> Last year, the Honolulu Diocese assembled a tribunal to examine an O'ahu woman's story that her cancer was cured after she traveled to Moloka'i to pray at Damien's grave.
> The patient and her family members were among those who testified before the tribunal. Also testifying was Dr. Walter Y.M. Chang, a Honolulu physician - and non-Catholic - who wrote about the spontaneous regression of the woman's cancer in the October 2000 issue of Hawai'i Medical Journal.
> Chang wrote that a malignant tumor had developed in the patient's lung in September 1998 and then disappeared without the aid of therapy. The spontaneous regression of this type of cancer may be the first case report of its kind, the scientific paper said. Other doctors who treated the woman also testified.
What they aren't doing is showing that her health had anything to do with praying over a decomposed body.
> There were a lot of miraculous healings at Lourdes in France, so that might be something to investigate if you're interested.
As one visitor to Lourdes pointed out with mordant sarcasm, there's always a big pile of crutches but never any wooden legs in it.
> if we discovered the earth was 100,000 years old, you could bet people would still argue evolution occured but at a "rapid rate"
Can't you do better than appealing to imaginary facts? That's like making claims about how people would explain the horizon if we suddenly discovered that the world was flat.
> Even crick (a respected scientist) entertained the idea of panspermia.
Panspermia is not in conflict with evolution; it just moves the starting point somewhere else in the galaxy.
Also, unless you think panspemia involved all living and extinct species falling out of the sky, you've got a problem if you try to accept panspermia and reject evolution.
> Anyway, the gist of this argument is that the earth is in fact only 6000 years old, but it was created with the appearance of being billions of years old, including light from the stars en-rout, radiocarbons having decayed, fake fossils, etc. (Think Bladerunner where the clones have memories that never really happened.) Moral of the story, there really is no _definitive_ way to prove this statement wrong.
Right. Of course, once you buy in to the idea that what you see is completely divorced from reality, all claims are equally good... or bad.
The people who offer this kind of argument have obviously never paused to consider that it can be invoked to support any rival religious claim just as well as their own. (Of course, these people aren't accustomed to basing their beliefs on evidence anyway; the whole thing is just a retcon to make it look like science doesn't actually refute some of their core beliefs.)
> Also, a more philisophical question would by why God would go through all this trouble to fool us into thinking the world was older than it actually was?
Also, how do you know His creation lies about its age and His memoirs tell the truth about it, instead of vice versa?
These facile arguments are only useful for True Believers desperate to preserve their "facts" in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
Right, and the Omphalos Argument is the claim that Adam and Eve were created complete with navels, even though they hadn't actually been born. The extension is a claim that the universe was created with a faked appearence of great age.
> It's good to be skeptical about this "New Human Species!!!" claim. Because claims like this have been wrong 100% of the time in the past
Claims "like this" in what sense? Are you unaware how many hominid species have been found, and have withstood the test of time?
> I have no reason to put my confidence in this discovery until more research has been done.
It's always good to withold judgement on fresh discoveries. But at least they published their find in Nature rather than at a press conference, like discoverers of Atlantis are prone to do.
> I'm not sure how this qualifies as a vulnerability. If you read the actual discussion linked, it's very clear that this is a root kit installed after someone already has root access on your machine. How did it suddenly become a vulnerability that if you have root access to someones machine, you can write a script that will automatically install a bunch of malware?
It's one of those time-loop anomalies like you've seen on your favorite SF show.
> Democratic President Franklin Roosevelt determined that Germany was our greatest threat despite the fact that Japan actually attacked us and we prosecuted that global war by taking down Italy first. The greatest threat is not necessarily the best first target.
Huh?
Are you unaware of the "Europe first" policy? Or are you making a subtle distinction between "greatest threat" and "greatest threat"?
> Bush assumed that the US would be hailed as liberating heros when conquering Iraq, and didn't even comprehend the notion of an organized resistance, and now people are dying because of his lack of foresight.
Indeed, months into the reality zone Rumsfeld was still scolding reporters for calling it a resistance movement.
Some people just can't distinguish between what they want and reality.
> The TR article does mention hours-long downloads and network outages for soldiers in the field, making it sound like our info-warfare is not yet ready for demo, let alone rollout.
I know a guy who works on Army technoprojects, and he says the bandwith problem was because of too much crap on the network, especially with endemic rank-pulling to grab bandwith for things that may have been useful, but weren't within the scope of what the system was designed for. By the time it got down to the guys on the sharp edge, all the water had already been siphoned out of the river.
> But for all of Bush's mistakes during the Iraq war, John Kerry hasn't convinced me that he'd do anything other than cut and run. That just isn't acceptable.
So, are you saying that we should have stayed the course in Viet Nam?
> Heck, not even interventions to stop genocide (Rwanda, Sudan) can seem to pass muster at the U.N..
Despite all the retcon bullshit about invading Iraq for humanitarian reasons, the USA will be the last country to take an interest in intervention in Africa. Look what happened when Liberia begged us for help.
> Thus far Iran is 100% within their rights, as far as refining uranium goes, not that that will stop war-mongers from using them as a boogey man to keep the American people scared. Not that it will stop Bush from invading them in his quest to get us all fricking killed. Bush would just love to invade because Iran would respond by launching long range missiles at our bases in Europe and we would have another world war on our hands, one we are almost certain to win, but that will keep him and his in power, kill off thousands of our soldiers, and make big profits.
That pot may boil within the next six months. Numerous Israeli officials have said that they will not let the Iranian reactor go on line, period. Several have said that the belive their window of opportunity for interdiction will close early next year. If someone doesn't say Iran's mind, something is going to happen. (And after watching what happened to Iraq, I doubt that anything is going to convince Iran that they don't want a nuclear deterrent.)
The difference between now and when the Israelis busted the Iraqi reactor is that Iran has missiles that they can fire on Israel in retaliation. Also, Israel may need to violate Iraqi airspace in order to reach the Iranian targets; if they do, and if the US does not intercept them, Iran and the entire Muslim world will think the US was an accomplice.
Would Iran retaliate against the US in Iraq? Sure we could beat their asses - but not at the stingy level of effort we've invested in the Afghanistan and Iraq invasions. This could get ugly.
> In fact people feel pretty good about the Clinton Presidency, although I think it could be argued that more acts of terror on home soil actually took place during the Clinton years.
Clinton was certainly a lamer, but at least he didn't use terrorism as an excuse for overthrowing governments he didn't like.
> CORRECTION. It shows Kerry voters are "more in tune" with the lies that the elite media is telling us about Iraq. Bush supporters include some 3/4 of those in the military, and they certainly understand what's happening on the ground in Iraq better than news reporters who cower in Bagdad hotels.
Guess that explains why some of that military feels like a simple fuel delivery job is a suicide mission, and why a whole stream of generals retiring after a tour in Iraq have been telling us that the whole thing has been AFU since day one.
> And how many Kerry supporters know that France's Chrac was building Saddam in the early 80s and stocking it with high-grade uranium so the mad tyrant could build an a-bomb?
How many Bush supporters know that he was our ally then, and also while using WMD on the Kurds and Iranians?
> How many Kerry supporters know that quite a few officials in the UN, France, Germany and Russia were getting illegal payola from the Oil for Food program?
How many Bush supporters know that the most recent report on the scandal had all the American crooks' names blacked out?
> All this is to elect Kerry, someone whose only significant accomplishment in a quarter century of political life was to lie and slander his "band of brothers" in Vietnam.
I think this would be an excellent time to have a president who understands that not every war is a good war.
> I think it's funny that we can capture scientists known to their fellows as "Dr. Germ" and "Chemical Ali" and somehow the "correct" story is that there not only were no WMDs in Iraq, but that they were never pursuing them to begin with.
The Bush Administration's greatest accomplishment has been convincing people like you that Iraq was an imminent threat to due to stuff they did back when they were our buddies.
> They're comparing apples to oranges. The report concluded that Iraq didn't have "_a significant WMD program_" but the question asked if "_Iraq had actual WMD_." Those are two completely different things.
The report concluded that they not only didn't have an arsenal, they didn't even have a viable program for producing one.
> You can argue about what constitutes a "significant WMD program" but WMD's have been discovered in Iraq. (Failed Sarin gas attack on a military convey back in May 2004 is one example.)
Ah, so we invaded Iraq because there was an old Sarin shell lying around somewhere...
> On the subject of partisan sniping, I particularly like Bush's new ads, the one's with all the wolves circling the camera, implying that the terrorists want Kerry to win.
> There is good news in Iraq, and most of it is ignored by our press. Iraq has a free press.
Tell that to the newspapers and television stations that have been shut down on account of their content.
> It has a new government with excellent support from the people.
Except for the ones that are trying to blow it up...
> Its new police and military are starting to vigourously attack the Al Queda members in the country.
Except for the ones that desert or defect...
> The economy is booming.
Mostly with C4 and mortar rounds...
> In the end, I support President Bush not because he's always right - of course he's not - but because he is steadfast and resolute when confronting our enemies.
No he isn't. He's the kind who drops the ball on confronting our real enemies in order to pursue a war on someone he doesn't like.
It amazes me that anyone thinks Bush is our best bet for national security.
> John Kerry is not the kind of person who will take strong and decisive action when faced with a threat
Slashdot Mirror
> Last year, the Honolulu Diocese assembled a tribunal to examine an O'ahu woman's story that her cancer was cured after she traveled to Moloka'i to pray at Damien's grave.
> The patient and her family members were among those who testified before the tribunal. Also testifying was Dr. Walter Y.M. Chang, a Honolulu physician - and non-Catholic - who wrote about the spontaneous regression of the woman's cancer in the October 2000 issue of Hawai'i Medical Journal.
> Chang wrote that a malignant tumor had developed in the patient's lung in September 1998 and then disappeared without the aid of therapy. The spontaneous regression of this type of cancer may be the first case report of its kind, the scientific paper said. Other doctors who treated the woman also testified.
What they aren't doing is showing that her health had anything to do with praying over a decomposed body.
> There were a lot of miraculous healings at Lourdes in France, so that might be something to investigate if you're interested.
As one visitor to Lourdes pointed out with mordant sarcasm, there's always a big pile of crutches but never any wooden legs in it.
> if we discovered the earth was 100,000 years old, you could bet people would still argue evolution occured but at a "rapid rate"
Can't you do better than appealing to imaginary facts? That's like making claims about how people would explain the horizon if we suddenly discovered that the world was flat.
> Even crick (a respected scientist) entertained the idea of panspermia.
Panspermia is not in conflict with evolution; it just moves the starting point somewhere else in the galaxy.
Also, unless you think panspemia involved all living and extinct species falling out of the sky, you've got a problem if you try to accept panspermia and reject evolution.
> Yes. And there are also modern humans who still think that humans descended from apes.
Humans are apes. Unless your parents aren't human, you did descend from apes.
> Anyway, the gist of this argument is that the earth is in fact only 6000 years old, but it was created with the appearance of being billions of years old, including light from the stars en-rout, radiocarbons having decayed, fake fossils, etc. (Think Bladerunner where the clones have memories that never really happened.) Moral of the story, there really is no _definitive_ way to prove this statement wrong.
Right. Of course, once you buy in to the idea that what you see is completely divorced from reality, all claims are equally good... or bad.
The people who offer this kind of argument have obviously never paused to consider that it can be invoked to support any rival religious claim just as well as their own. (Of course, these people aren't accustomed to basing their beliefs on evidence anyway; the whole thing is just a retcon to make it look like science doesn't actually refute some of their core beliefs.)
> Also, a more philisophical question would by why God would go through all this trouble to fool us into thinking the world was older than it actually was?
Also, how do you know His creation lies about its age and His memoirs tell the truth about it, instead of vice versa?
These facile arguments are only useful for True Believers desperate to preserve their "facts" in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
> Omphalos actually means belly button.
Right, and the Omphalos Argument is the claim that Adam and Eve were created complete with navels, even though they hadn't actually been born. The extension is a claim that the universe was created with a faked appearence of great age.
> It's good to be skeptical about this "New Human Species!!!" claim. Because claims like this have been wrong 100% of the time in the past
Claims "like this" in what sense? Are you unaware how many hominid species have been found, and have withstood the test of time?
> I have no reason to put my confidence in this discovery until more research has been done.
It's always good to withold judgement on fresh discoveries. But at least they published their find in Nature rather than at a press conference, like discoverers of Atlantis are prone to do.
> Maybe you are afraid to admit that evolutionary science is full of holes
Name three.
> I did not say anything about being a creationist
I notice you aren't actually denying it, either.
Sometimes people give away more than they intend to.
> So you're telling us that God is a liar?
Who told the truth in the Garden - God or the serpent?
I'm sure all the Slashdot readers who are notorious spies or serial killers will take heart at this!
> wow that is such a fluff piece, it says that the actual information will be released later on, it doesn't mention the species of plants looked at
They don't want to scare off tommorow's potential astronauts with a long list of vegetables.
> this is Slashdot, you should know tthe possibilities of bash scripting.
And of script bashing as well.
> I'm not sure how this qualifies as a vulnerability. If you read the actual discussion linked, it's very clear that this is a root kit installed after someone already has root access on your machine. How did it suddenly become a vulnerability that if you have root access to someones machine, you can write a script that will automatically install a bunch of malware?
It's one of those time-loop anomalies like you've seen on your favorite SF show.
> Maybe we should start faulting Congress (including Kerry) for being so quick to adopt a "jump-on-the-bandwagon" mentality...
Actually we should fault them for delegating their constitutional responsibility for making decisions to go to war to the executive branch.
> Democratic President Franklin Roosevelt determined that Germany was our greatest threat despite the fact that Japan actually attacked us and we prosecuted that global war by taking down Italy first. The greatest threat is not necessarily the best first target.
Huh?
Are you unaware of the "Europe first" policy? Or are you making a subtle distinction between "greatest threat" and "greatest threat"?
> Bush assumed that the US would be hailed as liberating heros when conquering Iraq, and didn't even comprehend the notion of an organized resistance, and now people are dying because of his lack of foresight.
Indeed, months into the reality zone Rumsfeld was still scolding reporters for calling it a resistance movement.
Some people just can't distinguish between what they want and reality.
> The TR article does mention hours-long downloads and network outages for soldiers in the field, making it sound like our info-warfare is not yet ready for demo, let alone rollout.
I know a guy who works on Army technoprojects, and he says the bandwith problem was because of too much crap on the network, especially with endemic rank-pulling to grab bandwith for things that may have been useful, but weren't within the scope of what the system was designed for. By the time it got down to the guys on the sharp edge, all the water had already been siphoned out of the river.
> But for all of Bush's mistakes during the Iraq war, John Kerry hasn't convinced me that he'd do anything other than cut and run. That just isn't acceptable.
So, are you saying that we should have stayed the course in Viet Nam?
> Heck, not even interventions to stop genocide (Rwanda, Sudan) can seem to pass muster at the U.N..
Despite all the retcon bullshit about invading Iraq for humanitarian reasons, the USA will be the last country to take an interest in intervention in Africa. Look what happened when Liberia begged us for help.
> Thus far Iran is 100% within their rights, as far as refining uranium goes, not that that will stop war-mongers from using them as a boogey man to keep the American people scared. Not that it will stop Bush from invading them in his quest to get us all fricking killed. Bush would just love to invade because Iran would respond by launching long range missiles at our bases in Europe and we would have another world war on our hands, one we are almost certain to win, but that will keep him and his in power, kill off thousands of our soldiers, and make big profits.
That pot may boil within the next six months. Numerous Israeli officials have said that they will not let the Iranian reactor go on line, period. Several have said that the belive their window of opportunity for interdiction will close early next year. If someone doesn't say Iran's mind, something is going to happen. (And after watching what happened to Iraq, I doubt that anything is going to convince Iran that they don't want a nuclear deterrent.)
The difference between now and when the Israelis busted the Iraqi reactor is that Iran has missiles that they can fire on Israel in retaliation. Also, Israel may need to violate Iraqi airspace in order to reach the Iranian targets; if they do, and if the US does not intercept them, Iran and the entire Muslim world will think the US was an accomplice.
Would Iran retaliate against the US in Iraq? Sure we could beat their asses - but not at the stingy level of effort we've invested in the Afghanistan and Iraq invasions. This could get ugly.
> In fact people feel pretty good about the Clinton Presidency, although I think it could be argued that more acts of terror on home soil actually took place during the Clinton years.
Clinton was certainly a lamer, but at least he didn't use terrorism as an excuse for overthrowing governments he didn't like.
> CORRECTION. It shows Kerry voters are "more in tune" with the lies that the elite media is telling us about Iraq. Bush supporters include some 3/4 of those in the military, and they certainly understand what's happening on the ground in Iraq better than news reporters who cower in Bagdad hotels.
Guess that explains why some of that military feels like a simple fuel delivery job is a suicide mission, and why a whole stream of generals retiring after a tour in Iraq have been telling us that the whole thing has been AFU since day one.
> And how many Kerry supporters know that France's Chrac was building Saddam in the early 80s and stocking it with high-grade uranium so the mad tyrant could build an a-bomb?
How many Bush supporters know that he was our ally then, and also while using WMD on the Kurds and Iranians?
> How many Kerry supporters know that quite a few officials in the UN, France, Germany and Russia were getting illegal payola from the Oil for Food program?
How many Bush supporters know that the most recent report on the scandal had all the American crooks' names blacked out?
> All this is to elect Kerry, someone whose only significant accomplishment in a quarter century of political life was to lie and slander his "band of brothers" in Vietnam.
I think this would be an excellent time to have a president who understands that not every war is a good war.
> I think it's funny that we can capture scientists known to their fellows as "Dr. Germ" and "Chemical Ali" and somehow the "correct" story is that there not only were no WMDs in Iraq, but that they were never pursuing them to begin with.
The Bush Administration's greatest accomplishment has been convincing people like you that Iraq was an imminent threat to due to stuff they did back when they were our buddies.
> They're comparing apples to oranges. The report concluded that Iraq didn't have "_a significant WMD program_" but the question asked if "_Iraq had actual WMD_." Those are two completely different things.
The report concluded that they not only didn't have an arsenal, they didn't even have a viable program for producing one.
> You can argue about what constitutes a "significant WMD program" but WMD's have been discovered in Iraq. (Failed Sarin gas attack on a military convey back in May 2004 is one example.)
Ah, so we invaded Iraq because there was an old Sarin shell lying around somewhere...
> On the subject of partisan sniping, I particularly like Bush's new ads, the one's with all the wolves circling the camera, implying that the terrorists want Kerry to win.
Purportedly not to good on the facts, either.
> There is good news in Iraq, and most of it is ignored by our press. Iraq has a free press.
Tell that to the newspapers and television stations that have been shut down on account of their content.
> It has a new government with excellent support from the people.
Except for the ones that are trying to blow it up...
> Its new police and military are starting to vigourously attack the Al Queda members in the country.
Except for the ones that desert or defect...
> The economy is booming.
Mostly with C4 and mortar rounds...
> In the end, I support President Bush not because he's always right - of course he's not - but because he is steadfast and resolute when confronting our enemies.
No he isn't. He's the kind who drops the ball on confronting our real enemies in order to pursue a war on someone he doesn't like.
It amazes me that anyone thinks Bush is our best bet for national security.
> John Kerry is not the kind of person who will take strong and decisive action when faced with a threat
What, if anything, do you base that claim on?