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Comment Re:no (Score 0) 637

Yeah. It is almost like humanity is composed of different kinds of people: Tall, short, black, white, strong, weak...etc and have ADAPTED to their environment
as well as having cultural knowledge which allows them to survive in their particular environment. Almost all people can live anywhere given enough time and training.

That is the strength of humanity: Adaptation to environment and the passing on of knowledge to our children.

Comment Re:The point (Score 0) 534

"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."
Thomas Jefferson to William Stephens Smith, Paris, 13 Nov. 1787

Oscar Wilde said "Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious." (Nicely quoted by Sean Connery from the movie, The Rock)
Leo Tolstoy described patriotism as "the principle that will justify the training of wholesale murderers".
Gustave Herve calls patriotism "a superstition, one far more injurious, brutal and inhumane than religion".

I think that Emma Goldman said it best when she said:
"Patriotism assumes that our globe is divided into little spots, each one surrounded by an iron gate.
Those born within this little spot consider themselves superior, nobler, more esteemed and more intelligent
than the living beings inhabiting any other spot."

Comment Re:better yet (Score 0) 534

Just to turn it into an absurd paradox: I hate hate. Therefore anyone who hates is a hater which means overly emotional and potentially dangerous.

Hating anyone, by definition, makes you a bad person since hate blots out reason and good moral judgement.
Do what the smart people do: Ignore them. If there has to be any response then pointing out flaws/inconsistencies
and vigorously ridiculing them as the vacuous cretins they are.

The tyrant, as one good poster writes in his sig, fears laughter more than an assassin's bullet.
Haters are just petty little tyrants who fear ridicule as well. Their entire world would fall apart if they don't constantly reaffirm and regurgitate
their hatred/belief. Laughter is a good anti-dote to this disease.

Comment Re:The Federal Acquisitions System is Broken (Score 0) 193

Interesting, but forgets the inevitable issues which will crop up:

1. NIMBY!
2. BANANA!
3. Who's going to pay?
3a. Government pays? Don't waste my tax payer money (on things which might save my life and those of my family!).
3b. Corporation pays? Restrictive and ridiculous rules, corruption and ineptitude of monumental proportions.
4. Stop thinking about this! Abortion/Muslims/Terrorists/Liberals/Economy/Boogeyman! are taking over the country.
5. God's plan all along!
6. 'nuff said.

It was a good run, America. Please don't deploy your nukes as a final gesture of spite and mean spiritness when your
empire comes to an end.

Comment Re:Church and Einstein (Score 1) 414

That quote was published by Time Magazine (without source or any indication that their reporter heard him say it). Since I am a terrible writer, I shall quote what "The Manic Street Preacher" ( From http://edthemanicstreetpreacher.wordpress.com/2009/08/26/einstein-statement-church ) who wrote:

"The statement first appeared in an article entitled “German Martyrs” which was published in Time magazine on 23 December 1940. You will find it posted on many religious websites and repeated by clergymen. Christian historian, Michael Burleigh, quotes it point-blank in his study of religion and politics in the 20th century, Sacred Causes, before rambling into a highly selective and ultimately, disingenuous defence of the Church during the Second World War.

Nevertheless, a superb piece by the analyst, William Waterhouse, first published in Skeptic (Volume 12, Number 3, Fall 2005), has exposed the statement as an exaggeration at best and a fabrication at worst by those eager to abuse Einstein’s prestigious reputation rather than convey his real opinions.

For starters, the statement appeared without any source or attribution when it was first published in Time. It is not known whether the reporter personally heard Einstein say it. The statement does not appear in the definitive collection of Einstein’s sayings, The Expanded Quotable Einstein. Any reference to the treatment of Europe’s Jews is also conspicuously absent.

In addition, the language is too flamboyant compared to Einstein’s usual style, with its reference to “great editors” and “flaming editorials”. The statement is also unlikely to have come from a scientist, stating as it does that Einstein “despised” something immediately after saying that he “never had any special interest” in it."

Highly exaggerated at best and outright fabrication at worst. Christopher Hitches says it better than I can in his his book "God is not great":

“Those who seek to misrepresent the man who gave us an alternative theory of the cosmos (as well as those who remained silent or worse while his fellow Jews were being deported and destroyed) betray the prickings of their bad consciences.”

I looked up the word "church" in the Albert Einstein Archives ( http://alberteinstein.info/ ) and only one document showed up. It is dated 11th of May, 1917:

"...If I were disposed toward the opposition and I saw in the state church an objectionable means of encouraging
people to maintain a mentality convenient for the ruling caste, then naturally I would not support this established
church. But if I loved the established church as a preserving element of the state which was according to my taste
(not mine), then I, as a free thinker, might safely join it .... "

http://alberteinstein.info/vufind1/images/einstein/11-457.tr.pdf

As a scientist he was more interested in the Enlightenment tradition and if the Church was an actor in support of that then he might have joined it, but then this happened:

"On January 1933, Franz Von Papen, leader of the Catholic Party of Germany, friend of E. Pacelli, the Papal Nuncio to Munich, later Pope Pius XII, became Hitler's Vice-Chancellor. Thus, the Leader of the German Catholic Party was second in command only to Hitler in Hitlerite Germany. Von Papen and Pacelli eventually negotiated for a Concordat in which Hitler pledged to support the Catholic Church, and the Catholic Church to support Hitler (June 1933)."

From http://www.reformation.org/holoc15.html

I am not an historian or an Albert Einstein expert, but to me it looks like the Church was supporting everything which the great scientist found objectionable.
Albert Einstein left Germany for the US in February 1933 and decided not to return to Germany due to the rise to power of the Nazis.

The last nail in the coffin of this quote is from Albert Einstein himself when he complained about this issue in a letter to Count Montgelas where he explained it thusly:

"On March 28, 1947, Einstein explained that the original comment was a casual one made to a journalist regarding the support of "a few churchmen" for individual rights and intellectual freedom during the early rule of Hitler and that, according to Einstein, the comment had been drastically exaggerated."

From http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/06-01-05/

The story links to a call an item number 58-548, an unpublished letter not yet digitized and trans-scripted by The Albert Einstein Archives. Here's the link:

http://alberteinstein.info/vufind1/Record/EAR000031801

"Science can not survive without critical thinking while religion and superstition can not survive it."

-= Flayed_Banana =-

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