Me making a funny typo: Why you would need to double mod it I have know idea.
You, insultingly: "Know" idea indeed. This must be a troll. I have no idea how one could seriously try to be a pedant and fail so miserably. Most morons wouldn't even try; you must be a special kind of moron.
Lol! Let the ad hominems fly. You're mother is a corpse fucker, but it's OK because your dad can't feel it anyway. Yay! But yes, even by replying in the first place I could have easily been considered trolling (just like you!). Anyway, rather than addressing the question 'is nitpicking style even pedantry,' I guess we'll never know! Well, since this is our last meeting: Farewell. (I foed you, so you needn't bother replying:) I won't see it.)
Would you also use two unnecessary commas in your essay?
It is grammatical to use a comma before the conjunction and. A comma separating the independent clause is also grammatical. Look it up.
What you are doing is writing two T's in the space of one letter, so if you tell lnkwell that you have tightly-spaced writing it may start to see them as two T's instead of one H. [...] Are there other examples where you write two letters simultaneously? I can't see the utility of that, myself.
I can't think of another letter in our alphabet that would cross at the same time in the event of a consecutive double. Further, crossing two Ts at once is not writing two letters simultaneously, and any serious HWR technology can handle it. Even Windows' terrible 'pen windows' from the mid-90s could correctly recognize when consecutive Ts were crossed together at the completion of the word.
That's interesting, though. When you write the word letter in cursive, you cross each T separately? Do you do it as soon as you write the letter, or do you do them both separately at the end of thew word? When you write Hello do you cross the H last? (I don't know anyone who does, the recognizer is broken; there's no way to justify the cross of two L-written letters as a variation of H). Either way, if Apple didn't think it was a bug, they would have closed/wont-fixed my bug reports 2 years ago (they wouldn't still be marked open). How sensitive the tablet is is moot, if it's "the same code" doing the recognition then all of the tablet input must be down-sampled to create text model for the recognizer (i.e., any minute wobbles will be discarded as the model is formed from inflection points; If I'd written the recognizer I'd use something like the first derivative of a vector function where z is just an incremental index through the length of the word, or if that was too compute intensive, just a list of 2D vectors refined by throwing out large parts of the curve data). (Additionally, mixed-case printing defeats ink, but not the newton. Also the newton used word based recognition, and not character based recognition; the choice for "my handwriting is widely spaced" doesn't really look at how close each letter is to the next, it affects the ratio of valleys to peaks, and the width of the comparison model. Ink doesn't use the same preference settings as the Newton, so I don't know how they can expect the same level of performance --even if I grant that the recognition engine may be an exact line-for-line port).
Further, even if the recognizer is the same, line for line, the lack of a training prefs, the lack of a punctuation caret, the lack of a context menu for multiple recognition hits, etc. are all features that have been stripped, whether you call that broken or not I guess is semantics.
I would call taking a feature rich app that certifiably "works for me" and then porting to another platform where it no longer "works for me" breaking it. Any other software developer would. If you moved Firefox to a more capable platform and it ran worse and without basic features, would you consider that 'unbroken'? Even if it was 'working as designed' would you even consider it a port or just a facsimile. You'd have to have experience with both platforms for me to continue the discussion. If you don't own a Newton there's really no point in my continued comparisons.
and for precision graphics, (just not accurate enough to click 1 specific pixel
But it's so fast/easy to zoom in and out with gestures, all the pixel pushers would never have a problem. Maybe what you meant is that the DPI and pressure sensitivity doesn't surpass a dedicated tablet.
People who draw with a mouse are missing the point. Is that a pun? They surely aren't interested in "precision graphics" (if we agree on what that means) anyhow.
First, a note to mods: This comment is already marked off-topic in the subject line. Why you would need to double mod it I have know idea.
Why, no. That depends on whether you [sic: real pedants use "one"] are one of those proscriptivists...
Jeez. Half-assed pedantry is so unsatisfying.
Your comment seems to be even more niggling than my fun-fact (as you are solely making a suggestion of style rather than a correction). Assertion if x and/or y would never require whether. I'm not aware of any grammar in which whether was requisite in a conditional. "Depends on whether" is certainly a common contruct (proscriptivists cheer!) but is no more semantically valid than "depends on if".
Finally, if I were writing an essay, and not merely replying to an individual, I would have certainly used more formal constructs (viz. pronoun choice). Still, the choice between if and whether in a conditional is not a grammatical choice.
Is nitpicking style "half-assed pedantry"? If that's the case, let me give you some style advice: Real pedants use one. Words mentioned as words are not quoted, they are emphasized, typically with italics. Also, 'real pedants' is a classic example of the Real Scottsman fallacy.
I did get around to Googling him thanks. It takes thirty seconds to post "lol the b1bl3 is a myth!" and about five hours to reply to it.
Haha, that gave me a good laugh.:-)
The sceptic who challenges me has to try and convince me I'm hallucinating about twenty years of answered prayer.
Likewise, you'd have to convince me you're not. That's the very basis of scepticism. Again, I grant that I may have misjudged you, but I'm still hearing the words of a zealot. You may not be. But for now, I guess I'm the Han Solo to your Obi-Wan, "I've never seen anything to make me believe there's one all-powerful force controlling everything."
As far as the link:
The curse of political correctness has brought down upon us yet another tome of self-righteous certainty. It is not that Ehrman gives what he admits are later Christianities equal chance of being right -- that question is avoided with the skill of a seasoned politician -- but rather, he wants to give them equal time to be heard, never quite telling us why, if they don't have a chance of being right, there is any sense in hearing from them to begin with.
I guess this is correct, but only for the most uncritical, unrational follower. Wouldn't the why be obvious to anyone that is curious about his Faith? Christians don't have (what I consider) to be the greatest strength of Islam, that is, the Bible, unlike the Quran, is not the absolute, immutable, untranslatable Word of God. Its history is fascinating none-the-less, but it is absolutely written by men, with or without His help, and men are fallible or liars.
I hate to be a pedant, but CPU is an initialism, while SCSI is an acronym. We don't pronounce CPU as a word, we just say "sea-pee-you" (or at least I don't know of any population that says "suh-poo" when they are talking about central processing units). I just figured that while we were nit-picking people, I'd throw in that fun-fact.
However, I will grant that the same argument for insisting that "begging the question" means raising the question can be used to dismiss the difference between acronyms and initialisms. Does that make it right? Well I guess that depends on if you are one of those proscriptivists (who insist that supposably is a word as long as enough people use it) or a descriptivist (who insist that words mean something, and ivory tower dictionaries contain those absolute meanings).
As someone that dodged an English degree, descriptivism has some sway over me, but I can understand why some people just want to say whatever the fuck they want and insist that I misunderstand their meaning through no fault of their own. Haha, maybe using language that other people understand has some roots in personal responsibility. It's my responsibility to make sure that others understand me./rant:-)
Well, the creative commons typically used by Flickr, is simply a means of easily defining the rights you are providing. It can mean a number of things, and I think he has a point - that its confusing; you have to read the rights for every bit of work, rather than being able to trust that a creative commons mark means you have certain rights.
A CC license means you can always copy, distribute, display, and perform the work. In addition you may have other conditional freedoms not granted by traditional copyright (or the code-centric licenses).
I guess I see what you mean about having "to read the rights for every bit of work", but you have to admit that Creative Commons streamlines this to the point that it's nearly idiot proof. I think it's disingenuous to say it's confusing. Click on the "CC button" (the link to the license) for any page covered with a CC license and you'll get something this: Creative Commons- By Attribution (CC-BY for short). Thanks to the Commons Deeds, the only time you'd ever need to delve into the legalese of the actual license are the same times you'd grab a lawyer for any other 'open' license (i.e., you are about to include GPL code in a closed, commercial product; you are about to publish a music compilation of other people's works).
I think Lessig is right for the same reason I think the Framers were right. Copyright does serve a purpose as long as time-limited monopolies promote science and the useful arts. The constitution gives no other reason for State granted monopolies. That's the trade-off -- a bigger commons in exchance for short/fixed-term monopolies.
That said, Open Source has not diluted the principle (as the Creative Commoms may have) by retaining a clear statement about what is and is not Open Source.
If the principle is constitutional copyright, Creative Commons has not diluted it. Copyleft by contrast stands completely counter to these goals (as a reaction to copyright, rather than a refinement). In this respect, it doesn't matter what RMS says about CC, because the arenas are completely seperate (I can't think of anyone using CC for code, just like no one is using GPL for music/film). http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/5771. The needs of Free Software and Open Source software (software freedom and code freedom) are just plain different from other forms of Free Art (creative freedeom). If code were an art that existed in a vacuum, in that there were times you didn't want to make derivatives, forks, plugins, extensions, libraries or enhancements, etc. only then would CC even be relevant (code is a very utilitarian art -- I've never written a program just to look at it, or read it). One size fits all is almost always wrong, isn't it?
In closing, Copyleft is very necessary as long as copyright exists; Creative Commons is also very necessary until copyright is reformed world-wide.
I'm surprised you've not heard of Ehrman. If you are such a scholar, I would imagine you would be aware of other published scholars.
If you weren't lazy, you could have just Googled him. I caught him on Fresh Air and enjoyed it. You can find it on the web if you're interested in his thoughts on "what hangs together". Also, you can get a more nuanced point of view from his papers/lectures. I'd say, head on back to your seminary, I bet they can get them for you (if you are actually interested in skeptical textualism and what not).
I may have misjudged your comments, but it sounds to me like you already know what you want to know ("onus is on the skeptic"!?!).
In Federalist No. 76, Alexander Hamilton warned that, in presenting nominations to the Senate, a president "would be both ashamed and afraid" to nominate cronies--or, as Hamilton called them, "obsequious instruments of his pleasure." Maybe politics was different back in the 1780s, but we have watched Bush appoint many obsequious instruments of his pleasure. It may be his legacy: George W. Bush--he took the shame and fear out of cronyism.
I'm personally hoping that maybe some of its innovative user interface ideas get carried over into other projects. Obviously Apple's current Ink tablet handwriting recognition system is a direct port from the Newton. Less obviously perhaps is that its Dock removal animation is, too.
I've made this comment before (to jcr in fact). If Ink is a direct port from the Newton, they broke it along the way. I have bugs filed (if you could search them) the describe this. I'll give you the short version first: Pull out your tablet on your Mac, write the word 'Rosetta' in cursive (and as typical for most writers, cross both Ts at once). On a Newton MP 2100 it will correctly translate this to 'Rosetta' 100% of the time for me. With Ink it gets translated to 'RoseHa' 100% of the time. Somewhere between Newton's 'Rosetta' handwriting recognition and OS X's 'Ink' recognition, they forgot how to 1) understand cursive, 2) learn user handwriting, 3) allow training of the recognizer, 4) allow the insertion caret to be used for punctuation, 5) correctly understand editing gestures in (almost) all cases -- ever try to join a broken word with Ink?.
For completeness sake, let me include that old bug report (which includes a snippet from a thread jcr and I had going about Ink's flaws compared to the Newton): https://bugreport.apple.com/ Problem ID: 3828160 (this bug is still marked "Open")
06-Oct-2004 02:53 AM David Rolfe: Steps to reproduce:
Write the word "Rosetta" crossing both Ts at once.
Expecteed Results:
As opposed to the expected "Rosetta" appearing in the Ink Window (or current text field, instead a result similar to "RoseHa" will appear.
Workaround:
Write slowly, and unnaturally. Avoid mixed-printing. Never use cursive.
For more information, I provide this summary from a conversation with an non-Apple (third party) OS X developer. I outline other bugs and missing features below. Especially, THE LACK OF A PUNCTUATION POP-UP ATTACHED TO THE INSERTION CARET IN THE INK WINDOW. Would it be appropriate to file that as another bug/feature?
---- I certainly have not spent as much time training Ink [compared to the time spent using the Newton MP2100, which I use as a baseline for comparison]. For one, it doesn't have the quick interface to teach a misrecognized word (you know: double tap, select correct guess) even in the 'Ink Window' where they try to emulate the Newton environment. Second, clicking on the caret in the Ink Window doesn't give a punctuation pop-up like the Newton, which makes punctuating things written in Ink a CHORE; good thing Apple doesn't make computers without keyboards these days... Otherwise your punctuation would he half-assed as it tries to guess whether something is a period or an accidental tap. Finally, Ink in 10.3 doesn't supply some training app like the Newton's prefs, the closest option is specifically adding words to a list that it frequently gets wrong, or that it can't dictionary guess. This list doesn't even learn (i.e. it doesn't automatically populate with a list of words that the recognizer knows it had a low confidence score on).
I know Ink is an afterthought -- Apple can't seriously consider Ink to be a 'solution' as it stands today. I'll give it two things though - the scribble sound it plays while you write sure is cute and it's fun to be able to include doodles right into iChat. However, you could not use an iBook, feasibly, without a keyboard, and get the same range of functionality as a heavy, 10 year old MP 2100.
I know again I'm coming off like some kind of freak -- but really, the Newton could tell when you crossed two Ts at once, and that chokes Ink in OS X -- so whatever changes they made since its [Rosetta's?] implementation on the ARM and the PPC they broke it.
I mean seriously JCR -- do you have both [an MP and a tablet equipped Mac]? Can you
A gold standard undermines a labor standard because on a gold standard that labor -- the labor of digging up gold -- is then different, differently valued (and possibly more or less valuable), than any other kind of labor. In turn, all other labor is valued in terms of how much gold could have been dug up. In your quip you are just describing a labor standard using gold as a commodity with a value based on labor! This is counter to what Dada wants us all to resist (and supports the comment which you are mocking).
Whether trinkets are better I guess is what is being debated. I don't have an opinion as to whether one is better or not, because when it comes to government coercion they are both the same (whether the government is monopolizing gold-digging or money-printing makes no difference on the end result, control of exchange).
Wow, really. In what fact do you seat your bigotry?
There's a huge difference between divorce and death and explicitly deciding "we'll let that child be raised in a poor setting".
A poor setting. So, for you, which is "poorer" a single parent family or a dual parent family? And besides, we "let" children get raised by divorcees all the fucking time. (Isn't that part of the problem? For years the "think of the children" debate revolved around divorce, before there was the new bogeyman of gay parents or miscegenation).
I can already tell that I don't need to ask whether a mother-mother family is "poorer" than a mother-father family. Now, if you can bring yourself to admit that a dual-parent family can possibly be worse than a single-parent family, I'd have to wonder why you wouldn't demand other family improvement laws, like (again) mandatory divorce (single-parent better) or mandatory marriage (dual-parent better), mandatory birth control (to prevent unwed/single parent familes), etc. ad absurdum.
Again, which is better, "for the children": A single parent family, or a dual parent family. Don't equivocate, just answer the damn question.
(When you're done you can expound upon whether a white-black family is "poorer" than a white-white or black-black family. I can't wait for your reply!)
Finally: It's not "bigotry" it's simple, rational thought. The concept that "any two people can be parents" is flat-out ridiculous and counter to natural human development. Every child should have a mother and a father. The number of people who disagree is, quite frankly, disturbing
Every naturally concieved child does have a mother and a father. We're talking about do those kids live with and are they raised by those same parents or some other combination of none or more of them. Whether we agree or not that "any two people can be parents" is moot because we don't have any other laws dictating what kind of families exist (well now that it's legal to have "mixed-race marriages" and "mixed-race children"). Unfit parents have children all the time. Some of them even know they are unfit and abandon their offspring to orphanages. To believe (and even insist it's "rational" as you put it) that two fit, loving adults can't raise children because of some arbitrary fear/custom seems to be the very definition of bigotry.
I will say again, the "Think of the Children" argument against homosexual marriages is completely bogus and is founded in nothing but the basest of prejudice.
Then again, you could just be trolling me! Congrats!
Right! Why is there debate about "shall not be violated". Papers and effects seems to obviously cover correspondence. Sheesh.
No Citizen is above the law. If the President must violate the law to uphold his oath of office, then he must submit to the punishment for his crimes. I mean, if he must fall on his sword to "protect the Union", so be it.
Nobody with eyes and ears can claim the corporation for public broadcasting was unbiased before 2000.
Bill Moyers has both eyes and ears and claimed the CPB was unbiased before 2000. I know you aren't one that's careful with his speech, but it's worth pointing out. You might be working with a different understanding of what unbiased means (on-topic, like the controversy revolving around what theory means).
Anyway, I make no assertions about your other points (big government does suck; if they can't control their spending, we need to control their budget). Cheers!
But on top of these obvious failures, is the most amazing:
The Big Bang is "not proven fact; it is opinion," Mr. Deutsch wrote, adding, "It is not NASA's place, nor should it be to make a declaration such as this about the existence of the universe that discounts intelligent design by a creator." [...] "This is more than a science issue, it is a religious issue. And I would hate to think that young people would only be getting one-half of this debate from NASA. That would mean we had failed to properly educate the very people who rely on us for factual information the most."
Rely on us for FACTUAL INFORMATION?! It's almost nonsensical -- 'big bang is opinion; we can't discount ID because people rely on us for facts!' WTF?
How's this one for you...I don't go to church, I'm pro-choice, against the Patriot Act, and against wiretapping without getting the damn warrents...and, oh yeah, I like science.
Wow, why don't you vote Libertarian? It sounds like the GOP platform has nothing for you (at least for the last 14 years), unless you forgot to mention that you hate gays.
For this reason along ALL of us are compelled to help raise the child (via tax dollars). If this were not the case then they would be left on hillsides.
It should be noted that not all orphanages are State-run or even State-supported.
But to continue, I said: but that aside, there is no pragmatic reason to consider [zygotes or embyros] [persons]. Calling a fetus a human being is less problematic, but requires an arbitrary (and thus consensus-based) decision on where an embryo becomes a baby. For a very long time this has been birth, but in America at least, the line is being pushed back." To which you respond:
This also supports my point: that people do not believe that "humanity" is an intrinsic value that we have, but rather that it is based on pragmatism or some form of utility (this entity is a person because it is useful; that one is not because it is useless to me, or a burden).
I don't think my statement supports your point. It's definitely NOT pragmatism; otherwise we would routinely euthanize the infirm and would execute rather than imprison-for-life; we wouldn't have pet shelters or orphanages; examples in every case of "non-productive surpluses"). Personhood or "humanity" if you prefer is a gestalt phenomena. We consider it to have something to do with sentience, brain-life, pain-sensitivity, self-awareness, 'having a soul', etc. If some mixture of these qualities wasn't important we would call strip-mining some analogue of genocide (trees and ecosystems are 'alive'), but most everyone agrees that forests lack some quality(ies) that makes their destruction immoral. So, one has to ask himself, what makes it wrong to kill a baby but makes it ok to kill a goldfish? (or to step up the ladder in comfort, eat a lamb? club a seal? euthanize a kitten? capital punish? assist a suicide?). So we accept that babies have something kittens don't, more than pain-sensitivity, more than aliveness, more than emotion, (kittens demonstrate all of these qualities) but not necessarily sentience or self-awareness (babies and kittens demonstrate neither of these). If it's just the soul-test we're back to arbitrary decisions. Now, there's an even harder task of stepping back in time, even before birth to figure out what features a fetus and a baby share that a kitten doesn't (again, using a kitten as an arbitrary example of something it's commonly held moral to euthanize; I guess you could replace kitten with any person/animal you think it's OK to kill -- dolphins, the elderly or infirm, felons, foriegners).
So, not to sound puerile, what does a fetus have that a kitten (or felon or enemy) doesn't that makes it acceptable to kill one and not the other?
There are problems with this as well. If absolutely no-one on Earth wants me to live, I still have the right to live.
Yes, an inalienable right, a natural right, unlike having your mother raise you...
That's what the Bill of Rights, says, anyhow. If I am attacked nobody will come to my aid, under those circumstances, but I may live if I can defend myself. To me, such a view boils down to "You are a person if you can force other people to recognize that you are a person." If this is true then abortion is little more than war against the weak...which America is pretty good at, these days, come to think of it.
Incidentally, this is the same argument for property rights. I have property as long as I can muster violence to hold it. I have land as long as I can defend it. (Contrast the inalienable rights to your own person and your own labor.) Nothing is yours by nature except that of your own body. We make agreements/laws/contracts to avoid all that violence, but these agreements require trust (which requires punishment of cheaters). Sorry for getting off-topic.
Anyhow, my argument for pragmatism was that an embryo or zygote is not a "person" a point you (and anyone, really) would concede. As I said before (and you agree) the debate is around the (as
As long-time miscegenators, my spouse and I have been living in common-law as fully married: a ceremony, rings, only joint accounts and ownership of all the stuff, two children, etc.
Right on, man. We actually have a State marriage license, but I respect your stance.:-)
[...] First off, divorce can easily happen after the children are already raised. Eight years of having a normal family and then divorce is almost certainly better than never having a normal family. No, it's not optimal, but if a marriage leads to divorce, chances are that family life for the children would likely be far worse than a successful marriage. Likewise, even if a parent dies in a normal family, at least the children had a normal family for some period of time. In a gay family, they NEVER had a normal family.
But is a 'normal family' the optimal family? This was basically my question -- but I'll reiterate it: If two parents is good enough, aren't more adults better? And fewer parents worse? (Don't reply unless you answer these questions; I'm not interested otherwise.)
[...] gay couples will never be as good at raising [children] as normal couples. Just because normal families can break down doesn't mean that gay couples should be allowed to raise families. That's like suggesting that just because natural disasters can strike cities, we should build homes on active volcanoes.
First, whether normal families break down is irrelevant. Second, what a terrible analogy. What I'm trying to determine is how having two mothers can possibly be worse than having one parent. I'm trying to have you mention a single shred of evidence that supports the claim that having two parents is worse than having one. (Or to address your tangential point, that a broken/divorced family is superior to a stable/committed family.)
Actually, I don't remember when interracial marriages were illegal, because I was born after 1964. [...] But I really fail to see what that has to do with homosexuality.
So? I'm telling you to remember it, not determining your date of birth. Hrm. Do I explain the obvious parallel between excluding marriage from one set of couples based on discrimination to excluding marriage from one set of couples based on discrimination?
(It's worth noting that the Republican party had more support for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 than the Democratic party.)
(Why is this worth noting? Are you implying that all conservatives are Republicans? That all Democrats are racist? I don't recall even mentioning political parties or their platforms. I merely mentioned libertarians and conservatives.)
Anyhow, here's an experiement for you:
Take this statement (which was your basic thesis, verbatim), "gay couples will never be as good at raising children as normal couples. Just because normal families can break down doesn't mean that gay couples should be allowed to raise families." Now replace gay with black and normal with white. Then, repeat it to my face, i.e., without the shroud of anonymity and with the spectre of personal responsibility.
My best guess ( without knowing how the secret program operated ) is that they're randomly intercepting any and all foreign-routed calls ( and maybe others ), in such a way that even the most pro-government judge would hesitate to authorize so many unfocused, unfounded wiretaps, and for whatever reason, they decided that asking Congress for permission to do what they wanted either wasn't needed or wouldn't work. They're claiming it's not needed, but they might only be right with Alito on the supreme court...
Q: If FISA didn't work, why didn't you seek a new statute that allowed something like this legally?
GONZALES: That question was asked earlier. We've had discussions with members of Congress, certain members of Congress, about whether or not we could get an amendment to FISA, and we were advised that that was not likely to be -- that was not something we could likely get, certainly not without jeopardizing the existence of the program, and therefore, killing the program. And that -- and so a decision was made that because we felt that the authorities were there, that we should continue moving forward with this program.
Yeah that kid was just too young to have owned an original GameBoy... which of course came with a pair of color-coded stereo earbuds. This was the only way to enjoy the revolutionary stereo sound.
Well, the State compels you to support your children for some period of time after they're born, as well. Is that also absurd? If not, then you need to explain why a fetus has no claim on the support of its parent(s) but a child outside the womb does. The only difference with any moral implications is that one is considered a "person" and one is not.
Wrong. Ever hear of adoption? No child has a right to a parent and no parent is compelled to raise a child.
But you say in a later post: As medical technology improves, the question of viability is less "Can we save it?" and more "Do we WANT to save it?" Before you argue that what is in the future has no bearing on what is happening now--understand that we are in the middle of this process, right now.
This is a great solution for all parties. Women that don't want to be compelled by the State to carry a fetus to term can give that fetus up for adoption right at conception/fertilization. Women that want to carry fetuses to term but don't care about their own genetic longevity can still enjoy pregnancy. The farms of artificial wombs (and the orphanages to handle the 'surpluses') will require vast bueracracies and tremendous tax-expenditures. Everyone wins! Except of course all the millions of orphans we will already have (and small-government tax-payers).:-) And then there's all those 'snowflakes' just waiting in their frozen tombs for imlpantation -- potential lives on ice.
Full disclosure, my wife was an orphan.
In my opinion there is no moral argument that a embryo or zygote is a human being ("person"), but that aside, there is no pragmatic reason to consider them such. Calling a fetus a human being is less problematic, but requires an arbitrary (and thus consensus-based) decision on where an embryo becomes a baby. For a very long time this has been birth, but in America at least, the line is being pushed back.
Slashdot Mirror
Take that, Karma!
:) I won't see it.)
Me making a funny typo: Why you would need to double mod it I have know idea.
You, insultingly: "Know" idea indeed. This must be a troll. I have no idea how one could seriously try to be a pedant and fail so miserably. Most morons wouldn't even try; you must be a special kind of moron.
Lol! Let the ad hominems fly. You're mother is a corpse fucker, but it's OK because your dad can't feel it anyway. Yay! But yes, even by replying in the first place I could have easily been considered trolling (just like you!). Anyway, rather than addressing the question 'is nitpicking style even pedantry,' I guess we'll never know! Well, since this is our last meeting: Farewell. (I foed you, so you needn't bother replying
Would you also use two unnecessary commas in your essay?
It is grammatical to use a comma before the conjunction and. A comma separating the independent clause is also grammatical. Look it up.
What you are doing is writing two T's in the space of one letter, so if you tell lnkwell that you have tightly-spaced writing it may start to see them as two T's instead of one H. [...] Are there other examples where you write two letters simultaneously? I can't see the utility of that, myself.
I can't think of another letter in our alphabet that would cross at the same time in the event of a consecutive double. Further, crossing two Ts at once is not writing two letters simultaneously, and any serious HWR technology can handle it. Even Windows' terrible 'pen windows' from the mid-90s could correctly recognize when consecutive Ts were crossed together at the completion of the word.
That's interesting, though. When you write the word letter in cursive, you cross each T separately? Do you do it as soon as you write the letter, or do you do them both separately at the end of thew word? When you write Hello do you cross the H last? (I don't know anyone who does, the recognizer is broken; there's no way to justify the cross of two L-written letters as a variation of H). Either way, if Apple didn't think it was a bug, they would have closed/wont-fixed my bug reports 2 years ago (they wouldn't still be marked open). How sensitive the tablet is is moot, if it's "the same code" doing the recognition then all of the tablet input must be down-sampled to create text model for the recognizer (i.e., any minute wobbles will be discarded as the model is formed from inflection points; If I'd written the recognizer I'd use something like the first derivative of a vector function where z is just an incremental index through the length of the word, or if that was too compute intensive, just a list of 2D vectors refined by throwing out large parts of the curve data). (Additionally, mixed-case printing defeats ink, but not the newton. Also the newton used word based recognition, and not character based recognition; the choice for "my handwriting is widely spaced" doesn't really look at how close each letter is to the next, it affects the ratio of valleys to peaks, and the width of the comparison model. Ink doesn't use the same preference settings as the Newton, so I don't know how they can expect the same level of performance --even if I grant that the recognition engine may be an exact line-for-line port).
Further, even if the recognizer is the same, line for line, the lack of a training prefs, the lack of a punctuation caret, the lack of a context menu for multiple recognition hits, etc. are all features that have been stripped, whether you call that broken or not I guess is semantics.
I would call taking a feature rich app that certifiably "works for me" and then porting to another platform where it no longer "works for me" breaking it. Any other software developer would. If you moved Firefox to a more capable platform and it ran worse and without basic features, would you consider that 'unbroken'? Even if it was 'working as designed' would you even consider it a port or just a facsimile. You'd have to have experience with both platforms for me to continue the discussion. If you don't own a Newton there's really no point in my continued comparisons.
Sorry for the delay in replying.
and for precision graphics, (just not accurate enough to click 1 specific pixel
But it's so fast/easy to zoom in and out with gestures, all the pixel pushers would never have a problem. Maybe what you meant is that the DPI and pressure sensitivity doesn't surpass a dedicated tablet.
People who draw with a mouse are missing the point. Is that a pun? They surely aren't interested in "precision graphics" (if we agree on what that means) anyhow.
First, a note to mods: This comment is already marked off-topic in the subject line. Why you would need to double mod it I have know idea.
Why, no. That depends on whether you [sic: real pedants use "one"] are one of those proscriptivists...
Jeez. Half-assed pedantry is so unsatisfying.
Your comment seems to be even more niggling than my fun-fact (as you are solely making a suggestion of style rather than a correction). Assertion if x and/or y would never require whether. I'm not aware of any grammar in which whether was requisite in a conditional. "Depends on whether" is certainly a common contruct (proscriptivists cheer!) but is no more semantically valid than "depends on if".
Finally, if I were writing an essay, and not merely replying to an individual, I would have certainly used more formal constructs (viz. pronoun choice). Still, the choice between if and whether in a conditional is not a grammatical choice.
Is nitpicking style "half-assed pedantry"? If that's the case, let me give you some style advice: Real pedants use one. Words mentioned as words are not quoted, they are emphasized, typically with italics. Also, 'real pedants' is a classic example of the Real Scottsman fallacy.
Thank you for the reply.
Haha, that gave me a good laugh.
The sceptic who challenges me has to try and convince me I'm hallucinating about twenty years of answered prayer.
Likewise, you'd have to convince me you're not. That's the very basis of scepticism. Again, I grant that I may have misjudged you, but I'm still hearing the words of a zealot. You may not be. But for now, I guess I'm the Han Solo to your Obi-Wan, "I've never seen anything to make me believe there's one all-powerful force controlling everything."
As far as the link:
I guess this is correct, but only for the most uncritical, unrational follower. Wouldn't the why be obvious to anyone that is curious about his Faith? Christians don't have (what I consider) to be the greatest strength of Islam, that is, the Bible, unlike the Quran, is not the absolute, immutable, untranslatable Word of God. Its history is fascinating none-the-less, but it is absolutely written by men, with or without His help, and men are fallible or liars.
Thanks for the reply, though.
Hi! Warning, mini-rant!
/rant :-)
I hate to be a pedant, but CPU is an initialism, while SCSI is an acronym. We don't pronounce CPU as a word, we just say "sea-pee-you" (or at least I don't know of any population that says "suh-poo" when they are talking about central processing units). I just figured that while we were nit-picking people, I'd throw in that fun-fact.
There's more at the Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Initialism
However, I will grant that the same argument for insisting that "begging the question" means raising the question can be used to dismiss the difference between acronyms and initialisms. Does that make it right? Well I guess that depends on if you are one of those proscriptivists (who insist that supposably is a word as long as enough people use it) or a descriptivist (who insist that words mean something, and ivory tower dictionaries contain those absolute meanings).
As someone that dodged an English degree, descriptivism has some sway over me, but I can understand why some people just want to say whatever the fuck they want and insist that I misunderstand their meaning through no fault of their own. Haha, maybe using language that other people understand has some roots in personal responsibility. It's my responsibility to make sure that others understand me.
Well, the creative commons typically used by Flickr, is simply a means of easily defining the rights you are providing. It can mean a number of things, and I think he has a point - that its confusing; you have to read the rights for every bit of work, rather than being able to trust that a creative commons mark means you have certain rights.
:-)
A CC license means you can always copy, distribute, display, and perform the work. In addition you may have other conditional freedoms not granted by traditional copyright (or the code-centric licenses).
I guess I see what you mean about having "to read the rights for every bit of work", but you have to admit that Creative Commons streamlines this to the point that it's nearly idiot proof. I think it's disingenuous to say it's confusing. Click on the "CC button" (the link to the license) for any page covered with a CC license and you'll get something this: Creative Commons- By Attribution (CC-BY for short). Thanks to the Commons Deeds, the only time you'd ever need to delve into the legalese of the actual license are the same times you'd grab a lawyer for any other 'open' license (i.e., you are about to include GPL code in a closed, commercial product; you are about to publish a music compilation of other people's works).
I think Lessig is right for the same reason I think the Framers were right. Copyright does serve a purpose as long as time-limited monopolies promote science and the useful arts. The constitution gives no other reason for State granted monopolies. That's the trade-off -- a bigger commons in exchance for short/fixed-term monopolies.
That said, Open Source has not diluted the principle (as the Creative Commoms may have) by retaining a clear statement about what is and is not Open Source.
If the principle is constitutional copyright, Creative Commons has not diluted it. Copyleft by contrast stands completely counter to these goals (as a reaction to copyright, rather than a refinement). In this respect, it doesn't matter what RMS says about CC, because the arenas are completely seperate (I can't think of anyone using CC for code, just like no one is using GPL for music/film). http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/5771. The needs of Free Software and Open Source software (software freedom and code freedom) are just plain different from other forms of Free Art (creative freedeom). If code were an art that existed in a vacuum, in that there were times you didn't want to make derivatives, forks, plugins, extensions, libraries or enhancements, etc. only then would CC even be relevant (code is a very utilitarian art -- I've never written a program just to look at it, or read it). One size fits all is almost always wrong, isn't it?
In closing, Copyleft is very necessary as long as copyright exists; Creative Commons is also very necessary until copyright is reformed world-wide.
Sorry for the rambling post.
Given your words in this post: http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=176688 &cid=14682636
I'm surprised you've not heard of Ehrman. If you are such a scholar, I would imagine you would be aware of other published scholars.
If you weren't lazy, you could have just Googled him. I caught him on Fresh Air and enjoyed it. You can find it on the web if you're interested in his thoughts on "what hangs together". Also, you can get a more nuanced point of view from his papers/lectures. I'd say, head on back to your seminary, I bet they can get them for you (if you are actually interested in skeptical textualism and what not).
I may have misjudged your comments, but it sounds to me like you already know what you want to know ("onus is on the skeptic"!?!).
Ah! I've found the old thread:
8 8&cid=10436404
;-p)
= 124388&cid=10436464
Start here: http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1243
Read replies from Strider- and jcr, and such. I mean if you're interested (and anyone else
Relevant post:http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid
I've made this comment before (to jcr in fact). If Ink is a direct port from the Newton, they broke it along the way. I have bugs filed (if you could search them) the describe this. I'll give you the short version first: Pull out your tablet on your Mac, write the word 'Rosetta' in cursive (and as typical for most writers, cross both Ts at once). On a Newton MP 2100 it will correctly translate this to 'Rosetta' 100% of the time for me. With Ink it gets translated to 'RoseHa' 100% of the time. Somewhere between Newton's 'Rosetta' handwriting recognition and OS X's 'Ink' recognition, they forgot how to 1) understand cursive, 2) learn user handwriting, 3) allow training of the recognizer, 4) allow the insertion caret to be used for punctuation, 5) correctly understand editing gestures in (almost) all cases -- ever try to join a broken word with Ink?.
For completeness sake, let me include that old bug report (which includes a snippet from a thread jcr and I had going about Ink's flaws compared to the Newton): https://bugreport.apple.com/ Problem ID: 3828160 (this bug is still marked "Open")
A gold standard undermines a labor standard because on a gold standard that labor -- the labor of digging up gold -- is then different, differently valued (and possibly more or less valuable), than any other kind of labor. In turn, all other labor is valued in terms of how much gold could have been dug up. In your quip you are just describing a labor standard using gold as a commodity with a value based on labor! This is counter to what Dada wants us all to resist (and supports the comment which you are mocking).
Whether trinkets are better I guess is what is being debated. I don't have an opinion as to whether one is better or not, because when it comes to government coercion they are both the same (whether the government is monopolizing gold-digging or money-printing makes no difference on the end result, control of exchange).
Wow, really. In what fact do you seat your bigotry?
There's a huge difference between divorce and death and explicitly deciding "we'll let that child be raised in a poor setting".
A poor setting. So, for you, which is "poorer" a single parent family or a dual parent family? And besides, we "let" children get raised by divorcees all the fucking time. (Isn't that part of the problem? For years the "think of the children" debate revolved around divorce, before there was the new bogeyman of gay parents or miscegenation).
I can already tell that I don't need to ask whether a mother-mother family is "poorer" than a mother-father family. Now, if you can bring yourself to admit that a dual-parent family can possibly be worse than a single-parent family, I'd have to wonder why you wouldn't demand other family improvement laws, like (again) mandatory divorce (single-parent better) or mandatory marriage (dual-parent better), mandatory birth control (to prevent unwed/single parent familes), etc. ad absurdum.
Again, which is better, "for the children": A single parent family, or a dual parent family. Don't equivocate, just answer the damn question.
(When you're done you can expound upon whether a white-black family is "poorer" than a white-white or black-black family. I can't wait for your reply!)
Finally:
It's not "bigotry" it's simple, rational thought. The concept that "any two people can be parents" is flat-out ridiculous and counter to natural human development. Every child should have a mother and a father. The number of people who disagree is, quite frankly, disturbing
Every naturally concieved child does have a mother and a father. We're talking about do those kids live with and are they raised by those same parents or some other combination of none or more of them. Whether we agree or not that "any two people can be parents" is moot because we don't have any other laws dictating what kind of families exist (well now that it's legal to have "mixed-race marriages" and "mixed-race children"). Unfit parents have children all the time. Some of them even know they are unfit and abandon their offspring to orphanages. To believe (and even insist it's "rational" as you put it) that two fit, loving adults can't raise children because of some arbitrary fear/custom seems to be the very definition of bigotry.
I will say again, the "Think of the Children" argument against homosexual marriages is completely bogus and is founded in nothing but the basest of prejudice.
Then again, you could just be trolling me! Congrats!
[...] the different kinds of marriage referred to in the Book are legion [...]
Legion and creepy. Thanks for the follow-up. Also, "He's a cultural pioneer" -- I like this turn of phrase.
Right! Why is there debate about "shall not be violated". Papers and effects seems to obviously cover correspondence. Sheesh.
No Citizen is above the law. If the President must violate the law to uphold his oath of office, then he must submit to the punishment for his crimes. I mean, if he must fall on his sword to "protect the Union", so be it.
Nobody with eyes and ears can claim the corporation for public broadcasting was unbiased before 2000.
Bill Moyers has both eyes and ears and claimed the CPB was unbiased before 2000. I know you aren't one that's careful with his speech, but it's worth pointing out. You might be working with a different understanding of what unbiased means (on-topic, like the controversy revolving around what theory means).
Google Bill Moyers, CPB, "National Conference on Media Reform", St. Louis, Missouri. http://www.freepress.net/news/8120
Anyway, I make no assertions about your other points (big government does suck; if they can't control their spending, we need to control their budget). Cheers!
But on top of these obvious failures, is the most amazing:
The Big Bang is "not proven fact; it is opinion," Mr. Deutsch wrote, adding, "It is not NASA's place, nor should it be to make a declaration such as this about the existence of the universe that discounts intelligent design by a creator." [...] "This is more than a science issue, it is a religious issue. And I would hate to think that young people would only be getting one-half of this debate from NASA. That would mean we had failed to properly educate the very people who rely on us for factual information the most."
Rely on us for FACTUAL INFORMATION?! It's almost nonsensical -- 'big bang is opinion; we can't discount ID because people rely on us for facts!' WTF?
How's this one for you...I don't go to church, I'm pro-choice, against the Patriot Act, and against wiretapping without getting the damn warrents...and, oh yeah, I like science.
Wow, why don't you vote Libertarian? It sounds like the GOP platform has nothing for you (at least for the last 14 years), unless you forgot to mention that you hate gays.
Thanks for the reply.
For this reason along ALL of us are compelled to help raise the child (via tax dollars). If this were not the case then they would be left on hillsides.
It should be noted that not all orphanages are State-run or even State-supported.
But to continue, I said: but that aside, there is no pragmatic reason to consider [zygotes or embyros] [persons]. Calling a fetus a human being is less problematic, but requires an arbitrary (and thus consensus-based) decision on where an embryo becomes a baby. For a very long time this has been birth, but in America at least, the line is being pushed back." To which you respond:
This also supports my point: that people do not believe that "humanity" is an intrinsic value that we have, but rather that it is based on pragmatism or some form of utility (this entity is a person because it is useful; that one is not because it is useless to me, or a burden).
I don't think my statement supports your point. It's definitely NOT pragmatism; otherwise we would routinely euthanize the infirm and would execute rather than imprison-for-life; we wouldn't have pet shelters or orphanages; examples in every case of "non-productive surpluses"). Personhood or "humanity" if you prefer is a gestalt phenomena. We consider it to have something to do with sentience, brain-life, pain-sensitivity, self-awareness, 'having a soul', etc. If some mixture of these qualities wasn't important we would call strip-mining some analogue of genocide (trees and ecosystems are 'alive'), but most everyone agrees that forests lack some quality(ies) that makes their destruction immoral. So, one has to ask himself, what makes it wrong to kill a baby but makes it ok to kill a goldfish? (or to step up the ladder in comfort, eat a lamb? club a seal? euthanize a kitten? capital punish? assist a suicide?). So we accept that babies have something kittens don't, more than pain-sensitivity, more than aliveness, more than emotion, (kittens demonstrate all of these qualities) but not necessarily sentience or self-awareness (babies and kittens demonstrate neither of these). If it's just the soul-test we're back to arbitrary decisions. Now, there's an even harder task of stepping back in time, even before birth to figure out what features a fetus and a baby share that a kitten doesn't (again, using a kitten as an arbitrary example of something it's commonly held moral to euthanize; I guess you could replace kitten with any person/animal you think it's OK to kill -- dolphins, the elderly or infirm, felons, foriegners).
So, not to sound puerile, what does a fetus have that a kitten (or felon or enemy) doesn't that makes it acceptable to kill one and not the other?
There are problems with this as well. If absolutely no-one on Earth wants me to live, I still have the right to live.
Yes, an inalienable right, a natural right, unlike having your mother raise you...
That's what the Bill of Rights, says, anyhow. If I am attacked nobody will come to my aid, under those circumstances, but I may live if I can defend myself. To me, such a view boils down to "You are a person if you can force other people to recognize that you are a person." If this is true then abortion is little more than war against the weak...which America is pretty good at, these days, come to think of it.
Incidentally, this is the same argument for property rights. I have property as long as I can muster violence to hold it. I have land as long as I can defend it. (Contrast the inalienable rights to your own person and your own labor.) Nothing is yours by nature except that of your own body. We make agreements/laws/contracts to avoid all that violence, but these agreements require trust (which requires punishment of cheaters). Sorry for getting off-topic.
Anyhow, my argument for pragmatism was that an embryo or zygote is not a "person" a point you (and anyone, really) would concede. As I said before (and you agree) the debate is around the (as
Only a couple hundred bucks per unit? Sign me up!
(said as someone that bought a Newton MP 2100, haha, but eventually also bought much cheaper Palm Pilots and Visors)
As long-time miscegenators, my spouse and I have been living in common-law as fully married: a ceremony, rings, only joint accounts and ownership of all the stuff, two children, etc.
:-)
c id=14640215.
Right on, man. We actually have a State marriage license, but I respect your stance.
Look at my post here and the anonymous reply to it: http://games.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=176200&
This latest wave of acceptable bigotry incences me.
[...] First off, divorce can easily happen after the children are already raised. Eight years of having a normal family and then divorce is almost certainly better than never having a normal family. No, it's not optimal, but if a marriage leads to divorce, chances are that family life for the children would likely be far worse than a successful marriage. Likewise, even if a parent dies in a normal family, at least the children had a normal family for some period of time. In a gay family, they NEVER had a normal family.
But is a 'normal family' the optimal family? This was basically my question -- but I'll reiterate it: If two parents is good enough, aren't more adults better? And fewer parents worse? (Don't reply unless you answer these questions; I'm not interested otherwise.)
[...] gay couples will never be as good at raising [children] as normal couples. Just because normal families can break down doesn't mean that gay couples should be allowed to raise families. That's like suggesting that just because natural disasters can strike cities, we should build homes on active volcanoes.
First, whether normal families break down is irrelevant. Second, what a terrible analogy. What I'm trying to determine is how having two mothers can possibly be worse than having one parent. I'm trying to have you mention a single shred of evidence that supports the claim that having two parents is worse than having one. (Or to address your tangential point, that a broken/divorced family is superior to a stable/committed family.)
Actually, I don't remember when interracial marriages were illegal, because I was born after 1964. [...] But I really fail to see what that has to do with homosexuality.
So? I'm telling you to remember it, not determining your date of birth. Hrm. Do I explain the obvious parallel between excluding marriage from one set of couples based on discrimination to excluding marriage from one set of couples based on discrimination?
(It's worth noting that the Republican party had more support for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 than the Democratic party.)
(Why is this worth noting? Are you implying that all conservatives are Republicans? That all Democrats are racist? I don't recall even mentioning political parties or their platforms. I merely mentioned libertarians and conservatives.)
Anyhow, here's an experiement for you:
Take this statement (which was your basic thesis, verbatim), "gay couples will never be as good at raising children as normal couples. Just because normal families can break down doesn't mean that gay couples should be allowed to raise families." Now replace gay with black and normal with white. Then, repeat it to my face, i.e., without the shroud of anonymity and with the spectre of personal responsibility.
Cheers.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/12/2
http://billmon.org/archives/002349.html, emphasis my own:
Yeah that kid was just too young to have owned an original GameBoy... which of course came with a pair of color-coded stereo earbuds. This was the only way to enjoy the revolutionary stereo sound.
Well, the State compels you to support your children for some period of time after they're born, as well. Is that also absurd? If not, then you need to explain why a fetus has no claim on the support of its parent(s) but a child outside the womb does. The only difference with any moral implications is that one is considered a "person" and one is not.
:-) And then there's all those 'snowflakes' just waiting in their frozen tombs for imlpantation -- potential lives on ice.
Wrong. Ever hear of adoption? No child has a right to a parent and no parent is compelled to raise a child.
But you say in a later post: As medical technology improves, the question of viability is less "Can we save it?" and more "Do we WANT to save it?" Before you argue that what is in the future has no bearing on what is happening now--understand that we are in the middle of this process, right now.
This is a great solution for all parties. Women that don't want to be compelled by the State to carry a fetus to term can give that fetus up for adoption right at conception/fertilization. Women that want to carry fetuses to term but don't care about their own genetic longevity can still enjoy pregnancy. The farms of artificial wombs (and the orphanages to handle the 'surpluses') will require vast bueracracies and tremendous tax-expenditures. Everyone wins! Except of course all the millions of orphans we will already have (and small-government tax-payers).
Full disclosure, my wife was an orphan.
In my opinion there is no moral argument that a embryo or zygote is a human being ("person"), but that aside, there is no pragmatic reason to consider them such. Calling a fetus a human being is less problematic, but requires an arbitrary (and thus consensus-based) decision on where an embryo becomes a baby. For a very long time this has been birth, but in America at least, the line is being pushed back.