ParanoiA

Yes, and she mentioned nothing about evolution. The question is qualified by "offensive to their religion or conscience". Yes, if something offends my conscience, you can bet your bottom dollar I'm probably not going to want to pass that on to my kids. Like slavery being a really cool and profitable idea. Also, keep in mind, that restricting the school from teaching X does not equate to the child not learning X. Back to slavery. I would be an idiot and irresponsible not to teach my child that slavery has happened and exists. However, it may be that I want to teach my child my way, so I can be sure it's not taught as socially acceptable, but rather as socially shameful while sharing the facts. So it's plausible that parents will want certain subjects off limits to the school system, so they can expose their children the way they want. Of course, the left extremists assume "yeah, teach them church dogma the way you want" while the right extremists say "Yeah, send them to school without any rights so they can teach them dogma the way they want".

They weren't bad, for a religio republican. I thought this one was interesting: Myers goes on to make a good point about a disaster for education, but it misses the larger individual rights principle that parents are the check on the school system - it's their child. Again, this notion parents shouldn't have a right to occlude curricula offensive to their conscience assumes the curricula to be prejudiced free - that the government run school system could never be guilty. Well if Myers can throw out the constitution to dismiss one of her answers, then I can catch it and use his slavery strawman here: If I don't want my child to learn that slavery is ok and profitable, then I shouldn't have to teach that to them. After all, at one time slavery was perfectly reasonable and blessed by the constitution and no doubt would have been taught that way if they had compulsory education. I'd like to think we all have the right to override a state's antiquated moral dynamics. But of course, we always seem to operate from the perspective that our present morals are the exception to history, and should be just as legislated. My only real point is that her answers revealed principles that guide her. She answered in complete sentences - statements with consequences that go beyond his little question. Edit: Oh, and boy did she screw up the pledge of allegiance question... That was dumb.

Yeah, weren't they the ones that ran some kind of banner under the announcement of Palin as the VP pick, to the effect of "How many houses does this make for McCain and Palin total?" - or something like that? The funny part was watching O'reilly get "tough" like he always does, pounding on his laminated particle board desk about how Brian Williams and Brokaw are "part of the problem", yelling and pointing his finger at the camera trying to get Brit Hume to agree with him. I love it. Ego doesn't meet ignorance like that but once in a lifetime...

Yes, I've heard quite the rotten, disgusting prejudice about how "she needs to be home with her child". I thought we were post 50's here. I just find it all so...irrelevant. Kind of like all of their private life stuff - it's just not important to the job. Now, the quiz on Russia - that's real damn relevant. And I'd like to see it. I've already read blogs from left wing nutjobs claiming that Palin is a horrible mother and that if she can't "control her 17 year old daughter" then how can she run the united states government..blah blah blah. Of course, anyone who claims "control" of a teenager needs to be probed for child imprisonment and/or abuse. It's despicable, and I'm sure we're going to hear more and more hypocrisy from the extreme left. Charges that she should be home with her disabled child - which I guess will get her closer to the kitchen which is where she needs to be...

Thanks I'll check that out. Sounds interesting anyway.

Well I'm not ready to die. But I do want to feel it and know it when it happens.

Well thank you so much there iNow. I didn't mean Obama's statements directly, although I believe his fits the distortion category, which is good enough in my opinion. I was responding to "any speech of this nature" and my personal qualifiers are simply no bs. I understand muddling up facts on accident, but this was a carefully crafted speech that contains distortions - at the very least, and I don't think that's worthy of an honest stateman. But hey, they all do it nowadays so I'm not suggesting he's the only one guilty of it, I'm just calling it how I see it, I'm sure McCain will bend the truth and rack up a list of his own. I'm actually more interested in Palin and seeing if she ends up turning evil.

I really need to read up on this conservation thing, I see this referenced alot when I go digging around physics stuff. I was hoping I could develop a fictional reality that simply included an additional elementary subatomic particle to be, or help to be, responsible for psychokinesis, and any downstream effects that particle might introduce that may not be obviously apparent. But I just don't understand enough to write about something like that and be believable I guess. Edit: Hmm, after reading about them conservation of energy makes sense, that one seemed pretty straight forward, but momentum conservation isn't entirely clear to me.

I expect it to be honest and worthy of a statesman. Not bullshit distortions worthy of stoners at the smoke hole.

Interesting...I would have thought the laws of physics were the result of the properties of the forces and particles. So, if the universe was empty of all particles, or all but one, the laws would still exist?

And when those rules are deduced, have you found that a particular physical phenomenon can be traced back to a simple particle? Like how Photons are responsible for electromagnetic phenomena (well, per Wikipedia anyway, so I don't know how accurate that is to phrase it that way). I guess that's what I find confusing. It almost seems like an elementary particle like a photon causes physical law. And if you were to remove it, you would then alter the laws of physics.

What kind of impact does a subatomic particle have on the laws of physics? Does the particle compel the properties of law, or does the law compel the properties of the particle? Or is that a chicken and the egg? I’m bored, and playing with my psychokinesis thing again, and was wondering about the idea of an elementary particle brokering such a concept. Is it plausible that one subatomic particle (that is, if we could get god to inject it in all the atoms of the universe for us) could possess the properties to provide the mechanism for forces we might exploit in the form of psychokinesis? Remember, this is for fun, so please don’t beat me up because I’m a dumbass about particle physics and don’t know how to ask a physics question without it contradicting itself or even making much sense.

I like your line of thinking here because you used the phrase "engaged with the government". That's more like it. Engage in the process. The most dangerous person is the one who votes out of ignorance. Stop these people wherever you find them. Persuade them to read and participate in the process, and if that fails, persuade them not to vote. No middle ground there. NASA doesn't hear my opinion on time dilation issues because I don't know what the hell I'm talking about. I shouldn't suffer some fool's opinion because he doesn't know what he's talking about either. Rush made a point years ago that sticks with me to this day. If you actually received your full paycheck and had to turn around and write the check, or pull out the cash, and pay your taxes for that pay period you would see a huge outcry by the public calling bullshit on their government and would get more involved, pay more attention. The psychological conditioning associated with your taxes already being stripped away by the time you receive your check is key to keeping the people from realizing just how much they're being screwed.

..which is exactly what feeds the status quo political machine that everyone likes to SAY they're against. Everytime we settle for the "lesser of two evils" we enable the two party seige - the same seige I remember many posters in here talking about being against - talking about how we'd like to see multiple parties and blah blah blah. But when the rubber meets the road, they play along. We say we don't like liars - yet we elect them over and over again for successfully lying. We rationalize and appeal to how much the other guy lies more or how it wasn't really a lie, but bending the truth - teenager logic. Please. A liar is a liar and none of them deserve the high office of the land if they can't tell me the damn truth. But hey, we all want to belong to a team, right? A team with relevance. Right now, the two relevant teams are Dems and Pubs, and they are jam packed with dispicable liars and cheats - after all, that's where the opportunity is, isn't it? I suppose we'll keep rewarding them...like we always have.

Why? Why do I care if McCain provides a list of 100 lies? How does that justify throwing a fit over one mark on one's past while denying the evidence of at least 7 enumerated cases of distortion by another? This response from you seems to imply you are heavily invested in the us vs them, rep vs dem - I have no interest, sorry. McCain isn't any holier when he lies, and it doesn't make Obama's lies "less bad".

Damn, now I feel bad for layman. Ah well, I guess we all learn from our falls...could sure do without the gang tackling though.

I like her. I heard part of her speech today, and my favorite was the line about saying no thanks to the bridge to nowhere..."If Alaska needs a bridge, we'll build it ourselves". I like that independent attitude. I don't know much about her but from her speech she sounds exactly like I imagined the first woman president to be in my mind's eye. I only wish she was running for the top spot, rather than second place. But with McCain's age, she'll likely get it before next election. Time will tell, and I've got a bit to learn about her, but so far so good. Hell, I might even vote for one of the two major parties for the first time in my life. Ah, I'm getting ahead of myself here... Obama admitted drug use at the Saddleback Forum on national TV as well - and I'd say it's almost certain he broke federal law AND state law as well.

Same here actually. I guess I just don't see what's particularly notable about one distorting another's positions now . You don't think so? You just threw poop at Palin on another thread about McCain's VP choice and that was one "mark" on her past, which Obama also has experience with among others, but you're going to let Obama here slide on 7 points of blatant distortion that happened yesterday? Ridiculous.

For one, depending on their age, a child won't remember why they're in their room to understand the punishment. At 2 years old, they'll forget why they were put there in just a few minutes. Every minute after that is just cruelty. And the few minutes they do understand, isn't enough of a consequence to be sure they won't repeat trying to go into the street. Besides...based on your logic, we're not supposed to be away from our child's side, remember? To be "good" parents, we're supposed to suspend our entire lives for 18 years and follow them around to protect them right? (Oh, and somehow hunt and gather to provide food, clothing, shelter...) So we can't send them to their room as any consequence because we'll be right there with them - that's just hanging out. How do they know when we're in the living room because they're in trouble or because there's a good show on? And lastly, you're busted for not reading my post. I specifically said spanking, accessing the pain trigger, is one of a SET of the tools for behavior modification. It's more useful and effective for dangerous behavior that the child cannot mentally process and understand and therefore subsequently adhere to reliably. Yes, it's lazy to buy outlet covers and call it a day - I see about 1 outlet cover per thousand outlets outside of my home. Since I have no intention of locking my child away in my house, it's reasonable to expect my child will encounter such outlets elsewhere. So, while it may seem "enlightening" to buy some outlet covers, it's actually more important to teach him not to stick forks in outlets. This would be akin to teaching your child not to use guns, rather than teaching him not to kill people. It's actually more responsible to address the problem itself. "The time" you got hit? Sounds like abuse to me. If you only got hit once, it was abuse. Where did you get hit? I don't remember "the time I got hit". I got spanked too many times to count. I'm not violent in the least. Neither are my kids. And you don't have anything to support that nonsense. Are you serious? You might as well ask me to back up the notion that dogs like to pee on trees. I'm a parent, and I don't know any parent in this thread, or this forum for that matter, that won't agree kids challenge your authority - particularly very, very young. Remember, my context as been consistently a 2 year old. They don't do it for any malicious reasoning, their just little people testing out the world around them. I don't know how you go about backing up common knowledge. But no, I don't feel obligated to do so. Neither should anyone else. I think you need some experience before you engage here, because your lack of it is seriously hurting your ability to reason these concepts. There are plenty of parents that don't use spanking, and none of them use the arguments you've posited here - they have real life experience and they know when they're being unrealistic and naive. Wow, what a scientific method that is... I don't suppose you've ever considered that what is considered "aggression", "anxiety", "often", "worries", "fearful" might change from culture to culture as well? It's not just the intensity of punishment that changes across cultures, layman.

So that was a figment of my imagination that they were engaged in a legal dispute about discriminatory hiring practices based on the idea that they sell burgers from hot chicks in scimpy outfits? Been to an equal opportunity strip club lately? I don't remember seeing any "big girls" or old women, or any kind of man on stage - they were all in the audience. They are being discriminated against, by your logic, so go get 'em. My 80 year old grandma ought to be able to work there. But no....they want to turn a profit and make believe that horny men want to see young women and are discriminating in order to gaurantee only good looking young women get to work there. Right' date=' my point is that they limit the scope of who can "utilize" their business by sensible discriminatory practice. Hospices focus on the dying. Profit turning golf clubs also focus on golf geeks. Everyone else doesn't really get to utilize their business. The thing is, we don't call that "discrimination" because we agree with it. We agree that a hospice has the right to deny flu patients, and admit a dying old woman instead. That's discrimination. But we "say" it like the hospice is "focusing" or "specializes" - we edit the word discrimination here because we agree with its application here and interpret the word "discrimination" as a pejorative. The public paid for that roadway. So of course, I have no issues with it. If you want to buy me a business, I'll be happy to do it discrimination free, like any businessman would do anyway. But a doctor is engaging in an activity that is immersed in direct harm and damage - observable harm. They are basically given an "exception" status to cut, poke, prod and give drugs to people that can kill them. This is murder. So in order to have such a thing as "medical practice" we would have to make such activity a privilege. And, that's not an infringement on personal choice. Just like denying you the right to stab me is not an infringement on your rights. I never said you have the right to run a business that kills people or causes direct damage. In fact, that's been my criteria for this entire thread - if it doesn't cause direct harm or damage, then I don't believe we have the right to restrict it. Some people choose chiropractors and "healers" - nothing stops those people from endangering other's lives by redirecting them away from actual medical practioners. They can't cut or give drugs, because here again, we're talking about tools for direct harm. Objective, direct damage. Not damage "perceived" by applying my particular morals and ethics - but actual, bloody, observable damage. What's so hard to get about that? Your rights end, where other's begin. It would seem quite appropriate to make a privilege out of a practice that engages directly in direct harm and damage. It also said immunities. In the same sentence. Two words away, separated by an "or". Right, I never advocated otherwise. I'm arguing against the law's existence. I'm challenging the notion that doctors shouldn't have a right to refuse treatment for whatever freaking reason they want since I believe you do not have the right to enslave people through blackmail to satisfy your moral code set. Threatening their license, their livelihood, unless they comply to the government's ideas of "good behavior" - the same government that declared slaves as 3/5 a person - is blackmail and it's wrong. Actually, I do believe the role of government is to protect us from objective harm. I've already covered the medical angle, and this would seem similar in that the activity could be considered a threat to national security. People are free to navigate in the ocean, and they are free to own guns, but they aren't free to point guns at the coast and invade Florida. So, I do believe the government's role is to extinguish threats to the security of the nation - and running a nuclear facility, of any kind, garners the attention of threat assessment. It's the armed boat coasting off the coast of Florida - when does a person's "rights" get trumped by the reality of national security? Well, that's a big debate right now, actually. But again, we're at least talking about consequences that involve direct damage and harm. Not conclusions that require moral code processing to deduce. And no, I haven't made up my mind about it. It's always been a good argument to point out nuclear warhead development by the neighbors being unacceptable. Right. Pointing out what "is" again. Irrelevant to my point entirely. I even elaborated on it with a second sentence. The principles in the Constitution are driven by philosophical conclusions - my statement is about that philosophical conclusion, not about the resultant law. I'm questioning where a person gets the just philosophical notion that someone else should be forced to run a business that reflects their ideas of good and bad. If we were writing the constitution today, where would we get the audacity to make that presumption? Right, we disagree on the proportion. I don't agree that state's rights have a legitimate case to override individual rights in terms of discrimination. In this case, the collective state's rights are oppressive, have precedence to cause irreparable harm and shame, and trample too much on individual liberty. The balance is tiled heavily in the collective's rights favor, unjustly, in my opinion. If that's true, so what? I'll bet if we forced little kids to be doctors, against their will, we'd have even more huh? I could cut crime in half if you let me strip your civil liberties away. But it's not acceptable to sacrifice some of our principles like that, even for noble intent. Think Bush, wiretapping and etc. And there are many who believe we have the level of care that we do because there is a lot of profit in medicine - doctors are rewarded with big salaries, as opposed to other more socialist approaches to medicine that result in lower pay, smaller talent pool. Not a value judgement, just clinical observation. After all, we also have profit driven hospitals that are run el cheapo style on the resources - money goes to a doctor's pocket rather than a new EKG machine. Yes, I'm ok with them exercising their freedom to discriminate against me, legally. Personally, I'm going to make a scene, and cuss at them, and I'm pretty sure the media would love to help fry them. But, that also serves to illustrate what's wrong with forcing the citizenry to pay taxes for industry that has nothing to do with the narrow role of government. Persuasion to get my tax money? Cool. Forcing my tax money? Not cool. The above scenario that you present is a good reason why I shouldn't be forced to participate in their education funding.

It is absolutely irresponsible parenting to protect your child to the extent it does not learn to look out for itself. You cannot follow your child around at arm's reach 24/7 and to suggest so leads me to believe you're not a parent. You must teach your child of the dangers in life at a very young age if you want them to beat the Darwinian odds. Again, no, I didn't say leave traps around the house to snap your child in two. I said you can't protect them 100% and you are directly responsible for their skills in personal safety so to "put some covers on the sockets" as your one stop solution is lazy and traitorous to your child. They deserve to know not to put things in light sockets - for when they are not locked in your "child safe" house. Or is your next suggestion going to be that we not allow our children to leave the yard? You shouldn't let them play in the yard? That's weird. And far more cruel than the tried and true spanking that fixes the 'going into the street' problem. And yes, it works. See, at two years old, they really don't understand nor do they really care. If you could even get them to remotely understand why it's wrong, they'd forget why a few minutes later. And many times, they love to just challenge your authority and essentially flip you off to see if you'll do something. Kids are funny. They're brand new little people figuring out the social structure. Physical domination is necessary to stop them from doing things that will hurt them or the group until they are of the psychological capacity to negotiate this on their own. A two year old child remembers better and responds more reliably to a swat on the butt when approaching the street, than trying to explain that cars can kill you. Sorry, but until their marbles develop to the point they can understand such concepts, they rely on us to teach them with other useful triggers - like pain in the butt. Yeah, kids learn from watching others and one of those things is that they're not in charge and don't get to dole out punishments. Hitting or otherwise. They also learn hard lessons of mocking other's behavior, like mimicing a love scene they watched in a movie, or drinking bleach like their older brother pretended to do the day before. So, sure I'll bet my spanking makes the list of observed behaviors to try out, and we take care of it like any other inappropriate behavior. It's not an "issue" like I'm sure you'd like to believe.

You want me to lecture a 2 year old why they shouldn't put a fork in a light socket? Aside from the language barrier, I'm pretty sure any charade I perform is only going end up being entertainment for the moment, and inspiration for the accident later. Acknowledging the utility value of our nature and instincts isn't a wholesale sellout of reason. Shame is a useful tool for molding behavior that humans use on each other instinctively, yet seems cruel when we see it on film; think Carrie. Shunning others from the group is good too, and again emotionally, mentally cruel. Pain, spanking, is part of the skill set. And like any of them, can be abused.

Yeah, I was wondering a bit on the same lines. That perhaps a happy medium is that a state has a natural right to secede with respect and obligatory dues to its "union" or whatever. So, for instance, if your state was invested with military bases and equipment by the federal government as a strategic move, but now you want to secede. Our union deserves the respect and obligation by your state to stay in the union long enough for us to readjust and maneuver our resources in lieu of your departure. After all, we depended on your pact with us when we deployed those resources that your state has enjoyed and likely profited from. Hell, outright theft could be argued if you're not compensating the "central" government for the infrastructure they've provided your state. Granted, in theory, I guess your state helped provide the taxes for it - but taxes are not apportioned evenly, nor is the infrastructure, so realistically other states may have paid the bulk - or I suppose the other way around as well.

Georgia is doing what Russia, America, or any other nation would do when a segment of their territory declares independence - they are enforcing their union. Russia doesn't have a legitimate territorial excuse for invading Georgia. Now, you can also argue that Georgia doesn't have any right to stop S Ossetia from separating, perfectly fair. And still, Russia doesn't have a legitimate territorial excuse for invading Georgia. The only way Russia "worms" itself into a plausible excuse to flex its muscle and punish Georgia, for trying to be sovereign and independent of Russia, is to appeal to their citizenry in South Ossetia. I cannot buy this sleeping lion analogy as it seems to presuppose that Georgia has no right to enforce its union, and assumes Russia automagically has some kind of natural right to respond to some other nation's intra-state conflict. See that's still holding me up too. I keep waiting for this epiphany to suddenly give me the answer to this philosophical dilemma. You're absolutely right, taken to their logical extremes ends with absurdity. I think Russia's action is on shakier ground that Georgia and the break away regions, but the protection of their citizenry is at least valid. What a mess.

Maybe it's different in the UK. Here in the states, season 1 was continuous, running from Jan ~ April 2005. Season 2 was split, first half was July ~ Sept 2005, second half was in Jan 2006 ~ March 2006. Season 3 was continuous, Oct 2006 thru March 2007. Now season 4 is split like season 2, with the first half running April thru June 2008. They also did a bunch of time slot shuffling - started out on Sundays, I think, then was moved to a Monday or something like that, and now they're on Friday nights. They're not any more guilty than any other series on TV nowadays. It just seems like networks are going out of their way to be sure good shows don't take off. By the time you get into them, they're pushing a mid-season finale, or some such cliff hanger. Season 4 has a good excuse, but I'm still pissy about season two. That was a tough hiatus to live through. After all, BSG is the only decent sci-fi I'm seeing on regular ole television.