You are confused as to what Intelligent Design is.
Intelligent Design is specifically referring to the theory advanced by the discovery institute saying that features of the universe and the Universe are best explained by intelligent cause, not an undirected process.
Panspermia is an independent hypothesis positing that life on Earth began elsewhere in the universe, and spread to earth through one or more means. It's not an "alternative explaination" or "controversy" to be taught that fills holes in the theory of evolution. It's barely even related, only overlapping with the study of the origin of life.
The idea that intelligent extraterrestrial life influenced evolution on earth is likewise an existing hypothesis unrelated to Intelligent Design. It covers a lot of the same ground as Intelligent Design, and suffers from a lot of the same problems (lack of evidence, lack of falsifiability, etc.) - but proponents of the hypothesis aren't holding it up as the one true explaination for life either.
Proponents of either theory aren't horrified that they're supporting Intelligent Design. They're horrified that they might be associated with the intellectually bankrupt individuals who do support Intelligent Design.
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I'm going to channel BadAnalogyGuy here, and explain it with a religious analogy: The theory of evolution is like Christianity as a whole, with all the general points agreed upon, and none of the basic facts in dispute (god exists, Jesus died and was resurrected, etc). There exist a wide number of interpretations of Christianity (Denominations like Methodists, baptists, etc). Some of them are contradictory, all of them are full of theological holes that can be used to criticize them, but all of these points are pretty minor in the grand scheme of things, and can be explained by our imperfect understanding of god, rather than being proof that Christianity is wrong.
In the same vein, the discovery institute, and by extension the theory of Intelligent Design would be something like the Westboro Baptist Church. Batshit crazy idiots who claim to be part of the church, but espouse a philosophy so out of touch with the rest of Christianity that the rest of the church distances itself from them. They are, as far as anyone else in the religious community is concerned, undeniably wrong - but they publicize themselves so well the public at large starts to suspect they're larger and more influential than they actually are.
Intelligent design has not been argued as a position that is falsifiable or testable. It specifically posits a supernatural origin for life and the universe.
You're arguing something completely different from what is actually being advocated by proponents of Intelligent Design.
I fully support the complete separation of teaching biology, and teaching theology.
Most of my biology teachers back in high school dealt with it by saying they didn't have an opinion on religion, and discussing it wasn't a part of the class. One outright stated that he could be fired if he talked about it in class.
Knowing what I do now about how hard it is to fire teachers, that probably wasn't true, but it was a very good excuse.
Most High School and low-level college biology courses only really deal with well-established facts, like natural selection, inheritance of traits, basic genetics, functions of the organs, the anatomy of a cell, etc. The really big, cosmic questions that we don't know the answers to have always tended to be glossed over in any class I've ever taken.
Completely separating the issue of religion from science classrooms is the best idea, in my opinion.
The issue with intelligent design is it isn't science! There is nothing falsifiable about intelligent design, it makes no predictions, it's not useful to anyone outside of spreading dogma, and has no potential to be useful for any other purpose.
There is no research done on intelligent design, you can't design an experiment to prove or disprove it, in a biology classroom you can't teach anything about it outside of saying "there are some holes in evolutionary theory that we can't explain yet, so some people think a magic man in the sky waved his hand to create these things."
The only leg Intelligent Design has to stand on is that proponents pretend there are only two possible explanations for the origin of life, Evolution and Intelligent Design. They claim that if Evolution is in any way false, then Intelligent Design must be true.
"but nowadays it's 99.999% about graphics and how much eye candy and shit you can pile into a game, and almost everyone's forgotten about the actual game part of the game, and the reason we'd want to play it in the first place."
People have been saying this ever since the mid-90's. There is no 'nowadays' about it. There is no 'forgotten.'
I was stationed on Ramstein Air Force Base and went for one of the middling packages. We only had one ISP on base (TKS) which, with the middling package I got, cost about $100 a month. Once I moved off base, I got roughly twice what I was getting for about half the price, so it's mostly just meed railing against government contracts.
The service was pretty consistent, it would go down for a few hours for maintenance about once a month, but usually during hours I was at work anyways.
Here in the states I've got a fiber line from Qwest for even less than I was paying off base, but I'm in one of the apparently rare communities with competing ISP's, and the exchange rate was hitting us pretty hard by the end of my time over there.
I wonder what the situation would be for servicemen overseas?
Depends where you're stationed.
I was in Germany, and they had one (shitty) ISP that was allowed to operate on base, broadband was ~$100 a month. Once you got to move off it was as good as anyone living in Germany. Generally inferior to the places I've lived in the states, but acceptable.
Off in the desert, the bigger bases have things like cyber-cafes that work for this sort of thing. People will play WoW on their off-hours quite frequently, so the bandwidth wasn't all that bad.
On the smaller bases, you're pretty much SoL, but you've usually got bigger things on your mind at that point.
I'm a bit confused about the need for tech support, can't we just train users to NOT do stupid things that crash their computers?
There's always that guy that ends up making a mistake anyways. Except, as pointed out above, mistakes over what information is and isn't safe to share over the public internet don't just crash computers. They can, potentially, cost lives.
Mod parent up, this is exactly the reason for doing this.
I was in Communications in the air force for a couple years too. Out in the field, social networking sites are one of the biggest security risks in existence. I imagine it would be even worse for Marines.
The government employs the most respected hacker in the world, and he'll end up getting defeated by some 17-year old kid in a winner-take-all hacking showdown.
The tendency of people who don't believe in magic men in the sky to insist on an exact word to label their own specific beliefs is silly. It's semantic nonsense that makes people argue about what words are used in lieu of arguing about whatever the hell they're actually arguing about. Call yourself an Atheist as a broad term, and if people want to know about the precious little snowflake you call your individual beliefs, have a conversation about it.
Seriously, get thirty atheists in a room and ask them what the word "Atheist" means, you'll get thirty-five different answers! One of them will probably be written down, tied to a brick, and thrown through the window!
I know you're being tongue in cheek here, but seriously, the Geneva Convention gives rules of civilized warfare. If you abide by the rules, you recieve the protections of those rules.
"Enemy combatants" are what happens when one side in a conflict (Guerilla fighters usually) - decide they're going to ignore the rules of war. By deciding this, they forfeit any protections under the Geneva Convention.
You tell me there's a magic man in the sky that created everything, and I don't believe you. That's not the same thing as saying, "I believe there's no god."
Muscle takes up more energy than fat does, and growing muscle takes a tremendous amount of energy, so when you go to the gym and lift weights it will cause you to lose fat. If you couple that with a proper diet, then you're going to lose weight, AND become stronger.
This sort of plan isn't necessarily going to turn you into a thin runner type person. Body type does count for something, but it'll make you healthier, better looking, better feeling, and not obese.
Some people drew shit in the genetic lottery, and I feel sorry for ya, but nobody can blame genetic predisposition for obesity.
The United Kingdom is a Surveillance society with Closed-circuit cameras covering pretty much everything you do in public. They haven't got cameras into people's houses, but I wouldn't be surprised if I heard about it happening.
Having spent a great deal of time in the United Kingdom, as well as the United States, and traveling around most of Europe, (Military lifestyle) - The UK is one of the more restrictive states in the western world, and seems to be using 1984 as a guide book, rather than a cautionary tale.
If the internet really had that much power, then Ron Paul would be the president right now, the executive cabinet would consist entirely of/b/tards, and we'd all have dates!
You think this might be one of those "sending a message" things?
Y'know, shut down one ISP under a justification that could, potentially, target any ISP in the Untied States? Start with a small one that nobody has ever heard of, and won't ruffle many feathers. Then, whenever an ISP is getting too uppity, politely bring up the topic of 3FN, and oh, wouldn't it be a tragedy if that happened to a larger ISP?
Isn't this backwards science? The Western workers caught by it are, on average, smaller and weaker than their non-gaming counterparts. If they don't reproduce, then all that's left to reproduce will be the ones who value things like "outside" and "sunlight" more than video games. Their children will share those traits, and the game-players will die off as befits any evolutionary branch with a poor (nonexistent?) reproductive strategy.
I have, personally, been to some of the shittiest places on earth.
Now, I agree with you that the conditions in various "first world" countries are, just as the phrase implies, a completely different world compared to the "third world" countries that are out there.
I also agree with you that many of these conditions are largely political or economic in nature. The technology exists to grow food cheaply enough to feed everyone in the world. The resources exist to produce enough medicine to prevent millions of needless deaths in the third world. The only thing stopping it is greedy men and women who realize doing so will affect their bottom line, and believe this to be unacceptable.
Nevertheless, even the average farm worker in China lives in a world where plentiful food, water, shelter, medicine, etc. can exist. They all have a good chance of benefiting from modern technology at least once in their lives, and might even be able to come over to the first world, if they're intelligent, dedicated, and lucky enough.
Compare this with the year 1709, when such inventions were inaccessible even by the greatest kings in the world, simply because they didn't exist!
This still leads me to believe the modern world has improved, and is continuing to improve, compared to the ancient one.
"Veteran" is a word that has always referred to a person who has served in a military, especially during wartime, at any point during their life.
I, for example, served in the Air Force for four years, spent Four months in Baghdad, and another Five months in Afghanistan, and am now out of the military and going back to school. I am, nevertheless, "a Veteran of the Iraqi and Afghani wars".
I spent most of my time in those respective areas as a technician, on base. I did, however, get the chance to go off base from time to time, and even, yes, speak with some civilians. As a result, I'm quite familiar with the living conditions over there.
Now, "A veteran of the colonial wars from 1709" spent longer on a ship, sailing to wherever it was he was going to be fighting, than I spent in the desert, total. The tour was longer, living conditions were harsher, food was worse, and you were MUCH more likely to end up dead, whether from direct combat, drowning, disease, malnourishment, or any number of other horribly lethal things I was much less likely to fall victim to.
Lastly, even if we WERE referring to civilians, the number of civilian casualties is entirely a function of the victorious army's plans. For example: The Native American population was damn near wiped out as a result of colonial-era wars!
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What's my point here? War is a very dangerous place. If a particular army wants you dead (whether you're in an existing army, or a civilian that just happens to be in the way) - chances are you'll die, or come close to it.
If a particular army does NOT want you dead, but you get injured anyways, your chances of surviving in the modern era are much higher, due to advances in medicine, antibiotics, etc.
There's really nothing more I can say. If you're going to participate in a conversation, try to understand what people are talking about.
In regards to your second point: You've got a point in that first world greed is one of the main causes of third world suffering, but you don't seem to grasp the conversation that's going on here. Do you really think the modern world is inferior to the world hundreds of years ago?
I mean, you're pointing out that we still have problems in the world, big problems, but that's not what we're talking about.
In regards to your third point: What the fuck do civilian casualties have to do with veterans?
Back in the day, if you got injured during a war, your life was pretty much over. Even if a "doctor" got to you in time to bind you up, chances are you'd die from infection. You'd have an even better chance of dying to disease before you even got the chance to fight!
Slashdot Mirror
You actually read the article, and you still can't figure out why it was illegal?
Idiot.
So there are cows on the moon now?
You are confused as to what Intelligent Design is.
Intelligent Design is specifically referring to the theory advanced by the discovery institute saying that features of the universe and the Universe are best explained by intelligent cause, not an undirected process.
Panspermia is an independent hypothesis positing that life on Earth began elsewhere in the universe, and spread to earth through one or more means. It's not an "alternative explaination" or "controversy" to be taught that fills holes in the theory of evolution. It's barely even related, only overlapping with the study of the origin of life.
The idea that intelligent extraterrestrial life influenced evolution on earth is likewise an existing hypothesis unrelated to Intelligent Design. It covers a lot of the same ground as Intelligent Design, and suffers from a lot of the same problems (lack of evidence, lack of falsifiability, etc.) - but proponents of the hypothesis aren't holding it up as the one true explaination for life either.
Proponents of either theory aren't horrified that they're supporting Intelligent Design. They're horrified that they might be associated with the intellectually bankrupt individuals who do support Intelligent Design.
----
I'm going to channel BadAnalogyGuy here, and explain it with a religious analogy: The theory of evolution is like Christianity as a whole, with all the general points agreed upon, and none of the basic facts in dispute (god exists, Jesus died and was resurrected, etc). There exist a wide number of interpretations of Christianity (Denominations like Methodists, baptists, etc). Some of them are contradictory, all of them are full of theological holes that can be used to criticize them, but all of these points are pretty minor in the grand scheme of things, and can be explained by our imperfect understanding of god, rather than being proof that Christianity is wrong.
In the same vein, the discovery institute, and by extension the theory of Intelligent Design would be something like the Westboro Baptist Church. Batshit crazy idiots who claim to be part of the church, but espouse a philosophy so out of touch with the rest of Christianity that the rest of the church distances itself from them. They are, as far as anyone else in the religious community is concerned, undeniably wrong - but they publicize themselves so well the public at large starts to suspect they're larger and more influential than they actually are.
Does this make sense?
Intelligent design has not been argued as a position that is falsifiable or testable. It specifically posits a supernatural origin for life and the universe.
You're arguing something completely different from what is actually being advocated by proponents of Intelligent Design.
I fully support the complete separation of teaching biology, and teaching theology.
Most of my biology teachers back in high school dealt with it by saying they didn't have an opinion on religion, and discussing it wasn't a part of the class. One outright stated that he could be fired if he talked about it in class.
Knowing what I do now about how hard it is to fire teachers, that probably wasn't true, but it was a very good excuse.
Most High School and low-level college biology courses only really deal with well-established facts, like natural selection, inheritance of traits, basic genetics, functions of the organs, the anatomy of a cell, etc. The really big, cosmic questions that we don't know the answers to have always tended to be glossed over in any class I've ever taken.
Completely separating the issue of religion from science classrooms is the best idea, in my opinion.
The issue with intelligent design is it isn't science! There is nothing falsifiable about intelligent design, it makes no predictions, it's not useful to anyone outside of spreading dogma, and has no potential to be useful for any other purpose.
There is no research done on intelligent design, you can't design an experiment to prove or disprove it, in a biology classroom you can't teach anything about it outside of saying "there are some holes in evolutionary theory that we can't explain yet, so some people think a magic man in the sky waved his hand to create these things."
The only leg Intelligent Design has to stand on is that proponents pretend there are only two possible explanations for the origin of life, Evolution and Intelligent Design. They claim that if Evolution is in any way false, then Intelligent Design must be true.
This is absolutely ridiculous.
"but nowadays it's 99.999% about graphics and how much eye candy and shit you can pile into a game, and almost everyone's forgotten about the actual game part of the game, and the reason we'd want to play it in the first place."
People have been saying this ever since the mid-90's. There is no 'nowadays' about it. There is no 'forgotten.'
I was stationed on Ramstein Air Force Base and went for one of the middling packages. We only had one ISP on base (TKS) which, with the middling package I got, cost about $100 a month. Once I moved off base, I got roughly twice what I was getting for about half the price, so it's mostly just meed railing against government contracts.
The service was pretty consistent, it would go down for a few hours for maintenance about once a month, but usually during hours I was at work anyways.
Here in the states I've got a fiber line from Qwest for even less than I was paying off base, but I'm in one of the apparently rare communities with competing ISP's, and the exchange rate was hitting us pretty hard by the end of my time over there.
I wonder what the situation would be for servicemen overseas?
Depends where you're stationed.
I was in Germany, and they had one (shitty) ISP that was allowed to operate on base, broadband was ~$100 a month. Once you got to move off it was as good as anyone living in Germany. Generally inferior to the places I've lived in the states, but acceptable.
Off in the desert, the bigger bases have things like cyber-cafes that work for this sort of thing. People will play WoW on their off-hours quite frequently, so the bandwidth wasn't all that bad.
On the smaller bases, you're pretty much SoL, but you've usually got bigger things on your mind at that point.
I'm a bit confused about the need for tech support, can't we just train users to NOT do stupid things that crash their computers?
There's always that guy that ends up making a mistake anyways. Except, as pointed out above, mistakes over what information is and isn't safe to share over the public internet don't just crash computers. They can, potentially, cost lives.
Mod parent up, this is exactly the reason for doing this.
I was in Communications in the air force for a couple years too. Out in the field, social networking sites are one of the biggest security risks in existence. I imagine it would be even worse for Marines.
wait a minute... I've seen this movie!
The government employs the most respected hacker in the world, and he'll end up getting defeated by some 17-year old kid in a winner-take-all hacking showdown.
Stop that.
Now.
The tendency of people who don't believe in magic men in the sky to insist on an exact word to label their own specific beliefs is silly. It's semantic nonsense that makes people argue about what words are used in lieu of arguing about whatever the hell they're actually arguing about. Call yourself an Atheist as a broad term, and if people want to know about the precious little snowflake you call your individual beliefs, have a conversation about it.
Seriously, get thirty atheists in a room and ask them what the word "Atheist" means, you'll get thirty-five different answers! One of them will probably be written down, tied to a brick, and thrown through the window!
I know you're being tongue in cheek here, but seriously, the Geneva Convention gives rules of civilized warfare. If you abide by the rules, you recieve the protections of those rules.
"Enemy combatants" are what happens when one side in a conflict (Guerilla fighters usually) - decide they're going to ignore the rules of war. By deciding this, they forfeit any protections under the Geneva Convention.
Will this ever go away?
You tell me there's a magic man in the sky that created everything, and I don't believe you. That's not the same thing as saying, "I believe there's no god."
Weight training isn't going to work now is it.
Yes, it will.
Muscle takes up more energy than fat does, and growing muscle takes a tremendous amount of energy, so when you go to the gym and lift weights it will cause you to lose fat. If you couple that with a proper diet, then you're going to lose weight, AND become stronger.
This sort of plan isn't necessarily going to turn you into a thin runner type person. Body type does count for something, but it'll make you healthier, better looking, better feeling, and not obese.
Some people drew shit in the genetic lottery, and I feel sorry for ya, but nobody can blame genetic predisposition for obesity.
The United Kingdom is a Surveillance society with Closed-circuit cameras covering pretty much everything you do in public. They haven't got cameras into people's houses, but I wouldn't be surprised if I heard about it happening.
Having spent a great deal of time in the United Kingdom, as well as the United States, and traveling around most of Europe, (Military lifestyle) - The UK is one of the more restrictive states in the western world, and seems to be using 1984 as a guide book, rather than a cautionary tale.
If the internet really had that much power, then Ron Paul would be the president right now, the executive cabinet would consist entirely of /b/tards, and we'd all have dates!
Don't do that ** self-censoring shit. It makes you look like a retard.
You think this might be one of those "sending a message" things?
Y'know, shut down one ISP under a justification that could, potentially, target any ISP in the Untied States? Start with a small one that nobody has ever heard of, and won't ruffle many feathers. Then, whenever an ISP is getting too uppity, politely bring up the topic of 3FN, and oh, wouldn't it be a tragedy if that happened to a larger ISP?
Isn't this backwards science? The Western workers caught by it are, on average, smaller and weaker than their non-gaming counterparts. If they don't reproduce, then all that's left to reproduce will be the ones who value things like "outside" and "sunlight" more than video games. Their children will share those traits, and the game-players will die off as befits any evolutionary branch with a poor (nonexistent?) reproductive strategy.
I have, personally, been to some of the shittiest places on earth.
Now, I agree with you that the conditions in various "first world" countries are, just as the phrase implies, a completely different world compared to the "third world" countries that are out there.
I also agree with you that many of these conditions are largely political or economic in nature. The technology exists to grow food cheaply enough to feed everyone in the world. The resources exist to produce enough medicine to prevent millions of needless deaths in the third world. The only thing stopping it is greedy men and women who realize doing so will affect their bottom line, and believe this to be unacceptable.
Nevertheless, even the average farm worker in China lives in a world where plentiful food, water, shelter, medicine, etc. can exist. They all have a good chance of benefiting from modern technology at least once in their lives, and might even be able to come over to the first world, if they're intelligent, dedicated, and lucky enough.
Compare this with the year 1709, when such inventions were inaccessible even by the greatest kings in the world, simply because they didn't exist!
This still leads me to believe the modern world has improved, and is continuing to improve, compared to the ancient one.
lol, wut?
"Veteran" is a word that has always referred to a person who has served in a military, especially during wartime, at any point during their life.
I, for example, served in the Air Force for four years, spent Four months in Baghdad, and another Five months in Afghanistan, and am now out of the military and going back to school. I am, nevertheless, "a Veteran of the Iraqi and Afghani wars".
I spent most of my time in those respective areas as a technician, on base. I did, however, get the chance to go off base from time to time, and even, yes, speak with some civilians. As a result, I'm quite familiar with the living conditions over there.
Now, "A veteran of the colonial wars from 1709" spent longer on a ship, sailing to wherever it was he was going to be fighting, than I spent in the desert, total. The tour was longer, living conditions were harsher, food was worse, and you were MUCH more likely to end up dead, whether from direct combat, drowning, disease, malnourishment, or any number of other horribly lethal things I was much less likely to fall victim to.
Lastly, even if we WERE referring to civilians, the number of civilian casualties is entirely a function of the victorious army's plans. For example: The Native American population was damn near wiped out as a result of colonial-era wars!
-----
What's my point here? War is a very dangerous place. If a particular army wants you dead (whether you're in an existing army, or a civilian that just happens to be in the way) - chances are you'll die, or come close to it.
If a particular army does NOT want you dead, but you get injured anyways, your chances of surviving in the modern era are much higher, due to advances in medicine, antibiotics, etc.
In regards to your first point: You're an idiot.
There's really nothing more I can say. If you're going to participate in a conversation, try to understand what people are talking about.
In regards to your second point: You've got a point in that first world greed is one of the main causes of third world suffering, but you don't seem to grasp the conversation that's going on here. Do you really think the modern world is inferior to the world hundreds of years ago?
I mean, you're pointing out that we still have problems in the world, big problems, but that's not what we're talking about.
In regards to your third point: What the fuck do civilian casualties have to do with veterans?
Back in the day, if you got injured during a war, your life was pretty much over. Even if a "doctor" got to you in time to bind you up, chances are you'd die from infection. You'd have an even better chance of dying to disease before you even got the chance to fight!
this describes a good portion of the EU