Well, this is a good point. What peer-reviewed, well-designed, large, double-blind medical studies have found media content, if any, to be harmful to children? I doubt there are any for pornography. Let's call this bill what it really is: cop-out for lazy parents.
I don't mean this in a rude or disrespectful way, but people don't value the lives of Iraqis the same. I try to, but most do not. What matters the most in terms of public perception is US (and maybe British) deaths.
Robots are one way the military is trying to address this, but the technology just isn't quite up to killing John Connor yet. They are expensive and very limited. However, when a robot is disabled or destroyed, no one cares, and it doesn't hurt public perception of the war. Even an unjust war with little to no death will get good public support.
Unfortunately I don't see robots changing anything in Iraq. However what I do see happening is "outsourcing". As we've established, deaths of Iraqis and people from other dissimilar nations don't generate as much negative public perception; hence, there has been a very strong drive to get Iraqis to replace the functions of US troops, particularily the most dangerous ones, in Iraq. By "outsourcing" the job of a soldier, the cost is reduced to the military below that of a robot, and there is little negative political change per death.
I'm very surprised we have not seen more "security contractors" from poorer nations; they hire US private security forces at an astronomical cost (as people care less about a Blackwater employee dying than a Marine), perhaps in the future instead of robots things will shift more along these lines to say, security contractors from China, Mexico, etc. Of course, it is still human beings killing and being killed, but as long as public perception can be controlled by avoiding US troop deaths, those who lust for blood on their hands will find little opposition.
It is true that the Reformation, and Lutheranism, was indeed a particular interpretation of Christianity, but the overall goal and point behind the Augsberg Confessional was the Catholic Church's "additions" to the religion that Luther took great objection to; regardless of his individual beliefs, it paved the way for a great deal of freedom from the then more or less exclusive interpretations of the Catholic and Orthodox traditions. I don't think it is reaching too much to ask if what many people consider objectionable about Islam is more the hadiths than the Koran, and wonder if that doesn't parallel Christianity at the same relative point just a bit.
The "infidels" bit comes from when Mohammad was being persecuted, and it is important to note it is regarding a specific instance at a specific point in time, and keep things in context, which sometimes followers have difficulty doing. The same is true for Paul's letters in the NT as you reference later. Also, even if one does interpret them to apply universally, "infidel" does not and never has applied to other "people of the book", so that would not be a valid justification for Christian/Jewish conflict. As a further point, the word used for war sometimes, "jihad", means struggle, not necessarily violence or physical in nature.
There are certainly things in the Koran we Westerners will tend to disagree with, particularily regarding women, and you make some excellent points there. However, as a counterpoint, many of the mistreatments of women ascribed to Islam actually predate it, and come from tribal traditions in that area; in many cases Islam's treatment of women is much better than how they were treated, and how they are treated in many areas of the world, including some of the Middle East, to this day.
The particular passage you cite is considered by some to be an incorrect translation; the word "beat", is actually "idribûhunna", and is used in the Koran only to denote separation or travel, not violence. The translation to "beat" comes from usage outside of the context of the Koran.
I don't want to go into too much of a semantics debate, but the overall things I'd like to stress are that at the time the Koran's instructions were a vast improvement in women's rights to the world as a whole, especially to the Middle East, and that the Islamic countries are making faster advancements relative to the birth of the religion towards women's rights than we in the US did; women's suffrage and the struggles of Susan B. Anthony are of our very recent past. Many urbanized areas in Islamic countries are within 100 years of us in terms of women's rights.
I agree with the former, but not latter part of your last paragraph. I think either religion is quite compatible with peace and enlightenment as history has shown, the question is in the interpretation. And I think you'll find that is not the fault of Jesus, Mohammad, God, or even Paul, but rather the institutions we have constructed today.
I do agree fundamentalism can be dangerous in any case though. Abandoning the hadiths entirely does not guarantee a positive change, it still very much depends on how the words of the prophet are interpreted. And they are interpreted outside of the hadiths through the lens of society. That has very much changed and evolved since the Arab and Muslim rural tribal societies in which Islam was born, and will continue to change and grow into the future.
But that still does not free the followers of individual responsibility; of my fellow Christians, they have no prophet telling them to kill anyone, and many still manage to justify hatred and violence to themselves. If we want followers of Islam to be less violent, more forgiving, and more peaceful, perhaps we should attempt to do the same instead of bombing them in the future. For despite all of the "progress" we have made in the West, we are for the most part guilty of precisely what we judge of those we hate. And I'm not entirely sure bombing them is going to elevate them to some lofty standard of peace and enlightment we cannot reach ourselves.
The reason is the relative age differences in each religion; Islam right now is about the same relative age of Christianity during the Dark Ages. Teachings have strayed far from what the prophet Mohammad wrote, and the various formal organizations have placed their word above that of the Koran and prophet. Much was the same in the case of the Catholic church, at the same point in Christianity's relative age, until Martin Luther worked to change that by denouncing the Church's "interpretive" teachings, returning to a more Biblical viewpoint, aiding the understanding of the common man with the small catechism, and those of the clergy with the large catechism.
And unfortunately I think the fallout of this is becoming all too appearent. The Koran records Mohammad as stating:
Only argue with the People of the Book in the kindest way - except in the case of those of them who do wrong - saying, 'We have Faith in what has been sent down to us and what was sent down to you. Our God and your God are one and we submit to Him. (Surat al-`Ankabut; 29:46).
Islam at various points in history was actually much more tolerant than Christianity during its day. Mohammad did indeed show tolerance to Christians and Jews, and for a while even Jews were shown acceptance, reversing a long conflict that began over land before Islam existed. Saladin during the Crusades was not only a brilliant commander, but a very reasonable and tolerant guy, and those kind of values actually spurred the rise of chivalry in Europe.
Unfortunately it seems the "people of the book" are still a long ways off from following it, but the British have done good work here and it is exactly these type of things that can help reverse the dehumanization of our fellow man that has taken place lately. Hopefully as Islam ages, they will abandon many of the precepts created by man as was the case during the great schism in Christianity, but it is a two-way street, and more Christians will also have to think more like Jesus and Tom Fox than we have been. I think that within each religion of the "people of the book" lies a path to peace, the question is how many more deaths it will take before we can all find it.
So where are the facts in your, and all these people attacking Christianity's, arguments? How much background material have you read about Christian support for stem cell research? Guess what: most Christians support it.
I'm sorry if a small minority of fundamentalists you see on the local news make us look bad, but why don't you try reading the viewpoint of the mainline, majority body of Christians, like the ELCA? http://www.elca.org/faithandscience/discussion/
Most Christians are not what you think, and the facts and data support this. It's simply that extremists always make the best news stories.
That's why peer review is so important in science. It's not a perfect process either, but it's a good way of validating these claims. The incentive is there for people to take things to the media, however true, and get attention and funding, and I think that's what has happened in this case. The fact is proof if alien life falling to earth would be ground breaking and a journal like Nature would love to carry a verifiable story of it, but this isn't it.
It is the law of supply and demand that guarantees things will improve-- at least in the opinion of most consumers. Hollywood is into sequals because they really do try to meet customer needs and expectations, and give people what they want. When something fails, it is because they gave people something else.
It saddens us when this is something we personally like (Firefly, Arrested Development, Furturama, etc), but the average consumer is showing Hollywood that the current crap story, ton of CG, big-budget approach isn't profitable. Thus it will not be funded unless it is profitable.
No one can predict with perfect certainty whether or not something will be well-done and a success. Lucas's recent works were shit, but the original SW trilogy were very successful and critically acclaimed; Hollywood funded Lucas's new efforts because they want to give people what they want and what sells! Not because they want to force crap on you.
Movies in theaters are indeed gouging in a way, but the costs of showing a movie in a theater have also increased dramatically. Carmike Cinemas has struggled financially for a very long time, believe it or not but owning large buildings in an urban area, licensing the content, and upgrading to the newest AV technologies over and over again is quite expensive. Movie theaters are expensive but it is not a high-profit ripoff scam business, the costs are expensive as well. I hope this will diminish in favor of the home theater and other distrubution methods. The economics here are failing.
In the future Hollywood will continue to try to give you what you want. Pay money for movies you think are excellent and you want to see more of, and support them. Don't support crap. Hollywood is very responsive to economics.
There will always be crap, because not even the people funding the movies can predict how they're going to turn out; they can only read the proposals and evaluate the past performance of the people making them. But they have a larger stake than you or I do in wanting to make sure they succeed. Sometimes this is underhanded, such as not showing a screening for critics with the recent "Ultraviolet" as they realized how much the end product sucked. But the movie industry never wanted it to get to that point, they want to make things that are epic and successful-- after all, that's the most profitable.
Big budget movies will never die, because of this. The investors and production companies will put their resources into maximizing their profits, and most of them really do love film and want to do make great movies. They gamble with the knowledge and dreams they have, they will always lose and win. Avoid the losers and support the winners, and this helps things evolve in the future.
And hey, I don't think Hollywood is abusing their power either. DVDs are great; a high quality version of a movie that even has a great viewing experience on a $20 player. Most of them cost less than music CDs and have a lot of bonus content. Sure, DVDs use CSS, but there's nothing wrong with wanting to protect your content and livelihood either.
Entertainment costs are down, down, down. Electronics are cheaper than ever, and getting the content legally-- via DVD, or new services like NetFlix make movie watching a better experience than in the VHS days, and a more economical one. TVs have dropped in price by almost half since the 80s due to improvements in cost production, and a DVD player costs maybe 20% of what a VCR once did. DVDs cost barely more than VHS tapes used to-- they go up less than inflation. And you can buy older DVDs for less than $5!
Hollywood has stolen nothing. They lose more than you do when a movie sucks. I don't ask you support bad content, but I ask that you do consider supporting things you want to see more of. I recently paid ~$80 for Seasons 1 and 2.0 of Battlestar Galactica, not because I hadn't already downloaded the bittorrents, but because I want to support good content and share it with others.
Finally remember that film is one medium for content alone. There are many ways to tell a story, and if film is not meeting your needs, you can always indulge another.
I'm not sure of the significance of this. There have been many past attempts at more unique delivery vehicles such as this that fail due to budgetary reasons. The major obstacle to putting things in space, even for the military, is how expensive it is, and some things just aren't more economical than the good old fashioned Werner Von Braun rocket approach.
As far as the other aspects of this for USAF purposes, ie, recon, they have been superceded by other technologies that have emerged and evolved since its development. The fact some military leaders didn't know about a private contractor's R&D efforts on failed technology doesn't mean there's a conspiracy you need to call Mulder and Scully about.
Personally I would suspect rockets will be the economical launch vehicle of choice (as uneconomical as they are) for quite some time, and that unmanned drones and improvement in satellite imaging will give us that military eye in the sky. I'm more in favor of seeing how to reduce the cost of rockets and getting more communication infrastructure in place for everyone to use, than spending our resources hunting down and killing our fellow man, but I'm more of a dork than a military leader.
Film is just another medium for telling a story. If the story is bad, the film will fail. Breasts, explosions, breasts, fire, breasts, CG, breasts, and breasts can make it vaguely entertaining, but it still won't be a very good movie.
And that's what a great deal of movies have been lately. Barely tolerable, stupid plots, that are not good stories and certainly would not stand on their own merit independant of medium, where infusions of cash, breasts, and CG try to make up for this. But in the end, all you get is a really expensive, bad movie, with a few tit shots. Putting the female lead on a trampoline, or just saying fuck it and turning it into a porno would probably be better at that point.
Indie movies don't necessarily have good plots, either. I've seen some pretty bad indie movies lately. Open Water, and the stupid one about the "death" tunnel or whatever were both distinctly worse than porn. In the end, it's all about the story, moreso than anything else. Film techniques and dynamics such as acting, direction etc are important as well, but second to the story.
Want my money? Tell me a good story. Then we'll worry about the CG and breasts. If I just want the latter without a story, I'll get a video game or porn.
The fact the pebble bed reactors are in South Africa also implies the disposal solution: Africa. People would complain if you buried the waste in Antartica, the desert, or even the sun. But Africa? No one would care. It's really the perfect place, politically, to store nuclear waste. New Orleans comes in a close second, as the American public stopped caring about it months ago.
Another good idea that would probably rival cold fusion for efficiency is hamsters, wheels, a turbine, and crystal meth. Animals are 80%+ effecient in converting energy to force, which is far better than the 10-12% of artificial systems. The crystal meth would even be free, since they're still brewing massive quantites of it as Americans need something more powerful than caffeine to keep them awake to work their 2-3 jobs to make ends meet in our spiffy new minimum wage service economy. The only waste here would be hamster shit, but you could probably sell that to hippies at a good food store. Or maybe make a super-coffee out of it from the unexchanged meth. Clearly, great potential regardless.
Oh please. "Insightful" religious bashing? Stop being prejudiced. This had nothing to do with it; these men were employees of a liberal county in a liberal state (Maryland). They had nothing to do with Christianity, Islam, Bush, Republicans, or whatever other group you think it's cool and trendy to hate. Oh wait, I forgot... only Republicans and Christians ever have curtailed freedom in the history of this country and the world!
If you're going to make a claim that they took these actions due to religion, and were trying to force their views on others, how about backing up your claims with facts?
Because there are none in the article. Indeed, just another case of religious intolerance and hatred on Slashdot. Maybe next time you guys can... oh, I don't know, not make stuff up to feed your hatred and instead simply put the blame where it's due? Just a thought.
Hating and blaming an Abrahamic religion for unrelated things isn't exactly a new idea, you know.
I'm a mostly libertarian person, and I attended a liberal college. All of the "leftist" professors I had were very tolerant of opposing viewpoints and welcomed rational arguments and dissertation opposite of their own.
No, I think the problem is in the books for some classes. There are just some courses that have very biased books-- "Capitalism and the Environment" was mentioned above, and I've seen some really bad women's studies stuff. In no case was the professor biased or a bad person, it was just that the material sucked.
Fundamentally it comes down to an issue of educational resources deeming a correct answer to very subjective questions, while only presenting a very narrow viewpoint. I don't think playing "The Final Solution to the Biased Teacher Question" is going to change anything, even a pretty reasonable professor is gonna have a tough time when the underlying material is crap.
Maybe there a few really biased profs out there, but it seems to me like there are already systems in place to deal with that. But when the books themselves are biased nothing can be done because the money's already been spent. There is no resolution. And in some cases pretty much all the books on the subject are total crap, at least from what I've seen.
I don't believe that this is another "nail" in the coffin of ID. These people feel threatened by science, because people wanting power have twisted and exaggerated small elements of their faith to create wedge issues and drive people to them-- ultimately undermining the core principles of Christianity. This seems to happen a disturbing amount on a number of issues lately.
I think the problem with ID, from a theological perspective, is it is making claims never contained in the Bible-- yes, Genesis says God created life, but it never spells out the mechanism. Given the rather spotty nature, oral traditions, and manual copying by most certainly falliable humans, I don't see how they can even begin to try to ascribe their claims to be backed by the Bible. And claims of inerrancy are ridiculous as well, as this has been shown between versions and translations. Why assume that divine intervention is the only explanation for life? If someone wants to create a fractal, they don't edit pixels.
Just because something exists in nature that we do not understand, doesn't mean God came down and zapped it. It just means we don't know. And neither do ID proponents.
I do believe in ID, but only in the case of selective breeding and genetic engineering. By humans. Evolution never produced the French Poodle.
Oh, and if you want to read something interesting regarding religion and science and creation, look at the Koran excerpts near the bottom of the Wikipedia Big Bang page. Not saying it's proof of anything being true, I just thought it was interesting.
ABSTRACT:
Myostatin is a secreted protein that normally functions as a negative regulator of muscle growth. Agents capable of blocking the myostatin signaling pathway could have important applications for treating human muscle degenerative diseases as well as for enhancing livestock production. Here we describe a potent myostatin inhibitor, a soluble form of the activin type IIB receptor (ACVR2B), which can cause dramatic increases in muscle mass (up to 60% in 2 weeks) when injected into wild-type mice. Furthermore, we show that the effect of the soluble receptor is attenuated but not eliminated in Mstn(-/-) mice, suggesting that at least one other ligand in addition to myostatin normally functions to limit muscle growth. Finally, we provide genetic evidence that these ligands signal through both activin type II receptors, ACVR2 and ACVR2B, to regulate muscle growth in vivo.
And what about the masculine form in gaming? To get a "masculine" body like many video games suggest, you'd need a steady diet of anabolic steroid cycles, heavy weight training, protein, creatine, clenbuterol and dinitrophenol. That type of muscle development and bodyfat level is simply physiologically impossible unless you use drugs to step outside the bounds of human biology.
Why all the constant emo angst about female forms in gaming? The male forms are no more realistic. Your average female gamer might not look like Lara Croft, but that image is actually more attainable with less risk than a male gamer trying to look like Duke Nukem.
Regeneration is a very complex process and its behavior is not governed by a single gene or protein expression, as it involves a variety of very complex mechanics that are not fully understood. While I'm sure this gene is responsible for part of the regenerative process in worms, simply eliminating one gene and breaking something doesn't mean this is going to translate into a human response. Regeneration research has been going on for many years, and it has produced limited results in rats as some of the mechanics responsible have been found. Further, stem cells don't play the only role in regeneration in more complex animals similar to mammals like the newt; the first step of regeneration is muscle cells dedifferentiating and then differentiating into a new replacement cell type. There are multiple proteins (and multiple genes) involved with this step alone, and it's one of many.
I use PubMed regularily to search millions of journal articles relating to biology, and only about 10% of the abstracts contain a link to a "free" version of the full article. Often the abstract contains enough information such that this isn't necessary, but sometimes the pertinent information in the conclusion is missing entirely from the abstract. To access the article without being a subscriber it typically costs $50-$100 to get a copy of the PDF! I am not making a profit off of this so I'm not sure why they expect me to pay that much. I would certainly love free access, as-is, I have to bug someone with access such as a doctor or university student friend to get the PDF for me (as their organizations have subscriptions). I wouldn't even mind paying a reasonable fee, but the current rates are anything but reasonable.
Aluminum is stronger by volume and harder by volume and weight and will flex quite a bit before it breaks. What this means to the user is an aluminum shell makes the device thinner. Further, anodized aluminum doesn't scratch as easily as plastic, especially some of the better anodizings available (like type III mil-spec).
Assuming a computer counts as tangible, movable property, and I do believe the rootkit at least counts as "criminal mischief", and the Texas AG has a legal duty to protect people's computers (or people ask him to), the use of lethal force against Sony BMG would be authorized.
9.43. PROTECTION OF THIRD PERSON'S PROPERTY. A person
is justified in using force or deadly force against another to
protect land or tangible, movable property of a third person if,
under the circumstances as he reasonably believes them to be, the
actor would be justified under Section 9.41 or 9.42 in using force
or deadly force to protect his own land or property and:
(1) the actor reasonably believes the unlawful
interference constitutes attempted or consummated theft of or
criminal mischief to the tangible, movable property; or
(2) the actor reasonably believes that:
(A) the third person has requested his protection
of the land or property;
(B) he has a legal duty to protect the third
person's land or property; or
(C) the third person whose land or property he
uses force or deadly force to protect is the actor's spouse, parent,
or child, resides with the actor, or is under the actor's care
No, this won't increase lifespan in a human. Yet another rat study that failed to translate into human data. Oxidative stress is one factor amongst many. To say aging is complex is an understatement.
As a whole, the population in first world countries is on a decline other than immigration. Not to mention this study has about zero relevance for humans. Now get a haircut, stop smoking pot, and uncurl your arms from around that tree.
This isn't even an animal study, this is a purely in vitro model which means it may or may not translate to anything beyond that. All of the other "anti-aging breakthroughs" in animal models failed to produce the same results in humans. Cell lifespan alone isn't the reason humans die of old age, as the telomerase research showed.
Great news if you're a yeast cell and like having a sluggish metabolism, though!
Slashdot Mirror
Well, this is a good point. What peer-reviewed, well-designed, large, double-blind medical studies have found media content, if any, to be harmful to children? I doubt there are any for pornography. Let's call this bill what it really is: cop-out for lazy parents.
Robots are one way the military is trying to address this, but the technology just isn't quite up to killing John Connor yet. They are expensive and very limited. However, when a robot is disabled or destroyed, no one cares, and it doesn't hurt public perception of the war. Even an unjust war with little to no death will get good public support.
Unfortunately I don't see robots changing anything in Iraq. However what I do see happening is "outsourcing". As we've established, deaths of Iraqis and people from other dissimilar nations don't generate as much negative public perception; hence, there has been a very strong drive to get Iraqis to replace the functions of US troops, particularily the most dangerous ones, in Iraq. By "outsourcing" the job of a soldier, the cost is reduced to the military below that of a robot, and there is little negative political change per death.
I'm very surprised we have not seen more "security contractors" from poorer nations; they hire US private security forces at an astronomical cost (as people care less about a Blackwater employee dying than a Marine), perhaps in the future instead of robots things will shift more along these lines to say, security contractors from China, Mexico, etc. Of course, it is still human beings killing and being killed, but as long as public perception can be controlled by avoiding US troop deaths, those who lust for blood on their hands will find little opposition.
It is true that the Reformation, and Lutheranism, was indeed a particular interpretation of Christianity, but the overall goal and point behind the Augsberg Confessional was the Catholic Church's "additions" to the religion that Luther took great objection to; regardless of his individual beliefs, it paved the way for a great deal of freedom from the then more or less exclusive interpretations of the Catholic and Orthodox traditions. I don't think it is reaching too much to ask if what many people consider objectionable about Islam is more the hadiths than the Koran, and wonder if that doesn't parallel Christianity at the same relative point just a bit.
The "infidels" bit comes from when Mohammad was being persecuted, and it is important to note it is regarding a specific instance at a specific point in time, and keep things in context, which sometimes followers have difficulty doing. The same is true for Paul's letters in the NT as you reference later. Also, even if one does interpret them to apply universally, "infidel" does not and never has applied to other "people of the book", so that would not be a valid justification for Christian/Jewish conflict. As a further point, the word used for war sometimes, "jihad", means struggle, not necessarily violence or physical in nature.
There are certainly things in the Koran we Westerners will tend to disagree with, particularily regarding women, and you make some excellent points there. However, as a counterpoint, many of the mistreatments of women ascribed to Islam actually predate it, and come from tribal traditions in that area; in many cases Islam's treatment of women is much better than how they were treated, and how they are treated in many areas of the world, including some of the Middle East, to this day.
The particular passage you cite is considered by some to be an incorrect translation; the word "beat", is actually "idribûhunna", and is used in the Koran only to denote separation or travel, not violence. The translation to "beat" comes from usage outside of the context of the Koran.
I don't want to go into too much of a semantics debate, but the overall things I'd like to stress are that at the time the Koran's instructions were a vast improvement in women's rights to the world as a whole, especially to the Middle East, and that the Islamic countries are making faster advancements relative to the birth of the religion towards women's rights than we in the US did; women's suffrage and the struggles of Susan B. Anthony are of our very recent past. Many urbanized areas in Islamic countries are within 100 years of us in terms of women's rights.
I agree with the former, but not latter part of your last paragraph. I think either religion is quite compatible with peace and enlightenment as history has shown, the question is in the interpretation. And I think you'll find that is not the fault of Jesus, Mohammad, God, or even Paul, but rather the institutions we have constructed today.
I do agree fundamentalism can be dangerous in any case though. Abandoning the hadiths entirely does not guarantee a positive change, it still very much depends on how the words of the prophet are interpreted. And they are interpreted outside of the hadiths through the lens of society. That has very much changed and evolved since the Arab and Muslim rural tribal societies in which Islam was born, and will continue to change and grow into the future.
But that still does not free the followers of individual responsibility; of my fellow Christians, they have no prophet telling them to kill anyone, and many still manage to justify hatred and violence to themselves. If we want followers of Islam to be less violent, more forgiving, and more peaceful, perhaps we should attempt to do the same instead of bombing them in the future. For despite all of the "progress" we have made in the West, we are for the most part guilty of precisely what we judge of those we hate. And I'm not entirely sure bombing them is going to elevate them to some lofty standard of peace and enlightment we cannot reach ourselves.
And unfortunately I think the fallout of this is becoming all too appearent. The Koran records Mohammad as stating:
Only argue with the People of the Book in the kindest way - except in the case of those of them who do wrong - saying, 'We have Faith in what has been sent down to us and what was sent down to you. Our God and your God are one and we submit to Him. (Surat al-`Ankabut; 29:46).
Islam at various points in history was actually much more tolerant than Christianity during its day. Mohammad did indeed show tolerance to Christians and Jews, and for a while even Jews were shown acceptance, reversing a long conflict that began over land before Islam existed. Saladin during the Crusades was not only a brilliant commander, but a very reasonable and tolerant guy, and those kind of values actually spurred the rise of chivalry in Europe.
Unfortunately it seems the "people of the book" are still a long ways off from following it, but the British have done good work here and it is exactly these type of things that can help reverse the dehumanization of our fellow man that has taken place lately. Hopefully as Islam ages, they will abandon many of the precepts created by man as was the case during the great schism in Christianity, but it is a two-way street, and more Christians will also have to think more like Jesus and Tom Fox than we have been. I think that within each religion of the "people of the book" lies a path to peace, the question is how many more deaths it will take before we can all find it.
73% of Christians polled by the Harris Group in a large, well-designed study (95% CI) favored it. (http://www.harrisinteractive.com/harris_poll/inde x.asp?PID=488)
I'm sorry if a small minority of fundamentalists you see on the local news make us look bad, but why don't you try reading the viewpoint of the mainline, majority body of Christians, like the ELCA? http://www.elca.org/faithandscience/discussion/
Most Christians are not what you think, and the facts and data support this. It's simply that extremists always make the best news stories.
Excellent point, I'd mod you up if I had the points. I suppose it wasn't much of a true competition, then.
That's why peer review is so important in science. It's not a perfect process either, but it's a good way of validating these claims. The incentive is there for people to take things to the media, however true, and get attention and funding, and I think that's what has happened in this case. The fact is proof if alien life falling to earth would be ground breaking and a journal like Nature would love to carry a verifiable story of it, but this isn't it.
It saddens us when this is something we personally like (Firefly, Arrested Development, Furturama, etc), but the average consumer is showing Hollywood that the current crap story, ton of CG, big-budget approach isn't profitable. Thus it will not be funded unless it is profitable.
No one can predict with perfect certainty whether or not something will be well-done and a success. Lucas's recent works were shit, but the original SW trilogy were very successful and critically acclaimed; Hollywood funded Lucas's new efforts because they want to give people what they want and what sells! Not because they want to force crap on you.
Movies in theaters are indeed gouging in a way, but the costs of showing a movie in a theater have also increased dramatically. Carmike Cinemas has struggled financially for a very long time, believe it or not but owning large buildings in an urban area, licensing the content, and upgrading to the newest AV technologies over and over again is quite expensive. Movie theaters are expensive but it is not a high-profit ripoff scam business, the costs are expensive as well. I hope this will diminish in favor of the home theater and other distrubution methods. The economics here are failing.
In the future Hollywood will continue to try to give you what you want. Pay money for movies you think are excellent and you want to see more of, and support them. Don't support crap. Hollywood is very responsive to economics.
There will always be crap, because not even the people funding the movies can predict how they're going to turn out; they can only read the proposals and evaluate the past performance of the people making them. But they have a larger stake than you or I do in wanting to make sure they succeed. Sometimes this is underhanded, such as not showing a screening for critics with the recent "Ultraviolet" as they realized how much the end product sucked. But the movie industry never wanted it to get to that point, they want to make things that are epic and successful-- after all, that's the most profitable.
Big budget movies will never die, because of this. The investors and production companies will put their resources into maximizing their profits, and most of them really do love film and want to do make great movies. They gamble with the knowledge and dreams they have, they will always lose and win. Avoid the losers and support the winners, and this helps things evolve in the future.
And hey, I don't think Hollywood is abusing their power either. DVDs are great; a high quality version of a movie that even has a great viewing experience on a $20 player. Most of them cost less than music CDs and have a lot of bonus content. Sure, DVDs use CSS, but there's nothing wrong with wanting to protect your content and livelihood either.
Entertainment costs are down, down, down. Electronics are cheaper than ever, and getting the content legally-- via DVD, or new services like NetFlix make movie watching a better experience than in the VHS days, and a more economical one. TVs have dropped in price by almost half since the 80s due to improvements in cost production, and a DVD player costs maybe 20% of what a VCR once did. DVDs cost barely more than VHS tapes used to-- they go up less than inflation. And you can buy older DVDs for less than $5!
Hollywood has stolen nothing. They lose more than you do when a movie sucks. I don't ask you support bad content, but I ask that you do consider supporting things you want to see more of. I recently paid ~$80 for Seasons 1 and 2.0 of Battlestar Galactica, not because I hadn't already downloaded the bittorrents, but because I want to support good content and share it with others.
Finally remember that film is one medium for content alone. There are many ways to tell a story, and if film is not meeting your needs, you can always indulge another.
As far as the other aspects of this for USAF purposes, ie, recon, they have been superceded by other technologies that have emerged and evolved since its development. The fact some military leaders didn't know about a private contractor's R&D efforts on failed technology doesn't mean there's a conspiracy you need to call Mulder and Scully about.
Personally I would suspect rockets will be the economical launch vehicle of choice (as uneconomical as they are) for quite some time, and that unmanned drones and improvement in satellite imaging will give us that military eye in the sky. I'm more in favor of seeing how to reduce the cost of rockets and getting more communication infrastructure in place for everyone to use, than spending our resources hunting down and killing our fellow man, but I'm more of a dork than a military leader.
And that's what a great deal of movies have been lately. Barely tolerable, stupid plots, that are not good stories and certainly would not stand on their own merit independant of medium, where infusions of cash, breasts, and CG try to make up for this. But in the end, all you get is a really expensive, bad movie, with a few tit shots. Putting the female lead on a trampoline, or just saying fuck it and turning it into a porno would probably be better at that point.
Indie movies don't necessarily have good plots, either. I've seen some pretty bad indie movies lately. Open Water, and the stupid one about the "death" tunnel or whatever were both distinctly worse than porn. In the end, it's all about the story, moreso than anything else. Film techniques and dynamics such as acting, direction etc are important as well, but second to the story.
Want my money? Tell me a good story. Then we'll worry about the CG and breasts. If I just want the latter without a story, I'll get a video game or porn.
Step 2: ???
Step 3: Declare the origin of life as alien
Allllllrighty then.
Another good idea that would probably rival cold fusion for efficiency is hamsters, wheels, a turbine, and crystal meth. Animals are 80%+ effecient in converting energy to force, which is far better than the 10-12% of artificial systems. The crystal meth would even be free, since they're still brewing massive quantites of it as Americans need something more powerful than caffeine to keep them awake to work their 2-3 jobs to make ends meet in our spiffy new minimum wage service economy. The only waste here would be hamster shit, but you could probably sell that to hippies at a good food store. Or maybe make a super-coffee out of it from the unexchanged meth. Clearly, great potential regardless.
If you're going to make a claim that they took these actions due to religion, and were trying to force their views on others, how about backing up your claims with facts?
Because there are none in the article. Indeed, just another case of religious intolerance and hatred on Slashdot. Maybe next time you guys can... oh, I don't know, not make stuff up to feed your hatred and instead simply put the blame where it's due? Just a thought.
Hating and blaming an Abrahamic religion for unrelated things isn't exactly a new idea, you know.
No, I think the problem is in the books for some classes. There are just some courses that have very biased books-- "Capitalism and the Environment" was mentioned above, and I've seen some really bad women's studies stuff. In no case was the professor biased or a bad person, it was just that the material sucked.
Fundamentally it comes down to an issue of educational resources deeming a correct answer to very subjective questions, while only presenting a very narrow viewpoint. I don't think playing "The Final Solution to the Biased Teacher Question" is going to change anything, even a pretty reasonable professor is gonna have a tough time when the underlying material is crap.
Maybe there a few really biased profs out there, but it seems to me like there are already systems in place to deal with that. But when the books themselves are biased nothing can be done because the money's already been spent. There is no resolution. And in some cases pretty much all the books on the subject are total crap, at least from what I've seen.
I don't believe that this is another "nail" in the coffin of ID. These people feel threatened by science, because people wanting power have twisted and exaggerated small elements of their faith to create wedge issues and drive people to them-- ultimately undermining the core principles of Christianity. This seems to happen a disturbing amount on a number of issues lately.
I think the problem with ID, from a theological perspective, is it is making claims never contained in the Bible-- yes, Genesis says God created life, but it never spells out the mechanism. Given the rather spotty nature, oral traditions, and manual copying by most certainly falliable humans, I don't see how they can even begin to try to ascribe their claims to be backed by the Bible. And claims of inerrancy are ridiculous as well, as this has been shown between versions and translations. Why assume that divine intervention is the only explanation for life? If someone wants to create a fractal, they don't edit pixels.
Just because something exists in nature that we do not understand, doesn't mean God came down and zapped it. It just means we don't know. And neither do ID proponents.
I do believe in ID, but only in the case of selective breeding and genetic engineering. By humans. Evolution never produced the French Poodle.
Oh, and if you want to read something interesting regarding religion and science and creation, look at the Koran excerpts near the bottom of the Wikipedia Big Bang page. Not saying it's proof of anything being true, I just thought it was interesting.
.Full journal article (PDF)
Why all the constant emo angst about female forms in gaming? The male forms are no more realistic. Your average female gamer might not look like Lara Croft, but that image is actually more attainable with less risk than a male gamer trying to look like Duke Nukem.
Regeneration is a very complex process and its behavior is not governed by a single gene or protein expression, as it involves a variety of very complex mechanics that are not fully understood. While I'm sure this gene is responsible for part of the regenerative process in worms, simply eliminating one gene and breaking something doesn't mean this is going to translate into a human response. Regeneration research has been going on for many years, and it has produced limited results in rats as some of the mechanics responsible have been found. Further, stem cells don't play the only role in regeneration in more complex animals similar to mammals like the newt; the first step of regeneration is muscle cells dedifferentiating and then differentiating into a new replacement cell type. There are multiple proteins (and multiple genes) involved with this step alone, and it's one of many.
I use PubMed regularily to search millions of journal articles relating to biology, and only about 10% of the abstracts contain a link to a "free" version of the full article. Often the abstract contains enough information such that this isn't necessary, but sometimes the pertinent information in the conclusion is missing entirely from the abstract. To access the article without being a subscriber it typically costs $50-$100 to get a copy of the PDF! I am not making a profit off of this so I'm not sure why they expect me to pay that much. I would certainly love free access, as-is, I have to bug someone with access such as a doctor or university student friend to get the PDF for me (as their organizations have subscriptions). I wouldn't even mind paying a reasonable fee, but the current rates are anything but reasonable.
Aluminum is stronger by volume and harder by volume and weight and will flex quite a bit before it breaks. What this means to the user is an aluminum shell makes the device thinner. Further, anodized aluminum doesn't scratch as easily as plastic, especially some of the better anodizings available (like type III mil-spec).
Assuming a computer counts as tangible, movable property, and I do believe the rootkit at least counts as "criminal mischief", and the Texas AG has a legal duty to protect people's computers (or people ask him to), the use of lethal force against Sony BMG would be authorized. 9.43. PROTECTION OF THIRD PERSON'S PROPERTY. A person is justified in using force or deadly force against another to protect land or tangible, movable property of a third person if, under the circumstances as he reasonably believes them to be, the actor would be justified under Section 9.41 or 9.42 in using force or deadly force to protect his own land or property and: (1) the actor reasonably believes the unlawful interference constitutes attempted or consummated theft of or criminal mischief to the tangible, movable property; or (2) the actor reasonably believes that: (A) the third person has requested his protection of the land or property; (B) he has a legal duty to protect the third person's land or property; or (C) the third person whose land or property he uses force or deadly force to protect is the actor's spouse, parent, or child, resides with the actor, or is under the actor's care
On the contarary, making fun of hippies always adds to your credibility.
No, this won't increase lifespan in a human. Yet another rat study that failed to translate into human data. Oxidative stress is one factor amongst many. To say aging is complex is an understatement.
As a whole, the population in first world countries is on a decline other than immigration. Not to mention this study has about zero relevance for humans. Now get a haircut, stop smoking pot, and uncurl your arms from around that tree.
Great news if you're a yeast cell and like having a sluggish metabolism, though!