the God of the bible expects your to sacrifice your child for him
In the story you are referencing, God asks Abram to sacrifice his own son, Isaac. However, knowing that he's been promised a great line of descendants through Isaac (Gen 21:12), Abram reasons that God can and will raise the dead. But the actual point of the story is precisely that God does not require Abram to sacrifice Isaac, instead providing a ram as substitute. This prefigures God providing his own son as a substitute sacrifice for mankind. If you read elsewhere in the old testament you find that human sacrifices are considered especially abhorrent and are often what gets God all riled up and pronouncing judgment.
he'll only let you win wars if you kill every man, woman and child etc
Well, as you state it, that's not quite true. I assume you're referencing 1 Samuel 15:3, which makes the case for total annihilation of the Amalekites for their wickedness and unprovoked aggression against the Israelites. This includes killing all of the livestock--it's war of justice and judgment, not profiteering--and when they bring back some livestock anyway, Saul loses his kingship over Israel as punishment. I get the feeling that it would be unproductive to get into a discussion of the proper exercises of God's justice, but let's just get to the pragmatic side. You are making the point that this "book" gives a prescription for similar "horrible acts." Well, this book is meant as a history, it was not the means of conveying the military directive to the Israelites, and the directive is very, very specific. One of the lessons (here and elsewhere) is that any time the Israelites take war into their own hands and insert any of their own motives they get horribly punished. It's part of the overall, "justice is in God's hands, not yours motif." Personally, I can't think of any modern extremist groups using this as a justification for violent acts--can you?
Anyway, according to Christian beliefs, a new covenant was forged two thousand years ago. According to the founder, Jesus Christ, this is the layout of how it's supposed to go:
The Greatest Commandment
34 Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. 35 One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: 36 “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”
37 Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’[c] 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’[d] 40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
And it is elaborated on with fairly bold requirements "43“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ 44But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. 46If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? 47And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? 48Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect."
So assuming there were some modern Amalekites "enemies," the new prescription is to love them and bless them.
There are a lot of problems to be find in, with, and about modern Christians, but I think this centers more around when they don't take their book's philosophies seriously rather than when they do.
Did color really add anything to movies, though? It may seem that way to us, but I get the impression that there is a bit of psychological feedback going on between what we see in movies and what we expect in movies.
In fact, there seems to have been a lasting effect from the original black and white movie footage of the the 1900-1950 era in that often directors will present footage set in that era in black and white. Sometimes it just feels wrong when it's in color. (it's almost like if you were to time travel to the 1920s you would expect everything to be in black and white)
Consider that you can get just as much, if not more out of reading a book, even though a novel tends to lack even a single picture.
But I find it can be pretty painful watching, e.g., 80s sci-fi movies with the terrible effects, whereas I bet back then they felt much more believable.
My conclusion (without having any formal education on the psychology involved) is basically that we can adapt our imaginations to any medium. Our minds might need some training in the medium to understand what to filter out and where to provide missing pieces, but frankly a 2D representation will wind up being just as good as a 3D representation as long as you're accustomed to it. (Why do people get freaked out at horror movies? Because they accept the reality being presented to them.)
The United Kingdom has a population density of 255 people/km^2. The Netherlands has a population density of 404 people/km^2. Singapore has a population density of 7148 people/km^2. Africa has a populatin density of 25 people/km^2, and if you like you can check for the invidual countries. It's high for a few countries, but it should be obvious at this point that "overpopulation" is not the problem any more than it is for highly populated eastern and western countries.
For that matter, even food is not the problem. Money is the problem. If you really care about overpopulation, well, guess what? Wealthy countries have low very population growth. In some cases, their populations may be shrinking (usually made up for by immigration). If you want to curb the population growth in Africa, your best bet is to make them rich.
Farming is at least a partial solution to the money problem. These countries are not yet wealthy enough to be spending significant money on importing food. Converely, though, poor countries can use their low labor costs as an advantage in selling into the global market. (A major problem with western "aid" is that it is temporary assistance which provides no sustainable livelihoods, and our habit of using our vast wealth to subsidize our own farmers to let them compete unfairly.) As their net wealth increases, the countries will be able to support greater education and improvements to livelihood and transition away from agricultural to more lucrative pursuits, just as we've been able to do.
So, yes, fixing the soil in Africa is a going to be helpful in resolving its present social issues.
Yes, so we've established this is a crime. That's not disputed.
But there are underlying reason why it was a crime, why that crime is assigned the penalty it has been, and why the legislators implement a price breakdown in the first place. If the specific law does not continue to correspond accurately with those intentions, it probably is being misapplied and/or needs to be modified.
One major function of the penalty (if not the only function) is to act as a deterrent. This means it needs to offset the potential gain to the offender in a way that accounts for his probability of being caught. In this case, a "robbery" charge is silly: robbers get a financial payoff and generally operate so as to escape penalty. Publically tossing someone's property obviously should involve assessing a different penalty because there is no financial reward and the chances of getting away with it are minimal.
Another key difference is where the perpetrator does not understand the value of the property. If someone grabs an unknown electronic item from you and damages it, how important is the price to whether he should be allowed to vote or made to spend significant time in prison? Seems to me that as long as he is required to make full restitution for the cost of the item, the additional criminal penalty should be roughly the same for most cases.
Consider, why did the legislators include a price breakdown at all? One reason may have been increased deterrence for major heists, another may have simply been to target particularly egregious offenses. Neither of which seems to me like something which should depend on whether it was an iPhone or a Nokia.
There's not really any way to know for sure without trying it. But there are a few reasons to be optimistic. We're talking genetically very similar animals (consider all the viable hybrids which occur naturally), and, when you think about it, the womb is a controlled environment. Once you have a highly evolved gestation system in place, selective pressure will tend to favor the existing system. (Look how similar embryos are, even across genetically distant species.)
If it doesn't work, well, now you figure out where things went wrong and try again. Hopefully you at least have a new batch of cell nuclei to work with.
Yeah, but as soon as they have any control at all over what is released, you will begin to hear, "Here is all of the data for the last 24 hours." "Why is there five minutes of silence six hours and thirty minutes in?" "Sorry, citizen, we deemed that to be sensitive information."
When your potential culprit is a six year old child, your weapon of concern is bought for a few bucks at Wal*Mart, and you're dealing with thousands of incidents, I think it's pretty clear that you need a technological solution for filtering laser light, not a massive network of informants.
Don't have secret police in the first place. "Undercover" cops have no place in a free society. Only police states have or need secret police. If social media makes the secret police impossible, GOOD!
In America, you need undercover cops because the standards for conviction are so high. Organized crime itself operates undercover, the members talk in 'code' so as to avoid offering anything legally substantive, etc., and cops somehow have to lure them off their guard in a setting where they feel completely comfortable. Would you rather live in a society where we lower the standard for conviction to 'acting suspicious'? Or where criminal organizations are simply untouchable? I'm no fan of big government, but giving power to the mafia just sets you up for a much more ruthless version of the same.
There's a big difference between a secret police force designed to spy out political enemies from the ranks of the public, and a guy who pretends he is a drug dealer so he can catch other drug dealers.
How about adding THC to actual, native weeds? Make it so everyone in the whole city has some hallucinogenic plant growing in their backyard, whether they want it or not.
In any case, being impossible to adequately enforce hasn't stopped them from trying so far.
The Okla. Spaceport in Burns Flat has longer, wider runways (13,503' x 300' w/1000 overruns versus only 10,000' x 200'),
That seems kind of trivial to expand if deemed necessary. How are you faring for a comparable emergency landing and test site?
better access to major transportation and major population centers
And you think population proximity makes it a great place for launching what will be essentially experimental bombs? (maybe even with nuclear fuel)
and a golf course on site
Just in case exploring new frontiers of our universe ever gets dull.
I imagine the NM site is a little more fuel efficient for being closer to the equator and a somewhat higher elevation, and pretty stellar for weather (one of the reasons it has a large community of astronomers and sites such as the VLA).
Why stop at keeping me from getting to work and contributing to society? You could push me in the mud, slash my tires, kidnap my dog, leave flaming bags of poo on my doorstep... there are all sorts of ways to inconvenience me. And I do wholly admit that this is an effective way to draw attention to pet and minority views that otherwise I wouldn't give the time of day to. Nobody would recognize the names 'Anders Breivik' or 'Al Qaeda' if they contented themselves with politely handing out pamphlets. I suppose if you think imposing costs on others in an acceptable means of getting attention for your political agenda, then the leap from promoting free speech to shutting down free enterprise is perfectly consistent.
If I'm looking up the name of something (via related criteria), or searching for a particular statistic, my ideal is to find it displayed in one of the website titles or excerpts without ever having to click anything.
Google also displays dictionary entries, etc. so that I can generally lookup words and get the definition right in the results.
Many times I consider a result "successful" when I don't find what I'm looking for--it was evident from the results that the object or information I wanted did not exist, so, while disappointing, Google did the job I wanted it to do.
I think a far better test is whether, after searching for something, small keyword alterations are made. Granted, many times there is a level of human refinement where people start off not knowing quite what they're looking for, but I think there is probably a much better correlation of people trying different words because they didn't find what they wanted than not-clicking anything. Basically, if people are coming away from Google and Bing equally satisfied, and Bing users click more, that means Bing is less effective and making its users do more work to get their info.
Please explain to me why a society in which protesters are allowed to effectively shut down my transportation to blare their political statements is morally superior to one in which they can assemble in the nearby concourse where everyone will be able to hear what they're saying and read their signs just as well. Also, please post your address, so that I can setup a protest in your living room. (certainly you would not dare to designate a private area restricted from public expression!)
Well, one idea is that you catch random orbiting junk at the other end, replenishing the lost momentum. In any case, efficiency isn't particularly important. The major limitation on getting things into space right now is construction, launch logistics, etc. If we could somehow be continuously sending things into space, it would be well-worth having to send two or three times the fuel along with.
Anti-matter is simply gravitationally repulsive in all instances? This explains why we appear to be in a universe inhabited by matter: matter clumps, anti-matter disperses, hence, when we look at clumps of stuff, we find matter. (and anti-matter is 'dark' for the same reason) This might explain accelerating expansion of the universe (anti-matter continues to apply a repulsive force). And it seems to me that anti-matter pushing on the outside of a galaxy would have much the same effect as additional matter pulling in from the inside of a galaxy.
Admittedly, my qualifications to explore this scenario quantitatively are limited.
Today's genes 'that don't exist in nature' are tomorrow's genes that do. Organisms naturally acquire new genes and new gene combinations; hence, evolution. I don't see why we would trust random cosmic radiation with unknowable mutagenic capacity more than we would trust the carefully tested and purposeful work of dedicated scientists. Nor is it really relevant to its biological effects whether a new protein comes from a lab or a paramecium--it's going to be equally alien to our anatomy either way.
All in all, you should probably be less concerned about the weirder stuff. The bigger and weirder the protein, the less likely it is to interfere with normal cellular processes.
Your points remind me of a fortune I read recently:
"A commercial, and in some respects a social, doubt has been started within the
last year or two, whether or not it is right to discuss so openly the security
or insecurity of locks. Many well-meaning persons suppose that the discus-
sion respecting the means for baffling the supposed safety of locks offers a
premium for dishonesty, by showing others how to be dishonest. This is a fal-
lacy. Rogues are very keen in their profession, and already know much more
than we can teach them respecting their several kinds of roguery. Rogues knew
a good deal about lockpicking long before locksmiths discussed it among them-
selves, as they have lately done. If a lock -- let it have been made in what-
ever country, or by whatever maker -- is not so inviolable as it has hitherto
been deemed to be, surely it is in the interest of *honest* persons to know
this fact, because the *dishonest* are tolerably certain to be the first to
apply the knowledge practically; and the spread of knowledge is necessary to
give fair play to those who might suffer by ignorance. It cannot be too ear-
nestly urged, that an acquaintance with real facts will, in the end, be better
for all parties." -- Charles Tomlinson's Rudimentary Treatise on the Construction of Locks,
published around 1850
I wasn't really discussing correct policy decisions so much as I was defending the reasonableness of asking for spending reductions in the same context. It seems strange that you on the one hand bemoan approving the debt hike as any but an unconditional measure, then also the fact that deficit reductions were not sufficient enough. Even if it was only side that caved (it wasn't), I'm pretty sure the alternative was the same debate with no budget concessions being made by anybody.
Your restaurant analogy is true enough when it comes to bond holders; we have made a commitment to pay for goods received. But I think I already explained that the bond holders never had anything to worry about. And you are incorrect in the your suggestion that the money was already spent, I mean, "pay for money" is a pretty ridiculous expression (although a nice try). If we wished to push with your domestic analogy, I might point out that when you commit to a two-hundred dollar meal and then reach into an empty wallet, you don't get to write a magic IOU like the government--you either wind up washing a lot of dishes, dealing with the police, or (immorally) trying to sneak out the back door. And putting yourself in the position where we would need the IOU is downright irresponsible in the first place.
My question for you is--how many of those Democrats ran on a campaign of 'raising taxes'? The tea ('taxed enough already') party candidates, who won the Republicans back control of the House in a fairly devastating route of the Democrats, based themselves entirely around small government platform that would reduce taxes and spending. That's why you weren't able to raise taxes, but that's also why you were able to get cuts to defense spending (the traditional Republican sacred cow). The "fifty-fifty" compromise of Democrats agreeing to spending cuts and republicans agreeing to higher taxes is actually the "ninety-five - five" compromise of Republicans disowning their entire campaign platform and pissing on their base while the Democrats have to politely excuse themselves for only mostly defending their pet entitlement programs.
I would personally approve of throwing in some increased tax revenue--provided it's understood this is to pay off the debt, not ease up on the pressure to cut spending. But I don't see blaming the Republicans. Maybe you can blame the voting public. (Kind of funny how pushing through Obama's healthcare proposal unilaterally lead to a public backlash which again brings us to lamenting the impossibility of compromise.)
P.S. I don't know what the S&P is going on about because the Bush Tax cuts are still set to expire, as was assumed in all the CBO budget estimates.
There is a fairly obvious connection in asking for spending cuts and debating the debt limit (i.e. the cap on spending in the red) . In fact, barring the approval of other means of reducing deficit spending, discussing how much debt we're willing to have is identical to debating how much money we are willing to spend. It is perfectly logical to refuse to raise the debit limit unless the government agrees to reduce the rate at which that limit is exceeded.
You are also being disingenuous in saying there wasn't any compromise, which their obviously was. The Democrats didn't just throw up their hands and approve the Republican bill. The Republicans agreed to include major cuts in defense expenditures, including a half-trillion dollar time bomb if the bipartisan committee doesn't compromise enough to get through the next through the next round of spending cuts. How much was cut from social security?
And the bond holders were never really at risk of not being paid back by the government fighting for the ability to sell more bonds. The outcome we were looking out was withholding entitlement checks and/or wages for the (undoubtedly short) span of time it would take voters to be pissed enough to make a compromise absolutely mandatory.
I hope you're right, in the sense that Instructables sucks enough that I wouldn't mind at all if they were dragged into the abyss and it was made that much easier for competitors to replace it.
Visiting that site is just a miserable experience--you have to be logged in to access the most basic of features, or worse, a paid membership, which it's always trying to foist on you, and otherwise it's full of ads. It has some great content--thanks to the user-community that puts up with them. But the longer it takes to replace the more content that is going to be tied up there.
Slashdot Mirror
the God of the bible expects your to sacrifice your child for him
In the story you are referencing, God asks Abram to sacrifice his own son, Isaac. However, knowing that he's been promised a great line of descendants through Isaac (Gen 21:12), Abram reasons that God can and will raise the dead. But the actual point of the story is precisely that God does not require Abram to sacrifice Isaac, instead providing a ram as substitute. This prefigures God providing his own son as a substitute sacrifice for mankind. If you read elsewhere in the old testament you find that human sacrifices are considered especially abhorrent and are often what gets God all riled up and pronouncing judgment.
he'll only let you win wars if you kill every man, woman and child etc
Well, as you state it, that's not quite true. I assume you're referencing 1 Samuel 15:3, which makes the case for total annihilation of the Amalekites for their wickedness and unprovoked aggression against the Israelites. This includes killing all of the livestock--it's war of justice and judgment, not profiteering--and when they bring back some livestock anyway, Saul loses his kingship over Israel as punishment. I get the feeling that it would be unproductive to get into a discussion of the proper exercises of God's justice, but let's just get to the pragmatic side. You are making the point that this "book" gives a prescription for similar "horrible acts." Well, this book is meant as a history, it was not the means of conveying the military directive to the Israelites, and the directive is very, very specific. One of the lessons (here and elsewhere) is that any time the Israelites take war into their own hands and insert any of their own motives they get horribly punished. It's part of the overall, "justice is in God's hands, not yours motif." Personally, I can't think of any modern extremist groups using this as a justification for violent acts--can you?
Anyway, according to Christian beliefs, a new covenant was forged two thousand years ago. According to the founder, Jesus Christ, this is the layout of how it's supposed to go:
The Greatest Commandment
34 Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. 35 One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: 36 “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”
37 Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’[c] 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’[d] 40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
And it is elaborated on with fairly bold requirements
"43“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ 44But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. 46If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? 47And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? 48Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect."
So assuming there were some modern Amalekites "enemies," the new prescription is to love them and bless them.
There are a lot of problems to be find in, with, and about modern Christians, but I think this centers more around when they don't take their book's philosophies seriously rather than when they do.
Did color really add anything to movies, though? It may seem that way to us, but I get the impression that there is a bit of psychological feedback going on between what we see in movies and what we expect in movies.
In fact, there seems to have been a lasting effect from the original black and white movie footage of the the 1900-1950 era in that often directors will present footage set in that era in black and white. Sometimes it just feels wrong when it's in color. (it's almost like if you were to time travel to the 1920s you would expect everything to be in black and white)
Consider that you can get just as much, if not more out of reading a book, even though a novel tends to lack even a single picture.
But I find it can be pretty painful watching, e.g., 80s sci-fi movies with the terrible effects, whereas I bet back then they felt much more believable.
My conclusion (without having any formal education on the psychology involved) is basically that we can adapt our imaginations to any medium. Our minds might need some training in the medium to understand what to filter out and where to provide missing pieces, but frankly a 2D representation will wind up being just as good as a 3D representation as long as you're accustomed to it. (Why do people get freaked out at horror movies? Because they accept the reality being presented to them.)
The United Kingdom has a population density of 255 people/km^2. The Netherlands has a population density of 404 people/km^2. Singapore has a population density of 7148 people/km^2. Africa has a populatin density of 25 people/km^2, and if you like you can check for the invidual countries. It's high for a few countries, but it should be obvious at this point that "overpopulation" is not the problem any more than it is for highly populated eastern and western countries.
For that matter, even food is not the problem. Money is the problem. If you really care about overpopulation, well, guess what? Wealthy countries have low very population growth. In some cases, their populations may be shrinking (usually made up for by immigration). If you want to curb the population growth in Africa, your best bet is to make them rich.
Farming is at least a partial solution to the money problem. These countries are not yet wealthy enough to be spending significant money on importing food. Converely, though, poor countries can use their low labor costs as an advantage in selling into the global market. (A major problem with western "aid" is that it is temporary assistance which provides no sustainable livelihoods, and our habit of using our vast wealth to subsidize our own farmers to let them compete unfairly.) As their net wealth increases, the countries will be able to support greater education and improvements to livelihood and transition away from agricultural to more lucrative pursuits, just as we've been able to do.
So, yes, fixing the soil in Africa is a going to be helpful in resolving its present social issues.
It's possible you might wish to re-read the passage you quoted.
Yes, so we've established this is a crime. That's not disputed.
But there are underlying reason why it was a crime, why that crime is assigned the penalty it has been, and why the legislators implement a price breakdown in the first place. If the specific law does not continue to correspond accurately with those intentions, it probably is being misapplied and/or needs to be modified.
One major function of the penalty (if not the only function) is to act as a deterrent. This means it needs to offset the potential gain to the offender in a way that accounts for his probability of being caught. In this case, a "robbery" charge is silly: robbers get a financial payoff and generally operate so as to escape penalty. Publically tossing someone's property obviously should involve assessing a different penalty because there is no financial reward and the chances of getting away with it are minimal.
Another key difference is where the perpetrator does not understand the value of the property. If someone grabs an unknown electronic item from you and damages it, how important is the price to whether he should be allowed to vote or made to spend significant time in prison? Seems to me that as long as he is required to make full restitution for the cost of the item, the additional criminal penalty should be roughly the same for most cases.
Consider, why did the legislators include a price breakdown at all? One reason may have been increased deterrence for major heists, another may have simply been to target particularly egregious offenses. Neither of which seems to me like something which should depend on whether it was an iPhone or a Nokia.
There's not really any way to know for sure without trying it. But there are a few reasons to be optimistic. We're talking genetically very similar animals (consider all the viable hybrids which occur naturally), and, when you think about it, the womb is a controlled environment. Once you have a highly evolved gestation system in place, selective pressure will tend to favor the existing system. (Look how similar embryos are, even across genetically distant species.)
If it doesn't work, well, now you figure out where things went wrong and try again. Hopefully you at least have a new batch of cell nuclei to work with.
Yeah, but as soon as they have any control at all over what is released, you will begin to hear, "Here is all of the data for the last 24 hours." "Why is there five minutes of silence six hours and thirty minutes in?" "Sorry, citizen, we deemed that to be sensitive information."
When your potential culprit is a six year old child, your weapon of concern is bought for a few bucks at Wal*Mart, and you're dealing with thousands of incidents, I think it's pretty clear that you need a technological solution for filtering laser light, not a massive network of informants.
I thought the bible predicted 1000 years of Windows XP.
I'm afraid your grammar skills will deteriorate, however.
Can you really give up these +5 moderated slashdot comments for the sake of enjoying life?
The elderly? No, sir, from what I've heard, this ride is meant for youth in Asia.
Don't have secret police in the first place. "Undercover" cops have no place in a free society. Only police states have or need secret police. If social media makes the secret police impossible, GOOD!
In America, you need undercover cops because the standards for conviction are so high. Organized crime itself operates undercover, the members talk in 'code' so as to avoid offering anything legally substantive, etc., and cops somehow have to lure them off their guard in a setting where they feel completely comfortable. Would you rather live in a society where we lower the standard for conviction to 'acting suspicious'? Or where criminal organizations are simply untouchable? I'm no fan of big government, but giving power to the mafia just sets you up for a much more ruthless version of the same.
There's a big difference between a secret police force designed to spy out political enemies from the ranks of the public, and a guy who pretends he is a drug dealer so he can catch other drug dealers.
How about adding THC to actual, native weeds? Make it so everyone in the whole city has some hallucinogenic plant growing in their backyard, whether they want it or not.
In any case, being impossible to adequately enforce hasn't stopped them from trying so far.
The Okla. Spaceport in Burns Flat has longer, wider runways (13,503' x 300' w/1000 overruns versus only 10,000' x 200'),
That seems kind of trivial to expand if deemed necessary. How are you faring for a comparable emergency landing and test site?
better access to major transportation and major population centers
And you think population proximity makes it a great place for launching what will be essentially experimental bombs? (maybe even with nuclear fuel)
and a golf course on site
Just in case exploring new frontiers of our universe ever gets dull.
I imagine the NM site is a little more fuel efficient for being closer to the equator and a somewhat higher elevation, and pretty stellar for weather (one of the reasons it has a large community of astronomers and sites such as the VLA).
Why stop at keeping me from getting to work and contributing to society? You could push me in the mud, slash my tires, kidnap my dog, leave flaming bags of poo on my doorstep... there are all sorts of ways to inconvenience me. And I do wholly admit that this is an effective way to draw attention to pet and minority views that otherwise I wouldn't give the time of day to. Nobody would recognize the names 'Anders Breivik' or 'Al Qaeda' if they contented themselves with politely handing out pamphlets. I suppose if you think imposing costs on others in an acceptable means of getting attention for your political agenda, then the leap from promoting free speech to shutting down free enterprise is perfectly consistent.
If I'm looking up the name of something (via related criteria), or searching for a particular statistic, my ideal is to find it displayed in one of the website titles or excerpts without ever having to click anything.
Google also displays dictionary entries, etc. so that I can generally lookup words and get the definition right in the results.
Many times I consider a result "successful" when I don't find what I'm looking for--it was evident from the results that the object or information I wanted did not exist, so, while disappointing, Google did the job I wanted it to do.
I think a far better test is whether, after searching for something, small keyword alterations are made. Granted, many times there is a level of human refinement where people start off not knowing quite what they're looking for, but I think there is probably a much better correlation of people trying different words because they didn't find what they wanted than not-clicking anything. Basically, if people are coming away from Google and Bing equally satisfied, and Bing users click more, that means Bing is less effective and making its users do more work to get their info.
Please explain to me why a society in which protesters are allowed to effectively shut down my transportation to blare their political statements is morally superior to one in which they can assemble in the nearby concourse where everyone will be able to hear what they're saying and read their signs just as well. Also, please post your address, so that I can setup a protest in your living room. (certainly you would not dare to designate a private area restricted from public expression!)
Well, one idea is that you catch random orbiting junk at the other end, replenishing the lost momentum. In any case, efficiency isn't particularly important. The major limitation on getting things into space right now is construction, launch logistics, etc. If we could somehow be continuously sending things into space, it would be well-worth having to send two or three times the fuel along with.
Anti-matter is simply gravitationally repulsive in all instances? This explains why we appear to be in a universe inhabited by matter: matter clumps, anti-matter disperses, hence, when we look at clumps of stuff, we find matter. (and anti-matter is 'dark' for the same reason) This might explain accelerating expansion of the universe (anti-matter continues to apply a repulsive force). And it seems to me that anti-matter pushing on the outside of a galaxy would have much the same effect as additional matter pulling in from the inside of a galaxy.
Admittedly, my qualifications to explore this scenario quantitatively are limited.
In any case, I have enjoyed reading your polite and well-reasoned reply. Thank you. :)
Today's genes 'that don't exist in nature' are tomorrow's genes that do. Organisms naturally acquire new genes and new gene combinations; hence, evolution. I don't see why we would trust random cosmic radiation with unknowable mutagenic capacity more than we would trust the carefully tested and purposeful work of dedicated scientists. Nor is it really relevant to its biological effects whether a new protein comes from a lab or a paramecium--it's going to be equally alien to our anatomy either way.
All in all, you should probably be less concerned about the weirder stuff. The bigger and weirder the protein, the less likely it is to interfere with normal cellular processes.
Your points remind me of a fortune I read recently:
"A commercial, and in some respects a social, doubt has been started within the
last year or two, whether or not it is right to discuss so openly the security
or insecurity of locks. Many well-meaning persons suppose that the discus-
sion respecting the means for baffling the supposed safety of locks offers a
premium for dishonesty, by showing others how to be dishonest. This is a fal-
lacy. Rogues are very keen in their profession, and already know much more
than we can teach them respecting their several kinds of roguery. Rogues knew
a good deal about lockpicking long before locksmiths discussed it among them-
selves, as they have lately done. If a lock -- let it have been made in what-
ever country, or by whatever maker -- is not so inviolable as it has hitherto
been deemed to be, surely it is in the interest of *honest* persons to know
this fact, because the *dishonest* are tolerably certain to be the first to
apply the knowledge practically; and the spread of knowledge is necessary to
give fair play to those who might suffer by ignorance. It cannot be too ear-
nestly urged, that an acquaintance with real facts will, in the end, be better
for all parties."
-- Charles Tomlinson's Rudimentary Treatise on the Construction of Locks,
published around 1850
I wasn't really discussing correct policy decisions so much as I was defending the reasonableness of asking for spending reductions in the same context. It seems strange that you on the one hand bemoan approving the debt hike as any but an unconditional measure, then also the fact that deficit reductions were not sufficient enough. Even if it was only side that caved (it wasn't), I'm pretty sure the alternative was the same debate with no budget concessions being made by anybody.
Your restaurant analogy is true enough when it comes to bond holders; we have made a commitment to pay for goods received. But I think I already explained that the bond holders never had anything to worry about. And you are incorrect in the your suggestion that the money was already spent, I mean, "pay for money" is a pretty ridiculous expression (although a nice try). If we wished to push with your domestic analogy, I might point out that when you commit to a two-hundred dollar meal and then reach into an empty wallet, you don't get to write a magic IOU like the government--you either wind up washing a lot of dishes, dealing with the police, or (immorally) trying to sneak out the back door. And putting yourself in the position where we would need the IOU is downright irresponsible in the first place.
My question for you is--how many of those Democrats ran on a campaign of 'raising taxes'? The tea ('taxed enough already') party candidates, who won the Republicans back control of the House in a fairly devastating route of the Democrats, based themselves entirely around small government platform that would reduce taxes and spending. That's why you weren't able to raise taxes, but that's also why you were able to get cuts to defense spending (the traditional Republican sacred cow). The "fifty-fifty" compromise of Democrats agreeing to spending cuts and republicans agreeing to higher taxes is actually the "ninety-five - five" compromise of Republicans disowning their entire campaign platform and pissing on their base while the Democrats have to politely excuse themselves for only mostly defending their pet entitlement programs.
I would personally approve of throwing in some increased tax revenue--provided it's understood this is to pay off the debt, not ease up on the pressure to cut spending. But I don't see blaming the Republicans. Maybe you can blame the voting public. (Kind of funny how pushing through Obama's healthcare proposal unilaterally lead to a public backlash which again brings us to lamenting the impossibility of compromise.)
P.S. I don't know what the S&P is going on about because the Bush Tax cuts are still set to expire, as was assumed in all the CBO budget estimates.
There is a fairly obvious connection in asking for spending cuts and debating the debt limit (i.e. the cap on spending in the red) . In fact, barring the approval of other means of reducing deficit spending, discussing how much debt we're willing to have is identical to debating how much money we are willing to spend. It is perfectly logical to refuse to raise the debit limit unless the government agrees to reduce the rate at which that limit is exceeded.
You are also being disingenuous in saying there wasn't any compromise, which their obviously was. The Democrats didn't just throw up their hands and approve the Republican bill. The Republicans agreed to include major cuts in defense expenditures, including a half-trillion dollar time bomb if the bipartisan committee doesn't compromise enough to get through the next through the next round of spending cuts. How much was cut from social security?
And the bond holders were never really at risk of not being paid back by the government fighting for the ability to sell more bonds. The outcome we were looking out was withholding entitlement checks and/or wages for the (undoubtedly short) span of time it would take voters to be pissed enough to make a compromise absolutely mandatory.
I hope you're right, in the sense that Instructables sucks enough that I wouldn't mind at all if they were dragged into the abyss and it was made that much easier for competitors to replace it.
Visiting that site is just a miserable experience--you have to be logged in to access the most basic of features, or worse, a paid membership, which it's always trying to foist on you, and otherwise it's full of ads. It has some great content--thanks to the user-community that puts up with them. But the longer it takes to replace the more content that is going to be tied up there.