Oh hey, I'll just fix that for you:

- The universe did not come from nothing. Thermodynamics prevents this.
- The universe did not create itself. Thermodynamics prevents this.
- The universe was not created.

Cheers!

Atheists tend to have much smaller brain regions for [a part of the brain responsible for causing religious experiences].

Yes indeed. Evolution does trend towards improving species.

Educated stupid scientists never understand 4 sided universal timecube.

I was just asking Tess about her act, and all she would tell me was that the show was big -- bigger on the inside than the outside. So I guess there was a lot of seating. A bunch of folderol, if you ask me. But at least we had box seats.

Science works without even the existance of ultimate causes and absolute truth.

Yes, it does, but that doesn't in any way disqualify it in reaching for fundamental answers, or in working with those ideas so that we have handles on them that are consensually experiential, testable, and repeatable. Superstition provides no tools whatsoever for resolving such questions. Or questions of far lesser import, for that matter.

My long-term general confidence in discovering more and more, deeper and deeper about reality, which is very high, lies entirely with science -- and with technology, science's prolific assistant / toolbox.

religion concerns the ultimate causes of things and, again, by definition, science cannot tell you about them.

Religion concerns mythology -- things people make up out of whole cloth. Faith, belief, credulous acceptance without backing facts, consensually demonstrable evidence, or testability -- not knowledge.

Science does indeed concern itself with the ultimate cause(s) of things; what TFS fails to understand is that just because there is no answer *yet*, that doesn't mean that there won't be, or that there can't be. We've really only been seriously at this with more than stone knives and bearskins for a hundred years or so. Directly because of science, we already know a great deal more than religion ever managed to determine in thousands of years over thousands of varieties of made-up ideas and almost unimaginable depths and expressions of faith.

The penultimate cause of things is indeed 100% in science's domain and, if indeed there is an answer that can be expressed in the physics humans can understand, the odds are at least decent that we'll figure it out. Using science. Not religion.

There's very little point, or sense, in giving religion credit it has not earned, nor in ceding to it whole chunks of reality it has shown absolutely no ability to pull back the curtains from.

To be fair what would you expect Yelp to do if they were offering a discount for five star reviews?

For a flight that doesn't reach orbit and stay there with the environment in 0G for at least a few orbits, I wouldn't pay anything. Heck, I won't pay a commercial airline to fly because the ratio of inconvenience to convenience+enjoyment is too high between the (id|patr)iot act's enforced paranoia and the seating designed by one-legged, one-armed engineers. Now an oceangoing cruise liner, that's something else again. I loves me a nice cruise. It's even worth going first class, which it definitely isn't in a commercial airliner.

However, for a flight that *does* go to orbit and stays a few turns, and doesn't require a spacesuit, and for which I could have a very private cubby with a view for two for the orbital duration, I might part with as much as five thousand for two seats, just for those few hours. They'd have to let me take my camera, though.

Which means I'm not going to get to go. :) Unless they build a space elevator or several in my lifetime. And apparently the materials science there is either too difficult, or nearly so. Oh well. There's always Firefly reruns.

You forgot to include the economic boost from the people now able to return to work faster/not dying/getting preventative care so they never get sick. Also the lowered cost of care for people who now can get treated before it becomes an emergency. Most of the cost of Obamacare is recognizing costs that were, until now, hidden.

So what you're saying is they should delay care until it becomes an emergency? Or are you saying if they don't get treated the problem will go away?

What you really want to say is that they don't deserve to be treated and should rot in the streets. Go on, let it out.

Fingerpointing is more important than solutions. This is a common and deep-rooted problem in politics, one that crosses party lines without pause. We have to stop this incompetence... What's the best way to accomplish this? I know! Let's start bickering about whether the Democrats or Republicans are at fault!

I still prefer KDE 3.5.

It has less of a PlaySkool feel to it than what came later.

I'll give the new stuff a try eventually but I have no compelling reason to change yet.

LK

2- Safety concerns: with baby and/or young children I felt I would rather not add RF generator inside my home. I know we are immersed in RF from everywhere, making some a few meters away is another level. I didn't want to add that. Just in case.

Ham radio operators -- of which I am one -- spend their lives immersed in more RF at various frequencies from kHz to GHz than you can possibly compare to unless you work at a broadcast radio or television station. And hams are one of the oldest demographics in the USA. So many 80 and 90 year olds, it's really kind of amusing. RF is not your enemy at wifi router and cellphone levels. Not even close.

I've been pretty much bathed in RF for the last forty years. I'm very healthy other than a few allergies I've had since I was a kid. Of course, I'm active, too -- but if RF at these levels was a problem, I'd *have* a problem by now.

XP also tweaked the VM subsystem in a way that was quite noticeable if you had more than about 256MB of RAM (better performance), but the main feature it added was remote desktop (although only in the Pro version). I was quite tempted to upgrade from 2K for the remote desktop stuff.

I'm not a huge fan. The goal of D was to produce a better C++, but if you're designing a new language then C++ really isn't where I'd choose to start. It's not as bad as Ruby (I can't imagine the kind of person who would look at Smalltalk and say 'what this language really needs is Perl-like syntax'. Actually, I can't imagine the kind of person who'd say that about any language. Including Perl). Rust is probably the modern language that I like the most.

Netflix should seriously consider abandoning Canada. Or even, just take a week off and refund all of their customers 1/4 of their monthly payment.

People will call their elected representatives if they lose access to something they want.

LK