>> ^NordlichReiter: This archive presents over 120Mb of emails, documents

Yes, lots of document, which should make it easy to find a SCIENTIFIC basis on which to object to the CRUs papers, if these documents show how/what was "fudged". I'm not a opponent of AGW, I know many people are, and will happily wade through the files. I will listen to them as soon as they present some SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE in there which contradicts the published findings of the CRU, until then, it amounts to little more than ad-hominem.

I think its simple. If you want to hid your activities when it comes to things important as this then you are suspect.

That is terribly naive, people who make their living studying and publishing information are not allowed to give out information willy-nilly. Perhaps this should not be the case, but every company, university, and research institution does this, to act like it's strange or inherently suspect is dishonest.

I don't think this is troubling. If a disease is running rampant and we have a vaccination, then we must secure ourselves and our fellow man. We cannot allow people to run around spreading the disease all willy-nilly even if they want to. An epidemic is as serious as war time - martial law must be enacted if it comes to it. This is not a permanent thing either, it will be until the epidemic is contained and squashed.

So, yeah, I'm siding with the state on this.

^I hate to say this but it probably isn't. You just missed the boat on it. You could go back and replay it, but then you'll be where I was when I watched Better Off Dead for the first time only 3 years ago. Yeah it was ok, but it certainly would have been better had I experienced it when it first came out.

One of the main things I picked up from playing Bioshock (and am replaying it now on my new system), is that System Shock 2 didn't coddle the player, whereas Bioshock does. A good example is that in SS2, you could install a telekinesis module but it's range wasn't very far (you had to upgrade it to get items that were out of your reach), and you had to spend a lot of upgrade chips to buy it. And I think you were stuck with it once you made the purchase (? it's been a while).

Bioshock just up and gives you the plasmid, it has an infinite range, and you can switch it out willy-nilly at a gene bank. Of course you can throw things with it now, which is a plus. SS2 didn't let you do that. SS2 was a little rougher around the edges, but it made it better.

>> ^AnimalsForCrackers:
>> ^Shepppard:
Shrooms aren't theraputic.
years ago my sister had a party here, and two of her friends took shrooms.
I still remember them freaking out so hard one of them actually wanted to go see my mom to make it better, but the other slapped her in the face and said that "We've gone too far now!"

It is true that mileage varies from person to person. Not to mention other mitigating factors like who you take them with, the environment taken in, your state of mind when ingesting, etc. Much care should be exercised in planning and preparation, before eating mushrooms all willy-nilly like.
For me, it was one of the best and most memorable experiences I've ever had with other human beings.


I agree completely. And it's not like the medical industry is just going to start giving prescriptions to mushrooms. If anything they'll make yet another pill form containing the specific chemicals, likely significantly 'watered down.' The drug industry is full of narcotic and hallucinogenic 'medicines.'

I personally have had my share of very positive experiences with a wide variety of hallucinogenic drugs both natural and man-made and I've found the 'magic mushrooms' are by far the least likely to produce a so called 'bad trip.' Especially compared to the likes of LSD. The experience mushrooms and other natural hallucinogenics such as Peyote, are a much milder, smoother and less grating effect, though often far more potent.

>> ^Shepppard:
Shrooms aren't theraputic.
years ago my sister had a party here, and two of her friends took shrooms.
I still remember them freaking out so hard one of them actually wanted to go see my mom to make it better, but the other slapped her in the face and said that "We've gone too far now!"


It is true that mileage varies from person to person. Not to mention other mitigating factors like who you take them with, the environment taken in, mental health/your state of mind when ingesting, etc. Much care should be exercised in planning and preparation, before eating mushrooms all willy-nilly like. Some people will experience adverse effects regardless, though, just like anything else.

For me, it was one of the best and most memorable experiences I've ever had with other human beings.

Edit: Just read Duckman's post, sorry for the overlap.

I tend to hop through those categories willy-nilly, thus lending credibility to a new category, the "Bipolar Cynic."

This college textbook needs an expensive update.

That quote about his willy-nilly decision-making process is downright frightening.

You want an aggressive knee-jerk reacting, gut-thinker with launch codes? Seriously.

>> ^jwray:
Gold is the oldest fiat currency.

Technically, a gold standard is not fiat, only symbolically. Fiat is generally defined as anything which is forced for use as money. In "declaring" gold as money, governments were merely adopting what people were already using. You see, gold won in the free market as a common means of exchange. Not paper. Of all things on earth, it is especially suited for this task. It is rare, easily divisible, indestructible, has few industrial uses, and requires no upkeep. Since it has to be mined from the earth, a natural limit is placed on government. They are restricted to asking (taxing) its citizens when they want to finance something! They can't just print new money will-nilly, lie about how much they're doing it with flawed CPI measurements, and make its citizens pay higher prices! Imagine that! And our highest rates of real growth were in the late 19th century, a period of no slavery, no income tax, no central bank, and gold-based money. It hasn't been matched since.

>> ^jwray
Its value is an arbitrary function of how much faith people have in it as a currency. Its price is being propped up by that faith alone.

That is the case for ALL things. Value is entirely subjective and depends on the human situation surrounding it, and the scarcity of that good relative to others. If you're alone on a mountain and you're starving, a cow is worth a hell of a lot more than gold or paper. If you're in a massive society where barter is inefficient and you need a common means of exchange and placeholder for wealth, gold fills that role nicely. If your government has done this to your money so that it's worth less than firewood, all faith in it will be lost relative to actual goods, including gold, which CAN'T EVER be made as common as dirt. The possibility doesn't EXIST:

http://content.answers.com/main/content/wp/en/c/ca/Inflation-1923.jpg

>> ^jwray
As an industrial material, the demand for gold is very low compared to the amount available.


Which is exactly why this particular precious metal made such a good monetary asset. Why would you want your money to have volatility from the supply and demand of complex industry products?

>> ^jwray
By the way, imposing the gold standard would shrink the money supply so dramatically as to cause deflation, and then deflation would cause loan defaults, and loan defaults would cascade to another great depression.


Nobody said it would be easy. Remember, depressions can be inflationary, too. Once that happens, people are in bad shape any way looking for a way out. I was afraid you were going to argue that there was a quantitative limit, which there isn't. In a move to monetize gold, it's demand and price will rise substantially to meet those figures, and the people who convert early will be better off than those converting last. But it can be done, particularly in a scenario when the paper money is made worthless anyway. Look at Zimbabwe. In their present situation, if every citizen immediately converted their money to gold, and used gold thenceforth, their long-term situation would improve dramatically as their money could no longer be debased.

^That would seem to be a pretty good solution. Though at the moment I don't know shit about Obama's health care system.
And I'm by no means a xenophobe. I just don't like it when my money pays someone else's benefits or salary -welfare for able bodied people and such. I realize that some people honestly can't make ends meet, hence subsidized housing and such, but anyone has to admit there are people that leech off the system.
Shit, just last Christmas Eve I saw a man buy a fucking shrimp platter with food stamps. Last time I checked, shrimp was a luxury food. One that even I can't afford willy-nilly. And I work damn hard for my food money. There's no fucking reason that someone that has government-provided money for food should be able to use it to buy luxury items that others that don't get free money can't afford.

>> ^rottenseed:
Nobody has the authority to take it upon themselves to discard a post unless it is a dupe or it is a flagrant disavowal of the rules

Exactly, that's why this *discussion isn't finished yet. Something needs to be done to prevent people from discarding videos willy nilly; whether that's a temp ban or removing the ability to discard other people's videos altogether, I don't know.

WOW, that's a really good point QM. Here I am going around casting my vote all willy-nilly when my candidate is clearly not quitting smoking of his own free will! That's the last time I trust MY instincts. Now that you mention it, it kind of makes me wonder why Bush quit drinking...

LOL. No, really. I did. I don't just throw LOL's around willy-nilly whenever I chuckle to myself like these no-account youngsters, so when I type it you know it still means something.
It means I found this clip to be delightful.

... does this guy have chunks of acoustic foam scattered about willy-nilly on his walls in the background? wtf?

I'm with you about the punctuation and quotes rule. I don't like it either, and wouldn't bother mentioning it except it was the right thread, and I mostly only pick on the grammar of those who pick on the grammar of others.

I didn't mean to suggest the usage of "whom" was willy-nilly. Rather, that it is rarely mandatory. In the first example I gave above, you must use "whom." In any other example I can think of where you could use "whom," you can also use "who." And clearly, "whom" can never represent the subject of a sentence, only an object.

The fact that the majority follows this rule is the very reason it's correct usage. Rules derive from standard usage, describing the way it's commonly used. This is called "descriptive grammar," and is the study of linguistics. If you do it the other way around, teaching native and non-native speakers how to speak "correctly" based on a set of rules passed down that are either outdated or were never reflective of the common usage of the language to begin with, that's called "prescriptive grammar," and serves no purpose. In fact, it's a waste of energy because no benefit comes from it.

E.B. White said it well:

The living language is like a cowpath: it is the creation of the cows themselves, who, having created it, follow it or depart from it according to their whims or their needs. From daily use, the path undergoes change. A cow is under no obligation to stay in the narrow path she helped make, following the contour of the land, but she often profits by staying with it and she would be handicapped if she didn’t know where it was or where it led to.

Preventing disease for the good of a society is preemptive by definition. That is the nature of preventative medicine.

Do you think history supports A)?

B) is simply true. I asked a biologist and she said that active virus mutate. AIDS is a good example(and the one she used), and mutation is the reason why there are actually multiple forms of AIDS. For more virulent diseases, like polio, measles, mumps, and rubella, widespread lack of vaccines would increase the likelyhood a number of people being infected. If they were infected the mere fact that they have an active virus means that the virus will mutate. In effect, negating the existing vaccine.

Africa has had outbreaks of Polio for this very reason.

http://microbiology.columbia.edu/PICO/Chapters/NewsAfrica.html

I prefer to use conditional language most of the time simply, because I could always be wrong. I do not think you should use it to infer that I am misleading people or simply stating things willy nilly. But I could have misinterpreted your comment. Text is always hard to read that way.