>> ^gwiz665:
Life is simply the animation of cells. Each cell reproduces based on DNA, multiple cells make out complex forms of life. That's it.

If you think "that's it" then you're being very unscientific. Science should relish the question of what consciousness is, where it comes from, and where it goes, rather than bat it away (some scientists do work on that question, but most seem to dismiss it). In a solipsistic sense, consciousness is the one knowable truth of our lives, and all the empirical truths we know are a house of cards extending outward from it. That's why I don't like the "simply the animation of cells" cop-out; the honest response is, "We can't scientifically determine that yet."

I haven't been involved in religion whatsoever for 15 years, but I've seen it do some good in people's lives, so I see opposing religion as a fruitless endeavor, potentially even with negative effects. There are things religion does that atheism and science cannot do, for some people.

Also, I'm baffled that so many atheists use the word "evil." If you're serious about excising religion from your life, there's no reason to use that word anymore.

>> ^MarineGunrock:< br />I did buy it used - but there is no secondary alarm system that I know of - I would have went off by now. Besides, as far as I know, it's not possible to install a secondary alarm on the car. I can't even get people to touch it to put a car starter on it.
If you so much as tinker with the electrical system, the computer shuts off to prevent theft. It then has to be towed to a dealership to be reset. (That's my understanding, anyway.)


Kill switch technology. One of the main reasons you take your car to a "certified" radio technician to change the radio.

I personally would relish seeing some wanker trying to steal my car, and then get in and try to drive it while the starter doesn't even turn!

Considering no Christian goes around doing this, the whole point is moot. They portrayed an inaccurate, unrealistic, anachronistic caracature as an extreme example for the express purpose of knocking down the strawman for humorous purposes. Really original stuff there... Nothing athiests like better I suppose than to relish in thier stereotypes and bigotry, assuming it applies in the real world instead of just marking them as hypocrites.

These people get into a stranger's truck and they don't even speak his language. He could be telling them, "I'm bringing you to my home to be shot to death by my group of white supremacist friends" and they'd have no clue until they were surrounded by ugly white men with no grasp of reality.

The debate over whether or not they should be here is a simple one. No, they shouldn't. And why not? Because they really are taking our jobs. Some people answer that with, "But they're taking the jobs that American workers wouldn't want." And that's true. But offer a job to an American with a wife and five kids to feed, and he'll take it. If he doesn't, he's a lazy bastard who shouldn't be raising a family to begin with. A family man makes sacrifices, and one of them is the choice of jobs he can have, especially if he's uneducated. So yes, Mexicans take our jobs, and that's not right.

I don't mind legal immigration, since my friend's family came here from Israel in 2000. But they didn't hop a fence and declare themselves Americans. They were offered a chance to move here because the father is an educated computer engineer, not because he'll pick tomatoes for pennies a day. And they relish the chance they were given more than someone who jumped over or climbed under a fence.

But anyway, this video is fucking hilarious. The end.

>> ^MarineGunrock:

If they weren't illegal, they wouldn't be running, would they?

...and all she asks is a couple of hours on the weekend to herself for which you will never ask her where she is or what she's doing!
Sounds like a nice trade-off to me! (just kidding)
somebody needs to make a guy version of this.
I can just hear it now:
"I will wake you up in the morning gently stroking your hair and smiling at you softly.
I will work hard all day doing sweaty manly things with my big strong hands like fixing the car or building something or moving heavy objects.
All during the day I will keep walking by you periodically and slapping your ass because it turns me on, or kissing your eyelids because you look so cute when you are concentrating.
When you cook, I will remark at how good it smells as it develops and compliment you profusely while eating.
At night, I will bring you drinks and laugh with you while making stimulating conversation, showing off my inner nerd and flirting with you.
I will match your mood and needs endlessly unless I am extremely tired from working, in which case I will be sure to look cute as I rest and thank you for understanding.
I will react with religious awe when seeing you naked, and make love to you with a different, surprising passion each night and also spontaneously during the day at unexpected moments because you find it delicious to be wanted and I genuinely want you.
I will hold you as you drift off to sleep and listen to your breath as you use my left arm as a pillow and relish loving me for who I am, because I care, and you like falling asleep with your hand on a perfect man tush."
something like that.
hang on a tick, I don't need a virtual guy, I GOT a REAL perfect man!!!!
(somebody please direct my husband to this spontaneous love letter of a comment of sorts, lol...thanks )

^ Well, McCain would operate the cart in much the same fashion as the previous hot dog guy, while always denying similarities. He'd say he offers different kinds of relish and sauerkraut when he knows the relish man and the sauerkraut man work for the same global conglomerate. The bun supplier is a personal friend of the existing hot dog man's family and he has powerful friends in the entire bakery industry, allowing for price-fixing and unfair labor practices. Finally, the hot dogs themselves: clearly, the most important part of running a hot dog stand. McCain would continue to allow Americans to depend on hot dogs because that's the way it has always been. Never mind Jonesville bratwurst or Italian sausage, which are tastier and more wholesome,

Wait, what was I saying?

>> ^MarineGunrock:

First, let me say I appreciate your honest attempt at "tearing me a new one". Compared to other replies, yours is a gem (a diamond with 250 written on it). You asked me some non-rhetorical questions, and I will gladly answer those that my two previous replies haven't, as they were not specifically aimed at your criticisms.

Oh, so having a college degree automatically exempts you from being lowlife scum

Sigh. Obviously not. You quoted me as saying "Not to say there aren't lowlifes in corporate America,". Did you not read the full quote or are you ignoring it on purpose? In the latter case, at least don't quote the embarrassing contradictory bit.

I'd rather have my blue-collar job over sitting in a tiny fucking cubicle any day.

Maybe so, and you may well hold a moral "relatively high" ground by doing so as far as I am concerned, but in light of america's global pursuit of economical happiness, I consider pretty much all jobs inside the U.S.A and some parts of Canada as "corporate". My usage of "corporate America" here was both a rhetorical and a conceptual synecdoche that played on the ambiguity of adjective-noun compound nouns in English (out of context, "corporate America" could mean both "the corporations of America as a whole" or "the whole of America as a corporation"). Sorry for the misunderstanding here, as usage should have required quotation marks to show I didn't use the idiomatic expression "corporate America" in its commonly accepted technical sense.

So now you're calling America's greatest generation lowlife scum? I would think that the veterans of WWII deserve nothing but honor and respect for their actions, and you should too.

I do respect them, and tried to make sure that what I said could not be construed as showing disrespect towards veterans of the two World Wars. Yet you have done so with a comment that is taken completely out of context as I implied it applied only to an ENLISTED army, specifically this one that is stationed in Iraq. As I pointed out, conscripts (and other time-of-war enlistees) are a different matter altogether. If you think they're not, may I just point out that officially, the United States has not been at war with anyone since WWII? Not in Korea, not in Vietnam and certainly not in both Iraqi "operations". The Congress may have voted funds and whatnot, but that is not War according to any international definition. Thus, only WWI and WWII will stand as examples of real modern wars with conscripts and ethically justified enlistment. Also, see my second post.

If it wasn't for them, you'd all be speaking German and saluting the Swastika right now.

Overused red herring. Please think of the Nazis and their children!

How can someone that honestly doesn't know of back-room politics and abuse of fellow humans be low life scum?

It is called guilt by ignorance (in christian terms, "Vincible Ignorance". Ask a theologian near you) You can be condemned in court as a consequence of it, if it can be shown that while you could have known the law, you didn't make the effort to for whatever reason (normally, you're suppose to know all law, but let's say you try to argue that it was somehow absolutely impossible for you to know it and that this should somehow absolve you of any wrongdoing). See also the concepts of "pluralistic ignorance" and of the bystander effect.

What if he did know about it?

Then that makes him guilty by association if he could prevent wrongdoing or if he refused to denounce it.

Maybe he would fucking want to join just to show that there ARE people in the military that don't beat on prisoners?

Maybe, but that doesn't change the fact that people in the military did beat up prisoners. If he joins the army without denouncing those actions, how are we to know that he doesn't intend to perpetuate them?

Someone that honestly loves his country so much he is willing to put his life on the line is stupid?

If he is doing so blindly then yes, whether or not the thing he does thereby is wrong or not. Of course, that is only my (and I reckon most of the educated world, except some parts of the United States and some other really religious educated regions) ethical standpoint, and you may stand elsewhere on this issue.

O RLY? Care to actually back asinine claims like that up with actual fucking data?

Well, I haven't heard of any prisoners being tortured or beaten during the invasion per se, nor in the immediate aftermath, and my educated guess would be that the advent of such actions would indeed be sudden, but following a gradual increase in emotional detachment from the guards (refer to the Stanford prison experiment that I quoted two sentences later, which is more data than you'll ever need on this matter, I'd think). But what I wrote was not a scientific article. If I were to cite every paper I've ever read (most of which you probably couldn't understand right away anyway) to satisfy your misplaced need for "data", I would not be finished writing that first post yet. Relishing that thought may well please you; if so you are misguided indeed (misguided about how "science" works and also about the internets).

Again, O RLY? Moar data plz. Or should I say ANY data, please.
Again, have you not read what you had just quoted, where I referred you to a well known psychological experiment made in a prestigious school, published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal and repeated in countless psychology textbooks which happens to sustain my very point? Or are you just trying to rip off my leg off of my still warm body? Also, see my last answer about your misunderstanding of the process of science, which applies here especially to social sciences.

Maybe because the point of my fucking post wasn't to counter his points. "Troops are low life scum" isn't a point, it's a n opinion, in case that's what you were referring to.

Maybe so, but then so was my remark not a statement about the opinionatedness of the poster you replied to, but about your implicit attempt at refutation through a more or less carefully/consciously constructed exclamation of disbelief. Indeed, as it is difficult to ascertain scientifically that a certain person or type of person is "lowlife scum", such bold statements are to be classified as opinion. It doesn't change the fact though, that some opinions are more educated than others and thus may carry more weight, either subjectively through a shared worldview and knowledge base, or objectively by being shown to be closer to an established truth that the participants in this debate eventually come to recognize as such later.

What the hell does that have to do with ANYTHING said here?

Yes indeed it doesn't directly relate, sorry. It is part of a previous version of my post that I forgot to erase entirely. Though the point it makes is now moot since it is not attached to the post as a whole anymore, the segment can be reconstructed as such: "[Your experience in your squadron may give you a different picture of the lowlifedness of the enlisted troops as a whole, since you generalize from your own, subjectively positive experience, but things may not be such when viewed from outside, and your own squadron may be a statistical anomaly.] Yes, you may have "heard [good] things" [about the rest of the army as whole], but there's a reason hearsay is not allowed as evidence in a trial: it's actually pretty unreliable. Also, keep and bear in mind that no one likes to think that he himself did "bad things" in a conflict. They always blame the other or perversely blame only themselves." For that last bit, see the concept of "pluralistic ignorance" that I quoted earlier.

Have I thrown a stone here?

I would say yes, and my whole post was, in a sense, a way to make this very point.

Basically, next time, if you don't have any data to back up supposed "facts", STFU.

Unfortunately for you, I had data, as I think I have shown here (too) extensively. But it was not to back any facts but to back opinion. I never claimed to have any facts concerning the lowlifedness of enlisted troops and neither did the original poster. The fact that I asserted my opinion as if it were fact is a rhetorical device of which you should be well aware of in "FOX-News America". It is one of the most simple, pervasive, transparent and perversely effective device in the whole of human speech (again, in my and some other people's view). It is also one of the easiest to catch, at least when you and your opponents are on different wavelengths: hence to need to train yourself to detect it even when people you agree with use it. I guarantee you it will save you from trouble in the long run.

The guitar player demonstrated his exquisite knowledge of an E chord.
Vocal inflection copied straight from Captain Beefheart, (Don Van Vliet)
http://www.videosift.com/video/Electricity-Captain-Beefheart

The difference being the Magic Band, while relishing in discord and dissonance, were fabulous musicians.

Whoa, simmer down there boiling water. Fiscal irresponsibility and nation-building are Democratic "things", too. Democrats have proven to be interventionists. Have we forgotten about Wilsonian interventionism? Woodrow Wilson believed every man had the right to self-determination and further believed it was America's duty to protect democracy throughout the world. Wilson sent troops to Mexico to proclaim martial law during a revolution. He was quoted saying his efforts were to "teach Latin Americans to elect good men." And, let us not forget his interventionist role in Europe which aided in the Versailles Treaty. We know how that ended for us.

What about Franklin Roosevelt? Hey, tell me which right-wing mouthpiece publication is responsible for this quote: "Franklin Roosevelt relished his nation-building" Fox News? Nope. The New York Times did in regards to his interventionist policies in Haiti. FDR even said "I wrote Haiti's Constitution myself, and if I do say it, it was a pretty good little Constitution."

What about Lyndon Johnson in Vietnam? The Vietnam War has been categorized as LBJ's war. But, our involvement with Vietnam started during the cold war, which started to be realized when Harry S. Truman tried to contain communism in Southeast Asia in the 50s. And, hell, JFK was guilty of increasing financial aid and advisory assistance in South Vietnam. He fully adopted the National Security Action Memorandum 52 which was left over from the Eisenhower Administration that read in regards to South Vietnam: "The U.S. objective and concept of operations stated in the report are approved: to prevent communist domination of South Vietnam; to create in that country a viable and increasingly democratic society, and to initiate, on an accelerated basis, a series of mutually supporting actions of a military, political, economic, psychological and covert character designed to achieve this objective."

Will that do or should I continue?

Yeah I have to agree, this type of stuff was influential when I was young, just like that other great student of his, Bill Hicks, but once you get older you kind of understand these guys were not prophets (and to treat them so is kind of ironic, given their message) and were wrong about a lot of things a lot of the time. They were contradictory, and sometimes hypocritical, on so many issues - this routine being an excellent example. Some of the time I guess they were just out to make sure they shocked everyone, even the seen-it-all gen-x kids, other times they were just following where the comedy took them.
These guys didn't teach us how to think for ourselves - anyone who "got" them was already well on the path to having a free mind.
What they did show us, George Carlin probably more than either Hicks or Lenny Bruce, was to think and say what we needed to say, and relish in it.

I said crowded areas, not my front door!

In reply to this comment by schmawy:
Jonny DUCK!-------->@

In reply to this comment by jonny:
You mean you don't do that already? Why wait? Try it today! It's a blast, especially in large crowded areas.

In reply to this comment by schmawy:
Yay! I don't relish the thought of being locked in a cage. Although hurling feces might be fun.

Awesome song, love floyd, love this song. In an age where I feel most popular music is no deeper than a puddle of piss by a urinal, I can always go back to Pink Floyd and relish in it.

Jonny DUCK!-------->@

In reply to this comment by jonny:
You mean you don't do that already? Why wait? Try it today! It's a blast, especially in large crowded areas.

In reply to this comment by schmawy:
Yay! I don't relish the thought of being locked in a cage. Although hurling feces might be fun.

You mean you don't do that already? Why wait? Try it today! It's a blast, especially in large crowded areas.

In reply to this comment by schmawy:
Yay! I don't relish the thought of being locked in a cage. Although hurling feces might be fun.

Yay! I don't relish the thought of being locked in a cage. Although hurling feces might be fun.

In reply to this comment by Sarzy:
Thanks, schmawy! You'll definitely be one of the filthy humans I spare when I instigate the chimp uprising.

In reply to this comment by schmawy:
*promote. Congratulations on the two-fitty, Sarzo the magnificent!