Asol
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I tried to read this article.
"Now, with the discovery of a home built by Neanderthals, it
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"Thou shalt worship no god" sticks in my craw as badly as "Thou shalt worship no god but me."
Yes, but their case is better. I would love for them to be wrong though.
The priority of placing religious or metaphysical traditions or thinking at the top of the list of apparently irrational behavior in others to be addressed is effectively an endorsement of more real problems in mass popular behavior such as consumerism which are far harder to tackle and far more widely enabled. In this way I find atheists particularly bothersome when vocal, because they tend to single issue crusade something they mistake for not being piss-ant relative to their own contributions to our problems. We can point our fingers in the mirror for the walmart, over population, EU zone, BP etc rather than at Jesus or Ganesha. Christmas trending from the religious to consumerism is just well rationalized degeneracy.
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I personally think that giving classes in ethics to teenagers and children is a waste of money. Teenagers will see them as either an outlet for them to stand out from the crowd (trying to pull a Will Hunting) or completely irrelevant to their lives, in both cases they are not taking much from the experience. With kids you run 2 risks, they often don't think in relative terms and they can grow out of it.
Surely ANY enterprise has associated risks. I didn't say teaching the subject would be easy. You're right kids don't handle abstarcts well. But teenagers (IMO) always respond t ooffers to put power in their hands. YOu offer them a way to think more clearly, avoid being exploited, buy cheaper, spot dangers... I think they would respond.
Idealistically down the road individual ethics and social responsibility have to rebound in major way. Permaculture has to be a central principle, with not even minute robberies and borrowings from oncoming generations being acceptable. I would say ethics are presently difficult to instill because the youth encounter nothing but wide spread consumerism and flagrant degeneracy. They would rightly consider various ethical points a handy cap in practice no matter how idealistic they felt. The phases of life and living generations in those phases need to be reintegrated instead of having broad institutionalized education, employment and retirement schemes. The present scheme enables a kind of inter-generational prisoners dilemma, everyone is concerned with their own personal 'get overs' while the institutions just enable it but don't actually bear the weight. People need to be trained to respect their biological base and have their needs met though as local means and schemes as can be made possible with as much personal contribution as they are able.
Essentially permaculture principles need to be integrated in all aspects of social design otherwise we can sit and pray that scientists and politicians can find a new finger for every new crack in the damn... What people are valuing as their freedom now are ultimately destructive principles, people manage misery and apathy event though they live in the height of comfort and wealth compared to history, clearly we need people on board with a new value system in line with permaculture ethics.
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Having a goal of a healthy campfire gives you good and bad cellulose to pick from, having a goal of good health and a strong metabolism gives you good and bad calories to pick from.
This argument would be a lot more convincing if nutritionists actually understood the biochemistry of metabolism that causes the supposed health effects of various foods rather than simply presenting a rapidly shifting array of things which are "good" and "bad" based on the most recent poorly-controlled correlative studies.
I don't put much store in modern nutrition, and for good reasons.
Well when I am talking about the cellulose about it is actually a specific substance, with a specific chemical composition and i can measure it in grams, i can send it to someone and they can confirm it is cellulose. Fire is probably a simple and less particular process than the host of interwoven processes of the body related to extracting energy from foods, yet i can select specifically to facilitate the fire. Calories on the other hand is an abstract metric applied to a host of substances based on how they react to a process that is loosely supposedly analogous to the end result of metabolism, which is a process aggregate of other processes.
As a consumer with a supposed scientific attitude it is ones own job to sift the sugar from the sand. A person should evaluate and contrast various arguements and perhaps experiment with the principles to see if they work and to what extent and in what circumstances rather than claim its 'not understood', that claim can always be cast out there depending on what kind of specifics you are looking for...
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Also with the diet information please read and consider Good Calories, Bad Calories by Gary Taubes. Very rigorous researcher and great book.
Protip: There's no such thing as a "good calorie" and a "bad calorie." Energy is energy.
Well the title is for the market and the UK edition is called the Diet Delusion if that helps, also I wouldn't lightly call someone rigorous. A lot of material is references such as weights of various agricultural societies and historic changes in general diet which provides information regarding fats from various sources as well as simple and complex sugars... It does spend significant time however under-minding the calorie as a relevant metric over all.
For an analogy there is also no such thing as 'good cellulose" and "bad cellulose" however when we go to make a campfire we select pieces that are dry, easily stacked, broken, or chopped as well as not having fungus or a swarm of insects about it. The cellulose itself is the same from instance to instance however we can easily select pieces that are far more susceptible to the chemical reaction of fire than others. Having a goal of a healthy campfire gives you good and bad cellulose to pick from, having a goal of good health and a strong metabolism gives you good and bad calories to pick from.
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A person from 11-13 should be able to enter any segment of productive society at the least an apprenticeship level. That is without too debilitating an upbringing, the adult being 18 idea is there to protect the work force and wage levels even if no one will admit it, same as the encouragement for people to go to school till 25-30 for a degree in organic blubberdashery and so on...
Also with the diet information please read and consider Good Calories, Bad Calories by Gary Taubes. Very rigorous researcher and great book.
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I'm surprised the recent downgrade of the US's credit rating hasn't made this thread yet. We're now AA+, I'm sure Russia has a AAA due to its awesome economy.Russia is strong
USA is weak
Asking for a strong USA is like asking for a burning metal pole to be shoved up your rectum. Our strength is almost always wrapped up in our xenophobic and militaristic tendencies.
More or less, the gov borrows and spends into the economy which gives us our money to start with. It can be easy to argue that this spend in is traditionally dominated by defense boondoggles. The sun is beginning to set on that picture. Its hard to guess what will come to be we have essentially 1 manufacturing person to 1 public sector person to 6 service industry(middlemen) person to 8 people who on paper contribute nothing while having the typical american 'needs'. Its a recipe for disaster for sure.
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i definitely missed this whole DoTA thing... its like a mod of warcraft 3 or something? people play it a lot still? so its like the counterstrike of warcraft 3?
More or less, Heroes of Newearth and League of Legends are descendants, with hon being closer to a clone/remake and league has some sort of casual friendly gameplay tweaks.
I believe the league of legends player base is becoming rather large, and now think both are on free to play with webshop business models.
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Finished The Player of Games by Iain Banks. Great work around themes in games, but flirted hard with the wonky side of sports and games in naratives (abstact and deus-exish drama and resolution at every turn really, orson scott card style...) and characters are very thin. Still worth it.
Starting The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver who is apparently very talented, its starting well. Lined up after this are Use of Weapons and Look at the Birdie short stories by Vonnegut.
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And you are engaging in a simple logical fallacy. The existence of climate change is utterly, completely, and gloriously irrelevant to the question of whether renewable energy can be the way forward. In fact accepting climate change as a fact makes the situation ten times worse because it imposes a gate on when improvements can occur.
I don't want to be rude about all this. But it's a damn shame to see so much effort going totally to waste.
And BTW, simply asserting that 'science will make it all OK' is a lunatic basis for policy making. If we're playing that game I say we just put everything we've got into cold fusion. Happy days. End of problem.
I agree with Wals here, a dose of prep will serve people far better than hoping for our science priests to deliver a black magic miracle at the zero hour. Agribusiness is the industry of converting oil to food more or less, this is hole in ethanol as a fuel solution, it takes oil to sustain those mono culture fields of corn/sugar/whatever. Oil is just far too expansive and integral of an enabler is present agriculture. Peak oil pretty much means peak food, baring some simply amazing tech and energy developments.
Also cynicism, skepticism and a decline in present consumption levels are not intrinsically negative or doomy, its better to face the more probably conditions and work from there.
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Space Chem is pretty impressive, good challenge and reward and the youtube feature is nice for sharing/showing off solutions. My favorite 'small time' game since Nimbus.
Also here is apparently a diver vs sharks pvp game that looks pretty interesting...
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For holy rolling athiests on youtube TheoreticalBull**** deserves more views than thunderfoot trolling. Definitely not an individual who is fuzzy in the logic department...
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Okay, I think I reached some sort of threshold today. I feel god awful. I vomited twice today, and not with the usual acid kick. I have a massive headache, joints feel like crap, I am unable to see straight, and severely fatigued.
Toxins can store and accumulate in the body fat, as you shed the fat your body and metabolism can be exposed to what was dormant. Minimizing sugar is better than using substitutes, most are pretty toxic. I also consider typical milk products and margerine toxic.
Prepare as much of your own food as possible and I would suggest gardening if you have the time and space, otherwise just keep doing your best. A monk wears a habit.
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Pandorum, a sci-fi horror movie. It was surprisingly good with some twists I didn't see coming.
I liked it also but Cung Le sure didn't help the picture.
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I believe guns are necessary for self defense.
I'd rather have a knife or two, although I will admit that they are less useful in some situations.
The function of a firearm is deterrence, a knife simply doesn't provide that.
I would like to hear the boards opinions on the Gerald Ung case while on topic as well...
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If ordinary people were capable of exercising lethal force sensibly then we would not need to train either police officers or soldiers so carefully.
If people were more responsible for themselves and their own interests we wouldn't be so over burdened with public sector parasites right now when we can least afford it. Super good point, you're really coming around on this one.
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So let me get this straight.
Taxes being used to help those less fortunate: Bad
Taxes being used for war: Good
I only say this because the war in Iraq will cost $900 billion this year alone. Where Health care will cost $940 billion over ten years. Yet there seems to be a lot less moaning about that.
So maybe I can't make my speedboat payments(or mortgage for that matter) without borrowing all over town and going into hoc. I should have no problems taking on a couple jetski's 'for the kids', while never planning or expecting to give up any of it for any circumstances. That logic is based on either planning to circle the drain or hope that some kind of crazy financial miracle and sunshine will just break over the horizon, both pretty ridiculous.
Also war compliance good or bad has everything to do with employment in the united states. There are some 118 or so million people in completely expendable service and middleman positions. Approx 19 million in some facet of manufacturing positions and approx 21 million government employees.... We have more people in government than manufacturing. Compared to 'real world' employment these people are over payed, under worked and don't face any direct competition. There is a lot of motivation to toe the line.
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/objectivist rant
Here Jack's mom traded the cow for magic beans and had the beanstalk adventure herself. Wealth redistribution is occurring intergenerationally through the monstrous debt as well as between classes, people not even born or productive yet will be hauling all the present day dead ass in this country well into the future. This will be another case of Americans consuming their station instead of passing it down to future generations, the assumption that our kids will live in star trek la la land is what enables this behavior the reality is they will be working a lot harder for a lot less. Sometimes it can be clear that 'most people' or 'common good' should not be enabled.
On 'backroom' deals, you can't enable every life sucking corporate demon and every squillion dollar big government boondoggle 24/7 then do some good conscience pretending to vote those monsters down one single day every 2 or 4 years. Thats the problem with consumer ethics, people believe they need every piece of candy dangled in front of them, and can be sold anything when they are paying on credit; that is robbing their children to pay for comforts. Such as passing this healthcare mess in the midst of economic disaster about amounts to looting, a guilt trip on the resistance is stunning.
/rant
Couldn't resist, I'm halfway through atlas shrugged.
If politicians were honest, Democrats would have skipped the bill that hands billions in profits to the insurance companies and come up with one where we wouldn't need insurance companies at all. One thing people need to realize is corruption always works in capitalism's favor, not the other way around. Politicians don't become corrupt for the fun of it.I'm not clear on it but it seems possible they may not do all that well, the customer still has the x factor knowledge of how much attention the expect to need and it seems they will be able to just pay the penalty until they need attention then sign up for an emergency or when health declines, I guess it would depend on strong enforcement.
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Oh, mirror images are hate-mongering now are they?The only hate mongering I see are those in the image.
The only connection between the 95k Mohammed decended muslims claiming libel and the 300-400 london danish embassy protesters is taking religious exception to the periodicals inquestion, the use of the image in relation to the 95k world muslims bringing suit borders on libelous itself.
Its an event 4 years ago where 4 individuals were probably rightfully jailed for attempting to incite violence and criminal behavior, there are a dozen odd signs of vulgarisms wrote in the same hand and distributed. Here an english speaker leads a crowd of likely mixed level english speakers in some hate speech at the 3 and 5 minute marks, they clearly have variable ability to comprehend or care what they are repeating.
This is just people being sheep and some ugly mob leadership and a case of what makes the best copy now this image is married to anything pertaining to muslims and free speech, its rather unfortunate and probably unacceptable if the shoe was on the other foot no? I don't consider it fairly representative of muslims, british muslims or even the bulk of the people who bothered to show up to that particular event. Why does an extremist few get stretched so far to represent the many? That kind of disproportional weight gives us attitudes like the post yesterday that was deleted, an otherwise nice person's first response was something he or a mod felt needed retraction. This is the same element of people reacting to something that is incendiary to them and a lot of media amplification...At what point will it be fair to say its a far reaching misrepresentation? The lack of any positive representations of anything islamic in the media makes perenial blackeyes like this more damaging when the worst ill advised extremists are persistently used to front the entire religion in the media.
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NEARLY 95,000 descendants of Mohammed are going to sue ten newspapers for publishing "blasphemous" cartoons of the Prophet.
http://www.news.com.au/world/descendants-o...i-1225843489852
Gotta love the pic in the link. Notice the spelling mistake?
Image is old, of questionable value and definitely used irresponsibly to hate monger here.
http://www.snopes.com/photos/politics/muslimprotest.asp
http://newsblaze.com/story/20060827211403n...b/topstory.html
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Couple stints of FF13, just doesn't seem enjoyable, been waiting for it to pick up.
The Abolition of Gender
in Way Off-Topic
Posted
This is a difficult subject to explain why it is potentially so wrong. Both longevity and gender(biologically) should not be tinkered with without ages of thought going into the value determination and goals. People are already mongrels who are eating their children through overpopulating, over consumption and footing them a crippling bill though our debt and hubris, seriously if one thinks about it most of our activities and conventions are almost designed to deplete resources. Making decisions like this from within our current consumer paradigm would be like a whole new apex of irresponsibility towards future generations.
Also in terms of gender politics human hierarchy is entirely voluntary, fundamentally vices enable others and virtues uplift the self. The gender with the more members socialized and educated to self identify as victims will be the weaker in a social context... From the equality angle feminism is also a failure and a false front, the behavior Guard Dog refers to in a military environment tends to be typical. Rather than the previous masculine standard being extended towards the new females in the traditionally male positions, the standard itself is more often eroded. In this sense feminism in political and work environments seems to just be a push towards androgyny, and mediocrity.
An old standard is eroded, replaced with nothing really. Everyone is equally wonderful(useless) in a consumer opium den.