F*** any aliens who refuse to interfere in our planet on the principle of it. The @$$holes are our enemy, not our friend. So I guess you're against us in the war against the Ori.
Afterall if you think of the reverse surely nobody would have a problem with a US citizen being arrested passing through Europe or Canada if they were guilty of a crime under our laws? I sure would if they didn't commit the crime while inside of your borders, and I think most Americans would agree with me. Imagine this scenario: I'm an American collector of Nazi World War II memorabilia, which was legally obtained. I sell my goods all over the world, and on my website I have a disclaimer saying "I don't know what laws apply to you so please don't order anything you can't legally order in your locale." Israel (or France) has a ban on pro-Nazi memorabilia. When I travel to Israel (or France) on vacation, they arrest me upon arrival because some of my customers happened to be Israeli (or French).
You may not like me, but I hope that you don't think the example I gave would be a good reason for me to be arrested, detained, jailed, executed, or harassed by the governments of either of those countries.
Were the US trying to extradite them from wherever they live for actions which they took outside the US then as non-US citizens I would have a big problem with that but if these idiots are stupid enough to fly to the US by themselves what on earth do they expect to happen? I can guarantee you have broken, and facilitated the breaking of, many silly American laws. In American law, ignorance of an obscure law is no excuse for disobeying it. I hope you are arrested the next time you try to travel to the US, you filthy criminal.
So, in the extreme, let's say that The Pirate Bay wins the auction for sealand, and honors it's promise to make all contriubtors honorary citzens.
Then, Sealand decides to make mass murder legal... still like asking that question? They can make it legal all they want, but that won't stop it from being illegal elsewhere. But what if Sealand decided to make talking on a cell phone illegal? What if most of the international flights in its region required a layover in Sealand? What if they decided to arrest and prosecute senior executives from Nokia for facilitating the use of cell phones? What's to stop them from extraditing you if you go to any country which has an extradition treaty with them?
If you don't like that one, try this: What if China declares posting on slashdot to be illegal? What if CmdrTaco's mother lives in China? What if she has a stroke, goes into a coma, and dies? If he goes to China to see her one last time, should he be arrested for allowing Chinese citizens to break their own unjust law? Should another country be expected to intervene to save him from the death penalty?
Personally, I feel there should be strongly worded international treaties about this. Laws should be divided up into categories like "morality" and "harm". If a person facilitates physical harm over borders, he should still be held accountable. For example, I think Iraq should be able to put out an arrest warrant for an Iranian engineer who sends schematics, instructional videos, and materials for use in building IEDs to insurgents in Iraq. An Iranian religious leader should not, however, be arrested by Iraqis while vacationing in Iraq for running a website designed to convince Sunnis to become Shia.
It's worth noting that about as many people in the US believe there are extraterrestrials who have visited us as consider themselves to be devout Christians.
Amazing, isn't it? I can't believe we still have so many Christians in this day and age...
Who knows, if a race can figure out how to migrate through space, it might just know how to detect life from a distance (which I find highly likely). Heck, we can already do that. We can tell pretty well from a distance what an atmosphere is comprised of, for example. Any atmosphere which has a relatively constant, non-self-sustainable mixture, such as ours with its high proportion of oxygen, almost certainly indicates a planet covered with life. We just can't see quite far enough yet.
The self-replicating space probes were created by man... You just gave me a new idea to get religion to boost NASA's funding. How about "Man was created by God so they could peacefully colonize and explore the universe for Him"?
I'm generally really skeptical about things like this, but this one looks sort of OK. It's not.
The basic idea apparently is to overload the sensors on heat seeking missiles. Pretty much.
So, what could possibly go wrong is likely that the missile will not be disabled, but will maybe lock onto the laser instead of the engine. That might be an improvement as having a heat seaking missile fly up one of the engine exhausts and detonate most likely is not a good thing. A rather unlikely scenario, but not much of an improvement. All explosives have a kill zone. If you're within 1 foot of an exploding grenade, you're not going to live much longer. If the warhead is sufficient to threaten a commercial multi-engine airliner, you're screwed either way. Regardless, that's not how this system operates. It's not going to lock onto a different part of the aircraft instead...
Considering that there are quite possibly an unknown number of US Stinger and Soviet SA-7 missiles floating around in the inventory of arms dealers in the shadier parts of the world, this anti-missile laser might be an OK idea. Sure, if you completely ignore the cost vs. risk analysis, or if you can talk somebody into paying to develop, test, and install all of the equipment for you. That way you're mitigating a very low probability risk for nothing. I doubt any airliner would be willing to spend $1m/plane to install these and the government has already funded testing and development for them!
At least, I'd like to hear why I'm wrong about this, as I will probably learn something I didn't know. Deal. In addition to the above points, this is a future system for a current threat. By the time this is actually widely deployed all of the current manpads, many of which proliferated during the Russia-Afghanistan conflict, will be gone. They'll either have been used, stored incorrectly, corroded, or simply have bad batteries and broken parts. There is little reason to believe that the next generation of manpads will be unable to counter this system.
Personally, I'm horrified that a politician with so much control over the DHS and DOD budgets thinks this is a good idea.
Many radar systems filter based on the velocity of the object detected. True. What's that have to do with this system? The article said "Adapted from military technology, Guardian is designed to detect a missile launch and then direct a laser to the seeker system on the head of the missile and disrupt its guidance signals." It detects a launch. If you'll look at the picture in the article, you'll notice the "laser" dome doesn't look much like a RADAR.
source? Ex airforce fighter aircraft radar technician. He said that is the information given to them during their many safety trainings.
He also mentioned that it makes a mess on the roof of the hanger when a tech is working on a plane and the ejection seat goes off... A buddy of mine nearly lost his arm working on the ejection seat of a captured iraqi fighter...
oh wait, your average joe doesn't understand the principles of science.
the question is: 50+% of the population does not believe in science. Never mind that 95% of the population's daily work depends on it. Should we be surprised that some so-called 'scientist' is acting politically? Of course Joe Public doesn't understand science! Why should they believe in things they don't understand? Their teachers told them there is a scientific debate between evolution and ID, that scientists think the earth is either 6000 years old or 4 billion years old, that scientific theories are "just theories". The meteorologist on channel 2 says "global warming" every time the temperature deviates from the average, but the meteorologist on channel 4 says "global warming" in a sarcastic tone and makes fun of it. The preacher says not to worry about it because Jesus is coming anyways. Mom and Dad don't know much about the matter, either. Scientific journals aren't easy to come by and are nearly impossible for the layman to understand anyways.
If you think Joe Public is just inherently stupid and ignorant about science, you might want to consider that perhaps it's society which has failed him. Our teachers are woefully incompetent and many at the lower levels of education have simple degrees like "Children's Education" which require nothing more than intros to science and math. Most parents can rarely offer much more than an uneducated answer or urban legend, and many of them teach their children to believe that religious leaders speak for God. Preachers have degrees in non-topics, like theology, but regularly attempt to explain or refute science to their flocks. To top it off, we've got a huge collection of jackasses, paid shills, idiots, and people capable of little more than reading teleprompters all over television.
And now it's time for my childhood story. In junior high, one of my math teachers had a degree in children's education, or some similar non-math arts degree. I disagreed with her lesson which said that "3.9(bar) != 4" (bar being the term we used for repeating/recurring/infinite 9s (9/(10^N - 1))). Naturally, I wrote "4" on my test instead. When she marked every answer incorrect and failed me, I asked her "what the difference was." She didn't get it, and probably never did figure it out. I didn't meet a single math teacher who did until I started taking courses at the college, when my brain had already matured and I had already decided not to pursue a career in mathematics because of all of the idiots.
Luckily I'm a stubborn ass. Most people aren't. Most people respect their elders, listen to their teachers, watch TV, and care what authority figures are telling them and, if it makes sense to them, they'll believe it. Nobody has the time to thoroughly research all of the scientific issues which affect their lives, and most people get the majority of their "scientific" information from journalists, friends, or non-expert teachers. That's the real problem we're facing, not just in America, but throughout the world.
Lets stick to the case under consideration instead of meandering off, shall we?
The fact is that the Slashdot newsflash is highly misleading in that totally misreports the expert in question.
This is because it simply parrots a blog/rant by a someone associated with the Senate, who got his facts wrong.
Perhaps we should have Penguinisto, the submitter, and samzenpus, the/. editor, decertified instead?
And thank you for your posts. I was just about done reading the comments and was about to go read the article when I noticed your rebuttal. Now I don't have to bother reading the article.
If a doctor says that decapitation is a sure-fire cure for headaches, then it would be wrong to 'censor' him. But he should not be allowed to practice medicine - at least not by medicine's governing body. I don't see why he shouldn't be allowed to practice medicine. I'd be surprised if headaches last longer than 15 seconds after decapitation. Actually, I really can't think of any other cures. There are better treatments with milder side effects, though. Perhaps a better analogy would be a doctor telling his patients they only need a flu vaccine once in their lifetimes since evolution is "just a theory"?
I do agree with the rest of your post, though. It's amazing how often people fall back on the "well I have the right to think whatever I want" argument whenever their opinions are disputed. Now if it was a Plumber's Guild and they told him he couldn't be a plumber if he doubted global climate change, I might call it censorship, but it seems like a fairly relevant thing for meteorologists...
More like you're running the water into your washing machine in the corner of the basement; it's spilling out and the whole floor is covered. You've known the floor's wet for ages, and you're 99.9% sure it's due to the washer thing, but there's some guy from the water company outside with a megaphone telling everyone it's groundwater rising up, which it does every 1500 years or so, and there's nothing you can do about it. (You have a pay-per-gallon water meter in your house.)
The water is up to your crotch. Do you:
turn the washing machine off, bail out the floodwater, and fix it so it doesn't flood your basement again;
think it's okay because in "the future" washing machines will be better designed and not flood your basement;
keep on going with it, because you need to get that laundry done and it's not your fault you're going to drown?
I'll go with "4. Run and check the water meter real quick. If it's flying, I'll go outside and kill the guy with the megaphone, then proceed to turn off my water main and fix the problem, hire a lawyer, refute the water bill, and sue for whatever reasons the lawyer can help me find. If the water meter isn't moving, and I look around and see everyone else panicking because their houses are flooding, I'll grab all of the valuables I can out of my house and do what I can to minimize my losses."
Pendantic jackass much? You even point out that PATA is a retroactively created term. I'm not sure what this has to do with pendants, but this is like saying we shouldn't differentiate between nuclear, diesel, steam, and wind powered ships because all we had a long time ago were "ships". If I suggested that I needed either "a sailboat or a ship" you would be wondering what I meant by the term "ship".
Day 1: none of my professors took me seriously. When they were asking guys who already knew how to program to move into CS2, they recommended that I stay in CS1. I ended up teaching a bunch of those guys a thing or two. After freshman year, I had earned the respect of my professors and my peers though.
There was a girl seated directly next to me in the the first programming class I attended. She possessed a remarkable, innate inability to understand any of the topics, and stumbled through her first hello world without ever understanding it. I'm not saying the teacher was the best I've seen. He was, at best, mediocre. The problem is that, after talking to her, I found out that she was really in the class because she was challenging the attitude that women couldn't code. Unfortunately for her, and all women, she failed miserably, and only managed to get a passing grade because she combined her emotional pleading with accusations of sexism.
After reading my anecdotal evidence, you're probably asking what my point is. I met many more girls who professed an interest in IT during high school, but it took a long time for me to actually find one who was a genuine nerd and could be respected as an equal. Sadly, these rights of passage are fairly important in determining who among your peers is actually a peer. I hope we find better ways of weeding out the weak and being nice to people, primarily because, all skills being equal, I prefer to work with women. They are simply more caring, social, and fun to flirt with. For precisely these reasons, I generally prefer them as managers as well.
But please do not believe that a man would not undergo similar hardships attempting to pursue a predominantly female career with high barriers of entry. I'm trying to think of one at the moment, but I can't, so I'll use a more ridiculous argument. Can you imagine a man trying to teach patterned breathing to pregnant women? They would be laughed out of a job until they were able to prove themselves. Likewise, the perceived number of skilled female IT workers is going to have to outweigh the perceived number of women getting into IT for the wrong reasons.
I propose that this could also be a cause of arrogance amongst male IT people. The idea is put in their head that they are better the moment they step onto a college campus. It probably just gets worse by the time the four years there are over.
I'm not discounting at all what you're saying, simply trying to add my experiences to it. I've worked with a lot of people in a lot of professions during my relatively short life. I will tell you right now that this attitude of elitism is endemic in nearly every career field which maintains significant hurdles as a barrier to entry. Anything from military special operators to actors to lawyers to politicians. Any field which requires the jumping of hurdles will instill a sense of superiority over those who were unable to overcome those hurdles.
Among the women in these fields this effect is even more exaggerated than that of the men. They are an even rarer breed than the men who made it into these positions! Sure, tons of men have been able to do what they're doing, but there are even fewer women in such positions.
In my interactions with these various professionals, one of the only professional fields I haven't noticed this in was doctors. They seem to have this marvelous way of sitting and attentively listening to a patient tell them why they think they're sick, and then promptly making the patient feel good about his self-analysis while simultaneously dismissing the patient's suggestions and giving a prescription for the real fix. I don't know exactly how the medical profession has managed to gain the public goodwill it has, but I imagine their adherence to their code of ethics plays a solid role.
I suppose my advice to the IT profession is to follow the path of the medical doctor. Adopt a common code of ethics (I know there are already such c
Clearly he was trolling himself as well as the moderators. Apparently he wasn't smart enough to create a troll he himself couldn't resist, but the moderators took the bait and waste their mod points marking him as a troll. I'm not sure if that makes the GP the winner or not, but it's certainly an interesting turn of events.
More than likely some fucktard from HR came up with it and told IT to implement it. You give the HR department too much credit. What they really did was pay a bunch of third party consultants a crapload of money to bypass IT altogether and implement the timeclock system with no IT involvement, then told IT to support it. Sir, the truthfulness of your accusations has made my chest contract into a fit of pangs. I will hold you responsible should I need medical attention.
I offer you a million dollars to believe that the sky is green. Can you comply? Sure, you can lie to me to get my money, but can you truly look at the sky and believe it is green, if I offer you a large enough sum to do so? I can indeed. Hallowed are the Ori. Wait, wait... May the greenness of the sky bless you today! I'm sorry if my words seem confused today. The day I accepted the greenness of the sky into my heart has been a very emotional one for me.
Would you like the mailing address for that check now, or can you simply wire it to me? If you need me to perform other tasks, such as forcibly converting some heretics and deniers of the Truth, simply let me know.
Defining Atheism You do not understand the definition of atheism. As the wikipedia article you cited points out atheism is "the positive assertion that deities do not exist." It's not an "I don't know"... it's a "I know for sure". Saying "I believe I'm reincarnated or I believe there are Thetans, but I don't believe in Shiva" is not athiesm. Atheism denies all that is not physical.
I suppose you stopped reading at the end of the very first sentence. Here is the full quote: "It is commonly defined as the denial of theism, amounting to the positive assertion that deities do not exist, or as the deliberate rejection of theism. However, others--including most atheistic philosophers and groups--define atheism as the simple absence of belief in deities (cf. nontheism), thereby designating many agnostics, and people who have never heard of gods, such as newborn children, as atheists as well. In recent years, some atheists have adopted the terms strong and weak atheism to clarify whether they consider their stance one of positive belief (strong atheism) or the mere absence of belief (weak atheism)."
See here for a philosophical definition of atheism and 3 unprovable presuppositions.
The replies thoroughly refuted his argument.
The term "saints" does not mean people who do miracles. These are people who are highly regarded, elevated up as examples of the belief system.
No, saint has long been a clearly defined religious term. You are redefining it as a non-religious term to justify associating it with atheism, then you are using the "they have Saints, just like religion!" argument to try to show that atheism=religion. I can't even think of an example that would exaggerate the stupidity of this argument any further than you already have. Regardless, if you're redefining saints to include "people who are respected and seen as good", you'll have to drop the association of saints with religion. It is a human trait to respect people who are perceived as doing good things, and that has nothing to do with religion, even if you believe that everything has something to do with a religion.
Atheists absolutely do evangelize./. is a perfect example... their are myriad of examples were atheists present and argue for their viewpoint, there are sigs here with atheist slogans... atheist may not be as formal as the Roman Catholic church (which is not surprising considering atheism reactionary history). They fight to win over hearts and minds to their point of view.
If you had read the definitions of evangelize you would know you're not going to convince me by using logical fallacies, such as this repeated use of fallacies of definition. Once again, evangelizing is a purely religious term. If you want to redefine it as "showing support for a cause" or "explaining why you support a cause" or even "trying to recruit people to a cause" then you are simply destroying the current definition of the word. But you can not redefine it and then claim that atheists are religious because they engage in evangelism because evangelism is a term that used to be religious, is still associated with religion, but has been redefined for the purpose of confusing atheism with religion. Unless you want me to start explaining to you why you're not really a christian because you don't burn witches or molest altar boys, since that's the new definition of christian.
I'm not sure whether you're even aware of how dishonest you are being right now. Perhaps your mind has been so warped that you can't see what you're saying is contradicting itself or perhaps you feel the ends outweigh the means. Regardless, atheists aren't evangelizing. For thousands of years theists have been killing and torturing anyone who refused to bow to their religious beliefs and indoctrinate their kids to follow
Atheism operates with many of the same behaviors as a religion. It has a set of unproveable presuppositions that its followers take by faith, its followers evangelize, there are particular behaviors and patterns (Darwin fish and the FSM come to mind), there are "saints" (I'm lazy tonight... so I'll hit up Darwin again), their are people put up on high who are unquestionable (scientists, however speculative their research may be recieve this luxury today).
Note that atheism and true agnosticism are completely different. An athiest makes a statement. There is "no god/God/higher power outside of nature". An true agnostic would simply admit that they can't ever really know at all. I think you're confused about the definition of atheism. Atheism does not operate with many of the same behaviors as a religion. It has no unprovable presuppositions that its followers take by faith; it has no followers and there is nothing for atheists to evangelize in the first place. Within any group of people there are going to be behaviors and patterns which can be uniquely associated with that group. There are no "atheist saints", but there are some famous figures which have given atheists more reasons to not be theists. Darwin gave us an alternative to creationism and was well ahead of his time, but nobody claims he was superhuman, godly, or performed miracles, and thousands of scientists would be ecstatic to find prove that he got something wrong and correct any mistakes he may have made. In science nothing is unquestionable. Many modern scientists are working to expand knowledge by proving their predecessors wrong or filling in the details their predecessors were incapable of. I challenge you to name one church or religion which encourages its members to update and replace their gospels as they find evidence that contradicts them, let alone encouraging their members to prove their prophets wrong.
In short, just because you believe atheists and scientists think or act a certain way doesn't mean it is true. The atheism you're probably attempting to describe would be strong atheism, which is the label currently associated with those who accept the proposition "God does not exist" as true. Most other atheists are "weak" atheists, which means that they do not believe in a god. They may or may not believe it is possible to know whether or not there is a god, so there is really no faith required to be an atheist by definition. Even most strong atheists would agree with "I do not know for certain that there is not a god, but I find the existence of any god as described by the various religions to be highly unlikely, and there is absolutely no evidence to believe in them."
Of course I'm surprised that you're so confused about these ideas since you yourself are a strong atheist. Perhaps you believe in Christianity or Judaism or Islam or Buddhism or Humanism, but you certainly deny the existence of Ba'Al, Ra, Yahweh, or the ancient aliens who trapped evil spirits in the volcanoes on Earth. It's safe to say there are millions of gods you not only don't believe in, but actively believe do not exist, and for very good reasons with so much solid evidence to back you up.
Astronomers think [a] supernova's shock wave knocked the pillars down about 6,000 years ago.
Just as the the Earth was being created!
You laugh, but there are actually some very arrogant people out there who believe that the Earth is older than that.
The legal language is exact and well-defined. Ok, I'll follow along...
The perceived "slipperyness" of lawyers is a side-effect of their function: To help their employers present effective arguments for the most-favorable-to-them interpretations of legal matters in dispute. You mean to say that the job of a lawyer is to exploit the fact that laws, as written, are open to interpretation? That doesn't really sound very "exact" or "well-defined" to me. Certainly there is a lot of technical jargon involved, and some terms are very specific but, overall, I can't think of a single law, article of the constitution, or amendment which hasn't resulted in someone in the legal system having to interpret exactly what it means. And those interpretations often change over time as society's morals change. I think there is ample evidence to say that our current systems of law and language are unable to precisely define meaning such that they will be honestly interpreted by everybody in the same way.
In religious texts they have tried to tell stories, such as the Good Samaritan, which went through great lengths to make the reader actually experience the associated emotions and understand the concepts on an emotional and ethical level, yet these texts have been the subject of even fiercer debate than Clinton's infamous questioning of the definition of "sex".
In short, I'd say it's obvious that our current legal language is imprecise and not well-defined. If the supreme court can't unanimously agree on interpretations nobody else can be expected to.
There is hope that current and future research into neurolinguistics will allow us to fully understand exactly how language is comprehended by different people, and ultimately develop a system of communication that eliminates the possibility of misinterpretation and misunderstanding. If we manage to accomplish this, the supposed redeeming value of modern legalese will finally become a reality. Until then, we'll have people who genuinely disagree, people encountering new situations that weren't considered when the laws were originally conceived, and people who know damned well they're wrong but know they can win an argument without being right.
introduce existing SCO customers to SuSE!
Both of them? Brooks/Eckered Pharmacies and McDonalds both run SCO UnixWare systems... both as central store processing servers/interfaces I know this is nitpicking, but it might have sounded better if you had mentioned a third customer to refute the argument...
That was then, here's what Schneier has to say now:
A few years ago I was ready to believe the NSA recognized we're all safer with more secure general-purpose computers and networks, but in the post-9/11 take-the-gloves-off eavesdrop-on-everybody environment, I simply don't trust the NSA to do the right thing.
So he's decided to ignore the evident logic in his initial reaction to a claim and allow his emotional response to other governmental abuses of authority to take its place? Not something I'd be proud of if I were him. Of course the same tired allegations come around every time the NSA is mentioned in the press. When they suggested improvements for PGP, nobody wanted to implement them out of fear they were back doors. Then, years later, people discovered the changes the NSA had proposed would have fixed a security weakness in the crypto.
Historically, the NSA has made solid contributions to Information Assurance. Historically, the weakest of their exploits far outshine creating a "NSAKey" vulnerability. I have no doubt that an agency which measures its computing power by the acre can break whatever encryption I use. I do think it is logical that they would want to help secure not only governmental systems, but the home computers of their employees and America's private sector from possible easy attack vectors. Imagine the crippling effect on American interests of French intelligence agencies thoroughly hacking Boeing and giving all of their data to Airbus. That is the reason it's under the NSA's charter to help fix security problems instead of creating new back doors. If they're not capable of hacking the typical windows server or workstation, without inserting new back doors in the operating system, we might want to consider outsourcing the NSA.
Slashdot Mirror
You may not like me, but I hope that you don't think the example I gave would be a good reason for me to be arrested, detained, jailed, executed, or harassed by the governments of either of those countries. Were the US trying to extradite them from wherever they live for actions which they took outside the US then as non-US citizens I would have a big problem with that but if these idiots are stupid enough to fly to the US by themselves what on earth do they expect to happen? I can guarantee you have broken, and facilitated the breaking of, many silly American laws. In American law, ignorance of an obscure law is no excuse for disobeying it. I hope you are arrested the next time you try to travel to the US, you filthy criminal.
Then, Sealand decides to make mass murder legal... still like asking that question? They can make it legal all they want, but that won't stop it from being illegal elsewhere. But what if Sealand decided to make talking on a cell phone illegal? What if most of the international flights in its region required a layover in Sealand? What if they decided to arrest and prosecute senior executives from Nokia for facilitating the use of cell phones? What's to stop them from extraditing you if you go to any country which has an extradition treaty with them?
If you don't like that one, try this: What if China declares posting on slashdot to be illegal? What if CmdrTaco's mother lives in China? What if she has a stroke, goes into a coma, and dies? If he goes to China to see her one last time, should he be arrested for allowing Chinese citizens to break their own unjust law? Should another country be expected to intervene to save him from the death penalty?
Personally, I feel there should be strongly worded international treaties about this. Laws should be divided up into categories like "morality" and "harm". If a person facilitates physical harm over borders, he should still be held accountable. For example, I think Iraq should be able to put out an arrest warrant for an Iranian engineer who sends schematics, instructional videos, and materials for use in building IEDs to insurgents in Iraq. An Iranian religious leader should not, however, be arrested by Iraqis while vacationing in Iraq for running a website designed to convince Sunnis to become Shia.
Amazing, isn't it? I can't believe we still have so many Christians in this day and age...
Personally, I'm horrified that a politician with so much control over the DHS and DOD budgets thinks this is a good idea.
He also mentioned that it makes a mess on the roof of the hanger when a tech is working on a plane and the ejection seat goes off... A buddy of mine nearly lost his arm working on the ejection seat of a captured iraqi fighter...
the question is: 50+% of the population does not believe in science. Never mind that 95% of the population's daily work depends on it. Should we be surprised that some so-called 'scientist' is acting politically? Of course Joe Public doesn't understand science! Why should they believe in things they don't understand? Their teachers told them there is a scientific debate between evolution and ID, that scientists think the earth is either 6000 years old or 4 billion years old, that scientific theories are "just theories". The meteorologist on channel 2 says "global warming" every time the temperature deviates from the average, but the meteorologist on channel 4 says "global warming" in a sarcastic tone and makes fun of it. The preacher says not to worry about it because Jesus is coming anyways. Mom and Dad don't know much about the matter, either. Scientific journals aren't easy to come by and are nearly impossible for the layman to understand anyways.
If you think Joe Public is just inherently stupid and ignorant about science, you might want to consider that perhaps it's society which has failed him. Our teachers are woefully incompetent and many at the lower levels of education have simple degrees like "Children's Education" which require nothing more than intros to science and math. Most parents can rarely offer much more than an uneducated answer or urban legend, and many of them teach their children to believe that religious leaders speak for God. Preachers have degrees in non-topics, like theology, but regularly attempt to explain or refute science to their flocks. To top it off, we've got a huge collection of jackasses, paid shills, idiots, and people capable of little more than reading teleprompters all over television.
And now it's time for my childhood story. In junior high, one of my math teachers had a degree in children's education, or some similar non-math arts degree. I disagreed with her lesson which said that "3.9(bar) != 4" (bar being the term we used for repeating/recurring/infinite 9s (9/(10^N - 1))). Naturally, I wrote "4" on my test instead. When she marked every answer incorrect and failed me, I asked her "what the difference was." She didn't get it, and probably never did figure it out. I didn't meet a single math teacher who did until I started taking courses at the college, when my brain had already matured and I had already decided not to pursue a career in mathematics because of all of the idiots.
Luckily I'm a stubborn ass. Most people aren't. Most people respect their elders, listen to their teachers, watch TV, and care what authority figures are telling them and, if it makes sense to them, they'll believe it. Nobody has the time to thoroughly research all of the scientific issues which affect their lives, and most people get the majority of their "scientific" information from journalists, friends, or non-expert teachers. That's the real problem we're facing, not just in America, but throughout the world.
The fact is that the Slashdot newsflash is highly misleading in that totally misreports the expert in question.
This is because it simply parrots a blog/rant by a someone associated with the Senate, who got his facts wrong.
Perhaps we should have Penguinisto, the submitter, and samzenpus, theAnd thank you for your posts. I was just about done reading the comments and was about to go read the article when I noticed your rebuttal. Now I don't have to bother reading the article.
I do agree with the rest of your post, though. It's amazing how often people fall back on the "well I have the right to think whatever I want" argument whenever their opinions are disputed. Now if it was a Plumber's Guild and they told him he couldn't be a plumber if he doubted global climate change, I might call it censorship, but it seems like a fairly relevant thing for meteorologists...
More like you're running the water into your washing machine in the corner of the basement; it's spilling out and the whole floor is covered. You've known the floor's wet for ages, and you're 99.9% sure it's due to the washer thing, but there's some guy from the water company outside with a megaphone telling everyone it's groundwater rising up, which it does every 1500 years or so, and there's nothing you can do about it. (You have a pay-per-gallon water meter in your house.)
The water is up to your crotch. Do you:
- turn the washing machine off, bail out the floodwater, and fix it so it doesn't flood your basement again;
- think it's okay because in "the future" washing machines will be better designed and not flood your basement;
- keep on going with it, because you need to get that laundry done and it's not your fault you're going to drown?
I'll go with "4. Run and check the water meter real quick. If it's flying, I'll go outside and kill the guy with the megaphone, then proceed to turn off my water main and fix the problem, hire a lawyer, refute the water bill, and sue for whatever reasons the lawyer can help me find. If the water meter isn't moving, and I look around and see everyone else panicking because their houses are flooding, I'll grab all of the valuables I can out of my house and do what I can to minimize my losses."Day 1: none of my professors took me seriously. When they were asking guys who already knew how to program to move into CS2, they recommended that I stay in CS1. I ended up teaching a bunch of those guys a thing or two. After freshman year, I had earned the respect of my professors and my peers though.
There was a girl seated directly next to me in the the first programming class I attended. She possessed a remarkable, innate inability to understand any of the topics, and stumbled through her first hello world without ever understanding it. I'm not saying the teacher was the best I've seen. He was, at best, mediocre. The problem is that, after talking to her, I found out that she was really in the class because she was challenging the attitude that women couldn't code. Unfortunately for her, and all women, she failed miserably, and only managed to get a passing grade because she combined her emotional pleading with accusations of sexism.
After reading my anecdotal evidence, you're probably asking what my point is. I met many more girls who professed an interest in IT during high school, but it took a long time for me to actually find one who was a genuine nerd and could be respected as an equal. Sadly, these rights of passage are fairly important in determining who among your peers is actually a peer. I hope we find better ways of weeding out the weak and being nice to people, primarily because, all skills being equal, I prefer to work with women. They are simply more caring, social, and fun to flirt with. For precisely these reasons, I generally prefer them as managers as well.
But please do not believe that a man would not undergo similar hardships attempting to pursue a predominantly female career with high barriers of entry. I'm trying to think of one at the moment, but I can't, so I'll use a more ridiculous argument. Can you imagine a man trying to teach patterned breathing to pregnant women? They would be laughed out of a job until they were able to prove themselves. Likewise, the perceived number of skilled female IT workers is going to have to outweigh the perceived number of women getting into IT for the wrong reasons.
I propose that this could also be a cause of arrogance amongst male IT people. The idea is put in their head that they are better the moment they step onto a college campus. It probably just gets worse by the time the four years there are over.
I'm not discounting at all what you're saying, simply trying to add my experiences to it. I've worked with a lot of people in a lot of professions during my relatively short life. I will tell you right now that this attitude of elitism is endemic in nearly every career field which maintains significant hurdles as a barrier to entry. Anything from military special operators to actors to lawyers to politicians. Any field which requires the jumping of hurdles will instill a sense of superiority over those who were unable to overcome those hurdles.
Among the women in these fields this effect is even more exaggerated than that of the men. They are an even rarer breed than the men who made it into these positions! Sure, tons of men have been able to do what they're doing, but there are even fewer women in such positions.
In my interactions with these various professionals, one of the only professional fields I haven't noticed this in was doctors. They seem to have this marvelous way of sitting and attentively listening to a patient tell them why they think they're sick, and then promptly making the patient feel good about his self-analysis while simultaneously dismissing the patient's suggestions and giving a prescription for the real fix. I don't know exactly how the medical profession has managed to gain the public goodwill it has, but I imagine their adherence to their code of ethics plays a solid role.
I suppose my advice to the IT profession is to follow the path of the medical doctor. Adopt a common code of ethics (I know there are already such c
Clearly he was trolling himself as well as the moderators. Apparently he wasn't smart enough to create a troll he himself couldn't resist, but the moderators took the bait and waste their mod points marking him as a troll. I'm not sure if that makes the GP the winner or not, but it's certainly an interesting turn of events.
You give the HR department too much credit. What they really did was pay a bunch of third party consultants a crapload of money to bypass IT altogether and implement the timeclock system with no IT involvement, then told IT to support it. Sir, the truthfulness of your accusations has made my chest contract into a fit of pangs. I will hold you responsible should I need medical attention.
Would you like the mailing address for that check now, or can you simply wire it to me? If you need me to perform other tasks, such as forcibly converting some heretics and deniers of the Truth, simply let me know.
Defining Atheism
You do not understand the definition of atheism. As the wikipedia article you cited points out atheism is "the positive assertion that deities do not exist." It's not an "I don't know"... it's a "I know for sure". Saying "I believe I'm reincarnated or I believe there are Thetans, but I don't believe in Shiva" is not athiesm. Atheism denies all that is not physical.
I suppose you stopped reading at the end of the very first sentence. Here is the full quote: "It is commonly defined as the denial of theism, amounting to the positive assertion that deities do not exist, or as the deliberate rejection of theism. However, others--including most atheistic philosophers and groups--define atheism as the simple absence of belief in deities (cf. nontheism), thereby designating many agnostics, and people who have never heard of gods, such as newborn children, as atheists as well. In recent years, some atheists have adopted the terms strong and weak atheism to clarify whether they consider their stance one of positive belief (strong atheism) or the mere absence of belief (weak atheism)."
See here for a philosophical definition of atheism and 3 unprovable presuppositions.
The replies thoroughly refuted his argument.
The term "saints" does not mean people who do miracles. These are people who are highly regarded, elevated up as examples of the belief system.
No, saint has long been a clearly defined religious term. You are redefining it as a non-religious term to justify associating it with atheism, then you are using the "they have Saints, just like religion!" argument to try to show that atheism=religion. I can't even think of an example that would exaggerate the stupidity of this argument any further than you already have. Regardless, if you're redefining saints to include "people who are respected and seen as good", you'll have to drop the association of saints with religion. It is a human trait to respect people who are perceived as doing good things, and that has nothing to do with religion, even if you believe that everything has something to do with a religion.
Atheists absolutely do evangelize. /. is a perfect example... their are myriad of examples were atheists present and argue for their viewpoint, there are sigs here with atheist slogans... atheist may not be as formal as the Roman Catholic church (which is not surprising considering atheism reactionary history). They fight to win over hearts and minds to their point of view.
If you had read the definitions of evangelize you would know you're not going to convince me by using logical fallacies, such as this repeated use of fallacies of definition. Once again, evangelizing is a purely religious term. If you want to redefine it as "showing support for a cause" or "explaining why you support a cause" or even "trying to recruit people to a cause" then you are simply destroying the current definition of the word. But you can not redefine it and then claim that atheists are religious because they engage in evangelism because evangelism is a term that used to be religious, is still associated with religion, but has been redefined for the purpose of confusing atheism with religion. Unless you want me to start explaining to you why you're not really a christian because you don't burn witches or molest altar boys, since that's the new definition of christian.
I'm not sure whether you're even aware of how dishonest you are being right now. Perhaps your mind has been so warped that you can't see what you're saying is contradicting itself or perhaps you feel the ends outweigh the means. Regardless, atheists aren't evangelizing. For thousands of years theists have been killing and torturing anyone who refused to bow to their religious beliefs and indoctrinate their kids to follow
Note that atheism and true agnosticism are completely different. An athiest makes a statement. There is "no god/God/higher power outside of nature". An true agnostic would simply admit that they can't ever really know at all. I think you're confused about the definition of atheism. Atheism does not operate with many of the same behaviors as a religion. It has no unprovable presuppositions that its followers take by faith; it has no followers and there is nothing for atheists to evangelize in the first place. Within any group of people there are going to be behaviors and patterns which can be uniquely associated with that group. There are no "atheist saints", but there are some famous figures which have given atheists more reasons to not be theists. Darwin gave us an alternative to creationism and was well ahead of his time, but nobody claims he was superhuman, godly, or performed miracles, and thousands of scientists would be ecstatic to find prove that he got something wrong and correct any mistakes he may have made. In science nothing is unquestionable. Many modern scientists are working to expand knowledge by proving their predecessors wrong or filling in the details their predecessors were incapable of. I challenge you to name one church or religion which encourages its members to update and replace their gospels as they find evidence that contradicts them, let alone encouraging their members to prove their prophets wrong.
In short, just because you believe atheists and scientists think or act a certain way doesn't mean it is true. The atheism you're probably attempting to describe would be strong atheism, which is the label currently associated with those who accept the proposition "God does not exist" as true. Most other atheists are "weak" atheists, which means that they do not believe in a god. They may or may not believe it is possible to know whether or not there is a god, so there is really no faith required to be an atheist by definition. Even most strong atheists would agree with "I do not know for certain that there is not a god, but I find the existence of any god as described by the various religions to be highly unlikely, and there is absolutely no evidence to believe in them."
Of course I'm surprised that you're so confused about these ideas since you yourself are a strong atheist. Perhaps you believe in Christianity or Judaism or Islam or Buddhism or Humanism, but you certainly deny the existence of Ba'Al, Ra, Yahweh, or the ancient aliens who trapped evil spirits in the volcanoes on Earth. It's safe to say there are millions of gods you not only don't believe in, but actively believe do not exist, and for very good reasons with so much solid evidence to back you up.
Astronomers think [a] supernova's shock wave knocked the pillars down about 6,000 years ago.
Just as the the Earth was being created!
You laugh, but there are actually some very arrogant people out there who believe that the Earth is older than that.
In religious texts they have tried to tell stories, such as the Good Samaritan, which went through great lengths to make the reader actually experience the associated emotions and understand the concepts on an emotional and ethical level, yet these texts have been the subject of even fiercer debate than Clinton's infamous questioning of the definition of "sex".
In short, I'd say it's obvious that our current legal language is imprecise and not well-defined. If the supreme court can't unanimously agree on interpretations nobody else can be expected to.
There is hope that current and future research into neurolinguistics will allow us to fully understand exactly how language is comprehended by different people, and ultimately develop a system of communication that eliminates the possibility of misinterpretation and misunderstanding. If we manage to accomplish this, the supposed redeeming value of modern legalese will finally become a reality. Until then, we'll have people who genuinely disagree, people encountering new situations that weren't considered when the laws were originally conceived, and people who know damned well they're wrong but know they can win an argument without being right.
So he's decided to ignore the evident logic in his initial reaction to a claim and allow his emotional response to other governmental abuses of authority to take its place? Not something I'd be proud of if I were him. Of course the same tired allegations come around every time the NSA is mentioned in the press. When they suggested improvements for PGP, nobody wanted to implement them out of fear they were back doors. Then, years later, people discovered the changes the NSA had proposed would have fixed a security weakness in the crypto.
Historically, the NSA has made solid contributions to Information Assurance. Historically, the weakest of their exploits far outshine creating a "NSAKey" vulnerability. I have no doubt that an agency which measures its computing power by the acre can break whatever encryption I use. I do think it is logical that they would want to help secure not only governmental systems, but the home computers of their employees and America's private sector from possible easy attack vectors. Imagine the crippling effect on American interests of French intelligence agencies thoroughly hacking Boeing and giving all of their data to Airbus. That is the reason it's under the NSA's charter to help fix security problems instead of creating new back doors. If they're not capable of hacking the typical windows server or workstation, without inserting new back doors in the operating system, we might want to consider outsourcing the NSA.