All I'm saying is that there was less imaginative possibility with a robot action figure than with a plain ol' stick. The more ambiguous and plain the object, the more scenarios I could fit it in to. If you have a castle playset, you are going to be playing castle most of the time. If you decide that the castle is actually a space station, you have to overlook the castley features like bricks and turrets to see the space station. However, the cardboard refridgerator box has no scneario-specific features to ignore -- just possibility as far as the mind's eye can see.
The action figure's realm of expression is smaller than a stick's. The robot could be an evil villian in his hideout, or he could be a good guy on his way to saving the galaxy. However, one thing he will *not* be doing is breakdancing, because *his legs just don't move like that*. He can only do a stilted walk. However, because the stick has no features that are going to contradict the impositions of your imagination, you are going to have an easier time playing a variety of scenarios with the stick than with the robot action figure.
It's like the difference between writting fan fiction and creating your own universe. There is simply a greater realm of possibility when you have blank pages. You don't have to follow the rules and
And like I said earlier, I *did* have mass-manufactured toys. At the time I wanted them very badly, but upon reflection I can see that I had much more fun with things like sticks and boxes than I ever did with any action figure. I like action figures and still have some to this day, but they certainly aren't a fountain of imaginative play.
I have to recommend against this. These 'financial professionals' make money from commission they get on selling you mutual fund shares, so they have an incentive to steer you towards investing money in ways that make money for them, instead of what is best for you.
As an almost 30-year-old, I now clearly understand the power of marketing, materialism and peer pressure. As a child, I would have given almost anything to have the toys I saw on commercials and that all the cool kids played with at school. However, when I actually got my hands on them, I found out that they were just as boring as all of the other toys that I had relegated to goodwill. But wait! There is a new cartoon series with cool new robots! And the toys come with laser swords! If only I could get my hands on *these* toys, I would be forever entertained and happy, and never want for anything else in life.
This is a life lesson, not some logic puzzle. Certainly you must be speaking facetiously.
"The things developing children interact with are known to cause a long-standing effect on their psychological development - particularly creativity, analytical skills and imagination."
I remember going over this in psych 101 and even the author of our textbook, Peter Gray seemed skeptical. What is the criteria by which we measure the things children interact with? Does a toddler who only has cardboard boxes to play with grow up stupider than one who has plastic puzzles in primary colors? IIRC, Gray wondered if an inner city child who had no toys, but interacted with extended family in the house and watched cars go by each day was in any less stimulating an environment than a kid who had nintendo or plastic blocks. Is there any objective measurement? The child who interacts with adults is arguably in a more stimluating environment. Understanding, predicting, and manipulating adult minds arguably takes more mental faculties than doing the same with blocks.
When I was a boy, I remember a stick being variously a rifle, a magical staff, a metal sword, a light saber, a spear, even a spaceship. Are my analytical skills impoverished because I ran around in the woods and played with sticks instead of playing the living room with shiny, plastic transformers? I remember being bored to tears by He-Man and G.I. Joe figures that required no imagination -- everything they did was pre-determined. I prefered playing with leaves in puddles or making figures out of mud or clay.
I did *want* those toys that other kids had -- but when I got them, I certainly couldn't play with them. They were much to boring. They just sat on the shelf as models. That's really what they are.
"The strange "feeling" of Deja Vu is simply due to experiencing familiarity when you believe there should be none. There is nothing strange about being in a familiar environment. It's when something seems familiar and you know it should not, that there is an extra feeling that comes along with it."
You've just identified a mechanism that isn't accounted for in the model. How does the mind know that there shouldn't be any familiarity? Besides the memory-scanning mechanism and the feeling-of-familiary-generating mechanism, you propose a third mechanism that checks that the feeling-of-familiary-generating is properly triggered by the memory-scanning mechanism, and not another process, which would be anomalous. If the checking mechanism detects a false recognition, then it in turn triggers a fourth mechanism, the 'erie feeling when you falsely recognize something' generation mechanism.
Remember, when we are talking about the mind, there is no "you" who "knows that it should not [recognize something]." These parts of the mind *are* the 'you' who 'knows'. If the parts fail, we have no way of knowing that they failed, unless there are other parts that are deliberately checking. If there are other parts that are deliberately checking, we have to account for them in the model.
Besides, like I said earlier, for me, Deja Vu is not the normal feeling of familiarity. It is special, strange feeling. There isn't any regular 'recognition' feeling. Maybe what I am referring to as Deja Vu isn't actually Deja Vu, because for me, the sensation is totally weird, not at all 'familiar'. It's kind of a sense of 'awe', like revelatory awe, knowledge that I shouldn't have, or knowledge that didn't originate from the regular methods. This can't be the regular 'familiarity' sense, because I don't feel this revelatory awe when I wake up in my familiar room or hop into my familiar car.
The claim here is that the sensation of Deja Vu is the same sensation as our everyday recognizing-something-familiar sense. The thing is, Deja Vu is that 'weird', 'erie' feeling that you get when you see something you think you have seen before. I don't get that same weird, erie feeling when I wake up in my familiar room, or hop into my familiar car.
Maybe the model could be modified a little. In my understanding, the feeling of Deja Vu is its own feeling, not the regular, everyday familiarity feeling.
Democracies didn't emerge by running. Democracies came from people standing and delivering. The universe doesn't care about us; so what? I care, and a lot of other people do. And when people get together and unite under a cause, whether it's a king or a constitution, they are very difficult to stop.
Nobody in the porn business is trying to show porn to children. They're in it to make money, and they want adults with credit cards to join their sites.
However, adults with credit cards tend to have wives, children, significant others, etc. that might not think to highly of them spending their hard-earned money on porn. It's the same fear that keeps them out of dirty book stores and movie theaters -- shame and embarrassment.
So what porno companies have to do is 'advertise' in such a way that their users could say "Oh, honey, I was just surfing around and happened to click on this link that happened to be porn. I would never, ever visit a porn site out of my own volition."
So then some kid run into these quasi-innocent adverts and end up seeing a lot of things that will scar their retinas. Mom finds out and hits the roof. She think that the evil perverts who make this stuff are deliberately trying to corrupt the youth -- why else would it be so easy to stumble across pornography on the internet?
Then, congresspeople who need votes to maintain power write acts like these to protect children from evil, corrupting pornographers, and mom votes for them in the fall. Except that they're not targetting children, they're just trying to give dad some cover.
I think that there is still hope. Remember that democracy itself emerged from global tyranny -- about 500 years ago, every country was ruled by nobility, and everyone else was a serf or a slave. Yet somehow the philosophy of humanism and the practice of democracy emerged.
There is no honor among theives. Facism is inherently unstable, because greedy people will always be vying for power. Cheating and fraud will be rampant, all the way up to the leader's inner circle. Local big men will attempt to break away from The Leader at the first sign his powerful grip is weakening. Meanwhile, since big government can no longer meet the needs of everyday folks, everyday folks will grow more independent and less reliant on the government. Corporations won't be able to povide pensions, salary, and health insurance, since they will be systematically plundered by its owners. Do you see what is being set up here? The people in charge will be busy stabbing each other in the back while a more or less independent population will be able to organize and resist encroachments on their freedom. The main reason they will be able to resist is the understanding that fascism won't fulfill its promise of a better life.
Now, I'm not saying that the rulers won't be rich and the people won't be poor, but in general, the people will have more freedom than before. It's sort of like the situation you see in third world countries where independent villages are doing relatively well. There are desperately poor people in slums in the city, because they rely on the system and can't make their own way. But up in the mountains or deep in the jungle, there are villages that don't need the government and are doing well without it, thank you very much.
So then, if an image install is so different from a regular install procedure, what is a regular install procedure? How different is an installation from copying a bunch of files?
"If I make $500,000 each year and spend the same, I have zero net worth. Meanwhile, if you make $20,000 but only spend $19,000, you gain $1000 in net worth each year. Yet who would you rather be? "
I would rather make half a mill each year. If I'm in a position where I make that much, chances are I have a nice pension and health insurance. Even if I have no savings, I can easily save thousands of dollars in future years if the $#!t hit the fan one year. I also probably have an incredible education, resume, job experience, credit, capital, and network to rely on. I could easily get a loan or sell some posessions if I really had to.
If I'm making $20,000 a year, or $5 an hour working full time, $10 part time, I might manage to save $1,000 over the course of a year. One trip to the emergency room eats that right up. I probably don't have health insurance nor any kind of pension. Chances are most of my friends and family are making the same money I am. If I run into any kind of financial emergency, I'm pretty much SOL.
After thinking it over, I'd rather be the person making 0.5 mill a year.
Actually it makes sense to me. The basic division of government goes like this: the legislature makes the law, the executive enforces it, and the judiciary judges. As part of enforcing the law, the executive branch investigates people and arrests them.
You are right that there is a kind of conflict of interest if the people in charge of the executive are committing crimes and don't want to investigate themselves, but there is a check on this built into the constitution. The congress is the most powerful branch and it can hold hearings and investigate. People can be held in contempt of congress, and they have to testify under oath. So congress can serves as a judiciary over the executive branch.
I think this is really great, but sometimes my favorite parts of MST3K were jokes they played with the silhouettes on the screen. In one of the Godzilla movies, there was a bird's-eye-view scene of some Japanese soldiers with round, white bubble-helmets on. Joel stood up, knocked on one of the helmets, and the soldier looked straight up into the camera!:D Classic.
Hey, sounds great, but what do they do in case of a fire? Can anyone pull a fire alarm, or do you have to RFID the fire alarm?
Seems like a fire alarm system would be a weakness -- if you make it too secure, you kill people in a real fire, and if it's not strict enough, a real theif would exploit it to escape.
My understanding is that your first explanation is correct -- everyone knows what an iPod is and wants one, so it makes their street value much higher than any other mp3 player. White earbuds inidicate that they are attached to an iPod.
First off, we don't think it flew; we think it glided. Second, the reason we think that because of the structure of it's back legs and hips.
Animals have to be good at getting around. This animal's front legs are way shorter than its back legs, so it wasn't running on all fours. They don't say so in the article, but probably scientists looked at the structure of its knee joints, hips joints, and feet and decided there wasn't very much mobility -- therefore it was easily lunch running on two legs. Finally, its hip, knee, and foot joint stucture and long, thin leg bones probably look much like modern gliders.
From this wikipedia article, there seems to be some debate as to whether it hopped and glided, or climbed trees and glided. It also seems as if some imprint of the rear membrane was in the fossil.
But basically the method that I outlined above is how you tell how fossil animals moved. You look at their bone structures and decide what they were mechanically capable of, knowing that they had to be good enough to stay away from predators. Look at modern animal's means of locomotion, and decide what is most similar.
"Paleoclimatologists have the records of weather condifions going back thousands of years using information such as tree rings, snow, lava, and seed deposits."
Don't forget the gold standard of past atmospheres, ice cores.
When SETI picks up a signal and the scientists look at it and say, "this signal originated from intelligence", how do you know that the intelligence had anything to do with it, or was merely observing?
It's because we are observing the *effect* of intelligence on a phenomena -- whatever influence that the intelligence had on the signal -- that we know the intelligence was acting on it somehow. If the intelligence merely observed the signal, but had no effect on it, there would be any change in the signal, and thus we couldn't detect the intelligence.
So, if we detect the 'fingerprint' of intelligence in a signal, the intelligence was having some effect on it, or else the signal wouldn't show any signs of intelligent influence.
In another sense, you have a point. Perhaps there was creation event that created the universe with an intelligence in it. That intelligence then somehow affected the entire universe, so the background radiation shows signs of influence from an intelligence.
But if the signal shows any signs of intelligence *at all*, then that means that the intelligence was acting upon the signal at some point. If it was observing without influenve, there would never be any change in the signal that would tell us. Even if the observation affected the signal, there would be some indication of it in the signal, which is what we are detecting. Remember, we have a criteria for *intelligence*, so if the intelligence observed the signal accidentally, or interacted with it in a random way, we wouldn't notice that random influence any more than the other, non-intelligent random influences on the signal.
Whether the intelligence was originating the signal or modifying it is a further question. My guess is that a signal that was modified by intelligence would have a different 'fingerprint of intelligence' than a signal that completely originated from intelligence.
"The computer doesn't give a damn how careful you are. If you spend hours carefully crafting a chunk of code that, through your ignorance, has a big security hole, all your care hasn't helped a bit. You have merely produced bad code.
OTOH, someone with good knowledge of the subject might toss off a 30-second routine that, due to their understanding, is highly secure."
" Reader Pyromage provided one answer to that question, writing:
"Because it's possible to devise an experiment that could provide scientific evidence in its favor.... Such an experiment does not -- even in theory -- exist for [Intelligent Design].""
I replied that:
I don't think it would be too hard to come up an experiment that could falsify a particular stain of ID.
First, we'll define an impersonal ID: the intelligent designer is simply a phenomena that is intelligent, like a human being or other intelligent animal. Not that we're saying that this creator has a body, or is organic, wears a crown, writes on stone tablets, or anything else; just that it is an intelligent phenomena.
Second, we'll have to define a criteria for detecting intelligence. This is essentially the same project as SETI. We've recieved lots of interesting radio signals from outer space; the problem is, we have no definition or set of criteria to distinguish signals arising from intelligent activity from other natural, even biological phenomena. We have some signals that *might* be from life, but then again they might not. If we had a criteria, we'd have a better idea. But we don't. So, once we do have the set of criteria, we could easily apply that to any observable phenomena.
Here's the example experiment. We'll look at the background radiation from the big bang, and we'll see if it meets the criteria for intelligence. If the background radiation meets the criteria for a signal arising from intelligent activity, then we know that the phenomena that created the universe is somehow intelligent. (Obviously that doesn't mean that the Bible is completely true, etc. etc). If we can somehow determine that we have the *only* criteria for intelligence, then if the background radiation does not meet that criteria, we will then know for certain that there was no intelligence involved at or around the beginning of the universe.
An old argument for the existance of God is that the heavens act very much like a watch -- the motions of the heavenly bodies are so precise, an intelligence must have created the system. It would be like finding a watch on the ground on a desert island and not thinking that a person had dropped it there. Obviously we now know that the planets aren't as graceful and watch-like as they seem to be. But essentially this is the same test. If we can decide what intelligence is, and a set of criteria for determining if a phenomena is influence by intelligence, then we can test for ID.
That's not a flaw with my experiment. My experiment would falsifiably show whether *or not* there was some kind of intelligence involved in the origins of the universe, as it claims.
The flaw is in the logic of the counter-argument you present.
I have no doubt that any attempt to take ID seriously would be taken and run with by Creationists as proof that God exists, that the Bible should be the basis of law. That does not follow from my experiment. The beliefs and actions of religious fanatics shouldn't prevent us from being skeptical, open minded, and following the data wherever it might lead.
I don't think it would be too hard to come up an experiment that could falsify a particular stain of ID.
First, we'll define an impersonal ID: the intelligent designer is simply a phenomena that is intelligent, like a human being or other intelligent animal. Not that we're saying that this creator has a body, or is organic, wears a crown, writes on stone tablets, or anything else; just that it is an intelligent phenomena.
Second, we'll have to define a criteria for detecting intelligence. This is essentially the same project as SETI. We've recieved lots of interesting radio signals from outer space; the problem is, we have no definition or set of criteria to distinguish signals arising from intelligent activity from other natural, even biological phenomena. We have some signals that *might* be from life, but then again they might not. If we had a criteria, we'd have a better idea. But we don't. So, once we do have the set of criteria, we could easily apply that to any observable phenomena.
Here's the example experiment. We'll look at the background radiation from the big bang, and we'll see if it meets the criteria for intelligence. If the background radiation meets the criteria for a signal arising from intelligent activity, then we know that the phenomena that created the universe is somehow intelligent. (Obviously that doesn't mean that the Bible is completely true, etc. etc). If we can somehow determine that we have the *only* criteria for intelligence, then if the background radiation does not meet that criteria, we will then know for certain that there was no intelligence involved at or around the beginning of the universe.
An old argument for the existance of God is that the heavens act very much like a watch -- the motions of the heavenly bodies are so precise, an intelligence must have created the system. It would be like finding a watch on the ground on a desert island and not thinking that a person had dropped it there. Obviously we now know that the planets aren't as graceful and watch-like as they seem to be. But essentially this is the same test. If we can decide what intelligence is, and a set of criteria for determining if a phenomena is influence by intelligence, then we can test for ID.
Boy, that brings me back. I remember days of running through creeks and posion ivy in the woods, wielding sticks that served as guns at long range, swords at short range, and magic staffs and we had all maimed and killed each other.
How do you know that the author wasn't picking up on some subtle signal that the dog gave off?
For all of our consciousness and self-awareness, we are still animals, and we do a lot of things on instinct, stuff that we don't totally understand and are generally unaware of in our everyday lives.
Slashdot Mirror
All I'm saying is that there was less imaginative possibility with a robot action figure than with a plain ol' stick. The more ambiguous and plain the object, the more scenarios I could fit it in to. If you have a castle playset, you are going to be playing castle most of the time. If you decide that the castle is actually a space station, you have to overlook the castley features like bricks and turrets to see the space station. However, the cardboard refridgerator box has no scneario-specific features to ignore -- just possibility as far as the mind's eye can see.
The action figure's realm of expression is smaller than a stick's. The robot could be an evil villian in his hideout, or he could be a good guy on his way to saving the galaxy. However, one thing he will *not* be doing is breakdancing, because *his legs just don't move like that*. He can only do a stilted walk. However, because the stick has no features that are going to contradict the impositions of your imagination, you are going to have an easier time playing a variety of scenarios with the stick than with the robot action figure.
It's like the difference between writting fan fiction and creating your own universe. There is simply a greater realm of possibility when you have blank pages. You don't have to follow the rules and
And like I said earlier, I *did* have mass-manufactured toys. At the time I wanted them very badly, but upon reflection I can see that I had much more fun with things like sticks and boxes than I ever did with any action figure. I like action figures and still have some to this day, but they certainly aren't a fountain of imaginative play.
I have to recommend against this. These 'financial professionals' make money from commission they get on selling you mutual fund shares, so they have an incentive to steer you towards investing money in ways that make money for them, instead of what is best for you.
As an almost 30-year-old, I now clearly understand the power of marketing, materialism and peer pressure. As a child, I would have given almost anything to have the toys I saw on commercials and that all the cool kids played with at school. However, when I actually got my hands on them, I found out that they were just as boring as all of the other toys that I had relegated to goodwill. But wait! There is a new cartoon series with cool new robots! And the toys come with laser swords! If only I could get my hands on *these* toys, I would be forever entertained and happy, and never want for anything else in life.
This is a life lesson, not some logic puzzle. Certainly you must be speaking facetiously.
"The things developing children interact with are known to cause a long-standing effect on their psychological development - particularly creativity, analytical skills and imagination."
I remember going over this in psych 101 and even the author of our textbook, Peter Gray seemed skeptical. What is the criteria by which we measure the things children interact with? Does a toddler who only has cardboard boxes to play with grow up stupider than one who has plastic puzzles in primary colors? IIRC, Gray wondered if an inner city child who had no toys, but interacted with extended family in the house and watched cars go by each day was in any less stimulating an environment than a kid who had nintendo or plastic blocks. Is there any objective measurement? The child who interacts with adults is arguably in a more stimluating environment. Understanding, predicting, and manipulating adult minds arguably takes more mental faculties than doing the same with blocks.
When I was a boy, I remember a stick being variously a rifle, a magical staff, a metal sword, a light saber, a spear, even a spaceship. Are my analytical skills impoverished because I ran around in the woods and played with sticks instead of playing the living room with shiny, plastic transformers? I remember being bored to tears by He-Man and G.I. Joe figures that required no imagination -- everything they did was pre-determined. I prefered playing with leaves in puddles or making figures out of mud or clay.
I did *want* those toys that other kids had -- but when I got them, I certainly couldn't play with them. They were much to boring. They just sat on the shelf as models. That's really what they are.
"The strange "feeling" of Deja Vu is simply due to experiencing familiarity when you believe there should be none. There is nothing strange about being in a familiar environment. It's when something seems familiar and you know it should not, that there is an extra feeling that comes along with it."
You've just identified a mechanism that isn't accounted for in the model. How does the mind know that there shouldn't be any familiarity? Besides the memory-scanning mechanism and the feeling-of-familiary-generating mechanism, you propose a third mechanism that checks that the feeling-of-familiary-generating is properly triggered by the memory-scanning mechanism, and not another process, which would be anomalous. If the checking mechanism detects a false recognition, then it in turn triggers a fourth mechanism, the 'erie feeling when you falsely recognize something' generation mechanism.
Remember, when we are talking about the mind, there is no "you" who "knows that it should not [recognize something]." These parts of the mind *are* the 'you' who 'knows'. If the parts fail, we have no way of knowing that they failed, unless there are other parts that are deliberately checking. If there are other parts that are deliberately checking, we have to account for them in the model.
Besides, like I said earlier, for me, Deja Vu is not the normal feeling of familiarity. It is special, strange feeling. There isn't any regular 'recognition' feeling. Maybe what I am referring to as Deja Vu isn't actually Deja Vu, because for me, the sensation is totally weird, not at all 'familiar'. It's kind of a sense of 'awe', like revelatory awe, knowledge that I shouldn't have, or knowledge that didn't originate from the regular methods. This can't be the regular 'familiarity' sense, because I don't feel this revelatory awe when I wake up in my familiar room or hop into my familiar car.
The claim here is that the sensation of Deja Vu is the same sensation as our everyday recognizing-something-familiar sense. The thing is, Deja Vu is that 'weird', 'erie' feeling that you get when you see something you think you have seen before. I don't get that same weird, erie feeling when I wake up in my familiar room, or hop into my familiar car.
Maybe the model could be modified a little. In my understanding, the feeling of Deja Vu is its own feeling, not the regular, everyday familiarity feeling.
Democracies didn't emerge by running. Democracies came from people standing and delivering. The universe doesn't care about us; so what? I care, and a lot of other people do. And when people get together and unite under a cause, whether it's a king or a constitution, they are very difficult to stop.
This is the problem with this type of law.
Nobody in the porn business is trying to show porn to children. They're in it to make money, and they want adults with credit cards to join their sites.
However, adults with credit cards tend to have wives, children, significant others, etc. that might not think to highly of them spending their hard-earned money on porn. It's the same fear that keeps them out of dirty book stores and movie theaters -- shame and embarrassment.
So what porno companies have to do is 'advertise' in such a way that their users could say "Oh, honey, I was just surfing around and happened to click on this link that happened to be porn. I would never, ever visit a porn site out of my own volition."
So then some kid run into these quasi-innocent adverts and end up seeing a lot of things that will scar their retinas. Mom finds out and hits the roof. She think that the evil perverts who make this stuff are deliberately trying to corrupt the youth -- why else would it be so easy to stumble across pornography on the internet?
Then, congresspeople who need votes to maintain power write acts like these to protect children from evil, corrupting pornographers, and mom votes for them in the fall. Except that they're not targetting children, they're just trying to give dad some cover.
So, I don't know what the right answer is.
I think that there is still hope. Remember that democracy itself emerged from global tyranny -- about 500 years ago, every country was ruled by nobility, and everyone else was a serf or a slave. Yet somehow the philosophy of humanism and the practice of democracy emerged.
There is no honor among theives. Facism is inherently unstable, because greedy people will always be vying for power. Cheating and fraud will be rampant, all the way up to the leader's inner circle. Local big men will attempt to break away from The Leader at the first sign his powerful grip is weakening. Meanwhile, since big government can no longer meet the needs of everyday folks, everyday folks will grow more independent and less reliant on the government. Corporations won't be able to povide pensions, salary, and health insurance, since they will be systematically plundered by its owners. Do you see what is being set up here? The people in charge will be busy stabbing each other in the back while a more or less independent population will be able to organize and resist encroachments on their freedom. The main reason they will be able to resist is the understanding that fascism won't fulfill its promise of a better life.
Now, I'm not saying that the rulers won't be rich and the people won't be poor, but in general, the people will have more freedom than before. It's sort of like the situation you see in third world countries where independent villages are doing relatively well. There are desperately poor people in slums in the city, because they rely on the system and can't make their own way. But up in the mountains or deep in the jungle, there are villages that don't need the government and are doing well without it, thank you very much.
So then, if an image install is so different from a regular install procedure, what is a regular install procedure? How different is an installation from copying a bunch of files?
"If I make $500,000 each year and spend the same, I have zero net worth. Meanwhile, if you make $20,000 but only spend $19,000, you gain $1000 in net worth each year. Yet who would you rather be? "
I would rather make half a mill each year. If I'm in a position where I make that much, chances are I have a nice pension and health insurance. Even if I have no savings, I can easily save thousands of dollars in future years if the $#!t hit the fan one year. I also probably have an incredible education, resume, job experience, credit, capital, and network to rely on. I could easily get a loan or sell some posessions if I really had to.
If I'm making $20,000 a year, or $5 an hour working full time, $10 part time, I might manage to save $1,000 over the course of a year. One trip to the emergency room eats that right up. I probably don't have health insurance nor any kind of pension. Chances are most of my friends and family are making the same money I am. If I run into any kind of financial emergency, I'm pretty much SOL.
After thinking it over, I'd rather be the person making 0.5 mill a year.
Actually it makes sense to me. The basic division of government goes like this: the legislature makes the law, the executive enforces it, and the judiciary judges. As part of enforcing the law, the executive branch investigates people and arrests them.
You are right that there is a kind of conflict of interest if the people in charge of the executive are committing crimes and don't want to investigate themselves, but there is a check on this built into the constitution. The congress is the most powerful branch and it can hold hearings and investigate. People can be held in contempt of congress, and they have to testify under oath. So congress can serves as a judiciary over the executive branch.
I think this is really great, but sometimes my favorite parts of MST3K were jokes they played with the silhouettes on the screen. In one of the Godzilla movies, there was a bird's-eye-view scene of some Japanese soldiers with round, white bubble-helmets on. Joel stood up, knocked on one of the helmets, and the soldier looked straight up into the camera! :D Classic.
Hey, sounds great, but what do they do in case of a fire? Can anyone pull a fire alarm, or do you have to RFID the fire alarm?
Seems like a fire alarm system would be a weakness -- if you make it too secure, you kill people in a real fire, and if it's not strict enough, a real theif would exploit it to escape.
My understanding is that your first explanation is correct -- everyone knows what an iPod is and wants one, so it makes their street value much higher than any other mp3 player. White earbuds inidicate that they are attached to an iPod.
First off, we don't think it flew; we think it glided. Second, the reason we think that because of the structure of it's back legs and hips.
Animals have to be good at getting around. This animal's front legs are way shorter than its back legs, so it wasn't running on all fours. They don't say so in the article, but probably scientists looked at the structure of its knee joints, hips joints, and feet and decided there wasn't very much mobility -- therefore it was easily lunch running on two legs. Finally, its hip, knee, and foot joint stucture and long, thin leg bones probably look much like modern gliders.
From this wikipedia article, there seems to be some debate as to whether it hopped and glided, or climbed trees and glided. It also seems as if some imprint of the rear membrane was in the fossil.
But basically the method that I outlined above is how you tell how fossil animals moved. You look at their bone structures and decide what they were mechanically capable of, knowing that they had to be good enough to stay away from predators. Look at modern animal's means of locomotion, and decide what is most similar.
"Paleoclimatologists have the records of weather condifions going back thousands of years using information such as tree rings, snow, lava, and seed deposits."
Don't forget the gold standard of past atmospheres, ice cores.
"...you can't get much better than climatology once you go 2 weeks out."
I heard a great quote somewhere along the line: "It isn't decided that far in advance".
Here's a clarifying question:
When SETI picks up a signal and the scientists look at it and say, "this signal originated from intelligence", how do you know that the intelligence had anything to do with it, or was merely observing?
It's because we are observing the *effect* of intelligence on a phenomena -- whatever influence that the intelligence had on the signal -- that we know the intelligence was acting on it somehow. If the intelligence merely observed the signal, but had no effect on it, there would be any change in the signal, and thus we couldn't detect the intelligence.
So, if we detect the 'fingerprint' of intelligence in a signal, the intelligence was having some effect on it, or else the signal wouldn't show any signs of intelligent influence.
In another sense, you have a point. Perhaps there was creation event that created the universe with an intelligence in it. That intelligence then somehow affected the entire universe, so the background radiation shows signs of influence from an intelligence.
But if the signal shows any signs of intelligence *at all*, then that means that the intelligence was acting upon the signal at some point. If it was observing without influenve, there would never be any change in the signal that would tell us. Even if the observation affected the signal, there would be some indication of it in the signal, which is what we are detecting. Remember, we have a criteria for *intelligence*, so if the intelligence observed the signal accidentally, or interacted with it in a random way, we wouldn't notice that random influence any more than the other, non-intelligent random influences on the signal.
Whether the intelligence was originating the signal or modifying it is a further question. My guess is that a signal that was modified by intelligence would have a different 'fingerprint of intelligence' than a signal that completely originated from intelligence.
"The computer doesn't give a damn how careful you are. If you spend hours carefully crafting a chunk of code that, through your ignorance, has a big security hole, all your care hasn't helped a bit. You have merely produced bad code.
OTOH, someone with good knowledge of the subject might toss off a 30-second routine that, due to their understanding, is highly secure."
Care != time.
" Reader Pyromage provided one answer to that question, writing: ... Such an experiment does not -- even in theory -- exist for [Intelligent Design].""
:
"Because it's possible to devise an experiment that could provide scientific evidence in its favor.
I replied that
I don't think it would be too hard to come up an experiment that could falsify a particular stain of ID.
First, we'll define an impersonal ID: the intelligent designer is simply a phenomena that is intelligent, like a human being or other intelligent animal. Not that we're saying that this creator has a body, or is organic, wears a crown, writes on stone tablets, or anything else; just that it is an intelligent phenomena.
Second, we'll have to define a criteria for detecting intelligence. This is essentially the same project as SETI. We've recieved lots of interesting radio signals from outer space; the problem is, we have no definition or set of criteria to distinguish signals arising from intelligent activity from other natural, even biological phenomena. We have some signals that *might* be from life, but then again they might not. If we had a criteria, we'd have a better idea. But we don't. So, once we do have the set of criteria, we could easily apply that to any observable phenomena.
Here's the example experiment. We'll look at the background radiation from the big bang, and we'll see if it meets the criteria for intelligence. If the background radiation meets the criteria for a signal arising from intelligent activity, then we know that the phenomena that created the universe is somehow intelligent. (Obviously that doesn't mean that the Bible is completely true, etc. etc). If we can somehow determine that we have the *only* criteria for intelligence, then if the background radiation does not meet that criteria, we will then know for certain that there was no intelligence involved at or around the beginning of the universe.
An old argument for the existance of God is that the heavens act very much like a watch -- the motions of the heavenly bodies are so precise, an intelligence must have created the system. It would be like finding a watch on the ground on a desert island and not thinking that a person had dropped it there. Obviously we now know that the planets aren't as graceful and watch-like as they seem to be. But essentially this is the same test. If we can decide what intelligence is, and a set of criteria for determining if a phenomena is influence by intelligence, then we can test for ID.
That's not a flaw with my experiment. My experiment would falsifiably show whether *or not* there was some kind of intelligence involved in the origins of the universe, as it claims.
The flaw is in the logic of the counter-argument you present.
I have no doubt that any attempt to take ID seriously would be taken and run with by Creationists as proof that God exists, that the Bible should be the basis of law. That does not follow from my experiment. The beliefs and actions of religious fanatics shouldn't prevent us from being skeptical, open minded, and following the data wherever it might lead.
I don't think it would be too hard to come up an experiment that could falsify a particular stain of ID.
First, we'll define an impersonal ID: the intelligent designer is simply a phenomena that is intelligent, like a human being or other intelligent animal. Not that we're saying that this creator has a body, or is organic, wears a crown, writes on stone tablets, or anything else; just that it is an intelligent phenomena.
Second, we'll have to define a criteria for detecting intelligence. This is essentially the same project as SETI. We've recieved lots of interesting radio signals from outer space; the problem is, we have no definition or set of criteria to distinguish signals arising from intelligent activity from other natural, even biological phenomena. We have some signals that *might* be from life, but then again they might not. If we had a criteria, we'd have a better idea. But we don't. So, once we do have the set of criteria, we could easily apply that to any observable phenomena.
Here's the example experiment. We'll look at the background radiation from the big bang, and we'll see if it meets the criteria for intelligence. If the background radiation meets the criteria for a signal arising from intelligent activity, then we know that the phenomena that created the universe is somehow intelligent. (Obviously that doesn't mean that the Bible is completely true, etc. etc). If we can somehow determine that we have the *only* criteria for intelligence, then if the background radiation does not meet that criteria, we will then know for certain that there was no intelligence involved at or around the beginning of the universe.
An old argument for the existance of God is that the heavens act very much like a watch -- the motions of the heavenly bodies are so precise, an intelligence must have created the system. It would be like finding a watch on the ground on a desert island and not thinking that a person had dropped it there. Obviously we now know that the planets aren't as graceful and watch-like as they seem to be. But essentially this is the same test. If we can decide what intelligence is, and a set of criteria for determining if a phenomena is influence by intelligence, then we can test for ID.
Boy, that brings me back. I remember days of running through creeks and posion ivy in the woods, wielding sticks that served as guns at long range, swords at short range, and magic staffs and we had all maimed and killed each other.
I think you missed the point of the anecdote.
How do you know that the author wasn't picking up on some subtle signal that the dog gave off?
For all of our consciousness and self-awareness, we are still animals, and we do a lot of things on instinct, stuff that we don't totally understand and are generally unaware of in our everyday lives.