Actually generally it is argued that morality was just some "quaint" PRE-enlightenment idea (you know the whole Jesus will throw you in hell if you don't help your fellow man).
Morality was believed to be obsolete, replaced by "utilitarianism", by the enlightenment philosophers. And, generally assumed, by most philosophers since. Utilitarianism, by Christian standards, is pure evil (e.g. a utilitarian would steal, rape, kill,... if he just wouldn't get caught, so only military force is holding society together).
E.g. by "postmodern" philosophers, morality is considered a rhetorical device to be used against Christians (and...), and nothing else. Certainly, they believe in the "application of force to change society", mostly against the wishes of the population. Truth, good, evil, law, and illegal are merely imposed by the strongest, and their goal is to become the strongest. (too bad, of course, that philosophers and academics in general, like their more moral predecessors, are such crybabies).
So you don't believe in evolution then ? (Evolution states that, no matter your opinions on the matter, population levels will grow to fill any available resource levels. Even if some part of them decides to conserve, that just means the conservers die and get replaced).
Because the whole point of science is that you can push policies that are not known to be 100% certain failures.
Unless, of course, you think Darwin was wrong (and all evolutionists since).
Well that solution clearly diminishes the potential for "your betters" to interfere in your life.
Ergo it's very, very bad indeed.
I guess we don't have it that bad. In muslim states it's forbidden to pick the hand you wipe your ass with. I've heard an algerian tell me they checked this in his high school. If the paedophile thief (excuse me "sex with a minor girl against her will, but 'within marriage' (without even her knowledge) makes everything peachy" and obviously the stealing was "under orders from allah") says it, it must be true, right ?
You're confusing two different issues here. The paper did get published in a peer reviewed journal. The government didn't interfere with that process at all. There is no evidence that the science was influenced by government agenda.
Except for, you know : 1) paying everyone who has a say on that "peer-reviewed" thing. I mean, I'm not saying it's the same thing, but Russian scientists also only had to be "peer reviewed" by the supreme soviet... which had quite a few scientists, who approved quite a few papers. I'm not saying the Canadian government is anywhere near that bad, but... 2) prevent these scientists from informing the public. This is, of course, supposedly the whole point of science, isn't it ? Making our lives better by increasing our knowledge.
What the other response to this post is trying to say is that chlorophyll can't convert most light frequencies into food. Converting sunlight into blue light, even with a 30% efficient process, would mean more sunlight + co2 + h2o converted into sugar (or whatever you're trying to produce).
Well look, all those things are forced on you by the government.
Otherwise you'd have to choose.
Never mind that there are people who are actually allergic to CFL's. That doesn't exist for normal light bulbs (or at least, it doesn't exist for "normal" strength bulbs, technically there's hypersensitivity for UV light, but to trigger that you'd need a lot of bulbs, while a single CFL will trigger it plenty). And CFL's can't even be dimmed (except the absurdly expensive ones).
Every clerk who kills someone by denying them medical coverage is committing an immoral act.
And not denying at least some medical procedures leads to infinite expenses. You know, the kind that even Obambi's creditcard (ie. your wallet) can't cover. Very cute to suggest never to deny anything. But you'd think someone would have told you about that whole "finite resources" thing.
So the solution is to *again* require the people to pay more. Typical really.
"Hey it hurts if I push my hand down on the barbecue. Hey, what's that ? A blowtorch ? Where do I stick my hand ?"
You see it'll stop hurting if you just do more of it. In *exactly* the same way. (which is why all statist governments, whether socialist or nazist, if they're really so different, started killing their own people on a large scale).
Unfortunately, you're right, but you don't think about the consequences.
The future can be 1) more comfortable 2) more efficient
Neither of which will lower energy usage of civilization (which is what would need to happen to make it more environmentally sound, at least with current energy production methods). You see, your intuition is wrong. A more efficient society is one that uses *more* energy. Not less.
Well, while I agree, as Germany experienced, it's not good enough to match even 1/10th of current production levels even with those ridiculous levels of coal available.
Actually, have you never wondered how such a society worked ?
Native Americans : relations between villages ("tribes") were hardly ever amicable (and when amicable where of the military alliance type)
Native Americans stole other tribes' women and children (and are even known to just kill their neighbor's children if you believe historical accounts).
Given the women-stealing, take three guesses how "free" women were in such a society. And given the necessity of prompt military responses, freedom of men, while bigger than that of women, can't have been all that much.
And the resources they lived on... the diseases (even without European diseases)...
*sigh* fisher-tropsh is a way to ADD energy to coal to make oil. Nobody doubts it's going to work, IF we find this outside energy source. Nuclear *might* work.
Well at least we can agree that they *lost* the war because they thought they were superior humans. Which makes that chances that you're right quite significant indeed.
You know, contraceptives are made of oil. So, without oil, the consequences for women of doing that will be extreme. So I doubt that what you say will even be possible, say, a dozen years after peak oil.
The problem is that that there are 2 ways to deal with a resource shortage :
1) the "gaia" way : you conserve. You limit your resource usage and try to save what's left. 2) the "american way" (investment if you like) : you spend MORE, not less, and go looking for a solution to the problem. And quite frankly, while one is to avoid going totally off the rail, you don't really care what (or even who) you destroy in the process and you promise yourself to "fix it later if I find a solution"
Now, intuitively you might think that 1) is the way to go. It's nicer. It's "green". It's "natural". It's everything the current media loves. It's "nice". It's "the right thing". It's "risk free". Unfortunately it's only risk free in the sense that it leads to the abyss with 100% certainty.
And then you start checking. Just how natural is it ? What do bacteria do, when their food source is threatened ? Well, with but a few exceptions they invest all their remaining energy in a desperate attempt to expand their territory. What do plants do ? The same (again 99.99999999% of plants do this). What do animals do ?...
So after researching this you start thinking the "natural" way is definitely option 2). But why ?
Well, simple. While option 1) might look nice rationally, but it is a trap : it is guaranteed to fail. Option 2) has some unknown amount of chance (probably more than 50%) of failure. But NOT 100%. Humans don't like it. We really don't know what will happen. Easier to go with guaranteed failure where no-one can be blamed. But unfortunately, the reaction to running out of resources cannot be conservation : it won't work. Society will wither and die if you do that.
At every point in time, there are 2 forces in nature. A force that is trying to advance by advancing the "state of the art" (in nature's case, the DNA library), species are trying to expand into areas where they couldn't exist before. They're trying to discover, and consume, resources they couldn't consume before. They're learning to create or replace critical molecules by alternative, less demanding versions. They're competitive and "weird things" happen. Lots of survival matches between all sorts of different species, which are rarely ever entirely won or lost by one or the other species.
But there is also a part of nature, a significant part, that lives on conservation. The main tactic to conserve, in nature, is to poison everyone else's chances for expansion, so as to take more for yourself. Lots of species do this, including several well known ones, and everyone (should) know the consequences. There are oak forests, and there are beech forests. Oak forests are big, extremely rich in biodiversity and house lots and lots of animals. Beech forests, by contrast, are sad, empty things, that look as if they're heavily poisoned, except for the beech trees. That's because they are heavily poisoned. By the beech tree (but there are other species like this).
Humans work in the same way. Expansion leads to rich, open societies that, above most all else, encourage discovery and change. Conservation leads to what you might call a taliban society.
Most people are reasonable, but some aren't. And the only way to deal with unreasonable people is in whatever term they understand. If their first instinct is to skip straight to violence, then you must meet them on those terms. Does that mean there will never be world peace and bullshit star trek harmony? Yup.
But if that's true, then surely we should attack the muslims threathening violence, not the pastor of this church "offending" them.
You know as well as I do that the demands of these muslims won't remain limited to this one pastor. They'll include gays soon enough, for example.
So AT&T could simply refuse to interconnect with anyone hosting skype servers and that'd be okay with you ?
Somehow I doubt it.
And obviously it violated network neutrality when AT&T intentionally slowed down the sip protocol. Easy enough to do on today's network equipment, and this was obviously seen as a gross violation of net neutrality.
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Can't fault him for the aesthetics though.
You mean religions inspire people to help one another (well ... certain religions do, others ...) ...
How terribly terribly unfair ...
Both of them ?
You know, conserve and spend at the same time.
Great idea !
Say, can you point me to the water ? The water that doesn't make you wet if you shower, that is. I find drying off such a drag.
Actually generally it is argued that morality was just some "quaint" PRE-enlightenment idea (you know the whole Jesus will throw you in hell if you don't help your fellow man).
Morality was believed to be obsolete, replaced by "utilitarianism", by the enlightenment philosophers. And, generally assumed, by most philosophers since. Utilitarianism, by Christian standards, is pure evil (e.g. a utilitarian would steal, rape, kill, ... if he just wouldn't get caught, so only military force is holding society together).
E.g. by "postmodern" philosophers, morality is considered a rhetorical device to be used against Christians (and ...), and nothing else. Certainly, they believe in the "application of force to change society", mostly against the wishes of the population. Truth, good, evil, law, and illegal are merely imposed by the strongest, and their goal is to become the strongest. (too bad, of course, that philosophers and academics in general, like their more moral predecessors, are such crybabies).
So you don't believe in evolution then ? (Evolution states that, no matter your opinions on the matter, population levels will grow to fill any available resource levels. Even if some part of them decides to conserve, that just means the conservers die and get replaced).
Because the whole point of science is that you can push policies that are not known to be 100% certain failures.
Unless, of course, you think Darwin was wrong (and all evolutionists since).
Well that solution clearly diminishes the potential for "your betters" to interfere in your life.
Ergo it's very, very bad indeed.
I guess we don't have it that bad. In muslim states it's forbidden to pick the hand you wipe your ass with. I've heard an algerian tell me they checked this in his high school. If the paedophile thief (excuse me "sex with a minor girl against her will, but 'within marriage' (without even her knowledge) makes everything peachy" and obviously the stealing was "under orders from allah") says it, it must be true, right ?
You're confusing two different issues here. The paper did get published in a peer reviewed journal. The government didn't interfere with that process at all. There is no evidence that the science was influenced by government agenda.
Except for, you know : ... which had quite a few scientists, who approved quite a few papers. I'm not saying the Canadian government is anywhere near that bad, but ...
1) paying everyone who has a say on that "peer-reviewed" thing. I mean, I'm not saying it's the same thing, but Russian scientists also only had to be "peer reviewed" by the supreme soviet
2) prevent these scientists from informing the public. This is, of course, supposedly the whole point of science, isn't it ? Making our lives better by increasing our knowledge.
Confusing 2 different issues ... right.
What the other response to this post is trying to say is that chlorophyll can't convert most light frequencies into food. Converting sunlight into blue light, even with a 30% efficient process, would mean more sunlight + co2 + h2o converted into sugar (or whatever you're trying to produce).
It would have been a *LOT* cheaper to just help these people.
Not allowing preexisting conditions to influence pricing will (obviously) drive up price (a lot) for everyone else.
Why do people always have to be forced to do this ?
Well look, all those things are forced on you by the government.
Otherwise you'd have to choose.
Never mind that there are people who are actually allergic to CFL's. That doesn't exist for normal light bulbs (or at least, it doesn't exist for "normal" strength bulbs, technically there's hypersensitivity for UV light, but to trigger that you'd need a lot of bulbs, while a single CFL will trigger it plenty). And CFL's can't even be dimmed (except the absurdly expensive ones).
Every clerk who kills someone by denying them medical coverage is committing an immoral act.
And not denying at least some medical procedures leads to infinite expenses. You know, the kind that even Obambi's creditcard (ie. your wallet) can't cover. Very cute to suggest never to deny anything. But you'd think someone would have told you about that whole "finite resources" thing.
Because it "wouldn't be fair". I'm sure some kind of "poor people" would be screwed like this.
Incidentially, it also gives them more power to interfere in your private life. Of course, this is pure coincidence.
Euhm - no. Transport costs would go up by a factor of 5. Which would force at least a few products to be produced locally.
So the solution is to *again* require the people to pay more. Typical really.
"Hey it hurts if I push my hand down on the barbecue. Hey, what's that ? A blowtorch ? Where do I stick my hand ?"
You see it'll stop hurting if you just do more of it. In *exactly* the same way. (which is why all statist governments, whether socialist or nazist, if they're really so different, started killing their own people on a large scale).
Unfortunately, you're right, but you don't think about the consequences.
The future can be
1) more comfortable
2) more efficient
Neither of which will lower energy usage of civilization (which is what would need to happen to make it more environmentally sound, at least with current energy production methods). You see, your intuition is wrong. A more efficient society is one that uses *more* energy. Not less.
Well, while I agree, as Germany experienced, it's not good enough to match even 1/10th of current production levels even with those ridiculous levels of coal available.
Actually, have you never wondered how such a society worked ?
Native Americans : relations between villages ("tribes") were hardly ever amicable (and when amicable where of the military alliance type)
Native Americans stole other tribes' women and children (and are even known to just kill their neighbor's children if you believe historical accounts).
Given the women-stealing, take three guesses how "free" women were in such a society. And given the necessity of prompt military responses, freedom of men, while bigger than that of women, can't have been all that much.
And the resources they lived on ... the diseases (even without European diseases) ...
Would you really want to live in their society ?
*sigh* fisher-tropsh is a way to ADD energy to coal to make oil. Nobody doubts it's going to work, IF we find this outside energy source. Nuclear *might* work.
Well at least we can agree that they *lost* the war because they thought they were superior humans. Which makes that chances that you're right quite significant indeed.
You know, contraceptives are made of oil. So, without oil, the consequences for women of doing that will be extreme. So I doubt that what you say will even be possible, say, a dozen years after peak oil.
The problem is that that there are 2 ways to deal with a resource shortage :
1) the "gaia" way : you conserve. You limit your resource usage and try to save what's left.
2) the "american way" (investment if you like) : you spend MORE, not less, and go looking for a solution to the problem. And quite frankly, while one is to avoid going totally off the rail, you don't really care what (or even who) you destroy in the process and you promise yourself to "fix it later if I find a solution"
Now, intuitively you might think that 1) is the way to go. It's nicer. It's "green". It's "natural". It's everything the current media loves. It's "nice". It's "the right thing". It's "risk free". Unfortunately it's only risk free in the sense that it leads to the abyss with 100% certainty.
And then you start checking. Just how natural is it ? What do bacteria do, when their food source is threatened ? Well, with but a few exceptions they invest all their remaining energy in a desperate attempt to expand their territory. What do plants do ? The same (again 99.99999999% of plants do this). What do animals do ? ...
So after researching this you start thinking the "natural" way is definitely option 2). But why ?
Well, simple. While option 1) might look nice rationally, but it is a trap : it is guaranteed to fail. Option 2) has some unknown amount of chance (probably more than 50%) of failure. But NOT 100%. Humans don't like it. We really don't know what will happen. Easier to go with guaranteed failure where no-one can be blamed. But unfortunately, the reaction to running out of resources cannot be conservation : it won't work. Society will wither and die if you do that.
At every point in time, there are 2 forces in nature. A force that is trying to advance by advancing the "state of the art" (in nature's case, the DNA library), species are trying to expand into areas where they couldn't exist before. They're trying to discover, and consume, resources they couldn't consume before. They're learning to create or replace critical molecules by alternative, less demanding versions. They're competitive and "weird things" happen. Lots of survival matches between all sorts of different species, which are rarely ever entirely won or lost by one or the other species.
But there is also a part of nature, a significant part, that lives on conservation. The main tactic to conserve, in nature, is to poison everyone else's chances for expansion, so as to take more for yourself. Lots of species do this, including several well known ones, and everyone (should) know the consequences. There are oak forests, and there are beech forests. Oak forests are big, extremely rich in biodiversity and house lots and lots of animals. Beech forests, by contrast, are sad, empty things, that look as if they're heavily poisoned, except for the beech trees. That's because they are heavily poisoned. By the beech tree (but there are other species like this).
Humans work in the same way. Expansion leads to rich, open societies that, above most all else, encourage discovery and change. Conservation leads to what you might call a taliban society.
Or politicians don't know what is being made up either.
Hell, it's quite a believable argument that most congress critters hope against hope that no-one will ever actually do the shit they vote through.
Most people are reasonable, but some aren't. And the only way to deal with unreasonable people is in whatever term they understand. If their first instinct is to skip straight to violence, then you must meet them on those terms. Does that mean there will never be world peace and bullshit star trek harmony? Yup.
But if that's true, then surely we should attack the muslims threathening violence, not the pastor of this church "offending" them.
You know as well as I do that the demands of these muslims won't remain limited to this one pastor. They'll include gays soon enough, for example.
You must see that you're contradicting yourself.
Is it, yes or no, okay for an isp to refuse to connect a server it doesn't like for it's content ?
This is both what rackspace did here, and is the exact same thing as AT&T did in refusing SIP on it's network.
So AT&T could simply refuse to interconnect with anyone hosting skype servers and that'd be okay with you ?
Somehow I doubt it.
And obviously it violated network neutrality when AT&T intentionally slowed down the sip protocol. Easy enough to do on today's network equipment, and this was obviously seen as a gross violation of net neutrality.