From you, I was expecting Bubba Ho-Tep.

Are you referring to anything or anyone specific here? The closest scientific principle I know to this is Occam's razor: do not multiply entities beyond that which is necessary. in other words, we cannot say that a thing does not or could not possibly exist, but we can say that to discuss such a thing without evidence is pointless unless you are discussing a hypothesis and how to test it. I'll believe in a god or gods when evidence gives me a reason to do so, and not before.

There certainly is much we don't know. (Job security for those in the sciences!) That does not, however, mean that it is reasonable to believe a proposition for which there is no reliable supporting evidence. It is a natural part of human nature to believe such things, but this is not the same as being reasonable. Science is demonstrably the most beneficial tool for understanding the world we inhabit, checking that knowledge against new information, and revising it when needed. I don't see religion as a tool for knowledge, rather as one used to cope with what is often a hostile existence, to find meaning where there is none given, and to provide certainty where little can be found. It is a tool I will avoid using. I won't look down on those who do, but it is perfectly justifiable to criticize the ideas that result from it.

well said!

I can't and won't defend the parent post(good god, what a mess!) but i will add to your point and say this about theology. Insofar as it is the study of religious practices and beliefs, it has significant value. But much of theology is the study of the nature of God or gods. Most Christian sects will claim that the mind and perhaps even the nature of god is unknowable. The products of this effort to speculate about the unknowable are often severely at odds with what the people whose butts are in the pews actually believe. Theistic theologians often describe god as a "ground of being", a phrase so meaningless that it cannot be parsed.

Hell is separation from God.
I'll take it. Can I have it now, please?

The SCOTUS ruling in Torcaso v. Watkins, in 1961, overturned all of these laws. The do remain on the books, and some times it is a lot of effort to get around them, but in the end they are unenforceable.

Oh geez, somebody just apologized on /.! Prepare yourselves for the end times everyone!

The survey sample seems to small to be informative. Political polls, as inaccurate as they are, usually have much larger sample sizes. I would have thought a sample of at least 300 would be needed. Also, why are there an uneven numbers of responses for each photo?

And for the trolls who did post on the white woman's photo, their natural inclination would be to make some immature comment about b00bs; whereas for the trolls posting on the black woman's photo, the easiest cheap shot would be to make it about race. But that doesn't mean that there is actually a racially motivated difference in people's reactions to the photos.

If race were not a factor, then the "easiest cheap shot" would have been the same or similar for both photos. The fact that racial attitudes are baked into us by american culture, and are terrifically difficult to overcome, means that those attitudes are in play in any social situation.

Or if they propose pieces of legislation that chip away at those rights. You don't take away rights all at once, you slowly erode them bit by bit. You don't push for legislation that prompts the "That's crazy" response, you push for the "Well that's not so bad" and lather rinse repeat about 100x. Sure maybe no one is proposing what you say right now, but if you think they won't be soon after this round of SOPA and PIPA plays out, you haven't been paying much attention.

If you're only looking out for a giant troll to come crashing through your castle gates, you're going to miss all the little thieves that sneak in the back door and cart out your treasury of rights piece by piece.

It played on CBS on friday nites after the 11:00 news. Not bad, but she was no Emma Peel.

We've been cable free ever since me and my SO left college and moved in together. In the earlier days, before streaming services were what they are today, we had to rely pretty heavily on torrents to get what we wanted. We'd also occasionally visit our friend with the DVR and watch some shows with him on his couch while hanging out (I know, shocking). We watched the first 3 seasons of the Wire like that actually.

Then Netflix intro'd instant streaming to Xbox, and selection was terrible. It was hardly worth it if we weren't already subscribed anyway. But it has continuously improved over time and now makes up I'd say the bulk of what we watch now. The rest of our current viewing we'd get off Hulu (free version) streamed from my laptop to our TV via hdmi cable. There's so much available by those two alone now we haven't needed to download a show in almost 4 years.

There are still plenty of shows that we can't get (till they're available on Netflix disc), but at this point, if it isn't available through Hulu/Netflix instant, then it's not worth it for us to watch. Simple as that.

You would say that, as part of that clique. :)

I thought it had to be something of value.

While there are many valid complaints about DLC out there, there is one major misconception that does get perpetuated rather unfairly, and that is of Day 1 DLC. The perception is that this was content that was deliberately withheld from the disk to be charged at a premium as a way to bilk consumers. While I can't speak for all companies' strategies I can say that in general this is simply untrue, and more a product of the nature of console development nowadays.

When a game goes into Cert for first party consoles, i.e. the game is complete, nothing else is to be added to the disk so that Nintendo, Sony, and MS can test the disk for compliance to be published on their systems, you're looking at a 4 to 6 month period between the disk entering Cert, going Gold, and then going to disk pressing and distribution and then actually hitting store shelves where nothing new is or ever will be added to the disk (except for major bug fixes found in the cert process). But this is still 6 months where you have developers on staff with all the tools and expertise of development still fresh and ready to go. So unless you've already scheduled the next product cycle (which you shouldn't while the game is still in Cert in case issues arise), you've got plenty of resources you can dedicate to turning around day one patches and DLC. Cert process for DLC is usually much shorter, because it's all building off the engine that was already tested on the disk, and since there's no manufacturing or distribution lead time, you can usually have some pretty high-quality DLC available in pretty short time alongside your disk's actual launch.

Day 1 patches also get a lot of flak, but are often a much more preferable solution (from the developer and publisher's perspective) for fixing issues that are turned up in cert that don't require you to restart the cert process and potentially delay your game's launch. It screws over the users who aren't online, but in today's console environment, that's such a non-vocal and shrinking minority of users that almost no one in the industry is any financial trouble for not going out of their way to cater to them (actually usually the opposite).

Not that a lot of Day 1 DLC (or DLC in general) isn't still not worthwhile, but the idea that it was content the devs were sitting on and decided to exclude to screw over the customers just doesn't jive with reality. No matter how much content may be included on a disk that may or may not have been relegated to DLC, there is always a huge chunk of time between the disk being locked and the disk hitting shelves where the devs can work on new material that may be ready in time for launch.

As a current game developer, while I can sympathize with a lot of your points on a general level, it sounds to me like you worked at some particularly shitty companies if all of those things were perpetually true at once.

Not saying that none of them happen anywhere, but they certainly don't all happen everywhere. And after that, change the details and the job titles in your description and you could be complaining about just about any industry in existence today.