aluminiumtrioxid

I dunno, I'd consider the fact that homophobia has been made déclassé over the course of a few decades a fairly good indicator that systemic prejudices can be driven extinct, given time.

That sounds suspiciously like magical thinking. Correlation does not equal causation. He said nothing about cause I didn't imply he did. I implied his description makes insurance companies sound like fairly irrational entities.

That sounds suspiciously like magical thinking. Correlation does not equal causation.

I work outside the bounds of dialectical materialism. And rational thought. (I kid, I kid.)

Your capacity for self-delusion never fails to amaze me.

Funny, I thought they exist to take care of all the boring **** without which modern society couldn't function. Silly things like making and enforcing laws and the like. That is what I mean about doing more harm than good along the way. In the US there are 2057 individual laws governing just the sale, transport, and regulation of purchase of alcohol. That is just FEDERAL laws. That isn't counting State, County, & City laws. The IRS internal regulations and tax codes are over 3.4 million words long. Just to give you an idea is you printed that in Arial size 10 font at 60 lines per page it would be over 7500 pages long. And that is just the IRS. Every State and small has their own tax code. From 2000 to 2007 Congress CREATED 452 crimes. These are actions that in 1999 were not criminal, in 2007 they would land you in prison, or in debt to Uncle Sam for a long time. There are 4450 FEDERAL crimes with mandatory prison time. Most of which were "created" since 1938. Since becoming President Barack Obama has signed 386 new laws into effect and issued 191 Executive orders as of 2014. Bush did even more of both. At what point in enough going to be enough? We are being governed to death. I'm probably breaking a law right now sitting here at my desk in my own home. Every one of these laws requires a staff to write them, that means staff jobs. Lawyers to fight or argue them, that means jobs. Congressmen to pass them, political jobs and a huge never ending bureaucracy to enforce them and when convenient or incentivzed to do so, look the other way on them . This is gotten way out of hand. Small wonder the US has the highest percentage of citizens in prison of any western nation. So when you're saying "governments exist solely for the purpose of self-perpetuation", you really only mean the US Government? I mean, other countries have governments without them resulting in anything like the shambling monstrosity that is the USian legal system.

Funny, I thought they exist to take care of all the boring **** without which modern society couldn't function. Silly things like making and enforcing laws and the like.

I'm pretty sure that's what the Nazis said, too

Ah, the sweet smell of rationality. Drumpf: the Rational Choice. Which is supposed to be relevant... how? Well, he has more support than is being portrayed in the media. I suppose. Still, the phrasing makes it sound like said supporters being decorated soldiers is supposed to be a relevant data point here, which is... bwuh?

Literally did not happen. Might be I read too much into his statement? Still seems to tie Clinton to the Republicans far as I see. He's only saying that it reflects badly on the Republicans that he thinks of Clinton as a preferable candidate in any way, shape or form. No causal relationship whatsoever.

Literally did not happen. The only thing it proves is that you can't even imply that there may be greater tribulations in life than being called racist without someone's butthole bursting into flames.

Which is supposed to be relevant... how?

Me telling you that I disagree with your premise and your conclusions and think you're pretty much wrong on all possible accounts shouldn't really interfere with that aim, should it. I wasn't calling you a big ol' poo-poo head, was I? And saying "you don't have the relevant data to make the comparison you made with any degree of reliability" is not the same as saying "you're saying it's not any issue at all". All I'm asking is a little bit of humility and recognizing the limits of your knowledge, no need to jump on your sword mate. No, my point is that claiming what basically amounts to "I think being called a racist is worse than racism itself" may be just a little bit unfortunate. I think you need to read my posts extremely uncharitably in order to arrive on that conclusion.

Well, you kind of failed at your aim then, because saying **** like "rooting out racism at this point causes more unhappiness all around than racism itself" is pretty much the definition of trivializing racism. But that's not really the problem: the problem is that you've never experienced racism yourself, yet you still feel free to judge just how much unhappiness it causes. To me, it kind of sounds like those old-time medieval biology texts whose writers sure as hell haven't seen the animals they're talking about, but sorta-kinda heard some legends and that made them experts on the matter. And we all know how reliable those texts were. Congratulations, you're agreeing with the people you claim to disagree with, then. Yup, because the good ol' "stick your head in the sand and hope it goes away on its own" method of problem-solving has such a great track record of being proven successful.

Spoken like someone who's never really experienced racism personally.

If your goal is to end up with a bunch of dead athletes, sure. Albeit I suppose if you're a self-proclaimed rational person and look at the costs of professional sports compared to the overall societal value it creates, the conclusion that ending up with a bunch of dead athletes is a net gain in utility may not be out of bounds.

Of course you are. Confirmation bias is a helluva drug.

GD I agree with Pidesco on this one, you cant force people to prayer just because you religious This comment from the article summarizes my view "Coach Monken had no business telling my son and his Army teammates to get on their knees and pray a prayer to Jesus!" wrote one concerned parent. "My son was very upset about this. ... This violates the Constitution and to think it happened at West Point?" OK, I didn't see that line. That is different. Never let facts get in the way of the outrage machine.

While Pillars definitely did lack a strong authorial vision, and it did hurt the overall quality of the game, I still find it preferable to DA:O which seemed to have an authorial vision that basically boiled down to "be as generic as possible but also add EDGY wherever you can". #neverforget

Wishful thinking much?

I think "this action is considered to be so fundamentally dumb that it doesn't even occur to your character" is a perfectly valid way of worldbuilding by omission. Uh, well, I don't, because plenty of people make "fundamentally dumb" decisions all the time in the real world In all fairness, they tend not to be placed in positions comparable to that of the Fatebinder. I mean, when you're working on a limited budget, and have to make a choice between spending resources on creating options that, at best, result in a chuckle and a quickload, or creating options that have more far-reaching consequences, "let's just assume the Fatebinder is aware of how stupid it would be for them to attack an Archon and their sense of self-preservation is developed enough that they'd like to avoid that fight regardless of what the player thinks they should be doing" is hardly an unreasonable position to arrive at.

Character death tends to preclude events that affect the character's long-term future, yes.

I think "this action is considered to be so fundamentally dumb that it doesn't even occur to your character" is a perfectly valid way of worldbuilding by omission.

He just looks so much like a sad and slightly confused basset hound in that clip. (Not that it is physically possible for a basset hound to look anything but sad and slightly confused.)

Isn't that basically the plot of Watson's entire inquisitor series?There was no such series. C'mon, it wasn't that bad. (Actually, I personally consider it to be a seminal work in the W40K-verse, and - despite its faults - vastly better than Abnett's offerings.)