I wouldn't know, never met him/her/it/whatever. Don't even know if there is a creator.
But I've seen enough intelligent humans do seemingly stupid things to know that intelligence isn't the sole driving factor in why things happen (if it's a factor at all). It's been speculated before that God created the universe becuase He got bored.
"Eventually in the evolutionary timeline, yuo get back to a point where the question of 'where did the matter come from' pops up,"
How do proponents of science expect to defeat the ideology of ID if they make some of the same mistakes?
"and evolution comes alogn and says that matter is eternal:"
Einstein comes along and says it isn't. The people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are convinced he's right. There's also the matter of the Big Burning Shiney Thing in the Sky that we geeks rarely ever see.
"we've been in an unending cycle of compression and expansion of matter for eternity,"
First off, you seem to be assuming there will be a Big Crunch. Last I heard, signs point to "No."
Secondly, you need to let go of the "hand grenade in a vacuum" visualization of the Big Bang, as it will get you into trouble. The problem with that is that there was no vacuum; matter and energy didn't just expand, space-time itself explosively expanded from a near-singularity to the gigaparsecs we see today.
There is no "before" the Big Bang, at least not in the four-dimensional sense. And if there were to be a Big Crunch, there would be no "after." There might be some sort of "metaverse" "outside" the universe, but space-time it ain't, and science will likely never have a way to confirm or deny its existence since it cannot be observed.
If anything, the Big Bang does far more to support the Genesis account of cosmology than the "eternal universe" model that the (pagen) Greek philosophers like Aristotle thought up. It's a damn shame the fundies are hung up on the age of the universe/earth/etc.
Most fundamentalists hate the Catholic church about as much as they hate Darwin, Freud and Galileo. Heck, most of the fundamentalist sects in North Americare are here because they were trying to get away from the Catholic church.
Pick up a Chick tract. Good ol' Jack practically rails against evolution and Catholicism in the same comic.
Abortion and homosexuality are about the only things fundamentalists and Catholics agree on.
All they have to do is merge this with their super-popular CD-i platform and it'd be the most popular console evar! Maybe Nintendo will let them make a few Zelda games for it...
"And before anyone tells me about Halo 2 on Live, it's full of squealing 13 year olds who call everyone gay when they get fragged."
Browse at -1 and you'll learn that you just described Slashdot.
Seriously, it's less about Halo 2 online and more about just plain old online. The world is full of closeted fuckwads, and they all have internet connections.
It also strikes me as pandering. I can't put my finger on it, but it feels like an attempt to both say "We have geeks, too!" as well as telling said geeks "No, really, we like you, just don't expect a raise or job security or anything."
Maybe I feel like it's pandering because, if I worked at Yahoo, that'd be the last thing I'd want. Other than a paycheck, they do their job for the problem-solving aspects. If they wanted attention and glory, they'd all be playing football. This statue was thought up by PHBs who continue to not "get it."
I've said it before and I'll say it again: the only reason Columbine made copy is because they were pointing their guns at someone other than themselves for once.
Apparently a big part of StarCraft: Ghost is a subpar online mode where everyone stealths around while trying to capture a base or some crap. That certainly sounds more exciting than the single player story mode full of StarCraft lore that we've been waiting 3 years for.
Seriously, if there's going to be so much of a focus on online gameplay that they don't think releasing the game for the GCN makes sense, it sounds like Ghost will become yet another online game with little more than chicks dressed in tight/revealing outfits going for it, just like half the games released in the past 3 years or so. Been there, done that.
I was looking for a new game to expand the StarCraft universe, but if all it's going to give me is "ZOMG! It's a Zergling! Shiney!" I have other games to spend money on.
Seriously, if that's what Congress does to protect our inboxes, I'd hate to see what a federal privacy statute would do the Fourth and Fifth Amendments.
The retailers' bills may be paid, but not Microsoft's. You're forgetting that Microsoft is selling these devices at a lost, and they want to "sell out" as fast as possible to jump to Phase 3 before Wall Street starts to ask too many questions about Phase 2.
All kidding aside, I really don't see even the Xbox 360 having something as pervasive as Live, if for no other reason than because Square-Enix has Final Fantasy XI and the latest expansion pack scheduled to release for the system. Even if SE wanted to pull a PSO and have players charged twice (once for Live, once for PSO), forsaking the current scheme in favor of a Live-esque service for the X360 version of FFXI will only break compatability with gamers on the PC and PS2 platforms. I don't see SE abandoning PlayOnline.
Microsoft may or may not have a centralized online service for the 360, but I don't see it being mandatory as it is now.
""The only people in the school district with a scientific background were opposed to intelligent design... and you ignored them?" he asked.
"Yes," Geesey said.""
It's very simple: the people in the school district that have a scientific background are not in the numerical majority. The first rule about democracy is that the majority makes the rules.
When you subject a school's curriculum to majoritarian control, this is what you get.
"The parents haven't shown this disdain, just as I personally haven't shown any disdain for citizens of Iraq (or, for that matter, Afghanistan)."
But this has been going on for longer than either Iraq or Afghanistan. Kansas started to make serious moves on this back in the Clinton administration. If there were to be the "changing of the guard" you think there would be, it would have happened by now.
Even then, this is something that began before anybody reading this post was born; people didn't magically wake up one morning a decade or two back and say "Oh, wait, I don't like evolution any more," this is pretty much the continuation of the debate that Darwin's work sparked in the Nineteenth Century. It just so happens that places like Kansas and Pennsylvania have hit critical mass in recent years, but this is far from something a single action can "fix" in a matter of months, years, or perhaps even decades.
If anything, this effort to marginalize these people will only entrench them further in their own beliefs. They will view themselves as martyrs. Elections have come and gone, repeatedly. Like it or not, this is something the people of Kansas want, and continuing to assume that this is all the work of some vocal minority will only make matters worse, such as inspiring them to set a national education curriculum.
"As another responder said, I don't think that threatening not to teach science to Kansas residents will be met with a few decades of Kansas youths not being able to go to college."
The state university system, among others. There will always be those willing to fill the vacuum, and such an adversarial move will only inspire them to take such action.
"Do you think the parents of Kansas will allow their children to go to schools who do not have the materials to teach science? The idea is to make a ruckus, raise the profile of the idiocy of the Kansas Board of Education, who are basically quietly destroying science education as Dorothy knows it in Kansas."
Then the plan is destined to blow up in their face. The parents of Kansas have already shown their disdain for a science curriculum by teaching ID in the first place. If nothin else, all this will do is confirm the ID camp's statements that there's a conspiracy in the scientific establishment against them.
"then they deserve to have their children shut out of every known college/university/whatever-you-name-it in the world (not just the US)."
"There's roughly 250,000,000 people in the US. Even if 95% of them absolutely hated science, that'd leave millions left to fight for reason."
No it doesn't. Unless you want to rediscover federalism, the majority always wins. Democratic republic means that the 51 are always right and the 49 are always wrong.
Mr. Lincoln was making an appeal to national unity (i. e. against secession), arguing that factionalism will only cause the death of the concept of republican government entirely. If anything, Mr. Lincoln's appeals could be better used to support RFID tags in passports, saying that we should all "get behind" the idea in order to "defend our way of life."
Seriously, can't you find a convenient Wilde or Mencken quote somewhere or something?
"You know why nobody's ever tried to invade Canada?"
Because you have nothing worth having.
"Because everybody knows how the invasions of Russia worked out."
Why, are you gonna torch Ottawa just so we can't have it?
Or are you referring to the cold weather? Neither France nor Germany had an Alaska.
"Plus, we might just go burn your White House down again for your impudence."
Those soldiers were carrying the Union Jack, not the Maple Leaf. In fact, I believe those particular soldiers were fresh from fighting Napoleon in Europe.
Besides, we're talking about the classically inept District of Columbia. Baltimore showed how to repulse an invasion.
"Maybe the time is right to invite Mexico to become U.S. States 51-54?"
First off, there's 31 states in Mexico, not counting the Distrito Federal. Why are you arbitrarily cutting them down to 4?
Secondly, they hate us. A good deal of them are still screaming bloody murder about the last war we had with them 160 years ago and cheer what Pancho Villa did up here. We're mutually convenient neighbors but not necessarily friends.
"Easier extradition of criminals"
Perhaps, perhaps not. Besides, the only way you're going to stop people from fleeing south to avoid extradition is to extend the US down to Tierra del Fuego.
"Better environmental laws there would help get toxic cleanup started"
First off, guess which one of us signed Kyoto. Second, a lot of their problems with toxic waste are because we put it there.
"Consistent employer laws to better protect employees"
Ignoring details like whether they'd all be "right to work" states, what makes you think Mexican labor laws will be adjusted "up" instead of US labor laws being adjusted "down?"
"Great real estate opportunities!"
Yeah, that's what they said last time. Not much prime real estate in Arizona or New Mexico, though.
Slashdot Mirror
I wouldn't know, never met him/her/it/whatever. Don't even know if there is a creator.
But I've seen enough intelligent humans do seemingly stupid things to know that intelligence isn't the sole driving factor in why things happen (if it's a factor at all). It's been speculated before that God created the universe becuase He got bored.
"Eventually in the evolutionary timeline, yuo get back to a point where the question of 'where did the matter come from' pops up,"
How do proponents of science expect to defeat the ideology of ID if they make some of the same mistakes?
"and evolution comes alogn and says that matter is eternal:"
Einstein comes along and says it isn't. The people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are convinced he's right. There's also the matter of the Big Burning Shiney Thing in the Sky that we geeks rarely ever see.
"we've been in an unending cycle of compression and expansion of matter for eternity,"
First off, you seem to be assuming there will be a Big Crunch. Last I heard, signs point to "No."
Secondly, you need to let go of the "hand grenade in a vacuum" visualization of the Big Bang, as it will get you into trouble. The problem with that is that there was no vacuum; matter and energy didn't just expand, space-time itself explosively expanded from a near-singularity to the gigaparsecs we see today.
There is no "before" the Big Bang, at least not in the four-dimensional sense. And if there were to be a Big Crunch, there would be no "after." There might be some sort of "metaverse" "outside" the universe, but space-time it ain't, and science will likely never have a way to confirm or deny its existence since it cannot be observed.
If anything, the Big Bang does far more to support the Genesis account of cosmology than the "eternal universe" model that the (pagen) Greek philosophers like Aristotle thought up. It's a damn shame the fundies are hung up on the age of the universe/earth/etc.
Intelligence is one thing, motivations are something else.
Most fundamentalists hate the Catholic church about as much as they hate Darwin, Freud and Galileo. Heck, most of the fundamentalist sects in North Americare are here because they were trying to get away from the Catholic church.
Pick up a Chick tract. Good ol' Jack practically rails against evolution and Catholicism in the same comic.
Abortion and homosexuality are about the only things fundamentalists and Catholics agree on.
All they have to do is merge this with their super-popular CD-i platform and it'd be the most popular console evar! Maybe Nintendo will let them make a few Zelda games for it...
"And before anyone tells me about Halo 2 on Live, it's full of squealing 13 year olds who call everyone gay when they get fragged."
Browse at -1 and you'll learn that you just described Slashdot.
Seriously, it's less about Halo 2 online and more about just plain old online. The world is full of closeted fuckwads, and they all have internet connections.
Fixed, thanks.
It also strikes me as pandering. I can't put my finger on it, but it feels like an attempt to both say "We have geeks, too!" as well as telling said geeks "No, really, we like you, just don't expect a raise or job security or anything."
Maybe I feel like it's pandering because, if I worked at Yahoo, that'd be the last thing I'd want. Other than a paycheck, they do their job for the problem-solving aspects. If they wanted attention and glory, they'd all be playing football. This statue was thought up by PHBs who continue to not "get it."
"Worst case is Columbine."
I've said it before and I'll say it again: the only reason Columbine made copy is because they were pointing their guns at someone other than themselves for once.
What, all that and no French jokes?
I was looking for a new game to expand the StarCraft universe, but if all it's going to give me is "ZOMG! It's a Zergling! Shiney!" I have other games to spend money on.
Wasn't Microsoft behind the "U-CAN-SPAM" Act?
Seriously, if that's what Congress does to protect our inboxes, I'd hate to see what a federal privacy statute would do the Fourth and Fifth Amendments.
"The demand is there and their bill is paid."
The retailers' bills may be paid, but not Microsoft's. You're forgetting that Microsoft is selling these devices at a lost, and they want to "sell out" as fast as possible to jump to Phase 3 before Wall Street starts to ask too many questions about Phase 2.
We're talking about the SEC, not the NSA. It's the SEC's job to look busy while being willfully ignorant of what's really going on ("I see nothink!").
All kidding aside, I really don't see even the Xbox 360 having something as pervasive as Live, if for no other reason than because Square-Enix has Final Fantasy XI and the latest expansion pack scheduled to release for the system. Even if SE wanted to pull a PSO and have players charged twice (once for Live, once for PSO), forsaking the current scheme in favor of a Live-esque service for the X360 version of FFXI will only break compatability with gamers on the PC and PS2 platforms. I don't see SE abandoning PlayOnline.
Microsoft may or may not have a centralized online service for the 360, but I don't see it being mandatory as it is now.
""The only people in the school district with a scientific background were opposed to intelligent design ... and you ignored them?" he asked.
"Yes," Geesey said.""
It's very simple: the people in the school district that have a scientific background are not in the numerical majority. The first rule about democracy is that the majority makes the rules.
When you subject a school's curriculum to majoritarian control, this is what you get.
"The parents haven't shown this disdain, just as I personally haven't shown any disdain for citizens of Iraq (or, for that matter, Afghanistan)."
But this has been going on for longer than either Iraq or Afghanistan. Kansas started to make serious moves on this back in the Clinton administration. If there were to be the "changing of the guard" you think there would be, it would have happened by now.
Even then, this is something that began before anybody reading this post was born; people didn't magically wake up one morning a decade or two back and say "Oh, wait, I don't like evolution any more," this is pretty much the continuation of the debate that Darwin's work sparked in the Nineteenth Century. It just so happens that places like Kansas and Pennsylvania have hit critical mass in recent years, but this is far from something a single action can "fix" in a matter of months, years, or perhaps even decades.
If anything, this effort to marginalize these people will only entrench them further in their own beliefs. They will view themselves as martyrs. Elections have come and gone, repeatedly. Like it or not, this is something the people of Kansas want, and continuing to assume that this is all the work of some vocal minority will only make matters worse, such as inspiring them to set a national education curriculum.
"As another responder said, I don't think that threatening not to teach science to Kansas residents will be met with a few decades of Kansas youths not being able to go to college."
The state university system, among others. There will always be those willing to fill the vacuum, and such an adversarial move will only inspire them to take such action.
"Do you think the parents of Kansas will allow their children to go to schools who do not have the materials to teach science? The idea is to make a ruckus, raise the profile of the idiocy of the Kansas Board of Education, who are basically quietly destroying science education as Dorothy knows it in Kansas."
Then the plan is destined to blow up in their face. The parents of Kansas have already shown their disdain for a science curriculum by teaching ID in the first place. If nothin else, all this will do is confirm the ID camp's statements that there's a conspiracy in the scientific establishment against them.
"then they deserve to have their children shut out of every known college/university/whatever-you-name-it in the world (not just the US)."
You assume it will stop with Kansas?
"There's roughly 250,000,000 people in the US. Even if 95% of them absolutely hated science, that'd leave millions left to fight for reason."
No it doesn't. Unless you want to rediscover federalism, the majority always wins. Democratic republic means that the 51 are always right and the 49 are always wrong.
Sheesh, talk about quotes out of context!
Mr. Lincoln was making an appeal to national unity (i. e. against secession), arguing that factionalism will only cause the death of the concept of republican government entirely. If anything, Mr. Lincoln's appeals could be better used to support RFID tags in passports, saying that we should all "get behind" the idea in order to "defend our way of life."
Seriously, can't you find a convenient Wilde or Mencken quote somewhere or something?
"You know why nobody's ever tried to invade Canada?"
Because you have nothing worth having.
"Because everybody knows how the invasions of Russia worked out."
Why, are you gonna torch Ottawa just so we can't have it?
Or are you referring to the cold weather? Neither France nor Germany had an Alaska.
"Plus, we might just go burn your White House down again for your impudence."
Those soldiers were carrying the Union Jack, not the Maple Leaf. In fact, I believe those particular soldiers were fresh from fighting Napoleon in Europe.
Besides, we're talking about the classically inept District of Columbia. Baltimore showed how to repulse an invasion.
Well, you can think of Baltimore as Pennsylvania's Tijuana, what with liquor laws being what they are in Pennsylvania.
I've heard stories from people as far away as New York coming down to Maryland to load up on liquor a few decades ago.
No, extradition doesn't involve "immigration charges," unless those immigration charges were from entering the United States, no Mexico.
"Maybe the time is right to invite Mexico to become U.S. States 51-54?"
First off, there's 31 states in Mexico, not counting the Distrito Federal. Why are you arbitrarily cutting them down to 4?
Secondly, they hate us. A good deal of them are still screaming bloody murder about the last war we had with them 160 years ago and cheer what Pancho Villa did up here. We're mutually convenient neighbors but not necessarily friends.
"Easier extradition of criminals"
Perhaps, perhaps not. Besides, the only way you're going to stop people from fleeing south to avoid extradition is to extend the US down to Tierra del Fuego.
"Better environmental laws there would help get toxic cleanup started"
First off, guess which one of us signed Kyoto. Second, a lot of their problems with toxic waste are because we put it there.
"Consistent employer laws to better protect employees"
Ignoring details like whether they'd all be "right to work" states, what makes you think Mexican labor laws will be adjusted "up" instead of US labor laws being adjusted "down?"
"Great real estate opportunities!"
Yeah, that's what they said last time. Not much prime real estate in Arizona or New Mexico, though.
"arrested on an immigration violation by Mexican authorities and turned over to agents of the U.S. Border Patrol,"
OK, so let me get this straight: he was deport from Mexico to the United States?
I think I need to go lie down now...