>> ^burdturgler:
But that's not how it went. Honestly, I will try to be fair here and say it's impossible for either one of us to truly know what what was in either of their heads during these moments of the interview .. so I would hope that you could at least understand my side of this particular part of the argument. For me, she asked 2 questions. For you she asked one. I see where she was going .. trying to ask questions to get him to tell us about the deeper meaning behind his important work (if there was one). Common themes for this are religion and philosophy. It was really a gift for him to enlighten us all about what philosophical views he might have on the protection of animals .. the importance of wildlife preservation, man's connectivity with nature .. etc ..
Instead it became what it is here. So maybe there is some mental illness that makes him react angrily towards Christianity instead of promoting his own cause and letting us understand the philosophy that drove him to be a man who studied nature and all it's wonder. Instead we hear about how God created a worm to eat a kids eye. Where did that come from? Does that make sense to you in the context of all of this?


Are you insane? It's called conversation. She asked him if he was a religious man. He said no. She asked if it had philosophical implications on him. Philosophy could be anything, but since the preceding question was about religion and David seemed interested in talking about it, he started with that philosophic impact. He says he gets mailings from creationists that focus on the splendor and diversity, as if God created nature for humans entertainment and study. I know these kinds of people, they've probably said everything to him while failing to address the many horrific and indiscriminate parts of nature that adversely affect us for no apparent reason. Giving the worm that eats eyeballs as an example is just as good as any. For the type of God these people believe in, it is within God's power to eliminate these sources of human suffering and yet he chooses not to. Why does that worm have to exist? Why not create another butterfly instead? Why not except humanity from viruses and disease? For all your fevered ranting and psychoanalysis, you aren't explaining anything.

Bad things happen to all kinds of people. It's a sad argument to say God doesn't exist because human suffering does.

The most-believed conception of God, the God most major religions believe in, is a benevolent, compassionate creator. Not a distant, hands-off creator. The fundamental truth that bad things happen to good people effectively disproves the former concept. If God values life and rewards virtue, it is inexplicable for him to allow a completely innocent baby to be born with a defect and die hours after exiting the womb. It can't be Satan because God is all-powerful.

This source of doubt has been known for centuries. And the way the christians fought it was to create the idea of "original sin," which said that a baby could be punished for sins made by its oldest ancestor, Adam, despite never having had the chance to sin itself. So not only did this supposedly compassionate God not forgive Adam when he disobeyed him, he found it righteous to randomly kill offspring thousands of generations removed from him.

There are still two problems with this argument: one, it is not just to punish an individual for the actions of another individual. We all have free will, a father's actions should bring punishment on him and not his children. Second, the punishment is still disproportionately administered. Innocent babies die without having a chance to sin while others have been allowed to live lives rife with sin. Now, you might say that God could still make it proportionate in the afterlife. However, that raises the question of why he bothered granting us a mortal life to lose at all. If we can just do all the same things dead as we can when we're alive, what's the freaking point in making two realms of existence?

"Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
Some say an explosion caused by the sudden combination of both."

-Robert Frost

>> ^blankfist:
What a kooky Libertarian. This is how we all are.


Sounds more like a whiny anarchist to me. I'm a libertarian and most of the libertarians I know understand the law and sometimes break stupid or unconstitutional ones intentionally to get them revoked before they become larger. I have, however, noticed Democrats getting scared of libertarian rationale and trying to turn the term into an insult.

Here's your libertarian example, and this guy is probably going to win:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtPFKX43lV8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jN92YFfSc5U

>> ^Bullwinkle
A common mistake and a big one. It also discredits your whole "English Major" trumpeting.

Humans make errors regardless of skill level, and frankly, that is an easier one for an advanced person to make than many others on first drafts. It doesn't discredit a damn thing any more than your capitalization of "Major" discredits you. What you've done is a logical fallacy in debate. Because you lacked a rebuttal, you tried to find something I was wrong about then used the associative property to say all else must then be wrong.

>> ^Bullwinkle
I doon't have to write a dissertation (or 100 formal papers) to make a point, though I clearly have to illustrate it again, since you boiled it down to your point instead of mine.
Grammar is about structure, not what is implied (or inferred). So, yes, the speaker may intend to say they couldn't care less when they say, "I could care less," but that is not what they're saying, even if the listener understood what they meant.

Grammar has nothing to do with this and I already admonished those who did, so stop floundering. Whenever this phrase is used, it is a whimsical way of saying they're in danger of caring less than they already do. It is never misinterpreted by the listener as the opposite and for good reason. You would never confess your capacity to care more or less, or fail to state a preference if you cared enough to give one. I can't even believe we're arguing about something so idiomatic. Idioms don't have to be literal, they simply to have to be interpreted for what they intend to convey.

>> ^Bullwinkle:
Banshee, stop tossing around the "English grad" thing like it's some kind of major accomplishment. A) English is one of the most common majors and B) Just because you studied literature does not mean you comprehend language.


Right, because writing about 100 formal papers on literature at a major university gives you roughly same exposure to language and its rules as a high school diploma or an Engineering degree. My bad, shouldn't have mentioned it.


As an example, I might point you to the definition of the word "infer."


Yep, mixed up imply/infer and didn't reread my post. Whoopee, what a tame and insanely common mistake. Notice how I can admit where I'm wrong instead of kicking the air like a mule.


No matter how much inflection or nuance or meaning you want to throw at the phrase, "I could care less" structurally does not imply what is intended when it's typically used.


What an amazingly thorough rebuttal, just stubbornly asserting the opposite without addressing the logic of my post. Why would anyone interpret that you cared enough to give a preference unless an actual preference followed? Explain. Your entire argument rests on this. For "I could care less" to imply caring when the opposite was intended, it has to be inferred that way by the person to whom it's spoken.

>> ^Shepppard
1) I don't think i've ever been called crotchface before.
2) I never said I disagree with the statement, and I'm not sure where you pulled that out of..
3) The sentence structure doesn't make sense. It can be about as effective as the first one, because the first one set the bar and the second is unable to pass it, Therefore stating "The first one didn't work, and neither did/will this one."
If it was as ineffective as the anti-drug commercials, that would be correct, because you're directly stating how ineffective the object was in comparison to something else.
Therefore stating "They both didn't work"
"About as ineffective as" means "the first one didn't work, but this one is doing better then it" which in this context, doesn't make sense, because the original intended statement meant that they are both ineffective.


Hey, Sheppard, you're wrong. Just shut up already. If you're describing something as being roughly as effective as something that has a low degree of effectiveness, that = low degree of effectiveness. And "about" is not equivalent to "under" or "over" like you are assuming, an approximation doesn't specify anything other than its close. There is no bar being set here.

>> ^NetRunner:
I think Jesse Ventura might be getting adopted by us progressives for this issue. He's done the best job of anyone in making clear a) that what we did was torture, b) that torture shouldn't be done by us and c) none of the excuses for it that have been used by anyone change a or b.
The only thing that rankled me about what he said was that as an Independent, he alone would want to prosecute everyone.
He's dead wrong about that. The progressives are more than happy to send everyone involved in this whole torture program to jail, no matter what letter is on their jersey.
I hope the Republicans get very angry about Pelosi failing to stop Bush and Cheney from torturing people, and join with us in asking for a special prosecutor so we can just put aside all the politics, and simply enforce the law. That way both sides can be properly held accountable for their actions.


Oh, gimme a break Mr. progressive. What the hell is a progressive? Democrats are as bad as the neo-cons. They started Vietnam, in which we lost 50,000 young men in a freaking jungle for no reason but to line the pockets of the military industrial complex, and half the democrats voted for Iraq. Neither party has clean hands, you can only find individuals who voted their conscious and serve their country above their party. Obama can't do #2.

>> ^BicycleRepairMan:
I've always considered the phrase to be an ironic one, of course grammatically it doesn't make any sense, per say, but I consider it sorta like when you give a false compliment "Yeah that was REALLY smart of you, douchebag" meaning you didn't think it was smart at all. By saying "I could care less" you are actually saying you could NOT care less if you tried. Since English isn't my first language I can't really tell, but that's my 2 cents anyway.


Once again, grammar has nothing to do with comprehension. I could walk into a store and say with perfect grammar: "My pelican needs a hot bath beside the bulldozer." But I doubt anyone will understand what I mean. "I could care less" isn't bad grammar or nonsense.

>> ^brycewi19
That's not entirely true. By saying that you could care less DOES NOT mean you are inferring that you already don't care. Who's to say what level of caring you're at during that moment?
What if you cared tremendously? Then you can easily say you could care less, because, well, there's plenty less to care about if you cared a ton.
By saying "I could care less" implies that there is less caring to be had, no matter where you stand on the caring spectrum.


Of course it fucking does, why in the hell would you state your capacity if you cared? If you cared, you would never answer without stating your preference.

"Hey, do you care where we eat?"
No. I couldn't care less. I don't care. (negative conveys no preference)
I could care less. (degree without preference infers no preference)
Yes. (affirmative with no preference, you will be asked your preference and failing to give that, you will be conveying that you have no preference)

"Hey, do you care where we eat?"
I want McDonalds. (stated preference that infers affirmative)
Yes, I want McDonalds. (affirmative + stated preference)

If you do care enough to cast a vote, you will cast it. If you don't care enough to cast a vote, you won't cast it. How much someone says they care is irrelevant information, all you care about as the speaker is whether they care ENOUGH to influence the choice that is made. Since "I could care less" conveys that as well as anything lacking a stated preference, it is perfectly acceptable to use.

Even stupider is that the people criticizing it are calling it "bad grammar." A grammatical problem is when syntax rules are not followed. "I and he is both named Bob" is a grammatical issue. This is not. If you think a grammatically correct phrase poorly conveys what the speaker is intending, so be it, but that does not make it a grammatical problem.

>> ^lucky760
Consider the converse, speaking in positive instead of negative terms. E.g., you want to tell your sweetheart how full of love you are for her. Would you tell her, "I could love you more," or would you tell her "I could not love you more?"

"I could care more" is the equivalent of "I could care less" and infers a degree of not caring, because any response inferring that you care must include the vote you supposedly cared to give. The phrase we are discussing is almost always used in the context of a selection of choices, whereas your example deals only with caring itself. It is rarely used in that context.

>> ^lucky760
It's not brain surgery, folks.

Apparently, it is for you. Next time, don't mock an English graduate unless you are damn sure you are right.

By saying that you could care less, you are inferring that you already don't care. It's the equivalent of saying "I could care less [than I already do]." It's a fancy way of saying you don't care simply by stating the capacity to care less, which you would never state if you did care. I am an English grad, if you want to go after something stupid, go after oxymoronic inventions from illiterate people like "irregardless."

I am an atheist who recognizes evolution and I share skepticism with regards to anthropogenic global warming. You can't use the associative property here to discredit the genuine scientific split on this topic. I love how the supporters have tried to make the inference that if you doubt anthropogenic global warming, you must be doing so on belief rather than reason. It clearly shows a sheepish attitude on the part of these people, to not be skeptical and do their own due diligence by looking at dissenting scientific data. Mr. God-fearing Republican isn't our official spokeperson, but you love plucking from that demographic.

I love the hypocrites in the Republican party. When they have no political power, they speak of the virtues of thrift and freedom. When they get power, they act like socialists. Where the hell was all this stuff when Bush was bailing out companies, giving the Fed free range, running trillion dollar deficits, having war adventures like Vietnam, signing a totally unrealistic 9 trillion dollar prescription drug bill ontop of what was already underfunded by 20 trillion? Why is today in danger of being socialism? Derr, we've been socialist for a long time. No one believes you are sincere anymore in your rhetoric, Republicrat dickweeds. See: government expansion in the last umpteen presidencies.

>> ^jwray:
Free markets can coexist with progressive income tax and government services. Libertarians tend to conflate economic liberty with flatter systems of taxation and a lack of needful public services like healthcare.


We need more socialized medicine like we need a hole in the head. The model you're suggesting is forced appropriation to create a national credit card of sorts that works until the country can no longer repay its debts in real terms (or more accurately, until its creditors realize this to be the case and stop financing the country's debt and artificially low rates). We're far past the point of having domestic credit, this is the very late stages to depend on exponential foreign credit. Our desire for life-prolonging procedures is unlimited, but our productive capacity to finance it is not. That is why prices are so high and quality so poor in government models. If it's just a national credit card whose compounding interest we finance by continuously finding more foreign investment, what's stopping a servicer from charging as much as he can and when does the foreign credit being "invested" in that increasingly expensive, non-exportable service eventually tap out?

We're like Madoff with a printing press, every time a bond matures we print another one. Since we severed gold-backing in 1971 but retained reserve status, we just export paper promises in exchange for goods, and until now foreigners have snatched them up. This is the fundamental realization that separates libertarians from stupider parts of the population: benefiting in the short-term at some greater long-term expense is not a good trade-off. Eventually it gets to a point where you get so hooked on that lifestyle that the credit junky rejects the withdrawal symptoms come time to save rather than consume. So the government just tries to inflate away the debt and you get bubble after bubble until the bond market itself is a bubble. Because if bond interest is insufficiently compensatory for the devaluation of the currency it promises to pay, why the hell would you buy them? If the effect of devaluation is only hidden by the fact that foreigners are hoarding rather than spending them, that's circular logic to suggest that dollars aren't losing value so long as you never use them to bid up the prices of products.

People wonder how countries like the UK and the USA went from rich creditors and manufacturing powerhouses to leading debtors who run deficits to consume rather than increase exportable production. All in a relatively short period of time. This is precisely how we did it, and as much shared blame you can point on needless military adventures post WWII, a borrow and spend health care model can only lead to squalor.

Recently, a relative of mine had a few procedures done on medicare (the second procedure was begotten by an infection caused during the first one). The doctors sent a bunch of excess equipment to our house and we couldn't return it. Some of it was still in its packaging, and the steel thing that holds up the intravenous bags? Wouldn't take that back either. The cost of her hospital stay and multiple invasive procedures was $150,000. Her out of pocket was only $100. It would take me a decade to earn that much after taxes, it was put on the national charge card in one week. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that this is going to end badly. People like David Walker have tried to warn people and were ignored for years. People's ignorance and sense of entitlement is too great now to elect someone who will stop the currency crisis before it happens.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OS2fI2p9iVs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oh-NqdmEDq4

You may now continue hitting your neo-con pinata.

>> ^KnivesOut:
WP your argument is based entirely on the preconception that humans have to continue to use at least as much if not more energy that we currently do.
With the increasing cost of energy, the demand for it will be reduced. Economics 101.


The global population is not decreasing, it's growing exponentially. Add to that the fact that developing countries like China and India have done a u-turn and are now more capitalist than we are. That is enabling more of them to outbid us for resources to power their new cars and homes and appliances, we didn't have to compete with that before. There is a global shift of capital happening from the deeply indebted and welfarist west to booming capitalist countries in Asia. If you tax fossil fuels here, Asia will be happy to take them off our luddite hands. You cannot artificially induce a transition to technologies that are hopelessly inefficient and expensive, you will be kicking people out of their cars, homes, off their computers.

70% of our oil is imported and we haven't built a nuclear power plant in decades to prepare for a transition to electric cars. Even if it were possible to snap our fingers and make every car and tanker electric, our electric grid is completely incapable of that load, we're getting blackouts in California already. How are we going to keep the cost of transportation and products as cheap as it is now without a massive, massive amount of nuclear power?