While I don't like the current political leadership of the country, I don't think it's quite accurate to compare the Bush presidentcy with say, a communist totalitarian dictatorship. Halliburton may be packed with selfish and greedy individuals, but I don't equate them with a Communist death squad.
It's a bad idea to suggest to a crowd of Brits that England should just get the hell out of Ireland. I mean, why not make it simple and just let each country have their own island, right?
While you're not entirely wrong, as an American you are really really not allowed to say this. Why? Cos Americans funded a lot of terrorism against the British mainland (NORAID) and we really haven't forgiven a lot of you for that. And in the current climate with America being all "ooh terrorists are threatening us, we must pin down the whole world", we're just not in the mood for that talk coming from you, ok? Particularly when all protestations to your government to cease funding the IRA was met with a deaf ear.
Think what your reaction would be if someone in a bar suggested that the middle east was none of your business and you deserved the Sept 11 attack for interfering in other people's business.
Not because of the side of the room they sat on a hundred years ago.
ISTR that this came from the British Third Parliament where the King's governors sat on his right and the opposition sat on the left. I believe similar was true of post revolution France. It probably predates all these massively but nevertheless tied into the notion of 'right-hand man'. It's certainly not uniquely a Christian thing - Hinduism has also had strong prescriptions against the left hand for a long long time and probably naturally this becomes extended into a wider metaphore.
Sinister is derived from Latin, and means "left." That's all.
[Sigh] And it's use by the mediaeval church is why it means 'evil'. In fact although the parent was satire (not troll) as all good satire it was very close to the truth. The church has long used 'left' to mean 'evil' - left-handers really were persecuted in times past. We still use the phrase cack-handed. And a lot of the modern left-wing demonisation by the right is very religiously inspired.
he problem is, you can't. All these odd perceptions of hell are taken from works outside the Bible itself - and when you start accepting random tradition as truth, you end up with travesties like the Catholic church.
All christian sects use the catholic bible and take works outside the bible be it Aquinas or be it some 18th century looney preacher. The bible just ain't much use by the time it's passed through the lens of 1500 years. Just look at the brouhaha over homosexuality!
Yeah, I agree hell is a Christian 'mod' - but it's all down to interpretation isn't it. The early Roman church found all sorts of good stuff in the OT with which to frighten their flock with visions of the devil and hell. It's only with the post-puritan humanist movements of the Enlightenment that this started to change.
This is why to my mind the Bible is pretty well worthless - you can make it dance to any tune you like.
My friend, what you are describing is called Machinima - go HERE to find out more and see some great indie game-based animation. Maybe it'll inspire you to make your own movie of Doom 3 to spread round the underground.
I think you must have missed the bit in sunday school where the preacher was talking about the fire and brimstone of eternal damnation that awaited all sinners...
But seriously, Christianity has re-invented its notion of heaven and hell more times than you can possibly count over the last 1000 years. What you describe is the modern liberal interpretation of the bible where the OT is mostly discounted. The Catholic church has no such misgivings about the reality of hell as described by Dante.
On the other hand, that's what everyone said about "normal" indies when Final Cut Pro caught on.
But it has made a huge difference. There have been some truly excellent low budget straight-to-dvd non-studio movies out in the last few years. Obviously one has to quote El Mariachi, but I'm more thinking of
Underworld
Dog Soldiers
Equilibrium
Cypher
The level of quality exhibited by these movies would have been impossible a few years ago without cheap non-linear video editting, cheap post fx and cheap cgi.
Is there a way for handicap people to defend against people pushing them over in their new "i-foot"? I assume they are considering a seat belt complete with voice activation and possibly safety padding
Do you regularly sweep handicapped people's crutches away or overturn their wheelchairs? If so please hand yourself in to your nearest police station.
Oh, that's rich. It must have been the Aztecs who came up with bushido, seppuku, and Sword of Doom. Hmm, perhaps I'll go do a "test cut" on some random peasant I find on the road.
No. That's rich. That's like saying that US culture is still focussed on genocide and wiping out native Americans or pistol duels at high noon on mainstreet.
It's not just the US - all I can say is likely you. Thanks in part to the arrival of US corporations but far more to the inspiration of British managers by their US counterparts we suffered a terrible blow to unions in the UK in the 80s from which we have still not recovered.
What I really don't get is this common argument that 'creative' and other skilled workers don't need the defense of unions yet one of the most unionised industries in the US is film and TV - you can't do anything in Hollywood without being part of a union (ok the posh name for the stars is a guild, but same thing).
Try looking along the mississipi basin - most of that is under 100m well within inundation if we lose the ice caps. Add in Florida and a lot of the Eastern seabord as well.
What remains to be conclusively shown is that (a) such large amounts have been emitted (b) there is no compensating factor in the process (e.g. increased heat => more water vapour => more clouds => increased reflexivity of the earth => less heat => no global warming).
There seems to be good agreement on (a) - it's not too hard to work out the mass of carbon injected into the atmosphere by burning of fossil fuels (we have very good numbers for the amount consumed) and by the burning of large swathes of forest (but that is a little more contentious as the numbers are poorer particularly historically) and we also have good estimates as the amount slaked out by rainfall. Further we can accurately measure the partial pressure of CO2 and see a significant rise over the last 100 years.
But where it does get more interesting is (b). Most models now suggest that while there is a dampening effect from increased cloud cover it is not global and the extra energy in the atmosphere leads to greater temperature and pressure differentials leading to more vicious storms. There are also interesting but less convincing models that suggest increased CO2 may initially lead to global warming, glacial and ice cap melting etc for a few hundred years or so and then the system bounces back with a vicious ice age (there are good arguments that ice ages are the neutral state of our planet) - neither is good for us.
Personally I view climatic change in either direction as very bad for mankind. We are very delicately balanced in terms of our habitation zones (most of our population is near sea level and concentrated on coasts) and our agriculture - adapting to changing growing seasons and wild storms could be very painful.
In short, you do not have absolutely conclusive evidence.
Oh FFS! and neither do you have absolutely conclusive evidence that it isn't. What we do have is very convincing evidence that it is. Can you not understand that this is a complex system that we live in?
This is not to say it doesn't exist. For a long time a smoking gun connection was missing for the depletion of the ozone layer and CFCs. Then one day Crutzen, Molina and Rowland found it, and eventually got the Nobel prize for it.
Very true. The trouble is that if we had responded to the early warnings and ditched CFCs then the Aussies and Kiwis would be able to go out in the summer sun without vast amounts of UV protection with the same impunity as southern Californians.
On a similar note, the US is still using methyl bromide (another great ozone destroyer) as a pesticide on fruit crops and had previously agreed to cease by now.
environmental science has a track record of hysterical predictions that have not been backed up by reality
I can't argue with that! Environmental science is full of people with wild and often wrong ideas. 20 years ago global warming might have been one of them but now is supported by mainstream met and geophysics with good data to back it up. It's hard to be as incontrovertible as the CFC link - well there is no doubt that CO2 is a major greenhouse gas - it's just demonstrating the impact to lay audiences that is proving tricky.
So forgive us if we are sceptic when environmentalists cry wolf yet again.
Sceptism is fine (and to be encouraged) but equally you have to be prepared to change your position when the evidence is presented. This is what distinguishes science from faith.
Oh dear we really have to go back to basics here. You seem to be labouring undering the delusion that science is the pronouncements of great men. Peer review is what leads to the consensus. WRT global warming that is a large corpus of experimental and observational data which combined point a big finger at human activity being a major contributor to global warming. Note I do not say the only factor. But certainly the one we can do something about.
And I think it is you demonstrating both arrogance and ignorance by attacking the messenger not the message. Game over.
Can't respond politely without abusing the person you're arguing with, eh? Must be a fault in your upbringing.
People in glass houses get the global warming they deserve...
And as for how science is done I suggest you read Popper. If you knew anything about Newton you would know that he published his works as 'letters' - invitations to other scientists to perform experiments demonstrating his theories. Thus the consensus of the scientific establishment came to be that Newton was right and Descartes and Aristotle were wrong.
As for the rest, no amount of evidence will convince those who will not see.
I did a PhD in geophysics (many years ago) and have a very good grasp of the subject thank you very much and understand well how science is done unlike yourself with your derision of 'consensus science'. That is how science is done, dickhead.
Yes we were at the end of an ice age. No we're not at the peak of a warm cycle (they don't follow). Yes geophysical processes occur on timescales of millions of years. But (and you'll have to engage that braincell here) they also occur on timescales of hundreds of years. Does the Maunder minimum mean anything to you? If not, shut up.
There is very good evidence from thousands of years of good scientific information (we have reliable records goind back hundreds of years and ice cores can take us back hundreds of thousands of years) that CO2 levels have risen dramatically. If that doesn't affect the insolation budget then you have no grasp of physics.
And whether its natural or not we need to do something about it because like it or not human civilisation is balanced on a knife edge. I do hope you live in one of the Jesusland states - the flat ones in the middle that will vanish under monsoons and a rising sea level. Survive that.
And anyone who uses Michael 'Jurassic Park' Crichton in defence of his science gets all the credibility he deserves.
Uh, Europe has to make some major cutbacks in its emissions - its just that we've been doing this for over 10 years now so it won't hurt as much as it would have done.
Yes, it would hurt for you USAians to comply with Kyoto but then you bastards have been hiding your heads in the sand and ignoring the problem as you are some of the biggest polluters and contributers to global warming on the planet.
And yes Russia is hoping that the carbon credits will prop up its economy, but we thought you USAians believed in all that good free market shit which is why Kyoto was structured that way in the first place.
War isn't a bravery contest, or about fighting fair face to face, you are there to win. Minimising your own casualties is something just about everyone tries to do. It is sort of important in fighting.
Or you could not fight. Civilised nations took that decision with the foundation of the Geneva Convention. Something that the US now abrogates.
You might also note that weapons of mass destruction are banned for precisely the reason that we do not want war to to be too easy to wage. Robot soldiers most definitely fall into that category.
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No, but you're not an Iraqi...
While you're not entirely wrong, as an American you are really really not allowed to say this. Why? Cos Americans funded a lot of terrorism against the British mainland (NORAID) and we really haven't forgiven a lot of you for that. And in the current climate with America being all "ooh terrorists are threatening us, we must pin down the whole world", we're just not in the mood for that talk coming from you, ok? Particularly when all protestations to your government to cease funding the IRA was met with a deaf ear.
Think what your reaction would be if someone in a bar suggested that the middle east was none of your business and you deserved the Sept 11 attack for interfering in other people's business.
ISTR that this came from the British Third Parliament where the King's governors sat on his right and the opposition sat on the left. I believe similar was true of post revolution France. It probably predates all these massively but nevertheless tied into the notion of 'right-hand man'. It's certainly not uniquely a Christian thing - Hinduism has also had strong prescriptions against the left hand for a long long time and probably naturally this becomes extended into a wider metaphore.
[Sigh] And it's use by the mediaeval church is why it means 'evil'. In fact although the parent was satire (not troll) as all good satire it was very close to the truth. The church has long used 'left' to mean 'evil' - left-handers really were persecuted in times past. We still use the phrase cack-handed. And a lot of the modern left-wing demonisation by the right is very religiously inspired.
Then, as a catholic, you're a heretic. Pope John Paul II accepted evolution in 1996, though this was really just ratifying Pious XI (1930s?).
Proceed directly to the nearest wooden stake, surround yourself with a large pile of faggots (wood that is) and light.
All christian sects use the catholic bible and take works outside the bible be it Aquinas or be it some 18th century looney preacher. The bible just ain't much use by the time it's passed through the lens of 1500 years. Just look at the brouhaha over homosexuality!
This is why to my mind the Bible is pretty well worthless - you can make it dance to any tune you like.
My friend, what you are describing is called Machinima - go HERE to find out more and see some great indie game-based animation. Maybe it'll inspire you to make your own movie of Doom 3 to spread round the underground.
But seriously, Christianity has re-invented its notion of heaven and hell more times than you can possibly count over the last 1000 years. What you describe is the modern liberal interpretation of the bible where the OT is mostly discounted. The Catholic church has no such misgivings about the reality of hell as described by Dante.
They just want Linux to win because it's against a capitalist company. Isn't that more than a good enough reason? ;-)
But it has made a huge difference. There have been some truly excellent low budget straight-to-dvd non-studio movies out in the last few years. Obviously one has to quote El Mariachi, but I'm more thinking of
- Underworld
- Dog Soldiers
- Equilibrium
- Cypher
The level of quality exhibited by these movies would have been impossible a few years ago without cheap non-linear video editting, cheap post fx and cheap cgi.Do you regularly sweep handicapped people's crutches away or overturn their wheelchairs? If so please hand yourself in to your nearest police station.
No. That's rich. That's like saying that US culture is still focussed on genocide and wiping out native Americans or pistol duels at high noon on mainstreet.
That's right it's our language and you should spell colour correctly ;-)
What I really don't get is this common argument that 'creative' and other skilled workers don't need the defense of unions yet one of the most unionised industries in the US is film and TV - you can't do anything in Hollywood without being part of a union (ok the posh name for the stars is a guild, but same thing).
Try looking along the mississipi basin - most of that is under 100m well within inundation if we lose the ice caps. Add in Florida and a lot of the Eastern seabord as well.
There seems to be good agreement on (a) - it's not too hard to work out the mass of carbon injected into the atmosphere by burning of fossil fuels (we have very good numbers for the amount consumed) and by the burning of large swathes of forest (but that is a little more contentious as the numbers are poorer particularly historically) and we also have good estimates as the amount slaked out by rainfall. Further we can accurately measure the partial pressure of CO2 and see a significant rise over the last 100 years.
But where it does get more interesting is (b). Most models now suggest that while there is a dampening effect from increased cloud cover it is not global and the extra energy in the atmosphere leads to greater temperature and pressure differentials leading to more vicious storms. There are also interesting but less convincing models that suggest increased CO2 may initially lead to global warming, glacial and ice cap melting etc for a few hundred years or so and then the system bounces back with a vicious ice age (there are good arguments that ice ages are the neutral state of our planet) - neither is good for us.
Personally I view climatic change in either direction as very bad for mankind. We are very delicately balanced in terms of our habitation zones (most of our population is near sea level and concentrated on coasts) and our agriculture - adapting to changing growing seasons and wild storms could be very painful.
Oh FFS! and neither do you have absolutely conclusive evidence that it isn't. What we do have is very convincing evidence that it is. Can you not understand that this is a complex system that we live in?
Very true. The trouble is that if we had responded to the early warnings and ditched CFCs then the Aussies and Kiwis would be able to go out in the summer sun without vast amounts of UV protection with the same impunity as southern Californians.
On a similar note, the US is still using methyl bromide (another great ozone destroyer) as a pesticide on fruit crops and had previously agreed to cease by now.
environmental science has a track record of hysterical predictions that have not been backed up by reality
I can't argue with that! Environmental science is full of people with wild and often wrong ideas. 20 years ago global warming might have been one of them but now is supported by mainstream met and geophysics with good data to back it up. It's hard to be as incontrovertible as the CFC link - well there is no doubt that CO2 is a major greenhouse gas - it's just demonstrating the impact to lay audiences that is proving tricky.
So forgive us if we are sceptic when environmentalists cry wolf yet again.
Sceptism is fine (and to be encouraged) but equally you have to be prepared to change your position when the evidence is presented. This is what distinguishes science from faith.
And I think it is you demonstrating both arrogance and ignorance by attacking the messenger not the message. Game over.
People in glass houses get the global warming they deserve...
And as for how science is done I suggest you read Popper. If you knew anything about Newton you would know that he published his works as 'letters' - invitations to other scientists to perform experiments demonstrating his theories. Thus the consensus of the scientific establishment came to be that Newton was right and Descartes and Aristotle were wrong.
As for the rest, no amount of evidence will convince those who will not see.
Yes we were at the end of an ice age. No we're not at the peak of a warm cycle (they don't follow). Yes geophysical processes occur on timescales of millions of years. But (and you'll have to engage that braincell here) they also occur on timescales of hundreds of years. Does the Maunder minimum mean anything to you? If not, shut up.
There is very good evidence from thousands of years of good scientific information (we have reliable records goind back hundreds of years and ice cores can take us back hundreds of thousands of years) that CO2 levels have risen dramatically. If that doesn't affect the insolation budget then you have no grasp of physics.
And whether its natural or not we need to do something about it because like it or not human civilisation is balanced on a knife edge. I do hope you live in one of the Jesusland states - the flat ones in the middle that will vanish under monsoons and a rising sea level. Survive that.
And anyone who uses Michael 'Jurassic Park' Crichton in defence of his science gets all the credibility he deserves.
I'm sorry but this is such utter bollocks I don't know where to stand. Most reputable science recognises global warming as well proven now.
But then I guess you're probably now going to start disputing evolution, heliocentricity and the existence of the universe before 5000BC.
Yes, it would hurt for you USAians to comply with Kyoto but then you bastards have been hiding your heads in the sand and ignoring the problem as you are some of the biggest polluters and contributers to global warming on the planet.
And yes Russia is hoping that the carbon credits will prop up its economy, but we thought you USAians believed in all that good free market shit which is why Kyoto was structured that way in the first place.