Just for the record, evolutionary changes scale with rapidity of the reproduction cycle, the severity of environmental pressures, and a great number of other factors. Even speciation (the usual benchmark for an 'extreme' evolutionary change) can thus occur in a couple decades, if you're a bacterium or a fruit fly living under relatively harsh conditions. Lesser things like behavioral patterns and communication methods can change well within the human timescale.
What I'm saying here is that the reason you think it's going to take several million years is that you've set your standard of 'sorting it out' artificially high. If I pulled the same arbitrary bullshit in the opposite direction, I could tell you that the sorting-out is pretty much instantaneous. After all, any eliminated species either was eliminated through termination of its niche (and thus had no purpose) or because it's been or is being supplanted by another (in which case the role is filled). I'd be just as right as you, too.
Ok, do I win the 'hijacking the OP's strawman' contest yet?
Well, in defense of the mods, in this case the post was actually flamebait. If you honestly think opening a post with a content-free tirade of insults is an invitation to polite discourse, please tell me where your ettiquette instructor is buried, as the perpetual rotary motion could prove quite handy as a clean source of energy.
In the man's defense, in context 'loose' and 'lose' have a very similar meaning overall, since money neither passed out of his posession nor did he free any net quantity of money from its restrictions.
Wow, I didn't even have to go beyond skimming to find illogic in your post. If "flashlight" and "light-emitting-device" are equivalent terms in your world, i fear that your lack of competence with the language disqualifies you from making any suggestions regarding legal documents.
Thank you for using the "post stupid idea to slashdot" ego-deflation method (patent pending). Have a nice day.
That's the major advantage of conservative areas. The legal system there doesn't tolerate bullshit. Meaning they actually make descisions in accordance with the law even in cases where it conflicts the prevailing attitude of the area. Hurrah for places that aren't California, eh.
Given that the tenets that define the southern baptist religion were established a century or two before the _computer_ existed, I'm thinking you're full of shit, sir.
It's essentially telling god what he can and can't do, by saying he's not capable of taking his time with creation or continuing to modify organisms after their initial creation. this is the problem with the creationist end of ID, and occurs in a varying range of degrees from outright blasphemy to just being a stupid way to go about a religion.
The less ignoring-observed-facts end of ID (changes happen, but are guided by god) just misses the basic point of the damned religion: by saying 'this is guided by god, and this isn't', they're missing on the fact that _everything_ is supposed to be guided by god, thus weakening the faith.
Uh... Why exactly would being made in god's image be affected by evolution? The fact that people don't look exactly like each other in every detail and are able to move already obviously implies that (a) the image is not static or (b) the 'image' in question is not purely physical, but partly or totally a reference to our social or psychological identity as creators. And 'day' is a highly malleable word in english, why would be be thinking it was any different in hebrew poetic form? (My history professors say things like 'in the day of the ascent of rome' all the time, should my faith restrict me to thinking that rome conquered and repopulated half of europe ina 24-hour period?) Not to mention that, even in the most literal interpretation, the relative motion of god's point of view to the earth is not given (if he's anything like the engineers i know, he was probably walking around the globe to keep up with the best lighting, and I'd imagine it takes a lot of pacing to tire out god). As for the no-death thing, I don't know, I'll have to read the book again sometime to come up with an interpretation for that one.
I'm not sure wether you're being serious or sarcastic about the dilution of religion, and frankly I don't particularly care. However, I find your lack of imagination, evidenced by your inabiliy to read a story and fill in possible interpretations rather than screaming 'contradiction!', completely appalling. What I'm saying here is that you must be a real bitch to watch movies with, as you'd object to pretty much everything not taken directly out of a history book as 'posing a contradiction'.
Meh, nothing says god can't take his time at doing things, evolution in no way implies an imperfect creator. When I learned christianity I was taught that (a) god is infinitely powerful and (b) creation has a purpose. Ignoring facts of the physical world in order to restrict god to your personal vision of what god should be doing is both an insult to (a) and a contradiction of (b).
Frankly, it hurts a little bit that the people that claim to be the leaders of my faith seem to have so little faith in god's purpose themselves, or that they're willing to sacrifice that faith for simple assurance in their own rightness. Maybe I should go back to the Catholics, at least they have colleges of people think thorugh this kind of crap before declaring policy.
Uh, science is a secondary concern as far as economy goes. The primary driver of economy is agriculture, and, let's face it, that's pretty much all Kansas has going for it anyhow, and it really doesn't require advanced theoretical expertise in any field, although biology helps a bit.
Just a little nitpick, "most widely accepted theory by a huge margin" really doesn't really belong in your post, as it has nothing to do with the validity of evolutionary theory as a scientific theory, nor does it really serve as an argument against the ID schtick. Otherwise, spot-on, eh.
I think a buttermilk biscuit is a cake in britain, or perhaps a scone depending on how much honey you put on it.
Blinding a driver that drives through a roadblock
on
Set PHASRs On Stun
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Because what you really want to do to the speeding 3-ton SUV is blind the driver... yup, definitely makes things safer for everyone.
I'm just going to not RTFA: If I found out that this suggested use was actually in the documentation rather than a stupid comment of an article submitter, I'd lose the last remaining scraps of faith I had in the existence of intelligent life in the universe.
That's pretty appropriate, since it's a retelling of one of the most cynical books ever written. Beyond the often-noted indictment of the gold standard, it was pretty much written for the express purpose of turning up every inconsistency and weakness in human nature to the view of the reader.
It does it pretty well, too. That's what makes it a classic, it says something about people in general, not just the specific people involved in the story and the targeted readership. The movie is the same, to a lesser extent.
The government's not very good at doing research. It's good on doing meta-research, i.e. figuring out what needs to be researched, and then throwing money at the people that are looking at the closest thing to what's needed. Just thought I'd clarify that for ya.
Oh, right, I guess weapons research is sometimes done by actual government employees rather than contracted companies.
What does money efficiency per drug have to do with it? I'd put absolute number of drugs successfully developed as my personal measuring-stick. Sure, if you can develop a drug for a dollar, but can only snag a couple hundred bucks, that's great, you've made a few hundred drugs. If you take ten pucks per drug, but can whip up a billion dollars, you've been overall a lot more beneficial in terms of the 'having things to keep me alive when i get sick' scale. The fact that the apparrent money cap on private companies is higher than charity or university research is not something that requres a compensating factor: it's an important aspect of the situation to take in when considering the effectiveness of the form.
Also, please direct me to the university that actually has the money to perform sufficient clinical trials to get drugs approved for public distribution. Because I've never seen one, and my brother's looking for a good med school.
Uh, I suggest you look up what 'crude' means. the patent system applied to drugs is a clever manipulation of the free market to stimulate research into medical technology. The funding for weapons research is politicians in washington filling up swimming-pool-sized trucks with taxpayers' cash and dumping it at the feet of whoever somes up with the next shiny bullet. There are merits and drawbacks to each system, but I assure you that one is unarguably cruder than the other, and you picked the wrong one.
Your comment about medicines is only a half-truth. Since medical research costs on the order of half a billion dollars minimum to research and test a new drug to approval, not only do patents slow the production of cheap drugs, they also cause the development of the drugs in the first place. And it's an important half of the truth you're missing, too, since most people would rather be able to spend a lot of money and send their mother's cancer into remission than have a dead mother smelling up the living room, which is the other option.
Most new drugs are developed in the US, specifically because we have a strong patent system. The algorithm patents may be stupid, but don't go trying to throw the baby out with the bath-water, there.
Except that the united states started going through its industrial revolution in the late 1700s, and didn't abolish slavery until the late 1850s. Plus the whole bit where the rise of the factories just replaced legal slavery with debt slavery...
Maybe our point is valid, I wouldn't know, but the argument that got you there is complete, as you say, "bunk". Also, your last paragraph intrigues me, and I would like to subscribe to your planet's newsletter. The perspective of a people that apparently haven't even had radio contact with the earth for the last half century sounds interesting.
On a personal level, I find marijuana smoke annoying, and am pretty sure taht the ashes of dead plants aren't going to have a positive effect on anyone's respiratory system, regardless of the drugs they carry. Not to mention that my whole apartment complex smells like singed death. This is why tabacco is only barely clinging to legality by virtue of a long history of supplying jobs and a huge amount of money, and it's why there will never probably be a great uprising of popular support for marijuana smokers.
Maybe you fellows should switch to legalizing the eating of marijuana or something, that might go over better. Excuse me, i'm going to go defenestrate a bong now. I can only hope that three stories is enough to break it irreparably.
Slashdot Mirror
Just for the record, evolutionary changes scale with rapidity of the reproduction cycle, the severity of environmental pressures, and a great number of other factors. Even speciation (the usual benchmark for an 'extreme' evolutionary change) can thus occur in a couple decades, if you're a bacterium or a fruit fly living under relatively harsh conditions. Lesser things like behavioral patterns and communication methods can change well within the human timescale.
What I'm saying here is that the reason you think it's going to take several million years is that you've set your standard of 'sorting it out' artificially high. If I pulled the same arbitrary bullshit in the opposite direction, I could tell you that the sorting-out is pretty much instantaneous. After all, any eliminated species either was eliminated through termination of its niche (and thus had no purpose) or because it's been or is being supplanted by another (in which case the role is filled). I'd be just as right as you, too.
Ok, do I win the 'hijacking the OP's strawman' contest yet?
Well, in defense of the mods, in this case the post was actually flamebait. If you honestly think opening a post with a content-free tirade of insults is an invitation to polite discourse, please tell me where your ettiquette instructor is buried, as the perpetual rotary motion could prove quite handy as a clean source of energy.
In the man's defense, in context 'loose' and 'lose' have a very similar meaning overall, since money neither passed out of his posession nor did he free any net quantity of money from its restrictions.
Wow, I didn't even have to go beyond skimming to find illogic in your post. If "flashlight" and "light-emitting-device" are equivalent terms in your world, i fear that your lack of competence with the language disqualifies you from making any suggestions regarding legal documents.
Thank you for using the "post stupid idea to slashdot" ego-deflation method (patent pending). Have a nice day.
That's the major advantage of conservative areas. The legal system there doesn't tolerate bullshit. Meaning they actually make descisions in accordance with the law even in cases where it conflicts the prevailing attitude of the area. Hurrah for places that aren't California, eh.
Given that the tenets that define the southern baptist religion were established a century or two before the _computer_ existed, I'm thinking you're full of shit, sir.
Maybe I'm a bit rusty, but weren't there eight folds on that path?
It's essentially telling god what he can and can't do, by saying he's not capable of taking his time with creation or continuing to modify organisms after their initial creation. this is the problem with the creationist end of ID, and occurs in a varying range of degrees from outright blasphemy to just being a stupid way to go about a religion.
The less ignoring-observed-facts end of ID (changes happen, but are guided by god) just misses the basic point of the damned religion: by saying 'this is guided by god, and this isn't', they're missing on the fact that _everything_ is supposed to be guided by god, thus weakening the faith.
The way things are going, 'the brain of america' will soon be known only as 'India'.
Uh... Why exactly would being made in god's image be affected by evolution? The fact that people don't look exactly like each other in every detail and are able to move already obviously implies that (a) the image is not static or (b) the 'image' in question is not purely physical, but partly or totally a reference to our social or psychological identity as creators. And 'day' is a highly malleable word in english, why would be be thinking it was any different in hebrew poetic form? (My history professors say things like 'in the day of the ascent of rome' all the time, should my faith restrict me to thinking that rome conquered and repopulated half of europe ina 24-hour period?) Not to mention that, even in the most literal interpretation, the relative motion of god's point of view to the earth is not given (if he's anything like the engineers i know, he was probably walking around the globe to keep up with the best lighting, and I'd imagine it takes a lot of pacing to tire out god). As for the no-death thing, I don't know, I'll have to read the book again sometime to come up with an interpretation for that one.
I'm not sure wether you're being serious or sarcastic about the dilution of religion, and frankly I don't particularly care. However, I find your lack of imagination, evidenced by your inabiliy to read a story and fill in possible interpretations rather than screaming 'contradiction!', completely appalling. What I'm saying here is that you must be a real bitch to watch movies with, as you'd object to pretty much everything not taken directly out of a history book as 'posing a contradiction'.
Meh, nothing says god can't take his time at doing things, evolution in no way implies an imperfect creator. When I learned christianity I was taught that (a) god is infinitely powerful and (b) creation has a purpose. Ignoring facts of the physical world in order to restrict god to your personal vision of what god should be doing is both an insult to (a) and a contradiction of (b).
Frankly, it hurts a little bit that the people that claim to be the leaders of my faith seem to have so little faith in god's purpose themselves, or that they're willing to sacrifice that faith for simple assurance in their own rightness. Maybe I should go back to the Catholics, at least they have colleges of people think thorugh this kind of crap before declaring policy.
Uh, science is a secondary concern as far as economy goes. The primary driver of economy is agriculture, and, let's face it, that's pretty much all Kansas has going for it anyhow, and it really doesn't require advanced theoretical expertise in any field, although biology helps a bit.
Just a little nitpick, "most widely accepted theory by a huge margin" really doesn't really belong in your post, as it has nothing to do with the validity of evolutionary theory as a scientific theory, nor does it really serve as an argument against the ID schtick. Otherwise, spot-on, eh.
I think a buttermilk biscuit is a cake in britain, or perhaps a scone depending on how much honey you put on it.
Because what you really want to do to the speeding 3-ton SUV is blind the driver... yup, definitely makes things safer for everyone.
I'm just going to not RTFA: If I found out that this suggested use was actually in the documentation rather than a stupid comment of an article submitter, I'd lose the last remaining scraps of faith I had in the existence of intelligent life in the universe.
That's pretty appropriate, since it's a retelling of one of the most cynical books ever written. Beyond the often-noted indictment of the gold standard, it was pretty much written for the express purpose of turning up every inconsistency and weakness in human nature to the view of the reader.
It does it pretty well, too. That's what makes it a classic, it says something about people in general, not just the specific people involved in the story and the targeted readership. The movie is the same, to a lesser extent.
The government's not very good at doing research. It's good on doing meta-research, i.e. figuring out what needs to be researched, and then throwing money at the people that are looking at the closest thing to what's needed. Just thought I'd clarify that for ya.
Oh, right, I guess weapons research is sometimes done by actual government employees rather than contracted companies.
What does money efficiency per drug have to do with it? I'd put absolute number of drugs successfully developed as my personal measuring-stick. Sure, if you can develop a drug for a dollar, but can only snag a couple hundred bucks, that's great, you've made a few hundred drugs. If you take ten pucks per drug, but can whip up a billion dollars, you've been overall a lot more beneficial in terms of the 'having things to keep me alive when i get sick' scale. The fact that the apparrent money cap on private companies is higher than charity or university research is not something that requres a compensating factor: it's an important aspect of the situation to take in when considering the effectiveness of the form.
Also, please direct me to the university that actually has the money to perform sufficient clinical trials to get drugs approved for public distribution. Because I've never seen one, and my brother's looking for a good med school.
Yeah, that's worked really well in all those 'socialized medicine' countries that produce a significant quantity of drug research like...
uh... like...
uh...
"Maybe once a virus or disease is labeled an epidemic then funding should come directly from the government for said development?" ~Cylix
Oh no! He's on to us!
Foul! No knowledge of basic economics or ability to use elementary logic is allowed on /. I hereby sentence you to three weeks of dupes as penalty.
Uh, I suggest you look up what 'crude' means. the patent system applied to drugs is a clever manipulation of the free market to stimulate research into medical technology. The funding for weapons research is politicians in washington filling up swimming-pool-sized trucks with taxpayers' cash and dumping it at the feet of whoever somes up with the next shiny bullet. There are merits and drawbacks to each system, but I assure you that one is unarguably cruder than the other, and you picked the wrong one.
Your comment about medicines is only a half-truth. Since medical research costs on the order of half a billion dollars minimum to research and test a new drug to approval, not only do patents slow the production of cheap drugs, they also cause the development of the drugs in the first place. And it's an important half of the truth you're missing, too, since most people would rather be able to spend a lot of money and send their mother's cancer into remission than have a dead mother smelling up the living room, which is the other option.
Most new drugs are developed in the US, specifically because we have a strong patent system. The algorithm patents may be stupid, but don't go trying to throw the baby out with the bath-water, there.
Except that the united states started going through its industrial revolution in the late 1700s, and didn't abolish slavery until the late 1850s. Plus the whole bit where the rise of the factories just replaced legal slavery with debt slavery...
Maybe our point is valid, I wouldn't know, but the argument that got you there is complete, as you say, "bunk". Also, your last paragraph intrigues me, and I would like to subscribe to your planet's newsletter. The perspective of a people that apparently haven't even had radio contact with the earth for the last half century sounds interesting.
On a personal level, I find marijuana smoke annoying, and am pretty sure taht the ashes of dead plants aren't going to have a positive effect on anyone's respiratory system, regardless of the drugs they carry. Not to mention that my whole apartment complex smells like singed death. This is why tabacco is only barely clinging to legality by virtue of a long history of supplying jobs and a huge amount of money, and it's why there will never probably be a great uprising of popular support for marijuana smokers.
Maybe you fellows should switch to legalizing the eating of marijuana or something, that might go over better. Excuse me, i'm going to go defenestrate a bong now. I can only hope that three stories is enough to break it irreparably.