> It's nice that your world view is confirmed because a group of people are willing to stand in line and shell out money (Barnum, anyone?)
There's actually more to it than that, but when there is a universal fanaticism, sometimes there actually is something unique underlying the inspiration.
> SF? Not quite. Good SF? Not even close.
Hmm... I'll have to disagree with you on that one. Even if we accept what appears to be your definition of science-fiction (i.e., extrapolating upon a philosophical concept unbounded by present technological limits), I would still disagree with you. Star Wars is an excellent creative and visual representation of what a technologically advanced galaxy might look like. Furthermore, it expounds upon the implications an interesting dualist version of Taoism.
> And, yes, I am an elitist snob.
Yeah, it must be difficult to watch so many shallow fools be entertained so richly by such a mockery of pure science-fiction. Oh the curse of intelligence and enlightened artistic taste.
> Gattica was good SF, Blade Runner was good SF, Minority Report was good SF.
I enjoyed Gattica. Minority Report was ok. I didn't find Blade Runner very enjoyable. None of these have stimulated my imagination like Star War has.
> Star Wars is a Western in SF clothing.
There are certainly heavy elements of fantasy, but a Western?!! The main plot fundamentals are not Han Solo and the bounty hunter.
Don't worry, these pompous, elite slashdotters are the exception, not the norm. Star Wars has a mythos to it that has captured the hearts of Americans and that has continued to do so with the prequels. I'm glad to see that the hoi polloi seems to agree with my taste of films and appreciation of well-done sci-fi (evidenced by the long lines and box-office returns).
I knew it would only be a matter of time before the intrinsically negative slashdot crowd would start modding up the cynical comments. It amazes me. I'll take Star Wars over "well-acted" movies like Lost in Translation or Chicago any day of the week.
See the second graph on this webpage for a graphical representation of the radiation levels. These are the events where radiation engineers on satellite programs find out if they did their job properly making their equipment hard against single event effects.
Well, at least our best students still dominate in terms of math skills. In otherwords, if you compare our top 1% with the top 1% of other countries, we score very highly.
I would consider this statistic to be more important since, generally speaking, these are the people who are going to enter critical math-related positions (in engineering, economics, etc). Nevertheless, I certainly don't mean to say that the math skills of the hoi polloi are non-important (just subordinate). "Innumeracy" affects many aspects of modern life and critical thinking.
Although Slashdot seems to typically censure any responses to this popular line of reasoning, I believe another perspective deserves declaration...
> Bush, however, lied about the reasons to start a war, in which presumably tens of thousands of Iraqis have died, and over a thousand American soldiers have died, bereaving their families and making orphans of their children. Bush's dishonesty is a moral abomination that has caused an enormous amount of death and suffering, with no end in the foreseeable future.
A true assessment of how "moral" an action would be to contrast the current outcome with the way things would've been otherwise. Are you really going to argue that the sum total of death and suffering in Iraq will be more now, even with Sadamm out of power? Contrast the ways things are to the way things were. Consider 50k-100k Kurds gassed in 1987-1988 (as reported by the Human Rights Watch). Or the hundreds of thousands of children dying of malnutrition and disease via the old method of containment. For this reason, the international publication "The Economist" supports the war in Iraq, although they disapprove of the misinformation used by the current administration to get us there.
> If overthrowing dictatorship is justification for war, to you support a military overthrow of North Korea?
North Korea is a completely different animal, having in its stock nuclear weapons a short toss away from millions of people living in Seoul. Similar reasoning applies to China as well. Just because some weeds can't be pulled without making a mess doesn't mean that **NO** weeds should be pulled. Upseeding dictators doesn't necessarily mean we'll be consistently at war, because after a few of the more egregrious are defeated, the others will begin to pay attention to basic human rights.
I have no doubt we have a similar goal in mind (reduction of world pain and suffering), but your pacifistic approach which (in my view), tolerates the status quo defies logic.
If there is indeed life on Mars, and a future sample retrieval mission obtains a sample, AND the replicating mechanism of that sample is NOT RNA/DNA (but perhaps, a more primitive form of it), would that be enough to convince significant numbers of creationists of evolution? The body of evidence keeps growing -- there's gotta be a point somewhere when the argument is as straight-forward as round Earth -vs- flat Earth.
(Of course, one might say we're already at that point, but we also don't have Ph.D. scientists from Berkeley and the like advocating a flat earth...)
Interesting how you nit the parent message for generalizing about professors being Democracts and then proceed with a stream of your own generalizations about Republicans.
Physics definitely is not for everyone. It's amazing how some people can absorp the concepts so readily while others appear to simply beat their heads against the wall. I always felt like an ant next to the brightest in my classes.
Good luck with your studies. Maybe you can help the good folks over in Geneva once you get your PhD.;-)
> I know of cases where science has discredit people who claim religion, but none where an actual religion has been discredited.
What is religion but claims of individuals? Larger religions exist when a body of individuals share a common creed. And I've seen both individual and aggregate representations of religion be disproven by science. Examples of larger religions being refuted include Mormon archeological claims and Christian claims to a global flood.
> Also, he wasn't talking about specific religions, but religion in general.
Religions in general make claims which pertain the physical, and religions in general are discredited time and time again. Your distinction is nonsensical.
> The problem is that science deals with the physical and religion with the metaphysical. Like I said, you have pretty feeble understanding of both.
Almost every religion I've ever encountered indeed does make statements that directly pertain to the "physical". Hence, physical/scientific discoveries often discredit the credibility of various religions.
Thanks to the planning behind this foundation, after the Microsoft Empire falls, there will only be 10 years of anarchy instead of 100. In its place, an even greater (but planned) empire will replace it. That new republic will be open source.
Rumor also has it there is a second foundation, located at Slashdot End in the galaxy...
I read the Economist to stay informed on matters of polical and economic happenings. I read Scientific American to stay abreast on the latest scientific developments. And I read Playboy to stay current on pop culture.
> On the other hand, if you're comparing launching a system that upsets the worldwide nuclear balance and doesn't have any practical uses other than global thermonuclear warfare
How short-sighted. Does stopping an ICBM launched by a rogue nation or terrorist group toward Manhattan constitute a practical use? And by your logic, the USSR's construction of ABMs around Moscow should've resulted in world war 3.
International development of an ability to safely diffuse ballistic high-speed high-yield explosive devices is a very positive progression in light of desiring world peace. I hope that within 15 yrs, all countries are protected by missile defense systems. Perhaps humanity may survive through the century yet.
No, this debate runs much deeper than the current election. The editors of The Economist (a very respected magazine) have argued for years against the FUD by which special interest groups seek protectionistic economic policy. One quote from an excellent write-up from the publication:
Outsourcing (or "offshoring") has been going on for centuries, but still accounts for a tiny proportion of the jobs constantly being created and destroyed within America's economy. Even at the best of times, the American economy has a tremendous rate of "churn"--over 2m jobs a month. In all, the process creates many more jobs than it destroys: 24m more during the 1990s. The process allocates resources--money and people--to where they can be most productive, helped by competition, including from outsourcing, that lowers prices. In the long run, higher productivity is the only way to create higher standards of living across an economy.
Yes, individuals will be hurt in the process, and the focus of public policy should be directed towards providing a safety net for them, as well as ensuring that Americans have education to match the new jobs being created. By contrast, regarding globalisation as the enemy, as Mr Edwards does often and Messrs Kerry and Bush both do by default, is a much greater threat to America's economic health than any Indian software programmer.
According to Wikipedia, the NSA still has google.com beat by a long-shot when it comes to hiring Ph.D. mathematicians:
"Despite being the world's largest single employer of Ph.D. mathematicians, the single largest owner of supercomputers, and an organization with a budget that exceeds that of the CIA, it has had a remarkably low profile until recent years. "
Slashdot Mirror
> It's nice that your world view is confirmed because a group of people are willing to stand in line and shell out money (Barnum, anyone?)
There's actually more to it than that, but when there is a universal fanaticism, sometimes there actually is something unique underlying the inspiration.
> SF? Not quite. Good SF? Not even close.
Hmm... I'll have to disagree with you on that one. Even if we accept what appears to be your definition of science-fiction (i.e., extrapolating upon a philosophical concept unbounded by present technological limits), I would still disagree with you. Star Wars is an excellent creative and visual representation of what a technologically advanced galaxy might look like. Furthermore, it expounds upon the implications an interesting dualist version of Taoism.
> And, yes, I am an elitist snob.
Yeah, it must be difficult to watch so many shallow fools be entertained so richly by such a mockery of pure science-fiction. Oh the curse of intelligence and enlightened artistic taste.
> Gattica was good SF, Blade Runner was good SF, Minority Report was good SF.
I enjoyed Gattica. Minority Report was ok. I didn't find Blade Runner very enjoyable. None of these have stimulated my imagination like Star War has.
> Star Wars is a Western in SF clothing.
There are certainly heavy elements of fantasy, but a Western?!! The main plot fundamentals are not Han Solo and the bounty hunter.
Don't worry, these pompous, elite slashdotters are the exception, not the norm. Star Wars has a mythos to it that has captured the hearts of Americans and that has continued to do so with the prequels. I'm glad to see that the hoi polloi seems to agree with my taste of films and appreciation of well-done sci-fi (evidenced by the long lines and box-office returns).
I knew it would only be a matter of time before the intrinsically negative slashdot crowd would start modding up the cynical comments. It amazes me. I'll take Star Wars over "well-acted" movies like Lost in Translation or Chicago any day of the week.
See the second graph on this webpage for a graphical representation of the radiation levels. These are the events where radiation engineers on satellite programs find out if they did their job properly making their equipment hard against single event effects.
I'm confused... did Lucas hire someone else to direct Episode III???
I wonder how many get tossed to make that one 82-incher....
Well, at least our best students still dominate in terms of math skills. In otherwords, if you compare our top 1% with the top 1% of other countries, we score very highly.
I would consider this statistic to be more important since, generally speaking, these are the people who are going to enter critical math-related positions (in engineering, economics, etc). Nevertheless, I certainly don't mean to say that the math skills of the hoi polloi are non-important (just subordinate). "Innumeracy" affects many aspects of modern life and critical thinking.
Well-said.
Although Slashdot seems to typically censure any responses to this popular line of reasoning, I believe another perspective deserves declaration...
> Bush, however, lied about the reasons to start a war, in which presumably tens of thousands of Iraqis have died, and over a thousand American soldiers have died, bereaving their families and making orphans of their children. Bush's dishonesty is a moral abomination that has caused an enormous amount of death and suffering, with no end in the foreseeable future.
A true assessment of how "moral" an action would be to contrast the current outcome with the way things would've been otherwise. Are you really going to argue that the sum total of death and suffering in Iraq will be more now, even with Sadamm out of power? Contrast the ways things are to the way things were. Consider 50k-100k Kurds gassed in 1987-1988 (as reported by the Human Rights Watch). Or the hundreds of thousands of children dying of malnutrition and disease via the old method of containment. For this reason, the international publication "The Economist" supports the war in Iraq, although they disapprove of the misinformation used by the current administration to get us there.
> If overthrowing dictatorship is justification for war, to you support a military overthrow of North Korea?
North Korea is a completely different animal, having in its stock nuclear weapons a short toss away from millions of people living in Seoul. Similar reasoning applies to China as well. Just because some weeds can't be pulled without making a mess doesn't mean that **NO** weeds should be pulled. Upseeding dictators doesn't necessarily mean we'll be consistently at war, because after a few of the more egregrious are defeated, the others will begin to pay attention to basic human rights.
I have no doubt we have a similar goal in mind (reduction of world pain and suffering), but your pacifistic approach which (in my view), tolerates the status quo defies logic.
If there is indeed life on Mars, and a future sample retrieval mission obtains a sample, AND the replicating mechanism of that sample is NOT RNA/DNA (but perhaps, a more primitive form of it), would that be enough to convince significant numbers of creationists of evolution? The body of evidence keeps growing -- there's gotta be a point somewhere when the argument is as straight-forward as round Earth -vs- flat Earth.
(Of course, one might say we're already at that point, but we also don't have Ph.D. scientists from Berkeley and the like advocating a flat earth...)
Interesting how you nit the parent message for generalizing about professors being Democracts and then proceed with a stream of your own generalizations about Republicans.
I recognize that Lockheed Martin was the prime contractor on this project, but anyone know who built the parachute subsystem?
Physics definitely is not for everyone. It's amazing how some people can absorp the concepts so readily while others appear to simply beat their heads against the wall. I always felt like an ant next to the brightest in my classes.
;-)
Good luck with your studies. Maybe you can help the good folks over in Geneva once you get your PhD.
> Mormon archeological claims
See here.
> Christian claims to a global flood.
And here...
> I know of cases where science has discredit people who claim religion, but none where an actual religion has been discredited.
What is religion but claims of individuals? Larger religions exist when a body of individuals share a common creed. And I've seen both individual and aggregate representations of religion be disproven by science. Examples of larger religions being refuted include Mormon archeological claims and Christian claims to a global flood.
> Also, he wasn't talking about specific religions, but religion in general.
Religions in general make claims which pertain the physical, and religions in general are discredited time and time again. Your distinction is nonsensical.
No. Clearly, "chance" refers to "probability of x, given our current collection of data".
If I have five coins placed under cups, what are my chances of lifting one of the cups and seeing a heads? 50%
If I learn that at least four of the coins are heads, what are my chances of a choosing a heads? 90%
Additional information changes the odds. At least be right if you're going to be anal.
> The problem is that science deals with the physical and religion with the metaphysical. Like I said, you have pretty feeble understanding of both.
Almost every religion I've ever encountered indeed does make statements that directly pertain to the "physical". Hence, physical/scientific discoveries often discredit the credibility of various religions.
Thanks to the planning behind this foundation, after the Microsoft Empire falls, there will only be 10 years of anarchy instead of 100. In its place, an even greater (but planned) empire will replace it. That new republic will be open source.
Rumor also has it there is a second foundation, located at Slashdot End in the galaxy...
I read the Economist to stay informed on matters of polical and economic happenings. I read Scientific American to stay abreast on the latest scientific developments. And I read Playboy to stay current on pop culture.
> On the other hand, if you're comparing launching a system that upsets the worldwide nuclear balance and doesn't have any practical uses other than global thermonuclear warfare
How short-sighted. Does stopping an ICBM launched by a rogue nation or terrorist group toward Manhattan constitute a practical use? And by your logic, the USSR's construction of ABMs around Moscow should've resulted in world war 3.
International development of an ability to safely diffuse ballistic high-speed high-yield explosive devices is a very positive progression in light of desiring world peace. I hope that within 15 yrs, all countries are protected by missile defense systems. Perhaps humanity may survive through the century yet.
Don't make me partition that!
And here's another group of Phoebe images...
According to Wikipedia, the NSA still has google.com beat by a long-shot when it comes to hiring Ph.D. mathematicians:
"Despite being the world's largest single employer of Ph.D. mathematicians, the single largest owner of supercomputers, and an organization with a budget that exceeds that of the CIA, it has had a remarkably low profile until recent years. "
There was actually some good discussion on this topic in a slashdot poll about love a while back...
Scientists have now found the brightest dark-sucker galaxy to date...