825 Forum Posts by "Draconias"
At 3/23/06 09:45 PM, GSgt_Liberal wrote: Being gay IS NOT BAD! It does not harm anyone.
Being metrosexual, however, does harm others. Guess which group is stereotypically portrayed as metrosexual? Gay men.
Most people fail to acknowledge it, but that really is the crux of the issue. Men will make the decisions on how American law treats gays, and they will base their reactions on gay men alone. That stereotypical femininity attacks the very foundations of the American male and poses, culturally, a severe threat to the male identity and function.
When you consider that most of the current adult males have also lived through the assaults of feminists against the same masculine values, it's no surprise that the men react forcefully now to defend their core cultural values.
And then there's the anal sex. It is not just something disgusting to most males, it is something feared. Why do you think people always make "Bubba" jokes about Prison? It is something that a majority of males do not and will not ever accept.
Those are the two primary things that make homosexuality, as a political and cultural movement, a severe danger to others. No one really gives a damn about individual homosexuals or the private practice of homosexuality. What most people refuse to accept is the social and political pressures applied by gay activists. Like those lobbying for Gay Marriage.
Besides the flaws with the argument for Gay Marriage, lawmakers-- men --will react to the implied lobbying as well, which threatens the future of their sons and culture.
In short: Gay Marriage ain't happening.
At 3/23/06 10:54 PM, Souta wrote: But why do the White people feel this way towards other races? It seems like to me that black people are more aggressive but thats just my opinion and thats what would intimidate me from stepping in.
Regardless of whether most people acknowledge it openly, there is a singificant cultural barrier between every ethnic group. Particularly in black/white relations, whites will be shut out of black cultural via threats or actual violence. This attitude is implicit in many areas of our popular culture and media.
"Gangsta" culture is intentionally closed to white people. A white kid suddenly break dancing or rapping is considered abnormal and freakish. However, it is considered perfectly normal for a black kid to rap or break dance. A white kid wearing too-big, baggy shirt and pants and a heavy gold chain will be ridiculed as a "poser." A black kid doing the same is just "part of the group."
It's on TV, it's everywhere in the media. Heck, just think of the T-Mobile ads they did recently with the "posermobile" or the All State insurance ad with the two kids in the expensive car driving up to the gang of black guys. It's a form of racism that often goes unacknowledged because it stems from a minority and primarily targets the majority.
At 3/23/06 08:19 PM, BeFell wrote: No God in the Pledge of allegiance, it offends 3% of the population.
No prayer in school, it offends 3% of the population.
No Jesus at Christmas time, if offends 3% of the population.
No saying Merry Christmas, it offends 3% of the population.
No religious figures at the presidential innaguration, it offends 3% of the population.
Don't donate to faith based charities, it offends 3% of the population.
And so on.
Almost everyone on this thread has missed on very simple thing: it isn't the atheists who demand demand those things, it's the "Politically Correct" scumbags.
Being an atheist alone doesn't mean jack for any of those. It's when you're offended and demand Political Correctness, that's when people become assholes. Notice how every case you cited is about something being offended by religious practices? That's not atheism at all, it's PC. You're attacking atheists for the actions of "liberal-minded" people.
Get things straight: you're hating a group of people for actions done by a different group which you probably associate with atheists incorrectly.
At 3/21/06 03:21 PM, JoS wrote: Someone has finally found a good use for Mac computers, breaking them down and using them for fuel.
Sadly, Mac computers go under the "radioactive waste" category. When they attempted to run a ton of these through the pilot biorefinery, it caused an explosion that launched all the Mac parts back out of the biorefinery. WCT now refuses to process anything related to Macs.
Just kidding. That would be really funny, though.
At 3/20/06 12:21 PM, x_Toadenalin_x wrote: The USA consumes 20 million barrels of oil a day. Your process makes 500 barrels, from 250 tons of input. This means to cope with demand, you need to find 1,000,000 tons of junk each day.
10 million tons, actually. From 40,000 biorefineries if they are built to the same size, which they probably won't be.
Not only that, but you say the process is "highly specialised", suggesting you need a million tons of chicken waste (or similar) each day..
No. This process is completely the opposite. It generalizes to just about everything. However, for the best output, the biorefinery needs to fine tune the various temperatures and pressures.
This only needs to be done once, by anyone. After that, any biorefinery can simply use the same values and instantly switch processing types.
This is clearly unfeasable
10 million tons of chicken alone sounds unreasonable. However, that's not your only source. All we need is a combined flow of 10 million tons from: restauraunt waste and grease; butcheries for chickens, turkeys, cows, pigs, deer, and others; non-water portions of sewage from cities; excess plant material from agricultural harvesting; rotten or diseased anything; all forms of unrecyclable urban waste; any sort of recyclables; most sorts of industrial waste; junkyard cars; old tires (huge source); anything we throw into landfills; anything we've already thrown into landfills; any biohazards we need to eliminate; construction waste (rotted beams, demolished buildings); et cetera.
Virtually anything we throw away can be reprocessed through a biorefinery, and I'm pretty damn sure that 314 million people produce more than 10 million tons of waste per day. That's only 63 pounds of waste per person. If many individuals don't reach that, industrial operations definately make up for it.
It's just as feasible as sending a man to the moon. It may be a major engineering challenege and take a long time to build infrastructure, but we can do it.
At 3/20/06 03:30 PM, TheShrike wrote: Uh-huh. Link to this Discover Magazine article? If it was print-only, care to tell me what issue? My parents have a subscription, and keep the old magazines around.
Page 46 of the current Discover issue is the "Anything into Oil" article. On the front cover is a human corpse ripped open and preserved as "art." Since it is the current issue, Discover doesn't have it up on their website yet, at least not for public viewing (you must subscribe).
By the way: with further processing, the biorefinery can also turn oils into methane or other non-oil products.
At 3/20/06 04:02 PM, ThebanLegion wrote: Yes, new evidence comes to light all the time, so it is not unreasonable to assume that some new evidence may come to light that will disprove evolution, right?
Actually, at this point, that is an unreasonable assumption. It is always unreasonable to assume future evidence will disprove a theory unless specific issues have already been identified in the theory. There have been no such errors identified with the Theory of Evolution.
Also, there is no direct evidence to support the big bang theory. It was created to give an explination for how the universe could have come into existance without a supreme being.
The universal microwave background is direct evidence of the Big Bang, or something of the sort. The form and shape of the universe is also direct evidence. The universal background radiation is actually what first made scientists consider the Big Bang. The entire universe we can currently observe is also red-shifted, which means it is flying away from us, and since everything is flying away, we're probably on the outside of a sphere of some sort.
Since you brought up the big bang, all the material in the universe was supposedly concentrated together into a tiny sphere smaller that the peoiod at the end of this sentnace. I understand that part, where did all that material come from?
In short, scientists currently believe (not a total agreement yet) that for an unknowable amount of time there was simply Nothing. Then, some asymmetry in the Nothing, the "fabric of space," suddenly made something happen. Huge quantities of matter and anti-matter were spawned, and since they were polar opposites, their total energy remained zero.
Soon, most of the matter and anti-matter completely annhilated one another. However, there is one type of matter called a Neutrino which, we've discovered, actually changes between electrical states randomly over time. When everything else annihilated, a huge quantity of Neutrinos didn't annhilate because they had shifted states. Eventually, over time, the Neutrinos (or really proto-Neutrinos of some sort), cooled and decayed into matter and anti-matter again, but the "universe" had spread out enough by this point that distance prevented the matter and anti-matter from annihilating one another.
Over huge spans of time, the mass cooled and collected, forming the universe we know today. The actual process which occurred initially left imprints all over the entire universe, in the forms, shapes, and movements we observe.
Seeing the Oort cloud is currently a technological imposibility and proving it's existance is also impossible.
Wrong. Even the keenest eye can't see a single speck of dust in a rain cloud, but you can still see the cloud itself. That should be obvious. It is the Oort cloud after all.
At 3/20/06 02:21 PM, Mlord5000 wrote: Marriage is a right. I am not saying that I am homosexual or anything of the sort but if to people (homosexual or not) are in love, who are we to stop the from getting married?
We can advise them wheather or not to go through with a marriage but we cannot tell them not to get married.
Marriage is not a right. It never has been. This isn't a matter of saying "You can't get married." It's a matter of saying "You can't completely alter the foundations of a strong secular and religious tradition to allow you to do something it was never intended to allow." Anyone can marry. You just can't marry just anyone, though.
At 3/20/06 07:38 AM, Gunnery_Sergeant wrote: Is there nonpartisan research that supports the "anything into oil" technology as being scientifically, environmentally and economically viable?
Nonpartisan implies that politicians have any say in the thing whatsoever. Well, screw them. This is purely private industry.
I believe the research in the subject is pretty convincing: they have a full-scale biorefinery operating in Missouri that has been making a profit for several months. They have had no emissions or environmental issues, and the process has worked perfectly once they fine tuned their processing variables. The plant has been pulling a profit since December.
That's enough proof for me. However, it is worth noting that the biorefinery was shut down for a month and still may be shut down permanently because the turkey waste smells bad and people nearby have been complaining about the smell.
Building the first refinery 15 minutes from the downtown city area was probably a bad idea, but who the hell can tell it was the biorefinery over the meat packing and butcheries all around it?
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At 3/20/06 01:44 AM, Velocitom wrote: I am sure if the oil companies have anything to say it wont even be put into the process of being made.
They already have a running biorefinery. The oil companies don't have a say about it.
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At 3/20/06 09:20 AM, TheShrike wrote: If the process could be powered by itself, and still produce enough product to be profitable, I'd be impressed. Outside of that, it's a pipe dream.
The article I cited didn't mention that information, but the Discover magazine article where I first heard about this did include that information.
The plant consumes 15% of its own output oil each day to fully power itself. It is generator-quality oil after all. The consumed oil was not included in the 500 barrels per day figure.
The Missouri plant is making a $4 per barrel profit ($2000 per day), not counting any additional profit from selling the fertilizer or calcium powder. It's economically feasible.
However, the CEO of the biorefinery did note that only 3 states in the US have taxation laws which would allow the company to make a profit. The company is planning to expand primarily into Europe because every location in Europe promises a major profit.
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Article Quote:
(http://www.usatoday...4-01-22-kantor_x.ht
m)
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[A new process called thermal depolymerization] turns just about anything into oil and fertilizer. And when I say "anything," I mean that: animal waste, medical waste, human waste. Used diapers, used computers, used tires. Anything that's not radioactive can be tossed into the hopper.
Those things go in one end of the process and come out the other as diesel oil and fertilizer using a process that mimics the Earth's. But instead of taking millions of years to turn plants, dinosaurs, and what-have-you into Venezuelan crude, TDP takes hours to do the same to just about anything you can throw in it. No wonder the energy industry is funding pilot projects and research facilities.
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This process is real, and it pulls a profit. The first industrial-sized biorefinery that relies on this process is up and running in Missouri, making 500 barrels of Oil per day and $4 per barrel. And that's in the worst-case situation, paying $30 per ton of turkey waste that they receive to process.
Biorefinery Rough Specs:
+ Can process virtually anything, focuses on hydrocarbons (organics)
+ Must be fine tuned for each type of input material for best results
Input:
+ Can process virtually anything, but currently focuses on hydrocarbons (organics)
+ Must be fine tuned for each type of input for best results
+ Processes 250 tons of input per day
Output:
+ Generator-quality (lighter) oil
+ Variable quantities of heavier oils
+ High-quality fertilizer
+ Seperated materials*
+ Water
+ No emissions!
+ No pathogens/proteins
* Depending on the input, the seperated material is different. It can be anything, ranging from calcium powder from bones to hydrochloric acid from toxins in plastics. In some cases, the seperated material may be a gas, like methane, but it is always removed in a pure form in a controlled container.
This thing has no emissions! While the current input the biorefinery is working with (waste from a turkey butchery) smells really, really bad, the plant itself has no emissions of any sort. No ash, no smoke, nothing.
It breaks down deadly toxins and chemicals. It kills 100% of pathogens, like viruses or bacteria. It even completely destroys dangerous proteins, such as the prion which causes Mad Cow Disease.
The process can expand to fit just about any waste. The only thing, the one exception, is radioactive waste. Anything else can be broken down into pure parts in safe forms. From junk cars, to landfill trash, to sewage, to agricultural waste, this process can break it down into something useful.
Each year the US butcheries produce 12+ billion tons of agricultural waste. If all of that was reprocessed using new biorefineries, we would have more than 4 billion barrels of oil. Every year, the US only uses 3.3 billion barrels of oil. And that's just waste from butcheries. Biorefineries could also process cars from junkyards, urban trash, raw sewage, old tires, old landfills, and just about every single other type of waste you can find.
We're on the verge of a world-changing development here. A new industry is born, one that promises amazing things. The first industrial plant took awhile to work out the kinks, but the company which owns the first plant is already making plans to build a car recycling plant in Michigan, a cow-butchery plant in Ireland, and others in Wales, England, and Germany.
The Irish Food Processors, the biggest beef operation in the UK, promised to pay WCT $50 per ton to take waste from them. That's an $160 profit increase per barrel as compared to the current biorefinery in Missouri.
This is big. This technology promises to change everything. It easily offers us the opportunity to completely eliminate our connection foreign oil. It could even completely remove our need for oil drilling and promise an unlimited supply of oil. It promises to completely change how our society deals with everything we throw away, and it promises a huge influx of useful materials that were otherwise unrecoverable.
When this new industry expands, it may destroy countries or make new super powers. Biorefineries will play a vital role in our future. How do you think we should deal with this? How important do you believe it will be? What will this mean for countries in the Middle East? How will this affect our relationship with the environment?
Discuss, answer, gaze into the future.
We rebelled from the foreign monarchy. The US already went through its only true imperialist stage. At this point, Iraq is nothing of the sort and doesn'ty even approach the actions of Colonial Britain. You obviously don't remember our recent past if you think our current actions are at all imperialist.
At 3/17/06 03:51 AM, WolvenBear wrote:At 3/15/06 03:27 PM, Begoner wrote:As a fan of science, I must call bullshit on this statement. Whereas gravity can be measured, and we know the force of it (or in a new place) we at least know how to measure it's force, evolution cannot. We still cannot say for certain that evolution is the way it happened. That's why when they teach it in school, it is the theory of evolution and when they teach the other in school its just plain old gravity.There are gaps in the evolution theory, there isn't enough evidence for anyone to conclusively say that evolution is true.There is enough as much evidence to conclusively state that evolution is true as there is evidence to state that gravity is true. Both are theories that have been proven true numerous times. Like the fact that the sun is at the center of our solar system. And what are these "gaps" that you speak of?
Not even close, WolvenBear. There are two parts two gravity, the Law of Gravitation and the Theory of Gravitation. The Law is simply the measurements and observations we have made that show objects with mass attract one another. The Theory actually has much less proof than Evolution and remains very shaky, since it relies on the as-yet undetected Gravitons.
Most of the ignorant masses that weigh in about Evolution don't realize that "Theory" is the highest possible rank for Explanations. The other category is Observations, where "Law" is the highest possible rank. The ignorant always complain that a Theory is not yet a Law, meaning it must not be a reliable Theory. Evolution is as proven as physically possible at this point.
At 3/16/06 08:09 PM, Begoner wrote:At 3/16/06 07:52 PM, blizace wrote: answer me 1 question, if evolution was real why the hell havent whales dolphins otters and other sea animals evolved to breathe without surfacing?Evolution takes time, and being able to breate without surfacing is a big change. Also, there is no significant advantage to surfacing and there will not be a big difference between the success of surfacing vs. non-surfacing whales.
It's a simple thing called evolutionary histories. Whales, Otters, etc. are all Mammals. The development of the lung was a massive accomplishment, one which will probably never reverse itself in Mammals. It took dozens of species and billions of years to develop lungs, and the return of many Mammals to the sea is simply too recent for those species to develop gills again.
Also, remember, evolution is not directed. Unless the genes for starting to develop gills again occur naturally within the population, and unless those genes also benefit the affected whales in the short term, the development of gills simply won't happen at all. Natural selection works against it.
What exactly is she saying that qualifies as racist? If you didn't notice, she is accusing someone else of being a racist, and that's why her paper has so many satirical statements about race. Even a cursory examination of her article proves her innocence with respect to racism.
She doesn't say anything racist, but she makes a somewhat convincing argument in favor of the racism of the New York Times. If you believe she sounded racist, you lack basic reading skills. It's just not in her article at all in any form except satirical attacks on the New York Times, and only then to mock them. It was never once stated in a serious or earnest manner.
I vote B. However, Civil Unions should apply to any pair of two people, regardless of gender or sexual orientation.
At 3/11/06 10:20 PM, sylvostheyehudi wrote: haha. do the research those were falsified studies.
They weren't actually falsified, but they have not been successfully repeated.
we have the big bang tremondous expansion. however for the first few million years there was no light because the molecules were so hot that the could not come together to make light.
Light is energy in the form of a wave-packet, not a molecule. For the first few hundred million years, protons and electrons hadn't yet formed, so molecules were a very long way off.
ok now that everything has cooled down its going to take a loooonnngggg time for stars and planets to form.
11.5 billion years for the Earth to finally form, according to your initial date.
now that the planets are formed we need water right? so now we have to wait for comets to land on earth and fill up our oceans, this take a loonnnnnngggg time because comets dont carry that much water.
Water is a fairly common substance in our solar system. The Earth carried vast quantities of water vapor from chemical reactions and the condensing material in the first formation. When the planet cooled down enough, the water condensed into great oceans. Comets could not provide an appreciable amount of water and thus are not a primary, or even noteworthy, source.
ok now that we have water we need life. in order for this to happen we need the amino acids in water to come together.
No, we do not. They did at some point form, but the basic processes that define "life" do not necessarily require amino acids. It is actually possible that early life first constructed amino acids, which would explain the single mechanism for creating them in all living organisms.
once we have life, it will of course be asexual reprodicing and single celled. next up we need two of these asexually reproducng creatures to mutate and the same time in the same way and they have to be extremly close to each other.
Not necessarily. In modern bacteria, we can observe the formation of tubes to transfer plasmoidal DNA, a process which appears to be the precursor of sexual reproduction. Only a male is required, since any receiving bacterium automatically becomes "female."
then you need the new sexually reproducing creatures to reproduce quickly and multiply.
Due to their size, all small organisms reproduce very quickly. These organisms have more than 800 million years to figure out the next step to multi-cellularity.
then you need them to evolve enough to survive out of water, then you need them to mutate in tottally different ways millions upon millions of times, then you need billions of years for survival of the fittest to weed out all the lower forms and the weaker.
They had lots of time.
of course you then need lots of time for human beings to become sentient. WOW. THATS a long time.
This stage was less than a blink of an eye compared to any of the previous stages.
if science thought the universe to be roughly, oh i dont know, a few quadrillion years of age i'd have no problem. however it doesnt. oh well.
You seem to have no true feel for the length of 4.5 billion years (for the Earth alone). Scientists approximate that life began 3 billion years ago.
Just assume you have a colony of basic cells at the beginning. Nearly every modern bacteria will divide more than once every 5 minutes. Assuming that as an absolute lowest reproduction rate, an early cell colony would have time to divide 315,576,000,000,000 times. Starting from one cell, by now you would have 2^(315,576,000,000,000) cells, a number so huge it would take a super computer several hours to calculate. And that's assuming an abyssmally slow reproduction rate. Crank it up to a reasonable 30 seconds and two hundred quadrillion would be like a speck of dust in comparison.
The scale of time we're talking about is huge. It's so massive that a human mind is simply incapable of grasping the size. So what do we do? We make it a meaningless number and just imagine some "big" value for it. You suggested quadrillions of years because you don't understand the true scale of time. If you did, 16 billion years would seem like more than enough.
At 3/10/06 03:03 PM, TheShrike wrote: There is no national language.
The sign is clearly discriminatory.
Then why does a government-funded hospital near where I live serve only Spanish-speaking people? They haven't been slapped with a PC lawsuit yet, but that guy gets slapped for declaring that he speaks English?
At 3/9/06 06:17 PM, Penal_Disturbance wrote: Remember that Soddomy is legal, and Peadophilia still isn't.
Hello! In the state of Ohio and many others, Sodomy is an illegal act. Good bye!
At 3/5/06 04:08 AM, facksfunny wrote:
:: No, that doesn't explain it. There are two thing wrong with this theory:
2) Shadows should still be parallel. The sun is equal-distant from all objects on the moon.
You are correct that multiple sources of light is not the correct answer. However, you are completely wrong in claiming that the shadows should be parallel.
After accounting for minor distortions by uneven terrain, every shadow along a landscape should always show a "convergence" effect. With the light source to your back, the shadows and any line on the landscape will converge to a single point that is far distant, usually directly on the horizon line. This is a natural effect of distance that occurs anywhere, but is most obvious on flat terrain where you can see for miles.
When you are at an angle to the light, as the astronauts were in each of the cited photos, the shadows will still converge based on the angle of the light source from their position, regardless of the distance from the light source.
Especially on the photo including the module, a close inspection will reveal that all of the shadows do converge, and most people mistakenly assume the module shadow is parallel to the horizon line when it is not. Take the photo, and trace the shadows out from their origination point, and you will have all of them converging in a single region (not exact, due to estimation of angle).
A much better, and more simpler, explanation is a close source of light.
Wrong. Remember, the distance doesn't matter at all. It's all about the angle from the objects to the light source, which you change by moving backwards. Changing the angle by physically moving the object or the source-- by rotating the planet about an axis-- will produce identical effects.
Every single shadow is mathematically defined. A close source of light is not a possible answer because of the distances involved in the photos. When you are looking at something more than a mile distant, it would be physically impossible to get a "close source" that satisfies the observed shadows.
2) As long as there is a force, the will be a reaction. No distrubance is visible under the nozzle.
The thrusters were disengaged multiple meters above the surface, about 10 meters if I remember correctly. The disturbance region from the thrust should be weak and larger than the module for two reasons: first, the exhaust expands quickly in low atmosphere, and second, the primary disturbance of terrain is from air turbulence, which can't occur without an atmosphere.
When the module actually hit, considering the wide module feet and reduced gravity, I wouldn't expect the force of the landing to be more than 2 pounds per square inch directly under the module feet.
3) So basically the ship jet engine wasn't able to leave any marks, but the astranauts managed to leave fine footprints?
What isn't applying force can't leave a mark.
At 3/4/06 07:32 PM, facksfunny wrote:AND HOW THE HECK WOULD WE KNOW HOW MUCH DUST WOULD ACCUMULATE IF WE COULDN'T SEND MAN TO THE MOON IN THE FIRST PLACE?!?!?!?!?!That can be calculated by the amounts of asteroid collisions on average, and the radiation from the sun would break down the moon's surface. This was estimated to cause a few miles of dust every 4.5*10^9 years.
Before executing any of the Lunar missions, we also had extensive knowledge of the geology and terrain on the Moon based on years of careful visual observation.
It's important to remember that the first mission landed on a regolith, which is essentially a huge slab of solid volcanic rock that is exposed on the surface. We knew for a fact before sending any missions that the first one would land on a safe, shallow surface.
We never actually expected miles of dust on the surface, even away from regoliths. The origination of the false belief that the Moon is covered in miles and miles of light dust was a mathmatical prediction created by a single scientist. After a lot of controversy, his predictions were proven completely wrong on a mathematical basis because he used incorrect rates for many key processes.
The most effective indicator of a weak, false argument for change is when the arguers resort to calling all opposition "close-minded" or somehow bigoted. Ad hominem attacks and absurd black-or-white reductions of the argument are further indication that they have not even looked into the actual argument.
Refusing to accept an alteration of marriage is not close-mindedness, nor is it somehow based on bigoted views against gays.
Many people simply consider the complete restructuring of a seemingly timeless tradition akin to sacrilege. The basic foundations of marriage have never been altered, regardless of some superficial alterations in law. The proponents of Gay Marriage want to expand marriage into something far beyond the intended purpose, and many fear this will destroy the meaning of marriage, cause many collateral issues, or simply disrupt something that should not be altered.
The complaint against the addition of Gay Marriage is simple: there's no reason for it, and it'll piss of a lot of people. There are no moral imperatives or any other basis for the Gay Marriage argument except "We want to get legal benefits."
Also, don't forget there is no "right" to marriage, thus there is no moral basis within any US legal documents for demanding Gay Marriage.
One statement is repeated often in these threads: "Communism is the perfect system, assuming a perfect population."
The Truth is that by its very nature, communism is a flawed concept that can not exist in a stable manner, and can not produce the imagined "utopian" civilization under any circumstances.
First and foremost, communism proposes a system where everyone is truly "equal." However, that "simple" concept is in fact extremely complex and there are many questions that go underanswered in favor of idealism.
Pre-Concept: Time, Effort, Goods, and Money are all forms of Value.
1. Humans are not equal in physical health. Many have ailments that cost great amounts of time and effort to treat, cure, or temporarily suppress.
How is it possible to balance a man with life-threatening cancer and a man in perfect health? Treating the ill man will require large amounts of Value, which would necessarily have to reduce the Value received for living by every other member of the community.
Immediately, some must wonder if they should even treat the ill man. Treating him at all will harm every other member of the community, and it will potentially force the ill man to live through horrible, agonizingly painful months before a final, tortuous death.
In this "Utopian" society, have Morals been thrown out the window? Have we somehow answered every question of Philosophy simply because we accepted equality?
2. Humans are not equal in ambition or interests.
So you have this "equal" world. Many people have greater drive towards certain goals than others, so how is this "equality" perfectly maintained? I know a man who goes and climbs the greatest mountains of the world every Summer, and I also know a man who is too lazy to even get a job. How can you possibly balance such high ambition and strong interest with a complete lack of ambition or interest? Also do not forget the added Value required for high ambition or interest.
In this "Utopian" society, have Individual Goals been thrown out the window? Have we somehow eliminated all individual differences?>
What could people possibly do for entertainment that would not place one person above another? Watch TV or see a movie? No, that creates celebrities. Play a board game? No, that has competitors beating one another. Play video games? No, those are competitive with winners and losers.
In this "Utopian" society, how will you stop people from naturally differentiating into levels of skill and ability? An from of competition ANYWHERE will introduce and foster the idea of competition, and thus Capitalism.
3. Communism eliminates motivation on all levels.
If you make everyone "equal" regardless of the Value they contribute to the community, what happens to motivation? Whether I work at a factory or talk in a forum all day, I am still completely equal to you in every sense under a communist system. Why should I, or anyone put massive effort into anything? What will motivate our civilization as a whole to create things, and develop new ideas? We will stagnate completely.
In this "Utopian" world, is everyone suddenly perfectly patriotic and totally duty-bound? Why would they work or do anything when they receive no benefits in any way, shape, or form?
4. Communism is a naturally unstable system.
Any economic action favoring anything will destroy a communist system. If Joe's Shack makes the only good pies, and people begin buying more pies there, they are participating in Capitalism and quickly cutting away at the foundation of their "communist" system.
If any individual- or group-owned organization creates, sells, or otherwise does anything involving a product or service, they are inevitably creating a Capitalist system, regardless of what "official" name you give it. Any act of Commerce in any form will destroy a communist system.
5. Crime, an inevitable occurance, is the only beneficial option.
If everyone is "equal" under the laws of the land, there remains only one option for those who desire more, or need more for some reason: crime. Inevitably, crime will occur because it is the only truly beneficial thing you can accomplish, and the only way to create any meaning in the actions of your entire life or solve issues which may not be something public or solveable by the public.
When you have nothing to lose, why not break the communist system?
Communism is a whimsical fantasy. It never was, and never will be, because the idea itself is flawed. It can not happen not because people are somehow flawed, but because the system itself is a complete dead end, a useless route, and destabilizes from the slightly tap. It is simply a system that does not work, but by keeping it a vague, generalized idea, proponents of communism can avoid confronting the insurmountable flaws within their "Utopian" world.
*smacks forehead*
Sorry, the light source in the module photo is very obviously off to the left, not the right. I mixed the two up in my description.
It is almost important to note that the line showing the module's shadow is wrong. The module shadow is angled significantly, in the proper direction. If you simply trace the shadow lines out, remembering to account for the large distance differences, they converge at a single point.
Facksfunny, with the module image, you made the exact mistake I expected and countered before you even presented it. The "impossible" shadows of that image are a classic example of convergence points, and, like I already mentioned, the convergence occurs according to the angle of the lightsource, as we very obviously can tell is located off to the right.
Module photo: Basic visual effect called convergence.
The top image, of the two men walking, requires a slightly closer examination. However, I could tell very quickly that it is not a matter of shadows but a matter of shadows on uneven terrain. The shadow to the left is stunted and appears different because it is reflected along a noticeable terrain rise then dip, while the shadow to the right is going straight downhill. It's an optical illusion from bare terrain, distance, and vacuum lighting, just look more closely at the ground.
Astronauts photo: Shadows falling on uneven terrain, which distorts the image from the photographed perspective.
Both are simple mistakes caused by inexperience. Anyone trained in visual effects, or even with just a keen eye, could point out your mistakes about the "impossible" shadows.
At 2/24/06 03:00 AM, -poxpower- wrote: Wow that would be right if it weren't for the fact that men control just about everything :(
The fact that old men control everything. The newer generations of men are doing the worst ever, in everything influenced by "Affirmative Action."
Plummeting male performance in schools is becoming a very serious and dangerous isssue in the past decade. The majority of people in colleges are now women. Record shattering numbers of men are simply dropping out before finishing High School.
Nearly all business sectors that are mostly men are facing massive shortages of new people. The math and science sectors, particularly advanced engineering and research science, are facing some of the lowest graduation numbers ever from colleges.
To put it bluntly, the new generations of men are getting fucked in the ass by institutionalized reverse-bigotry.
Sure, the old men control most everything, but the young men are in the worst situation they've ever endured in American history.
At 2/20/06 10:07 PM, facksfunny wrote: Actually if the moon is several billion years old than the dust layer is atleast a couple hundred feet. Do some research. And yes the astranauts WILL sink, that is why there is an argument on this issue. We didn't see anyone sink.
There's one really simple thing you seem to overlook:
The Apollo 11 mission intentionally landed on a regolith, which is a large exposed region of rock.
Regardless of dust depth elsewhere, there should only be shallow dust at a landing site specifically chosen because it should have a huge mass of solid rock at the surface.
Please show me a picture that shows that the dust was blown away under the ship. The atranauts didn't seem to have a hard time leaving prints in the dust.
http://nssdc.gsfc.na..es/a11_h_40_5931.gif
I very plainly see a crater in this photo, right at the exhaust point of a nozzle under the module. There is also another visible crater, but it is obscured by a shadow, and any others are completely in shadow.
I want to see the photo from you where shadows "point in different directions." Don't fall prey to the amateur mistake of forgetting convergence points in distance images!
They were apparently going in live transmition, and the astranauts came back to earth in less than a few days. NASA didn't have time to review all the photos as they were publicly released soon after the landing.
Wait, you're telling me an entire team of photographic specialists, while developing the film, couldn't possibly look and see poorly developed images? Sure. . .
Again proof please. Show me the original roll of film without the "c" on it please.
Go get it yourself. You know I don't have access to the original film rolls. Disregarding the issue of its existance on the lunar surface, what would it matter if the "c" was there?
Is Niel up on a 5 foot hill? His shadow is twice as long. Show me an unaltered picture taken on a hilly terrain with two men about the same height, one light source. If you can find a picture where one guys shadow is twice as long as the other, I'll let this accusation go.
Also some shadows point in different directions. Again find me a picture that hasn't been altered with one light source with shadows going in different directions.
I want to see the photo from you where shadows "point in different directions." Don't fall prey to the amateur mistake of forgetting convergence points in distance images!
http://www.tfhrc.gov..sep/images/sull1.jpg
This little image shows an example of convergence points. Shadows follow a convergence point based on the light source, not the photographer's angle, so you're probably mistaking simple visual mechanics with something "impossible."
Proof please. They recieved no radiation at all. They would have died from cancer by now.
Not all radiation levels produce cancer. Duh. You receive constant doses of background radiation on Earth without receiving cancer as a direct result. The astronauts were in very thick suits on the lunar surface, and no major solar radiation events occurred, so I don't see a problem anywhere.
Out of 121 photos how many photos have you seen so far? More than a hundred. So they only had a few lousy photos.
Show me a lousy photo please.
They don't publish them for a reason, duh.
Did they spent all of their training time learning how to take pictures? They had more important things to learn.
And they spents hundreds of hours training. They would never go unprepared. The landing was planned down to the smallest detail.
Doing tasks takes time too. Are you that stupid? It would take them 120 mins to complete all the tasks WITHOUT taking a picture. If they took pictures during the tasks it would take longer.
No, they took 120 minutes to complete all the tasks. If they were snapping photos during the work, that's why it took 120 minutes.
It takes time to aim the camera especialy when they got such perfect pictures. They had about 15 seconds to take each picture and go on with the rest of their mission objectives.
It's takes half a second to snap a picture using that style of camera, and they didn't pose. Literally, all it took was a quick pause, snap a picture, and get back to work. 15 seconds is more than enough time. Any single shot shouldn't have taken more than 5-10 seconds.
Get this through your head: they took photos while working, interspersed through the entire mission.
Multiple men with cameras that can snap two pictures per second taking ~120 pictures in ~150 minutes is nothing special. It's completely reasonable. Assuming constant shooting, the astronauts could have upwards of 36,000 photos, so 120 is nothing.
If they alternate then 0.5 seconds. Your calculations fail.
You're a bit of an idiot sometimes, ya know? I told you the cameras they used can take a photo every half second, so 2 photos per second X 60 seconds per minute X 151 minutes = 36,000 photos. This is obvious stuff here.
With respect to the camera, constant shooting would provide 36,000 photos maximum. That's the only physical limit on the number of shots the men could take. The fact that they are nowhere near this number simply makes it more obviously real.
120 photos in 150 mins means about 72 second per picture. That's not that much, especially considering that they were doing something else DURING those 72 seconds.
Are you kidding me? Do you take a more than a minute to snap a picture? Once you are in position, it should never take more than 5 seconds to get a good, solid image with little or no blurring. Their cameras took a full image in less than a second, so I don't see the issue here.
Also, the astronauts didn't pose for images, so they wasted no time whatsoever getting in position.
To put it bluntly, STUPID ASSUMPTIONS about what someone can or can't accomplish, and even the details of how they did it, create these idiotic conspiracies. If the data you are viewing doesn't match what you expect to happen, maybe your expectations are just WRONG.
At 2/22/06 06:37 PM, MegalomaniacVirus wrote: I still don't understand what's wrong with Iran's nuclear program.
A government of radical muslims filled with a complete and utter hate of the United States and intent on destroying the First World as soon as possible in control of nuclear weapons? Yeah, what do you think is wrong with that?
At 2/21/06 09:52 PM, PsychoPilot wrote:At 2/21/06 09:12 PM, thecheeseisblue wrote:Why not do a rifle execution and get it over with, it would not only save the state money but get rid of him for good.At 2/21/06 09:08 PM, blizace wrote: for it, because i beleive eye for an eye and all that crapAn eye for an eye? So, that would work if they were a murderer, but ithe death penalty kills rapists too.If it were really an eye for an eye a rapist would not be killed, the system is not truly fair in that respect.
Rifle ammunition costs money. Just go at him with a Machette. That way you only need to buy a single weapon and a single grindstone for maybe a decade of executions.
Life in prison is not absolute. Few, if any criminals sentenced to life in prison serve even one half of the sentence. The sentence itself is less than a lifetime, so an increasing number of inmates have outlived life sentences. You can say someone is forever locked away in prison, but that's never true, and society is never truly safe from their threat.
That threat doesn't just remain with that one murderer. When you put a serial killer in prison for a life sentence, you provide a lifetime of psychotic teaching and advice to every other inmate, who you are supposedly trying to reform. For every life sentence criminal in a prison, that's more crowding, more strain on the prison system, and more impressionable people for serial killers and chronic offenders to further corrupt. Why would we ever want to stick people so horrible they can never be allowed outside of prison right alongside people who we are "reforming" for a return to Society?
Also, don't forget that crime and murders can still happen inside a prison. If you think it is immoral to execute someone, it must be just as immoral to let a serial killer kill other people, regardless of past crimes. Also, I noticed an odd double standard where many said killing them is immoral, but intentionally having them raped is perfectly fine and moral. How can one form of further crime be any better or worse than another in the absolute sense?
Many people have complained about how the Death Penalty costs more than a life sentence for taxpayers. That is a matter of poor implementation, not the actual merits of the act. An execution can be free, but our system gives far too much leeway to Death Row criminals and thus massively increases the cost. Money should have nothing at all to do with this argument, as it has no bearing on the actual subject and only reflects negatively on the arguers for being greedy and callous.
Some criminals are simply too dangerous, too heinous, to ever allow back into society. If ever they are alive, their threat remains for innocent or undeserving people around them, and no good can come from their existance. Such people "deserve" nothing, and no "vengeance" is being served, these murderers simply need to die. They can not exist in this world without harming and endangering others, and the only safe option is simply to remove them. It is not an act of murder, or anything heinous or evil on its own, it is simply ending their lives, erasing them. They must be cleared from this world, and there's nothing more to it. It is the obligation of the State to perform this action for the safety of citizens, regardless of "deserving it" or "vengeance."
My Proposed Framework for the Death Penalty:
Requirements: Murder of 3+ people OR a particularly heinous and brutal murder where the victim survived for a significant span of time. Pregnant women can count for a maximum of two people, and only if the pregnancey has reached ~5 months. The convict must appear impossible to rehabilitate for some specific reason.
Appealing: Minimum of two re-examinations of the case. Appellant may not, under any circumstances, escape from his or her sentence due to a court technicality; such situations can only lead to a re-trial. Maximum of eight appeals, but further appeals may be accepted based on judicial discretion.
Every appeal must be heard, but may be denied by any level judge.
Time Limit: The execution must occur a minimum of two years and a maximum of three years after the first incarceration post-conviction, or within a month of the final appeal. No appeals may be made after the limit of three years have been passed.
Execution Style: Lethal gas administered within a sealed room is the only style of execution. Such gas must be colored for non-convict safety, and intermixing red, white, and blue is suggested.
Convict can not survive the execution; if large amounts of lethal gas and at least 45 minutes of attempts fail, the execution room should be safely vented and the use of a 9mm handgun is authorized to complete the execution. All handgun shots must be aimed at the head or upper torso, and as few shots as possible should be used to complete the job.
Those who erase the existance of others, others of far more worth to the world, and only wish to continue their deeds, can only be erased as well. For if they are not, their corruption and black tendrils of influence will spread and continue the harm we seek above all else to prevent.
I was going to say more, but let's just end this stupidity here and now:
Go read Wikipedia!
http://en.wikipedia...ing_hoax_accusations
All the stupid claims have a rebuttle, and it should fix all of your ignorant ideas about the moon landing.
There's little to no crater because there was only 1.5 pounds per square inch of force under the module and only an inch or two of dust.
The dust wasn't scoured away because it is air turbulence which does the scouring.
The "c" exists because someone made a copying error.
The flag doesn't fall because they hold it up with a rod (not starch, my bad).
The astronauts have perfect pictures because they took a huge number and only selected the good ones.
The astronauts didn't take tons of fast pictures because they spaced them out during the entire mission, and the cameras could take two pictures per second.
The stars don't show up because it's a day-time exposure.
Shadows look odd because of hilly terrain, multiple light sources, and no atmosphere.
Some versions of the radio recordings have impossibly small time delays for the mesasges because they edited out the pauses to save time. The actual recordings have these delays.
NASA hasn't officially rebutted the conspiracy theories because that would lend credibility to the very accusations they meant to erase. NASA did announce a rebuttal, but cancelled it for that very reason.
Conspiracy stems from ignorance, not from reality. Wake up and face the truth.
At 2/16/06 11:57 PM, facksfunny wrote: Nothing also holds the flag against gravity. The flag was made of thin almost seethrough fabric, it wasn't springy
"Flaws" spring from your ignorance. Have you ever seen what happens when you soak cloth in starch? It forms an almost rigid object. The planners for the space mission weren't idiots, they knew there wouldn't be enough wind to keep a normal flag flying, so they coated it in starch.
If you look closely at the flag, it never flaps in the wind, it shakes. They intentionally did this for cosmetic effect.
The dust layer on the moon is thin, and underneath is solid rock. Why do you think the astronaut footprints didn't go further down on any step for something so soft? There is a blast crater under the module, as shown in the pictures, but only to the depth of the dust.The "thin" layer of dust on the moon is 1km "thin." There is absolutley no evidence of any crator. Also there is no evidence of the engine even running. If it is a thin layer and all the dust was blown away around the site, then how did the astranauts leave prints.
One kilometer? Wrong. You don't get a full kilometer of dust on a volcanic plain on a moon with little to no erosion whatsoever.
Can you imagine what would have happened if there was that much dust? The module would have made a 200+ foot hole in the ground, and astronauts would sink down to their waists on every step!
Also, as I mentioned before, only the dust under the module was blown away because they had a focused jet nozzle, a nice little doodad that concentrates your exhaust for more lift in less time.
Prove that the "original" photos haven't been altered by NASA.
NASA got the photos first and completely reviewed them. If the "c" was in the originals, they would have fixed it before anyone else got the photos. The fact that it exists at all proves that it was not on the originals. Duh.
Actually their shadows point in different directions. When the two atranauts are standing almost side by side, Neil's shadow is twice as long.
Two men of different heights, on hilly terrain, at different elevations, shadowing onto uneven terrain. If you didn't notice, Neil is higher up on a hill, and his shadow is falling down into a dip where the other man is standing, then the top of each shadow is going up a hill.
Learn basic lighting effects: that's what you should see happen.
Why would they be? The lowest radiation dosage that will have any noticeable effect or cause cancer is 50 Rems. The astronauts recorded a radiation level of 12 Rems. That's not a dangerous level.Proof, please. During the apollo 11 mission the lowest radiation level recorded was 25 Rem.
To quote a response found on Wikipedia:
"The radiation is actually evidence that the astronauts went to the Moon. 33 of 36 of the Apollo astronauts have early stage cataracts that have been shown to be caused by radiation exposure to cosmic rays during their trip."
Can you prove any of them received crippling radiation to their internal organs? There's evidence enough that no Apollo astronaut got away unscathed.
Proof, please.
No, I mean the photos were to accurate, no body parts cut off from the picture. How did they manage to aim so well with their chest. Did you know that they took 121 pictures in 30 mins (considering they accomplished their mission objectives which took 120 minutes).
First of all, only good photos were published; more were taken but not revealed to the public. The original photo collection is supposed to have over a thousand images, mostly because not every photo is perfect so every scene got multiple shots.
Second, these astronauts were expertly trained with cameras. Third, the astronauts took photos while doing tasks. Only a total idiot would waste all that potential time when it takes a single second to snap a shot.
Multiple men with cameras that can snap two pictures per second taking ~120 pictures in ~150 minutes is nothing special. It's completely reasonable. Assuming constant shooting, the astronauts could have upwards of 36,000 photos, so 120 is nothing.
You imagine a conspiracy when you make ignorant assumptions about what someone did or didn't do, and you're always going to get called on that ignorance
