So jobs invented capitalism and anything you have to buy is evil?
No, no, no, no! Capitalism creates jobs, but jobs didn't "invent" capitalism. What are you some kind of weird left-wing labor flack who thinks that jobs are the end-all-be-all?
Those are consensus dates for contemporary, mainstream scholarship. Virtually no serious scholar has accepted second century dates for about 50 years. Back in the hayday of higher criticism, some very late dates were accepted. They've been almost completely debunked - unless of course you listen to Earl Doherty.
Do you have any IDEA how many gospels we already have? A couple more second or third century gospels just won't change much. Now... if they were early 2nd or first century, THAT would be interesting.
As for sources, here is one that took me less than 5 minutes to find:
"In the Jesus Seminar, all or most of GTh is treeated as a composition of the 50s antedating the canonical Gospels; but the majority of scholars thinks that, although GTh may have preserved some original sayings of Jesus, as a whole the work is a composition of the 2d century and reflects at time incipient gnosticism."
Raymond Brown. An Introduction to the New Testament. Doubleday, 1997.
To translate: according to exactly the same standards used to date the Canonical gospels (esp. John) later than 70, Thomas is late indeed.
This illustrates exactly the problem with treating Wikipedia as a definitive source: it tends to attract the work of talented amateurs or marginal scholars. It very often misses the mainstream in fields where there is a lot of controversy, and nearly always misses the mainstream in subjects related to the New Testament. In this case, the wikians have taken as correct a marginal view held by what most scholars would consider the radical fringe of New Testament scholarship - viz. the Jesus Seminar and especially Crossin. No serious, careful scholar of the field would have made a strong claim that the majority of critical scholarship regards Thomas as being of 1st century Provenance. On the other hand, someone who picked up a couple of the tendentious, popular treatments at Barnes and Noble certainly would.
A good, popular treatment of the Thomas controversy (and why the Jesus Seminar theories are unlikely to stand up) take a look at "Hidden Gospels: How the Search for Jesus Lost Its Way" by Phillip Jenkins. This book is admittedly conservative in outlook, but it's basically factually accurate and it lays out the issue in a way understandable to the lay person.
(And, for what it's worth, I'm a Doctoral Candidate in New Testament in a rather good program at a non-religious school, so I like to think I know more than some random wikipedia contributor.)
Critical scholarship (i.e. scholarship that has no a priori commitment to the historical reliability of the gospels) dates the gospels more or less as follows:
Mark - 68-75
Matthew - 80
Luke - 80-85
John - 90
Then, consider that most scholars date Thomas in its present form no earlier than 145. Any "new" gospel is likely to be much later. Further, there is good evidence to suggest that the Canonical four existed in proto-forms much earlier, with a proto-Mark dating back to the 40's.
Also, it doesn't help your case that you point to a couple of "Jesus Myth" sites to bolster your case. You realize that these people are considered to be a joke in the world of New Testament scholarship, don't you? The "anti-Jesus" advocates are far worse than the "pro-Jesus" advocates, so far as distorting history goes. I would suggest you read a good, standard intro to new testament, such as Raymond Brown's, before you continue to spout this bilge.
I've got nothing against Jesus, I just don't like religion.
Maybe you need to pursue a better religion? There are many different churches claiming the name of Jesus. Logic dictates that they are not all necessarily the same. To my eye, the ones which come closest to truly following Jesus are the Anabaptists (Mennonites, Brethren, Amish, etc.) Not that this doesn't mean that you have to ride in a horse and buggy or wear a bonnet. Only a tiny fraction of Anabaptists choose to live "retro".
As a student of the New Testament and early Christianity, I have to say that discoveries of "new" gospels are rarely very interesting. There was an explosion of gospel narratives starting in the late 2nd century (say 175). Most of these narratives are quite fantastic and have virtually no historical vallue. (Think of a 50 foot tall cross walking out of Jesus tomb, shouting imprecations upon Jerusalem.) More imporantly than their content, they are so late that any trace of historical content is purely derivative of the four canonical gospels.
N.B. I don't include Thomas in quite this category - it is a much more complicated case. But, despite the shrill nonsense that comes from the entertainment industry (anybody see the epigraph on "Stigmata") most scholars, myself included, would not regard Thomas in its present form as even being in the same class as the 4 canonical gospels.
At any rate, I suspect that any "lost gospels" found here will be of limited interest, mostly to scholars and pedants. Move along, nothing to see here.
Moreover, we shamefully mistreated the Intelligent Design (ID) theorists by lumping them in with creationists. Creationists believe that God designed all life, and that's a somewhat religious idea. But ID theorists think that at unspecified times some unnamed superpowerful entity designed life, or maybe just some species, or maybe just some of the stuff in cells. That's what makes ID a superior scientific theory: it doesn't get bogged down in details
The problem with this - and the reason it is easy for creationists and ID folks to criticize Scientific American and their ilk - is that they are criticizing the conclusion rather than the methods. For a scientist, it shouldn't matter whether a study concludes that Mongo Bongo God of The Congo was the real thing after all - so long as their is evidence to support that conclusion. Some Intelligent Design folks - particularly Behe - have strong scientific backgrounds and have offered significant science-based critiques of evolutionary theory.
The point that Scientific American seems to have missed here is that the difference between "creationism", "creation science", and "Intelligent Design" is not that the first two hold to YHWH and the latter holds to some unspecified force, but that Intelligent Design beings with a reasoned and informed critique of evolution rather than beginning with the book of Genesis.
(I should acknowledge that there is certainly something of a continuum among Intelligent Design advocates, from those who are scientifically well informed to those who... aren't. It has become somewhat fashionable among the creationist crowd to seize on ID as the justification of their beliefs. But if people using science to justify wacky religious beliefs disqualifies the science, then there are quite a few other theories that should be placed in abeyance. We could start with Relativity and go from there.)
Linux vulnerabilities tend to get reported before there's an exploit, even when the "vulnerability" is very minor. Windows vulnerabilities only come to light when there is an exploit, because no one can see the code.
I continue to be frustrated by the proliferation of package formats. So far as I can tell, there is no significant debate the dpkg is the best, most robust package format out there. I've never had the sort of dependency hell I had with RPM, and upgrading my Debian and Debian based boxes is trivially easy.
If it's too hard to use, then the solution is not to invent a whole new format, but to write tools to make it easy. Automating dependency management and package installation is hard. Writing a new user interface is easy.
Personally, I would like to see Debian packaging and packages become the base for all "mainstream" (i.e. binary distributed) linux distros. Obviously, distros like gentoo are something of a special case, but distros like Xandros, Ubuntu, and Mepis have demonstrated that it is a good base upon which to build a robust distro, and compared to different RPM-based distros, Debian based distros are amazingly interoperable. Why reinvent the wheel?
Personally, I think that the PATRIOT act is both problematic and unecessary. However, I do not think that it is the end of American civilization. In fact, the most problematic elements of the act are those which seem to suspend Habeas Corpus, at least under certain circumstances. However, during the civil war (and, arguably, during WWII w.r.t. Japanese internment) Habeas Corpus was suspended outright. Was this a problem? Yes. Was it the end of everything? No.
So, take a deep breath, relax, and rest assured that you will have another chance to unseat the dastardly Republicans in a couple of years. And, if you want PATRIOT repealed, lobby your congressman in the meantime.
As long as you're still free to decry the PATRIOT act, I don't think we have a major problem.
Consider this example. Let's say I own some rental property going for $1000/month. I rent this for a year to someone, but during that year I spend quite of bit of money to do the rental:
$600/month payment
$500 maintenance
$1500 improvements
You seem to be assuming that my "income" from this property would be simple - $12000. However, in fact, I've spent $9200 to make that income. So you might say I could deduct my expenses - i.e. $2800.
But wait, it gets worse. The $1500 I spent putting in a swimming pool increases the value of the property - presumably by $1500 (although in practice it's less.) Do I pay taxes on that $1500 or not? Or do I pay taxes on the amount that the installation of a pool increased the value of my property? Or what? And, while we're at it, I'm getting some equity for my payments. Do I get to deduct the whole payment, or just the interest?
The point I'm trying to make is that your proposal would only make sense if income were as clear-cut as someone making a salary. It's not.
As I see it, the basic problem with an income tax is that it inevitably renders the calculation subjective. There are so many weird little accounting questions that MUST be dealt with that there will always be opportunities for the wealthy to "game" the system. The advantage of a sales tax which excluded necessities (i.e. food, medicine, etc.) would be that it would (a) encourage capital investment by discouraging consumer spending and encouraging saving (b) disambiguate the tax code and (c) keep the government's nose out of my business.
I have been telecommuting for over 5 years now. There was a time when I had the kind of flexibility you describe. However, a year and a half ago my position was sold to a major IT outsourcer (whom I will leave nameless). I'm still telecommuting, but I no longer have even the flexibility that one would expect in a normal, professional office environment. I even have to get permission to leave my house for lunch! (And, yes, the manager DOES check.)
Not saying that every telecommuting situation is like this - like I said, I spend four years in a situation much like you describe. But don't assume that telecommuting implies anything relaxed about the work environment.
(BTW, if anyone needs a top-flight, alpha geek UNIX geek with programming and network skills and over 10 years UNIX and linux experience, who HAS to telecommute because he lives in the middle of nowhere, send me an email.:)
Excuse my but I believe it was Yoda, ca. 1983 who said that. Mr. Spock had nothing to do with it, and I have it on good authority that on that stardate he was actually in the midst of Kohlinar.
I don't think this was for an iPod dock. This guys is basing that conclusion on the fact that it's got firewire connectivity. But we should recally that Firewire was originally mostly used for video connectivity, not iPods, and Firewire is still more-or-less the standard for connecting video cameras and tuners digitally. The logical conclusion is that this bus is not here to support an iPod, but some sort of video hardware... like, say an HDTV tuner card?
This ties in nicely to the way that the mini seems tailor-made to be a media-center PC. If some sort of tuner card were plugged into this slot (say in a "Mac Mini Media-Center Edition" or something) you could plug a mini into your TV and be basically set with the ultimate convergence box.
That's my opinion, anyway. Be looking for a Media Center version of the Mini soon.
That was a different company, whose name escapes me. This company had partnered with Suse to do SLOX, but I would guess that, in anticipation of Novell releasing HULA and moving to that, they decided to open source it - probably to try to get traction.
In the long run, this sort of thing will undermine trust in Verisign's certs and in digital certificates in general. At that point, the market is open for a new cert company that does a more thorough job of researching the companies to whom they grant certs. Verisign should know this, however years of experience with them convinces me that they probably don't.
No it wouldn't - because "hate speech" is only "hate speech" when it's directed against someone the left likes (or at least hopes to get votes from.) The pluralist vision has no tolerance for groups that reject pluralism. So much for "tolerance."
There are more positive examples of differences. For example, consider Free Speech. America tolerates a level of free speech (including even speech that is offensive or subversive) that goes far beyond that tolerated in many other countries. Think about much of Europe, where it is illegal even to sell Nazi memorabilia, or Canada, where many churches are quite concerned that they will not be allowed to preach against homosexual practice.
In the US, we allow people to call themselves neo-Nazis and salute Hitler while holding a sign proclaiming that "God hates fags." And, as nauseating as I find those points of view, I think people should have the right to express them (but not to act on them.)
The bottom line is that the right to keep and bear arms is directly linked to the right to free speech (which most of us cherish). And one could argue quite strongly that the American tendency to hold opinions that differ from (todays) academic orthodoxy is itself a direct application of that same right of free speech.
If the rest of the world jumps off a cliff, should America join them?
Slashdot Mirror
Those are consensus dates for contemporary, mainstream scholarship. Virtually no serious scholar has accepted second century dates for about 50 years. Back in the hayday of higher criticism, some very late dates were accepted. They've been almost completely debunked - unless of course you listen to Earl Doherty.
When you've got an M.Div., come talk to me. In the meantime, I won't fight with an unarmed man.
back to your hole, troll.
Do you have any IDEA how many gospels we already have? A couple more second or third century gospels just won't change much. Now ... if they were early 2nd or first century, THAT would be interesting.
As for sources, here is one that took me less than 5 minutes to find: "In the Jesus Seminar, all or most of GTh is treeated as a composition of the 50s antedating the canonical Gospels; but the majority of scholars thinks that, although GTh may have preserved some original sayings of Jesus, as a whole the work is a composition of the 2d century and reflects at time incipient gnosticism."
Raymond Brown. An Introduction to the New Testament. Doubleday, 1997.
To translate: according to exactly the same standards used to date the Canonical gospels (esp. John) later than 70, Thomas is late indeed.
This illustrates exactly the problem with treating Wikipedia as a definitive source: it tends to attract the work of talented amateurs or marginal scholars. It very often misses the mainstream in fields where there is a lot of controversy, and nearly always misses the mainstream in subjects related to the New Testament. In this case, the wikians have taken as correct a marginal view held by what most scholars would consider the radical fringe of New Testament scholarship - viz. the Jesus Seminar and especially Crossin. No serious, careful scholar of the field would have made a strong claim that the majority of critical scholarship regards Thomas as being of 1st century Provenance. On the other hand, someone who picked up a couple of the tendentious, popular treatments at Barnes and Noble certainly would.
A good, popular treatment of the Thomas controversy (and why the Jesus Seminar theories are unlikely to stand up) take a look at "Hidden Gospels: How the Search for Jesus Lost Its Way" by Phillip Jenkins. This book is admittedly conservative in outlook, but it's basically factually accurate and it lays out the issue in a way understandable to the lay person.
(And, for what it's worth, I'm a Doctoral Candidate in New Testament in a rather good program at a non-religious school, so I like to think I know more than some random wikipedia contributor.)
I'll trot over and edit the Thomas article later.
Hm. How's your Hebrew? Is it as good as your Greek?
Also, it doesn't help your case that you point to a couple of "Jesus Myth" sites to bolster your case. You realize that these people are considered to be a joke in the world of New Testament scholarship, don't you? The "anti-Jesus" advocates are far worse than the "pro-Jesus" advocates, so far as distorting history goes. I would suggest you read a good, standard intro to new testament, such as Raymond Brown's, before you continue to spout this bilge.
Take a look at the third way cafe.
N.B. I don't include Thomas in quite this category - it is a much more complicated case. But, despite the shrill nonsense that comes from the entertainment industry (anybody see the epigraph on "Stigmata") most scholars, myself included, would not regard Thomas in its present form as even being in the same class as the 4 canonical gospels.
At any rate, I suspect that any "lost gospels" found here will be of limited interest, mostly to scholars and pedants. Move along, nothing to see here.
It's already been written: Matthew 5-7. You might want to take a read sometime.
The point that Scientific American seems to have missed here is that the difference between "creationism", "creation science", and "Intelligent Design" is not that the first two hold to YHWH and the latter holds to some unspecified force, but that Intelligent Design beings with a reasoned and informed critique of evolution rather than beginning with the book of Genesis.
(I should acknowledge that there is certainly something of a continuum among Intelligent Design advocates, from those who are scientifically well informed to those who ... aren't. It has become somewhat fashionable among the creationist crowd to seize on ID as the justification of their beliefs. But if people using science to justify wacky religious beliefs disqualifies the science, then there are quite a few other theories that should be placed in abeyance. We could start with Relativity and go from there.)
Linux vulnerabilities tend to get reported before there's an exploit, even when the "vulnerability" is very minor. Windows vulnerabilities only come to light when there is an exploit, because no one can see the code.
If it's too hard to use, then the solution is not to invent a whole new format, but to write tools to make it easy. Automating dependency management and package installation is hard. Writing a new user interface is easy.
Personally, I would like to see Debian packaging and packages become the base for all "mainstream" (i.e. binary distributed) linux distros. Obviously, distros like gentoo are something of a special case, but distros like Xandros, Ubuntu, and Mepis have demonstrated that it is a good base upon which to build a robust distro, and compared to different RPM-based distros, Debian based distros are amazingly interoperable. Why reinvent the wheel?
Personally, I think that the PATRIOT act is both problematic and unecessary. However, I do not think that it is the end of American civilization. In fact, the most problematic elements of the act are those which seem to suspend Habeas Corpus, at least under certain circumstances. However, during the civil war (and, arguably, during WWII w.r.t. Japanese internment) Habeas Corpus was suspended outright. Was this a problem? Yes. Was it the end of everything? No.
So, take a deep breath, relax, and rest assured that you will have another chance to unseat the dastardly Republicans in a couple of years. And, if you want PATRIOT repealed, lobby your congressman in the meantime.
As long as you're still free to decry the PATRIOT act, I don't think we have a major problem.
- $600/month payment
- $500 maintenance
- $1500 improvements
You seem to be assuming that my "income" from this property would be simple - $12000. However, in fact, I've spent $9200 to make that income. So you might say I could deduct my expenses - i.e. $2800.But wait, it gets worse. The $1500 I spent putting in a swimming pool increases the value of the property - presumably by $1500 (although in practice it's less.) Do I pay taxes on that $1500 or not? Or do I pay taxes on the amount that the installation of a pool increased the value of my property? Or what? And, while we're at it, I'm getting some equity for my payments. Do I get to deduct the whole payment, or just the interest?
The point I'm trying to make is that your proposal would only make sense if income were as clear-cut as someone making a salary. It's not.
As I see it, the basic problem with an income tax is that it inevitably renders the calculation subjective. There are so many weird little accounting questions that MUST be dealt with that there will always be opportunities for the wealthy to "game" the system. The advantage of a sales tax which excluded necessities (i.e. food, medicine, etc.) would be that it would (a) encourage capital investment by discouraging consumer spending and encouraging saving (b) disambiguate the tax code and (c) keep the government's nose out of my business.
Not saying that every telecommuting situation is like this - like I said, I spend four years in a situation much like you describe. But don't assume that telecommuting implies anything relaxed about the work environment.
(BTW, if anyone needs a top-flight, alpha geek UNIX geek with programming and network skills and over 10 years UNIX and linux experience, who HAS to telecommute because he lives in the middle of nowhere, send me an email. :)
Your pal, :)
Comic Book Guy
This ties in nicely to the way that the mini seems tailor-made to be a media-center PC. If some sort of tuner card were plugged into this slot (say in a "Mac Mini Media-Center Edition" or something) you could plug a mini into your TV and be basically set with the ultimate convergence box.
That's my opinion, anyway. Be looking for a Media Center version of the Mini soon.
That was a different company, whose name escapes me. This company had partnered with Suse to do SLOX, but I would guess that, in anticipation of Novell releasing HULA and moving to that, they decided to open source it - probably to try to get traction.
I'll give you realll gud website for $500!
No it wouldn't - because "hate speech" is only "hate speech" when it's directed against someone the left likes (or at least hopes to get votes from.) The pluralist vision has no tolerance for groups that reject pluralism. So much for "tolerance."
In the US, we allow people to call themselves neo-Nazis and salute Hitler while holding a sign proclaiming that "God hates fags." And, as nauseating as I find those points of view, I think people should have the right to express them (but not to act on them.)
The bottom line is that the right to keep and bear arms is directly linked to the right to free speech (which most of us cherish). And one could argue quite strongly that the American tendency to hold opinions that differ from (todays) academic orthodoxy is itself a direct application of that same right of free speech.
If the rest of the world jumps off a cliff, should America join them?