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Brentb

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Everything posted by Brentb

  1. Brentb
    Printed in 1878. The truth about taxation isn't new.
  2. Brentb
    It's a matter of integrity, which basically means acting in accordance with your principles and values. You cannot value freedom and value the thoughts and opinions of people who would have you imprisoned. What you can do is lie to yourself that you value both of those things, which has consequences like lack of trust in yourself and others, confusion, and possibly self erasure to name a few.
  3. Brentb
    People who propose disastrous "solutions" are dangerous, especially when they are very likeable and/or insightful at pointing out problems and issues
  4. Brentb
    I use the term "anarchy" because I want it to be better represented and become normalized.
  5. Brentb
    I'd recommend getting on the call-in show. You have too much going on here for it to be adequately addressed in a forum, and you have a baby on the way so it's imperative that it gets addressed as soon as possible!
  6. Brentb
    Are you expecting or is this purely hypothetical?
  7. Brentb
    Wouldn't an entrepreneur have a plan and a timeline in place for making enough money to support his business and himself?
  8. Brentb
    In the U.S. there is a Do Not Call Registry where you can exclude your number from cold sales calls. I've had to use Wesley's statement to deal with charities that I had given to in the past. It seems like a lot of charities just take my donation and use it to send me junk mail and pay people to call and annoy me. For scams, I just hang up.
  9. Brentb
    You can buy life insurance policies on your kids as soon as they are born. These policies are very inexpensive because kids typically don't die for a very long time. Such policies can have riders for abducted kids stating that they'll pay out the value of the policy to recover your child. This would make it profitable for a company to track down your child and bring him back to you.
  10. Brentb
    I think there's some validity in the message of the commercial, in that girls will likely choose to cultivate that part of themselves that is valued most by others. The commercial may annoy you because it's stupid. Boys are also being told to put gross things down, not mess up their clothes, and that they're cute or good-looking probably just as much as girls. Are we supposed to make a special effort avoid complimenting little girls appearances and make sure they mess up their clothes? Or It may annoy you because the entire public education system is already set up to give girls an advantage (grade-wise anyway) over boys, since it prizes obedience and conformity over exploration and creativity. I find it annoying because what's wrong with 18%? Why should it be any higher than that? If most women aren't interested enough in science or tech to make it the primary focus of their career, then so what? Only 18% of the NBA is white. Maybe there should be some PSAs to let white people know that they can jump, and that they should just focus and practice harder.
  11. Brentb
    The simple answer is that truth isn't decided by opinion. If 49% of people believe that people can hover in mid-air today, then people cannot hover today. if 51% of people believe that people can hover in mid-air tomorrow, then people will still not be able to hover despite the majority opinion. If 80% of people believe that government theft can have positive results and boost the economy and take care of everyone, it doesn't mean that it has any bearing on reality. I agree with st434u also. You're probably wasting your time.
  12. Brentb
    This is the response I gave to an analogous hypothetical situation where Man B commits an immoral action against Man A, and consequently Man A commits some immoral actions. In your case "Man B" is government and "Man A" is the soldier. You can see the full discussion at: How do you determine responsibility where other people are involved?
  13. Brentb
    If no one had ever drilled in the Gulf, would the oil beneath it simply remain there forever? Or would it eventually leak out anyway due to various seismic events? It always seemed to me that the effects of oil spills are exaggerated and played up in the media by governments and environmentalists so that they can extort more money out of oil companies.
  14. Brentb
    It sounds like your inner critic is taking you over. If you haven't heard of an inner critic, it's that little voice in your head that's telling you that I'm an idiot and that this is a bunch of touchy-feely bullshit. It's quite possibly an inner parent. It makes it difficult, if not impossible to have fun. There is no way to get rid of it, but you can learn to distinguish it from yourself and consequently enjoy yourself. I learned to deal with it through doing a weekend course called the Landmark Forum and also doing Improv Comedy classes. Books won't get rid of this - believe me, I tried. Practicing interactions with people is necessary.
  15. Brentb
    You do feel bad. You called in because you're ashamed to be alive. The point of what Stephan and Michael were doing, as far as I could tell, was to distinguish where the shame was coming from in your past and to isolate it so that you wouldn't continue walking through life in some nebulous cloud of antipathy. You can justify all you like, but it isn't anyone on this board that you need to convince. It's your conscience that doesn't believe any of your justifications. The good news is that you do have empathy. The bad news is that it's eating you alive. It sounded like you were having difficulty connecting with your feelings and those of your victims. This may be a stupid suggestion, but I find that the arts helps me to find feelings. Novels can put you into other's heads better than anything. If you google "bullying novels" you can maybe find something that will help the feelings come.
  16. Brentb
    Look at the lives of the writers and people in general that you admire most. Did they live with their parents until their late 20's? If so, then maybe it's the way to go. Though I'd guess that it's not the case, and that the real life experience of supporting oneself is critical for development as a person and as an artist. I think you have the order mixed up a little. The first thing to do is to get a job. After highschool, I had no interest in going straight to college. There was no money for it anyway, so I got a job in a factory as a material handler. While still living with my parents, I worked as many hours as possible and took night classes at the local community college which kept me out of the house, and managed to save up about $12,000 in a year from making $10/hour. Then I moved out of my parents place to room with a friend in another state in an area that had lower cost of living, and got another menial job that paid a little more. A year after that, I decided to go to college and blah, blah, blah.
  17. Brentb
    Hurting oneself is not immoral.
  18. Brentb
    Only if Man A agrees to be responsible for his own actions. If he doesn't take responsibility for his actions, then responsible people will take responsibility for his actions by separating him from others so that he can not harm others again.
  19. Brentb
    Yes, that's what I'm saying.
  20. Brentb
    Responsibility is an agreement. So you determine responsibility by looking for who agreed or agrees to be responsible for something. It is irresponsible to assign responsibility to an irresponsible person, and it is immoral to assign moral responsibility to an immoral person. Responsibility is not the same as fault. Man B is at fault for doing a terrible thing and should be stopped from doing such things in the future. That does not mean that Man A can morally allow Man B or the actions of Man B to be responsible for Man A's actions.
  21. Brentb
    No one has posted KMFDM yet?
  22. Brentb
    I don't know if the U.S. can handle ISIS.
  23. Brentb
    I wouldn't be offended by people not maintaining eye contact. It doesn't necessarily mean that they're not listening to you. When someone is telling me something important, my eyes usually dart to the floor so that my eyes don't distract me from hearing what the person is saying. Consequently, I often only make eye contact intermittently in a conversation. However, if someone is looking at a tv or another person then they're not giving you their full attention.
  24. Brentb
    Only the thing that is the fundamental source of all energy and life on the planet is "unlimited". So your theory holds because you consider the Sun as an outlier? Besides that, resources are not fixed. Sure the quantity of a particular material in the universe may be fixed, but any material does not become a resource unless or until it is valued. Values are subjective and can change dramatically over time and location.
  25. Brentb
    I'm guessing that they're just selling the coins this way to simplify the accounting. Would you rather have to deal with a ledger of 10 transactions of 3000 bitcoins or roughly 6 million transactions of variable bitcoin amounts that would result from selling on the open market? Between bankers, hedge fund managers, and silicon valley geeks, the price will probably get bid up to at least 90% of the market price. Especially considering that there are bitcoin ETFs coming to the stock market.
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