or piranhas ate your testicles, that's a perfectly normal reaction, and quite natural.
There is nothing even remotely normal about that whole sentence. You, sir, have a weird fetish, but please let me know if you decide to make a movie on this subject. I will buy the first copy.
If you have a good life, loving wife, happy kids, and live in a nice house with a big screen TV and drive a fancy car... and you still can't stop crying and get off the sofa? That's not a bad attitude, it's a chemical problem.
Or maybe he starred in that damn piranha movie. *shrug*
I'd argue that, even if the issue is Axons are not releasing enough neurotransmitters, the real need is to identify which Axons need to release which neurotransmitters to boost the areas we want boosted AND identify what other things are also affected by trying to fix the nebulous concept of depression so we can tweak other things back to their original levels.
I am not disagreeing with the broader point of your post about most of the modern medical science being a lot of guesswork, but your argument itself is flawed. Suppose they did all that which you just pointed out and then released the optimum amount of Axons which seem to tweak other things back to their original levels, would you be satisfied then? How do you know they are not doing anything else which is not yet known to us? Maybe they have been doing these experiments for a long time (actually I will bet that they have been) and this is the one which seems to be doing the optimum in terms of cost/benefit ratio.
Its all fine argueing about whether they missed something which could turn out to be vital at some point in the future, but that will Always be the case and if we were always just sitting there worrying about it without even trying anything then we would still be hanging from trees plucking berries and wondering what the hell is that bright thing in the forest which is consuming all the trees and seems to burn your skin when you go near it.
So you're saying that most people are sick, and being something of a psychopath is normal?
Whooooooosh!
Oh and he also insulted sick people, and people with emotions, and normal people, and your grandma, and your cat, and the robot overlord with no emotions who can't even fall sick! That bastard! Get your panties in a twist and KILL HIM!
Now all we need is to find a few nymphs to lure out those pesky 'Old Ones' and my plan to rule the world will be almost complete. Now where to find a painting crazy enough to interest them for a couple of thousand years while I grok the source of their powers. Hmm, maybe I should have killed Da Vinci while he was in the middle of drawing Mona Lisa..
I missed out on reading anything by Heinlein till about a few weeks back so I may be missing something important which made his works important when they came out but my first experience with one of his books(Stranger in a Strange Land) has been a really mixed bag so far.
(I think I should mention that I purchased the new Uncut version which, as someone pointed out earlier, may not be as good as the original one which most of you guys may have read)
The novel starts off well, I was getting into the plot nicely but then there were these disussions which kept going off on tangents, and got longer and longer as the novel progressed. It was fine for a while because short discussions are always interesting when they are related to something as open-ended as Religion or Universe, but then somewhere towards the later half of the book they got just plain stretched out and boring. I think the fact that some of the points made are not as scandalous today as they may have been a few decades from now may have something to do with it. Now some of the monologues come off across as plain preachy and narrow-minded (which is kind of ironic because most of them are about how the religions of the world suffer from those symptoms)
**SPOILERS**
I had to put the book down at the point where Michael finally groks that he is human because it was really taking me a lot of effort to just keep reading. I was losing interest even before that and the fact that a chapter ended at that point just made me decide to give up until I can get myself to finish it. Apart from the fact that I have been through most of the scandalous points raised a million times since I started taking interest in such subject,
He never defined till that point what is a Religion before showing that All religion are true. So as soon as anyone proclaims any answer to the question of "Life, The Universe and Everything" it automagically becomes true? Or do you need to have atleast 'n' number of people believing that to make it true? He criticizes (through the voice of one of his characters) that the Universe just couldn't have come to be with chance alone? Why not? Isn't that also one of the answers?
**SPOILERS**
I could go on but the post is already too long. Maybe he explained all my point towards the end of the book (in which case please refrain from posting spoilers:) but that will make them useless once someone stops reading the thing because its getting too tedious and uninteresting to spend time on.
Thanks for the informative reply. That makes perfect sense. I follow the same rule but still mess up sometimes, specially with long sentences, when I lose track of the sentence's structure.:)
As another non-native English speaker, I totally agree with the point you have made. The process of learning a new language (almost)always starts with reading it rather than trying to speak it, and I mean speaking in the sense when you can converse in that language to some degree rather than learning special words/phrases for some purpose like "Yes", "No", "Sorry", "Thank You" etc. This usually makes them aware of the difference in the words which may sound very similar to each other even to a native speaker.
Ofcourse, like you already pointed out, the non-natives have different sort of problems. I, for one, sometimes mix up between when to use "I" and "Me" in sentences like "Both I and Mr. X went..." or "it was trying get him and me to sign this...". Will check up the usage rules one of these days when I am not feeling this lazy.
(I am sure that at least one sentence in this post is grammatically/syntactically incorrect)
Its probably too late to add anything to the discussion now but I can't believe no one else mentioned it so far. Billy is a wonderfully light audio player with minimalist footprint even after loading 500+ items to the playlist. Comes in both installer and portable versions. Switched from winamp to it during my college days and haven't gone back since.
Check out their site Sheep Friends. All the applications there are designed with the minimalist footprint idea in mind and I have been using almost all of them for years now.
1. Abby [Simple allround converter]
2. Billy [Lightweight audio player]
3. Diana [Basic notes]
4. Hawk [Hex file viewer]
5. Kelly [Desktop calculator]
6. Natty [Tray mail checker/notificator]
I can't believe this tripe argument got modded up. Maybe people get a bit sensitive and cautious when religion/faith is thrown in any argument, irrespective of whether the argument itself was worthy of notice or not.
Science can disprove; it cannot prove. And the existence of God cannot be disproven.
The old tired argument. Tell me something, if no one can disprove the existence of God then does that mean that God exists? What about FSM, IPU and all the other constructs created specifically to expose that stupid line of argument? When someone makes a self fulfilling claim like the theory of an all-powerful "God" then the onus of "proof" lies on the one who made that claim rather than the rest of the world as opposed to what you would have everyone believe.
I can say there is an invisible purple ninja who lives in my backyard and creates and destroys the world every 13 seconds but sets it up with his infinite powers such that the inhabitants of every new world feel that they are living one continuous life, even though all of them exist for precisely 13 seconds. I was made aware of this for some unknown purpose and now he wants to see if I can make anyone else believe the truth of their existence. Have fun trying to prove or disprove that. Oh, did I mention he has infinite powers?
PS: Yeah the ninja is a male, and my captcha was "piggish". Figures.
I did hear about someone got his dreams of marrying Natalie Portman crash and burn after he saw the developed photograph, one person joined the new weighloss reality show as a result of that joke email and atleast one incident from the era of Black&White monitors where someone threatened to kill the person who started that stupid joke after facing serious identity crtisis as a result of the picture produced by that wonderful embedded camera.
Its ok. We are here for you. Beauty is only sin deep anyway.
Lets blame Capitalism for what that twat did. Oh wait they had a socialist system there.. then That is the root of all evil. It can't *possibly* be that the same types of fuckwads screw all types of systems in all the countries across the globe. You can have a perfect system designed by Angels after extensive testing on the holy beowulf clusters of Magrathea but it can and will be screwed in the ass by the people with the power to do that.
But hey who am I kidding, we can't even talk about international issues without getting into a country/religion specific fight so lets blame the first thing in our hate list as soon as we come across it.
Aria shacho?! Just wait till one of the BigBadGuys dons a cute outfit, places it in an oversized tumbler and takes it on a Gondola ride. It will reverse the policy within seconds.
Thanks for those links. Loved all the reviews so far. Fucking Hilarious stuff. I am in a cafe so I was trying not to make an ass out of myself by bursting into one of my "demonic laughs" (according to one of my friends) but I totally cracked up at the last one where he says the only way he would buy that game is if it came down to the budget price, and they threw in another game, and a cake, and Belgium.
...Still trying not to look at the face of all the people staring at me like I had tits at my back.
Totally agree with what you said. I find it highly amusing how the whole of humanity is living on the surface of a crude rock, floating through a seemingly infinite and largely unknown universe at breakneck speeds, and still most people won't be comfortable if told to live in a fully decked up man-made space station because that somehow feels unsafe.
Just goes to show how much our sense of safety and comfort depends upon the way we perceive things instead of any absolute facts or things like that.
Hehe that has to be one of the funniest comments I have read in a long time. So.. how many times did you have to read that article before you came up with that?
I am losing faith in human species now. I can understand not getting up to change the channels but now you want the marbles to bounce back to exactly the same height from which they were dropped?...
JUST GO DOWN AND PICK UP THE DAMN MARBLE!
And do 50 push ups while you are at it.
I wore black leather, listened to heavy metal, was overly sarcastic enjoyed computers (and solitude in a dark basement) and spoke "English" (not Ebonics). The day after columbine I apparently fit the profile and was instantly suspended. After threatening to call the ACLU they let me back to class and warned me not to behave "suspiciously" or I will phase the consequences.
Slashdot Mirror
Or maybe he starred in that damn piranha movie. *shrug*
Its all fine argueing about whether they missed something which could turn out to be vital at some point in the future, but that will Always be the case and if we were always just sitting there worrying about it without even trying anything then we would still be hanging from trees plucking berries and wondering what the hell is that bright thing in the forest which is consuming all the trees and seems to burn your skin when you go near it.
Whooooooosh!
Oh and he also insulted sick people, and people with emotions, and normal people, and your grandma, and your cat, and the robot overlord with no emotions who can't even fall sick! That bastard! Get your panties in a twist and KILL HIM!
Now all we need is to find a few nymphs to lure out those pesky 'Old Ones' and my plan to rule the world will be almost complete. Now where to find a painting crazy enough to interest them for a couple of thousand years while I grok the source of their powers. Hmm, maybe I should have killed Da Vinci while he was in the middle of drawing Mona Lisa..
I missed out on reading anything by Heinlein till about a few weeks back so I may be missing something important which made his works important when they came out but my first experience with one of his books(Stranger in a Strange Land) has been a really mixed bag so far.
:) but that will make them useless once someone stops reading the thing because its getting too tedious and uninteresting to spend time on.
(I think I should mention that I purchased the new Uncut version which, as someone pointed out earlier, may not be as good as the original one which most of you guys may have read)
The novel starts off well, I was getting into the plot nicely but then there were these disussions which kept going off on tangents, and got longer and longer as the novel progressed. It was fine for a while because short discussions are always interesting when they are related to something as open-ended as Religion or Universe, but then somewhere towards the later half of the book they got just plain stretched out and boring. I think the fact that some of the points made are not as scandalous today as they may have been a few decades from now may have something to do with it. Now some of the monologues come off across as plain preachy and narrow-minded (which is kind of ironic because most of them are about how the religions of the world suffer from those symptoms)
**SPOILERS**
I had to put the book down at the point where Michael finally groks that he is human because it was really taking me a lot of effort to just keep reading. I was losing interest even before that and the fact that a chapter ended at that point just made me decide to give up until I can get myself to finish it. Apart from the fact that I have been through most of the scandalous points raised a million times since I started taking interest in such subject,
He never defined till that point what is a Religion before showing that All religion are true. So as soon as anyone proclaims any answer to the question of "Life, The Universe and Everything" it automagically becomes true? Or do you need to have atleast 'n' number of people believing that to make it true? He criticizes (through the voice of one of his characters) that the Universe just couldn't have come to be with chance alone? Why not? Isn't that also one of the answers?
**SPOILERS**
I could go on but the post is already too long. Maybe he explained all my point towards the end of the book (in which case please refrain from posting spoilers
Thanks for the informative reply. That makes perfect sense. I follow the same rule but still mess up sometimes, specially with long sentences, when I lose track of the sentence's structure. :)
As another non-native English speaker, I totally agree with the point you have made. The process of learning a new language (almost)always starts with reading it rather than trying to speak it, and I mean speaking in the sense when you can converse in that language to some degree rather than learning special words/phrases for some purpose like "Yes", "No", "Sorry", "Thank You" etc. This usually makes them aware of the difference in the words which may sound very similar to each other even to a native speaker.
Ofcourse, like you already pointed out, the non-natives have different sort of problems. I, for one, sometimes mix up between when to use "I" and "Me" in sentences like "Both I and Mr. X went..." or "it was trying get him and me to sign this...". Will check up the usage rules one of these days when I am not feeling this lazy.
(I am sure that at least one sentence in this post is grammatically/syntactically incorrect)
Its probably too late to add anything to the discussion now but I can't believe no one else mentioned it so far. Billy is a wonderfully light audio player with minimalist footprint even after loading 500+ items to the playlist. Comes in both installer and portable versions. Switched from winamp to it during my college days and haven't gone back since.
Check out their site Sheep Friends. All the applications there are designed with the minimalist footprint idea in mind and I have been using almost all of them for years now.
1. Abby [Simple allround converter]
2. Billy [Lightweight audio player]
3. Diana [Basic notes]
4. Hawk [Hex file viewer]
5. Kelly [Desktop calculator]
6. Natty [Tray mail checker/notificator]
The old tired argument. Tell me something, if no one can disprove the existence of God then does that mean that God exists? What about FSM, IPU and all the other constructs created specifically to expose that stupid line of argument? When someone makes a self fulfilling claim like the theory of an all-powerful "God" then the onus of "proof" lies on the one who made that claim rather than the rest of the world as opposed to what you would have everyone believe.
I can say there is an invisible purple ninja who lives in my backyard and creates and destroys the world every 13 seconds but sets it up with his infinite powers such that the inhabitants of every new world feel that they are living one continuous life, even though all of them exist for precisely 13 seconds. I was made aware of this for some unknown purpose and now he wants to see if I can make anyone else believe the truth of their existence. Have fun trying to prove or disprove that. Oh, did I mention he has infinite powers?
PS: Yeah the ninja is a male, and my captcha was "piggish". Figures.
Uh.. monkey? I am really sorry dude.
I did hear about someone got his dreams of marrying Natalie Portman crash and burn after he saw the developed photograph, one person joined the new weighloss reality show as a result of that joke email and atleast one incident from the era of Black&White monitors where someone threatened to kill the person who started that stupid joke after facing serious identity crtisis as a result of the picture produced by that wonderful embedded camera.
Its ok. We are here for you. Beauty is only sin deep anyway.
Lets blame Capitalism for what that twat did. Oh wait they had a socialist system there.. then That is the root of all evil. It can't *possibly* be that the same types of fuckwads screw all types of systems in all the countries across the globe. You can have a perfect system designed by Angels after extensive testing on the holy beowulf clusters of Magrathea but it can and will be screwed in the ass by the people with the power to do that.
But hey who am I kidding, we can't even talk about international issues without getting into a country/religion specific fight so lets blame the first thing in our hate list as soon as we come across it.
Aria shacho?! Just wait till one of the BigBadGuys dons a cute outfit, places it in an oversized tumbler and takes it on a Gondola ride. It will reverse the policy within seconds.
(A cookie for the reference finder)
Thanks for those links. Loved all the reviews so far. Fucking Hilarious stuff. I am in a cafe so I was trying not to make an ass out of myself by bursting into one of my "demonic laughs" (according to one of my friends) but I totally cracked up at the last one where he says the only way he would buy that game is if it came down to the budget price, and they threw in another game, and a cake, and Belgium.
...Still trying not to look at the face of all the people staring at me like I had tits at my back.
Inisightful and very well said. I would have called for mod points but you are already modded +5.
Totally agree with what you said. I find it highly amusing how the whole of humanity is living on the surface of a crude rock, floating through a seemingly infinite and largely unknown universe at breakneck speeds, and still most people won't be comfortable if told to live in a fully decked up man-made space station because that somehow feels unsafe.
Just goes to show how much our sense of safety and comfort depends upon the way we perceive things instead of any absolute facts or things like that.
Fuckin' hilarious. My kingdom for some mod points..
Its terrible because its just a nerdy way of saying 'Ur Real Life', and I don't have much of it you insensitive clod!
Hehe that has to be one of the funniest comments I have read in a long time. So.. how many times did you have to read that article before you came up with that?
I am losing faith in human species now. I can understand not getting up to change the channels but now you want the marbles to bounce back to exactly the same height from which they were dropped? ...
JUST GO DOWN AND PICK UP THE DAMN MARBLE!
And do 50 push ups while you are at it.
You are an IIT'ian, aintcha?
No you are special, because you are my cuddly-wuddly lumpy-gumpy pumpkin pie.