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Is it true that Germany has a 30 hour work week?

> Clearly, the Bible and its various interpretations are full of inconsistencies and it makes no sense to base further assumptions on a source which cannot withstand rigorous analysis in the first place. Actually, the only reason I'm a Christian is because I did some serious study on Christianity. I refused to have a blind faith - Christ said to love God "with all your mind, heart and body". Obviously that implies more than just a blind emotional faith. That being said, I've yet to find anyone who can find a true inconstency with the Bible. Every "inconsistentcy" or "contradiction" I've ever seen brought forth against the Bible is either a) not reading the text in context or b) not understanding the audience it was written to. I'd love it if you would show me one. > If historical context cannot be trusted in determining truth, it must be that a religious belief comes from faith alone. And the Bible has shown time and time again that it is an accurate historical record. An example: Sir William Ramsay was a respected archaelogist who lived at the end of the 19th century. He was an atheist who ascribed to the theory that the Book of Acts was a product of made up stories produced in the 3rd century. Using the Bible as source text, he set out around the Mediterranean intend on disproving it. In the process of trying to show that the Biblical stories were made up, he found that the Bible was a remarkably accurate historical text. He suprised everyone when he returned home and wrote his book *St. Paul the Traveller and Roman Citizen* in which he stated, "Great historians are the rarest of writers...[I regard Luke] among the historians of the first rank". > Since we are free to believe in whatever we choose, why not believe in ourselves? Did Hitler not believe in himself? Did Jeffrey Dahmer not believe in himself? If we have no ultimate authority on what is right or wrong, what business do you have telling the murderer that he is doing wrong? Perhaps he is only doing what he believes right (see Hitler). I think there is a bit of misunderstanding on what exactly faith is. Faith doesn't necessarily imply one without evidence. You place faith/trust in your friends or certain people because they have shown you that they are reliable. Faith is placed on court decisions not because there is absolute proof that something has happened, but rather because the evidence is too great to ignore. The same goes for the Christian. You don't have to put blinders on to believe in God. Infact, God wants you to seek him out and look for the evidence that he is there. It is the only reason I am a Christian - I have seen historically and in my own life time and time again evidences of God. Just like many of you were not born atheists or raised as an atheist, I was not born a Christian.

These are awesome. Poetry but stories. Love it.

It's hilarious. I was a little worried as I neared the end and he hadn't yet mentioned Veronica Mars. Best show on TV.

What the hell is wrong with this guy? Is he going for a world record of most hated leader? Because if he is, he's doing a damn good job at it.

Well, to begin with, the translation they are using is the King James version, which is not very accurate. The KJV was based off of manuscripts from the 10th century AD and later, where as modern translations come from texts dating as far back as the 3rd and 4th centuries. Understanding of ancient Biblical Hebrew and Greek has also obviously increased since 1600 (when the KJV was written) as well. For example, one of the verses they cite, Deuteronomy 4:40, in the KJV reads, "That thou mayest prolong **thy days upon the earth**, which the Lord thy God giveth thee for ever.". Where as in the NIV it reads, "Keep his decrees and commands, which I am giving you today, so that it may go well with you and your children after you and that you may **live long in the land** the LORD your God gives you for all time." Now obviously these people aren't going to live forever and thus be able to live in the land forever, but it is a symbolic representation of God's covenant with Israel. Deuteronomy 4:40 is not referring to the earth as a planet, but rather as the land the Israelites knew. This rendering also fits in the context of the verse, where Moses is speaking to the Israelites about their future in the land of Canaan. Anyway, their first example is an excellent example of not looking at the verses in context with the rest of the Bible. Yes, the current earth will be destroyed, but verses such as Isaiah 56 speak of "a new heavens and a new earth" (actually, they reference this one). So while the current version of the earth will not always be around, earth itself will, and that's what the verses provided are getting at. Another example they provide, which is "is dancing a sin" is a great example of taking the verses out of context. For example, they reference Exodus 32, which says, "And it came to pass, as soon as he came nigh unto the camp, that he saw the calf, and the dancing: and Moses' anger waxed hot.... And Moses said unto Aaron, What did this people unto thee, that thou hast brought so great a sin upon them?" They actually italicize dancing as if it is the sin of the Israelites, but in the context of the entire passage, that is obviously not the case. The act of dancing wasn't sinful, it was the act of worshipping the golden calf which was sinful. I'm actually very suprised they even tried to call this an inconsistency because its *really* stretching it to call it one. The same goes with the other verses they referenced to try and show that the Bible says dancing is sin. I could keep going with these examples, but I think I have provided enough to show some of the major problems with these so-called "inconsistencies". One thing that should be known about Ecclesiastes is it by nature is a very contradictory book. Solomon (the author) praises different actions and desires and in the very next sentence will speak of how worthless they are. Basically alluding to the fact on how great things are at first but how they quickly lose their luster. That's why by the end of the book, you see him make a succinct summary, "Now all has been heard; here is the conclusion of the matter: Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man." But again, most of these alleged contradictions would not even be pointed out if critics would take the time to read many of the passages in context instead of isolating sentences and trying to make them read what they aren't. I mean, The Bible actually says, "there is no God"...but if you read the entire verse in context, it reads, "The fool says there is no God". Obviously you can see the problem with chosing one verse out of a collection of 66 books and trying to interpret the verse just by itself.

>in any case these commandments are too focused on debunking theism *Exactly*.

hey jerks, if you don't like a comment then reply to it, don't vote it down. I hardly ever see comments voted *up* here.

I would like to see this same chart with the addition of: # GDP # Unemployment data

that's what I thought too.

Liked it. However I'm just a bit unsure whether to show this one to my better half. The swelling has only just subsided since I tried to explain to her how the theory of the SEP field applied to chores. (SEP - Somebody Else's Problem - field - an invisibility cloak, from the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy or one of it's sequels.)

You can see charts like that at the CIA factbook. The following link is for Canada: http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/ca.html

Store what under the seat?

I saw a small circus in France last year where a girl threaded her long hair through a 2 inch steel ring from which she was hoisted up in the air and spun around at high speed .....

I don't understand...what exactly is this court case about? Does anyone know? > Signor Cascioli maintains that early Christian writers confused Jesus with John of Gamala, an anti-Roman Jewish insurgent in 1st-century Palestine. Right...because its common for thousands of people to just completely get people confused. Why exactly would even the Jewish rabbis mention Christ (albeit negatively) in the Talmud if he didn't exist? That in itself should be the first proof that whatever claims are being made is bunk - as there are several extra-Biblical sources that mention Christ, the Talmud being only one of them. Its debatable as to whether Christ really was who he said he was...but to go as far as to say that not only he didn't exist, but the Gospel accounts are based off of completely misidentifying a person is ludicrous.

Informasi beasiswa Indonesia. Beasiswa skripsi, beasiswa kuliah s1 s2 dan s3.Email, informasi.beasiswa-at-gmail-dot-com. Kunjungi http://informasi-beasiswa.blogspot.com

"Signor Cascioli, author of a book called The Fable of Christ, began legal proceedings against Father Righi three years ago after the priest denounced Signor Cascioli in the parish newsletter for questioning Christ’s historical existence."

Indonesian blogs review. Indonesian blogs directory - daftar lengkap blog Indonesia.

So he's sueing because the man made negative remarks about him? The whole trial just seems very odd.

Beasiswa indonesia dan beasiswa luar negeri

They sound pretentious and ignorant at the same time. If you are going to parody the 10 commandments put some effort into it.

islam and muslim and islamic teachings

Thanks for the link. It seems that there is a strong correlation between the Number of Vacation days and the Unemployment Rate. So more vacation days tends to mean fewer jobs. Bummer. :(

>Did Hitler not believe in himself? Did Jeffrey Dahmer not believe in himself? If we have no ultimate authority on what is right or wrong, what business do you have telling the murderer that he is doing wrong? Perhaps he is only doing what he believes right (see Hitler). I'm not a Christian, but what business do you have telling the murderer that what he is doing is wrong? I thought God was the judge? I guess you as a Christian know better, are obviously a better person then me (and Hitler). Because I believe in myself I can not hold a moral code right? That seems to be your arguement. You are so wrapped up in defending your faith you forget that faith is an individual thing. Have you ever heard the saying "The road to hell is paved with good intentions"? Most people who are evil do them because they think they are doing right, athiest (see Hitler) or not (see Crusades, slavery, Isreal/Pakistan). In the end its not the religion that is important, it is the people.

When you are sailing and just starting to get a little speed there is a wide angle around where the wind is coming called the "no-go zone", simply because if you face it you will go nowhere fast. After you pick up speed that angle shrinks because your momentum nullifies fringe effects of the wind acting upon you, so you can tighten up your angle and face a little more into the wind (but never completely into it). So his analogy is that the wind is the big problem and the more you get to work on the problem (the more velocity you pick up) the more directly you can face it, even if you never can face it directly.

It is easier here just to mark up/down the comments you agree/disagree with. But yes, I believe that people should comment more, rather than rate when possible - we'd have more interesting discussion here. Sometimes though, it's better just to mark the remarks about Bush, Lisp and Paul Graham down that you don't agree with and move along. As for the comments on this particular story, I don't agree with most of them. I honestly think this guy's paintings are fantastic, I could never paint like that. I also get the sense there's this feeling that he's been wasting his time somehow. Huh?

He didn't make 'negative remarks', something that anyone can do. He took part in that much more exclusive activity denouncing, which is available only to the rabidly fanatical.

This is news?? It was on digg 4 months ago

Well, it's on reddit now.

This would explain the robe, sandals and long hair ;-)

Indead.

Denouncing really can refer to an entire range of things. I wonder where you get the idea that its "only available to the radibly fanatical". Denouncing could be anything from "his works are incorrect" to "he's burning in hell". I mean, really...it could go from one extreme to another. I quick look-up on the literal definition (not that it really matters): 1. To condemn openly as being evil or reprehensible. See Synonyms at criticize. 2. To accuse formally. 3. To give formal announcement of the ending of (a treaty). Robbie, aren't you "comdemning openly" those who are "rabidly fanatical"? Should we take you to court for that? Oddly enough, in doing the same thing you are condemning...are you now a "radidly fanatical" person also? I do not literally mean what I just said, but your snap judgement on the situation when the article isn't very specific is a little off. The whole trial seems more than a little bizarre. A priest denounces (this could mean a myriad of things) a man who is denouncing the person of Jesus Christ, so now the man takes the priest to court and is sueing him? And on top of that the judge wants the priest to prove Jesus Christ exists? Like I said, the whole thing sounds ridiculous and bizarre. And for the record, I'm not a Roman Catholic if anyone feels like trying to use that against me.

I always found we should just apply the 3 laws of robotics to humanity and live by that :)

> I'm not a Christian, but what business do you have telling the murderer that what he is doing is wrong? I thought God was the judge? I'm really not sure what you are trying to say. Yes, I believe God is the judge. > I guess you as a Christian know better, are obviously a better person then me (and Hitler). Why the snide remarks? Where did I even imply that in anything I've written? > Because I believe in myself I can not hold a moral code right? That seems to be your arguement. You are so wrapped up in defending your faith you forget that faith is an individual thing. First of all, what exactly does "believing in yourself mean"? And again, if faith is an individual thing, then we have no right to condemn murderers, rapists, racists...really anything we condemn today. If its all a personal thing, who is to say what is right and wrong? > Have you ever heard the saying "The road to hell is paved with good intentions"? Most people who are evil do them because they think they are doing right, athiest (see Hitler) or not (see Crusades, slavery, Isreal/Pakistan). In the end its not the religion that is important, it is the people. Yeah, that's pretty much what I was saying.

It stinks!

just to add more info: Sweden 25 days, 40 h/week Norway 20 days, 37,5 h/week (usually 25 days if you don't have any overtime pay). In both countries 0 days if you are independent contractor ;-)

You're posting this on a site that does the same thing already. A competitor. Tell me, what were you thinking?

And coming from Y-Combinator, has a financial interest in its success.

At the [SDF Public Access UNIX System](http://sdf.lonestar.org) this has been the norm since *1987*, long before AOL and web0.2.0

Probably a good cause in the end, but it would have been nice if it didn't sound so dumb when you pronounce it:P

This may not be for everyone, but for anyone doing research in an academic setting, this paper gives some good tips.

I disagree: 1) Their debt load is certainly high for a manufacturing company, but not so bad considering that 2) It is, as you noted, more of a financial company -- which is understandable, since financing is where (again, like you said), so 3) I don't quite understand why you want them to focus on making cars (which you note that they're bad at) instead of loans (which you admit that they're good at), and finally 4) Your analogy is flawed; the Dow is not supposed to represent all companies from when they're added ad infinitum -- it adjusts based on changing circumstances, and I'd be that America's transition from a manufacturing to an information/financial economy is quite a transition. Look at the original Dow: There's only one company from that list that's still in the Dow, and it's GE -- a perfect exemplar of the manufacturing-to-banking transformation.

It's hard to say without seeing the denouncement itself and the exact reasons for bringing the case about. It's a shame the article doesn't mention this. To me it sounds like some sort of slander case.

Another clone of Reddit written in Lisp. This was just written as a fun experiment and not as a backlash against Reddit for switching to Python. It does, however, provide the source code, so it should be interesting reading for anyone learning Lisp and wondering how to use for day-to-day programming tasks.

This is a good resource for any Emacs user.

pays?

anyone have more details?

This code example implements the soundex algorithm from Donald Knuth. It is used to encode a word into a sound definition (for Enlish speakers only), thus the sound encoding can be used to match a submitted word (particularly English surnames) to a list of similar words. E.g., it could be quite usefull in a simple spell checking or dictionary program.

Great window on the ruby coommunity. Follow the comments. The ruby community is a great bunch of people. It is like the early perl or lisp communities. I hope they keep their freshness. They are aware of their specialness and are trying.

When Gandhi died, Albert Einstein said "Generations to come will scarce believe that such a one as this walked the earth in flesh and blood." s/gandhi/jesus/g

It's amazing how anonymous the Internet is that something this big could be hidden. I'm sure the VCs must have looked into this, but stranger things have happened . . .

this article strikes me as being *so* painfully wrong. right, pointers are hard. but guess what? memory management isn't programming. punching holes in cards isn't programming. the article is essentially saying that we need to separate the men from the boys by having them concentrate on irrelevant details. fair enough, if that makes sense to you, but please don't pretend these details have *anything* to do with the process of writing computer programs. in my modest experience, the opposite is true. have someone spend a decade managing memory and counting bits, then put them in an environment when they don't have any such distractions - when a function that adds x and y reads "let add x y = x + y", and they will reliably produce bullshit, because they have forgotten how to actually write programs, having spent so much time worring about whatever irrelevancies were imposed on them by their language of choice. C might be a good choice to teach for other reasons, like it provokes understanding of efficiency or machine architecture, which are valuable insights, but not because it is worthwhile to concentrate on C because it is "more difficult" junk, junk, junk.

Error in application retrievr Maximum Thread count reached. They don't seem ready for that much attention.

this appears to be pretty cool, but from my (very few) searches it appeared that much more emphasis was in the color than the shape. using thin, black lines i was amazed at how some of the images matched closely to my drawing. edit--after reading how it works it makes sense that color matters more, but you can still get cool b+w images by drawing in black

... and provide the user with a way to find data items easily and quickly.

> As for Anderson, rumor had it he didn’t shower often, would sleep at the office, and refused to drive a car for a while and took the bus everywhere despite having plenty of money. Everyone knows that living frugally even though you are rich is unamerican.

The first one is amazing.

I find it hard to believe Americans only get 13 days per year. I live in Canada and it seems like we have roughly the same amount of Statutory Holidays per year... So basically that means that Canadians get 13 'extra' days from their employers.

I detected a hint of sarcasm in robbie's post. Maybe I misread it, so I wouldnt take it too seriously. If anything I got the sense that hes agreeing with you by using hyperbole. This article lacks any kind of description about the court case itself, it just needlessly incites religious debate.

Up here in 'Soviet Canuckistan' we have free health care.

Heh. "The only thing more off-putting than rank elitism is the me-too wheezing of the other 95%"

Interesting. Don't think I've ever seen a poll of just active duty military.

We assume the military is "frustrated" because a speech line didn't draw applause? How that is a basis for drawing a broad conclusion? Maybe the military really is frustrated. Was there a stronger basis in the article and I missed it?

Prove Justice exists.

SmashMyViper.com is destroying a Dodge Viper for the chance to make a million dollars in order to start their own business. It's not a scam, as they have videos and pictures of the damage (Plus their model girls!). If you read through the FAQ and blog, it's actually a very clever idea.

This has urban legend written all over it.

So these are illegal in the US? They probably don't meet (ie. violate) FCC standards. Whats the big deal? It seems to me that everyone has cell phones now. I think the social customs will be self correcting and the next generation is gonna think these people are even more old-fogey then I do.

Nope, only in the footer.

Sounds like a job for the *orchestrasound* Blogosphere! hehe

Bush is going for a world record of "Most Hated by The Guardian," which is different. I'm losing faith in The Guardian as a source of worthwhile editorials. I'm having trouble dragging myself to read this one. I haven't even read the article and I already have questions. Is the US curbing public spending because private investment is heating up? I have serious doubt that The Guardian would bother to research and report such a fact. So why bother reading them? I have these questions because it's The Guardian. Which should bother me considering the high quality of their science section. But apparently, a high quality science department does not a solid editorial section make. I don't mind reading stuff that attacks my view, but when a source establishes a pattern of incomplete reasoning, I get suspicious and lose interest.

Watch "Gunner Palace" or "Off to war". The opinions expressed by the young men dying seem to agree with The Onion. Or perhaps these documentaries are just more Hollywood Liberal Elite hokum...

Hot props to "Say Something."

this man is hated, and I hate him too..

Wow, this is quite simply amazing. I drew a basic scene that was kind of like a tricolour flag with light yellow on the bottom, dark blue in the middle and light blue on top. Lo and behold, it found beach scenes, just as I had wanted. This is really, really cool!

Agreed. I read them all and it was my favorite.

A social networking tool which provides members with the opportunity to help and be helped by others. [via eHub]

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/players/profile?statsId=4326

"Filesystems are just a very stupid and restricted kind of database" /Pretty/ much. But relational databases are also a stupid and restricted kind of Unix filesystem (among other things, no mount()!) and indeed the Unix filesystem is a stupid and restricted kind of Unix filesystem (among other things, various crippling restrictions on the power of mount()). At the same time, no matter how powerful your database/file metadata system, you'll still want to have powerful and efficient ad hoc/unstructured search as proposed by Raskin (and others). (And then you can mount the search results as directories...) (I've been posting some relevant things to reiserfs-list, and I hope to post some more. If you're interested, see my posts since last May, which start with http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.file-systems.reiserfs.general/14107 , after reading Future Vision http://www.namesys.com/whitepaper.html of course.)

ugh. I had to stop after just a few tips. the writer seemed like such an arrogant prick it kind of made me ill.

This seems to jump from reporting research on stress to a self help article. Still, the results are interesting, though there isn't much to be learnt in the way of relieving it. Personally, I've found that [releasing the tension](http://walking.about.com/cs/stretching/a/loosenup3_p.htm) in your shoulders works quite well to relieve stress.

So his reasoning is, "Alarmists have been wrong in the past, so they must be wrong now about global warming." That's totally specious reasoning: true but misleading, IMHO.

post a link not requiring a login, please

I appreciate your apology, but a lot of other people did find it funny, so I suggest you keep your curmudgeonly ways to yourself.

Food for thought. I don't think he's saying that they're wrong about global warming, but certainly points out that environmentalists don't have a great track record.

PLEASE. How, exactly, did tips on "how not to look like an asshole" *from an asshole* make it onto the hot list? Here's how not to look like an asshole when ordering wine: "I'd like some cabernet sauvignon, please. Thank you."

That's a resubmit of http://reddit.com/info?id=17967

In _A Connoisseur's Guide to the Mind_, Roger Schank says, Always pick the cheapest bottle. The clear implication of the article is "try next door", or if not next door somewhere that the wait staff isn't grading you to flunk. Pity we don't know where "next door" is.

This should be split screened with the raw footage of President Bush's actions during the exact same time.

<quote>but to go as far as to say that not only he didn't exist, but the Gospel accounts are based off of completely misidentifying a person is ludicrous.</quote> It is certainly not ludicrous, and I contest the 'proof' you mention. It is perhaps not common knowledge, but a rational look at the evidence seems to exclude that Jesus ever existed. For example see http://www.jesusneverexisted.com/scholars.html

In the late 70's/early 80's ICL came up with a content addressable file store (CAFS) which aimed to address some of these issues, although it still used a query language to retrieve content. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_Addressable_File_Store for a synopsis.

I'd like to buy "On Lisp".

GDP is overemphasised by economists, imo.

Let me see if I get this argument: The world is complicated and science is imperfect, ergo we should stop trying to protect the environment on the basis of scientifc predictions. Looks like "intelligent design" for weather! It's a long walk from science fiction author to scientist, and this fellow seems to have come into the spotlight because he's saying what industry wants to hear, not because he has meaningfully falsified one iota of the arguments concerning global warming. Informed scepticism is helpful and necessary; uninformed scepticism of this sort smells suspiciously like paid lobbying.

Why not just full-text search? Google desktop search is one of the very few things I miss in linux-with it, I was consistently able to find anything I had on my desktop within seconds. The index is fairly large, but I have plenty of HD space, so I don't care much. There are definite benefits to a hierarchical filesystem for programmers, and full-text search is extremely hard to beat for most people's search needs, but I don't see where a DB would help much-the relational model does not apply in an obvious way to a random collection of files, with wildly divergent purposes and formats. How would you organize a home directory in a database?

Odd, the difference in the number of people killed in Gandhi's name and the number killed in that other guy's name.

gmcg - Chrichton has an MD from Harvard medical school, which in my book qualifies at least as a scientific background. It seemed to me that all of his examples were footnoted, so I'm not really sure why you'd say he was uninformed.

It is pretty common for people to believe stupid things, mutually inconsistent things, and impossible things, so I don't see a priori why getting the identity of some guy who lived 2 thousand years ago wrong is all that much of a stretch, particularly given that the single source that tells us the most about him is, as I understand it, a mishmash of nth generation translations of oral histories with some things thrown in that require a rather nonstandard understanding of several branches of science. That said, the case really is pretty wierd. Here is a somewhat coherent translation from italian of a filing by Luigi Cascioli: (It's from a site that bears his name, so a grain of salt may be in order): http://www.luigicascioli.it/12processo_eng.php And here is a purported translation of luigi's initial letter of complaint: http://www.christianism.com/html/notes/8note57.html It seems that the article really does explain about all there is to the case. Righi says that Jesus existed, Cascioli thinks not, and sued him under something that sounds like an anti-propaganda law. Maybe it is something left over from WWII? I believe that Germany has some laws that forbid certain forms of expression as propaganda or something-perhaps that is where this law comes from? As a side note, calling Christ's divinity debatable is a bit of a stretch. It is demonstrably believable for at least some people, but it is not really something on which there can be much of any true debate.

A rather extensive treatment on this phenomenon can be found in Freakonomics, by the way.

you know i think these statistics are made up

This speech mostly deals with society's capacity for acting based on fear rather than information. We should take Crichton's message as a warning and nothing more. No matter the issue, the questions remain the same: 1) What do we know? 2) What can we do with what we know? Hopefully Crichton's writings provoke people to ask these questions about global warming. Despite his polemics, I'm sure that even he would be pleased if people took it upon themselves to learn about the science behind the headlines.