, in my opinion, is an expectation of privacy.
While I agree with your basic idea, I think you're conflating a couple different legal issues. Reasonable "expectation of privacy" is something that generally applies only to actions taken by the government. Government agents (police, etc.) can't just search through your things without your permission. That's what an "expectation of privacy" is usually about.
Corporations, on the other hand, have traditionally had very little constraints placed on how they treat people's "privacy." Companies may have a "privacy policy," but they are generally not required to follow it by law (except when dealing with certain things like medical records, educational records, etc.). Obviously, if a corporation did to a private citizen what the police might do in searches, they would be trespassing and perhaps stealing (if they take anything), etc. As to information that you make available freely for public access, corporations are just as welcome to it as anyone else.
The problem with the present scenario is that there isn't a good analogy related to older law. In the past, collecting massive quantities of PUBLIC data and manipulating it was difficult, time-consuming, and expensive. Companies who wanted to invest in creating such databases were generally permitted to, because it would take so much effort to amass enough data for significant abuses to happen.
In the past couple decades, however, public data has become much more accessible, much more easily aggregated, much more easily searched, and much more easily analyzed and manipulated.
The issue is not that we have any traditional "expectation of privacy" for such data (since a lot of it is and generally has been public), but that new aggregating tools allow that data to be collected and analyzed in more efficient ways that end up feeling invasive. We need a new conception of "privacy" to deal with such scenarios, because a lot of us would like to continue living our lives without worrying about companies spying on us and tracking our every move, and yet we also would like to maintain our ability to act in some way "publicly" without being tracked. That's really a novel scenario, and I don't think the old legal concept of an "expectation of privacy" covers that well.
The real culprits here are the companies which sold WAPs which were pre-configured to broadcast traffic unencrypted to the world.
Agreed.
I sometimes have to rely on public APs for 'net access. I need to be able to trust that the open ones are there for people to use (lots of them will take my credit card through a trustworthy gateway and let me on the net!) I shouldn't be risking getting in trouble for invading people's privacy by using a network which is configured for open access.
I think this is a different issue. It's one thing to observe data broadcast from a network; it's another to actually use that network for your own purposes. If I sit on my porch across the street and watch your giant television through your window, there's not much you can do legally (except close the blinds), but if I get an extra remote control and start using your television myself (from outside the house) when you're not watching it, we have a different situation. Using an open network without the explicit permission of the owner means you're making use of their resources. That's why, for example, you can be fined for sending "spam" faxes -- by spamming a fax machine, you are costing the owner of that machine money for paper, ink, etc., even if it's a few cents. Observing something from a public place is one thing -- but using someone's equipment that resides on their private property without their permission is a different animal.
Now just define 'porn' for me.
"A naked sheep."
Oh wait... that's "shorn."
Damn... I'm always confusing my bilabial plosives and my palato-alveolar fricatives. (And no, despite their naughty sound, those aren't porn terms.)
With flamebait lines like that, I don't know how you got a +5 insightful.
I'll admit that particular line you quoted was a bit over the top. I'm just tired of all the "I'm a liberal and I'm open-minded" self-righteous crap that I hear a lot, so when the GP said something like that, I got a bit pissed. Sorry.
As far as one-dimensional thinking goes, yes, everybody knows the liberal-conservative axis is just a loose approximation.
For someone complaining about my generalizations, I beg to differ with your "everybody knows" here. Most of the people I talk to (except perhaps on some web forums with a lot of political discussion) seem to think that there are just Democrats and Republicans, and there are just liberals and conservatives, and some people might be more or less extreme, but if you claim to be off of that line somewhere, you must be a complete wacko, or at least some strange animal they've never seen before.
It sort of reminds me of my dad's story about growing up. He was an Eastern Orthodox Christian. Everyone else at school was Catholic or Protestant (and perhaps a couple Jews). Who you were, who you hung out with, etc. was very much influenced by whether kids thought of you as Catholic or Protestant. Even though there are hundred of millions of Orthodox worldwide (and even a significant community where my dad grew up), he was viewed as something strange.
Like the kids at my dad's school, most people just associate most political positions with these simplified categories. To try to tease apart the details of these positions would be like trying to have an argument about transubstantiation or eschatology with my dad's friends -- the details of their beliefs didn't matter, just that they identified with one group or another. As long as we have two dominant political parties that are associated with the two prevailing positions on a perceived one-dimensional political spectrum, it's safe to say that most people will think of those are "normal," and they'll assume all sorts of things about people who associate themselves with either position.
Thus, to most people (and most people don't hang out on political blogs or have detailed reasoned political discussions that radically challenge their beliefs) the liberal/conservative divide is pretty much how they think of politics. Not just an "approximation," since they don't have another model to use.
I read liberal blogs often and I note plenty of eclecticism among liberals; they're not sheep.
To risk another generalization, I submit that the "vast majority of liberals" aren't active on liberal blogs. Most people who call themselves "liberal," like most people in general, aren't particularly interested in having detailed discussions on politics that actually question their own beliefs in any detail. Though among my liberal friends I do note a marked propensity to stand around and congratulate themselves about how open-minded they are when they do talk about their views (often simultaneously disparaging conservative views); I don't notice the same tendency among my conservative friends. The latter definitely disparage liberals, but they don't claim they are open-minded while a priori rejecting the beliefs of others.
There was lots of disagreement among liberals. So, you are mistaken.
Well, as I already admitted, the statement you quoted from my post was an exaggeration. Nevertheless, for the GP I was actually arguing with to be right, you'd have to argue that such disagreement among liberals is actually greater than among conservatives. I'm not sure that's actually the case, which was at the heart of my argument.
Indeed, the vast majority of judgments about "the vast majority" are bullshit. :-)
On that, we can agree. :)
Lately I've been noticing that I get a lot more google matches that are utterly irrelevant to what I was looking for, and on examination, they usually don't even contain any of the keywords that I typed.
Yeah, which is why I took to using a "+" in front of most of my search terms about a year ago. It seems most people who use Google just type in random words that are something like what they want. I, on the other hand, learned to search by using the exact words that I want. Back when Google was young (over a decade ago), I remember that as something particularly useful -- if you knew the sorts of words likely to occur on a given page you were looking for, you could find it lightening fast compared to other search engines.
Today, though, particularly when I'm researching an obscure topic (or using search terms that are closely related to an idiom or some other idea), I often can't get any Google results anymore that will actually contain all my search terms without using "+". Otherwise, I get all sorts of crap sites vaguely related to one of my search terms.
From TFA:
Naples' graveyard has long been hunting ground for thieves: last year, 5,000 flower pots were stolen from the cemetery.
While I assume there's more evidence than is being repeated in this article, does it strike anyone else like there's a big gulf between stealing a flower pot versus digging up a grave, throwing out the corpse, and then breaking up the wood for an oven fire?
It all strikes me as a lot of work to save a few bucks.
Not to mention that you'd need the appropriate casket wood. Recent and high-end caskets have wood that's often heavily treated, which could release dangerous fumes when burned (dangerous not only for customers but for workers). Caskets that are cheap enough to be made of untreated wood generally deteriorate in the ground pretty fast, so only recent graves would be useful.
All in all, the story seems unlikely, unless someone were doing it for some warped or macabre reason. Even if they have evidence, I'm not sure about the focus on lower-end pizzerias. Cheap pizza places in Naples already use cheap wood to fire their ovens; this seems like a lot of heavy work for little gain.
You can find tip jars at fast-food restaurants, coffee shops...I think I even remember seeing one at a gas-station recently.
Yes, this drives me crazy as well. And generally it's not so much about a "tip" as a place for people to throw coins they don't want to carry.
If I'm at a coffee shop, the only person who might be worthy of a tip might be the barista (if anyone), not the cashier (who sometimes does nothing except hit buttons and give change). But the tip jars are always located by the cash register. Why? They just want people to drop their change in... it has nothing to do with "tipping" in the normal context, since it's difficult to tip on an "service" in that situation.
That said, before tip jars were so common everywhere, I once tried to tip a guy at a fast-food drive-thru. He was incredibly pleasant and polite, apologized that it was taking an extra minute for the order, chatted with me a bit, etc. But he wouldn't take the tip, saying it was just his job. I wish more people had his attitude (though I do realize that fast food is generally a crap job to have).
By the way, people used to tip at gas stations, though generally for "full-service." Today, "full-service" means they pump your gas, but they used to clean windshields, check oil, etc. On the rare occasion when someone does something like that at a full-service station, I generally give him a tip.
Paying short and getting my waitress sacked for "stealing" is pretty low.
That's not what GP was suggesting. See this:
As long as you don't *leave* until the negotiation has come to a mutually acceptable end.
In other words, he was suggesting that you complain and say you didn't get acceptable service, and therefore you think you shouldn't have to pay full price... and if the manager has to get involved, so be it.
I've eaten at restaurants a few times where I've had things go really wrong, but waitstaff or managers make up for it. For example, once I was having drinks with some people, and it turned into dinner. We all started ordering stuff, but for some reason the waitress forgot my order. She brought out the orders one or two at a time, and I thought I was just the last to be served... except she never came back.
After about 5 minutes, we finally flagged her down, and she said she'd check on it. Ten minutes later, we flagged her down again, and she said she'd go look into it right then... and discovered that it had never been placed. I finally received my food another 20 minutes later... after all my friends were done eating.
In this case, the waitress brought the manager over, who apologized for the situation, and gave me the meal for free AND a free drink.
Similar things have happened to me on a couple other occasions. When something goes really wrong as a waiter/waitress, the right thing to do is to fess up and keep the customer happy. It's better for you to tell the manager the problem and let him comp the meal (even if it costs you) than to wait for the customer to complain after getting the bill. As long as such a thing doesn't happen a lot, the manager probably won't fire you.
A liberal media can't survive by advertising in the US or anywhere else.
Sure they could. Market "organic" goods, "green" technologies, Apple products, etc.
Mind you, I'm not saying anything bad about these things. But a lot of such things are marketed this way to "liberals" (or "hippie liberals," as you called them), even though many -- not all, but many -- such products aren't a marked improvement over other options (even in their ecofriendly status, etc.). Yet somehow people are still willing to pay double, triple, or even quadruple the price for such things, just because they carry a certain kind of label.
If you don't think marketers haven't done research to figure out what "hippies liberals" like and how to attract them, you're hopelessly naive.
Oh, and by the way, the "media" isn't just news. While I'll grant you that there's more right-wing news programming than left-wing, the vast majority of television programming, movies, magazines, etc. tend to be more neutral, and if anything, tend to err on the side of being more "liberal" rather than portraying some right-wing fantasy-land.
Some of us just live in the real world and can indicate which is the closest approximation (YMMV) to their high level beliefs.
That's not what the GP was doing. He was arguing that "liberal" = "open-minded" and perhaps "independent thinker." My argument is that while many so-called "liberals" like to think they are more open-minded, they are actually just taking up one particular set of "high level beliefs" as you put it, which are mostly defined by one side of our two-party political discourse.
My argument was with his description of "liberal," which I think isn't true. If he wanted to say that he was a "liberal" because he believed in the various things that most liberals believe in, I'd have no problem with that... and my guess is that would be a fairly accurate description of his beliefs.
Ex: If someone is asked for their political ideology and they say they are a conservative, would you chastise them for not articulating each and every belief? Sounds like a lot of fun for everyone. (eye roll)
Nope. If they choose to identify mostly with that set of beliefs, that's fine. But if they start to claim that being a "conservative" means they are an independent thinker and open to a variety of ideas (as the GP did), I'd want to hear how their thinking is so independent through examples of how they don't just conform in their thinking to a cookie-cutter version of a "conservative."
I agree that people should think more critically, but name calling isn't going to win over people who just don't care as much about politics.
I wasn't name calling. I took issue with the GP's particular characterization of "liberalism," which I don't think is true (although many liberals like to think that way about themselves). I take issue only with that particular aspect of liberalism. If someone wants to call him/herself a "liberal" just because they happen to believe in the set of political positions that are common to liberals, I have absolutely no problem with that.
FYI - if you don't think the links below are propaganda, then I question your ability to think openly.
Not sure what your point is here. Even if these sites weren't propaganda, they'd still be trying to classify positions on a two-dimensional grid instead of a line. I think that such characterizations literally do add another dimension to the way we consider politics, but they are still just (limited) models. Any person who is truly "open to new ideas" will probably have a few aspects of his/her ideology that couldn't be accurately mapped in these spaces.
Nope. Despite the propaganda put out by certain groups that do think in lock-step, liberals are fairly... liberal in their thinking.
Bullshit. Anyone who would ever accept the name "liberal" in the U.S. is already buying into the idea that there is only one possible spectrum of ideas, which goes from "conservative" to "liberal." Most people seem to think that any possible collection of political ideas should be able to be mapped onto that one-dimensional scale. If you actually were thinking independently, you wouldn't buy into this oversimplified (and inaccurate) model.
Liberals don't tend to hold the view that things are perfect just the way they are. Upholding the status quo means thinking the same thing: everything is peachy just the way it is and the old ways are best.
Here's a newsflash -- the reality is that a lot of ideas have been around for a long time. Those who are supposedly "liberal" may actually be wanting to go back to older ideas as well, or older ideas that were rejected in the past for various reasons. If you think that "conservatives" only want things to stay the same, take a look at the "neo-conservative" movement, which has actively tried to change society in the past few decades. In your naive conception of conservative/liberal, is it even possible to have a "neo-conservative"? You might argue that the neo-cons are actually trying to return to some deeper past, but we all know that's just rhetoric -- their idealized past never existed.
Instead, liberals are open to new ideas and new ways of looking at the world, so they tend to be more eclectic in their thoughts and ideals than some other groups.
That may have had some traction in the classic "liberalism" on the nineteenth century. Today, though, the vast majority of "liberals" are just sheep buying into a certain collection of ideas that certain people deem "liberal."
You want to be truly open to new ideas? Start thinking independently for yourself. Analyze every political question from your own perspective and logic, and decide what makes the most sense to you. The standard modern "conservative" and "liberal" positions aren't very consistent and make a lot of assumptions that don't necessarily make a lot of sense.
So, yes, seeing how we have a pretty complex social dynamic going in our species, there exists that period when sexually mature individuals cannot yet be considered fully capable adults.
Perhaps. "Childhood," however, is primarily a social construction which has varied historically and within different societies. For most of history, teenagers were capable of work and therefore were treated pretty much as adults. In terms of sexuality, practice has varied from culture to culture. In some, becoming sexually active as soon as puberty arrives is fine; in others, there is some expectation to wait for greater maturity. In modern society, we've decided that teenagers -- who are notoriously volatile and have a great potential for causing mischief in society at large -- need to be controlled... hence, compulsory "education" that contains them in schools and infantilizes them. (That's a different topic, but do some research into the history of secondary education in the U.S. and Western Europe and where it came from before you think I'm being cynical.)
In sum, what you're talking about is a particular perspective. Personally, I tend to agree with you that people need time to mature past puberty. But I'm not going to claim that such a standard is valid for all times and places. The GP is not just arguing semantics here.
I find it hard to believe that any state would be so small that book manufacturers wouldn't cater to them. The whole argument seem to be a bit facetious.
Well, that's sort of true these days with electronic publishing, etc., but you're not going to get a new textbook written to specs for your state curriculum. However, it helps to be one of the 20 "adoption states," where the state board actually approves textbooks. If you're a school district in one of the other states, you're probably not going to get a customized textbook unless you do it yourself.
Before the last decade or so, Texas, California, and New York (as the most populous states) actually did determine some aspects of information that ended up in standard textbooks. For some publishers that still tend toward national editions, these state decisions may still have an impact.
Except you're missing an important point. Neither New York nor California passed laws telling history book writers what version of history they were allowed to include nor what religious or political slants were required by the state. [...] Textbook publishers were not required by law to have a bias prior to the Texan law. You can claim they did, but you need to support that hypothesis with real evidence. We know textbooks are being forced to have a slant now, because a law was passed requiring specific things determined by politicians, not historians.
I agree with you that what Texas is doing here is ridiculous, but... wow. If you don't think textbook publishers have yielded to state biases for decades, you're hopelessly naive. Each state generally has a state board of education, sometimes elected and sometimes appointed. Regardless, these people generally have a political slant of some sort. The way the curriculum for the state is accepted varies -- sometimes aspects of it are part of state law, sometimes they are just policies created by the board of education, but there are political fights on these boards over controversial issues in many states.
The curricula of small states doesn't really matter to textbook publishers, but the biggest markets (California, Texas, and New York) generally determine the major versions of textbooks that are created.
If you don't think these boards of education set rather specific standards for the exact materials to be covered in curricula, think again. Check out the detailed standards given for New York and California curricula:
http://www.cde.ca.gov/ci/
http://www.emsc.nysed.gov/ciai/standards.html
Take some time reading though the thousands of pages on these (and similar sites), and you'll quickly discover some of the "standards" that seem to have a political slant one way or another. Other standards seem to be completely arbitrary choices about what gets emphasized.
And when it comes time for textbook adoption, you can bet the states will check to see which textbooks line up most closely with their specified "standards."