Look at it as a race between Achilleus and a turtle. The turtle gets head start, so that he's already run half the way when Achilleus finally wakes up and starts running. When Achilleus has run half of the distance, the turtle is already at half the final half (Achilleus ain't actually trying). And so on. And Achilleus can never catch up with the turtle because every time Achilleus gets to a point where the turtle has been, the turtle is already gone. Ergo, there's no movement and where there's no movement there can't be a race (how can you race when nobody's winning?).
IIRC, good works will get you into paradise and you don't have to actually believe in Allah
Catholicism had/has the idea of Purgatory - a place where those people go who need a bit of cleaning before going to Paradise. All the 'pagan' philosophers of the antiquity went there - they did good deeds but didn't believe in God, but it wasn't their fault, so they were granted another chance. Some 'good' muslims were also said to go there, and usurers. It had a good effect on the economy.
For instance we Christians worship Jesus as God, which the Jews and Muslims refuse to and the Muslim idea of God is very different to the Judeo-Christian one i.e. a distant god who requies you to earn a place in paradise rather than a loving father figure who offers it freely to everyone who simply asks for forgiveness and accepts his love.
'Christians' is a very wide term. The Lutherians believe that God offers a place in paradise to anyone who has faith. Then there are those who believe that all the "seats" in paradise were handed out before the beginning of times and only a lucky few can go there (of course, everyone has a different opinion of who the "elite" are). The Russian Orthodox Church's belief was (is?), that only saints go to heaven. The Old Testament (many Christians aknowledge only the Old Testament) says that you have to obey god to go to paradise, it's Jesus who forgives for your sins, not the holy father God.
It's only the Muslims who claim that we all worship the same god and they most certianly do not speak for us.
First came Judaism. Christianity is a splinter group (you could even name it protestantism) of Judaism and they both worship the same god. Islam is based on one/both of them (they even have Moses and Jesus and Abram etc in the Koran). Christians (in general) don't admit that all three worship the same god - but Christians have burned other Christians for the same reason, too. Why should I trust them in this matter?
1) It would not be loving to allow them to contineu with a belief that is wrong without at least telling them that
Isn't this the position the Muslims hold? That Christians are true believers, only their beliefs are a bit wrong...
2) It's pretty offensive to see people putting something other than God first. And how many times a day do you hear someone exclaiming 'Jesus Christ!' or 'Oh my God!'? Bet that would be a lot less acceptable if it was Buddah or Allah being used instead.
I'd say you're very self-centric. If you were in, let's say, Afghanistan, you'd hear many people saying 'Bismillah!'. I don't say 'Oh my God!' too often, I mostly use the word 'kurat!' (the Estonian for 'devil'). Look away from your toes, please...
There's this one (an obvious one, though quite clever for an "in Soviet Russia" joke). Didn't see any more, though, so I'll throw in some myself:
In Soviet Russia, Harry Potter writes books about YOU!
In Soviet Russia, the copyrights are owned by YOU!
And last, but not least: In Soviet Russia, "In Soviet Russia" jokes are on YOU!
*Still waiting for "Harry Potsmoker and the Stoned Philosopher"*
Re:Different from other standards, how?
on
Incas Used Binary?
·
· Score: 1
Heh. To add to your list, 1 meter is the length of a certain metal rod at 20 C (Thus follows the question, what is its lenght in meters? Not as easy a question as it seems, by the way).
Not everybody counts time from Jesus's birth. I don't know what's the starting point for muslims, but the Jews count time from the creation of the world according to the Torah. The Jacobines wanted to reset the 0-year to the year of the Great French Revolution, but they failed - I guess the revolution wasn't great and important enough... In a Matrix-like vision of the future, the beginning point could actually be the building of the first computer (is there a consensus about what exactly was the first computer? I know that according to some, Jesus was born sometime 3 or 4 BC [note: BC doesn't stand for Before Computers!]).
I guess I should have thought of how extraordinary and important an event Jesus's birth (even if it didn't happen) was. My bad, mostly affected by living in a country where "scientific atheism" was propagated for almost 50 years and time was "before our era" and "our era". Will try to remember it the next time.
I think you'll find that sub-Saharan Africa was more or less unexposed to either European or Middle-Eastern culture (excluding a narrow coastal strip along the east coast) until the Portuguese and Spanish tried sailing south.
There was more exposure to Middle-Eastern culture in Africa than "a narrow coastal strip along the east coast". The Great Zimbabwe empire, quite far from the coast, traded with the Arabs on the east coast. Ethiopia (I wouldn't call it a narrow strip, either) had contacts with Egypt, they still have their own version of the Christian faith. Islam reached Western Africa in the 10th century AD when the kingdom of Ghana extended itself to Sahara. Timbuktu, one of the biggest cities in the region, was both a trade and a cultural centre. Quite a number of legends about how cruel some or other African nation was, were made up by Arab traders to scare Europeans.
It's actually a common thing in all cultures to call the outsiders demons or monsters or cultureless. Greeks called all the others barbarians, because they considered Greek the only language and everything else was just babbling (though I think they changed their way of thinking later). For the old Slavians(?), everybody else were 'nemec', speechless (they still call Germans this way). The Chinese stopped only lately calling the foreigners nomads (I think). This sentence about the Incas is only my interpretation of what I have read, so don't take this as the absolute truth, but I think it should still describe the situation quite well.
I myself read about it from "The Conquest of America" by Tzvetan Todorov. I have no more links to enlightenment to hand out though (but I will put this subject on my to-explore list), sorry...
How about what's best to plant after sowing rye for two years?
If you're using the old three-field system, you grow rye on one plot, barley on the second one and let the third one lie fallow. So one answer would be, that you don't grow rye on the same field for two years in a row. If you don't want to let it lie fallow, then clover is a good choice, as it helps to restore some kind of minerals (or something, I don't remember that much about junior high biology) the rye has consumed. Potatoes are definately not a good choice.
An interesting thing is how the existence of writing in South American civilizations seems to be connected to their attitude towards the Spanish. The Incas had quipus, Aztecs had pictogrammatic writing, Mayas had some kind of early-stage phonetic alphabet. When the Spanish came, the Incas were certain that they were gods; Aztecs believed it in the beginning, but later realised that the Spanish are humans just like themselves. Mayas raised the question, then answered it negatively and never called the Spanish gods.
The possible explanation is, that the evolution of writing is affected by the evolution of mental structures and categories: the Incas saw everything unfamiliar as supernatural, having been isolated from other cultures. The Aztecs and (particularly) the Mayas had had contacts with other cultures besides their own, so they know what it means to be conquered by a more advanced civilization.
using the invention of computers as your compare date makes little sense
Makes just as much sense as comparing all dates to the birthday of one Jesus, son of Joseph the carpenter. It's just an arbitrary point in time that is supposed to demonstrate something. Relating the time to George Boole's accomplishment would have been more informative, that's true, but I don't think most of the people even know who Boole was, not to mention when he lived (I don't know when he lived. 19th century?). Hell, not too many people know when the first electronic computers were built, either, but they have more clue about it than Boole.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but in linguistics, a symbol is considered the smallest unit of information. 'a', for instance is a single symbol, but it does carry information.
By the way, they had very good highways there between the capital and some other cities. These roads were one of the things that helped the Spanish to conquer the Incas so easily.
The stress is on as we know it. If I remember correctly, the Mayas didn't say that the world will end completely, it was just the end of one cycle and the beginning of the next one.
What's interesting about the Incas, is that they never discovered the use of wheel. They used wheels in building toys, but they didn't have carts and wagons.
The 7 bit thing. Maybe it was the most suitable system for them, worked out through trial and error. Or maybe it's just something to do with 2^0+2^1+2^2=7(=111 in binary)?
Do you really mean this? Maybe I'm too young and don't have much real world experience, but I just can't be so cynical to think that humans could be programmed like this.
The only thing I'm saying is this : printing phone directories and requiring people to dial numbers is turn of the previous century technology, and I think there should be a better, cheaper, more elegant way of doing this by now, but there isn't, which is odd.
You know, phones were invented in the 19th century, in a way, they are outdated. I don't remember when I last used a phone directory to find another person's number - most of those I know have mobiles (and almost all of the rest have no phone at all...) In some countries there are already as many (or even more) cellphones in use than "traditional" phones. Phone directories are dying with phones. The 21st century technology isn't telephone, it's email or something like that.
Slashdot Mirror
Look at it as a race between Achilleus and a turtle. The turtle gets head start, so that he's already run half the way when Achilleus finally wakes up and starts running. When Achilleus has run half of the distance, the turtle is already at half the final half (Achilleus ain't actually trying). And so on. And Achilleus can never catch up with the turtle because every time Achilleus gets to a point where the turtle has been, the turtle is already gone. Ergo, there's no movement and where there's no movement there can't be a race (how can you race when nobody's winning?).
An axe and safety goggles (just in case).
(Terry Pratchett "The Last Continent")
Maybe they are racists?
Catholicism had/has the idea of Purgatory - a place where those people go who need a bit of cleaning before going to Paradise. All the 'pagan' philosophers of the antiquity went there - they did good deeds but didn't believe in God, but it wasn't their fault, so they were granted another chance. Some 'good' muslims were also said to go there, and usurers. It had a good effect on the economy.
For instance we Christians worship Jesus as God, which the Jews and Muslims refuse to and the Muslim idea of God is very different to the Judeo-Christian one i.e. a distant god who requies you to earn a place in paradise rather than a loving father figure who offers it freely to everyone who simply asks for forgiveness and accepts his love.
'Christians' is a very wide term. The Lutherians believe that God offers a place in paradise to anyone who has faith. Then there are those who believe that all the "seats" in paradise were handed out before the beginning of times and only a lucky few can go there (of course, everyone has a different opinion of who the "elite" are). The Russian Orthodox Church's belief was (is?), that only saints go to heaven. The Old Testament (many Christians aknowledge only the Old Testament) says that you have to obey god to go to paradise, it's Jesus who forgives for your sins, not the holy father God.
It's only the Muslims who claim that we all worship the same god and they most certianly do not speak for us.
First came Judaism. Christianity is a splinter group (you could even name it protestantism) of Judaism and they both worship the same god. Islam is based on one/both of them (they even have Moses and Jesus and Abram etc in the Koran). Christians (in general) don't admit that all three worship the same god - but Christians have burned other Christians for the same reason, too. Why should I trust them in this matter?
Isn't this the position the Muslims hold? That Christians are true believers, only their beliefs are a bit wrong...
2) It's pretty offensive to see people putting something other than God first. And how many times a day do you hear someone exclaiming 'Jesus Christ!' or 'Oh my God!'? Bet that would be a lot less acceptable if it was Buddah or Allah being used instead.
I'd say you're very self-centric. If you were in, let's say, Afghanistan, you'd hear many people saying 'Bismillah!'. I don't say 'Oh my God!' too often, I mostly use the word 'kurat!' (the Estonian for 'devil'). Look away from your toes, please...In Soviet Russia, Harry Potter writes books about YOU!
In Soviet Russia, the copyrights are owned by YOU!
And last, but not least: In Soviet Russia, "In Soviet Russia" jokes are on YOU!
*Still waiting for "Harry Potsmoker and the Stoned Philosopher"*
Not everybody counts time from Jesus's birth. I don't know what's the starting point for muslims, but the Jews count time from the creation of the world according to the Torah. The Jacobines wanted to reset the 0-year to the year of the Great French Revolution, but they failed - I guess the revolution wasn't great and important enough... In a Matrix-like vision of the future, the beginning point could actually be the building of the first computer (is there a consensus about what exactly was the first computer? I know that according to some, Jesus was born sometime 3 or 4 BC [note: BC doesn't stand for Before Computers!]).
I guess I should have thought of how extraordinary and important an event Jesus's birth (even if it didn't happen) was. My bad, mostly affected by living in a country where "scientific atheism" was propagated for almost 50 years and time was "before our era" and "our era". Will try to remember it the next time.
There was more exposure to Middle-Eastern culture in Africa than "a narrow coastal strip along the east coast". The Great Zimbabwe empire, quite far from the coast, traded with the Arabs on the east coast. Ethiopia (I wouldn't call it a narrow strip, either) had contacts with Egypt, they still have their own version of the Christian faith. Islam reached Western Africa in the 10th century AD when the kingdom of Ghana extended itself to Sahara. Timbuktu, one of the biggest cities in the region, was both a trade and a cultural centre. Quite a number of legends about how cruel some or other African nation was, were made up by Arab traders to scare Europeans.
Few people are aware that Pokemon was originally based on legends of the 150 Aztec gods of war and death. Now you know. (Courtesy of Discordian Intelligence Agency)
It's actually a common thing in all cultures to call the outsiders demons or monsters or cultureless. Greeks called all the others barbarians, because they considered Greek the only language and everything else was just babbling (though I think they changed their way of thinking later). For the old Slavians(?), everybody else were 'nemec', speechless (they still call Germans this way). The Chinese stopped only lately calling the foreigners nomads (I think). This sentence about the Incas is only my interpretation of what I have read, so don't take this as the absolute truth, but I think it should still describe the situation quite well.
I myself read about it from "The Conquest of America" by Tzvetan Todorov. I have no more links to enlightenment to hand out though (but I will put this subject on my to-explore list), sorry...
If you're using the old three-field system, you grow rye on one plot, barley on the second one and let the third one lie fallow. So one answer would be, that you don't grow rye on the same field for two years in a row. If you don't want to let it lie fallow, then clover is a good choice, as it helps to restore some kind of minerals (or something, I don't remember that much about junior high biology) the rye has consumed. Potatoes are definately not a good choice.
The possible explanation is, that the evolution of writing is affected by the evolution of mental structures and categories: the Incas saw everything unfamiliar as supernatural, having been isolated from other cultures. The Aztecs and (particularly) the Mayas had had contacts with other cultures besides their own, so they know what it means to be conquered by a more advanced civilization.
Makes just as much sense as comparing all dates to the birthday of one Jesus, son of Joseph the carpenter. It's just an arbitrary point in time that is supposed to demonstrate something. Relating the time to George Boole's accomplishment would have been more informative, that's true, but I don't think most of the people even know who Boole was, not to mention when he lived (I don't know when he lived. 19th century?). Hell, not too many people know when the first electronic computers were built, either, but they have more clue about it than Boole.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but in linguistics, a symbol is considered the smallest unit of information. 'a', for instance is a single symbol, but it does carry information.
By the way, they had very good highways there between the capital and some other cities. These roads were one of the things that helped the Spanish to conquer the Incas so easily.
The stress is on as we know it. If I remember correctly, the Mayas didn't say that the world will end completely, it was just the end of one cycle and the beginning of the next one.
The 7 bit thing. Maybe it was the most suitable system for them, worked out through trial and error. Or maybe it's just something to do with 2^0+2^1+2^2=7(=111 in binary)?
I wonder what they used the seventh bit for, in that case. End of line? positive/negative?
It is, for the given value of true.
Do you really mean this? Maybe I'm too young and don't have much real world experience, but I just can't be so cynical to think that humans could be programmed like this.
Ok, I think I've read too many RIAA/MPAA related articles today, but it will make sure, that you are free for that concert ;7
You know, phones were invented in the 19th century, in a way, they are outdated. I don't remember when I last used a phone directory to find another person's number - most of those I know have mobiles (and almost all of the rest have no phone at all...) In some countries there are already as many (or even more) cellphones in use than "traditional" phones. Phone directories are dying with phones. The 21st century technology isn't telephone, it's email or something like that.
And, you can always memorize all the phone numbers you need.