an artist who has never ever touched a drug will inherently be a better artist than one who has had their faculties degraded due to drug use
drug use is only a gateway to lost time and lost faculties
however, plenty of people believe what you have written above. they are all subpar wannabes, not real artists
heck consider the work of drug enthusiasts, like william s burroughs or hunter s thompson: they never, ever say drug use heightens their art. they merely make art about their lifestyle. no artist, who has ever lived, has ever claimed that their drug use made them better artists. although you have: are you a salesman for the mafia? pffffft
if you wish to make great art in your life, you stay off drugs. if you wish to deaden the pain of feeling like a failure, take drugs
those are your choices, and that explains the relationship between drugs and art: it is a secondary, orthogonal use by people who, living on the cutting edge, often burn out
please note: i am not arguing against drug use here. go on, enjoy yourself. take all the drugs you want. just don't fucking pretend that drug use is anything more than what it is: a pleasurable experience, life-deadening experience. heighten insight and the senses? more like reduce and corrupt the faculties
you're a snakes oil salesman of the highest and sleaziest of orders. you should go work for big pharma
when you are deeply involved in making sure you simply have a meal to eat, you don't have the opportunity to dwell on the absence of a problem producing anxiety about having an absence of a problem
dealt with things like world war i, world war ii, the bubonic plague, the american revolution... etc.
all with less media resources, lower quality nutrition (we don't have lower quality nutrition these days, we have TOO MUCH nutrition), a worse set of ideologies, lower socioeconomic status, etc.
whatever stresses today's youth are going through, its fucking easy in comparison stresses previous generations have faced
get over it, grow the fuck up. sorry you're daily video game hours or facebook/ twitter diddling hours has been reduced. i think you'll find the ability to deal somewhere deep in your rich bounty of character. pffffffft
"The drugs won't just give you great things. You need to seed the experience. You need to participate in it, not just sit back and spectate."
you're posturing. those are arbitrary pointless signifiers. what you wrote is just a wonderful way to say a whole lot of nothing... much like a trip
plenty of people have tried to capture the sights, sounds, and thoughts of what they experienced while on a trip. but what they see, hear or read when they are sober is always scribbles, random musical notes, or "muffler indexing big cat dancing toupee". no matter if they "participate" or "observe and report". you are using arbitrary signifiers ("seed the experience") in a desperate attempt to attach meaning to an experience you have obviously retained a lot of significance in for your life
well, good for you then. if tripping is important to you, then please, by all means, go on with your bad self: continue to trip and enjoy the experience. i do not in any way stand against that which you enjoy. power to you. i hope you continue to enjoy tripping your whole life
i am not trying to be a killjoy. i am trying to kill your notion that what you enjoy has anything to teach us. hey, i enjoy kayaking. but i don't believe kayaking is a gateway to greater consciousness. i'll enthuse and evangelize and get excited when i talk to people about my joys kayaking. but i'm not going to tell them it makes my mind expand or my artistic abilities to increase or my iq to go up. it simply means i'm having fun and other people can have fun at it too
so don't try to fool yourself any longer or anyone else that what you are experiencing is anything more than the temporary degradation of self for pleasurable effect, like any other drug. not that the act of degrading self for pleasurable effect should not be done, not that it isn't enjoyable, and not that you shouldn't enthuse about it and enjoy talking to other people about how wonderful it is
but it isn't the gateway to anything except some harmless fun. get off your high horse
my thoughts and the images i saw on my trip were simply outstanding, the depths my mind was probing was simply awesome. i know what you speak of
but i was not actually feeling, seeing, hearing, and thinking great things. because while on that trip, what "i" was was modified: my mind had become incredibly small. what does a drug actually do psychopharmacologically? it doesn't open up some unknown portal in your mind. it simply shuts things down. its simple biochemistry, look it up
if you could take the processing power of a cat's brain, and temporarily put it in the context of the mental abilities of a human brain, the cat's brain would be utterly awestruck. this is the source of your impressions while on a trip. your executive functions, your highest faculties, are degraded and reduced and shrunk in powers to that of a small mammal like a cat. so of course normal human perceptions seem awesome: your executive functions are reduced
put it this way: if you measure the experience of sober reality as 1 foot in length, and your experience while on a trip as 1 mile in length, it is not because you actually experience a greater thing while on a trip, but because the yardstick you are using to measure your experience has been warped. what you experience while on a trip is no greater than reailty, simply your organs of perception have been shrunk and degraded. your entire yardstick is off
it is not that your mind is expanded while on a trip, but the actual organs of perception and interpretation in your mind are corrupted. such that common or cheaply altered thoughts and feelings and senses are seen as intricate, deep, and striking. when the truth is simply that the actual organ of thought is shrunken and broken while on a trip
what you believe of "great thoughts" and drug use is an illusion
both result in an alteration of what someone would consider "normal", thus the source of your confusion
but you don't create art when you are on lsd, nor do you find any inspiration
of course, when you are on lsd, you are speaking to god, you see both ends of the world, the words you write are of the highest genius, etc. then you come off of your trip, and you find you wrote "the dog, hollow beer"
drugs are a degradation, not a heightening. this is true aesthetically, and biologically. when you are in the degraded state of being under the influence of drugs, your perception of what art is becomes degraded as well
drug use is orthogonal to the lives of artists and the art they create. it is never intrinsic
the best art is done sober, and always has been done sober, and always will be done sober
drug use in artists coincides with a loss of abilities, not an increase of them
artists certainly have excesses in their lifestyles, of which drug use certainly is a common factor. but this is all secondary to being an artist, not some sort of gateway. if you dressed up like a race car driver, does that make you a race car driver? likewise, if you use drugs, you don't increase any artistic abilities, you just get stupid
anyone who actually believes that drug use increases artistic ability is certainly no artist
"weave" there isn't a joke that hasn't been made about girls with weaves
"RogueyWon" you're roguey? is that like sarah palin being mavericky?
"thepainguy" hello mr. S&M. go spank behinds somewhere else
"Southpaw018" ah yes, the proud left handed type, always announcing his left handed status without prompting. almost as annoying as the proud "i don't watch tv" type so damn proud of what nobody cares about
"91degrees" makes me think of that lame pop band 98 degrees
"Pharmboy" do you spam c1alis emails? or do sell adderall on your local college campus?
"MistrBlank" i'm sorry for your reproductive issues. in vitro fertilization offers wonderful outcomes nowadays
point being: prejudice is ignorant, all-pervasive, and easy. the idea is not that you should conform your email/ nickname to such small minds, but that if you lose a contact, or a job, due to such small minds, you should consider yourself LUCKY for the loss of contact with such mediocre people
i know well-respected medical doctors with aol addresses from the 1990s. because they don't have time to play mindless little image games like this one. this whole issue is stupid
creepy in the figurative sense, but also creepy in the literal sense too: it creeps up through the generations
the basic idea is that you have a region of genetic code that, with every generation, gets a little longer with repeats. such that, after a few generations, it results in mental deficiencies. of course, its not so straightforward: your child's number of copies of repeats may dramatically jump, or it may hold relatively stable with an unchanged number of copies at a borderline level for many generations. but the more your number of repeats in the vulnerable region, the greater your chance of having children with fragile x
so fragile x is not something like huntington's, where inheritance is straightforward and pat. in other words, any dilemmas a mother or father who is a carrier for huntington's may feel is the same for that person's grandparent, and its the same for that person's grandchild: its a constant across generations
but instead, with fragile x, you have to consider that your mild number of copies may be amplified through the generations. you have a greater risk than your grandparents, and your grandchildren have an even greater risk still
this creepy pattern of inheritance actually has a name: the sherman paradox
its information in aggregate. privacy implies PERSONALLY identifying information
if i say "wilbur cross of madison wisconsin rented 'no country for old men'" then that's an invasion of privacy
if i say "323 people in madison wisconsin rented 'no country for old men'" then there is no invasion of privacy
its ok to get upset about invasion of privacy. getting upset about it when none actually occurs is some sort of spastic hysteria, a triumph of emotion over logic. save your ammo for real battles
they react to things, they grow, they die and give birth to more ideas/ societies
look up the word "meme"
in fact, much as biological entities are nothing more than the vessels in which living, changing, competing genes exist, our minds are nothing but units in a game of living, changing, competing memes. language is the unit of information exchange
in fact, genetic change in humanity has ceased to be important. genetic change, across all species, now takes a backseat to memetic change in terms of evolutionary importance. evolutionary importance in this context meaning: the potential to extend life into new realms
we won't get off earth because of genetic change. we will get off earth because of memetic change. we are the dead end result of genetic change, and we became that when we evolved language and writing. with that leap, we closed the book on genetic change as being of paramount importance in terms of life's potential and opened a new book and a new era in life. we are in the beginning of a new era of memetic change, wherever that may lead, with or without us
genetics and genetic evolution just isn't the biggest most important game for life anymore. we're the interface between that and the new memetic era of life
1. country X does something bad 2. the USA is to blame for what country X does because (insert speculative line of reasoning)
the story summary is a classic example of this kind of bullshit
you don't have to like the usa. there is in fact, a smorgasbord of reasons to dislike the USA and its policies for you to choose from
however, if you have to blame initiatives done by other country's governments on the USA, you've left the land of logical coherence and entered the land of tribal chip on your shoulder
have a valid reason to dislike the USA, or be a crackpot. your choice
certainly terrorism in general will always be with us, but terrorism from one source or another certainly does end. fighting terrorism is simply the wages of civilization, like taking out the trash every thursday. you don't take the trash out one thursday and never do it again. its "the war on garbage". its called a "war on terrorism" but its really just law enforcement and police work. i mean there most certainly is a "war on crime" that will never end as well. its just verbiage
one bad actor can ruin the forum for everyone else
a nation committed to liberties will occasionally find those liberties abused by actors in bad faith. normally, you can weather these bad apples in low doses. but when the incidents increase, and the venom increases, some sort restriction on liberties becomes inevitable, simply as a matter of self-preservation
what's driving the threats to our liberties today are bad actors, not some top secret cabal that will preserve those limits forever. so fear not that our liberties are so fragile. there is a lot who remain committed to extending and expanding our freedoms, it is a solid philosophical bedrock, not some fashionable vogue. assholes hellbent on abusing our priveleges and blowing us up is a temporary threat, and restrictions on our liberties because of them are temporary as well. we the people will see to that
however, you can't erase an ingrained legal, philosophical, and cultural allegiance to freedoms overnight. in other words, there is also hysteria that a few airport restrictions means the entire western experiment with liberties and freedoms is over. yes, some screening efforts are an overreaction. but what we will see is some clamping down on freedoms in limited contexts: public squares, trains and airplanes, and then when the fundamentalist threat dies down in a decade or so (it is already losing its cachet in iran, which was a pioneer in fundamentalism in 1979), then these temporary clampdowns will be appropriately shoved aside as well
aside: my story about the troubles: i knew a british chick in the early 1990s and she was horrified when she came to new york city. now she knew that the ira got a lot of money from the states, but she was horrified at how out in the open it was. she couldn't believe that on almost every bank window were signs to the effect: "open your ira account today!" "now is the best time to open your ira account" "getting the best rates on your ira account?" etc...
i'm not talking about waging war, i'm talking about a hardcore antiterrorist effort, like the airport screenings
when terrorists set off bombs, hotheads on either side win, correct?
so, just as you say, and just as i also understand and agree with you, the way out of conflict is to let cooler heads prevail, which means not agitating the hotheads. you do that BY STOPPING THE BOMBS
you are confusing my support for hardcore antiterrorist efforts with hotheaded partisanship
surely, a few more IRA bombs or a few more ulster death squad atrocities would have prolonged the conflict and the hotheads, correct?
so we're in agreement
your only problem is that you are confusing my desire to ramp up the antiterrorist effort with being a hothead on a partisan side of the equation
question: would a hardcore antiterrorist effort have possibly stopped princip in 1914?
and if so, would millions have therefore not died in wwi, if other terrorist cataclysms were also averted?
if you say wwi would still have happened: you betray your own statement that everyone just having cooler heads and ignoring terrorist events is the way to go: because by saying wwi was inevitable you are saying hotheads will always prevail
if you say wwi could have possibly been averted: then you are putting your faith in hardcore antiterrorist efforts
you lose your argument either way. feel me now?
your problem is that you confuse my rational approach with the hysterical approach. from your position, which is the cluelessly blindly falsely complacent point of view, i can see how the hysteric and the prudent look the same. but you are confusing two positions. i'm not a hysteric. i'm not fearful. i'm levelheaded and prudent
meanwhile, i clearly understand that, just as dangerous as fatalistic terrified whining hysterics, is blind falsely complacent people like yourself
"hey everyone, could you listen up? i would like everyone on the planet to have a cool head. you know, to start behaving in a way no large groups of humans in any culture or any time period has ever behaved in all of human history, k thanks"
what i'm telling you is that terrorism precipitates war. example: wwi. example: iraq 2003. this is what al qaeda & co is trying hard to accomplish with the mumbai massacre last year. they aren't the earthquake. they are trying to catalyze the earthquake by pounding on geopolitical fault lines. THAT's why its important to fight terrorism hard. that's why its way more potent than something like car accident statistics
meanwhile, you just want to magically snap your fingers and change fundamental human nature. you want everyone to have a cool head. good for you. hey: its not going to happen. the status quo, permanent for human nature, is lots of hotheads running around
so when i tell you we need to fight terrorism hard it is not because i am also a hot head, it is because i recognize the reality, unlike you, that simply wishing for cooler heads is not going to actually make cooler heads. instead, we have to PREVENT THE ACTIVITIES THAT MAKE HOT HEADS. that is, we have to fight terrorist plots, hard. get me now?
what you are asking for is impossible
what i am asking for is hard, and doesn't always succeed. but it actually has a real world effect: ruined terrorist plots. and that genuinely makes a difference
you tell me: would a hardcore antiterrorist have possibly stopped princip in 1914? and if so, would millions have died in wwi if other cataclysms were also averted?
if you say wwi would still have happened, you betray your own statement that everyone just having cooler heads is the way to go: because by saying wwi was inevitable you are saying hotheads will always prevail
but if you say wwi could have possibly been averted, then you are putting your faith in hardcore antiterrorist efforts
so either yes or no to wwi possibly being averted, you lose your argument
i'm saying gwbush is an asshole. i'm saying assholes exist in this world. i'm saying terrorism gives them carte blanche to overreact. only in your demented mind does me saying that assholes overreact mean then that i am the same kind of overreacting asshole. no, moron, i'm only TELLING you what will happen, i'm not SUPPORTING what will happen. get the difference? the way you are reacting to me is called shooting the messenger
this is my message to you: assholes will overreact to terrorism. so therefore, its very important to fight terrorism. get it?
you're telling me "hey, everybody stop overreacting. you know, everybody just magically start behaving like no group of human beings in any culture in any period of human history has ever behaved"
in other words, i have an intelligent grasp of human nature and therefore an intelligent understanding of the large threat terrorism holds for us: it could precipitate a war. you, meanwhile, just wish people would sing campfire songs and hold hands and everything will be ok. you're a fool
it was simply to dispel your ridiculous notion that static historical statistics is somehow valuable in adequately describing the threat terrorism poses to you
"If Radicalism is spreading exponentially - perhaps you should look to your foreign policy and to your world attitude in general to find out why so many people hate you, not to their actions."
hilarious! in which you refer to a geopolitical truth that supports MY ASSERTION: that terrorism is a threat, and growing. hate feeds hate, correct? so a successful terrorist attack breeds hate, WHICH THREATENS YOU. right, moron?
19 men crashed 4 airplanes on 9/11. you say so what: terrorism is not a threat to me. that's your thesis
i say it allowed a moronic american administration to invading iraq. how many died there? did the hate in the usa and the hate in iraq from this growing cycle of violence POSE ANY THREAT TO YOU?
say to me with a straight face that gwbush could have had the political support to invade iraq if 9/11 didn't happen. do you understand yet what is at stake with terrorism and the need to fight it with time, money, and effort?
after 9/11, india and pakistan mobilized their troops on their borders. nothing happened there, luckily. is that always going to be the case if al qaeda and its wannabes unleash a few more mumbai massacres? wwi, which killed millions, was set off by a small group of nationalist partisans in sarajevo bent on assassination. the mumbai massacre last year was the same sort of attempt: pound at geopolitical fault lines until you pull everyone into the war al qaeda and its wannabes are already fighting. that's what they WANT, that's what they are working hard to do: not to be the earthquake, but to be the catalytic event that unleashes pent up frustrations and hatreds. you understand what an enzyme is, right? how a little bit can dramatically change the outcome of a solution of chemicals, correct? then you understand the potency of what al qaeda and its efforts really represents to your well-being
if princip had NOT assassinated the archduke, wwi probably still would have happened due to some other cataclysmic event, correct? OR: given time, and no major cataclysms, MAYBE things would have cooled down in europe, and the whole of history would have changed and millions of lives would have been saved
but you say fighting terrorism isn't worth it. according to you, a few more mumbai massacres, a few more blown up night clubs, a few more blown up trains: eh, isn't statistically significant. buy more road signs to fight car accidents instead. because you know, stopping 100 car accidents versus the possibility of war between india and pakistan which would kill millions: obviously, lets stop car accidents. pfffffffft
maybe, FINALLY, if you fucking understand what terrorism threatens to unleash in the world you derive your well-being from, then maybe you will finally be intellectually honest and admit that terrorism is a serious threat that must be fought hard. FAR more important than stopping fucking car accidents
something like road accidents have been studied to death, are mostly unchanging, and any costs are readily understood in terms of impact and cost effectiveness
meanwhile, something like terrorism is poorly understood, is obviously on the rise, is wildly variable in result, and is as a rule of the catastrophic variety: an airplane blown up today, a nightclub tomorrow, a suitcase nuke after that. its not a fucking exercise in counting the regular annual pile up of cars into trees, or anything remotely comparable, according to a thousand different variables a junior high school student could grasp. so to simplemindedly equate the two threats is exactly that: simpleminded stupidity
really, this is the truth: if you honestly want to sit there and represent to me that the threat of terrorism is as pat and simple as something like car accidents, then you are either intellectually dishonest due to denial or blindness, or you're just low iq and stupid
so let's put it in one obvious way maybe your dim wattage can grasp:
wwi, which killed millions, was set off by a small group of nationalist partisans in sarajevo bent on assassination. the mumbai massacre last year was the same sort of attempt: pound at geopolitical fault lines until you pull everyone into the war al qaeda and its wannabes are already fighting. that's what they WANT, that's what they are working hard to do: not to be the earthquake, but to be the catalytic event that unleashes pent up frustrations and hatreds. you understand what an enzyme is, right? how a little bit can dramatically change the outcome of a solution of chemicals, correct? then you understand the potency of what al qaeda and its efforts really represents to your well-being
put it another way: 19 men crashed 4 airplanes on 9/11. you say so what. i say it allowed a terrible american administration into invading iraq. how many died there? say to me with a straight face that gwbush could have had the political support to invade iraq if 9/11 didn't happen. understand what is at stake yet? after 9/11, india and pakistan mobilized their troops on their borders. nothing happened there. is that always going to be the case if al qaeda and its wannabes unleash a few more mumbai massacres?
in other words, only if you are completely blind falsely complacent moron who doesn't understand the impact and ramifications of a successful major terrorist attack in this world do you view terrorism as no threat to you
simply a more logical and more prudent analysis than yours
a simple static historical analysis of a threat is not valid. crude allegory: a disease grows exponentially. so: is your risk of catching the disease simply a function of historical cases? of course not. the threat changes over time. so why do you think your static statistical analysis has any value whatsoever on the subject matter? is the threat gee, i dunno, SLIGHTLY more complicated than your braindead one dimensional thinking on the subject matter? can you imagine some other variables and dimensions in a VALID risk assessment?
let's put it this way: false complacency is just as dangerous as false alarmism. i'm not speaking from alarmism. but you most definitely are speaking from complacency
Slashdot Mirror
an artist who has never ever touched a drug will inherently be a better artist than one who has had their faculties degraded due to drug use
drug use is only a gateway to lost time and lost faculties
however, plenty of people believe what you have written above. they are all subpar wannabes, not real artists
heck consider the work of drug enthusiasts, like william s burroughs or hunter s thompson: they never, ever say drug use heightens their art. they merely make art about their lifestyle. no artist, who has ever lived, has ever claimed that their drug use made them better artists. although you have: are you a salesman for the mafia? pffffft
if you wish to make great art in your life, you stay off drugs. if you wish to deaden the pain of feeling like a failure, take drugs
those are your choices, and that explains the relationship between drugs and art: it is a secondary, orthogonal use by people who, living on the cutting edge, often burn out
please note: i am not arguing against drug use here. go on, enjoy yourself. take all the drugs you want. just don't fucking pretend that drug use is anything more than what it is: a pleasurable experience, life-deadening experience. heighten insight and the senses? more like reduce and corrupt the faculties
you're a snakes oil salesman of the highest and sleaziest of orders. you should go work for big pharma
are modern ailments
when you are deeply involved in making sure you simply have a meal to eat, you don't have the opportunity to dwell on the absence of a problem producing anxiety about having an absence of a problem
dealt with things like world war i, world war ii, the bubonic plague, the american revolution... etc.
all with less media resources, lower quality nutrition (we don't have lower quality nutrition these days, we have TOO MUCH nutrition), a worse set of ideologies, lower socioeconomic status, etc.
whatever stresses today's youth are going through, its fucking easy in comparison stresses previous generations have faced
get over it, grow the fuck up. sorry you're daily video game hours or facebook/ twitter diddling hours has been reduced. i think you'll find the ability to deal somewhere deep in your rich bounty of character. pffffffft
"The drugs won't just give you great things. You need to seed the experience. You need to participate in it, not just sit back and spectate."
you're posturing. those are arbitrary pointless signifiers. what you wrote is just a wonderful way to say a whole lot of nothing... much like a trip
plenty of people have tried to capture the sights, sounds, and thoughts of what they experienced while on a trip. but what they see, hear or read when they are sober is always scribbles, random musical notes, or "muffler indexing big cat dancing toupee". no matter if they "participate" or "observe and report". you are using arbitrary signifiers ("seed the experience") in a desperate attempt to attach meaning to an experience you have obviously retained a lot of significance in for your life
well, good for you then. if tripping is important to you, then please, by all means, go on with your bad self: continue to trip and enjoy the experience. i do not in any way stand against that which you enjoy. power to you. i hope you continue to enjoy tripping your whole life
i am not trying to be a killjoy. i am trying to kill your notion that what you enjoy has anything to teach us. hey, i enjoy kayaking. but i don't believe kayaking is a gateway to greater consciousness. i'll enthuse and evangelize and get excited when i talk to people about my joys kayaking. but i'm not going to tell them it makes my mind expand or my artistic abilities to increase or my iq to go up. it simply means i'm having fun and other people can have fun at it too
so don't try to fool yourself any longer or anyone else that what you are experiencing is anything more than the temporary degradation of self for pleasurable effect, like any other drug. not that the act of degrading self for pleasurable effect should not be done, not that it isn't enjoyable, and not that you shouldn't enthuse about it and enjoy talking to other people about how wonderful it is
but it isn't the gateway to anything except some harmless fun. get off your high horse
i can attest to the illusion you believe in
my thoughts and the images i saw on my trip were simply outstanding, the depths my mind was probing was simply awesome. i know what you speak of
but i was not actually feeling, seeing, hearing, and thinking great things. because while on that trip, what "i" was was modified: my mind had become incredibly small. what does a drug actually do psychopharmacologically? it doesn't open up some unknown portal in your mind. it simply shuts things down. its simple biochemistry, look it up
if you could take the processing power of a cat's brain, and temporarily put it in the context of the mental abilities of a human brain, the cat's brain would be utterly awestruck. this is the source of your impressions while on a trip. your executive functions, your highest faculties, are degraded and reduced and shrunk in powers to that of a small mammal like a cat. so of course normal human perceptions seem awesome: your executive functions are reduced
put it this way: if you measure the experience of sober reality as 1 foot in length, and your experience while on a trip as 1 mile in length, it is not because you actually experience a greater thing while on a trip, but because the yardstick you are using to measure your experience has been warped. what you experience while on a trip is no greater than reailty, simply your organs of perception have been shrunk and degraded. your entire yardstick is off
it is not that your mind is expanded while on a trip, but the actual organs of perception and interpretation in your mind are corrupted. such that common or cheaply altered thoughts and feelings and senses are seen as intricate, deep, and striking. when the truth is simply that the actual organ of thought is shrunken and broken while on a trip
what you believe of "great thoughts" and drug use is an illusion
drug use degrades and confuses the senses
both result in an alteration of what someone would consider "normal", thus the source of your confusion
but you don't create art when you are on lsd, nor do you find any inspiration
of course, when you are on lsd, you are speaking to god, you see both ends of the world, the words you write are of the highest genius, etc. then you come off of your trip, and you find you wrote "the dog, hollow beer"
drugs are a degradation, not a heightening. this is true aesthetically, and biologically. when you are in the degraded state of being under the influence of drugs, your perception of what art is becomes degraded as well
drug use is orthogonal to the lives of artists and the art they create. it is never intrinsic
the best art is done sober, and always has been done sober, and always will be done sober
drug use in artists coincides with a loss of abilities, not an increase of them
artists certainly have excesses in their lifestyles, of which drug use certainly is a common factor. but this is all secondary to being an artist, not some sort of gateway. if you dressed up like a race car driver, does that make you a race car driver? likewise, if you use drugs, you don't increase any artistic abilities, you just get stupid
anyone who actually believes that drug use increases artistic ability is certainly no artist
maybe anchor it with a hip contemporary comedian?
i'm sure it would make lots of money
"weave"
there isn't a joke that hasn't been made about girls with weaves
"RogueyWon"
you're roguey? is that like sarah palin being mavericky?
"thepainguy"
hello mr. S&M. go spank behinds somewhere else
"Southpaw018"
ah yes, the proud left handed type, always announcing his left handed status without prompting. almost as annoying as the proud "i don't watch tv" type so damn proud of what nobody cares about
"91degrees"
makes me think of that lame pop band 98 degrees
"Pharmboy"
do you spam c1alis emails? or do sell adderall on your local college campus?
"MistrBlank"
i'm sorry for your reproductive issues. in vitro fertilization offers wonderful outcomes nowadays
point being: prejudice is ignorant, all-pervasive, and easy. the idea is not that you should conform your email/ nickname to such small minds, but that if you lose a contact, or a job, due to such small minds, you should consider yourself LUCKY for the loss of contact with such mediocre people
i know well-respected medical doctors with aol addresses from the 1990s. because they don't have time to play mindless little image games like this one. this whole issue is stupid
creepy in the figurative sense, but also creepy in the literal sense too: it creeps up through the generations
the basic idea is that you have a region of genetic code that, with every generation, gets a little longer with repeats. such that, after a few generations, it results in mental deficiencies. of course, its not so straightforward: your child's number of copies of repeats may dramatically jump, or it may hold relatively stable with an unchanged number of copies at a borderline level for many generations. but the more your number of repeats in the vulnerable region, the greater your chance of having children with fragile x
so fragile x is not something like huntington's, where inheritance is straightforward and pat. in other words, any dilemmas a mother or father who is a carrier for huntington's may feel is the same for that person's grandparent, and its the same for that person's grandchild: its a constant across generations
but instead, with fragile x, you have to consider that your mild number of copies may be amplified through the generations. you have a greater risk than your grandparents, and your grandchildren have an even greater risk still
this creepy pattern of inheritance actually has a name: the sherman paradox
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherman_paradox
its information in aggregate. privacy implies PERSONALLY identifying information
if i say "wilbur cross of madison wisconsin rented 'no country for old men'" then that's an invasion of privacy
if i say "323 people in madison wisconsin rented 'no country for old men'" then there is no invasion of privacy
its ok to get upset about invasion of privacy. getting upset about it when none actually occurs is some sort of spastic hysteria, a triumph of emotion over logic. save your ammo for real battles
they react to things, they grow, they die and give birth to more ideas/ societies
look up the word "meme"
in fact, much as biological entities are nothing more than the vessels in which living, changing, competing genes exist, our minds are nothing but units in a game of living, changing, competing memes. language is the unit of information exchange
in fact, genetic change in humanity has ceased to be important. genetic change, across all species, now takes a backseat to memetic change in terms of evolutionary importance. evolutionary importance in this context meaning: the potential to extend life into new realms
we won't get off earth because of genetic change. we will get off earth because of memetic change. we are the dead end result of genetic change, and we became that when we evolved language and writing. with that leap, we closed the book on genetic change as being of paramount importance in terms of life's potential and opened a new book and a new era in life. we are in the beginning of a new era of memetic change, wherever that may lead, with or without us
genetics and genetic evolution just isn't the biggest most important game for life anymore. we're the interface between that and the new memetic era of life
1. country X does something bad
2. the USA is to blame for what country X does because (insert speculative line of reasoning)
the story summary is a classic example of this kind of bullshit
you don't have to like the usa. there is in fact, a smorgasbord of reasons to dislike the USA and its policies for you to choose from
however, if you have to blame initiatives done by other country's governments on the USA, you've left the land of logical coherence and entered the land of tribal chip on your shoulder
have a valid reason to dislike the USA, or be a crackpot. your choice
that's all you should ever ask of anyone in a democracy, and its all you need to do to be effective
contact al qaeda. tell them what you've learned from the troubles. good luck
"Your example should be Ireland.
We fought for years with the death tolls mounting on both sides.
And it was not the fight that ended the conflict."
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1502532&threshold=3&commentsort=1&mode=nested&cid=30697250
well which is it?
it ends, or it doesn't end?
certainly terrorism in general will always be with us, but terrorism from one source or another certainly does end. fighting terrorism is simply the wages of civilization, like taking out the trash every thursday. you don't take the trash out one thursday and never do it again. its "the war on garbage". its called a "war on terrorism" but its really just law enforcement and police work. i mean there most certainly is a "war on crime" that will never end as well. its just verbiage
one bad actor can ruin the forum for everyone else
a nation committed to liberties will occasionally find those liberties abused by actors in bad faith. normally, you can weather these bad apples in low doses. but when the incidents increase, and the venom increases, some sort restriction on liberties becomes inevitable, simply as a matter of self-preservation
what's driving the threats to our liberties today are bad actors, not some top secret cabal that will preserve those limits forever. so fear not that our liberties are so fragile. there is a lot who remain committed to extending and expanding our freedoms, it is a solid philosophical bedrock, not some fashionable vogue. assholes hellbent on abusing our priveleges and blowing us up is a temporary threat, and restrictions on our liberties because of them are temporary as well. we the people will see to that
however, you can't erase an ingrained legal, philosophical, and cultural allegiance to freedoms overnight. in other words, there is also hysteria that a few airport restrictions means the entire western experiment with liberties and freedoms is over. yes, some screening efforts are an overreaction. but what we will see is some clamping down on freedoms in limited contexts: public squares, trains and airplanes, and then when the fundamentalist threat dies down in a decade or so (it is already losing its cachet in iran, which was a pioneer in fundamentalism in 1979), then these temporary clampdowns will be appropriately shoved aside as well
aside: my story about the troubles: i knew a british chick in the early 1990s and she was horrified when she came to new york city. now she knew that the ira got a lot of money from the states, but she was horrified at how out in the open it was. she couldn't believe that on almost every bank window were signs to the effect: "open your ira account today!" "now is the best time to open your ira account" "getting the best rates on your ira account?" etc...
ira stands for individual retirement account ;-P
i'm not talking about waging war, i'm talking about a hardcore antiterrorist effort, like the airport screenings
when terrorists set off bombs, hotheads on either side win, correct?
so, just as you say, and just as i also understand and agree with you, the way out of conflict is to let cooler heads prevail, which means not agitating the hotheads. you do that BY STOPPING THE BOMBS
you are confusing my support for hardcore antiterrorist efforts with hotheaded partisanship
surely, a few more IRA bombs or a few more ulster death squad atrocities would have prolonged the conflict and the hotheads, correct?
so we're in agreement
your only problem is that you are confusing my desire to ramp up the antiterrorist effort with being a hothead on a partisan side of the equation
question: would a hardcore antiterrorist effort have possibly stopped princip in 1914?
and if so, would millions have therefore not died in wwi, if other terrorist cataclysms were also averted?
if you say wwi would still have happened:
you betray your own statement that everyone just having cooler heads and ignoring terrorist events is the way to go: because by saying wwi was inevitable you are saying hotheads will always prevail
if you say wwi could have possibly been averted:
then you are putting your faith in hardcore antiterrorist efforts
you lose your argument either way. feel me now?
your problem is that you confuse my rational approach with the hysterical approach. from your position, which is the cluelessly blindly falsely complacent point of view, i can see how the hysteric and the prudent look the same. but you are confusing two positions. i'm not a hysteric. i'm not fearful. i'm levelheaded and prudent
meanwhile, i clearly understand that, just as dangerous as fatalistic terrified whining hysterics, is blind falsely complacent people like yourself
"hey everyone, could you listen up? i would like everyone on the planet to have a cool head. you know, to start behaving in a way no large groups of humans in any culture or any time period has ever behaved in all of human history, k thanks"
what i'm telling you is that terrorism precipitates war. example: wwi. example: iraq 2003. this is what al qaeda & co is trying hard to accomplish with the mumbai massacre last year. they aren't the earthquake. they are trying to catalyze the earthquake by pounding on geopolitical fault lines. THAT's why its important to fight terrorism hard. that's why its way more potent than something like car accident statistics
meanwhile, you just want to magically snap your fingers and change fundamental human nature. you want everyone to have a cool head. good for you. hey: its not going to happen. the status quo, permanent for human nature, is lots of hotheads running around
so when i tell you we need to fight terrorism hard it is not because i am also a hot head, it is because i recognize the reality, unlike you, that simply wishing for cooler heads is not going to actually make cooler heads. instead, we have to PREVENT THE ACTIVITIES THAT MAKE HOT HEADS. that is, we have to fight terrorist plots, hard. get me now?
what you are asking for is impossible
what i am asking for is hard, and doesn't always succeed. but it actually has a real world effect: ruined terrorist plots. and that genuinely makes a difference
you tell me: would a hardcore antiterrorist have possibly stopped princip in 1914? and if so, would millions have died in wwi if other cataclysms were also averted?
if you say wwi would still have happened, you betray your own statement that everyone just having cooler heads is the way to go: because by saying wwi was inevitable you are saying hotheads will always prevail
but if you say wwi could have possibly been averted, then you are putting your faith in hardcore antiterrorist efforts
so either yes or no to wwi possibly being averted, you lose your argument
i'm saying gwbush is an asshole. i'm saying assholes exist in this world. i'm saying terrorism gives them carte blanche to overreact. only in your demented mind does me saying that assholes overreact mean then that i am the same kind of overreacting asshole. no, moron, i'm only TELLING you what will happen, i'm not SUPPORTING what will happen. get the difference? the way you are reacting to me is called shooting the messenger
this is my message to you: assholes will overreact to terrorism. so therefore, its very important to fight terrorism. get it?
you're telling me "hey, everybody stop overreacting. you know, everybody just magically start behaving like no group of human beings in any culture in any period of human history has ever behaved"
in other words, i have an intelligent grasp of human nature and therefore an intelligent understanding of the large threat terrorism holds for us: it could precipitate a war. you, meanwhile, just wish people would sing campfire songs and hold hands and everything will be ok. you're a fool
it was simply to dispel your ridiculous notion that static historical statistics is somehow valuable in adequately describing the threat terrorism poses to you
"If Radicalism is spreading exponentially - perhaps you should look to your foreign policy and to your world attitude in general to find out why so many people hate you, not to their actions."
hilarious! in which you refer to a geopolitical truth that supports MY ASSERTION: that terrorism is a threat, and growing. hate feeds hate, correct? so a successful terrorist attack breeds hate, WHICH THREATENS YOU. right, moron?
19 men crashed 4 airplanes on 9/11. you say so what: terrorism is not a threat to me. that's your thesis
i say it allowed a moronic american administration to invading iraq. how many died there? did the hate in the usa and the hate in iraq from this growing cycle of violence POSE ANY THREAT TO YOU?
say to me with a straight face that gwbush could have had the political support to invade iraq if 9/11 didn't happen. do you understand yet what is at stake with terrorism and the need to fight it with time, money, and effort?
after 9/11, india and pakistan mobilized their troops on their borders. nothing happened there, luckily. is that always going to be the case if al qaeda and its wannabes unleash a few more mumbai massacres? wwi, which killed millions, was set off by a small group of nationalist partisans in sarajevo bent on assassination. the mumbai massacre last year was the same sort of attempt: pound at geopolitical fault lines until you pull everyone into the war al qaeda and its wannabes are already fighting. that's what they WANT, that's what they are working hard to do: not to be the earthquake, but to be the catalytic event that unleashes pent up frustrations and hatreds. you understand what an enzyme is, right? how a little bit can dramatically change the outcome of a solution of chemicals, correct? then you understand the potency of what al qaeda and its efforts really represents to your well-being
if princip had NOT assassinated the archduke, wwi probably still would have happened due to some other cataclysmic event, correct? OR: given time, and no major cataclysms, MAYBE things would have cooled down in europe, and the whole of history would have changed and millions of lives would have been saved
but you say fighting terrorism isn't worth it. according to you, a few more mumbai massacres, a few more blown up night clubs, a few more blown up trains: eh, isn't statistically significant. buy more road signs to fight car accidents instead. because you know, stopping 100 car accidents versus the possibility of war between india and pakistan which would kill millions: obviously, lets stop car accidents. pfffffffft
maybe, FINALLY, if you fucking understand what terrorism threatens to unleash in the world you derive your well-being from, then maybe you will finally be intellectually honest and admit that terrorism is a serious threat that must be fought hard. FAR more important than stopping fucking car accidents
so let's explore your questions:
something like road accidents have been studied to death, are mostly unchanging, and any costs are readily understood in terms of impact and cost effectiveness
meanwhile, something like terrorism is poorly understood, is obviously on the rise, is wildly variable in result, and is as a rule of the catastrophic variety: an airplane blown up today, a nightclub tomorrow, a suitcase nuke after that. its not a fucking exercise in counting the regular annual pile up of cars into trees, or anything remotely comparable, according to a thousand different variables a junior high school student could grasp. so to simplemindedly equate the two threats is exactly that: simpleminded stupidity
really, this is the truth: if you honestly want to sit there and represent to me that the threat of terrorism is as pat and simple as something like car accidents, then you are either intellectually dishonest due to denial or blindness, or you're just low iq and stupid
so let's put it in one obvious way maybe your dim wattage can grasp:
wwi, which killed millions, was set off by a small group of nationalist partisans in sarajevo bent on assassination. the mumbai massacre last year was the same sort of attempt: pound at geopolitical fault lines until you pull everyone into the war al qaeda and its wannabes are already fighting. that's what they WANT, that's what they are working hard to do: not to be the earthquake, but to be the catalytic event that unleashes pent up frustrations and hatreds. you understand what an enzyme is, right? how a little bit can dramatically change the outcome of a solution of chemicals, correct? then you understand the potency of what al qaeda and its efforts really represents to your well-being
put it another way: 19 men crashed 4 airplanes on 9/11. you say so what. i say it allowed a terrible american administration into invading iraq. how many died there? say to me with a straight face that gwbush could have had the political support to invade iraq if 9/11 didn't happen. understand what is at stake yet? after 9/11, india and pakistan mobilized their troops on their borders. nothing happened there. is that always going to be the case if al qaeda and its wannabes unleash a few more mumbai massacres?
in other words, only if you are completely blind falsely complacent moron who doesn't understand the impact and ramifications of a successful major terrorist attack in this world do you view terrorism as no threat to you
simply a more logical and more prudent analysis than yours
a simple static historical analysis of a threat is not valid. crude allegory: a disease grows exponentially. so: is your risk of catching the disease simply a function of historical cases? of course not. the threat changes over time. so why do you think your static statistical analysis has any value whatsoever on the subject matter? is the threat gee, i dunno, SLIGHTLY more complicated than your braindead one dimensional thinking on the subject matter? can you imagine some other variables and dimensions in a VALID risk assessment?
let's put it this way: false complacency is just as dangerous as false alarmism. i'm not speaking from alarmism. but you most definitely are speaking from complacency