Or healing Peter's chopped off ear?
Sidenote, but Peter cut off Malchus's ear. I guess, in a manner of speaking, it could be "Peter's chopped off ear"...
I think it was in the Hogfather book, but Terry Pratchett had a similar saying in his Discworld series. There was a footnote along the lines of the that the philosopher in question died and found himself in the afterlife surrounded by gods bearing clubs who proceeded to beat him about the head and shoulders complaining about "people who were too bloody clever by half for their own good." ^_^ Typical Pratchett.
Nowhere does The Theory of Evolution say, "viola life!"
Thank <DEITY> for that... could you imagine the havoc that living stringed instruments would cause?
I was with you up until the last link, which links to one of those "Everytime you masturbate, God kills a kitten" pictures. But yeah, to some Christian sects, Catholics are worse than Satanists. Of course, with their leaders perpetuating myths like saint worship and cabalistic societies, it's little wonder some of their followers are a bit confused.
*does his best to do a Jewish shrug* Who are we to know the reasonings of God? If you believe this "free will" doctrine, he allows some latitude in life. Now there's been many debates in that area, as to whether the idea of free will negates omniscience. It's kind of a practical example of "Could God create a rock he couldn't lift?" as the idea of us having free will would indicate that God could not accurately predict the future, as there's a matter of randomness. It also kind of digs down into whether free will can exist. Do we, as humans, really decide things, or are we victims of a collection of electrical and chemical impulses which would act the exact same way in the exact same situation every time? Or is more random? Is our self not the result of years of developing who we want to be and having the environment mold us? Or is it all the result of whether an impulse went left or right that decided our general bent in life?
It's all really heady stuff and, in my opinion, only fit to be mused upon by the theologians and philosophers of the world. Me, I know that God's in his heaven, all's right with the world, and that I perceive myself as being someone who can make choices in life and ultimately affect the world's destiny from that free will, even if it's just a little bit.
On an unrelated side-note, there was a really cute short story I read a number of years ago phrasing the 7 days of creation as the week before God's science project was due. He got a C+. There's another bit - I found it online at one point - where it's stated in a series of developer e-mails with God giving elaborate requirements such as rivers flowing with milk and honey, a 50% mix of land and water, the moon being a genuinely light-producing surface, etc and various angels (including Lucifer as the tech actually implementing things and therefore blamed for it not meeting spec) complaining about how the proposed requirements weren't plausible and suggesting design changes. Wish I could remember where I found that... had a Russian name in the website's citing of the joke, I think.
Honestly, I'd always heard it as a refutation of those against evolution. If we were created perfect, why all of the redundant systems like nipples for men?
Now, of course, once one considers male lactation, one wonders if maybe it's not so much an evolutionary dead-end as that we just don't get around to using them properly. Personally, I believe God designed us by method of nudging along evolutionary changes. Some things are not ideal, but there's an amazing amount of human development which serves a purpose that we don't recognize. Just look at the people who were saying that humans would eventually have their little toe shrink and disappear over the years... now, we find it's got a crucial balance function.
That was a really fascinating read. I had seen references to Orgone energy before, generally in old comic books a pulp sci-fi, but didn't know where the idea came from. It's kind of scary to think of the FDA wielding such power, but, on the other hand, having known many people who can't afford it being taken in by quack medical procedures, I have some symptahy for the FDA. Still, burning all of his works?
Or apply it to computer games. The Infocom games came with all kinds of neat whatsits like the Peril-Sensitive Sunglasses and the Microscopic Space Fleet in the Hitchhiker's Guide game. For that matter, Bethesda sent out an authentically burnt map with Redguard and a very nice looking map of the continent for Morrowind. *sigh* With so many games shipping in those tiny WalMart boxes, I fear for the future of said goodies, but it was always nice to get them. Heck, just give us a comprehensive and well-written manual!
*wry grin* Wouldn't it be nice if all of these devices allowed you to just drag-and-drop the files on? Instead, Apple forces you to use iTunes, Gateway's players force you to use WMP, several other programs have proprietary interfaces... How long will it take for some of these music companies to require that these access programs check for certain bits indicating that the music was legitmately bought from an online service or transferred in an otherwise unusable DRM-laden format?
I wonder if the contention isn't over another kind of control, promotion. The book publishers not only want you to read their books, they also want you reading their latest books, and the ones by their famous authors. They don't want you to do a search and find that a book from the 1960's has better coverage of World War II than their latest one that was co-written by Stephen Hawkings. Some authors may only owe a cut of the profits for X amount of years. After X years, the publishing companies would frankly prefer that book to disappear from sight. Therefore, even if Google only allowed searches and didn't display the few lines of coverage, I could still see these book companies calling foul on them.
What really confuses me is that in many games, they release with SafeDisc or something similar, but usually the first patch removes it. On one hand, it could be a canny marketing move (all, an attempted one...) to raise goodwill by having these companies remove restrictions along with an idea that it's the early releases that are most prone to pirating (you know, outside of that almost all of them are released in cracked versions before the release date). On the other hand, it could be that the publishing companies require the DRM and then the developers, who could care less, see nothing wrong with disabling it "for performance reasons."
For the record, off of the top of my head, Morrowind released with SafeDisc protection which was disabled via patch. The Sims 2 released with a restriction against running Daemon Tools, but had a workaround on their tech support site. I'm sure there have been others.
This amuses me, considering that I work in a legal office and on our lawsuits we redact the defendant's SSN except for...you guessed it, the last 4 digits. Top flight security, that.
That seems, to me, to be a very odd choice given people born in the same area at a reasonably close time, will have those first five digits in common. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Security_numb er_(United_States)) *shrug* Although I guess with a random enough sampling, it's about as close to random...
So, there's this doctor in town who always likes to relax after work with his favorite beverage, a hazelnut martini. Well, one day, as the doctor comes in, the bartender realizes he's all out of the ingredients for a hazelnut martini, so he mixes up something similar and serves it. The doctor takes a sip, frowns, and says, "This tastes odd. Is this a hazelnut martini?" The bartender replies, "No, it's a hickory daiquiri, Doc."
I think it's an Imperial thing. "can't be bothered" is a reasonable translation. No, it doesn't correspond directly, but neither does "know fuck-all" or similar constructions.
Personally, I will listen to a piece of music more times than I would re-watch a video clip. For one, music can be done as a background activity; videos require you to focus on them. Secondly, a video tends to be the same everytime you see it whereas music will evoke new images each time you hear it (even more with psychedelic drugs...).
So overall, I would say that it is for what music lacks that makes me see it as more valuable.
2. Any changes you make to the sperm would be passed onto the fetus. Doesn't matter whether change is dominant or recessive, if it is in the sprem that fertilizes the egg, it's part of the fetus.
Reminds me of that old joke of someone saying that sterility runs in the family...
Seriously though, some people definitely have more trouble. My parents did. They didn't believe in using drugs, so they researched fertility cycles. Interestingly enough, in the four week cycle, a female can only become pregnant in three days of that cycle. By virtue of NFP, they have six children. *wry grin* Although that leads to another old joke...
What do you call people who use the Rhythm Method?
Parents.
And, since I told that joke, I feel obligated to mention that NFP is not the Rhythm Method. It has a similar concept, watching natural cycles, but it's much more advanced, with a 99.9% success rate when used to prevent conception.
A more apt subject are out stomach muscles. Why do humans get hernias so easily? Because our stomach muscles were built to support our organs when we were still largely horizontal creatures and the other internal structures just don't hold up to the wear and tear of decades of upright behavior. Personally, I see this as clear evidence that the sedentary geek lifestyle is the right and true way. Standing is just plain unhealthy...
Supposedly the change was due to the translation of the Bible into German. The tetragammon is YHWH. The Germans pronounce Js like we do Ys and Vs like we do Ws. Therefore, JHVH is a fairly accurate translation. Somewhere in there, people stuck in vowels for convenience much like those who endorse Yahweh, Yahuweh, or Yahoo-Wahoo do, and we wind up with Jehovah, which was then mispronounced by people trying to read it as if it were English. ^_^ Ah, the inscrutability of God...
*shrug* It actually has facets of several Asimov stories. The lone robot hiding among a newly arrived shipment, testing the robots by invoking their self-preservation instinct, the controlling AI taking over humanity because it's easier to protect them that way... they even did some fun bits with the morality of robot decisions regarding the value of human life. Take action aspects out and you wind up with a movie that's only about 45 minutes long, but really isn't all that bad.
You want even scarier? Read Heinlein's The Door Into Summer and compare his robot to the Roomba. The book was written in the 60s. It's about time travel. Pretty darn eerie...
But seriously, the whole thing with people "loving" their robots doesn't worry me overmuch. They already do the same thing with their pets, their computer, their prize rose bush... although frankly, I don't plan on "loving" any rosebushes. Those thorns are apt to scratch the hell out of you...
I imagine that the University stuck that in there as much for deterrance as anything else. They could probably save themself trouble with a decent amount of potential litigants who thought they didn't have a case from the start. Of course, anything major would be infested with ambulance chasers...
Incidentally, that clause lasted all of a week into the school year. One of my roommates publically challenged it when we returned from Winter break and we were issued new student handbooks without the clause within the week. Nevermore did we tease Greg about his powers of bitching, "If only they were used for good instead of evil..."
One of my friends does this job with cows. She once shared with me the story of the time she got back from lunch and was shoulder-deep before she realized she'd forgotten to put back on her glove. That was one shirt she never wore again...
One might argue too that, without a legal way to bind each other together until death (or flimsy divorce excuses) do they part, there's less motivation to develop a lasting relationship. *shrug* A lot of it depends on how much one believes love is tied to sexual reproduction. Since the relationship isn't likely to bear fruit, there may not be as much reason to develop a lifetime relationship.
That said, I don't know what the latest research says on the subject. I know that 20-30 years ago, they were still saying that the general trend was towards promiscuity rather than long-term monogamous relationships, but that may have been a passing trend, propaganda, or inadequate research. For that matter, I've a pet theory that human psychology as a whole tends to be heavily influenced by what people are told psychology should be. Multiple Personalities on the television? People will start developing it. A concrete example would be the roles of of the two hemispheres of the brain. Early research postulated that the right side of the brain controlled input from the left eye and vice versa. They have experiments proving this. Now, they say that the right-side of the brain covers the left visual field of both eyes. They have experiments proving that. Makes a person wonder now, doesn't it? The act of observing affects the target of observation.
Slashdot Mirror
Or healing Peter's chopped off ear?
Sidenote, but Peter cut off Malchus's ear. I guess, in a manner of speaking, it could be "Peter's chopped off ear"...
I think it was in the Hogfather book, but Terry Pratchett had a similar saying in his Discworld series. There was a footnote along the lines of the that the philosopher in question died and found himself in the afterlife surrounded by gods bearing clubs who proceeded to beat him about the head and shoulders complaining about "people who were too bloody clever by half for their own good." ^_^ Typical Pratchett.
Nowhere does The Theory of Evolution say, "viola life!"
Thank <DEITY> for that... could you imagine the havoc that living stringed instruments would cause?
{Starts humming "They'll Know We Are Christians By Our Love"}
It's all really heady stuff and, in my opinion, only fit to be mused upon by the theologians and philosophers of the world. Me, I know that God's in his heaven, all's right with the world, and that I perceive myself as being someone who can make choices in life and ultimately affect the world's destiny from that free will, even if it's just a little bit.
On an unrelated side-note, there was a really cute short story I read a number of years ago phrasing the 7 days of creation as the week before God's science project was due. He got a C+. There's another bit - I found it online at one point - where it's stated in a series of developer e-mails with God giving elaborate requirements such as rivers flowing with milk and honey, a 50% mix of land and water, the moon being a genuinely light-producing surface, etc and various angels (including Lucifer as the tech actually implementing things and therefore blamed for it not meeting spec) complaining about how the proposed requirements weren't plausible and suggesting design changes. Wish I could remember where I found that... had a Russian name in the website's citing of the joke, I think.
Now, of course, once one considers male lactation, one wonders if maybe it's not so much an evolutionary dead-end as that we just don't get around to using them properly. Personally, I believe God designed us by method of nudging along evolutionary changes. Some things are not ideal, but there's an amazing amount of human development which serves a purpose that we don't recognize. Just look at the people who were saying that humans would eventually have their little toe shrink and disappear over the years... now, we find it's got a crucial balance function.
That was a really fascinating read. I had seen references to Orgone energy before, generally in old comic books a pulp sci-fi, but didn't know where the idea came from. It's kind of scary to think of the FDA wielding such power, but, on the other hand, having known many people who can't afford it being taken in by quack medical procedures, I have some symptahy for the FDA. Still, burning all of his works?
Or apply it to computer games. The Infocom games came with all kinds of neat whatsits like the Peril-Sensitive Sunglasses and the Microscopic Space Fleet in the Hitchhiker's Guide game. For that matter, Bethesda sent out an authentically burnt map with Redguard and a very nice looking map of the continent for Morrowind. *sigh* With so many games shipping in those tiny WalMart boxes, I fear for the future of said goodies, but it was always nice to get them. Heck, just give us a comprehensive and well-written manual!
*wry grin* Wouldn't it be nice if all of these devices allowed you to just drag-and-drop the files on? Instead, Apple forces you to use iTunes, Gateway's players force you to use WMP, several other programs have proprietary interfaces... How long will it take for some of these music companies to require that these access programs check for certain bits indicating that the music was legitmately bought from an online service or transferred in an otherwise unusable DRM-laden format?
I wonder if the contention isn't over another kind of control, promotion. The book publishers not only want you to read their books, they also want you reading their latest books, and the ones by their famous authors. They don't want you to do a search and find that a book from the 1960's has better coverage of World War II than their latest one that was co-written by Stephen Hawkings. Some authors may only owe a cut of the profits for X amount of years. After X years, the publishing companies would frankly prefer that book to disappear from sight. Therefore, even if Google only allowed searches and didn't display the few lines of coverage, I could still see these book companies calling foul on them.
For the record, off of the top of my head, Morrowind released with SafeDisc protection which was disabled via patch. The Sims 2 released with a restriction against running Daemon Tools, but had a workaround on their tech support site. I'm sure there have been others.
This amuses me, considering that I work in a legal office and on our lawsuits we redact the defendant's SSN except for...you guessed it, the last 4 digits. Top flight security, that.b er_(United_States)) *shrug* Although I guess with a random enough sampling, it's about as close to random...
That seems, to me, to be a very odd choice given people born in the same area at a reasonably close time, will have those first five digits in common. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Security_num
So, there's this doctor in town who always likes to relax after work with his favorite beverage, a hazelnut martini. Well, one day, as the doctor comes in, the bartender realizes he's all out of the ingredients for a hazelnut martini, so he mixes up something similar and serves it. The doctor takes a sip, frowns, and says, "This tastes odd. Is this a hazelnut martini?" The bartender replies, "No, it's a hickory daiquiri, Doc."
I still remember my shock going into a Moscow McDonalds and seeing that they offered milk on the menu. Unhomogenized milk, actually.
I think it's an Imperial thing. "can't be bothered" is a reasonable translation. No, it doesn't correspond directly, but neither does "know fuck-all" or similar constructions.
So overall, I would say that it is for what music lacks that makes me see it as more valuable.
God isn't dead! He just got the hell out of here!!
Ah, so you're a Deist, then?
Reminds me of that old joke of someone saying that sterility runs in the family...
Seriously though, some people definitely have more trouble. My parents did. They didn't believe in using drugs, so they researched fertility cycles. Interestingly enough, in the four week cycle, a female can only become pregnant in three days of that cycle. By virtue of NFP, they have six children. *wry grin* Although that leads to another old joke...
What do you call people who use the Rhythm Method?
Parents.
And, since I told that joke, I feel obligated to mention that NFP is not the Rhythm Method. It has a similar concept, watching natural cycles, but it's much more advanced, with a 99.9% success rate when used to prevent conception.
A more apt subject are out stomach muscles. Why do humans get hernias so easily? Because our stomach muscles were built to support our organs when we were still largely horizontal creatures and the other internal structures just don't hold up to the wear and tear of decades of upright behavior. Personally, I see this as clear evidence that the sedentary geek lifestyle is the right and true way. Standing is just plain unhealthy...
Supposedly the change was due to the translation of the Bible into German. The tetragammon is YHWH. The Germans pronounce Js like we do Ys and Vs like we do Ws. Therefore, JHVH is a fairly accurate translation. Somewhere in there, people stuck in vowels for convenience much like those who endorse Yahweh, Yahuweh, or Yahoo-Wahoo do, and we wind up with Jehovah, which was then mispronounced by people trying to read it as if it were English. ^_^ Ah, the inscrutability of God...
*shrug* It actually has facets of several Asimov stories. The lone robot hiding among a newly arrived shipment, testing the robots by invoking their self-preservation instinct, the controlling AI taking over humanity because it's easier to protect them that way... they even did some fun bits with the morality of robot decisions regarding the value of human life. Take action aspects out and you wind up with a movie that's only about 45 minutes long, but really isn't all that bad.
But seriously, the whole thing with people "loving" their robots doesn't worry me overmuch. They already do the same thing with their pets, their computer, their prize rose bush... although frankly, I don't plan on "loving" any rosebushes. Those thorns are apt to scratch the hell out of you...
Incidentally, that clause lasted all of a week into the school year. One of my roommates publically challenged it when we returned from Winter break and we were issued new student handbooks without the clause within the week. Nevermore did we tease Greg about his powers of bitching, "If only they were used for good instead of evil..."
One of my friends does this job with cows. She once shared with me the story of the time she got back from lunch and was shoulder-deep before she realized she'd forgotten to put back on her glove. That was one shirt she never wore again...
That said, I don't know what the latest research says on the subject. I know that 20-30 years ago, they were still saying that the general trend was towards promiscuity rather than long-term monogamous relationships, but that may have been a passing trend, propaganda, or inadequate research. For that matter, I've a pet theory that human psychology as a whole tends to be heavily influenced by what people are told psychology should be. Multiple Personalities on the television? People will start developing it. A concrete example would be the roles of of the two hemispheres of the brain. Early research postulated that the right side of the brain controlled input from the left eye and vice versa. They have experiments proving this. Now, they say that the right-side of the brain covers the left visual field of both eyes. They have experiments proving that. Makes a person wonder now, doesn't it? The act of observing affects the target of observation.