How the fuck is pay-before-consume an entirely unnatural model for entertainment? I can't imagine the act of purchasing a prostitute an entertainment service which is unnatural to pay beforehand. I can't imagine how going to see a movie and deciding "meh, that was a 2/5 or 1/5" and deciding not to pay for it.

The only thing that makes sense in your model is walking down a street and seeing a street performer, where I decide to pay if I liked it enough. The thing is, I didn't intend to be entertained by that street performer just by walking down the street. Sure, if I like it enough, I will pay after the fact. But for fuck's sake, if I download a movie (pirate it), I expected to be entertained, whether or not I liked the movie after I watched it.

Even 2000 years ago, you paid the ticket price before seeing the play.

Incorrect. This may indeed be your perception, but it is factually untrue.

The problem is not doctor's pay. You have no fucking clue how hard it is to become a doctor.

The problem is the uninsured, which the law requires hospitals to care for regardless of their ability to pay, so the people who actually can pay must pay more to make up for the people who can't.

I didn't like it, but there were other much better ways to spend one trillion dollars of the U.S.'s money and over 4000 lives.

I'm a little shocked... you seem to be telling a true story! I work in a startup in San Francisco with a bunch of computer nerds and I don't see any adderall at all.

In college, I once took some Ritalin to study for a test. I swear to god, I inadvertently wandered onto some porn before it kicked in... and then I ended up masturbating for THREE FUCKING HOURS STRAIGHT. I shit you not.

Duh - I wasn't insulting you, and clearly stated that I don't think your mother is a whore. Reread the comment, in particular the quoted text to what I was responding to.

This question makes it seem as if climatology scientists don't actually have overwhelming evidence that human activity has caused excessive greenhouse gases which lead to climate change. So, when I ask "is your mother a whore", you get pretty defensive as if I am engaging in crass insults - but as stated I didn't call your mother a whore, and I don't even think your mother is a whore! But obviously the question makes people think there's actually something to the content of the question, while the person who asks the question can hide behind the fact that they aren't actually stating belief in a positive answer, or even have evidence in any way, about the question.

When these debates happen, I would love to find this glue between one side and the other that is a great (but hypothetical) solution. Dealing with AGW does not necessarily require people to enjoy their lives less than they did before. If everyone replaced their car with a car that gets 10 times as efficient gas mileage, then they have the same lifestyle.

What "climate change fanatics", as their opposition calls them, wants, is for society to move in the direction of getting these technologies to help mitigate AGW. It's not for making everyone's life miserable - or "changes in their lives that they won't enjoy".

Sure, granted, some tree-hugging granola hippy in Berkley wants some doosh bag Texan to stop driving his Hummer - but that's an emotional tribal response. The real, scientific, and what I believe to be correct way to tackle this problem is to create solutions to the greenhouse gas problem that climate scientists warn about. And that's what pisses me off about these stupid political debates about AGW - it's about some guy in California and some guy in Texas in a pissing match, or an ideological argument, instead of saying "here are some problems we know about - let's make some solutions". And there ARE solutions!!

This is a worthless argument (Primary vs. complimentary) designed to distract people. The climate change the "fanatics" are talking about is directly correlated to certain human activity which produces greenhouse gas, and is caused by human activity. The percentage of that 1 or 2 degree Celsius raise in worldwide temperature as it relates to "primary" or "complimentary" is joke. The data says that AGW exists - which you don't deny - and ~95% of the knowledgeable scientists believe AGW will cause a catastrophic change for humanity in the next few centuries.

i.e. If the "warming" by 3 degrees in the next 200 years is only caused by 1.4 degrees of AGW, that 1.4 degrees is still catastrophic. You (and more specifically your argument) are the one muddying the science and the warnings by saying "well, it doesn't matter because volcanoes also increase greenhouse gases too".

Is your mother a whore?

Hey, hey, hey... calm down. I didn't call your mother a whore. I don't even think she's a whore! I just think it's important to ask that question. There's a rational debate going on here, after all.

Until it has been definitively proven what are all the factors of your mother prostituting herself, and then, any proposed evidence has been proven to deny her being a whore, it is silly to "panic" and give political control over to the people who are trying to deal with your mother not being a whore.

I really like some of your ideas. Unfortunately, the effectiveness of your message is completely diluted by the insults you're throwing out. Someone who you need to disseminate the information you're saying (e.g. the left) will simply not absorb the information because you've peppered the information with attacks, to which their emotions will not allow their brains to rationally think about it.

How about putting forth some good, rational proposals and data instead of claiming the "great swollen heads" want to "control humanity" and "destroy the economy of the United States".

The UN charter on children's rights has no authority in any jurisdiction in the U.S. You may have well said that schooling is in the French or Russian or Chinese constitution as well.

+1

Holy shit, at first I thought you sounded like you were being a typical slashdotter trolling dick... but everything you said was pure gold. This idea of sending a primitive nuke over to my home of San Francisco would suck ass for me, but it is, at this point in time, 65-50 year old technology. No the U.S. would not blow up the world... we would completely dismantle NK from top to bottom, and it would likely take less money than Iraq, and would likely have 100X more support, and there would (likely) BE NO NUKES INVOLVED, even if we had to use our own military to invade . There is no case for survival of a poor Emperor against a democracy whose citizens supports the war, along with tons of fucking money and technology.

When NK people there do "nuke tests" for "deterrence" they really need to understand two things: 1. 1950s war technology and 2. Very undeveloped people trying to get to the 1960s. The many military powers against them have been in the last 6 decades for a while now, oh, let's say I'd say 6 decades or so.

What US people need to know is that they - the DK - are a small, bullied people, who are trying to be badasses (via their government). They have impressive technology for such bullies. But as soon as they try to capitalize on their apparent self worth, they are fucked by so many players - Chinese, Japanese/Americans. Their country will seriously dissolve within a few weeks. So we can guess that they know that and won't hit SF because of that. And in the interim, they are just going to bully a little further until it happens. The Americans will never let them get to the point where they can actually bomb SF. It's just a game.

I really do believe, regardless of politics, that the natural and expected outcome of their continued bellicose attitude is just the beginning of reunification.

No, I don't. It's very hard to change, 50% of Americans don't even vote, and it would require a lot of people who benefit from it to decide to give it up.

This isn't a good metaphor. Even if you think 95% of the power should be with the states vs. 5% with the federal government - e.g. if you believe states should have all the power - that doesn't have anything to do with how the federal government is elected.

Here's another way of thinking of it. Imagine a small state with two counties. They are two completely separate counties with separate jurisdictions within the state. They both vote for their state government. There's two ways those counties could vote for their state government - by electoral college or by popular vote. Why should the voting power of one county be less than the other? Why shouldn't each person's vote count the same? This is an independent question of how they divide the laws and jurisdictions of their counties and of their state.