SilentSnow

Time travel into our universe is not possible. At best you might be able to travel into a parallel universe which had no effect on the one you left. Even this is incredibly unlikely. (I can't prove this, but I think it's likely enough to be true that I can't take any "time travel paradox" discussions seriously.)

I don't think he sets up a strawmen. It is generally understood among progressives(and by Greenwald) that many if not most intellectual progressives do not like Obama. The only question is whether Obama is the lesser of two evils. I would side with the "vote him out" option. Obama has been a complete disaster for liberals. If we continue to support him, then we lose any ability to ever influence policy since politicians with the Democrat label could do anything they want and get away with it. Now that the crazies have been eliminated, there is no reason at all to support Obama. Let Romney win

I'd say that "atheist" values are responsible for almost all human progress in the last 500 years. As for replying to your posts in general, I read the last few pages and have given up. I honestly can't tell when you are joking and being serious.

I'm actually not too concerned about a "deadly virus" scenario.We are designed(by evolution ) to be really good at killing viruses. Also, viruses have a mathematical problem. If they are too deadly then it is very hard to spread them. They act as a simple poison. A truly dangerous virus would have to be extremely contagious, have a very long incubation time, yet somehow also be completely deadly. I'm not a virologist, but I would guess these three factors directly work against each other and are extremely rare combined. As a third factor, microbiologists seem to be fairly incompetent in gene

Because Savaii is looking like a classic bitter jury. They massively hate Cochran. Just being associated with him(as Coach and Brandon clearly are) is probably enough to get most of Savaii to vote for someone else. When it comes to jury speeches Sophie is likely to give a vastly better speech than Brandon would have and is likely to do better than Coach as well. Also, Coach may be entertaining but most people simply don't like him. He might have skated by against two completely incompetent players like Rick and Brandon, but Sophie is enough of a reasonable alternative that he will have little

I don't think Brandon's move was that bad. He rationally could have counted on Coach doing the intelligent thing. However, Coach made a wildly stupid move in voting out Brandon instead of Sophie. Now he not only makes himself look like a coldblooded traitor, but he also keeps the person who would have done much better on the jury. There is simply no way Coach beats Sophie in a jury vote. He would probably have been a favorite in a vote over Brandon. I guess the good news for Sophie fans is that Ozzy is the only player left that can conceivably beat her.

Most Americans simply do not believe this. They vote for whatever they think will benefit themselves the most in the short run. I wrote years ago that the constitution no longer applies, and I've seen nothing to change my mind. The majority of Americans are perfectly happy to live in a police state as long as they think the goons are unlikely to be coming for them. That does bring up an interesting question- how many societies that devolved into fascism(as America is clearly doing) self-corrected, and how many had to be defeated in a war?

It's a supposition, not a question.

Why even bother to type a sentence so obviously false? At least make a lame joke or something. I understand that in theory the tea partiers reject Romney because he is too "liberal". But the problem with this is that Romney's policies are nearly indistinguishable from the other candidates on most issues. Also, the main idea of health care reform(mandates) was originally a Republican idea. Maybe Romney was unlucky enough to be caught taking the blame for the latest Republican shift rightward in policy, but it's hard to dismiss the "anyone but Romney" approach as completely unrelated to him bein

It was inevitable- Cain is a complete joke. I stand by my theory that the Republicans don't actually want to win this election. Does anyone else find it funny that many tea partiers refuse to vote for Romney because he isn't "christian" enough, but instead support Gingrich, who is about as unchristian as you could possibly get?

I think Albert and Sophie made a huge mistake. This was the week they absolutely had to blindside coach. They should have been completely certain coach was not going to take them to the final 3. Why would he, when he has 3 or 4 great goats? Now they simply don't have the numbers. Edna and Brandon are lost causes. When Rick is your only hope, then things are looking pretty grim. They should have done a coach blindside, then finished picking off Savaii(or eliminate anyone who complained about the blindside too much like Edna/Brandon). Now, it's hard to see a plausible scenario where Coach doesn'

I- 89N- 75T- 75P- 1Atheist, although somewhat moderate in that I think a decent portion of the population is better off believing in a moderate religion- the "useful lie" model. I don't think there is an easy political label for me. On that political test I scored strongly libertarian and left-wing. But some people think leftist libertarian is a contradiction, so who knows? As for this test, I think it is pretty worthless. Introvert/Extrovert is a pretty useful distinction, but the other three(especially judging/perceiving) don't seem to be very clear.

There is nearly a 100% chance that you will use health care. That's why they mandate that you pay some of your share of the costs. The funny thing about this debate is that mandates were originally a Republican idea. From a libertarian perspective, wouldn't you be in favor of a measure that doesn't allow people to impose costs on society? You could argue whether the mandate actually achieves its goal effectively, but the basic logic and constitutionality of the mandate seems pretty solid.

It's not that clear. On this episode it sounded like Jeff said everyone would pick except for Keith and Jim. In the official rules it says that everyone picks except the two voted for and the challenge winners(so Whitney picks). However, the producers reserve the right to break the rules whenever they want- and have in the past. So anywhere from 7 to 10 players would be picking(see page 7 in link). http://www.realityblurred.com/realitytv/ar..._survivor_rules

double post.

It doesn't matter what they say. When they get to 7 players there would be a big incentive for 3 of them to side with Cochran and blindside the other 3. Being matched up next to him in the final 3 is as close to a sure vote as you can get. As for whether this is better than being 6th out of 6, it's hard to say. Depending on the tiebreaker rules, the chances of his tribe being wiped out are as high as 50/50. So it seems just on that fact alone that it's better to be at the bottom of a tribe that has a 90+% chance of existing than the bottom of a tribe that has about a 50% chance of existing. Al

You could say that. But the way you could actually tell the difference between the two hypothesis' would be to actually examine the facts. Needless to say I think the facts are heavily on the "liberal" side on most issues. If it makes you feel any better, I'm not even remotely partisan. There are issues that people would call me conservative on, but these tend not to be discussed much here. As for whether I'm an idiot, we've been over this before. Feel free to point out any posts I've made that you think contain severe factual or logical errors. Or, if you prefer, list what you think it is tha

Lol. Thanks for the welcome. Don't know how much time I'll be spending here since this site is pretty pointless. I was just really bored today.

Remember back when you agreed with me on this point? http://www.fullcontactpoker.com/poker-foru...t&p=3494983I doubt your position has changed. You just disagree to be argumentative or get in another lame joke.

Obviously it's pointless to argue with your non-responses. But just for the record, I don't agree that the majority of this country is conservative. On some issues the majority of Americans are conservative. On these issues they usually get their way. On some issues the majority of Americans are liberal. On these issues they rarely get their way since our government has been corrupted to favor conservative interests.

Obama has been massively beneficial for the Republicans. On nearly every major issue he has sided with the Republicans, yet thanks to the conservative propaganda machine they still are able to demonize him no matter what he does. Every time Obama caves in to the Republican position the Republicans massively benefit(and he usually does). They get what they want, and just as importantly, they get to blame Democrats for the problems their policies cause. They would be insane to run a strong candidate against Obama since he gives them most of what they want. Politically it is better to get most of

Even if this study were correct, then it doesn't prove what you think it does. You could just as easily claim that congress is conservative, as shown by it's voting patterns over the last 30 years. Besides, I don't believe that the majority determines truth. Even if the media really were "liberal", it's quite possible that they are perceived to be liberal because they correctly point out facts in an unbiased way that the majority of "conservative" Americans ignore. Also, not to go too ad hominem on that professor, but when you make an absurd claim such as "Without liberal media bias, “the aver

Lol. Your extreme ideology guarantees that you would think this way. Let's suppose for arguments sake that the truth lies in the middle(it doesn't) and the media is completely unbiased. It's pretty safe to say that you are on the extreme right end of American politics. Just about everything you see would be to the left of your opinions. But this doesn't remotely mean that the media is biased- it just means that your viewpoint is an extreme one. Because of your extreme viewpoint bias your claims of media bias are extraordinarily weak. If you want to convince us that your extreme views are corre

I don't think there is a way to be really confident about this. Complex financial systems throughout history have been less stable and less understood than the powers that be care to admit. Today's systems are no exception. Will Greece defaulting bring about the end of the debt-based financial world? Probably not. But it might conceivably lead to a chain reaction that dissolves the Euro.

In a rational world, the government would not define what a religion is(since that is impossible) and would not provide arbitrary tax breaks/funding to politically powerful "religions". In this world a private group could then follow whatever practices they wanted as long as they were clearly stated in advance. However, we live in an irrational world where the government props up certain belief systems at the expense of others. Because of this, those groups who are being supported by the government should be required to have a certain amount of inclusiveness in their policies. If a group want