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What model are you advocating then? You're talking about by Kepler?

Don't you think it's a bit quaint to be defending the Tychonic model (which fell out of popularity with the mainstream scientific community, oh, maybe 200 years ago)? Among other things, I was under the impression that it doesn't predict the observed stellar aberration and stellar parallax... which the Copernican model does

I should provide a counterpoint to my seemingly optimistic post above: globalism also provides a way for first world countries to act exploitatively against the third world nations, particularly through agencies such as the WTO. But of course, that's a position only espoused by those who think that efficient trade should take a backseat to human rights. Otherwise, the WTO is doing a bang-up job.

Yeah, kinda funny that, the Constitution says that Congress is supposed to declare war, but for the past several decades we've been ignoring that, to the tune of "It's not war, it's a police action by an international coalition!" or some such bullsh*t, then going off and having a little war without a formal declaration (and little is certainly an understatement). Then a president like Bush comes along and look what happens... oops. Maybe having Congress vote on actually declaring war against another nation is a good idea. You know, the kind of vote whose passage results in a formal declaration of war, the kind of thing we haven't seen since the WWII era. Also, for fans of King Abdullah he just paid a visit to the UK and got a rousing reception to the tune of the Imperial Death March:

When do you define "globalism" as starting, and who should take the blame? Was 19th century imperialism an example of globalism? If so, globalism has been terrible for the world. But that's a composition fallacy. Overall, I think increasing interconnectedness is good. People are starting to achieve a more ecumenical and less race-centric view of humanity as a whole, and realize that everyone shares common problems that we should work on collectively.

Yeah, I've been reading the Onion for, what, 10 years now? We have a local office / distributor, that helps They also do a lot of good charity work, in conjunction with a local brewery at that Oh, did I mention they're oddly prophetic? http://www.theonion.com/content/point/this_war_will_destabilize_the (the counterpoint there is oddly reminiscent of revprez) http://www.theonion.com/content/node/30916 http://www.theonion.com/content/node/27696

Ever heard of BlueBrain? http://bluebrain.epfl.ch/ They're performing a molecular simulation of the mammalian neocortex, using a single CPU for each individual neuron. And hey, guess what, it works [math]complex \neq wrong[/math]

Bush compared Congressional Democrats' opposition, err, "stalling" on "important pieces of legislation," i.e. condoning the spying he performed illegally on American citizens for so long with ignoring the rise of Lenin (yes, who cares about Stalin, Lenin was the real bad guy) or Hitler. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/11/01/politics/main3441060.shtml This invective wouldn't be stupid and inept if Bush were likening the leader of a specific nation to Lenin or Hitler. If he were likening Ahmadinejad to the next Hitler it'd make Bush a dick, but at least it'd be somewhat apt. Ahmadinejad is at least the leader of a country. But no, Bush isn't doing that. He's likening Lenin and Hitler to the nonspecific threat of "terrorism" which by definition precludes national governments. He's not even calling out the leaders of countries who aren't taking measures against domestic terrorism (like oh, say, King Abdullah), nor is he pointing out any specific terrorist threat. He's likening Lenin and Hitler to an unspecific, phantom enemy perpetually lurking in the shadows waiting to strike out at any moment. I'm not defending the Democrats here. They're cowards. Reid just made a speech saying they have the power to end the war by withholding funding, but they won't. The sad thing is this sort of invective is effective: I'm sure in a few weeks we'll see the Democrats capitulating and sending Bush the exact bills he's asking for. What a sad state our country is in...

My favorite part of this whole thing was the defense attorney (who's Jewish, so I guess the Phelpses think he's going to hell with all the gays) pleading with the jury not to award excessive punitive damages because $2.9 million was already 3 times his client's net worth.

So you're a fan of the Tychonic model?

The Phelpses are professional trolls. While it's nice to see them get their comeuppance, I expect a long drawn out appeals process, possibly with the ACLU taking their case...

I'm not ordinarily a fan of Dilbert, but I found this hilarious: http://www.dilbert.com/comics/dilbert/archive/dilbert-20071031.html

Awesome video of a computer simulation showing the evolution of watches that can keep accurate time from random initial starting configurations: http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/10/how_to_evolve_a_watch.php

I've had 3 friends who each owned a pit bull that I've known throughout my life. All of them were some of the nicest dogs I've ever encountered.

Hurricanes are complex systems, and many things can affect their frequency and intensity, most notably relative humidity and vertical wind shear which can spreads storms out over a larger area and allow them to more easily dissipate latent heat, preventing the formation of hurricanes. High relative humidity and low vertical wind shear are essential to hurricane formation. However, heat from ocean water is a hurricane's energy source, and some climate scientists have advanced the idea that increases in sea surface temperature can increase hurricane intensity.

I don't particularly ascribe to the idea of "qualia" as being anything more than noumena, or in Dennett's bridged view of noumena and phenomena, a "phenom". The intrinsic and ineffable qualities ascribed to them seem like little more than arbitrary relationships. Dennett had a though experiment where neuroscientists tinker with your brain and crosslink two particular "qualia", say "redness" and "greenness". Your perception of these two colors is the complete opposite of what it was before, but from your perspective nothing has changed. You'll continue to stop at red (now green) lights and go when you see green (now red) ones. Despite how different redness may have seemed to you from greenness before, you'll still use the same language to describe the new red as you did the old. If that's the case, what intrinsic and ineffable qualities does redness really have? It's impossible to objectively introspect. Dennett's point was that a p-zombie is for all intents and purposes conscious if it is indiscernible from other conscious entities. Whatever it's doing, despite lacking the magic "conscious" property (which clearly means something quite different to me than it does to you), is functionally equivalent. While you claim that a p-zombie lacks "qualia" and I-ness/self-representation, it would certainly attest to possess both these properties. It could describe to you what "redness" is in endless variation and metaphor. It'd be able to confer to you its hopes and dreams, its long term plans, life goals, fears, etc. It'd be able to point out its own foibles. It'd have to do a very, very good job of magically "faking" possession of the properties it lacks. Otherwise, you'd realize it wasn't conscious.

It implies some sort of freedom from causality, e.g. Kant's conception of internally caused events

Scientifically distinguishing between entities which are "really" conscious and p-zombies would require a definition of consciousness which is partly scientific and partly metaphysical. I certainly don't believe such a definition is impossible to verify empirically. Functionalism would be an example of such a statement. Okay, not sure why that's relevant to the topic at hand. Hume is tangentially, but you should really be discussing Kant here, especially if this is all coming down to the mind/body problem (with the assertion that science is incapable of ever objectively studying the former). This certainly goes back to Dennett's argument against p-zombies: if a p-zombie cannot be discerned from a conscious entity, what makes it a p-zombie? How is it qualitatively different? Can something lack the property of "consciousness" yet be indiscernible from conscious entities?

Actually, looking at the way the question's phrased it's not a false dichotomy since it's explicitly asking if you can have both. I'll change my answer to "Depends on your definition of free will" Compatibilists will say no, incompatibilists will say yes, and neither probably disagrees with the other, they simply have different definitions of free will And we're back to Wittgenstein's observation that philosophy is a giant semantic debate

How do you distinguish between a "real" conscious entity and a p-zombie? I don't know. Are you a p-zombie? If not, prove it.

Never before in the history of the carbon cycle has so much sequestered carbon been liberated into the atmosphere. What man has done is quite literally an unnatural occurrence and thus has ramifications never before seen in the history of the global climate. If you can perform a multi-decadal global climate reconstruction by hand I'll pay you $1,000,000. However you must do it with a resolution and timesteps fine-grained enough to successfully reconstruct the instrumental record with similar skillfulness as a GCM. Yes, like Jim Hansen, perhaps one of the foremost proponents of anthropogenic greenhouse gases being the dominant forcing...

They might possibly be overseeing the execution of 6 million Jews, in addition to countless gypsies, gays, and other elements of society they deemed undesirable...

I've recently found an extremely interesting bit of writing by John Bell (of Bell's Inequality) that I'd like to share: http://books.google.com/books?id=FGnnHxh2YtQC&pg=PA100&lpg=PA100&ots=3qT9MVkq-6&sig=1HGVjQN12sbTUoJ-qK_pz3g4qGU#PPA103,M1 It's interesting to see Bell talking about these kinds of ideas. Can anyone provide me with further background on Clauser-Horne-Shimony or your interpretation thereof?

While I agree the chickenhawk neocons have demonized Ahmadinejad, he's still a Holocaust denier which makes him scum in my book. He's not Hitler, but to a certain extent he's still working Hitler's ends... albeit for entirely different reasons. That said, for some reason the neocons/press decided to focus on the wipe Israel off the map "quote," i.e. overblown mistranslation, rather than his views on the Holocaust... I guess because a "threat" against Israel better serves their warmongering purpose than does a direct attempt to downplay the Holocaust. I guess some people don't see the mass murder of 6 million people as something deserving of our attention when they can blow a mistranslation out of proportion to serve the ends of leading America into yet another pointless war.

I'd vote "false dichotomy" (which seems to be implied in your post) but it's not an option... what about a non-deterministic universe where we don't have free will, among other options? The above could describe functionalism / computationalism in a universe where quantum indeterminacy is real (i.e. the universe is hypercomputational). We could just be deterministic computers inside of a larger hypercomputer.