I have to agree, I just can't see computers being having any sort of rights to liberty. Computers can only _emulate_ humans. They can never have a _soul_.
One thing I look forward to... for the longest time people have been debating whether or not computers can be intelligent, be able to be conscious, be able to think for themselves.
Some people use the "soul" thing as their reason that computers can't ever be truly aware.
One of these days, I think in my lifetime, we'll reach the point where we can create a neural net as large and complex as the human mind. Then we can find out if there is some special "spark", such as a soul, needed, or if the emergent behavior of that complex a system is enough.
I'm tired of debating about whether this soul (which there is absolutely NO evidence for) exists and if it's necessary. I just want to find out by experimentation. ---
"just as thermonuclear weapons have made us face the realities of war and aggression, after five thousand years of pious jabber."
What? So, you mean the soldiers involved in the Napoleonic wars, who after battles piled bodies into piles so large they started to burn spontaneously like compost, did not face the realities of war and aggression? Or were they jabbering piously?
I think the point was that humans knew there was no longer the chance of "winning" the war. That instead of fighting to gain, all we would do would be to annihilate ourselves. That there was no real use, no possible tangible gain to fighting.
When the only possible consequences are something that horrible, then people actually start to get a different look at the situation. You can stand back an be apathetic to a war somewhere else when you don't have to worry about yourself - but when all of a sudden you know that with the push of a button you, and everyone around you, will die, then you start to feel differently. ---
Go into your preferences and turn his articles off if you feel that way. Don't try and get him removed, since there are some of us that, at least part of the time, like his stuff.
Isn't that what the preferences system and Slashdot are about? Giving people plenty of stuff to choose from and letting people filter out what they don't want?
It's not like putting up his articles somehow causes other useful stuff to not be here. AT WORST, all he could do is add nothing to Slashdot. He can't take anything away.
it doesn't take years of training or great physical skill to use it properly
This is both a good AND a bad thing.
Learning a martial art gives you the ability to kill people, but along with it the discipline and understanding to keep you from using it in a moment of anger. A gun just gives you the ability to kill. And makes it easier to harm someone when you're upset.
Guns are not used only for killing -- the primary use is as a deterrent by posing a potential lethal threat. (The difference is subtle but extremely important.)
Nuclear weapons are not used only for killing -- the primary use is as a deterrent by posing a potential annihilatory threat. Doesn't make me change my mind about them. "Oh, it's ok that we have the potential to destroy all human life at the push of a button because we're not really going to use it." That doesn't cut it for me. The problem with having the threat is that it might be used. Especially that the threat might be used improperly.
And to bring it back around. You're still wrong. Guns are NOT the same as Encryption. You don't have to worry about someone stealing your encryption from you and harming people with it. You don't have to worry about your kids accidentally a hold of your encryption and killing themselves.
I'm not getting into this to talk about gun control. I'm just trying to say they are two TOTALLY different things. ---
Jupiter has a simply huge magnetic field that traps cosmic rays and energetic solar wind particles for very long periods of time. This is bad enough that our space hardware has an difficult time with it, and I have heard the speculation that human beings could never visit the region of Jupiter without taking a lethal dose.
Could life evolve or take root (transported from Earth on tektites) in the leads of Europa given the extant conditions?
As far as life developing there... we don't know what forms are possible for life. We know OUR form of life would have a problem with the radiation, but that doesn't mean that any life would have those same problems. Perhaps a different form of life could have developed that actually somehow harnessed the radiation for energy, in some sort of "radiosynthesis". Maybe far-fetched, but there are bacteria here on Earth that can survive just about any radiation you throw at them. And that's just a modification in our structure of life.
I see way too much of that when people talk about life developing beyond Earth. They're too quick to project what is true about our life on any other possibilities.
Personally, I'd love to see a form of life that thought a planet like Venus was paradise and that Earth was uninhabitable.:) ---
This is the same with modern gun control legislation. Making guns illegal doesn't stop criminals from getting guns, only law-abiding citizens. There are now more guns in the US than their are people, and there is no stoping anyone from getting one. The same with weed, Same with computers, powerful microprocessors, and strong encryption. They can't be stopped!
Hmm... you're right. And similarly, by making murder illegal you're not stopping the bad people from killing the good ones, only stopping the good ones from killing the bad ones. So by that thought, we ought to make murder legal, right?
Encryption != guns.
There are many, many useful purposes for encryption. Sure, it's going to be used for some bad ones, but anything has nefarious purposes.
Guns, on the other hand, were invented and used for one thing - killing. To make sure large chunks of flesh are forcibly removed from a living creature.(No, they really didn't invent them to shoot clay disks) If you can't figure out that difference, you need to spend a little bit more time studying the two. ---
Re:Un-fun endings--Stephenson's Bane
on
The Diamond Age
·
· Score: 1
I've read both Diamond Age and Snow Crash. Both books had great beginnings, but both books ended up meandering off into a very speculative (credulity-straining) endings.
While I haven't read Snow Crash, I did really feel that way about The Diamond Age. The first half to three-quarters of the book was incredible. I was so addicted to it that I had trouble putting it down to even get some sleep. So I guess I sort of read the ending just to finish it and out of inertia, since it got really, well, off. Didn't seem to fit the rest of the book, and in many ways was a let-down.
The whole topic of the book however was so exciting. I've always had an interest in nanotechnology, but the amount he got into shows that he put a lot of thought and effort into trying to come up with something believable and realistic, based on what we know know.
This book in a way pushed me even more into thinking about nanotech. Enough so as to do other reading on the web (such as checking out The Foresight Institute, and seriously considering doing more studying and going back to school to try and get into the nanotech field - instead of waiting and hoping, I think I'd much prefer to help make it happen in my lifetime. ---
Hmm, I wonder... If you restrict someones freedom, do you still have freedom yourself?
An attack on anyone's freedom is an attack on everyone's freedom. I think freedom gains value the more people have of it. By taking it away from anyone, you're reducing the freedom of everyone else. Too many people don't get that.
Of course, there is a point where there is "too much" freedom, and as a result the worth of freedom goes downhill. If you give someone the freedom to kill, then you watch as plenty of people lose their freedom to live.
The goal should be to find the point where everyone has as much invidual freedom as possible but without reaching the point where one person's freedoms start infringing on another's. ---
For almost 2000 years they've been a large part of the make up of western culture. Christianity influenced everything, including the founding of this country. ("One nation, under God...") Should people not be told that, Should they not be told that those were the founding principles, weather or not they are correct, or applicable to day, they WERE the founding principles. Hell, Baltimore was founded as a haven for english and german catholics, Pennsylvania as a christian land were all people were brothers (though William Penn was a Quaker) an several of the origianal 13 colonies were places founded where puritans could be free to pursicuit their own instead of having some one else do it.
The founders of the US came from Christian backgrounds, and at least some of them were Christian (others were deists, which is different). And this should be taught honestly. But that includes teaching that the founders intentionally kept any Christianity, or any religious belief, out of the constitution because they wanted to keep religion and government seperate.
And don't forget that many of the original colonies that were founded to escape religious persecution ended up themselves persecuting different beliefs.
And this is NOT a Christian nation, in any way, shape, or form. The founders made that completely clear.
Not teaching things or removing things from a curriculum because they're aren't PC, is flat wrong, more or less regardless of religion/political stance, unless your a fascist.
It all depends on HOW they are taught. Teaching Christianity as a major influence on western culture is a good thing, so you can know where they came from. But just because it's a large influence doesn't mean that the public schools should be teaching it as part of the curriculum.
You can teach the Ten Commandments in a historical sense. But when you start actually endorsing them as correct, you've stepped over the line drawn by the first amendment. And that's exactly what the intention was by passing the bill to place them in schools. They weren't meant as a historical record, but as an attempt to affect the values of students. Which means not only were they pushing "Thou shall not murder", they were pushing "Thou shall have no other god before me". ---
Why does everyone point to the Ten Commandments in Schools as a bad thing that oppresses people?
I know this is offtopic, but I must say it anyways...
If it's posted in schools, it suggests that the entire decalogue is considered a good thing. That includes the two commandments related to religious belief. How do you think a hindu student feels when the government is supporting telling kids "Thou shall have no other gods before me", meaning the Christian god?
If the government really wanted a code of values posted in schools, it wouldn't be hard to make one that was not biased toward one religion over another. But instead of doing that, they posted a religious one. It's clearly more of an attempt to get Christianity in school than anything else.
Imagine how the public would feel if they posted a code that included one commandment which said "Thou shall bow to Satan God of destruction three times a day". You think they'd ignore that one because the others may have said stealing and murder are bad?
I would have no problem with the Wiccan Rede because it contains no religious references within itself.
When is it a bad thing to instill in children some kind of respect for human life and property?
When it appears they are biasing the respect of human life toward respecting only those people with certain beliefs. ---
Or even to make politicians redundant. Does the net possibly have the potential to change political systems from representitive democracy to partipipatory democracy where all citizens can participate in the discussion and vote on all issues rather than having politicians do so on their behalf.
Let me ask - do you REALLY want this?
Ideally politicans are supposed to be people who know that one of the functions of the government is to do the things the majority want while preserving the rights of the minorities. I know it doesn't really happen (see ten commandments in the schools), but if we go to allowing everyone to vote on the issues, then we eliminate this step.
All of a sudden, the country really becomes majority rule, the people who don't care about minorities take away the rights/freedoms of those minorities, and so on.
I'm sorry, but that idea scares me. Give that style 200 years of being tried and see if we can even recognize the constitution afterwards. ---
You know, while I wouldn't hazard a guess at a date yet, I've actually been thinking seriously that I may never have to face the prospect of dying of old age.
While immortality may not happen in 50 years, they'll surely have extended the life span by a good 20-30 years with medical advances. And with the rate of advances increasing, that 20-30 years shound be enough to allow me to extend it another 20-30 years. And so on until they figure out how to prevent death.
I don't care if I look 90 at that time, as long as I have most of my mind. Because it surely won't be too long after that (if not sooner) when they can fix up the body to make me look young again.
Personally, I plan on throwing a huge party for the turn of the millenium. As in Y3K.:) ---
Whatever you're selling, just make sure like you're not selling your soul. I feel like such a freak doing it...
Well, definately make sure you're not selling your soul. From what I've seen in past auctions, selling your soul really doesn't get you that much money. I think they went for about $20 at the most.
And then when you consider those stories about people who sold their soul to Satan for wealth, etc, it sure makes him look like a real sucker! ---
What exactly are the ethical oppositions to this? Except from bad sci-fi warnings, I fail to see how it would be wrong to augment the intelligence of the human race as a whole. Of course, learning ability has nothing to do with social or emotional intelligence, so it might just turn all of mankind into socially-misadapted geeks.
They're called religious objections. Something about believing man to be the "perfect" creation of a god or gods, and therefore altering this creation is a bad thing in the eyes of those god(s). Go ask a religious fundamentalist if this is a good thing, and they'll probably tell you it's not.
I don't have any objections to doing this, provided it's well researched so that we know there are little if any negative side effects, well planned, and available to everyone. The last part is the key for me - if we make it just for those who can afford the higher cost, we'll actually engineer ourselves into two species; the smart and wealthy "better" species, and the dumb and poor "labor". So shoot a billionaire now.:)
If we're going to create smarter mice, then we really need to create smarter cats to hunt them down. Can you imagine how a cat will react after being outsmarted time and time again by a mouse?
Hmm... I'm not sure I WANT my cats any smarter then they are. They're already in charge - what are they going to want next? Me to groom them?
Seriously... this could have serious applications for improving animals that we have doing tasks. It would allow bomb/drug sniffing dogs to do better and learn faster, for example.
And if there aren't side effects to it, maybe we could do it to people so they stop being so resistant to change later on in life and closed-minded - could keep those geezers in govermnet from trying to close down all the new stuff. Maybe this would have kept those Australian idiots from passing the censorship stuff... ---
And tell me again how this is my responsibility? I just fail to see the reasoning which leads to the inevitable conclusion that *I* should be the one to go fix this. I personally don't give a shit whether some inner city kid ends up working 70 hours a week at McJob to fuel his crack habit. BFD, just means I get a hot cheese burger when I have to work late.
Nobody said you personally had to fix it yourself. But anyone with a caring bone in their body would realize that it could just as easily have beem them born into these horrible situations. You didn't deserve to be in the life you're in - the world wasn't set up so you can have your nice white life while the bad people were made black and poor.
From the tone of this message, I have more respect for a poor mother who works her way off welfare than I can possibly have for someone like you who seems to think that you deserve your life.
Life is only worth something because we've decided it is. By deciding that all those lives are not worth anything, that even caring a little is a bad thing, you've managed to devalue your own life. When you think everyone else is worth nothing, everyone else will think you're worth even less. ---
Let's keep the government and everyone else out of this and let the cream rise to the top naturally. Black, white, et al - who cares?
You don't get it, do you? Do you really think that if you yourself were born in the middle of a housing project, with 4 siblings, no idea who your father was, a mother on drugs half the time and unable to give you attention, let alone raise you, with a boyfriend that beats her and sells drugs, where you don't play outside of the house, and you're lucky to get enough food to eat, let alone nutritional food, that you'd be able to end up where you are today? If you do, then you're living in a different reality from the rest of us.
The point of this article is the fact that the economic disparity is also very much a racial one. Society has put the minorities into these poor situations because of countless years of prejudice. Now just eliminating the prejudice isn't enough. because we've established a cycle of poverty.
If you're going to live in a dream world, and pretend that everyone has a fair chance of rising to the top, then at least realize it's a dream world. ---
I think it's just a temporary phenomenon. The web is still organizing itself, as the number of people and sites continue to grow so quickly. The big portals do little more than offer people one place to find what they're looking for.
As more and more people get on the web, interest communities will become more common. Such as Slashdot for the linux/geek crowd, others will appear for other topics, and people interested in that topic will start using that site as the place to go for information, as it will provide better, more detailed, and more appropriate stuff while filtering out the garbage that the portals are still filled with.
After all, would you go to Yahoo to get information about Linux when Slashdot is here? Not once you've found it.
I think the portals are going to be the places of choice for the newer users, and those that just get onto the web sporadically, but more topic-based sites are likely to keep popping up and providing better hubs for that topic.
I just purchased the previous SuSE package a couple days ago. Monday evening, to be exact. And two days later, they announce the next package. Is this all a covert trick to aggravate me?
Oh well, life sucks, just have to keep going on.
Oh, and for anyone who's not familiar with it, I'd say that SuSE installs pretty darn easily. Considering it was the first time I'd installed Linux and I managed to do it without too much effort. Still tailoring the details however (like getting sound). ---
Unfortunately, no, I didn't save the message where I saw it. I saw it on the web after the address was posted around a religious debate mailing list I was on that had a couple Wiccans on it...
Of course I believe it, considering all the anti-Wiccan sentiment going around again (especially that brought to you by Rep. "Bigot" Barr. ---
Please tell me where in the Constitution you find the so-called separation doctrine.
Here's a hint: you won't find it in there. You'll find it in the writings of Thomas Jefferson.
Thomas Jefferson's writings make it explicitly clear that the intention was to erect a wall of seperation. Just becase the constitution doesn't explicitly state it doesn't mean it's not the way it is.
I, for one, wish that they had expressly stated it there. Not like it would help prevent the countless incidents that show gross ignorance of the constitution... ---
When I hear about a biologist sequencing an organisms genome i come not to the conclusion of obvious evolution but of intelligent design ( hey its pretty much a program for life ).
I have to disagree there. If you look at the talk.origins web site, you'll see a nice FAQ filled with plenty of evidence of bad design in nature. If there was an intelligent designer behind life, he did a really BAD job of it. This is NOT evidence for a perfect god. Or even evidence for a highly intelligent god. What kind of intelligent thing would create humans having the blood vessels in FRONT of their retina where it can reduce sight instead of behind it like other animals?
At some point most everything comes down to at least a small part of faith. You take it on faith that evolution is not just as much a myth as the belief of scientists years ago that the sun revolved around the earth.
There is no "faith" required to believe evolution. There's enough evidence that it's by far the best explanation available for where life came from. We know that the Darwinian Process works (from experiements in other areas), and there's evidence that it happened there also, so why not?
Faith involves belief without evidence. Faith is believing a 2000-year old book is completely true in every word just because it says it is.
Just because you call belief in evolution faith doesn't mean it's anything like a religious faith. ---
Al Gore offends Open Source fans by mocking the concept on his campaign web page. He offends internet users by claiming that he invented the internet.
He also should offend any freethinker or separationist, considering he's said many times he wants to involve faith-based groups more in the government, even going so far as to have them "take over" some of the functions. Unconstitutional, of course.
On the other hand, G.W. Bush offends free thinkers by announcing that he wants religous organizations to take a larger part in government programs, and might directly tax dollars to those programs.
Oh, that's not the biggest one that bothers me.
He's stated that if elected, he would issue and Executive Order to prevent Wiccans from performing their celebrations in the military. Apparently any religion that isn't approved by Christians doesn't rank as being worthy in his eyes. And because of the different rules in the military, this total ignorance of the constitution can be done. ---
It's amazing how bad the space trash problem is getting up there. And every little speck of debris is a serious problem.
Every time the Space Shuttle goes up, they have to replace the glass, and many of the panels, due to collisions with tiny particles. Even something the size of a grain of sand can cause a visible pit. A 1" screw in a head-on collision could possibly cause a hull breach.
Remember that everything in orbit is going about 16,000 mph. A head-on collision means that screw would be hitting at 32,000 mph. An article in a recent Smithsonian went into detail about how they are designing armor for the International Space Station to try and withstand this - they've developed, for this purpose, a very high velocity gun that can shoot a projectile at about 25,000 mph. At this speed, a 1/2" diameter sphere will blow a head-sized hole in 1-inch steel.
Personally, I'm amazed at the fact that astronauts will still go on space walks. The microdebris alone could easily kill them.
If you think this version of the phone is bulky, you should see some of the prototypes of the Iridium Phone and Iridium Pager they have inside the Motorola Museum. They make the current one look sleek... ---
Slashdot Mirror
I have to agree, I just can't see computers being having any sort of rights to liberty. Computers can only _emulate_ humans. They can never have a _soul_.
One thing I look forward to... for the longest time people have been debating whether or not computers can be intelligent, be able to be conscious, be able to think for themselves.
Some people use the "soul" thing as their reason that computers can't ever be truly aware.
One of these days, I think in my lifetime, we'll reach the point where we can create a neural net as large and complex as the human mind. Then we can find out if there is some special "spark", such as a soul, needed, or if the emergent behavior of that complex a system is enough.
I'm tired of debating about whether this soul (which there is absolutely NO evidence for) exists and if it's necessary. I just want to find out by experimentation.
---
"just as thermonuclear weapons have made us face the realities of war and aggression, after five thousand years of pious jabber."
What? So, you mean the soldiers involved in the Napoleonic wars, who after battles piled bodies into piles so large they started to burn spontaneously like compost, did not face the realities of war and aggression? Or were they jabbering piously?
I think the point was that humans knew there was no longer the chance of "winning" the war. That instead of fighting to gain, all we would do would be to annihilate ourselves. That there was no real use, no possible tangible gain to fighting.
When the only possible consequences are something that horrible, then people actually start to get a different look at the situation. You can stand back an be apathetic to a war somewhere else when you don't have to worry about yourself - but when all of a sudden you know that with the push of a button you, and everyone around you, will die, then you start to feel differently.
---
Go into your preferences and turn his articles off if you feel that way. Don't try and get him removed, since there are some of us that, at least part of the time, like his stuff.
Isn't that what the preferences system and Slashdot are about? Giving people plenty of stuff to choose from and letting people filter out what they don't want?
It's not like putting up his articles somehow causes other useful stuff to not be here. AT WORST, all he could do is add nothing to Slashdot. He can't take anything away.
It's not a win-lose situation.
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it doesn't take years of training or great physical skill to use it properly
This is both a good AND a bad thing.
Learning a martial art gives you the ability to kill people, but along with it the discipline and understanding to keep you from using it in a moment of anger. A gun just gives you the ability to kill. And makes it easier to harm someone when you're upset.
Guns are not used only for killing -- the primary use is as a deterrent by posing a potential lethal threat. (The difference is subtle but extremely important.)
Nuclear weapons are not used only for killing -- the primary use is as a deterrent by posing a potential annihilatory threat. Doesn't make me change my mind about them. "Oh, it's ok that we have the potential to destroy all human life at the push of a button because we're not really going to use it." That doesn't cut it for me. The problem with having the threat is that it might be used. Especially that the threat might be used improperly.
And to bring it back around. You're still wrong. Guns are NOT the same as Encryption. You don't have to worry about someone stealing your encryption from you and harming people with it. You don't have to worry about your kids accidentally a hold of your encryption and killing themselves.
I'm not getting into this to talk about gun control. I'm just trying to say they are two TOTALLY different things.
---
Jupiter has a simply huge magnetic field that traps cosmic rays and energetic solar wind particles for very long periods of time. This is bad enough that our space hardware has an difficult time with it, and I have heard the speculation that human beings could never visit the region of Jupiter without taking a lethal dose.
:)
Could life evolve or take root (transported from Earth on tektites) in the leads of Europa given the extant conditions?
As far as life developing there... we don't know what forms are possible for life. We know OUR form of life would have a problem with the radiation, but that doesn't mean that any life would have those same problems. Perhaps a different form of life could have developed that actually somehow harnessed the radiation for energy, in some sort of "radiosynthesis". Maybe far-fetched, but there are bacteria here on Earth that can survive just about any radiation you throw at them. And that's just a modification in our structure of life.
I see way too much of that when people talk about life developing beyond Earth. They're too quick to project what is true about our life on any other possibilities.
Personally, I'd love to see a form of life that thought a planet like Venus was paradise and that Earth was uninhabitable.
---
This is the same with modern gun control legislation. Making guns illegal doesn't stop criminals from getting guns, only law-abiding citizens. There are now more guns in the US than their are people, and there is no stoping anyone from getting one. The same with weed, Same with computers, powerful microprocessors, and strong encryption. They can't be stopped!
Hmm... you're right. And similarly, by making murder illegal you're not stopping the bad people from killing the good ones, only stopping the good ones from killing the bad ones. So by that thought, we ought to make murder legal, right?
Encryption != guns.
There are many, many useful purposes for encryption. Sure, it's going to be used for some bad ones, but anything has nefarious purposes.
Guns, on the other hand, were invented and used for one thing - killing. To make sure large chunks of flesh are forcibly removed from a living creature.(No, they really didn't invent them to shoot clay disks) If you can't figure out that difference, you need to spend a little bit more time studying the two.
---
I've read both Diamond Age and Snow Crash. Both books had great beginnings, but both books ended up meandering off into a very speculative (credulity-straining) endings.
While I haven't read Snow Crash, I did really feel that way about The Diamond Age. The first half to three-quarters of the book was incredible. I was so addicted to it that I had trouble putting it down to even get some sleep. So I guess I sort of read the ending just to finish it and out of inertia, since it got really, well, off. Didn't seem to fit the rest of the book, and in many ways was a let-down.
The whole topic of the book however was so exciting. I've always had an interest in nanotechnology, but the amount he got into shows that he put a lot of thought and effort into trying to come up with something believable and realistic, based on what we know know.
This book in a way pushed me even more into thinking about nanotech. Enough so as to do other reading on the web (such as checking out The Foresight Institute, and seriously considering doing more studying and going back to school to try and get into the nanotech field - instead of waiting and hoping, I think I'd much prefer to help make it happen in my lifetime.
---
Hmm, I wonder... If you restrict someones freedom, do you still have freedom yourself?
An attack on anyone's freedom is an attack on everyone's freedom. I think freedom gains value the more people have of it. By taking it away from anyone, you're reducing the freedom of everyone else. Too many people don't get that.
Of course, there is a point where there is "too much" freedom, and as a result the worth of freedom goes downhill. If you give someone the freedom to kill, then you watch as plenty of people lose their freedom to live.
The goal should be to find the point where everyone has as much invidual freedom as possible but without reaching the point where one person's freedoms start infringing on another's.
---
For almost 2000 years they've been a large part of the make up of western culture. Christianity influenced everything, including the founding of this country. ("One nation, under God...") Should people not be told that, Should they not be told that those were the founding principles, weather or not they are correct, or applicable to day, they WERE the founding principles. Hell, Baltimore was founded as a haven for english and german catholics, Pennsylvania as a christian land were all people were brothers (though William Penn was a Quaker) an several of the origianal 13 colonies were places founded where puritans could be free to pursicuit their own instead of having some one else do it.
The founders of the US came from Christian backgrounds, and at least some of them were Christian (others were deists, which is different). And this should be taught honestly. But that includes teaching that the founders intentionally kept any Christianity, or any religious belief, out of the constitution because they wanted to keep religion and government seperate.
And don't forget that many of the original colonies that were founded to escape religious persecution ended up themselves persecuting different beliefs.
And this is NOT a Christian nation, in any way, shape, or form. The founders made that completely clear.
Not teaching things or removing things from a curriculum because they're aren't PC, is flat wrong, more or less regardless of religion/political stance, unless your a fascist.
It all depends on HOW they are taught. Teaching Christianity as a major influence on western culture is a good thing, so you can know where they came from. But just because it's a large influence doesn't mean that the public schools should be teaching it as part of the curriculum.
You can teach the Ten Commandments in a historical sense. But when you start actually endorsing them as correct, you've stepped over the line drawn by the first amendment. And that's exactly what the intention was by passing the bill to place them in schools. They weren't meant as a historical record, but as an attempt to affect the values of students. Which means not only were they pushing "Thou shall not murder", they were pushing "Thou shall have no other god before me".
---
Why does everyone point to the Ten Commandments in Schools as a bad thing that oppresses people?
I know this is offtopic, but I must say it anyways...
If it's posted in schools, it suggests that the entire decalogue is considered a good thing. That includes the two commandments related to religious belief. How do you think a hindu student feels when the government is supporting telling kids "Thou shall have no other gods before me", meaning the Christian god?
If the government really wanted a code of values posted in schools, it wouldn't be hard to make one that was not biased toward one religion over another. But instead of doing that, they posted a religious one. It's clearly more of an attempt to get Christianity in school than anything else.
Imagine how the public would feel if they posted a code that included one commandment which said "Thou shall bow to Satan God of destruction three times a day". You think they'd ignore that one because the others may have said stealing and murder are bad?
I would have no problem with the Wiccan Rede because it contains no religious references within itself.
When is it a bad thing to instill in children some kind of respect for human life and property?
When it appears they are biasing the respect of human life toward respecting only those people with certain beliefs.
---
Or even to make politicians redundant. Does the net possibly have the potential to change political systems from representitive democracy to partipipatory democracy where all citizens can participate in the discussion and vote on all issues rather than having politicians do so on their behalf.
Let me ask - do you REALLY want this?
Ideally politicans are supposed to be people who know that one of the functions of the government is to do the things the majority want while preserving the rights of the minorities.
I know it doesn't really happen (see ten commandments in the schools), but if we go to allowing everyone to vote on the issues, then we eliminate this step.
All of a sudden, the country really becomes majority rule, the people who don't care about minorities take away the rights/freedoms of those minorities, and so on.
I'm sorry, but that idea scares me. Give that style 200 years of being tried and see if we can even recognize the constitution afterwards.
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In fifty years, we will have immortality.
:)
You know, while I wouldn't hazard a guess at a date yet, I've actually been thinking seriously that I may never have to face the prospect of dying of old age.
While immortality may not happen in 50 years, they'll surely have extended the life span by a good 20-30 years with medical advances. And with the rate of advances increasing, that 20-30 years shound be enough to allow me to extend it another 20-30 years. And so on until they figure out how to prevent death.
I don't care if I look 90 at that time, as long as I have most of my mind. Because it surely won't be too long after that (if not sooner) when they can fix up the body to make me look young again.
Personally, I plan on throwing a huge party for the turn of the millenium. As in Y3K.
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Whatever you're selling, just make sure like you're not selling your soul. I feel like such a freak doing it...
Well, definately make sure you're not selling your soul. From what I've seen in past auctions, selling your soul really doesn't get you that much money. I think they went for about $20 at the most.
And then when you consider those stories about people who sold their soul to Satan for wealth, etc, it sure makes him look like a real sucker!
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What exactly are the ethical oppositions to this? Except from bad sci-fi warnings, I fail to see how it would be wrong to augment the intelligence of the human race as a whole. Of course, learning ability has nothing to do with social or emotional intelligence, so it might just turn all of mankind into socially-misadapted geeks.
:)
They're called religious objections. Something about believing man to be the "perfect" creation of a god or gods, and therefore altering this creation is a bad thing in the eyes of those god(s). Go ask a religious fundamentalist if this is a good thing, and they'll probably tell you it's not.
I don't have any objections to doing this, provided it's well researched so that we know there are little if any negative side effects, well planned, and available to everyone. The last part is the key for me - if we make it just for those who can afford the higher cost, we'll actually engineer ourselves into two species; the smart and wealthy "better" species, and the dumb and poor "labor". So shoot a billionaire now.
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If we're going to create smarter mice, then we really need to create smarter cats to hunt them down. Can you imagine how a cat will react after being outsmarted time and time again by a mouse?
Hmm... I'm not sure I WANT my cats any smarter then they are. They're already in charge - what are they going to want next? Me to groom them?
Seriously... this could have serious applications for improving animals that we have doing tasks. It would allow bomb/drug sniffing dogs to do better and learn faster, for example.
And if there aren't side effects to it, maybe we could do it to people so they stop being so resistant to change later on in life and closed-minded - could keep those geezers in govermnet from trying to close down all the new stuff. Maybe this would have kept those Australian idiots from passing the censorship stuff...
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And tell me again how this is my responsibility?
I just fail to see the reasoning which leads to the inevitable conclusion that *I* should be the one to go fix this. I personally don't give a shit whether some inner city kid ends up working 70 hours a week at McJob to fuel his crack habit. BFD, just means I get a hot cheese burger when I have to work late.
Nobody said you personally had to fix it yourself. But anyone with a caring bone in their body would realize that it could just as easily have beem them born into these horrible situations. You didn't deserve to be in the life you're in - the world wasn't set up so you can have your nice white life while the bad people were made black and poor.
From the tone of this message, I have more respect for a poor mother who works her way off welfare than I can possibly have for someone like you who seems to think that you deserve your life.
Life is only worth something because we've decided it is. By deciding that all those lives are not worth anything, that even caring a little is a bad thing, you've managed to devalue your own life. When you think everyone else is worth nothing, everyone else will think you're worth even less.
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Let's keep the government and everyone else out of this and let the cream rise to the top naturally. Black, white, et al - who cares?
You don't get it, do you? Do you really think that if you yourself were born in the middle of a housing project, with 4 siblings, no idea who your father was, a mother on drugs half the time and unable to give you attention, let alone raise you, with a boyfriend that beats her and sells drugs, where you don't play outside of the house, and you're lucky to get enough food to eat, let alone nutritional food, that you'd be able to end up where you are today? If you do, then you're living in a different reality from the rest of us.
The point of this article is the fact that the economic disparity is also very much a racial one. Society has put the minorities into these poor situations because of countless years of prejudice. Now just eliminating the prejudice isn't enough. because we've established a cycle of poverty.
If you're going to live in a dream world, and pretend that everyone has a fair chance of rising to the top, then at least realize it's a dream world.
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I think it's just a temporary phenomenon. The web is still organizing itself, as the number of people and sites continue to grow so quickly. The big portals do little more than offer people one place to find what they're looking for.
As more and more people get on the web, interest communities will become more common. Such as Slashdot for the linux/geek crowd, others will appear for other topics, and people interested in that topic will start using that site as the place to go for information, as it will provide better, more detailed, and more appropriate stuff while filtering out the garbage that the portals are still filled with.
After all, would you go to Yahoo to get information about Linux when Slashdot is here? Not once you've found it.
I think the portals are going to be the places of choice for the newer users, and those that just get onto the web sporadically, but more topic-based sites are likely to keep popping up and providing better hubs for that topic.
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I just purchased the previous SuSE package a couple days ago. Monday evening, to be exact. And two days later, they announce the next package. Is this all a covert trick to aggravate me?
Oh well, life sucks, just have to keep going on.
Oh, and for anyone who's not familiar with it, I'd say that SuSE installs pretty darn easily. Considering it was the first time I'd installed Linux and I managed to do it without too much effort. Still tailoring the details however (like getting sound).
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Unfortunately, no, I didn't save the message where I saw it. I saw it on the web after the address was posted around a religious debate mailing list I was on that had a couple Wiccans on it...
Of course I believe it, considering all the anti-Wiccan sentiment going around again (especially that brought to you by Rep. "Bigot" Barr.
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Please tell me where in the Constitution you find the so-called separation doctrine.
Here's a hint: you won't find it in there. You'll find it in the writings of Thomas Jefferson.
Thomas Jefferson's writings make it explicitly clear that the intention was to erect a wall of seperation. Just becase the constitution doesn't explicitly state it doesn't mean it's not the way it is.
I, for one, wish that they had expressly stated it there. Not like it would help prevent the countless incidents that show gross ignorance of the constitution...
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for life ).
I have to disagree there. If you look at the talk.origins web site, you'll see a nice FAQ filled with plenty of evidence of bad design in nature. If there was an intelligent designer behind life, he did a really BAD job of it. This is NOT evidence for a perfect god. Or even evidence for a highly intelligent god. What kind of intelligent thing would create humans having the blood vessels in FRONT of their retina where it can reduce sight instead of behind it like other animals?
At some point most everything comes down to at least a small part of faith. You take it on faith that evolution is not just as much a myth as the belief of scientists years
ago that the sun revolved around the earth.
There is no "faith" required to believe evolution. There's enough evidence that it's by far the best explanation available for where life came from. We know that the Darwinian Process works (from experiements in other areas), and there's evidence that it happened there also, so why not?
Faith involves belief without evidence. Faith is believing a 2000-year old book is completely true in every word just because it says it is.
Just because you call belief in evolution faith doesn't mean it's anything like a religious faith.
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He also should offend any freethinker or separationist, considering he's said many times he wants to involve faith-based groups more in the government, even going so far as to have them "take over" some of the functions. Unconstitutional, of course.
On the other hand, G.W. Bush offends free thinkers by announcing that he wants religous organizations to take a larger part in government programs, and might directly tax dollars to those programs.
Oh, that's not the biggest one that bothers me.
He's stated that if elected, he would issue and Executive Order to prevent Wiccans from performing their celebrations in the military. Apparently any religion that isn't approved by Christians doesn't rank as being worthy in his eyes. And because of the different rules in the military, this total ignorance of the constitution can be done.
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It's amazing how bad the space trash problem is getting up there. And every little speck of debris is a serious problem.
Every time the Space Shuttle goes up, they have to replace the glass, and many of the panels, due to collisions with tiny particles. Even something the size of a grain of sand can cause a visible pit. A 1" screw in a head-on collision could possibly cause a hull breach.
Remember that everything in orbit is going about 16,000 mph. A head-on collision means that screw would be hitting at 32,000 mph. An article in a recent Smithsonian went into detail about how they are designing armor for the International Space Station to try and withstand this - they've developed, for this purpose, a very high velocity gun that can shoot a projectile at about 25,000 mph. At this speed, a 1/2" diameter sphere will blow a head-sized hole in 1-inch steel.
Personally, I'm amazed at the fact that astronauts will still go on space walks. The microdebris alone could easily kill them.
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If you think this version of the phone is bulky, you should see some of the prototypes of the Iridium Phone and Iridium Pager they have inside the Motorola Museum. They make the current one look sleek...
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