Drink the water, then take a big piss (which will be all the water flushed out of your system by the alcohol), then pass out. Your body will absorb most of the water you drank, since it now really needs it. You'll probably have to piss when you wake up, but I've never had it bother my sleep. I usually drink more than than, too, if I was drinking heavily.
Look, as much as I enjoy hearing Lessig, Linus, et al dismantle Darl's insane FUD, it's already been done to death. Particularly with this last GPL-violates-constitution lunacy, Darl and SCO have become self-mocking. I fully expect the next press release from Darl to claim that the GPL makes apple pies taste sour, especially ones made by nice old grandmothers. Is this news? "Lunatic continues to babble, tricks 'reporters' into listening" is kinda newsworthy, I guess.
The real news is that SCO got a sizeable portion of their ass handed to them last Friday. SCO has one month to put up or shut up, and all their actions so far (in court!) have shown them very reluctant to put up. In the meantime its unlikely that Darl will shut up, but that is really, truly irrelevent. The FUD portion of this fiasco is over. It's court time now, and we're going to see exactly how shoddy SCO's claims were put together. Nothing SCO does or says until they walk into court next is of any significance.
January. It's not that long to wait. In the meantime, I'm all for ignoring SCO's public spewage.
In case you are caught unprepared without your Ultimate Hangover Cure (nice link btw), chugging several Big Gulps full of water before hitting the sack is a tremendous help. Most of the hangover symptoms (headaches, nausea, dry mouth, aching joints) are either caused or exacerbated by the dehydration that results from drinking. Even if you're lacking B-complex vitamins and a way to neutralize the acetaldehyde, 40 oz of water will go a long, long way toward making the next day as pleasant as possible.
People may not believe this, since drinking water on the day after does very little to make the hangover go away. Trust me, chug water before going to bed.
Oh, and since your web link didn't have this piece of advice, I add it here: Avoid tequila like the demon-spawned liquor of evil that it is.
Dude, how is expecting natural resources to come from space any different than it coming from earth? Either way, I have fuck-all to do with it. Unless these future colonists don't need computers, I think we can work out an amicable trade based on our mutual needs and skill sets. Just like today.
Sheesh.
About the asteroid: Again, I like earth. By the time we are able to build a perpetual self-sustaining colony on another planet, I hope we would have invested the energy to develop a better way to detect incoming bodies. No matter what, a planet-killer hitting earth would be really bad. And it isn't impossible to prevent.
The goal isn't to emmigrate from earth. Frankly, I like earth a lot, and don't want to leave for some stupid dome on Mars. Living on a planet where I can't go outside to sit among the trees because there's no breathable air and no trees is the nightmare I'm trying to prevent from happening -here-. Why would I want to go live like that somewhere else?:)
The point is that space is a source of material and energy resources that we could harvest without stripping our own planet. I also think moving polluting industry onto the moon or Mars or in space itself would be a great idea.
I agree with you on funding development that isn't directly under the purvue of the space programs. It works, and there's no reason this shouldn't be part of NASA's mandate. I think NASA should be funding a dozen X-Prize-like competitions/contract offers, since its goals (cheap access to space) should be exactly what NASA is aiming for as the necessary precursor to all other serious space developments. It is very true that with our current model (hugely expensive shuttle launches that out of simple necessity must be carrying huge, valuable payloads) it looks like we're simply throwing money down a gravity well.
Our current understanding of physics makes faster-than-light travel about as pie-in-the-sky as you can get. Traveling to Mars is perfectly within the limits of our physics; technology must simply be made to catch up with that potential. We can't wait until we develop warp drives, because warp drive development is likely only -after- all the other space development has occured. It's like not designed the mechanical calculators of the early 20th century because eventually you hope to make ultra-fast silicon-based computers that can do anything you ask. If you think we might like to be able to leave the planet for any reason in the next hundred years, then the time to start developing that capability is now.
I understand the idea that there are things more important from a charity perspective than space. I appreciate it greatly.
But I think it needs to be put into perspective. For the sake of time, I'm not going to dig up specific figures. The gist, however, is that we (meaning the U.S. gov) has an enourmous buget and there is more than enough money to give $10 to the ISS and $10 to a hungry kid and $10 to a poor country that can't afford AIDS medication and $10 to education and $10 for research into fusion.
We're talking trillions of dollars. Hundreds of billions right now (470 billion, if I remember) are going to war-waging. Looking at the situation in Iraq -- how many of our multi-million dollar toys are actually being used in the ongoing guerilla war? -- it seems this is a clear place where we could spend less (and not by cutting soldiers' benefits, for f's sake!).
Compare NASA's funding to the DoD's. Why are you eyeing NASA's paltry pile of dollars when there's a towering mountain right next to it that is largely unneeded?
I pick on defense funding because it seems so egregiously high (honestly, how can it be justified unless we're planning on launching an offensive war against a massive military like China or something?). I'm sure there are other completely-not-charitable-in-any-way ways our money is being spent. Business subsidies pop into mind.
I've heard it estimated that it would cost only $6 billion to end world hunger -- enough food is produced by far, but it costs a lot to distribute in the timely manner required. I can't imagine our educational system, despite its problems, needs a hundred billion on its own.
The point is there's enough money for all that and NASA. And NASA serves a very important function. We need to figure out how to maintain a growing high-tech society without making all our drinking water taste like MTBE. Learning how to use space to our advantage is an important step.
So leave NASA be, please. I want those other things (and the list is a lot longer than -my- arm; maybe you're taller than me) as well, but we don't need to gut NASA to get them.
Pardon the incoherence, but the coffee is just starting to kick in.:)
While flash is random access and doesn't have a physical seek latency, it is indeed a block device. On reads this isn't evident, but on writes it is. You can only overwrite whole blocks at a time. This is why it actually does make some sense to use traditional file systems on flash devices.
Educated guess: The patents cover methods and algorithms, not the particulars of NTFS implementation.
So someone "skilled in the art" could create a filesystem using the techniques in NTFS described by the MS patents, but this wouldn't necessarily be compatible with NTFS.
That is true for trademarks. Since the whole idea of a trademark is that it is identifying, letting people use it willy-nilly defeats the purpose, and you lose it.
Patents aren't like that. As far as I know, you aren't required to enforce them at all, and can selectively enforce them at your discretion.
This is why Rambus was able to wait for a few years until DDR was a well established standard and RDRAM was becoming a niche player then suddenly say "Oh, by the way, we have a patent on DDR so you owe us money." And it lets MS do this.
Cost of living in India is vastly lower than it is in the U.S. There is no possible way that I can compete with an Indian programmer on the basis of pay, unless I emigrate.
Being forced to compete with others on a completely unequal scale is a downside. That's why the U.S. is being threatened with sanctions over its steel tariffs. It makes it really hard for foreign nations to compete. Ya dig?
That's the fundamental problem. We have an unequal playing field, and in an environment where cost is valued over all else it isn't a competition, it's a blowout.
I really, really hope that globalization can help India and other countries boost their economies and develop themselves into the "1st World" nations they can be*. I just wonder what damage it will do to our economy in the meantime.
* Since outsourcing is only one half of the coin, the other half being U.S. companies sucking money out of developing nations, I don't think this is certain at all.
The reality of the situation is probably that Diebold is trying its best to score this contract and are making some mistakes along the way.
No, the reality of the situation is (note deliberate lack of qualifying "probably") that we don't know.
What we do know is that their machines are insanely insecure, have already failed in real elections, they know about it, they have tried to cover it up instead of fixing it, and have threatened to sue those who did expose these facts.
"Benefit of the doubt" is just that. You doubt the accusations, particularly because they are unproven. However, given the evidence that does exist, I don't know how you can say that they probably aren't true.
Which isn't to say I'm not largely agreeing with you. I'm just saying don't let your skepticism of critics of Diebold turn into a lack of skepticism of Diebold. They could very well be the schemers they are accused of being, no matter how sure you are that they'd never do that.
A draconian agenda would presumeably be an agenda to get draconian laws passed. Thanks to my history schooling and fantasy-novel reading, I still reflexively think of "draconian" as "like evil lizard men" instead of "like the harsh laws passed by Draco of Athens". Funny.
Niemoller was, at one point, supportive of the Nazis; but he not only came to realize their racism was harmful to society but actually did something about it.
I hadn't realized. Pretty inspiring, if you ask me.
No, because I very much didn't mean what you seem to think I meant.
Here you are comparing imaginary, theoretical human suffering to the very real suffering and deaths of the Jews, Gypsies, Poles and others targeted by Hitler's reign of terror. The fuck???
Ah, you were confused by my comparison, as if I was saying some future hypothetical war is going to make WWII look like happy days at the park. Sorry, my fault.
My observation was that WWII was pretty much the closest thing to what was described in Revelations as I can think of in human history, and yet the End Times didn't occur. Thus the postulate that one can cause Jesus to return by creating the situations described in Revelations is demonstrably false. The corrollary is that just because incredible suffering is going on doesn't mean it is the end.
Let me say it another way: WWII was fucking awful. If I was living during it, I would probably think I was living in the end times, and for damn good reason because my life would read like a page from Revelations. The same could be said if I was living in a trench in WWI.
But it wasn't the end times. Meaning humans are perfectly capable of creating hell on earth with no help from the Horsemen of the Apocalypse or the anti-Christ.
I guess I don't know how to be any more clear than that. I was disparaging the idea that humans could cause the end of time, not the idea that humans are murderous bastards capable of causing incredible suffering that makes you wish time would end.
It's so much better to feel like a victim than face your own shady past, isn't it? What a great way for white christians to avoid their guilt about The Trail of Tears, American slavery, anti-semitism, and the persecution of Irish and Chinese.
Actually I probably feel a lot more guilt for those things than I should seeing as I didn't do any of them. But if you knew anything about me (not that you should) you'd know I very much like to remind those around me of those events. I'm very much against white Christians feeling high and mighty, and reminding them of some of the things done by their ancestors is as good a way as any to remind them they aren't special.
"Those persecutions were nothing compared to what we (who so far have only reaped the benefits of other's persecution) will suffer!" Wow. That's brilliant!
Actually, while persecution of Christians is something that is supposed to happen in the end times, Revelations is as clear as it can possibly be about anything in a book filled with singing eyeball creatures that life is going to suck for everyone. I don't think it was supposed to imply that Christians would be the only ones being skewered.
PS-Last time I checked, Revelations was an allegorical account of the persecution of Christians under Roman rule, with the hope of immediate Theistic reprisal.
My understanding is that it is more an allegorical account of Jewish persecution under Babylonian rule. With references, I believe, to another period of persecution before that.
you made the mistake of assuming that if you're going to be robbed then the thief will do anything, i.e the probabilty of being robbed if all the thief has to do is steal your wallet is the same as the probabilty of being robbed if the thief has to perform minor surgery on you and then circumvent any other security measures.
Not at all. As you quoted me: "You've mistaken reducing the probability of being robbed with reducing the danger of serious injury in the event that one should be robbed" Yes, it is likely fewer robberies would occur. Those robberies that occured would be more likely to involve the maiming or killing of the victim. Got it now?
what has happened with credit cards? do the theives now mug people and murder/incapacitate them so they can't report it stolen? no.
Because they don't have to. Between when they steal it and when it gets reported stolen the thief can max out the card. And your wallet has cash in it they can use. If your only source of money is your chip, well...
if you say to a thief "you can only get money off me by killing me" then 99.9999% won't do it. and the couple of psychos that actually would do it are probably the kind who would torture you for fun anyway.
I think you need to look at some crime statistics in this country before you assume that only 0.0001% of criminals who commit armed robbery are willing to commit violence against you as well. The characterization of that set as "a couple of psychos" is grossly wrong.
If you want to challenge a thief to kill you, you go right ahead. I know which one of us has a better chance of getting killed by a mugger.
Hey there! Welcome to "You Don't Know My Religion"!
The prophecy of Revelations is what will happen, not what has to happen first.
In other words -- the End Times don't occur just because some people decided to try to make it occur. They may do a pretty damn good job of recreating the living hell that is described in Revelations, but that doesn't make it Revelations.
I could go out today and "convince" everyone on earth to wear my "Mark of the Burke" (slogan: "Easier than cash; better than being shot!"). That doesn't make me the anti-Christ, and wouldn't put Christ's return a day sooner. Even a pet genetically-engineered seven-headed giant monitor lizard (who I'd call "Gnashy") wouldn't qualify me.
Unless of course I -am- the anti-Christ. I'm pretty sure I'm not. I'm certainly not going to go make peoples' lives miserable on the off-chance that I am.
Another way to look at is this: Revelations describes some of the worst human suffering imagineable. World War II involved some of the worst human suffering imagineable, but it wasn't the war of Revelations. If World War III occurs, it may or may not be the war of Revelations as well, but it will still be an unimagineable human disaster.
I know you were being facitious, but you also are saying "Know Your Religion" when you are the one who is less informed.
Although there are people who think exactly what you're saying and they claim to have read the Bible. Apparently they missed the part, which I thought was pretty clear, when it is said that you won't know when the end times are here.
So advocating, allowing, or heaven forbid causing human suffering in the hopes of seeing Jesus return is really, really stupid.
Not all kidnappers are willing to kill or maim. There are very real differences in the repurcussions for kidnapping that does and does not result in bodily harm.
And do you really want to put that to the test with your child?
Potentially reducing the overall number of kidnappings at the cost of increasing the number of kidnapping victims who return with a severed limb or outright dead doesn't sound like a good tradeoff to me.
yes, because there isn't going to be any method of you reporting the chip stolen, or the chip being declined once your dead body is discovered is there?
This is true for credit cards as well, but they are still stolen and used successfully before the theft is reported. This is obvious, so why be smart?
I guess we should all leave our possessions outside our houses and the car keys in the ignition. If you're dealing with someone who is willing to risk gong to jail just for some material items, you don't want to give them a reason to come into your house and put your family at risk do you?
You've mistaken reducing the probability of being robbed with reducing the danger of serious injury in the event that one should be robbed. Putting your stuff in your locked house reduces the chance that any slightly larcenous soul walking by will rob you. Just like having my credit card in my wallet inside a buttoned pocket inside my jacket makes it more difficult for someone to pick pocket me.
If that isn't enough and they decide to break into my house or hold me up at gunpoint, we're past the "reducing risk of being robbed" stage. I'm being robbed. Now it's time to reduce the risk of being shot. "The only way you'll get anything out of me is to kill or seriously maim me!" doesn't sound like a good way to dissuade an armed robber.
Now why on earth would we worry. Strange that the text actually says in the hand or forehead, not on. I wish I could read the originals as they were written...
I'd say you should definitely refer to the originals (or at least a scholarly analysis thereof) before hinging anything on the semantic difference between "in" and "on".
It's the same problem that has all the Biblical literalists convinced that the earth is 6000 years old and it took exactly six twenty-three-hour-fifty-whatever-minute days to create the universe, because Ancient Hebrew the word for "day" could be translated several ways and somebody picked "day" instead of "era" or "eon".
Not that it matters in this case, because the meaning is clear regardless: Don't let anyone put identifying markers on, in, or up your body because they seek only to own you.
I think that's pretty good advice, no matter how sure you are the guy putting the mark on you isn't the anti-Christ.
Right now, if a mugger wants my wallet he can just take it instead of having to carve it out of my body.
It's the same as unremovable transmitter bands for children -- ie a horrible idea. If you're dealing with someone who is willing to kill or maim you to get money, the last thing you want to do is give them a reason to have to do it.
It was a divide-by-zero error in the application which subsequently took down the entire operating system. At the time, MS pointed out that the divide-by-zero was the application's fault, not theirs. Smart people pointed out that any operating system that can't handle a common application fault like divide by zero is complete shit.
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Drink the water, then take a big piss (which will be all the water flushed out of your system by the alcohol), then pass out. Your body will absorb most of the water you drank, since it now really needs it. You'll probably have to piss when you wake up, but I've never had it bother my sleep. I usually drink more than than, too, if I was drinking heavily.
Look, as much as I enjoy hearing Lessig, Linus, et al dismantle Darl's insane FUD, it's already been done to death. Particularly with this last GPL-violates-constitution lunacy, Darl and SCO have become self-mocking. I fully expect the next press release from Darl to claim that the GPL makes apple pies taste sour, especially ones made by nice old grandmothers. Is this news? "Lunatic continues to babble, tricks 'reporters' into listening" is kinda newsworthy, I guess.
The real news is that SCO got a sizeable portion of their ass handed to them last Friday. SCO has one month to put up or shut up, and all their actions so far (in court!) have shown them very reluctant to put up. In the meantime its unlikely that Darl will shut up, but that is really, truly irrelevent. The FUD portion of this fiasco is over. It's court time now, and we're going to see exactly how shoddy SCO's claims were put together. Nothing SCO does or says until they walk into court next is of any significance.
January. It's not that long to wait. In the meantime, I'm all for ignoring SCO's public spewage.
In case you are caught unprepared without your Ultimate Hangover Cure (nice link btw), chugging several Big Gulps full of water before hitting the sack is a tremendous help. Most of the hangover symptoms (headaches, nausea, dry mouth, aching joints) are either caused or exacerbated by the dehydration that results from drinking. Even if you're lacking B-complex vitamins and a way to neutralize the acetaldehyde, 40 oz of water will go a long, long way toward making the next day as pleasant as possible.
People may not believe this, since drinking water on the day after does very little to make the hangover go away. Trust me, chug water before going to bed.
Oh, and since your web link didn't have this piece of advice, I add it here: Avoid tequila like the demon-spawned liquor of evil that it is.
Or at least don't mix it with beer.
Dude, how is expecting natural resources to come from space any different than it coming from earth? Either way, I have fuck-all to do with it. Unless these future colonists don't need computers, I think we can work out an amicable trade based on our mutual needs and skill sets. Just like today.
Sheesh.
About the asteroid: Again, I like earth. By the time we are able to build a perpetual self-sustaining colony on another planet, I hope we would have invested the energy to develop a better way to detect incoming bodies. No matter what, a planet-killer hitting earth would be really bad. And it isn't impossible to prevent.
After the explosion of the Stranger In A Strange Land III interplanetary shuttle...
NASA = "Need Another Seventy Astronauts"
Sorry, but bad humor will live forever.
The goal isn't to emmigrate from earth. Frankly, I like earth a lot, and don't want to leave for some stupid dome on Mars. Living on a planet where I can't go outside to sit among the trees because there's no breathable air and no trees is the nightmare I'm trying to prevent from happening -here-. Why would I want to go live like that somewhere else? :)
The point is that space is a source of material and energy resources that we could harvest without stripping our own planet. I also think moving polluting industry onto the moon or Mars or in space itself would be a great idea.
I agree with you on funding development that isn't directly under the purvue of the space programs. It works, and there's no reason this shouldn't be part of NASA's mandate. I think NASA should be funding a dozen X-Prize-like competitions/contract offers, since its goals (cheap access to space) should be exactly what NASA is aiming for as the necessary precursor to all other serious space developments. It is very true that with our current model (hugely expensive shuttle launches that out of simple necessity must be carrying huge, valuable payloads) it looks like we're simply throwing money down a gravity well.
Our current understanding of physics makes faster-than-light travel about as pie-in-the-sky as you can get. Traveling to Mars is perfectly within the limits of our physics; technology must simply be made to catch up with that potential. We can't wait until we develop warp drives, because warp drive development is likely only -after- all the other space development has occured. It's like not designed the mechanical calculators of the early 20th century because eventually you hope to make ultra-fast silicon-based computers that can do anything you ask. If you think we might like to be able to leave the planet for any reason in the next hundred years, then the time to start developing that capability is now.
I understand the idea that there are things more important from a charity perspective than space. I appreciate it greatly.
:)
But I think it needs to be put into perspective. For the sake of time, I'm not going to dig up specific figures. The gist, however, is that we (meaning the U.S. gov) has an enourmous buget and there is more than enough money to give $10 to the ISS and $10 to a hungry kid and $10 to a poor country that can't afford AIDS medication and $10 to education and $10 for research into fusion.
We're talking trillions of dollars. Hundreds of billions right now (470 billion, if I remember) are going to war-waging. Looking at the situation in Iraq -- how many of our multi-million dollar toys are actually being used in the ongoing guerilla war? -- it seems this is a clear place where we could spend less (and not by cutting soldiers' benefits, for f's sake!).
Compare NASA's funding to the DoD's. Why are you eyeing NASA's paltry pile of dollars when there's a towering mountain right next to it that is largely unneeded?
I pick on defense funding because it seems so egregiously high (honestly, how can it be justified unless we're planning on launching an offensive war against a massive military like China or something?). I'm sure there are other completely-not-charitable-in-any-way ways our money is being spent. Business subsidies pop into mind.
I've heard it estimated that it would cost only $6 billion to end world hunger -- enough food is produced by far, but it costs a lot to distribute in the timely manner required. I can't imagine our educational system, despite its problems, needs a hundred billion on its own.
The point is there's enough money for all that and NASA. And NASA serves a very important function. We need to figure out how to maintain a growing high-tech society without making all our drinking water taste like MTBE. Learning how to use space to our advantage is an important step.
So leave NASA be, please. I want those other things (and the list is a lot longer than -my- arm; maybe you're taller than me) as well, but we don't need to gut NASA to get them.
Pardon the incoherence, but the coffee is just starting to kick in.
Best post on the subject.
While flash is random access and doesn't have a physical seek latency, it is indeed a block device. On reads this isn't evident, but on writes it is. You can only overwrite whole blocks at a time. This is why it actually does make some sense to use traditional file systems on flash devices.
Educated guess: The patents cover methods and algorithms, not the particulars of NTFS implementation.
So someone "skilled in the art" could create a filesystem using the techniques in NTFS described by the MS patents, but this wouldn't necessarily be compatible with NTFS.
That is true for trademarks. Since the whole idea of a trademark is that it is identifying, letting people use it willy-nilly defeats the purpose, and you lose it.
Patents aren't like that. As far as I know, you aren't required to enforce them at all, and can selectively enforce them at your discretion.
This is why Rambus was able to wait for a few years until DDR was a well established standard and RDRAM was becoming a niche player then suddenly say "Oh, by the way, we have a patent on DDR so you owe us money." And it lets MS do this.
Great system, eh?
And just how do you suck money out of a developing nation? There is no money there to suck!
So developing nation equals having zero capitol at all? That would sure make development pretty hard!
What kind of moron are you?
Cost of living in India is vastly lower than it is in the U.S. There is no possible way that I can compete with an Indian programmer on the basis of pay, unless I emigrate.
Being forced to compete with others on a completely unequal scale is a downside. That's why the U.S. is being threatened with sanctions over its steel tariffs. It makes it really hard for foreign nations to compete. Ya dig?
That's the fundamental problem. We have an unequal playing field, and in an environment where cost is valued over all else it isn't a competition, it's a blowout.
I really, really hope that globalization can help India and other countries boost their economies and develop themselves into the "1st World" nations they can be*. I just wonder what damage it will do to our economy in the meantime.
* Since outsourcing is only one half of the coin, the other half being U.S. companies sucking money out of developing nations, I don't think this is certain at all.
The reality of the situation is probably that Diebold is trying its best to score this contract and are making some mistakes along the way.
No, the reality of the situation is (note deliberate lack of qualifying "probably") that we don't know.
What we do know is that their machines are insanely insecure, have already failed in real elections, they know about it, they have tried to cover it up instead of fixing it, and have threatened to sue those who did expose these facts.
"Benefit of the doubt" is just that. You doubt the accusations, particularly because they are unproven. However, given the evidence that does exist, I don't know how you can say that they probably aren't true.
Which isn't to say I'm not largely agreeing with you. I'm just saying don't let your skepticism of critics of Diebold turn into a lack of skepticism of Diebold. They could very well be the schemers they are accused of being, no matter how sure you are that they'd never do that.
A draconian agenda would presumeably be an agenda to get draconian laws passed. Thanks to my history schooling and fantasy-novel reading, I still reflexively think of "draconian" as "like evil lizard men" instead of "like the harsh laws passed by Draco of Athens". Funny.
Niemoller was, at one point, supportive of the Nazis; but he not only came to realize their racism was harmful to society but actually did something about it.
I hadn't realized. Pretty inspiring, if you ask me.
It's really worth reading about all this.
Sure is. Thanks for the link.
Do you have any idea how offensive you sound?
No, because I very much didn't mean what you seem to think I meant.
Here you are comparing imaginary, theoretical human suffering to the very real suffering and deaths of the Jews, Gypsies, Poles and others targeted by Hitler's reign of terror. The fuck???
Ah, you were confused by my comparison, as if I was saying some future hypothetical war is going to make WWII look like happy days at the park. Sorry, my fault.
My observation was that WWII was pretty much the closest thing to what was described in Revelations as I can think of in human history, and yet the End Times didn't occur. Thus the postulate that one can cause Jesus to return by creating the situations described in Revelations is demonstrably false. The corrollary is that just because incredible suffering is going on doesn't mean it is the end.
Let me say it another way: WWII was fucking awful. If I was living during it, I would probably think I was living in the end times, and for damn good reason because my life would read like a page from Revelations. The same could be said if I was living in a trench in WWI.
But it wasn't the end times. Meaning humans are perfectly capable of creating hell on earth with no help from the Horsemen of the Apocalypse or the anti-Christ.
I guess I don't know how to be any more clear than that. I was disparaging the idea that humans could cause the end of time, not the idea that humans are murderous bastards capable of causing incredible suffering that makes you wish time would end.
It's so much better to feel like a victim than face your own shady past, isn't it? What a great way for white christians to avoid their guilt about The Trail of Tears, American slavery, anti-semitism, and the persecution of Irish and Chinese.
Actually I probably feel a lot more guilt for those things than I should seeing as I didn't do any of them. But if you knew anything about me (not that you should) you'd know I very much like to remind those around me of those events. I'm very much against white Christians feeling high and mighty, and reminding them of some of the things done by their ancestors is as good a way as any to remind them they aren't special.
"Those persecutions were nothing compared to what we (who so far have only reaped the benefits of other's persecution) will suffer!" Wow. That's brilliant!
Actually, while persecution of Christians is something that is supposed to happen in the end times, Revelations is as clear as it can possibly be about anything in a book filled with singing eyeball creatures that life is going to suck for everyone. I don't think it was supposed to imply that Christians would be the only ones being skewered.
PS-Last time I checked, Revelations was an allegorical account of the persecution of Christians under Roman rule, with the hope of immediate Theistic reprisal.
My understanding is that it is more an allegorical account of Jewish persecution under Babylonian rule. With references, I believe, to another period of persecution before that.
Hope things are more clear now.
you made the mistake of assuming that if you're going to be robbed then the thief will do anything, i.e the probabilty of being robbed if all the thief has to do is steal your wallet is the same as the probabilty of being robbed if the thief has to perform minor surgery on you and then circumvent any other security measures.
Not at all. As you quoted me: "You've mistaken reducing the probability of being robbed with reducing the danger of serious injury in the event that one should be robbed" Yes, it is likely fewer robberies would occur. Those robberies that occured would be more likely to involve the maiming or killing of the victim. Got it now?
what has happened with credit cards? do the theives now mug people and murder/incapacitate them so they can't report it stolen? no.
Because they don't have to. Between when they steal it and when it gets reported stolen the thief can max out the card. And your wallet has cash in it they can use. If your only source of money is your chip, well...
if you say to a thief "you can only get money off me by killing me" then 99.9999% won't do it. and the couple of psychos that actually would do it are probably the kind who would torture you for fun anyway.
I think you need to look at some crime statistics in this country before you assume that only 0.0001% of criminals who commit armed robbery are willing to commit violence against you as well. The characterization of that set as "a couple of psychos" is grossly wrong.
If you want to challenge a thief to kill you, you go right ahead. I know which one of us has a better chance of getting killed by a mugger.
Hey there! Welcome to "You Don't Know My Religion"!
The prophecy of Revelations is what will happen, not what has to happen first.
In other words -- the End Times don't occur just because some people decided to try to make it occur. They may do a pretty damn good job of recreating the living hell that is described in Revelations, but that doesn't make it Revelations.
I could go out today and "convince" everyone on earth to wear my "Mark of the Burke" (slogan: "Easier than cash; better than being shot!"). That doesn't make me the anti-Christ, and wouldn't put Christ's return a day sooner. Even a pet genetically-engineered seven-headed giant monitor lizard (who I'd call "Gnashy") wouldn't qualify me.
Unless of course I -am- the anti-Christ. I'm pretty sure I'm not. I'm certainly not going to go make peoples' lives miserable on the off-chance that I am.
Another way to look at is this: Revelations describes some of the worst human suffering imagineable. World War II involved some of the worst human suffering imagineable, but it wasn't the war of Revelations. If World War III occurs, it may or may not be the war of Revelations as well, but it will still be an unimagineable human disaster.
I know you were being facitious, but you also are saying "Know Your Religion" when you are the one who is less informed.
Although there are people who think exactly what you're saying and they claim to have read the Bible. Apparently they missed the part, which I thought was pretty clear, when it is said that you won't know when the end times are here.
So advocating, allowing, or heaven forbid causing human suffering in the hopes of seeing Jesus return is really, really stupid.
Not all kidnappers are willing to kill or maim. There are very real differences in the repurcussions for kidnapping that does and does not result in bodily harm.
And do you really want to put that to the test with your child?
Potentially reducing the overall number of kidnappings at the cost of increasing the number of kidnapping victims who return with a severed limb or outright dead doesn't sound like a good tradeoff to me.
yes, because there isn't going to be any method of you reporting the chip stolen, or the chip being declined once your dead body is discovered is there?
This is true for credit cards as well, but they are still stolen and used successfully before the theft is reported. This is obvious, so why be smart?
I guess we should all leave our possessions outside our houses and the car keys in the ignition. If you're dealing with someone who is willing to risk gong to jail just for some material items, you don't want to give them a reason to come into your house and put your family at risk do you?
You've mistaken reducing the probability of being robbed with reducing the danger of serious injury in the event that one should be robbed. Putting your stuff in your locked house reduces the chance that any slightly larcenous soul walking by will rob you. Just like having my credit card in my wallet inside a buttoned pocket inside my jacket makes it more difficult for someone to pick pocket me.
If that isn't enough and they decide to break into my house or hold me up at gunpoint, we're past the "reducing risk of being robbed" stage. I'm being robbed. Now it's time to reduce the risk of being shot. "The only way you'll get anything out of me is to kill or seriously maim me!" doesn't sound like a good way to dissuade an armed robber.
Now why on earth would we worry. Strange that the text actually says in the hand or forehead, not on. I wish I could read the originals as they were written...
I'd say you should definitely refer to the originals (or at least a scholarly analysis thereof) before hinging anything on the semantic difference between "in" and "on".
It's the same problem that has all the Biblical literalists convinced that the earth is 6000 years old and it took exactly six twenty-three-hour-fifty-whatever-minute days to create the universe, because Ancient Hebrew the word for "day" could be translated several ways and somebody picked "day" instead of "era" or "eon".
Not that it matters in this case, because the meaning is clear regardless: Don't let anyone put identifying markers on, in, or up your body because they seek only to own you.
I think that's pretty good advice, no matter how sure you are the guy putting the mark on you isn't the anti-Christ.
Right now, if a mugger wants my wallet he can just take it instead of having to carve it out of my body.
It's the same as unremovable transmitter bands for children -- ie a horrible idea. If you're dealing with someone who is willing to kill or maim you to get money, the last thing you want to do is give them a reason to have to do it.
This is common sense.
Yes.
It was a divide-by-zero error in the application which subsequently took down the entire operating system. At the time, MS pointed out that the divide-by-zero was the application's fault, not theirs. Smart people pointed out that any operating system that can't handle a common application fault like divide by zero is complete shit.
AccuVote results are in:
Yes: -35,002
No: 8,667,000,002
Cowboy Neal: Orangutan
Actually, that's fairly accurate.
So I'm guessing it's you that is full of shit.