winsor

Aside from it being in the public domain , I think of that more akin to "Monty Python's History of the World - Part 1" That would be Mel Brooks. As one of the family, his take has merit.

Changes my views for sure, I love eating crab! And yet one more of the uninformed that has not heard thatt there is a new testement. "New Testament?" Not a chance. The Tanakh (Hebrew Scriptures) has been used as the basis for a variety of alleged "new adventures" addenda - to include the Christian Scriptures, the Koran and the Book of Mormon. It is flattering that the history of our big, dysfunctional family has been used to authenticate so many unrelated works, but they are, in fact, unrelated. The use of supposed translations of Tanakh as "Part I" of other works is in violation of copyright. The terms "old" and "new" are only used by those who seek to validate the "new" by reference to the "old." Nice try. BSBD, Winsor

Orwell was an optimist.

The fact that rap - or hiphop or whatever it is - exists merely substantiates H. L. Mencken's observation that "Nobody ever went broke overestimating the vulgarity of the American buying public."

How ignoramic.... I'm talking about your post... Edit... ok, here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkZshaVoE60 Tuned into stupidity on steroids, as usual.

Not hardly. What I recommended was using intelligence, rather than stupidity. El Al has been dealing with these assholes for decades. When was the last time an attack on El Al was successful (the closest they came was Entebbe, and that worked badly for the attackers)? Having a group of fat half-wits harassing everyone in sight, while scrupulously avoiding any focus on the source of 99 44/100% of the problem, is hardly "planning for and trying to detect." I do not object to competent security. I most vocifierously object to abject stupidity, and TSA has a corner on the market. My policy is no radiation, no touch, no discussion (put it in writing) - and I wear a Speedo under anything they might want to inspect after I take it off. BSBD, Winsor

Why do we not take a look at how intrusive is the security at El Al? They have one individual with a three-digit IQ making the call in place of a platoon of TSA cretins. The key is not to ratchet up the stupidity level in response to issues that confuse those making the decisions. Al Qaeda may be assholes, but they are not retards. TSA are assholes AND they are retards. TSA gives the mentally retarded a bad name.

Faith is a necessary stepping stone to examine areas of spiritual phenomena. Science is still unable to quantify this obvious area of our being. Attributing consciousness to electrically charged neural matter is an incomplete explanation. The results of ones faith determine the validity of the object the faith is based in. There is no way any of us can discover everything on our own. We all learn by placing faith placed in the discoveries of others. ... If your goal is to substantiate Meso's observation that "Faith is retarded," mission accomplished.

How? Good question, I can't give you a quantum physical description. It requires faith to bridge the gap of understanding as stated previously. Once we accept the work of Christ through faith, we enter in to God's Kingdom and have access to all of the spiritual riches it contains. ... Boy, you sure swallowed that bill of goods - hook line and sinker. It just reaffirms the principle that there is a sucker born again every minute.

Once there was this guy that had a few new ideas. People have tested these ideas ever since and have not been able to disprove them. Then, new observations seemed to defy one of his ideas and he said that was his "greatest blunder". Then, many years after he died (and finally did or didn't-did find the "truth"), even newer observations showed that the idea he doubted might have provided a clue to something completely unimagined by anyone. So, maybe he was "right" after all. But he also said something to the effect that "God doesn't play dice" and it turns out that he was probably wrong about that one ......or was he? Yup, that was but one of the things Al got wrong. God IS dice.

I wonder what the correlation is between varied gravity anomalies as found in disparate geographic locations around the world and the numbers of DENSE Mutherfuckers in any one area, where the gravity anomolies are. If stupidity had mass a TSA checkpoint would be a black hole.

I agree completely. I do however believe that some people are happier believing in God and it is a victimless crime so they should be left to it. I grew out of Santa before I was 10, it took me another 10 or 15 years to grow out of God. I personally am happier for it. I love watching the debates though as no one ever seems to have the balls to put their hands up and say "I don't know all the fucking answers". The vocal physicists are as bad as the religious crowd. "The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong. That is, however, the way to bet." When asked whether there is a chance that exists, we say "yes." This is simply being polite, since the likelihood there exists anything that remotely resembles said deity as defined is vanishingly small, and may be treated as zero for all intents and purposes. It is on a par with the statistical likelihood that a kitchen cabinet will spontaneously undergo uncontrolled nuclear fission and wipe out Los Angeles - nonzero only for the sake of argument. People believing in nonsense is far from a victimless crime. A large group of people making very bad decisions on the basis of patent nonsense has all too often had large-scale and entirely criminal consequences. Superstitious people have inflicted great evil on the innocent throughout history often enough that it is rather a standard mode of behavior. You do not have to know all the answers to be able to spot ignorance on steroids. This is to say that one need not know what is specifically true to recognize something that is patently false. It is in keeping with my view of religion as a viral pathology that the most definitively false belief sets are the most virulent. The more glaringly false are the tenets of an ism, the more dangerous are its adherents when their demands for respect are not honored to their liking. I am in favor of DADT when it comes to beliefs. If you must adhere to something that goes beyond stupidity, PLEASE spare me the details. If you choose to proselytize, do not take it personally if the response is not positive. BSBD, Winsor

Dude, this is teevee. The whole bit about brininging mythology into the equation is to dumb it down enough that the unwashed masses can "understand" the presentation. There is a principle in advertising that, if you exceed an eighth-grade level, you have lost half of your audience. This applies to "science" teevee as well. The security-blanket provided by superstition apparently has appeal, but only serves to obfuscate the issues it purports to address. Religion is contingent upon the logical fallacy of argumentum ad ignoratio, or appeal to ignorance. I thus add religious structures to Patton's concrete fortifications as monuments to the stupidity of man. Despite what teachers are told to claim, there are stupid questions. Only a troglodyte would seek mathematical verification of superstition. Ask stupid questions and you get stupid answers. BSBD, Winsor

No problem.

I think you'll find the term is Christian Theology. Wrong. Do you have a reason for your assertion or is it simply an arrogant disrespect for the belief of others? Yes.

I think you'll find the term is Christian Theology. Wrong.

Rather a few. Christians have a pretty bad track record regarding the treatment of the deniers in their midst, so many of the deniers who survived are the ones who paid lip service to christian mythology. Religion is viral by nature, so anything one can do to inoculate against its pathology improves the likelihood of survival. BSBD, Winsor

You FOOL! It is ALL our fault! The CLIMATE! It is the CLIMATE that is angry at us! Now we find that the dread sin of CARBON can be compounded by thoughts of CUNNILINGUS and FELATIO! The HORROR of it all! We must REPENT!

I showed up for a 50 mile ride in Texas to discover that I should have brought the Harley instead of the Klein. Leathers instead of spandex would have been in order, as well. Come to think of it, I suppose it must have looked way gay to the biker trash crowd, but it did not occur to me to work that angle. Good thing - sometimes having a sick sense of humor can be hazardous to one's health (some Vigilante wanted to sell me a Sportster, and I said "nah, that's a girl's bike..."). BSBD, Winsor

You should have given me a call. The Cherokee is not very sexy, but it works well and I could have transport to the airline waiting for you in Virginia.

you'd like to see a flat rate 100% inheritance tax then? that's a great idea.

you'd like to see a flat rate 100% inheritance tax then? So far as you know, that's a great idea. If everyone gave all their money to the government, it could all be spent on worthwhile things. You should run for office. You would fit right in.

Very funny. Next you'll be telling us that you are appalled at how the gap between rich and poor in the USA has been increasing dramatically for the past 30 years. And we won't believe you on that either. For the past 30 years we have been paying the poor to breed. With kids as a cash crop, the population on the lowest tier has blossomed geometrically and unsustainably. This all falls into the law of unintended consequences; the road to hell being paved with good intentions and all that.

if the super rich paid their fair share of taxes then the government wouldn't have to tax the rest of us so much. surely that's not too mathematically advanced for you? I understood there would be no math. Your implied supposition that we operate under a zeo-sum system of taxation is terminally flawed - as are all of your other arguments. Keep it up, however, since you provide a classic case in point of the inanity of the the causes you espouse (which could very well be your point). Any time someone uses terms like "fair share," their logic is suspect. The "super rich" of my acquaintance pay orders of magnitude more taxes than do the "middle class," while the "poverty stricken" pay nothing, absorb resources, and procreate in sufficient quantity to ensure the continued cycle of poverty. Whether you have noticed or not, what the government spends has nothing to do with how much comes in in the form of taxes. It amazes me that anyone in the government could take exception to Bernie Madoff or Enron, since they are all cut from the same cloth. If, by "fair share," you mean anything along the lines of a flat rate, you have my attention. Nobody is penalized or subsidized, and everyone pays precisely the same percentage of income. If you sit around, smoke pot and listen to Ten Years After, the idea of no "rich" may seem idyllic. In practice, however, all that is accomplished by those with an excess of egalitarian zeal is to put us all out of business. Anything you recommend has been tried - with remarkably uniform results. You may wish to continue to do the same things and expect different results, though you should note that this is a classic definition of insanity. BSBD, Winsor

if they had been paying their fair share of taxes then the banks wouldn't have froze and we (the majority) wouldn't have had to bail the super rich (the minority) out... The idea that you can give money to the gov't faster than they can waste it is absurd, on a par with the idea that you can hit it big in a casino if you have a sufficient line of credit. The reason our government is terminally in hock is not because of any failure to tax everything in sight, and the idea that the core problem is that people who have managed to turn a profit are holding out is truly asinine. Tell you what, you make a few million and donate it to the treasury; show us how it's done. Put up or shut up.