shirgall

I admit that if a particular God made his presence known it would change the calculation of Pascal's wager... but if all gods were real, Pascal's wager fails, just as if all God's did not show themselves (the current case).

If you feel the Christian God is trustworthy, you may have read a different translation of the Bible than I did... especially since he is omnipotent so all translations of the Bible, which are supposedly his literal word, would be exactly equivalent to prevent misunderstandings of the laws you are supposed to follow. 1 Corinthians 14:34 http://biblehub.com/1_corinthians/14-34.htm

If you are getting value from freedomainradio you should contribute. Contributions can be money, spreading the word, sharing interesting or unique knowledge, or something else that benefits the community. I don't understand your statement that this is tantamount to welfare. There are many organizations that help with such cases, including FlexYourRights that made the video above. Follow their advice and then contact these organizations if you have a bad encounter. I agree that disrespect for bad laws and bad people is a good thing in the long run, because it encourages curtailing their power, but such disapproval has always been present in American politics and it didn't work to date.

Fair enough. Totally a non-starter. We have to do what we can do that is effective. I think the right angle of attack is the bullshit tax law that initiated the arrest. "This man died because he didn't pay a $5 tax." And when people point out the assault Eric Garner did that escalated the incident to the choke hold, point out that the assault would not have happened if there was not a tax on cigarettes. This is actually great fodder for the "against me" argument to use with your friends and family. We will get nowhere with anyone claiming that cops should not have arrest powers because the state is bad in and of itself, but we can whittle away at support for law and tax proliferation.

The choke hold didn't kill Garner, the constriction of his chest did. Also, what the video does not show is the alleged assault of a police officer in the minute before he was placed in the hold. Don't get me wrong, it was wrong to kill Garner, especially over something so trivial as tax evasion. I hope the civil suit causes serious changes. The most serious change would be to get rid of laws that are so egregiously bad that it causes such levels of ire and disrespect that people will inevitably get into conflicts with police. The state is capricious and unevenly applied in its torture of its chattel. That doesn't mean you should confront a cop on the street because it can get you killed.

Everyone has the power to use deadly force to defend themselves from death or grave bodily harm, not just the police. The power in question is that given by the state to the police to arrest people for crimes. These police would not have been threatened by this individual if they had not tried to arrest him for a bullshit crime. While the police may not be criminally liable for making an arrest here, an arrest that went horribly wrong, the civil liability for this should be enormous. ...And the bullshit crime should be gotten rid of.

Kurosawa must have hated the state in some small way. Beyond the examples of the absent state in the Seven Samurai (those ronin are leaderless samurai), Yojimbo features a magistrate coming to town, which effective stops the feud of the families warring over a small town. They spend their time making the town look perfect for him, and bribing him and his people. The local mayor is completely ineffective. Etc. etc. The setting is the period after brutal wars between various potentates all over Japan (which he covers somewhat in Ran, a remake of King Lear set in Japan) so it may have been effectively ruler-less, but I wouldn't call it the ideal state of liberty.

I like how Penn and Teller explain how a trick is normally done, and then do a trick that looks absolutely the same, but could not have been done the way they described. Marvelous misdirection.

The point of the video is that you don't fight them on their own territory. You protect yourself by behaving the right way and you fight them later in court.

But you can, supposedly, will yourself to eat the right foods and not eat too much. Most of my weight gain was stress-related food binges, and a VSG puts an easy end to that. 75% smaller stomach makes it rather difficult to overeat. But I still sometimes tell myself it is a cheat because other people don't have to do it.

My wife proposed to me.

I'm sorry, the Buzzfeed aspect of it was secondary to me, as my first impression of the video was "make men look like buffoons" and I was trying to understand if that was just me or if it was a common reaction. Perhaps I am oversensitive to the "make men look like buffoons" aspect of television comedy and it bled over into my impression of this video.

To me, the easiest way to defuse holiday gatherings is to do more non-holiday gatherings, imho. The families that fight the most on Thanksgiving are the ones that never eat together the rest of the year. Or do a "game night". It's the people that get so hung up on traditional this and that that add stress to holiday gatherings the most, and that brings out all the other demons. On the de-FOO side, though, this is not an option, but I can understand the guilt. My suggestion though, is to surround yourself with people that like a slow dinner with scintillating conversation, or a get-together to watch a movie, or an opportunity to go through a role-playing game or longer board game, and don't hang it on a particular date, and you will probably miss the stressful family gathering less and less. Let me add that there are more and more games where you are not pitted against everyone else but rather you are pitted against the game itself... like "Zombicide!" or "Forbidden Desert".

As for words being violent, the legal standard (which seems universalizable) for a credible threat requires the additional element of an initial action to carry out that threat. The threat does not have to be realized, but words (and often body language) are seldom enough. A credible threat is necessary to charge someone with assault as it used to establish jeopardy. (The other elements are ability and opportunity.) I'm boiling it down a lot here, and I am not a lawyer. Check out http://injury.findlaw.com/torts-and-personal-injuries/elements-of-assault.html for deeper discussion.

I have a problem with this. If a particular God appeared now, after all this time, he's kinda admitting to being a liar. Why would he let billions of people have alternative beliefs when it would be so easy to correct them? Why is it necessary heaven real just because God exists? After all, it could be part of his plan that I be an example for the others, but once my utility is complete, why does he need to reward me? What's in it for him? Then there's the billions of pieces of evidence that the cognitively dissonant claim are "tests of faith" rather than counterexamples to millennia-old narratives. Would he admit that all these monarchies are really in his name or would he strike them down as apostates? What on Earth would appear on the front of Canadian money, then? God appearing and settling one question creates more problems than it solves.

Or weight loss surgery regret. I sometimes look upon the fact that I resorted to vertical sleeve gastrectomy as a failure of willpower, discipline, and a bunch of other loaded adjectives.

The ubiquitous nature of cameras in cell phones has also had an effect here, including an intense effort to remind police that recording their activities is legal.

Well, there is a problem with the method, in that one is trying to forestall state control by controlling a state. How many people are going to risk their livelihood for that?

And, I've answered it. It's not moral to act to kill the innocent. However, you are not compelled to act to prevent the death of the innocent, but you might be considered to be scum. End of scenario. Somehow when confronted with the trolley problem this is never enough.

Because the arguments are designed to break universality, and you spend all of your time deconstructing that. The lifeboat problems are meant to limit your ability to react with all of the options normally under your command, to the point of them becoming ludicrous. If you act a person will die, but if you don't act more will die. There are no other choices. Is this realistic? I do answer the problems with universal rules, but in the Short Attention-Span Theater of the Internet, and the very real possibility that I'll die of old age before changing someone's mind make it kinda fruitless.

I think you missed my point. The looters were in the government, not the rebels. The Tea Party removed tea from royalists and rebels alike, as an act of war. The government stole items of value (with an army!) from people who had harmed no one, thus making them looters. I probably bent the metaphor too far.

Because both groups were co-opted by entrenched interests, either on the left or the right. They both started from the same point -> no bailouts for Wall Street, but with different justifications. It was only after being co-opted that Occupy turned violent (and communist). It was only after being co-opted that TEA turned Social Conservative. The history of looting in the USA starts with Washington and Hamilton sticking Western Pennsylvania whiskey makers with the bill for the Continental Congress. This is not positive at all. Instead it showed, early on in the country's formation, that powerful lobbyists will get the government they want. The Tea Party example you gave was different because they destroyed the tea so no one could have it, rather than taking it for themselves. It was an act of rebellion, if not an act of war. I don't see anything going on these days as similar. I see what's going on now as a call for "Do Not Rebuild".

http://store.steampowered.com/search/?os=linux

If you like that one, you'll also like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unsolved_problems_in_computer_science