>> ^Mazex:

Imagine if everyone stopped labeling giant groups of people pointlessly.


That is what I'm trying to point out. Our "speciation" (or: group and object distinctions and uses like labels or labeling) will continue to increase as our knowledge increase. It will become harder to lump everyone together. Except that we are all human; some "grouping" is correct no matter what you think. Trying to make it a moral issue is fairly laughable. As English (plus any language) and it's "noun" section would be eternally morally corrupt with your distinction.

I know what you're saying, but it seems like it's meant to be a defense of something some of us have done wrong; but, "religious" and "atheist" are fairly benign descriptors. I think we all know what ends up being wrong and right. Lastly, it's merely a shortcut.

>> ^Trancecoach:

Yes, it's an open secret that Bill W. believed that LSD was a "shortcut" of sorts for the 12 steps he developed.
Here's a resource to get you started.
(By the bye, one of my jobs is as the exec. dir. for the peer-reviewed journal that published much of the early research on LSD's effects on the mind.)
>> ^Boise_Lib:
Wait, back up. Bill Wilson...Really?
This information meshes with some research of my own. Is there source material on Bill W.'s experience?




Very Cool, Thanks coach.

This ties up more than one thread for me into a nice package! I've been looking into the relationship between AA and other means of personal enlightenment for quite a while.

Yes, it's an open secret that Bill W. believed that LSD was a "shortcut" of sorts for the 12 steps he developed.

Here's a resource to get you started.

(By the bye, one of my jobs is as the exec. dir. for the peer-reviewed journal that published much of the early research on LSD's effects on the mind.)

>> ^Boise_Lib:

Wait, back up. Bill Wilson...Really?
This information meshes with some research of my own. Is there source material on Bill W.'s experience?

@MaxWilder "But until it affects my life directly in one way or another, I have no reason to believe it either. I am neutral on the subject."

But what if I ask you directly : Does something like a Universe-level consciousness exists? Even if you answer that you don't have an opinion about it, you must believe in something: that the chances for its existence are 50-50, etc. And then, if you are an astronomer and must construct a theory on the workings of the Universe, then you MUST be believing either that the Universe forms a consciousness or that it doesn't since either theory imply many things as to the functioning of the Universe. Of course, it all depends on the definitions of "consciousness" and "Universe",etc. but if you don't like the definitions, tell us yours and whether you thus believe that the "Universe" is "conscious" or not. You may cry foul and go to quantum physics, but the brain is not a quantum computer. Your brain has a belief about a Universe-level consciousness, in one form or another, you simply just don't admit it.

Anyway, what I was trying to say is that there is nothing wrong in believing that God doesn't exist. Believing that the act of believing itself is wrong is already conceding to the theists' argument that belief is somehow strictly part of the religious phenomenon. "Beliefs" are a mental shortcut we humans have and need to function efficiently. Belief in something does not imply blindness to the shortcomings of beliefs. Thinking there are shortcomings to beliefs is a belief in itself. What I am saying is that there is no problem with beliefs, only problems with certain kinds of beliefs.

Beliefs are more general than you think, and this may be why you believe you can have a "no belief" about something. What you must understand is that a belief is not an opinion, nor is it a logical or statistical argument.

I somewhat disagree with him on this particular item. I think that the word "atheist" is just a shortcut around some opening-round questions.

We can elect to avoid labeling ourselves as such, but the simple fact of the matter is that anyone who asks me the question "Do you believe in any god/gods/supreme being?", to which I answer "no", is going to label me as an atheist whether I self-apply it or not. Furthermore, refusing to self-apply the label just gives the detractors an excuse to give a dismissive, haughty little laugh to themselves and think "well, if they are so sure of themselves, why are they trying to weasel out of this rather simple term?".

I think "atheist" is often used as a loaded term along the lines of "gay", and related words whether used in an attempt to be derogatory or not. When some idiotic 13 year old (its OK, I was an idiot when I was 13 too) says "this food is gay", "this music is gay", etc. their use of the term in that way says much more about themselves than about whatever they are applying it to. When a somewhat more mature, yet tragically not yet mature enough adult calls a homosexual a "fag", they are usually applying the term in a way that is meant to shut down discussion. Fag, worthy of derision or not worthy of any consideration whatsoever, end of story.

"Atheist" is used by many religious people in much the same way. This person doesn't believe what I believe, their lack of vision is worthy of derision or at best they should just be ignored, end of story. However, in both instances it is very clear for any witnesses capable of rational evaluation that this person doesn't have anything of real substance to bring to the discussion. They are, in effect, parading their bias and ignorance for all to see.

So I tend to think that a much better approach to this labeling than avoidance is to embrace it. Yes, I am an atheist. Many people will make stereotypical judgments about me based on an association of my with that term. However, the only way to break those stereotypes is to freely accept the label, and provide counterexamples to them as living proof that they are false. That guy freely acknowledges that he is an atheist, yet maybe he is polite. Perhaps he has a family with well-mannered children. He may seem to be a moral/ethical individual. He can be a good friend. All of these things in spite of what the zealot in the pulpit would have many believe about the dreaded "atheists".

It took some time (and will take more) for many people to figure out that "teh gays" aren't all child molesters, they probably won't try to rape you if you happen to meet one on a dark street at night, etc. in spite of what the pope might insinuate or flat out say about them. People accepting that atheists aren't bogeymen will take some time too.

>> ^srd:

While I appreciate the lecturers disappointment, I do believe he needs to get out more. In my professional experience the business types are all about cheating, cutting corners and taking shortcuts if such an opportunity is offered to them. And if you're teaching future business/managerial types, this kind of behaviour is only to be expected.
What I don't get is what a four hour ethics course is supposed to do. If you're inclined to cheat by laziness, lack of character or wrong upbringing, a few hours of stern talking to by someone who the culprits don't give a rats anus about isn't going to change much, other than waste everyones time. If someone is prone to cheating, the only way to stop them is to keep a close eye on them. Or a real long term effort to readjust their moral compass. Something that isn't easy at that age anymore though.


Especially since what our society teaches us is to screw others and cheat to get ahead. Because it doesn't matter how you get there...it's just that you get there.

While I appreciate the lecturers disappointment, I do believe he needs to get out more. In my professional experience the business types are all about cheating, cutting corners and taking shortcuts if such an opportunity is offered to them. And if you're teaching future business/managerial types, this kind of behaviour is only to be expected.

What I don't get is what a four hour ethics course is supposed to do. If you're inclined to cheat by laziness, lack of character or wrong upbringing, a few hours of stern talking to by someone who the culprits don't give a rats anus about isn't going to change much, other than waste everyones time. If someone is prone to cheating, the only way to stop them is to keep a close eye on them. Or a real long term effort to readjust their moral compass. Something that isn't easy at that age anymore though.

>> ^rychan:

If he's competing in Korea I think it's safe to say that he's extremely good. But you're right that his competition seemed a bit pathetic.
In high school I did a similar exercise with Starcraft 1 -- 4 or 5 of my friends against another friend who was near pro gaming level. He destroyed us, and at least in my case I was pretty familiar with Starcraft.
I think it's great that the game permits such a huge range of skill levels.
>> ^BicycleRepairMan:
It's kind of difficult to say how good this guy is when we don't know anything about these 3 players, I mean, I suck at SC, and I really suck. I dont even know like basic keyboard shortcuts, and I probably cant beat a bot (I could barely do so in SC1, but I haven really played SC2 much) so how "suck" are these "noobs"? It would be more interesting IMO with three "ok" players.


No, I'm not saying I dont think he's very good, he obviously is, I'm just saying its a bad measurement/demonstration of HOW good. if you pitted me against him, for instance, sure I'd be massacred, but I'd be massacred by a medium/below average player as well, because I suck so much. So that would be a pointless demonstration. but this vid is even more pointless, because we dont really know anything about the skills of the 3 other players.

If he's competing in Korea I think it's safe to say that he's extremely good. But you're right that his competition seemed a bit pathetic.

In high school I did a similar exercise with Starcraft 1 -- 4 or 5 of my friends against another friend who was near pro gaming level. He destroyed us, and at least in my case I was pretty familiar with Starcraft.

I think it's great that the game permits such a huge range of skill levels.

>> ^BicycleRepairMan:

It's kind of difficult to say how good this guy is when we don't know anything about these 3 players, I mean, I suck at SC, and I really suck. I dont even know like basic keyboard shortcuts, and I probably cant beat a bot (I could barely do so in SC1, but I haven really played SC2 much) so how "suck" are these "noobs"? It would be more interesting IMO with three "ok" players.

It's kind of difficult to say how good this guy is when we don't know anything about these 3 players, I mean, I suck at SC, and I really suck. I dont even know like basic keyboard shortcuts, and I probably cant beat a bot (I could barely do so in SC1, but I haven really played SC2 much) so how "suck" are these "noobs"? It would be more interesting IMO with three "ok" players.

I live up the road from a railway bridge with a clearance of 12ft. Not quite a crash a month, but everytime a Double Decker bus tried to take a shortcut it would lose its roof. Fortunately they never had passengers. We also had a Skip Truck tip itself over on the bridge and a 18 Wheeler rip its top off.

Oh, and whenever it rained too hard it flooded under the bridge and you'd always get a couple of people that didnt think the puddle was too deep. They didn't always make it across.

Hello! Just back this minute from seeing the film. I have a few comments to make which may involve SPOILERS.

SPOILERS
SPOILERS
SPOILERS


Hmmm.

The short review is - what a load of disappointing and quite frankly tedious crap.

Oh Nolan why are you getting worse with each film? Who honestly thinks LDC is an actor with enough charisma to hold a film like this? He really wasn't enough for this role. Why the fuck does Nolan insist on having that thuddingly monotonous soundtrack pounding over virtually every single scene of dialogue? Why not give the actors some space instead of making it feel rushed and forcing them into layering soundbites for only the sake of exposition? Why not make this about the performances rather than worship the god of pacing? (it certainly didn't feel like 148 minutes I'll give him that).

Sorry, that girl he hires? Where was that maze she designed? Oh fuck that, we want a shortcut now. And why is Leo's dad (Michael Caine again for some reason) offering up students to do dodgy work? And what was she studying? Extraction 101? What world is this that dreams can be hacked in this way? This is never explained. Should we expect to see the flying cars out the window? Has cancer been eradicated in this world? How many other people are doing this shit?

And Leo with a bad case of dead wife syndrome (DWS). You know if you want to keep pulling that trick you might want to make it better than it was in Memento. Which is hard to do. Mainly because Guy Pearce is a better actor who makes you feel something about his character. Sympathy, disgust, shock, whatever. Something. LDC is like balsa wood in comparison.

But maybe I'm being too hard on Leo. Maybe the problem is with the script. I was surprised to find I had no problems following what was supposed to be a twisty, layered plot. I didn't see multiple plots criss-crossing and tying my mind up in knots - you want that? Try a James Ellroy novel. I still find Memento a mind-bending watch. The dream within a dream scenario is as hard to imagine as a box within another box. And here that's all that Nolan is concerned about. He loves the techie aspects of this. How does box C behave in box B. Oh B is jiggling about so C is getting all shook up. And do we get to care much about the inception itself? Nope. I thought this was a big missed opportunity to play the complex mind-games required to crack the subject. But in between explosions there wasn't much time for that.

Nolan has become a slightly more sophisticated version of the recent fanboy directors. But he's still thoroughly crass and obvious and doesn't have the talent to explore the spaces between what initially seem like promising ideas. But dreams? Hell, I enjoyed the more straightforward japes of Dreamcape and that was a long time ago.

But I am surprised that so many love this - I'd ask that you think about the characters. State what was memorable about them and what made them interesting. What did this film actually say that was of substance? Strip away the artifice and what are you actually left with?

I saw Total Recall, again, a few days ago. It was better than this.

>> ^westy:

>> ^LarsaruS:
>> ^highdileeho:
Had to stop after the claim that only this sport offers self confidence and discipline. Baseball, football, boxing, volleyball, cricket, poker, chess, all sports offer those elements.

Too bad you didn't listen to all of it, he has some good points in there, it is after all 9 minutes long and that comment is at around 00:45 - 1:20.
And your claim is faulty as he says that all martial arts gives self confidence and discipline to the individual. (Oh, and just FYI boxing is considered a martial art.)
There are also different kinds of self confidence and discipline. If you practice chess and are good at it then yes it will take a lot of discipline to become better and you will gain a certain kind of self confidence from it. Will that self confidence lead to you feeling secure/more secure when the shit hits the fan and a 2m & 100kg angry person wants to stomp on your skull? I would guess no. Will it help your self image when it comes to thinking strategically and with tasks that require you to plan 3 steps ahead? Yea probably.
Martial arts training will give you the self confidence to know that if you need to you can defend yourself, at least better than the average person, and the discipline to not fight unless it is absolutely necessary and not because you got angry at someone over a "Your momma!" comment or some other insignificant stuff.
Hope this doesn't come off as flaming as that is not my intent.

tell you what negates pretty much all fighting technique, is the fact that running away and avoiding conflict in the first place is 99.9% more usfull than being some sort of master at fighting.
don't have an issue with people doing it for fun weather that be in the context of a sporting event or just for themselves dont mind people doing it for self defence but again its largely redundant as a way to defend yourself
from what I have seen many people have bullshit respect for marcail arts which is stupid , just as bullshit respect for anything is stupid.


You are correct, the best self defence training you can do is 400m hurdles and 60m sprints. That along with not reacting to insults, as they are only words and can't injure you, will keep you out of harm's way for most of your life, all of it if you are lucky. Your brain is the best self defence tool you will ever have, if you use it. Thinking first and acting later might save your life. Should you take the 3 minute shortcut through the dark alley at 3 in the morning or take the brightly lit path which is a bit longer?

However, it might not be possible to run away. You might be out with your family or you might have to defend someone else who is being assaulted/raped/whatever. In those cases knowing some basic fighting techniques and dos and donts (sp?) might save you or someone else you hold dear.

I find it hilarious that the obvious programing shortcut (or bug, feature) could make it one of the best thrillers the PC has ever seen.

I love Chrome very much and for the typical web surfer I wouldn't argue that it should be their #1, go-to browser, especially compared to Internet Exploder.

But a week or two ago I tried for days very hard to switch to it from Firefox and for my needs, it comes up short and does not beat out Firefox despite its lightning fast V8 JavaScript engine and alleged better memory management.

As fast as Chrome is, it crashed on me several times during routine tasks, it does not have any print preview support, and FireBug, my preferred tool for JS debugging, does not work so well (example: the web page's scrollbar includes the FireBug window, so I can't view the bottom of the page without undocking FireBug; the extension is also incomplete as compared to the Firefox version). I actually found myself repeatedly switching over to FF to load my development pages just for some proper debugging.

In addition to all that, the AdBlock extension is not able to block ads until after they've been downloaded. This results in ads showing up momentarily before they disappear from the page and often the space for the disappeared ads remains, whereas in FF they just never appear at all.

One other less significant issue is that you can't use address bar shortcuts for bookmarks, e.g., in FF I could type "w aaron burr" and it would load WikiPedia.

Finally, the lack of a way (at least an obvious way) to search a specific site is a bother. E.g., in FF I hit CTRL+E to get to the search box then CTRL+downarrow to switch to Amazon, then type in my query and, boom, I'm at Amazon. You can also add VideoSift to that search box in Firefox; if you don't know how, click the search box icon then click "Add VideoSift Search". (Note: in Chrome you can type "amazon" [among others] then hit TAB for a site-specific search, but that feature's not available for all sites and I don't see a way to add others.)

The end. (What is this my own personal blog or something?)