FMBI

Why I never, ever check my e-mail: http://img4.imageshack.us/img4/8503/em1hoo.th.jpg edit - Meh, it's like a 3-step process just to see a not-so-spectacular image, but at least it doesn't take 3 minutes to load. *cough*

Or, perhaps, out. Link Remember how we couldn't give any of the Guantanamo prisoners a fair trial because then other terrorists might "learn how we operated," thus endangering future efforts? Well, none of that applies now! Let's just release all the memos referring to torture methods that worked! The hypocrisy of all of this is kind of ridiculous in the first place, but it gets even worse when you remember that 1. torture doesn't work - there probably are no successful records, and 2. even if it did, Obama wouldn't release the memos. Therefore, Cheney's doing the same thing the anti-stimulus people have been doing for months - just throw out tons of crap and wait for the gullible media to apply the fair-and-balanced mantra to stories which are completely one-sided in real life. Ah, I wonder how long it will take for all the Bush people to give up and go live under a rock?

Well, that's a nice idea, but unfortunately, it implies that we would have to give equal time to, say, neo-Nazis if they wanted to come on here. I can imagine the conversations: Nazi: Let's kill Jews, destroy most of Europe, and try to take over the world! Other people: Er... Yeah....... [tries to find middle ground]... Would you settle for half of Europe?

These things have been out for years, and they're neither safe nor legal. If you want migraines, nausea, and throat cancer, go for 'em.

First, When you're linking to C@L, I don't think you have a right to complain about anything I post, short of Pravda. Second, eXiled is definitely a tabloid, but it's also had some of the world's best reporting for the last decade now - and I'm not exaggerating when I say that. If you ever have 3 or 4 weeks to spare, check out some of their old stories about politics - how many other sources were consistently right 5 years ahead of their time? Finally, Heh, this also has multiple sections, so: 1. No, I would not have heralded their efforts. The whiny wimps who protested against Bush were just a spineless bunch of idiots shaming the good name of liberalism. 2. They might think they're protesting both parties, but when 99% of the support for these tea parties is coming from right-wing talk radio types and corporate fundraisers, I kind of doubt that they're going to come up with any truly independent thoughts. Remember, China routinely has anti-state and anti-foreigner protests, but the results are very one-sided, because the state is doing a lot of the backing for those protests; hence, it can prevent any real damage to itself, while still doing damage to its opponents. It's the same way with these - Republican figures say "Be independent of BOTH PARTIES - oh, and vote for Palin!" 3. Astroturfing never truly evolves. Like its namesake, it's inorganic to begin with. You can repaint the fake grass, you can make all sorts of modifications, but nothing is going to happen on its own. And what does it matter if the people in Olympia have a slightly different agenda than the people in Tulsa? They're still going to vote for the same party, support the same views on the same issues, and listen to the same news sources. Tea parties = An insult to tea-drinkers everywhere.

You fell for this? Courtesy of the eXile: First expose Second expose Edit - Plus, why would anyone take right-wing populism seriously in the first place? Considering all the countries it's destroyed over the last years, and is currently destroying in Asia and Africa, it makes no sense to support it here. "Let's unleash the mob! Let's pave the road to a Palin presidency! Woo-hoo!"

What about Matthew Broderick?

Monster Mash!

my comp at home is fine... its all the keyboards at work that are fucked up Also, what's wrong with using a tube sock? It's cleaner than going without, and cheaper than condoms.

1 - Easily explainable through the multiverse theory, also, doesn't take into account the fact that if it didn't work for our particular form of life, we wouldn't be observing it - hence, there are probably alien life forms in other universes, or even other galaxies, worshipping their form of god for giving them exactly what they need to live. Also, over the years we have gained a massive amount of knowledge about what happened in the first milliseconds of the universe - things that we could never have even imagined 100 years ago. Considering how much we've learned, and how much power we've gained (splitting the atom? hell, splitting fundamental particles?) it seems extremely naive to assume that we won't figure out even more in the future - whereas believing that we will know more is common sense, backed up by history and observations. 2. Atheists have no institutions, unless they're silly little atheist clubs for narcissists who happen not to believe in a god. "Anyone who believes in a deity does not fit within the institution which atheists consider themselves to be within" - guess that means I can't talk to Christians anymore, huh? 3. True, except that there is no way of being devout if your beliefs contradict the nature of being devout in the first place. I might be absolutely convinced that there is no god, whereas my neighbor might be pretty sure there isn't one - but does that mean I'm "more trusting" or "practice my religion" more? No, it simply means that he doesn't give a monkey's tail, whereas I will reject any supernatural explanation unless it can be verified and shown to be more than the effect of someone's imagination. I care more, but that doesn't mean I'm more religious.

Not surprising that QoS sucked, but it is surprising that Maddox ever updated his site. o_o

It's hard to stay interested in a game when every single zone dies. I've only known about the game for 5 years, and during that time, I've seen Omega Fire, Battlefield, Anything Goes, Halo, Desert Storm, RedStar, Mystic Kingdom, Paintball (multiple versions! ), Alpha, several SWZ zones, 17th, Metal Gear, DSB, and even TW either die outright or else drop to a fraction of their previous population. Not saying some of those zones were the best ones out there, but they did all hold populations of anywhere from 20-100 in the past, and now it's like they never even existed. Now, am I addressing the meta-issues (e-politics, growing up, loss of the gods - Plat, SVS, kewl, GS, Priit, Mr. Ekted, Hoch, MTN, etc)? No. But when you come right down to it, there is no fucking reason to play this game anymore - because it doesn't even exist the way it used to. I'm starting to understand what it feels like to go home after a war and have half the population of your town gone - it just makes you want to get out and stay out. And Cont's even worse than real life, because even the 50% of people left are generally on a few hours a week at most, which makes it hard as hell to talk to them, let alone play a game together.

I'll just step in here to say : Welcome back, Ail, too bad you figured out that the Third Reich was really all about the atheistic plan to conquer the world. Sucks that us atheists had to rely on cultural traits that were generally created by churches when we were trying to convince people to come to our side.. you know, things like hating Jews, or Orthodox Christians, or supporting an omniscient monarch figure.. Plus, you, along with 99% of the people I've ever talked to, got the Pharisees backwards. Since I don't have 3 years to spend arguing, though, here's a rundown: Pharisees = good, Jesus = Pharisee, Paul = Non-Pharisee, early Christians under Paul = anti-Pharisee propagandists Still, though, assuming you switch that to the Sadducees, I suppose you have a point. Almost. And as far as the article - Kinda took it a little too seriously, didn't you? Heck, I already put up two disclaimers about it. But if that isn't enough, let me say it directly: It's funny, it's a new way of looking at things, and it's probably incorrect beyond a few very basic statements. And to round off a highly polemical post - atheism is not a religion, no matter how many times the Intelligent Design people say it is. If you go to a culture that has no religion, simply because they never came to rely on supernatural causes to explain their existence, are they religious, despite their innate atheism? Atheism is not necessarily a direct denial of God so much as an acceptance that God is irrelevant to natural processes, except perhaps as the original creator who is currently out to lunch - therefore, you are eliminating faith, rather than substituting an alternate one. ^_^

I'm all for it. This could actually be one of the final fronts in the "culture wars" - by resolving a major liberal-conservative issue in a mostly-conservative state, it could set the stage for enough states to legalize gay marriage or civil unions that it will be irrelevant as an electoral issue in the future. Which would mean that a certain currently-in-opposition party would have to actually focus on serious issues, instead of just getting out a paranoid base by threatening the breakdown of civilization if gays aren't discriminated against. I'm also interested in what effect this could have on Palin's candidacy in 012. She's virtually guaranteed to run on a social platform, and if all the social issues have taken a back seat, then she could be doomed.

@ Sever - Yes, but the thing about that theory is that it might help explain a lot of really stupid things religion has done. For example, the wars against the old cultures of South America and Southeast Asia, during the Spain-as-Superpower period: attempted conversion, followed by extermination if the potential converts [or, let's say, "carriers"] refuse the religion. It also suggests that some people, over time, might develop an "immunity" to religion; for example, someone who grows up in a religious family and later rebels has been "vaccinated" and will probably refuse to get "infected" again. Pretty stretchy with the definitions there, but it's still kind of interesting to speculate about. (Although, in the long run, alternative explanations probably do have more to do with the survival of religion. )

I hope everyone on here's an atheist, or else I foresee death threats - but I've always found this article interesting. Link

Because without a drastic change to the world cultural and economic system, our civilization will be effectively dead past that point. Not to say it would be over for the human race as a whole, but it would really suck for 99% of the population. Global warming, wealth inequality, resource shortages, life-extension drugs, private armies, corporatized space travel, universally available WMDs - not a fun place to live.

^ The best argument for deism / atheism ever. Over the millennia, God's steadily lost ground to science, as he will continue to do until the end of the human race circa 2300 A.D. Yes, his theoretical power has expanded over that time - instead of being limited to the Levant, he's now the guy that put together a universe several billion light-years across; but all of that gain has come from scientific research, while all of his former, observable powers have been debunked by the same. He's just gonna keep getting squeezed and squeezed until one day, the balloon finally pops [A helium balloon, perhaps?] It's fine if people still want to believe in some form of God - there are quite a few people I know who can justify a liberal approach to Christianity or Islam. But the old model of "I'll spend 3 hours a day and give up most of my individuality to get to know a nonexistent entity" just hasn't held up well over time. (Also, in more direct response, there's Occam's razor - but considering how often evangelicals misunderstand the very nature of that argument, I prefer the time-squeeze one.)

I really don't think that we want a return to the warlord days. Or at least I don't.

This is my main beef with your post, though it certainly has other flaws as well. Every single culture on the planet interprets "absolute truth" in completely different ways - stop by Armenia, Ethiopia, Russia, Greece, France, Italy, Norway, South Africa, Senegal, and Brazil if you don't believe me. In fact, you can pretty much take a country (or even a minority within a country) and attach their religion to their name, and get a different breed every time - ie, American Christianity, Libyan Islam, British Sikhism, etc, etc. The only reason people in the US can deny this is because most of them don't even accept different denominations, let alone different church systems, to be valid - hence, the never-ending attempts by evangelicals to rebrand themselves as "born-again Christians," "true believers," "the last real Christians," etc - essentially, trying to damn everyone else so that their "absolute" beliefs never have to stand up to a serious challenge. Also - there is not an exact and specific message/philosophies that the Bible teaches. There are about 500 different messages coming out of the Bible, depending on which section you open up to, and most of them can be logically proven as flawed. Genocide, rape, murder, and incest one day, forgiveness, asceticism and virginity the next - where the heck is this "message," exactly? And that's not even taking into account the fact that the early Church suppressed massive bodies of alternate interpretations of Christian teachings, or that it explicitly lied about the role Jews (and the Pharisees in particular) played during the immediate post-resurrection period, or that several books in the New Testament weren't written by their claimed authors. To recap: the Bible is not universal, it is not absolute truth, it is flawed, and it is not even complete. I'll be happy to elaborate on these points later on if anyone cares, but right now it's late and I'm tired. Have a nice day.

Redstar syndrome.

You could rename this topic "Why is SS dying?" and it would fit in perfectly with every other topic of that nature. It's a combination of demography, retarded people running the game, and a shitload of stupid staffers who drive their zones into the ground. That, and the fact that the SS player base is racist, abusive, very clique-ified, and resistant to anything new. If you solve all of those problems, then voila, the community comes back to life - if you don't, then the community goes downhill. PS - Bring back the spam forum. "All the old players/posters will come back! We haven't seen any decline in traffic / posting! etc, etc!" Mm-hmm...

Figuring out how to do this is certainly important, but you can't just say "Oh, if only we taught our children how to prove things in math, the world would be better!" This is just one more Oh-For-The-Good-Old-Days lament, with the small twist that it makes more sense than most of its brethren. Besides - while mathematical proofs tend to be rather useful, I personally never got much of a thrill from geometric proofs. A lot of them are nonsensical - "This is itself, therefore, That is itself" - and the rest are too complicated for most people to really get in the first place. And let's not forget one more thing - logic can really suck ass when you're dealing with real world situations. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f5/Principia_Mathematica_theorem_54-43.png

I watched this last month.

Is there a particular reason that people in England are so retarded when it comes to things like renewable energy and global warming? I always assumed it was just crazies like the people at EU Referendum, but every British person I talk to seems to be convinced that, unless they fight back against every initiative the EU happens to support, the world will end. WTF?