I'm not sure that the Vatican believes in the creation or not. I work for a Catholic healthcare organization where Sisters are omnipresent. During our last 'Mission Day' one of them was using the creation story in a metaphorical sense, and made a special point of calling it a 'myth.' In general the Sisters I've met are far more liberal than the Vatican. They believe in the rights of woman, of course, and, to some extent, the rights of homosexuals. They also focus not on the money flow to Rome, but helping the poor and the importance of the sermon on the mount ("God bless the peace-makers... God bless the meek...")-- an entire very central teaching of Jesus completely ignored by modern evangelicals.
The general trends show that while most people take religion lightly (how many of these red state dads do you think stay home and watch football rather than going to church?) they'll usually take the side of religeous extremism if asked. Polls show that a disturbing percentage of Americans believe in the biblical creation story-- that is, if they're asked. If they're not asked, most wouldn't give a damn what they're taught in school or even how the world or mankind began. I'll bet most of these same people wouldn't blink an eye if, after hearing the creation story in Sunday school or church on Sunday, they were taught evolution on Monday during school or nightclasses or whatever. One is science, the other religion. Not to sound elitist, but people are mostly dumb in the sense that they're not looking for an all-encompassing law of the world. They've got television and their social lives to worry about. They'll accept what they're taught, so long as it doesn't interfere with these two matters, whether they contradict each other or not.
According to this poll 55% of Americans believe that God created humans in present form. 47% of those had voted for Kerry, so it's basically a non-partisan belief. I'll bet that in Kansas, at least, these people get voted right back into office.
It's times like this I wish someone like Tom Cruise or someone of similar high-profile would step up and demand that Scientology be taught alongside 'intelligent design.' It would show how ridiculous this whole matter is. I should think his request would have to be granted, constitionally.
"You don't know anything about the origins mankind! I *do*!"
And the seven-fold path to wisdom needs to be placed next to the ten commandments on public property!
Nice try, but actually works against your purpose. I can probably find hundreds of books of fiction that were 'inspired by God' and that are profitable for teaching, reproof, correction, and training in righteousness.
IMHO, these people are just looking for a fight, or a cause. If its not intelligent design its going to be something else.
What follows is a slightly crack-pottish to present as actual fact, so don't assume that I really believe it, but the S. American writer Jorge Luis Borges wrote a fascinating little essay, which like many of his stuff was borderline fantasy and philosophy, about an idea floating around about a hundred years ago, that when God made the universe in 1500 BC or whenever, he created an implicit past as well. The laws of physics allow us to trace backward through history, leading all the way to the big bang. Hence the dinosaur bones; God isn't just trying to fuck with us. God may've created the world in 1500 BC, or yesterday, for that matter, or a second ago, but he created an entire past to go along with it, including memories, and 'reasons' for everything. So even if the Bible is right, there is still a perfectly plausible way to attach the theory of evolution to it. And as far as Adam and Eve being the first people on Earth, the Bible contradicts that and leaves it a little hazy. There seemed to be populated 'lands' outside of Eden after one son killed the other and was banished... You could say they were the first Jews, which is reasonable, but not necessarily the first humans. You could assume Adam and Eve to be the first self-conscious humans (as a result of the apple) and that all of the other were just animals (pre-humans, advanced apes)..
Anyway, this is all a little kooky, but good theories can be made to amend the differences of both sides. But like I said, people want a good fight, and all the better if they've got the government behind them. Why don't these 'christians' fight strips clubs and pornography? Because then they'll have to sacrifice. With issues like intelligent design and abortion they sacrifice nothing.
The U.S. is not becoming anti-science. It only appears that way because our administration (sorry if this seems like flamebait.. it is, but its clearly the truth) prioritizes their political success, fiscal policy, and religeon over the recommendations of science. Over time, I think this attitude could prevail over the country, but I doubt if more people than before look down on science as a result of our government's viewpoints. No doubt that debate over evolution and stem cell research has brought a lot of normally suppressed voices to the forefront of political discourse.
Supposedly Britian has a somewhat separated office of science within their government to make decisions that impact circumstances on environment, wildlife and global warming... much of these decisions take more than four years to measure for results, so they're obviously going to be ignored by any U.S. president whose voters believe otherwise. The British government appoints the person in charge of that much like we do the supreme court and federal reserve chairman, which is supposed to keep it relatively non-partisan.
I say we follow the British lead on matters like this. Of course it would have no effect on creationism/ abortion/ etc regulation, but its a start. As far as science in general, the United States is by far the leaders for scientific paper production, measured by citations. However, this number taken per capita or divided by the GDP of the country in question has always put the U.S. far behind in research, primarily to European countries. I'm not sure if this number has declined in the past few years having had a strong religious president.
Mostly, I think, the scientists just keep quiet and do their job of saving lives and advancing technology and let the naysayers bicker on the internet...
This is great, but I've never known anybody who's died of 'old age,' but always from cancer, heart failure, complications of diabetes, etc.. Wouldn't you have to cure all of these things as well or are they mostly a result of an aged body? In this case, maybe this guy's discovery, if it's actually real (I give it a 0% chance) might slow down or stop the onset of these diseases.
Further more, would we all have to look like Yoda after awhile?
It doesn't matter who sent the message. The phony blog sites are what are causing problems and their IP is easily found. Public blog hosting companies, hopefully, wouldn't allow scripts to automatically generate blogs on their sites. The phony blog submissions obviously are being submitted by the robot that's creating the blogs.
They could always randomly generate text from dictionaries to beat the word verification. But no 'splogger' is going to buy up thousands of IPs or domain names for their clever little scam. Figure in the IP or domain name to the pagerank. Maybe if most of the links are from the same IP then take a percentage off its score? This percentage co-efficient could even be derived from the textual context of the links.. if the context is the same (like the scores of mirrored Wikipedia articles, to name one example), then lower the co-efficient.
hehe.. That's really funny. But nobody watches that silly Rose Bowl the next afternoon. There are so many other things to do on a freezing January day when you don't have to work and you're extremely hung-over and all the stores are closed.
I'm curious what sort of reaction everybody's going to have when the ball drops in new york, hits the ground and every television in the country blue-screens or goes to fuzz. If people thought the year 2000 was spooky...
It's 2005. Why are we getting all giddy over a stupid eclipse?
We can put a man on the moon; we can have a woman in the senate; we can talk to our mothers living two thousand miles away in Chicago while we shop for groceries in Los Angeles; We can manipulate DNA on scales of billionths of an inch; network television regularly offers believable portrayals of catastrophic disasters and explosions, not to mention news programs can take us to the other side of the world each and every night; Fermat's Last Theorem has been solved after being posed 400 years ago; physicsts can describe the first few seconds of the big bang; we have a robot on Mars regularly sending us pictures of the Martian landscape; we are living in a more or less completely-global economy; we finally have decent electric-hybrid cars; they can fit sixty gigibytes in a space not much bigger than your hand (the iPod); we have jets that travel faster than sound.
But people still get excited when the moon gets dark for a few seconds.
What is the difference between a new moon and a lunar eclipse? Isn't the definition of both that the Earth comes between the sun and the moon??? This has been driving me nuts!
The familiar model of the atom is just as fictional, but has been extremely useful for visualizing the atom's properties and structure, particularly for beginners in physics or chemistry students, for whom the knowledge of an electron being both a wave and a particle is too-much-information. These pictures, or something like them, could be potentially useful for scientists. The particle's spin becomes a visual part of the particle and not just a number associated with it! On the other hand, the figures might be too difficult for most professors to draw on a chalkboard.
Okay, you didn't go *that* far, but your mild comment on 'giving them too much credit' sparked a comment by an anonymous coward, who agreed with you, that went a little overboard, IMHO. Anyway, I'm sure many sciences have their spectacular geniuses, but few are so widely heralded as the greatest of physicists. And you can be sure physics, like mathematics, attracts a lot of nutcases, probably more than most sciences, which is why both disciplines are especially sensitive about theories contrary to widely-held beliefs: no one wants to be on the side of the crackpot.
LaTex IS compilable, in a sense. It may even have Turing-complete macro capabilities.
Regarding your other point: don't you see it as a problem as well that if a physicist, as in the above story, admits the possibility of a long-standing error, knowingly opening the physicist community to questions of integrity, when we all know that physicists strive for integrity (really, they do; do you think it's easy to get the billions of dollars in funding they need?), and then you, as a "lesser-scientist," start questioning the integrity of physicists in general, thus validating their excuse to stay hush-hush in the first-place? They're admitting a possible huge mistake. They should be congratulated.
And besides, this talk about dark matter having been scientifically accepted 'as fact' is ridiculous. It's simply been the most believeable theory out there. Since physics works by induction, physicists are creating 'mythical hypotheses' everytime they do an experiment. They've been looking for ways, mathematically and observationally, to determine the existence/extent of dark matter for decades. To me, that says that physicists haven't accepted dark matter as a fact. If it were taken as fact, they wouldn't even bother testing the hypothesis.
In this case, we're discussing whether banks should be responsible for protecting money for their clients. It's nothing like your slashdot example, as slashdot offers no explicit or implicit guarantee that the link you click in a comment won't point to the goatse guy. If people put their money in a bank, there's at least an implicit guarantee that it's safe from criminals. In the case of identity theft, it's really become a marketing point for banks, an added assurance to customers who choose that particular bank. I'm not sure if the courts enforce the responsibility but it saves the bank trouble either way and it probably works out best for both parties.
As for the government protecting people: consider that an added bonus for paying your taxes each year. If someone stole cash from your wallet, would you hire a private investigator or call the police? It's the same with phishing or identity theft. Don't require individuals to become computer security experts; it's too much knowledge overhead. One bank cybersecurity expert can do more to protect a thousand clients than a thousand clients working individually can do themselves. That's just basic Marxism.
This website also lists Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Feynman, among others.
This website, while not too reliable-looking, lists several surprising names, including notable politicians (but we're discussing IQ here, so ignore those) and cites Bill Gates as a possible pothead. Most of the names listed are musicians (like Bob Marley-- duh!) and actors and writers, and if you're going to talk about them, you can just go ahead and list about every musician since the 50's:)
I'd heard this about Carl Sagan and just looked it up in Wikipedia:
Carl Sagan was an avid user of marijuana, although he never publicly admitted it during his life[4]. Under the pseudonym "Mr. X," he wrote an essay concerning cannabis smoking in the 1971 book Marihuana Reconsidered, whose editor was Lester Grinspoon. In the essay, Sagan commented that marijuana encouraged some of his works and enhanced experiences. After Sagan's death, Grinspoon disclosed this to Sagan's biographer, Keay Davidson. When the biography, entitled Carl Sagan: A Life, was published in 1999, the marijuana exposure stirred some media attention.
I remember in college having roommates who would do just about everything, including homework, while stoned. Personally, I could never remember the details of a movie I'd watched while stoned, so I can't imagine it could be good for schoolwork. Most of the potheads I knew never made it far, and some are doing really great, but Carl Sagan and scores of successful writers (like the entire beat generation from the 50's & 60's) have shown that pot doesn't have to make you stupid if you're motivated to begin with.
If you ever listen to Dr. Drew on radio loveline you know they can tell a pothead, even if he isn't stoned, from the initial drawl of their 'hello.' The apparent IQ effect on potheads probably has a lot to do on the kind of people smoking it and where their priorities lie.
Yes, Dr. Samual Johnson, if he were living now, would have been one hell of a blogger. Same with Samual Pepys, who would be more of the type of personal blogger we are discussing. Of course, in the latter case, he was writing for posterity. I don't think his journal was published until following his death.
That said, what's wrong with keeping journals? (or diaries, if you will) Why be so presumptuous to think anyone else in the world would care to read your daily woes/rants? I would venture to guess that it would be more therapeutic to write to yourself, rather than to expose your problems to the public's criticisms. How you relate to the internet world is so different than how you relate to the real world, the differences would likely result in more inter-relational problems than they would solve. I say, PROVE that you're writing for yourself, for therapeutic reasons, and keep a private journal. When you have an idea worth communicating, then put it out on your blog for the entire world to see.
This isn't a valid argument against something on the level that fMRI measures. Fear and its physiological effects are emotional and, well, physiological. The fMRI, as I understand it from the article, would look at the neural pathways that are in use at the time of the lie-- for example, if the person lying were deliberately creating a false response to each question, the fMRI might detect 'creative impulses' or some such. But if the lies were pre-determined, the brain waves would look entirely different, probably much like it would if they were telling the truth. If the person actually believed the lies, then there is no way to detect their statement as a lie, obviously.
The emotional level, such as what a lie detector is supposed to monitor, is then probably the best route for determining guilt. If you think about all of the complications of creating an fMRI-based lie detector, it seems less and less possible.
I have seen the work of a number of quacks and this guy doesn't exhibit any of the hallmark signs. In fact, it's pretty common for professors to work on alternate notational systems or, in this case, ways of looking at topics. The sad thing is, even if it this guy's system is actually better, it probably will be forgotten about as quickly as this slashdot thread.
He mentions in his introduction that mathematicians are usually very conservative about adopting replacements to age-old ideas, so he's aware of this problem; a quack would proclaim his system 'the next big thing' that will 'revolutionize' mathematics. This is why Wolfram's New Kind of Science received some chuckles from all over the field when it came out; whether it's good or not, it's got 'quack' written all over it. This guy's also done a good job of laying out the text and describing his ideas-- also a sure sign of non-quackdom.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not sure that the Vatican believes in the creation or not. I work for a Catholic healthcare organization where Sisters are omnipresent. During our last 'Mission Day' one of them was using the creation story in a metaphorical sense, and made a special point of calling it a 'myth.' In general the Sisters I've met are far more liberal than the Vatican. They believe in the rights of woman, of course, and, to some extent, the rights of homosexuals. They also focus not on the money flow to Rome, but helping the poor and the importance of the sermon on the mount ("God bless the peace-makers... God bless the meek...")-- an entire very central teaching of Jesus completely ignored by modern evangelicals.
According to this poll 55% of Americans believe that God created humans in present form. 47% of those had voted for Kerry, so it's basically a non-partisan belief. I'll bet that in Kansas, at least, these people get voted right back into office.
"You don't know anything about the origins mankind! I *do*!"
And the seven-fold path to wisdom needs to be placed next to the ten commandments on public property!
Nice try, but actually works against your purpose. I can probably find hundreds of books of fiction that were 'inspired by God' and that are profitable for teaching, reproof, correction, and training in righteousness.
Oops, that just slipped in there :) didn't mean it.
What follows is a slightly crack-pottish to present as actual fact, so don't assume that I really believe it, but the S. American writer Jorge Luis Borges wrote a fascinating little essay, which like many of his stuff was borderline fantasy and philosophy, about an idea floating around about a hundred years ago, that when God made the universe in 1500 BC or whenever, he created an implicit past as well. The laws of physics allow us to trace backward through history, leading all the way to the big bang. Hence the dinosaur bones; God isn't just trying to fuck with us. God may've created the world in 1500 BC, or yesterday, for that matter, or a second ago, but he created an entire past to go along with it, including memories, and 'reasons' for everything. So even if the Bible is right, there is still a perfectly plausible way to attach the theory of evolution to it. And as far as Adam and Eve being the first people on Earth, the Bible contradicts that and leaves it a little hazy. There seemed to be populated 'lands' outside of Eden after one son killed the other and was banished... You could say they were the first Jews, which is reasonable, but not necessarily the first humans. You could assume Adam and Eve to be the first self-conscious humans (as a result of the apple) and that all of the other were just animals (pre-humans, advanced apes)..
Anyway, this is all a little kooky, but good theories can be made to amend the differences of both sides. But like I said, people want a good fight, and all the better if they've got the government behind them. Why don't these 'christians' fight strips clubs and pornography? Because then they'll have to sacrifice. With issues like intelligent design and abortion they sacrifice nothing.
Supposedly Britian has a somewhat separated office of science within their government to make decisions that impact circumstances on environment, wildlife and global warming... much of these decisions take more than four years to measure for results, so they're obviously going to be ignored by any U.S. president whose voters believe otherwise. The British government appoints the person in charge of that much like we do the supreme court and federal reserve chairman, which is supposed to keep it relatively non-partisan.
I say we follow the British lead on matters like this. Of course it would have no effect on creationism/ abortion/ etc regulation, but its a start. As far as science in general, the United States is by far the leaders for scientific paper production, measured by citations. However, this number taken per capita or divided by the GDP of the country in question has always put the U.S. far behind in research, primarily to European countries. I'm not sure if this number has declined in the past few years having had a strong religious president.
Mostly, I think, the scientists just keep quiet and do their job of saving lives and advancing technology and let the naysayers bicker on the internet...
Further more, would we all have to look like Yoda after awhile?
It seems to me that these shared-hosting blog sites wouldn't allow people to use scripts to generate entire blog sites..
It doesn't matter who sent the message. The phony blog sites are what are causing problems and their IP is easily found. Public blog hosting companies, hopefully, wouldn't allow scripts to automatically generate blogs on their sites. The phony blog submissions obviously are being submitted by the robot that's creating the blogs.
They could always randomly generate text from dictionaries to beat the word verification. But no 'splogger' is going to buy up thousands of IPs or domain names for their clever little scam. Figure in the IP or domain name to the pagerank. Maybe if most of the links are from the same IP then take a percentage off its score? This percentage co-efficient could even be derived from the textual context of the links.. if the context is the same (like the scores of mirrored Wikipedia articles, to name one example), then lower the co-efficient.
I'm curious what sort of reaction everybody's going to have when the ball drops in new york, hits the ground and every television in the country blue-screens or goes to fuzz. If people thought the year 2000 was spooky...
- can I try to guess your mass?
- those boots look great with that jet-pack
- that NASA uniform looks good on you, but it would look better floating around empty in my bed chamber
- can I get you another cup of tang?
- I like how you always keep the cabin properly pressurized. It reminds me so much of my mother
- Is the Hubble telescope pointed at this vessel? (Why?) Because I feel like I'm *very* close to you [this one could use some work]
- Are you sure your suit is shielding gamma-rays properly? (Why?) Because you look so hot
- those must be space pants, because your ass is out of this world!
My favorite funny earth pick-up line:"You remind me of my mother-- my sexy, sexy mother..."
Major League Baseball playoffs: 1
Major celestial coincidence: 0
But people still get excited when the moon gets dark for a few seconds.
Yeah, yeah, I know about Google and Wikipedia.
The familiar model of the atom is just as fictional, but has been extremely useful for visualizing the atom's properties and structure, particularly for beginners in physics or chemistry students, for whom the knowledge of an electron being both a wave and a particle is too-much-information. These pictures, or something like them, could be potentially useful for scientists. The particle's spin becomes a visual part of the particle and not just a number associated with it! On the other hand, the figures might be too difficult for most professors to draw on a chalkboard.
Okay, you didn't go *that* far, but your mild comment on 'giving them too much credit' sparked a comment by an anonymous coward, who agreed with you, that went a little overboard, IMHO. Anyway, I'm sure many sciences have their spectacular geniuses, but few are so widely heralded as the greatest of physicists. And you can be sure physics, like mathematics, attracts a lot of nutcases, probably more than most sciences, which is why both disciplines are especially sensitive about theories contrary to widely-held beliefs: no one wants to be on the side of the crackpot.
Regarding your other point: don't you see it as a problem as well that if a physicist, as in the above story, admits the possibility of a long-standing error, knowingly opening the physicist community to questions of integrity, when we all know that physicists strive for integrity (really, they do; do you think it's easy to get the billions of dollars in funding they need?), and then you, as a "lesser-scientist," start questioning the integrity of physicists in general, thus validating their excuse to stay hush-hush in the first-place? They're admitting a possible huge mistake. They should be congratulated.
And besides, this talk about dark matter having been scientifically accepted 'as fact' is ridiculous. It's simply been the most believeable theory out there. Since physics works by induction, physicists are creating 'mythical hypotheses' everytime they do an experiment. They've been looking for ways, mathematically and observationally, to determine the existence/extent of dark matter for decades. To me, that says that physicists haven't accepted dark matter as a fact. If it were taken as fact, they wouldn't even bother testing the hypothesis.
As for the government protecting people: consider that an added bonus for paying your taxes each year. If someone stole cash from your wallet, would you hire a private investigator or call the police? It's the same with phishing or identity theft. Don't require individuals to become computer security experts; it's too much knowledge overhead. One bank cybersecurity expert can do more to protect a thousand clients than a thousand clients working individually can do themselves. That's just basic Marxism.
This website, while not too reliable-looking, lists several surprising names, including notable politicians (but we're discussing IQ here, so ignore those) and cites Bill Gates as a possible pothead. Most of the names listed are musicians (like Bob Marley-- duh!) and actors and writers, and if you're going to talk about them, you can just go ahead and list about every musician since the 50's :)
I remember in college having roommates who would do just about everything, including homework, while stoned. Personally, I could never remember the details of a movie I'd watched while stoned, so I can't imagine it could be good for schoolwork. Most of the potheads I knew never made it far, and some are doing really great, but Carl Sagan and scores of successful writers (like the entire beat generation from the 50's & 60's) have shown that pot doesn't have to make you stupid if you're motivated to begin with.
If you ever listen to Dr. Drew on radio loveline you know they can tell a pothead, even if he isn't stoned, from the initial drawl of their 'hello.' The apparent IQ effect on potheads probably has a lot to do on the kind of people smoking it and where their priorities lie.
That said, what's wrong with keeping journals? (or diaries, if you will) Why be so presumptuous to think anyone else in the world would care to read your daily woes/rants? I would venture to guess that it would be more therapeutic to write to yourself, rather than to expose your problems to the public's criticisms. How you relate to the internet world is so different than how you relate to the real world, the differences would likely result in more inter-relational problems than they would solve. I say, PROVE that you're writing for yourself, for therapeutic reasons, and keep a private journal. When you have an idea worth communicating, then put it out on your blog for the entire world to see.
The emotional level, such as what a lie detector is supposed to monitor, is then probably the best route for determining guilt. If you think about all of the complications of creating an fMRI-based lie detector, it seems less and less possible.
He mentions in his introduction that mathematicians are usually very conservative about adopting replacements to age-old ideas, so he's aware of this problem; a quack would proclaim his system 'the next big thing' that will 'revolutionize' mathematics. This is why Wolfram's New Kind of Science received some chuckles from all over the field when it came out; whether it's good or not, it's got 'quack' written all over it. This guy's also done a good job of laying out the text and describing his ideas-- also a sure sign of non-quackdom.