Isn't that like someone just making another entrance to your house and then painting it over to match the brickwork..?
Check out the Underhanded C Contest. Sure, a patch containing, "if(packet_csum=SEKRUT_FBI_BACKD00R_P4KT) {/* d0 3v1Lz */ }" would get noticed pretty quickly. But good security is really subtle; it's probably difficult, but not impossible, to make proper-looking code that actually screws up in just the right places. The main problem is that anything that subtle is as likely to get broken accidentally as well.
The bank should know that these scams are going on. They should know that some of their customers are likely to fall for them, thinking that they've deposited valid funds.
At least some banks do. After I finished school, I worked remotely for a company in California for about a year as an independent contractor, which involved me billing them every two weeks and them mailing me a check. A couple of times, just based on the financial situation (or me being a day late in billing and having no paycheck for another two weeks), I had to ask the cashier if they'd make the money available immediately (i.e., not wait for the check to clear). They'd seen small-time check-caching scams before ("I'll buy your junker car for $1000, here's a check for $2000 write me a check for the difference"), so always asked if I was sure the check would go through. "They always have" seemed to be enough for them to let me take the risk if I wanted to.
But yeah, seems like saying "it's clear" when it wasn't really clear is totally messed up. The guy may have been thinking, "It's probably a scam, but what the heck -- if the check doesn't clear, I won't give them any money. What's the risk?"
Obama got elected because his researchers identified a specific "market segment" of voters which they managed to go after without alienating their "base voters". That "market segment" were people who were fed up with the system as it was currently running, and the animosity that went on in Washington. He promised Change. This segment then voted for him.
Unfortunately, (1) it takes two people to stop being petty and forge partnerships; and it certainly wasn't in the interest of Republicans to do so (2) many of the things he's promised he hasn't even attempted to do (more open government, for instance) (3) some thing he just consistently lied about, like his record on abortion; but most people in the "market segment" who were pro-life didn't notice.
I wouldn't call Obama's election a victory by the "little guy"; I'd call it a coup of marketing strategy.
I actually have a good system, inspired by a slashdot post I saw some time ago. I used a password-generating program to make 52 random passwords. Then I printed them in a grid on a credit-card-sized piece of paper. Original is with my "safe documents", a photocopy is "laminated" with scotch tape in my wallet. I have a simple mapping from website name onto the grid which I won't forget. Bam -- instant, strong, almost unique password for any website that suddenly wants a login, without having to remember it or store it anywhere.
I don't have a gawker account, but if I did, it's (1) unlikely that another site would have the same password, and (2) even more unlikely that if there was a "collision", an attacker would try the one that shared the password.
So (as I understand it), at anyone time there are any number of outstanding bids. If the last sale was at 50.00, there may be bids to buy at (for example) 49.50, 49.90, 49.95, and 49.98, and bids to sell at 50.02 50.05 50.10 and 50.50. So the "bid-offer spread" is $0.04 (50.02-48.98).
The only way this could reduce the spread is if they transact on one side, and move towards the other side. I.e., if they buy at $50.02 and sell at $50.01, or sell at $49.98 and then bid at $49.99. But in both cases that would be a stupid thing to do: they'd be losing money.
What people are describing instead is "knowing the future"; i.e., they see an incoming sell for 48.99 and also an incoming bid for 50.01. So instead of letting the bid and the sell match up, they buy at 48.99 and sell at 50.01, making $0.02.
However, this transaction doesn't add any liquidity -- if the HFT hadn't been there, then the transaction would have gone through anyway; either the buyer or the seller (or both) would get the difference between the bid and sell prices, rather than the HFT seller getting it.
I'm certainly not an expert, and I'm willing to be corrected on my understanding of how stock trading and HFT work. But so far all you've done is wave terminology around in a way that makes me think I understand trading better than you do.
To the contrary, every time they buy and then sell for a slightly different price, they push the buy and sell prices closer together.
1. AIUI, Liquidity is about making more sellers and buyers; the price has nothing to do with it. 2. Your statement doesn't make any sense. "Buy" and "sell" are two different sides of the same transaction, so by definition if that transaction happens they're equal, and cannot be pushed closer together.
I say let the markets be as efficient as they can be.
We could make the police a lot more efficient too. Remove all the beurocratic requirements and protections; let them do wiretaps without a warrant, don't allow people to have lawyers, allow them to plant evidence, and torture suspects into confessing their crimes. Take away the presumption of innocense too. I guarantee that the police will be much more efficient at prosecuting people and getting them thrown in jail if we do that. Let the police be as efficient as they can be!
Unless of course, what you want is for only guilty people to be thrown into jail, in which case removing all the protections and procedures we have in place will actually reduce the police's effectiveness.
Maybe you should think about what it is the markets are actually efficient at doing, and what it is you actually want them to do.
"Liquid" means easier to buy and sell, yes? For example, your house may be worth $250K, but if I just walked up and offered you $250K, you probably wouldn't take it because you don't really want to sell it right now. If I was determined to have your house, I'd have to offer you enough of a premium to make you sell it anyway. Having lots of people buying and selling means that there's always someone willing to buy or sell at a reasonable price if you're a real investor rather than just a day trader. I'm not 100% convinced whether that's true (or whether the benefit is worth the cost even if it is true), but at least it's plausible.
But in HFT, isn't it the case that they see a price, purchase some really quickly, and then sell it again at a slightly different price? So they're not actually adding any liquidity. If there was no one there to purchase from, then the HFT trade system couldn't buy it from anyone to sell to you; and if there is someone to purchase from, then without the HFT system, you could just buy it from the original seller. So the HFT system doesn't add any liquidity, as far as I can tell.
Regarding "a better system": What do you mean by "better"? The end goal of all economics is merely organizational: we have people and resources, and we just need to organize everyone's effort in using the resources in a way that maximizes everyone's happiness. The current system often works well for that, but it's 100% clear that the current system also fails pretty often as well: it causes all kinds of waste, unhappiness, and long-term damage -- wasted money and effort put into building houses no one is going to buy, wasted labor from people being out of work, damaged environments and brands due to short-term-gain long-term-loss thinking, risky behaviors, &c. If it was a little more difficult to buy and sell investments, but we had fewer recessions and bubbles, and people who owned stocks genuinely felt responsible for the long-term effects of what the company did, I think the world would be a much better place.
The objective is to make money for the charity, so more money can be given out. It does not matter to the foundation if that's an American business or not, just that it has to be profitable. If African companies are not profitable then the foundation will simply squander the money away.
I think some of what's missing in the whole stock-market type investment thing is that people typically look at only one outcome for their investment: money (aka "shareholder value"). The problem with this is that it often leads to various degrees of evil behavior; often the very problems that the foundations themselves are giving money to try to solve.
If everyone, especially large charitable foundations like Bill Gates set up, tried to evaluate not just the value on the stock market, but how much good or evil the companies they'd invested in was doing, then we'd be living in a very different world from the one we are now. And arguably, a foundation with $40B could do more good overall by choosing investments specifically to optimize both for shareholder value and good of people, than it could by simply donating the income to explicit charities without asking how that money was made.
and has always been about making people feel secure.
On the contrary, it's about making people feel less secure.
It's a well-established principle of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) that acting on a fear helps maintain that fear. People who are afraid someone will break into their house may check the locks on doors and windows ten times a day; they think it makes them feel safer, but really it maintains the fear that someone may break in. Reducing these "safety behaviors" reduces the fear, and in some cases causes the phobia to vanish entirely.
So going through all this extra hassle reinforces in people's minds the idea that at any moment, any plane may blow up and take them down. It makes us not only more willing to spend money and put up with privacy checks; it encourages us to tolerate and support the "war on terror", and privacy violations in other areas (i.e., illegal wiretaps, &c).
Just FYI, that's how a lot of religions work, but it's not how Christianity works. It says that you can't be good enough to get to heaven. You've done wrong things in the past, and you will continue to do wrong things in the future; the only way to get forgiveness for those is through Jesus' death on the cross. I quote:
"No one can ever be made right with God by doing what the law commands [i.e., being good]. The law [i.e., all our ideas about what's right and wrong] simply shows us how sinful we are. But now God has shown us a way to be made right with him without keeping the requirements of the law... We are made right with God by placing our faith in Jesus Christ. And this is true for everyone who believes, no matter who we are. For everyone has sinned [i.e., done what was wrong]; we all fall short of God's glorious standard. Yet God, with undeserved kindness, declares that we are righteous." (Paul, Letter to the Romans, 3:20-24)
Regarding "earthly reassurance", Paul goes on to address this specifically:
"When we were utterly helpless, Christ came at just the right time and died for us sinners. Now, most people would not be willing to die for an upright person, though someone might perhaps be willing to die for a person who is especially good. But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners. And since we have been made right in God's sight by the blood of Christ, he will certainly save us from God's condemnation. For since our friendship with God was restored by the death of his son while we were still enemies, we will certainly be saved through the life of his son. So now we can rejoice in our wonderful new relationship with God because our Lord Jesus Christ has made us friends with God." (ibid, 5:6-11)
In other words: God doesn't want you to "be good", he wants you to trust and follow him. God didn't wait for you to come to him, he came to you. Jesus left heaven, lived on earth, and died a death of torture and shame to try to save you. If he's willing to go through all that before you're even trying to follow him, you can believe that once you are trying to follow him, he'll do anything in his power to keep you on the path to Heaven.
Have you ever experienced anything really cool -- sublime like a piece of music or an amazing sunset, really fun like hanging out with your best friends, or really interesting like certain things in science, math, &c?
If Jesus knew what he was talking about, God created all of those things; and he made* you in such a way that you could enjoy them. So if that's the kind of person he is, why would you think chilling with him forever would be boring?
*For the sake of argument, I'm allowing "made" in this context to include the possibility of evolution.
In the general population, 99% of the time the best I can hope for is a complete lack of interest from the other person or a few very stupid comments that make me sorry I started the conversation.
Maybe you should instead strike up a conversation about something they actually have experience in: something in their field, or relating to their life.. I've found an awful lot of knowledge, experience, and wisdom in the non-college-educated.
It's because (statistically) the more educated, the less religious.
Is it also possible that statistically, educated people are less likely to have to face death on a regular basis (their own or others'), and it is therefore easy for them to be in denial about the reality of their death?
I consider myself a firm believer in Jesus ("religious" if you must), and I do my best to order my life around the idea that my 70-odd years here is only the beginning of my existence. But I'm pretty sure that faced with imminent death, I would feel fear nonetheless -- although I'd expect it to be matched by an overwhelming assurance at the same time. It's hard for me to believe that anyone wouldn't feel some fear and doubt, even atheists.
On the other hand, I haven't really faced death, or seen anyone else face death, so maybe it's just not as scary as it seems.
Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they... will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by.
Question one: Have you lived a good life?
Question two: Do you know anyone who hasn't lived a good life?
Question three: If you asked any of the people you identified in #2, would they say they have lived a good life or not?
(Assuming that #1 was "yes", #2 was a non-empty set, and #3 was significantly smaller that #2) Question four: How do you know whether you actually measure up, given that so many people who think they measure up don't?
This are staggering, dicipline-changing insights unless someone can show a path from A-B.
You mean, if someone can prove that there cannot be a path from A-B. Just not knowing how the path could happen is not enough; after all, one of the hobbies of evolution skeptics is finding bits of biological machinery which it's difficult to concieve how they would have developed.
I don't see any difference between saying, "No one can show how arsenic could replace phosphorous [or whatever it was]; therefore, arsenic did not evolutionarily replace phosphorous, it must have spontaneously generated separately" and saying "No one can show how the eye could gradually evolve; a partially-formed eye is completely useless. Therefore the eye did not evolve, it was created". If you allow the first argument you have to allow the second; and if you disallow the second argument, you have to disallow the first.
Besides which, if there are similar amino acids and genetics, then I'd consider that evidence that it did evolve from life as we know it, rather than that it spontaneously generating a second time.
You can see it from the murder video. 12 civilians clearly unarmed shot with the murderers expressing clear joy at their slaughter.
Look at this video snippet. The guy there is clearly carrying an RPG, which is exactly what the trained soldier in the video said he saw before escalating the situation. I've had people come back and say it was a piece of photographic equipment. I was in the military, and my wife is a professional photographer. We both agree, that it looks and hangs and swings exactly like a weapon; and it doesn't look like any piece of photographic equipment we've ever seen.
It's a shame that the photographers got shot up, but they took that risk walking around in the open with people carrying RPGs.
About the "joy at their slaugther": even if the people in the video were in fact civilians, it's clear that the gunner thought they were armed insurgents -- people that had probably been involved in killing both Iraqis and American soldiers, and were the reason the gunner was even still in Iraq instead of back in the States with his family. The joy at killing the "bad guys" may shock you, but it's not the joy of killing innocents.
To mods: This is not a troll. It's important information, and a genuine contribution to correct a widespread misconception. Marking it "troll" is censorship.
Read the cnet article -- it has an interesting response from Comcast:
Unlike the peering relationship between Level 3 and Comcast, Comcast and Akamai, which had previously delivered Netflix's streaming video, had a commercial arrangement, a source close to Comcast confirmed. In other words, instead of swapping traffic between Comcast and Akamai for free, Comcast charged Akamai a fee to deliver its traffic including the Netflix video content.
Notice that the dispute is not between Comcast and Netflix -- it's between Comcast and Level3, which doesn't create content, only owns pipes. Level3 and Comcast have a "peer" agreement; they generate a similar amount of traffic, so they accept each others' traffic for free. That's a typical arrangement. However, this was before Netflix changed CDN from Akamai to Level3. Akamai sends much more traffic to Comcast than it receives, so it pays Comcast for receiving the traffic. That's also a typical arrangement. Now that Neflix will be going over Level3 instead, Comcast is just trying to negotiate the same deal w/ Level3 as with Comcast:
"Comcast offered Level 3 the same terms it offers to Level 3's CDN competitors for the same traffic," Waz said. "But Level 3 is trying to undercut its CDN competitors by claiming it's entitled to be treated differently and trying to force Comcast to give Level 3 unlimited and highly imbalanced traffic and shift all the cost onto Comcast and its customers."
Net neutrality may be an important issue, but it's not the issue here.
See, that's a quote of actual significance. But I didn't see that one in the Guardian's front-page linked here. Instead, I saw quotes that were perfectly valid things for people to say internally, but much more embarrassing in public: honest assessments of people's and their capabilities.
Here's the thing. If you happen to overhear private conversations, you have a responsibility to sort stuff. If you overheard your boss threatening an employee into not taking his vacation or something else he has a right to do, then it's proper that you make that public. If you overhear your boss talking with his wife about his erection problem, you have a contrary responsibility to keep that private and not spread it around. If you overhear your boss bad-mouthing and complaining about another manager, you also have a responsibility to keep that secret.
I think Wikileaks is in a similar position. Threatening another country if they pursue justice? Definitely needs to be published. Saying the UK's military has been incompetent, and that Karzai is paranoid? Definitely needs to be kept quiet. Everyone says honest things about other people that they wouldn't want them to hear -- that's 100% normal and healthy behavior. The ability to have that kind of honesty is very important for any team, especially one that has to communicate across a globe. This is going to undermine the ability of people to communicate openly.
In a way, having all those embarrassing things in there is not only bad ethics -- it undermines what could be a great effect of Wikileaks. If Wikileaks had filtered out stuff that was really evil and damning, that's all you'd see; as it is, you're likely to see a ton of stuff that makes good headlines but isn't actually of any import. And it gives the government a story to spin. They can focus on the "embarassing but not important" things, and completely ignore the ones that actually mean something.
I've watched the video and it clearly shows acts that break international law.
Look at the snippet on the video on this site. (Please ignore the offensive domain name, I haven't found this video snippet posted elsewhere.) The guy there is clearly carrying an RPG, which is exactly what the trained soldier in the video said he saw before escalating the situation. It's a shame that the photographers got shot up, but they took that risk walking around in the open with people carrying RPGs.
I've had people come back and say it was a piece of photographic equipment. I was in the military, and my wife is a professional photographer. We both agree, that it looks and hangs and swings exactly like a weapon; and it doesn't look like any piece of photographic equipment we've ever seen.
To mods: This is not a troll, this is exposing an important piece of information which contradicts commonly held beliefs.
I thought about that, but the fact is that if you actually bring down a plane, you're likely to have several hundred kills; whereas if you blow yourself up in a public place with a similar amount of explosives (or even, as much explosives as you can reasonably hide in your carry-on suitcase), you may kill a dozen or so but only injure the rest. In amount of actual deaths per amount of effort, I suspect bombing a plane is still the most efficient.
Slashdot Mirror
Check out the Underhanded C Contest. Sure, a patch containing, "if(packet_csum=SEKRUT_FBI_BACKD00R_P4KT) { /* d0 3v1Lz */ }" would get noticed pretty quickly. But good security is really subtle; it's probably difficult, but not impossible, to make proper-looking code that actually screws up in just the right places. The main problem is that anything that subtle is as likely to get broken accidentally as well.
At least some banks do. After I finished school, I worked remotely for a company in California for about a year as an independent contractor, which involved me billing them every two weeks and them mailing me a check. A couple of times, just based on the financial situation (or me being a day late in billing and having no paycheck for another two weeks), I had to ask the cashier if they'd make the money available immediately (i.e., not wait for the check to clear). They'd seen small-time check-caching scams before ("I'll buy your junker car for $1000, here's a check for $2000 write me a check for the difference"), so always asked if I was sure the check would go through. "They always have" seemed to be enough for them to let me take the risk if I wanted to.
But yeah, seems like saying "it's clear" when it wasn't really clear is totally messed up. The guy may have been thinking, "It's probably a scam, but what the heck -- if the check doesn't clear, I won't give them any money. What's the risk?"
Obama got elected because his researchers identified a specific "market segment" of voters which they managed to go after without alienating their "base voters". That "market segment" were people who were fed up with the system as it was currently running, and the animosity that went on in Washington. He promised Change. This segment then voted for him.
Unfortunately, (1) it takes two people to stop being petty and forge partnerships; and it certainly wasn't in the interest of Republicans to do so (2) many of the things he's promised he hasn't even attempted to do (more open government, for instance) (3) some thing he just consistently lied about, like his record on abortion; but most people in the "market segment" who were pro-life didn't notice.
I wouldn't call Obama's election a victory by the "little guy"; I'd call it a coup of marketing strategy.
I don't think maintaining a building and dealing with tenants (even good ones, but especially problematic ones) can be considered "nothing"...
I actually have a good system, inspired by a slashdot post I saw some time ago. I used a password-generating program to make 52 random passwords. Then I printed them in a grid on a credit-card-sized piece of paper. Original is with my "safe documents", a photocopy is "laminated" with scotch tape in my wallet. I have a simple mapping from website name onto the grid which I won't forget. Bam -- instant, strong, almost unique password for any website that suddenly wants a login, without having to remember it or store it anywhere.
I don't have a gawker account, but if I did, it's (1) unlikely that another site would have the same password, and (2) even more unlikely that if there was a "collision", an attacker would try the one that shared the password.
I was with you until there. Now I think you're probably the kind of mental midget who actually cheats at video games.
Try it with numbers.
So (as I understand it), at anyone time there are any number of outstanding bids. If the last sale was at 50.00, there may be bids to buy at (for example) 49.50, 49.90, 49.95, and 49.98, and bids to sell at 50.02 50.05 50.10 and 50.50. So the "bid-offer spread" is $0.04 (50.02-48.98).
The only way this could reduce the spread is if they transact on one side, and move towards the other side. I.e., if they buy at $50.02 and sell at $50.01, or sell at $49.98 and then bid at $49.99. But in both cases that would be a stupid thing to do: they'd be losing money.
What people are describing instead is "knowing the future"; i.e., they see an incoming sell for 48.99 and also an incoming bid for 50.01. So instead of letting the bid and the sell match up, they buy at 48.99 and sell at 50.01, making $0.02.
However, this transaction doesn't add any liquidity -- if the HFT hadn't been there, then the transaction would have gone through anyway; either the buyer or the seller (or both) would get the difference between the bid and sell prices, rather than the HFT seller getting it.
I'm certainly not an expert, and I'm willing to be corrected on my understanding of how stock trading and HFT work. But so far all you've done is wave terminology around in a way that makes me think I understand trading better than you do.
Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. The Therac 25 is definitely the most insidious computer failure I've ever heard of.
1. AIUI, Liquidity is about making more sellers and buyers; the price has nothing to do with it. 2. Your statement doesn't make any sense. "Buy" and "sell" are two different sides of the same transaction, so by definition if that transaction happens they're equal, and cannot be pushed closer together.
Care to explain?
We could make the police a lot more efficient too. Remove all the beurocratic requirements and protections; let them do wiretaps without a warrant, don't allow people to have lawyers, allow them to plant evidence, and torture suspects into confessing their crimes. Take away the presumption of innocense too. I guarantee that the police will be much more efficient at prosecuting people and getting them thrown in jail if we do that. Let the police be as efficient as they can be!
Unless of course, what you want is for only guilty people to be thrown into jail, in which case removing all the protections and procedures we have in place will actually reduce the police's effectiveness.
Maybe you should think about what it is the markets are actually efficient at doing, and what it is you actually want them to do.
"Liquid" means easier to buy and sell, yes? For example, your house may be worth $250K, but if I just walked up and offered you $250K, you probably wouldn't take it because you don't really want to sell it right now. If I was determined to have your house, I'd have to offer you enough of a premium to make you sell it anyway. Having lots of people buying and selling means that there's always someone willing to buy or sell at a reasonable price if you're a real investor rather than just a day trader. I'm not 100% convinced whether that's true (or whether the benefit is worth the cost even if it is true), but at least it's plausible.
But in HFT, isn't it the case that they see a price, purchase some really quickly, and then sell it again at a slightly different price? So they're not actually adding any liquidity. If there was no one there to purchase from, then the HFT trade system couldn't buy it from anyone to sell to you; and if there is someone to purchase from, then without the HFT system, you could just buy it from the original seller. So the HFT system doesn't add any liquidity, as far as I can tell.
Regarding "a better system": What do you mean by "better"? The end goal of all economics is merely organizational: we have people and resources, and we just need to organize everyone's effort in using the resources in a way that maximizes everyone's happiness. The current system often works well for that, but it's 100% clear that the current system also fails pretty often as well: it causes all kinds of waste, unhappiness, and long-term damage -- wasted money and effort put into building houses no one is going to buy, wasted labor from people being out of work, damaged environments and brands due to short-term-gain long-term-loss thinking, risky behaviors, &c. If it was a little more difficult to buy and sell investments, but we had fewer recessions and bubbles, and people who owned stocks genuinely felt responsible for the long-term effects of what the company did, I think the world would be a much better place.
I think some of what's missing in the whole stock-market type investment thing is that people typically look at only one outcome for their investment: money (aka "shareholder value"). The problem with this is that it often leads to various degrees of evil behavior; often the very problems that the foundations themselves are giving money to try to solve.
If everyone, especially large charitable foundations like Bill Gates set up, tried to evaluate not just the value on the stock market, but how much good or evil the companies they'd invested in was doing, then we'd be living in a very different world from the one we are now. And arguably, a foundation with $40B could do more good overall by choosing investments specifically to optimize both for shareholder value and good of people, than it could by simply donating the income to explicit charities without asking how that money was made.
On the contrary, it's about making people feel less secure.
It's a well-established principle of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) that acting on a fear helps maintain that fear. People who are afraid someone will break into their house may check the locks on doors and windows ten times a day; they think it makes them feel safer, but really it maintains the fear that someone may break in. Reducing these "safety behaviors" reduces the fear, and in some cases causes the phobia to vanish entirely.
So going through all this extra hassle reinforces in people's minds the idea that at any moment, any plane may blow up and take them down. It makes us not only more willing to spend money and put up with privacy checks; it encourages us to tolerate and support the "war on terror", and privacy violations in other areas (i.e., illegal wiretaps, &c).
Just FYI, that's how a lot of religions work, but it's not how Christianity works. It says that you can't be good enough to get to heaven. You've done wrong things in the past, and you will continue to do wrong things in the future; the only way to get forgiveness for those is through Jesus' death on the cross. I quote:
"No one can ever be made right with God by doing what the law commands [i.e., being good]. The law [i.e., all our ideas about what's right and wrong] simply shows us how sinful we are. But now God has shown us a way to be made right with him without keeping the requirements of the law... We are made right with God by placing our faith in Jesus Christ. And this is true for everyone who believes, no matter who we are. For everyone has sinned [i.e., done what was wrong]; we all fall short of God's glorious standard. Yet God, with undeserved kindness, declares that we are righteous." (Paul, Letter to the Romans, 3:20-24)
Regarding "earthly reassurance", Paul goes on to address this specifically:
"When we were utterly helpless, Christ came at just the right time and died for us sinners. Now, most people would not be willing to die for an upright person, though someone might perhaps be willing to die for a person who is especially good. But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners. And since we have been made right in God's sight by the blood of Christ, he will certainly save us from God's condemnation. For since our friendship with God was restored by the death of his son while we were still enemies, we will certainly be saved through the life of his son. So now we can rejoice in our wonderful new relationship with God because our Lord Jesus Christ has made us friends with God." (ibid, 5:6-11)
In other words: God doesn't want you to "be good", he wants you to trust and follow him. God didn't wait for you to come to him, he came to you. Jesus left heaven, lived on earth, and died a death of torture and shame to try to save you. If he's willing to go through all that before you're even trying to follow him, you can believe that once you are trying to follow him, he'll do anything in his power to keep you on the path to Heaven.
Just sayin'. :-)
Have you ever experienced anything really cool -- sublime like a piece of music or an amazing sunset, really fun like hanging out with your best friends, or really interesting like certain things in science, math, &c?
If Jesus knew what he was talking about, God created all of those things; and he made* you in such a way that you could enjoy them. So if that's the kind of person he is, why would you think chilling with him forever would be boring?
*For the sake of argument, I'm allowing "made" in this context to include the possibility of evolution.
Maybe you should instead strike up a conversation about something they actually have experience in: something in their field, or relating to their life.. I've found an awful lot of knowledge, experience, and wisdom in the non-college-educated.
Is it also possible that statistically, educated people are less likely to have to face death on a regular basis (their own or others'), and it is therefore easy for them to be in denial about the reality of their death?
I consider myself a firm believer in Jesus ("religious" if you must), and I do my best to order my life around the idea that my 70-odd years here is only the beginning of my existence. But I'm pretty sure that faced with imminent death, I would feel fear nonetheless -- although I'd expect it to be matched by an overwhelming assurance at the same time. It's hard for me to believe that anyone wouldn't feel some fear and doubt, even atheists.
On the other hand, I haven't really faced death, or seen anyone else face death, so maybe it's just not as scary as it seems.
Question one: Have you lived a good life?
Question two: Do you know anyone who hasn't lived a good life?
Question three: If you asked any of the people you identified in #2, would they say they have lived a good life or not?
(Assuming that #1 was "yes", #2 was a non-empty set, and #3 was significantly smaller that #2) Question four: How do you know whether you actually measure up, given that so many people who think they measure up don't?
You mean, if someone can prove that there cannot be a path from A-B. Just not knowing how the path could happen is not enough; after all, one of the hobbies of evolution skeptics is finding bits of biological machinery which it's difficult to concieve how they would have developed.
I don't see any difference between saying, "No one can show how arsenic could replace phosphorous [or whatever it was]; therefore, arsenic did not evolutionarily replace phosphorous, it must have spontaneously generated separately" and saying "No one can show how the eye could gradually evolve; a partially-formed eye is completely useless. Therefore the eye did not evolve, it was created". If you allow the first argument you have to allow the second; and if you disallow the second argument, you have to disallow the first.
Besides which, if there are similar amino acids and genetics, then I'd consider that evidence that it did evolve from life as we know it, rather than that it spontaneously generating a second time.
There's no place for civil disobedience then?
Look at this video snippet. The guy there is clearly carrying an RPG, which is exactly what the trained soldier in the video said he saw before escalating the situation. I've had people come back and say it was a piece of photographic equipment. I was in the military, and my wife is a professional photographer. We both agree, that it looks and hangs and swings exactly like a weapon; and it doesn't look like any piece of photographic equipment we've ever seen.
It's a shame that the photographers got shot up, but they took that risk walking around in the open with people carrying RPGs.
About the "joy at their slaugther": even if the people in the video were in fact civilians, it's clear that the gunner thought they were armed insurgents -- people that had probably been involved in killing both Iraqis and American soldiers, and were the reason the gunner was even still in Iraq instead of back in the States with his family. The joy at killing the "bad guys" may shock you, but it's not the joy of killing innocents.
To mods: This is not a troll. It's important information, and a genuine contribution to correct a widespread misconception. Marking it "troll" is censorship.
Notice that the dispute is not between Comcast and Netflix -- it's between Comcast and Level3, which doesn't create content, only owns pipes. Level3 and Comcast have a "peer" agreement; they generate a similar amount of traffic, so they accept each others' traffic for free. That's a typical arrangement. However, this was before Netflix changed CDN from Akamai to Level3. Akamai sends much more traffic to Comcast than it receives, so it pays Comcast for receiving the traffic. That's also a typical arrangement. Now that Neflix will be going over Level3 instead, Comcast is just trying to negotiate the same deal w/ Level3 as with Comcast:
Net neutrality may be an important issue, but it's not the issue here.
See, that's a quote of actual significance. But I didn't see that one in the Guardian's front-page linked here. Instead, I saw quotes that were perfectly valid things for people to say internally, but much more embarrassing in public: honest assessments of people's and their capabilities.
Here's the thing. If you happen to overhear private conversations, you have a responsibility to sort stuff. If you overheard your boss threatening an employee into not taking his vacation or something else he has a right to do, then it's proper that you make that public. If you overhear your boss talking with his wife about his erection problem, you have a contrary responsibility to keep that private and not spread it around. If you overhear your boss bad-mouthing and complaining about another manager, you also have a responsibility to keep that secret.
I think Wikileaks is in a similar position. Threatening another country if they pursue justice? Definitely needs to be published. Saying the UK's military has been incompetent, and that Karzai is paranoid? Definitely needs to be kept quiet. Everyone says honest things about other people that they wouldn't want them to hear -- that's 100% normal and healthy behavior. The ability to have that kind of honesty is very important for any team, especially one that has to communicate across a globe. This is going to undermine the ability of people to communicate openly.
In a way, having all those embarrassing things in there is not only bad ethics -- it undermines what could be a great effect of Wikileaks. If Wikileaks had filtered out stuff that was really evil and damning, that's all you'd see; as it is, you're likely to see a ton of stuff that makes good headlines but isn't actually of any import. And it gives the government a story to spin. They can focus on the "embarassing but not important" things, and completely ignore the ones that actually mean something.
Look at the snippet on the video on this site. (Please ignore the offensive domain name, I haven't found this video snippet posted elsewhere.) The guy there is clearly carrying an RPG, which is exactly what the trained soldier in the video said he saw before escalating the situation. It's a shame that the photographers got shot up, but they took that risk walking around in the open with people carrying RPGs.
I've had people come back and say it was a piece of photographic equipment. I was in the military, and my wife is a professional photographer. We both agree, that it looks and hangs and swings exactly like a weapon; and it doesn't look like any piece of photographic equipment we've ever seen.
To mods: This is not a troll, this is exposing an important piece of information which contradicts commonly held beliefs.
I thought about that, but the fact is that if you actually bring down a plane, you're likely to have several hundred kills; whereas if you blow yourself up in a public place with a similar amount of explosives (or even, as much explosives as you can reasonably hide in your carry-on suitcase), you may kill a dozen or so but only injure the rest. In amount of actual deaths per amount of effort, I suspect bombing a plane is still the most efficient.