Right now the consensus conclusion is that life on our planet has evolved to its current state via mutation and natural selection. There's no belief there.
Very strange, but I believe what you are saying here is that evolution is a proven fact, and therefore biologists are not under some kind of "blind faith". However, you must admit that there is some contention between the idea that life is "designed" (whether by accident, by "Nature", or by some supernatural creator) and that life "evolved". A scientist looks for different things based on what they believe. And it isn't "faith" in gentic mutation, natural selection, etc. that I am talking about. It's the idea that life was not engineered, therefore assume life is faulty and ill-designed, or that life was engineered, therefore assume that life is well-designed. Then question within that framework.
Now you seem idealistic about scientists, but to form an experiment the hypothesis has to come from somewhere. You need a framework to start with or you have no idea where to go next.
The logic you are applying here is that since we don't thoroughly understand it, it favors intelligent design.
The logic isn't even on that level. ID assumes a supernatural creator, and is not attempting to prove one exists, or did any particular thing. Just as evolution assumes things evolved and is not interested with proving that things did, just how. The difference is the difference in asking "how has this evolved?", vs. "how was this designed?". Both are perfectly valid scientific questions. The philosophical questions of "Is there a creator?" or "Did life begin through natural processes?" are answered by the individual scientist long before the research begins. Before a study in evolution can begin, the person studying it must first believe in Materialism. Before a study in ID can begin, the person studying it must first believe in a (possibly supernatural) Creator.
I have yet to see any evidence of any basic scientific rigor that anything, be it vestigal organs, or junk dna, can only be explained through concious design.
That statment shows you have assumed Materialism, and are not interested in the science of something, but some underlying philosophical question answered (or disproved). Scientists believed in the past that "vestigal" organs and "junk" DNA were remnants of evolution. Now that these have been shown to not be vestigal or junk, the science moves on, but the philosophical framework behind the science does not. Evolution may be the best explanation for life from a Materialist foundation, but there can be no proof of Materialism itself. It's philosophical.
That's why these debates rage on. It isn't about whether bacteria can over generations develop an immunity to an antibiotic. It's about underlying philosophical frameworks in Biology. And believing in a creator is not the end of discovery or questioning in science. Whether you discover that the planets orbit the sun because the solar system must be governed by natural physical laws, or because God would have made an elegant system that didn't require epicircles in the end doesn't matter. You've made the discovery.
Your statement "I cannot prove or disprove the existence or nonexistence of this entity at this time" is muddled by the last statement "If you don't know, don't claim that you do." The first is stating "That cannot be known", the latter is stating "you don't know". The result is a confusion of the two, which is common in agnosticism.
but the core foundation of ID seems to be "irreducible complexity."
No, the core of ID is that life is engineered, and well. The proof (or at least an argument in favor) of this engineering is "irreducible complexity". If a scientist believes that evolution is responsible for all life, then the search will be for "missing links", common ancestors, "vestigal" organs, etc. However, if the scientist believes that life is designed, then the organs will be studied for their purpose rather than written off as "vestigal". Processes will be studied for their differences than their similarities, and such.
ID, on the other hand, jumps to the conclusion of a supernatural creator.
The problem is you are either studying life under the belief that it evolved or that it was designed. The recent discoveries about "junk" DNA and "vestigal" organs show that what we had thought were artifacts of evolution are important to the function of the modern organism. Now you can propose a "smarter" evolution if you want, that includes no side-effects, transitions, or left-over garbage, or you can look to a new model to fit biology beneath, like ID.
Of course, throughout history, we've seen this story repeat time and time again. We find something we don't understand, somebody attributes it to the divine intervention, then we figure it out.
Like how many scientists attributed their discoveries to the belief that God would not make something so convoluted. Intelligent Design in a way proposes a new line of discovery. Evolution always looks for commonality and possible effects of mutation and such. ID would look for boudaries in DNA making one species *not* turn into another. Maybe there would be a set of species that fall within the boundaries and others outside. Maybe ID could be a better foundation of thought for complex biology, where instead of looking for common links, looking for the reason behind a complex structure. If you assume that something was designed, you look at different things than if you assume something evolved.
The real test of ID vs. Evolution is whether future biological discoveries fall more in line with life being an incredible engineering feat that stretches chemistry and physics to the max, or a clumsy thrown-together mishmash that barely works and has many non-working or leftover parts.
A couple points on the ID side are: "vestigal" organs are now being discovered to actually be important, and "junk" DNA seems to actually do something. This is not to say that evolution isn't important, and probably will have a place in biology even if something else supplants it, but ID does offer a valid alternative principle to the evolutionary framework.
Or to put it in other words: If you don't know, don't claim that you do.
I think you're confusing the more humble "I don't know" with the more direct statement of "That cannot be known." In such a case as God, many agnostics believe the believers are nutcases because such agnostics believe that the existence of God cannot be known. Many of these same people state that agnosticism is the more humble belief of "I don't know". This is misleading and serves to distort discussion on the subject.
The HD-DVD one worked this way, but the Blu-Ray disc has a full 2-layer DVD underneath.
JVC's prototype goes one step further than the Toshiba/Memory Tech product by incorporating a triple-layer structure. Topmost is the 25GB BD layer, under which sits the usual dual-layer DVD structure providing 8.5GB of storage capacity. The Toshiba/Memory Tech disc provides a single DVD layer, enough for 4.7GB worth of video and audio data.
from here
Also, people don't seem to understand that the industry switching to a new format earlier is *better* for the people who are staying back at DVD and not upgrading for a few years. Why? Remember, Blu-Ray and HD-DVD discs are the same size as DVDs and have the capability of having a DVD layer embedded on them to be compatible with current DVDs. The average consumer's situation will be to buy standard multi-format Blu-Ray/DVDs for a couple of years before upgrading their television and DVD player and suddenly find that all those movies they bought look *better* on their new system.
The reason why I think movie studios will make the multi-format discs are that it's cheaper to make one format in bulk and sell to everyone than have two misleadingly similar formats given to the public. It's much better for inventory and moving your movie if you can sell them one item and it works in your plain DVD player, and your brand new Blu-Ray player seamlessly. Of course, old shows selling for $2 at Wal-Mart won't have this, but I don't think anyone would expect much quality from that anyway.
People are just forgetting that backwards compatibility is possible here, where it wasn't for the VHS->DVD transition.
Unless the EU and India don't cripple their industries with regulations, they will never be world powers. The reason why China is rising is not just economics, it's regulation as well. But if business gets their way too much, then they could look like Japan.
And most of them have no idea that time moves faster in some places and slower in others based on gravity. Not to mention time dialation at high speeds. They have some idea of a static universe where time marches constantly everywhere at the same speed as Earth. Imagine trying to explain special relativity to a tribe wandering in the desert in 4,000BC. The creation story could be more accurate than we could possibly understand now, but simple enough to be (mis?)understood so long ago.
Social promotion is a problem, and it is both exhibited by schools promoting students, and teachers unions promoting teachers. Teachers Unions aren't the cause of student social promotion, they just run a parallel track.
What's coming across very clearly in your post is some animosity towards unions in general.
What I'm really bothered by are public employee unions. I recognize that unions have been good for U.S. workers, and that besides killing off a few U.S. industries (with the help of extremely lenient trade practices to countries we shouldn't be dealing with economically in the first place), unions have been good for workers. This is especially true in the old "company town" situations. However, public employees unions are essentially using their political leverage to get themselves more money. They are a political group that should be regulated as such, but are not. They are able to take money essentially by racketeering and use it to influence elections and elected officials.
All other groups who place political ads have to do so by getting specific donations to an outright political group like a PAC. Unions get to skirt by that rule. That's what I'm against. Also, there aren't any "non-union" public schools. At least not here in California. So much for not paying dues.
Obvously the religious fundamentalists do have significant influence on schools as indicated by the number of states like Kansas that adopted Intelligent Design, or stickers questioning the validity of evolution.
How many other states than Kansas are teaching intelligent design? Can you name one? In fact, I don't think Kansas is teaching it, they are in court debating whether they can. That's it.
And if you think the students will pay attention to some sticker with a long-winded message inside a textbook, I doubt you remember much about highschool. I don't think anyone really paid attention to the one demanding we never write in our textbooks when I was in highschool.
If a teacher talks up Christianity too much in a public school classroom, the teacher will be reprimanded or possibly fired for doing so. I don't think religious fundamentalists are what science has to worry about in pubic schooling.
Who is pushing the Intelligent Design debate? Atheists?
Hint: Where is intelligent design being taught? Nowhere. It's debated about maybe being taught in a courtroom in Kansas. It probably won't make it out of there. U.S. schools are failing *now*, U.S. science and technology lead is lagging *now*. Right now, Christianity is essentially barred from all public schools, evolution is being taught in biology classrooms as fact, and essentially no public school teacher is telling students not to do stem cell research.
In fact, the only thing truly discouraging kids from pursuing science and math, is their introduction to it in public schools. For the most part, it's the abysmal teaching from unionized teachers that is to blame.
Is everyone who rejects the religious right's tactics and viewpoints 'not religious'?
I guess you've never heard of the Unitarians.
Oh please. Unitarians are essentially secularists who gather once a week. Can you tell me one doctrine of Unitarianism? I can't, and I attended a Unitarian church for a year.
I don't think this is the root problem. I think the root problem is teachers unions. If we truly rewarded excellent teachers in public schools, I think taxpayers would be more willing to fully fund public education. If you switch parents for teachers' unions in your problems list, then it would read the same. Teachers unions do "social promotion", and in fact care about little else from what I see. Even an extension from 2 to 5 years to a tenure position is being fought tooth and nail in an all out television and radio ad campaign in California. The teachers unions don't care about if a teacher is failing. They want them to keep their job, and have pay raises early and often for even the worst teachers.
One of the problems is how one can evaluate how well a teacher can teach. The students probably know, but wouldn't be trusted to give an honest opinion. Principals don't spend much time in classrooms. Parents don't either. The ideal would be to have a good Principal to be able to select and trade teachers across districts, hiring new to replace the worst performers, and offering more money to proven good teachers. The problem would be getting rid of teachers union limits, and tenure in order to make that possible.
Vouchers would essentially provide this, and the group most against vouchers are the teachers unions, who have the democrat party in their pocket. And the unions are able to sway votes by using union dues to make misleading advertisements and fund democrat campaigns. All laws promoted to limit union sponsorship of political campaigns with dues they have essentially extorted from their members have failed because they already have so much power.
Act III: iTunes. You know, we have distributed over 200 million copes of iTunes now in the world, and those are only the copies we know about. iTunes in the US has an 84 percent market share for all legally downloaded music. We released iTunes 5 just five weeks ago, but a lot has changed. And so today we're introducing iTunes 6. We've been busy!
1. (1) Gifting. This has been the most requested feature. You can gift (i.e. buy) iTunes songs for someone else by song, album, or playlist.
2. Customer reviews.
3. Just for You. Personalized recommendations. We're going to be recommending albums and singles based on what you've bought before. It's going to be a beta, we'd like your feedback on it.
4. Video. If we're going to be able to play video on the iPod we're going to need away to buy video. Starting today we have 2,000 music videos for sale.[Shows Madonna catalogue]
What do they cost? $1.99 each. But we didn't stop there; we're adding some other videos you can buy. Pixar is putting up six of their award-winning short videos. $1.99 each. We are downloading videos 320 x 240, which is the native resolution of the iPod. They're about the size of six songs. All songs are governed by FairPlay. You can play them on up to five computers. They're not rentals. You own them -- they never time out. [Demo of gifting, customer reviews, Just for You, and videos including "Vogue," a U2 live exclusive. Demo of watching U2 video using Front Row on an iMac, playing photos and videos from an iPod on a big screen]
One more thing...
We have one more thing today, a pretty big thing. We're announcing one more thing that you can buy off the iTunes store today, and that is TV shows. What's the number one show on TV? What's the second? Lost. And who has these shows? ABC. And who owns ABC? [Disney logo on screen.] I know those guys!
Lost, Desperate Housewives, Night Stalker, That's So Raven, The Suite Life.
Yes, you can buy current episodes, and you can buy them the day after they are broadcast. They're ad free so you don't need to fast forward through the commercials, 320 x 240 again. An hour show is about the size of five albums. Depending on your speed it's about 10-20 minute to download an episode. What are they going to cost? $1.99 an episode for current season and past seasons. We have free previews on every episode.
Act I: The iMac G5. We sold over a million of them in its first year. What better place to put the computer than right behind the display? Today we're introducing and all new iMac. [It looks extremely similar] Three great new features.
(1) It's even thinner. The 20-inch is now thinner than the 17 used to be.
(2) iSight videocam. The new mac has an iSight built in. The camera has even better specs. Right out of the box videoconferencing without any extra stuff. We wrote a new app called PhotoBooth. [Demo: It has a built in flash - the entire display flashes. There are special effects including "Warhol" and effects that morph your face goofily.]
(3) Front Row. It s a new way to experience the media on your computer. It's an incredible way to enjoy your music, your videos, and your photos... from your sofa. We've done a remote control, Apple style. It's got six buttons. [Demo: He presses remote and a menu for Music / Photo / DVD / Video zooms in. There's a giant iPod-style interface for music. "I can enjoy my music from across the room and see the artwork."
Photos navigates through everything in iPhoto with slide show effects for albums.
"Now, a lot of people watch DVDs in their iMac, and it would be nice to control them from across the room. Now you can." [Loads DVD of The Incredibles with menu that blurs out the typically unusable menu on the DVD with an iPod-style menu. Movie posters and trailers in HD format streamed from apple.com] This remote control, I just wanted to point something that to me captures what Apple is all about. [Shot of huge button-congested remotes next to the tiny 6-button Apple remote]
Act II: The iPod. We announced yesterday that we had shipped almost 30 million iPods. Our market share, 75% of all MP3 players shipping. Five weeks ago we introduced the iPod nano. And you know what? We shipped over a million iPod nanos in the first 17 days, and we could not meet demand. But what about the white iPod? It's been a huge success for us. And therefore, we're going to replace it. The new white iPod. And yes, it does video.
Specs: Same width and height as current model, but thinner. QVGA (324 x 240) pixel 260,000 color 2.5-inch display. h.264 and MPEG-4 at 30 fps. TV out. 30GB and 60GB models. Same width and height. 30GB is 31% thinner than the curent 20GB model [Making it 0.44-inches thick--say wha?]. 60G is 12% thinner than 20GB. 30G up to 75 hours of video, $299. 60G up to 150 hours video, $399. Shipping in one week.
And, by popular demand, we make it in black. They also come with a nice carrying case, to keep 'em all perfect. [Thin plastic sleeve--aw shucks]
[AD: U2 performing live. Oh wait... it's on an iPod! New silhouette ad with Eminem -- it's not silhouette but a limited color palette. Steve likes the ads so much he runs each one twice. ]
The new iPod will be 30% thinner than the current 20GB iPod (making it 0.44-inches thick--say wha?), and will feature a 60GB version (which should be thinner than the current 0.63-inch thick 20GB iPod), and editions of both in black.
What's the device named, you ask? The iPod. That's it, just The iPod. Well spare you the Prince jokes. The iPod will have TV out.
Stevie has iTunes 6.0 up there--only about a month after introducing iTunes 5.0.
iTunes 6.0 will also feature video and the iTunes Music Store will feature Fairplay DRMed video downloads (big surprise, right?).
At launch over 2,000 music videos will be made available at a cost of $1.99 apiece. You can download iTunes 6.0 starting today.
Oh, and one more thing...
It's not only music videos you can buy. No, Apple's set up to allow you to purchase TV shows for $1.99 apiece. Get Desperate Housewives or four other ABC shows premiering on iTunes at two bucks an ep. Videos are native QVGA resolution.
Just to back up housing value info with some data this shows the most significant decrease in housing in California was 11.67% over five years. The most significant increase was in 1977 which was an increase of 28.1% in one year. Even after the increase though, a house cost $250k in inflation adjusted dollars, which is far short of the $450k median seen today in California.
There are different aspects here though. One is the usage of so many houses as short term investments. I've heard 3/4ths of new housing developments bought up by investors hoping for a quick 20% payoff. The second is the usage of new loan types, such as 40-year, and interest only loans. In California, interest only loans for housing has reached 30%. Adding to that, only 14% of households can afford a median priced home this year, which is the lowest since records started being taken. Since california housing is overvalued by 45% the correction could take prices down by that much.
When did this happen in the past? How long did it take? When do you see this happening in the future? I think maybe 2009, when the first round of interest-only loans start needing the principle paid off. But I don't know what kind of process this could take. Part of me thinks that the housing market will just stagnate until inflation brings the prices down to ordinary levels. Your scenario sounds similar, but from what I hear, there is a lot of foreign investment in U.S. real estate as well. The same people who got rich selling goods to the U.S. are investing in its real estate market, and so they would be in trouble as well. I'm having a hard time seeing what will happen, besides massive foreclosures and a housing drop like nothing else.
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Show life that has a bad enough design and you can get rid of the "intelligent" part.
Right now the consensus conclusion is that life on our planet has evolved to its current state via mutation and natural selection. There's no belief there.
Very strange, but I believe what you are saying here is that evolution is a proven fact, and therefore biologists are not under some kind of "blind faith". However, you must admit that there is some contention between the idea that life is "designed" (whether by accident, by "Nature", or by some supernatural creator) and that life "evolved". A scientist looks for different things based on what they believe. And it isn't "faith" in gentic mutation, natural selection, etc. that I am talking about. It's the idea that life was not engineered, therefore assume life is faulty and ill-designed, or that life was engineered, therefore assume that life is well-designed. Then question within that framework.
Now you seem idealistic about scientists, but to form an experiment the hypothesis has to come from somewhere. You need a framework to start with or you have no idea where to go next.
The logic you are applying here is that since we don't thoroughly understand it, it favors intelligent design.
The logic isn't even on that level. ID assumes a supernatural creator, and is not attempting to prove one exists, or did any particular thing. Just as evolution assumes things evolved and is not interested with proving that things did, just how. The difference is the difference in asking "how has this evolved?", vs. "how was this designed?". Both are perfectly valid scientific questions. The philosophical questions of "Is there a creator?" or "Did life begin through natural processes?" are answered by the individual scientist long before the research begins. Before a study in evolution can begin, the person studying it must first believe in Materialism. Before a study in ID can begin, the person studying it must first believe in a (possibly supernatural) Creator.
I have yet to see any evidence of any basic scientific rigor that anything, be it vestigal organs, or junk dna, can only be explained through concious design.
That statment shows you have assumed Materialism, and are not interested in the science of something, but some underlying philosophical question answered (or disproved). Scientists believed in the past that "vestigal" organs and "junk" DNA were remnants of evolution. Now that these have been shown to not be vestigal or junk, the science moves on, but the philosophical framework behind the science does not. Evolution may be the best explanation for life from a Materialist foundation, but there can be no proof of Materialism itself. It's philosophical.
That's why these debates rage on. It isn't about whether bacteria can over generations develop an immunity to an antibiotic. It's about underlying philosophical frameworks in Biology. And believing in a creator is not the end of discovery or questioning in science. Whether you discover that the planets orbit the sun because the solar system must be governed by natural physical laws, or because God would have made an elegant system that didn't require epicircles in the end doesn't matter. You've made the discovery.
Your statement "I cannot prove or disprove the existence or nonexistence of this entity at this time" is muddled by the last statement "If you don't know, don't claim that you do." The first is stating "That cannot be known", the latter is stating "you don't know". The result is a confusion of the two, which is common in agnosticism.
but the core foundation of ID seems to be "irreducible complexity."
No, the core of ID is that life is engineered, and well. The proof (or at least an argument in favor) of this engineering is "irreducible complexity". If a scientist believes that evolution is responsible for all life, then the search will be for "missing links", common ancestors, "vestigal" organs, etc. However, if the scientist believes that life is designed, then the organs will be studied for their purpose rather than written off as "vestigal". Processes will be studied for their differences than their similarities, and such.
ID, on the other hand, jumps to the conclusion of a supernatural creator.
The problem is you are either studying life under the belief that it evolved or that it was designed. The recent discoveries about "junk" DNA and "vestigal" organs show that what we had thought were artifacts of evolution are important to the function of the modern organism. Now you can propose a "smarter" evolution if you want, that includes no side-effects, transitions, or left-over garbage, or you can look to a new model to fit biology beneath, like ID.
Of course, throughout history, we've seen this story repeat time and time again. We find something we don't understand, somebody attributes it to the divine intervention, then we figure it out.
Like how many scientists attributed their discoveries to the belief that God would not make something so convoluted. Intelligent Design in a way proposes a new line of discovery. Evolution always looks for commonality and possible effects of mutation and such. ID would look for boudaries in DNA making one species *not* turn into another. Maybe there would be a set of species that fall within the boundaries and others outside. Maybe ID could be a better foundation of thought for complex biology, where instead of looking for common links, looking for the reason behind a complex structure. If you assume that something was designed, you look at different things than if you assume something evolved.
The real test of ID vs. Evolution is whether future biological discoveries fall more in line with life being an incredible engineering feat that stretches chemistry and physics to the max, or a clumsy thrown-together mishmash that barely works and has many non-working or leftover parts.
A couple points on the ID side are: "vestigal" organs are now being discovered to actually be important, and "junk" DNA seems to actually do something. This is not to say that evolution isn't important, and probably will have a place in biology even if something else supplants it, but ID does offer a valid alternative principle to the evolutionary framework.
Or to put it in other words: If you don't know, don't claim that you do.
I think you're confusing the more humble "I don't know" with the more direct statement of "That cannot be known." In such a case as God, many agnostics believe the believers are nutcases because such agnostics believe that the existence of God cannot be known. Many of these same people state that agnosticism is the more humble belief of "I don't know". This is misleading and serves to distort discussion on the subject.
They just can't make up their minds.
look carefully after the link to avoid registration.
Great, now do that for a compiled language and you can catch up to Apple.
The HD-DVD one worked this way, but the Blu-Ray disc has a full 2-layer DVD underneath.
JVC's prototype goes one step further than the Toshiba/Memory Tech product by incorporating a triple-layer structure. Topmost is the 25GB BD layer, under which sits the usual dual-layer DVD structure providing 8.5GB of storage capacity. The Toshiba/Memory Tech disc provides a single DVD layer, enough for 4.7GB worth of video and audio data.
from here
Also, people don't seem to understand that the industry switching to a new format earlier is *better* for the people who are staying back at DVD and not upgrading for a few years. Why? Remember, Blu-Ray and HD-DVD discs are the same size as DVDs and have the capability of having a DVD layer embedded on them to be compatible with current DVDs. The average consumer's situation will be to buy standard multi-format Blu-Ray/DVDs for a couple of years before upgrading their television and DVD player and suddenly find that all those movies they bought look *better* on their new system.
The reason why I think movie studios will make the multi-format discs are that it's cheaper to make one format in bulk and sell to everyone than have two misleadingly similar formats given to the public. It's much better for inventory and moving your movie if you can sell them one item and it works in your plain DVD player, and your brand new Blu-Ray player seamlessly. Of course, old shows selling for $2 at Wal-Mart won't have this, but I don't think anyone would expect much quality from that anyway.
People are just forgetting that backwards compatibility is possible here, where it wasn't for the VHS->DVD transition.
Actually, what I'd be more interested in is if you could burn several of your downloaded shows to DVD with iTunes. Maybe in the future.
Unless the EU and India don't cripple their industries with regulations, they will never be world powers. The reason why China is rising is not just economics, it's regulation as well. But if business gets their way too much, then they could look like Japan.
And most of them have no idea that time moves faster in some places and slower in others based on gravity. Not to mention time dialation at high speeds. They have some idea of a static universe where time marches constantly everywhere at the same speed as Earth. Imagine trying to explain special relativity to a tribe wandering in the desert in 4,000BC. The creation story could be more accurate than we could possibly understand now, but simple enough to be (mis?)understood so long ago.
Social promotion is a problem, and it is both exhibited by schools promoting students, and teachers unions promoting teachers. Teachers Unions aren't the cause of student social promotion, they just run a parallel track.
What's coming across very clearly in your post is some animosity towards unions in general.
What I'm really bothered by are public employee unions. I recognize that unions have been good for U.S. workers, and that besides killing off a few U.S. industries (with the help of extremely lenient trade practices to countries we shouldn't be dealing with economically in the first place), unions have been good for workers. This is especially true in the old "company town" situations. However, public employees unions are essentially using their political leverage to get themselves more money. They are a political group that should be regulated as such, but are not. They are able to take money essentially by racketeering and use it to influence elections and elected officials.
All other groups who place political ads have to do so by getting specific donations to an outright political group like a PAC. Unions get to skirt by that rule. That's what I'm against. Also, there aren't any "non-union" public schools. At least not here in California. So much for not paying dues.
Obvously the religious fundamentalists do have significant influence on schools as indicated by the number of states like Kansas that adopted Intelligent Design, or stickers questioning the validity of evolution.
How many other states than Kansas are teaching intelligent design? Can you name one? In fact, I don't think Kansas is teaching it, they are in court debating whether they can. That's it.
And if you think the students will pay attention to some sticker with a long-winded message inside a textbook, I doubt you remember much about highschool. I don't think anyone really paid attention to the one demanding we never write in our textbooks when I was in highschool.
If a teacher talks up Christianity too much in a public school classroom, the teacher will be reprimanded or possibly fired for doing so. I don't think religious fundamentalists are what science has to worry about in pubic schooling.
Who is pushing the Intelligent Design debate? Atheists?
Hint: Where is intelligent design being taught? Nowhere. It's debated about maybe being taught in a courtroom in Kansas. It probably won't make it out of there. U.S. schools are failing *now*, U.S. science and technology lead is lagging *now*. Right now, Christianity is essentially barred from all public schools, evolution is being taught in biology classrooms as fact, and essentially no public school teacher is telling students not to do stem cell research.
In fact, the only thing truly discouraging kids from pursuing science and math, is their introduction to it in public schools. For the most part, it's the abysmal teaching from unionized teachers that is to blame.
Is everyone who rejects the religious right's tactics and viewpoints 'not religious'?
I guess you've never heard of the Unitarians.
Oh please. Unitarians are essentially secularists who gather once a week. Can you tell me one doctrine of Unitarianism? I can't, and I attended a Unitarian church for a year.
Education funding. Huge problem in many states
I don't think this is the root problem. I think the root problem is teachers unions. If we truly rewarded excellent teachers in public schools, I think taxpayers would be more willing to fully fund public education. If you switch parents for teachers' unions in your problems list, then it would read the same. Teachers unions do "social promotion", and in fact care about little else from what I see. Even an extension from 2 to 5 years to a tenure position is being fought tooth and nail in an all out television and radio ad campaign in California. The teachers unions don't care about if a teacher is failing. They want them to keep their job, and have pay raises early and often for even the worst teachers.
One of the problems is how one can evaluate how well a teacher can teach. The students probably know, but wouldn't be trusted to give an honest opinion. Principals don't spend much time in classrooms. Parents don't either. The ideal would be to have a good Principal to be able to select and trade teachers across districts, hiring new to replace the worst performers, and offering more money to proven good teachers. The problem would be getting rid of teachers union limits, and tenure in order to make that possible.
Vouchers would essentially provide this, and the group most against vouchers are the teachers unions, who have the democrat party in their pocket. And the unions are able to sway votes by using union dues to make misleading advertisements and fund democrat campaigns. All laws promoted to limit union sponsorship of political campaigns with dues they have essentially extorted from their members have failed because they already have so much power.
Act III: iTunes. You know, we have distributed over 200 million copes of iTunes now in the world, and those are only the copies we know about. iTunes in the US has an 84 percent market share for all legally downloaded music. We released iTunes 5 just five weeks ago, but a lot has changed. And so today we're introducing iTunes 6. We've been busy!
1. (1) Gifting. This has been the most requested feature. You can gift (i.e. buy) iTunes songs for someone else by song, album, or playlist.
2. Customer reviews.
3. Just for You. Personalized recommendations. We're going to be recommending albums and singles based on what you've bought before. It's going to be a beta, we'd like your feedback on it.
4. Video. If we're going to be able to play video on the iPod we're going to need away to buy video. Starting today we have 2,000 music videos for sale.[Shows Madonna catalogue]
What do they cost? $1.99 each. But we didn't stop there; we're adding some other videos you can buy. Pixar is putting up six of their award-winning short videos. $1.99 each. We are downloading videos 320 x 240, which is the native resolution of the iPod. They're about the size of six songs. All songs are governed by FairPlay. You can play them on up to five computers. They're not rentals. You own them -- they never time out. [Demo of gifting, customer reviews, Just for You, and videos including "Vogue," a U2 live exclusive. Demo of watching U2 video using Front Row on an iMac, playing photos and videos from an iPod on a big screen]
One more thing...
We have one more thing today, a pretty big thing. We're announcing one more thing that you can buy off the iTunes store today, and that is TV shows. What's the number one show on TV? What's the second? Lost. And who has these shows? ABC. And who owns ABC? [Disney logo on screen.] I know those guys!
Lost, Desperate Housewives, Night Stalker, That's So Raven, The Suite Life.
Yes, you can buy current episodes, and you can buy them the day after they are broadcast. They're ad free so you don't need to fast forward through the commercials, 320 x 240 again. An hour show is about the size of five albums. Depending on your speed it's about 10-20 minute to download an episode. What are they going to cost? $1.99 an episode for current season and past seasons. We have free previews on every episode.
Thanks everyone!
Act I: The iMac G5. We sold over a million of them in its first year. What better place to put the computer than right behind the display? Today we're introducing and all new iMac. [It looks extremely similar] Three great new features.
... from your sofa. We've done a remote control, Apple style. It's got six buttons. [Demo: He presses remote and a menu for Music / Photo / DVD / Video zooms in. There's a giant iPod-style interface for music. "I can enjoy my music from across the room and see the artwork."
... it's on an iPod! New silhouette ad with Eminem -- it's not silhouette but a limited color palette. Steve likes the ads so much he runs each one twice. ]
(1) It's even thinner. The 20-inch is now thinner than the 17 used to be.
(2) iSight videocam. The new mac has an iSight built in. The camera has even better specs. Right out of the box videoconferencing without any extra stuff. We wrote a new app called PhotoBooth. [Demo: It has a built in flash - the entire display flashes. There are special effects including "Warhol" and effects that morph your face goofily.]
(3) Front Row. It s a new way to experience the media on your computer. It's an incredible way to enjoy your music, your videos, and your photos
Photos navigates through everything in iPhoto with slide show effects for albums.
"Now, a lot of people watch DVDs in their iMac, and it would be nice to control them from across the room. Now you can." [Loads DVD of The Incredibles with menu that blurs out the typically unusable menu on the DVD with an iPod-style menu. Movie posters and trailers in HD format streamed from apple.com] This remote control, I just wanted to point something that to me captures what Apple is all about. [Shot of huge button-congested remotes next to the tiny 6-button Apple remote]
Specs: Bluetooth, Superdrive, Mighty Mouse standard. 17-inch $1299. 20-inch $1699. Available today.
Act II: The iPod. We announced yesterday that we had shipped almost 30 million iPods. Our market share, 75% of all MP3 players shipping. Five weeks ago we introduced the iPod nano. And you know what? We shipped over a million iPod nanos in the first 17 days, and we could not meet demand. But what about the white iPod? It's been a huge success for us. And therefore, we're going to replace it. The new white iPod. And yes, it does video.
Specs: Same width and height as current model, but thinner. QVGA (324 x 240) pixel 260,000 color 2.5-inch display. h.264 and MPEG-4 at 30 fps. TV out. 30GB and 60GB models. Same width and height. 30GB is 31% thinner than the curent 20GB model [Making it 0.44-inches thick--say wha?]. 60G is 12% thinner than 20GB. 30G up to 75 hours of video, $299. 60G up to 150 hours video, $399. Shipping in one week.
And, by popular demand, we make it in black. They also come with a nice carrying case, to keep 'em all perfect. [Thin plastic sleeve--aw shucks]
[AD: U2 performing live. Oh wait
The new iPod will be 30% thinner than the current 20GB iPod (making it 0.44-inches thick--say wha?), and will feature a 60GB version (which should be thinner than the current 0.63-inch thick 20GB iPod), and editions of both in black.
What's the device named, you ask? The iPod. That's it, just The iPod. Well spare you the Prince jokes. The iPod will have TV out.
Stevie has iTunes 6.0 up there--only about a month after introducing iTunes 5.0.
iTunes 6.0 will also feature video and the iTunes Music Store will feature Fairplay DRMed video downloads (big surprise, right?).
At launch over 2,000 music videos will be made available at a cost of $1.99 apiece. You can download iTunes 6.0 starting today.
Oh, and one more thing...
It's not only music videos you can buy. No, Apple's set up to allow you to purchase TV shows for $1.99 apiece. Get Desperate Housewives or four other ABC shows premiering on iTunes at two bucks an ep. Videos are native QVGA resolution.
More details to come...
What happened to GOBE becoming GPL? I remember getting excited about it a while back, but was the source ever released?
Apparantly they are hoping someone will port the GPL version to OS X. (Probably shortly before they create a non-GPL commercial version for the mac)
Just to back up housing value info with some data this shows the most significant decrease in housing in California was 11.67% over five years. The most significant increase was in 1977 which was an increase of 28.1% in one year. Even after the increase though, a house cost $250k in inflation adjusted dollars, which is far short of the $450k median seen today in California.
There are different aspects here though. One is the usage of so many houses as short term investments. I've heard 3/4ths of new housing developments bought up by investors hoping for a quick 20% payoff. The second is the usage of new loan types, such as 40-year, and interest only loans. In California, interest only loans for housing has reached 30%. Adding to that, only 14% of households can afford a median priced home this year, which is the lowest since records started being taken. Since california housing is overvalued by 45% the correction could take prices down by that much.
When did this happen in the past? How long did it take? When do you see this happening in the future? I think maybe 2009, when the first round of interest-only loans start needing the principle paid off. But I don't know what kind of process this could take. Part of me thinks that the housing market will just stagnate until inflation brings the prices down to ordinary levels. Your scenario sounds similar, but from what I hear, there is a lot of foreign investment in U.S. real estate as well. The same people who got rich selling goods to the U.S. are investing in its real estate market, and so they would be in trouble as well. I'm having a hard time seeing what will happen, besides massive foreclosures and a housing drop like nothing else.