I realize that it's just for amusement, but that's an improper comparison. In this case, the physician is analogous to the gun, not the gun owner. It should compare the number of people who see a physician to gun owners.
Even if you assume that everyone in the country sees a physician, gun owners still come out ahead, but not nearly as dramatically.
There is not, however, a complete superiority of the US Constitution over all State law.
The Supremacy Clause of the US Constitution says otherwise. Different states have different laws, but if any state law conflicts with federal law or the Constitution, it is overridden.
Sorry, I can't check your link at the moment as it appears that the android browser can't copy from content. Any chance you'd run that through a url shortener so it'd be easier to transcribe?
You're completely ass-backwards. It's the isotopic ratios which prove that the increased CO2 is anthropogenic as our emissions differ from known natural sources.
Here's the music: the sun's output is weaker than expected and yet 2010 looks like one of the hottest years on record. What is this solar minimum proving again?
Well, for me, the two-fingered scrolling is pretty awesome and I find it terribly obnoxious to use a laptop without it. It's very natural relative to the "scroll zone" on most trackpads.
A boy is riding his bicycle and is struck by a car and killed. It appears that the car's brakes failed. During the course of the investigation, it is discovered that the driver's mechanic had told him that his brakes were bad and could fail at any time, but the driver was too cheap to get them fixed.
Is it possible that he would've killed the boy even if his brakes didn't fail? Yes.
Would you really be sitting here saying: "Why all the hate on this guy? He totally paid for the funeral even though no one asked him too!?"
I don't think most people are questioning BP's response. I think they've done the best they could given the situation. It's the events leading up to the disaster that have people angry.
Seriously*, how much money would it cost me to have you follow me around providing references and specifics to my half-rememberings and generalizations? I could really use that kind of service.
I wasn't disputing that some scientists warned of global cooling in the past, it's just irritating when people use that freakin' Newsweek article as "proof" that that was the consensus of the time. It wasn't.
As an aside, your new link (I only read the abstract) indicates that CO2 will increase surface temperature, but that aerosols counteract it and they believe that, in the end, the aerosols would overpower it. I've heard of studies (read: no link) that, IIRC, indicate that global warming would already be more severe if not for the affect of man-made aerosols in the atmosphere. Seems to me that the linked article may not really be incorrect.
You dismiss his "source" out of hand, but then waive around what? Newsweek? Really? That's your awesome source beyond all reproach? No wait, you also included the Times. Yes, two sources which are the pinnacle of peer reviewed scientific literature. Yep, no chance that they could've been publishing sensational stories intended to drive sales. No chance of that at all.
Methinks you need to find qualified sources. Pot, meet Kettle.
...accepting the results without seeing beyond to what established those laws.
I'll accept that we differ on this and neither opinion is more valid than the other. I just don't see the need for the natural laws to have a lawmaker. That's what makes them "natural";) To look beyond those laws, in the way that you do, falls into the realm of philosophy and I've never really been much of a philosopher.
As to finding a piece of alien technology, if it were much more advance than ours, would we be able to identify it as technology? As they say, any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Do you have any doubt that there would be mountains of people proclaiming that it was created by God and given to man by Him? I don't. When faced with the unknown people tend to turn to the comfortable. For some people that would be God, others would say it must be alien tech, but still others would say that it must be a natural phenomenon because aliens can't cross the interstellar distances to be on Earth. Really, I think there'd be tons of disagreement about what it was and how it was made.
Yesterday's Sisyphean task is today's accomplishment. Many people have believed that many things have not been possible and been wrong. If we had listened to those people, where would we be today? I'm glad that, even though you don't believe it's possible, that you don't actually want anyone to quit trying. I disagree, however, that even if they succeed, it still implies a creator. If they are able to replicate it by generating an environment that could have been naturally occurring, then they merely created the environment. This goes back to abiogenesis can be true without a natural creation to everything before it.
I place myself firmly in the Agnostic category. The existence or non-existence of God is not something I (or anyone) can prove, disproved, or imply. Given that, I think it's best to assume a natural process for everything (yes, I know what happens when you ass-u-me:P). It's too soon to declare that assumption invalid. There's always more to know and to put a "God did it, the rest is unknowable" (or even "the Big Bang happened, the rest is unknowable") on something is purposefully giving up on potential knowledge. Just think of where the world would be if we had done that whenever some person or even a majority of people thought it was sufficient.
Let me reiterate that I have no problem with there being a creator. I just don't think it's helpful to assume it to be true when trying to figure out how things work. In other words, how does knowing that an alien device has a creator help you understand how it works?
Look around you. Think of the natural laws that exist. Think of life itself.
If you can say that the creator can just be, then you must allow me to say that the laws of physics can just be. You can't discount something on the basis of complexity while using something much more complex to explain it.
Anyplace else you see a complex device (or any device, for that matter), you do not logically assume that it came about by accident. You assume it was made somewhere, in a factory or something. Please explain to me how this logic breaks down when we are talking about life itself.
A factory is a good guess for the device and can potentially be verified. A natural process is a good guess for life and can potentially be verified (or at least shown to be possible). It would be intellectually lazy to say that since abiogenesis hasn't been proven *yet* that it will never be proven, therefore God did it. This is what you essentially said in your prior post. There's no reason to stop there when we can find a simpler answer.
As for your point about who designed the designer, etc...abiogenesis proponents face the same dilemma.
I was really hoping for an answer here, but instead you just redirected. I didn't ask about abiogenesis, I asked about the designer's designer's designer. You're trying to explain complexity with an even greater complexity. Can you not see the problem with this, where the logic breaks down?
I'll take physics, mathematics, and theories, right or wrong, over a shoulder shrug and an "it's just not knowable." At least they are trying. And just to be technical, abiogenesis != big bang. I know people like to conflate the beginning of the universe and the start of life on Earth, but they really are two separate events. One's truth does not depend on the other's.
I apologize if this came out a bit snarky. I really don't mean it that way. I really appreciate the civil manner of your posts and I'm sorry I'm not as good as putting down my thoughts as you seem to be.
I'm sorry, you talk about abundant evidence, but I couldn't pick any out of your post. The only thing I see is loose implications like "order implies a designer." Maybe I'm dense, but I just don't get it. To me, it seems logical that anything able to design the universe must have order itself. By your logic, since it has order, it must have a designer as well, which also must have a designer, which also... I'm sure you get the idea. Lets just assume for the moment that the designer can just "be." But wait, why can we assume that for the designer, but not the laws of physics?
Maybe I missed what you said. Overall, I agree with your general point about orthodoxy being bad in science, or in anything, but I didn't see anything in your post amounting to anything more than "I (we) don't understand it, so God did it" (despite your claims to the contrary).
Ah, that makes sense. Thanks for doing the research that I wasn't willing to do:-)
Maybe it's shallow, but the primary thing I don't like about godaddy is their website. I find it cluttered and obnoxious looking. And as much as I like tits, they don't really sell me on domain and hosting services.
Really? You couldn't have ripped off a better looking site than godaddy? Maybe you're affiliated, maybe they ripped you off, maybe it's some cots template... Anyway you spin it, sorry, but I'll be looking elsewhere.
I hate replying to myself, but I forgot to mention that I also generally include something like "For Example: Joe MS" which probably does more to solve the confusion than just rearranging the verbiage.
I agree. It was unclear on my part. I had ass-u-med that italicizing Your Name within the quotes would be sufficient to distinguish that it was not literal. I was wrong.
I think your example is too complex and would confuse the testers (the testers are not coders). In all subsequent similar cases I took an approach more like this:
In the textbox, type the following: Your Name MS
This seems to work with much less confusion and I haven't had that problem since.
I once wrote a test plan which included a step like: type "Your Name MS" into the textbox...
The test failed because the application gave an error like: "Your Name MS" has already been used.
At first blush, it's "ha ha, somebody literally entered 'Your Name.'" Then you realize that it means more than one person did this! I've always taken this as a lesson that you have to be very careful with what you think will be obvious to the tester/user. I consider it a failure on my part because I didn't account for the "better idiot."
I think what he means is that some of the.NET library's functionality is implemented via COM. In other words, some of the built in classes are wrappers for preexisting COM components. It doesn't have to be implemented that way, but I think that it's a shortcut that Microsoft took to get the CLR out the door faster. I've had errors before which basically amounted to "failed to initialize {COM Component}" in strictly.NET apps (at least from my point of view as the developer).
So no, you don't use COM directly with.NET (aside from interop), but it's certainly being used under the hood.
Not quite. This is being funded by Google.org which is a subsidiary with a specific goal of doing stuff like this so it doesn't require a business case. See here. I think the whole "flow of information" thing was something some commentator came up with, not google.org.
Funny thing about people: they like to draw lines on the ground and then tend to look unkindly to other people crossing them. Even today, in my country, there are a lot of people who are very upset about an influx of immigrants from our neighbor to the south. Most of these immigrants simply want a better life in a more prosperous country, but the natives here see it as a threat to their prosperity. Weird, huh?
Just thought I'd point out that large scale migrations aren't as easy as the "just pick up and move north" you make it sound like.
Slashdot Mirror
I realize that it's just for amusement, but that's an improper comparison. In this case, the physician is analogous to the gun, not the gun owner. It should compare the number of people who see a physician to gun owners.
Even if you assume that everyone in the country sees a physician, gun owners still come out ahead, but not nearly as dramatically.
There is not, however, a complete superiority of the US Constitution over all State law.
The Supremacy Clause of the US Constitution says otherwise. Different states have different laws, but if any state law conflicts with federal law or the Constitution, it is overridden.
My definition of "on record": http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/
Sorry, I can't check your link at the moment as it appears that the android browser can't copy from content. Any chance you'd run that through a url shortener so it'd be easier to transcribe?
You're completely ass-backwards. It's the isotopic ratios which prove that the increased CO2 is anthropogenic as our emissions differ from known natural sources.
Here's the music: the sun's output is weaker than expected and yet 2010 looks like one of the hottest years on record. What is this solar minimum proving again?
Well, for me, the two-fingered scrolling is pretty awesome and I find it terribly obnoxious to use a laptop without it. It's very natural relative to the "scroll zone" on most trackpads.
Okay. Time for a (bad) analogy.
A boy is riding his bicycle and is struck by a car and killed. It appears that the car's brakes failed. During the course of the investigation, it is discovered that the driver's mechanic had told him that his brakes were bad and could fail at any time, but the driver was too cheap to get them fixed.
Is it possible that he would've killed the boy even if his brakes didn't fail? Yes.
Would you really be sitting here saying: "Why all the hate on this guy? He totally paid for the funeral even though no one asked him too!?"
I don't think most people are questioning BP's response. I think they've done the best they could given the situation. It's the events leading up to the disaster that have people angry.
The units aren't really a mixed. We just call it a quart sized bag instead of a liter sized bag.
Seriously*, how much money would it cost me to have you follow me around providing references and specifics to my half-rememberings and generalizations? I could really use that kind of service.
*Not to be taken seriously
Yes, much :)
I wasn't disputing that some scientists warned of global cooling in the past, it's just irritating when people use that freakin' Newsweek article as "proof" that that was the consensus of the time. It wasn't.
As an aside, your new link (I only read the abstract) indicates that CO2 will increase surface temperature, but that aerosols counteract it and they believe that, in the end, the aerosols would overpower it. I've heard of studies (read: no link) that, IIRC, indicate that global warming would already be more severe if not for the affect of man-made aerosols in the atmosphere. Seems to me that the linked article may not really be incorrect.
As to finding a piece of alien technology, if it were much more advance than ours, would we be able to identify it as technology? As they say, any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Do you have any doubt that there would be mountains of people proclaiming that it was created by God and given to man by Him? I don't. When faced with the unknown people tend to turn to the comfortable. For some people that would be God, others would say it must be alien tech, but still others would say that it must be a natural phenomenon because aliens can't cross the interstellar distances to be on Earth. Really, I think there'd be tons of disagreement about what it was and how it was made.
Yesterday's Sisyphean task is today's accomplishment. Many people have believed that many things have not been possible and been wrong. If we had listened to those people, where would we be today? I'm glad that, even though you don't believe it's possible, that you don't actually want anyone to quit trying. I disagree, however, that even if they succeed, it still implies a creator. If they are able to replicate it by generating an environment that could have been naturally occurring, then they merely created the environment. This goes back to abiogenesis can be true without a natural creation to everything before it.
I place myself firmly in the Agnostic category. The existence or non-existence of God is not something I (or anyone) can prove, disproved, or imply. Given that, I think it's best to assume a natural process for everything (yes, I know what happens when you ass-u-me
Let me reiterate that I have no problem with there being a creator. I just don't think it's helpful to assume it to be true when trying to figure out how things work. In other words, how does knowing that an alien device has a creator help you understand how it works?
I'll take physics, mathematics, and theories, right or wrong, over a shoulder shrug and an "it's just not knowable." At least they are trying. And just to be technical, abiogenesis != big bang. I know people like to conflate the beginning of the universe and the start of life on Earth, but they really are two separate events. One's truth does not depend on the other's.
I apologize if this came out a bit snarky. I really don't mean it that way. I really appreciate the civil manner of your posts and I'm sorry I'm not as good as putting down my thoughts as you seem to be.
I'm sorry, you talk about abundant evidence, but I couldn't pick any out of your post. The only thing I see is loose implications like "order implies a designer." Maybe I'm dense, but I just don't get it. To me, it seems logical that anything able to design the universe must have order itself. By your logic, since it has order, it must have a designer as well, which also must have a designer, which also... I'm sure you get the idea. Lets just assume for the moment that the designer can just "be." But wait, why can we assume that for the designer, but not the laws of physics?
Maybe I missed what you said. Overall, I agree with your general point about orthodoxy being bad in science, or in anything, but I didn't see anything in your post amounting to anything more than "I (we) don't understand it, so God did it" (despite your claims to the contrary).
Ah, that makes sense. Thanks for doing the research that I wasn't willing to do :-)
Maybe it's shallow, but the primary thing I don't like about godaddy is their website. I find it cluttered and obnoxious looking. And as much as I like tits, they don't really sell me on domain and hosting services.
I happen to be in the market for a host so I checked out your link. I was a little disturbed by what I saw. Compare:
https://www.securepaynet.net/gdshop/hosting/shared.asp?se=+&app_hdr=&prog_id=1t611&ci=5652#tabs
to
https://www.godaddy.com/gdshop/hosting/shared.asp?ci=8886#tabs
Really? You couldn't have ripped off a better looking site than godaddy? Maybe you're affiliated, maybe they ripped you off, maybe it's some cots template... Anyway you spin it, sorry, but I'll be looking elsewhere.
I hate replying to myself, but I forgot to mention that I also generally include something like "For Example: Joe MS" which probably does more to solve the confusion than just rearranging the verbiage.
I agree. It was unclear on my part. I had ass-u-med that italicizing Your Name within the quotes would be sufficient to distinguish that it was not literal. I was wrong.
I think your example is too complex and would confuse the testers (the testers are not coders). In all subsequent similar cases I took an approach more like this:
In the textbox, type the following: Your Name MS
This seems to work with much less confusion and I haven't had that problem since.
I once wrote a test plan which included a step like: type "Your Name MS" into the textbox...
The test failed because the application gave an error like: "Your Name MS" has already been used.
At first blush, it's "ha ha, somebody literally entered 'Your Name.'" Then you realize that it means more than one person did this! I've always taken this as a lesson that you have to be very careful with what you think will be obvious to the tester/user. I consider it a failure on my part because I didn't account for the "better idiot."
I think what he means is that some of the .NET library's functionality is implemented via COM. In other words, some of the built in classes are wrappers for preexisting COM components. It doesn't have to be implemented that way, but I think that it's a shortcut that Microsoft took to get the CLR out the door faster. I've had errors before which basically amounted to "failed to initialize {COM Component}" in strictly .NET apps (at least from my point of view as the developer).
.NET (aside from interop), but it's certainly being used under the hood.
So no, you don't use COM directly with
Not quite. This is being funded by Google.org which is a subsidiary with a specific goal of doing stuff like this so it doesn't require a business case. See here. I think the whole "flow of information" thing was something some commentator came up with, not google.org.
Funny thing about people: they like to draw lines on the ground and then tend to look unkindly to other people crossing them. Even today, in my country, there are a lot of people who are very upset about an influx of immigrants from our neighbor to the south. Most of these immigrants simply want a better life in a more prosperous country, but the natives here see it as a threat to their prosperity. Weird, huh?
Just thought I'd point out that large scale migrations aren't as easy as the "just pick up and move north" you make it sound like.
Must... resist... joke...
Damn your uber-hacker puppy!!!