Ah Asmo, this is humorous. Not in a way that has me thinking less of you, but due to the fact that even the smartest people make the most indefensible arguments. Stewart always has a joke when Republicans (and sometimes Democrats) do the same thing Chaos just did and which you defended--which is to ignore the "implied" in a statement. Usually Republicans use hate speech or such, but they just don't say the hate literally (Often when Obama's policies were compared to Nazi Germany's policies, for example.)

I.e, "Hey, I'm not saying Obama is like Hitler, but look at the smoke stacks coming from the White House?! They look like Jew smoke to you?!"

Another, but this one in more relation to our conversation.

I.e., Hey Lawdeedaw, when you have dick in your mouth does it taste good? WOAH, I DIDN'T SAY YOU SUCK DICK! YOU IMPLIED THAT! I just asked, you know, when dick is in your mouth...

See how utterly indefensible that above statement is? Or why Stewart gets so pissed, rightly so, when people make that argument? People can hide behind the most obvious statements and it's bullshit. Or people can be ignorant of the statements you make, and it's just as bullshit.

If you can't see the sense that makes, don't respond to this post please. I don't argue with ideology that blinds people to clear points and I have agreed with my fair share of points over the years when I have been wrong...so I expect it returned in kind.

Second, you do have a point about me being judgmental. I am jaded because every marriage I observed growing up was toxic. "Dad can't divorce mom, even tho she abuses us kids." Was a wonderful house I lived in. My wife was beaten for years by her husband, until she took poverty and destitution over that, and then met me. The list goes on and on, yada yada, no more need to explain my own life history because it isn't necessarily what happens in all of America. So I look at the worst aspects of marriage. Aspects that are as universal as the fact that we eat, breathe, shit and die.

Of course I also use history and stats to back up my judgment. So; marriage is a civil contract based on liberty and property (At least the part of marriage that matters to the government insofar as the rights they give you.) If the world's population of homosexuals is around 2.5% or so, depending on the estimates, then cheating (seeking out more than one relationship at a time) is much more naturally inherent to humans than sexual orientation by far. This is also natural in regards to the homosexual relationships as well. Cheating causes so much grief, repercussions, and yet it is only one bad aspect of being tied into a contract that many societies make difficult to break either through legal means or cultural taboos. Furthermore, abuse, divorce, long-term separation for business matters, much of these things kind of lend credence to the fact that marriage is created by society and has nothing to do with the "apparent" definitions we apply to it.

And Asmo, naughty naughty Asmo, you implied something...I am in no way shape or form telling other people what "their relationship is about." Just because I say something is inconvenient for damn near everyone (For some it is not) doesn't really mean much of anything. Shoes are inconvenient because you have to tie their laces. Is that me telling you how to shoe? No. How about kids? Kids are a hell of an inconvenience, but if you said I was degrading parenthood, especially my own, I would tell you to fuck yourself with that bold-faced lie.

If you are focused on the "property" aspect of that comment, well, you have an issue with my definition of the government's hand in marriage.

Pretty bold to sleep in a cave on an island this young and unstable.

There MUST be a miswording there, or bold faced, outright lie.
As temperatures rise, frozen underwater methane (methyl hydrate)is melted and RELEASED, not trapped. Not only that, as the ice on land disappears, it exposes permafrost that, as it melts, also emits methane. It's been happening for a while now, and is accelerating. Methane is FAR more damaging to the atmosphere than CO2, for longer times, so once this cycle takes off, we can expect exponential increase in the temperature rise.
It's POSITIVE feedback loop, not a negative one.
EDIT: Perhaps they mean when the Atlantic currents are disrupted and the lower ocean becomes colder...at that point it will have the ability to store more methane, but not the ability to capture it from the atmosphere since the upper ocean will be far warmer.
As for your misunderstanding of CO2, removing all CO2 production tomorrow won't remove any in the atmosphere, it will be there for quite some time before it could be absorbed in the ocean/forests, and that time period extends daily as the ocean becomes more acidic (making it impossible for diatoms to use the CO2 to make their shells) and the forests are removed. Once the ocean stops absorbing CO2, even the amount naturally created will be far too much for the atmosphere, and temps/CO2 levels will still rise even if we produce absolutely none. The tipping point was in the 70s-80s when we could have stopped CO2 production and made a difference. Now, it's too late unless we find a way to trap CO2 and keep it trapped. The systems are quite slow to react.
As for people "thriving", that's just ridiculous. There's been a food shortage world wide for quite some time now. The water shortage is becoming a bigger threat, and that's expected to increase exponentially as glaciers, snow packs, and aquifers rapidly disappear. Ocean harvests have drastically decreased, as have natural foods. We are thriving in the same way locusts 'thrive' when they swarm...but note that 99.9% of them die of starvation in the end.

...What do you mean "even cops in Utah"? As if you thought Utah is special?
More fucking liars. Never met a cop that wasn't one.
She had no reason to question him in the first place, and no reason to demand ID. (EDIT: Maybe that's wrong, apparently Utah is a 'show me your papers' state where demanding ID for no reason is legal?)
Never say a word beyond "I want my lawyer."
"What's your name?"..."I want my lawyer"...."What's your date of birth?"..."I want my lawyer."..."Are you not going to answer my questions?"..."I want my lawyer."...."Can you sit in my police car for my protection?"..."I want my lawyer." Best advice I ever got...from a lawyer. Anything else you say may be used against you, or lied about then used against you (as in this case).

She lies "I saw you, and I wanted to see if you'd be honest with me", but neglects to finish the thought 'because I'm a bold faced liar and I'm going to lie about seeing you smoking to try to get you to admit to a crime I can harass you for, and if that won't work I'll harass you in another way.'.
Name and badge number, and where's my lawyer? Please put their name on the internet.

See, you're a cop... gloating and laughing about lying.

That's extremely worrisome but..

-- I'll be polite here for a bit --

Great job, Lantern! You accomplished your job, in a clever way, that DEESCALATED the situation.

Now could you please explain..

Why should I ever trust a cop NOT to lie?

Why should I obey an order that COULD be based on a complete falsehood, fabrication, or bold-faced lie?

Why should I allow myself to be harassed or intimidated, even tho I know I'm completely within my rights as a "citizen" or "tax-payer"?

-- fin --


Now go back and watch that Arizona Iced Tea video and ask yourself those questions.

Ok, first things first. If you quote me and you decide to mark pieces of what I wrote somehow, don't do it out of fucking context. The part you turned into bold lettering is only a part of a sentence and does not communicatre the actual meaning of what I wrote at all.
I know you're not a troll but what you did there is suspiciously close to trolling. I know you're better than this. However, that is not ok. I do take issue with that especially because I know you and I are not on opposing teams here. You're not one the racist trolls here, neither am I, you know who I mean without using names.

Second, read my statement carefully. It's pretty much akin to the concept of the self-fullfilling prophecy. The statement I made validifies itself be me stating it.
Here's what I said phrased differently:
White people are better at being racist than everybody else because we don't suffer its consequences. White privilege, lack of empathy and inability to consider another point of view on the issue allows us to disregard the impact of it. That means we can be more clueless and uncaring in our behaviour as we don't feel the historical gravity, more or less immediate consequences or emotional toll of it as long as we can surpress whatever empathy for other humans we have.
Let me re-quote myself without your bullshit bold lettering:
'If there's one thing where white people are far more superiour than anybody else, it's having a feeling of superiority.'
Read that again!
And again!
You call that gloating? Really? A guy saying 'look at me, I'm best at being a shitty person!' is gloating in your opinion?
By stating this, I prove myself to be true, I validify my point by mentioning it. My point is not a good thing. Being arrogant is not a good thing.

Third, I get you are angry. You're a black guy living in the US, right? You should be pissed. There is this stereotype of the 'angry black man'. I never thought about it until Obama became President and political realities cause him to be wary of it.
If you are not white and a US citizen you have every right in the world to be pissed. Racism exists everywhere but one country where it still remains a huge, huge, superfuckinghuge problem is yours.
Pretty much everything encompassing domestic issues in the US has a racial component. My own country has serious problems with racism. Go, ask as german dude with turkish roots about his expirience. Every 'Achmed' has a story about it. Racism is like herpes, even if you don't have it, you're always at risk to be affected anyways.
Don't be mad at me, you're barking up the wrong tree . I may be an insesitive asshole and I won't deny the benefits of being white myself but I'm simply not your problem. People who want to keep you down because they don't like your pigmentation are.

A fair question. I'll try to answer it directly.

Your first paragraph is very close. What you describe there is the advantage afforded to you by the pro-white racialized society you live in. That's to say, all other things being equal, you are almost certainly better off as a white person than you would be had you been born a black person.

"White privilege" is the privilege of enjoying the benefits of the advantage you describe without even having to ask for it or condone it or even be aware of it. "Owning it" simply means acknowledging that this is the case and living your life accordingly. In your case, as a non-racist person, this might mean little change other than better understanding the situation every non-white person in most of the Western world has to actively notice, think about and deal with on a daily basis.

(Hope the bold wasn't too much. I wanted the "privilege" aspects to stand out from the "advantage" aspects.)

I'll agree too, they are toxic. I just had not said it before.

I only know about the whole gamer gate thing because of the reported insane threats that required police intervention and cutting off the youtube comments etc., and I don't think I'm odd in that respect (I know I am odd in many other respects). I never thought cutting off the comments had anything to do with stifling debate. I could be wrong, but I need to see evidence to convince me. EDIT: as I understood it, she only cut them off after the threats, not right after the criticism.

I think any threat to kill or rape someone in writing is serious. I remember it being reported that she was instructed to cancel personal appearances, that may have been inaccurate, but it's what I recall reading about the case.

Well, yes, you caught me being inadvertently sexist by saying 'single woman'. Mea Culpa. I should have said a person. Their sex and marital status is irrelevant, but I was thinking about her personally, not in general. I think death threats are serious, no matter who they're made against...same for rape threats, men get raped too. People bold enough to make public written threats should be taken seriously, IMO.

LOL! Too funny coming from you after your past comments, you probably don't even realize what you wrote. I believe citizen arrests are investigated like you said, but not the one's made by officers, which you tried to imply. There is no accountability for most criminal cops, and you know it well.

I hate to tell you, but a citizen would loose their job, especially if their job entailed driving, but often even if not, and it costs an average of over $15000. Sounds like some serious strings got pulled for this drunk driving cop to still be employed and only fined <$5K.
You are a repeatedly caught bold faced liar (and likely lie in your 'duties' as a cop, causing irreparable damage to people's lives with those lies), so you have no standing to call someone else a liar, and no, I don't lie even about little things (there's no such thing as a white lie) and it gets me into trouble all the time, so fuck you you whining tantrum throwing baby. My parents raised me to be honest at all times, so I'm no liar, unlike you.

By your own stated rules, because you had no argument against my post so devolved into name calling, you lose another argument...the last one with me, you aren't worth a minute of my abundant free time.

When a racist brings up race in a negative connotation time and time again, they should be called a racist...you trolling racist bastard.....and ignore.

@radx

As I mentioned in our previous conversations, my expectation is that once significant structural reform goes through, all the things I talked about before - much of the debt will be forgiven to speed up recovery for Greece and the rest of Europe. If that's not the case, then I agree that the policy was misguided. But it's the whole issue of trust again. Debt forgiveness certainly won't come before the fact, especially when a country like Germany is the main decision maker.

Putting that in perspective, I still think Merkel is broadly making the politically realistic best of a bad situation. I mean Merkel herself, from what I have read, is facing not insignificant opposition from a euro-skeptic right. Suppose she were more bold in funding Greece, was thrown out of office, and the policy abruptly reversed, what would that accomplish?

I can't speak to the specifics, but all those examples you mention of corruption and/or bad policy throughout the austerity process do not sound good. I have no doubt there were instances of malpractice or favoritism, and I hope if they are credible, they are investigated. I can only really argue on the merits of the broad intentions of the policy.

I would agree that the general attitude towards the Greeks being lazy and reaping what they sowed is unjustified. As an example, public sector workers did enjoy unjustified job security and there was a generously low retirement age compared to the rest of Europe. But much of the population didn't benefit from that early retirement or work in the public sector. From memory, actually measures like hours worked per capita were roughly in line or higher than the rest of Europe.

But unfortunately the brunt of the repercussions are borne by the populace who at best are responsible for not demanding more from their politicians because like mentioned before, the beneficiaries have emigrated and squirreled their ill gotten money away.

Not my cup of tea. I liked the old format way more. Also, I can no longer see if I have voted on a comment or not/it's no longer bold if I have voted. I'll miss that.
Can someone tell me how to opt out? I don't see it. I wanna stick with the older version if I can.
I'll also miss the videos on the side and at the bottom. I often used those lists to find other videos I wanted to see. Now that's ALL gone.

Hi Poolcleaner,

I think you're arguing from a false premise, that a belief in Creation science does not contribute to what you call true science. Some of the greatest scientists who ever lived were creationists. Here is a list of a few of them:

http://creationsafaris.com/wgcs_toc.htm

Their belief that God created an orderly Universe based on laws (which is the reason we call them laws) highly influenced and inspired their exploration of the cosmos. Here are a couple of quotes:

When with bold telescopes I survey the old and newly discovered stars and planets when with excellent microscopes I discern the unimitable subtility of nature’s curious workmanship; and when, in a word, by the help of anatomical knives, and the light of chemical furnaces, I study the book of nature I find myself oftentimes reduced to exclaim with the Psalmist, How manifold are Thy works, O Lord! In wisdom hast Thou made them all!

-Robert Boyle, Chemistry

The more I study nature, the more I stand amazed at the work of the Creator.

-Louis Pasteur, Medicine

Creation science is a collection of data which supports the idea that the Earth is young. Some of the theories within creation science are testable and predictive, but as a whole you cannot put it in a lab and perform a measurement any more than you could do so for macroevolution, because they both concern what happened in the past. You cannot observe macroevolution happening anywhere nor can you subject it to empirical testing. You can make observations and inferences based on a theory, but that is subject to interpretation.

This belongs in a courtroom, directly leading to this lady in jail as a con artist.

I'm not saying stupidity and ignorance should be offences in and of themselves. I am saying if you claim the title of doctor, and then proceed to boldly lie to people about their health then you go to jail.

this was a great discussion.
i was never a huge fan of sam harris as being a solid representative of an atheist viewpoint until a fellow sifter pointed some great essays by harris (waves to qwiz).my narrow opinion was mainly due to only watching short clips of harris,which is pretty unfair to harris and not indicative of his approach.

so i have gained a modicum of respect for harris in his ability to be reasoned in certain instances,though i may still disagree with many of his conclusions,for a multitude of reasons.

that being said i had two problems with this interview:
1.the first 5 minutes was harris whining and crying.that was total turn off.
2.at approx the 2hr mark he makes the argument that islam needs to experience a reformation,great argument and one i agree with,but in the VERY next sentence out of his mouth he criticizes reza aslan as not suggesting that islam is desperately in need of a reformation.

this is an out and out,bold face lie;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_god_but_God:_The_Origins,_Evolution,_and_Future_of_Islam

the entire book is an argument for reformation of islam!!

props to cenk for calling harris out on his draconian imaginary policies (if he were in charge).the arrogance of harris needs to be challenged at ever step and cenk did a great job.harris spent the majority of this interview back-pedaling.

there are some amazing atheist thinkers out there and throughout history,harris,at best,is mediocre.

i have read hitchens and harris is no hitchens.
*promote