In this analogy, there is no yard stick--there is a rubber band that stretches. You have to sample a lot of different types of things at a dig and cross-compare them. Shards of pottery may have designs that are similiar to others known between a period of 2000 - 3000 B.C. and the carbon dating gives an estimate between 2500 - 3500 B.C. A piece of wood may have been carved, and by its use looks like it would have been used at the same time as the pot. The archiologist would look at the pattern of tree rings and compare those to others that might have a more fixed date. Trees in that area of the world would exhibit similiar growth due to climate and so could be used to get an even better picture of time.
The farther back in the past you go, the harder it is to cross-reference these clues since fewer things might have "fixed dates". But even still, ice cores taken from the poles give a good indicator of relative "wetness" of the world in a given year and what sorts of air the world had (after the great volcanic eruption of Krakatoa, there were about 4 years of soot that created a darker layer of ice).
Scientists can see that these processes occur at a typical rate during periods where we know dates down to the month. They can then extrapolate, given certain variables in conditions, how long those processes must take. There are 100,000 of years of ice core samples. Layers deposit with dust and pollen (that comes in the spring) and it is a process that repeats over and over again.
This is not a matter of faith. There are different types of faith, good and bad. To me, a good form of faith is to believe in your fellow man and that only love conquers evil. That's one that matters. The bad form of faith, is to get hung up on having to think a certain way because some person told you that in Sunday school. When confronted with personal experience to the contrary, you keep trying to fit the world into this "faith fact" that you learned.
We tell our kids that there is a Santa Claus, and then when they are older, that there is no Santa Claus. The metaphor of Santa is of giving and joy, so there is a truth there. But you aren't going to impress anyone if you are 40 and trying to get the physics right for Santa to get down every chimney. That has nothing to do with with anything important.
There were scientists who once said; "smoking is good for you." That's because there was a financial insentive. I see a dangerous trend back to that "purchased research" these days. You can find a crackpot that will say anything for a buck--but you need to follow the money. Corporations that want to pollute, are spending money for "experts" to say that pollution won't effect climate. Cities effect climate; they get hotter and get less rain, they can channel local wind currents. Whatever, I won't prove anything to the "flat earth" group. But whether there is global warming, or evolution, or gravity is not the issue as much as the push for anti-science, faith-based crap. It isn't a question of faith; the only stuff in the bible on this is Adam and Eve, and that was just metaphor--there were a dozen creation myths like Adam & Eve before it that had different twists (most believe Adam and Eve myth came from the Babalonians). But this Universe and the science we research is a study of the wonders of God. The real use of this "faith is believing the crap we tell you", is to make people more credulous and more controllable. It is convincing you that up is down so that you will be willing to accept that you don't deserve more money and to work hard for scraps. It is to convince you that pollution isn't harming your children. To convince you that war brings peace and that all the starving and poor deserve what they get.
It scares me to live in a world where we still have arguements about evolution--as if Jesus had any concern on such matters at all. The main issue is that we should love our fellow man. We are finding more "faith" to give ourselves excuses not to care about others.
There is evidence of the great flood. Much research supports this, but it didn't all occur at exactly the same time. In the Americas, a previous ice age had left a lot of water trapped behind glaciers (believed to be around the area of the great lakes). So the ice water melt built up a giant lake and runoff eroded through the ice, either an earthquake or just reaching a critical tipping point broke the ice dam and sent a small ocean's worth of fresh water to cover the midwest. If you fly over Arizona, you can recognize the terrain as it is a wash plain and not so much an erosion terrain (it happened quickly). Other ice damn floods must have happened all over the world (there are more legends than just Noah in the Bible that have flood accounts). I don't remember the specifics, but I think the last large iceage was 25,000 years ago.
About carbon dating; it can be off by a factor of 2. Assumptions have to be made about what happened to an artifact (like baking) and other artifacts have to be collected to corroborate (that's why archiologists pay close attention to sedimentation layers). There are a lot of other processes like sedminentation that can have estimated rates. Another is magnetic pole switching; when lava with iron or solidifies, the iron ions are oriented (on average) with respect to the North/South poles as it cools. Since the magnetic poles have switched many times over the history of the earth, scientists can look for these magnetic bands and estimate how fast lava and continental drift have occurred on the sea floor.
In general, for earth to be, say only 4,500 years old, all these processes like erosion, radioactive decay, sedmimentation, etc., etc., would have to have occurred at a million times faster than their current rate. Dinosaurs could have existed 30 million, 60 million or 120 million years ago, but not with any physics or geology known could they have existed 20,000 years ago.
Scientific theories are reproduceable assumptions that can be verified by others. They have hard evidence that can be verified and studied. Gravity is a theory, and so far, nothing has dropped "up". You can enjoy any myths you want, have fun. But saying the earth is flat won't make it so.
Well that has a nice thought, but my guess is you'd see a lot more inventors washing up in the river because the lived longer than was convenient.
How 'bout 5 years for a drug. 10 years for a patent. 20 years for a copyright? You make a fortune in that time, but you don't get to become a king for all time because you invented one widget 50 years ago. The reason we don't come up with a fair and simple system is because the people and corporations who are already getting more than their fair share (Record execs know who they are) are the one lobbying and screwing up the laws.
Yes, absolutely--just like the old land grants. And back in those days, because taxation was really hard to accomplish, it was based on land ownership. This was seen as a resource that you could exploit well or not at all, but you had to pay for it whether you did much with it or not. I would much rather see taxes simplified on resource usage; land, water, oil and such. Since everything needs resources to get produced, those who produce more efficiently with limited resources are taxed less relative to innefficient producers. People should not have income taxes on what they earn by their labor-- that was a bad idea.
Dividends SHOULD be taxed, since these are on surpluses and reflect ownership and not personal labor. People should be compensated for what they do first, after that, you can give money to people for what they have. It sickens me to see companies run into the ground, but pensioners lose everything while execs have golden parachutes.
How about the government collects all patent royalties in eschrow, then patent holders get money out by proving they have the patent right? That way it isn't a person suing a company. OK. Maybe that is scary and even worse than what we are doing. But the current system favors those with the most, and really sucks if you don't have 5 years and Millions of $ to wait out a lawsuit. You have to have the resources to sue a big company that stole your ideas. If we didn't have any patent laws, it would be fairer than the system we DO have, that only protects like Microsoft or GE but not Blast or Smallguy, Inc.
*NOTE: None of my comments are representative or endorsed by any companies named.
So your saying that real estate holding companies are a way to really get an economy going?
Here is a mental experiment; imagine a country with nothing but holding companies, lawyers, accountants and insurance providers, lobbyists and PR Firms.
Then imagine a company with engineers, teachers, farmers and doctors.
OK. Where do you want to live? Which country is going to starve first? And at where is the tipping point in our country that Ross Perot described so well as "that vast sucking sound of business heading south of the border".
Douglas Adams, I believe, in his second or third Hitchhiker volume described Earth as having been settled by hair stylists and telephone repairmen. The engineers and farmers were sent on a separate rocket ship that was not headed into a star. But by dumb luck the early Earth settlers survived and groomed eachother and set up cables on trees and such, and eventually devolved into cavemen because their skills had nothing to do with a functioning society--no offense to hairdressers and telephone repair persons, it was just a good joke. But you get the idea. At some point, your society should be rewarding the people who do things that need to be done, before they reward the people who just collect or get in the way. Though I'd rather have good hair stylists than more litigators.
OK. I know it sounds simplistic... it's just conceptual.
The argument to current patent law is this; " so, nobody was producing anything 30 years ago when patents were shorter?"
Which of course is bunk.
To much IP law is creating a landmine for future development. It will be to the point that code gets completed and then is looked at by company attorneys for legal exposure, then gets recoded with inferior algorithms or less exspensively licensed libraries.
There is too much patent camping going on. Patent holding companies have no real use in a productive society--just an ownership society, which discludes the vast majority of people who merely work for a living. Fair is what is utlimately good for everyone. People who innovate should be compensated. But that is not what actually happens. You could fill volumes with true innovators who died poor.
And while were at it; no owning URLs unless you set up a web site with real content in a year, OK? This crap of choosing a URL and then you go to some camper who suggests you can buy it on an "easy payment plan"--- what is up with that?
A robot dancing means something to you, but (obviously) not the same thing in Japan as in the west.
Personally, I'm thinking that we all need to "get bionic", so that we don't get into this us people versus them machines issue in the future. If we all merge into a content super-being, the world will be a better place.
Only slightly kidding.
But here in the US, there seems to be a strange ambivalence torwards anything not human--as if human were the ultimate we could be. If you come from the school of thought where life and humanity is in a state of evolution, you see threats and opportunities in progress.
Agreed. I wasn't getting on a treatise about abortion. The point, and I guess most of us share it, is that something that is so much the core of the NewRight is something no more than 50 years old in principle (it was only illegal for about 20 years in the entire U.S. history)--and the way they present it as that is is something that is self evident and what GOD WANTS.
You'd think she might have mentioned it.
I would have no problem with people arguing the ethics of the issue. I think it should be made rarer as well. But I really--and I think you'd agree--I really have an issue with their moral certitude on everything that flys out of their butt. They do not have traditional values and don't even have the understanding of what history is to know how wrong they are. The espoused enemy has been; the cultural elite, the educational elite (PHDs), the UN, the Europeans, the Liberals--in fact, just about anyone who could tell them they are full of crap. Their understanding (OK, broad brush, but I'm sick of these jerks) of values and the constitution comes off of a Swarzeneggar movie or the 700 (Propaganda) Club. They accuse others all day of being manipulated by the media. Just as they are told to do.
[end rant]
Just a little hyped because the coronation of the Incompetent in Chief is this Thursday. Just breathe... 1... 2... 3...
this discovery may help lay the myth that Atlas 'holds the World on his shoulders', when his burden is, and always has been, the Heavens.
Wait, I thought the myth about Atlas was that he held up the earth, and that he was turned to stone my looking at Medusa's head (with Pericles help?), in order to help him endure his eternal burden.
Are there two myths on this, or is this just a confusion that the ancient Greeks didn't see a difference from earth and the heavens?
I think you are trying to say "allay the myth"? Allay means to "dispel", or put an end to. To "lay the myth" would be do get down and freaky with it--in a biblical sense --which would be a totally mixed metaphor. Not being picky, lord knows that I scratch out some messages on slashdot.
The media seems to love controversy in France as much as America it seems.
I would compare this to my Father-In-Law's opinion. He is Peruvian and learned English after coming to America. When the issue came up about a state language in Florida, he was strongly for kids being forced to learn English. I thought that was strange at first, but he said that they'd never get a good job if they didn't. I have to agree, if his daughter and I didn't speak the same language, we would never have met. There are times to self express and other times to not. But does a Burka really help these kids in school? It seems to me that they can respect or not their own religion with or without it. But with it, they are seperated from others.
Of course, as an expression of modesty, it may be important to them. But personally, I see it as a way that has kept women as second class citizens in their culture--I may be ignorant, but that is my impression. I just think as kids, these people need to get to know each other before they get the chance to exclude eachother. Heck, I have a hard time being comfortable around neocons. Imagine if we had real differences?
Yeah. Poster totally lost me. What is BS? That we have more or less diversity, or tolerance or what?
We have gang wars over red or blue head bands as well--what's your point? That is not anything we institutionally support. There are a few crumbs we can still be proud of here.
And wether culture is supported or not is sort of a provincial trend in my view. There are places where diversity is not smiled upon, and places where it is ignored.
What unlawful activity do you mean?
Who is Louis and why would somebody, wannabe Louis?
Can you share whatever you're taking? Or is there an antidote?
That to me seems like a current "loop hole" trend. Once you get a lot of people going a certain way, everyone else kind of gets quiet.
Personally, I'd like to post the principles of "Beezlebub" at all the court houses that have the ten commandments--just to make things fair. It seems that the evangelists are using the "not freedom from religion" as their mantra these days. That seems really reasonable until it's some religion they don't agree with.
I think I might side with the French on this one. I think that identifying the children's "otherness" tends to make them not a part of the other children. I know I can get over it, but I tend to feel like those in a burkah at school didn't want me around.
I'm not much for conformity, but I also think it hampers children's development if they have some artificial thing that is going to separate them. Having the same language or a standardized dress code helps to alleviate the normal tendancy of kids to ostracize. At the workplace, I would not agree with this decision, but I do agree that in schools.
These muslim kids will probably make more friends than they otherwise would have. And the kids that get to know them will see another side of a culture they might not have. On the other hand, this might dilute the muslim culture. I have no firm answer on this other than, I think people getting along is a better side to err on than for free expression--at least in the highschool.
I think the reason that Europ doesn't allow the "symbol" is because it is an endorsement of a regime and a belief that tore up most of Europe and almost enslaved the world. It is shame and anger. Though I don't think that sensorship works too well, I don't know if I wouldn't feel the same way. Imagine having a klansman come to your school all dressed up... It will take a while for that wound to heal.
I remember a bronze statue that used to sit in our Art Museum here in Atlanta. It might have been a copy of "the thinker". I remember it as brooding and naked. The parts most frequently polished by curious passers by? Finger on the left hand that stuck out. Posterior. And the un-leafed naughty bit.
So, it could be concrete or the "grabby-ness" of the public that pulls off those certain appendages.
No--puritan Americans are not a myth. I have them all over my neighborhood. "Church lady" is not a myth. They are hard working, engaged and nice people. They scare the crap out of me--but I don't let them know that. In fact, I don't even put out signs saying; "What Mandate?" because then they'd kick me out for not having a healthy lawn and ill-pruned shrubbery. The neighborhood association is very powerful. I admire their involvement, but not their lack of insight. The head of our association is a lady who is always trying to get some naughty shop closed down or a conservative elected dog catcher--totally a family values fanatic. Ironically, they have a gay son (God is trying to tell them something).
But I agree with you on one thing; a lot of the complaints the media gets are actually from astro-turf groups that send out the complaints posing as shocked Americans. One study was showing as many as 90% of the offended Americans were actually from one conservative group (this was on the Janet Jackson superbowl fiasco). I forget the name of the group, something like the "Council for American Integrity" or some other proud drivel.
I thought we exported annoying Americans--you know, the ones who go to France and state loudly how everyone would be speaking German if it weren't for America? (of course, now many people are thinking; "what's the downside?")
Well, seems we weren't exporting them, we've been breeding 'em.
These nice American's you speak of were probably Liberals. You could make a tidy sum of money if you allowed them to join your country and escape certain persecution.
I miss the days when streaking was a fad in the U.S.--not for any other reason but that it was funny, didn't harm anyone, and would definitely shake up the grocery store.
Does anyone notice that this topic wasn't interesting until someone added the leaf?
If I had more culture, I'd realize that finding that map on the globe was an important event. But the censorship created an interest in the vulgar--while in a country that might not worry about this, they would be discussing the map.
It is censorship that creates interest in the prurient.
Actually, my favorite works dervie from people who have found creative ways to circumvent the culture police. Look throughout history and you can see Shakespeare (victorian era?), Leonardo (emerging from the dark ages of riligious control) and South Park (trying to find any boundary they can break).
So, it is the debauched artists confronted with his uptight adversary (the person who generally has no talent but much anger is usually the uptight person), that creates great art.
Though I don't think much of the religious record for making this a better world, I do think that religion has served the purpose of creating an impediment to which creative thought must be applied to circumvent.
After all, you can't play tennis without the net. You have to have something in your way to present a challenge. If everything is allowed, it gets very boring to cheat.
Republicanism seems to be a refuge for people who have no need of thought, and want everyone but themselves accountable.
`the scabrous and the vile' Is pretty funny. It seems that everything that was too horrendous and that would destroy society only 40 years ago, is now on the "Family Channel". Heck, the Beatles with their long hair and effect on girls were seen as the bad boy rappers of their day.
What seems to annoy me most about today's Culture Police, is that they have no sense of history. Every religious principle is spoken as though this is what everyone good has always thought--but the Pious of today would shame the Pious of yesterday, and vice versa. The only thing that family values are consistent on is that everything that is like them is "good and has always been good' and everything unlike them is bad. Conservatism is merely the status quo. Nothing more.
For example; currently, abortion is a sin and is murder. Yet, if you look back only two hundred years (less in many cases), it was one of the purposes of the nunnery (convent). Women would have their illegitimate children, and they'd either be sent to an orphanage, or they'd be killed on the spot. The woman would then leave the convent with reputation preserved. The woman who went to term with the child, would have a "Bastard" and would have a poor reputation. I've read a few stories about thousaqnds of baby skeletons being unearthed around convents--these were babies that came to term.
I'm not making a statement for or against--just pointing out that much of our sensibilities are very transient and that our value systems are constantly changing. If people realised this, then they might work harder at proving some public good for pronouncing something to be wrong.
Is good art suppressed more by rules of public decency (even when applied with a heavy hand).... The "heavy hand" bit worries me. Seems too many people are ready to embrace a theocracy. They want a society where people are forced to do good, by fear of the government. This is the scary undercurrent of the NeoCon philosophy. "Good art" is defined by what reinforces the society. "Good art" to a liberal is what makes a person question themselves. Obviously, one philosophy is about bullying children, while the other is about raising adults.
I'm sure I'll be flamebate for these statements. But I know I'm right. See--faith-based works for everything! Wow, that was a lot easier than making points based on logic and examples.
Interesting. After his previous wife divorced him for infidelity. I suppose, piety is for those who sit in judgement. Giuliani did "one good thing", which was reassure people in NY after 9/11 and take a few photo ops with firefighters. The administration is so desperate for heros who will also be "yes-men" that Giuliani has been made a hero.
Don't know much more about him, other than he is pious, a cheater, and supposed to be a hero that can lead the nation. It's all about product placement people.
One point I have to make; Fewer people are collecting welfare because fewer people CAN collect welfare.
The number of people on welfare is not a useful figure anymore, because everyone who wants or needs it cannot get it, due to changes in policy. The number of people collecting disability is skyrocketing.
I have to totally agree with the previous statement. Reasoned discussion should be permitted without automatic criticism. Men and women are different and that is a fact. Nobody should be discriminated against due to generalizations because nobody exactly fits any mold. But my 2 year old son plays with cars and smashes dolls together. The media, the schools, the parents did not make this part of his nature--it is 100% boy nature.
We should guard against unkind generalizations, but it is important to address differences so that we can better serve the needs of men and women. I WANT men and women to be different. I want everyone to be a little different--because that creates strength and specialization. People need to have different skills and desires. Some people need to build the bridge while others make the movie. This helps the world go around.
The media likes to stir up the ants nest. Reporting on the furor over the reaction to a bad headline creates the news.
Maybe someone wants to punish Harvard for something else, or maybe this is just bad reporting (again). The real news is not the news that is reported--the real news is WHY the news was reported.
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In this analogy, there is no yard stick--there is a rubber band that stretches. You have to sample a lot of different types of things at a dig and cross-compare them. Shards of pottery may have designs that are similiar to others known between a period of 2000 - 3000 B.C. and the carbon dating gives an estimate between 2500 - 3500 B.C. A piece of wood may have been carved, and by its use looks like it would have been used at the same time as the pot. The archiologist would look at the pattern of tree rings and compare those to others that might have a more fixed date. Trees in that area of the world would exhibit similiar growth due to climate and so could be used to get an even better picture of time.
The farther back in the past you go, the harder it is to cross-reference these clues since fewer things might have "fixed dates". But even still, ice cores taken from the poles give a good indicator of relative "wetness" of the world in a given year and what sorts of air the world had (after the great volcanic eruption of Krakatoa, there were about 4 years of soot that created a darker layer of ice).
Scientists can see that these processes occur at a typical rate during periods where we know dates down to the month. They can then extrapolate, given certain variables in conditions, how long those processes must take. There are 100,000 of years of ice core samples. Layers deposit with dust and pollen (that comes in the spring) and it is a process that repeats over and over again.
This is not a matter of faith. There are different types of faith, good and bad. To me, a good form of faith is to believe in your fellow man and that only love conquers evil. That's one that matters. The bad form of faith, is to get hung up on having to think a certain way because some person told you that in Sunday school. When confronted with personal experience to the contrary, you keep trying to fit the world into this "faith fact" that you learned.
We tell our kids that there is a Santa Claus, and then when they are older, that there is no Santa Claus. The metaphor of Santa is of giving and joy, so there is a truth there. But you aren't going to impress anyone if you are 40 and trying to get the physics right for Santa to get down every chimney. That has nothing to do with with anything important.
There were scientists who once said; "smoking is good for you." That's because there was a financial insentive. I see a dangerous trend back to that "purchased research" these days. You can find a crackpot that will say anything for a buck--but you need to follow the money. Corporations that want to pollute, are spending money for "experts" to say that pollution won't effect climate. Cities effect climate; they get hotter and get less rain, they can channel local wind currents. Whatever, I won't prove anything to the "flat earth" group. But whether there is global warming, or evolution, or gravity is not the issue as much as the push for anti-science, faith-based crap. It isn't a question of faith; the only stuff in the bible on this is Adam and Eve, and that was just metaphor--there were a dozen creation myths like Adam & Eve before it that had different twists (most believe Adam and Eve myth came from the Babalonians). But this Universe and the science we research is a study of the wonders of God. The real use of this "faith is believing the crap we tell you", is to make people more credulous and more controllable. It is convincing you that up is down so that you will be willing to accept that you don't deserve more money and to work hard for scraps. It is to convince you that pollution isn't harming your children. To convince you that war brings peace and that all the starving and poor deserve what they get.
It scares me to live in a world where we still have arguements about evolution--as if Jesus had any concern on such matters at all. The main issue is that we should love our fellow man. We are finding more "faith" to give ourselves excuses not to care about others.
There is evidence of the great flood. Much research supports this, but it didn't all occur at exactly the same time. In the Americas, a previous ice age had left a lot of water trapped behind glaciers (believed to be around the area of the great lakes). So the ice water melt built up a giant lake and runoff eroded through the ice, either an earthquake or just reaching a critical tipping point broke the ice dam and sent a small ocean's worth of fresh water to cover the midwest. If you fly over Arizona, you can recognize the terrain as it is a wash plain and not so much an erosion terrain (it happened quickly). Other ice damn floods must have happened all over the world (there are more legends than just Noah in the Bible that have flood accounts). I don't remember the specifics, but I think the last large iceage was 25,000 years ago.
About carbon dating; it can be off by a factor of 2. Assumptions have to be made about what happened to an artifact (like baking) and other artifacts have to be collected to corroborate (that's why archiologists pay close attention to sedimentation layers). There are a lot of other processes like sedminentation that can have estimated rates. Another is magnetic pole switching; when lava with iron or solidifies, the iron ions are oriented (on average) with respect to the North/South poles as it cools. Since the magnetic poles have switched many times over the history of the earth, scientists can look for these magnetic bands and estimate how fast lava and continental drift have occurred on the sea floor.
In general, for earth to be, say only 4,500 years old, all these processes like erosion, radioactive decay, sedmimentation, etc., etc., would have to have occurred at a million times faster than their current rate. Dinosaurs could have existed 30 million, 60 million or 120 million years ago, but not with any physics or geology known could they have existed 20,000 years ago.
Scientific theories are reproduceable assumptions that can be verified by others. They have hard evidence that can be verified and studied. Gravity is a theory, and so far, nothing has dropped "up". You can enjoy any myths you want, have fun. But saying the earth is flat won't make it so.
Well that has a nice thought, but my guess is you'd see a lot more inventors washing up in the river because the lived longer than was convenient.
How 'bout 5 years for a drug. 10 years for a patent. 20 years for a copyright? You make a fortune in that time, but you don't get to become a king for all time because you invented one widget 50 years ago. The reason we don't come up with a fair and simple system is because the people and corporations who are already getting more than their fair share (Record execs know who they are) are the one lobbying and screwing up the laws.
Is that so difficult to understand?
Yes, absolutely--just like the old land grants. And back in those days, because taxation was really hard to accomplish, it was based on land ownership. This was seen as a resource that you could exploit well or not at all, but you had to pay for it whether you did much with it or not. I would much rather see taxes simplified on resource usage; land, water, oil and such. Since everything needs resources to get produced, those who produce more efficiently with limited resources are taxed less relative to innefficient producers. People should not have income taxes on what they earn by their labor-- that was a bad idea.
Dividends SHOULD be taxed, since these are on surpluses and reflect ownership and not personal labor. People should be compensated for what they do first, after that, you can give money to people for what they have. It sickens me to see companies run into the ground, but pensioners lose everything while execs have golden parachutes.
How about the government collects all patent royalties in eschrow, then patent holders get money out by proving they have the patent right? That way it isn't a person suing a company. OK. Maybe that is scary and even worse than what we are doing. But the current system favors those with the most, and really sucks if you don't have 5 years and Millions of $ to wait out a lawsuit. You have to have the resources to sue a big company that stole your ideas. If we didn't have any patent laws, it would be fairer than the system we DO have, that only protects like Microsoft or GE but not Blast or Smallguy, Inc.
*NOTE: None of my comments are representative or endorsed by any companies named.
So your saying that real estate holding companies are a way to really get an economy going?
Here is a mental experiment; imagine a country with nothing but holding companies, lawyers, accountants and insurance providers, lobbyists and PR Firms.
Then imagine a company with engineers, teachers, farmers and doctors.
OK. Where do you want to live? Which country is going to starve first? And at where is the tipping point in our country that Ross Perot described so well as "that vast sucking sound of business heading south of the border".
Douglas Adams, I believe, in his second or third Hitchhiker volume described Earth as having been settled by hair stylists and telephone repairmen. The engineers and farmers were sent on a separate rocket ship that was not headed into a star. But by dumb luck the early Earth settlers survived and groomed eachother and set up cables on trees and such, and eventually devolved into cavemen because their skills had nothing to do with a functioning society--no offense to hairdressers and telephone repair persons, it was just a good joke. But you get the idea. At some point, your society should be rewarding the people who do things that need to be done, before they reward the people who just collect or get in the way. Though I'd rather have good hair stylists than more litigators.
OK. I know it sounds simplistic... it's just conceptual.
The argument to current patent law is this; " so, nobody was producing anything 30 years ago when patents were shorter?"
Which of course is bunk.
To much IP law is creating a landmine for future development. It will be to the point that code gets completed and then is looked at by company attorneys for legal exposure, then gets recoded with inferior algorithms or less exspensively licensed libraries.
There is too much patent camping going on. Patent holding companies have no real use in a productive society--just an ownership society, which discludes the vast majority of people who merely work for a living. Fair is what is utlimately good for everyone. People who innovate should be compensated. But that is not what actually happens. You could fill volumes with true innovators who died poor.
And while were at it; no owning URLs unless you set up a web site with real content in a year, OK? This crap of choosing a URL and then you go to some camper who suggests you can buy it on an "easy payment plan"--- what is up with that?
I don't see where this is sick.
The dance means whatever you think it means.
A robot dancing means something to you, but (obviously) not the same thing in Japan as in the west.
Personally, I'm thinking that we all need to "get bionic", so that we don't get into this us people versus them machines issue in the future. If we all merge into a content super-being, the world will be a better place.
Only slightly kidding.
But here in the US, there seems to be a strange ambivalence torwards anything not human--as if human were the ultimate we could be. If you come from the school of thought where life and humanity is in a state of evolution, you see threats and opportunities in progress.
Agreed. I wasn't getting on a treatise about abortion. The point, and I guess most of us share it, is that something that is so much the core of the NewRight is something no more than 50 years old in principle (it was only illegal for about 20 years in the entire U.S. history)--and the way they present it as that is is something that is self evident and what GOD WANTS.
You'd think she might have mentioned it.
I would have no problem with people arguing the ethics of the issue. I think it should be made rarer as well. But I really--and I think you'd agree--I really have an issue with their moral certitude on everything that flys out of their butt. They do not have traditional values and don't even have the understanding of what history is to know how wrong they are. The espoused enemy has been; the cultural elite, the educational elite (PHDs), the UN, the Europeans, the Liberals--in fact, just about anyone who could tell them they are full of crap. Their understanding (OK, broad brush, but I'm sick of these jerks) of values and the constitution comes off of a Swarzeneggar movie or the 700 (Propaganda) Club. They accuse others all day of being manipulated by the media. Just as they are told to do.
[end rant]
Just a little hyped because the coronation of the Incompetent in Chief is this Thursday. Just breathe... 1... 2... 3...
All better.
this discovery may help lay the myth that Atlas 'holds the World on his shoulders', when his burden is, and always has been, the Heavens.
Wait, I thought the myth about Atlas was that he held up the earth, and that he was turned to stone my looking at Medusa's head (with Pericles help?), in order to help him endure his eternal burden.
Are there two myths on this, or is this just a confusion that the ancient Greeks didn't see a difference from earth and the heavens?
I think you are trying to say "allay the myth"? Allay means to "dispel", or put an end to. To "lay the myth" would be do get down and freaky with it--in a biblical sense --which would be a totally mixed metaphor. Not being picky, lord knows that I scratch out some messages on slashdot.
The media seems to love controversy in France as much as America it seems.
I would compare this to my Father-In-Law's opinion. He is Peruvian and learned English after coming to America. When the issue came up about a state language in Florida, he was strongly for kids being forced to learn English. I thought that was strange at first, but he said that they'd never get a good job if they didn't. I have to agree, if his daughter and I didn't speak the same language, we would never have met. There are times to self express and other times to not. But does a Burka really help these kids in school? It seems to me that they can respect or not their own religion with or without it. But with it, they are seperated from others.
Of course, as an expression of modesty, it may be important to them. But personally, I see it as a way that has kept women as second class citizens in their culture--I may be ignorant, but that is my impression. I just think as kids, these people need to get to know each other before they get the chance to exclude eachother. Heck, I have a hard time being comfortable around neocons. Imagine if we had real differences?
Yeah. Poster totally lost me. What is BS? That we have more or less diversity, or tolerance or what?
We have gang wars over red or blue head bands as well--what's your point? That is not anything we institutionally support. There are a few crumbs we can still be proud of here.
And wether culture is supported or not is sort of a provincial trend in my view. There are places where diversity is not smiled upon, and places where it is ignored.
What unlawful activity do you mean?
Who is Louis and why would somebody, wannabe Louis?
Can you share whatever you're taking? Or is there an antidote?
That to me seems like a current "loop hole" trend. Once you get a lot of people going a certain way, everyone else kind of gets quiet.
Personally, I'd like to post the principles of "Beezlebub" at all the court houses that have the ten commandments--just to make things fair. It seems that the evangelists are using the "not freedom from religion" as their mantra these days. That seems really reasonable until it's some religion they don't agree with.
I think I might side with the French on this one. I think that identifying the children's "otherness" tends to make them not a part of the other children. I know I can get over it, but I tend to feel like those in a burkah at school didn't want me around.
I'm not much for conformity, but I also think it hampers children's development if they have some artificial thing that is going to separate them. Having the same language or a standardized dress code helps to alleviate the normal tendancy of kids to ostracize. At the workplace, I would not agree with this decision, but I do agree that in schools.
These muslim kids will probably make more friends than they otherwise would have. And the kids that get to know them will see another side of a culture they might not have. On the other hand, this might dilute the muslim culture. I have no firm answer on this other than, I think people getting along is a better side to err on than for free expression--at least in the highschool.
In college--party!
I think the reason that Europ doesn't allow the "symbol" is because it is an endorsement of a regime and a belief that tore up most of Europe and almost enslaved the world. It is shame and anger. Though I don't think that sensorship works too well, I don't know if I wouldn't feel the same way. Imagine having a klansman come to your school all dressed up... It will take a while for that wound to heal.
I remember a bronze statue that used to sit in our Art Museum here in Atlanta. It might have been a copy of "the thinker". I remember it as brooding and naked. The parts most frequently polished by curious passers by? Finger on the left hand that stuck out. Posterior. And the un-leafed naughty bit.
So, it could be concrete or the "grabby-ness" of the public that pulls off those certain appendages.
No--puritan Americans are not a myth. I have them all over my neighborhood. "Church lady" is not a myth. They are hard working, engaged and nice people. They scare the crap out of me--but I don't let them know that. In fact, I don't even put out signs saying; "What Mandate?" because then they'd kick me out for not having a healthy lawn and ill-pruned shrubbery. The neighborhood association is very powerful. I admire their involvement, but not their lack of insight. The head of our association is a lady who is always trying to get some naughty shop closed down or a conservative elected dog catcher--totally a family values fanatic. Ironically, they have a gay son (God is trying to tell them something).
But I agree with you on one thing; a lot of the complaints the media gets are actually from astro-turf groups that send out the complaints posing as shocked Americans. One study was showing as many as 90% of the offended Americans were actually from one conservative group (this was on the Janet Jackson superbowl fiasco). I forget the name of the group, something like the "Council for American Integrity" or some other proud drivel.
I thought we exported annoying Americans--you know, the ones who go to France and state loudly how everyone would be speaking German if it weren't for America? (of course, now many people are thinking; "what's the downside?")
Well, seems we weren't exporting them, we've been breeding 'em.
These nice American's you speak of were probably Liberals. You could make a tidy sum of money if you allowed them to join your country and escape certain persecution.
I miss the days when streaking was a fad in the U.S.--not for any other reason but that it was funny, didn't harm anyone, and would definitely shake up the grocery store.
Well, the Lego "Mind-Bots" were a creation of the MIT Media Lab. So now Legos are cool again because they can be programmed.
Does anyone notice that this topic wasn't interesting until someone added the leaf?
If I had more culture, I'd realize that finding that map on the globe was an important event. But the censorship created an interest in the vulgar--while in a country that might not worry about this, they would be discussing the map.
It is censorship that creates interest in the prurient.
Actually, my favorite works dervie from people who have found creative ways to circumvent the culture police. Look throughout history and you can see Shakespeare (victorian era?), Leonardo (emerging from the dark ages of riligious control) and South Park (trying to find any boundary they can break).
So, it is the debauched artists confronted with his uptight adversary (the person who generally has no talent but much anger is usually the uptight person), that creates great art.
Though I don't think much of the religious record for making this a better world, I do think that religion has served the purpose of creating an impediment to which creative thought must be applied to circumvent.
After all, you can't play tennis without the net. You have to have something in your way to present a challenge. If everything is allowed, it gets very boring to cheat.
Republicanism seems to be a refuge for people who have no need of thought, and want everyone but themselves accountable.
`the scabrous and the vile' Is pretty funny. It seems that everything that was too horrendous and that would destroy society only 40 years ago, is now on the "Family Channel". Heck, the Beatles with their long hair and effect on girls were seen as the bad boy rappers of their day.
What seems to annoy me most about today's Culture Police, is that they have no sense of history. Every religious principle is spoken as though this is what everyone good has always thought--but the Pious of today would shame the Pious of yesterday, and vice versa. The only thing that family values are consistent on is that everything that is like them is "good and has always been good' and everything unlike them is bad. Conservatism is merely the status quo. Nothing more.
For example; currently, abortion is a sin and is murder. Yet, if you look back only two hundred years (less in many cases), it was one of the purposes of the nunnery (convent). Women would have their illegitimate children, and they'd either be sent to an orphanage, or they'd be killed on the spot. The woman would then leave the convent with reputation preserved. The woman who went to term with the child, would have a "Bastard" and would have a poor reputation. I've read a few stories about thousaqnds of baby skeletons being unearthed around convents--these were babies that came to term.
I'm not making a statement for or against--just pointing out that much of our sensibilities are very transient and that our value systems are constantly changing. If people realised this, then they might work harder at proving some public good for pronouncing something to be wrong.
Is good art suppressed more by rules of public decency (even when applied with a heavy hand)....
The "heavy hand" bit worries me. Seems too many people are ready to embrace a theocracy. They want a society where people are forced to do good, by fear of the government. This is the scary undercurrent of the NeoCon philosophy. "Good art" is defined by what reinforces the society. "Good art" to a liberal is what makes a person question themselves. Obviously, one philosophy is about bullying children, while the other is about raising adults.
I'm sure I'll be flamebate for these statements. But I know I'm right. See--faith-based works for everything! Wow, that was a lot easier than making points based on logic and examples.
Interesting. After his previous wife divorced him for infidelity. I suppose, piety is for those who sit in judgement. Giuliani did "one good thing", which was reassure people in NY after 9/11 and take a few photo ops with firefighters. The administration is so desperate for heros who will also be "yes-men" that Giuliani has been made a hero.
Don't know much more about him, other than he is pious, a cheater, and supposed to be a hero that can lead the nation. It's all about product placement people.
One point I have to make; Fewer people are collecting welfare because fewer people CAN collect welfare.
The number of people on welfare is not a useful figure anymore, because everyone who wants or needs it cannot get it, due to changes in policy. The number of people collecting disability is skyrocketing.
Just an FYI.
I have to totally agree with the previous statement. Reasoned discussion should be permitted without automatic criticism. Men and women are different and that is a fact. Nobody should be discriminated against due to generalizations because nobody exactly fits any mold. But my 2 year old son plays with cars and smashes dolls together. The media, the schools, the parents did not make this part of his nature--it is 100% boy nature.
We should guard against unkind generalizations, but it is important to address differences so that we can better serve the needs of men and women. I WANT men and women to be different. I want everyone to be a little different--because that creates strength and specialization. People need to have different skills and desires. Some people need to build the bridge while others make the movie. This helps the world go around.
The media likes to stir up the ants nest. Reporting on the furor over the reaction to a bad headline creates the news.
Maybe someone wants to punish Harvard for something else, or maybe this is just bad reporting (again). The real news is not the news that is reported--the real news is WHY the news was reported.