ATN, I'll have you know, I probably spent 45 minutes to an hour reading that web site, and I didn't find a single argument that didn't depend on either something like "The bible says its true so it is" or "scientists are wrong." I admit I haven't read the book, but telling us to read a specific book that isn't freely available online is a copout - it gives you an excuse to not answer arguments. So could you just give us a few reasons on how you can prove the christian god exists. That's what you claimed you could do from the get go.
While this may be literally true, you are to some extent quibbling with semantics... I think we all understood that the original poster was referring to the christian god... this kind of statement sort of gets in the way of real argumentation
I entirely agree with alcmena. I wouldn't say I believe in an absolute moral (actually in a sense I do, but not in the context of this discussion) that killing is always wrong just because its killing, but I would say that society loses a potential with every death, and that potential is almost always more valuable than the resources that might be saved by killing.
Since we cannot observe and repeat the universal creation process, we cannot subject it to the scientific method.
This argument is somewhat flawed... it doesn't take into account the option of indirect evidence and observation.
By that reasoning, when I walk into a room I've never been in before and see that the light is on, I can't conclude that the light was turned on at some point. Granted, I can never be 100% sure, but I'm pretty close, because I have indirect evidence that can be repeatedly shown. I can use the scientific method to prove that lights must be turned on to shed light, and thus assume that the light was turned on before I entered the room.
Well, it's somewhat unfair to say that... No one's really sure what the "first" lifeform was, but it was certainly far less complex than humans, and didn't have sexual reproduction, so all the issues of inbreeding don't really apply.
It's called the second law of thermodynamics which states that anything that happens, happens spontaneously (since all spontaneous processes increase entropy and entropy always increases).
Sorry, but I think you completely misunderstand the second law of thermodynamics. It doesn't apply to anything at all - it says that in a closed system, entropy increases. First of all, the Earth isn't a closed system... On top of that, entropy isn't some catch-all for any disorder, it applies specifically to Thermodynamics, which deals with chemical processes... if I meteorite strikes the earth carrying life, it's not a purely thermodynamic process.
I hate it when people mis-use Entropy!
Well, yes, life CAN start, but that's only part of the way from saying it DID start spontaneously. There isn't enough data to give any real guess as to how likely it is that life actually started spontaneously.
Actually no - in the precambrian it's generally thought that it would be very difficult for life to survive on the surface. There was no ozone layer because there was no Oxygen(O2) as the former comes from the latter. And the statement that Oxygen is "damaging" is not at all true - granted, it harms some things, but obviously modern day life adapted to the Oxygen, while we still get sunburns from UV (and we wven have an ozone layer).
However, I have heard some theories that suggest that the earliest life formed along the shore (for all the reasons Mr. Coward listed), and quickly migrated to the deeper ocean where it could survive much more easily due to the lack of UV
Oh, and there's no reason to assume extremophiles didn't come first - they aren't any more "kooky" than any other life forms, they just survive in different environments than most other bacteria do.
Keep in mind that people like him are in the vast minority - most readers (and many of the people who make reasonable posts) are not thinking like SmoothOperator. On top of that, what he said didn't make sense anyway - Darwin had no exlaination how life came to be - compartmentalization and the first DNA molecules had nothing to do with mutation or evolution. Don't get pissed off by people like him - I just ignore them.
I find that I work much better with a PDA... I have an awful memory and never used to remember phone numbers or appointments unless I wrote them down immediately. Now my PDA lets me do that. On the other hand, a friend of mine who has a better memory never uses his - except for tetris and IR pong, of couse.
On the other hand, I have a Handspring Treo, so it also operates as a phone and portable web browser/e-mail client, so that makes it particularly useful...
... is that some people actually think we should do something like this. I see nothing in here that convinces me that anything said here is even remotely realistic or true...
First of all, if someone actually got serious about making a storage facility, disposal would be easy... Build a few major storage centers, encase them all in concrete away from any populated areas (especially desert areas), and Groundwater wouldn't be an issue even if it somehow got through the tremendous amount of shielding. I think people fear nuclear power because it seems to close to nuclear weapons, which ARE frightening and useless...
Think about it this way- You can breath in carcinogens, rain acid on the earth, and pump contaminated water into rivers if you want, not to mention the fact that in less than a hundred years, you'll run out... Or you can use something that has a FAR greater fuel supply, can re-fuel itself using the original fuel, doesn't release any atmospheric contaminants, and (when well designed with a containment building) has a chance about equal to that of monkeys writing Hamlet of melting down. The ONLY issue is spent fuel storage, and it would easily be solved if a government would say "We want clean, efficient power." (Or aren't being payed off by corporate sponsors)
Re:What can be done about terrorism?
on
More On Tragedy
·
· Score: 0
Look, ordinarily I pounce on these as very Americocentric (I'm pretty sure that's a word), and yes, of course there were alterior motives to many, but many were motivated partly by kindness... and instead of Americans holding their noses up at the world, and vice versa, we need to see this more on BOTH sides...
Apparently, we have three people here that believe the US knows best for the rest of the world. I've always seen a huge irony in this, because it's usually right-wingers who spout this crap, and they're the same ones who say the government shouldn't do this to it's citizens. So it's okay for the US to "know best" for the rest of the world, but not it's own people then? Anyway, Instead of insulting environmentalists(operagost), lets look at this from a view of reason. 100+ countries signed Kyoto. The US did not. More countries pay UN dues. The US does not. Most countries abide by treaties they agree on until both parties agree to end the treaty. Apparently, with the BMDT, we do not. Anyone seeing a few paralells? I think the government likes Microsoft because they have similar attitudes. If a group that's theoretically above you comes to an agreement you don't like... ignore it. If you're a political theorist, this is not the rule of law, it is anarchy. To begin with, it's not at all proven Kyoto would cause any major harm to any part of the economy. However, it is proven that CO2 emissions are not a good thing. Don't give me any crap about that because it's TRUE Ask the vast majority of scientists, and they'll tell you that CO2 emissions are bad. Too many people figure that a little work is too much to do to save the planet from destruction (yes, now I'm babbling environmentalist rhetoric, but it's still just as true.) There's more evidence that CO2 harms the environment than that Kyoto harms the economy. So it makes sense to ratify it! Unless you're being payed off by people totally self-interested (which is usually big buisness in this case)...
This should be dismissed out of hand given the web site you give as your home page. That's probably the most idiotic, US-centric thing I've seen in quite a while.
No, that's not correct, because by definition, a black hole collapses upon itself, crushing any sort of bonds holding matter apart. Equations exist (I'm sorry I can't prove this, but my physics background isn't yet far enough to show this) that prove that if a black hole exists, the singularity does at some point in it. Anyway, any location with gravity strong enough to suck in light would be very different because then gravity would be a stronger force compared to the other fundamental forces.
Actually, the monster black hole will take a lot longer, because it's event horizon is large enough to drag in enough stuff (I pretty sure it's background radiation, since matter and energy are even more the same in a black hole) to grow at a faster rate than the Hawkins evaporation occurs. Thus big black holes don't explode at all (or won't for far more than 10^100 years, when the background radiation gets too thin. But by then, the universe has died an entropy death, effectively. All that's left is for the black holes to finally evaporate)
With regards to the second half, I thought it could happen, with liberals in office... until a big-buisness right-winger (note that I did not say republican...) entered office... and as for B, believing it won't make a difference is just emasculating capitalism. The whole system runs on competition, right? With even two huge companies competing, smaller ones at least have a chance, and those two MUST develop according to the market, not according to the whim of Bill Gates.
As for the top, it is purely ridiculous to say that the Bush administration making a decision isn't Bush's idea. First of all, who nominated Ashcroft? And if he thought this was a bad idea, Bush could say no... that's what it means to be at the top of the executive branch. Bush is responsible for acts of his administration. If a nuclear bomb is dropped on China, initiating World War III, Bush can't just say "it was Rumsfeld's idea."
Well, it is a preference issue... some can be happy just running around randomly shooting people, but I don't see any enjoyment in that. You get a lot more out of something developing... a good game is technically well designed, and has progression. That progression can be by way of story, gaining levels, higher score, or a higher frag count. It's a matter of opinion which is the funnest. I personally think story is the best method, and I don't think it may even be a slight minority that agrees... but it's out of proportion, still. Compare the story quality of a good (not FF quality, but good) RPG to the story quality of a "good book," and try to tell me they're equal...
Just to point Out, Microsoft Flight Simulator, even if you take ALL of it's versions together, was not the most popular game ever. And besides, there's a difference between playing a game and flying planes around in a pure simulator, in my opinion. A game goes somewhere, regardless of whether it uses a story... it has levels or something...
Well, good old Shrub (little Bush) declared human cloning illegal... I really don't see enough of a value in cloning to imagine a "black market" for clones...
Slashdot Mirror
ATN, I'll have you know, I probably spent 45 minutes to an hour reading that web site, and I didn't find a single argument that didn't depend on either something like "The bible says its true so it is" or "scientists are wrong." I admit I haven't read the book, but telling us to read a specific book that isn't freely available online is a copout - it gives you an excuse to not answer arguments. So could you just give us a few reasons on how you can prove the christian god exists. That's what you claimed you could do from the get go.
While this may be literally true, you are to some extent quibbling with semantics... I think we all understood that the original poster was referring to the christian god... this kind of statement sort of gets in the way of real argumentation
I entirely agree with alcmena. I wouldn't say I believe in an absolute moral (actually in a sense I do, but not in the context of this discussion) that killing is always wrong just because its killing, but I would say that society loses a potential with every death, and that potential is almost always more valuable than the resources that might be saved by killing.
Since we cannot observe and repeat the universal creation process, we cannot subject it to the scientific method.
This argument is somewhat flawed... it doesn't take into account the option of indirect evidence and observation.
By that reasoning, when I walk into a room I've never been in before and see that the light is on, I can't conclude that the light was turned on at some point. Granted, I can never be 100% sure, but I'm pretty close, because I have indirect evidence that can be repeatedly shown. I can use the scientific method to prove that lights must be turned on to shed light, and thus assume that the light was turned on before I entered the room.
Well, it's somewhat unfair to say that... No one's really sure what the "first" lifeform was, but it was certainly far less complex than humans, and didn't have sexual reproduction, so all the issues of inbreeding don't really apply.
It's called the second law of thermodynamics which states that anything that happens, happens spontaneously (since all spontaneous processes increase entropy and entropy always increases).
Sorry, but I think you completely misunderstand the second law of thermodynamics. It doesn't apply to anything at all - it says that in a closed system, entropy increases. First of all, the Earth isn't a closed system... On top of that, entropy isn't some catch-all for any disorder, it applies specifically to Thermodynamics, which deals with chemical processes... if I meteorite strikes the earth carrying life, it's not a purely thermodynamic process. I hate it when people mis-use Entropy!
Well, yes, life CAN start, but that's only part of the way from saying it DID start spontaneously. There isn't enough data to give any real guess as to how likely it is that life actually started spontaneously.
Actually no - in the precambrian it's generally thought that it would be very difficult for life to survive on the surface. There was no ozone layer because there was no Oxygen(O2) as the former comes from the latter. And the statement that Oxygen is "damaging" is not at all true - granted, it harms some things, but obviously modern day life adapted to the Oxygen, while we still get sunburns from UV (and we wven have an ozone layer). However, I have heard some theories that suggest that the earliest life formed along the shore (for all the reasons Mr. Coward listed), and quickly migrated to the deeper ocean where it could survive much more easily due to the lack of UV Oh, and there's no reason to assume extremophiles didn't come first - they aren't any more "kooky" than any other life forms, they just survive in different environments than most other bacteria do.
Keep in mind that people like him are in the vast minority - most readers (and many of the people who make reasonable posts) are not thinking like SmoothOperator. On top of that, what he said didn't make sense anyway - Darwin had no exlaination how life came to be - compartmentalization and the first DNA molecules had nothing to do with mutation or evolution. Don't get pissed off by people like him - I just ignore them.
I find that I work much better with a PDA... I have an awful memory and never used to remember phone numbers or appointments unless I wrote them down immediately. Now my PDA lets me do that. On the other hand, a friend of mine who has a better memory never uses his - except for tetris and IR pong, of couse. On the other hand, I have a Handspring Treo, so it also operates as a phone and portable web browser/e-mail client, so that makes it particularly useful...
... is that some people actually think we should do something like this. I see nothing in here that convinces me that anything said here is even remotely realistic or true...
First of all, if someone actually got serious about making a storage facility, disposal would be easy... Build a few major storage centers, encase them all in concrete away from any populated areas (especially desert areas), and Groundwater wouldn't be an issue even if it somehow got through the tremendous amount of shielding. I think people fear nuclear power because it seems to close to nuclear weapons, which ARE frightening and useless... Think about it this way- You can breath in carcinogens, rain acid on the earth, and pump contaminated water into rivers if you want, not to mention the fact that in less than a hundred years, you'll run out... Or you can use something that has a FAR greater fuel supply, can re-fuel itself using the original fuel, doesn't release any atmospheric contaminants, and (when well designed with a containment building) has a chance about equal to that of monkeys writing Hamlet of melting down. The ONLY issue is spent fuel storage, and it would easily be solved if a government would say "We want clean, efficient power." (Or aren't being payed off by corporate sponsors)
Look, ordinarily I pounce on these as very Americocentric (I'm pretty sure that's a word), and yes, of course there were alterior motives to many, but many were motivated partly by kindness... and instead of Americans holding their noses up at the world, and vice versa, we need to see this more on BOTH sides...
Why do all the posts insulting left-wingers come from Anonymous Cowards?
state have been browsing the web and happened upon Slashdot...
From now on the FBI will treat anyone using anything else as a "Fatal Exception" I suppose.
Apparently, we have three people here that believe the US knows best for the rest of the world. I've always seen a huge irony in this, because it's usually right-wingers who spout this crap, and they're the same ones who say the government shouldn't do this to it's citizens. So it's okay for the US to "know best" for the rest of the world, but not it's own people then? Anyway, Instead of insulting environmentalists(operagost), lets look at this from a view of reason. 100+ countries signed Kyoto. The US did not. More countries pay UN dues. The US does not. Most countries abide by treaties they agree on until both parties agree to end the treaty. Apparently, with the BMDT, we do not. Anyone seeing a few paralells? I think the government likes Microsoft because they have similar attitudes. If a group that's theoretically above you comes to an agreement you don't like... ignore it. If you're a political theorist, this is not the rule of law, it is anarchy. To begin with, it's not at all proven Kyoto would cause any major harm to any part of the economy. However, it is proven that CO2 emissions are not a good thing. Don't give me any crap about that because it's TRUE Ask the vast majority of scientists, and they'll tell you that CO2 emissions are bad. Too many people figure that a little work is too much to do to save the planet from destruction (yes, now I'm babbling environmentalist rhetoric, but it's still just as true.) There's more evidence that CO2 harms the environment than that Kyoto harms the economy. So it makes sense to ratify it! Unless you're being payed off by people totally self-interested (which is usually big buisness in this case)...
This should be dismissed out of hand given the web site you give as your home page. That's probably the most idiotic, US-centric thing I've seen in quite a while.
Why is that? How can the surface gravity be low while preventing light from escaping?
No, that's not correct, because by definition, a black hole collapses upon itself, crushing any sort of bonds holding matter apart. Equations exist (I'm sorry I can't prove this, but my physics background isn't yet far enough to show this) that prove that if a black hole exists, the singularity does at some point in it. Anyway, any location with gravity strong enough to suck in light would be very different because then gravity would be a stronger force compared to the other fundamental forces.
Actually, the monster black hole will take a lot longer, because it's event horizon is large enough to drag in enough stuff (I pretty sure it's background radiation, since matter and energy are even more the same in a black hole) to grow at a faster rate than the Hawkins evaporation occurs. Thus big black holes don't explode at all (or won't for far more than 10^100 years, when the background radiation gets too thin. But by then, the universe has died an entropy death, effectively. All that's left is for the black holes to finally evaporate)
With regards to the second half, I thought it could happen, with liberals in office... until a big-buisness right-winger (note that I did not say republican...) entered office... and as for B, believing it won't make a difference is just emasculating capitalism. The whole system runs on competition, right? With even two huge companies competing, smaller ones at least have a chance, and those two MUST develop according to the market, not according to the whim of Bill Gates. As for the top, it is purely ridiculous to say that the Bush administration making a decision isn't Bush's idea. First of all, who nominated Ashcroft? And if he thought this was a bad idea, Bush could say no... that's what it means to be at the top of the executive branch. Bush is responsible for acts of his administration. If a nuclear bomb is dropped on China, initiating World War III, Bush can't just say "it was Rumsfeld's idea."
Well, it is a preference issue... some can be happy just running around randomly shooting people, but I don't see any enjoyment in that. You get a lot more out of something developing... a good game is technically well designed, and has progression. That progression can be by way of story, gaining levels, higher score, or a higher frag count. It's a matter of opinion which is the funnest. I personally think story is the best method, and I don't think it may even be a slight minority that agrees... but it's out of proportion, still. Compare the story quality of a good (not FF quality, but good) RPG to the story quality of a "good book," and try to tell me they're equal...
Just to point Out, Microsoft Flight Simulator, even if you take ALL of it's versions together, was not the most popular game ever. And besides, there's a difference between playing a game and flying planes around in a pure simulator, in my opinion. A game goes somewhere, regardless of whether it uses a story... it has levels or something...
Well, good old Shrub (little Bush) declared human cloning illegal... I really don't see enough of a value in cloning to imagine a "black market" for clones...