alfredglenstein

Without addressing some of the horribly offensive and indefensible viewpoints in this thread that I think I've read in regards to Muslims, I think I ought to at least share with you guys, that this cartoon riot episode has more to it than just the Danish cartoon. Did you know that these cartoons in question were published not this year, not last year, but in 2003? Then, why are they rioting now? is probably the best question to ask. It has to do with Saudi Arabia and the pilgrimage to Mecca, that every healthy Muslim is expected to do at least once in their life. One of these events where this pilgrimage is done by a large gathering of people, in a huge religious festival is called the Hajj, the last of which happened this January (06). It is a huge festival, even though the West doesn't report much on it. The past few years there have been tragic "stampedes" killing around 250-300 or so people in Saudi Arabia, which puts Saudia Arabia in huge trouble. Their response was to deflect attention and stir up an all out assault on these old cartoons to avoid blame (which sure as hell seems to have worked). But you should go to DailyKos to read more on it. It's kind of amazing that no real explanation like this has permeated the public, and that it is just about the cartoons. So I hope you guys can take this with you, and hopefully, when others mention the cartoons, tell them there is more to it that it seems. For me, it's really about the corruption of Saudia Arabia.

Being grateful for that is night and day from having to accept yourself being in a lousy circumstance. It just seems like that's an easy way out of looking at the real conflict. Parents decide to have a kid knowing full well that the kid ought to be entitled to their own judgement, their own free will, their own emotions, and most importantly a right to be happy, or as close to it as possible. It seems deeply unnatural to me to think parents will use the fact that they are parents as a kind of demand for submissiveness, and that it means we no longer have to answer the question of whether the parents are in the right or on the wrong.

I bet if it weren't for Gmail, we'd still be seeing 2mb email accounts at Hotmail. Hotmail is kind of rediculous. But, if you use Firefox, and are stuck with Hotmail for whatever reason, there is a solution.You can go to Mozdev.org and get the Firefox extention called "Remove it Permanently" or RIP (what a cool acronym). It enables you to right click, and choose to remove any part of any web page! This is great for advertisements. If you right click, a little blinking rectangle will surround the thing you are about to remove on the page, then you can choose to remove it. Sounds complicated but it is just as easy as copying and pasting. Then, every time you come back to that page, the ad (or whatever else you choose to remove) will be gone. I think its a useful utility that helps with things like Hotmail, again, in case you are stuck with it for MSN messenger or whatever other reason. If you want something back, you can undo it, or go to a menu that shows everything you've blocked from the page and restore it.I bet Microsoft would put up more ads, or offer less space, if it could get away with it, but thankfully Gmail has put pressure on them to be less crappy, and to come out with a more solid search offering than the cluttered mess they had before.But there are lots of good alternatives, besides even Gmail. Par exemple (I know I know that's totally wrong)- Hriders.com (one terrabyte, and they don't care if you use it for storage), Mailnation.net (one terrabyte, they DO care, 10mb attatchment limit), 30gigs.com (that's right, and a good email system too). There's got to be other cools ones as well. So yeah. I used to use MSN, but the GMail/30gigs/Mailnation and Remove It Permanently realm is where I found myself.

Now I wouldn't call it the worst, but I'd call it something that is lagging behind other solid email services. I only ever got an msn email account because you had to to use MSN Explorer- that really cool facelift of internet explorer they had for a while. Not sure if it is still around.But yeah, its loaded up with mailing lists and "Today at MSN" nonsense that I don't care about, it's hard to deal with when there are so many beter alternatives.

Yeah, that sucks man, those cd's are expensive. But there are some parts that are kind of unclear. For example: What is going on here? There's got to be some explanation for this, right? Why did that person get mad, and take the CD? And how on earth can Dan blame you for HIM giving the computer to someone else, who then takes your cd and gets mad? An interesting story, and I'm sorry this hapened to you, but maybe you can enlighten us a bit on the details?

What an awesome discovery! I still think that if any planet is the answer, it will be Mars. I'm not about to argue that Mars does support life, but it sounds reasonable to argue that it can be made to. But perhaps we should just make the most of this planet, and not destroy it? That would be a very good solution also.

The best place on the entire internet to go, to find your cms, is opensourcecms.com (not advertising, just a visitor). They have examples up of all the major CMS's and then some- all free, all linked to the original site, with comments from people that have tried them out.Myself, I would like Mambo if it weren't so darned confusing. I like Drupal, but drupal may be hard to use for those of you who don't know how to manually add its tables to a database.I think right now my favorite is MDPro, by Maxdev. It is wonderful, and easy to use. You can find themes for it all around (though admittedly many of them are crappy sometimes). But MDPro prepares you for a full-fledged, powerhouse website, and I think its my favorite because of all the modules and things already put in place.Also, it's not as awful as some others like Clevercopy (I used to use that for a music blog, but there were bugs here and there in CC). Clever Copy is GREAT to instal. Just upload it, tell it where its database is, and it does the rest, checking every step of the way if something is wrong.. (but then again MDPro does this). But the problem with Clever Copy is, there is a HUGE "This was made by CleverCopy" tag on the bottom. It's hard to understand the settings, some blocks and things can't be removed at all, even if they suck for your design. And you can only add 6 blocks besides the preset ones. Say you don't want any of the preset blocks (like shoutboxes, etc.) and want all custom ones, the best you can do is 3 on each side before you have to PAY for more. What?? With so many more flashy and superiour CMS's out there, just go elsewhere.So on MDPro for example, you can add custom boxes also, but you can add as many as you want however you want. For me it was easier to work with than Drupal (Drupal is great though, comes with better themes and one could say is more customizable) because MDPro's modules are all right there for you in the admin area, whilst Drupal only has a few that come with the installation, and many others must be manually installed, which gets complicated.I especially like MDPro's built-in feature that lets users upload files.. way cool. (it does come with a WYSIWYG editor too).Lastly, I'd like to refer you to CMsimple- a nice little CMS that is simple, but doesn't even require a database to run! It's pretty awesome for such a small program, and saves your stuff to an HTML file, and does auto-backups. Also has a WYSIWYG editor. Also, it means you don't have to search all over the internet for a good database host (but if you're at Tra17, you've already found one..). So, I'd say, if you are looking for a big, News, Downloads, Reviews kind of site, choose MDPro, otherwise go to opensourcecms.com and see them in action and look for the one that is right for you.

Not to insult, but I don't think you read my post all the way through. All you did was essentially reinforce (though with better wording) ideas I already agreed with. Those were "contradictions" that I myself disagreed with. What about the King Soloman one?

Very solid point there Joshua. I have a feeling that going in this direction, the bible gains a sort of validity (and it ought to), for the same reasons we would grant validity to to historical facts. But I would like to toss in there, that certain kinds of info can be empirically challenged. We wouldn't have to throw out everything we learned from Isaac Newton I don't beleive, because he left us with testable concepts we could challenge. We might have to throw out Newton... but we have his concepts, we don't have to throw those out. But then what? Eventually our re-testings would have to be thrown out as well once they get old enough.. so surely there is some rule of historic merit that is being invoked. Hope I'm not misunderstanding you, and please correct me if I am! So, getting back to evolution and the bible- if we accept that different definitions for evolution are merely perspectives of the same single process of evolution, that is something we can test and see around us. A creationism or I.D. process we can't. This applies to both, regardless of where they came from. And if evolution were "proven" in some ancient book, I hold that it would not be valid on the authority of the book, but on its own truth. So, I guess I see a bit of a conflation between science and history here. We still have Newton & Pasteur's science, even if THEY themselves can't be empirically proven. Does that work?

I have 300 invites, and first come first serve. Send an email to abbenm@gmail.com and write a short paragraph about how your having a Gmail account will better america. In response I will send you from 1-5 gmail accounts (thats as much as 10+ gigs!), depending on how good your paragraph was. 5 if it was good, 1 if it was dull or average. Gotta make the gmail giveaway interesting!Then, if you want, you can use that 2-10 gigs of space like REAL hard drive space. Either use Firefox and get the Gspace extension, or download Gmail Filesystem (google them, easy to find). Gspace works like an ftp program in a tab in firefox, and Filesystem litteraly adds a Gmail icon to "My Computer", as if it were another drive.

I'll take you up on that, if you don't mind the invasion of an outside poster into your dispute. I do agree with you that several can be easily brushed aside. One example asks if God is a God of War or Peace... but that can perhaps be easily solved by saying he is both (though it leaves me with an uneasy feeling in the end, and I think there is more to it.) Also, in the "Is Jesus equal to or Lesser Than"... Jesus says "I and my Father are one" and then "my Father is greater than I." You can very simply say it only means Jesus IS God, but that God himself is greater. (again a bit uneasy for me, but it more or less works out.) But I would appreciate it, Come To Life, if you would put this one to rest: Sounds pretty straightfowardly wrong to me, but I am open to the possibility that you are better versed in the Bible than me. Any way to resolve this particular one?

I saw in the main forum, before I read this, that you had responded. Naturally, as I think is mostly the case for anyone in an e-debate, I felt a sense of intimidating anticipation that you may have responded with this towering post shredding down my logic. I can be wrong, it's happened before... But to do that you'd at least have to have internalized a bit of what I said, and I wish you would have looked at my argument a bit more if you are earnestly concerned with convincing me, and not just having the last word (I will apologize in advance if you prove me wrong in this respect). But without going any further into that, I will make a response here to your post, but if the discussion just keeps circling back around, as it looks like this one is, I will move on to other subjects. To start, YES, it IS untrue that Darwin recanted on his death bed. But don't take my word for it. Take Russel M. Grig's word (writer for Answers in Genesis) or Travis Case's word (a Creationist Minister). Or, take the combined word a Christian magazine and that of Darwin's daughter, Henrietta, who wrote in the Christian: And STILL, it is not relevant to evolution even if he did! I don't see how or why that would logically follow or again, why it would be relevant even if it did. I think I agree with what you said before on this one... Again, (as I posted before) that wouldn't invalidate all of evolution. If you think it DOES, would you please address the substance of my older post? Well I still don't see how or why you are seperating Macro from Microevolution. If you can, maybe you've got something, otherwise microevolution (as I posted before, no response) explains it, regardless of how hard it is for you to beleive. I.D. is minimally different from Christian Creationism. But if we go into that (and I'd be glad to) could we do it in another thread? It would distract from the many unanswered points already on the floor for this subject. So that is it for me in this thread I think. Hopefully some serious substance comes up to throw around, but if not, you'll see me in other threads.

Ok, Scientific American, a science journal, can probably answer this question better than I can... Even if that peice turns up untrue (which has not been demonstrated) that does NOT render the rest of evolution irrelevant. Not just adaptation, not just micro-evolution, but ALL of evolution. The Lady Hope story! This story is famously untrue and has been demonstrated as such repeatedly (which you could discover quickly in a google search), but still gets perpetuated. Nothing against you dude, but even Answers in Genesis, a christian web site that defends genesis has dismissed this as uncredible. Don't listen to it because it's them, listen to it because it's true: And what if it was true? Does that mean because Darwin said it no one should take evolution seriously anymore? Evolution isn't established and credible because Darwin said things about it, in fact it was the other way around- Darwin became established and credible because of his testable and remarkably accurate theory of evolution. If he did recant, the only thing that would matter is WHY he recanted and if it is credible. This is not what our evolution debate should be about! Reducing the science evolution to gossip about what one evolutionist may or may not have said has nothing to do with science. Blank assertions are great, but when I talked about Macro and Micro I at least discussed the ideas and their definitions a little. Like with Darwin, I will listen to this when I hear about the SUBSTANCE behind it. The surface level assertion won't do it for me.

Kasm, asking evolution to produce a whole entire animal or organism is remarkably disingenuous and unfair. The changes in a new direction are all that is needed to prove that things evolve. And they have been observed- any honest scientist (if you really are one, which I seriously doubt) would be aware of at least a few examples of OBSERVED, happening evolution. Remember, factual, undeniable proof, doesn't require a whole new animal, it requires a change in an animal. Here are some observed instances (these are from http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-speciation.html ... go look yourself there are a ton more) This is where the FACTS validate the HYPOTHESIS. It's really ironic that you use this example, because you can look closely enough and see that their similarities do suggest that they are related. And I'm sure someone educated enough could observe the two, and see which one is more highly evolved, and see that the Pentium 3 came before the Pentium 4... but it's kind of a silly example, that doesn't prove my point any better than it does yours. What do you mean "approved"? Even in places where it may be a beleif- it is a "beleif" backed up by empirical evidence, collections of information that can reasonably explain how we got to where we are today. That's how the string theory is being developed- not with observable proof, but with hypotheses that work and can explain things without going that far off course. Because of this abscence of "proof", you lump evolution in as "beleif" with intelligent design, which is unbeleivably dishonest, as it is a beleif with a whole lot more weight behind it. Micro and Macro aren't different types of evolution- they are different viewpoints. Macroevolution IS microevolution over a large enough period of time to show significant, rather than minor, changes. From wikipedia: The invented idea of Macro vs. Micro as different methods of evolution is the last straw creationists have to cling on to, as Micro evolution has been proven beyond a doubt (which is why I guess you tried to disqualify it as proof of evolution), and the last debate they have left is whether the two are different at all. And it is remarkably convenient and self-serving to shift the debate to Macro which takes hundreds or thousands of years and then claim it's not true because no one has lived to see it. What if it WAS only micro evolution? Why are we discounting it? Honestly, NO amount of Micro can produce new animals in that 50,000+ years? It's kind of like looking at a giant 500 year old tree and saying we should disregard everything we know about trees; and say that this tree was always this way, because no one lived to see it grow. And don't confuse Micro growth with Macro growth!

What?! How is that even possible- the two theories utterly contradict each other! How could you have seen both sides be "proven"? And remember, being proven is very different from just some evidence that helps the cause of either side. You said "proven". I agree. There are some people on the Usenet groups that have been arguing on evolution for 10+ years Overvall, TR, I agree with your post, but am worried at how you are trying to put up a "middle ground" on evolution that resolves everything. There may not be a middle ground.

Maybe you guys should learn spanish.If they can find a place here and make things work, God bless them. I am all for them making thriving Spanish communities. Wolf, your difficulties and inability to participate in spanish communities strikes me as ironic. Imagine how they feel.And by the way, if you go to Mexico, a lot of them do know English- they have to (at least near the border and around Ensenada, where I've been.) Their tourism industry depends on it. Many towns and cities south of our border even accept U.S. dollars- their currency doesn't even have a full-fledged hold over their country. I just don't even know what else to say. What is America to you? To me there are many MUCH more pertinent issues in North America than whether mainstream english-speaking Americans are catered to enough.

At first I was wondering if this was a kind of parody on people who argue against evolution, but sadly, it is not. I think as a science, the starting point of life is as relevant a study as any other involved in biology (unless you want to also go through biology and remove all other parts of it which are unlikely to net you a career- a very corrupted form of biology if I've ever heard of one!), and actually, it is something that our kids may end up choosing for a career in their life. Why not? I'm not sure how you can say this, unless you just aren't a science student or were alienated from it because it didn't interest you, or whatever other reason. It's just as important a field as history (and how much more relevant or job-ready is that?) I think avoidance is the simple and easy way out. Will there be confrontation? Fine. Maybe it will finally arouse some of our high school kids to get inspired about a subject, and if a high school can at least do that, they have surely accomplished something that rarely happens with high schoolers, especially in the realm of science. I really think it is wrong to look at the stress of a conflict alone as a reason to avoid the situation.. (and its kind of a psuedo conflict stirred up by creationists, whose angle is "teach the controversy".. the controversy which they have been pressing upon a subject relatively calm and in consensus at least in a general sense). Also, it is important I think, to learn about evolution because of the sense of civility and intellectualism (at whatever minimal level) it puts in our high schoolers. I want them to be able to look at a tree an know about how it grows, or to look at a dog or a bird and to think about their evolutionary history. It elevates our level of thinking that has become the standard for us modern people, and it's kind of nice to have a line such as this to be able to seperate us from the more ignorant generations and civilizations of the past.