Actually no. Come on Alan, yer citation doesn't even say that. It just says that "more than half" are "new" money, and that only 20% of the total wealth is inherited...So 49% of the wealthy could be old money, with "new" zillionares like Bill Gates (etc) skewing the actual wealth distribution.
It's difficult to hide inherited wealth from the IRS...they always want their share.
Broadly true, though I actually learned to weld from reading a book about it, and the book kicked ass. People who weld aren't usually brimming with hubris, though literary criticism is not just brimming, but overflowing with it.
Math is just as bad, and the thing is (unlike literary criticism), it shouldn't be! If you're doing theoretical math, you shouldn't need to be walking around trying to convince people what a big brain you have...you're doing theoretical math. Now if you're doing lit crit, you gotta talk it up, or people might just think you're an asshole.
So while I'd expect to have to sift a lot of garbage while reading a book of literary criticism, I really resent having to do the same for a book of math. Math is simple, elegant, and objective, and it should be presented that way...preferably with a few concrete applications for people like me who like that crap.
Nothing like one mathematician being snarky about another mathematician.
Frankly they both bored the shit out of me after about 5 seconds. Why is it that math is always rendered this way? I've met interesting and articulate mathematicians before, so I know they exist...Are they not allowed to write textbooks? Or at least write reviews about textbooks?
I was pushed into a near-hatred of math by hordes of pretentious math prodigys that had zero use for any student who didn't start off with what they felt was obvious knowledge. The text book talks down to you, the professor talks down to you, and god forbid you ask for a practical example!
I'm not a math genius, but I'm damn good at practical math. The only way I managed to pass calculus the first time was because I happened to be taking it at the same time as a physics course, and I could figure it out where I could see an application in physics. For calc II I shopped around, trying to find a decent book with dismal results. Ended up dropping the class, and shopping for a decent professor the next semester.
Math is cool, but goddamn, the way it's taught is awful and jackasses like this reviewer and the joker who wrote the book he's reviewing are a prime reason why.
You should never work on that sort of thing on anything but a 'clean' machine which has only the environment you're trying to test against on it and nothing else. Under no circumstances should it be connected to a network (besides an isolated test network), and it should never be connected to the internets.
It's just like working with an RL virus. You've got to take precautions unless you want to catch it yourself.
Good. They deserve some socio-legal proctology for betraying their paying customers to the government, without even a hint of protest against an action that is illegal, against all precident, and clearly unconstitutional.
Makes you wonder how often they allow wiretapping without a warrant, doesn't it? Clearly they had no problem with it.
Can't find anything like technical specs on it, but its described as being "slightly larger than a regular pda", which seems like it would definitely require external battery to get above a day of uptime.
I wonder as well about broadcast power vs battery life...In strictly passive mode it wouldn't matter, but trying an active MiM attack, you'd need to be broadcasting pretty strongly not to have the existing signal drown you out.
Couple of weeks? For a wifi enabled hand held device? Where the hell do you buy your batteries?!?
Unless it gets hooked up to some kind of battery array, I think we can safely peg the window for this thing at 24 hours at the extreme outside, though it's probably less than 12.
Now, depending on how smart it is, you could have it come up for 5 or 10 minutes at a certain time when you know something good will be available (e.g The boss syncs his pda), but it would have to be some cron-esque computer scheduled job, and I'm not sure why any environment (other than maybe a retail environment) would be running a regular job across wireless.
I think it'd be much more effective for the old Delivery Guy trick; something to keep in your pocket while you wander through the office, looking for someone to deliver your package to...Though I don't know how it is in other places, but where I work everything gets signed for in front, and a guard brings you your package. Of course, we don't use wireless either, so that's two for two.
So, what you're saying is, there are smart people who know whats going on, and dumb people who listen to the smart people when they are told how to vote?
Doesn't usually work that way, in my experience. People believe those who pander to their predudices.
The point that you seem to be missing, is that there aren't two sides. There is a religious argument, and there is a scientific argument.
Apples and oranges. You're not going to get an argument that's half apple, half orange. There is no compromise. If you want to have a scientific world view, you're stuck with evolution...no other theory even comes close. Scientists don't argue over evolution, they argue over little specifics in evolution.
If you want the religious version, you get creationism. Now some people reconcile the religious argument with the scientific argument..."The bible says what god did, and science says how he did it"...but if you're a pure creationist, you're talking 7 days, 6000 years, and ZERO evolution. And even if you reconcile, it's religion that bends to science, and not the other way around, and many zealots find that intolerable.
As with all deductive proofs of a religious nature, this only works if I accept all the premises as given. Anselm did the same trick a thousand years ago, and he did it better. All I need to say is, "DNA is not a language". Deoxyribonucleic acid...Acids are just common reactive chemical compounds, and while dna is more complex (only an acid because of some convieniently placed phosphate groups), acids occur everywhere in nature and their origins are not in the least mysterious.
So, instead of indulging in deductive masturbation, please point to something, anything, whose existence is only explainable through creation by a omnipotent creator.
The very idea that there are two choices with regards to evolution vs creationsim is laughable. Most of the dichotomies you talk about are matters of opinion, this is true.
But for evolution vs creationism, the choice is this:
Evolution: backed by countless observations of the world around us. Creationism: backed by a popular religious text.
Creationism is a belief with zero evidence behind it. It is not scientific; it is the opposite of scientific, meant to be taken on pure faith.
Evolution is a scientific theory. It has no serious scientific challengers. It is as valid and robust a theory as gravity, and, frankly, it is much better understood than gravity. We know the mechanisms for evolution, we can watch it happen through the fossil record, whereas the mechanisms for gravity are imperfectly understood.
Putting that on the same level with Creationism is a joke. They're apples and oranges.
THERE IS NO STEP BEYOND THEORY. Evolution is never going to be anything other than a theory...There is nothing else for it to be. You show the same hilarious incomprehension of the whole idea of science as the creationists.
Facts are things you can touch. Theorys explain facts in such a way as to allow us to predict, to reason ahead to facts we haven't found yet. Evolution predicted the existence of DNA more than a hundred years before it was discovered. That's a damn good theory.
Oh, I understand, though I doubt anyone in this society would actually fight over any of it (outside of a bar). Democracy is more about keeping the people happy than actually empowering them.
Any system would work well, if we had a way of putting the right people in the right places. Democracy is a terrible way of doing that, but since we vote the morons into office we feel like we're in control, and that our actions affect the outcome. So when bad stuff comes down the pipe, it's all the fault of the *insert name of other party* not the idiots who are actually in charge, so we end up with agression directed at our fellow citizens, rather than at our rulers.
See, and here I thought that the purpose of evolution was to describe the way in which living things change in response to environmental pressures. Who knew?
Oh, shall we hold creationism to the same standard? Where are the controlled creationist experiments? You want to hold something that happens over millienia to a lab demonstration? We're not going to show up too well there, but hey, God did it in 7 days, and you can't show it in a lab? 7 days? Come on! That should be easy!
Again with the negative proof. Give me one tiny shred of positive proof for creationism, one single solitary fact that suggests, against all other evidence, that the world was created in a few days by an omnipotent being, and I'll shut up.
Just one fact, and "It says so in the bible" don't count, if you're too stupid to realize that in advance.
I wouldn't call a website by the crackpot creationist R. David Pogge to be a mountain of evidence.
It's pretty hilarious watching Creationists try and cite evidence...I mean, an Evolutionist will cite thousands of scientists, hundreds of thousands of studies, and millions of years of fossil record, which all corroberate evolution.
Creationists will point to the personal website of a software engineer.
You hold to a literal read of the bible. That can be deduced from the fact that you seem to believe the Noah myth, one of the most hilariously improbable bit of the bible.
Then you move on and seem to suggest that when H5N becomes people flu, it has become a wholly new thing, rather than an old thing with a small change. This is strong creationism; doesn't even allow for microevolution.
So don't lie and say that you're religious and you believe in science, because you don't. A literal read of the bible and a belief in science are impossible to reconcile, no matter if you believe all the science that is not contradicted in the bible.
Just another damn ID fanatic, trying to cloak his fanatacism in science. The only thing your argument has going for it is that the amount of inbreeding that would have had to occur if your belief was the correct one would explain a hell of a lot about Kansas.
Ad Verecundiam is always a deductive fallacy, but informally it's only a fallacy if the authority in question is not recognized as being a good source on the subject at hand (Appeal to Irrelevant Authority).
Pointing out that the CIA (arguably the best source in a discussion about WMDs in Iraq) holds a certain view about WMDs in Iraq is a perfectly legitimate point in an inductive argument. How much weight that point holds with you depends on how much credit you give to the CIA.
By the standards of this discussion, they're option has a lot of weight.
Yea, they love to pull out the "Just a Theory" line.
I've never once heard a good argument for Creationism. It's right back to the "Two Teams" thing. If the Evolution team loses, that means the Creationism team wins, right? So they attack Evolution, which is really a good thing, because the more rigorous testing a scientific theory gets, the better it is...Or if they find a real problem, we'll be able to start looking for an answer which will result in a better theory.
A lot of us think this stuff. Unfortunately a lot more people think...hey wait, American Idol is on! *wanders off*
Drives me nuts when people treat science like it's a matter of opinion. Either there is evidence or there isn't. If you think they're wrong, then point to the flaw in the damn evidence! Don't just jam your fingers in your ears and yell 'NUH-UH!!!'
But that's the way it's done in a lot of places around here. I wish they'd decide to disbelieve something dangerous like EMF theory, or something. That'd be entertaining. Of course Bird Flu could run that way, if they deny funding for research because it surely can't "evolve" into a human communicable form.
Sure, because the liberal CIA, with it's leaders appointed by the arch liberal GWB, is totally sitting on all the evidence of WMDs, because they don't want to have to say, "Hey, we found some WMDs finally."
If this administration could find a credible talking dog to back up their search for WMDs, they'd be trumpeting it as loudly as possible. The fact that the only evidence you can point to is a fluffy article not even printed in the damn Stars and Stripes, but on the DoD webpage, suggests that the "article" is totally lacking in merit.
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Actually no. Come on Alan, yer citation doesn't even say that. It just says that "more than half" are "new" money, and that only 20% of the total wealth is inherited...So 49% of the wealthy could be old money, with "new" zillionares like Bill Gates (etc) skewing the actual wealth distribution.
It's difficult to hide inherited wealth from the IRS...they always want their share.
It's good that none of the tracks from that album showed up on any of the Beatles "Greatest Hits" albums...They did? Oh. Nevermind.
Broadly true, though I actually learned to weld from reading a book about it, and the book kicked ass. People who weld aren't usually brimming with hubris, though literary criticism is not just brimming, but overflowing with it.
Math is just as bad, and the thing is (unlike literary criticism), it shouldn't be! If you're doing theoretical math, you shouldn't need to be walking around trying to convince people what a big brain you have...you're doing theoretical math. Now if you're doing lit crit, you gotta talk it up, or people might just think you're an asshole.
So while I'd expect to have to sift a lot of garbage while reading a book of literary criticism, I really resent having to do the same for a book of math. Math is simple, elegant, and objective, and it should be presented that way...preferably with a few concrete applications for people like me who like that crap.
Nothing like one mathematician being snarky about another mathematician.
Frankly they both bored the shit out of me after about 5 seconds. Why is it that math is always rendered this way? I've met interesting and articulate mathematicians before, so I know they exist...Are they not allowed to write textbooks? Or at least write reviews about textbooks?
I was pushed into a near-hatred of math by hordes of pretentious math prodigys that had zero use for any student who didn't start off with what they felt was obvious knowledge. The text book talks down to you, the professor talks down to you, and god forbid you ask for a practical example!
I'm not a math genius, but I'm damn good at practical math. The only way I managed to pass calculus the first time was because I happened to be taking it at the same time as a physics course, and I could figure it out where I could see an application in physics. For calc II I shopped around, trying to find a decent book with dismal results. Ended up dropping the class, and shopping for a decent professor the next semester.
Math is cool, but goddamn, the way it's taught is awful and jackasses like this reviewer and the joker who wrote the book he's reviewing are a prime reason why.
You should never work on that sort of thing on anything but a 'clean' machine which has only the environment you're trying to test against on it and nothing else. Under no circumstances should it be connected to a network (besides an isolated test network), and it should never be connected to the internets.
It's just like working with an RL virus. You've got to take precautions unless you want to catch it yourself.
Good. They deserve some socio-legal proctology for betraying their paying customers to the government, without even a hint of protest against an action that is illegal, against all precident, and clearly unconstitutional.
Makes you wonder how often they allow wiretapping without a warrant, doesn't it? Clearly they had no problem with it.
Can't find anything like technical specs on it, but its described as being "slightly larger than a regular pda", which seems like it would definitely require external battery to get above a day of uptime.
I wonder as well about broadcast power vs battery life...In strictly passive mode it wouldn't matter, but trying an active MiM attack, you'd need to be broadcasting pretty strongly not to have the existing signal drown you out.
Couple of weeks? For a wifi enabled hand held device? Where the hell do you buy your batteries?!?
Unless it gets hooked up to some kind of battery array, I think we can safely peg the window for this thing at 24 hours at the extreme outside, though it's probably less than 12.
Now, depending on how smart it is, you could have it come up for 5 or 10 minutes at a certain time when you know something good will be available (e.g The boss syncs his pda), but it would have to be some cron-esque computer scheduled job, and I'm not sure why any environment (other than maybe a retail environment) would be running a regular job across wireless.
I think it'd be much more effective for the old Delivery Guy trick; something to keep in your pocket while you wander through the office, looking for someone to deliver your package to...Though I don't know how it is in other places, but where I work everything gets signed for in front, and a guard brings you your package. Of course, we don't use wireless either, so that's two for two.
So, what you're saying is, there are smart people who know whats going on, and dumb people who listen to the smart people when they are told how to vote?
Doesn't usually work that way, in my experience. People believe those who pander to their predudices.
The point that you seem to be missing, is that there aren't two sides. There is a religious argument, and there is a scientific argument.
Apples and oranges. You're not going to get an argument that's half apple, half orange. There is no compromise. If you want to have a scientific world view, you're stuck with evolution...no other theory even comes close. Scientists don't argue over evolution, they argue over little specifics in evolution.
If you want the religious version, you get creationism. Now some people reconcile the religious argument with the scientific argument..."The bible says what god did, and science says how he did it"...but if you're a pure creationist, you're talking 7 days, 6000 years, and ZERO evolution. And even if you reconcile, it's religion that bends to science, and not the other way around, and many zealots find that intolerable.
As with all deductive proofs of a religious nature, this only works if I accept all the premises as given. Anselm did the same trick a thousand years ago, and he did it better. All I need to say is, "DNA is not a language". Deoxyribonucleic acid...Acids are just common reactive chemical compounds, and while dna is more complex (only an acid because of some convieniently placed phosphate groups), acids occur everywhere in nature and their origins are not in the least mysterious.
So, instead of indulging in deductive masturbation, please point to something, anything, whose existence is only explainable through creation by a omnipotent creator.
The very idea that there are two choices with regards to evolution vs creationsim is laughable. Most of the dichotomies you talk about are matters of opinion, this is true.
But for evolution vs creationism, the choice is this:
Evolution: backed by countless observations of the world around us.
Creationism: backed by a popular religious text.
Creationism is a belief with zero evidence behind it. It is not scientific; it is the opposite of scientific, meant to be taken on pure faith.
Evolution is a scientific theory. It has no serious scientific challengers. It is as valid and robust a theory as gravity, and, frankly, it is much better understood than gravity. We know the mechanisms for evolution, we can watch it happen through the fossil record, whereas the mechanisms for gravity are imperfectly understood.
Putting that on the same level with Creationism is a joke. They're apples and oranges.
In a word: Bullshit.
Just because you can't duplicate it in a lab doesn't mean you can't come up with a huge body of supporting evidence.
Yea, it's a Theory...Just like Gravity.
THERE IS NO STEP BEYOND THEORY. Evolution is never going to be anything other than a theory...There is nothing else for it to be. You show the same hilarious incomprehension of the whole idea of science as the creationists.
Facts are things you can touch. Theorys explain facts in such a way as to allow us to predict, to reason ahead to facts we haven't found yet. Evolution predicted the existence of DNA more than a hundred years before it was discovered. That's a damn good theory.
Oh, I understand, though I doubt anyone in this society would actually fight over any of it (outside of a bar). Democracy is more about keeping the people happy than actually empowering them.
Any system would work well, if we had a way of putting the right people in the right places. Democracy is a terrible way of doing that, but since we vote the morons into office we feel like we're in control, and that our actions affect the outcome. So when bad stuff comes down the pipe, it's all the fault of the *insert name of other party* not the idiots who are actually in charge, so we end up with agression directed at our fellow citizens, rather than at our rulers.
Pretty clever.
See, and here I thought that the purpose of evolution was to describe the way in which living things change in response to environmental pressures. Who knew?
Oh, shall we hold creationism to the same standard? Where are the controlled creationist experiments? You want to hold something that happens over millienia to a lab demonstration? We're not going to show up too well there, but hey, God did it in 7 days, and you can't show it in a lab? 7 days? Come on! That should be easy!
Again with the negative proof. Give me one tiny shred of positive proof for creationism, one single solitary fact that suggests, against all other evidence, that the world was created in a few days by an omnipotent being, and I'll shut up.
Just one fact, and "It says so in the bible" don't count, if you're too stupid to realize that in advance.
I wouldn't call a website by the crackpot creationist R. David Pogge to be a mountain of evidence.
It's pretty hilarious watching Creationists try and cite evidence...I mean, an Evolutionist will cite thousands of scientists, hundreds of thousands of studies, and millions of years of fossil record, which all corroberate evolution.
Creationists will point to the personal website of a software engineer.
Nice try though.
Proof that mods don't read very well.
You hold to a literal read of the bible. That can be deduced from the fact that you seem to believe the Noah myth, one of the most hilariously improbable bit of the bible.
Then you move on and seem to suggest that when H5N becomes people flu, it has become a wholly new thing, rather than an old thing with a small change. This is strong creationism; doesn't even allow for microevolution.
So don't lie and say that you're religious and you believe in science, because you don't. A literal read of the bible and a belief in science are impossible to reconcile, no matter if you believe all the science that is not contradicted in the bible.
Just another damn ID fanatic, trying to cloak his fanatacism in science. The only thing your argument has going for it is that the amount of inbreeding that would have had to occur if your belief was the correct one would explain a hell of a lot about Kansas.
Sigh. "Option" should read "Opinion"
Ad Verecundiam is always a deductive fallacy, but informally it's only a fallacy if the authority in question is not recognized as being a good source on the subject at hand (Appeal to Irrelevant Authority).
Pointing out that the CIA (arguably the best source in a discussion about WMDs in Iraq) holds a certain view about WMDs in Iraq is a perfectly legitimate point in an inductive argument. How much weight that point holds with you depends on how much credit you give to the CIA.
By the standards of this discussion, they're option has a lot of weight.
Yea, they love to pull out the "Just a Theory" line.
I've never once heard a good argument for Creationism. It's right back to the "Two Teams" thing. If the Evolution team loses, that means the Creationism team wins, right? So they attack Evolution, which is really a good thing, because the more rigorous testing a scientific theory gets, the better it is...Or if they find a real problem, we'll be able to start looking for an answer which will result in a better theory.
A lot of us think this stuff. Unfortunately a lot more people think...hey wait, American Idol is on! *wanders off*
Drives me nuts when people treat science like it's a matter of opinion. Either there is evidence or there isn't. If you think they're wrong, then point to the flaw in the damn evidence! Don't just jam your fingers in your ears and yell 'NUH-UH!!!'
But that's the way it's done in a lot of places around here. I wish they'd decide to disbelieve something dangerous like EMF theory, or something. That'd be entertaining. Of course Bird Flu could run that way, if they deny funding for research because it surely can't "evolve" into a human communicable form.
It's where we keep our comedians, and our good beer.
Sure, because the liberal CIA, with it's leaders appointed by the arch liberal GWB, is totally sitting on all the evidence of WMDs, because they don't want to have to say, "Hey, we found some WMDs finally."
If this administration could find a credible talking dog to back up their search for WMDs, they'd be trumpeting it as loudly as possible. The fact that the only evidence you can point to is a fluffy article not even printed in the damn Stars and Stripes, but on the DoD webpage, suggests that the "article" is totally lacking in merit.