Have you ever tried it? In any sane car (and I except 2 tonne SUV monstrosities) you don't need power steering to steer effectively except at very low speed.
Yep. I had my coolant pump disintegrate while doing... a wee bit over the speed limit on a highway. It had the effect of entirely disconnecting the accessory drive belt, which also drives the power steering. I pulled over as soon as I could just to prevent the engine from overheating, but I didn't even realize I'd lost power steering until my speed dropped down to around 40km/h. Even at that speed the car was easily steerable, but kept getting stiffer and stiffer as my speed continued to decrease.
It's got nothing to do with whether the car is "sane" or not - it's simple physics. You see the same thing with old cars that don't have power steering in the first place - the slower you're moving, the harder it is to steer. I had the unfortunate experience of learning to parallel-park in an old civic with no power steering; let's just say it wasn't an enjoyable experience, although the car handled great at highway speeds.
Fire away, I'm not sure the definition you are referring to, hehe...
Ok, fair enough, there are many definitions:) It's probably easier to identify what constitutes invalid evidence. Logical fallacies of any type, for a start, should be disregarded. Anecdotal evidence is also right out. That right there eliminates 90% of what most people attempt to use as "evidence".
Probably because it seems to be human nature to be stupid and think one is far more important than one actually is... aka "proud," but "pride" seems to get thrown around as good and bad, depending on the culture and times and whatever.
I don't see anything wrong with a reasonable amount of self-pride - it's narcissism that causes problems.
By the way you floss your teeth, your mother is a crackwhore.
...
What?? Don't look at me like that. My statement made just as much sense as yours did!
Same way Confucian teach from Chinese culture is being categorized by Western scholar.
Atheism has nothing to do with Confucianism. One is the rejection of a belief, the other a complete system of beliefs. If you are unable to understand such a simple distinction, you probably shouldn't be getting involved in discussions on slashdot. I think 4chan might be more on your level.
There ought to be some evolutionary advantage to religious thinking (or an evolutionary advantage which has religious thinking as a difficult-to-avoid side-effect), since (from the atheist's perspective) belief in God is a somewhat arbitrary belief, yet it is so incredibly widespread (including societies cut off from each other for decades or centuries, like tribes in South America, etc.), in spite of the large amount of energy/time that is spent by human society on religious activities.
By that logic, there ought to be an evolutionary advantage to being susceptible to viruses:) Or an evolutionary advantage to having two arms instead of 4, since 2 is such an arbitrary number and 2 arms are so widespread amongst the human population.
Evolution isn't nearly that simple.
"Most studies have shown that religious involvement and spirituality are associated with better health outcomes, including greater longevity, coping skills, and health-related quality of life (even during terminal illness) and less anxiety, depression, and suicide."
Yeah I've heard that before. I find that study to be fairly convincing... however, I have to wonder, how much of that is just correlation?
Take one example: white males have the highest suicide rates, accounting for something like 70% of all suicides. White males also make up the largest segment of the atheist population. Is their increased suicide risk caused by their atheism, or is their pre-existing predisposition to suicide the reason for the higher incidence of suicides among atheists?
Unfortunately, there hasn't been nearly enough research done to uncover the actual phenomena which these statistics reflect. I'd definitely love to see some more studies on the topic.
We can argue back and forth about who has evidence, since the tendency is to simply dismiss the other side's evidence as non-evidence... with any debate, that's the case. Just look at the AGW debate.
The ideological side of the AGW debate, sure. On the science side, it's quite a bit different.
The word "evidence" has a pretty clear meaning. If you can submit actual evidence, I'd be more than happy to look at it. On the other hand, if all you can do is pull out Pascals Wager, a God of the Gaps argument, or a claim that evolution violates the second law of thermodynamics... then you don't actually understand what the word "evidence" means. Those types of arguments should be rejected offhand, regardless of what claim you're trying to prove. If someone was trying to argue for a position in which I do believe and was providing "evidence" of similar quality, I'd reject their argument too, and call them out on it. Ideology should not be a basis for accepting or rejecting evidence.
In other words, many of our words seem to have gotten quite broad in meaning
Yes, that's true. That's why when people ask me if I believe in a god, I usually say "which one?". There are at least a few thousand different definitions. For all I know, your definition of "god" might be one that I can believe... but I sincerely doubt it:)
Religion is self-stabilizing. Nonbelievers cannot mate with believers so religion is basically a modified form of sexual selection directed by relatives of the female.
That's not true. For one thing, in any secular nation it's fairly common for non-believers to mate with believers, or for believers of different faiths to procreate without changing their individual faith. Also, people seem to change religion like they change their underwear. Most of the converts to the Abrahamic faiths are apostates from another Abrahamic faith. There's plenty of intermingling there.
Anyway, even if true, it still doesn't answer the question of why religion arose in the first place. It would only speak to why religion continues to propagate.
Cute:) I'm touched that I've apparently left such a strong impression on you in the past, and sorry to say that I can't return the compliment. I haven't the foggiest recollection of ever speaking to you in the past. I wish I could say that I'll remember this conversation, but it hasn't been particularly memorable.
I don't argue that it can't be proven. I argue that compelling arguments can be made based on evidence, but that is a far cry from proven. Give me some even somewhat rational evidence of God in heaven. I doubt you have too much.
Fixed that for you.
Atheism is a belief. It is a belief that there are no deities/gods/whatever.
No, it's not.
Or my definition of atheism is wrong.
Yes:)
Atheism is simply the rejection of theism. Theism makes the claim "there is a god, and these are it's properties". Atheism is a response to that claim - "sorry, we don't believe you". It is not, however, an acceptance of the opposite claim.
Think of it this way: if you tell me that you are a billionaire, I'll say "sorry, I don't believe you". Based on the data available, I have no reason to believe that statement. However, that doesn't mean I believe that you're NOT a billionaire. It just means that I have no reason to accept your claim. If you can provide evidence, then I will accept your claim. Conversely, if I discover evidence to the contrary I will continue to reject your claim, AND I will start to believe that you are a liar. But my default position is one of simply rejecting your claim while not accepting the opposite claim either.
I have found that most "atheists" that are outspoken truly believe there are no such things as deities or gods, not simply reject the belief in it.
That may be so, however, you've got a bit of a selection bias there. First of all, a large percentage of people who self-identify as "agnostic" are technically atheists. Second of all, you're intentionally selecting a subset of atheists who are more likely to hold the belief you're looking for.
Personally, I believe that there are no gods, or at least I've never heard of a god for which there is any evidence. That belief isn't inherent in atheism, though - it's something extra. If you want an analogy... some Christians believe that the earth is 6,000 years old. However, that belief isn't a requirement of Christianity - it's something extra which they've added on to the actual theology. It's the same with atheism, except that atheism doesn't come with any theology or beliefs in the first place, so any beliefs that atheists happen to hold are by default an add-on.
Okay, I will run that by you one more time. Do try to keep up.
GREAT!
blah blah blah
Um, I thought you were going to explain how you can have charity without freeloaders?
And where do you get the idea I'm a liberal? I'm far scarier than that. I'm an anarcho-syndicalist.
Ouch. I wanted to ask if you were actively advocating communism, or if it was just a byproduct of your attempt to defend an indefensible position, but I didn't want to offend. You've just given me the answer. I think it'd be best if we both agreed not to waste any more time.
We're doing better because of health improvement. If not for that, IQ would be dropping by 1 to 2 points per year on an unchanging (not renormalized) scale.
Citation?
The originator of the Flynn Effect seems to disagree. I've found little credible evidence to suggest that health and nutrition are the primary cause of the IQ increase, and even less (ie. zero) to support the idea that IQ's would be decreasing in the absence of these improvements.
We can't keep up the health improvement forever.
Wanna bet?
We took lead out of our paint and fuel, we got rid of starvation, we got rid of many childhood diseases, and... now what? There isn't much room to improve.
Dunno about you, but I'm aiming for immortality and implantable computers with direct neural interfaces. I'm really sorry that your imagination is so stunted.
On the off chance that you're serious - and for those who aren't aware - IQ tests are re-normalized periodically in order to keep 100 as the average. In other words, if a person today and a person 30 years ago took the exact same IQ test and got the exact same answers, the person writing it today would receive a lower score. So yes, the average IQ does keep getting higher, even though it stays at 100:)
Suppression of the majority by the minority, I suspect.
That doesn't explain why it would have evolved in the first place, unless you're suggesting that having large segments of the population controlled by a few individuals is beneficial for the survival of a group. Even if we accept that premise, it doesn't explain why religion needed to fill that role.
The best evolution-based argument that I've seen for the emergence of religion is that, in most cases in the natural world, it's better to be sure about something and be wrong than to be unsure and unable to act. If you hear rustling in the bushes and believe it's a predatory animal, being wrong doesn't harm you, but if you're unsure about what it is and decide to investigate... well, things could end very badly for you. So we have a tendency to make assumptions and act on them before having all the data, and that tendency translated into all sorts of beliefs once we became capable of asking more abstract questions.
There are some other factors, too, such as our inherent tendency to anthropomorphize. We tend to assign living qualities to non-living objects, probably as a side-effect of our ability to judge the motives and intentions of other people/animals. This tendency also extends to the dead, and it's even easier to see how that might be a side-effect of empathy, so a belief in souls and an afterlife seems like a natural consequence. It's a fascinating topic.
So I guess natural selection is failing in your eyes, since we still have "Religious Neanderthals."
In the same sense that natural selection is failing because we still have wisdom teeth. Which is to say, not at all.
Atheism is a belief, since God has not been disproven.
No, atheism is not a belief - atheism is the rejection of a belief.
Sure, you can argue it's more or less logically sound, makes more or less sense, but when it come down to it - since God is not something you can taste, see, feel, touch, etc.,
Exactly - which is why anyone with a smidgen of intelligence should reject the idea right off the bat. Believing in things which do not manifest in the real world is not only silly and unreasonable, but completely pointless.
it's hard to be proven or disproven by science.
Science also has a hard time proving that Xenu isn't waiting at the edge of the solar system. Scientology is every bit as valid as any other religion - which is to say, not at all.
Liberals in America think *public* resources should be used to help others. Conservatives think that *public* resources should be used to help corporations.
Funny, I didn't realize Obama was a conservative. You learn something new every day.
It is 'My own money, but I don't want other people freeloading off what I give, we should all pay since we all benefit."
Heh. That's actually really funny. Let me see if I get this straight: you want to provide charity - free goods and services - to people who can't afford them... but you don't want freeloaders?
Sorry... run that by me one more time?
No, we don't all benefit. When I give money to a homeless guy, I'm not benefiting in any real sense. I also don't stop everyone around me and insist that they, too, give money to the guy. Charity is a personal responsibility - you can't mandate it. What you're advocating isn't charity, it's forced redistribution of wealth. The fact that your own contributions are, apparently, contingent on taking away my money too... well, that tells me exactly how charitable you are.
I don't consider myself either a liberal or a conservative, so I've got no stake in this fight. Put your ideology aside for a second, and look at the actual statistics.
While I agree with your stance on religious "giving", I think you're wrong in your overal conclusion. Try this article for starters.
(disclaimer: I have no idea what the politics of that site are, I just googled and followed the first hit that seemed reliable)
-- Although liberal families' incomes average 6 percent higher than those of conservative families, conservative-headed households give, on average, 30 percent more to charity than the average liberal-headed household ($1,600 per year vs. $1,227).
-- Conservatives also donate more time and give more blood.
While you may argue that a majority percentage of conservative "giving" is to churches (although I'd like to see some stats to support that assertion), you certainly can't argue that giving blood is a religious activity.
Here's what the author of the book (the one quoted in the article) has to say:
"I expected to find that political liberals - who, I believed, genuinely cared more about others than conservatives did - would turn out to be the most privately charitable people. So when my early findings led me to the opposite conclusion, I assumed I had made some sort of technical error. I re-ran analyses. I got new data. Nothing worked. In the end, I had no option but to change my views."
Lastly, here's a couple more interesting findings, from the same data:
- The middle class gives less than the working poor
- Individuals from European countries donate far less than Americans, though European governments give more humanitarian aid per capita than the U.S.
That last one certainly suggests that liberals are more willing to give other peoples money rather than their own, since European nations are generally a LOT more liberal than the US.
Insightful my ass. It was fun to watch, but that's it. The trend of the poor and uneducated breeding more than the well-educated upper classes has been with us for a long time now, yet our species has continued to improve technologically and the average IQ has continued to rise. You can poke fun at American popular-culture, if that's what makes you happy, but if you're going to suggest that the human race is about to start getting stupider then you'd better have some damn good evidence to support that.
Education can contribute to IQ, though. We've been seeing a steady rise in IQ points for quite a while now, and the best theories I've seen suggest that it's directly caused by the rise in abstract-thinking skills amongst the general populace. Since abstract thinking is a learned behavior, this certainly suggests that IQ measurements - no matter how well designed - will be influenced by the level of education of the person being tested.
So I'd love to know how much water, say, New York City uses in a given time period
That depends on what you mean by "uses". Water isn't like oil - it doesn't get burned up or destroyed when you "use" it. That's why I always laugh when people tell me to take shorter showers "in order to conserve water". By reducing the amount of water you use you're not really conserving water, you're conserving energy needed to move that water around and to clean the resultant sewage.
To answer your question, though - according to wikipedia, the public water supply in the US used about 163 million cubic meters of water per day in 2000. That's equivalent to about 163 million metric tonnes of water. However, that's only 21% of total consumption. That means that the US as a whole, in the year 2000, was using about 776 million cubic meters per day.
None of these figures would translate well to a possible lunar colony, though. Water consumption rates vary wildly between nations (and even just between provinces or states). The US uses twice as much on average as typical European nations. Consumption rates on the moon would be lower still, and water-reclamation would be mandatory. Water wouldn't be wasted on watering lawns, or golf courses. Agriculture would likely by hydroponic, which would require less water "usage" (the water cycle for hydroponics is a closed loop). I'd imagine that we'd come up with a more efficient system for disposing of solid human waste, too.
The short of it is, I'm a science guy and I can see the benefit in taking money from pure science and potentially moving it to buying everyone a new TV.
That's like saying, "hey, come on over to my place and we'll go swimming in my water pool!"
Ice is a solid phase, usually crystalline, of a non-metallic substance that is liquid or gas at room temperature, such as water, carbon dioxide ice (dry ice), ammonia ice, or methane ice.[1] However, the predominant use of the term ice is for water ice, technically restricted to one of the 15 known crystalline phases of water.
Note that "predominant" does not mean "only". It's quite possible to have, say, methane ice.
Slashdot Mirror
i hope your not from the united states of water boarding
I dunno where that is, but I'm picturing clear skies, warm beaches, palm trees, and some bitchin' waves. Got a travel brochure?
Have you ever tried it? In any sane car (and I except 2 tonne SUV monstrosities) you don't need power steering to steer effectively except at very low speed.
Yep. I had my coolant pump disintegrate while doing ... a wee bit over the speed limit on a highway. It had the effect of entirely disconnecting the accessory drive belt, which also drives the power steering. I pulled over as soon as I could just to prevent the engine from overheating, but I didn't even realize I'd lost power steering until my speed dropped down to around 40km/h. Even at that speed the car was easily steerable, but kept getting stiffer and stiffer as my speed continued to decrease.
It's got nothing to do with whether the car is "sane" or not - it's simple physics. You see the same thing with old cars that don't have power steering in the first place - the slower you're moving, the harder it is to steer. I had the unfortunate experience of learning to parallel-park in an old civic with no power steering; let's just say it wasn't an enjoyable experience, although the car handled great at highway speeds.
Fire away, I'm not sure the definition you are referring to, hehe...
Ok, fair enough, there are many definitions :) It's probably easier to identify what constitutes invalid evidence. Logical fallacies of any type, for a start, should be disregarded. Anecdotal evidence is also right out. That right there eliminates 90% of what most people attempt to use as "evidence".
Probably because it seems to be human nature to be stupid and think one is far more important than one actually is... aka "proud," but "pride" seems to get thrown around as good and bad, depending on the culture and times and whatever.
I don't see anything wrong with a reasonable amount of self-pride - it's narcissism that causes problems.
By the way you defend it yes it is.
By the way you floss your teeth, your mother is a crackwhore.
What?? Don't look at me like that. My statement made just as much sense as yours did!
Same way Confucian teach from Chinese culture is being categorized by Western scholar.
Atheism has nothing to do with Confucianism. One is the rejection of a belief, the other a complete system of beliefs. If you are unable to understand such a simple distinction, you probably shouldn't be getting involved in discussions on slashdot. I think 4chan might be more on your level.
There ought to be some evolutionary advantage to religious thinking (or an evolutionary advantage which has religious thinking as a difficult-to-avoid side-effect), since (from the atheist's perspective) belief in God is a somewhat arbitrary belief, yet it is so incredibly widespread (including societies cut off from each other for decades or centuries, like tribes in South America, etc.), in spite of the large amount of energy/time that is spent by human society on religious activities.
By that logic, there ought to be an evolutionary advantage to being susceptible to viruses :) Or an evolutionary advantage to having two arms instead of 4, since 2 is such an arbitrary number and 2 arms are so widespread amongst the human population.
Evolution isn't nearly that simple.
"Most studies have shown that religious involvement and spirituality are associated with better health outcomes, including greater longevity, coping skills, and health-related quality of life (even during terminal illness) and less anxiety, depression, and suicide."
Yeah I've heard that before. I find that study to be fairly convincing ... however, I have to wonder, how much of that is just correlation?
Take one example: white males have the highest suicide rates, accounting for something like 70% of all suicides. White males also make up the largest segment of the atheist population. Is their increased suicide risk caused by their atheism, or is their pre-existing predisposition to suicide the reason for the higher incidence of suicides among atheists?
Unfortunately, there hasn't been nearly enough research done to uncover the actual phenomena which these statistics reflect. I'd definitely love to see some more studies on the topic.
We can argue back and forth about who has evidence, since the tendency is to simply dismiss the other side's evidence as non-evidence... with any debate, that's the case. Just look at the AGW debate.
The ideological side of the AGW debate, sure. On the science side, it's quite a bit different.
The word "evidence" has a pretty clear meaning. If you can submit actual evidence, I'd be more than happy to look at it. On the other hand, if all you can do is pull out Pascals Wager, a God of the Gaps argument, or a claim that evolution violates the second law of thermodynamics ... then you don't actually understand what the word "evidence" means. Those types of arguments should be rejected offhand, regardless of what claim you're trying to prove. If someone was trying to argue for a position in which I do believe and was providing "evidence" of similar quality, I'd reject their argument too, and call them out on it. Ideology should not be a basis for accepting or rejecting evidence.
In other words, many of our words seem to have gotten quite broad in meaning
Yes, that's true. That's why when people ask me if I believe in a god, I usually say "which one?". There are at least a few thousand different definitions. For all I know, your definition of "god" might be one that I can believe ... but I sincerely doubt it :)
Religion is self-stabilizing. Nonbelievers cannot mate with believers so religion is basically a modified form of sexual selection directed by relatives of the female.
That's not true. For one thing, in any secular nation it's fairly common for non-believers to mate with believers, or for believers of different faiths to procreate without changing their individual faith. Also, people seem to change religion like they change their underwear. Most of the converts to the Abrahamic faiths are apostates from another Abrahamic faith. There's plenty of intermingling there.
Anyway, even if true, it still doesn't answer the question of why religion arose in the first place. It would only speak to why religion continues to propagate.
Cute :) I'm touched that I've apparently left such a strong impression on you in the past, and sorry to say that I can't return the compliment. I haven't the foggiest recollection of ever speaking to you in the past. I wish I could say that I'll remember this conversation, but it hasn't been particularly memorable.
Take care.
I don't argue that it can't be proven. I argue that compelling arguments can be made based on evidence, but that is a far cry from proven. Give me some even somewhat rational evidence of God in heaven. I doubt you have too much.
Fixed that for you.
Atheism is a belief. It is a belief that there are no deities/gods/whatever.
No, it's not.
Or my definition of atheism is wrong.
Yes :)
Atheism is simply the rejection of theism. Theism makes the claim "there is a god, and these are it's properties". Atheism is a response to that claim - "sorry, we don't believe you". It is not, however, an acceptance of the opposite claim.
Think of it this way: if you tell me that you are a billionaire, I'll say "sorry, I don't believe you". Based on the data available, I have no reason to believe that statement. However, that doesn't mean I believe that you're NOT a billionaire. It just means that I have no reason to accept your claim. If you can provide evidence, then I will accept your claim. Conversely, if I discover evidence to the contrary I will continue to reject your claim, AND I will start to believe that you are a liar. But my default position is one of simply rejecting your claim while not accepting the opposite claim either.
I have found that most "atheists" that are outspoken truly believe there are no such things as deities or gods, not simply reject the belief in it.
That may be so, however, you've got a bit of a selection bias there. First of all, a large percentage of people who self-identify as "agnostic" are technically atheists. Second of all, you're intentionally selecting a subset of atheists who are more likely to hold the belief you're looking for.
Personally, I believe that there are no gods, or at least I've never heard of a god for which there is any evidence. That belief isn't inherent in atheism, though - it's something extra. If you want an analogy ... some Christians believe that the earth is 6,000 years old. However, that belief isn't a requirement of Christianity - it's something extra which they've added on to the actual theology. It's the same with atheism, except that atheism doesn't come with any theology or beliefs in the first place, so any beliefs that atheists happen to hold are by default an add-on.
Okay, I will run that by you one more time. Do try to keep up.
GREAT!
blah blah blah
Um, I thought you were going to explain how you can have charity without freeloaders?
And where do you get the idea I'm a liberal? I'm far scarier than that. I'm an anarcho-syndicalist.
Ouch. I wanted to ask if you were actively advocating communism, or if it was just a byproduct of your attempt to defend an indefensible position, but I didn't want to offend. You've just given me the answer. I think it'd be best if we both agreed not to waste any more time.
We're doing better because of health improvement. If not for that, IQ would be dropping by 1 to 2 points per year on an unchanging (not renormalized) scale.
Citation?
The originator of the Flynn Effect seems to disagree. I've found little credible evidence to suggest that health and nutrition are the primary cause of the IQ increase, and even less (ie. zero) to support the idea that IQ's would be decreasing in the absence of these improvements.
We can't keep up the health improvement forever.
Wanna bet?
We took lead out of our paint and fuel, we got rid of starvation, we got rid of many childhood diseases, and... now what? There isn't much room to improve.
Dunno about you, but I'm aiming for immortality and implantable computers with direct neural interfaces. I'm really sorry that your imagination is so stunted.
Huh? The number 100 has continued to rise? :P
Smartass :)
On the off chance that you're serious - and for those who aren't aware - IQ tests are re-normalized periodically in order to keep 100 as the average. In other words, if a person today and a person 30 years ago took the exact same IQ test and got the exact same answers, the person writing it today would receive a lower score. So yes, the average IQ does keep getting higher, even though it stays at 100 :)
Check here for more info:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect
Suppression of the majority by the minority, I suspect.
That doesn't explain why it would have evolved in the first place, unless you're suggesting that having large segments of the population controlled by a few individuals is beneficial for the survival of a group. Even if we accept that premise, it doesn't explain why religion needed to fill that role.
The best evolution-based argument that I've seen for the emergence of religion is that, in most cases in the natural world, it's better to be sure about something and be wrong than to be unsure and unable to act. If you hear rustling in the bushes and believe it's a predatory animal, being wrong doesn't harm you, but if you're unsure about what it is and decide to investigate ... well, things could end very badly for you. So we have a tendency to make assumptions and act on them before having all the data, and that tendency translated into all sorts of beliefs once we became capable of asking more abstract questions.
There are some other factors, too, such as our inherent tendency to anthropomorphize. We tend to assign living qualities to non-living objects, probably as a side-effect of our ability to judge the motives and intentions of other people/animals. This tendency also extends to the dead, and it's even easier to see how that might be a side-effect of empathy, so a belief in souls and an afterlife seems like a natural consequence. It's a fascinating topic.
So I guess natural selection is failing in your eyes, since we still have "Religious Neanderthals."
In the same sense that natural selection is failing because we still have wisdom teeth. Which is to say, not at all.
Atheism is a belief, since God has not been disproven.
No, atheism is not a belief - atheism is the rejection of a belief.
Sure, you can argue it's more or less logically sound, makes more or less sense, but when it come down to it - since God is not something you can taste, see, feel, touch, etc.,
Exactly - which is why anyone with a smidgen of intelligence should reject the idea right off the bat. Believing in things which do not manifest in the real world is not only silly and unreasonable, but completely pointless.
it's hard to be proven or disproven by science.
Science also has a hard time proving that Xenu isn't waiting at the edge of the solar system. Scientology is every bit as valid as any other religion - which is to say, not at all.
Liberals in America think *public* resources should be used to help others. Conservatives think that *public* resources should be used to help corporations.
Funny, I didn't realize Obama was a conservative. You learn something new every day.
It is 'My own money, but I don't want other people freeloading off what I give, we should all pay since we all benefit."
Heh. That's actually really funny. Let me see if I get this straight: you want to provide charity - free goods and services - to people who can't afford them ... but you don't want freeloaders?
Sorry ... run that by me one more time?
No, we don't all benefit. When I give money to a homeless guy, I'm not benefiting in any real sense. I also don't stop everyone around me and insist that they, too, give money to the guy. Charity is a personal responsibility - you can't mandate it. What you're advocating isn't charity, it's forced redistribution of wealth. The fact that your own contributions are, apparently, contingent on taking away my money too ... well, that tells me exactly how charitable you are.
I don't consider myself either a liberal or a conservative, so I've got no stake in this fight. Put your ideology aside for a second, and look at the actual statistics.
Well we would if we were talking about pools on the moon. Context matters.
While I agree with your stance on religious "giving", I think you're wrong in your overal conclusion. Try this article for starters.
(disclaimer: I have no idea what the politics of that site are, I just googled and followed the first hit that seemed reliable)
-- Although liberal families' incomes average 6 percent higher than those of conservative families, conservative-headed households give, on average, 30 percent more to charity than the average liberal-headed household ($1,600 per year vs. $1,227).
-- Conservatives also donate more time and give more blood.
While you may argue that a majority percentage of conservative "giving" is to churches (although I'd like to see some stats to support that assertion), you certainly can't argue that giving blood is a religious activity.
Here's what the author of the book (the one quoted in the article) has to say:
"I expected to find that political liberals - who, I believed, genuinely cared more about others than conservatives did - would turn out to be the most privately charitable people. So when my early findings led me to the opposite conclusion, I assumed I had made some sort of technical error. I re-ran analyses. I got new data. Nothing worked. In the end, I had no option but to change my views."
Lastly, here's a couple more interesting findings, from the same data:
- The middle class gives less than the working poor
- Individuals from European countries donate far less than Americans, though European governments give more humanitarian aid per capita than the U.S.
That last one certainly suggests that liberals are more willing to give other peoples money rather than their own, since European nations are generally a LOT more liberal than the US.
Insightful my ass. It was fun to watch, but that's it. The trend of the poor and uneducated breeding more than the well-educated upper classes has been with us for a long time now, yet our species has continued to improve technologically and the average IQ has continued to rise. You can poke fun at American popular-culture, if that's what makes you happy, but if you're going to suggest that the human race is about to start getting stupider then you'd better have some damn good evidence to support that.
Education can contribute to IQ, though. We've been seeing a steady rise in IQ points for quite a while now, and the best theories I've seen suggest that it's directly caused by the rise in abstract-thinking skills amongst the general populace. Since abstract thinking is a learned behavior, this certainly suggests that IQ measurements - no matter how well designed - will be influenced by the level of education of the person being tested.
So I'd love to know how much water, say, New York City uses in a given time period
That depends on what you mean by "uses". Water isn't like oil - it doesn't get burned up or destroyed when you "use" it. That's why I always laugh when people tell me to take shorter showers "in order to conserve water". By reducing the amount of water you use you're not really conserving water, you're conserving energy needed to move that water around and to clean the resultant sewage.
To answer your question, though - according to wikipedia, the public water supply in the US used about 163 million cubic meters of water per day in 2000. That's equivalent to about 163 million metric tonnes of water. However, that's only 21% of total consumption. That means that the US as a whole, in the year 2000, was using about 776 million cubic meters per day.
None of these figures would translate well to a possible lunar colony, though. Water consumption rates vary wildly between nations (and even just between provinces or states). The US uses twice as much on average as typical European nations. Consumption rates on the moon would be lower still, and water-reclamation would be mandatory. Water wouldn't be wasted on watering lawns, or golf courses. Agriculture would likely by hydroponic, which would require less water "usage" (the water cycle for hydroponics is a closed loop). I'd imagine that we'd come up with a more efficient system for disposing of solid human waste, too.
Hope that helps.
The short of it is, I'm a science guy and I can see the benefit in taking money from pure science and potentially moving it to buying everyone a new TV.
Fixed that for you.
Water ice?!?!
That's like saying, "hey, come on over to my place and we'll go swimming in my water pool!"
Ice is a solid phase, usually crystalline, of a non-metallic substance that is liquid or gas at room temperature, such as water, carbon dioxide ice (dry ice), ammonia ice, or methane ice.[1] However, the predominant use of the term ice is for water ice, technically restricted to one of the 15 known crystalline phases of water.
Note that "predominant" does not mean "only". It's quite possible to have, say, methane ice.
Why did you guess who was wrong when the numbers were right there?
It's Intelligent Mathematics. When in doubt, go with faith.
Screw the miners, send up some Whalers!