Influence is different than belief. People believe in God. People were influenced by many evil men. In this case it is the same. Lie detectors are "mystical" and "fun." Much in the same way Ouija boards are fun as when you are a kid. Yeah, a few take it to the next level, but again it is not "massive amounts of people."

And look at this. "You are not the father," followed by massive antics. "The lie detector determined that was a lie," followed by massive antics. Again, no one gives two shits about the test, they want to see the bullshit. Let me pose this (and answer it please,) do you think people would watch pop culture if it was bland just because it had a lie detector test? Of course not, because no one gives...two shits

In this regard I am actually insulting American intellect far more than if they believed in a pseudo science, lol. Those people are pathetic, just like Springer people.

And I can see the value--if it makes you happy by all means. I am just justifying why I downvoted it (for blowing up the numbers and shifting blame.)

Also, Adam even disagrees with you! Lol; he says at the end about police departments using it to obtain confessions and it not being real, and the police say "yeah we know that!" Ie., police use it as a tool of influence to scared people. What people do fear is the jury not caring that a detector is inadmissible, they fear it won't matter because perception is 9/10ths of the law.

I fully agree. It's a good rendition and does the original song justice but the voice is just too autotuned for my tastes. And the whole arrangement is too... pretty. There's no 'live' feeling to it. It's just his voice and a bunch of perfect instrumentals. Like he's singing to a midi track or something.

Edit: part of what bugs me about autotuning voices is that they're actually tuned to the wrong notes, ie. equal temperament instead of the just temperament a good singer sings naturally. There's the whole bit about voice ability but if they just tuned it to the right notes I'd be happy... or at least happier...

Possibly, and I'm not familiar with US law, but I know in Australia there are laws that allow proportionate responses when either defending oneself or acting in the defense of another.

The guy was attacking a helpless person with a closed fist. He got hit (and is far more able to defend himself) with, at most, a closed fist. Proportionate. That he might die as a result of the blow could be foreseen by a reasonable person (ie. manslaughter) but the fact that he is attacking someone so incapable of defending themselves, in my mind, means that someone leaping to the defense of the blind guy has considerable latitude to remove the threat to him.

At least insofar as Aus law is concerned, might be completely different in the US, but I suspect any jury would take a very dim view (no pun intended) of someone bullying a blind kid.

That basically means that the only way an action scene can be good is via realism, and that's not true.

I would agree so much as to say that I don't think that Avengers scene was necessarily great, but it is good. I want to preface this first with I'm not a huge Avengers fan. I'm honestly not a big comic book fan either, so this isn't coming from a fan boy.

Why was it good? First off, it is very plot connected. It demonstrated Tony Stark being forward thinking and anticipating the Hulk potentially going Hulk and hurting/killing people... It's the same for his motivation to construct what became The Vision. It stays within both his and Hulk's character. Stark maintains his wise cracking self, even when it's not probably appropriate.

Immortality? Hardly. It conveyed how much damage could be done. IE, buildings and stuff didn't just get destroyed because, LOOK! STUFF BLOWING UP! The scene actually demonstrates the flaws/vulnerabilities of both Stark and the Hulk. Stark didn't just beat him, and that was that. They were very lucky nobody died (admittedly pretty conveniently). It took a bit of good luck for Stark to stop the Hulk that there was a huge building under construction nearby. It shows that even just the Hulk could potentially overpower whatever Stark cooks up to stop him, let alone whatever actual Supervillian comes along who is actually scheming to destroy/enslave the world, and he can make mistakes despite his best attempts (which is brought about Ultron as well). It demonstrated the Hulk's fragility of setting him off. Yet it also demonstrated that without Stark, the Hulk would have continued smashing and destroying. That was one of the themes in the movie, that technological innovation is something we need, yet can destroy us all.

Was it potentially overdone and there was some stuff that they could have toned down to keep with that darker ethos? Sure. The scene ain't perfect, but it's really damn good.

Needs more warnings at the end - May cause poisonous burns, itching, rashes, scars, insects / bites, decapitation, potent hallucinogenic plant experience ego death (this is a good thing), wild fire, sneezing, rashes, pulled muscles, sweating, potential flash flood, tornado, blunt force death (hail storm), suffocation (ie quicksand), dehydration, drowning (helicopter drops retardant on you or otherwise), hypothermia, freezing, lethal stings, booby traps, rednecks, cannibals, serial killers, getting lost and starving...

Arrogant ranting?? That hurt.
anyway... if you just google his dad, Muhammad Muhammad, I'm sure you will see he has a political agenda , ie : Islam acceptance.
Do you expect the whole thinking world to believe that the son of a Muslim activist whose whole agenda is to accept Islam , built a suitcase clock and took it to school and ignored his teachers advice (4 times)to get rid of it AND refused to explain to the authorities why he had done so. Do you expect us to believe this bullshit story?

Tobacco: 229875
Alcohol: 65678
Drunk Driving: 22204
Drug Abuse: 16423
Prescription Drug Overdose: 9852
..........
Gun related: 8,561


Dishonest use of numbers. the "gun related" tallys the number of people killed by gun violence ie people shot and killed intentionally by other people, it does not include suicide (about 20k dead a year) or accidental shootings (about 700 dead a year)

Secondly, lets look at these other causes of death: Lets see, all of these, except drunk driving, is people KILLING THEMSELVES, unintentionally. Theres a pretty big difference. Drunk driving is ILLEGAL, and nobody is arguing that it would be a good idea to have more of it. And you know, its not like we're trying to get more people killed by tobacco, for instance, in fact, lots of people are working on trying to lower the number of deaths from all these other things, but just because more people die from alcohol or tobacco use, ten to fifteen thousand murder by guns a year doesnt really count??

Secondly, people are on the whole not actually working to get guns BANNED, but to implement restrictions, perhaps in the same way owning and driving a car has its restrictions. Cars, you see, are not banned. But there are RESTRICTIONS. Does anyone feel there arent enough cars around?. No. But there are restrictions. You need a drivers license. you need to follow some traffic rules. Similar things could be implemented for guns. It would be a start.
Another place to start is gun CULTURE, which is probably the intent of this video, changing people minds about guns.

Heres a challenge to your statistics: The number of people SAVED by guns. We always hear of the elusive situation of a bad criminal breaking in to kill your family, but luckily dads an NRA member and chases the bad guy away with a trusty old gun. How often does shit like that ever actually happen?

Likely because race discrimination is something that lost acceptance generally a long time ago, and LGBTetc discrimination is still quasi-acceptable. I'd say that anyone who lives through a period of acceptance of the previously unacceptable experiences the dissonance between the old way of thinking vs the new.

Think about the reaction to a white guy calling someone a nigger in public vs a faggot (depending on where they do it of course). One would get a much stronger reaction than the other despite the fact they they are both offensive.

And I do tend to agree with the general cut of your post, I'd guess that most people would see discrimination against race as black and white (no pun intended), ie. it's not allowed under any circumstances, whereas discrimination re: sexuality is more of a grey (or rainbow) area.

Ultimately though, it's not like refusing to serve a disorderly customer, or refusing to employ a convicted felon. Those people are judged by the choices they make, not by who they are in the core of their being.

I really hate big government and PC bullshit, but I'm a huge fan of equality for all in the hopes of getting to a place where you don't need to legislate acceptance of people for who they are, it's just a default setting. But since that's usually a generational change, if a government is going to have anti-discrimination legislation that means anything, it should actually be across the board.

Not torn at all here. They utilize the resources of a stable society then they have to provide their services to all their members without basis of discrimination. The other way of looking at it is this. Do gays and lesbians have the option to avoid paying taxes on this business owner's benefits? Ie., he probably went to public school, his water bills are artificially low, the roads that are serviced so people can get to his place, the police provided to protect and prevent crime in his area, etc.

If gays and lesbians can opt out of paying taxes for anyone who could potentially deny them services (ie, as of right now everyone) then they wouldn't have a problem.

Ooohhh! Amiga, Ports of Call (It's on app store)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSyFSEU9JZM

https://www.google.no/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=amiga+ports+of+call&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&gfe_rd=cr&ei=bYDZVYrPBrOr8wfh7Y64Ag

If you want some reading material that delves into this quite extensively check out:

• Denial of Death


• Existential Psychotherapy
  

Reading it now. My fiancee, who is an avid reader but not usually the sci-fi, read it in 3 days and could not contain her excitement (ie: spolied it a bit for me). I think she liked the funny, but glossed over the science/math, whereas I love the science/math. Can't wait for the movie.

Extremely simplistic and naive guy, but he has delivered a great piece of propaganda to the enemy.
He sounds like he is leaning toward the Noam Chomsky school of thought ie; "its all the Wests fault, if we just stopped being so nasty, these lovely people would leave us alone..."

It depends on the circumstances....in family restaurants, the fear likely generated overweighs the positive effect of exercising one's rights, so still heroic? Maybe...I'm torn. Douche-baggy for no reason? Certainly.

However, those that, alone, are willing to calmly and responsibly open carry in public places where it's allowed (IE not at a playground, bank, school, airport, etc.) in order to strengthen their right to do so, especially in locals where they know they'll be harassed at the least, yes, I would say they're heroic. Perhaps misguided, but heroic.
An argument could be made that it's maybe time to revisit that right in today's society, but so long as it's a right I support people exercising it (responsibly) and would say they're heroic if they do it responsibly and at some risk to themselves.

If you did high school bio, think about what you covered that has any sort of influence on medicine... =)

Frog or rat dissection? Covered that in Bio 101 in the first year of my Applied Chemistry degree (and yes, you can give a rat a Columbian necktie... . Photosynthesis? Mating?

Yeah, Bio was pretty much introducing you to broad concepts and it's nothing that doesn't get rehashed in the first 6 months of Uni via intro subjects. I think of it more as a way to dip the toe in the pool and see if the subject matter excites you enough to try and turn it in to a career.

eg. At 40 now (and having forgotten my chem degree and gone in to IT as a sys admin after working as a chef, bouncer etc), I could go back to uni barely remembering anything about chemistry and start from scratch and be none the worse for it. The keystones you talk about are literacy and numeracy, that's about it. And they are learned in primary school.

Oh sure, it helps if you can do some higher math, but English lit? Physics? Drama? Almost nothing you do at high school has any real defining affect on most of what you do as an adult. It's more like a sampler platter, and of course a way of grading students (on a curve of course, we can't have people's scores based on their own merit) to distinguish what tertiary studies they should be eligible for.

School should be about igniting curiousity as much as practical skills for life. I did "Home Economics" (ie. cooking/sewing/budgets etc) and typing (on real mechanical typewriters no less) as opposed to wood/metal shop ( I was awful at shop). My home ec teacher was always interested in making different food, so we tried some pretty out there things in grade 8 (~13 years old), and I've always been interested in cooking since. Similarly, learning to touch type has made my life radically simpler, particularly in IT (try writing a 40 page instruction manual hunting and pecking).

Most of the high school grads we see as cadets or trainees are essentially useless and have to be taught from scratch anyway. Most of the codified BS we have these days doesn't prepare kids for life, doesn't encourage critical thinking or creativity, it a self justification to keep schools open.