So, I'm watching the Colbert Report, and he mentions that Conservapedia has started a project to Retranslate the Bible using only proper Conservative buzz words. While investigating this, I came across the article for Feminist Bible. In which, they complain that feminist ideas have permeated a number of newer Bible translations. And, well, yeah, Today's New International Version certainly has imposed some Gender-Neutral dialog and terminology.

Here's the problem though, they start talking about James 2:15-16, talking about how English translations make an "ungrammatical" (their words, not mine... I'm a linguist, if it sounds right it's grammatical, it may not be "proper", but it's still grammatical) rendering of a phrase in order to make it sounds more Gender-Neutral. Sure, I totally bet that the TNIV translation has done this, and guess what? It does use the plural personal pronoun to refer to an antecedent of "brother or sister". So, I'm like, "ok, I'll give you that."

But then in the footnotes, I note that they claim that this grammatical error is even in the KJV version, and in most English versions in fact. Ok, now things smell fishy, because KJV translation was done WELL BEFORE any liberal 1984-paranoid feminists could have gotten their hands on it for Gender-Neutral language. So... what's going on here?

I know of a site called BibleServer.com, which is an awesome webpage, because they provide multiple different translations, all easy to access. Ok, first up, the NIV translation. Nope, NIV uses the "grammatical" non-specifically-gendered personal pronoun "him". But, sure enough, KJV does as well. Well, this is really weird, right? Because as I noted before, KJV was well before any potential feminist influence. Well, ok, well, what about trying a different language?

German doesn't normally use their plural pronoun for non-specified or mixed gender, as they have a very DEFINED gender system. In fact, girls are given the pronoun "it", as well as "Omachen" (grandma with a dimunitive). This is because grammatical gender REQUIRES it to be used... it's not anti-feminine, it's not misogynistic, it's just the way the language works. Yet in the Luther 1984 translation, something weird is going on here... they use the 3rd-person singular subjunctive of "haben" => "haette", but they then refer to the singular antecedent with a plural pronoun. What's going on here?

So, let's look up a Spanish translation, "Version La Biblia de Dia". Spanish is a good choice for this, because they only have masculine and feminine, and even if there were a feminist rally, and there were 100 women, and one man in the crowd, the speaker would grammatically and naturally refer to the crowd as "hombres" (men). In Spanish, all non-specific singular pronouns are male, but any and all MIXED gender PLURAL pronouns are male. So, what happens here? Well, here the plural conjugation of "tener" is used: "tienen", and a plural pronoun is used to refer to this "singular" antecedent again. ("les") Ok, now I'm thoroughly confused...

Ok, wait, I know... let's stop all this work, and start walking back in the documents. Let's start with LATIN... good ol' Latin, when I want to know what misogynistic anti-feminists said about a Bible verse, I go to LATIN. Well, here they use the plural conjugation "sunt", and use a plural referent to the a "singular" antecedent again. WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?!?!

Ok, that's it... what language was the Epistle of James originally written in? Uh... Greek. Ok, let's go to the ancient greek. James 2, English and Ancient Greek side-by-side. Alright, here we go, we can go looking though this and.... brother... sister... plural conjugation... plural pronoun...

Ok, so, the reason why KJV and "most English translations" have this plural usage here is because the original freaking GREEK had this "grammatical error", not because of an error of the translators.

And Conservapedia rips on NIV all the time for being liberal biased and all, but they're the only people who, BECAUSE of a liberal attitude to update the language, altered the original meaning of the text in order to conform to proper English grammar of the time.

Ok, seriously, these are the same people who are vouching that the KJV meanings have skewed, and that "logos" should be translated with "truth" rather than "word" anymore, etc. And they're talking about how the original meaning is being lost by the modern liberal jerkwads... yet... some of the liberal jerkwads are actually ensuring that the language conforms to modern day grammar, rather than just blithely repeating the same grammatical errors made in the original Greek.

It reminds me of an amusing quote I once read, but cannot find again, so I shall paraphrase: "How fortuitous it was that God learned Greek to write the New Testament... it's however unfortunate that he had not learned the grammar better."

God can't properly agree a pronoun with a singular complex antecedent... isn't this book supposed to be infallible?

I've lurked at /. without posting for ages, mostly because I just don't have the time to interact like I used to.

But I've been clicking through the old RSS feed more and more lately, and when I saw the PAX Plague thread today, I came over to comment, since I'm kind of affected by the whole damn thing. I thought I'd take a look around since I haven't been here in awhile, and I saw that there are freaking ACHIEVEMENTS associated with our accounts. It's silly, and I'm sure it's been here forever, but I thought it was awesome and I was delighted when I read it.

I didn't realize how much I missed Slashdot until I spent some time here today, and I bet that anyone who joined in the last 2 years doesn't even give a shit about my stupid comments or anything, but it felt good to come back here, and feel safely among my people again.

This is a response to a video on Youtube done by a "tooltime9901", who in response to "jezuzfreek777", presents an interesting prompt. What are the "ten commandments" that an atheist should hold. This is so interesting because it comes to the fundamental philosophy of law and morality. Knowing that morality is fairly relative, and that morality cannot be viewed without context of the situation. Thus, there are justifications to killing another human. There are justifications for what would otherwise be considered theft.

Take these as examples. It is well accepted that self-defense is a legitimate justification for causing the death of someone else. Provided that said self-defense was given in a proportioned response. Thus, if someone simply attempts to assault you, you are only justified insofar as assault against that person. However, if an attacker is presenting a force which a reasonable person would find to be equivalent to lethal force, then one is justified in causing that individuals death.

Next, the justification of theft. It is well accepted that aquisition of ones own property is justified, even if the aquisition of that property would otherwise be considered theft. Thus, reaquiring ones own property is justified if someone has your property without your permission. Here is what is interesting though, you are not justified to use force or threat of force to reobtain your own propery. The use of force to obtain property is only permissible when force is being immediately or imminently used against you to obtain property from onesself.

So, we present here the point that we cannot justify a commandment-like proscription against killing another, or obtaining property in the posession of another. While proscriptions of murder and theft themselves are valid, one is then presented with the problem of defining murder and theft such that it accounts for, and allows justifications. This presents a further moral problem in that in defining murder, one can present the definition of "causing without reasonable and fair justification the death of another human being", because then one is presented with the problem of defining what a human being is. One would normally assume this to be an easy task, but recall that often a superior group of people will attempt to justify their actions by denouncing the humanity of another group. Whites denounced Blacks as humans, and thus the justification of slavery of that group, while slavery of whites was generally admonished. As well, the Nazis of Nazi Germany justified the wholesale slaughter of jews and the disabled as those categories of homo sapiens and being insufficient to warrant the protections afforded those of "human beings"

Thus, we are left with the necessity that the only commandment-like proscriptions and perscriptions afforded to us need be necessarily vague, and rather than covering specific details are presented as widely interpreted statements that present the foundation for a legal or moral system to be built upon more exactly. And thus, I can present from that notion the following six commandments, which I feel are reasonable, justifiable and rational. I use the speech of the time of King James in order to present an allegory and allusion to the commandments as they are considered by our modern age.

1. Thou shalt keep the trust of your word.
2. Thou shalt not do harm to others.
3. Thou shalt not endanger others.
4. Thou shalt honor thine obligations.
5. Thou shalt not act with intention to violate a proscription of law.
6. Thou shalt not act with knowledge, or willful ignorance to violate a requirement of law.

These six commandments actually establish the devisions of law within the common law system, and such commandments actually have equivalent notions in the civil law system.

The first commandment, I present as such, because of the importance of the issue. I see perjury and fraud as the fundamentally anti-thesis of reason, which is what a society must fundamentally be based upon. If the system cannot rely upon the word of an individual, then the system itself cannot operate. Thus, since the system must assume that parties are telling the truth, it is a fundamental requirement that this truth be told. This should not be considered to proscribe all lies, as not all lies are damaging to a moral system, however when presenting justification and context to a situation before an impartial party then the necessity of the trust in the words of the parties is paramount. And we should presume that any court, natural or not, would be impartial.

The second commandment presents a fundamental truth. We should not do harm to others. This is presented in commonlaw under the idea of intentional torts, and the third commandment presents a foundation for the idea of negligent torts. In both cases, if someone becomes harmed, either through the acts or the failure to act of another, then that person deserves the right to have their harm redressed.

The fourth commandment seems similar to the first, in that it would seem to require someone to be honest, and this is true, however it is more specific than that. The first commandment establishes the requirement that one be true in their word if there is a trust of that person's word, but it says nothing about when a trust of that person's word is fundmantally necessary. While the first commandment applies obviously where an impartial court is involved, it applies non-trivially to the announcment of obligations to others. This is the American idea of crossing ones fingers while annoucing an obligation, and thus that a trust was never intended in the announcement of that obligation. This commandment however provides that one must always place the trust of ones word in the announcement of an obligation. In the common law system, this commandment thus provides the foundation for contract law.

The fifth, and sixth commandments establish the foundation for criminal law in the common law system. These are specifically different from commandments two and three, in that it establishes that there is a legal doctrine for a society, and individuals are under an obligation (fourth commandment) to obey this "social contract". Thus the legal system should establish two types of criminal law, and while the common law system views both of these types of criminal law as identical, there exists the legal context that one may use a justification that one was unknowing of a specific law in some cases. This commandment thus places that requirement as apparent and opaque, as opposed to the current system that is vague on the issue.

The fifth commandment sets out that there are certain acts that are defined by a legal system to be impermissible. The legal system should define these in such a matter that the acts cause an effect, which the legal system finds intolerable, and thus knowledge of the fact that the action is proscribed is waived by all as being necessary. Only the intent of the action need be defined. The person intended to perform the act, and thus must be punished.

The sixth commandment takes a different tact. It states that the legal system should deem that certain actions must be performed by all within its jurisdiction. Thus, the idea that one must register and obtain a license to operate a motor vehicle on a public street. This requirement, done by the state however, states that it is in the best interest of all to require this, but that failure to perform the requirement does not imply by necessity that a violation of the commandment occured, because there are two parts to this commandment first, the individual must know about the requirement, as no one should be held to perform a requirement without being aware that such a requirement exists. However, this is provided that the individual not be willingly ignorant of the requirement. Thus, a person charged with violating a requirement to obtain a license to drive would not be a violation if the person did not know, and had no reason to know that such a license were necessary.

So, I've probably rambled enough, but this is what I think would be the best foundation for a system of commandments.

Of course... I make a few comments in an essay that attempts to say that the social embarrassment of an individual accused of sexual assault is "vastly greater" than the social embarrassment of the victim being identified.

I objected to this because I have been the victim of sexual assault. Oddly enough, when I comment about that, it's marked as a troll or flamebait.

Not like I should be surprised with how machismo and male-dominated the geek world is. I hope the people modding me down realize that they're being just as sexist as the author, and that they're damaging the credibility of men among women.

This is one of the big reasons why I've wanted to get out of the geek world in my work life. I don't want to deal with this chauvinistic bullshit in the workplace , where I spent 8 hours of my day... at least. Not to mention, there's the expectation that I will spend 60-80 hours a week at work. The whole IT industry is so sexist it disgusts me.

Honestly, I can't believe how stupid SOME men are. Not all of them, I've met quite a few really nice cool caring and understanding guys... however... jesus christ... modding down a girl as a troll because she objects to being told that the social embarrassment of her accused sexual assaulter outweighs her suffering?

Meh, I'm done... I'm just really sick and tired of how sexist men are... it's so frustrating.

Earlier this morning, Nintendo made several major announcements in a press conference in Japan. Ranging from a new Nintendo DS to a Wii storage solution. Nintendo's first announcement was a brand-new handheld in the Nintendo DS line of consoles. This revision of the DS brand will be a significant break from the previous DS Lite console. It will be named "Nintendo DSi". (Nintendo DS-Eye, get it?) Nintendo also announced a solution to the Wii storage problem. Unfortunately, it sounds like players will be able to download to their SD Card, but not actually play games directly from the card.

Firehose Link: http://slashdot.org/firehose.pl?op=view&id=1225579

(Still trying to figure out if the firehose does anything.)

"relative speeds...are certainly present and noticeable at far lower velocities e.g. atomic clocks on Concord, GR corrections to GPS satellite clocks etc. Physics professor speaking here :-)." - Roger W Moore

http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=523464&cid=23083626

"Everything is funny. Some things just aren't funny to you." - AC

http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=441794&cid=22300386

"You should use your moderator points to determine if comments are interesting, etc. Not to upvote crap you agree with in the most childish digg-style possible. By validating the parent poster's simplistic and stupid attacks, you're fueling the fire.

Mitt Romney isn't being attacked for his view on drugs: he's being attacked for being a republican. Everyone knows it. Hillary's view on the War on Drugs is identical. Obama actually talks about ramping up the War on Drugs. But they aren't republicans so they aren't subject to the same level of attack.

...I'm not even a republican, and I'm getting sick of this crap. Every election year I have to listen to trolls validate each other's existence while hating huge segments of society. For whatever reason (likely Bush's fumbling presidency), Slashdot leans left, so Romney's embracing of technology is seen as an invitation to attack." - Moonpie Madness

http://politics.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=432182&cid=22206250

"Personally, I'd be happy to let the religious folks gather round their altars and sing Hosannahs to their invisbile sky daddy, but unfortunately, that's not enough for them. They need to inflict their beliefs, whether on abortion, or stem cell research, or contraception use, or whatever, on all of us. Why should I trust somebody who closes their eyes to basic scientific fact to make decisions rooted in science that might affect me?" - Lurker2288
http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=415294&cid=22005842

"First of all, your arguing against inference. Have you ever seen an electron? Did you ever see your great-great-great-great-grandparents? Did you ever meet anybody that spoke Proto-Indo-European? No, but you can infer these things from the evidence. As to evolution, of course you can observe it. We have nylon-digesting bacteria now when nylon didn't even exist before the 1930s." - MightyMartian
http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=415294&cid=22005844

"If you want to send your kids to private school, that's your right. That doesn't mean that you get to take funds away from public schools." - Conspiracy_Of_Doves

http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=415294&cid=22005270

Yes, yes it does. If a person is unsatisfied or does not morally support a program or business, they should not be forced to pay for it and perpetuate something they will never use. When public schools finally get the message that their curriculum is so pathetic that the vast majority of parents wish to stop sending their children there, maybe .. just maybe because of dire financial pressure, will they get their act together.

It wouldn't be hard, now, to improve public schools, but it would require moving back the curriculum approximately four years. Eighth graders should not be having trouble with math problems like "-2 + -5". They should not be confused about which ocean is between North America and Europe. They should not be writing at a second grade level.

Administrators and school boards are simply more interested in PR, passing along students who are full year grade failures, and not really ever dealing with serious, repetitive behavior problems. They could care less about what's being taught (unless it's time for the yearly test) and they couldn't care more about how many times you send Young Frankie down to the office for the upteenth offense. (That's the teacher's problem after all.)

I say this as a current public school teacher. Public schools, as they are now, are detriments to our society as a whole. They are a black hole of funding and a student's worst nightmare. Public schools are filled with apathetic, under-EDUCATED teachers who want nothing more than to get their yearly raise and bitch about how they'd rather be doing something else, but they're not talented enough for it.

As long as public schools continue to be funded by the bottomless wallet of taxes, they will continue to fester. Administrations will continue to latch onto ridiculous, time-wasting fads like PLCs as the newest savior of education without every having the slightest thought about the actual material being taught or the standards being enforced. NO... these schools need not become centers of religion. NO... character education is NOT the right course of action. NO... $8 Billion dollars spent on technology, for which teachers who can't even comprehend how to make a table in Word, is not the answer.

Just increase your expectations. That's it, folks. That's IT.

"Well, they're now the proud owners of
network-solutions-hates-non-whites.com
our-ceo-jacks-off-to-goatse.com
batman-touched-my-junk-liberally.com"
-Malevolent Tester

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=410854&cid=21958492

"The real issue is, 9/11 won't happen again. As a country, we've learned our lesson about "just sit tight and wait" when it comes to plane hijacking. Box cutter? You best have a flamethrower next time, because me and everyone in business class are going to beat you to death with our laptops as soon as you start trying to wave that piddly crap in our faces. Akbar Macbook, Bitch!" - SatanicPuppy

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=353633&cid=21273977

"I think, therefore I am an Atheist." - sig of amokk

"Religious fanatic G.W.Bush has killed 100 times more people than religious fanatic Osama Bin Laden." - sig of Nicolas MONNET

Ironically, the rest of his post talked about hyperbolic statements.

I started reading about The Analogy of the Divided Line whereby the reasoning of an individual is divided into four parts.

The first part is the blanket assumption that what is seen is reality.
The second part is the higher order of understanding the particulars of reality.
The third part is an understanding that the objects around us are merely reflections, and that there is something more meaningful that gives a object its reality.
And the last part is inexistential, the understanding that there are things that exist but have no image in reality.

As I was reading this, it occured to me that Arithmetic itself is a wonderful example of this sort of reasoning.

The first level is physically tied arithmetic. Two apples and two apples are four apples, and four rows of five apples makes 20 apples, this is known to be true as you can actually count them.

The second level is route memorization. One knows that the concept of math is more than simply counting numbers, and that many operations have simple systematic answers, that do not require you to count the entirety of the result. Thus,2+2=4 and 4*5=20 because that's what the results of the arithmetic operation are.

The third level is an understanding of the principles behind math. That there is an abstract level behind math, that guides all the principles. You might realize that scalar math is simply 1x1 matrix math. You know that 2+2=4 not because you have been told so, but that the definition of the elements hold that the operation must produce that, but that "+" means much more than simply addition, but can include a number of ideas, such as the idea of logical or, or the construction of a set which strictly supersets both sets used as operands (Union operation). You know that 4*5=20 not because you have been told so, but because you know and understand how multiplication works, and that it is an agumentation of addition, thus n*m = sum(1-n, m), and inserting the values four and five, you retreive 5+5+5+5, which is defined in the context of the vector field we are using is 20.

The final level, is the cause of many people being considered to be raving lunatics. It's the understanding that numbers themselves do not having meaning, but rather that everything is derived from nothing. 0 is the cardinality of the empty set, while 1 is the cardinality of the powerset of the empty set, while 2 is defined as the cardinaltiy of the powerset of one, and that every number N is the cardinality of the powerset of N-1. Maths working in this field are like lambda calculus is to computation, because the lambda operation is the most basic of all operations, and breaking down math into the most basic of all elements, the empty set, you end up able to prove not only that 4*5=20 because it equals sum(1-4, 5) = 5+5+5+5 = 20, but because you know that n+m = incr(1-n, m) (where inc is like the Sigma Summation operator and the Pi Product operator, showing a sequential series of incrementations). Thus you know:
4*5 = sum(1-4, 5
        = 5+5+5+5
        = incr(1-5, 5) + 5 + 5
        = incr(1-(incr(1-5, 5)), 5) + 5
        = incr(1-(incr(1-(incr(1-5, 5), 5), 5)

And knowing that a single incrementation step is defined as
inc(x) = { x=0 : emptyset
                      x!=0 : powerset(f(x-1)) }

Thus that "numbers" are inexistential sets of literally nothing (various combinations (not permutations) of empty sets) and that finally collapsing them to a definition results in us taking the cardinality of the set in order to understand the value. Thus continuing above:
4*5 = incr(1-(incr(1-(incr(1-5, 5), 5), 5)
        = incr(1-(incr(1-inc(inc(inc(inc(inc(5))))), 5), 5)
        = incr(1-(inc(inc(inc(inc(inc(inc(inc(inc(inc(inc(5))))))))))), 5)
        = inc(inc(inc(inc(inc(inc(inc(inc(inc(inc(inc(inc(inc(inc(inc(5)))))))))))))))

Inserting the definition of five:
        = inc(inc(inc(inc(inc(inc(inc(inc(inc(inc(inc(inc(inc(inc(inc(inc(inc(inc(inc(inc(inc(inc(inc(inc(inc(emptyset))))))))))))))))))))

By applying the inc function we end up with:
        = powerset(powerset(powerset(powerset(powerset(powerset(powerset(powerset(powerset(powerset(powerset(powerset(powerset(powerset(powerset(powerset(powerset(powerset(powerset(powerset(emptyset))))))))))))))))))))

Whose cardinality is 20.

Having defined and proven addition, and the very definition of numbers themselves, you have broken free of any physical manifestation of mathematics. You are truly looking at what mathematics really is a priori, you are not bound to "it is defined this way" or "it was taught to me to be this value" or "I counted it myself", but rather you understand that all of those are merely images and reflections on a cave wall with regard to what really really is math.

You no longer "perform" math based on axioms, instruction, or the crude rudimentary counting, but rather based off of a priori proofs. You know of the existance and nature of math, because you understand what it really is.

At this point, do you become truly enlightened about math, and you understand why such variations as there are exist, because you can extract all of them from nothing.