Bak

this has been a waste of 10 minutes of my life. i want them back

speaking of religion, the book of Mormon says there were Jews living in North America like a thousand years ago. any Mormons care to explain what the !@#$%^&*?

isn't it sort of ironic that he was raised by a white mother?

Intelligence doesn't wrap around.

hey so with this story, it's an obvious misunderstanding. He's never played subspace and doesn't watch sci-fi, and hates physics so he's never heard of black holes. The sentence still makes sense if you remove the word black... a hole is like a rut. Now imagine if black hole wasn't a scientific term and someone said that... sounds racist don't it? The guy simply didn't know (not everyone is as nerdy as we are).

just because there are sex differences doesn't justify discrimination. In the armed forces, for example, the average man would make a better soldier than an average woman. however, there are some women that make exceptional soldiers so there's no reason to ban them from it. Additionally, there's some men who suck at soldiers. There's a continuum on both, but the average is shifted. This explains why only 20% of the armed forces are women; we shouldn't try to achieve a 50/50 distribution. Same thing with gays... some people think that if we allow open gays in the military all the flamboyant stereotypical gay guys will sign up and ruin unit cohesion. But the gays who will join aren't going to be like that, just like girls like paris hilton don't sign up either... we shouldn't strive for an equal distribution, just equal opportunity. As for racism vs sexism, I think sexism is more tolerated, but less severe. Few cultures have tried to kill off all women, whereas racial cleansing has been relatively widespread.

fox news co-runs the state-owned new agencies they're not banning emos, just the clothes... i kinda like the music

um... I think it's already a state

and 9/11 was Clinton's fault...

if any one of us suddenly became poor and lost everything we had, we'd most likely do fine getting our way out. however, lots of poor people don't have the education (knowledge, not just diplomas), motivation or upbringing to get them out. We can't give poor people a middle-class childhood.

socialized medicine is a good idea. doctors will still get paid a lot, and we'll get excellent preventative care.

we got 2 great candidates this time around... can't wait for January

I think you missed the point I was making, Aileron. I was willing to forgo the point to the helmet supporters that helmets protect the head from injury, as it's not worth debate imo. However, given that it is true, it's still not a justification to wear them while cycling as the relative risk needs to be gauged.

how did you manage to fall backwards when your momentum was moving you forwards? also true story: as a kid I was sitting in a chair that was turned sideways. I leaned back expecting a backrest and proceeded to fall back and hit my head right on the edge of the steam radiator and my head proceeded to bleed for like a half hour (I look back and wonder why my parents didn't take me to the hospital?). Now I doubt this is going to convince you to have your children wear helmets indoors. !@#$%^&* just yesterday I came home sorta drunk, went to pee, and while walking down the (dark) hallway from the bathroom to my bedroom hit my head square on the edge on an open door (why they made it open into the hallway I have no idea). There's lots of ways to hurt yourself, of course cycling is one of them. We need to gauge the relative risks rather than compare anecdotes.

not sure what you meant be the last part. If it was a case for not wearing helmets, it's hard to say since more people drive than ride bicycles.

Yeah you're right here. It's not a matter of it being unenforceable. However think of it this way: there is nothing I can do with cholesterol today that's going to kill me. However, given a gun or a car, I could come up with a way in which I would die.

baby licenses needed

it recovered? lol

it's not like 1 in 10000 burgers randomly kills you though (if it were they'd ban it).. heart disease is slow over time. a car accident is all or nothing, same with guns (all or nothing, not randomly killing )

the comments under that article are priceless. missile defense ftw

but you see, you can make the same points about wearing helmets for walking. It's certainly more safe. If you get hit in a pedestrian crash it's obvious the helmet WILL absorb a lot of the impact. but you don't wear helmets for walking

the cost of living varies from state to state but your poverty statistics don't take this into account.

Most of the proof to wear a helmet while riding a bicycle falls in two categories: 1. 90% of people who died while riding a bike weren't wearing helmets. This argument proves the effectiveness of wearing helmets, but doesn't prove that bicycling is a dangerous enough activity to warrant wearing one. This point would be true for walking helmets too, but people don't wear helmets for walking because it's not dangerous. People don't wear helmets while riding in cars, even though it would save some lives. 2. Person X got hit with a car and her helmet shattered into a million pieces but they survived. These arguments are not really proof since it's a testimonial account (sure it's effective emotionally, as anyone who's seen infomercials will attest, but it's not proof). Additionally, helmets are designed to shatter when slight impacts occur, ones that wouldn't necessarily cause more than a bump on the head (so a shattered helmet doesn't mean the alternative is a shattered skull). What sort of evidence is needed to prove that helmets are necessitated? We need a comparison between the rates of head injuries that occur when people are bicycling and the rates of head injuries that occur when people are walking as pedestrians or riding in a car. Comparing simple numbers is not enough, since obviously a lot more people walk around than bike. The comparison must be done on a per-time basis. Additionally it needs to be specific to head injuries, since most bicycle accidents result in scrapes where helmets do nothing. I would be convinced to wear a helmet if it's more dangerous than both walking and driving a car, since I don't wear one for either of those activities. Some interesting things I found while researching this was that the Netherlands have the highest rate of people who bike and a ridiculously small rate of fatal accidents, even though helmets are almost unheard of. Additionally, in Australia after they mandated all bicyclers wear a helmet by law, less people ended up riding their bike. In fact, many claim that since riding your bike (exercise) helps prevent the #1 killer heart disease, more people have ended up dead as a result of the bicycle helmet law.

all those states lack major cities. The gun ownership there is mostly for hunting. You're basically saying, "look the farmers can handle hunting rifles, so we should give handguns to the poor urban population too." also, way to link violent crime to race, without accounting for poverty. If guns are such a deterrent for crime, why aren't we arming the Iraqis to increase security?

I think such a law would be uncons!@#$%^&*utional. We shouldn't throw out the baby with the bathwater, only the part about gun possession .