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At 5/23/07 07:37 AM, WORLDTHREAT wrote: it is a true story, it was on documetery called "kill me of you can"

Then cite your source. Give us a link.

I would not vote for a person who believed in a religion I viewed as dangerous, regardless of their political views, primarily because religious sects I see as dangerous involve high levels of fanaticism or unreasonability, which would make the person extremely dangerous regardless of their apparent political views.

For example, I would not support a member of the Isma'ili or an Amish person for any significant political position because I know that their religion or lifestyle choices will inevitably attack my beliefs and freedoms. If they appear to be a "surface only" believer, they may be fine, but a die-hard believer would not be because religious and political attitudes are not independent.

First of all, I think you ought to provide a link with that "true" story.

Second, regardless of the story's validity, idiots will be idiots. If someone is too dumb to think then they will fall for idiotic tricks like the Nigerian Scam or obvious phishing. What kind of fool would believe that an Intelligence Agency would contact them for hire over a chatroom and never check any details of the organization or communication? If authorities could easily see pattern s of speech, too, shouldn't the guy have noticed something? Why would a CIA or similar operative EVER talk in noob-speech?

This story sounds thoroughly implausible and false to me, and entirely worthless otherwise (the exception does not make the rule-- idiots like that are too rare).

At 5/20/07 08:18 PM, T-N-T wrote: If you were saying about the illegals then, you are just racist. He is trying to enforce border patrol out there, and what the president means by 'helping them' is just giving them permits to live here to work. plus how can he sold a party? The party left him due to the war in Iraq.

The party didn't leave him because of the war in Iraq, they left him because he didn't have enough of a Spine and acted too much like a Liberal. The same goes for most of the Republican Congressmen as well-- we elected them because we wanted fiscal responsibility, the logic of a conservative, some serious government rebalancing, a productive economy, reform of collapsing institutions, and more support for science.

What did the Neo-Cons give us? Fiscal waste, the emotionalism of Liberals, no government improvements, poor economic management, no institutional changes, and scientific funding cuts. And then when Congress changed out, Bush has just bent over for virtually every Democrat idea, and he even supported an Amnesty bill. Bush would have strong conservative support if it was just the war in Iraq and he was a strong leader-- but he isn't, and his gang screwed over the Republican party and all of its supporters. Only a clothespin vote kept him in office because Kerry appeared even weaker when everyone was desperate for a strong leader.

The Neo-Conservatives are a shame to the Republican Party and we better damn well clear them out before the Republicans get control again if we want anything to get done.

At 5/19/07 04:05 PM, scorchin-hot wrote: Ok ok, evolution has a 99.99% chance of being true and global warming has a 90% chance of being caused by humans.
You people look for conspiracies everywhere, if everybody was denying global warming you would probably say they were being paid off by the oil companies so that americans would buy more gas guzzling hummers.

You're one of the people I was referring to in my post-- Humanity still has no idea what the hell is exactly going on with climate change. It's not a "90% truth" issue, it's a "we know 1%, maybe, possibly, and then other stuff is happening or maybe not" issue. If you believe Global Warming is that strongly founded, you obviously have never even looked into the real situation at all and rely only on propaganda such as "An Inconvenient Truth" (which people on every side of the issue recognize as inaccurate and alarmist).

And "you people" is an entirely inaccurate slur to throw at me. There is no conspiracy here whatsoever on any side-- just a bunch of politicos trying to take advantage of environmental scare tactics to get power while everyone else struggles to understand a complex situation.

At 5/19/07 01:49 PM, scorchin-hot wrote: Debating global warming is one step off of debating evolution. Unless you are debasting wether or not scientists and politicians are exagerrating the effects in order to make us actual do something about it.

Global Warming is nowhere near as founded as Evolution, and the two cases are drastically different. Global Warming is primarily debateable because, regardless of the fanatical insistence of some people, it is still a very poorly understood topic and the weather predictions have been consistantly proven wrong tby a massive margin. We don't fully understand what the real effects of climate shifts will be, the full array of factors affecting the climate change, the eventual results of the climate change, whether we are truly witnessing a long-term event, and what reasonable steps might be taken to deal with the change (if we should).

The truth is that most of the Global Warming hype and propaganda is blatantly false, severely distorted, entirely worthless, or not based on fact or action. It is being used politically to manipulate people for the most part right now because no actual reasonable options exist, and this idiotic insistence on everything about Global Warming being entirely correct is killing the scientific research. We can't look at the entire situation objectively with all the politics and foolery revolving around the issue, especially when scientists attempt to look at the opposing aspects of Global Warming-- many scientists lose their careers if they attempt to challenge it.

Global Warming is a bunch of bullocks as it stands, with nothing really to do with the real situation or the real climate change. It's just a political fiasco championed by liars and hypocrites.

At 5/15/07 08:57 AM, Jaketheclonetrooper wrote: 1. The artist who made it is rich enough. it's not like they'll go bankrupt or something if people download songs off the internet.

How ignorant of you to assume that. The majority of singers and musicians aren't super rich, like Britney Spears or the rare celebrity singers like her. The vast majority only earn moderate sums, so you reall are ripping them off badly.

2. Downloading the songs actually promotes the artist. The people will be like " I got this song off the internet, and I think it's awesome. I'll go watch these guys live when they tour to my country.

Promoting in the sense that they are known, yes. Promoting in the sense that they earn more money than you've stolen, no. If you downloaded it off a website, why won't your friends just do the same?

At 5/6/07 12:15 AM, HighlyIllogical wrote: Interesting, isn't it? Especially when their rationale is that denying terror suspects the "right" to purchase guns would "allow arbitrary denial of Second Amendment rights based on mere 'suspicions' of a terrorist threat."

That's absolutely a reasonable position on their part, if you ask me. Constitutional Rights should not be suspended simply by the command of a government official. There is no "clear and eminent" danger, simply a stated suspicion.

It's like removing Bush from office because he was investigated at one point, or throwing a man in prison for 10 years because he is a suspect in a trial-- both are suspicions, unproven, and the action taken against them would violate the constitution. This gun law is no different, and just gives an arbitrary power to government officials to "suspect" anyone they dislike, just as the FBI did do at one point in time, during the McCarthy era.

At 5/2/07 10:41 PM, HighlyIllogical wrote: Hmm...

Gee...last figures I saw from the Feds suggested 30,000 gun deaths...
Most of them could have been prevented with sensible control and strong enforcement!

Prevented? Probably not. Transmuted into knife or other weapon deaths? Sure. If someone wants to kill another person, they'll do it regardless of access to guns or other weapons. Limited legal guns only instills confidence in the would-be murderer or burglar.

At 5/1/07 12:09 AM, bahamutzer03 wrote: well, either way, I don't like the idea of some white coat owning a strain of mine or my decendant's genes or dna. if it were like only test subjects, and non human, i'd be at ease.

They don't own your genes at all. At the most, they own the list of what nucleotides exist on that gene for some individuals, acording to the process they used. They don't actually own anything physical or anything to do wth you.

At 4/27/07 12:01 AM, JoS wrote: We won't know if Bush did illegal stuff if no one looks into the shady corners.

But the goal is to keep looking and looking and looking regardless of whether or not anything is ever actually found because it makes Bush and the Republicans look bad if most of them are under investigation. The Democrats don't actually care if any of the investigations are justified, they just need to make the Republicans look bad at any cost.

Then, if they do get the Presidency, guess how many shady corners Congress will conveniently ignore? All of them.

At 11/27/06 08:31 PM, Tancrisism wrote: In my current opinion, I've been thinking that we should begin to refer "Iran" as Persia once again. The westerners referring to it as "Iran" seems to have somewhat deterred their ancient and vast culture and history.

Ironically, Iran is the ancient name of that nation. At no point was it ever actually called Persia by its own population; Persia was only a well-known province within the empire which became the name through which Westerners knew Iran. Using the name Persia is considered an insult by the current Iranians, so it doesn't seem appropriate to call them that.

Now that we call it Iran, the culture of the Persians seems to have faded in the western mind, and has been replaced with this new "Iran", a name which to the unlearned mind seems to be just another average middle eastern country which rose up from the ground.

Iran went a long way to make sure "Persian" culture and history were destroyed with the newest radical regime. They burned most of the history books and did everything they could to eliminate their ties to the old empire. So yes, they are effectively an average Middle Eastern country at this point.

Sure, the Iranians call Persia Iran, and have for a long period of time, but the Germans call Germany "Deutschland", and the Greeks call Greece "Ellas", but we still refer to them as Germany and Greece, respectively.

Iran doesn't deserve the history is has behind it with the curent extremist that control the country. Maybe at a later date, after they stop acting like crazy fools, we should consider treating them with respect of any sort.

At 4/19/07 11:30 PM, DrBrainTrust wrote: I understand that much, but there is still the matter of a serious lack of respect for the lives lost in the tragedy and those who are alive and still effected by it.

The People have a serious respect and empathy towards the victims. The Media are attention-whoring jounralists and I honestly have no respect for them at all. Everyone knows the Media rolls these events too much just for their own profit, but we don't agree with the Media's actions. The Media rarely reflects what the People actually want to see.

I believe the reason for the apathy you see is fairly obvious and extremely simple: what is the point of feeling horrible anguish for something like that? You probably have no connection whatsoever to the event, and regardless of how painful it is for those nearby, your empathy and anguish will accomplish absolutely nothing.

69 people die every day in the United States. 137,600 people die every day worldwide. How does anguish and pain for you help any of these people in any way? It doesn't. It only makes sense for those who actually knew and interacted with an individual to truly feel grief at his or her passing. For others to attempt to do the same out of a false sense of obligation is foolish-- simply understand the gravity of what happened, and offer condolences to those who deserve to feel grief.

That's all there is to it. There's no reason to feel empathy in the truest sense because it will do absolutely nothing for anyone, and make your days hell.

At 4/17/07 08:26 PM, Dre-Man wrote:

At 4/17/07 07:28 PM, MortifiedPenguins wrote: You don't listen to any of it and Imperator has yet to fully realize that.

Unfortunately, the one piece of information needed to refute your argument, I've Article I, Section VIII of the U.S. Constitution, you've completley failed to listen to as well. You overlooked it completely, as a matter of fact. But have fun thinking that you've won.

Dre-Man, perhaps you should examine your own soruces:

Powers of Congress:
"To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;"

Bush obtained approval from Congress for his military action within 60 days, as required by the laws passed by Congress regarding the deployment of troops. As Congress is within its own power to establish procedures for the President to deploy troops to capture territory, and he followed said procedures, he actions were entirely legal.

Hence, the President is not impeachable for his actions and the Capture of Iraq (it is not a war in any sense) is entirely legal as well under American law.

At 4/11/07 11:37 AM, JoS wrote: It looks ridiculas and hurts our city's imagine as a fashion and trend capital.

You know what really makes it so obvious that your post is faked and a complete waste of time? You spelled "ridiculous" incorrectly, which no news reporter should ever be lazy enough to do.

At 4/10/07 10:05 AM, Zoraxe7 wrote: But atheism has no explanation in responce to relligions so it should not be seen as a replacement for it.

You're wrong. Although Athiests may not have a specific explanation, this simple phrase is still true: "I may not know what is, but I do know some of what is not." Simply because Athiests don't know what the Ultimate Answer may be doesn't mean they can't tell BS when they see it-- and hence the reason they reject religion.

At 4/7/07 10:27 AM, ForkRobotik wrote: You didn't include the Ottoman Empire, which had an empire that spanned 3 continents for almost 1000 years! we wouldn't have clocks or combustion engines without them!

Yes, we would have them without the Ottomans. Mechanical clocks were invented by Europeans and were only very slowly adopted by the Ottomans and other Muslims, and even then in only limited ways (few to no public clocks). A small number of Ottomans did take part in the progression of internal combustion engines to the ones we know today, but they were by no means uniquely important in the process, which involved dozens of inventors all across Europe making step-by-step improvements.

Here's what I believe is the rea story of Noah's Ark:

Many centuries ago, a man named Noah lived in a semi-arid desert region which was dominated by diverse polytheistic religions, although he was monotheistic. Noah was a crafter of boats, and was highly experienced in the art. Soon after he completed his best boat yet, a hurricane struck. He panicked and took his family and all of his domestic animals onto the boat with him and holed up inside, refusing to let any polytheists on the boat lest it become overcrowded or capsize. The massive storm swept through the region, with a storm surge so high it flooded the flat desert-land. When it was over, Noah imagined that it had been an act of God-- for what else could have happened? --and because his family survived it must have been an attack on the polytheists by his God. The flood was huge, covering all the land as far as he could see, so it must have been a worldwide flood-- as far as he knew.

And that's what I believe the entirety of the story actually is-- a random believer witnessing highly abnormal natural phenomena and assuming an Act of God was involved.

I think the issue here is not the United States but the foolish comparison choices you have made.

Yes, the United States is a First World country, but have you compared it in age to any of the others? France is over 1000 years old as approximately the independent territory it is today. Britain joined the "First World" over 1900 years ago. The United States formed about 220 years ago.

Just about the only places it can be compared against in the First World are Canada and Australia-- both relatively low population, low power nations and both are still heavily tied to their ancient originators. The United States is effectively the only First World country that has formed entirely independent of the ancient European nations for most of its history. So do you wonder why we're not like all the other First World countries? Because the United States is completely differetn from those nations, all of which are hundreds of years older or are still dominated by millenia-old nation cultures.

It's foolish to only compare the United States against the First World countries. We probably have more population than all of them combined. The United States is significantly better than many countries, so the real question should not be "Why is America so bad?", your poor question, but "Where in the US demographics is this crime occurring?" We know most of the victims and perpetrators are in the 18-21 range. Now the question is "Why?"

At 4/4/07 09:50 PM, fahrenheit wrote: It contracts until it becomes incredibly small, but it cant explode because it is everything and it couldnt explode because it would have nothing to explode into.

The contraction part is still up for debate-- I believe the current scientific view is that a Big Crunch won't happen this time, at least, not until after everything effectively fades out. However, that theory is a favorite of some because then the true answer of the origin can be safely tucked away impossibly far from the reach of Science. We obviously can't figure out the original start if trillions of full universes happened in the meantime since no evidence will still exist.

At 4/4/07 11:04 PM, ForkRobotik wrote: The Ice on Greenland is sliding into the sea. When that happens, New york and Florida will be ocean.

No, not even close.

I'll tell you one thing that's absolute fact: I know of a planet going through warming significant enough that the ice caps are melting at a very fast rate. If the warming continues unabated, the water level might rise by 33 feet worldwide. No one is quite sure about the exact details of why it is warming or how we might stop it (if we want to). The ice caps are melting, the world is warming, and everything may completely change if we don't act.

Guess where I'm talking about: Mars.

Yes, our great buddy Mars is going through Global Warming and the ice caps are melting. I just heard this week that radar probing measured the amount of ice in the caps: enough water for an 11 meter deep ocean around the whole planet. Hrmm, do you think humans are responsible for that Global Warming, too? Did our dozen solar-powered rovers really screw up the entire planet?

No, the oceans on Earth won't rise nearly that much. It definitely won't be enough to sink Florida completely. Probably no more than 2 feet rise, at the absolute worst (total melt). Now, we have to wonder, if Mars is going through "abnormal" warming, too, perhaps it isn't just humans causing our planet to warm.

The absolute worst part of the Global Warming "movement' of environmentalists is their attempts to Guitl Trip the entire world into doing what they say. Sorry, buckos, but no one has any idea what the hell is actually causing the warming or what will really happen from it. We have guesses, but your solutions still suck.

I will conclude thus: Global Warming < Chuck Norris. He'll roundhouse kick it in the face when the time comes. (That's how much merit this topic deserves at the moment)

At 4/4/07 11:33 PM, CBBrooklyn wrote: I'm not a physics expert so cannot respond directly to the comments about conservation laws.

Middle schoolers are tought about the Laws of Conservation. Any of them should have known that much. Do they count as experts?

But I can say that a steel framed building cannot collapse at freefall speed unless the underlying floors start moving first. Dr Wood has already proved this here:

It can, however, fall at near freefall speed, and when no one is there to measure the exact speed, then you have to rely on the human eye or a relatively low quality video-- both poor methods of indirect information gathering.

From my observation of the collapses, I do not believe that the debris fell at the maximum gravitational speed because it visibly piles up on the remaining building below, causing a progressive collapse, and you can see other debris thrown to the side falling faster.

Regarding the collapse.... if you look at the available data you will learn that the towers did not collapse, but were pulverized.

Pulverized is only an expression. It is never used in a scientific or other expert sense, so your over-emphasis of this one word is odd. Did you ever take a look at the final collapse debris? Thousands of pounds of weight smashing downward so fast that walls become dust and falls into a chaotic mess sounds like "pulverized" to me, and that's exactly what a collapse does.

Where did all the building material go? Where's all the steel? Where's the thousands of desks, chairs, computers, xerox machines, filing cabinets, etc?

Don't you remember the weeks spent clearing out the massive piles of debris? Steel supports and pieces of other items are plainly visible, although most of it was "pulverized" by the collapse and the sheer weight crushing it.

Not only is ARA a manufacturer of directed-energy weapon technology,
but are also a founding sponsor of Directed Energy Professional Society (DEPS).

Oh wow, ARA knows something about lasers. Did you ever watch the live footage of the second impact and subsequent collapses? That's all the proof I need to completely destroy your conspiracy here. It is plainly obvious that no laser was involved, even one outside of the visible range.

What is obvious is a plane exploding through a building and the building collapsing-- with the outer edge of the debris falling quicker, forming a convex shape. Any lasers from above would create a concave shape because of the impact force and any lasers from the side would create an obvious concave impact depression or deformation. The footage shows no evidence of laser impacts or anything except for planes, fire, and gravity.

Besides, I have an ear to the research going on with industrial lasers. We're no where near the point where a laser could take down a building, and especially not in that fashion. Maybe punch a hole through a concrete wall, but not much more and it can't currently be scaled up because of energy consumption.

At 4/4/07 09:02 PM, Dre-Man wrote: Next thing you know, you're going to stop bashing Noah's Ark and point out how Jesus walking on water isn't scientifically possible.

There are several species of insects and at least one lizard which can travel around on water without breaking the surface tension, so why couldn't Jesus do it if he had access to advanced technology?

You people need to learn to use something called support.

Per Capita Murder Statistics
#1 Colombia: 61.78 murders per 100,000 people
#24 United States: 4.28 murders per 100,000 people
#51 Netherlands: 1.12 murders per 100,000 people

The United States is not #1 in murders by a longshot, and it's only about 4x worse than the Netherlands. The primary reason for that is almost invariably that the Netherlands is a mature, stagnating country as opposed to the United States, which is still going through lagre population convulsions from immigration and ghetto regions.

Since the United States is not #1 in murders, and not even close, the main topic of this thread is pretty much invalidated.

Extra Sources:
Confirmation of Colombia Murder Rate
Page 10 - US rate really closer to 5

At 4/1/07 07:15 PM, Zoraxe7 wrote:

At 4/1/07 06:28 PM, Memorize wrote:

We are getting away from the topic now, besides how many illeagal immigrants can there be here in my sate of Massachusetts compaired to a state like NewMexico?

Mexicans aren't the only illegal immigrants, just the ones less accepted. The Northern states have significant numbers of Asian illegal immigrants, primarily Chinese.

At 3/28/07 08:36 AM, Imperator wrote: Being poor, I don't have the time to check if this is real or not; if this is the "truth" I seek. How would I go about checking this study?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experime nt

Moreover, should I believe it to be true until I prove otherwise? If yes, why?

First of all, there is a distinction between "soft science" (sociology and the like) and "hard science" (physics, etc). You should not use "soft science" for an example of proof; technically, no proof in those fields is actually solid evidence.

Just remember: believe experiments you hear, and have access to significant information about, until flaws have been shown in the experiment. Only believe theories when you have seen the evidence and agree, or the vast majority of the Scientific community has cannonized the theory.

You don't have to prove anything or do any tests, but be aware of what testing others are doing and what has been done already.

At 3/27/07 09:26 PM, Memorize wrote:

At 3/27/07 09:22 PM, Draconias wrote:

Where did we come from? Earth. We developed here from basic chemicals into a society of organisms based on the continuation of complex chemical reactions (life).

In Genisis it even says God came to earth when it was "formless".

That doesn't mean anything. There is no such thing as "formless," unless it is used inaccurately to imply that God created absolutely every detail on Earth (which would mean he is quite evil-- hurricanes, earthquakes, floods, wildfires, tornados --all great ideas).

At 3/27/07 07:56 PM, USMC-Ryan wrote: If science is the answer then where did we come from, and if the big bang theory is your answer then why is it a theory and where did all those gases that cause the explosion come from?
Answer that you science wiz

Where did we come from? Earth. We developed here from basic chemicals into a society of organisms based on the continuation of complex chemical reactions (life).

Why is the Big Bang a theory? I need to make sure you get this: there is no higher rank than "theory" in Science. Any explanatory, "mechanism" ideas in Science are either a hypothesis or theory; a hypothesis originated from observation, but has no actual proof yet, while a theory has proof. That's all there is to it.

Where did all the gases that caused the Big Bang come from? Put simply, there were no gases. The Big Bang wasn't a bang at all, and was nothing like a bomb. In a matter of a few seconds, a single, almost infinitesimal spot in space suddenly burst with a massive expansion of energy (mostly like light at this point) at superluminal speeds and at a temperature far greater than you can imagine (though it has been estimated). Within a single second, the energy began to cool and began forming quarks and other subatomic particles. The cooling progressed from there to what we see today.

The Big Bang was the source of all gases, and matter in general, so of course it wasn't a gas explosion.

At 3/27/07 04:46 PM, Dre-Man wrote: The War Powers Act of 1973 was unconstitutional.

It has not been proven so in court, even though the legislative veto part of it has been voided. In fact, I believe it only requires a single authorization within 60 days, not an initial one, and Congress provided that.

Perjury is only an impeachable offense under oath. Every president has lied outside of oath, and all will lie. It's human nature.

And all who lie should be punished.

Only if a lie is worth punishing should it be punished. When a President celebrates Christmas with his young child, should he be punished to telling the kid that Santa Claus left presents?

And what constitutes a lie? A lie can be told intentionally, when one is aware of the facts, or told through ignorance, when certain information was not available. How do you differentiate between the two situations?