It's an interesting conversation, one I wish we could all have in person as typing is so cumbersome at times.

It's not only about the testosterone which guides the male libido (The penis has nothing to do with it - unless the entire process actually leads to sex - which it can - but most often it doesn't)

It IS, as Enoch points out, about attention. As long as the process of flashing the colourful feathers, gets the attention that is needed, then the individual is validated.

Just a glance or a stare can be enough to bolster a girls confidence (from a male, a female, a family member, a boss or whoever.) And if wearing the right shoes does the trick the validation is achieved. If wearing designer labels works, then validation is achieved. If being seen in a Lamborghini does the trick, then validation is achieved. Everyone has triggers. Sometimes they are emotional triggers brought on by personal trauma - sometimes they are learned triggers brought on by advertizing and society.

Male or female, Validation is all anyone ever wants. Those that have had constant validation in their lives, may not be a slave to the process. But in a society where advertisers constantly try to make us feel like we are not good enough so that they can create a market based on everyone's self image this is the way things work.

If it didn't work so well, they wouldn't do it. I work in advertising. I have been trained to find a way to sell things to people that they don't need. The problem is, I'm a cynic and I can't do it. So every time I have to do it, I find a way around it. That's why I now work at a college (a microcosm of political correctness where I don't have to sell stuff using sex - in fact we go out of our way not to)

So there are two sides to this equation:
1). There is the side where everyone seeks validation either emotionally, physically or by accomplishment.
2). And there is the side where advertising exploits our biological AND emotional needs to sell stuff.

Although they are two very different things, they form a symbiotic relationship and feed off each other.

I know that @bareboards2, you are trying to say, that this "advertising" needs to stop. And ideally, you are right. If you find a way to stop it all let us know. But I also know that this type of marketing is so targeted to our needs at the most basic levels, that this type of thing will never go away. Our personal needs, and desires need it too badly.

To try to explain all this is difficult - I trained for 6-years in art school to manipulate what people see and how to make them see what I want them to see. How to lead them and bring them to my way of thinking through visual media. Advertising is an attack and a science into your needs, sensibilities, emotions and psychological image of your self.

I expect the only way to battle media is through media - The person with the most media and money wins. (it's a propaganda war)

If you want to delve deeper into the psychology of it all - It's an in-depth study - here is a place to start. Start with John Berger's, "Ways of Seeing".
http://videosift.com/video/John-Berger-Art-Critic-interview
http://videosift.com/video/Ways-of-seeing-John-Berger (first episode of four)
http://videosift.com/video/WAYS-OF-SEEING-final-episode-vertising (final episode - Advertising).
The book starts with classical art and leads right up into modern advertising. Check Amazon for reviews.

>> ^ant:

>> ^Payback:
>> ^Sagemind:
Where's @ant - has he seen this ?

No, he's wandering around somewhere...

Um, look below with the names?


Sorry, when I make facetious comments, I tend to not delve into the backstory too far...

I started off with MJ and the Beach Boys at age 5. Then around 2nd grade it was Vanilla Ice & MC Hammer. Then 3rd it became Ice-T, NWA, Ice Cube. 4th grade it became Morbid Angel, Cannibal Corpse. 5th Grade it was Kyuss, Jesus Lizard, Melvins, Nirvana. 6th grade it was local punk bands, Lookout! Records, Minor Threat, Rancid... 7th grade I delved into the heart of Legendary DIY underground punk music. Ebullition records (Econochrist, Born against, Downcast, Spitboy, Iconoclast, Los Crudos), , Gravity Records (Heroin, Angel Hair, Antioch Arrow, Clikatat Ikatowi), Dischord (Fugazi, Hoover, Rites of Spring). The list goes on and on. The next ten years were all about underground hardcore/punk/noise/power-violence/sludge/grind/doom.

Then I moved to San Francisco. LOL. I'm an Aquarius. AQUARIUS RECORDS!!!!! I still listen to some of that stuff from time to time. A LOT of it was way ahead of it's time. These kids these days can't hold a candle to genuine, innovative, raw DIY music.

My bad on D1 dungeons.

There will always be cookie-cutter builds. And besides, when you're talking about 'the' build, you're talking about the ideal items to have, the vast majority of people will never get there. Meanwhile, the options for 'best with what you have' varied heaps. I played D3 through with a Monk, and the entire time, the only stats that felt worthwhile chasing were damage, dexterity and vitality.

I'm not saying it didn't have dark elements, but vast portions of the story, dialogue and tone, particularly after Act 1 (which I thought was best part of the game), where juvenile and completely off for a Diablo game. I mean for christ sake, the game delved into damsel in distress territory multiple times. Anyway posted this elsewhere, going to just copy paste:

1. Story tone is horribly off for a Diablo game. Act 1, the tone is almost that right mix of dark, macabre & grim horror albeit with overly colourful graphics. Then, in Act 2 and especially 3/4 the game becomes flat out goofy. It's almost like different studios designed the two parts. Regardless, it's obvious the whole gothic, cheesy but serious tone of previously Diablo games has been thoroughly ditched.

It becomes obvious there is a reason that most of the prime evils were mostly mute & why your characters was kept to making sarcastic remarks and one liners in D2. Diablo beretting you with grating "if it wasn't for your meddling kids" dialogue completely ruins the game's tone. Overall the mix of occasional ultra-violence and the overt colourfulness and childish NPC banter gives it an almost surreal and contradictory theme. As if a design house was of two minds, fighting over dominance over the franchise's feel.

There was just no need to muck with what was not broken to the point that it's hard for me to NOT imagine Activision sitting behind the developers dictating them how well the WoW tone sits with target demographics. There is nothing wrong with WoW existing in its own space with it's own unique identity. There's a problem with creative variety between Blizzard games becoming non-existent because they've caught on to what sells best and decided to stick to that.

As for launch issues, I didn't play D2 at launch, but that's not what really bugs me. It is abundantly obvious though that foisting online-only is part of the reason they're having so many launch issues.

Here's my full bitch session - http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/5149543659

>> ^mentality:

>> ^RedSky:
@mentality
D2 felt like a huge leap on D1. Randomized dungeons, huge increase in class and especially item variety, introduction of a vast swathe of new environments. In comparison critically looking at D3, while it does have an expanded skills system, at the end of a prodigious 11 year development cycle, D3 has far less item variety at launch, and arguably simplified gameplay mechanics on a number of levels.
Personally, I happen to also think the story is a let down, the tone of the game has been inappropriately been made cartoonish (art design non-withstanding).

D1 had randomized dungeons. Item variety in D2 was very limited because there often was one set of unique item that was 'THE' item for a specific build. The expanded environments in D2 were also very cartoony compared to the dungeons of D1, and calling D3 cartoonish with levels like the Halls of Agony is outright ridiculous.
The fact of the matter is that the grass is always greener, and we all look at the past with rose colored glasses. History repeats itself, but it seems like few people remember all the problems, controversy and bitching surrounding Diablo 2's launch.

I don't have time to waste on your ignorance any more, but just a few quick rebuttals should be sufficient to discredit your credibility.

First off, I'm not sure what you're trying to prove by this abstract:
http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.es.24.110193.001101

Quote: "Morphologists achieved much during that time, and none of their well supported phylogenies is overthrown by molecular data. So far, molecular sequences have contributed most significantly in areas where morphological data are inconclusive, deficient, nonexistent or poorly analyzed."

If anything it supports my point, but there are better sources out there. Which is why I chose to limit my literature sources to those that were at least after the year 2000. Why, you ask? Because the first bacterial genome was sequenced in 1995, about two years after that article. We've learned a lot since then, though, according to that abstract, even then they understood that molecular systematics were capable of elucidating many areas of the fossil record we didn't understand. Just read to the end of it.

I knew you would jump on the whole part where I conceded that it is not absolute agreement. Look, I took 30 seconds to write a sarcastic response on an internet forum. So what that I didn't bother to delve into the nuances of consensus trees and whatnot. Argue with the damn articles, not me.

You also just ignore it when I say that the fact that junk DNA has a function has nothing to do with it's evolutionary relevance and continue to claim otherwise without giving a reason. It is the relative mutation rates, not the functionality - maybe you didn't catch that the first time around.

Yada yada yada, I've got better things to do. Anyone who reads this little exchange can see your evident dishonesty and unwarranted extrapolation and that's all that matters. Because if someone is willing to plug their ears and yell loudly whenever something contradicts absolutely held beliefs like you are clearly willing to do, then there will be no convincing. This exchange is for those who are on the fence, and you're little display of anti-intellectualism speaks for itself even without all the scientific proof.

And trust me, I was a Christian. I was deriding salvation by grace as an arbitrary thing, doesn't mean I don't understand what you guys think.

now that trailer has me at least a little bit excited for ME3

I gotta say it though, they really fucked up. ME1 was a hit, it was actually something unique. Then instead of improving on it, they turned ME2 into another chest-high cover shooter and instead of delving deeper into the Reaper Mythos, they distract us with the collectors which was a waste of time and now they're going to play catch up to finish the story

The Reapers are supposed to be this super hyper-advanced threat that has wiped out entire civilizations on multiple occasions, but simply because Shep gathers a big enough fleet that will magically take them down? Bull.

It's the same sad story I've heard countless times. They did it to the Borg. They created this insanely powerful enemy, but then realized, oops, we can't make them too powerful because then how will the good guys win? So then they proceed to dumb em down. They didn't learn their lesson and did the same thing with the Dominion, but that time they literally did do a Deus Ex Machina and had the prophets intervene to knock the Dominion down to a more manageable size. The Clans from Battletech was the same thing. They create a force with unbalanced technology so they have to dumb them down and make them act like idiots to balance it out.

I'm going to play this game and I'm sure im going to enjoy it, but still...it just really honks me off that they dumbed the game and the enemy down and meddled with something that was a hit

What I really wanted was a game similar to the whole Pool of Radiance trilogy back in the day where your characters really did truly continue from game to game and not start over like they do in ME.

What I find ironic is that he states that religious faith limits curiosity and the search for knowledge, yet admitted that he'll believe "assume" what a scientist presents to him, since the 'scientific method intrinsically tests' science results.

What this implies to me is that if Dawkins or Tyson shows says something is true scientifically proven, such a person will believe it out of hand, especially if the person doesn't have the resources or intellect field-specific skills to delve deeper.>> ^enoch:

>> ^gwiz665:
Faith is the cancer of the mind, religion is just the outcome. The very essence of faith is to limit your curiosity, your search for knowledge and your very mind. I cannot abide by this.
I especially cannot abide by it when it is in people of power, like politicians.
It saddens me that smart, intellectual people are afflicted by this cancer, because it is such a damn shame that all they say have to be double-checked, because you cannot be sure whether it is actually founded in reason or in faith.
Faith has no value to me. Faith got us nowhere, reason got us to the stars.

thanks bud for making my point.
well done.

>> ^enoch:

>> ^Enzoblue:
Everyone whose ever been tempted by conspiracy theories should read Foucault's Pendulum. It's mandatory reading. Changed me from a potential sheep to an amused observer. Man's a genius.

this is the first time i have heard of this man.
maybe he brings insight to such things as exposing humanities penchant for buying into conspiracy theories but i have to say i wholeheartedly disagree with his take on love,the power of love and passionate creative force it can be in regards to life.
what he is speaking of concerning "love",is ego-love,which is a want/desire and is a purely selfish animal and has the tendency to slip in to hatred quite easily.
of course i am basing my opinion solely on this interview which is not really fair at all.
i am surprised i never heard of him considering i am quite fascinated with symbology.
methinks this man deserves a bit of investigating.


The book doesn't really expose the penchant for buying into conspiracy theories, it delves deep into the penchant for creating them and techniques involved, (and when I say deep, I mean deep). As far as ego-love, I struggle with this myself and, (if intellectually honest), can't really place my finger on any love that isn't ego-love.

Edit: Egads wait, lemme rephrase. I guess love of nature doesn't apply.... Nor does love of siblings/children. In personal relationships, (the kind that make me sick to my stomach in love), I'm crazy possessive though. I guess I need to work on this.

>> ^silvercord:

Here is that link again. I don't know why it crashed earlier.
It absolutely supports the argument for the very reason that UPS is unionized. Corporations exist to turn a profit. Many of them can support union employees. The government, on the other hand, does not exist to make money. It simply cannot fund the same types of benefits the private sector does.

The title of the article you're linking:

USPS made $76M profit in April (before $458M retiree health charge turned it into a loss)

Part of the issue that I didn't even delve into before is that USPS isn't really a good example of a public sector organization to begin with. It's not taxpayer funded, and hasn't been for 30 years. It's a lot closer to Fannie and Freddie than it is to the fire department.

But even setting that aside there's no causal link between unionization and the USPS financial problems, even according to the article you linked. Hell, they point out that wage and benefit costs have dropped.

So why tout the USPS's problems as another strike against public sector unions, its problems have nothing to do with unions, and would be profitable if it weren't for the stupid pre-paid benefits rule?

But that's just nitpicking, really. The real problem with the argument you're making is that it assumes that unions universally make unreasonable demands, and then usually get those unreasonable demands met.

Public sector benefits aren't generous because unions have fleeced the American people, they're generous because the private sector has drastically curtailed benefits (and unions!), while the public sector has been much more gradual in reducing them. Even still, public sector jobs generally pay people less than the private sector would offer them at their education and experience, even after you factor in benefits.

And even if that were not the case, and this was a matter of unions asking for too much, it is still a negotiation. Government employers can negotiate benefit cuts and wage cuts -- and in fact in most places the unions have agreed to rather sharp cuts during the recession!

Taking away the ability for public sector workers to organize is a political maneuver, not a budget concern. The idea on offer is to use a temporary crisis to put in place a permanent change in policy, in order to further their longer-range ideological and political goals.

>> ^NetRunner:

>> ^Yogi:
>> ^NetRunner:
@Yogi, so you're jumping on the same moronic bandwagon, and spreading lies to boot?
Awesome.

Nothing I said was a lie, it's history. Obama has been ordering targeted assassinations with drones. Clinton was responsible for the sanctions against Iraq which saw 500,000 Iraqi children die. This figure and the reasons for it were accepted by his secretary of state Madeleine Albright.
You wanna dispute either of those facts I'll refer you to Professor Chomsky and you can tell him how wrong he is.

What you're saying doesn't establish a similarity, it establishes your willingness to ignore evidence that contradicts your preconceptions.
For example, economic sanctions = war to you now? They're "Clinton's" economic sanctions, and not something the UN imposed before Clinton was President? That's before we even delve into your claim that the economic sanctions killed more children than 10 years of war killed.
That aside, what you need to prove for equivalence is that there's no difference. Not that you can argue that maybe on some subject that they have similar views (and it's hard to even do that, without relying on hasty generalizations), but that on every subject they agree, with no counterexamples.
So here are three counterexamples:
Democrats want universal healthcare, Republicans don't.
Republicans want to privatize Social Security, Democrats don't.
Democrats want to regulate banks, Republicans don't.
If you can't deal with those, and every single one anyone can come up with then the equivalency argument is shot, and you need to adopt the more sane pose of "Democrats suck, but Republicans suck a lot more" or vice versa if you like the cut of the Republican Party's jib.


If you want to maybe read a fucking book once in awhile I suggest A Different Kind of War: The UN Sanctions in Iraq by Hans von Sponeck.

>> ^Yogi:

>> ^NetRunner:
@Yogi, so you're jumping on the same moronic bandwagon, and spreading lies to boot?
Awesome.

Nothing I said was a lie, it's history. Obama has been ordering targeted assassinations with drones. Clinton was responsible for the sanctions against Iraq which saw 500,000 Iraqi children die. This figure and the reasons for it were accepted by his secretary of state Madeleine Albright.
You wanna dispute either of those facts I'll refer you to Professor Chomsky and you can tell him how wrong he is.


What you're saying doesn't establish a similarity, it establishes your willingness to ignore evidence that contradicts your preconceptions.

For example, economic sanctions = war to you now? They're "Clinton's" economic sanctions, and not something the UN imposed before Clinton was President? That's before we even delve into your claim that the economic sanctions killed more children than 10 years of war killed.

That aside, what you need to prove for equivalence is that there's no difference. Not that you can argue that maybe on some subject that they have similar views (and it's hard to even do that, without relying on hasty generalizations), but that on every subject they agree, with no counterexamples.

So here are three counterexamples:

Democrats want universal healthcare, Republicans don't.
Republicans want to privatize Social Security, Democrats don't.
Democrats want to regulate banks, Republicans don't.

If you can't deal with those, and every single one anyone can come up with then the equivalency argument is shot, and you need to adopt the more sane pose of "Democrats suck, but Republicans suck a lot more" or vice versa if you like the cut of the Republican Party's jib.

Hey there. I guess I've just been focused on other things, but I still love you guys.

According to Occams razor, the theory that makes the fewest amount of assumptions is the right one. IE, do not multiple causes unnecessarily. There are only 2 ways to look at this. Either something came from nothing, which is logically incoherent, or there is an eternal first cause. The eternal first cause is obviously the more simple explanation. So, this eternal first cause created the Universe, and since we know that time, space, matter and energy had a beginning at the big bang, we know that the first cause is timeless, spaceless, immaterial and transcendent, as well as being enormously powerful. Those all match God perfectly. God is the most simple explanation for origins based on the evidence. Since God is uncreated and has always existed, we don't need to explain His origins either. The buck stops with Him.

Many scientific theories about origins violate occams razor but no one seems to care about that. For instance, the fine tuning of the Universe, the precise calibrations of the 30 or so values that make it and life possible, are a mathematical impossibility to come about by pure chance. The ratio of electrons to protons must be better than one part in 10 to the 37th power, otherwise no stars or planets would have formed. That's 1 with 37 zeroes. The expansion rate of the universe must be tuned to within one part in 10 to the 55th power. If you take all of those values together, you have a well crafted Universe which defies explanation by naturalistic means. Scientists have recognized this..even dawkins admits the Universe has the "appearance" of design.

So, to counteract this fact they postulate the multiple universe hypothesis. The corralary would be, if you have one roulette wheel, you are very unlikely to guess the number that comes up. But if you have 500 roulette wheels, your number suddenly becomes very likely to come up. So, if you have multiple universes, you can now explain away design because we just happen to be in the Universe that appears as if it is designed, which is mathematically certain to happen at some point. However, this metaphysical explantion, for which there is no evidence, completely violates occams razor. You now must not only explain all of these Universes and how the laws of physics evolved in them, but also the Universe Generator that is churning them out, which would require even more fine tuning than our Universe has.

On the question of first causes, science is rambling and incoherent, delving into metaphysics which contradict reason and just plain common sense. God is a far more simple explanation than any of this, and it matches the facts of the matter perfectly.

There are plenty of books that I've read where the characters seem to be bisexual and constantly flirt with the idea, especially female characters. I find it to be rather annoying when it comes up so often in the books that it overshadows the story or in some cases becomes the story.

Try reading Laurel K. Hamilton, that author went off the deep end with her character Anita Blake, around book 9 or 10, she just stops with the teasing and has her sleeping with everything and everyone. It got really tedious reading through the book or two following 10, so I stopped reading the series. Plus the books just kept getting shorter and shorter when I saw her new books released. They went from 250-400 pages to about 150 and complaints full of the sex in the book taking up too much of the content.

These guys could probably find another place to publish. I mean after all Laurel K Hamilton delves into beastiality, criticizing her readers for being prudes when they get tired of story turning into her weird sex imaginings.

Thanks for sharing that. While I don't really like how she delves into a few scare tactics and also pushes that lab testing her dietary approach is pretty much an exact match to mine. It certainly makes sense and it would solve a lot of problems if more people adopted this kind of diet.

Being the biggest backers doesn't mean it's being done for religious purposes.

I'm not debating some see it that way. You also have a bunch of people who didn't, too.

Where in that link did Tony Blair was quoted saying this was part of a Christian struggle?! It's loosely about believing it's a good versus evil thing. It's not about killing Muslims because Muslims are evil, or demoralizing Muslim culture to make room for Christian culture.. If you believe it was about killing Muslims, or advancing the interests of Christianity at the expense of Islam, you need your head examined. At no point was Blair ever on a Christian Crusade.

A VERY small group of evangelical Christian soldiers doesn't make the case.

Now, about Obama and Christianity. You do realize Obama at this point pretty much goes to church because it's a political liability if he doesn't. He quite possibly is the least religious president to ever be in office.

He is not intentionally trying to kill Civilians. #1. The statistics you sited are skewed concerning civilian casualties, although I'm not dismissing civilian casualties. Significant civilian casualties have been a mainstay in military action since WWII on all sides, after a brief reprieve in WWI and other wars leading up to it. You do the best you can to limit them while achieving your objectives. The reality is you won't achieve anything if you try to avoid any civilian casualties.

With that said, the article is discussing Predator drone casualties only, which is a small fraction of total casualties. And even then, you have a dispute on statistics, and I agree the US military is not going to give an unbiased number either. However, it's very difficult to tell what the accurate number is at this point.

See the above about civilian casualties as collateral damage. It would be difficult to achieve anything if the primary focus was to avoid them instead of achieving objectives.

Does all this add up to terrorism? No, for several reasons:

1. It isn't intentional, not any part of the objective in conducting them. Terrorist acts are specific explicit targeting of civilians. Often, the more civilians you kill, the better when you're a terrorist.
2. You sited bombings in Tripoli. Part of the objectives in that raid is to topple the oppressive regime in Libya, is it not? And yes, I completely accept that we're not just there for that. Libya has oil resources, etc. we're interested in, but it doesn't change the fact that part of the reason we're there is to free the Libyan people from an oppressive regime. It's pretty silly to site an operation that inadvertently killed civilians to achieve a better life for the Libyan people at large.

Extreme progressives are critical of Obama for many of the things you're siting. Obama isn't an extreme progressive, socialist, communist, etc. as much as QM and WP would love for you to believe. He's a moderate politician who leans to the left. If that's the indictment, I don't think anyone would disagree he's not the most liberal progressive politician since FDR. He's not. To say however he isn't progressive at all is not true either. Honestly, as much oil as there is in Libya, it's not worth military action. There's a bit of idealist progressivism to conduct air strikes against Libya.

And again, I fail to see how that's relevant to the debate of the religion of this guy. He is a Christian, there's no doubt about it. Granted, he's got a warped Christian ideology, but it is Christian. You can't say someone isn't Christian just because you don't agree with their interpretation.

>> ^marbles:

>> ^heropsycho:
The war on terror isn't being waged based on an overt Christian ideology. There's the difference. There are plenty of Muslims in the US military who see no problem fighting radical Islam. Not sure how you missed that, but it's pretty obvious. This guy performed terrorist acts because of his warped Christian ideology.
My second point is wtf does Obama and Progressivism have to do with any of this? Short answer: it doesn't. And yes, this guy is clearly a Christian of the super-nutty variety. Every religion, and even atheists, have their nuts. Why is this so shocking to anyone?
>> ^marbles:
>> ^heropsycho:
1. How so?
2. WTF does that have to do with anything in this video?!
>> ^marbles:
The war against terror is largely a "Christian" crusade and yet I don't see you guys up in arms about it.
Any "progressive" that supports Obama or the Democrat Party is about as much progressive as Breivik is Christian.


1. Christian war hawks bombing and invading Muslim countries. Do some research.
2. Does this video not suggest Breivik is a Christian terrorist?


And as far as the war on terror as a Christian crusade, you have:
-Conservative Christians as the biggest backers of the Iraq war (link)
-Pentagon officials that see the "war on terror" as a religious war between Judeo-Christian civilization and Satan, with Islam of course cast in the latter role (link)
-President Bush using Biblical prophesy to justify the war in Iraq (link)
-Prime Minister Tony Blair viewing his decisions to go to war in Iraq and Kosovo as part of a "Christian battle" (link)

-US Military trying to convert Arabs to Christianity (link)(link)
These examples are just the surface, they don't even really delve into the Zionist components of the wars.

As for your second point--short answer: it has everything to do with it. It exposes your own hypocritical POV. (along with many other's)
Obama is a self professed Christian. He indiscriminately kills civilians with military drones (some estimates put the civilian death rate at 90%, the other 10% are just suspects executed without due process)(link)
Is this not terrorism?
Is Obama not a Christian terrorist?
There is ongoing torture of uncharged suspects, many who are innocent civilians, many who we know are innocent civilians. (link)(link)(link)(link)
Just recently, NATO bombing runs in Tripoli would last for several hours, hitting civilian targets and killing innocents. (link)(link)
Is this not terrorism that is fully supported by Obama and progressives?