My apologies, I phrased my original post poorly. I agree with everything you've said here, and I wondered about that magically accelerated solar wind as well.
What, mods are giving obvious flamebait +5 insightful today?
Apple have done a lot to maintain backwards compatibility, with fat binaries greatly smoothing the transitions from 68K to PPC to x86 in addition to the Carbon/Cocoa architectures easing developers into the new world of OS X from the old mishmash of 'Classic' MacOS.
They've deprecated many APIs and finally dropped Classic mode compatibility from Intel Macs altogether.
You can easily make a case that they've broken some backwards compatibility, but you'd be hard-pressed to prove it was needless.
Apple are also in the happy position of not having masses of legacy apps which have to be kept running apparently forever. Microsoft is in the unhappy, opposite position. I've no doubt that they'd dump support for ancient systems if they could.
The Electric Universe has very little behind it in terms of hard science, and so falls by the wayside. It's in good company there, sitting next to phlogiston, the ether and other hypotheses. Maybe some good will come of it, but it's unlikely given that it's in opposition to theories we can actually test and disprove/prove.
In part because selling the enchants is so hard... I could have sworn Blizzard said they were going to implement some kind of 'enchanting stone' that you could create then sell on the AH. That would have made things so much easier.
I saw something about this recently in a Q&A about the Lich King expansion.
Q: Why do Enchanters have to stand around Org and spam chat channels instead of put items in AH? (applause) A: Was originally designed for player interaction. Didn't work out quite as well. We still like the player interaction and may be keeping it on the higher enchants, but we are talking about going to an item based system. (applause)
That's as strong an indication as we're likely to get, but it's certainly not a definite. Still, we can hope.
I guess I'm one of those few that get more enjoyment from seeing new places in games than beating up monster clone #54326546543. I play WoW and swam around both continents at L10 to see new things. I found some 'lost' places (shacks on the coast miles from anywhere, signs of life but no creatures around) and some interesting new places. All great fun, and still my favourite time from this game.
I'm stuck on the grind now, with one character at L62 who rarely is played and another at L32 who I play just to get to L35 so I can increase my trade skills. I'd far rather concentrate on exploration and trade than beating up the same monsters again and again to accomplish yet another "bring me ten monster X livers" or "kill 15 of monster Y" quest. The game's not about that though, well not entirely.
There's still most of the Outlands to explore, and soon the next expansion will provide another continent to visit, so there's hope. I just have to wade through a bunch of dull, uninspired quests to get there.
It is depressing, but I sadly think that the market has spoken and the market has said, we want more WoW, please don't make us think or give us choices. Lead us by the hand and give us our XP and levels.
You're right - it *is* depressing. This is the time that the market has to be led to a different model, and game companies should be trying to release products that differ from WoW. Oddly it seems that they don't see this, believing that if they make another WoW, people will flock to their product. We've already got WoW though, we need something new, something very different.
In an increasingly free-market, user-pays world, we're seeing education move from the public sector to the private sector. As funding becomes more of an issue (got to run these school-like businesses at a profit!) we're going to see businesses tie the gift of money to some benefit they receive (probably advertising).
Schools *should* be vendor-neutral, but when they're private companies being run for profit, they can't afford to be.
If you think I'm being overly alarmist at the rise of education companies, have a look through the shock therapy ideas of the late Milton Friedman. As an example, New Orleans before Hurricane Katrina had 132 schools run on the public purse. After Katrina it had 7, with the difference being picked up by an increase in private-run charter schools. The public money goes to school vouchers which parents use to pay for their children's education.
So far, so good - less money from the public purse, everyone's happy. The state should not run businesses, and modern schools look a lot like businesses to the casual observer.
Although the people of New Orleans didn't have much opportunity to debate or even speak out about the wholesale change to their school system, as they were still in shock and trying to rebuild their homes. The teachers were almost all sacked, some being rehired by the schools at a lower wage, most not.
And what happens when another business offers essentially free money to one of these school-like businesses? Why shouldn't the for-profit charter school pocket the money and make their shareholders happy?
Apple gave discounts (you could buy whatever you like, but if you buy an Apple, you'll get a good discount).
Microsoft is tying aid money to use of their product (you can buy whatever you like, but if you don't put Windows on it, you won't get the aid money).
We're probably looking at this the wrong way. Microsoft is investing money in educating users in its products. It's not really giving aid or charity, but doing what it can to ensure future uptake of its products.
There's nothing inherently wrong with that, but it's not aid money, just another investment.
Go to the preferences for XTorrent, select the Searching panel and add the string below to the Search Tab list:
http://tvrss.net/search/?distribution_group=combined&show_name=%@&filename=&date=&quality=&release_group=&mode=simple I can't work the other one out quickly enough to be bothered with.
If the Electric Universe framework and Tesla's rumoured theories (little to nothing was published, leaving rumours and eyewitnesses as the main source of information) are correct, they'll stand up to testing and be accepted as valid.
If they're not, they'll wither and die leaving only a handful of crank scientists supporting them.
What does that mean? For an English newspaper, this seems a remarkably odd way to say "Warning: Do Not Use On Mac" or similar. I read that and recognised there was something about Apples, but it's not clear. What's an Apple slot? Is there one in my drive? Like Alice in Wonderland, we know all the words but don't understand the sentence.
I had to re-read it to get the right meaning. It's like one of those pictures - is it a vase or two women's faces? Or is it too early for me and my brain is just not working yet? I'm starting to lean towards that one.
There was another little picture with the words "tray drive (tick)" so I guess any slot-in drive is bad because only tray drives get the tick. It's still not as clear as it should be.
In addition to the poor wording, PC users need to recognise that Mac users have often been warned in the past about things that were perfectly harmless. "This website does not support Macs" usually means "change your browser agent to IE because we detected Safari." Lots of those interactive DVDs said the extra features were PC-only, but the film itself played just fine. We learn to ignore most warnings given by media outlets, because they're often just covering themselves.
It's not *quite* as simple as saying Mac users are illiterate. We're elitist assholes, but not illiterate.
Well, thanks Jeremy. Maybe you're not as bad as I thought. Any reason why you're trolling me? Or is it just random stuff? Did I actually do something to you? Or at you? The headslamming's going okay. The snake's dead though so I'm jump banging my head on the pulpy remains. It's kind of relaxing, in a headbanging way.
I've been wondering when you'd turn up, AC troll. Thanks for your gutless comment. Or will you post your name? You know mine, but you're too much the spineless worm to post your own.
>>Teaching chastity is all well and good, but why not teach condom use as well?
>Why don't you go do that instead of demanding it from those who honestly and in good faith do not believe in it?
I speak up whenever I can, but I don't have missionaries, fundraisers and vast support structures around me.
Those people who believe condoms don't help against the tide of AIDS are simply wrong. I don't care if they do so "honestly and in good faith" because the outcome is what matters, not the motives. The outcome is the uncontained spread of AIDS across poor nations who put their trust and faith in religions that failed to return it.
Is it wrong to speak up when you see something like this? Would you prefer I didn't say anything to maintain your peace of mind?
He holds no legal authority outside a few blocks in Rome. He is the head of a faith that teaches chastity outside of marriage, but so is the Dalai Lama.
That's a bit disingenuous. There's no *legal* authority, but when his people go around to poorer parts of the world and teach that condoms are evil, promote AIDS and should never be used then I'd say his authority is being felt.
It's a sickening, evil thing being done in the world, and it's being done by Catholics with the Pope's blessing. Teaching chastity is all well and good, but why not teach condom use as well? It'd save many thousands of lives, stop a lot of heartache and result in less unwanted pregnancies.
But no, the church wants that strong moral stance and they don't care about the cost.
First cause argument: motion requires a cause, but what is the first cause that started the first motion? Surely a god or demiurge must be this first mover (prime mover, unmoved mover).
Ah, but what caused the god or demiurge? Surely another god! And the thing that caused that god must be another god again! Soon we're back to "it's turtles all the way down," and no reasonable conclusion can be reached.
Science uses the Big Bang as the first event but posits nothing to 'cause' that. Indeed, since time and space are intertwined in current theory, there is no 'before' that moment - the question is invalid. Perhaps some force external to our time-space continuum, another universe entirely. Suddenly we're back to "turtles all the way down."
While a quick think and some modern science helps, religion can't provide answers without artificially stopping at some level. "God is the first cause!" says the religious person, but they refuse to consider the obvious question "Yes, but what created God?"
Further, I'd argue that introducing gods and demiurges not only fails to answer the question but limits further thought. Past thinkers considered these concepts as ultimate in every sense and so would not think past that point. Saying "God did it" is effectively saying "I don't know and refuse to investigate further!"
There may be a limit to what we can know about an exterior reality, and looking for first causes may cross that limit, leaving us with some penultimate cause but no way to look further.
As for Aquinas' Five Ways... we'll we've already covered first cause.
The unmoved mover is essentially the same as first cause (regression with an artificial endpoint that must be a god). Why not turtles all the way down?
Contingency is very similar - regression of potentiality back to something that must exist - and like the previous arguments posits God as the endpoint. Again with the turtles.
Degree is the weakest so far, with a gaping hole that isn't seen when the full argument is placed in context. Traditionally the argument (from Wikipedia) goes: 1 - Objects have properties to greater or lesser extents. 2 - If an object has a property to a lesser extent, then there exists some other object that has the property to the maximum possible degree. 3 - So there is an entity that has all properties to the maximum possible degree. 4 - Hence God exists!
The gaping hole is point two, which posits that no object in the Universe can have the maximum possible degree of a property. Why not? It's not answered. And what are these properties anyway? Weight? Melting point? Point three then goes on to say that there must be a single object with all maximum possible degrees. Why? Why not! Who needs to justify such a sweeping statement? Surely it can only be God, and when we read point four we see that yes, it was God all along!
The exact same argument, with all its flaws, would explain a pantheon of gods just as well. In fact it's stronger in that case because you don't have to collect all the "maximum possible degrees" into a single object.
So God is apparently the heaviest, hottest, coldest, wettest, driest, smartest, stupidest, etc thing in the Universe? Hmm...
Design fails the first concept - all things act for some reason. Who says? It's a circular argument. The first point is supposed, the second is seen through the lens provided by the first, the third is the argument and the fourth is the conclusion that fits the second and therefore first points. 1 - "I believe that God designed the Universe and everything in it for a plan." (this is not usually said up front) 2 - "I see that things happen for a reason." (or "the Universe is complex!") 3 - "There must be some plan for there to be a reason." (or "Complexity requires design!") 4 - "A plan for the Universe can only be devised by God, therefore God exists!" (or "Design requires God!")
Point two (usually the starting point) has no basis. I look at clouds and sometimes see
Try living your life as an atheist, where every day for your entire life is bash-the-atheist day. Where you end up arguing with your own parents who ask what they did wrong that you failed to believe in mystical gods and demons and fairies in the bottom of the garden.
You're upset about a few years of well-deserved religion-bashing now that people are finally starting to speak up about why they don't believe in religion or the literal truthiness of the Bible. Get used to it, because as long as religion speaks up on issues we can see and touch you'll have people talking back and just plain not respecting the thousands of years of religious thinking. And that's a good thing because either the religion will learn to survive in the reality we inhabit or die off because it couldn't reconcile a book from 2-4 thousand years ago with today's world.
You glossed over it as "something he said," but the Pope said that he thought Galileo's heresy trial was fair and reasonable when he spoke about it seventeen years ago, and that's just as ridiculous now as it was then. The previous Pope apologised for the treatment of Galileo, but the current incumbent prefers history as it was - a church struggling against science and reason.
Again, a political move designed to get bums on pews.
Boycotting Il Papa is shameful? Not at all. If someone comes out and says that the excommunication and damnation of Galileo was fine, then why should such intolerance be rewarded with meek submission when they parade it around?
The Pope cancelled the visit for his own reasons, none of them to do with his need for a "dignified and tranquil welcome."
In the same Regensberg lecture that criticized Islam for lacking a fundamental belief in reason, the Pope was also sending a warning to the West that reason itself was suffocating faith and destroying its historical identity. By offering himself up as victim of the La Sapienza professors he can cite further evidence for this argument right in his own backyard....
Muslims expressed outrage at references to the prophet Muhammed, and the implication that Islam was predisposed to violence, whereas papal supporters praised Benedict for the frankness of his argument in light of world events.
Political posturing, no more, no less. Criticise Islam, deepening the divide and intolerance in the world - it's great wedge politics although very damaging to the people on the ground. Play the poor martyr, the man who has more ability to speak up on issues and be heard than probably any other Human alive, and yet he pretends he's being censored. If it wasn't so transparent it'd be funny.
Italian President Giorgio Napolitano wrote to the Pope condemning "demonstrations of intolerance". Nice to see the Italian government go all wobbly at the knees and spineless.
For the whiff of censorship toward a figure who is welcomed in myriad settings across the world -- both for his position and his intellect -- may offer ammunition for Benedict's belief that he is something of a "Pope under siege" in the face of the prevailing secular winds of his times.
He wants to turn back the tide of history, back to when science was a tiny thing and easily controlled. The Pope may be under siege, but it's a siege mounted by reality and not secularity. The Catholic Church is failing to deal with the challenge of our rapidly changing times and so elects the ultra-conservative Ratzinger to stand like Canute before the tide.
If you don't want to hear him speak then don't go to his speech. He's got all the pulpits of the world to speak from. If he wants to speak about religion, he should get into a church. If he wants to speak at a university, then why shouldn't the staff and students have a right to protest against him? To use your point, if he doesn't want to be protested at, he should speak from his church.
It's not fucking rocket science. Probably just as well given this Pope's intolerance towards science.
When I was travelling for business I'd have killed (well, maybe not killed but certainly maimed) for something that light that could easily carry off presentations and still be powerful enough for work. Instead I had a half-ton Dell that came in its own heavy leather briefcase which still included a handful of accessories (most of which stayed at home). For a while I thought Dell had perfected the compacted neutron battery, where a teaspoon of the stuff weighs as much as a mountain. Carry that plus your normal luggage around an airport and you'll soon grow to hate every damnable gram as much as I did.
This is absolutely perfect for business travellers. And for those people you mentioned. And for people needing a very portable second machine.
I had a 512MB stick of RAM go bad in my old iBook. It worked for a year or so and then I started getting kernel panics all the time. Three, four times a day. I checked every component through software, did lots of RAM tests (write patterns, read patterns, etc) but nothing showed up. I guessed it might be the RAM so I pulled the stick and while the lower memory slowed the machine down, it didn't panic again. After a month of this sort of use (wanted to be certain) I swapped the stick under its lifetime warranty and everything was good again.
Ah, memories. The times I nearly threw that iBook out the window... good days...
The MagSafe cables actually take about the same force to break the magnetic connection as required to pull out the old cables. The difference is that they're designed to pull out if the cable is pulled from any angle. My wife and I both use MBPs and haven't had a cable fall out accidentally or otherwise.
It's a nice idea and definitely not the issue you're thinking it might be.
Galileo had evidence to support his theory, while the other scientists relied on dogma and tradition as their evidence. I use the term "scientists" loosely because those people were clearly not scientists in any sense we understand today. Making Galileo out to be a crank scientist who turned out to be right is a pretty damaging view of one of the great scientists of his age.
Condemning someone to Hell was not something to take lightly back then. We can say things today like "it'd be pretty bad I guess, if you believe in all that stuff," and think it was nothing much. It was a massive thing, barring Galileo from Heaven for eternity. Since the word of the Pope is infallible, the later apology won't allow Galileo back to Heaven. As an atheist, I can think it was all a bit silly, but back then it was deadly serious and the ramifications were truly terrible in their belief system. Again, I think you're greatly underestimating this.
Lastly, what would a conservative Pope come to a university for? He has many, many venues to speak from should he choose to. Instead he chose a place where he knew he would be challenged by opposition. And be clear - the Pope won't be argued with, he does not debate, so the opposition would not get any 'right of reply' or option to answer claims made by the Pope in that university. The scientists would not have a chance to let their ideas compete with the Pope's (whose are well-known anyway) in this sort of dialogue. They would be told what is right and that's the end of it.
I suspect that the Pope, the political animal that he is, wanted exactly this outcome so that he could put about the idea that science is intolerant of different ideas. His goal is to bring people back to the church, and this will help slightly.
I saw some of how Ahmadinejad was treated like royalty on TV. Of course, you Americans rebelled against royalty some time ago and wouldn't accept their rule again, which fits with the way Ahmadinejad seemed to be treated. Abused, heckled and while given a podium to speak from he wasn't given a great opportunity to talk freely. Many venues simply refused to have him present, let alone speak.
Not that he's got a lot to say once you get past the insane ravings of his delusional view of history. He is, however, leading a country and deserves the same respect due to any foreign leader that you hope to have normal diplomatic relations with (or hope to influence in some way, such as nuclear issues, arming of Iraqi rebels, etc).
And yes, Coulter and other conservatives deserve to be shouted down for defending and reinforcing the status quo. Real conservatives would be pushing for change along their actual values (small government, low taxes, etc) but they seem to have died off some time ago and been replaced by drones who push for big government and big business.
Slashdot Mirror
Interestingly, Adobe already have a fix out:
http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/product.jsp?product=13&platform=Macintosh
This corrects the issue, if their release notes are accurate. Why is this interesting? Because Adobe released the fix, not Apple.
My apologies, I phrased my original post poorly. I agree with everything you've said here, and I wondered about that magically accelerated solar wind as well.
What, mods are giving obvious flamebait +5 insightful today?
Apple have done a lot to maintain backwards compatibility, with fat binaries greatly smoothing the transitions from 68K to PPC to x86 in addition to the Carbon/Cocoa architectures easing developers into the new world of OS X from the old mishmash of 'Classic' MacOS.
They've deprecated many APIs and finally dropped Classic mode compatibility from Intel Macs altogether.
You can easily make a case that they've broken some backwards compatibility, but you'd be hard-pressed to prove it was needless.
Apple are also in the happy position of not having masses of legacy apps which have to be kept running apparently forever. Microsoft is in the unhappy, opposite position. I've no doubt that they'd dump support for ancient systems if they could.
Actually, you're supporting my prediction.
The Electric Universe has very little behind it in terms of hard science, and so falls by the wayside. It's in good company there, sitting next to phlogiston, the ether and other hypotheses. Maybe some good will come of it, but it's unlikely given that it's in opposition to theories we can actually test and disprove/prove.
In part because selling the enchants is so hard... I could have sworn Blizzard said they were going to implement some kind of 'enchanting stone' that you could create then sell on the AH. That would have made things so much easier.
I saw something about this recently in a Q&A about the Lich King expansion.
(five minutes of googling...)
Some rumours
(five minutes more...)
Ah! Found it!
Blizzcon forum
Q: Why do Enchanters have to stand around Org and spam chat channels instead of put items in AH? (applause)
A: Was originally designed for player interaction. Didn't work out quite as well. We still like the player interaction and may be keeping it on the higher enchants, but we are talking about going to an item based system. (applause)
That's as strong an indication as we're likely to get, but it's certainly not a definite. Still, we can hope.
People don't want to explore.
I guess I'm one of those few that get more enjoyment from seeing new places in games than beating up monster clone #54326546543. I play WoW and swam around both continents at L10 to see new things. I found some 'lost' places (shacks on the coast miles from anywhere, signs of life but no creatures around) and some interesting new places. All great fun, and still my favourite time from this game.
I'm stuck on the grind now, with one character at L62 who rarely is played and another at L32 who I play just to get to L35 so I can increase my trade skills. I'd far rather concentrate on exploration and trade than beating up the same monsters again and again to accomplish yet another "bring me ten monster X livers" or "kill 15 of monster Y" quest. The game's not about that though, well not entirely.
There's still most of the Outlands to explore, and soon the next expansion will provide another continent to visit, so there's hope. I just have to wade through a bunch of dull, uninspired quests to get there.
It is depressing, but I sadly think that the market has spoken and the market has said, we want more WoW, please don't make us think or give us choices. Lead us by the hand and give us our XP and levels.
You're right - it *is* depressing. This is the time that the market has to be led to a different model, and game companies should be trying to release products that differ from WoW. Oddly it seems that they don't see this, believing that if they make another WoW, people will flock to their product. We've already got WoW though, we need something new, something very different.
once again microsoft is scorned by slashdotters for the same reasons that apple is praised.
No, Apple aren't doing anything like this. Microsoft is being scorned for a new reason, wholly different to the ones people praise Apple for!
Unfairly as well, I'd add, but hey, what do I know? I'm not one of those brave ACs!
In an increasingly free-market, user-pays world, we're seeing education move from the public sector to the private sector. As funding becomes more of an issue (got to run these school-like businesses at a profit!) we're going to see businesses tie the gift of money to some benefit they receive (probably advertising).
Schools *should* be vendor-neutral, but when they're private companies being run for profit, they can't afford to be.
If you think I'm being overly alarmist at the rise of education companies, have a look through the shock therapy ideas of the late Milton Friedman. As an example, New Orleans before Hurricane Katrina had 132 schools run on the public purse. After Katrina it had 7, with the difference being picked up by an increase in private-run charter schools. The public money goes to school vouchers which parents use to pay for their children's education.
So far, so good - less money from the public purse, everyone's happy. The state should not run businesses, and modern schools look a lot like businesses to the casual observer.
Although the people of New Orleans didn't have much opportunity to debate or even speak out about the wholesale change to their school system, as they were still in shock and trying to rebuild their homes. The teachers were almost all sacked, some being rehired by the schools at a lower wage, most not.
And what happens when another business offers essentially free money to one of these school-like businesses? Why shouldn't the for-profit charter school pocket the money and make their shareholders happy?
Suddenly we get the Oscar Meyer periodic chart!
No, I can't see that.
Apple gave discounts (you could buy whatever you like, but if you buy an Apple, you'll get a good discount).
Microsoft is tying aid money to use of their product (you can buy whatever you like, but if you don't put Windows on it, you won't get the aid money).
We're probably looking at this the wrong way. Microsoft is investing money in educating users in its products. It's not really giving aid or charity, but doing what it can to ensure future uptake of its products.
There's nothing inherently wrong with that, but it's not aid money, just another investment.
Have fun!
If the Electric Universe framework and Tesla's rumoured theories (little to nothing was published, leaving rumours and eyewitnesses as the main source of information) are correct, they'll stand up to testing and be accepted as valid.
If they're not, they'll wither and die leaving only a handful of crank scientists supporting them.
What does that mean? For an English newspaper, this seems a remarkably odd way to say "Warning: Do Not Use On Mac" or similar. I read that and recognised there was something about Apples, but it's not clear. What's an Apple slot? Is there one in my drive? Like Alice in Wonderland, we know all the words but don't understand the sentence.
I had to re-read it to get the right meaning. It's like one of those pictures - is it a vase or two women's faces? Or is it too early for me and my brain is just not working yet? I'm starting to lean towards that one.
There was another little picture with the words "tray drive (tick)" so I guess any slot-in drive is bad because only tray drives get the tick. It's still not as clear as it should be.
In addition to the poor wording, PC users need to recognise that Mac users have often been warned in the past about things that were perfectly harmless. "This website does not support Macs" usually means "change your browser agent to IE because we detected Safari." Lots of those interactive DVDs said the extra features were PC-only, but the film itself played just fine. We learn to ignore most warnings given by media outlets, because they're often just covering themselves.
It's not *quite* as simple as saying Mac users are illiterate. We're elitist assholes, but not illiterate.
Well, thanks Jeremy. Maybe you're not as bad as I thought. Any reason why you're trolling me? Or is it just random stuff? Did I actually do something to you? Or at you?
The headslamming's going okay. The snake's dead though so I'm jump banging my head on the pulpy remains. It's kind of relaxing, in a headbanging way.
Ha, like you need an account to post your name. Another spineless worm, that's all you are. Cowardly, gutless, pointless.
I've been wondering when you'd turn up, AC troll. Thanks for your gutless comment.
Or will you post your name? You know mine, but you're too much the spineless worm to post your own.
>>Teaching chastity is all well and good, but why not teach condom use as well?
>Why don't you go do that instead of demanding it from those who honestly and in good faith do not believe in it?
I speak up whenever I can, but I don't have missionaries, fundraisers and vast support structures around me.
Those people who believe condoms don't help against the tide of AIDS are simply wrong. I don't care if they do so "honestly and in good faith" because the outcome is what matters, not the motives. The outcome is the uncontained spread of AIDS across poor nations who put their trust and faith in religions that failed to return it.
Is it wrong to speak up when you see something like this? Would you prefer I didn't say anything to maintain your peace of mind?
He holds no legal authority outside a few blocks in Rome. He is the head of a faith that teaches chastity outside of marriage, but so is the Dalai Lama.
That's a bit disingenuous. There's no *legal* authority, but when his people go around to poorer parts of the world and teach that condoms are evil, promote AIDS and should never be used then I'd say his authority is being felt.
It's a sickening, evil thing being done in the world, and it's being done by Catholics with the Pope's blessing. Teaching chastity is all well and good, but why not teach condom use as well? It'd save many thousands of lives, stop a lot of heartache and result in less unwanted pregnancies.
But no, the church wants that strong moral stance and they don't care about the cost.
First cause argument: motion requires a cause, but what is the first cause that started the first motion? Surely a god or demiurge must be this first mover (prime mover, unmoved mover).
Ah, but what caused the god or demiurge? Surely another god! And the thing that caused that god must be another god again! Soon we're back to "it's turtles all the way down," and no reasonable conclusion can be reached.
Science uses the Big Bang as the first event but posits nothing to 'cause' that. Indeed, since time and space are intertwined in current theory, there is no 'before' that moment - the question is invalid. Perhaps some force external to our time-space continuum, another universe entirely. Suddenly we're back to "turtles all the way down."
While a quick think and some modern science helps, religion can't provide answers without artificially stopping at some level. "God is the first cause!" says the religious person, but they refuse to consider the obvious question "Yes, but what created God?"
Further, I'd argue that introducing gods and demiurges not only fails to answer the question but limits further thought. Past thinkers considered these concepts as ultimate in every sense and so would not think past that point. Saying "God did it" is effectively saying "I don't know and refuse to investigate further!"
There may be a limit to what we can know about an exterior reality, and looking for first causes may cross that limit, leaving us with some penultimate cause but no way to look further.
As for Aquinas' Five Ways... we'll we've already covered first cause.
The unmoved mover is essentially the same as first cause (regression with an artificial endpoint that must be a god). Why not turtles all the way down?
Contingency is very similar - regression of potentiality back to something that must exist - and like the previous arguments posits God as the endpoint. Again with the turtles.
Degree is the weakest so far, with a gaping hole that isn't seen when the full argument is placed in context. Traditionally the argument (from Wikipedia) goes:
1 - Objects have properties to greater or lesser extents.
2 - If an object has a property to a lesser extent, then there exists some other object that has the property to the maximum possible degree.
3 - So there is an entity that has all properties to the maximum possible degree.
4 - Hence God exists!
The gaping hole is point two, which posits that no object in the Universe can have the maximum possible degree of a property. Why not? It's not answered. And what are these properties anyway? Weight? Melting point? Point three then goes on to say that there must be a single object with all maximum possible degrees. Why? Why not! Who needs to justify such a sweeping statement? Surely it can only be God, and when we read point four we see that yes, it was God all along!
The exact same argument, with all its flaws, would explain a pantheon of gods just as well. In fact it's stronger in that case because you don't have to collect all the "maximum possible degrees" into a single object.
So God is apparently the heaviest, hottest, coldest, wettest, driest, smartest, stupidest, etc thing in the Universe? Hmm...
Design fails the first concept - all things act for some reason. Who says? It's a circular argument. The first point is supposed, the second is seen through the lens provided by the first, the third is the argument and the fourth is the conclusion that fits the second and therefore first points.
1 - "I believe that God designed the Universe and everything in it for a plan." (this is not usually said up front)
2 - "I see that things happen for a reason." (or "the Universe is complex!")
3 - "There must be some plan for there to be a reason." (or "Complexity requires design!")
4 - "A plan for the Universe can only be devised by God, therefore God exists!" (or "Design requires God!")
Point two (usually the starting point) has no basis. I look at clouds and sometimes see
After all, EVERY day is bash-a-christian day.
Try living your life as an atheist, where every day for your entire life is bash-the-atheist day. Where you end up arguing with your own parents who ask what they did wrong that you failed to believe in mystical gods and demons and fairies in the bottom of the garden.
You're upset about a few years of well-deserved religion-bashing now that people are finally starting to speak up about why they don't believe in religion or the literal truthiness of the Bible. Get used to it, because as long as religion speaks up on issues we can see and touch you'll have people talking back and just plain not respecting the thousands of years of religious thinking. And that's a good thing because either the religion will learn to survive in the reality we inhabit or die off because it couldn't reconcile a book from 2-4 thousand years ago with today's world.
Thanks for the points.
...
You glossed over it as "something he said," but the Pope said that he thought Galileo's heresy trial was fair and reasonable when he spoke about it seventeen years ago, and that's just as ridiculous now as it was then. The previous Pope apologised for the treatment of Galileo, but the current incumbent prefers history as it was - a church struggling against science and reason.
Again, a political move designed to get bums on pews.
Boycotting Il Papa is shameful? Not at all. If someone comes out and says that the excommunication and damnation of Galileo was fine, then why should such intolerance be rewarded with meek submission when they parade it around?
The Pope cancelled the visit for his own reasons, none of them to do with his need for a "dignified and tranquil welcome."
In the same Regensberg lecture that criticized Islam for lacking a fundamental belief in reason, the Pope was also sending a warning to the West that reason itself was suffocating faith and destroying its historical identity. By offering himself up as victim of the La Sapienza professors he can cite further evidence for this argument right in his own backyard.
Muslims expressed outrage at references to the prophet Muhammed, and the implication that Islam was predisposed to violence, whereas papal supporters praised Benedict for the frankness of his argument in light of world events.
Political posturing, no more, no less. Criticise Islam, deepening the divide and intolerance in the world - it's great wedge politics although very damaging to the people on the ground. Play the poor martyr, the man who has more ability to speak up on issues and be heard than probably any other Human alive, and yet he pretends he's being censored. If it wasn't so transparent it'd be funny.
Italian President Giorgio Napolitano wrote to the Pope condemning "demonstrations of intolerance".
Nice to see the Italian government go all wobbly at the knees and spineless.
For the whiff of censorship toward a figure who is welcomed in myriad settings across the world -- both for his position and his intellect -- may offer ammunition for Benedict's belief that he is something of a "Pope under siege" in the face of the prevailing secular winds of his times.
He wants to turn back the tide of history, back to when science was a tiny thing and easily controlled. The Pope may be under siege, but it's a siege mounted by reality and not secularity. The Catholic Church is failing to deal with the challenge of our rapidly changing times and so elects the ultra-conservative Ratzinger to stand like Canute before the tide.
If you don't want to hear him speak then don't go to his speech.
He's got all the pulpits of the world to speak from. If he wants to speak about religion, he should get into a church. If he wants to speak at a university, then why shouldn't the staff and students have a right to protest against him? To use your point, if he doesn't want to be protested at, he should speak from his church.
It's not fucking rocket science.
Probably just as well given this Pope's intolerance towards science.
I don't think you really 'get it' with the MBA.
When I was travelling for business I'd have killed (well, maybe not killed but certainly maimed) for something that light that could easily carry off presentations and still be powerful enough for work. Instead I had a half-ton Dell that came in its own heavy leather briefcase which still included a handful of accessories (most of which stayed at home). For a while I thought Dell had perfected the compacted neutron battery, where a teaspoon of the stuff weighs as much as a mountain. Carry that plus your normal luggage around an airport and you'll soon grow to hate every damnable gram as much as I did.
This is absolutely perfect for business travellers. And for those people you mentioned. And for people needing a very portable second machine.
If I were still travelling I'd be interested.
I had a 512MB stick of RAM go bad in my old iBook. It worked for a year or so and then I started getting kernel panics all the time. Three, four times a day. I checked every component through software, did lots of RAM tests (write patterns, read patterns, etc) but nothing showed up. I guessed it might be the RAM so I pulled the stick and while the lower memory slowed the machine down, it didn't panic again. After a month of this sort of use (wanted to be certain) I swapped the stick under its lifetime warranty and everything was good again.
Ah, memories. The times I nearly threw that iBook out the window... good days...
The MagSafe cables actually take about the same force to break the magnetic connection as required to pull out the old cables. The difference is that they're designed to pull out if the cable is pulled from any angle. My wife and I both use MBPs and haven't had a cable fall out accidentally or otherwise.
It's a nice idea and definitely not the issue you're thinking it might be.
Galileo had evidence to support his theory, while the other scientists relied on dogma and tradition as their evidence. I use the term "scientists" loosely because those people were clearly not scientists in any sense we understand today. Making Galileo out to be a crank scientist who turned out to be right is a pretty damaging view of one of the great scientists of his age.
Condemning someone to Hell was not something to take lightly back then. We can say things today like "it'd be pretty bad I guess, if you believe in all that stuff," and think it was nothing much. It was a massive thing, barring Galileo from Heaven for eternity. Since the word of the Pope is infallible, the later apology won't allow Galileo back to Heaven. As an atheist, I can think it was all a bit silly, but back then it was deadly serious and the ramifications were truly terrible in their belief system. Again, I think you're greatly underestimating this.
Lastly, what would a conservative Pope come to a university for? He has many, many venues to speak from should he choose to. Instead he chose a place where he knew he would be challenged by opposition. And be clear - the Pope won't be argued with, he does not debate, so the opposition would not get any 'right of reply' or option to answer claims made by the Pope in that university. The scientists would not have a chance to let their ideas compete with the Pope's (whose are well-known anyway) in this sort of dialogue. They would be told what is right and that's the end of it.
I suspect that the Pope, the political animal that he is, wanted exactly this outcome so that he could put about the idea that science is intolerant of different ideas. His goal is to bring people back to the church, and this will help slightly.
I saw some of how Ahmadinejad was treated like royalty on TV. Of course, you Americans rebelled against royalty some time ago and wouldn't accept their rule again, which fits with the way Ahmadinejad seemed to be treated. Abused, heckled and while given a podium to speak from he wasn't given a great opportunity to talk freely. Many venues simply refused to have him present, let alone speak.
Not that he's got a lot to say once you get past the insane ravings of his delusional view of history. He is, however, leading a country and deserves the same respect due to any foreign leader that you hope to have normal diplomatic relations with (or hope to influence in some way, such as nuclear issues, arming of Iraqi rebels, etc).
And yes, Coulter and other conservatives deserve to be shouted down for defending and reinforcing the status quo. Real conservatives would be pushing for change along their actual values (small government, low taxes, etc) but they seem to have died off some time ago and been replaced by drones who push for big government and big business.