Many diseases are mediated by the microflora living on and in the human body; e.g. we now know that ulcers mostly result from bacterial infections in the stomach. A lot of oral cancer comes from the STD HPV. I'd bet that a lot of coffee changes the balance of bateria and fungus and viruses living in the mouth, leading indirectly to a lower incidence of cancer.
Using an original Xbox / PS3 controller requires rooted device, last time I heard.
I dunno about Xbox controllers, but my Transformer Prime supports PS3 controllers out of the box, stock, no rooting. Just plug in via USB cable once, turn on Bluetooth, and you're set.
That's why this "Arena" thing seems so pointless. I've already done this. Hooked my Transformer up to the TV, and played Max Payne and Shadowgun with a PS3 controller. I don't see the value-add.
For the most part, the "crop failures" were a side-effect of a deliberate attempt to force the peasantry out of the fields and into collective farms and/or factories.
Which they thought would work because of 'inherited vernalization' and other such claptrap.
I'm not minimizing the evil that was involved. Part of the what made Stalin, Mao, et. al. evil is that they were willing to ditch any evidence that contradicted what they wanted to be true.
BTW, as to the Communist states under Stalin and Mao - they also explicitly rejected neo-Darwinian evolution and embraced (and enforced) Lysenkoism instead. The resulting crop failures when reality failed to match up to "worker's science" killed a huge fraction - possibly the majority - of the millions who died under those regimes.
Ironically, the people under Hitler, Stalin, and Mao would have been better off if their leaders had accepted neo-Darwinian evolution.
It is kind of silly sometimes, though. For a relatively obscure example, the PS3 game "Infamous 2" allows users to create and upload their own missions, with text and cutscenes and everything. But the words are censored. Any word that's 'bad' in any language. For example, you can't use the word 'after' in your missions, because apparently it's a swear word in Dutch or something. Other censored words include "original", "cul", "pipe", and "bite".
(Although, if you spell it "aftèr" you can get through the block.)
That's part of it. But it's not like Facebook is obligated to carry stuff they don't like. They have a perfect right to be stupid and intolerant laughingstocks.
Would be a complete nightmare to keep synchronous across multiple computers and server though.
And everyone in the real world still thinks at the same rate. With turn-based games, you can do a little better - e.g. chess clocks that give dissimilar players different amounts of time - but for a continuous game it's rougher. And picture, you're walking down a hall, and suddenly things go slower because someone all the way on the other side of the map starts sprinting. It adds a whole new layer of lag-like behavior on top of the relativistic effects you're trying to simulate.
The key thing about relativity is that, no matter what speed you're moving at, you feel the same. It's just that everything around you behaves differently. Slowing the game clock down because other people are going fast doesn't simulate that at all.
Main problem is simulating time dilation. Single-player, you could do it, I suppose. But you can't give multiple players their own individual time rates.
Please Dr. Manhattan, go into your small room and cry.
A troll said mean things about me, of course I'm going to feel terrible! Or, y'know, not.
The natzis, Yemach Shemam if I might add, were not stupid, nor were they insane nor ignorant.
Actually, they were very ignorant. But you, too seem to have only read about Dawkins rather than, y'know, reading his actual words. The actual statement Dawkins made was: "It is absolutely safe to say that, if you meet somebody who claims not to believe in evolution, that person is ignorant, stupid, or insane (or wicked, but I'd rather not consider that)."
Dawkins... argued that Evolution proves that God Doesn't Exist
Um, you need to read another of his books. He never argued that. What he argues is that evolution directly counters a specific argument for God, the 'argument from design in biology', and indirectly undermines other design arguments because it forms an 'existence proof' that other sources for design exist than directed intelligence.
The conjunction is "or". If you are not stupid or insane, and you deny evolution, then you are, perforce, ignorant.
If you are neither stupid nor ignorant, then it would seem you're insane.
Dawkins believes - and I happen to agree - that the evidence supporting evolution is just overwhelming. Denying it takes the kind of mental gymnastics or sheer ignorance of flat-Earthers. If he's correct, then his characterization is accurate. You can accuse him of being wrong about the evidence for evolution, but you can't accuse him of being mean-spirited.
When I run this search, I get over 3.8 million hits. That's just on blogs.
In my my experience, most theists on the internet are insulting towards atheists. They link Hitler with atheism (Hitler sure wasn't a traditional Christian, but he was no atheist), they expressly claim that people become atheist just so they can justify their evil ways, etc. If you want to find argumentative people in any area, you won't be searching long.
So you can point to the existence of argumentative atheists. Bully for you. Now, do you have "grounding in fact" to indicate that "hardcore internet atheists" are, say, a majority of atheists or a major problem or something?
Religion can be (and usually is) a shortcut. But then it's just an immature or bad philosophy - it's still a philosophy. Plenty of atheists have undeveloped philosophies, too. (Tends to be less common since atheism is usually decided upon rather than inculcated from birth, but it does happen.)
Personally, I classify a philosophy/wordview/Weltanschauung as a 'religion' if it contains some element of the supernatural. If it doesn't contain a supernatural element, then it's not a religion.
What's actually effective is having a mix of confrontational and diffident proponents. The classic example is Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. Malcolm X is supposed to have said something like, "They worked with [King] so they wouldn't have to work with me."
(That said, Dawkins is far less confrontational than many theist portray him as.)
Hi, I "do things" - even desktop things - with my computer, and it's running XFCE on Xubuntu.
Admittedly, it's a fairly beefy machine (i7-2600K, 16GB RAM, GeForce GTX 560 Ti, 3 TB disc) but I haven't run into anything I can't do on it. What am I missing out on by using XFCE?
Firstt off, if it were an "office of efficient and effective programs", and it just so happened that the most efficient and effective programs tended to be faith-based, that wouldn't be a problem. It's when they are specifically seeking out faith-based programs that the problem comes in. Using faith as a proxy for efficiency and effectiveness http://usgovinfo.about.com/od/rightsandfreedoms/a/bushchurch.htm ">is the problem.
I'm sure that at some point the atheists will be running everything from the White House down. I just hope I and my family don't live to see that day
Yeah, yeah, the terrible atheists are coming. Sorry my asking for effective government policy implies that I crave to be a totalitarian oppressor.
and particularly not if I'm in need.
The differences between religious and secular giving aren't that pronounced. And that situation is influenced by lots of propaganda that there's no reason to be good to others if you don't believe in God, which seems to be something of a self-fulfilling prophecy for people who lose faith sometimes.
I objected to faith-based programs at the White House. As in, " religion driv[ing] policy that [atheists] have to live with." So your response is rather beside the point.
If you want to go that route, how do you know that the unicorns didn't create the universe last Thursday with all our memories pre-loaded? I am perfectly willing to grant that such a proposition is impossible to disprove. Of course, that's logically equivalent to saying that it makes no difference whatsoever if it's true or not. There's no possible observation that could be made that would in any way have any bearing on its truth or falsehood.
So guess what? Piss on such ideas. Even if they were true, they'd still be totally worthless.
In passing, I note that I've seen people who argue both that (a) the universe is so fine-tuned that any change would make life impossible, so God must have designed the universe, and (b) the laws of nature might have been totally different in the past, so that 4.6 billion years of radioactive decay could happen in 1/750,000th of the time without evaporating the Earth. I don't know if you're one of that ilk, but it wouldn't surprise me.
This is exactly the kind of thinking that leads to the persecution of Jews in Germany and Russia (Soviet Union) and Falun Gong in China and.....
Only if he really meant it, not as a joke. On the other hand, theseguys don't seem to be joking, not unlike the old witch hunts.
My question is, why do Atheists care about proselytizing their Atheism to others?
I don't really care if people believe in unicorns. But then, there isn't an "Office of Unicorn-Based Programs" in the White House. Atheists tend to care in direct proportion to how much religion drives policy that they have to live with.
Slashdot Mirror
Many diseases are mediated by the microflora living on and in the human body; e.g. we now know that ulcers mostly result from bacterial infections in the stomach. A lot of oral cancer comes from the STD HPV. I'd bet that a lot of coffee changes the balance of bateria and fungus and viruses living in the mouth, leading indirectly to a lower incidence of cancer.
I dunno about Xbox controllers, but my Transformer Prime supports PS3 controllers out of the box, stock, no rooting. Just plug in via USB cable once, turn on Bluetooth, and you're set.
That's why this "Arena" thing seems so pointless. I've already done this. Hooked my Transformer up to the TV, and played Max Payne and Shadowgun with a PS3 controller. I don't see the value-add.
Which they thought would work because of 'inherited vernalization' and other such claptrap.
I'm not minimizing the evil that was involved. Part of the what made Stalin, Mao, et. al. evil is that they were willing to ditch any evidence that contradicted what they wanted to be true.
BTW, as to the Communist states under Stalin and Mao - they also explicitly rejected neo-Darwinian evolution and embraced (and enforced) Lysenkoism instead. The resulting crop failures when reality failed to match up to "worker's science" killed a huge fraction - possibly the majority - of the millions who died under those regimes.
Ironically, the people under Hitler, Stalin, and Mao would have been better off if their leaders had accepted neo-Darwinian evolution.
(Although, if you spell it "aftèr" you can get through the block.)
That's part of it. But it's not like Facebook is obligated to carry stuff they don't like. They have a perfect right to be stupid and intolerant laughingstocks.
And everyone in the real world still thinks at the same rate. With turn-based games, you can do a little better - e.g. chess clocks that give dissimilar players different amounts of time - but for a continuous game it's rougher. And picture, you're walking down a hall, and suddenly things go slower because someone all the way on the other side of the map starts sprinting. It adds a whole new layer of lag-like behavior on top of the relativistic effects you're trying to simulate.
The key thing about relativity is that, no matter what speed you're moving at, you feel the same. It's just that everything around you behaves differently. Slowing the game clock down because other people are going fast doesn't simulate that at all.
Main problem is simulating time dilation. Single-player, you could do it, I suppose. But you can't give multiple players their own individual time rates.
A troll said mean things about me, of course I'm going to feel terrible! Or, y'know, not.
Actually, they were very ignorant. But you, too seem to have only read about Dawkins rather than, y'know, reading his actual words. The actual statement Dawkins made was: "It is absolutely safe to say that, if you meet somebody who claims not to believe in evolution, that person is ignorant, stupid, or insane (or wicked, but I'd rather not consider that)."
The Nazi's rejected evolution because they thought the human 'races' had been created separately by God. They were ignorant... and wicked. And frequently insane, too.
There, there. Don't cry. :-)
They were invented by a racist, too.
This shows that you've gotten your information about Dawkins from sources other than Dawkins. Try reading one of his books rather than reading about his books. If you can't bring yourself to do that, try reading David Sloan Wilson or Jerry Coyne and find out why 'microevolution' is itself a problematic distinction.
Um, you need to read another of his books. He never argued that. What he argues is that evolution directly counters a specific argument for God, the 'argument from design in biology', and indirectly undermines other design arguments because it forms an 'existence proof' that other sources for design exist than directed intelligence.
If you are neither stupid nor ignorant, then it would seem you're insane.
Dawkins believes - and I happen to agree - that the evidence supporting evolution is just overwhelming. Denying it takes the kind of mental gymnastics or sheer ignorance of flat-Earthers. If he's correct, then his characterization is accurate. You can accuse him of being wrong about the evidence for evolution, but you can't accuse him of being mean-spirited.
In my my experience, most theists on the internet are insulting towards atheists. They link Hitler with atheism (Hitler sure wasn't a traditional Christian, but he was no atheist), they expressly claim that people become atheist just so they can justify their evil ways, etc. If you want to find argumentative people in any area, you won't be searching long.
So you can point to the existence of argumentative atheists. Bully for you. Now, do you have "grounding in fact" to indicate that "hardcore internet atheists" are, say, a majority of atheists or a major problem or something?
Communism. Religion or not?
Buddhism. Religion or not?
Confuscianism. Religion or not?
(You also might want to look at David Sloan Wilson's "Evolution For Everyone", in particular the chapters on religion.)
Why?
Personally, I classify a philosophy/wordview/Weltanschauung as a 'religion' if it contains some element of the supernatural. If it doesn't contain a supernatural element, then it's not a religion.
(That said, Dawkins is far less confrontational than many theist portray him as.)
Actually, 'religion' is a proper subset of 'philosophy'. All religions are philosophies, but not all philosophies are religions.
Admittedly, it's a fairly beefy machine (i7-2600K, 16GB RAM, GeForce GTX 560 Ti, 3 TB disc) but I haven't run into anything I can't do on it. What am I missing out on by using XFCE?
Two problems.
To prevent travesties like this.
Yeah, yeah, the terrible atheists are coming. Sorry my asking for effective government policy implies that I crave to be a totalitarian oppressor.
The differences between religious and secular giving aren't that pronounced. And that situation is influenced by lots of propaganda that there's no reason to be good to others if you don't believe in God, which seems to be something of a self-fulfilling prophecy for people who lose faith sometimes.
I objected to faith-based programs at the White House. As in, " religion driv[ing] policy that [atheists] have to live with." So your response is rather beside the point.
So guess what? Piss on such ideas. Even if they were true, they'd still be totally worthless.
In passing, I note that I've seen people who argue both that (a) the universe is so fine-tuned that any change would make life impossible, so God must have designed the universe, and (b) the laws of nature might have been totally different in the past, so that 4.6 billion years of radioactive decay could happen in 1/750,000th of the time without evaporating the Earth. I don't know if you're one of that ilk, but it wouldn't surprise me.
Only if he really meant it, not as a joke. On the other hand, these guys don't seem to be joking, not unlike the old witch hunts.
I don't really care if people believe in unicorns. But then, there isn't an "Office of Unicorn-Based Programs" in the White House. Atheists tend to care in direct proportion to how much religion drives policy that they have to live with.