Compromise, however, requires cooperation from both parties. And if even if our values prohibit us from simply killing them all, if theirs do not, what reason do they have to compromise?
Good old fashioned self interest, likely. There are good reasons for peace. Unfortunately in the eyes of both sides there are even better reasons for conflict.
I'm not saying it's easy, or even that peace is possible in the near future. I'm just saying that as long as you keep your personal blinders on, and refuse to acknowledge differences in values and morals, peace is completely impossible.
Look at your "grey" cases:
It's wrong to steal a stereo. -> because you wouldn't want anyone else stealing yours.
It's not really wrong to steal bread when your child is starving -> because in the conflict between the owner of the bread and your child, you side with your child. Of course, this wouldn't be a problem if the owner of the bread followed the ethic and/gave you the bread to begin with/.
It's wrong to cheat on your fiance... -> because you wouldn't want to be cheated on.
unless he's a jerk and you're on board the Titanic and you meet a guy you dig - then it's romantic. -> hah.
It's wrong to kill. -> because you generally don't want to die.
But it's not wrong to kill to defend your family. -> because, as in the child example, you side with your family. Of course, this wouldn't be a problem if the person trying to kill you followed the ethic...
In each of the cases where who you side with changes the viewpoint, we're back to moral subjectivity.
I respectfully disagree with your assumption that there is an absolute "good".
If good and evil are subjective...then why should be even bother with trying to see both sides? Why bother trying to make peace? If there's no such thing as an objective good to strive for and follow then why the fuck don't we just kill 'em all? As long as we can justify it with our subjective morality, we're not doing anything wrong!...If there is no such thing as objective good and evil then there is no reason to change our viewpoint. There is no reason to make peace. There is no purpose in it because there is no goal to achieve, no standard to follow. You say we shouldn't label people as evil in the name of trying to achieve peace. Is peace objectively good? Or is that your own subjective opinion of the way things should be? By your arguments, it could only be the latter. In that case, your argument is completely pointless. More people in this country clearly have the subjective opinion that the "war" we're in is morally justified. Why should they follow your subjective opinion of what is good over the one they currently have? By your logic, the only thing for our country to do then is to continue the fighting, not make peace.
I think you simultaneously got, and missed, my point.
I'm saying the labels don't apply to other groups, and you can't reach a peaceful situation as long as you keep labelling somebody by your personal values.
Why don't you just kill them all, since values are subjective? Because your subjective values - the ones you revere - probably don't allow for that.
Where in my logic did I say everybody should just keep fighting? Smells suspiciously like a straw man.
I'm saying that if you want to find an end to the fighting, you have to stop vilifying the enemy, and start searching for some mutually agreeable reasons to stop fighting - and be willing to accept the fact that the group you are encountering friction with does not think the way you do. Compromise in the name of sharing the planet.
(Taken from my page. Seemed applicable since the indiscriminate labelling in this thread is just off the scale.)
Good and evil... right and wrong... even noble and dastardly... these are the social mileposts by which we measure ourselves and others.
In a rush to apply these labels, though, we often forget that these are not objective measurements. They are completely subjective, guided by our upbringing, our surroundings, our faith (or lack thereof), even our mood.
And when we seriously disagree with somebody elses viewpoint we often choose to label them "evil". One large, omnipresent example of this type of labelling occurred with the destruction of the World Trade Center.
It's difficult to rally people with a cry of, "Those people with different lives, values and backgrounds who felt it necessary to challenge us in a way that is foreign to our thinking must be dealt with in some fashion!"
Far more effective is the battle cry of, "The terrorists have engaged in evil acts, and must be hunted down and punished!"
Problem is, "evil" is an EXTREMELY subjective term. By many tenets of their upbringing and faith, these Muslims have every right to find the U.S. to be "evil", "decadent", even "doomed". By their morality, they are justified. They aren't wrong, because everything is a point of view. And I guarantee you that when they have their 8:00 a.m. morning meeting to discuss the agenda, the title on the page is not "Evil To Spread This Period". They firmly believe they are both "right" and "good".
There is no such thing as objective morality. There is no universal "good" or "evil". We choose to define these things the way we do because of who we are. But to expect the rest of the world - all 6 billion of us - to toe the line with respect to values is ridiculous.
I know the religious will claim that absolute "good" and "evil" exist. They'll also almost certainly believe that their particular religion is the source of these definitions. The problem is that religions are neither universal nor consistent within themselves. To declare ones own religion to be correct is to declare others to be incorrect. Many people will claim exactly that, though. To those people I have no response. There can be no meaningful discussion with somebody possessing complete, unshakeable faith. Such faith leaves no room for the idea that one might not be completely right.
But even within our own social sphere it's a big wash of grey. It's wrong to steal a stereo. It's not really wrong to steal bread when your child is starving - and no judge would sentence anybody for it. It's wrong to cheat on your fiance... unless he's a jerk and you're on board the Titanic and you meet a guy you dig - then it's romantic. It's wrong to kill. But it's not wrong to kill to defend your family. Everything is situational.
Western governments are big on tossing out the label of "evil" as an absolute. It's a useful tactic, employed by every government in wartime. The vilification of the enemy is practically a necessity. If the troops see the other side as thinking, feeling, fully-formed people, they will not kill them with the same expediency. Even more critical is the process of defining its own actions as "good", so that they do not come under scrutiny in the near term. After all, if we're "good" we shouldn't have to adjust our foreign policy (as an example).
We are a world at war. That has really only been brought home to the average North American in the last five years. And things are going to get worse before they get better.
But we can't expect to make any headway on peace through any means except by conquest unless we finally try to truly see both sides of each issue. And we can't do that until we stop painting everything in black and white. As long as we call a group "evil" we will never be able to see their side. It's a blinding mechanism.
Good and evil... right and wrong... judgments. Judgments that get in the way. These terms should only be used in measuring ourselves and our actions, because we are the only ones for whom these evaluations apply. As soon as you start evaluating others in this way, you are on extremely shaky ground.
Some people here have actually suggested that Microsoft has deliberately made Windows full of security bugs over the last decade to allow them to take advantage of this marketing opportunity.
So let me get this straight. The claim is that Microsofts evil plan is to profit at a rate of $50 per year from a group that consists of people that (a) don't use a free antivirus product, (b) don't stick to their pay product out of inertia, or (c) don't avoid Microsoft products on principle.
Really. Well, no matter what you think of their product, their marketing and business strategies are not that bad.
"Currently "enjoying" the comedown from a good weekend, i can assure you. ITS PAIN... alot of tweakers tend to either drop dead or go pschyo after being up for 7 days."
Now, now... The original post was a joke, and so was the followup. Let's not get into a drug-based dick-sizing competition.
Actually I think in 5-10 years you'll have progressed into obsolescence and unemployment
Nope. My company is footing the bill for 7 project management courses. Actually, they've already done so. The courses are done. I don't work for an IT company. I work for a solid, secure company that has an IT division. They keep their employees for decades, and retrain them if they want to move, laterally or vertically. The people in my position formerly are currently leading teams in unrelated areas.
I'll be here pretty much until I retire.
It's Too Much.
on
Beyond Java
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
On any large development project, by the time you've actually rolled into production, the toolset you selected is already out of date, and you have to start an "update the back end" project. And of course next is the project to unify your companies approach to delivering solutions, which means projects to bring the other projects in line. And when you're done that, it's time to revisit the back-end again.
I'm only 35 and I'm so tired of it. I don't want new languages. I just want to work with tools the team truly understands.
I have a life outside of work. The days of my wanting to read through stacks of documentation in the evenings to learn the latest new thing are gone.
So I'm being groomed for what I think is the natural progression for the tired but still knowledgeable developer... project management.
No... good women prefer men who don't sit around whining about how apes get all the girls.
All the brainy virgins out there just can't wrap their minds around a simple basic reality. If everything you have to offer a girl can be obtained by her in platonic friendship, then why should she go any further than "just friends"?
Get fit, dress nice, and stop thinking about how big your brain is. There are plenty of women.
Seriously. Fire the idjit who thought that one up.
Know why you don't advertise a Lexus during Maury? Apparently neither do the minds behind the "Public Awareness of Science and Engineering Drama Fund".
Have you tried Eclipse? It blows the doors off of anything MS has done IMO and I've used Visual Studio for years.
I recently attended four night classes on Java. Eclipse was the development platform.
When building GUI's in swing, the components would often collapse into points when dropped on the screen. The only way to get them back was to close the project and reopen them
Spaces in XML files in areas that should have been ignored caused application builds to fail. These were very difficult to track down.
I would try a build twice, with some specific failure resulting, and I would be unable to find the problem. I'd close down Eclipse, reopen it, and it would work fine.
I don't know how much time we spent fighting the tool on insignificant little issues that should never come up. I do know that I wrote a letter to the institution explaining that i would never attend another course with them again. I said that the platform provided should be solid, otherwise they are wasting my time.
I also downloaded the software onto my system, and tried to retrace our steps at home, with exactly the same problems.
I never had any problems of this kind during my limited exposure to Visual Studio.
As the highly computer literate relative, I have had to put my foot down as well. My time isn't limitless. More than half of my family run drastically outdated software on even more outdated hardware, and the phone rings a lot. I tell most of them there's nothing I can do. New software and new hardware.
Sounds heartless, but my family would suck every last minute out of my life if they could.
It's funny. I have contractor cousins. I would never dream of saying, "Shingle my house for free. Here are some old shingles."
I would never charge family for the help. The flip side is that excepting for very specific circumstances, I often won't help at all.
(Taken from my weblog Jan 22, 2006, at least 30% on topic)
"Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blind-folded fear." - Thomas Jefferson
Every now and then I take stock of my beliefs. I think everybody should do the same. After all, I'm a work in progress, and so are my opinions. That which I believed yesterday might have failed to hold up in the light of today. I often wonder what will happen to my beliefs in the four or five decades remaining in my life. Will I lose my pragmatic viewpoint, and embrace faith? Or will I increase my demand that proof accompany any extraordinary claim? I don't know what the future holds.
Do I believe in the existence of God? No.
Do I believe in the nonexistence of God? No.
I do not have belief in either of these scenarios, for both questions ask me to make a definitive call as to the state of being of something inherently unprovable. All I can say with any degree of confidence is that if God does exist, I'm pretty sure that no religion on the planet has anything resembling a true understanding of the entity. I'd be willing to bet they've got everything wrong.
I do know that I fully agree with the 1995 U.S. federal court ruling on Kitzmiller V. Dover Area School District. The district had a requirement endorsing intelligent design as an alternative to evolution. The court ruled that intelligent design was inherently religious in nature, and so rejected the requirement. For something to be a science, it must be consistent, empirically tested and falsifiable, correctable, dynamic, progressive, provisional, and based on multiple observations. Intelligent design fails most of these basic requirements. I don't believe you can replace a scientific theory with a philosophical one. By all means, teach religion in schools with religious affiliations. But don't teach it in science class.
I actually believe there is a great deal of instructional value in examining the debate itself in the classroom. Recently I've been absorbing the arguments on creationism versus evolution. There is powerful logic on both sides of this debate - showstoppers all around. Education should not simply be an exercise in knowledge transfer. Facts are lonely items. Don't teach your class that intelligent design is an alternative to evolution. Discuss with them the debate itself, where the philosophical issues lie, and why each view is difficult to refute.
Teach them to think in different ways, and to see things from the perspective of others. But when it comes right down to it, on one side is a slow progression of knowledge, and on the other side is the completely unprovable. Faith is the cornerstone of religion. You have to have faith, because there is no proof. If you had proof, you wouldn't need faith. Keep it out of the science class, that's all. It's the ultimate apples-and-oranges discussion.
Do I believe that organized religion has merit? Yes I do.
Do I believe that the benefits of organized religion outweigh the costs? That's a much more difficult question. I'm leaning towards saying that organized religion is not worth the price we have paid for it. I'm sure that no system populated by man, no matter how divinely inspired, is free of corruption. As Lord John Acton said, "Power corrupts, and absolute power corrups absolutely."
I believe that the upper echelons of every powerful religion resemble those of every major government. These organizations are concerned with retaining power, protecting themselves, and maintaining the status quo.
I believe spirituality can exist without dogma.
I believe that a sense of the divine can be better felt on a mountaintop at sunrise than within the walls of St. Peter's Basilica.
I believe that the collection and hoarding of great art and riches renders a religious institution completely null and void. It is a self-defeating process. A religion
I remember some girls from my "parties, booze, drugs, and women who like booze and drugs" days who should be tagged and tracked. I'm pretty certain we could learn a lot from them about the spreading of infectious diseases.
Had you spent the 1400 hours chasing chicks, what do you think you might have had to show for it? Other than VD or a seriously brused ego?
Spend 1400 hours chasing chicks, and you're bound to get really good at it! Then you can write a book on the subject and make tons of money off of geeks who get tired of playing World of Warcraft, but who can't talk to a girl to save their lives.
I'm sorry, but I fail to see how this addresses my point. I didn't mean to imply that I've had a hard life. I haven't. I've had a great life, my monetarily poor childhood included. We just had to be extremely careful with money.
You've gone far left field with this. My point was that if somebody who is living at the edges of their limited means needs a single item, "splurging and buying two" just to avoid change is often not an item.
I have never faced that problem as a provider. While I have a girlfriend, I have yet to marry. I make a shade under $6k per month, so I'll probably be fine.
But I've seen it from the other side. When I was a child, my family was poor. Not homeless poor, but "trailer on the outskirts of the city, living on moose/elk/grouse from my fathers fall hunting trips, never saw a movie in a theatre until age 14 poor". The money was accounted for to a penny. No nagging involved. It was a simply accepted that frugality was required.
So long as you can eat, have a place to stay, and have fun, why worry about money problems? Money is not even real anymore. Its not backed by hard currency, its just blips on a screen
Let's try an experiment. You take a piece of paper, some crayolas, and create a new $10 bill. Take it to the nearest grocery store, and try to buy food with it. Then explain to them how money is a fiction anyway. Let me know how that goes.
Why worry about money problems? Well, if you have no dependents, no real money issues, and few responsibilites, then by all means, don't.
I wouldn't have objected to your post but for its built-in disregard for the people who live on income at the subsistence level. That would also include seniors on fixed incomes.
Slashdot Mirror
Compromise, however, requires cooperation from both parties. And if even if our values prohibit us from simply killing them all, if theirs do not, what reason do they have to compromise?
Good old fashioned self interest, likely. There are good reasons for peace. Unfortunately in the eyes of both sides there are even better reasons for conflict. I'm not saying it's easy, or even that peace is possible in the near future. I'm just saying that as long as you keep your personal blinders on, and refuse to acknowledge differences in values and morals, peace is completely impossible.
Look at your "grey" cases: It's wrong to steal a stereo. -> because you wouldn't want anyone else stealing yours. It's not really wrong to steal bread when your child is starving -> because in the conflict between the owner of the bread and your child, you side with your child. Of course, this wouldn't be a problem if the owner of the bread followed the ethic and /gave you the bread to begin with/.
It's wrong to cheat on your fiance... -> because you wouldn't want to be cheated on.
unless he's a jerk and you're on board the Titanic and you meet a guy you dig - then it's romantic. -> hah.
It's wrong to kill. -> because you generally don't want to die.
But it's not wrong to kill to defend your family. -> because, as in the child example, you side with your family. Of course, this wouldn't be a problem if the person trying to kill you followed the ethic...
In each of the cases where who you side with changes the viewpoint, we're back to moral subjectivity.
I respectfully disagree with your assumption that there is an absolute "good".
If good and evil are subjective...then why should be even bother with trying to see both sides? Why bother trying to make peace? If there's no such thing as an objective good to strive for and follow then why the fuck don't we just kill 'em all? As long as we can justify it with our subjective morality, we're not doing anything wrong!...If there is no such thing as objective good and evil then there is no reason to change our viewpoint. There is no reason to make peace. There is no purpose in it because there is no goal to achieve, no standard to follow. You say we shouldn't label people as evil in the name of trying to achieve peace. Is peace objectively good? Or is that your own subjective opinion of the way things should be? By your arguments, it could only be the latter. In that case, your argument is completely pointless. More people in this country clearly have the subjective opinion that the "war" we're in is morally justified. Why should they follow your subjective opinion of what is good over the one they currently have? By your logic, the only thing for our country to do then is to continue the fighting, not make peace. I think you simultaneously got, and missed, my point.
I'm saying the labels don't apply to other groups, and you can't reach a peaceful situation as long as you keep labelling somebody by your personal values.
Why don't you just kill them all, since values are subjective? Because your subjective values - the ones you revere - probably don't allow for that.
Where in my logic did I say everybody should just keep fighting? Smells suspiciously like a straw man.
I'm saying that if you want to find an end to the fighting, you have to stop vilifying the enemy, and start searching for some mutually agreeable reasons to stop fighting - and be willing to accept the fact that the group you are encountering friction with does not think the way you do. Compromise in the name of sharing the planet.
(Taken from my page. Seemed applicable since the indiscriminate labelling in this thread is just off the scale.)
Good and evil... right and wrong... even noble and dastardly... these are the social mileposts by which we measure ourselves and others.
In a rush to apply these labels, though, we often forget that these are not objective measurements. They are completely subjective, guided by our upbringing, our surroundings, our faith (or lack thereof), even our mood.
And when we seriously disagree with somebody elses viewpoint we often choose to label them "evil". One large, omnipresent example of this type of labelling occurred with the destruction of the World Trade Center.
It's difficult to rally people with a cry of, "Those people with different lives, values and backgrounds who felt it necessary to challenge us in a way that is foreign to our thinking must be dealt with in some fashion!"
Far more effective is the battle cry of, "The terrorists have engaged in evil acts, and must be hunted down and punished!"
Problem is, "evil" is an EXTREMELY subjective term. By many tenets of their upbringing and faith, these Muslims have every right to find the U.S. to be "evil", "decadent", even "doomed". By their morality, they are justified. They aren't wrong, because everything is a point of view. And I guarantee you that when they have their 8:00 a.m. morning meeting to discuss the agenda, the title on the page is not "Evil To Spread This Period". They firmly believe they are both "right" and "good".
There is no such thing as objective morality. There is no universal "good" or "evil". We choose to define these things the way we do because of who we are. But to expect the rest of the world - all 6 billion of us - to toe the line with respect to values is ridiculous.
I know the religious will claim that absolute "good" and "evil" exist. They'll also almost certainly believe that their particular religion is the source of these definitions. The problem is that religions are neither universal nor consistent within themselves. To declare ones own religion to be correct is to declare others to be incorrect. Many people will claim exactly that, though. To those people I have no response. There can be no meaningful discussion with somebody possessing complete, unshakeable faith. Such faith leaves no room for the idea that one might not be completely right.
But even within our own social sphere it's a big wash of grey. It's wrong to steal a stereo. It's not really wrong to steal bread when your child is starving - and no judge would sentence anybody for it. It's wrong to cheat on your fiance... unless he's a jerk and you're on board the Titanic and you meet a guy you dig - then it's romantic. It's wrong to kill. But it's not wrong to kill to defend your family. Everything is situational.
Western governments are big on tossing out the label of "evil" as an absolute. It's a useful tactic, employed by every government in wartime. The vilification of the enemy is practically a necessity. If the troops see the other side as thinking, feeling, fully-formed people, they will not kill them with the same expediency. Even more critical is the process of defining its own actions as "good", so that they do not come under scrutiny in the near term. After all, if we're "good" we shouldn't have to adjust our foreign policy (as an example).
We are a world at war. That has really only been brought home to the average North American in the last five years. And things are going to get worse before they get better.
But we can't expect to make any headway on peace through any means except by conquest unless we finally try to truly see both sides of each issue. And we can't do that until we stop painting everything in black and white. As long as we call a group "evil" we will never be able to see their side. It's a blinding mechanism.
Good and evil... right and wrong... judgments. Judgments that get in the way. These terms should only be used in measuring ourselves and our actions, because we are the only ones for whom these evaluations apply. As soon as you start evaluating others in this way, you are on extremely shaky ground.
Some people here have actually suggested that Microsoft has deliberately made Windows full of security bugs over the last decade to allow them to take advantage of this marketing opportunity.
So let me get this straight. The claim is that Microsofts evil plan is to profit at a rate of $50 per year from a group that consists of people that (a) don't use a free antivirus product, (b) don't stick to their pay product out of inertia, or (c) don't avoid Microsoft products on principle.
Really. Well, no matter what you think of their product, their marketing and business strategies are not that bad.
"Currently "enjoying" the comedown from a good weekend, i can assure you. ITS PAIN... alot of tweakers tend to either drop dead or go pschyo after being up for 7 days."
Now, now... The original post was a joke, and so was the followup. Let's not get into a drug-based dick-sizing competition.
...I'm just on an eight day cocaine/speed/Red Bull bender.
Actually I think in 5-10 years you'll have progressed into obsolescence and unemployment
Nope. My company is footing the bill for 7 project management courses. Actually, they've already done so. The courses are done. I don't work for an IT company. I work for a solid, secure company that has an IT division. They keep their employees for decades, and retrain them if they want to move, laterally or vertically. The people in my position formerly are currently leading teams in unrelated areas.
I'll be here pretty much until I retire.
On any large development project, by the time you've actually rolled into production, the toolset you selected is already out of date, and you have to start an "update the back end" project. And of course next is the project to unify your companies approach to delivering solutions, which means projects to bring the other projects in line. And when you're done that, it's time to revisit the back-end again.
I'm only 35 and I'm so tired of it. I don't want new languages. I just want to work with tools the team truly understands.
I have a life outside of work. The days of my wanting to read through stacks of documentation in the evenings to learn the latest new thing are gone.
So I'm being groomed for what I think is the natural progression for the tired but still knowledgeable developer... project management.
...may the barrage of bad Star Trek jokes be peppered with the occasional enlightening, thoughtful tidbit...
e., "Only fuck the people you wouldn't like otherwise
No... more like, "Only date people you wouldn't mind fucking."
Pretty good advice, actually.
Of course, some of us suffer from a terminal case of integrity and are unable to pull off such behavior.
I LOVE IT! "Yeah, mom, I'm never getting married because I have way too much integrity for today's woman." I'll try that one.
Good women prefer apes.
No... good women prefer men who don't sit around whining about how apes get all the girls.
All the brainy virgins out there just can't wrap their minds around a simple basic reality. If everything you have to offer a girl can be obtained by her in platonic friendship, then why should she go any further than "just friends"?
Get fit, dress nice, and stop thinking about how big your brain is. There are plenty of women.
Seriously. Fire the idjit who thought that one up.
Know why you don't advertise a Lexus during Maury? Apparently neither do the minds behind the "Public Awareness of Science and Engineering Drama Fund".
How do we know Christa McAuliffe had dandruff?
Found her head and shoulders on the beach.
What were the last words spoken on the shuttle?
"Okay, FINE! Let the bitch drive."
(Heard on a dial-up BBS 6 hours after the disaster. Dialed in with my C64.)
Have you tried Eclipse? It blows the doors off of anything MS has done IMO and I've used Visual Studio for years.
I recently attended four night classes on Java. Eclipse was the development platform.
When building GUI's in swing, the components would often collapse into points when dropped on the screen. The only way to get them back was to close the project and reopen them
Spaces in XML files in areas that should have been ignored caused application builds to fail. These were very difficult to track down.
I would try a build twice, with some specific failure resulting, and I would be unable to find the problem. I'd close down Eclipse, reopen it, and it would work fine.
I don't know how much time we spent fighting the tool on insignificant little issues that should never come up. I do know that I wrote a letter to the institution explaining that i would never attend another course with them again. I said that the platform provided should be solid, otherwise they are wasting my time.
I also downloaded the software onto my system, and tried to retrace our steps at home, with exactly the same problems.
I never had any problems of this kind during my limited exposure to Visual Studio.
As the highly computer literate relative, I have had to put my foot down as well. My time isn't limitless. More than half of my family run drastically outdated software on even more outdated hardware, and the phone rings a lot. I tell most of them there's nothing I can do. New software and new hardware.
Sounds heartless, but my family would suck every last minute out of my life if they could.
It's funny. I have contractor cousins. I would never dream of saying, "Shingle my house for free. Here are some old shingles."
I would never charge family for the help. The flip side is that excepting for very specific circumstances, I often won't help at all.
(Taken from my weblog Jan 22, 2006, at least 30% on topic)
"Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blind-folded fear." - Thomas Jefferson
Every now and then I take stock of my beliefs. I think everybody should do the same. After all, I'm a work in progress, and so are my opinions. That which I believed yesterday might have failed to hold up in the light of today. I often wonder what will happen to my beliefs in the four or five decades remaining in my life. Will I lose my pragmatic viewpoint, and embrace faith? Or will I increase my demand that proof accompany any extraordinary claim? I don't know what the future holds.
Do I believe in the existence of God? No.
Do I believe in the nonexistence of God? No.
I do not have belief in either of these scenarios, for both questions ask me to make a definitive call as to the state of being of something inherently unprovable. All I can say with any degree of confidence is that if God does exist, I'm pretty sure that no religion on the planet has anything resembling a true understanding of the entity. I'd be willing to bet they've got everything wrong.
I do know that I fully agree with the 1995 U.S. federal court ruling on Kitzmiller V. Dover Area School District. The district had a requirement endorsing intelligent design as an alternative to evolution. The court ruled that intelligent design was inherently religious in nature, and so rejected the requirement. For something to be a science, it must be consistent, empirically tested and falsifiable, correctable, dynamic, progressive, provisional, and based on multiple observations. Intelligent design fails most of these basic requirements. I don't believe you can replace a scientific theory with a philosophical one. By all means, teach religion in schools with religious affiliations. But don't teach it in science class.
I actually believe there is a great deal of instructional value in examining the debate itself in the classroom. Recently I've been absorbing the arguments on creationism versus evolution. There is powerful logic on both sides of this debate - showstoppers all around. Education should not simply be an exercise in knowledge transfer. Facts are lonely items. Don't teach your class that intelligent design is an alternative to evolution. Discuss with them the debate itself, where the philosophical issues lie, and why each view is difficult to refute.
Teach them to think in different ways, and to see things from the perspective of others. But when it comes right down to it, on one side is a slow progression of knowledge, and on the other side is the completely unprovable. Faith is the cornerstone of religion. You have to have faith, because there is no proof. If you had proof, you wouldn't need faith. Keep it out of the science class, that's all. It's the ultimate apples-and-oranges discussion.
Do I believe that organized religion has merit? Yes I do.
Do I believe that the benefits of organized religion outweigh the costs? That's a much more difficult question. I'm leaning towards saying that organized religion is not worth the price we have paid for it. I'm sure that no system populated by man, no matter how divinely inspired, is free of corruption. As Lord John Acton said, "Power corrupts, and absolute power corrups absolutely."
I believe that the upper echelons of every powerful religion resemble those of every major government. These organizations are concerned with retaining power, protecting themselves, and maintaining the status quo.
I believe spirituality can exist without dogma.
I believe that a sense of the divine can be better felt on a mountaintop at sunrise than within the walls of St. Peter's Basilica.
I believe that the collection and hoarding of great art and riches renders a religious institution completely null and void. It is a self-defeating process. A religion
I remember some girls from my "parties, booze, drugs, and women who like booze and drugs" days who should be tagged and tracked. I'm pretty certain we could learn a lot from them about the spreading of infectious diseases.
In all seriousness it's been at least 6 years since "The Simpsons" was up to the standard that they set.
Family Guy is straight up humour. The Simpsons tries for a broader range. Personally, I'd rather watch Family Guy.
Had you spent the 1400 hours chasing chicks, what do you think you might have had to show for it? Other than VD or a seriously brused ego?
Spend 1400 hours chasing chicks, and you're bound to get really good at it! Then you can write a book on the subject and make tons of money off of geeks who get tired of playing World of Warcraft, but who can't talk to a girl to save their lives.
...is often not an item.
Make that "option".
I'm sorry, but I fail to see how this addresses my point. I didn't mean to imply that I've had a hard life. I haven't. I've had a great life, my monetarily poor childhood included. We just had to be extremely careful with money.
You've gone far left field with this. My point was that if somebody who is living at the edges of their limited means needs a single item, "splurging and buying two" just to avoid change is often not an item.
I have never faced that problem as a provider. While I have a girlfriend, I have yet to marry. I make a shade under $6k per month, so I'll probably be fine.
But I've seen it from the other side. When I was a child, my family was poor. Not homeless poor, but "trailer on the outskirts of the city, living on moose/elk/grouse from my fathers fall hunting trips, never saw a movie in a theatre until age 14 poor". The money was accounted for to a penny. No nagging involved. It was a simply accepted that frugality was required.
So long as you can eat, have a place to stay, and have fun, why worry about money problems? Money is not even real anymore. Its not backed by hard currency, its just blips on a screen
Let's try an experiment. You take a piece of paper, some crayolas, and create a new $10 bill. Take it to the nearest grocery store, and try to buy food with it. Then explain to them how money is a fiction anyway. Let me know how that goes.
Why worry about money problems? Well, if you have no dependents, no real money issues, and few responsibilites, then by all means, don't.
I wouldn't have objected to your post but for its built-in disregard for the people who live on income at the subsistence level. That would also include seniors on fixed incomes.