But Ler

@asianne, my bad… I forgot (or never knew) that the window for editing a post is 30 minutes. (I can edit any post for you, if you ask.)

Speaking of Memorial Day (if you think my timing here is so profound), you do realize how many more Americans died as a result of our knee-jerk response to 911, right? What did it actually achieve, other than to soothe the angst of ‘Mericans waving their flags, out to prove they will “never forget” in any way they can, and anyone who disagrees…[Read more]

@Robert, it would be just as meaningful, impactful, and personal if you just wrote an emotionalized retort like “You just hate America, don’t you?!”.

I am reminded of Bush’s cliche “just stay the course” during one of our most horrific mistakes of foreign policy by war ever made. As if American self-examination was an evil.

Perhaps you are…[Read more]

Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:
In Ireland we have the PR system

I’ve wished that could be part of American discourse for many years. In addition to added plurality, it eliminates the need for run-off elections (when 1-candidate-only balloting doesn’t result in a majority-chosen candidate).

the American system has become too polarized

Indeed.…[Read more]

Davis wrote:
their entire agenda is pretty much already planned out and most laws are tentatively drafted

[…] multiple party systems are often fantastic (Belgium, Germany, Denmark) or good (Ireland, Czech Rep, Japan)

[…] who must make new laws by absolute unanimity and it just makes the functioning EU all the more outrageously unique and…

[Read more]

Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:
Here is a clip from the show “Miracles for Sale” by Derren Brown.

Haha, right after that clip, youtube fed me an ad for an “acupuncture pen“. Isn’t science wonderful!? (I am just kidding here about the ‘science’, folks.)

Davis wrote:
It’s not that hard to motivate people into believing incredible things based on a good show and huge smiles and confidence.

Oh man, visions of Scientology popped up just now.

Robert_ wrote:
Can Islam integrate with western society. Not according to this expert

He seems like a whack job to me. I watched the whole video, which was so full of drooling bias and just-so certainty I couldn’t decide which of of his “facts” were true. His PhD is in physics, not religion or Islam, and his audience sounded like they were there…[Read more]

_Robert_ wrote:
Are we to assume that government workers are tops when in comes to technology?

The author never said “government workers”, but publicly funded policy research. I don’t have a problem with the rest of what you wrote in that paragraph. Still, he wasn’t helpful in spelling out who should decide whom should be paid to do the work, u…[Read more]

_Robert_ wrote:
Please explain why is it so “ironic”?

What I mean regards how the far Christian right can ignore the establishment clause of the constitution, and promote Christianity. I.e. Sharia law “bad” but Christian Law “good”.

It’s just wrong to fight Islam, in the name of Christianity. The higher road to take is humanism.

Unseen wrote:
But isn’t randomness just a way of describing the behavior of things we don’t understand?

They say quantum level probabilities are purely random, but I’d like for them to find something non-random underneath someday in order to be able to explain it. So yeah, maybe we just don’t understand that yet.

Also, one could, in theory, tra…[Read more]

And it seems our three branches of government might look increasingly kindly toward Christian tradition in government and law. An ironic, preemptive move again the supposed arrival of Sharia Law?

Simon Paynton wrote:
If we think of “conscience” as “self-governance on behalf of the group” then God fills the place-holder of the ultimate arbiter of moral matters.

That makes sense to me as an explanation for why God was invented.

Doh! I see typos, at least, and some missing clarity. I’ll adjust the post after seeing the Feynman link.

@SimonPaynton Sieve of Eratosthenes is what I was trying to explain that costs too much programming-wise and in the computer resources it requires. And the more efficient sieve algorithms mentioned in that same wikipedia article make my head…[Read more]