Comment Re:lol @ your shitty speeds in the US. (Score 1) 186
I was supposed to correct it to be about wired rather than cell reception but the general point stands.
If we lived in a tiny country like Sweden or Japan, it would be easy to have infrastructure in place for good internet speeds for all. "Unfortunately" for us, we just have too much room here in the USA.
This argument would make sense if Sweden was indeed geographically tiny and densely populated, however, it is not.
Sweden is actually far less densely populated than the US (source: Wikipedia and Nationmaster).
As for geography Sweden may be quite thin but this is not exactly useful for reducing costs for mobile infrastructure
since the signals from the mobile radio masts propagates in all directions forming a rough circle.
If you try to overlay Sweden on the continental US (just look at Google maps/earth) you would actually be able to enter
Sweden in Canada and exit it in Mexico without ever setting foot in the US.
In other words: Despite having less money per capita, fewer residents per square mile, a less suitable geographical shape and
being largely covered by forests blocking the the signals Sweden still manages to achieve better service than the continental US.
The excuse that the US has worse service because it is harder to reach all corners is and will always remain complete BS.
The service sucks because the operators lack competition and don't want to invest any more of their earnings than they absolutely
have to on infrastructure.
This _current_ BBC pedophilia scandal is far greater than what the slashdot article is letting on here.
Pedophilia is rampant in the uk and elsewhere in the social golden-spoon strata McAlpine hails from...
Google for BBC pedophilia scandal, there is far more than just this going on.
It's ironical that in your comment you provide a much worse example of how to depict people as criminals without any evidence than anything the BBC has done.
That would be the median person, of course.
Whenever normal humans (non mathematicians) speak of average they almost invariably mean the arithmetic mean.
Which in a case like this is not likely to be far enough from the median point to make a difference.
Though pointing out that using the term average is not technically perfect in some cases even though we all pretty much
understand what was meant is a good example of the dickishness that this thread is about.
You still cannot prove that he exists. Dawkins is just another "Russell's Teapot".
Oh such complete and (n)utter bullshit.
We can device proper scientific models complete with repeatable predictable and falsifiable tests which show that Dawkins exists*.
This is not true for god.
* Repeating these tests on a regular basis would likely greatly annoy Dawkins who may refuse to participate but it is no way impossible.
Why not just educate equally and allow people to come to their own conclusions?
This is an excellent idea.
One of the most efficient antidotes to religious indoctrination is to teach about all religions equally in school allowing
no special treatment of the most popular ones.
This way you expose all the similarities and common roots as well as our propensity as a species to accept this type
of dogma.
Very true. Religion is only one of the tribal markers used to determine "us" vs. "them". It's what irritates me about the oft repeated claim "most wars are caused by religion."
It should be noted that Dawkins speaks about this as well. This is addressed both in the God delusion and in an interview on hardtalk:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdZ_iA8fP_A
His main point is that religion is often used as a very potent marker to differentiate various groups.
Whether or not he was the Son of God, is irrelevant. From a purely utilitarian perspective, his philosophy is what is important, and his philosophy is very sensible.
This view seems very unusually sensible.
But this would mean that you are not a Christian as the vast majority define it since you are not a actually a theist.
If the only thing you believe in is that the teachings of Jesus are good in some general sense I'd consider this a philosophy
or simply an ethical viewpoint. This is especially true if you view the teachings as more important than the source
Would you consider the teachings themselves to be of equal importance if someone other than Jesus was the source of them?
If so wouldn't 'Christ' be quite irrelevant to your ethical/moral/philosophical viewpoint as well and your view of yourself as a Christ-ian
simply a way of expressing that you are not wholly without a moral code?
"The one charm of marriage is that it makes a life of deception a neccessity." - Oscar Wilde