I think that most Christians (and other religions) could accept the concept of life beyond Earth without having their faith completely shattered. Hell, the Catholic Church is more or less accepting of evolution as a concept (though "guided" by God as they say).
Also, if you believe what you read in your Orson Scott Card novels (such as Speaker for the Dead), they'd also be among the first to go out and try to convert it.:P
Economists, since productivity determines how much stuff will get produced, which determines how much stuff per person there is, and that's pretty much a measure of the standard of living that will result ("real GDP per capita").
When you're talking about productivity in the entire economy, you can draw a graph - on the Y axis is "real GDP per capita" while on the X axis is "capital / labor" (K/L for short). If you add more capital (machines, computers, tools) people get more productive, but less so as you add more and more and more. This means the line you graph will start somewhat steep, but then level off as you get higher (not entirely unlike the graph of sqrt(x)). The rough guideline for the economy at present is the "rule of one third" - if you increase your capital stock by 100%, you'll get about 33% more output. This sort of rule determines how much capital we end up having - we will increase our capital stock with investment until we have reached the "target rate of return", which is actually a slope of this productivity curve. This is the point at which investment pays for itself.
Then there are wonderful things like increases in technology. These end up shifting the productivity curve upward: people can do more with their technology than they could before. This increases real GDP per capita directly, but it also means that for the same level of capital, we're below the target rate of return, and can invest in all sorts of new capital, which will pay for itself - so we increase our capital stock as well.
The good news is that technology keeps coming, and while it may not be quite the same Spectacular Breakthrough as the introduction of computers, there is plenty happening in a variety of industries. Take, for example, Wal*Mart (the company everyone loves to hate, yes...) They have achieved a substantial portion of their success by becoming more productive with managing their warehouses and inventories, and are actively looking to increase their productivity in this area. (In fact, I've seen studies that claim they were responsible for the bulk of retail productivity growth in the late 90's, directly or indirectly). "Supply chain management" is trendy. And perhaps some day we will see RFID tags at the check-out line (to replace the last great checkout productivity enhancer, bar codes).
The abuse scenario is something like this: Small-time artist/singer/novelist/programmer creates something (a book, a song, a painting, a program), can't really manage to do much with it... but later a generic Big Bad Entity comes along, snaps it up, rips it off, makes a few million.
Ultimately, if the fee is high, then it's really an undue burden on all but the largest companies, while if it's low, the larger companies can ignore it. $10,000 to renew the copyrights on "I Wanna Hold Your Hand"? Nothing at all! $100 to renew the copyright on a really cool piece of artwork that an aspiring artist has created? That's probably more than he spent on the materials! I don't think you can really structure a fee schedule to effectively avoid this, either.
Or maybe our social structure is so fucked up and warped around money that it simply doesn't make business sense to have kids.
One reason we have a lower birth rate is that kids cost more these days - and not just in terms of $$$ for food and toys and college, but also a rising opportunity cost. Since we've made the transition from a muscle-based economy (farming and such) to a more intellectual one, women are now able to get (almost) the same sorts of wages men are. They can support themselves. That means that a woman choosing marriage, let alone a stay-at-home motherhood, is no longer the same sort of automatic decision that it used to be to ensure her well-being.
So one need not map this phenomenon entirely to sentiment that our social structure is "fucked up and warped around money". Some of it certainly is, but that's not everything. Feminism has come a long way and women have aspirations besides children- be it a career, or money, or some other personal ambition.
I've been wondering, with our global nature now, will we need archeologists in the future? While I believe cililiziations will surely 'collapse', won't we all be around to immediately take note of it, and update Wikepedia?
Archaeology is the search for fact. Not truth. If it's truth you're interested in, Doctor Tyree's Philosophy class is right down the hall. So forget any ideas you've got about lost cities, exotic travel, and digging up the world. We do not follow maps to buried treasure, and 'X' never, ever marks the spot. Seventy percent of all archaeology is done in the library. Research. Reading.
You had a nice little rant going until you claimed there were "anti-Christian" articles on slashdot. When your pogroms eliminate all the "false" Christians who believe in evolution an the big bang, that might be a true statement.
Until then, that sentiment is the raving of a fundamentalist loon.
Perhaps I have overstated the case for anti-Christian articles on Slashdot. It's really not the articles which are necessarily anti-Christian (not that people read them anyway, as we're all so fond of joking), or even generally the summaries. But I think it's fair to say, first, that most articles which mention "creationism" or "evolution" or "intelligent design" do lead to a wide variety of blanket Christian-bashing, and that this dominates the discussions, and it's hardly a stretch to think that it is among the primary motivations in seeing them posted; and second, that many of the articles that point these things out also contain some statements which are made against religion and/or Christianity in general. This is all besides any criticism of the position of various religious groups on matters such as creationism/evolution/intelligent design.
But while the criticism of my vague statement about "anti-Christian articles" may be valid, the kneejerk manner in which you have designated me a "fundamentalist loon" and have (even theoretically) connected me to "pogroms" to eliminate all the "false Christians" is not. From the vehemence with which you so readily apply these designations and invoke such loaded language, I think that I could make a case that you are behaving more in a far more "fundamentalist" manner than I am, especially given the sentiments you express about how you wish to "save [the religious] from their delusion of faith". Ultimately, I think the sentiment you are expressing is destructive in nature and incapable of saving anyone from anything.
Religion is not a means to direct spiritual affairs.
It has evolved as a set of guidelines about how to lead your life by reducing disharmony with your environment.
I don't know where this notion comes from, but many religions are very much about a means of directing spiritual affairs. The Catholic Church, even today, offers sacraments, through which the recipients are offered the grace of God. The ancient Aztecs offered human sacrifices to appease their gods. The ancient Egyptians mummified their dead (at least, if they could afford it) in elaborate rituals as preparation for the afterlife. (some) Buddhists meditate to help detach themselves from the concerns of the world in order to attain Nirvana.
I suspect that these roles have shaped the "evolution" of world religion far more than the role as a "set of guidelines".
and I really can't see that it's any less damaging than sexual molestation.
Yes, because raising a child as a Christian typically results in "a wide range of psychological, emotional, physical, and social effects" such as "anxiety, depression, obsession, compulsion, grief, post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms such as flashbacks, emotional numbing... dysfunctions such as sexual dysfunction, social dysfunction, dysfunction of relationships, poor education and employment records, eating disorders, self-mutilation, and a range of physical symptoms common to some other forms of post-traumatic stress disorder, such as sensual numbness, and loss of appetite."
...
Well, maybe you've just dealt with a really skewed set of Christians in your life. Or maybe you're making insanely overly broad generalizations; maybe you can call "going to church" a compulsion, or go wild and call them all "sexually dysfunctional".
I can't say I've somehow been specially authorized to speak on behalf of children who have been sexually molested, but I'm sure you can fill in a variety of notions on the inappropriateness of your comparisons.
Go on, follow the script, serve your whiny cult of victimhood.
As opposed to your script, where you dismiss him (and anyone like him) as the "whiny cult of victimhood"?
It's so much easier to ignore what a fellow is saying when he's just some irrational brain-damaged cultist,
I'm sure. Then you can claim the moral high ground and automatically win. Hooray for arguments!
In the meantime, while Scott is going on about some sort of point about how he's "been told by more than one Christian... that atheists do not have the capacity for morality", I'll point out that I've been told by more than one atheist that religion is more or less intrinsically evil (organized religion doubly so) and the cause of most of the problems the world has ever faced, and ought to be banned.
Now, if you are capable of getting off your self-congratulatory high horse, you might see a point which the grandparent poster is trying to make. Slashdot has an anti-religious slant. Anti-Christian articles are posted here so that people like you can go "Ha-ha!" and laugh at people, make fun of them, call them various sorts of names, and otherwise dehumanize them - for being Christian. (Mostly for being Christian, anyway; I've not seen articles mocking, say, Buddhism, for example). Why? I guess because it feels good to insult thine enemy.
Riiiight. Why doesn't Scott Adams team up with someone like, say, Elton John, and they can advocate banning religion completely or something like that?
Really, why go low scale? You are allowed to loan money which doesn't even exist, and to receive back the theoretical principal along with *interest*.
How is this any different from the rest of the money supply? I don't know if you noticed this, but we're using fiat money around these parts, which is really just money because people believe it's money. It's as immaterial and illusionary as everything else. (The one thing in particular about this illusion, people frequently believe they will be able to pay their taxes with it...)
As for theft - well, banking and borrowing and the government's fiscal policies (read: the Federal Reserve interest rate, in particular) do increase the money supply, and since they don't really do much to alter anything else (the quantity and relative value of goods and services in the economy) the little phenomenon called inflation does indeed "steal" value away, presently at the rather low rate of about 2.5% annually - a fairly modest rate; you'll lose half your value every 20 years or so at that rate, unless you decide to invest your money somehow - this scheme actually encourages investment. A little inflation is usually better than deflation...
Ummm, unless there's a giant spigot I missed in geography class, the world IS a zero-sum game. Except for the sun. Damn sun, pouring energy into an otherwise closed system, ruining a perfectly good blanket statement.
The thing is, we're not talking about things on the physical level, we're talking economics- and in economics, value can be created. If Bob puts together a set of shelves, it's probably more useful and valuable to him than the lumber that it came from. If he bakes a loaf of bread, it's more valuable than the grain that it came from. If Van Gogh paints a painting, it's a lot more valuable to humanity than the canvas and paints (and ultimately the pigments and mediums that those came from) ever were. Heck, look at computers! The same electrons can send an amazing, awe-inspiring, insightful comment to Slashdot, or they can send a -1 Flamebait.
You also point out the Sun. I suppose the Sun is a big part of this process too - due to agriculture and horticulture and such.
"A major source of objection to a free economy is precisely that it... gives people what they want instead of what a particular group thinks they ought to want. Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself."
Actually, I was looking at the title and I did a double-take, since the first time I saw it I thought it said "Celebrate the XML Debacle". Oop. I thought, surely it's not that bad...
For Google, at least, there is this Google Sitemaps program which seems to predate this particular endeavour (I've been using it for months now). Yahoo... I dunno.
... can anyone recommend any good Windows XP PGP/GPG-type tools? You used to be able to download a little cute PGP program as freeware to sit in your tray, hold your key, and encrypt/decrypt a window or the clipboard. Now all I can find like that is WinPT, and while it's serviceable for me, it's also incredibly ugly and not very refined, and is confusing by comparison. Gak! You can still download the old PGP freeware versions but they refuse to run on WinXP - there's just a 30-day trial out there now.
If there's one thing that annoys me it's when a program disappears like that...
Starting with the Edgy Eft release the artwork team introduced the concepts of Theme Teams. Theme Teams are small, independently operating groups of artists working on creating a desktop theme. These teams are coordinated by the Artists in Chief (AiCs) and receive support and feedback from the AiCs as well.
Well, theoretically, you could do that, but you'd be running into some pretty intense packet-reordering action at the receiver. Heck, they're probably running some pretty intense packet-reordering stuff at the receiver already. You'd probably need more/bigger/faster chips on both ends to do it.
But if you're going for something like that, why bother trying to stack ten 10-way systems instead of just scaling this thing up to one 100-way system?
Purchasing power parity compares the amount of money it takes to buy (purchasing) a certain basket of the same goods (parity) in two different countries. It's useful when comparing relative incomes across countries. You often hear about how in such-and-such country many people only make something like $1 an hour - but you don't hear as often how much further a dollar goes there. In such places, you can usually get goods and services (like food and housing) for mere pennies on the dollar compared to what you can find in the United States. Mind you, most people in these circumstances are admittedly still rather poor- just not nearly as abysmally poor as you might otherwise think.
The details of the calculation are best left to people more skilled in the art of economics than you or I. You can read about it on Wikipedia.
As long as we're throwing around figures and numbers and such... The World Bank's World Development Indicators 2005 estimates that one United States dollar was equivalent to approximately 1.8 Chinese yuan in terms of "purchasing power parity". So, that figure of 800 RMB/mo (to take the low estimate) is about equivalent to $222/mo in terms of what sort of Stuff you can actually buy with it. Of course, that means that also means that $10 =~ 78.65800 RMB is about equivalent to $43.70 in terms of what you'd need to give up to get it.
You may continue to draw conclusions. One thing this says to me is that it's looking a lot rosier for a Chinese company looking to get rich quick by selling stuff to Americans than vice-versa... or even for a Chinese company to sell stuff to Chinese... eh.
Re:IMO, a step towards improving our education
on
More A's, More Pay
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· Score: 1
We expect our teachers to put more and more hours in (most work tons of nights and weekend hours) for "the love of the children", and without any incremental pay. Shouldn't we reward them for their good work? Instead, we treat all teachers the same, and then provide tenure after 5 years (or so, depending on the school/state) that protects even the poor performing teachers. This is detrimental to our children, our future, and to our teachers.
I was fortunate enough to go to school in a mostly decent school system, but there were still the handful of incompetent teachers - you could usually find them looking at Health classes (they'd be mixed with the coaches). One teacher in particular was renowned for being incompetent - and I mean 2 * 7 = 18 incompetent. Repeating-a-few-urban-legends-about-pregnancy incompetent. And she's probably still teaching there, and at a higher salary than some of the newer teachers.
"Poor teachers are grossly overpaid and good teachers grossly underpaid. Salary schedules tend to be uniform and determined far more by seniority." -- Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom
Of course, whether or not this incentive structure will work effectively to counter this trend is a still undetermined. can
No, no, you're being far too individual-minded and materialistic. What are you, some sort of Republican? This is not an acceptable target for political funding. Now, talk about flying public transport and you'll have something.
Oh. Hold up just a second. There may be a way for this, just possible. Are the flying cars you propose by any chance powered by ethanol?
Economies of scale, resulting from these things being able to share common infrastructure, centralized maintenance, and things like that.
Have we learned nothing from decentralized computing?
We've learned that we can get run programs in the excess capacity in existing computers. What we do not see is any sort of company or research group buying new computers and then putting them geographically distributed locations. If you want to get a whole bunch of computing power together, you invest in a data center of some sort.
Slashdot Mirror
Also, if you believe what you read in your Orson Scott Card novels (such as Speaker for the Dead), they'd also be among the first to go out and try to convert it. :P
When you're talking about productivity in the entire economy, you can draw a graph - on the Y axis is "real GDP per capita" while on the X axis is "capital / labor" (K/L for short). If you add more capital (machines, computers, tools) people get more productive, but less so as you add more and more and more. This means the line you graph will start somewhat steep, but then level off as you get higher (not entirely unlike the graph of sqrt(x)). The rough guideline for the economy at present is the "rule of one third" - if you increase your capital stock by 100%, you'll get about 33% more output. This sort of rule determines how much capital we end up having - we will increase our capital stock with investment until we have reached the "target rate of return", which is actually a slope of this productivity curve. This is the point at which investment pays for itself.
Then there are wonderful things like increases in technology. These end up shifting the productivity curve upward: people can do more with their technology than they could before. This increases real GDP per capita directly, but it also means that for the same level of capital, we're below the target rate of return, and can invest in all sorts of new capital, which will pay for itself - so we increase our capital stock as well.
The good news is that technology keeps coming, and while it may not be quite the same Spectacular Breakthrough as the introduction of computers, there is plenty happening in a variety of industries. Take, for example, Wal*Mart (the company everyone loves to hate, yes...) They have achieved a substantial portion of their success by becoming more productive with managing their warehouses and inventories, and are actively looking to increase their productivity in this area. (In fact, I've seen studies that claim they were responsible for the bulk of retail productivity growth in the late 90's, directly or indirectly). "Supply chain management" is trendy. And perhaps some day we will see RFID tags at the check-out line (to replace the last great checkout productivity enhancer, bar codes).
Ultimately, if the fee is high, then it's really an undue burden on all but the largest companies, while if it's low, the larger companies can ignore it. $10,000 to renew the copyrights on "I Wanna Hold Your Hand"? Nothing at all! $100 to renew the copyright on a really cool piece of artwork that an aspiring artist has created? That's probably more than he spent on the materials! I don't think you can really structure a fee schedule to effectively avoid this, either.
So one need not map this phenomenon entirely to sentiment that our social structure is "fucked up and warped around money". Some of it certainly is, but that's not everything. Feminism has come a long way and women have aspirations besides children- be it a career, or money, or some other personal ambition.
Archaeology is the search for fact. Not truth. If it's truth you're interested in, Doctor Tyree's Philosophy class is right down the hall. So forget any ideas you've got about lost cities, exotic travel, and digging up the world. We do not follow maps to buried treasure, and 'X' never, ever marks the spot. Seventy percent of all archaeology is done in the library. Research. Reading.
-- Indiana Jones and the Last CrusadeBut while the criticism of my vague statement about "anti-Christian articles" may be valid, the kneejerk manner in which you have designated me a "fundamentalist loon" and have (even theoretically) connected me to "pogroms" to eliminate all the "false Christians" is not. From the vehemence with which you so readily apply these designations and invoke such loaded language, I think that I could make a case that you are behaving more in a far more "fundamentalist" manner than I am, especially given the sentiments you express about how you wish to "save [the religious] from their delusion of faith". Ultimately, I think the sentiment you are expressing is destructive in nature and incapable of saving anyone from anything.
I suspect that these roles have shaped the "evolution" of world religion far more than the role as a "set of guidelines".
Yes, because raising a child as a Christian typically results in "a wide range of psychological, emotional, physical, and social effects" such as "anxiety, depression, obsession, compulsion, grief, post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms such as flashbacks, emotional numbing ... dysfunctions such as sexual dysfunction, social dysfunction, dysfunction of relationships, poor education and employment records, eating disorders, self-mutilation, and a range of physical symptoms common to some other forms of post-traumatic stress disorder, such as sensual numbness, and loss of appetite."
...
Well, maybe you've just dealt with a really skewed set of Christians in your life. Or maybe you're making insanely overly broad generalizations; maybe you can call "going to church" a compulsion, or go wild and call them all "sexually dysfunctional".
I can't say I've somehow been specially authorized to speak on behalf of children who have been sexually molested, but I'm sure you can fill in a variety of notions on the inappropriateness of your comparisons.
As opposed to your script, where you dismiss him (and anyone like him) as the "whiny cult of victimhood"? It's so much easier to ignore what a fellow is saying when he's just some irrational brain-damaged cultist, I'm sure. Then you can claim the moral high ground and automatically win. Hooray for arguments!
In the meantime, while Scott is going on about some sort of point about how he's "been told by more than one Christian ... that atheists do not have the capacity for morality", I'll point out that I've been told by more than one atheist that religion is more or less intrinsically evil (organized religion doubly so) and the cause of most of the problems the world has ever faced, and ought to be banned.
Now, if you are capable of getting off your self-congratulatory high horse, you might see a point which the grandparent poster is trying to make. Slashdot has an anti-religious slant. Anti-Christian articles are posted here so that people like you can go "Ha-ha!" and laugh at people, make fun of them, call them various sorts of names, and otherwise dehumanize them - for being Christian. (Mostly for being Christian, anyway; I've not seen articles mocking, say, Buddhism, for example). Why? I guess because it feels good to insult thine enemy.
How very, very droll.
As for theft - well, banking and borrowing and the government's fiscal policies (read: the Federal Reserve interest rate, in particular) do increase the money supply, and since they don't really do much to alter anything else (the quantity and relative value of goods and services in the economy) the little phenomenon called inflation does indeed "steal" value away, presently at the rather low rate of about 2.5% annually - a fairly modest rate; you'll lose half your value every 20 years or so at that rate, unless you decide to invest your money somehow - this scheme actually encourages investment. A little inflation is usually better than deflation...
The thing is, we're not talking about things on the physical level, we're talking economics- and in economics, value can be created. If Bob puts together a set of shelves, it's probably more useful and valuable to him than the lumber that it came from. If he bakes a loaf of bread, it's more valuable than the grain that it came from. If Van Gogh paints a painting, it's a lot more valuable to humanity than the canvas and paints (and ultimately the pigments and mediums that those came from) ever were. Heck, look at computers! The same electrons can send an amazing, awe-inspiring, insightful comment to Slashdot, or they can send a -1 Flamebait.
You also point out the Sun. I suppose the Sun is a big part of this process too - due to agriculture and horticulture and such.
Eh, what do I know? Maybe it is that bad. =)
For Google, at least, there is this Google Sitemaps program which seems to predate this particular endeavour (I've been using it for months now). Yahoo... I dunno.
If there's one thing that annoys me it's when a program disappears like that...
Found some... with some digging. Peace, Tropic and Blubuntu.
But if you're going for something like that, why bother trying to stack ten 10-way systems instead of just scaling this thing up to one 100-way system?
I also hear of marriages to snakes and dogs.
The details of the calculation are best left to people more skilled in the art of economics than you or I. You can read about it on Wikipedia.
You may continue to draw conclusions. One thing this says to me is that it's looking a lot rosier for a Chinese company looking to get rich quick by selling stuff to Americans than vice-versa... or even for a Chinese company to sell stuff to Chinese... eh.
"Poor teachers are grossly overpaid and good teachers grossly underpaid. Salary schedules tend to be uniform and determined far more by seniority." -- Milton Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom
Of course, whether or not this incentive structure will work effectively to counter this trend is a still undetermined. can
Oh. Hold up just a second. There may be a way for this, just possible. Are the flying cars you propose by any chance powered by ethanol?
:)