While I strongly disagree with the suggestion that ethics stop at the workplace door, there is a point here I agree with:
Politically-capable voters are refusing to get off their asses and use their political power to reign in these government agencies, and are instead demanding that STEM workers sacrifice their jobs, potentially ruining their careers, in an completely ineffective effort to stop government evil.
USAians have this dangerous attitude born (or co-opted) from their individualism that is often phrased "Think globally, act locally." The danger with this attitude is that it usually convinces a lot of people that acting locally is all they have to do. If you want to fight global warming, then buy a Prius instead of taxing the Koch brothers into bankruptcy. Buying the Prius is a nice safe thing for a good little consumer to do (disclosure: I own one). Organising to kick the asses of the plutocracy is much harder and may well cost you your life, your fortune and your sacred honour. But it is the only thing that really works in the long run.
As I get older I am noticing that I have lost my twitch reaction speeds, so I can no longer play Quake, or Team Fortress very well. However, what I have lost in speed reaction, I have gained in cleverness.
Well, there is the old saw that "age and treachery will always overcome youth and skill." Does that count?
This was replaced with an aluminum compound, and aluminum is correlated with diseases like Alzheimer’s. Of course, we have no evidence that aluminum accumlation causes Alzheimer’s; it could just as well accumulate as a side-effect. Still, it’s cause for investigation..
I'm never sure if I want there to be an afterlife or not. And I'm Catholic. I have faith in God, but I can never know.
Really, what bothers me more than anything is the concept of hell. The exact nature of hell isn't really laid out in the Bible. It's described as being cut off from God and his goodness, permanently, which would be torment to us who were created by Him. But that doesn't tell you if it's really lakes of fire and demons with pitchforks (which was really just Dante's depiction that inspired everyone who came after), or if it's just some shitty shanty town...or if it's this reality we're in right now. But, if it is the whole 'torturing forever' thing, first thing I'm doing when I get to heaven is I'm tugging on God's cape and saying, "hey, can we get those people out of there?" I have no idea how I'm supposed to party forever in heaven with Jesus if there's even one soul suffering in hell.
While I have faith in God, I also kinda hope I'm wrong and there's simply nothing after death, because I would rather have there be nothing for me than torture for anyone.
This is an old question, and the best answer I know of is C. S Lewis' proposal in the Great Divorce that "the gates of Hell are locked from the inside".
You don't seem to understand the purpose of Bitcoin, or what a Ponzi scheme is. Ponzi schemes have nothing to do with exchanging money for virtual items, and Bitcoin itself has nothing to do with investment (although some people might use it for speculative reasons). The cause of all these recent Bitcoin problems is shady characters running the exchanges. But that is a problem with all currency, virtual or not.
You don't seem to understand why Bitcoins are a Ponzi scheme (and neither does the GP who brought it up.)
Bitcoin mining is designed to decrease over time until all 21 million coins have been mined. This means that the folks who got in early (i.e. the inventors) make out like bandits and the late arrivals are left holding the bag. The best part is that they have all sorts of true believers out there running interference for them in tech forums like/. It's like printing (real) money. Oh, wait...
Atheism isn't a faith. Though religious types like to believe it is. Just another of their false beliefs.
It depends what you call a "faith". In the sense that you assume a particular ontological and epistemological position called "scientific realism", then yes, you have a faith.
What about fist control? You can beat someone to death with your fists. Maybe they should require everyone to have their hands removed, or to be surgically altered so they can't curl their fingers into a fist.
There's a story in Washington State that all of the river names here, Snohomish, Skykomish, Skokomish, have the postfix "ish". Which is an Indian term meaning "This is a flood plain, idiot. Don't build your house here."
But by "Indian", do you mean Hindi, Punjabi or Urdu?
He means "American". If you ask North American native peoples what term they use, it is "Indian", so please lose the uninformed pedantry...
Of course no one but a church could possibly hope to run charities, food shelves, hospitals and orphanages.
Of course not. There are plenty of charities that do this that are not churches. Even the government (in theory) does some of this work too.
Unfortunately, they do not do enough of it - especially in this political climate of "makers and moochers" - so despite what you may hear about a few "wealth theology" abominations, most churches (and synagogues, and temples and mosques etc.) actually do a lot of work to patch up the truly evil state of the US "safety net". Just near me, local churches provide homeless shelters, food banks, cheap to free meeting space for support groups and if all else fails, a steady stream of volunteers for simply doing such work. BTW, I live in fairly large, affluent and nominally "liberal" city and these problems are still widespread.
And this is why churches have traditionally been given tax-exempt status - along with other organizations that do such work. Not because they are churches but because of the work they do.
The vast majority of us in worship communities would welcome help of any kind. For my part, I don't care if you are an atheist or an animist: If you want to do the work of the Kingdom, then I say that what we have in common is far more important than a few ontological squabbles.
Why is it that "heretics" need to indulge in easily debunkedad hominem attacks like this:
It is much easier for a scientist to sit in an air-conditioned building and run computer models, than to put on winter clothes and measure what is really happening outside in the swamps and the clouds. That is why the climate model experts end up believing their own models.
Give me the publicantions (sic) and research where Pro-AGW factions engaged in scientific fraud.
Well, this comes to mind. Why cover up the data? Maybe he was cleared of all wrong-doing, but this was one of the first hits when I searched for "Global Warming Fraud".
You typed something into Google and got hits. Wow, now that is deep research! Did you notice that at the top of your link was this?
Removing data points that did not fit their model, apply transformations to the data points that are not uniform across the entire dataset, using a filter that generates the same output even if the input was noise. Need I go on?
Yes, because you are repeating hearsay. The GP requested citations. You have provided nothing.
According to TFA, the work was based on extensive analysis of Moa genetic material obtained from bones. The evidence was that the Moa was in fact thriving (becoming more genetically diverse) until humans came along and ate everything Moa-related. Eggs, adults, you name it. This makes me wonder if the Moa might be a better candidate for cloning and reintroduction than something like a Mammoth. Use an Ostrich as the donor and then let them loose on the South Island. NZ is pretty eco-aware these days so it seems like they would do just fine.
It's a western thing. Westerners think they are just not good at some things, and never will be. In the far east it is accepted that anyone can learn pretty much anything if they put in enough effort. Therefore saying "I'm not good at maths" in Japan or South Korea is actually saying "I'm too lazy to master this".
Of course they also have a lot of kids killing themselves due to the pressure, and some people do have genuine learning difficulties that they can't do anything about.
As someone who has studied a martial art for about 30 years, despite having little talent for it, I have to say that I love this Oriental attitude. Most MA classes are built around the idea that everyone can learn the basics of this stuff if they just practice regularly, and damn if it isn't true! Probably added 10-20 years to my life (or at least improved its quality.)
In the second link in the summary Phil Plait goes so far as to translate the crater size into football fields, but perhaps we shouldn't fault him as that standard unit is neither "English" nor "archaic".
The real reason you don't remember as many new things as you get older, is that you realize just how useless most of the stuff you already remember is.
As an engineering graduate of 1986, I joined a group of classmates a couple of years ago on a visit to the Dean, who asked us what we would change, looking back, in the curriculum. There were two answers common to all of us: project management and English writing.
Good points. However, there's the flip side. One class I was required to take by my department for my CS degree was biology. All CS students had to take it. I argued bitterly against it at the time, and would happily do so again today 25 years later. It was a complete and utter waste of college credit hours.
I enjoyed my 1983 bio class, but I made sure I took it with a friend so we could defend our lab work against rampaging pre-meds...
Rich people don't donate organs in exchange for money. EVER. Poor people do. So yeah, let's help those economically poor people become even poorer in body and hasten their exit by letting them sell off pieces of themselves, and decrease the surplus population.
3) For all the hand-wringing about the poor people who will feel the pressure to sell a kidney, there is a very legitimate argument that those poor people should decide on their own if they want $50,000 for a kidney. What merits the state's law against them selling something they own? And what about poor people who need a kidney? Do they stand a better chance if there are fewer incentives, and fewer kidneys?
Stand down,/. mob. At worst, this discussion brings up the inconvenient subject of donation.
There is an even more legitimate argument to be made that no civilised society should force anyone into this kind of choice. But then we are talking about libertarians here, so civilised behaviour is not really at the top of their list of priorities...
Organlegging: Technology needed to deal in illicitly obtained body parts.
Bill Christensen wrote: As far as I know, Niven was the first writer to really work with a topic that is just starting to become a problem, thanks to drugs that make transplantation viable.
Indeed. I think the main thing he got wrong was the time window before artificial replacements become viable. He was thinking hundreds of years, but it's probably more like 25-50, with no rejection issues thanks to adult stem cell technology.
Slashdot Mirror
While I strongly disagree with the suggestion that ethics stop at the workplace door, there is a point here I agree with:
Politically-capable voters are refusing to get off their asses and use their political power to reign in these government agencies, and are instead demanding that STEM workers sacrifice their jobs, potentially ruining their careers, in an completely ineffective effort to stop government evil.
USAians have this dangerous attitude born (or co-opted) from their individualism that is often phrased "Think globally, act locally." The danger with this attitude is that it usually convinces a lot of people that acting locally is all they have to do. If you want to fight global warming, then buy a Prius instead of taxing the Koch brothers into bankruptcy. Buying the Prius is a nice safe thing for a good little consumer to do (disclosure: I own one). Organising to kick the asses of the plutocracy is much harder and may well cost you your life, your fortune and your sacred honour. But it is the only thing that really works in the long run.
As I get older I am noticing that I have lost my twitch reaction speeds, so I can no longer play Quake, or Team Fortress very well. However, what I have lost in speed reaction, I have gained in cleverness.
Well, there is the old saw that "age and treachery will always overcome youth and skill." Does that count?
What they want is control over global industry, insane amounts of unaudited "international aid money" and absolute moral authority.
Solve the problem and you take away their power, their money, and their claims to moral superiority.
This is something they will never let die.
If we fixed the climate tomorrow they'd still be harping about it.
Citation needed...
This was replaced with an aluminum compound, and aluminum is correlated with diseases like Alzheimer’s. Of course, we have no evidence that aluminum accumlation causes Alzheimer’s; it could just as well accumulate as a side-effect. Still, it’s cause for investigation. .
No it isn't. And the best current theory on what causes autism is that is developmental disruption of the cortex during pregnancy, not "toxins".
I'm never sure if I want there to be an afterlife or not. And I'm Catholic. I have faith in God, but I can never know.
Really, what bothers me more than anything is the concept of hell. The exact nature of hell isn't really laid out in the Bible. It's described as being cut off from God and his goodness, permanently, which would be torment to us who were created by Him. But that doesn't tell you if it's really lakes of fire and demons with pitchforks (which was really just Dante's depiction that inspired everyone who came after), or if it's just some shitty shanty town...or if it's this reality we're in right now. But, if it is the whole 'torturing forever' thing, first thing I'm doing when I get to heaven is I'm tugging on God's cape and saying, "hey, can we get those people out of there?" I have no idea how I'm supposed to party forever in heaven with Jesus if there's even one soul suffering in hell.
While I have faith in God, I also kinda hope I'm wrong and there's simply nothing after death, because I would rather have there be nothing for me than torture for anyone.
This is an old question, and the best answer I know of is C. S Lewis' proposal in the Great Divorce that "the gates of Hell are locked from the inside".
You don't seem to understand the purpose of Bitcoin, or what a Ponzi scheme is. Ponzi schemes have nothing to do with exchanging money for virtual items, and Bitcoin itself has nothing to do with investment (although some people might use it for speculative reasons). The cause of all these recent Bitcoin problems is shady characters running the exchanges. But that is a problem with all currency, virtual or not.
You don't seem to understand why Bitcoins are a Ponzi scheme (and neither does the GP who brought it up.)
Bitcoin mining is designed to decrease over time until all 21 million coins have been mined. This means that the folks who got in early (i.e. the inventors) make out like bandits and the late arrivals are left holding the bag. The best part is that they have all sorts of true believers out there running interference for them in tech forums like /. It's like printing (real) money. Oh, wait...
"Hearts full of youth, hearts full of truth. Six parts gin to one part vermouth!"
FTFY.
Atheism isn't a faith. Though religious types like to believe it is. Just another of their false beliefs.
It depends what you call a "faith". In the sense that you assume a particular ontological and epistemological position called "scientific realism", then yes, you have a faith.
What about fist control? You can beat someone to death with your fists. Maybe they should require everyone to have their hands removed, or to be surgically altered so they can't curl their fingers into a fist.
As a kickboxer, I think I might support this ;-)
There's a story in Washington State that all of the river names here, Snohomish, Skykomish, Skokomish, have the postfix "ish". Which is an Indian term meaning "This is a flood plain, idiot. Don't build your house here."
But by "Indian", do you mean Hindi, Punjabi or Urdu?
He means "American". If you ask North American native peoples what term they use, it is "Indian", so please lose the uninformed pedantry...
We are just going to have to recreate another big bang and then see what happens and therefore settle this debate once and for all.
Sadly, if they were climatologists, this is exactly what would be demanded of them in some quarters...
Of course no one but a church could possibly hope to run charities, food shelves, hospitals and orphanages.
Of course not. There are plenty of charities that do this that are not churches. Even the government (in theory) does some of this work too.
Unfortunately, they do not do enough of it - especially in this political climate of "makers and moochers" - so despite what you may hear about a few "wealth theology" abominations, most churches (and synagogues, and temples and mosques etc.) actually do a lot of work to patch up the truly evil state of the US "safety net". Just near me, local churches provide homeless shelters, food banks, cheap to free meeting space for support groups and if all else fails, a steady stream of volunteers for simply doing such work. BTW, I live in fairly large, affluent and nominally "liberal" city and these problems are still widespread.
And this is why churches have traditionally been given tax-exempt status - along with other organizations that do such work. Not because they are churches but because of the work they do.
The vast majority of us in worship communities would welcome help of any kind. For my part, I don't care if you are an atheist or an animist: If you want to do the work of the Kingdom, then I say that what we have in common is far more important than a few ontological squabbles.
Yeah, because politicians have real long term goals, you know with having to get elected ever 2-6 years. They really plan for the future. rofl
I'll take two years and democratic control over 3 months and no leverage any day.
http://edge.org/conversation/h...
Why is it that "heretics" need to indulge in easily debunked ad hominem attacks like this:
It is much easier for a scientist to sit in an air-conditioned building and run computer models, than to put on winter clothes and measure what is really happening outside in the swamps and the clouds. That is why the climate model experts end up believing their own models.
Here are some people wearing winter clothes and measuring what is really happening outside. Perhaps Professor Dyson should get out of his "air-conditioned" Princeton office and do some climatology field work.
Give me the publicantions (sic) and research where Pro-AGW factions engaged in scientific fraud.
Well, this comes to mind. Why cover up the data? Maybe he was cleared of all wrong-doing, but this was one of the first hits when I searched for "Global Warming Fraud".
You typed something into Google and got hits. Wow, now that is deep research! Did you notice that at the top of your link was this?
Removing data points that did not fit their model, apply transformations to the data points that are not uniform across the entire dataset, using a filter that generates the same output even if the input was noise. Need I go on?
Yes, because you are repeating hearsay. The GP requested citations. You have provided nothing.
According to TFA, the work was based on extensive analysis of Moa genetic material obtained from bones. The evidence was that the Moa was in fact thriving (becoming more genetically diverse) until humans came along and ate everything Moa-related. Eggs, adults, you name it. This makes me wonder if the Moa might be a better candidate for cloning and reintroduction than something like a Mammoth. Use an Ostrich as the donor and then let them loose on the South Island. NZ is pretty eco-aware these days so it seems like they would do just fine.
It's a western thing. Westerners think they are just not good at some things, and never will be. In the far east it is accepted that anyone can learn pretty much anything if they put in enough effort. Therefore saying "I'm not good at maths" in Japan or South Korea is actually saying "I'm too lazy to master this".
Of course they also have a lot of kids killing themselves due to the pressure, and some people do have genuine learning difficulties that they can't do anything about.
As someone who has studied a martial art for about 30 years, despite having little talent for it, I have to say that I love this Oriental attitude. Most MA classes are built around the idea that everyone can learn the basics of this stuff if they just practice regularly, and damn if it isn't true! Probably added 10-20 years to my life (or at least improved its quality.)
In the second link in the summary Phil Plait goes so far as to translate the crater size into football fields, but perhaps we shouldn't fault him as that standard unit is neither "English" nor "archaic".
When was the last time you were in Florida?
And I guess you have a clear and viable plan on what to to with the waste?
Reprocess it into more fuel, like France does?
The real reason you don't remember as many new things as you get older, is that you realize just how useless most of the stuff you already remember is.
This!
As an engineering graduate of 1986, I joined a group of classmates a couple of years ago on a visit to the Dean, who asked us what we would change, looking back, in the curriculum. There were two answers common to all of us: project management and English writing.
Good points. However, there's the flip side. One class I was required to take by my department for my CS degree was biology. All CS students had to take it. I argued bitterly against it at the time, and would happily do so again today 25 years later. It was a complete and utter waste of college credit hours.
I enjoyed my 1983 bio class, but I made sure I took it with a friend so we could defend our lab work against rampaging pre-meds...
Thanks for this, but I hope you don't mind:
Rich people don't donate organs in exchange for money. EVER. Poor people do. So yeah, let's help those economically poor people become even poorer in body and hasten their exit by letting them sell off pieces of themselves, and decrease the surplus population.
FTFY ;-)
3) For all the hand-wringing about the poor people who will feel the pressure to sell a kidney, there is a very legitimate argument that those poor people should decide on their own if they want $50,000 for a kidney. What merits the state's law against them selling something they own? And what about poor people who need a kidney? Do they stand a better chance if there are fewer incentives, and fewer kidneys?
Stand down, /. mob. At worst, this discussion brings up the inconvenient subject of donation.
There is an even more legitimate argument to be made that no civilised society should force anyone into this kind of choice. But then we are talking about libertarians here, so civilised behaviour is not really at the top of their list of priorities...
Organlegging: Technology needed to deal in illicitly obtained body parts.
Bill Christensen wrote: As far as I know, Niven was the first writer to really work with a topic that is just starting to become a problem, thanks to drugs that make transplantation viable.
Indeed. I think the main thing he got wrong was the time window before artificial replacements become viable. He was thinking hundreds of years, but it's probably more like 25-50, with no rejection issues thanks to adult stem cell technology.