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Messages - More Than Mortal
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7921
« on: January 31, 2015, 08:35:18 AM »
 trufax
7922
« on: January 31, 2015, 05:42:07 AM »
Washington TimesThe head of BBC Arabic said the Paris attackers who killed 12 people at the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo should not be called terrorists.
Tarik Kafala said that “terrorist” is “too loaded” of a word to describe the actions of Said and Cherif Kouachi. The two died in a shootout with French authorities on Jan. 9.
“We try to avoid describing anyone as a terrorist or an act as being terrorist. What we try to do is to say that ‘two men killed 12 people in an attack on the office of a satirical magazine.’ That’s enough, we know what that means and what it is,” the senior BBC executive told The Independent Jan. 25. “Terrorism is such a loaded word. The U.N. has been struggling for more than a decade to define the word, and they can’t. It is very difficult to.” Disgusting.
7923
« on: January 31, 2015, 05:37:17 AM »
And Maher, who I normally hate, says it best: BILL MAHER: Speaking of business. The president went on a customer service call this week to India. And then he cut short that trip, which I thought was kind of strange, to go to Saudi Arabia. Usually it's not the president who deals with funerals, that's what we have Biden for. But he went to Saudi Arabia to shake hands with, I mean, to meet with the guys who wouldn't shake hands with his wife. And I thought when she wouldn't wear the headscarf that she was kind of making the kind of statement that I've been trying to get across here for a long time. Which is stop respecting their medieval bullshit under the guise of it's their culture. Right?
Cultural relativism is nonsense. It's the 21st century. You won't shake hands with a woman? You're the ones who should be embarrassed, and if that's judgmental, good. I'm judging, yes. I'm judging that that's fucked up. And that you're the bigots. I'm not the bigot. You're the bigot.
7924
« on: January 31, 2015, 05:32:57 AM »
FUCKING SCIENCE MANA team of scientists has figured out a way for a standard silicon chip to tackle quantum entanglement — a phenomenon in which multiple particles are connected to each other and act in uniform, regardless of how far apart they are. The scientists’ findings were detailed on Monday in a research paper published in Optica, a monthly journal by The Optical Society (OSA).
So far, harnessing the power of quantum entanglement onto silicon chips has proven to be a difficult task because of the large size of the devices used to emit entangled photons; photons are essentially the particles that make up light. Creating silicon chips — which are inexpensive and prevalent compared to specialized entanglement equipment — that can handle quantum entanglement is a big deal in that it can allow for more powerful computer chips and better encryption technology.
The researchers of Università degli Studi di Pavia in Italy have come up with a way to solve this problem by creating a microscopic device that can supposedly fit onto a silicon chip and produce entangled photons.
The researchers paired a silicon wafer with what’s known as a ring resonator — a closed loop that photons enter on one side via a laser beam. They emerge entangled on the other side, where they are captured.
According to the research paper, the team of scientists was able to “demonstrate that silicon ring resonators in a silicon-on-insulator platform are an efficient source of time-energy entangled photon pairs.”
From the research paper:
We can confidently expect that silicon mircoring resonators will become the dominant paradigm of correlated photon sources for quantum photonics, both for applications involving the transmission of quantum correlations over long distances, such as quantum cryptography, and for applications involving quantum information processing “on-a-chip.”
Quantum entanglement can be very useful to the field of security and can help with encrypting messages. GridCOM Technologies, for example, explained to Gigaom in 2013 that it uses quantum entangled photons to generate encryption keys.
Any time someone tries to measure an entangled photon to learn what it may have encrypted, the GridCOM system is automatically pinged because of the way the photons are connected; each entangled particle affects the other and when one particle exists in a state where it is spinning up, its correlated particle will take on a state where it is spinning down.
7925
« on: January 31, 2015, 05:27:29 AM »
Brilliant.In natural matings, semen delivers spermatozoa and immunoregulatory fluids to the female reproductive tract. Here, a soluble form of CD38 (sCD38) is shown to play an important role in facilitating maternal immune tolerance against the fetus by inducing the development of uterine tolerogenic DCs and forkhead box P3+ (Foxp3+) regulatory T cells. Deficiency of sCD38 in seminal fluid increased the rates of loss of allogeneic fetuses, and this loss was rescued by a direct injection of recombinant sCD38 into the uterus. Thus, seminal sCD38 acts as a pivotal immune suppressor for establishing maternal immune tolerance against the fetus. sCD38 could potentially be used to prevent failed pregnancies.
7926
« on: January 31, 2015, 05:14:32 AM »
7928
« on: January 30, 2015, 01:44:26 PM »
In other news, Rubio isn't looking too bad.
2016 could be an interesting election cycle.
"Polls" this early out are highly inaccurate. In August of 2011, polls showed Michelle Bachmann as the Republican Candidate leader for the 2012 Elections.
Her campaign ended in disaster by the middle of January.
sighWhy can't you Americans just do it simply, like we Brits do?
7929
« on: January 30, 2015, 01:38:25 PM »
I have the nameplate equipped?
7930
« on: January 30, 2015, 12:59:30 PM »
A lot of American Cubans are, or are descended of, people who fled the Communists.
7931
« on: January 30, 2015, 12:52:57 PM »
but I was a bit confused by how you used semicolons in the second paragraph.
Ah, thanks for that. That sentence was originally preceded by a colon. I'll change them to commas. Is my description of quantum mechanics/gravity in relation to general relativity correct from your perspective? You have a greater grasp of science than I do.
7932
« on: January 30, 2015, 11:24:32 AM »
In other news, Rubio isn't looking too bad.
2016 could be an interesting election cycle.
Eh, I think Rubio will fall flat when it comes to attracting lefty voters. I'm certainly not inclined to vote for him at this point.
He won't do too badly with Hispanic voters, though, although his hard-line against Cuba could turn a lot of swing-voters off.
7933
« on: January 30, 2015, 11:23:42 AM »
I have to make a presentation for philosophy about secular authority; I chose science and politics, and would like to know if my parts about science make sense/are digestible. Also, for the sake of discussion value, do you have any specific philosophy of science and what role do you think science can play in society? Nature of Science Science has a long history with different schools of philosophy, from the Rationalism of Descartes to the Empiricism of Hume. The problem of demarcation—or what counts as science and what doesn’t—has plagued the processes and nature of science since its conception, and has been tackled from the Ancient Greeks to the Logical Positivists.
The modern basis of science finds itself in the work of Karl Popper, who developed the meta-theoretical school of Postpositivism, that sought to correct many of the problems with Logical Positivism. They broke down the subject-object divide; asserted that all knowledge is necessarily conjectural and warranted as opposed to authoritative and definite; and advanced Falsificationism.
This led to the epistemological school of Critical Rationalism; which embodied the ideas of Postpositivism into a scientific method. Critical Rationalism rejected the Strong Rationalism of the French Enlightenment, the Verificationism of the Logical Positivists and all forms of inductive Empiricism. Critical Rationalism argued science was a ‘natural selection’ of hypotheses.
Popper’s main achievement was solving the Problem of Induction, which he claimed was actually a myth. Inductive reasoning can’t lead to justified knowledge, as justification ‘begs for an authoritarian answer’. The whole underlying assertion of Popper and his work was that knowledge is perspectivist and conjectural; ideas which has been espoused by Friedrich Nietzsche, R.M. Hare and Sam Harris. Authorities within Science: Lawrence Krauss best summarised the attitude of science to authority when he said: ‘There are no authorities in science’. There may be people considered experts in certain fields of research, but their word is not authoritative, and only serves as valid if backed up by significant empirical evidence.
For instance, Newton is considered the original expert on physics and gravity. Nobody, however—or at least no scientist—would take Newton’s works as absolute. In fact, Newton’s work has been largely displaced by Einstein’s theory of General Relativity, which offers a geometric explanation of spacetime.
Despite this, however, Einstein also isn’t considered authoritative. Recent revelations in theoretical physics—namely quantum mechanics—has highlighted the problems of General Relativity and made scientists realise the need for a unified theory which reconciles a quantum description of matter with a geometric explanation of spacetime.
The existence of singularities, and a need for the ability to understand the interiors of black holes as well as the early universe also indicate a need to develop a full quantum theory of gravity, which can be combined with a description of the geometry of spacetime in the language of quantum physics.
There are also fledging hypotheses which are Popper falsifiable, such as Lee Smolin’s cosmological natural selection, which could become part of our body of knowledge. Science as an Authority: Science, as a whole process, can be considered an authoritative methodology for informing how we ought to view the world. Relying on the assumptions of ontological realism—more specifically metaphysical naturalism—science has proved its worth by working; it is the single best method of determining the value of the empirical content of certain propositions.
The problem many religious—and even secular people—have with viewing science as an authority is that they view science as a monolithic body of knowledge, as opposed to a gestalt of processes under constant revision. Science is a collection of probabilistic assertions subject to revision or rejection at any time.
In more specific questions of how we ought to act, in moral terms, science also claims to be able to inform. This rejects the historic fact-value distinction made by Hume, which asserts science can only say what is real, not how we ought to act. Founded on the philosophical basis of ethical naturalism—which makes a number of propositions to reach this point—people like Michael Shermer and Sam Harris have made the case for a science of morality.
Richard Feynman used the idea of cargo cult science to criticise certain areas and people who give the appearance of being outwardly scientific, while lacking the content of proper scientific study. Politics section: Spoiler Nature of Politics and Economics Politics is the theory and practice of influencing people on certain levels—be they global, civic or individual. More narrowly, politics is concerned with how best to order a society via governance and economics is concerned with the way humans produce, distribute and consume goods. Taken together, the government is responsible for the broad socioeconomic outlook of a society.
It’s more than likely that states, or governments, arose out of the need to wage warfare. Humans are naturally tribal, and processes like moral cognition have arisen out of a need to form cohesive, culturally uniform and self-domesticated groups.
This development of morality paved the way for centralised social structures, which would eventually lead to agriculture and then cities and then civilisation. Religion has also had a massive effect on politics; only recently has the divine mandate to rule been rejected as a legitimate basis for a government.
The Enlightenment has had the largest impact on the nature of government. The development of certain ideas like (classical) liberalism have contributed widely to Western civilisation both then and now. In countries like Britain empiricism, common law and respect for tradition evolved alongside developments in France around rationalism, civil law and progressivism—with liberty as an underlying value. Authority within Politics and Economics The history and development of various ideas within politics and economics stretch back to, most notably, the work of Aristotle. However, figures during the Enlightenment and thereafter have shaped our conceptions of these two areas of human activity the most.
Adam Smith, who wrote The Wealth of Nations, probably had the biggest impact on the development of 19th Century British politics. His classically liberal ideas about the rule of law, small government and free trade still permeate today among many conservatives and libertarians.
Edmund Burke, famous for his support of the American Revolution, is often considered the founder of modern conservatism and still impacts many attitudes of conservatives (especially traditionalists) today.
Karl Marx is also the founding father of the Left, having codified the ideas of a ‘scientific’ socialism and eventually communism into a set doctrine.
FDR is considered by man to be the first U.S. President to implement policies influenced by modern liberalism, which includes bigger government, more regulation and a bigger welfare state.
John Maynard Keynes was massively influential post-WWII, and his ideas of an activist government during a Recession has seen a resurgence since 2008 due to the global Great Recession.
Milton Friedman and F.A. Hayek were two free-market economists who influenced various heads of government from Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan to Brian Mulroney and Mart Laar. Politics and Economics as Authority Unlike science, politics doesn’t offer a set methodology or certain principles which are effective as to be essentially infallible. The nature of political authority, therefore, is much more unstable and subject to considerable criticism.
In the modern world, where governments aren’t justified by divinity or any transcendent authority and democracy is the norm, governments and politicians are often viewed with a lack of respect or with outright hatred. The Conservatives, in the U.K., are viewed by those on the Left as the party of the rich and privileged whereas Labour are viewed as the party of populism and the underclass.
Without the self-corrective mechanisms of science, or the claims to absolutism of theology, governmental failures are easy to spot and often exacerbated. It’s well known now that the government caused the Great Depression of the 1930s, and it’s more than likely that poor policies in 2006/7 led to the Great Recession of 2008/9. When people understand this, there’s often a visceral disgust for the government.
Instances wherein people think the government has committed an intentional injustice also leads to a repudiation of their authority, such as people who believe the 2003 War in Iraq was unjustified.
Despite this, however, the government also enforces the fundamental (moral) laws which govern our society; it isn’t that government is repudiated as an authority, but certain governments.
7934
« on: January 30, 2015, 11:19:15 AM »
In other news, Rubio isn't looking too bad. 2016 could be an interesting election cycle.
7935
« on: January 30, 2015, 01:59:26 AM »
I'm not comfortable with the idea.
It could only really work with older teens who've been educated about it.
7936
« on: January 30, 2015, 01:55:39 AM »
Classical-liberal, techno-philic, anti-theist, hawkish, free-market technocrat
I like what I see.
7937
« on: January 29, 2015, 03:36:20 PM »
Is this the regulatory 'fuck you' in response to the FCC essentially caving on net neutrality?
7939
« on: January 29, 2015, 03:10:21 PM »
Eh. I stand, but I could care less what it says. Doesn't make me anti-America, just means that I've said it so many times that it's pointless to me.
Oh, are we talking about the actual Pledge?
That's what I presume is meant by "Declaring Allegiance"
I'm British; we have no formal pledge. The possibility of confusion here never entered my mind >.>
7940
« on: January 29, 2015, 03:09:24 PM »
We laugh now.
We won't be laughing when we're living in Russian concentration camps.
And the Russians are living in Chinese concentration camps in turn.
Fucking Reds.
7941
« on: January 29, 2015, 03:07:44 PM »
Eh. I stand, but I could care less what it says. Doesn't make me anti-America, just means that I've said it so many times that it's pointless to me.
Oh, are we talking about the actual Pledge? Yeah, fuck that. As long as you're philosophically appreciative, I don't really care. Reciting some fucking words isn't going to reinforce or change any attitudes you already have. That's just a show of voluntary solidarity, really.
7942
« on: January 29, 2015, 03:04:31 PM »
Moderate Liberal
I'd have chosen "Dirty Socialist". But whatever floats your boat >.>
7943
« on: January 29, 2015, 03:03:36 PM »
declaring allegiance to the United States.
Extremely pointless, to be honest. And again, American Muslims are vastly different from Euro Muslims.
It's less about governmental loyalty and more about the moral and philosophical values which underpin pretty much all Western society. It's not just Muslims, everybody ought to do it. Especially the government, too.
7944
« on: January 29, 2015, 02:59:52 PM »
Gee, I guess that's why the economy tanked with Bush and many other Republicans but did great under Clinton and has recovered pretty well under Obama.
Wasn't Bush's fault. Was slightly Clinton's fault. Isn't Obama's fault.
7945
« on: January 29, 2015, 02:55:54 PM »
It's distasteful, sure, and she shouldn't have done it.
Let nobody forget, however, that the Muslim community ought to be renouncing terrorism and declaring allegiance to the United States.
7946
« on: January 29, 2015, 02:54:22 PM »
And at that very moment you had a significant neurological urge to remain alive, what would you say? It can't be a one word answer, either. If I were holding the gun to my own head, I'd probably go with traditionalist conservative.
7947
« on: January 29, 2015, 02:25:41 PM »
I mean, I guess that's nice for them, but Estonia is much different than the US in a great many ways. Hell, their population is about that of San Diego.
Oh sure, I'm not claiming it's the best thing to do for the U.S. If the U.S. were a post-Communist country after the fall of the Soviet Union, then maybe. I just like to head off any liberal intuitions against flat income taxes >.> They aren't universally bad, as many claim.
7948
« on: January 29, 2015, 02:16:16 PM »
No, it's not fair. It's the same as punishing a kid for making honor roll
Surely you don't advocate for a flat tax...right?
Works for Estonia.
7949
« on: January 29, 2015, 01:59:07 PM »
If there wasn't previous global climate changes
There has been nothing to this extent. We are the exception right now, not the rule.
7950
« on: January 29, 2015, 01:57:52 PM »
have exemptions for religious affiliations to not perform if necessary, while still allowing denominations to perform the marriages if they wish. Wait, does whatever's in the article go further than that? Spoiler No, I didn't read it. EDIT: Yes it does, and it's fucking retarded.
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