"The Final Countdown" just popped into my head. Thanks. ):

Reading the letter, and listening to the video, it seems to me that Coyne completely blindsided Haught. But, I can't help but feel that Haught's avoidance of anything resembling debate probably has something to do with this statement:

`` Sophisticated argument requires as an essential condition that you have the good manners to understand before you criticize. '' -- John Haught (to Jerry Coyne)

In the video, Haught defines faith explicitly as feeling the presence of something you have absolutely no means or context to comprehend. "Like being carried along by something large." But he also attempts to argue for spiritual awareness and "personal transformation" as necessary for complete thought, by referring to the Biblical writer, Paul.

Haught also refers to reality, existence, and experience, as consisting of multiple layers of meaning which can be deduced by some and not by others. He uses the example of a book: to a monkey, it is "black marks on white paper"; to a toddler learning the alphabet, it is "a treasure trove of possible meaning, a code"; to an adolescent, it's a plain use of language and to an adult with experiences to relate, it's a source of "timeless wisdom".

Relating all of these sentiments back to the Bible, from what authority did the authors write? From what authority does the reader attempt to understand? The suggestion is that the Bible (along with all of the other religious texts) constitutes this "something large" that carried the authors along. But in my personal experience, the use of the Bible more closely resembles this statement:

`` Citation of a few isolated sentences or paragraphs, the meaning of which requires reading and understanding many chapters, is hardly useful criticism. You grossly distorted every quotation you used, and then you coated over your [mis]understanding of these statements with your own uncritical creationist and literalist set of assumptions about the Bible and theology. There was no room for real conversation, as impartial viewers will notice. '' -- John Haught (to Jerry Coyne)

If we replace the word "criticism" with "evangelism" (which we can, because you have to be able to think critically about a subject in order to relate it to others with any cognition):

`` Sophisticated evangelism requires as an essential condition that you have the good manners to understand before you evangelize. ''

`` Citation of a few isolated sentences or paragraphs, the meaning of which requires reading and understanding many chapters, is hardly useful evangelism. You grossly distorted every quotation you used, and then you coated over your [mis]understanding of these statements with your own uncritical creationist and literalist set of assumptions about the Bible and theology. ''

The big problem with religious texts is that they both have to be taken as a whole (in order to be accepted for what they are presented as being by their followers) but they have to be taken in bits and pieces (because that's how humans communicate realistically, not in entire volumes at a time but in small bits that fit the constraints of energy and time).

There are reasons why the biblicists fought against literacy for centuries, and why when they lost that fight they fought against language, and why when they lost that fight they fought against astronomy and all other sciences, and why when they lost that fight they now fight against proper education and comprehension.

Even though Coyne blindsided Haught, and was arrogant and rude, he has some excuse: he's probably carrying the nerd-rage of seeing how your heroes throughout history have been supressed by religion, along with many of the greatest people of all time, and seeing how the worst offender (Christianity) argues that this treatment of people is looked upon highly by their "God". Anyone who looks at Christianity and truly comprehends it for what it is has every right in the world to be either enraged or frustrated.

If someone like Haught can't face debate, it's because that's one of the hallmarks of major religion: a deterrance of questioning. (Buddhism is probably the major exception, synonymous with purposefully introducing the acolyte to famous and ancient debates about Buddha nature and the cosmos and so on, but Buddhism is only a "religion" by misnomer.) There is nothing in any of the major religions that makes them conducive to questioning and debate, and in the cases of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, that was the intent in the writing of all of their major texts (IMHO), to suppress and rule over people as subjects and to justify their enslavement. I can't say the same thing for Hinduism: it wasn't originally written, at all, and I don't know it well enough to say whether the detestable laws under which Hindus for millenia chose to force each other to live is due to literal adherence to the lineage (oral or written) or whether it's justified by interpretation.

Haught can't face debate because Haught can't debate. Theology has become nothing but reductionism and axiomatic masturbation. They don't actually "know" anything useful or applicable to justify their field of study, except that there's religion in the world and that it increasingly grates on some peoples' nerves but not those people who also grate on peoples' nerves. And since they're those grating people, they feel uncomfortable and wonder "why".

So, Haught really put his finger on it when he said you can't criticise something without understanding it. Haught (and the rest of theology) don't understand their own selves, hence they can't assist in debate.

That's pretty amazing. Knowing that Russia's "Tzar Bomba" test utilized only half of the real weapon's 100 megaton charge, and that the subsequent explosion scared nuclear science into setting a goal of eventually not doing that any more (at least as I interpreted it), I expected our own "biggest bomb" to be some ginormous dinosaur we were too cautious to reveal let alone keep on stock. Here we have this modest, naval warfare weapon. That speaks volumes about America's conservativism towards nuclear weapons. Not only is its disarmament a nice show for people who want to believe nukes never happened, it's also a good mark for the people who are often accused of being trigger-happy, gung-ho, and sci-fi.

CCD isn't some mystery. It has already been solved. Over generations, bee-keepers have lost some of the finer points of bee-keeping, especially where there is an adherence to natural processes involved. This is understandable, given that beekeeping and honey cultivation are productivity-driven processes, intensified toward creating more product and not necessarily accommodating "bee nature". However, "bee nature" is directly affected by fungi such as nosema and cordyceps, and though their forefathers understood the necessity of such things as opening hives for aeration or "letting nature take its course" from time to time, the control-minded and productivity-driven behaviour of current beekeepers has them shrugging their shoulders over what to do. This has already been discussed at length, but you can look all over the internet and find discussions between beekeepers:

"what do I do about my bees having constant diarrhea all over the nest, or fungal infections? should i use a chemical?"

answer: "... open you hives and let them air out. give up harvesting, this year. check again next year. source... some latest findings by grant-driven scientific research? nope! some centuries-old book on beekeeping your grandpa probably had two copies of and probably never had to read once. maybe you should think about another line of work?"

I have a copy of a book on the same subject, "The Child and the Machine: Why computers may put our children's educations at risk". It's pretty interesting even if the author is obviously not a computer tech.

More evidence that our observable, perceivable universe even to its furthest reaches is not "all there is". You cannot find context for sidedness within a unary axiom.

The DeLorean failed because it was too expensive and quickly earned a bad safety reputation for shearing in half during collisions. People didn't buy them when they were offered at 60%. Why would people go back and buy one, now?

You should get a weightless apparatus, which could be any one of the following depending on your budget:

1. Office in outer space
2. Office on a supersonic jet that will do the free fall trick several times an hour (and refuel in air until it's the end of the business day)
3. A skydiving tube (vertical wind tunnel)
4. A huge frame of metal struts and a lot of tension springs connected to a trampoline canopy, with all your work supplies and things on that
5. One of those three-axis, fully rotational strap-down beds that spins around real fast with you in the middle
6. A full-torso, repeating spectre that carries you and your coffee around without expending any energy on the physical plane (not the supersonic plane, not the axial plane, the other kind of plane)

And for tools you should choose from one or more of these:

1. A full sensory immersion tank with electrodes and HDMI directly connected to your synapses through the base of your skull, inside a giant MRI that can read your brain pictures unless your secretary is in the room
2. A talking dildo that pees on your hand when you need water and orders chinese take out when you show signs of malnourishment
3. Laser beams inside of your eyes that burn paper or simply warm up the butts of your coworkers
4. Trained marmosets on a lot of xanax (so they don't freak out), who will fetch small packs of ketchup or instant coffee, lemon juice or dixie cups (which they like to wear for hats), or who will scribble notes on paper for you (if you implant things into their brains and connect them to a remote control connected to a Koala pad built into the arm of your chair)

There's lot of stuff you could get, you just have to learn to make some decisions for yourself!

not only will they make it through, they'll be less top-heavy and more bouyant in the end.

i mean, why should they rethink it? they're going to revolutionize computing in two years. shouldn't the focus be on getting existing warehouse and/or factory space down to bare minimal and ready to process memristor based components? they can get ahead of the game by cleaning out and retooling right now.

i wish i had the money to invest. surely remarks such as they're making will drive down the value of their stock, and they'll have another opportunity to only have shareholders on who are genuinely interested in the product and who know what they're got their hands on. this will make them smarter long-term investors who are more likely to hold onto their stock during mild troubles.

it's a great strategy, if that's what they're doing. it should be a model for the future: being honestly concerned about one's own business decisions, in front of everyone. the whole "don't lose your cool" presence has........ strained...... things.

. . . property of government thus not subject to "Warrant" being their property by default, especially if you sign any contract to "relinquish service" or "relinquish ownership" or otherwise "relinquish [rights]" in the involvement? Or, should we always ask them to serve a warrant when they want to get the data off the wire they let us carry around?

Or are all the wall street little startups suddenly advertising the fuck out of every single online publication that publishes an article about the occupy wall street movement?

Try with mozilla aurora and "always ask" on cookies. I used irishcentral and news.google.com for article research.

ask mee ask me askme

buh duuuuhhhh duh buh bubu doo duh duuhhhh!

duh buh buhbuh, duh, uh, uhhHHHHHh!

oh, it's right in the quote. 1 petabit/cm^3 so it's E+9+3, not E+9*x. But STILL! A petabit on a keychain.

some indications point to memristor as good for a new sort of processor.

from wikipedia:

"HP prototyped a crossbar latch memory using the devices that can fit 100 gigabits in a square centimeter,[5] and has designed a highly scalable 3D design (consisting of up to 1000 layers or 1 petabit per cm3).[citation needed] HP has reported that its version of the memristor is currently about one-tenth the speed of DRAM.[36] The devices' resistance would be read with alternating current so that the stored value would not be affected.[37]"

100 gigabits in a square centimeter. I also read that these memristor beds are easily stacked into cubic "chips" without consequence. Wouldn't that mean E+9*9 or E+81 bits of storage per cubic centimeter?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yc7yUo9jqYY