An atheist rejects the claim that any god exists, so he cannot "show that God is evil and vengeful". He can demonstrate that stories of God show him behaving badly.
when the truth that he is forgiving arises,
sez you
they criticize that as a "get out of jail free card"
Well, it is. There are so many flaws in religions, and they're layered so deep, that pointing out the flaws requires a scattershot approach. The more deeply layered flaws require temporarily accepting the supporting structure to identify the contradictions and moral depravity.
The boomers were set up by the so-called "Greatest Generation", which failed to give the boomers a moral foundation. They in turn were damaged by the Progressives of the 1900-mid-1930s era, who started the trend to personal irresponsibility and big government with Social Security and the Income Tax. Before then, the looters really didn't have a foothold.
A society being ruined does not mean that all civilization collapses; a more vibrant society often takes over the one that collapses from corruption.
My 9th grade algebra teacher loved to quote Aristotle complaining about the degeneracy of the younger generation; implying that the good conditions then (1965) contradicted Aristotle. She failed to realize that Greek civilization fell apart after Aristotle's student Alexander 'The Great' died.
IQ distribution isn't perfectly Gaussian. On the low end there is a long tail, but it's clipped at zero On the high end there is also a long tail.
I'd guess that the long tail on the low end is caused by brain damage of various sorts such as birth defects or accidents. On the high end there's a tendency to selective breeding and extraordinary care (which can act on whatever plasticity is available for IQ).
A 70 IQ is adequate to run a primitive shop like a farmstand, or operate a cash register. That's 2 standard deviations below the mean, leaving about 2.1% dependent upon family, charity, or the government, as an adult.
IIRC among humans, the tendency is a 40% return to the mean, so two 70 IQ parents have a 50% chance of each child having an IQ of 82 or above.
Tracking students (keeping bright and well-behaved students in classes with other bright and well-behaved students) is being deprecated by "politically correct" school boards; tracking would eliminate much of the "bad environment" problems they face in poor schools. Disruptive students need either whips or almost-magical teachers, and there aren't enough of the latter to go around at any price.
Hello my baby, hello my honey, hello my ragtime gal.
Send me a kiss by wire, baby my heart's on fire.
If you refuse me, honey you'll lose me, then you'll be left alone.
Oh baby, telephone, and tell me I'm your own.
Healthcare can be quite expensive, and in a place like the US with a lot of high tech medical doohickeys, it can be astonishingly expensive. The government does not have unlimited funds; in extremis it can't spend more on healthcare than the GDP. So sooner or later the government is going to determine and limit what it will pay for, and it would not be surprising to see everything else prohibited. So what will be the basis on which the government decides whose problems it will pay to fix? Obviously, those who can be expected not to contribute much to government get cut first: hence Obama's pronouncement five years ago that grandma should just take a pain pill (and prepare to die.) If you're an opponent of those currently in power (especially if you're prominent and have no way to blackmail the leaders) expect to have payment for your life-saving procedure denied or be subject to mysterious bureaucratic delays. If you've made a personal enemy of someone sitting on a death panel, kiss your ass goodbye.
Remember also that ultimately the government pays for nothing; that generous benefit you're getting was stolen from your neighbor, your children or parents, your siblings or even yourself. That guy down the street who spends half his life in the hospital because every July he runs his motorcycle into a tree and every December gets a new form of VD from his favorite whore? You're paying for his medical expenses. He doesn't care, he's not paying, why should he be more cautious?
I'm currently reading The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, which gives a little insight into what education was like over 150 years ago. (T.S. was written in 1876.) There was much more rote memorization than today, including memorizing long poems. Lots of attention to literature (particularly the Bible), geography, history. Math was primitive but thorough. Science and technology was practically nonexistent. Debating was standard fare.
The net was that people's minds were filled with enough information to be able to judge political affairs and to be able to handle daily tasks, and in addition filled with heaps of useless garbage. Careers were learned outside of school.
Today's schooling has just as much garbage, but its nature has changed. Math is less thorough but covers much more ground. Science education is greatly improved, in part because its value is so obvious with 150 years of progress. Graduates are woefully unable to judge political affairs, and have their minds filled with historical irrelevancies and bias.
Woz is talking out of his ass. His proposal for 1:1 teacher:student ratio has been shown non-optimum. How would you like to have a teacher hovering over your shoulder 6 hours a day, like a slave's overseer?
Most students do well in moderate sized classes, 20 to 30 well-behaved children. Those with behavior problems and those with learning disabilities may need more attention, but they're not "most students".
There are about 50 million school-age children in the US. The total workforce is about 150 million. Assuming 20% overhead for administration and maintenance, a 1:1 teacher:student ratio means 60 million people in the education industry without even considering college. Where are those people going to come from? How are they going to be paid? Where is the production going to come from to feed, clothe, house (etc.) the 1 person in 5 who is engaged in nothing but teaching?
The more carefully the idea is examined, the worse it looks.
Common Core (and you're not going to get away with hiding it by not capitalizing the program's name) is a scheme to create a uniform low level of education suitable to worker drones. As its goals and standards are becoming more widely recognized, states that had previously accepted it are reversing themselves.
Not getting caught for murder is not a concern only for those living under law prohibiting murder. Once a person is known to be a murderer, a majority of people will refuse to deal with him and he will be at risk from those seeking revenge.
It's quite easy to prove that freedom measurably improves society. Just compare the east and west sides of the Iron Curtain circa 1960.
Want to guess what the concept of privacy would refer to with a government-controlled internet? Bureaucrats would get a lot of chuckles out of anyone insisting on a court order to spy on citizens.
Most people working at McDonalds are young, and by and large the young do not have expensive health problems and do not need insurance. Insurance is an utter and disgusting waste of money.
The Obama administration is deliberately destroying private sector jobs. Their latest sally in this direction is increasing the minimum wage.
As long as a person is capable of filling some other person's wants, there's a potential job available. The idea that "there are not enough jobs to go around" is absurd. What minimum wage does is make a large number of jobs illegal.
The constructive response would be to find ways to make those programs more effective.
There is no way to make a suicide program promote life. The economic ignorance behind any program that supports living in poverty is complete, and impenetrable to the light of reason.
Socialism is great with small, like-minded groups;
The first year of the Plymouth Colony was a socialist society of between 50 and 102 people, and it was disastrous. It took a move away from socialism to make survival possible.
Slashdot Mirror
sez you
Well, it is. There are so many flaws in religions, and they're layered so deep, that pointing out the flaws requires a scattershot approach. The more deeply layered flaws require temporarily accepting the supporting structure to identify the contradictions and moral depravity.
In the US, the sign of a full stop is octagonal.
The boomers were set up by the so-called "Greatest Generation", which failed to give the boomers a moral foundation. They in turn were damaged by the Progressives of the 1900-mid-1930s era, who started the trend to personal irresponsibility and big government with Social Security and the Income Tax. Before then, the looters really didn't have a foothold.
A society being ruined does not mean that all civilization collapses; a more vibrant society often takes over the one that collapses from corruption.
My 9th grade algebra teacher loved to quote Aristotle complaining about the degeneracy of the younger generation; implying that the good conditions then (1965) contradicted Aristotle. She failed to realize that Greek civilization fell apart after Aristotle's student Alexander 'The Great' died.
IQ distribution isn't perfectly Gaussian. On the low end there is a long tail, but it's clipped at zero On the high end there is also a long tail.
I'd guess that the long tail on the low end is caused by brain damage of various sorts such as birth defects or accidents. On the high end there's a tendency to selective breeding and extraordinary care (which can act on whatever plasticity is available for IQ).
A 70 IQ is adequate to run a primitive shop like a farmstand, or operate a cash register. That's 2 standard deviations below the mean, leaving about 2.1% dependent upon family, charity, or the government, as an adult.
IIRC among humans, the tendency is a 40% return to the mean, so two 70 IQ parents have a 50% chance of each child having an IQ of 82 or above.
Tracking students (keeping bright and well-behaved students in classes with other bright and well-behaved students) is being deprecated by "politically correct" school boards; tracking would eliminate much of the "bad environment" problems they face in poor schools. Disruptive students need either whips or almost-magical teachers, and there aren't enough of the latter to go around at any price.
Hello my baby, hello my honey, hello my ragtime gal.
Send me a kiss by wire, baby my heart's on fire.
If you refuse me, honey you'll lose me, then you'll be left alone.
Oh baby, telephone, and tell me I'm your own.
Healthcare can be quite expensive, and in a place like the US with a lot of high tech medical doohickeys, it can be astonishingly expensive. The government does not have unlimited funds; in extremis it can't spend more on healthcare than the GDP. So sooner or later the government is going to determine and limit what it will pay for, and it would not be surprising to see everything else prohibited. So what will be the basis on which the government decides whose problems it will pay to fix? Obviously, those who can be expected not to contribute much to government get cut first: hence Obama's pronouncement five years ago that grandma should just take a pain pill (and prepare to die.) If you're an opponent of those currently in power (especially if you're prominent and have no way to blackmail the leaders) expect to have payment for your life-saving procedure denied or be subject to mysterious bureaucratic delays. If you've made a personal enemy of someone sitting on a death panel, kiss your ass goodbye.
Remember also that ultimately the government pays for nothing; that generous benefit you're getting was stolen from your neighbor, your children or parents, your siblings or even yourself. That guy down the street who spends half his life in the hospital because every July he runs his motorcycle into a tree and every December gets a new form of VD from his favorite whore? You're paying for his medical expenses. He doesn't care, he's not paying, why should he be more cautious?
Do the majority of young Americans think "alot" is a word?
Cadillac had thermal imagers in heads up displays, and for all I know may still have them available. I'd guess they're neither cheap nor popular.
It may not have been difficult, but your effort was unsuccessful. "Someone" is singular, "they" is plural.
Driving on the right side of the road is the norm, too. Are you going to insist on doing that in England?
Somehow I don't think wolves are essential to Finite Impulse Response filters.
I'm currently reading The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, which gives a little insight into what education was like over 150 years ago. (T.S. was written in 1876.) There was much more rote memorization than today, including memorizing long poems. Lots of attention to literature (particularly the Bible), geography, history. Math was primitive but thorough. Science and technology was practically nonexistent. Debating was standard fare.
The net was that people's minds were filled with enough information to be able to judge political affairs and to be able to handle daily tasks, and in addition filled with heaps of useless garbage. Careers were learned outside of school.
Today's schooling has just as much garbage, but its nature has changed. Math is less thorough but covers much more ground. Science education is greatly improved, in part because its value is so obvious with 150 years of progress. Graduates are woefully unable to judge political affairs, and have their minds filled with historical irrelevancies and bias.
Woz is talking out of his ass. His proposal for 1:1 teacher:student ratio has been shown non-optimum. How would you like to have a teacher hovering over your shoulder 6 hours a day, like a slave's overseer?
Most students do well in moderate sized classes, 20 to 30 well-behaved children. Those with behavior problems and those with learning disabilities may need more attention, but they're not "most students".
There are about 50 million school-age children in the US. The total workforce is about 150 million. Assuming 20% overhead for administration and maintenance, a 1:1 teacher:student ratio means 60 million people in the education industry without even considering college. Where are those people going to come from? How are they going to be paid? Where is the production going to come from to feed, clothe, house (etc.) the 1 person in 5 who is engaged in nothing but teaching?
The more carefully the idea is examined, the worse it looks.
Common Core (and you're not going to get away with hiding it by not capitalizing the program's name) is a scheme to create a uniform low level of education suitable to worker drones. As its goals and standards are becoming more widely recognized, states that had previously accepted it are reversing themselves.
Not getting caught for murder is not a concern only for those living under law prohibiting murder. Once a person is known to be a murderer, a majority of people will refuse to deal with him and he will be at risk from those seeking revenge.
It's quite easy to prove that freedom measurably improves society. Just compare the east and west sides of the Iron Curtain circa 1960.
Bad organizations behave badly. That doesn't mean that bad organizations are the only ones that exist.
Want to guess what the concept of privacy would refer to with a government-controlled internet? Bureaucrats would get a lot of chuckles out of anyone insisting on a court order to spy on citizens.
The poor in the USSR were walled off so tourists couldn't see them. Their condition was monstrously worse than today's working poor in the US.
Most people working at McDonalds are young, and by and large the young do not have expensive health problems and do not need insurance. Insurance is an utter and disgusting waste of money.
The Obama administration is deliberately destroying private sector jobs. Their latest sally in this direction is increasing the minimum wage.
As long as a person is capable of filling some other person's wants, there's a potential job available. The idea that "there are not enough jobs to go around" is absurd. What minimum wage does is make a large number of jobs illegal.
There is no way to make a suicide program promote life. The economic ignorance behind any program that supports living in poverty is complete, and impenetrable to the light of reason.
The first year of the Plymouth Colony was a socialist society of between 50 and 102 people, and it was disastrous. It took a move away from socialism to make survival possible.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA, Obama has announced he has no intention to be bound by Congress's Constitutional authority. He is a dictator.