pcs

Yes. Sure. When was the Catholic Church behind FE? Well that was an interesting non sequitur, but I commend you for your enthusiasm.

Yes, the article was hilarious, and pretty well written; especially because I can imagine a creationist reading this and saying "wow, that Rev has an answer for everything." And yes, under the definition most widely accepted in academic and professional circles, invoking a divine purpose fundamentally violates parsimony. However, does it follow that which is unempirical is also irrational? Ah hell, we can take this up in Philosophy if we want. Anyway, where the thread lies it's pretty damned funny and appropriate. Good find.

Close to the equator (higher tangential velocity at launch), it's on the Atlantic, and that's where we used to test our first missiles.

Recently addressed in another thread. I think you're confusing empiricism with logic. That is unless reasoning absent or contrary to empirical evidence fundamentally irrational, in which case that's a bit more of a leap than I'm willing to take without further discussion. And what about the qualitative difference between Flat Earth and ID/YEC? Flat Earth requires the denial of presently available empirical evidence (or at least an extreme parochialism and conspiratorial doubt over the intellectual honesty of astronauts, merchentmen and airline pilots). ID/YEC disputes the explanatory power of certain science regarding unobservable events and conditions. What historical evidence is there of any Christian sect of note subscribing to a flat earth model? Absent inventing time travel, I think the challenge of expunging ID as a credible public intellectualism will be somewhat different from that of debunking Flat Earth. Check out Destroy All Monsters. Lay out your plan.

Care to elaborate? As it stands right now, I could take this any number of ways. You might mean that all teleological models suffer from inherent defects in internal consistency, or that an Intelligent Design/Falling model does not follow from some system of justification we both share. I don't want to strawman, so hit me up.

The piece does raise an interesting question. If a teleological model yields the same testable predictions as a naturalist one, what is there beyond parsimony to distinguish between the two?

I wonder if Hal Puthoff was one of the reviewers. [1, 2]

Deja vu. I'd tell you the story but it's a bit personal and irrelevant. Let's just say that it's also human nature to eat, piss and sleep, three among many things I bet gets more of our time than lying could ever aspire to. Hell, out of a 168 hours I doubt even you've been lied to for more than 24 of'em. Of course, I could be wrong, in which case God help us all. So why don't you consider the possibility that while Deutsch is human--and therefore, in your mind, a liar--it might be a little disingenuous to attach that as his defining characteristics.

Have you considered that the experience of billions of people other than yourself may not be characterized in such emo'ish terms? Maybe a little cynicism is healthy, but that statement of yours is just loaded with baggage. I don't want to touch that with a ten foot pole, so could we please step out of that box and look at the issue dispassionately? I mean, this guy just lost his job in the face of an entire nation for nothing other than making a suggestion about how a piece of NASA edutainment is worded. And given the flap over his resume he may find it difficult if not impossible to find work in journalism; so that's countless thousands in college investment down the tubes. So why kick the guy while he's down?

A cover letter usually covers the latter part. We all know what fraud is. The question is whether or not it happened here. Remember, this guy is a political appointee who'd already spent 2003 and 2004 working with the Bush-Cheney and Reelect the President campaigns. You have no idea whether his resume was even a consideration when he was offered the job, or if it were whether his status at Texas A&M was known to his employers, or if he were aware that his resume was not up to date. The first two assumptions are your weakest; I'm pretty sure you have no experience with the political appointment process. I'm not even sure Yogi did, and he was smarter than your average bear if you remember. The question is whether there is a plausible way to reconcile the fact that Deutsch obviously hadn't graduated and his claim that the resume was unintentionally inaccurate. You can assume the least generous spin if it suits you, I just want to know whether or not that assumption stems from some respectable personal experience of yours or some hard \evidence.

I should rephrase. Do you base your conclusions about the habits and motives of people dispatching and handling resumes based on long experience, or did you just pluck them out of thin air?

Yes, a Ricci tensor is symmetric [imath]R_{\alpha\beta} = R_{\beta\alpha}[/imath], and therefore torsionless.

You could. See how far it gets you. On the other hand our friend George seems to have overcome the inaccuracy of his resume. Willful misinformation on a resume is fraud. However, it is not clear that this is the case here. And like I said, you don't have enough information to judge Deutsch. Do you arrive at that conclusion based on personal experience or did you just pluck it out of thin air? Just faith.

Is that the new secularist strategy? Hope the other side gives up?

Required to? I don't recall any statute or case law requiring someone to keep an up to date resume. Who's to say he didn't? 1. You don't know what role his resume played in securing the job, or what 2. You don't know what Deutsch knew about his resume when he Or perhaps he's telling the truth. I think a few of the resumes I have on file on Madison Ave are sorely out of date as well, and you have to wonder how many people on Monster actually update their resumes on a regular basis. Either way, the employer has more than enough opportunity to clear up these issues during the hiring process, and like I said, we have no idea what role his resume played in securing the appointment--if any at all. I don't know, perhaps I simply have more experience in the working world than you do.

Yeah. And here's some wisdom for you.

Sure he could. He could also say the guy is starting to act like Hitler. What's the big deal? I'd say it's about fifty fifty.

To where? And relative to what?

Are you? Are you or were you ever enrolled in a PhD program at Berkeley?

How so? Deutsch says he wrote his resume in anticipation of graduating. What's the big deal?

Your use of the term "fictional" is simply too inaccurate and abrasive for me to accept. Surely we should work out these issues of semantics before moving forward. This parallel is specious. Deutsch's memo did not refer to any ongoing scientific research program or product. The website is an arm of public affairs, and that's where the issue lies. If you want to discuss silly thing like whether or not bascule disagrees with gravity or Severian wants to ban gamma rays, then perhaps Pseudoscience is a better forum. If you want to talk about what role is appropriate for PAO in Big Science, let's go on. Yes, I can restate my own language as well.

1. The threat posed by Iraqi WMD and ties to terror was and is not imaginary. 2. Hitler appealed to rank militarism and Aryan racialism, concluding that German exceptionalism demanded they reclaim their national right to rule over the continent. He also conjured up an internal threat--the Jews--by appealing to the basest European anti-Semitism of that error. So, at least in that respect, Bush and Hitler are nothing alike. On the other hand, Rumsfeld made a very cogent point about Chavez's dictatorship. As much as you dislike Bush, the President has no authority and has claimed none to postpone elections, imprison political opponents or nationalize private property. Hitler and Chavez both have, and that's a parallel I suspect decent Americans would grasp. The self-flagellators on the Left? Who knows?

Although not quite inaccurate. I have said in the past that political victory is very important, at least in my view. I wouldn't say that I'm against political discussion, in fact I think the exchange is more interesting when both sides are thinking about how to push their agendas to the forefront rather than carping about how things should be.

Last I check, the President stood for reelection, hasn't imprisoned his political opponents, and has never exercised legislative powers. Those are three key distinctions between him and the likes of Chavez and Hitler. Perhaps the continued electoral success of our President and his party has more to do with the political bankruptcy of the dissenters.

Protest and dissent didn't die overnight in Nazi Germany. Hitler spent the first five years consolidating his power.