@ChaosEngine

Wine-tasting is mostly in our minds:


"In one test, Brochet included fifty-four wine experts and asked them to give their impressions of what looked like two glasses of red and white wine. The wines were actually the same white wine, one of which had been tinted red with food coloring. But that didn’t stop the experts from describing the “red” wine in language typically used to describe red wines. One expert said that it was “jammy,”5 while another enjoyed its “crushed red fruit.”

"Another test that Brochet conducted was even more damning. He took a middling Bordeaux and served it in two different bottles. One bottle bore the label of a fancy grand cru, the other of an ordinary vin de table. Although they were being served the exact same wine, the experts gave the bottles nearly opposite descriptions. The grand cru was summarized as being “agreeable,” “woody,” “complex,” “balanced,” and “rounded,” while the most popular adjectives for the vin de table included “weak,” “short,” “light,” “flat,” and “faulty.”"

New Yorker

>> ^Payback:

This fucktard is OK with the idea of a God that forces someone to rape another?
Can someone look up the chapter and verse of at least one instance of God calling on an Apostle to "teach that skanky little whore a thing or two about respect"?


If Mourdock were a true Christian he would be pushing for the death penalty for rapists and their victims that didn't cry out loud enough, or the rapist has to pay the father of the victim and the victim must marry her rapist:

If a damsel that is a virgin be betrothed unto an husband, and a man find her in the city, and lie with her; Then ye shall bring them both out unto the gate of that city, and ye shall stone them with stones that they die; the damsel, because she cried not, being in the city. But if a man find a betrothed damsel in the field, and the man force her, and lie with her: then the man only that lay with her shall die. ... For he found her in the field, and the betrothed damsel cried, and there was none to save her. If a man find a damsel that is a virgin, which is not betrothed, and lay hold on her, and lie with her, and they be found; Then the man that lay with her shall give unto the damsel's father fifty shekels of silver, and she shall be his wife; because he hath humbled her, he may not put her away all his days. -- Deuteronomy 22:23-29

Yes, you're missing my point entirely.
She prevents the court from subpoenaing her google searches. What if said searches indicate that she was, in fact, seeking said experience? At what point are said searches immaterial in a court of law? >> ^bareboards2:

@Trancecoach -- you get that is this victim blaming, right? An interest in bondage et al does not mean you are consenting to being raped and beaten. Just as going to his house, which is a dumb move, doesn't mean you deserve what happens. Or wearing a short skirt. This is all the same thing -- be careful, or it is your fault.
The guy was a professional, he is good looking, I'll bet he was charming. There are loads of one night stands out there that take one of each gender (on average!) that don't end in rape.
Especially nowadays -- Fifty Shades of Gray, an apparently terribly written book, is the best selling book of all time. So if you have read that, you better not go to a stranger's house?
Am I missing your point? I feel like I might be missing your point...

@Trancecoach -- you get that is this victim blaming, right? An interest in bondage et al does not mean you are consenting to being raped and beaten. Just as going to his house, which is a dumb move, doesn't mean you deserve what happens. Or wearing a short skirt. This is all the same thing -- be careful, or it is your fault.

The guy was a professional, he is good looking, I'll bet he was charming. There are loads of one night stands out there that take one of each gender (on average!) that don't end in rape.

Especially nowadays -- Fifty Shades of Gray, an apparently terribly written book, is the best selling book of all time. So if you have read that, you better not go to a stranger's house?

Am I missing your point? I feel like I might be missing your point...

^ Quboid:
I completely agree. Come on Google! Get with the now.


^ ypsilon:
Opinion noted and there's really no way for me to refute it, as the opinion is held by many and it's pretty safe to say that it is the standard. But my opinion is that the design decisions of the past create false senses of what does and does not feel "right", and that it is not apparent until many years later when a group of people break that standard and do something different in mass, intentionally or unintentionally. In time, as people accept the change and the old guard dies off (or is assimilated), it becomes a standard in its own right.

Consider what was acceptable fashion 100 years ago versus today; what was acceptable in art, architecture, music, and culinary arts in the Western hemisphere. Think of how web design standards and video games have changed. Or our sexual zeitgeist, for that matter.

I dunno, I'd be down for a triangle view or a circular view if there were technology readily available for the masses to create with.

>> ^raverman:

Totally innocent conversation... just like reading Fifty Shades of Grey on a bus


Also known as novelized Twilight fan fiction.

Totally innocent conversation... just like reading Fifty Shades of Grey on a bus

Tags for this video have been changed from 'josh robert thompson, fifty shades darker, anastasia steele' to 'josh robert thompson, fifty shades darker, anastasia steele, honey baked' - edited by calvados

>> ^calvados:

dead


Alive!

"Fifty Shades Of Grey" = "Word porn"
^Upvoted
*MUsic.

I'm gonna pop some tags
only got twenty dollars in my pocket
I'm I'm hunttin, looking for a come up
this is fucking awesome

Now, walk up to the club like what up I got a big cock
I'm so pumped i bought some shit from the thrift shop
Ice in the brandies so damn frosty the people like
damn, that's a cold ass hunky
rollin and hella deep had it to the..in me
dressed in all pink cept' my gator shoes those are green
drapped in a leopard mink girls standing next to me
probably shoulda washed this smells like R. Kelly sheets
Pisss

But shit he was 99 cents, bug it copin and washin it
bout to go and get some compliments
passin upon those mochassins someone else is been walking
and bout me and grudgie fuckin man I'm stuck in a closet
and say but my money in the ..I'm happy thats a bargain
bitch I'ma take you grandpa style, I'ma take you grandpa style
no for real ask your grandpa can i have his hand-me-downs
thank you my Lord jump suit as house slippers
doukie brown leather jacket that i found diggin
They had a broken keyboard, I bought a broken keyboard
I bought a ski blanket then I bought a knee board
hello hello my ace man my mellow
John Wayne ain't got nothing now my friends game hello
I could take some pro wings make em' cool sell those
this sneaker head will be like, awww he got the velcro

I'm gonna pop some tags
only got twenty dollars in my pocket
I'm I'm hunttin, looking for a come up
this is fucking awesome

Whatcha know bout rockin the wolf on your noggin
whatcha knowin about wearin a fur fox skin
I'm diggin, I'm diggin I'm searching right through that luggage
one man's trash that's another's man's come up
make your grand dad were donatein that plaid button
up shirt 'cause right now I'm up and looking her stuntin
I'm at the GoodWill you can find me in that
I'm not I'm not searchin in that section
your Grammy your auntie, your mommy your mammy
I'll take those flanel zebra jammies seconhand I'll rock that mother fucker
they built the oneesie with the socks on mother fucker
I hit the party and they stop in that mother fucker
they be like oh that Gucci that..tight
I'm like y'all that's fifty dollars for a T-shirt
limited edition lets to do some simple addition
fifty dollars for a T-shirt that's just some ignorant bitch she
I call that getting swindled and perished
I call that getting tricked by business
that shirts hella dope and i bliss im one
in six other people in this club a hella dome
eat game come take a look through my telescope
tryin to get girls from my brand man you hella wont
man you hella wont

I'm gonna pop some tags
only got twenty dollars in my pocket
I'm I'm hunttin, looking for a come up
this is fucking awesome

I wear your grandest clothes
I look incredible
I'm in this big ass coat
from that thrift shop down the road
(Little Girl)
Is that your grandmas coat?

Ayn Rand's Influence on Alan Greenspan
In The Age of Turbulence, Alan Greenspan describes the influence that Ayn Rand had on his intellectual development.

Ayn Rand became a stabilizing force in my life. It hadn't taken long for us to have a meeting of the minds -- mostly my mind meeting hers -- and in the fifties and early sixties I became a regular at the weekly gatherings at her apartment. She was a wholly original thinker, sharply analytical, strong-willed, highly principled, and very insistent on rationality as the highest value. In that regard, our values were congruent -- we agreed on the importance of mathematics and intellectual rigor.

But she had gone far beyond that, thinking more broadly than I had ever dared. She was a devoted Aristotelian -- the central idea being that there exists an objective reality that is separate from consciousness and capable of being known. Thus she called her philosophy objectivism. And she applied key tenets of Aristotelian ethics -- namely, that individuals have innate nobility and that the highest duty of every individual is to flourish by realizing that potential. Exploring ideas with her was a remarkable course in logic and epistemology. I was able to keep up with her most of the time.

Rand's Collective became my first social circle outside the university and the economics profession. I engaged in the all-night debates and wrote spirited commentary for her newsletter with the fervor of a young acolyte drawn to a whole new set of ideas. Like any new convert, I tended to frame the concepts in their starkest, simplest terms. Most everyone sees the simple outline of an idea before complexity and qualification set in. If we didn't, there would be nothing to qualify, nothing to learn. It was only as contradictions inherent in my new notions began to emerge that the fervor receded.

One contradiction I found particularly enlightening. According to objectivist precepts, taxation was immoral because it allowed for government appropriation of private property by force. Yet if taxation was wrong, how could you reliably finance the essential functions of government, including the protection of individuals' rights through police power? The Randian answer, that those who rationally saw the need for government would contribute voluntarily, was inadequate. People have free will; suppose they refused?

I still found the broader philosophy of unfettered market competition compelling, as I do to this day, but I reluctantly began to realize that if there were qualifications to my intellectual edifice, I couldn't argue that others should readily accept it. [...]

Ayn Rand and I remained close until she died in 1982, and I'm grateful for the influence she had on my life. I was intellectually limited until I met her. All of my work had been empirical and numbers-based, never values-oriented. I was a talented technician, but that was all. My logical positivism had discounted history and literature -- if you'd asked me whether Chaucer was worth reading, I'd have said, "Don't bother." Rand persuaded me to look at human beings, their values, how they work, what they do and why they do it, and how they think and why they think. This broadened my horizons far beyond the models of economics I'd learned. I began to study how societies form and how cultures behave, and to realize that economics and forecasting depend on such knowledge -- different cultures grow and create material wealth in profoundly different ways. All of this started for me with Ayn Rand. She introduced me to a vast realm from which I'd shut myself off.

From The Age of Turbulence, pp. 51-53. Omissions from the text are shown with bracketed ellipses. All other punctuation and spelling is from the original.

http://www.noblesoul.com/orc/bio/turbulence.html

When the Olympic torch went through Canada for the Winter Games in Vancouver a couple years ago, there were a few athletes--who worked their asses of and trained really hard for the honour of carrying the torch--followed by about fifty cops in riot gear at all times. Seriously, WTH‽

Seems a little US-centric to me. Jeopardy's run from 1964- to present with a ten year gap is impressive, and I know it says 'one of the...' but in the interests of Trivia there are a number of UK based shows that beat or equal it, and I'm sure other countries can boast likewise: Round Britain Quiz (since 1947, radio), University Challenge (1962), A Question of Sport (1970) and Mastermind (1972, but with a few years gap) are the obvious ones.

I guess we haven't had quite the scandal here that the US has with quiz shows in the fifties/sixties.

under fifty bucks? didnt remember it being that cheap