Hi there, Becca! What's a nice girl like you doing in a place like this? Are you here to meet a nice man or will I do? Are you busy tonight at 3:00 A.M.? Wanna come back to my place and watch Sportscenter?
Do you mind if I end this sentence in a proposition? Hey I'm no Fred Flinstone but I could sure make your bed-rock! Can I borrow your phone number, I seem to have lost mine. Would you like to try an Australian kiss? It is just like a French kiss, but down under. You wanna come over to my house and play Battleship. I can show you my destroyer. You be my Dairy Queen, I'll be your Burger King, you treat me right, and I'll do it your way! The word for the night is legs. Let's go back to my place and spread the word. Let's have breakfast together tomorrow; shall I call you or nudge you? Is that Windex you're wearing? 'Cause I can see myself in your pants. Something tells me you're sweet. Can I have a sample? I'm feeling a little off today. Would you like to turn me on?...and two filthy ones: Nice shoes...wanna fuck/screw? What fucks like a tiger and winks?
Yeah, it's a pity that Vicary actually falsified the results of his now-infamous theatre experiment.
Are you kidding? I, for one, am extremely glad that his original conclusions are wrong, that the human mind cannot be manipulated as easily as this quack posited. If Vicary's fudged results had been correct, and considering the capability of corporations and governments to misuse and abuse the resources at their disposal, we'd probably be living in a much more draconian world than we already are!
On a sidenote, I seem to remember reading about some Hollywood guy who wanted to integrate Vicary's theories in a horror film, flashing images of Bosch's hell, or Gustave Dore's engravings of Dante's Inferno, but decided against it, deeming it a reckless idea. It may have been either William Friedkin or William Peter Blatty (director and writer of The Exorcist, respectively), ten years after Vicary confessed. I guess some ideas may be too compelling to be false.
The money it made was due to the Internet and very little else.
Exactly. This is the equivalent of, say, "Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill!" debuting at Number One back in its' day. Or "Frogs". One favorable thing about "Snakes On A Plane" (SOAP?!!) is that it's a B-movie through and through, but with A-movie values. The extreme example of this is "Independence Day".
Another thing is that a movie like SOAP was marketed towards internet geeks, as opposed to film geeks (like myself), who'd much rather spend 9 bucks to go see something like Michael Gondry's "The Science Of Sleep".
Finally, what the hell is this obsession with freakin' Opening Weekend Gross? Whatever happened to films with staying power?
Okay, having a conversation with myself, I'm about to answer my own question: Staying power is in DVD, where SOAP is assured eternal cult status, therefore staying power. This film will make truckloads of money.
If you like Thursday Afternoon, I cannot recommend highly enough The Necks' Sex, a piece of experimental ambient jazz that goes on for an hour. Unlike most ambient, this one has a quiet but insistent groove in the background that makes it ideal for precisely what the title says. Don't even think about it, just get it!!!
Another outstanding album by Brian Eno, which might be nitpicked as four tracks, but is actually a single piece: Music For Airports, the very first, and still very best, ambient album ever.
On the other side of the spectrum, there's always Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music, probably the biggest "F*ck You!" ever recorded.
A sense of joy in life, the spirit of an explorer, the heart of a child, always ready to stand in awe.
However, there is strong reason for disillusionment among the current living generations. When growing up, we saw marvelous representations of climate-controlled, domed cities in harmony with nature, grand space stations rotating in Earth orbit, colonies on the Moon. We were told that we could very well be living in space with our children once we reached...the age we are now.
These and other wonderful visions, we were told, were not only within our grasp, but inevitable and imminent. Instead, what have we gotten? Ozone holes, global warming and the threat of nuclear winters. Bearing witness to the extinction of species on a mass scale. The decimation of rain forests, with plants that may hold untold secrets yet will never speak to us. More wars, same armies, new enemies.
In this sense, attitudes of cynicism and pessimism are a reflection of the profound failure by both our public and private institutions, which hold an overwhelming majority of society's resources, could channel these to create something positive, yet have shown again and again that they are only looking out for Number One, be it for personal gain of those in power or an overriding need to cling to some 'ism'.
Personally, I think sitting atop a million kilos of rocket fuel is the dumbest idea ever!
For your future reference, sir, what you are describing is better known as Spam In A Can.
Re:Exotic Projects Capturing the Public's Imaginat
on
ISS Construction Resumes
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Putting an American on the moon was not an incremental advance in technology but was a huge leap that faced a high risk of failure.
That's because of the approach that was chosen. If the US government had listened to Von Braun, there would have been a permanent space station in orbit since the sixties, a platform for ongoing moon missions by the seventies. We would be reaping the benefits of this today. Instead, they went for the most expensive, dangerous and least permanent route. Because JFK made the most ridiculous statement, not a man in the Moon in the next fifteen years, but an american by nine. But anyway, what the hell did anyone know back then? Caught in the grip of an ideological travesty known as the Cold War, throwing around buzzwords like evildoer, freedom...oh, wait.
NASA should go back to its adventurous roots by devoting 25% of its budget to exotic, high-risk projects. The remaining 75% would go to run-of-the-mill projects.
I second that motion. But first, NASA should again have a feasible operating budget.
There are some things that just should be done, and damn the cost.
In proyects such as the ISS, there are always inventions and advances that are not cost effective in the foreseeable future, but that benefit mankind tremendously in future generations.
To drag out a tired example, it's a modern Columbus.
FWIW, the King of Portugal invested in one fruitless expedition after another to circumnavigate Africa, but sailor's superstitions got in the way every time. I believe it was in the fourteenth attempt that the crew was caught up in a nasty storm and, after it had abated, discovered to their surprise that they were way south of Cape Bojador, according to legend, ends of the Earth. This was the turning point. Every single expedition after that progressed fearlessly further and further, bringing back paydirt each time. In the early XV Century, the King of Portugal set the stage for Columbus.
Here's another example: In medieval times, the alchemical process of creating lenses, perfecting the techniques of polishing them so that they would be as near perfect as possible. Meanwhile, all around, plagues and misery bedeviled society, which made lenses a pointless and costly exercise in trivial matters, according to the pundits of the age. Little did the pundits know that from this work, among other things, the microscope would come to being, the discovery of the source of diseases was only a matter of time.
For the majority, things always make much more sense in retrospect. For now, in the matter of the ISS, we need faith in the future fruits of peaceful labor on an epic scale. Yes, bureaucracy inflates expenses so that these things seem like pork barrel proyects. However, isn't the cost still a fraction of the money that goes down the black hole known as the Military Industry, which needs to invent wars in order to dispose of aging weaponry and keep the money-go-round in motion? For the time being, this is what we need to question, instead of peaceful endeavours of knowledge.
Oooh, Ibogaine. I've heard that nobody is even remotely interested in taking this baby recreationally. About how, when a member of the tribe takes Ibogaine, it is part of a long, elaborate and persistent ritual, to confine the individual within a certain mental space, since the effects of the drug can be highly erratic, therefore psychologically hazardous. The tribe member under the effects is administered Ibogaine several times, and is under constant supervision. Ibogaine is NOT a drug for casual use, but a tool to cure behavioral patterns and/or to explore shamanically. Dosification should only be done in a highly stable, tried-and-true environmental setting.
All in all, I think it's fantastic that substances like Ibogaine are being put to good use in the western world, and considering its' relative obscurity plus awesome, notorious reputation among the drug cognoscenti, it won't be abused and will remain under the radar, so we'll have it around for a long time, in case we need it.
In contrast, a marvelous substance like Ayahuasca is steadily gaining notoriety, it's only a matter of time before the Eye Of Sauron notices it and yet another front in the war on drugs is unleashed, as with Ecstasy a decade ago. (Yes, I know they're all Class I drugs anyway, catching unwanted attention is another matter).
Institutionalized drug hysteria is a disease goes to absurd extremes. Take John Roberts, the guy who was put on the Supreme Court by Bush, then made Chief Justice a month later, with not a day of experience yet. One of the cases the Supreme Court heard in its' first days concerned euthanasia, and while the technicalities were explained about how an opiate had to be administered to the individual, so that suffering during the death process would be minimized, Chief Justice Roberts interrupted to ask something along the lines of: "But is it acceptable to administer a controlled and addictive substance in this procedure?" The guy seemed to be concerned that result would be a corpse junkie! Roberts had to be gently taken aside by one of his fellow justices and told that in this particular type of case, the glorious War On Drugs was not the issue.
There's a pretty good movie from the seventies called The Seven Percent Solution, in which Sherlock Holmes teams up with Dr. Sigmund Freud to cure his cocaine addiction, all the while solving a murder case. Of course, cocaine was an over-the-counter drug at the turn of the century. Consider the name Coca-Cola, which originally contained coca leaf extract.
tompaulco, to quote Rudyard Kipling, you are a better man than I am. You are what in Auld English legend is known as 'best in men', a knight. Or in Cole Porter jazzy parlance, royalty. I am glad to share Slashdot with you.
Needless to say, I didn't last after a year of it and most of that time was spent off campus. Did a few rotten apples spoil the whole basket? It was a christian college, though, not conductive to intellectual development.
But from what you're saying, a majority of the students in this christian college were in agreement with you, it was a loud minority, an influential sect, but I think the term cult describes them much better. Like the Millenary Cult, which takes Revelations almost literally. I say almost because Revelations speaks about the fall of the Roman Empire, but this sect believes it's actually about Twenty First Century USA, never mind that a couple of decades ago, they believed it was about Twentieth Century USA.
Leave it to these people to put themselves in center stage by force and call the spotlight God. Generation after generation.
Since your arguments didn't work the first time, may I suggest tweaking them? Don't use scientific terms, use something closer to what they will relate to, making it more likely that they will respond instead of react. A few examples:
1. The Bible is ultimately written by the hand of man, but the glory of Nature (look up at the sky, dig the earth and find bones, peer through a microscope) is written by the hand of God itself. Why do you reject what God has written to you in fire, water and stone? Is this not lack of humillity before God? Are you not putting yourself and what you believe before what God is telling you through His creation? 2. Why would God test your faith with ALL the evidence of His creation? Do you really believe God is cruel, so that he would set traps of eternal damnation? What part of the Bible says this? If they switch tacts and answer "It's the work of Satan", you can answer back "Did Satan create the Universe, or did God?" We are meant to bask in God's glory, and to conquer nature, according to Genesis. 3. Most european christian churches acknowledge evolution. Charles Darwin's final resting place is Westminster Abbey, an honor reserved for the greatest of Protestants. The Vatican accepts evolution as fact. Do you know what european christian scholars say about the subject? May I suggest you search them out and read them? Be a global christian, as opposed to a provincial christian. 4. You embrace all the fruits of science's labor (television, electricity, telecommunications, space travel, medicine, etc). Why make an exception to one result of science's methods? Shouldn't you be consistent and either embrace or cast away all those things that make your life so much better? 5. If their minds close up and they attack you, throw point #4 in their faces: Take a stand, a full stand! Don't be wishy-washy, reject the full fruits of science, take your cue from the Amish, they have the right idea! You know what God will do to the lukewarm christians, don't you? He will vomit on them. With point #5, you are effectively daring them to become extinct in isolation, leaving all of us alone, and don't let the door slam your ass on the way out.
The United States of America was founded primarily by 2 groups of people: profiteers and the hard-core religious.
Let's coin a term, shall we? Religioneer: One who manipulates the faithful by jumping back and forth between Old and New Testaments as the need arises, shaping public opinion through demagoguery, for personal economic and/or political gain.
In this manner, we have a convergence in three broad strokes: 1) One who profits from religion, 2) betraying the spirit of the Bible and 3) exploiting the masses.
See also : Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Jimmy Swaggart, Ted Haggard, et al.
What is Leopard is stable on 10.5.1 and maybe hits 10.5.2...
Even as I'm hoping you're eventually proven correct, the continuing saga of OSX so far implies otherwise, it's always taken several updates to hone it down properly.
Before OSX, the story gets a bit convoluted. For example, while OS8 didn't officially go beyond 8.5 or 8.6, I can't remember which, OS9 was pretty much a straightforward continuation of OS8, the only added feature being the ability to run simulated on OSX, virtually useless for many of us back then, wary to install a radically different OS in our creaky 350 MhZ, 128MB RAM, 5GB HD jalopies. Furthermore, OS9 was a nasty affair in its' first couple of releases - no new features, stability shot to hell.
Also, take Apple hardware as an example, specifically, the flat screen iMac G5. When the first batch was released, there were two suppliers of power sources, and one had a tendency to overheat and combust while in Sleep Mode. Three months after purchase on average, first a nasty whiff of electrical fire and melted plastic, then fzzzzt! I was about to buy one in those days, but did extensive research on the Mac forums, and this problem was a main topic everywhere. Instead, I hung on to my extensively modded Blueberry iMac for a few more months. The second batch of iMacs addressed that problem, I made my move, and it's been relatively smooth sailing ever since.
However, the empirical lesson remains: never get the first batch that comes from Apple, hardware or software, not when it's that expensive, and not when for that price, their notorious customer support leaves something to be desired.
I found my way to the Slashdot main page and saw the title Did Humans Evolve? No, Says Americans, with 36 comments. Ten minutes later, I hit the 'refresh' button, and there were 368 comments. I betcha I wait another ten minutes, and it's gonna be up to 500 comments.
Haven't we covered this ground a million times before? Why does this subject still generate such a spontaneous flurry of heated opinion, basically posting the exact same arguments as in countless previous occasions?
Post about evolution on Slashdot, add water and stir, voilá, an instant war zone. Everybody's talking at the same time!
Hey, the faith-based once staunchly considered that the Earth not being at the center of the Universe a threat to their faith. Today, it's a universally accepted fact. - "But evolution is different!" - "Why?" - "Because I refuse to believe that I come from a monkey!" - "Yeah, and four hundred years ago, you would have refused to believe that you weren't at the center of God's Universe. How did that play out?"
However, european christians have less trouble accepting evolution as a fact. Something that I found very telling is that Darwin's final resting place is within the confines of Westminster Abbey. Also, even the Vatican is flexible on the subject of evolution in God's grand plan.
The current conflict began within the US, and has spread to the rest of the world in pockets here and there. It probably arises from the political enmity between fundamentalism and science created by the Scopes Monkey Trials. Which is to say, it's a propaganda war, childishly chosen by fire and brimstone demagogues with political cravings, and destined to lose in the long run, but in the short run, it creates soapbox issues and elevates reputations among the fearful and ignorant, biblically called 'the meek', to our dismay, a larger segment of the population we'd care to admit without hanging our heads in shame at the state of humanity in our day and age.
Wait til it's done. Then you don't have to fix what ain't broke.
My thoughts precisely. I can always understand people wanting to try out the latest of anything, but I'd always rather wait until the stabler versions come around. Rule of thumb: never go for the any version of 10.X.1, always wait for 10.X.5 at least. With Apple Support the way it is described in most OSX Forums (bad to worse), why put yourself in a position for potential grief for weeks on end? Furthermore, this is not taking into account that the GGGP post is talking about OSX as warez, with no warranties involved.
My wife is running her iBook with 10.3.9 flawlessly, she doesn't need Dashboard, I told her that she, ahem, don't have fix what ain't broke. I'm running Tiger on my iMac only because it came in the box, I'm up to 10.4.7, and have no intention of switching to Leopard until it's up to at least 10.5.7. By which time, Cheetah or Ocelot or whatever it's gonna be called, will already be floating around.
I wouldn't doubt it, in fact, I would hope so. Stevie J knows that the cutting edge moves in the outskirts, will never plunk down 300 bucks for the latest OSX, but is up for a challenge and will run it for the sheer fun (and status) of being in the first percentile of users. Much better to have this community on your side as the first wave of feedback. After all, this is where Stevie J comes from originally, so if he's behind it, glad to see he hasn't lost touch with his origins and acknowledges this extremely important demographic, albeit in an under-the-counter manner.
OSX Forums are gonna light up like christmas trees for the next several months, and you can bet Apple is gonna be watching.
The money aspect will take care of itself next year, when Leopard will sell like hotcakes among baby boomers, also status-conscious, but in a different way you understand, mostly interested in a spiffier (read: latest) façade with invisible plumbing. In other words, more features, ease of use with better syncing between iTunes, iPhoto, iWeb and iWhatnot, for their video iPod and their iBlog, baby picture slideshows with Fleetwood Mac and Abba as background music. This is the bread and butter of Apple, recognized as such a couple of years ago in MacWorld.
Face it: It's the perfect American "news" soap opera. And it also has the beauty of urgency: "Can she be found before she has the abortion?"
And now that you mention the Schiavo fiasco, let's not forget that not only will the media turn it into a soap opera, but fundamentalists will also turn it into a talking point. A few republican congressmen and all televangelists will be shocked, shocked I tell you, that this poor woman was able to find her damnation through the internet, only to realize much too late that what she did in a moment of desperation was a sin. My basic point is that personal situations like these will become fodder for populist demagogues, always a dangerous thing.
Farid-Kalil-Abdul-Al-Mohammed to the airport screener: "Let me tell you about my mother...", or if he makes it to the plane, to the dozing passenger next to him: "Psst, wake up, time to die".
Slashdot Mirror
Hi there, Becca! What's a nice girl like you doing in a place like this? Are you here to meet a nice man or will I do? Are you busy tonight at 3:00 A.M.? Wanna come back to my place and watch Sportscenter?
...and two filthy ones:
Do you mind if I end this sentence in a proposition?
Hey I'm no Fred Flinstone but I could sure make your bed-rock!
Can I borrow your phone number, I seem to have lost mine.
Would you like to try an Australian kiss? It is just like a French kiss, but down under.
You wanna come over to my house and play Battleship. I can show you my destroyer.
You be my Dairy Queen, I'll be your Burger King, you treat me right, and I'll do it your way!
The word for the night is legs. Let's go back to my place and spread the word.
Let's have breakfast together tomorrow; shall I call you or nudge you?
Is that Windex you're wearing? 'Cause I can see myself in your pants.
Something tells me you're sweet. Can I have a sample?
I'm feeling a little off today. Would you like to turn me on?
Nice shoes...wanna fuck/screw?
What fucks like a tiger and winks?
Yeah, it's a pity that Vicary actually falsified the results of his now-infamous theatre experiment.
Are you kidding? I, for one, am extremely glad that his original conclusions are wrong, that the human mind cannot be manipulated as easily as this quack posited. If Vicary's fudged results had been correct, and considering the capability of corporations and governments to misuse and abuse the resources at their disposal, we'd probably be living in a much more draconian world than we already are!
On a sidenote, I seem to remember reading about some Hollywood guy who wanted to integrate Vicary's theories in a horror film, flashing images of Bosch's hell, or Gustave Dore's engravings of Dante's Inferno, but decided against it, deeming it a reckless idea. It may have been either William Friedkin or William Peter Blatty (director and writer of The Exorcist, respectively), ten years after Vicary confessed.
I guess some ideas may be too compelling to be false.
The money it made was due to the Internet and very little else.
Exactly. This is the equivalent of, say, "Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill!" debuting at Number One back in its' day. Or "Frogs". One favorable thing about "Snakes On A Plane" (SOAP?!!) is that it's a B-movie through and through, but with A-movie values. The extreme example of this is "Independence Day".
Another thing is that a movie like SOAP was marketed towards internet geeks, as opposed to film geeks (like myself), who'd much rather spend 9 bucks to go see something like Michael Gondry's "The Science Of Sleep".
Finally, what the hell is this obsession with freakin' Opening Weekend Gross? Whatever happened to films with staying power?
Okay, having a conversation with myself, I'm about to answer my own question: Staying power is in DVD, where SOAP is assured eternal cult status, therefore staying power. This film will make truckloads of money.
Actually, Howard Dean would be president.
Dennis Kucinich.
If you like Thursday Afternoon, I cannot recommend highly enough The Necks' Sex, a piece of experimental ambient jazz that goes on for an hour. Unlike most ambient, this one has a quiet but insistent groove in the background that makes it ideal for precisely what the title says. Don't even think about it, just get it!!!
Another outstanding album by Brian Eno, which might be nitpicked as four tracks, but is actually a single piece: Music For Airports, the very first, and still very best, ambient album ever.
On the other side of the spectrum, there's always Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music, probably the biggest "F*ck You!" ever recorded.
Bravo, Sir!
A sense of joy in life, the spirit of an explorer, the heart of a child, always ready to stand in awe.
However, there is strong reason for disillusionment among the current living generations. When growing up, we saw marvelous representations of climate-controlled, domed cities in harmony with nature, grand space stations rotating in Earth orbit, colonies on the Moon. We were told that we could very well be living in space with our children once we reached...the age we are now.
These and other wonderful visions, we were told, were not only within our grasp, but inevitable and imminent. Instead, what have we gotten? Ozone holes, global warming and the threat of nuclear winters. Bearing witness to the extinction of species on a mass scale. The decimation of rain forests, with plants that may hold untold secrets yet will never speak to us. More wars, same armies, new enemies.
In this sense, attitudes of cynicism and pessimism are a reflection of the profound failure by both our public and private institutions, which hold an overwhelming majority of society's resources, could channel these to create something positive, yet have shown again and again that they are only looking out for Number One, be it for personal gain of those in power or an overriding need to cling to some 'ism'.
Personally, I think sitting atop a million kilos of rocket fuel is the dumbest idea ever!
For your future reference, sir, what you are describing is better known as Spam In A Can.
Putting an American on the moon was not an incremental advance in technology but was a huge leap that faced a high risk of failure.
That's because of the approach that was chosen. If the US government had listened to Von Braun, there would have been a permanent space station in orbit since the sixties, a platform for ongoing moon missions by the seventies. We would be reaping the benefits of this today.
Instead, they went for the most expensive, dangerous and least permanent route. Because JFK made the most ridiculous statement, not a man in the Moon in the next fifteen years, but an american by nine. But anyway, what the hell did anyone know back then? Caught in the grip of an ideological travesty known as the Cold War, throwing around buzzwords like evildoer, freedom...oh, wait.
NASA should go back to its adventurous roots by devoting 25% of its budget to exotic, high-risk projects. The remaining 75% would go to run-of-the-mill projects.
I second that motion. But first, NASA should again have a feasible operating budget.
There are some things that just should be done, and damn the cost.
In proyects such as the ISS, there are always inventions and advances that are not cost effective in the foreseeable future, but that benefit mankind tremendously in future generations.
To drag out a tired example, it's a modern Columbus.
FWIW, the King of Portugal invested in one fruitless expedition after another to circumnavigate Africa, but sailor's superstitions got in the way every time. I believe it was in the fourteenth attempt that the crew was caught up in a nasty storm and, after it had abated, discovered to their surprise that they were way south of Cape Bojador, according to legend, ends of the Earth. This was the turning point. Every single expedition after that progressed fearlessly further and further, bringing back paydirt each time. In the early XV Century, the King of Portugal set the stage for Columbus.
Here's another example: In medieval times, the alchemical process of creating lenses, perfecting the techniques of polishing them so that they would be as near perfect as possible. Meanwhile, all around, plagues and misery bedeviled society, which made lenses a pointless and costly exercise in trivial matters, according to the pundits of the age.
Little did the pundits know that from this work, among other things, the microscope would come to being, the discovery of the source of diseases was only a matter of time.
For the majority, things always make much more sense in retrospect. For now, in the matter of the ISS, we need faith in the future fruits of peaceful labor on an epic scale.
Yes, bureaucracy inflates expenses so that these things seem like pork barrel proyects. However, isn't the cost still a fraction of the money that goes down the black hole known as the Military Industry, which needs to invent wars in order to dispose of aging weaponry and keep the money-go-round in motion? For the time being, this is what we need to question, instead of peaceful endeavours of knowledge.
Oooh, Ibogaine. I've heard that nobody is even remotely interested in taking this baby recreationally. About how, when a member of the tribe takes Ibogaine, it is part of a long, elaborate and persistent ritual, to confine the individual within a certain mental space, since the effects of the drug can be highly erratic, therefore psychologically hazardous. The tribe member under the effects is administered Ibogaine several times, and is under constant supervision. Ibogaine is NOT a drug for casual use, but a tool to cure behavioral patterns and/or to explore shamanically. Dosification should only be done in a highly stable, tried-and-true environmental setting.
All in all, I think it's fantastic that substances like Ibogaine are being put to good use in the western world, and considering its' relative obscurity plus awesome, notorious reputation among the drug cognoscenti, it won't be abused and will remain under the radar, so we'll have it around for a long time, in case we need it.
In contrast, a marvelous substance like Ayahuasca is steadily gaining notoriety, it's only a matter of time before the Eye Of Sauron notices it and yet another front in the war on drugs is unleashed, as with Ecstasy a decade ago. (Yes, I know they're all Class I drugs anyway, catching unwanted attention is another matter).
Institutionalized drug hysteria is a disease goes to absurd extremes. Take John Roberts, the guy who was put on the Supreme Court by Bush, then made Chief Justice a month later, with not a day of experience yet.
One of the cases the Supreme Court heard in its' first days concerned euthanasia, and while the technicalities were explained about how an opiate had to be administered to the individual, so that suffering during the death process would be minimized, Chief Justice Roberts interrupted to ask something along the lines of: "But is it acceptable to administer a controlled and addictive substance in this procedure?" The guy seemed to be concerned that result would be a corpse junkie!
Roberts had to be gently taken aside by one of his fellow justices and told that in this particular type of case, the glorious War On Drugs was not the issue.
There's a pretty good movie from the seventies called The Seven Percent Solution, in which Sherlock Holmes teams up with Dr. Sigmund Freud to cure his cocaine addiction, all the while solving a murder case. Of course, cocaine was an over-the-counter drug at the turn of the century. Consider the name Coca-Cola, which originally contained coca leaf extract.
tompaulco, to quote Rudyard Kipling, you are a better man than I am. You are what in Auld English legend is known as 'best in men', a knight. Or in Cole Porter jazzy parlance, royalty. I am glad to share Slashdot with you.
Dang.
Needless to say, I didn't last after a year of it and most of that time was spent off campus.
Did a few rotten apples spoil the whole basket? It was a christian college, though, not conductive to intellectual development.
But from what you're saying, a majority of the students in this christian college were in agreement with you, it was a loud minority, an influential sect, but I think the term cult describes them much better. Like the Millenary Cult, which takes Revelations almost literally. I say almost because Revelations speaks about the fall of the Roman Empire, but this sect believes it's actually about Twenty First Century USA, never mind that a couple of decades ago, they believed it was about Twentieth Century USA.
Leave it to these people to put themselves in center stage by force and call the spotlight God. Generation after generation.
Since your arguments didn't work the first time, may I suggest tweaking them? Don't use scientific terms, use something closer to what they will relate to, making it more likely that they will respond instead of react. A few examples:
1. The Bible is ultimately written by the hand of man, but the glory of Nature (look up at the sky, dig the earth and find bones, peer through a microscope) is written by the hand of God itself. Why do you reject what God has written to you in fire, water and stone? Is this not lack of humillity before God? Are you not putting yourself and what you believe before what God is telling you through His creation?
2. Why would God test your faith with ALL the evidence of His creation? Do you really believe God is cruel, so that he would set traps of eternal damnation? What part of the Bible says this? If they switch tacts and answer "It's the work of Satan", you can answer back "Did Satan create the Universe, or did God?" We are meant to bask in God's glory, and to conquer nature, according to Genesis.
3. Most european christian churches acknowledge evolution. Charles Darwin's final resting place is Westminster Abbey, an honor reserved for the greatest of Protestants. The Vatican accepts evolution as fact. Do you know what european christian scholars say about the subject? May I suggest you search them out and read them? Be a global christian, as opposed to a provincial christian.
4. You embrace all the fruits of science's labor (television, electricity, telecommunications, space travel, medicine, etc). Why make an exception to one result of science's methods? Shouldn't you be consistent and either embrace or cast away all those things that make your life so much better?
5. If their minds close up and they attack you, throw point #4 in their faces: Take a stand, a full stand! Don't be wishy-washy, reject the full fruits of science, take your cue from the Amish, they have the right idea! You know what God will do to the lukewarm christians, don't you? He will vomit on them.
With point #5, you are effectively daring them to become extinct in isolation, leaving all of us alone, and don't let the door slam your ass on the way out.
I posed two questions for them, which I still ask
Aw man, it's so annoying when you tell half a story. Please finish it: How did the class respond to your two questions?
Or did you think we weren't paying attention?
The United States of America was founded primarily by 2 groups of people: profiteers and the hard-core religious.
Let's coin a term, shall we? Religioneer: One who manipulates the faithful by jumping back and forth between Old and New Testaments as the need arises, shaping public opinion through demagoguery, for personal economic and/or political gain.
In this manner, we have a convergence in three broad strokes:
1) One who profits from religion,
2) betraying the spirit of the Bible and
3) exploiting the masses.
See also : Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Jimmy Swaggart, Ted Haggard, et al.
What is Leopard is stable on 10.5.1 and maybe hits 10.5.2...
Even as I'm hoping you're eventually proven correct, the continuing saga of OSX so far implies otherwise, it's always taken several updates to hone it down properly.
Before OSX, the story gets a bit convoluted. For example, while OS8 didn't officially go beyond 8.5 or 8.6, I can't remember which, OS9 was pretty much a straightforward continuation of OS8, the only added feature being the ability to run simulated on OSX, virtually useless for many of us back then, wary to install a radically different OS in our creaky 350 MhZ, 128MB RAM, 5GB HD jalopies. Furthermore, OS9 was a nasty affair in its' first couple of releases - no new features, stability shot to hell.
Also, take Apple hardware as an example, specifically, the flat screen iMac G5. When the first batch was released, there were two suppliers of power sources, and one had a tendency to overheat and combust while in Sleep Mode. Three months after purchase on average, first a nasty whiff of electrical fire and melted plastic, then fzzzzt! I was about to buy one in those days, but did extensive research on the Mac forums, and this problem was a main topic everywhere. Instead, I hung on to my extensively modded Blueberry iMac for a few more months. The second batch of iMacs addressed that problem, I made my move, and it's been relatively smooth sailing ever since.
However, the empirical lesson remains: never get the first batch that comes from Apple, hardware or software, not when it's that expensive, and not when for that price, their notorious customer support leaves something to be desired.
Technically, you are correct, sir. Seldom is it asked. However, I'll take it one step sideways and ask: Is our children evolving?
I found my way to the Slashdot main page and saw the title Did Humans Evolve? No, Says Americans, with 36 comments. Ten minutes later, I hit the 'refresh' button, and there were 368 comments. I betcha I wait another ten minutes, and it's gonna be up to 500 comments.
Haven't we covered this ground a million times before? Why does this subject still generate such a spontaneous flurry of heated opinion, basically posting the exact same arguments as in countless previous occasions?
Post about evolution on Slashdot, add water and stir, voilá, an instant war zone. Everybody's talking at the same time!
Hey, the faith-based once staunchly considered that the Earth not being at the center of the Universe a threat to their faith. Today, it's a universally accepted fact.
- "But evolution is different!"
- "Why?"
- "Because I refuse to believe that I come from a monkey!"
- "Yeah, and four hundred years ago, you would have refused to believe that you weren't at the center of God's Universe. How did that play out?"
However, european christians have less trouble accepting evolution as a fact. Something that I found very telling is that Darwin's final resting place is within the confines of Westminster Abbey. Also, even the Vatican is flexible on the subject of evolution in God's grand plan.
The current conflict began within the US, and has spread to the rest of the world in pockets here and there. It probably arises from the political enmity between fundamentalism and science created by the Scopes Monkey Trials. Which is to say, it's a propaganda war, childishly chosen by fire and brimstone demagogues with political cravings, and destined to lose in the long run, but in the short run, it creates soapbox issues and elevates reputations among the fearful and ignorant, biblically called 'the meek', to our dismay, a larger segment of the population we'd care to admit without hanging our heads in shame at the state of humanity in our day and age.
Wait til it's done. Then you don't have to fix what ain't broke.
My thoughts precisely. I can always understand people wanting to try out the latest of anything, but I'd always rather wait until the stabler versions come around. Rule of thumb: never go for the any version of 10.X.1, always wait for 10.X.5 at least. With Apple Support the way it is described in most OSX Forums (bad to worse), why put yourself in a position for potential grief for weeks on end? Furthermore, this is not taking into account that the GGGP post is talking about OSX as warez, with no warranties involved.
My wife is running her iBook with 10.3.9 flawlessly, she doesn't need Dashboard, I told her that she, ahem, don't have fix what ain't broke. I'm running Tiger on my iMac only because it came in the box, I'm up to 10.4.7, and have no intention of switching to Leopard until it's up to at least 10.5.7. By which time, Cheetah or Ocelot or whatever it's gonna be called, will already be floating around.
Jobs probably leaked it himself.
I wouldn't doubt it, in fact, I would hope so. Stevie J knows that the cutting edge moves in the outskirts, will never plunk down 300 bucks for the latest OSX, but is up for a challenge and will run it for the sheer fun (and status) of being in the first percentile of users. Much better to have this community on your side as the first wave of feedback. After all, this is where Stevie J comes from originally, so if he's behind it, glad to see he hasn't lost touch with his origins and acknowledges this extremely important demographic, albeit in an under-the-counter manner.
OSX Forums are gonna light up like christmas trees for the next several months, and you can bet Apple is gonna be watching.
The money aspect will take care of itself next year, when Leopard will sell like hotcakes among baby boomers, also status-conscious, but in a different way you understand, mostly interested in a spiffier (read: latest) façade with invisible plumbing. In other words, more features, ease of use with better syncing between iTunes, iPhoto, iWeb and iWhatnot, for their video iPod and their iBlog, baby picture slideshows with Fleetwood Mac and Abba as background music. This is the bread and butter of Apple, recognized as such a couple of years ago in MacWorld.
sh*t p*ss c*nt f*ck c*cks*ck*r m*th*rf*ck*r and t*ts.
Face it: It's the perfect American "news" soap opera. And it also has the beauty of urgency: "Can she be found before she has the abortion?"
And now that you mention the Schiavo fiasco, let's not forget that not only will the media turn it into a soap opera, but fundamentalists will also turn it into a talking point. A few republican congressmen and all televangelists will be shocked, shocked I tell you, that this poor woman was able to find her damnation through the internet, only to realize much too late that what she did in a moment of desperation was a sin. My basic point is that personal situations like these will become fodder for populist demagogues, always a dangerous thing.
Bad taste alert!
Farid-Kalil-Abdul-Al-Mohammed to the airport screener: "Let me tell you about my mother...", or if he makes it to the plane, to the dozing passenger next to him: "Psst, wake up, time to die".