bascule

That is quite the strawman. The overarching point Dawkins is trying to make is that natural selection favored young offspring who listened unquestioningly to their elders. If you tell two children "Stay away from the alligator pond" and one listens and one doesn't, then the one who listened will produce offspring and the "listen to your elders" genes will be selected for. However, the same mechanism that provided a means for relaying life-saving information also allowed religions to form. Children unquestioningly accept religion just as they would "Stay away from the alligator pond", then grow up and pass the same information on to their children. It's clear from your statements that you have not actually read what Dawkins has to say on this matter. Nowhere does he say anything to the effect of "anyone who is a Christian is stupid". If anything, he says they're a victim of a particular evolutionary adaptation.

Analyzing the trade deficit from a layman's perspective isn't generally a wise thing to do, because chances are it doesn't mean what you think it means. A negative trade balance can be a good thing (the US has had a negative trade balance for years and years) If you want a more pressing issue in the US economy, it's the housing bubble and Adjustable Rate Mortgages. We're going to see record foreclosures followed by massive property devaluation as the market is swamped with foreclosed homes. This will decimate bankers, who will be forced to sell all the homes they foreclosed on well beneath the original purchase price. Banks are going to lose a lot of money on this. Homeowners will be without homes. Fortunately, I live in a town which instituted a moratorium on new construction/subdivisions/building permits (with lots of exceptions), but in general we have artifically inflated property values thanks to this measure. The result is a greenbelt of open space around the city, and some of the highest density and property valuations in the state (only Aspen is higher) Oh, and I sure as hell didn't get an adjustable rate mortgage.

The only places outside the US I've ever been are Mexico and Japan. Japan rocks!

Telekinesis will exist in the future. Here's how it works: Information will be transmitted via a brain/computer interface to a control system, which will interpret the commands sent by your brain and determine what actions should be taken. The computer responding to the commands will then actuate any number of devices. For example, you could will the lights on and off, but rather than flipping a switch, a computer would respond to your request and actuate a relay in order to accomplish this task. You're still flipping a switch with your mind, but in reality, technology is translating neural impulses into an electrical signal which uses an electromagnetic field to flip the switch. This probably isn't what you had in mind herme3, but if you really want telekinesis, technology is the only answer.

Just noticed Sam Harris's book is up to #2 on Amazon Thanks. Boulder is one of the most beautiful places in the entire world, and also one of the most socially progressive. It really feels like it's off in its own little universe...

I don't think there are many who question the historical significance of the church and the positive role it played in society. After the fall of Rome, the church provided virtually the only means of long-distance communication in medieval Europe, primarily since they had the only group with people who could read and write: the scribes. The Dark Ages also ended as an outgrowth of the Crusades, when the Spanish Arabs were conquered and the information they had horded... tons of Greek and Roman texts lost after the fall of Rome were translated from Latin into Arabic, and were subsequently translated and allowed to spread throughout Europe, ushering in the Renaissance. But, I certainly agree... in modern times religion has become largely irrelevant and even detrimental to society on the whole.

No more rent, just mortgage payments. But the best part, in my mind: NO MORE LANDLORDS. Partying will commence after my new roommate moves in. I'm thinking of throwing a wine and cheese party, but before I do that I will likely need more stemware. Or I can feel even more bourgeoisie by being one of the few people with stemware and forcing all the proles to drink out of regular drinking glasses

Yep, Harris's point is that unevidenced beliefs and superstitions need to be challenged, and that doing so is both moral and necessary, but such "intolerance" must not be allowed to escalate from there and only be kept at a conversational level.

The most reliable way to secure wireless is a firewall + IPSEC... what you're ultimately after is network security, and that's much better handled at the network layer, not the datalink layer.

Martin, I'm quite excited about Sam Harris's new book, and even more excited to see him when he comes to speak here. If you haven't already seen it you should check out this video: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=116152867541418146 Posted it to P&R a couple months ago.

Awesome. I wish I could talk to him.

I bought a home in Boulder through the affordable housing program

Haha, guess I was far too vague. I was using bourgeoisie in the original sense of being a land owner.

I really, really, really liked the art. I dunno why. It certainly dominated everything I drew at the time: (Card Captor Sakura, Meia from Vandread, Madoka Ayukawa from Kimagure Orange Road)

And doesn't it feel good...

I really liked cartoons when I was growing up. As I entered my teen years, I saw with anime a way to keep watching cartoons that, at the time, I felt better suited my age. Eventually I realized anime is crap and I needed to move on... to movies, documentaries, books, etc.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2366233,00.html Okay, so the PETA videos of poor circus animals get to me, I admit. Same with cows... poor cows! And yes, I too can't stand seeing debeaked chickens crammed into deplorable conditions for the purposes of providing the world with eggs and fried chicken. But seriously... halibut? Now granted, the ramifactions of their action were not considered, and the fish they "liberated" simply met with their deaths. But... why halibut? Why aren't they trying to liberate chimps, or cows, or some other group of animals more worthy of moral consideration? And, to top it off... random acts of vandalism. Well done.

This list sucks! Where's phenethylamine?

IMM, you've completely ceased making sense here... you've made the exact opposite argument about eating meat, and I agree with you on that argument. Either: - Slaughterhouses slaughter and IMM eats the meat - Slaughterhouses slaughter and IMM doesn't eat the meat While your effect on the system as a whole is negligable, you still have one. Just because the effect is negligable does not mean magic meat out of nowhere... some animal still had to die to get you that meat. But that's like saying that the whole system of animal slaughter will kill the same number of animals no matter what you do, so how are you morally accountable for the slaughtering of those animals, if they'd just be slaughtered anyway? It's not magic coolness from nowhere just like meat isn't magic meat from nowhere. Energy is going into the production of that dry ice. Now granted, the equipment used to cool the dry ice may be more efficient than your freezer, but I seriously doubt the net energy balance you would've gotten out of the whole thing would've been a positive one (had it worked in the first place)

Heh, I'm sure Mokele can do better than me at this: The fins of whales and the fins of fish The wings of bats and the wings of birds, or the wings of insects The bill of the Duck Bill Platypus and the paddle of the Paddlefish Dozens of examples between South American marsupials and North American placental mammals (the former were wiped out following the formation of a landbridge between the continents) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convergent_evolution According to Dawkins the eye appeared in some 40 different varieties throughout the course of evolution. He called this "achingly eager to evolve eyes" or something to that effect. Eyes certainly did One of the most interesting examples of this I learned about recently was the Portugese Man of War, which is in fact four different animals who live together in a colony, all providing different functions.

Chris Wallace has become something of a controversial figure of late. First he was chastized by hardline conservatives for rebuking the ABC special The Path to 9/11 for ficticious depictions of members of the Clinton administration with ficticious dialogue. Then he was simultaneously lauded by the right and chastized by the left for his interview with Bill Clinton, where Clinton accused him, among other things, of supporting the ficticious allegations purported by the ABC special which directly contradicted the findings of the 9/11 Commission, among other factual inaccuracies including alleging the wrong airline was responsible for the security breeches of the 9/11 hijackers and confusing the Washington Times with the Washington Post. The combination of the Wallace interview (which asked a number of pointed questions) and The Path to 9/11 special certainly struck a nerve with Clinton. There was plenty of invasion of Wallace's personal space to be seen with Clinton, somewhat reminiscent of the recent Matt Lauer interview of President Bush where Lauer can be seen poking the president on several occasions. (Watch out conservatives! Liberals are invading your personal space! Of course we can't forget Bush invading the personal space of a certain German Chancellor) So what's your take on Wallace? Did he attempt a conservative "hack job" on Clinton, or did he simply ask the kinds of questions which were on any conservative's mind after watching The Path To 9/11, even if he disputed its factual accuracy?

Wow, an awesome topic! And, as it happens, the friend of mine I leant The Ancestor's Tale to returned it to me just this day! One of the overarching themes of Richard Dawkins work is: progress accumulates. That should be coupled with another important point: progress is often obliterated by mass extinctions, but not completely. Dawkins describes this pattern as looking like a "sawtooth": in "arms races" between predators and prey, both evolve progressively to become more adept at the tasks of catching prey and evading predators respectively, until both are wiped out in a mass extinction event. Dawkins also describes the accumulation of "watershed" events in which lower-level problems evolution has encountered but is unable to solve are, for whatever reason, spontaneously solved, allowing for the development of more "advanced" creatures. Some of these include things like sexual reproduction, which gave birth to the concept of a species and allows novel adaptations to be shared among a population (a concept developed by Dawkins in his book River out of Eden) Dawkins still rejects the intuitive linear and teleological view of "the evolution of man" and contends that one cannot consider the development of any species in isolation. Rather, the entire gestalt of the biosphere is the result of a web of interconnected evolutionary events, each one consisting of a haphazardly occuring adaptation with no concept of the result of what all such adaptations would ultimately amount to. The interplay of the results of these isolated events is what drove the evolution of mankind, which represents the best of what evolution managed to produce in terms of brain designs. I think the point Dawkins was trying to get at was that evolution will inevitably, at some point, stumble upon higher level solutions to problems it has encountered since the dawn of life, and unless the ancestors of the organisms who garner these adaptations all go extinct, they will persist, and accumulate. The result is an emergent, progressive element within the evolutionary system, in the form of increasingly better reality-modelers, ultimately resulting in conscious entities. Dawkins ponders just such a proposition at the end of The Ancestor's Tale: So, what's my overarching theme to evolution? It's "looking" for a way out of the box. Not looking the way a conscious entity would, but performing a stochastic search, performing a random walk of all paths from the common ancestor to a potential route out of "the box", randomly and haphazardly transcending all limitations of the system imposed by the common ancestor, and eventually it may happen that one line of descendants affords such a route. In terms of the history of life systems, humans are extremely close to escaping the box. I think that's the whole thrust of transhumanism. Ray Kurzweil describes The Singularity as "When Humans Transcend Biology". I think The Singularity represents the point at which we finally escape "the box" and break free of all limitations imposed by our evolutionary legacy.

This approach to "happiness" was outlined in the Simon and Garfunkel song "I Am A Rock" The narrator has ostensibly sworn off social interaction, noting that "Friendship causes pain. It's laughter and it's loving I disdain." and "A rock feels no pain and an island never cries" The entire song belies the narrator's social frustration. The ineffible message is that this recourse leads only to a sad and lonely existence, exchanging the bittersweet qualities of life, friendship, and love for the mild melancholy of a lonely existence. Was it a good exchange? I guess that's up to the listener to decide. But I also think S&G's intentions were clear...

Coulter's books aren't worth buying to refute. Next time you're thinking about buying an Ann Coulter book solely for the purposes of refuting it, put it back and pick up a Noam Chomsky book instead

The secret to true happiness is to interconnect and resonate with your surroundings in such a way that you feel self-actualized