Your logic isn't flawed per se, just incomplete.

In an unstable environment like the one created by Obama and his ilk, no sane wealthy person is going to expand businesses or invest.

Lower tax rates mean more investing and more lending to entrepreneurs. It also means less "hoarding" by the wealthy, who in an electronic world can transfer monies rapidly and keep them parked elsewhere.

The idea is that even though the tax rate is lower, there is more economic activity, and thus greater revenue.

Taxation is only half of the equation, the other is spending. Government spending will certainly not stop under a Romney Administration; a continuing taxocrat-majority Congress means spending will barely slow down.


Outrage over the Ryan proposal is selective at best. His Earness has already screwed the middle-class. Here are the new taxes the middle class will be paying for Obamacare. The ink is already dry.

>> ^TheFreak:

Give me $2500 over a year and it will all be spent on household expenses in the bat of an eye, directly into the economy. Give $250,000 to a millionaire and what exactly is it going to do? How is that money going to stimulate the economy better than the millions they're already hoarding?
Someone give me a coherent argument for how an extra fraction of wealth is going to encourage these people to invest and grow anything. Show me the flaw in my logic.

At the time of his suicide, Hitler's official place of residence was in Munich, which led to his entire estate, including all rights to Mein Kampf, changing to the ownership of the state of Bavaria. As per German copyright law, the entire text is scheduled to enter the public domain on January 1, 2016, 70 years after the author's death.[19] The copyright has been relinquished for the Dutch and Swedish editions and some English ones (though not in the US, see below).
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mein_Kampf

>> ^EvilDeathBee:

>> ^Sagemind:
In Canada, We have Indigo Books, Indigo Books also runs Chapters bookstores, Coles Books, Worlds Biggest bookstore, Indigospirit, SmithBooks and The Book Company. It's the biggest chain in Canada, practically a monopoly, but not quite. It's our equivalent to Amazon books combined with Barns & Noble in the US, in fact, Amazon even owns stock in the Canadian book chain. It also retains a 57.7% share in Kobo Ink. (968.9 Million in yearly Sales.)
Heather Reisman, Indigo's CEO and owner banned "Mein Kampf" from all the stores. Although not casual reading material, Mein Kampf is required reading in quite a few university and college's. It's an important book for historians and students of history and politics.
You can find critiques of the work in her stores but not the book itself. Heather herself has, admittedly, never read the book. Being Jewish, she sites it as hate literature and doesn't want anyone to see it.
Heather's stance is that she is not Banning the book, she just doesn't carry it. It just so happens she doesn't have any competition. (other than college book stores and few straggling independants)
So my point is, if she is blocking this historical book, which other publications is she blocking? And what can we do, when the book stores filter the books we can see?

Out of curiosity, if someone were to buy Mein Kampf, where does the money go? Who publishes it? Or would it be in the public domain now?

>> ^Sagemind:

In Canada, We have Indigo Books, Indigo Books also runs Chapters bookstores, Coles Books, Worlds Biggest bookstore, Indigospirit, SmithBooks and The Book Company. It's the biggest chain in Canada, practically a monopoly, but not quite. It's our equivalent to Amazon books combined with Barns & Noble in the US, in fact, Amazon even owns stock in the Canadian book chain. It also retains a 57.7% share in Kobo Ink. (968.9 Million in yearly Sales.)
Heather Reisman, Indigo's CEO and owner banned "Mein Kampf" from all the stores. Although not casual reading material, Mein Kampf is required reading in quite a few university and college's. It's an important book for historians and students of history and politics.
You can find critiques of the work in her stores but not the book itself. Heather herself has, admittedly, never read the book. Being Jewish, she sites it as hate literature and doesn't want anyone to see it.
Heather's stance is that she is not Banning the book, she just doesn't carry it. It just so happens she doesn't have any competition. (other than college book stores and few straggling independants)
So my point is, if she is blocking this historical book, which other publications is she blocking? And what can we do, when the book stores filter the books we can see?


Out of curiosity, if someone were to buy Mein Kampf, where does the money go? Who publishes it? Or would it be in the public domain now?

In Canada, We have Indigo Books, Indigo Books also runs Chapters bookstores, Coles Books, Worlds Biggest bookstore, Indigospirit, SmithBooks and The Book Company. It's the biggest chain in Canada, practically a monopoly, but not quite. It's our equivalent to Amazon books combined with Barns & Noble in the US, in fact, Barns & Noble even owns stock in the Canadian book chain. It also retains a 57.7% share in Kobo Ink. (968.9 Million in yearly Sales.)

Heather Reisman, Indigo's CEO and owner banned "Mein Kampf" from all the stores. Although not casual reading material, Mein Kampf is required reading in quite a few university and college's. It's an important book for historians and students of history and politics.

You can find critiques of the work in her stores but not the book itself. Heather herself has, admittedly, never read the book. Being Jewish, she sites it as hate literature and doesn't want anyone to see it.

Heather's stance is that she is not Banning the book, she just doesn't carry it. It just so happens she doesn't have any competition. (other than college book stores and few straggling independants)

So my point is, if she is blocking this historical book, which other publications is she blocking? And what can we do, when the book stores filter the books we can see?

Not only was your prior argument fallacious, but I refuted it. Now you're ignoring that and cherry picking your replies here. Seems pretty intellectually dishonest to me?

Alright, Ill answer your "refutations" then:

"Why shouldn't you suspect that decay rates could change?"

If you read my post, I explained why : Because there is no evidence that suggest it is changing, and no known physical mechanisms that can produce such change. The moon could suddenly start orbiting the other direction relative to earth tomorrow, but there is no signs, no evidence, that suggests or implies that it will, and also physics dont allow it unless it is pushed or pulled by some very large force etc.
Bottom line, change in the decay rate is an assumption of something for which there is no evidence. Thats why scientists dont waste their time suspecting this.

As for the line "absense of evidence is not evidence of absense". Well thats a poetic thing and all, but its not really true when you think about it for a little bit: for the most part, this is how we exclude things from our reality, and separate what is real or not. It is perfectly consistent to say "I really dont think this thing exist" while remaining, in principle, open minded. There might be green hairy monsters hiding under my bed, I can never know for absolute certain, but I dont THINK so, the absense of evidence convinces me there are none.

The same is true in say, particle physics, there may be thousands of different "higgs-bosons" of different kinds doing all sorts of crazy shit in physics, but again, in the absense of evidence... you cant just build your ideas around fantasies.

Do you know the geologic column doesn't actually exist in reality?
Are you alking about illustrations of the geologic column? Then yeah, I'm aware that it doesnt look like that in real-life, but the term is definately real, and yes, erosion and things like that can expose old layers to fresh air, this is of course well know in biology and geology. When I say fossils are layed down in order, I dont mean that they are all physically on top of eachother, but that the dating of the layers match with the kind of animals found in that era. IE: there are no "fossil rabbits in the pre-cambrian" as one biologist replied when asked what would truly disprove evolution.


Caylor: "Do you believe that the information evolved?"

MB: "George, nobody I know in my profession believes it evolved. It was engineered by genius beyond genius, and such information could not have been written any other way. The paper and ink did not write the book! Knowing what we know, it is ridiculous to think otherwise."

Hahaha, if that was said by an actual molecular biologist capable of finding his own ass, I'll eat my hat. This is so obviously Creo-speak from here on to hell. The first thing an actual biologist would do would be to question the use of the word "information" (I'm assuming he's asking about the information contained in DNA) in this context. Because we refer to DNA as a language and "it contains all the information needed to assemble a human" and so on, Creationists think of DNA as some sort of literary masterpiece, it seems. The truth is of course that its 4 acids spelling 95% repetetive gibberish intersped with some interesting bits that code for proteins and do actual useful stuff.

They also seems to think that (perhaps because they believe it themselves) humans existed from the get-go, and that DNA somehow evolved inside us or some shit like that. (Like one creationist who asked Richard Dawkins how we humans peed before our penises and vaginas evolved..) Anyway, like our penises, our DNA is of course much older than humans themselves, We are simply the latest iterations of a nearly endless line of attemps by nucleic acids to clone themselves by way of making an animal that does the reproduction.

I highly suspect that interview was faked by creationists , but even if it wasnt, it'd just mean that there's a molecular biologist out there who doesnt know fuck all about molecular biology and hold some strange beliefs, and he's wrong. Simple as that.


You then have the obligatory list of quotations, and what can I say?.. I can see how you think these are somehow indicating a plot or something against creationist, but honestly this is just plain quotemining.

@ChaosEngine

Oh sweet irony, I'm being called wilfully ignorant by a young-earther.

I'm not going to refute you. I don't need to; @BicycleRepairMan has already done an excellent job of it.

An excellent refutation? He cherry picked one sentence out of my reply, a reply where I had demonstrated the fallacy of his argument from incredulity by proving his assumption of the constancy of radioactive decay rates was nothing more than the conventional wisdom of our times. Is this what passes for logical argumentation in your mind? He posited a fallacious argument. I exposed the fallacy. He ignored the refutation and cherry picked his reply. You seem to be showing that in your eagerness to agree with everything which is contrary to my position that you have a weak filter on information which supports your preconceived ideas. Why is it that a skeptic is always pathologically skeptical of everything except his own positions, I wonder?

@BicycleRepairMan

...and to see an exampe of such a racket, check the flood "geology" link.

Seriously, you cant see the blinding irony in your own words? So, things like radiometric dating, fossils, geology, astronomy, chemistry, biology are all just parts of a self-perpetuating racket confirming each others conclusions in a big old circlejerking conspiracy of astronomical proportions.. well, lets assume then that it is. So they are basically chasing the foregone conclusion that the universe is over 13 billion years old and that life on this planet emerged some 3,6 billion years ago and has evolved ever since. But where did these wild conclusions come from? Who established the dogma that scientists seems to mindlessly work to confirm, and why? And why 13,72 billion years then? Why not 100 billion years, or 345 million years?

The thing is, what you have here is an alleged "crime" with no incentives, no motivation.. Why on earth would all the worlds scientists, depentently and independently and over many generations converge to promote a falsehood of no significance to anyone? it might make some kind of sense if someones doctrine was threatened unless the world was exactly 13.72 billion years old. Or if someone believed they were going to hell unless they believed trilobites died out 250 million years ago.. The thing is, nobody believes that.

The truth is pretty much staring you in the face right here. The conclusions of science on things like the age of the earth emerged gradually; Darwin, and even earlier naturalists had no idea of the exact age of the earth, or even a good approximation, but they did figure this much: It must be very, very old. So old that it challenged their prior beliefs and assumptions about a god-created world as described in their holy book. And thats were nearly all scientists come from: They grew up and lived in societies that looked to holy books , scripture and religion for the answers, and everybody assumed they had proper answers until the science was done.If scientists were corrupt conspirators working to preserve dogma, they be like Kent Hovind or Ken Ham. Ignoring vast mountains of facts and evidence, and focus on a few distorted out-of-context quotations to confirm what they already "know".

Not only was your prior argument fallacious, but I refuted it. Now you're ignoring that and cherry picking your replies here. Seems pretty intellectually dishonest to me? In any case, I'll reply to what you've said here. I was going to get into the technical issues concerning why scientists believe the Universe is so old, and the history of the theory, but so far you have given me no reason to believe that any of it will be carefully considered.

Instead I'll answer with a portion of an article I found, which was printed in "The Ledger" on Feb 17th 2000. It's interview of a molecular biologist who wanted to remain anonymous

Caylor: "Do you believe that the information evolved?"

MB: "George, nobody I know in my profession believes it evolved. It was engineered by genius beyond genius, and such information could not have been written any other way. The paper and ink did not write the book! Knowing what we know, it is ridiculous to think otherwise."

Caylor: "Have you ever stated that in a public lecture, or in any public writings?"

MB: "No, I just say it evolved. To be a molecular biologist requires one to hold onto two insanities at all times:
One, it would be insane to believe in evolution when you can see the truth for yourself.
Two, it would be insane to say you don't believe evolution. All government work, research grants, papers, big college lectures -- everything would stop. I'd be out of a job, or relegated to the outer fringes where I couldn't earn a decent living.”

Caylor: “I hate to say it, but that sounds intellectually dishonest.”

MB: “The work I do in genetic research is honorable. We will find the cures to many of mankind's worst diseases. But in the meantime, we have to live with the elephant in the living room.”

Caylor: “What elephant?”

MB: “Creation design. It's like an elephant in the living room. It moves around, takes up space, loudly trumpets, bumps into us, knocks things over, eats a ton of hay, and smells like an elephant. And yet we have to swear it isn't there!”

Here are some selected quotes:

We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.

Richard Lewontin

"In China its O.K. to criticize Darwin but not the government, while in the United States its O.K. to criticize the government, but not Darwin."

Dr. J.Y. Chen,

Chinese Paleontologist

Even if all the data point to an intelligent designer, such an hypothesis is excluded from science because it is not naturalistic."

S. C. Todd,
Correspondence to Nature 410(6752):423, 30 Sept. 1999

"Because there are no alternatives, we would almost have to accept natural selection as the explanation of life on this planet even if there were no evidence for it."

Steven Pinker,
Professor of Psychology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA., "How the Mind Works," [1997]

"Biologists are simply naive when they talk about experiments designed to test the theory of evolution. It is not testable. They may happen to stumble across facts which would seem to conflict with its predictions. These facts will invariably be ignored and their discoverers will undoubtedly be deprived of continuing research grants."

Professor Whitten,
Professor of Genetics, University of Melbourne, Australia, 1980 Assembly Week address.

"Science is not so much concerned with truth as it is with consensus. What counts as truth is what scientists can agree to count as truth at any particular moment in time. [Scientists] are not really receptive or not really open-minded to any sorts of criticisms or any sorts of claims that actually are attacking some of the established parts of the research (traditional) paradigm, in this case neo-Darwinism. So it is very difficult for people who are pushing claims that contradict that paradigm to get a hearing. They find it hard to [get] research grants; they find it hard to get their research published; they find it very hard."

Prof. Evelleen Richards,
Historian of Science at the University of NSW, Australia

Speaks for itself, I think..

You definitely want to see Ink, if you like movies that are primarily mind-benders, meant to make you consider things from a new angle. I found it far, far better than I expected.

I agree on all parts, a nice mashup (especially impressive for combining four pieces), and a great video to front for it.

Yea... Not really racism. You should know what's being represented on your own darn body, especially when you're entering from Mexico in midst of drug war.

It's about context, and it's about knowledge. Imagine me as a high school kid thinking those SS lightening symbol with the skull is really cool, so I decide to get'em inked. Next time I try flying to Germany, they deny me at the airport because it's considered a Nazi symbol. I could make the argument saying I didn't know what the symbol was about before having them tattooed. The Germans would still deny my entrance.

Be mindful where you're traveling to, and be responsible for what goes on your body for god sakes... Puh.

>> ^Crosswords:

Troglodytes who touch computer screens to point at stuff.

It's even worse when it's the current user doing it. You've got a mouse under your hand that controls an object already on the screen, not coincidentally called a pointer!

Along the lines of what @Shayde said, I had a user once who not only got ink on the screen, but actually intentionally wrote on it. I kept throwing out her little post-it notes with her password on them, so she wrote it directly on the monitor screen.

Well, that's the fascinating thing about me, Yogi. I can recognize that someone has flaws and STILL like them. Amazing, n'est ce pas?
>> ^Yogi:

>> ^shuac:
>> ^Yogi:
>> ^shuac:
I always felt like "what's Ricky Gervais doing in this group?" Not that Gervais isn't funny but he hasn't exactly accrued the same stand-up gravitas as a Seinfeld or a Rock or a C.K.

I agree but he addresses that at one point and that's a great thing. Also I think it was his idea, his show.
Yeah I looked it up, Gervais Ink. his production company produced this special. I think they need like 40 more, even if it was just rehashing constantly I would watch all of them over and over.

I didn't realize that Gervais produced this show (which I have seen) but now that I do, I think he has an inferiority complex much like his David Brent character. Instead of injecting himself into the discussion and making it weird by over-reacting to everything (the above clip is a terrific example) he should have excused himself and inserted, I dunno, Louis Black. I think Black would have had a solid point of view on the topic. Or how about a woman?

Jeez did you not like Ricky Gervais that much? He was fine, I love this special, Ricky did nothing to make it bad. Also I know it sounds bad but I can't think of a woman comic that can keep up with these guys. That's probably due to my ignorance though.

>> ^shuac:

>> ^Yogi:
>> ^shuac:
I always felt like "what's Ricky Gervais doing in this group?" Not that Gervais isn't funny but he hasn't exactly accrued the same stand-up gravitas as a Seinfeld or a Rock or a C.K.

I agree but he addresses that at one point and that's a great thing. Also I think it was his idea, his show.
Yeah I looked it up, Gervais Ink. his production company produced this special. I think they need like 40 more, even if it was just rehashing constantly I would watch all of them over and over.

I didn't realize that Gervais produced this show (which I have seen) but now that I do, I think he has an inferiority complex much like his David Brent character. Instead of injecting himself into the discussion and making it weird by over-reacting to everything (the above clip is a terrific example) he should have excused himself and inserted, I dunno, Louis Black. I think Black would have had a solid point of view on the topic. Or how about a woman?


Jeez did you not like Ricky Gervais that much? He was fine, I love this special, Ricky did nothing to make it bad. Also I know it sounds bad but I can't think of a woman comic that can keep up with these guys. That's probably due to my ignorance though.

>> ^Yogi:

>> ^shuac:
I always felt like "what's Ricky Gervais doing in this group?" Not that Gervais isn't funny but he hasn't exactly accrued the same stand-up gravitas as a Seinfeld or a Rock or a C.K.

I agree but he addresses that at one point and that's a great thing. Also I think it was his idea, his show.
Yeah I looked it up, Gervais Ink. his production company produced this special. I think they need like 40 more, even if it was just rehashing constantly I would watch all of them over and over.


I didn't realize that Gervais produced this show (which I have seen) but now that I do, I think he has an inferiority complex much like his David Brent character. Instead of injecting himself into the discussion and making it weird by over-reacting to everything (the above clip is a terrific example) he should have excused himself and inserted, I dunno, Louis Black. I think Black would have had a solid point of view on the topic. Or how about a woman?

Or, if they use a pen to point at stuff. Pen ink on the screen is the worst. A problem when everyone shares desks at work. :-/

I had another pet peeve at work just today; a co-worker who kept sniffing loudly through his nose like he's clearing it. Every few seconds. For several hours. Gaaaaaahhhhhh...!
>> ^Crosswords:

Troglodytes who touch computer screens to point at stuff. Yes thank you I do see the thing on the screen that's right in front of my face, and now I see your big nasty smudgy finger print too. I need to find a way to lift prints from screens and apply them to crime scenes.

>> ^shuac:

I always felt like "what's Ricky Gervais doing in this group?" Not that Gervais isn't funny but he hasn't exactly accrued the same stand-up gravitas as a Seinfeld or a Rock or a C.K.


I agree but he addresses that at one point and that's a great thing. Also I think it was his idea, his show.

Yeah I looked it up, Gervais Ink. his production company produced this special. I think they need like 40 more, even if it was just rehashing constantly I would watch all of them over and over.

Gotta use expensive paper to write well with those pens too. The cheap stuff bleeds through or catches the pen tip, or rips holes through the paper when you try to make the pen flex and write stylishly.

Gets fairly expensive with the cost of fountain pens, decent ink, and good paper.

I used to use a fountain pen when I was younger and cared more about how my writing looked and was a little bit of a collector of weird pens/mech pencils. Then I got into computers, realized typing was loads easier because you could screw up all you wanted...and the carpal tunnel started, etc etc. Was just easier to use the keyboard versus having the cramping hands from trying to write neatly.

And now my handwriting looks like a little kid or doctor wrote it, and I hate people who hand me a clipboard to fill stuff out. Clipboards have to be pretty close to the most horrible writing surface you can have to write on...they are not natural to hold at all for me.