Agree. I think this is the same kind of thing that you see on TV where they ask celebrities onto talk shows to discuss things like the economy or foreign policy. They don't know anything, but it's good for ratings. But in this case, it's government money, presumably. It makes me wonder who the first person was that suggested that they have a discussion about terraforming Mars, and if anyone else in that meeting laughed out loud before realizing he/she was serious.
2. All things that people disagree about are subjective
3. Therefore, morality is subjective.
The second premise isn't stated, but is required by the conclusion.
My argument:
1. There is disagreement about Math
2. Math is not subjective
3. Therefore, there is disagreement about some non-subjective ideas.
You see how my conclusion disproves his second premise? His conclusion may still be true, but this particular argument for it is not valid.
This has nothing to do with how similar or dissimilar math and morality are. He could have been arguing about ice cream flavor preference. The key point is that disagreement about some idea does not by itself indicate whether or not it is subjective.
The parent was arguing that morality is entirely subjective because different people have different ideas about it. My analogy was intended to show that disagreement about something doesn't always imply that it is entirely subjective. I'm not sure what you took my meaning to be, but I'll try to explain things in the future instead of relying on the critical thinking skills of others.
I must admit no such thing. In a high school math class, students will provide many different answers to any one problem on an exam, but that hardly means that there are no right answers.
Right. I already know how this will be responded to, but I'm going to say it anyway.
Most of the girls you see in porn movies and pictures aren't there because they really enjoy doing porn.
They are probably there because at first they needed money (porn pays well), and started out by doing some non-nude or semi-nude pictures, then they just got tangled up in all of it.
I don't have statistics or anyting, but honestly, do you think a lot of women just decide one day that they want to receive anal sex from one stranger while giving a blow job to another? Maybe in your fantasies, but I think we both know that in real life, very few women like that exist, and if they do, they probably need some kind of help.
So yeah, notwithstanding the incredible greatness of the porn industry because it's willing to technologically innovate and is a powerful force for free speech (sarcasm), I think it is incredibly sad.
Yes, the idea of igniting the atmosphere was stupid.
In retrospect, it may seem that way, but a lot of people were worried about it at the time. IIRC, it was some time before someone calculated (to everyone's satisfaction) that the likelyhood of it actually happening was very small.
The obvious difference between breaking the copy protection on DVDs or software and tampering with this tag is that no one is coming to your house and checking your computer for illegal decryption software or software without the proper licenses.
Anyone with the right equipment can and will read the tag on your car, though. If this anyone happens to be the police, they might also check to see if your hacked tag corresponds to the physical description of your car, or perhaps a license plate number (which it won't).
In other words, heavy fines would be a pretty effective deterent because your chances of getting caught messing with the tag (even if successful) are far higher than your chances of getting caught with a copy of DeCSS.
hmm. Like I said above, there are different ideas about what "very good" means. I encourage you to read a few reviews of this card. It's considered to be a low-end card by Nvidia (thus the price tag).
Not to nitpick, but I think you probably have an unusual idea of what's "very good" if you could make it happen for under $600. I don't think it takes $5000, or even $2000, but I don't think I'd be able to play anything I'd want to play at resolutions and color depths I'm interested in seeing for so little green. Heck, just a "very good" (not the best) video card will run you most of $300. (Merely adequate ones can of course be had for less.)
Maybe. A pal of mine who lives in Boston went to a Peter Kreeft lecture a few months back (Peter Kreeft is a Roman Catholic philosopher at Boston College, writes lots of books accessible to lay people, and is a popular speaker on the writings of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien). He suggested that our real life "ring of power" would be immortality achieved through some medical means.
It was fresh water from their canteens and they were doing it to boil parts of their rations on, as I said, a regular basis. Like, daily. And it wasn't even for lack of a better source of heat, it was just a lot faster. Do you have some first hand experience with C4 that leads you to make these comments, or are you just imagining that it must be dangerous when it is burned? Possibly my dad was exagerating.
Launch mechanisms are engineered to a very high standard to be undefeatable.. specifically, someone with the drawings, an indefinite amount of time, and sophisticated test equipment would be unable to set off a nuke. This guy speculates that attempts to bypass the security measures result in a detonate of the high explosives designed to deform the fissionable material. So, anyway, no, I don't think that the technicians know how to bypass anything.
Small amounts of C4 can be used to start a fire, especially when dealing with moist kindling. Same situation though, it's not a game you want to play unless you have no other choice.
Possibly you overestimate the danger. My pop told me it was regular practice for him and his pals to boil water over small C4 fires in Vietnam.
I figure people are willing to pay 1.50 for a ringtone b/c then they are cool when every "gets" to hear their phone ringing. They aren't paying for music as much as to make a statement or show off their music tastes or whatever.
just think of how many meat packing plants, food processing plants, ranches, and farms there are in the US all of which would be suppliers of raw materials.
I can't quote numbers, but anecdotal evidence and personal experience tells me that this doesn't add up to much. I have an uncle who works at a meat packing plant, and these places have using every part of the animal down to a science that would shame Native Americans. He told me, "never eat imitation squid in an Asian country, it's probably pig rectum."
I grew up on a farm (I'm sounding like a real hick, here) and while there is a lot of waste (stalks left over and the like) I wonder whether you wouldn't expend so much energy collecting and transporting it that it wouldn't be worth the trouble.
Anyway (and I'm sure this last parts been said dozens of times already), using this process to drastically reduce our dependence on foreign oil probably isn't likely to happen in the near future, from an economic stand point. Even if you know nothing about the chemical processes involved, which sounds substantially cheaper to you: Converting crude oil to gasoline, or converting corn stalks to gasoline? A more promising solid to liquid hydrocarbon technology is liquefaction of coal, which I believe has been used/is being used in large volume in some parts of the world.
I wasn't trying to give advice on how to make good espresso.. I was trying to make the point that espresso is only espresso if it is brewed a particular way. It has nothing necessarily to do with where the beans came from or how they are roasted.
I brought it up because a lot of people (really only the parent at the time) seemed to think that espresso is a special kind of bean, or a special roast.
This is a common misconception. The only difference between what is usually called coffee and espresso is method of preparation. The only drink Starbucks serves that fits your description ("coffee that is derived from espresso") is an Americano, which is made from pulling a shot (or two) of espresso and adding hot water.
To make things clearer, most brewed coffee comes from a drip machine. Water at close to boiling is "dripped" through ground, roasted coffee.
Espresso is a whole different animal. The water is a little warmer, and instead of dripping, it is pumped under about 9 bar of pressure through a puck of finely ground coffee. The ratio of coffee to water is also far higher (so it does have more caffeine on a unit volume basis).
Commonly coffee intended for espresso is roasted a little darker than coffee intended for drip, but it doesn't have to be.
Caffeine content in coffee (brewed by the same method, with the same degree of grind) has mostly to do with how it is roasted (darker = more burnt = less caffeine) and what kind of bean it comes from. It is usually claimed that robustas contain more caffeine than arabicas, and also that most premium coffees are arabicas. What's confusing is that Starbucks has a reputation for burning their coffee and presumably would use higher grade arabicas. *shrug*
In the terminology of my post, a hard or strong atheist would say P = 0 (for this reason, there are very few intelligent people in this category.. it is too extreme to be defensible). A soft or weak atheist would say P is less than 0.5. In other words, on the evidence, it is more rational to believe in God's non-existence. An agnostic would say we have no way of knowing. In other words, P = ?.
I didn't make this stuff up, btw. It used to be part of the alt.atheism faq, IIRC.
That's a really good question, and one that is rarely asked.:)
http://www.origins.org/articles/plantinga_theism ra tionality.html
quote: "For first, my beliefs are not, for the most part, within my control. If, for example, you offer me $1,000,000 to cease believing that Mars is smaller than Venus, there is no way I can collect."
Not hard to understand. TV is 100% entertainment (yes, even the evening news). Watching a fuzzed out image of someone with a messed up voice is very dramatic.. "Look what lengths they've gone to to protect the indentity of this person.. what he's saying must be very juicy.."
I assume you are referring to the King James translation. Only a tiny minority of "fundies" believe it is the only valid translation. I would be curious to know where you are getting your information. I've gone to churches for many years which you would no doubt include in your slur, and have yet to personally encounter a person who "completely rejects" the modern translations.
Slashdot Mirror
Agree. I think this is the same kind of thing that you see on TV where they ask celebrities onto talk shows to discuss things like the economy or foreign policy. They don't know anything, but it's good for ratings. But in this case, it's government money, presumably. It makes me wonder who the first person was that suggested that they have a discussion about terraforming Mars, and if anyone else in that meeting laughed out loud before realizing he/she was serious.
Something tells me this post would be +5 insightful if he had been criticizing Bush.
The somewhat more expanded version.
Parent's argument:
1. There is disagreement about morality
2. All things that people disagree about are subjective
3. Therefore, morality is subjective.
The second premise isn't stated, but is required by the conclusion.
My argument:
1. There is disagreement about Math
2. Math is not subjective
3. Therefore, there is disagreement about some non-subjective ideas.
You see how my conclusion disproves his second premise? His conclusion may still be true, but this particular argument for it is not valid.
This has nothing to do with how similar or dissimilar math and morality are. He could have been arguing about ice cream flavor preference. The key point is that disagreement about some idea does not by itself indicate whether or not it is subjective.
The parent was arguing that morality is entirely subjective because different people have different ideas about it. My analogy was intended to show that disagreement about something doesn't always imply that it is entirely subjective. I'm not sure what you took my meaning to be, but I'll try to explain things in the future instead of relying on the critical thinking skills of others.
I must admit no such thing. In a high school math class, students will provide many different answers to any one problem on an exam, but that hardly means that there are no right answers.
Right. I already know how this will be responded to, but I'm going to say it anyway.
Most of the girls you see in porn movies and pictures aren't there because they really enjoy doing porn.
They are probably there because at first they needed money (porn pays well), and started out by doing some non-nude or semi-nude pictures, then they just got tangled up in all of it.
I don't have statistics or anyting, but honestly, do you think a lot of women just decide one day that they want to receive anal sex from one stranger while giving a blow job to another? Maybe in your fantasies, but I think we both know that in real life, very few women like that exist, and if they do, they probably need some kind of help.
So yeah, notwithstanding the incredible greatness of the porn industry because it's willing to technologically innovate and is a powerful force for free speech (sarcasm), I think it is incredibly sad.
Yes, the idea of igniting the atmosphere was stupid.
In retrospect, it may seem that way, but a lot of people were worried about it at the time. IIRC, it was some time before someone calculated (to everyone's satisfaction) that the likelyhood of it actually happening was very small.
"That's ok, son.. Here's your ticket. You won't have to pay all of it if you send the court proof of having the tag replaced within 30 days."
The obvious difference between breaking the copy protection on DVDs or software and tampering with this tag is that no one is coming to your house and checking your computer for illegal decryption software or software without the proper licenses.
Anyone with the right equipment can and will read the tag on your car, though. If this anyone happens to be the police, they might also check to see if your hacked tag corresponds to the physical description of your car, or perhaps a license plate number (which it won't).
In other words, heavy fines would be a pretty effective deterent because your chances of getting caught messing with the tag (even if successful) are far higher than your chances of getting caught with a copy of DeCSS.
hmm. Like I said above, there are different ideas about what "very good" means. I encourage you to read a few reviews of this card. It's considered to be a low-end card by Nvidia (thus the price tag).
Not to nitpick, but I think you probably have an unusual idea of what's "very good" if you could make it happen for under $600. I don't think it takes $5000, or even $2000, but I don't think I'd be able to play anything I'd want to play at resolutions and color depths I'm interested in seeing for so little green. Heck, just a "very good" (not the best) video card will run you most of $300. (Merely adequate ones can of course be had for less.)
Maybe. A pal of mine who lives in Boston went to a Peter Kreeft lecture a few months back (Peter Kreeft is a Roman Catholic philosopher at Boston College, writes lots of books accessible to lay people, and is a popular speaker on the writings of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien). He suggested that our real life "ring of power" would be immortality achieved through some medical means.
It was fresh water from their canteens and they were doing it to boil parts of their rations on, as I said, a regular basis. Like, daily. And it wasn't even for lack of a better source of heat, it was just a lot faster. Do you have some first hand experience with C4 that leads you to make these comments, or are you just imagining that it must be dangerous when it is burned? Possibly my dad was exagerating.
Launch mechanisms are engineered to a very high standard to be undefeatable.. specifically, someone with the drawings, an indefinite amount of time, and sophisticated test equipment would be unable to set off a nuke. This guy speculates that attempts to bypass the security measures result in a detonate of the high explosives designed to deform the fissionable material. So, anyway, no, I don't think that the technicians know how to bypass anything.
Small amounts of C4 can be used to start a fire, especially when dealing with moist kindling. Same situation though, it's not a game you want to play unless you have no other choice.
Possibly you overestimate the danger. My pop told me it was regular practice for him and his pals to boil water over small C4 fires in Vietnam.
I figure people are willing to pay 1.50 for a ringtone b/c then they are cool when every "gets" to hear their phone ringing. They aren't paying for music as much as to make a statement or show off their music tastes or whatever.
just think of how many meat packing plants, food processing plants, ranches, and farms there are in the US all of which would be suppliers of raw materials.
I can't quote numbers, but anecdotal evidence and personal experience tells me that this doesn't add up to much. I have an uncle who works at a meat packing plant, and these places have using every part of the animal down to a science that would shame Native Americans. He told me, "never eat imitation squid in an Asian country, it's probably pig rectum."
I grew up on a farm (I'm sounding like a real hick, here) and while there is a lot of waste (stalks left over and the like) I wonder whether you wouldn't expend so much energy collecting and transporting it that it wouldn't be worth the trouble.
Anyway (and I'm sure this last parts been said dozens of times already), using this process to drastically reduce our dependence on foreign oil probably isn't likely to happen in the near future, from an economic stand point. Even if you know nothing about the chemical processes involved, which sounds substantially cheaper to you: Converting crude oil to gasoline, or converting corn stalks to gasoline? A more promising solid to liquid hydrocarbon technology is liquefaction of coal, which I believe has been used/is being used in large volume in some parts of the world.
I wasn't trying to give advice on how to make good espresso.. I was trying to make the point that espresso is only espresso if it is brewed a particular way. It has nothing necessarily to do with where the beans came from or how they are roasted.
I brought it up because a lot of people (really only the parent at the time) seemed to think that espresso is a special kind of bean, or a special roast.
This is a common misconception. The only difference between what is usually called coffee and espresso is method of preparation. The only drink Starbucks serves that fits your description ("coffee that is derived from espresso") is an Americano, which is made from pulling a shot (or two) of espresso and adding hot water.
To make things clearer, most brewed coffee comes from a drip machine. Water at close to boiling is "dripped" through ground, roasted coffee.
Espresso is a whole different animal. The water is a little warmer, and instead of dripping, it is pumped under about 9 bar of pressure through a puck of finely ground coffee. The ratio of coffee to water is also far higher (so it does have more caffeine on a unit volume basis).
Commonly coffee intended for espresso is roasted a little darker than coffee intended for drip, but it doesn't have to be.
Caffeine content in coffee (brewed by the same method, with the same degree of grind) has mostly to do with how it is roasted (darker = more burnt = less caffeine) and what kind of bean it comes from. It is usually claimed that robustas contain more caffeine than arabicas, and also that most premium coffees are arabicas. What's confusing is that Starbucks has a reputation for burning their coffee and presumably would use higher grade arabicas. *shrug*
Don't read much theology, do you?
In the terminology of my post, a hard or strong atheist would say P = 0 (for this reason, there are very few intelligent people in this category.. it is too extreme to be defensible). A soft or weak atheist would say P is less than 0.5. In other words, on the evidence, it is more rational to believe in God's non-existence. An agnostic would say we have no way of knowing. In other words, P = ?.
I didn't make this stuff up, btw. It used to be part of the alt.atheism faq, IIRC.
That's a really good question, and one that is rarely asked. :)
m ra tionality.html
http://www.origins.org/articles/plantinga_theis
quote: "For first, my beliefs are not, for the most part, within my control. If, for example, you offer me $1,000,000 to cease believing that Mars is smaller than Venus, there is no way I can collect."
Commonly "soft" and "hard" (or some other appropriate adjectives) atheism are distinguished from one another and from agnosticism.
Agnosticism: We are incapable of knowing whether or not God exists
"hard" atheism: God does not exist
"soft" atheism: There is insufficient evidence to believe in God, or belief in God is irrational.
Not hard to understand. TV is 100% entertainment (yes, even the evening news). Watching a fuzzed out image of someone with a messed up voice is very dramatic.. "Look what lengths they've gone to to protect the indentity of this person.. what he's saying must be very juicy.."
I assume you are referring to the King James translation. Only a tiny minority of "fundies" believe it is the only valid translation. I would be curious to know where you are getting your information. I've gone to churches for many years which you would no doubt include in your slur, and have yet to personally encounter a person who "completely rejects" the modern translations.