I need to be more clear, then: China is a likely *future enemy* of the U.S. The morality of it, and blame for it, is neither here nor there -- in this thread. I'm simply observing and predicting.
Point #4 is unclear. What I meant is that China is using a different channel -- diplomacy -- to revert to the level of influence in Vietnam, Indonesia, Cambodia, and Laos that it once had through military means. That influence will necessarily rattle cages in both India and in Washington.
The problem with your logic is that even *if* the U.S. is constantly on the hunt for a new enemy for Public Relations purposes... it may occasionally find a real one!
I think China might qualify. China has been the hungry dragon for a long, long time. The U.S. will inevitably block some of its goals, and war within the next 50 years is likely.
Issue 1: Taiwan. The U.S. has supported the rights of Taiwan to de facto order its affairs. PRC has insisted on a one-China policy. When the time is right, the PRC will try to back its policy with force.
Energy. China's self-interest includes becoming a developing nation. Its citizens are just as interested in driving cars over there as soccer moms are interested in driving SUVs over here. The oil has to come from somewhere, and demand will surely... no, has already... driven the price of gas up; almost doubled it, in fact.
Korea. China has an uneasy relationship with North Korea, but it appears to be treating it as a kind of buffer state. If NK actually gets deliverable nukes (which is only a decade out or less), it will force a crisis.
Southeast Asia. That part of the world has cooled considerably in the last 30 years, but China still has trading interests there. In fact, it appears to be regrouping its strategy towards diplomatic influence.
South and Central America. For reasons that are unclear, China has made significant inroads into South and Central America: the purchase of the Panama Canal, and sweetheart deals with Venezuela.
Where does it all lead? To much more significant conflict than the U.S. had with Iraq.
I vote for British and female, but that's after reading your other posts.
British, because you use non-American idioms like "differently to" and "dodgy." You also use the nifty little £ sign.
Female, because you seem to be less drawn in by the ego of trolls than most men. And, you consider Joan d'Arc to be worth "sig"ing. And, your sentence pacing and tone seems slighty more "female" than "male." And, you use lots of smileys:)
But it doesn't make a bit of difference in the evaluation.
Well, actually, it might make a small bit of difference: it matters a little bit as to whether you were personally offended by the article, or simply took exception to it; knowing that (which I don't) would help "frame" your comments for better understanding.
But why not? Why could it not be the case that men are "more intelligent" -- as defined by scores on I.Q. tests -- than women, on average, while women are "more something else" than men -- as suitably defined and measured.
Take my wife and me, for example. She's brilliant: pediatrician from highly reputable school; EE before that; extraordinarily good at 3D reasoning, planning, and diagnosing tricky patient problems.
Funny thing is, she thinks I'm brilliant because I can do hardcore math and science and computers and old, dead languages.
I guess I'm espousing something like a "multiple intelligences" hypothesis, but what I'm really doing is rejecting the American Ideal: the lie that There is one WINNER and everyone else sux0rs.
Alright, so you are well-poised to answer my question then:
Is it actually profitable for companies to outsource their calls, given that many customers experience frustration with the quasi-language barrier? How much of a revenue hit do companies experience because of outsourced support?
Yep, that's one reason. Also in the mix was MacArthur's administration of post-war Japan, which is regrettably far beyond Sanchez's and Casey's work in Iraq. Read here for details.
But also, Japan had been entirely decimated and rose from the ashes with U.S. help. Iraq's level of suffering after the war was trivial compared to that of the Japanese; accordingly, the level of improvement brought by the Americans has been minimal.
But even one more thing is true: we brought a humongous force (350,000) into Japan and locked it down tight. No such action occurred in Iraq. Perhaps that would have been impossible to do? But if we could have managed it, then the roadside bombings, sabotage, and looting would have been much less.
So here's the hard question: why didn't we take in enough troops to lock Iraq down? Were we just not serious enough about the war? Were the military planners intimidated by the shifting political winds? (link for those who wish to recall those times) Did we fear that Hussein really did have a nuke and would vaporize a large number of our troops? I wish I could be a fly on the wall in the pre-planning of the war, because two things are clear:
1) Rumsfeld is not, in general, an idiot, BUT
2) The Iraq war appears to have been horribly planned and mismanaged.
Those who think that we went into Iraq to further some conspiracy to get their oil are giving the administration far too much credit for forethought, IMO.
Why is Iraq in 2005 so different from Japan in 1945? We did far more and far worse to the Japanese people and to their egos, than we ever did to the Iraqis. Yet Japan went almost immediately on a trajectory to having good relations with the U.S.
Or consider this: if the Iraqis just want us out of there, then why do some of them continue to carry out actions that will prolong our stay? It's not too difficult to see that if the insurgents took a break for a couple of years, then public pressure would bring the U.S. troops home and... bada bing, bada boom... the insurgents would have no competition anymore. Yet they don't take that approach. It's inexplicable on a simple "imperialist oppressor" model.
Or this: why did Afghanistan become the breeding ground for terrorists? We'd never been there.
I think the "imperialist" analysis is over-simplified. Factors like oil, Israel, Islam v. Christianity going back to the Battle of Tours in AD732, and the perception of the U.S. as a "Christian nation" all play a non-negligible role.
And yes, even hatred of some of our freedoms -- the rights of women, the right to free speech including porn, and the right to worship (or not) without molestation -- plays a role.
Well, no, actually, "faith without proof" is pretty much the invention of Kierkegaard.
The Christian belief (whether right or wrong, a case that I'm not arguing here!) has always considered itself centered in evidence of the sort that was considered convincing until recent times: documented eyewitness accounts of God's interactions with people. When you read the Bible, it is strikingly focused on evidences, both in the OT and in the NT. Luke, for example, considered himself to be a careful historian working in fact. See Luke 1:1-4, 2 Pet. 1:16, John 1:14, and the resurrection accounts to get an idea of the Christian attitude towards evidence.
For Christians, "faith" has to do with confidence in God's future fulfillment of his promises. That's why the famous verse "Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see" (Heb. 11:1), sometimes wrongly used to argue for the irrationality of faith, is followed by multiple examples of people who were documented, at least, to have spoken with God directly -- but had not yet received that which had been promised to them. Their faith did not consist of "belief without proof" but in confidence in the future, based on the character of God. Their faith was personal, not epistemological.
Even up until Hume, the general concensus was that evidence and reason pointed to the existence of God.
Most Christians who are told that "faith" means "faith without proof" just laugh (try it as an experiment sometime).
Again, I'm not arguing for the rightness of the Christian position -- just for a clear understanding of it.
Well, in that case, you've got a half-valid position.
Disagreeing with the person-hood of an embryo is a legitimate reason to dismiss opposition to stem cell research. (Or, more clearly, a legitimate reason to support stem cell research).
Disliking *other* beliefs of the opponents of stem cell research is a terrible reason to believe anything at all about stem cell research. It's like an inverted "celebrity endorsement" fallacy.
FWIW, I'm opposed to abortion, in general, and in support of the death penalty, in general... but with heavy qualifications. It's not hypocrisy; it's a consistent principle:
People at any state in life have a basic right to be free from the violent actions of others... BUT, that right can be voided under certain circumstances, and it might have to be balanced with the rights of others.
To me, embryonic stem cell research does not seem like one of those circumstances. It appears to have too much in common with plain old-fashioned cannibalism, except that the cannibals in this case get paid for their efforts and lauded as heros.
You have a valid point when you note that atheistic pogroms do not give Christians a "pass" on their own misdeeds, which are many.
However, I think you misunderstood my points. I'm arguing that
Brutality is not limited to the religious; therefore, religion cannot be attributed as the sole cause of brutality.
Atheist regimes on a national scale have so far offered an inferior product to those influenced by Christianity. I recognize that's a matter of opinion, since "value" is measurable in many ways. Nevertheless, the largest of the atheist regimes are indeed notorious for their repression of human rights.
Not all people who are religious fit within the category of repressors.
Funny, when I turn on the TV, I hear hatred spewed out towards the religious. How? Because mainstream media usually pick the most foolish examples of religious people to run stories on. D'ya notice that when they run a story on, say, hydrogen fuel cells, CNN will pull in academic experts and industry experts on cars and fuel cells.
But when a story is run on religion, are seminary professors consulted? Not usually. Usually, it's Jerry Falwell, Fred Phelps, or some other nutcase. Then a professor of religion from Duke or Harvard* is called in to make the other guy look that much more foolish.
That's a different form of hatred: slow, insidious propaganda designed to get across a logically invalid but generally accepted message: All of the religious people I see are idiots, bigots, and fools. Therefore, all religious people in existence are idiots, bigots, and fools.
Truthfully, though, I know a lot of religious people -- mostly Christians, but not all -- who are intelligent, urbane, and "enlightened." Their families are also places of "freedom and light."
Perhaps religion is the wrong axis on which to evaluate enlightenment.
Factual issues:
Luther's relationship to the Jews was more complicated than the single pamphlet you cite.
Hitler's use of Luther's pamphlet was most emphatically not Luther's fault. Hitler was willing to use anything that furthered his insane dreams. Nor was he particularly friendly to Christians. Google for "Dietrich Bonhoeffer" or "The Barman Declaration" or "The Confessing Church in Germany."
Finally, some Good Advice: If you're going to trumpet your own enlightenment and commitment to freedom, don't use abusive language like "we already know you suck." It gives the impression that you want to bully your readers.
* Note that academic study about religion -- its sociology, history, etc. -- is different from academic pursuit of religion, which is what seminary profs do.
Wow...that's weird. "Sex is good"? All sex? under any circumstances? Surely you'd want to qualify that statement.
And "religion is bad"? I don't think that blanket statement covers the entire range of available data.
I'm sorry, I just can't agree with your statements as posed. They need some serious nuancing.
For that matter, why do you include "pogroms" under the crimes perpetrated by the religious? The largest pogroms were under Stalin and Hitler, the first of whom was avowedly atheistic and the second, a persecuter of Jews, Catholics, and Protestants.
Atheism hasn't led to any regimes of freedom and light so far, so I'm not sure what alternative you're offering to the "dark side."
If you want Christian terrorists, I recommend the People's Crusade.
The larger point about terrorism in the Middle East -- it seems awfully short-sighted to limit it to the last 75 years. After all, Al Qaeda repeatedly drags up the Crusades as the reason to attack America...as if America were somehow European or Catholic.
I'm not really sure that it's possible to assign a "cause" in that region anymore. Everyone's behaving badly; end of story.
You're right about the model, but I had to go here to get a clear explanation of the methodology.
According to this the radiation is spread fairly evenly across the entire skull. This study had interesting numbers, but the methodology seemed odd (they apparently stuck the antenna 4cm in front of the eye, instead of at the ear). If the first document is correct, that would explain why FDA uses SAR as a metric: it's invariant throughout the head. It would also put the numbers back in the "concern" region.
I'm not going to stop using my cell, but I'm going to watch the research with interest.
You and the poster above you are correct: the averaging was not done over the entire body, but over the mass of a typical head. I don't know why they chose that metric.
Slashdot Mirror
It would be if it did :-)
But it doesn't. Each twin is a distinct organism, hence a human being.
Well, yeah, sure ... in Soviet Russia!
My point was simpler: in response to "Master of Transhuman", I was pointing out that one has to understand the issues first, before assigning blame.
I need to be more clear, then: China is a likely *future enemy* of the U.S. The morality of it, and blame for it, is neither here nor there -- in this thread. I'm simply observing and predicting.
Except for the birds. It's all fun and games until somebird loses a head.
Yeah, but eel ? Try selling that one in Kansas.
Point #4 is unclear. What I meant is that China is using a different channel -- diplomacy -- to revert to the level of influence in Vietnam, Indonesia, Cambodia, and Laos that it once had through military means. That influence will necessarily rattle cages in both India and in Washington.
I think China might qualify. China has been the hungry dragon for a long, long time. The U.S. will inevitably block some of its goals, and war within the next 50 years is likely.
- Issue 1: Taiwan. The U.S. has supported the rights of Taiwan to de facto order its affairs. PRC has insisted on a one-China policy. When the time is right, the PRC will try to back its policy with force.
- Energy. China's self-interest includes becoming a developing nation. Its citizens are just as interested in driving cars over there as soccer moms are interested in driving SUVs over here. The oil has to come from somewhere, and demand will surely
... no, has already ... driven the price of gas up; almost doubled it, in fact. - Korea. China has an uneasy relationship with North Korea, but it appears to be treating it as a kind of buffer state. If NK actually gets deliverable nukes (which is only a decade out or less), it will force a crisis.
- Southeast Asia. That part of the world has cooled considerably in the last 30 years, but China still has trading interests there. In fact, it appears to be regrouping its strategy towards diplomatic influence.
- South and Central America. For reasons that are unclear, China has made significant inroads into South and Central America: the purchase of the Panama Canal, and sweetheart deals with Venezuela.
Where does it all lead? To much more significant conflict than the U.S. had with Iraq.British, because you use non-American idioms like "differently to" and "dodgy." You also use the nifty little £ sign.
Female, because you seem to be less drawn in by the ego of trolls than most men. And, you consider Joan d'Arc to be worth "sig"ing. And, your sentence pacing and tone seems slighty more "female" than "male." And, you use lots of smileys :)
But it doesn't make a bit of difference in the evaluation.
Well, actually, it might make a small bit of difference: it matters a little bit as to whether you were personally offended by the article, or simply took exception to it; knowing that (which I don't) would help "frame" your comments for better understanding.
But why not? Why could it not be the case that men are "more intelligent" -- as defined by scores on I.Q. tests -- than women, on average, while women are "more something else" than men -- as suitably defined and measured.
Take my wife and me, for example. She's brilliant: pediatrician from highly reputable school; EE before that; extraordinarily good at 3D reasoning, planning, and diagnosing tricky patient problems.
Funny thing is, she thinks I'm brilliant because I can do hardcore math and science and computers and old, dead languages.
I guess I'm espousing something like a "multiple intelligences" hypothesis, but what I'm really doing is rejecting the American Ideal: the lie that There is one WINNER and everyone else sux0rs.
My 2c. :-)
Well, close: his pic was on the cover of the latest I, Robot edition.
Well, actually, the more expensive the item, the more I consider factors like reliability and service. So there it is.
Is it actually profitable for companies to outsource their calls, given that many customers experience frustration with the quasi-language barrier? How much of a revenue hit do companies experience because of outsourced support?
But also, Japan had been entirely decimated and rose from the ashes with U.S. help. Iraq's level of suffering after the war was trivial compared to that of the Japanese; accordingly, the level of improvement brought by the Americans has been minimal.
But even one more thing is true: we brought a humongous force (350,000) into Japan and locked it down tight. No such action occurred in Iraq. Perhaps that would have been impossible to do? But if we could have managed it, then the roadside bombings, sabotage, and looting would have been much less.
So here's the hard question: why didn't we take in enough troops to lock Iraq down? Were we just not serious enough about the war? Were the military planners intimidated by the shifting political winds? (link for those who wish to recall those times) Did we fear that Hussein really did have a nuke and would vaporize a large number of our troops? I wish I could be a fly on the wall in the pre-planning of the war, because two things are clear:
1) Rumsfeld is not, in general, an idiot, BUT
2) The Iraq war appears to have been horribly planned and mismanaged.
Those who think that we went into Iraq to further some conspiracy to get their oil are giving the administration far too much credit for forethought, IMO.
Why is Iraq in 2005 so different from Japan in 1945? We did far more and far worse to the Japanese people and to their egos, than we ever did to the Iraqis. Yet Japan went almost immediately on a trajectory to having good relations with the U.S.
Or consider this: if the Iraqis just want us out of there, then why do some of them continue to carry out actions that will prolong our stay? It's not too difficult to see that if the insurgents took a break for a couple of years, then public pressure would bring the U.S. troops home and ... bada bing, bada boom ... the insurgents would have no competition anymore. Yet they don't take that approach. It's inexplicable on a simple "imperialist oppressor" model.
Or this: why did Afghanistan become the breeding ground for terrorists? We'd never been there.
I think the "imperialist" analysis is over-simplified. Factors like oil, Israel, Islam v. Christianity going back to the Battle of Tours in AD732, and the perception of the U.S. as a "Christian nation" all play a non-negligible role.
And yes, even hatred of some of our freedoms -- the rights of women, the right to free speech including porn, and the right to worship (or not) without molestation -- plays a role.
Da*n, I thought I could only get spam through my e-mail. Now's it's on Slashdot, too?!
The Christian belief (whether right or wrong, a case that I'm not arguing here!) has always considered itself centered in evidence of the sort that was considered convincing until recent times: documented eyewitness accounts of God's interactions with people. When you read the Bible, it is strikingly focused on evidences, both in the OT and in the NT. Luke, for example, considered himself to be a careful historian working in fact. See Luke 1:1-4, 2 Pet. 1:16, John 1:14, and the resurrection accounts to get an idea of the Christian attitude towards evidence.
For Christians, "faith" has to do with confidence in God's future fulfillment of his promises. That's why the famous verse "Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see" (Heb. 11:1), sometimes wrongly used to argue for the irrationality of faith, is followed by multiple examples of people who were documented, at least, to have spoken with God directly -- but had not yet received that which had been promised to them. Their faith did not consist of "belief without proof" but in confidence in the future, based on the character of God. Their faith was personal, not epistemological.
Even up until Hume, the general concensus was that evidence and reason pointed to the existence of God.
Most Christians who are told that "faith" means "faith without proof" just laugh (try it as an experiment sometime).
Again, I'm not arguing for the rightness of the Christian position -- just for a clear understanding of it.
And others are no doubt older than I ...
Disagreeing with the person-hood of an embryo is a legitimate reason to dismiss opposition to stem cell research. (Or, more clearly, a legitimate reason to support stem cell research).
Disliking *other* beliefs of the opponents of stem cell research is a terrible reason to believe anything at all about stem cell research. It's like an inverted "celebrity endorsement" fallacy.
FWIW, I'm opposed to abortion, in general, and in support of the death penalty, in general ... but with heavy qualifications. It's not hypocrisy; it's a consistent principle:
... BUT, that right can be voided under certain circumstances, and it might have to be balanced with the rights of others.
People at any state in life have a basic right to be free from the violent actions of others
To me, embryonic stem cell research does not seem like one of those circumstances. It appears to have too much in common with plain old-fashioned cannibalism, except that the cannibals in this case get paid for their efforts and lauded as heros.
However, I think you misunderstood my points. I'm arguing that
- Brutality is not limited to the religious; therefore, religion cannot be attributed as the sole cause of brutality.
- Atheist regimes on a national scale have so far offered an inferior product to those influenced by Christianity. I recognize that's a matter of opinion, since "value" is measurable in many ways. Nevertheless, the largest of the atheist regimes are indeed notorious for their repression of human rights.
- Not all people who are religious fit within the category of repressors.
Funny, when I turn on the TV, I hear hatred spewed out towards the religious. How? Because mainstream media usually pick the most foolish examples of religious people to run stories on. D'ya notice that when they run a story on, say, hydrogen fuel cells, CNN will pull in academic experts and industry experts on cars and fuel cells.But when a story is run on religion, are seminary professors consulted? Not usually. Usually, it's Jerry Falwell, Fred Phelps, or some other nutcase. Then a professor of religion from Duke or Harvard* is called in to make the other guy look that much more foolish.
That's a different form of hatred: slow, insidious propaganda designed to get across a logically invalid but generally accepted message: All of the religious people I see are idiots, bigots, and fools. Therefore, all religious people in existence are idiots, bigots, and fools.
Truthfully, though, I know a lot of religious people -- mostly Christians, but not all -- who are intelligent, urbane, and "enlightened." Their families are also places of "freedom and light."
Perhaps religion is the wrong axis on which to evaluate enlightenment.
Factual issues:
Finally, some Good Advice: If you're going to trumpet your own enlightenment and commitment to freedom, don't use abusive language like "we already know you suck." It gives the impression that you want to bully your readers.
* Note that academic study about religion -- its sociology, history, etc. -- is different from academic pursuit of religion, which is what seminary profs do.
And "religion is bad"? I don't think that blanket statement covers the entire range of available data.
I'm sorry, I just can't agree with your statements as posed. They need some serious nuancing.
For that matter, why do you include "pogroms" under the crimes perpetrated by the religious? The largest pogroms were under Stalin and Hitler, the first of whom was avowedly atheistic and the second, a persecuter of Jews, Catholics, and Protestants.
Atheism hasn't led to any regimes of freedom and light so far, so I'm not sure what alternative you're offering to the "dark side."
See here and here for details.
If you want Christian terrorists, I recommend the People's Crusade.
The larger point about terrorism in the Middle East -- it seems awfully short-sighted to limit it to the last 75 years. After all, Al Qaeda repeatedly drags up the Crusades as the reason to attack America...as if America were somehow European or Catholic.
I'm not really sure that it's possible to assign a "cause" in that region anymore. Everyone's behaving badly; end of story.
It all seems so obvious in hindsight, y'know?
BTW, he might have done better to call Dick Cheney, cause according to TFA, the US CERT team ignored him.
According to this the radiation is spread fairly evenly across the entire skull. This study had interesting numbers, but the methodology seemed odd (they apparently stuck the antenna 4cm in front of the eye, instead of at the ear). If the first document is correct, that would explain why FDA uses SAR as a metric: it's invariant throughout the head. It would also put the numbers back in the "concern" region.
I'm not going to stop using my cell, but I'm going to watch the research with interest.
Regards,
Jeff Cagle
You and the poster above you are correct: the averaging was not done over the entire body, but over the mass of a typical head. I don't know why they chose that metric.
Check this article, the paragraph starting with "Rural Residents..."