At 11/24/09 01:15 PM, Mr-Money wrote:

2. So what? The UN is trying to steal $400bn a year in carbon taxes and deinstrialise the Western world by 20 years minimum.

You do realize the carbon tax has nothing to do with these emails, right?

And also that you sound insane?

At 11/24/09 11:27 AM, Mr-Money wrote:

You're not a scientist either, buddy.

You're still wrong though.
:,(
:,(

DAMN YOU, REALITYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY YYYYY!

At 11/24/09 12:19 AM, 4urentertainment wrote:

God doesn't love us until you actually obey his orders.

Wow that's sick as hell.
That puts God dead last in the running for "parent of the year".

It's like you're being told to play a video game. A very hard video game. And if you do well you'll be given a reward.

What happens if you don't do well again?
Oh right, you go to hell.
Forever.

Do I have a choice in playing this game?
No?

Yeah that sounds EXACTLY like a video game! What a spot-on analogy.

At 11/23/09 10:08 PM, Slat wrote:

Do they have factories in Neptune? Mars? Even Pluto is getting warmer ffs..

hmmm you do make a good point.
It's true that all warming everywhere in the universe is either man-made or not man-made.

I mean, how can something warm up by itself, and some other thing wam up because of man's activity? Like, PICK ONE, amiright?

Global warming is a big fucking fat lie.

Well obviously. Al Gore used his invention, the internet, to spread it, so he could sell carbon credits to make himself richer.

So he can build a rocket back to Neptune to rebuild his cave people empire and take his rightful place as the emperor of Gladorkia.

At 11/23/09 10:26 PM, Slat wrote:

Have you ever looked into any research done about the subject?

I've done so much research that I'm at "global warming is a lie is a lie is a lie is a lie is a lie is a lie is a lie is a lie" right now.

Species extincted all the time and not only because of comets..

BOOM, TAKE THAT IN THE FACE YOU FUCKING TASMANIA TIGERS, YOU GOT EXTINCTED.

I AM

THE EXTINCTINATOR

Oh and word to the wise: don't be like AI.
Now he's backed himself into a corner and either keeps on going down that road of being ludicrously wrong or he admits he was being an idiot all along.

He's got no hope for saving his dignity.

So, people, learn from that. Don't invest yourself so much in anything that you can't come back out without looking like a dumbass. If you're always honest about what you know and don't know and learn to admit when you're wrong, you'll become a lot smarter a lot faster and you'll know how to avoid situations like these.

THIS MESSAGE BROUGHT TO YOU BY HEAD-ON
HEAD-ON: APPLY DIRECTLY TO FOREHEAD
HEAD-ON: APPLY DIRECTLY TO FOREHEAD
HEAD-ON: APPLY DIRECTLY TO FOREHEAD
HEAD-ON: APPLY DIRECTLY TO FOREHEAD

At 11/23/09 04:19 PM, Al6200 wrote: dropping my other criticisms.

It's not even worth bothering because you can't even understand the explanation for ONE of the points, why would you suddenly understand and accept any other?

You've long since crossed into the realm of rock-headed crankism now. If you still don't get it after reading the latest posts by Elfer, you are either being dishonest or you're simply a moron :O

In case of ADD: there is no decline of temperature to hide, only inaccurate data to correct.

And most important: THE TREE RING DATA DOES NOT INVALIDATE EVERY OTHER SET OF TEMPERATURE DATA GATHERED FROM ALL OVER THE WORLD THROUGH EVERY OTHER MEAN IN FACT IT'S ALMOST ENTIRELY IRRELEVANT AT THIS POINT BECAUSE WE HAVE SATELLITES IN SPACE WE DON'T NEED DUMBASS TREES TO TELL TEMPERATURES, TREE RINGS ARE USED MAINLY TO CALCULATE TEMPERATURES IN THE PAST, I.E. HUNDREDS AND THOUSANDS OF YEARS AND ARE ONE OF THE WAYS WE KNOW THE EARTH WENT THROUGH COOLING/WARMING CYCLES BEFORE.

ok I admit it, I'm a climate scientist too. Obama is paying me top dollar to lie on the internet and cover for those leaked emails. THEY COULD RUIN EVERYTHING!!!11111

At 11/23/09 12:13 PM, morefngdbs wrote:

The onus isn't on us to prove anything...
we're not in a court of law !

The accusations made against the scientists are as serious.
Do you know the backlash a scientist could get for being exposed as unethical? That could end several careers. It's VERY serious.

Again wait a week or two and you'll see nothing's going to happen. Scientists in every domain reading these emails are just rolling their eyes once again at the general level of stupidity.

I for one do not see any global warming in my part of the globe...which is all I actually have to go on.

That's not how it works.
( I mean, fuck, does this come as news to you?? )

I've been to the Arctic more than once & I have see fossils of trees that used to grow there, in places where the closet tree is hundred of miles south of us.

There's so many misunderstandings in there...where to begin... ARRRR
Ever heard of continental drift?
Or maybe you aren't one to be dazzled by wild "plate tectonics" theories. And why should you? Has your continent visibly moved since you were born?

IMO its up to all scientists to prove we're the direct cause

Yeah that's what they've been doing for the last 20 years.

If you want to have a clear picture of the issue, then you have to dig through the papers and the scientific literature and I can assure you that IT'S REALLY REALLY BORING.

Don't listen to the media ONE WAY OR THE OTHER on science items, they get it wrong 90% of the time because they're not in the business of reporting science, they're in the business of making news entertaining.

AI, there is 0 reasoning with you.
I'm tearing my hair out trying to understand how someone can fail to understand an explanation so hard to keep living in a delusion.

You are absolutely NOT committed to the truth AT ALL.

But here's a challenge: in the coming weeks, MONITOR THE FALLOUT FOR THESE EMAILS. Go right ahead and see if any of the scientists have taken ANY flak for them and have had to resign / lost funds / retract papers as a result.

And keep in mind that if nothing happens ( nothing will ) THE ENTIRE SCIENTIFIC COMMUNITY IS IN CAHOOTS WITH THEM.

Congrats, your tinfoil hat is on. THE MIND RAYS WON'T GET YOU!

At 11/23/09 02:05 AM, Al6200 wrote:

The end is to hide the temperature decline

No, THERE IS NO TEMPERATURE DECLINE.
ANYWHERE.

http://bigcitylib.blogspot.com/2007/06/o n-divergence-problem.html

What the "decline" refers to is a decline in speed of forest growth which throws off ONLY ONE method of measuring temperatures AND ONLY AFTER 1960 and ONLY IN THE NORTHERN HEMISPHERE.

Tree rings are NOT the best way to measure temperature, we have far better instruments today and whatever it is that's causing them to grow more slowly IN NO WAY changes the data that's been gathered via much more precise tools such as satellites.

You were wrong, deal with it.

At 11/23/09 12:46 AM, Al6200 wrote:

But as of yet no one has presented a context that would justify hiding a decline

See, you're not even reading the explanation.

"The "decline" refers to the "divergence problem". This is where tree ring proxies diverge from modern instrumental temperature records after 1960. The divergence problem is discussed as early as 1998, suggesting a change in the sensitivity of tree growth to temperature in recent decades (Briffa 1998). "

As far as I know, none of this points even to a decline of anything, especially a global decline of temperatures, which is the conclusion you've instantly jumped to, and then used THAT conclusion to jump to even MORE conclusions.

You're acting coy like evidence would change your mind, but you're lying. This is all the evidence anyone could possibly demand and you're not even gonna read it anyway.

You don't give a shit.

Trying to give credibility to your flimsy explanations

My explanations? Oh, you mean the one given by several CLIMATE EXPERTS.

Oh wait, climate experts must be in on the conspiracy too! Yes that makes more sense than you not understanding obscure climate research relating to tree ring measurement discrepancies.

What legitamate scientific purpose exists for hiding a temperature decline?

http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=1530

Basically, as far as I understand, they were using tree rings to calculate temperatures reliably but then the data is all fucked up after the 60s and their theory is that it's due to human activity. So they suggest not using that method post-60s and he was talking about hiding that on his graph because it's irrelevant data as it's not as reliable as data they can get through other instruments.

It has nothing to do with any temperature decline anywhere.

But simply for you to think you knew what they were talking about enough that you could bust them on bad behavior shows your total lack of humility towards actual experts and their work.

Learn your lesson, next time you hear this kind of shit, take a couple days to reflect and see what their colleagues are saying because quite often, scientists are the only people who actually bust other scientists, not some crackpot deniers / lawyers/ politicians/ hackers.

At 11/22/09 08:17 PM, AapoJoki wrote:

Here is another explanation.

I mean, how much clearer can this get?

Meh he's too far invested into this whole thing now.

The scientific community is just rolling their eyes at this because they know nothing's up but he's convinced that THEY'RE JUST IN ON IT TOO! Anyone who's an expert and who doesn't agree with him must be in on the conspiracy!

9/10 chance this thing is in the next Alex Jones video.

I hope they take their proposal and shove it up their asses.

Also I vote we outlaw the printing press. No longer should scribes be deprived of their trade!

At 11/22/09 12:42 PM, Al6200 wrote:

there are always ways to explain the emails that would absolve them of any wrongdoing.

Yeah and it just so happens that those explanations are more than reasonable.

Again, no one's up in arms about any of this except the conspiracy nuts and the deniers. Don't you find that strange? If there was anything to this, the scientific community would be the first to shoot those guys down.

Maybe he was trying to "hide the decline"

THAT WAS EXPLAINED, DIDN'T YOU EVEN READ IT?
Not to mention NEITHER YOU OR I COULD POSSIBLY UNDERSTAND WHAT HE WAS WORKING ON. You have NO IDEA what he's talking about, all you've read is the word "hide" and assume that if he's "hiding" something then it must be super-secret and something THE PUBLIC!!!!1111111 can't see or ELSE he'd be RUINED!!!11111

When in fact it's pretty clear from all the explanations that all he's doing is omitting a simple set of data ( out of THOUSANDS THAT EXIST,HELLO ) from one graph / program / paper or whatever he's doing.

Not only do you not understand what they're doing, but YOU REFUSE TO TRY, instead thinking "hey I know they did something wrong now!".

That's just unacceptable, especially when you have the explanations STRAIGHT IN YOUR FACE and none of them are unlikely, irregular etc. and they make FAR more sense than to think they're somehow being dishonest manipulators.

I

can't

believe

this

crap

At 11/22/09 01:00 AM, Al6200 wrote:

Can you think of a use of the word "hide" that does not imply a deception?

Yeah, "hey, Joe, hide your balls when you're in public!"

And again now you're off on this tangent where instead of understanding what he's talking about, you're sure that if he's using the word "hide" then there must be something nefarious going on, even if you don't know what it is.

Again, this is the veil of ignorance.

No, it's NOT. That's how science works.
It's extremely likely that all he was doing is passing around his project to colleagues for review / testing / confirmation before he went public with it.

They do this ALL THE TIME.

It's not mysterious, it's not evil, it's not deceptive, it's NORMAL.

it is obvious to any thinking person that he does not want his data to face real scrutiny from skeptics.

You don't know what a skeptic is apparently. In his domain, skeptics are likely to be HIS COLLEAGUES because they're the ones with the expertise to criticise him, hence why he's showing his work to them.

He doesn't give a shit what the layman thinks about his data because THEY DON'T KNOW WHAT HE'S DOING.
And he surely doesn't want a competitor to scoop him on the data and publish it in an article before him or leak content.

That, again, is completely normal if you understand anything about how this works.

And keep in mind that NEITHER OF US knows if that's what he was actually working on! Was he working on an article? What was his program for? Why didn't he want it circulated?

You don't have a clue but you jumped to the craziest conclusion that if he doesn't want everyone to instantly see it, then he must be up to something.

and it seems sort of silly to equate Rowling's profit motive to the motive of a scientist receiving public funding.

It's got nothing to do with profit, it's... oh my god.. really? You're not understanding why someone doesn't want to make his work public before it's polished? What the shit?

Have you even ever worked on anything creative before? I have and it's the same thing on tons of levels. Whenever I make a Flash with other people we laugh at the reviews we'll get from dumbasses who suck at our games. WOW HOW NEFARIOUS AND EVIL! There's a reason why I don't make a game public and show it to every 12 year old I can find: I don't give a shit about their opinion because it's worthless in improving my end product.

But guess what, I do show it to peers and tell them to keep it secret.

HOLY SHIT CALL THE FBI, I'M OBVIOUSLY COLLUDING AND CONSPIRING.

Spin it as you will, but it is quite obvious that he doesn't want to deal with any criticisms that may undermine his conclusions.

Wow that's rich considering he's probably looking to publish this in a peer-reviewed journal.
Do you know how that works?

In fact, I missed something the first time I read it. He says that he "cleaned" it up knowing that he would respond to more "crap" criticisms. It seems possible that cleaning the data was their jargon for removing data sets that went against their set conclusions.

If you've ever worked with code before, you'll know that this most likely means his code was messy, i.e. no comments, badly formatted etc. and he was worried that people would bitch at him for making his code impossible to read. It has nothing to do with hiding data.

Again, take a hint: you don't know what he's working on, don't assume the worst.

I don't think that any person will buy your rationalizations of the evidence

Yeah only scientists will side with me :,(
But THEY'RE ALL IN ON IT!!

Don't you find it weird there was no fallout for this? Did those guy get fired? Are they being sued? This any order of scientist speak out against them to have them put under scrutiny?

Not that I know of. Woah it's almost as if the scientific community knew exactly what I did: those emails don't prove shit and they are entirely mundane and irrelevant.

And now sadly, 10 years down the line, morons like memorize will still cite this event as proof. "Hey remember in 2009 when they were EXPOSED!!".

What a tard. Please PLEASE don't fall into his camp, you're better than that.

At 11/21/09 10:06 PM, Al6200 wrote:

They don't explain it, they just minimize it. "Hide" was indeed a poor choice of words, because it showed that they were using deception in their research.

What research is that exactly? Apparently you know enough about that to be able to say that this data is relevant to the paper they were publishing and it was actual non-controversial, peer-reviewed results?
Sounds to me like all they did was omit a dataset that was wonky and badly tested. They do that all the time, for instance when a study that is badly done yields results they weren't expecting.

They just used the word "hide" instead of saying "omit" or "don't bother showing". That's what it seems to me.

He already said that he was sending it to colleagues, so the explanation about not letting people see the unfinished thing doesn't really work.

Yeah it does because they are colleagues in his domain who can review his code before he publishes it.
Again, when you publish a paper, that's something you do. You show what you're working on to experts you trust who can help you. You don't randomly leak your project to everyone.
But again that's what I'm getting from the email, who knows what the hell he's talking about, what his code does, what it pertains to etc.

This is evidence of exactly nothing.

You really don't see what's wrong with this? You think that good scientists are trying to make sure that their research doesn't get into the hands of critics?

This is exactly as nuts as saying J.K. Rowling doesn't want to show her Harry Potter book before the official release so the critics won't tear it apart ( before it's even finished).

It's nonsensical on so many levels.

Exactly, the scientists didn't predict it. They used the nature trick to hide the decline!

What are you talking about????

Sure, we all know how the climate scientists would never manipulate evidence, oust those who dissent, or change received dates or delete emails.

See how you're already imbued in the conspiracy? Even before knowing anything about the emails or understanding their context, suddenly you're suspecting the entire community of ignoring evidence, hiding data etc.

And now you're invested into being right about this. Now you'll try to rationalize this to see how you can still be right about it somehow.

It's too late for you basically.

At 11/21/09 08:27 PM, Al6200 wrote:

The word trick can be explained away, but the word hide cannot.

Yeah they do explain it in the exact same paragraph they explain the word "trick".

How can you possibly spin "but don't pass it along where it may get into the hands of the wrong people" as meaning anything other than "Make sure the skeptics don't get any information so that they can tear us apart or expose our fraud".

He's talking about a computer program he's made ( or some such thing ) that he's testing, probably before publishing his paper.
Duh he wants to keep it secret, it's like an invention or a new movie. You don't want every random person to see it before you're done testing it and polishing it.

This is ultra-standard stuff every scientist does all the time before publishing a paper.

And really, you couldn't come up with that explanation yourself? Doesn't that show you maybe don't know enough about this domain to come up to any sort of conclusions?

You're right, scientists didn't predict that nonsense. They used the nature trick to hide the decline.

No, there were no scientific papers predicting global cooling, it wasn't widely ( or even..not widely ) accepted by reputable climate scientists. They were no notable books on it.

It was just spin from the media. Look it up for yourself.

Scientists never said shit about global cooling in the 70's, that's a fabrication from the anti-global warming nuts.
And it's really say that it's repeated over and over and almost no one knows about this.

At 11/21/09 06:56 PM, Al6200 wrote:

But are those explanations likely or even plausible?

hmm let's see, it's either those extremely mundane, banal, common and likely explanations or a giant conspiracy involving thousands of climate scientists over the last 20 years.

hmmm http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/arc hives/2009/11/the-cru-hack/
Yeah

lol. Look at the emails in the Examiner link that I posted.

My god these are retarded. These are just horrible.
Holy shit, seriously? That's all it takes to take you in?

Like this first one:

Dear Phil and Gabi,
I've attached a cleaned-up and commented version of the matlab code that I wrote for doing the Mann and Jones (2003) composites. I did this knowing that Phil and I are likely to have to respond to more crap criticisms from the idiots in the near future, so best to clean up the code and provide to some of my close colleagues in case they want to test it, etc. Please feel free to use this code for your own internal purposes, but don't pass it along where it may get into the hands of the wrong people.

What the fuck are they talking about? I have no clue and neither do you or just about anyone who's read this. But the morons who made the article say fit to put in bold the "nefarious" parts. This is nonsense, complete nonsense. Like they bolded "but don't pass it along where it may get into the hands of the wrong people." What the hell does that mean? It could mean ANYTHING. Most likely it means "don't leak this shit before I publish my paper". That's like "ok, here you go Michael Bay, here's the first cut of the new movie, but make sure THEY DON'T GET IT!!!".

Woah how suspicious!

Or this:

"From Tom Wigley (acknowleding the urban effect):

We probably need to say more about this. Land warming since 1980 has been twice the ocean warming - and skeptics might claim that this proves that urban warming is real and important."

What the fuck is the Urban effect? How old is this? Who is Tom Wigley? What are they talking about? Why is confirmed land warming evidence of a conspiracy?

??????????????????

It just goes on and on, each email more irrelevant and incomprehensible than the last.

At 11/21/09 07:23 PM, Memorize wrote:

Correction: Past decade of cooling, as well as being wrong for the past several decades with their "Global Cooling will kill us all!" nonsense.

There was no "global cooling".
Scientists didn't predict that nonsense. It was made from bad scientific reporting from the popular media, aka your only source of knowledge on anything and everything.

p.s. you are still a dolt

At 11/21/09 12:43 PM, DeadSun wrote:

Now I met him again, and he denies the whole conversation. He tells me that supporting Obama will make you un american, and no one should support him, even if he is president. I played the recording and he says that I must of created that in a sound stage. Remade his voice.

Nice, you've found one of earth's most retarded person :D
Congrats on your special discovery!

At 11/21/09 02:25 AM, SadisticMonkey wrote:

And please, how is "it could be ANYTHING LOLZ" not a complete rationalisation of damning evidence.

Did you read the quotes?
They tell you nothing. Especially if you're a layman on TOP of not knowing who those guys are EXACTLY and what they are working on.

And on TOP of the quotes being presented as "serious incriminating evidence" in a really over-the-top hilarious conspiracy-theorist / X-treem lawyer fashion.

Once again, to imply this is all true, not only of those few scientists but of the ENTIRE movement is a conspiracy on a grander scale than any conspiracy ever pulled. You're siding with the creationists and the anti-vaccination people when you get into that boat.

I mean think about what you're doing. You're suddenly throwing out 20 years of climate research done by thousands upon thousands of scientists on the basis of a couple of emails you can't possibly understand the context or significance of?

MORE AT 11

Yeah I'm reading some of the quotes
( like from here http://michellemalkin.com/2009/11/20/the -global-warming-scandal-of-the-century/ ).

Really, they could be talking about ANYTHING.

Plus look at this gem:
"Fantasies of violence against prominent Climate Sceptic scientists:

Next
time I see Pat Michaels at a scientific meeting, I'll be tempted to beat
the crap out of him. Very tempted."

Yeah sounds like a pretty sorted case of bullshit to me.

Cars...

Cars = affliction.

God? God made the monkeys, didn't he?
Hence.... the big bang.

Big bang = oedipus complex?
Complex... life!

Evolution predicted this.

Maybe in the future, we will evolve more powers. I'm trying to touch my brain through my nose now.

Hmm brain... soft.

Soft = boron? I'll have to look into that. Someone answer these questions.

It's not that he's a freemason that scares me, it's that he's a REPTILIAN
:O
:O
:O
:O

He didn't swat that fly by accident. HE WANTED TO EAT IT

At 11/18/09 08:15 AM, domdom2323 wrote: "500 pleasing girls between 18 and 35 years of age, at least one metre 70 high."

Apparently it's important to be hot to be muslim.

Gaddafi said that women in the West "have often been used as pieces of furniture, changed whenever it pleases men. And this is an injustice."

Wow that's probably the most hypocritical thing ever said by anyone anywhere ever.
That's amazing. An entire galaxy probably exploded when he said that just to keep the universe balanced.

The muslims more than anyone treat women as livestock. From slave trades, stoning, rapes, harems, beatings, arranged marriages, daughter selling.... holy shit there's no one worse than those assholes. They've had the record for 1400 years.
They lock women up in their houses, deny them education, work opportunities... there's nothing they haven't done.

Anyone who's taken in by any religion in adult age is a FUCKING RETARD. Seriously. If you've over 18 and that shit still works on you, you deserve every beating you'll get from your loving muslim overlord.

and then proceeded to invite the women to travel to the holiest city for Muslims, Mecca in Saudi Arabia, even though only Muslims are permitted to go there.

IT'S A TRAP

I am a Catholic

Quit that shit
The Catholics are as bad if not worse than the Muslims when it comes to a lot of things. As far as I know, they're the two worst religions you can have today.

At 11/17/09 06:33 PM, SmilezRoyale wrote:

And that again is another benefit of a small sized state

Small size state is still a state.

Plus there is no definition for "small" in this case. Hong Kong is ENORMOUS. California is as big an economy as France.
So should France by split up into smaller governments? Or should California become its own country?

Large governments areuselessagainst fraud.

Just because they don't solve 100% of problems doesn't mean they solve no problems.
They protect against mounds of fraud and abuse and make everything smoother and more convenient without you realizing it.

For instance, you can know whether a food has peanuts or not in it. It's the law. Under anarchy, if you were allergic to peanuts, your life would just be harder and you might die at any time eating products made with no regulations whatsoever.
There's so many small things governments do that people take for granted, things to protect you when you don't even know it.

So whenever some big failure happens, people go apeshit over how evil the government is and how useless they are at their job.

Rob's public school is funded through taxation of 5000$ per household.

I can't think of a better thing to spend money on than education.
If you don't offer cheap education, poor people will stay poor and eventually your entire economy goes down.

Education is a great example of something people would NOT spend money on if they could avoid to because it's long-term. You don't see the effects before 20 years.

100/5000 = 1/50 or .02222 <-- this is the utility per dollar spent for the public school.

That's just not how you can measure something as complicated as this.

efficient and effective non-profit non-state organizations emerge, on the free market, like any other profit business, in response to demand.

Except they have to run on donations, randomly shut down or pay their employees peanuts.

Education existed before the government got involved,

There wasn't anything to teach.
We've all seen the results of "rich people only" education. It's called the Dark Ages.

At 11/17/09 12:53 AM, Warforger wrote: Ok why does this keep on getting deleted? This is the second time I've seen this thread.

I dunno, maybe it's because FUNK's account got hacked.

Or maybe because it's retarded because it looks like a complete 100% fabrication, the same kind of story preachers and politicians make up to "make a point".

Like right now I could go on a rant about how men are all sexist and make up some crazy elaborate ( cause you know it's true if it's long! ) story about sensitivity training and my bitch bra-burning hippy wife.

At 11/10/09 10:16 PM, gumOnShoe wrote:

Actually, Pokemon was the reason for the collapse of a bunch of sports card franchises because printing presses would rather print pokemon cards which were going to sell for more. And WOTC opened several WOTC stores just to sell pokemon cards. Trust me, it shifted back now, but Pokemon topped the charts. And I'm not sure that Magic has ever caught up with the initial sales. Probably annually MTG is doing better... but that's not really what this is about. :/

I dunno, I'm out of touch with numbers, but it seems to me that MTG is still on top.
Hasn't Pokemon been dethroned by Yu-Gi-Ho by now? Who the hell still watches that dumbass show?
Remember the movies and how they'd give you special cards for seeing them? Haha brilliant.

At 11/11/09 09:21 AM, morefngdbs wrote: I just bought silver dollars & silver bars, fifty cent silver pieces, NFld silver 5cent pieces and dimes.
I figured if they aren't making them anymore...they'll be worth something down the road.

I was right :)

Well they're not making Decipher's Star Wars CCG anymore and that ain't worth shit :D

But yeah with Asia getting richer and richer, I guess the price of everything collectible in the world will rise eventually.

Man I should start buying dual lands now... they were 15-18 on average 3 years ago and now they're up to 27-28... No one's ever going to not want those. No one knows what the fuck I'm talking about now.

At 11/10/09 09:57 PM, SmilezRoyale wrote:

At 11/10/09 05:43 PM, poxpower wrote:

Well, people are stupid and need to be controlled by higher powers right?

The only time a higher power should trump what the people want is when what the people want is not based on facts.
Democracy should dictate leadership, not reality.

I just find it fascinating that you have this sudden shift to a hard core civil libertarian when the topic is sex and not cash.

Whut?

And you couldn't be so inconsiderate to societal needs if you were to argue that people have a RIGHT to be stupid.

You can be stupid all your want as long AS I DON'T GO TO JAIL BECAUSE OF YOUR STUPIDITY.
If your stupidity costs me nothing, be stupid all you want.

No we have a government to protect people from their stupid mistakes and self-destructive sexual preferences.

The point is that you've yet to prove that jailing people who own cartoon child porn protects anyone or anything.

It's about as stupid as jailing people who like avocados because IN THIS CULTURE, BOY, WE DON'T TAKE KINDLY TO NO AVOCADOS.

At 11/10/09 11:52 AM, gumOnShoe wrote: I looked up a bit of the stuff and this is the earliest thing I've found so far, there still might be one more lead: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josephus_on _Jesus#Testimonium_Flavianum

Right Josephus. And pretty much the whole wiki on him is devoted to saying how he's a dubious source :D
And he's the best they have. Doesn't get better than Josephus.

I mean, read it for yourself, you don't need to believe me. Make up your own mind.

Frankly, barring some AMAZING discovery, Jesus's existence will forever be shrouded in mystery. Which isn't a problem for me since his existence changes nothing in my life :D

But at least it's more believable than fucking Moses and Noah. Now that's bullshit of the highest order.

At 11/10/09 06:07 PM, Ravariel wrote:

They are? News to me.

er SHOULD be.
Only people who desire to exploit the law would want it to be based on anything else.

Nevermind trying to figure out exactly what "rational" is.

An informed decision.
A proportional response.
Evidence-based.

It's hard to juggle all the laws to they're all equivalent when compared to each other, but first you start with the extremes, i.e. the laws that are self-evidently retarded and work from there.