Comment Re:Make that 0% (Score 1) 432
Of course, you're also forgetting rule 0 about corporations: charge so as to maximize profits at all times. Raising prices from that would mean reduced sales and lower profits.
The Star Trek universal translator, on the other hand, was capable of translating between English and previously unknown alien languages. Because of the principle of l'arbitraire du signe and the frequent use of idioms in human speech
Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra.
Unless your "time machine" is also a "place machine". At least for those of us in the US.
Give the rotation of the Earth, the revolution of the Earth around the Sun, the revolution of the Sun around the center of the Milky Way, and the movement of the galaxy through the universe, if you went forwards or backwards in time by pretty much any non-trivial amount there's a near certain chance that the point you're in is in the cold vacuum of space.
So I think it's probably reasonable to assume that a time machine can get you to somewhere else in the world.
. I could do the same thing with email: go back in time to right after the message was sent and respond then, and people would think I was punctual
Better yet, send out the response just a hair before the email comes in. People will think you're magical.
Perhaps you missed all the recent news items about all those government agencies that are stocking-up on huge quantities of ammunition?
You mean that Social Security Administration ammunition story last week? It's a non-story. They've got 295 agents that make arrests, execute warrants, and investigate fraud and just happen to carry guns when doing so because people committing social security fraud aren't always nice and friendly. Given that it's around 600 bullets per agent, which includes all the ammo they'll use for training in a given year, it's not some extraordinary amount.
The TV tried to tell me the puzzles were all solved, yet there are no solution possible.
The TV is a notoriously poor venue to get information from.
Philosophers will teach you that much, assuming you will take the time to listen and learn.
If you think most philosophers will say that all the puzzles are solved, you haven't met many philosophers. Even the most fervent philosophy professors I've met would stop short of saying that their views are bulletproof. By it's nature, philosophy it a field without a whole lot of hard evidence. If there were a rigorous way to gather concrete evidence and draw falsifiable conclusions for some question X, we'd stop saying question X was a philosophical question and instead say it's a scientific one.
They are many, and complex, and from every side that claims to know an answer.
I don't know for certain that there is or isn't any gods. I'm not even sure that they're a coherent enough concept to say for sure whether they exist or not. If a tribe in the south pacific points to a wood totem and calls it their god, then sure, it exists, but it has no relevance to most people's notion of a god. A child's notion of a god as a sky wizard is very different from a theologians idea of a omnimax deity, which is just as different as a philosophers notion of a divine watchmaker, which is just as different as someone else's notion of a pantheistic one-with-everything entity . Some views are clearly wrong. Some views can be rationally discussed and debated. Some views are self-contradictory to the point where you can't reasonably ask the question.
After years of work I came to the same conclusion the vast majority of Philosophers have, which is that there is probably a creator.
[Citation needed]
Also, even if true, argument from authority. On top of that, without a consensus on the properties of such a being you haven't really gotten anywhere.
Debating with atheists, I was surprised to find that even though they claimed that "science denies the need for a creator" there was no fact in those statements.
Science requires a falsifiable claim and sufficient evidence gathered to show that the claim holds up under scrutiny. Exactly how would I go about falsifying your claim to a creator? What evidence could I give you that would make you say you were wrong? What evidence have you gathered so far that might support your claim? What if I claimed there were a committee of creators instead of just one, how would you determine which of us is right?
If you take the time to try and answer the question for yourself, you may be surprised at how low the probability there is for the Universe not needing a creator.
There is insufficient data to make any claims at all regarding such a probability. State your evidence. Here's a hint: "Well, it's just too perfect" isn't evidence.
If you decide the Universe needs a creator, Theology becomes important.
Why? Even if I spotted you the existence of a creator, there would still be nothing you could say about that creator. Look at it this way: I'm sitting on a chair. What can you tell me about the chair I'm sitting in? How many legs does it have? Does it have arm rests? What's it made of? Does it swivel? Is it comfortable? How could you even answer the questions without being able to touch or see or use any method to measure the chair?
assuming some very basic thoughts common to nearly all Theology have some validity
Such as?
Evil does not have to convert a person to evil to harm them permanently, they simply need to fool people in to not believing.
What if there were a malevolent creator that gained power by belief? In such a case it could be considered evil to convince people to believe. The problem is, there's no basis for such a claim either way.
But the truth is that atheists will not challenge their faith in atheism
Do you ever challenge your beliefs about the existence of unicorns? Or fairies? Or alien abductions? Or whether we're all controlled by Reptilians? If you're a rational human being, you probably don't give much thought to any of these because you don't have any convincing evidence that any of these are true or are even likely to be true.
Now imagine that there were a few billion people who kinds sorta believed that the Reptilians existed, but couldn't actually agree with each other about their characteristics, history, or motivations and thought that all the other groups of Reptilian believers were being mislead by false Reptilian prophets. Now, you've grown up in a household believing in a specific view of Reptilians, but then you meet others who believe different things, and then you ask yourself if you actually have any reason to believe that Queen Elizabeth II is actually a 12 foot tall space lizard from another dimension. You realize that you don't have any evidence for this, so you say "she's probably just a nice old lady with a fancy hat". But then you have friends who still think she's a Reptilian, and they say "Well, someone's controlling the world". What would you even say to that? Do you think you could provide any evidence that they wouldn't dismiss as being engineered by the Reptilians? What if you lost friends or family because they couldn't accept that you didn't believe that such creatures existed? At what point would you stop even thinking about the possibility of Reptilians in your day to day life and just not want to talk about it because it's so absolutely baffling to you?
like many cities san jose was and is struggling its budget and has laid off workers, cut worker wages, cut pensions and benefits, and cut city services. that didn't stop them from building a new $400M city hall right at the peak of the economic downturn.
To anyone not reading the wikipedia link, the economic downturn in question is the one in the the early 2000s. (just for clarification)
I don't have the luxury of spending money I don't have
Sure you do. It's called a loan. Lots of people get them. They finance all sorts of things, like homes, cars, college educations, etc. Most people with mortgages have a far worse ratio of debt to income than the federal government and pay much higher rates.
Why the fuck can't game companies understand this?
The people managing game companies are by and large just like every other manager: extroverts who think that everyone else thinks like them. Also, they're idiots who don't understand what they're managing.
But praise be to the few gaming companies that actually understand their customer base (Valve and Paradox spring to mind).
Say whatever one may, no-one - maybe not even the author - can "improve" on a specific artistic creation
What about video games? Clearly they can transmit and produce emotions, tell a story, etc, etc, as good as any other art form. But just as clearly, they can be patched, modified, and may have to synch to technical advances. Was Portal an artistic creation or an engineering creation?
The TSA granted itself the exemption for valid reasons that must remain classified for National Security reasons, so you'll have to trust us on that.
Sounds totally legit guys. Nothing to see here, no sir. I'll just pick up that can.
TSA Counsel believes that the National Security determinations set forth in the classified memorandum give the TSA full authority to disregard any court orders requiring notice and comment rulemaking.
If an agency can ignore court orders unilaterally, exactly what is stopping them from doing any illegal thing that they want to do? Surely we can at least have a set of independent judges with security clearances who can preside over cases where "national security" comes up.
Factorials were someone's attempt to make math LOOK exciting.