Jihad needs scientists

"Michael A. Terrell" <mike.terrell@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:453630FA.BC40A6F1@earthlink.net...

jmfbahciv@aol.com wrote:

Now think again. Christians admire and praise people who are
martyrs. It doesn't take an IQ of greater than 60 to figure
out how to turn that one into making suicide bombers heroes.
Islam has figured out how. You need to listen to some
of Falwell's speeches. Turn to that religious channel that
is on your cable, arm yourself with a 10 gallon barf bag,
and listen to what those believers are getting told.

Falwell? You would have to hold a gun to my head first, and pull the
trigger. You'd either have to shoot me, or the TV.

While I agree that what those guys do is disgusting, it is actually a useful
exercise to listen for a few minutes (or as long as you can stand it). It
is important to know that that type of things exists in society, and that it
is actually moderately politically important.

Eric Lucas

 

"Michael A. Terrell" <mike.terrell@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:45363396.C560073@earthlink.net...

lucasea@sbcglobal.net wrote:

No, the acts of a lot of people here bother me enough to publicly
criticize
them, yet I still want to be "around" them in the context of this
discussion.

By the way, it is the church leadership of which I am critical. I have
many
friends in several of the congregations, and I thoroughly enjoy being
around
them, even though I deplore something their church does (that happens to
be
illegal.)

That may be your view--nice black-and-white worldview you've got there.
I
don't have that luxury, I see good and bad in everybody and everything.
I
get what I want out of the "relationship", and they appear to as well.
We
don't have to love everything each other does, but we can certainly
appreciate each other for what we and they are worth.

Eric Lucas


And your world view that allows you to ignore illegal acts somehow
makes you non hypocritical? It also makes you an accessory after the
fact, and depending on the crime, you could be charged for not reporting
it, when it does come under public scrutiny.


--
Service to my country? Been there, Done that, and I've got my DD214 to
prove it.
Member of DAV #85.

Michael A. Terrell
Central Florida

 

[John Larkin]

On Wed, 18 Oct 2006 05:09:58 GMT, Jonathan Kirwan
<jkirwan@easystreet.com> wrote:

On Tue, 17 Oct 2006 20:57:56 -0700, John Larkin
jjlarkin@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:

On Tue, 17 Oct 2006 18:07:18 GMT, Jonathan Kirwan
jkirwan@easystreet.com> wrote:

They are prohibited by law from engaging in politics, and
that's reasonably well enforced.

I didn't write that, you did.

Not in churches, they're not.

I didn't write that.

Churches may not donate money or substantial resources to political
candidates. Would you have a prohibition against members of a
congregation discussing politics? How about members of the Sierra
Club? The NRA? The ACLU? MADD?

There have been some recent legal actions against churches that have
broken the no-politics rules, and against some secular nonprofits,
too.

That's you, of course. Responding to someone you didn't cite above.

As a musician in a group that happens to play
for church services a lot, I've been to services of quite a few
denominations...and many of them preach politics from the pulpit, to the
extent of telling their congregation for whom they should vote. That is a
big problem, in my book.

I didn't write that.

Of course it is; you don't want their candidates to win.

John, you are so fast with all that snip and cut and slam, bam, thank
you mam reading of yours that it would be hard for anyone reading your
post to realize you were responding to someone other than me.

Show a little more care in your writing, if you'd please. If not, of
course, we'll manage. But it would be nicer if you would show some
care about those you are writing to.

Jon

Geez, it's just a newsgroup. It doesn't really matter.

John

 

Nice snip-job on your own comments that served as the basis for mine.
Reinserted here for clarity and honesty.


"Michael A. Terrell" <mike.terrell@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:45363396.C560073@earthlink.net...

lucasea@sbcglobal.net wrote:
"Michael A. Terrell" <mike.terrell@earthlink.net> wrote

If their acts bother you enough to publicly complain about them, why
do you want to be around them?

No, the acts of a lot of people here bother me enough to publicly
criticize
them, yet I still want to be "around" them in the context of this
discussion.

By the way, it is the church leadership of which I am critical. I have
many
friends in several of the congregations, and I thoroughly enjoy being
around
them, even though I deplore something their church does (that happens to
be
illegal.)
That is hypocritical.

That may be your view--nice black-and-white worldview you've got there.
I
don't have that luxury, I see good and bad in everybody and everything.
I
get what I want out of the "relationship", and they appear to as well.
We
don't have to love everything each other does, but we can certainly
appreciate each other for what we and they are worth.

And your world view that allows you to ignore illegal acts somehow
makes you non hypocritical?

I'm sure, in your black-and-whiteness, you've reported every crime you've
ever witnessed, and have refused to be around anybody who has ever done
anything illegal. Must be a really lonely existence.

It also makes you an accessory after the
fact, and depending on the crime, you could be charged for not reporting
it, when it does come under public scrutiny.

Yeah, whatever.

Eric Lucas

 

[John Larkin]

On Wed, 18 Oct 06 10:46:48 GMT, lparker@emory.edu (Lloyd Parker)
wrote:

In article <879bj21r9ffat4i1pbkbjffvfb2bag6d5r@4ax.com>,
John Larkin <jjlarkin@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:
On Tue, 17 Oct 2006 18:07:18 GMT, Jonathan Kirwan
jkirwan@easystreet.com> wrote:


They are prohibited by law from engaging in politics, and
that's reasonably well enforced.

Not in churches, they're not.

Churches may not donate money or substantial resources to political
candidates. Would you have a prohibition against members of a
congregation discussing politics? How about members of the Sierra
Club? The NRA? The ACLU? MADD?

There have been some recent legal actions against churches that have
broken the no-politics rules, and against some secular nonprofits,
too.

As a musician in a group that happens to play
for church services a lot, I've been to services of quite a few
denominations...and many of them preach politics from the pulpit, to the
extent of telling their congregation for whom they should vote. That is a
big problem, in my book.

Of course it is; you don't want their candidates to win.

John


The League of Conservation Voters puts out a voter's guide; the LCV is not a
tax-exempt organization because of this. Why are churches allowed to put out
voter's guides?

If they do, and if it's illegal, they should be stopped, naturally.
Ditto Sierra Club and all the rest.

John

 

"John Larkin" <jjlarkin@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote in message
news:tidcj2hc7r29unnup0qjddadothkt473q2@4ax.com...

On Wed, 18 Oct 06 11:51:42 GMT, jmfbahciv@aol.com wrote:

In article <e9ednZ8s0K3l2ajYRVnyuA@pipex.net>,
"T Wake" <usenet.es7at@gishpuppy.com> wrote:

"Eeyore" <rabbitsfriendsandrelations@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:4535424A.C08609A3@hotmail.com...


T Wake wrote:

lucasea@sbcglobal.net> wrote in message

Certainly a lot of the details of Darwin's theories have been
subject
to
question and modification over the years. What has not changed is
the
basic idea of evolution.

Very true. There is a conflict of terminology and if the people on the
radio
show were talking about "Darwin's theories" specifically they are a
bit
behind the curve. Modern evolutionary theory has progressed beyond the
specifics Darwin described.

I've noticed that there is now a common tendency for those who reckon
they
know
better to dismiss such things as 'just theories' as if that meant they
had
no
vailidity !


I love that phrase "just theories." It really makes me smile when some
creationist goes on about how "evolution is just a theory."

Like Newtonian Gravity isn't "just" a theory.

Yes. It is just a theory. It is the human race's best
guess at how nature and its laws work.

It's a pretty good theory but ignores relativistic effects. It's
quantitatively precise in most practical situations, but not all
situations, so it is indeed flawed, and not a "best guess."

Yes, all theories are flawed by definition, and the only measure of a theory
is its usefulness--i.e., how well it predicts or explains a certain effect,
combined with how easy it is to use (i.e., simple).

The trouble is, the Creation Science/Intelligent Design people use that
"flawed" to mean "useless", in order to aggrandize their belief system,
which provides complete certainty and Truth, despite being nearly useless in
explaining and predicting natural phenomena.

Eric Lucas

 

"MooseFET" <kensmith@rahul.net> wrote in message
news:1161181426.078024.31230@b28g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...

jmfbahciv@aol.com wrote:
In article <1161093895.152327.297830@k70g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>,
"MooseFET" <kensmith@rahul.net> wrote:

unsettled wrote:
jmfbahciv@aol.com wrote:


I can state my hidden agenda; preserve the world's accumulated
knowledge. Religious extremists have the goal of destroying
most of that knowledge. Islamic extremists have the goal of
destroying it all because it's a product of Western civilization.

Religious extremism is always the result of one of the following:

A) Insanity

B) Desire for power, control, and wealth

You left "sex" off the list, unless you include that in one of the
three you listed.

You haven't been paying attention. That is the reward for
murdering thousandS and millions of people.

Actually, I have been paying attention. The toughest job in heaven
these days is virgin wrangler.

Is that someone who wrangles virgins, or a wrangler who has not yet gotten
laid?

Eric Lucas

 

[John Larkin]

On 18 Oct 2006 07:23:46 -0700, "MooseFET" <kensmith@rahul.net> wrote:

jmfbahciv@aol.com wrote:
In article <1161093895.152327.297830@k70g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>,
"MooseFET" <kensmith@rahul.net> wrote:

unsettled wrote:
jmfbahciv@aol.com wrote:


I can state my hidden agenda; preserve the world's accumulated
knowledge. Religious extremists have the goal of destroying
most of that knowledge. Islamic extremists have the goal of
destroying it all because it's a product of Western civilization.

Religious extremism is always the result of one of the following:

A) Insanity

B) Desire for power, control, and wealth

You left "sex" off the list, unless you include that in one of the
three you listed.

You haven't been paying attention. That is the reward for
murdering thousandS and millions of people.

Actually, I have been paying attention. The toughest job in heaven
these days is virgin wrangler.

/BAH

Someone should do a serious psychological study of suicide bombers. I
bet there's a lot of sexual issues involved. Of course, proven suicide
bombers are hard to interview.

John

 

[Jonathan Kirwan]

On Wed, 18 Oct 2006 08:59:16 -0700, John Larkin
<jjlarkin@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:

On Wed, 18 Oct 2006 05:40:55 GMT, Jonathan Kirwan
jkirwan@easystreet.com> wrote:

On Tue, 17 Oct 2006 21:52:59 -0700, John Larkin
jjlarkin@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:

On Tue, 17 Oct 2006 16:55:17 GMT, Jonathan Kirwan
jkirwan@easystreet.com> wrote:

John, I've never seen a list for liberals to vote towards. Not ever.
Now you have:

http://www.emilyslist.org/

There are lots more... just look.

Please show me the list there.

Good grief, do I have to do all your web work for you?

https://secure1.emilyslist.org/Donation/index.cfm?event=initiative_showOne&initiativeID=12&mt=146

No, you just have to do YOUR OWN WORK. It was your point, after all.

I am beginning to put two and two together over this discussion to
gradually wonder that you may be the kind of boss who overly depends
upon people smarter than you to make good on your hand waving ideas.
I'm sure it isn't the case, but sometimes it seems that way.

I'm plenty smart about some things, less so about others. I'm rotten
at "business" stuff, the financial side of things, so I do have much
better people run that for me. And my serious math skills, in the
sense of doing calculus and heavy circuit analysis, are rusty from
disuse, and weren't stellar to start with, so if I need that sort of
analysis done, I have one of the kids do it. But I have a lot of
ideas, good ideas, and implement them well... about half the products
on my web site were designed by me, all the way from concept to
firmware and parts lists; I do get help with PCB layout and driving
the FPGA software. I have ideas because I like ideas and am bored by
routine, and because I give even outlandish concepts a chance before
rejecting them. I've designed about $200 million worth of electronics
so far, and I'm just getting good at it. I want to teach other people
to be good at it too.

My particular interest is understanding where ideas come from, and why
some of them get squashed. When Townes was trying to get his first
maser to work, his department head was convinced it was a waste of
time. Townes broke the idea to a Nobel laureat who promptly told him
that the maser couldn't work because it violated the rules of
thermodynamics. He later reconsidered.

John, I really am impressed by your response. And it is especially
wonderful to me when I hear that good people are able to be brought
together into a great team that enhances their strengths and where
each person has each others' backs on their weaknesses. It sounds as
though you understand that.

My wife has probably the quickest and facile imagination I've been
exposed to -- ever. She has no real technical depth, but her mind is
constantly active on imagining and putting things together in new
ways. I stop her at places and ask, "How in the heck did you get from
what you just said to this new thing here?" because, quite frankly, I
know that there was some means but I can't fathom the connections. So
she explains and when she does, there IS a connection from what she
had just said to the new thing. But I didn't see the path, there were
at least a dozen steps to it, and it happened in her mind is less time
than a second.

We have known each other since ... since before I can remember
existing. We grew up together. She's two years older and on occasion
actually baby sat me for my parents! But in all these years of
knowing her, each day I am around her is new to me. I never stop
listening. I am never bored. Her imagination is THAT GOOD.

Okay. So yes, I _am_ impressed by imagination and attracted to it,
obviously. I respect it. I value it. (My imagination space is in
mathematics. I enjoy seeing bosons become fermions through a
reflection space or realizing that packing spheres can be used as a
visualization of the error correction schemes of Hamming.)

One thing you might want to consider reading about is General Atomic,
which was a division of General Dynamics Corporation, in the mid to
late 1950's. Edward Teller, Freeman Dyson, and many others were
involved in developing several kinds of nuclear reactors for power
generation, including a fundamentally safe reactor that children could
operate and a terrorist could not cause to overheat, granted access
and using explosives. The interactions of scientists and scientists,
and engineers and scientists there is a real education about
successful harnessing of ideas into practicality. Teller was full of
ideas, but needed Dyson to demolish them often or to cast them into
mathematical form for deduction to specifics. Fierce disagreements
would gradually resolve into practical ideas. And engineers, with
perhaps one of the more important ones being an Iranian named Massoud
Simnad, absorbed the physics and were able to develop the necessary
materials and designs as a result.

John, ideas come from a lot of sources and some of them cannot be
intentional, but instead a matter of accident. The discovery of
radioactivity is itself a lesson in this. I'm sure that many times
before that event, people noticed fogged film but instead just assumed
it was bad and sent it back for new film. It took an accident of
imagination, not an intentional and directed one set to a path, for
Becquerel to question that assumption and to actually see if there was
a proximate cause, instead.

My own imagination has had its small successes, too, where better
trained physicists were stumped over a problem. So I understand and
appreciate some of what you are saying.

But there is only so much time and effort available and so many more
ideas to be considered -- especially when those coming up with the
ideas don't have to actually _know_ anything broadly about the facts.
It is so very much easier for us to grab some analogy from here and
paste it over there, when we don't really understand much of the
details and figure on leaving it to others to "work it out." There
just isn't much time for that. This is one of the reasons for the
practical rule in science that "the first burden of evidence" belongs
to the person proposing the idea. It's simply the only practical way
to go.

One of the things that has very much impressed me about the really
great (and read this as: two) physicists I've known, is the power of
their mindful thinking. Not only are they facile and imaginative,
holding a great many analogs and concepts in mind they can sling
around very quickly, but they have rigorous boundary conditions well
understood about each of them. They ask a few questions important to
selecting from them and are extremely adept in knowing exactly what
information excludes which analogs and includes others, rapidly and
intelligently reducing down. I've had them come cold into a situation
where they knew almost none of the engineering details, just because
they were vaguely interested for a moment, and had them within the
hour telling some highly skilled and long experienced engineers new
things about their own work they hadn't considered. It's impressive
to see. And it is very rare.

You are in a business where intuition and imagination, harnessed to
engineering realities, can be afforded because when it succeeds it
produces cash that comes back to fund the burden. Basic science
research does NOT produce cash that is brought back to fund the same
team. Economics of time and money are a little different.

Anyway, on the subject of evolution, it is one of those fields where
you cannot just "tinker" around without dealing with facts and imagine
you've contributed. It has a very long and very successful history
and it now incorporates almost every facet of every field within
science and both supports and draws its own support from the network
of interactions of theory and result across the science expanse. Very
subtle effects pile up very quickly as generations unfold. Even the
merest difference between a 50.001% and a 49.999% discrimination in
genes will turn into the near eradication of the 49.999% gene in
suprisingly short order. Proposing something as you do would have a
VERY measurable effect, unless you further compound its complexity by
suggesting that it only has a very subtle effect (and then, if so, why
at all?) Which means, actually, that if you are right about it even
though you don't know the exact mechanism, you should be able to
easily demonstrate your case because within the science there would be
very large and otherwise unexplained impacts that current theory
cannot be used to deduce.

So you should start there. Point out where the lacks are at and why
your explanation fits all the facts and yet also explains things
better. But don't imagine, if you cannot do that yet, that there is
any reason to seriously consider it when you cannot even be bothered
to find those areas in current evolution theory _requiring_ some new
idea to explain them. Especially when something like what you propose
would very quickly manifest itself as generations unfold.

Thanks for the discussion, sincerely. I think I see where you are
coming from and I respect that.

Jon

 

[Jonathan Kirwan]

On Wed, 18 Oct 2006 10:58:46 -0700, John Larkin
<jjlarkin@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:

Geez, it's just a newsgroup. It doesn't really matter.

I see. My time doesn't matter, either, I suppose. Got it.

Jon

 

"John Larkin" <jjlarkin@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote in message
news:0sdcj2p4j5juqv9ug5al7f0bder9pf0ott@4ax.com...

On Wed, 18 Oct 2006 05:13:06 GMT, <lucasea@sbcglobal.net> wrote:

"John Larkin" <jjlarkin@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote in
message
news:r84bj29ks79pg0usm3m1gckgv430imkd0d@4ax.com...

It's surprising to me, in this newsgroup, how hard it is to get people
to brainstorm, to riff on ideas. Rigidity rules.

I agree. I think the problem (at least on sci.chem) is that people will
present a new idea as a fact, rather than as a speculation. A post that
says "here's how I say it is" garners a very different response than one
that says "hey, guys, I had this new idea, and I'd like your thought on
how
to refine it". People need to find better ways to get a brainstorm like
that going. I've also found, through years of using it as a tool in my
science, that to do brainstorming well and productively takes a phenomenal
amount of discipline, and people do have to agree to abide by rules (for
example, the main rule is "you can only present new ideas, not
criticize/critique what someone else has presented".) Refinement of the
ideas generated in a brainstorm also takes discipline, but not quite as
much. That sort of discipline just ain't possible in a free-form forum
like
Usenet, particularly in unmoderated newsgroups.

My apologies for not being more aware of the crosspost...

No problem, this entire thread was massive crossposted from the beginning.
I'm actually kind of glad, it gets a broader perspective and a new bunch of
personalities. Sci.chem is kinda boring these days.

I'm writing
from the s.e.d. perspective. Scientists are trying to discover the
rules of nature, and engineers are usually annoyed by them. Actual
recent exchange: "Nice circuit, but it violates conservation of
energy." ... "Ooh, I really hate that one."

Well, that would be the "rigid inflexibility" that you decried. I'm just
joking--I agree with you on that issue, but the one thing that people need
to be extremely wary of being flexible about is the laws of nature. It's
unbelievably rare that one of them is truly found wanting.

But the problem is the same, in that we both need new ideas, and most
of the easy ones were found a long time ago. If you get a bunch of
people together, groupthink lowers their mean IQ, with mob violence,
or maybe politics, being the extreme expression. Brainstorming is a
mechanism to increase mean IQ, but as you say, it's fragile and not
easy to arrange. One bad player can poison a brainstorming session,
and on usenet there are plenty of bad players available.

There are effective mechansims for dealing with that one bad player, and
that's one situation where the discipline really comes in.

One on my brainstorming "rules" (and all brainstorming rules are
better kept hidden, enforced by stealth) is that no ideas be supressed
until they've been exposed and considered.

Yep, that's the most important one (actually, in the first, most creative
phase, ideas are not even to be considered, just written down for
consideration and building on in a later, less creative phase), but I don't
necessarily agree about the stealth. One of the best brainstorming sessions
I've ever been to had an explicit rule that anybody who critiques or
evaluates an idea during the idea generation phase itself had to pay a
quarter into the pot. Some of the younger
fresh-out-of-college-and-know-everything folks just didn't get it, and ended
up owing several dollars at the end of a 2 hour session.

The way to make that happen
is to substitute the enabling rule that there's no difference between
presenting an idea and making a joke. A good brainstorm is
recognizable by the laughter it generates. Lots of the jokes turn out
to be excellent ideas, after a little kicking around.

Yep, most new ideas are pretty silly on the face of it. Nice way to think
about it--I'll have to remember that.

Brainstorming is magical when it works.

It's always been one of my favorite parts of science.

It could be done on usenet if
the players had the guts to keep it up and not be intimidated by the
wedge-heads.

Maybe. It's very difficult to keep from getting sucked into the minutiae,
as witnessed by this thread. Of course, here, nobody is really trying. The
one advantage of a non-immediate medium like this is that you have more time
to simply consider the implications of your post, rather than just feeling
like you need to blurt things out in real time.

Eric Lucas

 

[Daniel Mandic]

John Larkin wrote:

Brainstorming is a
mechanism to increase mean IQ, but as you say, it's fragile and not
easy to arrange. One bad player can poison a brainstorming session,
and on usenet there are plenty of bad players available.

Have you hit something hard with your head?

One on my brainstorming "rules" (and all brainstorming rules are
better kept hidden, enforced by stealth) is that no ideas be supressed
until they've been exposed and considered. The way to make that happen
is to substitute the enabling rule that there's no difference between
presenting an idea and making a joke. A good brainstorm is
recognizable by the laughter it generates. Lots of the jokes turn out
to be excellent ideas, after a little kicking around.

You will find yourself in a closed circle, every single one fucks the
next one.

Yesterday we evolved an absurd speculation on the subject of dac
trimming into a new product idea, absolutely unrelated to the original
issue, one we can charge a heap of money for.

You mean an anal-speculator? Digital Audio controlled Trimming?

Brainstorming is magical when it works.

1938, Hitler. Germany.

John

Best Regards,

Daniel Mandic

 

[Daniel Mandic]

Lloyd Parker wrote:

Why then would a designer make every life form use almost the same
DNA? Why have a flower have the same basic DNA as a human?

Do you rise DNA to a new reference?


We will not find the dualism in the DNA. That is what have come out
of...

And you (and other Genfarter) with your dualism, will unriddle the
whole DNA Story for me. hehe...

Write it Down on shit-paper....



Best Regards,

Daniel Mandic

 

[Lloyd Parker]

In article <4sqcj2tqtkrvk561qtdu7ssk8bh8q6ofbc@4ax.com>,
John Larkin <jjlarkin@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:

On Wed, 18 Oct 06 10:46:48 GMT, lparker@emory.edu (Lloyd Parker)
wrote:

In article <879bj21r9ffat4i1pbkbjffvfb2bag6d5r@4ax.com>,
John Larkin <jjlarkin@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:
On Tue, 17 Oct 2006 18:07:18 GMT, Jonathan Kirwan
jkirwan@easystreet.com> wrote:


They are prohibited by law from engaging in politics, and
that's reasonably well enforced.

Not in churches, they're not.

Churches may not donate money or substantial resources to political
candidates. Would you have a prohibition against members of a
congregation discussing politics? How about members of the Sierra
Club? The NRA? The ACLU? MADD?

There have been some recent legal actions against churches that have
broken the no-politics rules, and against some secular nonprofits,
too.

As a musician in a group that happens to play
for church services a lot, I've been to services of quite a few
denominations...and many of them preach politics from the pulpit, to the
extent of telling their congregation for whom they should vote. That is
a
big problem, in my book.

Of course it is; you don't want their candidates to win.

John


The League of Conservation Voters puts out a voter's guide; the LCV is not a
tax-exempt organization because of this. Why are churches allowed to put
out
voter's guides?

If they do, and if it's illegal, they should be stopped, naturally.
Ditto Sierra Club and all the rest.

John

The Sierra Club is also not a tax-exempt. There IS the Sierra Club

Foundation, which is, but it doesn't do the lobbying and attempt to influence
people on issues. You can join the SC, you can contribute to the SCF, or
both, but you do them separately.

 

"John Larkin" <jjlarkin@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote in message
news:6vhcj257beh7bgi1u0iac8m5mshbm5cmsr@4ax.com...

On Wed, 18 Oct 2006 06:40:17 GMT, <lucasea@sbcglobal.net> wrote:

it's their destiny. As someone pointed out, many of the great
scientists (Newton, Einstein) were Believers, and it didn't damage
their creativity or math skills. I bet both were taught Creationism
big-time.

Maybe, but there's a big difference between the Jewish/Catholic (and most
Protestant sects') teachings, which take most New- and Old-Testament stories
as allegorical, and Christian Fundamentalism, which treat those stories as
literal truth (this is the basis for the name "Fundamentalist"). An
allegory about the formation of the universe is a lot less damaging than a
fairy tale that is to be taken literally.

If you're suggesting that ID is a viable scientific theory, then the onus
is
on *you* to come up with the experiments that will test that theory.

I'm suggesting that, given a big problem (and the universe is a *big*
problem) and no viable much less testable theories, there's no cause
for being hostile to any suggestion, and more than for being convinced
of any truth.

If they make no useful predictions and aren't testable/falsifiable, they
don't belong in science class. Period.

String theory, and the resulting outcomes, are in a slightly different class
from ID/CS. String theory is essentially mathematics, and not physics, and
is the only credible attempt (so far) to develop a mathematical construct
that unifies the electroweak force and gravity, and finally provide a
unified theory that explains all forces from a fundamental perspective. It
has not yet yielded any testable predictions, but I think that is from a
perspective of being far from complete. Ultimately, I think string
theorists do hope that the unification of those two forces will ultimately
provide new insights into physics that do provide testable theories. The
difference between it and ID/CS is that string theorists are at least making
a serious attempt to explain a physical phenomenon in a way that may
ultimately provide testable results. ID/CS shortcuts all that, and says
"it's true because the Giant Spaghetti Monster said it's true." I don't see
any possibility of that leading to any testable hypotheses. If you think
otherwise, then give me such a hypothesis, and test it, and I'll be more
than happy to have it taught in science class.

Personally, I tend to be of the opinion that gravity is a non-fundamental
force, in much the same way that centrifugal force is non-fundamental, in
that it is a side result of inertia in a non-inertial (rotating) frame of
reference. Gravity is a result of the curvature of space-time that is
described by Special Relativity. This may ultimately make it impossible to
unify the different forces in a meaningful and useful way, but I think we're
a long way from knowing whether or not that is true. In any case, there's a
good reason cutting-edge stuff like this isn't taught in high school science
classes--the students just don't have the basis of experience needed to
critically evaluate a such a new entity.

What concerns me more is dogmatic anti-Belief, wherein people
violently reject possibilities because they are afraid of even
slightly sympathizing with "religious nuts."

Another strawman. Nobody is doing anything of the sort. Beliefs are fine,
where they belong--in a religion or philosophy class.

In other works, relax.

This is one point on which *no* credible scientist will ever back down...nor
should they.

Eric Lucas

 

"John Larkin" <jjlarkin@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote in message
news:iuicj2hq5e3gsabtq0pk16l20eiqsnradv@4ax.com...

My particular interest is understanding where ideas come from, and why
some of them get squashed. When Townes was trying to get his first
maser to work, his department head was convinced it was a waste of
time. Townes broke the idea to a Nobel laureat who promptly told him
that the maser couldn't work because it violated the rules of
thermodynamics. He later reconsidered.

That's a great little parable, but it's not especially relevant, since it's
told after the fact. Not all wacko ideas are viable new theories. There is
a good reason that extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence, which
frequently take an extraordinary amount of work, which frequently requires
an extraordinary amount of hard-headedness to ignore the critics. It's the
scientific process, and it's a pretty good way to make sure that what we
think we know about our world really is true to the best of our
understanding--in a sense, it's a very effective way to sort out belief from
useful theory. That's not to say belief is in any way less useful or less
important than science, it's just that we have to be careful not to conflate
the two.

Your parable also doesn't mean that we should immediately drop everything to
embrace every new theory that comes along, so that we don't miss something
like the maser. If it is a useful new idea, there will be those with hard
heads who see to it that it becomes a tested and accepted theory. Until
that point, it is not something that should be taught in high school science
class. It is useful to teach those sorts of things at the upper college and
especially graduate levels, because those students are mature enough to know
that they're being taught about those lines of research in order to broaden
their perspective about what is possible in research.

Eric Lucas

 

[T Wake]

"JoeBloe" <joebloe@thebarattheendoftheuniverse.org> wrote in message
news:83ccj2lc8934ekjchf37cl3hqo7in9k1kh@4ax.com...

On Mon, 16 Oct 2006 17:09:32 +0100, "T Wake"
usenet.es7at@gishpuppy.com> Gave us:

Well, all I said was we could meet up


No, that isn't "all you said".

Oh look, the monkey is back.

Go on then, what else did I say? Where did I say I was going to do anything
other than give you the chance to live up to your claims?

 

[T Wake]

"JoeBloe" <joebloe@thebarattheendoftheuniverse.org> wrote in message
news:t8ccj2t79b5pm0rmal01mqnl98mejpik4q@4ax.com...

On Mon, 16 Oct 06 11:01:16 GMT, lparker@emory.edu (Lloyd Parker) Gave
us:

Yes, by all means, label those who disagree with you as traitors. Worked
for
Hitler, worked for Stalin, Bush is trying it... why should a little
pissant
Nazi like you be any different?

SAid the retarded twit that obviously hasn't read the US hating spew
that the DonkTARD has been putting out. Bone up on a thread before
you interlope into it, jack-off!

As usual, nothing you have said is relevant to the comment you are trying to
disagree with. You really do not have the language skills to engage in a
USENET debate with anything other than pointless insults and vague threats.

 

[Daniel Mandic]

<lucasea@sbcglobal.net> wrote:

Maybe, but there's a big difference between the Jewish/Catholic (and
most Protestant sects') teachings, which take most New- and
Old-Testament stories as allegorical, and Christian Fundamentalism,
which treat those stories as literal truth (this is the basis for the
name "Fundamentalist"). An allegory about the formation of the
universe is a lot less damaging than a fairy tale that is to be taken
literally.

Jewish/Evangelic/Christian

Islam

Buddhism

Hinduism

Manitou

Je



Best Regards,

Daniel Mandic

P.S.: Ute (former Utah)

 

[T Wake]

<jmfbahciv@aol.com> wrote in message
news:eh52sr$8qk_002@s847.apx1.sbo.ma.dialup.rcn.com...

In article <892dnbGwhIzhhajYRVnyvA@pipex.net>,
"T Wake" <usenet.es7at@gishpuppy.com> wrote:

jmfbahciv@aol.com> wrote in message
news:eh2jst$8qk_001@s777.apx1.sbo.ma.dialup.rcn.com...
In article <1161090357.909390.53800@k70g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>,
|||newspam|||@nezumi.demon.co.uk wrote:

jmfbahciv@aol.com wrote:
In article <eh01a0$ape$1@leto.cc.emory.edu>,
lparker@emory.edu (Lloyd Parker) wrote:

Actually we sold him weapons,

What percentage of all Iraq's purchases were from the US
government?

What, if it's only 50% that makes it OK?

You dodged answering the question. What percentage? Be specific.

we sold him the materials to make chemical
weapons.

Which materials?

The precursor chemicals.

Specify. I suspect you don't want to make that list because
I could buy most of them at the drug store.

I doubt if you would find any of the reactive starting materials for CW
like phosphorous chloride, fluoride, oxychloride, thionyl chloride or
any of the other more complex intermediates like trimethyl phosphite
(some of which have legitimate use in plastics and insecticides) on any
drug store shelf.

I have my chemistry book, also known as the recipe book. Now specify
the ingredients needed to make those dishes you've just listed.


They were ingredients.

Which need to be made. These compounds do not occur naturally
in the soil.

Not relevant, they are ingredient for the creation of CW. Breaking it down
into the common elements is truly pointless and nothing but a distraction.

These days even legitimate industrial users of
organophosphorous compounds are vetted.

But the poster wasn't talking about these days. He was talking
about 25 years ago.


Yes, 25 years ago there was less vetting. Now there is more.

So, once somebody used certain chemicals to do mass killings the
US put it on the restricted export list. Yet you seem to blame
the US for all the killings even though other countries also
supplied similar chemicals.

I do not blame the US for selling chemicals to Iraq. I think it was a
perfectly legitimate move to ensure that Iraq was capable of at least
withstanding Iran, if not actually winning.

Where does any form of "blame" come into this?

However, denying things like this happen is strange. The US sold chemicals
which were, at the time, known to have dual uses. Saying they were put on
the export list after the killings, to make it look like it was done in
response to the killings is pure nonsense.

You demonstrate a willingness to assume good faith where certain political
organisations are concerned and automatically assume bad faith with others -
even when presented with equal evidence. You have also made some massive
assumptions about peoples motivations, despite anything which is posted to
the contrary.

I suspect this is all the result of a very, very closed mindset you have.

Your point?

You are illogical in your zeal to make the US responsible
for all the ills in the world.

I am not trying to make the US responsible for all the ills in the world.

You are illogical for thinking I am.

You are illogical for thinking the US is inocent of all claims of wrong
doing.

You are illogical for thinking that there is a clear cut "us and them"
approach to global politics.

The US even sold Iraq helicopters and heavy vehicles on a don't ask
don't tell basis. As did the UK, Germany and even Israel... see for
example the WSU website (and links).

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/

Exports of obvious CW precursors from US companies (and in theory their
overseas subsiduaries) were eventually blocked in March 1984 according
to the WSU article. That sounds about right to me.

And why did those ingredients get on the US' restriction list?


Well do you mean after Saddam stopped being America's great ally in the
region?

You should sit down and make a diary of events w.r.t. time.

snip another question ignored

You seem to think a request for clarification was "another question ignored"
and you seem to think <snip> means something other than removing a block of
text.

Shall we make a list of how many questions you ignore? Better still, the
ones you sidestep or try to strawman a response?

Now, if you are prepared to debate reasonably then do you want me to talk
about why dual use ingredients got on an export control list before or after
Saddam's fall from grace?

Check out the infamous Matrix-Churchill show trial and the UK
government whitewash that followed its collapse.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/february/15/newsid_2544000
/2
544355.stm

I ain't going to go look for that. I thought the guy was accusing
the United _States_ for handing free weapons and components over
to Iraq--not United Kingdom.


Matrix Churchill was an example (remember the supergun which was mentioned
previously?) of how the UK/US (allies on the war in Iraq remember, the UK
is
the most vocal european supporter of US policies) have a dual standard at
times.

If you think the fact the example was a UK company means the US were guilt
free I suggest you look at:

"In June, 1982, President Reagan decided that the United States could not
afford to allow Iraq to lose the war to Iran. President Reagan decided
that
the United States would do whatever was necessary and legal to prevent
Iraq
from losing the war with Iran. President Reagan formalized this policy by
issuing a National Security Decision Directive ("NSDD") to this effect in
June, 1982," said the "Teicher Affidavit," submitted on 31 January 1995 by
former NSC official Howard Teicher to the U.S. District Court, Southern
District of Florida.

Now, why did Regan decide that it was not a good idea for
Iran to acquire Iraq? This has to be answered within the context
of the Cold War. Pay particular attention to what the fUSSR
was achieving in disarming Europe.


and

Much of what Iraq received from the US, however, were not arms per se, but
so-called dual-use technology- mainframe computers, armored ambulances,
helicopters, chemicals, and the like, with potential civilian uses as well
as military applications. It is now known that a vast network of
companies,
based in the U.S. and elsewhere, fed Iraq's warring capabilities right up
until August 1990, when Saddam invaded Kuwait

Note the "and elsewhere". What percentage of Iraq's imports came
from the "and elsewhere"?

95%.

[Both properly referenced on Wikipedia -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._support_for_Iraq_during_the_Iran-Iraq_war].

Or are you trying to get people to believe that everything the
UK did was also the US' fault?


Strawman based on a misconception that the UK dislikes the US.

Good grief. You are hopeles..

Well. The fact remains you do your utmost to divert into different,
irrelevant lines of arguments with alarming regularity. You have assumed
that I "blame" the US for things I dont blame the US about. You have
stereotyped all Europeans as hating the US. You really do have very little
demonstrated knowledge of the region but a _lot_ of assumed opinion.

Rumsfield went over there and embraced him and told him he was our
friend.

What was the context of this visit?

A promotional sales tour to help the Iraqis to win the Iran-Iraq war.

Win? I don't think so. In those days, most deals had to do with
keeping strengths equal with the Communists' (mostly fUSSR) satellites.


See above.

Ah, so you are goingt to completely ignore the Cold War going
on at the time. This dominated all countries' politics and
seemed to be reaching a crescendo during the early 80s.

Not ignoring the cold war at all.

Iran-Iraq was not a Russian proxy. Russia, as well as the US, supplied Iraq.

This has nothing to do with either the line of debate or the historical
context.

Now, what percentage of Iraq imports were from US companies?

Well in 1988 it was 5.44% of the arms imports (*). Not sure about other
products.

Is that an acceptable percentage?

5% implies that 95% came from elsewhere. Yet your arugments
imply that the US was the primary supplier. This is the illogic
that I was trying to get at.

I haven't intentionally said the US was the primary supplier. You may have
confused yourself over who you are replying to, but you could possibly solve
that by being less diversive with your replies and snips.

The US supplied 5.44 of the conventional arms Iraq imported in 1988. I have
no idea about the supply of dual use technology or other materials.

This does not mean the US was _the_ primary supplier by volume of war
materials to Iraq at this time (USSR was), but it certainly DID supply
weapons. The US did assist Saddam build his army. It did assist Saddam in
controlling his own people in an oppressive manner.

Does this make my position more clear?

Europeans have hidden assumptions about US companies and how they
function because their environment is based on their socailist
govnerments controlling production.


Pure nonsense. Spend less time reading crazy books and try to visit
Europe.

I have visited Europe. Did Churchill, Thatcher, and Wilson
write crazy books? Am I supposed to assume that all their
writings were lies?

Not all, but some of it will be. Human nature is they will write what they
want people to think about them. I have lived through Thatcher and Wilson
governments, and read books by them about that period. They recollections
and my own are different.

If you have visited Europe, I am intrigued where you think we have
"socialist" governments on the whole?

This is not how business
works in the US. Europeans have this subtle assumption and
don't seem to be able to realize that companies in the US
never first ask if they can manufacture a foo before they
build the plant.

Strawman.

No, it's not a strawman. Until you understand how our
commercial business is run, your assumptions that US
businesses only do what the government allows will be wrong.

Apart from the fact I have never made that assumption, you are being much to
generalised here. Your companies and business still abide by US law.

I have worked for dozens of US businesses. They are remarkably similar, if
not identical, to UK ones. If anything, the US businesses have been more in
bed with the Government.

On the otherhand, if your country has allowed businesses to step outside the
law then it really is time to sort your own house out before you try to sort
others.

European politics is still within a royalty mindset where
nothing is allowed unless the governing body Oks the request.

Any examples?

Things tend to be the reverse in the US. Until a product
is deemed harmful or not desirable, for whatever reason,
there generally isn't any restriction (other than tax
and contract law) to making stuff.

So you have no environmental protection law? No employee safety law?

Interesting.

Please note that there is a difference between laws and politics.

You were talking about laws in the last paragraph. Do American businesses
ignore the law? Do they influence politics?

European economy has constraints from unions. Ours doesn't
in today's markets.

Neither does the UK. How is this relevant?