MonDie

I haven't studied physics at all, but I think I know what you're saying. You did add "known to science." What makes you think there's no way to do this that's unknown to us, just like that unknown "higher intelligence"? Why must it have been an intelligent force that separated the antimatter from the matter? Because our bodies are bound by the laws of nature, nature can manipulate matter in any way we can. The only difference is that nature does things without intent.

My bad. I always forget that the page doesn't refresh every time I edit my post. How do you go about showing that something couldn't have emerged naturally (thus must have emerged artificially)? That would be a mightily impressive undertaking.

A scientist won't accept a given explanation for some phenomena unless there is evidence that the explanation is correct. This applies to explanations involving natural forces and explanations involving higher intelligence. By the way, how do you go about showing that something couldn't have emerged naturally (thus must have emerged artificially)? That would be a mightily impressive undertaking.

Just a thought. Perhaps policing should be more like jury duty. Define a group of people that can serve as cops, then assign them "cop duty" every once in a while. Only the well-trained, highly qualified cops would be full-time. The Zimbardo prison experiment provided evidence that people begin behaving differently when they're given power over others. If policing was more like jury duty, perhaps people wouldn't grow into the authoritative role. Also, the stress wouldn't build up for an extended period of time. This would also make conspiracy very difficult because "police officers" would no longer be a tight-nit social group.

Happy new year, Rigney. For the Biologists

Sorry that I edited my post after you (seemingly) responded to it. Those police were able to oppress citizens because they had weapons. If we didn't give guns to aggressive control-freaks, we wouldn't need to give guns to ordinary citizens. I guess I just admitted that some government officials aren't trustworthy. This problem is especially bad in Chicago.

Our country is a group of individuals acting in concert. If someone passes a crazy law, there will be people who refuse to follow or enforce it. The government can only forcibly take away our rights with threats of death and warfare. That's why we should keep the weapons in the hands of sane, non-violent people who don't have superiority complexes. Edited after Zapatos made his post.

The main reason I don't believe in a god: Most religious people assume that a god exists before the try to prove its existence. I'll give an example. Certain things are caused by other things. It must be true that such things can be traced back to a first cause. The first cause wasn't caused by anything else. The only thing that fits the criteria for a first cause is God. Thus God exists. The problem is that they have no way of knowing anything about "God," they've just assumed he exists with certain properties. For example, they probably also assume that God is a scentient being. I know better than to make those assumptions, so my conclusion would be more modest. I'll show you. Certain things are caused by other things. It's possible that such things can be traced back to first causes. Those first causes must have the trait of needing no other cause. I don't know of anything that possesses that trait (because I haven't presupposed the existence of a god). If some first cause were found, some people might decide to call it "God" even if it lacked many of the traits of God, like omniscience, omnipotence, or immutability. However, if it lacked most of the traits ascribed to traditional gods, I would not call it a god. This is the usual logic behind intelligent design. 1) Many natural things serve functions. 2) A thing will only serve a function well if it was designed to serve that function. For example, if a bunch of trees toppled onto each other, we wouldn't get a useful table, we would get a useless pile of wood. 3) It follows that natural things must have been designed by a scient being. Conclusion) The designer must have been something that didn't need to be designed by anything else, so the designer must have been God. Notice that, in the conclusion, there is the mistake of assuming God exists and has certain traits. Today, we have thoroughly demonstrated the existence of the natural forces behind evolution, and we have no reason to think those forces are scentient. We know that things can serve functions by accident. For example, even though a fire extinguisher was designed to extinguish fires, I can still use it to bash my way through a crowd. It's quite easy. As a scentient being, I decide the purpose of bashing my way through the crowd, then I look for something that is useful for that purpose. Nobody decided that the fire extinguisher should be useful for my purpose, its usefulness to me is an accidental trait. It's true that natural organisms are very adept at survival, but we know how they came to be that way. Organisms get random mutations in their DNA, and this causes populations to have variety. The mutations that are most useful for survival allow the organisms to survive, and survival allows the organisms to reproduce. Because the useful mutations are passed onto the next generation more frequently, they become more prevalent in populations. Notice that: (1) The purpose of survival was not decided by a scentient being. Because of natural forces, only things adept at survival were able to reproduce. The things that couldn't survive died off. A theist might argue for the possibility that these forces were scentient, but that idea is unnecessary. (2) Nothing had to design the organisms. Some mutations were accidentally useful, and some mutations were accidentally counterproductive. The mutations that didn't aid survival were eliminated over time. As we studied evolution, we didn't presuppose anything. We only ascribed properties to these natural forces if we had evidence for these properties. This is the basic idea behind Occam's razor. Apply this reasoning to God. Assume God is the first cause of the universe. If God caused the universe, does that necessarily mean he was scentient? No. Does it necessarily mean he is omnipotent? No. If you keep going, you will find that this "God" isn't necessarily a god at all. We decide the purpose for ourselves. I help other people because I've decided to serve that purpose. If you wish to take the biological perspective, we help eachother because a sense of community has helped us survive. Thus random mutations were useful if they promoted a sense of community.

I've decided to take this route. sudo adduser <other user> // creates new user; enter whatever username you like, for example: sudo adduser monkeybutt sudo adduser <other user> admin // adds the user to group 'admin' so it can edit the hosts file sudo deluser <main user> admin // removes the user from group 'admin'. Caution: If you forget 'admin,' it deletes the user. I will have siblings set the password for <other user> so I cannot edit the hosts file. Also, I had to remove <main user> from both the 'sudo' and 'admin' groups to remove its ability to edit the hosts file. I added <other user> to both of these groups. There's a problem. When I try to change my wireless network without root privelages, I get the message "System policy prevents modification of network settings for all users." In an unsuccessful attempt to fix the problem, I followed these AskUbuntu directions. http://askubuntu.com/questions/141553/how-to-enable-wireless-network-for-standard-users?lq=1 http://askubuntu.com/questions/66718/how-to-manage-users-and-groups For anyone else trying to do this, I have clarified the directions given in the AskUbuntu links. To enable "Connect to wireless and ethernet networks," open Users and Groups from Dash Home. Next, go to <main user>, then Advanced Settings, then User Privelages. (I enabled a bunch of the privelages for my main user, but not the administration privelage.) To make the wireless network "available to all users," open Network from Dash Home. Next, go to Wireless, then options.

I get it now. It wouldn't be the whole population against the drones, it would be part of the population against another part of the population. The scenario does resemble the premise of Terminator. The government turning on its people would be a matter of internal conflict. In the same way, a guy shooting up a movie theater is a matter of internal conflict. In both cases, you have one portion of the population trying to kill another portion of the population. Now consider this. If we give guns to violent people, we increase the risk of internal conflict, whether it's small scale or large scale. If we reserve the guns for sane, non-violent people, the risk of internal conflict will be much smaller. Of course, nobody is advocating putting all the guns (or military weaponry) in the hands of one person. The argument rests on the premise that government officials are not trustworthy!

Yes, because nothing can defeat Satan's army of pink unicorns.

Well the estimate of gunfighters was very high, and the estimate of the number of drones was low. You also failed to consider the other weapons at the government's disposal. Oh yeah, baby. He was making the point that the desire to eliminate guns is a natural reaction to guns being present. You can call them "whipped" all you like, but people will remain concerned about the safety of their children.

I wanted to check the numbers. I'm not informed on the war in Syria, but I read that they're killing the Alawites. According to Wikipedia, the Alawites comprised 11% of the Syrian population. In the quote above, you assumed that just under 2/3 of the U.S. population would have your back. Let's assume you have 90% of the population on your side. 311,000,000 multiplied by 0.9 is 278,000,000. To have 200,000,000 of them fighting with you, you will need 72% of them fighting with you. Here is a chart of the U.S. population divided according to age. If you start at age 0 and add up the percents for each age group, you reach 28% when you count the "15 to 19" section. Of course, there are also the extremely old people who cannot fight with you. So you will need about everyone age 18 and up fighting with you. I would look up how many drones we have, but I've got to go. Sorry! Anyway, if the government was killing that much of the population, they'd probably engineer an easily curable virus or something, then reserve the antidote for the people they like. They wouldn't use a bunch of drones.

Whether the improved accuracy is the result of improving technology or well-placed attacks, the U.S. government's drones have been killing many targets with few unintended casualties. Considering that the accuracy is improving with time, I suspect that the technology is improving.

If that propaganda is correct, citizens will need more than just guns to feel secure, they'll need bombs, fighter jets, nukes, and ebola viruses. As an alternative, I suggest that we fix the government. After all, the government needs us.

FOX News must have edited the article, because I cannot find them using the terms "liberal" or "left-wing" anywhere. The article still refers to Phelps as a Democrat, but the posters are debating that claim too. It looks like you can still read the original version by following their link to thegatewaypundit. According to Wikipedia, he tried to get through the Democratic primaries multiple times throughout the 90's. Not only did he fail each time, he has stopped trying. Furthermore, he doesn't seem to have been left-wing even then, since his group was protesting homosexuality back then too. Besides, by some criteria, even Democratic candidates are more right-wing than left-wing, despite being more left-wing than Republican candidates.

There is no known mechanism for about 99.9% of the supposed correlations between astronomical movements and the stuff going on in human societies. There is this rats study, but the hypothesis stood upon facts substantiated by biology. In addition, there are the tides and the seasons, but those are already explained by modern physics. As far as verified correlations go, that's about it. The rest of the supposed correlations haven't been tested rigorously, or have been found to be non-existent.

Perhaps the law of marginal utility can be applied to how law enforcement is focused. That is, a little investment in the enforcement of gun laws would go a long way, whereas further spending on "the war on drugs" would do virtually nothing, because the latter is already strongly enforced. For anyone who wants to understand the term, the quote below explains marginal utility.

So that the neighbors may also be soothed by her engaging voice, turn up the song's volume (especially at the finale ).

I know there are a lot of damning statistics regarding the rate of firearm related death in the U.S. Nonetheless, that chart doesn't give any specific numbers. It could easily be biased. 1) The shading of a box only changes if the number is over 1k, 15k, or 30k. Why not 5k, 15k, and 25k, or why not 10k, 20k, and 30k? Lindeman could have intentionally chosen a categorization scheme that would make the chart impactful. 2) How did they define the categories of death such as "suffocation" and "Fire/Burn?" For example, what if some categories included death in the hospital, whereas other categories only included a death if it was immediately following the event? And this particular line is awfully suggestive.

Sometimes religious people seem really nice even though they hold all those backward views. It's strange.

I was thinking about this recently. Did the laws arise from the material, or did the material arise from the laws? Remember that mathematical equations and visual aids are abstract human constructs. They are representations of macrophenomena that are actually comprised of microphenomena. We know that matter follows different rules when it takes different forms. But is the new form a consequence of the new rules, or are the new rules a consequence of the new form? Both rules and forms can be comprised of simpler rules and forms. I haven't studied physics. Things that perpetuate perpetuate, things that spread spread, and things that do neither whither away. Aside from random mutation and competition, these are the underlying principles of evolution, and they can be applied to many things. Yay, logic!

Thanks. The HowToGeek article gave a null command line. I just edited the hosts file with gedit. sudo gedit /etc/hosts My voice recognition software is trying to make me politically correct. I actually said, "Oh, it's snot porn."

I already have self-control on my Ubuntu operating system, but that has a 24 hour cap on its timer. I need a program that can block out a single website for months or even permanently. I don't want myself to be able to glance at it even once in the next several months. And no, it's not porn...