joelmichael

The early church had many disagreements, especially over observance of Jewish law such as circumcision. But the Judaizers (as they are called) essentially lost the debate, which Paul was active in, and the Church became rather Gentile-oriented. Many other things were up for dispute as well, such as the exact nature of Jesus, but these were ultimately ironed out under ecumenical councils which ratified certain dogmatic truths such as the Trinity. Beginning with the First Council of Nicaea in 325 AD, convened by Constantine, Rome sought to define Christianity properly and began to eradicate all heretics, such as Arianism and Catharism, though some remote groups such as the Copts evaded them due to being out of their jurisdiction.

Christianity thus maintained relative internal consistency under the Roman Church, and spread throughout Europe, until around the year 1000 when the Greek Orthodox split off from the Catholics. However, they still maintain very similar dogmas (including that circumcision is unnecessary).

Martin Luther did his work in the 16th century which caused a great deal of schism in the Church; until this time Protestants did not exist. King Henry VIII abandoned Catholicism and invented Anglicanism. All of these people nonetheless still believed circumcision was not necessary and it was not generally practiced in Europe, and many of their liturgical beliefs were much more aligned with traditional Catholicism than modern evangelicals.

It wasn't until the US, with its enormous variety, lack of traditional oversight, and radical re-interpretation of the Bible by individuals, that circumcision regained some religious significance in fringe groups. Pentecostalism in particular did not start until the 19th century. However, after looking around, I can't find any evidence that even they universally see circumcision as a religious requirement for Christians. Some Christians practice it anyway, but not as a religious requirement. Incidentally, so do many atheists.

I think it can be said that not only the New Testament but almost the entire history of Christianity is against circumcision being a religious requirement. There was disagreement in the early church, and there is disagreement in some fringe groups today, but it was never a mainstream view.

Catholics and Pentecostals are different organizations. Back in the old days we used to purge non-orthodox views, but that's not as tenable anymore, so we have thousands of interpretations. In any event, the traditional Christian view is that circumcision is no longer necessary, as stated by Paul several times in the New Testament.

You are right, and thank you for writing this. Our company agreed early on that tech interest wasn't essential for the success of our business. However, I do think it can be useful for finding engineering talent.

I know I saw it on the SA forums, where it may have originated. People would reply "too long; didn't read" to dismiss a post, which eventually was abbreviated to just "tl;dr". Anticipating this reply, authors of long posts would end their post with a "tl;dr" summary.

Why not just work out the bugs in his redesign? You said he got it done extremely quickly. It didn't seem like he was presenting it as a final version, but rather as a demo. Instead you throw it all out? How long did the replacement version take to finish? How many people worked on it? Was it feature-complete and free of bugs?

This reads like someone getting their spirit broken.

He was 20 years old and joking around in private AIM conversations. Who shall throw the first stone?

If someone's child has just died, is it more important that you be kind to them or that you be clever?

They produce our civilization. Right now you are speaking philosophically. Why bother?

Are we to regard Ethics as irrelevant? Logic? Aesthetics? Epistemology? Metaphysics? These are the five branches of philosophy.

I majored in Computer Science and have a minor in Philosophy. I consider philosophy the most important element of my life, and the lives of everyone else, often unknowingly. I see philosophy all the time on Hacker News and elsewhere. What do you call debates over law, for instance? Are those scientific? No, those are philosophy. So much of what humans do is philosophy that to suggest they do not participate in it because they aren't talking in "academic" terms is simply inaccurate.

There is an important social element to watching a show. When a new episode comes out, you can chat about it with friends and coworkers. That isn't true if you have waited weeks or months to watch it.

Of the four main female characters, there is only one prostitute.

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leisure_Suit_Larry_in_the_Land_...

Any student who wrote in a direction perpendicular to the lines of the paper would likely be sent in for well-deserved psychological counseling.

You are mistaken. SOPA required a court order.

Does he really think potential terrorists or criminals are going to hijack a plane using toothbrushes or popsicle sticks? The purpose of the TSA is to screen all passengers for real threats like guns, blades, and most of all, bombs.

He says there was no outcry over the backscatters. That's just out of touch; it was all over the Internet and even major news media back around November of 2010. Liberals and conservatives alike found the idea of their nude images too far. This kept backscatters from being deployed for the most part; have you ever seen one?

Seems to me that the TSA has changed their backscatter approach since then. Instead of showing the full images to security personnel it will do some computational analysis of the images and then represent any anomalies on a simple drawing of a human. The people going through the machine will see the same images the TSA will. See this image: http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/threatlevel/2012/02/TSA-Bo...

Nobody likes waiting in line or taking off their shoes. But I'd much rather do that than let people get onto my plane with explosives. Forget patriotism, it's a matter of your own personal safety.

Once you've generally sussed out how all of the different perspectives view issues, and thereby understand the patterns by which the world operates, the news starts seeming repetitious.

Looks like Wikipedia has been corrected as a result of this article. Well done to the author, and shame on those who try to distort the truth.

San Francisco, CA. Full time or intern.

We'd like to hear from interested Rails developers at all levels of experience. If you're new to Rails, this is a great place to learn. If you've already got years under your belt, then we'd love to have another strong performer.

CoverHound is building a platform that will make the site the Kayak.com of insurance shopping. This disruptive technology has already attracted several talented team members, not to mention venture capitalists.

Email joel [at] coverhound.com for more info.

I tried defending it on Hacker News and received a dozen downvotes. Don't be surprised if everyone in an echo chamber agrees.

I think people are being a bit hysterical. I remember the same thing happening when the DMCA was passed. The government just wants to end flagrant abuses of piracy. I don't think they are going to sic their dogs on Reddit. Sites like YouTube are already in compliance. So, I think it does smack of conspiracy theory, yes.

I'll believe it when I see it. I just don't believe the US government wants to shut down Reddit, Wikipedia, YouTube, and all of the other major sites the alarmists are claiming.

I felt the same way. Turns out there was a story in July with an almost identical title, but they seem to be different occurrences. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2725983

In the patent wars, patent trolls will prove to be valuable allies.

You either hold yourself and others accountable to a high standard, or you rationalize their failings to avoid the sin of judgment. I'm with the former camp.

Agreed, this sort of thing belongs over on Reddit's politics echo chamber. At least I can unsubscribe from that.

Everyone who uses CoffeeScript knows JavaScript. CoffeeScript is there for our pleasure.

Do you think it's better for the sun to rise at 8:25 am? Because that would be the situation during the winter solstice in San Francisco if DST was made permanent. Not much fun to wake up and go to work in darkness.

http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/astronomy.html?n=224&#...

Daylight Saving Time is great. It helps us have more sunlight during the spring, summer, and fall. Everyone is happy when it is enacted in the spring and they get to have sunlight when they go home from work. And in the fall, you get an extra hour of sleep. It's win-win.

I'm with Arrington. He isn't racist in the normal way the term is used, it's a very serious accusation to make, and rudely stifling his ability to speak his mind on this is disingenuous and a typical tactic of those criticizing him.

Bizarre comic tweeter @horse_ebooks has the same Klout score (67) as @biz. It was actually higher a little while ago.

Klout has also sent me their unsolicited Perk spam several times, even after I disabled it via their website. I complained to them on Twitter but got no response. In the end I blacklisted their domain.

In Rails, the application belongs in app/, not lib/ or a gem. If this does not meet your admittedly obsessive design concerns then I suggest not using Rails.