shirgall

A seminal moment, to be sure.

I think the point is that using nukes on our own country to repel invaders makes very little sense, and the video A4E cites makes some pretty good arguments that destroying enemy cities makes very little sense too. The negative social consequences of using nuclear weapons alone seems like too high a cost. Far too much money and effort is spent on nuclear power, nuclear weapons, thermonuclear weapons, nuclear monitoring and detection, and radiation medicine for it to be a hoax. The sun is far too bright for thermonuclear explosions to be impossible. I've observed ISS directly with a telescope. If it's a balloon it sure is fancy. At such a high altitude it's pretty put together for such a thin atmosphere. I have a friend who was paid to make an ipad app for use aboard it. I've observed a launch at Cape Canaveral too, for that matter. But that was the space shuttle and a heck of a long time ago now. I didn't stay for the landing, though, it was going to be five days later, and on my birthday.

As much fun as it would be to become a shake-down artist with legions of mindless drones and government enforcers at my back, I don't think I could live with myself. Sure, I can be an insufferable prick already, but it's another thing to take people's money on that basis alone. Besides, such organizations are really good at devouring their own over perceived slights and office politics.

I think this raises an important point. Once a law is made about a form of pollution, people abdicate their responsibility in determining whether or not their activity is damaging to others. "I'm following the law" is a lousy excuse, and a lousy lever to harass your neighbors. In the case above, I suspect your neighbors, rather than have a conversation with you, appreciated the ease in which others could force you to get what they wanted without negotiation, or even contact.

Pollution is about as aggressive as letting your dog wander off your property and poop on your neighbor's lawn. Others will expect you to take reasonable measure to contain your dog, and may ask you to clean up your dog's mess, but there's no cause to get into a violent confrontation about it. If you don't make good, you will be labeled a jerk and everyone in the neighborhood may start refusing to do business with you, etc. etc. If your dog wanders over to the neighbor's house and eats a chicken, or endangers a child, then it starts escalating.

I like Tyson getting people interested in science (especially astronomy), but--as others have pointed out already in this thread--his uncorrected misquotes and political wranglings detract from his moral standing.

My point was that the value of the dollar is not primarily determined by speculators, but by the transactions that everyone makes in dollars every day. When bitcoin is used as a medium of exchange greatly in excess of its use as a hedge against other currencies then it's volatility will cease and it's long-term value will emerge.

The difference between dollars and bitcoins is that there are millions of transactions in terms of dollars every day, where people are exchanging it for a standard of something else, and are tracking the change in that price both in the short and long terms. People track milk, bread, gasoline, a night out for dinner, an oil change...

Fair enough. I think he was being more proud of the bravery of saying it where he would expect to be challenged than necessarily pride in being religious. If someone comes to us and said, "I accept reason, and evidence, and empirical knowledge, but I am still unconvinced in this one area, and this is why" that is a lot different than some troll that says, "The Bible is Truth and if you don't start there you are idiots." For example, OtherOtie says this: There is a lot to work with here!

My wife took the pope's statement in the second video as a humorous exaggeration and not casual acceptance of violence.

From tonight's chat during the show.

Shots fired! Are you really picking on me for posting my subjective opinion within an objective framework about preferences? I separated the two statements with a paragraph break, I swear!

This has been going on for a long time. Uncle Scrooge... Donald... and the three nephews. Mickey, Minnie, and Goofy have tons of Aunts and Uncles... For too much information, see http://www.donaldisme.dk/fecundity.htm

Any businessman that does not make it as easy as possible to pay him is leaving money on the table. He'd accept payment in goat's milk if he could easily convert it into something he values (and so should anyone else).

In discussing this subject with my teenage daughter, she is not consciously aware of "shit tests" but definitely engages in the behavior. She seems pretty oblivious to it. It appears she has learned it from her female peers from middle school onward. Or from the shows they like to watch, such as "Pretty Little Liars" etc.

Capitalism isn't a faith system, it's true whether you believe in it or not. The Pope merely seeks protection for mass delusion.

Yeah, it's funny that they put Hitler on the right, because at the time he was on the left. Jonah Goldberg wrote a book on this called Liberal Fascism.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/style-blog/wp/2015/01/15/boy-who-came-back-from-heaven-going-back-to-publisher/?tid=pm_lifestyle_pop

Is this not a variant of "hard to get"?

"Shut up!" he explained.

Value is subjective. Sorry if it seemed like I was equating subjective and objective terms, but I was stating why my confidence in bitcoin was low. That doesn't undermine the objective statement that bitcoin's value is based on people's confidence in it.

"Money is valuable because it's money" is a simplification of the idea that money's utility comes from the perception (the confidence) that it can always be exchanged for other things of value. One thing that really undermines bitcoins value is the volatility of its value. Yes, it was valuable because it was money, but how valuable? Compared to what? To me, bitcoin's value increased when there were more stores that accepted it as currency, but decreased when it was clear that most stores were immediately cashing it out. If, instead, a chain of businesses were exchanging bitcoins during the progress of a product from raw materials to finished product and other currencies were completely left out of it, that would justify more confidence in bitcoins as a medium of exchange.

Especially since in a free transaction all participants end up better than when they started, so everyone profits. This is a stumbling block for socialists as they require there to be a victim for the ideology to progress (pun intended).

By defending the victims with the best tools they have. It's is not about attacking the abusers it's about defending the abused. A screaming match won't solve the problem, but the calm, rational intervention may stop the beating in the moment, and give pause for potential beatings in the future. And it's a signal to the victim that "it doesn't have to be this way."

The fact that the Story of Stuff's premise is "We make too much stuff and too little of what we really want" should be a hint as to their bias.