The only reason that science and religion doesn't seem to mix is that too many religious leaders stick to their dogmas and traditions even in face of human and scientific progress.
In other words, because science is winning.
There are at least a few explicitly non-dogmatic religions, you know.
Of course the non-dogmatic religions have no conflict with science, so we can win too!
Well, presumably, they do not equate personhood with sentience. It's a semantic argument.
I don't like Catholicism, though, because their corrupt and bestial priesthood has abused children for a thousand years. I really don't care if they hate science or not.
Why do you talk about religion and Christianity interchangeably? It's like you are talking about vehicles and you keep throwing in stuff that only applies to submarines. If you can conceive of no religion that is not functionally identical to Christianity, you aren't going to get very far in any attempt to understand religion.
Religion is not necessarily social or organized; these attributes are features of some religions, but certainly not all of them. Religions aren't even necessarily theist; there are several atheist religions (including one of the oldest religions in the world).
I agree with you about the Bible; an interesting read, surely, but no more divine than toe cheese.
Moral is what works, what's beneficial to a species. Good morals are the ones that keep your species going, bad morals decrease your chances of survival.
Equating morality with species survival is shifting the debate. Very few people would accept that as a tautology; you may as well claim that you are right because God says so in your head.
OK, as long as you consider a Java chess application "useful" (which I don't, but it's clearly a matter of taste) then it's not just theoretically possible, it's actually possible!
Personally, though, I can't run even four useful Java apps without my computer acting up. I can run a couple hundred compiled C applications simultaneously without any problems.
And so in the end, through many intermediate steps, your kitchen scales are calibrated against the single kilogram in Paris.
The compounding error, it burns... it burns!
Oh, definitely. Any attempt to equate physicalities through intermediaries must be assumed to incorporate compounding error.
But a balance is very, very simple; it has fewer internal sources of error than a voltmeter, for instance. You validate a balance the same way you validate a level; it's absolutely dead simple and requires no tools other than human hands, eyes, and the existence of the planet Earth.
On of my cow-orkers was stunned when I told him how you initially set an atomic clock. (Strip away the jargon, and you're just referencing against Flamsteed's stick - when the stick has no shadow, it's noon.)
Well, Oracle reacting quickly to this sort of thing is about as likely as five useful Java applications being able to co-exist peacefully on a user desktop.
But I will go read the link; perhaps Russell has a source, and isn't simply repeating the English "Black Legend" propaganda.... hmmm, nope, there's no source in the endnotes. Extensive googling shows no source for this allegation either. I think it's highly likely that Russell was merely repeating the anti-Spanish propaganda of his youth.
Historically, the Spanish were legally and socially restricted in their behaviour towards Christians. It seems very unlikely that Conquistadors would purposely risk legal penalties for infanticide when there was absolutely no penalty for murdering soulless heathen babies. The burden of proof is on Russell, as he has made an extraordinary claim, yet he offers no evidence or proof.
Meaning no insult to Russell's ideas, you understand; as in your own post, a misapprehension of one part of history does not necessarily invalidate one's overall point.
Your point is valid, but I think you have at least one historical misconception there.
As I recall, the Conquistadors were most anxious that Red Indians should not be baptized, because they were socially restricted in the amount of inhuman cruelty they could visit on fellow Christians. Infanticide was a kindness compared to the way many non-Christians were treated.
Don't trust my unreliable memory, though. I recommend de las Casas for a first-hand description of the behaviour of Spaniards in the New World. De la Casas only presents the Spanish horror, and is sometimes criticized for ignoring native atrocities, but he's still well worth reading.
There is no shortage of religions that do not have any conflict with science. Some of them are thousands of years old, some are probably being born as we speak.
But religion haters won't hear me through the 'lalalalalala' they are shouting.
For those aching to disagree with me: I'm not a Christian, so it's meaningless to me if you disprove some facet of Christian/Islamic/Jewish/Satanist dogma. If you think you can prove my God does not exist, go for it! You'll have to start by disproving the existence of subjective reality, so good luck with that.
It is not a concern now, and if it becomes one again we'll be having armed insurrection.
I doubt it. Most people don't even bother to vote. They aren't going to get off the sofa and arm themselves to defend something they don't care about.
Your "armed insurrection" would most likely consist of you and five of your buddies being gunned down by the local police forces. You'd have to come up with something far more creative than that, or you'd just be this week's "domestic terrorist" on the evening news.
Not meaning any insult to your patriotism or desire to preserve voting rights, just pointing out that you are an easily suppressed minority as soon as you resort to violence.
My reality-based study of the subject convinces me that the current system is optimized for vote fraud. I could easily subvert a hundred machines in any election with near-zero chance of detection.
Yeah, but, see, "That's not the way the world really works anymore. We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality - judiciously, as you will - we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors... and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."
(For those unfamiliar with it, that's a quote from an unnamed member of faith-based President George W. Bush's 2004 re-election campaign - see here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality_based )
Once you leave the reality-based community, you'll find that you can make all the voting machines unhackable by simply believing it is so!.
Your second point used to be a commonplace; they taught it in school 35 years ago. My teachers told me that the "letter of the law" is less important than the "spirit" of it - by which I think they meant that understanding the goals and intentions of the law are essential to applying it. We used to have classes called "citizenship" and "social studies" but my kids don't have anything like that in their school.
The airline industry was deregulated. I don't recall a lot of laws being put in place hampering that industry.
Your memory might be faulty, then. Go weigh the amount of paperwork governing airlines before and after "deregulation". Or just look at the size of the laws enacted to partially cancel and revise the previous laws.
No, I certainly do not intend to say that the rule of law does not work. I like LordArgon's reply to you; thank you, sir, you are a noble gas.
A legal system comprised solely of "don't be a dick" would probably work fine if you had a small enough population that everyone could recognize and agree when someone's being a dick. That's probably a population of about three people, though, I'd guess. Unless you have an exceptionally strong and pervasive culture. Law, culture and language intertwine.
No representational symbolic system (such as legal language) that has a functional relationship with a practical reality (such as the human condition) can eradicate paradox and ambiguity. You cannot create laws that are both useful and incapable of alternate interpretations, that's why we have judges and juries. Lawyers and kings figured this out long before Kurt Godel wrote down a suspiciously similar principle.
This is why it's better to have fewer laws, of course - what did Tacitus say? Oh, yes, In pessima republica plurimae leges - "In the most corrupt republic, the laws are most numerous". Lao Tse said it even earlier, and it's an idea that seems to have been independently derived throughout history.
Fewer, simpler laws (like: "don't kill anyone who is not doing harm" and "don't take stuff that isn't yours") are not only easier to understand and enforce than a large body of complex law, they are less prone to corruption by the powerful.
Hey, didja ever notice how after "deregulation" there are always more laws than before? Deregulation is just a corrupt politician's code word, brought to you by the Ministry of Public Enlightenment. I think it means somebody has their hand in your pocket; whenever you hear someone say "deregulation" you should probably reach for your gun.
Although I don't agree with you that the Internet is "essential" to citizens, I will agree that providing Internet access to the largest demographic in the US probably IS a good idea. Valid point, mister anonymous.
Nonetheless I don't like government making shady deals with incompetent, greedy private organizations to provide a public good. Either do it right, or don't do it, or do it through a transparent nonprofit government agency.
Half inch reel-to-reel magnetic tape. The reason you use 8-bit bytes today is because nine tracks held 8 bits of data and one of parity. Parity is extremely primitive error correction, obsoleted by cyclic redundancy check codes and the like.
I still have some data archives on 9-track. 6250 bpi PERTEC format, though, so you can't read them without an actual 9-track tape drive.
Eugene Debs (who was beating your horse even before it died) said
The class now in power cannot rule honestly. They must rule corruptly. They are in the minority. They have not the votes of their own to put them in power, but they have the money with which to corrupt the electorate. They have the money with which to corrupt the courts and to buy the legislators, and to debauch all our institutions. They have the power to do this because they have the money, and they have the money because they own the means of production and distribution.
The power that they have over people never can be abolished while they are in possession of the instruments that give them that power. That is the private ownership of the means of our common life. They own the railroads; they own the telegraph, the telephone; they own all these great agencies of production and distribution, the mines and the mills and the factories that have been socially produced, that are socially operated, that are socially necessary and still are held in private hands. The owners of the railroads have nothing to do with their operation. If every owner of an American railroad took a ship, an airship tonight, and left this planet, the people would never know it, for every train would come and go on time, and so with all of the great industries. Their private owners have no more to do with their management or their operation than if they lived upon Mars. Now, if the people, in their collective capacity can develop these great industries, if they can operate them socially, and if their very lives depend upon them, canâ(TM)t they also develop intelligence enough to make themselves the owners and the masters of these industries and operate them, not to produce multimillionaires and billionaires, but to produce wealth in abundance for all of the people?
The answer to Debs' final question is apparently "no".
The problem with the USA is the same problem we've always had. A huge country with too few control points (today we have centralized power production, giant mega-corps driving out family retailers, chain restaurants and factory farms centralizing food production, Ma Bell slowly reconstituting herself, etc. etc.) tends to huge corruption. Corruption is highly inefficient but unfortunately much more self-sustaining than good government; it's easier to corrupt a man than it is to find an incorruptible man of ethics and conscience.
History implies that the route to human progress (as well as world dominance economically, socially, and militarily) is the "nation of shopkeepers". If a society acts to guarantee a free and fair market by breaking monopolies, eliminating false advertising, and enforcing strict environmental standards, it can create the most resilient and capable society humans have ever enjoyed. You have to commit to the idea that your freedom to wave your fist ends where the next man's nose begins, though - as long as stuff like "fracking" is legal, and raw milk sales aren't, you've got a recipe for disaster.
The related floppies were stored in two nice box with a tight-fitting lid, in a "clean" closet far away from any EM source.
You can't see or hear EM, so it's really best to use a metal box. You have no assurance that there aren't vast, rhythmically fluctuating magnetic fields all around you;) which could in turn induce secondary magnetic perturbations in a random pile of ski-poles, coat-hangers and polyester slacks. if you want to go overboard, use a mu-metal box.
I've always kept magnetic media in metal boxes - typically old cookie tins - and I've never been harmed by this particular form of paranoia.
Slashdot Mirror
I can't remember the last time I laughed out loud while reading a forum post.
Oh, it's worse than that. Flamsteed's observatory is near Greenwich, England... Universal Time Co-ordinate Zero.
There are at least a few explicitly non-dogmatic religions, you know.
Of course the non-dogmatic religions have no conflict with science, so we can win too!
Well, presumably, they do not equate personhood with sentience. It's a semantic argument.
I don't like Catholicism, though, because their corrupt and bestial priesthood has abused children for a thousand years. I really don't care if they hate science or not.
Why do you talk about religion and Christianity interchangeably? It's like you are talking about vehicles and you keep throwing in stuff that only applies to submarines. If you can conceive of no religion that is not functionally identical to Christianity, you aren't going to get very far in any attempt to understand religion.
Religion is not necessarily social or organized; these attributes are features of some religions, but certainly not all of them. Religions aren't even necessarily theist; there are several atheist religions (including one of the oldest religions in the world).
I agree with you about the Bible; an interesting read, surely, but no more divine than toe cheese.
Equating morality with species survival is shifting the debate. Very few people would accept that as a tautology; you may as well claim that you are right because God says so in your head.
OK, as long as you consider a Java chess application "useful" (which I don't, but it's clearly a matter of taste) then it's not just theoretically possible, it's actually possible!
Personally, though, I can't run even four useful Java apps without my computer acting up. I can run a couple hundred compiled C applications simultaneously without any problems.
Oh, definitely. Any attempt to equate physicalities through intermediaries must be assumed to incorporate compounding error.
But a balance is very, very simple; it has fewer internal sources of error than a voltmeter, for instance. You validate a balance the same way you validate a level; it's absolutely dead simple and requires no tools other than human hands, eyes, and the existence of the planet Earth.
On of my cow-orkers was stunned when I told him how you initially set an atomic clock. (Strip away the jargon, and you're just referencing against Flamsteed's stick - when the stick has no shadow, it's noon.)
Well, Oracle reacting quickly to this sort of thing is about as likely as five useful Java applications being able to co-exist peacefully on a user desktop.
I mean, sure, it's theoretically possible.
Er, Bertrand Russell wasn't there.
De las Casas was.
But I will go read the link; perhaps Russell has a source, and isn't simply repeating the English "Black Legend" propaganda.... hmmm, nope, there's no source in the endnotes. Extensive googling shows no source for this allegation either. I think it's highly likely that Russell was merely repeating the anti-Spanish propaganda of his youth.
Historically, the Spanish were legally and socially restricted in their behaviour towards Christians. It seems very unlikely that Conquistadors would purposely risk legal penalties for infanticide when there was absolutely no penalty for murdering soulless heathen babies. The burden of proof is on Russell, as he has made an extraordinary claim, yet he offers no evidence or proof.
Meaning no insult to Russell's ideas, you understand; as in your own post, a misapprehension of one part of history does not necessarily invalidate one's overall point.
Your point is valid, but I think you have at least one historical misconception there.
As I recall, the Conquistadors were most anxious that Red Indians should not be baptized, because they were socially restricted in the amount of inhuman cruelty they could visit on fellow Christians. Infanticide was a kindness compared to the way many non-Christians were treated.
Don't trust my unreliable memory, though. I recommend de las Casas for a first-hand description of the behaviour of Spaniards in the New World. De la Casas only presents the Spanish horror, and is sometimes criticized for ignoring native atrocities, but he's still well worth reading.
The problem is indeed the ones stuffing fingers in ears, screaming "lalalalalalala", as you say.
But you're a fool if you think that behaviour is limited to the religious.
http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2451328&cid=37549992
There is no shortage of religions that do not have any conflict with science. Some of them are thousands of years old, some are probably being born as we speak.
But religion haters won't hear me through the 'lalalalalala' they are shouting.
For those aching to disagree with me: I'm not a Christian, so it's meaningless to me if you disprove some facet of Christian/Islamic/Jewish/Satanist dogma. If you think you can prove my God does not exist, go for it! You'll have to start by disproving the existence of subjective reality, so good luck with that.
I doubt it. Most people don't even bother to vote. They aren't going to get off the sofa and arm themselves to defend something they don't care about.
Your "armed insurrection" would most likely consist of you and five of your buddies being gunned down by the local police forces. You'd have to come up with something far more creative than that, or you'd just be this week's "domestic terrorist" on the evening news.
Not meaning any insult to your patriotism or desire to preserve voting rights, just pointing out that you are an easily suppressed minority as soon as you resort to violence.
Yeah, but, see, "That's not the way the world really works anymore. We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality - judiciously, as you will - we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors... and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."
(For those unfamiliar with it, that's a quote from an unnamed member of faith-based President George W. Bush's 2004 re-election campaign - see here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality_based )
Once you leave the reality-based community, you'll find that you can make all the voting machines unhackable by simply believing it is so!.
Well, thanks for the kind words.
Your second point used to be a commonplace; they taught it in school 35 years ago. My teachers told me that the "letter of the law" is less important than the "spirit" of it - by which I think they meant that understanding the goals and intentions of the law are essential to applying it. We used to have classes called "citizenship" and "social studies" but my kids don't have anything like that in their school.
Your memory might be faulty, then. Go weigh the amount of paperwork governing airlines before and after "deregulation". Or just look at the size of the laws enacted to partially cancel and revise the previous laws.
No, I certainly do not intend to say that the rule of law does not work. I like LordArgon's reply to you; thank you, sir, you are a noble gas.
A legal system comprised solely of "don't be a dick" would probably work fine if you had a small enough population that everyone could recognize and agree when someone's being a dick. That's probably a population of about three people, though, I'd guess. Unless you have an exceptionally strong and pervasive culture. Law, culture and language intertwine.
No representational symbolic system (such as legal language) that has a functional relationship with a practical reality (such as the human condition) can eradicate paradox and ambiguity. You cannot create laws that are both useful and incapable of alternate interpretations, that's why we have judges and juries. Lawyers and kings figured this out long before Kurt Godel wrote down a suspiciously similar principle.
This is why it's better to have fewer laws, of course - what did Tacitus say? Oh, yes, In pessima republica plurimae leges - "In the most corrupt republic, the laws are most numerous". Lao Tse said it even earlier, and it's an idea that seems to have been independently derived throughout history.
Fewer, simpler laws (like: "don't kill anyone who is not doing harm" and "don't take stuff that isn't yours") are not only easier to understand and enforce than a large body of complex law, they are less prone to corruption by the powerful.
Hey, didja ever notice how after "deregulation" there are always more laws than before? Deregulation is just a corrupt politician's code word, brought to you by the Ministry of Public Enlightenment. I think it means somebody has their hand in your pocket; whenever you hear someone say "deregulation" you should probably reach for your gun.
Although I don't agree with you that the Internet is "essential" to citizens, I will agree that providing Internet access to the largest demographic in the US probably IS a good idea. Valid point, mister anonymous.
Nonetheless I don't like government making shady deals with incompetent, greedy private organizations to provide a public good. Either do it right, or don't do it, or do it through a transparent nonprofit government agency.
Seems to me the economy dumped as soon as Al Gore said "Oh, yeah, I am in favor of tax cuts too" in 2000.
Normally I'd be the last to trot out any support for a greedy, incompetent corporation like Comcast, but... hey...
Is bread and circuses from tax dollars really a better idea than bread and circuses from a profit-making entity?
Oh, wait, it's just circuses. No bread. Or jobs.
Carry on then! Let them eat cake!
Half inch reel-to-reel magnetic tape. The reason you use 8-bit bytes today is because nine tracks held 8 bits of data and one of parity. Parity is extremely primitive error correction, obsoleted by cyclic redundancy check codes and the like.
I still have some data archives on 9-track. 6250 bpi PERTEC format, though, so you can't read them without an actual 9-track tape drive.
Eugene Debs (who was beating your horse even before it died) said
The answer to Debs' final question is apparently "no".
The problem with the USA is the same problem we've always had. A huge country with too few control points (today we have centralized power production, giant mega-corps driving out family retailers, chain restaurants and factory farms centralizing food production, Ma Bell slowly reconstituting herself, etc. etc.) tends to huge corruption. Corruption is highly inefficient but unfortunately much more self-sustaining than good government; it's easier to corrupt a man than it is to find an incorruptible man of ethics and conscience.
History implies that the route to human progress (as well as world dominance economically, socially, and militarily) is the "nation of shopkeepers". If a society acts to guarantee a free and fair market by breaking monopolies, eliminating false advertising, and enforcing strict environmental standards, it can create the most resilient and capable society humans have ever enjoyed. You have to commit to the idea that your freedom to wave your fist ends where the next man's nose begins, though - as long as stuff like "fracking" is legal, and raw milk sales aren't, you've got a recipe for disaster.
You can't see or hear EM, so it's really best to use a metal box. You have no assurance that there aren't vast, rhythmically fluctuating magnetic fields all around you ;) which could in turn induce secondary magnetic perturbations in a random pile of ski-poles, coat-hangers and polyester slacks. if you want to go overboard, use a mu-metal box.
I've always kept magnetic media in metal boxes - typically old cookie tins - and I've never been harmed by this particular form of paranoia.
All my CDs are backups; I ripped them to FLAC a few years back.
Some day I'll re-rip them and see if they've degraded.