Like this guy?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Anything is possible but they have helicopter rides at the county fair around my neck of the woods. They take off and land right next to the fair way with an area about 30 yards roped off. Of course they approach and leave from the far side and away from the rides but its usually still over a parking lot.

I'm not sure I would be overly excited about his landing. Still some concerns but likely not dangerous.

There is a surface to air missile battery on the capital building and white house. Likely in other areas around there to.

Because of his slow speed and open cockpit they had the opportunity to watch him instead of just reacting. If he got closer or appearedt to be threatening to the white house he likely would have been shot down.

Apparently it's trivial to make an upper middle class income doing that:

http://www.straightdope.com/co...

So I ask, why does anybody give to them anyways? Many of them make more money than the people who give them money.

Most people (theist or atheist) I suspect fall into the "Live and let live" camp. However, when a theist chooses to engage me on the topic, I will NOT pretend to beliefs I don't have, and I will not accept flawed argumentation out of some fake "respect" for their beliefs. That would be to lie to them, something they claim to hate. If they had any respect for my lack of belief, they wouldn't have broached the subject, and it is hypocritical of them to expect me to show their belief more respect than they chose to show mine. The fact that even some atheists believe I should shows just how privileged theists are in society.

Not to the person who believes in alien abductions.

I've known several conspiracy theorists who believe that aliens exist, they abduct people for experimentation, and that the government knows about it. I can respect them as a person, without respecting the belief in phenomenon for which there is no credible evidence. I view ANY belief in something without credible evidence the same way, with skepticism. For some reason that is perfectly acceptable EXCEPT if the belief is called a religion. That makes no sense to me.

I figured that he would be denied a heart transplant because of his bad criminal and academic history, until his mom and the popular media play the race card, and in a huge public outcry the medical team is forced to reverse their decision, and then not long afterwards he tries to rob an old lady, shoots at her, runs over a pedestrian, and then dies after he crashes into a very racist utility poll.

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/cr...

I think you are confusing two different issues here. Atheism vs Theism is about Belief, Gnosticism vs Agnosticism is about Knowledge. My wife and I are both agnostic atheists. Neither one of use Know whether or not there is a god, but neither of us belive that one exists based on the available evidence and rational marshaled as justification for his/her/its existence. It is possible to be a Gnostic Atheist (Knowing and Believing in the absence of a deity), as well as an Agnostic Theist (believing in god without actually knowing). From my perspective, the truly scary to me are the Gnostic Theists who claim to know for certain that god exists, not because of any empirical evidence, but simply because... Their counterparts, the Gnostic Atheists at least have a view that is consistent with observable phenomenon and are generally willing to be convinced of their error with sufficient evidence. I've had Gnostic Theists on the other hand tell me flat out that there is no evidence they would accept of god's nonexistence to even open up the possibility that they might be wrong. That kind of absolutism is truly dangerous.

Atheism is not a religion, it is the absence of religion and therefore a "true believer" in atheism is an oxymoron. It's like if you ask someone what there favorite cola is. The majority will say Coke, a close second will be Pepsi, some percentage will name far less popular colas, and some will say they don't like cola at all. That last group is the functional equivalent of an atheist. To say that their favorite cola is "None" is not really correct because it presumes that they like cola at all, which is not the case.

That being said, there are assholes in any group, and one should not confuse the views and actions of the asshole as representative or indicative of the group. And in defense of some atheists I've seen accused of being militant (my wife being one), what believers often perceive as being militant is actually being unapologetic. My wife's family has on several occasions attempted to engage my wife in religious discussions only to get frustrated when she turns there attempts at conversion (which no matter what they claim, was the true purpose of these conversations) into a dialog where she explains her beliefs and tries to make them understand her view. They view her attempts to turn the tables as being disrespectful and rude because they start from the assumption that god exists and any discussion of the possibility that he might not be real is inherently wrong and disrespectful to god. As the previous poster pointed out, there are lots of things people believing for which there is no credible evidence. Just because someone believes in something does NOT mean I have to show respect for that belief. However, lack of respect for the belief does not grant me permission to show disrespect to the believer. The religious in this world enjoy a privileged status in most society and many view that privilege as their right, instead of as an artifact of previous intolerance of different religions or the non-religious. Therefore they have a hard time not seeing my lack of respect for their belief as a lack of respect for them as a person.

Not true. The majority of atheists do not care one whit what you believe. The majority of the country still believes in some deity or other, and unless we want to be social hermits/pariahs, atheists engage with the religious all of the time. Most people don't even know that I am an atheists, and I don't know most other peoples faiths because I simply don't care. Not our business how you spend your Saturday/Sunday, or what you do at home.

However, we have just as much right to weigh in on how our tax dollars are spent, or what activities are incentivized by exemptions from those taxes. My grandmothers church goes on missions to 3rd world countries and I used to support her efforts by donating money to pay for the trip, supplies, etc. However, when I learned that the missions largess was only offered to those who agreed to convert to Christianity, my donations started going somewhere else. I don't care what the poor believe, and so I refuse to allow my money to incentivize conversions I see no importance to or value in. I have no problem supporting Christians in need, but not at the deliberate expense of non-believers. That kind of quid-pro-quo is why many atheists now oppose tax exemptions for religious organizations. Not because they are religious, but because they are discriminatory in how they dispense the largess of their donors. I don't want to incentivize discrimination by allowing tax exempt status for what I view as immoral behavior.

Most atheists I know were born into at least moderately religious families. I grew up Congregationalist, my wife was raised Presbyterian yet all 3 (soon to be 4) of our children are being raised atheist. Despite growing up in the church, several of my siblings are also have atheist leanings. The more critical thinking is encouraged, the more likely someone will analyze the basis of their faith and reject it.

The problem with atheism (from the religious perspective) is that even if you kill off all of the current atheists, someone in the next generation will rediscover all of the flaws in the local religion that led to the previous batch of atheists in the first place. As my wife is fond of saying, many atheists (herself included) don't believe in God precisely because they read the bible and found it lacking.

I see no inherent need for conflict or a "war of ideology" as you put it between atheism and any particular religion. What every your particular faith, most of the world believes something else. If you buy into the "1 true religion" claim made by your faith (and almost every other faith) then all of those theists who don't believe what you do are just as destined for whatever fate is reserved for unbelievers. I've seen no religion that grants "Partial Credit" for having the wrong faith instead of none at all. Therefore, if Christians can tolerate the existence of Jews, Muslims, Hindu, Wiccans, etc. then Atheists should be just as tolerable. At least atheists don't worship a false gods.

Having been stuck with a Lumia 521 for the past 4 days, I see exactly why Microsoft can't: It's just a watered down, crappy OS.

Its only positive side is that it runs fluid on older hardware, but other than that it just can't pull off shit. In the cases where the app you need is available for WP, the API features needed to support all of the same features it has on Android just don't exist. So nice apps I use like Endomondo are missing a shitload of features, and no amount of work on the part of the developer can change that. (A huge thing that is missing: Inter-app communication.)

Not only that, but the base OS itself is rather light on features. Little things, like for example you can't set custom tones for texts, emails, calendar events, etc.

Also the whole "live tile" system sucks ass. Live tiles aren't actually live (more like 15 minutes behind, where Android widgets ARE live) and for most apps, there's no point in the larger size, and apps that are best for lists (like a calendar agenda) work like shit compared to their Android variant because tiles can't display vertically like Android widgets can, so like the calendar tile only shows one event at a time. And then tiles that preview things (like email) flip through objects so unless you happen to look directly at it, you might not be seeing your newest email. Fortunately they (kind of) copied Android's notification system to address these shortcomings, but theirs is shitty in comparison (for example, no object grouping.)

Another thing is that the OS can't multitask for shit. If you download a file that is going to take a while, you can't do ANYTHING else, you just have to sit there and watch the progress bar. If you try to do anything else, it'll just stop the download.

It really is a lame OS. There really is no reason to use it as your daily driver unless you're just a big fan of Microsoft and/or you really hate all things Google.

Well in many ways, Scientology is like Nazism.

There, NOW we have gone full godwin.

Isn't Nokia running the mapping services that most Windows Phone users prefer? Apparently Bing Maps leaves a lot to be desired. It would probably be in Microsoft's interests to acquire it. Trouble is, it's a money loser, and so far everything Nokia has given to Microsoft is a money loser.

There was a book called "The Fall and Decline of Nokia" (didn't read it, but read a summary) which basically said that going with Windows Phone was a (and I quote) "catastrophic mistake". Apparently they went with WP because they were afraid of competing with Samsung. However it seemed that their only two entries into Android have done rather well so far (Nokia X and Nokia N1) so that was probably a mistaken opinion. The Nokia X line only stopped because Microsoft killed it after they owned it.

Betamax was inferior in one big way though: It only held up to an hour of video, meaning a typical feature length release had to be split across two tapes.

Granted they fixed this problem with a new higher capacity tape, it was only after VHS (which never had this problem) had already overwhelmed the market.

LaserDisc, which was superior to both betamax and VHS in terms of quality, also only held up to an hour of video, and thus it had the same problem Betamax originally had.

Nobody can say anything definitive becaus because we do not have all the facts yet. It is suspicious when congress asks for all the correspondents over benghazi and hers were missing just to find out she used an outside server and email and decided to purge anything she didn't want congress to see. Whether that purge contained anything pertinent to state or not is still being determined.

As for 2008, she would have lost by a significant amount. People like to say Obama was elected because he is black but the truth is that people were sick of the same old shit which after Bush, a Clinton would have been no different. Obama won because he was new and not a legacy. He offered change simply by not being related to previous administrations. I do agree it was Bill who lost it but not in the way you think.