There is a slim chance that the established religious leaders will be so reluctant to give up their blanket power - that they will deny ANYTHING claiming to be god to avoid losing their power over millions.

Any one think the Pope will quit and call it a day just because something looks like heaven decends from the skys?

Doubt it... call it a trick from the devil instead.

I don't miss being married, young, poor, and white trash very much, but I am sort of sad my kids were too young to remember christmas with their dads side of the family. They will never know the awesomeness of piling in the broken trucks and driving 30 minutes through the woods to uncle zac's house.... to the eat a christmas pig he shot and cooked inside of a trash can. theyll never watch their gramma take bong hits and then get sent into town to get pick her up some panty liners and virginia slims. great uncle 8-finger-james will never teach them how to widdle an assualt rifle out of the christmas tree. and theyll never get to watch 3 pregnant aunts ride a broken refrigerator down a hill or learn how to make a bomb out of old lawnmower batteries and blow up the aforementioned refrigerator. burning plastic xmas bonfire motherfuckers!!!

Thank you for the quality invocation.

In reply to this comment by dystopianfuturetoday:
*quality

Slim box was 100% win.

I didn't realize that was PJ at first. He's looking slim and healthy.

>> ^Bloocut:

Well when your clock is ticking Mr. Gwiz, and your only hopes of a meaningful relationship with the opposite sex (given your proclivity towards "bewbs" either altered or absolutely porn perfect after having had your initial sexual imprint fueled by porn and hand) are slim to nil, it's not hard to run the simple numbers. Oh yeah, aren't you in some butt-fucking cold nowhere country as well?
Good luck, handsome.
That shit was hilarious by the way:)


/e has a girlfriend...

Well when your clock is ticking Mr. Gwiz, and your only hopes of a meaningful relationship with the opposite sex (given your proclivity towards "bewbs" either altered or absolutely porn perfect after having had your initial sexual imprint fueled by porn and hand) are slim to nil, it's not hard to run the simple numbers. Oh yeah, aren't you in some butt-fucking cold nowhere country as well?

Good luck, handsome.

That shit was hilarious by the way:)

(Copypasta from reddit)

In text form for those that want it in its entirety:

Speech:

"And now I thought we might have a moment, however brief, for some sincerity, if that’s ok; I know there are boundaries for a comedian, pundit, talker guy, and I’m sure I’ll find out tomorrow how I have violated them.
I’m really happy you guys are here, even if none of us are really quite sure why we are here. Some of you may have seen today as a clarion call for action, or some of the hipper, more ironic cats as a clarion call for ‘action.’ Clearly, some of you just wanted to see the Air and Space Museum and got royally screwed. And I’m sure a lot of you are here to have a nice time, and I hope you did. I know that many of you made a great effort to be here today, and I want you to know that everyone involved with this project worked incredibly hard to make sure that we honor the effort that you put in and gave you the best show we could possibly do. We know your time is valuable, and we didn’t want to waste it. And we are all extremely honored to have had a chance to perform for you on this beautiful space, on The Mall in Washington, D.C.

So, uh, what exactly was this? I can’t control what people think this was, I can only tell you my intentions. This was not a rally to ridicule people of faith, or people of activism, or to look down our noses at the heartland, or passionate argument, or to suggest that times are not difficult and that we have nothing to fear. They are and we do. But we live now in hard times, not end times. And we can have animus and not be enemies. But, unfortunately, one of our main tools in delineating the two broke. The country’s 24-hour, politico, pundit, perpetual, panic conflictanator did not cause our problems, but its existence makes solving them that much harder. The press can hold its magnifying glass up to our problems, bringing them into focus, illuminating issues heretofore unseen. Or they can use that magnifying glass to light ants on fire, and then perhaps host a week of shows on the sudden, unexpected, dangerous flaming ant epidemic. If we amplify everything, we hear nothing.

There are terrorists and racists and Stalinists and theocrats, but those are titles that must earned; you must have the resume. Not being able to be able to distinguish between real racists and Tea Partiers, or real bigots and Juan Williams or Rick Sanchez is an insult, not only to those people, but to the racists themselves, who have put in the exhausting effort it takes to hate. Just as the inability to distinguish terrorists from Muslims makes us less safe, not more. The press is our immune system. If it overreacts to everything, we actually get sicker, and perhaps eczema. And yet, with that being said, I feel good: strangely, calmly good. Because the image of Americans that is reflected back to us by our political and media process is false. It is us through a fun-house mirror, and not the good kind that makes you look slim in the waist and maybe taller, but the kind where you have a giant forehead and an ass shaped like a month-old pumpkin with one eyeball.

So why would we work together? Why would you reach across the aisle to a pumpkin-assed, forehead, eyeball monster? If the picture of us were true, of course our inabilities to solve problems would actually be quite sane and reasonable. Why would you work with Marxists actively subverting our Constitution, or racists and homophobes who see no one’s humanity but their own? We hear every damn day about how fragile our country is, on the brink of catastrophe torn by polarizing hate. And how it’s a shame that we can’t work together to get things done. But the truth is, we do. We work together to get things done every damn day. The only place we don’t is here or on cable TV. But Americans don’t live here or on cable TV. Where we live, our values and principles form the foundation that sustains us while we get things done, not the barriers that prevent us from getting things done.

Most Americans don’t live their lives solely as Democrats, Republicans, Liberals, or Conservatives. Americans live their lives more as people that are just a little bit late for something they have to do. Often, something they do not want to do, but they do it. Impossible things every day, that are only made possible through the little reasonable compromises we all make.

Look. Look on the screen. This is where we are; this is who we are: these cars. That’s a schoolteacher who probably thinks his taxes are too high. He’s going to work. There’s another car. A woman with two small kids, can’t really think about anything else right now. There’s another car, swaying, I don’t even know if you can see it. The lady’s in the NRA and loves Oprah. There’s another car. An investment banker: gay, also likes Oprah. Another car’s a Latino carpenter. Another car a fundamentalist vacuum salesman. Atheist obstetrician. Mormon Jay-Z fan. But this is us. Every one of the cars you see is filled with individuals of strong beliefs and principles they hold dear. Often, principles and beliefs in direct opposition to their fellow travelers. And yet these millions of cars must somehow find a way to squeeze one by one into a mile-long, thirty-foot wide tunnel carved underneath a mighty river. Carved by people who by the way I’m sure had their differences. And they do it. Concession by concession. You go, then I’ll go. You go, then I’ll go. You go, then I’ll go. Oh my God, is that an NRA sticker on your car? Is that an Obama sticker on your car? Ah, well that’s okay, you go, then I’ll go. And sure, at some point there will be a selfish jerk who zips up the shoulder and cuts in at the last minute. But that individual is rare, and he is scorned not hired as an analyst.

Because we know instinctively as a people that if we are to get through the darkness and back into the light, we have to work together. And the truth is, there will always be darkness. And sometimes, the light at the end of the tunnel isn’t the promised land. Sometimes, it’s just New Jersey. But we do it anyway, together. If you want to know why I’m here and what I want from you, I can only assure you this: you have already given it to me. Your presence was what I wanted. Sanity will always be and has always been in the eye of the beholder. And to see you here today and the kind of people that you are has restored mine. Thank you.”

- Jon Stewart at The Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear, October 30, 2010

Step one:

Buy a bottle.

Step Two:

Buy a Brita.

Step Three:

Use the two combined for a month, and spend less money then you would have buying plastic water bottles, without the need to recycle the plastic.

>> ^moonsammy:

...did they just make Weapon of Choice into a commercial for iced tea?


Looks like it.

...did they just make Weapon of Choice into a commercial for iced tea?

The difference is voting with your heart or your head, so to speak.

Voting for Obama is the headvote, since he has a chance of winning, then "the game" is to get the best of the two big candidates. Voting with your heart, is voting for whoever you like the best, no matter their chance of winning. Some times those two are not mutually exclusive, those are good times.
>> ^NetRunner:

@blankfist, text comments really need a sarcasm mark. That was tongue in cheek.
My point is that I am voting my conscience. I'm just basing my actual vote on a pragmatic analysis of what vote will have the best chance of bringing about the policy outcome my conscience demands.
In the specific case of the 2008 presidential race, I didn't find any of the alternatives to Obama on the actual ballot appealing. Even if I had, I would've rather voted for Obama, who seemed to have a good chance of winning, and the skills to lead effectively, over a candidate whose platform matched my ideal in every possible way, but had a slim chance of winning, and seemed to lack the leadership skills to build a coalition to pass his agenda.
I say that is voting your conscience, at least the way voting works today.

@blankfist, text comments really need a sarcasm mark. That was tongue in cheek.

My point is that I am voting my conscience. I'm just basing my actual vote on a pragmatic analysis of what vote will have the best chance of bringing about the policy outcome my conscience demands.

In the specific case of the 2008 presidential race, I didn't find any of the alternatives to Obama on the actual ballot appealing. Even if I had, I would've rather voted for Obama, who seemed to have a good chance of winning, and the skills to lead effectively, over a candidate whose platform matched my ideal in every possible way, but had a slim chance of winning, and seemed to lack the leadership skills to build a coalition to pass his agenda.

I say that is voting your conscience, at least the way voting works today.

Disclaimer: I don't claim to be an authority on the topic, I just thought I'd share my musings for any who may be interested

I'm extremely surprised that none of the physicist could give a remotely satisfactory answer to the beam-hand interaction question. I realise that the energies involved are extreme so weird things may happen and they obviously specialise in more fundamental aspects of the physics but I would have expected all of them to know at least a little bit about the physics of interactions between charged particle radiation beams with solid objects or water.

I only learnt a bit about proton beam therapy used in radiation oncology during my Masters in Medical Physics, and I'll admit I've forgotten a lot of it and can't remember all the calculations or parameters involved, but it seems to me like this would be a similar although perhaps more extreme case. Ultimately you would be receiving some dose of ionising radiation, the amount would depend on various things.

As solid as our hand appears to be it is still mostly empty space on an atomic scale, and there is a very high likelihood that protons in the beam will not collide with anything as they pass through. This is particularly true at very high energies, I forget exactly why... either due to momentum or the time spent in close enough proximity with atomic nuclei or something, but protons interact relatively weakly until they lose enough energy through the few interactions that do occur, at which point the likelihood of further interactions rises exponentially dumping all the remaining energy very rapidly. It is interesting to note here that at medically relevant energies 100-200Mev (17-35 thousand times lower than the LHC) this energy dump requires between 5 and 20cm tissue for the initial slow down to take place before the beams slow enough to dump the bulk of their energy. Your hand is at most a few centimetres thick and barely sufficient enough to do this at 100MeV let alone 3.5TeV. Graph which illustrates this.

Anyway, energy from the beam would be deposited due to some deflections and collisions and result in ionisation of some atoms either directly by collisions or indirectly by xray/gamma rays produced in the interactions. The few direct collisions between protons in the beam and atomic nuclei would also likely result in exotic particles and radiation further contributing to the dose you receive.

Other things to consider are whether the protons that shoot through your hand are still following sensible enough trajectories for the LHC to bend them around for another pass. At near light speeds they would be shooting around the LHC many thousands of times per second so even if the chances of interactions occuring in your hand are slim, each proton that manages to make another pass rather than shoot off on a random path that takes it out of the LHC, will have many opportunities to interact and deposit energy.

So depending on just how many protons are in the beam, and how much energy they dump into your hand, the effect could be anywhere from increased chance of cancer to a radiation burn of some sort if not a hole in your hand (although I suspect that most extreme scenario is unlikely).

All of this assumes my understanding isn't completely void at the energies involved which, if it is, may explain why the physicists didn't mention any of this.

>> ^westy:

bah . load of shit realy .

Looked at the comment in my email, and thought - "I bet I know who posted th- aaah, there we go."