Buildings are made of people? I see bricks. I see stone. I see wood. I see concrete. I see, for some houses, bales of hay. But I 've never seen a building made of people. Lampshades in times past, yes. Entire buildings, never.
but that doesn't mean the building has a legal-right to speech, funding Romney's campaign, or other human rights.
But the people who make up a company, and who own it, do. They are still people despite also being owners of a company.
Since you are referrring to Citizen's United without saying as much, you might want to read the decision of the court and the facts of the case. Citizen's United was a "company" founded for the specific purpose of pooling the money of the owners to pay for political speech. Any court that claimed they didn't have the right to pay for political speech would have been breaking the first amendment of the US constitution by doing so. The people who make up a company still have the civil and constitutional rights granted to all people in the US.
Trying to claim they don't retain them is about as silly as saying you have lost your rights to free speech because you are a/. poster.
Notice that the first reference to ASLR in the summary is actually a link to Wikipedia.
And the reference to EMET is a link to a microsoft page that has at the top this warning:
This article applies to a different operating system than the one you are using. Article content that may not be relevant to you is disabled.
I'm reading this on a linux system, but I manage several windows boxes. It's very useful for microsoft to refuse to diplay content it decides I don't need to see. Thank you.
One of the reasons for the law about shipping evidence out would be to make sure the evidence isn't lost or modified. So in this case the physicality of the data actually is relevant and the law may make sense.
The data was copied, not lost or modified.
I have no doubt that the copy cannot be used in court, but I also have no doubt that the original can If the FBI finds anything in their analysis of the copy they'll tell the kiwis where to look in the original and the original will be used in court. In fact, it is documented practice for forensic analysts to make a copy of the device they are studying just so that the defence cannot claim that the original was modified during the examination.
The original was obtained, I assume, under legal kiwi means, and thus the FBI looking at it and telling the kiwis what they found isn't much different than the kiwis hiring a technical specialist to do the same.
Do you have evidence for "people got tired of music videos", or is that just a guess? Because I would say Viacom buying MTV in '85 was its death knell, although it took Viacom a few years to really figure out what to put on MTV.
MTV was doing ok with music videos as its niche format for many years. If MTV had kept doing well, Viacom would have had no decisions to make, and no reason to change formats. The change wasn't trying to get away from a successful channel, it was trying to fix a broken one. Part of the problem was that VH1 stole the "hits", and CMT stole country. One success spawned multiple copies, and thence multiple failures.
Not everyone non-music video show on MTV was bad though. Look at Liquid Television â"
I didn't say that they were bad, they were just not music television. Real World dealt with some (a few, at least) (ok, one maybe) serious social issue(s) of the time, even though it was mostly adolescent hijinks and drunken arguments. And sex. One Pedro to a hundred sex. And poor Paula, who was both a "social issue" and sex in one package. Some of the programs were fine. I loved Ken Olber's basement game show, for example. Many more are/were "reality" nightmares, successful for the same reason every reality show is: "my life doesn't suck as bad as those people on TV so I must be ok." That and "my life sucks just like those people on TV so I can relate". And maybe "those people have lives so much better than I do, maybe I can learn from them..."
You can still see some music videos -- at 6AM or so. But none of the mainstream programming is Music anymore. The 24 hour video concept wore out and advertisers noticed.
I forgot to mention even the simple concepts have tried to become generic TV. The Weather Channel, which for a long time was content to be The Weather Channel and provide weather information in a simple fast easy format. And even the program guide now carries the movies and programs that it used to be the listings for.
Why? Because we're all precious little snow-flakes, we all have interesting stories, and we all deserve our own television show.
Nope. Wrong.
The mass marketing of specialized channels happened because there simply weren't enough specialized viewers to keep the specialization afloat. They all had to start creating new stuff to draw more eyeballs for the advertisers.
MTV was an early victim. People got tired of watching music videos and they had to expand into whatever was edgy and new for the demographic they sought. That's why we have Real World and Road Rules and The Challenge XXI and "Pregnant at 16" and whatever other stuff they can draw people to. "Made" is homage to the fact that MTV has changed from music TV into "teen TV" but just not been honest enough to change the name.
It is an insidious problem. AMC (American MOVIE CLASSICS) has created new TV series (Mad Men) and is now heavy into "CSI Miami".
Even TVLand has fallen into the trap, airing new sitcoms they've produced.
It was a grand and glorious vision in the 80's. 500 specialized channels so anyone could find the kind of material they wanted to watch anytime. Cable networks starting up to do the equivalent of "The Scotch Tape Store" or "Spatula City". And then finding out that fractional audiences brought fractional ad revenues.
PBS gets away with it because they have convinced donors that they are special and it's an honor to give lots of money ( a rich people demonstration of social responsibility), they have convinced advertisers to pay for ads that are almost not ads ("this show is funded by..."), and use a lot of BBC produced programs to draw viewers that will pay to keep the transmitters fed with electrons.
PBS is, however, far from the "if not PBS, then who..." they were close to being many years ago. I was going to say british sitcoms are "if not PBS, then BBC America", but even BBCA has fallen into the trap and is busy showing lots of US shows --- at least any US show that has Gordon Ramsay as the host.
Thumbs are good to have as many prints will be those.
Thumbs are good to have not just for identification but to allow us to tie our shoelaces more easily and handle knives and forks, etc. Also press the space bar on normal keyboards. Not just thumbs, but opposable thumbs.
Ironically, your post proves YOU don't know what you're talking about. Atheists are on average more knowledgeable about religion than believers.
Yes, it is easy to believe that athiests might have a more general knowledge of "religion", or even "the world's religions" than someone who is a practicing member of any one specific religion. And it is far from amazing that they would think they know more about religion than any believer. Otherwise, they'd be implying that they didn' t know enough to make a choice.
If I want to be a good football player, I don't study the rules for swimming or table tennis. Details about hand faults or whatever in table tennis have no bearing on how to play football. I can tell you exactly what it means to be "offside" in ice hockey because I focus on that sport. I've been told many times what offsides is in soccer and I still don't get it. I don't need to. I'd do pretty well on a test about the rules of hockey, but I'd be an abject failure at a general knowledge test about the rules of all sports. I don't care about other sports, why should it matter that I don't know their rules?
Likewise, a practicing Protestant doesn't need to study the catechism or proclamations from the Pope or the daily emissions from the Dhali Lama. It is very likely that any question not regarding Protestantism will be missed by any Protestant, and any question not Catholic in origin by Catholics, etc.
So, yes, atheists will score better on a test designed to test general knowledge of all religions than someone who believes just one. What's the point? Oh, atheists are smarter than theists. Gotcha. Obviously they are atheists because of their smarter brains and better education.
Based on the kinds of malarky I see posted here whenever a religious debate starts, I'd say that atheists have a very poor knowledge of religion in general, and Christianity in particular. They think they know, but they really don't.
It's a not a "change" and it wouldn't be unilateral.
It isn't how the system was designed to work and it isn't how it works today, so yes, it would be a change. And yes, since it is one person making that change, it is unilateral.
The percentage of persons participating in his experiment would never be 100% of his constituency, thus, they are just like lobbyists.
The percentage participating is irrelvant. Lobbyists cannot expect that a simple vote amongst the lobbyists will result in a vote being cast as they demand. Lobbyists can wheedle and ply and buy dinners for, but not control, the vote of the person they lobby. That makes this significantly different than lobbying.
Elected officials make voting promises to lobbyists routinely.
Irrelevant. Elected officials do not promise to vote the way that a poll of lobbyists tell him to.
"Basic health care for everyone" sure sounds general to me, but I guess I'm not constitutional because it doesn't mention me by name.
Two stupid arguments in one sentence. "Basic health care for everyone" isn't the current issue de jour, since basic health care for everyone is already here. It's who pays for it and how much is meant by "basic". And people are not the topic of the constitution, it's the definition of the functions of the federal government. The fact you aren't mentioned by name is irrelevant because you aren't the federal government. Do you not understand at least that much about the Constitution?
If it were as precise as you think it is, we wouldn't have spent the last couple hundred years and change arguing about what it means.
Hardly. We have spent the last two hundred years arguing because there will always be people who want free stuff or a nanny state that will try to get whatever they want to pass constitutional muster by trying to claim that the constitution is "ambiguous" or "a living document" or whatever argument seems to work for them. When that fails, they'll try to argue that other country's constitutions are applicable here. And if all else fails, the ICC covers everything imaginable -- today. Not back then, but today it does, as a last resort of all those with their hands out for a federal handout.
Pretty much everyone interprets "general welfare" as including protections for vulnerable groups,
No, pretty much everyone interprets the rights as outlined therein as protections for vulnerable groups. It's the groups who seek government mandates for protection that try to read lots of stuff into simple things. The fact remains, "general welfare" does not mean "welfare for all" (using the modern definition of "welfare" as "free stuff from the government" as pushed by FDR and others). In fact, the word "welfare" doesn't mean free handouts of any kind, in the context of the constitution.
I think that benefits everyone,
It wasn't the intention of the founders that the federal government be the source of all benefits for all people. And no, taking money and property away from some to give it to those who don't have it does not benefit everyone, despite your claims to the contrary.
to drown out the voices. From inside my head. No I don't. Yes I do. Shut up. Make me.
As for creating privacy, nonsense I say. Just try scratching your nuts "in private" or farting and see if the women in the office don't complain to the boss.
The only true test for something creating privacy is if you can drink a beer while sitting in your underwear while doing it.
Did you really expect the founders to come up with a list of every single thing they want the government to do in the next millenium?
Yes. Everything that the federal government is to do. The rest is left to the states, or to the people.
And "general welfare" doesn't mean "everyone gets free stuff paid for by the productive members of society". "Welfare", in this context, means 'general wellbeing', not specific benefits for designated beneficiaries. That same "general welfare" clause that you think allows a welfare state applies just as much to the people who pay for the welfare as those who get it.
There is no equal protection clause violation here. The proportionality of votes to districts to people doesn't change because he's subcontracting the decision. In the end, he's still one representative with one vote.
However, he is giving more power to the relatively few people who might vote in his "poll" than the same number of people in another district who have no direct control over the vote of their representative. This is the "equal protection" issue.
That, and it is a unilateral change to the design of the system that applies only to some of the people who are operating under that system. Every other district will have a representative, this one district will have a proxy system. Does this not result in less protection for minorities from the "tyranny of the majority" in his district than those in other districts?
In a way, he's just allowing everybody to be a lobbyist.
Hardly. Even if 100% of the lobbyists visiting one Senator's office want him to vote a certain way, there is no guarantee he will. This guy is promising his constituents that he will vote the way the majority of them want him to on everything. That's significantly different from just being a lobbyist.
How do you ensure that the voters are educated on the issues and not just voting because it's 'leet and kewl" and they can 'vote no on everything just because they can'? I.e., you have money to hire a staff, and have access to background information that most people do not, and are expected to "do your homework" and cast informed votes because that is what you are elected to do in the current system. How do you make sure your proxy votes are cast with the same care and attention?
This is related to the question about keeping advertising from swaying the votes, but different. How do you get people who may be busy trying to make enough money to get by to spend the time doing the research that you were elected to do? And in that latter vein, does this change to the process not violate the "equal protection" clause of the Constitution? You are, after all, giving your constituents a much bigger voice in the vote of your elected body than those in other districts. Don't those other people deserve the kind of government that they are voting for, and which you are seeking to change?
In addition to the questions about authentication and authorization, how do you intend on dealing with the following critical issue:
1. Access to "voting" by people who aren't online. How do you keep from disenfranchising those who are not electronically capable, either because of cost or because of ability?
Don't forget that Genesis claims he did it in one day.
Actually, it doesn't use the word "day". It uses an ancient word that is currently translated as "day". In any case, do you not imagine that a being that is inspiring a book to be read by humans might use a concept that a human can relate to when describing something that nobody was around to see for themselves, and certainly was not intended to be a recipe for how the intended audience could repeat the stunt?
The evidence that the universe is about ~13 billions years old
Based on your assumptions, or the assumptions of others that you have not noticed. Do you imagine that there was a reason I referred to the faith of the assumption that the rate of radioactive decay has remained unchanged over billions of years? That's an assumption that is behind the determination of the "fact" of the age of the universe.
Furthermore, there isn't really anything that shows that Earth was 'created' by a supernatural being.
Likewise, there isn't anything that shows it wasn't created by a God. That's the point.
My 'faith' comes from visible evidence.
Your belief in how things happened comes from assumptions and a decision to choose which version you want to believe. It is truly a matter of faith, as you say.
You're welcome to bring the argument of 'faith' in science, but it's a different type of faith. I have faith that if I hold a lead ball, and let go of it, it will fall towards the ground.
You truly do not understand the scientific process or what it means to have "faith". Faith is a belief in things unseen. Have you never seen an object fall to the ground when released from some reasonable height above the surface of the earth? Really? Not once?
Your dropping a lead ball is a repeatable experiment. It has been directly observed by billions of people since the beginning of recorded time. I suspect, despite your claim that you accept it on faith, that you yourself have observed it on a routine basis in your daily life.
Now, you may be confusing "trust" with "faith". In the context of a discussion of religion vs. science, the two are not synonymous. You trust that the ball will fall because you have seen it happen before and don't expect that to change. You cannot claim faith that it will fall because you have seen it happen before and so have many many other people.
Science is based on study and empirical evidence.
That's right. Not faith. As soon as faith steps in, so does religion, and science leaves the building. Your faith that the radioactive decay rate of some element has remained unchanged is what leads you to claim that you know as a fact the age of the universe. Yes, it is faith, because the rate of decay at a time one million years ago is unseen.
Pray tell, given the current definition of "day", before the earth was created and light existed to separate the day from the night, exactly how long was a "day"? Ten years ago, how long was a "day"? Has it remained constant even over that short a length of time? Well, perhaps "24 hours" seems constant, but what about other kinds of "days"? Where do we get leap seconds from if the "day" is an unchanging constant? The tidal forces of the moon are not causing the length of a day to change? Isn't it interesting that as man gets more advanced, we find that some of the most basic concepts we think are static are actually changing?
What in your empirical evidence would make you think that you have the ability to decide for a supernatural being what his definition of "day" was?
But that's a long way from where we started. "Faith" is where science ends and religion begins, but many scientists are unable to differentiate between faith and empirical evidence, as you've shown here. The point stands, it is impossible to provide "empirical evidence" that the Genesis
Nowhere does the bible talk about significant digits;
"The Bible is not an ancient mathematics textbook, therefore it is inaccurate and unbelievable." Somehow it seems a bit arrogant to assume that a concept that most (but apparently not all) scientists are familiar with would be a complete mystery to an omniscient being. "Hey, God, your Bible doesn't mention protons and electrons and man knows all about them, so man is clearly smarter than You are!"
nor does the bible take the time to explain how the measurements were taken,
"The Bible does not report every detail of daily life as experienced by the people of the time, therefore it is inaccurate and unbelievable."
which would go a long way toward justifying such large margins of error.
The "large margins of error" you proclaim happen to be within the margin of error for the reported measurements, according to current scientific processes and thought. I think the problem lies not in the Bible but in your understanding of the purpose and context thereof, and modern scientific concepts regarding math. Please go look up "significant figures" and don't use the "images" section of Google to do it.
People who give complicated explanations about why the biblical measurements of round objects are acceptable do so because they are absolutely unwilling to admit that the bible is just a storybook and not an accurate description of the physical world.
I'm sorry that you find the concept of "significant digits" to be complicated. It is quite accurate, within the number of significant digits used, to talk about a round object that is 30 units in circumference and 10 units in diameter. Your inability to suss out what one digit of significance means doesn't make the description any less accurate. It probably wasn't intended to be more accurate than 1 sig. digit, and so the fact that it isn't means nothing.
Scientists are simply trying to understand how the universe works. If someone makes a wild assertion (teapot in space), does it not make sense to try to empirically determine if they are right or wrong?
"And God said, 'let there be light', and there was light. And He created the Earth and saw that it was good..."
Please explain how you will empirically determine the truth of that statement. What experiment will you perform to determine that this method of the creation of the Universe is not the way it happened?
I will happily admit that you can come up with lots of theories of how it might have happened and disprove various parts of those theories based on assumptions about initial conditions as you believe them to be until you are left with theories that are not currently disproven. I will happily accept that you say "this is how it might have happened."
How it might have happened is not proof that it did happen that way, however. And if you demand that I prove it happened as outlined in my statement above, I'll happily point out that there is no proof and that I'm not trying to prove it in the first place. I'm only pointing out that you cannot determine the "wrong" of that claim, just as you cannot determine the "right" of yours.
Religion means accepting someone's work on (ahem) faith against every indication to the contrary.
Your claim that there is no God is not "indication to the contrary". You cannot disprove God because there simply are no experiments you can perform that would allow that. You can make all sorts of philosophical arguments about this or that, but they all boil down to an assumption at some point that you can understand the mind of God and how He thinks or works. This could be as remarkable an assumption as assuming that the ant upon whom you are focussing the rays of the sun with a magnifying glass can understand "magnifying glass" or "torture".
But yes, the first part of your statement is correct. Religion deals with faith. So does "science" when it wanders into areas where this is no ability to disprove the theories. Faith in your assumptions is faith, be it an assumption that God can be understood by the mind of Man or the assumption that the rate of radioactive decay for certain elements has remained constant for billions of years. (Before you start claiming I said the rate hasn't been constant, read that sentence again.)
What's so bad about describing an object as roughly 10 units across and 30 units around?
Nothing. Its just scientific types who want to argue about God and will ignore their own mathematical priniciple of "significant digits" in their haste who complain.
"10" is one significant digit. "30" is one significant digit. "30/10 = 3" is not only correct for infinite precision based on individual "units" (like "dollar bills" or "golf balls"), but for the number of significant digits in the problem when talking about real physical measurements. And pi just happens to equal 3 TO ONE SIGNIFICANT DIGIT. "3.1415..." rounds down.
How many scientists pull a copy of Hansel and Gretel off the shelf when they want to calculate the BTU output of a gas stove? "Well, we have this well documented story where an oven raised the temperature of an X pound boy Y degrees, and we know the approximate heat capacity of the human body is Z, so that means..."
Can we please move on to something more significant to argue about as the proof for no God?
Before thinking about purchasing a particle accelerator,
Boy, aren't we exxagerating? Who said purchase?
One of those things is actually reading the paper, understanding the theoretical hypothesis which were laid out, analyse the data which was used as a basis for the results presented in the paper, check if it holds out, evaluate the results... You know, the peer review process.
That is not the peer review process. It is also a rare paper that provides all the raw data so someone can analyze it himself. Nobody does that, because nobody wants to give away the data they'll use for the next PhD or paper.
In this context, the need for a particle accelerator only enters the equation if you suspect that the results presented in the paper aren't up to par, and you wish to replicate them to see if you aren't being duped.
You are wrong. The scientific method does not say that one replicates an experiment only if one thinks he's being duped, it says you replicate the experiment to show that you get the same results when the experiment is done by someone else. And the "scientific method" is exactly what the OP was claiming was "the peer review method", so "in this context", you'd need to rent time on (not purchase) an SSC if you wanted to "peer review" a paper on the Higgs boson, according to the OP.
You actually only need to have an academic interest in the subject.
Untrue. You also need a good background in the subject to know when things are missing, or when other people's work is being presented incorrectly. An academic interest is why you are reading the paper, and you are reading the paper because you want to learn something, not because you already know it all. Yeah, some arrogant people do read papers in subjects where they do know it all just so they can corner the author at the next conference and point out all his mistakes in public. Most people read papers to learn because they don't know everything there is to know.
If all a person wants in journals is that they serve as an authoritative seal of approval which gives him enough confidence to place blind faith on a paper then the logo of a big name institution actually does the same thing.
Exxagerating again, are we? Peer review doesn't give "blind faith" in anything. It's a reasoned expectation that someone who is knowledgable in the subject has looked the paper over and doesn't find any glaring or obvious whoppers. The logo of a University gives no such reasoned expectation. That's the true "blind faith" option.
The fact of the matter is this: if someone actually reads papers of a given field and actually cares about how the peer review process works in that field then that person is already quite able to digest that information.
That is your opinion, not a fact. I've read many many papers in fields that are tangential to my research, and I care about how the peer review process works, and I am much better off because those papers did go through that process than if they had not. The question is not if the reader is able to digest the information, but that the information bears some semblance to truth and reason. Digesting incorrect information is worse than not being able to digest it at all, and the ability to digest it has nothing at all to do with peer review or the lack thereof.
... to the tune of billions going toward important causes that governments are too broke or shortsighted to fund.
Or, in the US, cannot be government funded. There is supposed to be a limit to what the federal government does, although it rarely applies those limits to itself anymore. I.e., neither broke nor shortsighted.
I like Warren. And his song about Margueritaville. He's just wasting away...
The US Patriot Act (as far as I can tell - I'm a dipshit Canadian) simply allows the FBI to request access to any (or all) electronic records without oversight. The mention of receiving a national security letter is illegal, while the warrant process has a paper trail and full disclosure to what was being searched.
According to the fount of all knowledge, the venerable Wikipedia, the NSL part of the Patriot Act was ruled by a court as unconstitutional and the amended version was also struck down.
The PIPEDA act in Canada has very strong personal protections in place, and isn't a joke act.
That may be, but it has no standing in any country outside Canada. If your fear of loss of data control is based on the foreign county not obeying PIPEDA, then you must fear them all, not just the US. The Patriot Act has no relevance to whether PIPEDA is obeyed in the US or not.
This appears to be more scare mongering trying to pin the big bad tail on a donkey that doesn't live in the US alone, but applies to all countries. There are no guarantees in any country that your Canadian data will not be seen by law enforcement. Not even in Canada itself.
You judge the validity of a paper by testing their explanations and predictions. That's essentially what the scientific community does for a living.
Right. I want to judge the validity of a paper on the Higgs boson, so I rent time on the SSC to reproduce the experiment. Everyone else who wants to judge does the same thing. Seems like a good use of limited resources. Can you find me a funding agency that will pay for this?
Peer review puts this work in the hands of a few people who are allegedly experts in the field, and their job is to judge the validity of the paper, not necessarily the results of the experiment that it may be reporting on. Was the scientific process followed? Were there controls where necessary? Does the data support the conclusion, whatever it may be? Is the data presented in a logical and reasonable manner? Are the assumptions underlying the paper reasonable? Is there some glaring error of omission or execution? Is the material itself publishable? Is it fresh and new, or simply reworked decades old textbook material? Are there proper citations for previous work, or previous work that should have been cited but was not?
You forget, the readers may not be experts in the field. They may be expanding their horizons or looking for new research questions, and expecting every one of them to "test the explanations and predictions" for themselves is silly. Expecting them to know that Smith and Wesson in 1975 did a similar experiment and came up with similar results but a different conclusion, and that the paper they are reading is incomplete because it did not discuss that experiment, is outrageous.
... because organizations such as universities and research institutions are more than willing to put their logo on the cover of their member's papers,
And this serves the function of peer review and validation how, precisely?
Slashdot Mirror
>>>As for corporations, they are made of people.
So are buildings,
Buildings are made of people? I see bricks. I see stone. I see wood. I see concrete. I see, for some houses, bales of hay. But I 've never seen a building made of people. Lampshades in times past, yes. Entire buildings, never.
but that doesn't mean the building has a legal-right to speech, funding Romney's campaign, or other human rights.
But the people who make up a company, and who own it, do. They are still people despite also being owners of a company.
Since you are referrring to Citizen's United without saying as much, you might want to read the decision of the court and the facts of the case. Citizen's United was a "company" founded for the specific purpose of pooling the money of the owners to pay for political speech. Any court that claimed they didn't have the right to pay for political speech would have been breaking the first amendment of the US constitution by doing so. The people who make up a company still have the civil and constitutional rights granted to all people in the US.
Trying to claim they don't retain them is about as silly as saying you have lost your rights to free speech because you are a /. poster.
Notice that the first reference to ASLR in the summary is actually a link to Wikipedia.
And the reference to EMET is a link to a microsoft page that has at the top this warning:
I'm reading this on a linux system, but I manage several windows boxes. It's very useful for microsoft to refuse to diplay content it decides I don't need to see. Thank you.
One of the reasons for the law about shipping evidence out would be to make sure the evidence isn't lost or modified. So in this case the physicality of the data actually is relevant and the law may make sense.
The data was copied, not lost or modified.
I have no doubt that the copy cannot be used in court, but I also have no doubt that the original can If the FBI finds anything in their analysis of the copy they'll tell the kiwis where to look in the original and the original will be used in court. In fact, it is documented practice for forensic analysts to make a copy of the device they are studying just so that the defence cannot claim that the original was modified during the examination.
The original was obtained, I assume, under legal kiwi means, and thus the FBI looking at it and telling the kiwis what they found isn't much different than the kiwis hiring a technical specialist to do the same.
Do you have evidence for "people got tired of music videos", or is that just a guess? Because I would say Viacom buying MTV in '85 was its death knell, although it took Viacom a few years to really figure out what to put on MTV.
MTV was doing ok with music videos as its niche format for many years. If MTV had kept doing well, Viacom would have had no decisions to make, and no reason to change formats. The change wasn't trying to get away from a successful channel, it was trying to fix a broken one. Part of the problem was that VH1 stole the "hits", and CMT stole country. One success spawned multiple copies, and thence multiple failures.
Not everyone non-music video show on MTV was bad though. Look at Liquid Television â"
I didn't say that they were bad, they were just not music television. Real World dealt with some (a few, at least) (ok, one maybe) serious social issue(s) of the time, even though it was mostly adolescent hijinks and drunken arguments. And sex. One Pedro to a hundred sex. And poor Paula, who was both a "social issue" and sex in one package. Some of the programs were fine. I loved Ken Olber's basement game show, for example. Many more are/were "reality" nightmares, successful for the same reason every reality show is: "my life doesn't suck as bad as those people on TV so I must be ok." That and "my life sucks just like those people on TV so I can relate". And maybe "those people have lives so much better than I do, maybe I can learn from them..."
You can still see some music videos -- at 6AM or so. But none of the mainstream programming is Music anymore. The 24 hour video concept wore out and advertisers noticed.
I forgot to mention even the simple concepts have tried to become generic TV. The Weather Channel, which for a long time was content to be The Weather Channel and provide weather information in a simple fast easy format. And even the program guide now carries the movies and programs that it used to be the listings for.
Why? Because we're all precious little snow-flakes, we all have interesting stories, and we all deserve our own television show.
Nope. Wrong.
The mass marketing of specialized channels happened because there simply weren't enough specialized viewers to keep the specialization afloat. They all had to start creating new stuff to draw more eyeballs for the advertisers.
MTV was an early victim. People got tired of watching music videos and they had to expand into whatever was edgy and new for the demographic they sought. That's why we have Real World and Road Rules and The Challenge XXI and "Pregnant at 16" and whatever other stuff they can draw people to. "Made" is homage to the fact that MTV has changed from music TV into "teen TV" but just not been honest enough to change the name.
It is an insidious problem. AMC (American MOVIE CLASSICS) has created new TV series (Mad Men) and is now heavy into "CSI Miami". Even TVLand has fallen into the trap, airing new sitcoms they've produced.
It was a grand and glorious vision in the 80's. 500 specialized channels so anyone could find the kind of material they wanted to watch anytime. Cable networks starting up to do the equivalent of "The Scotch Tape Store" or "Spatula City". And then finding out that fractional audiences brought fractional ad revenues.
PBS gets away with it because they have convinced donors that they are special and it's an honor to give lots of money ( a rich people demonstration of social responsibility), they have convinced advertisers to pay for ads that are almost not ads ("this show is funded by ..."), and use a lot of BBC produced programs to draw viewers that will pay to keep the transmitters fed with electrons.
PBS is, however, far from the "if not PBS, then who..." they were close to being many years ago. I was going to say british sitcoms are "if not PBS, then BBC America", but even BBCA has fallen into the trap and is busy showing lots of US shows --- at least any US show that has Gordon Ramsay as the host.
Thumbs are good to have as many prints will be those.
Thumbs are good to have not just for identification but to allow us to tie our shoelaces more easily and handle knives and forks, etc. Also press the space bar on normal keyboards. Not just thumbs, but opposable thumbs.
What's left is something very implausible that you deliberately have to take on faith.
The "implausible" part is flamebait, but yes, religion is entirely based on faith. That's why it is different than science.
Ironically, your post proves YOU don't know what you're talking about. Atheists are on average more knowledgeable about religion than believers.
Yes, it is easy to believe that athiests might have a more general knowledge of "religion", or even "the world's religions" than someone who is a practicing member of any one specific religion. And it is far from amazing that they would think they know more about religion than any believer. Otherwise, they'd be implying that they didn' t know enough to make a choice.
If I want to be a good football player, I don't study the rules for swimming or table tennis. Details about hand faults or whatever in table tennis have no bearing on how to play football. I can tell you exactly what it means to be "offside" in ice hockey because I focus on that sport. I've been told many times what offsides is in soccer and I still don't get it. I don't need to. I'd do pretty well on a test about the rules of hockey, but I'd be an abject failure at a general knowledge test about the rules of all sports. I don't care about other sports, why should it matter that I don't know their rules?
Likewise, a practicing Protestant doesn't need to study the catechism or proclamations from the Pope or the daily emissions from the Dhali Lama. It is very likely that any question not regarding Protestantism will be missed by any Protestant, and any question not Catholic in origin by Catholics, etc.
So, yes, atheists will score better on a test designed to test general knowledge of all religions than someone who believes just one. What's the point? Oh, atheists are smarter than theists. Gotcha. Obviously they are atheists because of their smarter brains and better education.
Based on the kinds of malarky I see posted here whenever a religious debate starts, I'd say that atheists have a very poor knowledge of religion in general, and Christianity in particular. They think they know, but they really don't.
It's a not a "change" and it wouldn't be unilateral.
It isn't how the system was designed to work and it isn't how it works today, so yes, it would be a change. And yes, since it is one person making that change, it is unilateral.
The percentage of persons participating in his experiment would never be 100% of his constituency, thus, they are just like lobbyists.
The percentage participating is irrelvant. Lobbyists cannot expect that a simple vote amongst the lobbyists will result in a vote being cast as they demand. Lobbyists can wheedle and ply and buy dinners for, but not control, the vote of the person they lobby. That makes this significantly different than lobbying.
Elected officials make voting promises to lobbyists routinely.
Irrelevant. Elected officials do not promise to vote the way that a poll of lobbyists tell him to.
"Basic health care for everyone" sure sounds general to me, but I guess I'm not constitutional because it doesn't mention me by name.
Two stupid arguments in one sentence. "Basic health care for everyone" isn't the current issue de jour, since basic health care for everyone is already here. It's who pays for it and how much is meant by "basic". And people are not the topic of the constitution, it's the definition of the functions of the federal government. The fact you aren't mentioned by name is irrelevant because you aren't the federal government. Do you not understand at least that much about the Constitution?
If it were as precise as you think it is, we wouldn't have spent the last couple hundred years and change arguing about what it means.
Hardly. We have spent the last two hundred years arguing because there will always be people who want free stuff or a nanny state that will try to get whatever they want to pass constitutional muster by trying to claim that the constitution is "ambiguous" or "a living document" or whatever argument seems to work for them. When that fails, they'll try to argue that other country's constitutions are applicable here. And if all else fails, the ICC covers everything imaginable -- today. Not back then, but today it does, as a last resort of all those with their hands out for a federal handout.
Pretty much everyone interprets "general welfare" as including protections for vulnerable groups,
No, pretty much everyone interprets the rights as outlined therein as protections for vulnerable groups. It's the groups who seek government mandates for protection that try to read lots of stuff into simple things. The fact remains, "general welfare" does not mean "welfare for all" (using the modern definition of "welfare" as "free stuff from the government" as pushed by FDR and others). In fact, the word "welfare" doesn't mean free handouts of any kind, in the context of the constitution.
I think that benefits everyone,
It wasn't the intention of the founders that the federal government be the source of all benefits for all people. And no, taking money and property away from some to give it to those who don't have it does not benefit everyone, despite your claims to the contrary.
I'm not the one who made the general welfare argument.
Sorry, I packed two comments into one. A different "you".
I made the "if it is not in the constitution it can't be unconstitutional argument".
If it isn't in the constitution, it is by default and by definition unconstitutional. The constitution defines what the feds can do. End of story.
As for creating privacy, nonsense I say. Just try scratching your nuts "in private" or farting and see if the women in the office don't complain to the boss.
The only true test for something creating privacy is if you can drink a beer while sitting in your underwear while doing it.
Did you really expect the founders to come up with a list of every single thing they want the government to do in the next millenium?
Yes. Everything that the federal government is to do. The rest is left to the states, or to the people.
And "general welfare" doesn't mean "everyone gets free stuff paid for by the productive members of society". "Welfare", in this context, means 'general wellbeing', not specific benefits for designated beneficiaries. That same "general welfare" clause that you think allows a welfare state applies just as much to the people who pay for the welfare as those who get it.
There is no equal protection clause violation here. The proportionality of votes to districts to people doesn't change because he's subcontracting the decision. In the end, he's still one representative with one vote.
However, he is giving more power to the relatively few people who might vote in his "poll" than the same number of people in another district who have no direct control over the vote of their representative. This is the "equal protection" issue.
That, and it is a unilateral change to the design of the system that applies only to some of the people who are operating under that system. Every other district will have a representative, this one district will have a proxy system. Does this not result in less protection for minorities from the "tyranny of the majority" in his district than those in other districts?
In a way, he's just allowing everybody to be a lobbyist.
Hardly. Even if 100% of the lobbyists visiting one Senator's office want him to vote a certain way, there is no guarantee he will. This guy is promising his constituents that he will vote the way the majority of them want him to on everything. That's significantly different from just being a lobbyist.
This is related to the question about keeping advertising from swaying the votes, but different. How do you get people who may be busy trying to make enough money to get by to spend the time doing the research that you were elected to do? And in that latter vein, does this change to the process not violate the "equal protection" clause of the Constitution? You are, after all, giving your constituents a much bigger voice in the vote of your elected body than those in other districts. Don't those other people deserve the kind of government that they are voting for, and which you are seeking to change?
1. Access to "voting" by people who aren't online. How do you keep from disenfranchising those who are not electronically capable, either because of cost or because of ability?
Don't forget that Genesis claims he did it in one day.
Actually, it doesn't use the word "day". It uses an ancient word that is currently translated as "day". In any case, do you not imagine that a being that is inspiring a book to be read by humans might use a concept that a human can relate to when describing something that nobody was around to see for themselves, and certainly was not intended to be a recipe for how the intended audience could repeat the stunt?
The evidence that the universe is about ~13 billions years old
Based on your assumptions, or the assumptions of others that you have not noticed. Do you imagine that there was a reason I referred to the faith of the assumption that the rate of radioactive decay has remained unchanged over billions of years? That's an assumption that is behind the determination of the "fact" of the age of the universe.
Furthermore, there isn't really anything that shows that Earth was 'created' by a supernatural being.
Likewise, there isn't anything that shows it wasn't created by a God. That's the point.
My 'faith' comes from visible evidence.
Your belief in how things happened comes from assumptions and a decision to choose which version you want to believe. It is truly a matter of faith, as you say.
You're welcome to bring the argument of 'faith' in science, but it's a different type of faith. I have faith that if I hold a lead ball, and let go of it, it will fall towards the ground.
You truly do not understand the scientific process or what it means to have "faith". Faith is a belief in things unseen. Have you never seen an object fall to the ground when released from some reasonable height above the surface of the earth? Really? Not once?
Your dropping a lead ball is a repeatable experiment. It has been directly observed by billions of people since the beginning of recorded time. I suspect, despite your claim that you accept it on faith, that you yourself have observed it on a routine basis in your daily life.
Now, you may be confusing "trust" with "faith". In the context of a discussion of religion vs. science, the two are not synonymous. You trust that the ball will fall because you have seen it happen before and don't expect that to change. You cannot claim faith that it will fall because you have seen it happen before and so have many many other people.
Science is based on study and empirical evidence.
That's right. Not faith. As soon as faith steps in, so does religion, and science leaves the building. Your faith that the radioactive decay rate of some element has remained unchanged is what leads you to claim that you know as a fact the age of the universe. Yes, it is faith, because the rate of decay at a time one million years ago is unseen.
Pray tell, given the current definition of "day", before the earth was created and light existed to separate the day from the night, exactly how long was a "day"? Ten years ago, how long was a "day"? Has it remained constant even over that short a length of time? Well, perhaps "24 hours" seems constant, but what about other kinds of "days"? Where do we get leap seconds from if the "day" is an unchanging constant? The tidal forces of the moon are not causing the length of a day to change? Isn't it interesting that as man gets more advanced, we find that some of the most basic concepts we think are static are actually changing?
What in your empirical evidence would make you think that you have the ability to decide for a supernatural being what his definition of "day" was?
But that's a long way from where we started. "Faith" is where science ends and religion begins, but many scientists are unable to differentiate between faith and empirical evidence, as you've shown here. The point stands, it is impossible to provide "empirical evidence" that the Genesis
Nowhere does the bible talk about significant digits;
"The Bible is not an ancient mathematics textbook, therefore it is inaccurate and unbelievable." Somehow it seems a bit arrogant to assume that a concept that most (but apparently not all) scientists are familiar with would be a complete mystery to an omniscient being. "Hey, God, your Bible doesn't mention protons and electrons and man knows all about them, so man is clearly smarter than You are!"
nor does the bible take the time to explain how the measurements were taken,
"The Bible does not report every detail of daily life as experienced by the people of the time, therefore it is inaccurate and unbelievable."
which would go a long way toward justifying such large margins of error.
The "large margins of error" you proclaim happen to be within the margin of error for the reported measurements, according to current scientific processes and thought. I think the problem lies not in the Bible but in your understanding of the purpose and context thereof, and modern scientific concepts regarding math. Please go look up "significant figures" and don't use the "images" section of Google to do it.
People who give complicated explanations about why the biblical measurements of round objects are acceptable do so because they are absolutely unwilling to admit that the bible is just a storybook and not an accurate description of the physical world.
I'm sorry that you find the concept of "significant digits" to be complicated. It is quite accurate, within the number of significant digits used, to talk about a round object that is 30 units in circumference and 10 units in diameter. Your inability to suss out what one digit of significance means doesn't make the description any less accurate. It probably wasn't intended to be more accurate than 1 sig. digit, and so the fact that it isn't means nothing.
Scientists are simply trying to understand how the universe works. If someone makes a wild assertion (teapot in space), does it not make sense to try to empirically determine if they are right or wrong?
"And God said, 'let there be light', and there was light. And He created the Earth and saw that it was good..."
Please explain how you will empirically determine the truth of that statement. What experiment will you perform to determine that this method of the creation of the Universe is not the way it happened?
I will happily admit that you can come up with lots of theories of how it might have happened and disprove various parts of those theories based on assumptions about initial conditions as you believe them to be until you are left with theories that are not currently disproven. I will happily accept that you say "this is how it might have happened."
How it might have happened is not proof that it did happen that way, however. And if you demand that I prove it happened as outlined in my statement above, I'll happily point out that there is no proof and that I'm not trying to prove it in the first place. I'm only pointing out that you cannot determine the "wrong" of that claim, just as you cannot determine the "right" of yours.
Religion means accepting someone's work on (ahem) faith against every indication to the contrary.
Your claim that there is no God is not "indication to the contrary". You cannot disprove God because there simply are no experiments you can perform that would allow that. You can make all sorts of philosophical arguments about this or that, but they all boil down to an assumption at some point that you can understand the mind of God and how He thinks or works. This could be as remarkable an assumption as assuming that the ant upon whom you are focussing the rays of the sun with a magnifying glass can understand "magnifying glass" or "torture".
But yes, the first part of your statement is correct. Religion deals with faith. So does "science" when it wanders into areas where this is no ability to disprove the theories. Faith in your assumptions is faith, be it an assumption that God can be understood by the mind of Man or the assumption that the rate of radioactive decay for certain elements has remained constant for billions of years. (Before you start claiming I said the rate hasn't been constant, read that sentence again.)
What's so bad about describing an object as roughly 10 units across and 30 units around?
Nothing. Its just scientific types who want to argue about God and will ignore their own mathematical priniciple of "significant digits" in their haste who complain.
"10" is one significant digit. "30" is one significant digit. "30/10 = 3" is not only correct for infinite precision based on individual "units" (like "dollar bills" or "golf balls"), but for the number of significant digits in the problem when talking about real physical measurements. And pi just happens to equal 3 TO ONE SIGNIFICANT DIGIT. "3.1415..." rounds down.
How many scientists pull a copy of Hansel and Gretel off the shelf when they want to calculate the BTU output of a gas stove? "Well, we have this well documented story where an oven raised the temperature of an X pound boy Y degrees, and we know the approximate heat capacity of the human body is Z, so that means ..."
Can we please move on to something more significant to argue about as the proof for no God?
Before thinking about purchasing a particle accelerator,
Boy, aren't we exxagerating? Who said purchase?
One of those things is actually reading the paper, understanding the theoretical hypothesis which were laid out, analyse the data which was used as a basis for the results presented in the paper, check if it holds out, evaluate the results... You know, the peer review process.
That is not the peer review process. It is also a rare paper that provides all the raw data so someone can analyze it himself. Nobody does that, because nobody wants to give away the data they'll use for the next PhD or paper.
In this context, the need for a particle accelerator only enters the equation if you suspect that the results presented in the paper aren't up to par, and you wish to replicate them to see if you aren't being duped.
You are wrong. The scientific method does not say that one replicates an experiment only if one thinks he's being duped, it says you replicate the experiment to show that you get the same results when the experiment is done by someone else. And the "scientific method" is exactly what the OP was claiming was "the peer review method", so "in this context", you'd need to rent time on (not purchase) an SSC if you wanted to "peer review" a paper on the Higgs boson, according to the OP.
You actually only need to have an academic interest in the subject.
Untrue. You also need a good background in the subject to know when things are missing, or when other people's work is being presented incorrectly. An academic interest is why you are reading the paper, and you are reading the paper because you want to learn something, not because you already know it all. Yeah, some arrogant people do read papers in subjects where they do know it all just so they can corner the author at the next conference and point out all his mistakes in public. Most people read papers to learn because they don't know everything there is to know.
If all a person wants in journals is that they serve as an authoritative seal of approval which gives him enough confidence to place blind faith on a paper then the logo of a big name institution actually does the same thing.
Exxagerating again, are we? Peer review doesn't give "blind faith" in anything. It's a reasoned expectation that someone who is knowledgable in the subject has looked the paper over and doesn't find any glaring or obvious whoppers. The logo of a University gives no such reasoned expectation. That's the true "blind faith" option.
The fact of the matter is this: if someone actually reads papers of a given field and actually cares about how the peer review process works in that field then that person is already quite able to digest that information.
That is your opinion, not a fact. I've read many many papers in fields that are tangential to my research, and I care about how the peer review process works, and I am much better off because those papers did go through that process than if they had not. The question is not if the reader is able to digest the information, but that the information bears some semblance to truth and reason. Digesting incorrect information is worse than not being able to digest it at all, and the ability to digest it has nothing at all to do with peer review or the lack thereof.
... to the tune of billions going toward important causes that governments are too broke or shortsighted to fund.
Or, in the US, cannot be government funded. There is supposed to be a limit to what the federal government does, although it rarely applies those limits to itself anymore. I.e., neither broke nor shortsighted.
I like Warren. And his song about Margueritaville. He's just wasting away ...
The US Patriot Act (as far as I can tell - I'm a dipshit Canadian) simply allows the FBI to request access to any (or all) electronic records without oversight. The mention of receiving a national security letter is illegal, while the warrant process has a paper trail and full disclosure to what was being searched.
According to the fount of all knowledge, the venerable Wikipedia, the NSL part of the Patriot Act was ruled by a court as unconstitutional and the amended version was also struck down.
The PIPEDA act in Canada has very strong personal protections in place, and isn't a joke act.
That may be, but it has no standing in any country outside Canada. If your fear of loss of data control is based on the foreign county not obeying PIPEDA, then you must fear them all, not just the US. The Patriot Act has no relevance to whether PIPEDA is obeyed in the US or not.
This appears to be more scare mongering trying to pin the big bad tail on a donkey that doesn't live in the US alone, but applies to all countries. There are no guarantees in any country that your Canadian data will not be seen by law enforcement. Not even in Canada itself.
You judge the validity of a paper by testing their explanations and predictions. That's essentially what the scientific community does for a living.
Right. I want to judge the validity of a paper on the Higgs boson, so I rent time on the SSC to reproduce the experiment. Everyone else who wants to judge does the same thing. Seems like a good use of limited resources. Can you find me a funding agency that will pay for this?
Peer review puts this work in the hands of a few people who are allegedly experts in the field, and their job is to judge the validity of the paper, not necessarily the results of the experiment that it may be reporting on. Was the scientific process followed? Were there controls where necessary? Does the data support the conclusion, whatever it may be? Is the data presented in a logical and reasonable manner? Are the assumptions underlying the paper reasonable? Is there some glaring error of omission or execution? Is the material itself publishable? Is it fresh and new, or simply reworked decades old textbook material? Are there proper citations for previous work, or previous work that should have been cited but was not?
You forget, the readers may not be experts in the field. They may be expanding their horizons or looking for new research questions, and expecting every one of them to "test the explanations and predictions" for themselves is silly. Expecting them to know that Smith and Wesson in 1975 did a similar experiment and came up with similar results but a different conclusion, and that the paper they are reading is incomplete because it did not discuss that experiment, is outrageous.
... because organizations such as universities and research institutions are more than willing to put their logo on the cover of their member's papers,
And this serves the function of peer review and validation how, precisely?