@Velocity5-sunlight w/adequate ultraviolet B rays is necessary for the proper absorption as well as the conversion of D into active metabolites-You need the sunlight or a tanning bed-No artificial sunlight that filters UV is effective.
There is no "just take supplements" option...except for the one where you take supplements, continue your cave-like existence, and develop osteoarthritis at 40.

This is without doubt about money. What else could it be if it isn't about generating income through fines and securing funding by artificially creating a need for a bigger than necessary police force? If not this, for what the incentive to generate more arrests and tickets? Just as a career move by somebody higher up? I doubt that, as higher crime rates tend to reflect negatively on elected officials and cops. Especially when the rate is fixed like this.
Locking up people is a business in the states and it shouldn't be but that's why America has the biggest prison population in percentage and headcount. And the same goes for militarizing the police. There's money to be made and those who get it do everything they can (lobbying for example) to make sure they keep getting more. This is not different.

Blind from births' are surprisingly uplifting to be around-They have no sense of any loss of senses, they have never experienced anything but an inconvenience which usually stems from the sighted dealing with their own egos and frustrations in providing for the "handicapped."

As a child, I remember a primer given to me by a neighbor on my street (also blind from birth) on the perception and interpretation of color-I was convinced that he, having never seen colors himself beyond descriptions from those around him HAD to know at least what the color black "looked" like because that was the predominant color seen on my visual field under artificial deprivation (dark cloth on eyes, etc.). I demanded that he had seen black because he was blind-I kept trying new and improved ways to describe to him the experience of "seeing" the color black all the while he kept laughing more and more!!

@ gwiz and arekin-While I tend to distrust "experts" or any kind, especially the self-described or those deemed worthy by others relying upon them for their "superior knowledge", you can't dismiss a culture's preference for simple details with regard to their culinary heritage. The Japanese imltho, are allowed passes on their anal attention to details regarding their cultural heritage after all, they took two for the team-

My own sushi would not be deemed worthy by most Japanese, but most Americans I serve it to act like they've just seen majolica performed when I prepare it and they partake.

The "right" way offers the experience as closely as it was intended by the culture, and the "wrong" way offers the Hindi version of "Star Wars" as a culinary experience., and I've had some shit sushi in my day, mostly prepared by white people. Oh, and a proper Japanese would never put that fake-ass artificial crab-pollock shit in their handrolls, either!

I like both ways, because I'm a fucking goat and would eat cardboard or tin if prepared suitably. I try to however, prepare and consume sushi according to tradition, and find it the most satisfying for the sushi experience. I am constantly trying to improve upon my rice according to the Japanese standards and practices-If you ace the rice, the rest is a cake-walk.

Oh yeah, and if you drink anything but black coffee, yer effeminate.

My understanding of star wars lore is that Sith use red lightsabers because the grow artificial crystals for their lightsabers, which only grow red (or red hues). Jedi use crystals that grow naturally, and thus have a much larger variety of colors (with some being rarer than others). Their is no logical restriction that says a Sith MUST use a red crystal, or that Jedi MUST use blue or green. I'd imagine that by lore, you would have to say that purple crystals are just super rare and that Windu being such an influential Jedi managed to get one of the rare few.

I'm always amazed that anyone would even think that any biopic, movie, mini-series, or made for TV movie would be accurate. It's compressed, staged and artificial because that's the format that works for the medium. American pop culture eats its own feces, like when George Clooney made a movie about Chuck Barris (that great historical figure).

In female to male gender transition, transgendered people often have voice changes with testosterone injections if they are younger. Their voice will drop, not unlike during puberty for men, although they may also choose to attend voice therapy to further 'pass' as a man.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voice_therapy_(transgender)

Anyhow, the sound of what is 'feminine' and 'masculine' are to a degree hormonal. It can be hormones delivered artificially, hormones exposed to during development that change the different aspects of the brain, a lot of the details are not well understood.

Theres a lot more to say, but I might be rambling. Jump on the googles if you're interested, maybe stumble on the Kinsey Institutes sex and gender research.

What is the effective difference between an all out dis-engagement which is essentially a shunning vs him being removed from the community when it is known that he is here only to push a product? There is no difference except for one. If he sticks around,there is always going to be someone who falls for the trap and we get to go through this all again. I say remove the trap. There are plenty of other places on the internet to fall for shillery. This doesn't have to be one of them.

It's not about profiting. yes we all are here to "get something out of it" The difference is that shiny admits that he is selling something.

Are you selling something @bareboards2 ? Am I? Is it your sole mission on the sift to press a particular viewpoint? Or are you just a little bit more multi-faceted than that?

I think it's rather hypocritical to not allow spam bots and marketing shills on here, but when someone shills the bible...suddenly it's ok.

I appreciate what they're trying to do. This site has an obvious left slant, but this is a misguided attempt to artificially balance it out. Yes, I said artificially.
It's the same bullshit the media tries to pull by giving airtime to both sides in order to pretend to be "balanced" regardless of how much evidence one side has over the other.

If anything, the sift gives Shiny preferential treatment because of his beliefs. He's become the poster child of the religious viewpoint here and so it doesn't seem to matter how he conducts himself or how intellectually dishonest or fallacious he is. He gets a pass. He certainly knows how to play the victim. You devote your entire existence here on the sift to pushing any other message and I bet you'd probably get kicked out.

To play into the liberal stereotype that the conservatives have. I bet you anything if someone started posting constantly about how great Obama is to the same extent Shiny posts about God/religion, even on a left leaning site such as this they'd eventually get kicked out for spam. At the very least, even us godless liberals would get sick of it and would find such a sifter to be annoying and ignore them.

This is not about atheist vs religion, this is not left vs right. This is about people who contribute to the community in good faith and those that do not. It's about holding people's feet to the fire.

If nothing else, you have to admit there are people out there who can represent religion FAR better than Shiny ever could. So if the sift really feels they HAVE to have a designated, artificial, religious "representative" to balance us "out of control liberals" There are people out there far less disingenuous and not one trick ponies like Shiny.

The one thing he didn't touch on is that marijuana is also illegal because hemp products would have been a competitor with other artificially made fibers. The major producers of those products had more lawyers, lobbyists and deeper pockets, bye bye marijuana.

Wait, there's water in Coke?! I thought they used artificial liquid!

There will come a day when we will need to take away affirmative action. But that day is obviously not today as this video completely demonstrates.

I agree with you, but what's the alternative? If we didn't do affirmative action, there wouldn't nearly as many minorities in higher positions as there is now. While we still have racial problems, they would be set back at least 20-30 years if we didn't give them a boost, artificial or not. There would always be exceptions of course, but minorities would still be in mostly service positions today. The idea of a minority being a CEO or getting elected into public office would still be an alien concept.

The sooner we treat them as equals, the sooner we level the playing field, the sooner Affirmative Action goes away, so quit bitching about first world problems and lets move forward so that Aff. Action IS unnecessary.

No mention at all of the doctoring of the video record of the Death Star Explosion.

Early video of the Death Star explosion showed no evidence of an explosive planar shock wave, or "Praxis Effect" emanating from the equator of the installation. This shock wave parralel to the equatorial trench is to be expected due to the rotational momentum of the massive artificial gravity devices employed by the installation at the equator. Yet no such Praxis shock wave is visible in the video created by the remote installation that first recorded the event.

Absence of the Praxis shock wave is only possible if the explosion occurred from several distributed points across the surface of the Installation, rather than from a single-point explosion at its center. The early video evidence is contrary to the results of the official investigation.

This early observation by skeptics becomes even more important due to the fact that this shock wave is 'clearly' visible in later released video. The video released following official investigation and engineering review of the incident. The official explanation that later came out in response to inquiries into this inconsistency are suspect. The panel of Imperial engineers claim that the effect was evident, though not apparent, and only became visible following restoration and enhancement of the video, as required for the investigation. This "enhancement", carried out prior to video re-release is suspicious, in and of itself, but the truely revealing factor is in the error made by those who would cover up the truth.

Inspection of the later video showing the Praxis shock wave shows a critical flaw: The angle of the planar shock wave is PERPENDICULAR to the equator of the Death Star. This is impossible and clearly reveals that the shock wave was later digitally added to the video as a cover-up!

You decide.

This is one of the most horrific things I've ever seen - even the crow blends in with his "artificial environment" better than he does.

Is there an animal cruelty channel?

What if we can't ever expect our children to treat each other with respect when our adults don't give them a lead to follow. Does the system by which we operate ensure harmony and shared purpose, or do we strive to force competition amongst ourselves for access to an artificially finite resource governed by a set of rules we have collectively agreed to follow?

Maybe our society is sick and this is one of the many symptoms. Maybe we need to change society.

The problem is that consoles these days don't have anything really new to offer except for more processing power which people really don't give a shit about as much anymore. The Wii proved that you can make a ton of money without having the best GPU/CPU.

You also had this phenomenon of consoles becoming more popular than PCs. But wait, they achieved this because the console added all these extra features...in other words, Consoles started to beat PCs....by becoming more PC-like. Wait a minute...that's not exactly beating PCs then is it?

Especially since I can still do more with a PC than I can do with a Console and I don't have to be restricted by what MS/Sony/Nintendo lock me into.

With the advent of Media PCs...the need for consoles have been lessened unless you specifically want to play a game that is an exclusive for a console.

What people really want is convergence, which is exactly what console makers don't want. I think people are sick of having to buy multiple consoles to play the games they want. When in reality, a PC can do it all and not be limited by these artificial restrictions.