Comment Equal Opportunity? Harvard? (Score 1) 529
One or more of those words do not mean what you think they mean.
One or more of those words do not mean what you think they mean.
Also, you're arguing a metaphor.
Thus, probably unwittingly, cause if your comments on the topic lack anything clearly it is having wits behind them, you go off to hide in your corner from the straw bogeymen coming for your "stuff", clutching at your gun to defend you.
Because, clearly, poor people are getting ready to take everything from you. $1000 today and other nonsense.
Here's the thing boyo...
Can you shoot viruses with them guns of yours? How bout bacteria?
Can you shoot 'lectricity into your wires and oil and water into your pipes?
How about simply shoot some bread on your table?
You know... stuff that will appear suddenly as what amounts to entire nations (there are countries with fewer people than 3.5 million truckers alone) suddenly end up without food or medicine or pot to piss in, and in the long run, without the ground to bury their dead.
Following your "Fuck them I got mine" economic policy.
How many bullets does it take to stop that guy who's off his meds and out of a job but perfectly able to steal a truck, get drunk on stolen booze and go ramming it into other people's cars?
Or simply take HIS gun (You think you're the only one with a peashooter?) and gun you down for no reason cause he's off his meds? You some gun-ninja, with a six sense for danger?
No... not fear. We know you got that covered. DANGER-sense. Like what Spiderman has. No?
Well... no wonder you're shaking in your boots then... you'd have to be shooting at everyone you don't know.
And that's a lot of boo-lets...
How about that other guy who decides to steal the copper out of them power lines and gets both himself electrocuted AND takes out half the local grid in the process?
Are YOU gonna guard all the power lines everywhere by your own lonesome, clutching your pathetic little Saturday night special?
What's that? You're gonna PAY someone to guard them? Will that be $1000, $5000 or more? Lotsa them power lines...
BTW... did you know that you can use transformer oil (from power transformers) to run engines?
Yeah... And they like have these pathetic locks on them. You just kick them a little. Then you drill a hole in the transformer, drain the oil into a can and leave it to rot or catch fire. Someone will come along and strip it of the wiring later.
You're gonna pay that? Oh right... guns... Your gonna shoot the transformer into working. No... wait... you're gonna pay more guards and police...
But fuck that... right... You know what that oil does best? It works GREAT in chainsaws.
Heatin don't come free, you know. But LANDSLIDES do!
You're gonna love those... they take out houses, roads, tear up underground pipes...
You'll be paying that shit too, I know. Right after you shoot that landslide.
But hold on... Them poor people don't have medical or any kind of insurance.
You won't mind them going around all sick and stuff... urinating in your yard... taking shit where ever they can... and eventually dying all around your place.
Right-right... you're gonna shoot that too. Shoot the sick right out of them.
Then shoot the medicine and doctors INTO hospitals to treat YOU when you need them instead of all them poor people swamping the system.
Then you're gonna pay someone to bury/burn the corpses, sanitize everything, give you daily checkups to make sure you didn't catch anything... must be great to be able to afford all that on your private tropical island.
And that's all before your next door neighbor, your huntin/fishin/masturbatin buddy, comes to your door with a plan to shoot himself some stuff.
See... his trucking business went belly up on account of all them self-driving trucks not needing his local services in your neighborhood cause nobody's buying shit there anymore. So... nothing to transport.
You and your ex-billionaire buddy are the only ones there - and you got yourself all the shit you need behind your guns and walls and moats and crocodiles and drawbridges and all that other shit you built around your personal "one-person prison".
Come on... He's your buddy. He's just gonna shoot you a little. And take your crocodiles.
Even their aircraft worked on a form of teleportation.
As for the nukes... it was actually a case of many dirty bombs exploding under an energy shield, down through a hollowed out core of the planet which was mined for hundreds of thousands of years.
Here:
Finally they projected it. What a brilliant picture! They had thought it might be fuzzy such as you get with heat waves. But the light that had traveled for over a year was crystal-clear and straight.
There was the imperial City of Psychlo. Circular tram rails, streets down from its cliffs like conveyor belts. They even carried the idea of mining into their city design.
Huge, bustling Psychlo! The center of power of the universes. The hub of the great, cruel claw that raked the bones from planets and peoples everywhere. There was the three-hundred-two-thousand-year-old monster itself, spread out in its sadistic and ugly might!
Neither Jonnie nor Angus had ever seen a live city of that size before. A hundred million population? A billion? Not the planet, just the city above the lower plain. Look at the trams. Rails that ran in circular spirals. Cars that looked for all the world like mine cars but full of people. Mobs in the streets. Mobs! Not riots. Just Psychlos.
You ever see so many beings? Even in such a tiny size one could see mobs!
They were daunted.
They compared it to their own towns, even to their own ruined cities. These didn't measure up to it at all.
What arrogance to attack anything like that.
They were so awestruck and impressed they hadn't even been looking at the transshipment rig of Psychlo. They missed the beginning and had to track back.
They adjusted the projector lens and position to get the transshipment platform of Psychlo more centered and enlarged.
And then they saw the whole sequence, just as it had occurred right after Jonnie and Windsplitter had raced across the Earth platform.
First, there were the Psychlo workers racing out to leave the platform clear for the incoming semiannual from Earth. There were flatbeds lined up to receive coffins and personnel.
There was the first shimmer of arrival of the Psychlos Jonnie and Windsplitter had knocked down.
Then a small puff.
There were the Psychlo workmen flinching back.
A force screen had gone on! A dome over the platform had closed instantly to contain that small explosion. It could not have been an atmosphere armor cable. Some sort of shimmering, sparkling screen. Transparent but very much there.
Trucks had time to start up before anything else occurred. One huge emergency truck had lunged nearer the platform, evidently to handle the minor blast. A whole minute went by.
Then the first lethal coffin exploded!
A big âoeplanet busterâ nuclear bomb, nestled into a bed of dirty mines.
The force screen held.
The holocaust was contained. The boiling, ferocious blast had not even bulged the screen.
Then another shock as the second coffined âoeplanet busterâ went off.
The screen held! Good lord, what technology to build a screen like that. What power it must take to hold it.
Another shock inside that dome. The third planet buster. It and all its ancient, very dirty atomic bombs. The screen held.
Psychlos were racing toward it from far off. Those near the platform were flattened by concussion transmitting through the screen.
The fourth contained bomb went off. The screen still held.
But the transmitted concussion had hurled the emergency truck backward. Nearby buildings lost their glass.
The ground was shaking as though hit by gigantic earthquakes.
A nearby building suddenly dropped downward as though sucked from below. Other buildings began to go the same way.
The fifth bomb went off!
And seen in slow motion, first narrowly, then more broadly, the entire scene went into a churning, boiling mass of atomic fire.
No, something more! Molten, flaming fire was erupting in spots all over the plain.
They widened the angle quickly.
The whole Imperial City of Psychlo was sinking and all about it sprayed up rolling oceans of molten fire.
The circular trams, the mobs, the buildings, and even the towering cliffs were drowning in a tumult of liquid, yellow-green flame.
They hastily widened the view.
And they saw the entire planet of Psychlo turn into a radioactive sun!
The recording ended. They sat limp. âoeMy god,â said Angus.
Jonnie felt a little sick. Psychlos or not, he had just watched the end product of all their planning and risk a year ago, and he was hit with a feeling of guilt. It was not easy to take responsibility for that much destruction.
He had thought the bombs would wipe out the company headquarters and perhaps the imperial City. But they had created a new sun.
âoeWhat happened?â said Angus.
Jonnie looked at his feet. âoeI pulled ten tabs out of those coffins. We didn't want to set a time fuse and then have them go off on Earth. We knew the bombs were a bit contaminated. Had radiation leaks. They were old and their cases were old. We handled them in radiation suits.â
He made a dropping gesture with his hand. "In the fight, I dropped the fuse tabs on the platform. I forgot them. They must have been slightly radioactive, and when they hit the Psychlo platform, they made a small puff of explosion. They are what caused the minor recoil last year.
âoeThey triggered the force screen on Psychlo that the Chamcos mentioned. And that force screen was good enough and strong enough to contain the blasts.
âoeI read in a book Char had that the crust of Psychlo is riddled with abandoned mine shafts and tunnels, a complete sieve. They call it semicore mining. The blasts went down. One after another they pounded deeper and deeper toward the molten core of Psychlo.
âoeThe fifth explosion penetrated the core. The next five exploded in that.
âoeI think all a nuclear weapon does is simulate a chain reaction into existence. And in addition to blowing out the planet crust, the fusion continued. And is probably still going on and may well go on for millions of years.
"Psychlo is no longer a planet. It 's a flaming sun!â
Angus nodded. âoeAnd all the transshipment rigs in the whole Psychlo empire, keeping schedule, not knowing about it, fired into that radioactive sun and blew themselves to bits!â
Jonnie nodded, a bit spent. âoeJust like we did in Denver a year later.â He shuddered. "Terl fired himself into a holocaust. Poor Terl.â
That's what it took to yank Angus out of it. âoePoor Terl! After all the rotten things the demon did? Jonnie, I sometimes wonder about you. You can be cool as ice and then all of a sudden you come out with something like 'poor Terl'!'
âoeIt would be an awful way to die,â said Jonnie.
Angus straightened up. âoeWell!â he said just like he had popped up out of a dive in the lake. "Psychlo is gone! The empire is gone! And that's one thing we don't have to worry about anymore! Good riddance!â
In the book, teleporters all check in with the homeworld at a set date to send back ore and to replenish their atmosphere, food and workforce stock.
As there is no hyperspace communication or FTL travel, once the Psychlo world gets turned into a "radioactive sun", everyone just keeps checking in, one at a time, and blowing themselves up.
To clear up...
Not every planet got turned into a sun. That happens only to the main planet which had that special breathing-gas of theirs which reacted violently to uranium.
On other planets, only their central mining camps around the teleporting platforms explode - with all their remaining supplies of atmosphere and food.
Which they can only get from their home planet.
Go to Red Letter Media (of the Mr. Plinkett Star Wars prequels reviews fame) and check out their Best of The Worst episodes.
Or just check out the Things review.
Battlefield Earth is Oscar-worthy compared to some schlock out there.
You just have to read it early enough... Like when you're 11-14.
Old enough to be interested in SciFi beyond simple space opera but not yet learned enough to be repelled by bad or pulpy writing. Though Hubbard sorta-kinda covered his ass there by claiming in-universe that the book was intentionally written that way.
E.g. On the inside cover of my library copy someone wrote "money is an idea backed with confidence".
Someone found that information so novel and fascinating, they had to write it down.
On the inside cover of the book they've read it from.
Just try imagining what could someone write on the inside of the DVD case of the movie.
Also, the book is full of some really fine pulpy action and adventure.
And it even manages to make negotiations and CONTRACTS exciting.
The movie literally put me to sleep first (and only) time I saw it.
Plus, the book is not dumb enough to have them flying harriers and raiding Fort Knox and doing all other nonsense which was not in the book.
Later though... One might find the book even more fascinating, but in a different way.
Like how much it echoes stories intentionally written to be a satire of an ultra-right pulp fairytale.
All of it clearly without the author realizing how steeped in those ideas his writing was.
Though, entertainingly, PP is close to the mark - and then he goes on the whole "Christians are being persecuted" tangent which is pure nonsense.
But he got the opening line right:
We live in a world of empiricism, where the concepts of faith and religion are - if not outright mocked and denigrated - are under constant pressure.
Which again proves that the truth is subversive.
Yes, we do live in a world of empiricism - because that's how the world is, whether we like it or not.
And such world will always put concepts of faith and religion under pressure. Just like it puts everything else under pressure.
It's only that PP finds the reality expressed in that sentence threatening.
I'll digress for a moment... I want to show a familiar example to point out something.
Remember how in "Godfather 2", Fredo tells Michael's son, Anthony, about a "secret" for catching fish?
How he'd always say a "Hail Mary" when throwing the line and he, out of all the kids, would catch the most fish.
Then later, we see him still doing that just before he gets "taken out" by Michael's assassin, Neri. SPOILERS!
Now, that's a '70s movie, done by a Catholic. Not very "observant" as he puts it himself, but still very "religious".
So, that is not "Fredo the idiot" - that is "Fredo the unloved child, becoming a traitor out of unrequited love and childlike innocence". And John Cazale pulled that off perfectly.
Today, that SAME character would be someone with mental issues.
Someone who does not understand the world around him, with that story hinting not at his childlike innocence but at his childlike mental capacities.
That's the '70s.
Showing that by then even for a religious Catholic director something like saying a prayer before every action that you feel is up to chance is something that only a child or someone as innocent as child might do.
An adult doing that... That's someone who's a bit iffy. One way or the other.
Cause Fredo sure as hell has issues. He's not an idiot... but he has emotional issues written all over him.
Compare that to Barry Pepper's Private Jackson in "Saving Private Ryan", praying for "true aim" and "victory in battle".
Which feels completely in character AND not disparaging at all. It feels like something that a young man might do in the war, during 1940s.
And nobody invented that prayer - he's quoting Psalms.
Which are basically a collection of ready-made prayers for various "troubles" one might find themselves in, and for saying "thanks god" for being delivered from them.
There are like 150 specific ways to cry "HELP GOD!" and to say "Thanks god!" just there.
Same thing with all those saints, protectors and patrons of this and that, and their corresponding amulets.
Or with all those relics of various saints, apostles, pieces of "true cross" etc.
Or with all the gods in Hinduism, or all the kami in Shintoism.
For everything out there that may harm or benefit one's existence and/or circumstances - there is a prayer, an amulet, a saint, a kami, a god...
But none of them deal with empirically provable aspects of the thing they are supposed to be influencing.
There is no "make sure that fire has flames" god or amulets - though there are dozens of fire-gods.
Or a kami you could pray to "to make water wet". Though there is a water kami.
Or an amulet with a saint whose job it was to make sure that apples are apples and not oranges. Though there is a saint of apple orchards - St. Charles Borromeo.
There is even a "fear of mice" saint - St. Gertrude of Nivelles.
Because, when you DON'T LIVE IN AN EMPIRICAL WORLD, when you live instead in a "Demon Haunted World" - you need a protector, an amulet, a prayer for everything.
Whatever it is you're not certain of, be it fish biting on a particular day or bullets hitting their target - just use the right amulet or prayer and shift odds in your favor.
If it works you got the blessing of your deity/saint/kami - if not... ask for forgiveness. And just imagine what could have happened HAD YOU NOT prayed.
By inventing all those demons and gods, men was thus able to stay in control of the uncontrollable events in his life.
Beg for mercy and should it not work, beg for forgiveness. Problem(s) solved. ALL of them.
Until science and technology became reliable enough and advanced enough that all those demons and saints stopped mattering.
As their disciplines which became irrelevant were replaced by technology and science which didn't need saints or magic to work.
There are several saints who deal with wolves and hunters - but no saints of guns. Though some are trying to jam a gun into one of their long cold and dead hands.
There is no "elevator prayer". Or an amulet to prevent your soda/beer can from spilling when you open it.
Or the saint of Internet or the WiFi and radio kami. Faith in god(s) won't get you a better mobile signal.
Cause when all things around you work on powers you understand and according to laws of science that you don't even have to understand for them to work - that eats away at the need for supernatural forces.
Most people being flown on airplanes may not understand aerodynamics, but you'd be hard pressed to find someone who believes that they are being carried by angels or jinns in employ of their particular airline.
How would passengers on a plane today react to a pilot who crosses himself and says a prayer before takeoff?
You know... Like Fredo or Private Jackson did. For additional entertainment, imagine the pilot being a Muslim.
Faith in old "tools" for dealing with uncertainty, like prayers, gods and amulets is, by the very nature of the modern world which functions on the rules of technology and science, being replaced by TRUST in the technology and science.
With an added bonus that not only is there no punishment for not trusting science (unlike the built in punishment for the lack of faith) - the science itself DEMANDS that you question it.
And if you do prove it wrong - you just end up with more science.
Whereas if you prove faith wrong... there's nothing but a silly fairytale.
It is an unfair fight where one side always wins and the other must lose. No wonder PP feels that religion is being "pressured".
Cause it is. By the reality of the world and its "empiricism".
The "conclusions" of "abnormal behavior" were made from observations that kids would rather be at home playing instead of sitting in a class AND from the fact that young humans will seek sexual satisfaction but avoid rejection.
That sounds like something a ROBOT might find strange.
Not a human being. Particularly not one who actually went through puberty at some point in their life.
In short... like most psychology studies out there, this too is most probably bullshit.
"Is giving rides to
others somehow requires a different skill set than
driving yourself?"
None at all.
That's why I always argue that school busses should be replaced with kids just hitchiking to school and back.
Same goes for all other cases wher one needs to be driven somewhere safely and on time.
Any random stranger with a car will do.
Try using that logic to reason out the cases of those who "want to be martyrs" armed with pressure cookers full of ball bearings and explosives.
I cannot recall if there were dead though.
http://www.nytimes.com/1988/10...
PARIS, Oct. 24-Government officials, religious leaders and film directors condemned today an apparent arson attack against a Paris theater that was showing Martin Scorsese's film ''The Last Temptation of Christ.''
The fire Saturday night left 13 people hospitalized, 1 of them in serious condition.
...
Before the film opened, the Archbishop of Paris, Jean-Marie Cardinal Lustiger, condemned it without having seen it. He said, ''One doesn't have the the right to shock the sensibilities of millions of people for whom Jesus is more important than their father or mother.''
After the fire, Cardinal Lustiger condemned those responsible for what the police suspect was arson. ''You don't behave as Christians but as enemies of Christ,'' the prelate said. ''From the Christian point of view, one doesn't defend Christ with arms. Christ himself forbade it.''
There have also been attacks against a new Claude Chabrol film, ''Une Affaire de Femmes,'' which is about a Frenchwoman who was executed for performing abortions. A viewer died of a heart attack after seeking to flee one theater after a teargas bomb was set off.
Even the "arguments" from the pulpit, both before and after, are the same.
It's almost as if they are coming from the same Abrahamic sources and same cognitive delusions.
How 'bout Vietnamese?
Russians? They simply HAVE to be commies.
They all came from commie countries at the time and as such they all must still be commies.
Oh... wait...
They left those countries cause they didn't like conditions there and clearly "being commie among other commies" wasn't their topmost priority.
Or it could be that you're talking out of your ass cause your head is overflowing with shit?
Don't you worry, there's a solution for that too.
Note how that link is about as relevant as yours? Actually... Maybe a bit more as you could put that on your head...
BTW... did you know that when you link vague, unrelated and loaded statements typed into google - that proves nothing?
But it still makes you look like a dick?! No? Well... don't thank me yet. There's more.
Like when you do that double quoting thing, it means that you are informed of and support the point of the asshole above doing the same linking to vague, unrelated and loaded statements and the rest of his dickery.
Which results in most of those results "supporting his theory" being from racist blogs?
So, you're not only full of shit - you're a racist dick by association. Good on ya!
As for Netherlands... Well... for one, your underlying premise is bullshit.
BTW, that's synonymous with "bald faced lying", FYI. So is quoting it, when you clearly show that you COULD check the factuality of those claims but... well... you know...
Anyway, that whole "Netherlands gun violence is high by European standards" thing - that's bullshit.
If we compare gun homicides they are actually rather median and mode for western and northern Europe.
Also, quite negligible and non issue. One guy could rack up twice those numbers in an afternoon.
You wouldn't call that symptomatic now, would you?
Anyway... on to stupid things as Reagan might say.
Sweden - annual firearm homicides total - 2010: 18; Rate of Gun Homicide per 100,000 People - 2010: 0.19,
Norway: 2; 0.04,
Finland: 14; 0.26,
Denmark: 11; 0.20,
Netherlands: 33; 0.20,
Belgium: 36; 0.33,
France: 127; 0.20,
Germany: 51; 0.06,
UK: 33; 0.05.
Feel free to compare later data too, where there is any across all the countries for the given year.
And where there are no outliers like that thing in Norway in 2011, where a lone crazed religious crusader might fudge the statistics of the entire country.
So... Now that we have those 33 deaths by "shooting"...
Onus probandi dictates that you prove your bullshit claims that you've taken up to defend, that:
- ALL those deaths are caused by Moroccan immigrants, i.e. "Them Moroccan gangbangers" as you like to call them,
- further, once you prove that ALL those murders are committed by Moroccan immigrants, that ALL those murderers were also Muslims.
BTW, it's spelled with an I... just so you know... Boy you sure are learning shit today.
Meanwhile, back in reality, back in 2009. there were 341528 people of Moroccan origin in Netherlands.
Meaning that, even if you do dig up those facts, at best you get to say you're not... how you put it... bald face liar.
But your racial and religious prejudice will still shine like a beacon of rectalism.
Cause even if you do manage to scrounge up the data supporting your position, and ALL those murders really WERE committed by Moroccan Muslims - that's still 0.0096% of Moroccan population in Netherlands.
Or do you also argue that EVERYONE in USA is a child molester?
After all... 2012 numbers of reported cases of child sexual abuse in USA come out to 0.019% of the entire population of USA.
And last I checked... that's like twice as many as you and your buddy need to generalize inflammatory statements and attach labels across wast populations.
Son.
Wowsers!
You've both missed the point of his friend's "issue" with "why a woman would want a truck".
You actually managed to hit the nail of his friend's logic right on the head but failed to connect the dots.
Why would a woman want a truck?
Women don't need to "carry big heavy things" - that's what they have men for. With their trucks.
I guess it's hard for him to imagine that a woman would have a need to carry large and/or heavy items?
That's EXACTLY right.
Because women have men to do such chores for them OR they have "no such need" and thus do not "own any such vehicle".
It's the part of that whole door-opening, heavy-things-lifting, unscrewing jars, walking on the side of the side-walk facing the street etc. etc. etc. life-long training for men - instigated by the Ladies of 19th century aristocracy whose ideal in life was to marry-up or mistress-up as high as possible while keeping the lower-statured competition down with expensive fashion and ridiculous rules such as which fork to use with which food.
Times and (some) fashions slowly changed but silly rules became culture, good behavior and common sense.
In past generations' defense, how could they have known about trucks and similar marvels of the modern age?
How many "gender differences affect the experiences" papers can we find that have been rejected because all the authors are male?
And would we even hear about those on account of such "research" being highly corrected for political correctness?
I mean...
I know a guy with a masters in "gender studies" whose ideas about women boil down to "they get ahead by giving head" (exact words were "by sleeping ahead").
At this very moment his Facebook page has the following joke: Domestic violence is when your wife won't give you any and won't let you have any from others.
He is also rather successful in art and culture work, popular with women, once had a suspended sentence for breaking the other guy's limb and has been known to publish on his Facebook page "funny" songs about his real life friends "playing with children".
Nobody tells a paper with only men to get a woman co-author just to make sure gender bias has been properly vetted. Though it may not be a bad idea...
You mean nobody's pushing for more women in science, thus trying to correct for gender bias science-wide instead of doing it on paper-by-paper basis? Really?
Hmm... Must be because women are actually NOT underrepresented in hard sciences and there is nothing to correct for.
Hmm... Something seems fishy about that line of reasoning... can't quite put my finger on it though.
Any circuit design must contain at least one part which is obsolete, two parts which are unobtainable, and three parts which are still under development.
