The scenario implies the religous man has a correct understanding of religious "truth". Of all the different variations of monotheism (to say nothing of the rest of the world's religions past and present) how do you know which one is the correct version? In life the religious man must rely on faith to guide his actions based on what his believes about the afterlife. If the second guy is right, the religous man has lost the opportunity to live life to the fullest (while alive) without the constraints of his religion.
Another thing, a bit tangential perhaps. morality != religious piety. Which means it is perfectly possible for a person to be virtuous without accepting Christian dogma or any sort of indoctrination.
It isn't in the book because the books author(s) has nothing to do with it. This whole business was the regional school board's idea. It is in the article. Summary: The board had to appease a bunch of parents who complained about the lack of alternatives to evolution in the text. Board came up with the stickers. Another bunch of parents sued with the help of the ACLU.
Such rants have no place in a discussion of broadband ussage in the US.
So you went to shoot people on another continent for the political ideology of your own government. Good for you...big deal. You accomplishments in killing niether fazes me nor elevates you, in fact it shames you.
Now go learn something about being a decent human being. Otherwise, shut up and piss off.
Man, the slashdot Gods really knows how to take the thrill out of a man's accomplishments. Just yesterday, I was giddy with pride for having finally figured out how to get the modem-on-hold function working for my dial up. No I'm depressed and have lost all motivation to attempt the same thing with my Debian partition. Excuse me but I have to go sulk now.
The Chinese are *Not* anti-social. Parent (who always posts as anonymous coward and repeats the same old anti-China rhetoric everytime with the same inflamatory links) may be right about differences from Western cultures, but has no clue what those differences are.
It is really amazing that someone could make rational comments about technology but be so willfully ignorant, intentionally immature, or perhaps just plain malicious when it comes to global cultural awareness.
If you know you are not interested, why do you desire an explanation?
For those who *are* interested, this can have any of several significance. According to an installment of NOVA on PBS called "Origions", a popular theory of planatary evolution holds that a hot molten interior in an inner planet such as Earth is responsible for creating the planetary magnetic field that shields the planet from the abrasive effects of the solar wind. Without this magnetic shield, the sun's radiation strips away the planet's atmosphere and other volatile compounds such as water. It was thought that Mars, being smaller than Earth, had a core that cooled and solidified more quickly and lost it's magnetic field early in it's life. With not magnetic field to shield it's surface, the atmosphere thinned and water became scarce.
If Mars happens to be more geologically active than we once thought, another theory will be needed to account for the signs of a wetter martian past. Quite possibly, we need to reevaulate the level of protection offered by the molten core of our own Earth against the erosive effects of the solar wind.
I suppose this is a bit off topic, But I'm extremely curios about the satellites providing this service. How many of those birds are up there to deliver all this bandwith? I know next to nothing about Sat Comm, but I imagine (due to launch costs and insurance etc.) satellites are expensive to operate. and that cost is passed on to the bandwidth endusers. Wasn't this the reason satellite phone (the ones with giant antennae) are only used sparingly by those in the most remote locations? Is it even a remote possibility that Boeing gets more than they bargain for and all this network access saturate their capacity?
The idea is not that computers are supposed to replace paper and pencil, it is that they enhance or supplement what is already being done. My older sisters learned high school math the traditional way. They learned to get answers analytically by cranking out equations and unfortunately, that's all they learned how to do. There was not real appreciation of the meaning behind the numbers and symbols. They didn't like it at all. They both went into biology related majors and careers. I went to the same school years later and learned calculus with a dynamic teacher who integrated graphic calculators into a curiculum that emphasized not only technical competence with lots of homework sets, but also conceptual mastery of the fundamental ideas by exploring relational meaning and visualization. Without the graphic power of the TI 82s we all had to buy, it would have been at best, time consuming and at worst, just plain impossible for the drawing skills of my teacher to get the same ideas across. Calculus just made sense and was easy to learn with this combined approach.
I'd like to recommend the very exellent GNUWin project. They are a great collection (consisting entirely of GNU software) of applications for not only scientific computing, but also just basic general computing on the Windows platform. Check out the list of applications on the two CD set as well as the current wishlist. It includes many of the programs already named. Latest ISO is the Nov 30 release package.
P.S. I think they're looking for new leadership to continue to project. Please help if you can.
...including one very expensive disco ball made from a failed attempt to produce projection televisions.
So THAT was the inspiration for those commercials with dancers in clean suits!
Re:That is why national Health Care is a Failure
on
Blogging Sweeps China
·
· Score: 1
This is hardly a black and white issue. I never refered to it as one. Note the question: " would *you* be willing to subsidize such religious freedom?" Your personal convictions are obvious through your tone, but you didn't bite the bullet. For what it's worth, here is where I stand in the shade of grey.
Yes, smoking should be illegal. Tobacco products have no redeeming value and in the light of all it's negative effects, there is no reason at all for anyone to be consuming this product.
Aids and other STDs are not an intrinsic part of human sexuality. People don't get sick just by virtue of being gay or male or female. Anyone is capable of choosing to practicing safe sex. Being of one gender or one orientation does not give a person free reigns to engage in risky behaviour. And that should be good enough for any health care system.
I believe a person does not choose his/her sexuality, and so should not be held responsible for the consequences of ones gender or orientation. This is something society needs to accept and integrate into existing institutions. As far as sexuality is concerned, I don't believe there is any personal freedom at all. You are what you are. The rest of the world just has to learn to deal with it.
But religion is different. Religion is not who you are. It is something you're taught and choose to accept. Certainly one should have the freedom to choose. But morality dictates that you must choose within the confines of ethics acceptable to your religion. If your religion condones prosperng at the expense of others, it is an idea you choose to accept.
I believe one should have the wisdom to distinguish between a good idea and a bad one and be rational enough to understand cause and effect. But the very nature of freedom dictates that one should be also free to choose harm. But why should anyone what to choose harm? The only reasons I can concieve of are that you are either too stupid to know any better or you are plain malicious. Since neither are of benefit to anyone, it makes sense to nip both in the bud. As far as I'm concerned, when you excercise the personal freedom to be evil or idiotic, you don't deserve to be a part of any program be it socialist or otherwise.
I think that is a very good private attitude to adopt. In fact, I'm inclined to endorse such an action for public implimentation out of personal conviction. But I feel such a thing is not practical or realistic. The ACLU (or it's equivalent, should there be one) would be up in arms over religious discrimination. Comparing it to anti-smoking commercials just illustrates how silly the whole thing really is. I mean, why do we even bother to continue allowing tobacco products to be produced and sold given it's negative effects? Is there anything of tangible value in cigarettes? The idea of freedom is concieved with the goal of removing obstacles and barriers to growth and development. In contrast, the american attitude of "just because I can" is just an idiotic notion with no redeeming value.
The Boxers were *nothing* like the Falun Gong of today. The boxers, right from the beginning, had political motives. Primarily though, they were anti-foreigners rather than anti-government and were not rebel in the strictest sense of the world. But that is besides the point. It seems to me such a pairing compares apples to oranges. The Boxers incident may be recent relative to the entire history of Chinese culture, but in terms of direct influence (and by this I mean the continuity of cultural consciousness) it was a lifetime ago. The Chinese society of today bares little resemblence to the one of the early 1900s. For the culture of the period, the ideas that sustained the boxers were not strange at all. A more appropriate analogy of the Boxers would be with the Native American "Ghost Dancers" of wounded knee. My personal opinion is that both groups had legitimate grips and were confronting them more or less directly within the expressive limits of their beliefs. Falun Gong, on the other hand, is a cult that spews wishy-washy political criticism under the veil of religious activities. As a religion, it is too inconsistant and immature to be taken seriously. The only thing it has going for it is really the same kind of momentum generated by a good advertising campaign in a large consumer population hungry for a new fad. In spiritual beliefs, I think they're closer to Christian Science. (For a good expose of Christian Science, consult Mark Twain or Martin Gardner.)
But you are right on several points. Falun Gong is blatantly political in private motives if not public expression. And they are not unsophisticated at all. More than any conventional dissident political movement, they have mastered the use of the Internet (instant messaging, usenet, etc.) to effectively coordinate activity and communicate among organizers. The sordidness lies in the fact that ordinary practitioners are being unwittingly manipulated into being foot soldiers for political oposition against the central government. Think about it, if you practice any religion properly within the privacy of your own home, who really cares? Falun Gong, on the other hand, has organized huge crowds of practitioners who perform in public places as publicity stunts to intentionally piss off critics. The Falun Gong movement is a tool for political motives with no real regard for what little spirituality it embodies. I think you're right Beijing knows Falun Gong has ill intentions toward the current regime, but the sad thing is most Falun Gong followers don't.
How about growing up in a society where one can believe in or do whatever one wants so long as it doesn't harm someone else?
Be careful my friend. One is just as free to choose ignorance and self limitation as one is of choosing happiness and prosperity. The thing about Falun Gong is that it takes obsolete ideas that are often detramental to one's well-being and guilding it over with a thin layer of spirituality and metaphysics. As a health regiment, practitioners have more often than not forgone legitimate medical treatment for serious conditions. You can say such tragedies do not harm anyone else, but that is only in the physical sense. Consider the case when out of 70 million practitioners, true medical health care is devoted to treating the late stages and serious consequences of neglected illnesses. The burden to the national health care system would be huge. It would be like Christian Science being revived in America on a massive scale. Everyone begins to engage in medicinal prayers for health. Meanwhile, doctors in hospitals all over the nation are being forced to deal with the expensive and often fatal late stages of easily treatable ailment. Would *you* be willing to subsidize such religious freedom?
Moderation on parent is unfair. The source of the Falun Gong movement is a crackpot by any definition. According to a bbc article:
"Some of Mr Li's pronouncements are certainly unconventional, some would say just plain strange.
He believes aliens walk the Earth and he has reportedly said he can walk through walls and make himself invisible.
Mr Li says that he is a being from from a higher level who has come to help humankind from the destruction it could face as the result of rampant evil. "
Similar characterization from articles in magazines like Newsweek and Times I've read in the past paint him as just another charlatan using a bogus mixture of old traditions and modern fads to spread his own crazy ideas. The tragedy is, China is just begining to open up and so is ripe for reception of this kind of crap. We in the US have had more than our share of lunatics like David Koresh and Marshall Applewhite. By now, we are jaded by bizzare ideas like this. But most chinese are still relatively naive about such things, and so they get caught up in the frenzy. To be fair, you can characterize this thing any way you like. But it is important to keep in mind most slashdotters can't really understand either the Beijing Government or Falun Gong from the perspective of an average Chinese citizen. At the end of the day, most of these political comments from tech enthusiasts are just hot air.
For what it's worth, Gunnm *has* been given the CG treatment before. There is a short movie clip of the Motorball competition. It was included as part of a DVD extra. you can find out how to get it at Reimeika.
pics. cover1.
cover2.
--
For what it's worth, Gunnm *has* been given the CG treatment before. There is a short movie clip of the Motorball competition. It was included as part of a DVD extra. you can find out how to get it at Reimeika.
I've had extreme reservations about this ever since rumors of Cameron helming Gunnm surfaced years ago. However, the man has recently expressed desire to turn this into a franchise, so we are most likely looking at more than just one film. Done properly, I believe a good screenplay can keep the plot tight and interesting without being too myopic.
Slashdot Mirror
The scenario implies the religous man has a correct understanding of religious "truth". Of all the different variations of monotheism (to say nothing of the rest of the world's religions past and present) how do you know which one is the correct version? In life the religious man must rely on faith to guide his actions based on what his believes about the afterlife. If the second guy is right, the religous man has lost the opportunity to live life to the fullest (while alive) without the constraints of his religion.
Another thing, a bit tangential perhaps. morality != religious piety. Which means it is perfectly possible for a person to be virtuous without accepting Christian dogma or any sort of indoctrination.
What if this unknown entity/higher order turns out to be the laws of physics as expressed through probability and quantum mechanics?
It isn't in the book because the books author(s) has nothing to do with it. This whole business was the regional school board's idea. It is in the article. Summary: The board had to appease a bunch of parents who complained about the lack of alternatives to evolution in the text. Board came up with the stickers. Another bunch of parents sued with the help of the ACLU.
I believe that is the same line of reasoning that motivates suicide bombers.
how about rebels and redcoats?
no, wait...
maybe Ghandi and...er...nevermind.
It implements the refinement of a 10 year old technology invented in Belgium.
Such rants have no place in a discussion of broadband ussage in the US.
So you went to shoot people on another continent for the political ideology of your own government. Good for you...big deal. You accomplishments in killing niether fazes me nor elevates you, in fact it shames you.
Now go learn something about being a decent human being. Otherwise, shut up and piss off.
Man, the slashdot Gods really knows how to take the thrill out of a man's accomplishments. Just yesterday, I was giddy with pride for having finally figured out how to get the modem-on-hold function working for my dial up. No I'm depressed and have lost all motivation to attempt the same thing with my Debian partition. Excuse me but I have to go sulk now.
The Chinese are *Not* anti-social. Parent (who always posts as anonymous coward and repeats the same old anti-China rhetoric everytime with the same inflamatory links) may be right about differences from Western cultures, but has no clue what those differences are.
It is really amazing that someone could make rational comments about technology but be so willfully ignorant, intentionally immature, or perhaps just plain malicious when it comes to global cultural awareness.
If you know you are not interested, why do you desire an explanation?
For those who *are* interested, this can have any of several significance. According to an installment of NOVA on PBS called "Origions", a popular theory of planatary evolution holds that a hot molten interior in an inner planet such as Earth is responsible for creating the planetary magnetic field that shields the planet from the abrasive effects of the solar wind. Without this magnetic shield, the sun's radiation strips away the planet's atmosphere and other volatile compounds such as water. It was thought that Mars, being smaller than Earth, had a core that cooled and solidified more quickly and lost it's magnetic field early in it's life. With not magnetic field to shield it's surface, the atmosphere thinned and water became scarce.
If Mars happens to be more geologically active than we once thought, another theory will be needed to account for the signs of a wetter martian past. Quite possibly, we need to reevaulate the level of protection offered by the molten core of our own Earth against the erosive effects of the solar wind.
I suppose this is a bit off topic, But I'm extremely curios about the satellites providing this service. How many of those birds are up there to deliver all this bandwith? I know next to nothing about Sat Comm, but I imagine (due to launch costs and insurance etc.) satellites are expensive to operate. and that cost is passed on to the bandwidth endusers. Wasn't this the reason satellite phone (the ones with giant antennae) are only used sparingly by those in the most remote locations? Is it even a remote possibility that Boeing gets more than they bargain for and all this network access saturate their capacity?
The idea is not that computers are supposed to replace paper and pencil, it is that they enhance or supplement what is already being done. My older sisters learned high school math the traditional way. They learned to get answers analytically by cranking out equations and unfortunately, that's all they learned how to do. There was not real appreciation of the meaning behind the numbers and symbols. They didn't like it at all. They both went into biology related majors and careers. I went to the same school years later and learned calculus with a dynamic teacher who integrated graphic calculators into a curiculum that emphasized not only technical competence with lots of homework sets, but also conceptual mastery of the fundamental ideas by exploring relational meaning and visualization. Without the graphic power of the TI 82s we all had to buy, it would have been at best, time consuming and at worst, just plain impossible for the drawing skills of my teacher to get the same ideas across. Calculus just made sense and was easy to learn with this combined approach.
P.S. I think they're looking for new leadership to continue to project. Please help if you can.
...including one very expensive disco ball made from a failed attempt to produce projection televisions.
So THAT was the inspiration for those commercials with dancers in clean suits!
Yes, smoking should be illegal. Tobacco products have no redeeming value and in the light of all it's negative effects, there is no reason at all for anyone to be consuming this product.
Aids and other STDs are not an intrinsic part of human sexuality. People don't get sick just by virtue of being gay or male or female. Anyone is capable of choosing to practicing safe sex. Being of one gender or one orientation does not give a person free reigns to engage in risky behaviour. And that should be good enough for any health care system.
I believe a person does not choose his/her sexuality, and so should not be held responsible for the consequences of ones gender or orientation. This is something society needs to accept and integrate into existing institutions. As far as sexuality is concerned, I don't believe there is any personal freedom at all. You are what you are. The rest of the world just has to learn to deal with it.
But religion is different. Religion is not who you are. It is something you're taught and choose to accept. Certainly one should have the freedom to choose. But morality dictates that you must choose within the confines of ethics acceptable to your religion. If your religion condones prosperng at the expense of others, it is an idea you choose to accept.
I believe one should have the wisdom to distinguish between a good idea and a bad one and be rational enough to understand cause and effect. But the very nature of freedom dictates that one should be also free to choose harm. But why should anyone what to choose harm? The only reasons I can concieve of are that you are either too stupid to know any better or you are plain malicious. Since neither are of benefit to anyone, it makes sense to nip both in the bud. As far as I'm concerned, when you excercise the personal freedom to be evil or idiotic, you don't deserve to be a part of any program be it socialist or otherwise.
I think that is a very good private attitude to adopt. In fact, I'm inclined to endorse such an action for public implimentation out of personal conviction. But I feel such a thing is not practical or realistic. The ACLU (or it's equivalent, should there be one) would be up in arms over religious discrimination. Comparing it to anti-smoking commercials just illustrates how silly the whole thing really is. I mean, why do we even bother to continue allowing tobacco products to be produced and sold given it's negative effects? Is there anything of tangible value in cigarettes? The idea of freedom is concieved with the goal of removing obstacles and barriers to growth and development. In contrast, the american attitude of "just because I can" is just an idiotic notion with no redeeming value.
The Boxers were *nothing* like the Falun Gong of today. The boxers, right from the beginning, had political motives. Primarily though, they were anti-foreigners rather than anti-government and were not rebel in the strictest sense of the world. But that is besides the point. It seems to me such a pairing compares apples to oranges. The Boxers incident may be recent relative to the entire history of Chinese culture, but in terms of direct influence (and by this I mean the continuity of cultural consciousness) it was a lifetime ago. The Chinese society of today bares little resemblence to the one of the early 1900s. For the culture of the period, the ideas that sustained the boxers were not strange at all. A more appropriate analogy of the Boxers would be with the Native American "Ghost Dancers" of wounded knee. My personal opinion is that both groups had legitimate grips and were confronting them more or less directly within the expressive limits of their beliefs. Falun Gong, on the other hand, is a cult that spews wishy-washy political criticism under the veil of religious activities. As a religion, it is too inconsistant and immature to be taken seriously. The only thing it has going for it is really the same kind of momentum generated by a good advertising campaign in a large consumer population hungry for a new fad. In spiritual beliefs, I think they're closer to Christian Science. (For a good expose of Christian Science, consult Mark Twain or Martin Gardner.)
But you are right on several points. Falun Gong is blatantly political in private motives if not public expression. And they are not unsophisticated at all. More than any conventional dissident political movement, they have mastered the use of the Internet (instant messaging, usenet, etc.) to effectively coordinate activity and communicate among organizers. The sordidness lies in the fact that ordinary practitioners are being unwittingly manipulated into being foot soldiers for political oposition against the central government. Think about it, if you practice any religion properly within the privacy of your own home, who really cares? Falun Gong, on the other hand, has organized huge crowds of practitioners who perform in public places as publicity stunts to intentionally piss off critics. The Falun Gong movement is a tool for political motives with no real regard for what little spirituality it embodies. I think you're right Beijing knows Falun Gong has ill intentions toward the current regime, but the sad thing is most Falun Gong followers don't.
Be careful my friend. One is just as free to choose ignorance and self limitation as one is of choosing happiness and prosperity. The thing about Falun Gong is that it takes obsolete ideas that are often detramental to one's well-being and guilding it over with a thin layer of spirituality and metaphysics. As a health regiment, practitioners have more often than not forgone legitimate medical treatment for serious conditions. You can say such tragedies do not harm anyone else, but that is only in the physical sense. Consider the case when out of 70 million practitioners, true medical health care is devoted to treating the late stages and serious consequences of neglected illnesses. The burden to the national health care system would be huge. It would be like Christian Science being revived in America on a massive scale. Everyone begins to engage in medicinal prayers for health. Meanwhile, doctors in hospitals all over the nation are being forced to deal with the expensive and often fatal late stages of easily treatable ailment. Would *you* be willing to subsidize such religious freedom?
"Some of Mr Li's pronouncements are certainly unconventional, some would say just plain strange. He believes aliens walk the Earth and he has reportedly said he can walk through walls and make himself invisible. Mr Li says that he is a being from from a higher level who has come to help humankind from the destruction it could face as the result of rampant evil. "
Similar characterization from articles in magazines like Newsweek and Times I've read in the past paint him as just another charlatan using a bogus mixture of old traditions and modern fads to spread his own crazy ideas. The tragedy is, China is just begining to open up and so is ripe for reception of this kind of crap. We in the US have had more than our share of lunatics like David Koresh and Marshall Applewhite. By now, we are jaded by bizzare ideas like this. But most chinese are still relatively naive about such things, and so they get caught up in the frenzy. To be fair, you can characterize this thing any way you like. But it is important to keep in mind most slashdotters can't really understand either the Beijing Government or Falun Gong from the perspective of an average Chinese citizen. At the end of the day, most of these political comments from tech enthusiasts are just hot air.no, you perv! the cg movie bit is the last item at the bottom of the page that can't be scrolled to.
For what it's worth, Gunnm *has* been given the CG treatment before. There is a short movie clip of the Motorball competition. It was included as part of a DVD extra. you can find out how to get it at Reimeika . . .
pics.
cover1
cover2
--
brevity is best. I'll direct you to one of my previous comments .
brevity is best. I'll direct you to one of my previous comments .
pics.
cover1
cover2
I've had extreme reservations about this ever since rumors of Cameron helming Gunnm surfaced years ago. However, the man has recently expressed desire to turn this into a franchise, so we are most likely looking at more than just one film. Done properly, I believe a good screenplay can keep the plot tight and interesting without being too myopic.