"Adherence to the rules of a state is compulsory; adherence to the rules of a religion is not. This is in the modern, Western, context."
This is certainly true for the West, and it's a good thing you added that statement, because as soon as you leave the modern West you can find compulsory religions and states that have no control over their citizens. What we can conclude from that is that adherence to the rules of a state or religion is based not on it being a geographic-bound state or a church-bound religion, but rather on which has the largest amount of influence for a time/era. In other words, that difference is merely circumstantial, not inherent to the nature of religions or states. So you're making a true statement, but it doesn't really conflict with my claim in any meaningful way.
Wow! Based on the E3 showing, I thought I'd only be able to watch the much-delayed worse-than-HDDVD Blu-Ray and download from the currently non-existent online service on it!
Wow! I really do get to pay more to do less with Sony! I can't wait.
Police reported that Gannon "has a history of being verbally abusive" toward police, and that after his arrest, he remarked that the officers "were a bunch of corrupt (expletives)."
Yes, they're basically different tenets of the official state religions. If you were to point out the well-armed armed forces of the United States, the well-armed police forces, and the increasing numbers of laws passed aimed at disarming the general populace, well... then you're not a believer. You're a heretic. You're some kind of terrorist gun-toting nutbag.
"It means that there should be no official religion for a country...."
As you yourself point out, the government of Mexico was for many years anti-Catholicism. This makes "anti-Catholicism" the official state religion.
There is an official state religion for every country; monarchs require it to justify why they should be The Man, and republics use it to drum up support for giving the government increasing amounts of authority. The religion need not be a theistic religion. On this side of the Rio Grande, the official state religion is "democracy & liberty." It's not really important that we practice libertarian, democratic principles, just as long as everyone believes that authoritarian acts are done "for liberty and democracy," and that those beliefs are worth believing in.
Because if you disagree, you know, we'll lock you up. You could be a terrorist!
The idea seems to be: "slashdot user kahei thinks you need to have a god in order to have a religion." In fact, I'd go as far as to say, "slashdot user kahei thinks you need to have a judeo-christian monotheistic god in order to have a religion."
Henry VIII was post-reformation, post-magna carta, post-renaissance... his creation of a separate church fits in perfectly with my point.
In the Middle Ages, the states in Europe were relatively weak next to the Catholic Church; the Vatican maintained the Empire Rome had left behind. As individual states became more powerful and less subservient to the Vatican, the idea of a "law higher than the state" remained; this was used to justify England's Magna Carta, the USA's Declaration of Independence, and the French Revolution. In the case of Vatican City, the idea of church as an independent state remains.
Consider Asia:
Marx and Lenin would never approve of the superstitions that continue to dominate Chinese culture after the Communist revolution; yet any religion that dares to become popular is immediately cracked down upon. Why? It's competition to the official state religion, Communism. Even today, China is no more Communist than, say, the United States of America, yet the Church of Mao remains as active as ever -- and remains the state religion.
Every state has its official religion, and every church represents a government with its own laws and enforcement.
Even in the USA, getting back to said Declaration of Independence, the principles behind it need not be defended so much as practiced; as an exercise, walk through the individual grievances against the King listed therein and count how many could apply to the current government of the United States.
Organized religion is either co-opted by a government or competing with it. All governments are theocracies, and all religions are independent states.
The state is a church, and the church is a state.
Given that, what does "Separation of church and state" really mean, anyway?
You're right: The Gloria Patri is not is Psalms, although it's in the Catholic prayer book and is a standard part of almost all Protestant worship services.
The focus of Gloria Patri is obvious when you read the entire lyrics:
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost.
As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be. World without end. Amen.
There is no mention of Creation in this text; what is mentioned is God and the Holy Trinity, which are what was in the beginning and will be now and forever.
As for the monks, I cannot think for anyone else, much less someone who died a long time ago. I can only think for myself, and what I see is still a non sequitur.
As for the 2x4 in my eye, I am only judging an argument, not anyone who made them.
Please explain how "it was always like this and it will never change" does not equate to "it's been this way forever and this is how it will stay".
What I said was:
As it was in the beginning, is now, and always shall be: for ever and ever.
to
unchanged since Creation and would remain unchanged forever after
is a non sequitur
First, remember; this is a song, not meant to be a logically rigorous defense of theology nor a mathematical proof we're talking about. That's why it's in Psalms.
Now, what is "it" that was in the beginning and is now and ever shall be? Specifically, why is "it" referring to Creation, and not, say, God's Covenant with Israel?
Secondly, is "it" wholly unchanged, or is the Psalm referring to specific aspects of it being unchanged? (It seems like a silly question, until you recognize that the Bible itself seems to contradict this interpretation with the growth in populations, the rise and fall of empires, the flood, the end of the Anakites...)
Now it's quite possible that there's a sound theological argument here, but I really don't care what it is; the point is that it's not being made, and the conclusion does not necessarily follow from the premise.
One would think that Sagan himself would be aware of something like this, given that he is the author (but by no means inventor) of the Baloney Detection Kit.
How about this for a lesson: If I didn't believe in what my company was doing, if I wasn't excited about it, I wouldn't be working for them or blogging about them.
Lack of dissension among the ranks is more likely a sign of employees buying into the company's vision and being treated well by the company, than from management flying off the handle, throwing chairs around at every perceived threat. It's more likely something you'd expect from a company that's known to engage in dodgy and unethical business practices.
It's not stolen, it's obiously lost. But if you then take it and don't try to track down the owner, start using it (running up charges for the owner), and then refuse to answer the owner's request that it be returned even with a reward, it's most definitely stolen.
Even if it was "sold" to her by the cab driver, as she said caveat emptor comes into play, as the lawyer on TFA suggests.
It's been running for a couple days (the whole thing started on the 6th), but I think slashdot finally took it over the edge. The pics are/were nothing special, a young latina (mexican american?) girl, a really big mexican guy. Sorry, no porn. There were some links to the girl, her boyfriend, and the fat guy's myspace pages, for those that get off on geocities-level craptacular page layouts.
You obviously didn't peruse the rest of the guy's site.
My hypothesis is that the people who stole it naïvely think that the guy is bluffing, puffing out his chest. In their minds, the law says, "Finder keepers losers weepers," not caveat emptor.
Some elderly women, recently widowed, will start buying lots of personal defense measures, burglar alarms and the like. Since U.S. culture doesn't have the same emphasis on the extended family as others, the grandmother doesn't have enough of a role from which they can derive a sense of importance; also, since they either predate or didn't participate in women's lib, they have no career accomplishments, students to mentor, etc. If they found their sense of importance through raising a family, they're way past menopause, and no longer desirable for the original purposes of sex, they entertain paranoid delusions because it makes them feel like they're still desirable.
There's a message there for people who worry about leaving information about themselves online.
David Cole, DFC Intelligence:E3 really isn't that important. The buying public pays little to no attention to the news coming out of E3. It is at best a 'dress rehearsal for the big show that fall.' Sony stumbled out of the gate for both the PS One and PS2 launches. Microsoft had poor initial showings for the Xbox. The only time it matters is when a poor showing at E3 is indicative of what is going to be a poor product. If a company gets its act together between E3 and product launch, all is forgiven.
2. Microsoft had poor initial showings for the Xbox and the Xbox ended up losing Microsoft $7 billion dollars and remains a distant second to the PS2.
3. As far as I've been able to tell, E3 is the thing among the gamer market to decide what's hip as what's not. Even if he was right about the Xbox and Playstation, the facts wouldn't support this statement.
4. Even if gamers don't pay attention to E3, the muckity-mucks at places like EA, Activision and Ubisoft do, and Sony's stumble is going to have repercussions regarding the decisions they make regarding what titles they'll produce, what consoles they'll produce them for, and how much effort they'll put into a port. The PS3 went in one week from being the likely market leader to a likely failure, and past crimes of Sony against development houses (i.e., making the Playstation 2 & 3 difficult to develop for, thus cutting into developer's margins) are going to have a substantial effect on what games are available for it. And the gamers will pay attention to what's available for their systems.
I agree with PJ of Groklaw's comment... I gotta get into this "Analyst" business. You can know absolutely nothing, spew off about things, and people will pay you to do it. How lovely!
...Miyamoto has enough class not to say what I was thinking it was. But I don't, so I'll say it:
It could be flattery; more likely, however, it's the floundering move of a corporation that really has no direction or clue of what it should be doing. This is monkey-see monkey-do, not "recognition."
You're absolutely right; what I wrote wasn't what I intended, and I should have reviewed it before hitting the "submit" button. And not just because people could have gotten the impression that I was, as you say, making some kind of "hamfisted tarring" of Sony.
For example, the idea I had in my brain, that somehow failed to make it to the keyboard, was that the network effect was not equivalent to HIV, but to an opportunistic infection (like pleurisy) that are what frequently kill HIV victims. It's the arrogance that permeates Sony that is what makes Sony more likely to make bad business decisions and be adversely affected by changes in the market (e.g., they are on the wrong side of the network effect with the PS3, and historically successful divisions of Sony are now struggling), and less able to recover from them once made (e.g., defending the ridiculous price of the PS3 rather than realizing that someone outside of the company -- the bulk of their developers and customers -- might actually have a point).
And I'm still willing to accept that it's a bad metaphor; I don't think it is, because it really makes sense to me in terms of what's happening to Sony overall. Next time I'll make sure the idea's fully baked before I click that tantalizing "Submit" button...
Even if you buy a next-gen console to play previous-gen games, they aren't going out and buying these previous-gen games in the same way they'd buy a next-gen game: Sony doesn't see one dime of income from the PSP owners using it to run MAME and NES emulators.
If you'd look at how those other systems were launched, you'd find that timing doesn't matter, either; being late is just as "bad" as being early.
Why is it that people feel the need to mention "not a Sony fanboy" any time they say anything that isn't negative about Sony? The denial itself is cause for suspicion.
You're right. The problem is that the vast bulk of the market doesn't see the PS3 as a "media center." They see it as a "game machine." It will succeed or fail as a game machine.
I am comparing the biological effect of a particular virus to the business effect of "feature creep." At least as far as how feature creep appears to affect Sony's business model, the analogy is dead-on in how HIV affects the body's ability to stave off infection (including HIV itself).
Slashdot Mirror
Did you just skip the whole part about Communism as a religion in my original post, or are you just being snarky for its own sake?
"Adherence to the rules of a state is compulsory; adherence to the rules of a religion is not. This is in the modern, Western, context."
This is certainly true for the West, and it's a good thing you added that statement, because as soon as you leave the modern West you can find compulsory religions and states that have no control over their citizens. What we can conclude from that is that adherence to the rules of a state or religion is based not on it being a geographic-bound state or a church-bound religion, but rather on which has the largest amount of influence for a time/era. In other words, that difference is merely circumstantial, not inherent to the nature of religions or states. So you're making a true statement, but it doesn't really conflict with my claim in any meaningful way.
Actually, I'd missed that; thanks for pointing it out!
Wow! Based on the E3 showing, I thought I'd only be able to watch the much-delayed worse-than-HDDVD Blu-Ray and download from the currently non-existent online service on it!
Wow! I really do get to pay more to do less with Sony! I can't wait.
Police reported that Gannon "has a history of being verbally abusive" toward police, and that after his arrest, he remarked that the officers "were a bunch of corrupt (expletives)."
Hard to argue with Gannon.
Yes, they're basically different tenets of the official state religions. If you were to point out the well-armed armed forces of the United States, the well-armed police forces, and the increasing numbers of laws passed aimed at disarming the general populace, well... then you're not a believer. You're a heretic. You're some kind of terrorist gun-toting nutbag.
"It means that there should be no official religion for a country ...."
As you yourself point out, the government of Mexico was for many years anti-Catholicism. This makes "anti-Catholicism" the official state religion.
There is an official state religion for every country; monarchs require it to justify why they should be The Man, and republics use it to drum up support for giving the government increasing amounts of authority. The religion need not be a theistic religion. On this side of the Rio Grande, the official state religion is "democracy & liberty." It's not really important that we practice libertarian, democratic principles, just as long as everyone believes that authoritarian acts are done "for liberty and democracy," and that those beliefs are worth believing in.
Because if you disagree, you know, we'll lock you up. You could be a terrorist!
"Anyway, you get the idea..."
The idea seems to be: "slashdot user kahei thinks you need to have a god in order to have a religion." In fact, I'd go as far as to say, "slashdot user kahei thinks you need to have a judeo-christian monotheistic god in order to have a religion."
Henry VIII was post-reformation, post-magna carta, post-renaissance... his creation of a separate church fits in perfectly with my point.
Anyway, you get the idea.
Consider Europe:
In the Middle Ages, the states in Europe were relatively weak next to the Catholic Church; the Vatican maintained the Empire Rome had left behind. As individual states became more powerful and less subservient to the Vatican, the idea of a "law higher than the state" remained; this was used to justify England's Magna Carta, the USA's Declaration of Independence, and the French Revolution. In the case of Vatican City, the idea of church as an independent state remains.
Consider Asia:
Marx and Lenin would never approve of the superstitions that continue to dominate Chinese culture after the Communist revolution; yet any religion that dares to become popular is immediately cracked down upon. Why? It's competition to the official state religion, Communism. Even today, China is no more Communist than, say, the United States of America, yet the Church of Mao remains as active as ever -- and remains the state religion.
Every state has its official religion, and every church represents a government with its own laws and enforcement.
Even in the USA, getting back to said Declaration of Independence, the principles behind it need not be defended so much as practiced; as an exercise, walk through the individual grievances against the King listed therein and count how many could apply to the current government of the United States.
Organized religion is either co-opted by a government or competing with it. All governments are theocracies, and all religions are independent states.
The state is a church, and the church is a state.
Given that, what does "Separation of church and state" really mean, anyway?
You're right: The Gloria Patri is not is Psalms, although it's in the Catholic prayer book and is a standard part of almost all Protestant worship services.
The focus of Gloria Patri is obvious when you read the entire lyrics:
Glory be to the Father,
and to the Son
and to the Holy Ghost.
As it was in the beginning,
is now and ever shall be.
World without end. Amen.
There is no mention of Creation in this text; what is mentioned is God and the Holy Trinity, which are what was in the beginning and will be now and forever.
As for the monks, I cannot think for anyone else, much less someone who died a long time ago. I can only think for myself, and what I see is still a non sequitur.
As for the 2x4 in my eye, I am only judging an argument, not anyone who made them.
What I said was:
First, remember; this is a song, not meant to be a logically rigorous defense of theology nor a mathematical proof we're talking about. That's why it's in Psalms.
Now, what is "it" that was in the beginning and is now and ever shall be? Specifically, why is "it" referring to Creation, and not, say, God's Covenant with Israel?
Secondly, is "it" wholly unchanged, or is the Psalm referring to specific aspects of it being unchanged? (It seems like a silly question, until you recognize that the Bible itself seems to contradict this interpretation with the growth in populations, the rise and fall of empires, the flood, the end of the Anakites...)
Now it's quite possible that there's a sound theological argument here, but I really don't care what it is; the point is that it's not being made, and the conclusion does not necessarily follow from the premise.
One would think that Sagan himself would be aware of something like this, given that he is the author (but by no means inventor) of the Baloney Detection Kit.
to here
is a non sequitur... in context, the latter does not necessarily follow from the former.
How about this for a lesson: If I didn't believe in what my company was doing, if I wasn't excited about it, I wouldn't be working for them or blogging about them.
Lack of dissension among the ranks is more likely a sign of employees buying into the company's vision and being treated well by the company, than from management flying off the handle, throwing chairs around at every perceived threat. It's more likely something you'd expect from a company that's known to engage in dodgy and unethical business practices.
Wait a minute...
It's not stolen, it's obiously lost. But if you then take it and don't try to track down the owner, start using it (running up charges for the owner), and then refuse to answer the owner's request that it be returned even with a reward, it's most definitely stolen.
Even if it was "sold" to her by the cab driver, as she said caveat emptor comes into play, as the lawyer on TFA suggests.
You obviously didn't peruse the rest of the guy's site.
My hypothesis is that the people who stole it naïvely think that the guy is bluffing, puffing out his chest. In their minds, the law says, "Finder keepers losers weepers," not caveat emptor.
Saw it trying to "phone home" through ZoneAlarm and nipped it in the bud right there.
Some elderly women, recently widowed, will start buying lots of personal defense measures, burglar alarms and the like. Since U.S. culture doesn't have the same emphasis on the extended family as others, the grandmother doesn't have enough of a role from which they can derive a sense of importance; also, since they either predate or didn't participate in women's lib, they have no career accomplishments, students to mentor, etc. If they found their sense of importance through raising a family, they're way past menopause, and no longer desirable for the original purposes of sex, they entertain paranoid delusions because it makes them feel like they're still desirable.
There's a message there for people who worry about leaving information about themselves online.
Ah! I see you are one of those who thinks there are ideological differences between the two major American money parties.
I think the real question you need to ask yourself is, since when was there a legitimate difference between Democrats and Republicans?
1. Sony did not "stumble out of the gate" for the Playstation launch at E3. What happened with the Playstation one at E3 is the stuff of legend.
2. Microsoft had poor initial showings for the Xbox and the Xbox ended up losing Microsoft $7 billion dollars and remains a distant second to the PS2.
3. As far as I've been able to tell, E3 is the thing among the gamer market to decide what's hip as what's not. Even if he was right about the Xbox and Playstation, the facts wouldn't support this statement.
4. Even if gamers don't pay attention to E3, the muckity-mucks at places like EA, Activision and Ubisoft do, and Sony's stumble is going to have repercussions regarding the decisions they make regarding what titles they'll produce, what consoles they'll produce them for, and how much effort they'll put into a port. The PS3 went in one week from being the likely market leader to a likely failure, and past crimes of Sony against development houses (i.e., making the Playstation 2 & 3 difficult to develop for, thus cutting into developer's margins) are going to have a substantial effect on what games are available for it. And the gamers will pay attention to what's available for their systems.
I agree with PJ of Groklaw's comment... I gotta get into this "Analyst" business. You can know absolutely nothing, spew off about things, and people will pay you to do it. How lovely!
...Miyamoto has enough class not to say what I was thinking it was. But I don't, so I'll say it:
It could be flattery; more likely, however, it's the floundering move of a corporation that really has no direction or clue of what it should be doing. This is monkey-see monkey-do, not "recognition."
You're absolutely right; what I wrote wasn't what I intended, and I should have reviewed it before hitting the "submit" button. And not just because people could have gotten the impression that I was, as you say, making some kind of "hamfisted tarring" of Sony.
For example, the idea I had in my brain, that somehow failed to make it to the keyboard, was that the network effect was not equivalent to HIV, but to an opportunistic infection (like pleurisy) that are what frequently kill HIV victims. It's the arrogance that permeates Sony that is what makes Sony more likely to make bad business decisions and be adversely affected by changes in the market (e.g., they are on the wrong side of the network effect with the PS3, and historically successful divisions of Sony are now struggling), and less able to recover from them once made (e.g., defending the ridiculous price of the PS3 rather than realizing that someone outside of the company -- the bulk of their developers and customers -- might actually have a point).
And I'm still willing to accept that it's a bad metaphor; I don't think it is, because it really makes sense to me in terms of what's happening to Sony overall. Next time I'll make sure the idea's fully baked before I click that tantalizing "Submit" button...
Even if you buy a next-gen console to play previous-gen games, they aren't going out and buying these previous-gen games in the same way they'd buy a next-gen game: Sony doesn't see one dime of income from the PSP owners using it to run MAME and NES emulators.
If you'd look at how those other systems were launched, you'd find that timing doesn't matter, either; being late is just as "bad" as being early.
Why is it that people feel the need to mention "not a Sony fanboy" any time they say anything that isn't negative about Sony? The denial itself is cause for suspicion.
You're right. The problem is that the vast bulk of the market doesn't see the PS3 as a "media center." They see it as a "game machine." It will succeed or fail as a game machine.
I am comparing the biological effect of a particular virus to the business effect of "feature creep." At least as far as how feature creep appears to affect Sony's business model, the analogy is dead-on in how HIV affects the body's ability to stave off infection (including HIV itself).
I don't see how this is in poor taste.