venomai

i.e. He sees it as wrong only because he was brought up to see it as wrong. There is something very "wrong" with an entire population of people who are satisfied with this conclusion.

Times change, and so does society. Hence the need for equality and acceptance. (EDIT: Not that a counter-culture is necessarily a bad thing in society. In many cases it can be very beneficial.) Stop there. Why is it wrong? Most of us welcome religious debate with open arms. Don't discourage it. :thumbdown:

This is a debate about abortion. Of course lawfulness is the argument here. The general hypocrisy of the American government, on the other hand, is irrelevant to this debate.

Personhood is not defined solely by cells and chromosomes. This is why we allow caregivers to lawfully end the life of somebody on life-support. Although this may be a form of "homicide," we (generally) do not consider it "murder." In both cases we eliminate a potential life by removing the support it depends on.

"Sin" is an arbitrary moral judgement based on one's upbringing in a given culture. It has no bearing in a debate. It's a shorter way of saying "X is bad because we have been brought up to see it as bad." Rules like "blacks should only marry blacks" and "men should only be intimate with women" are worthless unless there is valid (i.e. objective) reasons to abide by them. Of course homosexuals can raise a family (many of them do). "Productivity" is not based solely on one's ability to reproduce. Many extremely influential people have lived without ever contributing more newborns to our already over-populated society. You said: "Homosexuality as the urge can be ignored, aye, as easily as heterosexuality can be. We call that Celibacy. There are hundreds of thousands of men and women who practice it." Along the same vein, homosexuals, much like celibates, choose not to procreate. This, however, does not mean they cannot be productive to society. (And for the record, artificial reproduction now allows us to reproduce without intercourse.)

http://www.flickr.com/groups/beginnerph ... 7253418793 Do you have a filter on your lens? Is it a digital or film camera?

What?

I thought this is a single player game? :?:

The thing on the floor can be easily removed by a quick crop. I didn't even notice the smudge on the window until Nadril pointed it out. Great photo.

The "50% rule" only exists on TIF. :lol: For the record, not nearly 50% of that work is original. In the real world, adaptations of a work must abide by copyright laws. LP fails to do so in two ways, and thus he is infringing on the copyright. Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License. And I would seriously question the validity of your other statement. While LP is a fine artist, I haven't seen too many works by him that are any more impressive than even the 'render tags' we see so often here.

I would say many posters in The Gallery far surpass LP in artistic ability. The amount of profit he makes is irrelevant. There are two types of graphic designers, as I see it. Those who are passionate about making art, and those who are passionate about making money. LP, you seem to fall in the latter category, along with those such as Hannah Montana and Soulja Boy. For you to throw in a few tacky colours and sell these butterflies as "your own designs" (and then whine and b*tch when criticized) shows your complete disregard for what we artists value in a work. Sorry if this seems harsh, but you've got to hear it. You're acting like a child and an elitist moron, LP. My respect for you as a old-time poster and as an artist has gone out the window.

Use File > Open to select your EPS file. In the "Rasterize Generic EPS Format" dialog, enter a much larger size. Be sure to check "Constrain Proportions" and "Anti-Aliased." Hit OK. And voila, the vector data is scaled to the given size and converted to a raster image. No quality loss, no distortion. :thumbup:

What version of photoshop are you using? In CS2 you can open an EPS to any size you want, with no quality lost.

The character looks like it would be best suited in a post-apocalyptic world torn by nuclear warfare. e.g. Through a haze of pollution we can see the skeletal structures of old skyscrapers. In front of the character lies a clear ray of hope: what appears to be a radiation-immune form of life, such as a green plant. I find it best to think about the subject for a couple of days. Any time anything comes to mind that you think has potential, even if it doesn't seem apparent at first, write it down and sketch it out. In the mean-time, do some simple practices with still life, or just sketch what comes to mind.

Photoshop can open EPS files.

Nobody is suggesting that god is not real because the FSM is not real. :lol:

Would anyone be interested in weekly(ish) 3D challenges focused on learning Blender/3dsMax? We could try to cover a range of topics, such as high- and low-poly box modeling, UV and normal mapping, rigging and animation, lighting, etc. I wouldn't mind extending that idea to also include some basic game programming guides and challenges, such as with JMonkeyEngine (Java), Papervision3D (ActionScript) or OGRE (C++/Python).

I think the OP was referring to "corporate media." Something that, if removed, would likely be beneficial to our society.

I see nothing wrong with the (mass) media. I wouldn't expect any less from them -- they are, after all, seeking profit. The problem is with the public reaction. All too often news reports, advertisements and TV sitcoms are taken as some sort of "accurate depiction of reality." This often contributes to issues such as anorexia, stereotyping, panic, etc.

The American presidential elections have been more based on image than politics ever since the introduction of mass media. This was particularly evident after the Kennedy-Nixon debate. http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/K/htm ... -nixon.htm

I agree, but these are sacrifices made for fellow humans, not for god. I've often wondered the same. Say I was to claim that "Sasquatch is not real." Even if all of humanity were to disagree with me, this claim still implies that Sasquatch does not exist in reality, as opposed to does exist in reality. Though there is a wide range of human uncertainty, this claim is a black-and-white issue. e.g. Claiming "Sasquatch is as real as the Tooth Fairy" is different from claiming that "Sasquatch's non-existence is as certain as the Tooth Fairy's non-existence." It makes more sense to you only because you have been raised with a vastly different conception of god. Keep in mind, the Islamic radicals see your conception of god to be "illogical" and unreasonable. Who is to say that your specific conception of god is any more accurate than somebody else's? PS: We are the infidels, or "those without faith [in Islam]."

It is no concern of mine whether or not you, for example, thank god (or the chef) after a nice meal. I'm much more concerned with constant worship and sacrifice that consumes the time and money of an entire group of people -- a feature which is present in many if not most theistic belief systems. Your reasoning is flawed for two reasons which we have already discussed, neither of which you have yet to refute: (a) you believed in the wrong god, and as a result you were sent to hell. (B) the afterlife is shared by theists and atheists alike. If atheists were treated no differently from those of faith (i.e. God does not respond to worship and prayer), then the atheist's life on Earth, albeit misguided, would not have been wasteful, compared to the theist who spent his time worshipping and sacrificing to no avail. (OBVIOUS NOTE: This is a generalization. Not every theist spends time worshipping. As we've already made clear, we are not talking about theism in its entirety, but rather, specific conceptions of god and their payment-related expectations. Which, mind you, makes up a large portion of all theistic beliefs, if not the majority.) And although "wastefulness" is primarily a subjective term, it is not derived solely from the individual doing the action. For this reason, the couch potato's actions are considered "wasteful" even if the individual in question feels otherwise. As for the analogy thing, I'm not sure what you're on about. Homosexuality and murder are not alike in the item being discussed (the degree to which the act is socially acceptable), i.e. they are not analogous. EDIT: This contradicts everything you have been arguing.

Let's use an example... "Wasting your life watching television" is akin to saying that "television can be wasteful." It is not, however, anything like saying that "your life is a waste if you have watched television." Do you see how utterly ridiculous this interpretation is? Talk about a bad analogy... :lol: Things are either "real" or "not real" -- the same black-and-white distinction cannot be made with the degree to which something is deemed socially acceptable.

How is this a cop-out? It's a position one would take, much like "God is real," or even "God can exist." Yet you meticulously capitalize the term, implying a very specific conception of god. :lol: Announcing that "any or none of the models of the universe could be correct" seems rather obvious, wouldn't you say? This is what your argument is beginning to sound a lot like.

There is a substantial amount of scientific and well-tested evidence to support the Big Bang theory. http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/astronomy/bigbang.html It's ignorance like this that gives Christianity such a bad rep. :lol: