But yeah, that's just not scary. Western horror films aren't any better (and haven't been for decades), especially since they've just been copying foreign films lately, and doing a bad job of it.
Hellboy is horrible,
You know what else are awful horror movies? Blade Runner Harold and Kumar go to White Castle Citizen Cane The X-Men No Country for Old Men The 40 Year Old Virgin Of course, the main reason for this is that they're not horror movies either.....
Oh c'mon.....I'll grant you that the idea of "prescribing" these things as a medical device is batshit insane, but your concerns seem a little wild.....
Ok, here's the "prescribed" worst case scenario: tiny Tim finds Granny's piece, identifies what it is, but can't shoot it. He goes online, finds out how to work it, and "accidentally" blows his head off.
Or, Tiny Tim finds Granny's Lil' Rascal scooter, identifies what it is, but can't drive it. He goes online, finds out how to work it, and "accidentally" drives onto a highway and is splattered across the blacktop. The problem in both of these scenarios is that Tiny Tim is poorly supervised and left alone with potentially dangerous objects, not that the objects exist.
Here's the "real world" worst case scenario:...it's the perfect mugger's weapon... use your imagination!! The sick bastards that designed it obviously have! I can see it now... "Oh those Chinese copies that made their way into the US have nothing to do with us...." Gimme a fu(kin break.
There are plenty of tiny little "novelty" guns around, made to look like pens, or lighters or whatever. This would be a rotten choice for a mugger as nobody would know what it is when the guy pulls it out. Muggers generally would rather not shoot their victims, that ups the ante on multiple levels (police response, sentencing if caught). Some of them will use their gun if they feel they're "forced to" (ie, you don't give them what they want), but generally the gun is there to scare you into being cooperative. In that case, it really helps if you don't have to explain to your victim what you're holding and how it works before they feel intimidated by it. Might as well just carry a steak-knife instead...
Here's what will actually happen: murders will rise, and Americans will rally around the right to bear arms. So sad.
I just can't see this thing being so popular that it actually creates a noticeable increase in gun violence.
I think the problem there is choice of words. Universal healthcare is an entitlement, and calling it a right (in the way that Americans tend to use the word in this context) seems like a pretty long stretch. Personally I'm in favor of doing it, I just don't think that it fits the definition of being a right.
That's list is a terrible comparison for a number of reasons.
drive the way and at speeds I see fit? drive home after a getting drunk in the pub?
There are laws regulating the use of firearms just as there are laws regulating the use of motor-vehicles. You can't do 185 m.p.h. on the Garden State Parkway and you can't randomly fire a weapon on a city street. I don't think anyone here is arguing that such a right exists.
end unwanted pregnancies as I see fit?
This is legal in the United States, and personally I see it as a value call. If you're against abortion, don't have one, if you're okay with it, it's not my concern.
smoke or inject fun substances?
Currently illegal, but personally I don't care what drugs you use as long as you don't bother me while you're doing it.
sell those substances to kids because it's good money and I need to make a living anyway?
Children are a protected class for plenty of other things. Children can not drive cars, purchase alcohol, purchase cigarettes and many other examples. Does this mean that these restrictions should be extended to cover adults as well? Of course not.
own my personal nuclear warhead as protection against neighbour's dog?
If I shoot a someone who has broken into my home and intends to harm me, I have caused damage to that one person. If I set off a nuclear weapon to do the same thing, I've taken out thousands of other people who have nothing to do with the incident. Do you see a difference between the two situations?
Yeah really. I heard they had some crazy idea for some kind of computer "network" that could one day comprise millions and millions of machines and allow for pervasive communication and information retrieval. What a bunch of nuts.
We all know that the future of computers is a big municipal mainframe that people can access from their home computer-room over a compact terminal no bigger than a '57 Cadillac.
Actually, I think it's really more the context that matters, which you kind of point out with the phrase "literal truth", versus I suppose "philosophical truth"(?). My murderer above claimed innocence, but he lied so this was not truth. Literal truth. Kindness is preferable to cruelty. Philosophical Truth? Anyway, I'm just having fun with words and concepts, and that's the truth:)
Aren't both of your examples actually based on people's opinions of truth?
For instance, Catholics are actually stating their opinion on transubstantiation. That doesn't make it any more true than any other unsubstantiated opinion (keep in mind, there are plenty of dissenting opinions in other branches of Christianity). If God himself were to weigh in on the subject, perhaps he'd say that the Catholics are mistaken, meaning that although they believed it to be the truth, it is still actually not.
In the case of the judge and jury, they're using the facts of the case to form an opinion on what the truth of the case actually is. Let's say that a jury finds a man innocent of murder. In this example, the man actually committed the crime though. Therefore, while their opinion is that his innocence is true, they're wrong. Their finding actually has no bearing on the actual truth of what happened. The point being, although they thought they were right, they failed in finding the truth.
Consider yourself lucky. Slashdotters only have to put up with me in very small doses, and they can hide my posts. My wife on the other hand somehow deals with my assorted nonsense and idiocy on a daily basis. Poor, poor woman....
Most religions suggest that unrestrained cruelty and selfishness against other humans will result in unpleasant consequences later on. Judging by human behaviour, I'd say that all help there is needed.
And yet they do it anyway. In some cases, they do it in the name of religion. And in some religions, they can get off scott-free as far as the afterlife goes as long as they say they're sorry to someone who works for the church. If we had no religious people committing acts of "unrestrained cruelty and selfishness" I'd agree with you, but that's just not the case. People are capable of being unimaginably horrible, or breathtakingly wonderful, but religion doesn't seem to be a prerequisite for either.
Yeah, just like how the members of that "certian race" voted for Bill Clinton in almost the same percentage (83%), and even more of them voted for Kerry (88%). Now if Obama were a republican, you'd have an interesting data point, but saying that almost the same percentage of blacks voted democrat this year as in other recent years is suddenly racist is a little disingenuous. Or were they under the impression that Clinton and Kerry are black? McCain was not likely to get those votes regardless of who he ran against.
I'd say we would have gotten all the downsides and none of the upsides and thus would be worse off than now
And those upsides are what exactly? I'm not trolling, I really just don't see a whole lot that religion has provided that either wouldn't have happened anyway or that we actually need....
There's no way they were smarter and bigger then us and still managed to be defeated by us. So either they faced a danger we didn't, or they weren't as smart as us.
Or they just didn't breed as quickly as we do, or were for some reason less agressive. I'm bigger and smarter than an africanized bee, but I don't necessarily want to run up to one of their hives and start kicking it.
Being bigger and smarter doesn't guarantee success, it just gives a potential advantage.
I think the difference there would be intent, but that's why I'm hoping for a lawyer to answer. Forgetting to clean up that broken glass may be negligent, but going out onto the sidewalk, smashing bottles all afternoon and then walking away laughing might be considered reckless? That's my stab at it at least....
Okay, IANAL. My question will probably make it quite obvious that IANAL. That said....
I've heard quite a bit about prosecutors coming up with this (horrible) set of charges because they can't figure out anything else to get her for. I agree that what this woman did was very wrong, and I can understand their desire to prosecute her. My question is, doesn't this woman's actions fall under "reckless endangerment" or "child endangerment"? If she knew about the girl's instability, wouldn't creating a fake personality designed to betray her be an example of creating a situation with an inherent risk of death or injury of the "target" (i.e. potential suicide attempt)? Soooo, I imagine there's a reason not to prosecute this way. Any legal types care to set me straight?
Okay, the after was definitely photoshopped to add that background and touch-up her appearance, but the before pic, according to many photo-buffs here seemed to be heavily compressed and degraded from the (probable) original. This has the effect of making her appear much older, washed out, and more "run-down" than she would in a higher quality pic. Therefore, isn't the A.P. really bending this issue even further out of shape by using a photo as the "before" shot that they should know is not actually comparable to the actual original pic?
Really, everyone loves to rant about how much money is wasted by the government and military, and then you hear complaints about things like this? And for what?
Scenario A: We need a press photo of the new general in front of a big flag. Go hire a photographer, block a few hours on the general's calendar and get all the necessary approvals for the photo from everyone who inevitably will want to throw in their two-cents about how best to do it.
Scenario B: We need a press photo of the new general in front of a big flag. Hey, Bob, here's a nice pic of her from last year, can you photoshop a flag background into it? Should take about an hour or so.
There really is a world of difference between popping out a PR photo of someone so that the newsies can show it in the corner of the screen when they talk about her and touching up a photo of a warehouse to make it look like it's full of nuclear warheads.
More and more it seems to me that employers want to shift the focus of employee compensation from paying for an employee's time to paying for specific tasks to be accomplished. Now, more and more, technology makes it easier to try to accomplish this. You have to use the bathroom? Go ahead, but if you're gone for more than 4.5 minutes we're clocking you out automatically. Booting up your machine? Madness! The company can't make money off those 15 minutes so it simply won't pay for it. Attend the after-hours meeting off the clock, it's really for your own benefit, not the company's. The computer will monitor your activity, and management will get a regular report on your efficiency at a level only dreamed of by generations of managers past.
Efficiency is a good thing, but humans aren't machines and numbers on a report don't tell anywhere near a complete story when it comes to a given employee's work-life.
I love technology, I really do, but I hate that I see it being used in ways that seem to dehumanize workers, that make them just additional parts in the machine. I don't want to come off as having nostalgia for an age that never existed, but it seems to me that in the past 10 years or so the trend towards using technology this way has taken some really rotten turns. Not because companies have become more evil, just because they have tools to track what workers are up to that were unheard of in the past.
Perhaps I should have said the religions we have will now be moot unless one of them proves to be true. For instance, if humanity vanishes, and a new sentience arises and the Christians are right, would it be unreasonable to expect that their god would send a "savior" to this new sentience? Even if no new sentience were to take our place, we'd still know as some of us would be in heaven, the others would be in hell, and we'd therefore have a pretty definite answer about whether that particular god exists or not. Religions tends to think of themselves as having proof of their correctness, direct interactions and inspirations that come from their deities. If one of them is right, then that deity would "talk" to it's new creation, wouldn't it? I'm not talking about the concept of religion, I'm talking about the religions that are currently practiced and claim to be true and enduring.
Whenever I see someone say that anything regarding faith or spirituality is unlikely, I always question just how much of a scientist they really are, because if they were that dedicated to the scientific principle, they would say that they simply don't know, rather than make baseless assumptions.
Two things, faith and religion are definitely not the same thing. One can have faith that there is something greater than themselves without joining a religion that claims to actually have all the answers. The second is, to someone of a scientific bent finding Islam, or Christianity or Judaism unlikely is no different than finding the existence of tiny, ancient, invisible robots that hover slightly out of our reach unlikely. The fact you can't prove something doesn't exist does not mean that you have to accept absolutely anything as possible.
IMHO, a die-hard atheist is just as ignorant as a radical fundamentalist.
I guess it depends on what you mean by "die-hard". If you mean someone who goes out of their way to try to force others to accept that there's no god and punish them for believing differently, then I agree. If you mean someone who simply can't be persuaded to accept the possibility that religion is correct without some sort of compelling evidence for it, then I completely disagree. Personally, I don't care what anyone believes, but that doesn't mean I can't voice my own opinion on the subject, that I have to accept their beliefs as reasonable, or that I have to present my own views in such a way as to not imply that I believe they're wrong.
Ugh. I don't think I ever said that anyone should (or even can) live entirely without philosophy. I did say that one can live quite nicely without a philosophy that attributes an inherent purpose to the universe. Secondly, of course the universe can function without science. The universe functioned just fine before humanity came along, and will most likely continue once we're gone. The things that science studies though will probably not change. Objects will still exert a gravitational pull on each other, fusion will continue in stars, etc, etc, etc. Should another intelligent species arise though, all the nifty little things we've learned will be the same for them as they are for us. Once we're gone though, philosophy becomes moot, as it's tailored pretty specifically to humans, and particular subsets of them as well. Religion too will be moot, unless one of them, despite the staggering unlikeliness of it all, turns out to be true.
But then again, even fundamentalistic christians don't actually believe in "an old chap with a beard who lives in the sky".
Actually, I've heard a number of people claim exactly this, although the "in the sky" part actually refers to heaven. Of course it doesn't apply to everyone to claims to be a Christian, but saying nobody believes this seems inaccurate. I recall that the Bible claims that Adam was created in God's image (I could be wrong here, I know it's oft repeated though), which would, to someone taking a literal approach to religion, imply that God is in fact human-like.
As a matter of fact, christianity forbids you to put God into any shape (2nd commandment).
I've never heard this before. The second commandment reads as "You shall not make for yourself an idol". Or at least I think this is the one you mean, different groups seem to number them differently. Anyway, how does this bar people from imagining or describing what the Judeo-Christian God looks like? As far as Catholicism goes even making "idols" is fine, as long as you don't worship them as if they were actually God.
I still fail to see what exactly makes the big bang or the big superstring recycling vastly superior to the divine creation.
Well, there's actual evidence for the big-bang, and there's no evidence for divine creation (or a divine creator). That's probably where most people would start as far as distinctions go....then again, there are those who say that the big bang was divine creation, so it's not necessarily an "either/or" in some cases.
Slashdot Mirror
You know what else are awful horror movies?
Blade Runner
Harold and Kumar go to White Castle
Citizen Cane
The X-Men
No Country for Old Men
The 40 Year Old Virgin
Of course, the main reason for this is that they're not horror movies either.....
Oh c'mon.....I'll grant you that the idea of "prescribing" these things as a medical device is batshit insane, but your concerns seem a little wild.....
Or, Tiny Tim finds Granny's Lil' Rascal scooter, identifies what it is, but can't drive it. He goes online, finds out how to work it, and "accidentally" drives onto a highway and is splattered across the blacktop.
The problem in both of these scenarios is that Tiny Tim is poorly supervised and left alone with potentially dangerous objects, not that the objects exist.
There are plenty of tiny little "novelty" guns around, made to look like pens, or lighters or whatever. This would be a rotten choice for a mugger as nobody would know what it is when the guy pulls it out. Muggers generally would rather not shoot their victims, that ups the ante on multiple levels (police response, sentencing if caught). Some of them will use their gun if they feel they're "forced to" (ie, you don't give them what they want), but generally the gun is there to scare you into being cooperative. In that case, it really helps if you don't have to explain to your victim what you're holding and how it works before they feel intimidated by it. Might as well just carry a steak-knife instead...
I just can't see this thing being so popular that it actually creates a noticeable increase in gun violence.
I think the problem there is choice of words. Universal healthcare is an entitlement, and calling it a right (in the way that Americans tend to use the word in this context) seems like a pretty long stretch.
Personally I'm in favor of doing it, I just don't think that it fits the definition of being a right.
That's list is a terrible comparison for a number of reasons.
There are laws regulating the use of firearms just as there are laws regulating the use of motor-vehicles. You can't do 185 m.p.h. on the Garden State Parkway and you can't randomly fire a weapon on a city street. I don't think anyone here is arguing that such a right exists.
This is legal in the United States, and personally I see it as a value call. If you're against abortion, don't have one, if you're okay with it, it's not my concern.
Currently illegal, but personally I don't care what drugs you use as long as you don't bother me while you're doing it.
Children are a protected class for plenty of other things. Children can not drive cars, purchase alcohol, purchase cigarettes and many other examples. Does this mean that these restrictions should be extended to cover adults as well? Of course not.
If I shoot a someone who has broken into my home and intends to harm me, I have caused damage to that one person. If I set off a nuclear weapon to do the same thing, I've taken out thousands of other people who have nothing to do with the incident. Do you see a difference between the two situations?
Just wanted to mention that although this version pops up pretty regularly, it appears that it was not written by "Maj. Caudill, USMC".
Yeah really. I heard they had some crazy idea for some kind of computer "network" that could one day comprise millions and millions of machines and allow for pervasive communication and information retrieval. What a bunch of nuts.
We all know that the future of computers is a big municipal mainframe that people can access from their home computer-room over a compact terminal no bigger than a '57 Cadillac.
Actually, I think it's really more the context that matters, which you kind of point out with the phrase "literal truth", versus I suppose "philosophical truth"(?). :)
My murderer above claimed innocence, but he lied so this was not truth. Literal truth.
Kindness is preferable to cruelty. Philosophical Truth?
Anyway, I'm just having fun with words and concepts, and that's the truth
Aren't both of your examples actually based on people's opinions of truth?
For instance, Catholics are actually stating their opinion on transubstantiation. That doesn't make it any more true than any other unsubstantiated opinion (keep in mind, there are plenty of dissenting opinions in other branches of Christianity). If God himself were to weigh in on the subject, perhaps he'd say that the Catholics are mistaken, meaning that although they believed it to be the truth, it is still actually not.
In the case of the judge and jury, they're using the facts of the case to form an opinion on what the truth of the case actually is. Let's say that a jury finds a man innocent of murder. In this example, the man actually committed the crime though. Therefore, while their opinion is that his innocence is true, they're wrong. Their finding actually has no bearing on the actual truth of what happened. The point being, although they thought they were right, they failed in finding the truth.
Consider yourself lucky. Slashdotters only have to put up with me in very small doses, and they can hide my posts. My wife on the other hand somehow deals with my assorted nonsense and idiocy on a daily basis. Poor, poor woman....
I dunno, but if you could direct me to these sluts of which you speak I'd be willing to do all the necessary fieldwork to find the answer....
Wait....that one sounds okay to me actually....
And yet they do it anyway. In some cases, they do it in the name of religion. And in some religions, they can get off scott-free as far as the afterlife goes as long as they say they're sorry to someone who works for the church.
If we had no religious people committing acts of "unrestrained cruelty and selfishness" I'd agree with you, but that's just not the case. People are capable of being unimaginably horrible, or breathtakingly wonderful, but religion doesn't seem to be a prerequisite for either.
Yeah, just like how the members of that "certian race" voted for Bill Clinton in almost the same percentage (83%), and even more of them voted for Kerry (88%). Now if Obama were a republican, you'd have an interesting data point, but saying that almost the same percentage of blacks voted democrat this year as in other recent years is suddenly racist is a little disingenuous. Or were they under the impression that Clinton and Kerry are black? McCain was not likely to get those votes regardless of who he ran against.
And those upsides are what exactly? I'm not trolling, I really just don't see a whole lot that religion has provided that either wouldn't have happened anyway or that we actually need....
Or they just didn't breed as quickly as we do, or were for some reason less agressive. I'm bigger and smarter than an africanized bee, but I don't necessarily want to run up to one of their hives and start kicking it.
Being bigger and smarter doesn't guarantee success, it just gives a potential advantage.
I think the difference there would be intent, but that's why I'm hoping for a lawyer to answer. Forgetting to clean up that broken glass may be negligent, but going out onto the sidewalk, smashing bottles all afternoon and then walking away laughing might be considered reckless? That's my stab at it at least....
Okay, IANAL. My question will probably make it quite obvious that IANAL. That said....
I've heard quite a bit about prosecutors coming up with this (horrible) set of charges because they can't figure out anything else to get her for. I agree that what this woman did was very wrong, and I can understand their desire to prosecute her. My question is, doesn't this woman's actions fall under "reckless endangerment" or "child endangerment"? If she knew about the girl's instability, wouldn't creating a fake personality designed to betray her be an example of creating a situation with an inherent risk of death or injury of the "target" (i.e. potential suicide attempt)?
Soooo, I imagine there's a reason not to prosecute this way. Any legal types care to set me straight?
Okay, the after was definitely photoshopped to add that background and touch-up her appearance, but the before pic, according to many photo-buffs here seemed to be heavily compressed and degraded from the (probable) original. This has the effect of making her appear much older, washed out, and more "run-down" than she would in a higher quality pic. Therefore, isn't the A.P. really bending this issue even further out of shape by using a photo as the "before" shot that they should know is not actually comparable to the actual original pic?
Really, everyone loves to rant about how much money is wasted by the government and military, and then you hear complaints about things like this? And for what?
Scenario A: We need a press photo of the new general in front of a big flag. Go hire a photographer, block a few hours on the general's calendar and get all the necessary approvals for the photo from everyone who inevitably will want to throw in their two-cents about how best to do it.
Scenario B: We need a press photo of the new general in front of a big flag. Hey, Bob, here's a nice pic of her from last year, can you photoshop a flag background into it? Should take about an hour or so.
There really is a world of difference between popping out a PR photo of someone so that the newsies can show it in the corner of the screen when they talk about her and touching up a photo of a warehouse to make it look like it's full of nuclear warheads.
More and more it seems to me that employers want to shift the focus of employee compensation from paying for an employee's time to paying for specific tasks to be accomplished. Now, more and more, technology makes it easier to try to accomplish this. You have to use the bathroom? Go ahead, but if you're gone for more than 4.5 minutes we're clocking you out automatically. Booting up your machine? Madness! The company can't make money off those 15 minutes so it simply won't pay for it. Attend the after-hours meeting off the clock, it's really for your own benefit, not the company's. The computer will monitor your activity, and management will get a regular report on your efficiency at a level only dreamed of by generations of managers past.
Efficiency is a good thing, but humans aren't machines and numbers on a report don't tell anywhere near a complete story when it comes to a given employee's work-life.
I love technology, I really do, but I hate that I see it being used in ways that seem to dehumanize workers, that make them just additional parts in the machine. I don't want to come off as having nostalgia for an age that never existed, but it seems to me that in the past 10 years or so the trend towards using technology this way has taken some really rotten turns. Not because companies have become more evil, just because they have tools to track what workers are up to that were unheard of in the past.
Perhaps I should have said the religions we have will now be moot unless one of them proves to be true. For instance, if humanity vanishes, and a new sentience arises and the Christians are right, would it be unreasonable to expect that their god would send a "savior" to this new sentience? Even if no new sentience were to take our place, we'd still know as some of us would be in heaven, the others would be in hell, and we'd therefore have a pretty definite answer about whether that particular god exists or not.
Religions tends to think of themselves as having proof of their correctness, direct interactions and inspirations that come from their deities. If one of them is right, then that deity would "talk" to it's new creation, wouldn't it? I'm not talking about the concept of religion, I'm talking about the religions that are currently practiced and claim to be true and enduring.
Two things, faith and religion are definitely not the same thing. One can have faith that there is something greater than themselves without joining a religion that claims to actually have all the answers. The second is, to someone of a scientific bent finding Islam, or Christianity or Judaism unlikely is no different than finding the existence of tiny, ancient, invisible robots that hover slightly out of our reach unlikely. The fact you can't prove something doesn't exist does not mean that you have to accept absolutely anything as possible.
I guess it depends on what you mean by "die-hard". If you mean someone who goes out of their way to try to force others to accept that there's no god and punish them for believing differently, then I agree. If you mean someone who simply can't be persuaded to accept the possibility that religion is correct without some sort of compelling evidence for it, then I completely disagree.
Personally, I don't care what anyone believes, but that doesn't mean I can't voice my own opinion on the subject, that I have to accept their beliefs as reasonable, or that I have to present my own views in such a way as to not imply that I believe they're wrong.
Ugh.
I don't think I ever said that anyone should (or even can) live entirely without philosophy. I did say that one can live quite nicely without a philosophy that attributes an inherent purpose to the universe.
Secondly, of course the universe can function without science. The universe functioned just fine before humanity came along, and will most likely continue once we're gone. The things that science studies though will probably not change. Objects will still exert a gravitational pull on each other, fusion will continue in stars, etc, etc, etc. Should another intelligent species arise though, all the nifty little things we've learned will be the same for them as they are for us. Once we're gone though, philosophy becomes moot, as it's tailored pretty specifically to humans, and particular subsets of them as well. Religion too will be moot, unless one of them, despite the staggering unlikeliness of it all, turns out to be true.
Actually, I've heard a number of people claim exactly this, although the "in the sky" part actually refers to heaven. Of course it doesn't apply to everyone to claims to be a Christian, but saying nobody believes this seems inaccurate. I recall that the Bible claims that Adam was created in God's image (I could be wrong here, I know it's oft repeated though), which would, to someone taking a literal approach to religion, imply that God is in fact human-like.
I've never heard this before. The second commandment reads as "You shall not make for yourself an idol". Or at least I think this is the one you mean, different groups seem to number them differently. Anyway, how does this bar people from imagining or describing what the Judeo-Christian God looks like? As far as Catholicism goes even making "idols" is fine, as long as you don't worship them as if they were actually God.
Well, there's actual evidence for the big-bang, and there's no evidence for divine creation (or a divine creator). That's probably where most people would start as far as distinctions go....then again, there are those who say that the big bang was divine creation, so it's not necessarily an "either/or" in some cases.
in your experience do monotheists usually believe in more than one god?
but...but...it had the Lucasfilm logo on the package!