So what is this about? Why are you picking on us, programmers and IT workers?
Actually, I'm not picking on anyone, except the original bozo who suggested that discrimination doesn't occur. I have seen it occur on a fairly regular basis. I've watched how people treat me, verses how they treat my wife, who frankly, is smarter than I am about a great many things.
I am saddened, however, by a society who believes women are only good for "fuzzy, fluffy" non-technical things. I'm saddened by a society who took my wife, who was by all accounts a competant assembly code hacker in high school, and repeatedly drilled into her head by example how she was only worthwile if she showed her tits to some boob, and not because she could hack the OS inside an Atari to hook in additional features that it wasn't designed to do.
And it's not just men that I think share the blaim. Women also shoulder about half of this. Take the ex-girlfriend who thought I was a sissy because I can whip up the best tasting batch of brownies around, or who can bake chocolate chip cookies without refering to a cookbook. Or the neighbors who thought my parents were so sick and perverted that my brother and I should be turned over to child protective services because my mother would mow the lawn while my father would cook dinner. (True story--never grow up in a fundamentalist town if you can help it.)
I have little patience for sexism. But it isn't IT workers, or the geeks of the world, who are at fault here--though they do shoulder their share of the blaim.
this could be true....my theory is slightly different. Get this - there aren't as many women in IT because - hold on to your hats! - men and women are "different"
The question, though, is why are women different than men in this regard? Is it because the penis attached to your nether regions has an innate desire to install Linux, while a vagina makes you desire the wisdom of Betty Crocker? Is it because biologically you are wired from birth to want to play with computers, while a woman would be wired from birth to want to play with pink laced dolls?
Or is it because the people in our society presume that from birth, boys want to play with guns and girls want to play with dolls?
If you want to blame men for this ever so frightening trend, don't.
The issue here is not if men have subjugated women and reduced them to some sort of "second-class status" of confinement to pink lace and aprons covered with cookie dough. The question is if our innate prejudices in our society, shared by both men and women, cause us to want to raise the next generation of women to be as technologically stunted as the next generation of men will be emotionally stunted.
...but to say that women are being forced out of IT is just bullshit, especially because most "IT" companies are currently going to cemetaries digging up corpses to put in seats, AND paying them $80k a year.
It's only this accute shortage that has created the opportunity my wife now enjoys to get involved. Odd thing is: now that companies are listening to her rather than dismissing her, they find that she has a lot more to contribute than our society would have us expect.
Which? The part where my wife was asked in a meeting with a prospective client over a programming issue was asked to fetch coffee? Or the part where her advise on physics in a game was dismissed due to the fact that she's a woman?
I covered two industries for the price of one.
I'll bet (I'm guessing here) that most if not all of the customers you deal with are not high tech companies.
The particular episode I was refering to occured at a Japanese multinational whose name I won't give out here but whose name starts with an "S". Chances are, they made your television set and your VCR as well...
One would think an education at Caltech might include rudimentary English instruction.
You would think that, wouldn't you? But of course you'd be wrong. Besides, it has been my experience that those who resort to being critical about english usage generally have little else to contribute to the conversation.
This certainly adds a new dimension to the word fit. I understand tho'. I was in a similar spot 30 lbs. ago.
Don't lift weights, do you? I claim to be fit only because I have a black belt in Taekwando, and run 5 miles a day as well. Fitness is not a function of weight, but of overall conditioning.
Bottom line: woe is you, your mom, and your wife. We're susposed to feel sorry for an architect and two programmers. All the strawberry pickers in the state will, I'm sure, shed a tear for the three of you.
Where did you get that from my message? I don't claim "woe unto my wife and mother because they're mistreated." I only claim that additional burdens have been placed upon them that no-one would ever dream to place upon me simply because I have a dick and they have vaginas.
Did you actually read the link that was referenced in the original article? Given what was presented as "research," the original poster's comment was on target. Most of the "evidence" presented in the link involved children.
In fact, I did read the link that was refered to in the original article. And yes, I'm aware of the fact that in that particular research study much of the evidence presented involved how children are discriminated from birth towards predefined gender roles which preclude women from technically related arenas. However, in my experience, sexism doesn't stop at the age of 4. While it's only ancidotal, there is plenty of other ancidotal evidence in the daily papers and in the lives of most of the women around you--enough that it should suggest a trend to all but the most thick skulled.
I was addressing the original poster who suggested that discrimination does not exist. I wish you would have addressed my post rather than making fun of my weight without knowing if that's an extra 40 pounds around the waist or 40 pounds around the shoulders and upper body...
This is the year 2000. It isn't 1950. A woman isn't going to apply for a computer science scholorship and be told by the people who handle her applicant, "Oh, dearie -- don't you think a nice course in domestic engineering would be more suitable to a nice young lady like yourself?"
Wanna bet?
My wife and I work together on web site programming. She has a masters in theoretical physics; I have a BS in mathematics, both from the same school (Caltech). Yet when we go to a job site to talk about development issues, she is asked to go fetch coffee for the boys, or asked to take notes, or otherwise treated as my personal secretary, not my business partner. Once, I even had someone ask me a question about physics (as part of a game), and I turned and asked my wife--after all, she's the one with a master's degree in physics. Everyone in the room stopped cold and looked at me like I grew a horn or something--after all, why should I ask my pretty, stupid, coffee fetching wench for something that only men would understand?
There are hundreds of thousands of extremely successful women out there who made the system work for them, just like men have to.
I don't know what planet you've been on, but here on planet Earth, while there are thousands of highly successful women, the vast majority of programmers, heads of corporations and leaders are men. And not because men are somehow biologically superior--but because from birth, women are told they cannot.
I know it seems mean-hearted and politically off-the-deep-end to say things like this, but people need to grow up.
My mother is a successful architect. My wife, a successful programmer. In both cases I can report first hand the additional barriers they've had to face that I, as a successful programmer, have not.
My mother can now curse and swear like a sailor--and has been known to tell contractors on a job site to go fuck themselves because any self-respecting woman would never do so. Even so, she constantly has to remind people on the job site that she's in charge. Even so, in the last two months, my mother has (a) been descriminated by a legal arbitrator who told my mother flat out before arbitration that she was going to lose because she's just a "stupid cunt and has no business being in charge of a building site" (dispite having 15 years experience), (b) been assulted by a male who thought she had no business being on a job site (even though she was > the construction through her company. In the past she's been sexually assulted by a building inspector, threatened, and otherwise harrassed, all because she's a woman in a male dominated industry.
My wife has had to face similar issues. She's asked to fetch coffee, ignored during meetings with socially ill-equipped males who cannot stand the idea that a female is more mathematically competant than they are, and otherwise degraded repeatedly. In the > I've never had to deal with any of these issues--solely because I'm a 5'11 240lb fit confident male, instead of a 6' 135lb slender and attractive female.
If you're going to make it in a career, it's going to be because you work your ass off to attain it, not because your fifth grade teacher called on you more often than someone else when it came to answering an algebra question.
If you think sexual descrimination comes from "[some] fifth grade teacher [calling] on you more often than someone else", you're sadly mistaken.
So in other words, they're saying "Echelon is bad", but what they really mean is, "Echelon is cool and effective, and we're really pissed the US didn't include us in it".
Actually what happend was that the United States flat out told the French ambassador that either (a) France must stop these black bag jobs, or (b) the United States will turn over it's survellance information gathered on French companies (and French companies only) to US companies, in order to keep the playing field level.
This same thing will eventually happen to many Internet information sources as the cost of technology, marketing in a crowded market and talent to run and attract an audience requires capital beyond the average startup company.
Except... First, unlike radio and television which only has a fixed number of bands to offer in a particular outlet and thus can be monopolized, setting up a new Internet "broadcasting center" (web site) can be done with virtual pocket change: about $30/month or so, unless you don't mind Geocities ads.
Television and radio can become monopolies because the FCC will only grant so many television stations and radio stations in a given area. The Internet, however, is virtually infinite.
Second, while it may be true that setting up a first class organization costs a good chunk of change, the same can be said about creating a good operating system: the staggering manpower costs required to create a good first class operating system is absolutely phenominal, and beyond the amount of capital that can be reasonably raised by a startup.
Yet we have Linux. We have people who are willing to donate the sort of time and effort required to create a first-class operating system for free, outside the traditional command/control structures you see at a Microsoft.
And with the Internet it's the same thing: often the most interesting web sites with the most useful information and news are set up by individuals who donate their time for free to cover events or technologies which they are personally passonate about.
I'm not sure where Television and Radio would be if it only cost about $200 to set up a pirate television broadcasting center that could reach the same geographical region that ABC could. But I suspect the landscape would be far different than the monopolistic media outlets that are currently out there.
Likewise, I suspect the Internet won't reduce itself to yahoo.com, aol.com and news.com being the ABC, CBS and NBC of the Internet.
I agree, this is definately not a bad thing. But, in my view, if the French people so overwhelmingly abhored something as distateful as MacDonalds, wouldn't it be a safe assumption, that a MacDonalds 'restaraunt' in France, would be an utter flop. If there is no demand, there is no profit.
You mean like the amazing success of EuroDisney^H^H^H^H^H^H DisneyLand Paris? The emptiest^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hhappiest place on earth? The great sucking void that the Disney Corporation blew into the French countryside, only to have it become a sucking money vaccuum and void, where the designers didn't even have the blasted imagination necessary to change the park around to fit European taste? (I mean, come on: Main Street U.S.A., in France?!?!?!?)
In some places in the world, Micky D's will flourish. In France, I suspect they'll wither.
To the French, culture is all important. I suspect they would rather starve than allow anything to destroy a distinctively French culture.
They see Micky D's as more than just an abomination of the local cuisine. They see McDonalds as the first wave of an american cultural invasion which caters to the lowest common denominator and rolls like a bulldozer over parochial cultural concerns.
They look to the United States and see that, since about the 1990's, you cannot tell the difference between a shopping mall in Long Beach and a shopping mall in Atlanta. Of course in the United States, we strove for this sort of bland conformity in order to make it cheaper and easier to manufacture goods and services to a larger audience. And nothing better exemplifies this sort of bland conformity than McDonalds, where you couldn't tell the difference between a hamburger made in Japan from one made in Baltimore.
To the French, this sort of comformity is a form of walking death.
The French protest McDonalds because they fear a world where walking into a shopping district in Moscow is no different than walking through the French quarter in New Orlenes, where the Lobster and butter is a standardized bland flavor throughout the world, and where we all wear clothes from the Gap.
And to a certain degree I can't say that I blame them. While I appreciate a corporate culture which is attempting to cater to as many people as possible, it bothers me greatly that there is no place to go to find something different. I can drive for almost two hundred miles (I'm in Los Angeles) before I find anything that isn't the same damn shopping mall/fast food/tourist crap/mass produced electronics/mass produced art stuff. Hell, I bet in 10 more years, downtown Tiajuana looks like downtown San Francisco and downtown Honolulu....
Micky D's is considered the first wave of the invading corporate US culture, and it's seen as the first step in homoganizing European culture, all in the name of the lowest common (financial) denominator.
The French are quite passonate about their culture. Frankly I suspect they would rather allow some of their people to starve or live in poverty than lose their culture. This is not a bad thing per se; just a different value system than the one we have in the United States.
See, in the United States, the problem is not "multi-nationals" or the "corporate culture" as Katz keeps pounding out as some sort of repetitve chant. The problem is that in our ingenuity and our drive to make money, we try to cater to the lowest common denominator of the masses without regards to regional or parochial concerns. After 50 years of studying just in time distribution models and studies in retail competition, we've succeeded in creating more goods for more people at a cheaper price point than at any time in history. Now, even the poorest in the United States can afford a color television, mass-produced jewelry, mass-produced art and many other trappings which used to be reserved for the middle class. We've also reached a state of affairs where you cannot tell if you've walked into a shopping mall in Atlanta or in Los Angeles--because they're the same stores and the same layout with the same color scheme.
The French abhor this bland uniformity. To them, this sort of uniformity in the name of catering to the lowest common denominator is a form of walking death.
And so they protest. And they protest the signs of this bland uniformity, a MacDonalds which strives for such conformity that you couldn't tell a quarter pounder made in a MacDonalds in Japan from one made in Kentucky.
I'm sure there are other issues which drove Jose specifically to be pissed at the United States. The world seems full of people who hate the US with a passion for one reason or another, some of it perceived, some of it real. Knowing though that MacDonalds represents everything the French abhor about the United States, at least you can understand why he attacked one.
The original post said that usability had to be the overriding priority from the begginning of the OS-design process. My point is that this is not true for MacOS X, as it's built from the Mach/BSD basis which was not focused on usability, something you've only reinforced.
And my two cents: this worries me. That is, it worries me that MacOS X is being built on top of an operating system which isn't exactly known for it's stellar usability track record.
While I don't have a problem with Mach itself (which is just the process/thread management kernel with hooks for operating system modules and file system modules to flesh the whole thing out), it's the BSD heritage of the file system, the driver system, and the file hierarchy that concerns me.
While I'm sure Apple is doing it's best to eradicate the BSD heritage, at least from the user's perspective, having played extensively with MacOS X DR4, the whole thing still feels like it's a Macintosh on top of BSD, rather than just a Macintosh. That is, the user interface experience is still a little jarring, especially when it comes to the organization of files and mounting disks.
That was Raymond's attitude as well. And frankly, in the Macintosh world, it's bullshit: the most reliable computer in the world is just a doorstop if you don't know how to use it. In a world where reliability is placed above usability, the user interface becomes an afterthought, with horrible inconsistencies and atrosities abound.
To a certain extent these sorts of user interface inconsistencies are acceptable on Linux, which is to some degree an experimental development platform. But in the Macintosh world, this sort of "lassie-faire" user interface model would get your application drop-kicked to the moon.
Where Raymond seemed completely out of touch came from his (to the Macintosh developers out there) casual dismisal of the most central part of the Macintosh experience: the completely anal consistency in the user interface and user experience.
It doesn't matter one whit if that user interface is an added layer or part of the kernel or transplanted from an FTP server from Mars--so long as it's consistant, obeys the well defined user interface rules, and always keeps the user in control (rather than forcing the user to do what the computer wants him to do), then it'll be fine.
We don't want to send a probe to Europa to try to discover life, only to find out that we contaminated the place a dozen years back with strep, and so have no idea if there was life there or not.
OTOH, unless you both don't eat, don't breath and don't take a dump, you don't have room to talk: after all, everytime you eat, you take advantage of the death of animals and plants around you. When you breath, you mindlessly kill millions of organisms as they enter your lungs. And the fecal matter you excrete is part of one of the largest sources of environmental contaminants that man, in his presence on this earth, creates.
Stop speaking unless you know what is actually happening.... I also do[nt] see how the satalite was destroyed in an SDI test, since to my knowledge all SDI tests have been on earth and none in space.
The Anti-Satellite weapon:
A unique USAF space vehicle is the ASAT (Air-Launched Anti-Satellite Missile). Unlike the other vehicles on display here, this device can be used to destroy orbiting satellites that threaten the U.S.
The Space Test Program spacecraft P78-1 was launched on February 24, 1979 and continued operating until September 13, 1985, when it was shot down in orbit during an Air Force ASAT test.
While not strictly part of the SDI program (as development of the ASAT weapon started during the Carter administration), development and successful testing of this anti-satellite weapon losely fell under the "Star Wars" banner of programs that was funded by the Reagan administration.
Yes, we have been testing weapons in space. So have the Soviets, who have conducted similar tests. And while our ASAT program which produced the F-15 based ASAT weapon was canceled in 1987, we are still conducting on-going ASAT weapons tests today, with both ground-based kenetic ASAT weapons (basically missles which are launched into space from the ground and hit satellites in orbit), and space-based and airplane based laser ASAT weapons.
Re:CRT colors are limited
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But... film color is produced in a similar fashion, using three pigmentation layers on the film. So film is similarly compromised in it's color reproduction as a CRT.
OTOH, this works, because we only have three different color-sensitive cones in the eye to see colors with: one for red, one for green, and one for blue...
Re:What about drive-ins?????
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Drive-ins are going the way of the dodo for two reasons.
One, they're land-intensive. In the same acrage of a drive-in, you could build a mall with restaurants, shopping, video arcades and a movie theater all in one.
Two, they're a poor source of revenue. You drive into the theater, maybe you buy food at the consession stand, then you drive away. With the modern movie theaters used to anchor a shopping district or mall, you walk in, buy your ticket, perhaps shop at some of the adjacent stores, see the movie, and walk out to grab dinner at a local restaurant. Perhaps you kill some time at the local bookstore before the movie, and drop $20 on books. But unless you walk right in without looking left or right, and walk right out directly to your car without stopping, you will probably spend more money than at a drive-in.
On the other hand, movie theaters won't go the way of the drive-ins; in fact, they're being built as fast as developers can get plans approved in some parts of the country. That's because most shopping mall developers have figured out that having a movie theater in your mall draws traffic. And with a mall, the best thing you can do is draw traffic; that way, some of them may stay and continue to shop afterwards.
The first fundamental theorm of politics...
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I don't mean to be disrespectful, but it seems that in the current technophilic age we can find a thousand articles with one theme: "we're too dumb to handle technology" which really means "those Other People are too dumb to handle technology."
You forget that this is the first fundamental theorm of politics--that politics and political limitations are set not because we can't take care of ourselves, but because those other dumb fuckers can't take care of themselves.
This logic goes into justifying everything from antiabortion rhetoric to nuclear arms races to jaywalking laws and everything inbetween. This is used to justify socialism (we can't trust the economy to the "invisible hand" because the "invisible hand" is just a bunch of dumb fucks who don't know how to buy stuff). This is used to justify web censorship using stupid programs like Net Nanny (we can't trust the web to the general population because the general population is made up of a bunch of dumb fucks who can't control their kids). This is also used to justify anti-pornography laws (we can't trust those other dumb fucks not to get hairy hands).
In fact, I cannot think of a single law of the land which doesn't at least have part of it's justfication in the "we can trust ourselves, but we can't trust those other dumb fucks" theory of politics. Except perhaps some of the more fundamental ideas of social justice (i.e. "don't murder, don't steal" stuff).
Ever wonder why Congress exempts itself from many of the laws Congresscritters pass for you and I? Because they trust themselves. They just don't trust dumb fucks like us.
Re:A long slippery slope down to Hell
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I would completely disagree with the statement that these things are clearly delimited. big-bang vs creation? How delimited is that?
It's not as clear cut as that. While we can demonstrate that a literal reading of Genesis is clearly not how the world came into being, even the Roman Catholic Church states that the tale in Genesis is a spiritual and religious metaphore as to how God created the Universe. Just as the wine and cracker does not literally turn into human blood and human flesh, so can the "truth" in Genesis be a metaphore for something spiritually higher.
But who are we to say that it wasn't the Will of God who created the initial spark which resulted in the Big Bang? Most rational scientists, when pushed, cannot say with certainty what happened at T+some fraction of a second. Who is to say that it wasn't God who said "Let There Be Light!" at T - some fraction of a second?
And that's the point. Science can answer the question about mechanism, about physical laws, and about the history and the way things progressed and how things are put together. But the why of the Universe--if it was put together by a Master Clock Builder or is the happenstance of some random confluence of chaotic events--this is beyond the relm of Science. To ask why the Universe is is to ask a question only Faith can answer.
Although science is the study of cause and effect with the five senses, there are many scientific articles which continually extrapolate on what the have observed to postulate thier views on religious topics.
Oh, sure; I read those articles all the time. Gives a great insight into the workings of some scientists.
However, there are definite limits as to what is properly the relm of Science. And speculation into the Mind of God doesn't fit, unless we could get an interview with Him on CNN.
I mean, hell: for all we know, we're the spontaneous and random creation of an uncaring universe which just happened to accidently create intelligent life on a small speck of dust in some unimportant corner. Or perhaps there is a God and He is the Omega Point--the superintelligent and supernatural creation of Man who becomes so powerful and intelligent that He (our literal creation) envelops creation and, going back in time, sets the whole thing in motion. (A'la a wonderful short story by Issac Asimov.)
Or perhaps we were created by a Native American Coyote God which created the big bang as a cosmic prank.
My point is we don't know. And we cannot know, because by the very definition of the supernatural (which are events or things which are unmeasurable), we cannot know.
And an excerpt from the beginning of (Darwin's Origin of Species)...
And don't forget that in later editions, Darwin said that he was presenting the "how" of creation--but that he firmly believed in a Christian God who set the whole thing in motion. This led philosophers down the whole "Deism" movement where some believed that God simply set the universe in motion and has since abandoned us to our own devices. (Well, actually, as God is omni-everything, he was able to set a perfect universe into motion, and thus no longer needs to tend the whole thinng.)
But Darwin never drew the conclusion that why we were created--he only presented the mechanism for how, and left his belief in why to a Christian God he fervently believed in.
Creation is "supernatural", and can't be disproven (how can you disprove creation using cause and effect when the cause is supernatural), yet darwin extrapolated his theory to specifically deny creationism.
We have no reason to know if Creation was supernatural or not. And remember: Darwin limited his arguments to the evolution of species--he only outlined the "how" but said that he believed the "why" was a Christian God pulling the strings on chance.
As we understand better the mechanisms of life and of Chaotic systems, we can better answer the "how" of how life began in terms of chemical reactions and chaotic systems creating localized ordering out of chaos. But the why is never implied in the research: a perfect God may have created a perfect Universe in such a manner that the "spontaneous" creation of his likeness was the inevitable result of his setting the whole thing in motion. Or perhaps he has been tinkering with "chance" all along. Or maybe we're just really damned lucky to exist at all, as the whole thing was just the chance meeting of chemical compounds in a biological soup.
As a mathematician, I don't think pure science (the study of cause and effect) is evil (ridiculous),...
Well, duh! What I ment to say (and apparently had a typo) was that knowledge is not evil, but it's indescriminate use has the potential of being evil. A gun could be a great tool for hunting for food for starving children. Or it can be used to blow your best friend away.
The gun is not evil. Only the intent of it's user. And only in relation to the moral and ethical structures we use as a society for us to get along: maybe your friend was trying to kill a small child when he was stopped by a bullet.
...if you believe in a higher power, and you believe he has revealed himself in some way to you, yet you extrapolate your theories against that to the detriment of mankind, you are not exactly heavenly.
Well, setting aside the fact that I never stated what I believed (for all you know, I'm an american Indian who secretly sits naked under the stars playing a flute and dreaming of Coyote's wisdom), I'm not sure what you are talking about when you say "yet you extrapolate your theories against that to the detriment of mankind."
While I strongly disagree with the original fellow who seemed to imply that there is some knowledge which should be forbidden, there is a grain of truth in the notion that perhaps there are types of experiments or areas of research which should not be performed. Not because these areas of research are inherently evil, but because to a civilized society, they are repugnant. But it seems to me these should be limited to areas such as the NAZI research programs on concentration camp Jews in various areas of eugenics and other NAZI medical research programs.
But ultimately, Science and Religion are oil and water: the Science asks "how" and Religion asks "why." And when mixed together with a few spices, the whole thing makes a really tasty combination...:-)
Are there mental diseases which are organic in origin? Of course.
Is there a gene which determines if someone is predestined to be a criminal, a geek, or a cheerleader? Hell, the best we can say about the genes we know about is that there are genes for things like breast cancer--but they only indicate a greater tendency towards breast cancer. And hell, that gene isn't even the biggest indicator that if you are a woman, you will develop breast cancer during your life.
Personally I don't give a damn about the fraud of one researcher. What concerns me is the presumption that our genetic heritage predestines who we are, what we are, and how we shall behave.
Otherwise, if there is a gene for criminal behavior, then we cannot arrest criminals: by virtue of being genetically predestined to a certain behavior pattern, we could argue legally that that predestined behavior is as protected as other birth traits which are legally protected, such as skin color or gender.
Bear in mind that Catholics are not Christians since they worship the virgin whore rather than God.
And Christians worship a bastard? Or just the child of a whore?
Oh, no--that's right: Jesus wasn't a man, dispite being a carpender and born to a woman--he's one face of a three-faced God. That's how most "Christians" who claim Mary was a "virgin whore" get around the fact that they worship idols (the crucifiction, or the aspect of God which is Jesus) in direct violation of one of the ten commandments.
Don't complain too hard about the reverence of the mother of Christ--your trinity or the belief in Jesus who may or may not be a man as the mood strikes you isn't exactly the most sound of theological grounds to be arguing from...
Most (if not all) skinheads/KKK fuckwits/neo-nazi morons are Christian. Coincidence? If you think so, you too are a moron.
Most skinhead/KKK/neo-nazi morons profess to be Christian, but they only use the symbols of Christianity as a front for what is in essence a neo-pagan ego-centric system of beliefs in which Jesus is reduced to a bit player in a pantheon of older Norse or Astru Gods.
Not that I have a problem with neo-paganism per se. But these folks then commit the additional crime of twisting their pseudo-Christian neo-pagan religious system around a twisted and evil interpretation of how the world works, with their sick-ass hides dead center in their own twisted mystical system.
Calling this "Christian" is like calling the Dali Lama the Pope. They're not even on the same continent.
In the unlikely event that you Bible-pounding shitheads get your way and Baby Bush gets elected to office, we would see a nice shiny new nation of perfect white Aryan babies.
Likewise, most Christians are not skinhead/neo-nazi/KKKers. Claiming this is equivalent of claiming that all neo-pagans are evil, or that all Witches should burn for the crime of Witchcraft. Or that all Athiests are in league with a Devil they don't even believe in.
There is a place for people like you...the lion pit at the zoo.
Dude--did you ever think of switching to decaf?
Re:A long slippery slope down to Hell
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You probably also believe the quote is "money is the root of all evil", when it's actually "the love of money is the root of all evil."
My point being that it's not knowledge which is evil. It's the use of that knowledge, unchecked by ethics or morality, which is evil. Just because you can read on-line how to build an atomic bomb doesn't make you an atomic superpower. And just because you can read on-line how to murder someone and get away with it doesn't make you a hit man.
Science can be a tool for good in our society when it allows us to better ourselves and become closer to Heaven,...
It is not the role of Science to bring us closer to Heaven. It is the role of Science to help us understand how the material world around us appears to work. It is the role of Religion to bring us closer to spiritual perfection. I'm sure you'd probably be very upset if you walked in on your Priest or Preacher using an electron microscope to dissect the Bible.
Yet these "scientists", having already condemned decent Christian morality as being "backward" or "superstitious",...
Many scientists are Christians. Most others profess a belief in God or in a divine spark or a higher power that transcends this material plane. It's difficult to condemn yourself.
What some scientists do condemn is not Christians or Christianity, but the very small few who are in fact backwards or superstitious because they don't understand what Science is about--and attempt to condemn all of Science as a force of Lucifer or somesuch.
Science can be a tool for good in our society when it allows us to better ourselves and become closer to Heaven, but there are things which just aren't meant for people to understand, let along attempt to tamper with.
Of course there are things that man are not meant to understand, but instead must take on Faith. Anyone properly grounded in the underlying philosopical systems which drive the Scientific Method knows this.
However, anyone who knows how Science works knows that these area which man must take on Faith are clearly delimited--things such as the nature of God, the existance of the supernatural, or the nature of the Infinite. It's not that performing scientific experiments on God is Evil--it's that Science, properly defined, clearly says that it cannot explain these supernatural elements. Hense, supernatural.
But to decide that certain material inquiries into certain concrete elements such as the nature of the Human Genome is evil: these are not the pronouncements of God. I don't see "Human Genome Project" mentioned anywhere in the Bible.
No, it's man (specifically, certain "christians" such as yourself) who pronounce certain material lines of research as evil. And as we all know, man is fallable.
Are you so confident in your faith that you believe you can speak for God Himself?
I have extremely little patience in people who fail to understand Jesus's words about witnessing. I have very little patience in people who profess to be "christian", but whose loud "trumphet calls" of "faith" essentially boil down to bashing others. (Jesus Himself had something to say about people like you who do this sort of thing: and it ain't all that good.)
And I have very little patience in people who create strawmen (such as your demonstratably false presumption that scientists are not religious) in order to advocate their own political agenda disguised as a communication presumbably from the Mouth of God Himself.
This syndrome might have genetic origins in some cases.
And in the rest of cases?
It's environmental.
This just goes back to the old nature verses nurture arguments. Further, the reality of any mental disease, including those which have clear-cut biological sources, can often be brought into check through proper counceling, exercise and a good diet. That is, even for biologically caused mental diseases, environment can be used to bring the disease into check.
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So what is this about? Why are you picking on us, programmers and IT workers?
Actually, I'm not picking on anyone, except the original bozo who suggested that discrimination doesn't occur. I have seen it occur on a fairly regular basis. I've watched how people treat me, verses how they treat my wife, who frankly, is smarter than I am about a great many things.
I am saddened, however, by a society who believes women are only good for "fuzzy, fluffy" non-technical things. I'm saddened by a society who took my wife, who was by all accounts a competant assembly code hacker in high school, and repeatedly drilled into her head by example how she was only worthwile if she showed her tits to some boob, and not because she could hack the OS inside an Atari to hook in additional features that it wasn't designed to do.
And it's not just men that I think share the blaim. Women also shoulder about half of this. Take the ex-girlfriend who thought I was a sissy because I can whip up the best tasting batch of brownies around, or who can bake chocolate chip cookies without refering to a cookbook. Or the neighbors who thought my parents were so sick and perverted that my brother and I should be turned over to child protective services because my mother would mow the lawn while my father would cook dinner. (True story--never grow up in a fundamentalist town if you can help it.)
I have little patience for sexism. But it isn't IT workers, or the geeks of the world, who are at fault here--though they do shoulder their share of the blaim.
And so which part did you not buy? The
"...while there are thousands of highly successful women, the vast majority of programmers, heads of corporations and leaders are men."
part? Or the
"And not because men are somehow biologically superior--but because from birth, women are told they cannot."
part?
It would help to focus the conversation.
this could be true....my theory is slightly different. Get this - there aren't as many women in IT because - hold on to your hats! - men and women are "different"
...but to say that women are being forced out of IT is just bullshit, especially because most "IT" companies are currently going to cemetaries digging up corpses to put in seats, AND paying them $80k a year.
The question, though, is why are women different than men in this regard? Is it because the penis attached to your nether regions has an innate desire to install Linux, while a vagina makes you desire the wisdom of Betty Crocker? Is it because biologically you are wired from birth to want to play with computers, while a woman would be wired from birth to want to play with pink laced dolls?
Or is it because the people in our society presume that from birth, boys want to play with guns and girls want to play with dolls?
If you want to blame men for this ever so frightening trend, don't.
The issue here is not if men have subjugated women and reduced them to some sort of "second-class status" of confinement to pink lace and aprons covered with cookie dough. The question is if our innate prejudices in our society, shared by both men and women, cause us to want to raise the next generation of women to be as technologically stunted as the next generation of men will be emotionally stunted.
It's only this accute shortage that has created the opportunity my wife now enjoys to get involved. Odd thing is: now that companies are listening to her rather than dismissing her, they find that she has a lot more to contribute than our society would have us expect.
but how does that relate to IT?
Which? The part where my wife was asked in a meeting with a prospective client over a programming issue was asked to fetch coffee? Or the part where her advise on physics in a game was dismissed due to the fact that she's a woman?
I covered two industries for the price of one.
I'll bet (I'm guessing here) that most if not all of the customers you deal with are not high tech companies.
The particular episode I was refering to occured at a Japanese multinational whose name I won't give out here but whose name starts with an "S". Chances are, they made your television set and your VCR as well...
One would think an education at Caltech might include rudimentary English instruction.
You would think that, wouldn't you? But of course you'd be wrong. Besides, it has been my experience that those who resort to being critical about english usage generally have little else to contribute to the conversation.
This certainly adds a new dimension to the word fit. I understand tho'. I was in a similar spot 30 lbs. ago.
Don't lift weights, do you? I claim to be fit only because I have a black belt in Taekwando, and run 5 miles a day as well. Fitness is not a function of weight, but of overall conditioning.
Bottom line: woe is you, your mom, and your wife. We're susposed to feel sorry for an architect and two programmers. All the strawberry pickers in the state will, I'm sure, shed a tear for the three of you.
Where did you get that from my message? I don't claim "woe unto my wife and mother because they're mistreated." I only claim that additional burdens have been placed upon them that no-one would ever dream to place upon me simply because I have a dick and they have vaginas.
Did you actually read the link that was referenced in the original article? Given what was presented as "research," the original poster's comment was on target. Most of the "evidence" presented in the link involved children.
In fact, I did read the link that was refered to in the original article. And yes, I'm aware of the fact that in that particular research study much of the evidence presented involved how children are discriminated from birth towards predefined gender roles which preclude women from technically related arenas. However, in my experience, sexism doesn't stop at the age of 4. While it's only ancidotal, there is plenty of other ancidotal evidence in the daily papers and in the lives of most of the women around you--enough that it should suggest a trend to all but the most thick skulled.
I was addressing the original poster who suggested that discrimination does not exist. I wish you would have addressed my post rather than making fun of my weight without knowing if that's an extra 40 pounds around the waist or 40 pounds around the shoulders and upper body...
No.
This is the year 2000. It isn't 1950. A woman isn't going to apply for a computer science scholorship and be told by the people who handle her applicant, "Oh, dearie -- don't you think a nice course in domestic engineering would be more suitable to a nice young lady like yourself?"
Wanna bet?
My wife and I work together on web site programming. She has a masters in theoretical physics; I have a BS in mathematics, both from the same school (Caltech). Yet when we go to a job site to talk about development issues, she is asked to go fetch coffee for the boys, or asked to take notes, or otherwise treated as my personal secretary, not my business partner. Once, I even had someone ask me a question about physics (as part of a game), and I turned and asked my wife--after all, she's the one with a master's degree in physics. Everyone in the room stopped cold and looked at me like I grew a horn or something--after all, why should I ask my pretty, stupid, coffee fetching wench for something that only men would understand?
There are hundreds of thousands of extremely successful women out there who made the system work for them, just like men have to.
I don't know what planet you've been on, but here on planet Earth, while there are thousands of highly successful women, the vast majority of programmers, heads of corporations and leaders are men. And not because men are somehow biologically superior--but because from birth, women are told they cannot.
I know it seems mean-hearted and politically off-the-deep-end to say things like this, but people need to grow up.
My mother is a successful architect. My wife, a successful programmer. In both cases I can report first hand the additional barriers they've had to face that I, as a successful programmer, have not.
My mother can now curse and swear like a sailor--and has been known to tell contractors on a job site to go fuck themselves because any self-respecting woman would never do so. Even so, she constantly has to remind people on the job site that she's in charge. Even so, in the last two months, my mother has (a) been descriminated by a legal arbitrator who told my mother flat out before arbitration that she was going to lose because she's just a "stupid cunt and has no business being in charge of a building site" (dispite having 15 years experience), (b) been assulted by a male who thought she had no business being on a job site (even though she was > the construction through her company. In the past she's been sexually assulted by a building inspector, threatened, and otherwise harrassed, all because she's a woman in a male dominated industry.
My wife has had to face similar issues. She's asked to fetch coffee, ignored during meetings with socially ill-equipped males who cannot stand the idea that a female is more mathematically competant than they are, and otherwise degraded repeatedly. In the > I've never had to deal with any of these issues--solely because I'm a 5'11 240lb fit confident male, instead of a 6' 135lb slender and attractive female.
If you're going to make it in a career, it's going to be because you work your ass off to attain it, not because your fifth grade teacher called on you more often than someone else when it came to answering an algebra question.
If you think sexual descrimination comes from "[some] fifth grade teacher [calling] on you more often than someone else", you're sadly mistaken.
So in other words, they're saying "Echelon is bad", but what they really mean is, "Echelon is cool and effective, and we're really pissed the US didn't include us in it".
Actually what happend was that the United States flat out told the French ambassador that either (a) France must stop these black bag jobs, or (b) the United States will turn over it's survellance information gathered on French companies (and French companies only) to US companies, in order to keep the playing field level.
France did not stop.
This same thing will eventually happen to many Internet information sources as the cost of technology, marketing in a crowded market and talent to run and attract an audience requires capital beyond the average startup company.
Except... First, unlike radio and television which only has a fixed number of bands to offer in a particular outlet and thus can be monopolized, setting up a new Internet "broadcasting center" (web site) can be done with virtual pocket change: about $30/month or so, unless you don't mind Geocities ads.
Television and radio can become monopolies because the FCC will only grant so many television stations and radio stations in a given area. The Internet, however, is virtually infinite.
Second, while it may be true that setting up a first class organization costs a good chunk of change, the same can be said about creating a good operating system: the staggering manpower costs required to create a good first class operating system is absolutely phenominal, and beyond the amount of capital that can be reasonably raised by a startup.
Yet we have Linux. We have people who are willing to donate the sort of time and effort required to create a first-class operating system for free, outside the traditional command/control structures you see at a Microsoft.
And with the Internet it's the same thing: often the most interesting web sites with the most useful information and news are set up by individuals who donate their time for free to cover events or technologies which they are personally passonate about.
I'm not sure where Television and Radio would be if it only cost about $200 to set up a pirate television broadcasting center that could reach the same geographical region that ABC could. But I suspect the landscape would be far different than the monopolistic media outlets that are currently out there.
Likewise, I suspect the Internet won't reduce itself to yahoo.com, aol.com and news.com being the ABC, CBS and NBC of the Internet.
It's just too easy to turn to another station.
I agree, this is definately not a bad thing. But, in my view, if the French people so overwhelmingly abhored something as distateful as MacDonalds, wouldn't it be a safe assumption, that a MacDonalds 'restaraunt' in France, would be an utter flop. If there is no demand, there is no profit.
You mean like the amazing success of EuroDisney^H^H^H^H^H^H DisneyLand Paris? The emptiest^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hhappiest place on earth? The great sucking void that the Disney Corporation blew into the French countryside, only to have it become a sucking money vaccuum and void, where the designers didn't even have the blasted imagination necessary to change the park around to fit European taste? (I mean, come on: Main Street U.S.A., in France?!?!?!?)
In some places in the world, Micky D's will flourish. In France, I suspect they'll wither.
To the French, culture is all important. I suspect they would rather starve than allow anything to destroy a distinctively French culture.
They see Micky D's as more than just an abomination of the local cuisine. They see McDonalds as the first wave of an american cultural invasion which caters to the lowest common denominator and rolls like a bulldozer over parochial cultural concerns.
They look to the United States and see that, since about the 1990's, you cannot tell the difference between a shopping mall in Long Beach and a shopping mall in Atlanta. Of course in the United States, we strove for this sort of bland conformity in order to make it cheaper and easier to manufacture goods and services to a larger audience. And nothing better exemplifies this sort of bland conformity than McDonalds, where you couldn't tell the difference between a hamburger made in Japan from one made in Baltimore.
To the French, this sort of comformity is a form of walking death.
The French protest McDonalds because they fear a world where walking into a shopping district in Moscow is no different than walking through the French quarter in New Orlenes, where the Lobster and butter is a standardized bland flavor throughout the world, and where we all wear clothes from the Gap.
And to a certain degree I can't say that I blame them. While I appreciate a corporate culture which is attempting to cater to as many people as possible, it bothers me greatly that there is no place to go to find something different. I can drive for almost two hundred miles (I'm in Los Angeles) before I find anything that isn't the same damn shopping mall/fast food/tourist crap/mass produced electronics/mass produced art stuff. Hell, I bet in 10 more years, downtown Tiajuana looks like downtown San Francisco and downtown Honolulu....
Micky D's is considered the first wave of the invading corporate US culture, and it's seen as the first step in homoganizing European culture, all in the name of the lowest common (financial) denominator.
The French are quite passonate about their culture. Frankly I suspect they would rather allow some of their people to starve or live in poverty than lose their culture. This is not a bad thing per se; just a different value system than the one we have in the United States.
See, in the United States, the problem is not "multi-nationals" or the "corporate culture" as Katz keeps pounding out as some sort of repetitve chant. The problem is that in our ingenuity and our drive to make money, we try to cater to the lowest common denominator of the masses without regards to regional or parochial concerns. After 50 years of studying just in time distribution models and studies in retail competition, we've succeeded in creating more goods for more people at a cheaper price point than at any time in history. Now, even the poorest in the United States can afford a color television, mass-produced jewelry, mass-produced art and many other trappings which used to be reserved for the middle class. We've also reached a state of affairs where you cannot tell if you've walked into a shopping mall in Atlanta or in Los Angeles--because they're the same stores and the same layout with the same color scheme.
The French abhor this bland uniformity. To them, this sort of uniformity in the name of catering to the lowest common denominator is a form of walking death.
And so they protest. And they protest the signs of this bland uniformity, a MacDonalds which strives for such conformity that you couldn't tell a quarter pounder made in a MacDonalds in Japan from one made in Kentucky.
I'm sure there are other issues which drove Jose specifically to be pissed at the United States. The world seems full of people who hate the US with a passion for one reason or another, some of it perceived, some of it real. Knowing though that MacDonalds represents everything the French abhor about the United States, at least you can understand why he attacked one.
The original post said that usability had to be the overriding priority from the begginning of the OS-design process. My point is that this is not true for MacOS X, as it's built from the Mach/BSD basis which was not focused on usability, something you've only reinforced.
And my two cents: this worries me. That is, it worries me that MacOS X is being built on top of an operating system which isn't exactly known for it's stellar usability track record.
While I don't have a problem with Mach itself (which is just the process/thread management kernel with hooks for operating system modules and file system modules to flesh the whole thing out), it's the BSD heritage of the file system, the driver system, and the file hierarchy that concerns me.
While I'm sure Apple is doing it's best to eradicate the BSD heritage, at least from the user's perspective, having played extensively with MacOS X DR4, the whole thing still feels like it's a Macintosh on top of BSD, rather than just a Macintosh. That is, the user interface experience is still a little jarring, especially when it comes to the organization of files and mounting disks.
Reliability before usability, ALWAYS.
That was Raymond's attitude as well. And frankly, in the Macintosh world, it's bullshit: the most reliable computer in the world is just a doorstop if you don't know how to use it. In a world where reliability is placed above usability, the user interface becomes an afterthought, with horrible inconsistencies and atrosities abound.
To a certain extent these sorts of user interface inconsistencies are acceptable on Linux, which is to some degree an experimental development platform. But in the Macintosh world, this sort of "lassie-faire" user interface model would get your application drop-kicked to the moon.
Where Raymond seemed completely out of touch came from his (to the Macintosh developers out there) casual dismisal of the most central part of the Macintosh experience: the completely anal consistency in the user interface and user experience.
It doesn't matter one whit if that user interface is an added layer or part of the kernel or transplanted from an FTP server from Mars--so long as it's consistant, obeys the well defined user interface rules, and always keeps the user in control (rather than forcing the user to do what the computer wants him to do), then it'll be fine.
Yep, there is.
We don't want to send a probe to Europa to try to discover life, only to find out that we contaminated the place a dozen years back with strep, and so have no idea if there was life there or not.
OTOH, unless you both don't eat, don't breath and don't take a dump, you don't have room to talk: after all, everytime you eat, you take advantage of the death of animals and plants around you. When you breath, you mindlessly kill millions of organisms as they enter your lungs. And the fecal matter you excrete is part of one of the largest sources of environmental contaminants that man, in his presence on this earth, creates.
The Anti-Satellite weapon:
http://www.wpafb.af.mil/museum
The target:
http://asca.gsfc.nasa
While not strictly part of the SDI program (as development of the ASAT weapon started during the Carter administration), development and successful testing of this anti-satellite weapon losely fell under the "Star Wars" banner of programs that was funded by the Reagan administration.
Yes, we have been testing weapons in space. So have the Soviets, who have conducted similar tests. And while our ASAT program which produced the F-15 based ASAT weapon was canceled in 1987, we are still conducting on-going ASAT weapons tests today, with both ground-based kenetic ASAT weapons (basically missles which are launched into space from the ground and hit satellites in orbit), and space-based and airplane based laser ASAT weapons.
But... film color is produced in a similar fashion, using three pigmentation layers on the film. So film is similarly compromised in it's color reproduction as a CRT.
OTOH, this works, because we only have three different color-sensitive cones in the eye to see colors with: one for red, one for green, and one for blue...
Drive-ins are going the way of the dodo for two reasons.
One, they're land-intensive. In the same acrage of a drive-in, you could build a mall with restaurants, shopping, video arcades and a movie theater all in one.
Two, they're a poor source of revenue. You drive into the theater, maybe you buy food at the consession stand, then you drive away. With the modern movie theaters used to anchor a shopping district or mall, you walk in, buy your ticket, perhaps shop at some of the adjacent stores, see the movie, and walk out to grab dinner at a local restaurant. Perhaps you kill some time at the local bookstore before the movie, and drop $20 on books. But unless you walk right in without looking left or right, and walk right out directly to your car without stopping, you will probably spend more money than at a drive-in.
On the other hand, movie theaters won't go the way of the drive-ins; in fact, they're being built as fast as developers can get plans approved in some parts of the country. That's because most shopping mall developers have figured out that having a movie theater in your mall draws traffic. And with a mall, the best thing you can do is draw traffic; that way, some of them may stay and continue to shop afterwards.
I don't mean to be disrespectful, but it seems that in the current technophilic age we can find a thousand articles with one theme: "we're too dumb to handle technology" which really means "those Other People are too dumb to handle technology."
You forget that this is the first fundamental theorm of politics--that politics and political limitations are set not because we can't take care of ourselves, but because those other dumb fuckers can't take care of themselves.
This logic goes into justifying everything from antiabortion rhetoric to nuclear arms races to jaywalking laws and everything inbetween. This is used to justify socialism (we can't trust the economy to the "invisible hand" because the "invisible hand" is just a bunch of dumb fucks who don't know how to buy stuff). This is used to justify web censorship using stupid programs like Net Nanny (we can't trust the web to the general population because the general population is made up of a bunch of dumb fucks who can't control their kids). This is also used to justify anti-pornography laws (we can't trust those other dumb fucks not to get hairy hands).
In fact, I cannot think of a single law of the land which doesn't at least have part of it's justfication in the "we can trust ourselves, but we can't trust those other dumb fucks" theory of politics. Except perhaps some of the more fundamental ideas of social justice (i.e. "don't murder, don't steal" stuff).
Ever wonder why Congress exempts itself from many of the laws Congresscritters pass for you and I? Because they trust themselves. They just don't trust dumb fucks like us.
I would completely disagree with the statement that these things are clearly delimited. big-bang vs creation? How delimited is that?
...if you believe in a higher power, and you believe he has revealed himself in some way to you, yet you extrapolate your theories against that to the detriment of mankind, you are not exactly heavenly.
:-)
It's not as clear cut as that. While we can demonstrate that a literal reading of Genesis is clearly not how the world came into being, even the Roman Catholic Church states that the tale in Genesis is a spiritual and religious metaphore as to how God created the Universe. Just as the wine and cracker does not literally turn into human blood and human flesh, so can the "truth" in Genesis be a metaphore for something spiritually higher.
But who are we to say that it wasn't the Will of God who created the initial spark which resulted in the Big Bang? Most rational scientists, when pushed, cannot say with certainty what happened at T+some fraction of a second. Who is to say that it wasn't God who said "Let There Be Light!" at T - some fraction of a second?
And that's the point. Science can answer the question about mechanism, about physical laws, and about the history and the way things progressed and how things are put together. But the why of the Universe--if it was put together by a Master Clock Builder or is the happenstance of some random confluence of chaotic events--this is beyond the relm of Science. To ask why the Universe is is to ask a question only Faith can answer.
Although science is the study of cause and effect with the five senses, there are many scientific articles which continually extrapolate on what the have observed to postulate thier views on religious topics.
Oh, sure; I read those articles all the time. Gives a great insight into the workings of some scientists.
However, there are definite limits as to what is properly the relm of Science. And speculation into the Mind of God doesn't fit, unless we could get an interview with Him on CNN.
I mean, hell: for all we know, we're the spontaneous and random creation of an uncaring universe which just happened to accidently create intelligent life on a small speck of dust in some unimportant corner. Or perhaps there is a God and He is the Omega Point--the superintelligent and supernatural creation of Man who becomes so powerful and intelligent that He (our literal creation) envelops creation and, going back in time, sets the whole thing in motion. (A'la a wonderful short story by Issac Asimov.)
Or perhaps we were created by a Native American Coyote God which created the big bang as a cosmic prank.
My point is we don't know. And we cannot know, because by the very definition of the supernatural (which are events or things which are unmeasurable), we cannot know.
And an excerpt from the beginning of (Darwin's Origin of Species)...
And don't forget that in later editions, Darwin said that he was presenting the "how" of creation--but that he firmly believed in a Christian God who set the whole thing in motion. This led philosophers down the whole "Deism" movement where some believed that God simply set the universe in motion and has since abandoned us to our own devices. (Well, actually, as God is omni-everything, he was able to set a perfect universe into motion, and thus no longer needs to tend the whole thinng.)
But Darwin never drew the conclusion that why we were created--he only presented the mechanism for how, and left his belief in why to a Christian God he fervently believed in.
Creation is "supernatural", and can't be disproven (how can you disprove creation using cause and effect when the cause is supernatural), yet darwin extrapolated his theory to specifically deny creationism.
We have no reason to know if Creation was supernatural or not. And remember: Darwin limited his arguments to the evolution of species--he only outlined the "how" but said that he believed the "why" was a Christian God pulling the strings on chance.
As we understand better the mechanisms of life and of Chaotic systems, we can better answer the "how" of how life began in terms of chemical reactions and chaotic systems creating localized ordering out of chaos. But the why is never implied in the research: a perfect God may have created a perfect Universe in such a manner that the "spontaneous" creation of his likeness was the inevitable result of his setting the whole thing in motion. Or perhaps he has been tinkering with "chance" all along. Or maybe we're just really damned lucky to exist at all, as the whole thing was just the chance meeting of chemical compounds in a biological soup.
As a mathematician, I don't think pure science (the study of cause and effect) is evil (ridiculous),...
Well, duh! What I ment to say (and apparently had a typo) was that knowledge is not evil, but it's indescriminate use has the potential of being evil. A gun could be a great tool for hunting for food for starving children. Or it can be used to blow your best friend away.
The gun is not evil. Only the intent of it's user. And only in relation to the moral and ethical structures we use as a society for us to get along: maybe your friend was trying to kill a small child when he was stopped by a bullet.
Well, setting aside the fact that I never stated what I believed (for all you know, I'm an american Indian who secretly sits naked under the stars playing a flute and dreaming of Coyote's wisdom), I'm not sure what you are talking about when you say "yet you extrapolate your theories against that to the detriment of mankind."
While I strongly disagree with the original fellow who seemed to imply that there is some knowledge which should be forbidden, there is a grain of truth in the notion that perhaps there are types of experiments or areas of research which should not be performed. Not because these areas of research are inherently evil, but because to a civilized society, they are repugnant. But it seems to me these should be limited to areas such as the NAZI research programs on concentration camp Jews in various areas of eugenics and other NAZI medical research programs.
But ultimately, Science and Religion are oil and water: the Science asks "how" and Religion asks "why." And when mixed together with a few spices, the whole thing makes a really tasty combination...
Does biology make a difference in behavior? Sure.
Are there mental diseases which are organic in origin? Of course.
Is there a gene which determines if someone is predestined to be a criminal, a geek, or a cheerleader? Hell, the best we can say about the genes we know about is that there are genes for things like breast cancer--but they only indicate a greater tendency towards breast cancer. And hell, that gene isn't even the biggest indicator that if you are a woman, you will develop breast cancer during your life.
Personally I don't give a damn about the fraud of one researcher. What concerns me is the presumption that our genetic heritage predestines who we are, what we are, and how we shall behave.
Otherwise, if there is a gene for criminal behavior, then we cannot arrest criminals: by virtue of being genetically predestined to a certain behavior pattern, we could argue legally that that predestined behavior is as protected as other birth traits which are legally protected, such as skin color or gender.
Bear in mind that Catholics are not Christians since they worship the virgin whore rather than God.
And Christians worship a bastard? Or just the child of a whore?
Oh, no--that's right: Jesus wasn't a man, dispite being a carpender and born to a woman--he's one face of a three-faced God. That's how most "Christians" who claim Mary was a "virgin whore" get around the fact that they worship idols (the crucifiction, or the aspect of God which is Jesus) in direct violation of one of the ten commandments.
Don't complain too hard about the reverence of the mother of Christ--your trinity or the belief in Jesus who may or may not be a man as the mood strikes you isn't exactly the most sound of theological grounds to be arguing from...
Most (if not all) skinheads/KKK fuckwits/neo-nazi morons are Christian. Coincidence? If you think so, you too are a moron.
Most skinhead/KKK/neo-nazi morons profess to be Christian, but they only use the symbols of Christianity as a front for what is in essence a neo-pagan ego-centric system of beliefs in which Jesus is reduced to a bit player in a pantheon of older Norse or Astru Gods.
Not that I have a problem with neo-paganism per se. But these folks then commit the additional crime of twisting their pseudo-Christian neo-pagan religious system around a twisted and evil interpretation of how the world works, with their sick-ass hides dead center in their own twisted mystical system.
Calling this "Christian" is like calling the Dali Lama the Pope. They're not even on the same continent.
In the unlikely event that you Bible-pounding shitheads get your way and Baby Bush gets elected to office, we would see a nice shiny new nation of perfect white Aryan babies.
Likewise, most Christians are not skinhead/neo-nazi/KKKers. Claiming this is equivalent of claiming that all neo-pagans are evil, or that all Witches should burn for the crime of Witchcraft. Or that all Athiests are in league with a Devil they don't even believe in.
There is a place for people like you...the lion pit at the zoo.
Dude--did you ever think of switching to decaf?
You probably also believe the quote is "money is the root of all evil", when it's actually "the love of money is the root of all evil."
My point being that it's not knowledge which is evil. It's the use of that knowledge, unchecked by ethics or morality, which is evil. Just because you can read on-line how to build an atomic bomb doesn't make you an atomic superpower. And just because you can read on-line how to murder someone and get away with it doesn't make you a hit man.
Science can be a tool for good in our society when it allows us to better ourselves and become closer to Heaven,...
It is not the role of Science to bring us closer to Heaven. It is the role of Science to help us understand how the material world around us appears to work. It is the role of Religion to bring us closer to spiritual perfection. I'm sure you'd probably be very upset if you walked in on your Priest or Preacher using an electron microscope to dissect the Bible.
Yet these "scientists", having already condemned decent Christian morality as being "backward" or "superstitious",...
Many scientists are Christians. Most others profess a belief in God or in a divine spark or a higher power that transcends this material plane. It's difficult to condemn yourself.
What some scientists do condemn is not Christians or Christianity, but the very small few who are in fact backwards or superstitious because they don't understand what Science is about--and attempt to condemn all of Science as a force of Lucifer or somesuch.
Science can be a tool for good in our society when it allows us to better ourselves and become closer to Heaven, but there are things which just aren't meant for people to understand, let along attempt to tamper with.
Of course there are things that man are not meant to understand, but instead must take on Faith. Anyone properly grounded in the underlying philosopical systems which drive the Scientific Method knows this.
However, anyone who knows how Science works knows that these area which man must take on Faith are clearly delimited--things such as the nature of God, the existance of the supernatural, or the nature of the Infinite. It's not that performing scientific experiments on God is Evil--it's that Science, properly defined, clearly says that it cannot explain these supernatural elements. Hense, supernatural.
But to decide that certain material inquiries into certain concrete elements such as the nature of the Human Genome is evil: these are not the pronouncements of God. I don't see "Human Genome Project" mentioned anywhere in the Bible.
No, it's man (specifically, certain "christians" such as yourself) who pronounce certain material lines of research as evil. And as we all know, man is fallable.
Are you so confident in your faith that you believe you can speak for God Himself?
I have extremely little patience in people who fail to understand Jesus's words about witnessing. I have very little patience in people who profess to be "christian", but whose loud "trumphet calls" of "faith" essentially boil down to bashing others. (Jesus Himself had something to say about people like you who do this sort of thing: and it ain't all that good.)
And I have very little patience in people who create strawmen (such as your demonstratably false presumption that scientists are not religious) in order to advocate their own political agenda disguised as a communication presumbably from the Mouth of God Himself.
This syndrome might have genetic origins in some cases.
And in the rest of cases?
It's environmental.
This just goes back to the old nature verses nurture arguments. Further, the reality of any mental disease, including those which have clear-cut biological sources, can often be brought into check through proper counceling, exercise and a good diet. That is, even for biologically caused mental diseases, environment can be used to bring the disease into check.
Seems to me that it's nurture: 19, nature: 2.