That's another tactic of dealing with it. However, look at the results. Your answer says "just ignore the question", my answer might bring the participant to a new or deeper understanding of any proposed omnipotent entity.
I have a degree in religious studies, and the discussion always came up as to whether a scientific outlook was religious or not. There were a few extremists on both sides -- atheists that thought scientific and religious outlooks were opposites, and then extreme cultural relativists that thought that science was just another outlook like other religions and world-views.
People in the middle had a serious, open-minded discussion. Of course, we never figured out the 'answer'. I always flipped-flopped on the arguments. Especially interesting were things like Plato's 'world of forms' and Pythagoras' number cult. Hindu philosophy also interesting -- according to one of my professors, all logical models of the universe that scientific astronomers have discussed ( eternal, circular, beginning-but-no-end, no-beginning-but-end, big-bang, big-bust, bang-bust-cycles, multiverse (!) ) were covered thousands of years ago by Hindu philosophers. They also grappled with internal states and senses, which western science has meticulously avoided. Their stuff on consciousness blows my mind;)
The question I always grapple with is 'why should we trust logic'? I think there is something hard-wired in human minds that depends on logic for at least everyday life, and the scientific outlook says that logic, and only logic, is good enough for for the Big Questions.
This riddle always irked me: If God is omnipotent, can he make a rock so big that he can move it? I thought it was obvious that an omnipotent God should not necessarily be bound by logic. I think a Hindu philosopher would answer that God can both move and not move the rock, but can't not move nor not-not move the rock, and both can and can't move and not move...
But this professor is not making an attempt at serious open-minded dialogue. His title sounds remarkably like a 'debunking' class. He's just being a giant obviously-biased douchbag.
What worries me most in this new mission statement is the reference to space combat.
How dangerous would space combat be to the US? How much of our economy relies on communications satellites?
It seems to me that a relatively 'backwater' countries that had ICBM missles could do a lot of damage to the US economy (and thus war machine) by shooting down our satellites, even if they posed little challenge on the battlefield.
Two magnetic norths? Are you referring to the two center points in this image? One is magnetic north, the other is geographical or geometrical north -- the center of the 37.5* arc that the Earth rotates around.
I can see where you're coming from, but then the answer is to call him and say "We've decided to terminate you, come in tomorrow just to clear out your desk".
I know large organizations aren't always totally in sync, but it's kind of treating him like the living dead when he doesn't have access, and he has to call HR himself to find out that he's been fired. I mean, I know he got paid and all, but its personally humiliating.
Usually when someone posts a silly patent to a site like slashdot, the community finds prior art in minutes. Why not open these up to public discussion, have people sign affadavits or whatever, and let the community do the work?
Unfortuneately, it doesn't work like that. I have a Bachelor's in anthropology and I focused on ethnobotany.
What this database will probably give you is some thing like:
Creeping Treeclimber aphorensis creepius
Used by the BthongaThonga people in an admixture of 50+ other plants said to be helpful against spirit posession.
Merck scientists derived a compound from it that was effective in a cell culture of non-hodgekin's lymphoma.
Now, did the BthongaThonga people really discover the cure for non-Hodgekins lymphoma?
You are hardly ever going to get an exact match between traditional use and modern western scientific use. The only one that comes readily to mind is Chinchona bark, which was used by Native South Americans for 'fevers', which was later used to synthesis the quinine, the first anti-malarial drug. Now, people can't say that these Shamans had a cure for malaria, because there are a lot of other things that cause fevers. They were using Cinchona for all kinds of fevers, including malaria.
Then you have the new-agers who say "Shamans really don't realize what they are doing. They talk about magic darts and spirit posession, but really they are doing nothing different than modern doctors."
Sorry, wrong. I was on a 10-week field school and talked to a few shamans. Disease is caused by magic darts. These plants cure magic darts. If you challenge them on that, they will tell you *emphatically* that "No, demons are real, magic darts are real. If you have an occidental (western) disease, go in to town and see a doctor. However, if you need a dart removed, I'm your man."
The cases where traditional uses sync up totaly with western uses will be few and far between.
The problem is it takes a lot of money and time to extract these secrets from nature. So if it takes $30 million and 10 years research to figure out how to get something useful from a plant, and then as soon as you come out with it someone rips you off?
These people aren't just cherry-picking money from nature. That's why they want patent protectiong. They do want to make money, but it takes a *lot* of money and probably decades up front before you start making money off of it. There really is no free ride.
That's what I was thinking, but I was going to give him a chance to defend himself.
Hey, who knows? Maybe brains are totally pliable, but all turn out the same was because of the peripheral nervous system and sensory hook-ups they get wired to. So dogs have a large olfactory bulb because they get a lot of input from the nose nerve cells.
Congresspeople and senators don't care about *you*, but they do care about volume. If we all slashdotted our congresspeople's offices, they would care, and we would get our way.
I don't get it. If it doesn't matter what organism your pull nerve cells out of, and you can put nerve cells together and they'll form a brain, then why do brains vary so much across organisms?
I think this would solve a lot of problems as far as content in MMORPGs. It costs a lot of money to hire people who can write decent quests, stories, and epics. You could have the users do this for free if you allowed them to build their own empires, strike deals, backstab, take vengance, etc.
Stories are always about the human element. It sounds like current MMORPGs are to restrictive and don't allow the full range of human interaction. Thus, we have no human drama. So MMORPG companies have to hire people to create the drama for them
Giant Fish King Says: "Long Ago, the Elf King really fucked us over and burned our village when our enemies were attacking.."
"When Adolph Hitler assumed power as Chancellor of the Third Reich in 1933, he took the program over, claiming it for his own."
Well it seems only fair, seeing as how he completed so much of it under his rule:
"Hitler's autobahn construction began in September 1933 under the direction of chief engineer Fritz Todt. The 14-mile expressway between Frankfurt and Darmstadt, which opened on May 19, 1935, was the first section completed under Hitler. By December 1941, when wartime needs brought construction to a halt, Germany had completed 2,400 miles (3,860 km), with another 1,550 miles (2,500 km) under construction."
I think it's funny how you totally omit the fact that ealier you were claiming that roman built overpasses, because somewhere along the long you saw a picture of an aqueduct and thought it was an overpass?
Hey, want to address that one, or just ignore it like you did in all your previous posts? Or maybe you want to go back to the claim that they *could* have built overpasses, so they must have, when your only shred of evidence is the phrase "roman overpass" from some guy's blog.
You are too rich. I can't wait to see how you trip yourself up in the next post.
Slashdot Mirror
That's another tactic of dealing with it. However, look at the results. Your answer says "just ignore the question", my answer might bring the participant to a new or deeper understanding of any proposed omnipotent entity.
"God is beyond the comprehension, Nirguna Brahman that is. You never learned anything at your studies :-("
Isn't that the same answer as "God is above logic"?
I have a degree in religious studies, and the discussion always came up as to whether a scientific outlook was religious or not. There were a few extremists on both sides -- atheists that thought scientific and religious outlooks were opposites, and then extreme cultural relativists that thought that science was just another outlook like other religions and world-views.
;)
People in the middle had a serious, open-minded discussion. Of course, we never figured out the 'answer'. I always flipped-flopped on the arguments. Especially interesting were things like Plato's 'world of forms' and Pythagoras' number cult. Hindu philosophy also interesting -- according to one of my professors, all logical models of the universe that scientific astronomers have discussed ( eternal, circular, beginning-but-no-end, no-beginning-but-end, big-bang, big-bust, bang-bust-cycles, multiverse (!) ) were covered thousands of years ago by Hindu philosophers. They also grappled with internal states and senses, which western science has meticulously avoided. Their stuff on consciousness blows my mind
The question I always grapple with is 'why should we trust logic'? I think there is something hard-wired in human minds that depends on logic for at least everyday life, and the scientific outlook says that logic, and only logic, is good enough for for the Big Questions.
This riddle always irked me: If God is omnipotent, can he make a rock so big that he can move it? I thought it was obvious that an omnipotent God should not necessarily be bound by logic. I think a Hindu philosopher would answer that God can both move and not move the rock, but can't not move nor not-not move the rock, and both can and can't move and not move...
But this professor is not making an attempt at serious open-minded dialogue. His title sounds remarkably like a 'debunking' class. He's just being a giant obviously-biased douchbag.
No, not really... I do use the name on halfbakery -- after slashdot, that's my second most active site.
No, no, it's cool.
OK, but aren't there treaties covering space?
"...to fly and fight in Air, Space, and Cyberspace."
What worries me most in this new mission statement is the reference to space combat.
How dangerous would space combat be to the US? How much of our economy relies on communications satellites?
It seems to me that a relatively 'backwater' countries that had ICBM missles could do a lot of damage to the US economy (and thus war machine) by shooting down our satellites, even if they posed little challenge on the battlefield.
Two magnetic norths? Are you referring to the two center points in this image? One is magnetic north, the other is geographical or geometrical north -- the center of the 37.5* arc that the Earth rotates around.
I can see where you're coming from, but then the answer is to call him and say "We've decided to terminate you, come in tomorrow just to clear out your desk".
I know large organizations aren't always totally in sync, but it's kind of treating him like the living dead when he doesn't have access, and he has to call HR himself to find out that he's been fired. I mean, I know he got paid and all, but its personally humiliating.
It might be from the compositing of images -- it might have all the people from 100 different images, even if there are only a dozen in each picture.
"...USPTO is bad and grants too many broad patents..."
Do you mean "...it's bad because..." ?
Usually when someone posts a silly patent to a site like slashdot, the community finds prior art in minutes. Why not open these up to public discussion, have people sign affadavits or whatever, and let the community do the work?
OK, fine, but jeese, why *not* just call him that night?
Yeah, and why can't they call him the night before and tell him "don't bother coming in tommorrow?"
Why do they have to dick with him and have him come in, and then find out he was terminated only after *he* can't log in and then *he* calls HR?
Did you get paid for that last 15-30 minutes you were in?
What this database will probably give you is some thing like:
Creeping Treeclimber aphorensis creepius
Now, did the BthongaThonga people really discover the cure for non-Hodgekins lymphoma?
You are hardly ever going to get an exact match between traditional use and modern western scientific use. The only one that comes readily to mind is Chinchona bark, which was used by Native South Americans for 'fevers', which was later used to synthesis the quinine, the first anti-malarial drug. Now, people can't say that these Shamans had a cure for malaria, because there are a lot of other things that cause fevers. They were using Cinchona for all kinds of fevers, including malaria.
Then you have the new-agers who say "Shamans really don't realize what they are doing. They talk about magic darts and spirit posession, but really they are doing nothing different than modern doctors."
Sorry, wrong. I was on a 10-week field school and talked to a few shamans. Disease is caused by magic darts. These plants cure magic darts. If you challenge them on that, they will tell you *emphatically* that "No, demons are real, magic darts are real. If you have an occidental (western) disease, go in to town and see a doctor. However, if you need a dart removed, I'm your man."
The cases where traditional uses sync up totaly with western uses will be few and far between.
The problem is it takes a lot of money and time to extract these secrets from nature. So if it takes $30 million and 10 years research to figure out how to get something useful from a plant, and then as soon as you come out with it someone rips you off?
These people aren't just cherry-picking money from nature. That's why they want patent protectiong. They do want to make money, but it takes a *lot* of money and probably decades up front before you start making money off of it. There really is no free ride.
Yes, because of their sensory inputs. Hey, it's a hypothesis. Let's make some observations, and try to design an experiment to knock it down.
That's what I was thinking, but I was going to give him a chance to defend himself.
Hey, who knows? Maybe brains are totally pliable, but all turn out the same was because of the peripheral nervous system and sensory hook-ups they get wired to. So dogs have a large olfactory bulb because they get a lot of input from the nose nerve cells.
Congresspeople and senators don't care about *you*, but they do care about volume. If we all slashdotted our congresspeople's offices, they would care, and we would get our way.
I don't get it. If it doesn't matter what organism your pull nerve cells out of, and you can put nerve cells together and they'll form a brain, then why do brains vary so much across organisms?
I think this would solve a lot of problems as far as content in MMORPGs. It costs a lot of money to hire people who can write decent quests, stories, and epics. You could have the users do this for free if you allowed them to build their own empires, strike deals, backstab, take vengance, etc.
Stories are always about the human element. It sounds like current MMORPGs are to restrictive and don't allow the full range of human interaction. Thus, we have no human drama. So MMORPG companies have to hire people to create the drama for them
Giant Fish King Says:
"Long Ago, the Elf King really fucked us over and burned our village when our enemies were attacking.."
They sell antenna kits that you stick out doors and run a line into your house. I think you need a line of sight to the sky.
Instead of hoping, how about writing a letter to your congressperson and senators?
"When Adolph Hitler assumed power as Chancellor of the Third Reich in 1933, he took the program over, claiming it for his own."
Well it seems only fair, seeing as how he completed so much of it under his rule:
"Hitler's autobahn construction began in September 1933 under the direction of chief engineer Fritz Todt. The 14-mile expressway between Frankfurt and Darmstadt, which opened on May 19, 1935, was the first section completed under Hitler. By December 1941, when wartime needs brought construction to a halt, Germany had completed 2,400 miles (3,860 km), with another 1,550 miles (2,500 km) under construction."
I think it's funny how you totally omit the fact that ealier you were claiming that roman built overpasses, because somewhere along the long you saw a picture of an aqueduct and thought it was an overpass?
Hey, want to address that one, or just ignore it like you did in all your previous posts? Or maybe you want to go back to the claim that they *could* have built overpasses, so they must have, when your only shred of evidence is the phrase "roman overpass" from some guy's blog.
You are too rich. I can't wait to see how you trip yourself up in the next post.
Highways != Autobahn
That's kind of a kamikaze move you did there, bringing us both down. But hey, you're desperate...