^excellent actually! Like pre-buttered lobster.

..or, if you are wondering about their chemosensory abilities, those are excellent as well. Mantis shrimp can actually
identify the specific 'odor' of other individual mantis shrimp . They are aversive in the presence of the odor of animals to which they have lost conflicts, and bold in the presence of the odor of an individual they have defeated in the past.

>> ^youmakekittymad
1) the idea of the physical being inferior to the point of being "evil" is an Eastern religious/philosophical one, not Hellenic. Greek philosophy, if one takes Plato as representative of the entirety of that school, only held that perfection was not possible in the physical, but that is not a moral judgment. Ancient Hellenic religious traditions held that the gods were full of the same imperfections as humanity.
2) you would be hard-pressed to find a Christian dogma that holds that the dead are given new PHYSICAL bodies in the afterlife. if one takes their doctrine directly from the bible, hell is described as being a place away from the sight of god and without his grace, which is supposed to be eternal torment. being given a physical body in heaven would actually run contrary to christian teaching since it would allow for physical pleasures - which are generally deemed as base and even sinful on earth - in the afterlife.
which leads me to
3) presenting the miracles jesus is said to have performed in the healing of the sick as evidence for his divinity or the historicity of his person does not help your case a whit as that is one of the major points AGAINST his alleged divinity. it is a well-known problem in christian theology that while jesus taught that the earthly was base and that the afterlife he would create for all mankind was idyllic beyond description, he went to endless trouble to heal the sick and even went so far as resurrecting the dead. attempts to resolve this have only caused further arguments over the fate of lazarus after his resurrection and whether life of the soul after death would be granted, retroactively, to those who had lived before the time of jesus.
all of which is merely to say: sit down. your interpretation of christian doctrine of the afterlife is, at least, equally as made up. Hitchens merely has the edge on you of having his being scripturally correct.


1)I stand corrected. However, even Platonism is dualistic in nature - saying that there is a separation of the ideal/spiritual and the physical/material. My point is simply that this is not a Biblical idea.

2)Ummm, no. Catholics and most Protestants would agree that they ARE given physical bodies. Otherwise, Christians wouldn't call it Resurrection. Christian teaching never says that physical pleasures are evil. Rather, Christian teaching says that sin is a perversion or twisting of what God designed to be good. Contrary to popular mythology, even the Puritans respected a healthy sexuality. If any of them were having marital problems their first question was always "Are you having enough sex?" Christianity would say it becomes sinful when taken outside of marriage because that takes it out of God's intended design, but otherwise go have fun with it. Jesus' first miracle was turning water into wine at a wedding. He was often criticized by the Pharisees and religious community because he would go to parties, feasts, and the kinds of people he associated with.

3)Jesus never taught that the earthly was base. Again, earth was very important. Why else would God have created the earth and humanity and then declared it good in Genesis? Why else would Jesus come as a man? One of the fundamental doctrines in Christianity is that Jesus was fully God and fully man. This means that there is NO problem with the sicked being healed, but instead reinforces the idea that the physical IS important.

I really don't know where you're getting these ideas of what Christians believe, but they're very far off. As for Hitchens being scripturally correct, I just watched the video again and he doesn't quote it even once. Instead, he makes generalizations about things the Bible never says. He also misquotes C.S. Lewis.

^Far be it from me to change your mind (or care to), but in terms of philosophy, perception, for all intents and purposes, "is" "reality."

"But there is no way to perform a double blind test, what the fuck do you tell the shooter? It's impossible. How can you adequately mimic the behaviour of a psychopath? Any person you send in to do that job will do it unflinchingly and with as much speed and clinical precision as their skill would allow."

Simple answer for this one... Take one of the students, even one of them with gun experience and tell them to enter the room and shoot as many people as possible... a realistic goal for a killer. Don't tell them another person in the room has a gun. Once they are hit once or the gunman gets hit, trial over. Do this a few times with a few groups, then compare it to a like study where no one in the room except the gunman has a gun. Look at the numbers and you've got a good study. Science gods appeased. Demonstration valid... and still scary.

"* Guns are used 2.5 million times a year in self-defense."
To be fair, that number is likely an overestimate:
http://www.springerlink.com/content/t1h35xg532770p26/


The Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, Vol. 86, No. 1 (Autumn, 1995), pp. 150-187 http://www.jstor.org/stable/1144004?seq=2 :
"...research has consistently indicated that victims who resist with a gun or other weapon are less likely than other victims to lose their property in robberies and burglaries. Consistently research has also indicated that victims who resist by using guns or other weapons are less likely to be injured compared to victims who do not resist or who resist without weapons."
"With regard to studies of rape, although samples typically include to few cases of self-defense with a gun for separate analysis, McDermott, Quinsey and Upfold, Lizotte, and Kleck and Sayles (citations in linked article) all found that victims who resisted with some kind of weapon were less likely to have the rape attempt completed against them."

I found that in ten minutes... Apparently ABC had fewer than 10 minutes to look?

Here's a book I found but can't yet vouch for, still:
http://books.google.com/books?id=B1TqrNK3OkAC&printsec=frontcover&dq=gun+personal+protection+evidence&lr=&source=gbs_summary_s&cad=0

[edit] pardon the drunken ramblings of a random sifter

My apologies for the seemingly flippant answer. But this involves a deeply rooted philosophical basis of trial by jury. In nearly every jurisdiction in the U.S., a defendant is allowed to ensure that the members of the jury are in fact his or her "peers". Basically, it allows the defendant and prosecutor to disqualify anyone from sitting on the jury that has a predetermined bias which would in any way favor for or against the defendant. In the extreme of case of a capital crime, for instance, anyone that is morally opposed to the death penalty is automatically DQ'd. On the other hand, if the defendant were accused of rape, anyone on the jury that had previously been raped would be immediately DQ'd.

I don't think we need to get into the formal rules of U.S. criminal law here, but the philosophical bases for those rules are worth considering.


In reply to this comment by jonny:
>> ^lucky760:
In actual trials are defendants first introduced to each member of the jury?

They're peers not because you know their name but because only peers have the ability to vote.

Actually, they are. It's called voir dire (jury selection).

Ricardo explain why it is that way in is chapter on Machinery ch.XXXI
http://books.google.fr/books?id=iUUJAAAAQAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=david+ricardo&lr=#PPA466,M1

SDGundamX:

Watch this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjALf12PAWc

And read her book:
http://books.google.com/books?id=FDaaGQAACAAJ&dq=inauthor:Naomi+inauthor:Wolf

Then you'll see why people are scared of this type of shit occurring.

Hooray its working now! An amazing run, once he hits the straight away he just takes off. Apparently the 2nd and 3rd place runners were disqualified for stepping into another runner's lane. I heard some people call foul on the DQs because it was the American team that brought it up and the two Americans who were 4th and 5th got the bronze and silver respectively.

It does seem like the guy in 2nd does step into another lane, but its hard to tell from the video because the camera seems to change angles right when he does it.

The Robot: The Life Story of a Technology
By Lisa Nocks

read the forward here
http://books.google.com/books?id=urEaBTl3v1QC&pg=PA40&lpg=PA40&dq=Vichy+produced+robotics&source=web&ots=L8mogyVcc-&sig=KNls_Tpoo1yO5C_TzkmeHqGhtRs&hl
=en#PPA40,M1
trying to find out who Vichy was-this looks like a great addition to the shelf-

Gemini Snake-Snake coming out of the hole

Because that guy is so desperate for money he's robbing a DQ. ROTFL!!!!! ?

ant hates . . .the DQ?

Why wouldn't a world class athlete keep running on an injury? Because then he might be hurt for the big event? This is the Olympics, this is IT. This is where the throwdown is, and a DNF would mean that he wimped out. Before the new set of rules came around, Olympic judoka used to let their arms get broken in armbars on the ground just so they could get the chance to stand back up to face their opponents again.

Too bad about the DQ, but the mentality is totally different at that level. I'm sure he's happy with the way he dealt with the fall.