Humodour

Did you know that Stephen Harper is a Cylon? I have evidence.

Demo sounds like a pretty good idea. Demos seem like the only thing that make me want to buy games these days.

Why are all these good people moving on from Obsidian?

ROFL, Obama pretty much said he doesn't care what the constitution says, he wants judges to make it up as they go along, based on their ideology, which is the prevailing liberal view btw. Dear god you're an uninformed hack. I see. And I imagine that on inauguration day, the sky will split apart and fire will rain down from the heavens, as well?

Excellent article.

But he's going to use taxpayer money to build roads and upgrade switching substations. He's clearly a socialist! Are you a communist sympathiser? What I like about Obama is that when it comes to implementation, he's pragmatic and accommodating, but in terms of the big picture, what guides him, he's fairly progressive. This sounds too much like the typical claim about how the President is 'powerless' or "the President doesn't actually make decisions". I think after 8 years of Bush we've seen, for better or worse, how wrong that sentiment is. Amen. With potentially 3 SC judges retiring I shudder to think how that would of played out under a Republican administration. But besides maintaining (and in many places re-instituting) the apolitical nature of the judicial system, the most promising aspect of Obama's tenure will be science and technology infrastructure. For example, he's pretty much got an energy reform mandate, but this financial crisis actually gives him the span to implement it as part of infrastructure stimulus. Actually, another good thing about the financial crisis is that it significantly softens up Russia and Iran, giving Obama a far larger array of (importantly more peaceful) foreign policy options than was available just 3 months ago.

You're writing. We're trying to understand it. Semantics. Also, stating not to disbelieve is the same as belief is a rather weird semantic. What's not white is black or what? Man, why are you so keen on breaking this topic? Just because you think ghosts == rubbish, people willing to give it some more thought than you care to invest must not continue to do so? If you don't disbelieve something, then that involves a facet of belief, yes; belief in its possibility. Anyway, I'm not 'keen on breaking this topic'. I truly did initially think it was just skeptics vs skeptics playing devil's advocate in a light-hearted manner. If people here are willing to believe in ghosts or earnestly discuss their possible existence, than by all means, I won't begrudge them that. That is the case, and this should be clear to you especially as you're the one trying (not very successfully) to use the science club to beat people to silence... To deem everything impossible which you do not have a positive proof for is not scientific at all. And don't come telling us now that in this matter you don't think in terms of black and white... 'Science club' hey? Sorry for requesting scientific evidence. But right now it's at most metaphysics ("space-time distortion"), so why should I treat it as any more relevant than some other aspect of metaphysics? I actually highly doubt that you think those examples I quoted are as probable as eachother, or as ghosts or god existing, so you've already made some sort of essentially arbitrary decision about their likelihood right there, no? It's all fine and well to tell me I'm seeing in black and white, but making discrete choices is built into human decision making - specifically inference. Presuming all things possible because you can imagine them might seem like a morally superior stance to you, but it's hardly realistic unless you place some restrictions on it (e.g. 'right now, all signs point to this concept being highly unlikely, so until something changes that, I won't seriously consider it'), which as a human you will inevitably do unless certain parts of your brain have been decoupled (from memory, without the emotional centre - the amygdala - you become incapable of choosing between two logical possibilities). And lastly, I have not tried to silence anybody, samm. I am a skeptic, and since Amentep complained initially, I've responded seriously. Is that OK? Didn't you want a discussion? Or did you want one only between those agnostic of the supernatural?

Really, so you have an equal 'belief' in unicorns and Xenu too, do you? I find it odd to gather how you get I can get that I have some sort of "belief" in unicorns or Xenu from professing to neither believe nor disbelieve in ghosts. Let's please not get into semantics. A lack of commitment to belief or disbelief is itself a form of 'belief', hence the quotes. Agnostic to the last eh? Do you think everything you don't have evidence against is possible? For example: we're all in a virtual reality, or that you're a product of my imagination?

Newsweek has been running its election project for many years now. It (that specific secret press team) is not known for making things up or publishing falsehoods. To be fair to Ted Stevens, he did more for the lower classes of Alaska (especially rural native Americans) than, well, anybody, and he has immense seniority over Begich (which means he can continue to do more for Alaska). It's no surprise they'd keep voting for him. What McCain calls 'earmarks', rural native Americans call quality of life improvements. It's always interesting to see things from the other side's perspective.

Aye.

Well I don't know a single person who claimed Bush was going to become 'dictator for life'. And the 'anti-Bush' crowd is fairly large, for your information. I believe it comprises at least 2/3rds of Americans these days. Claiming most of them hold a silly belief like that is rather odd.

Really, so you have an equal 'belief' in unicorns and Xenu too, do you? I don't believe in "ghosts" per se, since no one has ever produced proof of one despite thousands of years of looking, nonetheless I remain open to their existence and spend a decent amount of time conversing with those who do believe. Again, what about unicorns and Xenu? I don't take you as a fence-sitter agnostic, so surely you have some sort of justification for singling out ghosts of all the random supernatural creatures out there? By ghost, you mean a spirit of a dead human? Or what? SOmething else? Any 'imprint' or whatever you want to call it. Working on the premise that an afterlife doesn't exist (or else this becomes a topic about religion), you will then require some framework within which ghosts could conceptually exist, yes? Well, science doesn't have one. The most people can come up with is pseudo-science like "holographic impressions" or whatnot, which is about as scientific as explaining away KITT or Replicators with the word 'nanotechnology'. Actually, at least nanotechnology can accomplish some of those amazing things (especially w.r.t. KITT). Ghosts are very much unlike Aliens. Aliens are a matter of probability. Ghosts are a matter of "is it even physically possible?". I'm not saying ghosts don't exist: I'm saying there's no plausible reason to believe they do anymore than unicorns, which is why I find a thread full of skeptics taking ghosts seriously to be amusing. If it's about wanting to believe, well, that's why we have TV and computer games.

When I was at uni, I lived on campus with 200 others in my dorm alone. So I met all sorts. Still, I can confidently assert that the overwhelming majority of women are fairly clean. By the same token, the majority of women seemed to be at least somewhat lax, too - from a messy room to just not caring if somebody else had a messy room (i.e. me). But I met only one girl who I'd call a slob, but she scared me, so it was all good.

Probably around the same time you learn how to type properly.

No, that's not what happened. Donors told her to go buy some clothes and she went and bought clothes alright. They were not pleased. For more on that, read the Newsweek project stuff that was kept secret until after the election (as they do every election). Her donors were not at all pleased with her spending, and more interestingly, it turns out it was more than $150,000, and she spent it on not just herself but her kids and husband - does that seem like the kind of stuff she planned to give back?

Nah, it was mostly just skeptics replying to skeptics playing devil's advocate. Ze substance was lacking. Err, unless somebody in this thread actually believes in ghosts and feels robbed of legitimate intellectual discussion? We have hard proof that aliens can evolve from within the framework of science (c.f. life on Earth). No such case exists for ghosts, nor is one even plausible.

I think "Soviets discover how to X-ray you with sticky tape" would be more appropriate.

Premise sounds interesting. Is it violent? Of course it's violent, but is it like disturbing torture violence or Desperado violence? I want a happy ending. Does it have a happy ending?

Her favourite subject is mathematics. Natalie Portman is awesome.

Ghosts don't exist. God doesn't exist. Aliens do exist - but the ones near us (near/in our galaxy, which really isn't 'near') may or may not be sentient or sapient. The end. Did you know that peeling scotch tape produces x-rays? The Soviets discovered it at the end of WW2, but everyone thought they were crazy.

Will there be throwing knives? I want throwing knives.

Healthcare and the economy were each far higher on the list of "things that matter to you this election" according to polling agencies. So no, I'd say it's not sane behaviour to still freak out about terrorism, and that's one of the reasons Obama won: people recognise this.

Hillary Clinton will be the next Secretary of State. Haha. It looks like McCain might get a position, too. Whether its an official one or not is probably the biggest unknown. More info on his cabinet here: http://cbs2chicago.com/politics/valerie.ja...a.2.864868.html

I doubt it. More than likely it was simply a 'good story' so they ran it. This happens to both sides of politics, FWIW. The 'media conspiracies' explanations and their analogues rarely turn out to be true. I don't know why the Republicans are trying to discredit her now, but unfortunately, this doesn't change the nature of her vapidness; spending hundreds of thousands of campaign donations on clothes, her interviews, not answering questions during the debate and flirting with the audience, etc. let me repeat: I DID NOT SAY IT WAS SMALL. i said, quite plainly, that it was smaller than it could have been. not that you would understand mathematics (no numbers larger than 2^12 and all), but even with 8.3 million it is only a swing of 4.15 million, when it could easily have been 10 or more, which was my point. Whoa nellie! No need to get so worked up mate. Anyway, why on earth would you expect a swing of 10 million instead of 4 million? There's not much history, certainly in modern times, for a swing of over 12% (i.e. a 24% margin). yeah, maybe when he's done the US will see the switch to libertarianism or similar. taks Maybe, but I doubt it. There's certainly little to no precedent for it elsewhere in the world (because it's not economically stable for the middle and lower classes who make up the bulk of voters) and it doesn't go down very well with the growing minority groups: Hispanics and African-Americans.

Didn't they say their latest AI was too smart and they might have to dumb it a bit for balance? Shame. I prefer hard to easy. You can learn on hard. Easy gets boring.