Can a brother amphibian get a *death (even if it was a fake death), *timeshift, and for good measure, a *terrible ? I'm not at all sure why you tagged it world affairs.

Please, don't test this theory for yourself. Frogs are having a tough enough time as it is with chytridiomycosis (infection from the chyrid/chytrid fungus (Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis)). If you need to slowly boil something alive, keep in mind we have an over abundance of humans and jump in the pot yourself. You'll get better data that way! ;-)

To be fair, I'm not yet certain it belongs in the religion channel. I'm sure this will *probably* boil down to that, (because it always does now a days), but it hasn't been mentioned yet and I feel like there's still a chance this could be related to Paris' horrible racism issues which started before this recent round of travesty.

But otherwise I'm in total agreement. Someone should make a religion about love!

Sweet zombie Jesus! What an insanely violent douchebag.
That is the official response to a child sitting quietly?!? That this behavior is sanctioned by the force is another glaring piece of evidence that there are no good cops anymore, a good person would not work for an organization that supports this behavior.

I hope this girl never has to work a day in her life, and that officer friendly never has another dime to his name when the lawsuit is over.

It seems daily we are given more evidence that, when confronted by an armed thug on a power trip, the only right thing to do is defend yourself with force as if your life depends on it, because it just may.

This crap boils my blood.

Since you brought up unusual punishments, let's take stoning people for adultery (which exists in both the Koran and the Bible). When was the last time someone was stoned to death by a group in the U.S., U.K., Australia, or even Malaysia for adultery? Hundreds of millions of Muslims and Christians around the world seem perfectly fine ignoring that part of their holy texts. Just because something that we find distasteful today is written in the holy text doesn't automatically make the religion evil nor does it suddenly force the practioners to behave like savages.

You need to look at the specifics. Take a look at the countries where stoning actually does still occasionally happen and who actually carries it out: Iran, Somalia, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan. Invariably when it does occur it happens in rural areas where there are people who still actually live like it is the middle ages, with extreme poverty and little education to speak of (other than religious). Sure, the book gave them the idea but it wasn't the only factor in play and to ignore these other factors or the fact that honor killings are in fact common across a wide number of cultures with varying religious backgrounds (even the Romans did it) is what would be truly intellectually dishonest.

As for extremists--they exist in all religions including Christianity. It wasn't a mob of Muslims who attacked Charlie Hedbo--it was two deranged individuals. And while some Muslims might have applauded the attack others denounced it, such as the hunderds of thousands of Chechen protestors who who were upset with the cartoons but didn't think violence was the right response (see article here).

Again, it's a complex issue that can't be boiled down to "Islam = Good/Bad." Islam as practiced by ISIS or Boko Haram? Yeah, there's some dark shit going on there. Islam as practiced by average citizens in Kuala Lumpur or Boston? Not so much.

But again, moderate statements based on reason and facts are not what sell books, generate online clicks, or fill lecture halls to capacity.

They do this quite a lot don't they? At least I remember reading an explanation to this behaviour that basically boiled down to "teenage male killer whale hijinks".

"So we now have a Europe where the political temperature is rising to boiling point: where the EMU elites are refusing to shift course; and where mischievous lawyers are concocting criminal charges against anybody daring to explore a way out of the trap.

This is a recipe for a European civil war."

From AEP, no less:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/11768134/European-alliance-of-national-liberation-fronts-emerges-to-avenge-Greek-defeat.html

You remind me of the time my grandmother, at 91 years old, was walking her small dog on Memorial Drive in Houston (MAJOR street, up to hundreds of cars per minute). She tripped on a crack in the sidewalk and fell hard on her face, smashing it badly and knocking out some teeth. She ended up crawling well over 2 blocks on hands and knees in full view of the street (no bushes or trees obstructing the view), bleeding profusely down her face, and not a single car stopped to help. That was over 6 years ago, and it still boils my blood that so many people are so uncaring/unhelpful, and it makes me think these are likely the same people that beg for help at the slightest discomfort in their own lives.
Sometimes I just hate humans.

I thought the video made a good point, but rather different from the one I assumed it was going for before watching.

As I was finishing up my senior year of High School after 4 years of taking crap for being a nerd etc., a friend/acquaintance of mine was starting her freshman year. She got picked on also, probably worse than I had had it. She made it through 1 semester before dropping out. Then she got a part time job for a half-year, took night classes at the local community college, and got her GED.

At the time, I thought she was making a terrible decision by not sticking it out and trying to get through High School the usual way -- 4 years of hell. But then, the next year she ended up at the same University where I was, both as Uni-freshmen, and she handled the much more mature University environment just fine.

It ended up completely turning the tables for me, to the point that I thought that her path of dropping out -> GED -> Uni was actually objectively superior to my suffering through the more traditional path.

So, that's what I thought "don't stay in school" was going to refer to.


But the actual message is good as well. The best classes that I had in Middle and High School were more practical things. But oddly enough, the best examples of that for me were my math classes. I had the same teacher for Geometry, Algebra 2, Pre-Calc, and Calculus (AP, so equivalent to Calc 1 at a University). He stressed the real-life applications of advanced mathematics by doing lots of word problems, and only teaching topics that he could point to concrete, real-world applications for. And by letting us use calculators for everything as long as we could explain WHY specific operations were needed to answer the questions.


...So, long-winded response boiled down:
I like the message. More practical stuff in school is better. And feel free to drop out -- especially if doing so is just a shortcut to further education at a University, Vo-Tech, or whatever.

The whole "Batman vs. Superman" thing is pretty silly to begin with for several reasons. Superman being overpowered in general and Batman only being able to possibly deal with him using kryptonite being a major one, and the idea of the two of them being at odds enough to actually fight each other being another.

I never have really liked Superman as a hero due to all of the tacked on powers and the fairly ridiculous backstory (though it's better now since they've retconned in a bunch of more sensible details over the many years).

Then this trailer seems to pretty much boil down the conflict between them to being "he's reckless and endangering lives and can't be trusted with his amazing powers" vs. "he's a vigilante who's going too far outside the law". Jesse Eisenberg as Lex Luthor (egging things on, and just in general) isn't working for me from what I see in this trailer either. Seems pretty silly. I guess mainly I was hoping for a better reason for them to end up fighting; the first teaser left that up in the air, and this one didn't personally give me compelling enough reasons.

Nice little teaser of Wonder Woman being in the movie as well, though, rather than just Batman and Superman.

Ohmigosh, how offensive! How dare you call me English! My Celtic blood is boiling, that's Scottish wank to you hehe *grins*

@vil - well, the Tour starts in a different country each time and the Grand Depart was from Utrecht this year. Perhaps his starting weight was 80 but delivered some of it? Perhaps he has another 40 to deliver after? 20 kilos per bag is reasonable, i've mounted ~40 kilos on a rear bike rack before. I don't know how Dutch postmen dress, but it didn't sound like the security were speaking English to me - the woman at the start was speaking Dutch, as was the man holding on to the bike. And people are allowed to ride the route.

But how did a hard boiled northerner (UK) like this end up delivering huge amounts of post in Utrecht?

Folks on the street haven't been all too friendly towards the Greeks for some years now, and the exhaustion caused by this mess only added to an attitude of "just get it over with" over the last year or so.

For nearly three years, I have tried to provide counter-arguments whenever someone went off on a tirade against the Greeks (and others) during a conversation with me, or generally around me. You can't really try to explain the birth defects of the Eurozone in 20 seconds or less, but just having some raw data ready at hand (pensions, wages, state of the healthcare system, etc) was usually enough to get people thinking.

But today was different. Today was ugly. Three times I was involved in an ad-hoc discussion about Greece and three times people couldn't care less about the facts at hand. It always boiled down to "we've paid enough, they need to piss off". Period. End of story. People turned sour, big time. All this time, I had never been yelled at, or laughed at, not even once. Until today.

Worst of all, a friend of mine with family back in Greece stopped arguing altogether. What's the point, she said...

Might be interesting to compare and contrast how we in the US have handled our laundry list of "bad things we've done in the past" compared to, say, Germany.

I know that the Nazi flag and other imagery are outright banned / censored in Germany. From what I understand, WW2 history taught in schools in Germany is handled very carefully, if not largely glossed over.

In the US, the only bit of history that gets treatment similar to that (in my experience/opinion) is the Vietnam war. I know my High School history classes definitely glossed over it and didn't want to get into any details about why, how, or whether or not we should have been in the war at all.

Compare that to WW2, which was covered in pretty great detail. Very much including actively encouraging students to consider their own thoughts on controversial things like dropping not just one but two atomic bombs on Japan.

The Civil War is also covered much more openly and honestly. I don't think I can recall anyone ever seriously suggesting that the single, most important root cause of the Civil War wasn't slavery. Other umbrella labels like "states rights" might be referred to as the impetus, but yes, any and all of those things really boil down to slavery.



One thing that scares me about the German approach (sweep under the rug and don't talk about it) is that it sort of all too conveniently ignores the reality that these terrible things were done by people who were (disturbingly) not very different from us. OK, Hitler himself might have been a 1 in a million or 1 in a billion combination of evil, crazy, and powerful. But Joe Average from today ... not so different from Hans Average from 1930s Germany.

Celebrating one's heritage and past is OK, sometimes even good. Especially when one can honestly own and try to understand the bad along with the good. I think it is OK to appreciate the Confederate flag, along with historical figures like Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. It is possible to accept that their core motivations were done in support of a very bad and evil institution (slavery), but to still respect or even admire their accomplishments as human beings. Thomas Jefferson owned slaves too, but we are willing to look beyond that when considering his legacy.

Maybe the Confederate flag is tied too closely to the institution of slavery for it ever to be uncoupled from that. Maybe a government that prides itself on being democratic should consider that that connection creates a conflict with many of its constituents. But I hope we never sweep it under the rug and pretend it never happened.

I'm sooo all about the blue pill. Call me broken.

Also i do love most things Matrix, and hard boiled eggs with salt.

Or, if you don't know what your setup is, put 1 cup water in a pot and boil it for the length of time the instructions call for. Then, poor the left over water into a measuring cup to see how much is left. Subtract from the 1 cup you started with to find how much water evaporates during that time. Then just add that much water to the normal 1:1 water each time you cook rice.