Incoherent to you maybe. Rambling no (my comments should roughly match up line for line as replies to your text - I didn't use quotes). Struck a nerve? No. But it looks like you've got a lot to say for someone who doesn't care for religion.

Almost nobody can remember all they read. This is not a unique claim. I'm guessing you aren't familiar with more than one major denomination - so don't speak on behalf of the others. You're pretty hung up on me needing to have remembered this thing in particular? Sorry but I didn't know this - that's why I asked (ffs). In this regard you're weak at being compassionate. I'm sorry, what is it you think I'm defending? My words? They don't need defence mate. They stand on their own.

I'd have to have some bullshit to quit it. I didn't try to shut down @newtboy (pointing out a truth of his own admission is not shutting him down - got that Mr. Reason?) and I certainly haven't been shut down myself (surprise motherfucker - I'm right here). That you can't understand the fairly straight forward last post shows a lot about you.

"To answer in all seriousness your subsequent questions:"

You missed several questions. Four in fact. I expected as much.

"The back bone of my religion" You're at it again. The retard is strong in you.

I'm not explaining away God's omnipotence. I'm making a fairly straight argument that he's not omnipotent (as in all powerful). I've used the straight forward translation of the word (the simplest argument is that omnipotent also means greatly (not all)) powerful and the refutation of your defence that he is in fact all powerful. This isn't some apologist thing, or defence of some fucked up part of the bible. I'm taking what you believe is a fundamental part of Christianity and attempting to take it down a notch. Hey, why do you think that is? (come on, say the opposite of the obvious, do it, show me how retarded you can be)

It's only a house of cards if you're not willing to give it even the slightest credence (which with your rabid atheism is unfortunately self-admittedly true). That's a great pity. Thousands of years of human culture dismissed in an instant because you're too headstrong (or butt-hurt) to give it a second thought. So much for reason.

Maybe you're not familiar with the 20th century and the clusterfuck of death that surrounded governmental experimentation (of which rejection of religion was a fundamental tenet). Look, I'm happy for you to attempt a no government society where your reason and compassion will lead everyone into quiet nirvana. But you'll be one of the first to be taken advantage of by some cold ruthless cunt who doesn't possess those abilities.

No, I seriously doubt you wish me the best. Your tirade against me demonstrates that. Hopefully you'll realise soon that you're not an Übermensch. And almost everything you now know is wrong (I sincerely hope you know that - it's a fundamental scientific tenet that we are always getting closer to the truth - wiping away the untruths we know - and yes there is research on this).

I do thank you for at least attempting to overcome your own obvious cognitive dissonance in sincerely wishing me peace at the end. It reminds me so much of people who claim to have a religion of peace after their brothers blow some people up. Lol.

Next up. SDGundamX with what he's sure will this time be the final blow as all bow before him with his unassailable reason and compassion that nobody else can possibly challenge.

Bye for a while. I've literally got work now and won't be back for about 28 days. I will be back though. Talk then.

Yeah, I'm with Eric.

The question is not fix Earth or go to Mars. We can easily do both.

US defence budget is $580B a year. You could literally take the entire Mars budget out your defence spending for 1 year and you'd STILL BE SPENDING MORE ON DEFENCE THAN CHINA!!!

It kind of bothered me for a while that I enjoyed this show and people interpreted it so literally. From what I remember reading the producer was actually a hardcore conservative.

But then I realised people also watch CSI and begin to assume that forensic evidence is irrefutable. Or that criminal defence attorneys are always the bad guys.

Turns out people are just morons.

The scariest thing to me is when people like you normalise the idea that a cop can be "set off". The way you just casually mention it like "Oh yeah, and of course if you piss one off well that's your own fault." And that's beside from anything that happened in the video - you throw up a defence for all other cases! In classic fashion, you insinuate that the blame lies with the victim, without actually saying it outright; to give yourself wiggle room on the retreat.

The fact that you think a look or tone of voice is enough to do so is only horrifying once one realises that the cop has ultimate authority in deciding whether your voice is acceptable to them, or your eyes opened wide enough (but not too wide as to glare).

God forbid any of my american friends get misinterpreted by a cop, because according to some, that's grounds for immediate execution or at least punishment under law.

This philosophy IS the problem.

I do agree that unilateral disarmament is a difficult thing to achieve, but there are other arguments as to why it should be pursued. I am sure we agree on a lot of things on this subject, but let me at least put the other side out there:

1. America as the over achieving nation in the world has a duty to lead by example. How can the country with the largest nuclear arsenal expect other countries to start the process that we all signed up to? Hey France, why didn't you get rid of your 87 nukes? Well America, why haven't you touched that pile of 500? (making up numbers here to illustrate the point)

2. The US isn't worried about Best Korea nuking them because they would need a staging platform and a functional ballistic missile. They can be launched from subs, but NK isn't really your worry there. The most developed nations are the concern, and if you could get an agreement it could happen, with peacekeepers and mutually open inspections, and pressure on smaller countries to abide or be trade embargoed to stop them (which the west does/has done already). Unlikely as things are right now, i agree.

3. We have ageing equipment housing extremely dangerous explosives. They require a huge amount of maintenance and whatnot, costing billions. The UK has to replace their system soon to the tune of hundreds of billions of pounds. Imagine what kind of alternative modern anti-nuclear defence system we could develop using all that money and all our technology? That way we could be safe from nukes without using nukes and it would cost less in the long run.

Also if you claim your weapons as part of a defence, it's a bit of a giveaway that you're bullshitting if you then go off around the world antagonising other countries, knowing that they can't really fight back. So i think in fairness we should crack open that self-defence argument and see what percentage of it is referring to "a good offence".

Having said all that, binning all the US nukes overnight wouldn't be a great idea. The UK would be less of a target and safer without nukes imo, but the US would probably make the world a lot safer just by having less.

Let's be honest here, the amount of nukes we have is preposterous. No one could possibly have any reason to use that many, the potential for absolute worldwide devastation is far too high to need that many - you could potentially finish the world off in a nuclear winter, according to the average figures given, in about 100 'small' nukes. Not 100 each per country, but 100 total worldwide.

And remember, that doesn't mean you can use 90 and be safe. The figure 100 was enough to likely cause a global famine by causing temperature drops leading to crop failures. That doesn't account for extinction of animals and the devastation of the natural balance (which would lead to our eventual extinction) which can be wildly unpredictable. You could shoot 40 at a country, win the conflict, and cause the starvation of millions+ in your own (and other) countries for the next 20 odd years..... or worse.

In defence of E.T, The Extraterrestrial, although not a particularly good game it wasn't the worst game ever for the Atari 2600. It really did contribute to Atari's downfall though, since Atari management ordered 5 million copies of the cartridge (of which 3.5 million ended up being returned).

Snopes has a pretty good article on the subject - http://www.snopes.com/business/market/atari.asp

That was a nice discussion about buying the election. I think that possibly the worst fact in the world is that marketing works. On everybody. If you spend enough money, you will influence more than enough people to do pretty much anything. The only defence - and what stops this from literally being 'buying an election' - is the other side spending money on marketing too.

In my opinion, two things need to change. 1) campaign financing, and 2) replace First Past The Post.

Having said that, I'm in Ireland, and we do have a good voting system, and reasonable (if not great) campaign financing laws, but it's still messed up. I've voted in every election I could, but have only ever voted against candidates, never for (i.e. I order my vote from least bad to worst). I've only seen one candidate I'd vote for, but he wasn't in my constituency.

The difference is, at least if/when a good candidate or new party comes along, we can vote for them without losing our voice.

This American election cycle has been the best ad for these facts that I've ever seen.

As a (slightly retired) fencer I love this, but I'd say a couple of things about the description.

The 'whap on the back' needs to apply 500g of pressure for 15ms in order to count. The time rule came in a while back to discourage 'flicking' - that exact problem.

The idea of dropping someone 'before he strikes back' is central to the roots of foil (fleuret in the video) and sabre. Essentially, if your opponent is attacking you have to parry them as a priority. The foil was traditionally the practice weapon which prioritised blows to vital areas, and defence over attack. Unfortunately, this also makes them very hard to follow if you don't know what you're watching.

Great video though. Makes me want to pick up a weapon again. Feel free to imagine some tragedy that made me swear never to fence again.

Playing meek does not protect you from any abuse you've mentioned, including being shot to death. It doesn't keep one from being arrested, beaten, humiliated, having false charges levied, etc. It only perpetuates the idea that the police are 'just doing their job's' when they abuse citizens. Fight back. This guy played meek until an asshat illegally grabbed his phone, then attacked him, and remained meek afterwards. He could have destroyed that cop if he fought back....but would have probably been shot if he had exercised his right to self defense.

If you are black and armed and you get stopped, shoot first. Being armed is now considered a legitimate reason for police to kill you. You don't have to be threatening, pointing that gun, or doing anything wrong at all, just having it is 'reason' enough for them to shoot you dead today. Prison is better than dead, imo.

Cops have squandered the good will and trust granted them by the public. They no longer get the benefit of a doubt.

It's 25 times more likely a cop will murder you than the odds you might murder them, they are all armed and dangerous, and turnabout is fair play. In my opinion, citizens have more right to shoot cops in self defence than vice versa.

In this part of the world stating "self defence" as a reason for wanting a firearm will disqualify you.

I would certainly consider suicide by firearm as "gun violence", and I would also say that good firearm regulations should make it hard for suicidal people to easily and quickly get their hands on a weapon.

The 1996 Australian gun buyback, which halved the number of gun-owning households here, is credited with a drop in the firearm suicide rates of almost 80%, with no significant effect on non-firearm death rates (source, via snopes). Although this was an unanticipated benefit of the buyback, I think most of us consider it a good outcome.

Oh, my apologies.

Sorry. Its just... heh... when you wrote "...and actually appropriate IMO" about the killing of cops I somehow thought you were sort of condoning killing cops. Or like, when you said "I have zero sympathy for recently murdered cops" I thought you were dehumanising them, like, just a lil bit. So, you know, I suppose I sort of jumped to this conclusion that you're a bit twisted.

Do you honestly think that more dead cops fixes this? It's kind of a cliche, but ever heard of the "cycle of violence"? You know, "hate begets hate" kind of thing?

In regards to this video...honestly I've no idea. I don't believe that he intended to shoot him or that it was premeditated...but then the level of incompetence required to pull this off without malice is equally unbelievable. I can only speculate that they cuffed him, even after it should have been easily apparent to them they had really badly fucked up, to treat him consistently so that they could later claim they'd acted in self defence.

You can in Washington and a couple other places. It's a new service.

Oh and by the way, Uber claims this is "ride sharing" so he's NOT a businessman, his car is NOT a place of business. The woman has been "invited" to "share" the ride.

...or are you claiming Uber is lying about its services?

As the owner of the vehicle, he can turf her any time he pleases. In fact, in more than a few places, there is a concept called "assault by trespass". It's how people shoot an unarmed burglar and it's still considered self-defence. Also, inviting someone into your property is meaningless if you want them to leave. There's no "but he said I could be here a minute ago" right to stay. The only people who can't be removed from your property after you let them in are vampires.

That's BS.

With a 5 round maximum capacity you're going to be reloading a lot and there's no reasonable argument why anyone needs more for hunting (and home defence is a red herring).

I think the whole law/culture issue addressed above is actually linked. Take the example of the Autobahn which is very much a parallel. Germans made a law saying you can drive as fast as you want on certain stretches of highway, a culture of high-speed driving developed, people die. The majority in Germany wants to do away with them, but the 10% who want to drive recklessly in their BMWs and Mercedes along with the manufacturers fight new legislation every time.

The law created the culture, and now the culture is preventing the laws from being changed. Just as in the US, the cycle has to break somewhere. Government can't legislate the culture, but they can change the laws and if the US ever gets to a point where guns aren't in the hands of whoever wants one then the argument for needing a 'home security' weapon drops. People feel safer, there are fewer shootings and the whole situation de-escalates.

I'm not saying barring suspected terrorists from owning firearms will accomplish that, but it would be a (very) modest start in the right direction.

There's a law in Ontario (and I'm sure it's similar in the rest of Canada,) that says if someone takes you to court and attempts to sue you, if you win your case, the person who tried to sue you has to pay your legal defences. That's a light paraphrasing, I'm sure there's more nuance, but it dramatically reduces the civil cases. If you're going to sue someone, you better be damn sure you're in the right, or else you may end up paying their legal fees.

I think I already know the answer, but why doesn't America do that?

Yeah, the battery pack would catch fire if exposed to water, they must have to seal it pretty well.

And yeah, as already mentioned the passenger compartment has a "bioweapon defence mode", presumably because Elon Musk is actually a real life Bond villain and he wants his customers to be safe from whatever doomsday scenario he has planned.