No, these are development jobs: check the article. R&D is almost always little r, big D in American companies today. When they mean research, they say Research. When they mean programming/software development, they say Research and Development to make it sound snazzier.
Actually, the article says this is a software development center. And moreover, the starting salary for an assistant professor (post-PhD) in computer science at a good American university is about the same as the starting salary for a software developer straight out of the bachelor's degree program the same university. And PhD grads really desperately compete for these faculty positions. The monetary disparity is pretty amazing.
According to the article, it's not MSR, it's development. R&D = research AND DEVELOPMENT. By the way, a couple of reasons that there are so few American grad students in engineering and the sciences are (a) the ballooning costs of student loans, often with interest accruing while in school; and (b) the image (often perpetuated by Slashdot) that engineering and science are dead end roads that get no respect. We need to find a way to correct these problems.
Sure. As you said, those who have the foresight to "save for a rainy day" will be able to purchase their necessities during the disaster, whereas those who lived paycheck-to-paycheck and saved nothing will most likely go without, or at least find their lifestyle significantly curtailed. Individuals are always responsible for their own well-being; those who refuse to plan for the future may indeed find themselves lacking something essential one day. I see no injustice here.
It's not nearly that simple. Individuals are not entirely responsible for what happens to them, a big part of it is circumstances. Some people are born into poor circumstances, which makes it a lot harder to bootstrap to the point where they can save enough for a rainy day. Or they may even be in the process of doing that when disaster strikes—for example, a graduate student in SF or NY really can't afford to save much after basic costs of living, whereas someone at a middle of nowhere land grant school could probably save half their stipend—and which schools they get into isn't entirely within their control.
Anyway, the resources will be allocated by their owners, not mechanically by "the market". If those owners wish to run a charity (presumably trading financial loss for goodwill, or some other intangible) they are free to do so, just as they are free to keep the food entirely for themselves. If, however, you were to force them to run such a charity, then (a) you would be stealing from them; (b) you'd end up with a real shortage eventually, during which those necessities couldn't be bought at any price because they were consumed early on; and (c) no one would bother to save for future shortages, knowing that anything they saved would simply be taken from them.
There's one huge hole in this argument: who's to say the owners of these resources, or the people with lots of money, got to that position through entirely fair means that were open to others? What of the person who makes high-pressure business deals to get richer, or gets control over resources by underrepresenting their value to people or municipalities who are desperate for the cash? Business is all about persuasion—it's no more "pure" than government.
Moreover, ownership is a social construct. People are granted ownership rights because society believes it's in everyone's best interest. The resources of the Earth are here to support all beings; by preventing someone from having access to the resources they need to survive, you are stealing their life from them as much or even moreso than they would be stealing from you were they to take those resources without your permission. Under extreme circumstances, we must act as a society to ensure that capitalists do not turn into the very tyrants who fight so hard to restrain by limiting government. When either capitalists or governments get out of hand, such that they are valuing themselves at the cost of society, they must be corrected. While markets work well in the common case, unregulated free markets and unrealistic price controls are both irresponsible means of managing extremely limited resources. We must ration resources not just because they are limited, but because they have value to society (sometimes unperceived value), and that social value must be maximized.
speculation will raise the prices and ration the supply of all the items whose supply is affected by the disaster. Doing otherwise -- by setting price ceilings, for example -- will only lead to eventual shortages as unchecked demand overwhelms the dwindling supply.
Except that the rationing mechanism may not be fair. So while there may not be an absolute shortage, there may be an effective shortage for most of the population, while it's still quite accessible to the rich few.
So a 35% chip speed increaes by 2009? Something tells me chips will be a hell of a lot faster than that by then anyway.
Did you ever stop to think, how are they going to actually get a lot faster? This technology is part of the story behind how chips are going to get faster. It will be combined with other technologies so that we can keep up with the demand for increasing performance. Chips don't just get faster on their own, there's a whole industry working on it.
Universities that don't engage in challenges or bleeding edge research can quickly lose their reputation. Harvard could only go so far without improvement before it became a place that used to be good.
Oh, definitely, but I don't think that's the case here. Harvard has good computer science researchers, they just doesn't enjoy the scale and prominence of, say, CMU. For example, Michael Rabin, Harry Lewis, and Leslie Valiant are all big names in CS at Harvard, and they also have other well-known researchers like Greg Morrisett and Norman Ramsey.
Zionist terrorism predates Palestinian terrorism by a remarkably long time.
There is NOT ONE Act of Terror, that committed by the State of Israel. Not ONE. So -- bugger off.
Yeah, we know it's not just one. It's more like a billion and three. No country is perfect, and Israel is particularly violent and elitist—much like your post. There's plenty of blame to go around to all sides for the huge mess in the middle east.
A lot of people who work in downtown Chicago ride the Metra trains into town from the suburbs, so they're only actually driving from their house to the station. Because Metra operates in a hub-and-spoke model, it's one of the few commuter rail systems which is self-sustaining and I think actually profitable. NYC has a far more comprehensive subway station, so even if you live in a different borough or one of the suburbs, you can commute to Manhattan without driving anywhere near 20 miles each way (yes, people living in Brooklyn may not need a car at all, but people living in say New Jersey still do).
Re:Unix console text editors are annoying
on
The Birth of vi
·
· Score: 1
Yo yo, Borland C and joe both use default keystrokes derived from WordStar. When I switched from DOS to Linux in the mid-'90s, I found it quite easy and natural to pick up joe, and I've been using it ever since. Check it out!
I don't think the melting of frozen ice on top of other frozen ice that's floating should be any different than one big piece of floating frozen ice which partially melts. In either case, the remaining frozen ice weighs less and thus displaces less water, but contributes that same weight of water in its place. I understand salt water vs. frozen freshwater can make a difference, though?
What research area are you in? I fucking hate Microsoft for their manipulative business practices and shoddy products, but I've got to say MSR's research in programming languages and software engineering is top-notch. The cognitive dissonance hurts so bad whenever I talk to or hear a talk from someone from MSR, you just have to understand that it's a separate entity from Microsoft proper, more like a wholly-owned subsidiary.
We were created sinnless (In a relation ship with God, not in rebelion to him). This does not mean we had no free will, God did not want robots. Man chose to do other than what he was commanded. Thus the relationship broken, and sin (rebelion to God) enters. Simple enough.
If your god didn't want robots, why was he commanding people what to do? Moreover, it's possible to create systems which are restricted in what they can do, yet nontrivial: consider strongly typed programs. It sounds to me like this god dude stayed up on an all-nighter implementing humans, and then just pushed out whatever he had. That kind of goes with that 6 days story, doesn't it? What an amateur.
Anyway, how do you know any of this stuff you claim? Because it's in the bible? And how do you know the bible has an veracity? Because it's written or inspired by god? And how do you know that god actually endorses the bible, assuming he even exists? Because the bible says so? Because someone you trust told you so when you were a kid? Because it makes you feel good?
As for the so called "patches". Its an archeological fact that no changes have been made since at least the early first milenia, and the old testament to not long after the time of Jesus (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_sea_scrolls).
Well, first of all, nothing is 100% proven in archeology or science in general, it's all a matter of best estimates so far. But even assuming the basic text wasn't modified recently, you still have to account for two things:
Translations imbue subtle changes throughout a text by choosing how to express phrases in another language. Even our understanding of one langauge changes over time.
Practices of interpretation—what something means, which sections are more important—change over time.
So if you're honest about it, this is hardly a settled matter.
Is that what the Bible says? No, it isn't. The Bible says Jesus created a perfect, sinless world. Man sinned, and brought the curse of sin and death on mankind -- man's choice, man's free-will.
This seems contradictory to me. Man is part of the world. How does your definition of perfect and sinless make any sense, if man (as part of the world) is able to introduce sin? That's like saying Windows '95 is stable just because it hasn't crashed yet, even though it could if you run an ill-behaved program. Or a Unix machine that's on the internet with remote logins available for root, with no root password is secure, just because no one's logged in and done anything malicious yet.
But enter what Jesus did, its anything but. Its grace, compassion, and mercy beyond anything ever known.
So he made the world, thought it was secure, then man hacked in, jesus realized he fucked it up the first time, so he released a fix? And you worship this dude as being the best? Oh, plus then there's all those little undocumented patches that the church slipstreamed in over the years. Sounds like the christian influence is what ruined the software industry!
Says you. Somewhere you have to start off with the assumption that this god exists and the bible is his word. Exactly as you point out, your saying that it is the case does not make it so.
Now we are getting somewhere! Not me, says the Bible. And this is exactly what I am trying to point out about evolution -- same situation exists there. You have to start out with the assumption that this God DOESN'T EXIST in order to move forward with any evolutionary conclusion! I'll gladly admit the belief in God and the Bible as His Word. And I'll also agree 100% that my saying it is the case does not make it so, neither does your saying it is NOT the case doesn't make it not so. Truth is immutable. It is not more true because people believe it, and it is not less true because people don't believe it.
Ok, so you're saying that god says god exists? But why do you actually believe anything about god in the first place? Personally, I am not arguing that god does not exist. I do not know that, because I do not even know for sure what you mean by the word "god." Rather, I am arguing that your argument doesn't make any sense without starting with your core mystical beliefs as axioms. Moreover, I don't see why one couldn't have a framework in which a god creates a world containing creatures that evolve. Nor do I think that truth is necessarily a knowable quantity—we live by approximations.
By the way, are you at all familiar with formal logic? It can't answer every question, but it does give useful insight into human reasoning. For example, let's say my assumptions are X = {all of my observations of the natural/physical world}, and let's say your assumptions are Y = {X and "god exists and the bible is correct"}. Now, it follows that any proposition I can verify is true under my assumptions, you can verify as true under your assumptions; and similarly, any proposition I can prove false under my assumptions, you can prove false under your assumptions. But moreover, there are additional propositions which you can prove true or false, but I cannot. This is because you're making a stronger assumption than I am. This is why I contend that my arguments and conclusions are simpler and more universal than yours.
Now, if some of your additional assumptions are contradictionry with real-world observations, you'll be able to prove both a proposition and its negation—this is troublesome, because it makes it easier for someone to persuade you into believing contradictory statements. You might think that's a bunch of nonsense, and that's because in practice, the human mind operates on a precedence system, where certain assumptions are deemed more valid than others. Thus if you arise at a conscious contradiction, you work to resolve it by deciding which side—or which side's assumptions and reasoning process—is "more right." This is why people who don't believe in god say you're illogical. But that is not entirely correct; you actually are reasoning under essentially the same system of logic as they are. The key difference is that your assumptions of the existence of god and correctness of the bible are gratuitous, and, for you, override the arguments offered by people who make fewer ontological commitments.
As for logical errors and discrepancies, I know of none, and since you are the one making the claim, go ahead and cite one.
Your request doesn't really ask for anything specific -- and as for "predictable behaviors" there's so many prophecies in the life, death, and resurrection of Christ, which fall outside of this category I'd be quoting large po
But if its truth you are after, the reason we don't have to worry about "viewpoints" and what people "say" over the course of time is because "viewpoints" and what people "say" isn't the issue anyway -- they aren't the foundation of truth. This is why God gave us His Word, the Bible, which will endure forever, and bookended His Word with the accounts of the beginning and end of time itself, so that the truth was not a matter of opinion, or subjective analsysis.
Says you. Somewhere you have to start off with the assumption that this god exists and the bible is his word. Exactly as you point out, your saying that it is the case does not make it so.
Its a completely cohesive historical account, from the very beginning to the very end, about Jesus Christ, complete with historically accurate geneaologies, historically accurate geography, historically agreeing versions of events given at different times in history, historically proven prophecies galore, and historically consistent with archaeology.
Have you actually inspected the veracity of these biblical claims, or are you just going on hearsay? Because from what I've seen, it tends to come down to two things: (a) the historical accounts in the bible were written after the events occured, and nonetheless are filled with logical errors and discrepancies from other good sources, and (b) accounts presented in ambiguous terms, but based on predictable human behaviors, so they can, after the fact, be interpreted as fortelling later events. Perhaps you could give us some primary source examples that deviate from this pattern?
I respect your right not to believe it. But let's just be honest -- your belief is your choice -- nothing more, nothing less.
I disagree. One's beliefs are never entirely their choice, they are subject to social pressures, particularly in one's upbringing. We must offer children an uncluttered view of reality so they don't end up like you.
If you care to question Christianity, true Christianity that is, not political activists, or the millions of church-goers who may be associated with religious organizations but at heart don't know Jesus, then don't seek the answer from men. The question you should be asking is: what does God think about this? Exposing hypocrisy in people is no accomplishment at all (exposing a lack of it might be, but exposing it is basically declaring someone a sinner, which we know already). You are correct that true Christians should not be hypocrites. But shortcomings you may find are not those of Christ, they are those of people, and the very nature which inside all of us that the Bible speaks directly about, so it is foolish to base your conclusions about Christ and your own eternity on the shortcomings of sinful men. Base your questions and criticisms on Jesus Himself -- what are your criticisms of Him?
Ok, so let me get this straight: this jesus dude is an avatar of this god who created all these people in the first place, but he screwed it up so badly that he made them by default sinful and with all these shortcomings so that millions, or even billions of them violate his own will? I'd say that's quite a criticism right there.
Let's put it this way: why should anyone even care about the bible and christianity in the first place? It's either making huge, unverifiable claims about the existence of a god who wants you to do this and that, or it's just an old book and a bunch of rituals.
Science is useful because it works. It's a process of discovering models which allow us to make reliable predictions in practice. When those models break down, you find a new model (example: Newtonian physics to quantum mechanics and relativity). Religions like christianity go in the opposite direction. Some vague model is assumed to be sacred and correct, and then the interpretation is adjusted to fit the observations. But why do we need to assume anything is sacred? Accepting the bible and christianity just clutters up your mind with a bunch of spurious assumptions which either (a) have no verifiable connection to the world, or (b) can be used to subvert your thoughts about the world.
You mentioned that the crusades were not inline with christianity. Yet we both know that at the time, they were rationalized on christian principles. What's going on here? While (your interpretation of) the bible may not directly say "go out and kill a bunch of unbelievers," history has shown that it's easy to make people believe that it does endorse those behaviors, under the pressure of an all-powerful being, no less. Why are people prone to these manipulations? I think it's a combination of several reasons: (a) by filling up their minds with all kinds of complicated otherworldly ideas, it's easier to subvert believers' thoughts, (b) people who are more easily-convinced to start off are more likely to accept religious assumptions in the first place, and (c) historically, immense social pressure was used to keep people in line with religion--even today, there are people who privately have their doubts about christianity, but publicly profess it to avoid loss of face. You'll note that I'm not blaming most christians themselves as people here; rather, my claim is that christianity itself is a dangerous cult.
In conclusion, yes there may be some good advice, some interesting stories, and some cultural insight to be gained from the bible. However, that is no justification for accepting the veracity of the christian mythology as a whole.
Epilogue: And, in the off chance that the christian mythology actually is correct, that god is one sadistic, incompetent moron. Certainly not the kind of guy I'd want to hang out with for eternity.
You have not lived until you've seen the early-90s copy of The Absolute Sound which explained why a copy of a music CD sounded better than the original on the same equipment.
I'm not familiar with The Absolute Sound, but it's not impossible that a copy of a music CD could sound better than the original. After playing and handling it for a while, the original may acquire minor scratches which can be overcome by multiple reads, but cause occasional skips and dropouts when playing directly on a plain audio CD player. When copying the CD, you're free to read from the disc multiple times and correct more errors, and then burn the data to a fresh medium absent of dust and scratches.
Re:Wunderfill ideya (Skore: 7, Troll)
on
More A's, More Pay
·
· Score: 1
Slashdot Mirror
No, these are development jobs: check the article. R&D is almost always little r, big D in American companies today. When they mean research, they say Research. When they mean programming/software development, they say Research and Development to make it sound snazzier.
Actually, the article says this is a software development center. And moreover, the starting salary for an assistant professor (post-PhD) in computer science at a good American university is about the same as the starting salary for a software developer straight out of the bachelor's degree program the same university. And PhD grads really desperately compete for these faculty positions. The monetary disparity is pretty amazing.
According to the article, it's not MSR, it's development. R&D = research AND DEVELOPMENT. By the way, a couple of reasons that there are so few American grad students in engineering and the sciences are (a) the ballooning costs of student loans, often with interest accruing while in school; and (b) the image (often perpetuated by Slashdot) that engineering and science are dead end roads that get no respect. We need to find a way to correct these problems.
Hey, now. In many case, message passing that's "too parallel" can actually be transformed by compilers into subroutine calls.
That's a great idea, and it's called shared-nothing concurrency. Check out languages like Erlang.
It's not nearly that simple. Individuals are not entirely responsible for what happens to them, a big part of it is circumstances. Some people are born into poor circumstances, which makes it a lot harder to bootstrap to the point where they can save enough for a rainy day. Or they may even be in the process of doing that when disaster strikes—for example, a graduate student in SF or NY really can't afford to save much after basic costs of living, whereas someone at a middle of nowhere land grant school could probably save half their stipend—and which schools they get into isn't entirely within their control.
There's one huge hole in this argument: who's to say the owners of these resources, or the people with lots of money, got to that position through entirely fair means that were open to others? What of the person who makes high-pressure business deals to get richer, or gets control over resources by underrepresenting their value to people or municipalities who are desperate for the cash? Business is all about persuasion—it's no more "pure" than government.
Moreover, ownership is a social construct. People are granted ownership rights because society believes it's in everyone's best interest. The resources of the Earth are here to support all beings; by preventing someone from having access to the resources they need to survive, you are stealing their life from them as much or even moreso than they would be stealing from you were they to take those resources without your permission. Under extreme circumstances, we must act as a society to ensure that capitalists do not turn into the very tyrants who fight so hard to restrain by limiting government. When either capitalists or governments get out of hand, such that they are valuing themselves at the cost of society, they must be corrected. While markets work well in the common case, unregulated free markets and unrealistic price controls are both irresponsible means of managing extremely limited resources. We must ration resources not just because they are limited, but because they have value to society (sometimes unperceived value), and that social value must be maximized.
Except that the rationing mechanism may not be fair. So while there may not be an absolute shortage, there may be an effective shortage for most of the population, while it's still quite accessible to the rich few.
Did you ever stop to think, how are they going to actually get a lot faster? This technology is part of the story behind how chips are going to get faster. It will be combined with other technologies so that we can keep up with the demand for increasing performance. Chips don't just get faster on their own, there's a whole industry working on it.
That's probably application-driven.
Oh, definitely, but I don't think that's the case here. Harvard has good computer science researchers, they just doesn't enjoy the scale and prominence of, say, CMU. For example, Michael Rabin, Harry Lewis, and Leslie Valiant are all big names in CS at Harvard, and they also have other well-known researchers like Greg Morrisett and Norman Ramsey.
A lot of people who work in downtown Chicago ride the Metra trains into town from the suburbs, so they're only actually driving from their house to the station. Because Metra operates in a hub-and-spoke model, it's one of the few commuter rail systems which is self-sustaining and I think actually profitable. NYC has a far more comprehensive subway station, so even if you live in a different borough or one of the suburbs, you can commute to Manhattan without driving anywhere near 20 miles each way (yes, people living in Brooklyn may not need a car at all, but people living in say New Jersey still do).
Yo yo, Borland C and joe both use default keystrokes derived from WordStar. When I switched from DOS to Linux in the mid-'90s, I found it quite easy and natural to pick up joe, and I've been using it ever since. Check it out!
I don't think the melting of frozen ice on top of other frozen ice that's floating should be any different than one big piece of floating frozen ice which partially melts. In either case, the remaining frozen ice weighs less and thus displaces less water, but contributes that same weight of water in its place. I understand salt water vs. frozen freshwater can make a difference, though?
Semantics.
What research area are you in? I fucking hate Microsoft for their manipulative business practices and shoddy products, but I've got to say MSR's research in programming languages and software engineering is top-notch. The cognitive dissonance hurts so bad whenever I talk to or hear a talk from someone from MSR, you just have to understand that it's a separate entity from Microsoft proper, more like a wholly-owned subsidiary.
If your god didn't want robots, why was he commanding people what to do? Moreover, it's possible to create systems which are restricted in what they can do, yet nontrivial: consider strongly typed programs. It sounds to me like this god dude stayed up on an all-nighter implementing humans, and then just pushed out whatever he had. That kind of goes with that 6 days story, doesn't it? What an amateur.
Anyway, how do you know any of this stuff you claim? Because it's in the bible? And how do you know the bible has an veracity? Because it's written or inspired by god? And how do you know that god actually endorses the bible, assuming he even exists? Because the bible says so? Because someone you trust told you so when you were a kid? Because it makes you feel good?
Well, first of all, nothing is 100% proven in archeology or science in general, it's all a matter of best estimates so far. But even assuming the basic text wasn't modified recently, you still have to account for two things:
- Translations imbue subtle changes throughout a text by choosing how to express phrases in another language. Even our understanding of one langauge changes over time.
- Practices of interpretation—what something means, which sections are more important—change over time.
So if you're honest about it, this is hardly a settled matter.This seems contradictory to me. Man is part of the world. How does your definition of perfect and sinless make any sense, if man (as part of the world) is able to introduce sin? That's like saying Windows '95 is stable just because it hasn't crashed yet, even though it could if you run an ill-behaved program. Or a Unix machine that's on the internet with remote logins available for root, with no root password is secure, just because no one's logged in and done anything malicious yet.
So he made the world, thought it was secure, then man hacked in, jesus realized he fucked it up the first time, so he released a fix? And you worship this dude as being the best? Oh, plus then there's all those little undocumented patches that the church slipstreamed in over the years. Sounds like the christian influence is what ruined the software industry!
Ok, so you're saying that god says god exists? But why do you actually believe anything about god in the first place? Personally, I am not arguing that god does not exist. I do not know that, because I do not even know for sure what you mean by the word "god." Rather, I am arguing that your argument doesn't make any sense without starting with your core mystical beliefs as axioms. Moreover, I don't see why one couldn't have a framework in which a god creates a world containing creatures that evolve. Nor do I think that truth is necessarily a knowable quantity—we live by approximations.
By the way, are you at all familiar with formal logic? It can't answer every question, but it does give useful insight into human reasoning. For example, let's say my assumptions are X = {all of my observations of the natural/physical world}, and let's say your assumptions are Y = {X and "god exists and the bible is correct"}. Now, it follows that any proposition I can verify is true under my assumptions, you can verify as true under your assumptions; and similarly, any proposition I can prove false under my assumptions, you can prove false under your assumptions. But moreover, there are additional propositions which you can prove true or false, but I cannot. This is because you're making a stronger assumption than I am. This is why I contend that my arguments and conclusions are simpler and more universal than yours.
Now, if some of your additional assumptions are contradictionry with real-world observations, you'll be able to prove both a proposition and its negation—this is troublesome, because it makes it easier for someone to persuade you into believing contradictory statements. You might think that's a bunch of nonsense, and that's because in practice, the human mind operates on a precedence system, where certain assumptions are deemed more valid than others. Thus if you arise at a conscious contradiction, you work to resolve it by deciding which side—or which side's assumptions and reasoning process—is "more right." This is why people who don't believe in god say you're illogical. But that is not entirely correct; you actually are reasoning under essentially the same system of logic as they are. The key difference is that your assumptions of the existence of god and correctness of the bible are gratuitous, and, for you, override the arguments offered by people who make fewer ontological commitments.
Here's a couple of lists of them:
Says you. Somewhere you have to start off with the assumption that this god exists and the bible is his word. Exactly as you point out, your saying that it is the case does not make it so.
Have you actually inspected the veracity of these biblical claims, or are you just going on hearsay? Because from what I've seen, it tends to come down to two things: (a) the historical accounts in the bible were written after the events occured, and nonetheless are filled with logical errors and discrepancies from other good sources, and (b) accounts presented in ambiguous terms, but based on predictable human behaviors, so they can, after the fact, be interpreted as fortelling later events. Perhaps you could give us some primary source examples that deviate from this pattern?
I disagree. One's beliefs are never entirely their choice, they are subject to social pressures, particularly in one's upbringing. We must offer children an uncluttered view of reality so they don't end up like you.
Ok, so let me get this straight: this jesus dude is an avatar of this god who created all these people in the first place, but he screwed it up so badly that he made them by default sinful and with all these shortcomings so that millions, or even billions of them violate his own will? I'd say that's quite a criticism right there.
Let's put it this way: why should anyone even care about the bible and christianity in the first place? It's either making huge, unverifiable claims about the existence of a god who wants you to do this and that, or it's just an old book and a bunch of rituals.
Science is useful because it works. It's a process of discovering models which allow us to make reliable predictions in practice. When those models break down, you find a new model (example: Newtonian physics to quantum mechanics and relativity). Religions like christianity go in the opposite direction. Some vague model is assumed to be sacred and correct, and then the interpretation is adjusted to fit the observations. But why do we need to assume anything is sacred? Accepting the bible and christianity just clutters up your mind with a bunch of spurious assumptions which either (a) have no verifiable connection to the world, or (b) can be used to subvert your thoughts about the world.
You mentioned that the crusades were not inline with christianity. Yet we both know that at the time, they were rationalized on christian principles. What's going on here? While (your interpretation of) the bible may not directly say "go out and kill a bunch of unbelievers," history has shown that it's easy to make people believe that it does endorse those behaviors, under the pressure of an all-powerful being, no less. Why are people prone to these manipulations? I think it's a combination of several reasons: (a) by filling up their minds with all kinds of complicated otherworldly ideas, it's easier to subvert believers' thoughts, (b) people who are more easily-convinced to start off are more likely to accept religious assumptions in the first place, and (c) historically, immense social pressure was used to keep people in line with religion--even today, there are people who privately have their doubts about christianity, but publicly profess it to avoid loss of face. You'll note that I'm not blaming most christians themselves as people here; rather, my claim is that christianity itself is a dangerous cult.
In conclusion, yes there may be some good advice, some interesting stories, and some cultural insight to be gained from the bible. However, that is no justification for accepting the veracity of the christian mythology as a whole.
Epilogue: And, in the off chance that the christian mythology actually is correct, that god is one sadistic, incompetent moron. Certainly not the kind of guy I'd want to hang out with for eternity.
You have not lived until you've seen the early-90s copy of The Absolute Sound which explained why a copy of a music CD sounded better than the original on the same equipment.
I'm not familiar with The Absolute Sound, but it's not impossible that a copy of a music CD could sound better than the original. After playing and handling it for a while, the original may acquire minor scratches which can be overcome by multiple reads, but cause occasional skips and dropouts when playing directly on a plain audio CD player. When copying the CD, you're free to read from the disc multiple times and correct more errors, and then burn the data to a fresh medium absent of dust and scratches.
trolls're sexy's all getout, ja!~
juss testin' out sum shit. yo yall gotz ein problem mit das?
ket gutchar tung? nah, eye meen ta say dis