Um, there are major differences between all those products you mentioned and the dinosaurs they replaced (okay, C++ is like a crocodile, the dino that's still alive, but for major projects Java isn't efficient and for small cross platform ones C++ isn't, so I don't see the clone argument unless you're talking about syntax). Lotus and Netscape were major improvements over their predecessors and the Playstation and SNES were leagues apart. The PS was a media gaming machine, Nintendo didn't dip their toes in the media aspect until the Wii, and it still doesn't play DVDs. Then the Lisa/Mac comparison to Xerox - Apple didn't copy it, they stole the idea and massively improved and marketed it before Xerox could. But really, that's Xerox's fault for letting Apple engineers take a peek at their work in progress.
MS is accused of cloning competitors because that's what they do, they make half-assed copies and market the hell out of them. Ideally, competition is supposed to involve the quality of the product. Netscape did a lot of things that Mosaic didn't, the only new things IE did was break compatibility with Netscape and make computers vulnerable to ActiveX exploits.
Now you're making assumptions. Where in my post did I claim to be a fundamentalist Christian?
Not all Christians are fundamentalists, not all people who are offended by fallacious anti-religious arguments are Christians. Fallacy #2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Converse_accident
You also repeated your first fallacy, ad hominem, because you attacked my character rather than the argument. It doesn't matter if I'm Aristotle or Mickey Mouse, it's the argument that matters.
Fallacy #3: Straw man, you tried to defend your use of fallacious logic by pointing out the absurdities of my (assumed) religion, thus framing the argument around irrelevant circumstances. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man
Fallacy #4: Fallacy of emotion - your hyperbolized, irrelevant satire was a cheap emotional appeal to atheists.
Way to be an ideal example of how NOT to construct a logical argument. Perhaps if you weren't so quick to judge and too impatient to think you may find some merit in religion. I'm all for religious debate, but when name calling and other silly fallacies are invoked it ceases to be an argument and becomes a dispute. Disputes are unproductive and achieve little other than spite. Logical arguments enhance the minds of those involved and sometimes conclude with a consensus. When no consensus is reached, at least there is an increased understanding.
. ..this is modded insightful when it's clearly flamebait. You may have a valid point, but calling Catholics stupid clowns is far from a logical argument and does nothing to support your conclusion that they shouldn't be tax exempt. Typical Dawkins thinking: logic only matters when dealing with science. Science was an unknown concept (it's a method of discovering knowledge, btw, not a book of answers) to Aristotle yet he considered many philosophical questions utilizing logic. Science likewise employs logic, it's dependent on it, but logic is in no way dependent on science. So regardless of how well formed you may believe your argument to be, "they're stupid clowns" is an ad hominem fallacy. I love how up-modded comments on Slashdot tend to be logical and are called out for their fallacies, but it pisses me off how this standard never seems to apply to religion. If I said Linux was crap because Linus Torvalds is a stupid weird clown everyone would be up in arms, the comment would be buried. But apply that same fallacious logic to the pope and it's insightful.
Well, you have to consider that in big corporations only certain individuals are allowed to talk to the press, and those certain individuals are supposed to know enough about their business to avoid such a monstrous gaff. We're techies, we know that the main "features" of Windows 7 are Mac-like GUI improvements. But to have a Microsoft representative admit that is terrible PR. Joe Shmoe may take Macs more seriously if he hears that OS X is the gold standard Windows is trying to live up to.
If this was just some guy, who happened to work for MS, who was overheard saying this at a bar on his day off, you'd have a point. But he said it to a journalist in an interview, so I'd completely understand if they fired him. Car analogy: a Ford rep says, "we wanted it to drive like a Volkswagen, their engineers are fantastic." As a consumer, that sounds like an endorsement for VW, not Ford's wannabe. Considering this is make or break season for W7 and Apple's looking for new material for their commercials, MS's rebuttal couldn't have been too hasty.
When I was 12 I made enough money to buy all the CDs and computer games I wanted with a paper route. I paid $50 for DOOM II in 1996. Then when I turned 15 I got a job flipping burgers, which I had to walk over a mile to get to. Part time employers love teenagers because they're flexible (easy to cut their hours), they don't compete for management positions, and they tend to have less health issues.
Then in rural areas there's plenty of informal sector jobs like husking corn or mowing lawns.
Regardless of whether a teenager has any employment opportunities or not, video games are still a luxury and by no means a necessity or entitlement.
More often than not, whistleblowers endanger their career or personal safety. They may be wrong from time to time, but it's hard to imagine someone taking that much risk without legitimate moral concerns.
Concerning nuclear energy, we should have been fast tracking it a long time ago. Also, much to the despair of energy companies, solar panels should be on houses.
This book seems genuinely interesting, but I don't understand why a determinist would also be a libertarian. Libertarians value freedom above all other things, but in a deterministic universe no one is free. If causality determines everything then why does it matter if the government is totalitarian or if society breaks down into anarchy? At least the totalitarian government merely LIMITS freedom, whereas the deterministic universe ABOLISHES it (well, technically it never exists). Libertarianism is very much a theory of justice, but in a determined universe nothing can be just, it just simply is.
I believe the universe may be determined (I have no proof to the contrary), but I like to believe that it's not because if it were I don't understand how anything could matter, how anything could have meaning. But Landsburg appears to be a passionate libertarian while maintaining a deterministic position. I just don't see how a political philosophy which values freedom above all other things could possibly be compatible with a causal theory which states that freedom doesn't exist.
I'm pretty sure we all have a horny gene. These genetic determinists seem to have forgotten that being civilized is overcoming natural impulses in lieu of rationality and morality.
The ground pin on American outlets is an EXTRA ground. There is a ground in the fuse box of the house as well. Granted, the third prong may increase safety, but not by much. British outlets just seem like overkill to me. Anyway, those little two prong adapters are safe and necessary, as there are a lot of old houses which lack three prong outlets.
I have to agree, and it saddens me because when Obama was initially elected I was very optimistic. It seems as if he's not who we thought he was, he's not a man with ideals more powerful than the system. He allows himself to be swayed by these idiot bureaucrats, probably the ones who run the NSA, CIA, and FBI. It's sad that he can't see through their fear-mongering, I'm sure they told him he'd be responsible for the next 9/11 or whatever if he didn't allow this shit to go on. But this completely contradicts his campaign promises to not be swayed by fear. Some people just don't understand that the ideals of the constitution, which is a contractual agreement between the government and the public, are more important than protecting us from every potential danger. This country was founded on the principle that liberty trumped life, that anyone without liberty should be willing risk their life to obtain it. We've turned into a nation of cowards, lead by cowards.
While I agree that the government has leaned more socialist in the last couple years, I don't think that using the budget as a metric for "how socialist" a country is is accurate. Socialism is a matter of policy, not dollars. The bulk of the spending increases have been in defense, an area where traditional socialists oppose massive spending and where libertarians support it. The bailouts are definitely somewhat socialist, but the budget was skyrocketing before those came into effect.
I think it's Job's lack of geekiness which has contributed to his success. In one interview while he was berating MS, he said it was b/c they had no culture and just thought like engineers. His example was fonts on Mac OS, how the typesets were inspired by the publishing industry. Consequently they formed a niche market, and being a key player in specific niches is what has always made Apple strong. Jobs is the liaison between consumer interests and the engineers.
Like you said, Balmer is just incompetent. That's not to say he's a complete moron, it's just that he's unqualified to run a company like Microsoft. But I also don't think that Gates would have done any better throughout the last decade. It's not like his "stepping down" really meant that his influence went anywhere. MS is just overambitious and resultantly has tripped over itself the past decade. As far as they're concerned, the XBox is a huge success, because appeasing shareholders isn't a priority of Gates/Balmer. They're in it for the legacy. Like O'Brien in 1984 says, "power is not a means; it is an end." They already have power - economic, political, and educational - and appeasing shareholders or grading their business's success by any other traditional metric doesn't apply because those are all a means to the end Microsoft achieved in the mid nineties. Our understanding of business may lead us to conclude that the last decade has been a failure for MS, just as Winston's understanding of society led him to believe Oceania was a failure, but the guys running the show are doing precisely what they have planned.
No dude, the French guy is right. It's not like the protagonists in French films are winners from the start, they have their flaws, but American protagonists tend to have little to no redeeming values. They're nothing but a bundle of flaws. Look at Transformers or Spider-man. Had Peter Parker not become Spider-man Mary-Jane would never have been his. It's always some ridiculous circumstance which, although a great conflict and seeming detriment to all involved, is not only resolved by the protagonist, BUT WORKS TO HIS ADVANTAGE. "Good thing all those people died and the world was in danger, otherwise I would never have lost my virginity."
If you think the French want to monopolize production then you really lack an understanding of their culture. If they wanted to compete with us in an ownership and logo war they wouldn't have a 35 hour work week and more national holidays than our jobs give us vacation days. Your assumption that this guy thinks we're pathetic because he's jealous is just absurd, there's nothing to be jealous of. Why don't you go visit France sometime and see if you can find the "inferiority complex" you speak of? Most of the French I've met come off as arrogant, but it's because they value enjoying life over "being #1!" So American logos are plastered everywhere and we're miserable because we're haunted by our nerd/jock high school dichotomy. Go #1! Meanwhile, the French enjoy the fruits of our labor.
I wasn't commenting on that, I was answering this: "Obviously Scientology is a laughable pile of dog shit, but how is it any worse than any of the other superstitious cults out there, like Christianity or Islam?"
Concerning the fraud charge, I would assume it's because of all the money they extort from their members. I know the immediate challenge to this would be that lots of churches pressure their members to donate, but I know of no other church which expels members for not giving or charges for access to theology. Scientology is run like a for-profit business (to paraphrase L. Ron Hubbard, "I want to get into the religion business, that's where the money's at."). If a Christian church were to reinstitute indulgences (where you pay the priest for salvation), I wouldn't be surprised to see them slapped with a fraud charge as well. Paying for salvation - whether it be from Allah or Xenu or Yahweh - violates any true theology. Theologies state that 1) there is a universal problem mankind suffers from and 2) through a certain practice 1 can be negated. But most importantly, since religion is a personal thing, a thing which exists whether or not money exists, the solution to the universal conundrum cannot be monetary. Hence Scientology is not a true religion/theology, it's a cult which poses as a religion, which is fraudulent.
One of the main reasons for the reformation was indulgences. Martin Luther, in essence, accused the Catholic Church of fraud.
The difference is in theology. The Catholic Church doesn't have a copyright on the Bible and they don't force their members to pay out the ass to gain access to their theology. What makes Scientology a cult rather than a religion is that you have to pay just to know what their core beliefs are. I don't have to become a Christian or a Buddhist to find out what those religions are about. I can find out what they're about and then make an informed decision. I can read the Koran for free on the internet, I can walk into a church and read one of their many Bibles, and if I ask a Buddhist monk what he believes in he won't charge me for that information. In this regard there is a major difference between Scientology and traditional religions. Even Mormonism, which I've always found to be particularly silly, has an open theology.
Another major difference is that I don't have to be a member of a church to be a Christian, Jew, or whatever. Religion is a personal thing and church is a community of religious people (i.e. you can be Christian and belong to no sect). In Scientology, with their closed theology, this is not possible because if you're not a member you don't know what they believe in.
But correlation is not causation, and if there is one thing sociological/psychological studies are consistently guilty of it's blending the two. They're grasping at straws, and one needs only common sense to realize this. If you're filling out a survey, do you treat it as a serous issue, which requires contemplation? Maybe. Is it possible that a larger percentage of those with higher last two SS numbers were wealthy than those with lower, thus willing to bid higher? Who knows. Studies like this are conducted all the time and they get only published when there's a "strong correlation." Please. This is far from conclusive and relies too heavily on conjecture (assuming correlation = causation). Your claim that "we can make inferences based on the experimental design" is highly questionable in this instance considering the small size of the group and only moderate correlation.
Here's a chess analogy. When I play white I never consider my first move, it's usually the same. When I play black my first move is predetermined by white's first move. I've played enough games of chess to know the immediate consequences of the opening moves. Similarly, you don't contemplate how to pump gas every time you pull up to the pump, you just do it. But when the chess game gets 5+ moves in you can't rely so heavily on prior knowledge because it becomes more unlikely that the board is exactly set up the same as it ever was before. On the flip side of this, you cannot contemplate every single piece and every single possible move b/c the human brain doesn't play chess the same way Big Blue does. But unlike Big Blue, the human can dismiss the rook which is boxed in by pawns, it can recall patterns and reapply them to the game at hand. But especially in late game situations you can rely less and less on prior knowledge. Like if the gas pump doesn't work like you'd expect it - you have to rethink what you know.
But the reliance on knowledge isn't a fallible weakness as this professor believes. We're able to assess a situation and determine whether depending on past knowledge is logical or not. "The fact that the students contemplated a decision at a completely arbitrary price, the last two digits of their social security number, very heavily influenced what they were willing to pay for the product. The students denied that the anchor influenced them, but the data shows something totally different." The fallacy is in the sentence. "Heavily influenced" when the truth was "moderate correlation." Furthermore, the data doesn't "show something totally different" it "SUGGESTS something different." Whenever the professor conducting the study uses hyperbolic and ILLOGICAL language and is trying to sell a book on the very subject, the results of the research become highly suspect. Grasping at straws.
Did he really expect to prove that the only beings capable of rational thought are irrational? Aristotle is turning over in his grave right now. From Amazon: "Duke University's behavioral economist Dan Ariely explores the hidden forces that shape our decisions" - a moderate correlation got turned into "hidden forces" - what a bunch of rubbish. A better example of an irrational decision is buying this guy's book. Statistics be dammed.
Pakistan has had nuclear weapons for years, why would you be worried about Iran having nuclear power plants? Unless, of course, you know nothing about Iran, which has many more freedoms and a much higher standard of living than Pakistan. Also, unlike Pakistan, the general populace doesn't consist of extremists who protect Osama bin Laden, they're people who PROTEST WHEN THEIR GOV'T PISSES THEM OFF.
Of course, instead of opening up dialogue with Iran and keeping them in check by aiding their nuclear ambitions, we could "kick their ass to the stone age" and kill thousands of people just like we did with Iraq and then station US troops there for ten years while anarchy ensues. That gunslinger attitude towards international politics is what got us in the messes in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Also, just b/c Iran will have nuclear weapons doesn't mean they will have a "finger on the proverbial button." First, they could never produce ENOUGH nuclear weapons to be a threat to us. If they were to attack anyone with a nuclear attack we could flatten their entire country in minutes. Not only would they lack the volume of weapons to be a threat to the international community, they lack the means to attack with them. It's not like they're making ICBMs and it's not like they could sneak a bomb into the U.S. (nuclear material is easy to track).
Ever consider that Obama won the Nobel prize b/c they're trying to criticize people like yourself who fell for Bush's fear mongering?
I can't believe people modded you insightful. Yeah, I'm sure the Nobel committee consists of people ignorant of how the U.S. government works - that's a bunch of BS. As far as they're concerned a "US President acting only in the interest of the US" is a bad thing because they award people for contributing to INTERNATIONAL PEACE. The deciding factor was probably the multiple times Obama addressed the Muslim world and APOLOGIZED for the policies of Bush and the fact that he is actively dismantling his most unpopular policies (the new Star Wars in Poland, torture). You know, the stuff that Hannity and Limbaugh call him unpatriotic for.
This was the world officially telling the American people not to elect dickheads like Bush if we want any international respect, but obviously the message isn't clear enough for everybody.
I love my MacBook Pro's trackpad as well but when it's on my desk I tend to use the mouse because it's slightly faster. A multi-touch trackpad may be the second best thing, and it's great for when I'm on the go, but it doesn't beat the mouse. The only time I use it when the mouse is hooked up is to scroll down pages because it does do that better than an analog wheel. To take a multi-touch trackpad and combine it with a mouse just seems like unnecessary complications. Sure, you they may be able to whip up some interesting tech demos, but the quality of an input devise is completely dependent on its ability to maximize productivity. A trackpad is more productive for a laptop on the go b/c it almost works like a mouse and the mouse isn't in the way/an extra thing to lug around. But if you're not going anywhere a mouse is bound to be more productive b/c it's more accurate, quick, and tactile.
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Um, there are major differences between all those products you mentioned and the dinosaurs they replaced (okay, C++ is like a crocodile, the dino that's still alive, but for major projects Java isn't efficient and for small cross platform ones C++ isn't, so I don't see the clone argument unless you're talking about syntax). Lotus and Netscape were major improvements over their predecessors and the Playstation and SNES were leagues apart. The PS was a media gaming machine, Nintendo didn't dip their toes in the media aspect until the Wii, and it still doesn't play DVDs. Then the Lisa/Mac comparison to Xerox - Apple didn't copy it, they stole the idea and massively improved and marketed it before Xerox could. But really, that's Xerox's fault for letting Apple engineers take a peek at their work in progress.
MS is accused of cloning competitors because that's what they do, they make half-assed copies and market the hell out of them. Ideally, competition is supposed to involve the quality of the product. Netscape did a lot of things that Mosaic didn't, the only new things IE did was break compatibility with Netscape and make computers vulnerable to ActiveX exploits.
Now you're making assumptions. Where in my post did I claim to be a fundamentalist Christian?
Not all Christians are fundamentalists, not all people who are offended by fallacious anti-religious arguments are Christians. Fallacy #2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Converse_accident
You also repeated your first fallacy, ad hominem, because you attacked my character rather than the argument. It doesn't matter if I'm Aristotle or Mickey Mouse, it's the argument that matters.
Fallacy #3: Straw man, you tried to defend your use of fallacious logic by pointing out the absurdities of my (assumed) religion, thus framing the argument around irrelevant circumstances. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man
Fallacy #4: Fallacy of emotion - your hyperbolized, irrelevant satire was a cheap emotional appeal to atheists.
Way to be an ideal example of how NOT to construct a logical argument. Perhaps if you weren't so quick to judge and too impatient to think you may find some merit in religion. I'm all for religious debate, but when name calling and other silly fallacies are invoked it ceases to be an argument and becomes a dispute. Disputes are unproductive and achieve little other than spite. Logical arguments enhance the minds of those involved and sometimes conclude with a consensus. When no consensus is reached, at least there is an increased understanding.
. . .this is modded insightful when it's clearly flamebait. You may have a valid point, but calling Catholics stupid clowns is far from a logical argument and does nothing to support your conclusion that they shouldn't be tax exempt. Typical Dawkins thinking: logic only matters when dealing with science. Science was an unknown concept (it's a method of discovering knowledge, btw, not a book of answers) to Aristotle yet he considered many philosophical questions utilizing logic. Science likewise employs logic, it's dependent on it, but logic is in no way dependent on science. So regardless of how well formed you may believe your argument to be, "they're stupid clowns" is an ad hominem fallacy. I love how up-modded comments on Slashdot tend to be logical and are called out for their fallacies, but it pisses me off how this standard never seems to apply to religion. If I said Linux was crap because Linus Torvalds is a stupid weird clown everyone would be up in arms, the comment would be buried. But apply that same fallacious logic to the pope and it's insightful.
Well, you have to consider that in big corporations only certain individuals are allowed to talk to the press, and those certain individuals are supposed to know enough about their business to avoid such a monstrous gaff. We're techies, we know that the main "features" of Windows 7 are Mac-like GUI improvements. But to have a Microsoft representative admit that is terrible PR. Joe Shmoe may take Macs more seriously if he hears that OS X is the gold standard Windows is trying to live up to.
If this was just some guy, who happened to work for MS, who was overheard saying this at a bar on his day off, you'd have a point. But he said it to a journalist in an interview, so I'd completely understand if they fired him. Car analogy: a Ford rep says, "we wanted it to drive like a Volkswagen, their engineers are fantastic." As a consumer, that sounds like an endorsement for VW, not Ford's wannabe. Considering this is make or break season for W7 and Apple's looking for new material for their commercials, MS's rebuttal couldn't have been too hasty.
When I was 12 I made enough money to buy all the CDs and computer games I wanted with a paper route. I paid $50 for DOOM II in 1996. Then when I turned 15 I got a job flipping burgers, which I had to walk over a mile to get to. Part time employers love teenagers because they're flexible (easy to cut their hours), they don't compete for management positions, and they tend to have less health issues.
Then in rural areas there's plenty of informal sector jobs like husking corn or mowing lawns.
Regardless of whether a teenager has any employment opportunities or not, video games are still a luxury and by no means a necessity or entitlement.
But that's what makes Sim City so much fun!
More often than not, whistleblowers endanger their career or personal safety. They may be wrong from time to time, but it's hard to imagine someone taking that much risk without legitimate moral concerns.
Concerning nuclear energy, we should have been fast tracking it a long time ago. Also, much to the despair of energy companies, solar panels should be on houses.
"The man laughed."
This book seems genuinely interesting, but I don't understand why a determinist would also be a libertarian. Libertarians value freedom above all other things, but in a deterministic universe no one is free. If causality determines everything then why does it matter if the government is totalitarian or if society breaks down into anarchy? At least the totalitarian government merely LIMITS freedom, whereas the deterministic universe ABOLISHES it (well, technically it never exists). Libertarianism is very much a theory of justice, but in a determined universe nothing can be just, it just simply is.
I believe the universe may be determined (I have no proof to the contrary), but I like to believe that it's not because if it were I don't understand how anything could matter, how anything could have meaning. But Landsburg appears to be a passionate libertarian while maintaining a deterministic position. I just don't see how a political philosophy which values freedom above all other things could possibly be compatible with a causal theory which states that freedom doesn't exist.
I'm pretty sure we all have a horny gene. These genetic determinists seem to have forgotten that being civilized is overcoming natural impulses in lieu of rationality and morality.
The ground pin on American outlets is an EXTRA ground. There is a ground in the fuse box of the house as well. Granted, the third prong may increase safety, but not by much. British outlets just seem like overkill to me. Anyway, those little two prong adapters are safe and necessary, as there are a lot of old houses which lack three prong outlets.
Thanks Orwell :P I agree with your post, I'm just pointing out that a citation is due.
I have to agree, and it saddens me because when Obama was initially elected I was very optimistic. It seems as if he's not who we thought he was, he's not a man with ideals more powerful than the system. He allows himself to be swayed by these idiot bureaucrats, probably the ones who run the NSA, CIA, and FBI. It's sad that he can't see through their fear-mongering, I'm sure they told him he'd be responsible for the next 9/11 or whatever if he didn't allow this shit to go on. But this completely contradicts his campaign promises to not be swayed by fear. Some people just don't understand that the ideals of the constitution, which is a contractual agreement between the government and the public, are more important than protecting us from every potential danger. This country was founded on the principle that liberty trumped life, that anyone without liberty should be willing risk their life to obtain it. We've turned into a nation of cowards, lead by cowards.
While I agree that the government has leaned more socialist in the last couple years, I don't think that using the budget as a metric for "how socialist" a country is is accurate. Socialism is a matter of policy, not dollars. The bulk of the spending increases have been in defense, an area where traditional socialists oppose massive spending and where libertarians support it. The bailouts are definitely somewhat socialist, but the budget was skyrocketing before those came into effect.
Does this mean that they were just unlucky in the 90's? I don't think so. . .
I think it's Job's lack of geekiness which has contributed to his success. In one interview while he was berating MS, he said it was b/c they had no culture and just thought like engineers. His example was fonts on Mac OS, how the typesets were inspired by the publishing industry. Consequently they formed a niche market, and being a key player in specific niches is what has always made Apple strong. Jobs is the liaison between consumer interests and the engineers.
Like you said, Balmer is just incompetent. That's not to say he's a complete moron, it's just that he's unqualified to run a company like Microsoft. But I also don't think that Gates would have done any better throughout the last decade. It's not like his "stepping down" really meant that his influence went anywhere. MS is just overambitious and resultantly has tripped over itself the past decade. As far as they're concerned, the XBox is a huge success, because appeasing shareholders isn't a priority of Gates/Balmer. They're in it for the legacy. Like O'Brien in 1984 says, "power is not a means; it is an end." They already have power - economic, political, and educational - and appeasing shareholders or grading their business's success by any other traditional metric doesn't apply because those are all a means to the end Microsoft achieved in the mid nineties. Our understanding of business may lead us to conclude that the last decade has been a failure for MS, just as Winston's understanding of society led him to believe Oceania was a failure, but the guys running the show are doing precisely what they have planned.
No dude, the French guy is right. It's not like the protagonists in French films are winners from the start, they have their flaws, but American protagonists tend to have little to no redeeming values. They're nothing but a bundle of flaws. Look at Transformers or Spider-man. Had Peter Parker not become Spider-man Mary-Jane would never have been his. It's always some ridiculous circumstance which, although a great conflict and seeming detriment to all involved, is not only resolved by the protagonist, BUT WORKS TO HIS ADVANTAGE. "Good thing all those people died and the world was in danger, otherwise I would never have lost my virginity."
If you think the French want to monopolize production then you really lack an understanding of their culture. If they wanted to compete with us in an ownership and logo war they wouldn't have a 35 hour work week and more national holidays than our jobs give us vacation days. Your assumption that this guy thinks we're pathetic because he's jealous is just absurd, there's nothing to be jealous of. Why don't you go visit France sometime and see if you can find the "inferiority complex" you speak of? Most of the French I've met come off as arrogant, but it's because they value enjoying life over "being #1!" So American logos are plastered everywhere and we're miserable because we're haunted by our nerd/jock high school dichotomy. Go #1! Meanwhile, the French enjoy the fruits of our labor.
And how exactly is underdog different from loser?
It's always good to try something new. Plus, I bet they'd be wild in the sack.
I wasn't commenting on that, I was answering this: "Obviously Scientology is a laughable pile of dog shit, but how is it any worse than any of the other superstitious cults out there, like Christianity or Islam?"
Concerning the fraud charge, I would assume it's because of all the money they extort from their members. I know the immediate challenge to this would be that lots of churches pressure their members to donate, but I know of no other church which expels members for not giving or charges for access to theology. Scientology is run like a for-profit business (to paraphrase L. Ron Hubbard, "I want to get into the religion business, that's where the money's at."). If a Christian church were to reinstitute indulgences (where you pay the priest for salvation), I wouldn't be surprised to see them slapped with a fraud charge as well. Paying for salvation - whether it be from Allah or Xenu or Yahweh - violates any true theology. Theologies state that 1) there is a universal problem mankind suffers from and 2) through a certain practice 1 can be negated. But most importantly, since religion is a personal thing, a thing which exists whether or not money exists, the solution to the universal conundrum cannot be monetary. Hence Scientology is not a true religion/theology, it's a cult which poses as a religion, which is fraudulent.
One of the main reasons for the reformation was indulgences. Martin Luther, in essence, accused the Catholic Church of fraud.
The difference is in theology. The Catholic Church doesn't have a copyright on the Bible and they don't force their members to pay out the ass to gain access to their theology. What makes Scientology a cult rather than a religion is that you have to pay just to know what their core beliefs are. I don't have to become a Christian or a Buddhist to find out what those religions are about. I can find out what they're about and then make an informed decision. I can read the Koran for free on the internet, I can walk into a church and read one of their many Bibles, and if I ask a Buddhist monk what he believes in he won't charge me for that information. In this regard there is a major difference between Scientology and traditional religions. Even Mormonism, which I've always found to be particularly silly, has an open theology.
Another major difference is that I don't have to be a member of a church to be a Christian, Jew, or whatever. Religion is a personal thing and church is a community of religious people (i.e. you can be Christian and belong to no sect). In Scientology, with their closed theology, this is not possible because if you're not a member you don't know what they believe in.
But correlation is not causation, and if there is one thing sociological/psychological studies are consistently guilty of it's blending the two. They're grasping at straws, and one needs only common sense to realize this. If you're filling out a survey, do you treat it as a serous issue, which requires contemplation? Maybe. Is it possible that a larger percentage of those with higher last two SS numbers were wealthy than those with lower, thus willing to bid higher? Who knows. Studies like this are conducted all the time and they get only published when there's a "strong correlation." Please. This is far from conclusive and relies too heavily on conjecture (assuming correlation = causation). Your claim that "we can make inferences based on the experimental design" is highly questionable in this instance considering the small size of the group and only moderate correlation.
Here's a chess analogy. When I play white I never consider my first move, it's usually the same. When I play black my first move is predetermined by white's first move. I've played enough games of chess to know the immediate consequences of the opening moves. Similarly, you don't contemplate how to pump gas every time you pull up to the pump, you just do it. But when the chess game gets 5+ moves in you can't rely so heavily on prior knowledge because it becomes more unlikely that the board is exactly set up the same as it ever was before. On the flip side of this, you cannot contemplate every single piece and every single possible move b/c the human brain doesn't play chess the same way Big Blue does. But unlike Big Blue, the human can dismiss the rook which is boxed in by pawns, it can recall patterns and reapply them to the game at hand. But especially in late game situations you can rely less and less on prior knowledge. Like if the gas pump doesn't work like you'd expect it - you have to rethink what you know.
But the reliance on knowledge isn't a fallible weakness as this professor believes. We're able to assess a situation and determine whether depending on past knowledge is logical or not. "The fact that the students contemplated a decision at a completely arbitrary price, the last two digits of their social security number, very heavily influenced what they were willing to pay for the product. The students denied that the anchor influenced them, but the data shows something totally different." The fallacy is in the sentence. "Heavily influenced" when the truth was "moderate correlation." Furthermore, the data doesn't "show something totally different" it "SUGGESTS something different." Whenever the professor conducting the study uses hyperbolic and ILLOGICAL language and is trying to sell a book on the very subject, the results of the research become highly suspect. Grasping at straws.
Did he really expect to prove that the only beings capable of rational thought are irrational? Aristotle is turning over in his grave right now. From Amazon: "Duke University's behavioral economist Dan Ariely explores the hidden forces that shape our decisions" - a moderate correlation got turned into "hidden forces" - what a bunch of rubbish. A better example of an irrational decision is buying this guy's book. Statistics be dammed.
on the iPhone app store. Don't you pay attention to advertising? :P
Pakistan has had nuclear weapons for years, why would you be worried about Iran having nuclear power plants? Unless, of course, you know nothing about Iran, which has many more freedoms and a much higher standard of living than Pakistan. Also, unlike Pakistan, the general populace doesn't consist of extremists who protect Osama bin Laden, they're people who PROTEST WHEN THEIR GOV'T PISSES THEM OFF.
Of course, instead of opening up dialogue with Iran and keeping them in check by aiding their nuclear ambitions, we could "kick their ass to the stone age" and kill thousands of people just like we did with Iraq and then station US troops there for ten years while anarchy ensues. That gunslinger attitude towards international politics is what got us in the messes in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Also, just b/c Iran will have nuclear weapons doesn't mean they will have a "finger on the proverbial button." First, they could never produce ENOUGH nuclear weapons to be a threat to us. If they were to attack anyone with a nuclear attack we could flatten their entire country in minutes. Not only would they lack the volume of weapons to be a threat to the international community, they lack the means to attack with them. It's not like they're making ICBMs and it's not like they could sneak a bomb into the U.S. (nuclear material is easy to track).
Ever consider that Obama won the Nobel prize b/c they're trying to criticize people like yourself who fell for Bush's fear mongering?
I can't believe people modded you insightful. Yeah, I'm sure the Nobel committee consists of people ignorant of how the U.S. government works - that's a bunch of BS. As far as they're concerned a "US President acting only in the interest of the US" is a bad thing because they award people for contributing to INTERNATIONAL PEACE. The deciding factor was probably the multiple times Obama addressed the Muslim world and APOLOGIZED for the policies of Bush and the fact that he is actively dismantling his most unpopular policies (the new Star Wars in Poland, torture). You know, the stuff that Hannity and Limbaugh call him unpatriotic for.
This was the world officially telling the American people not to elect dickheads like Bush if we want any international respect, but obviously the message isn't clear enough for everybody.
I love my MacBook Pro's trackpad as well but when it's on my desk I tend to use the mouse because it's slightly faster. A multi-touch trackpad may be the second best thing, and it's great for when I'm on the go, but it doesn't beat the mouse. The only time I use it when the mouse is hooked up is to scroll down pages because it does do that better than an analog wheel. To take a multi-touch trackpad and combine it with a mouse just seems like unnecessary complications. Sure, you they may be able to whip up some interesting tech demos, but the quality of an input devise is completely dependent on its ability to maximize productivity. A trackpad is more productive for a laptop on the go b/c it almost works like a mouse and the mouse isn't in the way/an extra thing to lug around. But if you're not going anywhere a mouse is bound to be more productive b/c it's more accurate, quick, and tactile.