Cap'n Refsmmat

Heh. I've done it with two large metal balls, one rusty and one covered with aluminum foil, and it just creates a very large spark and pop noise. No giant fireball.

You will note that we removed the attacks by Mr Skeptic. As for attacking religious people, well, there is far more to his argument that just that. Lessons learned from this thread: Responding to what you think is trolling or flaming with more trolling or flaming only makes things worse. Post reports are always read promptly and discussed by the staff. In-thread demands are unnecessary and just make things worse. Arguing with staff derails things even more. The thread was basically fine after Tar's posts. Nobody owns a discussion. That will be all for now.

Oh hush. You're both the bad guys here. I am not pleased with the behavior on both sides of the discussion, but your particular manner of responding to a problem with a bigger problem is not something I am fond of. Now, I have removed posts 155-160, the posts that were originally the "turds." The ones left behind are non-turd. If Mr Skeptic believes their points are better made in a separate thread, he can open a thread to make them. (In fact, I suggest he do that.) At this point splitting the existing posts will just split the anger off into its own thread, and that's not fair for the topic -- I think Skeptic and Tar have some good points that are worth discussion. Also, a word of future advice: if you don't think a post is on topic, don't respond to it and drag things further off topic. If you insist on continuing to drag your own thread off topic by arguing with me about who's the bad guy, we will be forced to close it.

I suppose you could make it out of this stuff: http://www.thinkgeek.com/gadgets/tools/7f02/ You could also go for a thermite reaction with aluminum foil and rust coatings, but I am not sure you could snap your fingers hard enough.

Please. You have already reported three posts and made this request seven times in this thread. You do not need to continue repeating it. We read all reported posts and discuss what action should be taken. In this particular case, we took in-thread action to stop personal attacks and get back on a reasonable course. Now, this may not be your actual intention -- I do not pretend to be psychic -- but your insistent requests give the impression that you do not wish to hear alternate viewpoints on this subject, and that you want us to facilitate that. We won't. If you believe that any posts cross the line as this thread continues, you can always report them. We do consider every reported post.

...after they've reversed the polarity, of course.

Oh no, they don't ignore it, they explain it away. Inertial dampeners! The torpedoes are self-propelled with warp engines anyway, so they're like recoilless rifles in operation. They don't cause much recoil.

In the presence of a sufficiently large disbelief suspension field, I suppose it can.

Perhaps the fuels are blueish?

What about your other posts in this thread? On the same note, however, Mr Skeptic has not been entirely helpful either. He is using some of the same tactics against you and is trying to make things personal, which only makes people angry and defensive. I would much appreciate it if we could end this meta-argument ("you're not answering the question!" "you're not being specific!") and get on with a real discussion. One that does not involve personal grudges. That goes for everyone involved.

There's a specific difference between a general moral proclamation and saying "we're going to take this one particular village. Murder the people of that village!" One advocates morality in general, one advocates behavior in a particular set of circumstances. Of course, the Old Testament does involve a lot of violence and God does advocate a lot of things that are not particularly nice. But as far as I recall, most were in particular situations ("conquer this city!"), not a general statement of "kill everyone!" The New Testament goes a step further when Jesus says that "love thy neighbor" even applies to enemies and those you don't like, and when Paul says that you should not judge and avenge -- you should let God handle that.

Good lord, guys, stop it. There seem to be long-running grudges from previous discussions that must always be brought up. iNow, what anyone has to say about homosexuality has nothing to do with what the Bible said in the cases of the specific passages you quoted; Mr. Skeptic, retorting as you have doesn't help convince anyone -- it merely makes the argument personal. This is a touchy subject. Please don't touch it inappropriately.

I note that iNow has avoided answering this question. It is unfortunately true. I would like to request that this thread have less self-righteousness, less self-important, less anger and insulting, and more reasonable discussion. Or I'll have God smite you.

Ad hominem tu quoque?

In any case, the New Testament changes things up a bit: Luke 10:26-37 "What is written in the Law?" he replied. "How do you read it?" 27. He answered: " 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind'[a]; and, 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'" 28. "You have answered correctly," Jesus replied. "Do this and you will live." 29. But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, "And who is my neighbor?" 30. In reply Jesus said: "A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he fell into the hands of robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. 31. A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. 32. So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. 33. But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. 34. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, took him to an inn and took care of him. 35. The next day he took out two silver coins[c] and gave them to the innkeeper. 'Look after him,' he said, 'and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.' 36. "Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?" 37. The expert in the law replied, "The one who had mercy on him." Jesus told him, "Go and do likewise." NIV Study Bible footnote: "Jews viewed Samaritans as half-breeds, both physically and spiritually. Samaritans and Jews practiced open hostility, but Jesus asserted that love knows no national boundaries." This is one of a few passages in the New Testament (particularly the Synoptic Gospels) that preaches the same message. Mark has a passage where Jesus says the two commandments listed in 10:27 above cover all the rest; "love thy neighbor" implies the rest, and any other rule to live by.

I have watched a live concert done with two Tesla coils and a guy in a chain-mail body suit. He stood between the coils and held out his hands, allowing giant bolts of electricity to arc to his suit. It was rather awesome.

I should point out that the Koran is first-person from God, so "we" in the above passages means "God." It does not mean "us believers." So the verses you quoted do not seem to directly advocate fighting or killing non-believers -- rather, they state that God will punish them. I'd have to dig to find it, but the Bible has a similar passage stating that God will handle the evil, and that you should not judge yourself -- let God do the final judgment when the time comes. Of course, you could look through the Old Testament and dig up quotes to advocate slaughter, but you can look through any sufficiently long text and dig out individual sentences that will advocate any cause. The question is whether they mean the same in context, and what the overall message of the work is.

Uh-oh. Has this thread fallen victim to a post miscount? edit: ah, that seems to have cleared it up. Page 3 wouldn't display at all for some reason.

If they sign the date or something, how do you verify the file attached is the one the person originally signed? It could be switched out and you wouldn't know, because the time and name would check out just fine. You'd have to hash the entire file to be sure it hasn't been tampered with. Thus I could take a file someone publishes and, an instant later, publish something with their signature but completely different contents. You need to think more evilly

I suppose it could be, but if there's libelous material here you'd be far better off reporting the post so we can take care of it. No need to jump right to hiring a lawyer.

It's not certain to me. Why do you say it is certain? What leads you to believe that? Once you are alive, you are by definition surviving, so survival comes with life. Or perhaps you mean something else?

The American Translator's Association may be helpful. You can also look around for a translation agency, which basically acts as a middleman by finding a translator who specializes in the appropriate subjects for you and such. If you need any advice finding a translation agency, well, my mom's a professional translator and she knows most of 'em, so just ask

SFN, of course!

Well, it's hard to do end-to-end encryption on a system where two hundred different people can be sharing the same document. There's no system outside of shared keys that I can think of that would handle end-to-end encryption in that sort of use case. Public-key encryption works great when you're corresponding with one person but doesn't work at all when you're corresponding to many at once. However, you could probably make a Wave extension thing (a "robot") that facilitates public-key encryption if you're corresponding with one person. You could also not do end-to-end encryption but instead have the server have a public key and have it know the public keys for all its clients, so it could decrypt incoming messages and re-encrypt them with the keys of everyone who should receive the message. But then you're just reinventing TLS with more complications. I do agree, however, that the SSL certificate hierarchy is quite annoying. If I were able to reinvent SSL nowadays to cover modern security threats, I think I'd do it much differently. But alas, we're stuck with phishing because proving users do not fully understand the complexities of certificates and what they mean...