I also went to Mann Eye and had mine done. The people were great and made me feel confident, but it was the technology that they had there that helped make the decision for me. The have the newest laser technology with the smallest profile combine withd intralase for cutting the flap.
The intralase part of the procedure (cutting the flap with a laser rather than a microkeratome) was really important to me. I knew a young girl who had just had the LASIK done at another doctor in Houston and they messed up when using the microkeratome and almost blinded her in that eye.
Even in spite of that I was confident enough in the intralase technology to go ahead with the procedure. I see 20/10 in my right eye and 20/15 in my left now. Sometimes I can see through women's clothes as well. Ok I made that last part up, but having vision this good is like living in a fairy tale for me.
I think I witnessed an importation of this cultural idea when I was in highschool.
We had a group of about 40 mostly Asian students that we called the "Xerox club." They would all get together in the morning before school in the cafeteria with the other studens. While everyone else was studying, eating, or trying to catch one last wink before school these guys and girls were copying their homework. Usually only 1 or 2 people would do the assignment and then they would pass it around for the others to copy. Once you finished copying you handed it to someone else so that everyone culd finish before the bell. It was pretty stealthy because while some were copying other people were taking and having a good time like normal, but all the students in the higher level classes knew what they were doing. Most of us had participated at one time or another as well. As long as you were cool with them they didn't mind you getting in on the action.
There were 2 funny results. First, every once in awhile people would grab the wrong assignment and turn it in. Sometimes it went unnoticed but other times they had to explain why they had someone elses homeowrk. Easy enough, we were studying together, etc. What was better is that one of my friends showed me that the teacher had graded his calculus homework and not even noticed that it wasn't his. He laughed and said something about "All Asians must look the same" to the teacher.
Second, copying doesn't teach well. Many of those students were in AP classes and after a few weeks of taking the copying shortcut they were behind on the book knowledge. They were pretty desperate come test time and many of them cheated. I saw furtive coded hand signals, almost microscopically written notes in the side of a pencil, ye olde graphing calculator with memory trick (that was new in my day), and even the long-sleeves-in-summer-with-stuff-written-on-your- arm method.
What surprised me the most was that the people who cheated could rely on the students that knew the answers (the ones they ultimately copied off of) to help them cheat on the tests too.
I understand where you are coming from but I think the idea is not to "add the machine" element, but to "add a possible witness."
In other words I don't think anyone would be upset if there was a number of witnesses to a crime that were able to identify the accused and describe the events in question. Unfortunately, most criminals try to execute their behavior when they think that they are unobserved. An unmanned drone would add the potential to solve a "witnessless" crime.
Yes I understand the chance for abuse. Yes I understand that giving up "liberty" for security leads to having neither. Then again, I also understand that people are kidnapped, murdered, robbed, and beaten daily in large cities in the US and the legal system dosen't have adequate evidence in many cases to even start an investigation.
This ain't a perfect world. This ain't a perfect tool. Neither exist IMHO. What it is is another tool to help the police deal with increasingly dense population in inner cities where they don't have enough funding and manpower to adequately cover the streets.
"that whole alpha monkey/competitive thing is pretty goddamn funny and sad"
First, I would say that you must have never read "how to win friends and influence people" or any of the many acclaimed management/motivation instruction literature with regard to the value of competetion. Competetion like this is a fantastic way to not only motivate people (if you can engineer it as a manager) but also to get them to work to their potential and beyond. People strech themselves and push themselves when motivated to be the best and when they are surrounded by peers that challenge them.
In the same way that women chit-chat and intermingle with their co-workers in an effort to build group cohesiveness (which pays off bigtime in stressful or trying situations), so male competetiveness can result in eliminating those stressful and trying situations by individual effort that is above and beyond the mediocrity that plagues most companies.
Furthermore, if someone establishes himself as the one with the biggest-genetalia it is usually through hard work, innovative thinking, and above average problem solving ability. In a leadership model (rather than a managerial model) company those people are elevated to higher positions to allow them to use their skills to solve larger problems and to teach those below them to the skills that got them elevated.
Competetion in males (and females if they want to interact on this level) can lead to not only personal excellence though trying your best to "win", but also to learning the intimate details of how your co-workers approach similar problems. With that knowledge a leader will be better able to marshall their workforce on a new problem by appointing people to appropriate tasks that allow their strengths to be utilized fully.
In other words, there are valid reasons for the "funny and sad" competetion that you describe. Just as valid as the "silly" relationship building that women do when they are at work. This probably stems from the fact that males accomplish the same relationship building through competetive activity that women do through social interaction. Both are valid and necessary for a healthy work environment, IMHO. You just have to be able to see the whole forest and not just the tree you are under to make it work for you and for those under you.
I think you had some atrocious pastors/teachers in your 20 years.
First John 1:9 says that if you confess (Greek word for "name or cite" as in a legal proceeding) your sins to God He is faithful (acts the same way continually) and just and will forgive you of all your known sins and cleanse you from all unrighteousness (unkonwn sins). Also, the Bible states that once you have been saved by faith in Christ you receive permanent imputation of 39 things, including eternal life with God. No more worrying about if you are going to go to hell after that. In addition, sin is not what leads to damnation. Belief/unbelief in Christ is the deciding factor. Even unbelievers are condemned only after all their good deeds are compared to the goodness of Christ. They are not condemned on the basis of their sins. No one is.
I think you also missed the parts where God says that fear and guilt are sinful thought patterns that lead to more sins and even to blasphemy.
I am not condemning you for choosing to be an agnostic/atheist. You can use your free will however you want and I won't question it. I would, however, question your teachers, pastors, and priests while you were a Christian. The issues you raise about fear, guilt, and damnation were solved for me in the first 20 minutes of studying systematic theology.
As for the scam, I bet you never went to a church that didn't continually ask you for money and discribe tithing as a necessity as a Christian (it is not, it was taxation for a civic authority and has nothing to do with spirituality). Most people haven't. They do exist, however. You just have to know what to look for.
The subject heading sums up your post. First, geocentrism and disbelief of evolution are not basic tennents of Christianity. They are thoughts and belief systems of all sorts of people, but they are not contained in the Bible itself. Second, in the Bible the believer is commanded to not posess fear and that guilt leads to patterns of sin and blasphemy.
You are attacking something that you see and do not like. This is understandable. However, I find it funny that your attack has absolutely nothing to do with the Bible itself. It only lampoons the sloppy thoughts and actions of a group of people who loudly proclaim to be Christian and then proceed to engage in activities that are counter to the letter and spirit of Christianity.
To me this says more about the quality of the Christians that you have interfaced with than it does about you.
"It's ok to say "I just believe it because I want to." Reason need not have anything to do with it, unless you're trying to convince someone else."
Nicely put.
I am a Christian who is fanatical in my belief and research of the Bible. However, I am under the impression that trying to logically prove the existence of God is misguided.
My personal faith is an expression of my respect for the characterestics of the God discribed in the Bible. The understanding I have of God's personal integrity, which combines His ideas of justice, righteousness, and love, makes me want to believe because I place value on imitating and embodying those characteristics. Even if there was concrete proof that God dosen't exist I would still have dedication to the principles that I have learned from studying the Bible and could still believe.
So for me it is not about why God logically exists. If you look at it, logically proving God is a losing proposition anyways. With the mundane existence we currently observe it is hard to argue logically for miracles. The dogmatic principles about what happened pre-universe are completely impossible to "prove" with logic as well. Even proving the existence of a person (Christ) doesn't prove that He was God or that He has a Father in Heaven.
Better to evaluate if you think that there is a God first. If you think that there is a God then evaluate the different religions and see if any of them ring true. Many times as I was growing up I thought to myself "I believe in a God, but not any of the Gods that have been presented to me." For me Christianity was the way to go, but it wasn't until I started studying it from the original languages that it made sense. Before that all I saw was a bunch of closed minded people trying desperately to close the minds of others around them to maintin control and to prevent their own heads from being jerked forcibly from the sand by the modern world. Those people still exist, but the more I understand about the Bible the more I realize that many of the people who proclaim the loudest that they are Christians are usually the most ignorant of what the Bible actually says.
I don't argue with people any more over the existence of the God discribed in the Bible. I know what I believe and I am not one to force something I beleive on someon else. I find it much more rewarding to explain the principles and characteristics of the God in the Bible and why I find them valiable. Everyone can benefit from that regardless of whether or not they believe. If they find something that they understand and identify with and it leads them to faith, all the better.
for months there has been talk in the US of "bunker busting" nukes to be used against Iran's facilities...
All of that is inconsequential compared to the encirclement accomplished with the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq. They are surrounded by American forces on all sides now. Funny how no one except them has noticed this.
Most people thought Iraq was about oil. Morons. The map doesn't lie. It's divide and conquer on all the Arab nations that aren't in bed with the US.
First let me start by saying that my post was written a bit tongue in cheek. If you took it to be an attack on sex and pornography I think that you might be reading too much into it or you might be too close to the subject to evaluate what you are reading without taking dammage to your shields. I guess I did go a bit far when I compared the RIAA's practices to the porn industry's practices. That wasn't fair to the porn industry and I can see how they would see that as insensitive and insulting. My apologies to Ron and Seymoure.
My personal opinion about the addictive qualities of pronography is based on my understanding of the physical reactions to sexual content and my observations of myself and others in reaction to pornography. If you want to call that flame bait, so be it. However, the fact remains that the porn industry works off of what I describe. Maybe it is not addictive in your sense of the word, but I don't see you clarifying that issue at all or providing any input to repudiate my claim.
As for your second point, you are taking a narrow view of the word fetishist. In fact, the context I put the word in is explicitly reflected in the second sentence you quote. A fetish can refert to a fixation or an interest in addition to what you discribe. Maybe the word is a bit loaded to someone who has a fetish but that would just be hypersensitivity on their part. If you check webster you might get a better understanding of the full definition of the word.
As for ancient religions and sexual activity I know the subject well. Certain worship has long included sexual activity as a basic tennent of and expression of the religion. In ancient times this included group sex, homosexuality, bestiality, pederasty, and forcing virgins to make thir first act of sex as a prostitute for the Goddess. The ones that wouldn't comply? Ever heard of virgin sacrifice? There are even references to certain worship practices where parents would, after a progression of more desperate measures to achieve the orgasmic state, put their children into ovens shaped like the god they were worshiping and engage in ritual group sex. The screams of their own progeny being burned alive in sacrifice to their god were supposed to be exceptionally gratifying to those who were ready.
Maybe that is not exactly what you were referring to, but it is an actual researched and documented fact. I bring it up because it shows just a little of what I am trying to mention. My point is not that sex is bad. I personally enjoy it (insert joke about how much your mom enjoys it with me, blah blah blah) quite a bit. But it is subject to abuses and manipulation. I have an aversion to manipulation and I see it as an impingement on my free operation and thought. Basically, any time I feel like people are designing something to heavily influence my behavior without telling me the whole story I get riled up. Whether that means walking in to the grocery store and being bombarded by scientifically designed graphics and colors or clicking on a seemingly innocuous link and being bombarded with images of a three way with a midget, a dolphin, and a baloney sandwich it still pisses me off.
And as for prostrating, you and I both do it every day. Usually during sex. Look it up.
"Why hasn't porn gone bust like the movie and music industries say will happen to them? "
The main difference I see is that porn is an addictive substance. Don't you remember the playground pushers motto, "The first one is always free"?
Many people would not buy porn their first time out. They have to "acquire the taste" first before they will go and spend cash on it. What better way to expose people to it than to make it free and obscenely easy to access?
Most consumers of porn are feshitists of some kind. They enjoy seeing activity "x" over seeing position "y", etc. This selectivity leads to the consumer model of porn. Cater to the individual tastes. Then, if you make it they will come. Sometimes on your face. But invariably they will come and buy it. Not all of them, but enough of them to pay the bills and make it worthwhile.
Even those who never pay for pornographic material help the ponographers consumer model by showing it to others. It spreads through people in an almost a viral way: some are immune, some have it but it is dormant, some are carriers, and some are just plain sick.
So to put it in analogy format: free pirated porn on the internet is to porn sales as FM radio is to album sales. The mechanisms of interest and addiction are different, but the result is similar. Show people something that they want and some of them will spend cash on it.
However, the price of "buying" a new customer for porn is a bit higher than music because the pornograpther is fighting religious conditioning, social stigma, even secular morality in an attempt to gain a new customer. This dosen't even consider the fact of restricted access and delivery methods. Fortunately for those pandering porn they have the biology of the body on their side. From endorphins and adrenaline to sensory neurons and autonomic responses we are hard-wired into sexual desire. All they have to do is pit the body against the inhibitions enough times through repeated exposure and they have a new client, probably for life.
Repeated exposure...Hmmm. Remind you of anything? How about how radio stations play the same song over and over.
I work in the auto industry and what I notice about credit unions is that they provide their clients better interest rates than larger banks (Chase, BofA, Wells, etc.), have lower fees, and much better customer service.
Put one such device on the nerves near the sensory/motor end and another near the central nervous end and put them in communication with encrypted RF signals. The result is that you could speed up the processing of input and drastically speed up reaction time. This also could be used to restore severed nerves to usability.
Dampen the incoming impulses from the meat nerves and substitute impulses from remote robotic appendages and you have intuitive robotic control of remote devices.
With a small enough power source and an exoskeleton and array of these devices on the neurons near/in the central nervous side you could have paraplegics walking around.
Implant them in young children and you could teach them to use remote robotic devices that have neural inputs and outputs that would not be intuitive to normal humans, like multi-armed devices, tentacles, whatever.
The only problems are RF interference, the durability of the implanted devices, getting hacked, expense, nad about a million other things.
Still, I would like to see the transhuman movement kicksstarted with radical alteration of disabled persons. Extreme lifestyle improvements could be achieved for people who need it. Then when the state of the art gets some momentum you will see people choosing to upgrade even when they aren't forced to.
It used to be that people would use "suspension of disbelief" to immerse themselves into a story.
Now it seems like everyone is in need of "suspension of suspension of disbelief." Since when did it become fashonable to read fiction and believe all the hype therein?
If you read Dan Brown and take him as an authority on biblical history and truth and you read Crichton and ridicule him for bending the truth to support his FICTION you might need to take a step back from the novel you are reading and have a healthy dose of reality. Suspension of disbelief should end when the covers are closed.
I feel that the transition to abundant human technological enahncement will come through the gateway of helping the disabled. In terms of need, it could be argued that they are the one that should be addressed first. Calling the desire to help disabled persons "short-sighted" is a bit harsh though. Once technology is created it goes where it is paid for.
However, once the technology is available to augment a disabled person ABOVE the proficency level of a non-disabled person you will see many non-disabled people taking the transhuman route. All it takes is having a paraplegic lift a car off of you once to drive the point home.
Here is the answer to any debate about global warming:
We're fucked.
Sorry to be so vulgar and blunt but there really are not pleasant words to describe the situation for the people of the world.
You and I can scream into any media outlet there is, scientists can forecast with ever increasing precision the cataclysmic repercussions of our continued actions, and yet, the great machine of human industry will rage on unchecked by the rational arguments of concerned people.
We can point fingers at the big guys, shake our heads at the little guys, lament and proclaim until we are hoarse and the media has become bored with the story, but won't change anyhting.
The conscience that you appeal to, the one that looks after unborn generations of future Earth inhabitatns...it dosen't exist. People are obligated to look after the here and now by the structure of economy and the pressures of sustenance. To scrape off a share of their prosperity (subsistence!) and deposit into a future acount for generations to come is unthinkable. To ask a power hungry government (all of them are, some more than others) to enact environmental policies that would protect people in the future is akin to asking people to voluntarily contribute extra on their income tax to help the poor and to pay back the deficit. Sure, it sounds like a good idea, but what person do you know that does it?
China, as a power-centric form of government, will seek any advantage they can for their industry without a thought for their own populace, much less for some future generation.
And as for the USA, well we have much bigger problems to deal with. Elected officials from both parties are routinely ignoring the will of the populace that elected them in favor of their own interests. Even if we, the people, had a majority position on changing the status quo the people in power would probably not respond.
Yep, were totally, completely, irrevocably screwed. All we can hope for is that the Earth will help us out by correcting the situation through some unknown set of checks and balances. Or the Sun cools itself down a bit at our request. Either one of those is more likely than getting countries to enact policies that actually reduce emissions to a level that would start to reverse what we have done.
I know that repeating themes are fantastic for bubblegum pop music and advertising, but poetry that says the same thing over and over should be left in the third grade classroom where it was written.
With this kind of microcosm/macrocosm symetry it makes me wonder: how boring would it be to reach enlightenment and realize that the universe is really homogenous throughout and it is only ignorance that lets us differentiate the parts.
With the ease of digital media capture and transmission I would think that TAKING A PICTURE or short video of the individual using the card would be beneficial as a deterrent and as a verification method. Just slap a digital camera on the credit card machine that snaps a photo of the user. The CC company retains it for security purposes and they could even charge an upgraded fee to the wary consumer to have it emailed to them for each purchase.
Someone using a stolen card would first have to overcome their fear of being identified and also the added burden of intensified verification. The last part is usually easy since many CC fraudsters have complicit partners on the other side of the check out counter, however the requirement of a picture of the CC user could give clues to whether or not they were in cahoots with the store employee.
For net purchases you would need a webcam or some such with software to make sure the picture/video wasnt just a file copy, etc.
"Unfortunately, ideas like mine are rarely published in the popular media"
I find it interesting that this one sentence can sum up and expose the problems with sensationalism in media.
Christians are portrayed as fact-hating zombie zealots. Atheists are portrayed as God-hating radical nuts. Both portrayals are based on 10 seconds sound bytes by people who were probably taken out of context or represent an inscrutible minority of the overall population subset. Neither represent the truth about the subjects as a whole and undeniably betray the notion of individuality.
What is interesting to watch is how people will take a simple declaration "I am an atheist" or "I am a Christian" or "I am a Muslim" and immediately correlate all their media injected hyperbolic characterizations into their frame of reference for that individual.
New meme: Lies...damnable lies...statistics...advertising...media?
Slashdot Mirror
"Its Not About The Graphics, Its The Gameplay... right?"
@ - "You got it bub!"
V - "Good graphics with no enjoyable gameplay? That just SUCKS!"
D - "I don't mean to flame, but this has been our motto for decades!"
b b \
bb* bb -- "We don't understand what all the buzz is about, graphics never held us back"
b b b /
(this has to be the dorkiest thing I have ever posted, but if you know what I am talking about you get my point)
I also went to Mann Eye and had mine done. The people were great and made me feel confident, but it was the technology that they had there that helped make the decision for me. The have the newest laser technology with the smallest profile combine withd intralase for cutting the flap.
The intralase part of the procedure (cutting the flap with a laser rather than a microkeratome) was really important to me. I knew a young girl who had just had the LASIK done at another doctor in Houston and they messed up when using the microkeratome and almost blinded her in that eye.
Even in spite of that I was confident enough in the intralase technology to go ahead with the procedure. I see 20/10 in my right eye and 20/15 in my left now. Sometimes I can see through women's clothes as well. Ok I made that last part up, but having vision this good is like living in a fairy tale for me.
I have children. Three beautiful (they take after their mother) children.
They are a bit rowdy sometimes. They like to run to me and jump on me and hug me and things like that.
One day I noticed that I was getting annoyed when they did this because it was knocking my glasses about and I was worried that they might get broken.
The next day I was looking at LASIK.
Some things are more important than others.
I think I witnessed an importation of this cultural idea when I was in highschool.
- arm method.
We had a group of about 40 mostly Asian students that we called the "Xerox club." They would all get together in the morning before school in the cafeteria with the other studens. While everyone else was studying, eating, or trying to catch one last wink before school these guys and girls were copying their homework. Usually only 1 or 2 people would do the assignment and then they would pass it around for the others to copy. Once you finished copying you handed it to someone else so that everyone culd finish before the bell. It was pretty stealthy because while some were copying other people were taking and having a good time like normal, but all the students in the higher level classes knew what they were doing. Most of us had participated at one time or another as well. As long as you were cool with them they didn't mind you getting in on the action.
There were 2 funny results. First, every once in awhile people would grab the wrong assignment and turn it in. Sometimes it went unnoticed but other times they had to explain why they had someone elses homeowrk. Easy enough, we were studying together, etc. What was better is that one of my friends showed me that the teacher had graded his calculus homework and not even noticed that it wasn't his. He laughed and said something about "All Asians must look the same" to the teacher.
Second, copying doesn't teach well. Many of those students were in AP classes and after a few weeks of taking the copying shortcut they were behind on the book knowledge. They were pretty desperate come test time and many of them cheated. I saw furtive coded hand signals, almost microscopically written notes in the side of a pencil, ye olde graphing calculator with memory trick (that was new in my day), and even the long-sleeves-in-summer-with-stuff-written-on-your
What surprised me the most was that the people who cheated could rely on the students that knew the answers (the ones they ultimately copied off of) to help them cheat on the tests too.
"many non-registered users simply commence to fix typos, improve grammar or language wording and so forth"
So what you are saying is that grammar nazis are a *good thing*?
I understand where you are coming from but I think the idea is not to "add the machine" element, but to "add a possible witness."
In other words I don't think anyone would be upset if there was a number of witnesses to a crime that were able to identify the accused and describe the events in question. Unfortunately, most criminals try to execute their behavior when they think that they are unobserved. An unmanned drone would add the potential to solve a "witnessless" crime.
Yes I understand the chance for abuse. Yes I understand that giving up "liberty" for security leads to having neither. Then again, I also understand that people are kidnapped, murdered, robbed, and beaten daily in large cities in the US and the legal system dosen't have adequate evidence in many cases to even start an investigation.
This ain't a perfect world. This ain't a perfect tool. Neither exist IMHO. What it is is another tool to help the police deal with increasingly dense population in inner cities where they don't have enough funding and manpower to adequately cover the streets.
"that whole alpha monkey/competitive thing is pretty goddamn funny and sad"
First, I would say that you must have never read "how to win friends and influence people" or any of the many acclaimed management/motivation instruction literature with regard to the value of competetion. Competetion like this is a fantastic way to not only motivate people (if you can engineer it as a manager) but also to get them to work to their potential and beyond. People strech themselves and push themselves when motivated to be the best and when they are surrounded by peers that challenge them.
In the same way that women chit-chat and intermingle with their co-workers in an effort to build group cohesiveness (which pays off bigtime in stressful or trying situations), so male competetiveness can result in eliminating those stressful and trying situations by individual effort that is above and beyond the mediocrity that plagues most companies.
Furthermore, if someone establishes himself as the one with the biggest-genetalia it is usually through hard work, innovative thinking, and above average problem solving ability. In a leadership model (rather than a managerial model) company those people are elevated to higher positions to allow them to use their skills to solve larger problems and to teach those below them to the skills that got them elevated.
Competetion in males (and females if they want to interact on this level) can lead to not only personal excellence though trying your best to "win", but also to learning the intimate details of how your co-workers approach similar problems. With that knowledge a leader will be better able to marshall their workforce on a new problem by appointing people to appropriate tasks that allow their strengths to be utilized fully.
In other words, there are valid reasons for the "funny and sad" competetion that you describe. Just as valid as the "silly" relationship building that women do when they are at work. This probably stems from the fact that males accomplish the same relationship building through competetive activity that women do through social interaction. Both are valid and necessary for a healthy work environment, IMHO. You just have to be able to see the whole forest and not just the tree you are under to make it work for you and for those under you.
I think you had some atrocious pastors/teachers in your 20 years.
First John 1:9 says that if you confess (Greek word for "name or cite" as in a legal proceeding) your sins to God He is faithful (acts the same way continually) and just and will forgive you of all your known sins and cleanse you from all unrighteousness (unkonwn sins). Also, the Bible states that once you have been saved by faith in Christ you receive permanent imputation of 39 things, including eternal life with God. No more worrying about if you are going to go to hell after that. In addition, sin is not what leads to damnation. Belief/unbelief in Christ is the deciding factor. Even unbelievers are condemned only after all their good deeds are compared to the goodness of Christ. They are not condemned on the basis of their sins. No one is.
I think you also missed the parts where God says that fear and guilt are sinful thought patterns that lead to more sins and even to blasphemy.
I am not condemning you for choosing to be an agnostic/atheist. You can use your free will however you want and I won't question it. I would, however, question your teachers, pastors, and priests while you were a Christian. The issues you raise about fear, guilt, and damnation were solved for me in the first 20 minutes of studying systematic theology.
As for the scam, I bet you never went to a church that didn't continually ask you for money and discribe tithing as a necessity as a Christian (it is not, it was taxation for a civic authority and has nothing to do with spirituality). Most people haven't. They do exist, however. You just have to know what to look for.
The subject heading sums up your post. First, geocentrism and disbelief of evolution are not basic tennents of Christianity. They are thoughts and belief systems of all sorts of people, but they are not contained in the Bible itself. Second, in the Bible the believer is commanded to not posess fear and that guilt leads to patterns of sin and blasphemy.
You are attacking something that you see and do not like. This is understandable. However, I find it funny that your attack has absolutely nothing to do with the Bible itself. It only lampoons the sloppy thoughts and actions of a group of people who loudly proclaim to be Christian and then proceed to engage in activities that are counter to the letter and spirit of Christianity.
To me this says more about the quality of the Christians that you have interfaced with than it does about you.
"It's ok to say "I just believe it because I want to." Reason need not have anything to do with it, unless you're trying to convince someone else."
Nicely put.
I am a Christian who is fanatical in my belief and research of the Bible. However, I am under the impression that trying to logically prove the existence of God is misguided.
My personal faith is an expression of my respect for the characterestics of the God discribed in the Bible. The understanding I have of God's personal integrity, which combines His ideas of justice, righteousness, and love, makes me want to believe because I place value on imitating and embodying those characteristics. Even if there was concrete proof that God dosen't exist I would still have dedication to the principles that I have learned from studying the Bible and could still believe.
So for me it is not about why God logically exists. If you look at it, logically proving God is a losing proposition anyways. With the mundane existence we currently observe it is hard to argue logically for miracles. The dogmatic principles about what happened pre-universe are completely impossible to "prove" with logic as well. Even proving the existence of a person (Christ) doesn't prove that He was God or that He has a Father in Heaven.
Better to evaluate if you think that there is a God first. If you think that there is a God then evaluate the different religions and see if any of them ring true. Many times as I was growing up I thought to myself "I believe in a God, but not any of the Gods that have been presented to me." For me Christianity was the way to go, but it wasn't until I started studying it from the original languages that it made sense. Before that all I saw was a bunch of closed minded people trying desperately to close the minds of others around them to maintin control and to prevent their own heads from being jerked forcibly from the sand by the modern world. Those people still exist, but the more I understand about the Bible the more I realize that many of the people who proclaim the loudest that they are Christians are usually the most ignorant of what the Bible actually says.
I don't argue with people any more over the existence of the God discribed in the Bible. I know what I believe and I am not one to force something I beleive on someon else. I find it much more rewarding to explain the principles and characteristics of the God in the Bible and why I find them valiable. Everyone can benefit from that regardless of whether or not they believe. If they find something that they understand and identify with and it leads them to faith, all the better.
for months there has been talk in the US of "bunker busting" nukes to be used against Iran's facilities...
All of that is inconsequential compared to the encirclement accomplished with the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq. They are surrounded by American forces on all sides now. Funny how no one except them has noticed this.
Most people thought Iraq was about oil. Morons. The map doesn't lie. It's divide and conquer on all the Arab nations that aren't in bed with the US.
First let me start by saying that my post was written a bit tongue in cheek. If you took it to be an attack on sex and pornography I think that you might be reading too much into it or you might be too close to the subject to evaluate what you are reading without taking dammage to your shields. I guess I did go a bit far when I compared the RIAA's practices to the porn industry's practices. That wasn't fair to the porn industry and I can see how they would see that as insensitive and insulting. My apologies to Ron and Seymoure.
My personal opinion about the addictive qualities of pronography is based on my understanding of the physical reactions to sexual content and my observations of myself and others in reaction to pornography. If you want to call that flame bait, so be it. However, the fact remains that the porn industry works off of what I describe. Maybe it is not addictive in your sense of the word, but I don't see you clarifying that issue at all or providing any input to repudiate my claim.
As for your second point, you are taking a narrow view of the word fetishist. In fact, the context I put the word in is explicitly reflected in the second sentence you quote. A fetish can refert to a fixation or an interest in addition to what you discribe. Maybe the word is a bit loaded to someone who has a fetish but that would just be hypersensitivity on their part. If you check webster you might get a better understanding of the full definition of the word.
As for ancient religions and sexual activity I know the subject well. Certain worship has long included sexual activity as a basic tennent of and expression of the religion. In ancient times this included group sex, homosexuality, bestiality, pederasty, and forcing virgins to make thir first act of sex as a prostitute for the Goddess. The ones that wouldn't comply? Ever heard of virgin sacrifice? There are even references to certain worship practices where parents would, after a progression of more desperate measures to achieve the orgasmic state, put their children into ovens shaped like the god they were worshiping and engage in ritual group sex. The screams of their own progeny being burned alive in sacrifice to their god were supposed to be exceptionally gratifying to those who were ready.
Maybe that is not exactly what you were referring to, but it is an actual researched and documented fact. I bring it up because it shows just a little of what I am trying to mention. My point is not that sex is bad. I personally enjoy it (insert joke about how much your mom enjoys it with me, blah blah blah) quite a bit. But it is subject to abuses and manipulation. I have an aversion to manipulation and I see it as an impingement on my free operation and thought. Basically, any time I feel like people are designing something to heavily influence my behavior without telling me the whole story I get riled up. Whether that means walking in to the grocery store and being bombarded by scientifically designed graphics and colors or clicking on a seemingly innocuous link and being bombarded with images of a three way with a midget, a dolphin, and a baloney sandwich it still pisses me off.
And as for prostrating, you and I both do it every day. Usually during sex. Look it up.
"Why hasn't porn gone bust like the movie and music industries say will happen to them? "
The main difference I see is that porn is an addictive substance. Don't you remember the playground pushers motto, "The first one is always free"?
Many people would not buy porn their first time out. They have to "acquire the taste" first before they will go and spend cash on it. What better way to expose people to it than to make it free and obscenely easy to access?
Most consumers of porn are feshitists of some kind. They enjoy seeing activity "x" over seeing position "y", etc. This selectivity leads to the consumer model of porn. Cater to the individual tastes. Then, if you make it they will come. Sometimes on your face. But invariably they will come and buy it. Not all of them, but enough of them to pay the bills and make it worthwhile.
Even those who never pay for pornographic material help the ponographers consumer model by showing it to others. It spreads through people in an almost a viral way: some are immune, some have it but it is dormant, some are carriers, and some are just plain sick.
So to put it in analogy format: free pirated porn on the internet is to porn sales as FM radio is to album sales. The mechanisms of interest and addiction are different, but the result is similar. Show people something that they want and some of them will spend cash on it.
However, the price of "buying" a new customer for porn is a bit higher than music because the pornograpther is fighting religious conditioning, social stigma, even secular morality in an attempt to gain a new customer. This dosen't even consider the fact of restricted access and delivery methods. Fortunately for those pandering porn they have the biology of the body on their side. From endorphins and adrenaline to sensory neurons and autonomic responses we are hard-wired into sexual desire. All they have to do is pit the body against the inhibitions enough times through repeated exposure and they have a new client, probably for life.
Repeated exposure...Hmmm. Remind you of anything? How about how radio stations play the same song over and over.
Coincidence?
Wait just a second. This ia AMERICA!
If the severance package is high enough I'll suck my replacements dick and then train him.
It's the American way.
I work in the auto industry and what I notice about credit unions is that they provide their clients better interest rates than larger banks (Chase, BofA, Wells, etc.), have lower fees, and much better customer service.
Other than that they suck as much as other banks.
Put one such device on the nerves near the sensory/motor end and another near the central nervous end and put them in communication with encrypted RF signals. The result is that you could speed up the processing of input and drastically speed up reaction time. This also could be used to restore severed nerves to usability.
Dampen the incoming impulses from the meat nerves and substitute impulses from remote robotic appendages and you have intuitive robotic control of remote devices.
With a small enough power source and an exoskeleton and array of these devices on the neurons near/in the central nervous side you could have paraplegics walking around.
Implant them in young children and you could teach them to use remote robotic devices that have neural inputs and outputs that would not be intuitive to normal humans, like multi-armed devices, tentacles, whatever.
The only problems are RF interference, the durability of the implanted devices, getting hacked, expense, nad about a million other things.
Still, I would like to see the transhuman movement kicksstarted with radical alteration of disabled persons. Extreme lifestyle improvements could be achieved for people who need it. Then when the state of the art gets some momentum you will see people choosing to upgrade even when they aren't forced to.
"There is nothing "illegal" about dis-obeying an illegal order. FUCK!!! "
Re-writing for the mindless massses...
Didn't we go through that sufficiently back in "A few Good Men"?
It used to be that people would use "suspension of disbelief" to immerse themselves into a story.
Now it seems like everyone is in need of "suspension of suspension of disbelief." Since when did it become fashonable to read fiction and believe all the hype therein?
If you read Dan Brown and take him as an authority on biblical history and truth and you read Crichton and ridicule him for bending the truth to support his FICTION you might need to take a step back from the novel you are reading and have a healthy dose of reality. Suspension of disbelief should end when the covers are closed.
I feel that the transition to abundant human technological enahncement will come through the gateway of helping the disabled. In terms of need, it could be argued that they are the one that should be addressed first. Calling the desire to help disabled persons "short-sighted" is a bit harsh though. Once technology is created it goes where it is paid for.
However, once the technology is available to augment a disabled person ABOVE the proficency level of a non-disabled person you will see many non-disabled people taking the transhuman route. All it takes is having a paraplegic lift a car off of you once to drive the point home.
Here is the answer to any debate about global warming:
We're fucked.
Sorry to be so vulgar and blunt but there really are not pleasant words to describe the situation for the people of the world.
You and I can scream into any media outlet there is, scientists can forecast with ever increasing precision the cataclysmic repercussions of our continued actions, and yet, the great machine of human industry will rage on unchecked by the rational arguments of concerned people.
We can point fingers at the big guys, shake our heads at the little guys, lament and proclaim until we are hoarse and the media has become bored with the story, but won't change anyhting.
The conscience that you appeal to, the one that looks after unborn generations of future Earth inhabitatns...it dosen't exist. People are obligated to look after the here and now by the structure of economy and the pressures of sustenance. To scrape off a share of their prosperity (subsistence!) and deposit into a future acount for generations to come is unthinkable. To ask a power hungry government (all of them are, some more than others) to enact environmental policies that would protect people in the future is akin to asking people to voluntarily contribute extra on their income tax to help the poor and to pay back the deficit. Sure, it sounds like a good idea, but what person do you know that does it?
China, as a power-centric form of government, will seek any advantage they can for their industry without a thought for their own populace, much less for some future generation.
And as for the USA, well we have much bigger problems to deal with. Elected officials from both parties are routinely ignoring the will of the populace that elected them in favor of their own interests. Even if we, the people, had a majority position on changing the status quo the people in power would probably not respond.
Yep, were totally, completely, irrevocably screwed. All we can hope for is that the Earth will help us out by correcting the situation through some unknown set of checks and balances. Or the Sun cools itself down a bit at our request. Either one of those is more likely than getting countries to enact policies that actually reduce emissions to a level that would start to reverse what we have done.
You forgot...
9. Can drink beer
10. Can drink beer
oh and...
11. Can drink beer
I think that covers it.
"What great poetry in the universe...
I know that repeating themes are fantastic for bubblegum pop music and advertising, but poetry that says the same thing over and over should be left in the third grade classroom where it was written.
With this kind of microcosm/macrocosm symetry it makes me wonder: how boring would it be to reach enlightenment and realize that the universe is really homogenous throughout and it is only ignorance that lets us differentiate the parts.
With the ease of digital media capture and transmission I would think that TAKING A PICTURE or short video of the individual using the card would be beneficial as a deterrent and as a verification method. Just slap a digital camera on the credit card machine that snaps a photo of the user. The CC company retains it for security purposes and they could even charge an upgraded fee to the wary consumer to have it emailed to them for each purchase.
Someone using a stolen card would first have to overcome their fear of being identified and also the added burden of intensified verification. The last part is usually easy since many CC fraudsters have complicit partners on the other side of the check out counter, however the requirement of a picture of the CC user could give clues to whether or not they were in cahoots with the store employee.
For net purchases you would need a webcam or some such with software to make sure the picture/video wasnt just a file copy, etc.
"know that there are people who would kill you in a heartbeat for your $0.10 dinner."
With that kind of attitude toward other people it is no wonder that they are in the position they are in.
The true test of humanity is whether or not you can keep your sanity, self-control, and humility in times of prosperity AND poverty.
"Unfortunately, ideas like mine are rarely published in the popular media"
I find it interesting that this one sentence can sum up and expose the problems with sensationalism in media.
Christians are portrayed as fact-hating zombie zealots. Atheists are portrayed as God-hating radical nuts. Both portrayals are based on 10 seconds sound bytes by people who were probably taken out of context or represent an inscrutible minority of the overall population subset. Neither represent the truth about the subjects as a whole and undeniably betray the notion of individuality.
What is interesting to watch is how people will take a simple declaration "I am an atheist" or "I am a Christian" or "I am a Muslim" and immediately correlate all their media injected hyperbolic characterizations into their frame of reference for that individual.
New meme: Lies...damnable lies...statistics...advertising...media?