FreeflyChile

Agree 100% I think that there are simply things that you can do for which you lose the right to remain alive. Depriving another person of that right in a premeditated fashion is such a thing.

Is gun ownership climbing at the same rate as population increase? More? Less? I'm just curious if you knew.

Im sorry i just thought it might be inline with your other beliefs Rest assured, I'm not particularly liberal. I think government should be very small, especially the federal government, and freedom as unrestrained as reasonably possible. If there's a funnier word to see misspelled, I don't know what it is. Blues, Dave I am partial to this one.... Edited because I was "stuped" enough to forget to hit "upload attachment"

hehehe yeah i dont know if you've noticed but i've joined your game in progress a couple of times in the last few days...

On a funny note: if they were Tibetans, they would be considered freedom fighters by some. Being Uighur (whose demands are similar to the Tibetans and as legitimate one would argue), some will call them terrorists...

Does anyone here play Madden? When the new one comes out I'll be getting it for the PS3 (finally a game to play on that thing...)

I have it on 360 as well.... though I've moved on to Battlefield: Bad Company.

To some people, not being allowed to believe in what they want would be a form of torture.

Is that a Freudian slip? Yes, one is science and the other is against science. So far, chuteless' argument is scoring a 0.000001 on the Marg scale of reasoning. Perhaps we can further this idea: how about a Marg = -Chuteless? My original proposal to the International System of Units for the "Marg" scale of reasoning was simply that zero would equal no reasoning whatsoever and literally having every atom in the universe being used as data to support your point would be a 10. If I understand you correctly, you'd like to expand this into numbers below zero and reclassify those numbers to reflect the absurdity of the argument in terms of "Chuteless". While I sort of agree with your basic premise, it does seem rather negative. Further, I'm not certain all units of measure need to contain negative numbers. For instance, a temperature below absolute zero or of a time -before- the Big Bang. This is true. The other way I was thinking of a "Marg" is not so much as a quantity, but as a measure within a scale (like pH measurements). So for example, a Marg of 0 would be perfectly objective. In terms of the debate, then, you can assign sides as necessary from -1 to 0 to 1 --- like totally off-the-rocker religious would be -1, 0 would be the reasoned argument taking into account what we know about science and respecting people's beliefs in religion, and 1 would be the ultra-scientific "people who believe in God are retards" extreme. In another embodiment, the -1 crowd would be the hardcore Clinton-got-a-BJ republicans, 0 would be the simple disclosure of facts on a topic and 1 would be the "Bush is satan" democrats. Though my system, after writing all of that, seems a bit too complicated. I like your system better. And though it's true that some measurements don't need negative units, given the drivel that sometimes gets spewed on the SC, having a scale for utter absurdity (the 'anti-Marg' or 'chuteless', if you will) is necessary to accurately measure arguments here.

Is that a Freudian slip? Yes, one is science and the other is against science. So far, chuteless' argument is scoring a 0.000001 on the Marg scale of reasoning. Perhaps we can further this idea: how about a Marg = -Chuteless?

Doesn't everybody want to be one? Seems like everyone wants to create one. "Kilopounds" is one of my favorites. I want a unit of measure named after me - that would be really cool! (And with that comment I eliminated any doubt w/r/t the aptness of my moniker. ) I know one (living) guy, John Vitko (former director of Biological & Chemical Countermeasures in S&T Directorate at DHS), who has a unit named after him: a "Vitko" is a the number of dead people or casualties required for something to me a *mass* terrorism event. 1 Vitko = 10,000 fatalities or 100,000 casualties. A "marg" ... a measure of scientific soundness/policy ? /Marg Is that metric or English units???

That's too bad. Though not surprising given we're on like a 20 year timetable to even go back to the moon.... This would really be an exciting project for humanity to get behind.

Which reminds me of something I've been thinking about for a while and I'll throw it out there for discussion.... Does anyone think that military personnel (pilots and vehicle drivers in particular) are "better" today in any way because this generation has grown up playing videogames? is there an advantage to a pilot going into the Air Force, that he's played flight simulator games growing up? I think Reagan once upon a time said something to the effect that Nintendo was helping train the new generation of warriors...

If you'd seen "Northerly Island" (the former Meigs) recently, you'd realize that the chance of that is between zero and none. Yeah, if you try and land there you might end up in the middle of a concert.

This really caught my interest - I googled it and read the Wikipedia entry... so is this actually on the radar of being built or is it still just theory?

Including the judge and prosecutor. So is it their fault that the defendant had a crappy lawyer that couldn't get a favorable verdict? A judge and prosecutor's execution might depend on the skill of the defense attorney...sounds like a sound system. You make it sound like a poker game, with the outcome dependent on the skill of the players. NOT exactly a sound basis for a system of justice with death as a possible outcome. We know that in Texas having a court appointed attorney who sleeps through a capital trial is not grounds for retrial! Yeah, that was my point in my reply.

Including the judge and prosecutor. So is it their fault that the defendant had a crappy lawyer that couldn't get a favorable verdict? A judge and prosecutor's execution might depend on the skill of the defense attorney...sounds like a sound system.

I think this is an interesting thread....it seems that people generally treat copyright law as they treat speed limit laws....most people know they're doing something illegal, or have a feeling that what they're doing isn't entirely legal, but they do it anyway because the odds are in their favor that they won't be caught if they're careful. I understand this attitude, but I find it funny that people would just openly admit to doing these things in a public forum. Granted, are lawyers for the music business reading dz.com looking for people to sue? Probably not. But given that a dz.com member was involved in defending someone in a copyright suit, it's not entirely out of the realm of possibility that this thread could be read by people looking for targets. or maybe, as it has been implied, the skydiving industry is just "below the radar" and there are bigger fish to fry. Still, it just takes one instance where they want to make a big deal of it and the jig is up.

What harm can come from a little government regulation? If it's good for guns, it's good for speech too, right? I say REGISTER COMPUTERS! Well you have to register your version of Office, because the trial version only opens 50 or so times...

I agree. There should be one truth in regard to history. When I refer to revisionist history, I am referring to teachers or professors who use history to slant it according to their own political leanings. A basic example of the point I am trying to make: Fact: I accidentally slipped and fell down a flight of stairs on August 16, 2003 resulting in Traumatic Brain Injury. Revised fact: I threw myself purposely down a flight of stairs on August 16, 2003 resulting in Traumatic Brain Injury. The 'fact' states the truth and what happened to me is labeled as an accident. The 'revised fact' infers that I was in a negative mental state and leads people to believe I was purposely at fault. In your example, the only 'fact' is that you fell down the stairs and suffered brain injury. The 'accidentally vs purposely' is subjective to a degree. OK, you say that you of course did not mean to misstep and hurt yourself -and you honestly believe it. That makes it fact to you. But then someone could say that you were negligent in not watching your step, or tying your shoe, or whatever happened that led you to fall down the stairs... etc. In any case, that wasn't why I wanted to reply - your comments (and Marg's prior to that) made me think that now that we're in an age where information is easier to get than ever, with more sources of information increasing the chances that the ever-elusive "truth" WILL get out...I think that now history will be remembered more than it ever has before. Maybe it's because when I was younger I didn't have as long a time on this planet to remember, but it seems to me that things that have happened in the last 10 years are better remembered than people of 1998 remembered in the 10 years prior to that (I have no way of proving this - just a theory of mine) simply because of how things are preserved now in this digital age. Also, w/r/t Marg's original post about a cultural/national collective short memory - I wonder if it has to also do with the fact that this country is made up of people from all over the place, so there is no predominant "cultural memory" that predominates over everything else and drives a culture (such as national hatred for neighboring cultures/countries that happens in other parts of the world).

Well by that logic add the executioner that actually does the killing, the cop doing the initial arresting, the person doing the initial accusing, etc.

That cop just allowed that cyclist to retire.

"Learn to swim, I'll see you down in Arizona bay." TOOL~Aenema And their inspiration was the Bill Hicks rant about the big one hitting and flushing LA into the ocean.

To which the town council of Morton Grove would reply "We had no idea you guys in Georgia could read or write".

And, for no other reason than this is a Bush thread and the Onion kicks ass: http://www.theonion.com/content/node/82858/10