What do we really know about history, anyway? You get different accounts of the same event by people who were actually there. Then, as the stories are propagated by those who weren't there, you get even more different stories. Eventually, things may be written down, and you may find evidence that fits with some stories but not others, but, in the end, what do we really know?
Man, that's a depressing paragraph. Sounds like you're writing that in a darkened room with walls painted black, while listening to the Cure.
"Law abiding gun owners aren't the problem, the follow laws... They are the ones who sometimes stop crimes before the police arrive. They are the ones who have CCW permits and stop deranged sociopaths who are going on public murder sprees before they can kill or before they can kill as many people as they'd like to."
Do you have an example of this? I haven't done a lot of research, but it seems that when "deranged sociopaths" do go on "public murder sprees," they tend to have specific targets in mind, say Columbine high school or the Holocaust museum, rather than just random murders of people. And in most of these exceedingly rare cases of mass murder, it's been trained professionals that put an end to the incident, not some Joe Blow packing heat. Even in situations where citizens did act--the Kip Kinkle school shooting and the September 11th flight over Pennsylvania, for example--they acted, and were effective, unarmed.
I mean, sure, public murder sprees happen movies and NRA wet dreams, but not so much in real life. Hypothetical mass murders being an argument for concealed weapons is weak at best. It's specious reasoning because if someone's nutty enough to want to go shooting, they aren't likely to give a shit whether anyone out there is armed or not. You can't guard against something like that any more than you can prevent earthquakes or lightning strikes.
Dude, a State Bar is not a professional association that an attorney may or may not join. It is a governmental entity that regulates the behavior of its licensees. The man still has his law degree; disbarment means he can no longer practice law in Florida. The same standard applies to doctors: are you going to say that a doctor found to be incompetent by his peers should still be allowed to practice medicine? Perform surgery? Prescribe drugs?
The state must reserve the right to revoke privileges it grants to anyone it initially deems qualified to do more than vote. That extends to lawyers, doctors, and day care operators; even to hunters, fishermen, and operators of motor vehicles. None of these things are a *right*, regardless of your degree of education. These things are privileges, granted by a political body whose responsibility it is to ensure that the citizens over whom it governs, and who ask for these privileges, act responsibly. If we do not, we are not only violating our agreement with that governing body, but with a basic social contract to which we all subscribe as members of a community, state, and country; and then we no longer get to do those things.
That's the power we grant our governments: not to curtail our rights to act irresponsibly, but to ensure that if we do, we have to answer for it, because that kind of behavior is not just obnoxious, but potentially dangerous.
Granted, you're already trying to pull your foot out of your mouth on that one, but really--reading about things that actually happen? Man, you don't know nothing about nothing. What made you think that we can take anyone's account of any event as gospel truth, and end interpretation right there? It's Plato's cave, man. All any of us can ever know is a shadow of the truth. Literature, in many ways, is an attempt to show that fact to us, not hide it.
I never said anything about a "first human." I said that if we accept evolution, then the account of creation--and therefore original sin--in Genesis is false. No Adam, no Eve, no serpent, no fruit. The logical assumption would then be that the first human wasn't named Adam, wasn't made out of mud, and didn't have a wife made from his rib, and didn't spawn the entire human race from a genetic pool of two people. He or she evolved from a primate somewhere in Africa. I don't see that as weak logic. Explain my weak logic using what I said rather than what you'd have liked me to say.
And if you're right about Christianity and evolution happily coexisting in the same cosmology, where does that leave the foundation of Christian faith? If Christ did not die to give us a chance at forgiveness for original sin, what did He die for? And if people misunderstand what the Bible says, please explain what the methodology is by which we should determine which sections of the Bible are literal and which are metaphorical.
I don't have any particular problem with Christianity, if that's the scheme somebody chooses to believe. I just don't think it makes any sense.
"Y'know, it occurs to me that anti-evolutionists don't just have a problem with evolution, but also geology, cosmology, carbon dating, physics. Any I missed?"
But they save their strongest hate for evolution. The problem with the theory is exclusive to Christianity because it strikes to the core of the religion. The theology is straightforward: Christ died as a means to offer salvation from Hell. But the sticking point isn't that Genesis has a different account of the origin of the universe, it's that Christ died to save us from Adam and Eve's sin in tasting the fruit of knowledge. That sin tainted not only those two, but all their progeny, i.e. everybody. So there's nothing we can do, unless we accept that Jesus had a really bad weekend for our sins. That's our ticket to Heaven. But if we accept evolution, then there was no Adam and Eve, no Eden, no original sin, and therefore, no need for Christianity. That means a lot of people stand to lose a lot of money.
That's the reason nobody who's strongly opposed to teaching evolution talks about their reasoning beyond "It's not what the Bible says." Even believers cherry pick what they want to believe in the Bible; I don't know many Christians who believe that the Earth is the center of the universe, for instance. But if we start discussing the real reasons churches oppose evolution, then some people who maybe haven't really thought about it will start to see how truly weak the foundations of Christianity are.
"I see this attitude from several of my classmates, who can't seem to understand that changes in program requirements set forth by the professor require them to change their code. 'What? You're making me change my program? But I already wrote it!' The rest of us quietly make the changes and move on with our lives."
Your classmates don't do that because they're confused by Apple's marketing. And you don't change your code because you believe in the higher ideals of open source. They're lazy students. You're a good student. I teach writing at the college level and the attitude is exactly the same. Most students don't want to revise their papers or their programs not because of Apple or Microsoft, but because they'd rather be drinking beer and playing Halo.
"I think the participle fucking quite succinctly and accurately described the combination of amazement and frustration the author of the post intended to convey."
Actually, I think in this case fuck is an adjective that modifies the noun "years" in exactly the way you describe. That's one of the wonders of all the variations of fuck: truly the most versatile word in the English language. It's a fucking pity that some fucks can't fucking get past the negative connotations of fuck; I mean, fuck, do they actually believe some words are fucking good and others are fucking bad? Fuck me.
They're just words. I don't think anybody, mortal or immortal, cares besides us, and we probably don't matter. Unless, of course, God really did create us, gave us the ability to speak and create our own languages, then decided to get all bent out of shape over some words we made up to serve our own communication needs. But that hardly sounds fair, does it? Sweet shitting Jesus. Can't fucking win.
I'll bet all these shows will just ooze cool sophistication. I mean, why didn't we start getting shows geared toward us fifteen years ago when everyone saw how awesome Unix was when they watched Jurassic Park?
Seriously, I hate to be cynical, but as much as Battlestar Galactica is the coolest show I've seen in years, most of Hollywood's understanding of biological science seems to be some variation on Frankenstein, their physical science based on Looney Tunes, and their concept of computer science is best left unmentioned. I'll bet they're making the same mistakes they've always made: thinking good shows can be about some World's Fair technology show and the World of Tomorrow when they should be about the story and the people.
"The only problem, of course, is that the Democrats are just as bad, if not worse [than Republicans] and their policies are even more harmful to the country."
Yeah, that whole Republican platform of bankrupting the treasury while waging open ended wars is fucking top notch. What's worse about the Democrats? Responsible governmental spending? Yeah, yeah, news flash, even Lyndon Johnson's wife is dead. So is the idea that Dems spend with abandon. Liberal social views--i.e. homosexuals, women and blacks deserve the benefits of full citizenship? Man, can't see how that's gonna harm the country. The idea that maybe we ought to limit our military actions to wars of necessity rather than wars of choice? Again, I don't know...that just sounds reasonable.
I can't believe the overwhelming defensive tone of the responses. It's as if our parents were chiding us to be more like Lloyd Braun and all we want is for them to either appreciate us or leave us alone.
I don't buy the arguments that the younger generation's priorities are different from their parents'. I'm not certain that the increasing reliance on devices for telephone numbers and birthdays is such a big deal, either. During the medieval and Renaissance eras, before paper was a cheap commodity, people memorized things all the time because that was the only medium available to them. Ancient rhetoriticians created so-called memory palaces so they could memorize hours-long speeches. Memory palaces and paper (and electronic devices) are aids for memory, not replacements for memory. We are doing the same thing everyone else has always done; only the procedural details have changed.
Still, I think the thing that ought to be considered is an old theme in science fiction. What happens to humanity when we begin to rely on technology a little too much? Prior to Gutenberg's press, literacy was a rare thing, and those who could read were the people in charge--the aristocracy and the church. That is not a coincidence. The printing press is an instance where technology may have meant the end of memory palaces and other systems of memorization, but it also meant that knowledge and learning became much more widespread, and political power followed. But these days, knowledge is becoming more and more proprietary. I might save all my phone numbers in my iPhone's address book, but without a lawyer's knowledge of the EULA, I have no idea if Apple has access to that information, or if they even technically own it and lease me the right to store it and use it.
Like I said, it's an old theme, with tons of writers having wondered about the consequences of giving up personal power and liberty for the sake of convenience. I can't help but think of the opening to the Allen Smithee version of Dune, when the narrator speaks of people depending on machines to take care of all the necessities of life, then later becoming slaves to the men who controlled the machines. Frank Herbert imagined a world in which after throwing off slavery to the machines, we concentrated on developing our minds instead of developing our technology. Yes, it's fiction, but the point of good fiction has always been to give us something to think about, to better enable us to make good judgments in real life. I think our typical judgments usually concern the immediate and the short term; how often do we think about long term consequences of our choices?
Slashdot Mirror
If some guy is open sourcing his DNA and his Slashdot ID is under, say, an arbitrary number that makes me look good, he has no cred.
What do we really know about history, anyway? You get different accounts of the same event by people who were actually there. Then, as the stories are propagated by those who weren't there, you get even more different stories. Eventually, things may be written down, and you may find evidence that fits with some stories but not others, but, in the end, what do we really know?
Man, that's a depressing paragraph. Sounds like you're writing that in a darkened room with walls painted black, while listening to the Cure.
"Law abiding gun owners aren't the problem, the follow laws... They are the ones who sometimes stop crimes before the police arrive. They are the ones who have CCW permits and stop deranged sociopaths who are going on public murder sprees before they can kill or before they can kill as many people as they'd like to."
Do you have an example of this? I haven't done a lot of research, but it seems that when "deranged sociopaths" do go on "public murder sprees," they tend to have specific targets in mind, say Columbine high school or the Holocaust museum, rather than just random murders of people. And in most of these exceedingly rare cases of mass murder, it's been trained professionals that put an end to the incident, not some Joe Blow packing heat. Even in situations where citizens did act--the Kip Kinkle school shooting and the September 11th flight over Pennsylvania, for example--they acted, and were effective, unarmed.
I mean, sure, public murder sprees happen movies and NRA wet dreams, but not so much in real life. Hypothetical mass murders being an argument for concealed weapons is weak at best. It's specious reasoning because if someone's nutty enough to want to go shooting, they aren't likely to give a shit whether anyone out there is armed or not. You can't guard against something like that any more than you can prevent earthquakes or lightning strikes.
We'll just have to be satisfied with the Rankin/Bass production. Ho-ho, my lad!
Your paper has Paris Hilton on the front page? Dude, the National Enquirer is not a newspaper.
A newly released NASA report warns that the world has forgotten the power of the sun....
Simon: My God, the sun!
Elaine: The sun? Simon, what is it?
Simon: A large, fiery ball at the center of our solar system.
Dude, a State Bar is not a professional association that an attorney may or may not join. It is a governmental entity that regulates the behavior of its licensees. The man still has his law degree; disbarment means he can no longer practice law in Florida. The same standard applies to doctors: are you going to say that a doctor found to be incompetent by his peers should still be allowed to practice medicine? Perform surgery? Prescribe drugs?
The state must reserve the right to revoke privileges it grants to anyone it initially deems qualified to do more than vote. That extends to lawyers, doctors, and day care operators; even to hunters, fishermen, and operators of motor vehicles. None of these things are a *right*, regardless of your degree of education. These things are privileges, granted by a political body whose responsibility it is to ensure that the citizens over whom it governs, and who ask for these privileges, act responsibly. If we do not, we are not only violating our agreement with that governing body, but with a basic social contract to which we all subscribe as members of a community, state, and country; and then we no longer get to do those things.
That's the power we grant our governments: not to curtail our rights to act irresponsibly, but to ensure that if we do, we have to answer for it, because that kind of behavior is not just obnoxious, but potentially dangerous.
Granted, you're already trying to pull your foot out of your mouth on that one, but really--reading about things that actually happen? Man, you don't know nothing about nothing. What made you think that we can take anyone's account of any event as gospel truth, and end interpretation right there? It's Plato's cave, man. All any of us can ever know is a shadow of the truth. Literature, in many ways, is an attempt to show that fact to us, not hide it.
I never said anything about a "first human." I said that if we accept evolution, then the account of creation--and therefore original sin--in Genesis is false. No Adam, no Eve, no serpent, no fruit. The logical assumption would then be that the first human wasn't named Adam, wasn't made out of mud, and didn't have a wife made from his rib, and didn't spawn the entire human race from a genetic pool of two people. He or she evolved from a primate somewhere in Africa. I don't see that as weak logic. Explain my weak logic using what I said rather than what you'd have liked me to say.
And if you're right about Christianity and evolution happily coexisting in the same cosmology, where does that leave the foundation of Christian faith? If Christ did not die to give us a chance at forgiveness for original sin, what did He die for? And if people misunderstand what the Bible says, please explain what the methodology is by which we should determine which sections of the Bible are literal and which are metaphorical.
I don't have any particular problem with Christianity, if that's the scheme somebody chooses to believe. I just don't think it makes any sense.
And for the believer, that answer is God. But that just begs the question: Why is there God instead of no God? You can't get something from nothing.
"Y'know, it occurs to me that anti-evolutionists don't just have a problem with evolution, but also geology, cosmology, carbon dating, physics. Any I missed?"
But they save their strongest hate for evolution. The problem with the theory is exclusive to Christianity because it strikes to the core of the religion. The theology is straightforward: Christ died as a means to offer salvation from Hell. But the sticking point isn't that Genesis has a different account of the origin of the universe, it's that Christ died to save us from Adam and Eve's sin in tasting the fruit of knowledge. That sin tainted not only those two, but all their progeny, i.e. everybody. So there's nothing we can do, unless we accept that Jesus had a really bad weekend for our sins. That's our ticket to Heaven. But if we accept evolution, then there was no Adam and Eve, no Eden, no original sin, and therefore, no need for Christianity. That means a lot of people stand to lose a lot of money.
That's the reason nobody who's strongly opposed to teaching evolution talks about their reasoning beyond "It's not what the Bible says." Even believers cherry pick what they want to believe in the Bible; I don't know many Christians who believe that the Earth is the center of the universe, for instance. But if we start discussing the real reasons churches oppose evolution, then some people who maybe haven't really thought about it will start to see how truly weak the foundations of Christianity are.
"I see this attitude from several of my classmates, who can't seem to understand that changes in program requirements set forth by the professor require them to change their code. 'What? You're making me change my program? But I already wrote it!' The rest of us quietly make the changes and move on with our lives."
Your classmates don't do that because they're confused by Apple's marketing. And you don't change your code because you believe in the higher ideals of open source. They're lazy students. You're a good student. I teach writing at the college level and the attitude is exactly the same. Most students don't want to revise their papers or their programs not because of Apple or Microsoft, but because they'd rather be drinking beer and playing Halo.
The most obvious joke would riff on the Energizer bunny. I just hope no one makes it.
So what does this mean for the atoms-of-my-fingernails-being-a-tiny-universe theory?
"I think the participle fucking quite succinctly and accurately described the combination of amazement and frustration the author of the post intended to convey."
Actually, I think in this case fuck is an adjective that modifies the noun "years" in exactly the way you describe. That's one of the wonders of all the variations of fuck: truly the most versatile word in the English language. It's a fucking pity that some fucks can't fucking get past the negative connotations of fuck; I mean, fuck, do they actually believe some words are fucking good and others are fucking bad? Fuck me.
They're just words. I don't think anybody, mortal or immortal, cares besides us, and we probably don't matter. Unless, of course, God really did create us, gave us the ability to speak and create our own languages, then decided to get all bent out of shape over some words we made up to serve our own communication needs. But that hardly sounds fair, does it? Sweet shitting Jesus. Can't fucking win.
I'll bet all these shows will just ooze cool sophistication. I mean, why didn't we start getting shows geared toward us fifteen years ago when everyone saw how awesome Unix was when they watched Jurassic Park?
Seriously, I hate to be cynical, but as much as Battlestar Galactica is the coolest show I've seen in years, most of Hollywood's understanding of biological science seems to be some variation on Frankenstein, their physical science based on Looney Tunes, and their concept of computer science is best left unmentioned. I'll bet they're making the same mistakes they've always made: thinking good shows can be about some World's Fair technology show and the World of Tomorrow when they should be about the story and the people.
To crush our enemies, see them driven before us, and hear the lamentations of their women.
And maybe its crew called it Yonada. And it was hollow. And one of them touched the sky.
Exactly. All those things of importance we want to preserve are of importance only to us. Only human arrogance would assume otherwise.
Is John Romero working on this one? I'm still waiting to be his bitch.
"The only problem, of course, is that the Democrats are just as bad, if not worse [than Republicans] and their policies are even more harmful to the country."
Yeah, that whole Republican platform of bankrupting the treasury while waging open ended wars is fucking top notch. What's worse about the Democrats? Responsible governmental spending? Yeah, yeah, news flash, even Lyndon Johnson's wife is dead. So is the idea that Dems spend with abandon. Liberal social views--i.e. homosexuals, women and blacks deserve the benefits of full citizenship? Man, can't see how that's gonna harm the country. The idea that maybe we ought to limit our military actions to wars of necessity rather than wars of choice? Again, I don't know...that just sounds reasonable.
"Zonk is a idiot"
It's *an* idiot. Dipshit.
I can't believe the overwhelming defensive tone of the responses. It's as if our parents were chiding us to be more like Lloyd Braun and all we want is for them to either appreciate us or leave us alone. I don't buy the arguments that the younger generation's priorities are different from their parents'. I'm not certain that the increasing reliance on devices for telephone numbers and birthdays is such a big deal, either. During the medieval and Renaissance eras, before paper was a cheap commodity, people memorized things all the time because that was the only medium available to them. Ancient rhetoriticians created so-called memory palaces so they could memorize hours-long speeches. Memory palaces and paper (and electronic devices) are aids for memory, not replacements for memory. We are doing the same thing everyone else has always done; only the procedural details have changed. Still, I think the thing that ought to be considered is an old theme in science fiction. What happens to humanity when we begin to rely on technology a little too much? Prior to Gutenberg's press, literacy was a rare thing, and those who could read were the people in charge--the aristocracy and the church. That is not a coincidence. The printing press is an instance where technology may have meant the end of memory palaces and other systems of memorization, but it also meant that knowledge and learning became much more widespread, and political power followed. But these days, knowledge is becoming more and more proprietary. I might save all my phone numbers in my iPhone's address book, but without a lawyer's knowledge of the EULA, I have no idea if Apple has access to that information, or if they even technically own it and lease me the right to store it and use it. Like I said, it's an old theme, with tons of writers having wondered about the consequences of giving up personal power and liberty for the sake of convenience. I can't help but think of the opening to the Allen Smithee version of Dune, when the narrator speaks of people depending on machines to take care of all the necessities of life, then later becoming slaves to the men who controlled the machines. Frank Herbert imagined a world in which after throwing off slavery to the machines, we concentrated on developing our minds instead of developing our technology. Yes, it's fiction, but the point of good fiction has always been to give us something to think about, to better enable us to make good judgments in real life. I think our typical judgments usually concern the immediate and the short term; how often do we think about long term consequences of our choices?
You know that Serenity thing doesn't work. Serenity now, insanity later.
"Printers is still an issue for home users."
Perhaps at home, but if I may quote the President, "Families is where our nation finds hope, where wings take dream."
In that vein, I was home users am always hopes for prints, and the issue wing Linux dreams good.