As I understand it, the economy in the south was dependent to slave labor.

But of course, that is no excuse. If we lived then, we would have nothing to do with the practice of forced labor, even if it did wreck the economy. Right?

According to him, the rear engine placed in the middle of tail fin is a bad design. The engine vibration puts too much stress on that fin. The metal weakens after a while. Compare this design to the design of the 727.

I think, some time ago, this design was causing problems.

If Kip Thorne can win a year's worth of Playboys for his bet that Cygnus X1 was a Black Hole, when current theory from Professor Hawking says Black Holes don't really exist, then can Professor Thorne please give me a year's subscription to the porno of my choice due to the non-existent bet that this wasn't such a star?

Bipolar Disorder, Psychosis and Schizophrenia for Dummies who know a little physics etc.

Life is generally in a good position when it has potential (like gravitational potential in the case of high ground) and the capacity to use it in a controlled fashion. That means balancing in a position that would otherwise be considered an unstable equilibrium in the sense of dynamical systems theory. Our bodies are at their most efficient when well balanced (just watch a good dancer to see this in action) and our brains are at their best when similarly balanced. If something disturbs the equilibrium, this disturbance and the required correction can be used to understand the disturbance. This is how stimulation affects us.

Now consider a simple example of a balancing physical object, but with no control mechanism: a spinning top. This has three states--spinning upright (when the gravitational potential is near its maximum), wobbling (when the gravitational potential is slightly lower, in which case it behaves erratically and gives up its energy randomly until...) finally we have the fallen over state. This is what medical people term depression. The simple solution is to get upright and balanced again, but this is hard in our modern overly complex society, and the result of trying to get up is often a lot of wobbling, which gets diagnosed as things like mania, psychosis and schizophrenia depending on how exactly this wobbling manifests itself. The key is to get balanced before you get pushed over, and that is hard when the medical mental health people seem to have the idea that you fix a wobbling spinning top by knocking it over and gluing it to the floor.

Trying to understand mental health in a 'sum of the parts' way is just dumb, but it is the obsession of the medical fraternity, and is to the extent that it is politically very difficult to suggest otherwise. How our genetic code creates us is an approach that misses the point that without the environmental context in which that genetic code develops, it won't develop, so you need to understand the environment as well (and that means understanding the entire world in complete detail, which is rather a long way the other side of impossible).

Viewed as an equilbrium seeking system, 'mental illnesses' like mania and schizophrenia are just seen as things like oscillations and resonant modes that are being excited by either an appropriate drive, or are resonating within the equilibrium seeking system. The biological stuff is just an implementation detail in much the way that transistors on a chip are implementation details of your python program that you are running that you can safely ignore in most cases. Medication is basically trying to solve a software problem by randomly pumping noise into the processor. A computer will crash instantly if you do this, but humans are rather more robust, and can survive for a long time in an unbalanced state. They are, however, rather unproductive in this state and won't tend to find life enjoyable. But they can survive for a long time, but can become desperate to get out of such states.

The concern is not so much about the disruption of radio communications, but the power grid. Our society might not survive a massive, long-term (months or even years) blackout (a huge number of transformers might be destroyed all at once by the induced EMF).

Memory transistors are about a thousand times larger than CPU transistors. Do try to keep up.

> “If this is your God, he’s not very impressive. He has so many psychological problems; he’s so insecure. He demands worship every seven days. He goes out and creates faulty humans and then blames them for his own mistakes. He’s a pretty poor excuse for a Supreme Being.” — Spock, The God Thing, by Gene Roddenberry

This quote was recently making the rounds on Facebook. It’s taken from a newly discovered script, what The Complete Star Trek Library is calling “Gene Roddenberry’s Last Star Trek Novel.” Roddenberry was an ardent atheist and it appears he was constantly working his critique of religion into the series. The God Thing is a testimony to Roddenberry’s atheistic aims.

http://mikeduran.com/2012/08/star-treks-loopy-deity/

> “We must question the story logic of having an all-knowing all-powerful God, who creates faulty Humans, and then blames them for his own mistakes.”

> It's like when atheists are dumb enough to treat all Christians alike, or Muslims, ...

No it's not like that at all.

When you join an organization that espouses certain values, then you must agree with those values. Otherwise why would you join?

For example, if somebody joins the KKK, it would hardly be wrong to think that person is a racist. And if somebody joined NAMBLA, then it is fair to believe that person believes it is okay to molest children.

Atheists have no set ideology. For that matter, theists may not either - unless they belong to some organization that has some specified sort of ideology.

But if you are Christian, Muslim, whatever; then you are claiming that you ascribe to those values.

> And of course the excesses of the church pale into insignificance compared with the horrors of Stalin and Mao

Which is "the church?" All religions? Christianity? Catholicism?

Let's remember the Nazis were very Christian, and the holocaust would not have happened without Christianity.

Christianity was also used to justify slavery, and witch burning, among other things.

I have read that throughout Islamic history, about 270 million people were killed for the cause of Islam.

Furthermore, Stalin, and Mao; were not motivated by any sort atheist ideology. If there is such a thing as "atheist ideology."

> The problem is even atheists still feel a need to believe in *something*

Nope.

> with varying details of what they consider "good".

By that you mean: bigotry, misogyny, blood sacrifice, slavery, and war. Also severe punishment for free speech, not worshiping as told. And of course, must give loads of money to those humans who claim to have a direct connection to "god." Finally, do not use reason, do not think critically, just accept everything on faith - that is the ultimate good.

From the article:

> "To which one might reply: Science is all those things. Between holocausts!"

My understanding is: without religion, there would have been no holocaust.

German Christians hated Jews. Hitler was a product of his strongly Christian upbringing. At the time, in Germany, Jew hatred was taught in public schools.

Why on earth would you blame science, and not religion, for the holocaust?