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Thank you two for hitting the nail on the head. In order to be subject to scientific scrutiny, ghosts must be defined in such a way that they are predictive and/or falsifiable.

So... can you suggest anything from the past that compares to A Remembrance of Things Past (or the more modern/comprehensive retranslation, In Search of Lost Time) Note it's not really an allegory...

Missile defense is and always has been a joke. Star Wars (i.e. the original SDI plan of space-based lasers) could be defeated simply by coating a missile with mirrors. The present interceptor missile-based system is susceptible to both MIRVs and decoys. Iran has some pretty advanced ICBM technology as well (the Shahab-6, based on the North Korean Taep'o-Dong 2). I certainly would not put it past them to be able to launch several of these, even if only one had a nuclear warhead. That's all you need to confuse interceptor missiles.

Oh really!

Dahl was perhaps my favorite author as a child and I'm saddened by the travesty of a movie that was Matilda, a book which ranks among my favorite childhood reads. Dahl may perhaps have served as an impetus for my future jadedness, especially with such dark imagery as Mrs. Trunchbull's iron maiden-esque box lined with shards of broken glass where she placed problem students. I also recall a cautionary tale told in poetry/song in Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator about a girl who consumed an entire bottle of chocolate coated laxatives from her grandmother's medicine cabinet, and subsequently suffered permanent diarrhea. Wow. (And I'm guessing that sort of scatological humor isn't to be found in Harry Potter...)

That seems to remain the point of contention. You seem to be saying "Let us have our crap, and by the way, don't call it crap" I'm quite content to let you have your crap, but I'm going to call it crap, because that's my opinion of it.

Anyone's guess as to the rate of change is merely of conjecture. I'm of the school that the rate of change is accelerating, or that is to say the speed at which change occurs is increasing. But again, this is only an opinion. Furthermore, it's not as if this is happening across the board. Many areas of society are stagnant.

Normally I'd agree with you and advocate isolationism. I think historically the United States intervention in foreign affairs has had negative outcomes. That said, nuclear weapons are a different story. They represent an extinction risk for the human species. We live each day under Damocles' atomic sword. I believe the potential negative consequences of not combating nuclear proliferation outweigh the potential negative consequences of intervening from a foreign policy perspective. I also believe that while the chances of the latter are much higher than the former, the risk that the former poses is so much greater that they cannot be ignored. However, for the most part the nuclear situation has been stable. This is due to the idea of MAD, and the knowledge of the consequences of both instigating a nuclear attack and retaliating against a false alarm. Those consequences are the extinction of the human species. They are the most dire consequences humanity can possibly imagine. While you'll typically see me writing off things like terrorism as a scare tactic and an ambiguous ideology at the basis of neo-McCarthyism, my attitude towards nuclear weapons is fear. I support full nuclear disarmament. Furthermore, I support international action intended towards preventing any further countries from obtaining nuclear weapons. I don't buy the "If US, China, France, etc. have nuclear weapons then everyone should have them!" bullshit. Nuclear proliferation is BAD. I did not support the Iraq war. I think the negative consequences of America's invasion Iraq will be both severe and drawn out, in the same way our previous intervention (e.g. instating the Shah) have been. I would not advocate an interventionist policy towards anything which did not represent an existential risk for the human species. Nuclear weapons do. The international nuclear situation is increasingly precarious. Nations with somewhat undeveloped sensibilities towards the dangers of nuclear weapons are obtaining them. These countries, including both Pakistan and Iran, are both politically unstable and in my opinion not trustworthy to safeguard a nuclear stockpile against those who might try to steal them. Furthermore, I personally do not regard them as having the discipline and restraint to possess nuclear weapons. That's not to say I really believe any of the other nations who possess them do, but I believe it's much more pronounced with Pakistan and Iran. And as I said, I advocate full nuclear disarmament, with the hope that were this ever to happen that the international community would crack down immediately and severely on anyone who attempted to develop them.

You're confusing science and logic. In logic, yes, unprovability and falsity are distinct. However, a hypothesis which is neither falsifiable nor predictive is not scientific. It does not exist within the realm on science. It is for all intents and purposes off the table until it can be rendered falsifiable and/or predictive. I didn't say anecdotes are fallacious. I said they are often used as a basis of a fallacy, such as a hasty generalization. Oh really? Can you falsify unicorns and Zeus for us in a way that doesn't apply to ghosts? Yes, the onus is on everyone to falsify a falsifiable hypothesis. Can you tell me how to falsify the existence of ghosts? Can you tell me how the existence of ghosts is predictive? If so, I'll happily try. However, until you do, ghosts cannot be scrutinized scientifically. If you cannot demonstrate how an idea is falsifiable or predictive, then sorry, it is off the table from a scientific perspective. Do you realize how utterly contradictory and self-defeating that argument is? Let me break it down for you: In the philosophy of science, the synonymity of falsity and unprovability is untenable because it relies on a philosophy which is wrong because it's unprovable. You're using the very idea you're trying to disprove to attempt to prove the falsity of that idea.

I'm just saying fun and intellectual stimulation aren't mutually exclusive. As far as I can tell, it's largely plot-driven yet episodic, there are few (two, from what I've heard, HP and Snape) characters of any real complexity, each of the books follows a recurring theme of a gradual buildup resulting in a confrontation between HP and Voldemort, and this approach is repeated throughout the series ad nauseam. The length of the series seems more indicative of a profit grab than what is necessary to relate the story. And thus we're back to ""repetitive plots, the static characters, the pedestrian prose, the wit-free tone, the derivative themes" If you want I can keep comparing HP to Proust, but in Proust the evolution of the characters takes place in the narrator's changing perceptions of them. Virtually everything you learn about the narrator takes place through the evocation of his memories of others, and being a Bildungsroman, we get to see how the narrator's memories/perceptions of people evolve with time (which is, shall we say, quite drastically). His writing is not plot driven in the least, but uses a stream of consciousness relation of intense imagery, mostly centered around how certain experiences evoke memory (and a continuous succession of cascading reflections upon memories the narrator develops throughout the course of the book). Reading Proust is a combination of visualizing what he's expressing and synthesizing the non-linear imagery into the greater picture. The length of the work is indicative of the complex ideas it contains, which is why it's treated as a single, multi-volume book. None of the volumes stand independently, whereas every book in HP contains the canonical, linear buildup to climax followed by denouement. I don't think anyone could ever look at the HP series and conclude it should be treated as a single book, yet at some 3,500 pages it rivals Proust. If you don't want me to proclaim HP to be vacuous unilaterally, let's just say it's vacuous compared to Proust.

I've read several of the Canterbury Tales, but with Chaucer's spellings ditched for modern ones. Yes, reading Shakespeare isn't that bad, but it isn't that fun. I'd much rather see it performed. Reading it is pretty boring. Who says reading works which aren't intellectually vacuous isn't fun?

This is just another example of "We want to solve problem X, but first we're going to cave to the administration for 6 months". Every time the Democrats try to play chicken with Bush they flinch. You can consider this indicative of Bush's stubbornness or the Democrats' cowardice. At least this bill has a built-in sunset clause in the near future. That said condoning this is f*cking abominable. I'm none too happy about what the Democrats are doing.

That's the real tragedy. I think everyone should make an effort to try to read Proust. Many (including myself) regard him as the greatest author of all time, and it's not as if his writing is horribly inaccessible, although not many are likely to finish his masterpiece. As someone who reads almost exclusively to better my own intellect, I just can't relate. Shakespeare is harder to read than Proust. Shakespeare's writing is not only archaic (translations of Proust use easily readable modern day English), but littered with an assortment of puns which are long since defunct in modern language. The difficulty in understanding Proust doesn't come from actually reading his writing (at least in the way it does Shakespeare). It has entirely to do with understanding his ideas, particularly those surrounding the idea of perception and memory. If you're not prepared to read in order to develop complex ideas... the complex message ineffably expressed through written language, then I guess you should stick to Harry Potter. Just don't go around saying that Harry Potter had a profound impact upon your perception of reality the way an author like Proust can elicit.

I support the threatening of force against Pakistan. As you might recall me mentioning a few times, there's this guy A.Q. Khan who's been kind of pissing me off. You see, he sold nuclear technology to Iran and North Korea. You might say he was the head of the international nuclear black market. He created Pakistan's nuclear bomb. After outing himself, he was pardoned by Musharraf. He's never been questioned by the IAEA. In fact, on the night that Bush took credit for the IAEA's bust of Khan's network during the presidential debates with Kerry, the IAEA had asked Pakistan to question Khan and been denied. I've also stated my belief that terrorism must be dealt with internally on a country-by-country basis (and thus a global "war on terrorism" is foolish) and Pakistan certainly has not done that. I've also stated my support for precision airstrikes against Iran in order to take out their nuclear production capability, so long as it was part of an international effort to deter nuclear proliferation. I would support action against Pakistan as part of an international coalition, both to secure information (now quite old information) regarding his dealings in the international nuclear black market and to end terrorist control in a country that won't police itself. If anything, I'm mad at Bush for labeling Pakistan our "ally in the war on terror" as their president pardoned and protected the world's most notorious nuclear fugitive. I have never supported the war against Iraq. I felt that unjustified. I think it's stupid to try to use opposition to invading Iraq, especially without support of the international community, as part of some category fallacy-based argument against invading Pakistan. Not all of us lefties are peaceniks. Some of us just don't want stupid wars, and Iraq was a stupid war. A stupid, stupid war, supported by stupid people. Some of us aren't stupid.

So a bit of background on this: in 2002 the Republican-controlled Congress and Presidency, in an unmitigated act of irresponsible deregulation allowed corporations without a bank or S&L charter to issue loans and furthermore relaxed restrictions on keeping interest rates above prime. The result: The US housing market experienced an unprecedented bubble driven by a previously untapped base of irresponsible mortgagors. These people had bad or no credit. This was further impacted by subprime mortgages: these mortgages offered an "interest only" grace period where no principal was due. Clearly this is in the lender's best interest as it makes the initial span of the amortization schedule flat at the maximum interest rate. Several new corporations sprung up to cash in on the suckers, such as New Century Financial, which dubbed itself "a new kind of blue chip". They lured in investors with the promise of an untapped market of potential mortgagors and rising prices within the housing market. Collateral damage: the bubble burst. Surprise surprise: lend money to people who are bad with money and you might have to foreclose on them. Make a policy of this and you kick off record foreclosures the likes of which have never seen before. But hey, at least you can cash out, while screwing both your investors and your mortgagors. AT LEAST YOU'RE RICH! Housing values continued to plummet to record lows, with realtors touting "The timber is worth more than that" and "It's cheaper than a car" Now: US investors are having to sell their international stock to cover losses in the housing market. This lead to a cascade failure among world markets So let me ask you: Is this not the absolute most clearest case of economic catastrophe spurned by the United States government failing to regulate the market and instead serving the interests of corporate lobbyists since the Great Depression? And before someone goes into a category fallacy-ridden diatribe: this isn't about "the rich" and "the poor". Both "the rich" and "the poor" got f*cked here. Some hooligans who decided to make use of some poorly written legislation and overzealous deregulation made out like bandits, while raping both "the rich" and "the poor" in the processs.

Hooray!

I'm certainly interested in whatever revolutions may stem outside of what seems from outward appearances to be a near monoculture (i.e. string theory) in modern physics. Hopefully you can relay to me that that's not the case, but it's the gist of what I got from Smolin. I thank you for the technical description but I'm afraid most of it is lost on me This idea greatly appeals to me. I was first exposed to it by Brian Greene describing dualities in string theory, then by Lee Smolin when he described how LQG and string theory could both be approximations of the same underlying theory. As I understand it the best way to approach to realizing the the reality of the situation is to pick out the best bits and pieces of several different theories and attempt to assemble them into a single, coherent model (this works for all domains of life, by the way) From my intuition-based layman's perspective my sense is that reality and the structures it comprises are actually emergent effects of a completely different underlying system. Realism as we understand it is dead, and modern physics is attempting to re-realize realism (wow) from an entirely different (background independent) perspective on how reality actually operates. Getting over the hump, so to speak, seems to be insurmountably difficult. All right, well I'll count on you to keep us apprised

The easiest way to define it is an overall trend of incorporating features into mainstream languages which make them less like Turing machines and more like Alonzo Church's Lambda Calculus. In general I believe that imperative approaches are being increasingly augmented with functional ornamentation. The mass adoption of closures and other types of anonymous and higher order functions is a big win. Not all languages are recursively enumerable. And even so... what? I understand the argument that the scope of CS extends beyond languages, namely algorithms which are language agnostic. But even so, this is far from the scope of the discussion.

I see CS as something which is certainly "nichefying" (to use a Chris Anderson neologism) In the niches, I see immense progress! I also see minimal adoption rates. Perhaps the two best languages to grace the near-mainstream of late are Python and Ruby. Recently I've been working with another, more niche language known as Erlang which deals with the increasingly prevalent problems of concurrency and fault-tolerant distribution. I consider all of these languages to be immensely progressive. However, I've been reading Steve Yegge's blog. He's renowned among the computer science community, works for Google, and has an excellent blog. Recently he "ported" the Ruby on Rails framework to JavaScript, soon after blogging about the requirements of what he thought would be the "Next Big Language" (NBL), a list of requirements which seemed to stipulate JavaScript/ECMAscript. I see other parties tending towards ECMAscript as "NBL" too, most notably Adobe with their Flex and AIR platforms. Adobe has gone so far as to license their Tamarin JIT compiler for ECMAscript under an open source license. Are niche languages really drawing people towards progressive programming patterns? Or will a new form of "blub" (to use a Paul Graham neologism) remain the dominant paradigm?

So as someone who flies by intuition on high-level metadata... what is "it" (beyond "Reuter's talk")? Judging from the context it appears to be some LQG formulation, but what? Does "it" have a name? Is "it" predictive beyond Einstein-Hilbert action?

You seem to be asking if there is a first cause to causation. This has been a philosophical riddle for quite some time (see Thomas Aquinas's Cosmological Argument) The answer is: science has not yet determined this. The prevailing theory suggests that there exists some pre-big bang context where time existed already (see inflation). There's a defensible alternative to the idea of a first cause: causation regresses infinitely (See Hilbert's Paradox of the Grand Hotel)

Before I start, let me say that you're a smart guy and you shouldn't let these kinds of discussions get to you so much. They certainly don't get to me in that manner. So you're saying they have faith in not having faith in God? That's a fairly odd sentiment. People change their minds all the time. Both Kirk Cameron and Ray Comfort say they used to be atheists who started believing in God. People lose their faith every day. I don't think opinions about religion are as static as you seem to think they are. What's the harm in it?

Is that a UCB reference?

Well, is it about time we agree to disagree? You can call me a pretentious snob, I'll call you all members of the cult of Potter and we can leave it at that :-D

Let me just say that Jedi mind tricks have nothing on the Mule, unless they're Jedi Mind Tricks who are more awesome than anyone.