Those ought to be easy. All the comments about creationism, well, fighting that is easy too.
What I find intriguing is that no one is actually dealing with the assertions that the proponents of intelligent design are making. All this yammering about "it's junk science" and "re-heated creationism" is helping them out. In order to beat intelligent design, someone has to address the claims that they are actually making. Those claims are more about applied statistics than theology. There are atheists who hold to intelligent design and muslims and other groups of non-christians. They aren't arguing for the book of Genesis. These sorts of ad hominem arguments aren't going to touch the future of science education. I mean, read what the original anonymous coward wrote in, "a robust education." It's ad hominem as well as circular. He may have a much better argument, but he's not voicing that, he's just ranting. These are the kinds of fallacies that make the people backing intelligent design look so much better than the opponents.
Besides, since when have people gotten a better understanding of the truth by excluding more ideas? If intelligent design is in fact bunk, then people will have no problems picking that out. It will rise or fall by its own merits. If no one can refute the claims they make, then it may rise, and rightfully so. But if we can genuinely refute those claims, they will have about a snowball's chance in hell of surviving the next 20 years.
Someone with deep enough pockets to battle it out with the RIAA and the MPAA.
They've been trying to stifle innovation for long enough with the old "The VCR will destroy Hollywood!" BS. And it took Sony, with the deep pockets they have, to protect the rights of the public, so that today I can use my Video Cassette Recorder without worrying about being taken to jail.
Now if Micro$oft will come to bat for us....
Imagine the possible irony if MS steps up to protect the rights of the public against the special interests...
I lived in Beijing between August 2000 and July 2002.
Because Beijing was competing for the position as 2008 Olympic host city, things like the porn were being cleaned up. This also meant that people without urban residence permits were regularly shipped back to the countryside (I hate it when the person I buy breakfast from gets kicked out of the city. Ruins the whole day.) Government intervention in daily life seemed rare, though draconian when it popped up. (They shut off heat for about a million people just to clear the skies up for the IOC)
Regarding the internet, some friends and I made use of a commercial product with an encrypted IP tunnel past the Great Firewall. As a result, I never suffered any problems regarding online censorship. The only time I noticed things really being censored(other than the propaganda machine that is the Chinese press), was immediately after the attacks on 9-11 when the TV news channel that I was watching got shut down.
Parent's got it right, as long as you give them no reason to bother you, they will spend their time bothering someone else.
"What's next, campus police stopping people from taking pictures of the library?"
Starbucks has policies doing essentially that. You are not allowed to take photos, because one of your photos might include an image that is trademarked by Starbucks Inc.
I learned this when I tried taking a photo once (At a Beijing location), and have had that confirmed at two other locations (in LA)
Kerry is Catholic, and not necessarily a Catholic in good standing. His stand on abortion has jeopardized his standing with the church, and may continue to make things uncomfortable in that relationship. I would not recommend equivocating liberal Catholicism with conservative Protestantism. (Or at least voters need to know that the two are not very similar at all.)
A Catholic person's relationship to the Pope has previously been a major concern of voters in a Presidential election, and I'm surprised to see it glossed over so quickly this year. Perhaps this is because Kerry hasn't demonstrated much respect for the stance of his church to date.
I think that a more informative question may be to ask the candidates "What are some specific obstacles that your approach will have to overcome?"
It takes no time to poke holes in an untested policy of another party. It takes some time and forethought to recognize the unique hurdles that you are going to be encountering, and I'd feel better knowing that a candidate is aware of these ahead of time.
Also, the last thing I want to hear at this point is more of the two parties attacking each other. Tell us what you will do!
The whole methodology of science is based around the principle of inference to the best explanation. Every experiment that fails to disprove a theory adds to the inductive base for that belief. When an anomaly arises, it shows that either 1) the data is wrong or misinterpreted or 2) the theory is wrong. Any time a scientist does an experiment, they are attempting either to provide a counterexample to a theory (thus disproving it) or to affirm a hypothesis by adding to the inductive base. At some point, the inductive base may become large enough to grant an individual warrant for belief that the theory is true. That's how science works.
The closest that science gets to deductive logic is the repeated use of modus tollens to deductively prove that a theory is wrong. Yet also falls under inductive logic, as it is a counter example.
If we wanted to use deductive logic in this sense, we could point to Olber's Paradox, which purports to prove that the universe doesn't contain an infinite ammount of luminous matter.
Infinite luminous matter implies infinite light coming in on every ray from your eye.
From my experience living in China, I'm hesitant to think that these servers really are responsible for the spam they claim. More likely they simply found servers that were responsble for some manner of free expression...
-ex
I lived in Beijing for two years. I'm surprised that it took this long. It should be noted, however, that since February there have been people selling DVD's in packages advertising Lord of the Rings Two. Never bought one, but I'm thinking that it was actually The Ring 2.
Anyway, having lived there, I can assure you, it's real. I'm just surprised that there were only 40 vendors selling it.
(And besides, how did they expect us not to buy pirate copies there, since "Fellowship" took six months to come to a theatre near us?) Bought the pirate DVD, paid full theatre price to see it (twice), and bought the legit DVD. Don't see how it cut into their sales at all.....
I'm studying abroad in China right now, and I know people who've received care packages that contained nothing but cookie crumbs wrapped in packing tape with "Public Security Bureau" stamped on it.
-Ex
Slashdot Mirror
Those ought to be easy. All the comments about creationism, well, fighting that is easy too.
What I find intriguing is that no one is actually dealing with the assertions that the proponents of intelligent design are making. All this yammering about "it's junk science" and "re-heated creationism" is helping them out. In order to beat intelligent design, someone has to address the claims that they are actually making. Those claims are more about applied statistics than theology. There are atheists who hold to intelligent design and muslims and other groups of non-christians. They aren't arguing for the book of Genesis. These sorts of ad hominem arguments aren't going to touch the future of science education. I mean, read what the original anonymous coward wrote in, "a robust education." It's ad hominem as well as circular. He may have a much better argument, but he's not voicing that, he's just ranting. These are the kinds of fallacies that make the people backing intelligent design look so much better than the opponents.
Besides, since when have people gotten a better understanding of the truth by excluding more ideas? If intelligent design is in fact bunk, then people will have no problems picking that out. It will rise or fall by its own merits. If no one can refute the claims they make, then it may rise, and rightfully so. But if we can genuinely refute those claims, they will have about a snowball's chance in hell of surviving the next 20 years.
-ex
They've been trying to stifle innovation for long enough with the old "The VCR will destroy Hollywood!" BS. And it took Sony, with the deep pockets they have, to protect the rights of the public, so that today I can use my Video Cassette Recorder without worrying about being taken to jail.
Now if Micro$oft will come to bat for us....
Imagine the possible irony if MS steps up to protect the rights of the public against the special interests...
I must be dreaming.
-ex
Accelrates at 34 km/s?? I thought that was a velocity. If .5 (at^2) = .005 m
And at = 34000 m/s
...then that makes the time about 3e-7 s. That would be something like 11.8 billion g's.
Not bad. Even for such a small projectile, that's an impressive impulse.
-ex
Regarding the internet, some friends and I made use of a commercial product with an encrypted IP tunnel past the Great Firewall. As a result, I never suffered any problems regarding online censorship. The only time I noticed things really being censored(other than the propaganda machine that is the Chinese press), was immediately after the attacks on 9-11 when the TV news channel that I was watching got shut down.
Parent's got it right, as long as you give them no reason to bother you, they will spend their time bothering someone else.
-ex
Starbucks has policies doing essentially that. You are not allowed to take photos, because one of your photos might include an image that is trademarked by Starbucks Inc.
I learned this when I tried taking a photo once (At a Beijing location), and have had that confirmed at two other locations (in LA)
-ex
A Catholic person's relationship to the Pope has previously been a major concern of voters in a Presidential election, and I'm surprised to see it glossed over so quickly this year. Perhaps this is because Kerry hasn't demonstrated much respect for the stance of his church to date.
-ex
It takes no time to poke holes in an untested policy of another party. It takes some time and forethought to recognize the unique hurdles that you are going to be encountering, and I'd feel better knowing that a candidate is aware of these ahead of time.
Also, the last thing I want to hear at this point is more of the two parties attacking each other. Tell us what you will do!
-ex
The whole methodology of science is based around the principle of inference to the best explanation. Every experiment that fails to disprove a theory adds to the inductive base for that belief. When an anomaly arises, it shows that either 1) the data is wrong or misinterpreted or 2) the theory is wrong. Any time a scientist does an experiment, they are attempting either to provide a counterexample to a theory (thus disproving it) or to affirm a hypothesis by adding to the inductive base. At some point, the inductive base may become large enough to grant an individual warrant for belief that the theory is true. That's how science works.
The closest that science gets to deductive logic is the repeated use of modus tollens to deductively prove that a theory is wrong. Yet also falls under inductive logic, as it is a counter example.
If we wanted to use deductive logic in this sense, we could point to Olber's Paradox, which purports to prove that the universe doesn't contain an infinite ammount of luminous matter.
Infinite luminous matter implies infinite light coming in on every ray from your eye.
The night sky is dark (~infinite light)
Therefore ~ infinite luminous matter.
-Ex
From my experience living in China, I'm hesitant to think that these servers really are responsible for the spam they claim. More likely they simply found servers that were responsble for some manner of free expression... -ex
I lived in Beijing for two years. I'm surprised that it took this long. It should be noted, however, that since February there have been people selling DVD's in packages advertising Lord of the Rings Two. Never bought one, but I'm thinking that it was actually The Ring 2.
Anyway, having lived there, I can assure you, it's real. I'm just surprised that there were only 40 vendors selling it.
(And besides, how did they expect us not to buy pirate copies there, since "Fellowship" took six months to come to a theatre near us?) Bought the pirate DVD, paid full theatre price to see it (twice), and bought the legit DVD. Don't see how it cut into their sales at all.....
-ex
I'm studying abroad in China right now, and I know people who've received care packages that contained nothing but cookie crumbs wrapped in packing tape with "Public Security Bureau" stamped on it. -Ex