I'm talking about radioactive decay, a pretty well understood phenomenon. When you start adjusting variables to compensate for the crazy belief that the entire universe is 6000 years old, you're left with a situation where you can't explain why certain elements decay at the predictable rate we observe and why others don't.
Just out of curiosity, at what point do you draw the line? Because I only know one person who describes herself as a 'christian fundamentalist' and she refuses to believe any science that proves that the earth is more than ~6000 years old. When I explained to her that simply refusing that fact throws out almost our entire understanding of the universe around us, from the distance of the stars to why the atom's we're composed of don't just fall apart, her response was akin to sticking one's fingers in their ears and screaming "i can't hear you" over and over again.
She didn't think that she was anti-science, she just thought that she could cherry pick facts from the bible and set up special cases in which the physical laws of nature no longer apply.
That's exactly what I thought. Why the hell are the four biggest banks so in bed with each other that they're having meetings to determine which of their other competitors is a threat? What is wrong with the govermnent oversight of the Australian financial industry that those banks have the balls to come right out and state that they're worried Google and Paypal are going to steal the market that they've divided up amongst themselves?
If manual labor is your thing, by all means go for it. It just seems silly to me to develop righteous indignation over people not wanting to perform menial tasks. I don't see any nobility in tilling your field by hand with an ox-drawn plow when a tractor will do the job better, faster and easier; in other words, 'more convenient'.
There are tasks we all have to perform to get by in this life, but it seems silly to me to define your own self worth through the effort you put into such tasks. I'd much rather define myself through the things that matter to me and the things I'm passionate about, rather than the tasks I needlessly made more difficult and still managed to finish.
I don't get done cleaning my toilets every weekend and think "I'm proud of the excellent job I did of sanitizing this bowl.", I think "Yay, that chore is done, now I can move on to something less mind-numbing."
I don't finish mowing my lawn every week and think "The 45 minutes I just spent mowing makes me a better person.", I think "That chore's done, time to clean the pool."
I don't finish cranking out 500 shotshells every month and think "The shells I have re-loaded are vastly superior to what I could have bought at the store, the guys at the range are gonna be jealous.", I think "I just saved $100, so I can afford to go skeet shooting more often."
From my point of view, the 'self-esteem' and 'self respect' issues are reversed. Why do you have self esteem or self respect for doing the same thing everyone else does? It's like putting a 'participation trophy' above the mantle and telling everyone how proud you are to have received the award everyone else involved got. Do something special or meaningful, and have self respect and self esteem because you did those things. Being proud that you did stuff you don't enjoy just makes you seem like a masochist.
If "having someone else carry the merchandise I purchased to my truck and load it in the back for me" is "giving up self-respect", I need to find a way to give up more of it.
Nah, It's more like saying "here's a fueled up truck, if you can find anyone who leaves their doors unlocked, and decide to take all their stuff, well that's your business."
And the fact that we have a special term for 'rich people who actually give some of their money away', and are able to compile a list of those few people who do so wasn't enough to demonstrate to you that it's an uncommon phenomenon?
Oh, you're right. I missed that context. Because it's not there.
That makes about as much sense as saying that the context in which Jesus meant for you to 'love your neighbor' was 'if you like your neighbor, and enjoy his company, otherwise feel free to be a dick to him.'
Well, if they can send one person back in time, why couldn't they send all the towers, lines, servers, power plants running them and support staff necessary to operate those phones back?
Once we master time travel, moving several million tons of copper, steel, electronics, generators, etc. through the time portal should be easy.
The real question is why is my cell phone bill so high when that film demonstrates that it's obviously 80+ year old technology.
I don't have to guess at what Jesus would have wanted you to do, because he said it himself:
Matthew 19:21:
Jesus answered, "If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me."
You probably don't want to bring up wealth re-distribution when arguing in favor of the idea that jesus was a free market advocate.
Jesus explicitly instructed his followers to re-distribute their wealth in Matthew 21:19.
Jesus answered, 'If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.'
What? How is that even a response to what I said?
I never mentioned anything about corporations, and if I had, I would have said that purely profit-driven organizations (which is what Corporations are) would definitely have been something American Jesus liked, but Bible Jesus despised.
I went straight to the source and made my decision from there. It was obvious to me, even as a teenager that the Jesus in the Bible I was forced to read for 18 years at Sunday school was not the same guy that they were talking about in church or politics. The Jesus in the bible was a cool guy who's message was about love. The Jesus everyone else was taking about was a hateful prick.
Bible Jesus was most certainly a Socialist. Give unto Ceasar... , It's easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven... , love your neighbor... etc, etc.
American Jesus is an ass kicking, name taking, blonde haired, blue eyed Republican Super-Soldier in God's Army who hates fags, liberals and minorities, and is leading the charge in Crusade v2.0 at the moment.
What exactly are you disputing about the article? Just because it's the Chinese party run newspaper doesn't mean that everything they say is a lie or propaganda. The article is an opinion piece, as all reviews are, and you may disagree with some of the reactions to specific features of the iPod, but there's no factual inaccuracies present in the article regarding what the iPod can or can't do.
Good luck with that telethon, I don't think you'll be getting any money.
Commercial airlines come in because the government hugely subsidizes the commercial airline industry in the US, running everything from air traffic control to airport security at little to no cost to the airlines involved because having cheap, functional air transportation in this country is in the best interest of US businesses.
Your opposion to 'all of it' until everything is run the way you want is incredibly childish and is the reason that the american political system is so broken right now. Republican strategy has been to shut down everything until they get everything 100% their way, and it's doing a great deal of harm to the nation's economy.
While I agree that our military has no business fighting any of the wars we're involved in at the moment, and that the DEA is a racist, authoritarian organization that should be eliminated, and that the War On [ABSTRACT_CONCEPT] is a war waged against one's own citizens, if the lesson that you take from those examples is "Taxation is theft" rather than "We need to get our government to stop wasting money that they DON'T have harming Americans and American Interests", then I have even less hope for the future of this country.
If taxes are a kind of theft from an individual, then driving on a public road, using a public library, riding on a commercial airline, and calling the police are all kinds of theft from the government or community.
We were paying for it just fine until Reagan came along and convinced the voting populace that taxation is theft and that defect spending is the wave of the future. Reagan's tax cuts (which have hung around much longer than the Red threat) are what sent this country spiraling into debt we haven't recovered from, not the cold war.
Re:Israel is an interesting exercise in Game Theor
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I'm talking about radioactive decay, a pretty well understood phenomenon. When you start adjusting variables to compensate for the crazy belief that the entire universe is 6000 years old, you're left with a situation where you can't explain why certain elements decay at the predictable rate we observe and why others don't.
She didn't think that she was anti-science, she just thought that she could cherry pick facts from the bible and set up special cases in which the physical laws of nature no longer apply.
That's exactly what I thought. Why the hell are the four biggest banks so in bed with each other that they're having meetings to determine which of their other competitors is a threat? What is wrong with the govermnent oversight of the Australian financial industry that those banks have the balls to come right out and state that they're worried Google and Paypal are going to steal the market that they've divided up amongst themselves?
Doh, forgot to include my counterexample: Chainsawing. If you ever need anything chainsawed, I'm your man. That's a menial task I actually enjoy.
There are tasks we all have to perform to get by in this life, but it seems silly to me to define your own self worth through the effort you put into such tasks. I'd much rather define myself through the things that matter to me and the things I'm passionate about, rather than the tasks I needlessly made more difficult and still managed to finish.
I don't get done cleaning my toilets every weekend and think "I'm proud of the excellent job I did of sanitizing this bowl.", I think "Yay, that chore is done, now I can move on to something less mind-numbing."
I don't finish mowing my lawn every week and think "The 45 minutes I just spent mowing makes me a better person.", I think "That chore's done, time to clean the pool."
I don't finish cranking out 500 shotshells every month and think "The shells I have re-loaded are vastly superior to what I could have bought at the store, the guys at the range are gonna be jealous.", I think "I just saved $100, so I can afford to go skeet shooting more often." From my point of view, the 'self-esteem' and 'self respect' issues are reversed. Why do you have self esteem or self respect for doing the same thing everyone else does? It's like putting a 'participation trophy' above the mantle and telling everyone how proud you are to have received the award everyone else involved got. Do something special or meaningful, and have self respect and self esteem because you did those things. Being proud that you did stuff you don't enjoy just makes you seem like a masochist.
If "having someone else carry the merchandise I purchased to my truck and load it in the back for me" is "giving up self-respect", I need to find a way to give up more of it.
You've obviously never bought a gun at wal-mart. They have the best prices on new Ruger 10/22s.
Nah, It's more like saying "here's a fueled up truck, if you can find anyone who leaves their doors unlocked, and decide to take all their stuff, well that's your business."
And the fact that we have a special term for 'rich people who actually give some of their money away', and are able to compile a list of those few people who do so wasn't enough to demonstrate to you that it's an uncommon phenomenon?
Oh, you're right. I missed that context. Because it's not there.
That makes about as much sense as saying that the context in which Jesus meant for you to 'love your neighbor' was 'if you like your neighbor, and enjoy his company, otherwise feel free to be a dick to him.'
Well, if they can send one person back in time, why couldn't they send all the towers, lines, servers, power plants running them and support staff necessary to operate those phones back?
Once we master time travel, moving several million tons of copper, steel, electronics, generators, etc. through the time portal should be easy.
The real question is why is my cell phone bill so high when that film demonstrates that it's obviously 80+ year old technology.
I don't have to guess at what Jesus would have wanted you to do, because he said it himself:
Matthew 19:21:
Jesus answered, "If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me."
You probably don't want to bring up wealth re-distribution when arguing in favor of the idea that jesus was a free market advocate.
Jesus explicitly instructed his followers to re-distribute their wealth in Matthew 21:19.
Jesus answered, 'If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.'
What? How is that even a response to what I said? I never mentioned anything about corporations, and if I had, I would have said that purely profit-driven organizations (which is what Corporations are) would definitely have been something American Jesus liked, but Bible Jesus despised.
I went straight to the source and made my decision from there. It was obvious to me, even as a teenager that the Jesus in the Bible I was forced to read for 18 years at Sunday school was not the same guy that they were talking about in church or politics. The Jesus in the bible was a cool guy who's message was about love. The Jesus everyone else was taking about was a hateful prick.
Do you mean American Jesus, or Bible Jesus?
Bible Jesus was most certainly a Socialist. Give unto Ceasar... , It's easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven... , love your neighbor... etc, etc.
American Jesus is an ass kicking, name taking, blonde haired, blue eyed Republican Super-Soldier in God's Army who hates fags, liberals and minorities, and is leading the charge in Crusade v2.0 at the moment.
What exactly are you disputing about the article? Just because it's the Chinese party run newspaper doesn't mean that everything they say is a lie or propaganda. The article is an opinion piece, as all reviews are, and you may disagree with some of the reactions to specific features of the iPod, but there's no factual inaccuracies present in the article regarding what the iPod can or can't do.
Space Pirates!
So you're a homophobic libertarian?
It's a prison colony, you need to declare the crime you committed to gain entry.
I can only imagine the casualties we'll suffer launching our invasion and occupation of the sun for possessing WMD's.
Commercial airlines come in because the government hugely subsidizes the commercial airline industry in the US, running everything from air traffic control to airport security at little to no cost to the airlines involved because having cheap, functional air transportation in this country is in the best interest of US businesses.
Your opposion to 'all of it' until everything is run the way you want is incredibly childish and is the reason that the american political system is so broken right now. Republican strategy has been to shut down everything until they get everything 100% their way, and it's doing a great deal of harm to the nation's economy.
While I agree that our military has no business fighting any of the wars we're involved in at the moment, and that the DEA is a racist, authoritarian organization that should be eliminated, and that the War On [ABSTRACT_CONCEPT] is a war waged against one's own citizens, if the lesson that you take from those examples is "Taxation is theft" rather than "We need to get our government to stop wasting money that they DON'T have harming Americans and American Interests", then I have even less hope for the future of this country.
If taxes are a kind of theft from an individual, then driving on a public road, using a public library, riding on a commercial airline, and calling the police are all kinds of theft from the government or community.
We were paying for it just fine until Reagan came along and convinced the voting populace that taxation is theft and that defect spending is the wave of the future. Reagan's tax cuts (which have hung around much longer than the Red threat) are what sent this country spiraling into debt we haven't recovered from, not the cold war.
Excellent post/username combo.