Did they do it in secret? If not, how is it sneaky?
"underhanded"
In what way? I think it's underhanded for biologists to make metaphysical pronouncements as if they were observable facts.
"dishonest"
Again, in what way? Biology textbooks often present the unobserved past on equal footing with observable, experimental science. THAT is pushing on dishonest.
Perhaps you don't understand what the issue is that is being discussed. Here is a good introduction to it:
And the tooth fairy and santa claus exist too. Except that we stop believing in them as we realise what a crock they are. Some don't do the sam with these god myths though."
The difference is that material processes do not even have the potential to explain life and consciousness as we experience it. The best that neuroscience has ever been able to do is discover corrolaries of consciousness. But the gap between the event of consciousness and it having brain correlations is huge.
No amount of mechanical processes cause a machine to snap from being without consciousness to being with consciousness. Consciousness and subjectivity are simply outside the realm of material processes, and no amount of yammering from the metaphysically confused (like Dawkins) changes that fact.
In addition, if material processes could explain all of the universe, it would completely undermine reason. Let's say that person A is a lifelong republican. And person A then goes and says, "George Bush is a great guy". Most democrats would say that person A is not speaking from reason, but says that only because he is a Republican. What they are saying is that he is influenced by outside events, which prevent him from being rational. However, in the materialist view, ALL events are outside, deterministic or chance, events. Therefore, all reason, including the reasoning that says that all things are the result of material processes, is not reasonable but instead imposed on the subject from the outside.
"and the whole 'god created us' thing only works if you believe in god. I'm sure that works for you, but the majority of people aren't christian, so searching for other explanations is kinda neccesary."
But the VAST majority do believe in God. And Biblically, even if they don't know how to worship Him, most people who believe in God believe in the same one that Christians do (see Paul's speech in Athens).
"p.s. - the pope believes in evolution. he has said so, in official papal newsletters."
Depends on what you mean by "evolution". Even young-earth creationists believe in "evolution" for some meaning of evolution. What the pope also said was that to suppose that the process of evolution was unguided would be the abandonment of reason, and would be akin to admitting effects without a cause. This is not the same "evolution" as is presented in textbooks, which usually specifically mention an unguided process.
"doesn't matter for you unless you're catholic, but just saying, believing in god doesn't mean you believe in intelligent design."
ID would agree fully with the pope. In fact, most ID'ers are probably more strongly allied with evolution than the pope is. Most ID'ers agree with universal common ancestry, but disagree that you could get the results that we have in life without a designer to guide the process.
"But we can. Find a series of precambrian rabbit fossils, and everything we've constructed regarding the history of life comes tumbling down."
Not necessarily. One could easily propose a secondary hypothesis for how they arrived there. For example, in several thousand years, archaeologists will be able to say that they have found dinosaur bones mixed with human bones.
Historical inquiry always has this kind of "fudge factor". In fact, there are spots where the fossils are out-of-order. The reason given is some sort of geological displacement. That's all well and good, except that at a few of the spots the only evidence for the displacement is that the fossils are out-of-order. That doesn't mean that it's incorrect, just that it's ultimately untestable because noone can know if the secondary hypotheses are correct, or how many of them there needs to be to look at the evidence in the correct light.
Also, you failed to point out that multiple theories can predict the same placements. In those cases, there is no way to tell between two theories. You can keep to one because it's the way its been done, but ultimately you can't test the historical theories to tell which one is true.
"I wouldn't even call it a conjecture. It's apologetics, almost certainly conceived and propagated dishonestly."
Who in the ID community is being dishonest?
"It's possible that someone could offer "intelligent design" as a conjectural explanation for some poorly understood phenomenon"
Actually, most people offer up "intelligent design" for well-understood phenomena. Would you say that the works of Mozart are not intelligently designed? Or perhaps that the Apache server was not intelligently designed? ID simply says that we can analyze design mathematically, and use the results of that to determine if a given physical system is likely the result of an intelligent agent. In fact, this process is already implicit in Archaeology and in SETI. It's just that biologists don't like it being applied to their neck of the woods.
"They're trying to convince the courts that creationists have sound scientific reasons for their beliefs."
This is incorrect. ID does not want either ID or creationism taught in science classes. In fact, most creationist organizations don't want creationism as a mandatory topic. And all groups I am aware of agree that evolution should be fully taught to students.
Actually, hypotheses and theories are quite disconnected, as are theories and laws.
A hypothesis is a testable prediction. A theory is a hypothesis-generating model. A law is a mathematical description.
For example:
Hypothesis: If I throw an object X with a force of Y at a vector of Z, it will land at point Q.
Theory: Gravity is caused by the warping of space by mass
Law: F=G*(m1*m2/r^2)
Note that even with dramatic changes to the _theory_ of gravity, the Law is relatively stable -- it is simply a mathematical description.
Thus, creationists and evolutionists are both wrong when one says "evolution is just a theory, it's basically a guess" and the other says "evolution is a proven fact, just like the 'theory of gravity'". Theories are merely hypothesis-producing mechanisms, and are judged by their usefulness of producing testable hypotheses.
"at least in its most basic forms, then obviously only a qualified medical specialist can make any decisions"
This is a bad idea. It assumes that medical knowledge (and not, say, ethical knowledge, or spritual knowledge, or personal knowledge) is required to make the decision.
"The very concept of 'fundamental rights' (which, frankly, I'm very skeptical about myself) are by definition not dependant on any single country's law - they are supposedly 'inherent' to any human being, so the government cannot grant them to you, only deny you them."
Yes, and this is because they are founded upon theological premises.
Interestingly, young-earth creationists view change as much more rapid than evolutionists. The difference being that the primary driver of change is built-in, rather than haphazard (yes, natural selection is not haphazard, but it does not _produce the change_ -- mutations do that, and mutations _are_ haphazard).
Young-earth creationists view the originally "created kinds" as roughly at the family taxic level for most vertebrate groups.
"For a long time I leaned towards a young earth point of view. What has started to change my mind was that idea of a supernova. If a star is 20,000 light years away, and we see it colapsing, then it would have been created in-transit. That seems, at its core, a little disceptive, which I think is against God's nature."
I agree with you. However, I don't think you are looking at all of the possibilities. You are looking at it with the assumption that science currently has all the answers. This is not necessarily a contradiction. This problem is address very well here:
"The fossils that we dig-up are not bone. They are stone."
Fossilization can occur quickly. There's actually been a fossilized ham found. Likewise there has been a fossilized baby found in a 3,000-year-old grave. Mt. Saint Helens has fossilized trees.
It doesn't take a lot of time, just the right conditions. See Dinosaur bones--just how old are they really?. And this was written before the discoveries of soft tissue within dinosaur bones.
One of the quotes from the article:
"The amount of time that it takes for a bone to become completely permineralized is highly variable. If the groundwater is heavily laden with minerals in solution, the process can happen rapidly. Modern bones that fall into mineral springs can become permineralized within a matter of weeks."
The record of destruction of the flood. The regularized sequence is explained by three causes: ecological zonation, hydrodynamic sorting, and differential escape. The mechanism for producing the flood is catastrophic plate techtonics.
For a good overview of the young-earth view, two good books are Origins: Linking Science and Scripture and Understanding the Pattern of Life (links are using my Amazon referral link because I'm a selfish, greedy bastard). A description of the current theory of the flood is contained at globalflood.org. All of these are by practicing scientists, although the author of "Origins" has not been publishing in the secular world for a while. Todd Wood, coauthor of "Understanding the Pattern of Life" is well-published secularly (you can search for "Wood TC" on medline). Likewise, the author of the global flood website is well-published (the first few publications listed are creationist, the rest are secular), and is a scientist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory.
More detail about the fossil sorting of the flood is available in the book Flood Geology, though I think some of the articles there are a bit dated, and I have not personally read through it all.
As Ken Ham would say -- "what would you expect from a global flood? Billions of dead things buried in rock layers laid down by water all over the earth."
Personally, I lean young-earth but have not done enough study both biblically and scientifically to make a decisive stand on the topic.
"Yeah, but... then you have to live in a "low cost" region, which is a pretty nice euphemism for hell."
Hmmm... A friend of mine sold their 1200 square foot house in California, and using just the money from that, they bought an entire INLET of Grand Lank, a boat, a house on the property, and a dock. The land area is huge, and they own both sides of the inlet.
So, I guess if you consider lakeside property with a large house "hell", then sure.
"the earth is only 6,000 years old; God planted fossils to test our faith"
Just so you'll know, the only person who has used the second half of that argument seriously has been dead for over a hundred years. There are many Young-Earth Creationists, some doing important work in biology (like sequencing the Rice Genome), and none of them think that God planted fossils "to test our faith".
"I would personally think that in the business world having someone who understood business as well as technology would be a boon."
Providing that this is true, yes, it is a HUGE boon. This is probably the most important thing -- to be able to communicate and operate in both worlds.
However, there are many who deceive themselves about how good they are in either world. Here are questions to think about for how good you are technically:
1) How long does it take you to learn a new programming language? This is important because it tells you how well you understand the _principles_ of programming languages, and how easy it will be to adapt to whatever environment you need to do.
* How long does it take you to learn a new platform? This is important because platforms always change, and you will likely have to interface with several. It also tells how easy it is for you to adopt new patterns of doing things.
* Have you ever programmed in assembly language? This is important because, ultimately, this is how the computer works.
* Can you write translators between systems, data stores, and protocols? This is important because almost every development job requires this in some sort. There are always disparate systems that need to be wired together. There are always unstructured data sources that need to be cleaned up and stored in a database. I've had to scrape HTML (and even Javascript) into a database on multiple occasions. In fact, once I had to tie into a system that only produced HTML and javascript as output, and had to write an API that could access it as a regular data source.
* Can you explain what you are doing and what your problems are in a way that communicates what management needs to know, without talking down to them? Can you truly explain what your issues are in a way that is jargon-free, or where the jargon is fully explained? Many non-technical managers are smart people (not all of them, obviously), but are not techy. Obviously, the dumb ones may need to be pounded on a bit, but there is no reason you should not be able to describe specifically what kinds of problems you are having to an intelligent, non-technical person.
I agree that programmer jobs have been riding a bubble, but I disagree to the extent of it or to the fact that the jobs in India will greatly affect the price of good programmers.
First of all, there is a HUGE difference between good programmers and bad/mediocre programmers. The reason jobs even can be outsourced to India is that the quality of many school graduates is so poor that it really doesn't matter. Qualified programmers are in no direct long-term competition with India programmers (this doesn't mean it won't happen in the short-run -- managers will not understand the difference between good and mediocre programmers, and try to outsource, and then go back in-country once that bites them in the butt).
The difference is communication. You cannot have the same kind of communication with someone who lives and works in India as someone in your own country. There are too many subtle differences. The only way to make it work is to have the job so over-specified that the programmer has no real work to do. You've basically had to hire more high-paid "analysts" and then have an expensive, far-away "build shop".
For example, your programmer in India is not going to have any idea if something in your code violates local tax laws, or local privacy laws. They aren't part of this country's culture, and therefore simply are not able to detect these sorts of things and report back, "hey, this isn't going to work". Likewise, arranging in-person meetings is difficult. For a team to really work together, everyone needs to know each other, including on a semi-social basis. I need to know if the person I'm talking to normally speaks in generalities or specifics, so I know if I need to constantly press him for more details, or know that whatever he gives me is really the way things are.
Programming is not a "cog and wheel" type activity.
$28-30k is not enough for highly skilled programmers. One of the problems is regional variance. My region (midwest) pays fairly low comparatively, but I still think that highly skilled programmers will generally make 40-50 minimum.
I think what will really deflate, though, is the high pay associated with certain tools and specialties. For example -- being an Oracle DBA. This is one of the most overpaid jobs I've ever seen. People are starting to figure out that paper certificates don't mean much, and that there really isn't $80,000 worth of skill required for any given database scenario (to be sure, there are some, but they are the exception rather than the rule).
Part of the reason for the decline also is the overabundance of mediocre and bad programmers. When they leave for other fields, the decline in our salaries will probably stop, but hopefully instead of them being replaced we will simply have higher standards in the future so we don't need so many people.
"I'm tired of the UNIX philosophy that seems to say that anything that allows users to do things easier should be considered a security risk. News flash, empowering users is not a fundamentally bad idea."
This is the problem. I love empowering users. However, there's two ways to do it, and they don't mix. The first way is to make systems that are TRULY simple. The second way is to make systems that are complicated and to educate the users. What doesn't work is to make systems that are truly complicated but are papered over by pretty interfaces and make people think that they don't need to know what is going on.
"For the average joe that's the way it should be. Just like the TV, microwave, car, etc."
Yes, if the process is truly simple. However, in the cases where the processes aren't truly simple, the facade of simplicity should be removed. This would include most Windows applications.
If you want a Windows application that actually _is_ simple, I have an example, but can't remember the name. Basically, it had a bunch of templates that you HAD to follow the template. It didn't allow you to screw around and totally wreck the template. It was _truly_ simple -- the user's options were few and discrete.
However, with beasts such a MS Word and OpenOffice (no digs to OO, except that they are mimmicking a broken model), there is absolutely no way to have true simplicity. Anything resembling simplicity is just a covering/faking of simplicity that will ultimately bite you.
If we are going to make things that are REALLY simple, that's great. That's what made the old Mac's great -- they really _were_ simple! What made it even better is that because it was simple, the users actually understood the product. That's one of the reasons Mac users hate Windows, is that with Mac being simple was being real, while on Windows the simplicity is just hiding what's really going on.
I'm all for simplicity IN SIMPLE SYSTEMS. But putting users on complex systems that just have a shallow "friendly" cover is asking for trouble. And that's precisely what the Windows world has.
"Users need fine grained control, good default settings, and a good user interface that lets them know what it is they are doing."
No, users need to know what the heck they are doing. The problem with Windows is that it was selling people the idea that you could do complex tasks with a computer without actually knowing what you are doing. That idea is plain false. You either have to have tasks which are simple in reality, or have tasks that are complex in reality. That doesn't mean that they have to be hard-to-use, but that it recognizes the complexity of the task which is being handled.
"I haven't seen all three of those yet, anywhere but it is very possible."
While a minority of what you are saying is possible, this assumes that someone can in theory (and in practice):
(a) predict all of the needed options. The fact that you know of an option or two that everyone needs does not mean that all needed options are known.
(b) with all of the options produced by (a), make it in such a way that a user can perform their task easily.
(c) make users understand both the consequences of the individual options listed in (a) and the consequences of combinations of these options.
Here's some better solutions from the "keep-it-simple" table:
Make Word documents unscriptable even in theory
Only allow applications launched from email to be open by certain, trusted programs, and not the shell. Even further, you could have it so that executable files cannot simply be dragged into the system, but they must be run through some sort of "verifier/installer" first.
You may say that your business cases require #1 to not be the case. But what I'm saying is that you are using Microsoft Word for something that you shouldn't be using it for. If you need your Word document to be an application program, then write a frickin application program!. If _really_ need customizations done to word, then the way they are loaded on needs to be as different from loading "normal" files as the east is from the west. It's the muddle that we are getting ourselves into where Microsoft Word is our development platform, and somehow we wonder why it's unsafe to even open a text document.
These are my two basic rules:
1) If a process needs to be simple, it must ACTUALLY be simple.
2) If a process needs to be complex, it must be UNDERSTOOD by its users, and its complexity must not be hidden (it can be moved out-of-the-way of normal processes, etc., but it should not be hidden).
You can be simple, or you can be complex, but to be complex-while-pretending-to-be-simple-but-only-for -certain-cases-where-it-really-works-but-is-always -insufficient-for-real-world-work won't cut it.
Most of these problems are not problems specific to Windows but are specific to dumb users.
Windows viruses usually don't propogate by modifying system files and whatnot. They do it just through the user's own account.
If a UNIX user opened what was advertised as a pr0n screensaver, and it wound up infecting his.bashrc file and creating an SMTP worm, there is absolutely NOTHING in the UNIX architecture that would stop this.
The problem is the culture that Windows has engendered, which says "everything should be automagic -- don't think! -- just click and the world will be yours!" It was caused by Windows, but bringing users of the same mentality to UNIX will just cause the problem to exist on UNIX, too.
"If I could claim legal posession of the crown jewels and wore them as a participant in a demolition derby"
True, but irrelevant. Change the scenario to this:
If you could claim legal posession of the crown jewels, wore them as a participant in a demolition derby, and they got destroyed because of a demolition player who was breaking the demolition rules that party would in fact be liable.
I disagree, but only a little. I _do_ think there is merit to a civil case, just not a criminal one. What they did was breach of contract. They had a contract not to do certain things within the game, and they broke that contract. This caused monetary damage to the players and the game company.
The idea of _jail time_ for this, though, is ludicrous.
Slashdot Mirror
"That was sneaky"
Did they do it in secret? If not, how is it sneaky?
"underhanded"
In what way? I think it's underhanded for biologists to make metaphysical pronouncements as if they were observable facts.
"dishonest"
Again, in what way? Biology textbooks often present the unobserved past on equal footing with observable, experimental science. THAT is pushing on dishonest.
Perhaps you don't understand what the issue is that is being discussed. Here is a good introduction to it:
The Unraveling of Scientific Materialism
"God made life. It is called a soul.
And the tooth fairy and santa claus exist too. Except that we stop believing in them as we realise what a crock they are. Some don't do the sam with these god myths though."
The difference is that material processes do not even have the potential to explain life and consciousness as we experience it. The best that neuroscience has ever been able to do is discover corrolaries of consciousness. But the gap between the event of consciousness and it having brain correlations is huge.
No amount of mechanical processes cause a machine to snap from being without consciousness to being with consciousness. Consciousness and subjectivity are simply outside the realm of material processes, and no amount of yammering from the metaphysically confused (like Dawkins) changes that fact.
In addition, if material processes could explain all of the universe, it would completely undermine reason. Let's say that person A is a lifelong republican. And person A then goes and says, "George Bush is a great guy". Most democrats would say that person A is not speaking from reason, but says that only because he is a Republican. What they are saying is that he is influenced by outside events, which prevent him from being rational. However, in the materialist view, ALL events are outside, deterministic or chance, events. Therefore, all reason, including the reasoning that says that all things are the result of material processes, is not reasonable but instead imposed on the subject from the outside.
"I suppose you could argue that this is useful ammo against the ID folks"
Actually, ID folks agree that evolution occurred and is occurring. Most of them also agree with Universal Common Ancestry.
"and the whole 'god created us' thing only works if you believe in god. I'm sure that works for you, but the majority of people aren't christian, so searching for other explanations is kinda neccesary."
But the VAST majority do believe in God. And Biblically, even if they don't know how to worship Him, most people who believe in God believe in the same one that Christians do (see Paul's speech in Athens).
"p.s. - the pope believes in evolution. he has said so, in official papal newsletters."
Depends on what you mean by "evolution". Even young-earth creationists believe in "evolution" for some meaning of evolution. What the pope also said was that to suppose that the process of evolution was unguided would be the abandonment of reason, and would be akin to admitting effects without a cause. This is not the same "evolution" as is presented in textbooks, which usually specifically mention an unguided process.
"doesn't matter for you unless you're catholic, but just saying, believing in god doesn't mean you believe in intelligent design."
ID would agree fully with the pope. In fact, most ID'ers are probably more strongly allied with evolution than the pope is. Most ID'ers agree with universal common ancestry, but disagree that you could get the results that we have in life without a designer to guide the process.
"But we can. Find a series of precambrian rabbit fossils, and everything we've constructed regarding the history of life comes tumbling down."
Not necessarily. One could easily propose a secondary hypothesis for how they arrived there. For example, in several thousand years, archaeologists will be able to say that they have found dinosaur bones mixed with human bones.
Historical inquiry always has this kind of "fudge factor". In fact, there are spots where the fossils are out-of-order. The reason given is some sort of geological displacement. That's all well and good, except that at a few of the spots the only evidence for the displacement is that the fossils are out-of-order. That doesn't mean that it's incorrect, just that it's ultimately untestable because noone can know if the secondary hypotheses are correct, or how many of them there needs to be to look at the evidence in the correct light.
Also, you failed to point out that multiple theories can predict the same placements. In those cases, there is no way to tell between two theories. You can keep to one because it's the way its been done, but ultimately you can't test the historical theories to tell which one is true.
"I personally, DO believe in "Intelligent Design" but only based on faith and not science."
Then you are speaking of creationism, not Intelligent Design. Intelligent Design is a mathematical model, not a faith-based one.
"I would never try and put fourth blind faith in the relm of science."
This has two problems:
1) faith should never be blind.
2) if you would not put your faith to the test, what good is it?
"I wouldn't even call it a conjecture. It's apologetics, almost certainly conceived and propagated dishonestly."
Who in the ID community is being dishonest?
"It's possible that someone could offer "intelligent design" as a conjectural explanation for some poorly understood phenomenon"
Actually, most people offer up "intelligent design" for well-understood phenomena. Would you say that the works of Mozart are not intelligently designed? Or perhaps that the Apache server was not intelligently designed? ID simply says that we can analyze design mathematically, and use the results of that to determine if a given physical system is likely the result of an intelligent agent. In fact, this process is already implicit in Archaeology and in SETI. It's just that biologists don't like it being applied to their neck of the woods.
"They're trying to convince the courts that creationists have sound scientific reasons for their beliefs."
This is incorrect. ID does not want either ID or creationism taught in science classes. In fact, most creationist organizations don't want creationism as a mandatory topic. And all groups I am aware of agree that evolution should be fully taught to students.
Actually, hypotheses and theories are quite disconnected, as are theories and laws.
A hypothesis is a testable prediction. A theory is a hypothesis-generating model. A law is a mathematical description.
For example:
Hypothesis: If I throw an object X with a force of Y at a vector of Z, it will land at point Q.
Theory: Gravity is caused by the warping of space by mass
Law: F=G*(m1*m2/r^2)
Note that even with dramatic changes to the _theory_ of gravity, the Law is relatively stable -- it is simply a mathematical description.
Thus, creationists and evolutionists are both wrong when one says "evolution is just a theory, it's basically a guess" and the other says "evolution is a proven fact, just like the 'theory of gravity'". Theories are merely hypothesis-producing mechanisms, and are judged by their usefulness of producing testable hypotheses.
"at least in its most basic forms, then obviously only a qualified medical specialist can make any decisions"
This is a bad idea. It assumes that medical knowledge (and not, say, ethical knowledge, or spritual knowledge, or personal knowledge) is required to make the decision.
"The very concept of 'fundamental rights' (which, frankly, I'm very skeptical about myself) are by definition not dependant on any single country's law - they are supposedly 'inherent' to any human being, so the government cannot grant them to you, only deny you them."
Yes, and this is because they are founded upon theological premises.
Interestingly, young-earth creationists view change as much more rapid than evolutionists. The difference being that the primary driver of change is built-in, rather than haphazard (yes, natural selection is not haphazard, but it does not _produce the change_ -- mutations do that, and mutations _are_ haphazard).
Young-earth creationists view the originally "created kinds" as roughly at the family taxic level for most vertebrate groups.
"For a long time I leaned towards a young earth point of view. What has started to change my mind was that idea of a supernova. If a star is 20,000 light years away, and we see it colapsing, then it would have been created in-transit. That seems, at its core, a little disceptive, which I think is against God's nature."
r lisle.mp3
I agree with you. However, I don't think you are looking at all of the possibilities. You are looking at it with the assumption that science currently has all the answers. This is not necessarily a contradiction. This problem is address very well here:
http://media.gospelcom.net/aig/Megaconference/05d
"The fossils that we dig-up are not bone. They are stone."
Fossilization can occur quickly. There's actually been a fossilized ham found. Likewise there has been a fossilized baby found in a 3,000-year-old grave. Mt. Saint Helens has fossilized trees.
It doesn't take a lot of time, just the right conditions. See Dinosaur bones--just how old are they really?. And this was written before the discoveries of soft tissue within dinosaur bones.
One of the quotes from the article:
"The amount of time that it takes for a bone to become completely permineralized is highly variable. If the groundwater is heavily laden with minerals in solution, the process can happen rapidly. Modern bones that fall into mineral springs can become permineralized within a matter of weeks."
"So how do those young earthers explain fossils?"
The record of destruction of the flood. The regularized sequence is explained by three causes: ecological zonation, hydrodynamic sorting, and differential escape. The mechanism for producing the flood is catastrophic plate techtonics.
For a good overview of the young-earth view, two good books are Origins: Linking Science and Scripture and Understanding the Pattern of Life (links are using my Amazon referral link because I'm a selfish, greedy bastard). A description of the current theory of the flood is contained at globalflood.org. All of these are by practicing scientists, although the author of "Origins" has not been publishing in the secular world for a while. Todd Wood, coauthor of "Understanding the Pattern of Life" is well-published secularly (you can search for "Wood TC" on medline). Likewise, the author of the global flood website is well-published (the first few publications listed are creationist, the rest are secular), and is a scientist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory.
More detail about the fossil sorting of the flood is available in the book Flood Geology, though I think some of the articles there are a bit dated, and I have not personally read through it all.
If you're interested in a good young-earth website, see Northwest Creation Network's Wiki, or the more comprehensive but not always as good Answers in Genesis website.
As Ken Ham would say -- "what would you expect from a global flood? Billions of dead things buried in rock layers laid down by water all over the earth."
Personally, I lean young-earth but have not done enough study both biblically and scientifically to make a decisive stand on the topic.
"Yeah, but... then you have to live in a "low cost" region, which is a pretty nice euphemism for hell."
Hmmm... A friend of mine sold their 1200 square foot house in California, and using just the money from that, they bought an entire INLET of Grand Lank, a boat, a house on the property, and a dock. The land area is huge, and they own both sides of the inlet.
So, I guess if you consider lakeside property with a large house "hell", then sure.
"the earth is only 6,000 years old; God planted fossils to test our faith"
Just so you'll know, the only person who has used the second half of that argument seriously has been dead for over a hundred years. There are many Young-Earth Creationists, some doing important work in biology (like sequencing the Rice Genome), and none of them think that God planted fossils "to test our faith".
"I would personally think that in the business world having someone who understood business as well as technology would be a boon."
Providing that this is true, yes, it is a HUGE boon. This is probably the most important thing -- to be able to communicate and operate in both worlds.
However, there are many who deceive themselves about how good they are in either world. Here are questions to think about for how good you are technically:
1) How long does it take you to learn a new programming language? This is important because it tells you how well you understand the _principles_ of programming languages, and how easy it will be to adapt to whatever environment you need to do.
* How long does it take you to learn a new platform? This is important because platforms always change, and you will likely have to interface with several. It also tells how easy it is for you to adopt new patterns of doing things.
* Have you ever programmed in assembly language? This is important because, ultimately, this is how the computer works.
* Can you write translators between systems, data stores, and protocols? This is important because almost every development job requires this in some sort. There are always disparate systems that need to be wired together. There are always unstructured data sources that need to be cleaned up and stored in a database. I've had to scrape HTML (and even Javascript) into a database on multiple occasions. In fact, once I had to tie into a system that only produced HTML and javascript as output, and had to write an API that could access it as a regular data source.
* Can you explain what you are doing and what your problems are in a way that communicates what management needs to know, without talking down to them? Can you truly explain what your issues are in a way that is jargon-free, or where the jargon is fully explained? Many non-technical managers are smart people (not all of them, obviously), but are not techy. Obviously, the dumb ones may need to be pounded on a bit, but there is no reason you should not be able to describe specifically what kinds of problems you are having to an intelligent, non-technical person.
I agree that programmer jobs have been riding a bubble, but I disagree to the extent of it or to the fact that the jobs in India will greatly affect the price of good programmers.
First of all, there is a HUGE difference between good programmers and bad/mediocre programmers. The reason jobs even can be outsourced to India is that the quality of many school graduates is so poor that it really doesn't matter. Qualified programmers are in no direct long-term competition with India programmers (this doesn't mean it won't happen in the short-run -- managers will not understand the difference between good and mediocre programmers, and try to outsource, and then go back in-country once that bites them in the butt).
The difference is communication. You cannot have the same kind of communication with someone who lives and works in India as someone in your own country. There are too many subtle differences. The only way to make it work is to have the job so over-specified that the programmer has no real work to do. You've basically had to hire more high-paid "analysts" and then have an expensive, far-away "build shop".
For example, your programmer in India is not going to have any idea if something in your code violates local tax laws, or local privacy laws. They aren't part of this country's culture, and therefore simply are not able to detect these sorts of things and report back, "hey, this isn't going to work". Likewise, arranging in-person meetings is difficult. For a team to really work together, everyone needs to know each other, including on a semi-social basis. I need to know if the person I'm talking to normally speaks in generalities or specifics, so I know if I need to constantly press him for more details, or know that whatever he gives me is really the way things are.
Programming is not a "cog and wheel" type activity.
$28-30k is not enough for highly skilled programmers. One of the problems is regional variance. My region (midwest) pays fairly low comparatively, but I still think that highly skilled programmers will generally make 40-50 minimum.
I think what will really deflate, though, is the high pay associated with certain tools and specialties. For example -- being an Oracle DBA. This is one of the most overpaid jobs I've ever seen. People are starting to figure out that paper certificates don't mean much, and that there really isn't $80,000 worth of skill required for any given database scenario (to be sure, there are some, but they are the exception rather than the rule).
Part of the reason for the decline also is the overabundance of mediocre and bad programmers. When they leave for other fields, the decline in our salaries will probably stop, but hopefully instead of them being replaced we will simply have higher standards in the future so we don't need so many people.
"I'm tired of the UNIX philosophy that seems to say that anything that allows users to do things easier should be considered a security risk. News flash, empowering users is not a fundamentally bad idea."
This is the problem. I love empowering users. However, there's two ways to do it, and they don't mix. The first way is to make systems that are TRULY simple. The second way is to make systems that are complicated and to educate the users. What doesn't work is to make systems that are truly complicated but are papered over by pretty interfaces and make people think that they don't need to know what is going on.
"For the average joe that's the way it should be. Just like the TV, microwave, car, etc."
Yes, if the process is truly simple. However, in the cases where the processes aren't truly simple, the facade of simplicity should be removed. This would include most Windows applications.
If you want a Windows application that actually _is_ simple, I have an example, but can't remember the name. Basically, it had a bunch of templates that you HAD to follow the template. It didn't allow you to screw around and totally wreck the template. It was _truly_ simple -- the user's options were few and discrete.
However, with beasts such a MS Word and OpenOffice (no digs to OO, except that they are mimmicking a broken model), there is absolutely no way to have true simplicity. Anything resembling simplicity is just a covering/faking of simplicity that will ultimately bite you.
If we are going to make things that are REALLY simple, that's great. That's what made the old Mac's great -- they really _were_ simple! What made it even better is that because it was simple, the users actually understood the product. That's one of the reasons Mac users hate Windows, is that with Mac being simple was being real, while on Windows the simplicity is just hiding what's really going on.
I'm all for simplicity IN SIMPLE SYSTEMS. But putting users on complex systems that just have a shallow "friendly" cover is asking for trouble. And that's precisely what the Windows world has.
No, users need to know what the heck they are doing. The problem with Windows is that it was selling people the idea that you could do complex tasks with a computer without actually knowing what you are doing. That idea is plain false. You either have to have tasks which are simple in reality, or have tasks that are complex in reality. That doesn't mean that they have to be hard-to-use, but that it recognizes the complexity of the task which is being handled.
"I haven't seen all three of those yet, anywhere but it is very possible."
While a minority of what you are saying is possible, this assumes that someone can in theory (and in practice):
(a) predict all of the needed options. The fact that you know of an option or two that everyone needs does not mean that all needed options are known.
(b) with all of the options produced by (a), make it in such a way that a user can perform their task easily.
(c) make users understand both the consequences of the individual options listed in (a) and the consequences of combinations of these options.
Here's some better solutions from the "keep-it-simple" table:
You may say that your business cases require #1 to not be the case. But what I'm saying is that you are using Microsoft Word for something that you shouldn't be using it for. If you need your Word document to be an application program, then write a frickin application program!. If _really_ need customizations done to word, then the way they are loaded on needs to be as different from loading "normal" files as the east is from the west. It's the muddle that we are getting ourselves into where Microsoft Word is our development platform, and somehow we wonder why it's unsafe to even open a text document.
These are my two basic rules:
1) If a process needs to be simple, it must ACTUALLY be simple.
2) If a process needs to be complex, it must be UNDERSTOOD by its users, and its complexity must not be hidden (it can be moved out-of-the-way of normal processes, etc., but it should not be hidden).
You can be simple, or you can be complex, but to be complex-while-pretending-to-be-simple-but-only-fo
Most of these problems are not problems specific to Windows but are specific to dumb users.
.bashrc file and creating an SMTP worm, there is absolutely NOTHING in the UNIX architecture that would stop this.
Windows viruses usually don't propogate by modifying system files and whatnot. They do it just through the user's own account.
If a UNIX user opened what was advertised as a pr0n screensaver, and it wound up infecting his
The problem is the culture that Windows has engendered, which says "everything should be automagic -- don't think! -- just click and the world will be yours!" It was caused by Windows, but bringing users of the same mentality to UNIX will just cause the problem to exist on UNIX, too.
And it's quite ironic that at about the same time Nature published Benner's opinion that the water is probably not where life originated.
I can imagine the conversations between these groups of scientists:
"Ooohh! We may have found water on mars!"
"Useless, but congratulations anyway."
"We just spent $X million dollars searching for water so that we can find the beginnings of life on other planets."
"Well, that's great, but our research shows that water is more likely to inhibit life than help it."
"Oh. Well don't tell that to the people signing our funding."
Kind of ironically amusing to be talking about the Darwin awards in the context of the invention of a 6-day young-earth creationist.
"If I could claim legal posession of the crown jewels and wore them as a participant in a demolition derby"
True, but irrelevant. Change the scenario to this:
If you could claim legal posession of the crown jewels, wore them as a participant in a demolition derby, and they got destroyed because of a demolition player who was breaking the demolition rules that party would in fact be liable.
"No crime, IMHO, was committed."
I disagree, but only a little. I _do_ think there is merit to a civil case, just not a criminal one. What they did was breach of contract. They had a contract not to do certain things within the game, and they broke that contract. This caused monetary damage to the players and the game company.
The idea of _jail time_ for this, though, is ludicrous.