Seriously, though. Maybe the author's change had to do something with changing to a a character type that no longer wonders around showing off her nipples through netting. That probably makes a difference in the likelihood of people coming up to chat with a stranger.
People love to bash it but do not realize how absolutely necessary it is for our economy. For starters, try doing some research to determine the percentage of our country that is employed in some capacity in marketing/advertising.
Terrible argument. That's the Broken Window fallacy in action. We have a lot of people hired by defense contractors in America. Does that mean that war is good for the country? We have plenty of people hired to track down drug dealers and to keep them in prison. Is drug dealing good for the nation? A lot of money gets poured into cleaning up Superfund sites. Is pollution good for the economy?
Just because a market exists for a service doesn't mean that the service benefits the economy by the mere act of creating jobs.
What about all the GOOD viral marketing that you've seen and gone "oh, cool, thats entertaining".
If it's entertaining, and people readily know that it's marketing, then it's not really viral in my book. I know it's not part of the standard definition, but I don't really consider something viral marketing unless it attempts to deceive the social network its exploiting into spreading word about it. I draw a line between publicity stunts and an attempt to hoodwink people into watching ads by disguising them as something else. That element of deception is what irritates most people here.
It's the lack of respect for the customer base that advertising often shows that rubs people the wrong way. A really good ad is either treated as useful information or entertainment. A bad ad is just an intrusion.
The problem is that a generation of Americans (speaking for my own country) has been pumped so full of non-judgmentalism, relativism, and revisionism by public schools that a majority of us can no longer discern it from shine-ola.
I'm sorry, but a person who has an ability to see the world from multiple points of view is generally better at discerning intent and deception than someone who thinks that there is only One Truth and that it is theirs. All you have to do is play the the latter's biases, whereas the former is capable of seeing the situation objectively or at least recognize that they're being pandered to.
A closed mind is not the answer to telling truth from lies.
Actually, I'm one of those people that prefers competitive games to be more appreciative of the other person's skill than taunting over their lack thereof. You'd be exactly the kind of person that I'd enjoy the ability to mute. Life's too short to play with people that irritate you.
I think it's a great idea, especially if the muted player gets a notification of the muting and if the status shows up on any lists of players on the server.
It would be a good deterrent if they knew that multiple players considered them not worth talking to. Even better if it sends them into an incoherent rage that results in more and more people muting them, if you ask me. Nothing quite like a wave of unpopularity to send an immature kid off sulking.
It's nigh impossible to pursue a drug control strategy against small-scale production of marijuana when industrial hemp and drug-quality hemp are indistinguishable without close examination. A decent crop of quality marijuana could be disguised as part of an industrial field. Care would have to be taken to avoid letting cross-fertilization dilute the quality of the product, and harvesting times are different, but the risks involved can be mitigated with effort. Said effort is less than that required to conceal marijuana production away from a field.
Even if mass-production for street retail is impractical, low-scale production would be a problem. In the current situation, anytime you see that distinctive plant you know you've got a criminal. Legalizing industrial hemp would make that impossible, because it would be impractical to test crops for THC content.
Again, why bother when there are other plants that can fulfill all of the same roles as hemp with none of the problems? The very specter of a problem with drug laws is enough to make it waste of time to argue for when problem-free alternatives exist. I say expend your energy elsewhere.
Then one guy was like, "I bet we could take a junior senator and turn him into a presidential candidate".
Yeah. They even wrote that speech that he gave at the 2004 Democratic Convention and then used their secret media Illuminati powers to get him to be the speaker.
The buzz behind Obama is real. True, the media has latched onto him as their darling, but he earned that by making a huge impression on everybody when giving that speech. Watch it (or at least listen to it) sometime. Just reading a transcript doesn't do it justice.
So? He attended a Catholic school while in Indonesia, was raised by an atheist mother and laid-back stepfather, and became a church-goer back in the 80s. He speaks at long length about his faith and how he came to grow into it in his book "The Audacity of Hope." You should read it sometime before spreading right-wing propaganda about him.
Besides, I'm with the AC. Who cares about the South if you're a Democrat? Increasingly, the South and the Republican Party are becoming symbiotically tied. Not only is the South no longer essential to a Democratic victory, but it's an increasingly futile gesture as it's the only place left that Republicans are making gains.
Obama should pay more attention to the Midwest and the West than the South, and I say that as a resident of Georgia.
Actually, the numbers are better than you think, but still not great. We currently get 67 gallons of fuel from one dry ton of biomass. That's a little over 2 barrels per ton, as you point out. However, that's only with current technology. The theoretical yields of most crops is around 100-120 gallons per dry ton. We'll probably never beat 80-100, so let's consider 3 barrels our most likely max.
Current crop yields using traditional crops like corn produce about 5 dry tons per acre, but better crops like kenaf or switchgrass can yield 10 tons per acre. Now we're starting to talk 30 barrels per acre.
Furthermore, only about half of the barrels of oil we consume per day is turned into gasoline. So, now we have to cover about 10 million barrels (once we account for rounding and the lesser energy density of ethanol). This will be improved by better gas mileage standards over the next couple of decades, but we'll ignore that for now.
10 million barrels per day is 1/3 million acres per day. ~120 million acres is nearly a third of the 390 million acres of farmland we have, so it's doable, but at a hideous cost. Even with today's technology and a better selection of crops, it would take 2/3 of our farmland. So, it's doable, but probably only at the cost of the entire country going vegan. <g>
I think I'm going to hold out more hope for biodiesel, especially algal biodiesel now. The most wild-eyed estimates claim 15,000 gallons per acre or about 500 barrels per acre. Even 100 bbl/acre would cover our gasoline needs in 10% of our arable farmland, though the water needs might be prohibitive without making efforts to control evaporation. On the bright side, we might be able to make use of non-arable land for this and avoid disturbing our farmland.
By the way, thanks for making me track down the numbers on this. I've changed my stance on bioethanol because of this.
Hemp grows very quickly and efficiently without much need for fertilizer compared to other crops. It produces oils which could be used in biodiesel and a lot of fibrous mass which could be used for cellulosic ethanol should we finally get an efficient, cheap process for it.
However, hemp carries all the usual problems with marijuana, and there are several other crops that on par with hemp for quick growth of cellulose with low fertilizer use (such as kenaf, switchgras, or miscanthus), and there are much better sources of oil for biodiesel production (like algae).
Hemp is a non-starter as a result. Why bother with all the drug enforcement hassles when you can get the same benefits from other crops?
I'm a hardcore Democrat, and I'd actually like to see a woman president someday, but Hillary Clinton just rubs me the wrong way. She's another unexciting DLC Democrat whose stances blow with the wind, and the only stances she seems consistent on are ones that I disagree with (e.g. her stance on video games, her general anti-consumer voting record, etc.). Right now, the absolute last thing the Democratic party needs is to put another poll-driven, passionless candidate to win the primary.
Obama gets my vote. He's got solid values, and he's yet to do anything that shows he doesn't mean what he says. I've been watching him since 2004 and hoping for this day.
Vote for the one person you think is the absolute worst to have in office. Like golf, the one with the lowest score wins.
Horrible idea. Most obscure candidate wins. All you've got to do is get on the ballot in enough states, stay out of the limelight, and you win. The idea wouldn't work without the ability to select multiple candidates, and then it becomes the same as being able to standard approval voting.
I've gotten stuck in two Fire Emblem games where the main members of the party are maxed out on levels (and gain nothing further from experience) and the rest of the party is too weak to level up without getting killed. Since the games offer no random, non-story battles to strengthen your party with, I'm stuck unable to advance the plot without having to sacrifice low-level characters (who then die permanently, losing you their elements of the story).
Hell, my fiance LOVES playing Dead or Alive Xtreme 2, hardly the target demographic for that game.
Yeah, but what is the game essentially? It's running around shopping for clothes, jewelry, and make-up for girls with some volleyball and fan service tossed in and next to no macho aggression. Oh sure, there's girls in bikinis, but modern culture has inured women to seeing scantily clad women in ads for women -- just open up a Cosmo sometime. There's far more to attract women to the game than men once you scratch the surface.
I just used this very quote in a response to another post without even realizing that you'd posted this. This is my favorite quote to inspire humility when thinking about religion.
So the episode in the temple, with the whips, you simply discount?
No. That was Jesus angry at people twisting a place of spiritual communion with God into a place of commercial benefit and exploitation. That's perfectly in tune with the very thrust of my argument -- that people will warp religion to their own benefit. That is what angered Jesus the only time he's noted as being angry and acting on it. You speak of it like it was a negative, but it's a strong message that religion and charity should not be co-opted to greed and cheating of others and that that's more worthy of anger than a previously stonable sin like adultery.
Christianity, which has a long and consistant record of violence that many of today's adherents would just love to be able to whitewash, but cannot.
You would be better to point out that Western culture has a long and constant record of violence that many of today's descendant would just love to be able to whitewash, but cannot. Western culture is no more or less guilty of violence than any other -- just more guilty of success with it. You seem to be singling out Christianity for your disdain. What exactly makes cultures that claim to follow Christianity different from cultures that claim to follow any other religion?
You mean like Christ going after those in the temple? Oh. Or do you mean like god turning Lot's wife into salt? Or his angels killing all the men and children? Or drowning every living creature except those who managed to get a seat on the ark? Or mixing up the languages of everyone? It seems to me that Scientology had a very good model for this in Christianity itself, both NT and OT derived.
Two points: 1) There is a very different standard of behavior between the Old Testament and the New Testament. 2) The actions of God himself do not directly imply what the actions of humans who worship him should be. In fact there are numerable examples in the Bible of God doing things that he forbids man to do (e.g. judgment of others).
Furthermore, millions - literally millions - of Christians believed that he would have sanctioned the inquisition [...].
I'm aware of what self-proclaimed Christians have done. I'm also aware of what Roman and Norse pagans did, what Taoists, Buddhists, and Confuscianists did, what Muslims did, what the Hindus and the Sikhs did, what the Egyptians did, what Zen Buddhists and Shinto practitioners did, what animists in the Americas and Africa did, etc., etc. Individual religions are little to blame for the same cultural patterns occurring back and forth across the history of the world. It's human nature. The use of religion in war, conquest, oppression, and xenophobia might as well be a skin on an application for all the net difference it causes. Religion is just used as an excuse to do what men do when faced with men who are different.
Hasn't the 20th century and the rise of Fascism, Communism, and racial separation movements taught you that we don't need religion for men to find reasons to rally together and commit violence against others?
Right now people are killing other people in the name of America in war founded on deception, maintained by wishful thinking, and bolstered by an eviscerating of our values. Does that mean that the Constitution and the principles of our founders and of American progress are valueless and irrelevant since they are not being actively practiced? This is essentially the argument you are making against the history of Christianity -- that the actions of the people who wrap it around themselves and act like the warmongers and xenophobes of every other culture in history are more important for judging the principles of it than the actions of those who obey those prinicples.
<stares expectantly, waiting for you to actually understand what you just said>
<calmly returns stare, vainly hoping you know what a fundamenalism
Guess I'll just have to start calling it a crippled smartphone.
I think we finally have a consensus here.
The iPhone is missing the one fundamental feature that justifies the typical smartphone's price tag. Charging the same price for a phone that can't be extended is like charging full price for a PC that can only run signed executables. Without the ability to change it, it's hardly a computer at all - it's just a toy.
Well... it's not completely unextensible. It's just that only Apple will be developing the new apps for the phone. Believe me, I'm not happy with this idea either. It's not the reason I won't be getting the iPhone. (Price, size, and battery power matter more to me.) It's only a small negative for me because the world of Symbian software for my phone has been utterly terrible. I just don't have great experience with 3rd party apps, though I appreciate the ability to get them.
I think it is just as fair to write "Christianity views those who interfere with Christianity to be fair game" or "Islam views those who interfere with Islam to be fair game."
No, I think it's quite unfair. The very source that Christianity springs from -- Christ -- explicitly does not sanction visiting wrath upon your enemies. Jesus repeatedly makes the point that you should love your enemies, that you should turn the other cheek, and that you should in general be far more concerned about your own flaws than those of others.
The very source that Scientology springs from -- L. Ron Hubbard -- explicitly stated that it was fair to go after enemies of Scientology, and his retraction of said policy is suspect because of both the way it was worded (mostly reflecting on the negative PR of the policy) and the fact that he stated that it was okay to lie to non-Scientologists. (Also, the fact that the policy was in effect into the 80s when a more public repudation came out belies the fact that it may not be retracted).
The fact that Christians rarely live up to the standards of their own religion does not imply that the religion itself is harmful and actively sanctions the persecution of non-believers. Every major human institution fails because of the petty self-interests of men who are willing to twist their people's beliefs for self-gain. From Christians vowing to never forgive and never forget to Buddhists supporting samurai to Muslims turning on Muslims to Communist leaders hording wealth for themselves to anti-drug officers taking and dealing drugs on the side, there have always been people willing to compromise the prinicples of their culture or organization for personal gain. The failure of leaders and followers to stick to the spirit of their avowed beliefs does not make said beliefs hollow and valueless in and of themselves.
To use as an underlying presumption that "Christianity = love your enemy" is, in my view, disingenuous. Christianity is demonstrably all over the map when it comes to core moral and ethical beliefs.
The Bible is very clear on the matter. The Sermon on the Mount is the most central sermon in all of the New Testament on how Christians are supposed to live. It's the central thesis that binds everything else. Furthermore, when asked what the most important commandments are, Jesus replied, "Love God," and "Love your neighbor as yourself." From "judge not" to "turn the other cheek," Christianity is fundamentally about foregiveness and love. Anyone who misses that is quite simply an off-shoot from the faith. I'm not being a fundamentalist here; it's the core doctrine of the faith. If you miss out on that, you're not a Christian.
Instead, you're a member of a human tribe that ritualizes Christianity as cultural binding without actually practicing the faith. You're free to hate and clash with all other cultures outside of yours, but you'd be doing this anyway without Christianity -- there would just be some other excuse to divide and hate. Maybe you'd be a Muslim. Maybe you'd be a polytheist. Maybe you'd be a militant atheist. It doesn't really matter -- you'd probably just be militantly xenophobic no matter what you were. There are biological reasons for this, after all. Anyone who doesn't appreciate that has neither and appreciation of world history nor of evolutionary sociobiology. Again, you should not blame Christianity for the unwillingness of people to actually practice what it preaches.
It is simply unacceptable to castigate Scientology for what it has not done. Guessing doesn't count. Stick to reality here.
I'm sorry, but the cold hard reality is that every single group in human history has at some point demonized outsiders and acted on it. Most of the successful ones got there by acting violently on those impulses. It's human nature. We're a pack animal. For better or for worse, that means that it's wired into our psychology to smooth over the flaws of the groups we identify
Years ago, the Christian Right had to go through pretty extreme lengths to enforce their will (for example, in the 1920s the prohibition of alchohol needed to explicity constitutional amendment to be enacted), since the role of the federal government was so limited.
That was the Christian Left -- the same radical religious movement that gave birth to unions, trust-busting, and women's lib in America. It was the Secular Right that fought against it mostly. The Temperance movement was very closely tied into the women's rights movement (as drunkenness was blamed for domestic abuse). It's no coincidence that the 18th & 19th Amendments were passed so closely together. It was a major part of the Progressive movement.
It was mostly secular conservatives that opposed Prohibition in its early days. Progressivism and its related policies were very strongly tied to religious fundamentalism back in the day. The tie between fundamentalism and right-wing politics is a function of the latter half of the 21st century and fear of communism.
Offhand the only major religion that doesn't condemn anyone or anything is Buddism.
Actually, militant Zen Buddhism was a unifying force in WWII Japan. Much like promises of eternal reward after death helps assuage fears for believers in Judeo-Christian teachings, the beliefs in impermanence and reincarnation assuage the fears of death for Buddhists. Soto Zen has also been criticized for racial discrimination [PDF] in the treatment of the former Japanese lower caste members. You can read a long list of essays about Buddhism going wrong (particularly Japanese Buddhism) here.
Then, of course, there was the White Lotus Revolution which overthrew the Mongol Yuan dynasty and established the Ming dynasty. That was basically a Buddhist nationalist secret society. The ethnic struggles in Sri Lanka are between the Buddhist Sinhalese and the Hindu Tamils, so Buddhists aren't all innocent either.
The problem is not the religion -- it's the people that practice it.
I repeat: go to any cell phone store and ask to see a smartphone; they won't just point you to the $20 phone with a built-in calendar.
Of course not, but I ask you again -- what core functionality does a Blackberry or Treo have that an iPhone does not? Other than the ability to install 3rd party software or to interface with specific software (i.e. Exchange servers) there's nothing.
As for the RAZR: running third party software isn't the only requirement of a smartphone, it's just one of them.
Well, then give me a definition of smartphone that includes a Treo and a Blackberry but not an iPhone or a RAZR that doesn't rely on whatever a salesperson steers you towards. Salespeople are not usually considered the rod to measure a standard by. Furthermore, it's going to be very hard to find a salesperson that going to have the option of steering you towards an iPhone on display for several months, now isn't it?
In fact, I'd say that if none of the definitions on the first page of a Google search for "smartphone definition" manages to turn up a definition that matches your concept, then I'd say that the common definitions of a smartphone include the iPhone. Admit it; you just have a feature wishlist that the iPhone doesn't meet. That in no way means that it isn't a high-end model that provides more than enough functionality to be considered a smartphone.
I'm not in the least contesting the idea that Scientologists aren't loony to their very core; I'm just curious why you seem to think that Scientologists are worse than Christians somehow. Most of the differences I can think of leave the Christians as the worse offenders.
Two points.
1) You're probably unaware of the offenses of Scientologists. They're relatively obscure. 2) There are a LOT more Christians and the religion has had a LOT longer time to have offenses committed in its name.
Combining these two means that you don't really have a good concept of the relative densities of craziness in the two religions. The larger a population is, the greater the violent fringe that can exist. Every major religion in existence has had its share of bloodshed, but that's not the fault of religion per se so much as the natural human tendency to form groups and to think less of people not in your group. Since Christianity is larger and more established, it has a greater capacity to harbor a lunatic fringe. That does not reflect necessarily on the relative merits of the core beliefs of the two faiths.
Don't recall any Scientologists blowing up any abortion clinics, for instance, nor can I think of them trying to tell me, a non-believer - or worse, getting a law put in place that coerces me - such that I can't marry two willing people.
While there isn't any solid evidence of murders committed in the name of Scientology, there is a long history of intimidation, harassment, and property damage in defense of the religion. (There is evidence for negligent death, but no first-degree murder.) The religion is relatively young, so it's hard to say whether that's a matter of time or not.
However, there is a marked difference in the canonical stance on violence towards outsiders between mainstream Christianity and mainstream Scientology. Scientology views those who interfere with Scientology to be fair game. That is to say that there's no moral laws protecting the enemies of Scientology and no sanction of any activities taken to harm them. Christianity, at its core, states that you should love your enemy. Few Christians are capable of holding themselves to that standard, but the difference in what you're supposed to do is marked.
As for attempting to force their morality on others, Scientology simply hasn't had the power to enforce its views on outsiders due to a lack of critical mass. What makes you think they'd be different from any other segment of society bound by a common code of behavior?
They have, however, lobbied for broad government powers to enforce copyright because they protect their inner secrets with copyright law and have been responsible for a number of DMCA takedown notices. They were notable advocates for the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act and the DMCA itself.
That is not a common definition of "smartphone". Go to any cell phone store and ask to see the smartphones; they'll show you to the Blackberries and Treos.
The common definition is a phone that combines PDA & cellphone functionality. Anything else is really irrelevant.
You can install new software on it to meet your current and future needs, without having to pay the manufacturer for an expensive development license, or waiting for an "approved" developer to write, test, and sell the app you need.
By that definition, Symbian phones from Nokia aren't smartphones anymore due to the expense of getting VeriSign to sign your apps, and the RAZR is one since its Java engine lets it run 3rd party software.
Quite frankly, it's an idiotic definition. In no way does 3rd party software have to be available for a phone to be a smartphone. The availability of said software is a definitely desirable feature, but it's utterly irrelevant for the purposes of describing the multi-functionality of such a device, just as it would've been an irrelevant standard for determining whether or not a PDA was a PDA or not.
Please give us your definition of a smartphone that somehow does not allow for the iPhone to be considered one. I've always assumed something like the Wikipedia's definition:
A smartphone is generally considered any handheld device that integrates personal information management and mobile phone capabilities in the same device. Often, this includes adding phone functions to already capable PDAs or putting "smart" capabilities, such as PDA functions, into a mobile phone.
Almost all phones today that sell for more than $50 are smartphones. The iPhone has calendaring, contact lists, a notepad, a web browser, a GPS navigation system, and so on, and so on.
If that isn't a smartphone, then I'd love to hear what phone on the market is one. What exactly can you do with a PDA that you can't do with an iPhone that overrides everything it can do?
Slashdot Mirror
Seriously, though. Maybe the author's change had to do something with changing to a a character type that no longer wonders around showing off her nipples through netting. That probably makes a difference in the likelihood of people coming up to chat with a stranger.
People love to bash it but do not realize how absolutely necessary it is for our economy. For starters, try doing some research to determine the percentage of our country that is employed in some capacity in marketing/advertising.
Terrible argument. That's the Broken Window fallacy in action. We have a lot of people hired by defense contractors in America. Does that mean that war is good for the country? We have plenty of people hired to track down drug dealers and to keep them in prison. Is drug dealing good for the nation? A lot of money gets poured into cleaning up Superfund sites. Is pollution good for the economy?
Just because a market exists for a service doesn't mean that the service benefits the economy by the mere act of creating jobs.
What about all the GOOD viral marketing that you've seen and gone "oh, cool, thats entertaining".
If it's entertaining, and people readily know that it's marketing, then it's not really viral in my book. I know it's not part of the standard definition, but I don't really consider something viral marketing unless it attempts to deceive the social network its exploiting into spreading word about it. I draw a line between publicity stunts and an attempt to hoodwink people into watching ads by disguising them as something else. That element of deception is what irritates most people here.
It's the lack of respect for the customer base that advertising often shows that rubs people the wrong way. A really good ad is either treated as useful information or entertainment. A bad ad is just an intrusion.
The problem is that a generation of Americans (speaking for my own country) has been pumped so full of non-judgmentalism, relativism, and revisionism by public schools that a majority of us can no longer discern it from shine-ola.
I'm sorry, but a person who has an ability to see the world from multiple points of view is generally better at discerning intent and deception than someone who thinks that there is only One Truth and that it is theirs. All you have to do is play the the latter's biases, whereas the former is capable of seeing the situation objectively or at least recognize that they're being pandered to.
A closed mind is not the answer to telling truth from lies.
Actually, I'm one of those people that prefers competitive games to be more appreciative of the other person's skill than taunting over their lack thereof. You'd be exactly the kind of person that I'd enjoy the ability to mute. Life's too short to play with people that irritate you.
Don't like that? Deal with it.
I think it's a great idea, especially if the muted player gets a notification of the muting and if the status shows up on any lists of players on the server.
It would be a good deterrent if they knew that multiple players considered them not worth talking to. Even better if it sends them into an incoherent rage that results in more and more people muting them, if you ask me. Nothing quite like a wave of unpopularity to send an immature kid off sulking.
It's nigh impossible to pursue a drug control strategy against small-scale production of marijuana when industrial hemp and drug-quality hemp are indistinguishable without close examination. A decent crop of quality marijuana could be disguised as part of an industrial field. Care would have to be taken to avoid letting cross-fertilization dilute the quality of the product, and harvesting times are different, but the risks involved can be mitigated with effort. Said effort is less than that required to conceal marijuana production away from a field.
Even if mass-production for street retail is impractical, low-scale production would be a problem. In the current situation, anytime you see that distinctive plant you know you've got a criminal. Legalizing industrial hemp would make that impossible, because it would be impractical to test crops for THC content.
Again, why bother when there are other plants that can fulfill all of the same roles as hemp with none of the problems? The very specter of a problem with drug laws is enough to make it waste of time to argue for when problem-free alternatives exist. I say expend your energy elsewhere.
Then one guy was like, "I bet we could take a junior senator and turn him into a presidential candidate".
Yeah. They even wrote that speech that he gave at the 2004 Democratic Convention and then used their secret media Illuminati powers to get him to be the speaker.
The buzz behind Obama is real. True, the media has latched onto him as their darling, but he earned that by making a huge impression on everybody when giving that speech. Watch it (or at least listen to it) sometime. Just reading a transcript doesn't do it justice.
So? He attended a Catholic school while in Indonesia, was raised by an atheist mother and laid-back stepfather, and became a church-goer back in the 80s. He speaks at long length about his faith and how he came to grow into it in his book "The Audacity of Hope." You should read it sometime before spreading right-wing propaganda about him.
Besides, I'm with the AC. Who cares about the South if you're a Democrat? Increasingly, the South and the Republican Party are becoming symbiotically tied. Not only is the South no longer essential to a Democratic victory, but it's an increasingly futile gesture as it's the only place left that Republicans are making gains.
Obama should pay more attention to the Midwest and the West than the South, and I say that as a resident of Georgia.
Actually, the numbers are better than you think, but still not great. We currently get 67 gallons of fuel from one dry ton of biomass. That's a little over 2 barrels per ton, as you point out. However, that's only with current technology. The theoretical yields of most crops is around 100-120 gallons per dry ton. We'll probably never beat 80-100, so let's consider 3 barrels our most likely max.
Current crop yields using traditional crops like corn produce about 5 dry tons per acre, but better crops like kenaf or switchgrass can yield 10 tons per acre. Now we're starting to talk 30 barrels per acre.
Furthermore, only about half of the barrels of oil we consume per day is turned into gasoline. So, now we have to cover about 10 million barrels (once we account for rounding and the lesser energy density of ethanol). This will be improved by better gas mileage standards over the next couple of decades, but we'll ignore that for now.
10 million barrels per day is 1/3 million acres per day. ~120 million acres is nearly a third of the 390 million acres of farmland we have, so it's doable, but at a hideous cost. Even with today's technology and a better selection of crops, it would take 2/3 of our farmland. So, it's doable, but probably only at the cost of the entire country going vegan. <g>
I think I'm going to hold out more hope for biodiesel, especially algal biodiesel now. The most wild-eyed estimates claim 15,000 gallons per acre or about 500 barrels per acre. Even 100 bbl/acre would cover our gasoline needs in 10% of our arable farmland, though the water needs might be prohibitive without making efforts to control evaporation. On the bright side, we might be able to make use of non-arable land for this and avoid disturbing our farmland.
By the way, thanks for making me track down the numbers on this. I've changed my stance on bioethanol because of this.
Hemp grows very quickly and efficiently without much need for fertilizer compared to other crops. It produces oils which could be used in biodiesel and a lot of fibrous mass which could be used for cellulosic ethanol should we finally get an efficient, cheap process for it.
However, hemp carries all the usual problems with marijuana, and there are several other crops that on par with hemp for quick growth of cellulose with low fertilizer use (such as kenaf, switchgras, or miscanthus), and there are much better sources of oil for biodiesel production (like algae).
Hemp is a non-starter as a result. Why bother with all the drug enforcement hassles when you can get the same benefits from other crops?
so long as they're not a woman...
Well, so long as they're not THAT woman.
I'm a hardcore Democrat, and I'd actually like to see a woman president someday, but Hillary Clinton just rubs me the wrong way. She's another unexciting DLC Democrat whose stances blow with the wind, and the only stances she seems consistent on are ones that I disagree with (e.g. her stance on video games, her general anti-consumer voting record, etc.). Right now, the absolute last thing the Democratic party needs is to put another poll-driven, passionless candidate to win the primary.
Obama gets my vote. He's got solid values, and he's yet to do anything that shows he doesn't mean what he says. I've been watching him since 2004 and hoping for this day.
Vote for the one person you think is the absolute worst to have in office. Like golf, the one with the lowest score wins.
Horrible idea. Most obscure candidate wins. All you've got to do is get on the ballot in enough states, stay out of the limelight, and you win. The idea wouldn't work without the ability to select multiple candidates, and then it becomes the same as being able to standard approval voting.
I've gotten stuck in two Fire Emblem games where the main members of the party are maxed out on levels (and gain nothing further from experience) and the rest of the party is too weak to level up without getting killed. Since the games offer no random, non-story battles to strengthen your party with, I'm stuck unable to advance the plot without having to sacrifice low-level characters (who then die permanently, losing you their elements of the story).
Hell, my fiance LOVES playing Dead or Alive Xtreme 2, hardly the target demographic for that game.
Yeah, but what is the game essentially? It's running around shopping for clothes, jewelry, and make-up for girls with some volleyball and fan service tossed in and next to no macho aggression. Oh sure, there's girls in bikinis, but modern culture has inured women to seeing scantily clad women in ads for women -- just open up a Cosmo sometime. There's far more to attract women to the game than men once you scratch the surface.
I just used this very quote in a response to another post without even realizing that you'd posted this. This is my favorite quote to inspire humility when thinking about religion.
So the episode in the temple, with the whips, you simply discount?
No. That was Jesus angry at people twisting a place of spiritual communion with God into a place of commercial benefit and exploitation. That's perfectly in tune with the very thrust of my argument -- that people will warp religion to their own benefit. That is what angered Jesus the only time he's noted as being angry and acting on it. You speak of it like it was a negative, but it's a strong message that religion and charity should not be co-opted to greed and cheating of others and that that's more worthy of anger than a previously stonable sin like adultery.
Christianity, which has a long and consistant record of violence that many of today's adherents would just love to be able to whitewash, but cannot.
You would be better to point out that Western culture has a long and constant record of violence that many of today's descendant would just love to be able to whitewash, but cannot. Western culture is no more or less guilty of violence than any other -- just more guilty of success with it. You seem to be singling out Christianity for your disdain. What exactly makes cultures that claim to follow Christianity different from cultures that claim to follow any other religion?
You mean like Christ going after those in the temple? Oh. Or do you mean like god turning Lot's wife into salt? Or his angels killing all the men and children? Or drowning every living creature except those who managed to get a seat on the ark? Or mixing up the languages of everyone? It seems to me that Scientology had a very good model for this in Christianity itself, both NT and OT derived.
Two points:
1) There is a very different standard of behavior between the Old Testament and the New Testament.
2) The actions of God himself do not directly imply what the actions of humans who worship him should be. In fact there are numerable examples in the Bible of God doing things that he forbids man to do (e.g. judgment of others).
Furthermore, millions - literally millions - of Christians believed that he would have sanctioned the inquisition [...].
I'm aware of what self-proclaimed Christians have done. I'm also aware of what Roman and Norse pagans did, what Taoists, Buddhists, and Confuscianists did, what Muslims did, what the Hindus and the Sikhs did, what the Egyptians did, what Zen Buddhists and Shinto practitioners did, what animists in the Americas and Africa did, etc., etc. Individual religions are little to blame for the same cultural patterns occurring back and forth across the history of the world. It's human nature. The use of religion in war, conquest, oppression, and xenophobia might as well be a skin on an application for all the net difference it causes. Religion is just used as an excuse to do what men do when faced with men who are different.
Hasn't the 20th century and the rise of Fascism, Communism, and racial separation movements taught you that we don't need religion for men to find reasons to rally together and commit violence against others?
Right now people are killing other people in the name of America in war founded on deception, maintained by wishful thinking, and bolstered by an eviscerating of our values. Does that mean that the Constitution and the principles of our founders and of American progress are valueless and irrelevant since they are not being actively practiced? This is essentially the argument you are making against the history of Christianity -- that the actions of the people who wrap it around themselves and act like the warmongers and xenophobes of every other culture in history are more important for judging the principles of it than the actions of those who obey those prinicples.
<stares expectantly, waiting for you to actually understand what you just said>
<calmly returns stare, vainly hoping you know what a fundamenalism
Guess I'll just have to start calling it a crippled smartphone.
I think we finally have a consensus here.
The iPhone is missing the one fundamental feature that justifies the typical smartphone's price tag. Charging the same price for a phone that can't be extended is like charging full price for a PC that can only run signed executables. Without the ability to change it, it's hardly a computer at all - it's just a toy.
Well... it's not completely unextensible. It's just that only Apple will be developing the new apps for the phone. Believe me, I'm not happy with this idea either. It's not the reason I won't be getting the iPhone. (Price, size, and battery power matter more to me.) It's only a small negative for me because the world of Symbian software for my phone has been utterly terrible. I just don't have great experience with 3rd party apps, though I appreciate the ability to get them.
I think it is just as fair to write "Christianity views those who interfere with Christianity to be fair game" or "Islam views those who interfere with Islam to be fair game."
No, I think it's quite unfair. The very source that Christianity springs from -- Christ -- explicitly does not sanction visiting wrath upon your enemies. Jesus repeatedly makes the point that you should love your enemies, that you should turn the other cheek, and that you should in general be far more concerned about your own flaws than those of others.
The very source that Scientology springs from -- L. Ron Hubbard -- explicitly stated that it was fair to go after enemies of Scientology, and his retraction of said policy is suspect because of both the way it was worded (mostly reflecting on the negative PR of the policy) and the fact that he stated that it was okay to lie to non-Scientologists. (Also, the fact that the policy was in effect into the 80s when a more public repudation came out belies the fact that it may not be retracted).
The fact that Christians rarely live up to the standards of their own religion does not imply that the religion itself is harmful and actively sanctions the persecution of non-believers. Every major human institution fails because of the petty self-interests of men who are willing to twist their people's beliefs for self-gain. From Christians vowing to never forgive and never forget to Buddhists supporting samurai to Muslims turning on Muslims to Communist leaders hording wealth for themselves to anti-drug officers taking and dealing drugs on the side, there have always been people willing to compromise the prinicples of their culture or organization for personal gain. The failure of leaders and followers to stick to the spirit of their avowed beliefs does not make said beliefs hollow and valueless in and of themselves.
To use as an underlying presumption that "Christianity = love your enemy" is, in my view, disingenuous. Christianity is demonstrably all over the map when it comes to core moral and ethical beliefs.
The Bible is very clear on the matter. The Sermon on the Mount is the most central sermon in all of the New Testament on how Christians are supposed to live. It's the central thesis that binds everything else. Furthermore, when asked what the most important commandments are, Jesus replied, "Love God," and "Love your neighbor as yourself." From "judge not" to "turn the other cheek," Christianity is fundamentally about foregiveness and love. Anyone who misses that is quite simply an off-shoot from the faith. I'm not being a fundamentalist here; it's the core doctrine of the faith. If you miss out on that, you're not a Christian.
Instead, you're a member of a human tribe that ritualizes Christianity as cultural binding without actually practicing the faith. You're free to hate and clash with all other cultures outside of yours, but you'd be doing this anyway without Christianity -- there would just be some other excuse to divide and hate. Maybe you'd be a Muslim. Maybe you'd be a polytheist. Maybe you'd be a militant atheist. It doesn't really matter -- you'd probably just be militantly xenophobic no matter what you were. There are biological reasons for this, after all. Anyone who doesn't appreciate that has neither and appreciation of world history nor of evolutionary sociobiology. Again, you should not blame Christianity for the unwillingness of people to actually practice what it preaches.
It is simply unacceptable to castigate Scientology for what it has not done. Guessing doesn't count. Stick to reality here.
I'm sorry, but the cold hard reality is that every single group in human history has at some point demonized outsiders and acted on it. Most of the successful ones got there by acting violently on those impulses. It's human nature. We're a pack animal. For better or for worse, that means that it's wired into our psychology to smooth over the flaws of the groups we identify
Years ago, the Christian Right had to go through pretty extreme lengths to enforce their will (for example, in the 1920s the prohibition of alchohol needed to explicity constitutional amendment to be enacted), since the role of the federal government was so limited.
That was the Christian Left -- the same radical religious movement that gave birth to unions, trust-busting, and women's lib in America. It was the Secular Right that fought against it mostly. The Temperance movement was very closely tied into the women's rights movement (as drunkenness was blamed for domestic abuse). It's no coincidence that the 18th & 19th Amendments were passed so closely together. It was a major part of the Progressive movement.
It was mostly secular conservatives that opposed Prohibition in its early days. Progressivism and its related policies were very strongly tied to religious fundamentalism back in the day. The tie between fundamentalism and right-wing politics is a function of the latter half of the 21st century and fear of communism.
Offhand the only major religion that doesn't condemn anyone or anything is Buddism.
Actually, militant Zen Buddhism was a unifying force in WWII Japan. Much like promises of eternal reward after death helps assuage fears for believers in Judeo-Christian teachings, the beliefs in impermanence and reincarnation assuage the fears of death for Buddhists. Soto Zen has also been criticized for racial discrimination [PDF] in the treatment of the former Japanese lower caste members. You can read a long list of essays about Buddhism going wrong (particularly Japanese Buddhism) here.
Then, of course, there was the White Lotus Revolution which overthrew the Mongol Yuan dynasty and established the Ming dynasty. That was basically a Buddhist nationalist secret society. The ethnic struggles in Sri Lanka are between the Buddhist Sinhalese and the Hindu Tamils, so Buddhists aren't all innocent either.
The problem is not the religion -- it's the people that practice it.
I repeat: go to any cell phone store and ask to see a smartphone; they won't just point you to the $20 phone with a built-in calendar.
Of course not, but I ask you again -- what core functionality does a Blackberry or Treo have that an iPhone does not? Other than the ability to install 3rd party software or to interface with specific software (i.e. Exchange servers) there's nothing.
As for the RAZR: running third party software isn't the only requirement of a smartphone, it's just one of them.
Well, then give me a definition of smartphone that includes a Treo and a Blackberry but not an iPhone or a RAZR that doesn't rely on whatever a salesperson steers you towards. Salespeople are not usually considered the rod to measure a standard by. Furthermore, it's going to be very hard to find a salesperson that going to have the option of steering you towards an iPhone on display for several months, now isn't it?
None of these definitions seem to exclude the iPhone. This definition doesn't seem to conflict. Neither does this one. Nor this one. Not this one either.
In fact, I'd say that if none of the definitions on the first page of a Google search for "smartphone definition" manages to turn up a definition that matches your concept, then I'd say that the common definitions of a smartphone include the iPhone. Admit it; you just have a feature wishlist that the iPhone doesn't meet. That in no way means that it isn't a high-end model that provides more than enough functionality to be considered a smartphone.
I'm not in the least contesting the idea that Scientologists aren't loony to their very core; I'm just curious why you seem to think that Scientologists are worse than Christians somehow. Most of the differences I can think of leave the Christians as the worse offenders.
Two points.
1) You're probably unaware of the offenses of Scientologists. They're relatively obscure.
2) There are a LOT more Christians and the religion has had a LOT longer time to have offenses committed in its name.
Combining these two means that you don't really have a good concept of the relative densities of craziness in the two religions. The larger a population is, the greater the violent fringe that can exist. Every major religion in existence has had its share of bloodshed, but that's not the fault of religion per se so much as the natural human tendency to form groups and to think less of people not in your group. Since Christianity is larger and more established, it has a greater capacity to harbor a lunatic fringe. That does not reflect necessarily on the relative merits of the core beliefs of the two faiths.
Don't recall any Scientologists blowing up any abortion clinics, for instance, nor can I think of them trying to tell me, a non-believer - or worse, getting a law put in place that coerces me - such that I can't marry two willing people.
While there isn't any solid evidence of murders committed in the name of Scientology, there is a long history of intimidation, harassment, and property damage in defense of the religion. (There is evidence for negligent death, but no first-degree murder.) The religion is relatively young, so it's hard to say whether that's a matter of time or not.
However, there is a marked difference in the canonical stance on violence towards outsiders between mainstream Christianity and mainstream Scientology. Scientology views those who interfere with Scientology to be fair game. That is to say that there's no moral laws protecting the enemies of Scientology and no sanction of any activities taken to harm them. Christianity, at its core, states that you should love your enemy. Few Christians are capable of holding themselves to that standard, but the difference in what you're supposed to do is marked.
As for attempting to force their morality on others, Scientology simply hasn't had the power to enforce its views on outsiders due to a lack of critical mass. What makes you think they'd be different from any other segment of society bound by a common code of behavior?
They have, however, lobbied for broad government powers to enforce copyright because they protect their inner secrets with copyright law and have been responsible for a number of DMCA takedown notices. They were notable advocates for the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act and the DMCA itself.
That is not a common definition of "smartphone". Go to any cell phone store and ask to see the smartphones; they'll show you to the Blackberries and Treos.
The common definition is a phone that combines PDA & cellphone functionality. Anything else is really irrelevant.
You can install new software on it to meet your current and future needs, without having to pay the manufacturer for an expensive development license, or waiting for an "approved" developer to write, test, and sell the app you need.
By that definition, Symbian phones from Nokia aren't smartphones anymore due to the expense of getting VeriSign to sign your apps, and the RAZR is one since its Java engine lets it run 3rd party software.
Quite frankly, it's an idiotic definition. In no way does 3rd party software have to be available for a phone to be a smartphone. The availability of said software is a definitely desirable feature, but it's utterly irrelevant for the purposes of describing the multi-functionality of such a device, just as it would've been an irrelevant standard for determining whether or not a PDA was a PDA or not.
Please give us your definition of a smartphone that somehow does not allow for the iPhone to be considered one. I've always assumed something like the Wikipedia's definition:
Almost all phones today that sell for more than $50 are smartphones. The iPhone has calendaring, contact lists, a notepad, a web browser, a GPS navigation system, and so on, and so on.
If that isn't a smartphone, then I'd love to hear what phone on the market is one. What exactly can you do with a PDA that you can't do with an iPhone that overrides everything it can do?
And as Mattel once pointed out, "Math is hard!"
How about the 5th of November, then?