I sincerely hope you're being sarcastic. Religions perceive sex as a necessary evil, to be used for procreation only. Actually, most religions go even further and condone the concept of love (and by extension sex) only if it subject to some kind of religious regulation mechanism, because anything else gnaws away at the oppressive stranglehold religion has over everyday life. In order to exist, religion needs to have a monopoly on everything fulfilling and meaningful.
Huh? Apparently you haven't read the biblical Song of Solomon. To quote from Chapter 7 (NIV translation):
1 How beautiful your sandaled feet,
O prince's daughter!
Your graceful legs are like jewels,
the work of a craftsman's hands.
2 Your navel is a rounded goblet
that never lacks blended wine.
Your waist is a mound of wheat
encircled by lilies.
3 Your breasts are like two fawns,
twins of a gazelle.
4 Your neck is like an ivory tower.
Your eyes are the pools of Heshbon
by the gate of Bath Rabbim.
Your nose is like the tower of Lebanon
looking toward Damascus.
5 Your head crowns you like Mount Carmel.
Your hair is like royal tapestry;
the king is held captive by its tresses.
6 How beautiful you are and how pleasing,
O love, with your delights!
7 Your stature is like that of the palm,
and your breasts like clusters of fruit.
8 I said, "I will climb the palm tree;
I will take hold of its fruit."
May your breasts be like the clusters of the vine,
the fragrance of your breath like apples,
9 and your mouth like the best wine.
That doesn't sound like "necessary evil" to me. I'd say it sounds rather enthusiastic.:)
The executives, when they make money, don't take the cash home and stuff it under their mattresses. They invest it, re-injecting the money into the economy in hopes of making more. Should they make the amount they make? I don't know, I'll leave that for another discussion. But you can't say that money is lost.
Uh, the difference is that we can think about these things and have discussions and ask the question, "Why might we be better (or even _different_) than a chicken?" I've never heard of chickens discussing such things - or discussing anything, for that matter.
If you feel that your life is no better than that of a chicken, frankly, I feel sorry for you. If you have no greater purpose than eating and passing on your genetic material, I feel bad for your sake that you've missed out on appreciating beauty, elegance, thought, love, and all the other things that really do make us human.
Of course, that doesn't take into consideration how much more I'm going to have to pay for the Social Security benefits of the baby-boomers without having the other, oh, one-third of my generation to help.
Granted. But just because bad things have been done with something doesn't mean that the thing itself is bad.
no really good authoritative version exists
In what language? English? Greek? French? The 1910 Louis-Segond is regarded as quite good. The NA27 and UBS4 Greek texts have been highly refined in light of centuries of textual work and are pretty well regarded and standard and pretty authoritative. The same goes for the BHS Hebrew text.
This is repeated by persons such as yourself, who assume it must be true because it supports your desired conclusion.
Yep. Nice ad hominem - that buys a lot of points. Of course, nobody would ever actually bother to _think_ about or analyze these things.
you have not made even the slightest attempt to verify it.
Again, nice ad hominem.
Which "Ancient texts" is the Bible on firmer footing than accurate-translation wise?
Mostly I was referring to contemporary Greek and Roman texts - Homer, Caesar, etc. And I stand by my original statement - please provide documentation to the contrary.
I could go through all the religions I know something about, and discuss how their foundational texts compare to the Bible in terms of access to the original language.
I'm not sure which religions these are. I will concede some ignorance on the textual traditions of many of the Eastern religions. For commentary on the Koran, see below.
you would have found out about if you had made any attempt what so ever to verify your assumption
Again, nice ad hominem. You know what? I _have_ made some attempt to verify and stdy these things, and I'm _well_ aware of your glaring example. Just because I've come to different concusions doesn't mean I'm unaware of the issues involved.
Modern Arabic copies of the Koran contain the exact text of the original.
Yes, they do. And we applaud the Koranic scholars for maintaining such a strong textual tradition. Of course, you don't mention that Jewish scholars have pretty strict controls on the integrity of their text as well. And they've been doing it about twice as long.
You may be willing to read the words of your favored proffet second or third hand and you may figure, heck, stuff gets translated all the time.
Actually, I wasn't willing to be stuck always doing that - so I chose to study the original languages. Of course, it's still easier for me to work in English, so I use translations that I and others consider to be "good", and I keep their limitations in my mind.
In contrast, amongst Christians there isn't even agreementas to which books are actually part of the bible in the first place.
Well, kind of. The Catholic church has the Apocrypha, but beyond that, canonicity is pretty well established.
The "original" Greek texts you refer to don't agree with each other, and many of them are, get this, translations!
As previously stated, we know where they disagree, usually why they disagree, and we've been able to assemble a remarkably good picture. And yes, some of them are translations (LXX being the most famous), but we have copies from the original language as well, which just adds more evidence to what they were trying to say.
Jesus didn't speak Greek. Not a word of it.
Oh my. I'm shocked. You mean that a Jewish man living in Palestine might have actually spoken like, Hebrew or Aramaic or something? Amazing. Nope, he didn't speak Greek, but the writers of the Gospels agreed very well on the _substance_ of what he said.
Actually, we know pretty well what the original Greek texts (of the New Testament, in this case) said. There are somewhere around 5000 manuscripts that we've found - which is a couple orders of magnitude more than most ancient texts that are regarded to be authoritative. People like the Jesus Seminar debate whether what they wrote was accurate, but there's generally good consensus that what we have now was written by somebody a couple thousand years ago.
Yes, it was translated, but stuff gets translated all the time. It's not like you can't find a copy of the Greek text pretty readily, and even find study materials or classes to learn Koine Greek yourself. Yes, it would take some effort, but the material is all out there.
I'm not as familiar with the Old Testament, but my understanding is that the Hebrews were pretty particular about transcribing things accurately when copying manuscripts. And again, there's a bunch of them out there, you can get at the text (and know where the questions about the text that do exist are), learn the language, and do your own analysis.
Yes, and Iraq was simply a paradise in the days of Saddam... free elections all the time, people could vote for whoever they wanted, and they could speak their minds openly. Saddam invited a lot of open debate and never even criticized, much less tortured, those who happened to disagree with him. Iraq was a model state for civil liberties. And Saddam's economic reforms were lauded by the people and made Iraq a truly prosperous, peaceful country. Tragic what we've done to it.
Yup. X-Files was pretty bad after the seventh season. I still think they should have ended the show with Scully pregnant, Mulder finally acheiving his wish of meeting Aliens (though he probably didn't want to be abducted), and Skinner standing there with his mouth open. But no, they had to drag it out, and it just didn't work with Duchovny gone.
A couple of decent shows (IMHO): Sports Night, which they cut off after two seasons, has little to do with sport, but had brilliant writing, interesting characters, etc. They run it on Comedy Central sometimes; I used Snapstream to record the entire run of it a while back, and the whole show is out on DVD (only $45, too). I'm also enjoying Scrubs, Thursdays on NBC. It's generally light, fun, irreverent, and mildly insightful. Of course, YMMV.
For a small jet you *could* just put diesel in there, like if the feds were bearing down on you and that's all you had, but you wouldn't be happy about it.
Conversely, if you happen to have a diesel car, it will run very nicely on Jet-A. My CFII flies a Beech King Air for a company, and he always parks his 2002 VW Bug with the Turbo Diesel in the hangar. When the fuel truck guys come by to fill up the airplane (a couple hundred gallons at a time), they throw a couple extra gallons into his car out of courtesy. Consequently, he never has to buy his own gas (and he gets like 58mpg anyway).
Re:Good night to test radio propagation
on
Meet The Leonids
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· Score: 2
What are the best modes/subbands for this? I have access to an all mode V/U rig, and I went down before to see if I could hear anything. Didn't come across much, but pretty much all of my DX has been on HF, so I'm not even sure what to look for. I know HSCW is supposed to be good, but I don't have time (nor energy) to get set up for that. What do you recommend?
The other option, of course, is to not rent or watch any movies that have things in them you disagree with.
Yeah, I know. That's pretty much the default action now. I'm just saying, it would be really nice if my (still hypothetical) kids could watch certain things without being exposed to all the garbage that winds up in there these days. For that matter, it'd be really nice if I could watch the stuff myself without, say, the f-word every other sentence.
Incidentally, I don't think people should be able to redistribute them entirely for their own profit. See my response a little farther down about a movie markup language that would essentially allow "templates" for movies to edit arbitrary language/sex/violence. I was going to put that in the original post, but I ran out of time.
Ok, this may not be exactly fair use (IANAL, though ironically, I've been summoned for jury duty next month, so I will be seeing the inside of the courtroom), and I had just gotten up and was in a hurry when I wrote the original post, so my legal analysis may be off.
But I think the idea of allowing people to make their own edits of movies should be legal. Specifically, I think the following would allow both parties to be happy: people could watch clean(er) movies, and nobody would lose any IP rights. This idea is not original to me, but I don't remember exactly where I heard it.
What we need is some kind of movie markup language, essentially a "template" for showing a given movie. The markup language would have instructions for certain places and certain operations, such as, perhaps, "mute the audio from 34:54.093 to 34:56.398," or "skip from 45:12.582 to 48:29.416." DVD players would know how to follow these instructions, and it would essentially replicate sophisticated remote-control jockeying by a parent. None of the actual movie content would be contained in the files, just the editing instructions. (Alternatively, this could be used to let people make their own cuts of movies and distribute them without distributing the actual content.)
I think this idea would be the best of all worlds for everybody involved. Nobody's redistributing movies, Hollywood still gets all of their precious dollars, and people get to watch cleaner movies.
(My karma is currently "Excellent," so I'm prepared to lose some precious points to argue for an unpopular idea. So mod/flame away, though I'd prefer to get flamed.)
This is an excellent example of fair use, and everybody here should be standing up in support of it. Particularly for those who believe that all IP should be Free, this is quite analogous to the GPL for movies. The movies, of course, should not be distributable without some kind of notification that "this is not the original version - it has been modified by X person/organization." For that matter, I'm not even saying that they should be freely redistrubitable - let the organizations pay the same fees that they would for the original movies.
The thing is, some of us don't want our (in my case still hypothetical) children hearing every curse word, seeing every head blown off, and seeing every sex scene in every movie. In many cases, those things simply aren't necessary and are thrown in for the sheer gratuity of it, and to give it more credibility as an "R" movie versus a "PG-13." "Ooh, they got an R, they must be really pushing boundaries, therefore this is a better movie." I don't want my kids to get the idea that using the F-word every other sentence is a normal thing. I know that they'll run into it at some point, and I'll explain it to them as much as they are able to handle, but the more they hear it, the more likely they are to use it.
Perhaps this is illegal right now. But then, a lot of stuff that should be legal is illegal. (DMCA anybody?). All I want to do is filter what comes into my house. It's like setting up a filter on my incoming net connection to filter out the things that I choose - it's my house, my net connection, so I should be able to control it.
Actually, there are more problems with an allegorical interpretation of the Song of Songs than with a more literal interpretation. The imagery is way too vivid to be construed in much of a theological context. What possible reason would God have for admiring the beloved's (which, in an allegorical interpretation, would be the reader's) body?
I would posit that a better interpretation is that the Song of Songs is simply an expression of the beauty of married love. The lover and the beloved are free to explore and, gasp, enjoy each other's bodies. Contrary to some interpretations, the Bible really does seem to teach that sex is something to be enjoyed, not endured, within a marriage. IIRC, I Corinthians 7 also deals with this.
You guys are missing the point
on
Penguin Airlines
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· Score: 5, Informative
I, for one, am terribly interested in the aviation side of this. Using Linux all the way through is very cool and all of that, and I suppose it's groundbreaking for an airline, but it's more an adaptation of existing technology (OS, desktop software, database, web server, scripting software) to a new problem (an airline). Where these guys are really breaking new ground is on the airplane side of things. I read the interview, and somehow I've managed to miss these guys, but I've heard references to this concept before, and as soon as this takes off, I hope to be using it as much as possible.
What these guys are proposing is using the Eclipse 500 to fly people all over the place. It's a six-seat airplane, 355 knot cruise (ca 410 mph), and according to the specs page, it has an accelerate-stop takeoff distance of 2,595 feet. This means it can accelerate to just under the speed it needs to fly on one engine, lose an engine, and still stop safely without running off the end of the runway. This will increase the number of airports Penguin can fly to versus, say, Northwest Airlines, by at least a factor of five. Most municipal airports have at least a 3,000 foot runway. Now, their page is slashdotted, so I'm not sure exactly how they'll handle this, but theoretically that means they could fly me (on a typical trip) from Springfield, MO to New Richmond, WI in a total time of about two hours, including drive time to and from the airport. Currently, it takes about six hours, including nintey minutes for checkin/security and an excursus through St. Louis, Memphis, or (heaven forbid) O'Hare, and then an hour driving from the Minneapolis airport to New Richmond. It's about twelve hours to drive, so it's almost not even worth it to fly, but with these guys, it would be so much nicer. This has the potential to be a serious boon for travellers. Depending on how they do this, it could eliminate hubs, and eliminate having to fly into one of the larger airports, followed by up to three hours of driving.
The Eclipse isn't yet certified, but it looks like it has a really good chance. These guys have been working on it for a while, and they seem to know what they're doing. They're using the Williams EJ22 engine, which is similar to their FJ44 engine that has been very successful on the Cessna CitationJet series. What really amazes me, though, is the price of these things. They're only asking about $850,000, which is barely enough to buy a twin-engine pison (instead of jet) Beech Baron these days.
All of which is to say, I'm really, really excited to hear about these guys, and I hope their business does well. I'll be flying them as soon as I can. They've got cool technology all the way around, and it has the potential to make life much better.
This has been bugging me since the whole Enron thing broke out. People were ticked off that someone would go screwing around with their money. They were shocked. Appalled. But why should they have been surprised?
For those of you who were old enough to follow politics back in 1992, think back to the presidential campaign. George Bush (the original) ran against Bill Clinton. Bush ran on a platform that character and integrity mattered, and Clinton ran on, "It's The Economy, Stupid!" (his words, not mine.) For eight years we had a president who repeatedly told us that character didn't matter. All that mattered was how things came out for you. Hence, we had innumerable scandals, out of which he bumbled, bludered, obfuscated, and lied. And the people just ate it up, because he was such a nice man, and looked so sweet on television. They wanted to hear a message of hedonism and narcissism.
Well, now everybody's reaping the consequences. This is what happens when people don't have character. Financial reports are untrustworthy, and now scientific reports are untrustworthy. Welcome to the Clinton legacy.
And the public schools (and I'd argue ANY school) are not parents. What's your point?
I completely agree. The point is that the parent post said "you" should not be teaching children to like or believe anything in particular. The poster didn't bother to narrow the scope of the "you", and I figured it unreasonable to assume that he/she meant me specifically, since to my knowledge I have never had previous interaction with the poster. Therefore, I was responding to the idea of nobody at all teaching kids what to like or believe. I take it you agree parents should teach their kids what to like and believe, which makes me very happy.
You should not be teaching children to like (or believe) anything. You should give them the facts and let them make their own mind up.
This sounds really nice and liberal, but when you think about it, it makes no sense. Kids need to be taught; after all, they're kids, and they're not yet completely equipped to make value judgments. Parents are supposed to guide them toward the way they should live their lives.
Say, for instance, that your second grade son makes a habit of involuntarily collecting lunch money every day from his classmates. They don't like it, but he's making quite a nice living from it. How do you, as a parent, respond? If you tell him it's wrong to do that, you're telling him what to believe. If you simply tell him the facts, you're stuck with basically saying, "Son, if you keep up this way of life, you might end up in prison some day. What you're doing is not nice." And you certainly couldn't punish the kid; after all, that's coercion toward a particular belief (that stealing is wrong).
They're kids. If you leave them on their own, or just tell them "the facts" (of which they're generally pretty perceptive anyway), you get a society like "Lord of the Flies." Not where I want to live.
The imperative of killing OBL derives from the right to self-defense. He's killed thousands of innocent people, and there's no reason to believe that he will desist until he's dead.
I think I agree with you. That leaves the question, though, where does the right to self-defense derive from?
Well, if we started debating theology, you might consider me a religious butthead. (I believe God wrote the Bible, the manuscripts are infallible, Jesus was God in the flesh, Jesus is the only way to salvation, all roads do not lead to God, God created the universe (though not necessarily in six days - jurys's still out), miracles still happen, etc.)
I would posit, though, that your statment of a lack of religion is in itself a religious statement. For starters, are you an atheist or an agnostic? An atheist explicitly believes there is no god; an agnostic simply doesn't know. And, an apathetic agnostic doesn't know and doesn't care.:)
Perhaps the discussion would better be framed in terms of "worldview." A significant part of your perspective on the world is influenced by that fact that you believe that there is no God (I'm going to go with the atheist definition above). The statement that there is no God is a faith statement with presumably some evidence of some sort behind it. You cannot conclusively prove that there is no God, and I cannot conclusively prove that there is a God. Hence, we are both left in the realm of faith.
I'm glad you agree with my statement about the second sense of freedom "from" religion. I won't force you to act/think/talk from a religion, and I hope you won't keep me from exercising mine.
Again, I'll say-- no one is advocating religion be eliminated from public life. The point is that government should treat all religions and the lack of any religion equally.
Thank you. That was my primary point in asking the first question, that government treating religions equally does not mean religion must be removed from public life.
would it be acceptible to replace "under god" with "under NO god"?
Well stated, and a point that is often lost on dear friends of mine. I've often mentally juxtaposed myself to an Islamic country and wondered how I would feel there when there is discussion on these issues.
So I think we agree - I won't make you pray, and you won't stop me from praying.
Wow. I've never provoked a response like that. Almost makes me wish I'd been trolling.
While your commentary is doubtless colorful, I think we're talking about two different senses of the phrase "freedom from religion." Essentially, you're saying that you have the freedom to create your own religion which is composed of copious amounts of autoerotic stimulation. Under the constitution, you seem to be quite free to do that. However, I would still classify that as freedom "of" religion. You've chosen a religion, it just happens to be different than what most people think of as "religious."
The main sense in which I've heard the phrase "freedom from religion" used, however, is to say that people have a right not to be exposed to any religious symbology, references, etc, whatsoever. Essentially, religion has no place in public life. With this sentiment, I must wholeheartedly disagree. Freedom "from" religion flies smack in the face of the second half of the establishment clause - "prohibiting the free exercise thereof."
I'm not forcing you to do anything, I just want the freedom to worship as I see fit.
Slashdot Mirror
I sincerely hope you're being sarcastic. Religions perceive sex as a necessary evil, to be used for procreation only. Actually, most religions go even further and condone the concept of love (and by extension sex) only if it subject to some kind of religious regulation mechanism, because anything else gnaws away at the oppressive stranglehold religion has over everyday life. In order to exist, religion needs to have a monopoly on everything fulfilling and meaningful.
Huh? Apparently you haven't read the biblical Song of Solomon. To quote from Chapter 7 (NIV translation):
1 How beautiful your sandaled feet,
O prince's daughter!
Your graceful legs are like jewels,
the work of a craftsman's hands.
2 Your navel is a rounded goblet
that never lacks blended wine.
Your waist is a mound of wheat
encircled by lilies.
3 Your breasts are like two fawns,
twins of a gazelle.
4 Your neck is like an ivory tower.
Your eyes are the pools of Heshbon
by the gate of Bath Rabbim.
Your nose is like the tower of Lebanon
looking toward Damascus.
5 Your head crowns you like Mount Carmel.
Your hair is like royal tapestry;
the king is held captive by its tresses.
6 How beautiful you are and how pleasing,
O love, with your delights!
7 Your stature is like that of the palm,
and your breasts like clusters of fruit.
8 I said, "I will climb the palm tree;
I will take hold of its fruit."
May your breasts be like the clusters of the vine,
the fragrance of your breath like apples,
9 and your mouth like the best wine.
That doesn't sound like "necessary evil" to me. I'd say it sounds rather enthusiastic. :)
This is almost insightful, save one thing:
The executives, when they make money, don't take the cash home and stuff it under their mattresses. They invest it, re-injecting the money into the economy in hopes of making more. Should they make the amount they make? I don't know, I'll leave that for another discussion. But you can't say that money is lost.
Uh, the difference is that we can think about these things and have discussions and ask the question, "Why might we be better (or even _different_) than a chicken?" I've never heard of chickens discussing such things - or discussing anything, for that matter.
If you feel that your life is no better than that of a chicken, frankly, I feel sorry for you. If you have no greater purpose than eating and passing on your genetic material, I feel bad for your sake that you've missed out on appreciating beauty, elegance, thought, love, and all the other things that really do make us human.
Of course, that doesn't take into consideration how much more I'm going to have to pay for the Social Security benefits of the baby-boomers without having the other, oh, one-third of my generation to help.
the bible has been repeatedly mistranslated
Granted. But just because bad things have been done with something doesn't mean that the thing itself is bad.
no really good authoritative version exists
In what language? English? Greek? French? The 1910 Louis-Segond is regarded as quite good. The NA27 and UBS4 Greek texts have been highly refined in light of centuries of textual work and are pretty well regarded and standard and pretty authoritative. The same goes for the BHS Hebrew text.
This is repeated by persons such as yourself, who assume it must be true because it supports your desired conclusion.
Yep. Nice ad hominem - that buys a lot of points. Of course, nobody would ever actually bother to _think_ about or analyze these things.
you have not made even the slightest attempt to verify it.
Again, nice ad hominem.
Which "Ancient texts" is the Bible on firmer footing than accurate-translation wise?
Mostly I was referring to contemporary Greek and Roman texts - Homer, Caesar, etc. And I stand by my original statement - please provide documentation to the contrary.
I could go through all the religions I know something about, and discuss how their foundational texts compare to the Bible in terms of access to the original language.
I'm not sure which religions these are. I will concede some ignorance on the textual traditions of many of the Eastern religions. For commentary on the Koran, see below.
you would have found out about if you had made any attempt what so ever to verify your assumption
Again, nice ad hominem. You know what? I _have_ made some attempt to verify and stdy these things, and I'm _well_ aware of your glaring example. Just because I've come to different concusions doesn't mean I'm unaware of the issues involved.
Modern Arabic copies of the Koran contain the exact text of the original.
Yes, they do. And we applaud the Koranic scholars for maintaining such a strong textual tradition. Of course, you don't mention that Jewish scholars have pretty strict controls on the integrity of their text as well. And they've been doing it about twice as long.
You may be willing to read the words of your favored proffet second or third hand and you may figure, heck, stuff gets translated all the time.
Actually, I wasn't willing to be stuck always doing that - so I chose to study the original languages. Of course, it's still easier for me to work in English, so I use translations that I and others consider to be "good", and I keep their limitations in my mind.
In contrast, amongst Christians there isn't even agreementas to which books are actually part of the bible in the first place.
Well, kind of. The Catholic church has the Apocrypha, but beyond that, canonicity is pretty well established.
The "original" Greek texts you refer to don't agree with each other, and many of them are, get this, translations!
As previously stated, we know where they disagree, usually why they disagree, and we've been able to assemble a remarkably good picture. And yes, some of them are translations (LXX being the most famous), but we have copies from the original language as well, which just adds more evidence to what they were trying to say.
Jesus didn't speak Greek. Not a word of it.
Oh my. I'm shocked. You mean that a Jewish man living in Palestine might have actually spoken like, Hebrew or Aramaic or something? Amazing. Nope, he didn't speak Greek, but the writers of the Gospels agreed very well on the _substance_ of what he said.
It was changed over time and translated.
Actually, we know pretty well what the original Greek texts (of the New Testament, in this case) said. There are somewhere around 5000 manuscripts that we've found - which is a couple orders of magnitude more than most ancient texts that are regarded to be authoritative. People like the Jesus Seminar debate whether what they wrote was accurate, but there's generally good consensus that what we have now was written by somebody a couple thousand years ago.
Yes, it was translated, but stuff gets translated all the time. It's not like you can't find a copy of the Greek text pretty readily, and even find study materials or classes to learn Koine Greek yourself. Yes, it would take some effort, but the material is all out there.
I'm not as familiar with the Old Testament, but my understanding is that the Hebrews were pretty particular about transcribing things accurately when copying manuscripts. And again, there's a bunch of them out there, you can get at the text (and know where the questions about the text that do exist are), learn the language, and do your own analysis.
Yes, and Iraq was simply a paradise in the days of Saddam... free elections all the time, people could vote for whoever they wanted, and they could speak their minds openly. Saddam invited a lot of open debate and never even criticized, much less tortured, those who happened to disagree with him. Iraq was a model state for civil liberties. And Saddam's economic reforms were lauded by the people and made Iraq a truly prosperous, peaceful country. Tragic what we've done to it.
AT&T Wireless spammed me - once. I called customer service, told them that by no means did I want such things, and I haven't gotten one since.
Yup. X-Files was pretty bad after the seventh season. I still think they should have ended the show with Scully pregnant, Mulder finally acheiving his wish of meeting Aliens (though he probably didn't want to be abducted), and Skinner standing there with his mouth open. But no, they had to drag it out, and it just didn't work with Duchovny gone.
A couple of decent shows (IMHO): Sports Night, which they cut off after two seasons, has little to do with sport, but had brilliant writing, interesting characters, etc. They run it on Comedy Central sometimes; I used Snapstream to record the entire run of it a while back, and the whole show is out on DVD (only $45, too). I'm also enjoying Scrubs, Thursdays on NBC. It's generally light, fun, irreverent, and mildly insightful. Of course, YMMV.
For a small jet you *could* just put diesel in there, like if the feds were bearing down on you and that's all you had, but you wouldn't be happy about it.
Conversely, if you happen to have a diesel car, it will run very nicely on Jet-A. My CFII flies a Beech King Air for a company, and he always parks his 2002 VW Bug with the Turbo Diesel in the hangar. When the fuel truck guys come by to fill up the airplane (a couple hundred gallons at a time), they throw a couple extra gallons into his car out of courtesy. Consequently, he never has to buy his own gas (and he gets like 58mpg anyway).
What are the best modes/subbands for this? I have access to an all mode V/U rig, and I went down before to see if I could hear anything. Didn't come across much, but pretty much all of my DX has been on HF, so I'm not even sure what to look for. I know HSCW is supposed to be good, but I don't have time (nor energy) to get set up for that. What do you recommend?
-N9ZT
I personally favour regieme change.
We already got one, didn't work...
"Developers, Developers, Developers, Developers"
The other option, of course, is to not rent or watch any movies that have things in them you disagree with.
Yeah, I know. That's pretty much the default action now. I'm just saying, it would be really nice if my (still hypothetical) kids could watch certain things without being exposed to all the garbage that winds up in there these days. For that matter, it'd be really nice if I could watch the stuff myself without, say, the f-word every other sentence.
Incidentally, I don't think people should be able to redistribute them entirely for their own profit. See my response a little farther down about a movie markup language that would essentially allow "templates" for movies to edit arbitrary language/sex/violence. I was going to put that in the original post, but I ran out of time.
Ok, this may not be exactly fair use (IANAL, though ironically, I've been summoned for jury duty next month, so I will be seeing the inside of the courtroom), and I had just gotten up and was in a hurry when I wrote the original post, so my legal analysis may be off.
But I think the idea of allowing people to make their own edits of movies should be legal. Specifically, I think the following would allow both parties to be happy: people could watch clean(er) movies, and nobody would lose any IP rights. This idea is not original to me, but I don't remember exactly where I heard it.
What we need is some kind of movie markup language, essentially a "template" for showing a given movie. The markup language would have instructions for certain places and certain operations, such as, perhaps, "mute the audio from 34:54.093 to 34:56.398," or "skip from 45:12.582 to 48:29.416." DVD players would know how to follow these instructions, and it would essentially replicate sophisticated remote-control jockeying by a parent. None of the actual movie content would be contained in the files, just the editing instructions. (Alternatively, this could be used to let people make their own cuts of movies and distribute them without distributing the actual content.)
I think this idea would be the best of all worlds for everybody involved. Nobody's redistributing movies, Hollywood still gets all of their precious dollars, and people get to watch cleaner movies.
What do you guys think?
(My karma is currently "Excellent," so I'm prepared to lose some precious points to argue for an unpopular idea. So mod/flame away, though I'd prefer to get flamed.)
This is an excellent example of fair use, and everybody here should be standing up in support of it. Particularly for those who believe that all IP should be Free, this is quite analogous to the GPL for movies. The movies, of course, should not be distributable without some kind of notification that "this is not the original version - it has been modified by X person/organization." For that matter, I'm not even saying that they should be freely redistrubitable - let the organizations pay the same fees that they would for the original movies.
The thing is, some of us don't want our (in my case still hypothetical) children hearing every curse word, seeing every head blown off, and seeing every sex scene in every movie. In many cases, those things simply aren't necessary and are thrown in for the sheer gratuity of it, and to give it more credibility as an "R" movie versus a "PG-13." "Ooh, they got an R, they must be really pushing boundaries, therefore this is a better movie." I don't want my kids to get the idea that using the F-word every other sentence is a normal thing. I know that they'll run into it at some point, and I'll explain it to them as much as they are able to handle, but the more they hear it, the more likely they are to use it.
Perhaps this is illegal right now. But then, a lot of stuff that should be legal is illegal. (DMCA anybody?). All I want to do is filter what comes into my house. It's like setting up a filter on my incoming net connection to filter out the things that I choose - it's my house, my net connection, so I should be able to control it.
Ok, my asbestos is firmly attached. Flame away.
Actually, there are more problems with an allegorical interpretation of the Song of Songs than with a more literal interpretation. The imagery is way too vivid to be construed in much of a theological context. What possible reason would God have for admiring the beloved's (which, in an allegorical interpretation, would be the reader's) body?
I would posit that a better interpretation is that the Song of Songs is simply an expression of the beauty of married love. The lover and the beloved are free to explore and, gasp, enjoy each other's bodies. Contrary to some interpretations, the Bible really does seem to teach that sex is something to be enjoyed, not endured, within a marriage. IIRC, I Corinthians 7 also deals with this.
I, for one, am terribly interested in the aviation side of this. Using Linux all the way through is very cool and all of that, and I suppose it's groundbreaking for an airline, but it's more an adaptation of existing technology (OS, desktop software, database, web server, scripting software) to a new problem (an airline). Where these guys are really breaking new ground is on the airplane side of things. I read the interview, and somehow I've managed to miss these guys, but I've heard references to this concept before, and as soon as this takes off, I hope to be using it as much as possible.
What these guys are proposing is using the Eclipse 500 to fly people all over the place. It's a six-seat airplane, 355 knot cruise (ca 410 mph), and according to the specs page, it has an accelerate-stop takeoff distance of 2,595 feet. This means it can accelerate to just under the speed it needs to fly on one engine, lose an engine, and still stop safely without running off the end of the runway. This will increase the number of airports Penguin can fly to versus, say, Northwest Airlines, by at least a factor of five. Most municipal airports have at least a 3,000 foot runway. Now, their page is slashdotted, so I'm not sure exactly how they'll handle this, but theoretically that means they could fly me (on a typical trip) from Springfield, MO to New Richmond, WI in a total time of about two hours, including drive time to and from the airport. Currently, it takes about six hours, including nintey minutes for checkin/security and an excursus through St. Louis, Memphis, or (heaven forbid) O'Hare, and then an hour driving from the Minneapolis airport to New Richmond. It's about twelve hours to drive, so it's almost not even worth it to fly, but with these guys, it would be so much nicer. This has the potential to be a serious boon for travellers. Depending on how they do this, it could eliminate hubs, and eliminate having to fly into one of the larger airports, followed by up to three hours of driving.
The Eclipse isn't yet certified, but it looks like it has a really good chance. These guys have been working on it for a while, and they seem to know what they're doing. They're using the Williams EJ22 engine, which is similar to their FJ44 engine that has been very successful on the Cessna CitationJet series. What really amazes me, though, is the price of these things. They're only asking about $850,000, which is barely enough to buy a twin-engine pison (instead of jet) Beech Baron these days.
All of which is to say, I'm really, really excited to hear about these guys, and I hope their business does well. I'll be flying them as soon as I can. They've got cool technology all the way around, and it has the potential to make life much better.
I've got a little Karma to burn, so here goes...
This has been bugging me since the whole Enron thing broke out. People were ticked off that someone would go screwing around with their money. They were shocked. Appalled. But why should they have been surprised?
For those of you who were old enough to follow politics back in 1992, think back to the presidential campaign. George Bush (the original) ran against Bill Clinton. Bush ran on a platform that character and integrity mattered, and Clinton ran on, "It's The Economy, Stupid!" (his words, not mine.) For eight years we had a president who repeatedly told us that character didn't matter. All that mattered was how things came out for you. Hence, we had innumerable scandals, out of which he bumbled, bludered, obfuscated, and lied. And the people just ate it up, because he was such a nice man, and looked so sweet on television. They wanted to hear a message of hedonism and narcissism.
Well, now everybody's reaping the consequences. This is what happens when people don't have character. Financial reports are untrustworthy, and now scientific reports are untrustworthy. Welcome to the Clinton legacy.
Bring on the moderators...
What about Borgware?
And the public schools (and I'd argue ANY school) are not parents. What's your point?
I completely agree. The point is that the parent post said "you" should not be teaching children to like or believe anything in particular. The poster didn't bother to narrow the scope of the "you", and I figured it unreasonable to assume that he/she meant me specifically, since to my knowledge I have never had previous interaction with the poster. Therefore, I was responding to the idea of nobody at all teaching kids what to like or believe. I take it you agree parents should teach their kids what to like and believe, which makes me very happy.
You should not be teaching children to like (or believe) anything. You should give them the facts and let them make their own mind up.
This sounds really nice and liberal, but when you think about it, it makes no sense. Kids need to be taught; after all, they're kids, and they're not yet completely equipped to make value judgments. Parents are supposed to guide them toward the way they should live their lives.
Say, for instance, that your second grade son makes a habit of involuntarily collecting lunch money every day from his classmates. They don't like it, but he's making quite a nice living from it. How do you, as a parent, respond? If you tell him it's wrong to do that, you're telling him what to believe. If you simply tell him the facts, you're stuck with basically saying, "Son, if you keep up this way of life, you might end up in prison some day. What you're doing is not nice." And you certainly couldn't punish the kid; after all, that's coercion toward a particular belief (that stealing is wrong).
They're kids. If you leave them on their own, or just tell them "the facts" (of which they're generally pretty perceptive anyway), you get a society like "Lord of the Flies." Not where I want to live.
The imperative of killing OBL derives from the right to self-defense. He's killed thousands of innocent people, and there's no reason to believe that he will desist until he's dead.
I think I agree with you. That leaves the question, though, where does the right to self-defense derive from?
Well, if we started debating theology, you might consider me a religious butthead. (I believe God wrote the Bible, the manuscripts are infallible, Jesus was God in the flesh, Jesus is the only way to salvation, all roads do not lead to God, God created the universe (though not necessarily in six days - jurys's still out), miracles still happen, etc.)
:)
I would posit, though, that your statment of a lack of religion is in itself a religious statement. For starters, are you an atheist or an agnostic? An atheist explicitly believes there is no god; an agnostic simply doesn't know. And, an apathetic agnostic doesn't know and doesn't care.
Perhaps the discussion would better be framed in terms of "worldview." A significant part of your perspective on the world is influenced by that fact that you believe that there is no God (I'm going to go with the atheist definition above). The statement that there is no God is a faith statement with presumably some evidence of some sort behind it. You cannot conclusively prove that there is no God, and I cannot conclusively prove that there is a God. Hence, we are both left in the realm of faith.
I'm glad you agree with my statement about the second sense of freedom "from" religion. I won't force you to act/think/talk from a religion, and I hope you won't keep me from exercising mine.
Again, I'll say-- no one is advocating religion be eliminated from public life. The point is that government should treat all religions and the lack of any religion equally.
Thank you. That was my primary point in asking the first question, that government treating religions equally does not mean religion must be removed from public life.
would it be acceptible to replace "under god" with "under NO god"?
Well stated, and a point that is often lost on dear friends of mine. I've often mentally juxtaposed myself to an Islamic country and wondered how I would feel there when there is discussion on these issues.
So I think we agree - I won't make you pray, and you won't stop me from praying.
Wow. I've never provoked a response like that. Almost makes me wish I'd been trolling.
While your commentary is doubtless colorful, I think we're talking about two different senses of the phrase "freedom from religion." Essentially, you're saying that you have the freedom to create your own religion which is composed of copious amounts of autoerotic stimulation. Under the constitution, you seem to be quite free to do that. However, I would still classify that as freedom "of" religion. You've chosen a religion, it just happens to be different than what most people think of as "religious."
The main sense in which I've heard the phrase "freedom from religion" used, however, is to say that people have a right not to be exposed to any religious symbology, references, etc, whatsoever. Essentially, religion has no place in public life. With this sentiment, I must wholeheartedly disagree. Freedom "from" religion flies smack in the face of the second half of the establishment clause - "prohibiting the free exercise thereof."
I'm not forcing you to do anything, I just want the freedom to worship as I see fit.