Conservative relative to what? Haven't you noticed that the Republican party isn't very conservative anymore? It's only conservative when you compare it to France.
There are several injunctions in the Bible commanding Christians to obey their government. For example, in Romans 13:1-7, Christians are told that God has placed rulers in their positions, and therefore, they should be obeyed. Remember that this must have been very controversial, since at the time Paul wrote this, Rome was very much against Christianity, and regularly persecuted the radical sect. Jesus made similar recommendations, specifically he John 19:9-11 told Pilate during his "trial" that it was God who granted Pilate his authority. Jesus also controversially told the Jews to pay taxes to the hated Caesar.
Why? Even though the government was doing repulsive and unfair and unjust things to them, Christians were commanded to obey.
I think the reason is because Jesus and Paul were very careful to point out that they were fundamentally concerned about sin and God, and not government. It's not that they didn't have a sense of justice, it's just that it is a lower priority. They want to fight the battles that are most worth fighting. Since Christianity on a fundamental level tears apart human allegiances by surrendering to God, Jesus and Paul did not want to make it worse by picking fights with human governments, which as Paul argues, are for the good of humanity in the first place. This is visible in China today, where the underground church emphatically states that they are not against the Chinese government. Unfortunately, this mindset is often taken advantage of by fascists (I believe Franco was supported by the Catholic church), and I feel that American Christians are to some degree abused in this way by the Republican party. Also, in many cases this message that I'm outlining is missed since for example, many Christian organizations were recently unfairly kicked out of Venezuela by Chavez who associates missionaries with CIA spies. Christians in the middle east have a *very* difficult time disassociating themselves with the CIA and US government. Christians want to be concerned about the things of God, not politics.
Of course many public figure Christians do not model this mindset by believing that the US should be turned into a theocracy modeled upon ancient Israel, and I think it's a mistake on their part. Other Christians make fools of themselves by recommending Chavez be assassinated, and others get bored and make audacious claims. On the other hand, they wouldn't be so visible unless they weren't so belligerent in the first place, so it's an unfair sampling of Christianity.
All that said... Christianity is obviously fundamentally concerned about justice, and many notable Christians stand up for what is right. Although I'm not a Catholic, I highly respect people like the Catholic Zimbabwe guy who is taking a stand against Mugabe, the Philippine Cardinal Sin who stood up against Marcos, Wilberforce who made a stand against slavery in Britain, Martin Luther King Jr who took a stand against racism, and many others. As good citizens, Christians are willing to take patriotic stands.
What Christians tell each other is that they'll obey authority figures unless they're told to do something that goes against Biblical principles, which is relatively rare in many Western countries. In the absence of clear Biblical direction, the official Christian position is unclear, and many Christians take advantage of the situation, and many other Christians are taken advantage of.
I agree with you, but in a slightly different sense.
I think the reason why the church didn't like people translating the Bible into a language other than latin was because Jesus routinely challenged the religious establishment. In an era when the church felt it had to support the crusades, buy indulgences, buy their relatives out of purgatory, and when in general "good works" look a lot like more money in church coffers, they couldn't have common people challenging the assertions made by the church.
Having holy texts in your own language means that the religious authorities have less control over you.
Well, my understanding is that in the Muslim ranking of non-Muslims, Christians and Jews are in an entirely separate category from the pre-Islamic pagans and atheists.
As I understand, the Quran is by definition in Arabic, since Muslims view the Quran itself as the validating miracle of Islam. However, I really wish that a bunch of them would sit down and produce or authorize a translation that we non-Arabs can understand and not misquote so easily. I don't see how it's in their best interest to always defend the Quran from people misquoting it because they didn't have a reliable translation.
The irony is that in the Cruelty in the Quran video the article is referring to, what's being presented are not quotes, but paraphrases. I took the liberty of looking up some of them, and although you can see where Gisbourne is getting his paraphrase, I'm not sure that he's always correct.
For example, one of the slides at 5:06 references Sura 28:62-64. In my copy of (Yusuf Ali translation) the Quran, it is apparent that Gisbourne went ahead and helpfully replaced "them" with "Christians". Looking at the passage, it doesn't even appear to me that this is a correct paraphrase since I think Muhammad was addressing polytheists, not Christians. But I'm not an expert, so I don't know. Either way, Gisbourne made a logic jump there.
I'm just refuting any claim that these are "quotes".
First of all, it should be clear to you by this point that you will have to accept a paycut. On the other hand, I've talked to people who said they were incredibly bored at their old job, and were more than happy to give it up to do something interesting.
Since I'm not 30 yet, I don't know what people mean by "rusty" skills and whether it's reasonable to consider whether you can learn what you need in 1 to 2 years. In my experience (i'm currently a computational chemistry grad student) I just learn the math I need as I go along. For most research problems, I would imagine that you do not start from scratch -- a lot of code is already available (probably in fortran) and if you start a project it will involve simply adding on or modifying it a little bit. Honestly, you do not use the majority of the math you learned...
However, if you want to get into a field like physics, I would imagine that the difficulty will be learning all the theory that is already in place. In theoretical chemistry, we have ~70 years of people poking around. If you have a good advisor, you won't need to worry about all that because they'll immediately direct you to an interesting project. Are you looking to start grad school or to get a job as a research position -- postdoc? The question is can you bring in enough skills for them to be willing to fund you out of their grant money, and add to that factor the question of whether there are other job seekers who have a degree.
When some people say that someone is "too old" for science, what they are usually referring to is probably not that they can't do it, but that they aren't the kind of risk takers who accept challenging projects. At some point, I think people begin to just find projects that produce papers, and not interesting science. I don't think there's a problem either way since honestly, both types are needed.
You might want to consider applying for at least a masters program if available in the field of your interest (many schools don't offer masters in fields like physics, chemistry). If not, maybe apply to a phd program. Honestly, advisors put up with a lot from their phd students, whereas they have higher expectations from their postdocs.
Lastly, it is important to remember that you *do not* need to be a good programmer in order to get good science done. I've been learning this. Many scientists produce really crappy code that produces good results. They don't need to understand the math because they simply link to a library. And, once you have legacy code that produces good, correct results, it's rare that people see the need to rewrite it. My point is, being a skilled programmer is probably not highly valued since scientists have demonstrated that it's unnecessary.
On the other hand, I'm sure companies like Gaussian, Schrodinger, etc like to have people good at writing visualization code. There are a lot of people looking into visualization research -- which requires good programmers -- because many biological entities like proteins need that kind of help to be understood.
So here's a summary from my rambling: 1) If you want to do science/engineering research, you probably need to go to grad school. 2) If you're interested in visualization, then there are probably a lot of research groups and companies in the biology/nanoscale/engineering realm who'd be happy to take you.
1) Free stuff that I can't use doesn't attract me anymore. I like pens, playing cards, notebooks...
2) I usually try to look at a list before I go into the arena. So put pithy info in any abstracts you can.
3) I like to get the information I need to know about your company efficiently. For example, the information that should be easy to obtain would include 1) what your company does 2) what positions are available 3) who you're looking for 4) contact info.
4) Most handouts available at many booths are just full of "motivational speaking", and I'm not interested in that. If you've clearly stated what you do, then I'll know whether I'm motivated or not.
5) Personally, I don't really care how much you spend on your brochures if you do not include the information I need. You're not going to "trick" me into working for your company anyway.
they probably mean of hollywood movies, 50% of those pirated worldwide are in canada. so both "world" and "hollywood" probably need to be in the phrasing.
The article probably means 50% of hollywood produced movies. Obviously hollywood could care less (and wouldn't have any statistics for) whether bollywood et al movies get pirated.
I enjoyed my TI89 in college, and made good use of it (before I started using Mathematica). But the fact of the matter is that the only criteria that really matters is what you're allowed to take into a test with you. When doing homework, Mathematica or something similar is probably better, and you can get substantial academic discount on that kind of software (at my school it's free).
Eventually, you'll probably find that you only use your calculator for simple calculations. Even honors chemistry classes don't require more than that; all you'll use it for is pV=nRT, pH, half life, etc. You'll be provided with a simple formula, and if it really is an honors class -- you'll be challenged *more* on how to use the formulas than in how long it takes you to punch them into a calculator.
So basically, there are steep diminishing returns on buying fancy calculators. Don't buy into the advertising.
does not try to bend the world to fit the Bible and live in the past, avoiding relativism Isn't that a contradiction? Something is going to have to have the final authoritative say.
mathematicians use proofs
scientists use experiments
judges have the law
Linux hackers have Torvalds
post modernists use themselves
Catholics give the Pope the final word
Protestants give the Bible the final word
Which category do progressive Christians fall into? I understand what you mean by avoiding, but even some relativism puts yourself as the decider. Something has to be the final arbiter of truth, and if you use yourself, how will you recognize your mistakes?
Compare this to some of the (let's be honest) hate speech coming from the Christian Right. Yes. Let's compare them because that hate speech is certainly representative of what most Christians think.
Look, everybody hates it when they are pigeon holed based on what some vocal minority say.
Any person that calls themselves a Christian but hates homosexuals, Muslims, non-Christians, liberals, etc. is sorely deluding themselves. or, you might say, hasn't RTFM
I think Tetris is great for the same reason as you. At some point, my fingers just know what to do.
One of the most relaxing things I can do is turn on some music to match my mood and play Tetris. The combination is very relaxing, and somehow it seems to me that music and Tetris are actually enhancing each other.
This just in: many high school aged students have to go to college to be challenged!! They have to go to college to learn what they should have in high school! More at 11!!
At 11: This just in, many US colleges {can be|are} easy too!! Students have to get advanced degrees to learn what they should have in college!!
i was summoned for jury duty recently. the biggest lesson for me was that lawyers are not there to uphold the law, be fair, be honest; they're there to win. the only guidance as to what the law is are the court precedents since the law must be interpreted before it can be understood. and then, interpretations you don't like can be challenged if they were not given by a high enough court.
and even furthermore, you can make an argument related to mathematical induction about how this works. just because you have a court ruling in your favor (the base step) doesn't mean it will work for you (the inductive step).
by another analogy. consider the bible -- tons of text in there. but for any verse which might seem clear to you, you are almost guaranteed to find two christians who will disagree animately as to what it means.
the answers given were unsatisfactory, but i think the whole point is that the answers were pointing out that there is little by way of reliable foundation available.
It seems to me that on some high enough level, the creation of law depends upon the intuition of the people. On a case by case basis, you can't argue "I don't feel guilty", but if false ideas are spread enough, then when enough people get sued, the law might begin to recognize that the "false ideas" had something legitimate about them.
Maybe this is just wishful thinking. But remember that the Bill of Rights exists on this side of the Boston Tea Party, American Revolution, etc, which was... illegal...
i guess the fundamental element in a business is that they want to make money. if the customers want some kind of ideology (whether you agree with it or not), then you'd better sell it to them. here in the US that means that they promote freedom (well, usually) of information but else where, those ideals are different.
you can't always decouple the symbiotic relationship between what's good for business and what's good for ideals. i think corporations might want to subscribe to Doing the Right Thing (DRT), but they'll only do it when they feel that they don't lose profits (taking into account that DRT might make them popular in some markets). for example, how is the US government going to tap phone wires w/o att's cooperation? how is att going to operate at all if the government doesn't give it the foundation it requires?
the problem that yahoo et al face is that because they are american based companies, they need to understand that american ideals relating to freedom of information are different than the ideals of the chinese government. the only way that western ideas about information will play a role in chinese (and other similar) markets, as far as profit margins are concerned, is if people who hold "western" ideals boycott these companies and thereby add some kind of "cost" to yahoo et al for them to want to censor information in china. hence reports like these.
the other solution would be for corporations to try to up hold some kind of motto like "do no evil" and try to convince themselves and others that somehow they are in the business for *more* than just profit. however, what do you do when these goals conflict? which criteria trumps the other? history has shown time and time again that for businesses when DRT is not profitable (and it rarely is)... profits (and usually the short term variety) dictate all decision making. DRT might be profitable in the short run if it wins you publicity, but given the short attention spans of people, DRT is probably never profitable in the long run.
and then, the nature of competition is that if you are willing to pay the monetary costs of DRT, your competitor might not be...
Slashdot Mirror
Because it speaks volumes, that's why.
Conservative relative to what? Haven't you noticed that the Republican party isn't very conservative anymore? It's only conservative when you compare it to France.
There are several injunctions in the Bible commanding Christians to obey their government. For example, in Romans 13:1-7, Christians are told that God has placed rulers in their positions, and therefore, they should be obeyed. Remember that this must have been very controversial, since at the time Paul wrote this, Rome was very much against Christianity, and regularly persecuted the radical sect. Jesus made similar recommendations, specifically he John 19:9-11 told Pilate during his "trial" that it was God who granted Pilate his authority. Jesus also controversially told the Jews to pay taxes to the hated Caesar.
Why? Even though the government was doing repulsive and unfair and unjust things to them, Christians were commanded to obey.
I think the reason is because Jesus and Paul were very careful to point out that they were fundamentally concerned about sin and God, and not government. It's not that they didn't have a sense of justice, it's just that it is a lower priority. They want to fight the battles that are most worth fighting. Since Christianity on a fundamental level tears apart human allegiances by surrendering to God, Jesus and Paul did not want to make it worse by picking fights with human governments, which as Paul argues, are for the good of humanity in the first place. This is visible in China today, where the underground church emphatically states that they are not against the Chinese government. Unfortunately, this mindset is often taken advantage of by fascists (I believe Franco was supported by the Catholic church), and I feel that American Christians are to some degree abused in this way by the Republican party. Also, in many cases this message that I'm outlining is missed since for example, many Christian organizations were recently unfairly kicked out of Venezuela by Chavez who associates missionaries with CIA spies. Christians in the middle east have a *very* difficult time disassociating themselves with the CIA and US government. Christians want to be concerned about the things of God, not politics.
Of course many public figure Christians do not model this mindset by believing that the US should be turned into a theocracy modeled upon ancient Israel, and I think it's a mistake on their part. Other Christians make fools of themselves by recommending Chavez be assassinated, and others get bored and make audacious claims. On the other hand, they wouldn't be so visible unless they weren't so belligerent in the first place, so it's an unfair sampling of Christianity.
All that said... Christianity is obviously fundamentally concerned about justice, and many notable Christians stand up for what is right. Although I'm not a Catholic, I highly respect people like the Catholic Zimbabwe guy who is taking a stand against Mugabe, the Philippine Cardinal Sin who stood up against Marcos, Wilberforce who made a stand against slavery in Britain, Martin Luther King Jr who took a stand against racism, and many others. As good citizens, Christians are willing to take patriotic stands.
What Christians tell each other is that they'll obey authority figures unless they're told to do something that goes against Biblical principles, which is relatively rare in many Western countries. In the absence of clear Biblical direction, the official Christian position is unclear, and many Christians take advantage of the situation, and many other Christians are taken advantage of.
I'd recommend Caltech. It has a great sports program now that both it's basketball teams have won a game in the last decade.
I agree with you, but in a slightly different sense.
I think the reason why the church didn't like people translating the Bible into a language other than latin was because Jesus routinely challenged the religious establishment. In an era when the church felt it had to support the crusades, buy indulgences, buy their relatives out of purgatory, and when in general "good works" look a lot like more money in church coffers, they couldn't have common people challenging the assertions made by the church.
Having holy texts in your own language means that the religious authorities have less control over you.
Well, my understanding is that in the Muslim ranking of non-Muslims, Christians and Jews are in an entirely separate category from the pre-Islamic pagans and atheists.
As I understand, the Quran is by definition in Arabic, since Muslims view the Quran itself as the validating miracle of Islam. However, I really wish that a bunch of them would sit down and produce or authorize a translation that we non-Arabs can understand and not misquote so easily. I don't see how it's in their best interest to always defend the Quran from people misquoting it because they didn't have a reliable translation.
The irony is that in the Cruelty in the Quran video the article is referring to, what's being presented are not quotes, but paraphrases. I took the liberty of looking up some of them, and although you can see where Gisbourne is getting his paraphrase, I'm not sure that he's always correct.
For example, one of the slides at 5:06 references Sura 28:62-64. In my copy of (Yusuf Ali translation) the Quran, it is apparent that Gisbourne went ahead and helpfully replaced "them" with "Christians". Looking at the passage, it doesn't even appear to me that this is a correct paraphrase since I think Muhammad was addressing polytheists, not Christians. But I'm not an expert, so I don't know. Either way, Gisbourne made a logic jump there.
I'm just refuting any claim that these are "quotes".
First of all, it should be clear to you by this point that you will have to accept a paycut. On the other hand, I've talked to people who said they were incredibly bored at their old job, and were more than happy to give it up to do something interesting.
Since I'm not 30 yet, I don't know what people mean by "rusty" skills and whether it's reasonable to consider whether you can learn what you need in 1 to 2 years. In my experience (i'm currently a computational chemistry grad student) I just learn the math I need as I go along. For most research problems, I would imagine that you do not start from scratch -- a lot of code is already available (probably in fortran) and if you start a project it will involve simply adding on or modifying it a little bit. Honestly, you do not use the majority of the math you learned...
However, if you want to get into a field like physics, I would imagine that the difficulty will be learning all the theory that is already in place. In theoretical chemistry, we have ~70 years of people poking around. If you have a good advisor, you won't need to worry about all that because they'll immediately direct you to an interesting project. Are you looking to start grad school or to get a job as a research position -- postdoc? The question is can you bring in enough skills for them to be willing to fund you out of their grant money, and add to that factor the question of whether there are other job seekers who have a degree.
When some people say that someone is "too old" for science, what they are usually referring to is probably not that they can't do it, but that they aren't the kind of risk takers who accept challenging projects. At some point, I think people begin to just find projects that produce papers, and not interesting science. I don't think there's a problem either way since honestly, both types are needed.
You might want to consider applying for at least a masters program if available in the field of your interest (many schools don't offer masters in fields like physics, chemistry). If not, maybe apply to a phd program. Honestly, advisors put up with a lot from their phd students, whereas they have higher expectations from their postdocs.
Lastly, it is important to remember that you *do not* need to be a good programmer in order to get good science done. I've been learning this. Many scientists produce really crappy code that produces good results. They don't need to understand the math because they simply link to a library. And, once you have legacy code that produces good, correct results, it's rare that people see the need to rewrite it. My point is, being a skilled programmer is probably not highly valued since scientists have demonstrated that it's unnecessary.
On the other hand, I'm sure companies like Gaussian, Schrodinger, etc like to have people good at writing visualization code. There are a lot of people looking into visualization research -- which requires good programmers -- because many biological entities like proteins need that kind of help to be understood.
So here's a summary from my rambling:
1) If you want to do science/engineering research, you probably need to go to grad school.
2) If you're interested in visualization, then there are probably a lot of research groups and companies in the biology/nanoscale/engineering realm who'd be happy to take you.
For me:
1) Free stuff that I can't use doesn't attract me anymore. I like pens, playing cards, notebooks...
2) I usually try to look at a list before I go into the arena. So put pithy info in any abstracts you can.
3) I like to get the information I need to know about your company efficiently. For example, the information that should be easy to obtain would include 1) what your company does 2) what positions are available 3) who you're looking for 4) contact info.
4) Most handouts available at many booths are just full of "motivational speaking", and I'm not interested in that. If you've clearly stated what you do, then I'll know whether I'm motivated or not.
5) Personally, I don't really care how much you spend on your brochures if you do not include the information I need. You're not going to "trick" me into working for your company anyway.
they probably mean of hollywood movies, 50% of those pirated worldwide are in canada. so both "world" and "hollywood" probably need to be in the phrasing.
The threat is primarily against the managers of the theaters, and only secondarily against ordinary Canadians.
Arguably, while Canadians will still find ways to see the movies if the movie is delayed, the theater chains will see their profits plummet.
The article probably means 50% of hollywood produced movies. Obviously hollywood could care less (and wouldn't have any statistics for) whether bollywood et al movies get pirated.
I enjoyed my TI89 in college, and made good use of it (before I started using Mathematica). But the fact of the matter is that the only criteria that really matters is what you're allowed to take into a test with you. When doing homework, Mathematica or something similar is probably better, and you can get substantial academic discount on that kind of software (at my school it's free).
Eventually, you'll probably find that you only use your calculator for simple calculations. Even honors chemistry classes don't require more than that; all you'll use it for is pV=nRT, pH, half life, etc. You'll be provided with a simple formula, and if it really is an honors class -- you'll be challenged *more* on how to use the formulas than in how long it takes you to punch them into a calculator.
So basically, there are steep diminishing returns on buying fancy calculators. Don't buy into the advertising.
Which category do progressive Christians fall into? I understand what you mean by avoiding, but even some relativism puts yourself as the decider. Something has to be the final arbiter of truth, and if you use yourself, how will you recognize your mistakes?
Look, everybody hates it when they are pigeon holed based on what some vocal minority say.
i.e. the Bible
Paraphrase:
:-p
Christians are good for Jesus
Atheists are good for nothing
I think Tetris is great for the same reason as you. At some point, my fingers just know what to do.
One of the most relaxing things I can do is turn on some music to match my mood and play Tetris. The combination is very relaxing, and somehow it seems to me that music and Tetris are actually enhancing each other.
This just in: many high school aged students have to go to college to be challenged!! They have to go to college to learn what they should have in high school! More at 11!!
At 11: This just in, many US colleges {can be|are} easy too!! Students have to get advanced degrees to learn what they should have in college!!
yea i agree. i would have appreciated an analysis of appropriate lines of defense coupled with an analysis of how successful those arguments would be.
i was summoned for jury duty recently. the biggest lesson for me was that lawyers are not there to uphold the law, be fair, be honest; they're there to win. the only guidance as to what the law is are the court precedents since the law must be interpreted before it can be understood. and then, interpretations you don't like can be challenged if they were not given by a high enough court.
and even furthermore, you can make an argument related to mathematical induction about how this works. just because you have a court ruling in your favor (the base step) doesn't mean it will work for you (the inductive step).
by another analogy. consider the bible -- tons of text in there. but for any verse which might seem clear to you, you are almost guaranteed to find two christians who will disagree animately as to what it means.
the answers given were unsatisfactory, but i think the whole point is that the answers were pointing out that there is little by way of reliable foundation available.
It seems to me that on some high enough level, the creation of law depends upon the intuition of the people. On a case by case basis, you can't argue "I don't feel guilty", but if false ideas are spread enough, then when enough people get sued, the law might begin to recognize that the "false ideas" had something legitimate about them.
Maybe this is just wishful thinking. But remember that the Bill of Rights exists on this side of the Boston Tea Party, American Revolution, etc, which was... illegal...
Socialist countries buy more for their population than non-Socialist countries!!!
More at.... cccrrrrr....[broken transmission]
i guess the fundamental element in a business is that they want to make money. if the customers want some kind of ideology (whether you agree with it or not), then you'd better sell it to them. here in the US that means that they promote freedom (well, usually) of information but else where, those ideals are different.
you can't always decouple the symbiotic relationship between what's good for business and what's good for ideals. i think corporations might want to subscribe to Doing the Right Thing (DRT), but they'll only do it when they feel that they don't lose profits (taking into account that DRT might make them popular in some markets). for example, how is the US government going to tap phone wires w/o att's cooperation? how is att going to operate at all if the government doesn't give it the foundation it requires?
the problem that yahoo et al face is that because they are american based companies, they need to understand that american ideals relating to freedom of information are different than the ideals of the chinese government. the only way that western ideas about information will play a role in chinese (and other similar) markets, as far as profit margins are concerned, is if people who hold "western" ideals boycott these companies and thereby add some kind of "cost" to yahoo et al for them to want to censor information in china. hence reports like these.
the other solution would be for corporations to try to up hold some kind of motto like "do no evil" and try to convince themselves and others that somehow they are in the business for *more* than just profit. however, what do you do when these goals conflict? which criteria trumps the other? history has shown time and time again that for businesses when DRT is not profitable (and it rarely is)... profits (and usually the short term variety) dictate all decision making. DRT might be profitable in the short run if it wins you publicity, but given the short attention spans of people, DRT is probably never profitable in the long run.
and then, the nature of competition is that if you are willing to pay the monetary costs of DRT, your competitor might not be...