"from the Moon" to me to think that someone would have any problem at all with having your thoughts about a common social idea like God called a belief.
Well, if you agree with me that we all have an infinite number of beliefs about an infinite number of non-existent things, then I think that issue is settled.
Do you feel like if someone applies a label to you, and you accept it, you are defining yourself as that label?
Yes, yes I do. I don't walk around all day thinking about my disbelief in God (like I imagine true believers of God do in the opposite way); it's not at all a part of my identity.
It's kind of like that old atheist quote "Atheism is a religion like not collecting stamps is a hobby". Except I replace "religion" with "belief" in that quote in this context.
Especially in light of what you think about defining yourself, you are saying that you are the default state and they are other, not that you're both equal and have different beliefs about something.
Well, I *do* think of myself as the default state. NOT because I think everyone else is somehow stupid or a "non-person"/barbarian, or because I'm smarter than everyone else, but for three specific reasons:
(a) Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. A "valid" belief in God would require some pretty damn extraordinary evidence to back up said belief (which hasn't been found after thousands of years of searching), therefore I don't think of it as a valid "default" state.
(b) There are thousands of different religions, all of which are mutually exclusive. So any active believer in a given religion is actively *disbelieving* a huge number of other religions. How can one claim that *any* of those beliefs be a valid default state if they claim that all the other (very very similar) beliefs are not a valid default state?
(c) Not every argument has two "equal" sides. For instance, I could claim that the world is actually only 3 weeks old, that all our memories are false, and that none of us existed more than 3 weeks ago. Now, I don't think of that as an equally valid argument compared to modern scientific understanding of the history of our planet (accretion disc, formation, heavy bombardment, etc etc).
Similarly, I don't think saying "there is an invisible, magic guy in the sky whose existence and powers fly in the face of everything we know about and observe in the known universe" and atheism are on equal logical footing.
not start frothing at the mouth about "I have a complete lack of belief about it, not just a belief that it doesn't exist!!!"
Frothing? I'm simply saying I no more "actively" disbelieve a God exists than actively disbelieve any other of the infinite variety of other nonexistent things that a human mind could conceive of.
I'm not the atheist; the other guys are the theists. Or do you actively define yourself as an aunicornist? Or an asentientmushroomist?
Yes, because weekly hundreds of McVeighs gear up for roadside bombings and suicide missions in the name of Christianity and whack job right-wing conspiracy theories.
Imagine Saudi Arabia occupying the USA. How many millions of Christian warriors would come out of the woodwork to bomb the "infidel invaders"? LOTS
our dominant religions (including atheism and agnosticism--which are, of course beliefs about God, if only by denial and uncertainty)
What are your "beliefs" about the tiny pink unicorn that lives under my fingernail? What about the anthropomorphic mushroom that lives at the bottom of Lake Titicaca and controls mankind's thoughts?
Oh wait, you don't have any beliefs about those? Kind of like me and God(s).
As a kid, it never even *occurred* to me that a God(s) could/should exist. The entire idea is so far removed from reality that it never even entered my head. It wasn't until I was in early grade school that I was like "You believe WHAT?" when talking to other kids. I thought they were from the Moon, and I still do. Insanity.
Pretty much everyone's wisdom teeth are completely buried in their gums, aren't they? Mine sure as hell were, and I think one of them was growing sideways into my jaw or something.
I don't know anyone who's had any of their wisdom teeth actually erupt.
Personally, I would say that it does, provided that had US law applied in the place and time where the copies were made, they would have been made lawfully
Exactly! There are legal copies, made in a totally legal fashion, and bought in a totally legal fashion.
When people day that copyright holders really can make/buy their own laws, they were 100% right. Beyond the pale.
Why the heck do they call imported copyrighted goods (DVDs from another region, etc) the "grey market" when it's black-letter illegal?
If you know the difference in time it takes to transmit a signal from A to B through one medium versus another, plus what appears to be behind what when you look at one point versus another, then you know enough
That sounds like a knapsack problem. If your signal travels through unknown distances of materials with a known signal propagation time, how do you know what combination of what amount of different materials you're transmitting through?
Put another way: How many combinations of coins (materials) can you use to add up to a dollar (total propagation time)?
First of all, chicken eggs from the supermarket do not have embryos in them. That would be fucking disgusting and I wouldn't eat one, let alone "bucketfuls".
50% of all abortions are performed before 8 weeks (and 98% are performed before 20 weeks). Want to see what an 8-week-old embryo looks like?
In September 2006, in response to the new policies limiting the amounts of liquids and gels that passengers could carry on airplanes, Milwaukee resident Ryan Bird wrote "Kip Hawley is an Idiot" on a plastic bag given to passengers by airport security for those substances. As a result he claims he was detained and told that the First Amendment did not apply to security checkpoints.
the Left claims that greedy scientists are conspiring with Big Pharma to hide the truth about vaccines, AIDS, and alternative medicine
I'm pretty far left and NO ONE I know in lefty political circles believes any of that garbage. That's fringe stuff for crazy hippies (I know, no true scotsman, blah blah).
the Right claims that greedy scientists are in cahoots with Big Government to hide the truth about evolution, global warming, and the age of the Earth
HOWEVER, it seems the right has made this fringe nonsense an official part of their platform!
Please compare the number of MSM news stories related to "Climategate" and "alternative medicine is being crushed by big pharma"
I think we might as well get over having lost this battle. All of the major media outlets (and thus the vast majority of Mindless Media consumers) are calling it a 'virus'.
You don't get a trojan from just surfing the web. Installing kracked software from TBP and then authenticating with your admin password is a loooooong way from random innocent people getting clobbered by drive-by malware.
Slashdot Mirror
So, is a booster shot really worthwhile? Particularly for their own health?
Nope, it's for the health of others (babies). Welcome to society; enjoy your stay!
I got a DTaP because I had a daughter on the way and knew my previous shot had worn of loooong ago. The shot was not for my sake, but for hers.
"from the Moon" to me to think that someone would have any problem at all with having your thoughts about a common social idea like God called a belief.
Well, if you agree with me that we all have an infinite number of beliefs about an infinite number of non-existent things, then I think that issue is settled.
Do you feel like if someone applies a label to you, and you accept it, you are defining yourself as that label?
Yes, yes I do. I don't walk around all day thinking about my disbelief in God (like I imagine true believers of God do in the opposite way); it's not at all a part of my identity.
It's kind of like that old atheist quote "Atheism is a religion like not collecting stamps is a hobby". Except I replace "religion" with "belief" in that quote in this context.
Especially in light of what you think about defining yourself, you are saying that you are the default state and they are other, not that you're both equal and have different beliefs about something.
Well, I *do* think of myself as the default state. NOT because I think everyone else is somehow stupid or a "non-person"/barbarian, or because I'm smarter than everyone else, but for three specific reasons:
(a) Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. A "valid" belief in God would require some pretty damn extraordinary evidence to back up said belief (which hasn't been found after thousands of years of searching), therefore I don't think of it as a valid "default" state.
(b) There are thousands of different religions, all of which are mutually exclusive. So any active believer in a given religion is actively *disbelieving* a huge number of other religions. How can one claim that *any* of those beliefs be a valid default state if they claim that all the other (very very similar) beliefs are not a valid default state?
(c) Not every argument has two "equal" sides. For instance, I could claim that the world is actually only 3 weeks old, that all our memories are false, and that none of us existed more than 3 weeks ago. Now, I don't think of that as an equally valid argument compared to modern scientific understanding of the history of our planet (accretion disc, formation, heavy bombardment, etc etc).
Similarly, I don't think saying "there is an invisible, magic guy in the sky whose existence and powers fly in the face of everything we know about and observe in the known universe" and atheism are on equal logical footing.
not start frothing at the mouth about "I have a complete lack of belief about it, not just a belief that it doesn't exist!!!"
Frothing? I'm simply saying I no more "actively" disbelieve a God exists than actively disbelieve any other of the infinite variety of other nonexistent things that a human mind could conceive of.
I'm not the atheist; the other guys are the theists. Or do you actively define yourself as an aunicornist? Or an asentientmushroomist?
http://abcnews.go.com/2020/story?id=2682730&page=1#.T43CilQo0Tw
Yes, you can call it biased... yet no liberals have ever been able to disprove it, just attack the authors without substantive arguments.
Remove churches from the population of charities and watch that figure PLUMMET.
Yes, because weekly hundreds of McVeighs gear up for roadside bombings and suicide missions in the name of Christianity and whack job right-wing conspiracy theories.
Imagine Saudi Arabia occupying the USA. How many millions of Christian warriors would come out of the woodwork to bomb the "infidel invaders"? LOTS
our dominant religions (including atheism and agnosticism--which are, of course beliefs about God, if only by denial and uncertainty)
What are your "beliefs" about the tiny pink unicorn that lives under my fingernail? What about the anthropomorphic mushroom that lives at the bottom of Lake Titicaca and controls mankind's thoughts?
Oh wait, you don't have any beliefs about those? Kind of like me and God(s).
As a kid, it never even *occurred* to me that a God(s) could/should exist. The entire idea is so far removed from reality that it never even entered my head. It wasn't until I was in early grade school that I was like "You believe WHAT?" when talking to other kids. I thought they were from the Moon, and I still do. Insanity.
Pretty much everyone's wisdom teeth are completely buried in their gums, aren't they? Mine sure as hell were, and I think one of them was growing sideways into my jaw or something.
I don't know anyone who's had any of their wisdom teeth actually erupt.
Personally, I would say that it does, provided that had US law applied in the place and time where the copies were made, they would have been made lawfully
Exactly! There are legal copies, made in a totally legal fashion, and bought in a totally legal fashion.
When people day that copyright holders really can make/buy their own laws, they were 100% right. Beyond the pale.
Why the heck do they call imported copyrighted goods (DVDs from another region, etc) the "grey market" when it's black-letter illegal?
I can;t fucking believe that, but I read it with my own eyes.
Unreal. First sale doctrine doesn't apply. Wow.
Care to cite some of these "international trade LAWS" you keep mentioning? Not agreements (what agreement did this Thai kid sign? none), but LAWS.
What specific law prevents me, a private citizen, from having foreign buyers send me books from abroad and me to resell them in the US?
Assuming you pay income tax on your profit, declare yourself self-employed, etc?
If you know the difference in time it takes to transmit a signal from A to B through one medium versus another, plus what appears to be behind what when you look at one point versus another, then you know enough
That sounds like a knapsack problem. If your signal travels through unknown distances of materials with a known signal propagation time, how do you know what combination of what amount of different materials you're transmitting through?
Put another way: How many combinations of coins (materials) can you use to add up to a dollar (total propagation time)?
2. Prep the supplies from #1 in orbit (need a space station or shuttle for this) and use cheap, slow engines to get them to Mars.
Yup, you're more than half-way to Mars in terms of delta-v just by getting into LEO.
First of all, chicken eggs from the supermarket do not have embryos in them. That would be fucking disgusting and I wouldn't eat one, let alone "bucketfuls".
50% of all abortions are performed before 8 weeks (and 98% are performed before 20 weeks). Want to see what an 8-week-old embryo looks like?
http://www.babycenter.com/fetal-development-images-8-weeks
Size: 0.63 inch/1.6 cm
Weight: 0.04 ounce/1 gram
Calling that a baby is a major fucking stretch.
This is a reference:
In September 2006, in response to the new policies limiting the amounts of liquids and gels that passengers could carry on airplanes, Milwaukee resident Ryan Bird wrote "Kip Hawley is an Idiot" on a plastic bag given to passengers by airport security for those substances. As a result he claims he was detained and told that the First Amendment did not apply to security checkpoints.
10 char lameness filter
Religious folks think all religions EXCEPT ONE are nonsense/not true.
Atheists just take it one religion further.
the Left claims that greedy scientists are conspiring with Big Pharma to hide the truth about vaccines, AIDS, and alternative medicine
I'm pretty far left and NO ONE I know in lefty political circles believes any of that garbage. That's fringe stuff for crazy hippies (I know, no true scotsman, blah blah).
the Right claims that greedy scientists are in cahoots with Big Government to hide the truth about evolution, global warming, and the age of the Earth
HOWEVER, it seems the right has made this fringe nonsense an official part of their platform!
Please compare the number of MSM news stories related to "Climategate" and "alternative medicine is being crushed by big pharma"
Well, I admit that running an unsigned Java applet is not the same, but still.....running unsigned Java applets?
I guess normal people would do that...
Ah, it was a Java Applet. That's what I get for not RTFA.
You know, something with a timebomb, that goes undetected, then fries the disk firmware?
Which would require (a) installing shady pirate software and (b) authenticating with your admin password.
They deserve what they get.
I think we might as well get over having lost this battle. All of the major media outlets (and thus the vast majority of Mindless Media consumers) are calling it a 'virus'.
You don't get a trojan from just surfing the web. Installing kracked software from TBP and then authenticating with your admin password is a loooooong way from random innocent people getting clobbered by drive-by malware.
Apple's claim that Mac's don't get "viruses", in my mom's mind, equate to "Apple's don't have malware".
If you don't install kracked shit from TBP on your Mac, it DOESN'T get malware.
Does your Mom do that?
Really? I mean, this is what a 150 mile drive around the Chicago metro area looks like:
http://g.co/maps/hsdus
That's a long, long way from "around town on a busy Saturday". Hell, it's less than 140 miles from Washington DC to Philadelphia!!
What kind of errands are you running??
I've easily done 150+ miles just in around-town-driving on a busy Saturday
No you haven't. 150 miles driving-around-town in a single day is nearly impossible.
The new WDTV (that came out in November 2011) has N wifi built in.
http://www.amazon.com/Western-Digital-Streaming-Media-Player/dp/B005KOZNBW
I LOVE that thing (although I have it wired, as it has a GigE port as well). It plays absolutely anything you throw at it.