StructuredDream

After giving a presentation on professional ethics and the need for scientists and project managers to be particularly responsible for following the "Do no harm" doctrine, I was approached by several attendees justifying the participation of project managers in the planning, design, production, and use of weapons of mass destruction.  I had used as an example the ultimate WMD, (currently: nuclear weapons) as the sort of development in which ethical project managers and scientists must not participate. Sponsored at the University of Texas at Dallas, which gains heavy financial support from large military corporations (e.g.: Texas Instruments, Raytheon) It was no surprise that several attendees challenged me after the talk, claiming that the U.S. is a uniquely noble nation, and that incinerating hundreds of thousands of civilians in Japan with 2 nuclear bombs was the morally correct and right thing to do.  The justification given was a standard "more lives were saved...

The other day, I lost my net connection, (not tremendously unusual when we have bad weather), and I received this message: As advertised, SC2 is supposed to be able to run without a BN connection once the owner of the game has registered it.    I decided to play some of the single player scenarios in the meantime while waiting for my network access to resume.  See below what happens when the user click's the button for "Play Offline"... SC "forgot" that I had authorized it and been playing for weeks with a SC2 character.  It now stupidly demands "authorization" to use software for which I've paid. Activision has made conflicting statements about the reasons for these harsh, totalitarian-seeming requirements - such as that it is and is not primarily to prevent sharing the software with friends, which they call "piracy".  In other words: your Grandma was evil when she told you that we should share with others, especially those w...

...with religious belief.  Like the clinically deluded, the faithful will say almost anything to maintain their illusion, but pathological delusion is defined as a concept or value held with certainty that is not credible, that is: based on expert, accurate information. Neutral, average people might understandably regard belief in supernatural beings with superior intelligence and magical abilities to intervene in natural reality as qualifying under such a definition. The "nice" people of faith try to say that militants "misinterpret" holy texts.  They claim: "our holy books teach peace", which like all lies is technically true, but completely misleading.  Hitler loved puppies...so he teaches love? What religious apologists for the "nice" religion cannot do is point to a single instruction in their holy books that says how one is to interpret either conflicting commands about what the monotheistic deity wants, or clear commands to commit violen...