When I was little, we lived in an area without TV reception. It wasn't until I arrived in the first grade that I learned I wasn't cool because I didn't have Star jeans (jeans w/ stars embroidered on the back pockets). I still remember the name of the person who informed me of my uncoolness even after 30 years distance. It would seem that TV can have a negative impact - we were too poor to afford stylish duds, thus relegating me to school nerd status. On the other hand, I have a graduate degree and my own business. I still don't have any Star jeans, but I'm not unhappy.
You were excluded because of not dressing right, and you can still remember the name of the kid who teased you, and it does not bother you at all? How did you get over it? The teasing did not make you want to skip school and stay away from those kids?
If you call television shows like "Traiding Spaces" (TLC), "Breaking Vegas" (History.. but not about the history of Vegas but about people who play poker and try to count cards). Discovery has a whole lot of paid programming. The pickings are slim, and they are replayed oftem. You don't get much new programming.
I will admit something, I am looking over the shows on the History Channel, and they have one on Egyptian Pyramids. But it is on at 5am.
Perhaps it's because I'm up here in Canada, but it seems as if we have plenty of quality programing. Documentaries on CBC constantly interest; a recent one documented a National Guard battallion deploying to your ongoing War in Iraq.
We don't get very much quality public programming in the USA. Politicians are cutting funding for humanities programming. And I have noticed the past 10 years, there are more quacks on PBS than before. The past couple months on PBS I have seen some guy who is selling "The Power of Intention", some half intellectual show about his lifestyle. It is not history, not a documentary, not science, but his opinions.
I was lucky there is one quality station I loved as a high school aged kid, the local Community College Station. I learned to talk French watching French in Action (although today they only play it once a week... at 1am, I guess all the French hating is working). They had a physics show called The Mechanical Universe. This was good stuff for a high school kid. I'd like to see quality educational shows on tv, not someones opinion, which seems to be the direction PBS is slowly going.
I have an idea, why not have a channel with nothing but a camera pointed in a college classroom? Not anything produced, but just a webcam that captures lectures. That would be interesting.
It is, in short, everythign Marx pegged religion for back in the day. It keeps the fucktarts passive. Take WCW and reality TV away from these people and they aren't going to write The Ilead - they're going to sit on the porch and bullshit with the neighbors.
Lets take your example one step further. They sit on the porch and bullshit with the neighbors. Sooner or later they will start talking about their life, their work. They might not write The Scarlet Letter, hell they might never even read it. But they might start questioning how they live. Do they really believe society is fair, that they should work 40+ hours a week yet have no financial security. You can't talk with the television about issues that effect you, you can just listen to the 15 second soundclip. With your neighbor, you can talk about the war in Iraq, healthcare, social security, where you work, how you live. You become an active participant in your life rather than just someone along for the ride. Sure they might bullshit and laugh, but a community will never form just sitting in front of a tv.
You can whine all you want, it doesn't make it true. Ever heard of personal responsibility? Self Control? Watching TV didn't make you do anything, you chose to.
The television producers and stations hire psychologists to think of ways to make people keep watching. Plus, they hook you as a kid.
Television is addictive like smoking cigarettes. You can get hooked to stupid storylines. They do use simple emotional manipulation to keep interest.
So no, it is not about personal responsibility because it is not a pure choice a person can make without outside influence. It is stacked to favor television. With all the money for just one show, such as when Friends paid each cast member one million dollars per episode, can you honestly say the television producers are not using unfair tactics to make people watch.
I'll give you one example. You make a show and get some simple story arch with emotional attachment. You add to that show some new style, say bell bottom pants. You make the "uncool" people look different. Welcome to CHiPs and the 70's. Then you make shows that exude wealth and prestege. A $100 haircut is no longer a waste of money, it is a status symbol. Shoes, that never crossed the $100 mark all of a sudden start costing multiples of $100. Welcome to the 1980's.
People who do not join the new style become outcasts. I knew a smart kid back in high school. His life was a living hell because no matter how hard he tried finding cool clothing, they just did not have it at K-Mart in the early 1990's. The only expensive thing this kid owned was a HP 48gx. His father was a person who insisted everyone get haircuts at home, and he forced them to watch nothing but PBS. This kid went on to an Ivy league school, but I bet you he is unhappy about being excluded from everything as a child.
People stop thinking critically while watching television, it is called suspension of disbelief. If it is on television, there is a large group of people who will believe it. Yet put it in print, and people become more sceptical. I guess it is easier to believe something if you see Bill O'Rielly telling it to you.
TV is the worst possible waste of time a person can have. Episodic television is mind numbing. It is designed to have somoene sit in front of a television while countless hours go away, never to come back. For example, what good has come from Sinfield on humanity? Yada, yada, yada. Point made.
The only reason television exists is because of advertising, for companies to sell you stuff you don't need. They don't care about you, and in many instances insult you. You don't need a doctor to diagnose you, instead we'll tell you what you need and you shop to find a doctor to write you a prescription.
I wish I had back all the hours I had watching TV. It has harmed me. It lowered my attention span. It made me blow my money on crap I don't need, and really did not want, but was so taken in by models who look so hot convincing me I really do need it.
How many people come home from a long day at work, pop open a beer while tossing a frozen pizza in the oven, and then spend the rest of the night laughing at 3rd grade jokes?
And even for the good things that TV can do, it has failed us miserably. Did anyone catch Dean's comments to Democrats? Dean said democrats need to get better at the 10 second soundbyte, more catchy phrases, and to mainstream their message. The TV could be so much more. Chances are you can get more from the editorial section of the newspaper than in a half hour news program. And where is the science and history on TV? Maybe we will get a science channel once cable hits channel 700. *sigh*
How do I get all those hours back? How do I go on living knowing my formative years were spent watching the Dukes of Hazzard?
why does NASA and the ESA (and other space agencies) have to each send their own probes. Due to the cost of space missions, wouldn't a more sharing of resources be useful. For instance, one agency pays for the ground control, another for the rockets, another for the actual probe. Sharing of costs and resources would allow for more missions and less parnoia about how one nation uses space.
Different ideas, different builds. Why do we have Windows and Linux when the programmers could work together? And the ESA and NASA are very different. I remember in Industrial Psychology we studied different systems of buisness. In Europe, they work as a team and are credited as members of a team. In the USA people get credit for outstanding work individually, not a team. So it is interesting to see how this plays out. The motivations are different, the dynamics are different, and the probes that are built will be different. I think there is something to be learned here.
Plus, if it was just NASA, we would have a space shuttle that never changes. Maybe some new ideas would make NASA reconsider their designs.
I did not even see that story "Can Build Robots But Can't Afford College" http://slashdot.org/~daveschroeder, but it would have been more interesting than the past 2.:p
I am suprised they deleted the story and all the comments. That kinda sucks.
How long before a new story. It's been four fucking hours already. Normally, if there is a story I am not interested in, I can go off to gonzo land and by the time I come back, there is something new.
Maybe CMDR Taco is obsessed with nano women for his nano-sized dick. And stories about using 2 centemeter drills to get to the core of the earth. I see a pattern here. But geeze... can we move on to something else?
36 comments above the 1 score threshold in 4 hours, that is about 8 or 9 people an hour having something to say.
And I guess in addition to the funny comment I made, I might as way say something insightful. Am I the only one worried that a much worse version of "What's the trouble with trebbles" can break out. I don't want nano nothing, I want it big enough that I can see it. The potential to make wepons here is too great. Plus, just the whole thing about using Borg technology in humans makes me shudder.
Personally I'd like to learn just as much about the earth under my feet as the stars above my head.
Please be my guest. Just let me close the door behind you.
Are you trying to tell me that this whole damn time, we've never broken through the earth's crust and seen the mantle for ourselves? We can send something 8.7 billion miles away but we can't drill two miles down? Doesn't this strike people as a bit odd or disconcerting?
We are already destroying the planet. All we need is to find ways to get deeper in it. Maybe we can make new garbage dumps down there, and the molten lava will consume it like a huge furnace.
Why waste all that time and money drilling a new hole, when they could just use the one that leads straight to hell, AKA Dick Cheney's "undisclosed location" bunker? Just look under the rock he crawled out from.
They are building a highway. Me thinks they can't get there fast enough.;)
But how smart is drilling into the core of the earth? Aren't they asking for one huge volcano?
And what about terrorism. If someone who was hell bent on one HUGE suicide bomb, what is to stop a country from picking 4 or 5 places around the world, dig deep, and pack a nuke. Blow up the nuke, and the earth is rearranged. Best case scenerio you just redistributed a ton of molten lava. Worst case scenereo and the USA is relocated to the moon.
One last question, to the lawyers. When I buy land, and I get mineral rights, just how deep into the eart are my digging rights?
My point: two years ago I put together a 1.8ghz machine with 512 megs of RAM, decent video card, decent hard-drive, for 300 dollars. No OS included. Toss in some FreeBSD and I'm up and runnning for 300 bucks. So, again, someone please tell me how a 500 dollar computer is news these days? Just because it's a Mac? Just because Joe-sixpack can pick one up and doesn't need to know how to assemble parts? If so, why assume he would give a hoot about NetBSD or Linux?
It is getting to the point where companies are making PC's much cheaper than anyone can buy. Dell has deals on servers in the $200-300 range, all you need is an OS like linux.
Apple is too expensive, they will never gain market share at their price. If they play it smart, and make their computer the flagship for ipod music, and cut the price on the computer, I can see them gaining a ton of customers. I don't own a mac, yet I *think* the mac is more of an entertainment center than anything with windows on it.
Is it possible to get a mini without the apple OS?
If you can't, then whats the point? You've already paid for an OS....
Plus, if you have the Apple OS, why go through the trouble of installing linux on the computer? The Apple OS has more support for more things right now. Or am I missing something?
The sweet thing about linux is it's free, and if you are stuck without an OS you have something.
BS, look at small form factor PCs and you'll pay $200 just on the chasis, and it still won't be as small or quiet as a Mac mini.
Dell is selling full PC's for the $200 range. Look at their website for buisness servers. Of course, you don't get an OS.
Apple is also behind in speed. You can talk about pipelines. You can talk about the myth of Mhz. But when it is a 2 to 1 ratio, and the price is a 2 to 1 ratio in the wrong direction, the PC is still king.
Motorola is developing cellphones capable of making calls via Wi-Fi networks. They have plans to add internet telephony software via a partnership with Skype. With these phones, Skype customers can call each other at no cost (for most cases). This causes a great concern to the cell phone industry because the calls would now be diverted from the cellular networks hence affecting usage income.
Anything that threatens the big Telcom companies will get shut down by government. The companies will find some excuse, they can be used by terrorists, they will collapse an industry, they will cook your brians. The telcom companies have enough lawyers and lobbyists to thing of something.
I just hope they don't kill this technology because they use the argumet "It is for P2P and illegal file sharing".
I wonder how this will all work. It sounds promising. But if someone has an open wi-fi port, say near a university, how much bandwith will 10 people take up making phone calls? 100 people?
"American kids in my opinion are often more well rounded at youth" That would be the steady stream of Big Macs and chocolate they consume. =P
I have been to Europe, they eat tons more chocolate than we do. And I am not even sure if the stuff they sell us americans really is chocolate. The stuff in europe is a milky delight, creamy, and nurturing. The stuff here must have come out of a lab- "Egor, does this taste creamy to you?".
I wonder what kind of concession Dell wants from Intel this time 'round.
Probably the same thing Walmart does. No matter what your prices are, come next year they will want it lowered.
I doubt Dell will add AMD to their choices. They leverege their prices by using one supplier. If AMD takes sales from Intel, Intel will not give Dell as good a price.
I know some will be ticked off. But for the poor, you can't do better than a Dell. $250 will get you a P4 2.4+ghz system with a 80 gig hard drive and 256 megs. Go on the right day, and they might be offering double RAM or double hard drives for the same price. I even saw it fall to $220 once, but that is rare. Just click on small buisness, not residential. And add your own OS, linux or whatever. Only downside is there is no video card, but 64 and some 128 meg video cards are dirt cheap.
You can't get a good machine off ebay used for the price of a new dell.
Does anyone REALLY think we are going to let N. Korea to continue to exist in it's current regime. By 2010, it will be loaded with nuclear weapons and we might even have a few American cities brought to ground zero from these weapons sold on the black market.
I hate to say it, but using robots is dumb. The USA has the best hackers ever! We'll hack your robots and make them turn on you. Will it be running on Microsoft Windows? *grin*
Seriously, I think that if I was the country of North Korea, I would be arming myself to the teeth too. Imagine being the "different" kid on the block. All of a sudden, the big boy named USA decides to kick the snot out of the avarage sized boy called Iraq. This kid named USA is even taunting others, like your buddy Iran. The only other large kid who would have a chance in a fight with the USA is out with the flu, and it does not look like he'll be back any time soon. So what do you do? You start filling your pockets with rocks. You look for the biggest stick you can find. And you try and do it very quietly.
But back to the OP. Do we really think the USA is the only country that should show off its muscles? Should other countries be allowed to have the same level of military power?
Are you insane, can't you read? I quoted Einstein saying that he does not believes in god. Or are you trying to tell me that you knew Einstein better than he knew himself?
That's the problem with creationist, they won't listen to reason, even if facts bite them in the nose.
Did Einstein say:
The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed
My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind
God is subtle but he is not malicious
I want to know God's thoughts; the rest are details
"As society gets more secular and starts making judgements without God, we will become more miserable. That hole people have in their life, the suffering, it is our longing for something more satisfying and Good than the choices we have made."
Bullshit.
As society gets more materialistic and starts making judgements without thought for long-term concequences, we will become more miserable. That hole people have in their life, the suffering, it is our longing for something more satisfying and Good than the choices we have made.
I hate to tell you, but you proved my point. People have been trying since the start of time to be happy, to be satisfied, and in thousands of years people are still unhappy. Yet I would place a bet that Pope John Paul II was a very satisfied man. He accepted the fact that he could not judge better than God. He accepted God as being Truth, and lived his life according to God.
Remember, Evil is the absence of some Good. When we judge, no matter how Good something looks, it could be missing more Good and we have a hole and suffer. Only God knows true Good.
Einstein was atheist, sometimes scientist say god, speaking metaphorically. Einstein said:
"It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it."
And by the way, what purpose will it serve to teach people lies? Even if they are not going to study science, they have to be tought facts, not lies. If you keep a population ignorant, they'll be easilly manipulated. As an example, I'm not a biochemist, I'm a Computer Scientist, but all the Organic Chemsitry I learned in high school has been very helpful in my life, to improve my nutrition, and hormonal profile, as part of my goal to be faster and stronger. It has also been helpful to identify all the crap about nutrition and health popular media barfs.
Einstein did believe in God, you are wrong.
And teaching creationism is not teaching a lie. It is teaching Truth. Chemsitry is not fully understood. God created how the world works, we try and understand it the best we can. But we are not God, and we should not make the mistake to believe we are know-it-all's.
I always though his quotes reflected a certain deistic view. That god or some force set everything off to form in what ever way it would, and that god does not interact directly with people or answer prayers.
I shared the same opinion as you, but the older I get the less "accidental" I think everything is. Humans are fallible, but God is not. There is a question about how much Free Will we really have. I am stating this not from a biblical perspective, but from a scientific and psychological one. B.F. Skinner, a psychologist argued that humans really have zero free will. Everything we do can be explained by 1) genetics we are born with, and 2) how we are conditioned. I dunno how much I agree with him, but it is hard to argue against his point. Every time I think I punched a hole in his theory, I realize it is not so...
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You were excluded because of not dressing right, and you can still remember the name of the kid who teased you, and it does not bother you at all? How did you get over it? The teasing did not make you want to skip school and stay away from those kids?
I will admit something, I am looking over the shows on the History Channel, and they have one on Egyptian Pyramids. But it is on at 5am.
We don't get very much quality public programming in the USA. Politicians are cutting funding for humanities programming. And I have noticed the past 10 years, there are more quacks on PBS than before. The past couple months on PBS I have seen some guy who is selling "The Power of Intention", some half intellectual show about his lifestyle. It is not history, not a documentary, not science, but his opinions.
I was lucky there is one quality station I loved as a high school aged kid, the local Community College Station. I learned to talk French watching French in Action (although today they only play it once a week... at 1am, I guess all the French hating is working). They had a physics show called The Mechanical Universe. This was good stuff for a high school kid. I'd like to see quality educational shows on tv, not someones opinion, which seems to be the direction PBS is slowly going.
I have an idea, why not have a channel with nothing but a camera pointed in a college classroom? Not anything produced, but just a webcam that captures lectures. That would be interesting.
Lets take your example one step further. They sit on the porch and bullshit with the neighbors. Sooner or later they will start talking about their life, their work. They might not write The Scarlet Letter, hell they might never even read it. But they might start questioning how they live. Do they really believe society is fair, that they should work 40+ hours a week yet have no financial security. You can't talk with the television about issues that effect you, you can just listen to the 15 second soundclip. With your neighbor, you can talk about the war in Iraq, healthcare, social security, where you work, how you live. You become an active participant in your life rather than just someone along for the ride. Sure they might bullshit and laugh, but a community will never form just sitting in front of a tv.
The television producers and stations hire psychologists to think of ways to make people keep watching. Plus, they hook you as a kid.
Television is addictive like smoking cigarettes. You can get hooked to stupid storylines. They do use simple emotional manipulation to keep interest.
So no, it is not about personal responsibility because it is not a pure choice a person can make without outside influence. It is stacked to favor television. With all the money for just one show, such as when Friends paid each cast member one million dollars per episode, can you honestly say the television producers are not using unfair tactics to make people watch.
I'll give you one example. You make a show and get some simple story arch with emotional attachment. You add to that show some new style, say bell bottom pants. You make the "uncool" people look different. Welcome to CHiPs and the 70's. Then you make shows that exude wealth and prestege. A $100 haircut is no longer a waste of money, it is a status symbol. Shoes, that never crossed the $100 mark all of a sudden start costing multiples of $100. Welcome to the 1980's.
People who do not join the new style become outcasts. I knew a smart kid back in high school. His life was a living hell because no matter how hard he tried finding cool clothing, they just did not have it at K-Mart in the early 1990's. The only expensive thing this kid owned was a HP 48gx. His father was a person who insisted everyone get haircuts at home, and he forced them to watch nothing but PBS. This kid went on to an Ivy league school, but I bet you he is unhappy about being excluded from everything as a child.
People stop thinking critically while watching television, it is called suspension of disbelief. If it is on television, there is a large group of people who will believe it. Yet put it in print, and people become more sceptical. I guess it is easier to believe something if you see Bill O'Rielly telling it to you.
The only reason television exists is because of advertising, for companies to sell you stuff you don't need. They don't care about you, and in many instances insult you. You don't need a doctor to diagnose you, instead we'll tell you what you need and you shop to find a doctor to write you a prescription.
I wish I had back all the hours I had watching TV. It has harmed me. It lowered my attention span. It made me blow my money on crap I don't need, and really did not want, but was so taken in by models who look so hot convincing me I really do need it.
How many people come home from a long day at work, pop open a beer while tossing a frozen pizza in the oven, and then spend the rest of the night laughing at 3rd grade jokes?
And even for the good things that TV can do, it has failed us miserably. Did anyone catch Dean's comments to Democrats? Dean said democrats need to get better at the 10 second soundbyte, more catchy phrases, and to mainstream their message. The TV could be so much more. Chances are you can get more from the editorial section of the newspaper than in a half hour news program. And where is the science and history on TV? Maybe we will get a science channel once cable hits channel 700. *sigh*
How do I get all those hours back? How do I go on living knowing my formative years were spent watching the Dukes of Hazzard?
Different ideas, different builds. Why do we have Windows and Linux when the programmers could work together? And the ESA and NASA are very different. I remember in Industrial Psychology we studied different systems of buisness. In Europe, they work as a team and are credited as members of a team. In the USA people get credit for outstanding work individually, not a team. So it is interesting to see how this plays out. The motivations are different, the dynamics are different, and the probes that are built will be different. I think there is something to be learned here.
Plus, if it was just NASA, we would have a space shuttle that never changes. Maybe some new ideas would make NASA reconsider their designs.
I am suprised they deleted the story and all the comments. That kinda sucks.
Maybe CMDR Taco is obsessed with nano women for his nano-sized dick. And stories about using 2 centemeter drills to get to the core of the earth. I see a pattern here. But geeze... can we move on to something else?
36 comments above the 1 score threshold in 4 hours, that is about 8 or 9 people an hour having something to say.
And I guess in addition to the funny comment I made, I might as way say something insightful. Am I the only one worried that a much worse version of "What's the trouble with trebbles" can break out. I don't want nano nothing, I want it big enough that I can see it. The potential to make wepons here is too great. Plus, just the whole thing about using Borg technology in humans makes me shudder.
Please be my guest. Just let me close the door behind you.
Are you trying to tell me that this whole damn time, we've never broken through the earth's crust and seen the mantle for ourselves? We can send something 8.7 billion miles away but we can't drill two miles down? Doesn't this strike people as a bit odd or disconcerting?
We are already destroying the planet. All we need is to find ways to get deeper in it. Maybe we can make new garbage dumps down there, and the molten lava will consume it like a huge furnace.
But I don't like it, not one bit.
They are building a highway. Me thinks they can't get there fast enough. ;)
And what about terrorism. If someone who was hell bent on one HUGE suicide bomb, what is to stop a country from picking 4 or 5 places around the world, dig deep, and pack a nuke. Blow up the nuke, and the earth is rearranged. Best case scenerio you just redistributed a ton of molten lava. Worst case scenereo and the USA is relocated to the moon.
One last question, to the lawyers. When I buy land, and I get mineral rights, just how deep into the eart are my digging rights?
It is getting to the point where companies are making PC's much cheaper than anyone can buy. Dell has deals on servers in the $200-300 range, all you need is an OS like linux.
Apple is too expensive, they will never gain market share at their price. If they play it smart, and make their computer the flagship for ipod music, and cut the price on the computer, I can see them gaining a ton of customers. I don't own a mac, yet I *think* the mac is more of an entertainment center than anything with windows on it.
Apple, please cut your prices!
If you can't, then whats the point? You've already paid for an OS....
Plus, if you have the Apple OS, why go through the trouble of installing linux on the computer? The Apple OS has more support for more things right now. Or am I missing something?
The sweet thing about linux is it's free, and if you are stuck without an OS you have something.
Dell is selling full PC's for the $200 range. Look at their website for buisness servers. Of course, you don't get an OS.
Apple is also behind in speed. You can talk about pipelines. You can talk about the myth of Mhz. But when it is a 2 to 1 ratio, and the price is a 2 to 1 ratio in the wrong direction, the PC is still king.
Didn't the government already rule that wiretapping applies to internet communications?
And having a phone would only stregnthen that argument for requiring ISP companies to have technology which allows for wiretaps.
But I don't see how VoIP will help P2P, it is just between 2 people, not like Napster was, or BitTorrent where one person shares, and anyone can d/l.
Anything that threatens the big Telcom companies will get shut down by government. The companies will find some excuse, they can be used by terrorists, they will collapse an industry, they will cook your brians. The telcom companies have enough lawyers and lobbyists to thing of something.
I just hope they don't kill this technology because they use the argumet "It is for P2P and illegal file sharing".
I wonder how this will all work. It sounds promising. But if someone has an open wi-fi port, say near a university, how much bandwith will 10 people take up making phone calls? 100 people?
I have been to Europe, they eat tons more chocolate than we do. And I am not even sure if the stuff they sell us americans really is chocolate. The stuff in europe is a milky delight, creamy, and nurturing. The stuff here must have come out of a lab- "Egor, does this taste creamy to you?".
Marketing got them where they are, and they still have the lowest prices. MBA programs should study their sucess, they are doing something right.
Probably the same thing Walmart does. No matter what your prices are, come next year they will want it lowered.
I doubt Dell will add AMD to their choices. They leverege their prices by using one supplier. If AMD takes sales from Intel, Intel will not give Dell as good a price.
I know some will be ticked off. But for the poor, you can't do better than a Dell. $250 will get you a P4 2.4+ghz system with a 80 gig hard drive and 256 megs. Go on the right day, and they might be offering double RAM or double hard drives for the same price. I even saw it fall to $220 once, but that is rare. Just click on small buisness, not residential. And add your own OS, linux or whatever. Only downside is there is no video card, but 64 and some 128 meg video cards are dirt cheap.
You can't get a good machine off ebay used for the price of a new dell.
I hate to say it, but using robots is dumb. The USA has the best hackers ever! We'll hack your robots and make them turn on you. Will it be running on Microsoft Windows? *grin*
Seriously, I think that if I was the country of North Korea, I would be arming myself to the teeth too. Imagine being the "different" kid on the block. All of a sudden, the big boy named USA decides to kick the snot out of the avarage sized boy called Iraq. This kid named USA is even taunting others, like your buddy Iran. The only other large kid who would have a chance in a fight with the USA is out with the flu, and it does not look like he'll be back any time soon. So what do you do? You start filling your pockets with rocks. You look for the biggest stick you can find. And you try and do it very quietly.
But back to the OP. Do we really think the USA is the only country that should show off its muscles? Should other countries be allowed to have the same level of military power?
Did Einstein say:
The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed
My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind
God is subtle but he is not malicious
I want to know God's thoughts; the rest are details
are these Einstein's quotes?
Bullshit.
As society gets more materialistic and starts making judgements without thought for long-term concequences, we will become more miserable. That hole people have in their life, the suffering, it is our longing for something more satisfying and Good than the choices we have made.
I hate to tell you, but you proved my point. People have been trying since the start of time to be happy, to be satisfied, and in thousands of years people are still unhappy. Yet I would place a bet that Pope John Paul II was a very satisfied man. He accepted the fact that he could not judge better than God. He accepted God as being Truth, and lived his life according to God.
Remember, Evil is the absence of some Good. When we judge, no matter how Good something looks, it could be missing more Good and we have a hole and suffer. Only God knows true Good.
Einstein did believe in God, you are wrong.
And teaching creationism is not teaching a lie. It is teaching Truth. Chemsitry is not fully understood. God created how the world works, we try and understand it the best we can. But we are not God, and we should not make the mistake to believe we are know-it-all's.
I shared the same opinion as you, but the older I get the less "accidental" I think everything is. Humans are fallible, but God is not. There is a question about how much Free Will we really have. I am stating this not from a biblical perspective, but from a scientific and psychological one. B.F. Skinner, a psychologist argued that humans really have zero free will. Everything we do can be explained by 1) genetics we are born with, and 2) how we are conditioned. I dunno how much I agree with him, but it is hard to argue against his point. Every time I think I punched a hole in his theory, I realize it is not so...