tortilliachp

Easy to say, hard to think about. It's not hard to think about at all, because it's wrong, and the proof is staring right back at us every living moment of every day (and on page 1 of this topic). actually, I was hoping that the otherwise science proficient community would consider scienfitic astrophysics points that they didn't neccessarily know before reading the topic, and realize that some things are very certain, and not speculations at all. Some of the things thrown out are proven to be wrong, so this topic may broaden horizons for many.

Your point? If a serial rapist argues that murder is wrong, is he wrong himself just because he's not a saint? Besides, I'm not entirely against abortion. I'm just presenting some various points for the sake of the debate. I think its better you have a safe abortion than an unsafe one. What I think is ridiculous are the people who call mothers who have abortions "murderers" and pro-choice people who assume every abortion is the result of a rape, incest, or would otherwise be harmful for the mother to have the baby. Sorry, I misread that post of yours, a_local_guy. I agree with you. my point? it's none of your business. even your own argument contradicts itself: the child is punished (in the case of rape) if it is aborted. it has done nothing wrong, yet dies. why do you therefore seperate it from other abortions? because of the mother, right? In that case, isn't the mother the person who should decide (in connection with the father if she wants) in each individual situation? that, again, makes it none of your business. I don't think we have the right to meddle with the life and death desicions of others. that goes if you're religious, it goes if you're not. All religions i know preach their gods as the only sources worthy of giving judgement. If you're not religious, what is then the meaning of life? Procreation? finding your meaning of life? Enjoying life? nothing? Without religion, how can you justify the value of human life as greater than other life? I think all of us disqualify ourselves due to our western lives as judges of others and their morality. We are, after all, the probable cause of mass extinction, of unfair distribution of foods which kills millions every year. we could all save hundreds of lives each year by spending our money not on ourselves, but on others. I don't think you have the right to tell anyone what they do to a single human life, as we've all sacrificed the lives of so many others for our own benefits. I don't think you can argue otherwise either, unless you say the life of a western child is worth more than the lives of non-westeners. After all, more than ten people could fed in many other parts of the world for the price of a single, lucky individual in the west. By aborting, you may actually ensure the survivability of 10 lives, sacrificing one. No, I don't think you have any right to have an opinion on who aborts and doesn't. You kill people indirectly every day, as do I. who are we to judge others taking just a single life?

Hehe, a common misconception. I will prove to you that the universe is not infinite by use of Olber's paradox, and Enstein's solution: The sky is dark at night. The universe is not static. The universe has a limited age. explanation: if the universe WAS infinite, the sky would be infinitely light as there are infinitely many stars in any given direction. With this infinity, supernovae would cover the nightsky completely at all times. The sky is dark, so the universe must be finite. The universe is not static. An infinite universe could not expand. Due to the redshift observed when examining distant objects in the night sky, we know the universe expands, the universe is therefore not infinite. This relation is quantified by Hubble's law. The universe has a limited age. That's not entirely true: we don't know what happened in the early stages of, or before the big bang. Due to the fact that we know the universe exapands, we can regress the expansion backwards: something must have started the expansion. True to expectance, if we go 13,4 billion years back, everything was gathered in a single point. This final assertion leads to another common misconception: this single point which was then the universe, is just as big as the universe is today. Many people ask " what's beyond that then". The concept "beyond the universe" doesn't exist, it's not possible. Knowing this singularity existed, which is does, because the universe expands, we know that all "planets" or other objects we can ever see are limited to the age since the last big bang, traveling just less than the speed of light consistently since then. The speed of light is a physical speed limit: we can never know if something faster than the speed of light exists, just as anything beyond the speed of light can never know if something is slower than the speed of light. They wouldn't even know of light as a concept. It is impossible to breech the speed of light. We don't know if something is above this limit, but if it is, it will remain that way for eternity, and will not resemble anything we know of today. All that aside, the universe very very large, not infinite. That doesn't take away from the trillions of quadrillions of stars that probably exist though :D

in the spirit of "that's none of your business" : do you eat meat, think much about the animals and their suffereing? do you think about the future generations you're killing by unsustainable consumption? are you against contraception? why should an innocent child die simply because the mother was raped, what's the child done to deserve death? no, i still think we don't have any moral highground that justifies interfering with other people's lives on issues that are literally matters of life and death.

choosing who should live and who should not, is something i feel would-be parents should consider before finding themselves in that situation. Condoms are not rocket science, but things can go wrong. if others choose to abort or not is none of my business.

Thanks for bothering with the statistics! The 8m strong population of sweden taking on the 300m of the US. case in point considering the ratios, if you look at 300m of Europe's population, and how many asylums and immigrants they accept. In the US you get called a socialist and recieve death threats for wanting to ensure everyone's human right to health care. That's beyond the point though, the thing is that the policy of the neo-nazis and the republicans are eerily similar in many areas. That also stands ideologically.

not effective, but if you want to loose weight, you invest time. First of all the cardio and weights, but if you want your weight to go down quickly, you simply need activities with high calorie usage per hour. That's where the treadmill comes in.

Godwin's law: this topic does not facillitate discussion. a scientist "who cannot create paradigm change because of his affiliation with economy" has predicted with high accuracy how this topic will turn out. Paradigms don't just change at a whim: in today's scientific world our scientific models are extremely well documented in most areas. Consider the big bang theory: it predicted blackbody radiation as background radiation at 2,6K due to the big bang itself and the expansion of the universe. That was verified later, and so the big bang theory is so likely to be correct, there are no concievable scientific alternatives to how the universe expanded / has existed. Contrastingly, the relationships modern sciences like sociology, neurology, physical psychology and genetics explore so complex relationships of so many individual variables that the conclusions are almost all provisionary. Thus, advances in genetic theory are at such a basic step that almost all the "results" are theories that have a decent probability of being right. Currently, the human genome has been mapped. However, that's simply like opening a book. We have started identifiying genes as letters in this book. we don't even have the alphabet yet, so genetic research is in its baby stages. After identifying the letters, we must then identify words, then sentences, paragraphs and the structure of the work. only then can we start decyphering the language of the sentences. Considering much simpler languages, like Linear B have not been decoded, and egyptian was only cracked due to a lucky rosetta stone, we're at least 50 years away from finding out what individual genes do. After that we can start examining the relationships between genes on the level of an organism. No, for the forseeable future genetics will remain trial and error, as it is today. That leaves an "I think that...." topic, where little meaningful discussion can take place. The tweaking of children etc. is science fiction of the distant future

eat less, work out more. for loosing weight: be sure you train basic strength, large muscle groups. more musclemass leads to higher metabolism. for loosing weight actively: run. The longer you run, the more you loose. Stronger heat and lungs are not a disadvantage for living long either. the more you work out, the more you loose. Be sure to do the strength, that's the least work for the most weight loss. For fast loss, you simply cannot get around feeling hungry, or hours and hours of running / cardo every week.

Because they are principled, already make enough money, and are willing to give some up to not give in to the freedom-hating scumbag Chinese government? Maybe, but I am not buying it. Or maybe they are considering the negative their cencoring is having on the revenue for advertisement in the western world? with only a 30% marketshare in China, the profit may not have been worth the lessening of users in richer areas. There was also only a short time before google would have ot renew its agreement with the chinese government as well, no? when "altruism" in the form of stopping self-censorship, and economy coincide, why not get the good PR for doing "the right thing" ?

Do y'all have some links about this? Tried Googlin' and didn't find anything. I've only seen this new system compared to Massachussettes, and that one doesn't work. There is a post earlier in this thread about it, citing a graphical statistic. That statistic is all you need to see to see the implications of this meaningful change. However, the mechanisms of cost, and the right to universal healthcare as a part of our human rights (Article 25: Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.) The human rights of 32 million people who will due to the reform have a right to health care, are non-negotiable. This has nothing to do with cost. that is a seperate issue of the bill, where bipartisan constructive cooperation should be a given: who wants to campaign for expensive health care? Doesn't Europe do what the US Government's trying to do...? Europe is sinking economically because it's moved so far left and socialist, while countries like China and India which remain relatively free-market economically are flourishing. I don't know where you live, but i'm assuming it's not europe. The american influence over proceedings here have declined dramatically the last 15 years. Most Europeans look to Europe, because they see themselves as a century ahead of consumerist, egocentric, conservative, selfish, inhumane, individualist, greedy, polluting, fat, torturing, illiberal americans. Did you know it's harder to get asylum in Europe than in the US, because there are more applicants who wish to go to Europe? Maybe america has forgotten about the progress during the last fifty years in the rest of the world? The democrats are a semi-right wing party in European terms. The republicans are right extremists compared to european politics, who are easily compared to neo-nazis due to their extreme rightist views (!) I think americans have become too imersed in their own country to see the global setting in which we all live today. On that point, in this current global economic system, doctors go to the US for jobs in true innovation; the people who look for new ways to combat cancer and heart disease come to the United States. More doctors immigrate to the US for work than any other nation. If the US goes socialist like the rest of the Western world, where do those doctors go? Where does the drive for innovation go? The most recent research here shows a significant decline in the importance of the US for applicable medican research. Drugs come from the US, new treatments, scanners and progressive use of existing technology often comes from Europe. Concrete examples: new generation CAT scanners, new generation ultrasound scanners, new generation prosthetics, the European Heart Associations dominance in the heart research of exercise as treatment for heart failure etc. Productivity per researcher is significantly higher in Norway, than in the US. It was not like that 10 years ago Have the americans rested on past successes? probably.

That is indeed the whole idea of a legal reform: changing the system. The current system is the most expensive one in the world, and far from the best in terms of treatment given per dollar. Changing the system gives it a whole set of different properties, so you can for instance increase coverage without raising price. That means someone makes less money (i.e. insurance companies, pharmaseutical companies, possibly doctors). That is why these groups have opposed the reform so vehemently: not due to what is ethically right, but because of their own self-interests. This is the entire point and nature of having a reform in the first place. I cannot think of anyone being against health reform, as the previous system, and the new current system are obviously both broken. The new system is simply a tad less broken than the previous one, but it still comes out terribly in comparsion with other countries. again, look at the example of Maryland: you can quite easily defy this apparent contradiction, and achieve the same high quality coverage for more people while paying less. It just means sticking up to the corporations that effectively run the US at this point in history. Similarly, considering only the facts: look at the gun lobby and the harm it causes, religious lobbies and their interest in education, millitary lobby, lobby, lobby lobby. Where did the common voter reassign their power to the corporations, rather than their own votes? Corporatism requires strict lobby regulation, and obviously this is not the case, so reform is neccessary. For a lobbyist, the right to free speech does not amount to a right to the bribery of politicians. I doubt such an argument would pass through the Supreme court though. That's the mess the american legal system is in. The type of corruption lobbyists perform that is going on in sophisticated terms, and this power-struggle of a percieved status quo in every situation is the nature of all political struggle, local, domestic, national and international. Those in power wish to establish a status quo, thus ensuring their continued power, while those who do not have power wish to alter the "status quo" that is actually ever-dynamic in ways beneficial to themselves. Just look at the bribery conducted under the terms of "compromise" to pass any healthcare bill: states getting special exceptions, or cheaper care, not for ideological or ethical reasons, but simply because they need to be bribed to do the right thing. I wonder how long america can retain its position as the flaws of its political system are made clear by polerization between the two parties. The EU is also in trouble, it is just a question before the east takes over unless vast reform takes place. In a conservatist enviornment, that's nigh on impossible.

Almost everyone is aware of the benefits of warming up before running. Equally important is warming down after running. That is what prevents stiffness, as lactic acid gets transported out of the muscles. Warming down consists of light jogging, where you don't get out of breath, but retain high circulation. We get advised to have a minimum 10 mins of warming down after activity, but 10% of effective training time is also a minimum. I.E. after playing a 3 hour tennis match, or running for 3 hours, I warm down for at least 18 minutes. stretching after excersise increases flexibility, it does not decrease sore/ stiffness. I wouldn't do interval training two days in a row either, unless you've been building up your form and excersise intensity over time.

The thing with anything and everything used to replace natural products is simple: phytochemicals. we don't know what these biologically active compounds actually do, but we get them in fruit and veg everywhere. We don't know if the composition of these is important, how they interact, or what health benefits they have. simply put: we are addapted to nature, we don't really know how nature works, so we can't emulate it. Of course some things are very well tested, but artificial sweetners etc. have not been tested. This area of food science is developing quickly: sterilan is being refined to loose its liquirshy taste, etc. these things haven't been tested. It may be smart ot be better safe than sorry, when we don't know the consequences. generally, the only dietary advice that is official, is that most westerners get too little vitamin D. any other supplements are not recommended for the general population, because we don't need them. why take more than neccessary, when we know overdosage of "healthy things" often have negative health effects? water and healthy eating just seems so safe. Electrolytes / sports drink only for competition. That's what the professionals do, don't they have good advice?

The Americans have the Senate... It's a global phenomenon. I agree the norwegian country side have too much power, but that can easily be avoided in any other country. This distribution of electorate by region and population has nothing to do with the party sytem. However, It's almost impossible to change the distribution in norway, since the population has been redistributed since the system was put in place in 1945. Those who represent the country side would have to remove themselves from power, which will never really happen voluntarily. The powerhungry become politicians, not the selfless. The system is good, but of course it needs fine-tuning. unlike the inherent flaws of a bipartite state, or a 5 party state, the grounded principle is effective. This graphic speaks for itself. It's hard to get a more expensive system than the current american one. reform is screechingly neccessary. What would work better than the current reform, in cutting costs, while ensuring coverage remains attainable for all?

This topic has so many intersting opinions there's just too much to comment on. It's also probably nicer and more productive to generalize. political system: look to Norway. 7-10 ish political parties work fine, coalition governments consist of 3-4 parties, those of other opinions (smaller parties) gain significant leverage, as they are often the deciding interest groups required to pass legislation. You have options, if "your" party does something you dislike, as there is a similar, yet somewhat different party: i.e. politicians are more accountable. Smaller parties also anihilate extremism, as these parties get excluded by the center, meaning change is gradual, less polarized, and the centre majority of the population almsot always find themselves catered to. cooperation neccessitates compromise. One has to ensure the chaos of italy and too many parties does not ensue though, which can easily be controlled by a 3-4% vote neccessity for a party to hold seats in parliament. Now if only norwegian voters weren't so silly and short-sighted... "I have to pay X dollars more" selfishness: the bane of America, the price of the American Nightmare for all those being exploited so the very few can get very rich. When no one is willing to pay anything to ensure the well-being of others, society has lost its sense of ethics. The general american opinion contradicts "in God we trust" on a daily, and ideological level. Christianity and religion practice selflessness and alturism as a creed of life, Americans envision a society where the right to exploit their surroundings and peers is grounded more strongly in the constitution and its amendments than the ethics worshipped every sunday. The empty rituals of religion are sidetracked by the worship of materialism and oneself as an individual. I wonder how often we, as modern men, reflect upon our own lives, if ever. The west seems lost in national debt that finances extravagant spending, while not paying the taxes for the services we gain. Spending the money of future generations, it's sickening to find that we are so entranced by our own sacreligious greed that we object when the money is spent on someone other than our immediate selves, as the deficits pile up. This "dining and dashing" through life is dispicable. Pay back the defict of the last 20 years, the same people benefiting are still alive. Cut military spending drastically, but most importantly raise the taxes. Healthcare is a human right.

Most of the puns on this thread would be more hazardous to my health than the incident itself. And i'm not kidding about that.

"Fun" requires variation and diversity. I stand by that point. complementary roles ensure many different ways of playing the exact same content. that's the beauty of it: being a ranger, a mage and a meleer in the same situation are all different things. I may like the intense clicking of "catching" a boss and tanking it, bosses may have varying weaknesses, requiring extra clicking for a mage etc. There would be many different things to choose from: thus, more of us find fun in every new piece of content: it's utilitarian to have variation. There are so many ways in which the three roles may be incorporated that needing at least 3 people to fight any boss, of different roles does not limit the veriety in the bosses, the other mechanics of the bosses do. If you can't find 2 people to perform an activity with on the RSOF, in clan chats, or on your own friendslist within 10 minutes, you're obviously not an active member of the community, and don't really care either way because "it requires a tad of effort to find out where i can consistently find teams of likeminded, likable gamers" I agree that other elements also have to be incorporated, making every boss unique, not like the KQ and KBD for instance, where the only thing that seperates them is their combat level, and minor details in what gear you bring. there should indeed be different mechanics for different bosses, making them "fun". That would lead to more complex roles within teams as well, and the mages /rangers /magers / vengancer / skiller elements or whatever also become more varied, and not just another "tank job" or "range from a distance". Any boss that can be killed solo at a lower level will be camped to death by high leveled players. They are obsolete, and the current bosses are mid-level bosses. I'm pretty sure almost anyone can solo the KBD with combat stats of 80, if they range mage or melee. The current bosses require combinations of mid-level players. People complain of the need for "instanced bosses" as high leveled teams are taking all the lootshare worlds for these bosses, evidence in point that your situation will not, and cannot work. Soloable bosses are like the metal dragons (here, especially mithril) and the chaos elemental: they are normal creatures, but a little stronger. They are not real bosses. The rest of your post concerns a gaming style where you do not interact with the players around you, only "friends" you have from before. That is exactly the attitude that hurts runescape in so many ways. That's the selfishness, "crashing", stealing spawns for killing and hunting, half-killing for slayer xp. That's the spamming, the begging, the "can i borrow", the bug abuse, the manipulation clans, the pre-agreed rules dm cheaters while pking. That is where flaming originates, hostility, and conversations that almost never progress beyond question: answer, even though there are 20 players woodcutting the same ivy. Relations between players in the gaming environment, not on their friendslist determines how the community acts almost all of the time. That is where the general enjoyment of a game is completely ruined by "noobs" or maturity, positivism and enjoyment emnate.

The penance queen can be killed by 5 level 80s (summoning included). the rewards have always been, and are still not comparable to any other bosses, and it takes 30 mins to get to the boss, and less than 10 mins to kill it. With a team that has played barbarian assault for a couple hours as individuals, you never fail killing the queen with ease. Mithril dragons are certainly more bosslike than BA. quite frankly, barbarian assault is popular with the lower levels to some degree, and is in no way master or elite in content or reward. does soul wars also constitute boss killing? All bosses currrently can be farmed effectively with a small team of players all wearing the same gear. By all "bosses" i consider monsters that should be difficult to kill, not just a routine. If Jagex assumed anything about bosses comparable to the corporeal beast and god wars dungeon from an old minigame, i would be extremely surprised, and very pesimistic about the future of the game. reorganizing the words of the first sentence you quote, retaining the original meaning: "These free spirits need only to be integrated into the community if they wish it." What i meant by the second sentence was obviously also unclear on my part: consider soloing bosses today. It's very inefficient, especially at god wars, because you spend your time mostly getting kill count, not fighting the actual boss. That means the single player alternative is clearly ineffective compared to a team strategy. That leaves you identical options as today: get a team, or spend more time on your own. However, the single-player way of killing bosses should never be as efficient for the individual as working with a team. You have a free choice to play as a pure character, however in making that choice you sacrifice some aspects of the game. The same goes, and should go for those who choose to turn their public chats to "off", choose not to add friends to their friendslists, and choose to contribute to the runescape community.

I have to agree. Co-op questing is a good idea on paper, but it only really works well when the quest is first released. After a few weeks the number of people that have to finish the quest at one time peters out and then you have players desperately searching for someone who has already finished the quest and is willing to take time out to help them. When the community was much smaller it wasn't much of an issue since just about everyone knew someone, but these days it's much easier to get lost in a crowd. I personally love questing and the idea of future co-op questing is appealing, but I don't want people who dislike quests feeling like they have to do them the first day the quest is released just to be able to finish it in any kind of timely manner. While there are more options available (especially to members) to network and find people to help with a quest, in a year or two years time there won't be many people looking to do a quest at the same time and that's really, really limiting for a player. Better to stick to having NPCs help out. This is where imagination can be limiting: group questing worlds. We currently have one. However, it serves little to no purpose. It would be easy for jagex to force those playing multiplayer quests to play them on a questing world, just as pvp is restricted to other worlds. With 70k+ players online at any given time, i'm having a really hard time imagining weekends where you cannot find the 1-2 other people you would need to complete a quest. there are just that many players online at the same time. yes, questing would initially be a tiny bit harder, but once you find a partner, you have a partner. The quests could have so many new facets, and they would be a lot mroe rewarding to complete. Runescape is not static. It's not like one could release a multiplayer quest identical in the build-up of today's quests by any means. Rather, they would be new, exciting and require a little bit of innovation. Wouldn't that be nice to see on the questing front? There are, after all, 214 single-player quests, and 2 multiplayer quests at this time, it is clear where there is room for variation, improvement and innovation of new game mechanics, like the "team instanced area".

But considering the amount of players who prefer not to team up all the time, wouldn't you agree it'd be against the spirit of the game and kind of unfair for Jagex to release updates that disadvantage people who would rather not "cooperate" with others all the time? runescape has always marketed itself as an MMORPG. It's not like multiplayer updates would come out of the dark. The runescape line has never been similar to the Everquest line, where you effectively play a single player game in the sense that they advertise that "you can socialize with other players" rather than perform quests and in-game activities with them. Contrastingly, the runescape staff have said the community focus has been a major aspect it's been working with, especially last year they were unusually loud in their proclamations that community was the focus of the future.

If you dislike multiplayer gaming, I can only suggest playing a different game than one that markets itself as "The Number 1 Free Multiplayer Game". The article only considers things from an MMORPG perspective as that is what runescape has always marketed itself as, if you don't particularly like that genre, maybe the future of runescape isn't for you (?)

Thanks to jp7725 for excellent editing!

Hehe, i think we talked past eachother again. by perspectives i mean exactly what you outline: the context in which the same beliefs ring true, but with a new insight.