Corvids are as, or may even be more, intelligent. There's the classic story of the Caledonian crow who custom fashioned it's own tool to get at grubs, a trait previously only known to primates, to cite one example. Others abound, but I'm feeling too lazy right now to go hunt them down. Heckle and Jeckle would've outsmarted Wiley E. Coyote any day of the week.
I can understand this. One one hand, I have a definite carnivorous streak. I love meat. Steak? Yum!! OTOH, I also am quite fond of animals. Rather than be the guy out in the woods with a 30-06 rifle hunting a buck, I'd rather be petting it (granted it wouldn't happen, and I could get gored). I don't think I could bring myself to shoot an animal unless I was actually badly in need of food or protecting myself. So.. I have the "benefit" of being insulated from the ugliness of it all, though I do recall that I swore off meat for all of 2 days after watching Faces of Death Vol2, where they showed the inside of a slaughterhouse.
Eating meat does not make us evil, it's just part of nature. And - despite the lack of humane treatment in some cases, I've seen some filmed kills in the wild, of lions or crocodiles snagging caribou and it was none too pleasant for the prey, especially if two predators fight over it, or they get away and later die of the injuries..or both.
But I can imagine a time in the future when society might look back at cattle ranching, slaughterhouses, and butchery as barbaric and unimaginable, even "gross". ("Eww, they ate a real animal that was once alive..?")
/\ This.
If it were homeopathic, it wouldn't have 0.1% capsaicin, it'd have something like 0.00000001% capsaicin.
To be honest, I can consider feasible many things that aren't currently backed by scientific evidence, but homeopathy ain't one of them. I don't know how it's advocates can say that the more diluted something is, the stronger it is, with straight face.
Real Science no, of course not. Using boiled willow bark as a remedy for various ailments based on praxis, very very likely.
As for the killing of witches - its worth noting that the word translated as "witch" is in Hebrew the word for "poisoner" - but that to ignorant Europeans the two meant the same thing.
Actually that's a modern misunderstanding. It was the Septuagint, a Greek translation (and the first translation of the Torah) that created the label for poisoner, not the original Hebrew Torah, or Pentateuch.
The original Hebrew word itself used in that passage was "M'khashephah" which seems not to translate all that well, though some interpretations are, "whisperer", or "spellcaster", the root of the word having something to do with cutting off.. but wasn't "poisoner", in any case. The Greeks had no good equivalent for the term and so went with "pharmakos ". That's where the poisoner thing came in.
http://thedomainandrealms.0catch.com/Library/witch.htmlhttp://www.necroticobsession.com/forums/76/43022
Unfortunately the original site proteuscoven.org is no longer around for reference, which is where the above two pages got their info.
I haven't posted anything on this thread until now, but I'll put forth a thought: I think it's particular to solar tech. We've been told about the next new solar breakthrough so many times now over the decades, but most deliveries have fallen short of the claims; we're just jaded. While solar tech has certainly improved, we've yet to see the kind of results expected (or hoped for) some time ago, kinda like, it's 2012, where are our Jetsons-eque flying cars?
The history of science is chock full of naysayers, even educated ones, who really should've known better, but once in a while, I imagine some naysayers are right, too.
Exactly. My mom just died last November, after languishing in a nursing home for 10 freakin' years with it. It's surprising she lasted that long, because she was pretty bad off when my dad put her in. (He died 5 years later.)
In those last years, she was pretty much a zombie, or a human shell, hadn't made a coherent sentence in years, and finally stopped even trying to speak a single word.. she seemed to sleep a lot, but I don't know everything that happened when I wasn't visiting. She so didn't deserve that tortuous end, not that anyone does. I would hope I'd die long before it got that bad.
If you don't have your own mind, what do you have? Is there really even a "you" anymore? I imagine few things are worse than getting slowly erased over a number of years.
Dunno what you guys were so unnerved about, unless it was a black widow or a brown recluse...or maybe something huge and gross like a wolf spider - which are pretty cool, actually. Personally, it's cockroaches that skeeve me out. And crickets, for some odd reason.
In 1964, there was another one nicknamed Prometheus that was believed to be the oldest tree. The US Forest Service sent a guy in with a chainsaw to cut it down so they could verify its age. It turned out to be over 4900 years old. No older bristlecones have been found. Other forestry people were sufficiently outraged by this that it turned into a standard textbook-level warning, and people who study the oldest bristlecones refuse to report their locations, to protect them from the Forest Service as well as from common vandals.
I know it's "just" a tree, and I'm not one to go cavorting about with greenpeace and whatnot, but wtf? What kind of stupidity is that- I can't believe they did that. The thing was close to 5,000 years old and they just killed it out of curiosity?
Anything that lasts that long deserves some respect.
About 11 years ago, I had an old car of mine serviced, and for whatever reason, the next day after getting it back I decided to pop the hood ("bonnet" for you UK'ers). There was the mechanics hammer just sitting on the air filter cover. I'm not even sure what he needed a hammer for. Unlike this story though, I lucked out and no damage occurred, except my confidence in that car shop.
Looking back at all those times you... didn't just give up while driving and drift into oncoming traffic, was it worth it?
Only because I didn't want to feel responsible for the death of the guy coming the other way.:-D
But seriously, yeah, ultimately, there really is no point to existence but to exist while you can.. if you can enjoy it.. so why not make the most of it?
Anyone philosophically trying to look for a point to it all is like the little kid that just keeps asking, "why" to every answer you gave for the previous "why?". There is no good answer.
It's the journey, not the destination.
Maybe I should rethink my priorities. These last couple of posts should've made me think of bread, but instead the first thing that came to mind was alcoholic beverages.
Point taken, but at work, watching videos is generally frowned upon. I took a chance and peeked at only the first minute or so. The thing didn't look big enough to accommodate a full sized person even when it wasn't folded, much less folded... unless it was a scale model.
Your memory serves correctly. Islam forked off from Judaism with Ismael, the brother of Issac, two sons of Abraham.
That's why the 3 large monotheistic faiths are often referred to as the Abrahamic religions. God=Allah, and muslims look upon Jesus as a blessed prophet, interestingly, though not as christians see him, of course.
YHWH reads like a totally different God in the New Testament. This is ironic, because the spread of christianity with the "new gentler" God, is done via Constantine, the Roman emperor who conquered his enemies in god's name, and then Clovis, the pagan who converted to Catholicism, leader of the early Franks, who did the same by warring against all competing tribes and converting them, who in turn was followed by a host of kings, from Charles "The Hammer" Martel to Charlemagne who ordered the pagan massacre at Verden. So much for the peaceful thing. Best laid plans and all that.
Of course, Islam hasn't a peaceful history either; being a proselytizing Abrahamic religion, it too has used extreme violence to spread throughout it's history, though it's politically incorrect to acknowledge this in today's climate.
Why is it we humans make war for profit, but not for gross violations of human rights?
I think because, even if we did, people would still claim we did it for profit of some kind.
Everyone very quickly forgot or downplayed not only how despicable Saddam Hussein was, (they'll just mention it here and there as gratuitous lip service and move on), but I haven't heard a peep in years about those two twisted sick fuck sons of his, Uday and Qusay. They were monsters the world is better off without.
Anyway, there's oil in Iran, so any war or aggressive action there will be linked to it regardless of the catalyst or proposed justification.
Hitler was not atheist in the slightest, he made many references to Jesus in his speeches. He also got to power in part thanks to support from right wing social conservatives and Christian fundies. In his speech to justify giving him emergency powers he called on the neeed to protect germany from socialism and atheism.
You are right about Stalin being an atheist, but it wasn't atheism that motivated his actions. He just generally "eliminated" anybody who had power he could not control. The church was just one of many examples.
While your first sentence is correct, your second and third are questionable or inaccurate: "protect germany from socialism".. what do you think the Nazi party was? National Socialist German Workers' Party. He didn't try to protect Germany from socialism, he wanted to protect it against communism -and, I might add, capitalism, as well, which he also regarded as foul.
Regarding the "right wing" thing, Hitler denounced capitalism and a host of other things usually associated with the right. Granted, however, he also railed against a number of things associated with the left. I'd say he was neither truly right wing or left wing, the nazis had elements of both and neither. Scholars of the day considered him politically syncratic.
Being unfamiliar with this "theory", I followed the link. Holy hell, do they beat around the bush! I still don't have any idea what they're talking about (other than claiming modern science is deeply fragmented and flawed), but I read enough to decide I don't care.
I had never been out in a dark sky area until I went up to Maine about 15 years ago, for summer vacation (now we go every year). I recall looking at the night sky going "Wow- who knew there were so many stars?", but wondered what weird kind of cloud I was looking at, until I realized it was the arm of the Milky Way. That was amazing. It didn't appear quite as breathtaking as the time lapse pics you see, but it was still awesome.
In my home area, I can't see jack shit - too close to Philly. And I had the same problem with neighbors someone mentioned above, they had these blinding porch lights, but it seems they only used them when I brought my scope out. That ended when they got foreclosed on - karma's a bitch.
Slashdot Mirror
Corvids are as, or may even be more, intelligent. There's the classic story of the Caledonian crow who custom fashioned it's own tool to get at grubs, a trait previously only known to primates, to cite one example. Others abound, but I'm feeling too lazy right now to go hunt them down. Heckle and Jeckle would've outsmarted Wiley E. Coyote any day of the week.
I can understand this. One one hand, I have a definite carnivorous streak. I love meat. Steak? Yum!! OTOH, I also am quite fond of animals. Rather than be the guy out in the woods with a 30-06 rifle hunting a buck, I'd rather be petting it (granted it wouldn't happen, and I could get gored). I don't think I could bring myself to shoot an animal unless I was actually badly in need of food or protecting myself. So.. I have the "benefit" of being insulated from the ugliness of it all, though I do recall that I swore off meat for all of 2 days after watching Faces of Death Vol2, where they showed the inside of a slaughterhouse.
Eating meat does not make us evil, it's just part of nature. And - despite the lack of humane treatment in some cases, I've seen some filmed kills in the wild, of lions or crocodiles snagging caribou and it was none too pleasant for the prey, especially if two predators fight over it, or they get away and later die of the injuries..or both.
But I can imagine a time in the future when society might look back at cattle ranching, slaughterhouses, and butchery as barbaric and unimaginable, even "gross". ("Eww, they ate a real animal that was once alive..?")
..or none/nun on Friday
They could sell the shit out of these $250K burgers they were called iBurgers and were sold by Apple.
They could make the patties square like White Castle burgers and round the edges too..
/\ This.
If it were homeopathic, it wouldn't have 0.1% capsaicin, it'd have something like 0.00000001% capsaicin.
To be honest, I can consider feasible many things that aren't currently backed by scientific evidence, but homeopathy ain't one of them. I don't know how it's advocates can say that the more diluted something is, the stronger it is, with straight face.
Real Science no, of course not. Using boiled willow bark as a remedy for various ailments based on praxis, very very likely.
As for the killing of witches - its worth noting that the word translated as "witch" is in Hebrew the word for "poisoner" - but that to ignorant Europeans the two meant the same thing.
Actually that's a modern misunderstanding. It was the Septuagint, a Greek translation (and the first translation of the Torah) that created the label for poisoner, not the original Hebrew Torah, or Pentateuch. The original Hebrew word itself used in that passage was "M'khashephah" which seems not to translate all that well, though some interpretations are, "whisperer", or "spellcaster", the root of the word having something to do with cutting off.. but wasn't "poisoner", in any case. The Greeks had no good equivalent for the term and so went with "pharmakos ". That's where the poisoner thing came in. http://thedomainandrealms.0catch.com/Library/witch.html http://www.necroticobsession.com/forums/76/43022 Unfortunately the original site proteuscoven.org is no longer around for reference, which is where the above two pages got their info.
I remember when I didn't have seven items in the same room needing an outlet - there was a TV, a lamp and maybe a small floor heater.
Okay, okay, I'm getting off your lawn now ..
I haven't posted anything on this thread until now, but I'll put forth a thought: I think it's particular to solar tech. We've been told about the next new solar breakthrough so many times now over the decades, but most deliveries have fallen short of the claims; we're just jaded. While solar tech has certainly improved, we've yet to see the kind of results expected (or hoped for) some time ago, kinda like, it's 2012, where are our Jetsons-eque flying cars?
The history of science is chock full of naysayers, even educated ones, who really should've known better, but once in a while, I imagine some naysayers are right, too.
Exactly. My mom just died last November, after languishing in a nursing home for 10 freakin' years with it. It's surprising she lasted that long, because she was pretty bad off when my dad put her in. (He died 5 years later.)
In those last years, she was pretty much a zombie, or a human shell, hadn't made a coherent sentence in years, and finally stopped even trying to speak a single word.. she seemed to sleep a lot, but I don't know everything that happened when I wasn't visiting. She so didn't deserve that tortuous end, not that anyone does. I would hope I'd die long before it got that bad.
If you don't have your own mind, what do you have? Is there really even a "you" anymore? I imagine few things are worse than getting slowly erased over a number of years.
Dunno what you guys were so unnerved about, unless it was a black widow or a brown recluse. ..or maybe something huge and gross like a wolf spider - which are pretty cool, actually. Personally, it's cockroaches that skeeve me out. And crickets, for some odd reason.
In 1964, there was another one nicknamed Prometheus that was believed to be the oldest tree. The US Forest Service sent a guy in with a chainsaw to cut it down so they could verify its age. It turned out to be over 4900 years old. No older bristlecones have been found. Other forestry people were sufficiently outraged by this that it turned into a standard textbook-level warning, and people who study the oldest bristlecones refuse to report their locations, to protect them from the Forest Service as well as from common vandals.
I know it's "just" a tree, and I'm not one to go cavorting about with greenpeace and whatnot, but wtf? What kind of stupidity is that- I can't believe they did that. The thing was close to 5,000 years old and they just killed it out of curiosity?
Anything that lasts that long deserves some respect.
What's Novell?
Not much, what's novell with you?
About 11 years ago, I had an old car of mine serviced, and for whatever reason, the next day after getting it back I decided to pop the hood ("bonnet" for you UK'ers). There was the mechanics hammer just sitting on the air filter cover. I'm not even sure what he needed a hammer for. Unlike this story though, I lucked out and no damage occurred, except my confidence in that car shop.
Looking back at all those times you ... didn't just give up while driving and drift into oncoming traffic, was it worth it?
Only because I didn't want to feel responsible for the death of the guy coming the other way. :-D
But seriously, yeah, ultimately, there really is no point to existence but to exist while you can.. if you can enjoy it.. so why not make the most of it? Anyone philosophically trying to look for a point to it all is like the little kid that just keeps asking, "why" to every answer you gave for the previous "why?". There is no good answer.
It's the journey, not the destination.
Maybe I should rethink my priorities. These last couple of posts should've made me think of bread, but instead the first thing that came to mind was alcoholic beverages.
Point taken, but at work, watching videos is generally frowned upon. I took a chance and peeked at only the first minute or so. The thing didn't look big enough to accommodate a full sized person even when it wasn't folded, much less folded... unless it was a scale model.
Unless it lacks a safety to prevent it from folding while you're in it! :D
The less impact religion has on the world the better. I seriously don't care what religion you are, and I wont beat you for believing in your wizard.
Leave Merlin and Gandalf outta this! :-D
Your memory serves correctly. Islam forked off from Judaism with Ismael, the brother of Issac, two sons of Abraham.
That's why the 3 large monotheistic faiths are often referred to as the Abrahamic religions. God=Allah, and muslims look upon Jesus as a blessed prophet, interestingly, though not as christians see him, of course.
YHWH reads like a totally different God in the New Testament. This is ironic, because the spread of christianity with the "new gentler" God, is done via Constantine, the Roman emperor who conquered his enemies in god's name, and then Clovis, the pagan who converted to Catholicism, leader of the early Franks, who did the same by warring against all competing tribes and converting them, who in turn was followed by a host of kings, from Charles "The Hammer" Martel to Charlemagne who ordered the pagan massacre at Verden. So much for the peaceful thing. Best laid plans and all that.
Of course, Islam hasn't a peaceful history either; being a proselytizing Abrahamic religion, it too has used extreme violence to spread throughout it's history, though it's politically incorrect to acknowledge this in today's climate.
Why is it we humans make war for profit, but not for gross violations of human rights?
I think because, even if we did, people would still claim we did it for profit of some kind.
Everyone very quickly forgot or downplayed not only how despicable Saddam Hussein was, (they'll just mention it here and there as gratuitous lip service and move on), but I haven't heard a peep in years about those two twisted sick fuck sons of his, Uday and Qusay. They were monsters the world is better off without.
Anyway, there's oil in Iran, so any war or aggressive action there will be linked to it regardless of the catalyst or proposed justification.
Hitler was not atheist in the slightest, he made many references to Jesus in his speeches. He also got to power in part thanks to support from right wing social conservatives and Christian fundies. In his speech to justify giving him emergency powers he called on the neeed to protect germany from socialism and atheism.
You are right about Stalin being an atheist, but it wasn't atheism that motivated his actions. He just generally "eliminated" anybody who had power he could not control. The church was just one of many examples.
While your first sentence is correct, your second and third are questionable or inaccurate: "protect germany from socialism".. what do you think the Nazi party was? National Socialist German Workers' Party. He didn't try to protect Germany from socialism, he wanted to protect it against communism -and, I might add, capitalism, as well, which he also regarded as foul.
Regarding the "right wing" thing, Hitler denounced capitalism and a host of other things usually associated with the right. Granted, however, he also railed against a number of things associated with the left. I'd say he was neither truly right wing or left wing, the nazis had elements of both and neither. Scholars of the day considered him politically syncratic.
Being unfamiliar with this "theory", I followed the link. Holy hell, do they beat around the bush! I still don't have any idea what they're talking about (other than claiming modern science is deeply fragmented and flawed), but I read enough to decide I don't care.
Which facts would those be?
But "Queen's Brain" is also a pretty good name for a band. ;)
I had never been out in a dark sky area until I went up to Maine about 15 years ago, for summer vacation (now we go every year). I recall looking at the night sky going "Wow- who knew there were so many stars?", but wondered what weird kind of cloud I was looking at, until I realized it was the arm of the Milky Way. That was amazing. It didn't appear quite as breathtaking as the time lapse pics you see, but it was still awesome.
In my home area, I can't see jack shit - too close to Philly. And I had the same problem with neighbors someone mentioned above, they had these blinding porch lights, but it seems they only used them when I brought my scope out. That ended when they got foreclosed on - karma's a bitch.