because to bring science into religion just screams "trouble"? more so than going the other way even.
though just to tell you, there were several computer models written to try and explain the parting of the sea by moses and it was shown that it could happen if a strong enough wind would blow for approximately 36 hours (winds that aren't completely unheard of in that area). now whether or not that happened, so be it. But it could happen within the realm of scientific possibility.
morals are not a valid example. LOok at the vikings. There entire religion was based on being a bad ass. The more you pillage, torture, and plunder, the higher up you were in the after-life.
but morals for an internal society are very pro-evolution. animals that work together enhance survival probabilities. The question you should ask is if humans helping each other ehance the survival of any one element. humans do this all the time. It can even be shown in other parts of the animal kingdom(especially elephant herds). look to the bible for an excellent counter-example. The laws of the old testament call for mass murder against anyone who thinks differently and rape and slavery(read the laws of deuteronomy). the real argument against evolution is how these deranged thought processes could have survived when they seem to run counter to what natural selection would call for. OF course, it can be argued that with limited resources, the best chance of survival is limiting the competing population, but that is for further discussion.
that's what most people call a trump card. as I've told people before, if you encapsulate yourself in those arguments, you will never lose because you cannot be argued with.
and of course, one can give evidence for why god is like the aether(when those arguments are invoked). Sure, you can suppose he does exist. and if you want, you can credit him/her/whatever with the creation of eveything. But in the end, you can't prove it one way or the other because the existence doesn't change a single thing about how the world works. It just keeps trucking along seeming following extremely well defined rules. So for the same reasons scientists reject the existence of the aether on the basis that it isn't needed to explain the propogation of light, the existence of god is rejected by many scientists, though it doesn't have to be. the aether can be postulated in such a way as to never show itself. unfortunately, that means its existence has no meaning. kind of like god in a lot of ways.
Why should you care if Intelligen Design is taught in schools?
I don't at all, I only care when it is taught in a science class room. Intelligent design is not a theory in the scientific sense, it is religious belief. the only arugment that exists in everything I have read is "it just seems way too complex to have happened wtihout someone guiding it all". That is the core argument. There is no evidence other than the fact that life is complex. It lacks any predictive power what so ever.
When a real scientist comes up with a theory, there are things that are predicted or testable. If tests show those predictions to be wrong, the theory is changed. creationism has absolutely no predictable points what so ever. Just like religion, it is based completely on faith and has no groundings in experiment or observation. to give a real analogy, it would be like me saying that there was some divine intervention in humans coming up with quantum mechanics because it is so complex. It is a statement that cannot be proved, supported, disproved, or have evidence given to the contrary if you honestly believe that there is some force that is responsible for every instance of quantum mechanics understanding.
of course, if you are for intellegent design being taught in the classroom, I guess we should give time in class to every crack job that believes they have a 'scientific' theory. flat earth theory should still get at least a day. I propose something known as intellegent shifting. In my theory, rather than falling off the side of the Earth, people are miraculously transported to the opposite side of the flat earth making it seem round. We don't teach things like this because science rejects them on all grounds. and of course, I would like teachers to mention my other theory of intelligent curving whenever Einstein's theory of relativity is mentioned (its not spacetime, its a higher power that causes light to curve. I mean, have you ever seen the field equations? way to complex to occur 'naturally').
would you like history teachers spending a day on each conspiracy theory over JFK's death? no , we don't give credence to people who believe that LBJ pulled at two hand guns to finish off the president(a real conspiracy theory). Just because a group of people believe something absurd long enough doesn't make it true or deserving of any level of respect. science classroom time is usually reserved for the best explanation we have moderated by how much time and the expertise of the audience.
F=ma gets taught because it is correct in the complete sense, to the best of our knowledge. What you want to refer to is F=GMm/r^2 which is only correct to a first order approximation. The beauty of it though is it highlights the scientific process. Before Einstein, astronomers had found real world examples where the current theory failed to predict what was going on(I believe at that time, it was the orbit of mercury) and the successful predictions of general relativity in relation to said orbit and many other things (including curvature of light around the sun) lead us today to accept it as the ruling theory of gravity. But all good scientists can show you why it needs to still be modified. Scientists have moved beyond the idea that they are always correct and there isn't anywhere to go. We accept the possibility of being wrong at all times and the possibility of a new theory that could fundamentally alter our thinking.
purveyors of creationism will never think that way. They can't. It would mean the shattering of their entire world if someone could prove them wrong(I am not saying if someone actually 'proved' god doesn't exists. rather, to even accept the fact that such a proof could exist would shatter the fundamentals of any faith). Of course, encapsulate yourself just right and noone can ever do that. Play the omnipotence trump card enough times and you are pretty much guaranteed to win, at least in your own mind.
so in other words, just as I said, as long as you define things like genocide and torture using things like emotions, we can't apply them to animals, right? its a circular definition, the problem I said it would be. If you define these things in such a way that only humans could fit your definition, then guess what, only humans will fit your definition.
but I must disagree on a few point, humans, as you have said, do the same thing as wolves. we try to convert as much raw food as possible into edible food. as our food supplies are no where near infinite as you suggest, we do suffer from the same population limitations the wolf would. It just happens to be that we haven't reached that limit yet. Just like over-hunting the elk would cause food shortages that would modulate the wolf population, when humans in areas push the natural reasources too far with too many people, usually severe famine persists until some type of balance is restored. We can also over-farm land to make it unusable and over-hunt our own animal food sources to extinction. what you really mean is that unlike anyone else in the animal kingdom, we can eat anything and can effectively produce our own food if we want.
and of course, animals playing with their prey can easily shown to be different than playing with others of the same species, if for no other reason than the fact that one is their prey. unless you mean to suggest the animal doesn't understand the difference between the two? of course, that wouldn't make sense because the animal doesn't kill its friend that it is playing with, only its prey.
an interesting set of occurances would be the dolphin.
a college paper but the sources at the bottom point to more athoritative people who have shown dolphin males grouping together in order to force mating on a female(also known as gang rape by male dolphins). of course, if you always separate humans from animals saying we are the only ones capable of reasoning, then this would just be following instincts, yet it is almost unheard of in any other species( I have never read of another case).
so like I said before, the evidence is before you but like all good trump cards, as long as you believe there isn't the mental capacity for animals to do these things with the same intent as humans (or if you believe humans do them for different, only-human reasons) then no, noone can show you an instance of it happening in nature. but then again, your definition forbids it so you shouldn't be surprised that no good examples can be given to you.
define torutre then. or genocide. They only really have meaning in the human sense. animals attempt genocide all the time, we call it competition. The elk in yellowstone was committing a genocide against the willow until the reintroduction of the wolf. Is that genocide? other food sources existed yet the willow was eaten almost out of exitence.
even human genocide is a form of competition in most places. One set of humans is fighting against another and attempts to completely destroy each other. Ants are known to do this when their mounds run into each other. massive 'wars' take place simply to win territory adn when one side wins, the other mound is usually completely taken over and all its ants are killed. Of course, you could call this comeptition for land but then, there was land elsewhere. give a broad enough definition and I guarantee it occurs. If you use things like "because of hatred" or "over trivial matters" then it is tough to measure for animals, or humans.
ok, fine. let me explain it using the right to vote, because it is the truest point about communism and what I think is the deciding factor on why fails.
In a democracy you have the right to choose to vote. You can, at any election(barring certain things on a criminal record here in the US) choose to vote for person A, person B,.... but your most distinct right from communism is your right to just say "I don't like anyone so I'm not going to vote at all". It is very similar to the signs of protest against Eisner at the Disney Shareholders meeting. about 48% of the voting stock withheld a vote of approval because they can't vote for someone else.
In communist Russia on the other hand, they had 100% participation. Why? Because it was required that you show up and vote.
It is very similar to owning something. In capitalism you can go out and work and own something and make it grow. But in communism you are forced to be a part owner in everything. The major choice you lack is to liquidate that holding. You are stuck with it. YOu can't sell it to the rest of the community because you would rather be eating extra chicken or buying books. That is what it means to lack the right to own nothing. If is a right you hold here in the US, like your right not to participate or your right to not work and be a complete bum(not meaning to start an argument about welfare. Welfare withstanding, it is still true that people could simply choose not to work).
if you want, I can give you an example of something obviously similar and has been around for a long time, pre-paid phone cards. ever wonder how they work? well, you make the call, and it decides how many minutes or billing increments you can talk, and then if you reach the end you get cut off because you are out of money.
this is truly BS, it has been around in a form where the only difference is the 10 digit code is now a phone number instead of a pin number.
the only even slight innovation maybe be if it also records incoming minutes, though it is still the same system just with one more if loop added.
anyone can say they are running, but it takes a whole lot more to get your name on the ballot. or are you ignorant of how the american political system(one of the more famous democratic republics) works? you require a certain number of signatures in each state/district to get on teh ballot unless you are running under the two major parties. even a more simple example exists. even if everyone wants me to be president of the US, if I haven't lived in the US for the last 14 years I am disqualified. That denies freedom of who to choose. So written into our own constitution are limits on our freedoms that we should theoretically have as a democratic republic.
Now those provisions don't bother me, but it also proves a major difference between theory and practice of any political/economic system. in the same way, pure communism says the means of production of communally owned(not governmentally owned, Marx believed a truly communistic state would not need a government at all). This means everyone has an equal say in how it gets used. Furthermore, you are allowed to own private property, as long as it isn't a means of production. That can be interpreted however you want but that is what the theory states.
now how about you go out and get educated on the stuff before calling people liars. of course, you think things are false just because you say they are. you might be the same person who things the solution to the problem P = nP is n=1.
yes, in fact, unlike capitalism, everyone is guaranteed a piece of land. In a democratic republic, do I have the freedom to run for office? the correct answer is no. I can't just stand up and say I'm running and have my name on the ballot. I have to do about 10 other things that cost loads of money. So I am in certain ways restricted. Same thing(in pure communism). unfortunately, you lack the right to own nothing or to monopolize the resources. while this does keep growth from reaching a maximum rate(if you consider capitalism to be the fastest an economy can grow) everyone does get something. I choose capitalism personally,but as the op said, there is a major difference between theoretical communism and communism tied in to a dictatorship.
Does anyone else find it ironic that such an outspoken opponent of violence in the media is so vicious in real life?
No, remember, he is a foot soldier in the army of god. While I'm not against religious people at all (I am one) he is just as bad as several of the Islamic extremists. He doesn't believe in negotiating and if he had the chance, it seems he would happily see these people killed. He even said he wants to tie a millstone around the neck of the gaming industry and drown them(you can find the quote if your read his website, stopkill.com). Like all people who feel this way, he feels he can do no wrong. He doubtfully sees any value in the life of people who he feels are on the "other side".
let's just say for god A, 'da' means yes. Then does 'da' also mean yes for gods B and C? or do each speak there own langauge so if both god A and god B said 'da', it could be they were both answering yes/no or it could also be that they didn't agree wtih each other
actually, its not that it is an open question. It depends on how you define groups/sets. using what we have today, it has been shown that you cannot show if such a set exists or doesn't exist, because all our math is completely consistent given either one. There is an incompleteness theorem(I forgot who) which states that if you have a set of rules to govern groups and sets that is complex enough to describe our numbers, then there will always be things that are not provable or disprovable, and the existance of a set which order less than c but greater than aleph0 is such a thing.
not always, I knew a guy at my school who would go out and buy the top of the line anything for a computer whenever it hit the market. When I say everything, I mean he had two two top end PC systems and a mac system simply because he wanted the top of Mac, Intel , AMD, Nvidia, and ATI. He also kept a matrox card.
There wasn't any real reason that he did it. He wasn't getting any noticably different performance(once the res is all the way up and the eye candy is turned on, the extra 2 frames a second don't matter), but because he comes from a really wealthy family and his father will pay for anything he wants, he buys it. There are quite a few people like that actually, who are either close to money to have it. And it's theirs to spend on what ever their hobby is.
I take it you've never tried to type of paper filled with foreign words and/or foreign names? For me, that is the only time I use auto-complete but during those times, it is the most useful feature I have ever run across. I used to have to type the word without any of the accents the entire way through and then go back and do a 'find and replace'. Now I can type it once and it will always complete it that way.
Physics papers would be a real bitch if I didn't have that option(Schrodinger is a key example).
hey hey now, I'm "doing" all I can not to get pulled into a war I don't agree with that was based on lies. a war where the only reason we are given for spending 6 billion a month is that we fucked up and so we have to keep spending it. It doesn't matter if I'm not the president. it's the same way that it doesn't matter if I'm not a doctor. if a doctor messes up and costs me my arm, I take him for what my arm is worth.
Bush fucks up and costs me programs I love, I get pissed at him to for not being able to do his job correctly.
The hurricane clean up, just like the war, are choices we are making. nothing has to be paid by the federal government. They are not required to fund the clean up of a city when the city didn't do things correctly. both are choices. Just like increasing taxes on those most capable of paying them and still live reasonably confortably is a choice. they are all choices so don't get all uppity when my priorities don't match yours.
what I complain about is a president who puts covering his own ass with bad excuses about Iraq above real science(no, under no circumstances is intelligent design real science).
I would say the only thing worse than using hindsight to critique others is to not critique them at all when you see that a glaring mistake was made that costs billions and our friends' lives every day. so I'm not sure what these real men are going out and doing if you are talking about our president, because I see a lot of excuses, ignorant comments, hiding from the truth, and using a position to help your friends first and do your job second. I could do that easily, all I need to lack is a conscience.
obviously you missed what administration we have. you won't be paying more in taxes when they spend more these programs. you'll just keep getting refund checks that represent money the government never had and the money will go towards other equally unconstitional programs(if you feel spending on NASA is unconstitutional).
but forgetting all that, you shouldn't worry about that money too much. that money will appear in the distant future through economic growth. you know, its that future Keynes was talking about, the one where you are dead.
not always. only in certain missions is that true. If you are planning on doing the same thing repeatedly, it is usually better to build the robot. because once you have it done correctly once, the amazing efficiency that is mass production kicks in. then it is just the sum of the cost of its parts and assembly. Humans, on the other hand, don't benefit nearly as well from economies of scale. worse yet, if you lose a human, you have to do a several million/tens of millions of dollar investigation as to why and how to prevent people from dying ever again when you strap them to a huge controlled explosion and send them off into an area that is not in any way habitable. its much simpler for botched robot missions.
I would be much more worried about the new avian flu we are facing today. according to the NY times, it so far has had a mortality rate of 60%, namely, nothing we do has any effect.
our only real luck has been that it doens't spread well from person to person yet.
this is the income statement put out for dell. I don't know if you have ever read one, but the first line is revenue(how much they made) and the next line is the cost of those goods that they sold(not including rent, wages, or any of that stuff, just purely, how much they paid to get the materials and then sell them).
as you can see, about 80% of what they sell is going to be original cost to them.
overall, they only turn a margin of about 6 to 7% when they consider all their other costs. And i would bet most of their overall margins don't come from things like an OS but rather, the little nicities they get people to buy.
so while your example is still valid, not by nearly the margin you were making it seem.
america is a democratic republic, its a definition we fit. The person who recieves the most/majority(depending) votes wins, and that is the end of it. That person goes on to act as a representative in the law making/decision making process. No one with any education has ever called the US a pure democracy. It isn't even presented that way in half assed text books.
Or are you complaining that the PAC's are good at convincing people to vote for someone you don't believe in or you think isn't good for america? sucks for you, but that is how a democratic republic works.
of course, this implies that I"m not going to take my new found extra 40 dollars and 2 cd's and go buy something else. Everyone always thinks people will spend the same amount on am object. There is no guarantee that anyone would go to the concert with the money saved.
YOur argument is philosophical and you add numbers to make it seem more realistic. But that doesn't mean it is. I could make the same argument but say out of every 20 people, only one does what you say and the other 19 go off and do something else with that money. Then the artist lost money by your model(1 dollar, actually).
Anyways, if I really wanted to be generous, I would sneak into the concert and steal the t shirt and download the music and hten just send them cash in an envelope of all my 40 dollars. They can write off the losses for the stolen merchandise(government pays for some), they lose that 5 dollars for the seat, and then they get 40 bucks. So I"ll just be a nice guy and do that instead.
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because to bring science into religion just screams "trouble"? more so than going the other way even.
though just to tell you, there were several computer models written to try and explain the parting of the sea by moses and it was shown that it could happen if a strong enough wind would blow for approximately 36 hours (winds that aren't completely unheard of in that area). now whether or not that happened, so be it. But it could happen within the realm of scientific possibility.
morals are not a valid example. LOok at the vikings. There entire religion was based on being a bad ass. The more you pillage, torture, and plunder, the higher up you were in the after-life.
but morals for an internal society are very pro-evolution. animals that work together enhance survival probabilities. The question you should ask is if humans helping each other ehance the survival of any one element. humans do this all the time. It can even be shown in other parts of the animal kingdom(especially elephant herds). look to the bible for an excellent counter-example. The laws of the old testament call for mass murder against anyone who thinks differently and rape and slavery(read the laws of deuteronomy). the real argument against evolution is how these deranged thought processes could have survived when they seem to run counter to what natural selection would call for. OF course, it can be argued that with limited resources, the best chance of survival is limiting the competing population, but that is for further discussion.
that's what most people call a trump card. as I've told people before, if you encapsulate yourself in those arguments, you will never lose because you cannot be argued with.
and of course, one can give evidence for why god is like the aether(when those arguments are invoked). Sure, you can suppose he does exist. and if you want, you can credit him/her/whatever with the creation of eveything. But in the end, you can't prove it one way or the other because the existence doesn't change a single thing about how the world works. It just keeps trucking along seeming following extremely well defined rules. So for the same reasons scientists reject the existence of the aether on the basis that it isn't needed to explain the propogation of light, the existence of god is rejected by many scientists, though it doesn't have to be. the aether can be postulated in such a way as to never show itself. unfortunately, that means its existence has no meaning. kind of like god in a lot of ways.
Why should you care if Intelligen Design is taught in schools?
I don't at all, I only care when it is taught in a science class room. Intelligent design is not a theory in the scientific sense, it is religious belief. the only arugment that exists in everything I have read is "it just seems way too complex to have happened wtihout someone guiding it all". That is the core argument. There is no evidence other than the fact that life is complex. It lacks any predictive power what so ever.
When a real scientist comes up with a theory, there are things that are predicted or testable. If tests show those predictions to be wrong, the theory is changed. creationism has absolutely no predictable points what so ever. Just like religion, it is based completely on faith and has no groundings in experiment or observation. to give a real analogy, it would be like me saying that there was some divine intervention in humans coming up with quantum mechanics because it is so complex. It is a statement that cannot be proved, supported, disproved, or have evidence given to the contrary if you honestly believe that there is some force that is responsible for every instance of quantum mechanics understanding.
of course, if you are for intellegent design being taught in the classroom, I guess we should give time in class to every crack job that believes they have a 'scientific' theory. flat earth theory should still get at least a day. I propose something known as intellegent shifting. In my theory, rather than falling off the side of the Earth, people are miraculously transported to the opposite side of the flat earth making it seem round. We don't teach things like this because science rejects them on all grounds. and of course, I would like teachers to mention my other theory of intelligent curving whenever Einstein's theory of relativity is mentioned (its not spacetime, its a higher power that causes light to curve. I mean, have you ever seen the field equations? way to complex to occur 'naturally').
would you like history teachers spending a day on each conspiracy theory over JFK's death? no , we don't give credence to people who believe that LBJ pulled at two hand guns to finish off the president(a real conspiracy theory). Just because a group of people believe something absurd long enough doesn't make it true or deserving of any level of respect. science classroom time is usually reserved for the best explanation we have moderated by how much time and the expertise of the audience.
F=ma gets taught because it is correct in the complete sense, to the best of our knowledge. What you want to refer to is F=GMm/r^2 which is only correct to a first order approximation. The beauty of it though is it highlights the scientific process. Before Einstein, astronomers had found real world examples where the current theory failed to predict what was going on(I believe at that time, it was the orbit of mercury) and the successful predictions of general relativity in relation to said orbit and many other things (including curvature of light around the sun) lead us today to accept it as the ruling theory of gravity. But all good scientists can show you why it needs to still be modified. Scientists have moved beyond the idea that they are always correct and there isn't anywhere to go. We accept the possibility of being wrong at all times and the possibility of a new theory that could fundamentally alter our thinking.
purveyors of creationism will never think that way. They can't. It would mean the shattering of their entire world if someone could prove them wrong(I am not saying if someone actually 'proved' god doesn't exists. rather, to even accept the fact that such a proof could exist would shatter the fundamentals of any faith). Of course, encapsulate yourself just right and noone can ever do that. Play the omnipotence trump card enough times and you are pretty much guaranteed to win, at least in your own mind.
so in other words, just as I said, as long as you define things like genocide and torture using things like emotions, we can't apply them to animals, right? its a circular definition, the problem I said it would be. If you define these things in such a way that only humans could fit your definition, then guess what, only humans will fit your definition.
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but I must disagree on a few point, humans, as you have said, do the same thing as wolves. we try to convert as much raw food as possible into edible food. as our food supplies are no where near infinite as you suggest, we do suffer from the same population limitations the wolf would. It just happens to be that we haven't reached that limit yet. Just like over-hunting the elk would cause food shortages that would modulate the wolf population, when humans in areas push the natural reasources too far with too many people, usually severe famine persists until some type of balance is restored. We can also over-farm land to make it unusable and over-hunt our own animal food sources to extinction. what you really mean is that unlike anyone else in the animal kingdom, we can eat anything and can effectively produce our own food if we want.
and of course, animals playing with their prey can easily shown to be different than playing with others of the same species, if for no other reason than the fact that one is their prey. unless you mean to suggest the animal doesn't understand the difference between the two? of course, that wouldn't make sense because the animal doesn't kill its friend that it is playing with, only its prey.
an interesting set of occurances would be the dolphin.
http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/bb/neuro/neuro04/web
a college paper but the sources at the bottom point to more athoritative people who have shown dolphin males grouping together in order to force mating on a female(also known as gang rape by male dolphins). of course, if you always separate humans from animals saying we are the only ones capable of reasoning, then this would just be following instincts, yet it is almost unheard of in any other species( I have never read of another case).
so like I said before, the evidence is before you but like all good trump cards, as long as you believe there isn't the mental capacity for animals to do these things with the same intent as humans (or if you believe humans do them for different, only-human reasons) then no, noone can show you an instance of it happening in nature. but then again, your definition forbids it so you shouldn't be surprised that no good examples can be given to you.
define torutre then. or genocide. They only really have meaning in the human sense. animals attempt genocide all the time, we call it competition. The elk in yellowstone was committing a genocide against the willow until the reintroduction of the wolf. Is that genocide? other food sources existed yet the willow was eaten almost out of exitence.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/18/science/earth/1
even human genocide is a form of competition in most places. One set of humans is fighting against another and attempts to completely destroy each other. Ants are known to do this when their mounds run into each other. massive 'wars' take place simply to win territory adn when one side wins, the other mound is usually completely taken over and all its ants are killed. Of course, you could call this comeptition for land but then, there was land elsewhere. give a broad enough definition and I guarantee it occurs. If you use things like "because of hatred" or "over trivial matters" then it is tough to measure for animals, or humans.
ok, fine. let me explain it using the right to vote, because it is the truest point about communism and what I think is the deciding factor on why fails.
.... but your most distinct right from communism is your right to just say "I don't like anyone so I'm not going to vote at all". It is very similar to the signs of protest against Eisner at the Disney Shareholders meeting. about 48% of the voting stock withheld a vote of approval because they can't vote for someone else.
In a democracy you have the right to choose to vote. You can, at any election(barring certain things on a criminal record here in the US) choose to vote for person A, person B,
In communist Russia on the other hand, they had 100% participation. Why? Because it was required that you show up and vote.
It is very similar to owning something. In capitalism you can go out and work and own something and make it grow. But in communism you are forced to be a part owner in everything. The major choice you lack is to liquidate that holding. You are stuck with it. YOu can't sell it to the rest of the community because you would rather be eating extra chicken or buying books. That is what it means to lack the right to own nothing. If is a right you hold here in the US, like your right not to participate or your right to not work and be a complete bum(not meaning to start an argument about welfare. Welfare withstanding, it is still true that people could simply choose not to work).
if you want, I can give you an example of something obviously similar and has been around for a long time, pre-paid phone cards. ever wonder how they work? well, you make the call, and it decides how many minutes or billing increments you can talk, and then if you reach the end you get cut off because you are out of money.
this is truly BS, it has been around in a form where the only difference is the 10 digit code is now a phone number instead of a pin number.
the only even slight innovation maybe be if it also records incoming minutes, though it is still the same system just with one more if loop added.
anyone can say they are running, but it takes a whole lot more to get your name on the ballot. or are you ignorant of how the american political system(one of the more famous democratic republics) works? you require a certain number of signatures in each state/district to get on teh ballot unless you are running under the two major parties. even a more simple example exists. even if everyone wants me to be president of the US, if I haven't lived in the US for the last 14 years I am disqualified. That denies freedom of who to choose. So written into our own constitution are limits on our freedoms that we should theoretically have as a democratic republic.
Now those provisions don't bother me, but it also proves a major difference between theory and practice of any political/economic system. in the same way, pure communism says the means of production of communally owned(not governmentally owned, Marx believed a truly communistic state would not need a government at all). This means everyone has an equal say in how it gets used. Furthermore, you are allowed to own private property, as long as it isn't a means of production. That can be interpreted however you want but that is what the theory states.
now how about you go out and get educated on the stuff before calling people liars. of course, you think things are false just because you say they are. you might be the same person who things the solution to the problem P = nP is
n=1.
yes, in fact, unlike capitalism, everyone is guaranteed a piece of land. In a democratic republic, do I have the freedom to run for office? the correct answer is no. I can't just stand up and say I'm running and have my name on the ballot. I have to do about 10 other things that cost loads of money. So I am in certain ways restricted. Same thing(in pure communism). unfortunately, you lack the right to own nothing or to monopolize the resources. while this does keep growth from reaching a maximum rate(if you consider capitalism to be the fastest an economy can grow) everyone does get something. I choose capitalism personally,but as the op said, there is a major difference between theoretical communism and communism tied in to a dictatorship.
Does anyone else find it ironic that such an outspoken opponent of violence in the media is so vicious in real life?
No, remember, he is a foot soldier in the army of god. While I'm not against religious people at all (I am one) he is just as bad as several of the Islamic extremists. He doesn't believe in negotiating and if he had the chance, it seems he would happily see these people killed. He even said he wants to tie a millstone around the neck of the gaming industry and drown them(you can find the quote if your read his website, stopkill.com).
Like all people who feel this way, he feels he can do no wrong. He doubtfully sees any value in the life of people who he feels are on the "other side".
thanks, I knew they existed, but I have misplaced by old proof textbook
I'm a little confused....
let's just say for god A, 'da' means yes. Then does 'da' also mean yes for gods B and C? or do each speak there own langauge so if both god A and god B said 'da', it could be they were both answering yes/no or it could also be that they didn't agree wtih each other
actually, its not that it is an open question. It depends on how you define groups/sets. using what we have today, it has been shown that you cannot show if such a set exists or doesn't exist, because all our math is completely consistent given either one. There is an incompleteness theorem(I forgot who) which states that if you have a set of rules to govern groups and sets that is complex enough to describe our numbers, then there will always be things that are not provable or disprovable, and the existance of a set which order less than c but greater than aleph0 is such a thing.
not always, I knew a guy at my school who would go out and buy the top of the line anything for a computer whenever it hit the market. When I say everything, I mean he had two two top end PC systems and a mac system simply because he wanted the top of Mac, Intel , AMD, Nvidia, and ATI. He also kept a matrox card.
There wasn't any real reason that he did it. He wasn't getting any noticably different performance(once the res is all the way up and the eye candy is turned on, the extra 2 frames a second don't matter), but because he comes from a really wealthy family and his father will pay for anything he wants, he buys it. There are quite a few people like that actually, who are either close to money to have it. And it's theirs to spend on what ever their hobby is.
I take it you've never tried to type of paper filled with foreign words and/or foreign names? For me, that is the only time I use auto-complete but during those times, it is the most useful feature I have ever run across. I used to have to type the word without any of the accents the entire way through and then go back and do a 'find and replace'. Now I can type it once and it will always complete it that way.
Physics papers would be a real bitch if I didn't have that option(Schrodinger is a key example).
hey hey now, I'm "doing" all I can not to get pulled into a war I don't agree with that was based on lies. a war where the only reason we are given for spending 6 billion a month is that we fucked up and so we have to keep spending it. It doesn't matter if I'm not the president. it's the same way that it doesn't matter if I'm not a doctor. if a doctor messes up and costs me my arm, I take him for what my arm is worth.
Bush fucks up and costs me programs I love, I get pissed at him to for not being able to do his job correctly.
The hurricane clean up, just like the war, are choices we are making. nothing has to be paid by the federal government. They are not required to fund the clean up of a city when the city didn't do things correctly. both are choices. Just like increasing taxes on those most capable of paying them and still live reasonably confortably is a choice. they are all choices so don't get all uppity when my priorities don't match yours.
what I complain about is a president who puts covering his own ass with bad excuses about Iraq above real science(no, under no circumstances is intelligent design real science).
I would say the only thing worse than using hindsight to critique others is to not critique them at all when you see that a glaring mistake was made that costs billions and our friends' lives every day. so I'm not sure what these real men are going out and doing if you are talking about our president, because I see a lot of excuses, ignorant comments, hiding from the truth, and using a position to help your friends first and do your job second. I could do that easily, all I need to lack is a conscience.
obviously you missed what administration we have. you won't be paying more in taxes when they spend more these programs. you'll just keep getting refund checks that represent money the government never had and the money will go towards other equally unconstitional programs(if you feel spending on NASA is unconstitutional).
but forgetting all that, you shouldn't worry about that money too much. that money will appear in the distant future through economic growth. you know, its that future Keynes was talking about, the one where you are dead.
not always. only in certain missions is that true. If you are planning on doing the same thing repeatedly, it is usually better to build the robot. because once you have it done correctly once, the amazing efficiency that is mass production kicks in. then it is just the sum of the cost of its parts and assembly. Humans, on the other hand, don't benefit nearly as well from economies of scale. worse yet, if you lose a human, you have to do a several million/tens of millions of dollar investigation as to why and how to prevent people from dying ever again when you strap them to a huge controlled explosion and send them off into an area that is not in any way habitable. its much simpler for botched robot missions.
so I got all that, but you've gone and confused me again.
what exactly is barratry
I would be much more worried about the new avian flu we are facing today. according to the NY times, it so far has had a mortality rate of 60%, namely, nothing we do has any effect.
our only real luck has been that it doens't spread well from person to person yet.
while your point would be valid with most other types of companies, dell does not sell its products for large margins.
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/is?s=DELL&annual
this is the income statement put out for dell. I don't know if you have ever read one, but the first line is revenue(how much they made) and the next line is the cost of those goods that they sold(not including rent, wages, or any of that stuff, just purely, how much they paid to get the materials and then sell them).
as you can see, about 80% of what they sell is going to be original cost to them.
overall, they only turn a margin of about 6 to 7% when they consider all their other costs. And i would bet most of their overall margins don't come from things like an OS but rather, the little nicities they get people to buy.
so while your example is still valid, not by nearly the margin you were making it seem.
america is a democratic republic, its a definition we fit. The person who recieves the most/majority(depending) votes wins, and that is the end of it. That person goes on to act as a representative in the law making/decision making process. No one with any education has ever called the US a pure democracy. It isn't even presented that way in half assed text books. Or are you complaining that the PAC's are good at convincing people to vote for someone you don't believe in or you think isn't good for america? sucks for you, but that is how a democratic republic works.
of course, this implies that I"m not going to take my new found extra 40 dollars and 2 cd's and go buy something else. Everyone always thinks people will spend the same amount on am object. There is no guarantee that anyone would go to the concert with the money saved.
YOur argument is philosophical and you add numbers to make it seem more realistic. But that doesn't mean it is. I could make the same argument but say out of every 20 people, only one does what you say and the other 19 go off and do something else with that money. Then the artist lost money by your model(1 dollar, actually).
Anyways, if I really wanted to be generous, I would sneak into the concert and steal the t shirt and download the music and hten just send them cash in an envelope of all my 40 dollars. They can write off the losses for the stolen merchandise(government pays for some), they lose that 5 dollars for the seat, and then they get 40 bucks. So I"ll just be a nice guy and do that instead.
right now, only nintendo doesn't sell its consoles for a loss. Its why even though they aren't the biggest, they are the most profitable.