Kitty-kickin's! That cats fine PP, he needed some chiding for pickin' that skirmish....it did look like the man got bit. Strange cat bites me indoors....he gets a wall-bouncer!! A domesticated cat that bites a human???...Half-feral and in need of discipline!

Good kittehs don't bites peeeps!!

I guess there's a benefit in teaching someone to use a tool that is capable of killing you. The respect and discipline involved is something of a life lesson, and can be extended to any number of potentially deadly things that we interact with more or less often.

When I was about 12, my dad and I went to a gun range in Florida for the first time, and he put his 1911 .45 in my hands, and showed me how to hold it, how to check if it was loaded, how to load it, and how to shoot it. He showed me how to respect the thing for the destructive life-taker that it is.

"Don't point a gun at anything you don't want to destroy" he said over and over again. I was terrified. I still enjoy shooting guns, even though I don't own any, and don't think I'll ever want one, but I can see the allure.

When you infuse an object with that level of emotional mass... it's like you can feel it in the room with you. The thing becomes more than a tool, it's a little gravity well of destructive power.

That's how I see them anyway. The people who are nonchalant about them scare me though. Stupid kids pointing guns at themselves in facebook cover photos. These people are the reason we can't have nice things.

Wait, wait, wait, did you just compare Falun Gong to Hamas? Hamas, a violent resistance movement with a history of deadly attacks against both military and civilian targets? Falun Gong is a spiritual discipline about bettering oneself and attaining spiritual enlightenment. Being a member of Hamas is in no way similar to practicing Falun Gong.

Final Update:

There are 3 contestants for our recipe contest, one by the way which was butt-stupid easy to enter and win, so reflects the confidence of our trio of takers, pumpkinandstorm, dystopianfuturetoday, and sheppard.

P&S has offered-up another recipe which I chose over the one already listed here:
To follow are the 3 recipes I shall replicate and somewhat summarily present for judgement to a neutral third-party judge, whose culinary judgement I trust impeccably due his years of discipline and dedication to all things gustatory. Plus, he's brutally honest, like I aspire to be.

Wow, I see so many viewing fails here.

1) Yes, some of these people are gun novices. But these people got more training in gun-handling and marksmanship than is required by most states in the U.S. and they STILL failed to stop the shooter.

2) The whole point of the video is that it takes hundreds of hours of training under stress (like in this scenario) in order for people to overcome their natural instincts and avoid a) freezing up or b) accidentally shooting themselves or another innocent in the confusion.

3) How many gun carriers (barring ex-military or police) have had the kind of training mentioned in Point #2? Of those that have, how many continue to put in the training hours necessary to not lose the skill?

It's all great spouting hypotheticals about how a CCW would have saved the day at Sandy Hook, but this video shows that's a patently false statement. What might have resulted in less casualties would have been a CCW in the hands of a highly disciplined individual with combat firearms training experience. How many gun carrying Americans do you know who fit that description?

And even if such a person HAD been in the school on that day, with the shooter wearing a bullet-proof vest and utilizing a semi-automatic rifle, there's no guarantee the outcome would have been any different.

More guns in the hands of undertrained Americans is not the answer. Modifying the social system so that identifying and dealing with mentally unstable individuals before they go on shooting rampages is a priority, though, would be a step in the right direction.

You're cherry-picking. That sentence isn't the key one. I'm not sure what is meant by that sentence (the use of "constraint" is ambiguous), but it would be utterly unscientific if it meant that the stratigraphic position pre-determined the outcome. Geology would be scientistic nonsense like ID, not science.

Yes, and that is the point. If Geology worked like that it would be scientific nonsense, and it does work like that. The stratigraphic position is determined by the index fossils and radiometric dating. The age of the index fossils is determined by the stratigraphic position and radiometric dating. Radiometric dating itself is "checked" by stratigraphic positioning. That doesn't sound like circular reasoning to you?

On the other side the date is determined by the uniformitarian assumptions about radioactive decay rates in the past, and many other things. It assumes, among other things, that the rate will never change. As I showed in my reply the Bicyclerepairman, the rates can indeed change.

Even the next two sentences demonstrate this: "There is no way for a geologist to choose what numerical value a radiometric date will yield, or what position a fossil will be found at in a stratigraphic section. Every piece of data collected like this is an independent check of what has been previously studied."

Now this is the intellectually dishonest part. They say they can't choose where a fossil will be, but they have already the determined that the presence of certain fossils and radiometric dating igneous layers above and below it determines the age of that layer. They don't choose where a fossil is, but they do choose what the age of the layer is that contains the fossil based on their assumptions. So they are basically saying that radiometric dating and stratigraphy is validated by index fossils and radiometric dating, and vice-versa.

The date that is returned is indeed chosen by the scientists as it is based on uniformitarian assumptions that they've made about the past. Perhaps you don't understand how it works, but there is nothing about the rock which reveals its age. They use the secondary evidence of how much radioactive decay of certain elements they believe have occurred, but if the rates aren't always constant, the measurement is worthless. As I showed in my reply to Bicyclerepairman, even secular scientists have acknowledged the rates can change. Therefore it is unreliable on its own, and what is essentially happening is that they are propping up one unprovable assumption with the evidence interpreted through another unprovable assumption.

If geologists were in the habit of treating data this way, scientifically-minded people who entered the field would be disgusted and leave, and form their own new scientific discipline of the study of the earth. The fact that this hasn't happened means the geological method appears scientific to scientific-minded people, if not dogmatists.

It's far more likely that you, a dogmatist and a non-geologist, are cherry-picking information to come up with data that supports your dogma. Dogmatists, by definition, cannot be relied upon for unbiased information that either challenges or confirms their dogma. Their dogma pre-disposes them to coming to wrong conclusions far more than non-dogmatists.

Your argument from incredulity not-withstanding, I think Max Planck sums it up rather nicely:

A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it

There was a paradigm shift from catastrophism to uniformitarianism in the late 19th century. It was a deliberate move away from the idea of a global flood. To make their theories worked, they needed vast amount of time. Most of the contention comes down to how fast or slow certain geological features take to form. Scientists have staked all of their modern research on the theory of deep time, and they interpret all of the evidence through that conclusion. In other words, it has become conventional wisdom..IE, dogma. Please read my reply to Bicyclerepairman to see how bias effects interpretation.

If you examine the history of science, you will see that scientists have had it wrong many times and wasted decades and decades of research on things ultimately proven to be false. The near universal agreement of scientists on any issue is not any indicator of truth.

I'll take 10 minutes to respond to your comments, but I'm not taking 1.5 hours to watch more non-scientific nonsense framed in scientific terms. If there were strong enough evidence that the Earth were a few thousand years old, there would be a branch of geologists studying it. And I'm excluding the dogmatic "creation geology". It is pseudoscience.

In other words, you believe whatever the scientists say and there is no reason to understand the alternative viewpoint. Your dismissal of the material as "non-scientific nonsense framed in scientific terms" flatly shows your intellectual incuriousity, not even having looked at it. Dr. Emil is an accomplished geologist and his discussion is framed in the terminology and methodology used in that field. If you want to debate this subject, you should at the bare minimum understand the basics of the position you are defending and the position you are arguing against. Also, the video is about 1 hour with 30 minutes of questions.

FWIW, according to Wikipedia: "Flood geology contradicts the scientific consensus in geology and paleontology, chemistry, physics, biology, geophysics and stratigraphy". Do you think you can knock all those scientific fields down as well? Have at it.

It's all predicated upon the philosophy of deep time. Deep time is the cornerstone of modern research, and it supported by flimsy, circumstantial evidence. If you can show deep time is false, then all of it crumbles.

Also, "former atheist" means "current dogmatist". You don't find it astounding that his conversion happened to coincide with his discovery that the evidence didn't hold up? I do. Evidence of non-scientific thinking.

It's interesting you're still inventing reasons why you shouldn't watch the video. You don't know anything about the man but you make wrongheaded assumptions about him. Such as that he converted because he had doubts about the evidence in Geology not holding up. Yet, that isn't the reason he converted, and it had nothing to do with his work as a geologist. Your conclusions here are evidence of non-scientific thinking.

You're cherry-picking. That sentence isn't the key one. I'm not sure what is meant by that sentence (the use of "constraint" is ambiguous), but it would be utterly unscientific if it meant that the stratigraphic position pre-determined the outcome. Geology would be scientistic nonsense like ID, not science.

Even the next two sentences demonstrate this: "There is no way for a geologist to choose what numerical value a radiometric date will yield, or what position a fossil will be found at in a stratigraphic section. Every piece of data collected like this is an independent check of what has been previously studied."

If geologists were in the habit of treating data this way, scientifically-minded people who entered the field would be disgusted and leave, and form their own new scientific discipline of the study of the earth. The fact that this hasn't happened means the geological method appears scientific to scientific-minded people, if not dogmatists.

It's far more likely that you, a dogmatist and a non-geologist, are cherry-picking information to come up with data that supports your dogma. Dogmatists, by definition, cannot be relied upon for unbiased information that either challenges or confirms their dogma. Their dogma pre-disposes them to coming to wrong conclusions far more than non-dogmatists.

Anything scientific can be independently verified by someone else, and if a scientists makes a strong claim and it's later proven wrong, that scientist's credibility is shot and their career severely damaged. So-called ID "scientists", on the other hand, can make all the wild assertions they want, and if something is proven false (again) they lose nothing, and may even gain standing in the ID community for trying -- they've shown their heart is in the right place, even if they're incompetent scientists.

Sample: lamentations, lamentations, lamentations worldwide

Watch out (repeated)

LB: In the beginning men and women had an obligation to their children
Lateef: Then there was a real and true necessity in need for building
LB: There was still the discipline and will proliferate the lineage
Lat: Matters of the spirit, mind, and body taken serious
LB: But the way that we became what we became
Somebody please explain
Lat: Well we could tell you if you're curious
Those that reign got the masses in chains
And their minds enslaved
Both: And that's the part that makes me furious

Watch out (repeated)

Both: Cos they're definitely aint no info readily avai'
Lable to the general A (?) people so let me know x2

Lat: It's easily this multimedia crews that feed you to the neediest
It's the greediest trying to cheat us out of our God given right
LB: To a quality education minimal opportunities available
Limited occupations we are not given a choice
Lat: Or given a voice within a political system pimped and gangsta'd out
Wherein the people are the victim sheep being lead about
LB: While the followers and the patrons of any faith outside the mainstream
Are being raided, falsely painted as endangering the way things work
Lat: And the way things are remain
LB: I can't believe that things aint worse
Lat: When all the wicked seeds we've sown have grown
LB: And poisoned all the Earth
Lat: It serves us right
LB: Can't really act surprised when the harvest has no worth
Lat: The curse that's lurking round the corner
Both: Is the product of our work

Watch out (repeated)

Right now
LB: The holy war's growing opposing forces polling of the origins
Of which have been historically been ignored
Right now
Lat: Our foreign policy is mallets of democracy
Upholding an aristocracy of secret terrorist cells
Right now
LB: The global poverty that we accept so commonly
Turns people into property one step away from hell
Right now
Lat: Healthcare battles bioengineering for the worldwide scare
Of the plague the we're fearing
Right now
LB: They got the right to put our lives under surveillance
Right now
Lat: They got the right to lock us up we don't obey them
Right now
LB: Modern education don't prepare the youth
Right now
Right now
Both: Do what you gotta do
Right now
LB: There's people shooting at people that's throwing stones
Right now
Lat: There's a movement of people across the globe
Right now
Both: Right now is where we're at
What goes around comes around
Time for action before the last trumpet sounds

You can't pick which evidence to consider.

Why not?

Radiometric dating tells us when the Earth was created. That's convincing evidence. Address it.

I've addressed it in the past but these debates don't go anywhere. I haven't found that anyone is willing to have an intelligent conversation on it.

Also, do you think scientists have a specific "Earth age = 4.5 billion years" agenda that they're trying to prove? Or do you just think scientists are simply wrong in their conclusions again and again, and it's a coincidence that they keep arriving at roughly the same number across all the different disciplines?

I think they're wrong in their assumptions, and that they interpret the evidence through the conclusion, rather than arriving at the conclusion because of the evidence. The empirical evidence that actually proves any of these theories is actually very weak or non-existent.

Scientific disciplines that young earth creationism contradicts (from Wiki, which has citations):

Physics and chemistry (including absolute dating methods), geology, astronomy, cosmology, paleontology, molecular biology, genomics, linguistics, anthropology, archaeology, climatology and dendrochronology among others.

Damn, this scientific conspiracy goes deep!

You can't pick which evidence to consider. Radiometric dating tells us when the Earth was created. That's convincing evidence. Address it.

Also, do you think scientists have a specific "Earth age = 4.5 billion years" agenda that they're trying to prove? Or do you just think scientists are simply wrong in their conclusions again and again, and it's a coincidence that they keep arriving at roughly the same number across all the different disciplines?

>> ^Drachen_Jager:

@aaronfr
I lived in a heavily mined area for six months, so I think I know how aware people are in those situations. However, I don't expect a five year old kid to have that same discipline, and quelle surprise, most of those who are injured or killed by old minefields are children. I don't think your point here is relevant.
When these things are done rolling around the desert, what is the certainty that desert is clear? If they don't clear spaces so they're actually safe, what's the point? Randomly detonate a few mines?
There's a reason it's expensive to clear mines properly, and comparing these things to proper mine clearance, and then comparing the pricetag is laughable.

I agree with you in part, but I think the strong form of your argument is a bit much. Certainly randomly detonating a few mines is helpful. If you can send some arbitrarily large number of these things (30 per mine you would have cleared in a sweep) rolling over the desert until you are ultimately detonating very few mines then it is also substantially less likely that a wayward 5 y.o. is going to stumble on one. It doesn't seem like an all or none proposition. I agree, before an area can be designated clear it should be properly swept. However, properly clearing the field is probably too expensive to be feasible. At least reducing the danger could save lives when those kids that don't know any better happen to wander after a stray ball in the still potentially dangerous mine field. Also, the number of mines that need to be safely disarmed could be reduced.

@aaronfr

Yeah, I think I have some idea how to clear landmines. I was the only one in my mine warfare class to spot the anti-lift device the instructors had placed next to one of the mines in the test. Yes, there is some danger to it, but the thing about clearing landmines that way, is that when you're done, the area is 99% certain to be clear.

I lived in a heavily mined area for six months, so I think I know how aware people are in those situations. However, I don't expect a five year old kid to have that same discipline, and quelle surprise, most of those who are injured or killed by old minefields are children. I don't think your point here is relevant.

When these things are done rolling around the desert, what is the certainty that desert is clear? If they don't clear spaces so they're actually safe, what's the point? Randomly detonate a few mines?

There's a reason it's expensive to clear mines properly, and comparing these things to proper mine clearance, and then comparing the pricetag is laughable.

I do agree with you on one thing, there are a lot of misconceptions here, and they seem to all be on your side of the conversation.

Having served and cooked (separate and unequal disciplines) , and feeling compelled to remain stern in writ yet fair with regard to sentiment (not like Deano), we will allow this to remain on the cooking channel and return the place-setting viddy deferring to the man who has just recently been schooled in the proper use of eating utensils....Oh wait, already done. Congratulations Mr. Fisk.