peacefuljeffrey

The Venom story would involve them having to deal with The Beyonder and Secret Wars! If they didn't, they'd piss off a lot of Spidey fans who look for at least a little authenticity. I myself am still pissed off about the microscopic-hairs-on-the-fingertips b.s. they used to explain wallcrawling. I like the explanation about molecular adhesion that you get in The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe (which, by the way, is a phenomenally good series!). - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Happily, I am healthy. I am one of those people lucky enough to be able to answer "No current medications" on doctors' questionnaires. No major surgeries. No major broken bones. No named diseases. I do have to keep an eye on my intraocular pressure, though. When I was younger, on through several years out of college, my eyesight was realllly good, perfect. I thought I'd been spared my mother's genes, which my brother got. I thought I would not end up nearsighted, but in 1998 I realized I was not seeing distant objects clearly. Went in for an eye checkup, and found I needed corrective lenses. Bummer. But not the end of the world, like I used to think it would be. I have a pretty mild prescription for my glasses and contact lenses, but my pressure tests showed a little high on the spectrum, so we have to watch it. Some day I might end up on eye drops to prevent glaucoma, but with a little luck it'll stay just fine and I won't have to medicate. But with all the things that could happen to a body, I consider myself very very fortunate. I can't complain about my health. It's good. Blue skies, -Jeffrey -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Loved my Mustang GT. However, you're behind the times by more than a year. Now I have a GTS Eclipse. ltdiver Well, update your avatar pic! You should trade that thing for a Subaru STI! - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

If that's the case, it's time for religious people to stop going around proclaiming that they DO understand everything, how god set it up, and what we're supposed to do with it. For all any of them know, god wants a certain number of us to not believe in him so that we go on ever searching for answers. It doesn't prompt people to learn, grow, get better, or anything of the sort. It just prods us to seek pleasure, or "do our own thing". Inadequate, presuming you expect to exist forever. Something wrong with seeking and having pleasure for eternity? I'd settle for that... By the way, if anything "doesn't prompt people to learn, grow, get better, or anything of the sort," it's thinking that all we need to know about our universe is set down in the bible. Fossil record? No need! The bible tells us how old the earth is, and everything on it. Space exploration? No need -- the earth is the center of the universe!! "Mr. Scientist, you found proof of life on another planet? It must be decoy life placed there deliberately by god to test our faith in the notion that the earth is the center of the universe!" All of it is utter hogwash. Easily destroyed myth and superstition. What's more, it is harmful to any attempt at unity between humans. Divide divide divide, because MY non-disprovable god is the right one and YOUR non-disprovable god is false! If god really gave a shit-crusted fuck about humanity, he would long ago have simply stepped in and said, "YO! Here I am! I love you ALL, and you can finally stop FIGHTING over me all the motherfucking time!" - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

No, just that she wants to BE president more than vice president. She wouldn't make a good restroom attendant. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Oooooh! "Santioned by the United Nations security council"! That's like being told by a cafeteria lunch aide to stop running in the halls, but the consequences aren't as dire. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Can you or anyone else establish that these non-felons who were mistakenly prevented from voting would have voted for Gore? Of course you can't. I want to know -- people band together if they are victims of just about anything that the world can throw at them, so where is the "Association of Disenfranchised Non Felons"? How many of the non-felons who were erroneously placed on the felon list actually did attempt to vote and were turned away? How many of these people are out there with certified letters from the Board of Elections stating that they were erroneously prohibited from voting in 2000 and have been reinstated? Because if people who didn't go out to vote in the first place were on that list, they are moot, right? I mean, if I were told, right there at my local polling station, that I was ineligible to vote because I was listed as a felon (I am not), I sure as shit would have been seeking redress, and at the very least that would mean having myself cleared to vote by the following year. These people have had almost four years. Where are they all? Wouldn't there be a statistic of how many people had been reinstated who had not belonged on the list? At the very least, someone should have set up a hotline for people to call if they found themselves erroneously called a felon, even if it were an independent, non-governmental agency, and we'd know how far and wide the problem was. Why isn't anyone looking into the felon lists in Tennessee? A win in his home state of Tennessee would have given Gore the election. Maybe there were non-felons in TN who were told they couldn't vote, enough of them to have turned things Gore's way... Surely every person who tried to vote and found himself being called a felon was indignant and sought to have the situation rectified? Where are all these disenfranchised people?? - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

WOW. With all that we disagree about, I am awestruck that we agree so strongly about this! And I think it is a very powerful statement that someone who went to school deliberately to study religion now has such disdain for it. I think this is a good thing, since I see religion and religiousness as a bane, too. Blue skies, - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

You have a fairly misguided notion of darwinistic evolution if you think it just happened randomly, or more to the point, if you think that's what darwininian evolution is about. What I think is funny is that at the same time as many religious people say that the nature of our creation is for god alone to understand, and it's way beyond any of us, they still claim to have it knocked when it comes to understanding how we're supposed to live, and what god wants of us. I think they're trying to have it both ways. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Wow, 14% atheist leads the pack, as of my posting! I answered Atheist and Other. I sure realize that there is a great mystery as to how all of existence came to be, and what set down the very rules by which existence governs itself (gravity, energy, matter, physical laws -- even the concepts of these things -- where did they come from?). But I certainly don't believe that a "god" did it. I don't know what did, or IF anything did. I tend to view "atheism" a little differently, I think, from the common sense of the word. I tend to regard it, personally, as a rejection of any and all existing notions of religion and deities. I think they're all a bunch of crap. I'd have put agnostic, but I am skeptical about the existence of a deity at all, so I think I fit more with atheist. I put "other" to account for the fact that my mind is not 100% made up about exactly what I believe about the nature of reality. That, and I tend to be a little "mystical," without edging into what I would call "religious." I also would not call myself "new agey." I am simply myself. I suppose that if anything, I worship knowledge, truth, beauty and love. Blue skies, - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Oh, god, here we go again with a tirade from the left about how precious the votes of felons are. Tell you what, if no felon ever got to vote again in all the future that remains, I would not be bothered, and I don't think our country would suffer harm. They're fucking FELONS, dude. It's not like someone is out there trying to keep COLLEGE STUDENTS from voting. Let's get our priorities straight. Do you really want your party to be known (well, too late) as the party that had to rely on FELONS favoring them in order to get elected?! Who on earth believes that if the left did not feel confident that the majority of felons would vote for democrats, that they would give a flying fuck about getting felons' civil rights restored?? These are the same felons that liberals are too chicken-shit to stand up to by being be armed in case of criminal attack. "That's what 911 is for..." - - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

That would stop her, you figure? Having promised not to do something? She is a power-mad, unrepentant liar. If she got elected VP because enough people didn't mind the fact that she reneged on a promise not to run, do you think that would keep her up at night? She's a sociopathic power-monger. I really doubt she'd feel remorse for having lied. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

That was bad, bad. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Silly me, I thought that stating you had used your reserve parachute FIVE TIMES proved that you would have DIED without it, not that you don't need it. All you're saying is that you feel able to selectively determine when you will or won't need to have a reserve with you. Fine. As with a gun, I can selectively determine whether I'm likely to need it in my daily travels. If I'm just going 1 mile away to Publix, I'm very unlikely to have to use my gun in self defense. I still take it, because I am unable to know what may happen on the way to, while in, and on the way back from the store. Perhaps I'll come home to disturb an armed burglar? Pray tell, when are these "proper conditions" when you feel it's perfectly safe to jump without a reserve? Are you talking BASE jumps, or something else? Are you prepared to let these exceptions be the rule? Your example of having needed, and used, a reserve parachute five times is tantamount to saying that you'd have died now, five times over, if you had not had it there to deploy. And yet you use your (reckless? responsible? considered? ill-considered?) willingness to now and then jump without a reserve as some sort of cockamamie proof that guns are unnecessary? You say that guns come well below reserves, and you've needed the reserve. I find it odd that someone whose life was saved by reserves five times could ever say, "I could live without reserves." If that is not a recklessly stupid statement, I don't think I'd know one. You seem to be implying you'll always be in control of your need of emergency life-saving devices (both reserve parachutes and guns qualify). Man, you really lost me on that one, as I'm sure you did others. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Yes, you're probably right. But then, I wouldn't know for sure because I don't live my life in constant fear. I live in constant preparedness to deal with threats to my safety. There is a huge difference, and you apparently do not understand it. I've cooked in my kitchen, at various residences, for twenty-some of my 32 years. I have never had a fire that I had to deal with. Therefore I do not feel the need to equip my kitchen with a fire extinguisher. See the parallel? (By the way, the statement is false. I DO have a fire extinguisher, because I realize not having had a fire is no guarantee of never needing an extinguisher in the future.) - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

In the meantime, this section from the link he provided is interesting, although it's probably best discussed in a different thread. I just thought I'd contribute it as "color" for the background of a discussion about civilian safety in England: ------------------ Britain -- Parliament increasingly has given the police power to stop and search vehicles as well as pedestrians. Police may arrest any person they "reasonably" suspect supports an illegal organization. The grand jury, an ancient common law institution, was abolished in 1933. Civil jury trials have been abolished in all cases except libel, and criminal jury trials are rare. . . . While America has the Miranda rules, Britain allows police to interrogate suspects who have asked that interrogation stop, and allows the police to keep defense lawyers away from suspects under interrogation for limited periods. Britain allows evidence which has been derived from a coerced confession to be used in court. Wiretaps do not need judicial approval and it is unlawful in a British court to point out the fact that a police wiretap was illegal." (Kopel, 1992, pp. 101-102.) ------------------ Chilling. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

What you are failing to consider is the new reality -- guns are pouring into your country, from wherever they may (eastern Europe is the suspectd culprit, right?). They are being used in gang and mafia warfare, but some number of them IS trickling and WILL continue to trickle down through the black market to street criminals, including robbers, rapists, burglars, muggers, and drug dealers. Given time, this will result in more of your average civilian population being victimized with them. You say that since they are not being used in self defense, they cannot be an impact on crime. How's that? If hundreds of thousands more come flowing into your country, they will have an impact on crime. They will be used in crime. More people who didn't have guns with which to commit crimes will have them. Confiscating guns from honest people who had licensed them is what won't have an effect on crime. But let's say you did now begin to license civilians to carry guns, in response to the knowledge that over the next decade more and more street criminals will be obtaining and using them. That will have an impact on crime. It may even help keep your crime rate under relative control. From all accounts, it is spiraling OUT of control as we speak. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

I never said the UK had a higher per capita murder rate, someone else did, but I do know that while our U.S. rate may be higher (MAY), ours is not growing by leaps and bounds the way the UK rate is, in the sense of double-digit percentage increases! THAT is FACT. We in the U.S. have available numerous cities and states that can be used to contrast what happens when concealed firearm carry is legal with what happens when it is not. It is not legal in Detroit, New York City, Washington D.C., Chicago. These happen to be the areas where murder rates and violent crime are the highest. Vermont, which does not even require a permit to carry a concealed handgun (neither does Alaska, now), has one of the lowest violent crime/murder rates in the entire nation. Your comment about Switzerland's population being homogenous seems to indicate you think a homogenous population generally has a lower crime rate than a multicultural one. Can we take that to mean that if a society really wanted to decrease its violent crime, it ought to seek out ways to make the culture homogenous? If the government fails to take such steps, isn't it not doing all it could to make its citizens safer?? - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Yes, you're probably right. Although I'm not sure if the impact on me of killing someone would have been better than the impact of being raped. That sounds stupid, doesn't it? But, either way, its an interesting point that Jeffrey's raised isn't it? I mean, if I'd have had a gun, I'd have been ok, if they had been decent people, I'd have been ok. I guess its like we need better people, not necessarily more guns. I'd say that in the meantime, while we're waiting for the basest, most evil people among society to become such sweethearts, it's best to be armed to defend yourself when one of the stragglers (or four) cross your path. Which is the more immediately effective solution: to arm yourself, or to wait for everyone to become benign and good at heart? - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

That's a very interesting statement, Jeffrey. Do you really mean it? I was raped when I was 21 by four men in a pub car park. I'm sure that if I had been carrying a gun, I could have prevented it from happening. Does that mean I deserved it? This (surprisingly, seeings its coming from me ) isn't an attempt to start a flame war, and I'm not trolling, I'm genuinely interested in what you really think Jeffrey. Oh, and sorry for taking this off topic, Mike. Nope...you didn't deserve it and too bad you didn't have a gun to permanently remove those a$$holes from the gene pool. Rock ON, Lady! You're my kind of woman! - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

That's a very interesting statement, Jeffrey. Do you really mean it? I was raped when I was 21 by four men in a pub car park. I'm sure that if I had been carrying a gun, I could have prevented it from happening. Does that mean I deserved it? This (surprisingly, seeings its coming from me ) isn't an attempt to start a flame war, and I'm not trolling, I'm genuinely interested in what you really think Jeffrey. Oh, and sorry for taking this off topic, Mike. I'm genuinely sorry you were raped. That shouldn't have happened, and I think that the people who did it should be dead. My statement is meant more in the abstract, more as a generality. In one way, yes, a person who has not taken steps to prevent victimization reaps the effects of that failure to prepare for defense. That means one has to walk a fine line between being relaxed in his/her everyday affairs, and bristling with preparedness to go into personal combat mode. I'm not saying it's easy. But a society that eschews, with prejudice, any effort to allow, much less encourage, individuals to defend themselves from criminal predation does deserve to have high crime rates. That is no the same, really, as an individual deserving to be a victim. Perhaps I should have said "*A* people, not just people." It would have been closer to what I meant. Women in the USA actively repel rapists by being armed. It happens. And statistically (JohnRich has posted about it) those who fight back against criminal attack with a weapon are injured at a lower rate than those who acquiesce to their attacker, or who fight back without weapons. It's just a fact of life, if you want to survive, you have to be ready to do damage, and that generally means "have a weapon at your disposal." Blue skies, - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Oh dear. It's source Jeffrey is listed at the bottom of the table. The data is from the Seventh United Nations Survey of Crime Trends and Operations of Criminal Justice Systems, covering the period 1998 - 2000 (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Centre for International Crime Prevention). The United Nations has adopted the stance that civilians around the world should not have the right to own personal firearms. I hardly think can be considered an unbiased source of information, much as I'm sure you don't think that any pro-gun information we might post with the NRA as its source would be legitimate. What about the survey that found people six times more likely to be the victim of violent crime in London versus New York City? - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

Please point to data to back up this statement. Please see the linked graph which illustrates just how wrong you are. The link shows data for the last set of figures available for murders with firearms per capita. Britain is last out of all the countries where this data is available. US is the 8th worst in the world. http://www.nationmaster.com/graph-T/cri_mur_wit_fir_cap Are you sure the UK is reporting more gun crimes than the US? (with thanks to nacmacfeagle who posted a similar link in an earlier thread). No offense, but who the fuck are the people who put together that information? What is their reliability? Why are they to be believed, anyway? And, um, I think it's kinda funny that countries like former socialist republics have lower firearms murder rates than the U.S. does... I guess they exclude those who are killed in war-like conflict, and bombings. Nothing like being selective in how people are killed to make a country look better. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

This is a perfect example, I think, of why "get out the vote" drives are a bad idea -- or at least, not necessarily a good idea. I have absolutely no idea who should or should not be on the BOD of the USPA! I've been in the sport since August 2003, I have 90 jumps, I am loving the environment, the people, and the skydiving, but I am NOT "in the know" and do NOT travel in the inner circles of skydiving. My vote is useless in something like this. I would have no idea what I would be getting by voting for any given person. My vote could be DANGEROUS to the USPA and to skydiving. Please tell me why, just by virtue of being a dues-paid member of USPA, I should vote in its elections. And please don't say, "Because other uninformed people just like you, Jeff, will be voting with no such compunctions as you have." - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"

You are talking about a different person from the one with whom the DZO had the falling-out, right? Why take out the bitterness from that situation on an unrelated person? If you care about skydiving, and people becoming better skydivers, you will be business-neutral about the decisions you make regarding jumping with this person and letting him jump your aircraft. If you care more about the petty business squabble, particularly if outside of this, your business is doing fine, then you don't care about skydiving or making better skydivers, and you should pack it in and let someone who loves the sport take over your DZ. - -Jeffrey "With tha thoughts of a militant mind... Hard line, hard line after hard line!"