The point is that what she's hearing is the government telling her that there is a God. It's not telling her that there are people who believe in God or gods; it's telling her that the U.S. government supports the idea that there is a God, and that we are somehow beneath him. This is harmful because it violates Newdow's right to direct his daughter's religious education: the government is teaching her about religion, and that is not its place. That's WHY we have the Establishment Clause.
Nobody's complaining (well, nobody sane anyway) that private individuals don't have a right to preach their religion to people they run into. They have as much right to preach at me as I do to ignore them or preach right back at them. Newdow's daughter will, undoubtedly, encounter myriad religious symbols in her life, but there is no law saying that private individuals cannot wear religious symbols or promote religious belief. There IS, however, a law saying that the GOVERNMENT can't do it.
Whether you believe in God or not, whether you believe that we really are "one nation under God", it is inappropriate for the government to take that stance.
The way I usually respond to this idea (that without God, we have no morals) is to say:
"Well, atheists don't believe in God, yet they have morals and ethics. So what you're saying is, the only thing keeping Christians from pillaging and raping and murdering is their belief in God? That you're so debased, only fear of eternal damnation keeps you from killing people?"
Huh? What are you talking about? Where did I say anything that contradicts what you're saying? I was talking about the fact that if the "under God" law is struck down, that will have no direct effect on "In God We Trust" unless a separate action is brought against that law. I'm fully aware of what it means when a law is struck down.
An action taken for the purpose of compelling the US Treasury to cease the use of those words would be almost certain to succeed
Actually, it has -- there has been at least one challenge to "In God We Trust" in the past, that made it to SCOTUS, and was REJECTED. That's why "IGWT" is still on our money. Now, IF another action was made against "IGWT", and this time SCOTUS agreed with it, THEN we would no longer have "IGWT" on the money. But that hasn't happened yet.
Can I get your opinion on which European countries are the best in terms of religious (and other forms of) tolerance? I'm getting awful sick of the religious attitude here in the U.S., and am seriously considering moving to somewhere that I don't have to fear getting lynched because I don't believe in a mythical superbeing. I've heard Finland is good, but it's kind of cold... suggestions?
As a side note, the effect on the United States currency would be that the printing of "In God We Trust" on the currency is clearly an endorsement of religion and the legislation requiring that would also be unconstitutional. This would mean that the printing of those words on banknotes is, and always has been, unauthorised. The money's still valid, but it would be possible to compel the US Treasury to cease including those words.
Not quite -- this issue has not been directly addressed. I personally agree that the same logic applies in either case, but until the courts actually say so, it ain't so. Hopefully this decision will give support to the next case to challenge "In God We Trust", but even if SCOTUS upholds the 9th Court's ruling in this case, the Treasury could not be compelled to stop printing "In God We Trust", because the law mandating those words has not itself been struck down.
Thanks for letting everyone on/. know that you don't know what it means for something to be unconstitutional, or even that you have the most basic understanding of logic or even the flow of time.
The Declaration of Independence was written *before* the Constitution. The 1st Amendment says that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion..." The DoI was not written by Congress. It was not a law. It was merely the colonies telling the King of England, "Fuck off, wanker, we want our independence."
I'm not sure why you call Lieberman a "so-called Liberal". Nobody calls him that -- he's more or less a religious zealot fascist. Just because he's a Democrat doesn't mean he's a liberal. I'm more or less a liberal, and used to be a Democrat, but when the Democratic National Committee declared something about glorifying God, I determined that they weren't representing my interests particularly well. I re-registered as a different party thereafter, though I won't say which, to try to keep people from making judgments about me based on my political party.:)
Justice Ferdinand F. Fernandez (enough F's? quick! get this man a stage name) partially dissented with the decision, and puts forth quite a bit of poor argumentation [1].
One of his quotes was:
I recognize that some people may not feel good about hearing the phrases recited in their presence, but, then, others might not feel good if they are omitted.
The logic here is that either way, someone will be offended -- if you don't include "under God", believers will be offended, and if you DO include "under God", atheists (or believers in other faiths) will be offended. The problem with this is that a vast majority of government laws, texts, and other actions contain nothing referring to God. He fails to address the fact that the phrase's presence in the Pledge is not about "feeling good" -- the Pledge, as an instrument of Congress, may not say anything EITHER WAY about religion or God. Omitting "under God" from the PoA no more denigrates religion than does omitting references to God from the Telecommuncations Act of 1996.
His main point is that the harm caused by "under God" is de minimis, meaning so insignificant as to have no measurable effect. I disagree on this point, although it is difficult to prove one way or the other, but I see it thus: The "under God" reference has been a part of the national zeitgeist for coming on 50 years. An overwhelming majority of Americans know the Pledge of Allegiance, and even if most never contemplate its meaning beyond reciting it occasionally, its values and meaning creep their way into our minds every time we hear it. This is not a bad thing in itself; anything repeated to you often enough will be ingrained into your consciousness.
But I don't think anyone can seriously deny that the majority of Americans see religion as something patriotic and necessary -- atheists are often seen as unpatriotic or un-American, even though such a comparison is, on its face, contrary to the definition of those words. Even former President Bush (the elder) said that he doesn't think atheists should be considered citizens, let alone patriots. "under God"'s presence in the government-backed Pledge of Allegiance has, for the last 50 years, undoubtedly left a mark on the beliefs and minds of Americans, and I would argue that it has at the very least contributed to our country's tendency toward credulous trust in the Almighty rather than reason and logic.
I've given away my bias here; I'm an atheist, and I agree with the court's decision. I also believe that "In God We Trust" should be removed from our currency, for similar reasons. Nonetheless, Justice Goodwin has acted properly in considering the case in a manner similar to what the Supreme Court has done on similar cases. Justice Fernandez's protestations seem to be based on nothing more than his own personal opinion, rather than relevant precedent.
[1] Justice Fernandez also appeals to emotion by suggesting that popular songs such as "God Bless America" or "America the Beautiful" may be taken away from us. He even mentions the third stanza of "The Star-Spangled Banner", our national anthem. Ignoring the fact that it is the fourth stanza that contains a reference to God (the version of the SSB that you hear at baseball games contains only the first stanza), I agree that he has a point -- however the point is not in what he says, but the fact that he says it at all. There will be loud opposition to anything preventing the government from referencing God (the First Amendment? what's that?), and attempts to do so will be met with emotional resistance. On the other hand, even IF the SSB is, by law, our national anthem, there is no law that I know of which requires it to be recited or sung on any government-sponsored occasion. (If there is such a law, then it should rightly be struck down, following the same logic.) Hence the SSB's being law (if it is) would quite possibly not fail the Establishment Clause tests so commonly used by the SCOTUS.
Pardon my potential ignorance, but wouldn't this simply cause the 1954 legislation to be struck down, meaning that the Pledge in its old form (i.e. without "under God") could still legally be recited? The case was challenging both (separately) the 1954 legislation and the school district's rule that it must be recited. The district's rule is only unconstitutional IF the law it references is active -- if the 1954 law is struck down, then the district's behavior is not unconstitutional.
0 doesn't round to anything -- it stays unchanged, as 0. If you round 0,1,2,3,4 down and 5,6,7,8,9 up, you end up with a small upward bias, because *on average*, your rounded values will be higher than your non-rounded values. If you round 5 to the nearest even digit, then your rounded values will average to the same as your non-rounded values, which is clearly better.
I wrote a simulation in PHP to see which rounding method is more accurate. Even rounding was an order of magnitude more accurate (about 0.01% off, vs. 5-up rounding being 0.1% off).
Try it yourself. Take a random set of numbers and see which are, overall, more accurate given one method or the other.
You call that a solution? Solutions are supposed to make things BETTER... how does it help anything to increase the size of the marketing department?:)
I can tell how this would go. If bugs cost us $60 billion a year, and better testing would result in one-third fewer bugs, who wants to bet that this extra testing would cost about $20 billion?:)
Radio technician: Sir! We're getting a signal from a satellite that's... Commander: That's what, soldier? Radio technician: *gulp* Well, sir, there's those stories about ghost satellites... I mean, we always thought they were just, you know, made up... Commander: What the hell are you talking about, son? Spit it out! Radio technician: I better just play the transmission for you, sir. Satellite: BRRAIIINNNSSSS.... Radio technician: It's... it's a zombie satellite, sir. Undead. Commander: (quietly) God help us all. (to technician) Get me the Pentagon! Radio technician: Uh... sir... the phone lines are dead! (suddenly the power goes out) Commander: Oh. My. God. (satellite bursts out of a closet and eats the commander)
First off, don't get me wrong, I'm entirely on your "side" insofar as there are sides in this debate;)
I admit my description is a bit confusing; let me break it down this way. For any given album, the set of all people can be broken down into the following groups:
A) People who download the album B) People who don't
A can be broken up into subgroups:
A1) People who download the album, and then buy it if they like it -- or delete it if it sucks A2) People who download the album, but then don't buy it if they like it -- or delete it if it sucks
B can be broken up into subgroups:
B1) People who don't download it, but do buy it B2) People who don't download it and don't buy it
Nobody's arguing about group B, as far as I can tell, since buying albums is a "societal norm" and there's little controversy, so we can ignore them for the purposes of this thread.
A2 can be rephrased as "people who will download the album INSTEAD of buying it, if they can download it". This is the only group that negatively affects sales, because INSTEAD of buying it, they are getting the content for free. Those who don't buy the album *because* they can download it -- do "hurt" the album's sales. Whether this is "wrong" is a moral question. (And we then have to go into, "is copying the same as theft?" Personally, I don't believe it's "immoral" to do this, but it is self-defeating; if you take from an artist you like without contributing anything to them, they are less likely to continue producing things you like, so it is in YOUR OWN INTEREST to support artists you like.)
The upshot is that A2 negatively affects album sales, and A1 positively affects album sales. You can easily argue that A1 consists of people who will not buy the album if they don't download it first, and thus A1 can only result in more sales, as long as at least one person in A1 buys the album as a result of downloading it. (If nobody in A1 buys the album, then the sales are still not hurt -- if all the people in A1 had been unable to download the album, none of them would have bought it anyway.)
The question is, does A1 help more than A2 hurts? Most P2P advocates (myself included) believe so, but proving it empirically is very difficult. Irrespective of that, everyone in group A is, at this time, breaking the law (U.S. law, anyway). Whether this means the law needs to be changed, or group A needs to be punished, is an entirely different debate, but one I'm happy to go into.:)
If you want to continue this in email instead of on/., feel free: just remove the SPAMTASTIC from my email address above.
You're correct when you say that P2P hurts sales...
No, he's not. Please stop this inane dittoheading.
Uh, you were supposed to read the rest of the sentence. I said that P2P hurts sales because there are a nonzero number of people who download instead of buying, but that that was probably more than offset by people who only buy AFTER they download (because they want to find out whether it's worth buying).
I believe that, OVERALL, P2P HELPS sales, but at least one ASPECT of P2P unarguably hurts.
You're right, except you're not seeing the whole picture. You're correct when you say that P2P hurts sales because some people would rather download than buy; on the other hand, you're forgetting that a lot of people will download and then buy anyway (assuming the music's any good). Whether that makes up for the download-instead-of-buy segment is arguable, of course, and we'd need hard numbers to really tell...
Well first off, I agree that we SHOULD be doing something about it. However, to say that "Mother Nature's ethical system" somehow demands that we deserve to die, is silly. There IS NO ethical system in nature; it's simply meaningless cause and effect. Given that we are operating in Mother Nature's realm, we may very well suffer due to our actions, but to anthropomorphize it as some kind of emotionally-charged intelligence is silly.
We have recognized a danger with a proven track record in killing virtually all larger surface life on the planet.
Yes, all larger surface life none of which has ever had any kind of technology before. Even if a massive asteroid strike killed virtually all humans, there would still be survivors; unlike any other species in the history of EVER, we have the ability to preserve ourselves in the face of such a catastrophe.
(ignoring the fact that many astronomers think we are long overdue for just such an impact)
You should know that this is a meaningless statement. The likelihood of getting his is not a function of time; it's a random variable. The chance today is exactly the same as it was yesterday, and the day before, and every day for the past million years. Long-term changes in local asteroid density affect the chances, but that density hasn't changed much in a billion years.
then it is our own fault for being complete dumbasses and we will be appropriately removed from the evolutionary process
Fine -- I agree. But saying that we DESERVE to be wiped out is counterproductive at best -- like you actually WANT us to be wiped out. Why not work hard to get the world in a position to defend itself from an asteroid attack, rather than bitching on a meaningless forum like/. to people who will just flame you for it?
Assuming I magically knew that no matter which I chose, I would suffer the same effects, there would be no reason to choose one over the other. Although there would be at least one reason to choose the children: help with overpopulation a tiny bit.:)
On the other hand, my conscience would probably get the better of me, and I'd choose a) instead of b). Plus, realistically, if I chose the latter, I might end up getting tortured for weeks and weeks before getting killed, instead of just getting killed, and I wouldn't want that. (On the other hand, maybe those extra weeks of torture would give me a chance to escape, get revenge on my captors, etc.)
Put all the idle people back in school, and turn everyone into a teacher, student, or scientist. Think about Civilization: when you produce so much that you only need 3 citizens per city to produce that city's food needs, and you've already built every structure in every city, what's left? Alpha Centauri.
then we, in our collective and profound stupidity, absolultely deserve to be eradicated and replaced by a more competent species, likely one that will emerge some tens of millions of years hence from some small creature poking around our ashes.
Statistically speaking, we're likely to develop technology that can trivially fend off a planet-killer asteroid long before one ever hits our planet. Just because someone doesn't adamantly handle every possible threat to his being doesn't mean he DESERVES to die. (One wonders exactly which ethical system it is that says this.)
And what makes you think that a species that will evolve tens of millions of years from now would end up being any more intelligent than we are?
Okay. So let's say the species (Homo sapiens) is wiped out by an asteroid strike. How is this any different to me than if I'm killed by a drunk driver? I'm just as dead, either way.
Slashdot Mirror
The point is that what she's hearing is the government telling her that there is a God. It's not telling her that there are people who believe in God or gods; it's telling her that the U.S. government supports the idea that there is a God, and that we are somehow beneath him. This is harmful because it violates Newdow's right to direct his daughter's religious education: the government is teaching her about religion, and that is not its place. That's WHY we have the Establishment Clause.
Nobody's complaining (well, nobody sane anyway) that private individuals don't have a right to preach their religion to people they run into. They have as much right to preach at me as I do to ignore them or preach right back at them. Newdow's daughter will, undoubtedly, encounter myriad religious symbols in her life, but there is no law saying that private individuals cannot wear religious symbols or promote religious belief. There IS, however, a law saying that the GOVERNMENT can't do it.
Whether you believe in God or not, whether you believe that we really are "one nation under God", it is inappropriate for the government to take that stance.
The way I usually respond to this idea (that without God, we have no morals) is to say:
"Well, atheists don't believe in God, yet they have morals and ethics. So what you're saying is, the only thing keeping Christians from pillaging and raping and murdering is their belief in God? That you're so debased, only fear of eternal damnation keeps you from killing people?"
Can I get your opinion on which European countries are the best in terms of religious (and other forms of) tolerance? I'm getting awful sick of the religious attitude here in the U.S., and am seriously considering moving to somewhere that I don't have to fear getting lynched because I don't believe in a mythical superbeing. I've heard Finland is good, but it's kind of cold... suggestions?
Presumably. IANAL. :)
Thanks for letting everyone on /. know that you don't know what it means for something to be unconstitutional, or even that you have the most basic understanding of logic or even the flow of time.
The Declaration of Independence was written *before* the Constitution. The 1st Amendment says that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion..." The DoI was not written by Congress. It was not a law. It was merely the colonies telling the King of England, "Fuck off, wanker, we want our independence."
I'd mod you up +1 Funny if I hadn't written in this story already ;)
There's an appropriately pithy saying, by some famous humanist or atheist of the past, but I don't remember who:
"Everyone's born an atheist."
I'm not sure why you call Lieberman a "so-called Liberal". Nobody calls him that -- he's more or less a religious zealot fascist. Just because he's a Democrat doesn't mean he's a liberal. I'm more or less a liberal, and used to be a Democrat, but when the Democratic National Committee declared something about glorifying God, I determined that they weren't representing my interests particularly well. I re-registered as a different party thereafter, though I won't say which, to try to keep people from making judgments about me based on my political party. :)
One of his quotes was:
The logic here is that either way, someone will be offended -- if you don't include "under God", believers will be offended, and if you DO include "under God", atheists (or believers in other faiths) will be offended. The problem with this is that a vast majority of government laws, texts, and other actions contain nothing referring to God. He fails to address the fact that the phrase's presence in the Pledge is not about "feeling good" -- the Pledge, as an instrument of Congress, may not say anything EITHER WAY about religion or God. Omitting "under God" from the PoA no more denigrates religion than does omitting references to God from the Telecommuncations Act of 1996.His main point is that the harm caused by "under God" is de minimis, meaning so insignificant as to have no measurable effect. I disagree on this point, although it is difficult to prove one way or the other, but I see it thus: The "under God" reference has been a part of the national zeitgeist for coming on 50 years. An overwhelming majority of Americans know the Pledge of Allegiance, and even if most never contemplate its meaning beyond reciting it occasionally, its values and meaning creep their way into our minds every time we hear it. This is not a bad thing in itself; anything repeated to you often enough will be ingrained into your consciousness.
But I don't think anyone can seriously deny that the majority of Americans see religion as something patriotic and necessary -- atheists are often seen as unpatriotic or un-American, even though such a comparison is, on its face, contrary to the definition of those words. Even former President Bush (the elder) said that he doesn't think atheists should be considered citizens, let alone patriots. "under God"'s presence in the government-backed Pledge of Allegiance has, for the last 50 years, undoubtedly left a mark on the beliefs and minds of Americans, and I would argue that it has at the very least contributed to our country's tendency toward credulous trust in the Almighty rather than reason and logic.
I've given away my bias here; I'm an atheist, and I agree with the court's decision. I also believe that "In God We Trust" should be removed from our currency, for similar reasons. Nonetheless, Justice Goodwin has acted properly in considering the case in a manner similar to what the Supreme Court has done on similar cases. Justice Fernandez's protestations seem to be based on nothing more than his own personal opinion, rather than relevant precedent.
[1] Justice Fernandez also appeals to emotion by suggesting that popular songs such as "God Bless America" or "America the Beautiful" may be taken away from us. He even mentions the third stanza of "The Star-Spangled Banner", our national anthem. Ignoring the fact that it is the fourth stanza that contains a reference to God (the version of the SSB that you hear at baseball games contains only the first stanza), I agree that he has a point -- however the point is not in what he says, but the fact that he says it at all. There will be loud opposition to anything preventing the government from referencing God (the First Amendment? what's that?), and attempts to do so will be met with emotional resistance. On the other hand, even IF the SSB is, by law, our national anthem, there is no law that I know of which requires it to be recited or sung on any government-sponsored occasion. (If there is such a law, then it should rightly be struck down, following the same logic.) Hence the SSB's being law (if it is) would quite possibly not fail the Establishment Clause tests so commonly used by the SCOTUS.
Pardon my potential ignorance, but wouldn't this simply cause the 1954 legislation to be struck down, meaning that the Pledge in its old form (i.e. without "under God") could still legally be recited? The case was challenging both (separately) the 1954 legislation and the school district's rule that it must be recited. The district's rule is only unconstitutional IF the law it references is active -- if the 1954 law is struck down, then the district's behavior is not unconstitutional.
0 doesn't round to anything -- it stays unchanged, as 0. If you round 0,1,2,3,4 down and 5,6,7,8,9 up, you end up with a small upward bias, because *on average*, your rounded values will be higher than your non-rounded values. If you round 5 to the nearest even digit, then your rounded values will average to the same as your non-rounded values, which is clearly better.
I wrote a simulation in PHP to see which rounding method is more accurate. Even rounding was an order of magnitude more accurate (about 0.01% off, vs. 5-up rounding being 0.1% off).
Try it yourself. Take a random set of numbers and see which are, overall, more accurate given one method or the other.
You call that a solution? Solutions are supposed to make things BETTER... how does it help anything to increase the size of the marketing department? :)
I can tell how this would go. If bugs cost us $60 billion a year, and better testing would result in one-third fewer bugs, who wants to bet that this extra testing would cost about $20 billion? :)
It probably went something like this:
Radio technician: Sir! We're getting a signal from a satellite that's...
Commander: That's what, soldier?
Radio technician: *gulp* Well, sir, there's those stories about ghost satellites... I mean, we always thought they were just, you know, made up...
Commander: What the hell are you talking about, son? Spit it out!
Radio technician: I better just play the transmission for you, sir.
Satellite: BRRAIIINNNSSSS....
Radio technician: It's... it's a zombie satellite, sir. Undead.
Commander: (quietly) God help us all. (to technician) Get me the Pentagon!
Radio technician: Uh... sir... the phone lines are dead! (suddenly the power goes out)
Commander: Oh. My. God. (satellite bursts out of a closet and eats the commander)
Jeez, at first I thought it said "Weird AI". I'm like, "There's such a thing as non-weird AI?"
First off, don't get me wrong, I'm entirely on your "side" insofar as there are sides in this debate ;)
:)
/., feel free: just remove the SPAMTASTIC from my email address above.
I admit my description is a bit confusing; let me break it down this way. For any given album, the set of all people can be broken down into the following groups:
A) People who download the album
B) People who don't
A can be broken up into subgroups:
A1) People who download the album, and then buy it if they like it -- or delete it if it sucks
A2) People who download the album, but then don't buy it if they like it -- or delete it if it sucks
B can be broken up into subgroups:
B1) People who don't download it, but do buy it
B2) People who don't download it and don't buy it
Nobody's arguing about group B, as far as I can tell, since buying albums is a "societal norm" and there's little controversy, so we can ignore them for the purposes of this thread.
A2 can be rephrased as "people who will download the album INSTEAD of buying it, if they can download it". This is the only group that negatively affects sales, because INSTEAD of buying it, they are getting the content for free. Those who don't buy the album *because* they can download it -- do "hurt" the album's sales. Whether this is "wrong" is a moral question. (And we then have to go into, "is copying the same as theft?" Personally, I don't believe it's "immoral" to do this, but it is self-defeating; if you take from an artist you like without contributing anything to them, they are less likely to continue producing things you like, so it is in YOUR OWN INTEREST to support artists you like.)
The upshot is that A2 negatively affects album sales, and A1 positively affects album sales. You can easily argue that A1 consists of people who will not buy the album if they don't download it first, and thus A1 can only result in more sales, as long as at least one person in A1 buys the album as a result of downloading it. (If nobody in A1 buys the album, then the sales are still not hurt -- if all the people in A1 had been unable to download the album, none of them would have bought it anyway.)
The question is, does A1 help more than A2 hurts? Most P2P advocates (myself included) believe so, but proving it empirically is very difficult. Irrespective of that, everyone in group A is, at this time, breaking the law (U.S. law, anyway). Whether this means the law needs to be changed, or group A needs to be punished, is an entirely different debate, but one I'm happy to go into.
If you want to continue this in email instead of on
I believe that, OVERALL, P2P HELPS sales, but at least one ASPECT of P2P unarguably hurts.
You're right, except you're not seeing the whole picture. You're correct when you say that P2P hurts sales because some people would rather download than buy; on the other hand, you're forgetting that a lot of people will download and then buy anyway (assuming the music's any good). Whether that makes up for the download-instead-of-buy segment is arguable, of course, and we'd need hard numbers to really tell...
Assuming I magically knew that no matter which I chose, I would suffer the same effects, there would be no reason to choose one over the other. Although there would be at least one reason to choose the children: help with overpopulation a tiny bit. :)
On the other hand, my conscience would probably get the better of me, and I'd choose a) instead of b). Plus, realistically, if I chose the latter, I might end up getting tortured for weeks and weeks before getting killed, instead of just getting killed, and I wouldn't want that. (On the other hand, maybe those extra weeks of torture would give me a chance to escape, get revenge on my captors, etc.)
Put all the idle people back in school, and turn everyone into a teacher, student, or scientist. Think about Civilization: when you produce so much that you only need 3 citizens per city to produce that city's food needs, and you've already built every structure in every city, what's left? Alpha Centauri.
And what makes you think that a species that will evolve tens of millions of years from now would end up being any more intelligent than we are?
Okay. So let's say the species (Homo sapiens) is wiped out by an asteroid strike. How is this any different to me than if I'm killed by a drunk driver? I'm just as dead, either way.
Yay! Satriani!
:)
Sorry, just had to chime in with agreement. There aren't nearly enough Satch fans.