I encourage you to get your degree on line. I did an online masters with UoP back in 2004, and I am willing to vouch for the quality of the instruction I got. The only ouch with UoP is the cost: It is pretty pricey, but you get what you pay for.
I turned in work for my masters degree from a dozen different cities, and I would have flunked out of a conventional program, just based on my work schedule and inability to attend classes. The MS has been a vital tool in securing the job I now have, not because it makes me a better technical worker, but because it causes an involuntary reaction in Catbert to put the resume on the top of the stack.
Indeed, in my current work we are prohibited from hiring software engineers without a degree, which is a dern shame, because one of our best guys could not transition from the prior contract because of this peccadillo.
Universities will be the next victim of the Internet. Why bother with a Lit degree when one can download the classics from Gutenberg.org? It has been several years since I consulted any source other than the internet for CS information, so the only reason to fool around with a traditional university is the party/social scene. (That is not a bad reason to attend, by the way, but it has nothing to do with information transfer or professional development.)
I take the bible literally. I also exposed my children to the fossil evidence, explaining to them the assumptions, methodologies and conclusion used by the researchers. I also explained to them where the fallacies were: unproven assumptions, suspect steps in the methodologies, and erroneous or unwarranted conclusions. I did the same, by the way, for bible interpreters that were attempting to go beyond where the scriptures plainly teach. Anything less would be dishonest.
I disagree about the mounting evidence idea. What is mounting is evolution dogma, and an empowered inquisition to make sure that no one questions the idea of evolution. Leakey's argument is from taxonomy, which is the art of laying out samples in some order, then saying that the order proves something. It does not. All it represents is a design in the mind of the taxonomist. Placing a fossil between two other fossils does not prove a link, it proves a relationship. I could go dig up a random collection of human thigh bones, place them in order from longest to shortest, then use that to prove that people are getting shorter over time. How do I do that? I select only bones that meet the criteria older, longer newer, shorter. I then claim the other bones are 'contaminated', a different population, or fraudulent dates. TA DA! proof! I can go about this ad infinitum (or until the grant runs out) with fossils, because I can always assign a find so a location in the taxonomy that meets my needs to prove the theory.
Fascinating post. You assume that everyone that opposes AWG is automatically anti-science, even though there are good scientific reasons to doubt the premise put forward by the "CO2 Taxation is the only thing that can save us!" crowd. Here is some science:
" There is no dispute at all about the fact that even if punctiliously observed, (the Kyoto Protocol) would have an imperceptible effect on future temperatures -- one-twentieth of a degree by 2050. "
Dr. S. Fred Singer, atmospheric physicist
Professor Emeritus of Environmental Sciences at the University of Virginia,
and former director of the US Weather Satellite Service;
in a Sept. 10, 2001 Letter to Editor, Wall Street Journal
It is possible that you are missing a third possibility: evolution is false, but something else (unknown to you) is true. Evolution is a possible explanation, but nothing about it makes it the only possible explanation. Where is your scientific curiosity? Maybe there is something more to find than a random origin resulting in a meaningless life followed by a random death.
What you are observing is that any skeptic is treated as if possessing such an idea automatically means the skeptic is a creationist. If one questions Leakey's conclusion, then obviously that means the questioner is a creationist. Never mind if one has a valid complaint with some aspect of Leakey's argument. It is pretty safe to say that Dr. Leakey will say what he thinks will buttress his preselected idea.
FINALLY! some one else who has actually read Darwin! Kudos to you. Now if we can just get people to examine their assumptions, methodology and conclusions this thread might be worth reading.
Even a general can be wrong, and Butler proves this. One can be drawn into a war at the will of an enemy, and defending the innocent and weak is always appropriate even if it requires the death of men who will not respect the value of the people they share space with. Butler was proven wrong by the Nazi. Sometimes you have to do something, and sometimes that something is unpleasant.
This is not a difficult problem. An over-the-road truck is of the same order of complexity as a 2-stage rocket in terms of parts count, We generate probably over half a million heavy trucks per year, so a rocket fleet to move 6 billion to orbit could be done. A better question is why? you would be leaving a place that has air, water and food for places that have none of those.
Just a few notes: The US withdrew from the ABM treaty using the formal means for doing so established in the treaty, so we fulfilled our treaty obligations to the letter of the treaty. One of the reasons that we did so was the inability of the other signatory (the USSR) to guarantee continued compliance with the treaty by newly independent states, such as Kazakhstan, which has the means to mount a missile defense.
I believe that respect for another people requires taking what they say seriously. This means taking the time to learn their language, or at least hiring a competent translator, and understanding enough about their cultural context to be able to understand their idiomatic statements. This includes understanding the fundamentals of their religion. These fundamentals (in this case) include the concept of Jihad, which involves killing infidels.
I agree that the bombers are not fundamentally suicidal. In truth they fundamentally homicidal. The Muslim idea is that they get a guarantee of going to wherever Allah is by dying in the process, regardless of their previous spiritual status.
The other point of this is not what I believe about them, but what they believe about themselves. They also might well have a plan for personally surviving the exchange to populate their Caliphate.
All parties have the option of defending themselves, and the Russian have defended Moscow from the very start of the cold war. You do not claim that their defenses are destabilizing, only ours. Why? I would also argue that a missile that can travel 7,000 miles for an attack will be more expensive than one that travels a couple of hundred for a defense. The idea that you can defeat defenses with MIRVs assumes that the defender cannot multiply his defense interceptors to match. One of the reasons that our mid-course intercepts tend to fail is that we are trying very challenging scenarios instead of simple one-on-one intercepts, which we know we can do. The problem with MAD is the inherent immorality of the proposition. It also assumes that your opponent is making rational choices, something the Jihadists prove daily to be a false assumption. What better way for a Muslim despot to get all his people to heaven than to get them all killed in a nuke exchange with the Infidels?
Why do you assume that a Russian/Chinese offensive missile is free? It is not, and from our perspective you need to count the cost of the damage that can be avoided in your strategic calculus. When you consider how much damage a nuke can do, the defensive missile looks pretty cheap.
There is a fundamental difference in morality between 'I will prevent you from killing my people' and 'I will kill all of you.' Preventing someone from killing leaves a lot more options open than killing people. Who knows, we might want them for allies at some point. Like the only nation we actually have nuked, and another that we would have nuked, had we not already beat them in conventional warfare. (That is Japan and Germany, for the historically illiterate.) The idea is sow uncertainty in your enemy's mind about the value of the offensive missiles. Who knows, they might even pull some of the warheads off and turn them into defenses, which is a win for everyone.
Every defensive missile turns a ~95% certain kill of 20-30 million people into a chance they might live. Count me in on that. If I am forced to bet my life on something a slim chance is way better than no chance at all. The fact that no defense is perfect does not mean that we should abandon defenses. I would prefer to complicate any enemy calculus of military activity as much as possible. If we give someone something that is certain to work, we can guarantee that they will use it at some point. If there is uncertainty in all their military courses, they may choose a negotiation rather than genocide. Let them try to guess which of:
We could restore the balance by reducing our inventory of offensive weapons, to everyone's (I think) satisfaction. Thus we have defenses against the psycho-islamists without unduly alarming rational self-defenders.
The man in question was never a Muslim, but since his parents were Muslim, he was convicted of apostasy. Facts here: http://www.sbcbaptistpress.org/BPnews.asp?ID=37246 The rights of non-Muslims under Sharia law does not include the right to property, and any action done by a Muslim male is justified and proper. You should do a bit of reading before assuming that some one is mixed up. A larger question would be why you think this is OK? Is it because he was a Christian that you think he deserves to die?
You are probably referring to the Inquisition conducted by the Catholic Church. Please remember that one of the 'crimes' that could get you death at the stake under the Inquisition was owning a bible. The bible is the most subversive document ever written.
We live at a time when more people are persecuted for their Christian faith than at any time in history. Muslim leadership does not need you to cover up their crimes.
I was being a little flip about the big band, but the truth is, quantum mechanics (Our best crack at understanding the universe), does not allow a particle to exist in less than it's wavelength. (simplified here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_singularity) At the singularity stage of the universe, no measurement is possible, so what existed at that point is 'nothing' in our time/space.
I notice that your defense of evolution consists of an ad hominem attack, and not a reasoned argument. Why?
I normally see a reference to: http://www.talkorigins.org/ at this point in the conversation, which is a delightful collection of all the fallacies in evolution. See if you can spot the error in each argument! (There are often more than one.)
The only problem with this idea is that all of the major themes in modern Christianity are laid out in the old testament. For instance the best ancient copy of Isaiah dates from 130-60 BC and contains, intact, the 53rd chapter, which was removed from later Jewish editions of Isaiah because one cannot read it without noticing the similarity to the events in the Gospels. By the way, the oldest references to the gospels date from the first and second century AD, and are indistinguishable from the modern texts. This is important because this was the period when it was death to be a believer in Christ, and the first church councils were a couple of hundred years in the future. I can better believe Muslims hacking up the torah and the gospels a thousand years later, then that a bunch of people running for their lives sat down to screw up the very thing they were dying for.
Christians are held to be infidels.
The Koran calls for the death of any person that denies any part of the Koran. When a Christian says that Jesus is the son of God (the foundational believe in Christianity), he earns a death sentence because either: a) he is worshiping some other God, or b) he is contradicting Mohammed. Either case is a death sentence.
Perhaps you think this is a thing of the past? There is a man in Iran condemned to death today for the crime of converting to Christianity.
You might consider the idea that each of the plagues was a judgement on one of the gods of Egypt, in which case there might well be a religious taboo or superstition related to each one of the plagues.
My point was that I disagree with killing the innocent. I also disagree with tyrants killing innocent people, and sometimes that means taking away their guns. By force. It would be more appropriate if you compared our kill-rate of innocent civs with Saddam's rate, or Bashirs, or The Talibans.
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I encourage you to get your degree on line. I did an online masters with UoP back in 2004, and I am willing to vouch for the quality of the instruction I got. The only ouch with UoP is the cost: It is pretty pricey, but you get what you pay for.
I turned in work for my masters degree from a dozen different cities, and I would have flunked out of a conventional program, just based on my work schedule and inability to attend classes. The MS has been a vital tool in securing the job I now have, not because it makes me a better technical worker, but because it causes an involuntary reaction in Catbert to put the resume on the top of the stack.
Indeed, in my current work we are prohibited from hiring software engineers without a degree, which is a dern shame, because one of our best guys could not transition from the prior contract because of this peccadillo.
Universities will be the next victim of the Internet. Why bother with a Lit degree when one can download the classics from Gutenberg.org? It has been several years since I consulted any source other than the internet for CS information, so the only reason to fool around with a traditional university is the party/social scene. (That is not a bad reason to attend, by the way, but it has nothing to do with information transfer or professional development.)
I take the bible literally. I also exposed my children to the fossil evidence, explaining to them the assumptions, methodologies and conclusion used by the researchers. I also explained to them where the fallacies were: unproven assumptions, suspect steps in the methodologies, and erroneous or unwarranted conclusions. I did the same, by the way, for bible interpreters that were attempting to go beyond where the scriptures plainly teach. Anything less would be dishonest.
This is why methodology is so important.
http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/greenhouse_data.html
" There is no dispute at all about the fact that even if punctiliously observed, (the Kyoto Protocol) would have an imperceptible effect on future temperatures -- one-twentieth of a degree by 2050. "
Dr. S. Fred Singer, atmospheric physicist Professor Emeritus of Environmental Sciences at the University of Virginia, and former director of the US Weather Satellite Service; in a Sept. 10, 2001 Letter to Editor, Wall Street Journal
So why go to a site that espouses hate when the Christian's God is a God of love? Might there be a problem right at the root of such a site?
(Such is the logical conclusion of evolution.)
What you are observing is that any skeptic is treated as if possessing such an idea automatically means the skeptic is a creationist. If one questions Leakey's conclusion, then obviously that means the questioner is a creationist. Never mind if one has a valid complaint with some aspect of Leakey's argument. It is pretty safe to say that Dr. Leakey will say what he thinks will buttress his preselected idea.
FINALLY! some one else who has actually read Darwin! Kudos to you. Now if we can just get people to examine their assumptions, methodology and conclusions this thread might be worth reading.
We have the plans for the Enterprise. Maybe Manitowoc can build 10 of those.
Even a general can be wrong, and Butler proves this. One can be drawn into a war at the will of an enemy, and defending the innocent and weak is always appropriate even if it requires the death of men who will not respect the value of the people they share space with. Butler was proven wrong by the Nazi. Sometimes you have to do something, and sometimes that something is unpleasant.
This is not a difficult problem. An over-the-road truck is of the same order of complexity as a 2-stage rocket in terms of parts count, We generate probably over half a million heavy trucks per year, so a rocket fleet to move 6 billion to orbit could be done. A better question is why? you would be leaving a place that has air, water and food for places that have none of those.
I believe that respect for another people requires taking what they say seriously. This means taking the time to learn their language, or at least hiring a competent translator, and understanding enough about their cultural context to be able to understand their idiomatic statements. This includes understanding the fundamentals of their religion. These fundamentals (in this case) include the concept of Jihad, which involves killing infidels.
I agree that the bombers are not fundamentally suicidal. In truth they fundamentally homicidal. The Muslim idea is that they get a guarantee of going to wherever Allah is by dying in the process, regardless of their previous spiritual status.
The other point of this is not what I believe about them, but what they believe about themselves. They also might well have a plan for personally surviving the exchange to populate their Caliphate.
All parties have the option of defending themselves, and the Russian have defended Moscow from the very start of the cold war. You do not claim that their defenses are destabilizing, only ours. Why? I would also argue that a missile that can travel 7,000 miles for an attack will be more expensive than one that travels a couple of hundred for a defense. The idea that you can defeat defenses with MIRVs assumes that the defender cannot multiply his defense interceptors to match. One of the reasons that our mid-course intercepts tend to fail is that we are trying very challenging scenarios instead of simple one-on-one intercepts, which we know we can do. The problem with MAD is the inherent immorality of the proposition. It also assumes that your opponent is making rational choices, something the Jihadists prove daily to be a false assumption. What better way for a Muslim despot to get all his people to heaven than to get them all killed in a nuke exchange with the Infidels?
Why do you assume that a Russian/Chinese offensive missile is free? It is not, and from our perspective you need to count the cost of the damage that can be avoided in your strategic calculus. When you consider how much damage a nuke can do, the defensive missile looks pretty cheap.
There is a fundamental difference in morality between 'I will prevent you from killing my people' and 'I will kill all of you.' Preventing someone from killing leaves a lot more options open than killing people. Who knows, we might want them for allies at some point. Like the only nation we actually have nuked, and another that we would have nuked, had we not already beat them in conventional warfare. (That is Japan and Germany, for the historically illiterate.) The idea is sow uncertainty in your enemy's mind about the value of the offensive missiles. Who knows, they might even pull some of the warheads off and turn them into defenses, which is a win for everyone.
It does work. That is why there is an issue. (facts here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-ballistic_missile) The Russians also have ABM systems for sale, which moves this from politics to economics.
missiles,
stealth bombers,
conventional aircraft,
submarines,
air craft carriers,
stealthy helicopters,
heavy helicopters,
seal teams,
special ops HI/LO jumpers,
or
lying diplomats
we will respond with.
We could restore the balance by reducing our inventory of offensive weapons, to everyone's (I think) satisfaction. Thus we have defenses against the psycho-islamists without unduly alarming rational self-defenders.
That was the stated purpose of the plagues: Exodus 12:12
You are probably referring to the Inquisition conducted by the Catholic Church. Please remember that one of the 'crimes' that could get you death at the stake under the Inquisition was owning a bible. The bible is the most subversive document ever written.
We live at a time when more people are persecuted for their Christian faith than at any time in history. Muslim leadership does not need you to cover up their crimes.
I notice that your defense of evolution consists of an ad hominem attack, and not a reasoned argument. Why?
I normally see a reference to: http://www.talkorigins.org/ at this point in the conversation, which is a delightful collection of all the fallacies in evolution. See if you can spot the error in each argument! (There are often more than one.)
That is an interesting view. What OT story shows this best?
Christians are held to be infidels.
The Koran calls for the death of any person that denies any part of the Koran. When a Christian says that Jesus is the son of God (the foundational believe in Christianity), he earns a death sentence because either: a) he is worshiping some other God, or b) he is contradicting Mohammed. Either case is a death sentence.
Perhaps you think this is a thing of the past? There is a man in Iran condemned to death today for the crime of converting to Christianity.
You might consider the idea that each of the plagues was a judgement on one of the gods of Egypt, in which case there might well be a religious taboo or superstition related to each one of the plagues.
My point was that I disagree with killing the innocent. I also disagree with tyrants killing innocent people, and sometimes that means taking away their guns. By force. It would be more appropriate if you compared our kill-rate of innocent civs with Saddam's rate, or Bashirs, or The Talibans.