jryan

It's always been a public as far as I can remember. There usually is news about these Texas meetings due to the overall effect their decisions have on the aggregate national curriculum. The hearings themselves are carried on Texas public access television as it is really a state issue that just happens to effect other states to the extent that those other state's apathy allows. As Cap'n pointed out, there is public response time for these hearings.

Well, yeah. It's a game, after all. But as a game goes, the ability to simulate individuals and personalities is second to none. The next release is coming out in a few day to weeks. It will change the game considerably and add a lot of content. It will most assuredly be buggy on release, but most of the bugginess will at least be new. The two persistent bugs in the current version that will be fixed, and make the game much more fun, is the Reclaim bug and "resident creature bug". In the current version you can reclaim a lost fort in the site finder (type capital R), you embark with an army that varies with the size and value of the fort you are reclaiming. The problem is that reclaiming caused magma to "move" so none of the foundries or smelters that are powered by magma work anymore. The second bug made embark a lot less fun because if you embarked on an enemy settlement that settlement turned friendly and you could no longer attack it. I used to have great fun attacking goblin black towers and claiming the large obsidian fortresses as my own (assuming I could defeat the demon lord). The new release fixes both of these problems, supposedly. So I will be starting my first fortress on the grounds of some unfortunate goblin settlement. Later on the programmer will be tacking game physics to make it a little more realistic, but a lot of his early work in that area had to be scrapped when he moved from a 2D game world to 3D.

I had that happen once but the dwarf made a leather thong instead of gauntlets. I've been having bad luck with moods recently, though. They always want to use materials that I don't have. I have just started walling them in their workshops while they mutter about needing silk thread or shells. Though I have solved the shell problem though as I now bring a wagon full of turtles to every fort.

Again, you just asked them about faith with regard to their religion. How many times must I make this distinction? Now ask them what is their percentage of faith in God, and how they arived at that percentage. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged You are not discussing a binary system then, which is what I was discussing. Is it 12:00 noon? ... if it is actually 3:00pm is "No" an "extreme" answer?

"Almost an atheist" is like "somewhat pregnant"

I find this statement to be a bit silly. The fact that we are discussing the topic based on news coverage about the process is clear evidence that the process is open to public scrutiny.

And I am pointing out that Aquinas WAS important to the Enlightenment ideas that contributed to revolutions from 1750 to present. Both in his making Aristotle relevant again, and in starting the scholastic movement which lead to Renaissance Humanism and the Age of Enlightenment starting in 1650 and sprouting all over Europe. Mentioning that fact is not revisionist history, but previous exclusion of those facts could indeed have been. Feel free to argue a contrary view to the one being asserted, and explain why that is more correct then the proposed inclusion of Aquinas, or that reducing Jefferson and elevating Aquinas "and others" is inappropriate.

There is no ambiguity, Sisyphus, and you and others have done nothing to change that fact. I have argued that the zygote is a living human being (or human organism), and the closest you can get to dissolving that unambiguous assertion is that it may become two or more human beings on a rare occasion, but never less than one. So the argument of protecting life (or living human organism) from conception is unaffected by the claims of potential twins or chimeras as neither changes the fact that protecting the life as it exists in the womb is still protecting that life regardless of it's potential to be more than one. When fraternal twins fuse they go from two lives to one, when identical twins split they go from one life to two. There is no ambiguity and you have failed to make a compelling case that there is sufficient ambiguity to invalidate the one life due to the possibility it may become two.

No I don't. Otherwise you have a system in which everything is extreme... at which point the word extreme loses meaning.

But go back and read the article that people are huffing and puffing about. It makes no charge that Jefferson is being removed from the importance of the founding of the United States, simply from the Age of Enlightenment Ideas that lead to revolutions from 1750 to today, which were well established before his contributions. Aquinas is important for many reasons, both in his own philosophy, and in the simple fact that Aquinas rescued Aristotle's philosophy from the dark ages dust bin and gave it new purpose. Aquinas is one of the primary reasons that Aristotle plays an important role in Western philosophy. Also, I notice that HuffPo doesn't seem to care enough about the issue to spell out who the "and others" refers to in the blog post. I would guess that nobody would object if those "others" were John Locke (the real father of Liberalism/Libertarianism), Thomas Paine, and others who truly laid the groundwork for the American revolution decades before Jefferson was even born. Why all the fuss about Thomas Aquinas? Is it simply because he is a religious figure as well as a philosopher? Is this a "separation of church and state" issue for people?

But you are speaking of religious faith which is as different from faith in God as Catholicism is from Agnosticism. You can also have a child raised Christian question his faith (either in the tenets of their faith or that base belief in God) and come out the other side as a faithful Muslim, a faithful Christian, and Agnostic or atheist. Three have no change to the existence of God and one does, and in the three cases the reason for the change is due to what tenets of the individual religions they hold as true or false. As a personal example, I was raised Catholic, and during my young questioning phase I spent time believing there was no God, but still finding value in Catholic morality, then entering a variable phase of dedication to Catholicism but with a new-found belief in God, leading to a slow, but I see inevitable, return the the Catholic Faith. But in that whole process God either existed or he didn't for me. I don't think you can claim extremes in a binary system as there is no middle.

Of course you can. I am asking what the units of measurement for faith are. The answer to that question is not numerical. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged As I stated a while ago, there are two separate definitions of faith at play here. If you are talking about a faith in "God" then I argue it is binary. If you are talking about a faith in a given set of religious tenets then that faith is arguably variable with it's measurable units being tenets... which themselves may or may not be binary. Getting back to the original question I would have to say the answer is still "No" on either definition of Faith.

Well, first, so we are clear, chimeras result from a starting state of fraternal twins, not identical. There would be no way of telling if identical twins re-merged as the genetic code is exactly the same. But I see no compelling argument to not protect the life or lives in the womb based on an overcomplicated consideration of how many lives it is or will end up being after various natural but unlikely scenarios that may happen happen.

They aren't talking about the founding of the U.S., Bascule. They are talking about the two men's contributions to the Age of Enlightenment. And no, Jefferson isn't a "primordial libertarian", that philosophical branch started in the Renaissance with Humanism as it decoupled human morality from theology and introduced the idea of immutable liberties. Jefferson came on the scene a full 100 years after the start of the Age of Enlightenment... hardly a primordial figure there.

Depends on the circumstance. They are not always trusted, no, and many states have a database available to other states to verify certificates electronically (and had them as early as 1995 as I used one in my work). But even before that we were required to get verification of birth from the state when a higher form of ID (that also verified birth certificates) was provided. I can only assume that a national ID card, since it would amount to the top tier form of ID, would have an in depth birth verification requirement, as such verification cascades to all other forms of ID. If it didn't then I would have a problem with it. I know a bit about such "chain of authority" ID systems between fed and state governments, and an unverified ID distributed by the Federal Government would royally screw that agreement. But I have seen nothing that indicates that these national ID cards would not be subject to such stringent verification processes so I see no need to accuse them of such at this point.

It's funny.. I don't remember my college philosophy courses having a problem with attributing much of the groundwork for the Age of Enlightenment to Aquinas, and his rejuvenation of the Aristotle logic, and the development through the scholastic pursuit of Christianity through logic ("scholastic" being a word used specifically to describe those who studied logical Christianity.. or "schoolmen" in more casual usage). This lead to Renaissance Humanism which is the father of the Age of Enlightenment. Jefferson was a student of this history, not an inventor of it, and the fact that he held slaves is a good indication that he was not always a very good student.

Well, the certificate itself is easy to forge, but the paper trail of that document isn't easy to forge. The only birth certificates you find being heavily forged (or at least when I was a social worker) were birth record from OTHER countries. Normally this was done in an attempt to make dependent children younger so as to extend their eligibility for benefits (cut-off usually being 18 years old). This was a common problem with Somalian refugees as we had to accept the Somalian Embassy claim of age, which would change at least once for ever child upon reaching their 18th birthday.' But the birth records are hard to forge without having someone in the state records bureau willing to implant false records into the state files to validate the birth certificate being provided.

I'm still tracking down the RBF portfolio in total, buut I printed the full list of solar energy programs to show that they were not merely giving money to solar projects by also providing loans to solar energy companies. But I'll admit, finding the full list of what RBF actually makes money on is rather difficult. And then their are the individual Rockefellers, and the Rockefeller Group, the Rockefeller Foundation to look up, Rockefeller&CO, and so on.

The national ID card is long past due as far as I am concerned. It was really due in the late 90s as soon as technology was sufficient to create a tamper resistant ID card. From illegal immigration to voter fraud, the ID card is the only logical starting point for any remedy.

Yeah, I worded that wrong. In the emails Reto Rudy is telling the USA Today writer to use HADCrut and NCDC, not GISTemp, for his reporting as temp records are "what they do best" and GISS does "rudimentary analysis" of global observed data. So I guess my question is this: Then what exactly IS GISTemp? Side note: Since GISS is using NCDC and HADcrut to check their GISTemp model then it's no surprise that GISTemp, HADCcrut and NCDC look alike, is it? I think the earlier attempt to validate GISTemp by it's agreement with HADcrut fall apart on that revelation. I wonder what record HADcrut used to validate their temperature model?

I know what a chimera is, and I don't consider them to be two individuals, as I said in my earlier statements. But it is possible for their to be one individual made up of two individuals. We can also have a person who has multiple personality disorder, and even another person with the physically split brain have two separate personalities, with one dominant but the other capable of controlling extremities on it's own. These cases of multiple personalities are also considered one individual in my way of reasoning.

That's my point. You can't answer that question without resorting to percentages or fractions, which just leads back to my assertion that the percentage is arbitrary as it has no divisible underlying substance. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged But you don't gain trust without incremental instances where trust has been shown to be appropriate. I don't gain trust simply as a matter of time, but from actions that I either agree of disagree with, or the ability of the person to meet the requirements for a given action. But that itself, like the faith in a religion still reduces down to smaller Yes/No questions. As such, I do not see faith in God as reducible, but rather one of the rudimentary Yes/No questions. Faith in a religion is that way, yes. But such a faith is a conglomerate of smaller faiths. Faith in God is not that way, as I see it.

I didn't shift the goalposts, I have shown you that they are invested in solar energy markets through their paper titled "Selling Solar". Feel free to show me how all the brokered deals in that document between various financial interests, RBF, and the Solar industry with RBF providing support and capital investment . Here is a list of deals in this one area and one document alone (pardon formatting as it is pulled from a PDF, but if you want the numbers you can find this same list starting on page 9 of the paper): • A joint venture has been undertaken by the Grameen Trusts, a pioneer in small-scale community lending in Bangladesh, and E&Co, a U.S.-based nonprofit whose mission is to encourage the development of renewable energy enterprises in developing countries. With RBF support for soft costs, Grameen and E&Co are forming a stand-alone rural electrification company that will pair Grameen’s widely decentralized credit operations (operating in one half of Bangladesh’s villages) with E&Co’s expertise in renewable energy. Because of Grameen’s stature in international development circles, its success in distributing solar systems throughout rural Bangladesh would go far toward promoting the viability of solar home systems. The pairing of solar system distribution with Grameen’s credit capability will not only speed the diffusion of solar units through Bangladesh but should also help other banks see the potential business opportunities available in solar financing. • In a similar effort to pair solar distribution with credit finance, the Syndicate Bank in southern India, another Pocantico conference participant, has launched a solar lending program for rural households in Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh that provides solar home loans through its , branches. An Indiabased solar energy service company that is a subsidiary of SELF supplies and maintains the solar home systems for Syndicate Bank customers, and is developing a network of solar service centers to install , systems a year. • E&Co is now in the final stages of developing a broad-based solar electrification industry in Morocco. Using a franchise model it has nicknamed MacSolar, E&Co is building a centralized acquisition, distribution, and finance entity that will encourage the development of dealerships by individual solar entrepreneurs throughout the country. E&Co anticipates that over , households could be served in the first three years of MacSolar’s operation. The International Finance Corporation (part of the World Bank Group) has expressed interest in providing financing. • The Solar Electric Light Fund’s industry-creation efforts in India and in China are expanding rapidly. Both countries now have well established credit networks and indigenous manufacturing capability. SELF has also initiated an expansion of its work in Vietnam, with RBF support. SELF’s partner in this effort, the Vietnam Womens Union, is the world’s largest national women’s organization, with over  million members. Vietnam’s rural population appears to be extremely receptive to solar systems and this project, like Grameen and E&Co’s efforts in Bangladesh, could become a case study in large-scale solar home system diffusion. • Environmental Enterprises Assistance Fund (EEAF) has established Corporacion Financiera Ambiental (CFA), a  million fund for environmental investment in Central America. EEAF will be the manager of this fund, and hopes to identify several renewable energy investment opportunities, including “off-thegrid” SHS companies. Investors in the CFA Fund include the Multilateral Investment Fund of the InterAmerican Development Bank, the Swiss government, Citizen’s Energy, and Triodos Bank. EEAF, with funding from USAID, has also begun efforts in Mexico to identify, evaluate, and invest in renewable energy and other environmental projects throughout the country. • In response to suggestions made at Pocantico, Solarex (the largest U.S. manufacturer of solar panels, owned jointly by Amoco and Enron) has begun to urge its dealers to provide credit to their customers as a vehicle for expanding sales and is explorPOCANTICO PAPER NO 2 ing its ability to offer a secure line of credit to its dealers to encourage these financed purchases. • The National Renewable Energy Lab in Golden, Colorado, has decided to serve as a trainer of solar entrepreneurs internationally, and will provide technical assistance to aid in the creation of locally based solar industries in developing countries. NREL has a widely distributed group of partners around the world. • The World Bank Group and four private foundations (Rockefeller Foundation, Rockefeller Brothers Fund, W. Alton Jones Foundation, and MacArthur Foundation) are collaborating to develop a new institutional credit facility—a solar bank— that could deliver between  million and  million over the next five years, principally from private financial markets, for working capital and end-user financing. The collaborative also hopes to develop a complementary nonprofit corporation to provide guidance on project preparation, training, marketing, and government policy. • The International Finance Corporation (IFC) and the Global Environment Facility (GEF) are moving through the approval process for the  million “PV Market Transformation Initiative” (PVMTI). The PVMTI is designed to significantly accelerate the commercialization, market penetration, and financial viability of PV technology in the developing world. • With RBF support, Environmental Advantage and the National Renewable Energy Lab have undertaken the financial and legal research called for by Pocantico participants. EA is actively seeking investors and lenders to buy receivables from Sudimara Solar, Soluz, and New World Power, all of which have expressed a need for working capital to expand their businesses. Working with bankers at Solomon Brothers, EA is also exploring the creation of receivables financing as well as equity and debt fund vehicles in which large insurance companies could invest. To continue these efforts in the long run, EA is developing an investment banking subsidiary, called Sun Capital, to provide financial services for solar companies.

Huh? Are you talking about chimera? How about you tell me which one's genetic code dominates and I'll tell you if one died.

Give me an example and I'll tell you whether they are morons. I have shown that on generic medications the US provides the greater savings over Canada, and that roughly 80% of prescription drugs have a generic, and that I can shop around if I don't have insurance for varying levels of deals in the US for my prescriptions that beat the Canadian system. I am sure their are certain drugs in Canada that can be purchased cheaper, for whatever reason (maybe related to higher demand in Canada leading to large bulk purchases, but I couldn't tell for certain) I do know from my years as a social worker that there are a lot of people that will simply assume what they are told is true, especially if told enough times, and never do the research themselves... and I would guess some shopping in Canada is driven by that. On that same line, why do Canadians come to the US for medical treatment? That is a double edged sword because those big bastard pharmaceutical companies spend billions every year developing those new breakthrough drugs because they are lucrative investments. We have new and innovative drugs because we pay for them. If the US, the most lucrative pharmaceutical market in the world, suddenly goes on the cheap you will also find that the rate of new pharmaceutical patents and FDA applications will slow. Does anyone have any stats of per-capital drug research expenditure by country? I'm trying to find it. Also, while we bemoan the skyrocketing cost of health care, we should also consider that in that same time medical research spending in this country skyrocketed as well. It seems to me that we are now punishing the organizations that invested so much capital in developing the medications and procedures that we now take for granted. Our health care isn't expensive just because. Also you must consider the cost of medical training (also a factor of the complexity born of new medical discovery). Would it be a fair trade to grant 5% more people health insurance at the cost of medical research?