1 - Fail-safe. The machine can break, power can go out, etc. The paper ballot still exists and can be easily hand counted.
2 - Inexpensive scaling. Since you mark on paper the polling station can have 20 booths for people which are not much more than a table, curtain, and a pen; yet they can share one or two optical scanners. Touch screen systems require one expensive machine per booth.
Do the math. 20 expensive touch screen machines per polling station, versus 2 less expensive optical scanners.
This cost savings could be used in urban areas where there traditionally have not been enough resources for the election.
3 - Trustable. Any dispute can be settled by the actual piece of paper I wrote on. Optical scanners are based on technology used by schools to grade for decades and require little more than a motor, light sensor, and a very low end CPU. There is little to go wrong and very little which can hide tricks.
4 - Easy to use. I take a pen and fill in a box. Touch screen systems appear to suffer serious "alignment" issues which can cause votes to be mis-registered and which require frequent realignment in the field.
5 - Robust. There is no screen to be scratched, or broken. The voter never interacts with the scanner except to slide a piece of paper into it. There is no printer to jam, or foul, or have other issues.
I've seen nothing in print that says that. This may be true for government mandated "taxes" on blank media that some countries do. The laws that authorize the tax often clear users, or at least the courts have rule in some cases
But this is a private deal between Microsoft and Universal Music "because of piracy". They might as well have used the term "because the sky is blue". Just 'cause the word piracy is in their press release doesn't mean Universal Music is giving us something good for their buck. The copyright laws and DCMA still gives them the power to sue anybody who "steals" their music.
This was done to benefit the Microsoft and the RIAA and was designed to do NOTHING for us. Anybody who thinks different let us know if the RIAA decides to drop the suit 'cause you stored the music on a Zune
If there is something offical which actually indicates otherwise as opposed to our wishing and hoping based on their claiming it was to make up for piracy then I'd love to see it.
I am not aware the money the Universal Music gets is a "royalty" fee or a licence fee for ANY consumer action. It's just money Microsoft gives them so that THEY can sell music on-line.
Having bought such a machine confers nothing useful on us. It's simply a tool Microsoft will use to disadvantage the other venders who want online stores.
Owning a Zune confers no rights to "copy" music beyond any you had before-hand.
The Zune hardware is not too bad. Some reviews have actually said it's really pretty good. The problem is that you don't try to take on the market leader with a device that is about as good for the same price. Esp if it's larger, heavier, and has less battery. The biggest "cool factor", the WiFi isn't even remotely useful until there is a critical mass of Zune in the wild. If you want to squirt stuff from your Zune you have to find someone else who has one.
But it's not flying off the shelves. It's NOT EVEN ON some shelves. It will fall off the Amazon top 100 in the next few days. The iPod is 5 or 6 of the Amazon top ten electronics sellers. The #1 at Amazon has firmly been an iPod for weeks. (Zune was #94 last I checked)
And Microsoft has done everything right. They were able to convince the entire non-iPod MP3 player industry to adopt Plays-For-Sure so they could all be put out of Microsofts way at once and they STILL can't outsell Creative's player.
Would you do business with them after they lured you into Plays-For-Sure?
They were carefull to pay off the RIAA through Universal Music for each Zune sold. The RIAA gets their money when you pay at the cash register. That way people can know they are doing the right thing.
Everyone who wants to send a buck to the RIAA by buying a Zune raise your hand!
They did a lot of focus groups and their ads had the right mix of Black, White, Asian, women, men, young, and old in their "Welcome to the Social" ads which feature some kind of music player. Did their ads really inform anybody about the Zune? Why I want one instead of an iPod?
They carefully came up with a misleading "points" scheme to cloud how much a song costs and to force consumers to leave a few cents on the table for each purchase. This is sure to appeal to the average buyer.
The only one who deserves a Brown Zune for Christmas is Bill Gates.
I still have this image in my head of Beavis saying "Heh, heh. He said Brown Zune!"
Clearly others have made the "Brown Zune" connection. That can't possibly be where marketing geniuses thought using a Brown Zune to squirt music would lead them.
If enough people made that mental association, the Zune brand is dead.
While the Zune hardware is not bad, the execution of the whole package lays bare the heart of Microsoft.
Having DRM I can deal with because I can choose to not purchase music from their store. I can obtain it elsewhere. But the fact they send money to Universal Music just from selling the hardware exposes whose side they are on. Even if I never buy from the RIAA they get their pound of flesh. Buyers are forced to pay the "music thief" tax.
Buy a Zune and send money to the people who will sue you or some old lady next year.
I also find it astounding people fall for their "point" scheme. Buy points now and leave a few dozen on the table each time you buy music. They make interest from all those points and mock you with it. It's anti-consumer like 10 hotdogs in a package versus 8 buns in a pack. It forces you to buy more than you want.
The faux-cool of the "it's got wifi and it's not an iPod" crowd astounds me. They are so eager to be "so cool they can't sell out by owning an iPod" are the very same people causing money to go to the RIAA and buying into the very vender who will enslave their music and hardware later.
Make no mistake. The reason MS sends money to Universal Music is to make it harder for all of the other hardware venders to avoid it. It sets up MS as the only people who will be able to do this. To borrow a bad line, "in the future all MP3 players are Microsoft".
BTW, and who thought of the "squirting music" to a Brown Zune bit? Probably the same one who thought "Welcome to the Social" was as sophisticated as the Dr Scholls "I'm Gelli'n, are you Gelli'n" ads. Ecch.
The only one who deserves a Brown Zune for Christmas is Bill Gates.
The work "Zune" may enter the lexicon as a word akin to Edsel or Pinto.
I heard a guy at work yesterday mentioning Sony's battery recall and commenting they "pulled a brown Zune" in terms of their marketing failure to deal with the problem correctly. (Brown being the least popular color for the Zune).
Think of the uses... "The Republicans got handed a Zune in the last election".
http://bricklink.com/ is sort of like ebay for LEGO. There are thousands of sellers around the world who buy Technic kits, break them down, then sell the parts. When you need exactly 5 of a particular gear it's a godsend.
I built my Difference Engine using LEGO bought from various sellers there.
Assuming your numbers are right it would require us to multiply our corn production by six times to just satisfy our current oil use. This assumes it requires ZERO energy to raise that corn and that the existing production continues to go to its current uses (food etc).
As to our "importing" it from agricultural nations, we ARE the corn exporting agricultural nation.
Using agricultural waste might be a good idea, but growing corn to obtain energy is a loosing propsition.
The Holy Grail when I worked with military networks (admittedly 10 years ago) was "multilevel security" which could enable a "top secret" and "secret" network to coexist and share data in a very controlled way. Information can go up, but never down. The hard part is how do you receive mail or do other things which require a two-way protocol? We built boxes which could sit in the middle and could pass messages. This appears to be a more advanced version of that.
The first Difference Engine I built could do 2nd order differences to 3 digits. The second machine (the one I posted at http://acarol.woz.org/ had better carry timing and was built to the same 2nd order/3 digit size, but is capable of being expanded to 4 digits and 3rd order differences.
I've had a lot of people ask for directions on how to make it, so I'm cleaning up the design to be easier than it currently is. Mostly making the adder rotors removable and making the power drive gear box a distinct module.
Some day I'm hoping to do a mini-analytic engine. Perhaps three or four registers, a simple ALU, programmed through a gear chain. This will require a lot of thought.
My followup to the Difference Engine is going to be a "tiny" Analytic Engine like thing. It can't possibly be as Babage envisioned, but it will be a general purpose programmable machine made from pure LEGO.
I envision four 2 digit "registers", a few math operations, and a conditional store operation. The programming will be via chain link LEGO pieces. Narrow bicycle chain means no-operation, wide tank-track chain indications "do it". There would be a half dozen or more synchonized chains running in parallel to carry out the program. Changing the program would mean changing the links on the chains.
I will be updating my page eventually with future directions.
The short term plan is to go to 4 digits and 3 orders of differences. I'm also recasting the machine to be easier to build because I've had a lot of people ask for plans.
If private money funded the research, then they have a much stronger claim to be able to control it. Don't like it? Come up with your own billion dollars and find your own cure.
If we go around cherry picking the truely ground breaking inventions "for the public good" from people who spent their own dime and took their own risks, I can assure you no one will do that in the future.
Conversely, if the US funded it or it was otherwise paid for with public money then the public took the risk and the public should own the benefits. Most University research falls into the evil loop hole where _I_ paid for it, but _THEY_ benfit. That stinks.
Private money? You win/lose on how good your bet is. It encourages really clever thinking. Public money? We all gonna share.
Each car that generates this "power" will find that it burns that little bit more gas than they would have otherwise going over the hump.
In fact, because of the inefficiencies involved, it would have saved fuel to have simply used electricity generated by a real power plant than being a vampire and taking it a bit at a time out of cars passing overhead.
These people either do not know the cost is simply being passed on to each car in terms of more fuel burned or don't care.
One of the tenets of logic is set membership. All dogs are mammals but not all mammals are dogs. If you get bitten by a dog, groaning on about those damn mammals isn't real productive.
Just because the people who offend you happen to call themselves Christains is no reason to lump all Christains into your anger.
I'll disavow it, but that's a meaningless gesture. I certainly had nothing to do with it. Don't know those who did, and I certainly don't approve of either that Kansas School Board anti-science work or of the attack on the professor.
I also don't approve of the professors rather silly letter. I would have hoped he would want to teach the truth for it's own sake, not to rub peoples faces in it in anger. But I don't think that he in any way deserved to be harmed or threatened.
I happen to be a strong believer in the absolute logic of evolution. It think it's a rather elogant answer to how the world got this way. I don't believe in a God and I have no beef with Gays marrying.
That said, I also am a strong beliver in taking personal responsibilty for what I say and do and I also expect that of others. Lumping the idiots with all Christains is self defeating.
It allows the idiots to frame the battle as us versus ALL Christians.
It alienates people who might otherwise be supporters or at least neutral.
It distracts from the pure scientific truth of our arguments.
It creates group blame rather than specific blame. The blame is spread amongs a billion Christains rather than the few hundred or thousand actual idiots clamering for this stuff.
Wanting the Pope to invene just shows how silly this is. Christains as so schisimed that half of Christainity distrust the Pope, a smaller fraction outright hate him. He doesn't speak for a huge percentage of them.
You will note I did not say HE made the "Christian" generaliation. I submit that more than a few on Slashdot did.
By attacking "Christians" as a class because of the actions of the anti science "fundimentalist" crowd we alienate potential allies (or at least neutral parties), and give the fundimentaists the power to frame the debate.
This is about responsiblity. We should hold people responsbile for their actions.
This is also about our responsibility. Attacking the class for the actions of a few and demanding the class reign in the troublemakers is to take the easy way out and abdicate our responsibility as human beings to deal with the actual people doing the actual harm.
This can't be about personal attacks and mockery. This has to be about science and truth. Allow them to look shrill, bitter, and angry.
"It's up to these who understand that their values are being exploited by the modernized equivalent of Talibans to stand up and defend them by systematically exposing the hypocrisy of the bigots."
NO, that plays into their hands. It's NOT about "Christian values". This allows the anti-science crowd to define the debate. Once they define the debate you've already lost.
This is simply about science versus a personal, unprovable belief being taught in school. That means that pretty much anybody can step to this.
Attacking the opposition through ad-hominum (which is what got this professor the media attention to begin with) gives the anti-science crowd power and distracts from the real merits of the debate. This is because people who otherwise had no specific stake in this felt attacked by him.
We should stick to the facts. Allow the opposition to look shrill and empty. Don't play into that ourselves.
Most certainly like *some* do with Muslims. As I said in a previous reply, Muslims as a class are no more responsible for the bombings in Bali (or anywhere) as Christians are responsible for the evolution debacle in Kansas.
People need to take responsibility for what they say and they should expect it from others. Group blame is an abdication of that expectation.
We all have choices. Is your choice to blame all Christians for the actions of a few vocal ones?
I would imagine you have made choices to be a member of many groups and classes of people. Some of whom probably bug the hell out of others. Are their actions YOUR fault?
We need to take responsbility for ourselves and expect it from others. Blaming all Christians is the easy way out and cheapens the issue because suddenly it's not about the clear truth of science and the insanity of "intelligent design" but about attacks and blame.
We can win with logic, but if we fall into their blame game we are no better. Save the venom from the SPECIFIC people and groups who are doing the idiot work.
For some reason people are unable to grasp the concept of personal responsibilty for themselves OR to expect it from others. What is the facination with "group blame"?
"It's telling that you chose the opposite analogy, though. I have a theory that Christians like to see themselves as a persecuted minority, especially when they're in the majority and doing the persecuting."
You are again taking the actions of a vocal few who have a persecution complex and applying it to Christians as a entire class. It's no better than some Blacks being angry with all Whites over a bunch of KKK idiots or some Whites being angry with all Japanese Amercians over Pearl Harbor.
Are you responsible for the actions of others who overlap a class with you? Should I be angry with YOU because you don't disclaim the actions of people who you have no control over? If so, you'd be pretty damn busy, cause you are a member of a lot of classes that I'm sure someone, somewhere has some beef with.
I'm not sure they can or it's somehow "more" their responsibility than the responsibility of ALL sane people to deal with anti science or bigoted elements of the population regardless of labels.
We might as well say Italians must deal with getting disparaged until they got control of that Mafia element of their community and will be seen as abetting their crime. People are responsibile for their own actions not their community.
Attacks on Christians as a whole alienates a large number of people who may well otherwise be allies in this battle. Attack the problem of being anti-science, or bigioted, or racist, not the larger community of otherwise pretty decent people.
I'm not sure what you mean by the "Until you.." bit. I don't belive there is a God or intelligent designer. That just defers the problem to "who made God?". I'm in the "It's just physics camp.".
So far as I know the professor never said that. I never said he did, nor did I mean to imply the article did. My point is that SOME people here on Slashdot are making these kinds of generalizations in many of the posts.
"Radical Creationists", "Fundimentalists", "Christian Right", etc gets a bit closer to target than the very broad brush of simply "Christians".
"Christians" (as a group) are no more responsible for the Kanasas School Board debacle or the professors attack than Muslims (as a group) are for bombings in Bali.
I happen to be in the Dawkins camp as a firm beliver in evolution. God doesn't exist. Can't exist. I just think the attacks on Christians as a whole for the actions of an ill-manner minority is distrating from the real merits of the getting science taught in schools rather than "Intelligent Design".
People seem to confuse the very tiny number of people who attacked this professor and who maintain a non-scientific militaint anti evolusionist stance with the much larger group of people who call themselves "Christians".
People are extrapolating the actions of a small group of hateful idiots to an entire class of people who happen to have an overlapping characteristic and disparaging the entire group as stupid, backward, or violent.
I suspect those same people would be horrified if the actions of a single minority member were to be unfairly extrapolated to their entire race or culture.
Slashdot Mirror
1 - Fail-safe. The machine can break, power can go out, etc. The paper ballot still exists and can be easily hand counted.
2 - Inexpensive scaling. Since you mark on paper the polling station can have 20 booths for people which are not much more than a table, curtain, and a pen; yet they can share one or two optical scanners. Touch screen systems require one expensive machine per booth.
Do the math. 20 expensive touch screen machines per polling station, versus 2 less expensive optical scanners.
This cost savings could be used in urban areas where there traditionally have not been enough resources for the election.
3 - Trustable. Any dispute can be settled by the actual piece of paper I wrote on. Optical scanners are based on technology used by schools to grade for decades and require little more than a motor, light sensor, and a very low end CPU. There is little to go wrong and very little which can hide tricks.
4 - Easy to use. I take a pen and fill in a box. Touch screen systems appear to suffer serious "alignment" issues which can cause votes to be mis-registered and which require frequent realignment in the field.
5 - Robust. There is no screen to be scratched, or broken. The voter never interacts with the scanner except to slide a piece of paper into it. There is no printer to jam, or foul, or have other issues.
I've seen nothing in print that says that. This may be true for government mandated "taxes" on blank media that some countries do. The laws that authorize the tax often clear users, or at least the courts have rule in some cases
But this is a private deal between Microsoft and Universal Music "because of piracy". They might as well have used the term "because the sky is blue". Just 'cause the word piracy is in their press release doesn't mean Universal Music is giving us something good for their buck. The copyright laws and DCMA still gives them the power to sue anybody who "steals" their music.
This was done to benefit the Microsoft and the RIAA and was designed to do NOTHING for us. Anybody who thinks different let us know if the RIAA decides to drop the suit 'cause you stored the music on a Zune
If there is something offical which actually indicates otherwise as opposed to our wishing and hoping based on their claiming it was to make up for piracy then I'd love to see it.
I am not aware the money the Universal Music gets is a "royalty" fee or a licence fee for ANY consumer action. It's just money Microsoft gives them so that THEY can sell music on-line.
Having bought such a machine confers nothing useful on us. It's simply a tool Microsoft will use to disadvantage the other venders who want online stores.
Owning a Zune confers no rights to "copy" music beyond any you had before-hand.
Those are boxes made from LEGO which happen to house modern computers.
// Yes, this is a shameless plug for my own machine...
This is a computing device MADE from LEGO... Three digits of mean hand cranked polynomial goodness. Only 105 turns of the crank per quadratic result!
http://acarol.woz.org/
Computing the way Babbage intended!
The Zune hardware is not too bad. Some reviews have actually said it's really pretty good. The problem is that you don't try to take on the market leader with a device that is about as good for the same price. Esp if it's larger, heavier, and has less battery. The biggest "cool factor", the WiFi isn't even remotely useful until there is a critical mass of Zune in the wild. If you want to squirt stuff from your Zune you have to find someone else who has one.
But it's not flying off the shelves. It's NOT EVEN ON some shelves. It will fall off the Amazon top 100 in the next few days. The iPod is 5 or 6 of the Amazon top ten electronics sellers. The #1 at Amazon has firmly been an iPod for weeks. (Zune was #94 last I checked)
And Microsoft has done everything right. They were able to convince the entire non-iPod MP3 player industry to adopt Plays-For-Sure so they could all be put out of Microsofts way at once and they STILL can't outsell Creative's player.
Would you do business with them after they lured you into Plays-For-Sure?
They were carefull to pay off the RIAA through Universal Music for each Zune sold. The RIAA gets their money when you pay at the cash register. That way people can know they are doing the right thing.
Everyone who wants to send a buck to the RIAA by buying a Zune raise your hand!
They did a lot of focus groups and their ads had the right mix of Black, White, Asian, women, men, young, and old in their "Welcome to the Social" ads which feature some kind of music player. Did their ads really inform anybody about the Zune? Why I want one instead of an iPod?
They carefully came up with a misleading "points" scheme to cloud how much a song costs and to force consumers to leave a few cents on the table for each purchase. This is sure to appeal to the average buyer.
The only one who deserves a Brown Zune for Christmas is Bill Gates.
Microsots marketing must still be questioned.
I still have this image in my head of Beavis saying "Heh, heh. He said Brown Zune!"
Clearly others have made the "Brown Zune" connection. That can't possibly be where marketing geniuses thought using a Brown Zune to squirt music would lead them.
If enough people made that mental association, the Zune brand is dead.
While the Zune hardware is not bad, the execution of the whole package lays bare the heart of Microsoft.
Having DRM I can deal with because I can choose to not purchase music from their store. I can obtain it elsewhere. But the fact they send money to Universal Music just from selling the hardware exposes whose side they are on. Even if I never buy from the RIAA they get their pound of flesh. Buyers are forced to pay the "music thief" tax.
Buy a Zune and send money to the people who will sue you or some old lady next year.
I also find it astounding people fall for their "point" scheme. Buy points now and leave a few dozen on the table each time you buy music. They make interest from all those points and mock you with it. It's anti-consumer like 10 hotdogs in a package versus 8 buns in a pack. It forces you to buy more than you want.
The faux-cool of the "it's got wifi and it's not an iPod" crowd astounds me. They are so eager to be "so cool they can't sell out by owning an iPod" are the very same people causing money to go to the RIAA and buying into the very vender who will enslave their music and hardware later.
Make no mistake. The reason MS sends money to Universal Music is to make it harder for all of the other hardware venders to avoid it. It sets up MS as the only people who will be able to do this. To borrow a bad line, "in the future all MP3 players are Microsoft".
BTW, and who thought of the "squirting music" to a Brown Zune bit? Probably the same one who thought "Welcome to the Social" was as sophisticated as the Dr Scholls "I'm Gelli'n, are you Gelli'n" ads. Ecch.
The only one who deserves a Brown Zune for Christmas is Bill Gates.
The work "Zune" may enter the lexicon as a word akin to Edsel or Pinto.
I heard a guy at work yesterday mentioning Sony's battery recall and commenting they "pulled a brown Zune" in terms of their marketing failure to deal with the problem correctly. (Brown being the least popular color for the Zune).
Think of the uses... "The Republicans got handed a Zune in the last election".
It was on Slashdot many moons ago. It's at http://acarol.woz.org/. I'm VERY close to having a significantly improved design posted. Enjoy...
http://bricklink.com/ is sort of like ebay for LEGO. There are thousands of sellers around the world who buy Technic kits, break them down, then sell the parts. When you need exactly 5 of a particular gear it's a godsend. I built my Difference Engine using LEGO bought from various sellers there.
Assuming your numbers are right it would require us to multiply our corn production by six times to just satisfy our current oil use. This assumes it requires ZERO energy to raise that corn and that the existing production continues to go to its current uses (food etc). As to our "importing" it from agricultural nations, we ARE the corn exporting agricultural nation. Using agricultural waste might be a good idea, but growing corn to obtain energy is a loosing propsition.
The Holy Grail when I worked with military networks (admittedly 10 years ago) was "multilevel security" which could enable a "top secret" and "secret" network to coexist and share data in a very controlled way. Information can go up, but never down. The hard part is how do you receive mail or do other things which require a two-way protocol? We built boxes which could sit in the middle and could pass messages. This appears to be a more advanced version of that.
The first Difference Engine I built could do 2nd order differences to 3 digits. The second machine (the one I posted at http://acarol.woz.org/ had better carry timing and was built to the same 2nd order/3 digit size, but is capable of being expanded to 4 digits and 3rd order differences.
I've had a lot of people ask for directions on how to make it, so I'm cleaning up the design to be easier than it currently is. Mostly making the adder rotors removable and making the power drive gear box a distinct module.
Some day I'm hoping to do a mini-analytic engine. Perhaps three or four registers, a simple ALU, programmed through a gear chain. This will require a lot of thought.
My followup to the Difference Engine is going to be a "tiny" Analytic Engine like thing. It can't possibly be as Babage envisioned, but it will be a general purpose programmable machine made from pure LEGO.
I envision four 2 digit "registers", a few math operations, and a conditional store operation. The programming will be via chain link LEGO pieces. Narrow bicycle chain means no-operation, wide tank-track chain indications "do it". There would be a half dozen or more synchonized chains running in parallel to carry out the program. Changing the program would mean changing the links on the chains.
I will be updating my page eventually with future directions.
The short term plan is to go to 4 digits and 3 orders of differences. I'm also recasting the machine to be easier to build because I've had a lot of people ask for plans.
If private money funded the research, then they have a much stronger claim to be able to control it. Don't like it? Come up with your own billion dollars and find your own cure.
If we go around cherry picking the truely ground breaking inventions "for the public good" from people who spent their own dime and took their own risks, I can assure you no one will do that in the future.
Conversely, if the US funded it or it was otherwise paid for with public money then the public took the risk and the public should own the benefits. Most University research falls into the evil loop hole where _I_ paid for it, but _THEY_ benfit. That stinks.
Private money? You win/lose on how good your bet is. It encourages really clever thinking.
Public money? We all gonna share.
In fact, because of the inefficiencies involved, it would have saved fuel to have simply used electricity generated by a real power plant than being a vampire and taking it a bit at a time out of cars passing overhead.
These people either do not know the cost is simply being passed on to each car in terms of more fuel burned or don't care.
Just because the people who offend you happen to call themselves Christains is no reason to lump all Christains into your anger.
I'll disavow it, but that's a meaningless gesture. I certainly had nothing to do with it. Don't know those who did, and I certainly don't approve of either that Kansas School Board anti-science work or of the attack on the professor. I also don't approve of the professors rather silly letter. I would have hoped he would want to teach the truth for it's own sake, not to rub peoples faces in it in anger. But I don't think that he in any way deserved to be harmed or threatened.
I happen to be a strong believer in the absolute logic of evolution. It think it's a rather elogant answer to how the world got this way. I don't believe in a God and I have no beef with Gays marrying.
That said, I also am a strong beliver in taking personal responsibilty for what I say and do and I also expect that of others. Lumping the idiots with all Christains is self defeating.
It allows the idiots to frame the battle as us versus ALL Christians.
It alienates people who might otherwise be supporters or at least neutral.
It distracts from the pure scientific truth of our arguments.
It creates group blame rather than specific blame. The blame is spread amongs a billion Christains rather than the few hundred or thousand actual idiots clamering for this stuff.
Wanting the Pope to invene just shows how silly this is. Christains as so schisimed that half of Christainity distrust the Pope, a smaller fraction outright hate him. He doesn't speak for a huge percentage of them.
By attacking "Christians" as a class because of the actions of the anti science "fundimentalist" crowd we alienate potential allies (or at least neutral parties), and give the fundimentaists the power to frame the debate.
This is about responsiblity. We should hold people responsbile for their actions.
This is also about our responsibility. Attacking the class for the actions of a few and demanding the class reign in the troublemakers is to take the easy way out and abdicate our responsibility as human beings to deal with the actual people doing the actual harm.
This can't be about personal attacks and mockery. This has to be about science and truth. Allow them to look shrill, bitter, and angry.
NO, that plays into their hands. It's NOT about "Christian values". This allows the anti-science crowd to define the debate. Once they define the debate you've already lost.
This is simply about science versus a personal, unprovable belief being taught in school. That means that pretty much anybody can step to this.
Attacking the opposition through ad-hominum (which is what got this professor the media attention to begin with) gives the anti-science crowd power and distracts from the real merits of the debate. This is because people who otherwise had no specific stake in this felt attacked by him.
We should stick to the facts. Allow the opposition to look shrill and empty. Don't play into that ourselves.
People need to take responsibility for what they say and they should expect it from others. Group blame is an abdication of that expectation.
I would imagine you have made choices to be a member of many groups and classes of people. Some of whom probably bug the hell out of others. Are their actions YOUR fault?
We need to take responsbility for ourselves and expect it from others. Blaming all Christians is the easy way out and cheapens the issue because suddenly it's not about the clear truth of science and the insanity of "intelligent design" but about attacks and blame.
We can win with logic, but if we fall into their blame game we are no better. Save the venom from the SPECIFIC people and groups who are doing the idiot work.
"It's telling that you chose the opposite analogy, though. I have a theory that Christians like to see themselves as a persecuted minority, especially when they're in the majority and doing the persecuting."
You are again taking the actions of a vocal few who have a persecution complex and applying it to Christians as a entire class. It's no better than some Blacks being angry with all Whites over a bunch of KKK idiots or some Whites being angry with all Japanese Amercians over Pearl Harbor.
Are you responsible for the actions of others who overlap a class with you? Should I be angry with YOU because you don't disclaim the actions of people who you have no control over? If so, you'd be pretty damn busy, cause you are a member of a lot of classes that I'm sure someone, somewhere has some beef with.
I'm not sure they can or it's somehow "more" their responsibility than the responsibility of ALL sane people to deal with anti science or bigoted elements of the population regardless of labels. We might as well say Italians must deal with getting disparaged until they got control of that Mafia element of their community and will be seen as abetting their crime. People are responsibile for their own actions not their community. Attacks on Christians as a whole alienates a large number of people who may well otherwise be allies in this battle. Attack the problem of being anti-science, or bigioted, or racist, not the larger community of otherwise pretty decent people. I'm not sure what you mean by the "Until you.." bit. I don't belive there is a God or intelligent designer. That just defers the problem to "who made God?". I'm in the "It's just physics camp.".
So far as I know the professor never said that. I never said he did, nor did I mean to imply the article did. My point is that SOME people here on Slashdot are making these kinds of generalizations in many of the posts. "Radical Creationists", "Fundimentalists", "Christian Right", etc gets a bit closer to target than the very broad brush of simply "Christians". "Christians" (as a group) are no more responsible for the Kanasas School Board debacle or the professors attack than Muslims (as a group) are for bombings in Bali. I happen to be in the Dawkins camp as a firm beliver in evolution. God doesn't exist. Can't exist. I just think the attacks on Christians as a whole for the actions of an ill-manner minority is distrating from the real merits of the getting science taught in schools rather than "Intelligent Design".
People seem to confuse the very tiny number of people who attacked this professor and who maintain a non-scientific militaint anti evolusionist stance with the much larger group of people who call themselves "Christians".
People are extrapolating the actions of a small group of hateful idiots to an entire class of people who happen to have an overlapping characteristic and disparaging the entire group as stupid, backward, or violent.
I suspect those same people would be horrified if the actions of a single minority member were to be unfairly extrapolated to their entire race or culture.