In the interest of full disclosure is this observation from the Washington Times. Notice the quote from one of the Park Rangers.

The Park Service appears to be closing streets on mere whim and caprice. The rangers even closed the parking lot at Mount Vernon, where the plantation home of George Washington is a favorite tourist destination. That was after they barred the new World War II Memorial on the Mall to veterans of World War II. But the government does not own Mount Vernon; it is privately owned by the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association. The ladies bought it years ago to preserve it as a national memorial. The feds closed access to the parking lots this week, even though the lots are jointly owned with the Mount Vernon ladies. The rangers are from the government, and they’re only here to help.
“It’s a cheap way to deal with the situation,” an angry Park Service ranger in Washington says of the harassment. “We’ve been told to make life as difficult for people as we can. It’s disgusting.”


Yep. Kinder and gentler.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/oct/3/pruden-the-cheap-tricks-of-the-game/

Don't try and pawn this off on me. It's not my "excuse". I'm closed only to one idea: of my being absolutely certain about anything. I'm not closed to any other idea, period. You have failed to convince me. That's why I don't accept your story. And after all this, you revealed yourself to be absolutely certain of your own judgement that your numinous experiences are coming from God.

Let me get this straight..you're completely closed to the idea of being absolutely certain of something. Think about that for a minute and see if you can spot the inherent contradiction contained within this idea.

If I say there is absolute truth, and someone says no there isn't, and I say are you absolutely sure about that?, this isn't a trivial question. That's what I used to think, that it was some kind of cheap trick, and ultimately meaningless. Don't be like I was and just dismiss this without giving it a great deal of thought. The fact is, you can't deny the idea of absolute truth without confirming it. It's not a cheap parlor cheap of logic, it is a revelation of the framework of reality, of how things really work. That there really is a certain truth, and everything you ultimately believe, flawed logic and all, ultimately points to it. It actually could be no other way. There is a ground for everything we know and understand. The atheist says though that's he is standing on air. The issue is that subjective beings can't know anything about objective reality so they grope around in the dark trying to understand what truth is. An atheism has no route to get beyond his subjective understanding. The only way you can understand truth then is by the light of revelation. IE, someone without objective understanding (an omniscient being) would have to enlighten you. If you've never seen light then you won't understand what darkness is. Jesus said if the light in you is darkness, how great is that darkness!

What I believe is that you were not systematic in trying to understand your experience. When you woke up from it and figured out that you were being led down a path to insanity, you just wrote the whole thing off as being entirely in your mind. I would liken this to coming home one day and finding a group of thieves moving furniture out of your house and loading it into a truck. You ask them what they're doing and they say that they are a moving company and that you called them and set up an appointment 2 weeks ago to move you out, and don't you remember? Oh wow, you say, it must have skipped my mind! It looks like it was just a rash idea of mine, really sorry for this inconvenience! You then proceed to help them move your furniture back into your house.

As you're moving everything back in, you notice the door has been busted open and the house has been ransacked. You ask them about this and they say that just earlier you were here trying to let them into house but you couldn't find your key so you kicked the door in because you didn't want to keep them waiting. You then tore the house apart looking for your keys, and when you found them you left to go get something to eat and that's where you've been this whole time. Pondering this you decide that if you could forget about calling them in the first place then you could most certainly forget about doing all of those other things too.

So you finally get everything back in the house and you again apologize profusely for wasting their time, but as they are leaving, they say don't worry about it because we were never here. We're just part of a dream you're having. Goodbye! You think to yourself, considering the memory problems I've been having, this seems very reasonable. The next day a friend stops by and asks you what happened to your house. Oh, it was all a bad dream, you say. I apparently did all of this in my sleep, but it's over now, not to worry!

I don't know what your experience was; typically, they try to convince you that you're some kind of Messiah-like figure, or that reality is centered around you in some way. What I do know is that things happened to you which you cannot explain; signs and wonders, strange "coincidences", etc. These were the signposts in your journey that reinforced your paradigm and kept you on that road. You want to believe that it was all in your head rather than a strategic plan to destroy you, so you chalk it up to delusion. It wasn't all delusion, though; you were being herded down a path, probably with the goal of getting you to kill yourself, and it's only because they went too far that you woke up from that spell.

You have failed to convince me. That's why I don't accept your story.

I can't convince you of anything. This isn't an intellectual problem that you're having, it is an issue of your heart. Only God can convince you, but your heart is hardened towards Him and you refuse to come near to Him.

And after all this, you revealed yourself to be absolutely certain of your own judgement that your numinous experiences are coming from God.

That's just what I've been saying all along, that there is a certain truth, and God reveals it to those who seek Him. That truth is Jesus Christ. You've admitted that God could convince me, so it isn't an inherently irrational position.

All you're telling me is that you are convinced of something, and FWIW, I believe that you are. You have no grounds to believe that your human perceived conviction is warranted, especially given that you know of many other humans who are equally convicted about things that contradict what you believe. That alone should give you doubt about your convictions, as it gives me doubt. If it doesn't give you doubt, you're not being rational. What's more likely: that you alone are correct among all the millions of equally convicted people, or that all equally convicted people, including you, are wrong? What makes you so special?

Nothing makes me special; I simply responded to Gods calling. I can explain why people follow false religion in imitation of the true God, which is that Satan blinds the eyes of unbelievers so that they cannot know the truth about God. He backs up their experiences with supernatural signs and wonders so that they believe they are on the right path. Satan is an imitator of God:

2Co 11:13 For such are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into the apostles of Christ.
2Co 11:14 And no marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light.
2Co 11:15 Therefore it is no great thing if his ministers also be transformed as the ministers of righteousness; whose end shall be according to their works.

I DO doubt my own existence -- at least, I don't take it as fact that I exist. I could be a brain in a vat, etc. I don't accept my own senses either as categorical evidence. I live as if they're accurate because it's instinctive and it serves me to do so. Skepticism is not ignorance. Accepting something absolutely and uncritically is ignorance. You expect me to accept your word on faith. Why should I believe you? You're just some random person on their internet soapbox who claims to have visions of god. See how stupid it would be for me to change my life because of that? You wouldn't.

I don't think you're actually that skeptical, because I haven't really seen you critically examine your own presuppositions. You say that you don't have any preference for the truth, but that is clearly not true. You are very slanted in favor of a liberal/humanistic/naturalistic mindset, and you oppose any ideas which contradict it. You clearly do accept some things, like evolution for instance, as the gospel truth. This is very inconsistent with your statements about uncertainty. You've seen the human capacity to delude itself, so you keep saying, but you don't seem to question the thought process that leads you to any of these conclusions.

The reason I came to be a Christian, and no one ever witnessed to me by the way, is because I wanted to know the truth and God showed me what it is. I had sufficient evidence from God to give my life to Jesus, and then Jesus completely transformed me and made me a new person. I didn't expect any of that to happen. I had no idea what it would mean to become a Christian. But it did happen, supernaturally, and I found out later that it matched up to everything the bible said would happen. It's one thing to use confirmation bias to make a bunch of coincidence and happenstance into some kind of experience of God. It's another to be transformed at the core of your being into an entirely new person, losing all the negatives and gaining an unlimited supply of peace, joy, hope and love. Even more so when it happens within a moment in time. I've seen miracles, and I've seen things like demon possession. I am certain because God made me certain, but there is plenty of evidence to justify my certainty.

You are certain about God's revelation to you because God has given you certainty of it. That's tautology, if you're a rational agent.

Actually, it's circular reasoning. You will find that every inductive argument suffers from this problem. You cannot actually ultimately justify a single one of your beliefs to me. The conversation could go like this:

You: (objection to a stated fact or belief)
Me: Is that a rational statement?
You: Yes, it is logical.
Me: How do you know it is logical?
You: Because I reason it to be so.
Me: How do you know your reasoning is valid?
You: Because I reason it to be so.

Repeat ad infinitum. You've admitted that you can't trust your senses, and you just assume that you're rational because it's instinctive, which provides you no ultimate justification for anything you believe. That you're telling me it's wrong to use circular reason is absurd since everything you believe is based on it.

Circular reasoning is not necessarily fallacious because you cannot point to an ultimate authority for any claim without using it. Look at the issues this problem of induction causes when it comes to proving scientific theory:

"Joel Feinberg and Russ Shafer-Landau note that “using the scientific method to judge the scientific method is circular reasoning”. Scientists attempt to discover the laws of nature and to predict what will happen in the future, based on those laws. However, per David Hume's problem of induction, science cannot be proven inductively by empirical evidence, and thus science cannot be proven scientifically. An appeal to a principle of the uniformity of nature would be required to deductively necessitate the continued accuracy of predictions based on laws that have only succeeded in generalizing past observations. But as Bertrand Russell observed, “The method of ‘postulating’ what we want has many advantages; they are the same as the advantages of theft over honest toil”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circular_reasoning

You cannot use empirical evidence to prove empiricism is valid, just as you can't use the scientific method to prove the scientific method is valid. Therefore science cannot be proven scientifically! It needs an ultimate justification which cannot be proven inductively. Therefore, you would have to use a deductive argument by presupposing the uniformity of nature to justify the continued accuracy of the predictions of science. But again, just assuming the uniformity in nature leads you to the same problem. The only evidence you have that the future will be like the past is in the past. Therefore it would be fallacious reasoning to say the future will be like the past because of the past.

This is where the problem comes in for the atheist, because he must use viciously circular reasoning, which is always fallacious. I can point to God to justify logic, truth, the uniformity in nature, and my own rationality. These concepts don't make any sense in an atheistic worldview, because there is no way to justify them. My reasoning isn't viciously circular..I can point to an ultimate authority. Your reason is viciously circular because you must point to yourself as the authority.

You want God to be real so you deny all evidence even to other *possibilities*, let alone facts.

I didn't originally go looking for God. He tapped me on the shoulder. I didn't become a Christian because I wanted God to be real, I became a Christian because the evidence indicated He is real.

I don't want anything in particular to be real. I only want to be as sure as possible of what I do believe.

I don't think you want the Christian God to be real, and would prefer that He wasn't. What you can be sure of is that you cannot ultimately justify any of your beliefs.

Yes, of course a god could convince you, but just because you're convinced, doesn't mean it was God who did it. That would be a faulty syllogism. Minds can play the most amazing tricks on people. That's documented fact.

How is it that when you have evidence that confirms your belief, it's faulty, but when you reject that evidence, it's rational? Just because you can potentially falsify an idea doesn't mean it has been falsified. I have a path to the truth, as you've admitted. God could make me certain, and He could reveal truth, so it isn't irrational to believe it, considering the overwhelming evidence that I have received, and continue to receive, each and every day. When God touches your life, you have a justified true belief in Him. In every case, when God makes someone certain, they are going to justified in saying that they're certain. You would say all these people are delusional, but you have no way to be able to tell the difference. Only the individual could really know that they've been touched by God. The only way you could find out is if you were yourself touched by God. That's what I've been trying to tell you all along. I can't convince you, but God can. He loves you and He is waiting for you to soften your heart and seek His face. That is the only thing which will prove or disprove my claim.


>> ^messenger:

stuff

i feel like i'm being manipulated, with cheap tricks, but i love internet

@BoneRemake That's your opinion, which is fine in your own home. Just don't stand in judgement of this father, or try to control what happens in his home.

I don't think it's over the line at all. In contrast, I'm sure some people think any form of spanking should get you life in prison.
________________________

As far as the girl posting this to reddit, seems like a cheap trick to me. A site that tolerates bigots and child porn doesn't strike me as the right forum for critiquing true abuse.

Regardless of all you out there jaded by the conglomerate that is Disney, this is a normal kid response.
Kids build up certain expectations for things and when they have their minds set on one thing, it's hard for many to switch gears. It's pure "Bait and Switch!"

Disney provides the worlds biggest playground for children, young and old.
It costs a fortune that most families can only afford once in a lifetime and some not ever.

These kids had no idea how to deal with the "Change of Plans. "
It's kind of a cheap trick to pull this stunt on the kids. Sure we've all seen it before with the "appropriate responses" but they most likely had some sort of build up. This trick planed more for the parents so they could receive the excitement that glowed off the kids.

Kids like to picture upcoming events in their minds before they happen.
Next time, don't keep it a secret, build it up slowly, and pop a surprise only when the kids are drooling for it.

My kids didn't even know what to expect from Disneyland. Sure they had heard of it but we had to go to the internet, show them pictures and describe to them what it was all about.

Then they got excited about it.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'Rock, rule, Canadian animation, post apocalyptic' to 'Rock, rule, Canadian animation, post apocalyptic, cheap trick' - edited by enoch

it's a damn cheap trick and i almost feel ashamed, but yea, it works

Didn't hear a whole lot of rock 'n roll in my house when I was a kid. My mom was mostly into country and easy listening (yikes), and my father was old so he liked stuff from Bing Crosby or the Andrews Sisters. I shit you not. However my mom did like Elvis Presley (and still does), but that's not what got me into rock. I pretty much found it on my own, like the rest of my brothers and sisters. I do remember feeling the secret thrill of listening to Nazareth's "Hair Of The Dog" (via my cousin. Maybe Crushbug and I are related).



Hearing "SON OF A BITCH!" in a song is pretty cool when you're 8 years old. In 1975. And lets not underestimate the power of the cow bell.

My first record was Billy Joel's 'Glass Houses', and then after that I bought AC/DC's 'Back In Black', Cheap Trick's 'Dream Police', Styx's 'Paradise Theater', Pink Floyd's 'The Wall', Rush's 'Moving Pictures', Van Halen's first album (aka 'Van Halen I'), sort of in that order, and then a lot more stuff after that, including teh AWESOME 'Dawn Patrol'.

Generalization or not, she has some very valid points. In fairness, I think I would have liked it better had she pointed out that most religions denounce violence. It's usually religious extremists that cause all the trouble and violence in the world. I know people that are Catholic, but don't believe that Creationism should be taught in schools. Whenever anyone takes something to an extreme, it can cause trouble. Religion just seems to have a way of magnifying that because it seeps into every aspect of life.

Also, someone referred to her as using a cheap trick by showing cleavage. I fail to see how wearing a somewhat low cut shirt invalidates her argument. If I had to guess, I'd say the fact that she was close to the camera and leaning forward a little bit was more for dramatic effect, not to get her rack on Videosift.

Oh yes... have to love a girl who decides to forgo showing her entire head and face in favor of her cleavage... How terribly convincing you argument is... Honeslty it's hard enough to be taken seriously at times without this kind of 'cheap' trick... can't stand girls like this.

The Weakerthans:Diagnosis
From LyricWiki
This song is performed by The Weakerthans.

I have a headache. I have a sore back. I have a letter I can't send. I have desire, it falters and falls down, it calls you up drunk at three or four a.m. to wonder when...wonderful. All the cheap tricks I tried too hard not to pull. Pulled along or pulled apart. The diagnosis of a foreign frame of heart. I have a story that I'd like to tell you, it's littered with settings and second takes. I have a feeling that hums with the street lights and hides under ice in always frozen lakes. My mistake to make you cringe. Another greeting like a broken creaky hinge to oil and push or pry apart. The diagnosis of a foreign frame of heart. Found a cure for being sure, and, sure as anything, I'll smile for my reckoning.

Cheap trick...but I watched it and was surprised, so upvote.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'cheap trick, 70s, fats domino' to 'cheap trick, 70s, fats domino, aint that a shame' - edited by kronosposeidon

No kidding. Dream Police and At Budokan were two of my earliest albums, and half of the kids I knew at the time had at least one of those too. Damn kids these days. *shakes fist*

In reply to this comment by twiddles:
Hey thanks, you're a man of your word Too bad there aren't enough old farts around here to appreciate such classic rock.

In reply to this comment by kronosposeidon:
*promote

Hey thanks, you're a man of your word Too bad there aren't enough old farts around here to appreciate such classic rock.

In reply to this comment by kronosposeidon:
*promote