I still remember attending a LUG meeting way back (1997?) and having none other than Larry Augustin introduce himself to me, give me his business card, and discuss Linux with me, a clueless "luser." I had no idea who he was at the time, but he sure is a nice guy.
What are the chances that Condoleezza Rice actually has any clue what the "authoritative root zone file" is?
Considering that she once headed up the NSA, I'd say the chances are darn good that she knows what it means. Also, I've heard that she graduated college years years younger than the norm, so I'd say the chances are pretty good she understands the basics of the Internet. In fact, I'd venture to say that she probably knows more than *you* know about it.
If the thesis of this article is true -- and that's a big "if" -- then who is more to blame than anyone else for global warming? Why, it't the anti-nuclear "environmentalists," of course. Nuclear power produces no greenhouse gases -- none! Yet the U.S. gets half its electric power from coal. Folks, we burn three tons of coal per *second* in the U.S. alone, and the gaseous emissions kill an estimated 50,000 people per year.
If indeed human activity is causing global warming, then we can solve this problem inteligently or stupidly. The intelligent solution starts with nuclear power. The stupid solution is to give up our mobility and regress to third world living conditions.
"Now, I'm not an apologist for Stalinism, but socialism, in it's most basic form means "sharing." It means looking after your fellow man, particularly those who have nothing. Attach a bearded guy, and a couple of nails and it turns into Christianity."
There you have it in a nutshell, folks. Socialism is Christianity minus Christ -- and minus God too, of course. Since they have rejected God, that gives them the right to "impose their morality on everyone." At the same time, they continuously howl about how "right-wing Christians" are trying to impose their morality on everyone. Quite a ruse, eh?
I didn't RTFA, but I like the idea -- even though I am a libertarian-leaning Republican. I've always considered it ridiculous for the govt to send billions of dollars to MS for Office when, for a fraction of that amount, they could help develop a good, free alternative. Everybody wins -- except MS, of course. The govt saves money, and the general public is freed from the shackles of MS proprietary formats.
I think you're confusing my sarcasm with my actual point.
I was applying the principle of reductio ad absurdum to the other guy's position that we should not use DDT because it causes DDT-resistant mosquitos to develop.
# I had already read the junkscience article you linked to - it discusses socio-political arguments for the banning of DDT and its impact on humans and wildlife. It mentions effectively NOTHING about the effectiveness of DDT as an insecticide with the exception of a small paragraph about how it still repels resistant mosquitos to some degree.
I reply:
Well, the Fox article says this:
But when DDT is available, the results are nothing short of spectacular. Indoor spraying with DDT, for example, reduced malaria cases and deaths by nearly 75 percent in Zambia over a two-year period and by 80 percent in South Africa in just one year. DDT works like nothing else - there's simply no doubt about it.
You wrote:
# I'm not going to dignify the link to a FOX article, filed in their "VIEWS" section with a response.
I reply:
Oh, I see. Now *that's* a brilliant strategy.
Now let me give *you* a tip. People who dismiss Fox News are ignorant. Yes, I'll agree it has a lot of OJ-style crap, but I watch Brit Hume's news program most nights and it is excellent. It blows away anything on the other major networks. Try watching it a few times. Maybe you'll agree.
As for personal insults, if you read your original reply to me I think it will be clear who started it.
That's all fine. I hope Gates is on the right track, and he may well be. But think about what you are suggesting. According to the other folks here who consider me "deluded," what will happen if we "wipe out" mosquitos? The whole ecosystem will collapse like a house of cards. And if we get a vaccine against malaria, won't malaria just become resistant and harder to deal with? Never mind me; how is Gates going to satisfy them? I don't think he can -- short of letting Africans continue to die by the million.
But when DDT is available, the results are nothing short of spectacular. Indoor spraying with DDT, for example, reduced malaria cases and deaths by nearly 75 percent in Zambia over a two-year period and by 80 percent in South Africa in just one year. DDT works like nothing else - there's simply no doubt about it.
I see I have been modded down to 0. Why I waste my time here on slashdot I have yet to figure out. Folks, DDT could be saving millions of lives in Africa, but folks like you prefer to stand around with your thumbs in your rear ends and let it happen even though a simple solution has existed for decades. Please read this article:
Sorry, but I must reply again. You claim that DDT is breeding resistant mosquitos, and therefore its use against malaria is unwise. According to that line of "reasoning," we should also stop using antibiotics because they are breeding resistant bacteria. Brilliant! I urge you to decline antibiotics the next time you get a serious infection.
People are dying in Africa by the million, and mental midgets like you have a "scientific" excuse to stand by and let them die. Congratulations, dude. And about that joint...
I can't help but wonder if anyone here on slashdot has a clue about the history of DDT and malaria.
The widespread use of DDT had all but wiped out malaria some three decades ago. Then someone named Rachel Carson wrote a fictional book called "Silent Spring" about how DDT was harming birds. The book was fictional, literally. But the irrational so-called "envoronmentalists" of the world took it as a call to action and successfully pressured the government to ban DDT. Now millions die needlessly in Africa as a result of their irrationality.
Why does the media not report this? They want to keep you in the dark. Do you want to stay there? If not, I urge you to read a book called Hoodwinked: How Intellectual Hucksters Have Hijacked American Culture, by Jack Cashill. It will explain the DDT ruse and many others too.
Good idea, but let's get it right while we're at it. It should be 2005-04-13, or it will be lexicographically ordered later than, for example, 2005-21-13.
Sir, where did I say anything about God? I didn't. You just imagined it.
Like so many evolutionists, you don't have a clue about combinatorics. Evolutionists are always saying that any odds can be overcome with enough time and space. But isn't funny that that never seem to do any actual calculations. They just wave their hands and make proclamations. Spetner and others *have* done some calculations, and they have demonstrated that it just ain't so.
Without getting into technicalities, let me just try to explain this in a general way. Thomas Huxley once said something to the effect that, "given enough time, even a monkey typing randomly at a typewriter will type Macbeth." Well, not quite. It turns out that you could put a monkey with a typewriter in every cubic meter of the entire known universe for the entire estimated age of the universe, and the chances of getting past the first few lines of Macbeth would be infinitesimally small.
I never claimed that Spetner proved the existence of God. What he did was prove that, with extremely high probability, the Neo-Darwinian Theory of Evolution is false. In other words, the idea that life began and "evolved" with absolutely no intelligent guidance has been disproven. Does that prove the existence of God? Maybe -- but I never made that claim.
In other words, I am simply saying that, from a purely "scientific" perspective, WE DON'T KNOW how we got here. What you and the evolutionists are doing is ignoring the probabilities and arrogantly claiming that you know how we got here. Yes, of course evolutionists will admit that they don't know all the "details," but they refuse to admit that they and we don't even know the big picture. In doing so, they are exhibiting a profound cultural arrogance. Someday they will be shown for the fools they are.
You claim to be a Christian, yet you have been hoodwinked by their nonsense. I can only suggest that you read Spetner's book, but your ignorance is not my problem. It's yours.
Sorry, but you just don't "get it." However, I'm certainly not going to spend time trying to explain your errors since you may not even see this message. I'll just tell you to read Spetner's book.
Unfortunately, sir, you are wrong. Read the book "Not By Chance" by Lee Spetner. Spetner is a professor emeritus of information theory at MIT, and he has proved mathematically that life is extremely unlikely to have originated by random chance.
How unlikely? More unlikely than you or I can even imagine.
Unfortunately, the evolutionary dogmatists are not interested in reality. Their minds are made up, and they are not about to let themselves be confused with the facts.
Al the crap about ID being unscientific and unfalsifiable is just a load of baloney.
Don't you just love statements like that. So the sunlight that hits the earth has 10,000 times as much energy as we need, eh? Ya, and we could get all the energy we need for a year from one bowling ball -- if only we could convert all the mass to energy. So what?
We all believe that conscious beings other than ourselves exist -- or at least I do. But it cannot be proven. Please don't strain yourself trying to think about how it could be proven. It can't.
That is why I laugh when I hear athiests chide believers for believing in God with no "proof." Unless they are solipsisists, they believe on sheer faith that conscious beings other than themselves exist.
Slashdot Mirror
I still remember attending a LUG meeting way back (1997?) and having none other than Larry Augustin introduce himself to me, give me his business card, and discuss Linux with me, a clueless "luser." I had no idea who he was at the time, but he sure is a nice guy.
What are the chances that Condoleezza Rice actually has any clue what the "authoritative root zone file" is?
Considering that she once headed up the NSA, I'd say the chances are darn good that she knows what it means. Also, I've heard that she graduated college years years younger than the norm, so I'd say the chances are pretty good she understands the basics of the Internet. In fact, I'd venture to say that she probably knows more than *you* know about it.
If the thesis of this article is true -- and that's a big "if" -- then who is more to blame than anyone else for global warming? Why, it't the anti-nuclear "environmentalists," of course. Nuclear power produces no greenhouse gases -- none! Yet the U.S. gets half its electric power from coal. Folks, we burn three tons of coal per *second* in the U.S. alone, and the gaseous emissions kill an estimated 50,000 people per year.
If indeed human activity is causing global warming, then we can solve this problem inteligently or stupidly. The intelligent solution starts with nuclear power. The stupid solution is to give up our mobility and regress to third world living conditions.
If you oppose nuclear power, please educate yourself.
"Now, I'm not an apologist for Stalinism, but socialism, in it's most basic form means "sharing." It means looking after your fellow man, particularly those who have nothing. Attach a bearded guy, and a couple of nails and it turns into Christianity."
There you have it in a nutshell, folks. Socialism is Christianity minus Christ -- and minus God too, of course. Since they have rejected God, that gives them the right to "impose their morality on everyone." At the same time, they continuously howl about how "right-wing Christians" are trying to impose their morality on everyone. Quite a ruse, eh?
I didn't RTFA, but I like the idea -- even though I am a libertarian-leaning Republican. I've always considered it ridiculous for the govt to send billions of dollars to MS for Office when, for a fraction of that amount, they could help develop a good, free alternative. Everybody wins -- except MS, of course. The govt saves money, and the general public is freed from the shackles of MS proprietary formats.
OK, now maybe I'll RTFA.
I urge you to read this petition:
http://www.fightingmalaria.org/petition.php
And I apologize for the arrogant tone of my reply to your post. Even though I thought yours was arrogant too, two wrongs don't make a right.
Wow! That is quite an illuminating article. I hope some of the DDT naysayers here see it.
That's an interesting website you have too.
"Smallpox vaccine was a waste of time?"
I think you're confusing my sarcasm with my actual point.
I was applying the principle of reductio ad absurdum to the other guy's position that we should not use DDT because it causes DDT-resistant mosquitos to develop.
You wrote:
# I had already read the junkscience article you linked to - it discusses socio-political arguments for the banning of DDT and its impact on humans and wildlife. It mentions effectively NOTHING about the effectiveness of DDT as an insecticide with the exception of a small paragraph about how it still repels resistant mosquitos to some degree.
I reply:
Well, the Fox article says this:
But when DDT is available, the results are nothing short of spectacular. Indoor spraying with DDT, for example, reduced malaria cases and deaths by nearly 75 percent in Zambia over a two-year period and by 80 percent in South Africa in just one year. DDT works like nothing else - there's simply no doubt about it.
You wrote:
# I'm not going to dignify the link to a FOX article, filed in their "VIEWS" section with a response.
I reply:
Oh, I see. Now *that's* a brilliant strategy.
Now let me give *you* a tip. People who dismiss Fox News are ignorant. Yes, I'll agree it has a lot of OJ-style crap, but I watch Brit Hume's news program most nights and it is excellent. It blows away anything on the other major networks. Try watching it a few times. Maybe you'll agree.
As for personal insults, if you read your original reply to me I think it will be clear who started it.
That's all fine. I hope Gates is on the right track, and he may well be. But think about what you are suggesting. According to the other folks here who consider me "deluded," what will happen if we "wipe out" mosquitos? The whole ecosystem will collapse like a house of cards. And if we get a vaccine against malaria, won't malaria just become resistant and harder to deal with? Never mind me; how is Gates going to satisfy them? I don't think he can -- short of letting Africans continue to die by the million.
Hey, genius, how about this:
l
But when DDT is available, the results are nothing short of spectacular. Indoor spraying with DDT, for example, reduced malaria cases and deaths by nearly 75 percent in Zambia over a two-year period and by 80 percent in South Africa in just one year. DDT works like nothing else - there's simply no doubt about it.
from http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,173766,00.htm
I see I have been modded down to 0. Why I waste my time here on slashdot I have yet to figure out. Folks, DDT could be saving millions of lives in Africa, but folks like you prefer to stand around with your thumbs in your rear ends and let it happen even though a simple solution has existed for decades. Please read this article:
l
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,173766,00.htm
Sorry, but I must reply again. You claim that DDT is breeding resistant mosquitos, and therefore its use against malaria is unwise. According to that line of "reasoning," we should also stop using antibiotics because they are breeding resistant bacteria. Brilliant! I urge you to decline antibiotics the next time you get a serious infection.
People are dying in Africa by the million, and mental midgets like you have a "scientific" excuse to stand by and let them die. Congratulations, dude. And about that joint...
Wow, dude, pass that joint over here ....
l
...don't bogart that joint, dude!
Dude, I'd say you've been massively hoodwinked. It took me all of two seconds with google to find this:
http://www.junkscience.com/ddtfaq.htm
Now, that article is a bit long for you, and if you don't have time to read it, please at least read this:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,173766,00.htm
Don't worry, Fox News has dumbed it down to your level, dude.
Hey,
I can't help but wonder if anyone here on slashdot has a clue about the history of DDT and malaria.
The widespread use of DDT had all but wiped out malaria some three decades ago. Then someone named Rachel Carson wrote a fictional book called "Silent Spring" about how DDT was harming birds. The book was fictional, literally. But the irrational so-called "envoronmentalists" of the world took it as a call to action and successfully pressured the government to ban DDT. Now millions die needlessly in Africa as a result of their irrationality.
Why does the media not report this? They want to keep you in the dark. Do you want to stay there? If not, I urge you to read a book called Hoodwinked: How Intellectual Hucksters Have Hijacked American Culture, by Jack Cashill. It will explain the DDT ruse and many others too.
You threw me for a loop there. A post on slashdot by someone who has a clue? Amazing!
A better example would have been 2005-11-13.
"Please use 2005-4-13 as it is less confusing."
Good idea, but let's get it right while we're at it. It should be 2005-04-13, or it will be lexicographically ordered later than, for example, 2005-21-13.
I just realized that you weren't the one who claimed to be a Christian. I think it was the original poster. Sorry.
Sir, where did I say anything about God? I didn't. You just imagined it.
Like so many evolutionists, you don't have a clue about combinatorics. Evolutionists are always saying that any odds can be overcome with enough time and space. But isn't funny that that never seem to do any actual calculations. They just wave their hands and make proclamations. Spetner and others *have* done some calculations, and they have demonstrated that it just ain't so.
Without getting into technicalities, let me just try to explain this in a general way. Thomas Huxley once said something to the effect that, "given enough time, even a monkey typing randomly at a typewriter will type Macbeth." Well, not quite. It turns out that you could put a monkey with a typewriter in every cubic meter of the entire known universe for the entire estimated age of the universe, and the chances of getting past the first few lines of Macbeth would be infinitesimally small.
I never claimed that Spetner proved the existence of God. What he did was prove that, with extremely high probability, the Neo-Darwinian Theory of Evolution is false. In other words, the idea that life began and "evolved" with absolutely no intelligent guidance has been disproven. Does that prove the existence of God? Maybe -- but I never made that claim.
In other words, I am simply saying that, from a purely "scientific" perspective, WE DON'T KNOW how we got here. What you and the evolutionists are doing is ignoring the probabilities and arrogantly claiming that you know how we got here. Yes, of course evolutionists will admit that they don't know all the "details," but they refuse to admit that they and we don't even know the big picture. In doing so, they are exhibiting a profound cultural arrogance. Someday they will be shown for the fools they are.
You claim to be a Christian, yet you have been hoodwinked by their nonsense. I can only suggest that you read Spetner's book, but your ignorance is not my problem. It's yours.
Regards,
Russ Paielli
http://russp.org/
Sorry, but you just don't "get it." However, I'm certainly not going to spend time trying to explain your errors since you may not even see this message. I'll just tell you to read Spetner's book.
Unfortunately, sir, you are wrong. Read the book "Not By Chance" by Lee Spetner. Spetner is a professor emeritus of information theory at MIT, and he has proved mathematically that life is extremely unlikely to have originated by random chance.
How unlikely? More unlikely than you or I can even imagine.
Unfortunately, the evolutionary dogmatists are not interested in reality. Their minds are made up, and they are not about to let themselves be confused with the facts.
Al the crap about ID being unscientific and unfalsifiable is just a load of baloney.
Don't you just love statements like that. So the sunlight that hits the earth has 10,000 times as much energy as we need, eh? Ya, and we could get all the energy we need for a year from one bowling ball -- if only we could convert all the mass to energy. So what?
Just imagine trying to live withough them.
But it will probably be the Internet.
We all believe that conscious beings other than ourselves exist -- or at least I do. But it cannot be proven. Please don't strain yourself trying to think about how it could be proven. It can't.
That is why I laugh when I hear athiests chide believers for believing in God with no "proof." Unless they are solipsisists, they believe on sheer faith that conscious beings other than themselves exist.