1) The dark-one's prison must not be patched, it must be made whole again to the degree that it was never breached.
Or the Dark One killed. The only point to having this story is if this is the end of the cycle. The Dark One threatened to "break the Wheel of Time" and to strangle people "with the corpse of the Great Serpent". If the powers of darkness can make a final end, why not the forces of light? And the novels never say that the bore has to be patched as if it were new, it says it must be patched tightly enough so the Dark One cannot escape.
I mean seriously, the thirteen greatest mages (give or take) of the second age are unleashed on the third age with all of their lost knowledge of the "one power" and their access to the "true power" and the best thing they can come up with is sleeping their way into the bed/court of a queen?
Don't forget that most of them, at least, don't have access to any angreal or sa'angreal. And that a circle of thirteen Aes Sedai can take any one of them down. And the fact that they're just as likely to nuke each other if one of them exposes themself. They're going to be cautious.
The problem with the story isn't so much Jordan's dug himself into a hole, but either he doesn't know how to end the story, or he doesn't want to. Or, as some people think, his editors are being bastards.
This is like naming your baby George Bush because it has name recognition
Yes, well, most people have an emotional attachment to their baby. The thing about SCO is that its CEO doesn't give a stuff about the company, and is more than willing to plough it into the ground in order to choke some money out of it for his own pockets.
Yeah - except that the "mature" games are just crap. Making a volleyball game and then taking the players clothes off doesn't make it "mature". A truly mature game would be a game that deals with content in a mature manner, not one that just shows as many titties as possible.
Um, how is fusion research related to the war in Iraq at all? If we were talking about deploying the mobile phone network, or re-establishing the public transport system, Ok, I understand. But fusion research isn't a "spoil of war". It's just the US getting all snooty cause France wouldn't play with it.
Nah, it's not because people wouldn't be interested, or because it'd be dull; it's because all the people who were upset by the murder and carnage of games like Manhunt would kick up a real stink at the level of immorality and depravity a political sim would include.
There are a tonne of characters in the book who are offered the ring, and yet refuse it. Aragorn, Gandalf, Galadriel; Frodo offers it to all of them, and they all refuse. But it's one thing to resist the pull of the ring when it's in someone else's hand, and quite another to resist, like Frodo does, when you carry it around day and night.
You talk about the development of Faramir in the movie, but I tend to think of Faramir more as a foil to Boromir; Faramir is what Boromir should have been. Faramir, along with Aragorn and Eowen and a few others, is an example of the nobility of the race that is to take over from the elves.
Also, I don't think Frodo's resistance to the ring is the only reason he is chosen as bearer. If Gandalf (or Galadriel, or Aragorn) had been the bearer, the consequences of a fall would have been disasterous. Not only would the ring not have been destroyed, but a new dark power would arise, just as evil as Sauron, and even more powerful. Not to mention that Frodo could sneak into Mordor. I'm pretty sure Sauron would notice if Gandalf the White came in to storm his castle. Frodo is chosen because he has no concern for greatness, because is not powerful, and because he is not glamerous.
Well, according to Christian theology, Jesus is the big kahuna. The only reason there wasn't some good fire and brimstone action was because he had other things on his mind:
"Do you think I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels? But then how should the Scriptures be fulfilled, that it must be so?" (Matthew 26:53-54)
I don't know many informed Christians who are opposed to stem cell research using adult stem cells, or those from umblicical cord blood. But these methods have nothing to do with therepeutic cloning - therepeutic cloning is a euphamism for what is, essentially, organ farming.
Actually, he concluded that either the universe always was (didn't begin) or was created by a supernatural agency. He didn't like that alternative, so he did not choose to pursue it. It wasn't a question of proof, it was a question of preference. Which he actually says in the book. He is an honest atheist, at least:)
Scientific thinking has a problem with arguing about the issue of the origin of the universe. Scientific process is centred around the concept of cause and effect. However, when you are looking at the origin of the universe, you are looking for an effect without a cause, which is an issue science can't address. Basically, there are three alternatives for the existence of the universe:
It always existed; nobody made it
It never existed, none of this is real
The "cause" of the universe is external to the universe itself
There is not very much proof for either alternative (and, in fact, there can be no real proof for the second). The "it always existed" argument is no more scientific than any other. Most people who support this view are just picking the alternative that doesn't mention God.
However, the Christian mode of belief is not the proof constructed by logical chains of cause and effect, it is faith.
I'm not going to flame you even though its tempting;) The real issue with christians seems to be they can't understand anything outside their frame of reference (not saying you personally).
It's the same with most people. Most Christians believe the doctrines they are taught without very much understanding of the whys and wherefores. There is a small subset, theologians and interested amateurs, who do. In the same why, most people who have gone through science can trot out scientific truths, but are lost when it comes to how the truth was derived, or what proof there is for the truth.
Two of your statements in this post seem directly opposed to each other. First we have: I have diabeties, I want it cured. Let diabetics decide if a few embryo's are "worth it."
Then a few lines later: The *CHRISTIANS* don't suffer the consequences of their idealogy, a bunch of poor kids are
When diabetics decide "a few embryo's are worth it", they don't suffer the consequences of that action. The embryos do. Most "religious types" (certainly not all) don't want to make decisions about YOUR life. They want to stop your decisions about your life from impacting others - and they view embryonic humans as no different from fully developed and grown up humans. Wether or not you agree with that premise is one thing, but ignoring it when you argue against their conclusions is just stupid.
"Now, I can't figure out how cloning or even forming living cells from nutrient-rich baths can be 'playing God' more than any other science."
In regards to therepeutic cloning (as opposed to reproductive), it is not the fact the cloning cells is going on that disturbs me. It's the fact that human beings are being manufactured for slaughter. "Therepeutic" cloning research is about creating embryos or fetuses (which is fine by me) and then killing them to use their cells for research (which is most definately not fine).
To pre-empt some responses, no, this is no different at all from the meat industry. We breed cattle soley to kill them for meat. But I believe there is an intrinsic value to human beings, that they are made in the image of God. Based on that premise, I cannot condone "therepeutic cloning". Attack my premise if you will, but don't attack my conclusion unless you can find fault with the logic between the two.
We have a chance to end the incarceration of many people in some of the most horrible and debilitating places I know, and it large comes down to semantics. When life starts.
You need to know when life starts if you ever want to prosecute someone for murder. Does life start at conception? At a certain point during gestation? At birth? There are no absolute grounds for deciding when life begins, only arbitrary ones. When an organism is conscious, when an organism is physically independant from its parent, when an organism is fully developed - none of them have anything to do with "life" they are totally arbitrary conditions.
The thing about stem cells is there's a whole bunch of different kinds.
The stem cells everybody wants to research are embryonic stem cells. These stem cells are about as un-differentiated as you can get. It means they are easy to work with, and can be used in many different areas of research.
However, if any of the research comes to fruition, we will not be using embryonic stem cells; scientists will harvest your own stem cells, and use them to grow the missing bits. The whole idea of stem cells is that the patient can regrow their own bits, with a 0% chance of rejection. If you just grew them from embryonic stem cells, you'd have the same rejection problem as with traditional transplants.
Stem-cells can be gathered from pretty much any part of the body. The stem-cells gathered from liposuction may be the ones actually used in the treatment when it's developed, but they are next to useless for research purposes; they're too hard to work with. For that, they need embryonic stem cells.
On the other hand, "Lindows" does describe the product very well. It's Linux with as close as possible to a Windows look and feel. Lindows doesn't use the name simply to try and be a knock-off Windows, it uses the name to explain what their intent is.
Let's look at the ever popular hypothetical "widget" market:
There are a number of widget manufacturers out there, each minding it's own business, building and selling widgets to the masses, because widgets are a vital useful product.
WidgetCo, refines their process, and strikes deals with the providers of the raw materials in widget making, and begins to offer widgets at prices far below those of their competitors. WidgetCo.
WidgetCo's competitors lose sales, and some of them go out of business.
WidgetCo buys out another couple of former competitors as a means of rapidly expanding their capacity, further consolidating the widget market.
Eventually, WidgetCo becomes the exclusive manufacturer of widgets.
Is WidgetCo now a monopoly? I say no.
If, in the absence of competition, WidgetCo begins raising it's prices, or begins building inferior quality widgets, in an unregulated market, someone can start a new company, UltraWidge.
At which point WidgetCo., with more money at disposal due to it's market dominance, buys out UltraWidget. Or buys up the raw material necessary to manufacture widgets. Or temporarily lowers its prices far below the cost of manufacture; with a larger abk balance, they can absorb losses for longer than this new upstart.
There are plenty of ways to maintain a monopoly without regulation. Legislating your way to monopoly is just the method of choice these days, as senators are so cheap.
Not to mention the Egyptian royalty after Alexander The Great's kingdom collapsed. Hell, Cleopatra married both her brothers before Marc Antony came on the scene. One of the nutty Roman Emporers marreid their sister too; can't remember which.
However, the original poster's point is well taken. Incest and inter-breeding often occurs in the upper ranks of heavily-based classed societies (due to a desire to avoid "diluting the bloodline"). Incest was not often practiced by the commoners in these situations. I don't know much about Polynesia; maybe it was different there.
This is a terrible idea; it's hard enough for geeks to get girls in the first place without having them sign a licensing agreement before the transfer of your IP can take place.
Well, my physics is not very advanced, but I don't think there's any actual destruction of mass in a nuclear reaction; it's just the very tight bonds in an atom release a lot of energy when broken.
Slashdot Mirror
1) The dark-one's prison must not be patched, it must be made whole again to the degree that it was never breached.
Or the Dark One killed. The only point to having this story is if this is the end of the cycle. The Dark One threatened to "break the Wheel of Time" and to strangle people "with the corpse of the Great Serpent". If the powers of darkness can make a final end, why not the forces of light? And the novels never say that the bore has to be patched as if it were new, it says it must be patched tightly enough so the Dark One cannot escape.
I mean seriously, the thirteen greatest mages (give or take) of the second age are unleashed on the third age with all of their lost knowledge of the "one power" and their access to the "true power" and the best thing they can come up with is sleeping their way into the bed/court of a queen?
Don't forget that most of them, at least, don't have access to any angreal or sa'angreal. And that a circle of thirteen Aes Sedai can take any one of them down. And the fact that they're just as likely to nuke each other if one of them exposes themself. They're going to be cautious.
The problem with the story isn't so much Jordan's dug himself into a hole, but either he doesn't know how to end the story, or he doesn't want to. Or, as some people think, his editors are being bastards.
I'm still looking for a patch for the W32.Clueless.User worm. It seems no matter how restrictive the firewall, this little blighter can get in.
This is like naming your baby George Bush because it has name recognition
Yes, well, most people have an emotional attachment to their baby. The thing about SCO is that its CEO doesn't give a stuff about the company, and is more than willing to plough it into the ground in order to choke some money out of it for his own pockets.
Yeah - except that the "mature" games are just crap. Making a volleyball game and then taking the players clothes off doesn't make it "mature". A truly mature game would be a game that deals with content in a mature manner, not one that just shows as many titties as possible.
Taken from a SCO board meeting?
Um, how is fusion research related to the war in Iraq at all? If we were talking about deploying the mobile phone network, or re-establishing the public transport system, Ok, I understand. But fusion research isn't a "spoil of war". It's just the US getting all snooty cause France wouldn't play with it.
Hahaha, for a second there I thought you were talking about Slashdot subscribers
Nah, it's not because people wouldn't be interested, or because it'd be dull; it's because all the people who were upset by the murder and carnage of games like Manhunt would kick up a real stink at the level of immorality and depravity a political sim would include.
There are a tonne of characters in the book who are offered the ring, and yet refuse it. Aragorn, Gandalf, Galadriel; Frodo offers it to all of them, and they all refuse. But it's one thing to resist the pull of the ring when it's in someone else's hand, and quite another to resist, like Frodo does, when you carry it around day and night.
You talk about the development of Faramir in the movie, but I tend to think of Faramir more as a foil to Boromir; Faramir is what Boromir should have been. Faramir, along with Aragorn and Eowen and a few others, is an example of the nobility of the race that is to take over from the elves.
Also, I don't think Frodo's resistance to the ring is the only reason he is chosen as bearer. If Gandalf (or Galadriel, or Aragorn) had been the bearer, the consequences of a fall would have been disasterous. Not only would the ring not have been destroyed, but a new dark power would arise, just as evil as Sauron, and even more powerful. Not to mention that Frodo could sneak into Mordor. I'm pretty sure Sauron would notice if Gandalf the White came in to storm his castle. Frodo is chosen because he has no concern for greatness, because is not powerful, and because he is not glamerous.
Because, like, it's such a different process from buying any other digital content isn't it?
Well, according to Christian theology, Jesus is the big kahuna. The only reason there wasn't some good fire and brimstone action was because he had other things on his mind:
"Do you think I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels? But then how should the Scriptures be fulfilled, that it must be so?" (Matthew 26:53-54)
Therepeutic cloning is the killing babies method.
I don't know many informed Christians who are opposed to stem cell research using adult stem cells, or those from umblicical cord blood. But these methods have nothing to do with therepeutic cloning - therepeutic cloning is a euphamism for what is, essentially, organ farming.
Actually, he concluded that either the universe always was (didn't begin) or was created by a supernatural agency. He didn't like that alternative, so he did not choose to pursue it. It wasn't a question of proof, it was a question of preference. Which he actually says in the book. He is an honest atheist, at least :)
There is not very much proof for either alternative (and, in fact, there can be no real proof for the second). The "it always existed" argument is no more scientific than any other. Most people who support this view are just picking the alternative that doesn't mention God.
However, the Christian mode of belief is not the proof constructed by logical chains of cause and effect, it is faith.
I'm not going to flame you even though its tempting ;) The real issue with christians seems to be they can't understand anything outside their frame of reference (not saying you personally).
It's the same with most people. Most Christians believe the doctrines they are taught without very much understanding of the whys and wherefores. There is a small subset, theologians and interested amateurs, who do. In the same why, most people who have gone through science can trot out scientific truths, but are lost when it comes to how the truth was derived, or what proof there is for the truth.
Two of your statements in this post seem directly opposed to each other. First we have:
I have diabeties, I want it cured. Let diabetics decide if a few embryo's are "worth it."
Then a few lines later:
The *CHRISTIANS* don't suffer the consequences of their idealogy, a bunch of poor kids are
When diabetics decide "a few embryo's are worth it", they don't suffer the consequences of that action. The embryos do. Most "religious types" (certainly not all) don't want to make decisions about YOUR life. They want to stop your decisions about your life from impacting others - and they view embryonic humans as no different from fully developed and grown up humans. Wether or not you agree with that premise is one thing, but ignoring it when you argue against their conclusions is just stupid.
"Now, I can't figure out how cloning or even forming living cells from nutrient-rich baths can be 'playing God' more than any other science."
In regards to therepeutic cloning (as opposed to reproductive), it is not the fact the cloning cells is going on that disturbs me. It's the fact that human beings are being manufactured for slaughter. "Therepeutic" cloning research is about creating embryos or fetuses (which is fine by me) and then killing them to use their cells for research (which is most definately not fine).
To pre-empt some responses, no, this is no different at all from the meat industry. We breed cattle soley to kill them for meat. But I believe there is an intrinsic value to human beings, that they are made in the image of God. Based on that premise, I cannot condone "therepeutic cloning". Attack my premise if you will, but don't attack my conclusion unless you can find fault with the logic between the two.
We have a chance to end the incarceration of many people in some of the most horrible and debilitating places I know, and it large comes down to semantics. When life starts.
You need to know when life starts if you ever want to prosecute someone for murder. Does life start at conception? At a certain point during gestation? At birth? There are no absolute grounds for deciding when life begins, only arbitrary ones. When an organism is conscious, when an organism is physically independant from its parent, when an organism is fully developed - none of them have anything to do with "life" they are totally arbitrary conditions.
He tried it once before. People didn't like what he said, nailed him to a cross and stuck him on a hill.
The thing about stem cells is there's a whole bunch of different kinds.
The stem cells everybody wants to research are embryonic stem cells. These stem cells are about as un-differentiated as you can get. It means they are easy to work with, and can be used in many different areas of research.
However, if any of the research comes to fruition, we will not be using embryonic stem cells; scientists will harvest your own stem cells, and use them to grow the missing bits. The whole idea of stem cells is that the patient can regrow their own bits, with a 0% chance of rejection. If you just grew them from embryonic stem cells, you'd have the same rejection problem as with traditional transplants.
Stem-cells can be gathered from pretty much any part of the body. The stem-cells gathered from liposuction may be the ones actually used in the treatment when it's developed, but they are next to useless for research purposes; they're too hard to work with. For that, they need embryonic stem cells.
On the other hand, "Lindows" does describe the product very well. It's Linux with as close as possible to a Windows look and feel. Lindows doesn't use the name simply to try and be a knock-off Windows, it uses the name to explain what their intent is.
Let's look at the ever popular hypothetical "widget" market: There are a number of widget manufacturers out there, each minding it's own business, building and selling widgets to the masses, because widgets are a vital useful product. WidgetCo, refines their process, and strikes deals with the providers of the raw materials in widget making, and begins to offer widgets at prices far below those of their competitors. WidgetCo. WidgetCo's competitors lose sales, and some of them go out of business. WidgetCo buys out another couple of former competitors as a means of rapidly expanding their capacity, further consolidating the widget market. Eventually, WidgetCo becomes the exclusive manufacturer of widgets. Is WidgetCo now a monopoly? I say no. If, in the absence of competition, WidgetCo begins raising it's prices, or begins building inferior quality widgets, in an unregulated market, someone can start a new company, UltraWidge.
At which point WidgetCo., with more money at disposal due to it's market dominance, buys out UltraWidget. Or buys up the raw material necessary to manufacture widgets. Or temporarily lowers its prices far below the cost of manufacture; with a larger abk balance, they can absorb losses for longer than this new upstart.
There are plenty of ways to maintain a monopoly without regulation. Legislating your way to monopoly is just the method of choice these days, as senators are so cheap.
Not to mention the Egyptian royalty after Alexander The Great's kingdom collapsed. Hell, Cleopatra married both her brothers before Marc Antony came on the scene. One of the nutty Roman Emporers marreid their sister too; can't remember which.
However, the original poster's point is well taken. Incest and inter-breeding often occurs in the upper ranks of heavily-based classed societies (due to a desire to avoid "diluting the bloodline"). Incest was not often practiced by the commoners in these situations. I don't know much about Polynesia; maybe it was different there.
This is a terrible idea; it's hard enough for geeks to get girls in the first place without having them sign a licensing agreement before the transfer of your IP can take place.
Well, my physics is not very advanced, but I don't think there's any actual destruction of mass in a nuclear reaction; it's just the very tight bonds in an atom release a lot of energy when broken.
Bob Shaw, Other Days, Other Eyes. A poster above mentioned it.