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Recent Comments by HadouKen24
 | comment listing type: Top Sift for Nov 28th, 2009Friends O' the Sift Top New Fear Videos by Vote  Subscribe Top 15 Fear Sifters of All Time Top 15 Fear Sifters of the Past Week Newest Appreciated Comments |
Raining Polar Bears
Read the news - Global Warmer is a HOAX -- Someone stole the scientists emails and documents and leaked them to the world--- go find them and read them.
No, I haven't taken the time out of my week to read 1000 e-mails and 79 other documents cherry-picked out of many, many other documents.
But I do know enough about online communication to know that any immediate conclusions are tremendously premature. And I also know enough about science and scientists--I have three siblings in engineering, and my own mindset is not all that divorced from a scientific perspective--to know that idiosyncrasies in terminology might sound incriminating, but not in fact be incriminating.
If the stuff that made it into the papers is the most incriminating that they have, then we should have no worries more worries about the climate science than we would have otherwise. It gives us no real information than that climate scientists have just the opinions and judgments that we should expect they would have.
Boy Won't Say Pledge of Allegiance Until Gays Can Marry
>> ^Trancecoach:
The kids got his own fan page on facebook.
Who doesn't?
I don't.
* weeps *
I'm 80% Girl, 20% Boy
I don't get it. What mistake was made? Even before I learned that the giant boobs were fake (at the 5:30 mark), I suspected this was a gay male. This person looks, behaves and speaks like a gay male.
Her boobs were fake? I doubt it. At the very least, not they're entirely fake. Hormone treatments--or for someone with Klinefelter's syndrom (XXY sex chromosomes), the cessation of hormone treatments--would cause such growth in breasts. Though this woman could have gotten implants as well, I find that somewhat unlikely. That kind of surgery requires money, which she doesn't seem to have.
EDIT: Also, she probably has something other than Klinefelter's as well, if her genitals were ambiguous enough at birth to require surgery. Klinefelter's alone results in apparently normal male children. Which makes the "cessation of hormone treatments" explanation even more plausible.
TDS: Legends of the Wall 11/10/09
Christopher Hitchens and Stephen Fry Debate Catholics
I really liked Fry's analogy of the Catholic church's obsession with sex to that of food with anorexic or the morbidly obese.
As for the topic at hand... I really am not that interested in this level of minutiae. Those of you who know me from posting here know that I really don't see much of a difference between Catholics, Protestants, Scientologist, Satanists, and Zoroastrians. It is all just some stuff made up by some guy (usually a guy, except in very rare occasions) to control and tell others what to believe. No religion has any proof that they are right, anyone who claims they do is about as trustworthy as someone who says they are Napoleon.
There are two major problems here.
First, it's not possible to say that all religions are something that "some guy" made up. For a great many religions--Hinduism, Judaism, and Shinto are good examples--there is not one single individual one can trace the religion to. Rather, they seem to have arisen organically, on the basis of the agreement and common practice of communities and tribes. If they arose to control people, it was not the action of a single autocrat, but the same kind norm creation that goes on in any community.
Second, not all religions make onerous demands on belief. Again, Hinduism and Shinto are good examples. While particular schools of Hinduism may demand assent to certain beliefs, one may hold nearly any set of beliefs and be a good Hindu, so long as one meets a baseline set of behavioral norms. There are even atheist schools of thought. (There is even a patron god of atheism, strangely enough. Attributed to it by other schools of thought, of course.) Much the same is true of Shinto, though it is less philosophically sophisticated--atheism may not be as acceptable, but there is room for a great diversity of opinion.
Before Christianity and Islam, in fact, this non-belief-centric approach to religion was the norm everywhere Judea and a few Zoroastrian communities. The notion that religion demands belief is not the norm in human society--only in Christian and Muslim society.
Christopher Hitchens and Stephen Fry Debate Catholics
I think the "big guns" and "lightweights" comment is more revealing than just calling this an "as usual" situation. I've heard MUCH better orators who would've turn H&F's points to shreds much more efficiently.
It could be the case that a better orator might better persuade the audience that the Catholic church is a force for good, but I doubt it would be strongly sustained by facts and reason.
Even at its best, the Church does great damage to freedom of thought and human dignity. In the 20th century alone, it has been responsible for tremendous damage in perpetuating colonial oppression. Where it spreads, it breaks apart or perverts traditional social structures and--by its teachings of exclusivity and damnation to Hell--splits societies apart. The Rwandan genocide, as Hitchens pointed out, was at least in part caused by the Church.
And this has been the case throughout its entire history, going back to the destruction of temples and lynching of Pagans by angry Christian mobs from the moment it attained political power. Before then, the twisted passive-aggression of voluntary martyrs--a not insubstantial proportion of Christian martyrs--and aggressive, even militant rhetoric of its leaders made it clear how they might act if given power.
Christopher Hitchens and Stephen Fry Debate Catholics
Lightweights against Hitchens, I guess the big boys couldn't be bought.
Hitchens himself is only a welterweight. He's a master of the bon mot and a wonderful rhetorician, but doesn't have the ordered, logical mind necessary to formulate and attack logical arguments. Remember, he only graduated university with a third class degree--putting him well below what would be required for a post-graduate education.
Fry, on the other hand, has a formidable intellect. He certainly shows it here. While Hitchens' opening was a bit chaotic and logically disjointed, Fry's was well structured and buttressed even against the bad arguments his opponents might bring up.
Congressman Alan Grayson Lists Number Of Dead Per District
I live in her district, actually, though I did not vote for her. She's running for governor of Oklahoma right now. I still won't vote for her; my vote is probably going to Drew Edmondson, if he makes it through the primaries.
Impossible Basketball Shot With Baseball Bat
Fake. A golf ball might be able to slice with enough wind. To do the same, with a basketball would require a category 5 hurricane. But, they did it once. They can do it again, right?
You clearly wasted your childhood not playing baseketball.
A basketball hit with a baseball bat will do that kind of thing almost every time. The real trick is getting it to go straight.
The lower mass to volume ratio and increased drag with increased volume make it much easier to put a high spin on the ball, and easier for the ball to slice or hook.
Also, it's not wind that's primarily responsible for slicing or hooking in golf. Even (especially?) a bad golfer will learn this on a day with calm winds.