I'm somewhat aggravated that rather than inspire some omphaloskepsis, I actually reaped a few further comments exactly like the ones that were driving me bonkers.
By the way, did you guys hear that the president is going to be on MythBusters?;)
I don't know if it's possible to burn nearly 10 years of positive karma in one post, but this appears to be the thread to attempt it on, so here goes...
I have never before seen such a complete orgasmic crap-fest of bashing a single person in one place as I have with Palin in this comment thread.
I get that people believe she is stupid (arguable). I get that people loathe her because she's conservative (fine). I get that people believe that not being fully-credentialed with a degree means that you have no intelligence (patently untrue).
What I don't get is how this circle-jerk of "dude, I hate her TOO!" is not as evidently moronic to the people participating in it as it should be.
Don't like stupid people? Cool...fine. Think Palin's stupid? Okie-dokie. Feel the need to be the 12,000th slashdotter to note her perceived ignorance in the same frigging thread? You fail it.
Let me be clear, I don't expect people to rally around me, here, but I caught myself saying "seriously?" so many times while looking for actual discussion of the president appearing on Mythbusters that I had to share my irritation.
As a side-note, "Flamebait" is the appropriate down-mod for a statement that you feel will draw a largely negative response because of its content. "Troll" is for when someone says something unkind or untrue in order to drum up a disagreement.
That sounds like an even more fun question to ask people...I'm borrowing that one! Might up the number of eyes to 4, even.
Perfect way to illustrate the point. The problem isn't with the principle, it's with understanding the nature of the problem that seems to call the principle into question.
Let's re-write the fractional 1/3 + 2/3 in base 9: now, it's.3 +.6 = 1.
By doing that, you make it more readable for someone who can grasp the concept of non base-10 number systems, but the people who can grasp that are not the ones that have trouble understanding that.9... == 1
The problem is not the representation, it's the grasp of the people staring at it.
The parent I replied to was talking about math being fundamentally inconsistent in reference to this specific representation of a number. My argument was that a lack of understanding does not make a case for math being fundamentally inconsistent.
Exactly, but the lack of knowledge about how to express that causes confusion for most people...just as this way of thinking about the number 1 confuses people. I admit it was not a great analogy.
As a matter of personal taste, LibreOffice is my preference at home, but I'm a dev who works a lot with.net and MS databases and MS Office users in the normal course of my day.
I'll agree that the price for Office is a bit high, but most people only use about 30% of the functionality that it offers, less, if they also use SQL Server and MS Exchange. There is an absolute crapload of stuff in Office related to integrating with the rest of their application stack, developer tools, and operating systems. Things that almost nobody outside of a large corp with an immediate need and no desire to retrain people will ever implement. That's what that price is all about.
With LibreOffice, there's less cruft, to be sure, and there's an actual, published, verifiable spec for document format. There's an army of volunteers. There's no financial reason to implement feature X for some incredibly small subset of users.
Could MS spur adoption of Office by dropping the price? Sure, but I'm sure that it wouldn't be worth it for them with their current development and revenue model for MS Office.
Okay, but this isn't a problem with the foundation of math being inconsistent, this is a problem with people not knowing how to write the number normally known as "1" in a different way. Most people would grasp "3/3" as being the same as 1, but this *looks* different because they're unused to seeing it.
The fact that the fractions 1/3 (known in decimal notation as.3...) and 2/3 (known in decimal as.6...) have a sum that can be written funny doesn't mean that they don't still add up to 1.
A mathematical amusement causes people confusion and consternation. It's like asking someone why they appear reversed left-to-right in a mirror, but not top-to-bottom, and saying there's an inconsistency in the foundation of physics.
The problem is that partial understanding of a subject and an associated problem in that subject makes things *appear* inconsistent when they are not.
I don't think anyone is saying "God didn't do it" either.
What they're saying is, "There's no reason to believe God did it." These two statements are not the same thing at all.
(Usually paired with "There's no reason to believe God even exists" - but not always)
=Smidge=
Okay, but someone who believed that God did it (and exists) would be exceedingly unlikely to make either of those statements. They may not be the same statements, but the inference is pretty obviously there (I understand pedantic arguments, believe me, so I fully expect to be challenged on that).
The circumstances surrounding the comment and it's reporting led me to believe that Hawking was making a statement about the pointlessness of a god figure in creation. I can't think of many reasons *why* the statement would be made, and Occam pointed me to make an observation regarding the most likely reason, whether the statement was explicit or not. I don't even necessarily disagree with him on what causes a BB, just with his idea precluding the concept of god, which it appeared to try to do.
A few people have been down the positive/negative proof conversation path, so I'll throw this one out there to add to it. Is saying "There's no reason to believe God did it." the same as saying "There's no reason to believe God didn't do it."
I've never understood why hardcore atheists believe that scientific explanations preclude God as a valid concept.
Because "God did it" adds nothing to our understanding and adds an extra, seemingly unnecessary link in the chain of reasoning. It's a platitude, not an explanation. On top of that, "God did it" has never, in the entire history of mankind, been the correct answer where such answers became knowable...So why should we accept "God did it" as the reason the universe exists?
=Smidge=
Agreed. My point was about the issue with the seemingly exclusionary view that either it's science, or it's "God" at the beginning of everything. To my mind, God is a concept every bit as abstract as an invisible, vibrating string that is the fundamental building block of everything *. Neither of them have any impact on my daily life that I can observe. Neither of them fill me with any deeper sense of meaning, etc.
I'm not saying "God did it" is the reason the universe exists, I'm saying that saying "God didn't do it" is as pointless as saying he did.
*...although, what are strings made of, where did they come from, and why do they vibrate...repeat ad infinitum for things that make up things...the turtles live...
Actually, it's exactly the same thing to say that gravity was always there. I've never understood why hardcore atheists believe that scientific explanations preclude God as a valid concept.
Knowing that there are atoms doesn't mean that there aren't electrons, protons, neutrons, etc. Same goes for quarks and electrons (and on ad infinitum, from a conceptual standpoint). God is a concept, regardless of whether certain groups believe there is a physical being associated with said concept. The logical response to "Is there a God?" is "Yes", but there's no concrete answer to what God is, or to how the concept of God relates to the creation of the universe.
I'm agnostic (after a brief catholic upbringing and 30-odd years of making my own mind up about things), not strictly atheist, and my general understanding is that of God as an idea. As far as I know, there's no way to prove or disprove said concept, hence my agnosticism.
I think Steve would disagree with my understanding, which is why he came up with a different answer. Easily accomplished when it's a philosophical subject, I suppose.
I think he's saying that the old "spawn copy" functionality the Blizzard used to provide (and that likely got people interested enough in the game to go buy a copy) wasn't a bad idea and forcing an internet connection for multiplayer *is* a bad idea. The OP's comment about n000bs not shelling out cash to get an intro to the game is perhaps phrased badly, but still insightful.
Blizzard deciding to allow people to play the *new* SC the same way they have been able to play the *old* SC would probably have lessened the development cost. I'm not sure if spending whatever they spent on Bnet/DRM for SC2 will be a positive net financial move.
I bitched and bitched about the lack of LAN play, and I [mostly] stopped once I realized they weren't going to add it back in, but I still think they've made some boneheaded decisions in that area.
So...it's fine for anyone to create an emulator that simulates patented hardware and can run on dissimilar commodity hardware, and the manufacturer of said patented hardware should simply say "OK, fine" to any company wishing to sell that emulator-hardware combination?
While I fully agree that software and patents need a divorce, [software] is not what's at issue that IBM invested R&D money in. They invested in hardware, and are saying no to a competitive business plan aimed at leveraging said investment. They have a right not to license, correct?
It's the "plus" part that's the problem...they want to sell a platform identical to IBM's without a licensing agreement. They asked for one, and IBM said "no" (to recap what I already said). That is *not* a typical FOSS approach, and we're not talking about *software*, we're talking about *hardware*.
Emulation is fine...IBM has said they have no problem with that software project. A competitor wanting to sell a complete platform that directly competes is *not* fine, and has nothing to do with the fact that Hercules built an emulator.
Maybe [your comments] are not strictly FUD, but it doesn't prevent them from being incorrect.
TurboHercules wants IBM to allow the OS they developed for the patented hardware they developed it to be run on to be licensed to run on emulators that TurboHercules will sell.
TH didn't license any of the underlying technology, and did not develop IBM-compatible hardware that does not violate the patents in question. TH was banking on IBM's pledge (intended to support FOSS development) not to assert patents to be their protection against sniping at *hardware* sales of IBM.
The fact that copyright and software are involved in this discussion is secondary to the issue at hand.
The Open Source Hercules project is not in trouble for creating the emulator. That's a simple fact. TurboHercules has garnered a strong "no" response to their inquiry about grabbing some of IBM's existing business. Another fact. Neither of these facts has a significant bearing on IBM's relationship to FOSS in general, or to their patent pledge.
Is TurboHercules saying "hey, if we can't share some licensing revenue, we'll kill the Hercules project"? Does it matter if they do? That's the beauty of FOSS...just because they have sour grapes over a problematic business plan, doesn't mean that the project has to die.
IBM has a problem with a competing (copycat) platform that TH is proposing which would cut in on the low end (and eventually the high end) of IBM's mainframe sales...not with the Hercules project itself.
...makes me wonder if it would work somehow with splitting mirrors to slice up the projected beam and a large number of smaller mirrors (something like a holographic DLP system). Hmm...what would the mirror array need to be shaped like?
Maybe a holographic refraction system with the projector in the middle of a cylindrical array of refractors?
They'll figure out a way to commercialize this sometime in the next 10 years, I'm sure.
I was hoping this would happen someday. Jumpcut going away (thanks a lot for that, Yahoo) left a big hole in online video content. I'll be waiting for them to allow the same type of collaborative editing/borrowing.
Rationalism is not an ideology. It cannot be. To be idealistic means forgoing being rational when a particular subject related to that ideology becomes the topic of discussion.
Rationalism and being able to consider viewpoints of others are not incompatible. The problem arises when you are facing what you know is either an irrational or unproven viewpoint espoused as truth by someone else.
A minority of the people mentioned in the study the article talks about are members of this group of thinkers. Scientists *ought* to be. Preconceived notions and science do not do justice to research.
There's a lot of crappy discussion of various scientific topics going on right now simply because the loudest talkers are not the most rational ones...at least until rational people get upset at flagrant opining in the guise of fact-giving.
Rational people are quick to compromise, if given evidence with solid foundations. Irrational people see rational people dismissing unfounded or weakly-supported opinion and think that rational people are unwilling to compromise because *they* cannot step back and examine things in the same way. Being able to resist making up your mind makes you a bad candidate for being, say, a troop commander, but it is the only *defense* to ideology.
Maybe you have a different definition of rational?
Think Progress failed to note that while they removed Jefferson from the portion of the curriculum that used to pertain to political revolutions (page 24, section 20c), he was added to the list of significant individuals in government and politics (page 40, section f), and left untouched in the section on political philosophies of the founding fathers (page 40, section D).
What I find more interesting was that while Calvin was added, Hobbes was removed. To me, that's a more obvious engineering move, although still shy of being unconstitutional.
I see what you're saying about the board member's vetoing a proposed change that's basically just more information. I think that's wrong-headed, but I'm guessing the people that elected the board members would disagree with me, and that's just where those Texans differ from you and I. It's a matter of local sensibility.
I'll have to find out what exactly Phil Plait is talking about...I'm intrigued, I'll admit.
The only bit I see in the changes related to the first amendment is a change from
analyze the rights guaranteed by the Bill of Rights, including first amendment freedoms;
to
identify the freedoms and rights guaranteed by each amendment in the Bill of Rights;
...so that's not them dropping a requirement, but rather adding one. If taught correctly, that would seem to imply that the right (to freedom of religious speech) *and* the freedom (from government creating a law respecting an establishment of religion...promoting one state religion) in the First Amendment would be covered...in addition to the rights and freedoms laid out in the rest of the amendments.
I did originally speak about the short shrift you mention. I was not implying that such material needed to be included in textbooks, I was saying (and did say specifically) that the changes made were in reaction to the slow push against public expression of religion in the modern day United States.
The schoolbook policy as described by Slashdot is reason to look at what the proposed changes are, I agree. Which is why I read the proposed changes before commenting.
Again, I agree that integrating religious doctrine in public schools runs afoul of the first amendment of the constitution. Again, I agree that the government is not permitted to tell people how or who to worship, and again, you're confusing my argument with that of someone who is both religious (which I'm not), a proponent of Christianity over other religions (which I'm decidedly not), and who has not taken the time to read about the proposed changes (which I have...well, am still doing...haven't found anything unconstitutional in the past few hours of browsing).
Before you rail about the failures of a document you haven't read, read it.
We do not differ philosophically, we differ in what we are seeing in this proposition. If you have something specific you can point to and say "right there...that's unconstitutional", then show me where and lets argue the merits, rather than being a pair of seemingly unsuccessful pedants.
I'd stand by a decision against schools forcing children to pray on constitutional grounds, but that's not what we're talking about. Prayer itself is not prohibited...mandatory, school-led prayer is. I never made a case that coercion is part of the first amendment's protections of religious speech. In fact, I said the opposite.
You seem to be confusing whether people are allowed to do something with whether people are required to do something. I also think that [your example] agrees with what the constitution "really says", I just think you have drawn a false parallel with the Texas textbook situation.
If the textbooks say something like "Jesus is Lord and don't forget it, because that's what our founding fathers want us to believe", then yeah, it's a bad thing, and unconstitutional. Believing that they actually say such a thing is pretty tough for me to swallow, especially knowing that my oldest daughter had a much less religious school in Saginaw, TX (just north of Ft. Worth) than she does in Mentor Ohio (just east of Cleveland).
The constitution *really* says a lot of things, but many people misunderstand both what it says, and how it applies. This might be one of those situations (or you might just be revved up by the article...I know it upset me until I read into it a bit).
The idea that government cannot censor speech, even religious speech, is not a stinking pile of bullshit. I'm agnostic, so I'll take your comment on suggestions for worship under advisement. The constitution doesn't say people can't use government channels to worship, it says that government can't dictate what form of worship people undertake or prevent them from doing so.
You made one comment that was fact-based, rather than emotion-based, but it was also inaccurate. I appreciate your depth of feeling, but would appreciate a more well thought-out response.
Slashdot Mirror
I appreciate that response a lot.
I'm somewhat aggravated that rather than inspire some omphaloskepsis, I actually reaped a few further comments exactly like the ones that were driving me bonkers.
By the way, did you guys hear that the president is going to be on MythBusters? ;)
I don't know if it's possible to burn nearly 10 years of positive karma in one post, but this appears to be the thread to attempt it on, so here goes...
I have never before seen such a complete orgasmic crap-fest of bashing a single person in one place as I have with Palin in this comment thread.
I get that people believe she is stupid (arguable). I get that people loathe her because she's conservative (fine). I get that people believe that not being fully-credentialed with a degree means that you have no intelligence (patently untrue).
What I don't get is how this circle-jerk of "dude, I hate her TOO!" is not as evidently moronic to the people participating in it as it should be.
Don't like stupid people? Cool...fine. Think Palin's stupid? Okie-dokie. Feel the need to be the 12,000th slashdotter to note her perceived ignorance in the same frigging thread? You fail it.
Let me be clear, I don't expect people to rally around me, here, but I caught myself saying "seriously?" so many times while looking for actual discussion of the president appearing on Mythbusters that I had to share my irritation.
As a side-note, "Flamebait" is the appropriate down-mod for a statement that you feel will draw a largely negative response because of its content. "Troll" is for when someone says something unkind or untrue in order to drum up a disagreement.
That sounds like an even more fun question to ask people...I'm borrowing that one! Might up the number of eyes to 4, even.
Perfect way to illustrate the point. The problem isn't with the principle, it's with understanding the nature of the problem that seems to call the principle into question.
So my point is different because the word "decimal" is nowhere to be found until the second paragraph?
Well, sorta'.
Let's re-write the fractional 1/3 + 2/3 in base 9: now, it's .3 + .6 = 1.
By doing that, you make it more readable for someone who can grasp the concept of non base-10 number systems, but the people who can grasp that are not the ones that have trouble understanding that .9... == 1
The problem is not the representation, it's the grasp of the people staring at it.
The parent I replied to was talking about math being fundamentally inconsistent in reference to this specific representation of a number. My argument was that a lack of understanding does not make a case for math being fundamentally inconsistent.
Exactly, but the lack of knowledge about how to express that causes confusion for most people...just as this way of thinking about the number 1 confuses people. I admit it was not a great analogy.
...Right.
...and it's the exact same point I just made in my first sentence.
As a matter of personal taste, LibreOffice is my preference at home, but I'm a dev who works a lot with .net and MS databases and MS Office users in the normal course of my day.
I'll agree that the price for Office is a bit high, but most people only use about 30% of the functionality that it offers, less, if they also use SQL Server and MS Exchange. There is an absolute crapload of stuff in Office related to integrating with the rest of their application stack, developer tools, and operating systems. Things that almost nobody outside of a large corp with an immediate need and no desire to retrain people will ever implement. That's what that price is all about.
With LibreOffice, there's less cruft, to be sure, and there's an actual, published, verifiable spec for document format. There's an army of volunteers. There's no financial reason to implement feature X for some incredibly small subset of users.
Could MS spur adoption of Office by dropping the price? Sure, but I'm sure that it wouldn't be worth it for them with their current development and revenue model for MS Office.
Okay, but this isn't a problem with the foundation of math being inconsistent, this is a problem with people not knowing how to write the number normally known as "1" in a different way. Most people would grasp "3/3" as being the same as 1, but this *looks* different because they're unused to seeing it.
The fact that the fractions 1/3 (known in decimal notation as .3...) and 2/3 (known in decimal as .6...) have a sum that can be written funny doesn't mean that they don't still add up to 1.
A mathematical amusement causes people confusion and consternation. It's like asking someone why they appear reversed left-to-right in a mirror, but not top-to-bottom, and saying there's an inconsistency in the foundation of physics.
The problem is that partial understanding of a subject and an associated problem in that subject makes things *appear* inconsistent when they are not.
That's your experience. They stole a tire from me.
Walmart did, or a rogue employee did? Seriously, what would the company want with your tire?
Besides which, how does that change the fact that they tow cars and repair lawn appliances?
I don't think anyone is saying "God didn't do it" either.
What they're saying is, "There's no reason to believe God did it." These two statements are not the same thing at all.
(Usually paired with "There's no reason to believe God even exists" - but not always) =Smidge=
Okay, but someone who believed that God did it (and exists) would be exceedingly unlikely to make either of those statements. They may not be the same statements, but the inference is pretty obviously there (I understand pedantic arguments, believe me, so I fully expect to be challenged on that).
The circumstances surrounding the comment and it's reporting led me to believe that Hawking was making a statement about the pointlessness of a god figure in creation. I can't think of many reasons *why* the statement would be made, and Occam pointed me to make an observation regarding the most likely reason, whether the statement was explicit or not. I don't even necessarily disagree with him on what causes a BB, just with his idea precluding the concept of god, which it appeared to try to do.
A few people have been down the positive/negative proof conversation path, so I'll throw this one out there to add to it. Is saying "There's no reason to believe God did it." the same as saying "There's no reason to believe God didn't do it."
Because "God did it" adds nothing to our understanding and adds an extra, seemingly unnecessary link in the chain of reasoning. It's a platitude, not an explanation. On top of that, "God did it" has never, in the entire history of mankind, been the correct answer where such answers became knowable...So why should we accept "God did it" as the reason the universe exists? =Smidge=
Agreed. My point was about the issue with the seemingly exclusionary view that either it's science, or it's "God" at the beginning of everything. To my mind, God is a concept every bit as abstract as an invisible, vibrating string that is the fundamental building block of everything *. Neither of them have any impact on my daily life that I can observe. Neither of them fill me with any deeper sense of meaning, etc.
I'm not saying "God did it" is the reason the universe exists, I'm saying that saying "God didn't do it" is as pointless as saying he did.
*...although, what are strings made of, where did they come from, and why do they vibrate...repeat ad infinitum for things that make up things...the turtles live...
Actually, it's exactly the same thing to say that gravity was always there. I've never understood why hardcore atheists believe that scientific explanations preclude God as a valid concept.
Knowing that there are atoms doesn't mean that there aren't electrons, protons, neutrons, etc. Same goes for quarks and electrons (and on ad infinitum, from a conceptual standpoint). God is a concept, regardless of whether certain groups believe there is a physical being associated with said concept. The logical response to "Is there a God?" is "Yes", but there's no concrete answer to what God is, or to how the concept of God relates to the creation of the universe.
I'm agnostic (after a brief catholic upbringing and 30-odd years of making my own mind up about things), not strictly atheist, and my general understanding is that of God as an idea. As far as I know, there's no way to prove or disprove said concept, hence my agnosticism.
I think Steve would disagree with my understanding, which is why he came up with a different answer. Easily accomplished when it's a philosophical subject, I suppose.
And, if you wish to pipe up on the site owner's behalf: http://corporate.discovery.com/contact/viewer-relations/
I think he's saying that the old "spawn copy" functionality the Blizzard used to provide (and that likely got people interested enough in the game to go buy a copy) wasn't a bad idea and forcing an internet connection for multiplayer *is* a bad idea. The OP's comment about n000bs not shelling out cash to get an intro to the game is perhaps phrased badly, but still insightful.
Blizzard deciding to allow people to play the *new* SC the same way they have been able to play the *old* SC would probably have lessened the development cost. I'm not sure if spending whatever they spent on Bnet/DRM for SC2 will be a positive net financial move.
I bitched and bitched about the lack of LAN play, and I [mostly] stopped once I realized they weren't going to add it back in, but I still think they've made some boneheaded decisions in that area.
So...it's fine for anyone to create an emulator that simulates patented hardware and can run on dissimilar commodity hardware, and the manufacturer of said patented hardware should simply say "OK, fine" to any company wishing to sell that emulator-hardware combination?
While I fully agree that software and patents need a divorce, [software] is not what's at issue that IBM invested R&D money in. They invested in hardware, and are saying no to a competitive business plan aimed at leveraging said investment. They have a right not to license, correct?
It's the "plus" part that's the problem...they want to sell a platform identical to IBM's without a licensing agreement. They asked for one, and IBM said "no" (to recap what I already said). That is *not* a typical FOSS approach, and we're not talking about *software*, we're talking about *hardware*.
Emulation is fine...IBM has said they have no problem with that software project. A competitor wanting to sell a complete platform that directly competes is *not* fine, and has nothing to do with the fact that Hercules built an emulator.
Maybe [your comments] are not strictly FUD, but it doesn't prevent them from being incorrect.
TurboHercules wants IBM to allow the OS they developed for the patented hardware they developed it to be run on to be licensed to run on emulators that TurboHercules will sell.
TH didn't license any of the underlying technology, and did not develop IBM-compatible hardware that does not violate the patents in question. TH was banking on IBM's pledge (intended to support FOSS development) not to assert patents to be their protection against sniping at *hardware* sales of IBM.
The fact that copyright and software are involved in this discussion is secondary to the issue at hand.
The Open Source Hercules project is not in trouble for creating the emulator. That's a simple fact. TurboHercules has garnered a strong "no" response to their inquiry about grabbing some of IBM's existing business. Another fact. Neither of these facts has a significant bearing on IBM's relationship to FOSS in general, or to their patent pledge.
Is TurboHercules saying "hey, if we can't share some licensing revenue, we'll kill the Hercules project"? Does it matter if they do? That's the beauty of FOSS...just because they have sour grapes over a problematic business plan, doesn't mean that the project has to die.
IBM has a problem with a competing (copycat) platform that TH is proposing which would cut in on the low end (and eventually the high end) of IBM's mainframe sales...not with the Hercules project itself.
...makes me wonder if it would work somehow with splitting mirrors to slice up the projected beam and a large number of smaller mirrors (something like a holographic DLP system). Hmm...what would the mirror array need to be shaped like?
Maybe a holographic refraction system with the projector in the middle of a cylindrical array of refractors?
They'll figure out a way to commercialize this sometime in the next 10 years, I'm sure.
I was hoping this would happen someday. Jumpcut going away (thanks a lot for that, Yahoo) left a big hole in online video content. I'll be waiting for them to allow the same type of collaborative editing/borrowing.
Rationalism is not an ideology. It cannot be. To be idealistic means forgoing being rational when a particular subject related to that ideology becomes the topic of discussion.
Rationalism and being able to consider viewpoints of others are not incompatible. The problem arises when you are facing what you know is either an irrational or unproven viewpoint espoused as truth by someone else.
A minority of the people mentioned in the study the article talks about are members of this group of thinkers. Scientists *ought* to be. Preconceived notions and science do not do justice to research.
There's a lot of crappy discussion of various scientific topics going on right now simply because the loudest talkers are not the most rational ones...at least until rational people get upset at flagrant opining in the guise of fact-giving.
Rational people are quick to compromise, if given evidence with solid foundations. Irrational people see rational people dismissing unfounded or weakly-supported opinion and think that rational people are unwilling to compromise because *they* cannot step back and examine things in the same way. Being able to resist making up your mind makes you a bad candidate for being, say, a troop commander, but it is the only *defense* to ideology.
Maybe you have a different definition of rational?
Think Progress failed to note that while they removed Jefferson from the portion of the curriculum that used to pertain to political revolutions (page 24, section 20c), he was added to the list of significant individuals in government and politics (page 40, section f), and left untouched in the section on political philosophies of the founding fathers (page 40, section D).
What I find more interesting was that while Calvin was added, Hobbes was removed. To me, that's a more obvious engineering move, although still shy of being unconstitutional.
I see what you're saying about the board member's vetoing a proposed change that's basically just more information. I think that's wrong-headed, but I'm guessing the people that elected the board members would disagree with me, and that's just where those Texans differ from you and I. It's a matter of local sensibility.
I'll have to find out what exactly Phil Plait is talking about...I'm intrigued, I'll admit.
The only bit I see in the changes related to the first amendment is a change from
to
...so that's not them dropping a requirement, but rather adding one. If taught correctly, that would seem to imply that the right (to freedom of religious speech) *and* the freedom (from government creating a law respecting an establishment of religion...promoting one state religion) in the First Amendment would be covered...in addition to the rights and freedoms laid out in the rest of the amendments.
I did originally speak about the short shrift you mention. I was not implying that such material needed to be included in textbooks, I was saying (and did say specifically) that the changes made were in reaction to the slow push against public expression of religion in the modern day United States.
The schoolbook policy as described by Slashdot is reason to look at what the proposed changes are, I agree. Which is why I read the proposed changes before commenting.
Again, I agree that integrating religious doctrine in public schools runs afoul of the first amendment of the constitution. Again, I agree that the government is not permitted to tell people how or who to worship, and again, you're confusing my argument with that of someone who is both religious (which I'm not), a proponent of Christianity over other religions (which I'm decidedly not), and who has not taken the time to read about the proposed changes (which I have...well, am still doing...haven't found anything unconstitutional in the past few hours of browsing).
Before you rail about the failures of a document you haven't read, read it.
We do not differ philosophically, we differ in what we are seeing in this proposition. If you have something specific you can point to and say "right there...that's unconstitutional", then show me where and lets argue the merits, rather than being a pair of seemingly unsuccessful pedants.
I'd stand by a decision against schools forcing children to pray on constitutional grounds, but that's not what we're talking about. Prayer itself is not prohibited...mandatory, school-led prayer is. I never made a case that coercion is part of the first amendment's protections of religious speech. In fact, I said the opposite.
You seem to be confusing whether people are allowed to do something with whether people are required to do something. I also think that [your example] agrees with what the constitution "really says", I just think you have drawn a false parallel with the Texas textbook situation.
If the textbooks say something like "Jesus is Lord and don't forget it, because that's what our founding fathers want us to believe", then yeah, it's a bad thing, and unconstitutional. Believing that they actually say such a thing is pretty tough for me to swallow, especially knowing that my oldest daughter had a much less religious school in Saginaw, TX (just north of Ft. Worth) than she does in Mentor Ohio (just east of Cleveland).
The constitution *really* says a lot of things, but many people misunderstand both what it says, and how it applies. This might be one of those situations (or you might just be revved up by the article...I know it upset me until I read into it a bit).
The idea that government cannot censor speech, even religious speech, is not a stinking pile of bullshit. I'm agnostic, so I'll take your comment on suggestions for worship under advisement. The constitution doesn't say people can't use government channels to worship, it says that government can't dictate what form of worship people undertake or prevent them from doing so.
You made one comment that was fact-based, rather than emotion-based, but it was also inaccurate. I appreciate your depth of feeling, but would appreciate a more well thought-out response.