Nietzsche also said that God is dead. And, my personal favorite, "When you stare into the abyss, sometimes the abyss stares back." It's pretty well established that somewhere in his lifetime, Nietzsche started going crazy. What people have never been able to determine is how far into his writing career it was that it happened. Neat guy to read, but you can see the undertow of madness in his writings.
They've been saying this for at least two years. Yes, typing can cause all kinds of RSI and there are several other disorders from typing which are commonly misdiagnosed as CTS, but actual carpal tunnel syndrome didn't have to do with typing.
Now the other thing which has always amused me is that it's only touch typists who get RSIs from typing. Those of us with a more erratic style move through a wide enough range of motion that we don't do damage to our joints. Apparently I was smarter than I thought, sleeping through typing class in high school...
Even without an active war, members of the armed forces still have higher rates of suicides and domestic violence than the rest of the population, or at least the last figures put out by the Air Force seem to show. *shrug* I'm not going to speculate as to reasons; there are enough people out there willing to do their own speculations. Theories range everywhere from stress to the armed forces attracting a certain personality to easy availability of firearms.
Personally, I have high respect for anyone in the military - both my grandparents on my mother's side were in WW2 and my dad was drafted for Vietnam - but it's not my bag. I'll fight if I'm called for my country (not likely at my age, but still possible) but I'm not the type to volunteer.
Incidentally, we had a fascinating discussion during our Diversity class at work (at an Air Force Base) over whether the switch to an all-voluntary army has been a good or bad thing. The basic argument is that if you only take in volunteers, you're more likely to get a particular subset of people who are more alikely to be aligned together in opinion. Draft 'em and you get everyone from pacifists to warmongers, intellectuals to jocks. It was an interesting discussion although we didn't really come to any conclusion.
There was a time when CGs made sense, but no longer; rendering all cutscenes in real time is now feasible - and it even adds a sense of visual coherence to the game.
The problem with rendered custscenes with the in-game engine is that you're stuck with the in-game limitations and small bugs can really add up. Playing No One Lives Forever is very difficult for me now because of the lack of lip movement. And VTM: Bloodlines... enough with the skating characters! Something glitched in my models, I guess, because when characters were supposed to move in the opening cutscenes, they'd freeze in a position, and then skid to where they were supposed to go. A pre-rendered scene, you know that it will always display the same way, and you can bypass limitations in the engine. Then again, when well done, those in-engine cutscenes can be much more immersive. Bioware has always done well in that respect, I think, reserving FMV for chapter cutscenes and using the engine for the smaller scenes in-game.
And for Heaven's sake, enough with the attempts to randomize cutscenes... That just leads to situations where invincibility flags get stuck on, cutscene length varies from 2 seconds to 10 minutes, and glitches become all the more evident. Go ahead and script all of the actions. If the user has seen the cutscene before, they'll probably just skip it. The stress on the system is easier too, no AI checking for what to do next, more bandwidth available to preload the next scene. And the scenes where they make it "interactive" by giving you regular control, but having an invincible or, worse, just extremely difficult foe, so as to force you to lose to advance the plot, those drive me crazy. Mainly, you don't know that you can't win, so you'll keep reloading and playing, trying to avoid the loss of your weapons or the like. And worse, some of them actually allow you to win, and then act like you were still beaten. As much as I dislike a lot of the scenarious where you're arbitrarily stripped of your ingame loot, I vastly prefer it when it's just plain scripted, not something I'm made to feel I'm in control of.
"It also checks the software running on the computer to make sure it hasn't been altered to act malevolently when it connects to other machines: that it can, in short, be trusted."
Obviously, they wouldn't let that virus run, right? I mean, it's not like the OSes have required patches for security holes that let programs through.
*shakes head in disbelief* It amazes me that people will swallow this, but then again, the depths of human stupidity have always amazed me.
*wry grin* Were you following at all the discussion which led up to this point? I was commenting on selfish and non-selfish reasons not to have kids. When there's a high chance of mortality, that's generally one of those cases considered non-selfish. My brother's actually in about the same position. My sister-in-law takes medications which would not work with pregnancies. Take her off her meds and she won't survive for long. I know a couple in my church who just can't plain have children, for whatever reason. I'm honestly not sure what the official position is, but it's generally accepted that if you can't have kids, you can't have kids. I've known some more militant Catholics who take the position that childless marriages are invalid marriages, but I don't think that's the general position. I personally see it as perfectly valid and non-selfish to hold off on kids there.
It's a shame that adoption is so hard and expensive these days. I know childless couples who want to adopt, but are stymied by the hurdles they have to jump in this country. Two couples I know have wound up going to China to adopt, but that costs a lot of money, is filled with a lot of risks involving the condition of the child when you get them or whether you get them at all, and smacks of buying a child to some people. On one hand, I can see the purpose of keeping people from adopting children who they would proceed to abuse or use, but any kid can face that whether they're with their birthparents or not.
*sigh* And I'm sorry for my post getting you in such a temper. I don't know if I explicitly stated health reasons in my non-selfish list earlier or not. I don't know if you read the grandparent post by me. Either way, I probably brought up a painful subject for you. Like I said before, I've got some understanding of the situation with my brother's marriage. Not personal understanding, me being unmarried, but it's a pretty close secondhand thing.
Yes.. in old greek mythology, buffy the illegitimate daughter of thor who did sip the ambrosia and slay cerberus and then was expelled to the netheregion of the universe..
Dude, Thor is from the Norse pantheon. Otherwise, references are just about right.
I know you're no doubt being facetious, but on the off chance you're not, they'll probably use some other names from the Greek or Roman pantheon, just to keep things consistent, while the "official name" will be something exciting like "Planetoid # 459204765.9"
Why are those reasons considered selfish? Can people choose not to have children and not be labeled as selfish? Maybe some people just don't want them. And the reasons aren't selfish or non-selfish; they just are. Of course, a lot of people think you're absolutely weird if you don't want children. Why is that?
I guess I would use the word selfish because, in the reasons I listed, it's the people deciding that they want these resources more than they would want their children to have them. Short of farming your children out as labor, you do tend to wind up with less materially. You'll have to sacrifice considerable time and money in their uptake. Even once they're successful engineers or doctors, there is no guarantee of money funneling back because they have their own lives and possibly their own families to tend to. So yes, I would characterize choosing not to have kids as being selfish versus selfless simply by definition. On the other hand, there are sometimes good reasons not to have children. If you really are unable to care for them, you have good reason to delay children.
As for not having them at all... that's a sticky point to me. I'm Catholic and I believe that the purpose of marriage is ultimately to have a family. It also seems weird from my perspective because children our your legacy, your gift to the world. You live on through them and, if you raise your kids right, they will enrich the world. Again, we get into the whole selfish versus selfless thing.
And, in the end, I'm sure a lot of people will disagree with me. That is their right, even if I think they're wrong. There will always be people who will decide that their life is better off without children to get in the way. There will be those who blatantly couch in those terms and those who will talk about population explosions or "not wanting my kid to grow up like me." I'm just stating my opinion on the matter.
Heh... ever see S1m0ne? Magic technology, of course, but the concept was interesting enough. Admittedly, he used a virus (on a floppy with convenient skull screen labels) to wipe her out rather than just a delete key.
There's plenty of it out there, although most of it is made by people in Poser and 3D Studio and it lacks a certain professionalism. Incidentally, on the second topic, at one point legislation was released in the US to curtail such works, but the act was stricken down on account of that a) there were no real people being harmed and b) how does one do an age check on someone who's not alive? On (b), I think a lot of it boiled down to the "lolita" models who're over 18, but look younger. With an actual model, you can pull out birth certificates to prove they're legal. With a virtual model, she could look 12 and you could claim just about any age you like. (As a sidenote, I've known three different girls who still look 12 even though they're in their mid-20's.)
Heh, I remember when that act got signed, all of the anime people were in a tizzy because technically speaking, Sailor Moon and her crew were all well underage. Never mind that they looked like they were much older...
Yeah, well that door swings both ways. Read some personal ads by women some day. Thay want the perfect guy who just stepped out of a cheesy romantic comedy who dotes on their every whim and is always around except when he goes to his job- managing (for about 45 minutes a day) the upscale art gallery he owns.
Hmmm... I wonder if maybe there's a difference not necessarily in what they expect, but what they'll settle for? I know that with the guys I know, there's often a particular physical model they're looking for and they find it hard to compromise on it, particular if their standards involve skinniness. Contrast against the average female personal ad which seems to focus more on personality traits, which can sometimes be changed and trained.
The joke originally cited the rhythm method, which did have a fair amount of "failure" to it. Many people either haven't noticed that the method has improved, or don't want to acknowledge it. *shrug* NFP is in the 99.999% range when done properly and is statistically correlated with happy and long marriages. I'm not sure why they're so afraid to consider it.
*shrug* I've had this debate with people before. I guess it all depends on your point of view. I've always seen it as working with the system rather than artificially suppressing it. I've had other people say that it's perverting the system by acting against natural order. I guess I could see either side. Sex is biologically set up in mammalian species so that one is most in the mood and gets the most pleasure during the fertile period. Humans, on average, are no longer much affected by this, being in the mood to have sex at all times. That is not always the case. I knew a girl who was only interested during fertile periods and when she was, she was... well, let's just say that she pretty much "went into heat" on those occasions. *wry grin* She also used to argue that NFP was fundamentally wrong because it involved understanding how the reproductive systems worked and she felt that that was knowledge no one should learn, let along use. She was a bit of an odd sort, admittedly.
Personally, I'm not altogether morally outraged by physical means of contraception, although I do not plan on using them. The chemical methods I'm less kosher with as a) I'm leary of manipulating body chemistry for entertainment purposes and b) the only reason the horomone based methods are classified as "contraceptive" rather than "potential abortifacent" is that the manufacturers lobbied to have the official definition of a contraceptive as not preventing contraception, but preventing implantation. Even then, it's estimated that some 5% of cases involve a child who implants but dies of starvation shortly after. Besides which, the NFP and related methods statistically lead to happier and longer-lasting marriages.
That or there's the symptothermal method where the female checks their body temperature upon waking which is also highly accurate. However, using non-artifical methods shouldn't be seen as a carte blanche. A good Catholic should consider whether they're actually delaying kids for a good reason (can't support them yet, conditions currently make childbirth an iffy proposition) or if it's for more selfish reasons (want to buy that new sportscar first, can't stand the possibility of losing free time to tending children, don't want to risk ruining their figure). *shrug* And not everyone follows that, but that's what's suggested.
I honestly think that HTML will live on for decades simply because it's human-writable. Using one's favorite text editor, one can bang together a page with a fair amount of sophistication and upload it. There is a some difference between HTML and BASIC (and Pascal, etc) in that in the end, one either has a custom interpreter for the language (the case for most of the BASICs) or it turns it into a universal format (binaries). HTML will live as long as most browsers will read the format, which I suspect will be practically forever. *shrug* Then again, the same was said about Gopher and how many clients are there for that anymore?
Incidentally, has Netcraft confirmed the death of HTML?
*shrug* Actually, Jesus maintains the average on his own. He died exactly once. After the ressurection, he ascended into Heaven body and soul. Enoch and Elijah in the Old Testament did the same and Roman Catholic tradition maintains that the Assumption of Mary happened. Balancing it out, we have Jesus bringing a couple people from the dead, the centurion's daughter and Lazarus IIRC. I'm sure there were others that aren't coming to mind now.
1 in 5 people are homosexual? I did not know that. Where does this statistic come from? Was it gathered by a survey in which 20% of people said they are gay? Or are we inferring that certain people are gay, even though they say otherwise? Just curious.
FWIW, that statistic has been floating around for a long time. Last I heard, it was traced back to a British study which asked after how many males had had a homosexual experience. *shrug* From what I understand, 1 in 5 said that they had had at least one experience. Now, they didn't identify themselves as homosexual, just as having had an experience and some articles commented on the number of them who'd been in boarding school where such an experience is not so uncommon.
Personally, I think no one's going to get anywhere in research until they start acknowledging that sexuality is a continuum, not a 3-point (or in some peoples' minds, 2-point) system. Sometimes I feel like we're back into the days of one drop theory in that all it takes is one homosexual experience and people get classified.
As long as human mortality maintains its steady 100% average your statement is fact.
I remember sitting down with the Bible at one point and trying to figure out how close the 100% mortality rate could be considered. I mean, you have people coming back to life, people being carried off to Heaven rather than dying... I think it worked out as slightly higher than 100% in the end due to people being brought back to life (and presumably dying a second time eventually).
Now, schools are cracking down because your sickly little Junior could die from sniffing my child's nuts from thirty yards away. So clearly, even a minute risk is too big for schools to take. With that in mind, maybe they should get more serious about not sending clearly sick kids into classes (rather than chastising children and making them feel bad for missing a day or three because they were puking their guts out).
Sniffing their nuts? Er... you do realize that "obedience school" is only meant for your dog, right?
That said, I heartily agree with you on the attendance policies of schools. Not only are children made to feel guilty for coming in sick, but the amount of sick days allowed are miniscule in some schools these days. Unless you're in a hospital, you can be sick all of 6 days in the entire year. That's just plain ridiculous.
Personally, I grew up with the "if you can walk, you can go to school" mentality and was very proud of my perfect attendance those few years I managed it. However, since I've started working for a living, my mindset has changed. Initially, I resisted using sick leave, in part for that "saving for a rainy day or major operation" standpoint and also because somewhere in the back of my mind, it seemed almost immoral to call off sick unless I really couldn't get out of bed to get to work. Then, one day, I was sitting at my computer desk, blearily trying to make out the characters on the screen through the haze of a bad head cold, and I started wondering how much work I was really going to get done that day. I came to realize that coming to work while half sick was not only risking infecting my co-workers and making my illness worse through stress, but I was also basically cheating my employers of a full day's work for a full day's wages because I was only at about 50% capacity. I personally blame the Protestant Work Ethic.
*rolls eyes* Why should there be a "yuck factor" associated with it? I mean, the way they get the brain cells there is by injecting dead baby into them.
As for the comment made in the article that there has never been a case where embryonic stem cells have been injected into humans, I cast aspersions on that assertation. I remember reading a Discover magazine article about 5 years ago where they were experimenting with injecting stem cells into the brains of people with Parkinsons. The article was actually about a recent experiment where they took half of the people and gave them the stem cell injections and the other half just had the needle stuck into their brain. The improvement rate was increased for both over the control group with no treatment, but the rate was the same whether or not the stem cells were present.
*blink* You have to get far in life? Dude, they were practically handing them out on the street while I was in college. Admittedly, it was a "student version" of the credit card, but it was easily obtained. I had one for a while, but preferred the performance of Discover. *shrug* Then again, I'm probably an atypical credit card user. I buy almost everything on my credit card, but I pay off my full balance every month. Therefore, the percentage rates don't matter to me; what matters is a lack of fees. Getting (admittedly miniscule) cash back is just icing on the cake.
An atheist with a concept of God isn't an atheist, by definition.
I can conceive of a world where pegasi fly thr friendly blue skies and unicorns peacefully much grass. I don't believe in that world. I think it is possible to be an atheist without any concept of God, but I'd wager that the majority of them have an idea about him and have just decided they didn't want to believe. Which I personally see as akin to disbelieving that man landed on the moon, but that's just my opinion.
Slashdot Mirror
Nietzsche also said that God is dead. And, my personal favorite, "When you stare into the abyss, sometimes the abyss stares back." It's pretty well established that somewhere in his lifetime, Nietzsche started going crazy. What people have never been able to determine is how far into his writing career it was that it happened. Neat guy to read, but you can see the undertow of madness in his writings.
Now the other thing which has always amused me is that it's only touch typists who get RSIs from typing. Those of us with a more erratic style move through a wide enough range of motion that we don't do damage to our joints. Apparently I was smarter than I thought, sleeping through typing class in high school...
. . . or, hell, why not run for office?
It sounds like he has pretty sound ethics. He wouldn't last a day out there as a politician.
Personally, I have high respect for anyone in the military - both my grandparents on my mother's side were in WW2 and my dad was drafted for Vietnam - but it's not my bag. I'll fight if I'm called for my country (not likely at my age, but still possible) but I'm not the type to volunteer.
Incidentally, we had a fascinating discussion during our Diversity class at work (at an Air Force Base) over whether the switch to an all-voluntary army has been a good or bad thing. The basic argument is that if you only take in volunteers, you're more likely to get a particular subset of people who are more alikely to be aligned together in opinion. Draft 'em and you get everyone from pacifists to warmongers, intellectuals to jocks. It was an interesting discussion although we didn't really come to any conclusion.
The problem with rendered custscenes with the in-game engine is that you're stuck with the in-game limitations and small bugs can really add up. Playing No One Lives Forever is very difficult for me now because of the lack of lip movement. And VTM: Bloodlines... enough with the skating characters! Something glitched in my models, I guess, because when characters were supposed to move in the opening cutscenes, they'd freeze in a position, and then skid to where they were supposed to go. A pre-rendered scene, you know that it will always display the same way, and you can bypass limitations in the engine. Then again, when well done, those in-engine cutscenes can be much more immersive. Bioware has always done well in that respect, I think, reserving FMV for chapter cutscenes and using the engine for the smaller scenes in-game.
And for Heaven's sake, enough with the attempts to randomize cutscenes... That just leads to situations where invincibility flags get stuck on, cutscene length varies from 2 seconds to 10 minutes, and glitches become all the more evident. Go ahead and script all of the actions. If the user has seen the cutscene before, they'll probably just skip it. The stress on the system is easier too, no AI checking for what to do next, more bandwidth available to preload the next scene. And the scenes where they make it "interactive" by giving you regular control, but having an invincible or, worse, just extremely difficult foe, so as to force you to lose to advance the plot, those drive me crazy. Mainly, you don't know that you can't win, so you'll keep reloading and playing, trying to avoid the loss of your weapons or the like. And worse, some of them actually allow you to win, and then act like you were still beaten. As much as I dislike a lot of the scenarious where you're arbitrarily stripped of your ingame loot, I vastly prefer it when it's just plain scripted, not something I'm made to feel I'm in control of.
Obviously, they wouldn't let that virus run, right? I mean, it's not like the OSes have required patches for security holes that let programs through.
*shakes head in disbelief* It amazes me that people will swallow this, but then again, the depths of human stupidity have always amazed me.
It's a shame that adoption is so hard and expensive these days. I know childless couples who want to adopt, but are stymied by the hurdles they have to jump in this country. Two couples I know have wound up going to China to adopt, but that costs a lot of money, is filled with a lot of risks involving the condition of the child when you get them or whether you get them at all, and smacks of buying a child to some people. On one hand, I can see the purpose of keeping people from adopting children who they would proceed to abuse or use, but any kid can face that whether they're with their birthparents or not.
*sigh* And I'm sorry for my post getting you in such a temper. I don't know if I explicitly stated health reasons in my non-selfish list earlier or not. I don't know if you read the grandparent post by me. Either way, I probably brought up a painful subject for you. Like I said before, I've got some understanding of the situation with my brother's marriage. Not personal understanding, me being unmarried, but it's a pretty close secondhand thing.
Yes.. in old greek mythology, buffy the illegitimate daughter of thor who did sip the ambrosia and slay cerberus and then was expelled to the netheregion of the universe..
Dude, Thor is from the Norse pantheon. Otherwise, references are just about right.
I know you're no doubt being facetious, but on the off chance you're not, they'll probably use some other names from the Greek or Roman pantheon, just to keep things consistent, while the "official name" will be something exciting like "Planetoid # 459204765.9"
I guess I would use the word selfish because, in the reasons I listed, it's the people deciding that they want these resources more than they would want their children to have them. Short of farming your children out as labor, you do tend to wind up with less materially. You'll have to sacrifice considerable time and money in their uptake. Even once they're successful engineers or doctors, there is no guarantee of money funneling back because they have their own lives and possibly their own families to tend to. So yes, I would characterize choosing not to have kids as being selfish versus selfless simply by definition. On the other hand, there are sometimes good reasons not to have children. If you really are unable to care for them, you have good reason to delay children.
As for not having them at all... that's a sticky point to me. I'm Catholic and I believe that the purpose of marriage is ultimately to have a family. It also seems weird from my perspective because children our your legacy, your gift to the world. You live on through them and, if you raise your kids right, they will enrich the world. Again, we get into the whole selfish versus selfless thing.
And, in the end, I'm sure a lot of people will disagree with me. That is their right, even if I think they're wrong. There will always be people who will decide that their life is better off without children to get in the way. There will be those who blatantly couch in those terms and those who will talk about population explosions or "not wanting my kid to grow up like me." I'm just stating my opinion on the matter.
Heh... ever see S1m0ne? Magic technology, of course, but the concept was interesting enough. Admittedly, he used a virus (on a floppy with convenient skull screen labels) to wipe her out rather than just a delete key.
Heh, I remember when that act got signed, all of the anime people were in a tizzy because technically speaking, Sailor Moon and her crew were all well underage. Never mind that they looked like they were much older...
Yeah, well that door swings both ways. Read some personal ads by women some day. Thay want the perfect guy who just stepped out of a cheesy romantic comedy who dotes on their every whim and is always around except when he goes to his job- managing (for about 45 minutes a day) the upscale art gallery he owns.
Hmmm... I wonder if maybe there's a difference not necessarily in what they expect, but what they'll settle for? I know that with the guys I know, there's often a particular physical model they're looking for and they find it hard to compromise on it, particular if their standards involve skinniness. Contrast against the average female personal ad which seems to focus more on personality traits, which can sometimes be changed and trained.
The joke originally cited the rhythm method, which did have a fair amount of "failure" to it. Many people either haven't noticed that the method has improved, or don't want to acknowledge it. *shrug* NFP is in the 99.999% range when done properly and is statistically correlated with happy and long marriages. I'm not sure why they're so afraid to consider it.
Personally, I'm not altogether morally outraged by physical means of contraception, although I do not plan on using them. The chemical methods I'm less kosher with as a) I'm leary of manipulating body chemistry for entertainment purposes and b) the only reason the horomone based methods are classified as "contraceptive" rather than "potential abortifacent" is that the manufacturers lobbied to have the official definition of a contraceptive as not preventing contraception, but preventing implantation. Even then, it's estimated that some 5% of cases involve a child who implants but dies of starvation shortly after. Besides which, the NFP and related methods statistically lead to happier and longer-lasting marriages.
That or there's the symptothermal method where the female checks their body temperature upon waking which is also highly accurate. However, using non-artifical methods shouldn't be seen as a carte blanche. A good Catholic should consider whether they're actually delaying kids for a good reason (can't support them yet, conditions currently make childbirth an iffy proposition) or if it's for more selfish reasons (want to buy that new sportscar first, can't stand the possibility of losing free time to tending children, don't want to risk ruining their figure). *shrug* And not everyone follows that, but that's what's suggested.
Incidentally, has Netcraft confirmed the death of HTML?
*shrug* Actually, Jesus maintains the average on his own. He died exactly once. After the ressurection, he ascended into Heaven body and soul. Enoch and Elijah in the Old Testament did the same and Roman Catholic tradition maintains that the Assumption of Mary happened. Balancing it out, we have Jesus bringing a couple people from the dead, the centurion's daughter and Lazarus IIRC. I'm sure there were others that aren't coming to mind now.
FWIW, that statistic has been floating around for a long time. Last I heard, it was traced back to a British study which asked after how many males had had a homosexual experience. *shrug* From what I understand, 1 in 5 said that they had had at least one experience. Now, they didn't identify themselves as homosexual, just as having had an experience and some articles commented on the number of them who'd been in boarding school where such an experience is not so uncommon.
Personally, I think no one's going to get anywhere in research until they start acknowledging that sexuality is a continuum, not a 3-point (or in some peoples' minds, 2-point) system. Sometimes I feel like we're back into the days of one drop theory in that all it takes is one homosexual experience and people get classified.
As long as human mortality maintains its steady 100% average your statement is fact.
I remember sitting down with the Bible at one point and trying to figure out how close the 100% mortality rate could be considered. I mean, you have people coming back to life, people being carried off to Heaven rather than dying... I think it worked out as slightly higher than 100% in the end due to people being brought back to life (and presumably dying a second time eventually).
Sniffing their nuts? Er... you do realize that "obedience school" is only meant for your dog, right?
That said, I heartily agree with you on the attendance policies of schools. Not only are children made to feel guilty for coming in sick, but the amount of sick days allowed are miniscule in some schools these days. Unless you're in a hospital, you can be sick all of 6 days in the entire year. That's just plain ridiculous.
Personally, I grew up with the "if you can walk, you can go to school" mentality and was very proud of my perfect attendance those few years I managed it. However, since I've started working for a living, my mindset has changed. Initially, I resisted using sick leave, in part for that "saving for a rainy day or major operation" standpoint and also because somewhere in the back of my mind, it seemed almost immoral to call off sick unless I really couldn't get out of bed to get to work. Then, one day, I was sitting at my computer desk, blearily trying to make out the characters on the screen through the haze of a bad head cold, and I started wondering how much work I was really going to get done that day. I came to realize that coming to work while half sick was not only risking infecting my co-workers and making my illness worse through stress, but I was also basically cheating my employers of a full day's work for a full day's wages because I was only at about 50% capacity. I personally blame the Protestant Work Ethic.
You, sir, have just blown my mind. What a wonderful mental image to start my day off with...
o/"Transporting young gulls across a staid lion for immoral porpoises... o/"
As for the comment made in the article that there has never been a case where embryonic stem cells have been injected into humans, I cast aspersions on that assertation. I remember reading a Discover magazine article about 5 years ago where they were experimenting with injecting stem cells into the brains of people with Parkinsons. The article was actually about a recent experiment where they took half of the people and gave them the stem cell injections and the other half just had the needle stuck into their brain. The improvement rate was increased for both over the control group with no treatment, but the rate was the same whether or not the stem cells were present.
*blink* You have to get far in life? Dude, they were practically handing them out on the street while I was in college. Admittedly, it was a "student version" of the credit card, but it was easily obtained. I had one for a while, but preferred the performance of Discover. *shrug* Then again, I'm probably an atypical credit card user. I buy almost everything on my credit card, but I pay off my full balance every month. Therefore, the percentage rates don't matter to me; what matters is a lack of fees. Getting (admittedly miniscule) cash back is just icing on the cake.
An atheist with a concept of God isn't an atheist, by definition.
I can conceive of a world where pegasi fly thr friendly blue skies and unicorns peacefully much grass. I don't believe in that world. I think it is possible to be an atheist without any concept of God, but I'd wager that the majority of them have an idea about him and have just decided they didn't want to believe. Which I personally see as akin to disbelieving that man landed on the moon, but that's just my opinion.