There is no point arguing in support of evolution if you haven't taken the time to even look at the claims of your opponents. IDists make a distinction between micro- and macroevolution and see the evolution of bacteria in response to antibodies, for example, as an example of microevolution at work. If you don't know this then you make yourself look as much of a fool as them. (Well, maybe not quite as much of a fool, but a bit of a fool anyway.)
...why you belong to an organization that claims a monopoly on truth (John 14:6) and yet is closely associated with supersition and pseudoscience.
Is it true that life evolved as a result of...
on
Ask The Mythbusters
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· Score: 1
...random variations in organic sludge and that humans are the descendants of monkeys or is that just a myth spread by my gay socialist drug-abusing science teacher who my Sunday school teacher (the best in Kansas!) says is the spawn of Satan and murders little children?
I tend to listen to the music rather than waste my time reading glossy magazines that tell me what I should be listening to.
Actually I won't disagree with you there. I made the mistake only last week of buying, for the first time in my life (I think), an album because the reviews said it was good (LCD Soundsystem if you must know, maybe I can spare you some suffering). I sold it the next day and used it to finance the buying of a bunch of CDs by mediocre musicians because despite the fact that they ain't no virtuosos on their instruments I love what they play anyway.
It's just that they can't be solved in terms of addition, multiplication, and exponentiation (i.e., using +, *, and radicals).
Not really. Here's a formula that gives a solution to x^5-a=0 : x=a^(1/5). You can even write down a formula in a,b,c,d,e, of this form, for all solutions to ax^5+bx^4+cx^3+dx^2+ex=0.
The point is that there is no universal formula of the required form for all quintics and above.
but afterwards, they wouldn't have been able to explain things
I never got this short-term understanding thing. Wy wife is the same - she'll seem to understand a deep idea for a while and then lose it. If I don't understand an idea I don't understand it. If I understand an idea it I grok it and it becomes part of me for life. I don't really understand the idea of being able to understand something one moment and not the next. (Of course I'm talking concepts here - I forget details all the time.)
Ooops. Slight mistake. But finite-dimensional Hilbert spaces are so boring. I might have lost most people but I'm sure your average pop science/science fiction reader could just about bend their mind towards the concept of always being able to travel orthogonally to any given bunch of directions.
I'll assume you have an idea of what we mean by 1D, 2D and 3D spaces. An n-dimensional space is one where you can have up to n directions that are at right angles to each other. Well a Hilbert Space is a kind of infinite dimensional space. This is a space where no matter how many directions you have already chosen, you can find another direction that is at right angles to all of them.
Now think about pairs of points in space. We can talk about there being a distance between them. Well the same is true in some infinite dimensional spaces, there's an idea of the distance between two points. And if you have an idea of distance you have an idea of how close a pair of points is.
Now think about a sequence of numbers like 1,1/2,1/4,1/8,... halving each time. Notice that successive pairs of points are getting closer and closer all the time. The distance between 1/2 and 1/4, say, is half that between 1 and 1/2. Now the fact that they appear to be getting closer and closer to their neighbors suggests that actually the sequence is getting closer and closer to something. In the example just given you can see that the sequence is getting closer and closer to zero. It never reaches zero but it does get as close as you choose. But there are spaces where it's possible for successive pairs to get closer and closer without there being an actual limit that they approach. They're kinda annoying and it's often useful to restrict your attention to cases where whenever you appear to be approaching a limit there really is a definite limit. Infinite dimensional spaces like this are known as 'Hilbert Spaces'.
Hilbert spaces are very useful in modern physics where the state of a physical system in quantum mechanics is often infinite dimensional. But they also have many applications outside of physics.
I could give some examples but I have a day job. And yes, I know I haven't said what I mean by 'space', but this a layman's introduction. Next week I'll give an introduction to functional analysis on Sobolev spaces for the layman...
English is so crude. Throw a few 'fucks' here and there and you think you've spiced up your language. We're talking Arabic here. You need to at least mention melons, boys, mothers and camels, as well as carnal relations.
The reason why these economies are having trouble dealing with their elderly is that people have chosen to spend their money on raising kids and then opt to rely on the state or their kids to provide for them when they are old, shifting the burden to the next generation. Instead I'm investing for my own future to make sure I'm as little a burden on others as possible when I'm older (and so I can also actually have fun in my retirement as well, of course). In fact, other people's kids are a burden on me as I have to pay for their healthcare through my own insurance payments.
Why would you treat someone else differently...?
on
Drink Decaf and Die
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· Score: 1
I try to treat all people with a certain amount of respect. Is there something special about people who sell food? My experience of places like McDonald's is the service is pretty obnoxious so those people get less respect from me than average. On the other hand people who do a great job of serving me in a restaurant will get more respect. I don't see anything special about food.
I'd like to see you saying that while eating a bowl of lightly sauteed venomous spiders (on a bed of wild California rice and garnished with cilantro).
Sony claim they are doing this to prevent piracy. But as a side effect it means users can't make 'fair use' of music they have bought on music players such as the iPod. But of course Sony benefit from this because they have their own music players, including players based on their own proprietary atrac format. So maybe this 'side effect' isn't a side effect after all. If that is the case, this rootkit isn't an anti-piracy tool gone wrong but a hideous piece of software whose purpose is to surreptitiously push users towards Sony products. In other words it's like Adware but worse - it deliberately breaks your PC to make it incompatible with competitor's products. If this can be proved to be the case then it seems to me that the law could come down on Sony pretty damn badly. I certainly hope so anyway.
If you do that you miss the point and might as well read a summary instead. There are many ways text can be good ranging from the surface level of how the words sound to deeper structure such as 'the ideas behind the stories'. The best writing is a conjunction of many of these features. Shakespeare makes great use of rhetorical devices like chiasmus, alliteration and parallelism. It's not "To be or not", it's "To be or not to be". This is poetry, not a physics text book where different sentences might convey the same meaning. The choice of words matters in Shakespeare, regardless of whether it might be considered 'proper' English.
Still, I don't blame you for getting this wrong, it seems to be a fact of modern life that you can produce crap art as long as it has a "deeper meaning", forgetting that the best art is a feast for the mind and the senses.
a chinese whisper effect happens when you pass a message one multiple times
Precisely, you define your terms for your convenience. Any translation is problematic - even translating from nearly identical seeming languages like American English to British English can be fraught with difficulties. But you've decided to call 2+ translations the "chinese whisper effect" to make it seem like a single translation is unproblematic.
My favorite biblical translation problem is Isaiah 45:7. It seems plainly obvious to me from the context that this is a response to Zoroastrian type beliefs where it is held that separate deities were responsible for good and evil and so it is fine to read "I create...evil". I studied Hebrew for many years and to me 'rah' has always meant 'bad' or 'evil'. Yet others find completely different ways to interpret the word 'rah'. The implications of these different translations is enormous - it makes a difference between a god who does only good and a god who performs acts of evil. There's clearly no need for multiple translations to lead us to what may be complete garbage - just one will do.
Even with the most fundamental words there is difficulty. Is the third word of Genesis 1:1 plural or not? It looks like a Hebrew plural but I don't know of any popular translation of the Bible that makes it plural. Even if it's considered as a symbolic plural, like the royal "we", the connotation is lost in the English.
Translations of the Bible are poor imitations of the real thing and your talk of 'the odd ambiguity' shows how unfamiliar you must be with the original text.
Slashdot Mirror
There is no point arguing in support of evolution if you haven't taken the time to even look at the claims of your opponents. IDists make a distinction between micro- and macroevolution and see the evolution of bacteria in response to antibodies, for example, as an example of microevolution at work. If you don't know this then you make yourself look as much of a fool as them. (Well, maybe not quite as much of a fool, but a bit of a fool anyway.)
...why you belong to an organization that claims a monopoly on truth (John 14:6) and yet is closely associated with supersition and pseudoscience.
...random variations in organic sludge and that humans are the descendants of monkeys or is that just a myth spread by my gay socialist drug-abusing science teacher who my Sunday school teacher (the best in Kansas!) says is the spawn of Satan and murders little children?
I'm wearing a tin-foil condom. There's no way I can catch a virus through this thing.
Have you patented that yet? I don't recall reading that inventions had to be legal.
Littler tip: Try your AW2 cartridge too.
Note also that the software installs itself surreptitiously without you even being aware that software is being installed.
I think I'll go and buy myself a chocolate with the first dollar I'd earn from this list.
And is your favourite at the top?
No.
Top 10?
No.
Top 20?
No.
Must be in the top 50 right?
No.
OK, somewhere in the top 100?
No, again.
Oh well, who cares what Rolling Stone says, eh?
The point is that there is no universal formula of the required form for all quintics and above.
Ooops. Slight mistake. But finite-dimensional Hilbert spaces are so boring. I might have lost most people but I'm sure your average pop science/science fiction reader could just about bend their mind towards the concept of always being able to travel orthogonally to any given bunch of directions.
And how far apart in meaning is "A, B, C, D as well as E" from just E?
Now think about pairs of points in space. We can talk about there being a distance between them. Well the same is true in some infinite dimensional spaces, there's an idea of the distance between two points. And if you have an idea of distance you have an idea of how close a pair of points is.
Now think about a sequence of numbers like 1,1/2,1/4,1/8,... halving each time. Notice that successive pairs of points are getting closer and closer all the time. The distance between 1/2 and 1/4, say, is half that between 1 and 1/2. Now the fact that they appear to be getting closer and closer to their neighbors suggests that actually the sequence is getting closer and closer to something. In the example just given you can see that the sequence is getting closer and closer to zero. It never reaches zero but it does get as close as you choose. But there are spaces where it's possible for successive pairs to get closer and closer without there being an actual limit that they approach. They're kinda annoying and it's often useful to restrict your attention to cases where whenever you appear to be approaching a limit there really is a definite limit. Infinite dimensional spaces like this are known as 'Hilbert Spaces'.
Hilbert spaces are very useful in modern physics where the state of a physical system in quantum mechanics is often infinite dimensional. But they also have many applications outside of physics.
I could give some examples but I have a day job. And yes, I know I haven't said what I mean by 'space', but this a layman's introduction. Next week I'll give an introduction to functional analysis on Sobolev spaces for the layman...
English is so crude. Throw a few 'fucks' here and there and you think you've spiced up your language. We're talking Arabic here. You need to at least mention melons, boys, mothers and camels, as well as carnal relations.
The reason why these economies are having trouble dealing with their elderly is that people have chosen to spend their money on raising kids and then opt to rely on the state or their kids to provide for them when they are old, shifting the burden to the next generation. Instead I'm investing for my own future to make sure I'm as little a burden on others as possible when I'm older (and so I can also actually have fun in my retirement as well, of course). In fact, other people's kids are a burden on me as I have to pay for their healthcare through my own insurance payments.
I try to treat all people with a certain amount of respect. Is there something special about people who sell food? My experience of places like McDonald's is the service is pretty obnoxious so those people get less respect from me than average. On the other hand people who do a great job of serving me in a restaurant will get more respect. I don't see anything special about food.
One could always choose to have fewer than three kids but such comments usually fall on deaf ears.
You can only patent inventions. Why does it need lawyers and courts to figure this out?
..."99% of non-smokers die".
I'd like to see you saying that while eating a bowl of lightly sauteed venomous spiders (on a bed of wild California rice and garnished with cilantro).
Sony claim they are doing this to prevent piracy. But as a side effect it means users can't make 'fair use' of music they have bought on music players such as the iPod. But of course Sony benefit from this because they have their own music players, including players based on their own proprietary atrac format. So maybe this 'side effect' isn't a side effect after all. If that is the case, this rootkit isn't an anti-piracy tool gone wrong but a hideous piece of software whose purpose is to surreptitiously push users towards Sony products. In other words it's like Adware but worse - it deliberately breaks your PC to make it incompatible with competitor's products. If this can be proved to be the case then it seems to me that the law could come down on Sony pretty damn badly. I certainly hope so anyway.
Still, I don't blame you for getting this wrong, it seems to be a fact of modern life that you can produce crap art as long as it has a "deeper meaning", forgetting that the best art is a feast for the mind and the senses.
My favorite biblical translation problem is Isaiah 45:7. It seems plainly obvious to me from the context that this is a response to Zoroastrian type beliefs where it is held that separate deities were responsible for good and evil and so it is fine to read "I create...evil". I studied Hebrew for many years and to me 'rah' has always meant 'bad' or 'evil'. Yet others find completely different ways to interpret the word 'rah'. The implications of these different translations is enormous - it makes a difference between a god who does only good and a god who performs acts of evil. There's clearly no need for multiple translations to lead us to what may be complete garbage - just one will do.
Even with the most fundamental words there is difficulty. Is the third word of Genesis 1:1 plural or not? It looks like a Hebrew plural but I don't know of any popular translation of the Bible that makes it plural. Even if it's considered as a symbolic plural, like the royal "we", the connotation is lost in the English.
Translations of the Bible are poor imitations of the real thing and your talk of 'the odd ambiguity' shows how unfamiliar you must be with the original text.