Fiery_penguin_of_doom Posts

Actually being familiar with Boolean logic can also come handy. Boolean logic uses truth tables, that is you write up all possible combinations of basic statements, then you evaluate the expression. I'd like to highlight a frequent problem with implication:

Implication:

P => Q
p implies q

Example:
"If the river is narrow, then we can cross it quickly."

Truth table:

P=True, Q=True, P=>Q=True
P=False, Q=True, P=>Q=True
P=False, Q=False, P=>Q=True
P=True, Q=False, P=>Q=False

The important thing is, that an implication is only false, if the condition is true yet the implication is false.

Example:
"Even though the river is narrow, we couldn't cross it quickly."

So the frequent argument that if something is not true, then it's implication is also false is fallacious logic!
Look at the truth table, even though the initial condition is false, the implied condition can still take on true or false values and the implication itself is still valid.

Contrapositive:

What is implicit in an implication is its contrapositive:

From the definition of an implication we have:
P => Q = NOT(P) OR Q.

Example:
"The river is wide or we can quickly cross it."

Using the commutative nature of the OR operation we get:

P => Q = Q or NOT(P)

Using the double negation rule we get:

P => Q = NOT(NOT(Q)) or NOT(P)

Again, from the definition of an implication we have:

P =>Q = NOT(Q) => NOT(P)

Example:
"If we can't cross the river quickly, it's not narrow."

Negation:

The negation of an implication, is once again not what people normally use, but this is the correct logical result of an implication being false:

From the definition we have:

P => Q = NOT(P) OR Q

Therefore, taking the negation of each side of the equation, we have:

NOT(P =>Q) = NOT(NOT(P) OR Q)

From the negation law we have:

NOT(NOT(P OR Q) = NOT(NOT(P)) AND NOT(Q)
(This a De Morgan relation)

From the double negation rule we know, this is the same as

NOT(NOT(P)) AND NOT(Q) = P AND NOT(Q)

Therefore:

NOT(P => Q) = P AND NOT(Q)

So the negation of an implication doesn't implicate anything else!

Example:
For example, the negation of the statement

"If the river is narrow, then we can cross it quickly"

is the statement:

"The river is narrow and we cannot cross it quickly."

Reasonably Bored's remark is indeed true. Although Biglundi and Jash2o2's arguments have become ever more childish, his basic argument is still true.

Jash2o2 has failed to provide any whatsoever secular proof of his position, merely relying on the (false) argument that "(P)==FALSE => NOT(P)==TRUE", which is a logical fallacy.

Actually Biglundi too made the mistake of getting bogged down in scientific terms, as he keeps insisting that a zygote is not alive, when it fact it's scientifically quite proven that it's a living organism (albeit one incapable of life on its own... a trait shared by many "parasites", hence why Doctor House referred to a fetus as suck).

However I agree with his basic position that a zygote is not (yet) a person. Arguments about when life begins, whether the zygote is truly alive is just a smokescreen that detracts from the central ethical problem of when do we (legally) grant person-hood to the unborn.

WTF is wrong with you Americans?!? It's not like these teenagers were doing anything wrong.

Heck, in my (old) school, (I've graduated long ago) they probably would've got a stern talking to, maybe a lecture on using protection then told to get a room.

FPOD is correct, cells shed are dead, my comparison was faulty. I'm at a loss here to say a process where we loose living cells, but I'm pretty sure there's one. However since I can't name one at the moment consider my argument void.



I specifically mentioned virii, since until they inject their genetic package into a cell they lack any metabolism of their own, so some biologists don't consider them living organisms.

However your argument that things should be killed for any arbitrary reason is at odd angles with what I was trying to get across: that possessing life on its own is not a sufficient reason as why humans shouldn't kill it.

We have various reasons why we kill animals and we even have reasons - that society as a whole accepts as moral - why we kill humans.

The point being, that for a beings life to be considered inviolate you need to ascribe more attributes to it. We normally don't agonize over worms, insects or bacteria that are killed as a result of our actions. We reserve our empathy to only a select cadre of animals... and our empathy seems to focus in-on the beings ability to feel pain.

So as long as the zygote is incapable of feeling pain - or feeling anything et all - than I don't believe a similar reason could be used to justify its welfare against the wishes of the woman bearing it.

You *could* ascribe a special potential to it, and this is a valid argument as it doesn't hinge upon either religious belief or non-religious "meaning" (once again belief) as the zygote's potential is something that has been objectively demonstrated.

However my counter argument to this is that said potential of zygotes is overstated: 2/3 of natural pregnancies end in miscarriage as the zygote fails to embed in the womb. Lots of zygotes are routinely destroyed in the process of in-vitro fertilization.

If we ascribe absolute significance to this potential, then its being routinely violated both by nature and a human practice that's widely accepted as good and honorable.

I'm *NOT* arguing that a zygote or more precisely a *fetus* shouldn't have any rights of its own. What I *AM* arguing against is the categorical, absolute deference of the zygotes rights over that of the bearer.

At some point during the pregnancy, you can no longer handle the fetus as just a bunch of cells. It has a nervous system of its own and is so developed that - given the medical state of our age - its healthy delivery is almost a given thing.

*Where* that point is, is debatable.

What I find *unjustifiable* though, is that you'd ascribe the same right to zygote, when in reality zygotes are routinely lost due natural causes (and a lot more frequently than people think, the zygote gets expelled during menstruation and even the woman won't know about it) or in processes already approved.

Until the pro-life camp comes up with reasons why a first trimester zygote can be morally destroyed in some cases - rape, natural causes, in-vitro processing, intra uteral devices - but can't be morally destroyed in others - namely abortus - your arguments will lack the necessary coherence to pass musters of objectivity.

Referring to the potential of the zygotes, simply won't do, as I've amply demonstrated the same potential in cases where it exists and is still ignored.

The only avenue I see open for you is the distinction of preventive and reactive action.... however for the life of me I can't see why you'd see the later as immoral and the formal as moral when the practical results are the same.

Quick check: see if in the playback properties - either in MPC-HC, or the FFDshow filter - you have accidentally set mirrored image somewhere. If its not set, you could try setting it and see if it helps (in case this behaviour is caused by your decoder).

What content are you trying to play and what decoder do you use for this?
-When playing a file, right-click, go into properties and check what the encoding of the video stream is. (E.g. divx/xvid, h262, etc).
-Next go into CCCP's filters in your start menu, and select the FFDShow video filter. Go into the codecs tab and check what's selected for this content type.
--If it's libvacodec, then you need to tweak the setting of FFDShow video filter.
--If it's something else, e.g. CoreAVC, you need to tweak the appropriate codec's settings. (Check your start menu for related items).

If you're concerned about the state of your hard-disk install speedfan and check the SMART tab. The readings you should look out for are reallocated sector count and bad sector count... if these start to rise your hard-disk is dying.

About the "hum" - it's normal for hard-disks to produce various kinds of low vibrations as they spin their disc at a significant RPM. There's a reason why PC quiet enthusiasts put rubber wafers under them.

Bottom-line: unless the SMART data suggests otherwise I wouldn't really worry about it.

...and I know a guy who was willing to have a nail driven into his penis. Another one was willing to drink battery acid. An individuals choice to do something carries no weight toward mandating the behavior for everyone else.

QualiaSoup made some excellent videos demonstrating that some morals *can* be objectively defined, as well as why you don't need God for morals to exist:

The fallacy of God as a moral compass:


Why the Bible fails as a moral compass:


He does *not* claim that morality is objective. In fact that very fact that once slave ownership was considered moral demonstrates that it isn't.

However we can agree that as science marches on and we *know* more and more about the world, morality too becomes more and more objective as there's less room for personal belief. Furthermore there are objective criteria for one's morality else it can't pass muster of modern society.

Your justification is just as arbitrary BigLundi's.

The quality you use to define a person - life - is not unique to the zygote. The cells of skin you normally shed during the day are also alive. It also shares your DNA. Bacteria and animals are also alive yet the former are usually only thought of as pests, while animals are routinely slaughtered. For the heck of it, I could point out that some researchers consider even virii a form of life.

All the rights you quote are a property of a person. Therefore the whole question of "when does life begin" is inappropriate. The question should be, when does a fetus become a person?

The answer would be very much an arbitrary one, but at least it's clear it's such an arbitrary decision, whereas questions over life are waxing biological fact with personal belief or faith if you will in metaphysics.

This is an ethical question.

Biology can't be used as a scalpel to cut the Gordian not. It won't have answer for you. If will tell you when a cellular organism comes to exist, when its various functions develop and finally when it will have the capacity for thought and feelings.

When you ascribe natural rights to that organism is a tricky thing, but if you ascribe it at the moment of conception, you also ascribe such rights to all the myriads of zygotes that never manage to embed in the womb. You also ascribe it to all the zygotes routinely destroyed in artificial insemination.

Even if you ascribe these rights only to zygotes embedded in the womb, if you put in clauses for rape, the safety of the mother, then you still - even if unconsciously though - accept that it does not yet have the full range of rights a person does.

Imagine if we were talking about a breathing, living new born and were debating whether to kill it, because it was born as a result of rape? Even pro-choice people would find the idea repugnant, yet the fact that you'd allow for that to happen to a zygote in case of rape shows that even you don't believe that a zygote is a person yet.

The key difference between a lame blowjob and a good one is suction. I've seen (and experienced) a lot of girls just push the penis in and out... if you add suction it feels x10 times better. Next comes details. Using the tongue, twirling it around the head... these tricks can make a good blowjob a great one. Finally learn to pace yourself, take breaks and just lick/kiss the sides, only use your tongue for a while otherwise your jaw will quickly tire.

This, so much this. +Rep. It's not legal or illegal, but a gray area where you'll likely loose if brought to court.

Guess what? You are the only arrogant bastard here.

A guy can always just skip town and leave the woman high and dry... no such chance with a pregnancy. How about preaching about *responsible fatherhood* first, before you start to make claims on women's bodies?

As mentioned, the two biggest dangers are surgery foul ups - though these are pretty rare - and your sight further deteriorating as you grow older and then you'd have a lot harder time getting it fixed.

Keep in mind though that so far (AFAIK) only laymen have posted. Ask an optician/doctor who's not directly involved in the surgery business.

Actually, there not another religion as divided as Christianity. Why? Because (most of the ) other religions don't claim absolute knowledge or absolute interpretation of knowledge.

Warning! The following video is Atheist propaganda, if such material causes you to incessantly rage, just don't watch it! If you're religious, but have the good humor to laugh at a satire that pokes at the inconsistencies surrounding your belief, you'll likely have a laugh too... though chances are you'll be still offended.



...so I wonder what "singular religion" or RELIGION in big capital letters does OP refer to?

I'm not sure we need to mandate more regulation, but making sure the various federal organizations actually do their part would be a start. Like SEC finally sending a lot of brokers to jail for fraud instead destroying evidence.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/is-the-sec-covering-up-wall-street-crimes-20110817

...right now the various federal organizations are suffering from systematic corruption and co-option by corporations. Cleaning house, reinstating the strict policies these organizations were founded with and screening employees for industry ties would be the bare minimum to actually get the regulations enforced.

You're not understaning the OP's problem. MPC-HC is loosing focus to another application that tries to pop-up. He could try setting in MPC-HC, so it's "always on top" and see if that helps. Otherwise, he'll have to hunt down the application in question and see why it pops up.

...and another classic, this game even had a Jukebox mode:

Tyrian - Main (Tyrian) Theme


Tyrian - Camais


Tyrian - Asteroid Dance

...I believe you misunderstand what gizgal wrote. As she wrote, she has no problem with yaoi - i.e. works him homoerotic content. She specifically mentioned *shota*, which means underage boys, which BTW can't be hosted on the site due the same reason loli can't. (Because the advertisers).

FPOD I don't know whether to be amazed or annoyed:

You quoted yet more statistics that show *gross* payment, not payment as % of one's income. When the top 10% owns in wealth more than the rest of society combined, it's no wonder they have to pay more... in fact they'd have to pay more even if the tax-rate was flat.

...yet they still pay less than Average Joe the blue-collar worker or Joe Average the white collar wage slave. There is no tax on interest, dividend and capital gains.

In other words, even though they "pay more", what they pay is still not measurable to what the average American has to shell out as a percentage of their wage. The key difference is that while the rich may be annoyed, the poor are barely getting by... or not at all. The USA is experiencing a record number of foreclosures.

For the hell of it, I could quote your very own source:
"You’ll see that one major reason why the share of taxes paid by the richest Americans has risen is that the richest Americans have experienced much greater income growth."

As for the AT&T, or "Ma Bell" story:
The most ridiculous twist on the truth I've ever seen. Bell Systems was *always* a private company. In fact it was after a range of *government* law suits, based on anti-trust laws - government *regulation* - that it was finally broken up.

Between 1956 and 1984 government *didn't* mandate any "privilege" for "Ma Bell" in fact it was restricted to 85% of the United States' national telephone network.

...so your argument is the very opposite of what has happened:

Government regulation finally broke up a monopoly and has allowed various startups to liven up the tel-co industry.

The regulation you quote, were *company*, not state or federal mandates.

...as for "self-regulation":

-The very same regulation that has been "in effect" in Wall Street? Good job, hasn't worked out so great.
-How about the MPAA?


-How about the Comics Code Authority? Which is universally acknowledged as a repressive regime?

Both those have been tools for censorship, enforcing the wishes of select interest groups, instead the country as a whole.

Dear FPOD! Your so called "rebuttals" have been getting a bit stale as of late:

1. Quoting statistics from a libertarian organization.

2. Calling me pretentious, misguided or just all in all wrong.

3. An attack on my person, likening me to a retard.

Before exchanging another broadside, I'd thought I'd go look for some hard data, from independent sources without an agenda. (Your source does not qualify, for it was made with the intention of promoting a flat tax rate).

However your blatant disregard toward anything I write combined with your smug assurance that your fairy tale philosophy must be right has aggravated me to the degree that you have this post.

So without sufficient research here is my response:

1. Your statistic that measures *absolute* payments toward taxes and is therefore meaningless. Let's have an example to demonstrate: I have a 100 sheep. You have 10. We live in the middle ages. We pay in tax 10% to the "holy temple". I pay 10 sheep. You pay a single one. Whoa! I just paid 90% of the tax! How unjust is that?

2. Could you quote a study how regulations hurt small businesses? Last I recalled it actually *helped* them. Without regulations, you'd still only have a single tel-co company (AT&T) and you couldn't start your own ISP as they'd own the whole network lock, stock & barrel.

You claim that big government organizations make it easier for big business to make things go their way... so the good response is to get rid of all regulation? This is a classical libertarian leap in logic, pointing out an existing, real-world problem than offering a fairy tale solution without any basis on reality... and if I point out a the thousands of times, when deregulation has hurt the public, you'll just go "revolutionary" on me, claiming that the "real" libertarian principles couldn't come to play, since the country in question hasn't yet implemented the big deregulated libertarian utopia.

3. ...and your fixation on "regulation = BAD", "deregulation = GOOD" is pathologic as shown by this comment:



The problem with Wall Street finance is that the SEC (& a whole range of other regulatory agencies) have failed to do their purpose: regulate.

In other words the whole problem stemmed from the fact, that in practice there was no regualation.

...going to a pure "arachno-capitalistic" basis, would help this how? How can Average Joe on the street ensure that a finance company won't screw him over by selling his pension fund crap? How can he insure that credit rating agencies won't rate this shit as the best thing ever?

Going back a step ow can Joe Average ensure that his telco company won't unfairly price his service? Go to another company? Who? In an unregulated world, AT&T + Verizon can deny forwarding calls from any other company. Only a startup with massive capital - enough capital to lay their parallel network everywhere! - could stand a chance.

Let's take another step, and say you want to open a small store of your own. How do you compete with Walmart, who buys the majority of foodstuff from producers? Walmart can stop buying anything from a producer if they directly sell to you. Agriculture is an area where you can make massive increases in productivity by going big... unless your "store chain" is big enough buy up the majority of the products of a producer Walmart can deny you stuff to sell as a producer without an outlet to Walmart is "dead".