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Post by Passerby on Aug 18, 2011 16:35:00 GMT -5
These sacks of crap regularly beat children with steel pipes as a form of discipline and were able to adopt nine. A gay couple in the States has trouble adopting a single child with risk of abuse cited by assholes who probably own the same child-rearing guide that said not beating your children with a hard object is tantamount to child abuse... even when they're behaving themselves. They need a reminder, you see.
Remember kids, God's love and gift of free will comes in the form of physical violence every time your parents think you've stepped out of line, and sometimes just because. But naughty language and tolerance of your neighbours are an unChristian abomination.
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Post by Passerby on Aug 17, 2011 23:03:55 GMT -5
OBAMA WEARS ORANGE TIE ...okay, I can't think of anything for this one. Mr. President, if you're reading this, please wear an orange tie. Orange is the color of Mandarin oranges. He's signaling his fealty to China. Obama signals his preference for oranges over the more quintessentially American apple. Orange is the color of high terror alerts. He want you to be afraid of his terrorist allies. Orange is a color on foreign flags. He's selling you out. Obama signals lack of stance and poor wardrobe coordination with fugly orange tie.
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Post by Passerby on Aug 17, 2011 18:12:06 GMT -5
Privateering is merely another aspect of private enterprise! Seize that freedom!
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Post by Passerby on Aug 17, 2011 1:24:36 GMT -5
Why choose between the two? Construct a frigate with a decoy wooden outer hull for the classic look and psychological shock value and arm the cannons with modified cluster munitions. The combination of a classic mast and sail with propellers on the underside of the ship ensures you have two way to move if the vessel is damaged and the fake hull can ablate and act as an additional protective layer. Of course, I'd insist on having at least one long range gun or torpedoes to compete with modern navel craft. And a gatling gun in the crow's nest.
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Post by Passerby on Aug 16, 2011 6:34:08 GMT -5
I'm guessing a severe lack of creativity and an irrational need to make everything in the world more American drives this remake. Hopefully they don't screw it up like they did Insomnia and just keep the script the way it is. Raiding Japan and Bollywood for flicks has proven fruitful so far, and sometimes it actually translates pretty well like the first Ring... (YMMV) but the rest of the time they fuck it up horribly and it mostly has to do with delivering a half-assed aesop or dumbing down complex moral and societal issues into easy to identify stock archetypes.
Who here saw both versions of Insomnia? Man, they took every once of moral ambiguity out of that film. They couldn't possibly have been more heavy handed in making sure you know one of them's the bad guy. It's of course the writer, whose been re-envisioned as a dirt-poor social leper with a penchant for manipulation and ramped up violent tendancies. They even tweaked the cop to make him more of a guilt-wracked vigilante whose indiscretions were actually supported by some background characters.
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Post by Passerby on Aug 15, 2011 16:42:56 GMT -5
Here I thought free markets only functioned as a way of distributing resources when there were actual resources available to be distributed. How very silly of me. A moderately reasonable person might think that, but these people are under the impression that demand and neccessity will actually somehow create supply and solution from nothingness for commercial consumption. The concept of finite resources only factors into pricing schemes and not into sustainability or practicality. As long as money exists and their bank accounts are full, Libertarians seriously think their problems are already solved. As far as the Free Market gospel is concerned there will always be another supplier and it's only a lack of business sense that prevents anyone from meeting your needs.
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Post by Passerby on Aug 15, 2011 0:35:21 GMT -5
There's a lovely little catch-22 they're going to have to come to terms with. Maintaining a city costs money, a floating city moreso. The cost of the city's upkeep will have to come from somewhere. This must come from A) Taxes, like every other city or B) Private investment.
Libertarians are opposed to taxes on principle, good luck convincing anybody to start paying them with a threat so mild as "this dump will sink and everyone will drown" when they think they can just buy personal floatation devices.
If somebody ponies up their personal cash for the city that makes them the defacto government as they control the city itself. Infrastructure, repairs, utilities, the very ground under everyone's feet becomes rented property that the landlord can kick you off of, probably with a ceremonial plank to walk. They will either demand the authority that comes with having bought the city itself - possibly becoming another George Pullman or Bioshock's Andrew Ryan - or they will end up being charity cases. Authoritarian figures and charity are anethma to Libertarian ideals.
Even if they somehow manage to gather enough people to afford to individually maintain a flotilla of disconnected houses someone will have to enforce boundries or neighbours will encroach upon eachother's property or aggressively expand. City defense is also an issue in international waters, and you can't count on these idiots to band together to fight off a large-scale pirate attack. They'd be picked off one at a time, figuring they can take care of themselves and it's not worth wasting your own stock of RPG's and bullets to save somebody else's skin.
Gainful employment would also be hard to come by out in the middle of nowhere with a 100% import economy. They can't exactly grow vegetables out on the ocean and the only food source on hand will be fish. They'll be competing with commercial expeditions just to pick up dinner. They'll have to go a ways out too, if their method of garbage disposal amounts to dumping their trash directly into the water.
They're doomed, but I imagine they'll find a way to blame someone else for it if they get far enough into their project to fuck up disasterously.
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Post by Passerby on Aug 13, 2011 23:27:43 GMT -5
He sued a newpaper for publishing an essay he submitted to another magazine for the express purpose of having it published for others to see? Except now that people other than the magazine's subscribers have seen it they think he's insane and no longer support him. Somehow it's the media's fault nobody agreed with the essay he never really kept to himself in the first place. How does this make sense to him?
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Post by Passerby on Aug 13, 2011 23:13:45 GMT -5
From what I already know of the Bible (especially where virginity, sex, and matrimony are concerned) it's hard as hell not to imagine this 'water of bitterness' being administered in the most horrible way possible. I drew that particularly disturbing conclusion from previous knowledge of other fidelity tests involving a whole lot of inappropriate touching combined with the redundant statements of the water entering the bowels, being drunk, and then entering the body again. Direct application of contaminants is also the most medically likely explanation for this 'curse' manifesting itself in the nether regions and reproductive organs.
Sorry if this grosses you all out, but I'm really trying to work through just what the hell the people who wrote this horror story meant to happen, what did happen, and what someone who grows up reading and believing the Bible gets out of these passages when they read them... if they think anything at all about what they're reading and not just repeating memorized lines like they were reciting lyrics to a song written in a language they don't know and don't care to learn. If I make someone stop and think long enough to either freak out because they see it too meaning it's not just me or rationally disprove me and mercifully invalidate my fears then my mission in in any given discussion is pretty much accomplished.
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Post by Passerby on Aug 13, 2011 7:04:52 GMT -5
If I'm reading this thing right - and I kind of hope I'm not - a priest would dip his hand in holy water contaminated with a pinch of barley, filth from the floor, and wet ink from ritually washing a freshly written 'curse' out of a book, and ram his scummy digits directly up a woman's vagina. Then they waited to see if she developed some manner of infection from being violated in such a way as a test of marital fidelity? An infection so horrible that it may permanently damage the poor woman's reproductive organs? Why do I get the feeling the priests commiting this bastardized version of highly unqualified gynecology spend the previous days laying hands on the sick and praying for God to heal them, neglecting to wash their hand or trim their fingernails the entire time?
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Post by Passerby on Aug 12, 2011 4:51:29 GMT -5
She may not think of herself as a hero, but she got off her ass and risked her own neck despite having no direct stake in the situation. That's two up on a lot of people in this world. The rest of us panic, stand around looking stupid, offer ultimately meaningless platitudes and prayers, or shrug and figure it isn't our problem.
Kid, parents should be looking up to you.
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Post by Passerby on Aug 10, 2011 3:17:06 GMT -5
While I'm all for preventing parents from dragging their children places they don't want to go, swearing oaths they have no comprehension of, and indoctrinating them in ideologies that will shape their entire world view with a heavy emphasis on rejecting anything that clashes with their beliefs... flatly denying any access to information on the subject of religion altogether isn't the act of an enlightened society.
It's shot right in the eye of both freedom and education if the child legitimately has their own desire to engage in religious pursuits and worship. Limiting the amount of duress a child's legal guardian can impose on them in taking up religious studies and setting an age of legal consent for being baptised, affirmed, or whatever you call it when you're officially considered a practicing member of a religion seems like a better place to start. Preventing religious institutions from accepting children below this age as altar boys or similar employees of the establishment would be another good move... might cut down on the rape too. Preventing religious figures from attempting to compel through faith, issue demerits or punishments based on faith, or discriminate based on tennets of faith should be strictly illegal to do to a child, especially one that has not made their own choice to follow the faith they are being made to live by. Heck, I don't even think it's acceptible to do that to adults. Making it so that a child cannot be recognized as a member of a religion until age of consent should provide an ample block as it can be argued that a minister has no more place attempting to influence someone not part of his flock than a cleric would telling the minister's congregation how to conduct themselves.
Cripes, I'm actually defending churches now.
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Post by Passerby on Aug 8, 2011 20:14:16 GMT -5
I believe the US Presidency should be decided in a prolonged Survivor style reality show that pointlessly risks the life, limb, and personal dignity of the candidates. It's been sadly proven that America has higher voter participation in American Idol than it does Presidential elections and ensures equal screentime to all eligible canditates as long as they are popular enough to continue to remain in the running. Sponsorship deals may even turn a profit, allowing the poorest independant to enter on equal standing with the better funded parties. Introducing challenges that force the contestants from rival political factions to work together to complete their challenges and maintain their place in the running may even have a far-off chance of extending to congressional proceedings. It's also slightly less degrading and somewhat more honest than the circus that Americans witness every four years. I feel for you, brothers and sisters south of my border. Really I do. And if this fails there will be lulz and the result would be no worse than the standard election of an idiot who has no idea what they're doing..
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Post by Passerby on Aug 8, 2011 19:58:04 GMT -5
"Avoid a hurricane: ask your gay population to move to another state!" Though I am quite insulted by the comparison to D&D fans. The only similarity between D&D players and the Tea Party is that both use gold to buy things. Oh, come now. Finding a well-adjusted D&D player is like finding a sane member of the Tea Party. Hell, there's errata stating neither can be conjured via Miracle or Wish. Does Vin Diesel count? Sure, he most often portrays a sociopath in his roles but the man himself is more or less of an agreeable temperment.
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Post by Passerby on Aug 6, 2011 19:41:42 GMT -5
Are you arguing criminal culpability, severity of charge, or the merits of the prison system itself? D. All of the above? Plus some bemusement at the tendency for courts to punish the people who appear to be the "victims" of the crime for which they are being punished. I spoke my mind on the first two out of those three subjects and you said I was missing the point. This doesn't clarify things at all. What is the point you wish to make? Do you believe Nicola entirely blameless? Pease qualify your view if this is so. I believe I mentioned before that the father was no longer in a position to directly influence her, and that she instigated the second contact. She went looking for him and that was her own call. Further, the arrest can simply be a medium to forcibly send the woman to counselling to break whatever lasting hold he might have. But on the flipside, and this can only be determined once counselling has begun, the daughter may well have *always* been the instigator. It's less common but it happens more than you'd think. Even if this is the messed up case that doesn't automatically make the father the victim either, it would have been his responsibility to reject and set her straight. You asked if there can be a 'victimless' crime with only perpetrators? Yes. You've never heard of two thugs going at it with mutual murderous intent over stupid respect issues? And more to the point this falls in a similar category to self-inflicted wounds. Is it 'punishing' a drug addict or a suicidal individual to take them into custody to prevent them from further harming themselves?
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