Dedalus: Love your second signature line.Originally Posted by Dedalus
I'd just like to point out that we public librarians are government employees, and we solve PLENTY of problems.
Under what basis are you able to make that assumption?Umm.. because that's what religion (at least insofar as we restrict ourselves to the theistic religions) is.
And under what basis are you able to assert the "conception of homo sapiens"?
And under what basis are you able to make that assumption?
With the fourth set of terms stated as follows:
The proposal is now acceptable. Though you were never in any position to offer that which I would do anyway. This however..."do whatever the hell you want"
...is not in correspondence.
That's right, keep missing the point...
....which is...
It's not a persecution complex. I get the impression he's amused by it more than anything else -- as am I.
Watching you try to start shit with folks has gotten entertaining.
I think I get it now, summer. You're disinterested in communication.
I'll stop wasting your time with attempts to engage you in it. Please carry on as you will.
"Qu'est-ce que c'est que cela, la loi ? On peut donc être dehors. Je ne comprends pas. Quant à moi, suis-je dans la loi ? suis-je hors la loi ? Je n'en sais rien. Mourir de faim, est-ce être dans la loi ?" -- Tellmarch
"Человек не может снять с себя ответственности за свои поступки." - L. Tolstoy
"[it] is no doubt obvious, the cult of the experts is both self-serving, for those who propound it, and fraudulent." - Noam Chomsky
Why are you so brilliant, The Rani? Why?You really don't get it?
Science as religion ... extinction as the rapture ...
It's a valid analogy, don't you think?
Last edited by summer in the fall; 09-09-2011 at 06:01 PM. Reason: typos, etc.
Awesome. This thread just took a hilarious twist!
Born in 1981 and INFJ Gen Yer
4t tv
It's great that people turned into this in large numbers and there were almost as many comments about it on facebook newsfeed, as there were for the MTV movie awards and American Idol.
That said...the article mentions that Fox News had the highest ratings. I'm sure those on the left might actually enjoy Fox for it's fair and balance nature
http://insidetv.ew.com/2011/09/09/ob...peech-ratings/
Born in 1981 and INFJ Gen Yer
Youngster? Ha! I am two years your elder. Call me, sir.That cookie was mine to begin with, youngster.
I have problems when folks on my side act like petulant children, too. I think that since the Awakening there has been a general loss of politeness on our whole society. The number of adults that have childish temper tantrums is pathetic.
If Cantor so dislikes the president that he feels the need to reject proper decorum and politeness out of spite than he should have just refused to attend.
Last edited by Odin; 09-09-2011 at 08:35 PM.
To recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting. It is like advising a man who is starving to eat less.
-Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man under Socialism
I grew up having complete trust of the government. It was the Iraq Invasion, and then learning about people being tortured by our government, that damaged that trust
To recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting. It is like advising a man who is starving to eat less.
-Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man under Socialism
Oh, I get it. I got it from the first. It's just incoherent and, particularly given the very clear contexts spelled out earlier, counter-rational.
I thought there was something to be gained in coming to common ground with a person who made claims that appeared to me to be so shockingly wrong. Shame on me for trying to make sense of the droolings of a dadaist.
"Qu'est-ce que c'est que cela, la loi ? On peut donc être dehors. Je ne comprends pas. Quant à moi, suis-je dans la loi ? suis-je hors la loi ? Je n'en sais rien. Mourir de faim, est-ce être dans la loi ?" -- Tellmarch
"Человек не может снять с себя ответственности за свои поступки." - L. Tolstoy
"[it] is no doubt obvious, the cult of the experts is both self-serving, for those who propound it, and fraudulent." - Noam Chomsky
Grammar Commando insists that I ask you at what number you wish to be called. Although I appreciate you calling me 'sir'.Call me, sir.
"Qu'est-ce que c'est que cela, la loi ? On peut donc être dehors. Je ne comprends pas. Quant à moi, suis-je dans la loi ? suis-je hors la loi ? Je n'en sais rien. Mourir de faim, est-ce être dans la loi ?" -- Tellmarch
"Человек не может снять с себя ответственности за свои поступки." - L. Tolstoy
"[it] is no doubt obvious, the cult of the experts is both self-serving, for those who propound it, and fraudulent." - Noam Chomsky
Where the hell did that comma come from? I suspect that was martini #2's doing and not my own.
Justin, it is indeed good to have you back!
Prince, literally laughing out loud.
I Am A Child of God/Nature/The Universe
I Think Globally and Act Individually(and possibly, voluntarily join-together with Others)
I Pray for World Peace & I Choose Less-Just Say: "NO!, Thank You."
Well, I do know the government (National Guard) saved our neighborhood from being torched by inner-city barbarians in the '67 Newark Riots. And I know the Government has given me 24 years of steady, productive employment, both before and after I was fu##ed over by three private engineering firms. So you're g##damned right I trust the government more than the "free market" to do the right thing. Not blindly, though.. I also know that GWB tried to privatize my position at FHWA every year of his first six. Which is why, as a social conservative, I nevertheless lean left.
Last edited by Roadbldr '59; 09-09-2011 at 10:31 PM.
"Better hurry. There's a storm coming. His storm!!!" :-O -Abigail Freemantle, "The Stand" by Stephen King
Just remember that the Postman always rings twice. And I remember Waterworld--never saw the ending to it though.The Postman? What the hell?!
Cry Havoc...!
Prince
PS: Sorry for the confusion; I guess I had my labels mixed-up. I suppose I can't expect the DVDs to organize themselves, can I?
~Chas'88
"There have always been people who say: "The war will be over someday." I say there's no guarantee the war will ever be over. Naturally a brief intermission is conceivable. Maybe the war needs a breather, a war can even break its neck, so to speak. But the kings and emperors, not to mention the pope, will always come to its help in adversity. ON the whole, I'd say this war has very little to worry about, it'll live to a ripe old age."
The government is not something to trust or not trust. It is a tool; a necessary aspect of life. Since at least in part it is democratic, the quality of our government depends on whom we vote for. We have the choice whether to vote for someone like Ralph Nader or someone like Michelle Bachmann. It also depends on how smart and ethical our leaders happen to be at any moment. That too depends on the people that happen to answer the call of public service. Any people gets the government it deserves. Government is not the only necessary institution in society, but it is one such. Americans from my generation onwards have become really childish about government, however wise they may be about some other things. Whether you "trust the government" or not is a ridiculously naive question when you think about it. It is a wild generalization, as if the word "government" means anything at all; as if government is completely good or completely bad, by virtue of being government. The GI Reagan largely started it with his stupid phrase "government is not the solution, government is the problem." How about, government is what we make of it? If Americans want to be "great" then we should stop thinking in childish terms and get real and practical about what needs to be done and how to do it, and work together rather than throw ideological tantrums at each other, or groan and whine about "the government" as if it were something separate from you and me; a Santa Claus that dissappointed us, so now it must be Satan.
P.S. I imagine as bad as he thought this thread had gotten before, the last 3 pages or so must have made David K put all of us on ignore.
Last edited by Eric the Green; 09-09-2011 at 11:58 PM.
Or as Bugs Bunny might say: "the man in the other red suit."
~Chas'88
"There have always been people who say: "The war will be over someday." I say there's no guarantee the war will ever be over. Naturally a brief intermission is conceivable. Maybe the war needs a breather, a war can even break its neck, so to speak. But the kings and emperors, not to mention the pope, will always come to its help in adversity. ON the whole, I'd say this war has very little to worry about, it'll live to a ripe old age."
Yes, I suppose he does(and in different languages). <chuckle> As to Waterworld: Now that I think about it, I believe I haven't ever seen the end, either. I'd bet we aren't alone in that; IIRC, it pretty much sucked.
Prince
PS: OTOH, The Postman(the one based on the Brin novel) was excellent...IMO, or course.
I Am A Child of God/Nature/The Universe
I Think Globally and Act Individually(and possibly, voluntarily join-together with Others)
I Pray for World Peace & I Choose Less-Just Say: "NO!, Thank You."
Idiocracy 101
He didn't get it, The Rani. That's why he needed to appeal to scientific rationalism (interposed between distracting disparagements) instead of using more neutral terminology. As in...Oh, I get it....
along with the totally irrelevant...
Now in response to...
I just wanted to see how far you'd flush this out. Unfortunately, you didn't satisfy my curiosity by answering my questions (or The Rani's). The common thread between the two is a belief that a select group of "people" will persist and the rest are doomed or damned, in other words, not fit to survive. The fact that both require years of indoctrination and leagues of followers, believers and non-believers, make them both religious in nature -- your inability to explain the differences between evolutionary theory and religion without assuming a set of shared beliefs illustrates this. Now you can change the subject if you want to and try to split hairs about humans and homo saps, but seeing as there is no hominoid in existence beyond what we call "people" at the moment, we are necessarily talking about the same thing and anything beyond that would be as magical in thinking as the depiction of the rapture. That's the point.
The resistance to accepting the validity of this analogy is not hard to grasp. It elevates religion to the status of science and undermines the culture-war condescension toward "believers" who believe they will be saved the same way "evolution guys" believe they will adapt, something which is a near-perfect mirroring of believer-group aggrandizement over the non-believer group and evidence of more parallels between the two. But perhaps more humiliating, it reveals the hidden Christianity at the root of Western science and the gullible nature of scientific rationalists who are every much the "believer" of science as are Christians. With this awareness it should be even easier to discard the superstitions of "evolutionary systems" (the topic from which this came) which thwart our ability to envision ethical means for constructing our societies.So you do or don't think that it's a valid analogy?
I thought the part about "evolved humans" being similar to "saved humans" was right on.
And as for this...
In the future Justin, if you sincerely would like to reach "common ground" please refrain from this silliness...
...or other such personal attacks veiled as proposals. I promise the boys on the board will still honor you. Plus, it really makes you look crooked.
Best...
P.S. And BTW this...
...is the kind of name-calling people engage in when they have absolutely nothing to add to a discussion. Wo! Wo! Where have I heard that before? Oh, yeah here. Come on, blokes. This is starting to get boring. Cheers.Shame on me for trying to make sense of the droolings of a dadaist...
night all...
Last edited by summer in the fall; 09-10-2011 at 04:36 AM. Reason: emphasis
Why, it's the left-wing incarnation of JPT!
Ohhhh! You're severely reading in. Yeah, you know, I suspected as much. But I didn't understand your motivation until now. Now I do: You're assuming Justin is an evil eugenicist, and your hostility is based on that reading. Got it! Thanks for the explanation.
Hey, Justin! You an evil eugenicist?
Or do you just, you know, realize that evolution is a natural process that we can't really stop from happening to any species, including our own?
Personally, I'm a good old-fashioned modernist lefty who believes in the value of a decent education; I'm like Joe Bageant in that. And I hate to see people strongly committed to an internally-consistent religious or political ideology that is self-referential and ultimately meaningless.
Science is ultimately based on testable predictions of reality. If a theory accurately predicts reality, it is accepted and built upon. Over and over again until we have a whole beautiful edifice of knowledge, all built on testable predictions of reality, extrapolations therefrom...which are themselves testable and check out...and...
Newton said he'd stood on the shoulders of giants.
I'd suggest some Richard Dawkins but wait! He's a clueless idiot when it comes to why women feel threatened when cornered in elevators. This makes him equally clueless about everything else!
Well then, how about some David Deutsch?
How can so many of us have lost, have completely missed out on all this knowledge and understanding? And it's been replaced with what? With empty, meaningless ideologies.
Why, I'm starting to sound like Krugman on economics!
Anyway. I think it's interesting how creationists who claim to have scientific expertise to back up their beliefs often turn out to be engineers, MDs, and veterinarians. It seems engineers (and MDs, and veterinarians) are often trained in a "don't ask why, just memorize these facts" sort of way, and so often aren't given a real understanding of the scientific method, and how and why it works. How and why and to exactly what degree we can be confident in scientific knowledge. As discussed here.
Science education has just gone down the tubes and as a result we get -- we get --
In Conclusion, I Am A Relic Of The Modern Era.
I'm just a harmless old man and a product of my time -- please, future overlords, don't purge me!
SUmmer said "But perhaps more humiliating, it reveals the hidden Christianity at the root of Western science and the gullible nature of scientific rationalists who are every much the "believer" of science as are Christians. With this awareness it should be even easier to discard the superstitions of "evolutionary systems" (the topic from which this came) which thwart our ability to envision ethical means for constructing our societies."
Actually, the entire Apocalypse meme goes back to Zoroaster, and the Rapture (whether of the nerds or taken straight) is an outgrowth of that.
Folks - the Book of Revelation is *in code*. Not the cyphers so beloved of conspiracy theories, but the thinly disguised context-dependent code of the roman a clef. Orwell's "Animal Farm" and "1984", for example. Or many a Golden Age sf story that set our current social problems in the future or on another world and ripped loose with how viciously the Terrans were treating the androids or the Martians - classic Trek did some of that in its day. Same difference! But without the trappings of religion. Likewise, John is talking about the enemy right in front of his face, the Roman Empire. And the events therein have already happened, over 1500 years ago. (The Number of the Beast is actual cypher. And most people who have tackled the cypher come up with Nero. YMMV.)
How to spot a shill, by John Michael Greer: "What you watch for is (a) a brand new commenter who (b) has nothing to say about the topic under discussion but (c) trots out a smoothly written opinion piece that (d) hits all the standard talking points currently being used by a specific political or corporate interest, while (e) avoiding any other points anyone else has made on that subject."
"If the shoe fits..." The Grey Badger.
I've read Dawkins. I'll bet if you asked him to describe the God he so shrilly and defiantly does not believe in, dollars to donuts (an equal trade these days) you'd get the fundamentaliost Sunday school version right down to the long white beard and thunderbolts.
How to spot a shill, by John Michael Greer: "What you watch for is (a) a brand new commenter who (b) has nothing to say about the topic under discussion but (c) trots out a smoothly written opinion piece that (d) hits all the standard talking points currently being used by a specific political or corporate interest, while (e) avoiding any other points anyone else has made on that subject."
"If the shoe fits..." The Grey Badger.
Ha, you and me are on the same boat!Why, it's the left-wing incarnation of JPT!
Ohhhh! You're severely reading in. Yeah, you know, I suspected as much. But I didn't understand your motivation until now. Now I do: You're assuming Justin is an evil eugenicist, and your hostility is based on that reading. Got it! Thanks for the explanation.
Hey, Justin! You an evil eugenicist?
Or do you just, you know, realize that evolution is a natural process that we can't really stop from happening to any species, including our own?
Personally, I'm a good old-fashioned modernist lefty who believes in the value of a decent education; I'm like Joe Bageant in that. And I hate to see people strongly committed to an internally-consistent religious or political ideology that is self-referential and ultimately meaningless.
Science is ultimately based on testable predictions of reality. If a theory accurately predicts reality, it is accepted and built upon. Over and over again until we have a whole beautiful edifice of knowledge, all built on testable predictions of reality, extrapolations therefrom...which are themselves testable and check out...and...
Newton said he'd stood on the shoulders of giants.
I'd suggest some Richard Dawkins but wait! He's a clueless idiot when it comes to why women feel threatened when cornered in elevators. This makes him equally clueless about everything else!
Well then, how about some David Deutsch?
How can so many of us have lost, have completely missed out on all this knowledge and understanding? And it's been replaced with what? With empty, meaningless ideologies.
Why, I'm starting to sound like Krugman on economics!
Anyway. I think it's interesting how creationists who claim to have scientific expertise to back up their beliefs often turn out to be engineers, MDs, and veterinarians. It seems engineers (and MDs, and veterinarians) are often trained in a "don't ask why, just memorize these facts" sort of way, and so often aren't given a real understanding of the scientific method, and how and why it works. How and why and to exactly what degree we can be confident in scientific knowledge. As discussed here.
Science education has just gone down the tubes and as a result we get -- we get --
In Conclusion, I Am A Relic Of The Modern Era.
I'm just a harmless old man and a product of my time -- please, future overlords, don't purge me!
To recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting. It is like advising a man who is starving to eat less.
-Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man under Socialism
It is always tempting to ask an atheist - tell me about that God you don't believe in. Usually, a believer can agree.
James50
The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of the Conservatives is to prevent the mistakes from being corrected. - G.K. Chesterton
