J. D. Stembal

Your experience sounds terrible, AJ! That's a hard core abuse of power. I've been harassed, questioned, searched and detained for a short while by cops before but never arrested (well, arrested but not handcuffed, jailed or thrown into a wagon) - probably because I have always deferred to their authority. Are there any details you are leaving out of the TSA encounter or did the supervisor truly wrestle you to the ground without provocation? I would have tried to lodge a formal complaint with the TSA, if there is a process for it. At the very least, I would have gotten this brute's name and number so I could out him on the internet for physical abuse.

I bolded the relevant statements in your post. Herein lies the problem. What is the point of using a term to describe people when the definition is entirely relative based on the time, place and of whom you are asking it? For example, instead of calling Stefan an alpha male, why don't you call him a strong, effective leader since that is your definition? Someone else might think an alpha male is a Pick Up Artist who sleeps with thousands of women using mind tricks instead of taking them out to a lavish dinner first (thereby saving himself a lot of coin). By that definition, would Stefan be an alpha male?

Eh, I got it wrong. I listened to the MP3 of the show again, and Stefan uses the argument that god cannot exist in reality because, by definition, he is unreal (a square circle). Supposedly, my ex was convinced by this argument, yet, like you, she had a negative emotional reaction to the word, atheism. The meaning is simple. You do not believe in any gods or religions. She called this lack of belief, a dogma, which it is not. Atheism is a lack of belief since the evidence does not support the claims of theists. I read your rebuttal of Stefan's argument, and honestly, I could not follow it, rationally, because is presupposes that there are such things as deities, omniscience, and omnipotence - things for which there is absolutely no evidence, nor can there ever be any evidence corroborating them. The question remains, why do you have a problem with the word, atheism? I prefer it to rational empiricist because when you say atheist everyone knows precisely what you mean, and there is no ambiguity.

That's a frightening situation to have to decide to throw money at a mugger, and run the other way. I'm glad I've never had the same experience, and I hope that your life was not seriously threatened in the attack. I find it curious, however, that you are preaching avoidance and awareness over self-defense, when you willfully did not practice avoidance since you were travelling in an area that was well-known for muggings. I completely agree with you that avoidance is the key to prevention, and that carrying a firearm is not a necessity, but a personal choice, and is not for everyone.

Are you selling a product that you would consume? If I am understanding it correctly, you are paid to encourage people to try and ultimately buy food. There is so much unhealthy processed garbage being sold as food that the odds you are encouraging people to make healthy decisions is pretty low, but of course, I am just making a baseless assumption. If you don't believe in the product you are selling, which may change from day to day, perhaps they sense that doubt within you. It makes sense, though. Why would I take a chance and buy a product that the salesman or spokesman won't buy himself? This is why celebrity endorsements help sales so much. If a successful actor or athlete says product X is good enough for them, there's a good chance the average consumer will try it out. The example where the doubtful customer asked for evidence of product claims, and you told him to research it on the internet is an instrumental example. If you really believed in the product, you would be using it and you could back up said product claims personally. For example, what if you were selling a topical acne cream in a department store and you have terrible acne? If the products works, why aren't you, as a salesman, using it? If you are using the product, why isn't it working? These questions would be swimming around either consciously or unconsciously in the back of every mark's head. Have you wondered why it is always young, attractive women who are selling beauty products and cosmetics? The consumers are mostly women, and they want to chase after youth with money. Therefore, young, attractive women are the perfect sales personnel for cosmetics.

Concealed carry is a cheap and viable option for self-defense, considering the alternative of possible victimization. My whole kit cost me about $1400, which includes several hundred rounds of ammunition, holster, two belts, loaders, cleaning supplies, brushes and the cost of the required self-defense class for licensing. I did, however, spend several hundred more on range and rental fees to try out an assortment of handguns to determine which I liked best before buying. There is no substitute for awareness over your surroundings to prevent victimization. You don't need a firearm to practice awareness, but if you are armed, awareness, practice and discipline is a must! I don't see the efficacy with the throwing cash as a decoy tactic, because a smart and successful mugger will make sure you have no exit before springing the trap. I wouldn't ever presume that my assailant is a fool or an amateur.

It is a bit distracting to discuss the validity of omniscience, omnipotence, knowing the future, or changing the future without also recognizing the other arguments against theism, namely the mountain of empirical evidence that there simply are no gods in existence. That said, I don't think Stefan's argument is necessary invalid. More accurately, Stefan's argument is completely unnecessary because you have to first concede the theist argument in the existence of gods in order to discuss the contradiction between omniscience and free will. The omniscience vs. free will contradiction supposedly convinced my ex-girlfriend that atheism was a valid philosophy ("The Cost of Not Listening" June 25th, 2014 call-in show) after she told me weeks earlier that she couldn't accept strict atheism for our future family. Apparently, she believed that all dogma, even rational atheism, is too close-minded to teach to children. Despite her contention that she was on the fence between atheism and agnosticism, she had two very influential religious people in her life, her best friend from grade school and her mother. It became clear to me that she would impose religion onto our children despite her objections to being raised Catholic, so I broke off our sexual relationship, and we split up. You claim that you are a rational empiricist, but hesitate to use the term atheist to describe your position. I'm not sure I understand your reasoning for avoiding the word, atheist. Are there any influences in your life that won't allow you to fully endorse atheism? Are you holding out for evidence in the existence of a deity?

Correct, I meant universally preferable, but I wrote it as universal and preferable. I don't see how it changes the meaning. given the context. Certainly, I am not saying that all preferences are universal if that's what you understood me to mean. To rephrase, I was curious if Wasatch really thinks that the non-aggression principle cannot be demonstrated as sufficiently as the "hard" sciences. Through observing the course of the thread (honestly, I skimmed through the technical jargon), I understood that he is suggesting that physics is closer to being universal (the unified theory) than the real world application of philosophy. Perhaps I've misunderstood him in his last post, but I know he understands that lifeboat scenarios are philosophic distractions, but he also mentioned his desire to apply limitations or boundaries on the absolute nature of the non-aggression principle. If you can prove or reason it logically, why do we need exceptions in emergency situations? What is an emergency situation but a lifeboat scenario by another name? All the lifeboat scenario does is allow someone to object to the NAP without applying it where it is universally preferable. For example, say you have a teacher who digs the concept of the non-aggression principle until you explain that his job is funded by state theft. Suddenly, he feels threatened by the logical principles you are proposing. Instead of applying the NAP universally, he will want his own lifeboat scenario, which is "What about educating the children? Don't you care about the children? The state and the taxpayer cares about the children!" What he is really saying is, "Don't you care about me and my cozy union job? I care about me, why don't you?" The more people you speak to about the NAP, the more the delimiting factors to universality will mount. Science, as a state-funded institution, is not excepted from this tendency. What if I proposed that I wanted an exception to gravity? Philosophy doesn't care about your lifeboat scenario, just as science doesn't care that I would like to be able to fly under my own power. My wishes don't make it so. Why should we care that the NAP skeptics want their lifeboat scenarios addressed? It has nothing to do with the universality of the NAP. Claiming that you don't have a universal preference to it is like saying that you want exceptions to the laws of thermodynamics. If you could cheat science, and not have to put any energy in your car to drive it, or grow food magically with fairy dust, don't you think there would be consequences? This is what the involuntary force of the state does to all of us. It creates magical pockets of self-interest where no one wants the principle to apply, and distorts all other voluntary interactions in the process.

Bill, There is no scientific explanation for aggressive behavior without also considering environment (epigenetics is the biological expression of our genes based on environmental factors), which includes stress on the mother during pregnancy. Was your wife under stress when she was pregnant with your daughter? Was she not sleeping well? Here's some additional information about the stress hormone, cortisol, if you are interested: http://teeccino.com/building_optimal_health/148/Six-Tips-To-Reduce-The-Stress-Hormone,-Cortisol.html. Elevated stress levels during pregnancy could explain why only one of your children expresses a "natural" tendency for aggression. I am assuming, of course, that there's no one in your immediate friends or family that your daughter is emulating. Aggressive behavior doesn't simply develop out of the blue with no explanation.

There's a science fiction screenplay hidden in this story somewhere. If there are no men permanently living there, why are they wearing cosmetics, jewelry and flashy clothes? I thought women only bothered with ostentation for the sake of men. Perhaps women like putting on a show for each other? Hmmmm... couldn't be!

Voting for Harry Browne in 2000 and getting Bush Jr, instead, then hearing my fellow college students blame independents for throwing away their votes. However, I didn't understand that all votes are wasted effort until much later. One year later, we have 9/11, then one month later, the Patriot Act. Bye-bye, freedom, but I'm not sure that we ever really had it - not in our lifetimes anyway.

I would have simply told him that he's not funny. There's no need to resort to fists. If someone is joking around at your expense, lay it down for him honestly. Don't sugar coat it, be straight. I did this recently when a female bully was trying to pass off casual insults towards me. When I took offense, she said, "Oh, I'm just joking around with you." My response; "I don't find you to be funny."

WasatchMan, Are you honestly saying that you cannot clearly demonstrate that the non-aggression principle is universal and preferable? I'm a little confused at this position because a child can do it. As I believe you may understand, lifeboat scenarios are a deliberate attempt to disprove the validity of the principle, usually by making an emotional appeal to fear or sympathy. They are not instructive for the real application of the principle, and are the reason why we have so many practical exceptions to the principle already, such as "killing is bad unless you are wearing a uniform". I also don't understand how discussing physics at length proves or disproves that philosophy cannot be universal.

Turn it into a negotiation. Tell them that you will eat what they cook and clean up the aftermath. When they don't feel like cooking, they clean up the mess left after dinner, put leftovers away, etc. This is how many childless couples and room mates manage to keep order in the home. I don't see why you can't do it with teens. It's not like they're toddlers liable to cut their fingers off with a knife. "I don't know how to cook" is not an acceptable excuse because throwing ingredients in a flying pan gets you edible results most of the time. Indeed, it's how I make nine tenths of my meals.

The problem with using the Greek alphabet to categorize people is no one can decide exactly what the letters mean, so two people in a discussion will be talking past each other and never about the same topic. It's similar to using the generational archetypes of X, Y, and Z to talk about disparate age groups of people. No one has standardized the years that belong to the generations, and even if they had, how useful is it to use definitions that are this broad and frequently overlap?

The fat people are sedentary argument usually comes from people who are still stuck using the calories in/calories out health hypothesis. Jeff Volek, co-author of The Art and Lifestyle of Low Carbohydrate Living, says that the triglyceride/HDL ratio is the most significant predictor for future cardiovascular health and total cholesterol has not much to do with it. Therefore, dietary cholesterol is incidental and not relevant to health outcomes, but dietary carbohydrate is very relevant for your triglyceride and HDL numbers. Here's a snippet and link to Jimmy Moore's blog, "Livin' La Vida Low Carb": http://livinlavidalowcarb.com/blog/low-carb-cholesterol-concerns-unnecessary/652

My counter to the "love it or leave it" argument is strict immigration laws. If you think about it critically, the INS is not designed to scrutinize immigrants, but to put plans into effect that make it more difficult for citizens to leave, should they desire.. The government could care less who is sneaking across the border looking for a better life. It's more desirable the have the tax cattle unable to leave if they get fed up, especially when there aren't many other countries that don't also have stringent immigration laws. Nearly any country will take you if you bring a lot of money, but no country wants you to leave with a lot of their play money, thus the linked article in the original post.

I stumbled across an article about a young woman, Brittany Wenger, researching breast cancer that bothered me a little bit. Do I have a right to feel slighted by her message? At the end of the video, she points out the caveat that she is currently only focusing on diagnosing breast cancer, but her technical solution could be extended to "many, or all forms of cancer." Why is she just focusing on breast cancer with Cloud4Cancer? She relates a story of how her cousin got breast cancer, but the odds are she also has a male relative that was diagnosed or will be in the future. In her family picture, she clearly has a father and possibly a younger brother. She makes a point to say that medical research is male dominated field. If that is so, then why are men often considered as an afterthought when it comes to medical funding and research? Why is Brittany's story being used to promote the hash tag, #WomenInspire? https://twitter.com/hashtag/womeninspire http://magazine.good.is/articles/brittany-created-her-own-solution

I have taken steps to remove myself from places and relationships where I would be exposed to substance abuse, which has been a weakness of mine since I was fifteen. Incidentally, this is also the age when I started medication and therapy for depression, which was caused by childhood abandonment and never addressed in my therapy. I had no self-knowledge at this point in my life, and I was never asked about my relationship to my parents. Therefore, I am extremely skeptical of professional psychiatry as I was essentially drugged for my parents' shortcomings. There is a conflict of interest between my needs and the needs of the profession, therefore, I will not seek the assistance of a counselor again. I know that I can come off sounding harsh. It comes from being completely honest with my feelings, which tends to catch people off guard. My half brother and sister (nine and six) are far from being out of danger, but I have expressed many of my concerns to my father about the way they are being raised. There is no way that I can ensure that they are no longer abused. If not physically, they will continue to be abused emotionally by their parents and institutionally through being enrolled in the public school system. I can already see how it affects them adversely.

The porn industry is perpetuated by feminist values. Looking at the industry objectively, you will see that the female actors are the real stars and beneficiaries of the demand for pornography. Males are largely disposable with regard to straight porn. One penis is as good as another all things being equal. Meanwhile, men are increasingly becoming frustrated with dating, marriage, and sexual encounters with women, which creates a negative feedback loop for money moving into the porn industry. As the porn industry grows in success, it receives a backlash from feminists in the media, which further exacerbates sexual relations between men and women. Not all pornography is for men, but I recognize that men are the foremost consumers of it. Women benefit indirectly from pornography consumption. With the increasing pressures of raising children in the age of the double income family, women and men have less time and energy to stay intimate. If it weren't for the easy outlet of pornography, many more men would be stepping out on their wives and having dangerous sex with prostitutes instead of their laptops to cope with their sexless marriages, which affects one in five married couples.

If you don't wish to respond to my post, that's your decision, but why would you attempt to insult me while also refusing to contribute to the discussion?

Sounds like some stinky bull feces to me. Clearly, no one wanted to do anything about it. Pulling the "I don't want to be a racist" card is just as bad as throwing the "you're being a racist" card at other people.

Of course, I was abused. I didn't consider it abuse at the time. A child can acclimate to any environment, not matter how abusive. My childhood did not reflect a military form of aggression, such as being hit with implements. I spent most of my childhood separated from my parents emotionally and physically. I am much more concerned about my abandonment issues than the physical abuse I endured. However, seeing my brother's mother use a belt on him because he would not go to bed was a revelation in empathy for me. It is what caused me to start donating to FDR, and allowed me to see that everything I had heard Stefan discuss on his shows applied to me. Before I witnessed the look of abject fear on my brother's face, I was a sleeper - an FDR tourist. Before awakening, I don't think I was capable of real empathy because it would have forced me to relive my inner emotions, which I had been muting for years through rampant alcoholism. I'm definitely new to empathy, and I realize it doesn't only apply to negative emotions. I am so full of the negative ones that it's impossible for me to empathize with joy. I am still not sure that you can practice empathy to gain proficiency in it. For me, empathy is something you choose to use or not with other people. I would like to point out that we are conditioned to turn our capacity for empathy off most of the time. Just watch the nine o'clock news and try to empathize with every story. It will turn you into a zombie. The majority of the news points to suffering and pain going on in the world. How can we possibly have the emotional energy to feel the pain of thousands of people each day? The simple answer is that we cannot. Humans are not mentally equipped to know and closely relate more than one hundred and fifty people during their lifetimes (Dunbar's number). That's why we have social media. It's so people can manage and filter all the people they have in their lives, keeping them at arm's length. This is also the reason why most celebrities are so screwed up mentally. They meet and talk to so many people they are forced to relate to the rest of the world as one entity. Where did I contradict myself in my earlier statements? Was it where I expressed frustration at the presumption that women are often ruled by their emotions?

If this is true, perhaps women shouldn't participate in risky activities, or act to mitigate the risks. I don't drive without my glasses since I am near-sighted. To do so would be taking an unnecessary risk. In general, there is a 10-20% difference in body mass between men and women. Continually granting the woman the victim card because of this disparity is ridiculous. Presuming a woman could not successfully stand up for herself physically, if needed, is not very empowering. Your statement also assumes that they will be defending themselves against the aggression of a man. The worries presented in the second video are overblown. What are the chances you are going to be slipped a mickey? Why wouldn't men be just as worried? I know a man who was drugged while out at a club. Why aren't men making videos about how they are afraid of being drugged? Why are people leaving drinks unattended if this is such a problem? Why are people going to creepy bars where this evil drugging business is occurring? Women do not avoid walking alone at night; everyone does. If we have a good reason to worry for our safety, carry a weapon. Turn the fear back on the perpetrators. Now let's look at men's worries: Getting passed up for promotion because of bigotry in the workplace. Wife leaving him and taking the kids. Being financially raped through alimony and child support abuse. False rape accusations and the legal costs incurred. Being hauled off to jail if a woman attacks him and he attempts to physically defend himself. Being criticized for inadequate sexual performance. I could go on but that's quite a handful of troubling masculine experience already!

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