>> ^deathcow:

> If you take the recommended daily dose, it puts you at about 1.6mgs of fluoride a day.
Fluorine bound into Fluoxetine is a lot different than fluorine bound into fluoride. You can eat all the salt you want but eating elemental chlorine and elemental sodium would kill you and light you on fire. Groaningly bad that he would equate drinking fluoride to being the same as eating Fluoxetine.


Yea, people seem to think of chemistry like cooking, where a molecule is just a loose collection of ingredients.


When people talk about the health risks of "fluoride" they're usually talking about Sodium Fluoride, which is an ionic compound and splits into Na+ and F- when dissolved in water (the negatively charged fluorine ion is called "fluoride").

Excessive amounts of fluoride (well above what is generally in tap water) can lead to severe health problems. Perhaps lower amounts cause problems too, but the evidence is less clear.

Prozac contains three covalently bonded fluorine atoms which do not split off when being metabolized. Prozac has it's own health impacts, but not because it produces fluoride ions.

> If you take the recommended daily dose, it puts you at about 1.6mgs of fluoride a day.

Fluorine bound into Fluoxetine is a lot different than fluorine bound into fluoride. You can eat all the salt you want but eating elemental chlorine and elemental sodium would kill you and light you on fire. Groaningly bad that he would equate drinking fluoride to being the same as eating Fluoxetine.

Oh no! The cat has declared war and had gone on a ram raid!

*groan*

>> ^joedirt:

I totally heard a groaning. why would someone not just lay down two blocks when they are down there ignoring their surrounding?

Creepers don't actually groan, that was just a zombie in the walls. The only sound creepers make is a short hiss, followed by a very large "boom"

I totally heard a groaning. why would someone not just lay down two blocks when they are down there ignoring their surrounding?

First off, major LOL, I'm an atheist, so thanks for assuming I'm Christian but I ain't.

Ok, I'm wrong. You're not religious but you certainly come off as excessively and disproportionately apologetic/sympathetic towards it. Sort of an anecdote that being an atheist doesn't necessarily mean one can think clearly about all things, but is that because I've been unable to understand you or is that because you've been unable to properly lay-out-on-the-table your position?.


I believe Hitchens, Dawkins, Harris, and those like them are doing atheists everywhere a disservice with their absolutist language (i.e. all religious people are crazy, stupid, etc., all religions are evil, etc., and so on and so forth). This makes atheists everywhere look like some kind of reverse hate-mongers.

This is a modification of your previous statement that they were just as fundamentalist as those they criticize, which I think is a tad more reasonable but still way off the mark. Please show the evidence that Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris, or Dennett is as fundamentalist and hateful as the religious fundamentalists they criticize (or have made blanket statements about all religious people). This is a statement you made earlier and you should have no problem backing this up. I'm pissed off because you're carelessly saying stuff like this as if its an established fact. It is not. You have all your work ahead of you.

Also, Dawkins et al. do NOT just run around crudely saying ALL religious people are stupid, deluded, or idiots. This is a strawman. They reserve their scorn of the religious mindset in proportion to their nastiness/harm to society. They're very careful to not make blanket statements regarding those who, through no choice of their own, were brought up religiously and have not been able to shake it off.

Yes, people who believe things for which there is no evidence ARE deluded, irregardless of the offense taken at such a statement. You should already understand that these men value truth over comfortable lies, and when informing someone of their delusions (for example, taking calls from a religious listener on a radio station) they (with not the not surprising at all exception of Hitchens) tend to be very explicit in explaining that they aren't being contemptuous or disdainful when they say say this, it is simply the truth. They do not just outright rudely call people idiots or morons. I'd like to see an example of this as I've never seen it.


It is exactly the kind of language of the fundamentalist opponents they profess to hate. Think about radical Islam--we're all Western devils because we don't subscribe to Sharia law, right?

Exactly, eh? Well then you should have no problem supplying some quotes with the full context (no quotemines) that measure up then. Regurgitating ignorant, second-hand blanket statements don't count.


The link I posted that compared Hitchens to Malcom X is spot on. Malcom X got a lot of media attention for his radical views, but in the end what did he accomplish? We don't celebrate Malcom X Day, you'll notice. Martin Luther King's Jr.'s message of cooperation and mutual understanding is what moved people's hearts on both sides of the divide and got us moving forward as a country, not Malcom X's divisiveness.

This comparison is vague as hell. One could replace Hitchens with most any influential/controversial thinker and it would still sound as if it were authoritative. Who the hell is saying Christopher Hitchens HAS to be that guy and why? There's plenty of room for all kinds, the MLKs and the Malcom-Xs. Basically you want Christopher to be something other than what he is.


Confronting and dealing with those people is going to require cooperation and dialogue between both the religious and non-religious people, between theists and atheists, between gnostics and agnostics.

You'll find no disagreement there from me. We only differ in our approach.


The failure of incredibly intelligent men like Hitchens to see this and their insistence on furthering the divisiveness on this issue is a great tragedy in my opinion. They don't see the forest through the trees. You want to prevent religion from dominating the political and cultural scene? So do a lot of religious people (the vast majority in most Western states). And their numbers VASTLY outnumber the atheists. Insulting those people who are clearly your potential allies hardly seems like a good way to go about getting them to see your point of view."

Do you really believe those leaders of the major religious institutions will relinquish their incommensurable power and malign influence on society if atheists (and the common people in general) just start fawning and kissing their asses and showing undue respect to these self-appointed, inherently corrupt, deluded arbiters of a lying morality? Pointing out their harmful ideology is hurting the cause of reason? You're placing far too much importance on tone and not truth.


When was the last time someone called you an idiot and you just sat there calmly and said, "You know what, you're right! I AM an idiot!

Provide some examples of the New Atheist's doing literally this and you may have a point. They don't. I have never once seen Dawkins, Hitchens, Dennett, or Harris calling saying "You're stupid, an idiot, a moron." UNLESS they (I really think only Hitchens would qualify here) were thoroughly provoked by an incredulous and ignorant bigot. More to the point, if one infers from the sum total of the reasoned arguments leveled against them that the only conclusion is that they must be an idiot for believing nonsense then that does NOT reflect on the person making the argument.

It seems as if you want moderate religious people to be coddled and not treated as the adults. Kid's gloves are for kids.


On a side note, I included the clip from Hitchens' brother because he points out the fact that Hitchens has built himself a tower, secluded himself inside of it, and is simply hurling missiles at anything that moves outside without bothering to try to engage in real dialogue.

And that's simply his opinion, in which he didn't really even attempt to qualify. Family members are probably the least objective source of information when it comes to the psychological state of another member that one could possibly ask for! Ask any practicing psychiatrist. The only reason this is authoritative to you at all is because it perfectly reaffirms a bias you've already held. This seems to be a common theme here.


I think the clip in this vid from the Glenn Beck show is the most telling of this, where Beck is trying to tell him that he doesn't consider Hitchens an enemy and Hitchens is actively trying to make Beck an enemy. He's not interested in real dialogue (to be fair to Hitchens, neither are many of his debate opponents)

<groan> He's not TRYING to make Beck his enemy. It'd be like me constantly provoking and demonizing and lying about someone and then wondering why he/she would have the nerve to not be my friend, it beggars belief! Beck has made himself an enemy of the reasonable, not the other way around and he most definitely isn't trying to "have a dialogue". I'm really starting to question why I even bothered responding at this point.


He's interested in making smart-alec comments and getting good sound bites--which is fine for an entertainer but doesn't get my respect for him as a thinker.

He loves a good debate, why is this surprising? It is what he is good at and his life's blood. Being entertaining does not by fiat exclude the substance of his arguments, which he is able to deftly supply in spades with incredible recall and erudition. Since you haven't argued the substance but merely the style in which its delivered (and shown yourself to have not even bothered to read their written works before you impugn your own personal bias onto them), you basically have just openly admitted that it isn't substance you place importance on in a good thinker but TONE. Well, to that I say, good luck.

The liberal mediopoly lasted from the 40s through the mid-90s. Government schools with a "new" pro-socialist-government message and social engineering experiments have been around since the 70s. The kollijes are a politically-correct joke. And Hollywood has been a liberal mecca and left-wing propaganda machine since post WW2. 90% of journalists identify with the Democrat party.

You mean to tell with all those advantages, FOX is still kicking ratings a$$?

The real reason the leftmedia is dying (and deserves to) is they no longer question authority when authority means leftists in power. Any vestige of 'mainstream' media objectivity vanished during the 2008 election.

So now the Red House, groaning with incompetents and radicals, can't take the heat?

Good.

November 2nd.

When he was in Utah, he seemed like a nice guy. 10 years later and he's a complete douche.

- That being said you do have to hide your douche side in Utah. Just look at Glenn Beck!
(Audience groans...)(BTW, yes Glenn is a outside of Utah Mormon--that, is also another story about Utah and it's middleman theocracy.)

I haven't seen that new Will Ferrel movie with Mark Wahlberg where they're cops, but it looked possibly funny from the trailers. I think Wahlberg is a better actor than most people give him credit for...agree with whoever said he's probably bad at picking scripts/directors. I thought his character was great in The Departed, no matter what you think of the movie.

As for Shymalan, big WTF to the water thing in Signs. I can't think of a bigger disappointment and letdown in a movie, though I'm sure there are worse...it'd be tough to come up with a list that tops it IMO. Also, I liked The Village even though the twist ending was questionable, I enjoyed the rest.

The rest of his movies have been mostly terrible, IMO...I'm one of the people groaning in the theater. His name attached to a movie has obviously ceased to be a reason to see something for the vast majority of people...and Devil looks like a massive shitpile.

The ostentatious marketing doesn't help. 'From the Mind of M. Night Shyamalan' should elicite groans.

"Oh, he has sought fit to share another brilliant tale with us, the unwashed masses. Please accept $20 as offering from my girlfriend and I and provide us respite from our weary lives."

I had a very similar experience to the beginning of this video. I saw the trailer for Devil for the first time when in a crowded theater just before Scott Pilgrim. The entire crowd was silent during the trailer until "From the mind of M. Night Shyamalan" came across the screen. It was then the ENTIRE crowd groaned loudly, and then started to talk through the rest of the trailer, obviously losing all interest. It was pretty funny.

By the time it gets to about the 3:50 area you can hear the whole thing groaning just from the stress. Also, at 4:40 (you can see it before) is the smoke plume in the far back the launch origin? Might be the other booster, but that plume looked like it was screwed up by atmospherics.

/edit- Definitely not the other booster.

{groan}

What? Temper trap are aussie?

You know, I love this song because it starts out and I think its some shitty song I cant think of...maybe a phil collins song. Yeah the one about his father. Anyway, so I groan, then I realise its actually an awesome song that I like.

EDIT: That is a brilliant video clip.

i'm sure if the straw/hay was clean, it may eventually sink when the water fills the voids in the porous hay. however oil floats... so chances are (non-scientific opinion incoming) oil-laden straw would float.

saltwater is more dense than freshwater (SW = 1.025, FW = 1.0), so it's even more difficult to sink hay, let alone oil soaked hay.

and regarding the solution proposed? why not? i mean, if our choices are 1) possible failure on cleanup at the cost of beef/milk prices rising, or 2) Gulf-coast wasteland... HAY, give it a try! (*groan*)

edit: apparently this idea is already in place using hair, nylon fibers, etc. not entirely sure on the reliability of the link, but here it is anyway: http://www.matteroftrust.org/