I don't mean to imply that a religion is JUST a moral code. I personally believe it is much more than that, a superset. I meant to point out that whatever moral codes we have now (laws, etc..) are based on past or current religious beliefs of right and wrong. I also suspect that one could not now arrive at a workable moral code for a society that wasn't based to some degree on those same religious beliefs. Therefore, whatever system of legal protections we enjoy, we have past religious beliefs to thank.
And that someone not availing themselves of such protections because they are areligious makes just as much sense as suggesting that someone who is religious or anti-evolution not avail themselves of modern medical technology.
I forgot to answer your other point. I quoted Kant's theory for a reason: it's an example of a moral theory that actually comes to conclusions that make sense, without resorting to anything more than a quest for universality (in the sense that a moral code shouldn't lead to contradictions if everybody adheres to them, etc.) and assuming all people are equal (specifically: that I am not intrinsically worth more than somebody else).
It also -- and that is probably its most important weakness -- assumes reason and rational behaviour.
Of course you can see that as an attempt of an 18th century Enlightenment philosopher to come up with a moral code without resorting to theological arguments, i.e. as a counter-reaction to morality with divine origins. Seen this way Kant wouldn't necessarily have come up with his theory if there weren't a religious morality, but that's a bit disengenuous.
Also, in many countries, most current legal protection was introduced by the Romans and strongly influenced by Napoleon. Should people who disagree with the ethics of the Romans and Napoleon not have a claim to legal protection?
In my case, I have a religious belief I subscribe to, part of which dictates that our doctrine is of course the most correct moral code. That doesn't preclude other morals systems from having some or none of it, or even being contrary. So I don't deny the existance of other moral codes, clearly they exist. I simply believe that they are informed by the original/correct moral code.
That's interesting; as I've said I'm not religious and didn't grow up around religious people so this is all a bit foreign to me. I think most people who are not religious would disagree with this 'strong inheritance' of moral codes and maybe opt for the weaker one I'd described.
I don't mean to imply that a religion is JUST a moral code. I personally believe it is much more than that, a superset. I meant to point out that whatever moral codes we have now (laws, etc..) are based on past or current religious beliefs of right and wrong. I also suspect that one could not now arrive at a workable moral code for a society that wasn't based to some degree on those same religious beliefs. Therefore, whatever system of legal protections we enjoy, we have past religious beliefs to thank.
And that someone not availing themselves of such protections because they are areligious makes just as much sense as suggesting that someone who is religious or anti-evolution not avail themselves of modern medical technology.
aha! Quite frankly what I think the original poster meant -- in jest -- was that if one rejects evolution by selection from biology, one should also reject its technological consequences, in this case modern medicine (drug companies are specifically targeting what are called 'conserved domains' in the genomes of pathogens, these are domains that have changed very little in evolutionary time over great evolutionary distance, but still clearly have a common ancestor. They validate evolution in two ways: there are things that are vital to survival and we (humans, archeae etc.) all share the same inheritance tree).
I personally think the consequences of this argument are stupid (of course one should avail him/herself of modern medicine) but there's still a valid criticism of people who don't believe in evolutionary theory: it's a very succesful theory that's at the basis of most of modern biology, as is evidenced by the availability of very potent drugs against all kinds of diseases.
Besides, the theory of evolution by natural selection is certainly not at odds with (sane) religion: there's plenty of room for god in this or any other scientific theory; science is not about what religions are about and it's usually a bad idea to mix reasoning from one these domains into the other. Look at how stupid the Catholic church looks in retrospect in its dealings with Galileo.
-If such a code is derived and followed, is it signficantly different than a religion? Is the real difference that one admits to being derived by man, while another claims to be derived from deity?
This, I think, is mainly a matter of personal viewpoint (i.e. do you think that there is a significant difference between a morality that admits being derived by man and one that claims to have a higher source; is that higher source something that makes it significantly different to you?)
-Is it possible for men to derive such a code independantly of religion, given that they will always be informed by religion to some degree?
I think Kant, who showed with in his reasoning framework that he was able to arrive at some kind of morality, would say: yes. But I happen to think that that is not true because we're mostly only capable of thinking and acting within the framework of our language and culture (we can only reason about things once we have named them, to put it very very briefly) and that includes the influence of religious thought in our culture (and language).
So in this sense, religion does play a role, esp. in morality where our culture clearly has a long history of appealing to religious sources, but, again, this is a personal viewpoint very much like the one above.
I see the basic elements, such as "causing suffering" or "harming others" to be predecided moral judgements, and I assume them to be based on common religious themes. Or, I suppose one could make a chicken-and-egg argument, and debate whch came first, the moral code that became religion, or vice-versa.
You're right, I was not very precise when I stated the Camus argument (and that's not only my fault, but partly due to Camus' logic).
But my point several levels back was that I believe all moral codes in use today, and any that we could arrive at in the future, would have a basis in past religions.
There I think that you've broadened the definition of religion to include anything that is the basis for a moral code. Religion is usually defined a bit stronger than that as it tries to unify the origin and intent of the universe together with a morality. Also, I think it's a bit disengenuous to people who really believe in their religion because it's reduced to an irrational set of morals, without the faith aspect that many people seem to profess who are religious.
If I'm getting the gist, the idea is that the moral code in question does not come from God nor nature, but is an aritrary code derived by man. If someone follows the code, then they are moral (by definition.)
Kant specified criteria which moral codes in general should follow; he provided a framework for testing the logical consequences of moral codes, by asking what happens if everybody follows this particular moral code? is it self-contradictory? etc. It's basically a test of universality.
A moral code that would stand that test would have to have a simple basis; it would follow from a very basic maxim that can hold universally (i.e. something like: "I'll do what benefits the greatest number of people") which he called a Categorical Imperative, and which would be the basis for the "moral code" that you are talking about.
Now actually choosing the categorical imperative is something that is restricted by a few other things (like the fact that we live with people around us who should be treated as people acting morally, otherwise the code is not universal), and through this kind of reasoning, you can actually arrive at conclusions that stealing is bad and that lying is bad. It's actually pretty clever, but it may leave you feeling like this construction is as stable as a house of cards.
Another example of a moral code without much of an outside basis is one by Camus, simply stated it says:
Here we are in this world that seems to behave at if it is value-free; animals and matter have no moral code they impose or live by, and it is impossible to find out from within this world what its goal is and what its meaning is. The only thing we know is that we humans can cause each other enormous suffering. In the light of this enormous meaninglesness, it's maybe best if we just all get along and try to live in solidarity.
> Hm, so are you of the opinion that religion can have no benefit at all,
No, of course not; one thing I like about religion (even though I'm not religious) is that it can force you to think about the big questions.
>... and that there is a natural moral code completely independant of any religious beliefs?
yes of course; you seem to have missed about two centuries of philosophical debate: start with Kant and keep on reading. You've missed quite a bit, apparently.
It's also the default algorithm to hash passwords (i.e. if you type in your password, it gets hashed into an MD5 sum which is then compared to what the MD5-ed password should be, thereby avoiding plaintext password storage).
Lucklily, most sane systems use salt so this algorithm won't work out of the box.
The Zuiderzee works are only a small part of the 'wall' around the Netherlands. It was created to make that wall a good bit shorter, like the Delta Works.
Given that the oldest wall-shaped water defenses date from around
200BC, and that the making of new dry land in the form of polders involved massive private ventures in the 17th and 18th centuries and were
undertaken as big New Deal-like projects in the
early 20th century, the real figure may still be
pretty big.
That 1982 10MB disk had a transfer rate of maybe 100kB/s, and today's disks have a transfer rate of around 40MB/s. That's an improvement factor of 'only' 400.
Look at it this way: back in 1982 it took 100 seconds to read an entire disk; now it takes 10000 seconds.
With latency it's even worse: IBM had a 30MB disk that had 30ms latency in 1973. Today, in 2005, the best we can do is about 5ms. That's only a factor of 6 in 30 years!
None of the current DSLR cameras really support older (non-autofocus) lenses, except Pentax.
Nikon claims lens compatibility but they conviently turned of all metering for non-autofocus lenses (this is purely to annoy you into buying new lenses, technically it's *more* difficult not to allow stopped-down metering), and your camera may be damaged if you put on very old manual focus lenses. Of course, if you buy a $6000 pro DSLR you won't have this problem, but they *encrypt* part of their RAW files in the hope that you'll need to buy Nikon software to read RAW files.
Canon abandoned their manual focus lens line when they introduced the autofocus EOS cameras in the late eighties, and Minolta did a similar thing a few years later.
Even the current Pentax digital cameras don't allow you to use older lenses as easily as on older cameras because the aperture isn't automatic (if you turn the aperture ring to higher f-stops the viewfinder will get darker and darker), but at least it works.
That's not to say that you'd *want* to use manual focus lenses on current DSLRs because the viewfinders are so tiny that it's almost impossible to see what's focused.
So, because you can't make it work perfectly you shouldn't try?
Anyway, I also happen to think that any company that holds data of such sensitivity should be morally and legally responsible for the confidentiality of that data.
Actually, Hilbert published his paper on general relativity at the same time as Einstein. (Einsteins paper was submitted 5 days later than Hilbert's).
The concept of 'curvature of space' (in the sense of differential geometry) had been worked on since Riemann in the 19th century and with Einstein's general relativity it had become clear that the universe doesn't have a Euclidian metric.
From that realization it was only a matter of time before somebody presented a metric which includes gravitational and electromagnetic effects, which is general relativity.
No, it doesn't. It consists of two plates with lines, which either transmit or block light depending on the specific location of the sun (the viewer needs to be at a specific position).
The visible lines then align in such a way that you can read off the time in digits. Hence 'digital'.
The problem with Windows and these worms is that you do not explicitly have to give execute permission to the file in question. It's just recognized as an '.exe' file by Windows and treated as an executable.
The kind of people who would execute this file, are the same kind of people who wouldn't know how to give some file execute permissions if they were running a Unix-based workstation (probably even OS X).
The word 'Dutch' probably didn't get into English because of the English not making any distinction: it was the Dutch themselves who considered themselves as being 'Diets', or 'Duytsch': i.e. German, before the 16-17th century revolution against the Spanish Habsburgs, which resulted in the Dutch Republic.
For example: the Dutch national anthem, written around 1570 (and arguably the strangest national anthem in the world), has Prince William of Orange, who lead the revolution saying: 'I am of "Duytschen" (German) blood' (as opposed to Spanish).
I assume that the word 'Dutch' (for those people on the other side of the North Sea) is older than the country as an indepent entity.
One big difference between European and American phone plans is that in Europe you pay only for calls you receive -- by the second (so two 30 second calls are charged as one minute).
In the US, you pay for both incoming and outgoing calls, by the minute, rounded up. This adds up very quickly and makes pre-paid phones exceedingly expensive.
I'd say dignity could be defined as 'having value or worth'.
But: can you really define "freedom"? Why can't I have the "freedom" to take your stuff out of your house? And why are the 'truths' in the Declaration of Independence 'self-evident'? These questions have no simple answers.
You diginity comes from your world view, not from how you think you're treated.
Of course it does. It means many things to many people but the idea is that allowing people to
live their lives in "dignity" (i.e. a life having a value) sums up the underlying idea for why there is democracy in the first place.
You're a classic symptom of what's wrong with continental europe
Coming from you I'll take that as a compliment.
(The ironic thing is that I don't even really agree with these laws but I felt I had to explain their origin:-) )
Twisted logic... my grandfather fought in WW2 to protect these freedoms, this form of censorship did not exist in pre-WW2 Britain or many years after, and we have never fallen to extremism or revolution in this country. I would say this is due to our democratic and open process that gives everyone a say without censure, nobody needs protection from speech, only physical threats, regardless if they result from speech.
The logic is that in the (continental) European view there is something more fundamental than democracry: the right to live in dignity. Combined with the experience of gross discrimination and worse during WWII this leads to such a ban; the way continental democracies justify themselves, this ban seems inextricably linked to their existance.
We have always remained in the relms of civility and and resolved internal problems without even the thought of violence. The same is true of the US, the war of independence was due to Britain not letting the US voice be heard in Parliament, I'm sure when concerns were first raised independence was not the primary motivation... but they were ignored and oppressed under new laws (stamp acts?) until it got to a point where independence was a diresable and the only way out. War and extremism is the consquence of not letting people express their concerns approximately, I'm sure to the US population of the time, independence was originally an 'extreme' measure, but in the end it became the only way.
Britan had a civil war (around the 1650's) where a substantial part of the population was killed. This was partly caused a long-going bitter religious divide which resulted in (for example) catholics being discriminated against for centuries. (Not that I'm a catholic by the way)
More recently: the independence of Ireland did not come without violence. No country is immune from political violence and these bans are a way of trying to deal with that.
Exteremism is always perpetuated by a small minority, in an open democracy they usually have their say and are simply dismissed as harmless nutters, however if you try and oppress those views then it backfires and the nutters obtain the moral high ground and the populus support that is required, it runs along the lines of "since these people have been censored they must have something very valid to say that 'they' don't want to us hear", it's classic pre-WW2 Germany, unfortuately Europe and France in particular hasn't learnt from this, hence the preoccupation with trying to ban anything undesirable with the undesired consequence of drawing attention to it.
Germany was a democracy before the Nazi's came to power and had no such bans on hate speech. In that situation, the small group of extremists came to power by being seen as a 'protest party' that would never actally do what they said when elected. That turned out to be a big mistake.
I agree with you, that in a healthy democracy, under normal economic circumstances, such laws are unnecesary and pedantic. However, because of historical reasons these laws are linked to the very existence of continental European democracies (esp. Germany; which now has a substantial part of former Eastern Germany voting for a 'protest party': the PDS)
Although almost all of Western Europe has now been a democracy for at least
60 years,
with constitutional provisions for the freedom of speech in all democracies
(except the UK where the European Treaty on Human Rights serves this
purpose), there are strict laws against 'inciting race hatred', which
limit free speech w.r.t. open racism etc.
Although the European countries and their laws and practices are quite
diverse, there seem to be
two main arguments which have lead to the introduction of these
laws. The first is practical: Europeans have experience with regimes
based on bringing this kind of speech in practice; World War II is still
very much
a defining moment in the collective history of Europeans. Most democracies
were either founded just after the war, or have been re-established
with new constitutions after 1945. In this way, anti-nazism and anti-fascism
has been one of the primary foundations by which the democratic ideals
were established and affirmed. The idea was: never again should a democracy
change into a racist totalitarian state, and it's worthwhile to give up
that bit of freedom to prevent this from happening again.
The other argument is more philosophical: there seems to be a difference
in the basis for the fundamental freedoms and rights between the US and
Europe. In the US, these freedoms and rights are seen as 'god-given' (or
'self-evident'), and are seen primarily as a way to protect the citizen
against the state.
In Europe, the basis for the democratic system with its freedoms is the
notion of the right to live in 'human dignity'. This implies that the
citizen should not just be protected from the state, but also from people and
corporations who try to infringe on 'human dignity'. In this sense,
'inciting race hatred' is seen as more threatening to minorities' right
to dignity than the person uttering those 'threats'
(remember that Europe has witnessed 'incitement' changing
to actual genocide).
You may or may not agree with these laws, but in Europe
there seems to be a broad majority in favor of these laws, mainly because
of WWII.
I hope my point is still clear in this long rant:-)
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I don't mean to imply that a religion is JUST a moral code. I personally believe it is much more than that, a superset. I meant to point out that whatever moral codes we have now (laws, etc..) are based on past or current religious beliefs of right and wrong. I also suspect that one could not now arrive at a workable moral code for a society that wasn't based to some degree on those same religious beliefs. Therefore, whatever system of legal protections we enjoy, we have past religious beliefs to thank.
And that someone not availing themselves of such protections because they are areligious makes just as much sense as suggesting that someone who is religious or anti-evolution not avail themselves of modern medical technology.
I forgot to answer your other point. I quoted Kant's theory for a reason: it's an example of a moral theory that actually comes to conclusions that make sense, without resorting to anything more than a quest for universality (in the sense that a moral code shouldn't lead to contradictions if everybody adheres to them, etc.) and assuming all people are equal (specifically: that I am not intrinsically worth more than somebody else).
It also -- and that is probably its most important weakness -- assumes reason and rational behaviour.
Of course you can see that as an attempt of an 18th century Enlightenment philosopher to come up with a moral code without resorting to theological arguments, i.e. as a counter-reaction to morality with divine origins. Seen this way Kant wouldn't necessarily have come up with his theory if there weren't a religious morality, but that's a bit disengenuous.
Also, in many countries, most current legal protection was introduced by the Romans and strongly influenced by Napoleon. Should people who disagree with the ethics of the Romans and Napoleon not have a claim to legal protection?
In my case, I have a religious belief I subscribe to, part of which dictates that our doctrine is of course the most correct moral code. That doesn't preclude other morals systems from having some or none of it, or even being contrary. So I don't deny the existance of other moral codes, clearly they exist. I simply believe that they are informed by the original/correct moral code.
That's interesting; as I've said I'm not religious and didn't grow up around religious people so this is all a bit foreign to me. I think most people who are not religious would disagree with this 'strong inheritance' of moral codes and maybe opt for the weaker one I'd described.
I don't mean to imply that a religion is JUST a moral code. I personally believe it is much more than that, a superset. I meant to point out that whatever moral codes we have now (laws, etc..) are based on past or current religious beliefs of right and wrong. I also suspect that one could not now arrive at a workable moral code for a society that wasn't based to some degree on those same religious beliefs. Therefore, whatever system of legal protections we enjoy, we have past religious beliefs to thank.
And that someone not availing themselves of such protections because they are areligious makes just as much sense as suggesting that someone who is religious or anti-evolution not avail themselves of modern medical technology.
aha! Quite frankly what I think the original poster meant -- in jest -- was that if one rejects evolution by selection from biology, one should also reject its technological consequences, in this case modern medicine (drug companies are specifically targeting what are called 'conserved domains' in the genomes of pathogens, these are domains that have changed very little in evolutionary time over great evolutionary distance, but still clearly have a common ancestor. They validate evolution in two ways: there are things that are vital to survival and we (humans, archeae etc.) all share the same inheritance tree).
I personally think the consequences of this argument are stupid (of course one should avail him/herself of modern medicine) but there's still a valid criticism of people who don't believe in evolutionary theory: it's a very succesful theory that's at the basis of most of modern biology, as is evidenced by the availability of very potent drugs against all kinds of diseases.
Besides, the theory of evolution by natural selection is certainly not at odds with (sane) religion: there's plenty of room for god in this or any other scientific theory; science is not about what religions are about and it's usually a bad idea to mix reasoning from one these domains into the other. Look at how stupid the Catholic church looks in retrospect in its dealings with Galileo.
But my questions are:
-If such a code is derived and followed, is it signficantly different than a religion? Is the real difference that one admits to being derived by man, while another claims to be derived from deity?
This, I think, is mainly a matter of personal viewpoint (i.e. do you think that there is a significant difference between a morality that admits being derived by man and one that claims to have a higher source; is that higher source something that makes it significantly different to you?)
-Is it possible for men to derive such a code independantly of religion, given that they will always be informed by religion to some degree?
I think Kant, who showed with in his reasoning framework that he was able to arrive at some kind of morality, would say: yes. But I happen to think that that is not true because we're mostly only capable of thinking and acting within the framework of our language and culture (we can only reason about things once we have named them, to put it very very briefly) and that includes the influence of religious thought in our culture (and language).
So in this sense, religion does play a role, esp. in morality where our culture clearly has a long history of appealing to religious sources, but, again, this is a personal viewpoint very much like the one above.
I see the basic elements, such as "causing suffering" or "harming others" to be predecided moral judgements, and I assume them to be based on common religious themes. Or, I suppose one could make a chicken-and-egg argument, and debate whch came first, the moral code that became religion, or vice-versa.
You're right, I was not very precise when I stated the Camus argument (and that's not only my fault, but partly due to Camus' logic).
But my point several levels back was that I believe all moral codes in use today, and any that we could arrive at in the future, would have a basis in past religions.
There I think that you've broadened the definition of religion to include anything that is the basis for a moral code. Religion is usually defined a bit stronger than that as it tries to unify the origin and intent of the universe together with a morality. Also, I think it's a bit disengenuous to people who really believe in their religion because it's reduced to an irrational set of morals, without the faith aspect that many people seem to profess who are religious.
If I'm getting the gist, the idea is that the moral code in question does not come from God nor nature, but is an aritrary code derived by man. If someone follows the code, then they are moral (by definition.)
Kant specified criteria which moral codes in general should follow; he provided a framework for testing the logical consequences of moral codes, by asking what happens if everybody follows this particular moral code? is it self-contradictory? etc. It's basically a test of universality.
A moral code that would stand that test would have to have a simple basis; it would follow from a very basic maxim that can hold universally (i.e. something like: "I'll do what benefits the greatest number of people") which he called a Categorical Imperative, and which would be the basis for the "moral code" that you are talking about.
Now actually choosing the categorical imperative is something that is restricted by a few other things (like the fact that we live with people around us who should be treated as people acting morally, otherwise the code is not universal), and through this kind of reasoning, you can actually arrive at conclusions that stealing is bad and that lying is bad. It's actually pretty clever, but it may leave you feeling like this construction is as stable as a house of cards.
Another example of a moral code without much of an outside basis is one by Camus, simply stated it says:
Here we are in this world that seems to behave at if it is value-free; animals and matter have no moral code they impose or live by, and it is impossible to find out from within this world what its goal is and what its meaning is. The only thing we know is that we humans can cause each other enormous suffering. In the light of this enormous meaninglesness, it's maybe best if we just all get along and try to live in solidarity.
> Hm, so are you of the opinion that religion can have no benefit at all,
No, of course not; one thing I like about religion (even though I'm not religious) is that it can force you to think about the big questions.
> ... and that there is a natural moral code completely independant of any religious beliefs?
yes of course; you seem to have missed about two centuries of philosophical debate: start with Kant and keep on reading. You've missed quite a bit, apparently.
Duh.. you're completely right. I should have RTFA :-)
It's also the default algorithm to hash passwords (i.e. if you type in your password, it gets hashed into an MD5 sum which is then compared to what the MD5-ed password should be, thereby avoiding plaintext password storage).
Lucklily, most sane systems use salt so this algorithm won't work out of the box.
But think of the gravitational energy we can extract from that!
Although it would be nice if a judge could waive the "loser pays" rule in cases where he thinks the plaintiff had a genuine complaint but still lost.
That's exactly how it works in most countries that have a "loser pays" system for civil cases. See, for example this text for more on the subject.
The Zuiderzee works are only a small part of the 'wall' around the Netherlands. It was created to make that wall a good bit shorter, like the Delta Works.
Given that the oldest wall-shaped water defenses date from around 200BC, and that the making of new dry land in the form of polders involved massive private ventures in the 17th and 18th centuries and were undertaken as big New Deal-like projects in the early 20th century, the real figure may still be pretty big.
That 1982 10MB disk had a transfer rate of maybe 100kB/s, and today's disks have a transfer rate of around 40MB/s. That's an improvement factor of 'only' 400.
Look at it this way: back in 1982 it took 100 seconds to read an entire disk; now it takes 10000 seconds.
With latency it's even worse: IBM had a 30MB disk that had 30ms latency in 1973. Today, in 2005, the best we can do is about 5ms. That's only a factor of 6 in 30 years!
None of the current DSLR cameras really support older (non-autofocus) lenses, except Pentax.
Nikon claims lens compatibility but they conviently turned of all metering for non-autofocus lenses (this is purely to annoy you into buying new lenses, technically it's *more* difficult not to allow stopped-down metering), and your camera may be damaged if you put on very old manual focus lenses. Of course, if you buy a $6000 pro DSLR you won't have this problem, but they *encrypt* part of their RAW files in the hope that you'll need to buy Nikon software to read RAW files.
Canon abandoned their manual focus lens line when they introduced the autofocus EOS cameras in the late eighties, and Minolta did a similar thing a few years later.
Even the current Pentax digital cameras don't allow you to use older lenses as easily as on older cameras because the aperture isn't automatic (if you turn the aperture ring to higher f-stops the viewfinder will get darker and darker), but at least it works.
That's not to say that you'd *want* to use manual focus lenses on current DSLRs because the viewfinders are so tiny that it's almost impossible to see what's focused.
So, because you can't make it work perfectly you shouldn't try?
Anyway, I also happen to think that any company that holds data of such sensitivity should be morally and legally responsible for the confidentiality of that data.
Or is that too much to ask?
LOL!
You're right.
I was in a hurry (at work) when I wrote it.
To bring this thread further off topic:
Actually, Hilbert published his paper on general relativity at the same time as Einstein. (Einsteins paper was submitted 5 days later than Hilbert's).
The concept of 'curvature of space' (in the sense of differential geometry) had been worked on since Riemann in the 19th century and with Einstein's general relativity it had become clear that the universe doesn't have a Euclidian metric.
From that realization it was only a matter of time before somebody presented a metric which includes gravitational and electromagnetic effects, which is general relativity.
You're right. I missed that there is a semi-transparent projection screen on the plate closest to the viewer.
No, it doesn't. It consists of two plates with lines, which either transmit or block light depending on the specific location of the sun (the viewer needs to be at a specific position).
The visible lines then align in such a way that you can read off the time in digits. Hence 'digital'.
The problem with Windows and these worms is that you do not explicitly have to give execute permission to the file in question. It's just recognized as an '.exe' file by Windows and treated as an executable.
The kind of people who would execute this file, are the same kind of people who wouldn't know how to give some file execute permissions if they were running a Unix-based workstation (probably even OS X).
The word 'Dutch' probably didn't get into English because of the English not making any distinction: it was the Dutch themselves who considered themselves as being 'Diets', or 'Duytsch': i.e. German, before the 16-17th century revolution against the Spanish Habsburgs, which resulted in the Dutch Republic.
For example: the Dutch national anthem, written around 1570 (and arguably the strangest national anthem in the world), has Prince William of Orange, who lead the revolution saying: 'I am of "Duytschen" (German) blood' (as opposed to Spanish).
I assume that the word 'Dutch' (for those people on the other side of the North Sea) is older than the country as an indepent entity.
But as far as gravity is concerned it doesn't really matter whether the moon has its familiar shape or a point mass.
We could just choose to leave the singularity there in orbit and observe funky gravitational lense effects!
I meant you pay only for calls you make, of course.
One big difference between European and American phone plans is that in Europe you pay only for calls you receive -- by the second (so two 30 second calls are charged as one minute).
In the US, you pay for both incoming and outgoing calls, by the minute, rounded up. This adds up very quickly and makes pre-paid phones exceedingly expensive.
I'd say dignity could be defined as 'having value or worth'. But: can you really define "freedom"? Why can't I have the "freedom" to take your stuff out of your house? And why are the 'truths' in the Declaration of Independence 'self-evident'? These questions have no simple answers.
Of course it does. It means many things to many people but the idea is that allowing people to live their lives in "dignity" (i.e. a life having a value) sums up the underlying idea for why there is democracy in the first place.
Coming from you I'll take that as a compliment.
(The ironic thing is that I don't even really agree with these laws but I felt I had to explain their origin :-) )
The logic is that in the (continental) European view there is something more fundamental than democracry: the right to live in dignity. Combined with the experience of gross discrimination and worse during WWII this leads to such a ban; the way continental democracies justify themselves, this ban seems inextricably linked to their existance.
Britan had a civil war (around the 1650's) where a substantial part of the population was killed. This was partly caused a long-going bitter religious divide which resulted in (for example) catholics being discriminated against for centuries. (Not that I'm a catholic by the way) More recently: the independence of Ireland did not come without violence. No country is immune from political violence and these bans are a way of trying to deal with that.
Germany was a democracy before the Nazi's came to power and had no such bans on hate speech. In that situation, the small group of extremists came to power by being seen as a 'protest party' that would never actally do what they said when elected. That turned out to be a big mistake.
I agree with you, that in a healthy democracy, under normal economic circumstances, such laws are unnecesary and pedantic. However, because of historical reasons these laws are linked to the very existence of continental European democracies (esp. Germany; which now has a substantial part of former Eastern Germany voting for a 'protest party': the PDS)
Although almost all of Western Europe has now been a democracy for at least 60 years, with constitutional provisions for the freedom of speech in all democracies (except the UK where the European Treaty on Human Rights serves this purpose), there are strict laws against 'inciting race hatred', which limit free speech w.r.t. open racism etc.
Although the European countries and their laws and practices are quite diverse, there seem to be two main arguments which have lead to the introduction of these laws. The first is practical: Europeans have experience with regimes based on bringing this kind of speech in practice; World War II is still very much a defining moment in the collective history of Europeans. Most democracies were either founded just after the war, or have been re-established with new constitutions after 1945. In this way, anti-nazism and anti-fascism has been one of the primary foundations by which the democratic ideals were established and affirmed. The idea was: never again should a democracy change into a racist totalitarian state, and it's worthwhile to give up that bit of freedom to prevent this from happening again.
The other argument is more philosophical: there seems to be a difference in the basis for the fundamental freedoms and rights between the US and Europe. In the US, these freedoms and rights are seen as 'god-given' (or 'self-evident'), and are seen primarily as a way to protect the citizen against the state. In Europe, the basis for the democratic system with its freedoms is the notion of the right to live in 'human dignity'. This implies that the citizen should not just be protected from the state, but also from people and corporations who try to infringe on 'human dignity'. In this sense, 'inciting race hatred' is seen as more threatening to minorities' right to dignity than the person uttering those 'threats' (remember that Europe has witnessed 'incitement' changing to actual genocide).
You may or may not agree with these laws, but in Europe there seems to be a broad majority in favor of these laws, mainly because of WWII.
I hope my point is still clear in this long rant :-)
Sander