1- Of course not. It is well known and documented that police stop and harass people depending of factors such as color, where they live, class, etc. The drug war is a prime example of a set of laws that everyone breaks, but are selectively enforced. There are many others, if you want to get into it.

Ah, yes, LA, that epicenter of police justice. Home of dirty cops who make up evidence to convict folks. Didn't they recently have to overturn hundreds of convictions due to dirty cops' behavior?

>> ^volumptuous:
1- Bullshit point. Citing/ticketing a person for breaking the law happens on every "side of the track", or whatever you're calling it. In fact, this "side of the track" is the officers beat. This is where he is every day. These are the people he is served to protect.
2- If you read this thread, you'd see my earlier account of my friend being ticketed for this same thing. My friend is also white, blonde, blue-eyed and makes a lot of money. But, cops didn't care, they saw a guy jaywalking and pulled him over. He wasn't suckerpunched because I didn't try to intervene and then push the officer like the girl in this video!
3- One girl was 19. Not a minor. The other (who pushed him) is 17. You're treating them like they're 8 or 9 years old.
4- Someone in the crowd yelled out "there's going to be a riot, right here".
5- The officer needs more training in subduing a perp. Otherwise, he ended the situation appropriately.
6- I've been arrested three times in my life. I didn't fight back during any one of them, nor did I call the officers names, or try to run away.
I lived for years in downtown Detroit, and now I live in one of the most violent, gang ridden parts of Los Angeles. Please do NOT tell me anything about color prejudice or police conduct. It seems the one here with no experience with law enforcement, or gang voilence, are the ones so quick to point the finger at us.
I'm one of the first to point out police misconduct, and basically have very little respect for authority. But that disrespect doesn't make me blind and cry wolf every time a cop arrests someone.
btw: Longde - your post above shows exactly what happened. People were breaking the law, the cop tried to stop them, they resisted, one pushed the cop, the cop ended the situation. The end.
>> ^longde:
1) I think the girls were stupid and should be taught how to deal with officers who have no respect for your age or gender, especially if you live on the wrong side of the tracks
2) I just can't imagine this happening to some of the skinny blonds I knew in high school, some of whom were just as crazy. I can't see them being suckerpunched. can you?
3) Despite some of you wanting to make an exception for these girls because they don't fit the phenotype you prefer, they are kids and minors, with the same mentality as such. It absolutely does matter in this situation.
4) The crowd was not hysterical, not a mob, not a riot. Look at their behavior, not their skin color. They were very restrained, not physically interfering at all. Just paying attention and recording to make sure this didn't turn into another 'accidental' cop murder. Given the history of cops, I can't blame those folks for being wary.
5) The officer obviously needs more training. To let a jaywalking infraction escalate into punching a 17 year old girl is unacceptable.
6) You law and order types would not be quiet and respectful if you thought some officer arresting you was in the wrong. You feel the way you do because you seldom encounter aggressive cops. Well, some people deal with that type everyday.

1- Bullshit point. Citing/ticketing a person for breaking the law happens on every "side of the track", or whatever you're calling it. In fact, this "side of the track" is the officers beat. This is where he is every day. These are the people he is served to protect.

2- If you read this thread, you'd see my earlier account of my friend being ticketed for this same thing. My friend is also white, blonde, blue-eyed and makes a lot of money. But, cops didn't care, they saw a guy jaywalking and pulled him over. He wasn't suckerpunched because I didn't try to intervene and then push the officer like the girl in this video!

3- One girl was 19. Not a minor. The other (who pushed him) is 17. You're treating them like they're 8 or 9 years old.

4- Someone in the crowd yelled out "there's going to be a riot, right here".

5- The officer needs more training in subduing a perp. Otherwise, he ended the situation appropriately.

6- I've been arrested three times in my life. I didn't fight back during any one of them, nor did I call the officers names, or try to run away.

I lived for years in downtown Detroit, and now I live in one of the most violent, gang ridden parts of Los Angeles. Please do NOT tell me anything about color prejudice or police conduct. It seems the one here with no experience with law enforcement, or gang voilence, are the ones so quick to point the finger at us.

I'm one of the first to point out police misconduct, and basically have very little respect for authority. But that disrespect doesn't make me blind and cry wolf every time a cop arrests someone.


btw: Longde - your post above shows exactly what happened. People were breaking the law, the cop tried to stop them, they resisted, one pushed the cop, the cop ended the situation. The end.



>> ^longde:

1) I think the girls were stupid and should be taught how to deal with officers who have no respect for your age or gender, especially if you live on the wrong side of the tracks
2) I just can't imagine this happening to some of the skinny blonds I knew in high school, some of whom were just as crazy. I can't see them being suckerpunched. can you?
3) Despite some of you wanting to make an exception for these girls because they don't fit the phenotype you prefer, they are kids and minors, with the same mentality as such. It absolutely does matter in this situation.
4) The crowd was not hysterical, not a mob, not a riot. Look at their behavior, not their skin color. They were very restrained, not physically interfering at all. Just paying attention and recording to make sure this didn't turn into another 'accidental' cop murder. Given the history of cops, I can't blame those folks for being wary.
5) The officer obviously needs more training. To let a jaywalking infraction escalate into punching a 17 year old girl is unacceptable.
6) You law and order types would not be quiet and respectful if you thought some officer arresting you was in the wrong. You feel the way you do because you seldom encounter aggressive cops. Well, some people deal with that type everyday.

1) I think the girls were stupid and should be taught how to deal with officers who have no respect for your age or gender, especially if you live on the wrong side of the tracks

2) I just can't imagine this happening to some of the skinny blonds I knew in high school, some of whom were just as crazy. I can't see them being suckerpunched. can you?

3) Despite some of you wanting to make an exception for these girls because they don't fit the phenotype you prefer, they are kids and minors, with the same mentality as such. It absolutely does matter in this situation.

4) The crowd was not hysterical, not a mob, not a riot. Look at their behavior, not their skin color. They were very restrained, not physically interfering at all. Just paying attention and recording to make sure this didn't turn into another 'accidental' cop murder. Given the history of cops, I can't blame those folks for being wary.

5) The officer obviously needs more training. To let a jaywalking infraction escalate into punching a 17 year old girl is unacceptable.

6) You law and order types would not be quiet and respectful if you thought some officer arresting you was in the wrong. You feel the way you do because you seldom encounter aggressive cops. Well, some people deal with that type everyday.

*long and good. I was blinded by the science at 05:53...

...Phenotypical taxonomy is character based, an in-depth analysis of every morphological developmental genetic or physiological trait, systematic classification surpasses this by comparing these collectives to determine derived synopomophies, indicating a nested phylogeny, and THAT determines the clade. Because phylogenetic hierarchy is the only consistent criteria for classifying diverse lifeforms stemming from an evolutionary lineage, and that is evidently where we came from...

Stick that in your turbo encabulator.

Yep. Google "Nager's Syndrome" or "Nager syndrome" online.

>> ^therealblankman:
Interesting, Ant. According to Wikipedia, Nager syndrome is so rare and often so egregious that there are only 25 people known to be alive who have the manifested phenotype. Is there truth to this? Not meaning to pry, but I've never previously heard of the condition.
In reply to this comment by ant:
Good luck with my small mouth. I can barely open my mouth to get my tongue through (born like this due to Nager's syndrome).

1. The human appendix is a useless vestigial organ. Vestigial organs and junk DNA are great evidence against "intelligent design".
2. Humanity did not stop evolving. It is still evolving, like every other species. Most people are born with a few mutations that were not present in either parent (this has been verified by DNA sequencing). Many of these mutations cause no change in phenotype because they affect junk DNA.
3. Dog breeding. There is DNA and archaeological evidence that all species of domesticated dogs (from chihuauas to Lassie) and grey wolves have a recent common ancestor. Actual experiments have been done in which a few decades of of selective breeding led lead to large changes.


In reply to this comment by arsenault185:
>> ^budzos:
Such an ignorant dumb fuck. The horror is that most people think the way this guy does. They see no difference between the big bang, abiogenesis, evolution, etc. because anything that goes "against god" is all part of the same crackpot theory to them.


Ignorant dumb fuck? Well, since he was able to mention 3 separate theories, then i would have to say hes not ignorant. Dumb? meh. He couldn't formulate a sentence to save his life. Fuck? yeah hes a fuck for giving creationists a bad name.

There is plenty of scientific fact to prove God and plenty to disprove and support evolution, life seeding, or other methods.

The biggest one that comes into my head is, if evolution were true, than large series of small mutations would have had to take place over millions of years. Well, in recorded history, there have been very few if any, mutations that led to a positive change in the biological make up of an organism. However, there have been more than enough mutations to argue against evolution. Heres a video that shows such mutations. Granted some of these may have been caused my chemicals and shit, affecting the fetal development, but things like this also occur in nature.
Now humans have evidently peaked in what we are capable of "evolving" to despite what Heroes and X-Men have to say. Because after thousands and thousands of years of recorded history, there seem to be no further evolutions, besides from rare genetic abnormalities, which are good for nothing more than conversation starters.

So if evolution is real, in the sense that man is "the retarded offspring of 5 monkeys having butt-sex with a fish-squirrel," then why did we stop evolving? Evolutionists say that evolution took place over millions of years. But man has only been around for a fraction of that. That means that the "missing link" isn'/t that far behind us, and was more than likely around for a long time as well. Another hole to the evolution theory is the "missing link" itself. Its not like there were only one or two of these man-apes. There had to be thousands of them in order to generate a populace capable of surviving the thousands of years it took to evolve into humans. So why is it we cant find them? What the hell is this about?

I could go on forever. You wont catch me berating others for their beliefs, even thought they might differ from mine. So to call some one an "Ignorant dumb fuck" for not agreeing with you, doesn't exactly help your argument.

I said: design ≠ creation

cobalt said: However it does require a designer who wuld have to be capable of manipulation on the same level as a "creator" making them one and the same.

A designer would certainly not need to have the same capabilities as a creator. Unless you are proposing that human geneticists who have designed, for example, mice with very specific phenotypes are also able to will them into existence.

The point I was making and several others have is that the theory of evolution says nothing about creation, and as such does not rule out a creator. I'd consider myself agnostic on the issue, but I get aggravated when the debates about evolution vs. ID get completely off track by bringing in arguments that have nothing to do with the debate. It's the same thing when debates about religion confuse faith and social hierarchies/power structures.

Lyrics:

Pendant mes cours d' SVT en terminale
il y avait une fille assise à mes côtés
comme elle était femelle et que j'étais un mâle,
j'ai décidé d'en faire ma fiancée.
Mais n'ayant rien suivi de mes cours de bio
Pour me faire remarquer j'ai fait l'idiot:
Je me suis penché vers elle et j'ai déclaré
les mots suivants, un peu comme ils venaient:

Oh,tel un coccolitophoridé
coincé entre le tertiaire et le crétacé
les systoles de mon coeur affolé
m'ont fait comprendre que tu es ma dulcinée.

Elle m'a regardé d'un air ébahi, j'ai eu peur d'avoir dit une connerie.
Puis son visage d'un sourire éclatant,
me dévoila toutes ses belles dents.
Et quand l' prof aborda l'immunologie,
c'est sur un ton d'antigène, qu'elle me répondit:

Si toi tu es un coccolitophoridé
coincé entre le tertiaire et le crétacé, moi je suis un trilobite décédé
depuis au moins 200 millions d'années.

De toute évidence elle suivait mieux que moi
le peu de cours de bio auxquels j'étais là
Mais pendant qu'la classe dessinait les anticorps
je n'pouvais me résigner à oublier son corps,
alors réunissant mes quelques feuilles de SVT
je suis parvenu lui rétorquer:

le polyallélisme d'un gène s'exprime
par la diversité phénotypique des individus,
ces quelques mots,je les déclâme pour te dire que tu as les plus beaux yeux qu'j'ai jamais vu

Me regardant, elle a rigolé,
et m'a répondu sur un p'tit bout d'papier:

le polyallélisme d'un gène s'exprime
par la diversité phénotypique des individus,
ces quelques mots, je sais qu'tu les imprimes
et je compte bien de voir ce soir après le bahut.

Et nous baladant sur l'échelle stratigraphique,
faisant fi des temps géologiques
nos hypothalamus en ébulition
on a participé à l'évolution!

----

When I was in school,
There was a girl who sat next to me
Since she was female and I was male,
I decided to make her my fiancée.
But, having paid no attention to my biology class,
To make myself seen, I played the idiot.
I leaned towards her and declared
The following words, a little bit as they came to me

Oh, like a coccolithophorid
Stuck between the Tertiary and Cretaceous
The beating of my distraught heart
Made me understand that you were my girl

She looked at me, dumbfounded. I was afraid I had said something stupid
Then her face with a dazzling smile
Revealed to me all her beautiful teeth
And when the teacher addressed immunology
She responded to me, not at all shy:

If you are a coccolithophorid
Stuck between the Tertiary and the Cretaceous, then I am a trilobite dead
For at least 200 million years

Apparently, she followed better than I
The few biology classes that I attended
But while the class drew antibodies
I couldn't resign myself to forgetting her body
So putting together the few pieces of paper I had
I succeeded in replying:

Genetic polyallelism expresses itself
Through the phenotypic diversity of individuals
I ranted these few words to tell you that you have the most beautiful eyes that I have ever seen

Looking at me, she laughed
And responded to me on a little piece of paper

Genetic polyallelism expresses itself
Through the phenotypic diversity of individuals
These few words, I know, will impress you
And I expect to see you this evening after class

And walking on the stratigraphic scale
Flouting geological time
Our hypothalamus boiling
We participated in evolution!

Hey saw this comment of yours, just wanted to make a few points..

I can understand your concern for political misuse of scientific ideas, its been known to happen, and in some cases that phenotype is a mushroom cloud, nonetheless, Dawkins, the way I see it, only gives his opinion on whats actually true, not what we "should" do. My point is that lets say we one day settle it all, and it turns out that we are 100% "survival machine" genetically driven survival robots, well? If its actually true, should we just keep denying it? Personally, I dont think its that black and white. Our genes steer and control us probably alot more that we'd comfortably admit, but just the fact that we are here, thinking about it..

Just consider the very last 2 sentences in "The Selfish Gene" (which is a wonderful book IMO, and not necessarily what you read from the title):

"We are built as gene machines and cultured as meme machines, but we have the power to turn against our creators. We, alone on earth, can rebel against the tyranny of the selfish replicators."

In reply to this comment by Farhad2000:
"A crude analogy can be found in the old saw about a chicken being just an egg's way of making more eggs. In a similar inversion, Dawkins describes biological organisms as "vehicles" or survival machines, with genes as the "replicators" that create these organisms as a means of acquiring resources and copying themselves. At the level of organisms, we can see genes as being for some feature that might benefit the organism, but at the level of genes, the sole implicit purpose is to benefit themselves. A related concept here is the extended phenotype, in which the consequences of the genes to the environment outside the organism are considered."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selfish_gene

These ideas then lead into a social framework for systematic population control in a free market society. Using game theory and the ideas of Sigmund Freud to appeal to our irrational emotions. Am not saying Dawkin's specifically believes that humans are far more controlled by their genes then their own individual selfs, but it's not hard to draw parallels how varying scientific ideas are misused for other purposes.

http://www.videosift.com/video/The-Trap-What-Happened-to-Our-Dreams-of-Freedom-Part-1

Well, Peter gets a couple of things wrong - one being the the idea that ethics comes from nothing for the atheist. He couldn't be further from the truth - right and wrong are clearly products of the sentient mind and its evolutionary origins.

Evolution occurs within the web of natual law and is therefore nonrandom. We (along with other sentient creatures) developed (evolved) empathy, which gave rise to a basic form of the "golden rule" - I would argue that this is the primary basis of all ethics. The irony is that even if you subscribe to the bible, you necessarily pick and choose which ethical precepts to follow (as they are mutually exclusive as presented in the text) and it is on the basis of this inherent biological/cultural ethics that you make these distinctions - not the literal (or even figurative) reading of the scripture.

I have already alluded to the other misconception he subscribes to in the "debate", that is, the idea that evolution is "random". It is most definitely not. No more so than the orderly arrangement of molecules within a crystalline matrix are "random". Like the molecules, evolution follows the "rules" of nature - those genetic configurations that produce phenotypes more efficient and effective at producing offspring (surviving to reproduce) will contribute to the future and thus pass on any beneficial variations which they possess - a slow and gradual process which ultimately leads to macroscopic change or "speciation".

No real magic or "randomness". All by the rules - just look at similar natural solutions to various natural puzzles - wings for flight (avian and mammalian), "fins" for water motion (including fish and mammals). If you look you will see that there is nothing "random" - the best solution is that which is perpetuated, as one would expect from a rational universe.

We don't have all the answers, but I think it is at least reasonable to think that we're on the right track. But remember - atheism is not a set of dogmatic beliefs, just a rejection of one belief.

"A crude analogy can be found in the old saw about a chicken being just an egg's way of making more eggs. In a similar inversion, Dawkins describes biological organisms as "vehicles" or survival machines, with genes as the "replicators" that create these organisms as a means of acquiring resources and copying themselves. At the level of organisms, we can see genes as being for some feature that might benefit the organism, but at the level of genes, the sole implicit purpose is to benefit themselves. A related concept here is the extended phenotype, in which the consequences of the genes to the environment outside the organism are considered."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selfish_gene

These ideas then lead into a social framework for systematic population control in a free market society. Using game theory and the ideas of Sigmund Freud to appeal to our irrational emotions. Am not saying Dawkin's specifically believes that humans are far more controlled by their genes then their own individual selfs, but it's not hard to draw parallels how varying scientific ideas are misused for other purposes.

http://www.videosift.com/video/The-Trap-What-Happened-to-Our-Dreams-of-Freedom-Part-1

.... actually I was just applying the standard rules that are listed in our posting guidelines. Which of course include a statement about racially sensitive materials. As for would I have been offended with Crazy Americans, well then no, because you would be making fun of a country. Although Canadians, and people from South America might be quick to point out that Americans actually encompass a wide variety of cultures. That said, crazy Arabs is most certainly racist because it applies to just one phenotype, and not an individual country or what have you. Mostly I just didn't like the video though.