Saryctos

Roll to place your pieces first?

One nuclear weapon changes things greatly. It means that more can be made, it means that it can be stolen, sold, or used. Once a country joins the "nuclear club", the politics surrounding them changes dramatically. Preventing a country from building nukes just cannot happen once they already have one, nowhere near as easily anyways. As for Iran, they have plenty of shady ties. Allowing Iran to develope nuclear weapons potentially puts them in the hands of numerous dangerous organizations, not excluding Iran itself. Also, the idea of a country not using nukes because they'll get destroyed in the process is a flawed idea. Nuclear weapons can be 'stolen', secreatly traded, or just given to someone who can't be tied to the gov't of the country it came from. Normally the nuke can be traced back to the country of origin, but if it is a new nuclear power, they may not have the "fingerprint" needed to do just that. Ontop of that issue, you couldn't retaliate against that country anyways, because you would have to go through a long procedure to make sure it came from them. By then you won't have any evidence as it'll be dismantled and scattered to the four corners of the earth to ensure their innocence. Also, Dak, we aren't a MAD country anymore, that's a cold war thing. Even if our policy were still such, it would never be followed through. There is just no way it can happen with the modern political climate and war being what it is these days. As for the OP topic... It has always been the case that the left to agree with our enemies, America is the bad guy in every conflict, and that we should never retaliate. We should seek understanding, and learn what makes them hate us, and then change ourselves to make them like us, because we are always at fault, not them.

Could it be that the market value of the house isn't actually worth anything near what people thought it was, and that the loss is what happens over the years? maybe noone wants those homes anymore. If that's the case then of course the value is going to plummet. This is especially true in michigan, where there are neighborhoods popping up everywhere, and jobs leaving just as fast as homes get built. Regulating the prices will only FORCE a seemingly arbitrary price on a piece of property reguardless of actual worth based on the market.

LoL gg

I recall seeing something about "brain fingers" http://www.brainfingers.com/ a while back on some TV show. and I know that there are things out there that can use remaining nerves to control prosthetics. http://www.technologyreview.com/Biotech/18134/

Don't forget the people buying interest only loans! Their stupidity deserves some credit too!

Considering the pre-requisites for their existance, indeed it would!

You actually think that example is anything near similar?

True in most cases, but if some one is hopped up on drugs, what's stopping them from killing you to protect them from witnesses? Not everyone has crime assesment skills, not everyone can read a complete stranger and determine if they're crazy, or just looking for some cash. If you go downstairs with mace or a stun gun, and it's a guy goosed up on PCP, what if it doesn't take him down? well now he's angry and might go after your kids once he's done with you. May very well not be the case, especially in most neighborhoods*. However, as a parent, the safety of your children may very well push any concern for another person, led alone a criminal completely off the table at a moments notice. I especially don't like the idea of killing anyone, it's probably the only actual moral dilema I think about. But not everyone is like me, and I'm not going to make it harder for someone else to defend themselves simply because of my morals. A gun is more than just a killing device, it's a delivery system. The bullets do the killing, I'm sure you can find non-lethal bullets out there. This not only gives you the deterance of a fire-arm, but the ability of being able to actually use it on someone. And there is no way some one is going to be able to know if your rounds are real or not. By the time they figure it out, they'll be writhing* on the floor in pain, or passed out. Some people just have different views on how they want to protect themselves. And I just think it makes much more sense that a criminal be afraid of death moreso than me sleeping in my bed without the availability to purchase something that makes me feel safe.

But you do agree that it does lower it to a degree.

Not perpetual by any means, but as long as there is radiant heat you could just use an uneven 'U' with a membrane and a filter to get osmosis flowing =P perpetual? hardly, free, maybe?

Most guns used by criminals are either stolen or Illegally purchased.

If you get jumped by 5 people, you should just give them your wallet, and walk away, reguardless of what you have hiding under your coat.

Most people really don't care how crappy their society is, as long as they've got said big screen T.V. crime will never be 0. There will always be idiots who want something else some one has. There will always be psychotic* people who kill for fun, or if they get looked at the wrong way. Even in a perfectly egalitarian society there will be people who screw up somehow and instead of solve their problem, they'll just take the solution from some one else. If you knew everyone on your block carried a handgun how likely would you be to go try to steal their wallets? Not nearly as likely as an unarmed neihborhood. Sometimes there's more to crime than simply crime prevention the government can do. People have to defend themselves from time to time instead of just being victimized. Crime will always be there, but what's the successful crime rate these days?

These people were rounded up by the military, not the police. They may not even have charges against them, as they do not necessarily even have to be criminals. The military rounded some people up, threw them in a detention* center, and is trying to figure out what to do with them. I don't see how lawyers have anything to do with this place. I do feel sorry for these people who got sent there having done nothing wrong, but really, a lot of blame can be placed on the process by which they were rounded up. A lot of people just started settling old grudges by saying someone was a terrorist, they'd get sent off with, probably very little afterthought. I also feel sorry for civilian casualties in the war. Shit happens, sometimes you die, sometimes you get stuck in prison for a while =/. It's definately an issue that needs to be resolved however. I think it would have been fine if it had not been played up so much. Now you have a problem with trying to resolve the issue gracefully, rather than quickly. Which is just going to lead to innocent people being detained longer, because mistakes are no longer tollerated by any facet of the government, thus making a, "oops we screwed up, but we'd like to move along" statement all but impossible, because then you'd have to break out the trials into the foul up, then the formation of committees to oversee the trials, blah blah blah. So the problem is filtering the dangerous ones fro mthe innocents. Well, pretty much anyone there is gunna be a problem once you release them, you've been holding them prisoner for quite a while. What does one do with PoWs once a war is over anyways? Just let them back into the country once the war is over? Well, the war ain't over yet, maybe once afghanistan* is stabalized to a reasonable level these people can all just be turned over to the gov't in charge of things over there. Because, when you just have the people sitting in Guantanamo you don't have anything to go on other than their word. Back in their home country you at least have aquaintences*, relatives, and that sort of thing to help figure out if they're a 'bad guy'.

well, it doesn't appear that guns are a big problem... http://www.channel4.com/news/2004/12/week_3/13_knife.html yes I know 2004 =/ http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/5032686.stm has a nice graph on the bottom http://www.gun-control-network.org/GF05.htm the bottom chart

But has he asked you to remove it from the forums? Quite a difference between realizing a joke has been made at your expense than QQing about it.

Alright, they're not saying it, they're doing it. I said nothing of creating stereotypes vs. reinforcing them. I do however say that they would not have demanded the ad be pulled unless they wanted to shape the the way people think. Break it down logically, why would you not want people to see something? Plenty of reasons, which one matters in this discussion? Why does that reason matter? yea...I thought so. Don't quite understand the democracy comment, why is that there?

The world may not have lost something, but the activist group thatgot the ad cancelled gained something. Power. The power to say "this commercial makes you think this way, we don't want you to think this way". I don't care much about never seeing the commercial again, but when an entity wields the power to restrict the freedoms of another, and the gaul to tell people how to think, I don't feel like defending them is in the right. You don't like the commercial? Change the channel. "But I can't make everyone else not watch it!...or can I?"

This reminds me of the way an incedent was handled for a friend in an MMORPG. They being female, had called someone 'hun' quite innocently while playing the game, "thanks hun" or something simple like that. They then got a 4 month ban for sexual harasment violations(apparently the other guy was a homophobe thinking it was another guy, and was offended). After calling the company hotline they said that they would not recount the ban because, as a player you should be aware that some people may not react so well to what you say, or some jazz like that. Not that all of that is pertinant* to the matter at hand, but it does bring up the same question. With how pro-activley aggressive solutions for people being offended are getting handed out, where do we draw the line and say, hey, you can't be held responsible for someone taking offense to X comment. Or, hey, you can't do anything about some one saying X comment. Especially when X wasn't even trying to mean what the person thought it did. seeing messages that we ourselves make in others' words can causes a lot of headache. Also, sometimes I miss posts due to fast reposts(lots of activity, I like it =)) or sometimes I might even be alt+tabbed working with my post open for editting and miss a few while I'm writing one out.

I probably shouldn't have editted that post, I meant to imply that the whole, "way we reinforce ideas", logic is bull. Watching something that you don't grab onto doesn't necesarilly affect you just because the 'message' was there. If you didn't get the message at all, then the message has no effect. However the process is a lot more complicated, than simply I got the message, or I didn't.

That's something a lot of people would like to think happens, but it really isn't that simple.

There is also the fact that sometimes I myself may be neive* to the underlying message of things that in no way offend ME personally. I have no qualms about admitting to commercial producers trying to slip in jokes that the 'prime' audience isn't supposed to see. A kind of, ha! we got this joke up on you guys and noone noticed buuuuuuurn. If that was the case, they screwed it up, because someone caught it =P It may very well be possible, I just think it was an innocent, dumb humor plug with nothing special attatched to it.

I really didn't see a negative message at all, when I watched that commercial the first time. I imagine the only people who did, are the people who watch for something negative to jump on. I'd imagine a possible thought going through the producer's mind was that the gay audience would look at it and say "wow, straight men(or homophobes if you prefer to demonize someone who doesn't fancy the gays) are crazy"*chuckle*. Negative? yes, but in a different more light hearted way. Light hearted humor may be in it's dying days in America. And not just from, no gay jokes, but all over. I just mention it because this is just another (#) on the stack.

My point is that the commercial was a quickly thrown together bit based on a simple premis* with the intention of knee jerk reactions. You know, room full of guys watchin' the game, guys kissing"eeeeew", hair ripping"ouch", ("I've done similar to the tune of 'being manly'")*chuckle*. I mean, it's the same people who brought you the "Happy Peanut Song*".I highly doubt it was designed to be an earth shattering controversial ad(obviously it was intended to poke into that realm just a bit, as most Super Bowl commercials do). And that was the purpose of the comment, to show that I feel the ad as more based off an old disney movie and their advertising demographic(families(disney) & guys(manly) infront of the TV, rather than a socio-political statement.