shirgall

Vice News has been getting a lot of scoops... like it's a leak channel or something. Why are they the first ones to get the beheading videos, for example?

But what almost every religion says now is that there is a God that is an free-willed, omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, omni-benevolent being who created and continues to interact with the universe. Even this simple start, without all the other baggage which is clearly bogus, is logically inconsistent. Believing it would not uplift me and make me feel great for very long, and there are many stories of people having a "crisis of faith" that doesn't sound very uplifting either (which is why religious manipulators only highlight the happy endings of return to delusion). If you start from first principles to build religion, you might get as far as animism, but empiricism will sink it pretty quickly. If you throw away the history, then how do you select from the thousands of mutually incompatible religions out there? Without the history aspect, there really is no easy way to judge one to be better than the others, is there, because they all rely on untestable assertions.

I wouldn't go so far as to say it was a bad employer. The hiring manager is looking for people happy and motivated to perform the assigned role. If I have my eyes on another prize maybe I won't be happy. Thus, I posted on Self-Knowledge...

From an phone interview today, I've been told that because I want to do something different that I want more in five years that I don't really want the job I've applied to, but the job I applied to is one I've done well for a decade. Sure, I see it as a stepping stone, as a way to pay my dues to get mindshare in a company, but when the role I really want is not there, what else can I do? The interviewer said I should step back and look at what I really want, but I feel pretty clear about what I really want. I don't feel I did the wrong thing by being honest with the interviewer, but I obviously sunk my own boat on getting gainfully employed. Figured I'd blurt this out as a form of catharsis. I'm kinda devastated at the moment.

I should point out that Michelle Obama currently runs a "Council on Women and Girls" too at the White House.

1700 3oz DVD cases with DVDs in them is about 318 pounds of DVDs... and they are probably split up amongst a few distribution centers rather than all being in one place. DVD cases are also slightly larger than CD jewel boxes. Eh, not worth spending too much time on this, but it sounds like someone did not partake in "Just In Time" production, let alone the growing trend of digital delivery over physical. I've watched all the Zeitgeist material online through legal channels, never really had much of a need for a physical copy.

We had soybeans in our rotation in order to get more nitrogen into the ground, but we certainly got more per bushel for it than corn, wheat, or oats. Yield was lower, though, but not much. This was back in the 70s and 80s, though, so perhaps things have changed since I was a farmer's grandkid.

Nothing wrong with questioning anything... where everyone needs to be worried is when they get into a situation where they think absolutely nothing could change their mind.

Yeah, I have to agree with this. being seized with indecision because death will result in either of a bichromatic choice is not equivalent to the intentional killing of another. The actor of the killing is not the person deciding whom has to die, but rather who set up the scenario in the first place. The switcher is neither intent on killing, nor allowing death by negligence or recklessness. From a legal perspective (not a moral one), murder and manslaughter are out the window in either outcome. Morally a person forced into such a position can only do the best they can in the moment, and the choice is not fundamentally clear. Every Spock will seek more alternatives and not act lest they be condemned for agency. Every Kirk might feel it's better to act than not to act less they be condemned for cowardice. Every Bones will cry, "I'm a doctor not a railway engineer." I've already spent too much time for a lifeboat problem, but it's been fun.

Brown v. United States 256 U.S. 335 (1921) "Detached reflection cannot be demanded in the presence of an uplifted knife." ---Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. The solution to the trolley problem is related to the doctrine of necessity (sometimes called the doctrine of two evils) and the immediacy of making a decision. It is better to break the law, even if it endangers others, if you act in a way that causes the least loss of innocent life, and very few people will fault you for making a decision in the brief moment you have. It is just as reasonable to freeze up and take no action at all because you neither planned nor predicted the dilemma. You have no way to get more information, or more options, and it is therefore most likely better to kill the one than kill the five, but you are hardly forced to. This is *not* the same as the Doctrine of Philosophical Necessity which is about materialism, determinism, and the implicit lack of free will.

Well, the FBI report is here: http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2012/crime-in-the-u.s.-2012/tables/8tabledatadecpdf/table-8-state-cuts/table_8_offenses_known_to_law_enforcement_by_connecticut_by_city_2012.xls#disablemobile Is does seem to show 0 murders. Beyond that it's supposition. As far as the media goes, they made a big deal about not playing the 911 tapes from Newton/Sandy Hook because they were "too traumatic." The guys at No Agenda played the whole thing and there was nothing traumatic to hear. Was *that* a media conspiracy, or just laziness? It looks like facts that don't support the narrative aren't interesting enough to talk about. It's not a conspiracy, it's just sloth.

I have to say that Stef's story about finding a therapist that was really interested in what he had to say made me extremely jealous. To date, my experiences with therapy, counseling, and coaching have involved people that didn't really seem to care what I had to say or how I felt.

Gotta love a video that has a "no true carnivore" argument.

If I were to criticize the lines of reasoning in this thread, it would be the title itself. To me it's obvious that we're all godless here, but that some people have a delusion, either pounded into them by adults when they were children, which is abuse, or forced upon them by society, which is manipulation, and most likely a combination of the two. What I decry is the tremendous wasted effort of perpetuating this abuse and manipulation and arguing about which methodology of abuse and manipulation is the best, let alone demanding respect for mastering one particular flavor of abuse and manipulation yet managing to be able to live an otherwise healthy life. To me there is no compelling evidence to follow any of the mutually-exclusive religious systems in common use. I simplify my life by subtracting away what cannot be backed up with evidence until I get to something satisfying and workable (a top-down system). Stef has spent a considerable amount of effort to build up from the bottom by starting with first principles, and deserves respect because he backs up each and every step. I find most of his arguments compelling. Some I am still working on, but that's beyond the scope of this thread. I don't see anything comparably respectable about any of the top-down systems being proffered, even my own. I am muddling through, like most people do, and I don't demand respect for that.

Buying property is fine as long as it has a return that's reasonable... that is, a good place that's close to good work and meets your comfort needs... but don't buy a place just because. Paying off your credit card every month is fine, but watch out for the cards that have annual fees for no reason and so on. The thing about renting is yes, you don't build equity, but you can also walk away a great deal more easily and you are not responsible for repairs and other upkeep that can totally blow you out of the water as an owner. I own a house in the middle of nowhere make in the late 1970s with well water and a drain field septic system. Hidden expenses come out of nowhere all the time. This is not a situation for someone just getting started with finances. Here's another piece of advice: build up savings on the order of six months worth of pay as soon as you can. Fairly liquid savings at that. This way you have leg room to make changes in your life. NEVER live check to check if you can help it.

Never borrow money to do anything that does not pay a return (the return can be non-monetary but should be long-term), even to "build credit".

One of the linked videos from the above is about Cultural Marxism and since it is a Buchanan vehicle decries atheism as a Communist Dogma for tearing down the west. I get that a lot in my own wanderings where people think that atheism is tantamount to socialism.

Marriage is a socially-constructed and reinforced price-fixing scheme to reframe a simple contractual agreement with ceremony, social pressure, and merchandising (and even franchising when it comes to who can actual officiate over such an event). At least it is based on (that is, exploits) instinctual feeling to child-rearing.

The "women and girls" phraseology was used by Hillary when she was the Sec'y of State, too. This effort is nothing new, it just has a new face.

Yeah, if I remember correctly one example he used was that there was a time that a tan indicated you worked outside in the fields so it was not desirable... but then everyone moved to working inside so a tan became an indicator of someone that had free time to be playing outside in the sun and it became attractive again.

Yeah, the argument is "if each free trade is beneficial to all parties involved then if all trades in a market are free that market is beneficial to all parties in that market." This is *not* a fallacy of composition, it is induction.

There's a lot of competition to get a good CEO and the right CEO for your organization. The really good ones get paid a lot because they can demand it. If an organization could pay less and get as good work, they would. If it doesn't get the best price it can, the stockholders will sue the board for breach of fiduciary responsibility. Everyone decries well-paid CEOs, but darn it the good ones make far more money for their companies than they cost. Obligatory disclosure: I've worked for CEOs in the past.

http://theweek.com/article/index/268360/how-our-botched-understanding-of-science-ruins-everything Here's one certain sign that something is very wrong with our collective mind: Everybody uses a word, but no one is clear on what the word actually means. One of those words is "science." Everybody uses it. Science says this, science says that. You must vote for me because science. You must buy this because science. You must hate the folks over there because science. Look, science is really important. And yet, who among us can easily provide a clear definition of the word "science" that matches the way people employ the term in everyday life? So let me explain what science actually is. Science is the process through which we derive reliable predictive rules through controlled experimentation. That's the science that gives us airplanes and flu vaccines and the Internet. But what almost everyone means when he or she says "science" is something different. To most people, capital-S Science is the pursuit of capital-T Truth. It is a thing engaged in by people wearing lab coats and/or doing fancy math that nobody else understands. The reason capital-S Science gives us airplanes and flu vaccines is not because it is an incremental engineering process but because scientists are really smart people. In other words — and this is the key thing — when people say "science", what they really mean is magic or truth. ...

Ann Coulter gets money from attention. She gets attention by making controversial statements and getting pulled into talk shows to talk about them. When people see her having an off the wall argument they get interested in her writing and buy her books. It's not clear she believes "in" anything. It's a very simple formula that works for her, and the only way to derail it is to ignore her.

Getting it to automatically log in does take a little bit of setting up, including some changes to security settings. Because of the possibility of losing my phone, I don't have it enabled but I did try it at one point. Often the lastpass keyboard gets disabled by updates of other keyboard apps, as they love to reset your settings.