Actually, divine intervention should be easy to spot -- just look for something that is beyond nature. Look for something occuring that is impossible to explain with scientific principles (and yes, life and its origins are being quite thoroughly explained by chemistry). Sadly for religion, science has proven capable of explaining everything in the universe, unlike the bible which can only explain a bunch of myths that are so ridiculous that they were not taken literally until around the beginning of the 20th century, when the current anti-science movement got started in the US.
And an artist who keeps revising his works is called a hack. Think George Lucas...
What about when the regulations ARE the barrier to entry? Besides, what is regulation getting us? It's not breaking up the monopolies, it's not bringing down prices, it's not improving services. I say that the government should just rule that lock-in contracts are illegal and unenforceable (in every market, not just telecom), take control of the physical infrastructure, and let providers compete for the right to sell time on the infrastructure.
There is NO such thing as a legitimate scientist who looks for answers in genesis, because that's utterly contrary to the idea of science -- which is to look for answers by observing the universe, rather than by assuming that a certain book is correct and than ignoring any evidence to the contrary.
Incidentally, where is Eden? Do you have any photographs of the seraphim and/or the flaming sword guarding it? Oh right, none of them exist! Me: 1, Genesis: 0. How did all the variation in the Human genome arise from just two people? Especially when one was just a feminized clone of the other. Did Adam have thousands of chromosomes? Somehow, Genesis seems to fail... Me: 2, Genesis: 0. We could discuss the physics of how a planetary flood would heat the atmosphere to thousands of degrees, and how the human genome would once again need to achieve its present richness (with thousands of variants for some genes) from just 8 people, but that would just be silly. Blah blah blah. The point being, Genesis has no answers unless you pre-assume that everying that is in Genesis is correct, and that anything in the real world that doesn't match up is just a satanic trick. Real scientists can't do that. Only religious zealots who are incapable of openmindedness think that way.
Hardly. If you flip a coin a thousand times, I can make a verifiable prediction that the results will be about within 50 heads/tails of 500 heads and 500 tails 95% of the time. You can test that, and see that it's true (actually, those particular numbers may not be accurate; I don't remember the details of the binomial distribution off the top of my head). Yet the process is clearly quite random and involves nothing even resembling intelligence. And yet there is some process "selecting" either heads or tails each time -- it's just not an intelligent process.
Face it -- whether or not god exists, every single piece of measurable evidence implies that the universe proceeds in a manner that does not require godly intervention. I would ultimately say that such a universe is far more impressive than the broken crap-shack universe that you obviously believe in, one that breaks down constantly and requires continual divine intervention. If the universe needed constant tinkering, wouldn't that make god an enormous fuck-up? Why couldn't he get it right the first time?
That's really only a short-term solution for the US though. Gradually, the economies of these countries are growing. They're starting to see more and more in-country research. Increasing numbers of graduates return home once they get their degree so that can work in local labs. I understand that South Korea is becoming a very good place to do science these days. The "brain-drain" from Canada to the US has apparently ended.
Still, it's a good point. A streamed education system has a number of very desirable properties, so long as it is designed well. Why teach grade-12 literature to the guy who'll be spending the rest of his life welding? Why teach welding to the girl who'll be spending the rest of her life solving differential equations to optomize the flow of reagents in some chemical plant?
That's a problem with INFLATION theory, not with the big bang itself. Did you even read it? You're just so desperate for science to be all wrong that you'll misinterpret anything. Incidentally, the commentary from answersingenesis.org has nothing to do with the actual discovery, which is just that the parameters of the big bang may wrong. That's very different than concluding that the big bang theory itself being wrong. A webpage run by a bunch of snake-handlers is not the same as informed commentary by actual scientists who have studied the phenomenon in question.
Reproducability isn't a necessary criteria of science. The ability to make verifiable predictions is. The big-bang theory makes predictions that you can verify for yourself with the right equipment. It's consistent with past observations, and makes consistently accurate predictions about future observations. That makes it a good scientific theory.
Now, let's pretend that you actually know something about science: what predictions does creationism make? Oh, that's right, none. None at all. Unless you count the predictions that the world will end soon, which keeps not happening. In fact, nearly every predictiont that creationists and ID-advocates make FAILS to realize. That makes it an interesting philosophical idea at best, or a huge load of bullshit at worst.
But prove me wrong: make a prediction about the distribution of the cosmic background radiation using the bible, and have the WMAP satellite test it. Then we'll compare your predictions with the big-bang+inflation theory predictions, and see who actually knows something about science.
Probably because the teachers and parents don't encourage wide-spread abuse of anyone who demonstrates a shred of intellect or individuality.
Americans put sports first, and guess what? America produces some of the world's best atheletes, while having to recruit its scientists from countries where the intellectually-gifted weren't pummeled half death on a daily basis.
It's all about who you encourage and who you disparage. When take an illiterate coke-snorting fuck-up who has had everything in life handed to him on a silver platter, and make him the leader of the entire country, it sends a clear message that trying hard in school is a waste of time.
Point a radio antennae at the sky. Observe the mysterious background noise. What is that, god whispering at ya? Angels gossiping? Sorry, no, it's the afterglow of a universe-sized explosion. Evidence, right there. Next, note the substantial redshifting of all the other galaxies, demonstrating that the universe is still exploding. Either that, or god is deliberately redshifting everything just to fuck with us, which would make him quite the dickface. We conclude that either A) the universe exploded and is still exploding, or B) a magical dude hates you so much that he would perpetrate a massive, universe-sized hoax on you. I'm going with A...
Have you even been in a biology classroom? The first two weeks of biology 1110 at the local community college consist entirely of evidence for evolution. Sorry, but your own ignorance does not constitute a lack of evidence for evolution.
Incidentally, there's nothing wrong with having intelligent design being taught in school, as long as you don't try to pass it off as a scientific (eg: falsifiable) theory. It's just an idea, nothing more. It belongs in a philosophy or religion class, like all ideas that fail meet the basic criteria for scientific examination.
High school kids in virtuall ALL countries experiment heavily with drugs and alcohol, and have for as long as there have been universities. Back during the renaissance, many European cities had laws forbidding students from entering -- they were that rowdy and destructive.
The problem is that Americans have a culture that celebrates ignorance and vilifies intelligence of any kind. I make it a point to slap anyone so profoundly stupid and intolerant that they use the phrase "ivory tower" -- a situation which, fortunately, has yet to arise. Thank god/cthulhu/fsm that I live in Canada, where we at least pay lip service to book-learnin'.
Seriously though -- considr that the US has an illiterate president. What kind of message does that send? He's the LEADER of the nation. And guess what -- people follow where he leads. In fact, it's estimated that as many as 10% of Harvard graduates are functionally illiterate, which is about what you'd expect from a school whose entrance criteria are primarily based on wealth and the prestige of an applicant's family, rather than any actual intellectual merit.
That's because telephone lines are a form of infrastructure. Realistically, they should be publically owned and run, the same way that the plumbing system is. Regulating the telephone system doesn't accomplish anything other than to drive prices up. Can you imagine if you got your water the same way you got your telephone service?
Infrastructure needs to be either inherently socialist, or it needs to be so completely deregulated that anyone can set up their own set of phone lines, and start competing. It's the half-assed middle-ground that makes competition impossible and cements the monopolies.
Indeed. Network neutrality is vital here and now, with The Internet, but will it make sense in twenty years, with whatever framework we're using at the time? Communications technologies change, and what works today isn't necessarily what works tomorrow. Legislation moves slowly. And really, regulation just fucks things up. The government is either in charge, or it isn't. It's all or nothing, because free markets just don't work in the face of regulation.
That's not to dismiss having the government run something -- that can work very acceptably with infrastructure. But it really is all or nothing.
I swear, it's a laugh a day with the Americans. Never was there a people more accepting of their oppression. Even Iranians stage riots. What's America got? Disgruntled forum posts.
Admittedly it would be a lot funnier if I didn't live a stone's throw from the US (I checked once, and the local transit system goes to within 300 metres of the US border... although there is no border crossing at that location). It would be funnier still if I wasn't aware that Canada's latest batch of census data is being processed by a US business, and is therefore considered property of the US government. Oh well, c'est la vie, long live rock, and all that.
The problem is when a lazy nurse that does more harm than good can't be fired. Admittedly this isn't a terrible problem in many hospitals, but in types of medical care it can become a major issue. Psych hospitals are a good example. Psych nursing has a high burnout rate among competent, caring nurses. As a result, a majority of psych nurses are lazy, incompetent, and don't give a shit. This in turn just increases the burnout rate among the good ones because they have to do the majority of the work. They inevitably switch to less stressful forms of nursing. Paliative care is another example.
So if you ever have the misfortune of becoming mentally ill or old, you'll find yourself wishing that it was easier to get shitty nurses fired, and that there were more nurses being trained by nursing schools (nursing schools deliberately keep the number of graduates low to maintain high salaries for nurses -- like most professional associations).
Hospitals are notoriously bad about their corporate culture, because there is absolutely NO accountability for ANYONE. Most of the staff is essentially unfireable because their skills are in high demand or they're in a union (or both, as in the unfortunate case of nurses). And most hospitals are effectively a monopoly (ambulances can't exactly perform a credit-check to decide where to take you...) and have a captive market.
I'm sure there are a few corporate environments that are worse, but they're probably degenerate one-off businesses that are in the process of completely disintegrating.
For some reason, teachers here think that they are gods inside schools. They consider themselves to have total authority, despite the fact that they take zero responsilibity for anything that happens inside schools. Consider bullying -- if you tried that at your workplace, you'd be lucky if you just got fired. More likely, you'd end up being sued into destitution or thrown in jail. And yet teachers do nothing to stop it, and spend their time expelling students who dare to complain about conditions in schools.
Have you read about those neat demos that materials engineers sometimes do where they drop a lead ball bearing onto a brick of amorphous steel, and the bearing continues bouncing for about two minutes because of how close to perfectly-elastic the collisions are? Now that is some cool shit. Materials engineers are truly the nerds' nerds, an inspiration to us all.
I'd bet that ports, be they of the air or water variety (and maybe border crossings), are going to be the major place that this is useful. High-security buildings may get this kind of thing too.
There's a very cool article on alternative biologies on wikipedia. It's highly speculative, but a great read for anyone with an outsider interest in biochemistry.
As an aside, your signature brought to mind the high school I went to. Some silly idea about "self-directed" learning, which actually just meant that the school only had to pay its staff to mark papers and yell at kids who brought slurpees to the study hall, rather than actually teaching anything. The graduation rate was about 20%, most of whom graduated a few years late. What an abomination. Not quite the same thing as "unschooling", but a potent demonstration of WHY schools are the way they are. As sucky as that model is (and it is undeniably sucky), we just don't have anything better yet.
If my country were INVADED, I'd fight to the death. If it were occupied, I'd be setting up IEDs like crazy, unless a chance to assassinate the occupying nation's leaders came along. Etcera. I believe in lots of things. I might even consider enlisting if my country went to war to defend some other democracy. But joining a military, on the off chance that the next deployment will be one that I support? Especially when the main use of military force is to invade other countries, usually for no reason and with no real plan for success? That I don't believe in. And getting abused and possibly sent to prison for deserting just so that I can avoid dying in some quagmire like Iraq part 2, that I solidly oppose. Only an idiot would join the army -- especially the American army -- at any time other than when there is an imminent threat. A real imminent threat that is, as opposed to an imaginary one. There are lots of idiots though, so the invasion armies of the world will never lack for manpower.
1.) For the second time, someone was too stupid to actually READ my post, in which I explicitly stated that I did not believe we should stop buying helicopters. I don't really believe that you are an employer, since most employers possess the basic literacy skills to not miss things like that.
2.) $3660/year is over half of what someone on welfare gets in BC, which has one of the highest costs of living in Canada. So that's actually doing pretty well.
3.) Not everyone that is on welfare should be on it. By properly funding these programs (instead of keeping them perpetually underfunded as is the norm), we can have enough social workers to actually make informed decisions about who to approve for disability, who to give long-term conventional welfare to (a single parent with a new baby typically needs two years out of the workforce, for instance), who to give the short-term, strings-attached welfare to, who to just stick in a skill retraining course for a month, and who to just tell to fuck off.
There are an awful lot of people that I do think need to be kicked off of welfare. One of the points I was making (since you didn't bother to read it), was that there really aren't that many people who genuinely NEED social assistance, and helping them isn't particularly expensive. Your own digging showed that only 1.8% of Canadians receive social support, and if programs were designed better that could be even lower.
The disabled need long term support (probably for their whole lives), people who have a temporary impediment to working need medium term support (a few months to a few years), people who've lost their job need short term support (one or two months, delivered in a timely fashion), and people whose field of employment has disappeared need a month of support and a ticket to the local technical institute.
4.) If you think that you need helicopters to defend a country, you've obviously never heard of Vietnam. The world's best military defeated by peasants. Besides, Canada has welfare AND helicopters. My point was simply to put welfare spending IN PERSPECTIVE. Military spending is vastly greater. Healthcare spending is vastly greater still.
You're not convinced that Australia can support an army capable of defending against a large scale attack? Are we thinking of the same Australia? The one that kicked unusual amounts of ass during world war 2? The Rats of Torbuk? That Japanese battlegroup that was demolished by a single Australian destroyer on its first mission with an novice crew? For some reason, Aussies are just plain tough.
So you joined the military -- knowing that the military would quite likely be deployed to fight somewhere -- and you didn't want to go to war? How many people become doctors while hoping they wont have to treat patients? How many people become janitors while praying every night that they wont be requird to clean? No offense, but that's seriously fucking stupid. A student loan, a flag, and a christmas tree could easily have satisfied your need for education money, patriotism, and family tradition, respectively.
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And an artist who keeps revising his works is called a hack. Think George Lucas...
What about when the regulations ARE the barrier to entry? Besides, what is regulation getting us? It's not breaking up the monopolies, it's not bringing down prices, it's not improving services. I say that the government should just rule that lock-in contracts are illegal and unenforceable (in every market, not just telecom), take control of the physical infrastructure, and let providers compete for the right to sell time on the infrastructure.
Incidentally, where is Eden? Do you have any photographs of the seraphim and/or the flaming sword guarding it? Oh right, none of them exist! Me: 1, Genesis: 0. How did all the variation in the Human genome arise from just two people? Especially when one was just a feminized clone of the other. Did Adam have thousands of chromosomes? Somehow, Genesis seems to fail... Me: 2, Genesis: 0. We could discuss the physics of how a planetary flood would heat the atmosphere to thousands of degrees, and how the human genome would once again need to achieve its present richness (with thousands of variants for some genes) from just 8 people, but that would just be silly. Blah blah blah. The point being, Genesis has no answers unless you pre-assume that everying that is in Genesis is correct, and that anything in the real world that doesn't match up is just a satanic trick. Real scientists can't do that. Only religious zealots who are incapable of openmindedness think that way.
Face it -- whether or not god exists, every single piece of measurable evidence implies that the universe proceeds in a manner that does not require godly intervention. I would ultimately say that such a universe is far more impressive than the broken crap-shack universe that you obviously believe in, one that breaks down constantly and requires continual divine intervention. If the universe needed constant tinkering, wouldn't that make god an enormous fuck-up? Why couldn't he get it right the first time?
Still, it's a good point. A streamed education system has a number of very desirable properties, so long as it is designed well. Why teach grade-12 literature to the guy who'll be spending the rest of his life welding? Why teach welding to the girl who'll be spending the rest of her life solving differential equations to optomize the flow of reagents in some chemical plant?
That's a problem with INFLATION theory, not with the big bang itself. Did you even read it? You're just so desperate for science to be all wrong that you'll misinterpret anything. Incidentally, the commentary from answersingenesis.org has nothing to do with the actual discovery, which is just that the parameters of the big bang may wrong. That's very different than concluding that the big bang theory itself being wrong. A webpage run by a bunch of snake-handlers is not the same as informed commentary by actual scientists who have studied the phenomenon in question.
Now, let's pretend that you actually know something about science: what predictions does creationism make? Oh, that's right, none. None at all. Unless you count the predictions that the world will end soon, which keeps not happening. In fact, nearly every predictiont that creationists and ID-advocates make FAILS to realize. That makes it an interesting philosophical idea at best, or a huge load of bullshit at worst.
But prove me wrong: make a prediction about the distribution of the cosmic background radiation using the bible, and have the WMAP satellite test it. Then we'll compare your predictions with the big-bang+inflation theory predictions, and see who actually knows something about science.
Americans put sports first, and guess what? America produces some of the world's best atheletes, while having to recruit its scientists from countries where the intellectually-gifted weren't pummeled half death on a daily basis.
It's all about who you encourage and who you disparage. When take an illiterate coke-snorting fuck-up who has had everything in life handed to him on a silver platter, and make him the leader of the entire country, it sends a clear message that trying hard in school is a waste of time.
Point a radio antennae at the sky. Observe the mysterious background noise. What is that, god whispering at ya? Angels gossiping? Sorry, no, it's the afterglow of a universe-sized explosion. Evidence, right there. Next, note the substantial redshifting of all the other galaxies, demonstrating that the universe is still exploding. Either that, or god is deliberately redshifting everything just to fuck with us, which would make him quite the dickface. We conclude that either A) the universe exploded and is still exploding, or B) a magical dude hates you so much that he would perpetrate a massive, universe-sized hoax on you. I'm going with A...
Incidentally, there's nothing wrong with having intelligent design being taught in school, as long as you don't try to pass it off as a scientific (eg: falsifiable) theory. It's just an idea, nothing more. It belongs in a philosophy or religion class, like all ideas that fail meet the basic criteria for scientific examination.
The problem is that Americans have a culture that celebrates ignorance and vilifies intelligence of any kind. I make it a point to slap anyone so profoundly stupid and intolerant that they use the phrase "ivory tower" -- a situation which, fortunately, has yet to arise. Thank god/cthulhu/fsm that I live in Canada, where we at least pay lip service to book-learnin'.
Seriously though -- considr that the US has an illiterate president. What kind of message does that send? He's the LEADER of the nation. And guess what -- people follow where he leads. In fact, it's estimated that as many as 10% of Harvard graduates are functionally illiterate, which is about what you'd expect from a school whose entrance criteria are primarily based on wealth and the prestige of an applicant's family, rather than any actual intellectual merit.
Infrastructure needs to be either inherently socialist, or it needs to be so completely deregulated that anyone can set up their own set of phone lines, and start competing. It's the half-assed middle-ground that makes competition impossible and cements the monopolies.
That's not to dismiss having the government run something -- that can work very acceptably with infrastructure. But it really is all or nothing.
Admittedly it would be a lot funnier if I didn't live a stone's throw from the US (I checked once, and the local transit system goes to within 300 metres of the US border... although there is no border crossing at that location). It would be funnier still if I wasn't aware that Canada's latest batch of census data is being processed by a US business, and is therefore considered property of the US government. Oh well, c'est la vie, long live rock, and all that.
As long as PETM throws a few of those nude-protest things in my city, it'll be worth it.
So if you ever have the misfortune of becoming mentally ill or old, you'll find yourself wishing that it was easier to get shitty nurses fired, and that there were more nurses being trained by nursing schools (nursing schools deliberately keep the number of graduates low to maintain high salaries for nurses -- like most professional associations).
I'm sure there are a few corporate environments that are worse, but they're probably degenerate one-off businesses that are in the process of completely disintegrating.
For some reason, teachers here think that they are gods inside schools. They consider themselves to have total authority, despite the fact that they take zero responsilibity for anything that happens inside schools. Consider bullying -- if you tried that at your workplace, you'd be lucky if you just got fired. More likely, you'd end up being sued into destitution or thrown in jail. And yet teachers do nothing to stop it, and spend their time expelling students who dare to complain about conditions in schools.
Have you read about those neat demos that materials engineers sometimes do where they drop a lead ball bearing onto a brick of amorphous steel, and the bearing continues bouncing for about two minutes because of how close to perfectly-elastic the collisions are? Now that is some cool shit. Materials engineers are truly the nerds' nerds, an inspiration to us all.
I'd bet that ports, be they of the air or water variety (and maybe border crossings), are going to be the major place that this is useful. High-security buildings may get this kind of thing too.
As an aside, your signature brought to mind the high school I went to. Some silly idea about "self-directed" learning, which actually just meant that the school only had to pay its staff to mark papers and yell at kids who brought slurpees to the study hall, rather than actually teaching anything. The graduation rate was about 20%, most of whom graduated a few years late. What an abomination. Not quite the same thing as "unschooling", but a potent demonstration of WHY schools are the way they are. As sucky as that model is (and it is undeniably sucky), we just don't have anything better yet.
If my country were INVADED, I'd fight to the death. If it were occupied, I'd be setting up IEDs like crazy, unless a chance to assassinate the occupying nation's leaders came along. Etcera. I believe in lots of things. I might even consider enlisting if my country went to war to defend some other democracy. But joining a military, on the off chance that the next deployment will be one that I support? Especially when the main use of military force is to invade other countries, usually for no reason and with no real plan for success? That I don't believe in. And getting abused and possibly sent to prison for deserting just so that I can avoid dying in some quagmire like Iraq part 2, that I solidly oppose. Only an idiot would join the army -- especially the American army -- at any time other than when there is an imminent threat. A real imminent threat that is, as opposed to an imaginary one. There are lots of idiots though, so the invasion armies of the world will never lack for manpower.
2.) $3660/year is over half of what someone on welfare gets in BC, which has one of the highest costs of living in Canada. So that's actually doing pretty well.
3.) Not everyone that is on welfare should be on it. By properly funding these programs (instead of keeping them perpetually underfunded as is the norm), we can have enough social workers to actually make informed decisions about who to approve for disability, who to give long-term conventional welfare to (a single parent with a new baby typically needs two years out of the workforce, for instance), who to give the short-term, strings-attached welfare to, who to just stick in a skill retraining course for a month, and who to just tell to fuck off.
There are an awful lot of people that I do think need to be kicked off of welfare. One of the points I was making (since you didn't bother to read it), was that there really aren't that many people who genuinely NEED social assistance, and helping them isn't particularly expensive. Your own digging showed that only 1.8% of Canadians receive social support, and if programs were designed better that could be even lower.
The disabled need long term support (probably for their whole lives), people who have a temporary impediment to working need medium term support (a few months to a few years), people who've lost their job need short term support (one or two months, delivered in a timely fashion), and people whose field of employment has disappeared need a month of support and a ticket to the local technical institute.
4.) If you think that you need helicopters to defend a country, you've obviously never heard of Vietnam. The world's best military defeated by peasants. Besides, Canada has welfare AND helicopters. My point was simply to put welfare spending IN PERSPECTIVE. Military spending is vastly greater. Healthcare spending is vastly greater still.
You're not convinced that Australia can support an army capable of defending against a large scale attack? Are we thinking of the same Australia? The one that kicked unusual amounts of ass during world war 2? The Rats of Torbuk? That Japanese battlegroup that was demolished by a single Australian destroyer on its first mission with an novice crew? For some reason, Aussies are just plain tough.
So you joined the military -- knowing that the military would quite likely be deployed to fight somewhere -- and you didn't want to go to war? How many people become doctors while hoping they wont have to treat patients? How many people become janitors while praying every night that they wont be requird to clean? No offense, but that's seriously fucking stupid. A student loan, a flag, and a christmas tree could easily have satisfied your need for education money, patriotism, and family tradition, respectively.