THAT OWNER IS PURE EVIL.

We're talking Fifth Element evil.

Ball of sphere evil.

Evilly evil.

The kind of evil that shouldn't have a dog.

And she's going to need new carpet near that bed very soon.

Even more so if she doesn't take Jackson for that damn walk he's wanting.

Jackson, you have my permission to take a massive dump under her bed.

After eating chocolate.

And I hope it smells.

Evil.

>> ^TheFreak:

Oh boy, God came up with some crazy stuff when he created the world in six days. Wonder what he could have meant by this.


Yea you know, it is kinda fucked up thing to witness now that you mention it. Two floating balls attracting a liquid upwards using forces unseen.

HAH !

I'm sorry, man...I just don't get what you're trying to say. It looks like you're trying to shoe-horn an agenda — albeit an honorable one — on a video about poor sportsmanship.

Maybe we should be made more aware of the reality of kids' concussions. I would have to do more research though because that NPR article has NO information as to where the "estimated" number comes from. I hate to be that guy, but honestly, that guy is why we know that the earth is a sphere and it travels around the sun...you can't just believe everything you read.

Assuming that it's close to correct...or even if the actual number is 25% of all pre-college football players have experienced concussions, then I would agree that something should be done to fix it. But, like I said, this isn't a video about kids getting concussions, nor is it a video about bounty-gate. The fact of the matter is that those things are bad — hence why people have been fired/suspended. Despite the physical nature of the sport, the intent to maliciously hurt somebody is frowned-upon by a majority of the NFL. There is a big difference between seeing a good solid hit between the numbers, wrapping up the player, and taking him to the ground, and taking out his knee cap. I don't see what's hard to understand about that.

>> ^JiggaJonson:

@rottenseed
You're inventing a narrative of what I've said that isn't consistent with reality.
I never said I didn't like football.
I never said I no one should play it.
I never said everyone had to adopt my point of view.
I never said kids are playing football against their will.
I did say that the certainty of concussions is reason enough not to play.
I did cite statistics about concussions that happen to adolescents PRE-college
"of the nearly 5 million adolescents playing football below the college level, it's estimated that half have sustained concussions, a third of them on multiple occasions"
From: http://www.npr.org/2012/05/09/152250525/mind-games-football-and-h
ead-injuries
Stop being a pussy and let that virulent feeling of bloodlust wash over you when those players go down. As you said, they're paid as much as they are because they know the risks involved. If that's the case, this should be celebrated as part of the game, no?
I'm arguing for safety, but I'm a pussy. And you're arguing for the game, but dont want players to get hurt. I'm sure the Saints bounty scandal was limited to that team and nothing like that happens anywhere else. Oh wait... http://www.myfoxny.com/story/19667323/calif-kids-footbal
l-team-hit-with-bounty-scandal
Cheer for the injuries that are part of this culture or call for better safety, I say.

I think that having a close knit community also erases much of that anonymity in that you create your own personality online so-to-speak. In some cases, such as @gorillaman and @chingalera pointed out, that personality is almost identical to the real-life one. In others it is not. However, in either case, you are known by your peers, you have online "friends", and communicate with one another. As in any social sphere, there are societal consequences for negative action - being ostracized, shunned, or reprimanded, either by your peers or the controlling power(s).

Once this community grows too large, people don't know each other and they become strangers. This happens in real life - the difference between a small town and a big city, for example. In these cities, once you have strangers, crime increases as the social fabric and responsibility that one feels to ones neighbors disappears. I feel that the same thing occurs in online communities once they become too large.

Man, I should write this up.

I don't understand why so many people are terrified of guns. They simply aren't scary. Up until the early 1900's, almost every family living in the US had a gun in the house. The United States wouldn't even exist if the colonials hadn't hidden and stockpiled their gun from the British as that was the first thing the British did when moving into a new town.....confiscating the guns. This emasculated the men, most volunteer "soldiers", and made revolt much less likely and population control much more manageable.

The 2nd amendment was created not for hunting or for sport, but for the civil defense of our citizens against tyranny and control. The authors of the constitution remembered how hard it was having weapons removed by government control and wanted to have measure in place to allow citizens to legally carry arms to defend themselves against similar actions in the future. It is a very empowering right.

In 2008, there were 75 deaths by firearm of children aged 1-15, 24 of which were actually suicides that were included in that gun death total. By contrast, 1,543 children of that same age group were killed in moving vehicle accidents and 735 by drowning. Therefore, we should be SIGNIFICANTLY more afraid of cars and pools than of guns by a wide margin, yet we don't have people calling the police because some kids are in a swimming pool or riding in a car.

Every male in Switzerland has a government issued semi-auto rifle. Literally every one (420,000+), yet they have some of the lowest crime rates in the entire world.

"Police statistics for the year 2006 records 34 killings or attempted killings involving firearms, compared to 69 cases involving bladed weapons and 16 cases of unarmed assault. Cases of assault resulting in bodily harm numbered 89 (firearms) and 526 (bladed weapons). As of 2007, Switzerland had a population of about 7,600,000. This would put the rate of killings or attempted killings with firearms at about one for every quarter million residents yearly. This represents a decline of aggravated assaults involving firearms since the early 1990s. The majority of gun crimes involving domestic violence are perpetrated with army ordnance weapons, while the majority of gun crime outside the domestic sphere involves illegally held firearms." - Wikipedia (of course)

My point is that guns are not inherently dangerous, significantly less in fact than a car or water statistically speaking. Having an armed society is a very good thing. Fearing people with guns only gives the gun power that it wouldn't have otherwise. Yes, there are shitty people out there doing bad things with guns, but I am more afraid of the distracted soccer mom in her minivan talking on the phone while beating her kids in the backseat while jugging a Starbucks latte driving 10 MPH over the limit (which I see all the time) than anyone carrying a gun. A good percentage of armed robberies aren't even committed with real guns, but the power that people without solid gun knowledge gives those guns, even fake, is what makes them dangerous.

Also, just an FYI, there are over 270,000,000 guns held by private citizens in this country yet 14,000 murders were committed by guns in 2010, and gun crime is down 11% since that time. That is a very low number of firearm murders considering how many guns are actually out there.

I am climbing off my soapbox now.

>> ^KnivesOut:

This reminds me of the logic behind the Klein bottle. It's the allowance for intersections that makes it "possible".


Yeah they kind of lost my interest at that point as well. I guess if you're working with theoretical mathematics, it's acceptable to consider theoretical materials too...

My apologies for missing your point, I sometimes tend towards the contentious. I think we have been arguing diagonally; of course religion (and faith) are the result of human traits, as is everything about human society. What I argue is that the unpleasant traits you rightly observe in other social institutions and widespread beliefs find a special form of propagation and protection from scrutiny in the supernatural aspect provided only by religious/supernatural belief. I still believe society would be better without religion, just as it would be without conspiracy theorists (often religious as well), state religion, and more generally the lack of critical thought. The reason religion is a worthy target when trying to effect social reform/progress is that, as I argue above, it ossifies and protects the negative traits you speak of, elevating them out of the sphere of human scrutiny/criticism by means of the supernatural argument.

>> ^jonny:

Nice straw men. I didn't write anything close to "without religion there can be no inspired art", nor have I ever heard or read anyone seriously suggest such a thing. Using that phrasing, my comment would be "without religion there can be no religiously inspired art," which should be self-evident.
And again you have assigned a position to me that does not follow from my comments. I am not apologizing for religion, nor do I think it doesn't deserve criticism and scrutiny. (On a side note, I think we may be using the word "religion" differently. I always make a distinction between faith (an individual belief) and religion (a collective belief). The distinction is analogous to the personal/public distinction in language.)
I haven't reduced religion to the sociocultural evils you mention. That is what you seem to have done, with only a dismissive acknowledgement of any good that may arise from it. I have repeatedly tried to show that religion is not the source of the evils you mention, but an expression of them. Even the teaching of nonsense and propagation of willful ignorance, which to me is one of the greatest sins, is hardly unique to religion or even inherent to it. Counterexamples - birthers and Taoism.
Again, let me point out that my comments arose from PostalBlowfish's comment that "there is nothing positive to be gained from religion that can't be realized without it," and his and your attempts to equate religion with certain fundamental human traits. This is really the basis of our disagreement - namely whether traits such tribalism and demagoguery are intrinsic to religion. To say that they are intrinsic implies that no religion can exist without those traits, and that is patently false. On the other hand, you don't need to look very hard to find those traits in just about any other social organization (politics, sports, business, etc.). This is what I keep trying to get across. None of the evils you attribute to religion are unique to it. Even if religion somehow magically disappeared tomorrow, all of those unpleasant traits would still be with humans. And this is the most important point I've been trying to make - don't let arguments over religion distract from the vastly more important task of helping humanity overcome these terrible tendencies inherent in all of us.
>> ^hpqp:
You say you are not separating the inherent evil of superstitious/religious beliefs from the the social evils it perpetuates, but then you go and skirt my whole argument, reducing the negative aspect of religion (which you seem to reduce to "organised religion", suggesting it is the institution and not the fundamental beliefs that are at to be discussed) to... the sociocultural evils (creationism, pedophilia, etc.). My point remains made and unchallenged.
As for the whole "without religion there can be no inspired art", that is a myth organised religion (especially the RCC) likes to keep alive, and is doing a good job apparently. Great art celebrates nature, humankind, humankind's stories and mythos, illustrates its fears and desires, etc etc, all of which will go on after the belief in invisible sky-daddies dies away. Because the Church had money and power, they could buy the talent, that's all. I am sure some religious artists were inspired by their devotion, just like others are by drug trips, sex, fears, and of course by psychological disorders. That does not render religious belief a positive in society that needs to be preserved.
Like I've said elsewhere, it's good to want to reduce the symptoms, but futile if we do not also attack the disease behind them. So yes, there is a great need to argue against religion, which is what allows the sociocultural symptoms you mention to exist.

This really is another storm in a bloody teacup.

@ChaosEngine brought up the perfect example of what's wrong on both sides of this type of thing with the Penny Arcade Sixth Slave comic debacle. That comic was absolutely innocuous. Having a slave say they were raped to sleep by dickwolves was merely a ludicrously horrible statement to show what a terrible existence the slave had, and why the player ignoring their pleas because they had fulfilled their quota was such a hilariously callous reaction.

To think that someone could read that and be offended, be offended enough to write a bloody blog post, is just stunning. It absolutely demonstrates a demeanour that's looking for the worst in everything and not the humour. I get that you may not find the comic funny, but to actually get riled up by it, to actually think it was worth telling people that you got riled up by it is stunning.

But then we get to the other ugly side of things. We have people who get angry at the people who got offended, and so they start attacking them (verbally), and start saying just horrible, mean spirited, ugly things. They start saying misogynistic, aggressive things that seem to demonstrate an ACTUAL core of anger/hatred towards women.

And that becomes scary.

So I think both sides are usually wrong in these cases:

* Those who get offended:
A lot of the time have very little reason to actually be offended (especially in the penny arcade example), it's as if they're attuned to their own little sphere of outrage and if someone mentions one of their keywords then they'll go nuts, regardless of the intent of a given joke.

* Those who made the initial joke and/or those who defend them:
Far, far, FAR too often they end up really attacking those that were offended, becoming vile and disgusting and not showing any restraint or compassion at all. Mike Krahulik demonstrates how NOT to handle something like the dickwolves incident. The correct way? 'Sorry you were offended by it, really don't understand how anyone could be, we're not taking it down as we don't see anything wrong with it. Let this be the end of it'. But nooo, he pushed and pushed and pushed it.

Louis CK, as usual, demonstrated that he can joke about horrible things and come up trumps because it's ALWAYS obvious that he's saying things in jest and from a good place (or for pure shock value). When someone says something so shit as 'It'd be funny if she was gang raped right now' without a damn strong demonstration that it was in jest and in no way meant to be mean or serious... well then that's a dick move and probably should be called out.

But for it to be as big as it's got? Gah!

>> ^L0cky:

Get the feeling the focal depth is also acting as optimisation as well though. The amount of in focus geometry is pretty low.

The amount of geometry is low, focused or not. I bet the background is just an image, probably mapped to the inside of a giant sphere.

If it wasn't, it wouldn't help that it's blurry. If you're raytracing, you've still got to do all the same calculations to areas that are out of focus that you do to areas that are in focus. The depth of field is calculated by your virtual camera/lense.

As I said, this is probably just a picture on a surface in the background and it's probably blurred solely for the purpose of keeping you from noticing.

LOL... you're a good troll. Here's a game for you: please precisely define the distinction between sensory processes and cognitive processes, and how exactly DS sufferers lack the latter. Or were you just some armchair bullshitter?

Fair warning, if you really want to have this debate, I'm probably out of your league.

>> ^gorillaman:

>> ^dag:
I believe sentience is a gray scale that extends well into the animal kingdom.
You can judge the character of a person by how they treat those that are weaker and less capable.

I think there's an argument to be made for one or more 'sentience thresholds' where the sum of an advanced intellect's understanding of the world, sense of itself, and capacity for abstract thought places it in a very different sphere of mentality to even slightly less able minds.
It's obvious that there's a distinction between non-thinking objects and any thinking creature at all, which would be the first threshold; I claim that humanity, or perhaps only the best of humanity, has cracked another.
It's a fact that compared to humans, animal brains are disproportionately devoted to sensory processing, etc. rather than cognition; which places us orders of magnitude ahead of them in our particular province, even with brains of apparently similar complexity. So there's a real gap there, rather than a smooth progression.
We have animal brains with a little extra cognitive grey matter stapled on top. That little bit seems to make all the difference. It's exciting to think where we'll be when we're able to create a lot more cognition, either biologically or electronically.
Now all of this may not have direct implications for damaged human brains, but it informs our understanding of intelligence generally.
I feel that the error being made by say, vegetarians who claim that 'an animal has just as much right to exist as a person', and similarly sincere but misguided retard-guardians is that they fail to account for these extremely important distinctions.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

Do you claim that there is a quantitative value of sentience? Are 100 chickens worth the life of a single human? Your rational argument breaks down into absurdity when followed to its ends. Better to err on the side of compassion and kindness towards living creatures where possible.
>> ^gorillaman:

>> ^dag:
I believe sentience is a gray scale that extends well into the animal kingdom.
You can judge the character of a person by how they treat those that are weaker and less capable.

I think there's an argument to be made for one or more 'sentience thresholds' where the sum of an advanced intellect's understanding of the world, sense of itself, and capacity for abstract thought places it in a very different sphere of mentality to even slightly less able minds.
It's obvious that there's a distinction between non-thinking objects and any thinking creature at all, which would be the first threshold; I claim that humanity, or perhaps only the best of humanity, has cracked another.
It's a fact that compared to humans, animal brains are disproportionately devoted to sensory processing, etc. rather than cognition; which places us orders of magnitude ahead of them in our particular province, even with brains of apparently similar complexity. So there's a real gap there, rather than a smooth progression.
We have animal brains with a little extra cognitive grey matter stapled on top. That little bit seems to make all the difference. It's exciting to think where we'll be when we're able to create a lot more cognition, either biologically or electronically.
Now all of this may not have direct implications for damaged human brains, but it informs our understanding of intelligence generally.
I feel that the error being made by say, vegetarians who claim that 'an animal has just as much right to exist as a person', and similarly sincere but misguided retard-guardians is that they fail to account for these extremely important distinctions.

>> ^dag:

I believe sentience is a gray scale that extends well into the animal kingdom.
You can judge the character of a person by how they treat those that are weaker and less capable.


I think there's an argument to be made for one or more 'sentience thresholds' where the sum of an advanced intellect's understanding of the world, sense of itself, and capacity for abstract thought places it in a very different sphere of mentality to even slightly less able minds.

It's obvious that there's a distinction between non-thinking objects and any thinking creature at all, which would be the first threshold; I claim that humanity, or perhaps only the best of humanity, has cracked another.

It's a fact that compared to humans, animal brains are disproportionately devoted to sensory processing, etc. rather than cognition; which places us orders of magnitude ahead of them in our particular province, even with brains of apparently similar complexity. So there's a real gap there, rather than a smooth progression.

We have animal brains with a little extra cognitive grey matter stapled on top. That little bit seems to make all the difference. It's exciting to think where we'll be when we're able to create a lot more cognition, either biologically or electronically.

Now all of this may not have direct implications for damaged human brains, but it informs our understanding of intelligence generally.

I feel that the error being made by say, vegetarians who claim that 'an animal has just as much right to exist as a person', and similarly sincere but misguided retard-guardians is that they fail to account for these extremely important distinctions.

"All these science spheres are made of Asbestos, by the way. Keeps out the rats. Let us know if you feel a shortness of breath, a persistent dry cough, or.. your heart stopping, because that's not part of the test. That's Asbestos."

~Cave Johnson

In reply to this comment by shinyblurry:
In reply to this comment by enoch:
i have rejected the lord jesus christ and taught others to do the same?
there is a line and you are about to cross it.
i have been extremely open and honest about my faith with you and it is obvious you really dont understand.
that,by itself,is fine and actually expected but to insinuate i do harm to people who i have harbored and cared for in their time of need is vulgar.

disagree with my view all you wish.
pray for my soul even if that makes you feel better but dont delude yourself for a second you have any idea who i am or what i do for people.

because you dont have a clue.


You know what..you're right. I don't know a whole lot about you or your life and it isn't my place to judge what you're doing. I've been landing in a lot of controversy lately, due to me taking the obvious bait strewn about. I've also just been typecast here, due to my previous foibles, and continued immaturity. I'm probably going to take a step back from what I'm doing here because it is becoming overtly negative in all spheres. I hope the best for you enoch, I really do. I have been praying for you and I will continue to do so. God bless.


see?
seeeee?
you come back with letters like that and you make it impossible for me to stay angry with you!
and now i feel like a douche for ripping into you like i did.
its not like i dont know where you stand.
sighs...
my apologies my friend but i cant thank you enough for restoring my faith in you.
because i do have faith in you as a person.
i know your heart is in the right place and you mean well and i really should have approached you first before just going off.
ah well..i can be a tad passionate at times.
please forgive.

know that you are in my prayers as well and i am gladdened i am in yours.
be well my friend.

In reply to this comment by enoch:
i have rejected the lord jesus christ and taught others to do the same?
there is a line and you are about to cross it.
i have been extremely open and honest about my faith with you and it is obvious you really dont understand.
that,by itself,is fine and actually expected but to insinuate i do harm to people who i have harbored and cared for in their time of need is vulgar.

disagree with my view all you wish.
pray for my soul even if that makes you feel better but dont delude yourself for a second you have any idea who i am or what i do for people.

because you dont have a clue.


You know what..you're right. I don't know a whole lot about you or your life and it isn't my place to judge what you're doing. I've been landing in a lot of controversy lately, due to me taking the obvious bait strewn about. I've also just been typecast here, due to my previous foibles, and continued immaturity. I'm probably going to take a step back from what I'm doing here because it is becoming overtly negative in all spheres. I hope the best for you enoch, I really do. I have been praying for you and I will continue to do so. God bless.