HA..HA! One of the best jokes ever by anyone on TV! I think we ought to nominate Urectum, Urass, and Urmomma as the three names for these planets in order to provide the next several generations of 6th grade boys with comedy material . Maybe we could even sneak Urethra in there somewhere...
HA! Python rules! I also remeber the famous Mel Brooks "History of the World" movie routine where the Vegas Styled show has the chorus "The Inquisition, what a show. The Inquisition, here we go!"
One thought though, Hawkings is already int the comfey chair, so they'd have to cut right to the pillows.
Ditto---
Good conversation! If you have time, read a good translation of the Tao te Ching. It really gets to the heart of the whole subjective vs objective perspective. The Taoists were dealing with the whole science vs mystical debate thousands of years before the West.
Have fun!
JD
Lump--
Now we are discussing something that can be discussed, namely usefullness (as opposed to existence or proof). I quite agree, given my perception of reality and my past experience with perceived gravity that jumping off a building is NOT a useful or wise thing to do. Waiting for the lift, however, is a wise thing to do because it is more useful than trusting gravity and terminal velocities to get you safely to the ground.
Your gripe with religion(s) seems to be based in what I hesitently call the "mythical" qualities of religion. I don't mean that these aspects of religion are not "true" or "real" or whatever. Let me explain it like this. I have a child of 3 years old, and I am expecting a second child. My wife and I have been telling him that mommy has a baby in her tummy, and that mommy's and daddy's make babies. If I pulled out videos and college textbooks and diagrams and tried to explain to his 3 year old mind how DNA, sperm, ovum, etc works I would not be presenting the information in an age appropriate way. Now to say that mommies and daddies make babies and that babies grow in mommies' tummies is not a "lie" in any sense of the word. The information in this form is "usefull" for my son to operate with day to day. If he grows up and tries to enter medical school, asserting that babies gestate in the stomach as useful knowlege for a doctor, he will not get the reception he would like.
If the ancient Hebrews and other tribes of the Middle East had been told about DNA, mutations, evolution, etc., the information would have been "useless." The story of Genisis gives plenty of operational knowlege to people of that time, and still teaches us something today.
Take for example the story of Adam and Eve. What it tells us, if we read it right is not scientific (as you and I would assert science), but rather it tells something about the human condition that rings true whereever humans are--If you place limits on people and forbid them from doing something, they will probably do it anyways and try to hide the fact that they did it.
The story of Cain and Able tells us both about the possible conflict early people who drove cattle verses thoes who grew crops, but it also tells us that human beings will envy each other and kill each other where envy runs unchecked.
One of the "myths" we have today centers around the idea that the Earth is collectivly intellegent and an organism in its own right--the Gaia theory. Given what we know about biology, geology and climate, it makes for a useful "story" for us to follow. Take that story/theory expoentially farther, and you see that the universe itself is a collective intellegence that perceives itself and reveals itself to itself. I call this God, sometimes I call it the Tao. The Tao Te Ching states that the Tao/Universe/God you can "name" is not the "real" one as the "real" one is outside our neurological ability to conceive of it or name it.
Trust me, I understand your resistance. I spent the better part of my life as an agnostic and believed there was no room for the mystic or mysterious in my life or the lives of others. And yes, I saw that there were people in this world who used faith as a way to gain power over others. But I learned that the poison is the cure and that in the interplay between faith and doubt, relativity and objectivity, is a place that is much more "useful" for me to be.
Lets look at your last statement point by point
1) "So what you're telling me is that up is down"--
Up can be down depending on who's viewing who. In deep space there is no up or down beside for the one you choose for yourself.
2) "black is white"--
When mixing light, Black is the absense of all colors and white is the presence of all colors, when mixing paint it can be the other way around. So, yeah, black is white given the situation. Additionally, we perceive black and white with our neurology. Who is to say we aren't the ones seeing things in reverse?
3)"and the complete lack of "emirical" evidence for a "god" is all the proof I need that one exists."-- What you call empirical evidence depends on you placing absolute faith in your ability to perceive reality as it actually "is."
If however we argue not in the reality of the thing, but in its "usefulness" and center the statements above a little different way, we have something to talk about.
1) I find it useful (for me) to believe that there is an "up" and a "down" at this moment in time sitting in my chair at the computer.
2) I find it useful (for me) to define black and white dependent upon which medium (light or pigmentation) I am using. I find it useful to reverse this definition when I am working with photographic negatives where black is white and white is black.
3) I find it useful (for me) to believe in a unifying absolute and a purpose to life. I find it useful (for me) to believe that salvation can be achived and has been achieved. I find it useful (for me) to believe that fluid concepts of mercy and love enhance my ability to think logically and engage the world. So, yeah, I find it useful (for me) to believe in God. Is there a God? I don't know. I doubt we'll ever really "know" in this life or any other, but hey, what the hell do I know?
Lump--
I would argue that true faith is the ultimate in skepticism. You seem to put a lot of faith into something called "evidence" when accepting so called "empirical" evidence is the ultimate leap of faith. Evidence is always filtered through our own neurology. You seem to be saying that a) neurological perception equals b) reality. The true skeptic is skeptical of his own skepticism. We all place faith in something---science, mathematics, and logic put faith that there is an objective reality that we can know separate from our emotional lives. Don't get me wrong, if I want to get to the moon in a rocket, give me science, but if I am looking for a guide in my life, I want something that acknowledges my own imperfect neurology and acknowledges that there may be something greater than myself, greater than humanity that has a better perspective on things than I do. Sure, some people use religion as a way to self-justify their actions. Don't try to tell me that people don't use science do the same. I seem to recall the Nazi's loved a science called Eugenics that made perfect logical sense--the way to improve the "breeding" of mankind is to scientifically eliminate the "inferior" members of our gene pool. I also recall a little movement called Communism that put faith in a sociological and economical model to the point where mass deportations and death were completely acceptable.
We are not reasoning machines that feel, we are.feeling beings that occasionally reason logically. Man is not the pinnacle of perception.
Hei! First off, I've lived in Norway and have family there, and you jokers have enough religious bigotry and heavy handed moralists to spare there as well. Does the name Fremskrittpartie and Carl I. Hagen mean nothing to you? What about The National Sammling? Don't get me wrong, I love Norway, and think it is one of the best run countries in the world, but don't pretend for one moment that you guys are free from any of the stuff that we here in America have. The only difference is that when one of our extremists shows their ass, it makes international news in every single blessed language. In Norway, however, it goes no further than the back pages of Aftenposten. Most countries have these jerks hiding in the political pot, the problem is that the U.S. is just a little more visible and our system is based on an "ALL or NOTHING" type of victory, giving extremists much more of a voice in a party.
Lastly, I have no idea what Bush wants to do or doesn't want to do, and if you are honest, neither do you. I'll give him the benifit of a doubt and say that 9/11 and the obvious growing Islamic-styled terrorist has led a very provincial man catering to his very provincial base to act in ways that have not taken into consideration international sensibilities.
Two quick comments--
1) The USA is not run by Christians. It is run by Capitalists who often use Christianity as a cover.
2) By the very definition of Christian (do unto others..., Love your neighbor as yourself..., love your enemy, etc.) anyone who would burn a person out of their house is NOT a Christian. Just like anyone who would commit a suicide attack on innocents (or suicide in general) is NOT acting within the bounds of Islam and are NOT Muslim.
One final thought. I'd much rather trust a person of religious faith (any faith for that matter) that says there is more to this world than what we see and that there is an absolute mandate to be spiritually "good" than I would trust a philosophy that says that the material world, run by materialistic rules, is all that there is (this includes both Capitalism and Communisim).
Nei, ved helvita! Drep ikke et spraak! One of my hobbies is linquistics, and I believe that when languages die out (which Scandinavian languages could over the years), ideas and concepts and the ability to express them also die out. I don't believe that there is a "English" language. The phenomenon people call "English" is to language what the Borg in Star Trek were to the cultures that they met. "English" began to die out with the Battle of Hastings in 1066. What came after was a hybrid creature ready to eat anything in its path.
One of the great things about English is that any word from any language can (and does). Gung-Ho(Chinese), OK/okay (African), pork (French)-(pig from Anglo-Saxon), facinate (from a Latin term meaning to charm someone with a penis shaped talisman), sky (Danish/Norwegian), ship (Danish/Norwegian), fjord (Norewgian), television (Greek and Latin), algebra (Arabic), shibboleth (Hebrew), hoosgow (Spanish), etc.
As a result, any language on the planet ought to be scared to death of the thing. The poor French are about to wet themselves in fear that English will eat their language alive. English is perhaps the most understoond language in Norway when you count immegrants and foreigners into the mix.
At the same time however, many of the things that makes Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish so elegant is that you all are forced to make due with a smaller number of words to describe very complex concepts. Television in Norwegian is fjernsyn (far-seeing) match is fyrstikk (fire stick). These languages (Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish) do preserve a lot of poetry in the language itself. I'd hate to see them disapear completly. It just would be nicer to have one written langauge to contend with though. Maybe we should all write in Chinese characters.....
Thanks!
I learned Norwegian orally and a little written, but I've heard more in Danish and Swedish (in movies) recently. I sometimes wish that Denmark, Sweden, and Norway would get over their national pride and admit that they essentially speak the same language and move on like the Itallians apparently have (that sound you hear is my granddad rolling in his grave). Maybe we could have an "open-sourced" Scandahoovisk written language...
Ha det rollig (both peaceful and fun)!
I also like your suggestion that they should have tried the bigamy/abandonment angle. At least this has a logical, legal arguement that is based in statute and precident. Common law and bigamy law has been worked out over centuries, and clear fault could be assertained.
onevulcanme--
As a Catholic who agrees with your desire to see all life cherished and preserved, I agree with your sentiment, but as a person who values logic, reason and most importantly, the law, I have to point out a few things. First, Mr. Schivo was given guardianship of Terri by a court of law. You and I may disagree with the judges decision, but we have to respect the law. I prayed daily for that Michael would reverse his stance and hand guardianship over to her parents, but in the end, he exercised his rights under our legal system. If you don't approve of that, cool, but in the end, in this case, it was nobody's decision but his that mattered. Second, as a pro-life Christian who also believes that it is wrong to bear false witness against another, I am embarassed and hurt that people chose to villify Michael Schivo. I understand her parents were not happy with him, I understand that emotions (and not reason) guide any parent's wishes for a terminally ill child, but the rest of us should have taken a step back and realized that none of us had any business judging the man. Have whatever opinion you like, but don't judge a man evil or damned in the eyes of God. We as Christians are forbidden to "judge" (in the sted of God) another, nor are we to slander a man. Michael Schivo was accused way after the point by Christians of beating her to death (way beyond what the scientific proof held), of being a money grubber looking to get his hands on her cash, and of being evil. I saw several interviews with Michael Schivo, and I felt (and still feel) that he was a man plauged by a complicated situation who acted out of love for a woman he made a promise to long ago. God only knows what was truly in his heart, and I hope and pray that it was good intent.
The more Christian way to have handled this would have been to leave the man alone with his charge, his wife, and pray for him, and later petition our legislatures to assume a pro-life stance of preserving life in questionable situations such as these. It should be assumed that in absense of a living will or final directive that the person wanted to be preserved. I'm sure it would have been a relief to Michael Schivo to know that the decision was out of his hands in the case of questionable desires from Terri. I personally have written out a living will that directs my wife and thoes I love to take specific actions and filed it with a lawyer. I encourage everyone who feels one way or the other about the sanctity of life and the meaning of death to do the same, but for God's sake (litterally) make up your mind about what life and living mean to you and take a stand.
1) William Shakespeare/Shaxberd--I'd love to get a few recordings of the Sonnets by this voice.
2) Julius Caesar--there is a highly detailed bust of him that would be perfect for this project
3) Marc Antony--ditto
(with all the Roman Busts, it would be cool to have Shakespeare's play done in the "original" voices.
4) Van Gogh
5) The figure in the Shroud of Turin.
6) Elizabeth I
7) Queen Victoria
8) Oscar Wilde
9) Napoleon (The phrase "I want to see little things hitting each other!" comes to mind.
10) Just as a controll, Ronald Regan.
Actually, if you look at it, what was different in the West (and China for that matter) from Africa and a number of other third world countries was the complete domination for periods of time of dominant world views that were enforced ruthlessly upon various "indigenous" (I hate that word) populations. Take for example Alexander the Great, he not only conquered various parts of the known world, he set up cultural, economic, and political outposts everywhere he went (note how many cities were named after him). Rome, also conquered and ruthlessly dominated territories all over Europe, inflicting the Roman world view on cultures much older than Roman culture. The worst period in the West, the Dark Ages, was in part the result of a power vacuume that allowed for feudal lords and petty kings to keep local populations under their thumb. It wasn't until the Roman church was able to excercise authority over kings, lords, and the like that the Renaissance was made possible.
I'll grant you that for the people suffering under such a domination, forced to fight for their way of life and their world view, that the experience isn't pleasent, but the overall peace is maintained. I'm one of the first people to say that morality is relative, but in that vacuume of absolutness, you either fight pig-headedly for your beliefs or you get walked all over by other beliefs. The problem with the comment "first do no harm" is that it is an illusion, living means brining harm and discomfort to yourself and others. As the Buddhists say, life is suffering. Our job is not to "do no harm," but to minimize the harm we do to ourselves and others. The essence of compassion is action within a moral framework. If we let things happen "by default", paralized by relativism, poverty happens, chaos happens, and the strong walk over the weak without ANY recourse.
I'm one of those who believes we have a responsibility to act in the world. I'd rather sin by comission than by omission or by passivly waiting like a coward for someone else to commit a sin possibly much worse than my own. I hate war. I hate conflict, but I am willing to state that war has solved a lot of things throughout history--slavery, Fascism, tyranny, and a whole host of other problems.
The noble savage doens't exist any more than the benevolent philosopher king. We do more harm by doing nothing than we do by acting. It isn't a matter of "do no harm." Rather, it is "do the right harm at the right time."
These people are not going to be helped with bioengineered rice. The problems in the third world are political chaos, war, lack of family planning, lack of education, religious fundamentalism, and others.
This is a bit of a "chicken or the egg" argument. The problems of the third world develop due to the problems of the third world--it is a cycle. If people don't have the basics of health, sustanence, and shelter, they tend to act in ways that promote "chaos, war, etc." In turn, the problems you cited cause the quality of life (in health, sustanence, and shelter) to decline. The cycle has to be interrupted somewhere, and why not with GM rice? The only side effect I can see is a wave of constipation across the third-world, and the possibility that they may become as full of shit as our hand-wringing, fist in the air, bullshit coffe-house, psuedo-intellectual classes in the West.
Walter Ong posed that we are entering a time when a "second orality" is taking hold. I don't think digital paper and e-ink are going to spell the end of reading books as much as audio media will replace the written word as the choice for most people. I enjoy listening to an audio book (unabridged of course) about as much as I do reading a physical book. What I especially like about the audio book is the ability to other things (drive, program, etc) while getting told a story. I've also listened to a great number of lectures and courses from the Teaching Company while doing other things as well. It seems to me that many of us are capable of learning and being entertained while the mundane things of life are taking place.
The crackberry crowd was using "proprietary software" and still are about to get hung out to dry over patent and IP issues. There almost needs to be a "starre decisis" for technology, an idea of "settled technology" that happens when and IP claim is brought against a company using software that has been marketed for a number of years without complaint. Is there such a thing? I'm thinking an IP holder should have 3 months from the time a technology is widely marketed (a fuzzy term, I know) where they have to crap or get off the pot as far as preventing another entity from continuing to use the technology. This might help eliminate the practice of buying up a patent long after a product possibly using that IP has been used widely and then suing. The attitude at that time should be "Hey, buddy, if you cared so much about this patent, you'd have contacted us years ago." Most of these software patents after mass usage are nothing more than parasitic attempts to benifit from other's work.
I'm sorry you were despirate enough to sign a contract that had such an agreement on it. I understand however, as I've have had to sign such non-compete and IP rights documents, that they can be exceedingly strict and unfair in these areas. The state I live in however has a right-to-work law that pretty much negates these types of contracts. I suggest you either move to such as state, or lobby your elected officials to make your state a right to work state.
Just be ready for a fight from the companies who love such crappy contracts.
Great point. The concept of Free Market is much like the concept of "Democracy." America is also not a "Democracy." We are a republic with democratic elements. As far as I know their are no true democracies or free markets in existence, just as there have never been any true communistic or totalitarian states around. Don't get me wrong, North Korea and Iran are giving the world a run for the money in the attempt to create a communistic and/or totalitarian hell on earth.
Horatio Alger myth? Come on, what a canned response to the truth. The West, specifically places like Britain, Canada, the US, Australia, Germany, Norway, Sweden, etc. have droves of people from all over the world beating down their doors, paying ungodly amounts of money to be smuggled in containers, cars, boxes, and the like just to come to countries where a free market affords them the ability to have one thing that they do not have where they are from, a chance to get filthy rich and live like they want to. Most, I agree just want to be able to make what we consider a "moderate" amount, but for them, our poverty is as good or better than their middle classes.
The only Horatio Alger myth that exists is the one propogated by lazy individuals that rich people don't work their asses off for what they have. I have had jobs where I didn't care for how things were done, and I moved on to others, and I am in the backwater of the U.S. That doesn't mean that there aren't people who suffer in this system of the free market. We see them daily, we hear about them daily when companies like Ford and Bell South lay off vast crowds of people, but look at how the immegrants in the West (and I am thinking specifically of the U.S.) work hard at whatever job they have and in a generation or two they excel at whatever they do.
Exactly. Face it if you live in even a somewhat progressive Western industrial nation (like the U.S.) you can take a job in about whatever floats your boat and still eat 3 meals a day and have a roof over your head. If you want the best foods and the best four walls and roof around, bust your hump for money. If you adjust what you "need" (read "want") you are not likely to starve or die of exposure. You'll have a longer life and a better attitude doing something you love than going for the bucks.
Currently, I hear that a bunch of students are being scared away from IT and being told that India, China, Fernando Poo, and a host of other sweatshop nations will be taking all the jobs from the US. I gotta call BS on that (and I ain't refering to a Bachelor of Science). People in the West (and especially in the US) have got to stop acting like sheep everytime a scare monger talking head pukes up statistics to grab viewers and readers.
As James Brown says, "Do what you like, do what you wanna do..."
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HA..HA! One of the best jokes ever by anyone on TV! I think we ought to nominate Urectum, Urass, and Urmomma as the three names for these planets in order to provide the next several generations of 6th grade boys with comedy material . Maybe we could even sneak Urethra in there somewhere...
One thought though, Hawkings is already int the comfey chair, so they'd have to cut right to the pillows.
Ditto--- Good conversation! If you have time, read a good translation of the Tao te Ching. It really gets to the heart of the whole subjective vs objective perspective. The Taoists were dealing with the whole science vs mystical debate thousands of years before the West. Have fun! JD
Your gripe with religion(s) seems to be based in what I hesitently call the "mythical" qualities of religion. I don't mean that these aspects of religion are not "true" or "real" or whatever. Let me explain it like this. I have a child of 3 years old, and I am expecting a second child. My wife and I have been telling him that mommy has a baby in her tummy, and that mommy's and daddy's make babies. If I pulled out videos and college textbooks and diagrams and tried to explain to his 3 year old mind how DNA, sperm, ovum, etc works I would not be presenting the information in an age appropriate way. Now to say that mommies and daddies make babies and that babies grow in mommies' tummies is not a "lie" in any sense of the word. The information in this form is "usefull" for my son to operate with day to day. If he grows up and tries to enter medical school, asserting that babies gestate in the stomach as useful knowlege for a doctor, he will not get the reception he would like.
If the ancient Hebrews and other tribes of the Middle East had been told about DNA, mutations, evolution, etc., the information would have been "useless." The story of Genisis gives plenty of operational knowlege to people of that time, and still teaches us something today.
Take for example the story of Adam and Eve. What it tells us, if we read it right is not scientific (as you and I would assert science), but rather it tells something about the human condition that rings true whereever humans are--If you place limits on people and forbid them from doing something, they will probably do it anyways and try to hide the fact that they did it.
The story of Cain and Able tells us both about the possible conflict early people who drove cattle verses thoes who grew crops, but it also tells us that human beings will envy each other and kill each other where envy runs unchecked.
One of the "myths" we have today centers around the idea that the Earth is collectivly intellegent and an organism in its own right--the Gaia theory. Given what we know about biology, geology and climate, it makes for a useful "story" for us to follow. Take that story/theory expoentially farther, and you see that the universe itself is a collective intellegence that perceives itself and reveals itself to itself. I call this God, sometimes I call it the Tao. The Tao Te Ching states that the Tao/Universe/God you can "name" is not the "real" one as the "real" one is outside our neurological ability to conceive of it or name it.
Trust me, I understand your resistance. I spent the better part of my life as an agnostic and believed there was no room for the mystic or mysterious in my life or the lives of others. And yes, I saw that there were people in this world who used faith as a way to gain power over others. But I learned that the poison is the cure and that in the interplay between faith and doubt, relativity and objectivity, is a place that is much more "useful" for me to be.
jd
Lets look at your last statement point by point 1) "So what you're telling me is that up is down"-- Up can be down depending on who's viewing who. In deep space there is no up or down beside for the one you choose for yourself. 2) "black is white"-- When mixing light, Black is the absense of all colors and white is the presence of all colors, when mixing paint it can be the other way around. So, yeah, black is white given the situation. Additionally, we perceive black and white with our neurology. Who is to say we aren't the ones seeing things in reverse? 3)"and the complete lack of "emirical" evidence for a "god" is all the proof I need that one exists."-- What you call empirical evidence depends on you placing absolute faith in your ability to perceive reality as it actually "is." If however we argue not in the reality of the thing, but in its "usefulness" and center the statements above a little different way, we have something to talk about. 1) I find it useful (for me) to believe that there is an "up" and a "down" at this moment in time sitting in my chair at the computer. 2) I find it useful (for me) to define black and white dependent upon which medium (light or pigmentation) I am using. I find it useful to reverse this definition when I am working with photographic negatives where black is white and white is black. 3) I find it useful (for me) to believe in a unifying absolute and a purpose to life. I find it useful (for me) to believe that salvation can be achived and has been achieved. I find it useful (for me) to believe that fluid concepts of mercy and love enhance my ability to think logically and engage the world. So, yeah, I find it useful (for me) to believe in God. Is there a God? I don't know. I doubt we'll ever really "know" in this life or any other, but hey, what the hell do I know?
We are not reasoning machines that feel, we are .feeling beings that occasionally reason logically. Man is not the pinnacle of perception.
Lastly, I have no idea what Bush wants to do or doesn't want to do, and if you are honest, neither do you. I'll give him the benifit of a doubt and say that 9/11 and the obvious growing Islamic-styled terrorist has led a very provincial man catering to his very provincial base to act in ways that have not taken into consideration international sensibilities.
2) By the very definition of Christian (do unto others..., Love your neighbor as yourself..., love your enemy, etc.) anyone who would burn a person out of their house is NOT a Christian. Just like anyone who would commit a suicide attack on innocents (or suicide in general) is NOT acting within the bounds of Islam and are NOT Muslim.
One final thought. I'd much rather trust a person of religious faith (any faith for that matter) that says there is more to this world than what we see and that there is an absolute mandate to be spiritually "good" than I would trust a philosophy that says that the material world, run by materialistic rules, is all that there is (this includes both Capitalism and Communisim).
One of the great things about English is that any word from any language can (and does). Gung-Ho(Chinese), OK/okay (African), pork (French)-(pig from Anglo-Saxon), facinate (from a Latin term meaning to charm someone with a penis shaped talisman), sky (Danish/Norwegian), ship (Danish/Norwegian), fjord (Norewgian), television (Greek and Latin), algebra (Arabic), shibboleth (Hebrew), hoosgow (Spanish), etc.
As a result, any language on the planet ought to be scared to death of the thing. The poor French are about to wet themselves in fear that English will eat their language alive. English is perhaps the most understoond language in Norway when you count immegrants and foreigners into the mix.
At the same time however, many of the things that makes Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish so elegant is that you all are forced to make due with a smaller number of words to describe very complex concepts. Television in Norwegian is fjernsyn (far-seeing) match is fyrstikk (fire stick). These languages (Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish) do preserve a lot of poetry in the language itself. I'd hate to see them disapear completly. It just would be nicer to have one written langauge to contend with though. Maybe we should all write in Chinese characters.....
Thanks! I learned Norwegian orally and a little written, but I've heard more in Danish and Swedish (in movies) recently. I sometimes wish that Denmark, Sweden, and Norway would get over their national pride and admit that they essentially speak the same language and move on like the Itallians apparently have (that sound you hear is my granddad rolling in his grave). Maybe we could have an "open-sourced" Scandahoovisk written language... Ha det rollig (both peaceful and fun)!
Takk saa myket! I try my best to mangle Norwegian and Swedish (hell and English for that manner) whenever I can.
Fordommet Svenska ninjas! (Or however you pluralize ninja in Svorsk--ninjanar?).
Now I've got that damn song running through my head. I wonder what the system does when it enounters Stxy based brain waves.
I also like your suggestion that they should have tried the bigamy/abandonment angle. At least this has a logical, legal arguement that is based in statute and precident. Common law and bigamy law has been worked out over centuries, and clear fault could be assertained.
onevulcanme-- As a Catholic who agrees with your desire to see all life cherished and preserved, I agree with your sentiment, but as a person who values logic, reason and most importantly, the law, I have to point out a few things. First, Mr. Schivo was given guardianship of Terri by a court of law. You and I may disagree with the judges decision, but we have to respect the law. I prayed daily for that Michael would reverse his stance and hand guardianship over to her parents, but in the end, he exercised his rights under our legal system. If you don't approve of that, cool, but in the end, in this case, it was nobody's decision but his that mattered. Second, as a pro-life Christian who also believes that it is wrong to bear false witness against another, I am embarassed and hurt that people chose to villify Michael Schivo. I understand her parents were not happy with him, I understand that emotions (and not reason) guide any parent's wishes for a terminally ill child, but the rest of us should have taken a step back and realized that none of us had any business judging the man. Have whatever opinion you like, but don't judge a man evil or damned in the eyes of God. We as Christians are forbidden to "judge" (in the sted of God) another, nor are we to slander a man. Michael Schivo was accused way after the point by Christians of beating her to death (way beyond what the scientific proof held), of being a money grubber looking to get his hands on her cash, and of being evil. I saw several interviews with Michael Schivo, and I felt (and still feel) that he was a man plauged by a complicated situation who acted out of love for a woman he made a promise to long ago. God only knows what was truly in his heart, and I hope and pray that it was good intent. The more Christian way to have handled this would have been to leave the man alone with his charge, his wife, and pray for him, and later petition our legislatures to assume a pro-life stance of preserving life in questionable situations such as these. It should be assumed that in absense of a living will or final directive that the person wanted to be preserved. I'm sure it would have been a relief to Michael Schivo to know that the decision was out of his hands in the case of questionable desires from Terri. I personally have written out a living will that directs my wife and thoes I love to take specific actions and filed it with a lawyer. I encourage everyone who feels one way or the other about the sanctity of life and the meaning of death to do the same, but for God's sake (litterally) make up your mind about what life and living mean to you and take a stand.
1) William Shakespeare/Shaxberd--I'd love to get a few recordings of the Sonnets by this voice. 2) Julius Caesar--there is a highly detailed bust of him that would be perfect for this project 3) Marc Antony--ditto (with all the Roman Busts, it would be cool to have Shakespeare's play done in the "original" voices. 4) Van Gogh 5) The figure in the Shroud of Turin. 6) Elizabeth I 7) Queen Victoria 8) Oscar Wilde 9) Napoleon (The phrase "I want to see little things hitting each other!" comes to mind. 10) Just as a controll, Ronald Regan.
Yeah, and they don't sound Eye-tallion either! Not one "Forgetaboutit" or "Yo!" in the whole damn script.
I'll grant you that for the people suffering under such a domination, forced to fight for their way of life and their world view, that the experience isn't pleasent, but the overall peace is maintained. I'm one of the first people to say that morality is relative, but in that vacuume of absolutness, you either fight pig-headedly for your beliefs or you get walked all over by other beliefs. The problem with the comment "first do no harm" is that it is an illusion, living means brining harm and discomfort to yourself and others. As the Buddhists say, life is suffering. Our job is not to "do no harm," but to minimize the harm we do to ourselves and others. The essence of compassion is action within a moral framework. If we let things happen "by default", paralized by relativism, poverty happens, chaos happens, and the strong walk over the weak without ANY recourse.
I'm one of those who believes we have a responsibility to act in the world. I'd rather sin by comission than by omission or by passivly waiting like a coward for someone else to commit a sin possibly much worse than my own. I hate war. I hate conflict, but I am willing to state that war has solved a lot of things throughout history--slavery, Fascism, tyranny, and a whole host of other problems.
The noble savage doens't exist any more than the benevolent philosopher king. We do more harm by doing nothing than we do by acting. It isn't a matter of "do no harm." Rather, it is "do the right harm at the right time."
This is a bit of a "chicken or the egg" argument. The problems of the third world develop due to the problems of the third world--it is a cycle. If people don't have the basics of health, sustanence, and shelter, they tend to act in ways that promote "chaos, war, etc." In turn, the problems you cited cause the quality of life (in health, sustanence, and shelter) to decline. The cycle has to be interrupted somewhere, and why not with GM rice? The only side effect I can see is a wave of constipation across the third-world, and the possibility that they may become as full of shit as our hand-wringing, fist in the air, bullshit coffe-house, psuedo-intellectual classes in the West.
Walter Ong posed that we are entering a time when a "second orality" is taking hold. I don't think digital paper and e-ink are going to spell the end of reading books as much as audio media will replace the written word as the choice for most people. I enjoy listening to an audio book (unabridged of course) about as much as I do reading a physical book. What I especially like about the audio book is the ability to other things (drive, program, etc) while getting told a story. I've also listened to a great number of lectures and courses from the Teaching Company while doing other things as well. It seems to me that many of us are capable of learning and being entertained while the mundane things of life are taking place.
The crackberry crowd was using "proprietary software" and still are about to get hung out to dry over patent and IP issues. There almost needs to be a "starre decisis" for technology, an idea of "settled technology" that happens when and IP claim is brought against a company using software that has been marketed for a number of years without complaint. Is there such a thing? I'm thinking an IP holder should have 3 months from the time a technology is widely marketed (a fuzzy term, I know) where they have to crap or get off the pot as far as preventing another entity from continuing to use the technology. This might help eliminate the practice of buying up a patent long after a product possibly using that IP has been used widely and then suing. The attitude at that time should be "Hey, buddy, if you cared so much about this patent, you'd have contacted us years ago." Most of these software patents after mass usage are nothing more than parasitic attempts to benifit from other's work.
Just be ready for a fight from the companies who love such crappy contracts.
Good luck!
Great point. The concept of Free Market is much like the concept of "Democracy." America is also not a "Democracy." We are a republic with democratic elements. As far as I know their are no true democracies or free markets in existence, just as there have never been any true communistic or totalitarian states around. Don't get me wrong, North Korea and Iran are giving the world a run for the money in the attempt to create a communistic and/or totalitarian hell on earth.
The only Horatio Alger myth that exists is the one propogated by lazy individuals that rich people don't work their asses off for what they have. I have had jobs where I didn't care for how things were done, and I moved on to others, and I am in the backwater of the U.S. That doesn't mean that there aren't people who suffer in this system of the free market. We see them daily, we hear about them daily when companies like Ford and Bell South lay off vast crowds of people, but look at how the immegrants in the West (and I am thinking specifically of the U.S.) work hard at whatever job they have and in a generation or two they excel at whatever they do.
Exactly. Face it if you live in even a somewhat progressive Western industrial nation (like the U.S.) you can take a job in about whatever floats your boat and still eat 3 meals a day and have a roof over your head. If you want the best foods and the best four walls and roof around, bust your hump for money. If you adjust what you "need" (read "want") you are not likely to starve or die of exposure. You'll have a longer life and a better attitude doing something you love than going for the bucks. Currently, I hear that a bunch of students are being scared away from IT and being told that India, China, Fernando Poo, and a host of other sweatshop nations will be taking all the jobs from the US. I gotta call BS on that (and I ain't refering to a Bachelor of Science). People in the West (and especially in the US) have got to stop acting like sheep everytime a scare monger talking head pukes up statistics to grab viewers and readers. As James Brown says, "Do what you like, do what you wanna do..."