arc

Almost every single person I went to high school with is more intellectually-gifted, more educated, and all-around smarter than myself. I was an idiot in school. I slept in class, never did my work, bombed the tests, and everyone thought I was a total moron. I remember being in science and math classes with all my smart religious peers. Their religiosity cannot be the result of low intelligence. If intelligence level was the metric for how religious or non-religious a person is, then I should be a deeply, devoutly religious person. Most of the people I'm referring to now mostly have at least a master's degree education and most of them are professionals. Our class valedictorian has a PhD in speech pathology, and many of the people I graduated with are engineers and lawyers now. It kind of puzzles me. How is that I ended up being the freethinker who understands logic, evidence, the scientific method, epistemology, etc., when they are clearly the intellectually-superior ones? I don't even have much education at all, yet I have relatively good understanding of science, philosophy, history, etc. Almost all of these people are very religious, and some of them even believe in the idea of a young Earth.

 

My pastor friend's wife is a good example of what I'm talking about. I struggled in many classes, and she was chosen to tutor me quite often back in high school because she was such a gifted student. Yet, there she is every Sunday, praying to an insecure space wizard that she unequivocally believes in, and I, the dummy, stay home because I realize just how improbable it is that her imaginary friend is anything more than that.

 

How does that work out? It always puzzles me that all these smart people I knew from school, whom I know are much smarter than myself, are less rational than myself on many subjects. Do you know any highly religious, but incredibly smart people?

 

I noticed the same sort of thing back when I was in school. I think it was mostly though that they were never in trouble and I sometimes was.

I believe it boils down to discipline at home usually leads to discipline at school. I read a book years ago called The Millionaires Mind, it explained this discipline nicely. These folks, if I recall correctly, were more likely to attended church but in either case the families were very efficient at all levels in their lives. They went to bed early and woke up early 7 days a week. Really expected their kids to spend a scheduled period every night studying. Their families ran like a finely tuned machine. I'm sure the nonreligious successful families do it similarly. But we just didn't notice them as much because they blended in better somehow.

I remember one religious guy we went through high school with, he was a 4.0 student. He was tall and handsome like some young executive. He looked bizarre that one day a year walking down the hall, past all the long hair and bell bottoms, wearing his Eagle Scout uniform. His hair was cut above his ears, but very sharp looking. He received an appointment to an academy, I believe it was Annapolis. He died piloting a small plane just a year out of high school somewhere on the east coast, I believe it was in Maryland.

Some parents are able to provide this nurturing environment with almost no effort regardless of their income, but sadly that income discrepancy does in many cases work against many student's success.

I feel that in the some of these incidences it is simply that the individuals in question did not know that their Ideas must/will be subjected to what amounts to be a prolonged destructive testing exercise by the forum members. They skipped the introductory threads and are completely blindsided by what appears to them as a wholesale attack. They really don't understand the process of skeptical analysis, and their responses resemble someone who just kicked a hornets nest. Just a lot of running around in circles while screaming and flailing. I wonder if a pop-up warning could be added to new members for when they post in the hard sciences at least.

"Anything in isolation can feel significant"


"How can behavior of people during traffic stops, suicidal people wanting to die by cop, and etc be responsible for this overwhelming problem. The trend defies any explanation I have seen. The problem is larger than can be addressed in isolation. In isolation Michael Brown's actions may have XY&Z, Tamire Rice could've should've would've, Dlyan Noble just wanted to die, and etc. Add it all up though and the trend is staggering and defies any explanation that each of the idividual cases can provide.

Defies explanation until you consider untreated mental illness may be more prevalent in society than in the past.

Hundreds of times over more so than Europe?

The brutality of this country's racism has left no marks?

Come on, there is no history of racism and brutality in Germany and the UK?

Take black vs white out of equastion and white police officers killing white citizen is still hundreds of times greater than we see elsewhere in the western world.

This video is a powerful message about treating violence as a contagious disease. But this is really just clever marketing because violent behavior is a psychological disorder. But the stigma that such terms carry in american society makes it unusable in delivering the message.

This is at the core of everything we are discussing here, fear drives people in the most vulnerable communities to arm themselves against the unchecked violence around them (Chicago"s gang murder rate for example). Many of these guns are stolen and further feed the cycle of trauma to the community. Citizens in the surrounding communities feel unsafe and arm themselves. The cycle grows in size as the fear of gun control causes a rush to buy guns and even ammunition "before it's too late".

These gun purchases are driven by fear. Almost all of it is irrational. Add to this the stresses of international and domestic terrorism to even further acerbated the irrational levels of fear and it does begin to resemble a mass public mental heath crisis. Every high crime area in the country had its roots institutional racism and feeds the irrational fear of crime and violence to the surrounding region, driving fear, and more importantly, reinforcing racism.

How does the police fit into this?

30 years ago most police interactions with the public did not include the public being armed. Now, most cops will come in contact with legally and illegally armed citizens on a daily basis. The fear the police have due to these guns is, although, very rational. This would most likely explain the number of instances in Idaho for example.

So, as the video illustrates so well, this cycle begins in those communities that we know, more than any others, have their origins in the historical institutional racism of this country. The resulting violence has spread as irrational fear to the general populace as shown by the mass arming of every community. The increase in police shooting of citizen's correlate to fear that the police have to the armed public in general.

If this isn't a public mental heath crisis based on the historical institutional racism then what do you call it?

Hundreds of times over more so than Europe?

The brutality of this country's racism has left no marks?

"Anything in isolation can feel significant"

"How can behavior of people during traffic stops, suicidal people wanting to die by cop, and etc be responsible for this overwhelming problem. The trend defies any explanation I have seen. The problem is larger than can be addressed in isolation. In isolation Michael Brown's actions may have XY&Z, Tamire Rice could've should've would've, Dlyan Noble just wanted to die, and etc. Add it all up though and the trend is staggering and defies any explanation that each of the idividual cases can provide."

Defies explanation until you consider untreated mental illness may be more prevalent in society than in the past.

Sadly, there is technology that prevents vehicles from hitting people, I'm afraid this is how we will cope with such horrors, always playing catch up with technology after the fact.

This is where we are at in all this mess in this country. Respect for the law is posed against a suppressed segment of society who's self worth in many ways is weighed in the currency of compromising oneself, for generations, in the face of oppression. And too, the value placed by that segment on, and of, individuals that resist to the point of losing their lives by not simply in many cases following a few basic instructions by police.

I just wanted to reiterate my position on this in case anyone may misinterpret my opinions on this subject. I fully acknowledge the roll of law enforcement's official and unofficial involvement in the oppression and even murder in the historical context of racism. But, I believe sincerely that a traffic stop or any other such random and potentially life changing interaction with law enforcement is the wrong time and place to let old or new grievances with the law take away the control you have of the situation.

As I related with my own brush with death in Ken's truck, he could have:

1. Informed the officer that there was a toy gun in the glove box.

2. If he had forgotten it was there until he put his hand on it he could have just left it there and proceeded to option 1.

3. If he was going to be so stupid as to take it out, holding it backwards by the barrel would have been preferred rather than the grip like he did that night. Fortunately for both of us his hold on it was low enough on the grip (the bottom half) and pointing up and away from the cop, that it may have prevented tragedy.

Either I or ken could have made it more difficult for the cop. What would have happened if we had acted angry or uncooperative when he had first approached us? I could have just put my hand down at my sides or in my coat pockets where he couldn't see them. When I saw ken's gun I could have panicked and tried to flee, the cop could have interpreted that move as hostile, the gun coming out of the glove box in one suspect's hand and the other suspect is trying to get out to ambush from over the rear of the truck, remember he had stepped to the back corner of the cab to be safer.

We could have completely screwed ourselves. "Suicide by cop" for dummies!

Cops will not tip their hand and ask a suspect who has been reported to have a gun, if he does really have a gun, unless they are so close that they have physical control of him or have taken him down to the ground and want him to tell them where he has it. At that point if he is still fighting with them he, unfortunately, is controlling his own destiny to the discretion of the arresting officers. Those two bailiffs that were just killed by a hand cuffed prisoner makes this rather poignant.

So, because of the horrendous misdeeds of the past, we are now in a place in this country where some people are going to oppose the oppression of the system during any interaction with law enforcement. Some of these people are going to also increase by there own actions, irregardless of the present officer's reasons for the contact or their presumed bias, the likely hood that at least two lives will be changed for the worse.

Some cops are bad, but most are good. But you can cause your own demise at the hand of either one by not staying calm and being smart about your situation. I once had a concealed carry permit due to a deranged convicted felon that acted, quite convincingly, like he wanted to kill me for giving the authorities a video of him running a stolen bulldozer that he said he didn't have in his possession. But really, I was more afraid at the time that my gun might reveal itself without me knowing. I had more stress worrying about cops pulling me over and going CERT on me before I could inform them of my status then I did about that crazy guy.

Though all that was probably because of ken.

But the cost of the proposed risk-avoidance behavior is still personal, and how much protection it actually provides needs to be weighed against the cost of implementing it.

 

It's easier to see whether the overall cost is larger on a societal level, because when you look at an individual level, the outcomes are binary and extreme.

 

But it's a bit like the debate over the frequency of cancer screenings. The more frequently you are screened, the more likely any cancer is to be caught early and therefore be treatable, potentially saving your life. But frequent screenings also increase the risk of false positives, and a false positive carries its own associated risks, including health damage done from unnecessary treatments.

 

You cannot say "On a societal level, it doesn't make sense to have screenings every six months because it will result in too many false diagnoses, but on an individual level you should be screened every six months to reduce your risk of dying of cancer."

 

Similarly, I'm not talking about a prisoner's dilemma scenario where everyone seeking the best outcome for themselves results in an overall negative outcome for everyone.

 

I'm questioning whether, on average, the overall outcome for any one individual is actually better when following the proposed behaviors.

 

To determine that, you cannot merely point out that the consequences of the risk involved are greater than the consequences of the behavior intended to mitigate that risk. You need to figure out how much the risk avoiding behavior is costing an individual and how much it actually mitigates the risk involved.

 

Philando Castile did everything right and still got shot. Tamir Rice and John Crawford were killed without even being given a chance to react to the presence of police, let alone cooperate with them.

 

The latter cases mean that a person would need to spend every waking moment of their lives avoiding doing anything that even taken out of context could appear threatening enough for someone to call the police, because there is no guarantee that the police, in responding to that call, will give you the benefit of the doubt and an opportunity to explain yourself or otherwise react appropriately to the situation. The former case demonstrates that even doing all of that does not necessarily provide a solid mitigation of that risk.

 

So I think it is fair to ask, from a purely pragmatic perspective, is this actually helping, and even if it does provide some measure of help, is it helping more than it is hurting even on the individual level.

 

The cost associated with the solutions is often overlooked because it is smaller than the problem if you look at it on a purely case by case basis, but if everyone, most of which would never experience the larger problem personally, are forced to adhere to a set of behaviors that is detrimental to their well being and happiness on a constant basis, those people are all being harmed by the solution more than they were by the problem.

 

It's like buying $100 a month insurance to mitigate a potential $1,000 risk. Yeah, I would rather pay $100 than $1,000, but the lower cost is never just a one time cost, and in the long run, the number of people who come out ahead by paying it is going to be very low compared to the number of people who are ultimately losing out by buying into the insurance and losing out in a big way.

Right, people bring the behavior of the victim into the discussing without actually being able to quantify the extent of changes to behavior needed or how effective those changes might be. Rather it is more of an argument that seems to try and find common ground. Cops shouldn't kill innocent people and innocent people should behave. Simple enough yet completely redundant. If a person is innocent than they are behaving; innocent? If a police officer kills an innocent person than it is they who should change and not the other other way around.

 

We have too many instances in this country of police killing people. It impacts the black community more than any other but even if we subtract minorities away the numbers are still way too high. We are in the thousands of people shoot by police per year while other western nations are in the single digits. It is outrageous yet the average person isn't outraged. IMO that apathy toward violence is part of the reason why we also have so many mass shootings. Sandy Hook and the Dallas shootings are part of the same problem. Tamir Rice and Trayvon Martin are part of the same problem. If all blacks behaved this way, all muslims behaved that way, and etc we would still have a big, big, big, problem. As a matter of culture we love guns and have a vengeful mindset towards too many things.

The point that both of your arguments miss is that any possible mitigable behavioral risks factors by the general public during police interaction: for example; those who are randomly stopped (tail light out), or reasonably profiled (be on the look out for a red headed bank robber), the general public's behavioral risk factors are subordinate to the officer's actual level of risk (facing off against redheaded armed robbers) or self perceived level's of risk (approaching a car alone with four redheaded young men in a rough area of town at night). Some of these shootings occurred while the officers had perceived a heightened state of risk while the unfortunate subjects assumed quite the opposite.

For any member of the general public it is in anyone's best interest to hope for the best but plan for the worst when interacting with any law enforcement personnel.

If you were the cop; What would you want people to do? What would make you less likely to react during a perceived higher level of risk?

When I was 18 I was out cruising with a friend in his very clean, straight and freshly painted hot rod 1950 Ford pickup. It was at night on the crowded boulevard where a couple of thousand other teenagers were doing the same thing. We were stopped by an unmarked police car, after we pulled into a parking lot the cop, wearing street clothes, carefully approached on the drivers side and flashed his badge while quickly scanning the truck's interior. I had my hands out where he could clearly see them but we were both wearing jackets which attracted his eyes several times as he quickly looked the truck cab over.

I could tell he thought we may have stolen the truck! He asked for Ken's driver's license and registration while he shifted to the rear of the driver's window opening where the back corner of the cab offered him some quick cover if things went bad for him. His face and left side of his chest and shoulder were the only thing visible from my position as he kept scanning the cab. Ken handed him his licence and then leaned over and opened his glove box door, I watched his hand go in and then come back out with shiniest 357 magnum pistol you've ever seen!

As I was simultaneously pissing and crapping myself I turned to see the cop's face as he was looking up from the I.D. that was in between his thumb and forefinger of his left hand. As fast as a gunslinger the cop's right hand was in his jacket pulling his real 357 magnum out of his shoulder holster. I said real because, as all that excitement was happening, Ken was just sitting back as he held up the gun and announced rather nonchalantly - "This is a toy"

Almost simultaneously the cop said: "Are you trying to get your #$%& ass killed!" While I sang backup with "You #$%& dumb ass!!

From the cop's perspective the truck was suspiciously nice to belong to just a teenager, so those two guys may have stolen it. He should pull it over and carefully check out the occupants. They may be desperate criminals.

While we are thinking; WOW! I hope I don't get a ticket for something.

BTW he had no reasons to pull us over, no bad driving or defective lights or anything that would justify the stop.

 

Indeed, some should be more fearful than other when, statistically, one segment of our populace is involved with more violent encounters with the police than another, whether or not those encounters are justified. America is a nation built by revolution on the shoulders of slavery and the subjugation of a native people over a few short years compared to other nations. America is a land of opportunity but that opportunity comes with challenges its citizens must surmount to obtain.

I was raised in an area of the U.S. where the closest major metropolitan city was considered to have one of the lowest black per capita populations in the country for its size. This time period I'm referring to here is 1966, we lived just 5 km outside the city limits in a unincorporated area between several smaller towns along the river that flowed through the valley. Starting in kindergarten one of my closest friends lived just a few houses away. We spent many hours at each other's home up into high school.

My friend's dad was black and his mom was white, they moved here just a few years before we did. We moved from a km away, they came from the deep south, if I recall correctly it was Alabama. His dad worked as an executive for "the" major communication company in the U.S. at the time and transferred here to work at their regional office. My friend's dad was very cordial to me and his son's other friends, and all of the neighbors had the highest regards for him. My parents went to several cocktail parties at their home and would always recount to us kids what great hosts my friend's parents were, and the hilarious quips his dad made. The county D.A. lived across the street from both of our families so the politicking was a favorite subject in these get-togethers, the D.A. had in his earlier law school days traveled to the south and worked on civil rights.

But as me and the other boys became older his demeanor towards me and his son's other friends changed, yet he remained as friendly and well liked to our parents as he always had. I started to really not like this man and felt he was completely dishonest in who he really was. Was he that nice guy our parents knew, or the jerk that his son and his friends knew?

I didn't figure out this mystery until he had passed away when I was around 30 years old and I had spent the needed time to understand his life. He was born in 1920 in a heavily segregated south, in one of the nation's poorest states where he endured the great depression into and through his adolescent years. He showed his true capabilities when he qualified to be a Tuskegee Airman during WWII and then later became a navigator on Cold-War era B-52 bombers. He was the first black aviator of any nation to fly none-stop around the world.

The levels of abuse he had to endure as a highly intelligent black adolescent in a depression era southern state would be akin to walking through a mine field on a daily bases. The abuse would have continued no doubt as he rose through the ranks to become an Air Force major. And most probably into and through out his corporate career.

I believe the answer to the mystery about his attitude towards us adolescent boys was that he was not going to be that character he had created to adapt to a heavily racist society, a character that he felt he was required to use to navigate throughout his life, a life that required compromises to his pride and intelligence. We did not deserve that respect that was denied him throughout his life. He was denied the simple act of standing against the abuse he was subjected to during his life.

This is where we are at in all this mess in this country. Respect for the law is posed against a suppressed segment of society who's self worth in many ways is weighed in the currency of compromising oneself, for generations, in the face of oppression. And too, the value placed by that segment on, and of, individuals that resist to the point of losing their lives by not simply in many cases following a few basic instructions by police.

I suspect my friend's dad felt a certain amount of self loathing, knowing that many in that world he had left behind would view him as a sellout. There has been so much damage done to our society and its segments, that it seems at times to be a hopeless cause.

I never said that I was intentionally promoting a book. Is recommending a book a crime in your fascist website?

 

For crying out loud give it a break!!

Use this thread to share your personal beliefs so we can build on each other and improve our own theories- Here's mine I am a Catholic and believe in an all powerful all knowing ever present perfect and infinite God I believe that all of existence is a result of Gods actions "thoughts" and words I believe you can go forever in forever out forever up forever down forever right and forever left in anything

Just to add to zapatos' great post;

Welcome to the SFN destructive testing laboratory. Where your ideas will be pounded into dust.

What is destructive testing? definition and meaning

Brilliant use of the comma in a recent moderator decision:

And, while we are at it, there is the Oxford comma:

 

And the comma of direct address (more informally known as the Donner Party comma) which makes the difference between: "Let's eat, Grandma!" and "Let's eat Grandma!"

Not wanting to be an art critic, but, those last two, I'm quite sure, are Michael Jackson and Freddie Mercury.

Yeah. I would say roads are natural, and air transport, and even spacecraft. What's against nature is society's obsessions.

Oh, you mean like some people's obsessive insistence and expectation that everyone else needs to live by their narrow self-righteous standards?

Mauna Kea is several thousand meters taller (measured from base to summit) than Everest. Mauna Kea is of volcanic origin, so it is unlikely it could support itself to the levels of the sedimentary and metamorphic rocks that make up Everest. Does the hydrostatic pressure of the ocean support the mountain? There must also be a substantial sea water penetration into the porous base materials of this volcanic island. Volcanic Mount St. Helens was substantially weakened by its glacier's melting prior to its earthquake triggered catastrophic landslide that uncapped its magma. Periodic earthquakes in Mauna Kea has probably also induced settling and landslides in its lower portions. It is also interesting that it depresses the oceanic plate below it by a staggering 6 km. That's over half its height. It is undoubtedly a difficult task for the lithosphere to support these massive structures. On the other hand the Himalayas are currently still rising due to the thickening of the continental collision zone that is beneath them.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mauna_Kea

Mauna Kea is over 3,200 km³ (770 cu mi) in volume, so massive that it and its neighbor, Mauna Loa, depress the ocean crust beneath it by 6 km (4 mi).^%5B9%5D The volcano continues to slip and flatten under its own weight at a rate of less than 0.2 mm (0.01 in) per year. Much of its mass lies east of its present summit. Mauna Kea stands 4,205 m (13,800 ft) above sea level, just 35 m (110 ft) higher than its neighbor Mauna Loa,^%5B3%5D and is the highest point in the state of Hawaii.^%5B10%5D Measured from its base on the ocean floor, it rises over 10,000 m (33,000 ft), significantly greater than the elevation of Mount Everest above sea level.

I was rather suspicious of that claim that the oceanic crust was depressed by 6 km. I looked at a GeoMapApp cross section and could not decipher a depression in the image. I imagined the volcanic island sitting in the middle of a large depression, like a bowling ball on a trampoline, but the image did not reveal anything close to what I imagined. So I wondered if it was just a wiki misunderstanding of the original study.

Image was furnished through and in no way endorsed by http://www.geomapapp.org using Global Multi-Resolution Topography (GMRT) Synthesis,

Ryan, W. B. F., S.M. Carbotte, J. Coplan, S. O'Hara, A. Melkonian, R. Arko, R.A. Weissel, V. Ferrini, A. Goodwillie, F. Nitsche, J. Bonczkowski, and R. Zemsky (2009), Global Multi-Resolution Topography (GMRT) synthesis data set, Geochem. Geophys. Geosyst., 10, Q03014, doi:10.1029/2008GC002332.

Data doi: 10.1594/IEDA.0001000, through http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/

I looked at the original source to make sure I understood correctly.

http://pubs.usgs.gov/pp/1557/report.pdf

INTRODUCTION

Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa, both volcanoes that rise more than 4,000 m above sea level, dominate the landscape of the Island of Hawaii (fig. 1). Offshore soundings led early students of the Hawaiian volcanoes (Dana, 1890) to realize that these volcanoes were built on a sea floor 5 km deep and are each, therefore, at least 9 km high. Recent seismic-refraction studies, however (summarized by Moore, 1987), have shown that as these piles of lava accumulated, they depressed the sea floor by as much as another 6 km (fig. 1). Thus, the summits of Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa are approximately 15 km above the down warped substrate, and the volume of each volcano exceeds 32,000 km 3, representing enormous outpourings of magma from localized sources.

So now I assume it must be completely filled with debris from the settling of the mountain, to the point it is not detectable at the ocean floor adjacent to the volcano.

But, "15 km above the down warped substrate ". . . HOLY CRAP!!!

Mauna Kea is several thousand meters taller (measured from base to summit) than Everest. Mauna Kea is of volcanic origin, so it is unlikely it could support itself to the levels of the sedimentary and metamorphic rocks that make up Everest. Does the hydrostatic pressure of the ocean support the mountain? There must also be a substantial sea water penetration into the porous base materials of this volcanic island. Volcanic Mount St. Helens was substantially weakened by its glacier's melting prior to its earthquake triggered catastrophic landslide that uncapped its magma. Periodic earthquakes in Mauna Kea has probably also induced settling and landslides in its lower portions. It is also interesting that it depresses the oceanic plate below it by a staggering 6 km. That's over half its height. It is undoubtedly a difficult task for the lithosphere to support these massive structures. On the other hand the Himalayas are currently still rising due to the thickening of the continental collision zone that is beneath them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mauna_Kea

Mauna Kea is over 3,200 km³ (770 cu mi) in volume, so massive that it and its neighbor, Mauna Loa, depress the ocean crust beneath it by 6 km (4 mi).^[9] The volcano continues to slip and flatten under its own weight at a rate of less than 0.2 mm (0.01 in) per year. Much of its mass lies east of its present summit. Mauna Kea stands 4,205 m (13,800 ft) above sea level, just 35 m (110 ft) higher than its neighbor Mauna Loa,^[3] and is the highest point in the state of Hawaii.^[10] Measured from its base on the ocean floor, it rises over 10,000 m (33,000 ft), significantly greater than the elevation of Mount Everest above sea level.

I don't even want to know what the headlight looks like.

I dont see any problem whit an perpetual motion machine. If u ask if it is possible, the answer is yes.

When a machine is working, if u notice i tends to overheat arent i rigth?

 

U can use that in order to prove that is impossibe to create such amazing generatior.

Congratulations, you have discovered perpetual argumentation.

Just to be controversial...

 

How about "limiting the volume of drugs floating around our country like Skittles or allowing people with known predisposition to addictive behavior to purchase them without restriction" ?

 

Do you think that would work ?

Has it worked ?

My paternal grandparents became bootleggers entrepreneurs during Prohibition. They were city folk, my grandmother liked to drink at the bars and continued to do so when the local speakeasy opened for business. A conversation with a supplier lead to my grandmother garnering my grandfather's skills as a master sheet metal journeyman for the production of stills for the thriving local bootleg industry. This eventually lead to them producing their own alcohol at a farm they purchased outside of town. The local police were given incentives to let them know when the federal agents were closing in, so the still could be dismantled and the pieces hidden around the farm. The condenser coil would be placed behind and under 6 to 10 cords of wood in the wood shed next to the barn. The agents would look around for a couple of hours and then leave. Times were good for those willing to take some risks.

Prohibition, like the War On Drugs was a complete failure. All the speeches that lead to these prohibitions sounded solid and well thought out, the projected benefits seamed worthy of the sacrifices to the liberties surrendered. Sadly, we also received for our efforts the unforeseen growth of organized crime that would then later benefit from the War On Drugs.

These elements are here now, waiting to fulfill the laws of supply and demand. The winners will be the smart entrepreneurs and of coarse those myriad of drug gangs ready to supply even more guns than they already deal in now.

What does a gun bootlegger entrepreneur look like? Probably like this guy.

https://www.wired.com/2014/10/cody-wilson-ghost-gunner/

Wilson’s latest radically libertarian project is a PC-connected milling machine he calls the Ghost Gunner. Like any computer-numerically-controlled (or CNC) mill, the one-foot-cubed black box uses a drill bit mounted on a head that moves in three dimensions to automatically carve digitally-modeled shapes into polymer, wood or aluminum. But this CNC mill, sold by Wilson’s organization known as Defense Distributed for $1,200, is designed to create one object in particular: the component of an AR-15 rifle known as its lower receiver.

That simple chunk of metal has become the epicenter of a gun control firestorm. A lower receiver is the body of the gun that connects its stock, barrel, magazine and other parts. As such, it’s also the rifle’s most regulated element. Mill your own lower receiver at home, however, and you can order the rest of the parts from online gun shops, creating a semi-automatic weapon with no serial number, obtained with no background check, no waiting period or other regulatory hurdles. Some gun control advocates call it a “ghost gun.” Selling that untraceable gun body is illegal, but no law prevents you from making one.

This will not end by writing and passing laws, the citizens of this country are drunk on its freedoms and will exercise them with disregard to any attempts to curtail them. My own grandparents were evidence to that.

Something is surely going to surface to solve the mystery one day.

Carved images similar to one at Gobekli Tepe are also found in the city of Çatalhöyük in western Turkey.

http://www.ancient-origins.net/news-history-archaeology/archaeologists-find-12000-year-old-pictograph-gobeklitepe-003441?nopaging=1

"Excavations being conducted at the ancient city of Göbeklitepe in Turkey have uncovered an ancient pictograph on an obelisk which researchers say could be the earliest known pictograph ever discovered."

The ‘Vulture-Stone’. Credit: Alistair Coombs

“The scene on the obelisk unearthed in Göbeklitepe could be construed as the first pictograph because it depicts an event thematically” explained Director of the Şanlıurfa Museum, Müslüm Ercan, to the Hurriyet Daily News . Ercan is leading the excavation at Göbeklitepe. It depicts a human head in the wing of a vulture and a headless human body under the stela. There are various figures like cranes and scorpions around this figure. This is the portrayal of a moment; it could be the first example of pictograph. They are not random figures. We see this type of thing portrayal on the walls in 6,000-5,000 B.C. in Çatalhöyük [in modern-day western Turkey].”

"The artifacts discovered in the ancient city have provided information about ancient burial traditions in the area in which bodies were left in the open for raptors such as vultures to consume. According to Mr Ercan, this enabled the soul of the deceased to be carried into the sky. It was called “burial in the sky” and was depicted on the obelisks in Göbeklitepe. Such rituals were conducted in and around the city around 12,000 years ago."

It appears Gobekli Tepe could be a site for funerary ceremonies where the dead were eaten by scavengers. Maybe the dangerous animals depicted on the columns are just examples on how the subjects may have died. Top ten "reasons why you're probably here" list for the dearly departed.

If they built successively better versions I'd tend to believe they would reuse the stones rather than move new ones the entire distance from the quarry.

I think we over apply our modern interpretation of what constitutes ancient religious practices in these circumstances. This isn't a simple alter for burnt offerings or a big rock that they gathered around. This shows intent on illustrating something of great importance and/or their best effort in understanding how it works. It also suggest the effort to unravel its possible influence on their lives and of course their hopes on influencing it to their advantage. It appears to be what I would assume the first attempts at constructing an observatory would look like. It would allow multiple people to observe the movement of the stars between the pillars, providing a means to measure time and distance.

This is the area of the world where astrology would soon begin to chart the heavens and it would be reasonable to imagine it began in circumstances such as these.

The sequence of building "versions" could be the result of the next generation of scholars making an improvement in the state of the art, convincing the ruling party that this will pay dividends in some manner. There may have been some (a lot) of P.T. Barnum salesmanship keeping this place flourishing with activity for many generations.

Somewhere in all this there were activities that we would ascribe religious connotations. But without alters or clear depictions of offerings like those in Egyptian and Mesoamerican examples this does not to me show any kind of heavy devotion to something akin to Baal.

And I would think it would be buried by those who cherish it to save its technology from falling into the wrong hands. If it had been captured I would expect some defacement and over carving by the conquering culture, some crudely done representation of their gods on and over the pillars before its burial. But then again, wouldn't they have occupied it instead? Turned it into one of theirs with their gods. And then it would have suffered the fate of all the other such sites, built on top of, layer after layer, as was the case with Troy and so many other more recent but still ancient sites.

The purpose of these sites may be of a more simple rather than complex use. Remember that just to the south of this site the people of the Nile valley later built pyramids and so too did the cultures of Mesoamerica. They may have differed in usage, but they also may not have, given both cultures made immense investment in time and labor. Two separate cultures building similar structures increases the likelihood the structure's purpose was more simple and shared a common desire that any industrious culture would fulfill, rather than each having their own widely separate and complex purposes.

Stonehenge is close enough structurally and aesthetically to these constructs in Turkey that the reasons for them may be similar. Stonehenge has celestial alignments, the heel stone, and the embanked avenue, are aligned to the sunset of the winter solstice and the sunrise of the summer solstice. There is much debate over other possible alignments.

I believe this site is distinct from Stonehenge in one respect. Was this site built to be kept secret for its lifetime and then buried to keep it safe afterwards, possibly from worries about an approaching hostile culture? Or were they buried in sequence as each one's celestial viewing "technology" became obsolete and replaced by the newer and presumed better construct next to it.

I remember the first time I experienced a night sky out in the wilderness with a ring of tall firs surrounding my vantage point, it was quite an astounding experience with those dark giants outlined by the brilliant night sky above and beyond them. I can imagine a ceremony or ritual down in that dark well with those pillared giants silhouetted against that brilliant canopy of stars. . . . . . . BREATHTAKING!

Can anyone muster, even a slight, non-joking, scientific theory that can explain as to how the car works? Use best of your knowledge in quantum physics or whatever is required to explain it..

 

~EE

Can anyone muster, even a slight, non-joking, scientific theory that can explain as to how the car works? Use best of your knowledge in quantum physics or whatever is required to explain it..

 

~EE

That would be that good old fashion magic that movie makers dish out like candy. Hell, how could you contain that amount of energy right behind the occupants and not die from some sort of radiation.

 

Well, I for one will live 120 years.

 

I didn't name "whatever," nor the 2 things mentioned as the fundamental thing that is very dangerous about modern science.

 

Science-in-fact, involves several observers agreeing on (a) method(s) of observation (that might later be modified or extended, if all agree), intending to arrive at a useful and reliable answer to a relevant question about a material problem or goal, based on the agreed method(s). Unfortunately, modern science unconditionally (for the most part) precludes certain viable variables and sets of data into every testing environment and station of observation.

 

 

Modern medicine should be based on good nutrition. The lion's share of research should be concentrated in discovery of nutritional values of foods, variations of diet, and inclinations of mind-teaching-appetite and appetite-teaching-mind.

 

Modern medicine should not be based on drugs and treatments.

And your alternative would be? . . . . .

https://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/faith-healing-religious-freedom-vs-child-protection/

"In 1997 a six-year-old boy in Oregon died from a necrotic bowel due to a hernia that could easily have been treated. The pathologist’s first reaction was “Not again!” He and his associate had compiled evidence of 18 children who had died over the last 10 years from curable diseases in a Followers of Christ congregation of 1,200 people. That worked out to 26 times the usual infant mortality rate. And it wasn’t just children: followers’ wives were dying in childbirth at 900 times the usual rate. One died of a type of infection that hadn’t killed anyone in America since 1910.

Nothing could be done about it, because Oregon had one of the strongest religious shield laws in the country. It protected parents from allegations of religious intolerance and gave them the right to withhold medical care for their children. In fact, the shield had just been beefed up: a new law to increase the punishment for murder by spousal or child abuse specifically prohibited prosecution for manslaughter if the person responsible was acting on religious beliefs.

A TV reporter named Mark Hass was told that there had been a cluster of preventable deaths among the Followers of Christ in Oregon City. He looked into it, but there were no criminal complaints, no police investigations, and the county DA was uninterested. When his investigation seemed to have reached a dead end, someone suggested he visit the local cemetery. He counted the graves of 78 children. He launched America’s first major series of TV reports on faith-healing abuse on KATU in Portland."

 

"There is a way that seems right to a [person], but in the end it leads to death." --an ancient proverb

 

I hardly make fun of science. Rather I refute where there is error, being more prominent where science is "modern."

The irony is killing me. . . . . . .

Modern science admits one class of evidence--evidence deemed acceptable by science.

 

Government courts, having long outlived modern science, admits scientific evidence, and many alternative classes of evidence. Smience unfortunately admits only her own interpretations and judgments. One line.

John, a thread was started on this forum today, the poster asked if members believed in the death penalty. Since the introduction of DNA evidence there have been an unprecedented level of exonerated people released from death row. These people were tried and convicted on what we could refer to as "jazzy" evidence.

Their demise had been decided by an ensemble of bad police work and an indifferent prosecution, who all I'm sure, believed the accused were guilty. The evidence that was presented to the jury in many of these cases was provided by a jail house informant who was rewarded in some way for their testimony.

These people gained their freedom, their lives, from pure science based evidence. Evidence that could not be deluded by the judicial incompetence that lead to the original injustice. This evidence left no doubt of their innocence.

Someday you may find yourself in similar dire circumstances, would you prefer the jazzy freestyle investigation and prosecution, or would you rather bet entrust your life on the clear and concise evidence provided by a forensic scientist.

John, you are mistaken in your concept of science, its not the group of scientists that form an accepted standard that holds sway, it is the scientifically derived evidence that holds them. The same evidence that would keep you from being wrongly put to death.