glenstein

I agree. There is a very strong will to stick with an argument, not for the facts, but, simply "because". Because you had invested in it and if you lose you look bad, or a part of you, a part of the way you thought the world worked is gone. More than any specific argument or belief, religious or not, is this fascinating and destructive tendency on self-insistence. I've seen it on this message board, and really it's shameful and sad. I've heard from people serving on jury duty that they would get near a unanimous decision on an obvious case, and there would be one person insisting against towering mountains of fact and preventing the jury from coming to a conclusion, getting a hung jury on a case where there was no reason on earth for it to occur. More than any belief itself about religion, politics, etc. is the self investment one puts in it, where they have to maintain come hell or high water some substance of an argument. I would be willing to bet that all kinds of positions and beliefs held by people are held on account of some baser, more immediate appeal than that they carry factual weight, and so expending paragraphs in textbooks and hours of time in congress on debates is really beating around the bush, because the bush isn't the argument itself. It's about personal dignity, integrity, or something like that which gets crushed or destroyed if relinquished. So I think most of the time, if you disagree with someone who is obviously wrong, you could engage them forcefully but in all likelyhood, despite having every fact in the world on your side, you could end up reinforcing the belief that you are trying to dispute. Better instead to address their willingness to commit to a certain belief. De-emphasize any urge to lift some bad idea (intelligent design, for example) to such a high altar that they start defining the world with it. If it becomes sacred to them it's too late, hence the fierceness of religion. There is a great Bertrand Russel quote on this: So in the grander scheme, combating that instinct is more important than any specific argument.

My first was a Sega Genesis. It had Sonic the Hedgehog, Hardball 94, X-Men, and a game base on the Lion King movie, back when that was huge. I also played (but didn't own) the Double Dragon/Battle Toads game, which I thought was awesome and I was always rooting for Sega against Nintendo. It's a shame that the Dreamcast didn't work out, it was a great and deserving console.

This is pretty silly, so I'll try to respond to the points that make sense. That Catholics aren't Christians would be news to them, and using the "no true Scotsman" argument, a logical fallacy maintaining that they aren't true Christians unless they believe x, y and z is unfair. Saying things like "A real Christian believes in the whole Bible." is really a loaded, self serving interpretation, and reading your posts on this boards you seem thoughtful enough, so the reasons why Catholics are, in fact, Christians (why is this even disputed?) are there and you should already be able to figure them out yourself. But if you want, I'll gladly elaborate on why you can't wantonly exclude vast swaths of the religious community from the very beliefs they claim to practice. There are probably a whole lot more Christian congregations that don't participate. But I was never arguing against that. You wanted to know what Christians exist who could believe in evolution. There is obviously a sizable group, regardless of whether you think they are "true" enough or whether you think such a group has to be in the majority before it can be considered notable. No one could suggest, for example, that racial groups aren't sufficiently "considerable" if they are merely minority populations, and get away with it. Why is this logic any more sensible in the present context? You wanted to know who these people are who think Christianity can agree with mainstream science, I'm representing them. This is frustrating. Here is a better source. It's a report based on a survey by a professional and respected polling firm, Rasmussen Reports. Broken down, just 4% of evangelics think the bible is not literally true. But 30% of protestants and 42% of Catholics don't believe the bible is literally true, such groups exist in significant numbers exactly like I was saying. Meaning all of this doubt and disagreement was a waste of time and beside the point. I sympathize with and understand what you are saying, just like I did from the beginning. There exist Christians who do take the bible literally. But I would have hoped it was fundamentally self evident that my question applied exclusively to those who it was relevant to, not to those who it isn't relevant to.

For one, all Catholic Schools, which alone seems significant enough to me. Also, the Vatican's former chief astronomer, Fr. George Coyne said intelligent design is not science "even though it pretends to be" and should not be taught in place of evolution. And there are the occasionally pieces like this, representative of Christians who accept evolution. And then there is this account of 530 congregations that participated in the recent Evolution Sunday. And here is a nice resource of prominent Christian Evolutionists and christian websites that are pro-evolution. 65% of Americans aren't fundamentalist Christians, meaning they do not believe in the literal, non-metaphorical truth of the bible. Mhmm indeed. On your last point, I only meant science as it specifically related to demonstrating the validity of God. The very existence of intelligent design/creationist proponents is a statement that Christians feel a need to prove God with science. I was merely asking, why, given God's omnipotence, is it even necessary to resort to sciencey arguments. I was not saying people who believe in God should give up any and all science, only that which they think is necessary to directly prove the existence of their creator. But I was unclear, so that's my fault As for your point on "memory" of evolution, that's apples and oranges. No personal memory or personal direct visualization of one animal changing into another is necessary to believe in evolution. While, on the other hand, a direct, immediate experience is necessary in order to convince someone they have been alive for many years when they've only existed for five minutes. So those appear to be two different things. Explore the word "imagination" a bit and you get exactly the kind of exploratory, creative thinking necessary to unearth and develop a theory.

Thanks for the great input from you all, I will be up for an update this week that addresses some of the very challenging and very legitimate concerns raised. For now a quick response to a quick and isolated problem, probably as fleeting and to the side as my mind is at present which is why I bother to answer it and not other concerns (yet). No, no! Just the Leader, only he moved out to the DR of C. All the people who came into the country were refugees from the tribal violence of nearby African countries, not the U.S! They have plenty of football to watch and politics to be outraged about over there and the U.S. has issued multiple consumer warnings to not fly to the Congo because of how unsafe it is (was). The Congo itself was a host to a plethora of its own displaced refugees among many from neighboring countries, and the whole region has a history of destabilization, refugeeism and thus (im)migration. It was these Africans who would come to the Congo and increase it's population. hey... you heard him!

First, before anything else, I want to emphasize that I was merely using evolution as a placeholder for any field of science at all that has any religious implications whatever. I didn't want to focus on the truth of evolution itself. Ok. Here we go. hmmmmm...... Which is true? I guess it depends a lot on how true to the word of God the Bible is. But isolating that first quote, "evolution contradicts the bible", I have something to say. There is a considerable and thoughtful group of people who believe quite the opposite on this point. One can consider his word without taking it literally, and as far as I know fundamentalists are exclusively the only group who even take the science of the Bible literally. Which, staying away from evolution, means that many christians are ok both with science and religion. Most, I would say. I am not sure I understand the above statement. What kind of "remembering" are you talking about and how is it the same as the memory I mentioned (where you are convinced you've been alive for many years when you are really only 5 minutes old)?? Those seem to me fundamentally, totally opposed. No one has a personal memory of evolution like they have a personal memory of their own life. Was that your point? I agree with that statement above very much and if I were a christian, I would stop there. But why do people go on and use science when God doesn't need science. Why is there an urge to use it to prove him? Um, I'm fairly sure that neither are true. Both humans and apes branched off from a common ancestor and evolved alongside one another, but neither apes in their present form nor humans in their present form turned into one or the other.

I see plenty of arguments on this board and elsewhere, and one pattern seems to be for Christians to embrace empirical facts, and logic when it suits them, but otherwise to suggest that the creator is simply incomprehensible and logic is useless. Why bother with the first if the second is true? And more importantly, why be bothered by things like Evolution science, or the big bang theory? Obviously an omnipotent creator can set those events in motion. They can set any event in motion so I'm not sure why cold rationality and science would have to contradict a being that exists outside of them/ Truth be told, I'm not sure why Christians even feel a need to argue for the proof of god. Even with, for example, the most damning and obvious evidence of evolution, what stopped god from instantly creating the world with fossils, animals, etc. as they are in a way that would perfectly conform to a theory of evolution? You don't even necessarily need intelligent design. God can get along just fine without needing to be propped up by our earthly theories. For that matter, what's preventing him from say creating the universe five minutes ago and just planting memories in us that make us think there has been an intricate history? This guy is omnipotent, for, um, god's sake. He can easily slice and dice evolution and make it perfectly plausible, nothings stopping him. So in the context of the "god" debate, why does it matter if, for example, evolution is valid or not? There is no aspect of existence we can turn to that he couldn't have already rigged.

Starcraft was great. but going back to play it now,you can feel the datedness and ancientness of the game. Myself, I like the custom made games that users make of starcraft that you can play on Battle.net. But still, I think the StarCraft age, or era, or whatever, has come and gone. I don't simply mean it being in the mainstream and getting played all the time, I mean that even that feeling of far-reaching classic-ness that we attribute to a game, that will always make it a great throwback to play, I think even that is a bit faded now. But that said, I wouldn't mind playing competitively at a lan gathering or something.One that I thought was really fun was Age Of Empires (the first one). At my high school, all the macintosh computers, somehow, had this game installed so afterschool my friends and I would play the game on that one demo map. We were really competitive so we tried to find the best ways to beat each other, and I would take the civilization which only needs 35 food to create it's villagers, and then I would build like 3-4 archery ranges and just SWARM archers all over the map and rush everyone. Since I know how the demo map runs, I knew there was a river cutting the land into two pieces and I would kill everyone on my side and then wall off the passages, effectively controlling 50% of the map. And then I would aggressively mine the most precious resources on the map: gold and stone, but mostly stone. And I would put the stone "in play" by making tons upon tons of stone towers. Besides defeating my army, an enemy would have to get through legions of towers to do anything to my base.It was also fun to get the research where you can see everything the enemy is doing, and sneak a villager into their town and start constructing random walls all around inside their village making everything inconvenient. And even if you can't get a villager to reach the area and build the wall, the section of unbuilt wall would stay there with 0 hit points and force everyone to walk around it, until they make a soldiers deliberately destroy it, which took time and gummed up the system. Of course, walls stopped having this effect in the second game.I learned a lot of tricks in that game, which made it really fun. One thing you could do if you were lucky enough, is convert an enemy transport ship that was about to drop off guys at your base. Then, you don't own the guys inside, but they are at the mercy of your ship! And it would be tempting to just sink the ship and kill all 10-15 guys inside, but don't do that. Instead, you can sail to an enemies base and drop off all the army there, forcing them to attack a player besides you. Or, better yet, you can just keep the ship, effectively taking away from the enemy player's population limit so they can't make new guys to attack you with! But I've only ever done that once. Other fun games I've spent too much time on:CossacksAgainst computer is too easy, but it is finally truly a grand and epic game, spanning miles of terrain and allowing thousands of soldiers. Without a patch, the computer players are idiots but if you do an Island map against Very Hards you will be in for a challenge. Even when they aren't allied they will try to gang up on you. The best thing to do in this game is to build 3 town centers right off the bat and have them produce villagers non-stop, which will give you a clear and complete economic advantage for the rest of the game. Most computers, and even human players will just build two. Then, if you choose Ukraine, which is the best civilization in the game (the developers were ukranian) you can upgrade and research the Cossacks, and swarm and destroy anything with the fastest unit in the game. Ukraine's only weakness is on water maps. Being a landlocked nation, they are terrible on water maps and only get the weakest boat, the Galley, while other nations, like England get the most fantastic ships any RTS has every seen, Victories with hundreds of cannons going off at once, or at least the much more powerful Frigates. Ukraine is at a clear disadvantage in this case, and the only thing I was ever able to do was dedicate no less than 200 villagers to constantly chopping wood to build galleys (which cost 9000 wood), and I would have to build like 10 docks and have them turn out as many galleys as possible. It's the only way to survive with Ukraine on the water.But the funnest thing of all about that game is exploring and controlling new islands. It really, really feels like a true achievement and on huge maps it can take 10 or so minutes for a land unit to walk to the other side of the map, and perhaps 20 or more for a boat to sail that far. And when you claim all the precious resources on an uninhabited island for yourself, it's an awesome feeling.

Well, it is true indeed that this would take several years to implement the reforms alone in the D.R. of the Congo, the construction of the Congo Dam itself will take about a decade to complete, and the water flowing through it will carry more force than the dam at Three Gorges in China, the world's largest dam (when completed). As for cultural reforms, the leader was never interested in any, save how culture is reformed by becoming more educated, self sustaining and up to date. The choice wasn't between their well known tradition and some foreign, ugly imposing values telling them to change how they lived. Just better. Just improvement. It's like a beggar being handed free money. Can you really say no? Of course this country has its history, its heritage, and its cultural integrity and is only a "beggar" in the sense that it is crippled in debt accumulated from interest and loans, and in dire need. The people were merely being offered a solution to violence, a way to move forward and out of the chaos that ravaged them. But it is true that there was a culture of opposition that made itself most known through violent rebellion and populist politics (which will be dealt with in the next post). This opposition had to be answered by propaganda, by being declared terrorists and surrounding one side of the conflict with stately legalized formality, but this was a true and major, and long running problem which again, will be covered in the next post. Institutions were built from the ground up, never imposed but flowing freely from the veins of practicality. They took possession of their lumber industry, selling raw materials to their own companies to produce wood and pulp-based products and wherever possible the nation would buy it's own gold, zinc, and other natural resources as well, to convert into other products, effectively swallowing up the other stations of the production line which were getting a free ride on remaking Congo resources. For convenience, the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Republic of Congo decided a merger was necessary. Both nations had claimed ownership of the river and agreements would be much less complicated if they merely became one nation, the Congo. Economically, politically, and in every national way possible they would simply be too intimately tied as nations, to the extent that it would do more harm than good to remain separate entities. More overwhelming than any cultural and political objections, was the exciting and inspiring fact that the new nation would become the economic capital of Africa. And they would. While the dam was being built, understanding and information spread greatly reducing the prevalence of diseases such as aids and malaria. Common knowledge about the seasons and sickness prolonged life expectancies, surpluses of grain were witheld in an inventory to combat the regularly occuring famine season, and refugees from violence of neighboring nations poured into the borders causing the population to boom from 66 million to over 90 million. Before the construction of the dam, many problems could not be answered by money, and so the Leader's printed books were spread as widely as possible (i.e. pumps, tanks and water filters were not made available but information on construction of simple wells, protecting water from infection, the need to store water from the rainy season in anticipation of the dry season, for those with no access to the river... all of this information was widely disseminated). What money the leader could afford to spend, outside of financing the Congo Dam went almost exclusively toward education: recruiting teachers and constructing buildings, to create a new generation of skilled laborers by the millions, After the dam was completed, at the urging of the "Leader", the political groups controlling the Congo shocked and outraged involved corporations and financiers by nationalizing the Congo Dam (seized control of it). In response an ever engulfing web of debt, lawsuits, and fines were being heaped upon the nation. These things went unanswered and unpaid or only paid in miniature fractions of the required amount by the Congo, because they claimed they couldn't afford to pay everything upfront. But in truth, these things were being deliberately disregarded by the Congo. They would eventually declare all debt and fines of any sort which had been crippling the nation totally null and void, but had to wait for a time when this could be done without bringing (economic) warfare down against itself. As it was between the Congos, energy agreements and intimate interconnections developed among neighboring countries- Cameroon, Gabon, Zambia, Tanzania, Sudan and eventually all the way down to South Africa eastto Somalia. This close relation was preferred over making money, and often Congo would deliberately take a loss to show good will toward the other nations and to further establish the ever expanding electricity grid, to only make money when certain regions became stable in the near future. And they would make money, on the hundreds of villages and townships which grew into hundreds of towns and minor cities across the heart of Africa, all dependent on Congo's Hydropower. This bargaining hand also made a significant impact on the nature of the African Union. It just seemed a matter of convenience that every summit between the nations would be held in Kinshasa, the capital of Congo which soon became considered the capital of Africa. Soon the supreme governing body of the union, "The Assembly of the African Union" (the collected heads of states of African Nations) found that they held their yearly meetings in Brazzaville (the capital of the "other" congo before their union). An African Court of Justice was also established in Kinshasa and inevitably the government of the Congo held huge sway over the entirety of the continent. Under the African Union, the Congo (and the Leader) gained an ever stronger grip on other nations of Africa preaching fierce isolation and integration, and it would take merely a decade or so for the reforms, both educational and economic, to spread in at least a skeletal way as Africa became a modernized and integrated super-nation. As this happened classes of labor were born: a hundred-million fold class of unskilled, poor laborers (never paid more than $1.00 an hour) who competed with China and India for the manufacturing business of the first world, giving rise to a small collection of genuinely African based manufacturing corporations. The second was a class of skilled workers (engineers, architects, programmers) and business minds that oversaw and developed the African labor force and infrastructure of the ever more integrated continent. As for the U.S. they would actually support this venture- they were well aware an American billionaire was setting up a charity, transforming and gaining influence in the continent, risking wealth in a way the U.S. government itself never would. Without the hindsight all of you readers have, what would they be worried about? Perhaps the everyday push and pull pressures of politics and economy that all big nations thrust against each other, but nothing more. What were they to suspect?.. .... developing.

Just being straightforward: It's posts like this where I have a hard time believing you when you say you've read thousands of viewpoints on all kinds of subjects, or that you read tons of scientific literature dealing with evolution. The evolution of the eye has been a fascinating and widely researched question. There are plenty of explanations for the development of the eye and someone who has truly voraciously consumed evolutionary literature would surely have come across it. One example: Even if one wants to doubt the theory, which you have every right to do, it's heavy handed to say evolution has "failed" to explain the eye. But congrats on starting an interesting topic and keeping everyone thinking.

A few interesting and practical ones.

(Obviously this isn't serious... but it is very much an idea, and theory) To start I will make clear that I am not claiming that my way is the best way to take over the world (even I think there might be simpler ways), I'm not claiming it is the the most efficient way, or that conquering the world is even a just or desirable thing that would help anything at all. Furthermore I acknowledge that the actions the following plan considers necessary, may very well be considered evil. But anyone with their eye on ruling the whole world surely understands that it would be a naive folly indeed to limit their range of actions to "good" ones if they were to ever make any serious progress. Indeed there are thousands of places one could start, and my initial post I will only be looking at the opening course for this world takeover. After some discussion of how this will progress, with welcome input from other users, the world will eventually be taken over by the completion of this thread. But first it has to start. And it starts in the U.S.A., with a Leader. In the late 80's and early 90's this Leader has been toying with computers, ripe with grandiose philosophies on how to change the world forever by making any and all of the world's information free and amazingly easy to access. They begin working on platform independent programs. Artificial intelligence is the goal for many of these projects, but the Leader fails to reach this goal. But he develops two things: 1- a superior search program with powerful and accurate algorithms and 2- a software that relies on its community to maintain, store, improve and develop information. As the Internet becomes successful, masses of wealth are accumulated (about $9-10 billion a year but increasing) and the Leader carefully develops and expands these endeavors to be on the cutting edge of new technologies and new ways to offer digitized information to everyone. It's not being on the cutting edge that matters, though. All being on the cutting edge means, is being the only one making these kinds of information available. Being the possessor of them. Being the one primary, leading source everyone turns to for their information. The wealth is amassed, and the Leader moves to the Democratic Republic of Congo. He quietly sets up a charity that continually donates to various causes in the Congo, encouraging the violent rebel factions ravaging the country to turn in their guns in exchange for money. This helps stabilize the country. Meanwhile, information systems dominating the internet back in the U.S. and around the world have produced tons of freely available information, and among the information are free digitized books of various educational purposes. In the Congo, the Leader sets up a cheap and inexpensive printing press system he runs out of the basement of his own house, printing inexpensive books that have been produced and released for free on the internet. Most of the ones he prints have to do with personal responsibility. They include: - ways to live self sufficiently and save money - practical guides to creating goods (i.e. chair making, crop raising) - information on prevention of sexually transmitted diseases - books on community values, morals. He hands them out for free to people in various communities. This is to further strengthen the stability of the nation. He also sponsors certain candidates and political movements he prefers, eventually himself becoming very politically influential. The country is transformed, it's populace becomes more efficient and less violent, and wider education programs can be implemented. But the major project has to get started. The Democratic Republic of Congo sits on the Congo River, one of the most condensed and potent natural forces in the world. Only the flow of the Amazon River is stronger. Building a hydroelectric dam on the Congo that fully harnesses the force of this river would generate enough electricity to power not only the entire country, but could fuel all the electricity needs of the neighboring Republic of Congo, any and all bordering nations and could even sell electricity to countries far away as Europe. This idea has long been a treasured but hopelessly far off dream for the people of both Congo's. It would mark the rising of a new and powerful electricity grid, a source of major wealth for the nations and a mountain of power waiting to fuel industry and lend emergence to cities throughout the hemisphere. But for the longest time there has been no way to finance this dream, except by plunging the nation ever further into debt to foreign nations who would then essentially control all the profits and rewards to be reaped from the construction of the dam. It was the Leader who came just in time to prevent the Dem. Rep. of Congo from selling off its' future, volunteering to finance a significant portion of it's construction and put the country in much better bargaining power with interested companies and nations looking to finance the dam's construction. The Leader can only afford to pay about $3 billion (and up to an additional $10 billion over time) of the roughly $50 billion in expenses needed to construct the Congo Dam. But the effect is to commence construction and establish major confidence from outside companies and allow much favorable financing that allows the government a much better negotiation position. Of course, the Leader's eventual goal is to have the Congo Dam revolutionize the region and place the nation in a position of considerable influence, with himself at the center. Developing.... For commenters: problems, holes, contradictions, it is welcome for you to point these out, I won't be upset. I will take them seriously, and try to make sure the Leader addresses them as he works to take over the world. Or I'll freely admit if it's a problem that will linger as the conquest progresses. Maybe the Leader will try different things, and maybe they will fail until a new plan can be thought of. But (only catch) nothing which has already been written can be undone or re-done. Have to keep moving forward. So I'm fleshing out this world conquering idea a bit... but I wanted to make sure I got the first part of this idea of mine out on the table for scrutiny.

I voted for both of them because they are both great and they should put them together and make one ultra system. Some like PC, some like MAC, its all about opinion and how can we know which is best if everyone only has their opinion on it which never can change u no? It's like apples and oranges because some ppl like the mac and some like the PC. One has all the games and the other doesn't have any games at all, one has viruses and the other doesn't have any viruses. But I think viruses are a good thing because if forces us to be creative and it makes us have jobs and keeps people away from sites they shouldn't be and email that isn't theirs to read. But its all good.

its not powered by google anymore. But google is better, and if they continue to operate and expand in the manner they have, we are all the better for it. The services are great and free, and have forced others to catch up. Like with email. Remember when Hotmail used to limit storage space to 2 megabytes? I do. Then gmail started and that changed really fast. I don't think its unfair to say that google is the internet.

This is more than a little silly. I was quoting you, not because I believed one whit of what you were saying, I was mocking your doubt of theories. Of course a theory can still be meritable, I never said it couldn't, you did. And the points you bring up as you argue against your own quotes are fairly good points. Your points happen to reinforce the validity of Hubbert's Peak, also a theory, which you doubted for the same reasons that you now want me to believe the Russians. It is a good point that an oil producer in Russia endorses those theories. Just like it's a good point that the U.S. Department of Energy and U.S. congress believes in peak oil. If I said "oh those russians aren't trustworthy because they used to be commies and etc. etc." would you take it seriously? I hope not. But that's exactly what you said about our United States congress. But I can say that one theory is more accepted in the mainstream science community and that one is more dubious and obscure. "A guys personal website" was actually using info quoted from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, a fact mentioned on the page I link to for anyone to read, so nice try. And I told you specifically what every graph was measuring, so you could have easily doubled checked if you doubted what I was saying. If I link to the sources, it's only going through the motions. Surely you still believe that our global reserve estimates rising for some reason, right? So if you have something substantive to say, I'll be happy to respond, but if you were honest you might at least acknowledge the several cases of hypocrisy on your part, but you won't. So it is likely that I am done here.

It seems to me that research from the guys you mentioned often makes use of charts and graphs. And in their own research, they consider their work a theory that they are still developing. Interestingly enough, Hubbert has correctly predicted several phenomina around the world with his theory and all oil wells follow the bell curve in output he predicted they would, just like global discovery of new wells follows the curve he predicted it would. The russians, by contrast, have had little direct research to accompany their theory. Now there was someone in this thread who was very suspicious of theories, and of graphs and charts, but I'll let that person speak on their own behalf. Maybe I should take that person's advice and distrust your Russian sources?

I'm going to tell you about one of my favorite programs I've ever found. Before I do, I should say that I like standard text editors, I like the fact that I can have a word program in front of my screen ready to instantly and permanently save any and everything I could ever choose to write in it. There is nothing stopping any computer owner from outpouring libraries upon libraries of text, whether its creative writing, a journal, philosophy, etc. etc. The written word is amazingly powerful and having a computer to record it utterly unleashes it. As long as you don't have carpal tunnel syndrome. Inspiring as that all is (except for carpal), I am pretty sure your brain operates differently from a computer, and so much that you COULD express ends up getting dropped. An idea has to travel from an emotion to a word, through your hands and into a sentence in a text editor. Distraction upon distraction upon distraction piles up as you are looking for the right word, the right key, and putting it in the right spot on the page. It also doesn't help that text in a text file always has to go in a linear stream. Because your actual thoughts go in more than one direction. Thoughts are very physical. They have locations, some are linked together, some hang over others, some have colors of emotion, some are thicker, etc. etc. What is the point? The point is that a whole new genre of software has been developed called mind-mapping software. This breed of software is essentially a text editor that uses thought bubbles instead of paragraphs to write text. Here is how it works: You start with a primary "node". You choose a word for it, any word you want, like "experience". You give it "child" nodes that branch off of it, like perception, illusion, objective truth. And those nodes can have sub-nodes, etc. etc. Not that complicated if you've ever used this method for "brainstorming" before. But on a computer it has so much more potential. For example, you can click on a primary node to show/hide the nodes branching off of it, and the more you ad, the larger, more complicated and more fruitful a behemoth of thought you will produce, every bit of it useful. You will be able to write things and think of things a text editor would normally make inconvenient, and essentially open up new dimensions of thought to a ready method of recording. Of course being a program there is much more you can do. You can have a "note" inside each node. For example, if you were using my example, you could stick a note inside the "perception" node explaining what you mean by it. But you can use it for any subject imaginable. Maybe you are planning to move to a city, you could use it for setting all your thoughts in order, what opportunities you are looking for, what aspects of city life you want to become involved in... It is startlingly easy how much you can come up with so quickly, and if you insert notes inside your nodes you can accumulate all kinds of thoughts and expand upon tons of ideas and make putting your thoughts in writing an easier process. So if you use windows, get Freemind! What a neat tool. It just makes you wonder what other kinds of programs could be developed that just look at text editing in a different way and how much thought they can unlock in a person. So this isn't my idea, but my musings on the potentialities for an existing idea.

Lol, they are actually doing this. In San Francisco at least. Article.

Yeah. If google just wanted a video service, they've had google video for a while now already. They bought the most popular blog service, blogger, and when youtube emerged as the biggest video sharing site, they bought that one also. They also took the longest running and most well known message boards, Usenet, and merged that into the realm of google. Wondering how they are going to acquire Wikipedia... Google is the internet.

That's a good point, except for the conspiracy idea, which sounds a little implausible. But I think what they were "selling" was not just the code, but everything that came with it. The reputation, the massive community base, the videos. There could be ten other sites with similar code that are just as good, but none of them would be Youtube. The code itself is nothing without the community.

Yeah, it's biased, but I don't always think bias is a bad or unimportant thing. Bias can reinforce the more significant points of consideration, or operate in the name of virtue in various other ways. Similarly with widely used definitions. You are right that belief is important, and widely used definitions are like a measurement on what people believe, and perhaps also a rough measurement of the critical reflection of our culture (or whatever forces) that lead for such a distinguishment to exist. Which, though imperfect, I think is significant. (EDIT: I would also add that the "other definition" you talk about was never mentioned at all in most every source listed, and when it is, it is rare and less emphasized for a reason. It is that much more biased to favor the obscure definition over the accepted one.) And on your map example, I think I actually agree with you there. The person who made the map would use a different word but would be describing the same thing even if he believed he should call its contents different things. Which is why I think the words don't matter as much as the subject. That is, the names on the map aren't as important as the actual geography. So, for my position, I don't think whether or not atheism is called a religion matters. Keeping with the map metaphor, I don't think it's a case of just referring to the same landmarks on a map by different names. That person who memorized the obscure map wouldn't disagree with anyone if they were discussing substance of the map, i.e., what country is what shape or how many miles from one country is from the next. They would agree on those things. I think what I'm saying, is that you gave this guy a map with a land mark named "atheism" on it. I don't disagree with the title (or if I do it's not an important disagreement), but I disagree with the shape of the drawing. Atheism would be drawn one way, Religion would be drawn another. And they are actually totally different countries.

A quick point on yet another claim of yours. The oil issues of the 70's were the result of an honest-to-god oil crisis. That was when the OPEC nations boycotted the U.S., western Europe, and Japan and gained OPEC it's infamy. There's no scam about that and it bears no relationship to the credibility of the peak oil theory. The reason all kinds of alternatives were becoming explored is because people felt the reality and immediacy of an oil crisis. It was no longer abstract. But as the boycott ended, prices lowered and people stopped taking a very real problem seriously and left alternatives at the wayside, where they remain today. So the 70's analogy doesn't apply. Then this, which is related: No one has ever claimed that Peak Oil would occur globally in the 70's. So that is untrue. It wasn't promoted before. Update: Then then there is this.. If you search for "Exxon Mobil on Peak Oil", the second result you get is "ExxonMobil Says, "Peak Oil Is Fiction"". The first result you get is a pdf document published on Exxon Mobil's own web site that talks about why Exxon Mobil thinks peak oil is a myth. Or if you look for Shell Oil's opinion, one of the first pieces you get is this, an article where Shell claims oil will dominate for the next 100 years. The oil companies want nothing to do with Peak Oil because it encourages alternative energies, it encourages people to brace themselves, conserve or look for alternatives in case there is a price hike. Besides being wrong, it wouldn't even make sense. Why would oil companies push a theory that tells everyone they should stop using oil? Why would they scare us away from oil? If they wanted us to buy it, wouldn't they tell us that everything is fine, there is plenty of oil and there is no need to change your lifestyle or look for an alternative source? Just to emphasize this, I'm going to quote what you wrote again: Now compare your statement with the statement of Exxon Mobil: In other words, you claimed something that was, again, untrue. How am I supposed to take anything you say seriously?

Thanks for the links. I make sure to read criticisms of peak oil and question myself consistently, so I'll look and see which of those add something new to what I know. I'm in the process of writing a pm with my last thoughts. But obviously, as you probably know, the number of google hits for something isn't always a great measure of how true it is. Perhaps a good measure of how much discussion there is on a subject, but it's not always a great measure of credibility. For instance, "the moon is made of cream cheese" gets 1,040,000 hits. You again have several contestable points but rather than getting into that, I'll just emphasize Hubbert's curve was actually relatively obscure until it started getting proven right by real world events (like the peak of U.S. production in the 70's I previously mentioned). People arguing against peak oil, that is, arguing against the very idea that we will ever slow down in our production of oil have a bit more on their plate in terms of evidentiary burden now than Hubbert, who continues to be proven right as oil wells all around the world (including Eugene Island) follow the curve he predicted they would. Update: If you turn on C-Span now you'll see Republican Roscoe Bartlett (I think that's his name), R-Maryland talking about Hubberts peak and the importance of energy indepedence. Update: Wow this is amazing. If you are still here you should really turn on C-Span. He's citing a lot of people and sources I've been using here and his presentation couldn't be more relevant to the subject at hand than it is. Or you can go to the C-Span website which carries live feeds. All of this just goes to reinforce how undisputed and accepted the science on Hubbert's curve is. One of the big poster boards Bartlett displayed for all to see was a quote from our own U.S. Department of Energy which said: That's what his poster said, but the same statement also has more explicit statements: So ad the U.S. Congress and U.S. Department of Energy to groups that have been duped by the Peak Oil Myth.

You are right. I did get very "into" my side but that's about as far as I am ever likely to go in terms of uncivil-ness. The only reason I didn't move on and simply not respond at all, was that I had invested a bit of time in my post that I didn't want to go to waste. But in the future I will be sure to just opt out of conversations if I know how uncivil/irrational they will be. For now, thanks BuffaloHELP for appealing to decency and not banning, blocking this etc. It shows respect for the common sense of your members and is an approach I'll definitely honor by cooling off and backing away from this subject.

Watermonkey's post was lost, but I happened to have a copy because I was typing up a response in a text file, so here it is: So Hubbert's Peak is now just a mainstream myth? Due to your flatly wrong, shot in the dark, characterizations of me as some tool who has no idea what I'm saying and your blatant ignorance of my previous post on Hubbert's peak which you don't address and which refutes everything you are saying, the earnest good will is gone. What's ironic is that buying into "propaganda" explains your position almost exactly. Your link, archived on a discout vitamins web page, points to a 6 1/2 year old story from the WSJ about the Eugene Island 330 oil field. The Eugene Island oil field is a favorite example from non-credible rumor mills like Worldnetdaily of a supposed self replenishing oil well, but in reality it's been debunked for years and even your own article, despite being highly biased and suggestive, acknowledges that the field is not a case of proven and settled fact. And no, there aren't hundreds more like them. If challenged maybe you could come up with a dozen or a few dozen, all from dubious sources. Eugene Island was memorable for how unexpected and atypical it was. Lots of research was done to explain that field that put it back in context which I'm sure you don't actually know about. Turns out it was in an unstable region where oil from a nearby field merely migrated into the Eugene 330 oil field. Nothing more. An ecologist sums up the research on this field: In other words, it's behaving like any other oil well and oil wells don't just spontaneously replenish themselves if you leave them alone for ten years. You are simply content to believe oil just creates itself in randomly self-regenerating deposits around the world. Just like you are happily ready to dredge out old debunked and misinterpreted myths about the Eugene Island field and convince yourself that not only is it true, but that every oil field in the world is just like that also and that anyone who believes otherwise has bought into a mainstream myth. And this is the foundation for your belief that there is a grand conspiracy to hide the infinite sources of gas? And not only that but to have the audacity to tell me that I'm just buying into some MSM myth and that all my sources are just biased (but your debunked sources of course are beyond doubt). Just for fun, lets sift through the vacuous and unverifiable speculation for your only other challengeable claim: If you actually knew anything about estimated reserves, you would know that that is a highly political, highly contradictory affair with dozens of claims from dozens of institutions. A good pdf (link) on this issue concludes: Also, you'd know that "technical", independent estimations that don't come from oil companies are showing shrinking estimates on energy reserves (source). You might know that increases in "estimates" were drastically affected by arbitrary declarations from OPEC countries in the 1980, rejected by the scientific community (check the "Oil Reserves" entry on wikipedia for that). Now, the actual change in world oil reserve estimates in the past five years: Most of the countries there, and most of the countries in possession of oil for that matter are the OPEC countries, which are notorious for arbitrarily adding to their crude oil estimates without explanation, generally so they can up their production quotas and sell more because production quotas rise with a raise in estimated reserves (this is mentioned in the source). Their claims generally aren't accepted as reliable. Then there is Canada, whose increase was from the discovery of the Athabasca Tar Sands. But those were a discovery, still no case of oil appearing again in old wells. So where are these increased estimates of yours? Nowhere. They aren't real. You made them up. You would also know that aside from estimated reserves, PROVEN reserves continue to go down. And no one disputes this. You might know that trends in discovery of new oil fields are declining. And here is a collection of estimations on future oil productions from a dozen+ major institutions: Notice they have something in common? Decline, decline decline. And that doesn't go away because some stammering, pompous fool reads a 6 1/2 year old debunked news article.