My apologies. I didn't realize that current research on Acromegaly is psuedo-science. Someone should tell all those researchers working on it, or the 3-4 per million people who have it, that nothing is wrong and it's all in their heads.
and then you jump to the conclusion that since its in that book, that it must be true.
Maybe you missed the fact that I was talking about what historians generally believe to be the truth behind that story. Or maybe you should have looked up the word "probably," which I used several times in that post.
If this story had not been included in "that book," but instead was in one of the many scrolls from the time period that didn't make it into "that book," would it have more credibility for you? Just because some people attribute religious significance, or even veneration, to "that book" doesn't reduce its value as a historical source document.
now - do you believe the earth was created 6000 years ago?
What in the world does what I believe about creationism vs. evolution have to do with uncovering the probable history behind the David and Goliath story? I don't get it. Were you held hostage by some Biblical literalists or something? Relax, kid, it's just an online discussion.
First test: how much historical evidence is in existence for the person of Goliath?
About as much as many other 2000-year-old historical figures, which is to say, enough to establish probability but not proof. If you're interested in what evidence there is, you could check out this video from the Discovery Store.
a war story of heroism, and pretty much same as all the others in every culture on the planet that tells stories about their leaders. Embellishments are to be expected...
Of course! History is written by the winners. Or at least, the winner's personal historian. And this story was embellished when the storyteller included miraculous invisibility and strength. My point was that the real miracle happened in David's heart when his faith and courage overcame fear, not in some physics-defying display of invisibility and superhuman strength. By definition, there is no such thing as a physical miracle. When a "miracle" happens that defies your existing model of the world, and you establish that it really did happen, you change your model to accomodate the new event. Viola', now your "miracle" has become a "phenomenon." It's only the human spirit that continually defies explanation by new models and theories. Unless you're a strict determinist, in which case we have philosphical chasm that is pretty much impossible to broach.
Exactly as described? Almost. Historians accept the story as being probably true. Goliath probably suffered from Gigantism, which often leads to blurry and tunnel vision by causing pressure on the optic nerve. Thus, David's ability to walk up to Goliath undetected, which the early storytellers attributed to David becoming miraculously invisible.
Gigantism also causes susceptibility to head trauma. Thus, David's ability to take down a helmeted opponent with a single stone from his sling. By the way, in tests sling stones achieve an average velocity of about 30m/s, so this is not implausible.
The problem I see with this story is that people are looking for a physical miracle that defies the laws of physics, and that's not where they should be looking. Instead, they should be looking at the fact that while all the hardened warriors were peeing their sandals instead of going out to face Goliath, a no-name shepherd boy had the faith and courage to step forward and accept Goliath's challenge. In doing so, he ended the battle before it began. If he hadn't accepted Goliath's challenge, the two armies would have resorted to a mass battle instead.
Wikipedia doesn't work well as a replacement for traditional encyclopedias, or even as an addition to them. Wikipedia's collaborative nature makes it useful in entirely different ways than a traditional encyclopedia. It can cover topics that haven't made it into the traditional encyclopedia, but that are still important enough to someone to contribute. Its update history gives the reader a diary of the changing views and scholarship on a subject.
In other words, traditional encyclopedias are good for telling us what topics have become important to society, and the truth about them as we know it. Wikipedia is good for telling us what topics are becoming important to us, and recording how what we know about those topics has changed.
If you're looking for an "authoritative," "credible," or "authorized" source of information don't look to Wikipedia. But if you're looking for a readout on people's current mindset, and a record of their changing views and knowledge, I think it's an excellent tool.
Libertarian philosophy isn't quite as heartless as you just portrayed it in your comment. If these working conditions were misrepresented or not disclosed when the employee asked during the interview (and it sounds like they were), then most libertarians would agree that the poster has a valid complaint: The employer initiated fraud against the employee. The core of libertarian ethics is that no one has the right to initiate force or fraud, or delegate the initiation of force or fraud, against another human or their property. Sounds to me like the employee was defrauded when he asked about the working conditions.
From the Babylon 5 television series, Capt. John Sheridan:
"Ask ten different scientists about the environment, population control, genetics and you'll get ten different answers, but there's one thing every scientist on the planet agrees on. Whether it happens in a hundred years or a thousand years or a million years, eventually our Sun will grow cold and go out. When that happens, it won't just take us. It'll take Marilyn Monroe and Lao-Tzu, Einstein, Morobuto, Buddy Holly, Aristophanes.. and all of this.. all of this was for nothing unless we go to the stars." (Infection, season 1, ep. 4)
"The real problem with our democratic system? It lets whoever we ellect decide how to spend other people's money..."
Alexander Fraser Tyler, in Cycle of Democracy, wrote:
A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over lousy fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The average of the world's great civilizations before they decline has been 200 years. These nations have progressed in this sequence: From bondage to spiritual faith; from faith to great courage; from courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance; from abundance to selfishness; from selfishness to complacency; from complacency to apathy; from apathy to dependency; from dependency back again to bondage.
"Let the individual states run the elections if they want, but have the Federal governement set the rules...It works up here in Canada..."
Each state is allowed to run the election its own way, and many other things its own way, so that the states are like laboratories or individual countries where they compete to come up with the best quality of life and the best government policies. Because U.S. citizens can freely and easily move from state-to-state, it's easy for them to "vote with their feet" for the best government solutions. Our Founding Fathers (and Mothers) had faith in the free market's ability to propogate the best quality of life, and they extended that faith in the free market to state governments.
"We have been laughing our asses off at how the US runs an election for the past 4 years, and this time was no exception.'
Well, that's certainly a valuable contribution to this discussion. I'm glad that you have found something to feel smug about. Perhaps this will help lift you out of your inferiority complex. On a more productive note, the fact that the U.S. still gives states so much autonomy reflects our different view of the proper role of federal government. Many countries and cultures believe that if it can be regulated at the federal level, then it should for the sake of consistency. In the U.S., we generally believe that if it can be regulated at the local level, then it should for the sake of flexibility. The Swiss have been having this discussion recently, in regards to their education system. Education in Switzerland is almost entirely regulated by the 26 individual cantons. That kind of local control makes schools more responsive to local needs, but the differences also make it more difficult to move between cantons when you've got school-age children.
"If I mark more then one, it is a spoiled ballot."
It's a shame that most people can't understand or don't care about the advantages of Condorcet voting. That kind of approval voting would fulfill the intent of the Electoral College, without the controversy that the College generates every year.
"Life is more valuable than property. By a factor of infinity. There are no exceptions."
Your lawfully-gained property is one of the products of your life. For example, let's say a burglar is stealing your wife's $6,000 engagement ring. How much of your life did you spend earning the money for that ring? Maybe 300 hours? If someone came up to you on the sidewalk and tried to forceably inject you with a drug that you know would instantly shorten your lifespan by 300 hours, would you use a potentially lethal defense (like a gun) to stop that attack?
Money is your irreplaceable life energy in a convenient, portable form. When someone steals your money, or something you bought with your money, they are stealing part of your life. I applaude your respect for human life, but don't you think that since people's property is bought with their lives, their right to defend their property should be given the same recognition as their right to defend their lives?
I found that Lulu.com's "ISBN Plus" service was the easiest and cheapest way to get my book listed on Amazon.com and BN.com. For less than $200 you get an ISBN and inclusion on these two major sites. You still need to do all the marketing myself, but there are numerous discussions in Lulu's forums about "guerilla marketing" your work. Getting it reviewed on Amazon and BN, creating Amazon lists of best-selling items that are similar to yours and including yours on that list, creating a "So you want to..." page and including your item on the page along with similar items, uploading a complete description/cover/excerpt for your product, etc. Seems that some of these would apply to marketing your software as well.
I'm curious about how effective getting listed on Amazon and BN is for software. Do many customers bother searching these sites when they're shopping for software? Or do they use dedicated tech sites, or just go right to Google for the software? I'd like to see some comments posted in a few months by some of the software sellers who've tried this.
You don't need nuclear power or a federal program to eliminate the United State's dependence on foreign oil. From an article on thermal depolymerization:
"Changing World say that converting all of the US agricultural waste into oil and gas would yield the energy equivalent of 4bn barrels of oil, roughly equal to the volume of US oil imports in 2001."
That's just the agricultural waste. Add municipal waste, and all the carbon locked up in our landfills. The process was developed by Changing World Technologies. They have a demo plant at a Con-Agra turkey processing facility in Missouri, which is producing 100-200 barrels of oil a day. At a price of about $15 a barrel to produce, it seems to me that freeing up the carbon in our waste stream is a cheaper alternative.
Slashdot Mirror
My apologies. I didn't realize that current research on Acromegaly is psuedo-science. Someone should tell all those researchers working on it, or the 3-4 per million people who have it, that nothing is wrong and it's all in their heads.
and then you jump to the conclusion that since its in that book, that it must be true.Maybe you missed the fact that I was talking about what historians generally believe to be the truth behind that story. Or maybe you should have looked up the word "probably," which I used several times in that post.
If this story had not been included in "that book," but instead was in one of the many scrolls from the time period that didn't make it into "that book," would it have more credibility for you? Just because some people attribute religious significance, or even veneration, to "that book" doesn't reduce its value as a historical source document.
now - do you believe the earth was created 6000 years ago?What in the world does what I believe about creationism vs. evolution have to do with uncovering the probable history behind the David and Goliath story? I don't get it. Were you held hostage by some Biblical literalists or something? Relax, kid, it's just an online discussion.
First test: how much historical evidence is in existence for the person of Goliath?
About as much as many other 2000-year-old historical figures, which is to say, enough to establish probability but not proof. If you're interested in what evidence there is, you could check out this video from the Discovery Store.
a war story of heroism, and pretty much same as all the others in every culture on the planet that tells stories about their leaders. Embellishments are to be expected...
Of course! History is written by the winners. Or at least, the winner's personal historian. And this story was embellished when the storyteller included miraculous invisibility and strength. My point was that the real miracle happened in David's heart when his faith and courage overcame fear, not in some physics-defying display of invisibility and superhuman strength. By definition, there is no such thing as a physical miracle. When a "miracle" happens that defies your existing model of the world, and you establish that it really did happen, you change your model to accomodate the new event. Viola', now your "miracle" has become a "phenomenon." It's only the human spirit that continually defies explanation by new models and theories. Unless you're a strict determinist, in which case we have philosphical chasm that is pretty much impossible to broach.
Exactly as described? Almost. Historians accept the story as being probably true. Goliath probably suffered from Gigantism, which often leads to blurry and tunnel vision by causing pressure on the optic nerve. Thus, David's ability to walk up to Goliath undetected, which the early storytellers attributed to David becoming miraculously invisible.
Gigantism also causes susceptibility to head trauma. Thus, David's ability to take down a helmeted opponent with a single stone from his sling. By the way, in tests sling stones achieve an average velocity of about 30m/s, so this is not implausible.
The problem I see with this story is that people are looking for a physical miracle that defies the laws of physics, and that's not where they should be looking. Instead, they should be looking at the fact that while all the hardened warriors were peeing their sandals instead of going out to face Goliath, a no-name shepherd boy had the faith and courage to step forward and accept Goliath's challenge. In doing so, he ended the battle before it began. If he hadn't accepted Goliath's challenge, the two armies would have resorted to a mass battle instead.
Wikipedia doesn't work well as a replacement for traditional encyclopedias, or even as an addition to them. Wikipedia's collaborative nature makes it useful in entirely different ways than a traditional encyclopedia. It can cover topics that haven't made it into the traditional encyclopedia, but that are still important enough to someone to contribute. Its update history gives the reader a diary of the changing views and scholarship on a subject.
In other words, traditional encyclopedias are good for telling us what topics have become important to society, and the truth about them as we know it. Wikipedia is good for telling us what topics are becoming important to us, and recording how what we know about those topics has changed.
If you're looking for an "authoritative," "credible," or "authorized" source of information don't look to Wikipedia. But if you're looking for a readout on people's current mindset, and a record of their changing views and knowledge, I think it's an excellent tool.
Libertarian philosophy isn't quite as heartless as you just portrayed it in your comment. If these working conditions were misrepresented or not disclosed when the employee asked during the interview (and it sounds like they were), then most libertarians would agree that the poster has a valid complaint: The employer initiated fraud against the employee. The core of libertarian ethics is that no one has the right to initiate force or fraud, or delegate the initiation of force or fraud, against another human or their property. Sounds to me like the employee was defrauded when he asked about the working conditions.
"It's great that someone's able to speak out about it... but it won't change anything"
If it keeps one person from walking into the same chopper blade as the author and her husband, it has changed something. For the better.
From the Babylon 5 television series, Capt. John Sheridan:
"The real problem with our democratic system? It lets whoever we ellect decide how to spend other people's money..."
Alexander Fraser Tyler, in Cycle of Democracy, wrote:
"Let the individual states run the elections if they want, but have the Federal governement set the rules...It works up here in Canada..."
Each state is allowed to run the election its own way, and many other things its own way, so that the states are like laboratories or individual countries where they compete to come up with the best quality of life and the best government policies. Because U.S. citizens can freely and easily move from state-to-state, it's easy for them to "vote with their feet" for the best government solutions. Our Founding Fathers (and Mothers) had faith in the free market's ability to propogate the best quality of life, and they extended that faith in the free market to state governments.
"We have been laughing our asses off at how the US runs an election for the past 4 years, and this time was no exception.'
Well, that's certainly a valuable contribution to this discussion. I'm glad that you have found something to feel smug about. Perhaps this will help lift you out of your inferiority complex. On a more productive note, the fact that the U.S. still gives states so much autonomy reflects our different view of the proper role of federal government. Many countries and cultures believe that if it can be regulated at the federal level, then it should for the sake of consistency. In the U.S., we generally believe that if it can be regulated at the local level, then it should for the sake of flexibility. The Swiss have been having this discussion recently, in regards to their education system. Education in Switzerland is almost entirely regulated by the 26 individual cantons. That kind of local control makes schools more responsive to local needs, but the differences also make it more difficult to move between cantons when you've got school-age children.
"If I mark more then one, it is a spoiled ballot."
It's a shame that most people can't understand or don't care about the advantages of Condorcet voting. That kind of approval voting would fulfill the intent of the Electoral College, without the controversy that the College generates every year.
"Welcome to my friends list." I added you and the parent poster to my friends list.
"Life is more valuable than property. By a factor of infinity. There are no exceptions."
Your lawfully-gained property is one of the products of your life. For example, let's say a burglar is stealing your wife's $6,000 engagement ring. How much of your life did you spend earning the money for that ring? Maybe 300 hours? If someone came up to you on the sidewalk and tried to forceably inject you with a drug that you know would instantly shorten your lifespan by 300 hours, would you use a potentially lethal defense (like a gun) to stop that attack?Money is your irreplaceable life energy in a convenient, portable form. When someone steals your money, or something you bought with your money, they are stealing part of your life. I applaude your respect for human life, but don't you think that since people's property is bought with their lives, their right to defend their property should be given the same recognition as their right to defend their lives?
I found that Lulu.com's "ISBN Plus" service was the easiest and cheapest way to get my book listed on Amazon.com and BN.com. For less than $200 you get an ISBN and inclusion on these two major sites. You still need to do all the marketing myself, but there are numerous discussions in Lulu's forums about "guerilla marketing" your work. Getting it reviewed on Amazon and BN, creating Amazon lists of best-selling items that are similar to yours and including yours on that list, creating a "So you want to..." page and including your item on the page along with similar items, uploading a complete description/cover/excerpt for your product, etc. Seems that some of these would apply to marketing your software as well.
I'm curious about how effective getting listed on Amazon and BN is for software. Do many customers bother searching these sites when they're shopping for software? Or do they use dedicated tech sites, or just go right to Google for the software? I'd like to see some comments posted in a few months by some of the software sellers who've tried this.
You don't need nuclear power or a federal program to eliminate the United State's dependence on foreign oil. From an article on thermal depolymerization:
"Changing World say that converting all of the US agricultural waste into oil and gas would yield the energy equivalent of 4bn barrels of oil, roughly equal to the volume of US oil imports in 2001."
That's just the agricultural waste. Add municipal waste, and all the carbon locked up in our landfills. The process was developed by Changing World Technologies. They have a demo plant at a Con-Agra turkey processing facility in Missouri, which is producing 100-200 barrels of oil a day. At a price of about $15 a barrel to produce, it seems to me that freeing up the carbon in our waste stream is a cheaper alternative.