Comment Re:bloatware (Score 1) 181
Bloatware? its still probably the smallest footprint browser with a builtin email function.
Emacs is still probably the smallest footprint operating system with a builtin editor function, but it still sucks.
Bloatware? its still probably the smallest footprint browser with a builtin email function.
Emacs is still probably the smallest footprint operating system with a builtin editor function, but it still sucks.
I didn't even take biology in school and I know that you are misrepresenting it.
Just---wow. Your didactic, "us vs. them" attitude is exactly what is broken with our society, from local politics to global conflicts. You (blindly) believe in "Science," so anybody who believes in God, by definition, does not. Anybody who is not exactly like you is automatically the Enemy, is clearly motivated by personal animus against you individually, and must be attacked at all costs, with disinformation and outright lies if necessary, even as you admit your own ignorance. You are exactly what I was talking about. You are the problem. "Evolution" is so sacrosanct to you that anybody who dares to suggest that it has limitations as a theory---even somebody who at the same time says it's the best theory we have available right now---is a heretic and should be stoned. If everybody thought like you, we would still be teaching that the universe revolves around the earth, because the Bible obviously says so, and to even examine the question further is tantamount to blasphemy. Have you even read On the Origin of Species, or do you just blindly worship Darwin based on what somebody else told you, like the many Christians who blindly worship God based on what somebody told them the Bible says?
wants lots of members with money but conveniently thinks Jesus hates poor people
I know, look how much we hate poor people. Your research skills are not a credit to you. And since you have appointed yourself the judge of 15 million people's charitable tendencies, I'm curious, how much did you personally give to charity last year?
>
Oh. I guess we don't need to do any more science, then, if it can't be questioned or examined. Close the textbooks, we're done here!
HOLY FREAKING CRAP I JUST SPENT TWO LONGISH POSTS SAYING THE EXACT FREAKING OPPOSITE!
You almost treat his post as a personal attack against your mother
His mother was a TRS80, you insensitive clod!
Evolution is observed by microbiologists and others every day.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure I said that. I was talking about the untestable "theory" that kids leave their biology classes believing, namely that there is a clean, clear, indisputable line from the Big Bang to earth to proteins to abiogenesis to multi-celled water-based life to apes to humans, and it's all part of a single, well-tested formula that cannot be questioned or examined.
As far as what motivates me, I'm Mormon. I believe in God. I also believe that "evolution" (such as it is) is the best theory we have for how different species arise. My brother, who is also Mormon, got a Masters in Evolutionary Biology at the very-Mormon BYU. His thesis was all about mutating viruses to make them do useful things like form pharmaceutical compounds. He now teaches high school biology in a small Texas town and wants to slap the dumb kids who say, "Can I skip the chapter on evolution, because I don't believe in it?" I'm not attacking evolution, though you seem to think that any acknowledgement of its limitations is tantamount to an attack. My point is that many science teachers teach it as though it is some kind of fixed, unalterable Truth, which is just as destructive to inquiry as teaching kids "Don't ask questions or you're going to hell." My faith does not willfully blind me to inquiry and investigation. Why should my scientific education do so?
Really, this is a criticism of the education system as a whole. It's about regurgitating some official policy line doled out by teachers. It has very little to do with meaningful learning.
then you are supposed to be teaching the scientific method (the core of "science") and things that have been learned and proven using the scientific method.
That's fine, as long as you realize that there are limits to how provable evolutionary science is under the classical "hypothesis-test-theory" scientific method we are teaching the kids. "Evolution" is not a single, clean, well-tested theory like "universal gravitation." It's a broad field of inquiry. We can do some predictable tests on either end (we can predictably mutate viruses, and predictably breed larger animals). But as far as I'm aware, we've never so much as synthesized even a single-celled organism from "primordial soup," much less grown it into a donkey by applying some well-tested formula.
For contrast, relativity is a theory that we can test, and although it has limits, we can predictably use it to do useful things like calibrating our GPS satellites. We can't do that with protozoa-to-mammal evolutionary theory, and we shouldn't be afraid to admit that it has gaps and limitations. Teach evolution, but teach it for what it is: a best-available composite model compiled from an entire field of investigations and discoveries, with lots of "we suspects" and "we're not sures." If we teach children to believe in the "Gospel of Evolution," like it's some kind of unerring, unassailable single Truth, handed down in its pure and unalterable form by the Gods of Science, then we are cutting off honest inquiry just as surely as a preacher who tells them that they will definitely burn in hell if they don't confess that the universe was conjured out of nothing exactly 6,000 years ago.
But, the New Testament doesn't really go into the creation of species, so Christians default to the Old Testament.
The Old Testament doesn't go into the creation of species either. It says that God made animals. It doesn't say how.
That's a neat tautology you've constructed. "It was illegal for Snowden to reveal PRISM, because the people running PRISM deemed it illegal to reveal PRISM.
And Wyden's stunt doesn't affect the ethical question. Assuming the article is true and Wyden was fully briefed on PRISM before the hearing, that just makes him complicit with General Clapper in conspiring to violate the Constitution.
That I can appreciate his likely skill with a service revolver
Cops don't carry those anymore. They carry Glocks. 9mm, 17+1 capacity. Yes, it's a technical nit to pick, but it means that the cop has 3x more bullets than you think he has if you think he's carrying a service revolver*. Also, he's probably carrying one or two spare magazines. In other words, Rain Man is screwed. Not only can he shoot you dead. He can shoot you very dead.
*I'm not saying this is always a bad thing. Cops deal with some seriously bad people sometimes, and I'm all for them being able to defend themselves. It just means that if you get a hotheaded cop on a power trip, there's potentially a lot of damage for IA to sweep under the rug in their coverup.
I'm disappointed that of all the people who whooshed your last line, none of them complained about "free reign".
I could care less. It's a mute point anyway.
Perhaps the news is that someone from Utah accepts the principles of evolution?
That's cute and all. But my brother, who is a devout Mormon, got an MS in evolutionary biology. At BYU.
Living on Earth may be expensive, but it includes an annual free trip around the Sun.