Sandbox (4)

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Sometimes very active discussions about peripheral issues overwhelm a thread, so this is a permanent home for those conversations.

I’ve opened a new “Sandbox” thread as a post as the new “ignore commenter” plug-in only works on threads started as posts.

5,911 thoughts on “Sandbox (4)”

  4. quarrion:
    quarrion,

    I need a volunteer who can assist me to embed an image in a comment.
    🙂

    When you click on upload file, do you get a new window from which to choose a file?

  12. Thoughts and well wishes to those associated with the fire of Notre Dame in France. In the USA, I always associated Notre Dame with IRELAND!

  13. stcordova: Thoughts and well wishes to those associated with the fire of Notre Dame in France.

    One firefighter was injured. Other than that, there was only property damage. Even bees survived.

    And now various billionaires have pledged large sums, its restoration is assured, especially now France’s saviour, Manu Jupiter Macron is on the case. Unkind souls have suggested the fire was very providential for Macron’s career as it caused cancellation of a speech he was due to give on National television and has shifted focus away from those inconvenient pauvres, les gilets jaunes and sundry other dissident groups. Though far be it from me to suggest M Macron had a Henry I moment.

  14. RL has restricted SL activity. Our village fête started Friday and lasts till Tuesday. Friday evening was brochette de sanglier, which I naïvely thought was cubes of meat barbecued on skewers. Not quite.

  15. Alan,

    RL has restricted SL activity.

    What does that mean. In any case that looks like a nice cookout. I think cubes of meat would be nice — kabobs. 🙂

  18. Alan Fox: Unkind souls have suggested the fire was very providential for Macron’s career

    Saw a video of a blowtoarch being applied to a three hundred year old oak beam, with little result. Pretty much matches my attempts to build fireplace fires. I would speculate that this could not happen without accelerants.

    Some years ago we had a major church fire near my house. I thought that one was convenient also. Old ugly building replaced with a shiny new one.

  19. When I heard the US sent a NUCLEAR-powered carrier strike group to the Mediterranean, I got worried because if any nuclear ship gets damaged in war and it’s reactor start leaking this could be a major environmental disaster with water contaminated with radio isotopes.

  20. Related:

    https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2014/11/13/sunken-soviet-submarines-threaten-nuclear-catastrophe-in-russias-arctic-a41349

    hile Russia’s nuclear bombers have recently set the West abuzz by probing NATO’s air defenses, a far more certain danger currently lurks beneath the frigid Arctic waters off Russia’s northern coast — a toxic boneyard for Soviet nuclear ships and reactors whose containment systems are gradually wearing out.

    Left to decay at the bottom of the ocean, the world is facing a worst case scenario described as “an Arctic underwater Chernobyl, played out in slow motion,” according to Thomas Nilsen, an editor at the Barents Observer newspaper and a member of a Norwegian watchdog group that monitors the situation.
    According to a joint Russian-Norwegian report issued in 2012, there are 17,000 containers of nuclear waste, 19 rusting Soviet nuclear ships and 14 nuclear reactors cut out of atomic vessels at the bottom of the Kara Sea.

    Crap!

  21. https://www.cnet.com/news/angry-fans-petition-erase-last-jedi-star-wars-canon/

    Not every Star Wars fan loved “The Last Jedi.” In fact, even though movie critics were overall very positive about the new Star Wars film, fans seem to be split on their opinions on how the film portrayed Luke Skywalker, Rey, Finn and the rest of the characters.

    And when Star Wars fans get angry, they start online petitions. Case in point, the new Change.org petition called “Have Disney strike Star Wars Episode VIII from the official canon” by Henry Walsh.

    “Episode VIII was a travesty,” Walsh wrote when the petition launched. “It completely destroyed the legacy of Luke Skywalker and the Jedi. It destroyed the very reasons most of us, as fans, liked Star Wars. This can be fixed. Just as you wiped out 30 years of stories, we ask you to wipe out one more, ‘The Last Jedi.’ Remove it from canon, push back Episode IX and remake Episode VIII properly to redeem Luke Skywalker’s legacy, integrity and character.”

    Amen! May the force be with you.

  25. Richard Carrier sues for defamation again!

    https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2019/05/08/dr-richard-carrier-has-again-sued-several-atheists-on-charges-of-defamation/

    In Missouri, he’s going after Skepticon, Inc. (which hosts a conference each year that’s free for attendees) and the group’s president Lauren Lane for publicly saying they were banning him from attending the conference due to his “repeated boundary-pushing behavior.”

    In Minnesota, he’s going after blogger PZ Myers, the CEO of the Freethought Blogs network, for suspending Carrier’s blog due to his alleged “persistent, obnoxious sexual behavior in defiance of specific requests that he cease.”

    The case of him suing Lauren Lane is deeper than meets the eye. Carrier and Lane supposedly had an affair and she offered him sex in exchange for a letter of recommendation according to court records.

    Thunderf00t gave an insanely funny commentary of Carrier’s first lawsuit:

  26. I found this by accident here at TSZ in the Media Library, NOT the comment section. Who posted it? It’s cute. I didn’t bother digging through the threads to find where it was posted. Thanks in advance:

  27. Sal,

    I found this by accident here at TSZ in the Media Library, NOT the comment section. Who posted it? It’s cute. I didn’t bother digging through the threads to find where it was posted. Thanks in advance:

    I posted it (and a photo of the other side of the box) here.

  29. The perils of following one’s intuition:

    Hawaii hiker says she followed a ‘voice’ down an unfamiliar trail. Then she got lost for 17 days.

    “I don’t really know what happened,” she said Tuesday morning, speaking to reporters while in a wheelchair. “All I can say is that … I have strong sense of internal guidance, whatever you want to call that — a voice, Spirit, everybody has a different name for it.

    “My heart was telling me walk down this path, go left. Great. Go right. It was so strong.”

    She said it turned out to be not nearly as strong when after meditating on a log she wanted to go back to her car.

  31. keiths:
    Sal,

    I posted it (and a photo of the other side of the box) here.

    Thanks!

    Are you into philosophy? I only took one class in it. The two philsophers (who did other things than philsophy) that resonated with me were Bertrand Russell and John Stewart Mill, other than that I really didin’t get into it.

    I was impressed someone here found Camus as he isn’t mentioned much. However, evangelical Christian thinkers 40 years ago seemed to appreciate Camus a lot. So that’s why the name sort of made my eye get wide when I saw it. It was also a great quote.

  33. I taught at Creationism at my Church, McLean Bible Church, in McLean Virginia, not too far from the Whitehouse.

    Look who visited our Creationist Church yesterday, 6/2/19, none other than the President of the United States, Donald Trump. The President humbled himself before the Lord. God bless the USA!

    https://www.mcleanbible.org/prayer-president

    AMEN!

    NOTES:
    McLean Bible Church is Mega Church funded by some very rich families in the area. We worship in an immense 100 million dollar complex! It’s no surprise then the President would visit us.

  35. Sounds like the pastor got some serious blowback from members of the congregation:

    I wanted to share all of this with you in part because I know that some within our church, for a variety of valid reasons, are hurt that I made this decision. This weighs heavy on my heart. I love every member of this church, and I only want to lead us with God’s Word in a way that transcends political party and position, heals the hurts of racial division and injustice, and honors every man and woman made in the image of God. So while I am thankful that we had an opportunity to obey 1 Timothy 2 in a unique way today, I don’t want to purposely ever do anything that undermines the unity we have in Christ.

    In the end, would you pray with me for gospel seed that was sown today to bear fruit in the president’s heart?

  37. David Hume was against the Design Argument, but imho, he actually did a good job of representing the Argument (which he did in order to criticize it):

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teleological_argument#British_empiricists

    Look round the world: contemplate the whole and every part of it: You will find it to be nothing but one great-machine, subdivided into an infinite number of lesser machines, which again admit of subdivisions to a degree beyond what human senses and faculties can trace and explain. All these various machines, and even their most minute parts, are adjusted to each other with an accuracy, which ravishes into admiration all men who have ever contemplated them. The curious adapting of means to ends, throughout all nature, resembles exactly, though it much exceeds, the productions of human contrivance; of human design, thought, wisdom, and intelligence. Since therefore the effects resemble each other, we are led to infer, by all the rules of analogy, that the causes also resemble; and that the Author of Nature is somewhat similar to the mind of man; though possessed of much larger faculties, proportioned to the grandeur of the work which he has executed. By this argument a posteriori, and by this argument alone, do we prove at once the existence of a Deity, and his similarity to human mind and intelligence.[67]

  41. Speaking of philosophers, there are some I encounter that I didn’t know were philosophers. Another one which I may post on is Norbert Weiner:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norbert_Wiener

    Norbert Wiener (November 26, 1894 – March 18, 1964) was an American mathematician and philosopher. He was a professor of mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). A child prodigy, Wiener later became an early researcher in stochastic and mathematical noise processes, contributing work relevant to electronic engineering, electronic communication, and control systems.

    Wiener is considered the originator of cybernetics, a formalization of the notion of feedback, with implications for engineering, systems control, computer science, biology, neuroscience, philosophy, and the organization of society.

    Norbert Wiener is credited as being one of the first to theorize that all intelligent behavior was the result of feedback mechanisms, that could possibly be simulated by machines and was an important early step towards the development of modern AI.[3]

    I didn’t even know he was a philosopher. I encountered his work in Advanced Electrical Engineering classes on Digital Signal Processing!

    I hope to post on TSZ shortly on Wiener’s work.

  43. https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/free-will-is-real/

    Linking should not be construed as endorsement, but I will say that I think List is a good philosopher. I even nominated him for some APA prize once. In any case, his book is def something that nonlin should cease blathering and read instead of continuing to spout fallacies about free will and pretty much everything else he writes about. Here’s an ally who actually knows what he’s talking about.

  44. walto:
    https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/free-will-is-real/

    Linking should not be construed as endorsement, but I will say that I think List is a good philosopher. I even nominated him for some APA prize once. In any case, his book is def something that nonlin should cease blathering and read instead of continuing to spout fallacies about free will and pretty much everything else he writes about. Here’s an ally who actually knows what he’s talking about.

    “Horgan: Free-will deniers claim that Benjamin Libet’s experiments undercut free will. Why are they idiots?

    List: They are certainly not idiots! They have made important contributions to our understanding of the mechanisms underlying voluntary motor actions. What they show is that when experimental participants are asked to perform spontaneous movements at a time of their choice, some brain activity can be detected before they feel the conscious intention to act. Libet and others take this to be a challenge for free will. I do not deny the experimental findings. The issue is how to interpret them.

    Contributors to this debate do not always define precisely what they mean by “causation”. For instance, if we define a cause as a systematic difference-making factor for the resulting effect, then it’s not clear that the neuronal readiness potentials measured by Libet would qualify as causes of the actions. As Libet acknowledges, subjects can still abort an initially intended action after the neural activity has begun. Libet describes this capacity as “free won’t”. Others, such as my London colleague Patrick Haggard, have shed further light on how this capacity is implemented in the brain.

    This is interesting…

  45. keiths:
    From the BBC:

    Thanks Keiths, great article.

    FWIW, that’s one reason I hang out here TSZ more than with certain people claiming to be Christians. I view many of the people here as having more integrity than some of the wolves inhabiting Christendom.

  47. I looked more into Kenneth Copeland. Sad, angering, disturbing. The reason he gets away with it is people want to believe what he is saying is true, because they don’t feel they have better options.

    The truth taught by Jesus himself is the parable of the poor man Lazarus and the Richman, where Lazarus was beloved of God but so poor he was eating from a garbage dump. They’d rather hear, “put some seed money in our ministry and God will heal your body, your children, and your finances….God says so.”

    It’s been a long time since I heard any pastor preach on that passage, and I can’t remember a single televangelist who was hustling for donations share that passage.

  48. There has been hardly any traffic in the moderation thread lately. That’s a change and not an unwelcome one for me.

  49. Bruce,

    There has been hardly any traffic in the moderation thread lately. That’s a change and not an unwelcome one for me.

    Yes. It’s great to see TSZ focused on content rather than endless moderation kerfuffles.

    Alan’s absence has been a real blessing. Even Neil and Jock seem to be more restrained these days, perhaps because of the fallout from the ouster of Mung.

  50. BruceS:
    There has been hardly any traffic in the moderation thread lately.That’s a change and not an unwelcome one for me.

    It’s clear that the ignore button works better than 3 biased moderators…
    I wish Mung could realize that and return…unless blogging has a negative impact on his psyche…
    The level of boredom can be easily tested at TSZ…😉

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