It doesn't really matter how many people identify as atheists, although I only know one person in my circle who says he is one. I would consider him pretty moral, also.

As I said before, the pendulum swings one way, then the other, much like the sexuality of many in Hollywood.

Regardless, how do you explain the rise of some type of religion in every civilization? Atheism is most likely a late development although I don't have the stats on it. It's a 20th century invention, I'm sure.

When it comes to religion, my faith rests on those with experiential knowledge. There are multitudes of people who have had direct experience of God, they generally coincide, whereas how can an atheist explain his experience of 'no God'. He can't do it.

So to believe in God becomes a common sense decision.

If you don't, that's fine, it's your life, live it as you wish. Each man is his own philosopher. If you are miserable, you have a lousy philosophy.

I've never watched this guy before, but I really wanted to march in and nail him down to one side of the table or the other, sit still damn you! Otherwise interesting video, I never really thought life expectancy stats that way before.

This will undoubtedly stir up a flame war, because it touches upon one of the forbidden topics, but what the hell:

Although there is, indeed, not a vaccination for heart diseases, a plant-based diet, across the board, in studies since, like, the 70s have shown that it basically heart-disease proofs you, not to mention diabetes.

Here's a long 53 minute video that goes over the basics, but the entire webpage has a little under 2,000 videos with a bunch of stats, papers, meta-studies, etc.

In a lot of ways, heart disease is very preventable, and even reversible in some cases, if you stop eating so much damn meat.

But, as stated above, "not eating meat" or "don't tell me what I can and cannot eat!" is up there with religion as far as topics that people get super-defensive about.

It's up you, truly, to determine what's more important: health or food deliciousness. And some people, knowingly, choose food deliciousness. And bless them. You make your own choices.

But also bless them for our ridiculous health care costs.

Except for meaningful stats about the economy. Pick an economic indicator and see under which presidents it did better, on average. The big ones all go to Democrats.

Your car example has a sample of 1 though, I'm specifically talking about large samples.

I think you're missing the point, when you increase the sample size of a favorable bet, eventually the probability of you losing money in the series of bets becomes negligible.

Take the video's example of say risking a coin toss of $10 for a potential $15.

You only need to win 40% of the time to break even ($15 * 0.4 - $10 * 0.6 = 0).

To work out the probability of this for different sample sizes we just look at the cumulative binomial distribution:

For 10 samples, 40% success or more occurs 82.8% of the time.
For 100 samples, 40% success or more occurs 98.2% of the time.
For 1000 samples, 40% success or more approximates 100% of the time.

If you want to work it out yourself or visualize it, you can use a tool like this:

http://homepage.stat.uiowa.edu/~mbognar/applets/bin.html

God the US will miss Chomsky when he's gone.

So will the ROW (the 19 out of 20 people on Earth that US power considers disposable meat..)

BTW from the outside it looks like the last days of Rome.. crazy all round, torture, non-judicial murder, mobs burning things, unchecked power, total obfuscation and confusion sown all around by rogue members of the powerbase for their own reasons, xenophobia, public statements of religious eschatology.. ..

Take it from a Brit - the end of total global power does not HAVE to be an apocalypse.. you guys need to get into tea and cricket, stat..

Whoever thought that was a good idea should be tested for psychosis, stat.

@Jerykk
i cant make heads nor tails what you are trying to convey.
are you making an argument for harsher prisons?
or an assertion that if they were less harsh people would WANT to go to prison?
that recidivism is irrelevant so we should just execute prisoners?

i agree that poverty leads to desperation which can lead to criminal activity.there is plenty of statistics to back that up,though interestingly those numbers are dropping in regards to poverty=crime.

as for your deterrence argument.
yeah..no.the numbers obviously dont add up.
right now there are more american citizens incarcerated than the soviet gulags of the 80's.in fact,america incarcerates more citizens per capita than any other nation in the world.

americas prison population=2.4 million..and rising.

which leads me to my next point.
what is the purpose of prison?
well,it should be to remove those violent elements from society and for the offenders who are non-violent a way to pay a debt to the society they betrayed (fill in the offense here ____).

when their time has been served (paid) then they are free to rejoin society and reintegrate themselves back into society.

but what if that system of punishment strips you of all dignity and humanity?treats you like an abandoned dog at the local animal shelter?physically beaten and spiritually shattered,just HOW to you rejoin normal society?

what then?
do you blame the inmate who was thrown into a inhumane system?or maybe..juuuuust maybe..it may be the SYSTEM which is the blame.

let us look at some stats shall we?
the private prison industry is the 9th largest lobbiest in the country.who lobby for stricter sentencing,zero tolerance and mandatory jail time.a new trend in this area is now regarding teens AND pre-teens.they also make contracts with the local government to have a certain % occupancy.(meaning that even if those beds are not filled,the company STILL gets paid).

and lets not forget those kick backs to the local judges.already 25 judges this year got caught with their hand in the cookie jar.

the idea that prison is a deterrence has been debunked.
there are over 5000 federal laws NOT including state and local.so at any given time,in any given day,YOU have perpetrated a federal crime.

the idea the prison is for rehabilitation is utter bullshit,another liberal feel-good "look at the good we are doing" trope.

prison is a business.
based on the mafia principle.
it is about making the poor a commodity and exploiting their lack of resources to fight back.
recidivism?
thats just repeat customers.american prisons care zippo about recidivism.

again i reference the milgram experiment.
treat people like animals and they will soon behave like animals.
treat them with humanity and dignity and the outcome is far more positive for a society as a whole..we ALL benefit.

but the private prisons dont want that..it means less profit for them.

the norden is doing it right and the results are impressive.

Someone give them lots of money for production, stat!

I was more than a little creeped out at how much screen time was given to the Romeo and Juliet law. Did Bay get charged with stat-rape at some point?

I don't think your read the same article, read the same document or watched the same video...
The video and the released document does not show that NSA stole his credentials. It shows that NSA cracked password to a 3rd party company that resells their service.

Furthermore, "network map" they showed on pages 3, 4 and 5 are simply AS interconnection maps. You can easily see it here https://www.robtex.com/as/as35207.html#graph or here https://stat.ripe.net/widget/bgplay#w.resource=35207

THEY CAN NOT INTERCEPT COMMUNICATIONS from "any and all of his company's customers". The only thing they can do that password is see physical location of satellite service users and turn on or turn off their service. HE SPECIFICALLY SAID THAT THIS SPECIFIC LOGIN IS LIMITED IN WHAT IT CAN DO!!!!!!!

If it obvious that you have no technical understanding of the issue at hand and this is a perfect example of how this article is scaremongering hype!

There are approximately 780,000 law enforcement officers in the U.S., and there is just not enough police brutality (or violence against police) to go around.

I believe his claim, and probably many officers will go through their entire career without needing to use force, even if 50 officers a year are killed in the line of duty and 400 people are killed by law enforcement officers. As a simple ballpark figure, using 2011 stats, over a 30 year timeframe (would this be a typical length of a police career?), you could expect about 14,000 fatal incidents involving law enforcement officers (spread among 780,000 officers).

Not only does the character and stats transfer, but they just announced if you buy on 360 or PS3 it will be a free upgrade to the XBox One or PS4 version respectively. http://www.destinythegame.com/digital-upgrade That is a limited time offer, but the character/stats transfer is a regular thing.

The fact that if I get it on my 360 that I can carry that same character and stats to an XBox One if I get one is a positive selling point. Same thing for PS3 buyers to PS4. Now I don't think there's a discount on the actual game, but they do transfer your characters over.