Whether the Bible might sometimes mean 'fortnight,' 'year,' or 'kalpa' when it says 'day' is pointless to debate. The parable of the creation of man in Genesis is not an historical account, nor is it meant to be taken literally at all. It's a simple analogy about what prevents people from realizing their unity with creation, specifically that our conventional means of 'knowing' the world blinds us to our innate natural being. The result, that we no longer see the world as a garden of creation of which we are a part, but as an adversary. (As for the part where God gives the world to mankind to capitalize on, well that's a purely human conceit.)
I highly doubt dividing the age of the observable universe or the generations of mankind by 7 will yield any special insight into the nature of the universe, the nature of the number 7, or the nature of 'God's mind.' However it might tell you a little something about the writer's culture.
And there's the other important point about politics, which is it's a necessary part of systems where there are struggles for power, and a necessary part of human discourse where everyone wants something. However, it doesn't have to be the game that gets played in the public court. I think at this point there's a level of faÃade that we can all see through.
The problem with the ugly game -- in which the pretendocracy makes as though they misconstrue some point, or become righteously indignant about some minor thing, or endlessly repeat some talking-point as though it were always conventional wisdom -- it only works against an opponent who plays the same game. Whenever you try to launch smears against decent people the shit always flies back in your face. The last thing politicians of industry want is grownups coming in and spoiling their play-time.
I look forward to the future day when the Earth (and Mars) are ruled by a wise council of enlightened people whose aim is first to help humanity thrive. But until that day, I'll take any honest soul we can find!
One of the better movies by Wim Wenders featuring a soundtrack by U2. In the movie Max von Sydow plays an eccentric researcher who invents a machine that can record dreams and play them back on machines that look a lot like laptop computers, leading to an epidemic of profound malaise.
On the other hand, the malaise may have been due to the world's most popular search engine being slow as hell and embodied by an obnoxious 3D animated bear.
The problem is nobody wants to fork the driver for binary load lifters, even though they're much like your moisture vaporator drivers in most respects.
Instead of doing what Microsoft do best which is to produce a workhorse they instead try and play the designer, and want to make a work of art.
I think using "art" as a pejorative here is misplaced.
If Microsoft applied Apple's design standards at the level of their OS and not just the UI, it wouldn't be "art" in the pejorative sense you imply, but a truly artful kind of programming - and what's wrong with that? You seem to imply that Apple has bolted a pretty exterior onto something on par with Windows.
I don't know if you've had a look at Apple's system architecture from the ground up - all the way to the high-level APIs - but it truly is a work of art, very well organized, and performs extremely well despite what some (Linux fans perhaps?) might call compromises at the kernel level.
When your bandwidth cap is exceeded your ports are all shut except 80. Your web browser can only get AT&T's page. You have options to (a) pay for another XXX GB of transfer or (b) upgrade your plan.
It ain't all that hard to do this. Making people pay a dollar-per-gigabyte without giving them notice that they've exceeded their limit is clearly not informing the user.
Tag this story lawsuitwaitingtohappen, whatcanpossiblygowrong, goodluckwiththat, monopoly, luserunfriendly and !cool.
I agree the federal government's involvement should be somewhat hands-off, but...
Getting education funded, requiring parent participation, and getting big companies to throw in for special programs would be a great start to improving primary education. And these are just the kinds of programs that frankly ought to be pushed on the states and backup-funded at the federal government level.
Education is a government responsibility, especially here in the USA, because the body politic is made up of The People, and their minds are -uh- kinda important!
Likewise, health care is something that should be funded and directed at the federal government level, as opposed to allowing a free-for-all, because the profit motive simply does not lead to proper prevention or care. In fact it leads directly to rising costs, rising debt, and financial collapse. Plus people avoid seeing doctors early, when the most could be done, and end up there only when they've already become sick.
If there's any country that should push these things - and fast! - it's the United States, because if the people are sick, stressed, and poorly educated, then the government (the people!) is sick, stressed, and poorly educated. (Oh, and it sure is!)
Honestly, I must rant! Education for education's sake and health care for health care's sake... why is this so difficult for America? When you actually try to do things -uh- directly, instead of hitching them to some bottom line on a balance sheet, you actually get better results and the balance sheet ends up being exactly what it's supposed to be.
Of course you know, whenever anything good is being done for the sake of lifting people up, the right wing feels a need to sabotage and squash it. After all, you can't control people who are educated, and you can't sell scads of pharmaceuticals to healthy people with good preventative care.
As the modern right-wing adage goes: "A stitch in time saves nine, but just think of how much you can charge for those nine extra stitches!"
People latch on to things that reinforce their beliefs and attitudes. The cultures and personalities that are attracted to Fundamentalism or Objectivism, or any prepackaged Ism are simply looking to obtain easy authority, a sense of superiority, and divine (or metaphysical) justification for their untenable attitudes.
Of course, what's good or not is ultimately justified by one's peers - if those around you think it's okay, it's okay - if they think it's bad, it's bad. Socially-dependent people adapt their attitudes to suit the culture they find themselves in.
To get beyond the literal interpretation of scripture or the rigid structure of a philosophy takes some real brains and experience, and a sensitivity to subtlety which most people seem to lack - perhaps because they're too downtrodden to rise above. To interpret something like Genesis (which is such a simple and obvious allegory!) as if it were the literal truth is just plain intellectual folly, and frankly... it harms the mind and poisons the heart.
But it goes on and on, because ugly hearts are oppressing good hearts by way of mob oversight.
Revealing the full... superstructure may be the work of a generation.
..assuming computers cease making any new advances.
Mathematicians do rely on their ability to spot patterns and sense implications that no computer can likely sift for today. But this will not always be the case.
You cannot just crash into a country killing innocents and dupes because of the policies of the country. It's heroic to want to do so, but you have to temper heroism sometimes with patience and process. There just is no magic bullet to kill off evil and ignorance. The point is to keep talking about it, keep discussing it, let the memes inform new generations as the world progresses. There will be suffering and death in the meantime, the point is for everyone to learn, learn, and wake up in time.
Borders are abstract, therefore Guantanamo Bay is within our "borders." Let's get these guys tried by due process - Yay! Then we can stop all the posturing and stalling and being foolish patsies of the Bush terror campaign... god, we're pathetic about our principles...
So if you hear somebody described on the media in the US as "extremely liberal"...
I know. People don't even know what it means to love the general concept of communal living, they think it's the norm to live a get-some-now life in a dog-eat-dog world, and it just propagates.
In the media they describe conscientious - activist - persons as "animal rights loonies" - "tree huggers" - "nutjobs". In the current media no good deed goes unpunished and the media leads the chorus of the dispossessed.
All of it is fueled by the war propaganda, echoing on. Show any kind of sensitivity and you are weak. Give the benefit of the doubt to your brother and you're taking an awful chance. They like us to be frightened of each other.
When someone calls the media "liberal" it just makes me laugh. It's a dead giveaway that the person is disingenuous, towing some kind of talking point, playing a game. The truly liberal stuff, the deep stuff, is nowhere to be found in the mainstream.
Man, I do think it would be a great world if we were all getting high together instead of everyone only loving the mirror, you know?
The insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan die - in large numbers - any time they try to go toe-to-toe with modern combat forces. It's no contest; so hopelessly lopsided that it's almost pathetic.
The real issue with respect to abortion is what exalted human being gets to make the choice to manage a woman's birth schedule? The fact is, you can't build a free state on the principle of self-determinism, and then turn around and assume metaphysical authority over personal moral choices - least of all in the transcendent arena of human reproduction.
The provision of the Constitution for the protection and welfare of citizens absolutely does not extend to the developing foetus, and in fact it cannot do so without crossing the threshold into coercion. If a woman does not desire to carry a child to term, no one can force her to do so.
The "protection of life" aspect of the Constitution is not a sacrosanct - or overarching - principle. The Constitution is not a Gospel, or a religious document, or a manifesto. It soundly attempts to define individual rights with respect to interference by the mob. Beyond this it doesn't presume. Abortifacients have been around forever, and the founders knew all about it. "Family planning" was not invented in 1971. Perhaps they were just coarse, but none thought it important enough to bring up at any of their meetings.
The Constitution is an imperfect but effective set of principles intended to prevent any influential group from assuming control of the government, or enacting laws that unduly oppress individual culture. Laws banning same-sex marriage, for example, would be prohibited by the Constitution, because there is absolutely no reasonable basis or public interest served by such an abridgment of human freedom.
So... whether we like it or not... every woman remains her own authority in this matter!
If you think a paper tape really makes any difference, you really need to watch the videos attached to this article by the Computer Security Group at UCSB...
Stop doing the things that put you at risk for viruses and you won't have to run anti-virus.
Thanks, I have! Windows has always had deep rush-job suckage all over it, so in 1996 I avoided it and bought a Mac. I have never had a virus or trojan, ever. (Ok, true, if Apple had not gone with UNIX I'd have some serious egg on my face! Likewise if Microsoft had gone UNIX we wouldn't be talking about the Mac at all today... but a Microsoft branded UNIX would surely have a lot more holes given their track record.)
Slashdot Mirror
Whether the Bible might sometimes mean 'fortnight,' 'year,' or 'kalpa' when it says 'day' is pointless to debate. The parable of the creation of man in Genesis is not an historical account, nor is it meant to be taken literally at all. It's a simple analogy about what prevents people from realizing their unity with creation, specifically that our conventional means of 'knowing' the world blinds us to our innate natural being. The result, that we no longer see the world as a garden of creation of which we are a part, but as an adversary. (As for the part where God gives the world to mankind to capitalize on, well that's a purely human conceit.)
I highly doubt dividing the age of the observable universe or the generations of mankind by 7 will yield any special insight into the nature of the universe, the nature of the number 7, or the nature of 'God's mind.' However it might tell you a little something about the writer's culture.
Look, if they don't release it on 3-6-9 the magic won't work, and I'll be damned if I pay $8 to go see it on 7-3-9!
I highly recommend healthy skepticism over cynicism.
And there's the other important point about politics, which is it's a necessary part of systems where there are struggles for power, and a necessary part of human discourse where everyone wants something. However, it doesn't have to be the game that gets played in the public court. I think at this point there's a level of faÃade that we can all see through.
The problem with the ugly game -- in which the pretendocracy makes as though they misconstrue some point, or become righteously indignant about some minor thing, or endlessly repeat some talking-point as though it were always conventional wisdom -- it only works against an opponent who plays the same game. Whenever you try to launch smears against decent people the shit always flies back in your face. The last thing politicians of industry want is grownups coming in and spoiling their play-time.
I look forward to the future day when the Earth (and Mars) are ruled by a wise council of enlightened people whose aim is first to help humanity thrive. But until that day, I'll take any honest soul we can find!
One of the better movies by Wim Wenders featuring a soundtrack by U2. In the movie Max von Sydow plays an eccentric researcher who invents a machine that can record dreams and play them back on machines that look a lot like laptop computers, leading to an epidemic of profound malaise.
On the other hand, the malaise may have been due to the world's most popular search engine being slow as hell and embodied by an obnoxious 3D animated bear.
Could this be the version of Windows that will finally get me to switch? Stay tuned!
I am a man born way before her time.
Unfortunately for slashdotters, 2*0 = 0.
Aha! That's only true for very small values of zero.
The problem is nobody wants to fork the driver for binary load lifters, even though they're much like your moisture vaporator drivers in most respects.
It may be a theory, but it's not a scientific theory.
In science parlance, it's an hypothesis. And a terrible one, truth be told, because it isn't founded on evidence but pure wishing.
Instead of doing what Microsoft do best which is to produce a workhorse they instead try and play the designer, and want to make a work of art.
I think using "art" as a pejorative here is misplaced.
If Microsoft applied Apple's design standards at the level of their OS and not just the UI, it wouldn't be "art" in the pejorative sense you imply, but a truly artful kind of programming - and what's wrong with that? You seem to imply that Apple has bolted a pretty exterior onto something on par with Windows.
I don't know if you've had a look at Apple's system architecture from the ground up - all the way to the high-level APIs - but it truly is a work of art, very well organized, and performs extremely well despite what some (Linux fans perhaps?) might call compromises at the kernel level.
When your bandwidth cap is exceeded your ports are all shut except 80. Your web browser can only get AT&T's page. You have options to (a) pay for another XXX GB of transfer or (b) upgrade your plan.
It ain't all that hard to do this. Making people pay a dollar-per-gigabyte without giving them notice that they've exceeded their limit is clearly not informing the user.
Tag this story lawsuitwaitingtohappen, whatcanpossiblygowrong, goodluckwiththat, monopoly, luserunfriendly and !cool.
I agree the federal government's involvement should be somewhat hands-off, but...
Getting education funded, requiring parent participation, and getting big companies to throw in for special programs would be a great start to improving primary education. And these are just the kinds of programs that frankly ought to be pushed on the states and backup-funded at the federal government level.
Education is a government responsibility, especially here in the USA, because the body politic is made up of The People, and their minds are -uh- kinda important!
Likewise, health care is something that should be funded and directed at the federal government level, as opposed to allowing a free-for-all, because the profit motive simply does not lead to proper prevention or care. In fact it leads directly to rising costs, rising debt, and financial collapse. Plus people avoid seeing doctors early, when the most could be done, and end up there only when they've already become sick.
If there's any country that should push these things - and fast! - it's the United States, because if the people are sick, stressed, and poorly educated, then the government (the people!) is sick, stressed, and poorly educated. (Oh, and it sure is!)
Honestly, I must rant! Education for education's sake and health care for health care's sake... why is this so difficult for America? When you actually try to do things -uh- directly, instead of hitching them to some bottom line on a balance sheet, you actually get better results and the balance sheet ends up being exactly what it's supposed to be.
Of course you know, whenever anything good is being done for the sake of lifting people up, the right wing feels a need to sabotage and squash it. After all, you can't control people who are educated, and you can't sell scads of pharmaceuticals to healthy people with good preventative care.
As the modern right-wing adage goes: "A stitch in time saves nine, but just think of how much you can charge for those nine extra stitches!"
People latch on to things that reinforce their beliefs and attitudes. The cultures and personalities that are attracted to Fundamentalism or Objectivism, or any prepackaged Ism are simply looking to obtain easy authority, a sense of superiority, and divine (or metaphysical) justification for their untenable attitudes.
Of course, what's good or not is ultimately justified by one's peers - if those around you think it's okay, it's okay - if they think it's bad, it's bad. Socially-dependent people adapt their attitudes to suit the culture they find themselves in.
To get beyond the literal interpretation of scripture or the rigid structure of a philosophy takes some real brains and experience, and a sensitivity to subtlety which most people seem to lack - perhaps because they're too downtrodden to rise above. To interpret something like Genesis (which is such a simple and obvious allegory!) as if it were the literal truth is just plain intellectual folly, and frankly... it harms the mind and poisons the heart.
But it goes on and on, because ugly hearts are oppressing good hearts by way of mob oversight.
...so we'd have even more unskilled people who would have to do those crap jobs!
Right or wrong, they'll all be drowned in the sea in a short while!
Revealing the full... superstructure may be the work of a generation.
..assuming computers cease making any new advances.
Mathematicians do rely on their ability to spot patterns and sense implications that no computer can likely sift for today. But this will not always be the case.
You cannot just crash into a country killing innocents and dupes because of the policies of the country. It's heroic to want to do so, but you have to temper heroism sometimes with patience and process. There just is no magic bullet to kill off evil and ignorance. The point is to keep talking about it, keep discussing it, let the memes inform new generations as the world progresses. There will be suffering and death in the meantime, the point is for everyone to learn, learn, and wake up in time.
We can only hope.
Borders are abstract, therefore Guantanamo Bay is within our "borders." Let's get these guys tried by due process - Yay! Then we can stop all the posturing and stalling and being foolish patsies of the Bush terror campaign... god, we're pathetic about our principles...
So if you hear somebody described on the media in the US as "extremely liberal"...
I know. People don't even know what it means to love the general concept of communal living, they think it's the norm to live a get-some-now life in a dog-eat-dog world, and it just propagates.
In the media they describe conscientious - activist - persons as "animal rights loonies" - "tree huggers" - "nutjobs". In the current media no good deed goes unpunished and the media leads the chorus of the dispossessed.
All of it is fueled by the war propaganda, echoing on. Show any kind of sensitivity and you are weak. Give the benefit of the doubt to your brother and you're taking an awful chance. They like us to be frightened of each other.
When someone calls the media "liberal" it just makes me laugh. It's a dead giveaway that the person is disingenuous, towing some kind of talking point, playing a game. The truly liberal stuff, the deep stuff, is nowhere to be found in the mainstream.
Man, I do think it would be a great world if we were all getting high together instead of everyone only loving the mirror, you know?
Orders to kill Joe the Plumber would result in a quick mutiny.
I'll do it, sir!
The insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan die - in large numbers - any time they try to go toe-to-toe with modern combat forces. It's no contest; so hopelessly lopsided that it's almost pathetic.
Or almost obscene.
The real issue with respect to abortion is what exalted human being gets to make the choice to manage a woman's birth schedule? The fact is, you can't build a free state on the principle of self-determinism, and then turn around and assume metaphysical authority over personal moral choices - least of all in the transcendent arena of human reproduction.
The provision of the Constitution for the protection and welfare of citizens absolutely does not extend to the developing foetus, and in fact it cannot do so without crossing the threshold into coercion. If a woman does not desire to carry a child to term, no one can force her to do so.
The "protection of life" aspect of the Constitution is not a sacrosanct - or overarching - principle. The Constitution is not a Gospel, or a religious document, or a manifesto. It soundly attempts to define individual rights with respect to interference by the mob. Beyond this it doesn't presume. Abortifacients have been around forever, and the founders knew all about it. "Family planning" was not invented in 1971. Perhaps they were just coarse, but none thought it important enough to bring up at any of their meetings.
The Constitution is an imperfect but effective set of principles intended to prevent any influential group from assuming control of the government, or enacting laws that unduly oppress individual culture. Laws banning same-sex marriage, for example, would be prohibited by the Constitution, because there is absolutely no reasonable basis or public interest served by such an abridgment of human freedom.
So... whether we like it or not... every woman remains her own authority in this matter!
If you think a paper tape really makes any difference, you really need to watch the videos attached to this article by the Computer Security Group at UCSB...
http://www.cs.ucsb.edu/~seclab/projects/voting/
Stop doing the things that put you at risk for viruses and you won't have to run anti-virus.
Thanks, I have! Windows has always had deep rush-job suckage all over it, so in 1996 I avoided it and bought a Mac. I have never had a virus or trojan, ever. (Ok, true, if Apple had not gone with UNIX I'd have some serious egg on my face! Likewise if Microsoft had gone UNIX we wouldn't be talking about the Mac at all today... but a Microsoft branded UNIX would surely have a lot more holes given their track record.)