HarrietTubmanPI
| | | Next 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 | | Comments | The Science Delusion (deleted TED talk)
05/09/13, 18:26
I also like to point out the following:
Advances due to materialism include vaccines, modern medicine, MRI machines, CERN, nuclear power, fusion technology, automobiles, trains, computers, the internet, and millions of other inventions we take for granted every day that improve our lives.
Advances due to metaphysics include - NONE
Even amazing things that were done under the guise of religion (Bach Cantatas, cathedrals, renaissance paintings) were done with materialism and material things. The exist in the real world. They aren't metaphysical.
Besides, you don't have to think of something as magical or governed by fairies and unicorns to find beauty in something. |  | The Science Delusion (deleted TED talk)
05/09/13, 17:08
This guy is deluded. I don't care how much research he has done or peer reviewed studies he has published. He is dead wrong in assuming that 'materialism' is some evil world view.
To know that something is part of reality, it has to have a materialistic explanation or some material explanation in order to make it work. To not have one would be like saying "all made up explanations are equally valid".
Say we want to know how an airplane flies. Well, if we use non-materialistic explanations we can conjure up an infinite number of things to say why an airplane flies, and they are all equally worthless. Non material things cannot be tested, and cannot be distinguished from reality.
Bullshit artists love them because not only do the gullible buy them up, but nobody can ever prove them wrong because of their absurd methods. How do you know I don't have an invisible dragon in my garage? | | David Harvey explains how to engage the Crisis of Capital
05/08/13, 23:18
urbanelf:
Don't confuse communism with socialism. Communism employs socialism, but there are many forms of socialism in whole or part that are not communism.
Social security, interstate highways, etc. are socialism. As is the Apollo missions. Any time any collective money by a government is used for the people, that's socialism.
It's required for a government to function. | | David Harvey explains how to engage the Crisis of Capital
05/08/13, 23:17
Obviously an extreme of either end of the spectrum won't work. Capitalism has it's flaws. Marxism does too. No one system is perfect.
Instead of trying to adapt a society to some 'ideal' economic and political system, it is better to keep adapting economic and political systems to society.
Society changes, so any system that does not change will not work.
Capitalism has many problems in that gross inequities can easily occur along with monopolies, abuse of the working class and the poor, etc.
However, Marxism (where prices are fixed and there is no competition) cannot work since we are biological organisms, and our society and species as a whole improves through healthy competition and selective processes. People will always feel the need to be able to have their own private property, and you will never get rid of all inequity. You can only minimize it.
If you want to look at the societies that are doing the best today, they are in Scandinavia. They do have taxes that are higher than the US, but the taxes are fair and usually aren't higher than the Laffer Curve. Private property is encouraged, and private ownership of business happens. However, the government uses its income to improve its citizens, to regulate businesses, and to make sure those at the top don't get too rich, and those at the bottom have a level playing field for improving their life. Some of the biggest reasons why people are poor include a lack of education, and free public and free higher education eliminates the low opportunity for those who are poor to become educated. Take care of the health of the citizens and they are stronger and more productive, and cost less in terms of health care and disability.
Free markets have value, just as some socialism does. Nobody can dictate prices by fiat, and rampant speculation shouldn't define prices either.
Competition can breed success, just like with biological evolution. Any economic or political system should have competition, so that a society can become stronger over time. It should reward hard work, as humans are not selfless enough to work for free.
Sure, maybe in a world of free energy and replicators and if we eliminate poverty, and if we had enough people who would work hard and clean the sewers for free (or who would willingly do it), and maybe if a frog had wings he wouldn't bump his ass hopping.
Anytime anyone claims that an 'invisible hand of the market' or that the other extreme of communism will work doesn't have one clue about how the real world works and how human nature is. | | Nicki Minaj 2012 grammy performance
05/07/13, 13:40
Five for awful. What in the hell was any of that?
I'll stick to some Charlie Parker, thank you very much. You all can have whatever this thing is. | | Dora The Explorer Aquapet
05/06/13, 20:47
Can you find the pene y los testículos? | | Middlefield, Ohio Shootout Footage
05/06/13, 13:17
From what I've heard, the AK47 is not at all accurate when it's a machine gun, and if you stand as far away as she did from it you won't get hit very much. It was designed to clear a room or trench in close quarters on automatic.
I'm not defending what this asshole did, or defending automatic weapons in any way. I'm just stating that 'aim' had nothing to do with it. | | 3d printed record
05/03/13, 18:39
Why couldn't you just make the record like they would originally and rotate a disk with a vibrating stylus that cuts the groove into the media?
Since we can transfer files and recordings, the only point of this would be testing higher resolution 3D printing.
I don't expect CD quality sound with this but it's neat that the resolution of 3D printing is improving. | | Floppy Diskette
05/01/13, 23:40
I 2nd this. I'm glad I'm not the only person to notice. | | Floppy Diskette
05/01/13, 23:40
I love the requirements at 0:08. Mouse - OPTIONAL.
I also remember that in the window between CD-ROMs and writeable CD drives there were high density 4 meg 3.5" floppys (as opposed to the 1.44 meg ones) that only certain drives could read. In order to use them, I had to pull a 3.5" drive out of a 1992 486 machine.
I also remember installing DOOM from 3.5" disks, and even Windows 3.1 from a stack of 20. That took forever. I can also remembering being the only one in my area or school that actually bought the 2nd part of Castle of the Winds. That was such a fun game. | | The Wacky World of Miniature Golf Starring Eugene Levy
04/28/13, 22:53
It's not even mini golf. It's just a series of poorly drawn animations and a script that's miles too long. Who would want to replay a game where the instructions are mandatory (that's why you have a manual) and the game is 100% cut scenes that you cannot skip? | | Kool Skool: Recycle Rap
04/17/13, 00:04
Is recycle Michael a directive to recycle him into paper? | | Elizabeth Warren is all out of bubblegum
04/14/13, 19:48
What are you smoking baleen? If Warren/Sanders ran for the Democrats in 2016 they would probably get some of the 'left leaning' republicans over, too. By the way, a lot of the higher ups in the GOP still have no clue why they lost in 2012, and a lot of them want to go even FURTHER to the right.
We might as well get some real strong liberals in the white house while we can - and while the GOP keeps putting people like Mitt and McCain up for president. | | Brian Blessed on Loose Women
04/14/13, 19:40
The guy is not fat. He's astonishingly strong. From his wiki article:
"Blessed has attempted to climb Mount Everest three times,[15] getting to 28,200 feet in 1993 and 25,200 feet in 1996, but never reaching the summit.[16] He has reached the summit of Aconcagua, in Argentina, and Kilimanjaro, in Tanzania. He is the oldest man to trek on foot to the magnetic North Pole,[17] and has undertaken an expedition deep into the jungles of Venezuela." | | Dana Perino raps on Fox News
04/14/13, 19:31
My name is Harriet and I'm here to say
Well, shit, I ain't got no imagination today | | The Tay Bridge Disaster, by William Topaz McGonnagall
04/14/13, 19:10
If they just named it the Silver Bridge or Purple Bridge, this would have never happened.
The poem I mean because so much rhymes with Tay. | | Big Meets Bigger - Mississippi
04/10/13, 18:59
"The main thing exercise does, at least for me, is make it harder for your body to settle into a comfortable state of reduced activity while you're consuming fewer calories. So exercise enough that your body spends a lot of time recovering from the last bout of exercise; that will force your body to turn to fat deposits. It will also make you sleepy all the time; sorry about that."
I'm not sure I can agree with that. Maybe you're not doing the right kind of exercise, or enough? You only need a day to recover from one hour of cardio.
Exercise doesn't make me sleepy all the time. It gives me more energy, actually. | | Big Meets Bigger - Mississippi
04/10/13, 18:58
Southern people aren't so bad. You can't choose where you were born, but you can choose how you live your life and where you end up. We're not all bad, fat, or racist, or rednecks.
I'm not sure why baleen decided to do such a low blow with the 'translation', but now that I'm an East TNer I'd like to take him on a few hikes over a few 6000 foot mountains and see how 'physically fit' he really is. I'm not a native east TNan, but it is the most beautiful part of the eastern US there is. And, the cost of living is cheap, too.
Exercise also does more than burn calories. It helps with your mental health as well. It reduces your chances of all kinds of disease. It increases your cardiovascular health. It even reduces your chance of heart disease.
I think baleen is just a northerner who's afraid of sweating and bugs and not looking pretty all the time ;)
(See, I can stereotype, too.) | | Big Meets Bigger - Mississippi
04/10/13, 13:58
As a former Mississippian who used to be 50 lbs or more overweight (and now I've lost it and I'm pretty athletic now) it's due to a lack of physical activity more than the diet. The southern diet hasn't changed much in the last 200 years or more. It still mostly consists of fried foods and seafood and BBQ. The types of food came from plenty of seafood, and a lot of west african food that likes to fry everything. (Yes, southern white people like to eat food that they have no clue originally came from Africa and I find this funny.) It was different when only the top rich people were not the ones working, and everyone else from the black former slaves to white poor sharecroppers was working very hard in the fields every day. Few poor people got fat then because they had to do so much physical labor to make any money. Even in west africa meals were not very frequent, and there was a lot of running and walking around.
You try working in a hot field all day in 90 degree weather with a 70 degree dewpoint. You'll lose a lot of water weight through sweat and a lot of calories.
Now most people from poor to rich don't do anything as far as physical activity goes.
Granted, processed foods are not helping either. If you make your own hamburgers or raise your own chickens they will be much better for you than a mcdonalds ammonia burger or a wal-mart mutated chicken. They taste much better, too. However, locally a natural and organic free range rotisserie chicken is usually twice as much as a wal-mart mutant rotisserie chicken, and to make my own hamburger from quality meat and bread it does cost more than you'd get at Wendy's.
I remember someone telling me that even frozen TV dinners were much better tasting 40 years ago than they are today, and I believe them.
I'm also not in a food desert. Many places in Mississippi you cannot get quality food like you can where I live now in east TN.
I lost my weight by changing my portions, getting rid of soft drinks mostly and sugary drinks (stevia all the way), but most importantly copious amounts of physical exercise including a point where I was running 30-50 miles a week. I still enjoy BBQ, fried seafood, hamburgers, hot dogs, etc. but I eat them in controlled portions, I cook them myself so I know what goes in them (except BBQ, because I haven't mastered it yet), and sweets. However, I count calories so that whatever I put on I'll burn off later.
Physical exercise is the best way to lose weight - unless you're so obese you can't even move. Physical exercise should make you sweat buckets, should wear you out, and unless you're burning 10 calories a minute you're not working hard enough. | | Ray Stevens: The Global Warming Song
02/23/13, 19:29
Five for stupid but here's what science has to say:
1) A new Florida at the south pole? Yes the antarctic ice is melting, but if global warming continues it'll be the last to go and will probably take a century to a few centuries to melt, if that. It is melting though at an alarming pace. But the arctic ocean melting completely year round is in the sights, and Greenland did have 97% surface melt this year, so Greenland might go in the next 150 years if we're on this path. Loss of arctic sea ice alone will also further climate change as polar airmasses will moderate crossing the pole. Canada will likely be warmer on average significantly because of this. Finally, if Antarctica melts, it won't be a summer home, and the land that bounces back will be so far distant from anything and will have such little light during 6 months that not much will grow there or live there.
2) It's not a 'media false alarm'. The Media has gotten a lot wrong about global warming, but if that's the case why not listen to the science and not the hype anyway - which is what you're complaining about? The media ALWAYS gets science wrong. However the real science behind global warming is very well established.
3) 40 feet of snow on the west coast of Antarctica? What? It's a desert.
4) 7 feet of snow now? What? At -62 below? No.
5) A polar bear... in Antarctica? WHAT?
6) Once rest of the world floods? No climate scientist is a biblical young earth creationist. There won't be a global flood. However, sea level rise with just a little bit of Greenland and Antarctic ice melt is serious. Look what happened during Hurricane Sandy in NYC when 15 feet of water came in. Now imagine that's a permanent feature. Now imagine instead of 5 feet below sea level, New Orleans is 20 feet below sea level. That's plausible in the next 50-100 years.
7) What is the point of this thing? | |
Next 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79
| |
|
