heyrabbit

You're not too humble ;) I don't think we ever went off topic. Differences in platforms means a difference of philosophy. The economy is the first victim of bad philosophy, from which all other victims are made. I don't want to talk about it if I'm not allowed to be reasonable. That would mean posting information about the candidates without making sense of it...

I have no idea what I have. I'll guess. 1829?

Whenever a person expresses belief in a false god, in that instant they are being stupid. But a person is a the sum of all his actions, not just the stupid ones. I do stupid things sometimes, as does everyone else. That doesn't mean I'm stupid or smart. I'm stupid or smart insofar as I act stupidly or smartly. And as much as it seems like a contradiction in terms, it's completely obvious that it's entirely possible to be a brilliant Christian, or a genius who's a Muslim, but nobody is a genius because of their Muslimness or Christianness. You can't get an overall estimate of a person based on one action (Although, if a person is religious, it tells you nearly everything about their philosophy). it's hard to judge how much a person is at fault for being religious, because you have to consider other factors such as environment, genetics, etc. For the average person, religion is just some degree of obligatory traditions forced on them by their parents and is not something to think about. But for politicians, it is their job to think philosophically. So there is much less of an excuse for finding the wrong answers. If a rocket scientist fails to crunch the numbers necessary to launch a rocket, it's not a "personal matter of no real significance to his job". Scientists who don't believe in evolution are starting to be laughed at more regularly and are not taken seriously by any credible scientist. That's what should happen to religionists. Okay. Let me put it this way. What's wrong with being a pedophile, and why should I disapprove of them, despite the near certainty that pedophiles will exist after I'm dead? I disapprove of those who have sex with children, of anyone who conceives that idea, and of anyone who does not disapprove of pedophiles. I do not think it's right or good to be a pedophile, provided they "keep it to themselves". I'm not concerned about hurting the feelings of pedophiles, in expressing my disapproval of them, for obvious reasons. I would not want to be friends with anyone who is casually indifferent to pedophilia, in a society dominated by pedophilic philosophy. If you think all of that sounds absurd, consider that pedophilia is not only less of a problem than religion, but it's a natural consequence of it.

Yeah. Yoou can't trick them into killing each other, or retrieving duck carcasses, or catching frisbees, or locating narcotics. BUT, would you rather have sex with a girl wearing cat ears or dog ears? Be honest.

Get a cat. They're independent, affectionate, ten times easier to take care of. They wont slobber on you. You can always get a dog later on as well.

I used to be a huge MG fan, from way back in the day, when I "enjoyed" degenerative music that exuded a bad sense of life. I think argument is probably the most productive part of human discourse and I'm not threatened by it. My not having delusions about the nature of the world doesn't make me more intelligent than anyone who does, it means that I thought about it and they didn't. There's no apparent connection between intelligence and a person's religious or non-religious convictions. What it does point to is a genetic predisposition to faith. You can literally be so well educated that you're able to be a neurosurgeon, or a rocket scientist, and still believe in Jesus, or Allah, that you're going to an alternate universe where you'll meet with dead people, that you're going to a land where you'll get access to 72 virgins. it's not true that a person's likelihood of being religious decreases depending on how low his intelligence is. All of the 9-11 suicide bombers were college educated, intellignet individuals. People are able to reconcile their contradictory beliefs by compartmentalization of the mind. If I didn't care about the human race, I wouldn't give a damn that religion is fundamentally maladaptive to sustaining a future for us. Argumentum ad numerum: Lots of people believe it so it must be true.

That's probably true. But maybe there's also a correlation between the vividness and activeness of your dreasm and the amount of memory consolidation going on. I kind of view it as a computer reboot, when the computer flips through all the memory.

I actually went for a long period without dreaming. That's why I'm kind of interested in this. I went for about 6 months without dreaming. Maybe I had a dream once every two weeks or less than that. Is that normal, or what? What would cause a lack of REM sleep?

That was a bit of an off-the-cuff remark, but it's still entirely reasonable. And I think that is part of the reason why it's something that should be discussed more. it's as relevant to a political discussion as anything else. I don't know what part of my writing made you think I'm pseudo-intellectual, because you haven't relaly responded to anything. I'd be the first to admit that I'm not an intellectual. I would think that would be obvious. That doesn't mean I don't think I'm intelligent - I do. But if any such distinction is to be made, it would be purely a comparative one. ;)

Hey, he approved it. he's also anti-big-business, which is another symptom of being a hippie Define "frack", you know. Case in point.

Yeah I noticed that too. why do you say that?

How do you debate a philosophical standpoint without philosophizing? "i like Hilary." and "i think obama " isn't an argument. What ideology lead to the industrial revolution? "Hardcore capitalism" didn't cause the depression. In fact, there was a significant increase in statism directly preceding the depression. If Bush followed his beliefs more strictly, half of San Fransisco would be stoned to death, before or after the elimination of a third of the population during the Sabbath. And we'd also be allowed to beat slaves.

What, the shirt is "anti-war"? This is why nobody should buy shirts that represent MG's political opinions... The problems of war are not reducible only to war itself. Who's against war in general, irrespective of what each particular war is being fought over? Nobody is "anti police arrests", or "anti-weather". (Well, I should sya that's not totally true, but it gives you an idea of how ridiculous it is). It is analogous to being "anti-pain", when a person seeks to avoid pain, regardless of why the pain is being experienced. No matter what goal or value is to be attained by a struggle - a career, a relationship, a healthy body - it involves experiencing pain. So the implications are obvious. If pain is bad, and pain is required to gain values, then the easiest thing to do avoid pain is to renounce valuing altogether. This is the mentality of people who "don't care" about anything. That's the difference between a neurotic and a man of self-esteem, the type of person who lives to avoid pain, as opposed to the person who lives to achieve happiness. Unable to recognize what a value is or what is required to achieve it, the hippie cites "peace and harmony" as the ultimate goal and "lack of killing" as the means of achieving it. "Why can't we all just get along?". "If only we stopped killing each other..." The criterion of hte bad is pain, and pleasure the criterion of the good. Their only explanation is a negation. The good is non-war. A is Non-A. That is the mentality of the anti-war protester, who might as well hold signs saying "Pleasure is good", or "Bad things feel bad". If MG is anti-war, that would seem make sense, seeing as how he is neurotic.

I thought you were bashing fear factory. I was gonna let you have it. I was gonna uh snatch, I don't know who that is. is that you? it's all fuzzy and evasive like your last pic. I give you 80/100

a is non a. you can't identify that objectivity doesn't exist without being objective. you're denying the first axiom Hobo, the word "punk" isn't a floating abstraction with no referent in reality. if that were the case, the word wouldn't exist, nor would this thread... if you want to know what "punk" means, isolate it's essential characteristic(s)

born to kill

I hope he joins the Dave Genn Band.

come one. we can discuss anything. why are we listing the last thing we put in our mouths? I hate this thread and everything it stands for. sandwich

it's a symbol of your coolness and success and yet you're way beyond the blackberry. you must be from the future... what is the new phone sought-after by cool people? the i-phone?

My brother-in-law was on the x-files. I'll just go have dinner with him. he's cooler than duchovny anyway. and he doesn't mumble in a monotone voice

Yay, you read the Fountainhead! That makes me happy. here's a few: Those who will not reason, are bigots, those who cannot, are fools, and those who dare not, are slaves.--Lord Byron So you think that money is the root of all evil? Have you ever asked what is the root of money?

I do not mean offense, but I'm obviously going to take exception to being told to consider reality when your opinion was formed in the act of evading it. "Socialist capitalism" is a contraction in terms. The two systems are antithetical and socialism is actually the negation of capitalism, which means that it isn't really a mixing of systems. You can say that a country's political/economic system is moral to the extent to which it is capitalist. Or that a country is socialist insofar as a lack of capitalism exists. etc So when a country turns to socialism or capitalism, it is not some sort of new system that is created, it is the strengthening or weakening of the free market and of capitalism. Government subsidies to corporations is caused be socialism. And I don't see how you can think that it is all right to redistribute wealth for education or medicine, and not to corporations. The problem with taxation isn't what the government is doing with the money, but that it has money at all. In reality, there is a reason why socialism positively requires a totalitarian dictatorship. In order to sustain "order" in a socialist country, in order to prevent black-market trade from occurring, what is required is that the population be deathly frightened for their lives. How does the government achieve this? Well, they need to have a secret police that watching the population at all times. Everyone is a potential spy and you dare not trade freely, let alone speak against the state. As the rulers of communist states, dictators must be perpetually frightened for their position and their lives. They must be paranoid about everyone around them. The position they took by force requires force to sustain, because there is resentment breeding everywhere and there is always someone who wants to take their place. The rulers of these states, therefore, must be cunning, manipulative, and willing to kill, not only in order to protect "the interests of the state", but more importantly, to protect their position and their life. Being an evil, murderous brute isn't a quality that's well thought of in a free society, but those are the traits that are most successful in a socialist system. So why was Stalin a jerk? What's wrong with Hitler, Castro, Jintao, Ahmadinejad, Hussein? It is not a matter of the socialist system being effective, and it's just a coincidence(!) that they always yield evil assholes. Those men were products of the system and they rose to the top through socialist natural selection (the selection of the worst) If, by "black and white", you mean "good and bad", or "true and untrue", then th world is black and white. And practical applications are necessary, but what is applied is theory and philosophy, something Obama is lacking. A man of integrity would never permit himself to pretend to be a Christian to gain office, if he understood the evils of religion. But, obviously his spirituality isn't some sort of ploy. he's not a fanatic, he just mystical to one degree or another like most Americans. The point is that people who are known alcoholics or racists don't gain office, but christians do. They are symptoms of the same problem

Uh, okay, first of all, those aren't points in favor of socialism. Secondly, those things occurred in the most Capitalist country in the world. If you want to want to know what came out of socialist thinking, ask yourself what you think of socialist countries. Naziism and Stalin were products of two of the most socialist civilizations in recent history. Now, it is not much to say that Obama is a socialist, because anyone who will get elected president will take charge of a mixed economy that is partly socialist already; therefore,the only thing required to earn him the title of socialist is to do nothing much radical, but obviously he is not radical at all by today's standards - nobody who gets elected is - and he will only add to the slide of America into statism. Taxation is socialism in action and he has no intent on eliminating it, he doesn't disapprove of it, he only intends on providing minimal tax cuts. This leads me to believe that he does not understand the injustice of taxation, nor does he understand its effect on the economy. I do not think that a person's religion should disqualify them legally from running for president, but any healthy society would naturally refuse to vote for a Christian. Political philosophy requires at least a basic understanding of metaphysics. Christianity is literally a primitive philosophy with a ridiculously false metaphysical view of the world. And so what should that say to voters? Since politics is a branch of philosophy, what woulud it mean to run for president while having no good ideas about philosophy and, at the same time, claiming to be a Christian? it is analogous to the doctor who intends on performing surgery on you, all the while admitting to not really having any good ideas about medicine. To say that least, it is not a trivial problem... To paraphrase Sam Harris: if you apply for a job as a doctor and have all sorts of ideas about medicine, but can't adduce reasons for them, you are literally laughed out of the room. That's a good thing because lives depend on that being the case... If a pesron wants to be a political philosopher, and they openly admit devoting their life to a false god from hte bronze age of human history, they should be laughed out of the room just as the witch doctor from the 16th century would be, who applies for the job of chief surgeon of a hospital. Admitting you are a Christian is like admitting you talk to aliens, or that you're an astrologer; it is the admission of a psychological weak point and should be a red flag in the eyes of everyone; it is an indication that that person is incapable of basic critical thinking. And so we might want to worry that the type of person who is admits to conceiving of evil ideas, the person who admits to devoting their life to them, that their stupid and evil ideas might influence on their decision making. No, it is more like, we would be bloody naive to think otherwise. it should be no surprise, then, that his political views mirror his religious ones. They are based on the same stupid premises and the same moral code - altruism. Who is Ayn Rand?

Hahaha. That's one of the funniest things Ive ever seen, is a white guy speaking with a chinese accent

I've watched a bit of this but I just do not enjoy it. I'm not sure why. I think this show is sort of like a soap opera for sci-fi nerds. a lot of drawn out melodrama, bad writing, and an uninteresting plot that's they're stumbling towards aimlessly, as it seems. The characters have that same cynical sass that makes police procedure shows boring. ... special effects are good Also, jimi is turning in his grave for having Dylan's song used in this show