When Spain colonized the Philippines (which is where I live), they called the natives "Indios" as well.

Granted that I've barely started learning Latin, but shouldn't that be "Et mater tua una simia est"?

I suggest, Sir, that you learn to put things in perspective.

Stupid title. Immaculate Conception does NOT mean virgin birth. The former (a member of a fallen race being free from Original Sin from conception) is a metaphysical concept that cannot be observed empirically. The latter (a female giving birth without having prior sexual intercourse) may, in fact, be observed empirically.

Sorry for the irrelevant comment. Anyway, interesting article!

Stupid title. Immaculate Conception does NOT mean virgin birth. The former (a member of a fallen race being free from Original Sin from conception) is a metaphysical concept that cannot be observed empirically. The latter (a female giving birth without having prior sexual intercourse) may, in fact, be observed empirically.
Sorry for the irrelevant comment. Anyway, interesting article!

It starts a new cycle - claiming that because of this the Mayans predicted the end of the world would be like saying at the end of every year that the world is about to end.

Yeah, it's also like saying at the end of every millennium that the world is about to end. Haha!

We might never know if some Mayans ascribed eschatological significance to their own calendar cycles. But if they did, they certainly weren't the last people to do it.

Assuming comment #31144782 is from the same AC, I think we can safely say that he's not BadAnalogyGuy... just some random jerk.

I expect if you humans don't wipe each other out with your stupidity and wars, that the next 50 years will be quite an interesting time for science.

Well, obviously you aren't one of "us humans". On behalf of all of us mere humans, I apologize that you and your fellow supermen, our moral and intellectual betters, have to witness our incredible stupidity. We are grateful for your patience as we try to sort out our various problems. You, of course, are free from stupidity or error of any kind, and it would be our undeserved privilege if you would deign to drop but a few hints from your infinite well of knowledge upon us on the matter of how we are to make our science more interesting to you. Should we, perhaps, abandon all else and focus our energies and our limited minds in developing our replacements: artificial minds that would surpass us in intelligence, and be therefore more worthy of you time? Please tell us, oh master. Our primitive brains thirst for a glimpse of true infallibility!

Your use of argumentum ad ignorantiam is... interesting. Would you, perhaps, claim that agnostics use argumentum ad ignorantiam when they say that we cannot prove or disprove the existence of God?

Wait, you mean this book isn't satirical?

Well would you look at that. Radical environmentalism has gone full circle from wanting to give animals human rights to asking people to eat their own beloved pets. I loathe to see the day one of these people comes to power. Who knows when they'll start to take A Modest Proposal seriously. Save the Planet, Eat Your Children!

What you said makes absolutely no sense. How exactly does being part of a small list make you "ain't all that big"? How about, for example, a small list of billionaires, will you scoff at them, too?

If a language is being used for important things by big, credible, and important organizations, that fact is enough to refute the claim that "nothing important is done in Ruby or Python."

From Jonathan Coulton's song, "The Future Soon":

The people my actions are going to affect (both in the present and the future generations) will themselves die eventually. The whole universe will inevitably end with either heat death or a Big Crunch, rendering all personal actions futile. So, in a purely materialistic and cosmological point of view, do the effects of my actions really matter? No, it doesn't.

A Buddhist can look at pictures of decomposing remains and conclude that he must not be worldly. Yet he can also (if he chooses to) look a the same pictures and conclude that nothing hinders him from being worldly, for the worldly and the non-worldly alike will end up rotting in the end; one might as well do as he wishes, for everything is an illusion (ah, that inspired Buddhist phrase!).

For the record, I do not subscribe to the cynical philosophy I tried to illustrate in the above paragraphs. But given that we do not live in a perfect Christian society where such a philosophy would not exist, environmentalists will have to look for better arguments than "it's nice to be nice to other people" and "you can't take your SUV with you when you die". Because in a doomed, absurd, or illusory universe of atheists or Buddhists, "clinging to the first rationalization that allows people to keep doing what they want" is a perfectly rational thing to do.