Interesting post. I agree with many of your points since I disapprove of religion needlessly curtailing a man's freedoms.
It's possible to not baptize your children now or what-ever, and not be effectively stoned to death or burned at the stake. How many thousands of years did that take? 5?
That is incorrect. There were always places where one could follow his own beliefs, provided he did not "disrupt" society doing so. This is no different than not being able to legally be a polygamist nowadays, or sacrifice cocks on the sidewalk.
Yes, the world could be free-er, but no, this isn't the first time people are "free from the shackles of organized religion", not by a long shot.
Personally I'm disgusted with the current state of Religion, so I (similar to Dawkins) have little value in 'respecting it'.
If, as you claim, religion is an invention of Man that has proven useful to his survival over generations, then what you are really disgusted with is human nature. Religion is simply a reflection of it, capable of great good and great evil. Maybe eliminating religion completely would not make the world a better place. Plenty of men do not need religion to tell them to have sex with 13 years old or beat up homosexuals and blacks. Discrimination will continue.
I am not certain but I think that the (1-9) numeral system we use now went india-arabia-world. The concept of 0, i'm not sure about but i know that the character for a variable X comes from the word Chai' (Arabic for "thing"/"something") to Greek Xai to simply X.
you're right, it's dishonest and I won't defend the practice on moral grounds. However, if I can play devils advocate here for a moment, HDTV is probably better for their eyes and, in the long term, they'll be better off with the undeniably better technology. Hdtvs at walmart are reasonably priced and a one time tv upgrade is better than using a crutch and watching stuff at 480i. Maybe greed and misinformation are helping and not hurting overall in this case.
Technically, grenades, batteries and gas tanks are all high-density energy containers. They tend to be hazardous (flammable, explosive, radioactive, etc.) and more powerful batteries will indeed be more dangerous batteries unless similarly significant progress is made in securing them.
I think we're going to see quite a few more stories about battery recalls and killer cellphones.
You make a good argument, I agree with most of what you say but I have a question:
We seem to have evolved to be pretty selfish. How realistic is it to expect the average person to renounce their world view and *really* stop caring about their continued existence? I don't know if we're capable of it, hardware-wise.
So, heroin does not cause major problems within a society? Go read about the british opium trade in China and about the major problems within a society it caused:)
All drugs should be legal to eliminate illegal trafficking and freeing cops to chase violent criminals and harmful corporations.
Your knowledge and thinking are sound but you are mixing up timescales. From a human timescale (decades to millenia), The underground carbon reserves are static and finite.
It takes time in the geological timescale for relevant amounts of biomass to be converted to coal/oil/etc. are they relevant and nobody can plan for their grandchildren's grandchildren, much less their hypothetical descendants millions of years into the future.
The effects of excessive amounts of CO2 being released into the air within a few centuries could cause the pendulum to keep swinging towards more heat while we try to stop/reverse it, further than we're comfortable with. But in the grand scheme of things, Global warming is a small inconvenience. We might lose some landmass, a few species and kill or ruin the lives of a hundred million people or two, maybe take a few decades of setback as a species at most. Tragic, but tragedy happens all the time, and most people are too selfish to really care.
In any case, nuclear and any non-polluting technology that can compete in the short term, Raw solar power and nuclear backups in the long run. It doesn't take a lot of brain to figure it out, really. As long as you look at numbers and solid data instead of headlines, memes and emotional reaction.
The NSA are the good guys, therefore, any traffic monitoring they do will be used to catch the bad guys. Since we are good guys*, we have nothing to fear.
NOTHING!
*Unless you smoke weed, use p2p or jaywalk, in which case you're a bad guy and you deserve to go to jail.
I remember when steam first came out and how enthusiastic I was at the possibilities. Then came the greed (retail pricing for bits, cybercafe suing, crappy distribution, invasive DRM, etc.) and the lies (remember how HL2 was almost done?:) )and the deleting of critical forum posts.
They say Valve is community oriented. Yeah, oriented towards their wallets!
They do make great games though. But they could have truly revolutionized game distribution.
When prompted on the matter, the Harmonix position was that licensing the song is $1 and then more money goes into creating tracks for 3 different instruments (+mike), and that what you're purchasing has more value than a regular song (depends on the value you place on portability/compatibility).
They said they couldn't say if the song prices would be lower or HIGHER than for Guitar Hero.
Bottom line: I fully expect $2+ songs and $20+ albums.
There are only 24 hours in the day. People have enough of a hard time just trying to juggle their obligations, free time and personal projects (eating well, exercising, spending time with the kids..)
After about 40 months of usage, I'm only using 571 MB.
I can't blame Gmail for being too small. I can blame it for lacking a whole bunch of features though:
-Grouping emails by sender(for cleanup)
-Displaying more than 100 emails per page and more than 20 results per search (20 results is really pathetic and insufficient)
-Doing a poor job at managing signatures when using one gmail account to manage multiple email accounts (forwarding and pop). Only one signature can be had per gmail account.
-Not supporting MS exchange (It's proprietary but it's also dominant and should be taken into account. A lot of people use gmail to handle work emails, me included and can't do it effectively when the company uses exchange server). Only forwarding is possible and that messes things up royally.
-and the list goes on and on.
I'm disappointed because I did submit lots of feedback and small requests to the gmail team and never got an answer or saw them implemented. Not even displaying more than 100/20 emails per page which should be trivial.
That said, I do love Gmail, it's just not as good as it can be.
Man, remember that old 8-bit game? It'd be great if it was remade in 3D! Perhaps with some cell shading or maybe link would live and fight in a darker world.
One can only hope...
The article says its top speed in the air is 115 mph. That's too slow.
Also, the carrying capacity is very limited with a capacity of 2 people or 1 person with luggage. 2 people with luggage is a much more acceptable figure.
The autonomy is less than 500 miles in the air, not so great for interstate trips.
The air mileage mileage, however is 25 mpg. That's good mileage.
And it has a 120 gallons fuel capacity, not bad at all for a car.
you're amalgamating Theism, christianity and religion.
They are not the same thing. Yes there are lots of morons out there, why do you feel the need to point that out? We already know. There is no point to be made there.
The initial cause of the universe isn't what most people mean when they say 'God'
Perhaps you are right. But he is under no obligation to defend the "guy in a white robe" image of God and you truly have no reason to be so aggressive. He didn't even claim he believed in God.
You are clearly not stupid and make some good points, one of which is about people hating to say 'I don't know'.
I think you ought to say "I don't know" and refrain from calling people who believe in God 'idiots'.
(no offense meant to you. As I said, you make good points)
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Ron Paul's views on immigration suck. You know there is something wrong with a candidate when white supremacists favor him.
OH MY GOD! WHAT'S THAT HEADING OUR WAY? Is it a bird? Is it superman? Oh, thank goodness, it went right over our heads.
It was...a JOKE! DUM DUM DUM!
Interesting post. I agree with many of your points since I disapprove of religion needlessly curtailing a man's freedoms.
It's possible to not baptize your children now or what-ever, and not be effectively stoned to death or burned at the stake. How many thousands of years did that take? 5?
That is incorrect. There were always places where one could follow his own beliefs, provided he did not "disrupt" society doing so. This is no different than not being able to legally be a polygamist nowadays, or sacrifice cocks on the sidewalk.
Yes, the world could be free-er, but no, this isn't the first time people are "free from the shackles of organized religion", not by a long shot.
Personally I'm disgusted with the current state of Religion, so I (similar to Dawkins) have little value in 'respecting it'.
If, as you claim, religion is an invention of Man that has proven useful to his survival over generations, then what you are really disgusted with is human nature. Religion is simply a reflection of it, capable of great good and great evil. Maybe eliminating religion completely would not make the world a better place. Plenty of men do not need religion to tell them to have sex with 13 years old or beat up homosexuals and blacks. Discrimination will continue.
So, people suck, what's new?
I am not certain but I think that the (1-9) numeral system we use now went india-arabia-world. The concept of 0, i'm not sure about but i know that the character for a variable X comes from the word Chai' (Arabic for "thing"/"something") to Greek Xai to simply X.
And yes, iaaaaita.
you're right, it's dishonest and I won't defend the practice on moral grounds. However, if I can play devils advocate here for a moment, HDTV is probably better for their eyes and, in the long term, they'll be better off with the undeniably better technology. Hdtvs at walmart are reasonably priced and a one time tv upgrade is better than using a crutch and watching stuff at 480i. Maybe greed and misinformation are helping and not hurting overall in this case.
Technically, grenades, batteries and gas tanks are all high-density energy containers. They tend to be hazardous (flammable, explosive, radioactive, etc.) and more powerful batteries will indeed be more dangerous batteries unless similarly significant progress is made in securing them.
I think we're going to see quite a few more stories about battery recalls and killer cellphones.
Dat's some deep sh*t .
You make a good argument, I agree with most of what you say but I have a question:
We seem to have evolved to be pretty selfish. How realistic is it to expect the average person to renounce their world view and *really* stop caring about their continued existence? I don't know if we're capable of it, hardware-wise.
So, heroin does not cause major problems within a society? Go read about the british opium trade in China and about the major problems within a society it caused :)
All drugs should be legal to eliminate illegal trafficking and freeing cops to chase violent criminals and harmful corporations.
Your knowledge and thinking are sound but you are mixing up timescales. From a human timescale (decades to millenia), The underground carbon reserves are static and finite.
It takes time in the geological timescale for relevant amounts of biomass to be converted to coal/oil/etc. are they relevant and nobody can plan for their grandchildren's grandchildren, much less their hypothetical descendants millions of years into the future.
The effects of excessive amounts of CO2 being released into the air within a few centuries could cause the pendulum to keep swinging towards more heat while we try to stop/reverse it, further than we're comfortable with. But in the grand scheme of things, Global warming is a small inconvenience. We might lose some landmass, a few species and kill or ruin the lives of a hundred million people or two, maybe take a few decades of setback as a species at most. Tragic, but tragedy happens all the time, and most people are too selfish to really care.
In any case, nuclear and any non-polluting technology that can compete in the short term, Raw solar power and nuclear backups in the long run. It doesn't take a lot of brain to figure it out, really. As long as you look at numbers and solid data instead of headlines, memes and emotional reaction.
I think taking Bubba's lube away is a bad thing. Just think about it for a minute.
The NSA are the good guys, therefore, any traffic monitoring they do will be used to catch the bad guys. Since we are good guys*, we have nothing to fear.
NOTHING!
*Unless you smoke weed, use p2p or jaywalk, in which case you're a bad guy and you deserve to go to jail.
I remember when steam first came out and how enthusiastic I was at the possibilities. Then came the greed (retail pricing for bits, cybercafe suing, crappy distribution, invasive DRM, etc.) and the lies (remember how HL2 was almost done? :) )and the deleting of critical forum posts.
They say Valve is community oriented. Yeah, oriented towards their wallets!
They do make great games though. But they could have truly revolutionized game distribution.
*shrug*
t'was a joke using an obscure Futurama reference.
Well, science has been vainquished, therefore proving the existence of God once and for all.
But...
ONCE AND FOR ALL!
Ouch! Sharp wit! :)
You'll see my name on your fan list.
When prompted on the matter, the Harmonix position was that licensing the song is $1 and then more money goes into creating tracks for 3 different instruments (+mike), and that what you're purchasing has more value than a regular song (depends on the value you place on portability/compatibility).
They said they couldn't say if the song prices would be lower or HIGHER than for Guitar Hero.
Bottom line: I fully expect $2+ songs and $20+ albums.
It's free.
It's low maintenance.
It's accessible everywhere.
There are only 24 hours in the day. People have enough of a hard time just trying to juggle their obligations, free time and personal projects (eating well, exercising, spending time with the kids..)
After about 40 months of usage, I'm only using 571 MB. I can't blame Gmail for being too small. I can blame it for lacking a whole bunch of features though: -Grouping emails by sender(for cleanup) -Displaying more than 100 emails per page and more than 20 results per search (20 results is really pathetic and insufficient) -Doing a poor job at managing signatures when using one gmail account to manage multiple email accounts (forwarding and pop). Only one signature can be had per gmail account. -Not supporting MS exchange (It's proprietary but it's also dominant and should be taken into account. A lot of people use gmail to handle work emails, me included and can't do it effectively when the company uses exchange server). Only forwarding is possible and that messes things up royally. -and the list goes on and on. I'm disappointed because I did submit lots of feedback and small requests to the gmail team and never got an answer or saw them implemented. Not even displaying more than 100/20 emails per page which should be trivial. That said, I do love Gmail, it's just not as good as it can be.
Congratulations :)
Thanks for the laugh :)
Man, remember that old 8-bit game? It'd be great if it was remade in 3D! Perhaps with some cell shading or maybe link would live and fight in a darker world. One can only hope...
The article says its top speed in the air is 115 mph. That's too slow.
Also, the carrying capacity is very limited with a capacity of 2 people or 1 person with luggage. 2 people with luggage is a much more acceptable figure.
The autonomy is less than 500 miles in the air, not so great for interstate trips.
The air mileage mileage, however is 25 mpg. That's good mileage.
And it has a 120 gallons fuel capacity, not bad at all for a car.
you're amalgamating Theism, christianity and religion. They are not the same thing. Yes there are lots of morons out there, why do you feel the need to point that out? We already know. There is no point to be made there.
That's a crazy number. It probably costs $30 or less.
The initial cause of the universe isn't what most people mean when they say 'God'
Perhaps you are right. But he is under no obligation to defend the "guy in a white robe" image of God and you truly have no reason to be so aggressive. He didn't even claim he believed in God. You are clearly not stupid and make some good points, one of which is about people hating to say 'I don't know'. I think you ought to say "I don't know" and refrain from calling people who believe in God 'idiots'. (no offense meant to you. As I said, you make good points)