You said almost 3 times that speed, continuously for over 10 minutes....and not with a lightweight speed shorting pistol.

If someone wanted to kill with each shot on moving targets at 3-400 yards in the dark, yeah, 5 seconds+- per shot still seem reasonable, maybe half that for someone who practices on living, moving targets often. Your claim some people can continuously do that 120 times a minute including mag changes is just laughable. They might shoot that fast, but not hit anything accurately at that distance.

You have to prove it to convince me...better? If it's as common as you say, that should be easy to provide with a comparison video instead of a suggestion to buy and read a certain book. The videos I found are all short range small target, not at all the same as what we're debating. Show me a comparison of a field layered deep with 10000 balloons getting shot at from distance, that would be informative, short course accuracy target shooting isn't.

My claim is you will have more control at full auto than absolute maximum possible finger speed.
My other claim is you will put more lead down range with most full autos. In a crowd situation where missing is basically impossible and aiming wasted effort, like this one, more bullets means more damage. Once the crowd dispersed, aiming a high powered rifle would probably be more effective, but not before. Were this not the case, why would any military allow them, ever?

In this Turkey shoot situation, you get more hits on target in full auto. In target shooting, you won't. This was not a series of targets at 20 yards, it was a target zone at 3-400 yards in the dark.

You are certainly welcome to your opinion, I just disagree.
I find it easy to believe that closely held military techniques could have been lost once the tool (bow) was no longer useful in the military. That is certainly the case for sword fighting/making.
As he mentioned, the method used today is better for stationary target shooting, the kind of shooting done today. Old school methods are so lost that most people believe in the back mounted quiver, which he showed clearly doesn't work in practice. Aiming with one eye also doesn't work on moving targets at different ranges, you need both eyes to determine distance properly.
As for armor, long bows penetrate plate armor, with mail beneath, and leather beneath that, at serious distance. It seems like a non-broad head arrow should penetrate chain mail and leather padding relatively easily, it would only need to split 1 or 2 rings to get through as I see it, which isn't that much. Also, I note at least one of his bows is not totally old school, but seems to be an odd compound style, probably giving him more power than it seems.
Shooting the arrow out of the air, I won't call fake, but probably took dozens of tries to get, even though the arrows were lobbed at him. Splitting one was likely unintentional, but still cool!

*promote surveillance podz as these provide slow-moving targets...

Given the (in)accuracy of your typical person wielding a pistol, even one who's got practice, running away is surprisingly pointful. Just don't run away in a perfectly straight line. If you do, then you're not truly a moving target.

Noting about moving targets. How about adjusting for wind, distance, barometric pressure and altitude?

>> ^xxovercastxx:

>> ^rich_magnet:
>> ^xxovercastxx:
She fires 67 shots in this video and hits her target 10 times.

If by target you mean blanket, she hits it more than 10 times. Of course, she's shooting from the width of a basketball court, which is what, 10m? The blanket is bigger than the average zombie, too.

No, by target I mean the object that is hanging in front of the blanket. It's visible when they switch to the over-the-shoulder shot. You can clearly hear when she hits it. Compare the sound of the first arrow she fires with the sound of the third arrow.


I'm not sure she's aiming for the target when she is firing at first. It looks like a speed one, then a moving/dodging one, then an accuracy one to me. I say it mainly because at the end she's just firing at a small moving target and she's pretty fucking accurate. I doubt she'd miss anything but trick shots by a large margin very often. And bear in mind that's what you're watching pretty much.

Check out a real professional archery bow for a competition. (you may already be aware of this stuff)

It's probably a way to estimate bullet travel time. In other words, to hit a moving target from any kind of distance, you must lead the target.

I think you're arguing whether or not this is a good system whereas I'm just stating that it's how it works. However, if we follow through on your example, those two men would probably face severe punishment (and/or death) for those actions because they went against the consensus of what the larger population thinks is moral behavior. Evolution by both natural and artificial selection.

While it's a subtle distinction, I believe it's an important one: There's a difference between making a decision based on your emotions and making a decision based on how it will effect other people. Yes, I believe that not causing harm or distress to other people is an objective base. I realize that's controversial.

I'm not arguing about whether it is good or not, I am saying it is madness. Witness the genocide in rwanda, or Nazi germany, or a million other examples of why morality by concensus and feeling is not moral by any definition. If it's all based on what people feel, and agree on, then if they feel that they don't like a group of people, and agree that they all should die, then in your world that's moral! The only thing that would stop such people would be judgment from another concensus. So basically, in your world anything people justify to themselves and get other people to agree on is moral behavior.

Do no harm is not an objective standard, that is such a simplistic way of looking at the world..there will always be exceptions. Such as defending your life, or someone else. You have to make judgments about right and wrong, what is good for more than yourself (which you have no way to determine), and do not harm doesn't cover them. If you had an opportunity to assassinate hitler, would you turn it down because of do no harm? What is the greater evil, killing him or letting him live? Why? For that matter, what makes hitler an objectively worse person than you are? Morality is always a moving target in your world; for it to be objective it can never move. It's insanity in every other case.

God told us that it's ok to beat a slave as long as we don't kill him. Only Israelites are above slavery.

In Exodus we're told that if a bull goes on a killing spree, the bull and the bull's owner are to be put to death. However, if the bull kills slaves, then the bull's owner owes the slaves' owners some cash.

The NT is a little softer (not surprisingly) on slaves, but still states that it's ok to own people so long as you treat them reasonably well.

Generally, were you ok with slavery and other immoral acts before your conversion? Did you really need to be told that these things were wrong? Or did you already know? I bet you already knew and I bet you were no less moral a person then than you are now.

I think you're utterly missing the point of what I have been talking about. It's not reading the bible that makes someone moral. Everyone has a God given conscience which tells them what's right from wrong. Murder is obejectively wrong because that is the law written on our hearts. However, that doesn't tell us how to live, it just gives us a general idea of what to do. That's why we need God to give us instructions on how to live a moral life

It's funny that you're railing against Christianity for slavery; Christians are the reason we abolished slavery. There has never been an abolitionist movement anywhere besides in the Christian west. Your morality by concensus failed to free any slaves, it took Christians to do it. The bible never says it okay to own slaves. Jesus taught that everyone is equal in the eyes of God. Anyone who follows that would know that keeping slaves was wrong. Gods message is progressive according to what people are ready to hear. The laws on divorce in the days of Moses were given because of the hardness of mens hearts. It took nearly 2000 years for people to be ready to free slaves..at the time, it just wasn't going to happen.

http://videosift.com/video/Religious-Penis-Waggling-Misogyny-Personified

I found a fix for this one. It will be a moving target -- watch it quick before it goes away again.


>> ^Retroboy:

C'mon, someone! FIND A DUPE!
It's got Jesus in the title. You know it's possible to resurrect!

>> ^Winstonfield_Pennypacker:

How is what these guys said any different than what the 'other guy' says (and gets a pass)?

What I think is different about things like what Angle and Bachmann said is that are incitement of violence.

>> ^Winstonfield_Pennypacker:
Politicians since times ancient have grossly extrapolated the actions/policies of their opponents.
[snip]
Bachman wanted people 'armed and dangerous'. Barak Obama wanted people "angry, get in their face, hit back twice as hard, bring a gun". I see no difference.

First, you need to source your Obama quote. I only found this as context:

“If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun,” Obama said at a Philadelphia fundraiser Friday night. “Because from what I understand folks in Philly like a good brawl. I’ve seen Eagles fans.”

Kinda sounds like it's a metaphor, does it not?

Secondly, that never became any sort of Democratic talking point or campaign slogan. You didn't hear it coming out of the mouths of everyone on the left every 10 seconds for the better part of a year, the way you heard "death panels".

Thirdly, have you followed the link on Bachmann's full quote, and read it in context? If not, here's more:

I want people in Minnesota armed and dangerous on this issue of the energy tax because we need to fight back. Thomas Jefferson told us ‘having a revolution every now and then is a good thing,’ and the people – we the people – are going to have to fight back hard if we’re not going to lose our country. And I think this has the potential of changing the dynamic of freedom forever in the United States.

I see the word revolution being used literally. I see talk of losing the country, of losing freedom, in the context of saying "I want people armed and dangerous".

Fourth, have I mentioned that this is in the larger context of falsely accusing Democrats of making up global warming?

So, the Obama quote isn't well sourced, doesn't involve a lie, was pretty transparently a metaphor for traditional electioneering activities, and I suspect if Obama was asked about it today he'd say it was a poor word choice. Bachmann's quote we have audio recordings of, involves a big lie, was pretty clearly about armed insurrection against the legitimate government of the United States, and while I suspect she would say "I didn't mean that", she probably wouldn't confess to any kind of issue with her word choice.

I don't see any equivalence.

>> ^Winstonfield_Pennypacker:
Palin's death panel is an exaggeration of the rationed care that IS a part of Obamacare. Similarly, Democrats accuse the GOP of starving people when they want to cut a social program.

Really? Neither statement is true.

First, medical care is a scarce resource, and any system by which we choose to distribute it is by definition "rationing", whether it's a market, or something else, so saying "Obamacare" has "rationing" is a meaningless statement. Even if I grant some special meaning of the word "rationing", there still isn't anything even remotely like Palin's "death panel" in the bill anywhere.

Second, when have Democrats accused Republicans of starving people? To be frank, I wish they would, especially since it's true more often than not. The closest I've seen is Alan Grayson saying that the Republican health care plan is "#1 Don't get sick. #2 If you do get sick, die quickly."

For that one to be true you need to wrap some caveats around it, but basically if you can't afford insurance, or have a preexisting condition, that was totally accurate.

>> ^Winstonfield_Pennypacker:
Do I like the overblown rhetoric? No, but it is part and parcel of any vigorous debate.
No normal person takes these statements literally though. And trying to pander to the NOT normal people seems to me an exercise in futility. Moreover, trying to be "PC" using the outliers of society as a standard is an impossible moving target, and rather subject to opinion.

To a large degree, this is a response to an argument I'm not making. I actually really like overblown rhetoric. What I don't like is the way the right imputes sinister motives to the left. It's not just "they're corrupt and beholden to special interests (and sometimes mansluts)", these days it's "they're coming to take your guns, kill your family, make your kids into gay drug addicts, take your house, your job, and piss on the American flag while surrendering to every other nation in the world".

The left is getting pretty coarse about the right, but most of our insults are that Republicans are corrupt and beholden to special interests...and dumb, heartless liars.

>> ^Winstonfield_Pennypacker:
There is no nice way to say this, but you are wrong. They were not, and you know it. There is no GOP candidate who would have survived 5 seconds if they'd been calling for armed rebellion if they lost. That is hyperbole.

I'd love to be wrong about this. I am not. Scroll back up to my first comment here, there are two videos of Republicans calling for armed insurrection if they lose. These two were small potatoes, but Michele Bachmann and Sharron Angle both were saying the same thing, just a little less directly. Rick Perry has been a bit more overt, but also a lot less graphic (talk of secession rather than revolution). Not to bring the Tea Party into this, but they kept showing up with signs talking about "Watering the tree of liberty with the blood of tyrants"

>> ^Winstonfield_Pennypacker:
I put it to you kindly that this opinion is another symptom of perception bias. Would you not agree that from Glenn Beck's perspective his infamous 'chalkboard histories' are an attempt to educate and outreach? And quite frankly, I feel very little sense of 'outreach' or 'education' when liberals call conservatives hateful, angry, evil, nazis, corporate shills, mind numbed robots, neocons, teabaggers, racist, sexist, and bigoted.

No, Beck's not trying outreach with his blackboards. He's painting a false picture of history in which liberalism is about violence and domination, and entirely overrun by a conspiracy of nefarious interests. That's not outreach, that's poisoning the well so that it's impossible for people who think he's illuminating some sort of truth (and to be clear, he is not), to talk to the people who haven't subscribed to Beck's belief that liberalism progressivism is just the new mask the fascists have put on to insinuate themselves into modern society so they can subvert it from within.

It's true that the left isn't engaging in outreach when they're calling you names. I suspect you haven't seen much outreach, given the way you personally tend to approach topics around here. You don't seem like the kind of person who's open to outreach.

That said, if I thought there was a way to show you what I think is good about liberalism, I would do so. I'd be happy to give you my take on what liberals believe and why, if you're genuinely interested in trying to understand the way we think.

>> ^Winstonfield_Pennypacker:
Sure - just be sure to allow that both ways. Criticize conservative pundits all you want. But don't get all testy if conservatives criticize liberal ones. And if you try to pin accessory to murder on conservatives, don't be surprised when they get their back up.

Yeah, I didn't. See, the right's been calling us murderers and tyrants quite a bit lately. They've been making the case in countless different ways that government run by Democrats, and especially by Obama is fundamentally illegitimate. Not "something we strongly disagree with" but a total break with the fundamental principles of our government that present a direct threat to people.

Here I personally went one click further and suggested that perhaps this is an intentional strategy to rile up the crazies, so they'll physically intimidate liberals.

Again, I'd love to see someone prove me wrong about that. Ad hominem tu quoque arguments won't really do the job.

>> ^Winstonfield_Pennypacker:
That is because I'm bearding the lion in its metaphorical den, so to speak. The sift is liberally slanted. I'm not. So even when dare to challenge the consensus groupthink - even when done respectfully - I get blowback. I would say that I am incredibly patient, respectful, and moderate in my tone. I rarely (if ever) make things personal. Even when I'm on the receiving end of some rather nasty abuse I tend to keep it civil.

I think then there may be room for me to maybe help understand the kinds of reactions you get.

Part of the issue is a lot of your comments are of the formation "What liberals are saying is utterly, demonstrably, and obviously false, and in fact, they're more guilty of it than the right". You then support your argument with a litany of asserted facts...that you don't source, and are in direct contravention of what was said elsewhere (regardless of whether it'd been sourced or not).

Part of the issue with making an argument purely on challenging facts is that you run headlong into questions about the legitimacy of the source, and those can be some of the ugliest arguments of all, especially if the only source cited is yourself.

I'd recommend trying to make philosophical or moral arguments that don't hinge on the specific circumstances, especially when we're talking about events we only know about from news stories. I find it helps move conversations from heat to light when you shift the discussion to the underlying philosophical disagreement like that.

I also think you'll get farther with making a positive statement about what you believe, than a negative statement about what you believe liberals believe. (i.e. instead of "Liberals just want to boss people around with their nanny state", try "Conservatives are trying to give people more freedom to choose how to run their own lives")

People will likely still disagree with you, but at least there's a chance they'll respond to what you said, rather than just hurl invectives at you.

>> ^Winstonfield_Pennypacker:
I don't apologize for being a rare conservative voice in a chorus of liberals, but that doesn't mean that "I" am responsible for 'increased vitriol'. The vitriol comes when people other than myself. I simply present a different point of view.

I don't think you should apologize. However, I also think you have to be willing to accept some responsibility for how people react to what you say. I'm self-aware enough to know that what I say is going to sound inflammatory to some people, and I certainly don't feel like criticism of my own inflammatory speech is somehow an assault on my free speech.

If you're getting a lot of vitriol (and I know you are), and that's not what you want, I think you should examine the way you're presenting yourself rather than assuming it's all the result of some sort of universal liberal intolerance.

This place has a bunch of really thoughtful people who enjoy civil discussion with people who they disagree with. If that's what you want, I gotta say I think you're just pushing the wrong buttons.

Palin - Bachman - et al.

I'm trying to avoid the typical back & forth on this thread. So I'll phrase it like this... How is what these guys said any different than what the 'other guy' says (and gets a pass)? Politicians since times ancient have grossly extrapolated the actions/policies of their opponents. Palin's death panel is an exaggeration of the rationed care that IS a part of Obamacare. Similarly, Democrats accuse the GOP of starving people when they want to cut a social program. Bachman wanted people 'armed and dangerous'. Barak Obama wanted people "angry, get in their face, hit back twice as hard, bring a gun". I see no difference. Do I like the overblown rhetoric? No, but it is part and parcel of any vigorous debate.

No normal person takes these statements literally though. And trying to pander to the NOT normal people seems to me an exercise in futility. Moreover, trying to be "PC" using the outliers of society as a standard is an impossible moving target, and rather subject to opinion.

The right-wing elected officials and candidates were talking about armed rebellion if they lose the election

There is no nice way to say this, but you are wrong. They were not, and you know it. There is no GOP candidate who would have survived 5 seconds if they'd been calling for armed rebellion if they lost. That is hyperbole.

I don't get the same sense of desire for outreach/reformation of liberals. I also don't get the sense of compatibility from them.

I put it to you kindly that this opinion is another symptom of perception bias. Would you not agree that from Glenn Beck's perspective his infamous 'chalkboard histories' are an attempt to educate and outreach? And quite frankly, I feel very little sense of 'outreach' or 'education' when liberals call conservatives hateful, angry, evil, nazis, corporate shills, mind numbed robots, neocons, teabaggers, racist, sexist, and bigoted.

I can condemn anything I want because I have free speech. I also think that there's a lot of validity to the idea that our national discourse has been poisoned with over the top rhetoric.

Sure - just be sure to allow that both ways. Criticize conservative pundits all you want. But don't get all testy if conservatives criticize liberal ones. And if you try to pin accessory to murder on conservatives, don't be surprised when they get their back up.

You...increase vitriol

That is because I'm bearding the lion in its metaphorical den, so to speak. The sift is liberally slanted. I'm not. So even when dare to challenge the consensus groupthink - even when done respectfully - I get blowback. I would say that I am incredibly patient, respectful, and moderate in my tone. I rarely (if ever) make things personal. Even when I'm on the receiving end of some rather nasty abuse I tend to keep it civil. I don't apologize for being a rare conservative voice in a chorus of liberals, but that doesn't mean that "I" am responsible for 'increased vitriol'. The vitriol comes when people other than myself. I simply present a different point of view.

I really think that's what is happening in the 'national discourse' too. Two sides collide. They don't like each other. If they dare (DAARE!) to present their perspective, they get jumped on like black on a bowling ball. The media in particular is hypersensitive to this, because it gives them ratings. Politicians love it too, because 'going negative' gets votes.

>> ^bmacs27:

If you've got me pegged as a creationist/ID proponent, you've got me pegged wrong. I specifically said, filling gaps in knowledge with divine intervention is obviously not valid. My point is simply that many who claim ID is unfalsifiable also claim irreducible complexity as impossible to demonstrate you might open evolution up to the same criticism. I don't really care what side I argue for, I'm just interested in hearing a hire level of debate. Frankly, I didn't want to talk about logical fallacies, I wanted to talk about biochemical processes, like opsin barrels, and energy barriers. That shit is dope.
Now, the real problem here is that what we mean by "evolution" is a moving target. It's so broad it's meaningless. In many ways "Darwinian evolution" has been falsified hundreds of times, much like Newtonian mechanics. It was wrong in the details. In fact, almost every rule I was ever taught at an elementary level about any sort of obviously falsifiable detail of evolution has turned out to be false in some weird or possibly limited case (e.g. epigenetics smells awfully Lamarckian). Still, we don't say "Darwin was wrong." You can't falsify evolution in the broad sense the same way you can't falsify gravity. At this point it's common sense more than science. It's more like a world view we use to form specific falsifiable theories than a theory itself. It's a world view that has been shown to be extraordinarily enlightening for sure. So much so, that at this point even with that Hippo fossil, I don't think people would change their minds.
That's fine. I just get worried about how far people push the assumption of natural selection (e.g. evolutionary psychology). I feel that there would more constructive arguments resulting from a healthy skepticism about it. I understand that there is a sociopolitical undertone to the whole debate, and I respect that. I just happen to think that those with the better arguments will win (natural selection). So often I see bullshit jive being put forth as reasoned debate, which I think is what happens when ideas gain too much popular acceptance. Thus, I'd like to see an elevated level of debate about the topic. Since you aren't going to get QM to form a coherent paragraph, I might as well be the uke.


Well, you may not remember, but not long ago "gravity" was thought not to exist. It took Galileo to prove without a doubt that it did. Same thing with "evolution": the concept was understood before Darwin (by, among others, Lamarck), but it took Darwin and his idea of natural selection to prove it (with Mendelian genetics being the Newtonian mechanics's analog). Newton said that two mass attract each other, and it still is true today only now we know that it is so because they each form a gravity well. In the same way Darwin said evolution happens by natural selection. I do not know how our understanding of the concept will change (or not, which is possible) in the future, but it will still be recognizable as being that the most fit (adapted) organism in a situation surviving and producing more offspring than the rest. What will change, I think, will be how we define fitness, organism, survival and reproduction. Already, the concept of "meme" shows how broadening some of the terms can lead to new understanding in the psychological realm. If you want to show that Darwin is wrong, then by all means attack natural selection and show us a better mechanism for evolution, the same way Einstein replaced Newtonian mechanics with general relativity. But really, I don't see how talking about biochemical processes will ever falsify natural selection. In fact, I don't even see how a flaw in natural selection could be revealed by some biochemical process: they seem to be on two different levels of abstraction. But if you know of one, then by all means enlighten us.

>> ^Psychologic:

Indeed. I would much prefer more specific designations for particular ideas within evolution (micro, macro, etc). "Evolution" seems to have a different meaning for everyone so at times it's difficult to know if two sides of a conversation are discussing the same idea.


"There is nothing mysterious or purposeful about evolution...it just happens. It is an automatic consequence of cold, simple mathematics." -- Scott Freeman & Jon C. Herron, Evolutionary Analysis

Microevolution is the change in an allele's frequency over multiple generations. Macroevolution is commonly referred to as speciation, the formation of new species via microevolutionary methods along with the isolation of organisms (either geographically or otherwise) and their eventual genetic divergence due to this isolation.

>> ^bmacs27:

Now, the real problem here is that what we mean by "evolution" is a moving target. It's so broad it's meaningless. In many ways "Darwinian evolution" has been falsified hundreds of times, much like Newtonian mechanics. It was wrong in the details.

I just get worried about how far people push the assumption of natural selection (e.g. evolutionary psychology).


Evolution is a moving target in as so much as any scientific discipline is. I'm sure if we started arguing about the physiology of vision, there would come a point where theory is still changing and, if I may, evolving within the scientific community. As I'm sure you know, this is just how science works.

Darwin was wrong in the details, true. Up to his death, Darwin believed in gemmules (small particles that travel through the body and deposit their "characteristics" into the gentialia) but that does not make his ideas any less sound. Modern evolutionary theory has filled in the gaps of Darwinian evolutionary theory. The fact that we can even reference Darwin 150+ years later should be a testament to how radically brilliant his ideas were and it should not undermine them just because he lived in a time where nothing was known about genetics (save Mendel's small garden patch).

About your last point concerning natural selection, I agree in so far that natural selection is not the only cause of evolution. Since evolution is merely the change in allele frequency over time, this can also be caused by migration and genetic drift, two very powerful forces and often more powerful in shorter time spans than natural selection. Albeit these forces are not influenced by agents of selection such as the environment, competition, predation, or sexual selection, they are still effective at causing the evolution of populations.