Sip

If you have some free time, try to figure out this sequence! I spent some time on it but just couldn't figure it out. But I do know the answer now 1 3 4 9 10 12 13 27 28 30 31 36 37 39 40 ... Just make sure you have a lot of free time

My solution to it was simple! I started buying 40 hotdogs at a time http://zr2.cs.ucla.edu/Sip/zr2/roflmao.gif Don't know if you saw this but they had the annual hot dog eating championships on the 4-th of July and this skinny Japanese guy broke his own world record by eating 50.5 hot dogs in 12 mins (prev record was 50). They said he before the event he weighed in at 113 pounds, but after the 12 minute contest he weighed 129 pounds!!!!!

quote:Originally posted by THOTH:Religion may be a means of expressing or codefying morals and ethics (and thus passing them on) - but by definition I would say religion does not preceede these things. Much of what we hold for morality is shared by all human religions - each basically codefying what are natural human norms (obviously with some variation - as can be expected). Ooooh Well said. I couldn't agree more.

quote:Originally posted by THOTH:... And I would put money on my 9 year old against you in either chess or checkers. In both (but the latter in particular) he can best most adults. So if he beats you does that make you stupid? I think we had this discussion some time ago. Are "chess" and "checkers" good benchmarks for smartness? Well, my computer can kick both my and your 9-year old's butt. Does it mean it's smarter than both of us? But in any case, I am honored that you would consider me as a "benchmark" for smartness against which to measure your 9-year old (who I am sure is very "capable") but I somehow I still doubt at the age of 9, a child has the ability to process complex thoughts as well as the average adult. I find this forum pretty amzing and extremely fun. Even statements such as "snow is white" can be shot down as "in error" and "not always true". Once again, I am not (or have I ever) made any absolute statements about my abilites. All I am saying, is that the average child is VERY STUPID relative to the average adult. Exceptions? Sure, there often are exceptions to a general statement such as that. But I do think I could kick your 9-year olds butt in ANYTHING and ANYTIME... bring it ON (ok, I admit, I suck in chess and checkers ... but no one can beat me in tic tac toe ) Actually, I would NEVER give into a challenge like that. It's a lose-lose situation for me. If I win, I have beaten a 9-year old (big deal). If I lose (I don't even want to think about it). So what do I get out of it? [ July 22, 2002, 07:42 PM: Message edited by: Sip ]

quote:Originally posted by THOTH: quote:Originally posted by Sip: Note also that I think all childeren are stupid!!! Obviously then you know nothing about children.Common Thoth ... how many 10-year olds do you see solving complicated engineering problems? How many 11-year olds do you see making speeches in front of scholars? How many 12-year olds do you see in this forum? (ooop, bad example Are you seriously telling me I am so "lost" and I don't know anything about childeren? Granted, I haven't seen all the childeren in the world but the ones I have seen, all of them, have been very stupid. Note that many of them have the potential to learn and become very capable thinkers. But at the time they are young, their brains are not that capable (their brains simply have not developed enough yet). [ July 22, 2002, 06:31 PM: Message edited by: Sip ]

quote:Originally posted by Accelerated: quote:"Is religeon in general the true force behind our morals and ethics or can there be strong ethical and moral values even without this all important religeon"? For the tenth time religion IS the true force behind our CURRENT morals and ethincs.... for the 11-th time, what about the second part of the question? I seem to get the feeling from you that you think there can't be morals without religeon.

Dear sen_vahan, I agree that I let Acc. drag me down several orthogonal paths of discussion in this thread !!! So here's my position. I brought up the "other" civilizations in response to Acc.'s statements that say: quote:By Acc:... If it wasnt for the Church we would be many hundred years behind. quote:By me:Ethics and morals do not have their roots in religeon. I think you are very WRONG in this statement. Ethics and morals have evolved, but their roots lie in Christianity (in the Western World anyway) Ultimately, all I started off saying is that in MY definition of a "trully enlightenend" or "trully civilized" (I used those interchangably) society, morals and ethics will (and should be) based on reason and thought and NOT religion. I am saying in such a society (as I have defined it in my head), religeon and spirituality are useless. So, the arguments above were NOT about this. They seemed to me (at the time) to be about Acc's claims that Chirstianity has been responsible for all the wonderful things we have (such as our advanced science, our great set of moral values, etc etc) ... I on the other hand, believe that the Christian church, although helped science in many cases, actually did more harm to it than good. So I think it all comes down to this: "Is religeon in general the true force behind our morals and ethics or can there be strong ethical and moral values even without this all important religeon"?

Oh believe me, right now, anything, even you is more interesting than all these damn 0's and 1's ... I have some data that just looks like noise and I am trying to make heads and tails out of it ... working on a Journal paper which was due two days ago!!! But it's almost done ... The cool thing is that at least my figures "look" nice ... they look pretty complicated with lots of dots and lines and dashes. I even have a few equations that are long and had to wrap them along several lines. It has all the elements of a top notch paper ... a catchy title, an ambiguous abstract, a long boring intro, some references to other people and what they have done (in case they read the paper), some technical preliminaries showing I can copy paste things out of books in the library, some complicated formulas and equations that no one will understand, and the all important "experimental results" figures ... yup, I have it all!!! Paper done We definitely will come back to this but I am about to pass out ... (just got back home) ... in the mean time, take a look at this and you'll know what I am takling about when writing "technical papers" ... so much for "science" :barf: It's how IEEE authors would write 1+1=2 (taken from the Stanford SMIC (Microwave Integrated Circuits Lab) ... really hillarious stuff http://www-smirc.stanford.edu/images/ieee_guide.jpg

Ok let's get back to the main argument. You are saying 'religeon in general as a moral force'. I am saying 'reason and logic in general as a moral force'. In the past, YOU PROBABLY VERY RIGHT. In a trully civilized society, I say you wrong. No need for religeon. Rational thought and reason is enough force. Sorry if I seem to be dropping words in my sentences but I haven't slept in 36 hours ...

What happened to Egypt? I am no history buff but I thought they had a great civilization before Jesus showed up!!! The chinese seemed to do fine as well. What about the Inkas in South America? Didn't they have an advanced civilization with "modern"-type cities where they all got along fine? Are you telling me there were no morlas and ethics before God and Jesus showed up with the Bible about 2000 years ago? I agree that the Church has had a strong influence on the development of science in Europe in the past centuries. It makes sense ... they had the money and science aint cheap!!! But the likes of Aristotle, Plato, Pythagoras, etc etc didn't do too bad without Christianity either. Oh and should we turn this thread into the "immoral" things that the church has done? How many witches did they burn? How many scientists did they destroy ... those who dared to say the Earth was round ... those who dared to say we revolved around the Sun? Those who dared to say evolution can and does happen? The "church" may have helped science a lot but I am SURE it did more BAD than GOOD

A smart guy once said we start to die the day we are born. (I actually got it from this movie with Danny DeVitto where he's a teacher in the Army, teaching Shakespeare to a bunch of failing kids. I LOVE that movie ) . [ July 21, 2002, 10:34 PM: Message edited by: Sip ]

quote:Originally posted by Accelerated:... He [GOD] may not be in the form as described in the Koran or the Bible, but not far and certainly far superior to our meagre existance. For one, how do you think the world and the universe came into existence? The Big Bang I believe is a load of rubbish... I don't believe in GOD. But then, I am 'enlightened' enough to acknowledge the possibility of it's existance. I am not certain about Big Bang or any other theories about the origin of the Universe (I don't think there is a single human being that can be certain of it). However, I don't usually dismiss things as rubbish without sufficient evidence. That's what I think is the definition of "enlightened" ... basing beliefs on "reason" and empirical observations (not on hearsay, guesstimation, or imagination). Would our societies have been different without Christianity? Probably. Would we be in a complete state of disarray and kill and rape each other every day? Probably not. Ethics and morals do not have their roots in religeon. I think they have deep 'reasons' for their existence. We don't steal and kill each other since GOD said so! No, we don't steal and we don't kill each other because doing so, would completely undermine 'civil' and 'social' existence in an advanced race such as us humans. We had 'civilized' societies way before christianity ... and we will have them long after it's disappearance as well Yes, I am usually an optimist . [ July 21, 2002, 10:30 PM: Message edited by: Sip ]

I have seen most of these before but they made me laugh again ... Only in America ... [*]1.... can a pizza get to your house faster than an ambulance. [*]2.... are there handicap parking places in front of a skating rink. [*]3.... do drugstores make the sick walk all the way to the back of the store to get their prescriptions while healthy people can buy cigarettes at the front. [*]4.... do people order double cheeseburgers, large fries, and a diet coke. [*]5.... do banks leave both doors open and then chain the pens to the counters. [*]6.... do we leave cars worth thousands of dollars in the driveway and put our useless junk in the garage. [*]7.... do we use answering machines to screen calls and then have call waiting so we won't miss a call from someone we didn't want to talk to in the first place. [*]8.... do we buy hot dogs in packages of ten and buns in packages of eight. [*]9.... do we use the word 'politics' to describe the process so well: 'Poli' in Latin meaning 'many' and 'tics' meaning 'bloodsucking creatures'. [*]10.... do they have drive-up ATM machines with Braille lettering. " title="" src="smilies/thumbup.gif" />

To his defense, I don't think he meant alcohol followed by driving. He was merely ordering his preference.

Holly CRAP dude! That must have sucked : Glad you seem to be ok. Definitely go and have yourself checked out if you haven't already done so. The adrenaline in such situations can make you feel like nothing is wrong but you could have serious internal injuries. I sincerely hope it's not the case. So I guess there were no airbags in the car?

So I'm sitting at home and for once trying to get some work done when I realize my connection from home to UCLA is slower than a 1980s 300bps modem!!! So now keep in mind we live about 20 miles from UCLA .... So this is what the route for my poor packets look like from home to school: code: 1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 192.168.0.1 2 13 ms 15 ms 14 ms 216.x.x.x 3 14 ms 14 ms 14 ms 216.x.x.x 4 14 ms 13 ms 13 ms 207.217.2.129 5 13 ms 12 ms 13 ms bor01-ge-1-2.ca-pasadena0.ne.earthlink.net [209.165.101.1] 6 38 ms 36 ms 37 ms bor02-oc12-6-2.co-denver0.ne.earthlink.net [209.86.82.78] 7 57 ms 55 ms 55 ms bor01-p-6-1.mo-stlouis0.ne.earthlink.net [209.86.82.6] 8 56 ms 54 ms 55 ms bor02-ge-1-1.mo-stlouis0.ne.earthlink.net [209.86.83.10] 9 60 ms 60 ms 60 ms bor01-p6-1.il-chicago0.ne.earthlink.net [209.86.82.10] 10 60 ms 60 ms 61 ms bor02-ge-1-1.il-chicago0.ne.earthlink.net [209.86.83.14] 11 65 ms 64 ms 65 ms bor02-so-6-1.in-indianap0.ne.earthlink.net [209.86.82.41] 12 65 ms 65 ms 65 ms bor01-ge-1-1.in-indianap0.ne.earthlink.net [209.86.83.41] 13 80 ms 80 ms 80 ms bor01-so-6-1.ga-atlanta0.ne.earthlink.net [209.86.82.37] 14 93 ms 93 ms 93 ms bor02-so-6-1.va-ashburn0.ne.earthlink.net [209.86.82.33] 15 93 ms 93 ms 93 ms bor03-vl-2.va-ashburn0.ne.earthlink.net [209.165.104.133] 16 98 ms 92 ms 92 ms 206.204.183.9 17 100 ms 94 ms 94 ms pos8-0-brc2-heva.us.conxion.net [206.204.250.93] 18 95 ms 95 ms 94 ms ge2-0-brc1-heva.us.conxion.com [206.204.250.81] 19 181 ms 173 ms 175 ms pos7-0-brc1-svca.us.conxion.net [206.204.250.109] 20 173 ms 173 ms 173 ms ge2-0-brc2-svca.us.conxion.net [206.204.250.90] 21 175 ms 175 ms 174 ms atm1-0-s1-brc1-paca.us.conxion.net [206.204.250.226] 22 98 ms 98 ms 98 ms STAN-GSR-GE-PAIX-2924.GE.Calren2.net [198.32.251.1] 23 99 ms 98 ms 98 ms SUNV--STAN.POS.calren2.net [198.32.249.73] 24 106 ms 107 ms 105 ms C2-QANH-GSR-QSV-GSR.ATM.calren2.net [198.32.249.154] 25 111 ms 107 ms 106 ms USC--QAnh.POS.calren2.net [198.32.248.18] 26 106 ms 106 ms 106 ms ISI--USC.POS.calren2.net [198.32.248.26] 27 107 ms 107 ms 108 ms UCLA--ISI.POS.calren2.net [198.32.248.30] 28 110 ms 108 ms 109 ms calren--border.backbone.ucla.net [169.232.35.9] 29 109 ms 116 ms 109 ms border--core.backbone.ucla.net [169.232.6.10] 30 109 ms 108 ms 109 ms core--anderson.backbone.ucla.net [169.232.51.30] So they start off here, go to Passadena California, Denver Colorado, St. Louis Missouri, Indianapolis Indiana, Atlanta Georgia, Ashburn Virginia, then make their way back to California, Stanford university, then a visit to USC (and ISI) and then finally to good'ol UCLA !!!! Isn't this amazing? . [ July 20, 2002, 04:18 PM: Message edited by: Sip ]

quote:Originally posted by Rubo:I am sure you guys already had plenty discussions of what it means being an Armenian so I will pass this subject. Yes, plenty of discussions! But nothing concrete seems to have come out. I don't think there is a definite answer to the question ... much like the meaning of life question! Everyone has his or her own take on it (what it means to be Armenian). Cheers Oh and I feel the same way about the AG deniers. Now this is one thing where the FACTS are there and are indisputable.

quote:Originally posted by Rubo:Sip I was talking about a TV program about Turkey. I guess you are lucky that you can dissociate the Armenian experience in Turkey and enjoy the little Touristy activities. I may be "lucky" but I always feel 'left out' and not like a 'true' Armenian due to my feelings. I have always felt like I should hate the turks ... As a kid, I was told to scream such things off the top of my lungs when we were marching each year for April 24th in Iran. Then, as I grew older, I started paying attention to what I could see to form my opinions on (just like you, dear Rubo, as an Artist have done the same). Granted, being stuck in purely academic circles so far in my life, I have had a very narrow view of what is trully out there. But the 'turks' I have come in contact with have all been extremely nice and normal individuals which have managed to put me in a complete state of confusion ... from one hand I have the Armenian cries and my childhood brain washings about the turks ... on the other hand I deal with these few individuals on a daily basis, some of whom have become my friends. Note that I had a VERY similar experience regarding Germans. For years and years I saw the world war 2 movies and jewish cries growing up in Iran. I was hateful of the germans and I despised everything about them... and then, somehow, we had to LIVE there for 2 years ... oh the horror !!!!!!! But nothing could be farther from it. I found Germans in general to be extremely pleasant people. I had a lot of fun going to school there as a growing teenager and developed strong friendships with several classmates. These are some of the reasons why I am a confused mess of thoughts right now. And everytime I hear chants of "We Armenains Hate All Turks" I get even more depressed ... well, I don't hate all turks ... so am I not an Armenian then? (I know sounds pretty childish but nevertheless, I have had that delimma for many many years) Oh, and one time, I gave this turkish guy the wrong answer on a test (he was sitting next to me). I really HATED myself for it since I didn't do it just to mess with him. I didn't do it to play a trick on him (I have done that many times before with others). I did it because deep down inside there was pure and sheer hatered bubbling somewhere in my guts. I didn't like that at all.

quote:Originally posted by sen_vahan:"I was stuck in traffic today in 107 degree (F not C ) weather so of course I started wondering randomly again ... Is "freedom of religion" trully possible in a civilized society? " Sip jan, why did you start to think about such terrible things in a traffic?... Didn't you have some water there?... I am seriously thinking of making a big hat for myself with a BIG heat sink and a cooling fan on it! I keep my computer CPU cooler than my head sometimes!!!!! It's a wonder I don't crash or just get "stuck" somewhere. Gotta love whoever designed our brain quote:by the way, i do not understand why a civilized society should not have a religion? I am lost.. It sounds brave but why do you think so? What is then a civilized society? Ok, I am NOT certain on my position on this as my views change day by day. At the moment, I am thinking that religeon was set in place to establish guidlines, morals, and a "way of life" for those who were not able to think clearly on their own. Things like "you shouldn't steal", "you shouldn't kill" etc etc had to be enforced using the "fear of hell" factor (example from christianity), as opposed to logical and ethical reasons of why one should live that way. A "civilized" society, in my dictionary, implies that it's individual members are capable of rational thought and clear thinking. There must of course be laws to establish a "standard" baseline of what is accepted by the masses but no religeon would be required anymore to strictly define what each individual should and should not do. Now on the spiritual side of things I am fairly convinced on my standpoint. A trully enlightened person does not need spirituality to feel good about life and have a purpose. Thus, I find that aspect of religeon, useless in a "trully" civilized society. And I fully realize this is a completely unpopular stance but all I have is myself to model my view of reality on.

I think the official reason for the raid was to serve warrants for illegal posession of firearms and explosives. In addition, this is what the PBS site says: "Koresh acknowledged on a videotape sent out of the compound during the standoff that he had fathered more than 12 children by several "wives" who were as young as 12 or 13 when they became pregnant." On top of that, I think they were beating the kids and "abusing" them which is a BIG no no in the US. Here's the PBS site.

Oh I see ... No they did NOT want the suicide. But given the options, they selected suicide as the better alternative. This is why I do NOT defend the US governments actions since they are the ones who ultimately presented the Davidians with the "options" (surrender or die).

Because the suicide, unfortunately, did not take out all the dumb asses in the world It only took out those who were in the compound. Note: the "childeren" who happened to be caught up in this whole ugly incident are excpetions to my comments above. They would have probably grown up to become dumb asses, but at the time, they were nothing but stupid childeren. Note also that I think all childeren are stupid!!! At some point, a select few develop abilities to think on their own ... but the majority, it seems, remain stupid as they grow old. By the way, hope you are not getting the impression that I am "defending" the US government's actions in that incident ... NO. I am NOT. However, I don't think those branch Davidian's were particularly "bright" so to say. There are SO many ways to live fruitful, successful lives (yes, even with as many women as that David Koresh guy wanted to have) without ending up like BBQ in some desolate compound in the middle of no where Just sad ... very sad. [ July 19, 2002, 10:32 PM: Message edited by: Sip ]

Dear Rubo, I was confused regarding what you were talking about ... is this some sort of TV program you are referring to? quote:I was disappointed that the report was successful in it’s intend to attract many tourists who are more interested in food and carpets then real history about the placeI am really not much of a carpet fan but I definitely fall in that turist category attracted to food. As long as they have good food, I'll probably visit there one day So why were you disappointed in the reports success? There are great things to visit in Turkey and that's what they pointed out. And naturally they would focus on the turist that has "spending" in mind as opposed to the ones that have "history" and "looking around" in mind ...

Probably not. But what do you expect to happen when you set your own building on fire and close off all the doors and exits? At times like this, I see the laws of "natural selection" really working out!!! I don't know if you know about these other set of morons that commited mass suicide to get on this commet that came close to earth a few years ago (was it the Hale Bob or something?) ... I think several of them had already castrated themselves for whatever reason. I hope they are having fun on the comet. (hope they all didn't soffocate due to lack of air )

... because they were doing "illegal" things