The prefatory clause does not limit the application of the main clause.
Amazing how many people manage to ignore what would seem to be a matter of basic grammer. In such a carefully written document, it seems clear that if the framers really meant to say, "...the right of militia members to keep and bear arms..." they would have done so.
I don't think we'll be "evolving" in any physical or mental sense to deal with asteroids.
Indeed. It's important to get away from the idea of evolution as something that results in steady advancement of a species. Our evolution may by chance have gifted us with the intelligence to survive the asteroid hazard, but it is up to us to employ that evolution.
As it is, unfortunately, our investment in protection against falling celestial objects is remarkably small compared to hazards bearing comparable average risks.
Well, one could say that the dinos died out cause they were to slow to develop a protection against asteroids. They were the rulers of the earth but just went on with their business eating each other and growing bigger for millions of years until the inevitable happend and a big one hit.
The problem is that to evolve a defense against something, a species needs to experience it and survive. So whether a species survives that first encounter depends entirely upon luck--whether the traits that it has evolved for other reasons happen by chance to also let it survive this new challenge.
And it seems our unevolved ancestors survived. If we can't survive the same (as a species, I don't mean as individuals), then we sure haven't evolved in the right direction.
That's the thing about evolution. It doesn't adapt a species to deal with rare events like big asteroid impacts. So whether a species survives or not is basically a matter of luck. Best bets would be small creatures with a short generation time. Which doesn't include us.
Recall the pondering and headscratching that goes on whenever one of our larger satellites' orbit decays. The speculation on where it will come down would be downright amusing if it weren't so serious.
Actually, satellite decay is a much harder problem, because it depends upon the friction with the atmosphere, which is variable. An object coming in from outside is actually rather simpler. In the unlikely event that anybody happens to be watching.
You know what would be ironic? If a good size asteroid hit the Earth, enough to kill millions of people but not billions, say, and that explosion mistakenly triggered a Russian nuclear attack on the U.S., and then the U.S. responded
Yes, if there had been a Tunguska-sized impact on a city back in the 1960's, there's a good chance that none of us would be here today
Indeed, it should be the market that decides, and not the courts : The market is the reason that North American automakers were forced to dramatically improve their quality (because the Japanese automakers were far ahead of them, and the market started voting for quality with their pocketbooks)
Boy, that's a funny example. Improvement of automobiles, particularly with respect to safety-related issues, was driven largely by legislation and the courts, not by the free market (remember Ralph Nader and "Unsafe at Any Speed"?) The failure of the automobile industry to offer the safety options that we now take for granted at any price (until forced to do so by liability and legislation) is one of the most dramatic failures of the free market. What it illustrates is that in a market dominated by a few large companies, and where the economic barriers to entry by new companies are nearly insuperable, there is often very little incentive to offer new features. And if a features isn't available at all, there is no way the market can "vote" for it.
What is required is a software "lemon law," that would override all software licenses. All that is required is three provisions.
1) Any reported bug (failure of software to work as advertised or documented) must be fixed without cost to the user within 6 months of report or the buyer becomes eligible for a full refund of the purchase price.
2) Any exclusion of liability for consequential damages is invalid if the damage results from a bug that the company knew about for more than 6 months.
3) Any exclusion of liability for consequential damages is invalid if the damage results from a bug that the company knew about and kept secret.
I think that we'd see in short order a dramatic improvement in software reliability.
The DNA in this "undifferentiated ball of cells" is unique. That's the problem for conservatives.
What's so special about unique DNA? Every sperm and egg has unique DNA, and any pair contains enough unique DNA to make a unique baby. Besides, would you argue than an identical twin--who doesn't have unique DNA--is somehow less of an individual or less of a human being than a singleton?
It's got nothing to do with the technology per se, but the possible killing of children who have no say in the matter.
Give me a break. Embryonic stem cells come from an undifferentiated ball of cells. No brain, no nerves, no senses. An embryo at this stage has about as much in common with a human being, medically and scientifically speaking, as dandruff. Now some people believe that there is a magic, undetectable "soul" in that ball of cells. And some people believe that cow in the stockyard might be their dead grandmother. I wouldn't deny either the right to their beliefs, no matter how absurd they might sound to the nonbeliever. But when they start demanding that we stop medical research that might rescue real, thinking people who are desperately in need, it is time to draw the line.
No, he actually has it the right way forward. If you view life as an abberation (based on how absurdly complicated and extraordinarily delicate life is), not the main point of the universe, then you wouldn't expect to see that abberation frequently at all.
Historically, the idea that we are somehow special and priviledged has not held up very well. Now of course, we only have one example to work with, but there are several indicators that life is not an aberration. Of course, you can invoke the anthropic principle and argue that we wouldn't be commenting on the matter if we weren't here. But there are a number of problems with that. First, intelligence clearly is relatively unusual (most life forms on the globe are not intelligent, and during most of the history of life on earth there were no intelligent life forms). So for life to be an aberration, you have to assume that we have the benefit of *two* improbable events. But wait, it gets worse. Life clearly appeared very early in the history of the earth. Statistically speaking, the average "waiting time" for an improbable event should be long. So if life is improbable, our planet was not merely remarkably lucky to get life at all, but remarkably lucky to get life so early.
So the argument that life is improbable requires the assumption that we were extraordinarily lucky in three different ways: 1) lucky enough to get life at all, 2) lucky enough for it to form early rather than late, and 3) lucky enough to develop intelligence enough to comment on it.
Finally, life is not extraordinarily delicate. It is found everywhere on the planet. Indeed, I don't know of anywhere that one can say with scientific certainty that life is absent. No, a given life form will not survive in conditions drastically different from those to which it is adapted. But evolution has proved capable of adapting life to virtually every accessible environment.
I don't think they even know the bottom line. I'd be willing to pay quite a bit to download TV on demand, even if there was a (reasonable) delay in availability after the intial commercial broadcast. After all, I'd be saving money on VCRs, tape, and my time in programming and setting things up. Not to mention the aggravation when I miss a favorite show because something went wrong. If the charges were reasonable and the user interface decent, I probably wouldn't bother seeking bootlegs even if they were readily available.
The technology is here, now, yet the legitimate owners of the material aren't even offering a reasonable alternative to the pirates.
Why can't life exist in forms completely unimagined by us on red-hot planets close to suns or enormous gas plants? And if we ever saw that sort of life, would we recognise it even if it was staring us in the face?
And that is perhaps the best reason that we should be looking for life on planets that resemble our own. Because on very different planets, we will have a hard time even recognizing life if it exists, much less communicating with it.
Actually, your uncle has it exactly backwards. The idea that there is likely be life somewhere else in the universe is based on the idea that life is something rather ordinary, and therefore should not be terribly uncommon. If we leave aside our egocentric view that we are something special, then the belief in the absence of extraterrestrial life is absurd.
What is that saying... copy one person and it's called plagarism.. copy 30 and it's called research.
It's saying that you don't understand the meaning of "plagiarism". Plagiarism is when you use somebody else's words or ideas without giving them credit. So all those names are what prevent it from being plagiarism.
In science, you are expected to relate your ideas and results to those of others. 30 references is about par for the course.
Actually, most of them *don't* find the holes; they learn about them from somebody else. The point being that if there are enough people trying to break into your system, somebody will succeed. If you are using a well-known OS, you are effectively under constant attack by thousands of hackers, because information they learn about one system is immediately portable to all the others. If you are using an obscure system, you just have to worry about rare hacker who stumbles across your system.
It's a little like locking your door. You won't stop the rare really skilled thief with a lockpick, but it'll deter all the guys who go around trying every doorknob.
Baseball and Basketball:
1) Exercise. Believe it or not, people are healthier when they exercise. People who exercise regularly have lower incidences of more diseases than I care to enumerate here.
I suppose that this might be relevant if we were talking about a high school in which the athletic efforts of all students were equally celebrated regardless of ability. But the way athletics works in real high schools, a handful of athletically talented individuals are encouraged to participate, while the majority of students end up cheering from the benches--an activity with about as much exercise value as playing computer games. Indeed, I would say that for the average person, exposure to high school athletics merely induces a distaste for athletic activity that unfortunately is likely to extend into later life.
2) The self confidence gained by being in shape. All the geeks on/. who complain about never getting laid probably never exercised in high school.
More likely, their athletic efforts in high school were jeered at, and they got beat up by the jocks in the locker room. I expect that for most people, the less they are involved in athletics in high school, the more likely they are to enjoy, and participate in, athletic activity later in life.
Chess and Go:
1) These are well researched games that have stood the test of time. Computer games only last until the next 'it game' comes out. By learning to play chess or go, you learn a skill that you'll have the rest of your life. Also, once you reach a certain skill level, you need to start researching documented theory on the game. For example, there are entire books that are devoted to a single chess opening.
2) Ever known anyone to get carpal tunnel from playing chess?
Actually, it is now becoming apparent that the risks of carpal tunnel have been greatly exaggerated (like computer games, there are fashions in ailments). For most people, a little rest and asprin eliminates the problem (just like many athletic injuries). Nor is this risk unique to computer gaming--you see it occasionally with almost any manual activity, including needlepoint and woodworking.
And frankly, the "skills" of chess and go do most people very little good in later life, aside from personal enjoyment. While popularity of games is fleeting, people who play a lot of games--especially those involving strategy--develop skills that generalize to many different types of games. Including chess and go.
Ummm...chess, go, basketball, baseball (need I go on?)
Given the propensity for computer games to become addictive, it's kinda inappropriate for schools to encourage this kind of thing.
An interesting complaint, given that all the activities you recommend are played compulsively (addictive behavior) by some students. And of course, the physical games like baseball and basketball are occasionally associated with disabling (and rarely, fatal) injuries, not to mention actual violence, either between players and spectators.
But of course, these are all traditional entertainments, so people blithely ignore the risks and injuries, and presume that these activities are beneficial overall, even though if some people get hurt, or indulge in athletics to the detriment of their studies. Violence is rare with chess, of course, but it also just as sedentary as computer games.
On the other hand, if something like a computer game is merely popular, it gets characterized as "addictive." And while no school would ever consider eliminating football if a player throws a punch during a game or if spectators get in a brawl afterwards, the slightest hint of any kind of a problem would doubtless lead to widespread demands for the elimination of computer gaming.
At this point in time, with Amazon being one of the last survivors of the dot-com shakeout, it seems that, instead of talking about what is wrong with Amazon, it would be more interesting to hear what they did right, as compared to all of the firms that are no longer with us.
Oh, and calling Star Wars one of the most epic stories ever written is pathetic. Read some books for God's sake. Ever heard of The Illiad? The Odyssey? The Maha-Barata? Fucking BEOWULF, for God's sake! Get out more!
No, it ain't the Mahabarata. So why do you react as if Lukas is meddling with Holy Writ?
Given the advances in technology I'd love to see all of the episodes stiched together seamlessly.
I agree. I see no problem with Lukas releasing a "Directors Cut" version. People are treating it like it's great literature, when even from the beginning it was basically a nostalgic retread of a bunch of science-fiction cliches.
I think a lot of people's anger at George Lukas is simply misdirected regret that they've gotten older, and no movie, no matter how well done, will thrill them the way the original "Star Wars" did when they were 13 years old.
I've gotten older too, and the new trilogy doesn't quite have the "oomph" of the original for me. But I do remember what it was like to be young well enough to know that if Lukas had released "Episode 1" first instead of "Episode 4," I'd still have thought it was about the best movie I'd ever seen.
Seem a ridiculously excessive weight of interpretation to place on which frothy summer blockbuster is a bigger hit.
Perhaps it all simply boils down to the fact that "Spiderman" is the first in its series, while "Episode II" is a sequel of a sequel of a sequel of a sequel. Sequels rarely do as well as the first movie. And for a series to still be drawing huge audiences (whether or not they are the hugest) this far down the line is pretty remarkable.
Call back if "Spiderman V" manages to do better than "Episode II".
A great loss, not merely for his contributions to evolutionary theory (and whether you agree with him or not, he has undeniably raised crucial issues that have stimulated progress in the field), but for his contributions to scientific history, and showing that serious scientific writing does not need to be dull or stilted.
I agree, this deserves its own topic. But this thread is sort of about evolution, isn't it?
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As it is, unfortunately, our investment in protection against falling celestial objects is remarkably small compared to hazards bearing comparable average risks.
That's the thing about evolution. It doesn't adapt a species to deal with rare events like big asteroid impacts. So whether a species survives or not is basically a matter of luck. Best bets would be small creatures with a short generation time. Which doesn't include us.
What is required is a software "lemon law," that would override all software licenses. All that is required is three provisions.
1) Any reported bug (failure of software to work as advertised or documented) must be fixed without cost to the user within 6 months of report or the buyer becomes eligible for a full refund of the purchase price.
2) Any exclusion of liability for consequential damages is invalid if the damage results from a bug that the company knew about for more than 6 months.
3) Any exclusion of liability for consequential damages is invalid if the damage results from a bug that the company knew about and kept secret.
I think that we'd see in short order a dramatic improvement in software reliability.
Or else die of a bizarre autoimmune disease that the doctors have never seen before...
So the argument that life is improbable requires the assumption that we were extraordinarily lucky in three different ways: 1) lucky enough to get life at all, 2) lucky enough for it to form early rather than late, and 3) lucky enough to develop intelligence enough to comment on it.
Finally, life is not extraordinarily delicate. It is found everywhere on the planet. Indeed, I don't know of anywhere that one can say with scientific certainty that life is absent. No, a given life form will not survive in conditions drastically different from those to which it is adapted. But evolution has proved capable of adapting life to virtually every accessible environment.
I don't think they even know the bottom line. I'd be willing to pay quite a bit to download TV on demand, even if there was a (reasonable) delay in availability after the intial commercial broadcast. After all, I'd be saving money on VCRs, tape, and my time in programming and setting things up. Not to mention the aggravation when I miss a favorite show because something went wrong. If the charges were reasonable and the user interface decent, I probably wouldn't bother seeking bootlegs even if they were readily available.
The technology is here, now, yet the legitimate owners of the material aren't even offering a reasonable alternative to the pirates.
Actually, your uncle has it exactly backwards. The idea that there is likely be life somewhere else in the universe is based on the idea that life is something rather ordinary, and therefore should not be terribly uncommon. If we leave aside our egocentric view that we are something special, then the belief in the absence of extraterrestrial life is absurd.
In science, you are expected to relate your ideas and results to those of others. 30 references is about par for the course.
Actually, most of them *don't* find the holes; they learn about them from somebody else. The point being that if there are enough people trying to break into your system, somebody will succeed. If you are using a well-known OS, you are effectively under constant attack by thousands of hackers, because information they learn about one system is immediately portable to all the others. If you are using an obscure system, you just have to worry about rare hacker who stumbles across your system.
It's a little like locking your door. You won't stop the rare really skilled thief with a lockpick, but it'll deter all the guys who go around trying every doorknob.
And frankly, the "skills" of chess and go do most people very little good in later life, aside from personal enjoyment. While popularity of games is fleeting, people who play a lot of games--especially those involving strategy--develop skills that generalize to many different types of games. Including chess and go.
But of course, these are all traditional entertainments, so people blithely ignore the risks and injuries, and presume that these activities are beneficial overall, even though if some people get hurt, or indulge in athletics to the detriment of their studies. Violence is rare with chess, of course, but it also just as sedentary as computer games.
On the other hand, if something like a computer game is merely popular, it gets characterized as "addictive." And while no school would ever consider eliminating football if a player throws a punch during a game or if spectators get in a brawl afterwards, the slightest hint of any kind of a problem would doubtless lead to widespread demands for the elimination of computer gaming.
At this point in time, with Amazon being one of the last survivors of the dot-com shakeout, it seems that, instead of talking about what is wrong with Amazon, it would be more interesting to hear what they did right, as compared to all of the firms that are no longer with us.
Seem a ridiculously excessive weight of interpretation to place on which frothy summer blockbuster is a bigger hit.
Perhaps it all simply boils down to the fact that "Spiderman" is the first in its series, while "Episode II" is a sequel of a sequel of a sequel of a sequel. Sequels rarely do as well as the first movie. And for a series to still be drawing huge audiences (whether or not they are the hugest) this far down the line is pretty remarkable.
Call back if "Spiderman V" manages to do better than "Episode II".
Any place that excludes somebody like Gould does not meet my definition of "heaven."
A great loss, not merely for his contributions to evolutionary theory (and whether you agree with him or not, he has undeniably raised crucial issues that have stimulated progress in the field), but for his contributions to scientific history, and showing that serious scientific writing does not need to be dull or stilted.
I agree, this deserves its own topic. But this thread is sort of about evolution, isn't it?