About Finishing

[beyelzu]

Originally Posted by thedoc

I like to finish with "Tung Oil", a light sanding before the last coat gives a real nice finish.

Biology/ Micro Biology with a Religion minor, should give you an interesting perspective on evolution.

I'm not sure what you mean exactly. I am a proponent of noma as laid it by Stephen Jay Gould. I am also a metaphysical naturalist. I happen to find religion interesting. I accept the fact and theory of evolution; to do otherwise would be ludicrous.

[erimir]

Originally Posted by JoeP

"bey/es threads" - Google Search

Has anyone compiled any bey/esian statistics?

Originally Posted by beyelzu

I'm not sure what you mean exactly. I am a proponent of noma as laid it by Stephen Jay Gould. I am also a metaphysical naturalist. I happen to find religion interesting. I accept the fact and theory of evolution; to do otherwise would be ludicrous.

I don't find the concept of NOMA to be all that useful.

Religion has no particular magisterium, because religion is too generic a term. Things like ethics and aesthetics cannot be proven scientifically (science can say things about them, like describing how our ethical intuitions work, but it can't say whether those intuitions are correct). But those types of things are simply frequent components of religion, not the whole of religion.

[Dingfod]

inland wave's niece just graduated with a Bachelors degree in Spanish. She's going on to get a Masters, thinking she would teach it. I've put her in contact with my brothers, both of whom make a living doing document translation. My nephew, who will get his Masters in Russian Studies this Spring has similar aspirations. I don't know if it's realistic, but at least it sounds fun.

[erimir]

My department is working on making those jobs obsolete.

We haven't succeeded yet! Hence why we had a talk this semester by a researcher who was working on computer-aided translation - tools to make human translation easier and faster. And there are sites like Duolingo that crowd-source translation, which also may hurt the professional translator business.

The trend seems to be that machine translations get better and better the more data we have, and any language pair where you can make a living translating is probably generating enough data that the machines will overtake it (and in fact, professional translators are generating the data that will be fed into the machines). We still have some way to go even on similar languages with tons of data, like English-Spanish.

When it comes to getting creative use of language to work in translation, however, I doubt that will be coming any time soon. Publishers won't want to entrust translation of novels, scripts, video games, etc. to machines for a good long while.

All of this to say... I would be aware that it's a field that's likely to be in for some serious changes.

[Dingfod]

I know. I've been doing my part to make them aware.

[thedoc]

Originally Posted by beyelzu

I'm not sure what you mean exactly. I am a proponent of noma as laid it by Stephen Jay Gould. I am also a metaphysical naturalist. I happen to find religion interesting. I accept the fact and theory of evolution; to do otherwise would be ludicrous.

Yes, I believe that Punctuated equilibrium is the most reasonable version of evolution.

What I meant was that most people I have encountered believe that evolution and religion are incompatible. Fundamental Christians reject evolution as anti-biblical. Atheists, that I have encountered, have stated the they believe that all Christians reject Evolution. Perhaps we travel in different crowds and people that you know can accept both concepts (Christianity and Evolution) as valid. For myself I accept that God created the Universe and life, and evolution is how God did it.

[thedoc]

Originally Posted by erimir

My department is working on making those jobs obsolete.

We haven't succeeded yet! Hence why we had a talk this semester by a researcher who was working on computer-aided translation - tools to make human translation easier and faster. And there are sites like Duolingo that crowd-source translation, which also may hurt the professional translator business.

The trend seems to be that machine translations get better and better the more data we have, and any language pair where you can make a living translating is probably generating enough data that the machines will overtake it (and in fact, professional translators are generating the data that will be fed into the machines). We still have some way to go even on similar languages with tons of data, like English-Spanish.

When it comes to getting creative use of language to work in translation, however, I doubt that will be coming any time soon. Publishers won't want to entrust translation of novels, scripts, video games, etc. to machines for a good long while.

All of this to say... I would be aware that it's a field that's likely to be in for some serious changes.

Several years ago I owned a hobby shop and found many of the instructions for plastic models produced in Japan to be quite humorous. A translator who does not have a subjective understanding of both languages will be at a loss. I don't see machines achieving that kind of understanding for many years, it still takes a person who can understand the meaning intended, to translate meaning. Translating words is not enough.

[Dingfod]

Originally Posted by thedoc

Yes, I believe that Punctuated equilibrium is the most reasonable version of evolution.

What I meant was that most people I have encountered believe that evolution and religion are incompatible. Fundamental Christians reject evolution as anti-biblical. Atheists, that I have encountered, have stated the they believe that all Christians reject Evolution. Perhaps we travel in different crowds and people that you know can accept both concepts (Christianity and Evolution) as valid. For myself I accept that God created the Universe and life, and evolution is how God did it.

I know a few atheists like that, but only a few. I personally have known quite a number of intelligent Christians who could compartmentalize their religious views from the scientific world. I worked with several very intelligent Christians when I was a laboratory analyst. Not all Christians believe the bible is the literal word of god. I know my dad, who was as devoted a Christian as can be, didn't. He always told us, "We don't know how long god's days are," when talking about the creation stories in Genesis. Evolution fit into that, he saw that as the way god created life.

[beyelzu]

Originally Posted by erimir

Has anyone compiled any bey/esian statistics?

I don't find the concept of NOMA to be all that useful.

Religion has no particular magisterium, because religion is too generic a term. Things like ethics and aesthetics cannot be proven scientifically (science can say things about them, like describing how our ethical intuitions work, but it can't say whether those intuitions are correct). But those types of things are simply frequent components of religion, not the whole of religion.

I find it useful from a practical point of view for discussion and debate. I am not trying to convince anyone about their religion, raher I am discussing something about science or history.

[thedoc]

Originally Posted by Dingfod

I know a few atheists like that, but only a few. I personally have known quite a number of intelligent Christians who could compartmentalize their religious views from the scientific world. I worked with several very intelligent Christians when I was a laboratory analyst. Not all Christians believe the bible is the literal word of god. I know my dad, who was as devoted a Christian as can be, didn't. He always told us, "We don't know how long god's days are," when talking about the creation stories in Genesis. Evolution fit into that, he saw that as the way god created life.

Since I don't run through a checklist with everyone I meet to verify their views on different subjects, I am only aware of those who announce their views to the world. I'm not suggesting that you do, but many people have their beliefs, and unless the subject is broached in conversation, there is no mention of it. So while I know many people, there are many of those that I do not know their views on these subjects.

[Dingfod]

I am not talking about casual acquaintances, but people I have known for a period of time. I don't know about you, but I usually know quite a bit about a person after knowing them for six months or a year or so.

[beyelzu]

Originally Posted by thedoc

Yes, I believe that Punctuated equilibrium is the most reasonable version of evolution.

What I meant was that most people I have encountered believe that evolution and religion are incompatible. Fundamental Christians reject evolution as anti-biblical. Atheists, that I have encountered, have stated the they believe that all Christians reject Evolution. Perhaps we travel in different crowds and people that you know can accept both concepts (Christianity and Evolution) as valid. For myself I accept that God created the Universe and life, and evolution is how God did it.

It's not an either or between punk eek and gradualism. It is more like a mixture of box.

[livius drusus]

Any atheist who claimed that all Christians are Young Earth Creationists would be a complete fool. The existence of Catholics alone would refute that position, and there are a billion of them. I seriously doubt, frankly, that you've actually heard an atheist make that claim.

[beyelzu]

Are we counting NA, cuz he's close ?

[livius drusus]

I specifically exempted complete fools.

[thedoc]

Originally Posted by livius drusus

Any atheist who claimed that all Christians are Young Earth Creationists would be a complete fool. The existence of Catholics alone would refute that position, and there are a billion of them. I seriously doubt, frankly, that you've actually heard an atheist make that claim.

There have been some who have posted this sort of thing on other forums. They tend to have a checklist of characteristics, and if you admit to being a christian, you are automatically labeled with this list, which includes being a creationist.

[thedoc]

Originally Posted by livius drusus

I specifically exempted complete fools.

Then why are you posting?

[LadyShea]

I had never even heard of YEC until I started going online, including during the years I went to church.

There are a lot of extremists online, asshole atheists included.

[naturalist.atheist]

Originally Posted by beyelzu

Are we counting NA, cuz he's close ?

trolling again?

[thedoc]

Trolling is a kind of fishing, it's seems he's hooked one.

[naturalist.atheist]

Originally Posted by thedoc

Trolling is a kind of fishing, it's seems he's hooked one.

He really likes me a lot. They all do. They like to conflate me with every boogieman they can think of.

[beyelzu]

The browser ate my reply.

Got into Santa Cruz yesterday, there was a poster session and it was fun. I had a blast. I will write a more detailed report later.

[Ensign Steve]

I thought about putting this in the petty accomplishments thread, but I guess it's relevant to this, plus I want to ramble some.

I'm planning to graduate in May so the clock is seriously ticking. The first draft of my thesis is due on April 2, which is something like 6 weeks from now. I don't think it will be an issue, I have been meeting my deadlines and I do have a modicum of publishable results, so I should be able to bang something out by then. I just feel like if I had all the time in the world I could really do it right and make it amazing and perfect, but I don't, so I have to keep chanting my "done is better than perfect" mantra and moving forward. My main priority is to graduate, but it would still be nice to create something I'm proud of.

That said, I do have a petty accomplishment to brag about, which is that I am working in machine learning and computer vision and in machine learning you have your training phase and your testing phase and the training phase takes a really long time. So I set it up to go overnight last night, and I thought, "good luck, my little program. learn well!" and I felt kind of silly about it, but I was nervous and excited about my computer program running overnight and learning all on her own. I was excited to get up this morning and she how she did, and goddamnit she learned!

I feel like such a proud papa.

[Ensign Steve]

Oh, fuck, this isn't the thread I thought it was. My bad!

[Ensign Steve]

The Venture Bros - I love mein job! - YouTube