Your writing would gain a significant measure of immaterial credibility if you knew the difference between then and than. "Then" is subsequent in time. "Than" is for comparisons.
"Randomly caused macro-evolution" happens to be the only elegant, probable explanation for natural phenomena. Agenda has nothing to do with it. As soon as any other theory has a shred of evidence (as opposed to pointing out the absence of evidence for certain periods of random macro-evolution), then that theory has a legitimate claim. Until then we get to make fun of their posturing. Science requires evidence. Until then we get to make fun of them.
No. Statutory rape, err, "sex without the permission of the moral guardians" is a strict liability offense. Do it and you're thrown in jail even if she or he looked 25 and had the best fake ID in the world, which you checked. The theory is that if we make the punishment barbarous enough it will discourage people from doing it and affirm our amazing morals. Forever and ever, amen.
Your argument is so absurd it proves the opposite. Once you've paid your moral debt [b]by living in a cage[/b] for years on end with rapists and violent abusers while the guards turn a blind eye, you deserve to get the job at Best Buy without problem. Our ex-cons return to crime because it's the rational choice when society refuses you every legitimate opportunity.
Look at the statistics for the number of people we throw in cages. The USA today incarcerates more people per capita than [i]any other society in history[/i] other than the Soviet Union at the height of the Gulag. We live in a caste system, and it's no surprise that those relegated to the bottom rungs return to the only informal (even if officially illegal) social safety net that supports them: petty crime.
Err, I'm only in my second year of law school, so everyone should take this with a grain of salt. However, if the trustee of his estate is empowered with the right to endorse certain things on his behalf, my half informed judgment is that this isn't a problem. The endorsements you make are probably an asset that can be allocated to trustees upon certain executory conditions, the least problematic of which is endorsing an organization that legally represents your interests as an artist.
There are advantages to military spending, sure. The real question is whether private capital markets, from which the tax revenue must be seized in the first place, are more or less efficient at improving social welfare than the simulated command economy of military budgets. I, for one, think that most military spending is so much less efficient at helping the general welfare that it's really a money sink.
Cut their budget. We lose a couple of your pet medical advances, but the preferences of the general population in defining their own welfare will more than make up for it.
Catharsis? Have you ever driven out of the parking lot after an auto race? Put your money where your mouth is and drive an uninsured Ferrari there, because those fans will form the most sedate, orderly exit known to man.
I'm reminded of Bill Hicks' hilarious tirades against the War on the Drugs -
[quote]"George Bush says 'we are losing the war on drugs'. Well you know what that implies? There's a war going on, and people on drugs are winning it! Well what does that tell you about drugs? Some smart, creative motherfuckers on that side."[/quote]
Would you care to provide a few concrete examples?
Oh please.
A news article on the Fox News website during October 2004 by Carl Cameron, chief political correspondent of Fox News, contained three fabricated quotes attributed to Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry. The quotes included: "Women should like me! I do manicures", "Didn't my nails and cuticles look great?" and "I'm metrosexual [Bush's] a cowboy".
http://mediamatters.org/items/200604040009Gibson falsely claimed that FISA court judges said Bush "didn't break any law" in authorizing warrantless domestic surveillance
On March 23, 2003 the FOX News channel headline banners were rolling: "Huge chemical weapons factory found in Iraq... Reports: 30 Iraqis surrender at chem weapons plant... coal. troops holding Iraqi in charge of chem. weapons." On the next day the Dow Jones Newswires reported, that, U.S. officials had admitted that morning that the site contained no chemicals at all and had been abandoned long ago.
No. It's not a holy war. It doesn't come down to opinion. They are wrong in fact repeatedly. They confirm the ideology of their viewing audience, manipulating the facts as convenient. To claim that this boils down to opinion only legitimizes it.
"Who are they to tell me that the Panama Canal was built in 1914? If I want to say that it was built in 1941, that's my right as an American!" - Stephen Colbert
there are dissenting views in other outlets.... All media slants facts with opinion, so you're doing the right thing by cross checking news organizations to see that they are providing the facts... Which is what news is about... News organizations don't stay in business when they blatently lie and misrepresent the core facts of an issue.
Not so fast. The major networks operate more as a collective institution than as a cut-throat competitive, diverse environment.
First, major news outlets are all huge corporations with an inherent stake in the stability of the status quo. Shocking revelations that create social uncertainty oppose their institutional interest in the status quo. They would rather repeatedly sell you the same re-packaged commodity.
Second, they are always conscious of the advertising license to do business. Again, challenging the status quo will always offend a small, vocal part of the readership. Advertisers are aware of this.
Third, they are tied to certain sources to produce the news commodity in a predictible way. Sure they could do independent investigative work to uncover something interesting, but it's easier and more reliable to paraphrase the information released by key players. Protip: press conferences are scheduled with journalists' deadlines in mind.
Fourth, there is a pretty consistent ideology among the class of people who participate in the institution. There is superficial diversity among the outlets, but that only conceals the fact that they share far more in common than they diverge. Let me paraphrase - "The most effective censor allows lively debate within strictly defined bounds." (Chomsky) The debate that takes place in today's media amounts to "I want to drink the kool-aid in a red cup" versus "I want to drink the kool aid in the blue cup." Ask yourself who runs the media - predominately white, male, heterosexual, upper-middle-class, Protestant, middle-aged, educated, urban individuals. Even people who are supposedly diverse are only diverse along one of these axes and are forced to speak within the bounds of the common ideology these people share. I dare you to find an impoverished minority intersexual environmental expert who can get an article published, despite the fact that this person would have a set of life experiences that could truly bring a different, intersting perspective to the table on a thousand issues.
The media postures itself as an attack dog, but the reality is that it is an institution in a symbiotic relationship with the government. This is why they can all lie to us at the same time despite the fact there's no concerted conspiracy.
For example, BBC journalist Greg Palast originally broke the story about the 20,000 disinfranchised black citizens in the 2000 election in Florida. You would think this would be a hot scoop that all outlets would fall over each other to get. In the first six months, no news outlet ran the story. ABC looked in to it, but their "investigation" was to call up Jeb Bush's office, listen to his denial, and drop the story. The story eventually ran, but only because the NAACP pushed it to the limelight. Even then the story was that the NAACP was complaining about issue X, not that this happened.
You just blamed a news outlet for starting a war, causing a trade deficit, budgetary and foreign relations problems and mistakes.
When was the last time the media truly challenged the government on any of these issues? All of these issues deserve front page news every day, scathing investigative reporting that publicly embarasses everyone responsible. Sure, they didn't cause these problems, but their complacence allows them to happen. Fox News, furthermore, has the active agenda of promoting misinformation about many of these problems. They accuse the outlets that are simply complacent of having a liberal bias. They truly are a primary player in the propaganda effort that got Americans to support the war and to ignore issues that truly are critical.
Intelligence is a pretty cloudy concept. It's one of those words that's a reverse signifier. The way in which it is used by someone inform us more about the person using the word than about the things being classified on a scale of "intelligence."
Current critical theory in the communications and philosophy fields would probably argue that "intelligence" is constructed by those with social privilege to justify their privilege through the illusion of naturalistic necessity.
The only reason I caution with the above is because I'm highly sympathetic to it.
Another strain of thought I'm highly sympathetic to, but which is incompatible with the above is the biological machine theory of intelligence. The metaphor is almost self-explanatory. Your brain is a machine and will funciton optimally when certain pre-conditions are met.
There truly is a lot to be said for proper diet and exercise in sustaining intelligence. There has been much research done of late that links regular exercise with forstalling age related memory loss. Another recent study found that exercise dramatically improved cognitive skills across the board when sedetary persons were forced to do mild arobic exercise 3 times a week.
The second part of my suggestion is a class of substances broadly called nootropics. (new-oH-trOH-pix) The brain is dependent upon a diverse quantity of chemicals. Many persons are deficient and this has very real impacts for the brain performance.
A lot of persons are intersted in improving their cognitive power through supplements/drugs. Many are safe and proven. I've personally achieved remarkable success. My memory is better than it has ever been. Obscure vocabuary words flow off my tongue. Mathematical proofs take a shorter amount of time to absorb. Latin is my university foreign language. Pre-nootropics I spent 4 hours a week memorizing Latin vocabuary for my classes. The following semester, with a similar workload, I spent 2 hours a week max.
The cheapest/most popular nootropic is called DMAE. Easily one of the reasons why it is popular is that it combats brain damage caused by alcohol use through replacing acetylcholine. A lot of people drink, so a lot benefit from DMAE. But DMAE does more than combat alcohol damage, so it should be considered even if you don't drink.
If you want a site with just un-hyped, straight-up studies, check out [url]http://www.smart-nutrition.net[/url]. I am not associated with them, but after checking out all the science behind the Get-Smart pills I purchased some two years ago and continue to purchase some to this day.
Today I regularly consume the Get-Smart pills, L-Tyrosine (for semantic recall), phosphatydl-Serine (misspelled I know, it's for alertness), and a B-vitamin.
My memory and general acuteness are at all time high levels. Mental clarity is its own reward. If you're curious at all, I highly encourage you to do some reading.
> Plus, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to play > "spot-the-stoner".
Quite the contrary. It's a shame to see this stereotype about recreational marijuana users perpetuated. I speak for a lot of my geek friends when I say that marijuana users on the whole are indistinguishable from everybody else except for the fact that they consume marijuana.
You don't see the corporate execs that smoke; you don't see the teachers that smoke; you don't see the politicians who smoked before their choice of careers forced them to call it quits.
Responsible users tend to be so responsible that you never know the difference. Only the tards trumpet their use. They were tards before they smoked marijuana too.
Recent studies have proven what most people already know. Marijuana is not physically addictive. Marijuana does not decrease one's cognitive capacity (1999 Johns Hopkins study if you're interested). Marijuana can be integrated into a healthy lifestyle as much as beer can.
In an age where 50% of Americans have consumed marijuana at some point in their life, it's time to stop with the mindless stereotypes. They only perpetuate the immoral and disastrous policy of marijuana prohibition.
The only difference between you and I is that you down a Coors and I have a joint. Please, end the insanity.
Every non-philosophy student loves to ridicule the question "How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?" as meaningless. However, its status as the perennial whipping boy of the ignorant is undeserved.
It's derived from the highly pertinent metaphysical question "Is consciousness substantive?" I.e. is consciousness the product of molecules or is it a consequence of immaterial considerations?
Thus, if you were a theologian with a belief in conscious beings called angels, you would claim finite many angels can dance on the head of a pin if you believe consciousness is substantive and you would claim infinitely many angels can dance on the head of a pin if you thought consciousness was immaterial.
This isn't a question that has ever received mounds of debate. Some say finitely many others claim infinitely many. Either way it's the simplification of a very intriguing issue.
Please tell me when, in the history of the United States (or any other nation), has prohibition served it's intended purpose
Never. If you had answered your own rhetorical question, you would have understood the parent article's message.
Cannabis prohibition causes more harm to society via its enforcement than cannabis useage itself. The justification for prohibition, i.e. that it "has no known medical use," is little more than a smoke screen for the real reason for its continued criminalization - disinformation, moral interventionist zealots, and scapegoating.
No study which has not been discredited has shown any long-term harmful effect to cannabis. Sure, there's harm in smoking it like there's harm in inhaling any vaporized plant matter. Sure, there's psychological addicition, but this is a fancy way of stating "People will repeat what they enjoy." Marijuana's addictive potential is equivilant to rollar coasters and a quality TV rogram.
No, the US of A needs a group to scapegoat. It's become unfashionable to rage against African-American males. Recreational drug users have become our new national plague.
Sure, some of us are downright ecclectic -- Aphex Twin, Bjork, T.A.T.U., Smiths, Squarepusher, Busta Rhymes, Tom Waits, De La Soul, Guster, etc, etc
Unless your etc's hold a surprise or ten, your preference in music isn't eclectic at all. Instead your preferred genre of music falls under what the rest of us label "curdled genital cheese."
Re:Alcohol and Cigarettes and harmful
on
Google vs. Evil
·
· Score: 1
Alcohol in and of itself is not bad for you.
Wrong. Alcohol is a solvent. Drinking anything is tantamount to soaking your brain in paint thinner. There is no more surefire way to become dumb than drinking. Even those that just drink occasionally suffer slight impairments of thought.
It spewed out the same error message to me. Except I read it. "MalformedURLException: no protocol" tips you off that all URL's need "http://" in front of them. Odd that the developers didn't think to catch this, but it's trivial none the less.
Even with a hefty intellectual punch behind your argument, you loose every ounce of credibility in my book at the point you listen to "The MIT Chorallaries."
I conjure up the vision of a Birkenstock clad graffiti artist who normally plasters rainbows, hemp slogans, and cal 3 derivatives on brick walls in urban areas taking time to tell me about the flaws in a capitalist driven IP exchange.
I've got a one word rebuttal for you hippie: PPPPBBBTTTTTTTTHHHHHH!
You indict the skeptic community with a flawed criterion. Due to the vagaries and idiosyncrasies of human knowledge, all rubrics designed to admit some knowledge while disallowing the other will err. However, the skeptic community pulls ahead when you look at the nature of its errors.
Without a hard skeptic attitude, humans are quick to adopt many claims as true, quickly polluting the pool of knowledge with falsehood.
With a callous skeptic methodology, scientists reject specimens of truth in an overly strict filter, but the admitted pollutants are significantly diminished.
Ask yourself which scenario is superior, a pool of water polluted with engine oil or a pool of pure water slightly smaller than its potential allows.
Slashdot Mirror
Your writing would gain a significant measure of immaterial credibility if you knew the difference between then and than. "Then" is subsequent in time. "Than" is for comparisons.
"Randomly caused macro-evolution" happens to be the only elegant, probable explanation for natural phenomena. Agenda has nothing to do with it. As soon as any other theory has a shred of evidence (as opposed to pointing out the absence of evidence for certain periods of random macro-evolution), then that theory has a legitimate claim. Until then we get to make fun of their posturing. Science requires evidence. Until then we get to make fun of them.
No. Statutory rape, err, "sex without the permission of the moral guardians" is a strict liability offense. Do it and you're thrown in jail even if she or he looked 25 and had the best fake ID in the world, which you checked. The theory is that if we make the punishment barbarous enough it will discourage people from doing it and affirm our amazing morals. Forever and ever, amen.
Your argument is so absurd it proves the opposite. Once you've paid your moral debt [b]by living in a cage[/b] for years on end with rapists and violent abusers while the guards turn a blind eye, you deserve to get the job at Best Buy without problem. Our ex-cons return to crime because it's the rational choice when society refuses you every legitimate opportunity. Look at the statistics for the number of people we throw in cages. The USA today incarcerates more people per capita than [i]any other society in history[/i] other than the Soviet Union at the height of the Gulag. We live in a caste system, and it's no surprise that those relegated to the bottom rungs return to the only informal (even if officially illegal) social safety net that supports them: petty crime.
Err, I'm only in my second year of law school, so everyone should take this with a grain of salt. However, if the trustee of his estate is empowered with the right to endorse certain things on his behalf, my half informed judgment is that this isn't a problem. The endorsements you make are probably an asset that can be allocated to trustees upon certain executory conditions, the least problematic of which is endorsing an organization that legally represents your interests as an artist.
There are advantages to military spending, sure. The real question is whether private capital markets, from which the tax revenue must be seized in the first place, are more or less efficient at improving social welfare than the simulated command economy of military budgets. I, for one, think that most military spending is so much less efficient at helping the general welfare that it's really a money sink. Cut their budget. We lose a couple of your pet medical advances, but the preferences of the general population in defining their own welfare will more than make up for it.
Catharsis? Have you ever driven out of the parking lot after an auto race? Put your money where your mouth is and drive an uninsured Ferrari there, because those fans will form the most sedate, orderly exit known to man.
I'm reminded of Bill Hicks' hilarious tirades against the War on the Drugs - [quote]"George Bush says 'we are losing the war on drugs'. Well you know what that implies? There's a war going on, and people on drugs are winning it! Well what does that tell you about drugs? Some smart, creative motherfuckers on that side."[/quote]
Would you care to provide a few concrete examples? Oh please.
y misrepresented five editorials to accuse "left-wing print media" of having no solutions to immigration woes
A news article on the Fox News website during October 2004 by Carl Cameron, chief political correspondent of Fox News, contained three fabricated quotes attributed to Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry. The quotes included: "Women should like me! I do manicures", "Didn't my nails and cuticles look great?" and "I'm metrosexual [Bush's] a cowboy".
http://mediamatters.org/items/200604040009Gibson falsely claimed that FISA court judges said Bush "didn't break any law" in authorizing warrantless domestic surveillance
http://mediamatters.org/items/200604030007O'Reill
On March 23, 2003 the FOX News channel headline banners were rolling: "Huge chemical weapons factory found in Iraq... Reports: 30 Iraqis surrender at chem weapons plant... coal. troops holding Iraqi in charge of chem. weapons." On the next day the Dow Jones Newswires reported, that, U.S. officials had admitted that morning that the site contained no chemicals at all and had been abandoned long ago.
No. It's not a holy war. It doesn't come down to opinion. They are wrong in fact repeatedly. They confirm the ideology of their viewing audience, manipulating the facts as convenient. To claim that this boils down to opinion only legitimizes it. "Who are they to tell me that the Panama Canal was built in 1914? If I want to say that it was built in 1941, that's my right as an American!" - Stephen Colbert
there are dissenting views in other outlets. ... All media slants facts with opinion, so you're doing the right thing by cross checking news organizations to see that they are providing the facts... Which is what news is about... News organizations don't stay in business when they blatently lie and misrepresent the core facts of an issue.
Not so fast. The major networks operate more as a collective institution than as a cut-throat competitive, diverse environment.
First, major news outlets are all huge corporations with an inherent stake in the stability of the status quo. Shocking revelations that create social uncertainty oppose their institutional interest in the status quo. They would rather repeatedly sell you the same re-packaged commodity.
Second, they are always conscious of the advertising license to do business. Again, challenging the status quo will always offend a small, vocal part of the readership. Advertisers are aware of this.
Third, they are tied to certain sources to produce the news commodity in a predictible way. Sure they could do independent investigative work to uncover something interesting, but it's easier and more reliable to paraphrase the information released by key players. Protip: press conferences are scheduled with journalists' deadlines in mind.
Fourth, there is a pretty consistent ideology among the class of people who participate in the institution. There is superficial diversity among the outlets, but that only conceals the fact that they share far more in common than they diverge. Let me paraphrase - "The most effective censor allows lively debate within strictly defined bounds." (Chomsky) The debate that takes place in today's media amounts to "I want to drink the kool-aid in a red cup" versus "I want to drink the kool aid in the blue cup." Ask yourself who runs the media - predominately white, male, heterosexual, upper-middle-class, Protestant, middle-aged, educated, urban individuals. Even people who are supposedly diverse are only diverse along one of these axes and are forced to speak within the bounds of the common ideology these people share. I dare you to find an impoverished minority intersexual environmental expert who can get an article published, despite the fact that this person would have a set of life experiences that could truly bring a different, intersting perspective to the table on a thousand issues.
The media postures itself as an attack dog, but the reality is that it is an institution in a symbiotic relationship with the government. This is why they can all lie to us at the same time despite the fact there's no concerted conspiracy.
For example, BBC journalist Greg Palast originally broke the story about the 20,000 disinfranchised black citizens in the 2000 election in Florida. You would think this would be a hot scoop that all outlets would fall over each other to get. In the first six months, no news outlet ran the story. ABC looked in to it, but their "investigation" was to call up Jeb Bush's office, listen to his denial, and drop the story. The story eventually ran, but only because the NAACP pushed it to the limelight. Even then the story was that the NAACP was complaining about issue X, not that this happened.
You just blamed a news outlet for starting a war, causing a trade deficit, budgetary and foreign relations problems and mistakes.
When was the last time the media truly challenged the government on any of these issues? All of these issues deserve front page news every day, scathing investigative reporting that publicly embarasses everyone responsible. Sure, they didn't cause these problems, but their complacence allows them to happen. Fox News, furthermore, has the active agenda of promoting misinformation about many of these problems. They accuse the outlets that are simply complacent of having a liberal bias. They truly are a primary player in the propaganda effort that got Americans to support the war and to ignore issues that truly are critical.
I think you just gave me a topic for my capstone Communication Arts paper. Thanks.
Intelligence is a pretty cloudy concept. It's one of those words that's a reverse signifier. The way in which it is used by someone inform us more about the person using the word than about the things being classified on a scale of "intelligence."
Current critical theory in the communications and philosophy fields would probably argue that "intelligence" is constructed by those with social privilege to justify their privilege through the illusion of naturalistic necessity.
The only reason I caution with the above is because I'm highly sympathetic to it.
Another strain of thought I'm highly sympathetic to, but which is incompatible with the above is the biological machine theory of intelligence. The metaphor is almost self-explanatory. Your brain is a machine and will funciton optimally when certain pre-conditions are met.
There truly is a lot to be said for proper diet and exercise in sustaining intelligence. There has been much research done of late that links regular exercise with forstalling age related memory loss. Another recent study found that exercise dramatically improved cognitive skills across the board when sedetary persons were forced to do mild arobic exercise 3 times a week.
The second part of my suggestion is a class of substances broadly called nootropics. (new-oH-trOH-pix) The brain is dependent upon a diverse quantity of chemicals. Many persons are deficient and this has very real impacts for the brain performance.
A lot of persons are intersted in improving their cognitive power through supplements/drugs. Many are safe and proven. I've personally achieved remarkable success. My memory is better than it has ever been. Obscure vocabuary words flow off my tongue. Mathematical proofs take a shorter amount of time to absorb. Latin is my university foreign language. Pre-nootropics I spent 4 hours a week memorizing Latin vocabuary for my classes. The following semester, with a similar workload, I spent 2 hours a week max.
The cheapest/most popular nootropic is called DMAE. Easily one of the reasons why it is popular is that it combats brain damage caused by alcohol use through replacing acetylcholine. A lot of people drink, so a lot benefit from DMAE. But DMAE does more than combat alcohol damage, so it should be considered even if you don't drink.
If you want a site with just un-hyped, straight-up studies, check out [url]http://www.smart-nutrition.net[/url]. I am not associated with them, but after checking out all the science behind the Get-Smart pills I purchased some two years ago and continue to purchase some to this day.
Today I regularly consume the Get-Smart pills, L-Tyrosine (for semantic recall), phosphatydl-Serine (misspelled I know, it's for alertness), and a B-vitamin.
My memory and general acuteness are at all time high levels. Mental clarity is its own reward. If you're curious at all, I highly encourage you to do some reading.
Reposting what you can only find browsing at 0.
------
> Plus, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to play
> "spot-the-stoner".
Quite the contrary. It's a shame to see this stereotype about recreational marijuana users perpetuated. I speak for a lot of my geek friends when I say that marijuana users on the whole are indistinguishable from everybody else except for the fact that they consume marijuana.
You don't see the corporate execs that smoke; you don't see the teachers that smoke; you don't see the politicians who smoked before their choice of careers forced them to call it quits.
Responsible users tend to be so responsible that you never know the difference. Only the tards trumpet their use. They were tards before they smoked marijuana too.
Recent studies have proven what most people already know. Marijuana is not physically addictive. Marijuana does not decrease one's cognitive capacity (1999 Johns Hopkins study if you're interested). Marijuana can be integrated into a healthy lifestyle as much as beer can.
In an age where 50% of Americans have consumed marijuana at some point in their life, it's time to stop with the mindless stereotypes. They only perpetuate the immoral and disastrous policy of marijuana prohibition.
The only difference between you and I is that you down a Coors and I have a joint. Please, end the insanity.
Every non-philosophy student loves to ridicule the question "How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?" as meaningless. However, its status as the perennial whipping boy of the ignorant is undeserved.
It's derived from the highly pertinent metaphysical question "Is consciousness substantive?" I.e. is consciousness the product of molecules or is it a consequence of immaterial considerations?
Thus, if you were a theologian with a belief in conscious beings called angels, you would claim finite many angels can dance on the head of a pin if you believe consciousness is substantive and you would claim infinitely many angels can dance on the head of a pin if you thought consciousness was immaterial.
This isn't a question that has ever received mounds of debate. Some say finitely many others claim infinitely many. Either way it's the simplification of a very intriguing issue.
Please tell me when, in the history of the United States (or any other nation), has prohibition served it's intended purpose
Never. If you had answered your own rhetorical question, you would have understood the parent article's message.
Cannabis prohibition causes more harm to society via its enforcement than cannabis useage itself. The justification for prohibition, i.e. that it "has no known medical use," is little more than a smoke screen for the real reason for its continued criminalization - disinformation, moral interventionist zealots, and scapegoating.
No study which has not been discredited has shown any long-term harmful effect to cannabis. Sure, there's harm in smoking it like there's harm in inhaling any vaporized plant matter. Sure, there's psychological addicition, but this is a fancy way of stating "People will repeat what they enjoy." Marijuana's addictive potential is equivilant to rollar coasters and a quality TV rogram.
No, the US of A needs a group to scapegoat. It's become unfashionable to rage against African-American males. Recreational drug users have become our new national plague.
Thanks Ashcroft!
Debian has this to.
CmdrTaco, you thought we wouldn't notice. Posting with user accounts is not nice.
Sure, some of us are downright ecclectic -- Aphex Twin, Bjork, T.A.T.U., Smiths, Squarepusher, Busta Rhymes, Tom Waits, De La Soul, Guster, etc, etc
Unless your etc's hold a surprise or ten, your preference in music isn't eclectic at all. Instead your preferred genre of music falls under what the rest of us label "curdled genital cheese."
Alcohol in and of itself is not bad for you.
Wrong. Alcohol is a solvent. Drinking anything is tantamount to soaking your brain in paint thinner. There is no more surefire way to become dumb than drinking. Even those that just drink occasionally suffer slight impairments of thought.
It spewed out the same error message to me. Except I read it. "MalformedURLException: no protocol" tips you off that all URL's need "http://" in front of them. Odd that the developers didn't think to catch this, but it's trivial none the less.
Cheers
I'm not so sure all the kids like things that explodes.
Generally kids are suckers for an explosion. After the first blast, they enjoy toying with the byproducts.
But for things that explodes, the second explosion happens at point blank range. This usually maims all involved.
Apparently someone thinks previewing is passe.
Even with a hefty intellectual punch behind your argument, you loose every ounce of credibility in my book at the point you listen to "The MIT Chorallaries."
I conjure up the vision of a Birkenstock clad graffiti artist who normally plasters rainbows, hemp slogans, and cal 3 derivatives on brick walls in urban areas taking time to tell me about the flaws in a capitalist driven IP exchange.
I've got a one word rebuttal for you hippie:
PPPPBBBTTTTTTTTHHHHHH!
You indict the skeptic community with a flawed criterion. Due to the vagaries and idiosyncrasies of human knowledge, all rubrics designed to admit some knowledge while disallowing the other will err. However, the skeptic community pulls ahead when you look at the nature of its errors.
Without a hard skeptic attitude, humans are quick to adopt many claims as true, quickly polluting the pool of knowledge with falsehood.
With a callous skeptic methodology, scientists reject specimens of truth in an overly strict filter, but the admitted pollutants are significantly diminished.
Ask yourself which scenario is superior, a pool of water polluted with engine oil or a pool of pure water slightly smaller than its potential allows.