KittenAB

Just wow. I liked the gift thing, it was a nice way to say sorry for something they had no control over. The people who work there have been extremely understanding of our impatience in receiving the pre-order that was delayed for the new design, most companies would have ignored the influx of emails asking about such a thing, we're lucky they are operated by people decent enough to say "this is what we know ..."

Not the reason I want to move there. Even then, from what I've heard their doctors care about patients more, otherwise they wouldn't be in that field there. But again, not the reason I hate the US.

I know I have not been on here for a while, my life sort of sucks right now and I am barely making it through. I really want to get out of the US more each day. I want to move to the UK. Just letting everyone know I am still alive, the doctors may want me to die but they aren't getting rid of me that easy. I will be a thorn in their side as long as I can be.

Eating dog is not special. Unless it's eating a human, even if true, I don't care.

Well, not believing is not making a choice technically. One way to look at it is "keeping your options open until something viable comes along." Unlike Pascal's Wager, the atheist wager is actually logical. Since each religion has the same chances of being correct and most don't have belief as being a requirement for a reward, it's safer just to be a good person and not belief in any of them. Most of the gods do not care if you worship them at all, just a few of the modern ones do, the modern ones do not even deserve worship anyway. It's one of the points often missed by the organized religion followers, there are many many many gods, and many religions, if there is a chance one is correct then there is an equal chance any are correct since they all have the exact same amount of evidence supporting them. It's like roulette, choosing one number you have a huge chance of losing and only a 1 in 100 chance of winning, but choosing a column (a way of just being good or bad) you have a 50% chance of being correct, even if the pay off is a bit less. So, why waste you life away worshiping something that has a very slim chance of being correct anyway?

These days they are finding that doctors make all sorts of mistakes, especially about gender. We are progressing, a bit too slowly but if we push hard enough things can get even better than they are now. However, sharing your story can help others in that situation now, so at least your wife's struggle and yours is not in vain.

Yeah, the speakers had too little time. They need a Reason Rally that spans a whole week, in my opinion. Make it a real event, like the Pride Parade and other such events. Also two stages, one for variety acts and the other for speakers would have organized it all better as well as given people more to do so they would have wasted less time "debating" with the disruptors. Eric Hovind was one of the people disrupting on the fringe, and certain atheists and scientific minds just can't resist that creatard. LOL

Give it up, he's either an extremely bad troll, or an extremely closed minded buffoon. I have yet to figure out which though.

I don't vote based on party, I vote based on voting records.

The party system is flawed, it is what made money the huge decider in elections to begin with, but the people who vote based on party are the biggest problem here. Now the country is slowly (state by state) enacting laws that force people to choose one party, and with only two parties ever getting any attention guess what happens to all other parties. Anyone who votes based on party should lose their right to vote until they get a brain.

Well, at least Rush isn't as bad as Alex Jones .... or is he?

The worst part ... it was a freaking atheist who was defending "intelligent design" as if it was science. Quote mining Hawkings was the low that pissed me off so much I just stopped bothering. No more, I won't even associate or discuss science with people who don't even understand the basics of evolution. But to quote mine a great mind makes me no longer want to speak to the person at all, ever. It's unforgivable for an atheist to quote mine anyone, in my opinion, it's the same as lying. The self replicating polymers have been produced in the lab, so it's very feasible that abiogenesis is valid at this point. However, Hawkings puts one feasible hypothesis into the mix which leads to the possibility that these did not originate on the planet itself but were on an asteroid. Since conditions for them would not have been likely to be perfect on Earth itself. We also know that organic material is very common in cloud masses around new forming stars. I'm enjoying hearing and learning of the new hypothesis far more these days. Asimov also came up with that hypothesis just his was worded in science fiction and was not submitted as an official one. Lovecraft, ironically, also postulated this very concept in a few of his works.

I admit not knowing who is developing what, but was speaking about the end-user companies for the fear of transitioning. Yeah, when I heard they were going to replace hard drives with SSDs soon I squeed. Once they find solutions to the degradation it will be the future. The drawback will be having to upgrade a lot of stuff. LOL But meh, it's worth it at this stage. Right now I am getting a bit high and mighty on some creatards on another forum though, they insult my intelligence with crap from a creationist source, which have all been debunked and mocked so many times it's getting old. I only have a high-school understanding of biology and taxonomy yet even I can't help but facepalm at the stupid claims of "irreducible complexity" or my personal favorite to laugh at the "missing link" crap. I swear, the people who buy into the creatard garbage have never even opened a biology book.

Some of the labs are trying to move into new circuit technology but are often hurt due to a lack of funding. Most tech businesses are afraid of the costs for switching over to a new tech in spite of the fact that it could be done seamlessly. I am hoping for a real advance soon though, the last real advance in technology was the transistor really, everything in the digital world is really just sets of transistors. I would prefer something really new to study, not just a new method of doing the same thing, but a whole new technology would really restore my passion for electronics. Well, for current artificial intelligence they are utilizing only basic difference engines, which have very limited applications. The biological brain has several difference engines plus several learning engines to accomplish it's tasks, but AI code is often limited to just one difference engine with a pretty incomplete learning engine. However, to make a complete AI one would also have to incorporate other forms of input, like audio, visual, etc., each with their own pair of engines. All driven by one primary pair of engines. With our current technology we couldn't make an actual robot with an AI because to accomplish the various engines with any amount of speed requires an individual CPU core and vast amounts of memory. We are, however, finally looking at solid state storage as a real method of data storage again. That tech is so old yet too few people even considered it viable until cellphones and digital media devices became popular. The speed increase for SSD tech is massive compared to the old standard hard drive we use today. Just an example of how an old tech got pushed to the side prematurely. SSD is probably the key to unlocking a potentially huge boom in AI research, because of it's speed and accuracy the software engines could function with the speed of the biological brain.

No, I keep forgetting there are two Brian Cox's. LOL I am a computer scientist in the loosest of terms, I fell behind on keeping up though and admit it's not something one can afford to fall behind on. With abiogenesis, as I said, once I saw it in chemical form, it made perfect sense to me since I have an aptitude for, well, any science that has a strict set of rules like chemistry and computers. Basically though, the only chance involved was that we wound up on this particular planet, considering the number of planets in the habitable zone are probably in the thousands in just our galaxy and that we have found perfect conditions to support life in even planets out of the habitable zone, it was inevitable. Right now the biggest challenge in computer technology is mono-electron pathways and gates. We can't accomplish this at room temperature without losing data to straying electrons. This is why they have been focusing on multi-core processors lately, unless we all want huge freezers attached to our computers, the mono-electron circuitry is just out of reach. My area of focus in computer sciences though is in the realm of software engineering, data processing software specifically. I have also branched into artificial intelligence, the concept is a dream of mine since reading Asimov as a child, which lead me to study various sciences like neurology and even psychology, though only briefly. I have a hypothesis for an artificial intelligence learning engine but it would require stimuli beyond text, so I have never been able to actually test it. If I can one day afford a NAO robot, I'll make it learn and think just like a living thing ... someday. The entire engine concept is based on how neural pathways work in biological organisms, simulated with a database for "memory," but I need more than "no" as the negative input.

Right now though, I'm in love with Brian Cox .... the guy's genius, and his voice is soothing, I use his lectures for lulling me to sleep lately. If you like Sagan then I highly recommend you see some of Cox's lectures, if you have not yet seen him.

As I said, being a skeptic I cannot accept hearsay information as fact. Not saying you are lying, just that I cannot accept it without some actual sources. As far as I know, Sagan was a brilliant person. Many intellectual minds are arrogant, I'm arrogant as hell myself and I am not a scientist in any way, just a dreamer and a very fast learner. My one talent, I have a learning curve that is that of a child even now. In the last few months I have learned advanced evolutionary theory and even understand it all, phylogeny is still boring though. There is a genetic link to intellect and anti-social personality traits though, it's a circumstantial link still because of various other factors, however it is holding true. However, even then, a lot of people who speak to someone on a topic they know a lot about will often appear abrasive or vain simply because we use a language that is tailored to that topic, often scientific terminology or even old Latin and Greek words, and we are just use to using stricter grammar at times. This is intimidating to the common person, though most often no intimidation is intended. Take abiogensis for example, it just makes sense to me, it's basic chemistry to me (a subject I have been keeping up on since high school) yet, to explain it to a person who has never had any high level chemistry education is frustrating to say the least.

For Carl Sagan you'd be best searching for his speeches on YouTube, many have uploaded them under Fair Use, but he is a cosmologist from the 80's who had a great philosophical technique for speeches. His lectures were often recorded with, at the time, really high quality imagery to accent his points. He was a dreamer of dreamers, though a bit of a pot smoker but meh, we all have vices.

Well, enlighten me on this "well known" point, I need some actual sources, I do not take anyone's word for anything without checking the sources and since I have never heard of this, I cannot in any way agree or accept it as fact.

No human is perfect, a good speaker, however, is a good speaker. Most of those in the spotlight have skeletons in the closet, but it seems that too few of their followers (mostly of the religious zealot types) are unwilling to admit this. People of reason, whether atheist or theist, are not afraid nor ashamed to say, people make mistakes. However, I would like to know your sources for this accusation, otherwise I cannot address this in any way.

It has yet to be challenged in several states, but yes, it is unconstitutional and if challenged would be tossed out by the courts as unconstitutional. The part that makes such laws really disturbing is that they are new, not old. They were passed within the recent decades and shows we, as a country, are going backwards. No, there are a few states with the "any public office" law, not just Republicans. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discrimination_against_atheists You have to scroll down a bit and yeah, it's wiki, but it's a good synopsis of this point. I don't agree with all of the assertions made in it (private organizations should maintain the right to discriminate membership). As to the Dawkins speech, he was not the only one. There were, I believe, over 30 speakers this year. One of the odd things is that this rally is not new at all, it has just been renamed since there are many theists who now support it. The original name was something like Atheist Association Rally, or some such. There are many theists who are supporting this movement to re-institute a full separation of church and state. Mormons use to be a lot more for equal rights and anti-persecution laws, however, some are becoming a bit over-zealous of late and the few who still remember the old president of the church know it's wrong to be like that, so even some of them are supporting the Reason Rally Coalition. The problem is that with the passing of most of the great speakers of reason, Dawkins is the only iconic one remaining. Carl Sagan would have been better, in my opinion, but alas he has passed, RIP. Brian Cox is pretty busy with lectures now so it's difficult to get him to come across the pond lately, and Cox is not nearly as iconic since he just loves talking about science all the time.

I don't often agree with his approach myself, a bit arrogant at times, but he is still very intelligent so I do enjoy some clips or short speeches of his. Yeah, the primary reason there is a larger vocalization in the US right now is because of the attempts to silence science in schools and even prevent atheists from voicing concerns about a theocracy, which would go against everything the US stands for. AronRa on YouTube did a few videos publicizing the outrageous modifications to history books being done in the schools (starting in his home state of Texas) and then there are those well known pushes to teach religious mythology as science in science classes. Fun fact: several states have laws that atheists cannot hold public office ... even today. Sad.

The clip is of Richard Dawkins' speech at the event. I see so little of it in the news yet as an event it was a great success. I regret to say I did not get to go there (wrong Washington), however, many of my favorite speakers and scientific minds were there and their own footage is pretty interesting. Are there any here who had the great pleasure of going? If so, please share your experiences.

Meh, I ramble a lot, it's fun sometimes.