Yes, exactly. We scoffed at them (and rightfully so) when they said "Linux is dying," and now that they say "Windows is dying" we're prepared to believe them?
'How risky are nuclear weapons? Amazingly, no one seems to know.' Hellman therefore did a preliminary analysis and found the risk to be 'equivalent to having your home surrounded by thousands of nuclear power plants'
That's reassuring, because it seems unlikely that my home will ever be surrounded by thousands of nuclear power plants.
So the question is not, "Is a fetus a person?" but rather, "Is it in society's best interest to sanction this type of killing?" I think it is both a benefit to society and a blessing to the unborn. Being raised in a family that doesn't want you is worse than death, and creates the type of person who is neither happy and fulfilled, nor a net benefit to society.
Those sound subjective to me. Mary Ellen Wilson, the first person in the US to be removed from a home because of child abuse, went on to live an apparently happy and fulfilling life. I don't know that we are qualified, or have the right, to judge who will or won't benefit society; lots of people born poor do well in life. Genetics doesn't care how much money your parents have.
The strongest non-moral argument against abortion in my opinion is that of demographics: population growth is necessary to maintain Western social welfare systems like Social Security. The second strongest is genetic: we don't know how many Einsteins we're losing (not only through abortion, but through high death rates of children in third world countries.)
This has come up in some interesting discussions about Battlestar Galactica: if you have the only 40,000 humans left anywhere, a case can be made for banning all birth control, or even forcing women to have as many children as they can, though I wouldn't support that.
What I don't understand is, why are they doing this censorship so quietly and compliantly? It seems like the principled thing would have been to fight it on free speech grounds.
It sounds like USAID (or someone else) is funding abortions when they're not supposed to, and is trying to cover its tracks, and that Johns Hopkins is going along with it because they support abortion rights.
because school zone speed limits are often ridiculously slow
Oh, c'mon! You'll brook no argument from me on highway speeds being artificially low, but school zones?
The speed limit in front of my high school was 15 mph, and I heard of a guy who got a ticket for going 17 mph. People drove faster than that in the parking lot (which I don't endorse, but I never heard of an accident there.) The local high school where I live now has a school speed limit of 25 mph (as well as a stoplight + crosswalk), which is more reasonable, and some area schools have school speed limits of 45 mph (on roads that are faster than that, obviously.)
I'm open minded enough to assume that the police officer sitting outside the school zone at 7:30AM isn't primarily interested in revenue collection.....
What does being open minded have to do with it? Outside a school zone at 7:30 am is ideal for revenue collection because school zone speed limits are often ridiculously slow and teenagers driving to school tend to not observe them, especially when late.
It would be nice if these reasonable Christians you refer to would actually raise their voices against the fundy whack-jobs and not let them dominate the religious conversation in the US.
Extremism and conflict are more attention-grabbing and "newsworthy". It would also be nice if the radical and unpopular elements of every group that one belongs to would just shut up, from the drunk on your bowling team to the neo-nazi who claims to support your favorite politician.
Because if a person who would benefit from the sale of your dead body was facing financial ruin, it may just be enough of an incentive to kill you or have you killed. Heck, there are people that have been killed over 10's of dollars, or a pair of shoes or even a beer or two. If you are worth more dead than alive, you might just find yourself dead sooner rather than later. It happens all the time to people with a big life insurance policy.
That's not a good enough reason to prohibit otherwise-lawful trade, much less something that can save thousands or millions of lives (by providing needed replacement organs). If you want murder to be illegal (as I do), then make murder illegal; don't make it illegal to do something that you think might increase the rate of murder.
What would minimize corruption in this area is legalizing sales of human body parts. If my estate would benefit from the sale of my body parts after I die, why shouldn't I arrange to have it do so?
But perhaps the real problem is not just the number of people, but what they're consuming. Remember that one citizen of an industrialized country consumes many times more of the world's resources -- food, oil, everything -- than a villager in sub-Saharan Africa.
I used to think that this was bad, but now I realize that it's good. In our current economy, everything that is consumed has to be produced by someone, leading to economic growth. People of industrialized countries produce more than villagers in sub-Saharan Africa, driving an economy that solves problems in an upward spiral. What we need are more citizens of industrialized countries, not fewer, and not just for the sake of our social welfare promises.
The original poster disparaged foolish belief with no scientific support, but professed his "firm Christian beliefs". There would appear to be a contradiction, since the Christian belief system also runs contrary to science.
Nerdposeur disparaged foolish belief, not belief with no scientific support. Lots of true beliefs have no scientific support; what I ate for breakfast last Saturday cannot be proven scientifically, but I believe I still remember it accurately.
Since every person's worldview is based on subjective experiences, there is no such thing as an objective worldview. Many people believe that the only valid beliefs are ones that can be proven scientifically, which is not scientifically provable.
The Christian belief system does not run contrary to science, because science does not make value judgments about itself such as "only scientific statements are valid."
Problem solved. I bet the backlog drops by at least 3/4 what it is today.
Sure. But you'd throw out a lot of legitimate patents. A patent covering e.g. "A method to produce chemical X..." which goes on to specify the method (not one which uses that verbiage to cover all methods, as do many bad patents) is not a bad patent, unless you're opposed to all patents.
It is plausible to say that a sequence of instructions is not an invention. What makes "a method to produce chemical X" as legitimate as "a machine that produces chemical X"?
Hardware security is just that, hardware, so there will never be an adequate software solution to a hardware security problem. Likewise, software security means nothing if the hardware is vulnerable.
I hear things like this a lot, and I disagree. The key words in the quote above are "adequate" and "nothing", which depend on a cost-benefit analysis. Just reducing risk can be more cost-effective than eliminating risk. Encryption is often an adequate software solution to a hardware security problem because most laptop thieves either don't care about the software or aren't equipped to carry out the kind of cold reboot attack described in the article, or because the data isn't important enough to warrant more expensive physical security (such as armed guards).
UK international development minister Shahid Malik, was detained on the way back from a series of meetings in Washington on combatting terrorism.
When they asked him what he was there for, he probably used the t-word. It's ridiculous that there is an unwritten list of words that one isn't allowed to use in an airport.
And you imply it was everyone's property implicitly from the day I wrote it. So why the fuck would I bother?
It's not property at all, it's an idea. It's intangible. For me to tell you a joke doesn't deprive me of that joke; similarly, for you to read your article to me does not deprive you of that article, even if I have perfect recall.
You would bother if you liked writing articles, or if someone paid you enough to write articles, or if some other thing motivated you. Otherwise you wouldn't.
in short, that's a great way to kill off all industries that don't create something physical.
It's true that some activities will no longer be profitable, but as long as problems need to be solved, someone will be willing to pay someone else to solve them, even if the solution is intangible.
I suspect that cluckshot is from the Huntsville area, which happens to be where most of Alabama's scientists and engineers are, and where they're so used to funny accents that they don't ask you where you're from when you order at a restaurant.
>>>"Not testable in any way" *means* "Science cannot apply to [it]"
>>*And* it means baseless, meaningless..
>That's a common religious belief.
Nothing religious about it: just logical: if you don't have a way to distinguish fairy tales from 'not testable in any way belief' it's probably because those 'untestable belief' are just that fairy tales..
That's a fine assertion, but how can you prove it, scientifically or logically? You can't, so it's a religious belief.
But they do affect how you live your life. Bird Flu, Super Staph infections, HIV, and other diseases our dependent on our knowledge of evolution for us to understand them. Gene Therapy and genetic engineering are as well. If you want work in these areas to continue, you better be on board with evolution.
That depends how loosely one defines "evolution". A creationist who accepts the idea of natural selection (what creationists call "horizontal evolution") can do medical research just as well as anyone else. An ID'er is already on board with evolution, "horizontal" and "vertical", so they wouldn't necessarily have any problem either.
Trying to separate opinions from public policy is silly. The belief that there is no god is a "religious belief": it is a belief that involves something religious.
It's part of a belief system that specifically does not involve anything religious.
If someone believes there is no god, their belief system involves something religious. Every belief system involves something religious. Too many people confuse religion or religious belief with organized religion. We all have opinions that are not based in reality; humans are quick to leap to conclusions, to find patterns that aren't there, because that provides significant evolutionary advantage. It's not rational to think that every rustle is a monster trying to sneak up on you, but if you behave as if it is, you're less likely to be eaten by a wild animal.
For ONLY non-scientific reasons? They should have plenty of ethical and pragmatic reasons to guide them in those matters, not just religous ones. If your religion is the only thing keeping you from doing evil things then you're a psychotic. Religion is no substitute for morality.
Ethical and pragmatic reasons are non-scientific reasons. Moral beliefs are religious beliefs. Moral beliefs come from a variety of sources (two examples are personal experience and training by parents), none scientific.
If someone tells me something, it's hearsay, not science, regardless of whether or not it's true.
Those rational people should recognize that pushing a particular religious belief into policy is a violation of church-state separation in a way that simply promulgating a scientific curriculum never was.
I see religious belief as simply a subset of unproven beliefs, a.k.a. opinions, and everybody has a huge number of unproven beliefs. Trying to separate opinions from public policy is silly. The belief that there is no god is a "religious belief": it is a belief that involves something religious. Some peoples' interpretation of church-state separation is itself such a belief. Some people believe, for non-scientific reasons, that we shouldn't kill each other indiscriminately; should those people ignore their own opinion when creating laws? Of course not.
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Yes, exactly. We scoffed at them (and rightfully so) when they said "Linux is dying," and now that they say "Windows is dying" we're prepared to believe them?
That's reassuring, because it seems unlikely that my home will ever be surrounded by thousands of nuclear power plants.
Those sound subjective to me. Mary Ellen Wilson, the first person in the US to be removed from a home because of child abuse, went on to live an apparently happy and fulfilling life. I don't know that we are qualified, or have the right, to judge who will or won't benefit society; lots of people born poor do well in life. Genetics doesn't care how much money your parents have.
The strongest non-moral argument against abortion in my opinion is that of demographics: population growth is necessary to maintain Western social welfare systems like Social Security. The second strongest is genetic: we don't know how many Einsteins we're losing (not only through abortion, but through high death rates of children in third world countries.)
This has come up in some interesting discussions about Battlestar Galactica: if you have the only 40,000 humans left anywhere, a case can be made for banning all birth control, or even forcing women to have as many children as they can, though I wouldn't support that.
It sounds like USAID (or someone else) is funding abortions when they're not supposed to, and is trying to cover its tracks, and that Johns Hopkins is going along with it because they support abortion rights.
The speed limit in front of my high school was 15 mph, and I heard of a guy who got a ticket for going 17 mph. People drove faster than that in the parking lot (which I don't endorse, but I never heard of an accident there.) The local high school where I live now has a school speed limit of 25 mph (as well as a stoplight + crosswalk), which is more reasonable, and some area schools have school speed limits of 45 mph (on roads that are faster than that, obviously.)
What does being open minded have to do with it? Outside a school zone at 7:30 am is ideal for revenue collection because school zone speed limits are often ridiculously slow and teenagers driving to school tend to not observe them, especially when late.
Extremism and conflict are more attention-grabbing and "newsworthy". It would also be nice if the radical and unpopular elements of every group that one belongs to would just shut up, from the drunk on your bowling team to the neo-nazi who claims to support your favorite politician.
People who like songs from 1968 are Cylons!
That's not a good enough reason to prohibit otherwise-lawful trade, much less something that can save thousands or millions of lives (by providing needed replacement organs). If you want murder to be illegal (as I do), then make murder illegal; don't make it illegal to do something that you think might increase the rate of murder.
What would minimize corruption in this area is legalizing sales of human body parts. If my estate would benefit from the sale of my body parts after I die, why shouldn't I arrange to have it do so?
I used to think that this was bad, but now I realize that it's good. In our current economy, everything that is consumed has to be produced by someone, leading to economic growth. People of industrialized countries produce more than villagers in sub-Saharan Africa, driving an economy that solves problems in an upward spiral. What we need are more citizens of industrialized countries, not fewer, and not just for the sake of our social welfare promises.
Nerdposeur disparaged foolish belief, not belief with no scientific support. Lots of true beliefs have no scientific support; what I ate for breakfast last Saturday cannot be proven scientifically, but I believe I still remember it accurately.
Since every person's worldview is based on subjective experiences, there is no such thing as an objective worldview. Many people believe that the only valid beliefs are ones that can be proven scientifically, which is not scientifically provable.
The Christian belief system does not run contrary to science, because science does not make value judgments about itself such as "only scientific statements are valid."
It is plausible to say that a sequence of instructions is not an invention. What makes "a method to produce chemical X" as legitimate as "a machine that produces chemical X"?
I hear things like this a lot, and I disagree. The key words in the quote above are "adequate" and "nothing", which depend on a cost-benefit analysis. Just reducing risk can be more cost-effective than eliminating risk. Encryption is often an adequate software solution to a hardware security problem because most laptop thieves either don't care about the software or aren't equipped to carry out the kind of cold reboot attack described in the article, or because the data isn't important enough to warrant more expensive physical security (such as armed guards).
When they asked him what he was there for, he probably used the t-word. It's ridiculous that there is an unwritten list of words that one isn't allowed to use in an airport.
It's not property at all, it's an idea. It's intangible. For me to tell you a joke doesn't deprive me of that joke; similarly, for you to read your article to me does not deprive you of that article, even if I have perfect recall.
You would bother if you liked writing articles, or if someone paid you enough to write articles, or if some other thing motivated you. Otherwise you wouldn't.
It's true that some activities will no longer be profitable, but as long as problems need to be solved, someone will be willing to pay someone else to solve them, even if the solution is intangible.
Perl's even worse in that respect. They don't call it "write only" for nothing.
Parenthesis in function calls are optional! That's not what I would call "clarity".
My impression after using RoR for a few months is that "what seems logical" to Ruby's creator is not what seems logical to me.
I suspect that cluckshot is from the Huntsville area, which happens to be where most of Alabama's scientists and engineers are, and where they're so used to funny accents that they don't ask you where you're from when you order at a restaurant.
Occam's Razor is a good guideline, but it's not infallible. Sometimes the more complicated explanation is true.
That's a fine assertion, but how can you prove it, scientifically or logically? You can't, so it's a religious belief.
That depends how loosely one defines "evolution". A creationist who accepts the idea of natural selection (what creationists call "horizontal evolution") can do medical research just as well as anyone else. An ID'er is already on board with evolution, "horizontal" and "vertical", so they wouldn't necessarily have any problem either.
If someone believes there is no god, their belief system involves something religious. Every belief system involves something religious. Too many people confuse religion or religious belief with organized religion. We all have opinions that are not based in reality; humans are quick to leap to conclusions, to find patterns that aren't there, because that provides significant evolutionary advantage. It's not rational to think that every rustle is a monster trying to sneak up on you, but if you behave as if it is, you're less likely to be eaten by a wild animal.
Ethical and pragmatic reasons are non-scientific reasons. Moral beliefs are religious beliefs. Moral beliefs come from a variety of sources (two examples are personal experience and training by parents), none scientific.
If someone tells me something, it's hearsay, not science, regardless of whether or not it's true.
That's a common religious belief.
I see religious belief as simply a subset of unproven beliefs, a.k.a. opinions, and everybody has a huge number of unproven beliefs. Trying to separate opinions from public policy is silly. The belief that there is no god is a "religious belief": it is a belief that involves something religious. Some peoples' interpretation of church-state separation is itself such a belief. Some people believe, for non-scientific reasons, that we shouldn't kill each other indiscriminately; should those people ignore their own opinion when creating laws? Of course not.