Gotta watch resteraunts. You are expected to order soda, coffee, or alchahol. Don't fall for it. Some have excellent Lemonade, but others just have a lemon flavored soda. Unfortunatly to get my free Sub at Subway I have to order a soda, no matter what I really want. (No surprize, to a resteraunt the ice is the most expensive part of a glass of pop)
What pisses me off now is that when you order water they want to push a 12 oz bottle of Aquafina on you for $1.00. The Soda with high-fructose corn syrup and flovoring is more expensive then JUST PLAIN WATER!!!!!
Seriously, this is one of the most EVIL rackets I've ever seen. Especially since the bottle watered is little better than what comes out of the tap.
Pen and Teller BULLSHIT did a great show on this.
Seriously, I think there should be a law against selling water for more than Soda (or gasoline for that matter).
I have no problem paying $.25 for the service of water (plus the cup), but these folks are being real dicks.
Makes you think that there should be a Surgeon General's warning on every caffinated beverage.
Ultimately, it's everyone's personal choice. But there should be informed consent. People shouldn't have to suffer Migraine's for years and finally discover that it was caffiene.
I think some people confuse a PHYSICAL addiction with PSYCHOLOGICAL addictions.
A psychological addiction would be say shopping. This is what makes someone feel good so they constantly go do it. It doesn't have profound physical effects.
A PHYSICAL addiction causes nasty pain and profound effects on the body like nausea and migraine if you don't get your fix.
Cocaine, Nicotine, Opiates, caffiene. These things are physical addictions. Over time, these substances actually change the way your body works.
Shopping, Basketball, ESPN, TV, Speeding, Sex, etc... these things are PSYCHOLOGICAL addictions. They don't change your body (well maybe sex;-). Rather they tap into some existing psycological pathos. They are a SYMPTOM of a problem, not the problem itself.
Personally, I was a caffiene addict for over 10 years (realized this afterward).
After quitting, I can eat or drink NOTHING with caffiene. I can't drink Pepsi or Coke. I can no longer embibe the Doctor (my lost master;-) I can't have chocolate. I can't even drink Lipton Brisk. If I do, I migraine comes for me 4-5 hours later.
BTW, Sierra Mist SAYS that it doesn't have caffiene. I can tell you from my migraine based caffiene detector that IT DOES!!!!
Ways eleviate the symptoms:
* Ibuprofin * Naproxin Sodium * Ice Pack on the head. * Humming works surprisingly well, go figure. This is probably why migraine sufferers are so fond of screaming.
People addicted to caffiene don't REALIZE they are because they are typically chronic users. The Migraine's come after your body eliminates the caffiene. If your a heavy user, that can be as long as a day. Like say SATURDAY.
For years I had head splitting migraine and severe nauseau EVERY SATURDAY!!!! Except when stuff was overdue and I went to work on Saturday where the free 4-5 cans of Dr Pepper was. Hmmmm...
Finaly, the myth that caffeine is required to do geek/technical work is just that, a myth. Wired, jittery programmers don't do well at sustained/quality output (ymmv). When I need to work really extended hours, caffeine is the first thing I eliminate. I can, at a pinch work thru technical problems for 24-hour or longer stints, caffiene will just interfere more once serious fatigue begins to set in, learned this nearly 3 decades ago:-).
The need for a caffiene fix is a self fullfilling prophecy. After getting of a LONG caffiene addiction, I can tell you that my brain works better overall without.
In other words, you drank caffiene a few hours ago so your body craves it and you can't think straight without it. You drink the caffiene and things get better so you believe the source of your caffiene alertness is caffiene. In fact, the reason for your INALERTNESS was the caffiene withdrawal.
Medical studies are pretty tricky. It's best to not draw profound life changing conclusions from the first one. Wait for followups and multiple studies that say the same thing.
William Harvey, the disoverer of blood ciruclation, left his coffee paraphernalia to the Royal Society and is said to have declared on his deathbed that the coffee bean was the source of all true happiness (going a bit far I'd say).
I don't think so. $70 per unit leaves little money for all the other components and that "profit" thing. That is unless the device will depend on subscriptions.
Rather, I think people are overlook the Cornice Storage Element. It's rumored to go for $50/1.5Gig per unit in quantity. Likely Apple could dicker them down a bit.
Since Apple is supposed to announce it soon, they need something for Steve Jobs to wave around on stage. That doesn't sound good for a unit that was just recently announced.
I kinda laugh at the guys who think aircraft carriers are going to be obsolete. If they think that, they should realize that airfields and bases are obsolete as well. The big difference is you can MOVE an aircraft carrier.
I'm still stumping for submersible carriers that would launch stealth jump jets, helicopters and landing craft.
Part of learning to pilot any vehicle (including a car) is learning to read the G-forces that the vehicle is giving you.
For example, it would be impossible to teach someone to recognize excessive speed in icy conditions with "static" simulator. One must calibrate themselves to the g-forces being expressed and when the car starts to give way.
When you experience it in a simulator, you can look at gauges, but this isn't how people drive/pilot. This is also the reason that "fly by wire" technology is so important. The feeling of the control surfaces being expressed through the controls will tell a pilot far more about the state of the plane then gauges.
I've actually thought about this problem before. I too thought that a variable speed, variable axis centrifuge could reasonably simulate G-Forces.
Personally, I'd like to see a whole new series of immersive game pods that really puts someone IN the action. The static pods of racers and Battletech just doesn't cut it. Putting the pod in a mini-centriguge that can twist and tilt to express g-forces, that would rock!!!! Hopefully some company will come up with an all purpose rig to put any arcade simulator in. The g-forces really don't have to be large if you do a lot of video, vibration, and audio immersion.
Arcades have little to nothing to offer anymore with the state of advanced console games. I'd like to see them ratchet things up and provide experiences that a home console could NEVER offer.
Large scale file servers are one example of machines that can directly benefit from 64-bit addressing. Forget the 4-Gig memory limit.
The other excellent example is anything to do with video. A single DV tape takes 16 GIG of space. As CPU speeds ramp up, the need for more memory to feed CPUs and eliminate disk latencies will increase.
If I write double in a program. I assume it's going to be compiled into a double.
A true 64-bit CPU would have a natural advantage in handling double length int's and floating point numbers.
Having said that I don't think 64-bit is necessary in anything but professional workstations. I also don't think that 3 Ghz CPUs are very necessary either. Especially since 1/3 of the hertz in a P4 is the equivalent of revving your engine.
From this perspective, a 64-bit CPU is a windfall not for engineers, but for marketers. So the 64-bit CPU can easily be made to look "superior" because well, it's twice as much. It's like Spinal Tap's Amps that go up to 11 instead of just 10.
We'll see how it plays out. But if the marketers have their way, we'll all be sporting 64-bit CPUs within tree years.
He left for Moscow with half a million. He returned with handfuls.
Napoleon's history is military conquest for conquest's sake. In Egypt, the same. He left with tens of thousands and came back with handfuls.
Napolean killed for the sake of personal ego. NONE of his battles involved protection of France or Italy. None of his battle's represented a fight for democracy since he crowned himself Emperor.
Napolean's last great act was to return to prominence and march again into foreign war. He wasn't content with France. The little shit-head wanted to rule all of Europe under the guise of being a "liberator".
The saucy little Corsican was little more than a narcisistic killing machine. His identity was that of a conquering general and nothing but complete victory or complete defeat could satisfy that.
That is where I get genocidal. He was DIRECTLY responsible for the deaths of MILLIONS for nothing other than his own sense identity.
Re:The first 15 posts on this are things you cant
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It's an issue because he was trying to get sanctions against people who used the term "black" instead of "African-American". He may not have been the one he originated it. He was the one pushing it.
At the same time he had no trouble referring to white people as "WHITE". If he truly fealt that it's insulting to refer to someone by their skin color, he would have used the term "Euro-American". It was Jesse hypocrisy at it's highest.
That's the kind of shit that makes the black activists look like a bunch of whining, lazy hypocrites. Personally, I know this isn't true. But you have to remember that you're putting up a poor front and really pissing of southern voters and otherwise alientating people who would be sympathetic.
i.e. there is no such thing as a legitimate government, and violence, and if there is no such thing as a legitimate government then the current definition of violence is inherently flawed because it has a basis in the use of legitimate force by a state.
The justification for violence is self defense. The appropriate level is the minimum required to mitigate a threat.
The idea that governments take morality into account is somewhat nieve.
Priorities of a government:
1) Keeping itself in power. 2) Satisfying it's closest advisors (enriching them). 3) Making up justifications for numbers 1 and 2. They cite convenient and narrow references to traditional forms of morality. Their actions are almost ALWAYS inconsistent with the entirety of the philosophy or religion.
In general, I would say that EVERYONE and every organization is immoral to some degree with respect to the golden rule. Of course, capitalism is 100% immoral in the golden rule because it is an antithesis of sharing.
I don't believe that saying "I'm Christian" has any on someone in most US circles. I'd guess if you took a poll, more than 60% of Slashdotters would say they are Christian. That's just a guess since most Slashdotters are Americans with computers. And most Americans of affluency (can afford computers) consider themselves Christian.
There is a big difference between saying
"I'm a Christian"
vs...
"I'm a Christian so you should be too. You should respect all my rituals and accept public funding of them while I belittle your Judaic and Islamic traditions. Your little heathen boys should have to be singled out for NOT being christian in our majority christian society."
vs...
"All you non-Christian's are heathens who are attempting to destroy American ways of life. The founding fathers were all Christian. This is a nation FOR Christians. Homosexuals and Feminists are godless infidels. The Jews killed Christ so they deserve as much."
Most "godless liberals" and "christian liberals" tend to have no problem with statement number 1. Statements number 2 and 3 are problematic because your not expressing religious freedom. Your expressing freedom to oppress others religiously.
1) We will not run out of oil within the 21st century
Assuming that their is a fixed supply, we will run out at some point. An astronomer has suggested that hydrocarbons well up from the core(The Deep Hot Oil). But he has no substantial evidence for that.
So I guess this is kinda a toss up. We have to look at things from the standpoint of prudence. Is it more prudent to assume a limitless supply of a critical resource or a fixed supply. I guess that's a value judgement. However, most prudent planners would assume a fixed supply in order to gauruntee that we don't run out and find ourselves in a crisis.
2) Human activity is not and will not under current trends measureably change global climate
Climate changes over time, that's a scientific fact. Sometimes it's affected very quickly by violenet phenomenon. That's a fact.
Excessive CO2 gas CAN lead to global warming. That's a FACT. Excessive reduction of CO2 gas can lead to global cooling. That's a FACT.
The question is whether we as humans have a capability to create a radical phenomenon on par with mother herself. We know that we are flooding the atmosphere with giant amounts of CO2 in short periods of time. We know that we are rapidly diminishing the earths natural CO2 reducer, vegetation.
So here's the question. Are we making more CO2 than we have vegetation to prcoess??? We aren't certain. But again, prudence may dictate a measure of caution.
It should ABSOLUETLY dictate a lot of effort to studying the issue in more details. More temperature monitoring globally and extensive monitoring on and below the oceans. More money to generate more core samples to generate more detail about historic CO2 and temperature levels.
The statement that we AREN'T creating climate changes is effectively unproveable since it's a negative. The notion that we ARE isn't proven, but it's clear that if we put out too much CO2, things will get hotter here on earth.
3) dietary fat is not a leading cause of cardio-vascular disease
There are pretty good correlations between people who eat high-fat diets and heart disease. This undoubtedly is influenced by lifestyle.
What you have to remember is that this notion is being pushed by the Atkins crowd. They are making claims about false science with little or no empirical evidence to back their claims. Atkins has been selling his diet for 30 years. He seems to have little interest in proving it's philosophy empiracly.
4) There is life on Mars and Gilbert Levin discovered it with the LR experiment on the Viking lander
There is a legitamit concerns that the experiment does not necessarily mean there is life on mars. The experiment doesn't eliminate a possibility. The exact chemical nature of the samples is unknown so ruling out any other reaction is impossible.
5) HIV does not cause AIDS
There is a VER strong correlation between having the HIV virus and having aids. Since viruses tend to cause disease, this is a natural conclusion.
The fact that people with high HIV counts have "full-blown" aids while people who low counts are "just infected" leads to a fairly natural conclusion.
I read this and I'm still unmoved. Under these explanations using retro-viral drugs like AZT should promote aids, not stop as it is with the "standard" treatments. Beyond this, it doesn't have evidence of a SINGLE case of AIDS without HIV. The fact that some people seem to be immune from HIV is not proof of anything. Most diseases don't infect at 100%. If they did, we would likely all have died out millions of years ago.
Crichton calls for more collection of data concerning global warming. That is prdudent AND scientific.
What hit me at home was:
"A signal is received, to great excitement. It turns out to be false, but the excitement remains. In 1960, Drake organizes the first SETI conference, and came up with the now-famous Drake equation:
N=N*fp ne fl fi fc fL
Where N is the number of stars in the Milky Way galaxy; fp is the fraction with planets; ne is the number of planets per star capable of supporting life; fl is the fraction of planets where life evolves; fi is the fraction where intelligent life evolves; and fc is the fraction that communicates; and fL is the fraction of the planet's life during which the communicating civilizations live. "
I had heard this "Drake Equation" on some Discovery Channel program. The guy rattled it off like it was some kind of fact but it sounded like a bunch of speculative nonsense. None of those variables can be measured. Whats the point of mentioning it.
I myself believe that there is PROBABLY other life out there. The sheer size of the universe and the apparent resilience of organic bacteria strongly imply that intelligent life someplace else is a statistic certainty. I can't prove that, so I won't tell someone else that "THERE IS LIFE OUT THERE."
The example of Carl Sagan is also striking. He predicted a period of global cooling after the Kuwaiti oil fires. It didn't happen. Or at least it was so small that it escaped our ability to measure it.
Here may be the great lesson. We are extremely concerned about the potential for global warming. Our FIRST reaction should be to heighten our ability to measure and detect small changes across the ENTIRE globe in very precise measures. Also important is to do LOTS of sampling of the earth's ocean which acts as a global heat-sink.
This is the type of stuff that NASA should be concentrating on. Not sending men to the moon.
The golden rule is logically a non-subjective principle that can govern a system or ethics. One assumes that others have the same rights and needs as you do. One treats others accordingly.
Re:Iraq vs. Israel" No moral equivalence
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This is exactly what is wrong with the UN. There is no moral equivalence between the murderous dictator Saddam, and Israel, a democracy which is trying to cling to a mere.0015% of the land mass in the Middle East, which is apparently too much for the Palestinisans - and the UN and Jimmy Carter.
The UN is a forum for international co-operation. A lot of people (France) try to treat the UN as a sovereign organization, it's not. It's like an interfaith organization.
There is a true need for semi-sovereign organizations in the world. The best example is the United States itself. Yep, the US is the first great international body that bonded an assortment of autonomous colonies into a union. The EU is the next great example.
But these organizations are fairly homogonous in nature. They have common values and common goals. We shouldn't delude ourselves into thinking that we can enter into a sovereign arrangement with China.
The UN is a place to talk and not much more. UN Security council resolutions are about as binding in practice as the ten commandments (though shalt not covet, right!!!!).
We do have one shitty sovereign super-national body right now. It's called the World Trade Organization and we're now part and parcel of the slave labor in China. And legally, there isn't SHIT we can do about it until we withdraw from this shitty treaty.
Re:Best examples of heresy I can think of
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Prayer is schools is harmless - We had it for years and years, but now because we must "tolerate" one or two crackpot parents, we can't do this, despite the good it does
So you wouldn't mind your children praying to Allah facing east then would you???
Their is no official sanction against praying in schools. A prayer is a private conversation between you and god. Schoolchildren are free to pray any time they like.
However, state employed school officials aren't allowed to engage in religious activities on state time. We explicitely bar the involvement of government in religion for the sake of both government AND religion.
Don't give me crap about "our founding fathers were Christian". The pilgrims were christian. Thats about the extent of our national Christian foundations. The people who grace our currency were largely deist, and congregationalist. A few were outwardly hostile towards (Jefferson, Franklin) christianity.
There is actually a "Jefferson Bible" that TJ commisioned that removed all the supernatural references. Franklin referred to Christianity as "entirely unintelligible".
If you'd like to see the results of a non-secular mixed religion country, go visit Bosnia-Herzogovina. If you're SO deeply concerned, I'd like for the various Christian sects to get together and decide on the theological curriculum.
How many sacrements??? What did you do to the Our Father??? You pray in public??? Trans-Configu what??? You wanna see a REAL war, don't look to Islam vs Christians, put these folks together:
Baptists, Southern Baptists, Lutherans, Calvinists, Catholics, Ch urch of Christ, Jesus Jews, Greek Orthodox, Ukranian Orthdox, other Orthodox, Dividians, Branch Dividians, Two-by-Twos, Yadda, yadda, yadda,
Watch the fireworks!!!! Once Allah is out of the way, you'll discover that these folks generally dislike each other EVEN MORE!!!!!
Slashdot Mirror
Gotta watch resteraunts. You are expected to order soda, coffee, or alchahol. Don't fall for it. Some have excellent Lemonade, but others just have a lemon flavored soda. Unfortunatly to get my free Sub at Subway I have to order a soda, no matter what I really want. (No surprize, to a resteraunt the ice is the most expensive part of a glass of pop)
What pisses me off now is that when you order water they want to push a 12 oz bottle of Aquafina on you for $1.00. The Soda with high-fructose corn syrup and flovoring is more expensive then JUST PLAIN WATER!!!!!
Seriously, this is one of the most EVIL rackets I've ever seen. Especially since the bottle watered is little better than what comes out of the tap.
Pen and Teller BULLSHIT did a great show on this.
Seriously, I think there should be a law against selling water for more than Soda (or gasoline for that matter).
I have no problem paying $.25 for the service of water (plus the cup), but these folks are being real dicks.
Makes you think that there should be a Surgeon General's warning on every caffinated beverage.
Ultimately, it's everyone's personal choice. But there should be informed consent. People shouldn't have to suffer Migraine's for years and finally discover that it was caffiene.
I think some people confuse a PHYSICAL addiction with PSYCHOLOGICAL addictions.
;-). Rather they tap into some existing psycological pathos. They are a SYMPTOM of a problem, not the problem itself.
A psychological addiction would be say shopping. This is what makes someone feel good so they constantly go do it. It doesn't have profound physical effects.
A PHYSICAL addiction causes nasty pain and profound effects on the body like nausea and migraine if you don't get your fix.
Cocaine, Nicotine, Opiates, caffiene. These things are physical addictions. Over time, these substances actually change the way your body works.
Shopping, Basketball, ESPN, TV, Speeding, Sex, etc... these things are PSYCHOLOGICAL addictions. They don't change your body (well maybe sex
Personally, I was a caffiene addict for over 10 years (realized this afterward).
After quitting, I can eat or drink NOTHING with caffiene. I can't drink Pepsi or Coke. I can no longer embibe the Doctor (my lost master
BTW, Sierra Mist SAYS that it doesn't have caffiene. I can tell you from my migraine based caffiene detector that IT DOES!!!!
Ways eleviate the symptoms:
* Ibuprofin
* Naproxin Sodium
* Ice Pack on the head.
* Humming works surprisingly well, go figure. This is probably why migraine sufferers are so fond of screaming.
People addicted to caffiene don't REALIZE they are because they are typically chronic users. The Migraine's come after your body eliminates the caffiene. If your a heavy user, that can be as long as a day. Like say SATURDAY.
For years I had head splitting migraine and severe nauseau EVERY SATURDAY!!!! Except when stuff was overdue and I went to work on Saturday where the free 4-5 cans of Dr Pepper was. Hmmmm...
Finaly, the myth that caffeine is required to do geek/technical work is just that, a myth. Wired, jittery programmers don't do well at sustained/quality output (ymmv). When I need to work really extended hours, caffeine is the first thing I eliminate. I can, at a pinch work thru technical problems for 24-hour or longer stints, caffiene will just interfere more once serious fatigue begins to set in, learned this nearly 3 decades ago :-).
The need for a caffiene fix is a self fullfilling prophecy. After getting of a LONG caffiene addiction, I can tell you that my brain works better overall without.
In other words, you drank caffiene a few hours ago so your body craves it and you can't think straight without it. You drink the caffiene and things get better so you believe the source of your caffiene alertness is caffiene. In fact, the reason for your INALERTNESS was the caffiene withdrawal.
Medical studies are pretty tricky. It's best to not draw profound life changing conclusions from the first one. Wait for followups and multiple studies that say the same thing.
William Harvey, the disoverer of blood ciruclation, left his coffee paraphernalia to the Royal Society and is said to have declared on his deathbed that the coffee bean was the source of all true happiness (going a bit far I'd say).
;-)
Sounds like an addict to me
I've never been addicted to Heroin. But I can tell you that a good caffiene withdrawal can give some severe migraine accompanied with nausea.
Please,
Programmers are the field famous for venerating Jolt Cola.
So your saying they made sure the control group had an identical diet SANS the extra calories from coffee.
Like others, I would suspect that coffee drinkers are drinking coffee instead of sugared caffinated beverages.
BTW, Caffiene is a nuero-stimulant. A VERY addictive one that is indicated in causing migraines.
I don't think so. $70 per unit leaves little money for all the other components and that "profit" thing. That is unless the device will depend on subscriptions.
Rather, I think people are overlook the Cornice Storage Element. It's rumored to go for $50/1.5Gig per unit in quantity. Likely Apple could dicker them down a bit.
Since Apple is supposed to announce it soon, they need something for Steve Jobs to wave around on stage. That doesn't sound good for a unit that was just recently announced.
Excellent rational.
I kinda laugh at the guys who think aircraft carriers are going to be obsolete. If they think that, they should realize that airfields and bases are obsolete as well. The big difference is you can MOVE an aircraft carrier.
I'm still stumping for submersible carriers that would launch stealth jump jets, helicopters and landing craft.
Part of learning to pilot any vehicle (including a car) is learning to read the G-forces that the vehicle is giving you.
For example, it would be impossible to teach someone to recognize excessive speed in icy conditions with "static" simulator. One must calibrate themselves to the g-forces being expressed and when the car starts to give way.
When you experience it in a simulator, you can look at gauges, but this isn't how people drive/pilot. This is also the reason that "fly by wire" technology is so important. The feeling of the control surfaces being expressed through the controls will tell a pilot far more about the state of the plane then gauges.
I've actually thought about this problem before. I too thought that a variable speed, variable axis centrifuge could reasonably simulate G-Forces.
Personally, I'd like to see a whole new series of immersive game pods that really puts someone IN the action. The static pods of racers and Battletech just doesn't cut it. Putting the pod in a mini-centriguge that can twist and tilt to express g-forces, that would rock!!!! Hopefully some company will come up with an all purpose rig to put any arcade simulator in. The g-forces really don't have to be large if you do a lot of video, vibration, and audio immersion.
Arcades have little to nothing to offer anymore with the state of advanced console games. I'd like to see them ratchet things up and provide experiences that a home console could NEVER offer.
Large scale file servers are one example of machines that can directly benefit from 64-bit addressing. Forget the 4-Gig memory limit.
The other excellent example is anything to do with video. A single DV tape takes 16 GIG of space. As CPU speeds ramp up, the need for more memory to feed CPUs and eliminate disk latencies will increase.
If I write double in a program. I assume it's going to be compiled into a double.
A true 64-bit CPU would have a natural advantage in handling double length int's and floating point numbers.
Having said that I don't think 64-bit is necessary in anything but professional workstations. I also don't think that 3 Ghz CPUs are very necessary either. Especially since 1/3 of the hertz in a P4 is the equivalent of revving your engine.
From this perspective, a 64-bit CPU is a windfall not for engineers, but for marketers. So the 64-bit CPU can easily be made to look "superior" because well, it's twice as much. It's like Spinal Tap's Amps that go up to 11 instead of just 10.
We'll see how it plays out. But if the marketers have their way, we'll all be sporting 64-bit CPUs within tree years.
He left for Moscow with half a million. He returned with handfuls.
Napoleon's history is military conquest for conquest's sake. In Egypt, the same. He left with tens of thousands and came back with handfuls.
Napolean killed for the sake of personal ego. NONE of his battles involved protection of France or Italy. None of his battle's represented a fight for democracy since he crowned himself Emperor.
Napolean's last great act was to return to prominence and march again into foreign war. He wasn't content with France. The little shit-head wanted to rule all of Europe under the guise of being a "liberator".
The saucy little Corsican was little more than a narcisistic killing machine. His identity was that of a conquering general and nothing but complete victory or complete defeat could satisfy that.
That is where I get genocidal. He was DIRECTLY responsible for the deaths of MILLIONS for nothing other than his own sense identity.
It's an issue because he was trying to get sanctions against people who used the term "black" instead of "African-American". He may not have been the one he originated it. He was the one pushing it.
At the same time he had no trouble referring to white people as "WHITE". If he truly fealt that it's insulting to refer to someone by their skin color, he would have used the term "Euro-American". It was Jesse hypocrisy at it's highest.
That's the kind of shit that makes the black activists look like a bunch of whining, lazy hypocrites. Personally, I know this isn't true. But you have to remember that you're putting up a poor front and really pissing of southern voters and otherwise alientating people who would be sympathetic.
i.e. there is no such thing as a legitimate government, and violence, and if there is no such thing as a legitimate government then the current definition of violence is inherently flawed because it has a basis in the use of legitimate force by a state.
The justification for violence is self defense. The appropriate level is the minimum required to mitigate a threat.
The idea that governments take morality into account is somewhat nieve.
Priorities of a government:
1) Keeping itself in power.
2) Satisfying it's closest advisors (enriching them).
3) Making up justifications for numbers 1 and 2. They cite convenient and narrow references to traditional forms of morality. Their actions are almost ALWAYS inconsistent with the entirety of the philosophy or religion.
In general, I would say that EVERYONE and every organization is immoral to some degree with respect to the golden rule. Of course, capitalism is 100% immoral in the golden rule because it is an antithesis of sharing.
I don't believe that saying "I'm Christian" has any on someone in most US circles. I'd guess if you took a poll, more than 60% of Slashdotters would say they are Christian. That's just a guess since most Slashdotters are Americans with computers. And most Americans of affluency (can afford computers) consider themselves Christian.
There is a big difference between saying
"I'm a Christian"
vs...
"I'm a Christian so you should be too. You should respect all my rituals and accept public funding of them while I belittle your Judaic and Islamic traditions. Your little heathen boys should have to be singled out for NOT being christian in our majority christian society."
vs...
"All you non-Christian's are heathens who are attempting to destroy American ways of life. The founding fathers were all Christian. This is a nation FOR Christians. Homosexuals and Feminists are godless infidels. The Jews killed Christ so they deserve as much."
Most "godless liberals" and "christian liberals" tend to have no problem with statement number 1. Statements number 2 and 3 are problematic because your not expressing religious freedom. Your expressing freedom to oppress others religiously.
1) We will not run out of oil within the 21st century
Assuming that their is a fixed supply, we will run out at some point. An astronomer has suggested that hydrocarbons well up from the core(The Deep Hot Oil). But he has no substantial evidence for that.
So I guess this is kinda a toss up. We have to look at things from the standpoint of prudence. Is it more prudent to assume a limitless supply of a critical resource or a fixed supply. I guess that's a value judgement. However, most prudent planners would assume a fixed supply in order to gauruntee that we don't run out and find ourselves in a crisis.
2) Human activity is not and will not under current trends measureably change global climate
Climate changes over time, that's a scientific fact. Sometimes it's affected very quickly by violenet phenomenon. That's a fact.
Excessive CO2 gas CAN lead to global warming. That's a FACT. Excessive reduction of CO2 gas can lead to global cooling. That's a FACT.
The question is whether we as humans have a capability to create a radical phenomenon on par with mother herself. We know that we are flooding the atmosphere with giant amounts of CO2 in short periods of time. We know that we are rapidly diminishing the earths natural CO2 reducer, vegetation.
So here's the question. Are we making more CO2 than we have vegetation to prcoess??? We aren't certain. But again, prudence may dictate a measure of caution.
It should ABSOLUETLY dictate a lot of effort to studying the issue in more details. More temperature monitoring globally and extensive monitoring on and below the oceans. More money to generate more core samples to generate more detail about historic CO2 and temperature levels.
The statement that we AREN'T creating climate changes is effectively unproveable since it's a negative. The notion that we ARE isn't proven, but it's clear that if we put out too much CO2, things will get hotter here on earth.
3) dietary fat is not a leading cause of cardio-vascular disease
There are pretty good correlations between people who eat high-fat diets and heart disease. This undoubtedly is influenced by lifestyle.
What you have to remember is that this notion is being pushed by the Atkins crowd. They are making claims about false science with little or no empirical evidence to back their claims. Atkins has been selling his diet for 30 years. He seems to have little interest in proving it's philosophy empiracly.
4) There is life on Mars and Gilbert Levin discovered it with the LR experiment on the Viking lander
There is a legitamit concerns that the experiment does not necessarily mean there is life on mars. The experiment doesn't eliminate a possibility. The exact chemical nature of the samples is unknown so ruling out any other reaction is impossible.
5) HIV does not cause AIDS
There is a VER strong correlation between having the HIV virus and having aids. Since viruses tend to cause disease, this is a natural conclusion.
The fact that people with high HIV counts have "full-blown" aids while people who low counts are "just infected" leads to a fairly natural conclusion.
I read this and I'm still unmoved. Under these explanations using retro-viral drugs like AZT should promote aids, not stop as it is with the "standard" treatments. Beyond this, it doesn't have evidence of a SINGLE case of AIDS without HIV. The fact that some people seem to be immune from HIV is not proof of anything. Most diseases don't infect at 100%. If they did, we would likely all have died out millions of years ago.
EVERYONE has biases. The issue is whether you admit to your bias upfront.
Nice link. Thank you.
Crichton calls for more collection of data concerning global warming. That is prdudent AND scientific.
What hit me at home was:
"A signal is received, to great excitement. It turns out to be false, but the excitement remains. In 1960, Drake organizes the first SETI conference, and came up with the now-famous Drake equation:
N=N*fp ne fl fi fc fL
Where N is the number of stars in the Milky Way galaxy; fp is the fraction with planets; ne is the number of planets per star capable of supporting life; fl is the fraction of planets where life evolves; fi is the fraction where intelligent life evolves; and fc is the fraction that communicates; and fL is the fraction of the planet's life during which the communicating civilizations live. "
I had heard this "Drake Equation" on some Discovery Channel program. The guy rattled it off like it was some kind of fact but it sounded like a bunch of speculative nonsense. None of those variables can be measured. Whats the point of mentioning it.
I myself believe that there is PROBABLY other life out there. The sheer size of the universe and the apparent resilience of organic bacteria strongly imply that intelligent life someplace else is a statistic certainty. I can't prove that, so I won't tell someone else that "THERE IS LIFE OUT THERE."
The example of Carl Sagan is also striking. He predicted a period of global cooling after the Kuwaiti oil fires. It didn't happen. Or at least it was so small that it escaped our ability to measure it.
Here may be the great lesson. We are extremely concerned about the potential for global warming. Our FIRST reaction should be to heighten our ability to measure and detect small changes across the ENTIRE globe in very precise measures. Also important is to do LOTS of sampling of the earth's ocean which acts as a global heat-sink.
This is the type of stuff that NASA should be concentrating on. Not sending men to the moon.
The golden rule is logically a non-subjective principle that can govern a system or ethics. One assumes that others have the same rights and needs as you do. One treats others accordingly.
This is exactly what is wrong with the UN. There is no moral equivalence between the murderous dictator Saddam, and Israel, a democracy which is trying to cling to a mere .0015% of the land mass in the Middle East, which is apparently too much for the Palestinisans - and the UN and Jimmy Carter.
The UN is a forum for international co-operation. A lot of people (France) try to treat the UN as a sovereign organization, it's not. It's like an interfaith organization.
There is a true need for semi-sovereign organizations in the world. The best example is the United States itself. Yep, the US is the first great international body that bonded an assortment of autonomous colonies into a union. The EU is the next great example.
But these organizations are fairly homogonous in nature. They have common values and common goals. We shouldn't delude ourselves into thinking that we can enter into a sovereign arrangement with China.
The UN is a place to talk and not much more. UN Security council resolutions are about as binding in practice as the ten commandments (though shalt not covet, right!!!!).
We do have one shitty sovereign super-national body right now. It's called the World Trade Organization and we're now part and parcel of the slave labor in China. And legally, there isn't SHIT we can do about it until we withdraw from this shitty treaty.
Prayer is schools is harmless - We had it for years and years, but now because we must "tolerate" one or two crackpot parents, we can't do this, despite the good it does
h urch of Christ,
So you wouldn't mind your children praying to Allah facing east then would you???
Their is no official sanction against praying in schools. A prayer is a private conversation between you and god. Schoolchildren are free to pray any time they like.
However, state employed school officials aren't allowed to engage in religious activities on state time. We explicitely bar the involvement of government in religion for the sake of both government AND religion.
Don't give me crap about "our founding fathers were Christian". The pilgrims were christian. Thats about the extent of our national Christian foundations. The people who grace our currency were largely deist, and congregationalist. A few were outwardly hostile towards (Jefferson, Franklin) christianity.
There is actually a "Jefferson Bible" that TJ commisioned that removed all the supernatural references. Franklin referred to Christianity as "entirely unintelligible".
If you'd like to see the results of a non-secular mixed religion country, go visit Bosnia-Herzogovina. If you're SO deeply concerned, I'd like for the various Christian sects to get together and decide on the theological curriculum.
How many sacrements??? What did you do to the Our Father??? You pray in public??? Trans-Configu what??? You wanna see a REAL war, don't look to Islam vs Christians, put these folks together:
Baptists,
Southern Baptists,
Lutherans,
Calvinists,
Catholics,
C
Jesus Jews,
Greek Orthodox,
Ukranian Orthdox,
other Orthodox,
Dividians,
Branch Dividians,
Two-by-Twos,
Yadda, yadda, yadda,
Watch the fireworks!!!! Once Allah is out of the way, you'll discover that these folks generally dislike each other EVEN MORE!!!!!