Not much does. You should take a nice close look at the subject of criminality before you extemporaneously state your emotional position as basis for how the real world "should" work.
The mental basis for criminality is a complete rejection of all authority save that of the criminal himself. Many times this mental attitude leads to psychosis. Generally, criminals do not want to change. In fact, many of them feel that they are morally superior to people who attend church, work real jobs, and have normal lives. Trying to reform someone who holds the reformer in such contempt is impossible without resorting to methods that you would, I am sure, find detestable(my turnt to reference a popular work: see "A Clockwork Orange")
Education, in most cases, results in well-read criminals. Psychotherapy results in criminals who learn to fake the psychologist's "steps to recovery." The plain truth is that "reform" is a crock of krap 99% of the time.
Remember that criminals choose to be criminals. They are not forced to be criminals.
The fact that the death penalty is, in your opinion, not a deterrent to crime is twofold. One, if it was applied more often and more expediently it would definitely be much more effective of a deterrent.
Two, it is the sole responsibility of the judicial system to deter criminals. The manner and effect of punnishment is the only deterrent to criminality. See one above.
In other words, if you go easy on criminals, if you try to practice sociology from the bench, or allow criminals to be set free before their terms are completed you are encouraging crime.
The only way to ensure that criminals are deterred from future crime is by punishing them harshly and mercilessly. Crime itself is unfair, harsh, and merciless, sometimes even senseless, why shouldn't the punishment be as well?
An analogy of sorts: If a prize winning German Shepherd decides one day, after many long years of harmonious interaction with humans, that it is going to maul a child, the animal will be immediately put to death.
Now, compare the mentality and socialization of the dog to the mentality and socialization of the human.
Who is more responsible, a dog or a man?
If we kill the dog, who may not be fully responsible for the action because of instinct, and who certainly is not cognizant of morality of humanity in his frame of reference, why should we tolerate someone to live who KNOWS that human life is valuable, that killing is not only wrong, but that it carries the possibility of death as punnishment.
Why the fuck should someone get to live if they disrespect law, liberty, property and society so much that they feel that the motivations, thoughts, conventions, and morals of the rest of us are so contemptable that they can violate anyone or any thing at any time based solely on their whim?
The criminal acts like an animal, so why not treat him like one?
If someone was trying to be a smartass (I, myself, cannot help it) they might mention that on a very basic and true level digital media of any kind is encrypted.
The encryption is in a very basic form of course, being only 0's and 1's. I know, it sounds pathetic, but remember the "weak encryption" of the Adobe software? All the producer of a copyrighted work has to do is say that the product is encrypted and they gain the benefit of the doubt as well as the full protection of the law.
The resultant logic is that anything that is digitally encoded becomes uncopyable under the DMCA. Even playing the media could be construed as circumventing the access protection.
If, however, you had purchased the proper "decoding" device from the copyright holder or its legally authorized distributor, maybe then it would be legal. Of course the "device" would have to be secure, running secure code in a secure box, free from all the pesky vulnerabilities of today's data management devices. Sound familiar?
Sheesh! Am I paranoid or what? That could never happen...
Re:Soldiers aren't worth as much.
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Shuttle Politics
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"If you work in a supposedly safe office job - or working in a restaurant or cleaning an office building, you do not expect to die that way. Your family has a reasonable expectation that this kind of thing won't happen."
Good point. Except people had attempted to destroy that building before.
Set that aside, and consider this. Should not everyone in the US now have a reasonable expectation that if they work in a large office building in a metropolitan area that they might be killed in this same manner?
Re:Soldiers aren't worth as much.
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Shuttle Politics
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The same problem with results from magazine surveys is at work on a larger scale with respect to the September 11th lawsuits.
Specifically I am speaking about self-selection. In magazine surveys you only get responses from people outgoing, self centered, or interested enough in the subject matter to respond to the survey. In other words, the type of people who respond to the survey are the only ones who get their results counted. They end up speaking for everyone.
In the September 11 disaster the lowest common denominator of people and their lawyers set the bar for payment. Some of the famalies were not even satisfied with the huge ammounts of money they were offered and sought even more.
These same individuals care enough about themselves to get paid off of their dead family members, but not enough about their country to be concerned about the benefits of a dead, injured, or even retired soldier.
The real secret, though, is that the soldiers in the military have self-selected themselves as well. These are the people in the population with enough integrity not to whine and complain like little children when things are out of balance. They live, work, and fight to defend the country that they love.
Other things are secondary if not inconsequential.
I have thought that games or television could be used to introduce children to concepts from mathematics that are usually learned by people who are much older.
Two formats come to mind. One being "explicit" where the actual material is taught in an undisguised and straightforward, yet entertaining, format. An example would be a logic puzzle based upon a mathamatical principle. The puzzle is solved by getting the right clues from the gaming environment and using them to solve the puzzle. The gamer/student learns the principle and applys it to get to the next obstacle and progress in the game.
The second would be "allegorical," where the information is related by the interaction of characters or plot elements to convey meaning under the guise of something else. An example is to name characters after, say, trigonometric functions (sin, cos, tan, etc.) and relate their behavior and interactions with each other to their mathematical qualities. The benefit of this method is that it could be used to introduce young chilren to these concepts long before they actually encounter the material academically. Then, when the material is introduced, the child finds that the mental model required to understand the concepts is already in place! All the student needs to do is make the connection. This method seems like a natural fit for television progamming.
This probably could not generate enough energy to power your phone, but I bet the vibrations from your heart beating could power implanted cardiac telemetry devices.
Couple that with a wireless system that broadcasts to a monitoring device worn on the waist and you have a nifty little package. It would simplify the jobs of cardiac physicians and would also simplify the lives of those patients who used it, ie. they would not have to rely on an outside powering device, and the devices would not need invasive surgery to replace batteries etc.
Only problem is that the myocardial infarction that the implanted devices are monitoring for will kill the power to the sensors as well as the patient. Hmmmmm...back to the drawing board.
This might be a help to those who fear being buried alive. Just put a reciever for your cardiac telemetry in the headstone, coupled to a siren. If your heart starts beating after you have been "laid to rest" EVERYONE will know it. Of course you ex-wife could just cut the wires to the siren. Hmmmmm...back to the drawing board.
One of the best movie experiences of my life was going to see "From Dusk Till Dawn" having absolutely NO IDEA what the film was about.
My friends picked me up at work and said, "Hey, we're going to the new Tarentino movie, wanna come?" That was all the introduction that I had.
If you have seen the movie you will realize why this was so wonderful. The first.33 of the film is just a couple of criminals on the run, kidnapping, murdering, etc., standard mayhem and violence.
---SPOILER---
Then BLAMMO!!! Suddenly it's an undead freakshow and then nonstop vampire whacking for the rest of the flick.
Needless to say, it was a fan-freakin-tastic movie experience.
If I had seen the trailer, or had heard about it at all from someone who had seen it, the impact would have been minimal. I might have even become bored waiting for the "vampire part" to start. This way was definitely the best.
Unfortunately, what seems obviously stupid to the average/. reader, I fear, is not so to the average judge or the average juror.
I can easily see the technical facts of this case being purposefully obscured by the prosecution's testimony and statements. If the prosecution succeeds in making the facts of the "wake" system's operation a point of dispute they may win because many people don't understand these things and the judge/jury will just have to take one side or the other based on who they "believe" and not who is factually correct. In other words, they (the prosecution) will use the ignorance of the court's participants to win a case that should be thrown out.
The double-edged-sword part of this is that if the defense does use the DMCA as the avenute to winning the case, they will have strengthened a law which was brought about through the exercise of the above mentioned ignorance. Ironic...and scary!
It is completely impossible to say anything truly intelligent or enlightneing in a space this size, excep
"including protests that block traffic and shut down freeways is very much a part of"
1) People who are protesting do not have the right to violate laws that otherwise apply. Just because they are "protesting" or "peacably assembling" does not mean that laws for the safety and coherence of society no longer apply. Most cities have ordinances that prohibit blocking a street without a permit. Almost every municipal authority still has jay-walking laws in place. Also keep in mind that blocking traffic can HURT people; you know the thing that all these peacenicks supposedly want to prevent. Just imagine an ambulance trying to get someone to a hospital...
2) Acting like a complete moron in public by making yourself throw up on the sidewalk, shutting down streets, and starting fights with bystanders and police (yes the anti-war protestors have done all of these) does not make people want to listen to you, much less help you. It's just like the way that debaucherous hedonists view self-righteous hypocrytical religious types. They say: "if that is what it is to be "good" I really don't mind being bad!" Same thing here: If that is what an anti-war protestor does, I will NEVER be one!
Sure, I respect the rights of all people to "protest" or to make their voices heard. I would rather have them do it from a position of humility, so that if there is someone who, like myself, has reservations about the war in Iraq, they aren't scared to walk up to one of these hate-sign toting, sidewalk cookie-tossing, street blocking, pugilist agitators and ask them to intelligently express their reasons for opposing the war.
Maybe if they were not so arrogant and offensive they would see their numbers and support grow.
I played Quake 2 excessively online for about 4 years. Being one of the very first people in the neighborhood with a cable modem (this was a few years ago) I had a consistently low ping. Couple this with a fast machine and a 22" monitor and I had the ingredients for success. The only thing I lacked was a Boomslang.
However, my skills sucked! So I found the hardest rail tournament servers I could: those with the best players and the game speed jacked up all the way. I took one freaking hell of a beating for a month or two. No shit, I was frag bait...the easy-kill noob.
Then I got better...and better...and better. Soon I was taking first place consistently and loving it.
I have to say that getting the krap kicked out of me is what made me get better. The best part was going to the lower speed game servers and having all the wankers call me a cheater when I grapple into the room, rail them in the head, and then grapple right back out again without touching the ground. SWEET!!!
WAIT! Even better was the kill against the OBVIOUS aim-botter 12 year old. Man do they get pissed! Very Sweet!
I would have rated you +1 funny if I had the points.
The reason that porn is so special is that it is a controlled visual stimulus. In other words, you have to be a certain age to buy it in the USA. Playboy, Penthouse, Hustler, etc. cannot be purchased at the corner store by those under the age of 18/21 depending.
In other countries this may not be so. I mean, maybe elementary children in Europe can buy hardcore-fisting-scat mags at the school store. However, in the USA we have laws about this type of material and THAT is the difference between porn merchants and regular merchants.
As for religious sites: have a sense of humor! Most of the offensive religious sites can be downright hilarious if you read them.
I remember one time I clicked on a link to an innocnet looking article in a Linux friendly news site.
I was redirected to a domain called "goat.se" or something or other.
After replcing my eyeballs I have taken up a crusade to stop this type of activity on the net. No one should have to bathe in holy water and take antipsychotic drugs just because they want to be well informed about the news.
In Houston we had a store located on a major commercial street (Westheimer) that was called "Cindy's Toy Box."
Sounds innocent enough, but when you walked inside there were a large assortment of Cindy's (SEX) toys prominently arrayed for all to see. You see, the store was a shop that sold sex accesories, paraphenalia, and such.
Surprisingly, the sign stayed the same for almost 6 months (maybe a little longer! Can't exactly remember). Eventually it was changed to reflect the type of store it is more accurately.
Re:If I was a sentient life form...
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Gamma Ray Burst
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Any life form sufficiently advanced enough to create one of these bursts would probably know not to stand next to it when it went off.
Hmmmm, they might even be able to shield against it! Ooooh! Technology!
You forgot option 3...There's a cruise missile sticking out of the server.
If I was a sentient life form...
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Gamma Ray Burst
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What better way to get the attention of another sentient species than by creating massive gamma ray bursts that could be seen the all over the universe!
Maybe SETI needs to take a closer look at these bursts?
Not to sound arrogant or insensitive, but you obviously know nothing about the Bible or its contents. Really, you lack knowledge in the area, so please don't misquote, mischaracterize, and slander the Bible and/or Jesus with your baseless and malformed ideas.
Take note please:
The Bible says capital punishemnt is necessary for the proper function of government and law enforcement.
The Bible says that war (against evil nations and agressors) is necessary for freedom and peace.
The Bible says that murder is wrong, yet murder is quite different than war and capital punishemnt.
"If some unemployed punk in New Jersey, can get a cassette to make love to Elle McPherson for $19.95, this virtual reality stuff is going to make crack look like Sanka."
Ever notice that "simulate" and "stimulate" are almost the same?
Re:Arcade games were a FAD
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Lucky Wander Boy
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"I still prefer battling it out with another live human in a game of Mortal Kombat or Street Fighter 2"
Me too, however I get the same thrill matching wits and reflexes while playing Quake/UT/etc. online. It's nice to play for free and I don't have to leave the house.
The other nice thing is no one complains that I am stark naked.
Let me make an analogy that will help explain my position on the writings of the Bible and their "interpretation."
When you read a newspaper article and discuss it with someone your discussion is, usually, not about your "interpretation" of the article. Generally you discuss the facts of the article and correlate them to things that you know or feel and convey them to the other person. You can do this because you have a common background: the language you speak, your understanding of idiom and vernacular language, social conventions, the historical framework of the time in which you were raised, and the immersion in and awareness of current events. The reason that your attempts to use a Greek new testament and an Greek to English dictionary result in lack of clarity stems from the fact that many of the tools you need for proper translation are not all in the words when considered individually.
Idiomatic language, for one, can be a huge stumbling block. This is one of the things that make the English language so hard to learn if you are not born into it. Now look at Koine Greek, not only is it filled with idioms, but it also is sprinkled with other forms of Greek (Attic Greek and Ionic Greek) and their peculiar idioms as well, not to mention their verb tenses and grammatical differences.
Verb tenses are another problem in Greek. Consider the word "Tetelestai." Many translations say it means "It is finished." However, the verb tense conveys a different meaning. The true translation into English would look like this "It is finished now, with results that will continue forever." Not totally different, but much more precise, and furthermore, that is how it would be seen by someone who was Greek living in that day who read it or heard it.
Both verb tenses and idioms and all other things grammatical and definitional fall under the heading of exegesis. However, exegesis falls short of the mark in translation because it does not fully encompass the social customs, current events, and historical framework of the time in which the words were written. The study of those things is called isagogics. Without the proper understanding of isagogics, translation will fail miserably. Just imagine someone translating the front page of the newspaper of today a couple thousand years from now. Without knowledge of current events, much less knowledge of our political forms and climate, or about basic things like movies and television, they would not get far at all.
Fortunately, we have inherited and discovered innumerable documents that fill in our understanding of all the things we need to properly translate, exegetically and isagogically, the New Testament. However, the vast majority of people who go to Christian churches today do not have instruction by people who understand Greek or Hebrew, much less the intricacies and mechanics involved with the translation of the Bible. This does not negate the fact that the knowledge is extant and available. Lack of knowledge of the existence of something does not negate its existence. Unfortunately, I see many people argue from this viewpoint. Just because you have not seen/experienced/been exposed to/understood something does not make it untrue. If this were the case, no one would ever learn anything new.
The next part of understanding the Bible comes from the intra-Biblical references. The Bible is its own authority on many matters. By this I mean that it describes history, phenomena, mechanics, and knowledge that are not discussed in other works. Therefore, many of the authors of the individual books will continue where another author left off in another book or will speak with the assumption of knowledge in a certain category that is discussed elsewhere in the Bible. Without the proper understanding of the category or categories of knowledge that the author is currently speaking about, the passage will be meaningless or perplexing. However, in the right categorical context, it becomes illuminating.
These words make me cringe like you cannot believe. Surely there is no end to the interpretation of the writings of Nostradamus...they happen to be confusing and oblique from almost any perspective.
However, if you again are referring to the book of Revelation, there is very little that is up for "interpretation." If one is to look at the original Greek language of the book, the meaning becomes clear to the point where "interpretation" is completely unnecessary.
As to the comment about timing, your reference to the Genesis account is a straw man. The issue of the timing of the Revelation account is undisputed and easily confirmed through many intra-biblical references starting in the old testament and continuing throughout the new as well.
Revelation states (among other things) that after a 7 year period of intense turmoil (called the tribulation), Christ comes back to earth and institutes perfect environment. This continues for 1000 years. Then at the end of 1000 years there is a huge war lasting a short time and then Christ causes the Earth to destroy itself completely through nuclear fission (Take a look at the Greek on this one, the details are AWESOME! Describes fission quite well.)
Then cretion of a new Heavens and a new Earth.
Nowhere does it describe a period of time where there is an "apocalyptic aftermath."
Interestingly enough, the first book of Niven's I ever read was the Rinworld Engineers (second of three in the series). I read it probably 5 times that year. I have read it probably another 10 times in the 12 years since. The book was and is great.
I read Ringworld after the Engineers and thought it was good, but not as good at the Engineers. Funny huh?
I think this may have something to do with the excitement and intellictual stimulation we feel when we read something new. Then once the characters are known and the plot developed, the story and universe gets "stale."
In other words, decreasing quality of sequels may be due to something other than the writing.
Slashdot Mirror
"it doesn't reform the criminals"
Not much does. You should take a nice close look at the subject of criminality before you extemporaneously state your emotional position as basis for how the real world "should" work.
The mental basis for criminality is a complete rejection of all authority save that of the criminal himself. Many times this mental attitude leads to psychosis. Generally, criminals do not want to change. In fact, many of them feel that they are morally superior to people who attend church, work real jobs, and have normal lives. Trying to reform someone who holds the reformer in such contempt is impossible without resorting to methods that you would, I am sure, find detestable(my turnt to reference a popular work: see "A Clockwork Orange")
Education, in most cases, results in well-read criminals. Psychotherapy results in criminals who learn to fake the psychologist's "steps to recovery." The plain truth is that "reform" is a crock of krap 99% of the time.
Remember that criminals choose to be criminals. They are not forced to be criminals.
The fact that the death penalty is, in your opinion, not a deterrent to crime is twofold. One, if it was applied more often and more expediently it would definitely be much more effective of a deterrent.
Two, it is the sole responsibility of the judicial system to deter criminals. The manner and effect of punnishment is the only deterrent to criminality. See one above.
In other words, if you go easy on criminals, if you try to practice sociology from the bench, or allow criminals to be set free before their terms are completed you are encouraging crime.
The only way to ensure that criminals are deterred from future crime is by punishing them harshly and mercilessly. Crime itself is unfair, harsh, and merciless, sometimes even senseless, why shouldn't the punishment be as well?
An analogy of sorts: If a prize winning German Shepherd decides one day, after many long years of harmonious interaction with humans, that it is going to maul a child, the animal will be immediately put to death.
Now, compare the mentality and socialization of the dog to the mentality and socialization of the human.
Who is more responsible, a dog or a man?
If we kill the dog, who may not be fully responsible for the action because of instinct, and who certainly is not cognizant of morality of humanity in his frame of reference, why should we tolerate someone to live who KNOWS that human life is valuable, that killing is not only wrong, but that it carries the possibility of death as punnishment.
Why the fuck should someone get to live if they disrespect law, liberty, property and society so much that they feel that the motivations, thoughts, conventions, and morals of the rest of us are so contemptable that they can violate anyone or any thing at any time based solely on their whim?
The criminal acts like an animal, so why not treat him like one?
If someone was trying to be a smartass (I, myself, cannot help it) they might mention that on a very basic and true level digital media of any kind is encrypted.
The encryption is in a very basic form of course, being only 0's and 1's. I know, it sounds pathetic, but remember the "weak encryption" of the Adobe software? All the producer of a copyrighted work has to do is say that the product is encrypted and they gain the benefit of the doubt as well as the full protection of the law.
The resultant logic is that anything that is digitally encoded becomes uncopyable under the DMCA. Even playing the media could be construed as circumventing the access protection.
If, however, you had purchased the proper "decoding" device from the copyright holder or its legally authorized distributor, maybe then it would be legal. Of course the "device" would have to be secure, running secure code in a secure box, free from all the pesky vulnerabilities of today's data management devices. Sound familiar?
Sheesh! Am I paranoid or what? That could never happen...
"If you work in a supposedly safe office job - or working in a restaurant or cleaning an office building, you do not expect to die that way. Your family has a reasonable expectation that this kind of thing won't happen."
Good point. Except people had attempted to destroy that building before.
Set that aside, and consider this. Should not everyone in the US now have a reasonable expectation that if they work in a large office building in a metropolitan area that they might be killed in this same manner?
The same problem with results from magazine surveys is at work on a larger scale with respect to the September 11th lawsuits.
Specifically I am speaking about self-selection. In magazine surveys you only get responses from people outgoing, self centered, or interested enough in the subject matter to respond to the survey. In other words, the type of people who respond to the survey are the only ones who get their results counted. They end up speaking for everyone.
In the September 11 disaster the lowest common denominator of people and their lawyers set the bar for payment. Some of the famalies were not even satisfied with the huge ammounts of money they were offered and sought even more.
These same individuals care enough about themselves to get paid off of their dead family members, but not enough about their country to be concerned about the benefits of a dead, injured, or even retired soldier.
The real secret, though, is that the soldiers in the military have self-selected themselves as well. These are the people in the population with enough integrity not to whine and complain like little children when things are out of balance. They live, work, and fight to defend the country that they love.
Other things are secondary if not inconsequential.
I have thought that games or television could be used to introduce children to concepts from mathematics that are usually learned by people who are much older.
Two formats come to mind. One being "explicit" where the actual material is taught in an undisguised and straightforward, yet entertaining, format. An example would be a logic puzzle based upon a mathamatical principle. The puzzle is solved by getting the right clues from the gaming environment and using them to solve the puzzle. The gamer/student learns the principle and applys it to get to the next obstacle and progress in the game.
The second would be "allegorical," where the information is related by the interaction of characters or plot elements to convey meaning under the guise of something else. An example is to name characters after, say, trigonometric functions (sin, cos, tan, etc.) and relate their behavior and interactions with each other to their mathematical qualities. The benefit of this method is that it could be used to introduce young chilren to these concepts long before they actually encounter the material academically. Then, when the material is introduced, the child finds that the mental model required to understand the concepts is already in place! All the student needs to do is make the connection. This method seems like a natural fit for television progamming.
Just my $0.02.
This probably could not generate enough energy to power your phone, but I bet the vibrations from your heart beating could power implanted cardiac telemetry devices.
Couple that with a wireless system that broadcasts to a monitoring device worn on the waist and you have a nifty little package. It would simplify the jobs of cardiac physicians and would also simplify the lives of those patients who used it, ie. they would not have to rely on an outside powering device, and the devices would not need invasive surgery to replace batteries etc.
Only problem is that the myocardial infarction that the implanted devices are monitoring for will kill the power to the sensors as well as the patient. Hmmmmm...back to the drawing board.
This might be a help to those who fear being buried alive. Just put a reciever for your cardiac telemetry in the headstone, coupled to a siren. If your heart starts beating after you have been "laid to rest" EVERYONE will know it. Of course you ex-wife could just cut the wires to the siren. Hmmmmm...back to the drawing board.
"we'd still be getting eaten by wolves "
Here is an interesting study for you: Try to find references to vicious wolf attacks on humans.
Chances are you will only find fairy tales.
Wolf attacks on humans are VERY rare, if not nonexistent, without some other influence like rabies.
"I guess I like surprises"
.33 of the film is just a couple of criminals on the run, kidnapping, murdering, etc., standard mayhem and violence.
One of the best movie experiences of my life was going to see "From Dusk Till Dawn" having absolutely NO IDEA what the film was about.
My friends picked me up at work and said, "Hey, we're going to the new Tarentino movie, wanna come?" That was all the introduction that I had.
If you have seen the movie you will realize why this was so wonderful. The first
---SPOILER---
Then BLAMMO!!! Suddenly it's an undead freakshow and then nonstop vampire whacking for the rest of the flick.
Needless to say, it was a fan-freakin-tastic movie experience.
If I had seen the trailer, or had heard about it at all from someone who had seen it, the impact would have been minimal. I might have even become bored waiting for the "vampire part" to start. This way was definitely the best.
Unfortunately, what seems obviously stupid to the average /. reader, I fear, is not so to the average judge or the average juror.
I can easily see the technical facts of this case being purposefully obscured by the prosecution's testimony and statements. If the prosecution succeeds in making the facts of the "wake" system's operation a point of dispute they may win because many people don't understand these things and the judge/jury will just have to take one side or the other based on who they "believe" and not who is factually correct. In other words, they (the prosecution) will use the ignorance of the court's participants to win a case that should be thrown out.
The double-edged-sword part of this is that if the defense does use the DMCA as the avenute to winning the case, they will have strengthened a law which was brought about through the exercise of the above mentioned ignorance. Ironic...and scary!
It is completely impossible to say anything truly intelligent or enlightneing in a space this size, excep
"including protests that block traffic and shut down freeways is very much a part of"
1) People who are protesting do not have the right to violate laws that otherwise apply. Just because they are "protesting" or "peacably assembling" does not mean that laws for the safety and coherence of society no longer apply. Most cities have ordinances that prohibit blocking a street without a permit. Almost every municipal authority still has jay-walking laws in place. Also keep in mind that blocking traffic can HURT people; you know the thing that all these peacenicks supposedly want to prevent. Just imagine an ambulance trying to get someone to a hospital...
2) Acting like a complete moron in public by making yourself throw up on the sidewalk, shutting down streets, and starting fights with bystanders and police (yes the anti-war protestors have done all of these) does not make people want to listen to you, much less help you. It's just like the way that debaucherous hedonists view self-righteous hypocrytical religious types. They say: "if that is what it is to be "good" I really don't mind being bad!" Same thing here: If that is what an anti-war protestor does, I will NEVER be one!
Sure, I respect the rights of all people to "protest" or to make their voices heard. I would rather have them do it from a position of humility, so that if there is someone who, like myself, has reservations about the war in Iraq, they aren't scared to walk up to one of these hate-sign toting, sidewalk cookie-tossing, street blocking, pugilist agitators and ask them to intelligently express their reasons for opposing the war.
Maybe if they were not so arrogant and offensive they would see their numbers and support grow.
"or people who continuously kick my butt"
I played Quake 2 excessively online for about 4 years. Being one of the very first people in the neighborhood with a cable modem (this was a few years ago) I had a consistently low ping. Couple this with a fast machine and a 22" monitor and I had the ingredients for success. The only thing I lacked was a Boomslang.
However, my skills sucked! So I found the hardest rail tournament servers I could: those with the best players and the game speed jacked up all the way. I took one freaking hell of a beating for a month or two. No shit, I was frag bait...the easy-kill noob.
Then I got better...and better...and better. Soon I was taking first place consistently and loving it.
I have to say that getting the krap kicked out of me is what made me get better. The best part was going to the lower speed game servers and having all the wankers call me a cheater when I grapple into the room, rail them in the head, and then grapple right back out again without touching the ground. SWEET!!!
WAIT! Even better was the kill against the OBVIOUS aim-botter 12 year old. Man do they get pissed! Very Sweet!
I would have rated you +1 funny if I had the points.
The reason that porn is so special is that it is a controlled visual stimulus. In other words, you have to be a certain age to buy it in the USA. Playboy, Penthouse, Hustler, etc. cannot be purchased at the corner store by those under the age of 18/21 depending.
In other countries this may not be so. I mean, maybe elementary children in Europe can buy hardcore-fisting-scat mags at the school store. However, in the USA we have laws about this type of material and THAT is the difference between porn merchants and regular merchants.
As for religious sites: have a sense of humor! Most of the offensive religious sites can be downright hilarious if you read them.
I remember one time I clicked on a link to an innocnet looking article in a Linux friendly news site.
I was redirected to a domain called "goat.se" or something or other.
After replcing my eyeballs I have taken up a crusade to stop this type of activity on the net. No one should have to bathe in holy water and take antipsychotic drugs just because they want to be well informed about the news.
In Houston we had a store located on a major commercial street (Westheimer) that was called "Cindy's Toy Box."
Sounds innocent enough, but when you walked inside there were a large assortment of Cindy's (SEX) toys prominently arrayed for all to see. You see, the store was a shop that sold sex accesories, paraphenalia, and such.
Surprisingly, the sign stayed the same for almost 6 months (maybe a little longer! Can't exactly remember). Eventually it was changed to reflect the type of store it is more accurately.
Any life form sufficiently advanced enough to create one of these bursts would probably know not to stand next to it when it went off.
Hmmmm, they might even be able to shield against it! Ooooh! Technology!
You forgot option 3...There's a cruise missile sticking out of the server.
What better way to get the attention of another sentient species than by creating massive gamma ray bursts that could be seen the all over the universe!
Maybe SETI needs to take a closer look at these bursts?
Not to sound arrogant or insensitive, but you obviously know nothing about the Bible or its contents. Really, you lack knowledge in the area, so please don't misquote, mischaracterize, and slander the Bible and/or Jesus with your baseless and malformed ideas.
Take note please:
The Bible says capital punishemnt is necessary for the proper function of government and law enforcement.
The Bible says that war (against evil nations and agressors) is necessary for freedom and peace.
The Bible says that murder is wrong, yet murder is quite different than war and capital punishemnt.
It might be beneficial to note the true meaning of "amen" at this point.
The proper translation is similar to what one says when recieving an order from a superior officer.
It could be translated as "Acknowledged" or "I acknowledge," or even "understood" though this is more loose.
...to quote Dennis Miller:
"If some unemployed punk in New Jersey, can get a cassette to make love to Elle McPherson for $19.95, this virtual reality stuff is going to make crack look like Sanka."
Ever notice that "simulate" and "stimulate" are almost the same?
"I still prefer battling it out with another live human in a game of Mortal Kombat or Street Fighter 2"
Me too, however I get the same thrill matching wits and reflexes while playing Quake/UT/etc. online. It's nice to play for free and I don't have to leave the house.
The other nice thing is no one complains that I am stark naked.
Let me make an analogy that will help explain my position on the writings of the Bible and their "interpretation."
When you read a newspaper article and discuss it with someone your discussion is, usually, not about your "interpretation" of the article. Generally you discuss the facts of the article and correlate them to things that you know or feel and convey them to the other person. You can do this because you have a common background: the language you speak, your understanding of idiom and vernacular language, social conventions, the historical framework of the time in which you were raised, and the immersion in and awareness of current events. The reason that your attempts to use a Greek new testament and an Greek to English dictionary result in lack of clarity stems from the fact that many of the tools you need for proper translation are not all in the words when considered individually.
Idiomatic language, for one, can be a huge stumbling block. This is one of the things that make the English language so hard to learn if you are not born into it. Now look at Koine Greek, not only is it filled with idioms, but it also is sprinkled with other forms of Greek (Attic Greek and Ionic Greek) and their peculiar idioms as well, not to mention their verb tenses and grammatical differences.
Verb tenses are another problem in Greek. Consider the word "Tetelestai." Many translations say it means "It is finished." However, the verb tense conveys a different meaning. The true translation into English would look like this "It is finished now, with results that will continue forever." Not totally different, but much more precise, and furthermore, that is how it would be seen by someone who was Greek living in that day who read it or heard it.
Both verb tenses and idioms and all other things grammatical and definitional fall under the heading of exegesis. However, exegesis falls short of the mark in translation because it does not fully encompass the social customs, current events, and historical framework of the time in which the words were written. The study of those things is called isagogics. Without the proper understanding of isagogics, translation will fail miserably. Just imagine someone translating the front page of the newspaper of today a couple thousand years from now. Without knowledge of current events, much less knowledge of our political forms and climate, or about basic things like movies and television, they would not get far at all.
Fortunately, we have inherited and discovered innumerable documents that fill in our understanding of all the things we need to properly translate, exegetically and isagogically, the New Testament. However, the vast majority of people who go to Christian churches today do not have instruction by people who understand Greek or Hebrew, much less the intricacies and mechanics involved with the translation of the Bible. This does not negate the fact that the knowledge is extant and available. Lack of knowledge of the existence of something does not negate its existence. Unfortunately, I see many people argue from this viewpoint. Just because you have not seen/experienced/been exposed to/understood something does not make it untrue. If this were the case, no one would ever learn anything new.
The next part of understanding the Bible comes from the intra-Biblical references. The Bible is its own authority on many matters. By this I mean that it describes history, phenomena, mechanics, and knowledge that are not discussed in other works. Therefore, many of the authors of the individual books will continue where another author left off in another book or will speak with the assumption of knowledge in a certain category that is discussed elsewhere in the Bible. Without the proper understanding of the category or categories of knowledge that the author is currently speaking about, the passage will be meaningless or perplexing. However, in the right categorical context, it becomes illuminating.
With regard for the book of Revelation this pr
"and there's no end to such interpretation."
These words make me cringe like you cannot believe. Surely there is no end to the interpretation of the writings of Nostradamus...they happen to be confusing and oblique from almost any perspective.
However, if you again are referring to the book of Revelation, there is very little that is up for "interpretation." If one is to look at the original Greek language of the book, the meaning becomes clear to the point where "interpretation" is completely unnecessary.
As to the comment about timing, your reference to the Genesis account is a straw man. The issue of the timing of the Revelation account is undisputed and easily confirmed through many intra-biblical references starting in the old testament and continuing throughout the new as well.
Which book of Revelation have you been reading?
Revelation states (among other things) that after a 7 year period of intense turmoil (called the tribulation), Christ comes back to earth and institutes perfect environment. This continues for 1000 years. Then at the end of 1000 years there is a huge war lasting a short time and then Christ causes the Earth to destroy itself completely through nuclear fission (Take a look at the Greek on this one, the details are AWESOME! Describes fission quite well.)
Then cretion of a new Heavens and a new Earth.
Nowhere does it describe a period of time where there is an "apocalyptic aftermath."
Interestingly enough, the first book of Niven's I ever read was the Rinworld Engineers (second of three in the series). I read it probably 5 times that year. I have read it probably another 10 times in the 12 years since. The book was and is great.
I read Ringworld after the Engineers and thought it was good, but not as good at the Engineers. Funny huh?
I think this may have something to do with the excitement and intellictual stimulation we feel when we read something new. Then once the characters are known and the plot developed, the story and universe gets "stale."
In other words, decreasing quality of sequels may be due to something other than the writing.