I grew up in a Christian home (Methodist) but never really bought in and considered myself an atheist from about ~12 years old or so.

@poolcleaner said that atheists might be the worst at "respect(ing) my beliefs and recogniz(ing) that I am not recruiting them and they are not recruiting me".

There's two parts of that. Respecting other beliefs, and not proselytizing.

Just speaking for myself, I would say that I am an atheist specifically because I don't respect the Christian beliefs that I grew up with, and feel much the same way about the dogmatic elements of any religion. Most religions share the basic tenet of the "Golden Rule" (or claim that they do), and as far as I am concerned that is the only thing of value to be found in any religion -- although it can exist perfectly fine outside of any religious context.

That's where proselytizing comes in though. For a while when I was younger, I wanted to "spread the good news" of atheism -- to show others what was so obvious and important to me, that idea that the Golden Rule works just as well outside of any religious context. I was "indignant" (as poolcleaner put it) and quick to tell people that I am atheist and to sort of "pick a fight" about it. I wanted to show people just how stupid and wrong they were.

I think LOTS of atheists are like that, especially early on after they part ways with religion. To be fair, a lot of that is defensiveness since atheists tend to get proselytized to a LOT by Christians that learn/discover that they are an atheist -- especially in the US.

Now I'm 20 years older and I live in a country that is 95% Buddhist, 4% Islamic, and 1% Christian/Other. Thailand isn't even really close to the most diverse Asian country in religious terms (Singapore has 5 religions with 10%+ of the population, with Buddhist being the most at 34%) but there is an air of practiced religious acceptance / tolerance here that is WAY different from back home in the US.

I'd wager that amongst the major religions, Christianity might contain the highest percentage of the "proselytizing type" -- those that really strongly believe in the message enough to want to spread it to those who don't, or those that have never really questioned their beliefs but who nonetheless buy in enough to think that it is important to get it out there. On the other hand, there are many more Christians who may be very strong believers but who are comfortable keeping that all internal and not proselytizing.

With atheists, I'd say that there is a high correlation between being very "out" / open about their atheism and being the "proselytizing type" of atheist. So, if you know that someone is an atheist, it is fairly likely that they will be a bit "indignant" about it. If someone is an atheist but doesn't feel the need to inform others about it, most people would never know/assume they were an atheist. I'm not talking about "closeted" atheists; just the difference between those who are going to tell you within 10 minutes of meeting you that they are an atheist without the subject ever coming up, and those that will only mention it if you directly ask them about it.

Keeping that it mind, I can actually believe that from an outside perspective, known atheists might be more aggressive than known Christians just due to that sort of selection bias. Maybe.

Pretty simple. He's a bit out of his element, being on someone else's show, and he's a bit rusty, after quitting his show a year and a half ago.

The examples in this video (picture wise) are bad.

A big point in 'the prince' was that one needs to appear as a good person, regardless of whether or not you are or are not good.

Hence the best examples would be people who were perceived as virtuous, when they behind the scenes were sometimes not [when they needed to be not virtuous in order to achieve their goals].

Showing plenty of examples of people historically perceived as villains, is actually not the point. In fact, Machiavelli makes a point of how being perceived as bad runs a high risk of ending your reign.

One example in the book is of a ruler who assigns a man to ruthlessly crush disorder in a city. The man ruthlessly crushes disorder, and earns the hatred of the citizens. The ruler comes to the city, kills the man (cuts off his head and takes it out to show people), and claims to have liberated the people from this abusive man. In doing so, he both swiftly eliminates the disorder, demonstrates his authority, and ends up appearing as the good guy (one who cares for the suffering of the people and earns the people's appreciation).




The prince is a historical case study of different rulers throughout history, their circumstances, their intentions, their actions, and their success/failure, and what functional elements interconnected these factors. It's a game theory analysis for monarchs. Primarily technical (morality outside of its scope, morality being neither promoted nor admonished).

(The prince was not Machiavelli's personal opinion of how one should act - he personally preferred virtue and the republic. Personal preference was not the point of 'the prince'.)

-scheherazade

@Payback: Forgot to say, because I was on a Jean-Pierre Jeunet rant, but David Fincher directed Alien 3, so *thumbs up* -- it wasn't that boring of a film, with some strange elements of a monastic lifestyle among criminals. I thought it was more thought provoking than Prometheus.

I am a fan of Alien Rez, not because of Joss Whedon's patchwork script, but because at least it had the familiar comedic elements of Jean-Pierre Jeunet and his usual returning ensemble cast (Ron Pearlamn, Dominique Pinon), as well as Sigorney Weaver being a badass mother.

Just my opinion. I love all of Jeunet's films; as wild and varied as the genres, his film style and character driven stories transcend the genre. City of Lost Child, Amelie, Delcatessen, Micmacs -- really excellent track record. Cool bit of science fiction in all of his films, even if just sort of a chaotic sense of fate and surrealism.

Ridley Scott is hit or miss -- but then again, Ridley Scott has far more a prolific film career so it's like arguing the planetary distances versus the intergalactic distances, we can't fully comprehend the multitude of influences involved in making a film and the secret to making it a good film, so what does it matter if it's 1 astronomical unit, 2 light years, or 26 billion light years, it's all beautiful art.

My kindness aside, his last 5 films: Robin Hood, Prometheus, The Counselor, Exodus, The Martian -- typical and BORING blockbustery movies. 1492 and everything after have been epic suck fests. Even Hannibal was a let down. They're all movies you're sort of excited about, if it weren't for the fact that he drags them out and adds little element of noticeable flair. Like Spielberg, hidden in realism. I want the stylistic elements of Alien and Blade Runner and Legend that PULLED YOU OUT of the movie experience to say loudly: This is art.

The soundtracks especially -- Ridley Scott replaced the original scoring of his movie Legend, which was a dazzling score by Tangerine Dream -- he replaced it with Jerry Goldsmith in rerelease... which sort of makes it all come full circle when you listen to the awful, typically EPIC score of Prometheus, minus all the atmosphere that the original soundtrack provided.

pretty good....however as soon as i saw the uncanny tandem i suspected there were other cgi elements. It immediately looked wrong with three wheels.

Couldn't agree more! The writer is pretty fresh and the director(s) are stunt guys. Beyond that, I don't know much about the production, but both John Wick and John Wick 2 are precise and well choreographed gunfu with elements of the Matrix/Indigo Prophecy, Hitman, Assassin's Creed, Bruce Lee movies, and on and on. Star power, as well.

I have Jack Reacher (same writer as Usual Suspects), John Wick, Collateral (Michael Mann), and Jason Bourne in the same stack.

In 2002, when I was studying film I had a chance to listen to Doug Liman, the director of The Bourne Identity talk about the making of the film. He hadn't really done much at the time, but now he's in the thick of these highly stylized, star powered, accurate (bullet count, stunts, etc.) Action flicks.

The most interesting graph happens at roughly 4:38. 3.7 trillion dollars, made up of roughly 1/7th discretionary spending, 1/7th defense, and 5/7ths SS/Medi*/Interest.

The one philosophical holdout that I still appreciate about the GOP platform is generally smaller government. But for all they harp on that, they usually do jack shit to actually cut down on that total from the graph.

That huge 5/7ths portion is close to untouchable; or at least it would be political suicide to mess with any of that stuff. The only exception is the interest payments, which *do* have to be paid, but we could work to reduce the debt which would in turn reduce interest. How to do that? Raise taxes. And suddenly all the Republicans think it's a terrible idea.

That leaves the 1/5th from Defense and 1/5th from other Discretionary spending. To me, Defense is the obvious target. If you really want to tighten the belt and be fiscally conservative, do we actually NEED to spend all that on defense? Couldn't it be cut in half or even more drastically and we'd still easily be able to actually, you know, defend the country? But again, pretty much zero Republican interest in cutting Defense budget, unless you're a kooky fringe element like Ron Paul with zero intra-party backing.

So that leaves the 1/5th of Discretionary spending. And yeah, sometimes Republicans do actually make cuts here. At best, they cut "drop in the bucket" type stuff like mentioned in the video, with negligible effect on the budget and a loss of programs that are valued by some/many. At worst, you end up like KansasBrownbackistan, with zero budget for schools, etc.

That rift between party platform and actual action is the biggest reason that I tend to have *zero* interest in voting Republican for any national office, in spite of still being registered as a Republican. State offices (governor, state legislature, etc.) are slightly more palatable places to consider voting in an R, but not by much. I do think they tend to be good options for Local government offices, especially for more rural areas. On the other hand, D's tend to be much better at promoting things like Bond Issues for improving schools, maintaining infrastructure, etc.

Actually, matter does appear and disappear from and to nothing. There are energy fields that permeate space, and when their potential gets too high, they collapse and eject a particle. Similarly, particles can be destroyed or decay and upon that event they cause a spike in the background energy fields.

One of the essential functions of a collier is to compress a bunch of crap into a tiny spot, so that when enough decays in that specific spot it will cause such a local spike in energy that new particles must subsequently be ejected (particles that are produced at some calculated energy level - different energy levels producing different ejections).

*This is at the subatomic level. Large collections of matter don't just convert to energy.

I know plenty of people roll eyes at that, but the math upon which those machines are built are using the same math that makes things like modern lithography machines work (they manipulate tiny patterns of molecules). You basically prove the math every time you use a cell phone (thing with modern micro chips).

...

But that's beside the point. If there ever was 'nothing', the question isn't "whether or not god exists to have made things" - it's "why do things exist". God could be an answer. As could infinite other possibilities.

...

Personally, eternity is the answer I assume is most likely to be correct. Because you don't have to prove anything. The universe need not be static - but if something was always there (even just energy fields), then there is an eternity in one form or anther.

Background energy and quantum tunneling are a neat concept (referring to metastability). Because you can have a big-bang like event if the background energy level tunnels to a lower state, expanding a new space starting at that point, re-writing the laws of physics in its area of existence. Meaning that our universe as we know it can simply be one of many bubbles of expanding tunneling events - created at the time of the event, and due to be overwritten by another at some point. Essentially a non-permanent local what-we-percieve-as-a-universe, among many. (I'm avoiding the concept that time and space are relative to each bubble, and there is no concept of an overarching time and place outside of any one event).

(All this comes from taking formulas that model measurements of reality, globing them into larger models, and then exploring the limits of those models at extreme values/limits. ... with a much lagging experimental base slowly proving and disproving elements of the model (and forcing model refinement upon a disproval, so that the model encompasses the new test data))

-scheherazade

For all I know, the Syrian secessionists (if that's what the original local revolutionists should be called) are all gone and the fighters of today are nearly all foreign invaders

Given that both the government and ISIS armies both specifically targeted them first they likely are all gone. If you go back to Al Jazeera's coverage of the early Russian offensives, their airstrikes and attacks were ignoring the ISIS held territory and only hitting the moderate/legitimate rebels. Similarly, pretty much all reports of the ISIS foreign fighters coming in were that they never pretended to support the rebels, but merely replaced them demanding obedience or death.

@radx

The foreign element is fighting both sides of the war. The strongest fighting force on the 'rebel' side is ISIS and the strongest fighting force overall is the Russians fighting for Assad. If foreign support makes the rebels illegitimate doesn't it do the same for Assad?

And it is less of a TV show then it is 3 movies with continuing elements released each year.

Prometheus was almost great, but there were too many "that's fucking stupid" elements. The entire crew was shit, not a single one was likable. At least with the space truckers in Alien, they were all sorts of assholes, but they were likable assholes. In Prom, they were just unpleasant people, doing unpleasant things, while generally being bad people - I hate them all still.

One thing Prometheus had going for it was visuals - Ridley Scott knows how to film a good looking film, I don't really think anyone can argue that. I really hope the story won't get fucked over this time, and I hope it won't just be a retread either. The reason Aliens was so great, is that it did something new with the franchise; prometheus tried and failed to do that well.

Alien 3 was not actually so shit, I think. It made some damn near unforgivable choices in killing off Newt and Hicks off screen, but aside from that I actually liked it. Close to a retread of Alien, but still a twist on it.

A4 was just shit with some good bits in - the many twisted clones of ripley, the Auton, and the aliens in water was all fun things. The rest is garbage.

I'm cautiously optimistic about Covenant, more classic horror, I wager, but with Scott's signature visuals.. we'll see!

Interesting question.

My personal take is that I wouldn't call it a "Christmas movie" because the Christmas elements aren't particularly integral to the story, but it is borderline.

Elf and Ernest Saves Christmas are Christmas movies. Home Alone and Die Hard are harder to call, but I'd say yes for Home Alone and no for Die hard.

Yes, that's one of the reasons I held off posting it. It's the part that's stuck most strongly in my mind. I checked the posting rules carefully, and they say:

[...]not considered "snuff" if presented as a limited, incidental portion of a lengthy educational, informative news report or documentary that encompasses a much broader narrative

So I don't think I'm violating the spirit or letter of the rules. That also matches with my own judgement of what I would or wouldn't want to see, which was the other reason I wasn't sure about posting. It's also why I put an nsfw tag, a warning in the title, and used a full un-edited copy (there are several that are parts of tv shows that sensationalise it a bit much for my comfort).

In the end, I personally think the educational value far outweighs the disturbing elements, but I wouldn't blame anyone for thinking otherwise.

Who the fuck designs a game like that?
I've seen a lot of crap in my days but this truly deserves the "You're winner!" trophy. 3 real time days for a boss battle? Pushing a car as a gameplay element? WTF, Japan? I thought you were supposed to be entertaining?!