And during these negotiations you expect hostilities to magically cease?
At that point in the war, the Japanese were very limited in their offensive capabilities. They didn't have fuel for planes, they didn't have much left in the way of ships. Ceasing hostilities would have been largely a matter of the US slowing its advance.
As several posts have pointed out, the Japanese military was ready to fight to the last man.
Surrender negotiations may not have succeeded, but both other options would have still been open had they failed.
Inevitable? Hardly. Japan was already making peace overtures. But the US wanted unconditional surrender and wanted the war with Japan to end before the Russians got involved.
Re:More money than brains I guess
on
Re-Pet a Reality
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· Score: 1
With the industrial revolution we have gone from 1 in 2 people working to feed the world to 1 in 20 needed to feed the world.
That was in fact my point. Increasing food production capacity has not solved the problem. Why should further increases solve it?
As long as the rich are spending money it is helping everybody.
How about if we streamline the process and just not give them all the wealth in the first place? I say that somewhat jokingly, since I don't have a particular economic plan in mind. My point is that the rich are not the origin of wealth. The fact that its better when they hoard less of it does not mean they are integral to economic success.
Re:More money than brains I guess
on
Re-Pet a Reality
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· Score: 1
There are plenty of people in this world who think you and I are greedy for what we have. If you choose to look down on others then you have to accpet the criticisms of those who look down you.
I'm not speaking of judging people but of judging actions. I'm also not claiming that my morality is universal. I'm telling you what my moralilty says about this. You no doubt have moral judgements as well. One of them seems to be that you shouldn't share them with others. I don't have that one because I think that a shared morality is important for society and discussing moral judgements helps in this.
It would be illogical to expect everyone on the earth to lower their standings to a common level.
Its illogical to expect that people won't kill each other. Just because we can't reach that goal doesn't mean we can't strive for it. I would not, btw, say that the goal is to achieve exact equality, but to have it a more reasonable level, such as where everyone can eat at the cost of some not being able to resurrect their cats.
Re:More money than brains I guess
on
Re-Pet a Reality
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· Score: 1
We already have the technology to feed the world. The problem is that we do not choose to do so. More technology will not change this.
Re:More money than brains I guess
on
Re-Pet a Reality
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· Score: 1
That line of logic can be applied to every convenience that we have beyond the basic necessities
Well yes, thats true. You may consider it absurd, but a number of people have reached that conclusion, Jesus of Nazareth being a prominent example. Me, I'm no saint. But you don't need to be one to avoid the degree of wastefulness like this sort of thing. You could literally save people's lives with the money spent on creating this cat.
Do you own a microwave?
Actually, no I don't;)
Re:to all the nay-sayers out there...
on
Re-Pet a Reality
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· Score: 0
This is still America, the last time I looked. People should be able to spend their money any damned way they want without judgement or interference from the do-gooder charity police.
You have the right to spend how you want, but you don't have the right to do it without other people judging you. Freedom of thought and expression are also part of America, not just freedom to spend money.
Re:More money than brains I guess
on
Re-Pet a Reality
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· Score: 1, Troll
As to the wisdom of spending $50k on a cat - any cat - I'd say that it depends a lot on your overall financial picture.
Put a needy kid through college...or get a kitten. Supply starving villagers with a herd of cattle...or get a kitten Save a child from starving to death...or get a kitten
Regardless of how much you earn, I don't see how blowing money of a frivoulous project like this could ever be called wise.
This is exactly how totalitarian regimes are born; the war between Eurasia and Oceania has already begun.. Orwell was right, just 20 years off.
If I remember correctly, it was nationalism not religion which was used to fool the people in 1984, so this does not bear out the point you were trying to make. In any case, what I really meant was that there is no correlation with any particular religion. All popular religions are equally vulnerable to exploitation by authority. I think this has more to do with the gullibility of people rather than the nature of religion.
His point was that a country can be corrupt AND Christian, not that countries become corrupt from Christianity. Governmental corruption and the religion of the population are not directly correlated.
Straw man argument? It wasn't an argument at all. I was simply making fun of your obvious lack of concern for his wellbeing accompanied by demands that he show consideration for you.
As for his credibility...he may be in danger of loosing his credibility as a patient but really, who the fuck cares? Are you in charge of his medical care? If you don't want to give him advice, don't.
Slackware was what got me into Linux, which got me an internship, which got me a job, which saved me from being an unemployed philosophy major. Thanks Pat!
If you read the whole history, he actually seems more like the opposite (hypercondriac?). He spent a long time ignoring the problem or treating it just enough to make the symptoms go away. All the theories he came up with were not concocted prior to seeking medical opinion or despite their conclusions as you might expect with a hypocondriac. It was only when doctors were not able to diagnose his problem that he got desperate enough to try to do research himself.
Because you chose to read that story, he now owes you an explanation? Did you actually post some helpful advice? Did you even post a supportive comment? No, you didn't, and he doesn't owe you shit.
Heh, maybe the fact that the replies he got were mostly just alot of scolding for not managing his health better has convinced him to keep these things private from now on. Compassion does not seem to be a big priority with alot of the slashdot community.
You can't rerun the Battle of Hastings to test whether or not Norman the Conqueror really invaded in 1066.
I wasn't trying to suggest that history was a science, but to the question of whether history should be influenced by science. Clearly it is. If I submit an article to historical journal about the lost city of Foo, I will be expected to have some evidence that Foo existed. If my evidence does not hold up to scientific scrutinity, my research will be dismissed. If I say that that the lost city of Foo was destroyed by centaurs, people will not believe it because biology tells us that centaurs almost certainly did not exist.
Christianity deals with revealed knowledge which is either the absolute truth or lies. In fact, if anything, it is science that is left with beliefs and religion with either the absolute truth or an absolute lie.
The difference I had in mind in constrasting belief vs. knowledge was an internal difference between relying on faith vs. direct experience. Honestly, I didn't give it enough thought. On second thought I don't think that a distinction between belief and knowledge really makes sense.
Truth is the states of affairs in the presumed `real world'. Agreement of someone statements with some assumed state of affairs is `correctness'.
If truth is the state of affairs, then nothing you can say or think can be true, as what you say are just words or thoughts about the state of affairs. Its a valid defintion for truth, but not a terribly useful one. The common use of the word truth usually involves both a label slapped on the reality, and the agreement of our words with that reality. They are seperate ideas sharing a single term. The ultimate reality is unknowable, since knowledge is modeling of the thing, not the thing itself. This opens the question of how we could ever confirm that our words or thoughts correspond to a reality at all - they can only correspond with other words or thought. Dead end! Point is, using words like truth will not get you anywhere. Best to just leave it alone and concentrate on being internally consistant.
Re:how about "creationism" crap?
on
Bad Science Awards
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· Score: 1, Insightful
Can what you learn in Biology affect what you learn in history or sociology or business? Should it.
Absolutely. In fact, thats pretty much separates myth from history, sociology from superstition. Both sociology and history involve evaluating evidence in the same way that biology does. Can you say the same thing for religion?
You argue that the knowledge of science and the knowledge of religion can't co-operate together. Can you provide me with the an argument as to why you think that is?
I think the point is that you can't actually have any knowledge of religion at all. You can only have beliefs.
Unlike a real parasite, malware's goal isn't just to survive and reproduce - it goal is to generate revenue. I don't see how a company can generate revenue by secretly installing truely benign software on your system.
Unless you have damp course (to stop water from the soil) you will have serious problems with our friends the fungi.
Can someone explain this? I'm guessing it has something to do with the peculiar necessity for basements which I've never understood. I'm sure they must do something for a house beside provide a place to experiment with drop ceilings and explore the joys of flooding.
Cardboard tends to be pretty flexible, and the house is not rigidly fastened to the ground so I wouldn't be suprised to see these things get through an earthquake almost unharmed. As for rain, well they use a fly similar to what you use with a tent so, short of hurricanes, it shouldn't be a problem. Cold on the other hand seems like it would be, since insulation doesn't seem to be part of the picture.
A few things about that explanation don't make sense:
Depending on the rainfall (or lack thereof) at the time, this can build up and kill trees, most notably at the bottom end of watersheds where acid tends to accumulate
The pH of rain in the areas has measurably increased. According to that theory rain has remained the same.
Also, acid rain damage in trees is seen primarily at high alititudes, not in valleys.
Furthermore, someone finally pointed out that trees absorb most of their water (with whatever chemicals it carries) through their roots, NOT through their leaves
This is not relevant as they are dying from their leaves being damaged by the acid, not from poisoning.
someone observed that the tree die-off happened not only "downwind" from factories
Sulfur dioxide and other pollutants are now dispersed broadly by the tall chimneys of modern factories. This was to counteract the very visible occurance of acid damage to structures (and people) located around factories.
At that point, closer examination of the "factory damaged" areas showed that they too had naturally high-sulphur soil conditions, at a concentration far in excess of anything a factory and a passing cloudbank could generate... and that periodic damage had been occurring as far back as vegetation patterns could be tracked, not merely since the onset of industrialization.
Actually what they've found is that acid rain damage tends to occur in areas that lack limestone deposits. Limestone is basic and tends to neutralize the excess acids in the rain.
Also, if this happened periodically, why had no one noticed them before? If the period is so long was so long that it had not occured in recent history, then we must be experiencing some very remarkable increase in rain that somehow went unnoticed.
And after all that, the handwaving about "acid rain" rather abruptly stopped
Actually what happened was that people lost interest in the problem, not that the problem went away. Some new emission standards were put into place, but acid rain is still a problem.
Slashdot Mirror
Long term or short term? Short term the rich win. Long term you get revolutions and nobody wins.
And during these negotiations you expect hostilities to magically cease?
At that point in the war, the Japanese were very limited in their offensive capabilities. They didn't have fuel for planes, they didn't have much left in the way of ships. Ceasing hostilities would have been largely a matter of the US slowing its advance.
As several posts have pointed out, the Japanese military was ready to fight to the last man.
Surrender negotiations may not have succeeded, but both other options would have still been open had they failed.
Possibly it saved lives in comparison to an invasion. Seems unlikely it saved lives in comparison to negotiating a surrender.
Inevitable? Hardly. Japan was already making peace overtures. But the US wanted unconditional surrender and wanted the war with Japan to end before the Russians got involved.
With the industrial revolution we have gone from 1 in 2 people working to feed the world to 1 in 20 needed to feed the world.
That was in fact my point. Increasing food production capacity has not solved the problem. Why should further increases solve it?
As long as the rich are spending money it is helping everybody.
How about if we streamline the process and just not give them all the wealth in the first place? I say that somewhat jokingly, since I don't have a particular economic plan in mind. My point is that the rich are not the origin of wealth. The fact that its better when they hoard less of it does not mean they are integral to economic success.
There are plenty of people in this world who think you and I are greedy for what we have. If you choose to look down on others then you have to accpet the criticisms of those who look down you.
I'm not speaking of judging people but of judging actions. I'm also not claiming that my morality is universal. I'm telling you what my moralilty says about this. You no doubt have moral judgements as well. One of them seems to be that you shouldn't share them with others. I don't have that one because I think that a shared morality is important for society and discussing moral judgements helps in this.
It would be illogical to expect everyone on the earth to lower their standings to a common level.
Its illogical to expect that people won't kill each other. Just because we can't reach that goal doesn't mean we can't strive for it. I would not, btw, say that the goal is to achieve exact equality, but to have it a more reasonable level, such as where everyone can eat at the cost of some not being able to resurrect their cats.
We already have the technology to feed the world. The problem is that we do not choose to do so. More technology will not change this.
That line of logic can be applied to every convenience that we have beyond the basic necessities
;)
Well yes, thats true. You may consider it absurd, but a number of people have reached that conclusion, Jesus of Nazareth being a prominent example. Me, I'm no saint. But you don't need to be one to avoid the degree of wastefulness like this sort of thing. You could literally save people's lives with the money spent on creating this cat.
Do you own a microwave?
Actually, no I don't
This is still America, the last time I looked. People should be able to spend their money any damned way they want without judgement or interference from the do-gooder charity police.
You have the right to spend how you want, but you don't have the right to do it without other people judging you. Freedom of thought and expression are also part of America, not just freedom to spend money.
As to the wisdom of spending $50k on a cat - any cat - I'd say that it depends a lot on your overall financial picture.
Put a needy kid through college...or get a kitten.
Supply starving villagers with a herd of cattle...or get a kitten
Save a child from starving to death...or get a kitten
Regardless of how much you earn, I don't see how blowing money of a frivoulous project like this could ever be called wise.
This is exactly how totalitarian regimes are born; the war between Eurasia and Oceania has already begun.. Orwell was right, just 20 years off.
If I remember correctly, it was nationalism not religion which was used to fool the people in 1984, so this does not bear out the point you were trying to make. In any case, what I really meant was that there is no correlation with any particular religion. All popular religions are equally vulnerable to exploitation by authority. I think this has more to do with the gullibility of people rather than the nature of religion.
His point was that a country can be corrupt AND Christian, not that countries become corrupt from Christianity. Governmental corruption and the religion of the population are not directly correlated.
Nice strawman argument
Straw man argument? It wasn't an argument at all. I was simply making fun of your obvious lack of concern for his wellbeing accompanied by demands that he show consideration for you.
As for his credibility...he may be in danger of loosing his credibility as a patient but really, who the fuck cares? Are you in charge of his medical care? If you don't want to give him advice, don't.
Slackware was what got me into Linux, which got me an internship, which got me a job, which saved me from being an unemployed philosophy major. Thanks Pat!
There's been some legitimate concern if this guy is really sick, or just a hypochondriac.
Wow with that kind of concern for his wellbeing being shown, he must be pretty heartless to refrain from keeping his "fans" updated?
The interest is one of trust. If the guy does the same thing in 6 months, are we to believe him?
How many years has he been producing Slackware? How many times has he asked for help? Yeah, he's really starting to be a burden.
If you read the whole history, he actually seems more like the opposite (hypercondriac?). He spent a long time ignoring the problem or treating it just enough to make the symptoms go away. All the theories he came up with were not concocted prior to seeking medical opinion or despite their conclusions as you might expect with a hypocondriac. It was only when doctors were not able to diagnose his problem that he got desperate enough to try to do research himself.
Because you chose to read that story, he now owes you an explanation? Did you actually post some helpful advice? Did you even post a supportive comment? No, you didn't, and he doesn't owe you shit.
Heh, maybe the fact that the replies he got were mostly just alot of scolding for not managing his health better has convinced him to keep these things private from now on. Compassion does not seem to be a big priority with alot of the slashdot community.
You can't rerun the Battle of Hastings to test whether or not Norman the Conqueror really invaded in 1066.
I wasn't trying to suggest that history was a science, but to the question of whether history should be influenced by science. Clearly it is. If I submit an article to historical journal about the lost city of Foo, I will be expected to have some evidence that Foo existed. If my evidence does not hold up to scientific scrutinity, my research will be dismissed. If I say that that the lost city of Foo was destroyed by centaurs, people will not believe it because biology tells us that centaurs almost certainly did not exist.
Christianity deals with revealed knowledge which is either the absolute truth or lies. In fact, if anything, it is science that is left with beliefs and religion with either the absolute truth or an absolute lie.
The difference I had in mind in constrasting belief vs. knowledge was an internal difference between relying on faith vs. direct experience. Honestly, I didn't give it enough thought. On second thought I don't think that a distinction between belief and knowledge really makes sense.
Truth is the states of affairs in the presumed `real world'. Agreement of someone statements with some assumed state of affairs is `correctness'.
If truth is the state of affairs, then nothing you can say or think can be true, as what you say are just words or thoughts about the state of affairs. Its a valid defintion for truth, but not a terribly useful one. The common use of the word truth usually involves both a label slapped on the reality, and the agreement of our words with that reality. They are seperate ideas sharing a single term. The ultimate reality is unknowable, since knowledge is modeling of the thing, not the thing itself. This opens the question of how we could ever confirm that our words or thoughts correspond to a reality at all - they can only correspond with other words or thought. Dead end! Point is, using words like truth will not get you anywhere. Best to just leave it alone and concentrate on being internally consistant.
Can what you learn in Biology affect what you learn in history or sociology or business? Should it.
Absolutely. In fact, thats pretty much separates myth from history, sociology from superstition. Both sociology and history involve evaluating evidence in the same way that biology does. Can you say the same thing for religion?
You argue that the knowledge of science and the knowledge of religion can't co-operate together. Can you provide me with the an argument as to why you think that is?
I think the point is that you can't actually have any knowledge of religion at all. You can only have beliefs.
Unlike a real parasite, malware's goal isn't just to survive and reproduce - it goal is to generate revenue. I don't see how a company can generate revenue by secretly installing truely benign software on your system.
Unless you have damp course (to stop water from the soil) you will have serious problems with our friends the fungi.
Can someone explain this? I'm guessing it has something to do with the peculiar necessity for basements which I've never understood. I'm sure they must do something for a house beside provide a place to experiment with drop ceilings and explore the joys of flooding.
Cardboard tends to be pretty flexible, and the house is not rigidly fastened to the ground so I wouldn't be suprised to see these things get through an earthquake almost unharmed. As for rain, well they use a fly similar to what you use with a tent so, short of hurricanes, it shouldn't be a problem. Cold on the other hand seems like it would be, since insulation doesn't seem to be part of the picture.
A few things about that explanation don't make sense:
Depending on the rainfall (or lack thereof) at the time, this can build up and kill trees, most notably at the bottom end of watersheds where acid tends to accumulate
The pH of rain in the areas has measurably increased. According to that theory rain has remained the same.
Also, acid rain damage in trees is seen primarily at high alititudes, not in valleys.
Furthermore, someone finally pointed out that trees absorb most of their water (with whatever chemicals it carries) through their roots, NOT through their leaves
This is not relevant as they are dying from their leaves being damaged by the acid, not from poisoning.
someone observed that the tree die-off happened not only "downwind" from factories
Sulfur dioxide and other pollutants are now dispersed broadly by the tall chimneys of modern factories. This was to counteract the very visible occurance of acid damage to structures (and people) located around factories.
At that point, closer examination of the "factory damaged" areas showed that they too had naturally high-sulphur soil conditions, at a concentration far in excess of anything a factory and a passing cloudbank could generate... and that periodic damage had been occurring as far back as vegetation patterns could be tracked, not merely since the onset of industrialization.
Actually what they've found is that acid rain damage tends to occur in areas that lack limestone deposits. Limestone is basic and tends to neutralize the excess acids in the rain.
Also, if this happened periodically, why had no one noticed them before? If the period is so long was so long that it had not occured in recent history, then we must be experiencing some very remarkable increase in rain that somehow went unnoticed.
And after all that, the handwaving about "acid rain" rather abruptly stopped
Actually what happened was that people lost interest in the problem, not that the problem went away. Some new emission standards were put into place, but acid rain is still a problem.