Australia's answer to the NYT. It seems to be a particular strain of "made to order" lab mouse, that should make it easy for others to replicate or refute.
Loved your rant and agree whole-heartedly, the quote above is an article of faith, philosopically the same as "God is very real, my friend.". Nobody can (dis)prove either one. We can all agree the gravitational pull on earth surface is ~10m/s/s, alas there is no such consensus about God(s). When people ask who created God the answer is often "God just is", most the time I am content to think that the "Universe just is" (10m/s/s) and (quantum physics aside) things behave in predictable ways. Every now and then I take a trip through infinite parallel Universes, talk to the sky, daydream of scantily dressed angles......oh your still here.
In the "big scheme" they are all just stories, some more belivable than others. Science is a method of sorting out..well.. scientifically useful stories, all the other strories end up as politics, religion, etc. Science has deemed the question of "God" as "useless" because of all the excellent reasons outlined in your post, politics and religion on the other hand find all sorts of answers and often go to war to prove who is right.
We are at the mercy of our own perceptions and senses, experience is all there is. When asked if it's more likeley for 50%+ of all papers to be wrong or one paper to be a joke, experience tells me I've heard that joke before.
"Dude, I wish I could get away with buying my girlfriend a dirty, black, carbon based rock for a ring. You must have a really accepting significant other."
Poor old US of A gets painted as a bad guy when all they are doing is "helping" out the locals, everything is really all the UN's fault. Yeah right, next you will be telling me Hugo Chaves{sic} is planning to commit suicide and the Orange revolution has nothing to do with oil.
"Oh, I see you have 10 years of experience writing applications in C++. We're really looking for someone experienced in C. Sorry."
"Don't apologise, I understand it can be hard to intervew experts who talk in jargon. You see the C++ programming langage has C inside of it, kinda like the letter 'C' is inside of the alphabet. C++ is really shorthand jargon for "C plus a lot more", you C?"
Not wanting to appear stupid the arts-major will usually nod wiseley and tick the box. If they are still suspisious, start drawing diagrams.
Many moons ago a pimp...err I mean an agent...suggested that for each job in a CV, insert a sepreate section that just lists all technologies. Not the ones used, but ALL the technoglogies connected with the job's project(s). Have 3-4 lines of acronyms for each job and make sure all acronyms listed in the ad appear at least once, the more times you list "must have's" the better. This works well to get past the arts-majors in HR who think Java comes in a coffee cup. Thier job is simply to take a pile of CV's and look for the 10 CV's that most closely match their list of criteria. Then they check out any credentials and invite you for a chat and a cup of Java.
This is "the first date", the one where they look you up and down and ask the same stupid questions in a different way. It is essential that HR prove their worth so about half of the "first date's" will be culled, in fairness to the applicants, the culling will be random and polite.
If you get past the first date and into a real interview, you will nearly always be interviewed by the project manager. Now if the project manager starts using the same criteria as the HR department then (unless you are applying for his job) you have wasted your time. It is much more likely the PM will know what he is doing and will invite his senior developers to the interview to catch any Dilbert style bullshit.
I have also been on the other side of the interview desk many times, HR performs the valuable function of reducing 200 CV's down to something manageable, legible and authenticated. I am sure HR throw out a lot of good CV's, but more impotantly, they weed out ALL the obvious liars. I think of HR as a first level help desk, they know what to do as long as you fit into their procedure. The real trick with HR is trying to guess what is on their checklist. Fighting it won't get you anywhere and if you don't have the wits to get past HR after a few of tries, well...
As for TFA, I have been hearing about the death of mainframe skills since the 80's. If the skills really do become rare and valuable then IBM (or whoever) will simply open up it's own certification program before the cost of labour goes too high. If that were to happen then retrenched old-timers would find themselves battling HR because they didn't have XYZ-a/b in their CV.
Same thing that is wrong with all the other "fire-brand" clerics, they are all a bunch of phycopathic, self-serving, hypocrites. A much more troubling question is, what is wrong with the millions of people who hang (and often act) on their every word, can't they just go and worship a pop/sports-star like everyone else? Perhaps a few "real-life celebrity preacher" magazines would help knock them off their pedestals?
Now before I get burnt at the stake, let me just clarify that I don't give a flying-fuck what God(s) anyone belives in. If it provides them with a satisfactory answer to the question "why" and they don't force it onto me then it becomes no more than a curiosity.
A flesh and blood human who is speaking from a pulpit is not God and has no better insight into "God's Will" than any of the people he is preaching too. Maybe an education campain, we could kick it of by deporting Pat Robertson to Venessuala[sic]?
Yeah, yeah, I know I am offtopic but TFA is a dud so I thought I would talk about politics, religion, gossip-mags and a bit of sport.
"Sure, let them watch.....They are going to see it anyway, and it would be better to be there to guide them"
This may be true for a teenager but I would like to know how a five year old can watch movies without the parent knowing about it.
"This is sort of on-par with the inability to be able to distinguish between fantasy and reality."
Yes it is, people are not born with that ability, they need to be eased into the idea over the first 10years of their life. The job of a parent is the job of a censor, you filter the real-world so that your offspring can comprehend it and stay out of harms way. Anyone who claims this is not a hard balancing act is either not a parent or is doing their kids a dis-service.
"a psychology book is not a manual for how to operate kids
There is no manual and most parents realise that soon after the child is born.
"You watch it and you're 'ok', right? Why shouldn't they be?.......But I watch someone get decapitated in a movie, I know it's all fake, and may even laugh if the movie makes it funny."
Problem here is nobody is defining how old the "kids" are. If they are (say) 8+ then some of them will be able to comprehend the fake/real thing if it is explained to them, if they are 15+ almost all of them will comprehend it. If they are young children then it will give them nightmares and you will have to deal with that result somewhere around 3:00 in the morning.
I have seen plenty of "kids" (including one of my own) who were scared shitless of Santa and no amount of "reasoning" from the parent(s) will persuade the kid to sit on his lap for a photo. The other day my friends two year old burst into tears because everyone sung "happy birthday" so enthusiastically that it scared her. Kids are not miniture adults, if you don't understand that basic fact then you are not a parent (even if you do have kids).
"As long as you explain to the child the differences between real and fake, there should be no reason you will need to censor them from violence in media."
You should keep that somewhere safe so that you can look at it and laugh when you have managed to raise your kids into adulthood.
"I have a vivid memory of going to see a movie with my uncle at a very young age."
I grew up in Australia and the first movie I saw at a theater was "Born Free". I don't remember anything about the food but I do remeber that everyone stood up while they played "God save the Queen".
"and because in echolocation, the sending sensor is not the same as receving sensor, you really need 4 sensors total."
Rubbish, a bat can catch a moth ("meaningfull object") in flight ("3D model"). It can do this in total darkness using two sensors and an emitter, it's the same principle as a robot carrying it's own light source in the dark.
"If the alien had 2 separate glands that each spat out the components of a super-acid"
Yep, the use of two glands is how the bombardier beetle sprays 100degC acid (and other nasty stuff) out of their arse.
Offtopic - Search google for "bombardier beetle" and 3 out of the first 4 hits declare it to be "proof" that evolution is wrong. Have these people never heard of the babelfish?
"From bacteria to humans, competition breeds conflict."
Individual conflict is not war, war is a group behaviour that has only been observed in humans and (possibly) chimps. I agree that war is part of our basic nature, it is born from the failure of politics. This does not mean we have to encourage the failed "politicians" who resort to blowing up London busses or mud-hut villages. It simply means our natural tendency is to support our "leader's" blood-lust, if more people were aware that this tendency exists in ALL humans then humanity as a whole would be better equiped to reject a failed politician's call for war.
That's correct, Saddam was unwilling to surrender to the US, probably because he did not attack the US and was not hiding nukes in his garden shed.
In Japan, the Emporer's general did not surrender even after the bomb was dropped. The general thought that the US decision to change the unconditional surrender demand to one that offered to preserve the Emporer's palace and privlages was a sign of weakness. The general chose ritual suicide when the Emporer himself decided to surrender.
"The people in Iran are pissed at Israel, too. What did they do to Iran? Oh, they were being Jewish."
There is also the small matter of Israel's military, they have already blown up an Iranian nuclear reactor in the past and they are threatening to do it again.
"Are you saying the Iranian government is rational?"
Slashdot Mirror
Australia's answer to the NYT. It seems to be a particular strain of "made to order" lab mouse, that should make it easy for others to replicate or refute.
"Gravity is very real, my friend."
..well.. scientifically useful stories, all the other strories end up as politics, religion, etc. Science has deemed the question of "God" as "useless" because of all the excellent reasons outlined in your post, politics and religion on the other hand find all sorts of answers and often go to war to prove who is right.
Loved your rant and agree whole-heartedly, the quote above is an article of faith, philosopically the same as "God is very real, my friend.". Nobody can (dis)prove either one. We can all agree the gravitational pull on earth surface is ~10m/s/s, alas there is no such consensus about God(s). When people ask who created God the answer is often "God just is", most the time I am content to think that the "Universe just is" (10m/s/s) and (quantum physics aside) things behave in predictable ways. Every now and then I take a trip through infinite parallel Universes, talk to the sky, daydream of scantily dressed angles......oh your still here.
In the "big scheme" they are all just stories, some more belivable than others. Science is a method of sorting out
We are at the mercy of our own perceptions and senses, experience is all there is. When asked if it's more likeley for 50%+ of all papers to be wrong or one paper to be a joke, experience tells me I've heard that joke before.
Here is a recent slashdot story about growing 10 carat 1/2inch thick gem-quality diamonds.
"Dude, I wish I could get away with buying my girlfriend a dirty, black, carbon based rock for a ring. You must have a really accepting significant other."
Ummm, diamond IS carbon.
Poor old US of A gets painted as a bad guy when all they are doing is "helping" out the locals, everything is really all the UN's fault. Yeah right, next you will be telling me Hugo Chaves{sic} is planning to commit suicide and the Orange revolution has nothing to do with oil.
" we must first understand and be able to define what intelligence is."
:)
I don't think you will find the answer on slashdot.
"Oh, I see you have 10 years of experience writing applications in C++. We're really looking for someone experienced in C. Sorry."
"Don't apologise, I understand it can be hard to intervew experts who talk in jargon. You see the C++ programming langage has C inside of it, kinda like the letter 'C' is inside of the alphabet. C++ is really shorthand jargon for "C plus a lot more", you C?"
Not wanting to appear stupid the arts-major will usually nod wiseley and tick the box. If they are still suspisious, start drawing diagrams.
Many moons ago a pimp...err I mean an agent...suggested that for each job in a CV, insert a sepreate section that just lists all technologies. Not the ones used, but ALL the technoglogies connected with the job's project(s). Have 3-4 lines of acronyms for each job and make sure all acronyms listed in the ad appear at least once, the more times you list "must have's" the better. This works well to get past the arts-majors in HR who think Java comes in a coffee cup. Thier job is simply to take a pile of CV's and look for the 10 CV's that most closely match their list of criteria. Then they check out any credentials and invite you for a chat and a cup of Java.
This is "the first date", the one where they look you up and down and ask the same stupid questions in a different way. It is essential that HR prove their worth so about half of the "first date's" will be culled, in fairness to the applicants, the culling will be random and polite.
If you get past the first date and into a real interview, you will nearly always be interviewed by the project manager. Now if the project manager starts using the same criteria as the HR department then (unless you are applying for his job) you have wasted your time. It is much more likely the PM will know what he is doing and will invite his senior developers to the interview to catch any Dilbert style bullshit.
I have also been on the other side of the interview desk many times, HR performs the valuable function of reducing 200 CV's down to something manageable, legible and authenticated. I am sure HR throw out a lot of good CV's, but more impotantly, they weed out ALL the obvious liars. I think of HR as a first level help desk, they know what to do as long as you fit into their procedure. The real trick with HR is trying to guess what is on their checklist. Fighting it won't get you anywhere and if you don't have the wits to get past HR after a few of tries, well...
As for TFA, I have been hearing about the death of mainframe skills since the 80's. If the skills really do become rare and valuable then IBM (or whoever) will simply open up it's own certification program before the cost of labour goes too high. If that were to happen then retrenched old-timers would find themselves battling HR because they didn't have XYZ-a/b in their CV.
"Just what exactly is wrong with Pat Robertson?"
Same thing that is wrong with all the other "fire-brand" clerics, they are all a bunch of phycopathic, self-serving, hypocrites. A much more troubling question is, what is wrong with the millions of people who hang (and often act) on their every word, can't they just go and worship a pop/sports-star like everyone else? Perhaps a few "real-life celebrity preacher" magazines would help knock them off their pedestals?
Now before I get burnt at the stake, let me just clarify that I don't give a flying-fuck what God(s) anyone belives in. If it provides them with a satisfactory answer to the question "why" and they don't force it onto me then it becomes no more than a curiosity.
A flesh and blood human who is speaking from a pulpit is not God and has no better insight into "God's Will" than any of the people he is preaching too. Maybe an education campain, we could kick it of by deporting Pat Robertson to Venessuala[sic]?
Yeah, yeah, I know I am offtopic but TFA is a dud so I thought I would talk about politics, religion, gossip-mags and a bit of sport.
"Sure, let them watch.....They are going to see it anyway, and it would be better to be there to guide them"
This may be true for a teenager but I would like to know how a five year old can watch movies without the parent knowing about it.
"This is sort of on-par with the inability to be able to distinguish between fantasy and reality."
Yes it is, people are not born with that ability, they need to be eased into the idea over the first 10years of their life. The job of a parent is the job of a censor, you filter the real-world so that your offspring can comprehend it and stay out of harms way. Anyone who claims this is not a hard balancing act is either not a parent or is doing their kids a dis-service.
"a psychology book is not a manual for how to operate kids
There is no manual and most parents realise that soon after the child is born.
"You watch it and you're 'ok', right? Why shouldn't they be?.......But I watch someone get decapitated in a movie, I know it's all fake, and may even laugh if the movie makes it funny."
Problem here is nobody is defining how old the "kids" are. If they are (say) 8+ then some of them will be able to comprehend the fake/real thing if it is explained to them, if they are 15+ almost all of them will comprehend it. If they are young children then it will give them nightmares and you will have to deal with that result somewhere around 3:00 in the morning.
I have seen plenty of "kids" (including one of my own) who were scared shitless of Santa and no amount of "reasoning" from the parent(s) will persuade the kid to sit on his lap for a photo. The other day my friends two year old burst into tears because everyone sung "happy birthday" so enthusiastically that it scared her. Kids are not miniture adults, if you don't understand that basic fact then you are not a parent (even if you do have kids).
"As long as you explain to the child the differences between real and fake, there should be no reason you will need to censor them from violence in media."
You should keep that somewhere safe so that you can look at it and laugh when you have managed to raise your kids into adulthood.
"I have a vivid memory of going to see a movie with my uncle at a very young age."
I grew up in Australia and the first movie I saw at a theater was "Born Free". I don't remember anything about the food but I do remeber that everyone stood up while they played "God save the Queen".
"a sexy babe who is a computer nerd too!"
Sexy Babe: "Honey, I will be whoever you want me to be, until the card runs dry."
Ok, those sort of creatures will defend a territory and I suppose that is a type of warfare.
Good point, I think the whole thing links back to the idea of "family".
"and because in echolocation, the sending sensor is not the same as receving sensor, you really need 4 sensors total."
Rubbish, a bat can catch a moth ("meaningfull object") in flight ("3D model"). It can do this in total darkness using two sensors and an emitter, it's the same principle as a robot carrying it's own light source in the dark.
African or European? - European, the Africans can't afford olympic strength steroids.
"If the alien had 2 separate glands that each spat out the components of a super-acid"
Yep, the use of two glands is how the bombardier beetle sprays 100degC acid (and other nasty stuff) out of their arse.
Offtopic - Search google for "bombardier beetle" and 3 out of the first 4 hits declare it to be "proof" that evolution is wrong. Have these people never heard of the babelfish?
"From bacteria to humans, competition breeds conflict."
Individual conflict is not war, war is a group behaviour that has only been observed in humans and (possibly) chimps. I agree that war is part of our basic nature, it is born from the failure of politics. This does not mean we have to encourage the failed "politicians" who resort to blowing up London busses or mud-hut villages. It simply means our natural tendency is to support our "leader's" blood-lust, if more people were aware that this tendency exists in ALL humans then humanity as a whole would be better equiped to reject a failed politician's call for war.
I don't know about two sharks, but a large school of angry Sea Bass could do the job.
Monty Python would use an unladen swallow.
My bad, but I think the rest of the post is valid.
Most mobile phones have an alarm clock function. Since the terrorists are trying to create random carnage on the subway why do they need a network?
From the content of your post I very much doubt you have actually read the Koran or the Bible.
That's correct, Saddam was unwilling to surrender to the US, probably because he did not attack the US and was not hiding nukes in his garden shed.
In Japan, the Emporer's general did not surrender even after the bomb was dropped. The general thought that the US decision to change the unconditional surrender demand to one that offered to preserve the Emporer's palace and privlages was a sign of weakness. The general chose ritual suicide when the Emporer himself decided to surrender.
"The people in Iran are pissed at Israel, too. What did they do to Iran? Oh, they were being Jewish."
There is also the small matter of Israel's military, they have already blown up an Iranian nuclear reactor in the past and they are threatening to do it again.
"Are you saying the Iranian government is rational?"
I'm saying no national government is rational.
"Why is Iraq in 2005 so different from Japan in 1945?"
In Japan the Emporer was allowed to continue his rule.