Rather than quote all your points AGAIN, let's just leave it at this:
The world can not possibly be less than billions of years old for a vast number of reasons which your post shows you clearly can't understand. This has nothing to do with the existance or non-existance of gods.
There is no evidence for the latter other than a bunch of conflicting books and strange voices in your head which I'd glad to say I don't have to put up with.
Even the Greek texts of the gospels are at least transcriptions if not translations so they are open to error and confusion just as much as any other work of Man.
You have decided to be a slave to a character in a book; that is a total waste of your life and the world would be marginally better off without you.
Jesus was a great guy; but he's dead and gone and he ain't coming back. In the real world, that never happens and never did. The truth is that Jesus died once and didn't come back, just as no god created the Earth or Man. There's no more reason to think that any of those things happened than there is that Harry Potter exists.
The world is a vastly greater and majestic place than you grasp - to say nothing of the greater universe it is a tiny part of. Equating it to some jewish folktales is to utterly cheapen it.
Stop running away from death, it never works and you're never going to make anything of your life living in fear.
At the very least, learn SOMETHING about the publishing history of the bunch of fairy tales you are kidding yourself are documentary evidence. I know you won't but you really should.
The password is a 20 character phrase that has significance for me, it's not recorded, written down, no one else knows it.
Big deal. If they want to know badly enough they'll drill your teeth without an anaesthetic until you tell them. If you're lucky they might then let you go.
The only protection is not to know, or seem to know, anything valuable.
Furthermore, the "Right to Privacy" is not actually present anywhere in the Constitution.
The right to privacy from the government is, that's why they used to need a search warrent and all that shit. That part of the constitution has not been enforced for about a hundred years.
Don't like it? Then be careful of who you share your info with.
Share? The government employs tens of thousands of people whose job it is to TAKE that information, and fuck you if you wanted keep it private. The geovernment employs people to open mail, filter email, monitor phone calls and even to note down the names of people who write into their local newspapers. What the fuck do you think the aristocracy of America cares about you, your rights, or what way you vote? Get real.
You're confusing copyright and patent (don't feel bad, everyone else on this site does too)
I think he was just saying that Patents should be changed. Which might be a fair enough balance if the PO is going to insist on giving them out free with bubblegum. Either tighten up the system or reduce the level of control a patent gives over the market.
Or instigate random executions of Patent Office staff until they wise the fuck up.
I think we need the FBI, CIA, NSA and that the world is in a better place.
America needs the FBI, CIA, NSA etc in order to protect it from the consequences of the years of illegal, violent, and often immoral actions of the FBI, CIA, NSA etc. Without them recruiting enemies for America, the Twin Towers would still be there.
one of the more fundamental being that x86 asm is now a horrible mess that is not suitable to feed into an extremely optimised processor core.
On a similar note, x86 programming model was always a horrible mess that is not suitable to feed into a programmer or, for that matter, a compiler. It really is junk, but it was junk on the day IBM decided to use it. Motorola had much better chips on the market at the time.
This is why x86 runs so hot and slow: the instruction set, and especially the register set, is so restrictive that a lot of work has to be done for things which are and were trivial on other architectures.
As regards the lab results: I'd basically say, on the face of it that the lab must be/have been duff, or that someone is lying. No one would have run a carbon-14 test on coal and not expected a result like the one they did in fact get in 1985. Today the same test would probably show a later date simply due to better intruments pushing down the level at which contamination matters, but it is simply futile to measure the age of ancient objects like coal via C14. Although, I note that 36000 years is older than 5000.
But I imagine the commandments were the same.
Strangely, not according to the bible.
The idea that Peter went and murdered him is silly - Christ himself told Peter to keep his sword back in the scabbard when Judas was right in front of them
So we know he had a desire at some point to kill him which was only stayed by the direct intervention of Jesus. And we also know that Peter is the disciple most prone to violence.
and Jesus taught doing good to those that despise and persecute us.
And we also know that Peter was the one that failed (ie, denined) Jesus quickest. In what way is thinking he killed Judas silly?
Furthermore, the ice sheet during the Ice Age would have been lower and warmer at the time the snow was building.
Why?
it is almost certain that variability exists at the subseasonal or storm level, at the annual level, and for various longer periodicities (2-year, sunspot, etc.). We certainly must entertain the possibility of misidentifying the deposit of a large storm or a snow dune as an entire year or missing a weak indication of a summer and thus picking a 2-year interval as 1 year."
Besides subannual oscillation, other non-precipitation variables such as snow dunes, can add subannual layers.
That's a big list of objections. Just as well the ice cores are taken from different locations hundreds of miles apart to reduce the chance of a freak weather event making a mess of the results. You'd almost think the people doing this work were being careful or something!
BTW, staligmites and other mineral formations show seasonal layers too. For you to be right, thousands of things and people who are actively seeking the truth have to be wrong, for me to be right only one very old book has to be wrong, and the millions of people that just passively accept it of course. But since they made no effort to establish the truth themselves that's not really a big deal, is it?
The Gospels are clear - Judas hung himself.
Acts is clear - Judas died in his field after a horrific bursting incident. "Becoming headlong" is not really "he hung himself" or even "he was burried", in fact the translation to "fell" seems like a sensible translation of an otherwise odd passage/phrase.
There is not a single instance of Paul being a lair.
I don't think James would agree with you there. Paul was in fact quite worried when he last saw James because he had been caught out telling gentiles things he had told James he would not.
The problem with Paul is that he usurped the movement and turned it away from a progressive thing and into just another tedious religion based on the same old sky-gods that we'd had for probably ninty millenia before Jesus came along with a truely radical philosophy that offered something good for a change. It was still based on ignorance and superstition, sure, but it was, in the words of Oscar Wilde, at least looking at the stars. After Paul turned it into an Empire-friendly McDonalds version it was ineviatable that only 300 years later, the followers of the "Prince of Peace" could seriously talk about Jesus giving them strength in battle. The ultimate pacifist became a god of war, a post he has largely retained ever since.
I don't worship crucifixes. I worship God.
You seem to be spending a lot of energy on worshipping the Bible: a book that is a selective grouping of sometimes more, sometimes less related mat
God speaks to me. Gandalf does not. Of course, you can call me mad or hallucinatory. Doesn't alter the fact.
You can say you're sane but that doesn't change the fact that you're claiming to hear voices (perhaps seeing things too for all I know).
Goodness - you're talking about Jezebel's priests failing to light a fire since they worship a dead God.
Read the story again; it's much more about splits in the Jewish religion than it is about Baal the "dead god". Interesting phrase, that.
Aha - taking the meaning of a book, not from what it says, but theories of how it was written.
No. One bunch of characters are against them, and another bunch of characters are for them and there's quite a long power struggle over the topic as one of the story arcs. Ironically this is one of the few places where the authors managed to portray realistic people.
Which are clearly mentioned as reprehensible by God.
Sometimes. Except when they're okay. To say nothing of the arcaeological evidence that worship of a "Mrs God" was quite widespread. Obviously those people had been listening to the WRONG voice in their heads, right?
Their SISTERS were their wives - isn't it obvious?
No. Not nearly as obvious as "they married non-jews because this is a story of the origin of jews, not all people everywhere". But then neither is as obvious as "this is a fairy story, it doesn't have to make sense. Luckily."
It contrast Lot and Abraham - both righteous
Righteous?! "There's a gang of men at the door who want to kill our guests. Quick, throw them the teenage girls and while they're raping them we can find a way out the back or something.". Oh, yeah, righeous dude!
> HOW many commandments did Jehova give Moses?
10. Surely, you don't believe a Monty Python movie over well documented historical sources?
I don't know which MP movie you mean (which surprises me), but I was refering to the Bible, not a historical source admittedly but it is what we're talking about. Ten is the wrong answer. Go back and read the story again. Hint: you're half right.
I observe Easter but don't follow the silly Easter bunny and egg tradition. Why should I feel guilty for some English label saying "Easter" which is probably caused by pagan traditions blended into a Christian one,
Actually, there is almost no such thing as a Christian tradition; it's basically all pagan. Easter is just the old "god that came back to life by magic" story told one more time (and retold again and again afterwards, it's the basic story behind the Indian Rope Trick).
Perhaps you believe the knights templar are his bloodline as well, or Jesus visited holy brahmins in India and the lamas in Tibet (when he wasn't hanging with the druid dudes in Ireland) with regular flights back to Jerusalem on UFOs. Don't forget to renew your subscription to "Paranormal Times".
One work of fiction at a time, please! The book we're talking about is full of clues about her. Again, they're the more realistic parts. Why would a good Jewish Rabbi like Jesus be unmarried?
Wishful Balderdash! Jesus ALSO washed the feet of *his* 12 disciples and told them to wash *each others feet* too. Perhaps you think the entire early Christian church of Jesus' were all married to each other too - one big bisexual, bigamous, family. Idiot.
The timing is important; it's not like I get married every time I say the words "I do". And the fact that she acts like his wife too, of course.
If the groundwater is heavily laden with minerals in solution, the process can happen rapidly
If. Plus, you are constantly talking about sandstone. Other stones are fossil bearing too, and a damn sight slower forming than sandstone.
Remember - we Christians claim the entire early world was destroyed by a great flood.
Only because a bunch of pagans told you that and you believed them for some reason.
XML was designed as method of storing data,amoung other things. How could the patent office possibly accept a patent where XML is simply being used to do what it was designed to do?
Cookies were designed to identify returning browsers so that the website could connect them with data collected about them earlier, but Amazon got a patent for using cookies to identify returning browsers so that they could be connected to data collected about them earlier.
It must be strange to live your life based on a work of fiction. Imagine saying that Gandalf was real.
As to God's wife's priestesses, they appear in the story of the priests of Baal failing to light the fire and their sacred groves of trees which were part of Jewish temples are mentioned in I think 4 or 5 other places, including two points where there is a schism in the religion and the groves are torn up and then re-planted. I'm sure you can find them if you bother to look. My Bibles are packed away in preparation for moving house so you'll have to do your own leg work. Try to get a Bible with an index, that makes it easier if you can't be hassled with trudging through the whole dreadful thing (WHERE did Cain and Seth get their wives again? WHY is it good to have sex with your daughter if you're lonely? HOW many commandments did Jehova give Moses? How MUCH for the TALKING DONKEY?)
For bonus points you could find the answer to this: why is Easter so-called and why does the Easter *Bunny* give out eggs?
Jesus was married to Mary Magdelaine. She anoints his feet twice which a jewish wife did as part of the (very long and silly) ritual for marrage in those days, and the whole wedding at Caina reeks of the fact that they were the bride and groom. To say nothing about the various other documents from around the time, such as Phillip's gospel that contains the famous argument between the deciples and Jesus about his favourtism to Mary and the reference to them kissing on the lips, a totally taboo thing for non-married jews at that time. Plus, going back to stuff in the traditional Bible, there's the fact that all the post-death stuff with the body and returning to the cave etc. which are wifely duties and are carried out by Mary. If they were not married then would one not expect his mother or one of his sisters do these things? (We are told in Mathew that he has at least two sisters as well as the four brothers). More bonus points if you can find out why Jesus seems to have been followed by women called "Mary" his whole flaming life. There is a reason and it's not that it was THAT common a name.
Anyway,
Modern bones that fall into mineral springs can become permineralized within a matter of weeks.'
That's right. Modern small bones that fall into mineral springs can become permineralized in weeks. Dinosaurs were common creature and many were gigantic; they certainly did not seek out mineral springs for their deathbeds. This argument is nonsense. The existance of a screw does not invalidate all hammers. In the real world, ie one that's not derived from a badly written collection of bronze-age rantings, sometimes things work differently from the norm. Some fossils are made by mineral springs and wells, but most are not.
Rather, I was proving the existence of a recent lower limit.
Which is pointless. I was born in 1965, therefor all humans are less than 40 years old. Doesn't make much sense, does it? Why do you think "Some bits of metal were embedded in sandstone in a few decades, therefore all dinosaurs lived less than 6000 years ago" makes any more sense?
With such low levels of C14, the item will appear indeterminately *older* than 50,000 years.
No it won't. In order to date a sample a count is taken. Once the "real" count drops to the point where the radioactive background is too great the count will no longer descend without very advanced techniques (which don't yet work reliably). The final figure you get will depend, more or less randomly, on the exact level of background radiation. If the background noise in you lab happens to match the C14 reading for 34000 years ago then that is the lowest reading you will be able to get no matter how old the sample actually is. If your lab is better shielded or in a different part of the world that figure might go as far as 50000 years ago. Beyond 50000 is almost impossible with modern technology, although some work is being done on this.
I don't understand why Microsoft hasn't gotten on the pdf "game".
Pride. For years they've wanted Word to be the "international language" of documents and they won't easily admit that they lost that battle. If indeed, they have.
Also, of course, they might just not be able to do it. They don't employ the sharpest knives in the box, generally.
I've read it and I can assure you that it is not even close to being right; it's almost pure mythology. Not even very good mythology at that.
Of course, if it was true then it would, by definition, be the oldest system instead of being a bizarre mis-mash of Sumarian, Babylonian, and even Egyption stories that it actually is. I particularly like the little bits the editors have missed like the strange references to Jehova's wife's priestesses, and Jesus's wedding.
My point is rapid rock formation can occur in a few decades, not just millions of years. So a dinosaur that died (shock, horror) 6000 years ago could have a bone embedded in sandstone.
That's true. I've actually stood at geological formations that were laid down in a day, never mind decades. Although it would have taken longer for them to solidify into hard rock.
Regardless, that says nothing about the age of a particular rock. So you say a sandstone bed might be 6000 years old. Why not 6,000,000? What is placing the upper limit on the age?
The the dictionary meaning of fossil just defines it as traces of organic life embedded in the earth's crust.
That's nice. But we are talking dinosaur bones and scientific terms, not dictionary terms. All fields of expertise have jargon which is more specific in that field than in general "dictionary english", the law is a classic example, but programmers, for example, mean something more specific by the word "memory" than the common user, who will often not diferentiate between RAM and hard drive space. Anyway, dinosaur bones do show mineralisation of the bone matrix, a process which takes a long time, so again you are trying to make a point about the upper limit by saying what the lower limit is.
Can you provide a link: I thought Carbon 14 is no longer absorbed once a living entity dies.?
Sorry, that's mostly true, I should have said " the background radiation in the test chamber", not "absorbed by the fossil". It's 3am here and I fluffed my memory roll!
There's a link here but there is information all over the place.
Radiocarbon dating has been very well calibrated back to 11000 years and quite well back to over 25000 years using tree rings, which I assume you think were planted there by your insane ju-ju spirit to confuse us. Not much point worshipping an obvious loony like that whether he exists or not.
This fossil was apparently 70 million years old and found embedded in sandstone.
So?
I hope you're joking and not seriously suggesting the Bible is related to reality? I mean, come on! Time to stop banging the rocks together and worshipping the big scary man in the sky!
The pictures shows several such 'recent fossils' found by kids on a beach - bits of glass cemented together with sand, even a car's gearbox cemented into sandstone.
That's not fossilisation, that's just burial. when you find a bone with the calcium lattice filled with, or replaced by, minerals from the surrounding rock then we'll at least be in the area of talking about fossils.
As to the link you provide, the story is bollocks. Carbon dating a very old specimen does not result in an "infinite age", it gives an age of between 30 and 40 thousand years because that is the "time signiture" given by the background radiation absorbed by the fossil. Thus, at around that point the real signal fades away and is no longer discernable from the noise. In other words, all ancient fossils will give a more or less random date between 30 and 40 thousand years old. That's why it's not used on things like T-Rex bones.
yes you are actually purchasing the rights to one copy
Not quite. If I buy a book I am allowed to copy it for personal use. Likewise I can legally copy a CD for personal use in the car or whatever (I know the American DMCA makes this tricky if there is DRM). Other than the EULA, which has no force in law, what is the legal position for saying that downloaded music is to be treated differently from music bought in a shop?
However those rights are tied to the physical disk....sell the disk sell the rights...the disk is the liscense
Legally too in the case of a book I must destroy any photocopies when I sell the book, but in what way am I required to do anything more (than delete all other copies) if I give you my copy of "How to dismantle an atomic bomb"? What is the legal basis for saying that that is not enough to comply with copyright law? The point I'm getting at here is that there is NO LICENCE. There is an EULA/TOS, which has never been signed my me and so can not form a contract. A license with no signitures, like the GPL, can only give more rights, not take them away. I have the right to make copies for personal use; where does a physical disc come into the picture and what law removes that right if the music came from a network? I'm not arguing that they can't kick me off the system for breaking the TOS - it's their service - but I am saying that if I paid for 1 copy and I give that 1 copy to another person, then there's no legal basis to sue me at all.
I don't think so, because some research tools are just tools. If they can convince the reasership that their methodology is sound without spending the effort to clean up and distribute their tools, then that might be just fine.
That's fair enought up to a point but when you're talking about projections based on a simulation then it's not enough to just say what your data was and promise that your program did something sensible with it. Even publishing the algorithms isn't enough since the results are generated by the actual program, not the planned program. This is analogous to mathematicians publishing their proofs.
But why should this apply only to controversial cases like this one? Any scientific claim based on modelling is open to the same question: were there any bugs in your code or assumptions that you made (such as how to round, which can have a big effect in massivly itterated data runs) which didn't make it into your paper? This is not just a tool like a calculator or something; it is in fact part of your research.
You mean artists expect payment for their work? Those capitalist dogs! Don't they know that art should be free?
When the music companies found that they could save about 25% on distribution and packaging costs (more, but then bandwidth cost are new), they kept the price the same, if not slightly higher per track (for a poorer quality product). Who do you think got the extra cash? Do you think it was the artists? If so, I've got a really nice bridge to sell you.
Yes, 'authorized' and 'official' Scrabble dictionaries. Not for memorizing. But, for challenge and verification.
Many people I know have a house rule that if challenged the placer must be able to define the word, in addition to the word being in the dictionary and spelt correctly. Lots of laughs when playing against someone that habitually uses the word list books!
In this case, the end product that the grants paid for is the scholarly paper, not a computer program.
But the program is part of the authority of the paper. Put it like this: if the program was revealed to be a random number generator, do you think it would reflect badly on the value for money the taxpayers got? In which case, don't researchers have a duty to publish the program in order to help show the validity of their research, in all cases, not just this one?
Since I started playing e-Scrabble with a friend last year, she's bought (us) a couple of Scrabble dictionaries
Do you mean a couple of Oxford Concise Dictionaries, or those stupid little word books for cheaters that are stuffed full of foreign words and no definitions? I might not be great at Scrabble, being slightly dyslexic, but I'm proud to say that I don't stoop so low as to use that sort of thing.
The proverbial angst-ridden teen talking about his/her lunch and how life sucks is communication as much as team members inside a company making decisions is communication.
That's exactly the attitude that's led to the destruction of Google as a quality search engine. All comments are not equal and while both of these are communication, as you say, one of them is "noise" and the other is "signal".
You obviously haven't seen top blogs like Boingboing.net or Engadget.com.
I have. Engadget is quite good review site that for some reason the owners have decided to call bloga because they have a facility for commenting on the reviews. Boing boing is a very poor list of things what one can find on other websites with a comment option. Otherwise there's not much to them that justifies the "log" part of the name apart from the occasional boring mention of somthing dull that happened to one of the owners/editors.
To be a real blog it really should be 99% dull things that happened to the owner and 1% interesting or useful comment. Boing Boing is dull, certainly, but since none of it is a log in any real sense, it still doesn't seem to qualify to me. Unless your definition of "blog" is simply any site with news items and comments. Which it seems to be for some people.
Not really. There is a superficial resemblance but a web log is usually a single person (or couple) reporting or, in the case of Flickr, showing daily mundane things from their lives. Very little of/. is about the lives of the staff or the readers so it's not really a log of any sort. Just posting new stuff every day does not make you a blog unless you think news.bbc.co.uk is a blog.
Slashdot Mirror
TWW
Big deal. If they want to know badly enough they'll drill your teeth without an anaesthetic until you tell them. If you're lucky they might then let you go.
The only protection is not to know, or seem to know, anything valuable.
TWW
Yeah, right.
We are the government.
Unless you're a billionaire, I don't think so.
Furthermore, the "Right to Privacy" is not actually present anywhere in the Constitution.
The right to privacy from the government is, that's why they used to need a search warrent and all that shit. That part of the constitution has not been enforced for about a hundred years.
Don't like it? Then be careful of who you share your info with.
Share? The government employs tens of thousands of people whose job it is to TAKE that information, and fuck you if you wanted keep it private. The geovernment employs people to open mail, filter email, monitor phone calls and even to note down the names of people who write into their local newspapers. What the fuck do you think the aristocracy of America cares about you, your rights, or what way you vote? Get real.
TWW
I think he was just saying that Patents should be changed. Which might be a fair enough balance if the PO is going to insist on giving them out free with bubblegum. Either tighten up the system or reduce the level of control a patent gives over the market.
Or instigate random executions of Patent Office staff until they wise the fuck up.
TWW
America needs the FBI, CIA, NSA etc in order to protect it from the consequences of the years of illegal, violent, and often immoral actions of the FBI, CIA, NSA etc. Without them recruiting enemies for America, the Twin Towers would still be there.
TWW
On a similar note, x86 programming model was always a horrible mess that is not suitable to feed into a programmer or, for that matter, a compiler. It really is junk, but it was junk on the day IBM decided to use it. Motorola had much better chips on the market at the time.
This is why x86 runs so hot and slow: the instruction set, and especially the register set, is so restrictive that a lot of work has to be done for things which are and were trivial on other architectures.
TWW
But I imagine the commandments were the same.
Strangely, not according to the bible.
The idea that Peter went and murdered him is silly - Christ himself told Peter to keep his sword back in the scabbard when Judas was right in front of them
So we know he had a desire at some point to kill him which was only stayed by the direct intervention of Jesus. And we also know that Peter is the disciple most prone to violence.
and Jesus taught doing good to those that despise and persecute us.
And we also know that Peter was the one that failed (ie, denined) Jesus quickest. In what way is thinking he killed Judas silly?
Furthermore, the ice sheet during the Ice Age would have been lower and warmer at the time the snow was building.
Why?
it is almost certain that variability exists at the subseasonal or storm level, at the annual level, and for various longer periodicities (2-year, sunspot, etc.). We certainly must entertain the possibility of misidentifying the deposit of a large storm or a snow dune as an entire year or missing a weak indication of a summer and thus picking a 2-year interval as 1 year."
Besides subannual oscillation, other non-precipitation variables such as snow dunes, can add subannual layers.
That's a big list of objections. Just as well the ice cores are taken from different locations hundreds of miles apart to reduce the chance of a freak weather event making a mess of the results. You'd almost think the people doing this work were being careful or something!
BTW, staligmites and other mineral formations show seasonal layers too. For you to be right, thousands of things and people who are actively seeking the truth have to be wrong, for me to be right only one very old book has to be wrong, and the millions of people that just passively accept it of course. But since they made no effort to establish the truth themselves that's not really a big deal, is it?
The Gospels are clear - Judas hung himself.
Acts is clear - Judas died in his field after a horrific bursting incident. "Becoming headlong" is not really "he hung himself" or even "he was burried", in fact the translation to "fell" seems like a sensible translation of an otherwise odd passage/phrase.
There is not a single instance of Paul being a lair.
I don't think James would agree with you there. Paul was in fact quite worried when he last saw James because he had been caught out telling gentiles things he had told James he would not.
The problem with Paul is that he usurped the movement and turned it away from a progressive thing and into just another tedious religion based on the same old sky-gods that we'd had for probably ninty millenia before Jesus came along with a truely radical philosophy that offered something good for a change. It was still based on ignorance and superstition, sure, but it was, in the words of Oscar Wilde, at least looking at the stars. After Paul turned it into an Empire-friendly McDonalds version it was ineviatable that only 300 years later, the followers of the "Prince of Peace" could seriously talk about Jesus giving them strength in battle. The ultimate pacifist became a god of war, a post he has largely retained ever since.
I don't worship crucifixes. I worship God.
You seem to be spending a lot of energy on worshipping the Bible: a book that is a selective grouping of sometimes more, sometimes less related mat
You can say you're sane but that doesn't change the fact that you're claiming to hear voices (perhaps seeing things too for all I know).
Goodness - you're talking about Jezebel's priests failing to light a fire since they worship a dead God.
Read the story again; it's much more about splits in the Jewish religion than it is about Baal the "dead god". Interesting phrase, that.
Aha - taking the meaning of a book, not from what it says, but theories of how it was written.
No. One bunch of characters are against them, and another bunch of characters are for them and there's quite a long power struggle over the topic as one of the story arcs. Ironically this is one of the few places where the authors managed to portray realistic people.
Which are clearly mentioned as reprehensible by God.
Sometimes. Except when they're okay. To say nothing of the arcaeological evidence that worship of a "Mrs God" was quite widespread. Obviously those people had been listening to the WRONG voice in their heads, right?
Their SISTERS were their wives - isn't it obvious?
No. Not nearly as obvious as "they married non-jews because this is a story of the origin of jews, not all people everywhere". But then neither is as obvious as "this is a fairy story, it doesn't have to make sense. Luckily."
It contrast Lot and Abraham - both righteous
Righteous?! "There's a gang of men at the door who want to kill our guests. Quick, throw them the teenage girls and while they're raping them we can find a way out the back or something.". Oh, yeah, righeous dude!
> HOW many commandments did Jehova give Moses?
10. Surely, you don't believe a Monty Python movie over well documented historical sources?
I don't know which MP movie you mean (which surprises me), but I was refering to the Bible, not a historical source admittedly but it is what we're talking about. Ten is the wrong answer. Go back and read the story again. Hint: you're half right.
I observe Easter but don't follow the silly Easter bunny and egg tradition. Why should I feel guilty for some English label saying "Easter" which is probably caused by pagan traditions blended into a Christian one,
Actually, there is almost no such thing as a Christian tradition; it's basically all pagan. Easter is just the old "god that came back to life by magic" story told one more time (and retold again and again afterwards, it's the basic story behind the Indian Rope Trick).
Perhaps you believe the knights templar are his bloodline as well, or Jesus visited holy brahmins in India and the lamas in Tibet (when he wasn't hanging with the druid dudes in Ireland) with regular flights back to Jerusalem on UFOs. Don't forget to renew your subscription to "Paranormal Times".
One work of fiction at a time, please! The book we're talking about is full of clues about her. Again, they're the more realistic parts. Why would a good Jewish Rabbi like Jesus be unmarried?
Wishful Balderdash! Jesus ALSO washed the feet of *his* 12 disciples and told them to wash *each others feet* too. Perhaps you think the entire early Christian church of Jesus' were all married to each other too - one big bisexual, bigamous, family. Idiot.
The timing is important; it's not like I get married every time I say the words "I do". And the fact that she acts like his wife too, of course.
If the groundwater is heavily laden with minerals in solution, the process can happen rapidly
If. Plus, you are constantly talking about sandstone. Other stones are fossil bearing too, and a damn sight slower forming than sandstone.
Remember - we Christians claim the entire early world was destroyed by a great flood.
Only because a bunch of pagans told you that and you believed them for some reason.
Cookies were designed to identify returning browsers so that the website could connect them with data collected about them earlier, but Amazon got a patent for using cookies to identify returning browsers so that they could be connected to data collected about them earlier.
Basically, the patent office is shit.
TWW
As to God's wife's priestesses, they appear in the story of the priests of Baal failing to light the fire and their sacred groves of trees which were part of Jewish temples are mentioned in I think 4 or 5 other places, including two points where there is a schism in the religion and the groves are torn up and then re-planted. I'm sure you can find them if you bother to look. My Bibles are packed away in preparation for moving house so you'll have to do your own leg work. Try to get a Bible with an index, that makes it easier if you can't be hassled with trudging through the whole dreadful thing (WHERE did Cain and Seth get their wives again? WHY is it good to have sex with your daughter if you're lonely? HOW many commandments did Jehova give Moses? How MUCH for the TALKING DONKEY?)
For bonus points you could find the answer to this: why is Easter so-called and why does the Easter *Bunny* give out eggs?
Jesus was married to Mary Magdelaine. She anoints his feet twice which a jewish wife did as part of the (very long and silly) ritual for marrage in those days, and the whole wedding at Caina reeks of the fact that they were the bride and groom. To say nothing about the various other documents from around the time, such as Phillip's gospel that contains the famous argument between the deciples and Jesus about his favourtism to Mary and the reference to them kissing on the lips, a totally taboo thing for non-married jews at that time. Plus, going back to stuff in the traditional Bible, there's the fact that all the post-death stuff with the body and returning to the cave etc. which are wifely duties and are carried out by Mary. If they were not married then would one not expect his mother or one of his sisters do these things? (We are told in Mathew that he has at least two sisters as well as the four brothers). More bonus points if you can find out why Jesus seems to have been followed by women called "Mary" his whole flaming life. There is a reason and it's not that it was THAT common a name.
Anyway,
Modern bones that fall into mineral springs can become permineralized within a matter of weeks.'
That's right. Modern small bones that fall into mineral springs can become permineralized in weeks. Dinosaurs were common creature and many were gigantic; they certainly did not seek out mineral springs for their deathbeds. This argument is nonsense. The existance of a screw does not invalidate all hammers. In the real world, ie one that's not derived from a badly written collection of bronze-age rantings, sometimes things work differently from the norm. Some fossils are made by mineral springs and wells, but most are not.
Rather, I was proving the existence of a recent lower limit.
Which is pointless. I was born in 1965, therefor all humans are less than 40 years old. Doesn't make much sense, does it? Why do you think "Some bits of metal were embedded in sandstone in a few decades, therefore all dinosaurs lived less than 6000 years ago" makes any more sense?
With such low levels of C14, the item will appear indeterminately *older* than 50,000 years.
No it won't. In order to date a sample a count is taken. Once the "real" count drops to the point where the radioactive background is too great the count will no longer descend without very advanced techniques (which don't yet work reliably). The final figure you get will depend, more or less randomly, on the exact level of background radiation. If the background noise in you lab happens to match the C14 reading for 34000 years ago then that is the lowest reading you will be able to get no matter how old the sample actually is. If your lab is better shielded or in a different part of the world that figure might go as far as 50000 years ago. Beyond 50000 is almost impossible with modern technology, although some work is being done on this.
astounding allegation,
What asto
Pride. For years they've wanted Word to be the "international language" of documents and they won't easily admit that they lost that battle. If indeed, they have.
Also, of course, they might just not be able to do it. They don't employ the sharpest knives in the box, generally.
TWW
I've read it and I can assure you that it is not even close to being right; it's almost pure mythology. Not even very good mythology at that.
Of course, if it was true then it would, by definition, be the oldest system instead of being a bizarre mis-mash of Sumarian, Babylonian, and even Egyption stories that it actually is. I particularly like the little bits the editors have missed like the strange references to Jehova's wife's priestesses, and Jesus's wedding.
My point is rapid rock formation can occur in a few decades, not just millions of years. So a dinosaur that died (shock, horror) 6000 years ago could have a bone embedded in sandstone.
That's true. I've actually stood at geological formations that were laid down in a day, never mind decades. Although it would have taken longer for them to solidify into hard rock.
Regardless, that says nothing about the age of a particular rock. So you say a sandstone bed might be 6000 years old. Why not 6,000,000? What is placing the upper limit on the age?
The the dictionary meaning of fossil just defines it as traces of organic life embedded in the earth's crust.
That's nice. But we are talking dinosaur bones and scientific terms, not dictionary terms. All fields of expertise have jargon which is more specific in that field than in general "dictionary english", the law is a classic example, but programmers, for example, mean something more specific by the word "memory" than the common user, who will often not diferentiate between RAM and hard drive space. Anyway, dinosaur bones do show mineralisation of the bone matrix, a process which takes a long time, so again you are trying to make a point about the upper limit by saying what the lower limit is.
Can you provide a link: I thought Carbon 14 is no longer absorbed once a living entity dies.?
Sorry, that's mostly true, I should have said " the background radiation in the test chamber", not "absorbed by the fossil". It's 3am here and I fluffed my memory roll!
There's a link here but there is information all over the place.
Radiocarbon dating has been very well calibrated back to 11000 years and quite well back to over 25000 years using tree rings, which I assume you think were planted there by your insane ju-ju spirit to confuse us. Not much point worshipping an obvious loony like that whether he exists or not.
TWW
So?
I hope you're joking and not seriously suggesting the Bible is related to reality? I mean, come on! Time to stop banging the rocks together and worshipping the big scary man in the sky!
The pictures shows several such 'recent fossils' found by kids on a beach - bits of glass cemented together with sand, even a car's gearbox cemented into sandstone.
That's not fossilisation, that's just burial. when you find a bone with the calcium lattice filled with, or replaced by, minerals from the surrounding rock then we'll at least be in the area of talking about fossils.
As to the link you provide, the story is bollocks. Carbon dating a very old specimen does not result in an "infinite age", it gives an age of between 30 and 40 thousand years because that is the "time signiture" given by the background radiation absorbed by the fossil. Thus, at around that point the real signal fades away and is no longer discernable from the noise. In other words, all ancient fossils will give a more or less random date between 30 and 40 thousand years old. That's why it's not used on things like T-Rex bones.
Creationists are funny.
TWW
That's cruel.
TWW
Not quite. If I buy a book I am allowed to copy it for personal use. Likewise I can legally copy a CD for personal use in the car or whatever (I know the American DMCA makes this tricky if there is DRM). Other than the EULA, which has no force in law, what is the legal position for saying that downloaded music is to be treated differently from music bought in a shop?
However those rights are tied to the physical disk....sell the disk sell the rights...the disk is the liscense
Legally too in the case of a book I must destroy any photocopies when I sell the book, but in what way am I required to do anything more (than delete all other copies) if I give you my copy of "How to dismantle an atomic bomb"? What is the legal basis for saying that that is not enough to comply with copyright law? The point I'm getting at here is that there is NO LICENCE. There is an EULA/TOS, which has never been signed my me and so can not form a contract. A license with no signitures, like the GPL, can only give more rights, not take them away. I have the right to make copies for personal use; where does a physical disc come into the picture and what law removes that right if the music came from a network? I'm not arguing that they can't kick me off the system for breaking the TOS - it's their service - but I am saying that if I paid for 1 copy and I give that 1 copy to another person, then there's no legal basis to sue me at all.
TWW
Why? When I buy a CD I'm not buying the media, as the shop would quickly find if the disc was blank.
TWW
That's fair enought up to a point but when you're talking about projections based on a simulation then it's not enough to just say what your data was and promise that your program did something sensible with it. Even publishing the algorithms isn't enough since the results are generated by the actual program, not the planned program. This is analogous to mathematicians publishing their proofs.
But why should this apply only to controversial cases like this one? Any scientific claim based on modelling is open to the same question: were there any bugs in your code or assumptions that you made (such as how to round, which can have a big effect in massivly itterated data runs) which didn't make it into your paper? This is not just a tool like a calculator or something; it is in fact part of your research.
TWW
When the music companies found that they could save about 25% on distribution and packaging costs (more, but then bandwidth cost are new), they kept the price the same, if not slightly higher per track (for a poorer quality product). Who do you think got the extra cash? Do you think it was the artists? If so, I've got a really nice bridge to sell you.
TWW
Many people I know have a house rule that if challenged the placer must be able to define the word, in addition to the word being in the dictionary and spelt correctly. Lots of laughs when playing against someone that habitually uses the word list books!
TWW
But the program is part of the authority of the paper. Put it like this: if the program was revealed to be a random number generator, do you think it would reflect badly on the value for money the taxpayers got? In which case, don't researchers have a duty to publish the program in order to help show the validity of their research, in all cases, not just this one?
TWW
Do you mean a couple of Oxford Concise Dictionaries, or those stupid little word books for cheaters that are stuffed full of foreign words and no definitions? I might not be great at Scrabble, being slightly dyslexic, but I'm proud to say that I don't stoop so low as to use that sort of thing.
TWW
That's exactly the attitude that's led to the destruction of Google as a quality search engine. All comments are not equal and while both of these are communication, as you say, one of them is "noise" and the other is "signal".
TWW
I have. Engadget is quite good review site that for some reason the owners have decided to call bloga because they have a facility for commenting on the reviews. Boing boing is a very poor list of things what one can find on other websites with a comment option. Otherwise there's not much to them that justifies the "log" part of the name apart from the occasional boring mention of somthing dull that happened to one of the owners/editors.
To be a real blog it really should be 99% dull things that happened to the owner and 1% interesting or useful comment. Boing Boing is dull, certainly, but since none of it is a log in any real sense, it still doesn't seem to qualify to me. Unless your definition of "blog" is simply any site with news items and comments. Which it seems to be for some people.
TWW
Not really. There is a superficial resemblance but a web log is usually a single person (or couple) reporting or, in the case of Flickr, showing daily mundane things from their lives. Very little of /. is about the lives of the staff or the readers so it's not really a log of any sort. Just posting new stuff every day does not make you a blog unless you think news.bbc.co.uk is a blog.
TWW
Yep, heard that one a thousand times in the 90's. Didn't work then.
TWW