Science is a system of logic designed to derive natural laws from observations of phenomena and falsifiable experiments. It has nothing to do with "belief". Scientists can and do have suspicions about various things which can be useful when it comes to the first part of the scientific process, but even these suspicions can be problematic if steps aren't taken to ensure that they don't interfere with accurate results, or the interpretations of such. Calling them "beliefs" instead of "suspicions" isn't disallowed, as long as you realize that it doesn't change what I said.
Religion is more than what you describe, in many cases. Far from being a random collection of superstitions (admittedly, some self-described religions do fall under that category), it is often a sophisticated collection of traditions, culture, and moral/ethical laws that can and sometimes do improve the standard of living of people. For instance, many religions claim that it is wrong for me to murder you out of perverse pleasure, and that whether or not I'm caught and punished, it is a great harm, period. What does science tell us of murder? Not much, though it can confirm that murder does happen. There are some that try to count murders, and derive statistical models, but since no experiments are possible (or wise, or unobjectionable), many call this "soft science" or refuse to consider it such at all. However, it should be noted, that whether science or not, the numbers suggest that murder is also bad. A society that tolerates it would probably devolve into chaos, and be an unpleasant, unproductive one to live in. Wow. Imagine, religion taught us not to murder without $13 billion in federal grant money spread over 70 years.
Your hypothesis has merit. We need to design an experiment that can falsify it, and then after many years of reproducing the results, it will become a foundational theory.
Here is my proposal for just such an experiment. We will need at least 5 different communities of random varieties of religious faith, and a control group of rabid atheists. Over a period of years, we will expose all of them to a random selection of scientific facts, unprovable pseudo-scientific factoids, moral proverbs, and prohibitions against certain behaviors.
Examples:
*Facts* The speed of light in a vacuum is the absolute velocity possible under any concievable circumstance. Earth-like planets are roughly spherical.
*Factoids* Biological organisms evolve due to natural selection and mutations introduced by the occassional mutagenic radiation or chemical compoud.
*Moralisms* Treat your fellow man as you yourself would wish to be treated. It is a sin to murder.
*Prohibitions* Do not steal. Do not force others to do your bidding.
I theorize, that after a period of 10 years or less, we would begin to see striking statistical correlations in this experiment, the atheists would be more likely to reject the moralisms and the prohibitions, and the religious guinea pigs would reject things like gravity and microwave ovens.
This is only a preliminary proposal, feel free to submit modifications.
PS It is illogical to "guess" that people who believe (in the non-loaded sense of the word) that science isn't mutually exclusive from religion are religious. Logic dictates that you agree on a common set of definitions for these words not slanted to prove your point beforehand.
The saddest part? After tuning it to a point where it's extremely accurate and useful, the religious bigots often co-opt it, and claim that was what they were saying all along.
If God does exist, which do you think he probably finds more important?
A) That people believe he exists (even though their belief doesn't alter the fact that he exists)
or
B) That people should be good, kind, and loving to one another. That we shouldn't murder each other, or take advantage of other's weaknesses.
That's the danger in moral relativism. If "God" doesn't exist (and no one can prove that he does), I don't have to worry about being punished. Abortion is more of a convenience than it is taking a life, laying off 10,000 people and ruining their lives to save some dollars is ok because by law my only concern is profit... all sorts of things become possible.
Here's a thought... if we try to be decent, even if it turns out there is no God, maybe this place would end up looking alot like the paradise the fictional guy promised us. It sure looks alot like the fictional hell we were threatened with.
You must have went into the very narrow field of boring science. Most scientists see miraculous things every day, I'd think. Hell, thought that was the fun part, trying to figure them out.
Surely you agree that it's a miracle the human race hasn't made itself extinct...
My question for you is: what consistent, generally applicable principle are you using to decide which things in the Bible are and are not reliable?
Can't speak for the GP post, but I myself use common sense, intuition, and when it's reliable, science. Gradual, Darwinian evolution has its problems, so that can't be used, though I do suspect something like evolution happened. Wouldn't mind actually having a candidate mechanism for the rapid bursts of evolution that seem to ocurr.
But then, I also have problems with some dating methodologies. Mind you, I'm not some retard that thinks dinosaurs died in Noah's flood, but some things could still be off by *a lot*. As much as people bitch about biblical dates being off (6000 yr old earth), paleotological, and possibly even geological dates could be just as bad.
Also, I do find it difficult to fathom that some hard-line atheists dispute the existence of a historical Jesus. Could biblical accounts be inaccurate? Maybe even wildly so... but I'm willing to concede someone by that name walked the earth +-20 years when the bible claims he did.
It's all moot, really. Whether or not God(s) exist, I want to be a good person. Wish more people did.
People create cars. Cars are created. Yet, to me, it looks as if cars evolve from year to year... I even see traits that appear to cross-polinate to other species!
Clearly, both are true in a way. And yet, biological evolution is a source of great controversy, even in the scientific community (though not that it itself is dispute, dispite the claims of preachers). Why christians fail to take the opportunity to work within the blank framework that evolution provides, instead of attacking it for its shortcomings, is beyond me.
What happens if somehow, someone proves evolution beyond shadow of doubt? Will billions of christians become atheists? It's just dumb.
Cubit measurement is wrong, probably more useful to figure the biggest wooden ship plausible.
Animal species as we know them today... too damn many. More practically, it's probably intended that Noah took all the various livestock species common to his culture. I also think "two of each" is mistranslated. Wouldn't be suprised if it were "enough of each" or similar.
Not saying it happened, but there can be alot of truth in these things. Just need to understand how translation and lack of cultural reference points can confuse things...
Not particularly. Let them rot. Their generation let things get this bad... I don't feel like taking care of them, just so that I can rot in my own old age.
Pointers are much easier to understand from an assembly language point of view. Now mind you, when I have **'s and whatnot, I can be confused by just what it is a pointer "to", but I know what they are in theory, and have more than a little fun creating all sorts of weird data structures with them.
How in the hell can you do a linked list without a pointer? What do you do when you need a dynamic array, and the only thing close is a linked list?
Agh, see it didn't even ocurr to me immediately, how do you use malloc() without pointers? Is he declaring everything on the stack? How can you load anything bigger than 1 or 2k that way?
I don't want to call you a liar, but this is absurd, beyond the pale.
The last prospect I got turned down for, I was told they "wanted someone who knew perl". Presumably so I could run a script.pl on the command line, to follow some instructions(which is dumb). My own personal fork of the AWstats web statistics package (written in perl) has features even the latest version doesn't have (someday I have to get around to contributing my additions).
I know that I can't get a programmer job of some sort, I'm not expecting that. But, in response to his rant, I'm not conceding that I couldn't do them. Since when has ability ever had anything to do with it? I don't dress up well, I'm kinda weird looking, and I really need to put a cheap S&K suit on the credit card... even if I am near broke. I'm awkward to talk to, I can't help it. Even when I know the answer better than the other interviewees, there is a pause in my voice, the hesitation.. hell, I can't catch myself at it, but I suspect I stutter even.
Of the jobs I could feasibly be hired for? Well, with phone support, you won't get the stupid script "have you tried rebooting yet" bullshit. I know the proper names for widgets (I'm not forced to say "you know, the button thingy in that one window in the control panel thingy), but smart enough to not expect the user to know them. I've installed not only more, but stranger software than anyone likely to respond to this thread. Hardware, even more so. Unless you know someone that has an ATM155 network at home (Cabletron ZX250 Smartcell switch, PCI Fore cards), I think I take that award.
As for hardware repair, I can replace a mainboard in an iBook in 10m53s flat. Comparable times on most other hardware. Not that anyone does actual repair anymore... it all boils down to unboxing the new computer while not embarrassing your company in front of the client when doing so.
Doesn't matter though... why go to the trouble of finding someone truly competent, when business logic dictates that you plan on incompetence, and hire 3 times as many techs? If the competent tech dies, or is in a car accident, you don't have a crisis of replacing someone hard to replace. I'm screwed, basically... I should have worked on beig a better liar or asskisser, instead of knowing stuff or being able to work hard.
I don't want to go tinfoilhat on you, but read this. The people who benefit don't even live in the US, or for that matter consider themselves citizens of any nation. By the time China goes to war with us, they intend to have wormed their way into the banking system over there, and loaning the money to the chinese to go to war... they win either way.
Can someone explain to me exactly why the government meddles in things just enough, and refuses to protect our rights just enough, to cause any potential jobs to wither on the vine?
I'm all for this "look out for yourself" libertarian bullshit, but make corporate charters temporary, renewable every 2 years, and that they can be dissolved with *no reason* whatsoever. Give me back the 14/28 years of copyright, only with providing an unencumbered version to LOC. The list goes on, but start with those, and I'll start considering that my lack of a job is solely my own fault.
It's far worse than the picture you paint, I'm afraid. Why, it was just a few days ago here on slashdot, where they were talking about raising retirement age to fix social security... everyone that's hoping to find a job now, will be competing with 65+ yr olds for work. No retirement means less job openings.
BTW, and idea what our kids are supposed to be going to college for? We were told that when the manufacturing jobs left that we need not worry... we'd all be switching over to a service economy. Computers, management, whatever. IT and even what middle management is necessary, seems to have been exported now. Are we all supposed to be day traders or something?
Only slightly offtopic, things are hurting bad. I need a job two months ago. PC/network technician here (5 years experience), self-taught coder, windows and unix, C++, perl, VB. Can do nearly anything... just need a chance with a non HR droid.
When it has to be too near some place that has an endangered bird, when it affects weather enough to raise the nearby city's avg summer temperature 2 degrees, when el nino runs out of steam and power output drops by half (with no old coal plant to fire up to take up the slack)....
Nobody likes hydroelectric either. Several species of fish may go extinct because of it. But whatever, asshat.
As auxillary power, even on a national/global scale, nothing bad. As backup power, I do appreciate wind power. However, the "save the earth" hippies don't understand, it can't be more than that. Or it could have significant effects. Just like hydroelectric does, this would change something horribly, I feel, if we were to set up wind farms big enough to provide the majority of our power.
We need fusion. There is no excuse for the minimalistic funding fusion research gets. And in the meantime, we need to seriously consider fission.
Um, I'm not a Bush fan, as you might have guessed. I am not a Kerry fan either, probably less obvious.
I do not particularly object to a hypothetical Iraq invasion, Hussein is scum. However, I have several problems with one.
1) We needed to concentrate on Afghanistan. We need 100,000 troops there... a microscopic bug shouldn't be able to wiggle a millimeter without us knowing about it, surrounding it with infantry, and vaporizing it.
2) A random president invading Iraq nominally on humanitarian grounds is ok. This isn't random, it's another Bush. Seems contrived.
3) A random president invading Iraq nominally on humanitarian grounds is ok. This one came with a contrived "he has WMDs" excuse.
4) Using the "he has WMDs" excuse implies "significant" WMDs. Mind you, there is fudge room here, but most people believe that using that is rather dishonest. To clarify, if it were somehow possible to prove someday that Hussein only had a tablespoon of mustard gas (literally), would that be enough to justify an invasion? At what point is it justified? I'm not sure, but it's more than 15 empty gas shells.
5) Changing stories to "oh no the intelligence was faulty". Assuming that everyone had intelligence saying he had 10 ballistic missiles with thermonuke warheads, russian, chinese, and british (not to mention our own), and we get there, and find it all false... that's excusable. But it didn't go down like that. We have people contriving evidence, and no "third party" countries say anything like what we claimed. There is no good faith here that the intelligence was simply flawed. Add to that, a president who decided what he wanted, and agents who catered to that... if this were science, we'd be highly suspicious of any results. Unfortunately, politicians act on such before they can even be verified.
6) It isn't clear that anything we can do will leave Iraq any better than it already is.
7) It isn't clear that anything we can do will leave Iraq less of a terrorist hotbed than it already was.
8) Our prez and vice prez have strong ties to the corporations awarded contracts there.
As a matter of fact, the only thing I don't find objectionable, is ignoring the UN.
Since when does the government ever even use true surpluses or deficits in their math? It's hard to follow, so forgive me if I'm wrong... but as near as I can tell, they're always talking "projected surpluses/deficits". Often for many years in advance.
In particular, wasn't Clinton's "surplus" the projected surplus for like 2005, assuming that things kept going the way they were going back in 1998?
Slashdot Mirror
Science is a system of logic designed to derive natural laws from observations of phenomena and falsifiable experiments. It has nothing to do with "belief". Scientists can and do have suspicions about various things which can be useful when it comes to the first part of the scientific process, but even these suspicions can be problematic if steps aren't taken to ensure that they don't interfere with accurate results, or the interpretations of such. Calling them "beliefs" instead of "suspicions" isn't disallowed, as long as you realize that it doesn't change what I said.
Religion is more than what you describe, in many cases. Far from being a random collection of superstitions (admittedly, some self-described religions do fall under that category), it is often a sophisticated collection of traditions, culture, and moral/ethical laws that can and sometimes do improve the standard of living of people. For instance, many religions claim that it is wrong for me to murder you out of perverse pleasure, and that whether or not I'm caught and punished, it is a great harm, period. What does science tell us of murder? Not much, though it can confirm that murder does happen. There are some that try to count murders, and derive statistical models, but since no experiments are possible (or wise, or unobjectionable), many call this "soft science" or refuse to consider it such at all. However, it should be noted, that whether science or not, the numbers suggest that murder is also bad. A society that tolerates it would probably devolve into chaos, and be an unpleasant, unproductive one to live in. Wow. Imagine, religion taught us not to murder without $13 billion in federal grant money spread over 70 years.
Your hypothesis has merit. We need to design an experiment that can falsify it, and then after many years of reproducing the results, it will become a foundational theory.
Here is my proposal for just such an experiment. We will need at least 5 different communities of random varieties of religious faith, and a control group of rabid atheists. Over a period of years, we will expose all of them to a random selection of scientific facts, unprovable pseudo-scientific factoids, moral proverbs, and prohibitions against certain behaviors.
Examples:
*Facts*
The speed of light in a vacuum is the absolute velocity possible under any concievable circumstance.
Earth-like planets are roughly spherical.
*Factoids*
Biological organisms evolve due to natural selection and mutations introduced by the occassional mutagenic radiation or chemical compoud.
*Moralisms*
Treat your fellow man as you yourself would wish to be treated.
It is a sin to murder.
*Prohibitions*
Do not steal.
Do not force others to do your bidding.
I theorize, that after a period of 10 years or less, we would begin to see striking statistical correlations in this experiment, the atheists would be more likely to reject the moralisms and the prohibitions, and the religious guinea pigs would reject things like gravity and microwave ovens.
This is only a preliminary proposal, feel free to submit modifications.
PS It is illogical to "guess" that people who believe (in the non-loaded sense of the word) that science isn't mutually exclusive from religion are religious. Logic dictates that you agree on a common set of definitions for these words not slanted to prove your point beforehand.
The saddest part? After tuning it to a point where it's extremely accurate and useful, the religious bigots often co-opt it, and claim that was what they were saying all along.
If God does exist, which do you think he probably finds more important?
A) That people believe he exists (even though their belief doesn't alter the fact that he exists)
or
B) That people should be good, kind, and loving to one another. That we shouldn't murder each other, or take advantage of other's weaknesses.
That's the danger in moral relativism. If "God" doesn't exist (and no one can prove that he does), I don't have to worry about being punished. Abortion is more of a convenience than it is taking a life, laying off 10,000 people and ruining their lives to save some dollars is ok because by law my only concern is profit... all sorts of things become possible.
Here's a thought... if we try to be decent, even if it turns out there is no God, maybe this place would end up looking alot like the paradise the fictional guy promised us. It sure looks alot like the fictional hell we were threatened with.
You must have went into the very narrow field of boring science. Most scientists see miraculous things every day, I'd think. Hell, thought that was the fun part, trying to figure them out.
Surely you agree that it's a miracle the human race hasn't made itself extinct...
My question for you is: what consistent, generally applicable principle are you using to decide which things in the Bible are and are not reliable?
Can't speak for the GP post, but I myself use common sense, intuition, and when it's reliable, science. Gradual, Darwinian evolution has its problems, so that can't be used, though I do suspect something like evolution happened. Wouldn't mind actually having a candidate mechanism for the rapid bursts of evolution that seem to ocurr.
But then, I also have problems with some dating methodologies. Mind you, I'm not some retard that thinks dinosaurs died in Noah's flood, but some things could still be off by *a lot*. As much as people bitch about biblical dates being off (6000 yr old earth), paleotological, and possibly even geological dates could be just as bad.
Also, I do find it difficult to fathom that some hard-line atheists dispute the existence of a historical Jesus. Could biblical accounts be inaccurate? Maybe even wildly so... but I'm willing to concede someone by that name walked the earth +-20 years when the bible claims he did.
It's all moot, really. Whether or not God(s) exist, I want to be a good person. Wish more people did.
People create cars. Cars are created. Yet, to me, it looks as if cars evolve from year to year... I even see traits that appear to cross-polinate to other species!
Clearly, both are true in a way. And yet, biological evolution is a source of great controversy, even in the scientific community (though not that it itself is dispute, dispite the claims of preachers). Why christians fail to take the opportunity to work within the blank framework that evolution provides, instead of attacking it for its shortcomings, is beyond me.
What happens if somehow, someone proves evolution beyond shadow of doubt? Will billions of christians become atheists? It's just dumb.
Wish more people could talk about this (especially southern baptists; most don't seem pleased to explore it quite so reasonably).
Any other good examples of this thinking?
Cubit measurement is wrong, probably more useful to figure the biggest wooden ship plausible.
Animal species as we know them today... too damn many. More practically, it's probably intended that Noah took all the various livestock species common to his culture. I also think "two of each" is mistranslated. Wouldn't be suprised if it were "enough of each" or similar.
Not saying it happened, but there can be alot of truth in these things. Just need to understand how translation and lack of cultural reference points can confuse things...
Not particularly. Let them rot. Their generation let things get this bad... I don't feel like taking care of them, just so that I can rot in my own old age.
I actually figured it out the hard way (still cheated, used online resources to check e versus primes).
The second puzzle, at that site, is really stumping me. If there is indeed a third, I don't stand a chance.
Funny, maybe. So hurtfully true, it's scary.
Pointers are much easier to understand from an assembly language point of view. Now mind you, when I have **'s and whatnot, I can be confused by just what it is a pointer "to", but I know what they are in theory, and have more than a little fun creating all sorts of weird data structures with them.
How in the hell can you do a linked list without a pointer? What do you do when you need a dynamic array, and the only thing close is a linked list?
Agh, see it didn't even ocurr to me immediately, how do you use malloc() without pointers? Is he declaring everything on the stack? How can you load anything bigger than 1 or 2k that way?
I don't want to call you a liar, but this is absurd, beyond the pale.
The last prospect I got turned down for, I was told they "wanted someone who knew perl". Presumably so I could run a script.pl on the command line, to follow some instructions(which is dumb). My own personal fork of the AWstats web statistics package (written in perl) has features even the latest version doesn't have (someday I have to get around to contributing my additions).
I know that I can't get a programmer job of some sort, I'm not expecting that. But, in response to his rant, I'm not conceding that I couldn't do them. Since when has ability ever had anything to do with it? I don't dress up well, I'm kinda weird looking, and I really need to put a cheap S&K suit on the credit card... even if I am near broke. I'm awkward to talk to, I can't help it. Even when I know the answer better than the other interviewees, there is a pause in my voice, the hesitation.. hell, I can't catch myself at it, but I suspect I stutter even.
Of the jobs I could feasibly be hired for? Well, with phone support, you won't get the stupid script "have you tried rebooting yet" bullshit. I know the proper names for widgets (I'm not forced to say "you know, the button thingy in that one window in the control panel thingy), but smart enough to not expect the user to know them. I've installed not only more, but stranger software than anyone likely to respond to this thread. Hardware, even more so. Unless you know someone that has an ATM155 network at home (Cabletron ZX250 Smartcell switch, PCI Fore cards), I think I take that award.
As for hardware repair, I can replace a mainboard in an iBook in 10m53s flat. Comparable times on most other hardware. Not that anyone does actual repair anymore... it all boils down to unboxing the new computer while not embarrassing your company in front of the client when doing so.
Doesn't matter though... why go to the trouble of finding someone truly competent, when business logic dictates that you plan on incompetence, and hire 3 times as many techs? If the competent tech dies, or is in a car accident, you don't have a crisis of replacing someone hard to replace. I'm screwed, basically... I should have worked on beig a better liar or asskisser, instead of knowing stuff or being able to work hard.
Maybe there are less IT jobs and more other kinds of jobs.
Yeh, I hear Walmart is hiring.
I don't want to go tinfoilhat on you, but read this. The people who benefit don't even live in the US, or for that matter consider themselves citizens of any nation. By the time China goes to war with us, they intend to have wormed their way into the banking system over there, and loaning the money to the chinese to go to war... they win either way.
Can someone explain to me exactly why the government meddles in things just enough, and refuses to protect our rights just enough, to cause any potential jobs to wither on the vine?
I'm all for this "look out for yourself" libertarian bullshit, but make corporate charters temporary, renewable every 2 years, and that they can be dissolved with *no reason* whatsoever. Give me back the 14/28 years of copyright, only with providing an unencumbered version to LOC. The list goes on, but start with those, and I'll start considering that my lack of a job is solely my own fault.
It's far worse than the picture you paint, I'm afraid. Why, it was just a few days ago here on slashdot, where they were talking about raising retirement age to fix social security... everyone that's hoping to find a job now, will be competing with 65+ yr olds for work. No retirement means less job openings.
BTW, and idea what our kids are supposed to be going to college for? We were told that when the manufacturing jobs left that we need not worry... we'd all be switching over to a service economy. Computers, management, whatever. IT and even what middle management is necessary, seems to have been exported now. Are we all supposed to be day traders or something?
Only slightly offtopic, things are hurting bad. I need a job two months ago. PC/network technician here (5 years experience), self-taught coder, windows and unix, C++, perl, VB. Can do nearly anything... just need a chance with a non HR droid.
When it has to be too near some place that has an endangered bird, when it affects weather enough to raise the nearby city's avg summer temperature 2 degrees, when el nino runs out of steam and power output drops by half (with no old coal plant to fire up to take up the slack)....
Nobody likes hydroelectric either. Several species of fish may go extinct because of it. But whatever, asshat.
Not a problem, as long as I'm on the committee that decides who to reduce, and as long as you're not.
Besides, isn't this argument the same as "if only the little fat children didn't eat so much, the africans wouldn't starve" ?
As auxillary power, even on a national/global scale, nothing bad. As backup power, I do appreciate wind power. However, the "save the earth" hippies don't understand, it can't be more than that. Or it could have significant effects. Just like hydroelectric does, this would change something horribly, I feel, if we were to set up wind farms big enough to provide the majority of our power.
We need fusion. There is no excuse for the minimalistic funding fusion research gets. And in the meantime, we need to seriously consider fission.
Um, I'm not a Bush fan, as you might have guessed. I am not a Kerry fan either, probably less obvious.
I do not particularly object to a hypothetical Iraq invasion, Hussein is scum. However, I have several problems with one.
1) We needed to concentrate on Afghanistan. We need 100,000 troops there... a microscopic bug shouldn't be able to wiggle a millimeter without us knowing about it, surrounding it with infantry, and vaporizing it.
2) A random president invading Iraq nominally on humanitarian grounds is ok. This isn't random, it's another Bush. Seems contrived.
3) A random president invading Iraq nominally on humanitarian grounds is ok. This one came with a contrived "he has WMDs" excuse.
4) Using the "he has WMDs" excuse implies "significant" WMDs. Mind you, there is fudge room here, but most people believe that using that is rather dishonest. To clarify, if it were somehow possible to prove someday that Hussein only had a tablespoon of mustard gas (literally), would that be enough to justify an invasion? At what point is it justified? I'm not sure, but it's more than 15 empty gas shells.
5) Changing stories to "oh no the intelligence was faulty". Assuming that everyone had intelligence saying he had 10 ballistic missiles with thermonuke warheads, russian, chinese, and british (not to mention our own), and we get there, and find it all false... that's excusable. But it didn't go down like that. We have people contriving evidence, and no "third party" countries say anything like what we claimed. There is no good faith here that the intelligence was simply flawed. Add to that, a president who decided what he wanted, and agents who catered to that... if this were science, we'd be highly suspicious of any results. Unfortunately, politicians act on such before they can even be verified.
6) It isn't clear that anything we can do will leave Iraq any better than it already is.
7) It isn't clear that anything we can do will leave Iraq less of a terrorist hotbed than it already was.
8) Our prez and vice prez have strong ties to the corporations awarded contracts there.
As a matter of fact, the only thing I don't find objectionable, is ignoring the UN.
In other words, they don't want to have to pay american or european researchers fat salaries.
Since when does the government ever even use true surpluses or deficits in their math? It's hard to follow, so forgive me if I'm wrong... but as near as I can tell, they're always talking "projected surpluses/deficits". Often for many years in advance.
In particular, wasn't Clinton's "surplus" the projected surplus for like 2005, assuming that things kept going the way they were going back in 1998?