Hubble Space Telescope Advent Calendar 2008 46
krou writes "The Big Picture blog is running a Hubble Space Telescope imagery Advent Calendar, where for 25 days (it started on the 1st of December), a new photo will be revealed from the Hubble Space Telescope."
Re:Wise Men complain (Score:3, Insightful)
I've been reading through "The Audacity of Hope" by Barrack Obama. I am not a huge Obama supporter, but figure it would be good to read through the then-presidential-hopeful and now President elect's thoughts. One thing that impressed me is how Barrack identifies the "I'm right an will ridicule everyone who disagrees with me" mentality as the single most harmful element of political discourse today. He has a great point. take a look at Slashdot. Out of 100 "disagreement" threads, how many are actually civil? How many have folks listening to the other point of view?
I know I am guilty of this.
Your post did nothing to advance discourse. It was simply a poor attempt at humor and making fun of a belief system. Yeah, I know.... this is Slashdot. But for some reason I'm having a Don Quixote complex today and felt like pointing this out.
Re:Wise Men complain (Score:3, Insightful)
"You are in more dire need of a blowjob than any white man in history."
Re:But why wait 25 days? (Score:5, Insightful)
Showing one image a day for 25 days is a great way to generate repeat traffic for your blog and increase page views, especially if your blog is picked up by Slashdot! Or you could skip the middle man and go directly to the source and get as many beautiful HST images as you want... right now.
Because thats what an advent calendar is!
I understand that being skeptical of blog postings is tradition (and a good way to get mod points) on Slashdot but trust me, the Big Picture does just fine without needing to troll Slashdot for hits
Re:Sneaking a peak under the petticoat of creation (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Wise Men complain (Score:3, Insightful)
It is not possible to advance the discourse.
The beliefs he's ridiculing are based on pure, blind FAITH.
It's the same basis that suicide bombers use to support their actions, that was used to justfiy the Crusades and the Spanish Inquisition.
The is no such thing as a rational discourse here because these people are not rational.
All you can do is make it blindingly obivous to the people that are not 100% locked into an arbitrary belief system, that beliefs based on nothing more than faith are fundamentally flawed and not worthy of respect.
These people admit up front that nothing you say can change their mind because god told them the "truth".
The idea of "keeping the discouse at a high level" is really just a smoke screen for actually saying, "Let's not challenge these peoples belief system by pointing out the obvious logical flaws and inconsistencies."
If I believed that whites were genetically superior to blacks, people would criticize, ridicule and ostracize me. This is a natural, rational response to the problem. My irrational, arbitray beliefs have a negative impact on society and society is actively seeking to discourage them. Although I would be allowed to hold these beliefs, the rest of society is not obligated to treat them as anything more than utter bullshit. (People with those beliefs can still be treated with respect, but an idea must stand on its merits.)
The idea that just because someone somewhere believes something, we have to treat it as a well-founded legitimate proposition is one of the biggest tradgedies in our educational system today, both at the high school and college levels.