. I shop there most weeks for staples.... stuff like Diet Coke and paper towels?. Neither Diet Coke nor Paper Towels are foodstuffs for real poverty.
I don't think Wal-Mart sucks because a crappy small business shop gets ran out of town by an efficient corporation. I think they suck because they're, well, a distortion of themselves. Had they followed their current policy back when Sam was in charge, they'd never have expanded.
My local newspaper surveyed four different grocery stores around town for prices on 15 or 20 different common products. Wal-Mart had the lowest price on all but 3. Insufficiently small sample. A typical grocery store has thousands of distinct products, and a good survey would need to include ALL avenues of purchasing a catagorical list--"lowest unit price for milk, bread, flour, etc of any brand or size"--from "discount" clubs and farmer's markets to grocery stores and gas stations.
(the fun bit is that, at the moment, there's literally nothing the local wal-marts have where the low price justifies the poor selection. We have the internet, and THAT is the price-setter, not the local market.)
Sheesh. Learn to quote. Anyway.
So are all these people with their different believes right? Are they all wrong? Is one particular view right? Are they prepared to define it without eventually trying to redefine it under scrutiny? 1: "beliefs" 2: No, Maybe, yes, more than you'd think. 3: Gospel time!
God exists. He created everything, and commanded us to behave justly and rightly. We all failed, and for this we deserve to burn in hell. But -- Good news! -- He loves us. So, he sent Jesus Christ to show us a better way, and Jesus died a rather painful death in the effort. If you do your best to live as Jesus showed you, and most importantly love Him and God, He'll keep you out of Hell and you'll live forever with Him (and, by extension, everyone else who loves Him.)
Skipping the unprovable or mystic variations, that's Christianity. It cannot be disproven by Science, nor are there any internal fallicies within it. There is, however, ample room for crap thrown on top of it. And I'll agree that the crap is crap.
But the crap is not my religion.
So basically praying is of no benefit, and you are just as statiscally likely to benefit (because god wants to fuck up any statistical analysis) from not praying as you will by praying? Really????? Statistically speaking? Sure. But statistics are for measuring what thousands of people do. They mean shit when it comes to your personal life.
If you buy a lottery ticket, you might win a crazy amount of money. Statistically you won't -- but every few weeks, someone does.
(I never said prayer has no benefit. I said that prayer has no statistical benefit, because God apparently answers the prayers of non-Christians or just grants random miracles to fuck up statistical studies about prayer.)
The same bible you say is wrong?... You quote a book you say is wrong to prove your assertion? I never said the Bible was wrong. I said that not all Christians believe it to be the completely inerrant and entirely factual testimony of God. My personal belief is that the Bible contains enough of the Truth to be beneficial in the balance, and that it contains enough intentional errors and contradictions to keep dogma from overshadowing gospel.
And, in the part you were replying to, I was referencing the Bible as a generally container of faith. And it is. Some Christians believe that it's distorted truth, others perfect allegory, but all hold it in reverence as a message of some kind from their/our God.
No, that is not funny nor true. Science places a theory forward that stands until it is disproven, at which point is is happily put aside for the new theory. Religion (or the religious) will say a thing until it gets too painfully obvious that is it bogus, then wriggle to a new definition. Hold on for a minute, I need to stop laughing.
Scientists are every bit as stubborn and half-witted as the religious. They say that they really want to see change, and would love to have everything they've spent their lives learning be disproven -- but that's crap, and the honest ones know it.
The human mind simply does not like admiting that it's wrong. And that's as true for scientists as it is for theologians... and as true for science fanboys as it is for common parishioners.
Go back and read the gospel included in the first part of this comment. It's as clear and subtle as the underlying philosophy in science--("the world is understandable and its rules complex, but immutable").
Not if there is no evidence of the woman's existence, you can't. You can't have any knowledge at all. All you can have (or not have) is belief; and that's the fulcrum upon which the weights of theism and atheism turn. If you insist on bringing non-existance into it:
I tell you I had a three-way orgy last night, with my wife and a hot bi-curious-lesbian. My brother asks you if you think it happened. There are three possible answers.
1: No, you think that it didn't. I'm a loser. 2: Yes, you think that it did. I am Hugh Hefner. 3: You're not sure. I'm "that guy".
You have just as much and as little evidence that the orgy existed as we do that God exists, albeit on a smaller scale.
The options are belief in existence, belief in non-existence, or non-belief. The latter two are NOT synonyms. Remember that we are talking about belief, not science or proof here. Just belief.
. If our government tries to pull any funny business, China can dump the dollar and crash our currency in a matter of weeks or days There are innumerable ways to counter this -- from simply assessing china a punative fee to invading China. (Push comes to shove, we'd "win" in a war against China and everyone knows it. We'd be back in the wild west. They'd be dead.)
The most likely manner, however, is just to leave it be. China holds a lot of US currency, but by no means a majority of US dollars. And so long as we have enough time to have an effective home currency, we'll do fine. Even if everyone in the world dumped dollars for Euros. (Hint: We'd do so at the same time, make the Euro our national currency, and we'd be welcomed with open arms.)
And that doesn't strike you at all as short-sighted? Nope. I don't hold anything more than short-term savings in dollars. Only a fool would. I hold it in stocks et al which, although priced in dollars, reflects wealth of an altogether different sort than the simple dollar bill.
Have you failed to notice how that rate is increasing? The dollar has already lost 96% of its purchasing power since 1913. Hyperinflation is a very real possibility. 1913? NINTEEN THIRTEEN?
You'll forgive me if I don't panic. Inflation that is not fast enough to disrupt ordinary life is simply not a problem. If your currency is not out doing something, it deserves to lose value over time.
The United States of America does not have a free market either. A free market is a market in which prices of goods and services are arranged completely by the mutual consent of sellers and buyers. We do not have a perfectly free market. But we have a market that is a hell of a lot freer than the USSR's. Which is all that matters. Our semi-free Market is a HELL of a lot better than the USSR's pseudo-Command market.
In case you believe I am going over the top, here is a video [thedailyshow.com] of Alan Greenspan stating quite clearly that we do not have a free market, along with some hand-waving about how we can't have one because of human nature. You'll forgive me if I don't buy your attempt to stretch Alan Greenspan's appearance on a comedy show to equating the USSR and the USA's economic status.
The fact is, we're in pretty deep shit, and nobody's talking about it because nobody in the government or the media is talking about it, and we really need to talk about it if we're going to do anything to improve the situation. Find me one economist -- just ONE -- who believes we're in the kind of end-of-the-world shit you're describing. I'll wait.
Incidentally, if we don't use breeders then using nuclear is a HORRIBLE and TERRIBLE idea; we can gain a couple orders of magnitude in efficiency this way. With breeders, nuclear can be not just practical but also profitable without subsidies. Nuclear -- even non-breeder three-mile island reactors -- are profitable at a certain price point. Like any other alternative energy source, they just need to hit a certain cost/benefit ratio and they're in. They benefit from not needing fancy new technology or theoretical advancement, etiher -- we can just copy the French.
Who told you that? Think about it for a second; a solar system.... Stop. Note "small device use." As in, pocket calculator. You can do your own research.
I assume you didn't buy it new, or it would take you like 20 years to reach an economic payoff on that, even at today's gas prices (although if they do double, it could take a lot less time...):) My van was ten years old, worth about $500, and needed either $800 tires or $1000 rims + tires. The fuel economy choice was made concurrent to an already determined purchase.
"Joe Sixpack" buys a new car every five years anyway. He should have gotten rid of the SUV by now, and if not by now then by, at the latest, 2010.
Unemployment is pretty high right now, and it's only going to get worse. I predict a continual rise in crime over the next twelve to seventeen years as the economy goes right in the toilet. Good luck not having your car stolen by someone who is going to take it to be stripped for the two useful parts, with which they will buy a burger and some crank. Unemployment isn't that high, and we're likely to have a significant economical boom once we stop pissing away money fighting Iraq's battles for them.
As for crime -- please. Even at the bottom end of the scale, there's enough legal opportunity to feed and house everyone. Crime's as much an addictive and cultural thing as anything else -- and the legalization of a few choice narcotics would pretty much win the "war on drug dealers" overnight, and you know it.
Let me make one thing clear. I'll respond more, but this is important.
If you think that questioning your political opposition's motivation, intellect, or honesty is a valid tactic in political discourse, SHUT THE FUCK UP. It's a crappy idea when the Republicans do it, and Democrats--and democracy--deserves better.
John Kerry loves his country. Al Gore loves his country. Newt Gingrich loves his country. Rush Limbaugh loves his country. Keith Oberman loves his country. Ron Paul loves his country. Ronald Regan loved his country. Jimmy Carter loved his country. RICHARD NIXON loved his country.
If you think that any American who dedicated their lives to public service--which is what politics is, by the way--doesn't love his or her country, you don't know yours.
Again I ask, do you believe in God, yes or no? "Neither" is not an answer to a yes or no question. Well, true. But a "no" wouldn't make me an atheist. I could be a wiccan, fer example. Or a Bhuddist. Or a Satanist.
If I asked you "do gods exist?", you could answer "yes", "no", or "I don't know". And that's what the essential religious question is.
I also wonder if this whole issue as to what einstein's religious beliefs were isn't driven almost entirely by his famous god and dice quote? Find a good biography of Einstein. Albert was famous as much for his religious views as he was his published scientific papers.
Atheism was popular, as it still is, in scientific circles in the early 20th century. Einstein was notable on this subject BECAUSE he subscribed to neither his native judaism nor atheism.
During his lifetime Atheists tried to claim this deterministic-jew as one of their own, and despite his rejection of their point of view they have continued non-stop ever since.
In other words... an agnostic doesn't necessarily believe it's absolutely false... but how likely is it? VERY unlikely. An atheist who tries to run away from the name of his own religion, to a word expressly chosen to NOT reflect the "religion is wrong" school of atheism, is still an Atheist.
Richard Dawkins, a man who has made a professional career out of attacking religion as not only patently false but a harmful falsehood, is by any technical measure a classic capital-A Atheist.
I'll concede a technical possibility that God does not exist, that Jesus did not die for my sins, and that my wife is having an affair. That doesn't make me not a Christan or her an adulterer. It just makes me sensible.
Hi, I'm a Christian, and you're wrong.
The Christian religion believes that the bible in the inerrant word of their god Some scientists believe JFK was assassinated and the USAF covers up aliens. Does this mean disproving either one disproves Science?
No Christian denomination believes that the bible we have today is a literal testimony of God without error. Some believe that the Bible was this as originally written, and has since been mistranslated. Others believe that the Bible is exactly what God wants it to be, errors and all. And still others give no special credence to the Bible, aside from being a unifying body of books without significant errors when it comes to matters of faith.
Do you believe praying can have a positive outcome in medical cases? Then there should be a statistical difference between the mortality of praying Christians and non-praying. Wrong again. Christian doctrine holds that God loves all of man, not just the Christians. And I don't think Christians have a monopoly on wanting to get better when they are ill, or wishing for their loved ones to recover when their loved ones are so afflicted.
Even if you suppose that Christians are given special dispensation, it's well within God's stated powers to grant enough additional people health so as to confound the study, while still granting his prayers.
What science cannot disprove is a story that is redefined every time it is questioned, and fobs most stuff of to 'the mystery'. Funny. If you switch "science" and "religion" in your thesis, you get the exact same result. Science is, by definition, "a story that is redefined every time it is [successfully] questioned."
Considering that the Chistian Bible contains an injunction against anything more than simple statements of Gospel, and a prediction that future events of God will not be known by man, you can't disprove Christianity by testing a supposed secondary belief. That'd be like trying to disprove gravity by seeking to establish that it's not related to mass -- if you succeeded, you wouldn't somehow make this force that pulls us to the center of the Earth and keeps the earth spinning around the Sun go away.
Could you or someone give some examples of religion-less spirituality? Re-Define "religion" as "an organized system of faith to be taught to others, that makes significant claims that are scientifically unprovable" and you'll get it.
If you stick with the common definition -- "beliefs about the supernatural" -- you can't, because everyone but passive agnostics have a religion then, and that makes capital-a Atheists testy, so they always try and redefine the word.
Reading it, you'd think this would stop the [non-atheists] from repeatedly dragging the man unwillingly into their camp; but since this well-known remark... Einstein was as much a "theist" as any Buddhist, humanist-Christian, or New Age spiritualist.
He believed that the universe had a purposeful order to existence, and that everything from the laws of physics to the mental illness of his son to the random dropping of a spoon at breakfast was predetermined by this order.
Einstein also frequently personified this order, and was prone to refer to his personalization in various explanation of his theories as well as his initial drive to comprehend them. He was driven by his very-religious belief that the universe had order in his entire scientific life -- from the Miracle Year all the way through his rejection of chaotic quantum mechanics.
He wasn't a religous jew for most of his life, but he sure as hell was not a "your religion is a fairy-tale that needs to be dismissed" atheist, either. In fact, he explicitly rejected claims of association by atheists far more strongly than he ever rejected religion.
(1) True but a democracy just leads to a Tyranny of the Majority that squashes the minority (or the individual) underfoot. If we must have tyranny, better a tyranny of as many as possible.
But if I can't tape Medium because of NBC's blocking flag, and I can't buy the DVDs, where do I go to get the show? (Legally.) http://www.nbc.com/Video/
You want to watch a full episode of your show? Go to NBC.com, when you want to, and watch it.
We can vote with our dollars & stop watching NBC. Get your shows from alternate sources like DVDs. When NBC Broadcasting sees its ratings drop to 1.0% of the nation, then maybe it will wake-up (or go out of business). THE PEOPLE hold the power to kill corporations. They just need to learn to exercise that power. Three things.
1: 99% of the country does not care what you think, and will not give a rat's ass if NBC sets the "broadcast flag", the "liberal flag" the "1984! flag", or the "evil bit." If their Tivo or DVR breaks, they'll blame the manufacturer -- who should be able to patch their box to allow time shifting lickety split.
1a: So, the ONLY people who care about the broadcast flag are folks using Windows Media Player to record TV? Is there ANYONE like that?
2: You cannot kill a corporation. At best, you can cause it to lose enough revenue that it will change its policies. Considering that Wal-Mart is still around, I wouldn't hold my breath.
Now, GOVERNMENTS -- yeah, a GOVERNMENT can kill a corporation. All it takes is a single "corrupt enterprise" ruling from a court, and it's gone. And that's ignoring that, as property, a corporation can be siezed via emminent domain, and then sold-off.
1: There is absolutely -ZERO- events causing the gas and oil spikes...
We're AT WAR in the MIDDLE EAST. War means chaos. Chaos means production becomes unsteady. Unsteady production means LOWER SUPPLY.
Also...
CHINA and INDIA are ENTERING THE MODERN AGE. That means they want cars, and power plants, and other things that burn oil. Half the world starting to do what Americans have done for a century means INCREASED DEMAND.
You know what happens when you LOWER SUPPLY or INCREASE DEMAND? Yep. Prices go up. And this isn't even mentioning Peak Oil.
2: Congress is absolutely powerless to do anything to stop it,
The price of oil? Pretty much. Congress also can't stop hurricanes. What's your point?
the current administration just plain doesn't care about the American people in any way.
Actually, they do. Every single elected offical in Washington cares deeply about their country--the Republicans just think we're better off if they leave us to fend for ourselves, even if some of us starve. (Are you starving?)
Even if Congress try to do something, how can they pay for it? Sell war bonds to China? The US is bankrupt.
The US is FAR from bankrupt. China's only where they are in the world because we're allowing them to grossly distort the currency exchange, because we want them to work for peanuts. Push comes to shove, we can just sue in the WTO and slap a Tarrif on investments and production from China.
3: The dollar is rapidly losing ground against every single currency in the world. The only reason that the dollar buys what it does is because people believe in it... and people are not anymore.
Odd. I still get paid in dollars, and they purchase enough goods for me to go back to work tomorrow.
The dollar won't be the uber-currency of the 21st century. Good. Hegemony is boring, and Americans suck in a boring world.
4: There are no solutions to the energy crisis. Nuclear plants are not going to be built anytime soon, nuclear fusion is a joke to keep tokamaks funded, even though there have been -zero- advances in fusion since the laser was invented. Solar is a joke because it costs more to make a solar panel than what energy it ever gets through its useful life. Wind, geothermal, are only useful in rare areas. Pretty much, the US lives and dies on coal and oil... and cars don't burn coal.
"no solutions": I suppose you're right. We'll never go back to $1 a gallon gasoline. Shucks. But we knew this was coming twenty years ago.
Nuclear: Plans are on the tables, Greenpeace's founder is endorsing Nuclear... sorry, there will be new plants built or chartered by the next Presidential Election. Maybe before this one.
Fusion: I won't even dignify this with more than "you're wrong."
Solar: Ok, in small batches, for small device use, in the northeast, a photovotalic cell takes more energy to create than it will produce in its lifetime. But (1) they get significantly cheaper with larger batches and technology improvements, (2) they last longer in larger installations, and with increased tech, which increases their total energy output, (3) in some places (deserts) they pay-off in less than five years already, (4) photovotalic isn't the only means of solar power. Reflected-light to melt salt or boil water works pretty damn well.
Wind: Wind blows everywhere, some places essentially constantly. Couple a wind farm with a flywheel, and you can produce pretty damn good power. Essentially anywhere in the United States. Not eveywhere, but hardly "rare" for any meaningful definitions of that word.
It's Economics, stupid: Let me put this a little bit more clearly. Wind, Geothermal, Wave, Solar, and Nuclear lose out to oil and coal for electricity generation because the latter are so god damn cheap.
The problem is that the Earth doesn't have sufficient gravity to hold free hydrogen What are you talking about?
Sure, hydrogen released at sea level will rise to the outer surface of the atmosphere. But that's only because it's the least dense gas in existence, and all the other heavier gases push it up due their own higher gravity. Eventually, the hydrogen would reach a point where the pull of gravity and the "push" of the rest of the atmosphere would even out.
Some hydrogen will get away due to thermal escape (an individual molecule moving fast enough to have escape velocity), but the earth will also collect some hydrogen due to the solar wind and its ordinary passage through space.
I wager that the 1ppm we have of atmospheric hydrogen is a few orders of magnitude greater than the atomic hydrogen present in the vacuum of space -- even if we disregard the amount of hydrogen that has bonded with oxygen in our little dust-ball.
Where were all the people claiming that "God Time" worked on a different scale before we discovered the true age of the Universe? The same place the scientists were?
No, really. For hundreds of years the scientific notion was that the universe had always existed, and the idea of a "beginning" to the planet--let alone the cosmos--was just religious claptrap.
And if you want to get really specific, the concept that time is a fluid construct of your local frame of reference pre-dates serious scientific discussion as to the begining of the universe.
(Of course, if you're willing to prove me wrong, and can dig up a reference to "god-time" before the Big Bang theory, I'd love to hear it.)
Then fuck God. Fuck Him right in the ear. Because he's a sick fuck who won't allow his creations to perceive the truth about their origins, who deliberately set out to deceive us, and I will NEVER worship a sick son of a bitch like that. ?
You, ah, DO realize that God told us all of this, far before we could understand it, right?
Complaining about apparent nuance in the deity's creation is kind of like complaining that your stoner parents are straight-laced professionals now, even though they tell you they were stoners whenever you ask.
I could tell you how easy it is to reconcile the six-day creation with the universe's apparent age without the introduction of deception, but you've obviously made a religious choice to be atheist, and nothing I can say would dissuade you from that.
Instead, how about the gospel in 26 words? "God exists, He loves you, and even though you probably deserve to go to hell, He's willing to let you off if you love Him back."
The more we learn, the more obvious it becomes that life, far from being a unique or rare thing in the universe, is actually an inevitable natural process... So far we have ONLY found life on one planet-- a planet that has liquid water, a single moon relatively large compared to the planet's mass, active volcanic and tectonic activity, a strong magnetosphere, and an active weather system.
While we have theorized that not all of those are needed, the truth is that we haven't found so much as a single primitive cell anywhere else. And we haven't found one single location in the entire universe with all five save for our home planet.
Palm Pilots do NOT boot instantly. Reset one, and see how long it takes to boot Irrelevant to the point. The Palm's "hibernation" (suspend, really) is precisely the same as what all these "instant booting computers" would do.
The modern palms don't even need a power source to retain their state, since they all use NV Flash Ram.
Yeah! How dare they want to keep an unfinished song from being heard by everyone in the world?
As I recall it, every single artist that bitched about Napster did so AFTER an unfinished, "still working on it", "no, you can't hear it mom" track was thrown up on Napster.
And everyone I knew who used Napster, or its equivalents, did so because they were too cheap to bother buying music. Sorry, Napster's not even close to the moral standing the GPL has.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't think Wal-Mart sucks because a crappy small business shop gets ran out of town by an efficient corporation. I think they suck because they're, well, a distortion of themselves. Had they followed their current policy back when Sam was in charge, they'd never have expanded. My local newspaper surveyed four different grocery stores around town for prices on 15 or 20 different common products. Wal-Mart had the lowest price on all but 3. Insufficiently small sample. A typical grocery store has thousands of distinct products, and a good survey would need to include ALL avenues of purchasing a catagorical list--"lowest unit price for milk, bread, flour, etc of any brand or size"--from "discount" clubs and farmer's markets to grocery stores and gas stations.
(the fun bit is that, at the moment, there's literally nothing the local wal-marts have where the low price justifies the poor selection. We have the internet, and THAT is the price-setter, not the local market.)
2: No, Maybe, yes, more than you'd think.
3: Gospel time!
God exists. He created everything, and commanded us to behave justly and rightly. We all failed, and for this we deserve to burn in hell. But -- Good news! -- He loves us. So, he sent Jesus Christ to show us a better way, and Jesus died a rather painful death in the effort. If you do your best to live as Jesus showed you, and most importantly love Him and God, He'll keep you out of Hell and you'll live forever with Him (and, by extension, everyone else who loves Him.)
Skipping the unprovable or mystic variations, that's Christianity. It cannot be disproven by Science, nor are there any internal fallicies within it. There is, however, ample room for crap thrown on top of it. And I'll agree that the crap is crap.
But the crap is not my religion. So basically praying is of no benefit, and you are just as statiscally likely to benefit (because god wants to fuck up any statistical analysis) from not praying as you will by praying? Really????? Statistically speaking? Sure. But statistics are for measuring what thousands of people do. They mean shit when it comes to your personal life.
If you buy a lottery ticket, you might win a crazy amount of money. Statistically you won't -- but every few weeks, someone does.
(I never said prayer has no benefit. I said that prayer has no statistical benefit, because God apparently answers the prayers of non-Christians or just grants random miracles to fuck up statistical studies about prayer.) The same bible you say is wrong?
And, in the part you were replying to, I was referencing the Bible as a generally container of faith. And it is. Some Christians believe that it's distorted truth, others perfect allegory, but all hold it in reverence as a message of some kind from their/our God. No, that is not funny nor true. Science places a theory forward that stands until it is disproven, at which point is is happily put aside for the new theory. Religion (or the religious) will say a thing until it gets too painfully obvious that is it bogus, then wriggle to a new definition. Hold on for a minute, I need to stop laughing.
Scientists are every bit as stubborn and half-witted as the religious. They say that they really want to see change, and would love to have everything they've spent their lives learning be disproven -- but that's crap, and the honest ones know it.
The human mind simply does not like admiting that it's wrong. And that's as true for scientists as it is for theologians... and as true for science fanboys as it is for common parishioners.
Go back and read the gospel included in the first part of this comment. It's as clear and subtle as the underlying philosophy in science--("the world is understandable and its rules complex, but immutable").
I tell you I had a three-way orgy last night, with my wife and a hot bi-curious-lesbian. My brother asks you if you think it happened. There are three possible answers.
1: No, you think that it didn't. I'm a loser.
2: Yes, you think that it did. I am Hugh Hefner.
3: You're not sure. I'm "that guy".
You have just as much and as little evidence that the orgy existed as we do that God exists, albeit on a smaller scale.
The options are belief in existence, belief in non-existence, or non-belief. The latter two are NOT synonyms. Remember that we are talking about belief, not science or proof here. Just belief.
The most likely manner, however, is just to leave it be. China holds a lot of US currency, but by no means a majority of US dollars. And so long as we have enough time to have an effective home currency, we'll do fine. Even if everyone in the world dumped dollars for Euros. (Hint: We'd do so at the same time, make the Euro our national currency, and we'd be welcomed with open arms.) And that doesn't strike you at all as short-sighted? Nope. I don't hold anything more than short-term savings in dollars. Only a fool would. I hold it in stocks et al which, although priced in dollars, reflects wealth of an altogether different sort than the simple dollar bill. Have you failed to notice how that rate is increasing? The dollar has already lost 96% of its purchasing power since 1913. Hyperinflation is a very real possibility. 1913? NINTEEN THIRTEEN?
You'll forgive me if I don't panic. Inflation that is not fast enough to disrupt ordinary life is simply not a problem. If your currency is not out doing something, it deserves to lose value over time. The United States of America does not have a free market either. A free market is a market in which prices of goods and services are arranged completely by the mutual consent of sellers and buyers. We do not have a perfectly free market. But we have a market that is a hell of a lot freer than the USSR's. Which is all that matters. Our semi-free Market is a HELL of a lot better than the USSR's pseudo-Command market. In case you believe I am going over the top, here is a video [thedailyshow.com] of Alan Greenspan stating quite clearly that we do not have a free market, along with some hand-waving about how we can't have one because of human nature. You'll forgive me if I don't buy your attempt to stretch Alan Greenspan's appearance on a comedy show to equating the USSR and the USA's economic status. The fact is, we're in pretty deep shit, and nobody's talking about it because nobody in the government or the media is talking about it, and we really need to talk about it if we're going to do anything to improve the situation. Find me one economist -- just ONE -- who believes we're in the kind of end-of-the-world shit you're describing. I'll wait.
E-mail me if you have to.
"Joe Sixpack" buys a new car every five years anyway. He should have gotten rid of the SUV by now, and if not by now then by, at the latest, 2010. Unemployment is pretty high right now, and it's only going to get worse. I predict a continual rise in crime over the next twelve to seventeen years as the economy goes right in the toilet. Good luck not having your car stolen by someone who is going to take it to be stripped for the two useful parts, with which they will buy a burger and some crank. Unemployment isn't that high, and we're likely to have a significant economical boom once we stop pissing away money fighting Iraq's battles for them.
As for crime -- please. Even at the bottom end of the scale, there's enough legal opportunity to feed and house everyone. Crime's as much an addictive and cultural thing as anything else -- and the legalization of a few choice narcotics would pretty much win the "war on drug dealers" overnight, and you know it.
Fucking Slashdot...
Let me make one thing clear. I'll respond more, but this is important.
If you think that questioning your political opposition's motivation, intellect, or honesty is a valid tactic in political discourse, SHUT THE FUCK UP. It's a crappy idea when the Republicans do it, and Democrats--and democracy--deserves better.
John Kerry loves his country. Al Gore loves his country. Newt Gingrich loves his country. Rush Limbaugh loves his country. Keith Oberman loves his country. Ron Paul loves his country. Ronald Regan loved his country. Jimmy Carter loved his country. RICHARD NIXON loved his country.
If you think that any American who dedicated their lives to public service--which is what politics is, by the way--doesn't love his or her country, you don't know yours.
If I asked you "do gods exist?", you could answer "yes", "no", or "I don't know". And that's what the essential religious question is.
Atheism was popular, as it still is, in scientific circles in the early 20th century. Einstein was notable on this subject BECAUSE he subscribed to neither his native judaism nor atheism.
During his lifetime Atheists tried to claim this deterministic-jew as one of their own, and despite his rejection of their point of view they have continued non-stop ever since.
An Agnostic is the latter.
Theist -> "I believe in the existence one or more deities"
Athiest -> "I believe in the non-existence of any deities."
Agnostic -> "I believe in neither."
Richard Dawkins, a man who has made a professional career out of attacking religion as not only patently false but a harmful falsehood, is by any technical measure a classic capital-A Atheist.
I'll concede a technical possibility that God does not exist, that Jesus did not die for my sins, and that my wife is having an affair. That doesn't make me not a Christan or her an adulterer. It just makes me sensible.
No Christian denomination believes that the bible we have today is a literal testimony of God without error. Some believe that the Bible was this as originally written, and has since been mistranslated. Others believe that the Bible is exactly what God wants it to be, errors and all. And still others give no special credence to the Bible, aside from being a unifying body of books without significant errors when it comes to matters of faith. Do you believe praying can have a positive outcome in medical cases? Then there should be a statistical difference between the mortality of praying Christians and non-praying. Wrong again. Christian doctrine holds that God loves all of man, not just the Christians. And I don't think Christians have a monopoly on wanting to get better when they are ill, or wishing for their loved ones to recover when their loved ones are so afflicted.
Even if you suppose that Christians are given special dispensation, it's well within God's stated powers to grant enough additional people health so as to confound the study, while still granting his prayers. What science cannot disprove is a story that is redefined every time it is questioned, and fobs most stuff of to 'the mystery'. Funny. If you switch "science" and "religion" in your thesis, you get the exact same result. Science is, by definition, "a story that is redefined every time it is [successfully] questioned."
Considering that the Chistian Bible contains an injunction against anything more than simple statements of Gospel, and a prediction that future events of God will not be known by man, you can't disprove Christianity by testing a supposed secondary belief. That'd be like trying to disprove gravity by seeking to establish that it's not related to mass -- if you succeeded, you wouldn't somehow make this force that pulls us to the center of the Earth and keeps the earth spinning around the Sun go away.
If you stick with the common definition -- "beliefs about the supernatural" -- you can't, because everyone but passive agnostics have a religion then, and that makes capital-a Atheists testy, so they always try and redefine the word.
He believed that the universe had a purposeful order to existence, and that everything from the laws of physics to the mental illness of his son to the random dropping of a spoon at breakfast was predetermined by this order.
Einstein also frequently personified this order, and was prone to refer to his personalization in various explanation of his theories as well as his initial drive to comprehend them. He was driven by his very-religious belief that the universe had order in his entire scientific life -- from the Miracle Year all the way through his rejection of chaotic quantum mechanics.
He wasn't a religous jew for most of his life, but he sure as hell was not a "your religion is a fairy-tale that needs to be dismissed" atheist, either. In fact, he explicitly rejected claims of association by atheists far more strongly than he ever rejected religion.
You want to watch a full episode of your show? Go to NBC.com, when you want to, and watch it.
1: 99% of the country does not care what you think, and will not give a rat's ass if NBC sets the "broadcast flag", the "liberal flag" the "1984! flag", or the "evil bit." If their Tivo or DVR breaks, they'll blame the manufacturer -- who should be able to patch their box to allow time shifting lickety split.
1a: So, the ONLY people who care about the broadcast flag are folks using Windows Media Player to record TV? Is there ANYONE like that?
2: You cannot kill a corporation. At best, you can cause it to lose enough revenue that it will change its policies. Considering that Wal-Mart is still around, I wouldn't hold my breath.
Now, GOVERNMENTS -- yeah, a GOVERNMENT can kill a corporation. All it takes is a single "corrupt enterprise" ruling from a court, and it's gone. And that's ignoring that, as property, a corporation can be siezed via emminent domain, and then sold-off.
Prove me wrong on this.
Since you asked...
1: There is absolutely -ZERO- events causing the gas and oil spikes...
We're AT WAR in the MIDDLE EAST. War means chaos. Chaos means production becomes unsteady. Unsteady production means LOWER SUPPLY.
Also...
CHINA and INDIA are ENTERING THE MODERN AGE. That means they want cars, and power plants, and other things that burn oil. Half the world starting to do what Americans have done for a century means INCREASED DEMAND.
You know what happens when you LOWER SUPPLY or INCREASE DEMAND? Yep. Prices go up. And this isn't even mentioning Peak Oil.
2: Congress is absolutely powerless to do anything to stop it,
The price of oil? Pretty much. Congress also can't stop hurricanes. What's your point?
the current administration just plain doesn't care about the American people in any way.
Actually, they do. Every single elected offical in Washington cares deeply about their country--the Republicans just think we're better off if they leave us to fend for ourselves, even if some of us starve. (Are you starving?)
Even if Congress try to do something, how can they pay for it? Sell war bonds to China? The US is bankrupt.
The US is FAR from bankrupt. China's only where they are in the world because we're allowing them to grossly distort the currency exchange, because we want them to work for peanuts. Push comes to shove, we can just sue in the WTO and slap a Tarrif on investments and production from China.
3: The dollar is rapidly losing ground against every single currency in the world. The only reason that the dollar buys what it does is because people believe in it... and people are not anymore.
Odd. I still get paid in dollars, and they purchase enough goods for me to go back to work tomorrow.
The dollar won't be the uber-currency of the 21st century. Good. Hegemony is boring, and Americans suck in a boring world.
4: There are no solutions to the energy crisis. Nuclear plants are not going to be built anytime soon, nuclear fusion is a joke to keep tokamaks funded, even though there have been -zero- advances in fusion since the laser was invented. Solar is a joke because it costs more to make a solar panel than what energy it ever gets through its useful life. Wind, geothermal, are only useful in rare areas. Pretty much, the US lives and dies on coal and oil... and cars don't burn coal.
"no solutions": I suppose you're right. We'll never go back to $1 a gallon gasoline. Shucks. But we knew this was coming twenty years ago.
Nuclear: Plans are on the tables, Greenpeace's founder is endorsing Nuclear... sorry, there will be new plants built or chartered by the next Presidential Election. Maybe before this one.
Fusion: I won't even dignify this with more than "you're wrong."
Solar: Ok, in small batches, for small device use, in the northeast, a photovotalic cell takes more energy to create than it will produce in its lifetime. But (1) they get significantly cheaper with larger batches and technology improvements, (2) they last longer in larger installations, and with increased tech, which increases their total energy output, (3) in some places (deserts) they pay-off in less than five years already, (4) photovotalic isn't the only means of solar power. Reflected-light to melt salt or boil water works pretty damn well.
Wind: Wind blows everywhere, some places essentially constantly. Couple a wind farm with a flywheel, and you can produce pretty damn good power. Essentially anywhere in the United States. Not eveywhere, but hardly "rare" for any meaningful definitions of that word.
It's Economics, stupid: Let me put this a little bit more clearly. Wind, Geothermal, Wave, Solar, and Nuclear lose out to oil and coal for electricity generation because the latter are so god damn cheap.
Sure, hydrogen released at sea level will rise to the outer surface of the atmosphere. But that's only because it's the least dense gas in existence, and all the other heavier gases push it up due their own higher gravity. Eventually, the hydrogen would reach a point where the pull of gravity and the "push" of the rest of the atmosphere would even out.
Some hydrogen will get away due to thermal escape (an individual molecule moving fast enough to have escape velocity), but the earth will also collect some hydrogen due to the solar wind and its ordinary passage through space.
I wager that the 1ppm we have of atmospheric hydrogen is a few orders of magnitude greater than the atomic hydrogen present in the vacuum of space -- even if we disregard the amount of hydrogen that has bonded with oxygen in our little dust-ball.
No, really. For hundreds of years the scientific notion was that the universe had always existed, and the idea of a "beginning" to the planet--let alone the cosmos--was just religious claptrap.
And if you want to get really specific, the concept that time is a fluid construct of your local frame of reference pre-dates serious scientific discussion as to the begining of the universe.
(Of course, if you're willing to prove me wrong, and can dig up a reference to "god-time" before the Big Bang theory, I'd love to hear it.)
You, ah, DO realize that God told us all of this, far before we could understand it, right?
Complaining about apparent nuance in the deity's creation is kind of like complaining that your stoner parents are straight-laced professionals now, even though they tell you they were stoners whenever you ask.
I could tell you how easy it is to reconcile the six-day creation with the universe's apparent age without the introduction of deception, but you've obviously made a religious choice to be atheist, and nothing I can say would dissuade you from that.
Instead, how about the gospel in 26 words? "God exists, He loves you, and even though you probably deserve to go to hell, He's willing to let you off if you love Him back."
While we have theorized that not all of those are needed, the truth is that we haven't found so much as a single primitive cell anywhere else. And we haven't found one single location in the entire universe with all five save for our home planet.
The modern palms don't even need a power source to retain their state, since they all use NV Flash Ram.
Yeah! How dare they want to keep an unfinished song from being heard by everyone in the world?
As I recall it, every single artist that bitched about Napster did so AFTER an unfinished, "still working on it", "no, you can't hear it mom" track was thrown up on Napster.
And everyone I knew who used Napster, or its equivalents, did so because they were too cheap to bother buying music. Sorry, Napster's not even close to the moral standing the GPL has.
Yes, because it's never too late to do the right thing.
If Microsoft GPL'd Microsoft Office, would you install it?