Ahh, your distinction is subtle, and understandable; however, untrue. I will admit, all laws as we understand them are "human derived," but the principals are universal. Let us take an example, and we'll use yours: a^2 + b^2 = c^2. Humans use that to describe a perceived shape. If ET species 'X' observes same shape, they may use different descriptors, but the principal would be the same; they would be describing a shape we understand as a triangle, and would follow the same rules, just manifested differently.
A caveat here... perhaps the leaders of African countries want sh!t for their citizens - that is an argument that can be made. Average African citizens, who have a minimal knowledge base, no access to information, and know only what they are told, have their consciousness and desires very easily controlled and manipulated. Had they open access to knowledge, information, and resources, I'd wager a billion dollars they wouldn't independently choose "crap" for their life. Would you?
Subjugation is both forced on and accepted by the subjugated. Hope for a new, better, free life has to be both realized and fought for.
There have been many articles recently discussing the disappearance of online privacy (or, privacy in general). While I'm traditionally a huge proponent of individual privacy, I'm beginning to think that, as our digital/information age progresses, privacy will be a thing of the past - at least, to the extent that the average citizen can expect privacy.
Currently I, and several like me, fight for our privacy. But, are we better served by doing so? Our privacy will be violated if those who desire to do so have sufficient power and/or resources, so I believe, in our age, it is a moot point. Perhaps we would be better served by making it institutional law that NOBODY has privacy. Everyone has access to information about everyone else.
Before I get flamed, think about it. If this were *actually achieved* (note the hopeful emphasis), politicians could no longer easily hide behind untrue words spoken with conviction. We would be better equipped to discover the pedophile terrorizing the local town, or discover which corrupt army official is taking bribes to transport arms to other countries. If privacy is eroding to the point of no return anyway, why not get something truly useful out of it, instead of fighting tooth and nail against it while politicians make "special rules" that they can easily enforce for themselves, making their lives private, and setting us at further disadvantage.
I would like input - like I said, I'm a huge fan of privacy, so I'm going out on a limb here... but it just seems like we're trying to delay the inevitable, when we could be using it to our favor.
Sorry to lay the lie to your claim, but the parent is right. I have lived in a liberal town in my home state that had an overwhelming majority of pot smokers, who were either very successful occupationally, or as college students. I don't doubt that some people have trouble dealing with dependencies, but that's on them personally, or you as a parent raising them. Please, don't drag the rest of us into it. You're personal bad experience is in no way indicative of the population as a whole. I'm sorry to put your teen pothead in that light, but that's the truth of it.
Think of it this way... if your teen wasn't a pothead, they'd be an alcoholic, or worse. Cracking down on drugs (and keeping them illegal) isn't going to solve his problem. The weed is not to blame lady... it was merely a tool, neither good nor evil, used to express how he feels. If it wasn't that, it would be something else, I PROMISE YOU that. Perhaps a little family therapy and counseling would go a long way though.
I must agree with your two detractors... you're logic twists and turns without any real coherency.
I am not an idealist, simply a realist. I understand that there are several countries with socialized systems that work very poorly. I also understand there are several countries with socailized health care systems that work extremely well (read better than ours).
It is not a crime against America to point out it's flaws. We are, by far, the most powerful, "richest" country in the world, yet our health care system doesn't even rank in the top 30! In case you weren't aware of this, I'll give you the current rankings (provided by http://www.photius.com/rankings/healthranks.html):
1 France
2 Italy
3 San Marino
4 Andorra
5 Malta
6 Singapore
7 Spain
8 Oman
9 Austria
10 Japan
11 Norway
12 Portugal
13 Monaco
14 Greece
15 Iceland
16 Luxembourg
17 Netherlands
18 United Kingdom
19 Ireland
20 Switzerland
21 Belgium
22 Colombia
23 Sweden
24 Cyprus
25 Germany
26 Saudi Arabia
27 United Arab Emirates
28 Israel
29 Morocco
30 Canada
31 Finland
32 Australia
33 Chile
34 Denmark
35 Dominica
36 Costa Rica
37 United States of America
Now, if you want to continue to glorify the US health care system to me, by all means... ignore reality and listen to the propaganda you've been fed. If you want to take a hard look at reality, it's time to realize that we are woefully lacking in health care. There are several reasons we can point to for this, a prominent one being insurance companies skimming massive profits for doing nothing more than managing the money we give them. There are many many others, but the point is, we must be looking for these broken areas and engage in discussions on how to fix them. If you fail to see the problems we currently have in our health care system, we can no longer have an intelligent discussion, because reason eludes you.
Is the answer socialized health care? Perhaps. Universal health care? Possibly. A dismantling and reconfiguration of the current monopolistic, private, profit-driven-lower-expenses-at-all-costs-while-pooling-massive-amounts-of-money-at-the-top, and unfair redistribution system? Maybe. I don't care if it's private, public, democratic, republican, communist... whatever - I just want it to be better, because as a proud nation of Americans, we deserve better!!!
By the way, you're claim that HMO's are interested in preventative health care is a bunch of BS. Why do you think they're still pushing prescription drugs at us, instead of pushing preventative medicine? Because there's exponentially more profit to be made in treating someone who's dying than in educating and preventing that condition in the first place. It's simple business economics. Then again, you seem to place all your trust in Corporate America, so I can't expect you to see the truth of all this.
Or at the very least, it could have already happened.
Those of you able to peer into Earth's history and tell us exactly what has happened in the past, please, be silent, you're input is not welcome (and entirely based on anecdotal evidence).
I need to state a premise, essential to understanding what I suggest as *possible* - while we can observe the Earth (and all it contains) as it exists today, and infer from such observation what the past may have been like, we are simply making educated guesses. Fair enough? Sometimes they are fairly accurate (based on further educated guesses which correlate with previous guesses), sometimes they are shown to be utter fallacy. I am not suggesting we cannot know anything about the past, nor that what we think we know is entirely wrong; I am simply saying, by the very nature of science, what we do know is not known with absolute certainty.
Now, I admit, I have quite the imagination. Does anyone recall the first episode of Futurama, when Fry becomes frozen and life on earth rises and falls several times? It isn't a huge stretch to relate such a scenario to our current lives, which at any moment could become completely irrelevant in a nuclear winter. Did such fluctuations in living creature populations occur in Earth's past?
The idea of a chimera, the human/animal, is very old indeed, stretching far into antiquity, probably beyond written record. Where it originates is anyone's "educated guess", but is it so difficult to consider the possibility that, perhaps, we did mix human and animal genes in the past? If so, were the results good? Or is there a reason they are creatures generally feared, and no longer exist? It would explain why such creatures appear in ancient myths and writings. Of course, a great imagination can also account for that:)
Of course, there are logistical barriers, such as how to isolate genes. But consider this: even though ancient civilizations hadn't amassed the knowledge base, and access to it, that we currently have, they still accomplished incredible, imaginative, sometimes unbelievable feats. Is there only one way of creating a chimera? Is it possible they could have devised their own method for combining human and animal genes into a single living being?
Consider another possibility - besides total (or near total) destruction of civilization, there have also been several set-backs. The Library of Alexandria comes to mind. What if next week, we were set back 1000-2000 years because of massive wars, pandemics, natural disasters, or any other life-altering catastrophe which has been shown to occur in the past? Where would we be, how would we survive? Would our children believe us when we told them of automobiles and televisions and computers and electricity and cell phones? Were the disaster great enough, all this and more would become completely useless, irrelevant, and forgotten. In two to three generations humans would have nearly forgotten our great Information Age, lost in "myth" and legend. Ha, if we lost 200 years we'd be farming again! And who knows what shape civilization would take after such an event? Does anyone truly believe that such a scenario is beyond possibility?
I am not proposing this as truth revealed. I'm simply saying that the idea of combining animals and people certainly isn't novel, and while we can deduce all we like, we will never know the absolute truth. The simple fact that they are so saturated throughout human history tells me that it is a possibility to consider in a universe where almost anything is possible.
"my biggest pet peeve with the so-called debate around evolution is the notion that there is some sort of directionality to it."
As opposed to what, it being completely random? We have another name for that, its called mutation. Since we are bound by laws (nature and physics [called God by some]), it only makes sense that evolution would continue to express itself in better ways within that system. Darwinism implies direction, that being "survival of the fittest"! I guess I don't understand your peeve, since the alternative - evolution with no direction (aka mutation), happening at complete randomness in completely random ways, is completely absurd. Anything that is not beneficial would be called "devolution", and products of such a process would cease to exist rather quickly because of their inherent inferiority.
If I'm completely misunderstanding you, please clarify.
I disagree. Is it right for the labels to steal from the public and the artists, guising it under "fees" or "administrative costs" or some other BS? Is it right for politicians to rip off Americans under the guise of "protection" or "incentives" or other legal nonsense? Just because the rich make up the laws, doesn't make them right, correct, beneficial or true. They've defined what "stealing" is, based on what is convenient for them. They're still stealing from us, even if it is legally allowed by a severely flawed system, and called something else. I say steal away... if they can make laws they can't break, then why should we follow them?
(don't flame me... this is in regards to stealing music, not any other "illegal" action)
There is a fundamental problem in the progression of AI: right and wrong. Humans have the right to "disregard" knowledge. When someone claimed, against common knowledge, that the earth was round, he disregarded what he knew to form a better conclusion. Would we be able to produce machines that could do this - go against what their code says? Any human error in any aspect of our knowledge of existence would be exacerbated exponentially as said machine progressed. How would it correct such a fatal flaw, when said flaw formed it's basis of existence and functionality? Would it even recognize such a flaw, and how?
Philosophers are like lawyers - assert what something is not, but never assert what is, for that will paint you in a corner. De-construct, but don't construct, for fear of failure.
Let's take a step back. Look at humans as a species... we started off very animal like, violent scavengers and hunters, acting in any manner that is beneficial to our survival. As we PROGRESS (develop, EVOLVE, as a species), we become more organized, less violent, less "animal-like." (Not looking at exceptions here - there are always exceptions. General trends are more telling.) INTELLECT begins to rule over brute STRENGTH. As this progression occurs, we also happen to become more "moral." Coincidence? I think not. Our mighty-big brains allow us to rise above animal instincts and rely on cognitive reasoning and logic.
Humanity is just now realizing that we don't have a F****NG clue? Let's say collectively we know, what,.01% of what there is to know about absolute truth? Or anything at all, for that matter? An we tink we suuu smert!
Good to see ourselves humbled every once in a while. Don't get me wrong, we've made great strides as a race, but examples like this show us just how far we have yet to go, and also make us realize that in a universe of infinite possibilities, we've hardly touched the surface of what there is to discover. Most of what we do "know" we don't even fully understand yet! It's quite exciting to see breakthroughs like this... there's something very tantalizing about the unknown.
Give Ilient's SysAid a try. A small, somewhat obscure company, but the software works excellent, is very customizable, and very affordable for smaller organizations. Fairly feature rich as well. Oh, and you can try it for free. Not trying to sell anything... just relaying my experience with it.
I absolutely love your formula for defining 'Social Justice'. Focus purely on wealth and ignore every other variable - of course that will produce a result in your favor.
Allow me to throw some tidbits for you to chew. Suppose we have human 'A' who is a wealthy white male who did absolutely nothing to achieve his wealth other than being the lucky nephew of a rich uncle, and does absolutely nothing now other than sit on his butt and drink soda. Now, suppose we have a second human, 'B', who is a Mexican immigrant, who is dirt poor but works 80+ hours a week for dirt money. In this scenario, we have the DETAILS that fill the void between 'A' and 'B' that you so cleverly ignored. Would you say that there is 'Social Justice' between person A and B and their wealth discrepancy? Or maybe you are person 'A'....
I may be a lot of things, but an idiot, certainly not;-) Such people commonly resort to insults. I was merely asking for a definition of what the parent meant by "evolution". To say that things evolve is indeed a fact - evolution happens daily. Bacteria evolve, people evolve, animals evolve, on both macro- and micro- scales. However, in the context of the discussion it appeared as if the parent meant that the "origin of life as evolution" is a fact (which makes sense, since comparing evolution to creationism only makes sense in regards to the origin of life). That, I am not entirely comfortable agreeing with.
What do you mean, "evolution is fact"? That evolution occurs? Of course it does! That evolution is the origin of all that is? Please, tell me, what makes this THEORY a fact?
Instead of leaving you guessing, I'll get this out right away - I'm a very liberal person of Faith (Christian, if you wish). What I find incredibly interesting is everyone's attempt to discredit each other's theories.
First, let's make something very clear: any attempt to describe what happened 5,000 to 100,000,000 (ad infinium) is purely theoretical. Aside from the scant remains of fossils that could possibly date back to that time period, we have no evidence whatsoever. Nobody was there, nobody saw the evolution of living beings or the big bang; nobody can go there to affirm or reject any claim.
What we pretend to know is very precarious indeed. We use a method of dating that appears to be accurate within our limited time-frame of knowledge (namely, carbon dating). However, consider that error, over the spans of time we're dealing with, has the potential to be exponential. Combine that with the fact that carbon dating, as our only "reliable" method of dating, has no way of being verified by an outside source (beyond several thousand years), and we could safely say that we know next-to-nothing about the history of this universe.
I am not here advocating Creationism. Nor Evolutionism (which, by the way, is as much a faith, if not more so, than Creationism). I am here to say that I am willing to be the first person to say "I do not know". I have absolutely no clue how the universe came about! All I can do is make as good a guess as I can with the information I have readily available to me. And even then, it's purely a guess. To say that we can unilaterally claim either Evolutionism or Creationism as correct is not only preposterous, but incredibly arrogant. Could everything have resulted from the Big Band, and it's ensuing randomness? Possibly. Could an omni-present Energy that everyone likes to call God be the source of all that exists? Possibly. Do I know the answer? Certainly not!
No, definitely not a fictional user. I work in IT, and I would NEVER ALLOW, nor ASK or EXPECT end users to install Windows, administer their machine, or even install their own software (some, yes, but not most by a far cry)! There is a very wide range of users out there, most of which fall under the i-don't-know-jack category, or the i-think-i-know-jack-but-really-only-know-enough-to -do-more-harm-than-good category. They are happy if they can do their simple daily tasks without breaking the computer and waiting for hours while I (support) find the time to fix their blunder.
This is a perfect example of the Internet working exactly as it is supposed to - informing the masses in a way that was never possible before. It is becoming increasingly difficult for government and corporate America to lie through their teeth and get away with it. The guises are falling and everyone is invited to watch.
Slashdot Mirror
Ahh, your distinction is subtle, and understandable; however, untrue. I will admit, all laws as we understand them are "human derived," but the principals are universal. Let us take an example, and we'll use yours: a^2 + b^2 = c^2. Humans use that to describe a perceived shape. If ET species 'X' observes same shape, they may use different descriptors, but the principal would be the same; they would be describing a shape we understand as a triangle, and would follow the same rules, just manifested differently.
A caveat here... perhaps the leaders of African countries want sh!t for their citizens - that is an argument that can be made. Average African citizens, who have a minimal knowledge base, no access to information, and know only what they are told, have their consciousness and desires very easily controlled and manipulated. Had they open access to knowledge, information, and resources, I'd wager a billion dollars they wouldn't independently choose "crap" for their life. Would you?
Subjugation is both forced on and accepted by the subjugated. Hope for a new, better, free life has to be both realized and fought for.
of course, slashdot completely avoids this form of mutual back-scratching...
let us bow to the all-knowing geek master...
There have been many articles recently discussing the disappearance of online privacy (or, privacy in general). While I'm traditionally a huge proponent of individual privacy, I'm beginning to think that, as our digital/information age progresses, privacy will be a thing of the past - at least, to the extent that the average citizen can expect privacy.
Currently I, and several like me, fight for our privacy. But, are we better served by doing so? Our privacy will be violated if those who desire to do so have sufficient power and/or resources, so I believe, in our age, it is a moot point. Perhaps we would be better served by making it institutional law that NOBODY has privacy. Everyone has access to information about everyone else.
Before I get flamed, think about it. If this were *actually achieved* (note the hopeful emphasis), politicians could no longer easily hide behind untrue words spoken with conviction. We would be better equipped to discover the pedophile terrorizing the local town, or discover which corrupt army official is taking bribes to transport arms to other countries. If privacy is eroding to the point of no return anyway, why not get something truly useful out of it, instead of fighting tooth and nail against it while politicians make "special rules" that they can easily enforce for themselves, making their lives private, and setting us at further disadvantage.
I would like input - like I said, I'm a huge fan of privacy, so I'm going out on a limb here... but it just seems like we're trying to delay the inevitable, when we could be using it to our favor.
Sorry to lay the lie to your claim, but the parent is right. I have lived in a liberal town in my home state that had an overwhelming majority of pot smokers, who were either very successful occupationally, or as college students. I don't doubt that some people have trouble dealing with dependencies, but that's on them personally, or you as a parent raising them. Please, don't drag the rest of us into it. You're personal bad experience is in no way indicative of the population as a whole. I'm sorry to put your teen pothead in that light, but that's the truth of it.
Think of it this way... if your teen wasn't a pothead, they'd be an alcoholic, or worse. Cracking down on drugs (and keeping them illegal) isn't going to solve his problem. The weed is not to blame lady... it was merely a tool, neither good nor evil, used to express how he feels. If it wasn't that, it would be something else, I PROMISE YOU that. Perhaps a little family therapy and counseling would go a long way though.
I must agree with your two detractors... you're logic twists and turns without any real coherency.
I am not an idealist, simply a realist. I understand that there are several countries with socialized systems that work very poorly. I also understand there are several countries with socailized health care systems that work extremely well (read better than ours).
It is not a crime against America to point out it's flaws. We are, by far, the most powerful, "richest" country in the world, yet our health care system doesn't even rank in the top 30! In case you weren't aware of this, I'll give you the current rankings (provided by http://www.photius.com/rankings/healthranks.html):
1 France 2 Italy 3 San Marino 4 Andorra 5 Malta 6 Singapore 7 Spain 8 Oman 9 Austria 10 Japan 11 Norway 12 Portugal 13 Monaco 14 Greece 15 Iceland 16 Luxembourg 17 Netherlands 18 United Kingdom 19 Ireland 20 Switzerland 21 Belgium 22 Colombia 23 Sweden 24 Cyprus 25 Germany 26 Saudi Arabia 27 United Arab Emirates 28 Israel 29 Morocco 30 Canada 31 Finland 32 Australia 33 Chile 34 Denmark 35 Dominica 36 Costa Rica 37 United States of America
Now, if you want to continue to glorify the US health care system to me, by all means... ignore reality and listen to the propaganda you've been fed. If you want to take a hard look at reality, it's time to realize that we are woefully lacking in health care. There are several reasons we can point to for this, a prominent one being insurance companies skimming massive profits for doing nothing more than managing the money we give them. There are many many others, but the point is, we must be looking for these broken areas and engage in discussions on how to fix them. If you fail to see the problems we currently have in our health care system, we can no longer have an intelligent discussion, because reason eludes you.
Is the answer socialized health care? Perhaps. Universal health care? Possibly. A dismantling and reconfiguration of the current monopolistic, private, profit-driven-lower-expenses-at-all-costs-while-pooling-massive-amounts-of-money-at-the-top, and unfair redistribution system? Maybe. I don't care if it's private, public, democratic, republican, communist... whatever - I just want it to be better, because as a proud nation of Americans, we deserve better!!!
By the way, you're claim that HMO's are interested in preventative health care is a bunch of BS. Why do you think they're still pushing prescription drugs at us, instead of pushing preventative medicine? Because there's exponentially more profit to be made in treating someone who's dying than in educating and preventing that condition in the first place. It's simple business economics. Then again, you seem to place all your trust in Corporate America, so I can't expect you to see the truth of all this.
Or at the very least, it could have already happened.
:)
Those of you able to peer into Earth's history and tell us exactly what has happened in the past, please, be silent, you're input is not welcome (and entirely based on anecdotal evidence).
I need to state a premise, essential to understanding what I suggest as *possible* - while we can observe the Earth (and all it contains) as it exists today, and infer from such observation what the past may have been like, we are simply making educated guesses. Fair enough? Sometimes they are fairly accurate (based on further educated guesses which correlate with previous guesses), sometimes they are shown to be utter fallacy. I am not suggesting we cannot know anything about the past, nor that what we think we know is entirely wrong; I am simply saying, by the very nature of science, what we do know is not known with absolute certainty.
Now, I admit, I have quite the imagination. Does anyone recall the first episode of Futurama, when Fry becomes frozen and life on earth rises and falls several times? It isn't a huge stretch to relate such a scenario to our current lives, which at any moment could become completely irrelevant in a nuclear winter. Did such fluctuations in living creature populations occur in Earth's past?
The idea of a chimera, the human/animal, is very old indeed, stretching far into antiquity, probably beyond written record. Where it originates is anyone's "educated guess", but is it so difficult to consider the possibility that, perhaps, we did mix human and animal genes in the past? If so, were the results good? Or is there a reason they are creatures generally feared, and no longer exist? It would explain why such creatures appear in ancient myths and writings. Of course, a great imagination can also account for that
Of course, there are logistical barriers, such as how to isolate genes. But consider this: even though ancient civilizations hadn't amassed the knowledge base, and access to it, that we currently have, they still accomplished incredible, imaginative, sometimes unbelievable feats. Is there only one way of creating a chimera? Is it possible they could have devised their own method for combining human and animal genes into a single living being?
Consider another possibility - besides total (or near total) destruction of civilization, there have also been several set-backs. The Library of Alexandria comes to mind. What if next week, we were set back 1000-2000 years because of massive wars, pandemics, natural disasters, or any other life-altering catastrophe which has been shown to occur in the past? Where would we be, how would we survive? Would our children believe us when we told them of automobiles and televisions and computers and electricity and cell phones? Were the disaster great enough, all this and more would become completely useless, irrelevant, and forgotten. In two to three generations humans would have nearly forgotten our great Information Age, lost in "myth" and legend. Ha, if we lost 200 years we'd be farming again! And who knows what shape civilization would take after such an event? Does anyone truly believe that such a scenario is beyond possibility?
I am not proposing this as truth revealed. I'm simply saying that the idea of combining animals and people certainly isn't novel, and while we can deduce all we like, we will never know the absolute truth. The simple fact that they are so saturated throughout human history tells me that it is a possibility to consider in a universe where almost anything is possible.
"my biggest pet peeve with the so-called debate around evolution is the notion that there is some sort of directionality to it."
As opposed to what, it being completely random? We have another name for that, its called mutation. Since we are bound by laws (nature and physics [called God by some]), it only makes sense that evolution would continue to express itself in better ways within that system. Darwinism implies direction, that being "survival of the fittest"! I guess I don't understand your peeve, since the alternative - evolution with no direction (aka mutation), happening at complete randomness in completely random ways, is completely absurd. Anything that is not beneficial would be called "devolution", and products of such a process would cease to exist rather quickly because of their inherent inferiority.
If I'm completely misunderstanding you, please clarify.
I disagree. Is it right for the labels to steal from the public and the artists, guising it under "fees" or "administrative costs" or some other BS? Is it right for politicians to rip off Americans under the guise of "protection" or "incentives" or other legal nonsense? Just because the rich make up the laws, doesn't make them right, correct, beneficial or true. They've defined what "stealing" is, based on what is convenient for them. They're still stealing from us, even if it is legally allowed by a severely flawed system, and called something else. I say steal away... if they can make laws they can't break, then why should we follow them?
(don't flame me... this is in regards to stealing music, not any other "illegal" action)
There is a fundamental problem in the progression of AI: right and wrong. Humans have the right to "disregard" knowledge. When someone claimed, against common knowledge, that the earth was round, he disregarded what he knew to form a better conclusion. Would we be able to produce machines that could do this - go against what their code says? Any human error in any aspect of our knowledge of existence would be exacerbated exponentially as said machine progressed. How would it correct such a fatal flaw, when said flaw formed it's basis of existence and functionality? Would it even recognize such a flaw, and how?
Philosophers are like lawyers - assert what something is not, but never assert what is, for that will paint you in a corner. De-construct, but don't construct, for fear of failure.
Let's take a step back. Look at humans as a species... we started off very animal like, violent scavengers and hunters, acting in any manner that is beneficial to our survival. As we PROGRESS (develop, EVOLVE, as a species), we become more organized, less violent, less "animal-like." (Not looking at exceptions here - there are always exceptions. General trends are more telling.) INTELLECT begins to rule over brute STRENGTH. As this progression occurs, we also happen to become more "moral." Coincidence? I think not. Our mighty-big brains allow us to rise above animal instincts and rely on cognitive reasoning and logic.
Can I get your number?
Humanity is just now realizing that we don't have a F****NG clue? Let's say collectively we know, what, .01% of what there is to know about absolute truth? Or anything at all, for that matter? An we tink we suuu smert!
Good to see ourselves humbled every once in a while. Don't get me wrong, we've made great strides as a race, but examples like this show us just how far we have yet to go, and also make us realize that in a universe of infinite possibilities, we've hardly touched the surface of what there is to discover. Most of what we do "know" we don't even fully understand yet! It's quite exciting to see breakthroughs like this... there's something very tantalizing about the unknown.
Give Ilient's SysAid a try. A small, somewhat obscure company, but the software works excellent, is very customizable, and very affordable for smaller organizations. Fairly feature rich as well. Oh, and you can try it for free. Not trying to sell anything... just relaying my experience with it.
I absolutely love your formula for defining 'Social Justice'. Focus purely on wealth and ignore every other variable - of course that will produce a result in your favor.
Allow me to throw some tidbits for you to chew. Suppose we have human 'A' who is a wealthy white male who did absolutely nothing to achieve his wealth other than being the lucky nephew of a rich uncle, and does absolutely nothing now other than sit on his butt and drink soda. Now, suppose we have a second human, 'B', who is a Mexican immigrant, who is dirt poor but works 80+ hours a week for dirt money. In this scenario, we have the DETAILS that fill the void between 'A' and 'B' that you so cleverly ignored. Would you say that there is 'Social Justice' between person A and B and their wealth discrepancy? Or maybe you are person 'A'....
That's assuming (as law currently states) that we should treat corporations as persons - with which I completely disagree.
I may be a lot of things, but an idiot, certainly not ;-) Such people commonly resort to insults. I was merely asking for a definition of what the parent meant by "evolution". To say that things evolve is indeed a fact - evolution happens daily. Bacteria evolve, people evolve, animals evolve, on both macro- and micro- scales. However, in the context of the discussion it appeared as if the parent meant that the "origin of life as evolution" is a fact (which makes sense, since comparing evolution to creationism only makes sense in regards to the origin of life). That, I am not entirely comfortable agreeing with.
What do you mean, "evolution is fact"? That evolution occurs? Of course it does! That evolution is the origin of all that is? Please, tell me, what makes this THEORY a fact?
Instead of leaving you guessing, I'll get this out right away - I'm a very liberal person of Faith (Christian, if you wish). What I find incredibly interesting is everyone's attempt to discredit each other's theories.
First, let's make something very clear: any attempt to describe what happened 5,000 to 100,000,000 (ad infinium) is purely theoretical. Aside from the scant remains of fossils that could possibly date back to that time period, we have no evidence whatsoever. Nobody was there, nobody saw the evolution of living beings or the big bang; nobody can go there to affirm or reject any claim.
What we pretend to know is very precarious indeed. We use a method of dating that appears to be accurate within our limited time-frame of knowledge (namely, carbon dating). However, consider that error, over the spans of time we're dealing with, has the potential to be exponential. Combine that with the fact that carbon dating, as our only "reliable" method of dating, has no way of being verified by an outside source (beyond several thousand years), and we could safely say that we know next-to-nothing about the history of this universe.
I am not here advocating Creationism. Nor Evolutionism (which, by the way, is as much a faith, if not more so, than Creationism). I am here to say that I am willing to be the first person to say "I do not know". I have absolutely no clue how the universe came about! All I can do is make as good a guess as I can with the information I have readily available to me. And even then, it's purely a guess. To say that we can unilaterally claim either Evolutionism or Creationism as correct is not only preposterous, but incredibly arrogant. Could everything have resulted from the Big Band, and it's ensuing randomness? Possibly. Could an omni-present Energy that everyone likes to call God be the source of all that exists? Possibly. Do I know the answer? Certainly not!
the exact point is they shouldn't be attempting to restrict you in this manner.
did you add anything useful? maybe i missed it...
let us bow to the new bourgeoisie...
No, definitely not a fictional user. I work in IT, and I would NEVER ALLOW, nor ASK or EXPECT end users to install Windows, administer their machine, or even install their own software (some, yes, but not most by a far cry)! There is a very wide range of users out there, most of which fall under the i-don't-know-jack category, or the i-think-i-know-jack-but-really-only-know-enough-to -do-more-harm-than-good category. They are happy if they can do their simple daily tasks without breaking the computer and waiting for hours while I (support) find the time to fix their blunder.
This is a perfect example of the Internet working exactly as it is supposed to - informing the masses in a way that was never possible before. It is becoming increasingly difficult for government and corporate America to lie through their teeth and get away with it. The guises are falling and everyone is invited to watch.