BruceVC

The only thing you've 'proved' is how ignorant and full of yourself you are. Yet again. You are quite good at offering us all proof of this quite often. Oh, and congrats again on being a subject of your government, thinking it is your government who provides the quality of life to the folks under it's rule. You are such a good serf. Such a good subject. Your superior comrades, king, or queen are no doubt happy to have you as such a loyal subordinate. Really, if you think there's a scale that can quantify what is the best culture you're either naive, ignorant, full of yourself, stupid, some combination of, or all of the above. Here's probably the best scale I can think of out there in regards to what is the best nation to live in: The suicide rate by nation. As obviously if it's such a great place to live for everyone, no one would kill themselves. In no way would I say that even the above is any kind of great indicator of what is the best culture. Though it's certainly more relevant I'd say that the links you provided. And in regards to those links. By one of them I live in the #1 culture, and while there are few other places on earth I'd consider living in, I wouldn't say my culture's way is the best way (especially in 2014 USA). Of the supposed top ten nations on that list, exactly half of them I would move the hell out of as fast as possible as their governments are way too fascist or communist for me. Of your other list, the top 4, absolutely no way would I want to live there, for the same reason. Sweden? Australia? Nice places to visit sure, great people, I have friends in both places.. but their laws and government are way too oppressive, corrupt, and inept. Unless of course you are a happy good loyal subordinate serf who bathes in socialism and the 'glory' (*cough* *choke* *gag**vomit*) of their queen. Seriously. What's good for one person is not good for another. One man's trash is another man's treasure. #@*( anyone who would forcibly impose their way of life on anyone else, especially if they do it under the false auspices of 'we're doing it for your own good'. There's a special place in hell reserved for such folks. Morning Vals How are you doing today ? So despite the fact that I can give another 6 or 7 links that discuss various indexes that represent what countries have the best quality of life you think the best way to measure this should be based on how few people commit suicide Seriously dude you make me laugh....try to listen to what you are saying. Suicide is normally caused by depression, depression is a chemical imbalance and your quality of life for a depressed person can make no difference around a decision to end there life And yes I believe in governments and paying taxes. I believe governments have a responsibility to provide certain basic services and we need to support them by not breaking the law and paying your rates and taxes. So if this makes me a serf then I guess I am one. But I don't mind being a serf because I think I live a really good lifestyle

I had never heard of them before, they look cute. I wonder if they can be eaten and what they taste like?

Either you haven't had enough sex in your life or you've got some kind of creepy synesthesia if you think the offal of human groinal regions and sweat smells like spring flowers. The potential joke based on the fact that flowers are fundamentally sexual organs is lost when you've actually been in a room reeking of human copulation. Do you spend loads of time in rooms that reek of human copulation...you seem quite knowledgeable

Its funny but I never saw his posts like that. I thought he was always logical and reasonable with his comments. He also made some of the most informed and convincing points around issues of social justice. So I miss his input

When did anyone say that Western culture is perfect and doesn't need to improve on any aspect of its culture? I said that governments in Western countries give there citizens the best quality of life and I proved it by posting several links. I made this point because I wanted to settle the debate " what makes Western society better than say Russian or other societies". If you have another way of measuring happiness levels across countries please post it. But I refuse to say, just because its politically correct, that the quality of life in places like Russia or China for the average citizen is the same as most Western countries. This may sound arrogant but its not intended to be, its just the reality of governments in the modern world and how they manage there countries Also the issue with RT is that it is an international news channel. Its suppose to present the news to world and not just there local population. That's why the objectivity is important

I miss him as well, he said he was taking a break from the Obsidian forums

OK, what was in the past that's better than Western civilization? Also if the indexes are flawed because they are based on Western qualities of a good life then maybe you can share what other variables are important. The links I posted discuss scores like purchasing power, safety, healthcare and pollution levels. And I'm sure those are universal values that every culture and country aspires to?

Ah.. more of your Your ignorance rises to a special level BruceVC. I'll give you this, of all the people I've ever run across on a forum anywhere, your indignant armor to reality is the thickest. In media you'd be akin to Piers Morgan, hubris, haughty holier than thou attitude, and all. Pretty much no matter what anyone ever writes your viewpoint is near impervious. And to address your first quotebox above, you really just show how much you let other people do your thinking for you. I'll leave the 9/11 issue at this for you as it's a good litmus test in regards to actual knowledge of the event. Until you (or anyone else who swallows whole and faithful the official conspiracy theory on 9/11) can write at least a couple of paragraphs about the significance of Building Seven during that event, citing actual facts about it, and why it is significant on the number of levels that it is, especially in relation to the official narrative, you truly have not done your homework and allowed others to do your thinking for you. Its funny you mention Piers Morgan, I really admire him and loved his show. He was shutdown by the right wing and the NRA in the USA, a pity because he made loads of sense. But to be fair to America you can't have an outsider lecturing morality and whats socially acceptable. So his time was limited, I realize that now And Vals remember, I won't give up on you..I'll keep trying to get you to see the reality of how the world really operates

I agree, Fox and RT are on the same level IMO. And its a very low level for the objectivity of news

How did I know Sarex was going to agree to that You and I have had this discussion before and we both know we won't convince each other, so this is a good case of a " Lets agree to disagree"

You've raised some good points but I think you are misunderstanding and misrepresenting what feminism means. I am feminist and all it means is that you believe that women have equal rights to men and I am opposed to cases where those rights aren't equal. Some of the examples you gave have more to do with the objectification of women or sexual inappropriate comments Feminism doesn't mean you hate men or think men are rapists. If that has been your experience you weren't dealing with feminists but people who clearly were discriminating against men.

Well I'm working now at a customer and we have an issue with Firewall ports that aren't open. So we may have to reschedule the work for later in the week, oh well these things happen

So this is really the problem as you see it Volo? Men are stereotyped in games and there are games that are designed only for women and this is sexist?

And it's really rather tiresome seeing Mor reflexively press the 'must be Russian' button whenever someone disagrees with him. Even asterisking oby ain't Russian. As for bias western media are as bad as RT, they're just (somewhat) better at hiding it and use more subtle techniques like false balance (interview Tartars on a 1:1 basis with others to provide 'balance', even if they're 1/8 of the population, cherry pick to get psychotic sounding interviewees with opposing views), acritical restating of governmentally supplied 'facts' (Iraq can hit London in 45 minutes; John Kerry says there's no real separatism in Crimea so there isn't whatever prior referendum and actions show), allowing the presentation of poorly researched facts (Tartars were a majority prior to Stalin's deportation, still occasionally stated as fact; transparent ballot boxes = travesty, despite them being used in France and India and shown on the same news sources without comment) and just plain selective reporting and weasel words (our side= activists; their side = separatists/ rioters; we intervene, Putin invades; we have governments, they have regimes etc etc). The last especially is straight from 1984, might as well actually be saying Putin regime doubleplusungood, our government doubleplusgood. Most westerners think our media is better due to simple confirmation bias- they say what people want to hear, confirm our obvious superiority and hence are, obviously, correct. But five minutes research shows what a load of slanted garbage we're actually being presented with. And if I can do that for free they, with all their resources, should be able to do it on a professional level, but they don't. They're capable of it, they just don't want to. You can't seriously believe that RT and other Western news channels portray the news in the same way? But I want to discuss a more interesting point. What's wrong with thinking that Western culture is superior? Lets not use the word superior, it sounds arrogant. Lets say that Western culture gives its citizens the highest quality of life. http://www.numbeo.com/quality-of-life/rankings_by_country.jsp http://www.businessinsider.com/top-countries-on-oecd-better-life-index-2013-5?op=1 Do you dispute these links? The Cold War is over, Western ideology has won. Lets not ignore the fact that despite some of the issues in Western culture we offer our citizens the best and most favourable options for a happy and prosperous lifestyle

That's how many people see the situation Whereas how I see their argument is "Games made for male audience should cater more to women" Instead of asking more games targeted at them. Partly I believe the problem is that there isn't an idea of what a woman's game is. IMO cause feminist seem incapable of enjoying anything, which if they could they wouldn't be feminists in the first place. But why do you think many games cater for a male audience, I agree with this by the way. It doesn't make it right but its the reality. Do you remember that article Alan (I miss Alan, I wonder when he is going to come back) posted a while ago how Sony and other large software companies intentionally targeted the male fan base from the 1980's. So now we have situation where we need to be more inclusive around gaming design in some cases as there is a skewed perception around what consumers want. Do you think this would help around the objectification of women in games?

That's how many people see the situation

What type of work were you doing and what was the reason you resigned if you don't mind sharing?

Malc do you and others honestly actually watch CNN International? Not CNN USA. There is a difference I do, there are numerous talk shows and documentaries that give an objective view on global news. Every night there are shows like Global Exchange which is broadcast from Abu Dhabi and basically only discusses the BRICS countries and the Middle East. Then there is the absolutely superlative Fareed Zakaria who has interviews with some of the most interesting people in the world and is not pro or anti American, he discusses the relevant news and you get many different perspectives. I can give many more examples but I think you get my point So I don't get this unfair characterization of CNN as biased, because they are present much more objectivity than myopic views on events in the world

Only that's not at all what's being suggested in this thread. I'm curious, why do people insist on putting stock on what official and mainstream sources say, by default, without any sort of critical review or personal fact checking, when said sources have been known to stretch the truth, misrepresent, make mistakes and outright lie in the past. I suspect this is related to the theorised innate psychological vulnerability of people to authority figures, but there has to be more to it than that. Because you seem to lack any "critical review or personal fact checking" leaning on official and mainstream Russian nationalized news, which has proven track record of completely slanted propaganda reportage according to a script provided by the Kremlin. While dismissing every other source as biased. You guys are like a religious people on an atheist board, who suffer from major cognitive dissonance and lacking any proof to validate their system of belief they lash at foundations of the "other side" trying to diminish it or de-legitimize it so they can feel like they are both on similar footing. Similarly here, you started by attacking the "west", the "western media", trying to claim that Russian nationalized state media instead of providing one sided regulated POV is more open and diverse then the media across the "westren" world. Then you tried to deflect from Russian actions with apple and orange scenarios (which to you feel the same), trying to blame the west for the situation, legitimize it by claiming that its better off this way, had a little streak of Russian super power national hard on, and defaulting to internet conspiracy crap. Because :/ I suppose you feel that if you can google some crap to support your argument your are still in the game or by dismiss this whole thing is our mental issues due to some aversion from authority figures it sits well with you or something of the sort .. And BBC and CNN have a track record of unbiased journalism. LOL There is no such thing as an international news channel that doesn't have an element of bias. But at least they try to present both sides of the debate, unlike RT

I don't think you understand what spurious actually means. But seeing how you can't seem to distinguish between "perpetuate" and "perpetrate", this shouldn't come as a surprise. I wonder if you actually do this sort of thing on purpose, like oby's occasionally mangled grammar. If that's the case, props for the low key trolling. I'll start off by saying that I'm not terribly interested in 9/11 conspiracy theories and don't really follow the latest trends. Regardless, the first four points are circular logic, "this is the truth because it's the official accepted version and the official version is the true one". The fifth point has some merit, but if you dig a bit into the official 9/11 findings, you can see the conclusions fail to address some relevant issues. Not in my opinion, but in that of people in the know. It's probably not realistic to expect a final report that squashes all possible doubts, but that's not a blank check for sloppiness. The fifth point is, by far, the one that best proves just how uninformed and biased you are. The NSA has openly admitted to colluding with big tech firms to organize a massive, automated illegal surveillance ring. This is not a conspiracy theory, it's a full-fledged, straight up, no-nonsense, billion dollar conspiracy that was exposed only because an insider blew the whistle. Start by reading up on XKEYSCORE and PRISM and go from there. This stuff isn't even secret, it's on the NYT and Wikipedia, for Pete's sake. None of this means that every conspiracy theory out there is to be believed. But it means you should be careful with what sources you choose to trust and that you should be mindful of attempts to dismiss claims or questions solely by virtue of them being labelled "conspiracy theories" regardless of their merit. Thanks for the correction on "perpetuate" and "perpetrate". That was an unintentional mistake, I have no issues with you correcting me on any perceived incorrect usage of words. But spurious is valid in my post, your view is false and incorrect

With bit editing that would be is excellent phrase to put in t-shirts that support atheism. That's brilliant, how would you word it for a shirt? I want to get one made

Only that's not at all what's being suggested in this thread. I'm curious, why do people insist on putting stock on what official and mainstream sources say, by default, without any sort of critical review or personal fact checking, when said sources have been known to stretch the truth, misrepresent, make mistakes and outright lie in the past. I suspect this is related to the theorised innate psychological vulnerability of people to authority figures, but there has to be more to it than that. The argument is not "believe every conspiracy theory because otherwise you are sheep", and turning it into that is very much strawmanning. The argument is, "when there is conflicting evidence and expert opinions, why do you choose to believe one version over the other?" Heh, the link I posted a few pages ago questioned even whether this is an actual choice at all, and this is reinforced by the cognitive dissonance videos Valsuelm posted. Arguably, there is no difference between the conspiracy crackpot that takes every word that comes out of Alex Jones' mouth as gospel, and the honest-to-god upstanding citizen that believes it's his duty to trust every press release by an alphabet agency—both have renounced their ability to form their own opinions, relying on others to provide prefabricated ones instead. So why the selective derision? So unfortunately as usual you are basing your argument on a spurious premise. You say "why do you choose to believe one version over the other". Lets take 9/11, Al-Qaeda perpetuated 9/11. This is not the view of one source or one country. In summary Every Western international news channel has the same story, 9/11 was committed by Al-Qaeda Al-Jazeera and other non-Western news channels have the same story Al-Qaeda has admitted planning and committing 9/11 There are numerous interviews with Al-Qaeda members and other people where they discuss and share why AQ planned 9/11 There are whole organizations and security companies that were and are dedicated to 9/11 and the causes of 9/11. Surly you cannot think that if 9/11 was some sort of conspiracy we wouldn't have some sort of proof by now Individuals like Julian Assange and Edward Snowden have made it there goal in life to expose the USA for all its "skulduggery and dishonesty". If there was this great secret how come there have been NO credible examples of it that these people would have loved to bring to the worlds attention. Especially with Snowden who had access to the NSA information So a dismissal of a conspiracy theory is not based on one story or view. Its a combination of the facts and reality of a situation

... *sigh* you got offended when nep suggested that IE were a mess... you said he were ignorant and couldn't know anything 'bout programming to make such claims. nep were not only wrong, but insulting. Gromnir observed that the black isle developers made similar claims about the IE... more than once. do you know what a red herring is? is clear not what you think it to be, that is for sure. regardless, you has somehow volourn'd yourself into a kinda infinite repeating loop. the black isle developers who worked 'pon Planescape, then iwd, heart of winter... and trials of the luremaster and icewind dale 2 is, one would assume, meeting the subjective threshold o' programming knowledge and personal familiarity with the infinity engine you found wanting in nep. sure, you can ignore the other folks in this thread who seems to have programming knowledge and disagree with you, but suggesting that Black Isle comments on the exact point 'bout which you and nep disagreed is nothing more than red herring is not so much curious as they is clear obtuse. HA! Good Fun! ps please, say something new... anything. really. " something new" There I said it on behalf of Hiro

Ouch! Those three words at the end of your sentence don't sit well in this context. I never knew you were a little aspiring comedian

No I don't think you are, just the fact that you have a sense of humour (as in the joke you played ) confirms this. Personally I find those types of jokes funny, especially if those people tend to complain a lot