|
God
Dec 3, 2005 10:48:17 GMT -4
Post by Retrograde on Dec 3, 2005 10:48:17 GMT -4
and that there is a set of beliefs of some kind involved. Well, disbelief is a particular form of belief, is it not?
|
|
|
Post by Retrograde on Nov 8, 2005 23:42:52 GMT -4
It was on the BABB. It can now be found hereBe warned, this thread has a lot of toilet humour. But is darn funny. It took me a while to stop laughing enough to be able to post - but I'm tempted to add the following quote from JayUtah to my sig file:
|
|
|
Post by Retrograde on Nov 8, 2005 23:39:12 GMT -4
On an unrelated note: if you made a one-way freeway along the earth's equator, and had traffic driving across it, would it cause our days to grow shorter/longer? It seems to me it would, but only so long as the traffic is moving. To make things really silly (because the original idea was perfectly serious and not at all silly), even though the jump doesn't move the earth, any movement of the earth on the way up being undone on the way done, there might be a tidal effect while the people are in the air, so it could slow down the earth's rotation...
|
|
|
Post by Retrograde on Nov 8, 2005 9:31:38 GMT -4
Like the Robots in Futurama? ;D Didn't know about that - not sure why robots would be eating organic food anyway, but maybe I don't understand robot engineering properly... Great. You do know that a while back we had Jay working out if an astronaut could pee his way off an astroid, now we'll have him working out how much rocket thrust flatuance would provide. Didn't know that either. Was that here? I did a search, but couldn't find it - a search for "pee" turns up mainly posts from the "peeves" thread. It seems to me the answer is always yes if the asteroid is sufficiently small, and it's a question of determining what is the critical mass (and diameter too, I suppose) for a given level of, um, liquid rocket fuel...
|
|
|
Post by Retrograde on Nov 7, 2005 22:48:31 GMT -4
Why don't they just chow down on a lot of spicy food and then point their arses skyward?
|
|
|
Post by Retrograde on Apr 20, 2007 0:18:12 GMT -4
But without being able to confirm what transpired on the forum, it would be irresponsible of me to assume what you say is true, and to make any accusations solely on that basis. To the members of the ApolloHoax forum: I came to the conclusion a long time ago that the author of the above statement is one of the lowest forms of scum in the universe. Perhaps my level of disgust with this alleged human comes when the lies are personal; he has lied about me (not by name, but through inclusion in a group), and also lied about more than one person I know (by name). The lies to which I refer are about things of which I have direct, personal, first-hand knowledge. If he were to know the slightest thing about me, I strongly suspect he would quickly assign me a spot in a particular take-over-the-world conspiracy that he has advocated here and elsewhere. But that's his problem, not mine. I decided I would pay him no more mind than I pay to a dried-up lump of goose crap on my lawn, since, noxious and disgusting though he may be, he appears to have no power, and can only make annoying yapping noises on the internet. But I wished to enshrine the above statement in a quotation, in case its author decide to edit it. Here it may serve as perpetual evidence of the sancimonious hypocrisy of the individual who routinely accuses others, including me, of quite heinous crimes, without the slightest shred of evidence. I now revert to my previous silent contempt.
|
|
|
Post by Retrograde on Apr 19, 2007 0:26:28 GMT -4
From JayUtah: ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- American democracy is founded upon the principal that government by its nature cannot be trusted. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- (bolding mine)
Can I get one of those t-shirts people are always talking about, or does it need to be more substantive?
;D
|
|
|
Post by Retrograde on Apr 7, 2007 15:09:14 GMT -4
Working with special interests, spinning the facts a little to make you look better, etc. is one thing. Actively conspiring to murder thousands of innocents for no real gain is something else entirely. It's simply an order of magnitude greater than the perfidity I can believe our elected leaders are capable of. I just posted on this, but my opinion is, advancing trust-based arguments plays right into the hands of the anti-truthers. Governments have done things much nastier than that, and some of them were elected. It's evidence, not trust, to which I would point. . .
|
|
|
Post by Retrograde on Apr 7, 2007 15:06:33 GMT -4
Anyone who feels their own elected government is capable of murdering thousands of innocents for the PR value probably has a serious problem with authority figures of any kind. If you view the world as controlled by a mysterious "them" who are willing to go to any ends to reach their goals and who deceive the vast majority of your fellow citizens, then fighting them by any means, including killing those who hold contrary opinions, becomes more viable. Within the last 100 years, we have had some examples of governments racking up casualty totals (among their open populations) of several tens of millions, on multiple occasions. There sometimes is a mysterious and sinister (or maybe just sinister) them in charge, and sometimes they were even elected, or if not elected, nonetheless enjoyed broad popular support. I don't believe the theories being advanced by some individuals here not because I think the government is too nice to do anything nasty, but because the evidence suggests that the theories are wrong. That said, one liar at this board, who is as pompous and condescending as he is empty headed, is the best argument against democracy I've ever seen. So the great irony here is, these people are slowly turning me into the mysterious and sinister them that they so abhor. . .
|
|
|
Post by Retrograde on Apr 7, 2007 14:46:12 GMT -4
This assumes, of course, that this has any truth to it. Do not forget the many other religions that exist. What precludes this one above all others? And consider the chance that other civilizations exist on other worlds with their own religions. That adds to the problem. Here is a website that's mostly about arguing with people about their religious beliefs. I already thought it was pretty futile, and my experience at the above-referenced site has reinforced this belief. . . ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D
|
|
|
Post by Retrograde on Apr 5, 2007 16:02:28 GMT -4
Equally if not more shocking is that on the thread where he said he was “lucky” that his ex-wife, the mother of his children, had been killed NO ONE DISAGREED and several concurred. Several of them mentioned breaking up with their wives over this and only one “truther” said they should get a grip. I guess once you pay this kind of price, you're rather susceptible to the sunk cost fallacy. . .
|
|
|
Post by Retrograde on Apr 5, 2007 13:34:32 GMT -4
I wonder whether making a threat of that sort would be sufficient to get the guy on a "not welcome in this country" list? Maybe the fellow won't be visiting NYC after all. Don't really know much about immigration to the US (I was awfully young when I did it), but if he does get banned from the US, I think I know what reason he will cite in his posts. . .
|
|
|
Post by Retrograde on Apr 4, 2007 23:53:47 GMT -4
Hmm. Should they come face to face, does Mark Roberts now have license to off the guy and plead self defense?
|
|
|
Post by Retrograde on Apr 9, 2007 17:45:20 GMT -4
No, I'm merely again calling for cost/benefit. Good. I'm glad to hear someone believes in that.
|
|
|
Post by Retrograde on Apr 9, 2007 17:44:10 GMT -4
So, if it's not enough to completely solve the problem we shouldn't even bother? If I was making a budget and my expenses were a bit too high I would start by cutting out the unnecessary ones. But what if I still couldn't quite get my budget to balance... does that mean I should give up and just go ahead and spend my money recklessly? No, every little bit helps. Removing 8% of the CO2 emissions from the air might not save the world, but it's a start. \begin{rant} Well, if we should undertake every action that reduces CO2 emissions, on the grounds that every little bit helps, then I expect your full support for my proposal for the depopulation of Canada. It's cold in the winter there, and lots of people are burning lots of fossil fuels to keep warm. Only people who can show a compelling reason to live in Canada will be allowed to do so. The rest of them will be relocated to Western Sahara, where it is warmer and their energy consumption will be much lower. I know you will support my proposal. Every little bit helps. Or is it only other people who should be reducing CO2 emissions? For everyone else, chapter one of any microeconomics textbook will discuss optimization in a two-good economy, which may, in such textbook examples, be called "guns" and "butter." The discussion will continue, and will develop the concept of efficiency. A feasible production plan is efficient if, for a given level of "guns," it is impossible to produce more "butter," and for a given level of "butter," it is impossible to produce more "guns." A feasible production plan is inefficient if it is possible to increase production of one of "guns" or "butter" without decreasing production of the other. There is a trade-off between "guns" and "butter," and different individuals may disagree on how much guns and butter to produce, but it is rather hard to see why anyone would prefer an inefficient production plan to an efficient production plan. If we construct a graph with the two goods on the two axes, there is a curve containing all efficient production plans. We may disagree on where on the curve we should be, but we all ought to agree that we should be on the curve, rather than off of it. Substitute "environmental quality" and "everything else" in place of "guns" and "butter," and you have a framework for rational analysis of environmental problems. What I have described so far is extremely basic, but nonetheless allows one to analyze how a given level of environmental quality can be achieved at a minimum sacrifice of other goods/resources. That would be an efficient solution to the environmental problem. If a proposed action is not efficient, then it is inefficient, that is, it reduces the standard of living more than is necessary to achieve a given level of environmental quality (or, to turn it around, it achieves a lower level of environmental quality than in possible for a given standard of living). Again, this is extremely basic, well understood by any environmental economist (or any economist, for that matter). Two questions: a) How do you folks feel about someone who argues about spaceflight but lacks basic knowledge of Newton's law of gravity? b) How do you folks feel about someone who argues about environmental and economic policy, but doesn't even seem to be aware of the basic tradeoff (or worst yet, seems to argue that the tradeoff should be ignored) that has been discussed in chapter one of any basic microeconomics textbook for decades, if not at least a century? LunarOrbit, I'll be glad to help you with your resettlement in Western Sahara. \end{rant}
|
|