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Comment Re:Separation of Powers (Score 1) 703

The problem with the constitution was that it was largely a theoretical document. The Framers didn't have a lot of real-world examples to draw upon.

For example, the idea that all voting members would vote individually on each issue, and that nobody would ever form voting blocs or parties.

Or the idea that the loser in the presidential election should be VP.

Comment Re:Null hypothesis (Score 1) 556

Ok, so which omnipotent sky wizard do you then believe? Yahweh? El? The composite Jehova? Yeshua? Allah? Baal? Vishnu? Shiva? Buddha? Flying Spaghetti Monster? One of the ascended Emperors of Rome? The living Emperor of Japan, directly descended from Amaterasu? Amon-re? Tezcatlipoca? I can keep coming up with names that entire populations have fervently believed, with all their hearts and souls, were divine beings.

Comment Re:A Simple Retort (Score 1) 556

How many planets with liquid water, an atmosphere and a magnetosphere?

It's not even as simple as this. Even now, my kids public schools have material on the shelf that says 'all life gains energy from the sun, or via a linear chain of eating something that did,' but then have to point out that this is now proven wrong. Like the man said, 'It's life, Jim, but not as we know it.'

The odds that an individual sperm containing half of your DNA would be the one to fertilize an egg are so long that you can not possible exist. (Anybody got a car analogy?)

In Ontario, a license plate consists of seven alphanumerics. Call it 36 options per slot.

Tell me a license plate you saw on the way to work. Well, that's bullshit. There's a 1 in 36x36x36x36x36x36x36, or 1 in 78,364,164,096 chance you could have seen that license plate. Therefore, an omnipotent being MUST have put that exact license plate there.

That's the argument a lot of creationists try to put forward. 'The human genome is blah blah long, with blah blah possible combinations, so you personally couldn't have 'evolved,' the chances are too slim.' It's reductio ad absurdum.

Comment Re:And that's still too long (Score 1) 328

Copyright is supposed to be a restriction of our right to copy the works of others so that the other can profit from it for a short while - thereby giving the other an incentive to create. But giving up our right to copy forever was never the intention of the deal.

This. Copyright is supposed to be a *temporary* block on your natural right to make copies, in order to provide incentive to create and make public, and profit, during that temporary block.

Comment Re:No group "owns" any day on the calendar. (Score 5, Interesting) 681

That's the thing; a lot of 'christians' do, in fact, think it to be a literal birthday.

The fact that they're so incorrect about a basic tenant of their faith is telling.

Also, anybody who claims Christianity is pro-family obviously hasn't read Luke.

I've always wanted to make a movie that was Matthew, Mark, Luke and John getting together to reminisce about the good old days, then getting into arguments over the differences in their gospels. 'Wait, that's not how *I* remember it...'

Comment Re:Culture and information matter. (Score 1) 288

Historically speaking, defectors from the Soviet Union were most utterly shocked and amazed by grocery stores.

The idea that there could be SO MUCH FOOD that people could browse around, pick and choose, pass up fruits or vegetables as not quite pretty enough, and that the stores would routinely throw out unwanted food was simply unfathomable.

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