Not sure. I just went looking (google) for anything I could find about flaws in the studies (they apparently do the same one each year) and I didn't find anything.
If you've got something, I'm certainly open to reading it.
That is a horrible graph (should be properly labeled), but it shows the percentage of correct respondents in the US and Europe.
Note that only a little over 55% answered correctly that it takes the Earth a year to go around the Sun, and fewer than 80% know the Earth actually goes around the Sun, rather than vice-versa.
You need to be either "crazy" or willfully ignorant to reject evolution. It's not really insane in the clinical sense, it's just that you were indoctrinated with a horrible belief system which makes you reject reality in favor of a nice myth. You certainly can't reject evolution based on science, no matter what word games you play with the word "theory".
And for the separation of church and state, if you want a joined church and state, I advise you to look at the wonderful states of Saudi Arabia & Iran for examples of the tyranny which results.
Ron Paul does have some good ideas about reducing the role of government in our lives...unfortunately the ideas are in the same package with a bunch of batshit crazy ones.
Well, he's a Doctor who denies evolution for one. How the hell did he get thru biology, much less medical school and still not see the truth of evolution?
Second, he thinks the separation of church and state is a bad thing and wants to amend the constitution to "fix" that.
I'm fine with simple paper ballots, but there definitely are issues with them for the disabled. Also, you have trouble with ballots which can be 'spoiled' to a variable extent. If 'spoilage' were simply binary, then deciding when to just throw out the ballot (at least for the spoiled contest on it) would be easy, but since it's not, you get people arguing about 'the intent of the voter'. Ballot marker machines are supposed to solve that.
The thing is, with the protocols, I can allow you to threaten me, fill out the ballot the way you want, then submit it. Then later (before election day) I go down to the registrar of voters and explain what happened and fill out the ballot the way I want in the private area at the registrar of voters. They make sure the 'right' ballot gets counted. So yeah, with a huge effort and risk of getting caught, someone could slightly influence the election.
On the other hand, with all-electronic voting, someone could easily _control_ the election and there would be no way to prove it.
A lot of the reason behind the push for voting machines was supposedly to be easier for disabled people to use to vote. After all, a blind person will have a lot of trouble with "scantron" or other "visual" type ballot.
I understand the need for machines which make it easier for disabled people to vote, but the only "safe" machine is a machine which just marks ballots in a human-readable manner. The machine can ensure that ballots aren't created in an invalid state (multiple candidates when only one is allowed), and that non-vote selections are explicit (voter must choose 'none of the above' to proceed). The machine then prints the ballot in a human readable form and makes it available to the voter. The voter inspects it and either places it in the ballot box, or takes it to another machine which reads the ballot and makes the selections apparent to the voter (think vision impaired voter needing the ballot to be 'read' to them) and then after they confirm the ballot is accurate, places it in the ballot box.
This still doesn't deal with the fact the many voters will vote without making 'hard' selections. Candidates at the top of the ballot get a 'bump' just by their position. There are other ways which a machine could subtlety influence an election, as well as marking some percentage of the ballots "erroneously" in hopes that voters wouldn't inspect the ballots closely and find the errors.
In short, accurate elections with anonymous, non-voter-provable (to prevent blackmail/vote purchasing) votes are hard, but since they are the basis for our system of government, we need to do the work to do it right.
In California, you can be an Permanent Absentee Voter, which guarantees a paper trail for your vote. I deliver mine directly to the County Registrar of Voters, but I believe you can drop them off an any polling place, or mail them, though they have to arrive by the deadline, postmark does not count.
The evolution thing is minor, though it goes to his willingness to educate himself about a controversial issue and learn the facts and think critically. His willingness to combine religion with state authority (the very antithesis of the founding of this country) and his rejection of the 14th amendment (which guarantees the bill of rights and other restrictions on government power apply to the state and lower governments as well as the federal government) are the main reasons I reject Ron Paul.
I don't worry too much that he'll be a spoiler, and I worry very little he'd be President, but I still feel it is important that the people who support him for his small government views (which is what drew me to him and caused me to learn more about him) learn more about his more problematic views. And those are the ones that most people say make him a 'wacko': abolish the IRS and much of the govt.
In early 2007 I thought I might be able to vote for Ron Paul against certain Democrats if it came down to that (unlikely). After learning more about Dr. Paul: that he hasn't felt the need to educate himself about the scientific facts about evolution and rejects it, though wasn't willing to raise his hand during the televised debate where the candidates were asked that question; that he calls abortion "Murder"; and, most critically, that he wants to remove the ability of the federal government to intervene in violations of chuch/state separation. If the founding fathers got nothing else right with our country, they got the separation of church and state right. Integrating religion and state power is a sure path to tyranny.
Outsourcing or not, it's important to get the right skill level for the job, or plan for training. The trouble we have is we have a large, complex, code base, and we had too much turnover with the engineers in India. Also, the time difference can be a big impact when you've got a day for the round-trip of question-answer-review...
(btw, writing 'too' as 'to' makes you sentences more difficult to understand)
Hey, I hate python (did Guido learn nothing from the Makefile debacle?), but I can't imagine that the XO kids will learn nothing from a system designed with a very intelligent architecture, with security designed in from the ground up, with access to source for everything and with a focus on learning. I imagine that children who learn about computers from an XO would be much better developers than kids raised on Windows.
Well, not sure about scandal, but there was the issue about the racist statements published in his name in his newsletter. It took him quite a while to disclaim those statements. But while those statements concerned me, I still felt that he was the only Republican candidate I could possibly vote for. Seeing bits out of the latest youtube debate I'm not sure I could vote for him. The 'god' bits were bothersome, but the main problem I have with him is his stance on Roe v Wade and his calling of abortion, 'murder'. Regardless of whether he believes it or is just pandering, I don't think I could vote for him over someone else who supports Roe v. Wade.
Exactly. I bought my wife an iPhone for her birthday on Sunday. I could have waited, though she had a 'need' for it now (PDA mostly) and got her something else as a gift. The thing is, 'next year' is so nebulous that there was no wait I was going to wait for that. Had he said, "...At Macworld", I probably would have waited.
If you're posting something on the internet, you should have the expectation that everyone in the whole world may someday know it was you who wrote it.
David Brin's essay on the end of privacy is probably appropriate reading here...
Slashdot Mirror
Not sure. I just went looking (google) for anything I could find about flaws in the studies (they apparently do the same one each year) and I didn't find anything.
If you've got something, I'm certainly open to reading it.
National Science Foundation Survey shows people are scientifically ignorant:
http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/seind04/c7/fig07-06.htm
That is a horrible graph (should be properly labeled), but it shows the percentage of correct respondents in the US and Europe.
Note that only a little over 55% answered correctly that it takes the Earth a year to go around the Sun, and fewer than 80% know the Earth actually goes around the Sun, rather than vice-versa.
Oh fine, kill our fun. But you know, without speculation the comment area on a slashdot story will pretty much be empty...
One interesting thing about the Atlas of Creation is that it uses photos of fishing lures as examples of life to compare to fossils to show a lack of evolution.
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/01/well_fly_fishing_is_a_science.php
Fishing lures.
Yeah, this is something I can believe in...
If he didn't want to get infected, he should have used lynx on OpenBSD!
You need to be either "crazy" or willfully ignorant to reject evolution. It's not really insane in the clinical sense, it's just that you were indoctrinated with a horrible belief system which makes you reject reality in favor of a nice myth. You certainly can't reject evolution based on science, no matter what word games you play with the word "theory".
And for the separation of church and state, if you want a joined church and state, I advise you to look at the wonderful states of Saudi Arabia & Iran for examples of the tyranny which results.
Ron Paul does have some good ideas about reducing the role of government in our lives...unfortunately the ideas are in the same package with a bunch of batshit crazy ones.
Well, he's a Doctor who denies evolution for one. How the hell did he get thru biology, much less medical school and still not see the truth of evolution?
Second, he thinks the separation of church and state is a bad thing and wants to amend the constitution to "fix" that.
Yeah, but how much of the extra weight of corn is fuel calories and how much is water weight (which wastes energy if we're shipping it around).
Well, if you could prove that they were doing the tampering at the behest of enemies of the state
You mean the one I took back to the poll worker and reported as "spoiled" before getting one which I used to record my "real" vote?
I'm fine with simple paper ballots, but there definitely are issues with them for the disabled. Also, you have trouble with ballots which can be 'spoiled' to a variable extent. If 'spoilage' were simply binary, then deciding when to just throw out the ballot (at least for the spoiled contest on it) would be easy, but since it's not, you get people arguing about 'the intent of the voter'. Ballot marker machines are supposed to solve that.
The thing is, with the protocols, I can allow you to threaten me, fill out the ballot the way you want, then submit it. Then later (before election day) I go down to the registrar of voters and explain what happened and fill out the ballot the way I want in the private area at the registrar of voters. They make sure the 'right' ballot gets counted. So yeah, with a huge effort and risk of getting caught, someone could slightly influence the election.
On the other hand, with all-electronic voting, someone could easily _control_ the election and there would be no way to prove it.
A lot of the reason behind the push for voting machines was supposedly to be easier for disabled people to use to vote. After all, a blind person will have a lot of trouble with "scantron" or other "visual" type ballot.
I understand the need for machines which make it easier for disabled people to vote, but the only "safe" machine is a machine which just marks ballots in a human-readable manner. The machine can ensure that ballots aren't created in an invalid state (multiple candidates when only one is allowed), and that non-vote selections are explicit (voter must choose 'none of the above' to proceed). The machine then prints the ballot in a human readable form and makes it available to the voter. The voter inspects it and either places it in the ballot box, or takes it to another machine which reads the ballot and makes the selections apparent to the voter (think vision impaired voter needing the ballot to be 'read' to them) and then after they confirm the ballot is accurate, places it in the ballot box.
This still doesn't deal with the fact the many voters will vote without making 'hard' selections. Candidates at the top of the ballot get a 'bump' just by their position. There are other ways which a machine could subtlety influence an election, as well as marking some percentage of the ballots "erroneously" in hopes that voters wouldn't inspect the ballots closely and find the errors.
In short, accurate elections with anonymous, non-voter-provable (to prevent blackmail/vote purchasing) votes are hard, but since they are the basis for our system of government, we need to do the work to do it right.
In California, you can be an Permanent Absentee Voter, which guarantees a paper trail for your vote. I deliver mine directly to the County Registrar of Voters, but I believe you can drop them off an any polling place, or mail them, though they have to arrive by the deadline, postmark does not count.
The evolution thing is minor, though it goes to his willingness to educate himself about a controversial issue and learn the facts and think critically. His willingness to combine religion with state authority (the very antithesis of the founding of this country) and his rejection of the 14th amendment (which guarantees the bill of rights and other restrictions on government power apply to the state and lower governments as well as the federal government) are the main reasons I reject Ron Paul.
I don't worry too much that he'll be a spoiler, and I worry very little he'd be President, but I still feel it is important that the people who support him for his small government views (which is what drew me to him and caused me to learn more about him) learn more about his more problematic views. And those are the ones that most people say make him a 'wacko': abolish the IRS and much of the govt.
In early 2007 I thought I might be able to vote for Ron Paul against certain Democrats if it came down to that (unlikely).
After learning more about Dr. Paul: that he hasn't felt the need to educate himself about the scientific facts about evolution and rejects it, though wasn't willing to raise his hand during the televised debate where the candidates were asked that question; that he calls abortion "Murder"; and, most critically, that he wants to remove the ability of the federal government to intervene in violations of chuch/state separation.
If the founding fathers got nothing else right with our country, they got the separation of church and state right. Integrating religion and state power is a sure path to tyranny.
Outsourcing or not, it's important to get the right skill level for the job, or plan for training. The trouble we have is we have a large, complex, code base, and we had too much turnover with the engineers in India. Also, the time difference can be a big impact when you've got a day for the round-trip of question-answer-review...
(btw, writing 'too' as 'to' makes you sentences more difficult to understand)
Looks like since about 7000 UIDs since you've been here :-)
So, if my rip of my CD that I purchased isn't perfect, then I don't have a copy of that particular CD and so it's infringement? :-)
I'm beginning to think that IP should go the way of the dodo, and I write software for a living...sigh, the crazies are running the nuthouse.
Hey, I hate python (did Guido learn nothing from the Makefile debacle?), but I can't imagine that the XO kids will learn nothing from a system designed with a very intelligent architecture, with security designed in from the ground up, with access to source for everything and with a focus on learning. I imagine that children who learn about computers from an XO would be much better developers than kids raised on Windows.
Well, not sure about scandal, but there was the issue about the racist statements published in his name in his newsletter. It took him quite a while to disclaim those statements.
But while those statements concerned me, I still felt that he was the only Republican candidate I could possibly vote for. Seeing bits out of the latest youtube debate I'm not sure I could vote for him. The 'god' bits were bothersome, but the main problem I have with him is his stance on Roe v Wade and his calling of abortion, 'murder'. Regardless of whether he believes it or is just pandering, I don't think I could vote for him over someone else who supports Roe v. Wade.
I used to think I could vote for Ron Paul, until I heard him call abortion murder.
Exactly. I bought my wife an iPhone for her birthday on Sunday. I could have waited, though she had a 'need' for it now (PDA mostly) and got her something else as a gift. The thing is, 'next year' is so nebulous that there was no wait I was going to wait for that. Had he said, "...At Macworld", I probably would have waited.
If you're posting something on the internet, you should have the expectation that everyone in the whole world may someday know it was you who wrote it.
David Brin's essay on the end of privacy is probably appropriate reading here...