There's news, and then there's being given an advertisement
If you don't understand the difference between a press release and advertisement you really shouldn't participate in any kind of discussion on Slashdot. Or any discussion about anything anywhere. Perhaps you should even try to put duct tape on your mouth for about five to six years, just to be sure. Almost any news you ever read anywhere is the result of a press release or similar of some sort. Slashdot is News for Nerds, quoting press releases is in fact on of the things it should do. If they are relevant for nerds.
You're mistaken on that as well. Laws mean what they say
Funny, you just said that there is no need for a Supreme Court and that there is no field of law called Statutory Interpretation. Sorry to burst your bubble of ignorance, but you are simply wrong.
In this specific case, for example, one would have to look at the background work to interpret what is meant by "scientific controversies". According to Breechen, Common Origin is an example of such. So, no, the wording is not enough. If it was, there would be no need to teach law in universities.
Well, demonstrating that Creationism is not science is enough. Remember, these laws, including the one that you "support" are designed, not to improve science education. When they say "discussing the strengths and weaknesses", what they actually mean is that ones should teach that Creationism is an alternative theory to Common Origin. All of these laws in the south are introduced so that that can be done. If you don't understand that you've been living under a rock for the past few decades.
There was no generalization. If a stray pack of Lions attack, and those lions are financed by a significant number of other lions, and 75% of all lions support their actions, taking out the lions is probably OK. Taking out giraffes and koala bears on the other hand...
Can you explain how the absence of a mainstream alternative scientific theory bears on the strengths and weaknesses of the one mainstream theory?
Firstly, there is not an absence of a "mainstream" alternative theory, there is a total absence of any alternative theory.
Secondly, it doesn't directly say anything on its own about the strengths and weakness of that theory. However, if 100 years have passed (as in this case) and nobody has been able to postulate an alternative theory, and nobody has been able to provide any data points that weaken the theory, it is not unreasonable to assume said theory has a high probability of being the correct one. Please note, the theory has morphed slightly over time as new data and new technologies have emerged. Darwin didn't know about DNA, for example. The core hasn't changed.
Should students be taught critical thinking, absolutely, and Creationism could easily be used to help such education. It is in fact perfectly suited for that. One could use it to show that Creationism is not a theory, it isn't even a hypothesis. Creationism is simply a new way of formulating an age old superstition. As such one could sit down, blow the Creationism nonsense out of the scientific water so to speak, to show just how infantile the thought-patterns of its supporters are. I do believe that would cause some uproar though.
Another thing that could be useful would be Christianity as such. Many people believe the stories in the Old Testament for example, are historically accurate. You could use those to show how reason and rationality blows those notions out of the water and that people who actually believe in that nonsense are ignorant, intellectually impaired or lazy etc. Again, though, I think you'd have some politicians up in arms over that. If you taught how much rubbish superstitious people actually believe in and exactly how retarded that belief is, parents would pull their children out of school. I am certain that the laws proposed here were not intended for such activities.
Also, to expand on my point, some time back, the position of "Head of Zoo" was given to a monkey. During his tenure some stray lions attacked the primate area killing more than 3000 monkeys. The head monkey went, understandably, ballistic. He then handed millions of dollars to the lions before attacking the zebra compound, the giraffes, some rhinos and others. To date the result of the attacks on the animals that did not perpetrate the attacks is estimated to about 500 000.
Now, the current monkeys claim the attacks were justified, and that the Lions perpetrating the attacks were generally innocent and someone of high standard we should still do business with. A rational mind would put those monkeys behind bars for treason. The original head monkey and most of his friends belongs in jail for belligerent genocide.
Your paternalistic view may have lead to your assumption that because you have been running the zoo, that no one else can
Not at all, I have observed monkeys in action, and I have, logically, concluded that they do not possess the ability to run the zoo. When a significant portion of the monkeys time is spent throwing feces at each other or eating said feces them selves, putting them into management positions would be irresponsible. That is neither paternalistic or making assumptions. We can actually learn something from observation, but it seems most RINO's don't believe that is possible.
I agree: teaching "controversy" between evolution and religion is a lie. One is science. The other is not.
You, me and people in science agree on this. For us, and if the bill was proposed by us, there would be no problem.
When I read the senate bill, I found no direction to teach such controversy
A government bill is not something that exists in a vacuum, it exists in a context. The context is that the majority of the people in said state would argue that to prod the weakness of the Theory of Common Origin (often mistakenly called evolution) you have to use some variation on Creationism. I know the bill doesn't read that way to you, or even me, but that is because we do understand what a theory is. 99.9% of the US population, and probably at least 80% or teachers in public schools in these states have no clue. They actually think Creationism is a theory, and that it should therefore be taught when prodding Common Origin. Context matters.
Can anyone explain to me how discussing the strengths and weaknesses of a theory is anti-science?
It isn't. When there are multiple theories we should devote ample time for all of them. The problem is that currently there are no alternative theories to the Theory of Common Origin (often mistakenly called "evolution"). When there are no alternative theories, none can be taught. For more information, google "scientific theory".
I am not surprised at all, and the LINO/DINO aspect is just a minor brain fart. The main reason he's probably never heard of it is that it is mostly a construct without a real-world representation. If you look at the concept RINO, and you say "who are they", you can point to the entire Tea Party movement, and these days, in reality, the entire GOP. In theory I would vote GOP, but there isn't really any candidates that are non-RINOs these days. It's ALL about anti-science, anti-secularism etc. The entire GOP has turned into a circus where everybody is playing the "Who's dumber than Sarah Palin" game.
Sadly, voting for any GOP candidate today is the same as voting for letting the monkeys run the Zoo. I fail to see a single person in that party that at the current point in time doesn't fall into, or tries to move into the category "raving lunatic". I sweat, even Bernie Sanders is more palatable than the average GOP member. For those of us who are "Get the GOV out of my house, my wallet and just about anything in my life", the GOP is no longer, and hasn't been for a long time, an alternative. The last non-insane GOP member I can remember is G. H. W. Bush.
Yeah, it's really unsanitary. Think about it. Dirt. Also, growing food in that dirty stuff is terrible, and also animals eat stuff that grows in unsanitary dirt. I would recommend you stop eating. Also note, water runs through dirty dirt as well, so drinking is ill-adviced on that alone, but don't forget that all the water you consume will contain amounts of urine from birds, animals and probably humans. Finally, rotting corpses release a serious amount of nasty gases, they blend with the air, so breathing is also not recommended.
All that for not being able to formulate an argument and only being able to contribute vitriol. As I mentioned, when you finish Kindergarten, and start mingling with adults that are not solely your shepherds, you will find that in those circles, using reasoned arguments are considered rational and are usually thought of as a requirement for participating in polite exchange of opinion.
Until then watching Sesame Street will still be fun for you.
How much of a fan-boy would I have to be to use an OS with a user-hating UX and no usable applications just to spite Microsoft? Or, let me put it differently, what kind of a MORON would do that?
When children speak it can be funny. This is. According to you logic, we should still be using the UX from Windows 3. Ugh! You are too young to remember the vitriol the "Toys 'R Us" UX of Windows XP received. People hated the Windows XP UX every bit as much as they hated Windows 8. Your comment is complete nonsense, and factually wrong too. Apple has dramatically changed its UX over the years, and they have even split it in half where the UX on OSX is dramatically different from the UX on iOS (though the two share a lot of the core).
Yes, Windows 8 - making the desktop like a tablet, was a serious mistake, but even then I was able to enjoy the many benefits of Windows 8 (less resource usage, better performance etc) by simply investing a tiny amount of money and time to make Windows 8 and Windows 7 indistinguishable. Should I have had to, not really, no, but I would rather actually fix the problem then whine about something that was entirely inconsequential.
People only perceive Windows as being better because they rarely actually install it
I totally disagree. I was on a team that developed some of the first commercial Java software back in the late 1990s. In fact, Sun used our logo (together with many others) on the New York Times ads they used to promote Java back then. Our system was entirely server-stuff, not much need for client-side code (there was a small amount). Our Testing/CI system (built in-house) ran on Linux, and we deployed almost exclusively on Sun. All of our developers ran Windows though.
So, develop using Java, mostly for Sun and HP, CI and testing entirely on Linux. Why not developers? Because Linux was then, is today, and will continue to be for a long time still, extremely user-un-friendly on the desktop. You talk about making installation work well. That's important, but for a UI that still can't get CUT-COPY-PASTE done well, perhaps the focus should be on UX and hope that over time vendors will pre-install.
UX on Linux is bad. Really, really, really bad. It shows no signs of improvement. So, my descendants are going to play with their pet flying pigs LONG before Linux makes any in-roads on the desktop. To Linux/UX developers, here are some advice: Drop X. Completely. It's a monstrosity. It's an abomination. It was way cool in 1988 and 1989 because I could have several X-Terms open at the same time. Usability never really got beyond that though. So, drop it. Send it to the bottomless pit of rubbish stuff created by nerds. When X is gone, sit down and develop a UX from ground up. Look to Apple to see what they have done, look at some of the NExT stuff, BeOS etc. Heck, there are even cool things in Windows (the ever more seamless moving from desktop to tablet being a good idea for example) to take into consideration. Create some alliance with Linus, making sure there is ONE, and ONLY ONE, UX allowed on Linux. Have Linus shut down any attempt at allowing choice and options. In UX, choice and options are bad ideas.
That would be a start. It would be a necessary but not sufficient set of actions to perhaps ever create a usable UX for Linux. Sadly, it's never going to happen. Linus doesn't give a shit about UX, and he (perhaps rightfully) thinks it's going to become irrelevant. We'll see.
Slashdot Mirror
There's news, and then there's being given an advertisement
If you don't understand the difference between a press release and advertisement you really shouldn't participate in any kind of discussion on Slashdot. Or any discussion about anything anywhere. Perhaps you should even try to put duct tape on your mouth for about five to six years, just to be sure. Almost any news you ever read anywhere is the result of a press release or similar of some sort. Slashdot is News for Nerds, quoting press releases is in fact on of the things it should do. If they are relevant for nerds.
Microsoft's proprietary implementation of C#.
You really need to get your butt out of the 1990s, the world has changed dramatically since then.
Hi, the 1990s called and wanted their stupid anti-Microsoft soundbites back.
Het, you forgot to put on your tinfoil hat. I know, 'cause I can read your thoughts, and I *really* don't want to.
You're mistaken on that as well. Laws mean what they say
Funny, you just said that there is no need for a Supreme Court and that there is no field of law called Statutory Interpretation. Sorry to burst your bubble of ignorance, but you are simply wrong.
In this specific case, for example, one would have to look at the background work to interpret what is meant by "scientific controversies". According to Breechen, Common Origin is an example of such. So, no, the wording is not enough. If it was, there would be no need to teach law in universities.
Well, demonstrating that Creationism is not science is enough. Remember, these laws, including the one that you "support" are designed, not to improve science education. When they say "discussing the strengths and weaknesses", what they actually mean is that ones should teach that Creationism is an alternative theory to Common Origin. All of these laws in the south are introduced so that that can be done. If you don't understand that you've been living under a rock for the past few decades.
You're saying that since 75% of lions are bad, lions are bad.
No, I'm saying that since 75% of lions are bad, the chance that any random lion is bad is about three in four.
This is a distinction you do not afford the monkeys.
No monkey with desirable traits have been observed for more than 100 years. Scientific consensus say they are extinct.
There was no generalization. If a stray pack of Lions attack, and those lions are financed by a significant number of other lions, and 75% of all lions support their actions, taking out the lions is probably OK. Taking out giraffes and koala bears on the other hand...
Can you explain how the absence of a mainstream alternative scientific theory bears on the strengths and weaknesses of the one mainstream theory?
Firstly, there is not an absence of a "mainstream" alternative theory, there is a total absence of any alternative theory.
Secondly, it doesn't directly say anything on its own about the strengths and weakness of that theory. However, if 100 years have passed (as in this case) and nobody has been able to postulate an alternative theory, and nobody has been able to provide any data points that weaken the theory, it is not unreasonable to assume said theory has a high probability of being the correct one. Please note, the theory has morphed slightly over time as new data and new technologies have emerged. Darwin didn't know about DNA, for example. The core hasn't changed.
Should students be taught critical thinking, absolutely, and Creationism could easily be used to help such education. It is in fact perfectly suited for that. One could use it to show that Creationism is not a theory, it isn't even a hypothesis. Creationism is simply a new way of formulating an age old superstition. As such one could sit down, blow the Creationism nonsense out of the scientific water so to speak, to show just how infantile the thought-patterns of its supporters are. I do believe that would cause some uproar though.
Another thing that could be useful would be Christianity as such. Many people believe the stories in the Old Testament for example, are historically accurate. You could use those to show how reason and rationality blows those notions out of the water and that people who actually believe in that nonsense are ignorant, intellectually impaired or lazy etc. Again, though, I think you'd have some politicians up in arms over that. If you taught how much rubbish superstitious people actually believe in and exactly how retarded that belief is, parents would pull their children out of school. I am certain that the laws proposed here were not intended for such activities.
So what you are saying is that it was wrong to generalize the actions of a few stray lions to all lions
If you can read that out of what I wrote, you need to come here and share the drugs you are on.
100/100? Wow. I've 300/300 at home. Looking forward to seeing you guys from over the in the 21st century. About 20 years from now I guess :-)
Also, to expand on my point, some time back, the position of "Head of Zoo" was given to a monkey. During his tenure some stray lions attacked the primate area killing more than 3000 monkeys. The head monkey went, understandably, ballistic. He then handed millions of dollars to the lions before attacking the zebra compound, the giraffes, some rhinos and others. To date the result of the attacks on the animals that did not perpetrate the attacks is estimated to about 500 000.
Now, the current monkeys claim the attacks were justified, and that the Lions perpetrating the attacks were generally innocent and someone of high standard we should still do business with. A rational mind would put those monkeys behind bars for treason. The original head monkey and most of his friends belongs in jail for belligerent genocide.
Your paternalistic view may have lead to your assumption that because you have been running the zoo, that no one else can
Not at all, I have observed monkeys in action, and I have, logically, concluded that they do not possess the ability to run the zoo. When a significant portion of the monkeys time is spent throwing feces at each other or eating said feces them selves, putting them into management positions would be irresponsible. That is neither paternalistic or making assumptions. We can actually learn something from observation, but it seems most RINO's don't believe that is possible.
'cause I'm human and compared to me a monkey is retarded. The religion of "the animals do it best" is infantile.
I agree: teaching "controversy" between evolution and religion is a lie. One is science. The other is not.
You, me and people in science agree on this. For us, and if the bill was proposed by us, there would be no problem.
When I read the senate bill, I found no direction to teach such controversy
A government bill is not something that exists in a vacuum, it exists in a context. The context is that the majority of the people in said state would argue that to prod the weakness of the Theory of Common Origin (often mistakenly called evolution) you have to use some variation on Creationism. I know the bill doesn't read that way to you, or even me, but that is because we do understand what a theory is. 99.9% of the US population, and probably at least 80% or teachers in public schools in these states have no clue. They actually think Creationism is a theory, and that it should therefore be taught when prodding Common Origin. Context matters.
Can anyone explain to me how discussing the strengths and weaknesses of a theory is anti-science?
It isn't. When there are multiple theories we should devote ample time for all of them. The problem is that currently there are no alternative theories to the Theory of Common Origin (often mistakenly called "evolution"). When there are no alternative theories, none can be taught. For more information, google "scientific theory".
I am not surprised at all, and the LINO/DINO aspect is just a minor brain fart. The main reason he's probably never heard of it is that it is mostly a construct without a real-world representation. If you look at the concept RINO, and you say "who are they", you can point to the entire Tea Party movement, and these days, in reality, the entire GOP. In theory I would vote GOP, but there isn't really any candidates that are non-RINOs these days. It's ALL about anti-science, anti-secularism etc. The entire GOP has turned into a circus where everybody is playing the "Who's dumber than Sarah Palin" game.
Sadly, voting for any GOP candidate today is the same as voting for letting the monkeys run the Zoo. I fail to see a single person in that party that at the current point in time doesn't fall into, or tries to move into the category "raving lunatic". I sweat, even Bernie Sanders is more palatable than the average GOP member. For those of us who are "Get the GOV out of my house, my wallet and just about anything in my life", the GOP is no longer, and hasn't been for a long time, an alternative. The last non-insane GOP member I can remember is G. H. W. Bush.
Read your own post above and apply the same standard to it :)
I always do. If you don't know what is meant by: "When adults converse they use arguments", just ask an adult for help.
Yeah, it's really unsanitary. Think about it. Dirt. Also, growing food in that dirty stuff is terrible, and also animals eat stuff that grows in unsanitary dirt. I would recommend you stop eating. Also note, water runs through dirty dirt as well, so drinking is ill-adviced on that alone, but don't forget that all the water you consume will contain amounts of urine from birds, animals and probably humans. Finally, rotting corpses release a serious amount of nasty gases, they blend with the air, so breathing is also not recommended.
All that for not being able to formulate an argument and only being able to contribute vitriol. As I mentioned, when you finish Kindergarten, and start mingling with adults that are not solely your shepherds, you will find that in those circles, using reasoned arguments are considered rational and are usually thought of as a requirement for participating in polite exchange of opinion.
Until then watching Sesame Street will still be fun for you.
'cause who would ever need more than 3.5G of memory, right? Is that you again Mr. Gates?
How much of a fan-boy would I have to be to use an OS with a user-hating UX and no usable applications just to spite Microsoft? Or, let me put it differently, what kind of a MORON would do that?
Bovine manure.
Microsoft is the only one that is THAT bad
When children speak it can be funny. This is. According to you logic, we should still be using the UX from Windows 3. Ugh! You are too young to remember the vitriol the "Toys 'R Us" UX of Windows XP received. People hated the Windows XP UX every bit as much as they hated Windows 8. Your comment is complete nonsense, and factually wrong too. Apple has dramatically changed its UX over the years, and they have even split it in half where the UX on OSX is dramatically different from the UX on iOS (though the two share a lot of the core).
Yes, Windows 8 - making the desktop like a tablet, was a serious mistake, but even then I was able to enjoy the many benefits of Windows 8 (less resource usage, better performance etc) by simply investing a tiny amount of money and time to make Windows 8 and Windows 7 indistinguishable. Should I have had to, not really, no, but I would rather actually fix the problem then whine about something that was entirely inconsequential.
People only perceive Windows as being better because they rarely actually install it
I totally disagree. I was on a team that developed some of the first commercial Java software back in the late 1990s. In fact, Sun used our logo (together with many others) on the New York Times ads they used to promote Java back then. Our system was entirely server-stuff, not much need for client-side code (there was a small amount). Our Testing/CI system (built in-house) ran on Linux, and we deployed almost exclusively on Sun. All of our developers ran Windows though.
So, develop using Java, mostly for Sun and HP, CI and testing entirely on Linux. Why not developers? Because Linux was then, is today, and will continue to be for a long time still, extremely user-un-friendly on the desktop. You talk about making installation work well. That's important, but for a UI that still can't get CUT-COPY-PASTE done well, perhaps the focus should be on UX and hope that over time vendors will pre-install.
UX on Linux is bad. Really, really, really bad. It shows no signs of improvement. So, my descendants are going to play with their pet flying pigs LONG before Linux makes any in-roads on the desktop. To Linux/UX developers, here are some advice: Drop X. Completely. It's a monstrosity. It's an abomination. It was way cool in 1988 and 1989 because I could have several X-Terms open at the same time. Usability never really got beyond that though. So, drop it. Send it to the bottomless pit of rubbish stuff created by nerds. When X is gone, sit down and develop a UX from ground up. Look to Apple to see what they have done, look at some of the NExT stuff, BeOS etc. Heck, there are even cool things in Windows (the ever more seamless moving from desktop to tablet being a good idea for example) to take into consideration. Create some alliance with Linus, making sure there is ONE, and ONLY ONE, UX allowed on Linux. Have Linus shut down any attempt at allowing choice and options. In UX, choice and options are bad ideas.
That would be a start. It would be a necessary but not sufficient set of actions to perhaps ever create a usable UX for Linux. Sadly, it's never going to happen. Linus doesn't give a shit about UX, and he (perhaps rightfully) thinks it's going to become irrelevant. We'll see.