J. D. Stembal

It is very important to note that your aunt was religious and bilking your mother for money she didn't have. Also, more importantly, you weren't told about it. I would ask your mother why that is. This is a fact in the story that bothers me because there was a multitude of events that occurred in my family that I didn't find out about until months or even years later. When you feel like you are always the last person to know, it means that deceit exists under the surface of your family relationships.

I'm not opposed to women being assertive but there's a right way and wrong way to go about it. There's definitely an aspect of "ego-boosting" involved with this type of attention, but I believe it only works on those of us who have self-esteem issues. For example, I was smacked on the ass by a woman as I walked by and when I turned around, she cat-called me (the "Whoo-hoo, Sexy!" greeting). She was an attractive woman, and I remember feeling put-off by it at first, then ex post facto, I rationalized it as an ego-boost. "That woman finds me attractive - great!" but it was only as a defense against being angry with her, looking back on it. I didn't approach her to talk to her, because I felt violated and humiliated underneath the justifications. I should have told her that what she did was not permissible, but I just let it go, thereby enabling the behavior of another "Whoo-hoo" party girl. Contrast it with another encounter. I was singing karaoke in a bar, and just after I got off the stage, a woman approached and started talking to me about how she liked my performance. We ended up talking for a bit, and she gave me her phone number. I called her and we dated for a time, and I'm sure she enjoyed it very thoroughly. What the ass-slapper didn't get was any positive attention from me. The woman who treated me like a human being got to date me. Men and women really aren't so different. They would rather be treated like a person than a penis or vagina with legs. I very much appreciate the sympathy. Thank you. As an aside, I've never hooted or whistled at any woman on the street. I will definitely strike up conversation with women in public, and yes, it does instigate a lot of fearful stares. ("Why is this strange man speaking to me?") I don't take it personally because I know it's all in their head. Some women will smile or return a greeting, but very few will actually stop to chit-chat with a stranger on the street.

1. People who let food rot in the fridge. 2. People who will wait until the precise moment you start speaking to interrupt you.

I would argue that the Second-Way woman has less self-knowledge than the First-Way, because she's been misled (by feminism) into thinking a career is more important than raising children. I expect that there are way more Second-Way women out there than you suggest. They wake up in their late-30s realizing that no men are interested in dating them, and if they are, they don't want kids since the men who want kids will aim for a woman 20 years old or so. When they had the opportunity to have children in their twenties, they were more interested in their education and career prospects, and probably shunned the attention from older men who wanted families. I've seen women like this up close, and it's pitiful. I have much more respect for a First-Way woman because at least she is being true to her biology. This is why I asked the question, "Do women tend to follow the logical necessities of their biology?" Second-Way women don't start thinking about kids until they get baby rabies, which is way too late. I haven't yet gotten around to reading Ridley, but it's been on the list. I did read the War Brides blog. However, I'm still not convinced by the strength of the nature argument. I'm not saying it doesn't play a factor, but I believe that what we see when we are growing up has a greater impact on us. If genetics and evolutionary biology trumped childhood, why do you see so many women focusing on careers at the expense of their fertility? Feminism and the cult of the working mother has swayed women away from acknowledging their reproductive potential. They have internalized this idea that their mothers were held back in their careers by choosing to have them, so they view having their own children as "option b" until they start frothing at the mouth in their 30s. I also have a problem with the idea of historical female oppression because feminists, especially the radicals, love to use this as a central theme in their rants against men. If we want to go as far back as the Paleolithic, we need to first acknowledge that none of us were around back then. Hell, there wasn't even a state. Infanticide was practiced out of necessity since a woman, by design, cannot have more than two infants at one time. If they couldn't feed or carry the children, they got left behind to be eaten by scavenger animals. Children didn't often make it to age five as they were last on the list to get food. Children weren't even considered to have personhood until they survived to age five or six because that was when they could start hunting, fishing and gathering. Also, women and babies were much more likely to die during child birth than today. I forget the figures I read, perhaps a 20-25% death rate for the mother and about 30% for the baby. I'm not going to say that women didn't have a rough time of it for a while, but this was entirely predicated by their biology, childbirth and the lack of advanced medicine, not some sort of twisted male on female systemic oppression, like feminists paint it out to be.

What is the travesty exactly? That women are not adequately represented in science? With regards to pussy power, academics may be a little too boring and crusty to listen to Pigface.

I have been grabbed, spanked and fondled in public a handful of times without my permission by women, and a couple gay men as well. I do not recall enjoying the attention. The worst was the dick grabbing. That pissed me off a bit. I'm probably a 7/10 for reference or at least I was when this harassment occurred. Also, this is for Miramiss, but getting hit on by cougars is extremely creepy, and luckily, I don't recall it happening much. It's almost as if these women are banking on me having been sexually abused by a woman when I was a child, because honestly, unless I'm trying to pimp myself out as a gigolo, why do I want to have anything to do with a woman who is probably rapidly approaching menopause?

Putting exact ages aside, would you morally object to a step-parent (legal guardian, not biological parent) from having a sexual relationship with their child?

I am starting to feel like determinism posts and calls are determined beforehand.

It is infinitely more exciting to think about all the areas of the planet that are unowned, or "publicly owned." What would happen with the 71% of the Earth's surface that is classified as international water, which cannot currently be owned? Your imagination is the limit. Underwater cities, fuck yeah!

Who the fuck? I am so sad to see this video.

I would be highly skeptical about anything you think you know about a person with this magnitude of celebrity. Public image can be massaged and manipulated just like everything else. I mean, look at him. He goes on MSNBC and berates the anchors for commenting on his clothes when, presumably, he's the one who decided to wear them. It's not enough for him that he acts in movies, which are seen by millions, but he also seeks to be in the political spotlight. He's the comedic incarnate of Ben Affleck. Contrast this with the relative humility and reluctance of Mr. Molyneux, who wants nothing to do with mainstream media, dresses down for his podcasts, and doesn't apply makeup despite his high definition camera. I bet Stefan is wearing sweatpants or no pants at all when he sweats in front of the camera. I still remember the show where he went shirtless for a bit. Yes, I enjoyed myself thoroughly. He's fearless, and doesn't care about his image. You cannot say the same for Brand. He's a sophist, and he's popular, which can only be a dangerous combination for the people. Has anyone here actually read his books? They got 4/5 stars on Amazon.

I'm not at all technically acquainted with cryptonetworks, but I've desired something like this for a long time. Goodbye eBay, goodbye Amazon, goodbye Heatware, goodbye Paypal, goodbye credit cards. Then I realized that you could use this for anything from finding a babysitter to betting on horse races from home (and more). My brain just exploded. From listening to Stefan's BTC podcast, I was under the impression that feedback, escrow, and e-commerce features were already built into the BTC architecture or could possibly be bolted on top of it. Would BitMarket be competing directly with BTC (and other major crypto currencies) or working with it? Is this the e-commerce (everywhere commerce) expansion pack that BitCoin sorely needs?

Assuming you are an American, you might want to look at this website (http://www.usdebtclock.org/) and then ask yourself what those taxes are really paying.

Prison isn't voluntary, just as arbitrary organ harvesting isn't voluntary, so he is technically correct that prison is immoral. Who knows how he came to this conclusion?

Weenie, Thank you for posting the thread! Since you had trouble reading through Universally Preferable Behavior, let's start with something simple. Do you believe that it is ethical for a person to use or consume a resource that is owned by another without expressed permission? This is a yes/no question, by the way.

I have a small problem with defining stupid and funny as objective. Perhaps an IQ score could work as an objective metric of the potential to learn, but that fundamentally doesn't define what the child says when they call each other stupid. Calling someone stupid is meant to be a personal attack. What does the word mean if people suddenly start trying to use it objectively? Does it mean willful ignorance or being "dense"? I was trying to make a logical argument with my former girlfriend and when I finished, she came back with a "yeah, but..." line of reasoning, meaning she didn't listen to the whole argument and just focused on the conclusion. I suggested that she may be dense - willfully ignorant - but not stupid, because I know stupid is an inflammatory word. In the end, she took offense anyway. After that, I was unable to have any civil discussions with her so I just avoided discussions or being intimate. She then suggested that I start reading Non-Violent Communication, which I immediately suspected of being a crock of piss, but I have to be honest that I never gave it a chance. Perhaps I should have. The ex definitely told me that I was being too judgmental when I told her that I wanted to raise children peacefully, meaning she couldn't brainwash them into being good God-fearing Catholics like her parents did to her. A judgment is simply coming to a decisive and sensible conclusion, which I did by leaving her. People who do evil turn the word into "narrow-minded" and make you out to be the bad guy.

I'm not sure why I'm replying. I feel like I've avoided this thread on purpose for the past month. I'd like to go over two points. 1) What this theoretical circumstance doesn't address is why the five men are sick in the first place. As we know, up to 95% of diseases are self-inflicted by lifestyle choices. For example, you get cancer because you eat too many carbohydrates, just like you get fat because you eat too many carbohydrates. The research behind this has been demonstrated since the 1950s and 60s. Likewise, smoking is a risk factor for heart attacks, cancer, and pulmonary disease, which has been known since the 1960s. If these five sick people are essentially killing themselves slowly since the odds are that the illness is self-inflicted, why would we want to save them with the organs of healthy people, seeing that the healthful probably don't want to give up their organs willingly? 2) I am aware that this is often used as a model for a classroom discussion on utilitarianism, but it has no real world application outside the current statist paradigm. The reason for this is that it is illegal to sell organs on the open market. This creates a shortage of organs behind bureaucratic red tape, which would tend to cause the theoretical problem that is attempting to be solved in your post. How do we decide who needs the organs the most desperately without a price mechanism? If you cut out the registered donor process, and allow people to sell their kidneys, you immediately fix the kidney shortage so there is no recipient waiting line or at least not a very long line. Also, if people are consciously aware of how much an organ replacement procedure will cost, perhaps they will use that information to weigh their own personal choices which will lower the incidence of self-inflicted disease. In this culture of Daddy Obama Cares for you, people have no incentive to change their lifestyle to be more healthy because everyone else will pay for it. This is what we call moral hazard.

My parents are life long beer connoisseurs (except they drink cheap, tasteless swill) and had a nearly fully stocked liquor cabinet when I was growing up. They didn't entertain many guests, either. I don't remember them getting tanked but they would sometimes have two or three beers with dinner and end up fighting about something or other before bed. When I see my parents now on visits, they always have a beer in hand and especially with dinner. I'm not sure if this is because they need to be drinking to be around me or if this is what they do on a daily basis. I have recently come out as an ancap to my parents, so perhaps they are medicating their shame and disapproval of me. I started drinking when I was 15, and it was stealing liquor from the cabinet, and mixing noxious concoctions that would end up making me throw up all over the place. This was also the age that I started taking anti-depressants prescribed by a psychologist. Also, I started smoking at 15. At 16, I started smoking pot. My dad and I would fight a lot, probably because he was absent 90% of my early childhood, then when I was a teenager I started seeing a lot more of him because he got laid off at work. I've since quit drinking (also smoking and drugs) and I feel so much better about myself. I was heavily medicating my feelings of pain, anger and sorrow and not dealing with them. This is the danger with parental drinking. Coming home and kicking back means you aren't connecting with your life, your family, or your kids. You are actually ignoring them by doing so. The path toward twenty years of substance abuse is started by emotionally blocking out your family with these seemingly harmless adult relaxation tactics.

Take a step back and look at this statement rationally. I've read all your posts in the two threads you started, and most people have been very civil with you. You've only received five negs, yet you've had a lot of insightful replies, too. Who is being mean and aggressive and why?

Patent trolls are why we cannot have nice things.

I am confused now. I'm looking yes/no answers. Did the universe and life begin at the behest of a divine consciousness? Does entropy empirically prove determinism and disprove free will? I am a big fan of eating mushrooms myself, but I don't eat them often due to the high cost relative to caloric value. I can understand why they wouldn't affect your insulin levels as they effectively have no glycemic index value despite being mostly carbohydrate. In my personal experience, much of carbohydrate craving is simply a physiological addiction to wheat. There is a chemical byproduct of digesting wheat stimulates the opioid receptors in the brain. This bears out empirically. No one spazzes out over a carrot or a head of lettuce, but if you put a doughnut in front of someone... oh, dear. This is why grocery stores often have the bakery in close proximity to the entrance. Simply the sight or smell of freshly baked bread or pastries sets people's cravings off. For a very long time, I had to run past the bakery to get to the meat coolers in order to not think about breads and cakes. I'm not sure what you mean about sexual desire and anxiety. Does eating fungus limit sexual desire? What use is this effect? I could see that lowering anxiety could be beneficial, but it's probably more productive to discover the cause.

I wasn't as concerned with the age of the student as statutory rapes laws are complete arbitrary, as you know. I do find it disgusting that one of the teachers is twice the student's age. Just try to universalize it. I'm 35. What if I started having a sexual relationship with a 17 year old? In some states in the US, 17 is the legal age of consent (16 in a couple others). Even if I could prove that this sexual arrangement makes way more reproductive sense than dating a woman my age (less eggs), I would be morally castigated for "taking advantage" of a younger woman, even by other men. How do you know the act was voluntary on the part of the student? Do you know he wanted it? Can a minor voluntarily decide to have sexual relations with a legal guardian? More importantly, why do two female teachers want to have sex with a student when they can meet other men who would be perfectly happy to get banged in a three-way? It's about control and domination. There is obviously an ego or power trip involved here on the part of the teachers, so they could act out their prior childhood abuse. If we were concerned over the infantilization of teenagers, we wouldn't force them into schools to be raped by pedophiles in the first place.

Here's an article about the CEO, John Mackey: http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/01/whole-foods-market-john-mackey-interview-conscious-capitalism He sounds more like a reluctant capitalist than a conscious one. He's the ultimate pragmatist. When he's concerned with industry regulation and union trouble, he's a libertarian. When it comes to appealing to the customers, he's an ethical vegan. But he's definitely not a socialist! No, no, no. That's a bad word. Ethical veganism, however, comes directly out of feminism, which has its origins in Marxist Socialism. See the "Animals are people, too!" message within The Animal Manifesto if you don't believe me. http://www.cyberchimp.co.uk/research/manifesto.htm Apparently, Carol J. Adams doesn't know that hens, like human females, continually ovulate and lay eggs until they are no longer in the window of fertility. Sex and fertility are facts of all known life. The real reason feminists oppose the "exploitation of animals" is they dread thinking of themselves as brood mares for the patriarchy. She must raise animals up to the moral status of human (we don't eat other humans, usually) because woman won't deign to accept their role as dumb, exploited animal. The irony is, of course, this is exactly was feminism does to women. It lowers them to the moral status of dumb animal. We can't ever hold women accountable because they are perpetual victims, like the lowly beef cow. Ever since Paul Erlich published The Population Bomb in 1968, in which he speculated about the use of enforced sterilization by chemically altering food, the Federal government has been eagerly meddling in the agricultural industry and propagandizing us about what we should and shouldn't eat. The result of the forty year experiment of shaming people for eating meat ("Meat is murder!") is a sick society that clamors for socialized health care, but Mackey says he's not a socialist. I call shenanigans.

None of your statements are facts. If an asteroid collided with the planet, or a global nuclear catastrophe occurred, most, if not all, life would end. Remember the dinosaurs? If you talk about the wonderment of nature and the universe, and use it to invoke the existence of God, the ultimate unknowable, people stop seeking the truth. That is the danger. We already know that, logically, no god can possibly exist. This is akin why the government is so dangerous to human progress. The more institutions that are controlled by the power of the state, the more people believe that without the government, these wonderful institutions would not exist,never mind that most of them are destructive and costly and confer no benefits whatsoever. When people like yourself muse over unanswered questions about dark matter or fungi, why is there a tendency to speculate in the supernatural? Don't you want to look for the real answers?

When the Muggles are constantly being propagandized to vote, it's hard to stem the tide of irrationality. I caught a glimpse of a newspaper in Starbucks the other day, and all I saw was VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE VOTE PLEASE VOTE WE ARE DESPERATE FOR VOTES slathered all over the front page. I think it was the New York Times. When no body goes to the polls any more, governments will be in a pickle. I tried to argue this with a statist friend earlier this year and he just shook his head at me and walked away like I was telling him that I wanted to rape his sister. He didn't want to hear it. Statists think that without democracy and voting, we'll devolve into North Korea. While that is a chance that we must take, it is better to know the truth than to continue to live in a fantasy. I would be relieved if the gestapo started dragging us away in the night. At least we would know that we were right. I could tell the statists, "Look. Fascism. Keep waving your flag, you stupid Nazis!" The reality is that probably won't transpire, and if it does, the media will be sure to spin it in such a way to assuage fears. Everyone is so brainwashed that they will attack and uphold violence for the state rather than see the truth. I remember the look on my face when I told my former girlfriend that America was the Fourth Reich, meaning that, as a country, we are worse than Nazi Germany in terms of deaths caused by war, democide and global economic control through central banking and the reserve currency, the U.S. dollar. Do you remember after September 11th and the start of the Iraq War how no one could figure out why the rest of the world was becoming vocally anti-American? We collectively scratched our heads. We would wonder, "Is it our freedom that they hate?" but I think deep down inside we knew the real reasons. We would hear the advice, "If you plan on travelling to certain areas of the world, tell people you are Canadian if they ask if you're American." I think David Bowie nailed it with, "I'm afraid of Americans, I'm afraid of the world."