Why not discuss Hume, Locke, Kant, Heidegger, Plato, Aristotle.
Is discussing the history of philosophy and topical philosophy somehow contradictory? You may think that history of philosophy classes are a waste of time (and in many ways, I agree), but that does not mean that they shouldn't be taught. They are important for gaining a firm footing in the historical arguments/thoughts that philosophy has had to deal with. Also they let the non-phil majors fulfill their philosophy requirement without ruining a 'higher level' philosophy class with their ramblings (think a course on Shakespeare with a fellow who keeps claiming Shakespeare did not write all those plays....important but in the wrong setting).
Philosophy and Religion are irreparably conjoined at the hip. Yes, Nietzsche may have shed a tear over this but this doesn't negate the long history of the two intermingling.
I don't believe the issue is whether agents can emerge from "random processes" or whether they require intelligent design. I believe the issue is what that intelligent 'thing' is. The Creationists believe that 'thing' is their (emphasis is important) God. The scientists believe that 'thing' is nature itself.
If you are interested in this and want to read up on one of the essential works of this type of literature, then Aristotle's Metaphysics is in order. Aquinas' Summa contra gentiles is a nice piece that attempts to make Aristotle's God fit into the Christian mold.
The very basis of both science and philosophy is that the truth can be ascertained by evidence, reasoning, argument, etc.
No, the basis of philosophy is not that the truth can be ascertained by evidence, etc. You are talking about Empiricism, which is a relative new-comer to the philosophy scene. Empericism may very well be useful for philosophical matters, but that does not mean that philosophy's basis contains it.
Philosophy is not just the statement of non-provable ideologies
Redesign Is Seen for Next Craft, NASA Aides Say
August 2, 2005
By WILLIAM J. BROAD
For its next generation of space vehicles, NASA has decided to abandon the design principles that went into the aging space shuttle, agency officials and private experts say.
Instead, they say, the new vehicles will rearrange the shuttle's components into a safer, more powerful family of traditional rockets.
The plan would separate the jobs of hauling people and cargo into orbit and would put the payloads on top of the rockets - as far as possible from the dangers of firing engines and falling debris, which were responsible for the accidents that destroyed the shuttle Challenger in 1986 and the Columbia in 2003.
By making the rockets from shuttle parts, the new plan would draw on the shuttle's existing network of thousands of contractors and technologies, in theory speeding its completion and lowering its price.
"The existing components offer us huge cost advantages as opposed to starting from a clean sheet of paper," the new administrator of NASA, Michael D. Griffin, told reporters on Friday.
The plan, whose origins go back two and a half years, is emerging at a time when it may help deflect attention from the current troubles of the shuttle fleet.
The Discovery's astronauts are to make a spacewalk tomorrow to fix a potentially hazardous problem with cloth filler on its belly.
Future missions have been indefinitely suspended while NASA tries to solve the persistent shedding of foam from the external fuel tank at liftoff.
The plan for new vehicles is to be formally unveiled this month. Its outlines were gleaned from interviews and reviews of trade reports, Congressional testimony and official statements. Some details were reported on Sunday in The Orlando Sentinel.
On Friday, Dr. Griffin emphasized the plan's safety, telling reporters that the new generation of rockets would have their payloads up high to avoid the kinds of dangers that doomed the Columbia two and a half years ago and threatened the Discovery last week when insulating foam broke off its fuel tank shortly after liftoff.
"As long as we put the crew and the valuable cargo up above wherever the tanks are, we don't care what they shed," he said. "They can have dandruff all day long."
Congress would have to approve the initiative, and many questions remain. John E. Pike, the director of GlobalSecurity.org, a private Washington research group on military and space topics, said he wondered how NASA could remain within its budget while continuing to pay billions of dollars for the shuttle and building a new generation of rockets and capsules.
Alex Roland, a former historian of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration who now teaches at Duke University and is a frequent critic of the space program, said the plan had "the aroma of a quick and dirty solution to a big problem."
But supporters say it will let astronauts move expeditiously back into the business of exploration rather than endlessly circling the home planet, and do so fairly quickly.
"The shuttle is not a lemon," Scott J. Horowitz, an aerospace engineer and former astronaut who helped develop the new plan, said in an interview. "It's just too complicated. I know from flying it four times. It's an amazing engineering feat. But there's a better way."
Dr. Horowitz was one of a small group of astronauts, shaken by the Columbia disaster, who took it upon themselves in 2003 to come up with a safer approach to exploring space. Their effort, conceived while they were in Lufkin, Tex., helping search for shuttle wreckage, became part of the NASA program to design a successor to the shuttle fleet.
The three remaining shuttles are to be retired by 2010 under the Bush administration's plan for space exploration, which is intended to return humans to the Moon and eventually Mars.
The new vehicles would sidestep the foam threat alt
I was with you until the last part. That "If Dell did not suck, they would not have to be so defensive" reasoning, well...sucks. Just because you respond to someone making an accusation does not mean you're admitting that they are speaking the truth. Yes, it is more mature to not respond but as a business I don't think they would consider this an option. I agree that the laws need to be reformed so DellComputersSuck.com is not able to be sued by DellComputers, but that is another issue.
It is actually this train of thought to means Dell HAS to respond to this sort of thing. If you can make outrageous claims against something and have people believe the claims merely because you made the claim...well, then we are a sad lot indeed.
I hope you're not serious. They have these nifty little places called libraries. They used to house only books, but now they usually have public internet access as well. I guess your statement has some intuitive force, but you ought to think before you make such broad generalizations.
I do like many forms of jazz & R&B, which also are tied in with hiphop culture.
You're going to have to explain that one to me. If we were taking a purely historical perspective then no, Jazz or R&B owe absolutely nothing to Hip-Hop. Hip-Hop is the late-comer to the music scene in comparison to those other two types of genres. Now if you mean hip-hop is tied in with Jazz and R&B because their performers are mostly of color...well then you may be correct, but not politically so.
But in response to all those Slashdotters who think rap or hip-hop is not a form of music...I understand you project your judgments for the genre from your experiences in pop culture, but you are just wrong. You are wrong like non-geeks who think all geeks live with their parents and play D&D/DDR/etc all the time. It may be understandable why you have come to these thoughts about the entire genre of music, but it does not mean those thoughts have any justification. Are the members of the Roots not musicians? If you grant that, then do you mean people who do not make their own music are not musicians (and thus the sound they produce not music)? If not make, then maybe musicians ought to play their own instruments? Is not a turntable an instrument? What about a MPC? So if just speaking to a beat does not count, then does that mean rock lead singers are out and the music they produce?
I thought the point of music was to use the medium of sound to express yourself...
Simply making someone disappear doesn't send the kind of shock like seeing someone else's brutally mangled body and knowing that that could be you if you decide to screw around with the perpetrator.
Depends on if this was done by the actual, and extremely organized, Russian mafia or just some thugs. I have to say the thought that people who annoy an organization just disappearing is frightening. Gulags anyone? The more organized sort of Mafia's do not have to make a spectical to show people their power. It's only the up-and-coming groups that try to be extremely brutal. Once a group has control they want as little publicity as possible.
On the other hand, if this outfit is 'Invite Only', it is more like a club, a group... a (partly) criminal group!
How is this any different than phone providers and mail carriers which charge a fee? It is invite only, and you get your invitation when you have the relevant funds.
I've done pretty stupid things when I was drunk, even dangerous and irresponsible things, and the day after I was always completely wasted. Alcohol is definitely not healthy. It can induce aggression, irresponsible actions, and make you do things you'll regret later.
This is a matter of personal control I believe. You can drink alcohol and remain relatively in control of your actions. You need not get drunk every time you drink. How many times have you been aggressive, done irresponsible actions, or done things you'll later regret while sober? I doubt the answer is zero. Messing up is a symptom of life, not alcohol. Alcohol may allow you to disregard your inhibitions, but that needed "force" you to do anything that you don't want to do.
To be truthful, and entirely irrelevant, I've done stupid, dangerous, and irresponsible things while sober. I believe we all have. So what?
It was unnecessary to list multiple instances of legitimate reasons to have/use a handgun and then to compare that to "Commission of crime". Couldn't you have used "Commission of no crime" to "Commission of crime"? Or did you just want to make it seem like there are so many more legitimate uses than illegitimate uses?
What if you said in 1999 "Man, I really with X would die. You know...I may just hit him with my car" then several years later you do in fact hit X with your car, but the location where you hit him was inroute to a conference you were traveling to for your job (etc). Then does the speech reveal intent?
Adelphia (Northeastern North Carolina), 5. It seems that they've maxed out the current capacity of their systems/lines in the area but are indifferent about upgrading so, in my experience, there's been problems with connectivity (30m out here, 5h there), speeds (upload = horrible, download = tolerable only because DSL isn't exactly a viable option and there's no competition), and newsgroups (since they've outsourced their newsgroup service to Giganews you only get 5GB, come on...).
Slashdot Mirror
This requires me to link up with one of my favorite posts on Slashdot. Trust me, you'll chuckle. If not, then fire me.
Why not discuss Hume, Locke, Kant, Heidegger, Plato, Aristotle.
Is discussing the history of philosophy and topical philosophy somehow contradictory? You may think that history of philosophy classes are a waste of time (and in many ways, I agree), but that does not mean that they shouldn't be taught. They are important for gaining a firm footing in the historical arguments/thoughts that philosophy has had to deal with. Also they let the non-phil majors fulfill their philosophy requirement without ruining a 'higher level' philosophy class with their ramblings (think a course on Shakespeare with a fellow who keeps claiming Shakespeare did not write all those plays....important but in the wrong setting).
Philosophy and Religion are irreparably conjoined at the hip. Yes, Nietzsche may have shed a tear over this but this doesn't negate the long history of the two intermingling.
I don't believe the issue is whether agents can emerge from "random processes" or whether they require intelligent design. I believe the issue is what that intelligent 'thing' is. The Creationists believe that 'thing' is their (emphasis is important) God. The scientists believe that 'thing' is nature itself.
If you are interested in this and want to read up on one of the essential works of this type of literature, then Aristotle's Metaphysics is in order. Aquinas' Summa contra gentiles is a nice piece that attempts to make Aristotle's God fit into the Christian mold.
Not familiar with metaphysics now are we?
Intelligent Design is both an argument from evidence and falsifiable in principle.
How would one falsify Intelligent Design?
What would make you want to do such a thing?
Don't mod this up too high, I forgot the Post Anonymously button =/
Redesign Is Seen for Next Craft, NASA Aides Say
August 2, 2005
By WILLIAM J. BROAD
For its next generation of space vehicles, NASA has decided to abandon the design principles that went into the aging space shuttle, agency officials and private experts say.
Instead, they say, the new vehicles will rearrange the shuttle's components into a safer, more powerful family of traditional rockets.
The plan would separate the jobs of hauling people and cargo into orbit and would put the payloads on top of the rockets - as far as possible from the dangers of firing engines and falling debris, which were responsible for the accidents that destroyed the shuttle Challenger in 1986 and the Columbia in 2003.
By making the rockets from shuttle parts, the new plan would draw on the shuttle's existing network of thousands of contractors and technologies, in theory speeding its completion and lowering its price.
"The existing components offer us huge cost advantages as opposed to starting from a clean sheet of paper," the new administrator of NASA, Michael D. Griffin, told reporters on Friday.
The plan, whose origins go back two and a half years, is emerging at a time when it may help deflect attention from the current troubles of the shuttle fleet.
The Discovery's astronauts are to make a spacewalk tomorrow to fix a potentially hazardous problem with cloth filler on its belly.
Future missions have been indefinitely suspended while NASA tries to solve the persistent shedding of foam from the external fuel tank at liftoff.
The plan for new vehicles is to be formally unveiled this month. Its outlines were gleaned from interviews and reviews of trade reports, Congressional testimony and official statements. Some details were reported on Sunday in The Orlando Sentinel.
On Friday, Dr. Griffin emphasized the plan's safety, telling reporters that the new generation of rockets would have their payloads up high to avoid the kinds of dangers that doomed the Columbia two and a half years ago and threatened the Discovery last week when insulating foam broke off its fuel tank shortly after liftoff.
"As long as we put the crew and the valuable cargo up above wherever the tanks are, we don't care what they shed," he said. "They can have dandruff all day long."
Congress would have to approve the initiative, and many questions remain. John E. Pike, the director of GlobalSecurity.org, a private Washington research group on military and space topics, said he wondered how NASA could remain within its budget while continuing to pay billions of dollars for the shuttle and building a new generation of rockets and capsules.
Alex Roland, a former historian of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration who now teaches at Duke University and is a frequent critic of the space program, said the plan had "the aroma of a quick and dirty solution to a big problem."
But supporters say it will let astronauts move expeditiously back into the business of exploration rather than endlessly circling the home planet, and do so fairly quickly.
"The shuttle is not a lemon," Scott J. Horowitz, an aerospace engineer and former astronaut who helped develop the new plan, said in an interview. "It's just too complicated. I know from flying it four times. It's an amazing engineering feat. But there's a better way."
Dr. Horowitz was one of a small group of astronauts, shaken by the Columbia disaster, who took it upon themselves in 2003 to come up with a safer approach to exploring space. Their effort, conceived while they were in Lufkin, Tex., helping search for shuttle wreckage, became part of the NASA program to design a successor to the shuttle fleet.
The three remaining shuttles are to be retired by 2010 under the Bush administration's plan for space exploration, which is intended to return humans to the Moon and eventually Mars.
The new vehicles would sidestep the foam threat alt
Yes, and isn't everything fine and dandy with that war?
My apologies. I simply assumed that the website was like BestBuySucks, not another vendor trying to be cute. Thanks for the clarification.
I was with you until the last part. That "If Dell did not suck, they would not have to be so defensive" reasoning, well...sucks. Just because you respond to someone making an accusation does not mean you're admitting that they are speaking the truth. Yes, it is more mature to not respond but as a business I don't think they would consider this an option. I agree that the laws need to be reformed so DellComputersSuck.com is not able to be sued by DellComputers, but that is another issue.
It is actually this train of thought to means Dell HAS to respond to this sort of thing. If you can make outrageous claims against something and have people believe the claims merely because you made the claim...well, then we are a sad lot indeed.
You're going to have to explain that one to me. If we were taking a purely historical perspective then no, Jazz or R&B owe absolutely nothing to Hip-Hop. Hip-Hop is the late-comer to the music scene in comparison to those other two types of genres. Now if you mean hip-hop is tied in with Jazz and R&B because their performers are mostly of color...well then you may be correct, but not politically so.
But in response to all those Slashdotters who think rap or hip-hop is not a form of music...I understand you project your judgments for the genre from your experiences in pop culture, but you are just wrong. You are wrong like non-geeks who think all geeks live with their parents and play D&D/DDR/etc all the time. It may be understandable why you have come to these thoughts about the entire genre of music, but it does not mean those thoughts have any justification. Are the members of the Roots not musicians? If you grant that, then do you mean people who do not make their own music are not musicians (and thus the sound they produce not music)? If not make, then maybe musicians ought to play their own instruments? Is not a turntable an instrument? What about a MPC? So if just speaking to a beat does not count, then does that mean rock lead singers are out and the music they produce?
I thought the point of music was to use the medium of sound to express yourself...
And the most high babelfish translator says: "All its bases are belonging we!" ;)
To be truthful, and entirely irrelevant, I've done stupid, dangerous, and irresponsible things while sober. I believe we all have. So what?
It was unnecessary to list multiple instances of legitimate reasons to have/use a handgun and then to compare that to "Commission of crime". Couldn't you have used "Commission of no crime" to "Commission of crime"? Or did you just want to make it seem like there are so many more legitimate uses than illegitimate uses?
They need to unfreeze Disney
You'd think Slashdot would be free of such urban legends, but then again it is Slashdot. Snopes to the Rescue!
Basically they are flag words for a bad argument (or a faulty one). If you need to point out the obvious, then it isn't very obvious, now is it...
What if you said in 1999 "Man, I really with X would die. You know...I may just hit him with my car" then several years later you do in fact hit X with your car, but the location where you hit him was inroute to a conference you were traveling to for your job (etc). Then does the speech reveal intent?
Why do you hate America?
Adelphia (Northeastern North Carolina), 5. It seems that they've maxed out the current capacity of their systems/lines in the area but are indifferent about upgrading so, in my experience, there's been problems with connectivity (30m out here, 5h there), speeds (upload = horrible, download = tolerable only because DSL isn't exactly a viable option and there's no competition), and newsgroups (since they've outsourced their newsgroup service to Giganews you only get 5GB, come on...).