If there is no national id card, then what will happen is that a "virtual" national id card will be created. It could take a number of forms, from collecting drivers license ID information from the states, to building biometric databases. Do you mean something like the Total Information Awareness program?
The giant unified database of all our electronic records ( bank, phone records, internet logs, credit card purchases, medical records, court records, magazine subscriptions etc. etc. ) was officially killed in 2003, but what happened is that all of the separate functions were farmed out to smaller, separate programs. Wikipedia says "An unknown number of TIA's functions have been merged under the codename 'Topsail'."
You've hit on exactly why this issue of language is a false issue. Immigrants *do* learn the local language, even if they do use their native tongue at home and in their own community, and 80-year-old grandma could never learn more than a few phrases. As other posters have pointed out, this was the case in the immigration waves of the US. Here in Columbus, there was German village, where 100 years ago, you would hear German on the street, hear German in the local shops, and could buy local German-language newspapers. My grandmother grew up in the lake Erie town of Fairport harbor, which was a Finnish-speaking community 100 years ago. Has there been any serious damage to US culture from all of these foreign-speaking communities we've had in the past 200 years? No. And we do have a great variety of ethnic restaurants!
So if immigrants learn the local language, why do you have to make a law demanding that they do so? The reason is because it creates a rally point for a xenophobic base. Combine that with people who "look different from us" (something that European immigrants don't have to deal with), and you have a winner. Any time some Turkish-speaking kid overturns a car in a riot, you can demonize all Turkish speaking immigrants, who are peaceful, productive, law-abiding citizens and otherwise use French in public when dealing with the French-speaking society they live in. The implication is that France is about to be overrun by Muslims and you will have to speak Arabic to buy a newspaper or go to court. White people will be the minority, and thus treated as badly as brown immigrants are treated now. So you can get people to come out and vote for you if you say that your language, culture, ethnicity or race is about to be overwhelmed by hoards of swarthy immigrants, even when the threat doesn't match the on-the-ground reality, as you point out.
You are half-right in that the separation of powers that the Founder specified in the constitution is the division between the federal executive, legislative, and judicial branch. The other separation of powers that they specified is the separation between federal, state, and local governments. Supposedly, each is sovereign. We and any readers probably know how the sovereignty of the state and local governments has fared in the past 250+ years.
The point that I didn't make clear is that the various bureaucracies, for all their waste and inefficiency, *do* serve as a de facto check on the powers of government. The political scientist James Wilson talks about this. From that perspective, bureaucratic 'duplication' and fighting between agencies and levels of government are not entirely unwanted, if you are interested in separation of powers.
That's why I think projects like the Patriot Act, breaking down the walls between various federal, state, and local governments, or the CIA and FBI co-operating, are so insidious. We really don't want law enforcement working in perfect harmony or tandem, because then when some dictator-to-be shows up, he has a much easier time. When Blackwater troops are dispatched in New Orleans, for example, and the Governor of Louisiana and the Mayor of New Orleans have already ceded power to the President because of the national emergency, there is no oversight of Blackwater troops, aside from the executive branch. A personal, private republican guard is what every good dictator needs to do his dirty work. In this case, the seperation of powers between the federal, state, and local law enforcement, has been side stepped, and in a national emergency, the congress and the judiciary are just not involved. Add to that a national ID, and you have one-stop-shopping for rounding up dissidents.
Yeah, its not like these "totalitarian governments" already have me [seven different items].
I like the national ID because it arguable can fold services 1, 2, 4, and 7 into one stupid card and cut the bureaucracy. The whole idea behind Totalitarianism is to get rid of the bureaucracy and centralize power so that when the dictator says "jump", everyone jumps. The United States was founded on the concept of separation of powers, so that no part of the government would become overly powerful and tyrannical.
Sure, everyone hates to see their tax dollars wasted on duplication and inefficiency. But the opposite is *much*, *much* worse -- a totally efficient, effective government, where one strong, charming person who comes into power could send millions to their death with the stroke of pen. When you have a powerful government with little bureaucracy to slow down the functioning of governments, a tyrant can easily increase his own powers without anything slowing him down. Layers of government, separation of powers, the insanity of various forms and departments, are the boring, mundane details that protect us from concentration camps.
Wayne Madsen is maintaining a chart of data thefts of personal information. He lists 3 or 4 dozens thefts. He believes these thefts are an attempt to populate the Total Information Awareness databases.
Never ascribe to incompetence what can be explained by malice, I guess.
Well, they may not have been transcribing it into stone. They may have been observing it using whatever means they had to create them, and then carving the patterns into the stone.
The point I was trying to make is that it's difficult to establish cultural connection in a secret "We'll kill you if you tell" cult lineage. But, I think we do know enough to make a case.
it's remotely plausible One thing I forgot to harp on enough in my above comment was that trying to draw a cultural connection is that there is a long tradition in the west, starting from Pythagoreans, of secret magic math teachings. "Secret" as in, we'll kill you if you tell anyone. These teachings were thought to be the descriptions of the fundamental nature of reality. So we don't have a lot of writings that say "Pythagoras taught us that..." We do know a little of what Pythagoreans, their descendants, and people who claim to be their descendants, teach. And it has to do a lot with geometry and music being expressions of the divine, perfect forms of the heavens. So, read the longer, earlier comment now.
This aspect (ie, zero cultural knowledge) of it reminds me of the part in Contact, where the aliens send us prime numbers.
That may not be entirely accurate. I say this, but don't take this evidence to mean "case closed".
The people who built the temple may have had pythagorean influences. The pythagoreans were like Platonists in they thought that the real reality, the reality that generates the forms we see in everyday life, were mathematical patterns. Sort of like the way we use mathematics to describe the laws of physics -- the laws of physics being another idea from the Greeks. Specifically, they thought that the behind-the-scenes reality was geometric patterns. It was Pythagoras who first developed the western musical scale, based on notes created by sucessively diving a vibrating string in half. Wikipedia says, "We do know that Pythagoras and his students believed that everything was related to mathematics and that numbers were the ultimate reality and, through mathematics, everything could be predicted and measured in rhythmic patterns or cycles. According to Iamblichus, Pythagoras once said that 'number is the ruler of forms and ideas and the cause of gods and demons.'".
Wikipedia also says, "He was the first man to call himself a philosopher, or lover of wisdom. Many of the accomplishments of Plato, Aristotle and Copernicus were based on the ideas of Pythagoras.".
Another thing to keep in mind that the Pythagoreans were a mystery cult. In a lot of classical Greek religions, the "secret teachings" were kept secret from non-initiates. Just like the mathematical laws are 'hidden' from your average Joe who knows nothing about them, they keep their special secret knowledge out of the hands on average people. After all, these were the Secrets of the Universe, and were closely guarded. Wikipedia says, "The Pythagoreans observed a rule of silence called echemythia, the breaking of which was punishable by death. This was because the Pythagoreans believed that a man's words were usually careless and misrepresented him and that when someone was "in doubt as to what he should say, he should always remain silent". Another rule that they had was to help a man "in raising a burden, but do not assist him in laying it down, for it is a great sin to encourage indolence", and they said "departing from your house, turn not back, for the furies will be your attendants"; this axiom reminded them that it was better to learn none of the truth about mathematics, God, and the universe at all than to learn a little without learning all. (The Secret Teachings of All Ages Hall, Manly P.).
In his biography of Pythagoras (written seven centuries after Pythagoras's time), Porphyry stated that this silence was "of no ordinary kind." The Pythagoreans were divided into an inner circle called the mathematikoi ("mathematicians") and an outer circle called the akousmatikoi ("listeners"). Porphyry wrote "the mathematikoi learned the more detailed and exactly elaborate version of this knowledge, the akousmatikoi (were) those which had heard only the summary headings of his (Pythagoras's) writings, without the more exact exposition." According to Iamblichus, the akosmatikoi were the exoteric disciples who listened to lectures that Pythagoras gave out loud from behind a veil.
The akousmatikoi were not allowed to see Pythagoras and they were not taught the inner secrets of the cult. Instead they were taught laws of behavior and morality in the form of cryptic, brief sayings that had hidden meanings. The akousmatikoi recognized the mathematikoi as real Pythagoreans, but not vice versa. After the murder of Pythagoras and a number of the mathematikoi by the cohorts of Cylon, a resentful disciple, the two groups split from each other entirely, with Pythagoras's wife Theano and their two daughters leading the mathematikoi.
"
So the idea of public knowledge, public debate, peer-review, etc. that we h
Yes, I did watch the video. The technique they used to create the patterns was the developed by Ernst Chaldni, who drew "a bow over a piece of metal whose surface is lightly covered with sand". He published his technique in 1787. Singing bowls go back at least a thousand years in Asia. Wikipedia says that "Singing bowls from 10th-12th century are found in private collections". The Rosslyn chapel was built in the 15th century, before Chaldni's time.
That's more likely as it's easily done with the human voice as compared with trying to get water to do it. Provided they knew the trick. How many thousands of years have people played drums without any awareness of the various pattern different harmonies would create if you put sand on it and sang on it? Chaldni published his findings in 1787. That tells me that it wasn't common knowledge. If your person in Asia in the 10th century, without a wealth of material possessions, and you have bowls lying around, my guess it that they they are going to put water in it at some point. Then, Hey! What happens when it has water in it and we make it sing?
As far as how the creators of the Rosslyn chapel developed it, I don't think there's any evidence for any technique. They may have used a bow on a metal plate. They may have sung onto membranes. This water-vessel technique is another method. They may have used another. I don't think we know at this point, I was just brainstorming and providing more evidence.
Yeah, because getting unlimited massage by yourself with a singing bowl is a waste of time compared to paying $50 - $100 for a have masseuse give you one.
A couple of weekends ago, I took a sound healing workshops with Steve Sklar in Minneapolis ( mod me down for attending a new age workshop;) ).
We played around with singing bowls. These are bowls of a particular metal alloy, and when you fill them with water at various levels, you can see patterns in the water emerge when you get the bowls vibrating strongly. At various levels, you can even see five-pointed water patterns. If you get them really going, the vibrations are so strong that water sprays out of the strong points. Sometimes they formed 'halos' or round craters in the middle, like some of the carvings.( As far as healing, you put these suckers on your body at various points and they give you a great, penetrating massage. )
Looking at the patterns referenced in the videos, I wonder if the carvers were transcribing the patterns that various pitches made in some kind of water-bearing vessel. I think this goes back to Pythagoreans and their idea that the sacred geometries were related to musical tones. IIRC, they thought that the basic generational patterns of our world were geometric, and represented themselves in various ways, including musical scales and visual geometry .
Basically it's to gear up the public to be accepting to fingerprint scanning as part of everyday life. You don't need a fingerprint scanner on an iPod. Same reason they're putting RFID chips in credit cards and passports -- to get people so used to them, there will be no problem when they want to implant them in our hand.
In movies shot in real life, you often do what's called 'cheating' in order to create a scene. The director will position a man and a women talking about one foot diagonal from one another, but from where the camera is placed, it looks like they are just inches apart. There are lots of cheats used to compose a frame just right, make an actor seem taller, improve the dramatic imagery. Very few of these could be translated to 3D, because that would make the cheat obvious. I think true 3-D films can only be created in CGI.
You can do a lot of phenotypic and linguistic analysis, but these theories, once widely held and certainly scientific according to the standard of their day and the available evidence, have fallen into disrepute, after we started to do genetic analysis. One fo the things that hinder this is that as human beings, we have a lot of built-in brain mechanisms to analysis and classify people based on their facial features, which don't strongly correspond to genetics. While we haven't cracked the code yet of exactly which genes contribute to facial features and skin color, other genes that we have identified in the human genome paint a much wider and complex picture.
I'm not trying to be confrontational, just regurgitating what we learned in anthropology class;)
We are Caucasians. Our white skin color comes from the Caucasus mountains, north of Iran. Are you saying that all 'white' people alive today derive their white features from an ancestor in the caucus mountains? That was a popular theory from about 50-100 years ago, but I haven't heard of any researcher that sticks by that today. Yes, there are white people in the caucus mountains, but there's no evidence to believe that white skin developed there, over and above any other place in Europe.
It's a shame, because I would really like to see another Starcraft. Unfortunately the fanbois are probably scaring Blizzard away from actually doing it, since they know the first screenshots or videos released from beta will set off a torrent of bad press from people saying "What is this crap? They were saying this was ready for release like two years ago, and this is all they have?" Fortunately for you and me, I think there's a strong chance that it might be a starcraft title. They put a lot of development into Starcraft:Ghost ( at one point they had some 100 screenshots of *gameplay* on the website), which apparently was shelved by Vivendi, against the wishes of the developers. Ghost was supposed to be an FPS role-play for gaming consoles. There are also indications, specifically the posting for a job opening for the next-gen MMO, that the new title could be an MMO. It may be that they took all the development for Ghost and repurposed it as an MMO.
Blizzard is a maverick in the games industry, in that they don't pump out crap title after crap title. They spend a long time developing a solid product. This goes against the wishes of their fans, who want new games now, and also their shareholders, who want new revenue now. They just seem to steadfastly develop quality products -- look at the years they delayed Warcraft III. That's unheard of in the games industry. So I don't think they are scared by fanbois -- fanbois will buy any crap that comes out; certainly they will buy Blizzard's new title no matter what. They waited years for WCIII, and it was successful; they have no choice but to wait the years for whatever Blizzard announces next.
You're saying that people need to believe in fairy tales in order to do charitable work?
First you said you "didn't see any benefit at all to religion." [Emphasis mine]. Then why I point out some very obvious benefits to religion, you start talking about fairy tales. Pick an argument and stick with it. Are there benefits to religion or not? Clearly there are. Fairy tales are another matter.
I don't think the Underground Railroad was affiliated with any particular church, it was just a bunch of people that wanted to do the right thing.
That's true, the underground railroad was not a project of any church in particular. Many churches did participate. But the underground railroad was not the only anti-slavery effort. And the underground railroad was not an effort to abolish slavery; they only helped slaves escape slavery.
The Amish church, the Mennonite church, the Quakers, the Methodist church, and several others had specific platforms against slavery as part of their official church doctrine. They spoke out against slavery in sermons, and pressured governments to outlaw slavery, and pressured business to get out of the slave trade. The Quakers refused boycotted cane sugar in the US, using only Maple sugar, because the cane sugar was produced in the West Indies by slaves.
Yes, the various churches have committed terrible evils throughout history. I'm not denying or overlooking that. But you said there was "no benefit" to religion. You seem to be overlooking or denying the good things that religion has done. If you consider running charitable organizations or fighting against slavery to be of no benefit, I can't agree with you. Whether someone is doing to because they believe in an invisible man in the sky or because they believe in the inherent dignity of man, both are equally nebulous concepts, and the whole issue is a moot point point to me. The facts on the ground is that religion has done a lot of good things, which you seem dogmatically unwilling to concede, and also a lot of bad things.
Where you and I disagree, I think, is that you stick to the claim that religion is the cause, root, or source of all evil in human society. I've given you examples of religions that are totally peaceful and non-violent, and explained why the bad guys outnumber the good guys over time. So religion can't be the only source of evil. I've also explained how it always seems to be politically powerful religious people perpetrating the evil, just like the non-religious politically powerful people. I think that that is a strong indication that it is political power, not religion, that is the source of evil.
And the other pillars are executing people who convert away from Islam, and horrific abuse of women (including sewing their vaginas shut as children).
This is factually incorrect. The five pillars of Islam are 1. testifying the one true God, 2. performing prayers, 3. charitable giving, 4. fasting, and 5. pilgrimage.
As far as female genital mutilation, this was a traditional African practice that has carried through to Muslim culture in Africa. It's also practiced by non-Muslims in Africa. You will find that it is not required by Islamic scripture, and what is referenced is hood removal, not "sewing their vaginas shut as children, and it is not practiced in the the Islamic middle east or amongst Muslims in Southeast Asia. In the largest Muslim countries, Indonesia and Pakistan, they do not practice female genital mutilation.
I don't see why you need to make inaccurate statements to support your argument. You could make a perfectly fine argument without resorting to ignorant claims. Why should I trust what you have to say about religion when you don't have your basic facts correct?
"Moreover, I don't see any benefit at all to religion. Spirituality and open-mindedness maybe, but not religion, where all the answers are already known because holy men with holy books tell us, and then ask for money."
If you see no benefit at all to religion, you are keeping your head in the sand. I'm starting to think that your position on the "evils of religion" is just as dogmatic as the proponents of a particular religion.
What about the protestant churches leading the movement to abolish slavery in the West? What about all the orphanages, women's shelters, homeless shelters, schools, mission projects that various churches support throughout the world? For the entire medieval history of Europe, the Catholic church was responsible for the education system.
One of the five pillars of Islam is Zakat, or charitable giving. Wikipedia says this:
Zakat, or alms-giving, is the practice of charitable giving by Muslims based on accumulated wealth, and is obligatory for all who are able to do so. It is considered to be a personal responsibility for Muslims to ease economic hardship for others and eliminate inequality.[8] Zakat consists of spending a fixed portion of one's wealth for the benefit of the poor or needy, including slaves, debtors, travelers, and others. A Muslim may also donate more as an act of voluntary charity (sadaqah), in order to achieve additional divine reward.[9]
There are two main types of zakat. First, there is the zakat on traffic, which is a fixed amount based on the cost of food that is paid during the month of Ramadan by the head of a family for himself and his dependents. Second, there is the zakat on wealth, which covers money made in business, savings, income, and so on.[10] In current usage zakat is treated as a 2.5% levy on most valuables and savings held for a full lunar year, as long as the total value is more than a basic minimum known as nisab (3 ounces or 87.48 g of gold). As of 16 October 2006, nisab is approximately US $1,750 or an equivalent amount in any other currency.[11]" So you have 1400 years of Muslims giving a specified amount to money to the poor. I think that's absolutely incredible.
If you're going to steal the election, you can't steal it by too much, because then it's obvious that the results are far away from reality. You can only tip the scales a little bit without people noticing. Therefore, you can only turn tight races and get away with it.
What happened in Ohio in 2004 was that the turnout was so great, it didn't matter even the little bit that they cheated. If they had changed enough votes to overturn the election, it would have been obvious what they had done.
Slashdot Mirror
The giant unified database of all our electronic records ( bank, phone records, internet logs, credit card purchases, medical records, court records, magazine subscriptions etc. etc. ) was officially killed in 2003, but what happened is that all of the separate functions were farmed out to smaller, separate programs. Wikipedia says "An unknown number of TIA's functions have been merged under the codename 'Topsail'."
You've hit on exactly why this issue of language is a false issue. Immigrants *do* learn the local language, even if they do use their native tongue at home and in their own community, and 80-year-old grandma could never learn more than a few phrases. As other posters have pointed out, this was the case in the immigration waves of the US. Here in Columbus, there was German village, where 100 years ago, you would hear German on the street, hear German in the local shops, and could buy local German-language newspapers. My grandmother grew up in the lake Erie town of Fairport harbor, which was a Finnish-speaking community 100 years ago. Has there been any serious damage to US culture from all of these foreign-speaking communities we've had in the past 200 years? No. And we do have a great variety of ethnic restaurants!
So if immigrants learn the local language, why do you have to make a law demanding that they do so? The reason is because it creates a rally point for a xenophobic base. Combine that with people who "look different from us" (something that European immigrants don't have to deal with), and you have a winner. Any time some Turkish-speaking kid overturns a car in a riot, you can demonize all Turkish speaking immigrants, who are peaceful, productive, law-abiding citizens and otherwise use French in public when dealing with the French-speaking society they live in. The implication is that France is about to be overrun by Muslims and you will have to speak Arabic to buy a newspaper or go to court. White people will be the minority, and thus treated as badly as brown immigrants are treated now. So you can get people to come out and vote for you if you say that your language, culture, ethnicity or race is about to be overwhelmed by hoards of swarthy immigrants, even when the threat doesn't match the on-the-ground reality, as you point out.
You are half-right in that the separation of powers that the Founder specified in the constitution is the division between the federal executive, legislative, and judicial branch. The other separation of powers that they specified is the separation between federal, state, and local governments. Supposedly, each is sovereign. We and any readers probably know how the sovereignty of the state and local governments has fared in the past 250+ years.
The point that I didn't make clear is that the various bureaucracies, for all their waste and inefficiency, *do* serve as a de facto check on the powers of government. The political scientist James Wilson talks about this. From that perspective, bureaucratic 'duplication' and fighting between agencies and levels of government are not entirely unwanted, if you are interested in separation of powers.
That's why I think projects like the Patriot Act, breaking down the walls between various federal, state, and local governments, or the CIA and FBI co-operating, are so insidious. We really don't want law enforcement working in perfect harmony or tandem, because then when some dictator-to-be shows up, he has a much easier time. When Blackwater troops are dispatched in New Orleans, for example, and the Governor of Louisiana and the Mayor of New Orleans have already ceded power to the President because of the national emergency, there is no oversight of Blackwater troops, aside from the executive branch. A personal, private republican guard is what every good dictator needs to do his dirty work. In this case, the seperation of powers between the federal, state, and local law enforcement, has been side stepped, and in a national emergency, the congress and the judiciary are just not involved. Add to that a national ID, and you have one-stop-shopping for rounding up dissidents.
[+1] Concur.
We don't want to be like a corrupt, inefficient 3rd world government. We need to keep that sweet spot.
I like the national ID because it arguable can fold services 1, 2, 4, and 7 into one stupid card and cut the bureaucracy. The whole idea behind Totalitarianism is to get rid of the bureaucracy and centralize power so that when the dictator says "jump", everyone jumps. The United States was founded on the concept of separation of powers, so that no part of the government would become overly powerful and tyrannical.
Sure, everyone hates to see their tax dollars wasted on duplication and inefficiency. But the opposite is *much*, *much* worse -- a totally efficient, effective government, where one strong, charming person who comes into power could send millions to their death with the stroke of pen. When you have a powerful government with little bureaucracy to slow down the functioning of governments, a tyrant can easily increase his own powers without anything slowing him down. Layers of government, separation of powers, the insanity of various forms and departments, are the boring, mundane details that protect us from concentration camps.
...L - E - N - R! It's fun to play with some L - E - N - R...
Wayne Madsen is maintaining a chart of data thefts of personal information. He lists 3 or 4 dozens thefts. He believes these thefts are an attempt to populate the Total Information Awareness databases.
Never ascribe to incompetence what can be explained by malice, I guess.
Well, they may not have been transcribing it into stone. They may have been observing it using whatever means they had to create them, and then carving the patterns into the stone.
Argh!
The point I was trying to make is that it's difficult to establish cultural connection in a secret "We'll kill you if you tell" cult lineage. But, I think we do know enough to make a case.
This aspect (ie, zero cultural knowledge) of it reminds me of the part in Contact, where the aliens send us prime numbers.
That may not be entirely accurate. I say this, but don't take this evidence to mean "case closed".
The people who built the temple may have had pythagorean influences. The pythagoreans were like Platonists in they thought that the real reality, the reality that generates the forms we see in everyday life, were mathematical patterns. Sort of like the way we use mathematics to describe the laws of physics -- the laws of physics being another idea from the Greeks. Specifically, they thought that the behind-the-scenes reality was geometric patterns. It was Pythagoras who first developed the western musical scale, based on notes created by sucessively diving a vibrating string in half. Wikipedia says, "We do know that Pythagoras and his students believed that everything was related to mathematics and that numbers were the ultimate reality and, through mathematics, everything could be predicted and measured in rhythmic patterns or cycles. According to Iamblichus, Pythagoras once said that 'number is the ruler of forms and ideas and the cause of gods and demons.'".
Wikipedia also says, "He was the first man to call himself a philosopher, or lover of wisdom. Many of the accomplishments of Plato, Aristotle and Copernicus were based on the ideas of Pythagoras.". Another thing to keep in mind that the Pythagoreans were a mystery cult. In a lot of classical Greek religions, the "secret teachings" were kept secret from non-initiates. Just like the mathematical laws are 'hidden' from your average Joe who knows nothing about them, they keep their special secret knowledge out of the hands on average people. After all, these were the Secrets of the Universe, and were closely guarded. Wikipedia says, "The Pythagoreans observed a rule of silence called echemythia, the breaking of which was punishable by death. This was because the Pythagoreans believed that a man's words were usually careless and misrepresented him and that when someone was "in doubt as to what he should say, he should always remain silent". Another rule that they had was to help a man "in raising a burden, but do not assist him in laying it down, for it is a great sin to encourage indolence", and they said "departing from your house, turn not back, for the furies will be your attendants"; this axiom reminded them that it was better to learn none of the truth about mathematics, God, and the universe at all than to learn a little without learning all. (The Secret Teachings of All Ages Hall, Manly P.).
In his biography of Pythagoras (written seven centuries after Pythagoras's time), Porphyry stated that this silence was "of no ordinary kind." The Pythagoreans were divided into an inner circle called the mathematikoi ("mathematicians") and an outer circle called the akousmatikoi ("listeners"). Porphyry wrote "the mathematikoi learned the more detailed and exactly elaborate version of this knowledge, the akousmatikoi (were) those which had heard only the summary headings of his (Pythagoras's) writings, without the more exact exposition." According to Iamblichus, the akosmatikoi were the exoteric disciples who listened to lectures that Pythagoras gave out loud from behind a veil.
The akousmatikoi were not allowed to see Pythagoras and they were not taught the inner secrets of the cult. Instead they were taught laws of behavior and morality in the form of cryptic, brief sayings that had hidden meanings. The akousmatikoi recognized the mathematikoi as real Pythagoreans, but not vice versa. After the murder of Pythagoras and a number of the mathematikoi by the cohorts of Cylon, a resentful disciple, the two groups split from each other entirely, with Pythagoras's wife Theano and their two daughters leading the mathematikoi. "
So the idea of public knowledge, public debate, peer-review, etc. that we h
As far as how the creators of the Rosslyn chapel developed it, I don't think there's any evidence for any technique. They may have used a bow on a metal plate. They may have sung onto membranes. This water-vessel technique is another method. They may have used another. I don't think we know at this point, I was just brainstorming and providing more evidence.
Yeah, because getting unlimited massage by yourself with a singing bowl is a waste of time compared to paying $50 - $100 for a have masseuse give you one.
A couple of weekends ago, I took a sound healing workshops with Steve Sklar in Minneapolis ( mod me down for attending a new age workshop ;) ).
We played around with singing bowls. These are bowls of a particular metal alloy, and when you fill them with water at various levels, you can see patterns in the water emerge when you get the bowls vibrating strongly. At various levels, you can even see five-pointed water patterns. If you get them really going, the vibrations are so strong that water sprays out of the strong points. Sometimes they formed 'halos' or round craters in the middle, like some of the carvings.( As far as healing, you put these suckers on your body at various points and they give you a great, penetrating massage. )
Looking at the patterns referenced in the videos, I wonder if the carvers were transcribing the patterns that various pitches made in some kind of water-bearing vessel. I think this goes back to Pythagoreans and their idea that the sacred geometries were related to musical tones. IIRC, they thought that the basic generational patterns of our world were geometric, and represented themselves in various ways, including musical scales and visual geometry .
Basically it's to gear up the public to be accepting to fingerprint scanning as part of everyday life. You don't need a fingerprint scanner on an iPod. Same reason they're putting RFID chips in credit cards and passports -- to get people so used to them, there will be no problem when they want to implant them in our hand.
Remember, the Total Information Awareness project is alive and thumpin' !
This will only work for CGI movies.
In movies shot in real life, you often do what's called 'cheating' in order to create a scene. The director will position a man and a women talking about one foot diagonal from one another, but from where the camera is placed, it looks like they are just inches apart. There are lots of cheats used to compose a frame just right, make an actor seem taller, improve the dramatic imagery. Very few of these could be translated to 3D, because that would make the cheat obvious. I think true 3-D films can only be created in CGI.
You can do a lot of phenotypic and linguistic analysis, but these theories, once widely held and certainly scientific according to the standard of their day and the available evidence, have fallen into disrepute, after we started to do genetic analysis. One fo the things that hinder this is that as human beings, we have a lot of built-in brain mechanisms to analysis and classify people based on their facial features, which don't strongly correspond to genetics. While we haven't cracked the code yet of exactly which genes contribute to facial features and skin color, other genes that we have identified in the human genome paint a much wider and complex picture.
;)
I'm not trying to be confrontational, just regurgitating what we learned in anthropology class
Even better -- his armor was forged by the fires of the BSD daemon!
Blizzard is a maverick in the games industry, in that they don't pump out crap title after crap title. They spend a long time developing a solid product. This goes against the wishes of their fans, who want new games now, and also their shareholders, who want new revenue now. They just seem to steadfastly develop quality products -- look at the years they delayed Warcraft III. That's unheard of in the games industry. So I don't think they are scared by fanbois -- fanbois will buy any crap that comes out; certainly they will buy Blizzard's new title no matter what. They waited years for WCIII, and it was successful; they have no choice but to wait the years for whatever Blizzard announces next.
You're saying that people need to believe in fairy tales in order to do charitable work?
First you said you "didn't see any benefit at all to religion." [Emphasis mine]. Then why I point out some very obvious benefits to religion, you start talking about fairy tales. Pick an argument and stick with it. Are there benefits to religion or not? Clearly there are. Fairy tales are another matter.
I don't think the Underground Railroad was affiliated with any particular church, it was just a bunch of people that wanted to do the right thing.
That's true, the underground railroad was not a project of any church in particular. Many churches did participate. But the underground railroad was not the only anti-slavery effort. And the underground railroad was not an effort to abolish slavery; they only helped slaves escape slavery.
The Amish church, the Mennonite church, the Quakers, the Methodist church, and several others had specific platforms against slavery as part of their official church doctrine. They spoke out against slavery in sermons, and pressured governments to outlaw slavery, and pressured business to get out of the slave trade. The Quakers refused boycotted cane sugar in the US, using only Maple sugar, because the cane sugar was produced in the West Indies by slaves.
Yes, the various churches have committed terrible evils throughout history. I'm not denying or overlooking that. But you said there was "no benefit" to religion. You seem to be overlooking or denying the good things that religion has done. If you consider running charitable organizations or fighting against slavery to be of no benefit, I can't agree with you. Whether someone is doing to because they believe in an invisible man in the sky or because they believe in the inherent dignity of man, both are equally nebulous concepts, and the whole issue is a moot point point to me. The facts on the ground is that religion has done a lot of good things, which you seem dogmatically unwilling to concede, and also a lot of bad things.
Where you and I disagree, I think, is that you stick to the claim that religion is the cause, root, or source of all evil in human society. I've given you examples of religions that are totally peaceful and non-violent, and explained why the bad guys outnumber the good guys over time. So religion can't be the only source of evil. I've also explained how it always seems to be politically powerful religious people perpetrating the evil, just like the non-religious politically powerful people. I think that that is a strong indication that it is political power, not religion, that is the source of evil.
And the other pillars are executing people who convert away from Islam, and horrific abuse of women (including sewing their vaginas shut as children).
This is factually incorrect. The five pillars of Islam are 1. testifying the one true God, 2. performing prayers, 3. charitable giving, 4. fasting, and 5. pilgrimage.
As far as female genital mutilation, this was a traditional African practice that has carried through to Muslim culture in Africa. It's also practiced by non-Muslims in Africa. You will find that it is not required by Islamic scripture, and what is referenced is hood removal, not "sewing their vaginas shut as children, and it is not practiced in the the Islamic middle east or amongst Muslims in Southeast Asia. In the largest Muslim countries, Indonesia and Pakistan, they do not practice female genital mutilation. I don't see why you need to make inaccurate statements to support your argument. You could make a perfectly fine argument without resorting to ignorant claims. Why should I trust what you have to say about religion when you don't have your basic facts correct?
In Taliban Afghanistan, women w
If you see no benefit at all to religion, you are keeping your head in the sand. I'm starting to think that your position on the "evils of religion" is just as dogmatic as the proponents of a particular religion.
What about the protestant churches leading the movement to abolish slavery in the West? What about all the orphanages, women's shelters, homeless shelters, schools, mission projects that various churches support throughout the world? For the entire medieval history of Europe, the Catholic church was responsible for the education system.
One of the five pillars of Islam is Zakat, or charitable giving. Wikipedia says this: Zakat, or alms-giving, is the practice of charitable giving by Muslims based on accumulated wealth, and is obligatory for all who are able to do so. It is considered to be a personal responsibility for Muslims to ease economic hardship for others and eliminate inequality.[8] Zakat consists of spending a fixed portion of one's wealth for the benefit of the poor or needy, including slaves, debtors, travelers, and others. A Muslim may also donate more as an act of voluntary charity (sadaqah), in order to achieve additional divine reward.[9]
There are two main types of zakat. First, there is the zakat on traffic, which is a fixed amount based on the cost of food that is paid during the month of Ramadan by the head of a family for himself and his dependents. Second, there is the zakat on wealth, which covers money made in business, savings, income, and so on.[10] In current usage zakat is treated as a 2.5% levy on most valuables and savings held for a full lunar year, as long as the total value is more than a basic minimum known as nisab (3 ounces or 87.48 g of gold). As of 16 October 2006, nisab is approximately US $1,750 or an equivalent amount in any other currency.[11]" So you have 1400 years of Muslims giving a specified amount to money to the poor. I think that's absolutely incredible.
Sorry, I mean in Ohio in 2006.
If you're going to steal the election, you can't steal it by too much, because then it's obvious that the results are far away from reality. You can only tip the scales a little bit without people noticing. Therefore, you can only turn tight races and get away with it.
What happened in Ohio in 2004 was that the turnout was so great, it didn't matter even the little bit that they cheated. If they had changed enough votes to overturn the election, it would have been obvious what they had done.