One of my favorite vacations I've ever been on was a trip with my wife to Kauai. We rented a jeep and used directions that we got off of the geocaching site to travel to the location where they shot the original film. It was a fairly long drive through some thick forest/jungle, over several streams, and finally stopping at the remnants of the "Park's" entrance. The site is absolutely gorgeous! A short walk from the gate takes you to an overlook where you can observe several waterfalls that cascade down into the caldera and we got to find one of the best geocaches ever!

Personally I find it hard to reconcile what I know about physics with the existence of consciousness to begin with. Perhaps a better thought question would be something along the lines of Chalmers' zombie world arguments. That is, could a person appear outwardly to perceive and act in the world normally and not be conscious? That is, could they just be some sort of robot, or cascade of known biochemical processes? Alan Turing, in his own way, was interested in the same question.

Therein lies the problem. If there is no satisfactory physical test for consciousness, how can we be so sure about how consciousness is anchored to matter? Frankly, I see little hope of unifying an understanding of consciousness with an understanding of physics without invoking quantum mechanics. Even that just feels like punting to the physics equivalent of magic.

Personally I'm on the lunatic fringe with consciousness. I can't derive consciousness, but I'm overwhelmingly convinced of its existence. So, instead of dealing with all the paradoxes I just assume consciousness is present in all matter. There are varying experiences, or "degrees" of consciousness however. The nice entropy reducing capabilities of our nervous system make our particular conscious experience substantially richer than that of, for example, a rock. So I guess my thought is that the experience sort of fades towards the experience the matter would have without the metabolic energy necessary to support neuronal conduction. Honestly, I don't think it would be possible to obtain data on it, but I imagine it to be somewhat like fading to gray. I suppose it would be equally likely to be like fading into chaos.

"why is this baby dying, while God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent?"

Not a hard question. If you look at our ability to grasp concepts, we tend to compare things only in contrasts.

Today is cold--because we know what hot (Or warm) is.

Think of a child born without a nerves to feel pain without even knowing it is doing so. The child will gauge its eyes out if left to itself. You know love because you know pain, happiness because you know sadness, life because you know death.

If I was God, I would do things exactly the same way He supposedly did things. Of course, I don't believe in God, so the point is moot.

And as a last joke, I would burn in hell all the sick Christians and save all the good aethists.

>> ^jmzero:
Pains me to do it - but I am going to agree with ShinyBlurry in that he has a correct conception of how many Christians view the situation and that that view is not internally inconsistent. There are, of course, Christians who view it a bit differently in one way or another, but those differences don't really impact the question we started with here.
In general, the starting point question is "why is this baby dying, while God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent?" This is a good question: shouldn't God, being omnipotent, should be able to realize all his goals (including this baby surviving, since he's benevolent) without compromising any other principles or goals?
It depends on what kind of definition you have for "omnipotent". Is it "the ability to make true anything that can be stated?" (ie. He can make 2+2=7). Is it the weaker "he can, without limits, control physical and spiritual reality" (ie. he can make gravity go backwards and make electrons "more wet")?. Is it the weaker "limitless control over the physical configuration of the universe" (ie. he can turn the universe into a pretzel, but gravity will still work the same)? One can make similar distinctions about His omniscience, how it extends into the future, how it interacts with free will, and how it extends into paradox.
It also depends on self or otherwise imposed limits. Does He have bounds in terms of what He can and/or will do? Does He mess with "free will"? Can he create and/or destroy "souls"? Did he create "Satan" or evil or good or law, and what is his relationship with the law?
How you (or an individual Christian) answers the above question dictates, to an extent, how they resolve the question. However, for most Christian groups that I'm familiar with, the presence of evil and bad outcomes in the world is (one way or another) the result of God's unwillingness or inability to limit free will, and the cascade of related mishaps ever since the fall of Adam. The flip side is, for a dead baby like this, that they'll get a good go of it in heaven (or Paradise Earth, or whatever).
The specifics of how this is resolved and stated varies with Christian groups and people, but the overall point is usually pretty similar and, as before, I don't think it's internally inconsistent.
Similarly, the oddity of Jesus (being God) praying to the Father (also God) is resolved in a few different ways (all of which restore consistency in one way or another). Sometimes it is, as sb points out, the idea that though the same in many ways, Jesus was a separate being and was legitimately asking (or sometimes just communicating, with no real desire to be spared). Or you can see it as an instructive, rhetorical thing - demonstrating how normal people are supposed to deal with God (even though Jesus didn't need to communicate or deal in that way). Or there's probably 10 other resolutions that are internally consistent, again depending on exact definitions of God's nature and what not.
All in all, it's natural that Christians are going to have a lot of leeway on something like this. The Bible doesn't spend a lot of time nailing down the properties of God (and it only spends a few chapters literally nailing Him anywhere) - so complaining about it is kind of like complaining about the magic in Lord of the Rings.

Pains me to do it - but I am going to agree with ShinyBlurry in that he has a correct conception of how many Christians view the situation and that that view is not internally inconsistent. There are, of course, Christians who view it a bit differently in one way or another, but those differences don't really impact the question we started with here.

In general, the starting point question is "why is this baby dying, while God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent?" This is a good question: shouldn't God, being omnipotent, should be able to realize all his goals (including this baby surviving, since he's benevolent) without compromising any other principles or goals?

It depends on what kind of definition you have for "omnipotent". Is it "the ability to make true anything that can be stated?" (ie. He can make 2+2=7). Is it the weaker "he can, without limits, control physical and spiritual reality" (ie. he can make gravity go backwards and make electrons "more wet")?. Is it the weaker "limitless control over the physical configuration of the universe" (ie. he can turn the universe into a pretzel, but gravity will still work the same)? One can make similar distinctions about His omniscience, how it extends into the future, how it interacts with free will, and how it extends into paradox.

It also depends on self or otherwise imposed limits. Does He have bounds in terms of what He can and/or will do? Does He mess with "free will"? Can he create and/or destroy "souls"? Did he create "Satan" or evil or good or law, and what is his relationship with the law?

How you (or an individual Christian) answers the above question dictates, to an extent, how they resolve the question. However, for most Christian groups that I'm familiar with, the presence of evil and bad outcomes in the world is (one way or another) the result of God's unwillingness or inability to limit free will, and the cascade of related mishaps ever since the fall of Adam. The flip side is, for a dead baby like this, that they'll get a good go of it in heaven (or Paradise Earth, or whatever).

The specifics of how this is resolved and stated varies with Christian groups and people, but the overall point is usually pretty similar and, as before, I don't think it's internally inconsistent.

Similarly, the oddity of Jesus (being God) praying to the Father (also God) is resolved in a few different ways (all of which restore consistency in one way or another). Sometimes it is, as sb points out, the idea that though the same in many ways, Jesus was a separate being and was legitimately asking (or sometimes just communicating, with no real desire to be spared). Or you can see it as an instructive, rhetorical thing - demonstrating how normal people are supposed to deal with God (even though Jesus didn't need to communicate or deal in that way). Or there's probably 10 other resolutions that are internally consistent, again depending on exact definitions of God's nature and what not.

All in all, it's natural that Christians are going to have a lot of leeway on something like this. The Bible doesn't spend a lot of time nailing down the properties of God (and it only spends a few chapters literally nailing Him anywhere) - so complaining about it is kind of like complaining about the magic in Lord of the Rings.

Slowly, my vimeo videos are being declared as dead, I'm afraid of a cascade effect happening to me while vimeo is trying to fix the issue. Any way to warm more sifters about this so that all my animations don't end up in the deadpool??

I just like how they throw in gerrymandering at the end. They tried to do this in Utah last year to keep democratic winners at a minimum.

If you wish to know why: Salt Lake City, it's northern neighbor city, Ogden, and the city that had most of the Olympic events, Park City, all vote democratic. However, the farther south of Salt lake City the more republicans you find. The only reason they vote Republican is for some reason we've yet to figure out in the main valley is why they vote Republican. These are typically good 'ol church going or listening to Rush/Beck type people and have a LARGE tendency of group-think and block voting.

In other words we always get screwed over (even in the suburbs) by this demographic. It's the same demographic that screwed over California on prop 8. The block or: "your religion wants you to vote this way" (which I see as a huge state versus religion debate that should be brought up) works VERY well. It's very tiring to watch it happen in EVERY election, but people are getting smarter as the cities, specifically, along the Wasatch Front (the western edge of the Rocky Mountains end in a huge corridor that runs N/S from southern Idaho to Southern Utah--close to Las Vegas) that are natural valleys that form every 40-70 miles and end with the mountain ranges on both sides "cutting off" the metropolitan areas forming about six major areas, and then some cities off to the east of the mountains (not many, some of them are: Moab, Tooele, Price, Vernal, etc...). Most of the populace lives in this area and it distinctly follows I-15 which runs straight into Los Angeles.

Strangely enough the more people that live in more urban type environments with lots of people, these people tend to have a democratic or atleast a very moderate republican stance. The smaller cities ALL vote republican. In other words, Salt Lake City is held hostage by Utah's small cities and developing cities along the I-15 corridor or cities that are not located next to I-15 and of course Utah County, just south of Salt Lake City or Salt Lake County (which has many cities, Provo being the biggest; but more importantly it has BYU; hence it's almost inane voting standard).

The politicians wish to divide Salt Lake County into an area unable to vote democratically as they would group us with just enough "typical republican voters" as to make our votes worthless. This got shot down last year, but I have no idea about this year. With our new law passed I can't even look to see if they're trying to do this--which is probably why they wanted to do this anyway.

Lots of these politicians were going to get kicked out in the next election cycle, some did. But, they got replaced by a worse setup: Tea Party or Glenn Beck followers that hide behind the all magical (R). The populace loving their block voting voted these idiots right in and of course the laws this year are inane. Mike Lee would be an example of this.

It should also be known that the LDS/Mormon church owns quite a bit of media in and around this area (the biggest is called Deseret, but there are a few more). The reach of this media reaches a lot of areas in the Intermountain West or Intermountain Region (which is HUGE): Utah, Wyoming, Nevada, Colorado, Arizona, California, Oregon, Idaho and Washington--there may be more, but the largest stronghold is Wyoming, Utah, California (around the Sierra Nevada and north), and Idaho. KSL (at KSL.com) is the LDS churches right arm in Utah and in the regions I listed above; it's also the churches direct feed to their semi-annual conferences that are followed by members voraciously. Many people consider coming to Utah to see the conferences much like a pilgrimage you see in other religions.

Wyoming and Idaho, as they do not have major news/media stations (or atleast in the past they didn't-this is still true for western Wyoming), KSL fills that void, as the church and the members have more than enough money to make this a very far reaching media outlet for the Intermountain West/Region. KSL plays it's role well when it comes to group-think and spreading the ideas created by the church and even LDS politicians, along with the churches run newspaper "Deseret News"; with the "satanic" or democratic/moderately conservative and more level headed news publication provided by "The Salt Lake Tribune" which is a very good newspaper. Even if you're a republican and not LDS, you'll find it to be a good source for news for anyone that isn't a "Republican Mormon"; they are very centrist in their opinions and provide a VERY MUCH needed counterweight in the region. KSL tends to follow Deseret News or likewise, Deseret News follows KSL--obviously following the LDS churches thoughts and opinions on subjects. Though they tend to do fine as long as they're ONLY reporting the news, like a breaking story...

Anything that has time to become an op-ed becomes an obvious religiously slanted opinion and more annoyingly, lately (the last decade or so), it has a politically charged republican view. Recently some Tea Party views have crept in. The LDS church doesn't seem to like or hate the tea party and I've never heard an opinion making their stance on that issue official at any level; but, at the same time I know a lot of Mormons that love Glenn Beck and Rush, so that situation to me seems "fuzzy" at best. As the church has never reprimanded Glenn Beck (as far as I know). If I said some of the same things that Glenn Beck has, would most certainly be incurring a disfellowship or even a excommunication. I'm an atheist, so if I made that known I'd certainly get the excommunication. But, you may need to go to the meeting to see that happen; which I wouldn't--I'd have to ask someone more "in the know" to get an idea what would happen as even when I was a Mormon no one ever talked about these meetings, they were taboo. Anyway...

Typically the Intermountain West or Intermountain Region is the "Mountain States or the Sierra Nevada, Cascades, and the Rocky Mountains" and the "Great Basin or Intermontane Plateaus and Colorado Plateau". Which is VERY large.

So that is my experience with church vs. state and the members of said faith trying to hoodwink others by using gerrymandering or other unscrupulous ways to change the vote in their favor. These people should be the excommunicated ones... But, since they aren't it makes me think MUCH less of the LDS church (but, since Proposition 8 I've had little faith that they were anything, but another religion trying to force people to see things there way--there is no middle ground). So if you live in "The Intermountain West", which is a huge region, make sure you find out who is behind your media. You may be surprised.

I think that should cover everything I wanted to say.

>> ^blankfist:

>> ^volumptuous:
If by fair you mean "a lot bloodier, and the protesters would now be "armed and dangerous" and the military would mow them down instantly"
Often, people don't think like you Blanky. Ghandi didn't want guns. These people most likely don't want them either. And it's so weird to me that you see every situation through the barrel of a gun.
>> ^blankfist:
I bet they wish they had guns. This revolution would be a bit more fair.


They're throwing rocks. I just assumed they'd want something a bit more effective at their disposal. Pardon me.


Throwing rocks is still a way of showing you being angry, but not wanting to do serious damage.

As stated, all guns would do is provide a medium for someone to do something really stupid.

Essentially, think the cascading events of V for Vendetta, and take this exact video as our grounds.

People are angry, some are protesting non-violently, some are throwing rocks (To me that says they're still disgruntled and showing it, but not wanting to do serious harm).

Then you get one or two idiots, who do something really stupid. Weather that's shooting a cop, or shooting another protester. This leads to someone else doing something stupid, be it the rest of the protesters who grow more violent due to the first stupid act, or the corrupt cops.

Either way, the other side is just going to arm themselves and get involved (Police to take down rioters, rioters to take down police).

The entire situation would become all out chaos.

I really can't see how having guns in this fight would cause it to go any other way. What else are you going to do? Stand there and wave them about saying "Hey look, I have a gun!"?

The fact that there's a lack thereof is probably saving dozens of lives.

>> ^Mcboinkens:
who is to say that gay animals are not there purposefully, for reasons unknown as of yet? Maybe it is something that is common and is not a defect or mutation.


Alfred Kinsey wrote about sexuality as being a spectrum.
Its a pretty simple idea, and has some obvious merit if you think even at the basic level of variation in hormone expression amongst individuals (and the cascading effects of those hormone variations) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinsey_scale

Also I think it was E.O. Wilson who wrote about possible advantages to having a percentage of homosexual or asexual family/community members in terms of helping to maintain group cohesion, helping raise related youngsters, helping to defend the group, etc., benefits that greatly effect the group's genetic lineage and outweigh the individual not procreating. E.O. Wilson is an entomologist specializing in communal insects (ants, wasps, etc.), so this hypothesis is just the clearly evolutionarily advantageous behaviors that exist in those insects scaled back and applied to social mammals.

My favorite professor back in the day used to say the sound of discovery is rarely, "Eureka!", and more often "Huh, that's odd". Hurray for the accident of discovery! I find an interesting proposition in that heat actually creates friction. Without heat, you experience such things as these super flows. Would it not be an interesting idea that elements of this universe bring into existence other elements? Like a cascade of meta-rules that we can never be aware of; the rules unfold as other rule sets are propagated.

Cascading tragedies, blarg.

*backup=[...snipped...]

Its obvious to anyone with 1/16 of a brain that these people are brainwashed with their beliefs, when you start chanting " Mohammad " like a bunch of fucking monkeys in the amazon ( one starts then they are all howling) and it cascades into this fracas bullshit its obvious religion has got to go.

Please take your idiot beliefs and let the door hit your ass on the way out. I am so happy I took part in Draw Mohammad day, six cartoons I put up around town.

I was appalled when it was brought to light it was in Sweden . " this is our country too " THEN FUCKING ABIDE BY THE LAWS AND UNDERSTAND your ability to get the fuck up and walk out not cause a potential bloody scene.

all of em

In reply to this comment by choggie:
in other words....white people are retarded

In reply to this comment by choggie:
dude...a CSS cascading style sheet, basically lets you plug in html gook into yer pafge setup

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cascading_Style_Sheets

the VS lets you cut and paste a few, but knowing where to put shit in the script changes the movie....i can't help you(trans.-won't take the time to figger it out m'self, much less w/o a better gig), get some templates from lucky or dag, and ask them what you want yer bling to look like, in 30 words or less....
In reply to this comment by enoch:
In reply to this comment by choggie:
i gotcha....lemme go give her a look and whip up some code-what colors would you like??

In reply to this comment by enoch:
In reply to this comment by choggie:
your sub-genre should take care of itself...if yer bored, try sunshine.

In reply to this comment by enoch:
so i got my channel.now what the fuck do i do?
i need some help bub..think you could spot me some of those fabulous brain cells and tell what i should know.
dont want to screw it up.

LOL..classic.
it's fishing on the gulf for me this weekend and hopefully every weekend till sept.
the help i need is in creating the channel itself.
i have some of it but i have no clue what a CSS file is nor do i know what the embed is for the sidebar.
i r code retarded.

thinking black background and a blue bordser?
what is a CSS file?

dude...a CSS cascading style sheet, basically lets you plug in html gook into yer pafge setup

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cascading_Style_Sheets

the VS lets you cut and paste a few, but knowing where to put shit in the script changes the movie....i can't help you(trans.-won't take the time to figger it out m'self, much less w/o a better gig), get some templates from lucky or dag, and ask them what you want yer bling to look like, in 30 words or less....
In reply to this comment by enoch:
In reply to this comment by choggie:
i gotcha....lemme go give her a look and whip up some code-what colors would you like??

In reply to this comment by enoch:
In reply to this comment by choggie:
your sub-genre should take care of itself...if yer bored, try sunshine.

In reply to this comment by enoch:
so i got my channel.now what the fuck do i do?
i need some help bub..think you could spot me some of those fabulous brain cells and tell what i should know.
dont want to screw it up.

LOL..classic.
it's fishing on the gulf for me this weekend and hopefully every weekend till sept.
the help i need is in creating the channel itself.
i have some of it but i have no clue what a CSS file is nor do i know what the embed is for the sidebar.
i r code retarded.

thinking black background and a blue bordser?
what is a CSS file?

The West Virginia coal mine where an explosion killed 25 workers and left another four unaccounted for in the worst mining disaster since 1984 had amassed scores of citations from mining safety officials, including 57 infractions just last month for violations that included repeatedly failing to develop and follow a ventilation plan.

The federal records catalog the problems at the Upper Big Bra More..nch mine, operated by the Performance Coal Company. They show the company was fighting many of the steepest fines, or simply refusing to pay them. Performance is a subsidiary of Massey Energy. Another Massey subsidiary agreed to pay $4.2 million in criminal and civil fines last year and admitted to willfully violating mandatory safety standards that led to the deaths of two miners. The fine was the largest penalty in the history of the coal industry.

The nation's sixth biggest mining company by production, Massey Energy took in $24 million in net income in the fourth quarter of 2009. The company paid what was then the largest financial settlement in the history of the coal industry for the 2006 fire at the Aracoma mine, also in West Virginia. The fire trapped 12 miners. Two suffocated as they looked for a way to escape. Aracoma later admitted in a plea agreement that two permanent ventilation controls had been removed in 2005 and not replaced, according to published reports.

The two widows of the miners killed in Aracoma were unsatisfied by the plea agreement, telling the judge they believed the company cared more about profits then safety. After the deal, the Massey subsidiary pledged a renewed focus on safety after the fines were levied.

But Bruce Stanley, the attorney who tried the Aracoma Mine accident case, had doubts. He told ABC News Monday there are a lot of similarities between the Aracoma mine and the one involved in this week's tragedy, and he has concerns about Massey's checkered track record on safety issues. Data kept by the Mine Safety and Health Administration show the Upper Big Branch mine has suffered three worker fatalities in last 12 years.

"One can only hope that the level of criminal neglect evident at the Aracoma accident was not repeated at the Upper Big Branch mine," Stanley said Monday night.

After the Aracoma accident, Massey Energy released a statement that said the company "is a recognized leader in safety innovation and performance and remains committed to working with federal and state agencies to fully understand the causes of the accident and to prevent a similar occurrence at Massey Energy or elsewhere in the future."

Monday night, Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship released a statement saying, "Our top priority is the safety of our miners and the well-being of their families. We are working diligently on rescue efforts and continue to partner with all of the appropriate agencies."

The company is well known in West Virginia, in part because CEO Don Blankenship grew to become a fixture in state politics, doling out thousands of dollars to candidates he favored – most of them Republicans. In 2004, he spent millions on advertising that attacked a West Virginia state Supreme Court justice, leading to the election of challenger Brent Benjamin.

Massey had a $70 million case before the state Supreme Court and, once elected, Benjamin made the controversial decision not to recuse himself because of Blankenship's support of him and to hear arguments anyway. Another member of the court hearing the case was Chief Justice Elliott "Spike" Maynard. He later recused himself after photographs surfaced showing that he vacationed with Blankenship in the French Riviera.

When an ABC News reporter tried to interview Blankenship about the possible conflicts in the parking lot of a Massey Energy office in Belfry, Ky., Blankenship became agitated.

"If you're going to start taking pictures of me, you're liable to get shot," Blankenship told the reporter before grabbing his camera.


Blankenship later told the Charleston Daily Mail he couldn't recall making any threats. "Quite frankly, I don't know what I said except that I know I'm never loud, vulgar or rude to strangers," he said.

The conflicts surrounding the state Supreme Court saga triggered a cascade of changes, including a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that called on judges to recuse themselves when major donors come before them in court, and a vote by the West Virginia legislature to adopt public financing of judicial campaigns.

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/west-va-coal-company-deadly-explosion-fined-millions/story?id=10293691&page=2

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=ab4_1270570649