It's curiosity that brings us science, and wonder that brings us religion, if that's not cutting semantics too fine.

Science and logic are wonderful, as it were in casual speak, yet religious marvel is not about 'what kind of magic' so much as about marveling at being as such.

I think 'What kind of magic is this' remains a kind of utilitarian / instrumental thinking - often posing in religious garb while actually still the domain of science to answer with these and those theories and measurements and attributes. A lot of what passes for religion wanders that way and promptly (tragically really - being doomed to fail) trips up into competing with science.

Religious awe is about reality being sublime/ineffable essentially, the part of reality which is trans-rational and inaccessible to measurement.

On a tangent, faith, for me, is not some laughable doctrine or particular sentences, but a perspective (a metanoia), of being somewhat perpetually in mild astonishment, a little bit of constant background amazement about the time-being in array, the interpenetration of form and emptiness in all things, the way language is a charming necessity always falling short of capturing the being and non-finite nature of objects. Though maybe I'm digressing here...

Noting your remark, I, too, facepalm all the time at the superstitious. It's not-even-wrong, as the physics phrase would go. It's actually kind of useful though in it's way - if superstition is involved, it's easy to discern as bad theology and move on.

Nice chitchatting with you guys, btw. It's been too long since I was browsing/participating in Slashdot threads. I miss the quality of these forums. You guys are great company.

How about publishing a competing copy, with more niggers and slaves tossed in. And let's toss in some colorful extra profanity here and there. We'll have a new order of publishing, where a consumer can select the style of copy and prose that appeals to his tastes, and put in custom orders for certain disliked words to by substituted with synoymns.

Annoyed that some uppity author uses nitid instead of brilliant, or that some popular hack ludicrously has someone hiss with pleasure in a romance scene? Order it with a few synonym substitution made...

I find it droll, but honestly, I sincerely expect exactly that aspect of customized publishing to, eventually, inevitably arrive. Hence aspects of this debate about more or less nigger seems somewhat moot.

You left out that the Romans would have almost certainly done all of the above while also managing to have 2 or 3 civil wars within the Roman empire. Honestly, who didn't come to a bad end in ancient Rome? Cicero had to stick his head out of his carriage having been chased down by political assassins, in order to assist his relatively inexperienced murder at somewhat ineptly hacking off his head. Oh, ancient Rome - such a model for politics and governance...

Actually it is wonder that brings us religion. Self-delusion is generally a disappointment with the realization that one has been tangled up in projections and wish fulfillment fantasies, which is helpful when it brings useful change. Whereas the underlying wonder / marvel as wonder / marvel, which is a key basis of religious impulse, is not the cause or target of that self-delusive drive or the aftermath of grappling with it. Best of luck with your continued unfolding, whichever path of atheism / agnosticism / religious inclination you take.

The necktie literally evolved out of the dinner napkin. Don't get too carried away. Ludicrous shoes meant to display that you can't be bothered to walk more than 50 feet to resolve a problem are easily a better definitive litmus test of religious quality.

Do they eliminate the buzzing in to claim the answer and have all players answer all questions? Because it would seem that the computer could always instantaneously buzz in and use the next few seconds to conjure up the answer, just as many humans do, save that 3-4 seconds of computational time can effect a pretty massive search / advantage. I would certainly run metrics on my program and figure out the optimal lead time to have it buzz prior to finding the answer. As has been noted, this is 75 percent marketing, and does not work well with the game format designed for humans.

I work in finance, the hypothesis of the article is ludicrous. No one enters m or b in any system among dozens that I have ever seen. No one even enters all the 000s, as the layperson typically initially assumes. You enter 100 for a 100 million order. Virtually all the control reports for middle and back offices also output that way. And lets not even talk about most products/systems trading screens generally having dual static and the four-eyes principle and deal review of trades from done to verified states by the middle office (traders are front office) and so forth. The whole premise of the billion vs million typo is a pretty dubious posit from unfamiliarity. It doesn't defy the rules of physics, but just...unlikely...

The clearest fix, imho, is that most products / banks / trading house have modules for traders limits. Which do what you'd think - a trader simply cannot trade a billion, it auto-rejects. Not every system has this setup, primarily as the product vendor's often charge semi-ludicrous ad-hoc fees for every last module to their product, including the trading limits modules, but really, it's becoming more and more pervasively standard.

If you want to be concerned generally? Be concerned or activist about things like hedge funds over-leveraging under the current lack of regulation and counterparty/exposure visibility, where a political battle is long overdue to unfold to more transparently regulate hedge funds (via clearinghouses and regulatory disclosures, for instance). Or be worried that no one understands very well how to predict where the trillion dollar range massive amounts of overall global liquidity flow and behave under irrationality, overwhelming the tools at central bank's disposal in a way not seen in prior decades.

If you want to be concerned personally? Diversify your stock holdings outside the US market. Honestly, it's silly to hold your own country's stock too heavily. Probably illustrated best by people in small European countries having a portfolio made up of 80-90 percent of businesses based in their tiny country. Versus considering the world economy, and making your country perhaps weighted, but more accurately reflect it's percentage slice of the global economy.

This article is just silly headlines pandering. Though it beats the Slashdot article today on how many keys to carry in your pocket. Jesus. Non-judgment day must be growing near.