"Creationism" is laughed at by science-y types because it's not science. Science consists (nominally) of some ever-changing theories and a mountain of experiment to back it up. Creationism consists of a Great Big Book of Immutable Theory, which is never to be tested or modified.
"Creation theory" is laughed at because it is laughable to put it in the same category as an actual scientific theory, which, while it may be incomplete, is a damned sight better than "a superhero from outer space did it".
You know, I appreciate your quaint traditions and superstitions. I on the other hand am an evolved being who deals solely with the source of life, which exists in all of our hearts. That middle man thing... it's wacky and I appreciate it...
Gotta run, there's a voice a-callin' me.
Temporal authority has no place with a supposedly spiritual body in any case.
A phone tap requires a court order. Carnivore does not. That's the important difference.
No personal vendetta is required; law enforcement officials may have the purest of intentions while stepping on my rights, but that doesn't justify them.
If we trust law enforcement to make these decisions, we give up on the whole idea of judicial oversight---the cops become accountable to no one.
You implied that "factoring the risk correctly" had to entail abstinence. You say that "if you don't want to get pregnant, you must not fuck". This is technically true in the same was that "if you don't want to die a horrible flaming car-wreck death, you must not get in a car".
The point is that we do get in cars. We drive around, cognizant of the risk, but unwilling to live in fear of it.
This isn't a boolean statement. I didn't say "if you have sex, you will not get pregnant". There's a risk, same with driving.
My counter-example clearly shows that your point is invalid. We don't counsel teenagers not to drive (when they're legally allowed to), and we shouldn't counsel teenagers not to fuck (considering age of consent yadda yadda). In both cases, we (ideally) make them aware of the risks involved.
Counseling teenagers to be abstinent is foolhardy and puritan.
The fact that this is a loaded issue is very relevant. I notice you're not saying that teenagers should be forever banned from driving, because they might die.
"Find me one car that is 100% reliable at not getting you killed on the highway. There isn't one. Thus, eventually driving == horrible flaming death. If you don't realize that, you don't know what you're getting yourself into."
Very, very few things are a hundred percent reliable. It's called "acceptable risk". We mitigate these risks---in the example above, by wearing seat belts and not drinking.
Your argument is completely fallacious and utterly worthless. If you weren't talking about such a loaded issue, you'd see that in a second.
"No interest" in restraining themselves? Bullshit! If you belonged to a group that was that stigmatized, if you knew that your neighbors would lynch you if they knew, wouldn't you be constantly filled with the self-loathing that comes from keeping such an awful secret? Look at the kinds of self-hating strangeness that closeted gays go through---that so many went through before the liberation movement that it was thought to be a part of the orientation.
That pedophiles do molest is a testament either to their incredibly unbalanced mental state, or to the incredible strength of their compulsion.
Hey, physicists are known for saying things like "the car drives past the airplane at v=0.6c". In fact, the physics literature is pretty rife with references to ridiculously-dense black-hole matter in the "how big would a battleship be?" or "how much would a black-hole baseball weigh?"
Quarks tend to be "bound" into either mesons (a quark and an antiquark) or hadrons (three quarks or three antiquarks---protons and neutrons).
I suppose the interesting part here is the enormous energy required to overcome the forces that bind mesons/hadrons together.
Err... that is, if the article is talking about what I think it's talking about. It's 2 AM here, I should be thinking about de Broglie, Schrodinger and Bohr.
It's density, not mass, that stops light. A star may have more mass than a black hole, but the gravitational field is at no point strong enough to "stop light", as you put it. (Think Gauss's law---inside a sphere, the gravitational field is influenced only by the matter "under" you.)
Wouldn't a real atheist not give two donkey butts about the church? Wouldn't they especially never write scenes involving an actual god in their books?
Kinda confused here. I mean, religion for me is like kneecaps for a snake---I just don't bother.
Of course, you might be saying that he writes about the evils of temporal authority and the bad stuff churches do, which I'm good with. I'm just fuzzy on him writing about a "revealed god" in his books.
Since when did Slashdot start putting the ads in the stories themselves?
Seriously, this thing reads like a marketing release. There's a reason book reviewers are called critics. Gushing praise for something I've never heard of smells a bit too much like a payoff for my liking.
I'm very disappointed.
(Oh, and it's my 400th post. Be happy for me. Whee.)
Variables such as a, b, c, thing, object, stuff, crap etc should not be allowed.
Um, if you have to write code like this:
for (itemIterator=0; itemIterator < itemMax; itemIterator++)
itemPointer[itemIterator].isFlagged = 1;
... then I really don't want anything to do with you. There are good and valid places to use i, j, retval and friends. There's a rule of thumb about the length of a variable's name being proportional to the logarithm of the scope (measured, for instance, by the number of lines of code it can be accessed from).
Why the funky spelling of Greenpeace? Where are the vast sums of money and the fat-cat bleedinghearts getting rich off the donations of well-meaning hard-working schmoes?
You can't blame them... I mean, remember the gross misinformation promulgated in the fifties? "Of course the government has your well-being in its best interests!"
I'd feel justified in being a little skeptic of any claims The Man makes about nuclear power. (Or about anything else, come to think of it...)
Right. 'Cause, you know, Slashdot is actually populated by a great big hive mind, a la the "Microsoft" icon on the front page.
Clearly we (by which we mean Slashdot) see you as a virus, and you must be stmaped out and ignored, since you're not part of the collective. Which explains the Score: 4, Funny. Right.
Slashdot Mirror
Eh, I'll bite on this one.
"Creationism" is laughed at by science-y types because it's not science. Science consists (nominally) of some ever-changing theories and a mountain of experiment to back it up. Creationism consists of a Great Big Book of Immutable Theory, which is never to be tested or modified.
"Creation theory" is laughed at because it is laughable to put it in the same category as an actual scientific theory, which, while it may be incomplete, is a damned sight better than "a superhero from outer space did it".
--grendel drago
A phone tap requires a court order. Carnivore does not. That's the important difference.
No personal vendetta is required; law enforcement officials may have the purest of intentions while stepping on my rights, but that doesn't justify them.
If we trust law enforcement to make these decisions, we give up on the whole idea of judicial oversight---the cops become accountable to no one.
--grendel drago
The FBI needs a court order or the permission of one of the two parties involved to get a wiretap. It's not trivial.
Carnivore, on the other hand, listens without permission from the judicial system, without any oversight. There is no balance to this power.
Sure, Carnivore is equivalent to a phone tap for email---a phone tap that the feds can apply to anyone, for any reason, on the merest whim.
I think the tin-foil hats are justified here.
--grendel drago
You implied that "factoring the risk correctly" had to entail abstinence. You say that "if you don't want to get pregnant, you must not fuck". This is technically true in the same was that "if you don't want to die a horrible flaming car-wreck death, you must not get in a car".
The point is that we do get in cars. We drive around, cognizant of the risk, but unwilling to live in fear of it.
This isn't a boolean statement. I didn't say "if you have sex, you will not get pregnant". There's a risk, same with driving.
My counter-example clearly shows that your point is invalid. We don't counsel teenagers not to drive (when they're legally allowed to), and we shouldn't counsel teenagers not to fuck (considering age of consent yadda yadda). In both cases, we (ideally) make them aware of the risks involved.
Counseling teenagers to be abstinent is foolhardy and puritan.
The fact that this is a loaded issue is very relevant. I notice you're not saying that teenagers should be forever banned from driving, because they might die.
--grendel drago
"Find me one car that is 100% reliable at not getting you killed on the highway. There isn't one. Thus, eventually driving == horrible flaming death. If you don't realize that, you don't know what you're getting yourself into."
Very, very few things are a hundred percent reliable. It's called "acceptable risk". We mitigate these risks---in the example above, by wearing seat belts and not drinking.
Your argument is completely fallacious and utterly worthless. If you weren't talking about such a loaded issue, you'd see that in a second.
--grendel drago
"No interest" in restraining themselves? Bullshit! If you belonged to a group that was that stigmatized, if you knew that your neighbors would lynch you if they knew, wouldn't you be constantly filled with the self-loathing that comes from keeping such an awful secret? Look at the kinds of self-hating strangeness that closeted gays go through---that so many went through before the liberation movement that it was thought to be a part of the orientation.
That pedophiles do molest is a testament either to their incredibly unbalanced mental state, or to the incredible strength of their compulsion.
--grendel drago
Tee hee. From the Biodiesel page:
Among the many advantages of biodiesel fuel: [...] Non-flammable [...]
I'd really like my fuel to burn. You know, for the producing of the energy and the putt-putting of the engine.
Yeah, yeah, I know that they mean you can't douse a hobo with it and toss him a lit match, but it's still funny marketing material.
--grendel drago
Yeah, that's the one.
Back off, sucka fool! Nobody touches my "Tang" budget!
--grendel drago
Hey, physicists are known for saying things like "the car drives past the airplane at v=0.6c". In fact, the physics literature is pretty rife with references to ridiculously-dense black-hole matter in the "how big would a battleship be?" or "how much would a black-hole baseball weigh?"
--grendel drago
Quarks tend to be "bound" into either mesons (a quark and an antiquark) or hadrons (three quarks or three antiquarks---protons and neutrons).
I suppose the interesting part here is the enormous energy required to overcome the forces that bind mesons/hadrons together.
Err... that is, if the article is talking about what I think it's talking about. It's 2 AM here, I should be thinking about de Broglie, Schrodinger and Bohr.
Bah. Time for a porn break.
--grendel drago
It's density, not mass, that stops light. A star may have more mass than a black hole, but the gravitational field is at no point strong enough to "stop light", as you put it. (Think Gauss's law---inside a sphere, the gravitational field is influenced only by the matter "under" you.)
--grendel drago
"Our war is a spiritual war. Our great depression is our lives." --Tyler Durden
Flamebait?!
You read that and tell me it doesn't look like a press release from the publisher!
Sheesh. Crackhead moderators...
--grendel drago
Wouldn't a real atheist not give two donkey butts about the church? Wouldn't they especially never write scenes involving an actual god in their books?
Kinda confused here. I mean, religion for me is like kneecaps for a snake---I just don't bother.
Of course, you might be saying that he writes about the evils of temporal authority and the bad stuff churches do, which I'm good with. I'm just fuzzy on him writing about a "revealed god" in his books.
--grendel drago
Since when did Slashdot start putting the ads in the stories themselves?
Seriously, this thing reads like a marketing release. There's a reason book reviewers are called critics. Gushing praise for something I've never heard of smells a bit too much like a payoff for my liking.
I'm very disappointed.
(Oh, and it's my 400th post. Be happy for me. Whee.)
--grendel drago
Really, we're used to freeze-dried diets, Tang and total isolation from the rest of humanity!
--grendel drago
Mmm... Soylent Green...
--grendel drago
for (itemIterator=0; itemIterator < itemMax; itemIterator++)
itemPointer[itemIterator].isFlagged = 1;
... then I really don't want anything to do with you. There are good and valid places to use i, j, retval and friends. There's a rule of thumb about the length of a variable's name being proportional to the logarithm of the scope (measured, for instance, by the number of lines of code it can be accessed from).
--grendel drago
Why the funky spelling of Greenpeace? Where are the vast sums of money and the fat-cat bleedinghearts getting rich off the donations of well-meaning hard-working schmoes?
Just askin'.
--grendel drago
You can't blame them... I mean, remember the gross misinformation promulgated in the fifties? "Of course the government has your well-being in its best interests!"
I'd feel justified in being a little skeptic of any claims The Man makes about nuclear power. (Or about anything else, come to think of it...)
--grendel drago
Right. 'Cause, you know, Slashdot is actually populated by a great big hive mind, a la the "Microsoft" icon on the front page.
Clearly we (by which we mean Slashdot) see you as a virus, and you must be stmaped out and ignored, since you're not part of the collective. Which explains the Score: 4, Funny. Right.
--grendel drago
Wars haven't been won by numbers alone in the last hundred years. See "machine gun" and "Gallipoli" for more information.
--grendel drago