Intelligence without conscience is not admirable.
Brains and internal organs are interesting in general, but I wouldn't find them so interesting smeared around at an accident site.
Having someone who believes that pi is exactly equal to 3 is amusing, except when they force that nonsense into law.
Rush is pure troll. He gets his jollies off of pissing people off.

We all know that Duke Nukem is gonna be written in Perl 6 and run on HURD.

Sky blue and Royal blue are both blue, right?
Don't be held captive by a mere definition.

(see Wittgenstein's language game : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_Investigations

One general characteristic of games that Wittgenstein considers in detail is the way in which they consist in following rules. Rules constitute a family, rather than a class that can be explicitly defined.[14] As a consequence, it is not possible to provide a definitive account of what it is to follow a rule. Indeed, he argues that any course of action can be made out to accord with some particular rule, and that therefore a rule cannot be used to explain an action.[15] Rather, that one is following a rule or not is to be decided by looking to see if the actions conform to the expectations in the particular form of life in which one is involved. Following a rule is a social activity.

Indeed. We like to think of a solid thing as the opposite of empty space, but is the solid volume merely the place where fields have the greatest probability of interaction? Are there really solid things out there that exist the way we think of them?

The public option is gone, and single payer never made it to the table.

I don't know if that is directly attributed to a filibuster threat, but its certainly attributed to resistance to those ideas. I guess those were the victims of too much compromise and/or the power of money and the weakness of lawmakers.

That the thing was passed is sort of a success, but more of a political one than a life changing one.

Engineers tend to think deeply with full focus, which has got to be the source of their troubles, and their gifts of design.

"MultiTasking" to me is a wrenching experience, where I have to refocus my mind onto something new.
It's not a pleasant experience.

Indeed, I think we will have gadget printers. You are quite correct though, as they will be printing each other.
The jobs will be in the design.
Until we have jobs making auto correcting and efficiency boosting algorithms.
Until we can then complete the strange loop connecting the algorithms to themselves.

What will we do? Probably make it up as we go along. Al Cap kinda predicted this with the shmoo.

I don't see why it implies that Santa is real.

There is a context beyond the words themselves. Ignoring that context, or thinking that words are exact things, is not seeing the full picture.

If you hear an adult say 'Santa is generous' and honestly think that they mean Santa is real, you might have wandered a bit much in the autistic spectrum.

I agree. You need real friendship. I just don't think there is anything wrong with playing 'pretend' once in a while as long as you don't get carried away. That's what I think what religions are - pretend that got carried away.

I don't know if there is more to the core of Christianity than "Don't be a jerk. There is no specific chosen race - everyone has the same intrinsic value." No harm in studying though.

We are focussing on them now, but as a rule, we also make fun of Christianity, Buddhism, Janism, Judaism, any ism.

I'm just trying to find an analogy that you might connect with. Maybe mental model would work better for you?

Why Jesus? There are lots of Christians out there, and it would be a more pleasant experience for me if they tended to act nicer. It would be simple for them to have an imaginary Jesus or angel.

Personally, I'd have a talking dog, I think.

You are thinking too concretely. Please note the difference :

• I believe that unicorns exist
• I believe that the idea of unicorns exists

Now consider :

• I believe the Ideal Gas Law is true.
• I believe the Ideal Gas Law is a reasonable model for simple cases.

If I said 'Santa is generous', I think most people would agree, and not be mislead into thinking that I actually believe there is a Santa. I can believe 'Santa is Generous' without needing to believe that Santa is a real person.

Too subtle? Too nuts?

redundant? This was one of the first comments.

While I agree with you, I don't believe religions are immune from change. The big backlash against this day seems to be from students who feel that their religion is being singled out and picked on, rather than the actual drawing of Mohammad. Having a draw all relgions event would show that no, we are not singling them out for criticism.

Think of it as the holodeck of your brain using some spare cycles to make a construct. It may be able to draw conclusions that your conscious mind is not able to at the moment.