I disagree entirely. I thought it was very good -- and I am conservative, and Republican, and a journalist, and I've seen every episode of The Colbert Report -- and I think most people were not laughing because most of what he said was directed at the journalists themselves.
Dude. Sigh. Colbert was there BECAUSE of what he was going to say. How much courage does it take to do what the organizers of the event, and the President, expect you to do?
It's fair as long as you pull your weight. One naturally assumes that a good communist state will either proportion wealth distribution to work, or have other effective ways of ensuring fair distribution.
The key here is "ensuring." That is another way of saying "forcing."
Communism can only work on a small scale where people are free to leave the system if they so choose. Where there is true freedom. On a large scale, you cannot have such freedom, because you need to force people to participate, or it will not work. And the fact that you force people to participate means you are violating their rights.
At its simplest level, what you're complaining about is high taxes.
No. It's about private ownership, and the fact that communism denies it exists.
I'm half in-favour of a 100% tax bracket above a certain level anyway, and that's basically all this is - you don't receive a salary, because whatever you produce, you receive back again in some other useful form. The only people who really complain on this argument are those who would lose out because they've been sitting on their arses earning more than they deserve - like most of the West.
So a. you do not believe in the human right to private ownership (or, apparently, the right to choose where one will live), and b. you actually have no understanding of capitalism.
Seriously, and truly, you do not understand capitalism. Capitalism works by freeing up capital at those high levels you would tax at 100%, so that the private sector can be unleashed to create more wealth, by creating more and better jobs, which then in turn creates more wealth and more and better jobs. This actually works: it's been proven time and again.
And it's not the people at the top of the heap who complain. It's millions of people who never have and never will make six figures who complain, because they want the jobs created by the people who are being taxed.
Why do you think America consistently has the best economy, with the shortest recessions, over the past 25 years? Because during that time the government has moved significantly toward this basic approach, and it has worked. Almost all European nations have tighter economic controls with higher taxes, and more stagnant economies. One of the few exceptions is Ireland, which recently has loosened their grip on their economy even more than the U.S. has, which has directly resulted in the fastest-growing economy in the world, with a huge standard-of-living increase for everyone. not just those at the top.
It's been proven, beyond reasonable doubt, that capitalism works. China still wants to prove that communism can work too, but they've only done so by adopting many reforms they borrowed from capitalism: they have admitted that anything close to pure communism is a failure. Cuba is trying the same thing. We'll see if it works.
If making personal attacks is your only line of recourse, you probably shouldn't pretend to be logical.
Um... so you can accuse me of something, but when I say you did it, then... I am the one in the wrong? Pull the other one!
You accepted my definition that Behe and Dembski represent ID.
No, I did not. You are confused. In fact, I asserted that was false, when I asserted that Moreland represented ID too.
My point was that older (irrational and unscientific) theories which have been sometimes called "ID", such as Paley, are not in the same set as Behe and Dembski, and are more properly refered to argument-from-design or teleological arguments.
And that's wrong. They are ID. As Dembski said.
I don't need to rely on experts (many of whom don't understand the difference themselves) to make my point; the logic is clear and stands on its own.
Except that it doesn't. You have no logic here. Your logic is that ID == Dembski, just because you say so, and therefore anything !Dembski is !ID. (Well, Behe too.) That's not rational, not logical. It's the fallacy of begging the question, unless you can actually *prove* that ID == Dembski.
There's no excuse for a bad memory when all of the posts are archived.
Right. You should be ashamed of yourself.
"I'd rather say that Behe and Dembski are the only two people to seriously consider in ID. Old arguments like Paley's are irrelevant to the modern discussion. ID is not argument from design." -Me (about 5 posts back.)
Yes, and? You were stating what ID is, there, but in the last post, you said you were only talking about certain KINDS of ID, "modern" and "scientific."
I'm not talking about a subset of ID; their stance is ID.
Ah, so now you are back to ID as a whole.
Well, you're wrong. And incredibly, you have offered absolutely no evidence to support your claim, and have even stated that the person you call one of "the only two people to seriously consider in ID" is wrong, without providing any reason for me to think so, beyond your assertion of it.
So here we are. You have not in any of these posts provided any evidence supporting your position. I have offered evidence supporting mine: the statements of two experts in the field. That's not to say I am therefore right, but in the absence of the slightest bit of evidence from you, despite requests from me that you provide some, there is no choice but to conclude that you're wrong.
Nope. But this discussion is boring so I will skip to the salient bits.
As I stated before, I consider Behe and Dembski to define modern ID
OK, maybe YOU think Behe and Dembski "define modern ID," but THEY do not think that, and neither does anyone else who has two brain cells to rub together.
Also, you are appear to be committing the shifting-the-goalposts fallacy: before you said "ID", and now you stipulate "modern ID."
In order to stipulate a "new earth", you have to disagree with science.
That is utterly false. What is true is that you have to disagree with the modern, mainstream scienctific view. But that is not "science."
But I am only considering the "scientific" ID community
Again, shifting the goalposts. You never before stipulated you were talking about a subset of the ID community, and in fact, you directly implied the opposite: most people attacking ID, whom you were arguing against, were not only addressing the "'scientific' ID community," yet you pretended the ID you were talking about was the same ID they were attacking, when in fact, you now concede those are two different things.
I've spoked wih Dembski in real life when he came to my campus (and stumped him, to boot), so I doubt you're going to win by mechanically repeating that Dembski and other IDers don't/can't believe in natural selection.
I never once said they cannot believe in natural selection, nor do I believe that. You're the one who is greatly confused.
You have me confused with others who assert ID == creationism. I did not say that, I merely said it is false that ID *excludes* the possibility of creationism.
What I have said -- and what is absolutely true -- is that ID does not exclude a belief in a literal six-day, 24-hour, creation. And unlike you, I actually offered a quote from an Intelligent Design expert backing me up. You illogically and quite falsely said he is not authoritative on the subject, but that Dembski is.
As I had that expert for a professor, not merely meeting him once but getting to know him over a couple of years, I think my appeal to authority fallacy is less fallacious than yours.
But you want to stick with Dembski? Fine. He said: "First off, design is not young earth creationism. This is not to say that there are no young earth creationists who are also design theorists (Paul Nelson and Siegfried Scherer come to mind)."
It's odd that normally I argue against people who say ID == creationism. I agree with you, fully, that this is false. But it is just as false that ID excludes creationism -- even young earth creationism! -- as Dembski readily concedes.
You're again not being careful enough with your definitions.
You are, again, wrong.
Creationism is the literal belief of one of the account of creation in Genesis.
Fair enough.
ID necessarily stipulates natural selection and an old earth; it's an inherent part of the theory.
That could not possibly be more false.
I've already backed up my claim with an authoritative statment from an expert. You say it is not authoritative -- even though anyone who knows anything about ID knows Moreland is authoritative -- but he speaks for someone whom you say is authoritative, anyway.
You have done nothing but make your own assertions, without any substantiation of the assertions.
As any person can see, the theories of Creationism and ID are incompatible.
Any person who does not know what ID means, like you: yes.
I'm not attacking you
I never said you were. I said you were using argumentum ad hominem. That means your argument was against me, not what I was saying. That's what you were doing when you said "any person with two rational brain cells."
It's not an authoritative source. I'd rather say that Behe and Dembski are the only two people to seriously consider in ID.
Actually, yes, it is an authoritative source. JP Moreland is an authority. And even if he were not, one of "the authors" he says do not accept the argument you offer was, in fact, Dembski. So... you're wrong.
ID is not argument from design. It stipulates evolution
No, it does not. Only some people who believe ID believe in evolution. ID itself does not.
I've written it as a common myth that creationism and ID can be equated
It depends, of course, on how you define "Creationism." However, what is clear, is that a belief in a young Earth, that was formed in seven literal 24-hour periods, is not opposed to the concept of ID. So if that is what you mean, then you are wrong.
and I've also deflated the myth
No, you have not.
any person with two rational brain cells can see the fundamental conflict between creationism and ID.
And any person with two rational brain cells would not use argumentum ad hominem.
Well, no, you actually are wrong. You said ID is something, as opposed to something else, and you were wrong, as I showed by quoting an authoritative source on ID.
It's one thing to say that ID != creationism. But to say that ID excludes creationism -- or at least, is so dissimilar from it that it excludes a literal interpretation of the Gensis account -- is, simply, false.
When you say "creationism is not ID" you are clearly talking about your own definition of ID. But most people, including most proponents of ID, do not use your definition.
I divide ID into hard ID and soft ID.
And then there are those who believe in the literal Genesis account and in ID, which fall into neither camp. Many ID proponents believe in a 7-day creation. Putting your fingers in your ears and closing your eyes won't make the Discovery Institute go away.
And beating up anti-ID people for taking the Discovery Institute at its word is also fruitless.
Hard ID stipulates most of evolution, but claims that the so-called "ball rolling uphill" mutations are not adequately explainable with evolution, and proposes an outside agency which messed around with evolution to bring about the world as we know it. If phrased correctly, this is a testable hypothesis, and so can be falsified and worth at least a study given the large number of people believing in it.
Well, no, it is neither testable nor falsifiable. (Not that I care about those things, as they are rather stupid ways to go about solving the demarcation problem.)
Well, OK, it is testable in theory, but not in practice. We'd need an oracle or some other relevatory device. And it is not falsifiable at all, any more than the existence of God is falsifiable.
ID is not Creationism, this is true. But ID is not what you said, either. ID only says that however we got here -- be it young-earth creationism or natural selection -- it was designed. ID itself takes no position on how that design was implemented, and most ID proponents, including those at the Discovery Institute (the premiere ID think tank), think that evolutionary theory is invalid as it doesn't square with the Genesis account.
For example, in The Creation Hypothesis -- one of the first major ID books, with essays by many prominent ID proponents -- JP Moreland wrote in the introduction:
Second, [as a response to the idea that evolution proves design is implausible], theists can grant, for the sake of argument, that the general theory of evolution is true, and go on and build a design argument based on broader features of order and purpose, even on the existence of the mechanisms of evolution. It can be claimed that evolution merely explains how God designed the living world; it does not remove the need for a Designer. This response grows stronger the more we discover that living things are even more complicated than was believed to be the case during the time of Darwin. As the intricacy of organisms becomes more apparent, it becomes less plausible to believe that the processes of evolution could mindlessly produce life, and it becomes more plausible to believe they were *guided by an Intelligence* in such a way as to overcome the improbabilities of life arising in the first place.
The main problems with this response are that it is hard to square with the early chapters of Genesis and with the empirical facts of science itself. So while the response could be adopted merely for the sake of argument, the authors of this book do not utilize it.
So while many people do believe in both evolution and ID -- that's the general direction I lean, too -- it is going way too far to say "ID == natural selection is true, creatures evolved, but an intelligent designer influenced evolution."
Could you post the actual budget figures to back up your claims.
Well, no. Do your own home work. BLS.gov.:p Here's an interesting resource as well. I especially like the comparison of average annual GDP growth per president: Reagan is second in modern times only to Kennedy/LBJ (which stands to reason, because Kennedy cut the income tax rates by a whopping 30 percent).
It also includes a lot of figures on the budget. It's no love affair with Reagan either, and I disagree with some of it.
Also, when converting to constant dollars which year are you using? Are these 1980 dollars, 1989 dollars, or 2006 dollars?
Sorry, it was late last night, I meant to write current, not constant. If it were constant, then $200 billion over 8 years would be no big deal!
I was under the impression that the budget differences between what Reagan proposed and what Congress passed weren't significant, and that at least once Reagan requested more than was passed.
Exactly once, out of the eight years. And maybe $200 billion out of $7.5 trillion is not significant, but again, when you add in the cumulative cost of each increase, it adds up: so the $50 billion more Congress spent in FY1982 adds up to about $400 billion over those eight years, not even adjusting for annual spending increases or inflation (because those additional expenditures in FY1982 remain in the budget for subsequent years). The $35 billion in FY1983 adds up to about $280 billion (unadjusted). FY1984-87 were much less significant, but Congress picked up again in FY1988-89.
I really don't get why Reagan is always equated with fiscal responsibility.
Well, maybe I can help.
He doubled (possibly tripled) the national debt after many steady years (when adjusted for inflation).
That is not very interesting, in itself. You have to look at the reasons why.
Sure he wanted to get rid of the DOEducation and other programs he didn't like, but any cuts he made were far made up for by tax cuts and vastly increased military spending.
Well, no. The tax cuts were more than made up for by increased revenues from the economic expansion. The first two years of Reagan's administration saw decreased tax revenues, but that was because a. we were in a recession caused by economic conditions he inherited and b. the tax cuts had not yet had time to take effect. But after that, revenues increased significantly on a year-to-year basis, at a much higher average (in real dollars) than we'd had under Carter, with the higher tax rates.
Military spending is another matter. If I run a business and keep the books balanced and make a good profit, and have no debt, but then I have some bad accident and through no fault of my own I have to take out a big loan, no one would call me fiscally irresponsible. That's what Reagan's military spending represents, to the overwhelming majority of Americans: something that simply had to be done, even if it had a negative impact on the bottom line.
What you also leave out that a large portion of the increased debt was the direct result of the Democratic Congress' spending habits: they passed budgets that totalled about $200 billion (in constant dollars) more than Reagan asked for. It's nothing to sneeze at, and that $200 billion number doesn't even take into consideration the cumulative impact: when Congress spent $50 billion more than Reagan requested in 1982, that $50 billion was included in 1983's request. To which Congress added $35 billion more. And so on.
So it's sorta important that you don't leave that out. Not that I am saying Congress was wrong to do what it did; they have the power of the purse, not the President. But it's not fair to give Reagan all the blame for the deficits when the fact is that if you remove the cumulative impact of the difference between Reagan's requests and Congress' actual spending, we would have actually had a $100+ billion surplus in 1989.
Bush's economic policies are really just throwbacks to Reagan's.
Only in part. There are certainly strong similarities: both inherited a terrible recession (well, technically, Bush's recession did not begin until after he took office, but it was obviously caused by conditions he had no control over, that he inherited), both responded with tax cuts that increased federal tax receipts, both have ended up with much stronger economies than they inherited, and both significantly increased the debt.
But there are two important differences, which I've already mentioned. First is Congress' spending. Reagan opposed hundreds of billions (which cumulatively reached into the trillions) in increased spending, but went along with it because he needed to work with an opposition Congress. Bush, on the other hand, has had a Republican Congress, and not only didn't merely approve their increased spending to work with them, but he proposed most of it himself.
The other difference is the Cold War vs. the Iraq War. If you see both as necessary, then both sets of expenses are justified, and do not impact his fiscal conservatism (except perhaps in how much is wasted in the effort). But far more people see Reagan's military spending as justified, than see Bush's. And the point is that in order to say the policies are the same, you need to either say both are justified, or both are unjustified.
Seriously, if a conservative says that, and doesn't act that way, then he is not a conservative. Hence, Bush, and much of the GOP Congress, is not conservative. They do some conservative things, but a conservative would never be in favor of No Child Left Behind, for example.
The problem is that most people think social conservatives -- of which Bush is one -- is the same thing as a Reagan conservative, or a Republican Revolution conservative. Just spouting the anti-abortion and anti-gay-rights shibboleths are enough to get you "in." The Republican Revolution was a conservative one, but it died awhile ago.
First, converting to non-lossy formats does not cause a loss of quality. Second, you don't lose metadata when you go to a CD, if you then import it back, because iTunes remembers your track info for CDs it burns. Third, it is very simple to convert it to MP3 (except for the DRM, but that's the same with converting to any other format).
The one thing you got right is that you will lose quality if you go from AAC to some other lossy format, like low-bitrate MP3 or Ogg. Again, ignoring the DRM issue: if you're concerned about that, why would you get 128 kbps AAC in the first place? If you want a low-bitrate MP3 or Ogg file, then simply do not get it originally in a low-bitrate AAC.
That's the biggest reason I don't use iTMS much: I don't want low bitrate audio files, and I want to be able to transfer them to another low bitrate format later without losing quality. So instead I buy CDs and rip those to Apple Lossless, and from there convert it to any other format I need. No DRM, no unnecessary quality loss, and I can re-convert my library easily at any time without having to worry about additional quality loss, reripping, or reentering metadata.
Still, there will be those who will not smell the shit, even when it's right there, on their plates.
Yes, and on the other hand, there are people who JUST KNOW that Bush's "16 words" were lies based on forgeries, despite the fact that they were based on separate, preexisting, British intelligence.
That is, a lot of times people smell things that just simply are not there.
Sorta. PowerPC is a subset of Power. So it is marginally related, not entirely unrelated. But not as related as the article submitter and most commenters seem to think.
We need a buildup of speculation to prime the pump of investigation. Do you need video of Cheney literally twisting arms? You might get that...
Produce it and then I might care. This has been alleged of Cheney and the rest of the administration for years, and we have no more evidence than Clarke saying he "felt" like when Bush told him to look into something, that Bush was REALLY telling him to manufacture it. No actual evidence, no even actual hearsay! Just feelings. And worse for the people making the allegations, there was not the slightest repercussion from refusing to make things up.
Just as you have inferred from Wilkerson using speculation that he is playing games, the man has inferred something from Cheney spending perhaps an inordinate about of time at Intelligence.
There are many reasons why he might be there, beside trying to put undue pressure on people. This is boring supposition for which I have no use.
Suckers who don't want to believe are everywhere, too.
Right. People who don't believe something for which there is no evidence is a "sucker." Funny how Slashdot normally accuses such people of being "religious fanatics." I guess it is context-dependent.
Wilkerson never attacks Bush or the administration.
Nonsense. He said Cheney was intentionally putting undue pressure on the CIA (despite, again, having no such knowledge). How is that not an attack on the administration?
This is also the same guy who accused Cheney and Rumsfeld of being in a "cabal" to undermine State, and even the President. Said Feith was also in the cabal, and was "the stupidest blankety, blank man in the world." These are not attacks?
Yes, he does not attack Bush strongly, directly, but I didn't imply that directly: I was speaking there specifically of Clarke. I didn't say or intentionally imply Wilkerson was attacking anyone, even though he obviously was.
Why some people take this as an attack Against George W. Bush is puzzling.
How you can say the things he said do not constitute an attack against the administration is likewise puzzling.
Yawn. I was not criticizing the things he saw, I am criticizing the things he was talking about that he did NOT see. That is what "opinion" refers to. Like when he asserts Cheney put undue pressure on the CIA, while also admitting he has no actual knowledge that this happened. It's a boring game Wilkerson is playing, but suckers who Want To Believe buy it.
How dare you question the motives of someone who agrees with the majority of people here! You can only question the motives of *unpopular* people, silly!
Whatever. This is not news, as Wilkerson has been saying this for months. And it's not interesting, because Wilkerson offers no new facts, only opinions.
It's kinda like Richard Clarke's book: if you look at his actual facts, it does not add up to a serious condemnation of Bush. It's only when you add his opinions that it becomes an attack on Bush. Same thing here: he obviously disagreed with the policy, and he is disgruntled for that and perhaps other reasons, and he is speaking out, but he is not actually giving us new or interesting information.
But that doesn't matter: he agrees with "us" so therefore "we" were right all along!
Slashdot Mirror
I disagree entirely. I thought it was very good -- and I am conservative, and Republican, and a journalist, and I've seen every episode of The Colbert Report -- and I think most people were not laughing because most of what he said was directed at the journalists themselves.
Dude. Sigh. Colbert was there BECAUSE of what he was going to say. How much courage does it take to do what the organizers of the event, and the President, expect you to do?
It's fair as long as you pull your weight. One naturally assumes that a good communist state will either proportion wealth distribution to work, or have other effective ways of ensuring fair distribution.
The key here is "ensuring." That is another way of saying "forcing."
Communism can only work on a small scale where people are free to leave the system if they so choose. Where there is true freedom. On a large scale, you cannot have such freedom, because you need to force people to participate, or it will not work. And the fact that you force people to participate means you are violating their rights.
At its simplest level, what you're complaining about is high taxes.
No. It's about private ownership, and the fact that communism denies it exists.
I'm half in-favour of a 100% tax bracket above a certain level anyway, and that's basically all this is - you don't receive a salary, because whatever you produce, you receive back again in some other useful form. The only people who really complain on this argument are those who would lose out because they've been sitting on their arses earning more than they deserve - like most of the West.
So a. you do not believe in the human right to private ownership (or, apparently, the right to choose where one will live), and b. you actually have no understanding of capitalism.
Seriously, and truly, you do not understand capitalism. Capitalism works by freeing up capital at those high levels you would tax at 100%, so that the private sector can be unleashed to create more wealth, by creating more and better jobs, which then in turn creates more wealth and more and better jobs. This actually works: it's been proven time and again.
And it's not the people at the top of the heap who complain. It's millions of people who never have and never will make six figures who complain, because they want the jobs created by the people who are being taxed.
Why do you think America consistently has the best economy, with the shortest recessions, over the past 25 years? Because during that time the government has moved significantly toward this basic approach, and it has worked. Almost all European nations have tighter economic controls with higher taxes, and more stagnant economies. One of the few exceptions is Ireland, which recently has loosened their grip on their economy even more than the U.S. has, which has directly resulted in the fastest-growing economy in the world, with a huge standard-of-living increase for everyone. not just those at the top.
It's been proven, beyond reasonable doubt, that capitalism works. China still wants to prove that communism can work too, but they've only done so by adopting many reforms they borrowed from capitalism: they have admitted that anything close to pure communism is a failure. Cuba is trying the same thing. We'll see if it works.
If making personal attacks is your only line of recourse, you probably shouldn't pretend to be logical.
... so you can accuse me of something, but when I say you did it, then ... I am the one in the wrong? Pull the other one!
Um
You accepted my definition that Behe and Dembski represent ID.
No, I did not. You are confused. In fact, I asserted that was false, when I asserted that Moreland represented ID too.
My point was that older (irrational and unscientific) theories which have been sometimes called "ID", such as Paley, are not in the same set as Behe and Dembski, and are more properly refered to argument-from-design or teleological arguments.
And that's wrong. They are ID. As Dembski said.
I don't need to rely on experts (many of whom don't understand the difference themselves) to make my point; the logic is clear and stands on its own.
Except that it doesn't. You have no logic here. Your logic is that ID == Dembski, just because you say so, and therefore anything !Dembski is !ID. (Well, Behe too.) That's not rational, not logical. It's the fallacy of begging the question, unless you can actually *prove* that ID == Dembski.
There's no excuse for a bad memory when all of the posts are archived.
Right. You should be ashamed of yourself.
"I'd rather say that Behe and Dembski are the only two people to seriously consider in ID. Old arguments like Paley's are irrelevant to the modern discussion. ID is not argument from design." -Me (about 5 posts back.)
Yes, and? You were stating what ID is, there, but in the last post, you said you were only talking about certain KINDS of ID, "modern" and "scientific."
I'm not talking about a subset of ID; their stance is ID.
Ah, so now you are back to ID as a whole.
Well, you're wrong. And incredibly, you have offered absolutely no evidence to support your claim, and have even stated that the person you call one of "the only two people to seriously consider in ID" is wrong, without providing any reason for me to think so, beyond your assertion of it.
So here we are. You have not in any of these posts provided any evidence supporting your position. I have offered evidence supporting mine: the statements of two experts in the field. That's not to say I am therefore right, but in the absence of the slightest bit of evidence from you, despite requests from me that you provide some, there is no choice but to conclude that you're wrong.
Which I already knew.
Is it a fallacy to appeal to fallacy too often?
Nope. But this discussion is boring so I will skip to the salient bits.
As I stated before, I consider Behe and Dembski to define modern ID
OK, maybe YOU think Behe and Dembski "define modern ID," but THEY do not think that, and neither does anyone else who has two brain cells to rub together.
Also, you are appear to be committing the shifting-the-goalposts fallacy: before you said "ID", and now you stipulate "modern ID."
In order to stipulate a "new earth", you have to disagree with science.
That is utterly false. What is true is that you have to disagree with the modern, mainstream scienctific view. But that is not "science."
But I am only considering the "scientific" ID community
Again, shifting the goalposts. You never before stipulated you were talking about a subset of the ID community, and in fact, you directly implied the opposite: most people attacking ID, whom you were arguing against, were not only addressing the "'scientific' ID community," yet you pretended the ID you were talking about was the same ID they were attacking, when in fact, you now concede those are two different things.
Very dishonest of you.
But yeah, it encapsulates what I said in a nutshel ... ID and Creationism are fundamentally antithetical ideas.
Right, you said that. Too bad Dembski disagrees, as I showed in the other post.
No, you're misunderstanding
Nope.
yet again.
Haven't yet.
Dembski does not deny natural selection.
I never said he did.
I've spoked wih Dembski in real life when he came to my campus (and stumped him, to boot), so I doubt you're going to win by mechanically repeating that Dembski and other IDers don't/can't believe in natural selection.
I never once said they cannot believe in natural selection, nor do I believe that. You're the one who is greatly confused.
You have me confused with others who assert ID == creationism. I did not say that, I merely said it is false that ID *excludes* the possibility of creationism.
What I have said -- and what is absolutely true -- is that ID does not exclude a belief in a literal six-day, 24-hour, creation. And unlike you, I actually offered a quote from an Intelligent Design expert backing me up. You illogically and quite falsely said he is not authoritative on the subject, but that Dembski is.
As I had that expert for a professor, not merely meeting him once but getting to know him over a couple of years, I think my appeal to authority fallacy is less fallacious than yours.
But you want to stick with Dembski? Fine. He said: "First off, design is not young earth creationism. This is not to say that there are no young earth creationists who are also design theorists (Paul Nelson and Siegfried Scherer come to mind)."
It's odd that normally I argue against people who say ID == creationism. I agree with you, fully, that this is false. But it is just as false that ID excludes creationism -- even young earth creationism! -- as Dembski readily concedes.
You're again not being careful enough with your definitions.
You are, again, wrong.
Creationism is the literal belief of one of the account of creation in Genesis.
Fair enough.
ID necessarily stipulates natural selection and an old earth; it's an inherent part of the theory.
That could not possibly be more false.
I've already backed up my claim with an authoritative statment from an expert. You say it is not authoritative -- even though anyone who knows anything about ID knows Moreland is authoritative -- but he speaks for someone whom you say is authoritative, anyway.
You have done nothing but make your own assertions, without any substantiation of the assertions.
As any person can see, the theories of Creationism and ID are incompatible.
Any person who does not know what ID means, like you: yes.
I'm not attacking you
I never said you were. I said you were using argumentum ad hominem. That means your argument was against me, not what I was saying. That's what you were doing when you said "any person with two rational brain cells."
simply any of your purported experts on ID
Like Dembski. *shrug*
It's not an authoritative source. I'd rather say that Behe and Dembski are the only two people to seriously consider in ID.
... you're wrong.
Actually, yes, it is an authoritative source. JP Moreland is an authority. And even if he were not, one of "the authors" he says do not accept the argument you offer was, in fact, Dembski. So
ID is not argument from design. It stipulates evolution
No, it does not. Only some people who believe ID believe in evolution. ID itself does not.
I've written it as a common myth that creationism and ID can be equated
It depends, of course, on how you define "Creationism." However, what is clear, is that a belief in a young Earth, that was formed in seven literal 24-hour periods, is not opposed to the concept of ID. So if that is what you mean, then you are wrong.
and I've also deflated the myth
No, you have not.
any person with two rational brain cells can see the fundamental conflict between creationism and ID.
And any person with two rational brain cells would not use argumentum ad hominem.
>> Well, the problem is, you're wrong. :-)
Not at all.
Well, no, you actually are wrong. You said ID is something, as opposed to something else, and you were wrong, as I showed by quoting an authoritative source on ID.
It's one thing to say that ID != creationism. But to say that ID excludes creationism -- or at least, is so dissimilar from it that it excludes a literal interpretation of the Gensis account -- is, simply, false.
When you say "creationism is not ID" you are clearly talking about your own definition of ID. But most people, including most proponents of ID, do not use your definition.
I divide ID into hard ID and soft ID.
And then there are those who believe in the literal Genesis account and in ID, which fall into neither camp. Many ID proponents believe in a 7-day creation. Putting your fingers in your ears and closing your eyes won't make the Discovery Institute go away.
And beating up anti-ID people for taking the Discovery Institute at its word is also fruitless.
Hard ID stipulates most of evolution, but claims that the so-called "ball rolling uphill" mutations are not adequately explainable with evolution, and proposes an outside agency which messed around with evolution to bring about the world as we know it. If phrased correctly, this is a testable hypothesis, and so can be falsified and worth at least a study given the large number of people believing in it.
Well, no, it is neither testable nor falsifiable. (Not that I care about those things, as they are rather stupid ways to go about solving the demarcation problem.)
Well, OK, it is testable in theory, but not in practice. We'd need an oracle or some other relevatory device. And it is not falsifiable at all, any more than the existence of God is falsifiable.
ID is not Creationism, this is true. But ID is not what you said, either. ID only says that however we got here -- be it young-earth creationism or natural selection -- it was designed. ID itself takes no position on how that design was implemented, and most ID proponents, including those at the Discovery Institute (the premiere ID think tank), think that evolutionary theory is invalid as it doesn't square with the Genesis account.
For example, in The Creation Hypothesis -- one of the first major ID books, with essays by many prominent ID proponents -- JP Moreland wrote in the introduction:
So while many people do believe in both evolution and ID -- that's the general direction I lean, too -- it is going way too far to say "ID == natural selection is true, creatures evolved, but an intelligent designer influenced evolution."
Could you post the actual budget figures to back up your claims.
:p Here's an interesting resource as well. I especially like the comparison of average annual GDP growth per president: Reagan is second in modern times only to Kennedy/LBJ (which stands to reason, because Kennedy cut the income tax rates by a whopping 30 percent).
Well, no. Do your own home work. BLS.gov.
It also includes a lot of figures on the budget. It's no love affair with Reagan either, and I disagree with some of it.
Also, when converting to constant dollars which year are you using? Are these 1980 dollars, 1989 dollars, or 2006 dollars?
Sorry, it was late last night, I meant to write current, not constant. If it were constant, then $200 billion over 8 years would be no big deal!
I was under the impression that the budget differences between what Reagan proposed and what Congress passed weren't significant, and that at least once Reagan requested more than was passed.
Exactly once, out of the eight years. And maybe $200 billion out of $7.5 trillion is not significant, but again, when you add in the cumulative cost of each increase, it adds up: so the $50 billion more Congress spent in FY1982 adds up to about $400 billion over those eight years, not even adjusting for annual spending increases or inflation (because those additional expenditures in FY1982 remain in the budget for subsequent years). The $35 billion in FY1983 adds up to about $280 billion (unadjusted). FY1984-87 were much less significant, but Congress picked up again in FY1988-89.
I really don't get why Reagan is always equated with fiscal responsibility.
Well, maybe I can help.
He doubled (possibly tripled) the national debt after many steady years (when adjusted for inflation).
That is not very interesting, in itself. You have to look at the reasons why.
Sure he wanted to get rid of the DOEducation and other programs he didn't like, but any cuts he made were far made up for by tax cuts and vastly increased military spending.
Well, no. The tax cuts were more than made up for by increased revenues from the economic expansion. The first two years of Reagan's administration saw decreased tax revenues, but that was because a. we were in a recession caused by economic conditions he inherited and b. the tax cuts had not yet had time to take effect. But after that, revenues increased significantly on a year-to-year basis, at a much higher average (in real dollars) than we'd had under Carter, with the higher tax rates.
Military spending is another matter. If I run a business and keep the books balanced and make a good profit, and have no debt, but then I have some bad accident and through no fault of my own I have to take out a big loan, no one would call me fiscally irresponsible. That's what Reagan's military spending represents, to the overwhelming majority of Americans: something that simply had to be done, even if it had a negative impact on the bottom line.
What you also leave out that a large portion of the increased debt was the direct result of the Democratic Congress' spending habits: they passed budgets that totalled about $200 billion (in constant dollars) more than Reagan asked for. It's nothing to sneeze at, and that $200 billion number doesn't even take into consideration the cumulative impact: when Congress spent $50 billion more than Reagan requested in 1982, that $50 billion was included in 1983's request. To which Congress added $35 billion more. And so on.
So it's sorta important that you don't leave that out. Not that I am saying Congress was wrong to do what it did; they have the power of the purse, not the President. But it's not fair to give Reagan all the blame for the deficits when the fact is that if you remove the cumulative impact of the difference between Reagan's requests and Congress' actual spending, we would have actually had a $100+ billion surplus in 1989.
Bush's economic policies are really just throwbacks to Reagan's.
Only in part. There are certainly strong similarities: both inherited a terrible recession (well, technically, Bush's recession did not begin until after he took office, but it was obviously caused by conditions he had no control over, that he inherited), both responded with tax cuts that increased federal tax receipts, both have ended up with much stronger economies than they inherited, and both significantly increased the debt.
But there are two important differences, which I've already mentioned. First is Congress' spending. Reagan opposed hundreds of billions (which cumulatively reached into the trillions) in increased spending, but went along with it because he needed to work with an opposition Congress. Bush, on the other hand, has had a Republican Congress, and not only didn't merely approve their increased spending to work with them, but he proposed most of it himself.
The other difference is the Cold War vs. the Iraq War. If you see both as necessary, then both sets of expenses are justified, and do not impact his fiscal conservatism (except perhaps in how much is wasted in the effort). But far more people see Reagan's military spending as justified, than see Bush's. And the point is that in order to say the policies are the same, you need to either say both are justified, or both are unjustified.
So did Dole, and that was 1996. Dole carried the Tenth Amendment in his pocket, and Bush aids the Republican Congress in regularly violating it.
Every time I hear a "conservative" talk about fiscal responsibility I want to smack him in the face.
You sound like a Democrat, then.
Seriously, if a conservative says that, and doesn't act that way, then he is not a conservative. Hence, Bush, and much of the GOP Congress, is not conservative. They do some conservative things, but a conservative would never be in favor of No Child Left Behind, for example.
The problem is that most people think social conservatives -- of which Bush is one -- is the same thing as a Reagan conservative, or a Republican Revolution conservative. Just spouting the anti-abortion and anti-gay-rights shibboleths are enough to get you "in." The Republican Revolution was a conservative one, but it died awhile ago.
You're wrong on several counts.
First, converting to non-lossy formats does not cause a loss of quality. Second, you don't lose metadata when you go to a CD, if you then import it back, because iTunes remembers your track info for CDs it burns. Third, it is very simple to convert it to MP3 (except for the DRM, but that's the same with converting to any other format).
The one thing you got right is that you will lose quality if you go from AAC to some other lossy format, like low-bitrate MP3 or Ogg. Again, ignoring the DRM issue: if you're concerned about that, why would you get 128 kbps AAC in the first place? If you want a low-bitrate MP3 or Ogg file, then simply do not get it originally in a low-bitrate AAC.
That's the biggest reason I don't use iTMS much: I don't want low bitrate audio files, and I want to be able to transfer them to another low bitrate format later without losing quality. So instead I buy CDs and rip those to Apple Lossless, and from there convert it to any other format I need. No DRM, no unnecessary quality loss, and I can re-convert my library easily at any time without having to worry about additional quality loss, reripping, or reentering metadata.
Still, there will be those who will not smell the shit, even when it's right there, on their plates.
Yes, and on the other hand, there are people who JUST KNOW that Bush's "16 words" were lies based on forgeries, despite the fact that they were based on separate, preexisting, British intelligence.
That is, a lot of times people smell things that just simply are not there.
Sorta. PowerPC is a subset of Power. So it is marginally related, not entirely unrelated. But not as related as the article submitter and most commenters seem to think.
We need a buildup of speculation to prime the pump of investigation. Do you need video of Cheney literally twisting arms? You might get that...
Produce it and then I might care. This has been alleged of Cheney and the rest of the administration for years, and we have no more evidence than Clarke saying he "felt" like when Bush told him to look into something, that Bush was REALLY telling him to manufacture it. No actual evidence, no even actual hearsay! Just feelings. And worse for the people making the allegations, there was not the slightest repercussion from refusing to make things up.
Just as you have inferred from Wilkerson using speculation that he is playing games, the man has inferred something from Cheney spending perhaps an inordinate about of time at Intelligence.
There are many reasons why he might be there, beside trying to put undue pressure on people. This is boring supposition for which I have no use.
Suckers who don't want to believe are everywhere, too.
Right. People who don't believe something for which there is no evidence is a "sucker." Funny how Slashdot normally accuses such people of being "religious fanatics." I guess it is context-dependent.
Wilkerson never attacks Bush or the administration.
Nonsense. He said Cheney was intentionally putting undue pressure on the CIA (despite, again, having no such knowledge). How is that not an attack on the administration?
This is also the same guy who accused Cheney and Rumsfeld of being in a "cabal" to undermine State, and even the President. Said Feith was also in the cabal, and was "the stupidest blankety, blank man in the world." These are not attacks?
Yes, he does not attack Bush strongly, directly, but I didn't imply that directly: I was speaking there specifically of Clarke. I didn't say or intentionally imply Wilkerson was attacking anyone, even though he obviously was.
Why some people take this as an attack Against George W. Bush is puzzling.
How you can say the things he said do not constitute an attack against the administration is likewise puzzling.
Read your constitution
Duurrrr, we have a constitution? You don't say!
Yawn. I was not criticizing the things he saw, I am criticizing the things he was talking about that he did NOT see. That is what "opinion" refers to. Like when he asserts Cheney put undue pressure on the CIA, while also admitting he has no actual knowledge that this happened. It's a boring game Wilkerson is playing, but suckers who Want To Believe buy it.
No, that was only a single show on Fox News (Brit Hume) that was found to be more balanced than most other news shows.
How dare you question the motives of someone who agrees with the majority of people here! You can only question the motives of *unpopular* people, silly!
Whatever. This is not news, as Wilkerson has been saying this for months. And it's not interesting, because Wilkerson offers no new facts, only opinions.
It's kinda like Richard Clarke's book: if you look at his actual facts, it does not add up to a serious condemnation of Bush. It's only when you add his opinions that it becomes an attack on Bush. Same thing here: he obviously disagreed with the policy, and he is disgruntled for that and perhaps other reasons, and he is speaking out, but he is not actually giving us new or interesting information.
But that doesn't matter: he agrees with "us" so therefore "we" were right all along!
Cool. Who are you? :-)