In my experience, though, (and I got out of Corporate I.T. about 3 years ago), is that self-taught programmers don't learn formal techniques; instead, they cobble stuff together until it "works". Then, since they built it from scratch, they get all defensive when you attempt to talk about more efficient techniques, etc.
Maybe I've just had bad experiences, but it was my experience that the folks who shouted the loudest had the code that sucked the hardest. (Now, on the other hand, another poster had it right: kids right out of school had little or no experience taking a project to successful completion, but they eventually tended to get the hang of it, since (putatively) they already had the background and just had to pick up the work ethic on-the-job. Lots harder to have the work ethic and try to pick up the theoretical background.)
In the context of wbren's remark, though, I thought I'd just say that, maybe he created something that worked like the visitor pattern, but without having the background to know how it works, etc, I wouldn't be so sure that there wasn't some sort of Rube Goldberg contraption under the hood -- as a black box, it "does" the visitor pattern, but when looked into, (and taking my (biased) experiences into account), there'd be some seriously crufty code that begged to be re-written under the hood...
And if the Universe requires a prime mover, then why doesn't the prime mover?
Umm... by definition? The universe is mutable. If it had some immutable "start state", then it would be necessary to posit how it changed from immutable (prime-mover-state) to mutable (current state).
The prime mover, on the other hand, is immutable. Its creation of a mutable universe violates neither the observed nature of the universe, nor its own (posited) nature.
And if you're going to assert that the prime mover is exempt from the very logic you claim makes the prime move necessary, then why can't I apply Occam's Razor and declare the universe can have that property you claim for the prime mover, and thus declare the prime mover unnecessary?
Because we've observed that the nature of the universe is its mutability. The universe cannot simultaneously be immutable and mutable; therefore, something must have given rise to the universe. If this thing itself was (is) mutable, then something else gave rise to it. Infinite regress. Fold all these "non-prime-movers" up into the definition of the universe, and you still need something to kick off the process. Ergo, immutable prime mover.
Or, more to the point, why would this posited singularity be bound by causality?
It's not bound by its own causality; rather, it provides the basis for the causation of the universe.
Most of my friends are not hard core tinker happy nerds. And they were all underwhelmed with the iPad. In fact, I don't know a single person who was actually impressed by it.
Not one.
The "magic" of the iPad, if there is such a thing, is not in its tech specs; it's in the types of apps that can be brought to market, given the new platform's capabilities. Could it be stuffed with more toys? Of course. However, here's the deal: the iPad will take off, based partially on fanboi sales, and partially on "mom and pop" sales -- mark my words, this is the "notebook computer" your parents (or grandparents) want, since it'll be so easy to use, and so difficult to muck up.
Once it's done gaining a beachhead, the iPad will then start to sprout additional hardware capabilities. Eventually, it'll come close to what "we" want it to be.
To use a WWII analogy, this is D-Day: a tough landing to make, and not one that will appear particularly impressive, but one that will provide the opportunity for future growth and expansion. Other tablets are taking an "Operation Market Garden" approach -- high risk, with a win-big-or-fail-impressively payoffs, which will fade away and be largely forgotten, once the iPad strategy proves itself effective.
Will I buy an iPad v1? Hell, no! But, maybe, come Christmas buying season, if there's a v2 that has added enough features, while giving the software and book markets time to catch up... yeah, maybe then I'll plunk down my cash.
The article was either written poorly, or the writer was attempting to insert his/her own opinions into the discussion. The full quote from the article is as follows:
The study in the New England Journal of Medicine shows that scans can detect signs of awareness in patients thought to be closed off from the world.
Patients in a vegetative state are awake, not in a coma, but have no awareness because of severe brain damage.
The article goes on to describe how the researchers showed that there was awareness in the patients, due to their ability to "answer" questions by thinking about different types of activities -- involving motor skills vs spatial analysis, for example.
By quoting just the second sentence I've included here, the OP gives the impression that there's nothing to see.
Harris bemoans the fact that, regardless what effort he puts into a game, someone will crack it. But, he's attempting to learn the wrong lesson.
It isn't that people (/ consumers) are intrinsically fair.
It isn't that crackers are acting out of some noble desire to rid the world of DRM.
The lesson here is simple: DRM doesn't work. There's no real ROI on it, so don't put in on games and make it difficult or unplayable for your paying customers. Period.
Some say, that Idiocracy was a documentary sent back from the future
Other than having electrolytes, you know what the scariest thing about Idiocracy is? Every year that passes since it's release, that future seems not only more possible, but more probable.
My fiance thinks the future will be a combination of Wall-E and Idiocracy, but whatever...it's not looking good -_-;;
What's really fun about these two comments is that each contain the sort of error that TFA references: "Some say, that Idiocracy" (parmesan comma) and "since it's release" ('its', the 3rd person singular possessive pronoun, does not require an apostrophe). (I'll overlook the emoticon, since this isn't a formal paper, so I would argue it's less inappropriate here.)
Absolutely -- when Apple introduced the iPad, reporters pressed Jobs on pricing: he just kept repeating that the prices on eBooks would be the same as on Amazon. Now we see what that means: Apple is allowing the publishers to raise their prices, vis-a-vis Amazon, so the publishers are now walking across the street and saying, "I want $15, not $10, and if you don't like it, I'm pulling out of your marketplace".
This is just a pre-emptive strike by Amazon -- it'd be far more damaging if the headline read "Apple eBook vendor drops Amazon"...
Actually, you're now putting words in my mouth. I didn't say that Pope said anything about pores in condoms etc; just that various Catholic priests have said such things in the past with persistent regularity.
To-may-to, to-mah-to. Your response to the assertion that the Pope was right in his statement was (1) cherry picking a quote from the article, (2) bringing up an unrelated assertion about promiscuity, and (3) throwing in a non sequitur about condom porousness.
However, I see that you're talking about the Church's general stance about artificial birth control. You raise an interesting point about historical statements providing context to a given quote. It raises the question, though, of whether anyone can make a comment about anything, if all statements made by persons or groups with whom they're affiliated provide the context for their upcoming statements.
Nonetheless, what you've done is to fail to hear what the Pope said, in a given context, in a response to a distinct, directed question, and instead responded to something else altogether.
To your point about "no artificial contraceptives", that's besides the point: if the NFL comes out against steroid use, and then makes a valid, logical point about a specific incidence of steroid use, you don't judge that comment against their general stance, do you? No, you judge the comment on its own merits. Unfortunately, that approach doesn't apply when the Church or the subject of birth control is in play. Nice.
"In a 2008 article in Science called Reassessing HIV Prevention, 10 AIDS experts concluded that 'consistent condom use has not reached a sufficiently high level, even after many years of widespread and often aggressive promotion, to produce a measurable slowing of new infections in the generalized epidemics of Sub-Saharan Africa.' "
What this says is that Africans don't use condoms often enough for them to be effective against the spread of AIDS.
Nice job cherry-picking a quote to make it say something it isn't trying to say. The article continues:
When most transmission occurs within more regular and, typically, concurrent partnerships, consistent condom use is exceedingly difficult to maintain
In other words, the article isn't saying that "Africans don't use condoms enough"; it's saying that people don't use condoms in the context of stable relationships. It's about people with risky sexual habits being dishonest with their partners. And, in this case, the Pope is right: given this dynamic, condoms aren't gonna bring HIV under control in Africa.
It's amazing how people have made the Pope's statement into something it never said: he was asked about the AIDS epidemic in Africa. He responded that you can't just throw money at the problem, or distribute condoms, and expect the problem (remember -- in Africa) to go away. As you affirm by your quote from the article, the Pope is correct on this count.
Note that he's not saying anything about pores in condoms, or effectiveness in stopping AIDS in a given use, or increased promiscuity: he simply stated a defensible fact: in Africa, the AIDS problem is not going to go away by throwing money at it, or by throwing condoms at Africans. Period.
Any other assertions are trying to put words in the Pope's mouth... just as you've done.
What's even worse is that Catholic priests have been disseminating information that use of condoms is ineffective against AIDS (the usual bullshit about "viruses being so tiny they can go through the pores", etc, also used by Christian Evangelical camp).
Apples and oranges, and anecdotal ones at that. Even if we were to start a discussion on these allegations, they would have nothing to do with the Pope's statement during his trip to Africa the other year.
Anybody who does not actively and vehemently denounce the legitimacy of those priests who engaged in that behavior, is complicit in that behavior.
Absolutely -- and that's been the response of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops. Although they can't change the wrongs that have been done in the past, they've instituted policies that require diocesan officials to immediately remove the accused priest from ministry, and report the accusation to the authorities.
All you've done is make some lukewarm statement about how a few bad people shouldn't influence my feelings on the matter.
Well, isn't that a logical response? Of course, as you point out, it's not the only response, as the Church is responsible for the pastoral care of its members.
I have never, not a single time, heard a Catholic apologize to me for what happened
I'm confused. Earlier, you stated that you heard that your parish priest was found to be molesting children. You implied that it was not you, but "other people your age". So, you're asking for an apology not for something that had been done to you, but for putting you at potential risk, depending on how close you were to the situation, which you haven't established? OK -- in your case, clearly, he was removed from parish ministry.
(You've provided no information about what "California" implied in your description. Was he placed in a parish? Given your description, it seems he was part of an order, and not a diocesan priest. Was he placed in ministry that kept him away from young boys?)
and try to restore my faith.
Your faith in that one man? In the diocese (or his order), who removed him from service? Or in the Church, who is now taking measures to make sure this does not happen again?
Instead, I get people just like you, who blame ME for what happened
put that straw man to bed already -- I've not blamed you, nor faulted you for the events you describe. However, I am asking you to logically defend your stance against the Church as a whole, given its recent actions.
and try to tell me I'm some sort of idiot for losing faith.
Not at all. But, please help me understand how, in the face of the action taken against your parish priest, and the actions that the USCCB is taking, it is logical to blame the entirety of the organization, and even its current members, as you are doing.
It's clear you don't WANT me back
Not at all true. However, my intuition tells me that there's more to your story than you're presenting here. Given the public nature of Slashdot, it's your right not to expose yourself publicly regarding a matter that you're presenting as clearly still deep wound today. If I were your local parish priest, would I come to you and attempt to offer the pastoral care you've mentioned here, if I knew who you were and how to get in touch with you? Absolutely.
Dude... I seriously hope those numbers are wrong... 2% of all catholic priests in the US? That sounds way to high.
Sorry -- was going from memory, and used the "number of allegations" number incorrectly. The statistics include all priests from 1950 to 2002, with the majority of the incidents in the 70's, and in decline since the 80's. From the Wiki article:
The report determined that, during the period from 1950–2002, a total of 10,667 individuals had made allegations of child sexual abuse. Of these, 3300 were not investigated because the allegations were made after the accused priest had died. After investigating the remaining 7700 allegations, the dioceses were able to substantiate 6,700 accusations against 4,392 priests in the USA, about 4% of all 109,694 priests who served during the time period covered by the study.[19] The number of alleged abuses increased in the 1960s, peaked in the 1970s, declined in the 1980s and by the 1990s had returned to the levels of the 1950s.[20]
Of the 4,392 priests against whom the accusations were deemed to be credible, 3,300 were not investigated because the allegations were made after the accused priest had died. Police were contacted regarding 1,021 of the remaining 1092 priests. 384 of these priests were prosecuted resulting in 252 convictions and 100 prison sentences. Thus, 6% of all priests against whom allegations were made were convicted and about 2% received prison sentences to date.[3][21]
Now, the Wiki article needs a little work: it double-counts the 3300 cases that weren't investigated "because the priest accused had died". If I have time, I'll go check out the Jay report, and see if this was just a simple mistake: chances are, the 4392 number came from the study.
The statistics worth noting -- in 2002, among all priests who served in the U.S. from 1950 to 2002:
only 4% had allegations leveled against them.
Only 0.35% were prosecuted for alleged crimes
Only 0.23% were convicted.
That is, out of 7000 allegations, only 4000 were found credible; only 1000 of these could be investigated (the rest have already been adjudicated by their maker...). Less than 400 of these were brought to trial; 252 convictions resulted. Not quite the "den of pederasty" that some allege; nonetheless, the Church should have none of this activity in its ranks.
The rest of the Church aided and abetted them by shuffling them around, and there is no telling how many escaped being outed.
When some of the hierarchy aided and abetted them...
(fixed that for ya).
When the Church instantly feeds their pedos to the cops, in public, and assists law enforcement personnel in busting pedos then it might not merit the label of pedo farm it currently deserves.
Which is, if you've been paying attention to the actions of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops' response, exactly what they're doing -- there's a no tolerance policy that requires dioceses to notify the authorities. Funny how that never gets mentioned...
Your fault? Nope... I made the assumption that you were an active Catholic -- and an adult, at that -- when you left.
So, let me get this straight: you found out, when you were 10, that your priest was molesting boys. So you, on your own, decided to leave? Hmm... that can't be the whole story. Perhaps your parents decided not to keep you in a situation that was perceived as dangerous (a reasonable response). Perhaps later in life, as an adult, you decided that you couldn't get your head around a situation in which a member of a group doesn't act in concert with the tenets of the group (not terribly logical, but reasonable, if you were right in the middle of a scandal, and had that visceral response). Perhaps, though, you had your own negative experiences, and taking all these things into consideration, you decided to bail. Again, that's a conclusion that fails to distinguish between the principles at hand, and the failures of individuals who claim to hold to the principles.
When Bush did all the things that made Dems scream, did it make sense to abandon America? When Obama pushes through his agendas, does it likewise make sense for conservatives to abandon America? No. Somehow, though, the Church is held to a different standard: when its members, especially its leaders, fail (and in criminal ways, at that), the whole organization and/or its tenets are to blame. NOT logical (although understandable, if one is making an emotional or visceral decision, based on unrealistic expectations of humans who act as leaders...
Your insistence that all Catholics, or all priests are butt bandits is laughable, of course: the rates of incidence of abuse, around 2% over the past 50 years or so, is in the same range as other populations in Western society (teachers, male parents, volunteers in youth groups). Now, a real question is: should we hold clergy to higher standards? Yes -- but finding out that they're human doesn't imply that their actions reflect on the whole institution...
Punishable by death by the Church? Where'd that one come from? Last time I checked, the Church hadn't put people to death... at least, not since medieval understandings of power and the exercise thereof...
That's a real problem. Catholic priests should be monitored to make sure they're not communicating with minors. The Catholic Church, after all, is the only organization to have a slush fund to pay off victims of their pedophiles.
Somewhere on the order of 2% of Catholic priests in the U.S., over the past 50 years, have been proven (or accused) of sexual abuse of minors. Your call for monitoring a population who, by and large, does not commit crimes, for the sake of an extreme minority who does, is chilling. I bet you're all for Patriot Act intrusions of privacy, aren't ya? Or is this simply a straw man -- it's just the Church you don't like, and this is a convenient way to harass its representatives?
btw -- your summary of the Wiki article is blatantly misleading: if there were such a "slush fund", why are there so many diocesan bankruptcies documented? "4, Informative", in this case, reads more like "-5, Politically Correct Troll".
Let me understand: for some portion of your life (presumably, for some portion of your adult life), you believed in the tenets of the Catholic Church. That is to say, that among other things, you believed in God.
Then, evidence that priests, and to an extent, bishops, are human, and have failings, and sin (sometimes, criminally), somehow changed your belief -- not in a given person, or persons, or even, the Church -- but in the existence of God?
Can you provide a URL that documents your assertion? In fact, the research bears out the Pope's observation out, but since the Pope was the one making the observation, all hell broke loose when he said this.
What do I have to support this claim?
"In a 2008 article in Science called Reassessing HIV Prevention, 10 AIDS experts concluded that 'consistent condom use has not reached a sufficiently high level, even after many years of widespread and often aggressive promotion, to produce a measurable slowing of new infections in the generalized epidemics of Sub-Saharan Africa.' "
(from http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/27/AR2009032702825.html, a column written by a senior research scientist at the Harvard School of Public Health.)
Property tax is one of the big reasons that the City is going after the universities, because as it stands, they're exempt. That means no "inclusion in school tuition and dorm fees".
Gas tax? You've never been to the University of Pittsburgh, have you? It's an urban campus -- there's not enough parking for commuters, let alone student residents!
Road tolls? Nope on that one, either -- the nearest toll roads to campus are easily a half-hour away, and don't figure into the equation of resident-student travel.
Sales tax? Yeah, but that's not what the City is trying to target here. They recognize that sales taxes are coming in, and what they're attempting to do here is fill the void in the rest of the tax burden, by grabbing from students what they cannot grab from universities.
Please stop spreading misinformation. There's ample evidence that Enron manipulated prices. Ever heard of Death Star?
Sure, I have -- Death Star was a shell game, designed to collect fees for congestion relief. Do you know what congestion implies? Excess capacity in one area of the grid, and insufficient transmission to get it to where it wants to go. The California problem was blackouts -- in other words, insufficient capacity. In a situation in which there's grid-wide insufficient capacity, there generally aren't any congestion situations... duh!
Please mod parent down -- this is neither "informative" nor "insightful"... Enron had nothing to do with the rolling blackouts in California; as the fine article mentioned, the problem was that retail rates were capped, while wholesale rates were deregulated. All it took was a relatively sustained spike in prices, and the retail suppliers were swimming in red ink; this led to even higher prices (because energy prices depend on a whole bundle of factors, including credit risk -- once the retailers were swamped, prices went even higher, as wholesalers (reasonably) suspected that retailers couldn't survive, paying hundreds while charging pennies... (I was in the industry at the time, and was sent to a client site in the aftermath of the blackouts...)
Now, once California's blackouts happened, people started questioning deregulation in general. The increased attention may have been what led to the sniffing around Enron, and the discovery of their accounting shenanigans. It's not the other way around, though...!
Actually it was Enron illegally manipulating the market which lead to the rolling blackouts. Notice they stopped shortly after the collapse of Enron and the arrest of those that hatched the schemes.
Do I really have to go the "correlation doesn't imply causation" route? Enron =/= California meltdown. Some Enron traders worked to artificially inflate rates, but the blackouts would have happened without their attempt to game generator down-time...
The "bribing" described in the article was Eddison trying to convience the local government that it would be worth it to install an electric grid.
The fiendish prof announced that he will run that code through itself. Whatever letter grade it spits out will be his thesis grade. He got a D. He begged and cried and threw a hissy fit and wangled a B and scraped through the degree.
Fiendish? What could possibly be more fair and objective than making him eat his own dogfood?
Suggesting that he runs his prof's code through the analyzer, if the prof truly believes his code deserves a "D"...
Dude deserves to fail: when confronted, he shoulda countered that he used his program as a baseline: the program that minimally gets a "pass", when run through the analyzer. Any MS student who can't BS his thesis prof... *sigh*...!
That's what I'm guessing too. TFA is ridiculously underinformative. Neuralstem doesn't seem to be talking specifics for some reason.
I'm guessing their technique involves 1. Surgery to get tissue samples which would be enriched in neural stem cells (I've heard the cells next to the ventricles in your brain are good spots for that)
So, if I understand you correctly, you're guessing that they're adult stem cells, not embryonic stem cells? That might answer your implied question of why Neuralstem isn't talking specifics -- stem cell research is only cool when it's embryonic stem cell research...;)
"2: A bishop then must be blameless, the husband of one wife, vigilant, sober, of good behaviour, given to hospitality, apt to teach; 3: Not given to wine, no striker, not greedy of filthy lucre; but patient, not a brawler, not covetous; 4: One that ruleth well his own house, having his children in subjection with all gravity; 5: (For if a man know not how to rule his own house, how shall he take care of the church of God?)"
you will see that it was not the intention of the church founders that priests should be celibate.
umm... it was also the intention of church founders that all Christians must be circumsized, and follow Jewish law. However, they decided that it was wiser to allow Gentiles to follow their own dietary customs and not to require circumcision. So... why is it ok on one hand that church leaders to make a decision against Jewish custom, and not ok on the other hand that they decided that celibacy be mandatory? It all comes down to the ability of church leaders to follow the promptings of the Holy Spirit in making decisions related to the church, doesn't it?
In other words, I'd rather that these extremely immature humans were given the chance to continue maturing toward adulthood, rather than being tossed aside OR killed for parts to help others.
My brother is an extremely immature human. What you are describing is an embryo. An embryo is a multicellular diploid eukaryote in its earliest stage of development that has no more in common with a human being then an ant. (And before you say it, the fact that the embryo cells may becomepart of a human being doesn't matter. I can eat the ant and it will become a part of a person too.)
Really? A human embryo can develop into an adult human, not just "become part" of one. Once you're able to take an ant and turn it into a human being, come back into the discussion. Until then, enjoy your diet of ants...
Slashdot Mirror
In my experience, though, (and I got out of Corporate I.T. about 3 years ago), is that self-taught programmers don't learn formal techniques; instead, they cobble stuff together until it "works". Then, since they built it from scratch, they get all defensive when you attempt to talk about more efficient techniques, etc.
Maybe I've just had bad experiences, but it was my experience that the folks who shouted the loudest had the code that sucked the hardest. (Now, on the other hand, another poster had it right: kids right out of school had little or no experience taking a project to successful completion, but they eventually tended to get the hang of it, since (putatively) they already had the background and just had to pick up the work ethic on-the-job. Lots harder to have the work ethic and try to pick up the theoretical background.)
In the context of wbren's remark, though, I thought I'd just say that, maybe he created something that worked like the visitor pattern, but without having the background to know how it works, etc, I wouldn't be so sure that there wasn't some sort of Rube Goldberg contraption under the hood -- as a black box, it "does" the visitor pattern, but when looked into, (and taking my (biased) experiences into account), there'd be some seriously crufty code that begged to be re-written under the hood...
And if the Universe requires a prime mover, then why doesn't the prime mover?
Umm... by definition? The universe is mutable. If it had some immutable "start state", then it would be necessary to posit how it changed from immutable (prime-mover-state) to mutable (current state).
The prime mover, on the other hand, is immutable. Its creation of a mutable universe violates neither the observed nature of the universe, nor its own (posited) nature.
And if you're going to assert that the prime mover is exempt from the very logic you claim makes the prime move necessary, then why can't I apply Occam's Razor and declare the universe can have that property you claim for the prime mover, and thus declare the prime mover unnecessary?
Because we've observed that the nature of the universe is its mutability. The universe cannot simultaneously be immutable and mutable; therefore, something must have given rise to the universe. If this thing itself was (is) mutable, then something else gave rise to it. Infinite regress. Fold all these "non-prime-movers" up into the definition of the universe, and you still need something to kick off the process. Ergo, immutable prime mover.
Or, more to the point, why would this posited singularity be bound by causality?
It's not bound by its own causality; rather, it provides the basis for the causation of the universe.
Most of my friends are not hard core tinker happy nerds. And they were all underwhelmed with the iPad. In fact, I don't know a single person who was actually impressed by it.
Not one.
The "magic" of the iPad, if there is such a thing, is not in its tech specs; it's in the types of apps that can be brought to market, given the new platform's capabilities. Could it be stuffed with more toys? Of course. However, here's the deal: the iPad will take off, based partially on fanboi sales, and partially on "mom and pop" sales -- mark my words, this is the "notebook computer" your parents (or grandparents) want, since it'll be so easy to use, and so difficult to muck up.
Once it's done gaining a beachhead, the iPad will then start to sprout additional hardware capabilities. Eventually, it'll come close to what "we" want it to be.
To use a WWII analogy, this is D-Day: a tough landing to make, and not one that will appear particularly impressive, but one that will provide the opportunity for future growth and expansion. Other tablets are taking an "Operation Market Garden" approach -- high risk, with a win-big-or-fail-impressively payoffs, which will fade away and be largely forgotten, once the iPad strategy proves itself effective.
Will I buy an iPad v1? Hell, no! But, maybe, come Christmas buying season, if there's a v2 that has added enough features, while giving the software and book markets time to catch up... yeah, maybe then I'll plunk down my cash.
The article was either written poorly, or the writer was attempting to insert his/her own opinions into the discussion. The full quote from the article is as follows:
The study in the New England Journal of Medicine shows that scans can detect signs of awareness in patients thought to be closed off from the world.
Patients in a vegetative state are awake, not in a coma, but have no awareness because of severe brain damage.
The article goes on to describe how the researchers showed that there was awareness in the patients, due to their ability to "answer" questions by thinking about different types of activities -- involving motor skills vs spatial analysis, for example.
By quoting just the second sentence I've included here, the OP gives the impression that there's nothing to see.
Harris bemoans the fact that, regardless what effort he puts into a game, someone will crack it. But, he's attempting to learn the wrong lesson.
It isn't that people (/ consumers) are intrinsically fair.
It isn't that crackers are acting out of some noble desire to rid the world of DRM.
The lesson here is simple: DRM doesn't work. There's no real ROI on it, so don't put in on games and make it difficult or unplayable for your paying customers. Period.
Some say, that Idiocracy was a documentary sent back from the future
Other than having electrolytes, you know what the scariest thing about Idiocracy is? Every year that passes since it's release, that future seems not only more possible, but more probable.
My fiance thinks the future will be a combination of Wall-E and Idiocracy, but whatever...it's not looking good -_-;;
What's really fun about these two comments is that each contain the sort of error that TFA references: "Some say, that Idiocracy" (parmesan comma) and "since it's release" ('its', the 3rd person singular possessive pronoun, does not require an apostrophe). (I'll overlook the emoticon, since this isn't a formal paper, so I would argue it's less inappropriate here.)
Absolutely -- when Apple introduced the iPad, reporters pressed Jobs on pricing: he just kept repeating that the prices on eBooks would be the same as on Amazon. Now we see what that means: Apple is allowing the publishers to raise their prices, vis-a-vis Amazon, so the publishers are now walking across the street and saying, "I want $15, not $10, and if you don't like it, I'm pulling out of your marketplace".
This is just a pre-emptive strike by Amazon -- it'd be far more damaging if the headline read "Apple eBook vendor drops Amazon"...
Actually, you're now putting words in my mouth. I didn't say that Pope said anything about pores in condoms etc; just that various Catholic priests have said such things in the past with persistent regularity.
To-may-to, to-mah-to. Your response to the assertion that the Pope was right in his statement was (1) cherry picking a quote from the article, (2) bringing up an unrelated assertion about promiscuity, and (3) throwing in a non sequitur about condom porousness.
However, I see that you're talking about the Church's general stance about artificial birth control. You raise an interesting point about historical statements providing context to a given quote. It raises the question, though, of whether anyone can make a comment about anything, if all statements made by persons or groups with whom they're affiliated provide the context for their upcoming statements.
Nonetheless, what you've done is to fail to hear what the Pope said, in a given context, in a response to a distinct, directed question, and instead responded to something else altogether.
To your point about "no artificial contraceptives", that's besides the point: if the NFL comes out against steroid use, and then makes a valid, logical point about a specific incidence of steroid use, you don't judge that comment against their general stance, do you? No, you judge the comment on its own merits. Unfortunately, that approach doesn't apply when the Church or the subject of birth control is in play. Nice.
"In a 2008 article in Science called Reassessing HIV Prevention, 10 AIDS experts concluded that 'consistent condom use has not reached a sufficiently high level, even after many years of widespread and often aggressive promotion, to produce a measurable slowing of new infections in the generalized epidemics of Sub-Saharan Africa.' "
What this says is that Africans don't use condoms often enough for them to be effective against the spread of AIDS.
Nice job cherry-picking a quote to make it say something it isn't trying to say. The article continues:
When most transmission occurs within more regular and, typically, concurrent partnerships, consistent condom use is exceedingly difficult to maintain
In other words, the article isn't saying that "Africans don't use condoms enough"; it's saying that people don't use condoms in the context of stable relationships. It's about people with risky sexual habits being dishonest with their partners. And, in this case, the Pope is right: given this dynamic, condoms aren't gonna bring HIV under control in Africa.
It's amazing how people have made the Pope's statement into something it never said: he was asked about the AIDS epidemic in Africa. He responded that you can't just throw money at the problem, or distribute condoms, and expect the problem (remember -- in Africa) to go away. As you affirm by your quote from the article, the Pope is correct on this count.
Note that he's not saying anything about pores in condoms, or effectiveness in stopping AIDS in a given use, or increased promiscuity: he simply stated a defensible fact: in Africa, the AIDS problem is not going to go away by throwing money at it, or by throwing condoms at Africans. Period.
Any other assertions are trying to put words in the Pope's mouth ... just as you've done.
What's even worse is that Catholic priests have been disseminating information that use of condoms is ineffective against AIDS (the usual bullshit about "viruses being so tiny they can go through the pores", etc, also used by Christian Evangelical camp).
Apples and oranges, and anecdotal ones at that. Even if we were to start a discussion on these allegations, they would have nothing to do with the Pope's statement during his trip to Africa the other year.
Anybody who does not actively and vehemently denounce the legitimacy of those priests who engaged in that behavior, is complicit in that behavior.
Absolutely -- and that's been the response of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops. Although they can't change the wrongs that have been done in the past, they've instituted policies that require diocesan officials to immediately remove the accused priest from ministry, and report the accusation to the authorities.
All you've done is make some lukewarm statement about how a few bad people shouldn't influence my feelings on the matter.
Well, isn't that a logical response? Of course, as you point out, it's not the only response, as the Church is responsible for the pastoral care of its members.
I have never, not a single time, heard a Catholic apologize to me for what happened
I'm confused. Earlier, you stated that you heard that your parish priest was found to be molesting children. You implied that it was not you, but "other people your age". So, you're asking for an apology not for something that had been done to you, but for putting you at potential risk, depending on how close you were to the situation, which you haven't established? OK -- in your case, clearly, he was removed from parish ministry.
(You've provided no information about what "California" implied in your description. Was he placed in a parish? Given your description, it seems he was part of an order, and not a diocesan priest. Was he placed in ministry that kept him away from young boys?)
and try to restore my faith.
Your faith in that one man? In the diocese (or his order), who removed him from service? Or in the Church, who is now taking measures to make sure this does not happen again?
Instead, I get people just like you, who blame ME for what happened
put that straw man to bed already -- I've not blamed you, nor faulted you for the events you describe. However, I am asking you to logically defend your stance against the Church as a whole, given its recent actions.
and try to tell me I'm some sort of idiot for losing faith.
Not at all. But, please help me understand how, in the face of the action taken against your parish priest, and the actions that the USCCB is taking, it is logical to blame the entirety of the organization, and even its current members, as you are doing.
It's clear you don't WANT me back
Not at all true. However, my intuition tells me that there's more to your story than you're presenting here. Given the public nature of Slashdot, it's your right not to expose yourself publicly regarding a matter that you're presenting as clearly still deep wound today. If I were your local parish priest, would I come to you and attempt to offer the pastoral care you've mentioned here, if I knew who you were and how to get in touch with you? Absolutely.
Dude... I seriously hope those numbers are wrong... 2% of all catholic priests in the US? That sounds way to high.
Sorry -- was going from memory, and used the "number of allegations" number incorrectly. The statistics include all priests from 1950 to 2002, with the majority of the incidents in the 70's, and in decline since the 80's. From the Wiki article:
The report determined that, during the period from 1950–2002, a total of 10,667 individuals had made allegations of child sexual abuse. Of these, 3300 were not investigated because the allegations were made after the accused priest had died. After investigating the remaining 7700 allegations, the dioceses were able to substantiate 6,700 accusations against 4,392 priests in the USA, about 4% of all 109,694 priests who served during the time period covered by the study.[19] The number of alleged abuses increased in the 1960s, peaked in the 1970s, declined in the 1980s and by the 1990s had returned to the levels of the 1950s.[20]
Of the 4,392 priests against whom the accusations were deemed to be credible, 3,300 were not investigated because the allegations were made after the accused priest had died. Police were contacted regarding 1,021 of the remaining 1092 priests. 384 of these priests were prosecuted resulting in 252 convictions and 100 prison sentences. Thus, 6% of all priests against whom allegations were made were convicted and about 2% received prison sentences to date.[3][21]
Now, the Wiki article needs a little work: it double-counts the 3300 cases that weren't investigated "because the priest accused had died". If I have time, I'll go check out the Jay report, and see if this was just a simple mistake: chances are, the 4392 number came from the study.
The statistics worth noting -- in 2002, among all priests who served in the U.S. from 1950 to 2002:
only 4% had allegations leveled against them.
Only 0.35% were prosecuted for alleged crimes
Only 0.23% were convicted.
That is, out of 7000 allegations, only 4000 were found credible; only 1000 of these could be investigated (the rest have already been adjudicated by their maker...). Less than 400 of these were brought to trial; 252 convictions resulted. Not quite the "den of pederasty" that some allege; nonetheless, the Church should have none of this activity in its ranks.
The rest of the Church aided and abetted them by shuffling them around, and there is no telling how many escaped being outed.
When some of the hierarchy aided and abetted them...
(fixed that for ya).
When the Church instantly feeds their pedos to the cops, in public, and assists law enforcement personnel in busting pedos then it might not merit the label of pedo farm it currently deserves.
Which is, if you've been paying attention to the actions of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops' response, exactly what they're doing -- there's a no tolerance policy that requires dioceses to notify the authorities. Funny how that never gets mentioned...
Your fault? Nope ... I made the assumption that you were an active Catholic -- and an adult, at that -- when you left.
So, let me get this straight: you found out, when you were 10, that your priest was molesting boys. So you, on your own, decided to leave? Hmm... that can't be the whole story. Perhaps your parents decided not to keep you in a situation that was perceived as dangerous (a reasonable response). Perhaps later in life, as an adult, you decided that you couldn't get your head around a situation in which a member of a group doesn't act in concert with the tenets of the group (not terribly logical, but reasonable, if you were right in the middle of a scandal, and had that visceral response). Perhaps, though, you had your own negative experiences, and taking all these things into consideration, you decided to bail. Again, that's a conclusion that fails to distinguish between the principles at hand, and the failures of individuals who claim to hold to the principles.
When Bush did all the things that made Dems scream, did it make sense to abandon America? When Obama pushes through his agendas, does it likewise make sense for conservatives to abandon America? No. Somehow, though, the Church is held to a different standard: when its members, especially its leaders, fail (and in criminal ways, at that), the whole organization and/or its tenets are to blame. NOT logical (although understandable, if one is making an emotional or visceral decision, based on unrealistic expectations of humans who act as leaders...
Your insistence that all Catholics, or all priests are butt bandits is laughable, of course: the rates of incidence of abuse, around 2% over the past 50 years or so, is in the same range as other populations in Western society (teachers, male parents, volunteers in youth groups). Now, a real question is: should we hold clergy to higher standards? Yes -- but finding out that they're human doesn't imply that their actions reflect on the whole institution...
Punishable by death by the Church? Where'd that one come from? Last time I checked, the Church hadn't put people to death... at least, not since medieval understandings of power and the exercise thereof...
That's a real problem. Catholic priests should be monitored to make sure they're not communicating with minors. The Catholic Church, after all, is the only organization to have a slush fund to pay off victims of their pedophiles.
Somewhere on the order of 2% of Catholic priests in the U.S., over the past 50 years, have been proven (or accused) of sexual abuse of minors. Your call for monitoring a population who, by and large, does not commit crimes, for the sake of an extreme minority who does, is chilling. I bet you're all for Patriot Act intrusions of privacy, aren't ya? Or is this simply a straw man -- it's just the Church you don't like, and this is a convenient way to harass its representatives?
btw -- your summary of the Wiki article is blatantly misleading: if there were such a "slush fund", why are there so many diocesan bankruptcies documented? "4, Informative", in this case, reads more like "-5, Politically Correct Troll".
Let me understand: for some portion of your life (presumably, for some portion of your adult life), you believed in the tenets of the Catholic Church. That is to say, that among other things, you believed in God.
Then, evidence that priests, and to an extent, bishops, are human, and have failings, and sin (sometimes, criminally), somehow changed your belief -- not in a given person, or persons, or even, the Church -- but in the existence of God?
Umm... that's not terribly logical, ya know...
Can you provide a URL that documents your assertion? In fact, the research bears out the Pope's observation out, but since the Pope was the one making the observation, all hell broke loose when he said this.
What do I have to support this claim?
"In a 2008 article in Science called Reassessing HIV Prevention, 10 AIDS experts concluded that 'consistent condom use has not reached a sufficiently high level, even after many years of widespread and often aggressive promotion, to produce a measurable slowing of new infections in the generalized epidemics of Sub-Saharan Africa.' "
(from http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/27/AR2009032702825.html, a column written by a senior research scientist at the Harvard School of Public Health.)
Need to mod down parent -- this isn't insightful.
Property tax is one of the big reasons that the City is going after the universities, because as it stands, they're exempt. That means no "inclusion in school tuition and dorm fees".
Gas tax? You've never been to the University of Pittsburgh, have you? It's an urban campus -- there's not enough parking for commuters, let alone student residents!
Road tolls? Nope on that one, either -- the nearest toll roads to campus are easily a half-hour away, and don't figure into the equation of resident-student travel.
Sales tax? Yeah, but that's not what the City is trying to target here. They recognize that sales taxes are coming in, and what they're attempting to do here is fill the void in the rest of the tax burden, by grabbing from students what they cannot grab from universities.
Please stop spreading misinformation. There's ample evidence that Enron manipulated prices. Ever heard of Death Star?
Sure, I have -- Death Star was a shell game, designed to collect fees for congestion relief. Do you know what congestion implies? Excess capacity in one area of the grid, and insufficient transmission to get it to where it wants to go. The California problem was blackouts -- in other words, insufficient capacity. In a situation in which there's grid-wide insufficient capacity, there generally aren't any congestion situations... duh!
Please mod parent down -- this is neither "informative" nor "insightful"... Enron had nothing to do with the rolling blackouts in California; as the fine article mentioned, the problem was that retail rates were capped, while wholesale rates were deregulated. All it took was a relatively sustained spike in prices, and the retail suppliers were swimming in red ink; this led to even higher prices (because energy prices depend on a whole bundle of factors, including credit risk -- once the retailers were swamped, prices went even higher, as wholesalers (reasonably) suspected that retailers couldn't survive, paying hundreds while charging pennies... (I was in the industry at the time, and was sent to a client site in the aftermath of the blackouts...)
Now, once California's blackouts happened, people started questioning deregulation in general. The increased attention may have been what led to the sniffing around Enron, and the discovery of their accounting shenanigans. It's not the other way around, though...!
Actually it was Enron illegally manipulating the market which lead to the rolling blackouts. Notice they stopped shortly after the collapse of Enron and the arrest of those that hatched the schemes.
Do I really have to go the "correlation doesn't imply causation" route? Enron =/= California meltdown. Some Enron traders worked to artificially inflate rates, but the blackouts would have happened without their attempt to game generator down-time...
The "bribing" described in the article was Eddison trying to convience the local government that it would be worth it to install an electric grid.
Note that Edison =/= Enron...
Fiendish? What could possibly be more fair and objective than making him eat his own dogfood?
Suggesting that he runs his prof's code through the analyzer, if the prof truly believes his code deserves a "D"...
Dude deserves to fail: when confronted, he shoulda countered that he used his program as a baseline: the program that minimally gets a "pass", when run through the analyzer. Any MS student who can't BS his thesis prof... *sigh*...!
That's what I'm guessing too. TFA is ridiculously underinformative. Neuralstem doesn't seem to be talking specifics for some reason.
I'm guessing their technique involves 1. Surgery to get tissue samples which would be enriched in neural stem cells (I've heard the cells next to the ventricles in your brain are good spots for that)
So, if I understand you correctly, you're guessing that they're adult stem cells, not embryonic stem cells? That might answer your implied question of why Neuralstem isn't talking specifics -- stem cell research is only cool when it's embryonic stem cell research... ;)
If you look into 1 Timothy, chapter 3 -
"2: A bishop then must be blameless, the husband of one wife, vigilant, sober, of good behaviour, given to hospitality, apt to teach;
3: Not given to wine, no striker, not greedy of filthy lucre; but patient, not a brawler, not covetous;
4: One that ruleth well his own house, having his children in subjection with all gravity;
5: (For if a man know not how to rule his own house, how shall he take care of the church of God?)"
you will see that it was not the intention of the church founders that priests should be celibate.
umm... it was also the intention of church founders that all Christians must be circumsized, and follow Jewish law. However, they decided that it was wiser to allow Gentiles to follow their own dietary customs and not to require circumcision. So... why is it ok on one hand that church leaders to make a decision against Jewish custom, and not ok on the other hand that they decided that celibacy be mandatory? It all comes down to the ability of church leaders to follow the promptings of the Holy Spirit in making decisions related to the church, doesn't it?
In other words, I'd rather that these extremely immature humans were given the chance to continue maturing toward adulthood, rather than being tossed aside OR killed for parts to help others.
My brother is an extremely immature human. What you are describing is an embryo. An embryo is a multicellular diploid eukaryote in its earliest stage of development that has no more in common with a human being then an ant. (And before you say it, the fact that the embryo cells may becomepart of a human being doesn't matter. I can eat the ant and it will become a part of a person too.)
Really? A human embryo can develop into an adult human, not just "become part" of one. Once you're able to take an ant and turn it into a human being, come back into the discussion. Until then, enjoy your diet of ants...