They need one of those good pulp novel names to stay in the public mentality for an enduring period of time. Without that you just fade into obscurity.
Typically you want a multi-syllabic first name that rolls off the tongue but that is not too long. Preferrably starting with a vowel for softness, having none of the hard consonants throughout, and least four letters long. Then a last name starting with a hard consonant that really drives the point of the name home with some flair.
Alan KAY. See how that works? Say it out loud now...Alan KAY. Pretty cool, huh? Try one more time and let the first name just kind of roll, then really punch the last name...Alan KAY.
Almost as good as Denny Crane, but that name was created artificailly using these guidelines. However, to prove the point...if you heard that name once you know exactly who that is!
A Y and 2 As in a row and than a hyphenated first name that wasnt used by one of the popes? Come ON guys! What were you and your publicist thinking?!?
A little military history, some common sense, and some impartiality would allow people to understand the desire and need for these bases.
When Chalmers Johnson states the only reason for military bases are "imperialism and militarism" he ignores the mirror image of bases by non-US countries around the world, and the correlated defensive side of militarism.
The first principle to understand is that for many decades now we have been strategically outmaneuvered by the Soviets on a global scale. What this means is that America was militarily defeated on a strategic level, especially when it comes to the mobility of our forces around the world. For a modern military power of our level this is an unnaceptable condition that needs to be remedied, as a small perturbation in the balance of power could lead to a pitched battle where we are not only the underdog, but the likely loser.
Furthermore, if you do not think that the military in the former Soviet Union (or China for that matter) continues to educate their military youth around how to attack and conquer the USA, you are beyond foolish. The plans for globally concerted military strike against the homeland USA were laid decades ago and are continually updated, enhanced, and revised by some of the greatest military minds in the world. A single political shift or destabilization event could catalyze those plans into action.
Those military bases are a deterrent, a stopgap, and a necessary tool in the prevention of hostilities toward the USA. If they did not exist in the past and continue to exist today Chalmers Johnson would have to find something new to complain about because the USA would most likely not exist.
"Pentagon must constantly invent new reasons for keeping in our hands as many bases as possible long after the wars and crises that led to their creation have evaporated"
This shows the shortsightedness of this guy and his misunderstanding of the motivating factors of the military. The reason that the USA will build a military base overseas is usually not because of a conflict of immediacy, but because of the long term strategic benefit of that base. In other words, the conflict at hand usually has little to do with the construction of the military base, but the long range benefits to our strategic planning and deployment do.
It is not a stretch either to think that the selections of which conflicts to engage in are predicated on the strategic goals of the USA and not some of the other factors that are often cited by individuals. In fact, the COMPLETE ABSENCE of anyone in the media or government ever talking about strategic planning combined with the hindsight to see that there has definitely been strategic foresight and planning painstakingly implemented can make someone very suspicious.
Case in point: The Middle East. Why go in to Iraq when there were so many problems in parts of Africa with genocide, etc? The long term strategic benefits of a base there are much greater than really any other part of the world. Because of this I will go on the record saying that our military withdrawal from Iraq will be VERY slow one, taking an indeterminate amount of time based on other factors in surrounding countries.
As for the Lagrange points, if they provide some advantage, and a reasonable way to capitalize and secure that advantege is devised, you can bet your ass that someone will try to occupy it for the same reasons that there are strategic military bases by many large countries all over the world.
Also, anyone who casts the statement "perpetual war" like it is a convention perpretrated against the people of the world by an elite few has closed their eyes and mind to history and the "perpetual" human condition. There has never been a time without war in human history. I can see from this that the necessity of military bases is lost on some people, as the idea that humanity is, and always has been, in a state of constant upheval and conflict is, while glaringly conspicuous to some, completely invisible to others.
Blockbuster lost my business when I went in to rent a movie one day and they said my rental card had expired since I had not used it in 3 months.
I decided to BUY the movie straight cash and the guy behind the counter said they would not SELL me the movie until I got another MEMBERSHIP!
I went down the street to Hollywood to buy the movie and, on a lark, asked the lady behind the counter if my membership was still good. She said yes, it was. I then asked her how long it had been since I rented a movie there and she replied, after some checking and chuckling, about THREE YEARS!
I confirmed that I could rent movies at Hollywood even though it had been YEARS since I had last rented one, added my wife to the rental account (without her there in person mind you) bought the movie I wanted, grabbed a few more movies off of the 3/$30 previously viewed rack and took my happy ass home, vowing never to shop at Blockbuster again.
The household name for Blockbuster has become "those bastards" or "the enemy"(I buy alot of movies). Also, you can imagine my surprise when I heard the real scoop on their "NO more Late Fees" promotion that just meant that they charged you full price for the movie if you were late. HAR HAR HAR. Bastards.
"And yet, we don't really seem to see masses of cancer patients getting cured outside these laboratory studies"
Many more people are being helped each year than the last. Unfortunately, new ideas are sometimes deadends that end up helping no one or having such bad effects that they are worse than the disease. Other treatments are so narrow in their aplication that you have to have certain kind of cancer for it to be expected to work. Progress is being made though, more and more each year.
Case in point:
My step-grandfather started having problems with the hiccups about three years ago. At first they went on for a few hours at a time. Later, he was even doing it while he slept, continuously for months. The constant pain and exaustion (yes, EXAUSTION from hiccups) finally overcame his reticence to see a doctor. They did some tests, then more and more tests, and finally an MRI. They found inoperable cancer on/in his spine.
A few weeks later he is at MD Anderson in Houston and they are trying an new treatment on him. They took a biopsy of some of the cancer and used it to make a vaccine. He stayed in Houston for about 6 months, had some minor chemo followups, some checkups, and then went home.
Complete remission was and still is the diagnosis. And the hiccups went away!
The problem with cancer is that cancer cells have similar reactive profiles and vulnerabilities to healthy cells. Finding the chink in the armor of the cancer that dosen't exist in the healthy cells is the big problem. Reaserchers are getting better and better at this (see the above vaccine example) but there are so many different kinds of cancer, with accompanying different vulnerabilities and minor variances from healthy cells, that it will take quite a bit of time to find and exploit them all.
In some cases even the methodology of treatment had to be fundamentally different They told my grandfather that he was lucky to have the certain kind of cancer that he had as it was one that was potentially treatable with the vaccine therapy.
I think that the basic health of the individual comes into play as well. Many people develop cancer in the twilight years of their lives. Their waning virility may make it difficult to enact a cure, regardless of the potency of the medication.
Regardless of the obstacles, had my grandfather gotten sick about 8 months before he did, there would have been no chance of stopping his cancer in time. There was no trial going then and this particular treatment was not available to humans at all. Given time to grow he would have been killed or paralyzed by his cancer. So ya, doctors are making progress, it may seem slow, but not to my grandfather. It was more like just in time, for him.
What I personally will never, ever get around is how someone can become so sick...
I feel the same way with respect to this. In addition, the thing that exacerbates the problem is when people begin to examine the victims to see what they were doing in order to "deserve" this type of attack.
It is equivalent to looking at a dead rape victim and telling her family, "Well, she should not have worn a pretty dress today. She was asking to get raped, and by God she deserved it! That poor rapist had no other choice than to do what he did."
The people of London had absolutely nothing to do with anything that could even remotely justify this kind of action. Those who will come after and point fingers at anyone other than those who comitted these acts are truly sickening in their mental monstrousness. They misunderstand justice at a fundamental level.
The worst part is that there may not be many terrorists in the world, but there are literally millions of people who think the terroists are justified in what they do.
The idea is not to influence the Olympics to go somewhere else, it is to remove the financial gain and prestige that an Olympics will bring to that country.
In other words, what is worse, an Olympics held in one of 3 places that you despise or an Olympics that no one attends? How many people will feel safe going to London to see the Olympics and having to ride the same public transportation system that was bombed previously?
It never fails, no matter what the conflict, if you follow the money you will find the reason.
You miss the point. All I am saying is that if you get corrected don't get offended and do not put unreasonable expectations on other people with respect to how they will react to how you write.
A perfect example of what I am talking about is here for you to examine:
Thank you, by the way, for your corrections. I appreciate it and will try not to make them in the future!:)
And, whether or not you believe it, I am sincere in my thanks.
Your analogy breaks down with fashon, as fashon has certain rules, like grammar, but you do not make the connection in your analogy. For example, if someone was putting pants on their head I would probably say something to them.
If your output sucks do not expect everyone to gloss over it with tolerance and blissful acceptance. YOU wrote it, YOU are responsible for the content. If someone else is offended by it, or for jimminy's sake they try to help you not sound like an idiot by correcting you, don't get all jumped up and high and mighty about how grammar dosen't matter. Take it as a learning lesson.
Remember YOU were the one who wrote it. It is the utmost in arrogance to shovel shit in someone elses face and say "act like it smells like roses!"
Racism and elitism are exemplified by saying that people of other races/classes cannot be expected to speak and write correct English.
It is saying they are too weak to help themselves, as we have to change the standards to accommodate them. You create a distinction where there is not one. I reject this notion, as it is the basis for the problems, IMHO, that you try to point out in your last paragraph.
Remember that language is the BASIS OF ALL THOUGHT. If your language skills suffer you will suffer from a dearth of thought ability. This means that without proper language mastery there are thoughts that you cannot have. Think about that and realize that this is the most effective and insidious form of oppression that is possible, essentially short-circuiting the ability of an individual to access whole realms of thought and therefore action.
Saying that it is elitist or racist to teach children to have coherent thoughts and be able to express them is such a malformed and abhorrent idea that I cannot comprehend how someone can think it. NOT expecting this from children, not enforcing this in children, is robbing them of the guidance that should help them in lieu of the mature volition that they will (hopefully) one day possess. Not teaching this respect for language and the proper expression of it sabotages their understanding of the importance of language and prepares them for a half-life where they are constantly pigeonholed, judged, and relegated to the nether regions of society.
Recently, Bill Cosby has castigated the black community for having just the kind of thought patterns that you have expressed here. He charges that thinking like this leads to the continued oppression of an entire culture/community of people in the USA, not from outside that community, but from within.
If you have ever seen the movie "Malcolm X" you might remember a scene where Malcolm is in prison and starts to study the dictionary under the tutelage of his Muslim mentor. This was the beginning of his self-education that was the basis of his liberation, not from the prison of walls around him, but from the prison of his mind that was constructed of his own ignorance. Furthermore, regardless of your views on his politics and methods, the results of his mental emancipation are clear and undeniable. He could not have even conceived of the things he did later in life without this clarity of thought engendered by his intellectual renaissance, much less developed the rationale, conviction, and motivation to lead others in the same path.
The language that you use is the hallmark of your mind and the only thing that most people in your life will be able to use to judge you. Your understanding, mastery, and expression of language is also the currency of thought, and the basis for building the mental constructs that allow an individual to liberate themselves from the trappings of their status quo and become the sole engineer their future.
To ignore one facet of language renders it worthless. In someone who ignores different aspects of language in the same way, it can enforce the worthlessness of that individual to society, regardless of his or her potential character and ability.
The fact that you do not think this is important and then try to blame the convenient scapegoat of those who you see as occupying a higher social class or specific racial background (even sinking so low as to compare them to the FRENCH! har har har) leads me to the conclusion that you have muddled the cognitive line between the authority of society to dictate its own norms and standards and the rare snobbery of base individuals. Whatever the reason for this, the result is that you look like someone who is, first and foremost, unimpressed with or antagonistic to a certain group of people and therefore rejects the characteristics that those people possess, regardless of the intrinsic value of those characteristics. Unfortunately this is also expressed in minority groups, some going so far as to reject
Can you properly frame the term "epignosis" in its correct Biblical context and provide examples of how it is important?
Can you elucidate the central tennents of the Bible with concerning to the status of mankind with respect to the other creatures in creation and why the current arrangement is necessary, again according to the Bible?
Can you discribe what the Bible says with regards to the interchange of essence that occurs at the moment of faith in Christ and the eternal repercussions for the believer?
Can you sum up the constituent parts of the integrity of God as discribed in the Bible and use those to show the policy and strategy that God uses to approach and deal with the creatures in the universe?
If you cannot do those things you have not even scratched the surface of the Bible and therefore cannot understand how the things that Christ did and said interlock with the rest of the scriptures.
Without that basic understanding, your attempts to see Christ as He is portrayed in the Bible are going to be fruitless because you do not understand the context. You are at the very least more than 2000 years out of that context and fundamentally seperated from it due to lack of grounding in systematic theology and Jewish and Christian doctrine.
If you do give yourself the opportunity to view this internal symetry between the Bible and Jesus the conclusions you will come to will be a bit different I think. I suspect that you will come to the crossroads of "fact or fiction" instead of thinking that he was a real person who was a crook or madman. The reason I say this is that the correlations and meshing with the rest of scripture is so good as to seem either perfect, indication divinity, or suspiciously contrived, indicating a fraud of colossal proportions.
However, until you can see the whole tapestry, and understand the way it is constructed and how the parts fit together you will forever be sidelined in your own self-assured yet ignorant position.
In addition, and in my opinion most importantly, the "message" of Jesus is the reason that I see a difference between him and an unscrupulous or unhinged character as you imagine him. Gaining the perspective to properly evaluate Him on this basis requires a bit more than just reading the Bible from cover to cover. Systematic theology will help a bit, but understanding the original languages is really the key.
So the price of entry is high, but at least then you could say that you *really* tried.
"Actually, you are wrong. Jesus himself commanded in Mathew 5:48"
You quoting this is problematic for thos who do not understand the Bible and Christian theology. What He is stating, if it is to be taken exactly as it is translated, is completely impossible for humanity, especially so in the context of the divine as described in the Bible by Christ himself.
So, then you have to ask yourself a series of questions. Is this translated properly? Is it taken out of context? Is there some nuance missing? If yes, no, and no are the answers then what is He referring to? Maybe the imputation of divine righteousness or maybe another of the 39 irrevocable absolutes that are mentioned as the inheritance of those who believe in Christ. The answer is a lesson for the reader.
As for what is "required" this is a matter of some complexity. First, there is the PREREQUISITE of salvation before this declaration takes on any meaning. This means that for the person listening to this discussion and taking it as a teaching lesson they ALREADY have salvation. Therefore, salvation is not at stake when talking about these things, only how a Christian should compose themselves. The person will be a Christian by the standards set forth in the Bible regardless of how they act, provided that they believe in Christ. All other things are irrelevant with respect to that person attaining salvation and their status as a Christian, regardless of the way other humans may view them.
Now, you may be thinking things like if person X does action Y they can never go to heaven, but the Bible is explicit about how salvation occurs and it does not involve the action of mankind other than faith and even that faith is imputed by God to mankind. This seperates the actions of man from the salvation of God completely and throws many of the ideas of what mankind thinks should matter when determining salvation right out the window.
As for the addition lessons provided by God in the Bible that do not have to do with the subject of the Gospel/hamartiology/salvation, they are for those believers who want to worship God. Worship, in the Bible, is simple. It is learning about Bible doctrine, which in turn is knowledge of the character and person of God. Through this process, a Christian is said to be able to achieve the "Mind of Christ" where he will have enough understanding and internalization of the character of God and Bible doctrine that they can think, act, react, and derive moivation the same way that Christ does. All Christians are commanded to achieve this, though those that do not will not lose their salvation or their status as Christians. Again the status of Christian is independent of actions other than faith in Christ.
I guess if you break it down into the basic parts "pseud" and "epigraph" it makes it a bit easier to remember the proper spelling. However, it does make you wonder how they arrived at the pronunciation.
I have never seen a conservative who had advocated states rights without limit, or in direct contradiction ot the constitution.
The idea of "states rights" is in the constitution as well, in that if the power is not strictly listed in the constitution it is in the realm of states rights.
The bais of this case is clearly delineated in the constitution and the judges saw fit to ignore that.
In the end they are all employees, and therefore controlled by the media policies of the people they work for, dependent on those that employ them for thier livelyhood, and subject to termination if they try to go against what their management wants.
If management says "don't show this on the news" they don't. It is that simple. In fact, I bet management dosen't even have to say that, the people in teh newsroom just KNOW by now. That is why they are still employed there!
This is just another example of how the media serves its own interests.
*JUST* last night I was discussing cigarettes and nicotine with my 10 year old daughter.
I googled for some details on the neurological effects of nicotine and widened the search for nicotine as a pesticide. Howstuffworks.com was one of the top sites so I checked it out.
I spent about 10 minutes reading things with my daughter and elucidating what was going on. It was a well written article, broken down into pages in an outline type format. Very informative and simple to understand.
After reading it my daughter was talking about how the nicotine is an "impostor" for acetylcholine. Not too bad for a 10 minute session.
So, yes, you goofball, they still do that "sometimes.":)
"the lunar dust is incredibly hard on mechanical things "
One of the great things about the moon is the lack of atmosphere. This means that when you move dust away from a place it will not return easily.
Sweepers, vacuums, or (GASP!) explosives could be used to remove the dust from a proposed build site. No more dust and no wind to bring it back!
Personally I think that he explosive idea is the best as any mechanical device would be subject to the same abbrasive damage that your proposed installation would be.
Well, that and the fact that I would love to watch through my telescope while we blow shit up on the moon!
Also, why avoid doing something initially (building a base on the moon in this instance) because it is hard to do and will cost money? We are talking about space exploration and technological advancement. OF COURSE it is going to cost alot of money! It always does, and always more than we think going in.
The reason why? We don't know what we don't know we don't know. We continually run into unforseen problems. The fantastic part about an undertaking like this, IMHO, is these problems we never even anticipated. We conquer the real roadblocks on the way to the goal and develop new technology in the process. These new technologies provide us with the payoff for doing these outlandish and expensive things when they trickle down to the public sector.
So in the process of overcoming these obstacles we discover ways of meeting and hopefully exceeding what is required to achieve our goal. Then, when we implement our new ideas, maintenance gets less expensive.
And for our efforts we have a totally new bag of technological tricks, a smug sense of self accomplishment, AND a lunar base. Beat that!
The growing up I would say is important to people with body mods and tattoos, etc. is that they should recognize that the world contains prejudice. The fact that you have made yourself different than eveyone else will result in you being persecuted at one level or another. You knew this when you got the tattoo/mod. Some people even wanted it! To cry foul and rally against it shows immaturity irrespective of the fact that you have tattoos or mods. In other words, suck it up and take it, just like you did the pain of gettin the tat itself.
Take this perspective as one from an (ex?) subculture member who has friends who have full sleeves, neck, face, skull tattoos, etc. Most of my friends realized what the consequences of their actions would be before they got them. Well, some were drugged out of thier minds and couldn't think past next week and therefore didn't care, and others just did not want to be identified with the members of society that were conformists. Regardless, I have not heard any of them complain about this, to their merit.
As for myself, I had bleached white hair that went down to my ass for years. The chicks dug it, but when it was time to get a professional job after college, I got it chopped. The reason? I knew that it would be a distraction that could prevent me from getting the job and money that I wanted. I still dream aobut having long hair, I loved it that much. I just realized that, regardless of how I felt about it, someone else with something that I wanted would probably feel differently.
Also consider that there are(were!) people in this world who have been killed for having a different shade of skin from birth. Then compare your "tribulation" to the prejudice that they have endured.
The point is this: Nobody likes a whiner. Everyone makes decisions, and for better or worse, and they have to deal with the consequences. The really sad part is that you did this to yourself.
There are numerous studies that show that metals are in tattoo ink.
Either way, what you are looking for are iron containing oxides and the like, as these are the ones that will react to the magnetic field in the MRI and supposedly cause the irritation, etc.
I work in a retail business in Houston and *RIGHT* across the freeway from me is a little lab where they make, among other things, large quantities of nanotubes and buckyballs. They mostly provide these to NASA and USA researchers for development of new lubricants for the space program.
The way I found this out was from the guy that runs it. He stopped in to take a look at my products and we got to talking about what he did, and needless to say, I was deeply interested.
The thing that freaked me out was that as we were talking about the C60 he messed with he showed me his palm and there were places where he had nanotubes and buckies embedded in his skin. All that went through my head was "WTF are the long term repercussions of massive nanotube and buckball inhalation (which he mentioned as well) and consumption?"
I guess nobody really knows, I just hope that they aren't bad because the guy was pretty cool.
Sorry to spoil yours, but as a race as a whole Jews score much higer in the intelligence category than other races. The Japaneese score similarly high.
Unfortunately it is almost impossible to reference these studies with an internet link or with anything in recent US publications because of the opressive "politically correct" landscape.
Slashdot Mirror
Because no one can pronounce their names!
They need one of those good pulp novel names to stay in the public mentality for an enduring period of time. Without that you just fade into obscurity.
Typically you want a multi-syllabic first name that rolls off the tongue but that is not too long. Preferrably starting with a vowel for softness, having none of the hard consonants throughout, and least four letters long. Then a last name starting with a hard consonant that really drives the point of the name home with some flair.
Alan KAY. See how that works? Say it out loud now...Alan KAY. Pretty cool, huh? Try one more time and let the first name just kind of roll, then really punch the last name...Alan KAY.
Almost as good as Denny Crane, but that name was created artificailly using these guidelines. However, to prove the point...if you heard that name once you know exactly who that is!
A Y and 2 As in a row and than a hyphenated first name that wasnt used by one of the popes? Come ON guys! What were you and your publicist thinking?!?
Maybe what we really need is a cannabis aresolization weapon, not to disperse rioters, but dope them into peaceful harmony?
A little military history, some common sense, and some impartiality would allow people to understand the desire and need for these bases.
When Chalmers Johnson states the only reason for military bases are "imperialism and militarism" he ignores the mirror image of bases by non-US countries around the world, and the correlated defensive side of militarism.
The first principle to understand is that for many decades now we have been strategically outmaneuvered by the Soviets on a global scale. What this means is that America was militarily defeated on a strategic level, especially when it comes to the mobility of our forces around the world. For a modern military power of our level this is an unnaceptable condition that needs to be remedied, as a small perturbation in the balance of power could lead to a pitched battle where we are not only the underdog, but the likely loser.
Furthermore, if you do not think that the military in the former Soviet Union (or China for that matter) continues to educate their military youth around how to attack and conquer the USA, you are beyond foolish. The plans for globally concerted military strike against the homeland USA were laid decades ago and are continually updated, enhanced, and revised by some of the greatest military minds in the world. A single political shift or destabilization event could catalyze those plans into action.
Those military bases are a deterrent, a stopgap, and a necessary tool in the prevention of hostilities toward the USA. If they did not exist in the past and continue to exist today Chalmers Johnson would have to find something new to complain about because the USA would most likely not exist.
"Pentagon must constantly invent new reasons for keeping in our hands as many bases as possible long after the wars and crises that led to their creation have evaporated"
This shows the shortsightedness of this guy and his misunderstanding of the motivating factors of the military. The reason that the USA will build a military base overseas is usually not because of a conflict of immediacy, but because of the long term strategic benefit of that base. In other words, the conflict at hand usually has little to do with the construction of the military base, but the long range benefits to our strategic planning and deployment do.
It is not a stretch either to think that the selections of which conflicts to engage in are predicated on the strategic goals of the USA and not some of the other factors that are often cited by individuals. In fact, the COMPLETE ABSENCE of anyone in the media or government ever talking about strategic planning combined with the hindsight to see that there has definitely been strategic foresight and planning painstakingly implemented can make someone very suspicious.
Case in point: The Middle East. Why go in to Iraq when there were so many problems in parts of Africa with genocide, etc? The long term strategic benefits of a base there are much greater than really any other part of the world. Because of this I will go on the record saying that our military withdrawal from Iraq will be VERY slow one, taking an indeterminate amount of time based on other factors in surrounding countries.
As for the Lagrange points, if they provide some advantage, and a reasonable way to capitalize and secure that advantege is devised, you can bet your ass that someone will try to occupy it for the same reasons that there are strategic military bases by many large countries all over the world.
Also, anyone who casts the statement "perpetual war" like it is a convention perpretrated against the people of the world by an elite few has closed their eyes and mind to history and the "perpetual" human condition. There has never been a time without war in human history. I can see from this that the necessity of military bases is lost on some people, as the idea that humanity is, and always has been, in a state of constant upheval and conflict is, while glaringly conspicuous to some, completely invisible to others.
Blockbuster lost my business when I went in to rent a movie one day and they said my rental card had expired since I had not used it in 3 months.
I decided to BUY the movie straight cash and the guy behind the counter said they would not SELL me the movie until I got another MEMBERSHIP!
I went down the street to Hollywood to buy the movie and, on a lark, asked the lady behind the counter if my membership was still good. She said yes, it was. I then asked her how long it had been since I rented a movie there and she replied, after some checking and chuckling, about THREE YEARS!
I confirmed that I could rent movies at Hollywood even though it had been YEARS since I had last rented one, added my wife to the rental account (without her there in person mind you) bought the movie I wanted, grabbed a few more movies off of the 3/$30 previously viewed rack and took my happy ass home, vowing never to shop at Blockbuster again.
The household name for Blockbuster has become "those bastards" or "the enemy"(I buy alot of movies). Also, you can imagine my surprise when I heard the real scoop on their "NO more Late Fees" promotion that just meant that they charged you full price for the movie if you were late. HAR HAR HAR. Bastards.
"...this is something much deeper"
Like cervix deep or are we talking fallopian tubes here?
"And yet, we don't really seem to see masses of cancer patients getting cured outside these laboratory studies"
Many more people are being helped each year than the last. Unfortunately, new ideas are sometimes deadends that end up helping no one or having such bad effects that they are worse than the disease. Other treatments are so narrow in their aplication that you have to have certain kind of cancer for it to be expected to work. Progress is being made though, more and more each year.
Case in point:
My step-grandfather started having problems with the hiccups about three years ago. At first they went on for a few hours at a time. Later, he was even doing it while he slept, continuously for months. The constant pain and exaustion (yes, EXAUSTION from hiccups) finally overcame his reticence to see a doctor. They did some tests, then more and more tests, and finally an MRI. They found inoperable cancer on/in his spine.
A few weeks later he is at MD Anderson in Houston and they are trying an new treatment on him. They took a biopsy of some of the cancer and used it to make a vaccine. He stayed in Houston for about 6 months, had some minor chemo followups, some checkups, and then went home.
Complete remission was and still is the diagnosis. And the hiccups went away!
The problem with cancer is that cancer cells have similar reactive profiles and vulnerabilities to healthy cells. Finding the chink in the armor of the cancer that dosen't exist in the healthy cells is the big problem. Reaserchers are getting better and better at this (see the above vaccine example) but there are so many different kinds of cancer, with accompanying different vulnerabilities and minor variances from healthy cells, that it will take quite a bit of time to find and exploit them all.
In some cases even the methodology of treatment had to be fundamentally different They told my grandfather that he was lucky to have the certain kind of cancer that he had as it was one that was potentially treatable with the vaccine therapy.
I think that the basic health of the individual comes into play as well. Many people develop cancer in the twilight years of their lives. Their waning virility may make it difficult to enact a cure, regardless of the potency of the medication.
Regardless of the obstacles, had my grandfather gotten sick about 8 months before he did, there would have been no chance of stopping his cancer in time. There was no trial going then and this particular treatment was not available to humans at all. Given time to grow he would have been killed or paralyzed by his cancer. So ya, doctors are making progress, it may seem slow, but not to my grandfather. It was more like just in time, for him.
If you are responsible for this directly, and therefore the actions of those terrorists are reasonable and justified, you have only one option.
Go fucking kill yourself.
What I personally will never, ever get around is how someone can become so sick...
I feel the same way with respect to this. In addition, the thing that exacerbates the problem is when people begin to examine the victims to see what they were doing in order to "deserve" this type of attack.
It is equivalent to looking at a dead rape victim and telling her family, "Well, she should not have worn a pretty dress today. She was asking to get raped, and by God she deserved it! That poor rapist had no other choice than to do what he did."
The people of London had absolutely nothing to do with anything that could even remotely justify this kind of action. Those who will come after and point fingers at anyone other than those who comitted these acts are truly sickening in their mental monstrousness. They misunderstand justice at a fundamental level.
The worst part is that there may not be many terrorists in the world, but there are literally millions of people who think the terroists are justified in what they do.
The idea is not to influence the Olympics to go somewhere else, it is to remove the financial gain and prestige that an Olympics will bring to that country.
In other words, what is worse, an Olympics held in one of 3 places that you despise or an Olympics that no one attends? How many people will feel safe going to London to see the Olympics and having to ride the same public transportation system that was bombed previously?
It never fails, no matter what the conflict, if you follow the money you will find the reason.
You miss the point. All I am saying is that if you get corrected don't get offended and do not put unreasonable expectations on other people with respect to how they will react to how you write.
:)
A perfect example of what I am talking about is here for you to examine:
Thank you, by the way, for your corrections. I appreciate it and will try not to make them in the future!
And, whether or not you believe it, I am sincere in my thanks.
Your analogy breaks down with fashon, as fashon has certain rules, like grammar, but you do not make the connection in your analogy. For example, if someone was putting pants on their head I would probably say something to them.
If your output sucks do not expect everyone to gloss over it with tolerance and blissful acceptance. YOU wrote it, YOU are responsible for the content. If someone else is offended by it, or for jimminy's sake they try to help you not sound like an idiot by correcting you, don't get all jumped up and high and mighty about how grammar dosen't matter. Take it as a learning lesson.
Remember YOU were the one who wrote it. It is the utmost in arrogance to shovel shit in someone elses face and say "act like it smells like roses!"
"Why is the preterite of run ran, yet the preterite of shun is shunned?"
What I have always wondered about was how "freeze" goes into "froze" and then "frozen."
Take that as a rule, then, how about: Squeeze, squoze....SQUOZEN?
Racism and elitism are exemplified by saying that people of other races/classes cannot be expected to speak and write correct English.
It is saying they are too weak to help themselves, as we have to change the standards to accommodate them. You create a distinction where there is not one. I reject this notion, as it is the basis for the problems, IMHO, that you try to point out in your last paragraph.
Remember that language is the BASIS OF ALL THOUGHT. If your language skills suffer you will suffer from a dearth of thought ability. This means that without proper language mastery there are thoughts that you cannot have. Think about that and realize that this is the most effective and insidious form of oppression that is possible, essentially short-circuiting the ability of an individual to access whole realms of thought and therefore action.
Saying that it is elitist or racist to teach children to have coherent thoughts and be able to express them is such a malformed and abhorrent idea that I cannot comprehend how someone can think it. NOT expecting this from children, not enforcing this in children, is robbing them of the guidance that should help them in lieu of the mature volition that they will (hopefully) one day possess. Not teaching this respect for language and the proper expression of it sabotages their understanding of the importance of language and prepares them for a half-life where they are constantly pigeonholed, judged, and relegated to the nether regions of society.
Recently, Bill Cosby has castigated the black community for having just the kind of thought patterns that you have expressed here. He charges that thinking like this leads to the continued oppression of an entire culture/community of people in the USA, not from outside that community, but from within.
If you have ever seen the movie "Malcolm X" you might remember a scene where Malcolm is in prison and starts to study the dictionary under the tutelage of his Muslim mentor. This was the beginning of his self-education that was the basis of his liberation, not from the prison of walls around him, but from the prison of his mind that was constructed of his own ignorance. Furthermore, regardless of your views on his politics and methods, the results of his mental emancipation are clear and undeniable. He could not have even conceived of the things he did later in life without this clarity of thought engendered by his intellectual renaissance, much less developed the rationale, conviction, and motivation to lead others in the same path.
The language that you use is the hallmark of your mind and the only thing that most people in your life will be able to use to judge you. Your understanding, mastery, and expression of language is also the currency of thought, and the basis for building the mental constructs that allow an individual to liberate themselves from the trappings of their status quo and become the sole engineer their future.
To ignore one facet of language renders it worthless. In someone who ignores different aspects of language in the same way, it can enforce the worthlessness of that individual to society, regardless of his or her potential character and ability.
The fact that you do not think this is important and then try to blame the convenient scapegoat of those who you see as occupying a higher social class or specific racial background (even sinking so low as to compare them to the FRENCH! har har har) leads me to the conclusion that you have muddled the cognitive line between the authority of society to dictate its own norms and standards and the rare snobbery of base individuals. Whatever the reason for this, the result is that you look like someone who is, first and foremost, unimpressed with or antagonistic to a certain group of people and therefore rejects the characteristics that those people possess, regardless of the intrinsic value of those characteristics. Unfortunately this is also expressed in minority groups, some going so far as to reject
You have tried?
Can you properly frame the term "epignosis" in its correct Biblical context and provide examples of how it is important?
Can you elucidate the central tennents of the Bible with concerning to the status of mankind with respect to the other creatures in creation and why the current arrangement is necessary, again according to the Bible?
Can you discribe what the Bible says with regards to the interchange of essence that occurs at the moment of faith in Christ and the eternal repercussions for the believer?
Can you sum up the constituent parts of the integrity of God as discribed in the Bible and use those to show the policy and strategy that God uses to approach and deal with the creatures in the universe?
If you cannot do those things you have not even scratched the surface of the Bible and therefore cannot understand how the things that Christ did and said interlock with the rest of the scriptures.
Without that basic understanding, your attempts to see Christ as He is portrayed in the Bible are going to be fruitless because you do not understand the context. You are at the very least more than 2000 years out of that context and fundamentally seperated from it due to lack of grounding in systematic theology and Jewish and Christian doctrine.
If you do give yourself the opportunity to view this internal symetry between the Bible and Jesus the conclusions you will come to will be a bit different I think. I suspect that you will come to the crossroads of "fact or fiction" instead of thinking that he was a real person who was a crook or madman. The reason I say this is that the correlations and meshing with the rest of scripture is so good as to seem either perfect, indication divinity, or suspiciously contrived, indicating a fraud of colossal proportions.
However, until you can see the whole tapestry, and understand the way it is constructed and how the parts fit together you will forever be sidelined in your own self-assured yet ignorant position.
In addition, and in my opinion most importantly, the "message" of Jesus is the reason that I see a difference between him and an unscrupulous or unhinged character as you imagine him. Gaining the perspective to properly evaluate Him on this basis requires a bit more than just reading the Bible from cover to cover. Systematic theology will help a bit, but understanding the original languages is really the key.
So the price of entry is high, but at least then you could say that you *really* tried.
"Actually, you are wrong. Jesus himself commanded in Mathew 5:48"
You quoting this is problematic for thos who do not understand the Bible and Christian theology. What He is stating, if it is to be taken exactly as it is translated, is completely impossible for humanity, especially so in the context of the divine as described in the Bible by Christ himself.
So, then you have to ask yourself a series of questions. Is this translated properly? Is it taken out of context? Is there some nuance missing? If yes, no, and no are the answers then what is He referring to? Maybe the imputation of divine righteousness or maybe another of the 39 irrevocable absolutes that are mentioned as the inheritance of those who believe in Christ. The answer is a lesson for the reader.
As for what is "required" this is a matter of some complexity. First, there is the PREREQUISITE of salvation before this declaration takes on any meaning. This means that for the person listening to this discussion and taking it as a teaching lesson they ALREADY have salvation. Therefore, salvation is not at stake when talking about these things, only how a Christian should compose themselves. The person will be a Christian by the standards set forth in the Bible regardless of how they act, provided that they believe in Christ. All other things are irrelevant with respect to that person attaining salvation and their status as a Christian, regardless of the way other humans may view them.
Now, you may be thinking things like if person X does action Y they can never go to heaven, but the Bible is explicit about how salvation occurs and it does not involve the action of mankind other than faith and even that faith is imputed by God to mankind. This seperates the actions of man from the salvation of God completely and throws many of the ideas of what mankind thinks should matter when determining salvation right out the window.
As for the addition lessons provided by God in the Bible that do not have to do with the subject of the Gospel/hamartiology/salvation, they are for those believers who want to worship God. Worship, in the Bible, is simple. It is learning about Bible doctrine, which in turn is knowledge of the character and person of God. Through this process, a Christian is said to be able to achieve the "Mind of Christ" where he will have enough understanding and internalization of the character of God and Bible doctrine that they can think, act, react, and derive moivation the same way that Christ does. All Christians are commanded to achieve this, though those that do not will not lose their salvation or their status as Christians. Again the status of Christian is independent of actions other than faith in Christ.
Yeah, there is that.
I guess if you break it down into the basic parts "pseud" and "epigraph" it makes it a bit easier to remember the proper spelling. However, it does make you wonder how they arrived at the pronunciation.
Anyone has studied canonicity enough to use the term "pseudopigraphal" gets a highfive.
I have never seen a conservative who had advocated states rights without limit, or in direct contradiction ot the constitution.
The idea of "states rights" is in the constitution as well, in that if the power is not strictly listed in the constitution it is in the realm of states rights.
The bais of this case is clearly delineated in the constitution and the judges saw fit to ignore that.
"but in the end they're journalists"
Wrong!
In the end they are all employees, and therefore controlled by the media policies of the people they work for, dependent on those that employ them for thier livelyhood, and subject to termination if they try to go against what their management wants.
If management says "don't show this on the news" they don't. It is that simple. In fact, I bet management dosen't even have to say that, the people in teh newsroom just KNOW by now. That is why they are still employed there!
This is just another example of how the media serves its own interests.
*JUST* last night I was discussing cigarettes and nicotine with my 10 year old daughter.
:)
I googled for some details on the neurological effects of nicotine and widened the search for nicotine as a pesticide. Howstuffworks.com was one of the top sites so I checked it out.
I spent about 10 minutes reading things with my daughter and elucidating what was going on. It was a well written article, broken down into pages in an outline type format. Very informative and simple to understand.
After reading it my daughter was talking about how the nicotine is an "impostor" for acetylcholine. Not too bad for a 10 minute session.
So, yes, you goofball, they still do that "sometimes."
"the lunar dust is incredibly hard on mechanical things "
One of the great things about the moon is the lack of atmosphere. This means that when you move dust away from a place it will not return easily.
Sweepers, vacuums, or (GASP!) explosives could be used to remove the dust from a proposed build site. No more dust and no wind to bring it back!
Personally I think that he explosive idea is the best as any mechanical device would be subject to the same abbrasive damage that your proposed installation would be.
Well, that and the fact that I would love to watch through my telescope while we blow shit up on the moon!
Also, why avoid doing something initially (building a base on the moon in this instance) because it is hard to do and will cost money? We are talking about space exploration and technological advancement. OF COURSE it is going to cost alot of money! It always does, and always more than we think going in.
The reason why? We don't know what we don't know we don't know. We continually run into unforseen problems. The fantastic part about an undertaking like this, IMHO, is these problems we never even anticipated. We conquer the real roadblocks on the way to the goal and develop new technology in the process. These new technologies provide us with the payoff for doing these outlandish and expensive things when they trickle down to the public sector.
So in the process of overcoming these obstacles we discover ways of meeting and hopefully exceeding what is required to achieve our goal. Then, when we implement our new ideas, maintenance gets less expensive.
And for our efforts we have a totally new bag of technological tricks, a smug sense of self accomplishment, AND a lunar base. Beat that!
The growing up I would say is important to people with body mods and tattoos, etc. is that they should recognize that the world contains prejudice. The fact that you have made yourself different than eveyone else will result in you being persecuted at one level or another. You knew this when you got the tattoo/mod. Some people even wanted it! To cry foul and rally against it shows immaturity irrespective of the fact that you have tattoos or mods. In other words, suck it up and take it, just like you did the pain of gettin the tat itself.
Take this perspective as one from an (ex?) subculture member who has friends who have full sleeves, neck, face, skull tattoos, etc. Most of my friends realized what the consequences of their actions would be before they got them. Well, some were drugged out of thier minds and couldn't think past next week and therefore didn't care, and others just did not want to be identified with the members of society that were conformists. Regardless, I have not heard any of them complain about this, to their merit.
As for myself, I had bleached white hair that went down to my ass for years. The chicks dug it, but when it was time to get a professional job after college, I got it chopped. The reason? I knew that it would be a distraction that could prevent me from getting the job and money that I wanted. I still dream aobut having long hair, I loved it that much. I just realized that, regardless of how I felt about it, someone else with something that I wanted would probably feel differently.
Also consider that there are(were!) people in this world who have been killed for having a different shade of skin from birth. Then compare your "tribulation" to the prejudice that they have endured.
The point is this: Nobody likes a whiner. Everyone makes decisions, and for better or worse, and they have to deal with the consequences. The really sad part is that you did this to yourself.
There are numerous studies that show that metals are in tattoo ink.
Either way, what you are looking for are iron containing oxides and the like, as these are the ones that will react to the magnetic field in the MRI and supposedly cause the irritation, etc.
I work in a retail business in Houston and *RIGHT* across the freeway from me is a little lab where they make, among other things, large quantities of nanotubes and buckyballs. They mostly provide these to NASA and USA researchers for development of new lubricants for the space program.
The way I found this out was from the guy that runs it. He stopped in to take a look at my products and we got to talking about what he did, and needless to say, I was deeply interested.
The thing that freaked me out was that as we were talking about the C60 he messed with he showed me his palm and there were places where he had nanotubes and buckies embedded in his skin. All that went through my head was "WTF are the long term repercussions of massive nanotube and buckball inhalation (which he mentioned as well) and consumption?"
I guess nobody really knows, I just hope that they aren't bad because the guy was pretty cool.
Sorry to spoil yours, but as a race as a whole Jews score much higer in the intelligence category than other races. The Japaneese score similarly high.
Unfortunately it is almost impossible to reference these studies with an internet link or with anything in recent US publications because of the opressive "politically correct" landscape.