.....which provide an energy source and significant temperature variations....
That is not enough. DNA is only a carrier of code, akin to a computer memory or disk. The information on a disk and the structure and material of the disk itself are entirely separate. The chemistry of ink on paper tells you nothing about the musical score or other material written thereon.
Nobody has ever demonstrated the creation of *any* code or language by anything other than a mind. DNA carries the language of life as authored by the Creator of life in the same way that paper carries the works of Shakespeare.
We may someday be able to copy life, in the same way we are able to copy digital information or an image on paper. Copying Shakespeare's plays on a XEROX is very far below authoring such play.
....that involves thinking in a linear, step-by-step manner about how a problem can be solved........
The problem with establishing a series of steps is that the first step has to be put somewhere. Nobody KNOWS where that first step needs to go. We can believe where it might have been, but once you start to believe, who is to say one belief is more true than any other?
The Bible tells us the first step began with God because God is the eternally self existent One. Modern science cannot really place the first step. Logic tells us the Universe either created itself, which is absurd, or it was caused by a cause outside of itself or it always existed. Since observed data shows that it has not always existed. By process of elimination we come to an outside, independent cause. The writers of the Bible claim they were personally told by God, that He is that one who made everything from nothing. This does fit within the framework of logic. Of course anyone can feel free to believe or reject the testimony of any witness.
Indeed, time is the magic that turns rocks, never mind frogs, into princes. No maiden kisses required, just enough time. Boy, what a fairy tale masquerading as science!
......That these answers, which are directly contradicted by observation, are none the less true.......
The question whether the answers contradict the observations themselves or someone's interpretations of the observations. When scientists "measure" the age of rocks, for example, they use radioactive decay as their clock. The assume (believe) that this clock is both accurate and CONSTANT over the time period in question. This assumption is never questioned and on the surface seems to make sense. However, there is no way to PROVE that this radioactivity clock, upon which the immense ages theorized, are based, is in fact invariant over the large spans of time. So we can either believe our logic or we can believe the writers of the Bible who claim that God Himself told them a little, not nearly as much as we'd like to know about how things began. Either way, science or religion, it comes down to belief.
.....The alternative is to sacrifice logic, common sense,......
What you are really doing is elevating your logic and common sense into the position of God. Do you know everything that could be known? Is there any human that does? If not, you cannot know there is no God any more than a religious person can know that there is. They don't have all knowledge either. Both can only BELIEVE. Who are you to say that your belief is truer or better than someone else's? Are you God or something? Does your belief give you the right to trample on the belief of other people just because YOU believe their belief is ridiculous or illogical? Is your vaunted, so called logic able to judge as someone who possesses all knowledge?
There isn't and there has never been a culture that did NOT have some sort of religion. In your human pride, you worship your intellect and logic. Humans are an incurably religious creature. Maybe, just maybe, that might tell you something about the Biblical assertion of humans being made in the image of God. An image stamped on a coin is pretty hard to obliterate. Nobody can do it without certainly destroying or severely damaging such a coin. This image of God in man is very hard to obliterate.
.....When I hear the reports of an archaeology dig about how the Bible wasn't quite true.........
Can you give an example of that and not just somebody's opinion or interpretation of the data?
(.....What do you believe when at least 25% of your faith is proved false by science and alternate histories and anthropological studies?.....)
Are you taking about actual scientific facts and data, the raw data that is, or someone's interpretation of that data? Both scientists and religionists tend to interpret data through their world view and pre-suppositions.
Example: In 1929 Edwin Hubble discovered the "red-shift". That light from distant objects is shifted toward the red end of the spectrum. That was and still is a measured fact. However then he INTERPRETED that to mean that these objects are in rapid motion due to the well known doppler effect. He and most scientists never considered that the cause of this observation may be something entirely different. Today, still, the entire science establishment of astronomy and cosmology takes this interpretation as established fact.
The other sciences you mentioned are no different. They observe data and then interpret that data. These interpretations, just like any propaganda repeated often enough,long enough, and loud enough, are eventually believed as truth.
So you must choose whether to believe these interpretations of the data or believe the claim of the writers of the Bible, that they were eyewitnesses of the events and people they wrote about.
.......I do science and I am religious. Is there something wrong in that?....
Nothing at all. They ask and try to answer different questions that have puzzled the minds of man since the dawn of history.
Science attempts to answer "how" questions. Religion is tries to answer "why" questions. Neither has cornered the market answering "when" things happened or when they might happen.
All information comes to us either by first hand experience or by communication from some witness. Nobody can PROVE if a witness is telling the truth or not. All we can do is to either BELIEVE the witness or not. Even your own senses can deceive you.
When a scientist does an experiment or observation, it only applies to the time he does it. We can assume (believe) it should logically apply also to the past or the future, but there is no way to know that for sure. If scientists and religious folks both talk about the WHEN of things, we have to believe one or the other, until someone invents time travel. No human scientist has gone back and observed the formation of life, so we have to believe their assertions about it. Even if someone did travel to the dawn of time and then came back, we'd still have to take their word for it or not.
We also, equally, may choose to BELIEVE, or not, the religious claim of revelation from God to a human called Moses about when life began. Nobody can go back to verify that Moses heard correctly.
Present evolutionary dogma depends on time, unfathomable quantities of time. Time essentially occupies the place of God. Given enough time, anything is possible. Time is omnipotent, in that it can do anything that God can do. Time can turn not only a frog, but even a rock into a prince.
........and they are never punished for their actions.......
You hypocrite! Have you ever been punished for your bad actions? How many lies you have told so far in your life, or stuff you have "appropriated" that wasn't yours? How about the other eight commandments? Notice they are called commandments not optional choices. How many times have you broken traffic laws and not been punished. Ever wonder what kind of a world it would be if EVERYBODY got punished instantly, EVERY time we broke some law? Because we ALL are law breakers, we all die eventually, without exception.
Yes it does. I kills all possible pathogens that might contaminate the milk or other product on its way from the cow to you. Dairy farmers don't have to be as vigilant about ensuring that milk from sick animals not contaminating the milk from the rest of the healthy herd, since any possible contaminants are rendered harmless by the heat. The dairy industry can relax cleanliness standards because pasteurization kills any organisms that might be lurking in the equipment.
Unfortunately, the high heat also destroys much of the nutrition and enzymes that was originally in the milk. The enzymes and other factors found in milk make it the most digestible food in existence. The destruction of these has given rise of the widespread allergies to dairy products. Additionally, homogenization breaks up the relatively large fat particles into very small ones that can pass undigested, directly into the blood. This fat then helps clog the arteries.
People have drunk raw milk for centuries and still drink it in most parts of the world. Some did and do get sick from contaminated dairy products, but most do not.
Big government passing law against the sale of raw milk is just another example of the "We, the governing elite, know better and have to protect the unwashed masses from themselves" kind of attitude. Why not let everyone choose whether they want to buy a certain product?
That is slow. I recently installed the new Mac OS 10.5.1 and it transferred data at 1738.1 MB/min from the internal drive to an external FW drive. I am using a 2Ghz dual G5 PPC I got in July 2004. I wonder how that compares with XP?
I do know that MS OS are ALWAYS slower on existing hardware whereas Apple's OS sees to get faster with each upgrade on existing equipment.
I bought a new Macbook pro and installed Win2K, XP and VISTA within 3 virtual machines under Parallels. Win2K is fastest, XP a little slower, but VISTA is glacial by comparison. It does look nice though. VISTA is also a battery hog. Checking with the Activity Monitor tells why.VISTA keeps both CPUs busy at 60-85% with no user apps running. Win2K runs at 50-55%, XP uses 20-23%, Parallels by itself, with no VM running uses about 2-3%
For example: Win2K boot time is 28 sec. Winxp boots in 38 sec, VISTA takes 1min 58 sec with memory allocation of 256M, 512M and 1000M respectively.
VISTA definitely need some serious improvement if that is possible without a total re-write.
Stay with XP if you must use Windows. If buying a new computer, check out the new Macs. Yes, they cost more, but you also get more.
It would be better to allow the creator of a work to only let the copyright to be "loaned" to a given publisher/seller for say 5 years. After that the creator could re-negotiate with another. No creator of a copyrighted work could ever "sell" this or permanently transfer their copyright. Only real, living breathing humans could get a copyright that expires when the creator does. In such a system, the artist makes the money, not some fat intermediaries.
.......If copyright was not transferable I would have had no choice other than to self publish.....
As author you could "loan" your copyright to a publisher for a time, say no longer than 5 years or a certain number of copies. After that negotiations with that or other publishers could be repeated for another maximum of 5 years at a times as long as you live. Any time the work was not selling, you could declare it public domain or not. However, it becomes public when you die. Since your neither the publisher nor your heirs created the work, why should they get copyright?
.....Any honest, fair and honourable politician......
Wow, is there such creature in existence anywhere? Certainly not any of the ones currently in office. If there were such a creature in existence out there somewhere, would he/she have a ghost of a chance of ever getting into office nowadays? Is it possible for someone to get or remain in office without bribes (er- campaign contributions) these days?
......they think laws allowing $200,000 fines and 20 years in jail PER OFFENCE are extreme.....
No, what they really want is the death penalty for the first offense. Murder is punished with life in prison, but copying anything gets the offender immediate execution.
.......but eventually you reach the upper limit of how long a human being can live........
It isn't so much how long people live, but how healthy they are at any given age on average.
In the early part of last century, a dentist named Weston A. Price wanted to find out more about dental health. He knew that in some parts of the world tooth decay and other common dental problems found in industrialized nations did not plague certain isolated people groups in widely scattered parts of the world. He visited these out of the way, "backward" places and studied the life style and diet of those who lived there. You can find out as much or more about what he learned here:
It seems that our modern factory foods are the biggest contributor to the many degenerative ailments affecting children, grown up adults and the elderly. Environmental factors also are involved. Maybe better living through chemistry isn't at all better, but rather bad all around.
....Any time in which you must observe a group that consists of humans, you are incapable of running multiple tests across multiple generations......
However you can find out what healthy, long lived people groups life style contributed for generations to their well being. Until the advent of our present "industrial" foods, the degenerative diseases such as cancer, heart disease, diabetes and obesity was rare.
We use a simple rule when shopping. Pick the item with the shortest ingredient list. For example, get ice cream made with real cream, whole milk, egg and flavoring, rather than the one with a long list of unpronounceable chemicals. Get sourdough bread made with whole grains.
Avoid foods that are "ized" and "ated", as in homogenized, pasteurized, hydrogenated etc. We get milk directly from a farmer. It is just as it comes from his healthy cows, complete with all enzymes needed to properly digest it and the cream floating on top. Pasteurization destroys the enzymes and homogenization makes the fat particles small enough to pass undigested into the blood and help clog the arteries. This is much more effort than simply reaching into the dairy case at the supermarket.
Avoid industrial oils, such as soy, canola. Use real butter, cream, olive and coconut oils. Avoid refined foods and drinks but concentrate on the stuff that is natural.
Don't sit in front of a display for too long, but get out at least a bit for each day. Stop worrying about stuff you cannot do anything about.
I was referring to the ORBITAL time of the earth around the sun. One such orbit is commonly called a year. The rotation of the earth is governed by mass, inertia as confined by the laws of momentum conservation. Losses due to the mechanisms you mentioned do slow this axis rotation slightly.
Any such losses of the earth through space would also tend slow the earth in its orbit. That would cause the earth to "fall" inward toward the sun, thus speeding it up again. The result would be a slightly shorter solar year. This effect could not be very large. Otherwise, we'd all have gotten too close to the sun by now to be able to live.
.....Might run into problems because the redshift is, I believe, generally how the age/distance of the signal is shown........
In 1929, Edwin Hubble discovered that the spectrum of light of distant objects, including the hydrogen line, is shifted toward red. That was and still is a measured fact. Then Hubble put forth a tentative INTERPRETATION of what might be the cause of this shift. The astronomer community ran with that explanation of the doppler shift as the cause for the red shift and is still the predominant belief today.
In the light of that hypothesis, distant objects are supposedly receding from us and each other at significant fractions of the presently measured speed of light. This belief (faith) has led to the need for incredulous, never discovered, theoretical constructs of dark matter and energy making up the largest portion of the known matter and energy in the universe.
An alternate interpretation (ie. we don't know this one for sure either) is that due to the expansion of space, its electromagnetic properties have changed drastically since what is commonly called the "Big Bang" started it all. This interpretation for the cause of the red shift does NOT require postulating undiscovered matter or energy in order to explain the more recently observed motion of galaxies.
Since the speed of light can be shown to be greatly affected by the medium it traverses, this change in space itself, as the universe expanded, would have similarly changed the speed of light. This would also affect the behavior of all atomic orbits of the electrons, which give off characteristic light patterns and frequencies. If the red shift is due to this mechanism, it means that the speed of light would have been about 3x10^8 faster shortly after the beginning of the Universe that what we measure today. That means an atomic clock would have run that much faster also.
.....Because we can measure the variation using atomic clocks, of course.....
So how do we know that the atomic clocks are constant, especially over centuries or millennia? They have not been around long enough for us to find out whether or not they drift slowly over long periods. We know they are very constant over the time since they have been invented. We assume ie. believe that they are constant long term, but we have no way of being sure.
We do know however, that the rotation of the earth around the sun could not have changed much because it is governed by gravity. The equations for gravity only contain the units of mass and distance, WITHOUT any reference to time. The equations for the motions of atoms contain time dependent units governed by certain "constants". There is some compelling evidence, that some of these so called constants, such as c, the speed of light, and therefore the inversely related Planck's constant h have NOT been constant over long periods of time. There is no known law of physics, that demands the invariance of these "constants". There ARE laws of physics that mandate the constancy of gravity. Clocks based on gravity, cannot drift over the long run.
The main reason we use atomic clocks is that we are able to measure their "ticks" MUCH more accurately over the relatively short human life time. Nobody has managed to construct any clock based on gravity to divide time into microsecond or better granularity.
How often to synchronize atomic time to gravity (solar) time is an arbitrary decision. Maybe do a correction of atomic time whenever it differs by a minute or so from gravity time. You boss should not be too angry if you come to work a minute late because your atomic watch lost a minute over your life time.
Generally, in written communication, we often miss the tone of voice, in which something is said in person. I'm sure that if I had said to you, what I wrote in my post, you would have caught the facetious ring in my voice.:-)
It's definitely too expensive. Maybe $40-$50 would be about right. If it could optionally read the text out loud in a reasonably human sounding voice, maybe $80-$100 might not be too high. A paper book can't read bed time stories out loud until children (or adults even) fall asleep.
.....that your average person will put out $400 for an e-reader.....
Many have done that already for such a reader that also works as a phone, music and video player at that price. It can access books and other things for free. I have heard they are marketed under the name "iPhone", because most people buy them for their telephone function. Rumors have it there is also a cheaper version called "iTouch" that omits the phone part, but works fine for the other functions, including a reader.
....I don't have kids yet, but am worried about how I can give them my experience growing up.......
You can begin by making the sacrifice and home school them. We did that at least in the early part of our kids lives. It meant living at a lower economic level by keeping the wife at home. She was sometimes looked down on, because she was "only" a mother/homemaker and did not pursue her career.
If you are married, you can make the sacrifice and STAY married, faithful even if it get hard, yes. possibly very hard. Children need a mother AND a father. Keeping your home intact is probably the biggest factor for you to have well adjusted, joyful children. Always be truthful and insist on them being so. Don't be afraid to come down hard on willful misbehavior and disobedience, especially untruthfulness. As they get older, show them you're trusting them by giving them greater responsibilities and privileges.
Be a good example, always. If you do screw up sometimes, and you will, don't be too proud to say I'm sorry. Kids innately tend to be trusting and forgiving, if they know they are loved.
....In just a few short generations, we have redefined them as children....
In the Bible we read that God blessed some teenagers with a high calling and awesome responsibility.
Joseph was chosen by God and hated by his brothers. They sold their teenage brother into slavery in Egypt, yet he became prime minister of the most powerful and advanced nation of that time when he was thirty.
David was a teenage shepherd boy when he was appointed to be King and part of the Messianic line. He wrote some of the most beautiful and uplifting poetry ever penned.
Daniel was dragged off to Babylon in his teens. Holding fast to his faith, he ultimately became prominent in the Babylonian empire's government. Even the conquering Medes and Persians put him into high office.
Mary was a teen to whom the Angel Gabriel announced that she was the one God had chosen to bear His Son into our world. She had to change the diapers of the Son of God.
Her son, Jesus, as a twelve year old, confounded the most highly educated men of His time with wisdom they marveled at, but did not know the source thereof.
One of Jesus' disciples was a teen who wrote on certain aspects of Jesus that the other gospel writer never mention. Before his death John was shown in a mysterious vision the culmination of all history.
Indeed, God loves and respects teenagers as adults. He has given some of them rather tough assignments and they came through with flying colors, even though they did mess up now and then. Should we do any less by our young people? Many, but not all will rise to our highest expectations of them.
Slashdot Mirror
.....which provide an energy source and significant temperature variations....
That is not enough. DNA is only a carrier of code, akin to a computer memory or disk. The information on a disk and the structure and material of the disk itself are entirely separate. The chemistry of ink on paper tells you nothing about the musical score or other material written thereon.
Nobody has ever demonstrated the creation of *any* code or language by anything other than a mind. DNA carries the language of life as authored by the Creator of life in the same way that paper carries the works of Shakespeare.
We may someday be able to copy life, in the same way we are able to copy digital information or an image on paper. Copying Shakespeare's plays on a XEROX is very far below authoring such play.
....that involves thinking in a linear, step-by-step manner about how a problem can be solved........
The problem with establishing a series of steps is that the first step has to be put somewhere. Nobody KNOWS where that first step needs to go. We can believe where it might have been, but once you start to believe, who is to say one belief is more true than any other?
The Bible tells us the first step began with God because God is the eternally self existent One. Modern science cannot really place the first step. Logic tells us the Universe either created itself, which is absurd, or it was caused by a cause outside of itself or it always existed. Since observed data shows that it has not always existed. By process of elimination we come to an outside, independent cause. The writers of the Bible claim they were personally told by God, that He is that one who made everything from nothing. This does fit within the framework of logic. Of course anyone can feel free to believe or reject the testimony of any witness.
....if you have the time.......
Indeed, time is the magic that turns rocks, never mind frogs, into princes. No maiden kisses required, just enough time. Boy, what a fairy tale masquerading as science!
......That these answers, which are directly contradicted by observation, are none the less true.......
The question whether the answers contradict the observations themselves or someone's interpretations of the observations. When scientists "measure" the age of rocks, for example, they use radioactive decay as their clock. The assume (believe) that this clock is both accurate and CONSTANT over the time period in question. This assumption is never questioned and on the surface seems to make sense. However, there is no way to PROVE that this radioactivity clock, upon which the immense ages theorized, are based, is in fact invariant over the large spans of time. So we can either believe our logic or we can believe the writers of the Bible who claim that God Himself told them a little, not nearly as much as we'd like to know about how things began. Either way, science or religion, it comes down to belief.
.....The alternative is to sacrifice logic, common sense,......
What you are really doing is elevating your logic and common sense into the position of God. Do you know everything that could be known? Is there any human that does? If not, you cannot know there is no God any more than a religious person can know that there is. They don't have all knowledge either. Both can only BELIEVE. Who are you to say that your belief is truer or better than someone else's? Are you God or something? Does your belief give you the right to trample on the belief of other people just because YOU believe their belief is ridiculous or illogical? Is your vaunted, so called logic able to judge as someone who possesses all knowledge?
There isn't and there has never been a culture that did NOT have some sort of religion. In your human pride, you worship your intellect and logic. Humans are an incurably religious creature. Maybe, just maybe, that might tell you something about the Biblical assertion of humans being made in the image of God. An image stamped on a coin is pretty hard to obliterate. Nobody can do it without certainly destroying or severely damaging such a coin. This image of God in man is very hard to obliterate.
.....When I hear the reports of an archaeology dig about how the Bible wasn't quite true.........
Can you give an example of that and not just somebody's opinion or interpretation of the data?
(.....What do you believe when at least 25% of your faith is proved false by science and alternate histories and anthropological studies?.....)
Are you taking about actual scientific facts and data, the raw data that is, or someone's interpretation of that data? Both scientists and religionists tend to interpret data through their world view and pre-suppositions.
Example: In 1929 Edwin Hubble discovered the "red-shift". That light from distant objects is shifted toward the red end of the spectrum. That was and still is a measured fact. However then he INTERPRETED that to mean that these objects are in rapid motion due to the well known doppler effect. He and most scientists never considered that the cause of this observation may be something entirely different. Today, still, the entire science establishment of astronomy and cosmology takes this interpretation as established fact.
The other sciences you mentioned are no different. They observe data and then interpret that data. These interpretations, just like any propaganda repeated often enough,long enough, and loud enough, are eventually believed as truth.
So you must choose whether to believe these interpretations of the data or believe the claim of the writers of the Bible, that they were eyewitnesses of the events and people they wrote about.
.......I do science and I am religious. Is there something wrong in that?....
Nothing at all. They ask and try to answer different questions that have puzzled the minds of man since the dawn of history.
Science attempts to answer "how" questions. Religion is tries to answer "why" questions. Neither has cornered the market answering "when" things happened or when they might happen.
All information comes to us either by first hand experience or by communication from some witness. Nobody can PROVE if a witness is telling the truth or not. All we can do is to either BELIEVE the witness or not. Even your own senses can deceive you.
When a scientist does an experiment or observation, it only applies to the time he does it. We can assume (believe) it should logically apply also to the past or the future, but there is no way to know that for sure. If scientists and religious folks both talk about the WHEN of things, we have to believe one or the other, until someone invents time travel. No human scientist has gone back and observed the formation of life, so we have to believe their assertions about it. Even if someone did travel to the dawn of time and then came back, we'd still have to take their word for it or not.
We also, equally, may choose to BELIEVE, or not, the religious claim of revelation from God to a human called Moses about when life began. Nobody can go back to verify that Moses heard correctly.
Present evolutionary dogma depends on time, unfathomable quantities of time. Time essentially occupies the place of God. Given enough time, anything is possible. Time is omnipotent, in that it can do anything that God can do. Time can turn not only a frog, but even a rock into a prince.
........and they are never punished for their actions.......
You hypocrite! Have you ever been punished for your bad actions? How many lies you have told so far in your life, or stuff you have "appropriated" that wasn't yours? How about the other eight commandments? Notice they are called commandments not optional choices. How many times have you broken traffic laws and not been punished. Ever wonder what kind of a world it would be if EVERYBODY got punished instantly, EVERY time we broke some law? Because we ALL are law breakers, we all die eventually, without exception.
......Pasteurization has a reason...
Yes it does. I kills all possible pathogens that might contaminate the milk or other product on its way from the cow to you. Dairy farmers don't have to be as vigilant about ensuring that milk from sick animals not contaminating the milk from the rest of the healthy herd, since any possible contaminants are rendered harmless by the heat. The dairy industry can relax cleanliness standards because pasteurization kills any organisms that might be lurking in the equipment.
Unfortunately, the high heat also destroys much of the nutrition and enzymes that was originally in the milk. The enzymes and other factors found in milk make it the most digestible food in existence. The destruction of these has given rise of the widespread allergies to dairy products. Additionally, homogenization breaks up the relatively large fat particles into very small ones that can pass undigested, directly into the blood. This fat then helps clog the arteries.
People have drunk raw milk for centuries and still drink it in most parts of the world. Some did and do get sick from contaminated dairy products, but most do not.
Big government passing law against the sale of raw milk is just another example of the "We, the governing elite, know better and have to protect the unwashed masses from themselves" kind of attitude. Why not let everyone choose whether they want to buy a certain product?
......That's about 25MB/min.....
That is slow. I recently installed the new Mac OS 10.5.1 and it transferred data at 1738.1 MB/min from the internal drive to an external FW drive. I am using a 2Ghz dual G5 PPC I got in July 2004. I wonder how that compares with XP?
I do know that MS OS are ALWAYS slower on existing hardware whereas Apple's OS sees to get faster with each upgrade on existing equipment.
I bought a new Macbook pro and installed Win2K, XP and VISTA within 3 virtual machines under Parallels. Win2K is fastest, XP a little slower, but VISTA is glacial by comparison. It does look nice though. VISTA is also a battery hog. Checking with the Activity Monitor tells why.VISTA keeps both CPUs busy at 60-85% with no user apps running. Win2K runs at 50-55%, XP uses 20-23%, Parallels by itself, with no VM running uses about 2-3%
For example: Win2K boot time is 28 sec. Winxp boots in 38 sec, VISTA takes 1min 58 sec with memory allocation of 256M, 512M and 1000M respectively.
VISTA definitely need some serious improvement if that is possible without a total re-write.
Stay with XP if you must use Windows. If buying a new computer, check out the new Macs. Yes, they cost more, but you also get more.
.....The duration is way to long.......
It would be better to allow the creator of a work to only let the copyright to be "loaned" to a given publisher/seller for say 5 years. After that the creator could re-negotiate with another. No creator of a copyrighted work could ever "sell" this or permanently transfer their copyright. Only real, living breathing humans could get a copyright that expires when the creator does. In such a system, the artist makes the money, not some fat intermediaries.
.......If copyright was not transferable I would have had no choice other than to self publish.....
As author you could "loan" your copyright to a publisher for a time, say no longer than 5 years or a certain number of copies. After that negotiations with that or other publishers could be repeated for another maximum of 5 years at a times as long as you live. Any time the work was not selling, you could declare it public domain or not. However, it becomes public when you die. Since your neither the publisher nor your heirs created the work, why should they get copyright?
.....Any honest, fair and honourable politician......
Wow, is there such creature in existence anywhere? Certainly not any of the ones currently in office. If there were such a creature in existence out there somewhere, would he/she have a ghost of a chance of ever getting into office nowadays? Is it possible for someone to get or remain in office without bribes (er- campaign contributions) these days?
......they think laws allowing $200,000 fines and 20 years in jail PER OFFENCE are extreme .....
No, what they really want is the death penalty for the first offense. Murder is punished with life in prison, but copying anything gets the offender immediate execution.
.......but eventually you reach the upper limit of how long a human being can live........
It isn't so much how long people live, but how healthy they are at any given age on average.
In the early part of last century, a dentist named Weston A. Price wanted to find out more about dental health. He knew that in some parts of the world tooth decay and other common dental problems found in industrialized nations did not plague certain isolated people groups in widely scattered parts of the world. He visited these out of the way, "backward" places and studied the life style and diet of those who lived there. You can find out as much or more about what he learned here:
http://www.westonaprice.org/splash_2.htm
It seems that our modern factory foods are the biggest contributor to the many degenerative ailments affecting children, grown up adults and the elderly. Environmental factors also are involved. Maybe better living through chemistry isn't at all better, but rather bad all around.
....Any time in which you must observe a group that consists of humans, you are incapable of running multiple tests across multiple generations......
However you can find out what healthy, long lived people groups life style contributed for generations to their well being. Until the advent of our present "industrial" foods, the degenerative diseases such as cancer, heart disease, diabetes and obesity was rare.
We use a simple rule when shopping. Pick the item with the shortest ingredient list. For example, get ice cream made with real cream, whole milk, egg and flavoring, rather than the one with a long list of unpronounceable chemicals. Get sourdough bread made with whole grains.
Avoid foods that are "ized" and "ated", as in homogenized, pasteurized, hydrogenated etc. We get milk directly from a farmer. It is just as it comes from his healthy cows, complete with all enzymes needed to properly digest it and the cream floating on top. Pasteurization destroys the enzymes and homogenization makes the fat particles small enough to pass undigested into the blood and help clog the arteries. This is much more effort than simply reaching into the dairy case at the supermarket.
Avoid industrial oils, such as soy, canola. Use real butter, cream, olive and coconut oils. Avoid refined foods and drinks but concentrate on the stuff that is natural.
Don't sit in front of a display for too long, but get out at least a bit for each day. Stop worrying about stuff you cannot do anything about.
.....but peering at it for long periods of time on that tiny screen? .....
How about if Apple adds a program that reads the text out loud in a pleasant human like voice? An 8BG phone can store a LOT of bed time stories.
....There's also drag from the tides......
I was referring to the ORBITAL time of the earth around the sun. One such orbit is commonly called a year. The rotation of the earth is governed by mass, inertia as confined by the laws of momentum conservation. Losses due to the mechanisms you mentioned do slow this axis rotation slightly.
Any such losses of the earth through space would also tend slow the earth in its orbit. That would cause the earth to "fall" inward toward the sun, thus speeding it up again. The result would be a slightly shorter solar year. This effect could not be very large. Otherwise, we'd all have gotten too close to the sun by now to be able to live.
.....Might run into problems because the redshift is, I believe, generally how the age/distance of the signal is shown........
In 1929, Edwin Hubble discovered that the spectrum of light of distant objects, including the hydrogen line, is shifted toward red. That was and still is a measured fact. Then Hubble put forth a tentative INTERPRETATION of what might be the cause of this shift. The astronomer community ran with that explanation of the doppler shift as the cause for the red shift and is still the predominant belief today.
In the light of that hypothesis, distant objects are supposedly receding from us and each other at significant fractions of the presently measured speed of light. This belief (faith) has led to the need for incredulous, never discovered, theoretical constructs of dark matter and energy making up the largest portion of the known matter and energy in the universe.
An alternate interpretation (ie. we don't know this one for sure either) is that due to the expansion of space, its electromagnetic properties have changed drastically since what is commonly called the "Big Bang" started it all. This interpretation for the cause of the red shift does NOT require postulating undiscovered matter or energy in order to explain the more recently observed motion of galaxies.
Since the speed of light can be shown to be greatly affected by the medium it traverses, this change in space itself, as the universe expanded, would have similarly changed the speed of light. This would also affect the behavior of all atomic orbits of the electrons, which give off characteristic light patterns and frequencies. If the red shift is due to this mechanism, it means that the speed of light would have been about 3x10^8 faster shortly after the beginning of the Universe that what we measure today. That means an atomic clock would have run that much faster also.
.....Because we can measure the variation using atomic clocks, of course.....
So how do we know that the atomic clocks are constant, especially over centuries or millennia? They have not been around long enough for us to find out whether or not they drift slowly over long periods. We know they are very constant over the time since they have been invented. We assume ie. believe that they are constant long term, but we have no way of being sure.
We do know however, that the rotation of the earth around the sun could not have changed much because it is governed by gravity. The equations for gravity only contain the units of mass and distance, WITHOUT any reference to time. The equations for the motions of atoms contain time dependent units governed by certain "constants". There is some compelling evidence, that some of these so called constants, such as c, the speed of light, and therefore the inversely related Planck's constant h have NOT been constant over long periods of time. There is no known law of physics, that demands the invariance of these "constants". There ARE laws of physics that mandate the constancy of gravity. Clocks based on gravity, cannot drift over the long run.
The main reason we use atomic clocks is that we are able to measure their "ticks" MUCH more accurately over the relatively short human life time. Nobody has managed to construct any clock based on gravity to divide time into microsecond or better granularity.
How often to synchronize atomic time to gravity (solar) time is an arbitrary decision. Maybe do a correction of atomic time whenever it differs by a minute or so from gravity time. You boss should not be too angry if you come to work a minute late because your atomic watch lost a minute over your life time.
.....Trust me, it's no e-reader.....
:-)
Generally, in written communication, we often miss the tone of voice, in which something is said in person. I'm sure that if I had said to you, what I wrote in my post, you would have caught the facetious ring in my voice.
It's definitely too expensive. Maybe $40-$50 would be about right. If it could optionally read the text out loud in a reasonably human sounding voice, maybe $80-$100 might not be too high. A paper book can't read bed time stories out loud until children (or adults even) fall asleep.
.....I could authorize up to 7 devices on my account......
Wow, I've got shelves full of books, each properly 'authorized' and a laptop full of cool, free "authorized" content to read, listen to and watch.
.....that your average person will put out $400 for an e-reader.....
Many have done that already for such a reader that also works as a phone, music and video player at that price. It can access books and other things for free. I have heard they are marketed under the name "iPhone", because most people buy them for their telephone function. Rumors have it there is also a cheaper version called "iTouch" that omits the phone part, but works fine for the other functions, including a reader.
....I don't have kids yet, but am worried about how I can give them my experience growing up.......
You can begin by making the sacrifice and home school them. We did that at least in the early part of our kids lives. It meant living at a lower economic level by keeping the wife at home. She was sometimes looked down on, because she was "only" a mother/homemaker and did not pursue her career.
If you are married, you can make the sacrifice and STAY married, faithful even if it get hard, yes. possibly very hard. Children need a mother AND a father. Keeping your home intact is probably the biggest factor for you to have well adjusted, joyful children. Always be truthful and insist on them being so. Don't be afraid to come down hard on willful misbehavior and disobedience, especially untruthfulness. As they get older, show them you're trusting them by giving them greater responsibilities and privileges.
Be a good example, always. If you do screw up sometimes, and you will, don't be too proud to say I'm sorry. Kids innately tend to be trusting and forgiving, if they know they are loved.
....In just a few short generations, we have redefined them as children....
In the Bible we read that God blessed some teenagers with a high calling and awesome responsibility.
Joseph was chosen by God and hated by his brothers. They sold their teenage brother into slavery in Egypt, yet he became prime minister of the most powerful and advanced nation of that time when he was thirty.
David was a teenage shepherd boy when he was appointed to be King and part of the Messianic line. He wrote some of the most beautiful and uplifting poetry ever penned.
Daniel was dragged off to Babylon in his teens. Holding fast to his faith, he ultimately became prominent in the Babylonian empire's government. Even the conquering Medes and Persians put him into high office.
Mary was a teen to whom the Angel Gabriel announced that she was the one God had chosen to bear His Son into our world. She had to change the diapers of the Son of God.
Her son, Jesus, as a twelve year old, confounded the most highly educated men of His time with wisdom they marveled at, but did not know the source thereof.
One of Jesus' disciples was a teen who wrote on certain aspects of Jesus that the other gospel writer never mention. Before his death John was shown in a mysterious vision the culmination of all history.
Indeed, God loves and respects teenagers as adults. He has given some of them rather tough assignments and they came through with flying colors, even though they did mess up now and then. Should we do any less by our young people? Many, but not all will rise to our highest expectations of them.