BlueLancer

In debates it's pretty easy to fend off flamebaiters and people who post irrelevant stuff. They pretty generally fall into the troller subcategory of posters, just ignoring them can also shut them up since everyone stops caring about their comments. Also, if they continue spamming and flaming, you can nominate them for bans or edit their posts. The forum rules should allow that against troublemakers. That's not very wise on a public forum, I don't mean to side with the flamers but that's quite the wrong action. It is power abusing. You should rather edit the personal details or ask your friend to remove them in a case like that, instead of locking and deleting the entire debate.

That's funny because my father has quite a few Jewish friends, he visits them and doesn't condemn their practices, he eats their food... Why does it matter? Does it make him less of a muslim? You're just as bad as the bible belt christians or the KKK if you really believe everything your bigoted father or the Koran told you. No people are at war with each other at birth. Also, sure, USA is against Palestine. That's why they have paid them hundreds of millions in foreign aid & support the forming of a palestinian state and the withdrawal of Israel from the occupied territories gained in the 1960's wars? How is, say thequran.com any different from skepticsannotatedbible.com? They both view the books from a purely objective viewpoint, they have no inaccuracies whatsoever. Sounds like you have a conspiracy theory about 'jews' being behind everything from world wars to 9/11. A text which possibly shows your views/beliefs critically is "blasphemy" just in your reality. You're implying islam is the correct religion, but you forget over 75% of the world isn't islamic (and the great majority of the world isn't christian either for that matter). What is "blasphemy" to you, is an observation to another. Don't you think it's blasphemy to the jews when you show them how inaccurate "their" religion is? After all, they have the Talmud, you have the Koran. It's just your word against theirs.

Well.. My father claims to be a muslim, as do his friends and family.. But yet, he chooses to disobey some parts of the Koran just as about every muslim I know. Such as drinking alcohol... He says it's "ok because everyone else does it too", but it's just because he lives in a western country and he's not disciplined enough to quit it. He says "once in a while you can drink". But, you can't eat a pig's meat "once in a while" because that would be against God's will, yet drinking alcohol is not? The general population doesn't have a "religion". They just group themselves with a tag like 'christianity', 'islam', etc.. And follow any rituals as long as they don't limit their life too much. In western countries, apparently God thinks it's ok for millions of muslims to drink beer and vodka, but in Saudi Arabia, God will punish you for it? :?: It's linked with society, not religion. Women in western countries mostly don't wear burkhas. Men in western countries don't feel restricted about drinking alcohol. Muslims in western countries mostly don't pray 5 times a day or pay zakat (charity of 1/40th your salary) as told by the Koran.

Why am I not in my right mind for studying religions and theology without the intention of blindly following them or necessarily asking the intepretations of imams and priests? What about the fact my mother is a christian, while my father is a muslim? Should I just refrain from studying either religion or learning about the 'holy books' of those religions? (Not that I put any special weight on those particular religions, just because my parents follow one of them) An Imam or a Priest are just normal humans who studied theology. I don't see how their advice is so important in determining the 'rightness' of a religion.

One example would be don't eat any kind of seafood from China. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19487107/ This year, British cows had caught mad cow's disease as well and the EU imposed export sanctions on other british dairy products too. That doesn't mean you shouldn't touch british meat. An exception doesn't make a rule... Most Chinese seafood, just as most British meat, is fine and consumable food.

Hopefully the WGA strike wont stop 24 from airing in 2008... :pray: Since Fox said they will only air it if there are no interruptions with the flow of new episodes.. It doesn't seem very likely, because they'd only have a few weeks left to resolve the dispute (if we are to see 24 next year). Dammit!

I believe she has studied psychology in a college/university for quite some time. Not sure though; That's just coming from the back corners of my mind as related info :P

I don't particularly care about, or fear death... What I fear sometimes is the prospect I may have to be born again (not a religious belief, but since I'm already born in this human form, no way to even know if I had 'existed' before) Frankly, the odds are extremely high to be born an impoverished child in India, China, African countries etc... And die quite soon during your childhood. Being caught in a loop like that, not being able to effect the world around you in any way let alone stay alive, is quite scary. I'd rather take the 'eternal nonexistence' :lol:

And how exactly are products of "other countries" 'dirtier' or of a lesser quality? For one example, even though it's not the most ethical company, McDonald's uses meat from Brazilian farms. They get paid far less than say, an European farmer, but the quality is just the same. Unless there's something about "foreign" countries' soils and animals that I don't know, and is making the vegetables and anything that roams on their land, junk.

That's an age-old method of making money online - and it works. The reason why everyone isn't doing it, is because 99% of people can't figure out content which is interesting enough to keep people coming back again and again. Artists don't have that problem, since their fans and other curious people will visit the site very often. Even if only 1-2% of visitors click on ads (which isn't unrealistic, not to mention the views themselves count too), you can make plenty of cash.

You sir, are wrong. The flying spaghetti monster will. The point wasn't to bash religions, the point was to remind you shouldn't apply meaningless remedies to serious problems. You don't use witch-doctors to actually cure a disease if you care about the survival of the person. Likewise, you wouldn't just 'pray' that a suicidal person doesn't kill him/herself. Suicidality can stem from numerous physiological or psychological traumas/problems, and the lack of ability to cope with them. That's where the 'another' person steps in, and tries to help the person and be his/her friend, and talk him/her out of the plan.

I tried WoW back when it was new (2005?2006?), due to pressure from friends... Honestly, after 60 levels, I can say the game was nothing special :lol: No idea how people get hooked on it so hardcore... The only thing I truly liked about that game is the impressive and well designed landscapes. Sometimes I'd just log in not to get XP or 'raid' with my guild, but to explore the lands, or just make a character in the opposite realm and listen to the music and stuff. But each to their own. If you're a student, or just have a lot of spare time, I suppose you could enjoy 'grinding' and other tedious 'skilling' in MMORPG's.

What would praying do? Make you think you helped something when really you were just talking to yourself? Yeah... No matter how religious you are (or any other superstitious beliefs you might have), "praying" is the absolute wrong way of dealing with serious situations like this. (Like mentioned above, you're really just talking to yourself) No God/Goddess/thing will stop a person from taking her own life (or even that of another person), YOU have to do something if you can affect the situation in any way possible. Be a realist, and spend your time locating her. On the other hand, if she really wanted 'attention', she'd called you back already. So you can be pretty sure she is serious about her intentions. Don't let the situation evolve into something you could blame yourself for (for the rest of your life). While it's not your fault, it can be painful to know you could've done something to stop her.

That's very true, and it's a serious world issue. Heck, that's one of the sole reasons why huge riots break out in cities where WTO meetings are held. By using western labour-produced farm products instead of buying products from the truly poor farmers in 3rd world countries, you deprive people who have absolutely no welfare system, healthcare, anything, from keeping themselves alive. This is one issue where the EU is no better than the americans; They spend hundreds of billions of dollars every year giving aid money to farmers in France, Germany, Italy, etc. to keep them in business. Instead of buying vegetables and other farm products from poor countries (while retaining the same quality, and paying a lower price), people think it's good to "buy domestic". Sure, except if that farmer in the UK doesn't get enough people buying his products, he's not going to have himself and his 5 children die of hunger. He can apply for other jobs even if farming is all he's done in his life. That's not quite the case in poorer countries where a lot of people have absolutely no other alternatives than either farming, maybe a shopkeeping/trading if they're lucky enough to have starting capital, or becoming a criminal.

Post in video games next time 8-)

Hi :) Post this here: http://forum.tip.it/viewtopic.php?t=144061

That might not be a bad idea at all. Still, since she sent you a text message, you will be able to find her number that way. Regardless of phone models, the sender's number is always visible in the header. You should try to talk her out of it ASAP. Hope nothing goes terribly wrong...

I sort of regret picking up Japanese, because Chinese is where it's at when it comes to usability. When we're all like 40-50, China will be more powerful than the US, it will have a bigger economy, stronger military & technology, it will have about 2 billion people (about 1/4th of the world population by then) speaking mostly Mandarin. Not to say Japanese isn't a nice language too. :) But it's spoken by far less people than Chinese.

Frankly, in todays world the concepts like communism, socialism, capitalism, etc.. Mean nothing (except in North Korea which is the only exception, let's not get into that). Look at China and tell me it's really 'communist'. What every country needs is more humanistic governments and ideas, which are also approved by the population. This year, Norway pledged $1 billion dollars for poor people of the world (and that's besides the fact they already donate 1% of their gross GDP to foreign aid. That's not all... They also pledged to donate 3 billion crowns (USD $560 million) to rainforest preservation, just two days ago. Count how much money that equals in a country of merely 4.3 million people. That means every Norwegian is personally aiding the world this year by about 500-700$ US dollars. Now, just think if all western countries could do even 1/10th of that...

The text message contains her number, do contact her if you can't contact anyone else, like her parents. I also think it's worth it to leave whatever you're doing now/tomorrow to be there physically for that person, not very many things can be more important than convincing a person he/she is making the wrong decision by taking out his/her own life. At least that's what I'd do if I were faced by your horrible situation.

The tragic thing about nearly all these cases... Is that people often stir trouble that originates from trivial things which don't matter at all, or try to cover up their own incompetence. Those people must have really boring lives.

That's not quite the point.. 8-) Nobody said the country has yet split in two. Even the article says Also some politicians were in on the joke, so it had some acceptance to act as a shock for Belgians. They made it really look as if the flemish people declared independence. Because that might just happen very soon if they don't form a government. It's soon been 7 months since the elections with nobody in power.

You can't just use a site to learn a language (especially if you want to learn speaking it fluently). You should have also a real interest in taking up classes even if you're not in school or not, doesn't matter. I'd give you a magical site if there was one, but there isn't. Anyways, you can use this site for some Japanese basics. I've been learning it for some 5 years now... And I'm not even nearly fluent :lol: There's some 50,000 kanji signs.. I'm not even trying to learn them all, about 1000-2000 basic ones is enough to read a newspaper etc. Since you're beginning to learn Japanese, you should first learn katakana+hiragana. That's what even Japanese kids are taught first. If you forget a kanji sign, which is likely, you can just write it in hiragana. If you're more interested in the phonetic side, check out this site. Click on "Grade 1" first, that site is very extensive. Just by looking at a site such as that can help you determine how serious you really are about learning Japanese (or a new language at all). It's not an overnight process and certainly not easy.

My parents like the Beatles alot (for reasons I don't know).. I thought the music is pretty boring (but it's far better than most of the junk of 60's). Some of the Beatles later production is funny though, you can easily hear (and see from the song names) they were high on drugs while making those songs. :lol: The lyrics sometimes make so little sense it's humor itself.

That's crazy, coming from someone as smart as you. You've either changed a lot or your tip.it account got hacked. And I thought I could profile people.. A lot of 'Floridians' are of african, south american and asian heritage as well. What does their ethnicity have to do with the jobs they should do? Also, not all white people are well off. Millions of ethnically white people in the US have to work the same dead-end jobs as every other poor person, because they need something for feeding their families. They can't just "pick" a job, they'll take any that offers a salary/payment.