Do you really think they're going to pick people who are going to go with state's rights on abortion?
If they're Republicans the answer to that question is probably yes.
I think perhaps you don't realize that Roe vs. Wade was a ruling against states' rights. Prior to Roe v. Wade states could determine for themselves whether or not to legalize abortion.
As it happens, among conservatives there is a greater divide over abortion than there is over Roe v. Wade. Some educated conservatives favor abortion rights. I haven't met any who favor Roe v. Wade, which is viewed as (a) a violation of strict constructionist principles in interpreting the constitution (b) an erosion of the rightful powers of the states (c) a terribly written ruling.
Now, it could well be (and is probably the case) that step #2 in the grand scheme is to try to get abortion outlawed in all the states--which, depending on your politics, you may view as a violation of individual autonomy. But as for the autonomy of states, and the legal arguments typically put forth,* it is not an issue educated conservatives tend to be hypocritical on.
*The moral arguments are obviously more encompassing since they are usually treating abortion as perfectly equivalent to mruder.
Based on the data presented so far it would appear that increased ambient radiation (or whatever it is) decreases decay rates, so being farther from the sun would result in an increase in nuclear decay.
Would be kind of interesting if we were thereby unable to take nukes out of the solar system (how's that for intelligent design!) although I rather doubt the effects would be nearly so pronounced.
Done in Convention by the Unanimous Consent of the States present the Seventeenth Day of September in the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and Eighty seven
So which "naturistic god" did the founding fathers believe to have lived 1786 years before the ratification of the Constitution?
Your conclusions from your cited passage do not make any sense. The simple occurrence of the word "Nature" is not a pass to read any naturalistic philosophy you deem fit into the statement.
The most obvious influence for the wording in the passage you quote is the philosophizing of John Locke, which is most profoundly depicted in the last sentence with a modification of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of property." The "Laws of Nature" would more frequently be referred to as "Natural Law"--the basic prohibitions against murder, theft, etc., which are believed to exist even when man is in the "state of nature" without any government to say what's okay and what isn't. "Nature's God" reinforcing the divine supremacy of such laws and fits in just as well with either the deistic or Christian beliefs. The deist argues against divine intervention after the instance of creation--but both deist and Christian equally agree on the primal nature of God's laws.
There is no coded espousal of deism. And, to be honest, there is no coded espousal of any other religious view either. The architects of the Declaration and the Constitution were either Christian or raised Christian, surrounded by Christians, in the one case writing a document seceding from a nigh-universally Christian nation, in the other writing a document to govern a nigh-universally Christian nation, and in both cases, considering a larger audience of Christian nations who would be reading the document and key in supporting the new government.
I certainly hope you don't honestly mean to suggest that the Declaration of Independence was written with a mind to capitalize on King George's/England's deist sensibilities, or to rally the American's behind their common deist theologies, because I cannot begin to imagine that in the midsts of fighting a war for their own survival that these men found subtle theological pedantry to be on the list of major priorities.
It should be bloody obvious that God is mentioned as a factor of commonality. In attempting to arbitrate with a country that shares such beliefs, and trying to unite a group of independent and frequently disjoint colonies, those kinds of commonalities are nothing to be balked at.
The language does not constitute an endorsement. It constitutes and assumption.
You cannot resolve what is ultimately an order of magnitude problem by reallocating the existing IP space. That's like trying save a sinking ship by organizing a bucket brigade which goes from the lower deck to the captain's quarters.
If the blocks become a valuable asset the companies will auction them off themselves, seeing as making a profit by selling assets is WHAT THEY DO. No need to deal with all of the political an economic fallout from a government usurpation of the property.
Simply consolidating the existing resources by use of NAT, dynamic IPS, etc. will accomplish infinitely more anyway.
If you don't want your students to read something, have one of their professors assign it as homework and mention that there will be no grade or quiz.
Better yet, say there *will* be a quiz and then symlink "Jihadist Pamphlet Cliffnotes" to "Partial Differential Equations Vol. I, II, and III" in the google results.
For one thing, because giving someone one of those in absolutely no way means that they will actually use it. For another, it doesn't discourage the, "If one is good, three must be three times better!" mentality.
There are probably a zillion different solutions if you personally want to make certain you take pills when you should in the proper quantity.
But this is meant less to be an electronic counterpart to a pillbox, and more an electronic counterpart to a conscientious mother.
You wouldn't say you could rightly kill someone sleeping, in a coma, suspended animation, etc., simply because they had temporarily ceased their conscious thought. You would bring into consideration their potential to resume conscious thinking.
So I think it's far from clear that the line of humanity is drawn once consciousness initiates. The fact that it *will* initiate, provided you make no intentionally destructive interventions, seems suspiciously like other cases where we intuitively feel that it is wrong to end life.
I'm not saying it is necessarily the same. I feel that it is, quite possibly, impossible to know. But, the thing is, you don't demolish a building until you're sure it's been evacuated, and you don't kill someone or something on a 50/50 hope that it isn't actually murder.
"Christianity has no pantheons, no idols, no sacrifices, no oracles. . . . In short, it has none of the hallmarks of a religion."
The properties you have not listed are not common to all that most people consider religions, which rather defeats the point of using them to classify religion, but then, I think your point was just to list things that atheism doesn't have that other religions do.
Even some of the things you list are applicable. There is some dogma/declaration of faith--or, at least, I don't suppose you can be an atheist without a professed belief that God does not exist. Which equals or exceeds the opposing theistic assertion in that, while it's conceivable for their to be proof of God, there can never be disproof, so theism provable but neither are disprovable. There is indeed an atheist hierarchy/leadership, as much as there is Protestant or Muslim hierarchy/leadership, in so much as their are atheist organizations. Having no moral code is itself a moral code, and there are atheistsects.
This question always comes up, and it's always fun because it always boils down to people with agendas trying to set the terminology to their favor. (as if the way you classified things had any effect whatsoever on their logical properties)
But a simple flip to the dictionary reveals the startling truth of the matter: The word "religion" is not so absolutely defined as to favor one side over the other. There is plenty of room to interpret atheism as either being or not being a religion, and no reason to say that either view is illogical. The whole debate is nothing more than a political fiction.
Actually, mirrors *can* reflect 100%... of a particular wavelength. And it just so happens that lasers are monochromatic in nature.
However, between two lasers of discrepant frequencies, you could pretty much guarantee that one of them would be effective. So defense is possible in the theoretical sense, but not the practical sense.
In as much as the intended targets are stationary, it is a fairly simple consideration--shine the laser on the target at low power, if you see the glowing dot on the target... turn up the power.
How many people are liable to be staring at, say, a SAM site, in the middle of the night? For that matter, how many times will this have to be used before everyone knows not too? Not to mention that it would be fairly simple and cheap to airdrop safety glasses designed to filter on the laser's wavelength.
At least laser-rebound is nice enough to be benign when you are out of sight. Shrapnel will take a parabolic arc which hops over any intermediary buildings to pop you on the head.
Not to mention that rules for angle of incidence/reflection mean that a laser shot straight down on a tall structure is unlikely to cause problems for anyone else.
Anyway, say this takes fifteen years to become standard technology; by then, repairing retinas may be easy as pie, but money says that being blast-incinerary radius of a bomb will still be fairly lethal.
Do you have a job? Does it concern you that you're generating economic product a significant portion will be directly funding an entire military in the hopes that it will be good at killing people at a later date? (...and the present?)
Previously, my desires to flame the dean of students, trick him into clicking a goatse link, and infect his computer with gay porn had all been sadly unfulfilled due to his troglodytic eschewing of modern technology.
But now that the elder generation is seeking parity with the younger, we can at last unveil the full weaponry of the internet.
The guy may as well have called Hell's Angels a bunch of sissies.
A good rule to follow is that, when you are going to piss a group of people off, make sure it's a group not sufficiently motivated to assume a lynchmob mentality.
You seriously mean to suggest that it is not possible to make any sociological assertions?
The stigma not only exists, it is rather obvious that it does, to the point that there is not any sense bothering to argue with you about it. You yourself doubtless have shaped certain of your choices around it, and as far as stigmas go, if I were dedicated enough to put your life on trial here, I am without any doubt that there would be quite a wealth of hypocrisy to rebuke the statements you have just made.
Contrary to your insinuations, I am not a socialist; I consider myself as individualist as one may philosophically be; but simply because I advocate the individual over the society does not mean I feel any need to try to subterfuge very evident courses of fact in order to favor that.
How is masturbating and looking at pornography of consenting adults considered "perverted"? That is a very limited view given that your body is wired in such a way as to encourage you to reproduce as frequently and as often as possible. It stands to reason that people need to satisfy their natural urges somehow. It's hard getting laid; people are picky about their partners and there's this stigma attached to sex still even in our modern liberated society.
It does not particularly matter whether or not you can come up with a rationale for it. Society says looking at pornography is perverted, ergo, it is perverted.
Your argument is analogous to saying that "fuck" is not a swearword because you can think of legitimate contextual uses for it in a sentence. It doesn't matter. Society says it's non-kosher, ergo, it is a swearword.
And maybe to you these things are enough a part of your daily habits that it is difficult to view them as anything other than benevolent, but consider your entire argument could just have applicably been said in defense of, say, rape.
Just accept the fact that social stigmas are decided by society, not you. You can reasonably argue against them, but you cannot reasonably argue against their classification.
I wonder at the mindset of the people complaining.
"Hey, let's all get together in some big mob in a public area with big signs and shout collective messages! Yeah! Let's do it!"
20 seconds later...
"Man, I think we're being spied on." "Really?" "Yeah, check out those low-flying insects... probably robots or something." "QMGZ, you're right! The government is watching us! Our cleverly concealed group of hundreds of protestors has been outed to the man!"
Anyway, I thought we'd already pinned squirrels as the chief liaisons of CIA spy programs. Doesn't a jump straight from squirrel to fly violate Moore's law?
First of all, you can't fine him "$3 million", (a) because he couldn't pay it, (b) because then you probably have to pay people close to that amount just to convince them the financial risk of the job was worth taking.
Also, it's evident it wasn't 100% on him. The data was stolen from an intern's car. He bears the indirect culpability of not encrypting it, not backing it, trusting the intern, whatever. It's natural to feel that "heads should roll" but why should the onus of all this fall necessarily on him? (Well, maybe it all should--I'm just going off the blurb in the summary.)
On the other side of it, a week's vacation time is ridiculous, whether or not he's at fault. If he is, well, there should be a real punishment. If he's not, it's fairly idiotic to slap him around just for the show of doing so.
And how much did the four-month long investigation cost? If it was more than a week of this guy's vacation time... yeah, well, that was another win for the taxpayers, wasn't it?
The way it should have worked is that there should have been a clearly defined set of rules, a clearly defined set of responsibilities, and a clearly defined set of repercussions. When employee X neglected responsibility Y, he should have already been aware that Z would be the punishment, and Z should have been what happened immediately afterward. You might need a four month investigation to find the harddrive thief, but you shouldn't need more than a week to handle violations of internal policies.
Those of us who have eaten British cuisine will realize fully its hazardous potential.
Yeah, it seems innocent enough, until the kid opens a delicatessen and starts whipping up some kippers & marmite. I'm sorry, but free speech has its limits, and kippers & marmite lie squarely on the other side of it. Blech!
If "a kilogram of hydrogen is equivalent in energy to a gallon of gasoline" then, estimating about 400 million gallons of gas per day used by the US, we will need 10 million acres of algae farm. That is with the assumption that they obtain their optimal output, and no additional energy is expended for processing, transport, etc.
By contrast, an average nuclear power plant produces 1000 megawatts of energy. Also assuming optimum efficiency, we get (10^9 joules pers second * (60 * 60 *24) seconds per day / (237.1*10^3 joules to electrolyze 1 mole of hydrogen at 298K) * 1.01 grams/mole = 368,047 kilograms of hydrogen per day.
So... 10 nuclear plants, or 10 million acres of algae farm?
Let's not forget that your algae farm will stop photosynthesizing when it's cloudy out.
Slashdot Mirror
Do you really think they're going to pick people who are going to go with state's rights on abortion?
If they're Republicans the answer to that question is probably yes.
I think perhaps you don't realize that Roe vs. Wade was a ruling against states' rights. Prior to Roe v. Wade states could determine for themselves whether or not to legalize abortion.
As it happens, among conservatives there is a greater divide over abortion than there is over Roe v. Wade. Some educated conservatives favor abortion rights. I haven't met any who favor Roe v. Wade, which is viewed as (a) a violation of strict constructionist principles in interpreting the constitution (b) an erosion of the rightful powers of the states (c) a terribly written ruling.
Now, it could well be (and is probably the case) that step #2 in the grand scheme is to try to get abortion outlawed in all the states--which, depending on your politics, you may view as a violation of individual autonomy. But as for the autonomy of states, and the legal arguments typically put forth,* it is not an issue educated conservatives tend to be hypocritical on.
*The moral arguments are obviously more encompassing since they are usually treating abortion as perfectly equivalent to mruder.
Based on the data presented so far it would appear that increased ambient radiation (or whatever it is) decreases decay rates, so being farther from the sun would result in an increase in nuclear decay.
Would be kind of interesting if we were thereby unable to take nukes out of the solar system (how's that for intelligent design!) although I rather doubt the effects would be nearly so pronounced.
Stirke me clown, and fry will become more prayerful than you can portably imagine!
All of the other technological components will be designed to be redundant... it seems like an oversight not to have a backup human.
So which "naturistic god" did the founding fathers believe to have lived 1786 years before the ratification of the Constitution?
Your conclusions from your cited passage do not make any sense. The simple occurrence of the word "Nature" is not a pass to read any naturalistic philosophy you deem fit into the statement.
The most obvious influence for the wording in the passage you quote is the philosophizing of John Locke, which is most profoundly depicted in the last sentence with a modification of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of property." The "Laws of Nature" would more frequently be referred to as "Natural Law"--the basic prohibitions against murder, theft, etc., which are believed to exist even when man is in the "state of nature" without any government to say what's okay and what isn't. "Nature's God" reinforcing the divine supremacy of such laws and fits in just as well with either the deistic or Christian beliefs. The deist argues against divine intervention after the instance of creation--but both deist and Christian equally agree on the primal nature of God's laws.
There is no coded espousal of deism. And, to be honest, there is no coded espousal of any other religious view either. The architects of the Declaration and the Constitution were either Christian or raised Christian, surrounded by Christians, in the one case writing a document seceding from a nigh-universally Christian nation, in the other writing a document to govern a nigh-universally Christian nation, and in both cases, considering a larger audience of Christian nations who would be reading the document and key in supporting the new government.
I certainly hope you don't honestly mean to suggest that the Declaration of Independence was written with a mind to capitalize on King George's/England's deist sensibilities, or to rally the American's behind their common deist theologies, because I cannot begin to imagine that in the midsts of fighting a war for their own survival that these men found subtle theological pedantry to be on the list of major priorities.
It should be bloody obvious that God is mentioned as a factor of commonality. In attempting to arbitrate with a country that shares such beliefs, and trying to unite a group of independent and frequently disjoint colonies, those kinds of commonalities are nothing to be balked at.
The language does not constitute an endorsement. It constitutes and assumption.
You cannot resolve what is ultimately an order of magnitude problem by reallocating the existing IP space. That's like trying save a sinking ship by organizing a bucket brigade which goes from the lower deck to the captain's quarters.
If the blocks become a valuable asset the companies will auction them off themselves, seeing as making a profit by selling assets is WHAT THEY DO. No need to deal with all of the political an economic fallout from a government usurpation of the property.
Simply consolidating the existing resources by use of NAT, dynamic IPS, etc. will accomplish infinitely more anyway.
If you don't want your students to read something, have one of their professors assign it as homework and mention that there will be no grade or quiz.
Better yet, say there *will* be a quiz and then symlink "Jihadist Pamphlet Cliffnotes" to "Partial Differential Equations Vol. I, II, and III" in the google results.
For one thing, because giving someone one of those in absolutely no way means that they will actually use it. For another, it doesn't discourage the, "If one is good, three must be three times better!" mentality.
There are probably a zillion different solutions if you personally want to make certain you take pills when you should in the proper quantity.
But this is meant less to be an electronic counterpart to a pillbox, and more an electronic counterpart to a conscientious mother.
You wouldn't say you could rightly kill someone sleeping, in a coma, suspended animation, etc., simply because they had temporarily ceased their conscious thought. You would bring into consideration their potential to resume conscious thinking. So I think it's far from clear that the line of humanity is drawn once consciousness initiates. The fact that it *will* initiate, provided you make no intentionally destructive interventions, seems suspiciously like other cases where we intuitively feel that it is wrong to end life. I'm not saying it is necessarily the same. I feel that it is, quite possibly, impossible to know. But, the thing is, you don't demolish a building until you're sure it's been evacuated, and you don't kill someone or something on a 50/50 hope that it isn't actually murder.
"Christianity has no pantheons, no idols, no sacrifices, no oracles. . . . In short, it has none of the hallmarks of a religion."
The properties you have not listed are not common to all that most people consider religions, which rather defeats the point of using them to classify religion, but then, I think your point was just to list things that atheism doesn't have that other religions do.
Even some of the things you list are applicable. There is some dogma/declaration of faith--or, at least, I don't suppose you can be an atheist without a professed belief that God does not exist. Which equals or exceeds the opposing theistic assertion in that, while it's conceivable for their to be proof of God, there can never be disproof, so theism provable but neither are disprovable. There is indeed an atheist hierarchy/leadership, as much as there is Protestant or Muslim hierarchy/leadership, in so much as their are atheist organizations. Having no moral code is itself a moral code, and there are atheist sects.
This question always comes up, and it's always fun because it always boils down to people with agendas trying to set the terminology to their favor. (as if the way you classified things had any effect whatsoever on their logical properties)
But a simple flip to the dictionary reveals the startling truth of the matter: The word "religion" is not so absolutely defined as to favor one side over the other. There is plenty of room to interpret atheism as either being or not being a religion, and no reason to say that either view is illogical. The whole debate is nothing more than a political fiction.
Actually, mirrors *can* reflect 100%... of a particular wavelength. And it just so happens that lasers are monochromatic in nature.
However, between two lasers of discrepant frequencies, you could pretty much guarantee that one of them would be effective. So defense is possible in the theoretical sense, but not the practical sense.
In as much as the intended targets are stationary, it is a fairly simple consideration--shine the laser on the target at low power, if you see the glowing dot on the target... turn up the power.
Doesn't get much more certain than that.
How many people are liable to be staring at, say, a SAM site, in the middle of the night? For that matter, how many times will this have to be used before everyone knows not too? Not to mention that it would be fairly simple and cheap to airdrop safety glasses designed to filter on the laser's wavelength.
At least laser-rebound is nice enough to be benign when you are out of sight. Shrapnel will take a parabolic arc which hops over any intermediary buildings to pop you on the head.
Not to mention that rules for angle of incidence/reflection mean that a laser shot straight down on a tall structure is unlikely to cause problems for anyone else.
Anyway, say this takes fifteen years to become standard technology; by then, repairing retinas may be easy as pie, but money says that being blast-incinerary radius of a bomb will still be fairly lethal.
Do you have a job? Does it concern you that you're generating economic product a significant portion will be directly funding an entire military in the hopes that it will be good at killing people at a later date? (...and the present?)
That it will be possible to predict what values Excel will give us in our spreadsheets?
Previously, my desires to flame the dean of students, trick him into clicking a goatse link, and infect his computer with gay porn had all been sadly unfulfilled due to his troglodytic eschewing of modern technology.
But now that the elder generation is seeking parity with the younger, we can at last unveil the full weaponry of the internet.
The guy may as well have called Hell's Angels a bunch of sissies.
A good rule to follow is that, when you are going to piss a group of people off, make sure it's a group not sufficiently motivated to assume a lynchmob mentality.
In addition to quirky physics videos (seventh one down on the list) we do thrown and pirate flag relocation, have the blow shit up, cheapest tuition / worst food, and wicked rock climbing routes.
We also have girls^H^H^H^H^H a girl.
(PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE come to our school if you are a girl. Naked Sam (per video) is usually kept indoors.)
You seriously mean to suggest that it is not possible to make any sociological assertions?
The stigma not only exists, it is rather obvious that it does, to the point that there is not any sense bothering to argue with you about it. You yourself doubtless have shaped certain of your choices around it, and as far as stigmas go, if I were dedicated enough to put your life on trial here, I am without any doubt that there would be quite a wealth of hypocrisy to rebuke the statements you have just made.
Contrary to your insinuations, I am not a socialist; I consider myself as individualist as one may philosophically be; but simply because I advocate the individual over the society does not mean I feel any need to try to subterfuge very evident courses of fact in order to favor that.
It does not particularly matter whether or not you can come up with a rationale for it. Society says looking at pornography is perverted, ergo, it is perverted.
Your argument is analogous to saying that "fuck" is not a swearword because you can think of legitimate contextual uses for it in a sentence. It doesn't matter. Society says it's non-kosher, ergo, it is a swearword.
And maybe to you these things are enough a part of your daily habits that it is difficult to view them as anything other than benevolent, but consider your entire argument could just have applicably been said in defense of, say, rape.
Just accept the fact that social stigmas are decided by society, not you. You can reasonably argue against them, but you cannot reasonably argue against their classification.
Blindness is not a disability, it is a superpower!
I should totally be made a (highly-paid) part of their blood-sucking legal team.
I wonder at the mindset of the people complaining.
"Hey, let's all get together in some big mob in a public area with big signs and shout collective messages! Yeah! Let's do it!"
20 seconds later...
"Man, I think we're being spied on." "Really?" "Yeah, check out those low-flying insects... probably robots or something." "QMGZ, you're right! The government is watching us! Our cleverly concealed group of hundreds of protestors has been outed to the man!"
Anyway, I thought we'd already pinned squirrels as the chief liaisons of CIA spy programs. Doesn't a jump straight from squirrel to fly violate Moore's law?
Also, it's evident it wasn't 100% on him. The data was stolen from an intern's car. He bears the indirect culpability of not encrypting it, not backing it, trusting the intern, whatever. It's natural to feel that "heads should roll" but why should the onus of all this fall necessarily on him? (Well, maybe it all should--I'm just going off the blurb in the summary.)
On the other side of it, a week's vacation time is ridiculous, whether or not he's at fault. If he is, well, there should be a real punishment. If he's not, it's fairly idiotic to slap him around just for the show of doing so.
And how much did the four-month long investigation cost? If it was more than a week of this guy's vacation time... yeah, well, that was another win for the taxpayers, wasn't it?
The way it should have worked is that there should have been a clearly defined set of rules, a clearly defined set of responsibilities, and a clearly defined set of repercussions. When employee X neglected responsibility Y, he should have already been aware that Z would be the punishment, and Z should have been what happened immediately afterward. You might need a four month investigation to find the harddrive thief, but you shouldn't need more than a week to handle violations of internal policies.
Those of us who have eaten British cuisine will realize fully its hazardous potential.
Yeah, it seems innocent enough, until the kid opens a delicatessen and starts whipping up some kippers & marmite. I'm sorry, but free speech has its limits, and kippers & marmite lie squarely on the other side of it. Blech!
If "a kilogram of hydrogen is equivalent in energy to a gallon of gasoline" then, estimating about 400 million gallons of gas per day used by the US, we will need 10 million acres of algae farm. That is with the assumption that they obtain their optimal output, and no additional energy is expended for processing, transport, etc.
By contrast, an average nuclear power plant produces 1000 megawatts of energy. Also assuming optimum efficiency, we get (10^9 joules pers second * (60 * 60 *24) seconds per day / (237.1*10^3 joules to electrolyze 1 mole of hydrogen at 298K) * 1.01 grams/mole = 368,047 kilograms of hydrogen per day.
So... 10 nuclear plants, or 10 million acres of algae farm?
Let's not forget that your algae farm will stop photosynthesizing when it's cloudy out.