Same as if yu really believe someone is going to pull the trigger on that loaded gun pointed at your head if you eat that twinkie, you'll ignore your craving for junk food.
Yeah, like all of those smokers who know it's bad for them but don't want to stop... or overeaters... or every other person who has an addiction of one type or another.
So now you try to duck behind religion as an addiction? Sounds about right to me... a self-destructive habit that the person indulges in without any rational justification.
My final point... trotting this guy out as the example of an expert on alternative theories to global warming or a Christian theologian is equivalent to me citing some space-looney who believes in cosmic rays and alien abductions and that life started on Earth when the aliens created the pyramids as a leading naturalist. It's a strawman argument.
You're overlooking one thing - I wasn't the one who brought this guy up - he started the whole thing by complaining to the school board in the first place.
Frosty Hardison, a parent of seven who also said that he believes the Earth is 14,000 years old. "The information that's being presented is a very cockeyed view of what the truth is.... The Bible says that in the end times everything will burn up, but that perspective isn't in the DVD."
Hardison's e-mail to the School Board prompted board member David Larson to propose the moratorium Tuesday night.
So he's fair game - and the fact that the school board acted on his bible-thumping stupidity makes them fair game as well. We don't tell them what to teach in church, they chould keep their stuff out of the schools.
they pale in comparison to billboards and the likes.
Unlike a billboard, both the mormons and the jehovah's witnesses will try to ring my doorbell. And its never at a good time... how would they like it if we all went to their meeting places and started ringing their doorbells while they're busy doing their sh*t?
The real problem with the cctv systems in britain is that they haven't resulted in a drop in crime - quite the opposite. What works is police on the streets, not in a station looking at video cameeras.
Also, there's a difference between a camera that is recording everything, 24 hours a day, indiscriminately, of everyone, and you taking a video of someone breaking a law.
The first one breaks the concept of "anonymity in public places", where people have an expectation that, if they aren't doing anything wrong, people will mind their own business.
Why not cure both problems - pick up the dog shit they didn't pick up (use a plastic bag) and "fill up" the door handles of their car that they so inconsiderately parked in your spot.
If they "discover" this at night when its dark, so much the better... shit happens...
One site documents locations where people have failed to pick up after their dogs.
I won 3 large dogs - a newf, a st. bernard, and a large mutt - and I pick up. All the time. I don't know how many times people with their "rat-on-a-rope" dogs pretend they don't see their little precious socker-ball-dogs (because your first urge is to kick them) taking a dump. What cities should do is offer to split the resulting fines 50/50.
The same could be done for dogs running off-lead.
... and Jehovah's Witnesses going door-to-door distrbing the peace...
... and cats running loose...
... and people dumpng their car ashtrays on the streets...
Its simple - if they REALLY believed that God knows, and that punishment is certain, they wouldn't be doing the crap they do.
Same as if yu really believe someone is going to pull the trigger on that loaded gun pointed at your head if you eat that twinkie, you'll ignore your craving for junk food.
BTW, as for those "millions of christians doing good" - if someone is doing something good because they're trying to please their god, their actions are worthless, according to the bible.
If people want to believe in a harmless superstition, that's fine - however, christianity is no longer harmless (if it ever was). Using it as a shield to ignore global warming is the halmark of ignorance by assholes who are engaging in wilful "don't-want-to-know", because, like the fat person with the twinkie, they'd have to modify their behaviour, and they're too full of themselves to consider that they might be wrong, that they may have to take some personal responsibility for what is going on in the world by cutting back on fossil fuels, and that god isn't going to pull their fat out of the fire if "that global warmin' thang really does happen."
If you don't like Christians just come out and say it... but don't go and sully logic with a weak ass argument like that
There is Nothing logical about any superstition, whether its christianity, voodooism, or scientology. Don't go and sully the term "logic" by confabulating it with unsupported religious beliefs.
I know... but at least mine will be powered by renewable energy - hydro-electricity from James Bay.
... I more than make up for it by not having air conditioning in the car... driving below the speed limit... standard transmission instead of automatic...
For some reason, the concepts of oral sex and anal sex are just too shocking for christians, unless they're good upstanding christian leaders, in which case they can have their porn stash, oral sex, anal sex, gay sex, drugs, drunken orgies, abortions, illegitimate kids, financial scandals, etc... and as long as nobody except God knows, its all good...
Funny how their actions put the lie to the very concept that there's an all-seeing, all-knowing God...
Name the last time Fundamentalist Christians flew planes into building killing innocents, or used truck bombs to blow up apartment buildings or office buildings or naval ships.
How many people has BushCheneyRumsfeld's "quick little war" killed so far? More than 9/11.
How many Americans has BushCheneyRumsfeld's "quick little war" killed so far? More than 9/11.
Bush has stated that God has told him what to do. He'd be less dangerous and more Americans would be alive today if Mr. Chimp had just stuck to the cocaine and the booze.
Ashamed that the school is required to present alterative (sic) scientific viewpoints.
The "alternative viewpoint" was "the end of the earth" as "written in the bible"... that's more like an alternative to science, as opposed to alternative science.
But what do you expect from someone so full of themselves as to have 7 kids in this day and age...
I'd like them to at least be self-consistent. For example, do as their bible instructs and kill any of their followers who doesn't keep their sabbath, and to excommunicate anyone who has sex when the woman is on her period http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/contra/sex_menst ruate.html
Friday, August 19, 2005
Boing Boing's $250,000 Intelligent Design challenge (UPDATED: $1 million)
Yesterday, I posted an item to Boing Boing about the growing popularity of Pastafarianism, a new religion that worships Flying Spaghetti Monster, initially created to protest the Kansas State School Board's decision to teach "Intelligent Design" in schools.
In regards to your sig:
"Mary had a little lamb, the doctor was surprised. When Old McDonald had a farm, the poor guy nearly died."
Mary had a little sheep,
And with that sheep she went to sleep...
The sheep turned out to be a ram -
Mary had a little lamb,...
But... the schools are publicly (tax) supported, while churches are privately funded. Surely you can see why one would suggest that the schools should not be for indoctrination, but instead be places of learning where balanced viewpoints are presented about controversial issues.
Last I looked, churches are indirectly subsidized by taxpayers:
various taxation exemptions (real estate, income, etc)
tax deductions for donations
special deductions for members who have taken a vow of poverty
Tax the churches same as any other business, and don't allow deductions for donations to them, same as you can't deduct for other Sunday entertainment such as a movie, and you'd have a point... maybe.
There is no controvery about whether global warming is happening, except from those with a vested interest in pushing ignorance - the religious right and the oil companies. That's not "balanced argument." Religion is superstition, and has no place in the schools. A "belief" that there is no global warming has as much scientific validity as a "belief" that God exists...
On the other hand, I'm seeing the effects of global warming right now. Montreal winters used to come with a guarantee of snow and cold weather. I can see the grass right now... in January!!! WTF? Its raining outside. Instead of snowbanks, I'm seeing... lawns and mud.
Normally, by now there'd be several feet of snow... it makes me worry about how hot the summer is going to be. I've already decided to buy 2 more 10,000 BTU air conditioners as soon as they go on sale.
Frosty Hardison, a parent of seven who also said that he believes the Earth is 14,000 years old. "The information that's being presented is a very cockeyed view of what the truth is... The Bible says that in the end times everything will burn up, but that perspective isn't in the DVD."'"
In other words...
in the same spirit of fairness, require that his pastor give equal time to an athiest and a devil worshiper on Sunday
since he's such a believer in life after death, shoot himself so he can see Jebus that much quicker
Believe it or not, but several c compilers (including g++) accept $var names. Its not just a BASIC thing. Originally, the $ sign was supposed to be reserved for internal use in c (as were leading underscores) but things change...
If you're using a templating system and regexes (as I suggested:-), you don't actually store the escape codes, just a mnemonic for them.
For example, [CUP] for cursor up, [HOME] for home the cursor, [CLEOL] for clear to end of line, [10,15] to go to row 10, column 15, etc. Heck, you could implement all of ncurse's features that way...
Not only is this easier for the end user to edit/maintain, but again, it can be done in a plain-text file, or stored in a db.
It would also make it fairly easy to develop an alternate web interface to everything, not just for maintenance, but also for those users who aren't constrained by bandwidth and/or hardware limitations.
Heck, with a bit of javascript, some css, and a bit of ajax (without the xml), you could also emulate a terminal right in the browser... and if that's the case, then the bandwidth usage is the same (after the initial page load - and even that can be obviated by using a proxy locally to load a local copy of the page, then proxy the data from the server).
I think its the sort of thing that would actually be fun to do. And it would sure beat those "screen-scraper" interfaces (if you've seen one, you know how ugly they are).
There are already signs, the drivers know full well they are breaking the law. Only actually enforcing it will change their behaviour.
You could always do what we did...
Go to several council meetings, expressed our anger to both the council and the police
When we knew that they knew who we were... I went to the town hall, told the mayor's secretary that a bunch of us were going to "borrow" some of the city's
stop signs and put them where we thought they would do more good
... and that we had a stuffed dummy that we were going to throw in front of the first speeder we saw coming
... and that after the first speeder, we'd be blocking the road with heavy equipment (it was a major artery)
Sure enough, on the appointed day, EVERY CAR was going well under the speed limit. Instead of 80 - 100 km/h in a 50 km/h zone, everyone was doing 30 km/h. So we went down the road to investigate. Turns out that they had done the following:
Erected new 30 km/h speed limit signs (reduced from 50 km/h)
Radar + lots of cops in both directions
2 Transit Commission bus tow trucks on standby if we did block the road
They knew we were serious, and they did something about it. (It didn't hurt that I was perpared to run against the mayor if he didn't, and he knew it).
Moral of the story - the squeeky wheel gets greased. Become a thorn in the side of the politicians (or a threat to them), and they'll do something.
I am neither inconsistent nor self-contradictory. As to the "wrongness" of my argument that ncurses is not necessarily the best solution, as I pointed out, the only person who is in a position to decide that is the person who posted the original question. Or are you now claiming to be psychic?
Not using ncurses does NOT mean doing a "roll-your-own" reimplementation of ncurses, unless the person who posted the original question needs all the ncurses functionality. They were asking for various ideas - you like ncurses, fine. In certain circumstances, I'd agree. However, this is not one of them, for the simple reason, as I have pointed out, that we do not know the circumstances. If you can't see that, then that's your problem, not mine.
Whether ncurses is or is not a mess is totally beside the point - which was to consider various solutions. Ansi escape codes for terminal display handling are quick and easy to implement, and have the side benefit that the pages can be stored in plain text files, or as varchar fields in a database, they can be edited with any plain-text editor, there is no need to recompile the application if you're changing the display, you can make a templating system easily using regexes, etc...
Ncurses when necessary, but not necessarily ncurses. K.I.S.S. is still a good idea.
I guess some people still have some difficulty comprehending that anything in JS is subject to change on the client side.
A good example is writing your own proxy to fetch a site, then inject your own scripts into it before feeding it to your browser. Block ads, replace the body.onLoad() that calls a bunch of popups, rewrite all the urls, etc.
Gee, maybe I should write up a fancy paper on how I did it, say its the "latest attack vector" or some other nonsense, and pimp myself as some 133t s3cur1ty xp3rt.
It looks like to me that the lottery ticket is printed on thermal transfer paper- in which case ironing it would turn the side with the number on it completely black. That one makes the most sense to me- I could almost see someone trying to iron out a crumpled ticket.
Next time you buy a good claw hammer, check the warantee; You may be supprised to see that if you pull a nail with the claws, it voids the warantee!
Next time, try buying a REAL quality tool - a single piece forged hammer, not those two-piece POS with a separate head and handle. Just be ready to spend $25 - $50 for it, not $1.79.
Slashdot Mirror
So now you try to duck behind religion as an addiction? Sounds about right to me ... a self-destructive habit that the person indulges in without any rational justification.
You're overlooking one thing - I wasn't the one who brought this guy up - he started the whole thing by complaining to the school board in the first place.
So he's fair game - and the fact that the school board acted on his bible-thumping stupidity makes them fair game as well. We don't tell them what to teach in church, they chould keep their stuff out of the schools.
Unlike a billboard, both the mormons and the jehovah's witnesses will try to ring my doorbell. And its never at a good time ... how would they like it if we all went to their meeting places and started ringing their doorbells while they're busy doing their sh*t?
The real problem with the cctv systems in britain is that they haven't resulted in a drop in crime - quite the opposite. What works is police on the streets, not in a station looking at video cameeras.
Also, there's a difference between a camera that is recording everything, 24 hours a day, indiscriminately, of everyone, and you taking a video of someone breaking a law.
The first one breaks the concept of "anonymity in public places", where people have an expectation that, if they aren't doing anything wrong, people will mind their own business.
Why not cure both problems - pick up the dog shit they didn't pick up (use a plastic bag) and "fill up" the door handles of their car that they so inconsiderately parked in your spot.
If they "discover" this at night when its dark, so much the better ... shit happens ...
Just remember to post the video :-)
I won 3 large dogs - a newf, a st. bernard, and a large mutt - and I pick up. All the time. I don't know how many times people with their "rat-on-a-rope" dogs pretend they don't see their little precious socker-ball-dogs (because your first urge is to kick them) taking a dump. What cities should do is offer to split the resulting fines 50/50.
The same could be done for dogs running off-lead.
Its simple - if they REALLY believed that God knows, and that punishment is certain, they wouldn't be doing the crap they do. Same as if yu really believe someone is going to pull the trigger on that loaded gun pointed at your head if you eat that twinkie, you'll ignore your craving for junk food.
BTW, as for those "millions of christians doing good" - if someone is doing something good because they're trying to please their god, their actions are worthless, according to the bible.
If people want to believe in a harmless superstition, that's fine - however, christianity is no longer harmless (if it ever was). Using it as a shield to ignore global warming is the halmark of ignorance by assholes who are engaging in wilful "don't-want-to-know", because, like the fat person with the twinkie, they'd have to modify their behaviour, and they're too full of themselves to consider that they might be wrong, that they may have to take some personal responsibility for what is going on in the world by cutting back on fossil fuels, and that god isn't going to pull their fat out of the fire if "that global warmin' thang really does happen."
I know ... but at least mine will be powered by renewable energy - hydro-electricity from James Bay.
For some reason, the concepts of oral sex and anal sex are just too shocking for christians, unless they're good upstanding christian leaders, in which case they can have their porn stash, oral sex, anal sex, gay sex, drugs, drunken orgies, abortions, illegitimate kids, financial scandals, etc... and as long as nobody except God knows, its all good ...
Funny how their actions put the lie to the very concept that there's an all-seeing, all-knowing God ...
How many people has BushCheneyRumsfeld's "quick little war" killed so far? More than 9/11.
How many Americans has BushCheneyRumsfeld's "quick little war" killed so far? More than 9/11.
Bush has stated that God has told him what to do. He'd be less dangerous and more Americans would be alive today if Mr. Chimp had just stuck to the cocaine and the booze.
The "alternative viewpoint" was "the end of the earth" as "written in the bible" ... that's more like an alternative to science, as opposed to alternative science.
But what do you expect from someone so full of themselves as to have 7 kids in this day and age ...
I'd like them to at least be self-consistent. For example, do as their bible instructs and kill any of their followers who doesn't keep their sabbath, and to excommunicate anyone who has sex when the woman is on her period http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/contra/sex_menst ruate.html
I see nobody has collected on the $1 million dollar offer to prove that Jesus isn't the son of the Flying Spaghetti Monster ...
In regards to your sig:
Mary had a little sheep, ...
...
And with that sheep she went to sleep
The sheep turned out to be a ram -
Mary had a little lamb,
Last I looked, churches are indirectly subsidized by taxpayers:
Tax the churches same as any other business, and don't allow deductions for donations to them, same as you can't deduct for other Sunday entertainment such as a movie, and you'd have a point ... maybe.
There is no controvery about whether global warming is happening, except from those with a vested interest in pushing ignorance - the religious right and the oil companies. That's not "balanced argument." Religion is superstition, and has no place in the schools. A "belief" that there is no global warming has as much scientific validity as a "belief" that God exists ...
On the other hand, I'm seeing the effects of global warming right now. Montreal winters used to come with a guarantee of snow and cold weather. I can see the grass right now ... in January!!! WTF? Its raining outside. Instead of snowbanks, I'm seeing ... lawns and mud.
Normally, by now there'd be several feet of snow ... it makes me worry about how hot the summer is going to be. I've already decided to buy 2 more 10,000 BTU air conditioners as soon as they go on sale.
In other words ...
Believe it or not, but several c compilers (including g++) accept $var names. Its not just a BASIC thing. Originally, the $ sign was supposed to be reserved for internal use in c (as were leading underscores) but things change ...
If you're using a templating system and regexes (as I suggested :-), you don't actually store the escape codes, just a mnemonic for them.
For example, [CUP] for cursor up, [HOME] for home the cursor, [CLEOL] for clear to end of line, [10,15] to go to row 10, column 15, etc. Heck, you could implement all of ncurse's features that way ...
Not only is this easier for the end user to edit/maintain, but again, it can be done in a plain-text file, or stored in a db.
It would also make it fairly easy to develop an alternate web interface to everything, not just for maintenance, but also for those users who aren't constrained by bandwidth and/or hardware limitations.
Heck, with a bit of javascript, some css, and a bit of ajax (without the xml), you could also emulate a terminal right in the browser ... and if that's the case, then the bandwidth usage is the same (after the initial page load - and even that can be obviated by using a proxy locally to load a local copy of the page, then proxy the data from the server).
I think its the sort of thing that would actually be fun to do. And it would sure beat those "screen-scraper" interfaces (if you've seen one, you know how ugly they are).
You could always do what we did ...
Sure enough, on the appointed day, EVERY CAR was going well under the speed limit. Instead of 80 - 100 km/h in a 50 km/h zone, everyone was doing 30 km/h. So we went down the road to investigate. Turns out that they had done the following:
They knew we were serious, and they did something about it. (It didn't hurt that I was perpared to run against the mayor if he didn't, and he knew it).
Moral of the story - the squeeky wheel gets greased. Become a thorn in the side of the politicians (or a threat to them), and they'll do something.
I am neither inconsistent nor self-contradictory. As to the "wrongness" of my argument that ncurses is not necessarily the best solution, as I pointed out, the only person who is in a position to decide that is the person who posted the original question. Or are you now claiming to be psychic?
Not using ncurses does NOT mean doing a "roll-your-own" reimplementation of ncurses, unless the person who posted the original question needs all the ncurses functionality. They were asking for various ideas - you like ncurses, fine. In certain circumstances, I'd agree. However, this is not one of them, for the simple reason, as I have pointed out, that we do not know the circumstances. If you can't see that, then that's your problem, not mine.
Whether ncurses is or is not a mess is totally beside the point - which was to consider various solutions. Ansi escape codes for terminal display handling are quick and easy to implement, and have the side benefit that the pages can be stored in plain text files, or as varchar fields in a database, they can be edited with any plain-text editor, there is no need to recompile the application if you're changing the display, you can make a templating system easily using regexes, etc...
Ncurses when necessary, but not necessarily ncurses. K.I.S.S. is still a good idea.
Hans Reiser, is that you?
A good example is writing your own proxy to fetch a site, then inject your own scripts into it before feeding it to your browser. Block ads, replace the body.onLoad() that calls a bunch of popups, rewrite all the urls, etc.
Gee, maybe I should write up a fancy paper on how I did it, say its the "latest attack vector" or some other nonsense, and pimp myself as some 133t s3cur1ty xp3rt.
In other words, if your javascript calls anything that proxies a resource, normal per-domain restrictions don't apply.
This isn't even XSS. Its just how it works ...
Wake me up when there's some REAL news :-)
I've got a better idea. How about NO ads, relevant or otherwise?
There are already enough ads in the world ... heck, people are walking brand advertisements. Enough already ...
Sounds painful. If that's what he wished for, I hope he wasn't ingrateful.
Next time, try buying a REAL quality tool - a single piece forged hammer, not those two-piece POS with a separate head and handle. Just be ready to spend $25 - $50 for it, not $1.79.
The actual label was "do not iron while wearing clothes" ...