Good call; one of the things that has helped in keeping me employed is that I learned how to speak to groups of people at a young age. It really shows when you're interviewing against a panel and come off as confident, knowledgeable, and eager, rather than terrified, stupid, and reluctant.
I'll keep this short. Athiests are, admittedly, the small minority in the US. The US is a democracy in which free speech is expressed. Generally, only laws that are not disapproved by the significant majority of the US may be passed. The significant majority of the US are Christians or at least religous and believe that religous speech broadcasted must not be eliminated. So form your own channel and advocate to your heart's content is my advice to you, or move to a like-minded country if it really annoys you that much.
Talk about not even reading my post. When did I say we needed to get of religious broadcasting? Hm? I just don't want non-religious broadcasting to be actively discriminated against, which it is.
On top of that, the entire reason our government is structured the way it is, is to prevent something called a 'tyranny of the majority'. Basically, the Founding Fathers, idiots that they were, wanted a government where no large group could easily take rights away from a smaller group. Ergo, they set up a system of indirect representation, e.g. a republic, by which elected officials would stand between mob rule and the rights of minorities.
Why on earth would an athiest advocacy group expect the benefits of a religous group? They could only receive those benefits if they admitted that they were, in fact, also a religion which is the last thing any athiest I know would want to do.
Nice non sequitur. Freethinking atheists want the same legal protections for their institutions that religions get precisely because their institutions are non-religious. By showing favor to religious institutions over secular ones, the government is violating the Lemon test, and fostering excessive entanglement with religion. In short, as long as religious institutions receive preferential treatment over any other non- (or for-, in the case of Scientology) profit group, there is a problem in this country.
Why don't you move to China or N. Korea then? They very rigorously inforce these rules there. Nothing above the state after all, n'est pas? France might be up your alley too, but they aren't quite as disciplined as the other nations yet, but they're getting there.
Of course. Better our leaders do anything they want in the 'name of God', rather than being accountable to the public. The original poster didn't say, "Gee, I want to move to a totalitarian country!", he said, "I'm fucking tired of all of these religious wackos pushing their views on me!"
Big difference. Yet, I'd say 90% of the time someone complains about the growing problem with religion in the US, they are told to go to China. Then again, this is consistent with my experiences in dealing with rabid Christians -- they're nice only to people just like them, and want everyone else dead. Anyone who disagrees with the way Americans do things should get the hell out.
BTW, if you want to stay in the US (if you're in the US in the first place), you've got a remote; use it for crying out loud!!
Can't use a remote to change judicial proceedings where you are forced to 'swear in' on a Bible. Can't use a remote to stop hate crimes against the non-religious. Can't use a remote to keep our government from throwing science out of schools in favor of old sheepherder fairy-tales.
This is a free country.
Tell that to a black man living in Alabama today. Tell that to the gays living in the bible belt who can't come out for fear of being beaten to death. Tell that to the 'war criminals' being held in secret because they had the wrong headgear.
if you've got some money, you can even start up your own athiest advocacy cabel and/or broadcast channel, do fund raisers, form stupid talk shows and advocate religous intolerance to your heart's content
There are atheist advocacy groups, only they don't get the same protection under the law as religious advocacy groups. They also don't get the favoritism shown towards religious groups; you'll find bible clubs in many high schools, but many 'alternative religion' or freethinker clubs aren't allowed because they're 'religious'.
(so long as it isn't blatently hateful speech)....but Pat Robertson and Jerry Fallwell can blame atheists for 9/11. TV Christians can scream at us and tell us we're going to hell. Our own leaders can tell us we don't deserve to be citizens because we don't buy the Buy-Bull(tm).
Seriously, get a grip. BTW, I'm somewhat of an agnostic and totally disagree with you if it wasn't obvious by now.
You're also apparently living in a cave. The parent poster has some very valid points, and some of us non-religious types are very fucking scared about the way our country is turning. Being an atheist outside of a few select areas is, in the US, a dangerous thing, and that goes tenfold if you're at all vocal.
1. It's not "THE accepted theory", merely the one with the least contradictory evidence.
Guess all my bio and anthro professors were wrong, then. And my textbooks. And all of the lecturers whose lectures I've attended...
2. Evolution says NOTHING about how life ORIGINATED, only about how organism haves adapted over time. Maybe some one-celled organisms developed in the primordial soup, maybe God created many proto-animals within the First Six Days; either origin story is compatible with evolutionary theory.
No, it does a very good job of explaining how life originated -- read Dawkins. It's explained quite well, and in a way we can replicate in a laboratory.
If you're going to rant about the state of education, it helps if you have all of your own facts correct.
If you're going to rant about people having their facts correct, maybe you should check yours first.
Yet good teachers used to be more common...they're not few nowadays because good teachers get chased out of the system by zealots with a point to prove, and by parents bringing lawsuits against them for doing their jobs, because giving Johnny an 'F' and making him repeat third grade might 'hurt his self esteem'.
Even despite this, flash-card babies are often better than the parents; at least the flash-card babies repeat fact rather than wistful fiction.
Book-love isn't just literature; it's comic books, and science fiction, and stories of all types. Reading is also like any other form of exercise; it makes you a better reader, and has the side effect of making you a better writer. Considering how much information in our society is imparted through the written word, you would tend to think more people would look at reading as a valuable skill.
Furthermore, reading a book is not a passive experience -- you have to flip pages and use your imagination to 'fill in the blanks', whereas when watching a film, the entire experience is passive, and your body even drops (from a biochemical standpoint) down into the first stages of sleep. Playing games is better, but all you do is improve your skill at that one game, which isn't useful in the real world (for the most part). Games also do improve hand-eye coordination, but there are better ways of doing this -- they're called 'sports', and they not only improve coordination, but they provide exercise as well.
Films and video games do have their place, but it is more important to read.
There's a short story by Charles Sheffield titled 'Higher Education' -- you should read it. In this story, all schools can only teach the barest minimum of facts, and are almost totally crippled because of the threat of parental lawsuits. Most people no longer learn to read, instead relying on electronic readers which read text aloud for them.
In the story, one student gets kicked out of his school for playing a prank on a visiting congresswoman (oops). He signs up with an asteroid-belt mining company, who get full parental rights over him, because his real parents don't bother to read the contract -- they're more interested in the large chunk'o'change they get for signing him on.
He complains and whines about his training, and at one point questions his needing to learn to read. His instructor takes him into an ore transport, and reads out the section in the procedure manual which describes proper coupling with an ore carrier -- it's a technical process that would fill two hours' worth of video, but which can be described a single page of text.
The instructor tells him that the reason he needs to read is because he needs to be able to understand instructions quickly, or he will probably get himself killed. That the book can withstand more radiation, heat, and pressure than a human body, and will still be functional in environments that would destroy a reader.
Reading is survival, because information is survival.
Sadly, in my experience, Republicans stick to the rules...which they are more than happy to rewrite to suit their needs.
There's good reasons I don't like either party. Both are owned by corporate interests, both screw up in novel and horrible ways, and neither really gives a shit about the future. Show me a candidate from either party who would sacrifice, nee, even jeopardize his re-election and political career by standing up for his principles.
That was my experience as well; I liked that, in German classrooms, it was expected that you had read and comprehended the material, because if you hadn't, you were fscked.
American classrooms, on the other hand, baby-step you through everything. I hate sitting through an hour of class where all the professor does is go over the reading material he assigned the night before, because he knows that 75% of the class didn't read it.
The parents don't need to be smarter; just smart enough to give their kids a kick to start learning on their own. My dad, although I love him dearly, is an idiot when it comes to any type of real scientific knowledge -- he has a few crackpot theories on advanced physics, yet he doesn't understand even the basics of vector math, and thinks that an object dropped from a moving aeroplane will fall straight down -- instead of maintaining the same forward speed it had when it left the aircraft.
Yet this man inspired me to read, to study math and physics, to ask questions about the universe. He taught me to play chess, and how to find books in a library so that I could look up answers. He bought me an electronics experiment kit from Radio Shack so I could build my own radio.
He might have zip when it comes to scientific knowledge, but he still put me on the right track.
Science is full of dogma, unfounded beliefs, lack of proof, unstated assumptions, errors, etc. And science education usually does no more to address these problems than other academic disciplines.
At the fringes, yes -- there is a point where all some scientists do is the intellectual equivalent of mastrubation. There's also the crackpot fringe whose diplomas by-and-large come from mail-order diploma mills, but who write convincing-sounding books on the scientific validity of numerology in the bible and staple a 'PhD' at the end of their name -- just to sound credible.
Mainstream science, however, is all about proof, and if you don't have it, you get reamed. If you rely on unstated assumptions that turn out to be false, you get reamed. If you make errors, you get reamed when someone double-checks your work. This is why all of the Cold Fusion nuts have been sent to the fringes, along with the 'young earth' and 'flat earth' types -- because they refuse to acknowledge their mistakes.
Seriously. Show me an unfounded belief, error, or unstated assumption that has stuck around in physics, chemistry, biology, or any other scientific field for a signifigant period of time. Something that is clearly and demonstrably false, yet which the mainstream community refuses to correct. Good luck.
In large part, this problem can be placed squarely on the shoulders of American parents. The ones who are too busy working long hours to afford SUVs and big-screen TVs to spend time with their kids. Love is shown, not through sitting down and reading a book to your six-year-old, but by purchasing them a PlayStation.
Education begins at home; the schools can't be expected to inspire kids, especially when the two biggest influences on their lives are nominally apathetic towards everything but material acquisition. Few children will ever learn to love reading in a house where the parents don't, and critical thinking skills can't just be taught in the classroom, because the environment is just too limited.
Many parents also have this nasty habit of riding the educators long and hard, basically dictating what and how the school will teach. Nevermind the fact that the educators have spent years studying How To Educate -- the parents always know how to teach their kids better.
The end result is that schools have crippled their curriculums, by and large, because of the insane number of frivolous lawsuits brought on by irate parents, who were 'concerned' about what their kids were learning. They didn't want their kids learning about things that might upset them, or that might conflict with their religious beliefs, or that might seem racist in any way, shape, or form.
History teachers have to walk on tiptoes because they have to present a politically incorrect subject (human history) in a politically correct fashion. Evolution is under fire in biology classes because it contradicts religious doctrine, nevermind that it is the accepted theory for how life originated. Philosophy classes are never taught in high schools, and we don't have much art or music because they are unimportant next to teaching the kids how to use a word processor...which they already learned how to do at home.
Hell, students nowadays are rarely ever failed or held back a year, because of parental uproar -- there are kids that make it to high school without being able to read beyond a fourth-grade level. My father quit teaching because he was tired of having to explain Shakespeare to people who could barely make it through Dr. Seuss.
What's the solution? Change our culture. Get people to stop worrying about nice cars and expensive clothes, and instead start spending actual time with their kids. Read to them. Tell them stories of your youth. Help them figure out when advertisements are bull, and praise them for accomplishment. Punish them when they misbehave. Above all, just be there.
No, E-Voting is a big problem looking for smaller problems to forcibly mate with. At least, E-Voting without a paper trail is.
Despite hanging chads or bad ink, giving a receipt to the voter, along with keeping a paper copy for the polls, is the only way to insure that voting is handled properly. Of course, the Diebold machines don't produce a paper trail, primarily because it's harder to stage a respectable coup that way (rimshot!).
On top of that, most, if not all, of the commercial voting systems are needlessly complex, and have insane operating procedures -- they suffer from a horrible case of Second-System Effect, and it shows in how inaccurate they are.
All you need is a simple storage device, a receipt printer, and a bin to collect hard-copies of said receipts should a recount be needed. Some simple encryption on top of that should keep the data reasonably secure, and a bit of random sampling out of the pile of receipts can be used to ensure that the electronic copies of the votes are, in fact, good.
A competent coder could write this system in a day, and then a team of coders could spend a month pouring over it to make sure that the code is good. Open-sourcing said code so that programmers in the general population could find additional problems would be even better, and the government could offer a small reward for those that track down and report bugs. Sort of like software bounty-hunting.
On the flip side, this wouldn't jive with Diebold, because the CEO has already promised the next election to His Favorite Candidate. And, before the Rabid Right flames me for being pissed at the CEO of Diebold, remember -- I'm mad because it's a conflict of interest, not because he's a Republican. I'd be screaming murder if the Democrats, who I don't like much either, tried to pull the same crap.
IIRC, BL3 is usually reserved for diseases that are moderately contagious, albeit only treatable (not curable). AIDS is minimally contagious, though; you can only get it through transferrence of blood or semen.
Indeed, and on top of that, the German and French navies run very heavily towards the missile-cruiser side, which provide a pretty solid defense against pretty much anything else that rides on the sea. They also have, combined, more attack submarines than we do, and more overall industrial capacity -- remember, we've been exporting our manufacturing jobs for years, and a number of things important to the military, like a happy amount of our medical supplies, are supplied solely through European firms.
They couldn't really attack us right now, but were we to attack them, we'd get our asses handed to us, unless we went nuclear -- in which case everyone loses.
First off, I'm majoring in anthropology, and just got done with a Human Osteology lab, in which we got to piece together bits and pieces of the evolutionary record through bone morphology.
Second, yes, the record for our species is pretty unbroken. We've got a lot of intermediate forms, stemming from bipedalism, to increased brain size, all the way up to cultural adaptation and primitive medicine. It would be hard to paint a better picture without having a videotape of the entire process.
Have you talked do your company about this? Have they refused to pay?
Document all the work-related calls you've made, even if it takes a bloody ream of paper -- an then take them to a small claims court. It's a civil suit, and given the circumstances, you'd have decent legal standing to request reimbursement. Assuming that you've talked to your boss about things more than once, you can demonstrate that you have made a good-faith effort to resolve the conflict without litigation. Even if you lose, the company will still spend a happy amount of money defending against your suit.
On top of that, if they fire you soon after filing such a suit, you've got great grounds for a wrongful termination suit.
I'm not a lawyer, and I'm not a fan of frivolus lawsuits, but I am a big fan of standing up for your rights.
I think it's more of a no-cells-near the OR sort of deal. How many people with pacemakers run around near cell phone towers with their chests cut open (well, outside of Chicago, that is)?
Indeed; our culture provides selective pressure which favors the, for lack of a better term, unwashed masses. Wealthy, well-educated people spend lots of time becoming both, and thus don't raise as many kids, whereas low-income families are typically quite large.
Devolving is certainly a misnomer, but it makes me kind of sad to know that the human race is probably destined for a very long, slow, painful decline.
One of them set themselves on fire? I mean, I know about John Lennon getting shot and all (why the FSCK couldn't they have taken out Yoko too?) Which one? Did he survive?
Oh, fire beetle. My mistake.;) You could easily just have said 'human eye' or pointed to any other complex system or organism; the rules still apply, and you still see evidence that points to evolution. In the case of the fire beetle, all the tools required for it to produce a hot chemical spray can be found in other organisms: acid-resistant stomach linings, methane production, chambered toxin release, etc. The fire beetle is simply a novel combination of these things. One which had four billion or so years to work out the bugs; given the lifespan of these critters, that's about an equal number of generations.
I am not saying evolution is wrong, but to say that it IS absolutely correct would also be inaccturate, you can show that some things have evolved, and that humans have evolved to a point, but we cannot say with absolute certainty that humans evolved from apes.
We didn't; we evolved from earlier forms of humans, who in turn evolved from even more primitive forms, who in turn came from ape-like mammals that served as a common ancestor, and this is very-well proven, through a combination of genetic testing and osteological analysis.
Lucy is a good example; we know that she was around about three million years ago, and that other than her bipedal adaptations, she was very similar to modern apes -- small brain, curved tarsal bones, and so on. Continuing on through the austrolopithecines, you see two branches (gracile and robust); the gracile branch became homo erectus, which eventually led to modern man, and the robust branch eventually evolved into the neanderthals, which died out a few hundred thousand years ago.
It's a pretty clean, unbroken record, really, and there are even a few species along the line that have died out (like the Neanderthals) -- evolutionary dead-ends. The only reason we're around is because we were better suited to survive. And, yes, I'm oversimplifying all of this for the sake of being compact. *grin*
The guy posted processors and hard drives that DON'T EXIST. He only takes pay-pal. Hmmmm you would have to have some real FAITH to buy from him:-)
But you have seen new breeds of dogs, and new strains of the flu virus, and new antibiotic-resistant bacteria, right? The exact same principles apply to us -- only many humans are way too arrogant to acknowledge that, yes, we are subject to the same forces of any other animal. Natural selection is still alive and well, thank you, and along with its friends 'Variation' and 'Mutation', evolution is still chugging along.
The underlaying rules behind evolution are testible, and have been proven as well as any scientific fact can be (see the Problem of Induction in any philosophy textbook), which is why evolutionary modeling techniques are used in any field that requires predictions about complex molecules. This includes chemical engineering, medical research, and even computer software design.
Go read talkorigins.org; it explains a lot, and it answers a lot of common misconceptions about evolution. Also note that evolution says nothing about religion, and many religious people believe that God put the rules in place to let us evolve -- which is a much more reasonable concept than assuming that what happened in the Bible literally occurred, and that God just put all these fossils and all of that radioactive material around 'just to confuse the unworthy'.
Creationism is supernatural -- it completely contradicts pretty much every piece of scientific knowledge in almost every field, from anthrpology to quantum mechanics. Thus, proving creationism *would* earn one the million dollars -- and, yes, people have tried to do it, and failed.
Indeed; those who lack evidence try and make up for it with panache. This is why none of the creationists, or the UFO-chasers, or the television psychics have ever managed to win the million-dollar challenge posted by the James Randi Educational Foundation. And before anyone screams 'conspiracy', remember that all one needs to do to win the prize, which is held in an escrow account, is present evidence of any paranormal phenomena which completely at odds with modern science. The procedures for doing so must be agreed upon by both parties, and the applicant is the one who designs the tests used to verify his-or-her claim, in order to prevent any steamrolling. All in all, a very fair prize. One which has been unclaimed for fourty years (IIRC).
Maybe Michael's Computers should try to claim the prize, what with the supernatural performance of their systems.;)
As far as Michael's Hardware, just remember, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is, and at the very least, you should check first.
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Good call; one of the things that has helped in keeping me employed is that I learned how to speak to groups of people at a young age. It really shows when you're interviewing against a panel and come off as confident, knowledgeable, and eager, rather than terrified, stupid, and reluctant.
You know, I was going to respond to this, when I finally realized you're a crackpot. I've been trolled! *grin*
Seriously. Go to college. Take a first-year philosophy class. All your questions are dealt with there.
Oh, well, it was fun while it lasted...
I'll keep this short. Athiests are, admittedly, the small minority in the US. The US is a democracy in which free speech is expressed. Generally, only laws that are not disapproved by the significant majority of the US may be passed. The significant majority of the US are Christians or at least religous and believe that religous speech broadcasted must not be eliminated. So form your own channel and advocate to your heart's content is my advice to you, or move to a like-minded country if it really annoys you that much.
Talk about not even reading my post. When did I say we needed to get of religious broadcasting? Hm? I just don't want non-religious broadcasting to be actively discriminated against, which it is.
On top of that, the entire reason our government is structured the way it is, is to prevent something called a 'tyranny of the majority'. Basically, the Founding Fathers, idiots that they were, wanted a government where no large group could easily take rights away from a smaller group. Ergo, they set up a system of indirect representation, e.g. a republic, by which elected officials would stand between mob rule and the rights of minorities.
Why on earth would an athiest advocacy group expect the benefits of a religous group? They could only receive those benefits if they admitted that they were, in fact, also a religion which is the last thing any athiest I know would want to do.
Nice non sequitur. Freethinking atheists want the same legal protections for their institutions that religions get precisely because their institutions are non-religious. By showing favor to religious institutions over secular ones, the government is violating the Lemon test, and fostering excessive entanglement with religion. In short, as long as religious institutions receive preferential treatment over any other non- (or for-, in the case of Scientology) profit group, there is a problem in this country.
Why don't you move to China or N. Korea then? They very rigorously inforce these rules there. Nothing above the state after all, n'est pas? France might be up your alley too, but they aren't quite as disciplined as the other nations yet, but they're getting there.
...but Pat Robertson and Jerry Fallwell can blame atheists for 9/11. TV Christians can scream at us and tell us we're going to hell. Our own leaders can tell us we don't deserve to be citizens because we don't buy the Buy-Bull(tm).
Of course. Better our leaders do anything they want in the 'name of God', rather than being accountable to the public. The original poster didn't say, "Gee, I want to move to a totalitarian country!", he said, "I'm fucking tired of all of these religious wackos pushing their views on me!"
Big difference. Yet, I'd say 90% of the time someone complains about the growing problem with religion in the US, they are told to go to China. Then again, this is consistent with my experiences in dealing with rabid Christians -- they're nice only to people just like them, and want everyone else dead. Anyone who disagrees with the way Americans do things should get the hell out.
BTW, if you want to stay in the US (if you're in the US in the first place), you've got a remote; use it for crying out loud!!
Can't use a remote to change judicial proceedings where you are forced to 'swear in' on a Bible. Can't use a remote to stop hate crimes against the non-religious. Can't use a remote to keep our government from throwing science out of schools in favor of old sheepherder fairy-tales.
This is a free country.
Tell that to a black man living in Alabama today. Tell that to the gays living in the bible belt who can't come out for fear of being beaten to death. Tell that to the 'war criminals' being held in secret because they had the wrong headgear.
if you've got some money, you can even start up your own athiest advocacy cabel and/or broadcast channel, do fund raisers, form stupid talk shows and advocate religous intolerance to your heart's content
There are atheist advocacy groups, only they don't get the same protection under the law as religious advocacy groups. They also don't get the favoritism shown towards religious groups; you'll find bible clubs in many high schools, but many 'alternative religion' or freethinker clubs aren't allowed because they're 'religious'.
(so long as it isn't blatently hateful speech).
Seriously, get a grip. BTW, I'm somewhat of an agnostic and totally disagree with you if it wasn't obvious by now.
You're also apparently living in a cave. The parent poster has some very valid points, and some of us non-religious types are very fucking scared about the way our country is turning. Being an atheist outside of a few select areas is, in the US, a dangerous thing, and that goes tenfold if you're at all vocal.
1. It's not "THE accepted theory", merely the one with the least contradictory evidence.
Guess all my bio and anthro professors were wrong, then. And my textbooks. And all of the lecturers whose lectures I've attended...
2. Evolution says NOTHING about how life ORIGINATED, only about how organism haves adapted over time. Maybe some one-celled organisms developed in the primordial soup, maybe God created many proto-animals within the First Six Days; either origin story is compatible with evolutionary theory.
No, it does a very good job of explaining how life originated -- read Dawkins. It's explained quite well, and in a way we can replicate in a laboratory.
If you're going to rant about the state of education, it helps if you have all of your own facts correct.
If you're going to rant about people having their facts correct, maybe you should check yours first.
Yet good teachers used to be more common...they're not few nowadays because good teachers get chased out of the system by zealots with a point to prove, and by parents bringing lawsuits against them for doing their jobs, because giving Johnny an 'F' and making him repeat third grade might 'hurt his self esteem'.
Even despite this, flash-card babies are often better than the parents; at least the flash-card babies repeat fact rather than wistful fiction.
Book-love isn't just literature; it's comic books, and science fiction, and stories of all types. Reading is also like any other form of exercise; it makes you a better reader, and has the side effect of making you a better writer. Considering how much information in our society is imparted through the written word, you would tend to think more people would look at reading as a valuable skill.
Furthermore, reading a book is not a passive experience -- you have to flip pages and use your imagination to 'fill in the blanks', whereas when watching a film, the entire experience is passive, and your body even drops (from a biochemical standpoint) down into the first stages of sleep. Playing games is better, but all you do is improve your skill at that one game, which isn't useful in the real world (for the most part). Games also do improve hand-eye coordination, but there are better ways of doing this -- they're called 'sports', and they not only improve coordination, but they provide exercise as well.
Films and video games do have their place, but it is more important to read.
There's a short story by Charles Sheffield titled 'Higher Education' -- you should read it. In this story, all schools can only teach the barest minimum of facts, and are almost totally crippled because of the threat of parental lawsuits. Most people no longer learn to read, instead relying on electronic readers which read text aloud for them.
In the story, one student gets kicked out of his school for playing a prank on a visiting congresswoman (oops). He signs up with an asteroid-belt mining company, who get full parental rights over him, because his real parents don't bother to read the contract -- they're more interested in the large chunk'o'change they get for signing him on.
He complains and whines about his training, and at one point questions his needing to learn to read. His instructor takes him into an ore transport, and reads out the section in the procedure manual which describes proper coupling with an ore carrier -- it's a technical process that would fill two hours' worth of video, but which can be described a single page of text.
The instructor tells him that the reason he needs to read is because he needs to be able to understand instructions quickly, or he will probably get himself killed. That the book can withstand more radiation, heat, and pressure than a human body, and will still be functional in environments that would destroy a reader.
Reading is survival, because information is survival.
Sadly, in my experience, Republicans stick to the rules...which they are more than happy to rewrite to suit their needs.
There's good reasons I don't like either party. Both are owned by corporate interests, both screw up in novel and horrible ways, and neither really gives a shit about the future. Show me a candidate from either party who would sacrifice, nee, even jeopardize his re-election and political career by standing up for his principles.
I hadn't thought of that. I can see how giving receipts to the voters would be a bad idea.
Thanks!
That was my experience as well; I liked that, in German classrooms, it was expected that you had read and comprehended the material, because if you hadn't, you were fscked.
American classrooms, on the other hand, baby-step you through everything. I hate sitting through an hour of class where all the professor does is go over the reading material he assigned the night before, because he knows that 75% of the class didn't read it.
The parents don't need to be smarter; just smart enough to give their kids a kick to start learning on their own. My dad, although I love him dearly, is an idiot when it comes to any type of real scientific knowledge -- he has a few crackpot theories on advanced physics, yet he doesn't understand even the basics of vector math, and thinks that an object dropped from a moving aeroplane will fall straight down -- instead of maintaining the same forward speed it had when it left the aircraft.
Yet this man inspired me to read, to study math and physics, to ask questions about the universe. He taught me to play chess, and how to find books in a library so that I could look up answers. He bought me an electronics experiment kit from Radio Shack so I could build my own radio.
He might have zip when it comes to scientific knowledge, but he still put me on the right track.
Science is full of dogma, unfounded beliefs, lack of proof, unstated assumptions, errors, etc. And science education usually does no more to address these problems than other academic disciplines.
At the fringes, yes -- there is a point where all some scientists do is the intellectual equivalent of mastrubation. There's also the crackpot fringe whose diplomas by-and-large come from mail-order diploma mills, but who write convincing-sounding books on the scientific validity of numerology in the bible and staple a 'PhD' at the end of their name -- just to sound credible.
Mainstream science, however, is all about proof, and if you don't have it, you get reamed. If you rely on unstated assumptions that turn out to be false, you get reamed. If you make errors, you get reamed when someone double-checks your work. This is why all of the Cold Fusion nuts have been sent to the fringes, along with the 'young earth' and 'flat earth' types -- because they refuse to acknowledge their mistakes.
Seriously. Show me an unfounded belief, error, or unstated assumption that has stuck around in physics, chemistry, biology, or any other scientific field for a signifigant period of time. Something that is clearly and demonstrably false, yet which the mainstream community refuses to correct. Good luck.
In large part, this problem can be placed squarely on the shoulders of American parents. The ones who are too busy working long hours to afford SUVs and big-screen TVs to spend time with their kids. Love is shown, not through sitting down and reading a book to your six-year-old, but by purchasing them a PlayStation.
Education begins at home; the schools can't be expected to inspire kids, especially when the two biggest influences on their lives are nominally apathetic towards everything but material acquisition. Few children will ever learn to love reading in a house where the parents don't, and critical thinking skills can't just be taught in the classroom, because the environment is just too limited.
Many parents also have this nasty habit of riding the educators long and hard, basically dictating what and how the school will teach. Nevermind the fact that the educators have spent years studying How To Educate -- the parents always know how to teach their kids better.
The end result is that schools have crippled their curriculums, by and large, because of the insane number of frivolous lawsuits brought on by irate parents, who were 'concerned' about what their kids were learning. They didn't want their kids learning about things that might upset them, or that might conflict with their religious beliefs, or that might seem racist in any way, shape, or form.
History teachers have to walk on tiptoes because they have to present a politically incorrect subject (human history) in a politically correct fashion. Evolution is under fire in biology classes because it contradicts religious doctrine, nevermind that it is the accepted theory for how life originated. Philosophy classes are never taught in high schools, and we don't have much art or music because they are unimportant next to teaching the kids how to use a word processor...which they already learned how to do at home.
Hell, students nowadays are rarely ever failed or held back a year, because of parental uproar -- there are kids that make it to high school without being able to read beyond a fourth-grade level. My father quit teaching because he was tired of having to explain Shakespeare to people who could barely make it through Dr. Seuss.
What's the solution? Change our culture. Get people to stop worrying about nice cars and expensive clothes, and instead start spending actual time with their kids. Read to them. Tell them stories of your youth. Help them figure out when advertisements are bull, and praise them for accomplishment. Punish them when they misbehave. Above all, just be there.
But this will never happen here.
Grr. Okay. Done now.
No, E-Voting is a big problem looking for smaller problems to forcibly mate with. At least, E-Voting without a paper trail is.
Despite hanging chads or bad ink, giving a receipt to the voter, along with keeping a paper copy for the polls, is the only way to insure that voting is handled properly. Of course, the Diebold machines don't produce a paper trail, primarily because it's harder to stage a respectable coup that way (rimshot!).
On top of that, most, if not all, of the commercial voting systems are needlessly complex, and have insane operating procedures -- they suffer from a horrible case of Second-System Effect, and it shows in how inaccurate they are.
All you need is a simple storage device, a receipt printer, and a bin to collect hard-copies of said receipts should a recount be needed. Some simple encryption on top of that should keep the data reasonably secure, and a bit of random sampling out of the pile of receipts can be used to ensure that the electronic copies of the votes are, in fact, good.
A competent coder could write this system in a day, and then a team of coders could spend a month pouring over it to make sure that the code is good. Open-sourcing said code so that programmers in the general population could find additional problems would be even better, and the government could offer a small reward for those that track down and report bugs. Sort of like software bounty-hunting.
On the flip side, this wouldn't jive with Diebold, because the CEO has already promised the next election to His Favorite Candidate. And, before the Rabid Right flames me for being pissed at the CEO of Diebold, remember -- I'm mad because it's a conflict of interest, not because he's a Republican. I'd be screaming murder if the Democrats, who I don't like much either, tried to pull the same crap.
Quit floundering around and just read the article.
IIRC, BL3 is usually reserved for diseases that are moderately contagious, albeit only treatable (not curable). AIDS is minimally contagious, though; you can only get it through transferrence of blood or semen.
Indeed, and on top of that, the German and French navies run very heavily towards the missile-cruiser side, which provide a pretty solid defense against pretty much anything else that rides on the sea. They also have, combined, more attack submarines than we do, and more overall industrial capacity -- remember, we've been exporting our manufacturing jobs for years, and a number of things important to the military, like a happy amount of our medical supplies, are supplied solely through European firms.
They couldn't really attack us right now, but were we to attack them, we'd get our asses handed to us, unless we went nuclear -- in which case everyone loses.
...and we'd call him Mr. President.
First off, I'm majoring in anthropology, and just got done with a Human Osteology lab, in which we got to piece together bits and pieces of the evolutionary record through bone morphology.
Second, yes, the record for our species is pretty unbroken. We've got a lot of intermediate forms, stemming from bipedalism, to increased brain size, all the way up to cultural adaptation and primitive medicine. It would be hard to paint a better picture without having a videotape of the entire process.
Have you talked do your company about this? Have they refused to pay?
Document all the work-related calls you've made, even if it takes a bloody ream of paper -- an then take them to a small claims court. It's a civil suit, and given the circumstances, you'd have decent legal standing to request reimbursement. Assuming that you've talked to your boss about things more than once, you can demonstrate that you have made a good-faith effort to resolve the conflict without litigation. Even if you lose, the company will still spend a happy amount of money defending against your suit.
On top of that, if they fire you soon after filing such a suit, you've got great grounds for a wrongful termination suit.
I'm not a lawyer, and I'm not a fan of frivolus lawsuits, but I am a big fan of standing up for your rights.
I think it's more of a no-cells-near the OR sort of deal. How many people with pacemakers run around near cell phone towers with their chests cut open (well, outside of Chicago, that is)?
Indeed; our culture provides selective pressure which favors the, for lack of a better term, unwashed masses. Wealthy, well-educated people spend lots of time becoming both, and thus don't raise as many kids, whereas low-income families are typically quite large.
Devolving is certainly a misnomer, but it makes me kind of sad to know that the human race is probably destined for a very long, slow, painful decline.
Fire beatle?
;) You could easily just have said 'human eye' or pointed to any other complex system or organism; the rules still apply, and you still see evidence that points to evolution. In the case of the fire beetle, all the tools required for it to produce a hot chemical spray can be found in other organisms: acid-resistant stomach linings, methane production, chambered toxin release, etc. The fire beetle is simply a novel combination of these things. One which had four billion or so years to work out the bugs; given the lifespan of these critters, that's about an equal number of generations.
:-)
;)
One of them set themselves on fire? I mean, I know about John Lennon getting shot and all (why the FSCK couldn't they have taken out Yoko too?) Which one? Did he survive?
Oh, fire beetle. My mistake.
I am not saying evolution is wrong, but to say that it IS absolutely correct would also be inaccturate, you can show that some things have evolved, and that humans have evolved to a point, but we cannot say with absolute certainty that humans evolved from apes.
We didn't; we evolved from earlier forms of humans, who in turn evolved from even more primitive forms, who in turn came from ape-like mammals that served as a common ancestor, and this is very-well proven, through a combination of genetic testing and osteological analysis.
Lucy is a good example; we know that she was around about three million years ago, and that other than her bipedal adaptations, she was very similar to modern apes -- small brain, curved tarsal bones, and so on. Continuing on through the austrolopithecines, you see two branches (gracile and robust); the gracile branch became homo erectus, which eventually led to modern man, and the robust branch eventually evolved into the neanderthals, which died out a few hundred thousand years ago.
It's a pretty clean, unbroken record, really, and there are even a few species along the line that have died out (like the Neanderthals) -- evolutionary dead-ends. The only reason we're around is because we were better suited to survive. And, yes, I'm oversimplifying all of this for the sake of being compact. *grin*
The guy posted processors and hard drives that DON'T EXIST. He only takes pay-pal. Hmmmm you would have to have some real FAITH to buy from him
Or just be really gullible.
*sigh*
But you have seen new breeds of dogs, and new strains of the flu virus, and new antibiotic-resistant bacteria, right? The exact same principles apply to us -- only many humans are way too arrogant to acknowledge that, yes, we are subject to the same forces of any other animal. Natural selection is still alive and well, thank you, and along with its friends 'Variation' and 'Mutation', evolution is still chugging along.
The underlaying rules behind evolution are testible, and have been proven as well as any scientific fact can be (see the Problem of Induction in any philosophy textbook), which is why evolutionary modeling techniques are used in any field that requires predictions about complex molecules. This includes chemical engineering, medical research, and even computer software design.
Go read talkorigins.org; it explains a lot, and it answers a lot of common misconceptions about evolution. Also note that evolution says nothing about religion, and many religious people believe that God put the rules in place to let us evolve -- which is a much more reasonable concept than assuming that what happened in the Bible literally occurred, and that God just put all these fossils and all of that radioactive material around 'just to confuse the unworthy'.
Creationism is supernatural -- it completely contradicts pretty much every piece of scientific knowledge in almost every field, from anthrpology to quantum mechanics. Thus, proving creationism *would* earn one the million dollars -- and, yes, people have tried to do it, and failed.
Maybe Michael's Computers should try to claim the prize, what with the supernatural performance of their systems. ;)
As far as Michael's Hardware, just remember, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is, and at the very least, you should check first.