starbug1

I was kinda making a sardonic comment about how humanity has directly caused loads of ecological disasters and species to become extinct than nature has' date=' over the last several hundred years.

 

People are executing nature's extiction agenda instead of nature.[/quote']

 

Gotcha. I fully agree.

Well, until you mentioned the George Bush part, I didn't believe it.

Right out of my mouth.

That's why I don't watch Discovery anymore. It went downhill a couple a years back

"Don't you just love how Discovery Channel abandoned science in favor of reality programs?" --Azure Phoenix (See: sarcasm)

Maybe humanity is nature's way of ensuring the next mass extinction.

or, UN-sure way. No species has lasted up past 1,000,000 years, and assuming we don't kill ourselves, the adverse affects that we have inflicted on nature will. And cosidering that dinosaurs never ruined the environment, we aren't exactly clean living. Even still, humanity may have a way, because of intelligence, to circumvent those problems. Everything so far has run a sort-of pattern for extinction, and we may be, more or less, done with before the next big one. I kinda doubt it though.

You can be all powerful and still be an idiot just in the same way as you can know everything but not care.

But only in God are omnipotence and omniscence combined.

but i cant help thinking that having the num pad on the left would just be easyer.

I think it's the right-handed dominant gene at work here...

When typing' date=' its most confortable to have the alphabet-keys directly infront of you, meaning that, with the numpad and the arrow keys etc, the right-hand-side of the keyboard is about 20 feet away from you.

 

and that's where the mouse is.

 

Here's what im talking about:

 

Keyboard--> [_______'] O <--mouse

Person------> \o______/

With labtop computers there isn't this problem

yep. the latter was right...

http://www.jcu.edu/philosophy/gensler/goldrule.htm

BTW - What's this "Golden Rule"?

I think it's either "Silence is golden." or "Do unto other's as you would have them do unto you."

You people and your books.

 

Give me a manga any day.

 

But after that' date=' sci-fi, fantasy, then physics books.[/quote']

 

Manga's read from back to cover...something I find hard to get used to, or it might be that they are ridiculously annoying and hopelessly based on astrology.

 

EDIT: the promiscuity of the characters is a poor way to introduce porn into comics...

He could just use some work on his plot lines, as far as Timeline is concerned. I, personally, find his books rather dull.

It really does seem that way when you read more on a broader scale

...which ones have you read?

To avoid anthropocentrism' date=' I've always envisioned Earth as just one lab in a universe full of labs, and humans as an experiment. Maybe Earth is really a kitchen among a universe of kitchens and God is wearing a pointy black hat and waiting to shove us in the oven.

 

Would it be "good" to shove Him in first? Is that really what He wants us to do, wake up and realize we're being fattened for the kill if we don't shape up and take action?[/quote']

 

Okay...I'm confused. Is God cooking us, or sucking out our souls, or is the oven a metaphor for death, and that's how our bodies are interred into "a crisp" and consciousness is realeased, as a sign of God. Or were you being quiptitious. In any case, shoving him in first seems hard to do. Though is god even palpable to begin with?

Well' date=' among successful marijuana smokers we have... Carl Sagan. Among successful amphetamine addicts we have... Hitler.

 

Using the composition fallacy I can prove that all stoners are actually brilliant astronomers with deep insights into the universe, and that all amphetamine addicts are Nazis.

 

Q.E.D.[/quote']

 

You forgot successful cocaine addict...Sigmund Freud

 

 

Well' date=' it's more believable then "only losers smoke weed"

__________________[/quote']

 

The notion that "only losers smoke weed" is no more credible than "all people who get straight A's are smart," or "only Buddists are celibate." Marijuana has been a heavy contributer to much of the world's art. We have the beat generation of music and literature, with Burroughs, Kerouac, and Ginsburg. Where would they be without drugs and alcohol? (note: many of the beat writers and poets could be considered losers, but they are famous, so it is moot)

 

How good would the Grateful Dead be without weed? (maybe not the best example ) Let's just say a GREAT DEAL of the music from the 60's on.

God' date=' don't get me started on Timeline... an evil genius creates a way to fax a copy of a person into alternate universes, creates a perfect electronic language translators and takes advantage of unsuspecting anthropologists in order to... (evil pause) CREATE THE MOST HISTORICALLY CORRECT THEME PARK KNOWN TO MAN!!!

 

The generally idea was ok, but he pretty much screwed that part up.[/quote']

 

 

Hey, as far as technically correct fiction goes, Crichton knows his stuff. He could write non-fiction books if he wanted. He's just more an action-packed fantasy guy who knows a lot about science.

 

EDIT: ...I know what you mean

I found this one on Atheists.com...

"A religious war is like children arguing over who has the strongest imaginary friend..." --bonswizzle

Crichton... personally' date=' I don't know how I feel about his, several are awesome, particularly J.Park and Eaters of the Dead, but others are rather lacking. Each is built from great ideas, but I think his climaxes and endings are bland and unengaging. The Lost World was just utter crap, just giving Malcom a chance to rant for however many hundred pages.....

 

when did I become such a bitter critic?[/quote']

 

Let's see...it's about 4 months later, and I've officially drained myself of Crichton.

I nearly burned "Disclosure" after the first 30 pages. "Rising Sun" if it's anything like the movie, I'll never read it. Michael Crichton said he would never write another sequel after TLW because it was such trash that lined the way for the movie, which I don't think you can even call garbage, it's worse. (JP 4 coming out this summer!!!!!! woot!)

 

I hear they are making "Prey" into a movie, and I thought that the book was relatively "engaging." I learned something about nano-tech, which interested me in the science some. The first 50 pages were hard to get through, however, when it seem Crichton had gone soft with the vomitatious baby-talk. The ending was good, definately not crap, but nothing like Timeline, and JP.

 

Currently entertaining Stephen King, Dawkins, and Pulitzer Prize winners in Fiction and non-fiction.

after our body dies, we may exist as pure consciousness[/b'].

does that come bottled or canned?

You mean besides the Ten Commandments or the Golden Rule?

The ten commandments are just a restating of what consitutes morality, and I really doubt God had anything to do with it. If this states god's goodness, more keeping tabs on us.

Maybe he's vengeful, and he's just keeping us on Earth as a feeding ground for our souls. Maybe he wants us to be "good" so it fattens our souls and makes them juicier, kind of like chickens.

That's on amazon.com. God's Plan: The Hansel and Gretel story

....isn't soul pretty much all ego and personal judgement? So god then is a manifestation of our ego's, as he sucks it away from us when we die with consciousness a bi-product? This makes for earth as a harvest center, and then God's goodness is severely contradictory, for some people.

okay thanks people, this is all good to know. i guess i wasn't making an informed decision before but i guess i am now. thanks.

...so i'm assuming you've tried it then?

learning a keyboard layout isnt the same as learning a language. learning the keyboard is largely muscle memory. you dont think about, your fingers just go where they know the keys are from practice. learning another keyboard layout would require you to think about which layout your using while you type.

sure. it was an example that roughly applies. even though muscle memory and speaking aren't the same, they both still are learned applications. Sometimes I have to stop and think about where a key is when my "muscle memory" slips. Thinking isn't always necessary to speak.

Like language, after a new keyboard is learned, the muscle memory can adapt to both keyboard, and like language, there are always moments of crossover misinterpretation, but the learned programs are permanent.

we certainly could change it, it might take a decade to get everyone and everything switched over though, and in the mean time it would hurt productivity. would the more efficient layout be worth all that? how much faster could it really be?

this is what I predicted and asked about initially.

i know some people who can type 160 wpm on a qwerty keyboard, how much improvement could there be from a different layout?

170 wpm.

does anyone know what the long term affects of meth are ?

You'll look like you've lived by a poorly maintained nuclear plant or gotten hit by a semi.

Not necessarily. I could probably learn a new keyboard' date=' and if it's beneficial, I wouldn't mind spending the effort. But there are a lot of people who wouldn't want to spend the effort, or do not have the time to, that would not want to change.

 

In any case, QWERTY is a de facto standard, and it'll take a long time to go away. In the mean time, you can pop the caps off of your keys, rearrange them, and then change the character map.[/quote']

 

no. I don't think i'd make it a hobby. For now I'm fine conforming QWERTY. I just thought it was something good to consider. that, and world peace.

Are you against the idea?

The number one reason is that people simply don't like change. There are surely far more speed-friendly keyboard layouts out there. But for many people, it takes years to familiarize themselves with the standard QWERTY keyboard, so why change?

It wouldn't be as costly a change as say changing the all the road signs in the US to metric, so what are we complaining about? Change should be dealt with, and if "intolerance to change" is the reason, it's stupid. There should be nothing trying about learning TWO keyboards, we learn more than one language. GRRRR

Out of all the carnivorous plants, the pitfalls look the coolest.

I met Carlisle Bell once.

I really miss threads like this:

http://www.scienceforums.net/forums/showthread.php?t=14801&highlight=creationism+evolution

Even though they may have deserved to be banned, temporarily banned, or permanently banned, they bring up the most inticing threads. shinbits...

I can remember only two or three instances in my life when I have gotten BO. It's never when I exercise or when I'm nervous. Never did figure out what triggered it. I often smell it on people who exercise, so maybe its a sign of dehydration?