Rostere

Saw TFA a few hours ago in a nice cinema, not often you can watch a movie with a Gin and Tonic in your left hand! A few spoilers and opinions:

There's only one way to prepare for TFA:

Stop reading people's fantasies and wild speculations on the internet. That said: It is illegal in Sweden to keep records of ethnic heritage of people accused of or convicted of crimes. It is true that in some of the most segregated suburbs (there probably are three or so in Sweden) harassment of people with "improper" clothing could occur. Still, this is something which COULD happen, and the harassment would take the form of someone shouting something at you. I've walked with a tailcoat on through some of the "worst" suburbs of Stockholm without anything happening at all. Anyways, 99% of the things you read are probably outright lies, cherry-picking, or a mixture of both. That said, refugees have lately (talking the last year or so) become a huge short-term economic burden. The amount of money spent on juveniles coming to Sweden without their families is comparable to the collected expenditures of the entire state of Afghanistan, I've heard. For something you deem "fantasies and wild speculations" there are dozens of people passionately claiming this very thing that seemingly get nothing out of it. Are they all racists then? Look, as for Sweden being a country which easily gives out welfare with no counterdemands, I think most people would agree. Same as for refugees not being a short-term economic bonus, and the segregation and societal divides that has occured. But this stuff: "The right is very insistent that muslim immigration is directly responsible for a huge spike in rape cases in nordic (and other) countries, and that the police and media purposefully omit the ethnicity and religion of the perpetrators on a regular basis to protect the whole multi-culti fantasy. Additionally, the punishments are usually extremely lenient. I've also read reports from women that harassment of native women walking around (not covered up) in the streets by muslim arabs and blacks is a regular thing." Is frankly just Nazi-levels of hogwash. I don't have time to reply to every lie and exaggeration in that statement, nor to do a Freudian analysis of the people who seem pathologically obsessed with interracial rape. I don't care much for generalizing and labelling people "racists", I'd rather discuss every single issue separately. And frankly, a lot of what you hear is on this level: I'm surprised some people are so willingly circulating wildly racist blatant lies.

Stop reading people's fantasies and wild speculations on the internet. That said: It is illegal in Sweden to keep records of ethnic heritage of people accused of or convicted of crimes. It is true that in some of the most segregated suburbs (there probably are three or so in Sweden) harassment of people with "improper" clothing could occur. Still, this is something which COULD happen, and the harassment would take the form of someone shouting something at you. I've walked with a tailcoat on through some of the "worst" suburbs of Stockholm without anything happening at all. Anyways, 99% of the things you read are probably outright lies, cherry-picking, or a mixture of both. That said, refugees have lately (talking the last year or so) become a huge short-term economic burden. The amount of money spent on juveniles coming to Sweden without their families is comparable to the collected expenditures of the entire state of Afghanistan, I've heard.

I think at some point Obsidian released "official" AP avatars, but a discussion started about "why is X from the game not an avatar", somebody offered to make custom avatars, and then eventually it derailed into people making avatars of everything on earth with the AP text underneath. I had a Feargus AP avatar which I used for a while

The point with my post was to introduce more concrete notions about what "socialized healthcare" means in practice. It's kind of annoying to see people who have no idea what "socialized healthcare" even means to argue about the pros and cons only based on their ideas about how nice things are in different countries.

You can't understand why Nordic socialized healthcare seems to be more economical than American healthcare without the underlying reasons. Since you don't necessarily pay a lot to see the doctor, you can visit for preventive reasons before you are in urgent need. Needless to say, acting preventively instead of completely ad hoc saves a lot of money. If you must pay a lot to see the doctor for preventive reasons, then that encourages risky behaviour which essentially ends up in you paying a lot trying to save your life when you're already basically dead, or for continuous medicination when you have acquired some preventable medical condition. Add to this national programs of scheduled mammography, et.c.. The state bargains collectively for acquisition of drugs (incidentally also for alcoholic beverages...), and through testing decides what is economical, even though doctors are ultimately often free to choose themselves. There is no financial incentive whatsoever for the doctor to provide a more expensive cure, or to choose a cure which costs less but gives less. There is also no financial incentive for the collective bargainer to sell drugs to apothecaries for anything less than the lowest price possible. You are allowed to choose doctor if you want, but there is always a default option in place. It won't happen that you pay a fortune in bills because you didn't choose any economical option in advance before giving birth or something like that. I've heard nightmare stories about giving birth in the US. Depending on where you live, choosing a hospital might not be easy and so there might be a free market only in theory. Something which might be interesting here is that Sweden used to have a monopoly for selling drugs as well. This was recently sold to private actors. We note that while the consumer price index has risen by about 4% since, prices for buying drugs in stores have risen about 12% on average (averaging between different specific common drugs). On the other hand, if you don't want to buy drugs in-store, you can buy prescription-free drugs online for at the lowest about 1/4 what they used to cost before deregulation. The lesson here is that deregulation does not automatically bring lower prices in general, but it does encourage innovation, like the spread of online stores in this case. The state monopoly could technically have done the same thing and sold non-prescription drugs online for peanuts, but there was no real incentive for innovation.

I've yet to see any movie which features realistic swordfighting. But the Star Wars prequels are esecially guilty of being **** in that regard.

Historically, yes, during some periods. For example, Sweden during the period of 1920 to 1976. But then you will have to compare to other countries during the same period. More recent things you could look at is what the SPD in Germany has done since 1998, the SPÖ in Austria, the most famous Social Democrat party currently in govnerment is possibly the PS in France. Closer to where you live you have the SWAPO, FRELIMO and MDC parties in your neighbouring countries. They are of course influenced by the specific African conditions, but essentially they are the African counterparts of European Social Democrat parties.

"Democratic Socialism" is a synonym for "Social Democracy". Social Democracy is the largest left-wing movement in the world and thus is a very vague label. It is a matter of opinion of it is a good ideology of course, but it is far from vacuous at least, it is very real, in fact I would say that with the existence of the Socialist International and the Progressive Alliance, Social Democracy is the largest (somewhat) unified political movement in the world (and thus by extension, in the history of mankind). So what Sanders is trying to say that he belongs to is far from a "new type of ideology", as far as practical results go, social democracy might be the easiest ideology to find out more about by looking at the countries which have been ruled by Social Democratic parties, and their legacy.

Amen, brother.

Mods, feel free to take the above post by Ineth to a new separate thread about the I/P conflict (in order that we do not go too much off-topic), maybe I will reply to it when I have time.

Things that currently are counted as most evil, vicious, horrible, etc. in world history are things that our grandfathers did. Which is why such concepts as fundamental human rights, current refugee treaties etc. were created in first place. Yes, but we progressed from that stage of development. It makes no sense to argue that current societies who do certain things we don't agree with are irredeemable, when we did the same things. Clearly, it is possible to go from Nazi Germany in 1944 to today's Germany, which selflessly spends a lot of resources to give people from countries broken by war a new future. Same with British and French colonialism. Yet those are the same countries, with the same people (roughly speaking, we also have migration, but I do not believe that can account for these changes).

So how come Cruz and Paul are not leading over Carson and Trump? And why do people prefer Carson over Trump (to me these appear similar in policies)? Out of all the people who "present an alternative vision", why do they choose Carson? You can say what you want about Cruz, Paul and Trump, but at least there's nothing I've read about them which makes me doubt their grip on reality. To be honest, I think there is some kind of identity politics that plays a part here, I think that being at odds with scientific reality in your statements is something which automatically generates a lot of support among religious people, who can sympathize with struggling against reason. The scientific establishment and the political left merge together in their eyes to represent some kind of abstract ominous subjugating entity. It's similar to how the same people tend to believe in both healing crystals, ghosts and homeopathy even if these are completely unrelated phenomena. So if Carson says things which puts him in a situation which religious people can sympathize with, I think that can be a positive thing for his campaign to win religious votes - his religious sympathizers might never have invented the idea that the pyramids were granaries themselves, but when Carson gets criticized by archaeologists, they can relate to when they have been criticized by cosmologists and geologists for their statements on the age of the earth, and so on. It remains identity politics and not "real" politics because Carson is not about to stop funding for NASA or archaeology studies because they disagree. Similarly, when Trump says something outrageous about immigrants and comes under attack by the liberal press, he will probably generate a lot of sympathy from that even if people do not agree 100% with what he is saying.

People are forgetting that censorship was commonplace in Western countries 60-80 years ago. How long has it been since "insulting the king" and "insulting god" were removed as crimes in European countries? Carl Laemmle's filmatisation of "All Quiet on the Western Front" is one shocking example of 20th century censorship in Europe. It's absurd that we claim that the same things our grandfathers did is suddenly "absolute evil" - we should strive to understand what is the logical next step for the less developed countries, like an older sibling guiding a younger sibling through their life choices. Let's just acknowledge that some countries are not as advanced as others. We should aim to help these societies progress along the same lines as we did, one step at a time. Everything cannot be achieved at once, and quick and forceful "solutions" are often foolish. We can't expect all countries to suddenly adapt 21st century free speech, when many are effectively living in the 20th or 19th century as far as social politics go.

Short version for stoned people: don't escalate a fight by conventional means against an enemy such as this. You can't fight evil with stupidity. 15 year on and all of the US' meddling in the ME has only served to destabilize the entire place and make it a playground for extremists such as ISIS. The US wanted to fight Al Qaeda but neither nation-building in Afghanistan (which is now failing utterly, as shown in the amount of Afghans migrating to Europe) nor the completely useless invasion of Iraq had anything to do with this, and both of these actions have served to increase the support for extremist Islamism, not the other way around. The enemy of your enemy is not necessarily your friend. The enemy of your friend is not necessarily your enemy, and so on.

Okay. So let's see how people around the world are reacting to this. "We are all Israelis now", "Finally Europe has it's own 9/11" "Welcome to World War Three" Great guys, so I would wish France very welcome to WW3, a.k.a. "The War on Terror Islam". Finally France can start meddling in the Middle East more, because that's what started will solve this. 30 years ago, political Islamism was not on the map. But let's overthrow the democratically elected government of Iran, let's support Osama Bin Laden, let's support Saddam Hussein, let's support Hamas, let's support the Syrian Rebels, let's shoot people semi-randomly from drones, let's detain and torture people without due process, let's prop up Egypt's corrupt dictatorship and hope that does not create extremist revolutionary groups, let's prop up Saudi Arabia so that they can pay for extremist mosques in Europe, let's create all sorts of wars to create a refugee crisis in Europe. And of course, let's support land theft and ethnic cleansing in Palestine, surely nobody will fight back to protect their rights. I mean, it's not as if anyone would pick up weapons if Arabs would declare an Islamic State in New York, declare race laws and start to put Americans in ghettos. I think it's sick and perverted that the same people whose wars and short-sighted meddling have caused this crisis are saying that we must meet this with more war and more meddling. They are conjuring up an enemy which did not exist before their interventions. This is similar to how colonialism laid the perfect groundwork for Communism in colonialized countries.

Actually I haven't studied structural engineering, but I have taken a course in solid mechanics, which depending on which sub-area of structural engineering you are discussing is close enough I am mostly interested in the psychology behind why people do not immediately discard Carson as a crackpot. Candidates such as him wouldn't be possible where I live. I recognize there is some small amount of butthurt regarding which candidates to criticize. Just for the record, I was talking politics the other day with my GF and most of the time we were discussing whether or not Hillary was a pathological liar or not. It's just that those things are not very interesting for me to discuss here, with you. Hillary Clinton makes sense to me as she is not very different from the politicians we have got here and I have no real interest in reading more about her, but Carson is a complete enigma, I can't understand why he is treated like a politician and not like a mental case. Carson's statements are for me not qualitatively different from those of John Nash, who was forcibly admitted to a psychiatric hospital.

By what standard impractical? A.D. 2015 or B.C.2015? You do realize standards could change and practicality was not any concern when you have thousand of slave at your disposal? Narrow passageway and no empty chambers? Funny they were there when I last visited. How many pyramids did you visited personally? As for the why. I would say the exact same reason they would build a massive pyramid instead of a tiny hole for a dead body to bury. It is obvious - throughout all of history burial monuments to kings have been very common. However, absurdly inefficient granaries have never been observed as far as I am aware. Why would they build a mountain out of stone, with a tiny passageway to a chamber only to store grain in it? And why would all pyramids we have discovered thus far be tombs, with no trace of being used as granaries? Why would there be no historical accounts of the pyramids being used as granaries, while all contemporary accounts who describe their function saying that they are tombs? You do realize that it is no more logical to say that a pyramid is a granary than to say that it was used as a house, to store water, to store papyruses, to store cats or whatever. It is possible to come up with any number of completely illogical, unfounded and absurd usages for pyramids. It will be as hard to convince a paranoid schizophrenic who thinks the pyramids were used to store grain as it will be to convince a paranoid schizophrenic who believes that the F-35 is a submarine. I don't see how this has been disproven more than Carson's claim, and they are about as sensible. You can sit underwater in a F-35, although this would not be practical for any purpose. Similarly, you can store grain in a pyramid, but it is probably about as space-efficient as storing grain in the Eiffel tower (can we agree that the Eiffel tower was not built as a granary?). We know that the pyramids were used as tombs (we have observed no pyramid NOT used as a tomb). Similarly we know that the F-35 are used as aircraft, we have observed none being used as a submarine. The claims are equally absurd in my eyes. I would actually say that the claim the "Joseph built them", through factually being very vague, is not falsifiable to a great degree. If we relax the claim to being "a Semitic-speaking person or a person of Semitic heritage helped design some pyramid", then it appears much more likely to be true. Then you can retroactively identify this person as Joseph. Of course, all of this hinges on not interpreting the Bible literally, in which case pretty much everything is unlikely to have occurred exactly as it was described. There are also theories about Atenism being inspired by Semitic religion. To be honest, the only thing we really can say is that the two are likely to be connected in their development. But then, there is also the (probably more credible) theory that Judaic monotheism was inspired by Zoroastrianism (eliminating the need for any link to Atenism), specifically the pantheist beliefs of Cyrus the Great, one of history's most intriguing figures.

But you do understand that when Carson asked about the purpose of big empty chambers in pyramids he got "we are not sure" answer? You call that a statement that should change his theory? You do understand that we don't have full understanding of building technique and full purpose of pyramids. We have purpose for one part of pyramids - storing dead pharaons, but what about the rest of the building? Your F-35 example is not applicable because F-35 could never be used as a submarine, but pyramids ARE capable by it's design and properties to be used as a storage for keeping food fresh? So the scientists have a theory and Carson have a theory. The problem is when you don't agree with scientists theory some dumb, unintelligent people will call you "clinically insane", even though you theory have the same probability of being true. It's like Islam and Pastafarians. They both have stupid story about a their god, but people tend to laugh at Pastafarians but not Muslims. So I would give Carson a pass with his theory about pyramids granary. Sorry, but usage of the pyramids as a granary is about as practical as usage of the F-35 as a submarine. You can store grain in a pyramid just as you can sit in a F-35 underwater but both of them are extremely impractical. I mean, a pyramid is a veritable mountain out of rock. The are narrow passageways inside it, and burial chambers which are tiny compared to the size of the pyramid. There are no "big empty chambers", that's a complete delusion right there. As far as we know, all of the chambers are either meant as traps, or were burial chambers. This leaves nothing to account for. Or are you saying that somebody built these massive pyramids with their tiny chambers for grain storage, only for later pharaons to use it as a tomb instead? Why the heck would someone build a pyramid to store grain when they could have just built a small house to store the same volume? Anyways, this discussion is getting more retarded by the minute. You might as well give me a pass on my theory about the F-35 being a submarine, since this has not been disproven thus far.

I fail to see how this is surprising at all. Pretty much everyone around the world is condemning the attack. Hezbollah is in government together with Lebanese Christian parties, Lebanon has good relations with France... They are probably as disgusted as everyone else, and with literally no reason to not condemn the attack.

Not knowing the capital of a US state is a completely different kind of misunderstanding. A factual error which is on par with believing that the pyramids stored grain would be for example "The F-35 was built to be used as a submarine". Now, if a non-military person said this, and retracted their statement upon seeing videos of the F-35, there wouldn't be much to discuss. But if this person was given information about the F-35 and still maintained that it was a submarine, they probably have some kind of mental issues. The thing is that this Carson guy has been confronted with this statement, and did not retract it. That puts him very squarely in the category of the clinically insane. It is painfully clear from even the shortest Google search that a pyramid would be a laughably suboptimal granary. And that is without the overwhelming historical and archaeological evidence that they were used as tombs. This level of rejection of reality is unexplainable with anything else than a psychological condition.

See this.

I would not let this guy near any granary construction company for obvious reasons. I don't know how you define intelligence, but Carson clearly has about the same grip on reality as a paranoid schizophrenic. That is not to say that he cannot also be intelligent in some sense of the word, like this guy. It's kind of scary to think about what other kinds of absurd ideas he might have.

So. Why would anyone shoot down a passenger jet and how did they acquire the means to do so? Good starting plot for a spy novel, I guess.