The gist of the article you linked to was simply this: lack of media coverage = complete lack of evidence.
No, not at all. He *demonstrates* the complete lack of evidence. "Media coverage" is only one of the many many things that lack any mention of such a person. The actual argument is that given the complete lack of *any* evidence whatsoever together with the early writings that do not pretend there was a real person coupled with the other contradictions that believing such a thing is pretty silly when the people who lived at that time didn't believe any such nonsense.
While I don't believe in the Christian claims regarding the divinity of this man, I must say the author was not very thorough. There was definitely something going on during that time, some very strange activities of a man who was very special.
Bullshit. Come now, let's see you provide a single scrap of evidence for that. Just one. You make such a bold statement, fail completely to even try to back it up with anything but your own faith and now you're being called on it.
The Muslim book does a decent job of explaining the whole ordeal, and the fact that it comes from an illiterate man in the deserts of Arabia is likewise very remarkable.
Yes, so stories told *900 years* later and based on the same fictional works is your idea of evidence? I can't even say, "nice try" on that one. That was a pathetic attempt at spreading falsehoods.
Just because a perfect match between Christian theology and historical documentation doesn't exist does NOT mean that nothing happened.
It's not an imperfect match. It's practically no matches at all. Couple this with the mass of contradictions, the blatant forgeries to attempt to cover up the total lack of evidence and still nothing is proven. However, the overwhelming majority of the historical evidence, and the facts do point to there never having been such a person. Couple this with the complete lack of any evidence for such a person as well as the fairy tale nature of the entire story, and it's quite clear that far and away the most likely scenario is that there never was a Jesus and all of the stories were made up.
Even the author admits it's his own theory, which he backs up with his own study and research (because he can't find other people who support this idea).
He does, in fact, find plenty of research to support the idea. There has been much support for this very idea since a couple of hundred years after the supposed events since even then they realised that there was no evidence for it, so no, this isn't some breathtakingly new idea.
What are you actually trying to say here? That well researched, well documented theories are a bad thing? We should just always believe the same things we've always believed? That is what you're saying. If we went with your way of living, we'd all still be sitting in caves. No thanks.
It's hard to imagine that the Gospel of Mark was intended as religious fiction (think an ancient 'Left Behind' series) and was then believed en mass by people unaware that it was written as fiction.
It wasn't believed en masse. It was believed, for the most part, by people living decades to centuries after the supposed events in far away places. You do know also, that in the early days, nobody did take it seriously, right? It was only much later that the idea of an actual historical Christ was made up. You really might try to at least look like you know anything about the issue before making yourself look silly like that.
It's hard for *you* to imagine that, perhaps. You arbitrarilly decided to believe it's magically true, regardless of any facts, so your opinion on what is or isn't *reasonable* to conclude is entirely worthless by your own choice. For me it's easy since I don't have an emotional attachment to believing that it is a true story in spite of the massive amount of evidence against that position and the complete lack of *any* evidence for it.
He's also correct in that Mark is not written in a formal historical style the way Luke is, but that doesn't mean it's not meant to be a factual account.
Yet, you do nothing to address the arguments put forward addressing exactly that point.
I know that you desperately want to believe it's true, but no matter how much your self image, self worth, and whatever else are tied up in that belief, a simple denial is not an argument. The fact that that is all that you have backing you up does demonstrate how desperate you are to keep believing in your silly fairy tale.
Proving the non-existance of Christ would be nice- but that's like proving the non-existance of Julius Ceaser. There's too much evidence that some guy named Jesus walked around preaching to people and got a bunch of followers crazy enough to die for him.
Now that is a bald faced flat out lie.
Here's a challenge for you. Provide one scrap of legitimate evidence for the existence of Jesus. I'll give you a hint. There isn't any at all. That is made abundantly clear in that article. The fact that there is zero credible evidence for a historical Jesus is quite well established. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, but the bulk of the article makes the case for the evidence of absence.
Come now, I've read "The Conquest of Gaul" and seen plenty of evidence for a historical Julius Caesar. Neither you nor I have ever seen *anything* even close to evidence of an actual Jesus and I defy you to provide any. Not more of your lies, not "durrrr It's true because I want it to be true" which is the extent of your argument this far, but real, credible, historical evidence.
Now once you fail utterly to provide any evidence for your lie can I expect you to do the right thing and apologize? I seriously doubt it since you are so lacking in integrity as to have told such a blatantly obvious lie in the first place. Come now, if there is as much evidence for Jesus as for Julius Caeser, let's see it, liar.
It's also a cheap jab at companies with less sense of humor.
I agree with your whole post except for this bit. "Cheap" inexpensive, sure. Usually "cheap" has negative connotations though, which I don't think apply to this. I think it's a pretty classy jab at companies with less sense of humor.
Anyhow, pedantry doesn't work so well at work or home so there's/.;-)
So, in 30 minutes you read that whole (long) article, examined the vast amount of research documented in the footnotes ( you couldn't claim "poorly researched" otherwise) , ignored all of that documentation which *you* just claimed was "poorly researched" (you couldn't claim "unsubstantiated" otherwise) and then go on to claim that, due to you contradicting yourself in one simple sentence, he must be some wacko conspiracy theorist?
Wow, you're truly amazing. Not only do you make no sense (you'd have given a couple dozen examples if you were actually trying to look like you make sense given that you're slagging thousands of hours of *substantiated, documented research* with one ignorant sentence) but you demonstrate yourself to be an idiot. Nice!
The simple fact that your entire post was one big ad Hominem Doesn't prove you wrong, but it does show that you know *nothing* that could back up whatever it is that you think your point might be.
My opinion is that you don't even have a clue what point you're trying to make since that would involve logic, and you've completely failed that.
Honestly, even on/., I can't think of anybody who's ever looked as stupid as you do right now:-) OK, Taco with the iPod thing, but other than that...
I paused and considered writing "the supposed birth of Christ," but it's best to take one myth at a time. I don't want to be known to posterity as the corpse that united the Christians and the Neo-Druids.
And I forgot to say I agreed with your other points. Besides, who wants to be remembered as a corpse;-)
Connection to the past is kind of the point of preserving Stone Henge and other historic' places. I live in a house built around 1875 and even that short time is a great connection to the past.
Agreed. I lived in 2 different houses in Chicago, before buying my current place, the newest of which was built in 1894. Just looking at the old places really does instill a sense of awe for how much has gone on before. Prior to that, I went to England which has some old stuff;-) Since then one of my friends moved to Boston which makes Chicago look new (and we visited over St. Paddy's Day so new isn't what my liver looked like after;-)
It's easy to stand somewhere like Stonehenge, Long Stone or my parlor and imagine all the people that went before you. It creates a sense of place, of permanence, a sense that long after you're gone people will be standing in the same place doing the same thing you're doing.
Totally. *Hearing* about history is one thing. To lean up against the actual bricks which were there during the events (which and when ever they were) and think about it is truly a different experience... Well, at least to me.. and it would seem, to you.
String theory places limits on how small you can measure something, however, since you have to use strings to do it; esssentially, you can't measure something that is smaller than the strings you're using to probe it. So there is sort of a "fuzzy" minimum effective distance, even though space itself is continuous.
One major goal for theories of everything is to show that the singularities in general relativity are smoothed away at small enough scales.
My admittedly incomplete understanding is that string theory goes a different way with this. It presumes that such small enough scales are unnecessary because they don't even make sense to discuss since they don't even exist.
Which ties into this point:
Analyticity (am I spelling that right?) means that the theory is mathematically continuous, which is again something that seems to be highly desirable as our universe contains very few (probably no) formal sigularities.
Not sure what you mean by analyticity in this context. Given my math background, I'm used to caring about analytic functions, which essentially are infinitely differentiable, hence even "nicer" than continuous functions, but it might mean something completely different here although it sounds related.
Again, string theory says that space is absolutely not continuous, it's discrete. You can not *infinitely* subdivide an interval, and particles are not perfect, literally *zero size* mathematical points.
My understanding is that that flaw in the standard model of particle physics is the primary thing keeping GR and QM from being merged. The assumption of real physical particles that take up literally no space whatsoever. Not a very tiny amount. None at all.
To understand the difference, think about R^2, the normal Euclidian plane. That is a continuous space. You can divide it infinitely nad you will always find more points of your space in between any two points you pick no matter how close together they are.
Now think about Z^2 (plane, but only integers). This is a very similar space in some ways like "shape" and extent. It's a much smaller subset though. It consists of only the points where each coordinate is an integer, so (0,0) (1,5),(8,10000000000) are all elements of this space, but (1,1/2) is not. You might look at a drawing of the plane and say, "sure it is, it's right there" (pointing to where it would be if you were talking about R^2), but that empty space between points isn't really there. It doesn't exist in the space in question. Essentailly, I think they're saying that there is a quantum of distance and it's on the scale of the Planck Length.
So, from what I understand of the theory(s);-), it seems like they aren't really going for analyticity in string theory by defining space to be real continuous euclidian space as has more or less tacitly been done for centuries. Rather they're claiming that space itself isn't continuous.
And, of course, this post might well be full of factually inaccurate statements, misinterpretations and repetitions of things which are flat out wrong;-)
1. The average husband has experienced wife troubles for an average of three consecutive days - about every month - over the course of his marriage. This is in addition to random outbursts throughout the month.
Well, I'm better than average on this one. I have a wife who realsied that if you skip the green pills and go right to a new pack you can reduce this a lot. Say three consecutive days about every year:-)
And the decision to sell your car may come back to bite you when you decide to go somewhere outside of your 'community'.
This might come as quite a surprise to you, but there are businesses in existence which will, for a reasonable fee, *rent* you a car. If you don't own a car, add up what you save in gas, insurance, car payments, parking etc. Now think about how many days you could rent a car over a year for that same total cost.
I think you'll find that you're still way ahead assuming that you live somewhere where you can get around without the car most of the time.
I own a car, but I don't use it that much. I can't really afford to get rid of it since I do need it for work at times (lugging servers around), but I know many people without cars who could afford one just fine but make out better financially without one.
I fail to see what being a libertarian has to do with it....
The end result is that wealthy special interests have won out against the public good yet again. I fail to see how that benefits anyone, on the left or the right.
It's clear that your understanding of politics is pretty limited.
The left and the right are the tools of special interests. When we get bigger government, they *both* win and the American people lose.
You need first to understand what the left and the right are and what they are right or left *of*.
The right is lock stock and barrel the supporter of wealthy special interests by definition. The left ostensibly agrees with the principle that all people are created equal, but they believe further that the power of the state should be used against the individual to enforce that equality. The right flat out disagrees with the whole premise. They beleive wholeheartedly that the rich and powerful are better and therefore the power of the state should be used against the individual to *prevent* equality.
That is what the left and the right are.
What they are right or left of is Liberalism, which is the philosophy that the indivisual's rights are important. This isn't what it means in common useage in the US anymore, but that's becasue the left and the right both despise Liberalism as it is an inherently small government philosophy.
When the term got coopted by leftists and reviled by rightists, the Libertarian movement started. This is the closest thing we have to a Liberal party in the US. My issues with them are they've taken belief in the market as an absolute truth by faith, which is a problem.
So, the point of all of this to your questions:
I fail to see what being a libertarian has to do with it.
Because libertarians (apart from the above caveat) are the only party that actually does care about individual liberty. Any time we talk about Left versus Right and every time we allow an issue to be framed as if that was a meaningful distinction the point that there is actually a different view that doesn't support massively increasing government power and destruction of individual rights as both the right and left do all the time.
So both the left and the right love restricting free speech. The reason that the Libertarians are relevant is that they're the only party that doesn't actively stand against free speech (and most other freedoms as well.)
I fail to see how that benefits anyone, on the left or the right.
Bigger government always benefits the left and the right since big government is what they stand for since that's the only way they can achieve their goals of using the government against the people.
I said that because I still tend to believe that law enforcement people (and that is apparently what the people who have taken these people are) tend to be at least honest enough not to put behind bars someone who they themselves believe to be innocent.
Then you are an incredibly naive person. You might think you're being a good person by assuming the best of others, but when others doing their worst is so endemic and so highly rewarded in our society, you're being a very bad person to ignore reality since you are tacitly supporting it by holding on to those naive and blatantly false assumptions.
In other words, I can't believe that the US would be party to the mass arrest of innocents, and their long term incarceration (5 years and counting) without trial, unless they had a fair amount of evidence that the people in question were guilty of the crimes that they were arrested for. After all, they have released a fair number of their detainees already, without trial, after apparently clearing them of any chargeable wrong doings.
So because they have been proven to have arrested and incarcerated (and tortured, let's not forget) innocents for long periods of times you find it hard to believe that they would do exactly that?!?
Stunning logic there.
That really is the mental state of anybody trying to defend this administration's cowardly treasonous policies though. Nobody has managed to come up with a better argument than yours and yours doesn't even make any sense at all. In fact it directly contradicts itself, yet you stiull pretend that it's even a sane point.
That argument you made, shows a complete disconnect with reality. That failure of yours and those like you to deal with reality is the primary thing that allows our government to continue torturing and murdering innocent people.
Hell, even the NY Times plainly states that the Iranians are funding terrorists in a BIG WAY. It's not a right wing conspiracy theory. It's a proxy war.
You mean just like France funded the US (colonies) against the British in the War of Independence?
Heck, if we got invaded I'd certainly hope somebody would step up and help us repel the foreign invaders who came in unprovoked on a basis of lies and murdered our families.
So, the terrorists in Iraq are the Americans by any definition you care to use. Pretty sad when Iran are the good guys compared to us.
Probably they deserve to be there, but I still doubt the legality of a lot of the siezures that came out of the Middle East prior to the USA declaring war on anyone other than a fairly nebulous concept of "terrorist groups".
The major problem with our concentration camps is that there is no way of knowing whether or not any of the people there are actually guilty of anything. In fact, there does not exist a single reason to believe any such thing.
So saying that they "probably" deserve what they're getting is entirely false, unless you're divulging classified information. There is nothing to judge probabilities of guilt or innocence of the people we're illegally and unconstitutionally holding in our various death camps around the world.
But if you shoot down all of your own satellites, then there wouldn't be any left for your enemies to shoot down, thus rending your enemies' anti-satellite weapons completely ineffective and useless.
Brillant!!!
Not only will we make them waste massive cash, but we'll get to borrow more from them to rebuy all of our kit.
Oh You've just been promoted, General Coward. You're headed straight for the Pentagon with those sorts of ideas!
it's just that either way life is less fun than it would be otherwise and that's all i was going for.
Sure, and I wasn't trying to counter your point with it either, just felt like pointing out the difference. If you can't be pedantic here, then where can you be;-)
Well, the only thing that I can think of is that then you'd be in the class of cop-killers, one of the groups along with pedophiles, snitches, and cops themselves whose lives are extra-special not-fun in prison.
Cop-killers are fucking heroes in prison.
Now maybe other cops bribe and/or threaten other convicts into making cop killer's lives hell in prison, but they're a completely different class. The others you mentioned have a shitty time in prison becasue they're widely considered scum by the other prisoners. Not so with cop killers.
As previous posters have pointed out its sponsored by both political parties and actually has wider acceptance among Democrats
You say that like it is in any way relevant to whether or not the legislation is any good. All it means for legislation to be supported by both major parties is that it is explicitly anti-individual rights and pro big government. Those are the only things the parties actually agree on.
I'm not addressing this actual piece of legislation though. Just your argument for it.
The problem is that the unfortunate face of libertarianism is the Libertarian Party, who are much closer to anacro-captialism than moderate libertarianism.
True enough. My main objection to the Libertarian party is their religious belief in the market. I tend to describe myself as a Liberal, but in America,, that word doesn't mean what it used to, but there isn't another word that works. Clever of the Left and the Right to completely subvert the view that individual liberty is important when they're both gung ho big government.
Oh, not a spelling flame, it just cracked me up: it's anarcho-capitalism, as in the same root as anarchy. Anacro-capitalism would be like cavemen trading rocks or something;-)
Slashdot Mirror
The gist of the article you linked to was simply this: lack of media coverage = complete lack of evidence.
No, not at all. He *demonstrates* the complete lack of evidence. "Media coverage" is only one of the many many things that lack any mention of such a person.
The actual argument is that given the complete lack of *any* evidence whatsoever together with the early writings that do not pretend there was a real person coupled with the other contradictions that believing such a thing is pretty silly when the people who lived at that time didn't believe any such nonsense.
While I don't believe in the Christian claims regarding the divinity of this man, I must say the author was not very thorough. There was definitely something going on during that time, some very strange activities of a man who was very special.
Bullshit. Come now, let's see you provide a single scrap of evidence for that. Just one. You make such a bold statement, fail completely to even try to back it up with anything but your own faith and now you're being called on it.
The Muslim book does a decent job of explaining the whole ordeal, and the fact that it comes from an illiterate man in the deserts of Arabia is likewise very remarkable.
Yes, so stories told *900 years* later and based on the same fictional works is your idea of evidence?
I can't even say, "nice try" on that one. That was a pathetic attempt at spreading falsehoods.
Just because a perfect match between Christian theology and historical documentation doesn't exist does NOT mean that nothing happened.
It's not an imperfect match. It's practically no matches at all. Couple this with the mass of contradictions, the blatant forgeries to attempt to cover up the total lack of evidence and still nothing is proven. However, the overwhelming majority of the historical evidence, and the facts do point to there never having been such a person.
Couple this with the complete lack of any evidence for such a person as well as the fairy tale nature of the entire story, and it's quite clear that far and away the most likely scenario is that there never was a Jesus and all of the stories were made up.
Even the author admits it's his own theory, which he backs up with his own study and research (because he can't find other people who support this idea).
He does, in fact, find plenty of research to support the idea. There has been much support for this very idea since a couple of hundred years after the supposed events since even then they realised that there was no evidence for it, so no, this isn't some breathtakingly new idea.
What are you actually trying to say here? That well researched, well documented theories are a bad thing? We should just always believe the same things we've always believed? That is what you're saying. If we went with your way of living, we'd all still be sitting in caves. No thanks.
It's hard to imagine that the Gospel of Mark was intended as religious fiction (think an ancient 'Left Behind' series) and was then believed en mass by people unaware that it was written as fiction.
It wasn't believed en masse. It was believed, for the most part, by people living decades to centuries after the supposed events in far away places. You do know also, that in the early days, nobody did take it seriously, right? It was only much later that the idea of an actual historical Christ was made up. You really might try to at least look like you know anything about the issue before making yourself look silly like that.
It's hard for *you* to imagine that, perhaps. You arbitrarilly decided to believe it's magically true, regardless of any facts, so your opinion on what is or isn't *reasonable* to conclude is entirely worthless by your own choice.
For me it's easy since I don't have an emotional attachment to believing that it is a true story in spite of the massive amount of evidence against that position and the complete lack of *any* evidence for it.
He's also correct in that Mark is not written in a formal historical style the way Luke is, but that doesn't mean it's not meant to be a factual account.
Yet, you do nothing to address the arguments put forward addressing exactly that point.
I know that you desperately want to believe it's true, but no matter how much your self image, self worth, and whatever else are tied up in that belief, a simple denial is not an argument. The fact that that is all that you have backing you up does demonstrate how desperate you are to keep believing in your silly fairy tale.
Proving the non-existance of Christ would be nice- but that's like proving the non-existance of Julius Ceaser. There's too much evidence that some guy named Jesus walked around preaching to people and got a bunch of followers crazy enough to die for him.
Now that is a bald faced flat out lie.
Here's a challenge for you. Provide one scrap of legitimate evidence for the existence of Jesus. I'll give you a hint. There isn't any at all. That is made abundantly clear in that article. The fact that there is zero credible evidence for a historical Jesus is quite well established. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, but the bulk of the article makes the case for the evidence of absence.
Come now, I've read "The Conquest of Gaul" and seen plenty of evidence for a historical Julius Caesar. Neither you nor I have ever seen *anything* even close to evidence of an actual Jesus and I defy you to provide any. Not more of your lies, not "durrrr It's true because I want it to be true" which is the extent of your argument this far, but real, credible, historical evidence.
Now once you fail utterly to provide any evidence for your lie can I expect you to do the right thing and apologize? I seriously doubt it since you are so lacking in integrity as to have told such a blatantly obvious lie in the first place.
Come now, if there is as much evidence for Jesus as for Julius Caeser, let's see it, liar.
It's also a cheap jab at companies with less sense of humor.
/. ;-)
I agree with your whole post except for this bit. "Cheap" inexpensive, sure. Usually "cheap" has negative connotations though, which I don't think apply to this. I think it's a pretty classy jab at companies with less sense of humor.
Anyhow, pedantry doesn't work so well at work or home so there's
So, in 30 minutes you read that whole (long) article, examined the vast amount of research documented in the footnotes ( you couldn't claim "poorly researched" otherwise) , ignored all of that documentation which *you* just claimed was "poorly researched" (you couldn't claim "unsubstantiated" otherwise) and then go on to claim that, due to you contradicting yourself in one simple sentence, he must be some wacko conspiracy theorist?
/., I can't think of anybody who's ever looked as stupid as you do right now :-)
Wow, you're truly amazing. Not only do you make no sense (you'd have given a couple dozen examples if you were actually trying to look like you make sense given that you're slagging thousands of hours of *substantiated, documented research* with one ignorant sentence) but you demonstrate yourself to be an idiot. Nice!
The simple fact that your entire post was one big ad Hominem Doesn't prove you wrong, but it does show that you know *nothing* that could back up whatever it is that you think your point might be.
My opinion is that you don't even have a clue what point you're trying to make since that would involve logic, and you've completely failed that.
Honestly, even on
OK, Taco with the iPod thing, but other than that...
I paused and considered writing "the supposed birth of Christ," but it's best to take one myth at a time. I don't want to be known to posterity as the corpse that united the Christians and the Neo-Druids.
;-)
And I forgot to say I agreed with your other points.
Besides, who wants to be remembered as a corpse
Connection to the past is kind of the point of preserving Stone Henge and other historic' places. I live in a house built around 1875 and even that short time is a great connection to the past.
;-) ;-)
Agreed. I lived in 2 different houses in Chicago, before buying my current place, the newest of which was built in 1894.
Just looking at the old places really does instill a sense of awe for how much has gone on before.
Prior to that, I went to England which has some old stuff
Since then one of my friends moved to Boston which makes Chicago look new (and we visited over St. Paddy's Day so new isn't what my liver looked like after
It's easy to stand somewhere like Stonehenge, Long Stone or my parlor and imagine all the people that went before you. It creates a sense of place, of permanence, a sense that long after you're gone people will be standing in the same place doing the same thing you're doing.
Totally. *Hearing* about history is one thing. To lean up against the actual bricks which were there during the events (which and when ever they were) and think about it is truly a different experience... Well, at least to me.. and it would seem, to you.
How long ago was the birth of Christ?
Error: NAN
There never was such a person. Not even to the people alive at that time.
String theory places limits on how small you can measure something, however, since you have to use strings to do it; esssentially, you can't measure something that is smaller than the strings you're using to probe it. So there is sort of a "fuzzy" minimum effective distance, even though space itself is continuous.
Ahhh, ok.
Misinterpreatation one found and fixed
One major goal for theories of everything is to show that the singularities in general relativity are smoothed away at small enough scales.
;-), it seems like they aren't really going for analyticity in string theory by defining space to be real continuous euclidian space as has more or less tacitly been done for centuries. Rather they're claiming that space itself isn't continuous.
;-)
My admittedly incomplete understanding is that string theory goes a different way with this.
It presumes that such small enough scales are unnecessary because they don't even make sense to discuss since they don't even exist.
Which ties into this point:
Analyticity (am I spelling that right?) means that the theory is mathematically continuous, which is again something that seems to be highly desirable as our universe contains very few (probably no) formal sigularities.
Not sure what you mean by analyticity in this context. Given my math background, I'm used to caring about analytic functions, which essentially are infinitely differentiable, hence even "nicer" than continuous functions, but it might mean something completely different here although it sounds related.
Again, string theory says that space is absolutely not continuous, it's discrete. You can not *infinitely* subdivide an interval, and particles are not perfect, literally *zero size* mathematical points.
My understanding is that that flaw in the standard model of particle physics is the primary thing keeping GR and QM from being merged. The assumption of real physical particles that take up literally no space whatsoever. Not a very tiny amount. None at all.
To understand the difference, think about R^2, the normal Euclidian plane. That is a continuous space. You can divide it infinitely nad you will always find more points of your space in between any two points you pick no matter how close together they are.
Now think about Z^2 (plane, but only integers). This is a very similar space in some ways like "shape" and extent. It's a much smaller subset though. It consists of only the points where each coordinate is an integer, so (0,0) (1,5),(8,10000000000) are all elements of this space, but (1,1/2) is not. You might look at a drawing of the plane and say, "sure it is, it's right there" (pointing to where it would be if you were talking about R^2), but that empty space between points isn't really there. It doesn't exist in the space in question.
Essentailly, I think they're saying that there is a quantum of distance and it's on the scale of the Planck Length.
So, from what I understand of the theory(s)
And, of course, this post might well be full of factually inaccurate statements, misinterpretations and repetitions of things which are flat out wrong
1. The average husband has experienced wife troubles for an average of three consecutive days - about every month - over the course of his marriage. This is in addition to random outbursts throughout the month.
:-)
Well, I'm better than average on this one. I have a wife who realsied that if you skip the green pills and go right to a new pack you can reduce this a lot. Say three consecutive days about every year
And the decision to sell your car may come back to bite you when you decide to go somewhere outside of your 'community'.
This might come as quite a surprise to you, but there are businesses in existence which will, for a reasonable fee, *rent* you a car.
If you don't own a car, add up what you save in gas, insurance, car payments, parking etc.
Now think about how many days you could rent a car over a year for that same total cost.
I think you'll find that you're still way ahead assuming that you live somewhere where you can get around without the car most of the time.
I own a car, but I don't use it that much. I can't really afford to get rid of it since I do need it for work at times (lugging servers around), but I know many people without cars who could afford one just fine but make out better financially without one.
I fail to see what being a libertarian has to do with it. ...
The end result is that wealthy special interests have won out against the public good yet again. I fail to see how that benefits anyone, on the left or the right.
It's clear that your understanding of politics is pretty limited.
The left and the right are the tools of special interests. When we get bigger government, they *both* win and the American people lose.
You need first to understand what the left and the right are and what they are right or left *of*.
The right is lock stock and barrel the supporter of wealthy special interests by definition.
The left ostensibly agrees with the principle that all people are created equal, but they believe further that the power of the state should be used against the individual to enforce that equality.
The right flat out disagrees with the whole premise. They beleive wholeheartedly that the rich and powerful are better and therefore the power of the state should be used against the individual to *prevent* equality.
That is what the left and the right are.
What they are right or left of is Liberalism, which is the philosophy that the indivisual's rights are important.
This isn't what it means in common useage in the US anymore, but that's becasue the left and the right both despise Liberalism as it is an inherently small government philosophy.
When the term got coopted by leftists and reviled by rightists, the Libertarian movement started. This is the closest thing we have to a Liberal party in the US. My issues with them are they've taken belief in the market as an absolute truth by faith, which is a problem.
So, the point of all of this to your questions:
I fail to see what being a libertarian has to do with it.
Because libertarians (apart from the above caveat) are the only party that actually does care about individual liberty. Any time we talk about Left versus Right and every time we allow an issue to be framed as if that was a meaningful distinction the point that there is actually a different view that doesn't support massively increasing government power and destruction of individual rights as both the right and left do all the time.
So both the left and the right love restricting free speech. The reason that the Libertarians are relevant is that they're the only party that doesn't actively stand against free speech (and most other freedoms as well.)
I fail to see how that benefits anyone, on the left or the right.
Bigger government always benefits the left and the right since big government is what they stand for since that's the only way they can achieve their goals of using the government against the people.
Do you understand now?
I said that because I still tend to believe that law enforcement people (and that is apparently what the people who have taken these people are) tend to be at least honest enough not to put behind bars someone who they themselves believe to be innocent.
Then you are an incredibly naive person.
You might think you're being a good person by assuming the best of others, but when others doing their worst is so endemic and so highly rewarded in our society, you're being a very bad person to ignore reality since you are tacitly supporting it by holding on to those naive and blatantly false assumptions.
In other words, I can't believe that the US would be party to the mass arrest of innocents, and their long term incarceration (5 years and counting) without trial, unless they had a fair amount of evidence that the people in question were guilty of the crimes that they were arrested for. After all, they have released a fair number of their detainees already, without trial, after apparently clearing them of any chargeable wrong doings.
So because they have been proven to have arrested and incarcerated (and tortured, let's not forget) innocents for long periods of times you find it hard to believe that they would do exactly that?!?
Stunning logic there.
That really is the mental state of anybody trying to defend this administration's cowardly treasonous policies though. Nobody has managed to come up with a better argument than yours and yours doesn't even make any sense at all. In fact it directly contradicts itself, yet you stiull pretend that it's even a sane point.
That argument you made, shows a complete disconnect with reality. That failure of yours and those like you to deal with reality is the primary thing that allows our government to continue torturing and murdering innocent people.
You haven't been reading the comments there have you?
;-)
No, you caught me
Hell, even the NY Times plainly states that the Iranians are funding terrorists in a BIG WAY. It's not a right wing conspiracy theory. It's a proxy war.
You mean just like France funded the US (colonies) against the British in the War of Independence?
Heck, if we got invaded I'd certainly hope somebody would step up and help us repel the foreign invaders who came in unprovoked on a basis of lies and murdered our families.
So, the terrorists in Iraq are the Americans by any definition you care to use.
Pretty sad when Iran are the good guys compared to us.
Probably they deserve to be there, but I still doubt the legality of a lot of the siezures that came out of the Middle East prior to the USA declaring war on anyone other than a fairly nebulous concept of "terrorist groups".
The major problem with our concentration camps is that there is no way of knowing whether or not any of the people there are actually guilty of anything. In fact, there does not exist a single reason to believe any such thing.
So saying that they "probably" deserve what they're getting is entirely false, unless you're divulging classified information.
There is nothing to judge probabilities of guilt or innocence of the people we're illegally and unconstitutionally holding in our various death camps around the world.
Dont worry with the search just go read groklaw.net; its all there
;-)
Yeah, but Groklaw is all dry and factual. Not nearly as entertaining as reading about it here
Didn't she also see evidence of ghosts in the past?
;-)
Oh man, I saw that show. I couldn't stop laughing at what a truly credible analyst she isn't.
But if you shoot down all of your own satellites, then there wouldn't be any left for your enemies to shoot down, thus rending your enemies' anti-satellite weapons completely ineffective and useless.
Brillant!!!
Not only will we make them waste massive cash, but we'll get to borrow more from them to rebuy all of our kit.
Oh You've just been promoted, General Coward. You're headed straight for the Pentagon with those sorts of ideas!
The guards are legally not allowed to know what you're in there for.
;-)
If they're high profile enough, there's no avoiding it
it's just that either way life is less fun than it would be otherwise and that's all i was going for.
;-)
Sure, and I wasn't trying to counter your point with it either, just felt like pointing out the difference. If you can't be pedantic here, then where can you be
Well, the only thing that I can think of is that then you'd be in the class of cop-killers, one of the groups along with pedophiles, snitches, and cops themselves whose lives are extra-special not-fun in prison.
Cop-killers are fucking heroes in prison.
Now maybe other cops bribe and/or threaten other convicts into making cop killer's lives hell in prison, but they're a completely different class.
The others you mentioned have a shitty time in prison becasue they're widely considered scum by the other prisoners. Not so with cop killers.
There are lardbutts all over in elected government who need to get the hell out. Strom Thurmond was an example, as is Ted Kennedy.
OK, say Ted Kennedy gets unelected.
What's your plan for actually managing to pry his fat drunk ass out of the chair?
As previous posters have pointed out its sponsored by both political parties and actually has wider acceptance among Democrats
You say that like it is in any way relevant to whether or not the legislation is any good.
All it means for legislation to be supported by both major parties is that it is explicitly anti-individual rights and pro big government.
Those are the only things the parties actually agree on.
I'm not addressing this actual piece of legislation though. Just your argument for it.
The problem is that the unfortunate face of libertarianism is the Libertarian Party, who are much closer to anacro-captialism than moderate libertarianism.
;-)
True enough. My main objection to the Libertarian party is their religious belief in the market. I tend to describe myself as a Liberal, but in America,, that word doesn't mean what it used to, but there isn't another word that works. Clever of the Left and the Right to completely subvert the view that individual liberty is important when they're both gung ho big government.
Oh, not a spelling flame, it just cracked me up: it's anarcho-capitalism, as in the same root as anarchy. Anacro-capitalism would be like cavemen trading rocks or something