Oh I understand the issue just fine: the issue here is that you're asking for an objective process to agree with your personal preference; essentially a request for reality to adhere to your opinions rather than the other way around. And you think this is an intelligent request.
On the other hand, I don't spend large parts of my life exercising and worrying about my health. Why spend 30% of your off-time to perhaps live 20% longer? Especially if most of that time is going to be in a retirement home, worrying about bowel movements and whether there will be pudding.
In no particular order:
* The person who is fit/healthy is less likely to end up unable to wipe his own ass in a retirement home.
* Fit and healthy people get more attention from the opposite sex.
* Exercise is a natural anti-depressant.
* Exercise boosts libido.
* You'll sleep better.
* You can eat more.
Of course there are no promises. You could be in the best shape of your life and get hit by a bus tomorrow. Such is life.
Your job, not mine. Or, we have a domain not resolvable by science, as was the original claim.
That's easy then; I'll define "best" as "most records sold", look up the figures, and have an answer for you in no time.
What, that's not the kind of "best" you meant? Well then rephrase the goddamn question instead of telling me that I have to define what you're asing for.
Tell me, then, which is the best rock band in history, or is no knowledge of the subject possible?
First define "best".
If you think science can't give you the answer to something, it's only because you don't know how to ask the question.
Science has no heroes
Bullshit. Science has plenty of heroes, and their stories serve to fascinate and inspire future generations. What science doesn't have is the mindless fanboi-ish worship of heroes. Anyone who actually understands the first thing about science knows that even our heroes can be wrong; and most of them HAVE been wrong about at least a few things. That doesn't stop them from being heroes, it just makes them human.
"Why?" is still a valid question;
No, it's not. The question "why" in this case presuposes some kind of purpose, without any reason to believe that such a purpose exists. Just because you can phrase something in the form of a question doesn't mean that your "question" makes any sense.
Of course, there is video. Yes, there are SD copies and screeners, maybe even someone ballsy enough to cam and slip that on BitTorrent, but 1080i (true, not upsampled) movies are rare.
Say what?
Dude, either you haven't been paying attention, or you don't know how to use teh intertubes. Every movie is available as a torrent in full 1080p pretty much the day the blueray disks hit the store shelves. Many are available even earlier.
Even Blu-Ray hasn't been fully cracked yet (it is still a race with each individual movie.)
If by "race" you mean that the various release groups are tripping over each other in order to see which one can get theirs up in the shortest amount of time, then yes. "X-Men Days of Future Past" won't be available for purchase for another 3 weeks, but there's already a 720p blueray rip available on the torrent sites, and the 1080p version should follow in the next few days.
It's easy to copy music by plugging a cable from a headphone jack into a line-in jack on another computer.
Got you one better: in this day and age it's pretty much inconceivable that they would disable bleutooth functionality. If you can pair your fancy unpiratable player to a PC rigged to copy the incoming audio stream to disk, you've got yourself a digital copy with essentially no quality loss.
The problem is devices that WOULD be significantly cheaper to repair if parts were more easily (and reasonably) available and if the things weren't designed to be harder to repair.
I keep hearing this complaint - that there are devices out there which are "designed to be harder to repair" - but, at least in my experience, that's incredibly rare. More often devices are designed to be difficult to open due to concerns about warranty claims on modified items, and even THAT is pretty rare. Every electronic gizmo which I currently own can be opened with relative ease. Most of them I would be able to perform SOME repairs on, as long as it doesn't involve having to replace chips or capacitors.
There are some things that bug me - such as my Nexus 5 not having a (easily) replaceable battery. However, while I may not be happy about them, they're all design choices which the manufacturer made for reasons that have nothing to do with repairability. And, for the most part, they're things that don't really effect me (eg. it is highly unlikely that I will keep my Nexus 5 long enough to actually need a battery replacement).
Actually it's pretty well supported by data.
If it were well supported by the data I wouldn't have said that it keeps being repeated without any good evidence. In reality, all of these claims are only supported by the "research" of S.A. Marshall, and there's no evidence that the guy ever actually did the research that he claims he did. There's certainly no replication of his results. But there is evidence that he had a habit of making up data to support his narratives.
In fact, it's one of the reasons veteran units are so dangerous. Most of the members are actually trying to kill you instead of just shooting in your general direction.
This is like saying that the reason professional basketball teams are so good is because they actually try to score points. Silly, at best.
The actual reason veteran units are so dangerous is because:
1. They're experienced.
2. They're a (literal) example of the survivor bias; most of their crappy soldiers die off, shifting the bell-curve to the right.
That's tactics, not psychology. During the 2nd world war most soldiers did not want to kill enemy soldiers because they saw them as fellow humans.
That claim keeps getting repeated without any good evidence. Anyone who's actually studied history knows that it's complete bullshit. Human beings have been participating in organized murder and genocide for thousands of years. We have archaeological evidence of mass slaughter on every continent, amongst every major ethnic group. Plus we have evidence of lovely post-death atrocities such as scalping, ritualized slaughter, and even cannibalism; things which only further illustrate how unlikely it is for combatants to view the other side as "fellow humans". The idea that soldiers on the battlefield are reluctant to shoot at each other is complete nonsense.
I miss the culture of repair.
You miss overpaying for goods?
A repair culture exists any time it's significantly cheaper to fix something than to replace it outright. A couple hundred years ago there was a repair culture about everything including socks, because a new pair of socks was a luxury and continually patching old ones was way more economical. We stopped repairing our socks when they became cheap enough to throw away. Do you really want to go back to a time when you had to keep repairing your socks because you couldn't afford new ones?
I don't miss that. Not at all. I much prefer having the choice to either tinker with my gadgets when I have the time, or just buy new ones when I don't.
Ever looked at a 'natural' map, like Europe, Asia etc?
And ever looked at an 'artificial' map, like USA, Africa?
There's no such thing as a natural map, unless you're talking about the geological outlines without any political boundaries. You know why your "natural" maps look so chaotic as opposed to your "artificial" ones? Because the former are a result of centuries of conflict carved out according to what each tribe could hold, whereas the latter are carved out arbitrarily by one tribe (ie. the British) which can hold everything. The latter is no more "artificial" than the former; it merely ceases to have any meaning once the all-powerful tribe packs up and goes home. The power vacuum gets filled by the old tribes all going back to their original squabbles.
The British didn't create conflict by putting up new borders; they put a stop to ongoing conflicts which resumed once the British left.
The guys ruling there usually do one thing: 'cleanse' the previous ruling cohorts and replace every post with family members and far relatives. Regardless if they win an election or become rulers by a coupe. The idea that law is above everything, that corruption is bad etc. etc. is a strange concept to them. How should it not, during the occupation by europeans they experienced that the laws are not protecting them, they are only to the benefit of the imperialists.
While there's a small bit of truth to your conclusion, it creates the false impression that "cleansing" is a modern invention. That's bullshit. These tribes were destroying and enslaving each other long before the white man ever set foot on their continent.
So we've given them lower infant mortality and more regular food availability, while they continued to kill and enslave each other at roughly the same rate as before. And you think that "messed them up"?
How so?
Seems to me at worst we've made things slightly better for them. I'm pretty sure the women, at least, are happy to see more of their children surviving to adulthood. Plus we've given them the tools and knowledge to build better societies, even if it hasn't happened yet. How is that a bad thing?
Not to mention that you whole comment stinks of condescension. "Should have left those poor dumb Negroes to their own devices; they'd be much happier running around naked chucking spears at the local wildlife".
If anybody but a LEO does it, it is "searching for illegal pornography" and "trying to obtain illegal pornography" and a crime.
Neither of those are a crime in any jurisdiction I'm familiar with. Maybe there are some ass-backwards states in the US where that's true, but they would be the exception rather than the rule. Nice try though.
If all else fails, lower your standards.
