*promote safe driving under arbitrary rules

You don't need high speed internet either, technically (I do, but I am a robot). Technically, you don't need a lot of things, it is all pretty much arbitrary when you talk in those terms. When you make people have to sign up for certain rights via some sort of process, it is the beginning of a real erosion of rights. I'll even meet people half way to say if you want to be in public areas with a gun, some kind of permit is needed like cars...I don't like it, but Ill give you that. But as long as I am not using it to commit crimes, your right to restrict my behavior is over...period. It might be that freedom comes with a hefty prices of dead people, innocent people, innocent people that we could of protected with ever increasing restrictions of social liberties. I mean, look at Saudi Arabia, lower murder rates than even some European countries of pretty good order. But they live in a totalitarian dictatorship, and I am not trying to make a scarecrow argument about totalitarian dictatorships and whatnot, what I am trying to say is people dying isn't the only important metric when talking about rights to do things.


It might be true that more people will die with lacks gun laws, it might be true that more people die because of lacks drug lacks, lots of things might be true about how freedom serves to make economics weak, countries less secure, more prone to internal strife and faction, it might be true that the seeds of freedom and the ability to self regulate cause harms that extend beyond ones self. Even so, I still don't think a better framework exists for conducting ourselves that doesn't cripple and stifle people who have done no wrong. If the price for a drunk driver is abolition, the price of a murder disarmament, the price of wreck less driving horse drawn carriage, then we have failed to address the underlying problem and snub out freedoms ability to creatively deal with complex social challenges via the creative process of problem solving.

I think history has shown that any attempts to snub out action instead of guide it fail miserably. Gun control starts and ends with people, not laws, I suggest we start there. Starting neighborhood gun responsibility programs, safety education for youths, ect...whatever, I don't know, I can't pretend to know what is the best way to address the complex issue of gun control for every community, the point is that is their bag, it can be done without force given the context of the USA. Not every country has that luxury, children roaming the streets with AK-47s is not a real problem in this country, nor would it be if gun control laws were more lacks. We do have problems, I don't want there to be any mistake about that, but I don't think the solution is wholesale elimination of thing that only CAN be dangerous, I mean, anything can be dangerous, ask the folks in Oklahoma about ammonia nitrate...you don't even need a licence to buy that stuff.

Point is, the world is dangerous, and I think freedom allows for a certain amount of that danger to exist. It is the price we pay. We should look to the unwritten code that manages us, the code of culture and community.

"The freedom which we enjoy in our government extends also to our ordinary life. There, far from exercising a jealous surveillance over each other, we do not feel called upon to be angry with our neighbour for doing what he likes, or even to indulge in those injurious looks which cannot fail to be offensive, although they inflict no positive penalty. But all this ease in our private relations does not make us lawless as citizens. Against this fear is our chief safeguard, teaching us to obey the magistrates and the laws, particularly such as regard the protection of the injured, whether they are actually on the statute book, or belong to that code which, although unwritten, yet cannot be broken without acknowledged disgrace."

Pericles' Funeral Oration from the Peloponnesian War

[["atheists kinda sorta make a claim of some sort. What's your point."]]

To me it's kind of a minor point but for this it comes down to the burden of proof, which is something atheists are trying to avoid at all costs.

[["And if you think that the atheist experience simply trawls the bottom of Christian intellectualism then who would you have them debate, Ray comfort? Matt Slick? Perhaps you?"]]

How about Ravi Zacharias? John Lennox? Matt Dillahunty has actually formally debated a few Christians and he didn't do very well.

[["More than anything, the most disgusting trait of Christianity is that it equates child rapists and children as equally sinful in the eyes of God. There are certainly various arguments saying that different consequences will be felt here on earth, or perhaps that there is an arbitrary age of innocence, etc... But almost universally, Christians agree that the following scenario is at least possible:"]]

What the scripture says is that we've all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Further, it says that the wages of our sin is death. Therefore, it is saying that we all have a sin problem, and that God doesn't show any partiality between sinners. The murderer and the liar are both headed for hell, although there is an indication in the scripture that there are degrees of punishment in hell. I also believe in the age of accountability.

Is it possible that the murderer may go to heaven while the murder victim goes to hell? It certainly is. What you're not realizing is, God loved both equally, and had His hand out to both equally. He doesn't show partiality in punishment, and He doesn't show partiality in salvation. He did everything possible to save the one that perished without violating His free will, and the man turned him down. That isn't because God is wicked, or unjust, but because the one that perished refused to stop doing evil and accept Gods pardon. Would you release a murderer out of death row who refused to stop murdering? Why should God forgo justice with unrepentant sinners?

What you're saying is, the murderer deserved to go to hell and the victim didn't. Yet, what the scripture says is that both equally deserved to go to hell, since they are both sinners. Every single person alive on the planet right now is not receiving the punishment they deserve; every day they are receiving what they don't deserve, which is breath, and life, and a chance to begin forgiven. No one has to go hell; people get there by pushing past the love, grace and mercy of their Creator.

You are an a-godzilla-ist and that is entirely a practical concession to the fact that you can't really afford giant monster insurance considering recent statistics for giant lizard attacks and indeed going through life avoiding Tokyo at all costs is just kinda a bummer - imagine all the fresh sushi you could miss out on.

You can't actually prove that there never was a Godzilla or that there never will be a Godzilla and you can only assume (not demonstrate) that there is not a Godzilla planet orbiting one of the stars a few galaxies down the way.

All you can really say is that Tokyo is still standing and that all the various accounts of Godzilla's antics across the myriad of B-movies and hollywood blockbusters that feature him as a character seem to have no basis in reality for various reasons. You move on with your day, smile a bit and never really bother to duck for cover.

And that's all we're saying about God. To my knowledge, that is the bleeding edge of audacious claims being made by anyone who is even vaguely respected - simply that we can't take religious claims seriously any more, so we are going to move on with our lives, only dealing with religion directly when it decides to be a bit too influential for our tastes.

But fine, based on the secondary predicate principle and a lengthy philosophy 101 essay with no shortage of verbal meandering through Descartes, et al., atheists kinda sorta make a claim of some sort. What's your point.

And if you think that the atheist experience simply trawls the bottom of Christian intellectualism then who would you have them debate, Ray comfort? Matt Slick? Perhaps you?

More than anything, the most disgusting trait of Christianity is that it equates child rapists and children as equally sinful in the eyes of God. There are certainly various arguments saying that different consequences will be felt here on earth, or perhaps that there is an arbitrary age of innocence, etc... But almost universally, Christians agree that the following scenario is at least possible:

Rapist rapes child, we'll start with that.

The child struggles through the resultant torturous anguish across a lifetime, starts a support group, mans a hotline, works in the community to support fellow victims, increases awareness and so on while loving his/her family and friends, making mistakes periodically and occasionally letting loose at a concert or something. The child (now an adult) is unfortunately just a minimally observant Jew and never really gave Jesus any consideration, so when he/she gets hit by a drunk driver at the unfortunate age of 34, he/she is tormented in hell for the rest of eternity.

The rapist, meanwhile, goes on with his (statistically probable) life, perhaps he rapes some more children (also statistically probable) and maybe he then stops at some point, realizing it is wrong and maybe even feels guilty about it. Ridden by guilt, the preaching of a wayward street preacher catch his ears one day. He ventures into church for the first time. He is moved. He proclaims his belief in Jesus and the resurrection. He feels his sins are forgiven and he can feel years of guilt being washed away. Maybe he even admits his history as a rapist to a sympathetic inner circle of confidants, spiritual advisors and friends. He dies of a heart attack, and spends eternity in heaven.

That is disgusting and a god that sets such a system up is disgusting.

Many compassionate people are blinded into thinking this is just and good in an effort to tenaciously preserve their own sense of eternal safety and cosmic worth at all costs. That is less disgusting just because it is an understandable impulse, but it is disgusting nonetheless.

Isn't that the Negative Zone? I'm fairly certain it works like however Marvel wants it to work. Sort of like the Power Cosmic. Stupid review judging it as a movie outside the bounds of comic book conventions.

Comics are silly, convoluted, and prefer form over function:

1. Thor and Iron Man are required to have pissing contests.
2. Sunglasses and eye patches make people without super powers look badass.
3. Banner on a motorcycle is a good juxtaposition against his Hulky-jump-through-the-air travel form.
4. Loki is a conceited god so the Iron Man delay works -- didn't this reviewer. already assess that Loki was there to convert and not kill?
5. Of course CAPTAIN AMERICA just jumped from a plane. Idiot.
6. Did he just judge the movie according the Captain America's silly costume? Idiot.
7. No lap dance? He wants to watch the Russian dude give Black Widow a lap dance? I'm confused.
8. Bad guys running laps happens in... most action films with bad guys that need to fill in some time and guide direction visually. Reeeaaaally dumb criticism.
9. Plasma screens? You'd prefer to see a cell phone and then a split screen with 4 other people on cell phones? WTF
10. Loki's scepter is also a space phone??? My phone is also a camera, GPS, medical adviser, blogging tool, gaming device, and if I could download an app that performed mind control, I would. Loki is a god so he can.
11. The hellicarrier was created by Jack Kirby. Fuck you, this is an Avengers movie.
12. Sweeping cameras may sound silly, but comic book logic dictates that this is fine. Why not?
13. His criticism of little girls being able to find Bruce Banner is a criticism of our emotional attachment to the Gavroche, not the Avengers. Is the mystique of a street smart urchin gone from our collective unconscious?
14. Hawkeye's virus arrow is perfectly executed and makes sense according to his abilities.
15. Thor being easily tricked by Loki using low brow tactics is true even in Norse mythology. What exactly are we critiquing here?
16. Loki's objective in being captured is partly him being an overly confidant asshole god. He's just sort of going around half cocked because he can and likes to do so. The gods aren't smarter than us, just more powerful and with magical abilities that trump technology. In fact, this means they don't need to try as hard and would definitely be candidates in the personality disorder department. Hell, for all we know they could suffer from intellectual disorders that would never have become an issue (aside from making them stupidly violent) considering their power.
17. Hawkeye versus Black Widow is not cool? Damn.
18. Fury also gave an intimidating death stare in Jurassic Park when Nedry's "Ah ah ah, you didn't say the magic word" security screen pops up. HOLD ONTO YOUR BUTTS. I liked the half reference.
19. If you have trouble understanding the powers of Mjölnir, why do you also complain about the plodding exposition?! These things require exposition and it's so arbitrary that it becomes plodding. Comics are FILLED with plodding exposition because of this and there's a point where you just have to know the characters. Do they explain superman's laser eyes in the movies? Actually... do they?
20. Black Widow is a weapons expert, including theoretical weaponry.
21. In the comics Hulk learns to control his powers and can even be intellectual in said form.
22. The alien invasion would do more damage than a nuclear bomb. These villains enslave entire worlds.
23. The ending requires homework??? THE ENTIRE SERIES OF MOVIES REQUIRES HOMEWORK.


That being said, I agree with a good number of the points:

1. The tesseract was a rebranding of the Cosmic Cube which has a long history in the Marvel universe. (So I guess this movie was made for comic book fans?)
2. Well lit facility. There should have been some sort of cloaking shield around it, which is perfectly acceptable in a comic book world, if not the real.
3. Cap's bet. I don't believe Cap would have done that because it isn't just.
4. Speaking in English to Germans. It would have been cool to hear him speak in German. Damn!
5. Hawkeye's arrow fucking up the hellicarrier. However, I could see this happening in a comic book, I just don't like it.
6. Captain America's ear piece and bad aim.
7. Tesseract mind control wearing off after blunt trauma.
8. Cap's super powers are kinda lame in these movies, but I'm sure if they weren't, then this review would contain criticism about how his human fists can smash through metal.
9. The aliens are a pretty shitty replacement for the Skrulls. This is what makes me the saddest.
10. Imiatating transformers... this bugged the crap out of me when I first saw the trailer. UGH!
11. Thor's lightning must have a long cooldown.
12. Yeah, it was pretty lame when the aliens died after they were cut off from the mother ship. Inferior to the Skrulls fo sho.

Funny. no one is saying we shouldn't cut spending. It seems rather arbitrary for you to say we should cut spending FIRST. Why can't we do both cut spending and tax increases? Why should it matter what "order" they go in? Rational people would hit it from both ends.

Or are you just playing childish partisan games again. Even the right is finally breaking ranks and giving the middle finger to Grover Norquist. So your opinions are in the minority and as you well know, the minority opinion doesn't go far in a democracy.

The reality is that the tax burden on the wealthy has declined steadily over the last few decades. The economy was doing great when taxes were higher, so your argument does not reflect reality as usual.

looks like you've bitten off more than you can chew again.

>> ^Mookal:

It's about being a genuine, opinion forming individual rather than sheep herded by a marketing department or fragile social trend.


Apologies in advance for the upcoming rant; it's not targeted at you - I think this every time I see someone calling other people sheep:

We're all sheep.

We all have a herd mentality. We're all influenced by marketing. We're especially influenced by marketing on things we don't really care about; which is most things.

We can pick a dozen things that lately, we personally have bothered to stop and think about; be critical about; research; object to; offer alternatives to; form opinions of; protest; debate or attempt to share our knowledge of.

We sometimes do this on one subject for 5 minutes of one day and then forget all about it 2 days later.

We can also stick to a cause and campaign on it for years of our lives, even our whole lives.

You're not special.

For 99% of things, we don't do any of this; instead we defer to one of the available concensuses. If we didn't do this then we would be unable to function from day to day.

When you think someone else is a sheep, they are just deferring to a concensus on the one arbitrary issue you happen to be thinking about at that moment in time. On another day and another subject - you are the sheep.

>> ^renatojj:

@Kofi if 200 billion is not enough, wouldn't that amount increase if government didn't take away so much from it? If people were allowed to keep more of their money, I think they would have more to likely donate to charity.


Well if you look at "charity" breakdown, it's only about $35B that goes to anything like disaster relief.

So let's use that real number. And then let's pretend that it's not already spent on ongoing everyday problems, and then let's pretend the ~$60B in tax revenue that these "charities" are exempted from costs nothing.

Are you seriously claiming that you could put together a lean-mean non-profit relief org that could manage to be prepared for, and provide aid in any arbitrary situation like hurricane Sandy for $35B a year? What about the next thing? What if you go a Katrina instead?

>> ^renatojj:


Also, I'm sure you'll agree that just throwing money at a problem is not a solution, whether it's 200 billion or 2 trillion, the amount isn't everything. Just look at how much more money government takes and how poorly it does its job. Wouldn't charity, without the wasteful middle man of government, improve the situation?
Besides, wasting money is the opposite of charity, because it's money that won't go into productive employment, goods, services, and investments. So society is worse off, and while most of us can still go on with our lives, those who are needy and poor are the most affected by any amount of wasted resources.


Large Organizations are wasteful, if they are for-profit, charity, or government, having a large enough infrastructure to address large problems is costly, that is not a government problem.

We live in a high infrastructure technological society. We don't form bucket brigades when someone's house catches on fire, we have professionals, with effective equipment, who show up and solve this problem more quickly and efficiently, and at a lower aggregate cost to society.

The same is true of disaster relief, we pay for the maintenance of a professional disaster relief infrastructure, and it's cheaper than either doing it ad-hoc, or not having anything in place at all.

Kindness and charity are good and real human impulses, but they are not preparedness, we have organizations for that, we call them governments.

>> ^MilkmanDan:

If you watch high-level fencing, the participants are usually very aggressive. That is for a good reason -- high aggression usually results in more scored touches/points over time. But we're talking aggregate; over many many matches with many many participants, being more aggressive is usually better in terms of total points scored. However, that ignores the fact that if you participated in actual duels with non-blunted weapons with that same level of aggression, you might be slightly more likely to kill your first (, second, third ...) opponent, but you would also be more likely to get yourself killed. The tactics and approach are altered as a consequence of using blunted/nonlethal weapons as opposed to "shit gets real" tools of war.

I know next to nothing about fencing, but I watched it in the olympics out of interest, and I found myself thinking a lot of the strikes put the attacker in a really dangerous position if the swords were real. Good to know I was on the right track.

>> ^MilkmanDan:


As much as we might try to emulate the "real deal", I suppose that it can't be 100% authentic without authentic consequences (which is obviously impossible).


pffsh! Away with your defeatist attitude. Both participants sign waivers, we give them pointy swords and armour and hold it somewhere with a relaxed attitude to health and safety, like Indonesia, Zimbabwe or Texas.

Would be interesting in future to see combat sports eventually go virtual, with a matrix style environment that allows for no holds barred combat without an arbitrary victory condition.

>> ^hpqp:

>> ^Reefie:
I've often found myself alienated from other men... I think differently, I behave differently, I'm not into typical 'guy' things. Generally I find I understand women relatively well but am totally clueless when it comes to how guys' minds work. At one point in my life I was giving serious thought to the prospect of gender change but there was one obstacle I hadn't counted on - private medical insurance companies and the NHS won't contemplate gender change unless the individual is attracted to those of the same sex. The idea of creating a lesbian didn't go down well with those who have the authority to make such decisions on my behalf.

Wow, that's an extremely bizarre and arbitrary line to draw on the part of the NHS. Maybe they suppose that people like you will have an easier life as a "feminine" heterosexual man (or "male lesbian") than as a transsexual lesbian (and vice-versa for women)?
One thing I've heard from an acquaintance who works with trans people though is that sometimes men and women who are uncomfortable with their gender (often because of childhood trauma) become convinced they are the wrong sex as a means of avoiding tackling those issues. That's one reason why having to go through psychotherapy (the woman I cite is a therapist specialised in this issue) before being allowed to begin hrt/grs is not a bad idea. But refusing gender reassignment just because it'd render you "homosexual", that's pretty absurd.


Despite the absurdity of the denial, in a way I'm glad that option was denied me. It allowed me to come to terms with who I am regardless of my gender. Nowadays I accept that I'm a guy, just not a stereotypical guy. Now the only dilemma I face regularly is the rejection by women who I find attractive (talking both personality and physically, I'm rarely lured by physical attraction alone) since I don't conform to their expectations of the male of the species. Can't blame people for wanting to avoid a fucked-up individual

There's another reason I'm glad the option wasn't available to me... I have two friends who have both gone through the transformation (both are/were guys) and seeing first-hand the emotional anguish they dealt with made me realise I might not have been strong enough to handle the pressures that are imposed on any individual who goes through that process.

... Uncle Frank..? NOOOOOOOO!
>> ^hpqp:

>> ^Reefie:
I've often found myself alienated from other men... I think differently, I behave differently, I'm not into typical 'guy' things. Generally I find I understand women relatively well but am totally clueless when it comes to how guys' minds work. At one point in my life I was giving serious thought to the prospect of gender change but there was one obstacle I hadn't counted on - private medical insurance companies and the NHS won't contemplate gender change unless the individual is attracted to those of the same sex. The idea of creating a lesbian didn't go down well with those who have the authority to make such decisions on my behalf.

Wow, that's an extremely bizarre and arbitrary line to draw on the part of the NHS. Maybe they suppose that people like you will have an easier life as a "feminine" heterosexual man (or "male lesbian") than as a transsexual lesbian (and vice-versa for women)?
One thing I've heard from an acquaintance who works with trans people though is that sometimes men and women who are uncomfortable with their gender (often because of childhood trauma) become convinced they are the wrong sex as a means of avoiding tackling those issues. That's one reason why having to go through psychotherapy (the woman I cite is a therapist specialised in this issue) before being allowed to begin hrt/grs is not a bad idea. But refusing gender reassignment just because it'd render you "homosexual", that's pretty absurd.

>> ^Reefie:

I've often found myself alienated from other men... I think differently, I behave differently, I'm not into typical 'guy' things. Generally I find I understand women relatively well but am totally clueless when it comes to how guys' minds work. At one point in my life I was giving serious thought to the prospect of gender change but there was one obstacle I hadn't counted on - private medical insurance companies and the NHS won't contemplate gender change unless the individual is attracted to those of the same sex. The idea of creating a lesbian didn't go down well with those who have the authority to make such decisions on my behalf.


Wow, that's an extremely bizarre and arbitrary line to draw on the part of the NHS. Maybe they suppose that people like you will have an easier life as a "feminine" heterosexual man (or "male lesbian") than as a transsexual lesbian (and vice-versa for women)?

One thing I've heard from an acquaintance who works with trans people though is that sometimes men and women who are uncomfortable with their gender (often because of childhood trauma) become convinced they are the wrong sex as a means of avoiding tackling those issues. That's one reason why having to go through psychotherapy (the woman I cite is a therapist specialised in this issue) before being allowed to begin hrt/grs is not a bad idea. But refusing gender reassignment just because it'd render you "homosexual", that's pretty absurd.

In 1981, Frank Tipler[3] put forth an argument that extraterrestrial intelligences do not exist, based on the absence of von Neumann probes. Given even a moderate rate of replication and the history of the galaxy, such probes should already be common throughout space and thus, we should have already encountered them. Because we have not, this shows that extraterrestrial intelligences do not exist. This is thus a resolution to the Fermi paradox—that is, the question of why we have not already encountered extraterrestrial intelligence if it is common throughout the universe.

A response[4] came from Carl Sagan and William Newman. Now known as Sagan's Response, it pointed out that in fact Tipler had underestimated the rate of replication, and that von Neumann probes should have already started to consume most of the mass in the galaxy. Any intelligent race would therefore, Sagan and Newman reasoned, not design von Neumann probes in the first place, and would try to destroy any von Neumann probes found as soon as they were detected. As Robert Freitas[5] has pointed out the assumed capacity of von Neumann probes described by both sides of the debate are unlikely in reality, and more modestly reproducing systems are unlikely to be observable in their effects on our Solar System or the Galaxy as a whole.

Another objection to the prevalence of von Neumann probes is that civilizations of the type that could potentially create such devices may have inherently short lifetimes, and self-destruct before so advanced a stage is reached, through such events as biological or nuclear warfare, nanoterrorism, resource exhaustion, ecological catastrophe, pandemics due to antibiotic resistance.

A simple workaround exists to avoid the over-replication scenario. Radio transmitters, or other means of wireless communication, could be used by probes programmed not to replicate beyond a certain density (such as five probes per cubic parsec) or arbitrary limit (such as ten million within one century), analogous to the Hayflick limit in cell reproduction. One problem with this defence against uncontrolled replication is that it would only require a single probe to malfunction and begin unrestricted reproduction for the entire approach to fail — essentially a technological cancer — unless each probe also has the ability to detect such malfunction in its neighbours and implements a seek and destroy protocol.

wikipedia my friend

I has opinions.

A music video should not be replaced with a live performance, IMO.

A live performance should not be replaced with a music video, IMO.

A specific live performance should not be replaced with a different live performance, IMO.

An audiosift with arbitrary background visuals (artist slideshow, static image, vintage footage, ironic footage, any other kind of 'filler' footage) should be able to be replaced with embeds that have different arbitrary background visuals. A short film set to a popular song would not be considered arbitrary background visuals, IMO.

It looks like you replaced a music video with a live performance, which is a no-no IMO.

This particular music video features Mike Patton in a Mr. Bungle shirt, which makes me happy. I like to be happy. Please make me happy.

Million. Trillion. Whats the difference, right @bobknight33 ?

Where was all this panic when you were 7 trillion in debt? Surely it's an arbitrary sum by that point.