If you spread your belief in a theory, the theory of evolution, and you do so with the zeal of those in other religions, and you think your way is the only right persepective, you got yourself a religion...
Not if you have actual evidence for your beliefs and theories. Cold hard data, mountains of it in fact. Evolution has this in spades. Religions do not require any evidence. In fact, some explicitly prohibit any evidence at all. There is a clear distinction between the two.
I'm in the later group, and I dismiss out of hand anything anyone says about the existence of any god. I'm prejudiced that way, for better or worse.
That's not being prejudiced. It's critical thinking. There is a very real difference.
Prejudiced means holding a view or opinion without examining and judging the facts beforehand. Critical thinking is the exact opposite, namely, coming to a conclusion based upon examination of the facts presented.
When someone makes an extraordinary claim, namely in this case; "There exists a powerful, and supernatural deity", it is in no way prejudiced to refuse to accept this idea without sufficient evidence. It is an extraordinary claim, and requires compelling evidence. Without such evidence, the most rational view is to hold that no such entity exists. In fact, the prejudiced position is to assume the opposite, i.e. hold in the deities existence without examining and judging the facts.
The trouble is of course, in our current/post Abrahamic society, claiming that an all powerful god exists, while extraordinary, is in no way uncommon. People do this all the time. It is also taboo to challenge this view, and to do so is to be labeled "impolite","intolerant" and indeed, "prejudiced".
This is not in and of itself a burning issue. However, it becomes one when people holding such views attempt to impose those views on others. They wield their beliefs like a weapon, and raise the taboo of questioning those same beliefs like a shield. I think it's a serious problem of modern times that religious and other irrational beliefs are not challenged in public discourses. Religious groups are currently arguing from an unassailable position. Is it any wonder they are preponderate in so many debates nowadays?
The current problems stem largely from (1) business method patents (2) software patents...... Patents on physical inventions which are clearly new, innovative, and unique are fine.
Yet where do we draw the line? What makes an invention "physical"? A prototype? Some patented devices are literally the size of buildings, or otherwise intended for a one off construction, so demanding a prototype is sometimes unreasonable? Many software algorithims and even business methods are at times even more ingenious than many physical inventions.
I question the overall usefulness of patents. I really do. We have experienced more innovation, technological and economic progress in the last 15 years than at any time in history. And all the while, Chinese manufacturers have been flagrantly ignoring patents, and multinational research houses have amassed less patents than outright patent trolls.
In my opinion, patents are like firearms. Some countries allow or even promote their use. But there's an argument, which many countries accept, that they should be subject to very severe restrictions. I think the time has come to place such restrictions on patents.
NCMEC is in all likelihood run and supported by right wing social conservatives, with many probably having morbid sexual perversions related to the organization's work. No doubt the odd well meaning parent of a victim is thrown into the mix, and actually honestly cares about helping children. However, I suspect the former description to be more reflective of the organisation's mean.
People have to understand that the modern hysteria surrounding pedophiles, etc, etc is not about helping children. It's about changing our society into what they want it to be. Near as I can tell, strict gender roles appear to be their primary objective, especially with regard to child minding. After the last 10 years, as a male I would not look after anyone's child for so much as five minutes, for any sum of money, or under any circumstances. Anyone that would is quite frankly being dangerously foolish.
In my opinion Clive Peachey's actions were entirely correct, and he should not have to apologise, or even feel regretful, for being justifiably cautious in a world of hysterical people reading to point deadly fingers. Modern day good Samaratian's should are advised to walk past the baby Jesus. This is the world that mass hysteria, and more importantly people's tolerance of it, has created. It would be nice to live in a better one, but that won't happen until more people challenge the likes of this "1 in 5" nonsense from NCMEC.
The vast majority of people don't respond to subtlety or detail, they respond to soundbytes.
I sometimes wonder.
Though I am sure some are responsive to soundbites, sometimes I think they exist to stifle and intimidate opposition. A thought terminating cliche could be a good description. For example calling pedophiles, "baby rapers", even if they are two years older than their almost adult victims, and insisting that such people be branded in this way, really puts reasonable people on the backfoot.
No one really wants or has the motivation to get into a protracted and emotive argument with such people, and so remain silent. I think the silent majority really doesn't care about pedophiles as much as the media exposure would suggest, and I think most of the media exposure is fueled by a minority who actually enjoy hearing about, and overreacting to, such macabre and lurid reports.
The girl in question was 13 years old, not a full grown woman.
When I was 13, I was not fully grown. However, I was also not a complete infant. I was also by that time responsible for my own actions, and held responsible when the occasion arose!
What ever happened to the old Bar Mitzvah type view, where people became responsible for their own "sins", i.e. actions once they reached 13? Was there something terribly wrong with that? 13 is pushing on, and you'd better be pushing on with it, because the world is not going to treat you like an infant forever. I'm not unsympathetic to someone with a mental illness like depression, but their decisions are their own, even decisions as grave as suicide.
By the way, past the age of 13, I don't tend to lay the blame on the parents anymore. People have to be held responsible for their own actions. There may be mitigating circumstances, but there are rarely any real excuses.
I keep hearing stories of uncles and granduncles who left home at the ages of 15 and 16 to work abroad! Aunts and grandaunts one often found, may not have been abroad, but were certainly working much of the time. Is it more beneficial for their wellbeing to treat 16 and 17 year olds as incapable infants? Many people certainly seem to think so. I don't advocate people dropping out of school, but I don't think it's right to keep people of that age there against their will.
There's a balance to be achieved in everything of course. However, I think our modern view of teenagers, their capability and culpability, is skewed too far towards an infant perspective.
When I had to start using Mathematica for my courses,....
Had to, or were too lazy to go without?
Mathematica is a blight upon the scientific world. The price is outrageous, the code is closed source and the learning curve never stops rising. The thing is like some kind of religious oracle; arcane, totally inscrutable, and regarded by almost everyone as infallible. Did I mention the price?
It would be nice to see an open source, scrutable and affordable counterpart to Mathematica. Something like GNU Octave is to Matlab. Looks like it's never going to happen though. Maxima, Sage and Axiom all fail to make the grade, and have infuriating names besides. The situation is less and less likely to change as people who "have" to use Mathematica in their courses keep entrenching the thing deeper and deeper.
When will people learn how the Internet actually works?
The internet works as it will. The "world wide web" however relies de facto on DNS.
The main problem here is that ICANN and hences DNS and hence a major portion of web infrastructure is, for some unbeknownst reason, seemingly under the jurisdiction of every backwater district court judge in the US. I thought your federal institutions answered only to federal judges?
In the interests of competent governance, ICANN and the registry should at the very least be a Federal institution, answerable to federal, and not state, judges,
Charlie McCreevy is an ex-Irish MP and a chartered accountant whose biggest role was as Minister for Finance in Ireland.
McCreevy was in fact, sent off to Europe for the express purpose of exiling him from Irish Politics. Even in his own Free Market centric party, his policies were far too Thatcherite to let him continue to make his characteristically brash polemics. He gleefully accepted his "promotion" to European statesman, and his party, and indeed the country, breathed a collective sigh of relief.
McCreevy has a history of giving tax breaks and other concessions to industries and business that he "approves of". Witness his institution of a 0% tax on bets made at horse race meetings (he's a big fan of the sport). He's a supply sider with little time for anything that doesn't immediately net money i.e., fair use, hospitals, etc. He's been mentioned before on Slashdot here and here. The "loose cannon" quote is particularly apt.
Charlie McCreevy is the type of politician lobbyists love. He'll wine and dine, brunch and lunch with all manner of industry representatives and indeed has by the looks of things. Rest assured that when he finally steps down from his post (forcing him out will require tectonic pressure) the entire European Parliment, and Union, will breath a collective sigh of relief.
The second amendment says "...the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.", yet we allow for exceptions (no tanks on my block!)
It also states that "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State,....". True the entire sentence makes little sense, but it is clear to me that your right to bear arms depends on your being part of a "militia", and on the "security of a free State". Yet I've never heard anyone demand those conditions. Why? Because the law is deliberately ambiguously worded so that it is flexible enough to fit a variety of current, and future, situations.
Nowhere in the constitution does it provide a "right" to privacy, but not only was such a right "interpreted" to exist when no such right existed before, it brought with it the "right" to an abortion with strong arguments that this right is absolute (no exceptions).
Your constitution has another amendment which is rather explicit:
"The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." It recognises that the people have their own intrinsic rights which are not explicitly mentioned in it, and that these rights, which the vast majority would place their privacy in and many would place abortion in. Again, this is to ensure that the law is adaptable and important rights need not be mentioned in the constitution, or the law, in order for people to be free to exercise them. Take as a concrete example, the right to urinate and defecate (sometime simultaniously!).
What good is the damn document if in 20 or 50 years it will mean something entirely different? What good is the amendment process if we can subvert it by just saying "...well, I think it means THIS now"?
A lot better than one which becomes outdated and disliked by the people. The constitution of Ireland provides some good examples of constitutional articles which were too specific to their time and place.
The constitution as it was originally written gave a "special position" to the Catholic Church, which was practically all powerful in the country at the time. As time wore on, less and less people thought this was a good idea, and so the article in question had to be removed in a referendum. (Unfortunately the section proclaiming "The State acknowledges that the homage of public worship is due to Almighty God. It shall hold His Name in reverence, and shall respect and honour religion." was not removed, which doesn't sound good if your not an Irish Monotheist, or possibly an Irish Muslim. We'll probably have a second referendum at some point to change that too.)
The constitution also prohibited divorce. Yes that's right. The Irish constitution prohibited divorce. We had to have another referendum to change that too.
At the time it was written, the constitution also laid Irish (Republic of) claim to Northern Ireland. Quite specific claim in fact. As time went on, this became an ever greater impossibility and, long story short, we had to have a referendum to change that.
More pertinent to the current debate is the amendment introduced in 1983 which explicitly prohibited abortion. This is probably the one that the wider world knows most about, as we later had a rather internationally high profile referendum looking to strengthen this amendment. Most Irish people however, will remember this amendment as the one that caused the
Its even more difficult when people outside of the religion have the audacity to tell Muslims what is and isn't antiquated or kosher.
Strangely, it is generally still regarded as audacious for someone to give their own opinion of religious scripture unless they actually "follow" that religion? In fact, usually one must be a well versed cleric, with years of experience before it is regarded as OK for one to interpret or critique canonical interpretations of scriptures. Even protestants, with their "personal god" beliefs, still tend to hold this opinion.
It's all part of our societies wider taboo one critiquing religions or beliefs of any kind. This simply cannot be done without wide condemnation ensuing. To point out that Jesus in all likelihood never came back from the dead, or that Moses, Mohammad or Joseph Smith most likely simply heard voices in their heads, would get you not only condemned, but regarded by everyone as a very odd and obnoxious person.
I'll repeat. Critique of religion is a taboo in our society. It shouldn't be. It is because religious people are not prepared to enter into any kind of debate on their beliefs. They are however, very quick to enter into debates on just about every other topic, and to offer their unimpeachable teachings as the guide, answer and justification for every position they take.
I for one think that religion, and faith, should be subject to as much scrutiny, critique and debate as everything else in our society. That's not going to happen while people hide behind persecution complexes and practiced outrage.
For the record, I'll be audacious enough to give my opinion on the issue of the depictions of Muhammad. Audacious in the sense that I am not a muslim or a religious scholar, simply someone with their own opinion and the freedom to say it. I disagree with the current majority interpretation of the Quran passages and hadiths in question. It's clear to me that idolatry is what is being forbidden, and that any passages that are purported to be forbidding visual representations of Muhammad, are simply too general and ambiguous to be regarded as to mean that.
The argument that images of Muhammad are forbidden by religious texts does not stand up to scrutiny. Just because that's the way the scholars and priests have agreed to interpret it does not mean that that's the way the rest of us have to. And even if we do, we do not have to abide by any religious decree we do not agree with.
Personally, I think a major newspaper or other publication needs to put a respectfully drawn painting of Muhammad on its front page. Freedom of speech should not be stifled by religious privilege.
Concerned readers of the rather lurid tale above may rest assured that its scandalous contents are entirely false.
Mr. Pi is a well known and well respected number in the mathematical community, who despite its irrational tendencies, has won the hearts of all decent magnitudes with its transcendental nature. A nature one might add, which intrinsically prevents it from appearing at the roots of any finite order equation, let alone one of only seventeenth order.
Mr. Pi is a good friend to many highly respected mathematical families such as the Trigonometric Functions and the Elliptic Functions. It is also known for its generous community work, appearing in many Geometrical texts and Physics equations, and in general is known far and wide for not holding itself above the common constant, despite its fame and status.
Mr. Pi has been known for years as a wonderful role model and teacher for polynomials of a small degree, particularly for second order equations. It has opened up worlds of possibility and inspired these young equations for many years, and it would be a great shame if this false, cruel and libelous fiction caused an end to those efforts.
I urge readers to reject and condemn this utterly false, malicious and libelous insult upon a good member of the mathematical community. We must not abandon the rigor and scruple that our community is renowned for, and succumb to emotive reasoning. The reader may be assured that however rational their coefficients, seventeenth order equations are known to come across irrational roots, of any multiplicity, all by themselves!
I know you were just joking, but to some of us, software engineering is serious business.
Then why is it that you, and others like you, allow those programmers who do not treat it as a serious business to call themselves software engineers? Why is it that they are allowed a free ride on your professionalism? Why is a php hacker allowed to rank himself alongside those who write the code for fuel injectors and airbags?
Then again, a certification body for engineers could just leave us with another guild type organisation.
That it specifically hunted down the 3 individuals who pissed it off?
Yes but it only got one. And the way these things work, that one guy was probably the one taunting it the least, who was misfortunate enough to socialise with one, or two, crueler, more sadistic and most likely more alert companions.
Unfortunately, not even tigers can sneak up on weasels.
Slashdot Mirror
That's not being prejudiced. It's critical thinking. There is a very real difference.
Prejudiced means holding a view or opinion without examining and judging the facts beforehand. Critical thinking is the exact opposite, namely, coming to a conclusion based upon examination of the facts presented.
When someone makes an extraordinary claim, namely in this case; "There exists a powerful, and supernatural deity", it is in no way prejudiced to refuse to accept this idea without sufficient evidence. It is an extraordinary claim, and requires compelling evidence. Without such evidence, the most rational view is to hold that no such entity exists. In fact, the prejudiced position is to assume the opposite, i.e. hold in the deities existence without examining and judging the facts.
The trouble is of course, in our current/post Abrahamic society, claiming that an all powerful god exists, while extraordinary, is in no way uncommon. People do this all the time. It is also taboo to challenge this view, and to do so is to be labeled "impolite","intolerant" and indeed, "prejudiced".
This is not in and of itself a burning issue. However, it becomes one when people holding such views attempt to impose those views on others. They wield their beliefs like a weapon, and raise the taboo of questioning those same beliefs like a shield. I think it's a serious problem of modern times that religious and other irrational beliefs are not challenged in public discourses. Religious groups are currently arguing from an unassailable position. Is it any wonder they are preponderate in so many debates nowadays?
Yet where do we draw the line? What makes an invention "physical"? A prototype? Some patented devices are literally the size of buildings, or otherwise intended for a one off construction, so demanding a prototype is sometimes unreasonable? Many software algorithims and even business methods are at times even more ingenious than many physical inventions.
I question the overall usefulness of patents. I really do. We have experienced more innovation, technological and economic progress in the last 15 years than at any time in history. And all the while, Chinese manufacturers have been flagrantly ignoring patents, and multinational research houses have amassed less patents than outright patent trolls.
In my opinion, patents are like firearms. Some countries allow or even promote their use. But there's an argument, which many countries accept, that they should be subject to very severe restrictions. I think the time has come to place such restrictions on patents.
It's 1x4x9 + 6, obviously!
Censorship is never necessary. Ever.
But fighting it always is.
NCMEC is in all likelihood run and supported by right wing social conservatives, with many probably having morbid sexual perversions related to the organization's work. No doubt the odd well meaning parent of a victim is thrown into the mix, and actually honestly cares about helping children. However, I suspect the former description to be more reflective of the organisation's mean.
People have to understand that the modern hysteria surrounding pedophiles, etc, etc is not about helping children. It's about changing our society into what they want it to be. Near as I can tell, strict gender roles appear to be their primary objective, especially with regard to child minding. After the last 10 years, as a male I would not look after anyone's child for so much as five minutes, for any sum of money, or under any circumstances. Anyone that would is quite frankly being dangerously foolish.
In my opinion Clive Peachey's actions were entirely correct, and he should not have to apologise, or even feel regretful, for being justifiably cautious in a world of hysterical people reading to point deadly fingers. Modern day good Samaratian's should are advised to walk past the baby Jesus. This is the world that mass hysteria, and more importantly people's tolerance of it, has created. It would be nice to live in a better one, but that won't happen until more people challenge the likes of this "1 in 5" nonsense from NCMEC.
Though I am sure some are responsive to soundbites, sometimes I think they exist to stifle and intimidate opposition. A thought terminating cliche could be a good description. For example calling pedophiles, "baby rapers", even if they are two years older than their almost adult victims, and insisting that such people be branded in this way, really puts reasonable people on the backfoot.
No one really wants or has the motivation to get into a protracted and emotive argument with such people, and so remain silent. I think the silent majority really doesn't care about pedophiles as much as the media exposure would suggest, and I think most of the media exposure is fueled by a minority who actually enjoy hearing about, and overreacting to, such macabre and lurid reports.
Your post makes no sense. I award you no points, and may the gods have mercy on your immortal soul.
When I was 13, I was not fully grown. However, I was also not a complete infant. I was also by that time responsible for my own actions, and held responsible when the occasion arose!
What ever happened to the old Bar Mitzvah type view, where people became responsible for their own "sins", i.e. actions once they reached 13? Was there something terribly wrong with that? 13 is pushing on, and you'd better be pushing on with it, because the world is not going to treat you like an infant forever. I'm not unsympathetic to someone with a mental illness like depression, but their decisions are their own, even decisions as grave as suicide.
By the way, past the age of 13, I don't tend to lay the blame on the parents anymore. People have to be held responsible for their own actions. There may be mitigating circumstances, but there are rarely any real excuses.
I keep hearing stories of uncles and granduncles who left home at the ages of 15 and 16 to work abroad! Aunts and grandaunts one often found, may not have been abroad, but were certainly working much of the time. Is it more beneficial for their wellbeing to treat 16 and 17 year olds as incapable infants? Many people certainly seem to think so. I don't advocate people dropping out of school, but I don't think it's right to keep people of that age there against their will.
There's a balance to be achieved in everything of course. However, I think our modern view of teenagers, their capability and culpability, is skewed too far towards an infant perspective.
I find it difficult to adequately express just how asinine this requirement is. And I'm a mathematician!
Sage is to Maxima is to Mathematica as Vim is to Emacs is to Word. I'm an Emacs fan myself.
Had to, or were too lazy to go without?
Mathematica is a blight upon the scientific world. The price is outrageous, the code is closed source and the learning curve never stops rising. The thing is like some kind of religious oracle; arcane, totally inscrutable, and regarded by almost everyone as infallible. Did I mention the price?
It would be nice to see an open source, scrutable and affordable counterpart to Mathematica. Something like GNU Octave is to Matlab. Looks like it's never going to happen though. Maxima, Sage and Axiom all fail to make the grade, and have infuriating names besides. The situation is less and less likely to change as people who "have" to use Mathematica in their courses keep entrenching the thing deeper and deeper.
Did I mention the price?
The internet works as it will. The "world wide web" however relies de facto on DNS.
The main problem here is that ICANN and hences DNS and hence a major portion of web infrastructure is, for some unbeknownst reason, seemingly under the jurisdiction of every backwater district court judge in the US. I thought your federal institutions answered only to federal judges?
In the interests of competent governance, ICANN and the registry should at the very least be a Federal institution, answerable to federal, and not state, judges,
He is able to torture members of the house who dissent.
McCreevy was in fact, sent off to Europe for the express purpose of exiling him from Irish Politics. Even in his own Free Market centric party, his policies were far too Thatcherite to let him continue to make his characteristically brash polemics. He gleefully accepted his "promotion" to European statesman, and his party, and indeed the country, breathed a collective sigh of relief.
McCreevy has a history of giving tax breaks and other concessions to industries and business that he "approves of". Witness his institution of a 0% tax on bets made at horse race meetings (he's a big fan of the sport). He's a supply sider with little time for anything that doesn't immediately net money i.e., fair use, hospitals, etc. He's been mentioned before on Slashdot here and here. The "loose cannon" quote is particularly apt.
Charlie McCreevy is the type of politician lobbyists love. He'll wine and dine, brunch and lunch with all manner of industry representatives and indeed has by the looks of things. Rest assured that when he finally steps down from his post (forcing him out will require tectonic pressure) the entire European Parliment, and Union, will breath a collective sigh of relief.
4chan creates /b/tards; altogether far more repugnant creatures.
It also states that "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, ....". True the entire sentence makes little sense, but it is clear to me that your right to bear arms depends on your being part of a "militia", and on the "security of a free State". Yet I've never heard anyone demand those conditions. Why? Because the law is deliberately ambiguously worded so that it is flexible enough to fit a variety of current, and future, situations.
Your constitution has another amendment which is rather explicit:
"The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."
It recognises that the people have their own intrinsic rights which are not explicitly mentioned in it, and that these rights, which the vast majority would place their privacy in and many would place abortion in. Again, this is to ensure that the law is adaptable and important rights need not be mentioned in the constitution, or the law, in order for people to be free to exercise them. Take as a concrete example, the right to urinate and defecate (sometime simultaniously!).
A lot better than one which becomes outdated and disliked by the people. The constitution of Ireland provides some good examples of constitutional articles which were too specific to their time and place.
The constitution as it was originally written gave a "special position" to the Catholic Church, which was practically all powerful in the country at the time. As time wore on, less and less people thought this was a good idea, and so the article in question had to be removed in a referendum. (Unfortunately the section proclaiming "The State acknowledges that the homage of public worship is due to Almighty God. It shall hold His Name in reverence, and shall respect and honour religion." was not removed, which doesn't sound good if your not an Irish Monotheist, or possibly an Irish Muslim. We'll probably have a second referendum at some point to change that too.)
The constitution also prohibited divorce. Yes that's right. The Irish constitution prohibited divorce. We had to have another referendum to change that too.
At the time it was written, the constitution also laid Irish (Republic of) claim to Northern Ireland. Quite specific claim in fact. As time went on, this became an ever greater impossibility and, long story short, we had to have a referendum to change that.
More pertinent to the current debate is the amendment introduced in 1983 which explicitly prohibited abortion. This is probably the one that the wider world knows most about, as we later had a rather internationally high profile referendum looking to strengthen this amendment. Most Irish people however, will remember this amendment as the one that caused the
Strangely, it is generally still regarded as audacious for someone to give their own opinion of religious scripture unless they actually "follow" that religion? In fact, usually one must be a well versed cleric, with years of experience before it is regarded as OK for one to interpret or critique canonical interpretations of scriptures. Even protestants, with their "personal god" beliefs, still tend to hold this opinion.
It's all part of our societies wider taboo one critiquing religions or beliefs of any kind. This simply cannot be done without wide condemnation ensuing. To point out that Jesus in all likelihood never came back from the dead, or that Moses, Mohammad or Joseph Smith most likely simply heard voices in their heads, would get you not only condemned, but regarded by everyone as a very odd and obnoxious person.
I'll repeat. Critique of religion is a taboo in our society. It shouldn't be. It is because religious people are not prepared to enter into any kind of debate on their beliefs. They are however, very quick to enter into debates on just about every other topic, and to offer their unimpeachable teachings as the guide, answer and justification for every position they take.
I for one think that religion, and faith, should be subject to as much scrutiny, critique and debate as everything else in our society. That's not going to happen while people hide behind persecution complexes and practiced outrage.
For the record, I'll be audacious enough to give my opinion on the issue of the depictions of Muhammad. Audacious in the sense that I am not a muslim or a religious scholar, simply someone with their own opinion and the freedom to say it. I disagree with the current majority interpretation of the Quran passages and hadiths in question. It's clear to me that idolatry is what is being forbidden, and that any passages that are purported to be forbidding visual representations of Muhammad, are simply too general and ambiguous to be regarded as to mean that.
The argument that images of Muhammad are forbidden by religious texts does not stand up to scrutiny. Just because that's the way the scholars and priests have agreed to interpret it does not mean that that's the way the rest of us have to. And even if we do, we do not have to abide by any religious decree we do not agree with.
Personally, I think a major newspaper or other publication needs to put a respectfully drawn painting of Muhammad on its front page. Freedom of speech should not be stifled by religious privilege.
But the big questions on everyones lips are: "Will Slashdot support OpenID?", and "Is Anonymous Coward already taken?".
Concerned readers of the rather lurid tale above may rest assured that its scandalous contents are entirely false.
Mr. Pi is a well known and well respected number in the mathematical community, who despite its irrational tendencies, has won the hearts of all decent magnitudes with its transcendental nature. A nature one might add, which intrinsically prevents it from appearing at the roots of any finite order equation, let alone one of only seventeenth order.
Mr. Pi is a good friend to many highly respected mathematical families such as the Trigonometric Functions and the Elliptic Functions. It is also known for its generous community work, appearing in many Geometrical texts and Physics equations, and in general is known far and wide for not holding itself above the common constant, despite its fame and status.
Mr. Pi has been known for years as a wonderful role model and teacher for polynomials of a small degree, particularly for second order equations. It has opened up worlds of possibility and inspired these young equations for many years, and it would be a great shame if this false, cruel and libelous fiction caused an end to those efforts.
I urge readers to reject and condemn this utterly false, malicious and libelous insult upon a good member of the mathematical community. We must not abandon the rigor and scruple that our community is renowned for, and succumb to emotive reasoning. The reader may be assured that however rational their coefficients, seventeenth order equations are known to come across irrational roots, of any multiplicity, all by themselves!
Further proof that Numerology knows no religious bounds.
Then again, a certification body for engineers could just leave us with another guild type organisation.
Yes but it only got one. And the way these things work, that one guy was probably the one taunting it the least, who was misfortunate enough to socialise with one, or two, crueler, more sadistic and most likely more alert companions.
Unfortunately, not even tigers can sneak up on weasels.