And I used the word journalistic deliberately: His overheated writing aside, his own sources make the case that spam is not that important; eg towards the end:. The two are now widely reviled on cybercrime forums for costing spammers tens of millions of dollars in profits, and for focusing attention from law-enforcement officials and security experts on individual spammers. These two fuckers killed the spam business, Vishnevsky said in a May interview.
It was never super profitable for most guys; maybe five to ten guys earned really good money with spam. But after Pavel and Gusev started their war, everyone started thinking that every spammer is a millionaire and started hunting for spam and spammers. This business went to shit when Pasha [Vrublevsky] got busted. If Pasha and Gusev [had] not start[ed] that stupid war, everyone would be much happier. The spam industry has indeed taken a huge hit in the past few years. According to Symantec, by March , spam levels had fallen to just over one billion junk messages per day, and the total has hovered at or very close to that diminished level ever since.
In other spots, Krebs makes mistakes or does not exhibit as much critical thinking as one would like: As is not that surprising in retrospect, inasmuch as the language turned out to be the obvious one and lots of proper names survived into Greek sources and so were available for Rosetta Stone-style comparison. So a sobering double lesson for modern researchers: One of the things I dread in a work like this is an author who is in a hurry to cover up and hide all the technical details and dreads that her audience is too dumb, ignorant, and impatient to reach any genuine understanding and settles for lies to children.
She seems to avoid this trap and I felt, at least as a non-classicist and non-linguist, that I got an intelligible and reasonably accurate understanding of the intellectual puzzle and accomplishment of the decipherers. But was Linear B really worth reading about? The decipherment of hieroglyphics, of course, unlocked an extraordinary array of Egyptian riches from the baroque mythology, endless ancient Egyptian history, and many interesting magical, religious, and everyday letters and documents; there is no question as a layperson that you are interested in what hieroglyphics have to say even more than in how they say it and how they were unlocked.
Mesopotamian clay documents are often boring, but so many survive and give us things like Gilgamesh that there too the results seem worth learning about, even the commercial ones which can build up a whole market economy before our eyes. With Linear B… the deciphering turns out to be the most interesting part. The documents are boring and the world depicted in the administrivia is about exactly what you would expect from reading about the palace, a totalitarian agricultural economy, and are a disappointment.
A few enigmatic names and allusions are a poor catch. With Linear B, the journey is more interesting than the destination, which makes the account somewhat sterile. The end of the battle sees a stack of revelations unfold, including at least two that could be called literal deus ex machina s, the failure of the Great Crusade and the second resurrection of the No-God. I would worry about spoilers here but seriously, you are reading R. This sets the stage for, presumably, another trilogy covering the fight against the No-God and Achamian re-enacting the First Apocalypse.
Home Site Me New: Dysgenics Bibliography External links. Somewhere in California, in the s, a nuclear weapons lab develops advanced technologies for its post-Cold War mission. Advanced as in not working yet. Mission as in continued funding. A scandal-plagued missile defense program presses forward, dragging physicist Philip Quine deep into the machinations of those who would use the lab for their own gain. The Soviet Union has collapsed. But new enemies are sought, and new reasons found to continue the work that has legitimized the power of the Lab, its managers, and the politicians who fund them.
Quine is thrust into the center of programs born at the intersection of paranoia, greed, and ambition, and torn by incommensurable demands. Deadlines slip and cost overruns mount. He is drawn into a maelstrom of policy meetings, classified documents, petty betrayals, interrupted conversations, missed meanings, unanswered voicemail, stolen data, and pornographic files. Amid all the noise and static of the late twentieth century made manifest in weapons and anti-weapons, human beings have set in motion a malign and inhuman reality, which now is beyond their control. More than a critique of corrupt science and a permanent wartime economy, Radiance is a novel of lost ideals, broken aspirations, and human costs.
Failure is just another word for opportunity. Spin is a property not of atomic particles but of the news cycle. Nature is a blur beyond the windshield, where lives are spent on the road, on the phone, on the make, in fierce competition for financial, political, and intellectual resources. It is a world which language is used to evade, manipulate, and expedite. Years ago, I ran into a book review titled Its awful and enticing radiance: Timmel Duchamp; about a novel I had never heard of by an author I had never heard of, but it sounded interesting and I read the review until towards the end, it quote a key passage in Radiance: A murmur of rain had started again.
He lay there in the abyss of his thoughts as her breathing beside him steadied and deepened. Almost a voice stirred in him. It starts before Hanford, it almost said. Who could imagine that this radiance at the heart of matter could be malign? That with its light came fire? Yet from the first the ashen bones were there to see within the flesh. It starts with Becquerel carrying the radium in his pocket that burned his skin, and darkened the unexposed film. It starts with Marie Curie poisoning herself in that pale uncanny glow. With Rutherford guessing at this new alchemy, guessing that matter, giving up its glow, transformed itself one element into another.
With the miners at Joachimsthal, deep under the Erzgebirge, inhaling the dust of uranium and dying of mountain sickness. With Oppenheimer at Jornada del Muerte that morning of Trinity. With the scientists who had prised open the gates to that blazing realm past heaven or hell. What were they now at the Lab in all their thousands, but the colonial bureaucrats of that realm, the followers and functionaries, the clerks and commissars?
Mere gatekeepers of that power. Or in its keeping. It goes of its own momentum beyond Hanford, to Trinity, to Hiroshima, to the prisoners, the cancer patients, the retarded children, the pregnant women injected or fed this goblin matter to see would it bring health or sickness, the soldiers huddled in trenches against the flash, bones visible in their arms through closed eyes, staring up at the roiling cloudrise, the sheepherders, the farms, the homes, the gardens downwind.
And in his sleep the voice long stilled spoke once more. It starts with Sforza; in case of need I will make bombards, mortars, and firethrowing engines of beautiful and practical design. It starts where we start. It is mind, it is hunger, it is greed, it is defense, it is mischief, it is the devil, it is the god; it is life. The force of the incantation struck me and a few years later, a copy finally appeared in my local library system.
A hallmark of Radiance is the Gibsonian sense of alien entities and organisms clashing for life, at a level above individuals: Here I borrow a term from Kevin Kelly and refer to the Technium: Section two turns to the unseated Highet: The Biblical and Wagnerian overtones are strong in this section. Section three completes the work. Just like Dune Messiah thoroughly subverted and undermined the simplistic narratives presented for the reader to swallow in Dune , part three shows the reader how Quine in his own turn is fully subverted by the environment, his sense of duty, and yes, his own belief in the desirability of progress.
The imagery and parallelism at times is not even subtle: And finally, having been corrupted but having succeeded in securing the future of the National Ignition Facility which runs to this day , Quine is dealt the final blow: The Technium strives toward openness and proliferation. Technology may be amoral but it has imperatives of its own. The book ends in Quine in despair and granted a moment of lucidity: He was on the shoulder turned sideways.
Through the passenger window he saw traffic rush toward him and pass behind him. Ahead of him, smoke rose from fields of stubble, and a flight of bird, scattered by some disturbance, wheeled, now black, now white, against the empty burning sky. In the heart of that light, lucid and inevitable, all that was scattered cohered. Superbright and all its progeny stood plain before him in conception and in detail and in its component part and its deepest strategies and in its awful and enticing radiance.
He saw the design and the making of that device complete, and of further devices without end, and he stood apart from them as if it mattered not at all whether the deviser was himself or whether they came into being sooner or later. Trembling he stared across the burning fields and whispered, —Stop.
But the traffic rushed on. The 3 sections form closed circle: The reader expecting further satire will not be pleased by this section. And what would a tragedy be without there being a great gap between what we hoped a character might accomplish and what actually happens? The higher they can fly, the sadder a crash. Coyote, First Angry, enemy of all law, wanderer, desert mind, outlaw, spoiler, loser, clown, glutton, lecher, thief, cheat, pragmatist, survivor, bricoleur, silver-tongued Taliesin, latterday Leonardo, usurper Sforza, adulterer Lancelot, tell, wily one, by any means, of the man with two hearts, of knowledge and desire safely hidden from each other.
Did not Paracelsus command us to falsify and dissimulate so that ignorant men might not look upon our mysteries? Did not the noble da Vinci hide the meaning of his thought by the manner of his script? What man has not two masters, two minds, two hearts? Tell of the man so wounded in himself that he tore his second heart from him and cast it out, naming it the world, and swore to wound it as it had wounded him.
Progress is not inevitable. Knowledge can be lost look at scurvy. Science is not a formalized process, but a spirit of honesty and inquiry, which can be aped and the wordless teaching lost how can Japanese or Chinese researchers run hundred of experiments, apparently complying with all known standards, every single one of which concludes acupuncture works, when results elsewhere show dramatically lower success rates? Anti-vaxxers to our left, Creationists to our right. Highet is not wrong - just one-sided.
If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart? Throughout the book, we know the work goes on.
Transmutation has been realized as radioactive decay, while modern medicine would astound Bacon, and it does not seem absurd that in the next few centuries mankind will cure aging. The double aspect pops up again, of fraud and greatness: Once upon a time, there was a man who was convinced that he possessed a Great Idea. Indeed, as the man thought upon the Great Idea more and more, he realized that it was not just a great idea, but the most wonderful idea ever. The Great Idea would unravel the mysteries of the universe, supersede the authority of the corrupt and error-ridden Establishment, confer nigh-magical powers upon its wielders, feed the hungry, heal the sick, make the whole world a better place, etc.
The man was Francis Bacon, his Great Idea was the scientific method, and he was the only crackpot in all history to claim that level of benefit to humanity and turn out to be completely right. It starts with Bacon… But the traffic rushes on. And the work goes on. Reminds me of Watchmen. Or to borrow from the official summary: An introverted teenage girl with an unconventional superpower, Taylor goes out in costume to find escape from a deeply unhappy and frustrated civilian life.
As she risks life and limb, Taylor faces the dilemma of having to do the wrong things for the right reasons…Readers should be cautioned that Worm is fairly dark as fiction goes, and it gets far darker as the story progresses. Just the opposite on every count, really. I recommend reading single arcs at a time: The work is not perfect. The opening is perhaps too slow: In the middle, I suspect there was perhaps too much material devoted to the Slaughterhouse Nine arc and not enough to later plot arcs like Taylor joining the heroes or dealing with later Endbringers.
But the flaws are relatively small and hopefully will be addressed in the editing process. I read Worm after it was finished and I continued to see positive reviews of it, such as Eliezer Yudkowsky: Other reviews include Joshua Blaine: Highly recommend if you want some action and suspense. Worm is really dark. But, despite those positives, terrible things happen to everyone always. I also found the superhero fight sequences less engaging as time went on - but they can be skimmed with little loss. Every situation is desperate, every problem urgent.
By the time a conflict reaches its resolution, another is at its peak, and two more are right around the corner. Stories of Your Life and Others. His writing is deceptively excellent: Stories of Your Life and Others is much superior to his novella Life Cycle of Software Objects , and contains pretty much all of his greatest short stories which I have read, except for his excellent Exhalation. I read most of them online, so when I had the chance to read a hardcopy of the full collection, I seized it.
The Tower of Babylon ; amusing, and in describing the lives of the people living on the tower, moving in some respects. The final ending feels like an appropriate conclusion. If one had to criticize it, it would be that the Tower itself is completely unrealistic even in the Biblical cosmology of the story: I would rank this 5 of the 8 stories. Division by Zero ; not terribly impressive - over-wrought, and I feel I have read this story before and better.
Chiang, like every other author, confronts the limits of his writing ability in trying to write convincingly of a superintelligence who is by definition vastly smarter than he is the same challenge laid down by Campbell to Vinge: But the whole is still memorable. Fortunately, just a few weeks ago I happened to read some material on the Lagrangian interpretations of physics and combined with knowing in advance the ending, I was able to appreciate the story much better this time.
I would rank this 3 of the 8 stories. Avoiding the physics entirely! The scriptwriter apparently took the only bits he understood, a mention of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis which is mostly a hypothesis , as decades of searching have turned up less than impressive empirical results like slightly easier perception of named colors and better geographic location knowledge when grammar encodes direction - certainly nothing like the grand expectations in the s that led to such linguistic neologistic monstrosities as herstory or womyn.
With the meaning of the story excised, he has to come up with a regular plot, and does this by giving the aliens a - dare I say - more human motivation in trying to somehow save themselves by uplifting humans. Or how is Heptapodese not supposed to lead to incredible chaos as people learn it and start monkeying with the future?
Why do the aliens need any assistance from the humans in the first place, whether to learn their language or to save themselves? The special-effects depiction of Heptapod is some nifty cloud effects, but the heptapods themselves are not terribly compelling aliens. I would doubtless have enjoyed it more if I had never read the story. The Evolution of Human Science ; short, dubious. Seventy-Two Letters ; simply fantastic. The writing is Chiang at his most Chiang-y, the world interesting and provocative, and the ending simply unspeakable.
Liking What You See: A Documentary ; interesting ideas, but something about the dialogues and characters seem off. It just jars me. I think somewhere Chiang also notes his dissatisfaction with the writing of this one. Borges is always interested in translation see for example his fantastic essay on translating the Nights and I made a note to look up this work which presented such challenges for rendering into Spanish.
Urn Burial is hugely archaic, but also amazing. I am not sure where I have last seen any literary pyrotechnics to match Browne in English. David Foster Wallace sometimes approaches him, but beyond that I draw blanks. The book defies any simple summary as many passages are cryptic tangles and Browne says many things. So I will not try, and simply present some passages that struck me: He that lay in a golden Urne eminently above the Earth, was not likely to finde the quiet of these bones.
Many of these Urnes were broke by a vulgar discoverer in hope of inclosed treasure. The ashes of Marcellus were lost above ground, upon the like account. Where profit hath prompted, no age hath wanted such miners. For which the most barbarous Expilators found the most civill Rhetorick. Gold once out of the earth is no more due unto it; What was unreasonably committed to the ground is reasonably resumed from it: Let Monuments and rich Fabricks, not Riches adorn mens ashes.
The commerce of the living is not to be transferred unto the dead: It is not injustice to take that which none complains to lose, and no man is wronged where no man is possessor. If the nearnesse of our last necessity, brought a nearer conformity unto it, there were a happinesse in hoary hairs, and no calamity in half senses.
But the long habit of living indisposeth us for dying; When Avarice makes us the sport of death; When even David grew politickly cruell; and Solomon could hardly be said to be the wisest of men. But many are too early old, and before the date of age. Adversity stretcheth our dayes, misery makes Alcmenas nights, and time hath no wings unto it. But the most tedious being is that which can unwish it self, content to be nothing, or never to have been, which was beyond the male-content of Job, who cursed not the day of his life, but his Nativity; Content to have so farre been, as to have a title to future being; Although he had lived here but in an hidden state of life, and as it were an abortion.
Nature hath furnished one part of the Earth, and man another. The treasures of time lie high, in Urnes, Coynes, and Monuments, scarce below the roots of some vegetables. Time hath endlesse rarities, and shows of all varieties; which reveals old things in heaven, makes new discoveries in earth, and even earth it self a discovery. That great Antiquity America lay buried for a thousand years; and a large part of the earth is still in the Urne unto us.
Some bones make best Skeletons, some bodies quick and speediest ashes: Who would expect a quick flame from Hydropicall Heraclitus? The poysoned Souldier when his Belly brake, put out two pyres in Plutarch. But in the plague of Athens , one private pyre served two or three Intruders; and the Saracens burnt in large heaps, by the King of Castile , shewed how little Fuell sufficeth.
Though the Funerall pyre of Patroclus took up an hundred foot, a peece of an old boat burnt Pompey ; And if the burthen of Isaac were sufficient for an holocaust, a man may carry his owne pyre. The long habit of living indisposeth us for dying. To be content that times to come should only know there was such a man, not caring whether they knew more of him, was a frigid ambition in Cardan: To be namelesse in worthy deeds exceeds an infamous history. The Canaanitish woman lives more happily without a name, then Herodias with one.
And who had not rather have been the good theef, then Pilate? But the iniquity of oblivion blindely scattereth her poppy, and deals with the memory of men without distinction to merit of perpetuity. Who can but pity the founder of the Pyramids? Herostratus lives that burnt the Temple of Diana, he is almost lost that built it; Time hath spared the Epitaph of Adrians horse, confounded that of himself. In vain we compute our felicities by the advantage of our good names, since bad have equall durations; and Thersites is like to live as long as Agamenon, [without the favour of the everlasting Register: What Song the Syrens sang, or what name Achilles assumed when he hid himself among women, though puzling Questions are not beyond all conjecture.
What time the persons of these Ossuaries entred the famous Nations of the dead, and slept with Princes and Counsellours, might admit a wide resolution. But who were the proprietaries of these bones, or what bodies these ashes made up, were a question above Antiquarism. Not to be resolved by man, nor easily perhaps by spirits, except we consult the Provinciall Guardians, or tutellary Observators.
Had they made as good provision for their names, as they have done for their Reliques, they had not so grosly erred in the art of perpetuation. But to subsist in bones, and be but Pyramidally extant, is a fallacy in duration. Vain ashes, which in the oblivion of names, persons, times, and sexes, have found unto themselves, a fruitlesse continuation, and only arise unto late posterity, as Emblemes of mortall vanities; Antidotes against pride, vain-glory, and madding vices. Pagan vain-glories which thought the world might last for ever, had encouragement for ambition, and finding no Atropos unto the immortality of their Names, were never dampt with the necessity of oblivion.
Even old ambitions had the advantage of ours, in the attempts of their vain-glories, who acting early, and before the probable Meridian of time, have by this time found great accomplishment of their designes, whereby the ancient Heroes have already out-lasted their Monuments, and Mechanicall preservations. The Discovery of France: This is incredibly interesting because from our perspective, we have forgotten if we ever knew what went into the process of taking the thousands of villages and regions differing in all sorts of ways, and crushing them into the relatively homogeneous high-tech culture of today - unifying languages, political systems, forms of transportation, religion, and so on.
Often people dramatically underestimate this. You may not think that they are unified , but they are far more unified than they used to be - contrast the original 13 American colonies to how large America is now, or look at historical maps of Han China with the current boundaries, and think about all the cultural, linguistic, political, and economic differences that used to exist, and how many of, say, the languages are now extinct. To say nothing of the peoples… Tibet and the American Indians come to mind as examples unique only for the documentation and notice taken of their particular instance.
The process of homogenization and simplification happens in many large countries, for easily-understood reasons such as the convenience of the state. This may sound like a very grand theme, but Robb is able to give so many fascinating examples that one forgets the underlying demonstration and just basks in the knowledge of how the past is a very foreign country. Wizards, Alchemists, and Spiritual Seekers in the Age of Reason , a sense of distance and alienation is one of the things I prize most in historical works - while there is continuity, continuity is easy to find and it is beyond easy to portray the past as proceeding Whiggishly and comprehensibly into the present, obscuring all the ways in which we are profoundly alien from the past.
Where do I start… The extraordinary fact that until the 20th century, French was only a plurality language in France? The horrifying bits about drunken dying babies being carted to Paris by the angel-makers? The packs of smuggler dogs who smuggled goods in and out of France for their human masters? Or the dog-powered factories? The forgotten persecution of the cagot caste? The wars between rival villages? The commuting peasants who thought nothing of a 50 mile walk? The strange twists of fate that lead regions to specialize in particular wares?
The villages of cretins or families who regard a cretinous child as a gift from god? The mapping of the hidden communication networks that spread rumor at the speed of a horse? I made per-chapter excerpts of parts I liked: I owe to De Quincey to whom my debt is so vast that to point out only one part of it may appear to repudiate or silence the others my first notice of … If at times I have appeared knowledgeable or worth reading to others, it is perhaps only because I have stood on the shoulders of Borges and Wikipedia. Of the items translated in this volume, I would suggest as starting points these The Duration of Hell pg A Defense of the Kabbalah pg The Homeric Versions pg The Art of Verbal Abuse pg A History of Eternity pg The Doctrine of Cycles pg Richard Hull, Excellent Intentions pg The Total Library pg A New Refutation of Time pg The Argentine Writer and Tradition The Enigma of Edward Fitzgerald pg The Dialogues of Ascetic and King pg The Scandinavian Destiny pg Edward Gibbon, Pages of History and Autobiography pg The Concept of an Academy and the Celts pg The Enigma of Shakespeare pg Emanuel Swedenborg, Mystical Works pg Blindness pg Borges, I think, died happy.
The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy. Ford Motors, when considering a plant in Germany, found that to give its blue-collar American workers their accustomed lifestyle would require expenses 4x that of normal blue-collar German workers; and horses will feature repeatedly throughout.
The Bankers Who Broke the World. I enjoyed this tremendously for revealing a new world to me where I thought I already knew the lay of the land. Throughout were revelations to me - just how ruinous WWI was, how reparations kept echoing and damaging Germany, how exactly the hyperinflation started it was only partly the Versailles payments but more the social programs? As far as criticism goes, I can agree with some of the other reviewers: Ahamed sometimes goes overboard with the narration, and skimps on the details one might want.
And China is quite aggressive lately. But nevertheless, before WWI, they thought they could have a short victorious war against an encircling enemy; does China think it can have a short victorious war against their encircling enemy, the USA-coordinate nations? Of course it could never happen; just like WWI could never happen. Bias in Mental Testing. Discussion of the topics straddles that fine line between too informal and too formal, as Jensen is careful to introduce and explain each concept as he goes and includes excellent summaries at the end of each chapter to the point where this would make a good textbook and it is so readable that I think even new students to statistics could understand almost everything in the book at least, as long as they paid attention and occasionally checked back to the glossary to be reminded of which of the many formulas is relevant to a particular point; there is a ton of content and skimming will not work.
Overall, my impression is extremely positive. The statistical principles are largely the same, the black-white gap has hardly budged, the lack of bias remains accepted, etc. I saw no large mistakes or content that has been totally obsoleted, and in some areas one would have to say Jensen is being constantly vindicated by the latest research - in particular, in arguing for the genetics of people of non-retarded intelligence being largely uniform over the intelligence range and governed by a large number of additive alleles yielding an objective normal distribution , none of it needs any correction.
Afterwards I read a recent review, Bias in mental testing since Bias in Mental Testing , Brown et al , comes to the same conclusion. Nevertheless, NGE fans will still find many revelations here, like the origin of NGE production in the failure of the Aoki Uru film project an origin simply not present in any Western sources before Notenki Memoirs was translated. I read it several times, and that was how I wound up transcribing my copy into a webpage which I could annotate with cross-references and interviews with other figures like Okada or Anno - I realized I could keep rereading it, or just do the job right the first time.
The Remains of the Day. Ishiguro makes the tragedy clear enough, shows us the heart of the story, but without ever being gauche. In July , I re-read it and for good measure, I watched the movie too. The movie, IMO, was pretty good with excellent casting, if unfortunately often blunter than the novel and the ending especially so.
What struck me this time through was the ending of the novel: But instead of the typical Hollywood ending where he woos Miss Kenton or quits his job etc, he realizes that it really is too late: It is, in other words, a beautiful tale of not honoring sunk costs or pursuing lost opportunities.
The Book of Lord Shang. The Book of Lord Shang was very hard for me to read: The version I read was an ebook version of Duyvlord. The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution. This is no fluffy Guns, Germs, and Steel walk through the park! Overall, far more interesting than I had expected.
DEPARTMENTS
Surprisingly funny or interesting anecdotes. There is a superfusion of gods and oracles, which was curious - the oracles truly were treacherous! The Persian kings come off as remarkably capricious and destructive, even the good ones. The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined. Time and again, I was shocked to find subjects treated of keen interest to me, or which read like Pinker had taken some of my essays but done them way better on terrorism, on the expanding circle, etc.
I initially thought I might excerpt some parts of it for an essay or article, but as the quotes kept piling up, I realized that it was hopeless. Reading reviews or discussions of it is not enough; Pinker just covers too much and rebuts too many possible criticisms. The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet.
Finally got around to reading it. It would ruin the feel. The Life and Science of Richard Feynman. The Collapse of Complex Societies. Ordinary Lives in North Korea. Genetics and Analysis of Quantitative Traits. Poems by the Zen Monk Shotetsu. Seeds in the Heart: The Complete Winnie the Pooh. Latro in the Mist. Stories of Life, Death and Brain Surgery. The Sign of the Seahorse. The Rediscovery of Man: The Ring of the Nibelung. City of Golden Shadow Otherland, 1.
Science Slightly Over The Edge. Ein Orbis Pictus des Universums der Phantasie. The Best of Little Nemo in Slumberland. Science and Civilisation in China, Volume 5: Chemistry and Chemical Technology, Part 6: The Politics of Heroin: The Secret History of Star Wars. The Golden Age Golden Age 1. The Napoleon of Notting Hill. Selected Stories and Other Writings. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Charlie Bucket, 1.
The Very Hungry Caterpillar. The Tale of Peter Rabbit. The Book of Imaginary Beings. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. Zen Flesh, Zen Bones. Essays on Software Engineering. From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Compact Oxford English Dictionary. The Complete Calvin and Hobbes. Ring Xeelee Sequence, 4. A Handbook for Researchers and Practitioners. Travelers of a Hundred Ages: One Hundred Famous Views of Edo. Sex, Evolution, and Consumer Behavior. Seeing Like a State: Is There Anything Good about Men?: How Cultures Flourish by Exploiting Men. Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength. A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World.
The Confessions of Aleister Crowley: James and the Giant Peach. Rationality and the Reflective Mind. A Crag Banyon Mystery. A Tale of Aegis Immemorial. The Total Package Stories Collection 1 Stories Elf Finale Ed The Elf Elf Promotion Ed The Elf 4. Kids Attack Ed The Elf 7. Saving Ed Ed The Elf 3. How to write a great review. The review must be at least 50 characters long. The title should be at least 4 characters long. Your display name should be at least 2 characters long.
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Chi ama i libri sceglie Kobo e inMondadori. Collection 2 Stories by Laura Fantasia. Buy the eBook Price: Available in Russia Shop from Russia to buy this item. Or, get it for Kobo Super Points! Well, we do have Blue Laws in the US, restricting things like business practices notably liquor sales on Sunday. But even ignoring that, most of these Blue Laws have — correctly — been repealed. Not only that, but I suspect that a lot of these politicians making claims about the Ten Commandments themselves work on Sundays or even Saturdays.
This is good advice, certainly, and at the very least worth keeping in mind and even attempting in daily life.
Smashwords – The Jesus Bomb (Ed The Elf #8) - A book by Laura Fantasia - page 1
But is this the basis for any legal precedent? Children disrespect their parents all the time — I might even accept that as a definition of childhood. So here we are, halfway through the Ten Commandments, and there is not yet one single thing they say that actually has legal precedent. Now, I can argue that this particular action was objectionable long before the Ten Commandments were etched in stone.
Heck, even some other primates apparently can grieve over the loss of other primates. Note too that the code of Ur-Nammu , which predates Moses by centuries, expressly forbad murder. Soldiers, for example, or killing in self defense. Some people say that the Commandment actually translates to "murder", which would then exclude my two examples. Well, we do have some laws dealing with this as well — though they are seldom enforced, and vary wildly from state to state. But we do have the capability to exceed our evolutionary limitations. And what if both people in the relationship mutually agree to bring in a third party?
Something like this, I suspect, should be taken on a case-by-case basis, and not have blanket laws thrown over everything. In this sense and more things listed below , my feelings would fall under the purview of libertarianism. If you disagree with this, think about some bad behavior you personally might have, and ask yourself if they should be illegal. Since few of these laws even exist, and those are on the wane — and not enforced — even half credit would be a stretch.
Still, something here bugs me. I mean, if God went out of His way to start mentioning specific acts to be bad, why this one? Why not other ones that are generally considered to be more important? I would put rape much higher on the list even than adultery, too. What kind of legal or moral code would leave that act off its list of "Thou shalt nots"? Of all the Commandments, this is the one I like the best. But another reason is schadenfreude. So many people who interpret the Bible literally seem to ignore this Commandment, like, for example, here , and here , and here , and here , and here , and here.
However, the strict interpretation of this Commandment is not simply lying. Bearing false witness is a phrase that implies you are lying in some sort of official capacity; for example, in front of a local judge or magistrate. It can be an ugly emotion, to be sure, but making it illegal would, I think, be overstepping the bounds of the legal system. Coveting is uncool, but there is a whole laundry list of negative emotions, many of which are ugly indeed. Waging false war would be up there pretty high on my list. Nepotism is a good one, too. I bet you can think of others. So at the very best — and I think I was generous — not even half the Commandments translate into law, and those that do have a suspicious pedigree.
Moreover, the first four Commandments, and the ones that most pertain to religion and Judeo-Christianity specifically, are expressly forbidden by our Constitution and the fifth is arguably unconstitutional as well. Remember too that many civilizations had codes of ethics and legal systems that had similar ideas long before Moses climbed Mt. Moreover, reading through the teachings of Jesus, I see a lot of things like paraphrasing a bit "Be nice to each other", "Forgive one another", "Look at your own failings before sniping at someone else", and others. So the Ten Commandments are clearly neither the moral nor legal basis of the United States of America.
At best, you can say that 2 rounding up overlap our laws, but they are a hardly a basis for laws. And they fall far, far short of being a basis of morality. I would think a lot of the things but not all of them! Of course, nearly all politicians making claims about moral issues based on the Bible are themselves going against a whole lot of the things Jesus was pretty specific about. Go ahead and read the Sermon on the Mount, and ask yourself if the politicians so fond of bringing up that old-time religion are really following in the footsteps of the One they claim to follow.
It parallels what I have to say here in weirdly congruent ways, even mentioning halfway through the Commandments that none so far had matched our laws! They are slightly less generous than I am, giving the Commandments a score of 3 out of 10, but I take our two similar arguments as an indication that the evidence all points to the same conclusion. Can you please stick to etc. I used to come here to read blahblahblah, not blahblahblah. It makes me uncomfortable and defensive to read the opinions of others.
Blah blah snark about politics, blahblahblah. I get annoyed each time one of my fellow Christians talks about making this a Christian nation. I may have missed half a point being added somewhere. I am slightly confused by your math Phil. Your arguement goes into Intermission with a Running total of.
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In 6 you add 1. Umm… How does 0. The total should be 3. Okay, so others beat me to it. After commandment number 5, your running total is 0. After commandment 6, which you give 1. It should be 1. At some point, a virtual 0. It went from virtual to actual, and thus, we have an extra 0. If you thought all that was silly, well, now you know what us atheists thing about religious belief. Silly and unlike my little fantasy there, dangerous. You will never convince those who believe that we base our laws on the Bible. They believe that Adam and Eve were kicked out of paradise for eating from the tree of knowledge.
Sometimes they are two. Sometimes they are 1. Sometimes they are all of them at once. You must try harder. It is not easy to become sane. Of course, shellfish eating, cutting your hair and playing fotball touching a pigskin are all Biblical laws from Leviticus that we basically ignore. Our law owes much, much more to Pagan Rome than it ever will to the Bible. The Romans had a proper legal system for a very long time, one that separated disputes between individuals and crimes that involved the state, with judges and properly written laws on a variety of topics.
There are even several separate versions of the 10 Commandments in the Bible… for example one of them separates out coveting a neighbors wife, and coveting a neighbors possessions. Religious injunctions should not and cannot be the basis for common law, for the simple reason that one cannot change or adjust these laws. Finding the death penalty increasingly unappealing? Sorry, its written in stone by god. Laws need to be changeable to reflect the current thought.
People used to be put to death for any type of crime, or put in jail for a crimes designated as such by immoral laws. Where in this post is Phil being anti-religious. I see nothing anti-religious in his post. It draws a connection between being good to your folks and a long life. I could understand the link better if it was spelled out:.
Stealing does not just apply to physical theft.
The stealing described in the commandments can be applied to a number of things. Some obvious ones include; stealing life, stealing the truth IE: Rogue Medic Yes, the Bible asks that you tithe, if you are able to. You are supposed to do what you can to help your Brothers and Sisters in Christ.
Our plumbing also owes much more to pagan Rome than the benighted Christian Europe from which the pilgrims arrived. Plumbing, togas, olives, togas, wine, togas — yup, Romans — a much better legacy for a nation. Another example of evolution in action. Those genetic lines that produced ugly offspring died out long ago for just this reason.
I think Phil is being far too generous with 6 and 7, and maybe 8. Murder and adultery are not federal crimes, and theft mostly is not interstate fraud and theft from the government are obvious exceptions. The feds did not get Al Capone for murder or adultery. The graven image thing I thought was pretty well settled as part of the first amendment: Way, way too generous. The Constitution is the codification of the principles the country was founded on. Nothing in there about killing or stealing — those are state laws generally.
Actually, the first 5 deal with the relation between Man and G-d, while the second 5 deal with the relation between Man and Man. Oh, and the two tablets that Moses got from Mt. We will know peace when there is no religion. Meanwhile, not stealing is in the second group because it deals with person-to-person interactions. Are you reading my mind?!!!
A lot of these claim that the United States is either a Christian nation — a ridiculous and easily-disprovable notion— or that it was founded on Judeo-Christian principles. This is simple fact. If it was, your comment would be heresy and illegal. However, your comment is clearly not illegal. This makes sense if I correctly remember a documentary from long ago that said that the early Jews were polytheistic and YHWY was the god of the gods, vs. Obviously the god of the god is the most powerful so people gravitated toward it. Remember it says it is a jealous god.
I added it up 2 times and got 4 as well. Me math fail too. Fantasy is a useful attribute of the human critter but like all such attributes it can be misused. When my five year old son asked that question I tried to exercise spin control by saying Santa was an idea that some people try to practice. He just looked at me as though I was nuts,,,.
Before Hammurabi, law was determined on a case by case basis at the whim of an individual authority figure. Which is a cool idea in and of itself. If people could just accept the notion that God was an ideal that might or might not exist, we might get past all the histrionics of whose ideal was the best,,,or, knowing humans as I do, maybe not,,,.
Or, to be geekier: The reluctance of Jews in converting keeps their god from returning. Never knew we had that much power. That we may be a nation of Christians in the majority , does not now or ever make us a Christian nation. The old Yahweh lived moderately peacefully among the other gods of Canaan. The new, improved Yahweh was a bit of a piker. The law code of Hammurabi is not necessarily the first written code.
It is just the first one we have a record of. Chances are, it did not appear out of a vacuum, but following a long tradition of laws passed down orally and on other, equally less permanent media. As for rape, in the old testament it is often actually encouraged if done to slaves or girls of a conquered nation. See for example Deuteronomy Blue laws are state law, not federal. In short, I completely agree that the ten commandments almost completely contradict our constitution, and more people need to figure that out. I remember the following cartoon: Moses is up on Mt. Sinai, tablets in hand, looking up at the sky.
You want us to cut the ends of our dicks off? But if it has a Judeo-Christian basis, it is OK. Astronomy frequently deals with approximate values that may have no more than one significant digit. The Honor Mom and Dad thing, however, he gets wrong. Phil, nice job in setting up a straw man to knock down. A pedantic parsing of words without thorough cultural and historical context and a distinction between the making and following of law is hardly proof of your thesis.
FWIW, Jesus was hardly politically-correct.
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He annoyed the rulers of his people and scared their Roman masters enough to cause them to execute him. He did this by claiming to be God and King. An honest examination of him means taking the hard sayings with the soft ones — including the one where he says he fulfilled the whole Law the Commandments and additional cultural regulations perfectly. Sometimes I think you doth protest too much. When I started to write MY post, there were only 13 showing and I had read all of them.
By the time my two bits were completed, it was posted as number However, there have been plenty of laws and regulations and such regarding cursing and taking the lords name in vain. The score could be a 4. We have plenty of laws regarding what can and cannot be said, including allegedly cursing in gods name and all that. But it could also be argued that, since we have people swear on bibles and if they lie after doing so they have broken the law, since we hold ones word after swearing on the bible to a higher level than someone simply stating their word, that we are upholding commandment 3 to the point of giving it a full point!
Maybe they should bring back togas. That may improve things. Shut up and stay in the corner, he says. Assuming that state laws count, I think 7 adultery may be worth half a point. While adultery itself is not illegal in most jurisdictions, it is universally regarded as grounds for a divorce, in particular the more painful at-fault variation. Divorce falls under civil law, since marriage is not generally regarded as a criminal act, but it is still under the law nonetheless. So one could argue half-credit for 7. Bit of a stretch though. Perhaps a quarter point? Nonethless, the main thrust of this article is correct.
Most of the laws in the US are not based on the Commandments. Heck, you could also argue negative points on commandment 1, since the constitution specifically allows other gods. Greeks never wore togas! That was a Roman invention, one that could only be worn by Roman citizens. So, okay, Greeks who were Roman citizens wore them, but they were an outside fashion! Greeks were fond of simple tunics, wrapped around the body and clipped at the shoulder. Oh, and the Athenians were fairly notorious for wearing stinky wool underwear! Point taken and I did think of it myself, I promise.
Some of the other timestamps made me wonder in those specific cases, however. You are right, Chris. Yahweh was originally the Canaanite sky god El. In other words he belonged to the same pantheon as Marduk, Baal and Anat. The name El still survives in words like Israel Isra-El. Back in the early days the Israelites still believed other gods existed, but none of those gods could provide for them as well as El did. It even looks like it was fine to worship these other gods, as long as El was acknowledged as the foremost god.
At some point this mutated into only worshipping El, and as the other gods became irrelevant and increasingly forgotten it became possible to think in terms of there being only one God. Quoting the words directly, with links to see it in context. Do you even know what a strawman argument is? Sorry about the math problem there, folks. I had changed the post at the last second after being convinced to change one of the credits, and missed the half-point problem. Well if the Romans wore togas and they were successful, then logic dictates that togas may help Greeks.
If a person claims divinity you should really be suspicious of their sanity. Of course any evidence of said divinity would be compelling…. These are not the ten commandments. These are the Laws of Moses. This list is not written on the stone tablets nor broken and put in the Ark. Look later in the same book of the Bible you will see an entirely different list that the bible itself calls the ten commandments. Since then people have applied a religious angle to them but they were purely about profit, not god.
That is a bald-faced, unsupported assertion. There is absolutely no reason to believe that a planet full of atheists would be peaceful. Religion and the violence that it has spawned is a symptom it is not the disease. The disease is human nature. When human nature changes to eschew violence then there will be peace, and those peaceful people may or may not be subject to magical thinking, but peace and religion are really unrelated.
George Carlin breaks down the Ten Commandments: Blue Laws are a state-by-state thing. Instead, the comparison should be with the Constitution, as the supreme law of the land and the foundation for our government. Those commandments that are included in our law structure barring blue laws and laws about swearing are just common sense rules for creating a safe and peaceful community. You could make an argument that adultery laws are there to preserve the peace. Although, I agree that this is a personal choice and should not involve the community at large. Further, the writers of the old testament, were trying to achieve a community of peace under a structure of religion.
Not particularly coincidentally, they identified similar rules. Those similar rules are found world wide in most ancient and current civilizations. Just common sense and common agreement. Tip for young players. And as for JC being politically incorrect because he said he was God? I recommend checking your facts, perhaps by reading a little book I call The Bible. He was executed in a standard fashion by the government of the day because he claimed to be King, which is the only significant no-no in polytheistic Roman Palestine.
Plutonian I would call it a nation made up of people, the majority of which are Christian. To say it is a Christian nation specifically implies that we structred our nation after Christianity, which is obviously the reason for this article. Plutonian, why do you insist that the nation be associated with anything at all? Why not just call it a nation? Or if you are saying that the adjective has to reflect something about the majority, how about an Adult Nation?
Equally as abstract and meaningless, since it has no bearing on our laws or culture. It is relatively easy to show how utterly wrong and anti-human the OT is. What kind of religion does that? In the same chapter he just about condemns everybody to death Romans 1: But if you are a pathological sadist then as a Christian in the New Testament you are repeatedly promised a good view on a bloody holocaust without parallel just for your amusement.
It will be such great fun if you happen to be approved as a spectator and of course if you like that sort of stuff. Great fun perhaps, but to call it politically correct is perhaps not entirely accurate. Not really much of a big supporter of family values either.
Then clearly, we are a nation of Democrats, while we were most definitely a nation of Republicans for 8 years prior to that, and the most sincere nation of Democrats for 8 years prior to that, and. But of the cities of these people, which the LORD thy G-d doth give thee for an inheritance, thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth: I agree with Thameron.
But holding up religion as the biggest source of problems is red herring and ignores the underlying human natures. People will find one reason or another to back up their dislikes, hatreds and selfishness with anything that makes twisted logical sense. Our laws are not Christian. Our constitution, upon which our laws are based, are not Christian. Our government is not Christian.
Our military is not supposed to be Christian, although there seems to be some trouble with that. None of the official organizations or establishments are Christian. We are not a Christian nation. We, as a majority, might be a Christian people, but those are two very different things. Matt T nailed it. We are clearly an Adult Nation, since the majority of citizens are adults. Then again, we might be an Omnivorous Nation. Or perhaps an Automotive Nation.
Why not go with Protestant Nation, since the majority are Protestants? Describing a nation by its religion is rather one-dimensional, and insisting upon treating that single dimension as paramount is short-sighted in the extreme. Last I checked, they applied to the Jews, and were not binding to any non-Jew. This is an argument that has not been created by BA to knock down.
This is an argument that is regularly repeated by the holier than thous as if it were a fact. I agree with those who point out that federal law has very little to do with the Bible, except for the part that states —. Not exactly a Bible-thumping phrase, but the whole post is about a nonsensical claim by politicians religious or not trying to appeal for votes. Secular laws governing people who worship hundreds of gods.
The idea that all Christians worship the same law suggests that they do not kill each other over their different Christian gods. It is less common than it used to be, but that has nothing to do with whether their gods are the same. I mean how could we tell if a person took the lords name in vain or not? In fact, looking at the writings of some of the founders and framers of the Constitution and our early government reveals that the U.
A decent book discussing this is Moral Minority: Our Skeptical Founding Fathers. What you can post on a blog and what the government deems is illegal are two different things. I can ask you to leave and if you refuse to I can call the police to get you forcibly ejected. At no point am I infringing on your First Amendment rights by not letting you curse in my house in front of my children. First Amendment applies to the government, not individuals. Politicians should stick to real issues that effect us all, not some jaded, archaic Puritan values that really has no meaning in our lives…unless one has a thing for beating kids which in many jurisdictions is illegal.
Religions are grand, lofty ideals. Of course, shellfish eating, cutting your hair and playing football touching a pigskin are all Biblical laws from Leviticus that we basically ignore. In the unlikely event that my meaning was unclear. I might point out that there is a second set of ten commandments in Exodus They ought to be the same, but for some reason they are not. This second set is even less relevant to any laws of today. Anyone celebrate the feast of unleavened bread? Read the story of Lot and what he did to prove himself a righteous man to be saved from the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.
When a crowd gathered outside his door to attack the angels visiting him, he offered them his daughters instead. Women were property, and rape was only a crime if it infringed upon the rights of the father or husband. Run by a patriarchal oligarchy where the women and children are second class citizens. And what about the poor minorities and down trodden who have limited freedoms…. An interesting current and, I think, whacko anecdote about the adultery thing… http: The article itself even more so.
While I certainly agree with the premise of your article our secular laws generally have little basis in the religious books of the Christian Bible , many of your interpretations of the commandments are quite incorrect at least from a Jewish perspective, I cannot speak for the Christian perspective.
Just a few examples, more for interest sake to be honest, as I am also a skeptic but like to learn a bit about everything is possible. However, an argument could be made that Talmudic discourse has had a strong influence on Western laws as it discusses issues from manslaughter, to torts to building codes. Firstly, the idea of 10 commandments being more important than all others is not correct. In fact the 10 commandments were removed from Jewish prayer services over a thousand years ago due to the fear that some people would think just that.
For example, if someone breaks into your house at night, he is considered to have forfeited his live and can be killed since he does so knowing you must be home and is therefore likely prepared to kill you if attacked. Which certainly is a big one that needs to be addressed as you allude to in your comment on 7, i. There are many more examples of this in your article but these are the two easiest to explain.
Again, the general premise of the article is, I believe, correct but if you are going to interpret a very complex, document in its translated form it is important to know a fair bit rather than do it from the seat of your pants. After all that is what we skeptics accuse others of doing all the time and no disclaimer should excuse shoddy research.
I fully agree with this. I have long contended that rulers and leaders use religion as a tool. How hard is it to just be honest? I pointed out the whole thing about the first amendment negating the first three and the fourth if you want to get technical. You did a much more thourough job than I would have Phil. I would have left it at a brief description. Then again I might have also mentioned that 10 is an arbitrary number of comandments and that a greater number than that have been discarded.
Next, why is this god who is claimed to be all-knowing and perfect be such a schizophrenic psychopath? How does a perfect being have any needs at all? For example, if he were perfect why would he have a need to create anything? In fact, he may be a low-ranking god with about the same power over this universe as we have over earth. But he gets to play around with it but only after he got his degree in universe management and did a long internship. What possible utility does that serve? You log onto wikipedia, and you discover a new nation has formed in Europe.
What is your first deduction from this description? Is it A This nation is made up mostly of Zoroastrians. Or B Zoroastrianism is a basis for this nation, its laws, culture, and people. You DO imply a societal thread, which is precisely what the founding fathers wanted to avoid. There are other ways of acknowledging the number of Christians in the US.
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Oh, and it has a lot of everything else, too. As for the rest of your statement are you claiming a ritual that started thousands of years ago is wrong? Nothing about protecting and respecting children. Nor is there anything slavery. Gotta love witty dialog that sum up so much so briefly. Not a Constitutional scholar, but my understanding is that it is a little of both. There were some anti-people-who-believe-differently-than-us sentiments at the time go figure!
You totally lost me on your ridiculous note: Throw in translation, etc. Or a blogger to go head-to-head with a couple centuries of religious lawyers. And do my best to keep from reading the comments. If Plutonian is the same person as Plutonium is from Pluto, then good luck explaining definitions to him her? This individual does not understand critical nuances. Nowhere in the US constitution nor the declaration of independence are statements asserting the country be a Christian nation. Heck the founders where white. As someone else pointed out, is this a white nation?
Chris, Isaiah and Jeremiah would disagree. It is more accurate to say it was counter to the will of Yahweh as it was interpreted by the priest culture of Jerusalem, which was then in ascendancy after the fall of the northern kingdom of Israel. The error comes from assuming the region now known as Israel was a monoculture, all worshipping in the same fashion. This is not supported by the historical evidence. Im just saying we do not have absolute free speech- not that its a bad thing, but we dont. There are laws which limit what we can and cannot say. I think they were actually more concerned with persecution by the pilgrims, who treated other religious groups far worse than they were ever treated.
This is called monolatry in the trade. True monotheism only entered the Hebrew religion on its way toward becoming Judaism around and after the time of the Babylonian Exile 6th cy BCE. Anyone who says that our laws are based on the Ten Commandments has clearly never read either one. Now imagine if some politician told us we needed to base our laws on Exodus 21, including such gems as:. Notwithstanding, if he continue a day or two, he shall not be punished: Then his master shall bring him unto the judges; he shall also bring him to the door, or unto the door post; and his master shall bore his ear through with an aul; and he shall serve him for ever.
Keep thinking and blogging critically, about whatever you feel like. Hmm, and all the Christians I know say there is just one god.