@Trancecoach

I read through each individual link (jumped to conclusion and discussion on the scholarly piece), and I'm yet to find anything that's WORSE than "rape worthy"

I'm sorry, there is a reason women are still not allowed to drive in some countries: http://www.cnn.com/2013/10/26/world/meast/saudi-arabia-women-drivers/

And it's not because MEN are so oppressed.

I agree with ya.

There are a lot of jumping to conclusions and pseudo-scientific & "spiritual" & "mystical" hyper-babble in there.

It's really not about being "right" about anything; I think when people go on their spiels about it - there is a lot of personal fervor and frustration that this is obviously something extremely important to study because it "seems" like the "impossible". That it is so impossible to describe that it seems like anything or everything. Even when I think about times I have been under it and try to imagine what it was like I feel like I am going to bust reality wide open.

I do believe that it is bizarre that this chemical exists and seems to interact with us in an extremely intense and vivid way. It will be interesting to find out what scientists find out about this thing in the next 50 years and hopefully they can figure out more than "It is attaching to 5-HT_ & 5-HT_ receptors".

In 2013 scientists found that a rat's pineal gland contains this molecule so the future is going to be pretty interesting on this topic.

Agreed. I'm Christian, and politically conservative, but I'm certainly not jumping on the denial train. I think what most scientifically-aware conservatives (yes, we exist) are more concerned about is that the facts are uncovered and that a plan of action is established, in a logical, orderly manner. Unfortunately, people tend to jump to conclusions about the causes, and then rush solutions that tend to cause more problems than they solve. And that's really a factor of making money off the issue, whether it be from the media using fear, or the various business industries proposing solutions that are more monetarily beneficial to themselves than solving the problem.

@VoodooV

Blankfist loves that word. Though I often question if he knows what it means. Totalitarianism or Police Sate just don't have the same ring to his ear.

Per my post it really would be useful to have the full story here. I know that wanting all the facts and understanding the entire situation before jumping to conclusions isn't popular, but I'm ok with that.

Surely there are a large range of possibilities of what happened here ranging from the police and doctors went totally insane to David Ersatz is a known drug smuggler with a confirmed history...

Let's just all pretend that we can reach informed conclusions based upon this video and the recycled news cloud it formed.

/sarcasm: Go listen to the Young Turks I'm sure they have many interesting things to say.

Yes, you seem to finally get it. As I wrote but you misunderstood or intentionally ignored, legalization without regulation simply encourages the black market.
The point of legalization is that it fosters regulation. If there is no enforcement, that's the government's failing. Here in the USA, we have some legal brothels that are regulated fairly tightly, and as far as I can tell there's never once been a claim that they used slaves in either one. They would not do so because they would likely be caught and lose their money factory.
And I think you are completely wrong, this video directly accuses legal brothels of being the culprit. It starts off pretending to be a legal brothel, then has a sign that slaves end up "here" (in a legal brothel).
I think they missed the point by using legal brothels in Amsterdam as the setting for the video, they should have pretended to be a black market brothel elsewhere.

Thanks, Procrastination, for the backup. It is a normal problem here that people read or cherry pick one sentence out of context then rant against what they wish it said. Also a problem that people give links to "evidence" and jump to conclusions about it rather than stick to what it actually says. Because a story makes you feel a certain way about an issue, one should read carefully to be sure the facts actually support that feeling, as many writers are willing to obfuscate, fabricate, or outright lie to prove their point.

That was pretty much exactly what I thought.

But hey, let's not let that stop us from jumping to conclusions!

So yeah, this is a down vote for me, because the video grossly misrepresents the facts.

They're both jumping to conclusions. The southern countries aren't in trouble because they're nanny states - although their public sectors were in many cases quite excessive - but neither is it clear that the northern countries are better off because of their social security systems. There are many other differences between Germany and Greece than just how big a role the state plays in the welfare of its citizens.

Lots of coincidences. There's only so many super rich pricks in the venture capital game. You are going to see overlap. Investigate it and accept the findings. These two just jump to conclusions.

Besides, regardless of their ties to Bain, venture capitalists have enough incentive to rig the election anyway.

You and I don't know why they threw peanuts. They were not interviewed and given a chance to explain themselves.
Quit jumping to conclusions and making an ass of your self like with CNN and the RNC. I was just asking a valid question.

Too much over reacting by everybody.
>> ^VoodooV:

>> ^bobknight33:
Is the hatred against the camera operator or the leftest media?

oh so it's acceptable to call a fellow human being an animal if they disagree with your political ideology.
no matter how you spin it, it's still unacceptable. So fuck off Bob

Ctrl+L is not esoteric and plenty of people use keyboard shortcuts. I don't care whether it's part of a Windows library or not but if it's widely used across existing Windows installations you'd expect to be able to use them again in the new version of Windows. But if the new interface is going to disconnect from the desktop experience I just don't understand why it has to be linked at all to the desktop. Schizophrenic indeed. The user-interface needs to be consistent and harmonious. Hasn't everyone got that memo by now?

What they're showing with the search failures is that demonstrates a lack of focus on making the desktop interface as polished and user-friendly as possible. If nothing else it appears rushed and sloppy.

I want the system to be gleaming right out of the box - I don't want to have to note all the little exceptions and workarounds . Clearly in some aspects they've put in some work with multi-monitor support and Explorer but in other areas it looks incomplete.

>> ^spoco2:

Yeah, I'm not sold on the whole interface at all. BUT these guys are also missing things which I got pretty much straight away.
The typing to search for things, and not finding 'device manager' et al... if they just looked then below the search box it shows that it's matched items within Apps/Settings/Files So the default is to show just the apps that match, but if he clicked on 'Settings' then it would have shown him what he was looking for without having to actually go to control panel first. And my guess is there's an option for the search results to list all three of those things. DO THEY NOT LOOK AT THE SCREEN... Arg... now they're doing it for printers. The screen says 'NO APPS MATCH YOUR SEARCH', and then it has 17 matches in settings, and some matches in files.

Then they start bitching about Control L, which isn't a windows thing at all
The tabs thing is definitely something to bitch about, as it makes zero logical sense to have everything hidden off screen and not be able to access things without right clicking.

Yes, it looks like Microsoft have not considered non touch interfaces enough, which is a huge oversight. And it really seems they've taken something that was working really well, Windows 7, and stuffed touch stuff over the top and then said it was all done without looking at whether it was a cohesive whole.

So I don't like the look of windows 8 for non touch devices, but these guys jump to conclusions, don't read the interface properly and assume that everyone is a power user who uses the esoteric key combos they use (even when they're specific to particular apps).

Yeah, I'm not sold on the whole interface at all. BUT these guys are also missing things which I got pretty much straight away.

* The typing to search for things, and not finding 'device manager' et al... if they just looked then below the search box it shows that it's matched items within Apps/Settings/Files So the default is to show just the apps that match, but if he clicked on 'Settings' then it would have shown him what he was looking for without having to actually go to control panel first. And my guess is there's an option for the search results to list all three of those things. DO THEY NOT LOOK AT THE SCREEN... Arg... now they're doing it for printers. The screen says 'NO APPS MATCH YOUR SEARCH', and then it has 17 matches in settings, and some matches in files.


* Then they start bitching about Control L, which isn't a windows thing at all

* The tabs thing is definitely something to bitch about, as it makes zero logical sense to have everything hidden off screen and not be able to access things without right clicking.


Yes, it looks like Microsoft have not considered non touch interfaces enough, which is a huge oversight. And it really seems they've taken something that was working really well, Windows 7, and stuffed touch stuff over the top and then said it was all done without looking at whether it was a cohesive whole.


So I don't like the look of windows 8 for non touch devices, but these guys jump to conclusions, don't read the interface properly and assume that everyone is a power user who uses the esoteric key combos they use (even when they're specific to particular apps).

Yes, if you don't support gay marriage, you are, by definition, anti-gay. (I have never heard of any gay person who doesn't like straight people getting married. Have you???)

You're correct that homosexuals aren't defined by their ability to marry one another. They, like all humans, are defined in part by their rights, of which marriage is one.

You're correct, Chik Fil-A didn't donate to anti-gay campaigns. They donated to the anti-gay organizations that run them. Same difference, as far as I'm concerned, but if you want to split hairs...

As our country is more closely aligned with fascism inasmuch as government is "gay married" to the corporations, then where/how corporations spend their money is of increasing importance to the consumers who are, in essence, voting to support issues with their dollars.

Your analogy of the birthday present is not the same thing, because I, unlike a corporation, do not have political power like they do. If the present was $50 Million, and it was donated to Al Qaeda, then yes, you would have supported terrorism with your "gift."

Anyone who says the following is clearly running an anti-gay agenda:
"I think we are inviting God's judgment on our nation when we shake our fist at Him and say 'we know better than you as to what constitutes a marriage' and I pray God's mercy on our generation that has such a prideful, arrogant attitude to think that we have the audacity to try to redefine what marriage is all about."

Dan Cathy, Chick-Fil-A Pres. and COO, The Ken Coleman Show, June 16th.


... even though he clearly has little understanding of how marriage was originally defined in the Bible (which commands that brothers-in-law marry widows, or that rapists marry the women they rape) as if that even mattered!.


>> ^Edgeman2112:

>> ^Trancecoach:
You're right. The fact that they do things for married couples doesn't mean that they're anti-gay. The fact that they donate large bundles of money to anti-gay campaigns, on the other hand, does mean that they support anti-gay policies.
Did you not watch the video??>> ^Edgeman2112:
This is reaaaaaaaaaaaallly stretching it. Just because they do things for married couples doesn't mean they hate gays. I side with the chicken people on this one because they're a victim of gross generalization.


Yes I watched the video, but you are the one who fell for the sensationalism.
Let's be rational and fair here. If you don't support gay marriage, does that automatically label you as anti-gay? F-ck no it doesn't. If gay people don't like straight people getting married, does that make they're anti-straight? F-ck no it doesn't. It's a ludicrous generalization.
Each group of people isn't defined by their ability to marry one another. This is the mistake complainers are often guilty of making.
And no, they didn't make donations to anti-gay campaigns. They made donations to the organizations. What they then do with that money is not Chic Fil A's business. If I give you 50$ for a birthday present, then you donate that to Al-Queda, the media will portray me as supporting terrorism.
I don't like to jump to conclusions based on things I hear on the internet, and I do love that spicy chicken sandwich with a half and half sweet tea and waffle fries.

>> ^Trancecoach:

You're right. The fact that they do things for married couples doesn't mean that they're anti-gay. The fact that they donate large bundles of money to anti-gay campaigns, on the other hand, does mean that they support anti-gay policies.
Did you not watch the video??>> ^Edgeman2112:
This is reaaaaaaaaaaaallly stretching it. Just because they do things for married couples doesn't mean they hate gays. I side with the chicken people on this one because they're a victim of gross generalization.



Yes I watched the video, but you are the one who fell for the sensationalism.

Let's be rational and fair here. If you don't support gay marriage, does that automatically label you as anti-gay? F-ck no it doesn't. If gay people don't like straight people getting married, does that make they're anti-straight? F-ck no it doesn't. It's a ludicrous generalization.

Each group of people isn't defined by their ability to marry one another. This is the mistake complainers are often guilty of making.

And no, they didn't make donations to anti-gay campaigns. They made donations to the organizations. What they then do with that money is not Chic Fil A's business. If I give you 50$ for a birthday present, then you donate that to Al-Queda, the media will portray me as supporting terrorism.

I don't like to jump to conclusions based on things I hear on the internet, and I do love that spicy chicken sandwich with a half and half sweet tea and waffle fries.

>> ^messenger:
Someone who believes in something despite evidence against it is not using sense, reason and intellect. The Bible contradicts itself internally (contradictory lists of the "begats" is the clearest example I can think of), so cannot be accurate. If you believe the Bible is infallible, that isn't a reasonable belief. Some people "believing in a personal god" doesn't equate to "believing in Yahweh", which is your contention, so it doesn't matter if they're true or not. There's nothing unscientific about spirituality, and identifying some aspect of your spiritual experience a personal god. There's plenty unscientific about declaring the Bible to be infallible. Again with not understanding science.


If you're referring to the geneology of Jesus, it is presenting one geneology through David's son Solomon, which is the royal line, and one geneology through David's son Nathan, which is the non royal line. The lineage in Matthew is Josephs line, and the lineage in Luke is Marys line. There is no actual contradiction there, or anywhere else in the bible. What skeptics call contradictions are usually things they simply do not understand.

In any case, it would not be unreasonable to believe the bible, even if there were contradictions. This is simply a fallacious argument.

>> ^messenger:
The absence of circumstantial evidence where you might expect to find it is circumstantial evidence of absence. If the Bible were true, we would should expect, for example, that miracles would continue to occur, because why not? They should be even more commonly documented because of our massively increased population and information technology. But they appear to happen less! This is absence of circumstantial evidence. Amazing discoveries in science aren't evidence for God. God is one theory that explains them, but it doesn't work the other way -- you can't start with an amazing fact, and declare that it suggests all other theories are wrong. No matter what the universe looks like, it will still conform with the theory of God creating it, so amazing discoveries are not evidence -- they're just things we can't explain yet, like retrograde motion was once considered "amazing" and attributed to gods.)


Your contention is false for a few reasons; first, that miracles do not occur, and second, that we should expect to find an abundance of miracles. Not only have I seen miracles occur, I have been a party to them. As far as the number of miracles, we shouldn't expect to know how many miracles occur. God isn't performing for the general public. Even the post-resurrection appearances were only for a limited number of people.

We do have circumstantial evidence for Gods existence, such as the information in DNA and the evidence of fine-tuning. The theory of God has explanatory power, and is a better explanation for these phenomena. We should never ignore a theory which better explains the evidence.

>> ^messenger:
This where I start picturing you with your hands over your ears going LALALALALALA! Nothing rules out God's agency. Nothing rules out God period. He cannot be ruled out because there's nothing verifiable about his existence whatsoever. Nobody ever makes this claim, ever, ever, ever. It's like you wish we were saying this, but we're not. Really, we're not. BUT, if someone claims that their god has a chariot that moves the sun across the sky, I call bullshit because we have actually seen with our eyes that the Earth is spherical and rotates on its axis, which causes the apparent motion of the sun. If someone says the Earth is only a few thousand years old, I say bullshit and refer you to archaeology and to every branch of science that demonstrates the Earth to be much older.


It is the persistant claim of atheists that science has sufficiently described the Universe and is regulating God to a smaller and smaller corner. It's called the "god of the gaps" and you hear this all the time. You hear it from eminient scientists like Dr Krauss. So I don't wish it is being said, it is being said all the time.

As far as the age of the Earth goes, there are more evidences for a young earth than an old one. Since you don't know much about macro evolution, you probably don't know much about the theory of deep time either. Paleontology and archaelogy are historical sciences. The age of the earth is assumed, and the evidence is interpreted through that assumption. The assumption itself is never challenged.

>> ^messenger:
This is the least scientific thing you have ever said.


Messenger, you seem like a thoughtful person, so step outside of your box for a moment and think about this. The statement that "If God exists, the entire Universe is evidence of His existence" is a scientific statement of absolute fact. If it isn't, explain why not.

>> ^messenger:
You and I agreed before, no solipsism.


I engaged in no solipsism, as you will see, and I also thought we weren't going to be doing cherry picking either. I noticed you avoided these questions:

The question I would put to you is, how would you tell the difference? How would you know you're looking at a Universe God didn't create? What would you expect that to look like?

>> ^messenger:
You realize that you are using logic to prove that logic isn't real? "If-then" statements and implied questions come from logic. If logic doesn't stand on its own, then you can't use it to prove that it doesn't stand on its own. If you want to know where the rules of formal logic come from, you can look it up. If you don't accept them as valid, you've descended into solipsism, at which point I don't even accept that anything exists but my own mind. If you accept the definitions and rules of logic as valid on their face, then we don't require anything to explain where they came from. Logic is definitions, like equality. a=a. How do I know this? It's the definition of equality. If you disagree, then words have no definition, and thus no meaning, and we also agreed that "words have meaning".


I am not using logic to disprove logic, I am using logic to show you that you don't have a foundation for your own rationality. You live your life as if logic is a transcendent and absolute law, the same way as you do right and wrong, but you can't account for it in your worldview. It's a bit like sitting in Gods lap to slap His face. If logic doesn't have the same value independent of human belief, then you have no basis for your own rationality. Words do have meaning, which is why I am pointing out you have some intellectual sinkholes in your worldview that you just accept without thinking about it.

>> ^messenger:
Also, as your argument goes, if you assert that logic is a creation, and that God created logic, this entails that God exists outside of logic. Interesting prediction.


I didn't say God created logic, I said He is a rational being. Since we are made in His image, we are also rational beings.

>> ^messenger:
No, I wouldn't, necessarily. That's one field of science that I know very little about. If you've read a single book about it, you know more than me. That' doesn't mean you understand better than me how science works in general.


It doesn't mean that, no, but it does mean that you spoke authoritatively and condescendingly about something that I actually know more about than you do, jumping to conclusions based on your misunderstanding of what I said, that on a lack of knowledge about the theory itself. I would say this is positive evidence in my favor, and negative evidence against you.

>> ^messenger:
But since you bring it up, the theory of macro evolution may or may not be weak, I don't know, but outdated quotes from Darwin and about Darwin about the impossibility of macro evolution don't convince me any more than outdated quotes from Newton about the impossibility of the Solar System holding together. Do you know what Newton concluded? He concluded it must be God holding it together. Einstein figured out why it really doesn't fly apart, and it wasn't because of God.


They aren't outdated quotes, they are predictions that were made about what we should expect to find if the theory is true. Darwin made a great discovery, that changes can occur within a species. From there, he made an unjustified extrapolation that all species had a common ancestor. He expected to find evidence for this theory in the fossil record, but what he found was evidence against his theory. He blamed this on the relative poverty of the fossil record. 120 years later, we know it isn't the poverty of the fossil record; there simply is no fossil evidence to confirm macro evolution.

Do you know what a gluon is? It is a theoretical sub-atomic particle that binds quarks together. It has never been observed; it is simply a fudge factor, and without it, atoms would fly apart. Scripture says God is upholding them.

>> ^messenger:
Likewise, the problem of the lack of fossil records has been resolved since Darwin's time. The fossil evidence of intermediary links isn't a problem with the fossil evidence: it's a problem with Darwin's model. Darwin believed all evolution happened gradually, as he had observed. But there's no reason to believe it must all be slow. If one species had some tiny mutation that happened to give it a massive advantage over other species, its descendants would naturally spread into all sorts of new niches and tons of evolution would take place, both for it and other animals in its environment. Again, these changes were very rapid, so rapid, that they may not have left fossil evidence. Sometimes they did and other times they didn't, or we haven't found it yet. Check this video out: It's mostly a rebuttal to the "God is not a blind watchmaker" argument for Intelligent Design, but you can skip to 1:33 and still understand the premise. If you watch until 8:42, you'll see the reason why we wouldn't expect to find fossils of intermediary links, and why this isn't an argument against macro evolution anymore.


You're talking about the theory of punctuated equillibrium, or the modern "hopeful monster" theory. This is one of my favorite quotes:

In fact, most published commentary on punctuated equilibria has been favorable. We are especially pleased that several paleontologists now state with pride and biological confidence a conclusion that had been previously been simply embarrassing; 'all these years of work and I haven't found any evolution.'

Gould & Eldredge
Paleobiology v.3 p.136


It's the theory to explain why there is no evidence for evolution. How convenient. Do you realize that this makes macro evolution unfalsifiable? It also makes macro evolution a metaphysical theory, like abiogenesis, which you must take on faith. The video you referenced is not an accurate demonstration of macro evolution, either, since nothing is being added to the genome. A reconfiguration of the same genetic material is not traversing above the species level and is therefore micro evolution.

Since you're never read a book on macro evolution, try this one and challenge yourself:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0890510628/ref=olp_product_details?ie=UTF8&me=&seller=