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Sheesh, I hope protests on that new death die down, seeing that the videos present show the kid, if not clearly a gun, but pointing something quickly at the officer. That is pretty much the textbook case of the proper use of deadly force - gun or not, the cop MUST assume the worst in that case when something is drawn quickly like it was in the video (spend the time to analyses what was pointed at you and you could be shot). You can't get in arms about everything, or else it removes the legitimacy of the protests that actually are about overbearing police. :/

At 12/19/14 11:40 AM, Camarohusky wrote:

At 12/19/14 11:29 AM, Gario wrote: they just displayed a level of technical ability this country never knew they could pull off

I'd have to dispute that completely. It is well known that there are a good amount of groups out who can pull this off and many of them are willing to make attacks for the highest bidder. Now, if this is a homegrown North Korea government cell, then yes, you are right. However, the more likely situation is that North Korea merely hired mercenary hackers to do their bidding for them.

I think you left out a keyword that I used moments prior to that statement: If. I didn't say there was solid evidence that they did it, I said if the evidence shows that they did it, then it could be beneficial for our intelligence. It actually sounds like you agree with me, more or less, aside from that misunderstanding.

I gave this topic a little thought, and realized some good for our country actually came from this. If North Korea is actually responsible for this, then they just displayed a level of technical ability this country never knew they could pull off (North Korea and cyber warfare just doesn't add up, normally). The USA has gained a pretty big piece of intelligence on a country that nearly has an iron curtain-like amount of secrecy about it, all at the low cost of... An apparently sub-par movie. On the short term, we lose, but in the long run that's a pretty valuable thing to get on our enemies.

Not a bad silver lining, really.

At 12/17/14 10:02 PM, LordJaric wrote: With Sony's pulling The Interview due to threats could this potentially open the door to limiting freedom of speech when it comes to the film industry? Should Sony have just gone ahead and shown the movie or were they in the right to cancel the film. Just where do we draw the line between standing up to threats and backing down.

"Freedom of Speech" is only guaranteed within the boundaries of this country - that phrase means virtually nothing outside of countries that practice it. What other countries do to disrupt that has always been something that could potentially silence an American or a corporation. If a country like Mexico, Russia, France, etc. ever decided to personally threaten me on something relatively insignificant (such as on the release of a movie), I would take that threat seriously and not produce that movie, unless I absolutely knew my country had my back on that. I see no reason other people would act differently.

The door that you're thinking of has always been a possibility, it's just that other countries do not go out of their way to take advantage of that very often, as it makes the country look completely asinine and childish. Also, if a country repeatedly acts out in such a manner, limiting the freedoms American citizens normally enjoy consistently, the country runs a large risk of invoking serious hostility from us, which no sane country would really want.

This IS North Korea, though... :/

At 12/17/14 02:40 PM, Feoric wrote:

At 12/17/14 02:24 PM, Gario wrote: That isn't the worst site to draw sources from, thankfully, but unless the book has sources in it itself, there are no sources to draw any conclusions about the budget. I wish I could take what someone says on a site like Forbes at face value, but I think it'd be betterfor the article to source the claims on all that spending.

Literally anybody can write opinion articles on Forbes' blog section, just like anyone can be an iReporter on CNN. Don't let the name alone fool you.

Oh, it doesn't 'fool' me - a sourceless report is a sourceless report, even if NPR or CNN were reporting it, it'd still be a terrible report.

While I find Leanlifter's idea of trolling hilarious (there are virtually no trolls in here, not even lifter... he just really doesn't understand anything), the implication that one can simply change topics because it's their thread is reckless. I still have unanswered questions on private policing, and it'd be no good to assume that topic is on the wayside when it's the name of the thread.

At 12/17/14 03:30 AM, leanlifter1 wrote:

At 12/16/14 07:36 PM, aviewaskewed wrote:

At 12/16/14 01:48 AM, leanlifter1 wrote:

Obama's welfare state,

Explain what you're talking about, then prove it with legit sources.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/peterferrara/2011/04/22/americas-ever-expanding-welfare-empire/
Socialism for needs and Capitalism for Greed I presume ...

That isn't the worst site to draw sources from, thankfully, but unless the book has sources in it itself, there are no sources to draw any conclusions about the budget. I wish I could take what someone says on a site like Forbes at face value, but I think it'd be betterfor the article to source the claims on all that spending.

Good effort on your part, though.

At 11/22/14 11:05 PM, leanlifter1 wrote:

Every time the facts do not align with your beliefs you claim ... Conspiracy theory ... that's getting old not to mention a real bad cop out. Nothing "personal" at all I don't understand why you think it is ... personal.

What facts are you referring to? That is literally the only thing that is turning people off to your posts (well, that and the belligerence). The only facts posted in this thread are from Aviewaskewed (that is, a link to the report that Benghazi was officially shown as nothing more than what was presented in the media by a Republican committee). If you show facts (real facts, not those made up by your reasoning), then people would listen.

The facts are we have three Government parties spewing shit and the out come is innocence. Do you not find this just a bit tocontrived and a little to convenient ?

You pronouncing something as "fact" does not make it so. Links? Reports? Articles from an accredited source?

Benghazi, eh? Truth be told, to this day, I have no idea what the "scandal" was - four people (from our embassy) died after violence occurred in another country. Unless the accusation is that Obama literally incited the riots himself in order to kill innocent Americans, I don't see anything that scandalous about the whole thing. Tragic, yes. Scandalous...? I hope everyone can move on about it, now.

At 11/20/14 10:17 PM, leanlifter1 wrote:

At 11/20/14 10:04 PM, BrianEtrius wrote:

what prevents that PMC from turning on its own people it is supposed to protect?

Fuck are you guy's really this dense LOL. If the Police turn on the people that line their fucking pockets guess what ... THEY DON'T GET PAID ! Unlike Government Stooges whom get paid not matter how terrible their performance may be.

Power is a form of payment - "dollars" is not the only form of compensation. If a person had the choice between absolute control over a region and a regular paycheck, they will chose absolute control, hands down. If you really don't think power fills in for currency, consider the fact that someone in that position can simply take money from people in order to make up for that. There is no disadvantage to screwing the public over, in this scenario. In the case of a public police force, no one can have that absolute power without dire consequence, so that scenario is very unlikely, in a balanced government.

It's called "Economic Utility", and it's a heavy contributor to how people behave in any market. You need to understand economics before you can claim you'll understand the results of a free market on... well, anything.
As an aside, consider if everyone in a crowded room seems to be missing some point you're making, it is entirely possible that you may be the one misunderstanding something. Food for thought.

Can't believe I'm entertaining the idea, but I'll take it seriously for a second.

Why does the second police force need to be private? If you desire a second force for the sake of a check and balance, why not instead divide the current force into two or more competing forces in the same district, wherein those that do the better job get more of the public funds, or something to that effect? It invokes the capitalist frame using public funding - you'll get either the same or more effective results by keeping the funding public.

Note that I am not really SUGGESTING that, but if the "checks-and-balances" are what you're going for, why does it need to be privately funded?

Politicians don't think we're "stupid", they think we're "human", and as such we behave in a group as humans tend to do. When put in large groups, we polarize and dig our heels into our group, refusing to associate with the other side. Politicians actively take full advantage of that using ads and statements that either accelerate this process or benefit from the political isolation between the groups. They do this because it works, and (more importantly) if they don't then they will lose to someone that does. Sucks, but that's the political reality of things - straight players cannot compete.

Funny that this topic is up today, as I literally gave a presentation on this very topic an hour ago (even going as far as to use the Men in Black quote on here - very relevant).

At 11/16/14 03:42 PM, X-Gary-Gigax-X wrote: 'Bourbon'? Why so specific? Makes me think they're trying to plug for alcohol companies.

Kentucky bourbon from a Kentucky senator. It makes good thematic sense, to me.

At 11/14/14 11:07 PM, leanlifter1 wrote:
I got laid off during the economic downturn in 2009 and I made the choice to no longer continue in my Trade. I picked bottles for 2 years and started my own company. I made 1 to 2 hundred dollars per day on average, made my own hrs, was my own boss and did not have to put up with corporate bull shit. We always have a choice just some of us need more direction than others.

Now that you did that, someone else doesn't have that opportunity in your area (or, at best, it will create a situation where neither of you will do as well, since someone will be stealing your business, cutting down on both of your potential profits). If enough people take whatever enterprise is viable/available/feasible to work on in an area, eventually work will run out, as resources and demand are zero-sum in nature.

Nice job on finding better work, but the very fact that you did that is exactly the reason that another person can't do the same thing (you did no wrong - it's just what happens). Based on that logic alone, eventually people really WILL have no choice but to accept whatever scrapes are available in their area, or live on welfare. So yeah, some people really don't have that kind of control of their situation. Life sucks like that.

How is that a different view on taxes? That's technically the correct view on it, as that's precisely what a tax is. A more interesting question is why this definition on taxes is ever put into question by people at all... :/

My brother's a nurse, actually - he hasn't really experienced ridicule yet. If he were to experience it, though, it's generally not the women calling them out, but the men questioning why they didn't upgrade to a doctor. Just saying that while the discrimination may occur, it really has little to do with the women, in that case, which is pretty much exactly what you said.

Anyhow, I'm avoiding the pay gap argument, since it actually is possible that your argument is right (I simply observe that there's a pay gap, that's not really evidence for or against - someone better versed at this would need to make that argument), and there are cases where women really ARE less fit for one job over another (women's physical composition, for example, renders them more vulnerable to broken hips and such due to being shaped for child bearing, so are less fit for physical-heavy work), but that doesn't explain their lack of enthusiasm for things such as STEM jobs. You can claim that they "just don't want to do it", Zazz, but that really doesn't explain the "why" at all - it's lazy, at best, and sidestepping the argument, at worst. Going with the "It's just natural" approach is lazy, as there is no biological reason women would be less fit than men at STEM jobs, only societal reasons, such as the expectation that women be the homemakers once children are introduced to the family unit (which is the crux of the feminism argument, to begin with).

Female biology is something to consider when looking at the jobs they apply for (again, physically they are less suited than men), but that line of reasoning stops with business jobs, scientists, engineers, politicians, etc. It thus raises the question of "Why", which a naturalistic answer doesn't address at all.

At 9/13/14 07:21 PM, chinablue30 wrote: http://imgur.com/gallery/BNCgvtL Interesting read.

Alright, so instead of showing that women make 0.77$ to every man's dollar, it shows that women are generally discouraged from entering into fields that make the most money (entering into one of those fields myself, I see the backhanded compliments and rather unfair treatment they get, when they try). Assuming the 0.77$ mark is incorrect (from what I gather it's still pretty close to true, all other things being equal), isn't the fact that women are discouraged from entering STEM fields still something that people should attempt to do something about? Either women don't get paid as much, or they're barred from jobs that make more money, it's a problem, either way.

Atheists are generally hated for the same reason religions are hated - if you don't believe what another person believes, then you often make the other person uncomfortable, somehow. 'Course, this isn't particularly special to atheists; other people who follow differing religions tend to be hated for the same reason. There's not much you can do about that, since even if you came to believe in a religion to avoid this hatred you'll just find different people hating you for not believing what they believe (if you changed your belief, for example, you'd even find some atheists giving you scorn for your action). Do you remain atheist, making other religions like Christians and Muslims uncomfortable, change to a Christian and make atheists and Muslims uncomfortable or become a Muslim, to the ire of Christians and atheists? Obviously these aren't the only beliefs out there, but it illustrates my point well enough. Don't worry about the hate - there's nothing that you could do that'd please everyone.

All one can do is not hate others for believing something that you don't. Maybe,just maybe, it'll rub off on others, over time.

... Probably not, but it's better than joining the hate orgy.

I don't think being able to mount a decent military invasion on Japan's end to any nuclear power is really in their best interests, as they don't have the benefit of mutually assured destruction on their side. They try to invade China? China threatens them with the bomb and they're forced to retreat (or China drops a bomb on them and then they pull back, either way). Conflicts have been relatively small due to this since atomic/nuclear weapons have become available, for this very reason - Japan cannot retaliate against that kind of weaponry, and considering the size of the country, it wouldn't take much to level them, if China so chose to do so.

Not to say there wouldn't be some heavy consequence of that action from the rest of the world, but before people get the idea that Japan would have a prayer retaliating against China with their military, understand that they could be leveled in very little time, and there would be nothing they could do about it due to their lack of WMDs, themselves.

There's nothing wrong with changing your political views over time, as you acquire more information on any given subject. "Flip-flopping" is only a problem when you express one view on a subject, then change it whenever it's convenient for you or an argument that you're having with someone (like many do in the political realm), since you're then simply using those political points in order to gain the favor of others rather than owning the beliefs for yourself.

At 3/29/14 11:58 AM, Camarohusky wrote: Take the low end and get them out of academic schools as early as possible training them like apprentices, or for something else that doesn't require much mental skill.

Which jobs would those be, and do you think that would cover the conservative estimate of 35% of upcoming Americans that fit this position? The percent is partly made up (I'm basing it off of the natural distribution curve of IQ, so people < 88 IQ, given a standard deviation of 12 points), but those apprentice jobs are being phased out at a pretty quick rate (Construction is in the shitter - take my word on that, custodians are limited in need, as is security, the jobs mentioned above are decreasing for the given reason...). This is compounded by the fact that our population does not decrease with the decrease of jobs. For the most part that's an issue for the lower end of academics (people who could barely pass high school, or worse), but considering the number given (give or take 5%) that's quite the number of people who are going to be unable to find work in the near future.

Also, online purchasing is amazing, I have no idea why you'd be upset about it when people can and will interact with others in more meaningful interactions - in fact, if their shopping is done before the average person goes out of their house it gives them more time to spend with others, and if the person doesn't go out (computer game addiction, or some other anti-social behavior), shopping outside of their home doesn't help their behavior. Just saying, 'cause you're dishing out the hate on online shopping for no reason, is all...

At 3/3/14 11:14 AM, UFO3240 wrote: All most all of those have had some good effect. The only bad thing about science is how @#$%##@ arrogant scientists are they assume that the earth is full of molten crap or that humanity's only been around for 10000 years or that were the first civilization. That is the real case against science.

What? First, the Earth has a solid core with a molten layer around it, and humanity is claimed to have been around for at least 150k years - if you're going to claim scientists are making assumptions, at least get their assumptions correct. Second, they are not assuming what they state; there is no other way we could get a magnetic force on the Earth without a molten layer, and there is plenty of archaeological evidence that mankind extends at least that far back in history.

At 2/19/14 09:37 PM, leanlifter1 wrote:

At 2/19/14 07:48 PM, Gario wrote:

There was a control group of 29 non-homophobic males (out of 64 total), so they did have a baseline to compare against. I personally think the only .

Rhetorical nonsense and non conclusive.

Wow, you are unintelligent. You may not have understood my post because of your inability to comprehend scientific jargon, but I was agreeing with you in the post, you dumbass. You dismissed it because you literally didn't understand it. Re-read the post and you'll see that my point was that the experiment was inconclusive given the data that was extracted. Or you won't see it because your level of comprehension seems to be insignificant.

At 2/19/14 07:15 PM, leanlifter1 wrote:

At 2/19/14 07:05 PM, Camarohusky wrote:

At 2/19/14 06:25 PM, leanlifter1 wrote: The article was invalided because they used closet homosexuals and not straight males

Um... That's like saying that a study determining whether a set of hills count as mountains or not is flawed because the hills they used were mountains and not hills.

No it's like using the wrong tool for the job. If I am trying to prove that chocolate ice cream tastes like vanilla ice cream and I use vanilla ice cream that is colored brown then I proved nothing and my research is botched. I hate the Taliban therefor I must be a terrorist.

There was a control group of 29 non-homophobic males (out of 64 total), so they did have a baseline to compare against. I personally think the only conclusion that could reliably come from that experiment, though, was that people that worry about homosexuality get an erection ~15% quicker than people who do not worry about homosexuality with male homosexual stimuli (and both control and homophobic groups have similar erections to heterosexual and lesbian stimuli), so at best one could say a homophobe is proven to be bisexual. Unless there is other scholarly work out there that definitively shows that the homophobe gets aroused faster for homosexual acts than for heterosexual ones, I would be hesitant to claim that homophobes are "closet homosexuals".

At 2/18/14 02:44 PM, leanlifter1 wrote:

At 2/18/14 02:28 PM, Gario wrote:

At 2/18/14 01:28 PM, AxTekk wrote:

At 2/18/14 08:39 AM, leanlifter1 wrote:

At 2/18/14 08:10 AM, AxTekk wrote:

By the same token though, to cover them in the government health plan could be extremely expensive and not very effective. I genuinely think the debate does boil down to AHCA. Maybe this should have been posted in an existing AHCA thread.

I don't think their is one. That said if these HIV victims were not forced into AHCA then they would have been covered. Once again we are witnessing the inefficiency of monetary economics.

Yeah, then I think this is the proper place for this discussion. This is basically the new AHCA thread guiz

There actually was a thread on AHCA set up a few months ago - I'm not going to look for it, but it's a place to talk solely about AHCA. Enough on that, I have an on topic question, here.

There were two AHCA threads set up this week and both were taken down by mods before the first post was submitted. Me smellz some serious censorship going on here. This thread is directly about AHCA and how it delegates the responsibility of public health coverage to the middle man being the Insurance company's to dictate who get's health care coverage. This can be said to be economic bigotry.

http://www.newgrounds.com/bbs/topic/1352490

There, the thread I was talking about - I'm sure that thread is suitable for AHCA, if you have future problems. Now that we have that out of the way, did you want to answer my question, or do you want to spew more crap on the NG moderator conspiracy? :/

At 2/18/14 01:28 PM, AxTekk wrote:

At 2/18/14 08:39 AM, leanlifter1 wrote:

At 2/18/14 08:10 AM, AxTekk wrote:

By the same token though, to cover them in the government health plan could be extremely expensive and not very effective. I genuinely think the debate does boil down to AHCA. Maybe this should have been posted in an existing AHCA thread.

I don't think their is one. That said if these HIV victims were not forced into AHCA then they would have been covered. Once again we are witnessing the inefficiency of monetary economics.

Yeah, then I think this is the proper place for this discussion. This is basically the new AHCA thread guiz

There actually was a thread on AHCA set up a few months ago - I'm not going to look for it, but it's a place to talk solely about AHCA. Enough on that, I have an on topic question, here.

I'm not sure how a state law can circumvent a federal one - isn't there a statement or two about how insurance companies can deny patients insurance based on pre-existing conditions? I mean, if it's mandated, it makes no sense to allow this at all - are people from Louisiana going to take action against this sometime?

Going to agree with both Korriken and Camarousky on this one. Korriken is absolutely right on his position that a one party system would have long-term damaging effects on the country - even if you're for the party, it's healthy for a country to have more than one point of view that can counterbalance the other. Unfortunately, this is nearly the situation that we're in at the moment - considering how recklessly polarized the Republican party has become, fewer and fewer people can hold onto the party (at least that's what I see, especially as a former Republican myself). It's not good.

This isn't the first time that something like this has happened, though this IS the longest stretch of time where a party has maintained it's strength. I agree with Camarousky on this: the current party will likely fade into obscurity, and something else will come out of the rubble, relabel, adjust their positions and become something new.

At least, if that DOESN'T happen then we're in a serious bind.

N64 is full of awesomeness.

Ogre Battle 64 is one of the best tactical RPGs from that generation - I highly HIGHLY recommend it. Seriously, it somehow manages to look better than PSX classics like, well, Ogre Battle tactics and it's FF cousin (great games too, but not on the N64, lol).

Perfect Dark is another great title, along with Bomberman 64. Even though it's not technically a great game, I also would suggest Quest 64 - you either love it or hate it, and it tends to be pretty cheap on sites like ebay and amazon (~7$). I'd say it's worth a shot at the price you can get it, just be sure to turn the music off and turn up something that you can actually enjoy, lol.

At 2/4/14 07:51 PM, Korriken wrote:

At 2/4/14 04:30 PM, Fim wrote: Why even bother giving these creationist douches a platform to spout their dumb backwards beliefs?*

*'beliefs' not being synonymous with 'scientific theory'.

The irony of the whole thing is people feel the need to constantly slam and bash on those who believe in creation. They can be ignored, but people feel the need to crush those that disagree with them.

People don't bash creationists for believing what they do (correction: MOST people don't do this - I'll never speak for everyone). People DO universally get upset when one group demands to be treated as a science when there is no evidence for such a claim. Just watched the first part of it, and the creationist has literally said just read the bible, believe it and do not question it without evidence - to be honest, I was hoping for something more interesting than that from him.

Anyway, the consequences of treating a religious belief as a scientific truth is fairly disastrous, as their methods are not complimentary. You CAN be religious scientist (that is, you have a belief and you accept scientific discovery), but you can't have a science that is based on religion because you cannot question the source of the religion, by definition, which is 100% contrary to the scientific method. Yes, there is mud thrown on both ends, but to say therefore they're both wrong because of it is not correct.

As far as I'm concerned, believe what you want, but don't force publicly funded schools to teach the creationist method to students as a viable alternative to evolution when one cannot adhere to the scientific method. It's something that Bill Nye fights for consistently, so I'm all for cheering for him.

I wasn't offended by the coke commercial yesterday, but I was authentically confused by it - I simply thought that a variety of countries were singing an American song until about halfway into the commercial. They could've made their point much clearer if they sang it in english while showing the ethnic backgrounds, but it's no harm done.

Also, freedom.

Elegant solutions to the problem require that you prepared for it motivically earlier in the piece. I can hear something like an augmented triad being enharmonically reinterpreted in order to get you into a tonality that is a major 3rd away (like from Dm to Bbm, for example), but for that to work seemlessly you'd need to have been working augmented triads into your composition, in the first place.

But yeah, using something like a V5+3+ chord in Dm (A-C#-E#(F)) and enharmonically making it into the V5+3+ of Bbm (F(E#)-A-C#) and moving into the new key like that is one possibility for a modulation like that.

At 1/27/14 08:12 AM, Camarohusky wrote:

At 1/27/14 07:45 AM, Gario wrote: So you need to actually watch something happen in order to believe it's true?

You don't understand the point that was made. The point that was made is that while there is mounds of evidence pointing toward evolution, there is no smoking gun. This means that there is a jump needed to make the final conclusion. With all of the evidence that exists, the jump is very small, but a jump exists nonetheless.

Okay, with all due respect since I do know you're not unintelligent, I addressed this point directly earlier in this thread (addressing you specifically, in fact). I acknowledge that there is a possibility that it is flawed or even flat-out wrong. That is true of every scientific field (science must be falsifiable by definition, after all), yet it would be flat out stupid to simply deny any other field of science without a viable alternative. Why is evolution a special case where despite the combination that it both has a mountain of evidence AND there is no viable, scientific alternative (Intelligemt Design was a worthy contender in the 19th century, but it has some severe challenges to it that evolution addresses solidly), one still may simply deny it just because? You need to have evidence against evolution in order to deny it - it's not only wrong to do otherwise, it's harmful to the fields of artificial intelligence, biology and psychology since they rely on the findings of evolution in order to function properly (and in the case of biology and psychology, "macroevolution").

You want to deny evolution? Fine, but unless you have evidence against it be prepared to rightly be called a fool.