@harlequinn

I see the root of the problem in the US simply being existing gun availability (incomparably high to any other developed country) which makes them cheap, plentiful and relatively easily obtained without a license. I'm sure that better mental health and poverty programs would help in the US but those would surely only chip at the problem and many would fall through the cracks. To me, a more trusted, reliable and locally available police force is more the answer. I guess the relative geographic dispersion in the US is a factor here, and probably why guns took off like they did in the first place.

Comparing to here in Australia, I would much rather bans kept a lid on availability so that we never have the problems the US does. Not that any other country is ever likely to match the US (89 guns per 100 people, versus 15/100 here in AU), but better safe than sorry. I think that statistic better than anything describes why so many Americans have the attitude to gun bans of 'well then only the criminals will have guns'. The ubiquity and accessibility is highly apparent in the US, whereas here in AU and probably most parts of Western Europe they are a rarity and that argument seems bizarre.

I think I see how this is done. Watch at .25 speed around 3:58. As he's going through the deck, you can see he's filtering face-up cards versus face down cards. Then just before the reveal, he does a "cut" which aligns the cards. He has Penn and Tellers cars set opposite...if they went in face-up then he put them in the face-down cut, if they put it in face-down, he put it in the face-up selection. I'm surprised that they didn't realize how this was done. Pretty basic, actually. This is the phantom shuffle method.

Your video, Cats versus Ssscat compressed air blasts, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

And this...

http://videosift.com/video/Cats-versus-Ssscat-compressed-air-blasts

lol

"People choose to be polygamous" means people what polygamy? A-they are born that way? B-it just happens? Or C-Hrm, lets see...they must LEARN it. You specifically compared it with being born gay versus choosing (ie., learning something and then choosing it.) Whether this was intentional or not is...irrelevant...

Second, most of the stuff was meant to be irrelevant to the content but also explaining why I hate moral connotations from judgmental assholes. You twist that as though I related it to the video or used it directly against your argument--which I did not. If you didn't understand this, I am not sure how to spell out something so obvious, especially to someone as well-learned as you Chaos. Even if you didn't twist it, your constant poking at it was irrelevant to the argument, and makes your argument seem very petty.

Furthermore, the definition of monogamy is crafted in the best possible light for those "practicing it." They can sugar coat the shit all they want, but it's still shit. Basically they took the most convenient definition they could find and applied it. Remember, I said, "You could argue that boning, fucking, sucking, dating people until you decide it is convenient to settle down is monogamy, and that's fine." Keyword, "that's fine." So yeah, I agreed in a way that the common definition accepted by others is as you said--don't correct bullshit that didn't need correcting.

Lastly, Rome was an example of how history affects perception. Nothing paranoid about that. I think its bullshit, but it happens. It would be like saying that people hate persecution of Jews because of Nazis. In fact Israel can abuse Palestinians these days exactly because of the past. @newtboy was damn right about child rape and didn't need to use sarcasm. Yeah, Rome/Greece had some good and bad, absolutely. But all in all they were hated as a greedy, mass-murdering peoples who brought hell to their vanquished.

This is Texas Hold 'em, and it's only ever played with one deck. The entire point of texas hold 'em is that a good player can calculate the statistical probability of what he has versus what the other players have, because they can all see the community cards.

If you introduce a second deck, it would completely mess up all those statistics. It's possible there are multiple deck variants of poker, but this certainly isn't one of them.

Tournament poker is always played with one deck at a time.

I believe mole rat jesus died on the 31st year, raised on the 33rd year, so it's more of a tradition of mole rat self sacrifice. Like seppuku or Harry Carry -- someone correct me on the written versus spoken forms of this Japanese tradition (in need of revival).

But you may wonder, "Aren't there any mole rats that don't believe in the tradition of self sacrifice?" And I would tell you, Yes. Yes, there are plenty that don't follow these traditions.

And you'd think in reply, "Well, that's odd. If these," let's called them "'alternative' mole rats broke away from the traditions of self sacrifice, why aren't there more older mole rats today?"

Well, it's a sad but simple truth, Timmy, but usually the jesus worshipping mole rats kill the nontraditional, alternative mole rats (who have the ability to live forever) -- and, really, any type of worshipper of something can fulfill this role of antagonizer: mole rats who worship pagan mole gods, power, money, the God of molterial possessions, AIDS. And these mole rats murder the alternative mole rats. Or drive them into suicide, fulfilling their ritualistic traditions of self sacrifice for their sun mole god. Or some type of mole rat god. There are many others...

One day the mole rat society will have a scientific term for the process by which a restrictive institution innately develops out of a fearful mass of moles, becoming normative mole rat behavior. One day we will understand how these fearful, normative moles inadvertently MURDER their fellow mole simply through their ignorance and their evil, sinful desires for power and dominance over their world, their fellow mole rat. (Is it a form of subconscious sociopathy? With hidden sociopaths leading the charge?)

They turn love into hate, declaring their moral mole rat codes as ethical, in order to profit and/or maintain their sense of safety, their illogical, SELFISH mole rat world order, to save their own asses and the asses of their mole rat children from mole rat hell. Sell. Fish. Mote. Eee. Vations.

It's a simple process of societal entropy within the mole rat community. An 'us versus them' mentality that just sits hidden between the conscious and subconscious mole rat mind. It's fucking not going to be "THEM" because those mole rats don't practice the ritual of self sacrifice to maintain the mole rat average life expectancy.

TL;DR: MOLE RATS DIE KNOWINGLY AND UNKNOWINGLY IN THE NAMES OF THE SUN GODS. Mole rat God bless mole rat America.

Or maybe we tackle this from 180 degrees.

As opposed to what is happening, or how likely, we may find common ground on what it is we should actually be doing.

I've already made the suggestion of electric vehicles and fission, fusion or renewables in place of coal as the road away from emissions. Specifically improving li-ion batteries as Tesla is doing is a major step. Researching sodium-oxygen batteries would be even better as they can hold 4-5 times the power and have cheaper materials and recent results have us close to making them viable, so I'd like to see gov money directed there.

For power solar and wind are currently only cost-competitive because the scale is small enough that we get away with treating coal plants like giant batteries covering our baseline. They simply aren't cost effective to scale up for base load yet, and not likely to be for another 10-20 years. We can have a lot of nuclear plants built in that time. With electric cars coming into the picture, we're also going to need that extra electric capacity. I again would strongly encourage more gov money going into French style large scale nuclear power deployment. China's already doing it, even they've had enough of their current coal literally blocking the sun in the sky on them and nuclear is part of their clean air push. We should be encouraging that and following suit out this way.

I also wasn't kidding about Lockheed-Martin's fusion research. A lot of new ideas are out there for fusion confinement plans and Lockheed has publicly declared their intentions to have a demonstration reactor in 5 years time. I'm hopeful, and if that pans out, the roll out of truly cheap and clean power will start in the next decade for the sole reason that fusion under cuts coal for price.

Part of me reason for these measures versus more drastic ones is we need to keep our economies growing because regardless of what we do the next 30 years, the oceans will continue rising that entire time and the mitigation measures we're going to gradually be spending more and more on are gonna required us to have the money to do them.

If anybody's got better suggestions I'm all ears.

That's so fascinating to me. You're clearly only looking at all the couples from one perspective: American males are shit and Chinese males are wonderful.

Try considering it from both points of view in both couples. The Chinese girl forces her boyfriend to hand over all his money even though he clearly doesn't want to. In order to appease his ball-and-chain, the Chinese guy has to bribe her with a purse. The Chinese girl forces her guy to hold her purse and suffer through shopping with her. The Chinese father-in-law is overtly overbearing and controlling. Chinese couples dump off their babies with in-laws to live free of their burden.

It's not racist to joke about American males being infamously fearful of commitment. In America there are endless references in popular culture to that aspect of American society all the time. Does that make racist the producers of such content?

It's also very commonplace for couples in America to get divorced. Would it have been racist if they'd joked about Americans divorcing versus Chinese staying together despite being miserable?

It's a matter of facts, and pointing out facts in a humorous (to some) way is not a racist act.

And the whole "fucking bitch" line was mostly an over-exaggeration for comedic effect, and it worked. But the fact remains that it's not uncommon for Americans to really feel that way about their SO picking off their plate. (Like I said, I've seen worse than a verbal insult in the form of a physical attack.) Whereas it's ostensibly more uncommon in China.

Funny, recidivism is high because there are no social support mechanisms post release, surprise surprise..

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/09/why-scandinavian-prisons-are-superior/279949/

"How is it that Nordic prisons that seem so cushy yield recidivism rates one-half to one-third of those in the U.S. (20-30 percent versus 40-70 percent)? "

I could add more quotes that would show up you're awfully, typically misinformed opinions, but it won't change your mind and I doubt anyone else around here needs to be more convinced that you're an idiot... ; )

newtboy says he has nothing against 'those fucking cowards in blue'.

lol

Isn't this akin to anecdotal evidence? One video versus one video?

Here's a video of a black man, open carry, not even questioned:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDQp2WJELTw

I'll bet if newtboy saw a black man open carry in front of his house, he'd get on the phone to 911 faster than you can say 'hypocrisy'.

Also...you'll notice the black man in this video was not shot because he complied with the officer's orders. That by itself gives the video some value.

@newtboy - There is a men's and a women's bantamweight *title* because the men and women don't fight each other, so they can't have just one title, but they aren't separated as different "men" and "women" divisions. Subtle difference, but still very meaningful I think.

@Lawdeedaw - That difference in severity makes all the difference. I'm curious if Knox (2012) cites how many husbands versus wives are subject to prolonged physical and psychological torture by their spouse.

I like her and her attitude, but to me there is a gap of cognitive dissonance between her answer to the first question versus the second...

She will only fight women because it is never OK for a man to hit a woman. Fair enough, and she justified her reasoning on that well.

But then, MMA is the most pro-woman sport because there is no distinction made between men and women. But all the women are in the MMA "bantam-weight" division, and the men aren't ... just because they don't use the sex/gender words doesn't mean the distinction isn't there. And based on her to response to the first question, she endorses if not personally requires that distinction in order to be comfortable with the system...

Seems weird to me.

10 people killed versus one cop killed.

I imagine you would prefer those stats to be reversed, considering your animus toward cops.

The reason that stat is correct is because cops are called into dangerous situations with dangerous people, the cops have training and the responsibility to use deadly force.

If the cop does something wrong, he has to answer to his local prosecutor up to and including the attorney general of the United States and the resources of the entire Dept of Justice...which, by the way, was used on Darren Wilson, and Darren Wilson was found to have acted correctly.

You would prefer the criminal get the upper hand, which puts you well out of the mainstream of normal people.

Why is that?

You really need to use some critical thinking instead of just taking a statistic and trying to draw a conclusion from it. Especially when that conclusion is so blatantly specious.