So, what exactly do you believe? And why does my atheism make me "suck"?
It's difficult to tell, but you sound like a 'deist' (as opposed to a theist), but you might be even closer to atheist than that. Certainly given your statement of "a god is likely and is probably the end result of evolution" leads me to believe that you don't think a 'god' created the universe we live in, or at least not the 'root' universe [ I suppose our universe could be a 'matrix-like' technological creation of a god who evolved in a "parent" universe ].
The "god" you're talking about sounds like the "god" Einstein talked about. Basically "god" was his word for the beauty and wonder of the universe, but it's a horrible word to use for that since it's so easy to confuse with the Jewish/Christian/Muslim god (formerly the white bearded guy, now I'm not sure what form "he" is supposed to take). Certainly, if 'math' is your religion, then your god is unlikely to be recognized as such by most christians, muslims and jews.
If you like science as well as Math, I'd read some Dawkins. If you think 'The God Delusion' is too inflamitory, you might like "The Selfish Gene".
Everyone has an in-born sense of right or wrong. It's affected by their social up bringing, but "morals" have evolved in more species than just humans. When an individual is more likely to survive and procreate because they work together with those around them, help care for others who may also be carrying the gene, that gene favoring 'altruism' and other commonly accepted "morals" is likely to flourish in the population. Even religious people in modern times don't derive their morals from the bible or other documents, they _use_ their in-born morals to select the parts of the bible to follow. That's why a non-believer like me can talk to a christian's children about why I'm an athiest and not be stoned by their parents.
Actually, it depended on who's machine we played on. Mine was a//e (with 512k add-on memory), and my friends was the ][+ with the shift key wire in place (I think). My friend later got a//gs. What a joke!
Yeah, I'm old. Nearly 'get off my lawn old', pushing 40. A friend showed me some games on his PS/2, and he and I grew up playing Apple ][ games together. We avoided passing a compiler class by playing Hellcats or something like that. From what I could tell, the Apple// games had much better playability than his PS/2 games. Sometimes I think I should get my Mac running a Apple// emulator and waste a bunch of time...
Sometimes I think slashdot should make you hit submit, then re-type the comment while reading it from a copy displayed above the text box. Of course, with current software, there's no way to enforce typing vs. copy/paste, so people still wouldn't read their comments and realize how inane their typos and brain-farts make them seem...of course, I'll now go ahead and post this without re-reading it and something in it will make _me_ look inane... sigh.
I doubt that we'd need missile defense against North Korea or Iran. Either would be more likely to try a terrorist type attack than a missile attack against us. Both know that we would detect the launch bloom of a missile attack, and in retaliation would wipe out their entire country for one missile strike here. On the other hand, a shipping container or sailboat sailing into SF bay with a nuke would be much harder to track back to the guilty party, and therefore we'd be much less likely to launch a nuclear reprisal.
Yeah, and I debated about the snide comment. Probably should have left it out and written a longer comment about how I believe that education _must_ be improved if we, as citizens, are going to remain competitive in the world and be able to rise to the challenge of controlling those in government who would seek to control us.
But I was working, so I didn't want to take the time:-)
Interesting comment about Tiger. I recently had one of my Crucial 512MB SO-DIMMS go bad in my 400MHz pismo (G3) laptop. I definitely noticed the difference in responsiveness and usability between 512MB and 1GB while I was waiting for the replacement memory. Of course, it's Safari. I would only panic when running Safari...
Well, I voted absentee, but I take my ballot to the county election office to drop it off, so I don't have to worry about the mail.
Furthermore, if someone forced me to fill out my ballot a certain way, I could head to the county election office today, or a polling place and tell them such and vote a provisional ballot. So I'm not too worried about undue influence on absentee voters.
Since I can revoke my absentee ballot, you'd have to keep me from getting to the elections office to revoke my ballot and re-vote. Of course that's possible, but so is terrorizing people who would likely vote against your desires as well...
but killing dolphins in and of itself is only wrong if it endangers the survivability of the species
If that's true, then I'd have to say:
but killing people in and of itself is only wrong if it endangers the survivability of the species
And I'd put Dogs, the Greate Apes, Elephants and probably quite a few other animals in that category. Maybe even steers, but god I sure do love a good steak. On the other hand, at least I was willing to raise and slaughter my own steer to eat (though I haven't done that in a long time).
The way I see it, the woman has the right to have the fetus removed from her body. She doesn't have the right to see that it's killed. That is, if the fetus is viable and there is someone who is willing to pay the extra costs to care for the premature baby, they may do so. But the woman has the right to stop feeding the fetus and have it removed from her body.
You buy food, right? But you're not competent (or at least you don't have the time, every time) to determine whether that food is suitable for you to eat. You rely on the FDA and other agencies to ensure that.
I'd recommend a similar national certification for voting machines before any voting machine vendor was allowed to sell them as such, and a law barring voting agencies from purchasing and/or using non-certified machines in elections.
But you're right, we probably should just go back to how things were before 'The Jungle' came out and things were reformed. </sarcasm>
Well, if someone threatened/bought my vote, I could give them the signed ballot, then go to the secretary of state or whatever the local office is called, and tell them to cancel that vote and then vote how I want.
Agreed, but the ballot generated by the machine has to be voter-verifiable. That is, the 'reader' machine can only look at a human-readable indication of the vote. Nothing like this:
You voted for "John Q. Public" followed by the barcode "|!|!!l!!|" (which the reader machine reads as "Jane Smith").
There are still attacks of the form of the 'hidden serial number' printed on color laser printers (assuming the attacker controls both the ballot creating machine and the ballot reading machine), but these would fail in the event of a manual recount. Of course if the attack throws off the vote by enough that it's not contested then the manual recount wouldn't happen.
Another attack relies on the voter not reading the ballot in all cases. Let them select who they want, then print who the attacker wants (in some small percentage of cases). If the voter notices, they void their ballot and the poll worker attributes it to the voter being clueless wrt difficult to use voting machines...
There are a couple of reasons I see for ballot printing machines: blind voters and making it impossible to create a ballot in which the "voter's intent" displayed by the ballot is difficult to decern. The ballot may not match the voter's intent, but it would clearly be a specific intent.
Issues with them abound. The attacks above, technological failures, cost, etc. I think in most cases, scantron type ballots, or the ones where you draw a thick black line to fill in an arrow are a much better solution.
Slashdot Mirror
So, what exactly do you believe? And why does my atheism make me "suck"?
It's difficult to tell, but you sound like a 'deist' (as opposed to a theist), but you might be even closer to atheist than that. Certainly given your statement of "a god is likely and is probably the end result of evolution" leads me to believe that you don't think a 'god' created the universe we live in, or at least not the 'root' universe [ I suppose our universe could be a 'matrix-like' technological creation of a god who evolved in a "parent" universe ].
The "god" you're talking about sounds like the "god" Einstein talked about. Basically "god" was his word for the beauty and wonder of the universe, but it's a horrible word to use for that since it's so easy to confuse with the Jewish/Christian/Muslim god (formerly the white bearded guy, now I'm not sure what form "he" is supposed to take). Certainly, if 'math' is your religion, then your god is unlikely to be recognized as such by most christians, muslims and jews.
If you like science as well as Math, I'd read some Dawkins. If you think 'The God Delusion' is too inflamitory, you might like "The Selfish Gene".
Everyone has an in-born sense of right or wrong. It's affected by their social up bringing, but "morals" have evolved in more species than just humans. When an individual is more likely to survive and procreate because they work together with those around them, help care for others who may also be carrying the gene, that gene favoring 'altruism' and other commonly accepted "morals" is likely to flourish in the population.
Even religious people in modern times don't derive their morals from the bible or other documents, they _use_ their in-born morals to select the parts of the bible to follow. That's why a non-believer like me can talk to a christian's children about why I'm an athiest and not be stoned by their parents.
Actually, it depended on who's machine we played on. Mine was a //e (with 512k add-on memory), and my friends was the ][+ with the shift key wire in place (I think). My friend later got a //gs. What a joke!
Everybody knows that a Rocket must have something to push against to fly.
Well, sure, but the rocket would push against the 'ether', that the electromagnetic radiation propagates thru...duh!
</sarcasm>
Yeah, I'm old. Nearly 'get off my lawn old', pushing 40. A friend showed me some games on his PS/2, and he and I grew up playing Apple ][ games together. We avoided passing a compiler class by playing Hellcats or something like that. From what I could tell, the Apple // games had much better playability than his PS/2 games. Sometimes I think I should get my Mac running a Apple // emulator and waste a bunch of time...
Then I realize that that's what Slashdot is for.
Sometimes I think slashdot should make you hit submit, then re-type the comment while reading it from a copy displayed above the text box. Of course, with current software, there's no way to enforce typing vs. copy/paste, so people still wouldn't read their comments and realize how inane their typos and brain-farts make them seem...of course, I'll now go ahead and post this without re-reading it and something in it will make _me_ look inane... sigh.
I doubt that we'd need missile defense against North Korea or Iran. Either would be more likely to try a terrorist type attack than a missile attack against us. Both know that we would detect the launch bloom of a missile attack, and in retaliation would wipe out their entire country for one missile strike here. On the other hand, a shipping container or sailboat sailing into SF bay with a nuke would be much harder to track back to the guilty party, and therefore we'd be much less likely to launch a nuclear reprisal.
Really? What did it taste like?
Interesting that you compare the cost of the missile defense to the cost of 9/11, which of course didn't bother with missiles.
If I secretly had a nuke, I could blow up pretty much any coastal city in the world without a problem.
Yeah, and I debated about the snide comment. Probably should have left it out and written a longer comment about how I believe that education _must_ be improved if we, as citizens, are going to remain competitive in the world and be able to rise to the challenge of controlling those in government who would seek to control us.
:-)
But I was working, so I didn't want to take the time
Interesting comment about Tiger. I recently had one of my Crucial 512MB SO-DIMMS go bad in my 400MHz pismo (G3) laptop. I definitely noticed the difference in responsiveness and usability between 512MB and 1GB while I was waiting for the replacement memory. Of course, it's Safari. I would only panic when running Safari...
I'd like to add a number 7.
7. Improve the educational system so that people ranting about torture might spell it correctly and get taken just a wee bit more seriously...
On the other hand, I agree with almost all of the rest of it.
You must use Windows. I've never had trouble with bluetooth in OS-X.
Well, I voted absentee, but I take my ballot to the county election office to drop it off, so I don't have to worry about the mail.
Furthermore, if someone forced me to fill out my ballot a certain way, I could head to the county election office today, or a polling place and tell them such and vote a provisional ballot. So I'm not too worried about undue influence on absentee voters.
I've been thinking about getting T-shirts made that say 'FIRE!!!' and wearing them to the theater.
Think anyone would get it?
Since I can revoke my absentee ballot, you'd have to keep me from getting to the elections office to revoke my ballot and re-vote.
Of course that's possible, but so is terrorizing people who would likely vote against your desires as well...
Yep, but I was still shocked and pissed off :-(
Unfortunately, you can find shark fin soup for sale in the US. We stayed at a hotel in Hawaii and the restaurant there had shark fin soup.
:-(
I refuse to stay there again, though my wife really liked the hotel
but killing dolphins in and of itself is only wrong if it endangers the survivability of the species
If that's true, then I'd have to say:
but killing people in and of itself is only wrong if it endangers the survivability of the species
And I'd put Dogs, the Greate Apes, Elephants and probably quite a few other animals in that category. Maybe even steers, but god I sure do love a good steak. On the other hand, at least I was willing to raise and slaughter my own steer to eat (though I haven't done that in a long time).
The way I see it, the woman has the right to have the fetus removed from her body. She doesn't have the right to see that it's killed. That is, if the fetus is viable and there is someone who is willing to pay the extra costs to care for the premature baby, they may do so. But the woman has the right to stop feeding the fetus and have it removed from her body.
I like the 'Apple ProBook' and 'Apple MacBook' myself, but 'ProBook' doesn't have enough Apple/Mac identifiability by itself.
You buy food, right? But you're not competent (or at least you don't have the time, every time) to determine whether that food is suitable for you to eat. You rely on the FDA and other agencies to ensure that.
I'd recommend a similar national certification for voting machines before any voting machine vendor was allowed to sell them as such, and a law barring voting agencies from purchasing and/or using non-certified machines in elections.
But you're right, we probably should just go back to how things were before 'The Jungle' came out and things were reformed. </sarcasm>
My wife and I watched it. There was a bit on Diebold on there, basically that they wouldn't talk to Lou.
Well, if someone threatened/bought my vote, I could give them the signed ballot, then go to the secretary of state or whatever the local office is called, and tell them to cancel that vote and then vote how I want.
At least in CA.
Agreed, but the ballot generated by the machine has to be voter-verifiable. That is, the 'reader' machine can only look at a human-readable indication of the vote. Nothing like this:
You voted for "John Q. Public"
followed by the barcode "|!|!!l!!|" (which the reader machine reads as "Jane Smith").
There are still attacks of the form of the 'hidden serial number' printed on color laser printers (assuming the attacker controls both the ballot creating machine and the ballot reading machine), but these would fail in the event of a manual recount. Of course if the attack throws off the vote by enough that it's not contested then the manual recount wouldn't happen.
Another attack relies on the voter not reading the ballot in all cases. Let them select who they want, then print who the attacker wants (in some small percentage of cases). If the voter notices, they void their ballot and the poll worker attributes it to the voter being clueless wrt difficult to use voting machines...
There are a couple of reasons I see for ballot printing machines: blind voters and making it impossible to create a ballot in which the "voter's intent" displayed by the ballot is difficult to decern. The ballot may not match the voter's intent, but it would clearly be a specific intent.
Issues with them abound. The attacks above, technological failures, cost, etc. I think in most cases, scantron type ballots, or the ones where you draw a thick black line to fill in an arrow are a much better solution.