Trying split up addressing your points and enoch's here, forgive me if things bleed over between a bit.

Large terrorist networks like Al Qaida were and still are using your definitions against your country. They operated with impunity and effectively as their own autonomous state within the borders of Afghanistan and Pakistan. The question is whether acts of war launched from that region then are classed as an act of the Afghan or Pakistani state. If they are, then Afghanistan and Pakistan are to be held to account as states launching the act of war. If they are not, then they have for intents and purposes yielded the sovereignty of that territory to a new independent state waging it's own independent war.

The jihadists are trying to hard to live in an international loophole where they are operating with the autonomy of a state right up until another nation state wants to wage war back against them and then suddenly they are just citizens of the larger state they are technically within the borders of.

When the Bush admin pushed back hard, the Afghanistan government refused(more on this in my reply to Enoch) while the Pakistani government extremely begrudgingly agreed to at least pretend they weren't friendly with them in back channels anymore. Thus act of war met with war in Afghanistan, and yes, I would insist a war that Afghanistan initiated and NOT GW.

As for Saudi Arabia, they are more responsible for Jihadi ideology and funding than any other state, and yes the west largely has ignored it so long as they sold their oil and then used the money to buy back top of the line American made military hardware. I have to say I think it's a bit shortsighted to have made Saudi Arabia number 3 on the global military budget charts... You won't find my hypocritically trying to defend them, they are the ones sending most of the money into Pakistan's mountains to build the madrasa's that don't seem to teach anything after how to fire and assemble your AK.

The right of today is absolutely radicalized. The last 8 years proved it.

The debate may not be settled, but the science and facts are....there are just many who refuse to accept it, but they have neither science or fact on their side.

Eating shrimp is a sin. Wearing a cotton poly blend is a sin. No where in the bible is there a chart saying one sin is worse than another.
EDIT: It actually says- "If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.", which read closely means being bisexual is the abomination, not homosexuality.....BUT that's only for Jews, because Christians generally have the view that the New Covenant supersedes (i.e., replaces) the Old Testament's ritual laws, which includes many of the rules in Leviticus. Christians therefore have usually not observed Leviticus' rules, they only use them to attack others for behavior that makes them uncomfortable.


I don't think they've said you can't spout your hate, only that they'll challenge it...you have said they should not be allowed to be gay and married.

If government policy was a living wage for any job, the poor wouldn't stay poor and wouldn't need the handouts and programs you hate.

God and his son have failed miserably to elevate man....no wonder they want to be left out of the conversation.

Oh man, "evolutionary chart in reverse" is a *fantastic* line...

You'd also confirm the pickpocket was guilty, wouldn't you? Well I would - I don't just believe everything I see or hear. I didn't mention it explicitly because I expect everyone to question all of their sources all of the time, like I do. But I don't see how that would make it make less sense, rather that it is more or less accurate of a comparison...? anyway.

In light of that, I think my example not only makes sense but is more valid than yours because yours introduces feelings and bias towards the involved parties that only make metaphorical sense if you refer to jingoistic crap about blindly loyal American nationalism and fear/hatred of Russians somehow. Which is kind of the point I'm questioning in the first place; there is a huge difference between 'applying reasonable doubt to your sources' (your point) and using the Russian excuse to ignore the actual problem (my point).

Also has there ever been an American intelligence leak/failure that was NOT linked to the Russians? I hope we're not reverting to the kind of cold war style paranoia that 10 years ago we would have laughed at around here. Somewhere there's a flow chart in the White House that has 12 boxes on one side listing possible internal failures and fuck ups and they all point to one box on the other side saying "Blame Russia".

If you're genuinely worried about the source making the leak up and it all being just faked, you best take that up with Wikileaks. They have a very robust reputation, the kind that you don't earn easily. It doesn't make them right, but it means you have to make a strong point against them. I feel like it wouldn't be all that hard for anyone with the clearance to check and confirm if it was a Russian fabrication, and then a story confirming Wikileaks was talking bullshit, releasing Russian propaganda, would be huge news.

His point about trapping yourself in genres is excellent. It's really easy to label yourself and dismiss other genres as crap (god knows, I was guilty of it myself when I was a teenager).

But there are no bad genres, there is only bad music. Yeah, I still have very little time for most of the fluff in the charts, but that doesn't mean there isn't occasionally a great pop tune that catches my ear.

Slippery slope fallacy.
"If we allow gays to marry, what's next? Can I marry my dog?"

No-one is talking about banning guns. I wouldn't support that myself. I have friends who are hunters and target shooters.

But be reasonable; you can have a gun for target shooting or hunting or even "home defence" (if you're really that paranoid), but you don't need an AR-15 or anything with a high capacity magazine and it's not unreasonable to make sure that people who own guns aren't complete nutjobs.

NZ is in the top 15% of gun ownership rates per capita (22 guns per 100 people), but our average annual firearm homicide rate for the last 30 years or so is ~0.2 deaths per 100k people.

Compare that to the USA. The US tops the chart of gun ownership with 112 guns per 100 people. So the gun ownership rate is 5 times that of NZ, but the average annual firearm homicide rate is 4 deaths per 100k people. That's 20 times the number of murders. Even if you allow for the higher gun ownership rate, you're still 4 times worse than NZ.

And the difference is simple: we have sensible gun ownership laws.

I saw a great post the other day.
"The conservative mind:
Abortions? BAN THEM!
Gay Marriage? BAN IT!
Marijuana? BAN IT!
Guns? eh, banning things never works"

But hey, you're gonna need those guns for when Donary Trumpton ushers in a tyrannical dictatorship. Good luck with that; let me know how you get on with an AR-15 versus a predator drone.

Good point. I admit I'm mostly quoting The Economist's recent article on it, since I haven't compared them myself:

"Meanwhile, fees as a percentage of assets under management have dropped from 0.68% in 1983 to 0.12% today (see chart). This compares with an industry average of 0.61% (or 0.77%, when excluding Vanguard itself). Fees on its passive products, at 0.08% a year, are less than half the average for the industry of 0.18%. Its actively managed products are even more keenly priced, at 0.17% compared with an average of 0.78%."

http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21700401-vanguard-has-radically-changed-money-management-being-boring-and-cheap-index-we

Also: http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21700390-rise-low-cost-managers-vanguard-should-be-celebrated-slow-motion-revolution

Totally agree with you on diversifying across index funds (as safe as fund managers are in theory compared to other financial institutions, I would never assume any financial company is 'safe') and of course staying under $250K FDIC insurance level.

Somewhat disappointed that he didn't include my personal favorite argument against Pascal's Wager: conflicting faiths.

Instead of a 4-cell chart (2x2 from believe/don't believe and god exists/doesn't), the chart should arguably be a LOT bigger. Plenty of individual branches of Christianity will tell you that *their* specific brand is the only one that will get you into heaven. And that's just relatively minor distinctions -- different sorts of Protestants, or Protestants vs Catholics, etc. We haven't even got to Christianity vs Judaism vs Islam -- all of which fall under the "Abrahamic" umbrella -- but very few Christian faiths think that Jews or Muslims are just as eligible to enter heaven as they are (or vice-versa). From there you can get to things as disparate as Hindu vs Ancient Egyptian vs Zoroastrianism, and everything else.

With that sort of chart, it is just as easy to say that choosing to believe in the *wrong* god could possibly be associated with a more negative outcome than washing your hands of it and going Atheist. Maybe I chose to believe in Ra the Sun God when Zeus ends up being the one true deity. Come to find that Zeus, as it turns out, tolerates people who don't believe in him as long as they don't believe in one of his competitors (like Ra). Therefore I get a lightning bolt to the keyster and a trip to Hades while my nonbeliever buddy gets a ticket to Elysium.

Of course it's all a load of bollocks, but if your argument is a load of bollocks (like Pascal's wager) you don't get to complain when somebody flips it on its head and uses it to argue the exact opposite...

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What's the difference between a pet pig and a livestock pig though?
They both want blankets and cookies. Or at the very least neither of them wants to stand in a tiny metal and concrete cage and be pumped full of antibiotics, hormones and god knows what else for their short miserable lives. Neither of them want to be bruised because they have only enough room to face one direction their entire lives. Neither of them want their testicles ripped out without anesthetic while they are piglets. Neither of them want to be beaten when they don't eat.

Also, despite what the marketing people say, humans are not omnivores, everything healthwise and physiologically suggests we are somewhere between herbivores and frugivores. It's also backed up historically too by analyzing fossilized poop!

Here is a quite simplified chart, but I think it does a pretty good point of showing how far away we are from typical mammalian omnivores http://www.whale.to/c/10013268_676368449097110_1949968139_n.jpg

I'm not having a go at you, but I just hope you aren't acting according to a few labels that some organisation has set.

Oh man, thank you.
So, train safety scheduling signals.
Sudden perverse thought; shorting or charting across the rails doesn't confound that system does it?
Sorry, not an EE...

That's not true.

Despite what politicians may say, America has no trouble financing its debt. The US bond market is at the highest demand level (lowest yield) it has ever been because the US is perceived as the best house in a bad neighbourhood.

Literally, US bonds have not been more in demand since the US was founded.

Chart is a bit old, it's now solidly below 1945 levels:

http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user3303/imageroot/2013/12/20131220_bonds.jpg

I would highly advise you to stop listening to politicians, political pundits or partisans if you want truthful information about the economy.

Because of a lack of real pressure to cut the debt beyond the politics of it, Republicans or Democrats have no real incentive and thereby no genuine interest to actually reduce the debt rather than kicking the can down the road.

So adding what is a marginal amount of debt on top of that shouldn't make a difference to them.

I had the opportunity to sit courtside at a Globetrotters game around '93 or so. They basically had two teams. The showmen that are usually associated with the group but also some young talent that could just flat out fly. Pure athleticism that was off the charts. Needless to say, I had an absolute blast and meeting these fun loving entertainers after the game is a memory I will cherish my entire lifetime.

Yeah, that chart is almost completely worthless. Clear indication that the publisher is either deceitful or ignorant.