i totally agree.

i live in florida now but i came from rhode island and lived in new york and chicago and i can attest to how differently these regions deal with conflict.

in new england and new york things are dealt with pretty directly..and quickly..which is viewed by those from the south as being "rude and opinionated" but in actuality is just dealing with a possible conflict directly and getting it out of the way.
there is nothing wrong with being direct and honest if you do it with respect.

so when i moved to florida (first miami,then ft lauderdale and now tampa)i found many of the people here to be two faced and a bunch of shit-talkers but what i didnt realize is that is how the south deals with possible conflict.they can do this due to the fact that they are not living on top of each other and can allow space to let the conflict die down.

i do not agree with that philosophy and still deal with people with the direct and honest approach but having gained this newfound understanding i deal with southerners with a much more gentle touch and it has done wonders to clear up any misunderstandings.

an interesting side note:i took my buddy from the rural country of pasco county to brooklyn with me to visit family and he was amazed at how very cool and awesome the people were there.as if somehow all new yorkers were douchebags.
i had to remind him that when you have millions of people living on top of one another you better learn to get along or its gonna be a bumpy ride.

Looks like someone idiot went out earlier and drove most of the track on a tractor. Must have been bumpy as hell.

*whew!* You never know these days, thought that was out of character for you.

In reply to this comment by doogle:
>> ^Duckman33:

>> ^doogle:
Was the guy expecting to hear Mittens continue with: "Yeah, I'm against it, but don't you worry, punks like you can continue to get away with doping yourself while you leech off the system."

Are you fucking serious with this attitude? Punks like him leaching off the system? So you exoect him to go out and get a job then? Wow.


No, I'm not fucking serious. Take a breather, I had my Mittens hat on, wondering what he'd be saying. Keep up. And take note, I'm from CANADA. Medical MariJane is legal here, and we all have a system open to all, but no one's leeching. Grab your skis, come up and check it out. I hear you're in for a bumpy tide.

>> ^doogle:

>> ^Duckman33:
>> ^doogle:
Was the guy expecting to hear Mittens continue with: "Yeah, I'm against it, but don't you worry, punks like you can continue to get away with doping yourself while you leech off the system."

Are you fucking serious with this attitude? Punks like him leaching off the system? So you exoect him to go out and get a job then? Wow.

No, I'm not fucking serious. Take a breather, I had my Mittens hat on, wondering what he'd be saying. Keep up. And take note, I'm from CANADA. Medical MariJane is legal here, and we all have a system open to all, but no one's leeching. Grab your skis, come up and check it out. I hear you're in for a bumpy tide.


*whew!* You never know these days, thought that was out of character for you.

>> ^Duckman33:

>> ^doogle:
Was the guy expecting to hear Mittens continue with: "Yeah, I'm against it, but don't you worry, punks like you can continue to get away with doping yourself while you leech off the system."

Are you fucking serious with this attitude? Punks like him leaching off the system? So you exoect him to go out and get a job then? Wow.


No, I'm not fucking serious. Take a breather, I had my Mittens hat on, wondering what he'd be saying. Keep up. And take note, I'm from CANADA. Medical MariJane is legal here, and we all have a system open to all, but no one's leeching. Grab your skis, come up and check it out. I hear you're in for a bumpy tide.

>> ^Asmo:

Don't try those moves on a bumpy road (like Australia), you'll just die horribly... ; )


Oh how I hate chipseal....

Don't try those moves on a bumpy road (like Australia), you'll just die horribly... ; )

>> ^Tymbrwulf:

Upvote, but this redditor said it best:
>> ^Redditor:
If this works as they claim it does it is simply amazing...
However, as a scientist (genomics/developmental biology) I am skeptical of the lack of evidence provided. They showed an image of "what his burn might have looked like" wasnt even him... and then showed the fully healed results (saying it was like that after 4 days)
I'm assuming this was filmed well after the 4 days unless his hair grew back in 4 days as well.
I'm not sure why they wouldnt show the progress over the 4 day period, or at the very least a before/after shot of his hand, arm, shoulder, face, whatever. It can't be b/c it was too graphic, they showed other scars... and it can't be b/c there weren't photos taken of his progress. If this is a new technique which is in testing phases, or trying to get it to market there must be tons of documentation and with that pics/video of the progress.
The idea is sound, and do not doubt it works as good if not better than current grafting techniques, but I do doubt that he was fully healed in 4 days and looking like he did on the video



There's another post on there about how hair can't grow back because the follicles are gone forever and no amount of magic stem cells will fix that.
Also, no surprise here, burns don't do their dirty work to a uniform depth. So you've got a burn area which is uneven which is why the end result is likely to look bumpy.

Also another link on that reddit post links to a BBC article which was banging on about this gun 6 years ago. I suspect the inventor is still hawking it around and tv companies are more than happy to hype it ridiculously.

Also, @griefer_queafer , there's an old, highly cynical saying: the masses are asses. When people like Harris yearn for a charter to outline ethics for mankind, I'm of the opinion that they are really looking for an easy look-up table or flowchart that will tell any human alive in 2011 whether an action is ethically wrong (to a p>0.05) or ethically neutral. You're completely correct in saying that constructing this flowchart would be subjectively based on some human devised system, and that this is trading one tradition for another. Harris' argument seems to simply be that one moral code is "better" (less subjective, or whatever he thinks) than the one the masses still embrace when we're talking about real people living real lives all around us now. This implies that if something "better" came along later, he'd jump on that. I think this is an important point, and starts us down a bumpy roads of how morality changes in societies and what are the values of tradition.

In other words, he doesn't talk about nothing, he just doesn't talk about what you wanted to talk about (and instead ridicules the very idea, with the whole 'eyeball removing culture' quip).

>> ^COriolanus:

Since no person or group has stepped up to fix this shit yet ("this shit" meaning the whole freaking' society)
IT AIN'T GONNA GET FIXED
It's going down, folks. Hope you're strapped in. It's gonna be a bumpy ride!


YEEEEE HAWWWWW! On the express elevator to hell!

Since no person or group has stepped up to fix this shit yet ("this shit" meaning the whole freaking' society)

IT AIN'T GONNA GET FIXED

It's going down, folks. Hope you're strapped in. It's gonna be a bumpy ride!

@SDGundamX

I hope I've done the tag properly. I prefer notifications to be set to 'off' because I get enough junkmail from the other bazillion websites I'm registered to as it is, so yeah I don't pay much attention to that stuff.

Anyway, on to your reply!

Speaking of assumptions...

Oh boy! Here we go!

...I’m noticing that you tend to make a lot of them. You assumed, for instance, that I was a Christian. You assumed that I was trying to defend a particular religion or religious practice.

Yes, I did, as I've already admitted. It was a fine display of all the common symptoms of a religious apologist/troll, touting all the usual old and tired canards I've heard repeated ad nauseum; unjustified and arrogantly pronounced assertions with no evidence to ground them to reality, a blatant false equivocation, and flat out wrong characterizations of Hitchens et al's position. I'm genuinely sorry I had you falsely pegged but when it walks like a duck and squawks like a duck...well, y'know. In other words, you probably could have done a better job of elucidating and then justifying your opinion.

You assumed (and continue to assume) that I am calling Hitchens and the rest fundamentalists. I am not. I could not. Atheism by its very definition cannot be “fundamentalist” as this article explains. What I said was:

I find it ironic that those such as Hitchens, Dawkins, and Harris, in their zeal to exterminate religion, have become such zealots unwilling to admit evidence contrary to their position that they now rival the fundamentalists they profess to be fighting against.

Your words are right there above mine. They are zealots that rival the fundamentalists they are opposed to, in their zeal to exterminate (I call bullshit on this, they seek to marginalize it not destroy it) religion. On what planet is this not a false equivocation? On what planet am I to not take you at your word? You still haven't provided evidence for this or the other claim that they even wish to exterminate religion, as well. Because they don't. If you don't stand by your wording then retract it. You really haven't read anything from them other than what you have learned from secondary, tertiary sources, have you?



...that they refuse to revise their absolutist statements about religion being the cause of evil or the spreading hatred even when faced with evidence of religion instead bringing good into the world (on the blog—the story of Hitchens and the taxi driver who went to great lengths to return Hitchens’ lost wallet because the driver’s religion demanded he do so).

This evidence exists in heaps and bounds—I would guess (though I don’t know for sure, granted) in equal amounts to the evidence that religion spreads hatred. Regardless of the amount, in the face of the fact that such evidence exists at all, Hitchens’ previous statement (the one made in this clip about religion being the primary cause of hatred) becomes wholly untenable.


Are you seriously attributing the fact that moral people can exist within the institution of a religion and still be moral, to the religion itself? Could you name a single decent thing a religious person can do that a non-religious person couldn't? What kind of morality do you think preceded the origins of the Muslim cab driver's religion? The exact same morality that has always existed between humans and other humans on some level, that of mutual altruistic behavior, the "golden rule" and that the Abrahamic religion has co-opted into the rest of their vile ideology. You have your causes and effects here reversed, human morality is what it is in spite of religion, and to invoke religion where its not even a necessary requirement is to trivialize the very thing that enabled homo sapiens, as inherently social animals, to get to where we are today in this technological age without destroying ourselves in the process.


In regards to the so-called ad hom: I feel this applies to your post because you appear to be dismissing my argument before even considering it since you start off suspecting I don’t think clearly.

Well, you are wrong. I obviously read your whole reply before I responded. What you feel is irrelevant. Did you just read that one line and then ignore everything else I said? I mentioned the "not thinking clearly thing" purely as an aside, I then went on to address your points. Ad hom doesn't apply, sorry. It would've if that was all I supplied as the basis of my argument; I didn't say "You do not think clearly, therefore you are wrong". Ad hominem isn't what you wish it to be so stop abusing the term.

This brings us back to the Gnu Atheist’s confrontational tactics—in that link you gave me, the writer explicitly endorses being rude. I’m not here to tell you it isn’t a valid tactic—it most certainly is.


Being unflinchingly truthful and not kowtowing to the religious lies/claptrap and ridiculing those whose faith is threatened (who would have no qualms about being as rude and demeaning as possible in telling me so) by my sole existence is rude now. You should tell those uppity gays to be more polite and not stand up for equal treatment, in whatever way they choose as long as its non-violent/within the boundaries of the law, maybe their oppressors would stand down. No, confrontation is the answer if you want to change speak out and "business as usual". I consider lies to be harmful and rude and demeaning to an individual deserving of being treated like an adult in the marketplace of ideas, even the most comfortably benign, fluffy touchie-feelie ones.


I’m here to question it’s efficacy.

It was already pretty clear to me but thanks. It looked to me like you had already decided. You may NOW be appearing to question that, but again, what you may have meant certainly isn't what you wrote and to expect others to be able to know is dickish. I agree it's a good question still but haven't provided evidence to show its efficacy. So let's refrain from the assumptions. All I know is it wasn't some accommodationist, overly polite wank, unwilling to get his hands dirty to enlighten me, that stirred the feelings I've secretly held for so many years about my existence and God, it was someone who was NOT afraid of confrontation in surgically disillusioning my cherished notions of reality, of showing just how ridiculously absurd the whole thing is. It is a matter of ethics to value truth more than(key words) some default arbitrarily designated level of respect.

So, what I was trying to say in my original post is that it annoys me that Hitchens and the rest continue onward with their blanket absolutist statements despite the fact that there exists evidence to the contrary.

Saying religion, of all kinds, is the primary (meaning secondary and tertiary factors also contribute but don't even approach the monopoly religion has on spreading misery, violence, and hatred) isn't really a controversial statement at all to me. History tells us much. Can you think of any other more divisive human social construct that has caused more strife throughout history? Shall we play the game of "add up the bodies"? It boggles the mind to think of where humanity might be right now if not for the Dark Ages.

For instance, just because some people use communism to establish totalitarian regimes, doesn’t make communism evil.

Communism is as much an ideology based on fantasy as religion. In so far as it is not based on evidence and reason and being willfully enforced/propagated, it is harmful.

So, my question for you is, is being rude and disrespectful to people an effective arguing technique? Let’s be clear, I am not saying we need to respect other people’s ideas.


It certainly can be effective. I have no real evidence besides anecdotes and the correlative fact that religious membership levels in the US/Britain have been slowly declining since around the time the Gnu Atheists began to speak out and be more prominently featured in the media/Internets in general. The level of ridicule should be in proportion to the level of bat-shit insanity of the beliefs held. No one is championing a one-size-fits-all approach.

To tie all this together, let’s talk about one last assumption you made. You assumed I didn’t want to reply to your questions because I was trying to dodge the issue. I’d like us to be clear on my true reasons for not replying (so you won’t have to assume anymore).

I (like you, I imagine) happen to be a very busy person. I work full-time and put in a lot of unpaid overtime. I also have a beautiful family and good friends that I want to spend my free time with. This limits the amount of time I can spend on the Internet. So I have to choose when and how to respond to posts wisely.

Fair enough, I wouldn't accuse someone of dodging for being busy. I do not expect replies either, I hold you to nothing except your own words. I accused you of dodging because, when asked, you didn't provide much in the way of evidence to justify your assertions or a flat-out retraction. I could say this in any number of polite ways, you simply didn't.

You, from the very start of your post, set out to pick a fight.

Guilty as charged!

You made completely unfounded assumptions and then attacked an imaginary opponent that you mistook for me.

I made the assumption you were religious and was wrong, the rest still stands. You don't want others to take your word for it? Then add some more words! What you may have "meant" is not what I got pissed off at and responded to, understand this already.

Why should I spend it defending or searching the Internet for proof for an argument I never actually made (the “reality/validity” of Christianity; the fundamentalism of atheists like Hitchens)? Why should I try to reason with someone who from the very outset displays such misguided behavior?

That's my whole point! You shouldn't have said anything at all if you didn't have anything truthful to say in the first place. You really have no fucking clue what you're talking about when you talk about them and you rightly got called on it. I already addressed where I made any assumptions about you, the rest is through your own doing. You have NOT shown that they rival those fundamentalists they oppose, you have NOT shown that they wish to eradicate religion, you haven't even shown how they are zealots. You are being incredibly dishonest to the point of absurdity!


Thanks for reading this to the end. As a footnote, here is a link to a discussion on that web site you gave me that I found very interesting. Most of all, I found JoiletJake’s comments interesting—see posts #139 and #146 in particular, as I believe they are similar to my views on religion.


I've already read them and just re-read. Joilet comes off as incredibly honest, humble considering his position, and its pretty plain to see that the response he got, while initially bumpy, gradually warmed up to him as he elaborated and made it well known he is relying solely on his personal feeling in the matter and not trying to assert an attribution of those feelings onto actual reality. I think its great your attitude aligns with his, it may not be logically consistent but at least it's pretty harmless on the whole. Notice he wasn't tossing out baseless assertions, straw manning, or falsely equivocating.

I'd really enjoy it if you were to paste/copy what you said on Pharyngula and see how different the reaction would be. Such tasty schadenfreude! My guess is you would be entertainingly dismantled, rudely perhaps, but dismantled nonetheless. Welcome to the Internets.

I really have no interest in continuing this conversation, as lovely and downright tedious as it has been. I am done responding the minutiae of your several attempts at special pleading. Think whatever you want about the Gnu Atheists, whatever keeps the cognitive dissonance at bay.

Not only does it have to follow contours of the land, but these panels would have to be able to deal with subsidence of the layers of earth under the foundation due to constant rolling point loads from trucks (since cars weigh nothing compared to a fully loaded truck). Asphalt/bitumen can elastically deform and still be a via road surface (i'm sure everyone's noticed 'channels' in the road). Couple that with the need to remove surface run-off water when it rains. True you could make the top road surface bumpy, but once those bumps are worn down you cant re-surface without replacing a whole panel.

On top of that, what happens if the micro-processors suddenly crap out, or some of the LEDs blow. In the first case, any road markings would suddenly disappear, or conversely the road would suddenly light up blinding drivers. In the second case, you'd either have to replace a full panel, or have "acceptable defects" where a certain number of LEDS can blow and the panel won't be compromised.

If they manage to get this to work, kudos to them, but i just can't see it happening with what they've been showing. Would seem to be easier to harness the thermal energy of roads rather than solar energy acting on the roads.

Well I had trouble trying to think of a happy child hood story but here is one. When I was little I decided I was going to run away from home. So I took an old ford tractor that we had to use for chores (watering pigs) and started my ultra slow gettaway. The water container bounced off because of the bumpy prairie and by the time my grandpa and uncle found me it was a few miles behind. I then was crying because I knew what was coming. Well it was bliss while it lasted...

^ I suppose much of this debate hinges on one's opinion of what will be possible at any given point in the future, so lets ignore the timeline for a moment.

There will come a time in the future when technology is able to accomplish any task that people do not want to do themselves. They will be safe and highly intelligent, with the ability to adapt to their environment and the tasks at hand. People will still be able to contribute to knowledge and understanding, but they won't be required for the mundane day-to-day operations of the world. I have a hard time seeing capitalism being functional (or needed) in such an environment.

Of course we don't suddenly jump from present-day into complete automation. The part I'm interested in is the transitional period, especially in the context of economics. I do agree that tech is currently creating a lot of jobs, but that will not always be the case... eventually the trend will reverse, and I don't think our current economic models can handle that. We will have to adapt.


I think the biggest question is "how fast will this happen". Some predict 200 or more years, but an increasing number believe it will happen in less than 100. Taking into account the current and near-term advances in biotech, we might just live to see it. If it really does take 200+ years then we will have plenty of time to react to changes in a positive way, but if it happens in less than 100 then we may be in for a bumpy ride at times. I don't think it will destroy the world, but I do think we'll see more frequent ups and downs in the world economy, including rises in unemployment (especially in the long term).