When you can show me an effect with no cause (not just no discernible cause, but no cause at all) we'll talk about the big bang having no cause. Especially, since the state before (infinite entropy) ought to, by the 2nd law of thermodynamics, be the most stable piece of matter one could wish for.
Yes, that's one of the major differences. The thing I find wierd about Sola Fide is that "by faith alone" is only mentioned once in all of Scripture- and it's imediately preceded by "Not by"- James chapter 2 has the full discussion, but the verse in question is "Not by faith alone are we justified, but rather by every good work".
Only if you think the definition of the word "miracle" is always a supernatural event, rather than merely a fortuneate natural event. Why in your opinion do you require God to break his own rules to exist? And as for the anthropic principle, WHERE in anything that I said did I compare God to a human being?
because their religion teaches them that whatever they do here is merely preparation for an afterlife that will be much much better.
I keep hearing that- but as a Catholic I just don't understand it. If you're preparing to make your afterlife better, wouldn't it be reasonable to at least try to DESERVE that afterlife?
From the Article: Polls for many years have shown that a majority of Americans are at odds with key scientific theory. For example, as CBS poll this month found that 51 percent of respondents believed humans were created in their present form by God. A further 30 percent said their creation was guided by God. Only 15 percent thought humans evolved from less advanced life forms over millions of years.
Uh, this looks like a poll tweaked for contraversy to me. The 2nd answer presupposes the third; thus 45% of Americans think that humans evolve from less advanced life forms over millions of years, and a large portion of those believe that God wrote the rules that caused the evolution. The Big Bang itself is not only consistent with this point of view- it provides some proof of it. Something happened at planck time that changed the laws of the universe from a set of random variables effecting every particle differently, to a set of constants that all of our laws of physics are based upon. And not easy numbers either- really messy numbers that if they were even.0000000001% different than they are, we would not have evolved in the same way- perhaps not at all.
So while our dearly stupid evangelical leaders may be going the wrong way, the American People as a whole seem to be as pro-science as ever.
The problem is, with the fickleness and lack of accountability of the blog world, slander and unfounded scares are just as easy to pull off as justified whistleblowing.
The same was true of print before the slander and libel laws- Thomas Jefferson even approved of the situation. In many ways it's still true- because the law is slow, and print media is faster, and blogs are faster yet.
When Apple got dingedby ipodsdirtysecret.com, the creators of the video and furor conveniently left out the fact that the problem was much rarer than they made it sound and that they hadn't made a reasonable effort to resolve the matter privately before raising their online lynch mob.
Contacting tech support and the executive office of the company wasn't enough of a "reasonable effort" to you? I've got to say, Apple deserved it for their rotten customer support if nothing else. Just because the problem was rare, doesn't mean it's right for a coporation to take that attitude with customers.
When it died down Apple was guilty of at worst a minor support snafu instead of a vast conspiracy to force repeat iPod purchases.
The problem was that the "minor snafu" was company wide policy- and needed changing. They refused to change the policy with the first complaint, and they paid the price for it. They should have forseen the possibility at least, and if they wanted to keep it quiet, should have simply offered a by-mail exchange policy for ipods with dying batteries. Instead they choose to insult the customer instead. Thus fitting my sig line precisely- if you don't like the reaction, don't do the action.
Of Ben Franklin's newspaper. This sort of thing has been going on since the begining of the country- that's what freedom of the press is all about.
Having said that, my new signature line is key to defeating the danger of the blogosphere. For every action, there will be an equal and opposite reaction. This goes for business ethics just as much as it goes for momentum.
The answer to that bit is in the magic spell that sends her home "There's no place like home". So what if she's destined to be no more than a pig farmer's wife? That's a perfectly honorable role in life- UNLIKE the role the Wizard was playing when Dorthy met him, or the role the old lady down the street/wicked witch of the east was playing when she kidnapped Toto. Yes it's cynical- and that's the entire reason why it is a compeling fairy tale, it wouldn't be the same without the cynicism. Other people see it too- they're just less bothered by the cynicism than you are, most likely because they live in the same cynical and perverse world that Frank L. Baum was living in when he wrote the book to begin with.
If you think this is bad, try to find a copy of the 1970s remake Wiz- which features an all black cast and was filmed in New York City, complete with following the "Yellow Brick Road" across the Brooklyn Bridge...and there was another remake in the late 1990s with Moesha as Dorthy that picked up some scenes that were missing from the original movie, like the attacking apple trees....
So is the ABC nightly news- and it offers about the same level of communication (as in completely unidirectional). Technology that doesn't offer an advantage over previous technology is bound to fade away and die a natural death.
If you think that's cynical- you should see the interpretation of the original story in the light of certain political happenings of the times. You do know the story existed before it was a movie, right? And that the ruby slippers were originally silver?
The next thing you know- they'll be re-releasing Boy's Town, with digital editing to make Bing Crosby not a Catholic Priest for fear of offending people who have a relative who was abused by a priest....
Bzzzt. Wrong. He said that they've approved US$62.5B for the Gulf States for right now, to get things started. They don't know how much it's going to cost. People have been throwing the US$250B for NOLA number around but he says they're not getting that much (I've seen some critical analysis of that and it's actually funny - the number, not the situation). He doesn't want to raise taxes because he thinks it's bad for the economy.
Ok, so I worded mine wrong. Idiots who think raising taxes is bad for the economy need to look at this country in the 1950s- when the top tax bracket paid over 90% income taxes, and we had the largest expansion of the middle class in human history, of any country (the middle class has been shrinking ever since).
Sounds like valid opinion to me - it's perfectly fine to disagree with it, but it's not so far out as to be insane or require a pee test. I'd imagine that the reason he doesn't have feedback is because a bunch of people would misread (either accidentally or deliberately) what he wrote and post a bunch of nonsense like what you started your post with. It'd be a shame if the "nasty liberals" you mention go around trolling sites misrepresenting him and discourage this sort of thing.
The value of the blog is in the conversation...if you're unwilling to have the conversation because you believe something unsupported by history (large tax cuts have *alwasy* been followed by unemployment and recessions, for instance), then you deserve whatever you get.
People who pay attention to blogs that don't allow comments end up having no thoughts of their own- they only repeat the blogs.
I still agree with the grandparent that the death knoll of blogging is not accepting comments- there's no difference between a blog that doesn't accept comments and TV or other mass media. The power of the blog is in the conversation, not the initial lecture.
Thanks for proving my point- that these three examples are largely unknown blowhards that you have to rely on wikipedia articles to identify. By definition, their blogs aren't very compeling- and I hold with the great-grandparent's idea that it's because they are single-opinion blogs.
As for the not leaving it open for feedback, he is simply saving himself tons and tons of hate and spam from not just "nasty liberals", but jackasses of all stripes.
Yep- like other politicians and so-called "representatives" that only represent themselves.
It's easy to ignore the garbage to find the good....or ignore the irrelevant for the relevant. Posts like that mean something too when it comes to governing: it means that there are always a certain number of retards that we should not be ignoring.
I suspect three little people named Glenn Reynolds, Cory Doctorow, and Joshua Micah Marshall may disagree with you on the "blogs without comments are doomed to failure" bit.
Who are they and why should we pay any attention at all to their opinion?
More Information is always useful, regardless of where it comes from. Especially if that information makes you reexamine old prejudices and pre-concieved notions.
If they think they can rebuid NOLA and the other towns hit hard by hurricanes in the gulf for only $62.5 billion, AND still keep taxes down, then I'd say we need to be doing pee tests on the House Leadership. Still, Mega Points for actually attempting to blog, but he's missed the feedback section in his implementation, I think on purpose. Can't have any nasty liberals leaving him messages, can we?
That's why I put in "something useful"- for the short time I dealt with ME, it was so unstable that you couldn't even finish a word processing document without having the machine reboot into safe mode and recover an earlier copy of the registry. ME was not useful.
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And yet, now we have libel and slander laws, and print is much improved because of them.
Actually, I'm not so sure it is improved. If anything, it smacks of censorship, which is far more annoying to me than a mere insult could ever be.
When you can show me an effect with no cause (not just no discernible cause, but no cause at all) we'll talk about the big bang having no cause. Especially, since the state before (infinite entropy) ought to, by the 2nd law of thermodynamics, be the most stable piece of matter one could wish for.
Yes, that's one of the major differences. The thing I find wierd about Sola Fide is that "by faith alone" is only mentioned once in all of Scripture- and it's imediately preceded by "Not by"- James chapter 2 has the full discussion, but the verse in question is "Not by faith alone are we justified, but rather by every good work".
Only if you think the definition of the word "miracle" is always a supernatural event, rather than merely a fortuneate natural event. Why in your opinion do you require God to break his own rules to exist? And as for the anthropic principle, WHERE in anything that I said did I compare God to a human being?
because their religion teaches them that whatever they do here is merely preparation for an afterlife that will be much much better.
I keep hearing that- but as a Catholic I just don't understand it. If you're preparing to make your afterlife better, wouldn't it be reasonable to at least try to DESERVE that afterlife?
From the Article: Polls for many years have shown that a majority of Americans are at odds with key scientific theory. For example, as CBS poll this month found that 51 percent of respondents believed humans were created in their present form by God. A further 30 percent said their creation was guided by God. Only 15 percent thought humans evolved from less advanced life forms over millions of years.
.0000000001% different than they are, we would not have evolved in the same way- perhaps not at all.
Uh, this looks like a poll tweaked for contraversy to me. The 2nd answer presupposes the third; thus 45% of Americans think that humans evolve from less advanced life forms over millions of years, and a large portion of those believe that God wrote the rules that caused the evolution. The Big Bang itself is not only consistent with this point of view- it provides some proof of it. Something happened at planck time that changed the laws of the universe from a set of random variables effecting every particle differently, to a set of constants that all of our laws of physics are based upon. And not easy numbers either- really messy numbers that if they were even
So while our dearly stupid evangelical leaders may be going the wrong way, the American People as a whole seem to be as pro-science as ever.
The problem is, with the fickleness and lack of accountability of the blog world, slander and unfounded scares are just as easy to pull off as justified whistleblowing.
The same was true of print before the slander and libel laws- Thomas Jefferson even approved of the situation. In many ways it's still true- because the law is slow, and print media is faster, and blogs are faster yet.
When Apple got dingedby ipodsdirtysecret.com, the creators of the video and furor conveniently left out the fact that the problem was much rarer than they made it sound and that they hadn't made a reasonable effort to resolve the matter privately before raising their online lynch mob.
Contacting tech support and the executive office of the company wasn't enough of a "reasonable effort" to you? I've got to say, Apple deserved it for their rotten customer support if nothing else. Just because the problem was rare, doesn't mean it's right for a coporation to take that attitude with customers.
When it died down Apple was guilty of at worst a minor support snafu instead of a vast conspiracy to force repeat iPod purchases.
The problem was that the "minor snafu" was company wide policy- and needed changing. They refused to change the policy with the first complaint, and they paid the price for it. They should have forseen the possibility at least, and if they wanted to keep it quiet, should have simply offered a by-mail exchange policy for ipods with dying batteries. Instead they choose to insult the customer instead. Thus fitting my sig line precisely- if you don't like the reaction, don't do the action.
You got my sig right- and you're also right that the business world is learning the wrong lesson.
Of Ben Franklin's newspaper. This sort of thing has been going on since the begining of the country- that's what freedom of the press is all about.
Having said that, my new signature line is key to defeating the danger of the blogosphere. For every action, there will be an equal and opposite reaction. This goes for business ethics just as much as it goes for momentum.
My point is that it isn't a "popularity contest" at all- it's a matter of superior technology.
One way communications is 20th century; not 21st.
The answer to that bit is in the magic spell that sends her home "There's no place like home". So what if she's destined to be no more than a pig farmer's wife? That's a perfectly honorable role in life- UNLIKE the role the Wizard was playing when Dorthy met him, or the role the old lady down the street/wicked witch of the east was playing when she kidnapped Toto. Yes it's cynical- and that's the entire reason why it is a compeling fairy tale, it wouldn't be the same without the cynicism. Other people see it too- they're just less bothered by the cynicism than you are, most likely because they live in the same cynical and perverse world that Frank L. Baum was living in when he wrote the book to begin with.
If you think this is bad, try to find a copy of the 1970s remake Wiz- which features an all black cast and was filmed in New York City, complete with following the "Yellow Brick Road" across the Brooklyn Bridge...and there was another remake in the late 1990s with Moesha as Dorthy that picked up some scenes that were missing from the original movie, like the attacking apple trees....
So is the ABC nightly news- and it offers about the same level of communication (as in completely unidirectional). Technology that doesn't offer an advantage over previous technology is bound to fade away and die a natural death.
If you think that's cynical- you should see the interpretation of the original story in the light of certain political happenings of the times. You do know the story existed before it was a movie, right? And that the ruby slippers were originally silver?
The next thing you know- they'll be re-releasing Boy's Town, with digital editing to make Bing Crosby not a Catholic Priest for fear of offending people who have a relative who was abused by a priest....
Bzzzt. Wrong. He said that they've approved US$62.5B for the Gulf States for right now, to get things started. They don't know how much it's going to cost. People have been throwing the US$250B for NOLA number around but he says they're not getting that much (I've seen some critical analysis of that and it's actually funny - the number, not the situation). He doesn't want to raise taxes because he thinks it's bad for the economy.
Ok, so I worded mine wrong. Idiots who think raising taxes is bad for the economy need to look at this country in the 1950s- when the top tax bracket paid over 90% income taxes, and we had the largest expansion of the middle class in human history, of any country (the middle class has been shrinking ever since).
Sounds like valid opinion to me - it's perfectly fine to disagree with it, but it's not so far out as to be insane or require a pee test. I'd imagine that the reason he doesn't have feedback is because a bunch of people would misread (either accidentally or deliberately) what he wrote and post a bunch of nonsense like what you started your post with. It'd be a shame if the "nasty liberals" you mention go around trolling sites misrepresenting him and discourage this sort of thing.
The value of the blog is in the conversation...if you're unwilling to have the conversation because you believe something unsupported by history (large tax cuts have *alwasy* been followed by unemployment and recessions, for instance), then you deserve whatever you get.
People who pay attention to blogs that don't allow comments end up having no thoughts of their own- they only repeat the blogs.
I still agree with the grandparent that the death knoll of blogging is not accepting comments- there's no difference between a blog that doesn't accept comments and TV or other mass media. The power of the blog is in the conversation, not the initial lecture.
Thanks for proving my point- that these three examples are largely unknown blowhards that you have to rely on wikipedia articles to identify. By definition, their blogs aren't very compeling- and I hold with the great-grandparent's idea that it's because they are single-opinion blogs.
As for the not leaving it open for feedback, he is simply saving himself tons and tons of hate and spam from not just "nasty liberals", but jackasses of all stripes.
Yep- like other politicians and so-called "representatives" that only represent themselves.
It's easy to ignore the garbage to find the good....or ignore the irrelevant for the relevant. Posts like that mean something too when it comes to governing: it means that there are always a certain number of retards that we should not be ignoring.
I suspect three little people named Glenn Reynolds, Cory Doctorow, and Joshua Micah Marshall may disagree with you on the "blogs without comments are doomed to failure" bit.
Who are they and why should we pay any attention at all to their opinion?
More Information is always useful, regardless of where it comes from. Especially if that information makes you reexamine old prejudices and pre-concieved notions.
If they think they can rebuid NOLA and the other towns hit hard by hurricanes in the gulf for only $62.5 billion, AND still keep taxes down, then I'd say we need to be doing pee tests on the House Leadership. Still, Mega Points for actually attempting to blog, but he's missed the feedback section in his implementation, I think on purpose. Can't have any nasty liberals leaving him messages, can we?
In the end, there can be only one....I predicted this a short while ago.
That's why I put in "something useful"- for the short time I dealt with ME, it was so unstable that you couldn't even finish a word processing document without having the machine reboot into safe mode and recover an earlier copy of the registry. ME was not useful.
Of course- if you were the last of your family to actually do something useful, you'd be neurotic too.