The next thing would be to account for the volume of the ocean being doubled, and then halved, all in the course of a few months. Where did it come from, and where did it go?
The Bible says so: It came up out of the ground. I suppose there could be some huge vast subterranean oceans deep in the bedrock of our planet. One could even posit that tectonic activity could have forced water from these chambers, then drained back down.
On the other hand, the Genetic Record of species does NOT verify a mass extinction and recovery 5000 years ago. The theoretical "eve" from which all humanity is descended (by a study of mitochondrial DNA) is speculated, by generational estimation, to be somewhere around 10 million years ago. Unless we were having generations at a rate of about one every week for a singificant period of time. (The Bible actually talks about LONGER generations - some guys, particularly in Noah's bloodline, lived for hundreds of years, and Abraham fathered his first child when he was 100).
Onan wasn't punished for Homosexuality. Onan was punished because he didn't obey traditions and commandments. Specifically, he was supposed to knock-up his Sister-in-Law, because his brother was dead. Instead - he pulled-out, and splooged on the ground.
This is commonly interpreted in modern times as: "every time you mastrubate, God kills a kitten."
Don't ask me how this came about. But Onanism is basically about mastrubation, not Homosexuality. And the thing that primitive cultures hated about it was that it was perceived as having a negative impact on population growth - (as if any of us who mastrubated would turn down a chance for some hot monkey love with a sister-in-law. . . ). Onan wasn't a chronic mastrubator. He simply was trying to NOT knock up his sister-in-law (as was his duty by law). But meaning got perverted by modern interpretations. . .
you need to come to believe for yourself - not because the ark is there, not because the shroud is there, but because GOD is there. You have to feel GOD's presence. Nobody else can believe for you.
. . . this is the message I wish more so-called Christians out there would believe this. And I would add; Believe for yourself, not because the BIBLE is there, but because GOD is there.
Having been nastily betrayed by two life long friends in the name of Christianity, I still don't feel that I'm ready to accept most churches as anything other than as organized political organizations.
. . . folks like you and I are, indeed, in a pickle. Spiritually curious, our hearts are open to God, but we're terrified of His other followers. And rightly so. It's pretty tough to undo 2000 years of religious tradition. Especially when so many "believers" rely so heavily on the spiritual crutch that is the Bible.
Pi == 3 is a pretty good approximation actually, it is only 5% off the actual value.
If THAT'S the case, then shouldn't there be maybe another half-a-Commandment in there somewhere? I mean 10.5 is only 5% off the actual value of 10 Commandments.
. . . I'm just saying; either the Bible is 100% perfect and accurate, or it's not.
If it *IS*, then let's pick up our guns and bombs, and go kill all the infidels.
If it is *NOT*, then we need to lay down our weapons and LOVE OUR NEIGHBORS. . . . And maybe burn all the heretic Christian Taliban who are currently running our country at the stake.
Were you expecting an inifinitely long bible with all the digits?
No, of course not. But why even bring it up? Why is this passage even IN the Bible in the first place?
I believe it is portrayed in error, ON PURPOSE - as an example of why Inerrancy is a "BAD" thing.
Clearly the Bible's a significant work. An important guide to believers. But in my opinion, this passage is a message that canon scripture is not intended to be precise and perfect and never changing. One thing is clear. When believers start to take too much stock in their Scripture, and refuse to accept that it may not be a 100% perfect roadmap of God's Will - that's when people start blowing stuff up.
. . . Pi can ONLY be 3 in a domain where Circles are Hexagons. (which is interesting in of itself, from a Kaballistic point of view, seal-of-Solomon, etc.)
I have to disagree on the above point. The Middle East was a battleground long before oil meant anything.
True. . . and furthermore, as long as the US remains one of the largest exporters of weapons in the world, we will ALWAYS be doing business with these very satisfied customers.
Yet atheists - and I probably should count myself a member of that camp, though I despise being associated with most of them even that much - find endless delight in equine flagellation.
In my experience, many Athiests (certainly not all) are drawn to the philosophy out of an assumed sense of Intellectual Superiority over those with "antiquated superstitious belief".
The thing was, back when I called myself an Atheist, I would constantly catch myself praying. Maybe it was a habit from childhood, or maybe there was something more to it. It's a feeling I have a hard time describing, and sure it's illogical, and that's the point. Anyway, I stopped calling myself an Atheist. And since then, I've concluded that there are limits to human logic, and human senses. We'll always be pushing those limits, but there will always be something quite beyond them. That's where my superstitious beliefs come from.
The trick is - try not to believe in something specific, that can later be disproven;
If we find an Arc on the top of Ararat, in a 5000 year-old glacier, with frozen animal feces from every animal species known to man (except Unicorn, eh?), SCIENCE will have some 'splainin' to do. Sure, someone could have PUT it there - but HOW? Sure, it could have landed there after a flood, but HOW?
If we don't find it (as I suspect), well then it's just another mystery of mythology (as it is today, and has been for thousands of years).
On the other hand, when Scripture says something very specific about a method of execution, and later scientific tests directly prove crucifixion via nails through the palms of the hands is impossible (the flesh would tear - and this is only ONE example from scripture), all I can say is that someone who bases their faith and belief on Inerrant Accuracy specified in ANY documentation, is setting themselves up for either failure, or some ridiculous logical gymnastics to explain away the inconsistencies. This includes a scientist who's in love with their recorded DATA, and how it proves a certain theory. Because sooner or later, someone else is going to come along with a more accurate instrument, or better math, and turn that lovely data and associated theory upside down. It's almost inevitable. So the one thing that both Science and Religion need to keep in mind, is that they need to keep their minds open. Faith has NOTHING to do with what can or can not be empirically proven.
they were reviled because they circumvented the whole publishing and peer review part of science and went directly to the 'make wild-ass claims to the press'
. . . sad to say, the reviling hasn't dissuaded many many other "scientists" from doing the same thing.
Believe me, whatever the mythical secret-suppressing automobile manufacturers/oil drillers don't want revealed, the the electic industry very much does want a new energy source.
They want a new energy source, yes, but they don't want one they can't control, whose supply they cannot constrain on the Market for profit.
I'm not saying that Cold Fusion is the real deal or that it was somehow supressed. Look at the major oil companies' involvement in Solar power research, though, and you'll see what I mean. It's already set at "cartel pricing" to discourage competition with their fossil fuel business. Wait until the fossil fuels start running out - watch the price of solar cells skyrocket magically. . .
... it means a little more than simply hitting a website and picking the guy who you'd like to have lead.
This brings up a semi-interesting point, when you compare internet voting, to say. . . ebay, and look at the potential for easy access to early vote tallies, projections, media spin, etc. - and give the voter the flexibility to vote at 8am, or 8pm, or any time in between, I think we'd definately see the emergence of Vote Snipers, who wait until the most opportune time to vote, to attemt to influence other voters, or take advantage of trends. We already have an excessive "gaming the system" with the time zones, and the exclusion of third-parties. I think online voting would just make that worse.
(as a solution to the above problems: -news blackouts on election day -voter lotteries for preferred range of time for voting, and -polls open 00:00-23:59 GMT in all locations on election day.
This would ensure a more random time-distribution for voters (at a cost of slightly less convenience, which should be made up for by laws REQUIRING employer-accomidation).
The scenario you posit requires a leader of a nation to be so completely irrational as to initiate an action that guarantees the complete and total destruction of their entire country. There is absolutely no evidence that any leader in the world is this irrational. Individuals like Hussein, Qaddafi, Il Jong or Castro may be vicious, sociopathic, megalomaniacal killers but they have never shown an indifference to their personal self-preservation.
On the contrary. Hussein would be in power today had he shown any deference to his personal self-preservation - even in the WORST case, he'd be retiring on the French Riviera in exile.
If he HAD no WMD - why the F-CK didn't he bend over backwards to PROVE it, thus invalidating Bush's claims, and justification for war? Why did he stonewall the inspectors? Why did he continue to fire at US planes policing the no-fly zone (legal or not)? If you believe some of the news stories about his Interrogation (I'm not saying I do, consider the source of all information regarding Hussein, post-capture), he's supposedly irrational, uncooperative, and still believes he's President. There's no reason to believe that he wasn't in a degraded mental state prior to the war, or even dating back several years. Perhaps he went senile. Perhaps high-level Baathists chose to keep him in power as a figurehead, and a focus for anti-Baathist rage. Similar to the situation in the US now, where Rove, Cheney, and Wolfowitz keep an absolute retard in office as the figurehead to go along with their plans.
Backtracking a ballistic missile launch to its source is now a trivial exercise. The US response would be overwhelming and final. Nothing would remain of the "rogue country" except blast glass.
But still, I certainly do not want to be hanging out in downtown LA, watching the contrail of an incoming warhead, and knowing that, even if it was only 5% effective and extremely costly, why the hell didn't someone at least TRY something to stop what was about to happen to me and my family?
On the other hand, smuggling a nuclear bomb into the US in a shipping container, for example, leaves no mathematically certain way to track it to its source. It's also much cheaper and simpler. This is the real threat from terrorists or "rogue nations." And it is a threat for which we are woefully unprepared.
Agreed, this is a huge threat - and one we should be concerned about, and actively doing something about. But that does not mean that the Ballistic Missile threat does not exist. Something CAN be done about that. Unfortunately, I think that the Bush Junta's reasoning behind this is more along the lines of massive corporate welfare for Carlyle Group partners than anything else. With the Bush plan, we'll have NEITHER protection. I'm arguing that we should do BOTH - as quickly as technologically possible (and not prior to that). We need a better deterrant to the BM threat than "massive retaliation". Massive Retaliation is really an unacceptable response from a humanitarian standpoint. Murder 40 million Iranians because a handful of psychoes are running their government and decide to attack the US? Having a BM defense allows for some VERY well leveraged attempts at diplomacy and saving the lives of 40 million innocent bystanders before resorting to the Massive Retaliation response - without having to make the huge strategic sacrifice of losing a major US city - once that happens, other military options become limited, the US economy, and the World economy probably could not survive such a blow. The nuclear threat needs addressing, whether it's smuggled in in a shipping container, or from a Ballistic Missile, (or an enemy bomber thats allowed to wander into US airspace by the same air defense system that was totally asleep at the wheel on 9/11).
given the current pace of Sci Fi, I would extrapolate a trend;
The next popular series will be a 90210-ified (see: Smallville) version of the life-story of brilliant high-school honor student, Victor Von Frankenstein, a hunky-looking geek, who, using his 'leet science skills, builds a freind from spare parts to help him defeat bullies, and play on the football team, pushing his school to the State Championship. I'm still working out the details of how we get a cute teenage girl named Igor to be the love-interest, who never actually gets together with Victor despite both of their covert efforts over the span of the first 3 seasons because they're both too shy to say anything to the other, or too busy with schoolwork, or maybe Victor can't decide between Igor or the Bride he built in the second season, or some other crap like that.
That's because it's been largely the same Jackasses since the 1970's.
Look up the life history of someone like, say, Jack Valenti, and you come up with all sorts of interesting tidbits that most of us who discuss his disgusting perverted take on "Freedom" on a semi daily basis here on Slashdot; He was "special assistant" during the Johnson Administration. Johnson *appointed* him to the head of the MPAA. (?! how does that work?). Like most crooked white-collar criminals, (at least it seems that way, lately) he is a Texan. In 1964 - he was involved with the Bay of Tonkin incident; largely seen as a staged "outrage" that justified US involvement in the Vietnam war.
If you wear the ever-fashionable tinfoil hat these days. . . you know that Valenti is one of "them" - and he represents a movement.
but if something big happened, I know it will be there.
yeah, I can always count on Drudge to keep me up to date on Kerry's botox injections, or the marketshare ratings of some crap radio talkshow I've never heard of.
YEs, the difference here, between Slashdot and FoxNews, is when FoxNews puts on some unbelieveable garbage, the audience is passive, and absorbs it for themselves. As individuals, they have to decide, based ONLY on the information Fox gave them, whether the story, and editorial claims are accurate. On Slashdot, if some unbelievable garbage is put up, the reader goes to the comments, and lo and behold, VERY often, there are dozens of folks better informed than the average reader on the particular topic, and can agree, or call bullshit. MANY bullshit articles that otherwise would pass, get slapped down like the Ho that spent her money on smack.
Popular opinion seems to be that the primary cause for this ignorance and violence is lack of proper education and lack of gainful employment. Since the poor people have nothing to do and can only learn from fundamentalist Muslim "clerics," they become terrorists. You don't see any rich kids blowing themselves up to kill innocents that they have never met yet hate passionately.
Like, prince Bandar, of the Saudi Royal Family - who sent money to a charity that funneled it to Al Qaeda?
Slashdot Mirror
I rather like Microsoft's newfound interest in what they call "transparancy." I think that the blogging trend inside MS is a good thing--
The Soviets called it "Glasnost". This was, of course, prior to 1987. . .
It's an AIRSHIP!!! /Zeppelin von MontePython
The next thing would be to account for the volume of the ocean being doubled, and then halved, all in the course of a few months. Where did it come from, and where did it go?
The Bible says so: It came up out of the ground. I suppose there could be some huge vast subterranean oceans deep in the bedrock of our planet. One could even posit that tectonic activity could have forced water from these chambers, then drained back down.
On the other hand, the Genetic Record of species does NOT verify a mass extinction and recovery 5000 years ago. The theoretical "eve" from which all humanity is descended (by a study of mitochondrial DNA) is speculated, by generational estimation, to be somewhere around 10 million years ago. Unless we were having generations at a rate of about one every week for a singificant period of time. (The Bible actually talks about LONGER generations - some guys, particularly in Noah's bloodline, lived for hundreds of years, and Abraham fathered his first child when he was 100).
Onan wasn't punished for Homosexuality.
Onan was punished because he didn't obey traditions and commandments. Specifically, he was supposed to knock-up his Sister-in-Law, because his brother was dead. Instead - he pulled-out, and splooged on the ground.
This is commonly interpreted in modern times as:
"every time you mastrubate, God kills a kitten."
Don't ask me how this came about. But Onanism is basically about mastrubation, not Homosexuality. And the thing that primitive cultures hated about it was that it was perceived as having a negative impact on population growth - (as if any of us who mastrubated would turn down a chance for some hot monkey love with a sister-in-law. . . ). Onan wasn't a chronic mastrubator. He simply was trying to NOT knock up his sister-in-law (as was his duty by law). But meaning got perverted by modern interpretations. . .
you need to come to believe for yourself - not because the ark is there, not because the shroud is there, but because GOD is there. You have to feel GOD's presence. Nobody else can believe for you.
. . . this is the message I wish more so-called Christians out there would believe this. And I would add;
Believe for yourself, not because the BIBLE is there, but because GOD is there.
Having been nastily betrayed by two life long friends in the name of Christianity, I still don't feel that I'm ready to accept most churches as anything other than as organized political organizations.
. . . folks like you and I are, indeed, in a pickle. Spiritually curious, our hearts are open to God, but we're terrified of His other followers. And rightly so. It's pretty tough to undo 2000 years of religious tradition. Especially when so many "believers" rely so heavily on the spiritual crutch that is the Bible.
Pi == 3 is a pretty good approximation actually, it is only 5% off the actual value.
If THAT'S the case, then shouldn't there be maybe another half-a-Commandment in there somewhere? I mean 10.5 is only 5% off the actual value of 10 Commandments.
. . . I'm just saying; either the Bible is 100% perfect and accurate, or it's not.
If it *IS*, then let's pick up our guns and bombs, and go kill all the infidels.
If it is *NOT*, then we need to lay down our weapons and LOVE OUR NEIGHBORS.
. . . And maybe burn all the heretic Christian Taliban who are currently running our country at the stake.
Were you expecting an inifinitely long bible with all the digits?
No, of course not.
But why even bring it up?
Why is this passage even IN the Bible in the first place?
I believe it is portrayed in error, ON PURPOSE - as an example of why Inerrancy is a "BAD" thing.
Clearly the Bible's a significant work. An important guide to believers. But in my opinion, this passage is a message that canon scripture is not intended to be precise and perfect and never changing.
One thing is clear. When believers start to take too much stock in their Scripture, and refuse to accept that it may not be a 100% perfect roadmap of God's Will - that's when people start blowing stuff up.
. . . Pi can ONLY be 3 in a domain where Circles are Hexagons. (which is interesting in of itself, from a Kaballistic point of view, seal-of-Solomon, etc.)
I have to disagree on the above point. The Middle East was a battleground long before oil meant anything.
True. . . and furthermore, as long as the US remains one of the largest exporters of weapons in the world, we will ALWAYS be doing business with these very satisfied customers.
Yet atheists - and I probably should count myself a member of that camp, though I despise being associated with most of them even that much - find endless delight in equine flagellation.
In my experience, many Athiests (certainly not all) are drawn to the philosophy out of an assumed sense of Intellectual Superiority over those with "antiquated superstitious belief".
The thing was, back when I called myself an Atheist, I would constantly catch myself praying. Maybe it was a habit from childhood, or maybe there was something more to it. It's a feeling I have a hard time describing, and sure it's illogical, and that's the point. Anyway, I stopped calling myself an Atheist. And since then, I've concluded that there are limits to human logic, and human senses. We'll always be pushing those limits, but there will always be something quite beyond them. That's where my superstitious beliefs come from.
The trick is - try not to believe in something specific, that can later be disproven;
If we find an Arc on the top of Ararat, in a 5000 year-old glacier, with frozen animal feces from every animal species known to man (except Unicorn, eh?), SCIENCE will have some 'splainin' to do.
Sure, someone could have PUT it there - but HOW?
Sure, it could have landed there after a flood, but HOW?
If we don't find it (as I suspect), well then it's just another mystery of mythology (as it is today, and has been for thousands of years).
On the other hand, when Scripture says something very specific about a method of execution, and later scientific tests directly prove crucifixion via nails through the palms of the hands is impossible (the flesh would tear - and this is only ONE example from scripture), all I can say is that someone who bases their faith and belief on Inerrant Accuracy specified in ANY documentation, is setting themselves up for either failure, or some ridiculous logical gymnastics to explain away the inconsistencies. This includes a scientist who's in love with their recorded DATA, and how it proves a certain theory. Because sooner or later, someone else is going to come along with a more accurate instrument, or better math, and turn that lovely data and associated theory upside down. It's almost inevitable. So the one thing that both Science and Religion need to keep in mind, is that they need to keep their minds open. Faith has NOTHING to do with what can or can not be empirically proven.
they were reviled because they circumvented the whole publishing and peer review part of science and went directly to the 'make wild-ass claims to the press'
. . . sad to say, the reviling hasn't dissuaded many many other "scientists" from doing the same thing.
Believe me, whatever the mythical secret-suppressing automobile manufacturers/oil drillers don't want revealed, the the electic industry very much does want a new energy source.
They want a new energy source, yes, but they don't want one they can't control, whose supply they cannot constrain on the Market for profit.
I'm not saying that Cold Fusion is the real deal or that it was somehow supressed. Look at the major oil companies' involvement in Solar power research, though, and you'll see what I mean. It's already set at "cartel pricing" to discourage competition with their fossil fuel business. Wait until the fossil fuels start running out - watch the price of solar cells skyrocket magically. . .
Not computer networking.
People.
Know the right people, and you're in (as long as you're at least competent).
And. . . get into the defense industry, get a Security Clearance. You're golden. They'll never outsource those jobs.
If an organ fails, maybe the question "Does this person still need to live" should be asked.
/Limbaugh
. . . yeah right, and the next question will be. . . "is he a Liberal?"
no thanks to your utopian worldview.
... it means a little more than simply hitting a website and picking the guy who you'd like to have lead.
This brings up a semi-interesting point, when you compare internet voting, to say. . . ebay, and look at the potential for easy access to early vote tallies, projections, media spin, etc. - and give the voter the flexibility to vote at 8am, or 8pm, or any time in between, I think we'd definately see the emergence of Vote Snipers, who wait until the most opportune time to vote, to attemt to influence other voters, or take advantage of trends.
We already have an excessive "gaming the system" with the time zones, and the exclusion of third-parties. I think online voting would just make that worse.
(as a solution to the above problems:
-news blackouts on election day
-voter lotteries for preferred range of time for voting, and
-polls open 00:00-23:59 GMT in all locations on election day.
This would ensure a more random time-distribution for voters (at a cost of slightly less convenience, which should be made up for by laws REQUIRING employer-accomidation).
The scenario you posit requires a leader of a nation to be so completely irrational as to initiate an action that guarantees the complete and total destruction of their entire country. There is absolutely no evidence that any leader in the world is this irrational. Individuals like Hussein, Qaddafi, Il Jong or Castro may be vicious, sociopathic, megalomaniacal killers but they have never shown an indifference to their personal self-preservation.
On the contrary. Hussein would be in power today had he shown any deference to his personal self-preservation - even in the WORST case, he'd be retiring on the French Riviera in exile.
If he HAD no WMD - why the F-CK didn't he bend over backwards to PROVE it, thus invalidating Bush's claims, and justification for war? Why did he stonewall the inspectors? Why did he continue to fire at US planes policing the no-fly zone (legal or not)?
If you believe some of the news stories about his Interrogation (I'm not saying I do, consider the source of all information regarding Hussein, post-capture), he's supposedly irrational, uncooperative, and still believes he's President. There's no reason to believe that he wasn't in a degraded mental state prior to the war, or even dating back several years. Perhaps he went senile. Perhaps high-level Baathists chose to keep him in power as a figurehead, and a focus for anti-Baathist rage. Similar to the situation in the US now, where Rove, Cheney, and Wolfowitz keep an absolute retard in office as the figurehead to go along with their plans.
Backtracking a ballistic missile launch to its source is now a trivial exercise. The US response would be overwhelming and final. Nothing would remain of the "rogue country" except blast glass.
But still, I certainly do not want to be hanging out in downtown LA, watching the contrail of an incoming warhead, and knowing that, even if it was only 5% effective and extremely costly, why the hell didn't someone at least TRY something to stop what was about to happen to me and my family?
On the other hand, smuggling a nuclear bomb into the US in a shipping container, for example, leaves no mathematically certain way to track it to its source. It's also much cheaper and simpler. This is the real threat from terrorists or "rogue nations." And it is a threat for which we are woefully unprepared.
Agreed, this is a huge threat - and one we should be concerned about, and actively doing something about. But that does not mean that the Ballistic Missile threat does not exist. Something CAN be done about that. Unfortunately, I think that the Bush Junta's reasoning behind this is more along the lines of massive corporate welfare for Carlyle Group partners than anything else. With the Bush plan, we'll have NEITHER protection. I'm arguing that we should do BOTH - as quickly as technologically possible (and not prior to that). We need a better deterrant to the BM threat than "massive retaliation". Massive Retaliation is really an unacceptable response from a humanitarian standpoint. Murder 40 million Iranians because a handful of psychoes are running their government and decide to attack the US? Having a BM defense allows for some VERY well leveraged attempts at diplomacy and saving the lives of 40 million innocent bystanders before resorting to the Massive Retaliation response - without having to make the huge strategic sacrifice of losing a major US city - once that happens, other military options become limited, the US economy, and the World economy probably could not survive such a blow. The nuclear threat needs addressing, whether it's smuggled in in a shipping container, or from a Ballistic Missile, (or an enemy bomber thats allowed to wander into US airspace by the same air defense system that was totally asleep at the wheel on 9/11).
uh - then add on top of that a $400 video card at the cutting edge of a new generation, for each new game title?
No magazine of which I am aware has any integrity.
Well, there's always Consumer Reports. But what they don't lack in Integrity, they surely make up for it with utter lack of cluefullness.
given the current pace of Sci Fi, I would extrapolate a trend;
The next popular series will be a 90210-ified (see: Smallville) version of the life-story of brilliant high-school honor student, Victor Von Frankenstein, a hunky-looking geek, who, using his 'leet science skills, builds a freind from spare parts to help him defeat bullies, and play on the football team, pushing his school to the State Championship. I'm still working out the details of how we get a cute teenage girl named Igor to be the love-interest, who never actually gets together with Victor despite both of their covert efforts over the span of the first 3 seasons because they're both too shy to say anything to the other, or too busy with schoolwork, or maybe Victor can't decide between Igor or the Bride he built in the second season, or some other crap like that.
That's because it's been largely the same Jackasses since the 1970's.
Look up the life history of someone like, say, Jack Valenti, and you come up with all sorts of interesting tidbits that most of us who discuss his disgusting perverted take on "Freedom" on a semi daily basis here on Slashdot; He was "special assistant" during the Johnson Administration. Johnson *appointed* him to the head of the MPAA. (?! how does that work?). Like most crooked white-collar criminals, (at least it seems that way, lately) he is a Texan. In 1964 - he was involved with the Bay of Tonkin incident; largely seen as a staged "outrage" that justified US involvement in the Vietnam war.
If you wear the ever-fashionable tinfoil hat these days. . . you know that Valenti is one of "them" - and he represents a movement.
but if something big happened, I know it will be there.
yeah, I can always count on Drudge to keep me up to date on Kerry's botox injections, or the marketshare ratings of some crap radio talkshow I've never heard of.
YEs, the difference here, between Slashdot and FoxNews, is when FoxNews puts on some unbelieveable garbage, the audience is passive, and absorbs it for themselves. As individuals, they have to decide, based ONLY on the information Fox gave them, whether the story, and editorial claims are accurate.
On Slashdot, if some unbelievable garbage is put up, the reader goes to the comments, and lo and behold, VERY often, there are dozens of folks better informed than the average reader on the particular topic, and can agree, or call bullshit. MANY bullshit articles that otherwise would pass, get slapped down like the Ho that spent her money on smack.
I think that's why Bush is so reviled here.
Popular opinion seems to be that the primary cause for this ignorance and violence is lack of proper education and lack of gainful employment. Since the poor people have nothing to do and can only learn from fundamentalist Muslim "clerics," they become terrorists. You don't see any rich kids blowing themselves up to kill innocents that they have never met yet hate passionately.
Like, prince Bandar, of the Saudi Royal Family - who sent money to a charity that funneled it to Al Qaeda?
Ice-9.
Another form of water that doesn't get things wet. . .
Yeah, but the first time I miss a shot with the sniper rifle due to DirectX inaccuracy, I'm switching damn platforms.