udx

There is no such thing as a 'perfect' model, all models are wrong, but some are useful... that is the fundamental truth of models.

I don't know if you realize this but most species have died out on this planet if you look at the historical (fossil) record. That doesn't bode well for your argument. Not true. It makes a lot more sense for extinction to be part of a divine plan than for it to be random and arbitrary. The Universe is based on order; extinction doesn't fit the bill unless directed by an intelligence. This is a view a priori that there is a divine plan to start with. With that view you can argue anything to fit into that framework. Not that I don't support there is a divine plan, but one must look at the evidence and interpret conclusion from it, not to mold all the evidence around a conclusion/idea. We can argue with the same type of logic saying that a Universe based on order should not have extinction because extinction removes information from the eco-system a type of disorder. You do not need intelligent direction to cause specie extinction, it is an irreversible direction that we are facing from the order to disorder view.

We need to end the financial controls on the country first. One who has the money makes the rules. Bankers have absolute control of money and they make the rules. Political dynasties are just good reliable puppets that deliver on financial interests of special groups.

A world with no privacy, like in the movie "Minority Report".

Prayer is basically having a dialogue with God. It doesn't necessarily mean you have to drop everything you are doing to pray, although there is a time for that as well. You can pray while you are driving for example. I am a firm believer of doing things during the time specifically assign to it, which is to practice the music in order to worship God (also a type of prayer). I think dedicating half of the time to solely pray in that manner is not very wise. A short prayer would suffice, people on the worship team who wants to pray for a long time could pray together prior to the worship practice so it doesn't have to eat up time of others who doesn't have the time or wish to pray so long. Everyone have an different idea of how long they are comfortable praying for, why not let people decide for themselves. I would suggest splitting the worship time and prayer time. People who are interested in long prayers could come to that session prior to the worship practice and people who do not could come during the a lotted worship practice. A few minute short prayer prior to the worship practice should suffice.

Typical empire building that powerful nations does. US had built military bases all over the world, now that China has surpassed or about the surpass US economy, it is reasonable they do the same to protect their interests.

Hi everyone, Recently I got interested in personality profiles. After doing some personality test (Briggs Myers) I discovered that I am INTJ which is relatively rare, only 2% of the general population. After reading through the description and doing some serious self-reflection over the past 2-3 days, I find that its description fit me to the letter. It shows my strengths and weaknesses, both of which I find to be very accurate. I find that learning more about myself helps me better learn about others and how I interact with people in general. By thinking it over, it allowed me to be more comfortable in my own skin and acknowledge how I am different from other people and how I can adjust/accommodate to personalities of other people. For example, some of my Strengths are... *Quick, Imaginative and Strategic Mind *High Self-Confidence *Independent and Decisive *Hard-working and determined *Open-minded *Jacks-of-all-Trades Some of my weaknesses are... *Arrogant *Judgemental *Overly Analytical *Loathe highly structured environments *[and I exclude an embarrassing one, if you are interested you can look it up yourself ] It sure help me narrow down what kind of jobs, friends and analyze how I behave. I now want to implement the suggestion mention for this personality type in order to improve myself. I was wondering if anyone else have this type of experience and whether or not personality profiles also accurately describe you?

This is currently how commercial airplanes are flown. After take off and landing it turns to autopilot, and the plane just direct itself to pre-set flight destination. Computers are good at doing repetitive tasks well, it is only when unforeseen variables and circumstances/malfunction pop-up you would need the judgement of a human to solve. Pilot on commercial airliners pretty much just watch the plane fly itself, and only do manual operation if there is a problem, this isn't like driving where you have to keep hands on the steering wheel.

Now this is a strange thought, if you trust computer more than than a human, this also means you would have to trust the humans who created that computer knows what he is doing. At the end of the day, you have to trust that human who made it more.

the United States of America was not created as a Democracy..... it is a Republic.... and there is no reason it shouldn't last a thousand years if it had stayed as a Republic... I know. I don't see how making it a Republic would make much difference in the long run though. You cannot have good government if you have immoral citizens and uninformed public. The representatives in a republic could only be as good as the public from which they are elected from. I don't think the middle/high class society are any better at electing good people. The government and media is doing a good job keeping people uninformed about what the real issues are. All empires goes through these stages. 1. The age of outburst (or pioneers). 2. The age of conquests. 3. The age of commerce. 4. The age of affluence. 5. The age of intellect. 6. The age of decadence. 7. The age of decline and collapse. I think we all know which stage we are at now.

If this really gets implemented, I would see a lot of lawsuits due to injuries. Company would probably have to get every customer who choose to use that thing sign a injury waiver. Just use common sense and get a shop clerk to help.

Anyhow, I seriously doubt any change in voting system would make a difference at this point. There is always ways for people of influence to corrupt the government no matter what rules you make. Besides, money talks, and private individuals already controls the purse strings of the country...it doesn't matter what laws government makes. "A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship." --Alexander Tytler in 1787

The government is not supposed to "take care" of any of us. And the idea of equality is that we are created equal.... nothing says we stay that way.... a person who sets on his/her back side when they could be growing and working isn't equal to the person who grows and gets an education and works his back side off his whole life.... and when you make them equal, you mess with the whole driving force of society. I am not saying "take care" in terms of meeting people's every need. You are confusing my terms with socialism. I am talking about "taking care" in terms of addressing one's concern. I knew some of you would take it the wrong way.

I agree that lawmakers should also be subject to the laws they make, they are not above the law. I don't know how they were able to get out of their own laws in the first place. Yes, these congress jobs should be made to be almost like a volunteer position, actually a service job than a career they could retire from. Term limits probably not that necessary, but should make them have a couple years in between the terms so they could not be a career politician.

To eliminate 30%+ voters is no small amount. Besides, voting participation rate is already such that people in higher income bracket vote at higher rates, there is no need to artificially cut off people of specific income group from voting. Certainly voting age could be adjusted. In some countries it is 21. But your argument doesn't hold to scrutiny regarding eliminating voters because they are 'low information' and they vote Obama. You can' just eliminate voters because they don't vote the way you wanted them to vote. That is just ageism and bias selection. By your reasoning we could also eliminate voters of certain age and higher by making up some other excuse about how their age affects their judgement and ability to vote. Personally I believe if you are old enough to die for your country and able to file your taxes independently you are old enough to vote.

The idea that only property owners could vote would be disastrous. I once thought about the implication of this. You would depriving all the poor (30% don't own property) from having a voice and having their concerns taken seriously. It would make US more unequal than it already is. To own a house/property is to be at least middle/higher income class. Poor people have no influence on the government other than their vote, if they are not eligible to vote due to no ownership of property, then the government would not have to be concern of their welfare at all. I don't think it is fair to have the government only take care of the specific income class and totally disregard other income class. Another issue is home ownership percentage is wildly different between ethnicities, this would also encourage the government to gear their policies to benefit a specific demographic. The wealthy people already have disproportionate impact on the voting system based on their campaign contributions, no need to make it even more unbalanced. The same thought process applies to eligibility to vote if you pay certain amount of taxes or the amount of votes is proportional to amount of taxes you pay.

Science is the in the business of fleshing out all the details of a phenomenon. Parker made it a either or choice, either you believe in God or you believe in science, when there was no conflict present. Often when there is a conflict, it is the fault of misinterpreting scripture. Science help us understand scripture in better light.

You probably don't really know what science is and how it is conducted. Clearly God doesn't provide all you need to know, else we wouldn't go to school to learn 'worldly' things and how to survive while on Earth. God through the Bible only provides you the essentials of what you need to know to be spiritually alive on Earth and beyond that.

Not a clue what point you trying to make. Perhaps you can spend more time expounding your point by writing complete sentences.

There is really no conflict between science and God. Science can be used the wrong way to interpret stuff, just as the Bible could be interpreted wrongly to conclude the things about the observable world. This shouldn't be a either or decision. "We must not a priori equate Scripture with our exposition of it. The so-called contradictions between faith in the Bible and science are in fact not a conflict between the Bible and assured scientific knowledge, but between interpretations of the Bible and scientific theories."

I doubt that humans are getting smarter. We may have more knowledge, but it doesn't really mean we are becoming smarter in terms of higher intelligence. There are evidence that show we are becoming more stupid. Around 2,000~5,000 genes control intelligence, at rate of accumulating mutations it would only mean humans get more stupid overtime. This make sense as we seen ingenious inventions in history done with much less, some we can't even replicate now even with the best modern tools. Also, intelligence and mating are negatively correlated. People who have higher intelligence in general, produce less children compare to people with lower intelligence. In fact there is a comedy movie that is based on this premise.

Another question for you, how do you know which search engine track you or not. Search engines gotta make money, they make money by selling your data to advertisers. To my knowledge, there is not a single search engine that doesn't make use of the data they collect on you.

How can you choose not to update a search engine? Search engines are server side software, not client side software where you can choose to update or not.

It is confirmed... the co-pilot deliberately crash the plane. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-32063587

If this technology have the power to heal, it would certainly have the power to destroy and mutilate the body. I'm afraid what kind of abuses is in store for this technology. It could be possible that it rewire someone's brain or kill someone on command.