I was working at a company that was very intensely into iPhones and development of iPhone apps, and everyone there had an iPhone and loooved it. But even the fanniest fanboys had to race outside whenever their iPhone rang. There was a spot in the courtyard where AT&T wouldn't drop your call and there was always a crowd of dorks clumped there yakking on their iPhones. This was in fucking Cupertino, one mile south of the 280/85 interchange, 1.4 miles SW of Apple. My wife and I had razr phones and we both got shit coverage there and also here, 3 miles east of Apple.
AT&T has already gagged my interest after dropping all the calls I made from home or work. BTW I live 3 miles NE of Apple's headquarters and worked 2 miles SW of it. And I have been to Apple's headquarters; there is no AT&T reception at all.
For one thing, in any secular nation it's fairly common for non-believers to mate with believers
Secular nations are a recent development, and had never existed until merely centuries ago. And it is still applying selective pressure.
Anyway, even if true, it still doesn't answer the question of why religion arose in the first place. It would only speak to why religion continues to propagate.
"Why religion arose in the first place" is a dumb question; that's a historical detail. Once people get ideas in their head they seek out people who agree with them. You're asking where an initial weird idea arose. People get them all the time. And as generations go by people pile more weird, often contradictory ideas on top.
That doesn't explain why it would have evolved in the first place, unless you're suggesting that having large segments of the population controlled by a few individuals is beneficial for the survival of a group. Even if we accept that premise, it doesn't explain why religion needed to fill that role.
Religion is self-stabilizing. Nonbelievers cannot mate with believers so religion is basically a modified form of sexual selection directed by relatives of the female.
No. If a case comes before the court, and the law doesn't cover the facts of the case, then the correct response is "case dismissed".
That sounds pretty stupid. Someone might do something that e.g. is hard to distinguish between murder and manslaughter since the law is vague or leaves ambiguity. The correct response isn't "case dismissed".
First, it's fucked up because it incorporates a totalitarian assumption is that every possible circumstance should be governed by law,
Every possible circumstance is legal or illegal. I don't see what's "totalitarian" about that.
and that whenever someting happens that isn't covered by law it must have been some sort of oversight that should immediately be rectified.
Um, yeah, ASAP, if it comes before a court and a verdict hangs in the balance. If not immediately, then when? After waiting for someone to pass an ex post facto law?
when you get hauled off to court suitable rules will be made up to cover whatever it was you did.
They're called precedents. A court has to issue a ruling that cites existing law and prior precedent. That's a burden that does not have to be met by the legislature, which is a fundamental difference between branches.
And someone has to make up something, because cases are going to reach the court all the time, and we can't just stop time in its tracks.
You figured out why this story hardly even matters at all. Mitochondrial DNA is prokaryotic and does not undergo cross-linkage. Everyone's eukaryotic DNA is all jumbled up and unique, but prokaryotic DNA doesn't change down the maternal line. And you share great-great-....-great-grandmothers with a lot of people, probably a lot of the people you see commenting here. There are only a limited number of haplotypes in the human population; about 40. That could be encoded in six bits of information, although the information content in a given sample can easily exceed 1/40 because the haplotypes are not equally widespread. (But how many haplotypes would you expect to find among 800 newborn Texans in the first place?) Your mitochondrial DNA reveals a very small amount of information about you, similar to your eye color.
From the Texas Tribune:
They never said they were turning over hundreds of dried blood samples to the federal government to help build a vast DNA database — a forensics tool designed to identify missing persons and crack cold cases.
The implication here is that the database is for tracking down these 800 babies if they ever go missing or become criminals. There is no indication that the missing persons and cold-case suspects would necessarily need to be involved with these people at all. Were they just taking scattershot samples from the general population in order to determine general haplotype types and frequencies? They only had 800 anonymous samples in this vast secret DNA database.
From newscientist.com:
The fear of a negative reaction is understandandable. Concerns over genetic privacy are growing - for example a recent study found that even anonymous collections of DNA can potentially be traced back to individuals. However, the DSHS appears only to have handed over mitochondrial DNA, which is next to impossible to trace to individuals.
Handling public fears about genetic privacy is certainly tricky, but concealing such an affair is not the answer - and only increases public mistrust.
The issue here is really the fact that they didn't say shit to the parents as this was all going on, because they feared the sort of bad publicity they're getting now.
Just make the bottles and candy wrappers with this 98% plastic solar array, and make them get sticky when exposed to salt. That way they'll clump together into big floating solar power generating islands when they reach the Garbage Patch.
Yes but judges can create precedent by presenting a finding where existing law is vague. The legislature can respond to that by further legislation. Judges can also find laws to be unconstitutional, and these rulings might require passage of an amendment to overcome.
You hear a lot about "legislating from the bench" but this is part of the job. Judges are supposed to "legislate" by filling in gaps as cases present themselves which might have no clear precedent or no clear interpretation within existing law. (The legislature certainly can't be expected to think of everything.) And judges of both persuations do it, as they are supposed to.
The catch is, they're supposed to do it well. When you're nominating or confirming judges, and you absorb yourself with fetish issues like abortion or gun rights, you can end up with the sort of foolish judiciary we have today.
OK, listen. I'm an expert on Mormonism. Why? I did a Google search an hour ago, that's why.
Mormons don't specifically believe in either creationism or evolution. The official position of the Church is that this issue is unresolved, because God has not revealed the answer.
An analogy can be made with birtherism. There are people who consider the certificate of live birth and the old contemporaneous newspaper article as sufficient evidence. Aside from them, there are crazy "creationist" birthers who insist the president was born in Kenya and is a citizen of Kenya, etc.
The "Mormons" would be similar to politicians and pundits who appear on TV and answer "I have no idea" when asked if they believe the president is a citizen.
I'm an athe^H^H^Hgnostic at this point in life, so my knowledge of Mormonism is a bit limited. Perhaps you can forgive me for these childish questions.
Is it an exaggeration or a misunderstanding that Mormonist beliefs include Christ entering the New World? Because that alone has always struck me as the principal strangeness. I mean, look at all the water in the way. [...Thinks...] OK, I know it's already been set up so that he can walk right across it, which itself is very strange indeed, but it's a given at the end of the first book. [...Thinks...] Still, that's like a month long walk. He'd have nothing to eat. And he did need to eat, because he was at the Last Supper, and it's not like he was a waiter for his apostles. [...Thinks...] Well, I guess he could do the loaves and fishes trick. There would be plenty of fish for him to catch, and he could make the bread from himself, along with a nice wine to go with it. [...Thinks...] Except no wine glass to hold it in. and where does he sleep? [...Thinks...] Actually I have never heard any Biblical references to His sleep patterns anywhere, and this was after the Resurrection, so he was probably jet lagged. [...Thinks...] Did he actually walk here like a normal person, or did he get here via some Star Trek transporter-like miracle? That would solve everything.
Well, the Anonymous Mormon has a point. Mormons did dig up this dinosaur, and in terms of mythology the Mormons are more free to dig up saddleless dinosaurs than most evangelical Christians- because the Church has taken up no position on the matter of creationism/evolution other than to say God has not revealed the answer.
OTOH perhaps you're setting a low standard. I was watching Valkyrie last night (the one with Scientologist Tom Cruise)... you have to see it. He singlehandedly makes the whole movie hilarious. I couldn't suspend belief long enough to stop thinking "Scientologist", and his acting doesn't help at all.
Whoops, the forbidden fruit was on the other tree, which is a flaw in my initial theory.
What follows is a modification of my theory.
*ahem*
*ahem ahem* s/Life/Knowledge of Good and Evil/
The following is MY theory.
*ahem*
*ahem* *ahem*
This was the type of dinosaur that wore a saddle, so that people from the Bible could ride it around, and with that long neck it could have easily reached up to get the forbidden fruit from the Tree of Life for that bitch Eve. *Ahem*
If we set up solar devices so that they can float in water and function as an interconnected grid, we could drape a network of them over the Pacific Garbage Patch so no one would notice it.
Electing judges sounds like it makes sense, but it's a very bad idea. When you get your day in court you can often face opponents who have made political contributions to the judge. It turns the judiciary into an extension of the legislative branch.
I cannot, however use it to advertise a product or service.
IANAL either but I suspect federal law would make a distinction between you hawking some service using someone's face, and that same someone being used by the government on postage intended for use in the mail which is a public service. You're not a state actor, for one thing.
Stamps have only ever shown dead people, so this whole point is totally moot, just academic Slashdot lawyering. But even if they displayed living individuals, I think the existing law that would apply would be different and offer your face less protection.
I added my own artistic craftsmanship, with my careful, skilled pixelation of the original. And I defaced it a little. But although it is a transformative work, it does not fit the legal definition of a derivative work because I didn't get permission from anyone before blurring the original stamp out of recognition. Legally, it's merely a copy of the original with shit on it.
However, I will gladly give this guy a percentage of whatever profit I make by posting this here.
Slashdot Mirror
Dude, it wasn't just my phone.
I was working at a company that was very intensely into iPhones and development of iPhone apps, and everyone there had an iPhone and loooved it. But even the fanniest fanboys had to race outside whenever their iPhone rang. There was a spot in the courtyard where AT&T wouldn't drop your call and there was always a crowd of dorks clumped there yakking on their iPhones. This was in fucking Cupertino, one mile south of the 280/85 interchange, 1.4 miles SW of Apple. My wife and I had razr phones and we both got shit coverage there and also here, 3 miles east of Apple.
I hope they have first gaged the interest
AT&T has already gagged my interest after dropping all the calls I made from home or work. BTW I live 3 miles NE of Apple's headquarters and worked 2 miles SW of it. And I have been to Apple's headquarters; there is no AT&T reception at all.
For one thing, in any secular nation it's fairly common for non-believers to mate with believers
Secular nations are a recent development, and had never existed until merely centuries ago. And it is still applying selective pressure.
Anyway, even if true, it still doesn't answer the question of why religion arose in the first place. It would only speak to why religion continues to propagate.
"Why religion arose in the first place" is a dumb question; that's a historical detail. Once people get ideas in their head they seek out people who agree with them. You're asking where an initial weird idea arose. People get them all the time. And as generations go by people pile more weird, often contradictory ideas on top.
That doesn't explain why it would have evolved in the first place, unless you're suggesting that having large segments of the population controlled by a few individuals is beneficial for the survival of a group. Even if we accept that premise, it doesn't explain why religion needed to fill that role.
Religion is self-stabilizing. Nonbelievers cannot mate with believers so religion is basically a modified form of sexual selection directed by relatives of the female.
No. If a case comes before the court, and the law doesn't cover the facts of the case, then the correct response is "case dismissed".
That sounds pretty stupid. Someone might do something that e.g. is hard to distinguish between murder and manslaughter since the law is vague or leaves ambiguity. The correct response isn't "case dismissed".
First, it's fucked up because it incorporates a totalitarian assumption is that every possible circumstance should be governed by law,
Every possible circumstance is legal or illegal. I don't see what's "totalitarian" about that.
and that whenever someting happens that isn't covered by law it must have been some sort of oversight that should immediately be rectified.
Um, yeah, ASAP, if it comes before a court and a verdict hangs in the balance. If not immediately, then when? After waiting for someone to pass an ex post facto law?
when you get hauled off to court suitable rules will be made up to cover whatever it was you did.
They're called precedents. A court has to issue a ruling that cites existing law and prior precedent. That's a burden that does not have to be met by the legislature, which is a fundamental difference between branches.
And someone has to make up something, because cases are going to reach the court all the time, and we can't just stop time in its tracks.
From the Texas Tribune:
They never said they were turning over hundreds of dried blood samples to the federal government to help build a vast DNA database — a forensics tool designed to identify missing persons and crack cold cases.
The implication here is that the database is for tracking down these 800 babies if they ever go missing or become criminals. There is no indication that the missing persons and cold-case suspects would necessarily need to be involved with these people at all. Were they just taking scattershot samples from the general population in order to determine general haplotype types and frequencies? They only had 800 anonymous samples in this vast secret DNA database.
From newscientist.com:
The fear of a negative reaction is understandandable. Concerns over genetic privacy are growing - for example a recent study found that even anonymous collections of DNA can potentially be traced back to individuals. However, the DSHS appears only to have handed over mitochondrial DNA, which is next to impossible to trace to individuals.
Handling public fears about genetic privacy is certainly tricky, but concealing such an affair is not the answer - and only increases public mistrust.
The issue here is really the fact that they didn't say shit to the parents as this was all going on, because they feared the sort of bad publicity they're getting now.
Her family should get a royalty every time a cancer cell makes another unauthorized copy of her DNA.
Just make the bottles and candy wrappers with this 98% plastic solar array, and make them get sticky when exposed to salt. That way they'll clump together into big floating solar power generating islands when they reach the Garbage Patch.
Yes but judges can create precedent by presenting a finding where existing law is vague. The legislature can respond to that by further legislation. Judges can also find laws to be unconstitutional, and these rulings might require passage of an amendment to overcome.
You hear a lot about "legislating from the bench" but this is part of the job. Judges are supposed to "legislate" by filling in gaps as cases present themselves which might have no clear precedent or no clear interpretation within existing law. (The legislature certainly can't be expected to think of everything.) And judges of both persuations do it, as they are supposed to.
The catch is, they're supposed to do it well. When you're nominating or confirming judges, and you absorb yourself with fetish issues like abortion or gun rights, you can end up with the sort of foolish judiciary we have today.
OK, you're on to me. I'd like to take a vacation day from exciting stories about Google then.
Is anyone else getting sick of hearing exciting stories about Google?
OK, listen. I'm an expert on Mormonism. Why? I did a Google search an hour ago, that's why.
Mormons don't specifically believe in either creationism or evolution. The official position of the Church is that this issue is unresolved, because God has not revealed the answer.
An analogy can be made with birtherism. There are people who consider the certificate of live birth and the old contemporaneous newspaper article as sufficient evidence. Aside from them, there are crazy "creationist" birthers who insist the president was born in Kenya and is a citizen of Kenya, etc.
The "Mormons" would be similar to politicians and pundits who appear on TV and answer "I have no idea" when asked if they believe the president is a citizen.
I'm an athe^H^H^Hgnostic at this point in life, so my knowledge of Mormonism is a bit limited. Perhaps you can forgive me for these childish questions.
Is it an exaggeration or a misunderstanding that Mormonist beliefs include Christ entering the New World? Because that alone has always struck me as the principal strangeness. I mean, look at all the water in the way. [...Thinks...] OK, I know it's already been set up so that he can walk right across it, which itself is very strange indeed, but it's a given at the end of the first book. [...Thinks...] Still, that's like a month long walk. He'd have nothing to eat. And he did need to eat, because he was at the Last Supper, and it's not like he was a waiter for his apostles. [...Thinks...] Well, I guess he could do the loaves and fishes trick. There would be plenty of fish for him to catch, and he could make the bread from himself, along with a nice wine to go with it. [...Thinks...] Except no wine glass to hold it in. and where does he sleep? [...Thinks...] Actually I have never heard any Biblical references to His sleep patterns anywhere, and this was after the Resurrection, so he was probably jet lagged. [...Thinks...] Did he actually walk here like a normal person, or did he get here via some Star Trek transporter-like miracle? That would solve everything.
[...ducks...]
Well, the Anonymous Mormon has a point. Mormons did dig up this dinosaur, and in terms of mythology the Mormons are more free to dig up saddleless dinosaurs than most evangelical Christians- because the Church has taken up no position on the matter of creationism/evolution other than to say God has not revealed the answer.
OTOH perhaps you're setting a low standard. I was watching Valkyrie last night (the one with Scientologist Tom Cruise)... you have to see it. He singlehandedly makes the whole movie hilarious. I couldn't suspend belief long enough to stop thinking "Scientologist", and his acting doesn't help at all.
Whoops, the forbidden fruit was on the other tree, which is a flaw in my initial theory.
What follows is a modification of my theory. *ahem*
*ahem ahem*
s/Life/Knowledge of Good and Evil/
The following is MY theory.
*ahem*
*ahem* *ahem*
This was the type of dinosaur that wore a saddle, so that people from the Bible could ride it around, and with that long neck it could have easily reached up to get the forbidden fruit from the Tree of Life for that bitch Eve. *Ahem*
Whoops, <= arrgh hit submit too soon arrgh *sob*
if ((index(whoosh) % 2) >= 1)
*whoosh*
*whoosh*
end
The law changes gears though when you try to sell the picture, and when you try to sell something else using the picture. /IANAL
If we set up solar devices so that they can float in water and function as an interconnected grid, we could drape a network of them over the Pacific Garbage Patch so no one would notice it.
My first pet's name was smegma.
Electing judges sounds like it makes sense, but it's a very bad idea. When you get your day in court you can often face opponents who have made political contributions to the judge. It turns the judiciary into an extension of the legislative branch.
I cannot, however use it to advertise a product or service.
IANAL either but I suspect federal law would make a distinction between you hawking some service using someone's face, and that same someone being used by the government on postage intended for use in the mail which is a public service. You're not a state actor, for one thing.
Stamps have only ever shown dead people, so this whole point is totally moot, just academic Slashdot lawyering. But even if they displayed living individuals, I think the existing law that would apply would be different and offer your face less protection.
But how about changing the stamps up a little bit so that they fall under fair use instead of further infringing?
That's a good idea. Behold, the non-infringing stamp!
I added my own artistic craftsmanship, with my careful, skilled pixelation of the original. And I defaced it a little. But although it is a transformative work, it does not fit the legal definition of a derivative work because I didn't get permission from anyone before blurring the original stamp out of recognition. Legally, it's merely a copy of the original with shit on it.
However, I will gladly give this guy a percentage of whatever profit I make by posting this here.